Ninefox Gambit

by Yoon Ha Lee

Hazan was consulting with Colonel Ragath, Medical, and Navigation. Cheris saw no reason to interrupt him. Instead, she brought up a formation model. “Servitors,” she said. “Could it be?”

  “General,” Jedao said, wintry, “your soldiers are dying.”

  For once she wasn’t tempted to shout at him. “One of the risks of a probe is casualties.”

  “General, they’re defenseless. You’re wasting time while they’re being massacred.”

  “I’m trying to figure something out,” Cheris said. “You’re getting in my way. Do you have some contribution to make? Because I’m not the one who’s wasting time here.”

  This time his voice was a gun-crack. “Your commander’s plan will necessitate the sacrifice of a company to hold the high corridor. I recommend that you –”

  She was shaking. When Jedao said “recommend,” it came with the force of an order. She clenched her hands.

  She was only a brevet general, but she had conviction on her side. Even if it meant defying Jedao. She straightened, prepared for the next lash of that familiar voice. “I’ll discuss details with the commander when he has them,” she said harshly. If Jedao didn’t like it, too bad. It was his turn to defer to her.

  Brief silence, then savagely correct courtesy. “You know the numbers, General. I await your convenience.”

  The grid didn’t want to add servitors to the simulated formation she had input. It was un-Kel. She was using one of the earlier heretic formations they had identified. Cheris cloned the necessary levels of the simulator – Doctrine wasn’t going to thank her for messing up their sandbox – and yanked out baseline assumptions and their associated implications.

  “So that’s where you’re going,” Jedao said, right in her ear.

  Commander Hazan interrupted her to present her with the plan. Cheris stared at the schematics for a few seconds before she could convince her brain to switch tasks. “General,” she said to Jedao, not exactly a peace offering, “I would welcome your input.”

  Jedao said scathing things about the Nirai team’s choice of demolition targets, which Cheris passed on undiluted. But Hazan’s basic plan was sound, and a mediocre plan implemented quickly was better than an excellent plan two hours too late.

  “Implement now,” Cheris said.

  “Sir.” Hazan bent over his terminal and began parceling out orders. He probably wanted to question her priorities, too, but he wasn’t going to do it in front of everyone. Jedao didn’t need to worry about that.

  Cheris returned to the formation simulator, seeding an appalling number of values based on intuition. Her cleaver-work with the code convinced the simulator to regard servitors as quasi-human for the purpose of generating formation effects.

  The Kel used servitors on the battlefield for reconnaissance and the occasional spot of flyby shooting, but the reason for the servitors’ reduced status wasn’t only hexarchate regulations. It was because servitors generated negligible formation effects under the high calendar, and the Kel defined themselves by their formations. Formation effects were also of limited use against servitors, but this wasn’t exactly useful if you didn’t expect to be fighting other Kel.

  The heretics had designed a calendar where these axioms weren’t true. If servitors weren’t formation-neutral on the Fortress, this cut both ways. Servitors could demonstrably be harmed by formation effects, so they might be able to generate exotic effects themselves as part of a Kel formation.

  She changed one parameter, two, more. Adjusted the spacing of the defensive square until she had a rough reenactment of the incident Shuos Imnai had described: a servitor unwittingly spoiling a formation and allowing the amputation gun’s influence to mutilate everyone, including itself.

  “I see it now,” Jedao said.

  It was all the apology she was going to get from him. “We can do this,” Cheris said. “And I’ve got a better use for those propaganda drops.”

  “I thought you might,” he said, “although I would have come up with something different.”

  His approval should have worried her, but all she felt was hellfire triumph. The heretics had decimated her soldiers. It was time to hammer them dead in return.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

  Priority: Urgent

  From:: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

  To: Heptarch Liozh Zai

  Calendrical Minutiae: Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Peahen, Day of the Earthworm, and it’s about to be the name of that other snail whose name I can’t pronounce, unless Doctrine has had another vote.

  I’m glad you’re not celebrating our latest success, my dear Zai. Stoghan and his cronies might think we’ve scored a decisive blow, but you and I know better. That Kel swarm hasn’t left and we still have an infestation in one ward.

  Which isn’t to say that I don’t possess the utmost faith in the relief swarm’s ability to deal with the threat, but it will be more impressive if we handle that part ourselves. Negotiate from a position of strength and all that.

  Anyway, it’s been impossible to get Doctrine’s attention. Stoghan’s soldiers might be entertaining themselves passing around videos of mutilated squirming Kel synchronized to dance tunes, a pastime that gives me the creeps, but Doctrine recognizes that the changed geometry of the Fortress alters its calendrical effects, and the fix will be nontrivial.

  Although the Nirai are some of the hexarchate’s most inept conversationalists, when it comes to pinpoint demolitions, they can’t be beat. I’m no engineer, but it took serious coordination to remove that section mostly intact, stabilize its motion, and evacuate the wounded.

  I would give a few cases of that delightful vintage from the City of Firefly Desires to find out where they scared up their primary gunner. It’s probably the same person Jedao delegated to dispatch the kaleidoscope swarm, someone with an unusual intuitive grasp of mathematics. Any fool can feed numbers to a grid, but it takes knowledge of the underlying systems to know which numbers matter.

  The thing to consider is Jedao’s next move. It’s certain that the Shuos infiltrators stayed behind to provide intelligence and make nuisances of themselves. They’re hard to locate and we’re short-handed. An overly helpful couturier turned in an “infiltrator” two days ago, but the woman was some unfortunate social rival. That’s the kind of luck we’ve been having.

  The bright side is that most of the Kel in the Umbrella Ward are gone, but Jedao will land more troops when he can. He’s barely touched the infantry complements on all those bannermoths, which is a substantial reserve.

  One more thing about the Shuos before I forget. Analysis Team Two has for once accomplished something without handholding and found proof of tampering with the Fortress’s financial flows. What’s more impressive is that someone inserted time-delayed logic spikes into Gerenag Abrana’s systems, and that’s just what we know of. No one’s found anything amiss with your personal systems, but I suspect the problems are better-hidden.

  Everyone’s abuzz over the Hafn transmission, but your people aren’t familiar enough with the Hafn to interpret it correctly. I tried to make this point twice at the last meeting, but Abrana was the only one taking me seriously. It’s not a coincidence that she’s the only upper-level ally who’s spent significant time off-Fortress.

  The Hafn have a bias toward understatement. They prefer to get things done with little fuss, and they’re not above what the Kel would classify as Shuos tactics. The Hafn may sound diffident, but the Kel are going to be in for a hard time.

  In any case, the game isn’t won, but it’s good to allow yourself the occasional moment of careful optimism. I suggest you follow my example here.

  Yours in calendrical heresy,

  Vh.

  “YOU’VE BEEN AT the formations for hours,” Jedao said. “Are you sure you shouldn’t rest?”

  “You’re a great believer in rest,” Cheris said. She grimaced at the leftmost pivot of the latest formation. Would skew symmetry get her t
he results she wanted? The whole thing was moot if they couldn’t wrench the heretics’ calendar into a more favorable configuration, but she preferred to prepare just in case.

  “I once had someone swerve her tank out of our column and straight into a house. With a very large basement. Because she was too sleep-deprived to think. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. – Oh, who am I kidding, it was hilarious, even if it was kind of a disaster. I laughed so hard my aide almost shot me.”

  “Do I look that tired?”

  “Not yet,” Jedao said.

  Great. “I have some of Doctrine on this, too,” Cheris said, “but I’m faster.”

  “I know.”

  Cheris didn’t look around the room, didn’t look at the ashhawk emblem, didn’t look at the ninefox shadow. Her world was graying at the edges, not the way it did in combat, but the way it had in Kel Academy when she got another letter from her mother handwritten in not entirely grammatical high language.

  Skew symmetry wasn’t it, either. Cheris played with the pivots in her head, trying different configurations. Ah: that looked promising. She fiddled with the simulator.

  “Colonel Ragath’s unit list for the assault looks good,” Jedao said, “but I had expected as much. I’ve been pleased with his competence.”

  An update flashed in from Medical. Cheris gritted her teeth as she looked at the collation. The battalion had taken eighty-eight percent casualties.

  The boxmoths were having difficulty loading all the possibles into the sleepers to stabilize them until they could be unfrozen for treatment at a real medical facility. The colonel-medic noted, very clinically, that due to time pressure, lower quality prep would affect recovery rates.

  “This won’t make you feel better,” Jedao said, “but the heretics mistimed that attack.”

  “Yes, I see,” Cheris said after a moment. She and Jedao would have followed up to hold the position if the initial attack had been successful. If the heretics had given way slowly, drawn the Kel further into the Fortress, they could have hit the entire assault force with the amputation guns. As it stood, the Kel had taken staggering losses, but they still had soldiers left to fight with.

  Jedao was quiet while Cheris worked through another six formations, but it was a companionable quiet. Then she tried to work the tension out of her hands. She had gotten used to the fingerless gloves. Even her officers no longer took notice of them.

  “I wish I knew I was doing this right,” Cheris said, “but there’s nothing for it but to move forward.”

  “The only unforgivable sin in war is standing still,” Jedao said. “It’s better to be doing the wrong thing wholeheartedly than to freeze.”

  “You’ve lost soldiers.” It wasn’t what she had meant to say.

  “Nothing makes it easier,” Jedao said. “I sometimes think I’m not the mad one, that it’s Kel Command. They should know better. Anyway, you should stop delaying.”

  “I should,” she agreed, and headed out.

  Commander Hazan frowned when Cheris entered the command center. “Has something changed, sir?”

  “Commander,” Cheris said, “I wish to address the servitors.”

  “The moth servitors, sir?”

  “The swarm servitors. All of them, or as many of them as can be reached for an address in twenty-four minutes.”

  He didn’t understand. “If you have orders for them –”

  “I’m not interested in presenting them with orders,” Cheris said, resolved to be patient with him. “I need to address them. To make a request. It would be better if I could do so personally, but with the swarm entire that’s impossible. The servitors themselves may have suggestions for how to accommodate this. I am amenable to any reasonable suggestion.”

  The command center’s atmosphere was distinctly awkward. Her officers thought this was Jedao’s mad scheme. It wouldn’t make them feel better to know that it was hers, and in any case she didn’t owe them explanations.

  Hazan recovered enough to say, “Commander Hazan to Servitor Overgroup One.” He began explaining the request.

  “We didn’t have servitors when I was alive,” Jedao said. “No true sentients, anyway, although there were rumors. Plenty of presentient drones. I wonder what the servitors think of what we did to their forebears, but then we make damn sure they don’t burden us with their opinions, don’t we?”

  Dangerously, Cheris agreed with this.

  “The linkup is ready for you, sir,” Hazan said. “Address in eighteen minutes?”

  “That will suffice,” Cheris said. She kept out of the way while waiting and read reports as they crossed her terminal. Briefly, she fantasized about sitting in a chair by a window and watching clouds go by. Did Jedao ever wish for quiet vacations? Or, dreadful thought, was this already his idea of a vacation?

  “Six minutes, sir,” Hazan said.

  She was signing off on several Shuos reports. Grid warfare, mostly, with the targets she and Jedao had designated after consultation with Captain-analyst Ko. She hoped none of the Shuos were getting too creative.

  “I’m ready,” Cheris said as the minute slid closer.

  Servitors didn’t organize themselves the same way on all moths. The Unspoken Law’s servitors had a traditionalist bent, and they were represented by a single sleek deltaform from Overgroup One. The Sincere Greeting had two delegates, one labeled Over, the other labeled Sideways. She wasn’t sure what that meant. The largest group was from Commander Kel Irio’s Spectrum Fallacy: five servitors, each of a different form.

  She had to start somewhere. “Servitors,” she said, for lack of a better form of address, “this is Brevet General Kel Cheris. I have interrupted your duties because I have a request for you. It is not an order.” Best to make that clear from the start.

  Cheris heard a stifled exclamation from Scan.

  The servitors were silent, motionless, prism-eyes focused on her.

  “We have threshold winnowers being modified for use under the heretics’ calendar,” Cheris said, “but we need to regain a toehold on the Umbrella Ward and advance into the Drummers’ Ward. The difficulty is the amputation gun.

  “There’s one useful thing we know about the amputation guns. They have to be deployed in formation. The heretical calendar occupies a phase basin that is, unusually, not servitor-neutral. If servitors can be covertly landed, we can use you to construct grand formations and take the heretics by surprise. With Doctrine’s aid, I have identified formations that will offer protection against the amputation guns. It’s likely that the heretics haven’t anticipated this possibility. Certainly, as their infantry is not Kel-indoctrinated, they won’t have access to formations themselves.”

  The terminal lit up to indicate that the servitors were consulting each other. At last one of them said to her, through the translation interface, “This is not an order.”

  Her heart sank. “That’s correct,” she said. “You are Kel, but your service has traditionally been given certain parameters. It would be improper for me to order you to carry out a human duty when you don’t receive the accompanying human privileges. The only thing I can do is ask.”

  “Release the logistical preliminaries.”

  Cheris did so, wondering what sort of critique she was about to receive.

  “Steady,” Jedao said. “They haven’t said no.”

  The servitors spoke among themselves for a much longer time. It couldn’t be a matter of computation; that would have been fast. It had to be an argument. Cheris was aware of Commander Hazan shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  “The numbers are straightforward,” said a snakeform from Spiders and Scars. “We are not tacticians. But the odds of retrieval are minimal.”

  “That’s also correct,” Cheris said. “The situation on the Fortress will be messy.”

  “How do you propose transport?”

  “We’ve been sending propaganda canisters twice daily. Some of them could be modified to accommodate you. The heretics used early
canisters for shooting practice, but we started including recreational drugs and other luxuries, and we have some indication that they’re getting through now. There’s still risk involved, obviously. But I think the heretics are convinced the setup is an exercise forced on us by Doctrine. They’re unlikely to consider the canisters a real threat.”

  Cheris was increasingly convinced that the propaganda materials, narrating the stomach-turning ways in which the six factions had turned on the Liozh, hadn’t been directed at the heretics, but at her. Egocentric as that sounded. But she would take that up with Jedao later.

  “Absurd,” the snakeform said after a pause, “but workable.”

  Her breath caught.

  This time the Sincere Greeting’s Sideways-servitor spoke. “We are Kel. We will serve as Kel. We will fight as Kel, although we were not made for this kind of fighting. This is a Kel mission. If it furthers the Kel mission, we will serve.”

  “Thank you,” Cheris said. “I will send further instructions. I appreciate your service.”

  “Plan wisely, Kel general,” the Sideways-servitor said. And that was all.

  “Of all the damn things,” Hazan said.

  “I’ve forwarded you my preliminary plans,” Cheris said. “I need to speak to Doctrine.”

  “Of course, sir,” Hazan said, his expression still astounded.

  “A lot of people are going to die because of what I just did,” Cheris said subvocally.

  She expected Jedao to explain why it was necessary. Instead, he said, “I’m afraid it never stops hurting.”

  “Get me Captain-magistrate Gara,” Cheris said before she had time to think about that too hard.

  Gara, who was off-shift, was slow to respond. “Sir?” she asked.

  Cheris reviewed what they had on the heretics’ calendar. “In four days, look,” she said. “Their node in the remembrance superstructure has collapsed partly due to the damage we did to the Fortress’s geometry. If we knock that ritual day aside and preempt with some kind of victory feast –”