Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

AT KEL ACADEMY, an instructor had explained to Cheriss class that thethreshold winnower was a weapon of last resort, and not just for itsnotorious connotations. Said instructor had once witnessed a winnower inuse. The detail that stuck in Cheriss head wasnt the part where everydoor in the besieged city exhaled radiation that baked the inhabitantsdead. It wasnt the weapons governing equations or even theinstructors left eye, damaged during the attack, from which ghostlightglimmered.

What Cheris remembered most was the instructors aside: that returningto corpses that were only corpses, rather than radiation gates contortedagainst black-blasted walls and glassy rubble, eyes ruptured open, wasone of the best moments of her life.

Five years, five months, and sixteen days later, surrounded by smashedtanks and smoking pits on the heretic Eels outpost world of Dredge,Captain Kel Cheris of Heron Company, 109-229th Battalion, had come tothe conclusion that her instructor was full of shit. There was nocomfort to be extracted from the dead, from flesh evaporated from bones.Nothing but numbers snipped short.

According to the briefing, the Eels had a directional storm generator.The storms scrambled vectors. The effect was localized, but it wastroublesome when parallel columns ended up at opposite ends of a road ahundred kays apart, and fatal when movement along the planetary surfacesent you underground instead. Too close and the storms mightdisintegrate your component atoms entirely. Cheris and the othercaptains had been assured that the weather-eaters would keep the stormscontained, and that all the Kel infantry had to do was walk in and seizethe generator.

That had been eighteen hours ago. It wasnt that anyone was surprised bythe plans failure. It was the carnage.

Heron Company had left the cover of the southwestern woods a scanteighty-three minutes ago. The intent was to advance in a tedious snakingcurve east and then north around Hill 117 because intelligence hadindicated that the Eels vanguard would occupy the ridge nearer thewoods and leave the hill route open. It was as Cheriss company made itout of the woods that they saw what had happened to the Kel who hadpreceded them.

Cheris was unable to organize her first heart-stop impressions of whathad been the rest of the battalion. Feet scraped inside-out next tounblemished boots. Black-and-gold Kel uniforms braided into cracked ribcages. Gape-jawed, twisted skulls with eye sockets staring out of theirsides and strands of tendon knotted through crumbling teeth. A book ofprofanities written in every futile shade of red the human body had everdevised, its pages upended over the battlefield from horizon to horizon.

Her company had survived thanks to dumb luck. A field grid error haddelayed their advance, so they had missed the brunt of the attack. Shedidnt know if any other companies, or the other battalions, had madeit. Her inability to raise regimental headquarters didnt come as asurprise. Communications going down was nothing new. Orders were orders,however, and it was best to move forward. Once they got close enough,the main body of the Eels would no longer be able to deploy the stormsagainst them, lest they, too, be caught in their area of effect.

Pulses of heat in her left arm alerted her of contacts. Servitor Sparrow3 reported the coordinates of an incoming Eel battalion, arrivalestimated in two hours. The transmission ended in a burst of pain: theservitor had been detected. It was too much to hope that the Eels hadntrecognized it as a Kel servitor, and worrisome that they had let it knowthat it had been compromised before destroying it. There was no time tomourn Sparrow 3, who had been fond of Kel music; that would have to comelater.

Anything from the other servitors? Cheris asked her communicationsofficer, Lieutenant-engineer Dineng, over the subvocal relay.

A pause. Nothing, sir, Dineng said. Sparrow 8 is investigating thestorm ahead.

Cheris frowned at the periodic flickers of reports in the form of visualoverlays. If anything, they obfuscated her picture of the situation, butshe was used to that.

She monitored relay chatter with half an ear as she compared old mapsand new reconnaissance. Certain words crackled out of the soundstreamagain and again: Eels. Sleep. Storm, fractal coefficient, cant theweather-eaters hurry up. And, for pitys sake, was Kel Inoe going onabout his sex life again?

For her part, Cheris wouldnt have minded holing up in the shadow of arock and sleeping for a week. The week was one of the few time measuresthe hexarchate didnt regulate. In her old home, the City of RavensFeasting, they used the eight-day week. When she was tired, it was easyto lapse out of the military ten-day week into the eight. In the furtivetradition of her mothers people, today would be Carrion Day, a reminderof the importance of scavengers. It was difficult to agree.

Sir. Her senior lieutenant, Kel Verab, brought her out of her reverie.I dont like the look of the silhouettes on Hill 119. It was southwestof 117. She brought it up on her display and frowned at the complicatedsilhouette. Probably an installation of some sort and I bet its goteyes. I give you odds the Eels will call in the artillery the secondthey think they can get all of us. Maybe we should keep heading east.

We cant avoid the heretics forever, Cheris said. Were going to haveto hope that formation defenses hold for us if they start lobbingshells. She addressed the company. Formation, she said, Pirs Fan.It had a longer name, but nobody had time for the full names on thebattlefield.

Pirs Fan was one of the simpler formations. As its name suggested, itresembled a wedge. It was easiest for Cheris: she held the primary pivotat the van, and everyone adjusted their position relative to hers.

The Kel specialty was formation fighting. The combination of formationgeometry and Kel discipline allowed them to channel exotic effects, fromheat lances to force shields. Unfortunately, like all exotics, thisability depended on the local societys adherence to the hexarchateshigh calendar. And the high calendar wasnt just a system oftimekeeping. It encompassed the feasts, the remembrances with theirritual torture of heretics, the entire precarious social order.

Cheris knew the formations effect had begun to propagate when the worldshifted blue and the blacks bent gray. Pirs Fan offered protectionagainst the weather. It was usually better to rely on theweather-eaters, but Cheris had lost any faith that they would beeffective on this mission. Unfortunately, the formation wouldnt shieldthe unit from a direct hit. She hoped to close with the generator beforethat became an issue.

If the situation changed, there were other formations. The Kel infantrylibrary included thousands, although only a hundred or so were taught aspart of Lexicon Primary. You also had to allow for transition time inmodulation, especially between less familiar formations. Cheris couldfeed her soldiers the information through the grid, but it was nosubstitute for drill.

The march as they swung north steadied Cheris. Here stubby succulents,too low to be credible cover, grew only to be crushed underfoot. Theplants gave off a stinging fragrance that attenuated into a watery,cloying sweetness. The regional survey hadnt flagged it as a toxic.Whether the plants had any meaning to the Eels, Cheris didnt know. Shewould probably leave Dredge, if she left Dredge, without finding out.

Lieutenant Verab alerted her of the enemy sighting via heat pulse. Overthe relay, Cheris heard a junior sergeant shouting at someone who haddropped his rifle, a recent recruit who had a talent for botchingthings.