Ninefox Gambit (34 page)

“Weniat to Colonel Ragath. Three winnowers operational, sir. We don’t have a good way of gauging what ‘operational’ means in this –”

“They’re working,” Ragath said flatly. “Captain Jaghun set up video for us before the radiation caught up to her company. Captain Iziade was within eyeshot of the passage out, but I’d had it sealed. The heretics caught on fast. They’ve already locked down everything else; we’re cooperating to contain the damage. Scan’s shot to hell with the winnowers active, but you may be the only people left alive down there.”

The ward’s population had been estimated at 43,000 people. It wasn’t that the number was high. It wasn’t. Weniat knew what large numbers looked like. It was the ratio. Everyone dead.

At least it would have been quick. Not painless, but quick. Of course, to say that cleaning up all the corpses was going to be a hassle was an understatement. Not his problem, luckily.

Weniat, in a rare exercise, recovered enough humanity to say, “I’m sorry about your soldiers, sir.”

Ragath ignored this. “Leave the winnowers running for another hour just in case, then shut them off. We’ll retrieve you, but in case of some disaster on our end you know what to do.”

Destroy the winnowers. They couldn’t be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

“One of these days you’ll tell me to do something hard, sir,” Weniat said.

“Go fuck a power socket, Captain,” Ragath said without heat, and signed off.

“Y
OU’RE CERTAIN
?” C
HERIS
asked Colonel Ragath. “We’re having the expected problems with Scan up here.”

“We’re certain,” Ragath said. “We’re extracting the winnower teams now. Nothing left but fungus and corpses. Thanks to Captain Jaghun, we even have a video of some creative but misguided soldier’s attempt to survive by pulling her eyes out with her fingers. Didn’t work, of course.”

Neither of them mentioned the fact that the winnowers hadn’t respected loyalty-states. Ragath had reported the destruction of three Kel companies earlier. There was nothing more to say about it.

“Thank you for your work, Colonel, and my regards to the winnower teams,” Cheris said. “Keep me informed of further developments.”

“Naturally, sir.”

“He approves of you,” Jedao said.

“I couldn’t tell,” Cheris said. Out loud: “Still no luck, Scan?”

“We’re not likely to get readings on that hemisphere for another four hours, sir.”

“All that,” Cheris said subvocally, “and it wasn’t even the main assault. We depopulated a ward as a distraction.” At least the heretic Gerenag Abrana, whose holdings and supporters had been concentrated in the Radiant Ward, would be sure to take notice.

“The best feints,” Jedao said, “look like real attacks.”

During the winnower attack, Shuos infiltrators in other wards had been busy with sabotage. A lot of sabotage, carefully targeted.

Out loud again: “Get me Captain Damiod and Captain Ko.” The cryptology team and the Shuos. Their faces appeared next to her primary display.

“Sir,” Ko said, saluting.

“Sir,” Damiod said. “You wanted to hear about that line.”

“Yes,” Cheris said. He had brought it to her attention not long ago.

“With aid from the infiltrators, we’ve confirmed that Line 92832-17 goes directly to the Fortress’s command center. It’s probably Inaiga Zai’s direct line. We haven’t had any luck decrypting the packets. I suspect there’s some cutting-edge theorem being used because the structures smell funny, but never mind that.

“More to the point, we’ve confirmed that the tap on 17 goes to an individual associated with Zai’s lieutenant Gerenag Abrana. Unless the Shuos have gotten bored, no one’s tampered with the tap. We
think
Zai doesn’t realize it’s there.”

“Do you concur?” Cheris asked Ko.

“I do, sir,” Ko said.

“I’m sorry not to have better news for you,” Damiod said, although he sounded as though what he was really sorry about was this demand on his time.

“It’s all right,” Cheris said, and took note of Ko’s eyes, momentarily narrowed. “That’s not what I need. You’ve prepared that dummy cipher for me?”

“It’s ready,” Ko said. “It looks like a hedgehog, but a good team should be able to crack it in days if they approach it the right way, especially with the Fortress’s computational resources.”

Cheris was betting that Gerenag Abrana had an excellent team.

“Then here’s the next thing,” Cheris said. “Can we insert a message into Line 17? And make sure the tap sees it?”

“It’s an excellent tap,” Damiod said scornfully. “It probably sees more than the main line does. But sir, once you do that, they’ll be able to run a trace. You’ll blow our ability to listen in.”

“That’s fine,” Cheris said. “After this message we may not need to listen any longer.”

Ko was thoughtful. “How very Shuos of you, sir.”

“Do you have an objection?” Cheris said.

“It was merely an observation, sir.”

“This is the message I want inserted,” Cheris said to Ko and Damiod, “by whatever means necessary. Full video, show the shadow. Open with the Deuce of Gears.” Jedao had insisted on this. “This is Garach Jedao Shkan, forgive the cosmetic changes; my options were limited.” The name sounded unnaturally natural. “As per your request, I’ve cleared out the pests in your house. If you take care of your end, you should have a free hand to negotiate once the Hafn arrive. Meanwhile, I have some Kel to attend to. I trust we can discuss further arrangements over dinner as previously agreed. Enjoy the peace and quiet.”

If this worked, if Zai’s lieutenant cracked the dummy cipher and overheard Zai’s “negotiations” with Jedao to get rid of Zai’s subordinates, the heretics would tear each other apart and they could all go home soon.

Cheris looked down at her half-gloved hands so she wouldn’t have to notice the way people were looking at her.

“That’s it,” Jedao said. “Now we wait.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

S
HUOS
H
AODAN HATED
assassination assignments. Years ago, an instructor had explained that this was why he was ideal for them. Certainly he had the requisite skills, some of which had come from growing up in a Kel family, and he had excelled in academy. Originally, however, he had hoped for something quiet in analysis or adminstration.

On one of his first missions, his supervisor had sent him as a backup field agent anyway. The primary agent was talented but erratic. She got herself tangled up in some side scheme involving art fraud (he would have loved to see the wording of the reprimand), and Haodan had to dispatch the target himself.

He did too good a job. His supervisor told him it was his duty to take on more assassination assignments. When he protested that he didn’t enjoy taking lives – in some Shuos divisions you could go your entire career without taking a life, not that the general public would ever believe it – the supervisor said, with cruel persuasiveness, that if every Shuos weaseled out of wetwork, that would leave no one but the bullies and sociopaths. Hence it was Shuos policy to retain some assassins who didn’t glory in their work. Not that the general public would believe that, either.

Haodan knew that the argument was an appeal to his ego. It worked.

So here he was in the Fortress’s Dragonfly Ward years later, getting in position for his attempt on the head of the heretics’ analysis section, a foreigner named Vahenz afrir dai Noum. Shuos eavesdropping on the heretics’ discussions suggested that she was influential in policy-making as well. As his handler had explained, they hadn’t wanted to make an attempt on Vahenz earlier because it was more useful to monitor her activities without doing anything that would trigger an inconvenient stepping up of security. Now that the Fortress was all but taken, however, they wanted to make sure that Vahenz didn’t escape to cause trouble elsewhere, considering how much damage she had done already. They’d considered trying to capture her alive, but in the end they had decided against it on the grounds that the operation would be too uncertain.

Haodan had secured a job as a delivery man for a fancy confectioner; the Fortress’s citizens apparently took a certain level of decadence for granted, even while under siege. The previous delivery woman had gotten sick with Haodan’s encouragement, and Haodan had made all the right noises at the interview. Some research had turned up the manager’s worry for relatives trapped on the Drummers’ Ward, which Haodan played on shamelessly. He could have told her that life wasn’t going to be any better in the Dragonfly Ward now that the campaign was drawing to a close, even if the confectionary was in one of the areas least affected. Once the Kel had secured the Fortress, they would send for the Vidona, and the Vidona were bound to be more thorough than usual about reeducation procedures with a nexus fortress in the wake of a rebellion.

Vahenz ordered confections every other day like clockwork. Haodan despaired of predictable people. They made his job too easy. But then, the easier the job, the likelier it was that he could pull it off without excessive secondary casualties, so he ought to be grateful.

The parcel he was interested in was pasted over with cunning cutout paper shapes, farm animals in accordance with the heretical calendar. The effect was elegant, espeecially with the tasteful subdued colors of the paper. It would be his third delivery.

It amused him that the confectionary’s manager insisted on hand delivery during a siege. The human touch or something. She claimed people paid extra for it. Servitor delivery wouldn’t have made his work significantly harder, though. He knew ways of handling civilian servitors.

The manager was giving him instructions. She liked the fact that he stood practically at attention – something you learned fast with a Kel father, albeit one who was a medical technician – and treated her seriously. “Don’t forget to tell Leng that I’m thinking of their son,” she was saying. “And be certain to tell Ajenio that I’ve got those new sesame cookies in production, if he wants to place an order. I’ve included samples in his parcel so he can try before he decides, but he’ll like them. I’m always right about these things. Oh, and avoid the 17-4 passage. They’ll be marching soldiers through there around the time you go through, and you don’t want to be mixed up in that. Some kind of parade, but you’ve got a job to do.”

At last she had said everything she was going to say, and Haodan was able to leave. He rode his scooter in the designated lane. The passages on this level were messy, and the lifts were a disaster. Then again, the Fortress had originally been intended as a retreat for the heptarchs, with wards designed by separate teams, and for reasons of Doctrine they had demolished and reconstructed great chunks of the interior to do away with the seventh ward after they destroyed the Liozh. It was a wonder the thing was habitable.

The first two deliveries went as expected. Ajenio, a round, florid man, insisted on trying a sesame cookie in front of Haodan, and then offered him one. Haodan declined. He knew the manager would take a dim view of his saying yes. Besides, she already sent him home with a basket of treats every evening and he was convinced he was gaining weight.

By the time he freed himself from Ajenio, who was capable of waxing poetic about a cookie to a degree even an Andan would find embarrassing, he was twelve minutes behind schedule. Still, not disastrous.

The office Haodan went to after that was in a building that had its back up against one of the ward’s walls. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that escape passages were involved, although the Shuos attempts at scan had been inconclusive. He had been here before. His face and his uniform with the swan-and-ribbon logo were familiar to security. They waved him through, smiling. He smiled back. It was only polite.

Seventeen minutes late. He still had some margin.

Up to the fourth floor. Lucky unlucky four, as the Kel would say. The target worked in this office sometimes, instead of being holed up in the Fortress’s command center all the time. Judging from some of the infiltrators’ gossip, the heretics didn’t all get along. She probably wanted to monitor the ward in person, or hide some of her activities from her putative superior.

The target’s assistant sat at the front desk. She was stabbing at the terminal. Too bad: if he had a different pretext he could have offered to help her with the problem, but as it stood that would arouse suspicion. Besides, odds were that a Shuos had caused the problem to begin with.

Haodan bobbed in a calculatedly nervous bow. “Swan and Ribbon. Sorry to interrupt, should I drop this off or take it in?” He always asked.

The assistant never let him take it in, but he had gotten one of the other infiltrators to run a flickerform servitor into the ceiling above the target’s office. Maddeningly, the target had enough shielding and scan machinery in there to outfit a warmoth. Even the servitor spy was a risk. All it did was listen, and at a random time each day it sent an encrypted databurst to indicate what times it detected human activity in there. No luck getting clean vocals out.

The office was located far to the back, with additional security in the way. It would have been nice to go in and do the job personally, but Haodan wasn’t suicidal.