Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

Major Ula’s company wavered for a moment. Then they got themselves sorted out and the pivots started moving into place. A great fierce light sprang up around her company. No, it wasn’t light. You couldn’t read by it or warm your hands by it, but whatever it was, it drew the eye and made it flinch at the same time. It intimated banners and swords held high and six-gun salutes. Ula was bannering: surely that was a good sign, the suicide hawk plain to see, even if all they had to represent their general was the null banner. Someone was hissing at him. He remembered to keep up. If the servitors could do their job when they were so new at it, it behooved him to do his. Astonishingly, the gate was giving way. The transparent stuff was snaking off in curling vapor. And the light – those radiant words, all the ideals of the hexarchate scribed by poets long dead – the light was funneling free in scrolls and coils, words uncaged, or perhaps words driven off. “– is the captain.” The voice on the link was savage even through the crackling. “Word from the colonel. The heretics have woken up. They’ve dropped the corrosion gradient and they’re headed for our rear. Rear units are changing front. We’re to follow the major once she’s through and hit that factory, hope the rearguard can keep the heretics occupied.” Naraucher looked again at Ula’s company. This time he noticed something that hadn’t been apparent before. At the edges of the formation, the non-pivot positions, humans and servit...