Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

The communications post in the Anemone Ward is back in our hands and Jedao’s troops even handed over the loyalists, but I’m bothered by Jedao’s resources. I threatened some videos out of Stoghan’s lackeys, and those aren’t just infantry he landed, those are Kel. I don’t care if they were wearing brown instead of black-and-gold, those are Kel. You know the joke, right? If you have a choice between sending a three-year-old to do covert ops and a Kel, you pick the three-year-old because the Kel is too stupid to lie? Anyway, where did Jedao get these Kel? If we’re dealing with a legitimate Kel swarm, if Kel Command gave Jedao command – but how did he convince the Kel to surrender one of their high officers? Any other general would be able to rely on formation instinct to shove the order through, but I’m not sure Jedao would inspire that kind of obedience unless he explicitly got Kel Command’s blessing. Yet this seems more likely than the other possibility, which is that the least trustworthy general in Kel history convinced at least one Kel high officer to join him. That’s the problem with formation instinct: if he turned the right individual, he could have taken down the rest. The thing is, Jedao isn’t just a traitor, even if people’s brains short out around that fact. He’s also a Shuos. The two aren’t equivalent, despite the Shuos jokes. He was a Shuos assassin before he switched tracks, and there’s circumstantial evidence he did some analyst work as well. Anyway, his career...