Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

fuck me sideways with a drill press, is that a Kel with decent math scores?”

the Shuos ninefox with its waving tails, each with a lidless eye, and the Kel ashhawk in flames; the Andan kniferose and the Vidona stingray; the Rahal scrywolf and the Nirai voidmoth scattered with stars.

They weren’t actually vermin. They were miniature servitors in the shapes of snake and stingfly and spider. Still, the resemblance was good enough for the phobia. Even Cheris, who had made friends with servitors since childhood, was unable to stop her reaction. They tasted her skin and prodded the crevices of her taut hands. At one point her face was heavy with clinging servitors and their cold weight. She tried not to blink when silver antennae waved right in front of her eyes. She was gripped by the fancy that it was going to insert an antenna into her pupil and force it open, wider, wider, crawl in through her optic nerve and take up residence in the crenellations of her brain, lay eggs in the secret nodes of nerve and fatty tissue.

If you looked too long at the ceiling, which Cheris did once, you started to see stars, faintly at first, then closer and closer, faster and faster, the luminous smears of nebulae resolving into individual jewels of light, and even the velvety darkness admitted cracks behind which great gears groaned – but she stopped looking. She’d always heard that Nirai stations were peculiar, but this was the first time she’d seen anything like this. The

“I am a mirror in your hands, but I break at your kiss,”

She made herself undress as usual, hesitating only when she reached her gloves. Ordinarily she would have taken them off to sleep, but she didn’t like the thought of Jedao seeing her hands naked. In public, the Kel ungloved only for suicide missions. He had already seen her hands. She did not feel easy about that.

The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you.

“The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don’t fold,”

You can’t leave advantages lying around, either, or people will use them against you.”

You want to accomplish as many different things on as many different levels as you can with each move. Efficiencies add up fast.”

“According to the Shuos,” Jedao said, “games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invested with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work.”

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

“You’re a resurrecting gosling,” Vahenz said, entertained in spite of herself.