Chapter 8: Chandni

She arrived on a supply shuttle that smelled of engine grease and bad decisions.

The shuttle was one of Prithvi's grey-market contacts — a Dweepvasi trader named Keshav who ran supplies between the outer colonies in a vessel that was held together, as far as I could tell, by optimism and duct tape. The cargo was our second Iron and Stone shipment — fifty units each, enough to begin Malhar's Phase Two wall upgrades. But the cargo wasn't the interesting part.

The interesting part stepped off the shuttle's ramp, looked at Cherai Colony with the expression of a person who had been expecting disappointment and was not disappointed, and said: "So this is where the Kendra Sena sends people to die. Charming."

Chandni Joshi. Private First Class. Combat specialist, Level 7. Transferred from the 22nd Urban Warfare Division — a unit that operated in the colony-cities, the massive human settlements where the Game's politics were as dangerous as its monsters. Her transfer papers said "disciplinary reassignment." Her record said three insubordination charges, two unauthorized operation modifications, and one incident classified as "creative interpretation of rules of engagement" that had, according to the footnote, resulted in the successful defense of a civilian district that her commanding officer had ordered abandoned.

She was tall — taller than Ira, almost as tall as me. Her hair was shaved on the sides and spiked on top in a mohawk that was dyed electric blue — a cosmetic modification that the Game allowed but that most soldiers avoided because it compromised camouflage. Chandni had apparently decided that camouflage was less important than self-expression. Her skin was the deep brown of someone from the Deccan plateau, her eyes dark and sharp, and her body — I noticed, because noticing was unavoidable — was the kind of body that combat training sculpted: lean, muscular, the particular geometry of a person who had spent years fighting and had been shaped by it.

"Private Joshi," I said.

"Lieutenant Agni." She looked me up and down with the frank assessment of a person who did not believe in pretense. "You're shorter than I expected."

"You're bluer than I expected."

The mohawk — electric blue, vivid against the gas giant's amber light — caught the breeze. She grinned. The grin was — I felt my pulse respond before my brain had a chance to intervene — dangerous. Not threatening. Dangerous, the way a cliff edge was dangerous: the knowledge that proximity could lead to falling, and the falling could be spectacular.

"I requested this posting," she said.

"You requested Cherai?"

"I heard about you. The Lieutenant who got the impossible quest and actually started working on it. The guy who allied with the Dweepvasi instead of ordering them around. The squad that killed a Vana-Raja at Level 2." She shrugged — a motion that involved her entire body and conveyed more information than most people's monologues. "I was going to get transferred anyway. Might as well go somewhere interesting."

Ira appeared beside me. She'd materialized the way she always did — suddenly, silently, the Reconnaissance specialist's particular talent for being present when you needed her and invisible when you didn't. She looked at Chandni. Chandni looked at Ira. The assessment was mutual, rapid, and — I could feel the air between them vibrate with it — competitive.

"This is Ira Kapoor," I said. "My —"

"Your girlfriend," Chandni said. "The file mentioned." She extended a hand to Ira. "Chandni. Call me C.J. My friends call me C.J. I'm assuming we're going to be friends."

Ira took the hand. The handshake was brief, firm, and loaded with the particular subtext that two competent women exchanged when they met in the presence of a man they were both interested in and were deciding whether to compete or collaborate.

"Welcome to Cherai, C.J.," Ira said. "Your bunk is third from the left. The food synthesizer makes chai that tastes like engine coolant. And the jungle tries to eat you if you stand still."

"Sounds like my last posting, except the chai was worse."

I showed C.J. the colony — the walls, the towers, the medical facility, the Dweepvasi settlement. She took it in with the particular attention of a soldier assessing terrain: noting sight lines, cover positions, defensive weaknesses, and escape routes with the automatic efficiency of a person for whom tactical awareness was as natural as breathing.

"Your north wall is still vulnerable," she said as we walked the perimeter. "The chitin patches are strong, but the joints between the chitin and the timber are stress points. A coordinated hit on those joints would split the wall apart."

"I know. Malhar's working on it."

"What about mines? The jungle approach from the north is a natural funnel — the terrain channels anything coming at you into a kill zone if you mine it properly."

"We don't have mine components."

"I do." She tapped her inventory — the Game's storage system, invisible but accessible. "The 22nd Division used modular mine kits. I requisitioned six before I left. Accidentally, of course. The requisition system has so many forms that sometimes things just... appear in your inventory." The dangerous grin again. "Bureaucratic accidents. Very tragic."

"You stole mines from a front-line unit."

"I creatively interpreted the requisition process. There's a difference. The difference is that I have mines and the 22nd still has a warehouse full of them." She pulled out a mine kit — a compact disc, the size of a dinner plate, the surface marked with the Game's standardized warning symbols. "Proximity triggered. Variable yield. I can configure them for anti-personnel or anti-vehicle. One of these, buried at the right depth, would stop a Vanachari charge dead."

"And a Vana-Raja?"

"Three of them would give even a Raja pause. Six would turn the approach into a graveyard."

I looked at her. The blue mohawk. The sharp eyes. The stolen mines. The criminal record that was, viewed from the right angle, a resume of creative problem-solving. The Kendra Sena had sent her to Cherai because she was trouble. And trouble — on Cherai, surrounded by hostile jungle and circling enemies and a quest that demanded innovation — was exactly what I needed.

"Welcome to the squad, C.J.," I said.

That evening, C.J. planted her mines in the northern approach — six devices, buried at calculated intervals, configured for maximum anti-predator yield. She worked with the methodical precision of a person who had done this dozens of times and whose hands knew the procedure the way a musician's hands knew an instrument. Ira watched from the tower, providing overwatch and — I suspected — continuing her assessment of the new arrival.

Later, in the mess hall, C.J. sat with the squad and ate the synthesizer's attempt at dal-chawal — the rice was adequate, the dal was a war crime — and talked. Not about the war, not about combat, but about life. Her life before the Game, which she remembered fragments of: a flat in Pune, a motorcycle, the particular freedom of a person who had never belonged to anything and had liked it that way. Her life in the Game: the 22nd Division, the city-fights, the moment she'd decided to save the civilian district against orders and had become, in the space of a single decision, both a hero and a criminal.

"The thing about orders," she said, stirring the dal with the particular contempt reserved for food that had personally offended you, "is that they're only as good as the person giving them. My CO ordered a retreat because the district wasn't 'strategically valuable.' Three thousand civilians. Not strategically valuable." She set the spoon down. The contempt extended from the dal to the memory. "I held the line. Lost two squad members. Saved thirty-two hundred people. And got a disciplinary transfer for my trouble."

The table was quiet. Hemant — who had refused his own immoral order — nodded. Sanjana — who had filed reports that were ignored — looked at her hands. Malhar — who had been reprimanded for building defenses that worked — smiled the small, bitter smile of recognition.

"You'll fit in here," I said.

"I know." She looked at me. The sharp eyes softened — not much, just enough to admit something that the punk exterior and the blue mohawk and the stolen mines were designed to camouflage. "That's why I came."

Ira materialized again — this time at the mess hall table, sliding into the seat beside me with a cup of the abysmal chai. She looked at C.J. C.J. looked at her.

"She's staying," Ira said to me, not breaking eye contact with C.J.

"Yes."

"Good." Ira sipped the chai. Winced. "We need someone who knows how to properly disobey orders. I'm too good at following them."

C.J. laughed. The laugh was — like her grin — dangerous. Warm and dangerous. The kind of laugh that made you want to hear it again and also made you aware that the person laughing had seen enough to know that laughter was a form of defiance.

Outside, the mines lay buried in the jungle approach, invisible and patient, waiting for something to be foolish enough to charge the north wall again.

Cherai's squad was eight.