Nirai Weinat

> "*One of these days you'll tell me to do something hard, sir.*"
> ― Nirai Weinat
>
>

Captain-engineer **Nirai Weinat** was a Nirai engineer who served with the Kel during the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## Personality

Weinat learned to understand the mechanics of threshold winnowers at the age of thirteen, and may have been the only person in the null swarm who liked them. Though sometimes accused of finding destruction funny, he merely appreciates the inevitability of entropy and the efficiency of certain classes of deadly weapons which cooperate with death to do their work.

When communicating with military personnel, he frequently forgets to start with his rank, using only his name. He is on friendly terms with at least one infantry captain, but still had to remind himself to stop underestimating the Kel when Infantry Colonel Kel Ragath mentioned transcendental numbers.

## History

Though Weinat originally considered Brevet General Kel Cheris a jumped-up infantry captain, he was impressed with her lateral thinking in using servitors for unconventional formations and decided she might have potential after all.

Weinat was tasked with the depopulation of the Radiant Ward by means of threshold winnowers, using four winnowers instead of one as insurance against malfunction. He commanded four winnower teams, all crewed by volunteers, who were inserted into the Radiant Ward under cover of Kel attacks. His own team set up in a park and included Nirai technicians whom he mentally referred to as Steady Engineer and Nervous Engineers Three, Four, and Five.

Once informed that the other three teams were also ready, Weinat contacted Colonel Ragath and advised him to withdraw Kel infantry from the ward. He contacted Ragath again upon the approach of hostiles, and, despite three slow Kel companies who had not yet escaped the ward, were given permission to begin. He then contacted all teams and ordered the activation of all four winnowers.

Observing the winnower's effect on an unfortunate deer, Weinat confirmed that it was working and checked in with the other teams, instructing Team Three to remain in the safety zone their otherwise nonoperational winnower was producing. Weinat then reported to Ragath, who confirmed the deaths of his three slow companies, the infantry's cooperation in locking down the affected ward so the effect would not spread, and the destruction of the ward's population of ~43,000 people, leaving only the winnowers' sheltered crews alive.

In a rare display of humanity, Weinat expressed his regrets for the three lost Kel companies. On Ragath's orders, he let the winnowers run for another hour, with the teams prepared to destroy them if necessary to keep them from the heretics. The winnowers and their teams were then retrieved by the Kel.

## Winnower Teams

On Team One, Steady Engineer worked steadily throughout the operation, once disparaging Nervous Engineer Five's shooting skill. Nervous Engineer Three became more nervous at Weinat's order to have more confidence, and threw rocks at a local deer until it left the area, unfortunately not permanently. Nervous Engineer Four was the first to hear hostiles approaching before the winnowers were activated. Their winnower operated as planned.

Team Two were clinical in nature, reporting that their winnower was ready on schedule and that all systems functioned adequately when it was activated.

Team Three's winnower was ready on schedule, but did not operate except to produce its operators' safety zone. Its crew stayed in the safety zone until evacuated.

Team Four, two members of whom Weinat considered incompetent but who commanded by a very vigilant lieutenant, took thirty-eight extra minutes to ready their winnower, twenty-four minutes longer than they had estimated. Light emanating from a nearby residential building confirmed the operational status of their winnower.

## Trivia

* Two of the Kel companies lost to the winnowers were those commanded by Captain Kel Jaghun and Captain Kel Iziade. The third company captain is not named in the text.