Ninefox Gambit (30 page)

“Kel Cheris,” Jedao said. He had never called her that before. His voice was glacially soft, reasonable. “This is not a priority.”

So this was how he sounded when he was furious.

“Shuos Imnai,” Cheris said, “this is General Kel Cheris. Is your location secure?”

“General,” Imnai said, “I’m fine for the moment. The heretics are – it’s a slaughter. They won’t search shops and residences while they’re amusing themselves shooting mutilated torsos. Sir.”

“Your databurst suggests that the servitors were disabled around the same time the Kel were,” Cheris said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. I got Servitor 10 to enter the zone of fire and confirm that it’s a gun effect, not a field effect.”

She had already known that the effect fired discretely. “You may not have this information, Shuos Imnai, but try to think. Which Kel company did Servitor 10 approach?”

“Captain Kel Jurio,” Imnai said after a moment’s thought. “But I can’t vouch that everyone was correctly positioned.”

“Was Jurio’s company using modified formations that you were aware of?”

“I wouldn’t know for sure, sir – oh. If you read between the lines, 10’s report suggests that they were moving into some kind of defensive square with a diagonal front” – this was enough for Cheris to identify the formation – “but they judged it wrong. The amputation gun found a vector in and reamed its way through the ranks.”

Location. Imnai was close to the proposed demolitions work. “Shuos Imnai,” Cheris said, “the following chambers will be unsafe shortly.” She gave the list. “Remove yourself to the ward’s interior and continue your work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“General Cheris out.”

Hazan was consulting with Colonel Ragath, Medical, and Navigation. Cheris saw no reason to interrupt him. Instead, she brought up a formation model. “Servitors,” she said. “Could it be?”

“General,” Jedao said, wintry, “your soldiers are dying.”

For once she wasn’t tempted to shout at him. “One of the risks of a probe is casualties.”

“General, they’re defenseless. You’re wasting time while they’re being massacred.”

“I’m trying to figure something out,” Cheris said. “You’re getting in my way. Do you have some contribution to make? Because I’m not the one who’s wasting time here.”

This time his voice was a gun-crack. “Your commander’s plan will necessitate the sacrifice of a company to hold the high corridor. I recommend that you –”

She was shaking. When Jedao said “recommend,” it came with the force of an order. She clenched her hands.

She was only a brevet general, but she had conviction on her side. Even if it meant defying Jedao. She straightened, prepared for the next lash of that familiar voice. “I’ll discuss details with the commander when he has them,” she said harshly. If Jedao didn’t like it, too bad. It was his turn to defer to her.

Brief silence, then savagely correct courtesy. “You know the numbers, General. I await your convenience.”

The grid didn’t want to add servitors to the simulated formation she had input. It was un-Kel. She was using one of the earlier heretic formations they had identified. Cheris cloned the necessary levels of the simulator – Doctrine wasn’t going to thank her for messing up their sandbox – and yanked out baseline assumptions and their associated implications.

“So that’s where you’re going,” Jedao said, right in her ear.

Commander Hazan interrupted her to present her with the plan. Cheris stared at the schematics for a few seconds before she could convince her brain to switch tasks. “General,” she said to Jedao, not exactly a peace offering, “I would welcome your input.”

Jedao said scathing things about the Nirai team’s choice of demolition targets, which Cheris passed on undiluted. But Hazan’s basic plan was sound, and a mediocre plan implemented quickly was better than an excellent plan two hours too late.

“Implement now,” Cheris said.

“Sir.” Hazan bent over his terminal and began parceling out orders. He probably wanted to question her priorities, too, but he wasn’t going to do it in front of everyone. Jedao didn’t need to worry about that.

Cheris returned to the formation simulator, seeding an appalling number of values based on intuition. Her cleaver-work with the code convinced the simulator to regard servitors as quasi-human for the purpose of generating formation effects.

The Kel used servitors on the battlefield for reconnaissance and the occasional spot of flyby shooting, but the reason for the servitors’ reduced status wasn’t only hexarchate regulations. It was because servitors generated negligible formation effects under the high calendar, and the Kel defined themselves by their formations. Formation effects were also of limited use against servitors, but this wasn’t exactly useful if you didn’t expect to be fighting other Kel.

The heretics had designed a calendar where these axioms weren’t true. If servitors weren’t formation-neutral on the Fortress, this cut both ways. Servitors could demonstrably be harmed by formation effects, so they might be able to generate exotic effects themselves as part of a Kel formation.

She changed one parameter, two, more. Adjusted the spacing of the defensive square until she had a rough reenactment of the incident Shuos Imnai had described: a servitor unwittingly spoiling a formation and allowing the amputation gun’s influence to mutilate everyone, including itself.

“I see it now,” Jedao said.

It was all the apology she was going to get from him. “We can do this,” Cheris said. “And I’ve got a better use for those propaganda drops.”

“I thought you might,” he said, “although I would have come up with something different.”

His approval should have worried her, but all she felt was hellfire triumph. The heretics had decimated her soldiers. It was time to hammer them dead in return.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

Priority:
Urgent

From:
: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

To:
Heptarch Liozh Zai

Calendrical Minutiae:
Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Peahen, Day of the Earthworm, and it’s about to be the name of that other snail whose name I can’t pronounce, unless Doctrine has had another vote.

I’m glad you’re not celebrating our latest success, my dear Zai. Stoghan and his cronies might think we’ve scored a decisive blow, but you and I know better. That Kel swarm hasn’t left and we still have an infestation in one ward.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t possess the utmost faith in the relief swarm’s ability to deal with the threat, but it will be more impressive if we handle that part ourselves. Negotiate from a position of strength and all that.

Anyway, it’s been impossible to get Doctrine’s attention. Stoghan’s soldiers might be entertaining themselves passing around videos of mutilated squirming Kel synchronized to dance tunes, a pastime that gives me the creeps, but Doctrine recognizes that the changed geometry of the Fortress alters its calendrical effects, and the fix will be nontrivial.

Although the Nirai are some of the hexarchate’s most inept conversationalists, when it comes to pinpoint demolitions, they can’t be beat. I’m no engineer, but it took serious coordination to remove that section mostly intact, stabilize its motion, and evacuate the wounded.

I would give a few cases of that delightful vintage from the City of Firefly Desires to find out where they scared up their primary gunner. It’s probably the same person Jedao delegated to dispatch the kaleidoscope swarm, someone with an unusual intuitive grasp of mathematics. Any fool can feed numbers to a grid, but it takes knowledge of the underlying systems to know which numbers matter.

The thing to consider is Jedao’s next move. It’s certain that the Shuos infiltrators stayed behind to provide intelligence and make nuisances of themselves. They’re hard to locate and we’re short-handed. An overly helpful couturier turned in an “infiltrator” two days ago, but the woman was some unfortunate social rival. That’s the kind of luck we’ve been having.

The bright side is that most of the Kel in the Umbrella Ward are gone, but Jedao will land more troops when he can. He’s barely touched the infantry complements on all those bannermoths, which is a substantial reserve.

One more thing about the Shuos before I forget. Analysis Team Two has for once accomplished something without handholding and found proof of tampering with the Fortress’s financial flows. What’s more impressive is that someone inserted time-delayed logic spikes into Gerenag Abrana’s systems, and that’s just what we know of. No one’s found anything amiss with your personal systems, but I suspect the problems are better-hidden.

Everyone’s abuzz over the Hafn transmission, but your people aren’t familiar enough with the Hafn to interpret it correctly. I tried to make this point twice at the last meeting, but Abrana was the only one taking me seriously. It’s not a coincidence that she’s the only upper-level ally who’s spent significant time off-Fortress.

The Hafn have a bias toward understatement. They prefer to get things done with little fuss, and they’re not above what the Kel would classify as Shuos tactics. The Hafn may sound diffident, but the Kel are going to be in for a hard time.

In any case, the game isn’t won, but it’s good to allow yourself the occasional moment of careful optimism. I suggest you follow my example here.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

“Y
OU’VE BEEN AT
the formations for hours,” Jedao said. “Are you sure you shouldn’t rest?”

“You’re a great believer in rest,” Cheris said. She grimaced at the leftmost pivot of the latest formation. Would skew symmetry get her the results she wanted? The whole thing was moot if they couldn’t wrench the heretics’ calendar into a more favorable configuration, but she preferred to prepare just in case.

“I once had someone swerve her tank out of our column and straight into a house. With a very large basement. Because she was too sleep-deprived to think. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. – Oh, who am I kidding, it was
hilarious
, even if it was kind of a disaster. I laughed so hard my aide almost shot me.”

“Do I look that tired?”

“Not yet,” Jedao said.

Great. “I have some of Doctrine on this, too,” Cheris said, “but I’m faster.”

“I know.”

Cheris didn’t look around the room, didn’t look at the ashhawk emblem, didn’t look at the ninefox shadow. Her world was graying at the edges, not the way it did in combat, but the way it had in Kel Academy when she got another letter from her mother handwritten in not entirely grammatical high language.

Skew symmetry wasn’t it, either. Cheris played with the pivots in her head, trying different configurations. Ah: that looked promising. She fiddled with the simulator.

“Colonel Ragath’s unit list for the assault looks good,” Jedao said, “but I had expected as much. I’ve been pleased with his competence.”

An update flashed in from Medical. Cheris gritted her teeth as she looked at the collation. The battalion had taken eighty-eight percent casualties.

The boxmoths were having difficulty loading all the possibles into the sleepers to stabilize them until they could be unfrozen for treatment at a real medical facility. The colonel-medic noted, very clinically, that due to time pressure, lower quality prep would affect recovery rates.

“This won’t make you feel better,” Jedao said, “but the heretics mistimed that attack.”

“Yes, I see,” Cheris said after a moment. She and Jedao would have followed up to hold the position if the initial attack had been successful. If the heretics had given way slowly, drawn the Kel further into the Fortress, they could have hit the entire assault force with the amputation guns. As it stood, the Kel had taken staggering losses, but they still had soldiers left to fight with.

Jedao was quiet while Cheris worked through another six formations, but it was a companionable quiet. Then she tried to work the tension out of her hands. She had gotten used to the fingerless gloves. Even her officers no longer took notice of them.

“I wish I knew I was doing this right,” Cheris said, “but there’s nothing for it but to move forward.”

“The only unforgivable sin in war is standing still,” Jedao said. “It’s better to be doing the wrong thing wholeheartedly than to freeze.”

“You’ve lost soldiers.” It wasn’t what she had meant to say.

“Nothing makes it easier,” Jedao said. “I sometimes think I’m not the mad one, that it’s Kel Command. They should know better. Anyway, you should stop delaying.”

“I should,” she agreed, and headed out.

Commander Hazan frowned when Cheris entered the command center. “Has something changed, sir?”

“Commander,” Cheris said, “I wish to address the servitors.”

“The moth servitors, sir?”

“The swarm servitors. All of them, or as many of them as can be reached for an address in twenty-four minutes.”

He didn’t understand. “If you have orders for them –”

“I’m not interested in presenting them with orders,” Cheris said, resolved to be patient with him. “I need to address them. To make a request. It would be better if I could do so personally, but with the swarm entire that’s impossible. The servitors themselves may have suggestions for how to accommodate this. I am amenable to any reasonable suggestion.”