There were only a few reasons why a man who always won his battles would be soliciting Khiruev’s input. Given that Jedao was a Shuos, Khiruev could guess which one applied. After all, she was already a game piece in a contest whose stakes she saw but dimly, through a veil of gunsmoke and fractures.
“Detach a single tactical group,” Khiruev said. “Commander Gherion of Stormlash Glory with Two.” Gherion was good at autonomous action, and Jedao’s nod suggested that he approved the choice. “Set them loose to shoot up some geese—” She plotted locations: a listening post, a Nirai research facility, a habitat with a significant Andan presence. “So far the evidence is that the Hafn especially dislike planets, but we don’t know when that will change.” Naturally, there were no systems near enough the Fortress’s nexus to use as bait.
Jedao passed on the orders unaltered to Commander Gherion. Khiruev could tell that Commander Janaia didn’t like this development, but she had no pretext for an objection, and in these matters she was a very proper Kel. Gherion, for his part, was torn between enthusiasm at getting into action sooner rather than later, and the conviction that Jedao was sending him off to die. But he acknowledged his orders promptly.
“Six remaining tactical groups for maximum flexibility in grand formations, is that it?” Jedao said. “What else do you see?”
Khiruev felt like a cadet all over again, disconcerting at the age of seventy-two, and reminded herself that Jedao had to have been a cadet himself at some point in his existence. “The outrider concentrations nearer the Fortress are spaced inconveniently for some of the larger grand formations,” Khiruev said, “most notably the ones that invoke area effects. But it would be a small matter to clear the flocks at need.”
“If that’s what you recommend—”
“What I recommend, sir, is travel formation River Snake.” Janaia was giving Khiruev an irritated look. She ignored Janaia. River Snake had negligible combat effects, and moth commanders naturally hated it. It was best for getting efficiently from one place to another in situations like this: a glorified column.
“River Snake it is,” Jedao said, and gave the very movement orders that Khiruev had suggested on the map. “I don’t care how good Hafn manufacturing capacity is, if you can call it that. They can’t have an infinite supply of geese, whatever their method of transporting them here, or we’d be neck-deep in them.”
Khiruev had reservations about the reliability of intuition when it came to people so alien that they made scouts out of child-bird-insect-flower composites. The thought must have shown on her face. Jedao raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.
The long hours of their circuitous approach to the Fortress passed by like trickling water. Jedao occasionally asked for Khiruev’s opinions and implemented them directly as orders. The Kel in the command center had noticed what was going on. They sneaked glances at Khiruev with the same deadened anxiety that they had formerly reserved for Jedao. They knew, even if they hadn’t guessed the true story behind the assassination attempt, that Khiruev could not offer them any protection from the traitor.
The Hafn were expecting to fight Khiruev, so they would fight Khiruev. Right up until the point when Jedao intervened. Too much to hope that Hafn intelligence was inept, after all.
When Jedao didn’t require her presence, Khiruev distracted herself by organizing her boxes of gadgets. Surprisingly, Jedao hadn’t ordered the lot vaporized. On the other hand, Khiruev was hung up on whether gears should be sorted by radius or number of teeth instead of manufacturing more assassination drones, so maybe Jedao was on to something.
Khiruev had given up sorting and was reading the rambling memoirs of a courtesan when the advance scouts made scan contact with the main Hafn swarm. The courtesan’s escapades evaporated out of her head on the way to the command center. Red lights everywhere, low voices. Jedao was already seated, posture perfect, looking damnably relaxed.
After taking her place next to Jedao, Khiruev saw that they would reach combat distance in about four hours if everyone continued moving along the projected trajectories, which was unlikely.
“All right, General,” Jedao said, very clearly. “For your purposes, I’m not here. Deal with the Hafn.”
Khiruev shivered, but an order was an order.
“Communications,” she said. “Message for Commandant Mazeret of the Fortress of Spinshot Coins. Inform her that we’re about to engage the Hafn swarm and that she may see some fireworks.” She hesitated over how much detail to give her, then left it at that. Best not to risk fouling up Jedao’s plans. Still, no reason not to take advantage of the Fortress’s defenses if they could convince the Hafn to get within range during the encounter.
“Fortress acknowledges,” Communications said after a while. And after that: “Commander Gherion reports that Tactical Two is in formation to minimize scan shadow and is headed for the rendezvous point as ordered.”
Not that anyone was positive that Hafn scan worked like the hexarchate’s, but the precaution couldn’t hurt. Khiruev adjusted the scale on the tactical display, then rotated it while she considered the available geometries. Jedao watched, his face tranquil.
“Order for the swarm,” Khiruev said. “All units assume formation Thunder of Horses.” She tapped out the pivot assignments. “Tactical Three and Four, you’ll be tripping the nearby outriders.” She had almost said ‘geese.’ “Destroy them at your discretion.” No sense chancing that these outriders had defenses the earlier ones hadn’t employed.
The moths, represented on the tactical display by flattened gold wedges, began moving into position relative to each other. She could hear Janaia giving orders to Navigation: it was customary for the command moth to hold the formation’s primary pivot. Muris was speaking tersely to Doctrine.
The Hafn showed up as smudges, location probability clouds. Scan reported that the scouts, which had pulled back, still had trouble getting coherent formant readings from the foreign mothdrives. Reports from the Eyespike swarm, which had been destroyed delaying the Hafn, had put the enemy at eighty Lilacs, roughly equivalent to bannermoths in size and armament, and ten Magnolias, larger than the Lilacs although not as formidable as cindermoths. Forty-eight years ago, Kel Command had switched to flowers for designating enemy moth types after a spat with the Andan. Sometimes Khiruev wondered about Kel Command’s priorities.
Even after a few decades of doing this, Khiruev found the apparent slowness of the moths’ motion aggravating. It made her want to reach through the display to the moths themselves and yank them into place. She recognized the ugliness of this impulse. No doubt something like it was how Kel Command had come up with formation instinct in the first place.
She missed, too, the thrumming ease of working as part of a composite. Being the general in charge of a composite was not quite as thrummingly easeful, but it had afforded her the illusion of subsuming herself in a single will, which was the point. Jedao would have seen even that illusion as threatening. Besides, if the calendricals tilted in the Hafn’s favor suddenly, composite technology would fail. Every Kel with half a brain knew that compositing was required mainly for reasons of internal discipline between missions, rather than being a useful coordinating tool in battle against heretics.
“Doctrine,” Khiruev said, “what do you have for calendrical fluctuations?”
To the side, Jedao was looking at Doctrine measurements of calendrical values and laboriously putting together a query for the grid. Was this some issue of getting accustomed to a modern interface? Khiruev itched to show him how, but she had other matters to attend to, and it would cause Jedao to lose face. A puzzle for later.