“Effects must be localized, sir,” Doctrine said in a subdued voice. “We should be seeing the effects of the heretic calendar’s intrusion and there’s still nothing.”
This was consistent with earlier reports, but worrying nonetheless. Khiruev would have felt better if they had some idea how the Hafn could use their exotics in hexarchate space without skewing calendrical terrain. The fact that they had an interest in the Fortress suggested that this ability came at a price and that they’d rather be on home terrain, or at least, flipping the Fortress would enable them to project their native calendar in the surrounding space and deny the hexarchate that advantage. A pity that Jedao had ditched all their Nirai, who would have had the best shot at cracking the mystery.
The Hafn had spotted the Kel. Their moths wheeled to form what looked like a three-petaled flower. Each petal elongated in its approach to the Kel’s Thunder of Horses.
“All units banner the Swanknot,” Khiruev said flatly.
“Sir—” Janaia protested.
Khiruev narrowed her eyes at Janaia. Jedao had moved on to some other system of congruences and was ignoring the two of them. “The order stands,” Khiruev said.
She wasn’t the swarm’s ranking officer anymore. Jedao was. The banner defied Kel protocol. But Jedao had said that he wasn’t here. Khiruev’s emblem was the only one available, and it would have been worse not to banner.
The Hafn seemed to understand what bannering meant now. In the first engagement, according to the records, they hadn’t responded, and the Kel had—disastrously—taken it as an insult. Here, the Magnolias transmitted the Hafn government’s emblem. It was an antiquated-looking shield with a plain gold band across the top and a hectic tangled mass of vines, fruits, and insects beneath the band, overlaid for good measure by gold curlicues. Atrocious graphic design if it had originated anywhere in the hexarchate, but looking at the tangles, Khiruev thought of the boy with the cat’s cradle string whom they had retrieved from the outrider. Her hands clenched.
“The Hafn are twenty-one minutes out of dire cannon range,” Weapons said.
“We’re about to find out about their long-range weapons,” Khiruev said.
The Hafn approach slowed. The three petals had become three concave dishes facing the Kel. The dishes had to be their equivalent of formations. The geese had used it, and the Hafn swarm had used it against General Kel Chrenka’s Four-Eyed Shrike swarm. Unlike a formation, however, it seemed to have no consistent set of effects.
Khiruev made the mistake of glancing over to check what Jedao was up to. Jedao was smiling sardonically as he played jeng-zai against a grid opponent. He didn’t meet Khiruev’s eyes, but this was clearly mad tactical prodigy for ‘pay attention to your job, fledge.’
“Hafn maintaining distance, sir,” Scan said.
At this point, a few things were clear. First, the Hafn were staying almost exactly sixty-four of their minutes out of range of the formation’s kinetic lances, which were currently inactive and which were controlled by modulating three component formations. Second, the fact that the Hafn general could read Kel formations meant they could potentially be manipulated that way. Third, said general had read the particular placements of the component formations, suggesting that the main swarm might have longer-range scan than the geese, whose virtue must be in their numbers and expendability.
The problem with the kinetic lances was that they telegraphed themselves. Their sideways raking motion could only be hurried along so much by precise execution of the subformations. Certainly the lances would maul what they hit, and they had better range than anything the Hafn had yet to reveal, or the Kel swarm would have seen incoming fire already. But Khiruev looked at those waiting dish-shapes and sensed that the other side wasn’t worried yet. She also remembered that the Hafn had annihilated Kel swarms already, by means yet unclear, and they had successfully infiltrated a nexus fortress before. It wouldn’t do to get overconfident.
Time to test how well the Hafn had studied up on the Kel. “General Khiruev to all units, maneuvers on my mark,” she said, setting up trajectories on the subdisplays. “Give me Wildfire Over the Aerie with Pivots One, Two, and Three refused as shown.” She passed the Pivot One parameters to Janaia separately. “Do not, repeat, do not fill Pivots Two or Three without my direct order. Mark.”
Janaia blanched, but she only gave Khiruev one questioning look before she executed her part of the order. Communications reported that four moth commanders wished to speak to Khiruev. She turned them all down.
Wildfire Over the Aerie was both a grand formation and a suicide formation, a rare combination. It had only been tested once in battle. Two hundred ninety-eight years ago, General Kel Dessenet had used it to blow up an invading swarm. Kel Command had put it on the proscribed list because, as a side-effect, it filled the affected region of space with long-lasting calendrical dead zones, some of which still existed today. In any case, the question was, how well did the Hafn know formation mechanics?
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Jedao pausing at his card game to note the development. Nice that he was paying attention.
As it turned out, the Hafn didn’t do research by halves. Partway into the Kel’s formation modulation—messier than she would have liked, but it wasn’t as if they’d had any reason to drill this—the Hafn reacted by peeling away. They headed straight for the Fortress.
“They think we’re serious,” Janaia said, blackly amused. “Terrible trade just based on the numbers, don’t you think?”
“Not like they haven’t figured out that we’re Kel,” Khiruev said. “For all they know, we haven’t met our daily suicide quota. Communications, advise Commandant Mazeret of the situation. All units maintain formation in present state and pursue.”
She knew what the Hafn were thinking. If they retreated to the Fortress’s environs, the Kel wouldn’t dare activate Wildfire because it would take out the Fortress as well. This was true as far as it went. None of the Fortress’s defenses would protect it from that particular conflagration.
The scoutmoths alerted her that unfamiliar formants were showing up in the Hafn swarm’s wake, small and rapid.
“Change course,” Khiruev said, and indicated the correction. It would slow them down reaching the Fortress, which was a problem, but getting obliterated would also be a problem. There were too many of the things to sweep with the scatterguns in a reasonable amount of time. Best to go around.
“Sir,” Communications said. “Six bannermoths in Tactical Three are taking some kind of corrosion damage.”
Khiruev frowned at the display and put in another course correction.
Communications spoke again: “Tactical reports that bannermoths Scratching Shadows, Beyond the Ocean, Two Books Bound Together, and Snakeskin Drum have been lost, sir.” After a few moments, she added the other two.
“General Khiruev to Commander Nazhan,” Khiruev said. Tactical Three’s commander. “What the hell happened out there?”
“Those spiderfucking web-looking Hafn things effloresced at us, sir,” Nazhan said thinly. “One moment.” Voices in the background; red washing over his face. “Engineering thinks their weapon did something to cause the moths’ biotech innards to rupture. Best readings suggest that everything’s messed up with parasites or an infection of some kind”—he didn’t mention Kel fungal canisters, although everyone was thinking of them—”but we can’t very well send a decontamination team in there right now.”
The swarm detoured farther. The Hafn were well ahead of them now. Jedao still gave no sign that he was about to take over.
“The Fortress has activated phantom terrain,” Scan said.