Tactical Five obliged. A collation of videos arrived half a minute later. The group leader’s scan officer had tagged the most telling items, captured by a bannermoth that had sent out drones for a closer look.
One video frame was especially clear. The bannermoth Tempest Countdown should have been black painted with gold, from its name along the spine to the fire-and-bird motifs of the Kel. Instead, great swathes of the visible wing surfaces had gone green with a luster as of poisoned pearls. More worryingly, translucent veins had grown over the green area. The video showed them pulsing. Khiruev remembered the boy sewn up with birds and flowers, the endless procession of red spiders crawling through the crystalline veins that connected him to his casket. She couldn’t tell if red anything crawled through the infected moth’s veins. At least she hadn’t wasted time on Override Aerie Primary trying to slave the rogues’ mothgrids to that of the Hierarchy of Feasts. She had a fair idea it wouldn’t have worked.
Khiruev ordered the swarm into a formation from Lexicon Secondary. The modulation was as rough as she’d thought it would be, but she kept her face impassive. The Kel ordinarily tried to avoid having hostile units materialize inside a formation.
Updates blinked at her, demanding her attention. What interested her most was a report from Tactical Four’s Commander Gehmet and the accompanying list of units destroyed. Dragonfly Thunder. Three Gears Spinning. Song of Blackened Stones. Stag’s Blood.
She tapped out more orders, managing swarm geometry with more grid assistance than usual. Ordinarily Khiruev relied on Janaia to fill in the blanks, but she didn’t work with Muris like this often. She wanted to leave some margin for error.
“Sir, you’ll want to see this,” Doctrine said into one of the rare lulls. The loudness of her voice was like a hammer. “We think we’ve isolated the Hafn configuration.”
Equations, animated diagrams. The Hafn didn’t factor their configurations the way the Kel did their formations. But Khiruev could now see the traitor’s lance (as Doctrine had labeled it) where it had been hidden in the spike. She had to assume they’d do it again if they could.
Hafn Swarm One was now in range of the Kel’s longest-range weapons. As Khiruev had predicted, they had only struck at Minang Tower in passing. The Kel veered off to avoid being pinned between the two enemy swarms. Tactical Five was having a certain degree of success against the crashhawks and had taken out six of fourteen. Khiruev caught herself wondering what had become of the crew on those moths and made herself stop. They could figure that out after the battle.
Tactical Two under Commander Gherion had lost two moths, Pillar of Breaking Skulls and Storm Chasm. Khiruev frowned. Was Gherion doing what she thought? She lost precious seconds backtracking through the combat reports. There it was. Sacrifices, not losses.
She had authorized Gherion to do what he thought necessary. The formation Gherion was using, Kiora’s Stab, was both flexible and volatile. Gherion had already used the hellstabs it generated to destroy five Hafn moths, but in the process he was burning up his bannermoths. There was some chance the whole formation would destabilize and they’d all evaporate partway through.
Either the Hafn recognized Kiora’s Stab or had developed rapid respect for it. They were working very hard to keep Tactical Two from the targets Khiruev had tagged for Gherion. Encouragingly, they hadn’t—yet—used the traitor’s lance on Tactical Two.
Khiruev had just issued orders for the swarm to change front as it pirouetted to meet Hafn Swarm One when the command center fell silent. She glanced over and saw Jedao standing in front of the closing entrance. Jedao wasn’t smiling. No one was.
Khiruev rose and saluted, not too fast. “Sir,” she said, more coldly than she’d intended, although not half as much as she felt. “Your orders.”
I am not angry, she thought. I am not angry. If she repeated it enough times in her head it might even become true.
“You’ve done well, General,” Jedao said. He returned the salute. Only then did Khiruev notice that his eyes were bloodshot. Jedao took his seat. “You don’t have to worry about more moths going rogue,” he added without explaining how he knew this. “They were almost certainly saving that attack for a different target, but you made them panic and they blew it early.”
Commander Muris had been speaking quietly with Communications about a gap: three bannermoths in Tactical Six had drifted out of alignment while evading missiles exploiting a shield breach. Muris broke off and looked at Jedao. Jedao raised an eyebrow at Khiruev, who said in an undertone, “Commander Janaia is indisposed, sir.” Jedao indicated to Muris that he should carry on.
“Commander Gherion has forced Hafn Swarm Two to take the defensive,” Khiruev said, “but Tactical Two will probably burn up before they reach their assigned targets. Without a counter to the disruption attack, we are unable to follow up without risking significant losses—and those losses are unlikely to bring us much chance of success.”
“There’s another way,” Jedao said. “That’s not a criticism. You had no way of knowing. Communications, get me the moth commanders, will you?” Communications signaled that the line was open. “Jedao to all units. I can tell you exactly what Hafn Swarm Two is up to. You saw them jump in. They’re frantic to jump those auxiliaries back out before we obliterate them. What they’re protecting is very bad news for the hexarchate. It will allow them to establish a base of operations within our borders.
“The Hafn jump requires them to be in a certain configuration. It’s the trigger, if you will. The jump then takes a certain amount of time to take effect. They’re feinting their way around it right now. But look at this—”
A paper showed up on one of Khiruev’s displays. It had been forwarded to Doctrine as well. The diagram was a marvel of clarity, but the accompanying equations might as well have been written in seafoam. Khiruev was barely able to guess at Hafn integer keys by correlating them with what she remembered from the briefing Kel Command had given her a lifetime ago. She met Jedao’s eyes, wondering where the hell he had picked up a team of pet Nirai. But now was not the time to ask.
Jedao wasn’t looking at her anyway. He continued addressing the swarm. “It is possible, with good timing, to spike the jump. I require sixteen bannermoths for the operation, as the scoutmoths’ drives are insufficiently powerful. When I say ‘spike,’ I mean that the jump translates the Hafn moths into a signal, which then travels through a space only loosely connected to ours.”
The scan anomalies. Khiruev remembered.
“It is possible to corrupt the signal so that it cannot be reconstituted. We have a good idea of the limits of Hafn error correction.” Almost casually, Jedao flicked his terminal. The relevant section of the paper highlighted itself.
“I require sixteen bannermoths”—Jedao’s voice flexed—”but I will not order you to take on the task unless it becomes unavoidable. I am asking for volunteers.” He did smile then, but his eyes were bleak. “Because if this works, nobody ever comes back out. Not the sixteen moths, not the Hafn either. You have twelve minutes to decide and to evacuate as many nonessential personnel as possible. After that, I will ask General Khiruev to pick by lottery.”
Khiruev resorted to messaging Jedao privately, reflecting that if this were a training simulation, she’d be docked an entire mark. We are Kel, sir, she said. Use us as Kel.
Jedao messaged back as though they were two cadets at the back of a classroom. You are people first. You deserve a chance to choose.
Khiruev didn’t know how any army could run on that principle, or how, for that matter, the hexarchate’s oldest soldier had come up with such an incomprehensible idea.