Twenty-three seconds elapsed. Muris was doing an extraordinarily efficient job of handling swarm maneuvers. The Hafn swarms had joined up with each other. Two more of Gherion’s moths were burning up.
“You have never had any reason to trust me,” Jedao went on as though he had never paused. “You don’t trust me now. That’s as it should be. But the one promise I can make you is that I know how to win battles. It’s all I can do for the hexarchate now. And this is a battle that has to be fought. Because the Hafn aren’t just here to claim territory. They’re here to destroy worlds; they’re here to steal our service. We’re in position to keep them from the things they want. Choose however you will, but choose quickly.”
Khiruev had already selected sixteen bannermoths by lottery.
Communications had two calls for Jedao. Then five. Eleven by the time the twelve minutes was up.
Khiruev struck off the last eleven from her list and passed the rest over to Jedao.
Jedao had already prepared move orders. In fact, Khiruev didn’t recognize the formation he called for, and Khiruev was certain it wasn’t because her memory was failing her. She knew better than to ask. Jedao caught her expression and took pity. The paper Jedao passed over contained yet more advanced mathematics.
I don’t have time to check the derivations, Khiruev thought, irritated at herself. She confirmed that Doctrine had a copy as well and asked her for a quick check if one was possible.
The Hafn wavered when they spotted the nonstandard formation. Whatever they were in the middle of doing, however, they were resolved to finish it. Light like ice and iron sprang up in a great crisscross web around the auxiliaries. A detachment headed Tactical Two off.
Gherion had been listening to Jedao’s address. When the sixteen designated bannermoths sprinted for the web, Tactical Two flared up in a pillar that sliced through part of it to facilitate their passage. This had the unexpected effect of shifting the web laterally just as the sixteen moths plunged in, and just as the web brightened.
“It’s the damnedest thing, sir,” Scan said after stabbing the displays. “I’ve got the web on visual and all those moths, frozen like statues, but all the formants are gone. Like they’re ghosts.”
“Opposite of what you get with a ghost,” Jedao said, very softly. “But yes.”
Nothing remained of Tactical Two except a scattering of red-bronze light, rapidly diminishing.
“Hafn Swarm Two is abandoning Swarm One,” Khiruev said, watching the two separate from each other. Curious: Swarm One’s movements had become conservative, sluggish. Two was fleeing outright.
“Yes, I see it,” Jedao said. “Communications, get me Commander Daharit. I’m detaching Tactical Six to deal with Swarm One. I don’t think they’re going to give you any trouble. See if you can capture anything intact for analysis. Everyone else, condense to Tide of Dragons. We’re going to make sure Swarm Two doesn’t get away.”
As it turned out, Swarm Two didn’t prove to be any trouble, either. It wasn’t until the main swarm joined up with Tactical Six that Khiruev had a chance to talk to Jedao. She didn’t request a meeting; she didn’t have to. Jedao had summoned her to his quarters. A jeng-zai deck rested on the table.
“You have a whole list of things to say,” Jedao said. “Go ahead and say them.”
“The swarm deserved your full attention during the engagement, sir,” Khiruev said.
“The swarm had my full attention,” Jedao said. “I was in the middle of a project with implications for the campaign entire.” He sat down and shoved some cards aside with his toe. Two of them fluttered to the floor. Then he put his feet up on the table.
“You put the swarm at risk.”
“Are you saying you’re not capable?”
“I’m saying you’re the better general.”
Jedao’s eyelids lowered fractionally. Khiruev couldn’t tell whether he was angry or not. “This isn’t your fault,” Jedao said, “but you’re not even near the field of battle.”
Khiruev refrained from clenching her hands. “I don’t expect you to tell me everything, but my usefulness to you is becoming severely limited.” When Jedao continued to regard her coolly, Khiruev added, “I don’t know what you intend to do about Commander Janaia.”
“I reviewed the transcript,” Jedao said. “I agree with your assessment. She broke down precisely because she’s such a good Kel. It didn’t happen to you because, sorry, you’re not quite so rigidly Kel yourself.”
“I know,” Khiruev said. Janaia believed strongly in the importance of loyalty and formation instinct. Her horror at the thought of becoming a crashhawk had been palpable. “But she’s still brittle, and that’s a problem.”
Jedao tapped his knee. “I had better talk to her when we get a bit more breathing space, but we’re going to have to retain Muris as commander for the time being. I’ll have Janaia report to Medical for assessment and counseling.”
Khiruev didn’t mention that Jedao could have dealt with Janaia directly if he’d only been in the command center at the time. “Who provided the mathematics?” she said. “The formations and the analysis of the Hafn translation method?”
“I was in here,” Jedao said, “because I would prefer not to reveal that to you.”
Khiruev weighed the merits of pressing for an answer and decided it wouldn’t do any good. “You asked for volunteers,” she said.
“Yes, we were both there for that part.”
“You originally took control of the swarm by coercion,” Khiruev said. “We were both there for that part, too. Why does it matter now that we should choose our service?”
“Would it be such an evil thing to learn, General?” Jedao asked.
Khiruev looked at the cards on the floor, then at Jedao’s unruffled face. “If you didn’t want us to be Kel, sir, why—?”
“You’re already putting your trust in the least trustworthy general in Kel history,” Jedao said. “It won’t kill you to follow me a little longer to see where this is all going.”
“I am yours, sir,” Khiruev said, and wondered why Jedao’s eyes turned sad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BREZAN WAS FEEDING the birds with Tseya, at her insistence, while Beneath the Orchid approached the Kel swarm. Tseya kept referring to it as the Deuce of Gears swarm. This was correct, but Brezan felt that sometimes reality needed a kick in the teeth, even if it was only in your head, and called it the Swanknot swarm to himself. They were no longer receiving active updates from Andan sources, as that might reveal their presence. Their own scan, however, told them that Jedao and the Hafn were dancing around each other. Brezan and Tseya wanted to stay close, but not too close, in case something combusted.
One of the three birds made an alarming rattling sound and tilted its head almost all the way sideways to peer at Brezan when he failed to dispense another treat. Brezan was of the opinion that necks, no matter how long and slender and graceful, shouldn’t be allowed to corkscrew like that. “Seriously, we should be monitoring the situation ourselves,” he said to Tseya. He tried not to think about how much the bird’s beak resembled a spear.
Tseya was dangling her bare feet in a tiny creek, apparently unconcerned that her toes might get nibbled off. Today she wore her hair in braids, which tumbled down over her crocheted silk shawl. “They made me read up on a few Kel battles when I was in academy,” Tseya said placidly. “Some of them go on longer than our most interminable dinner parties. The two swarms haven’t even bannered at each other yet. I’d say there’s no sense getting wound up, except as far as I can tell, you’re always wound up.”
Brezan glowered at her. The bird was looking sadly at him instead of picking on the more accommodating target, having clearly been trained to harass innocent Kel. He fished another treat out from the container and held it out gingerly. With great delicacy, the bird plucked the morsel from his grasp and swallowed it.