And that’s the problem. Kel jokes aside, the hawks are trigger-happy, not slow on the draw. What we’re seeing is the Shuos leaning on them hard because if it were just up to the Kel hexarch, we wouldn’t be able to sleep for the bombs. They’re not just coming in bristling with guns. We could handle guns. They’re coming into this with a plan, which means some kind of twisty knotted-up Shuos plan. No luck cracking their encryption, but the thing is, they have to come to us sooner or later. If they lose the Entangled March completely, the surrounding marches start to go. It’s the beauty of rot-flow, and they’re not going to expect that our Analysis is as well-integrated as it is.
In the meantime, down at the firing range we’ve been using targets in the shapes of nine-tailed foxes. Good way to relieve stress. You should come join me sometime. Or at least come admire what an excellent shot I am. I hit the eyes every time.
Yours in calendrical heresy,
A SCHEMATIC OF the Fortress of Scattered Needles spun slowly in the air. It resembled a swollen moon with six underground chambers, each holding 40,000 to 60,000 people, each differently structured. Defensive ribs held the Fortress together.
“Invariant ice,” Jedao was saying. “I don’t suppose anyone’s figured out where to get more of the stuff.”
Cheris looked at the Nirai, but he was ignoring them. “Not that an infantry captain would have heard,” Cheris said.
Invariant ice had the ability to generate shields in the surrounding space. The shields were impermeable to anything but a narrow band of communications frequencies. In principle, a sufficiently strong attack could overwhelm the shields and drain the ice of virtue. But the last Cheris had heard, even fury bombs would not suffice, and those were exotics anyway.
“I don’t know how you plan on getting past the shields,” Cheris said. The hexarchs had installed them at the central nexus point precisely because of their invulnerability. Calendrical effects were exaggerated at nexus points, and it had been taken for granted that invariant ice provided the Fortress enough protection.
“How many people have tried?” Jedao asked.
“They die before they get close enough,” Cheris said, “but it’s still a bad situation.” She consulted one of the standardized simulators and ran a very simplified scenario. The after-battle statistics glowed at her. “I don’t think the hexarchs are going to be impressed with a twenty-nine-year siege.”
Jedao laughed quietly. “It won’t take that long. We’re not fighting the ice, Cheris, we’re fighting the people using the ice. Let’s see what intelligence we have on the Fortress.”
They divided up the summaries and the most relevant-looking of the individual reports. “I don’t suppose you’re also trained to handle intelligence work,” Jedao said.
The Nirai was now arranging cards face-up. At the center was the Drowned General. Cheris winced at the reference to her situation.
“Sorry,” Cheris said to Jedao. “Why don’t you tell me what to look for?”
“The obvious things. Who set this up, and how? With a locus like the Fortress, it can’t be accidental. Someone targeted the Fortress and succeeded. I’m surprised that the Rahal justiciars in residence didn’t catch it and get rid of the problem in the usual blunt Rahal fashion. Which suggests that a lot of parameters were held at the tipping point and nudged over at the right moment. That would have taken a lot of organization.”
“You’re suggesting a conspiracy,” Cheris said.
“I don’t have any evidence, but intuition’s worth something.”
Most of the reports were weeks old. Whatever had happened had been sudden. Communications had been one of the first things to go. Only when the lensmoth returned out of the twenty-five-strong task force did the hexarchs put the Fortress under interdict.
“That was smart, by the way,” Jedao said sarcastically. “With no outside news coming in, whoever’s in there doesn’t have a choice but to listen to whatever the heretics say.”
The Nirai was smirking again. “Yes, well,” he said, “what can you expect of a bunch of hexarchs?”
“It’s standard procedure,” Cheris said, stiffening.
“Of course it is,” the Nirai said.
She was puzzling over the Fortress’s internal politics – fractious, but the system encouraged faction rivalry – when Jedao spoke again.
“It’s only mentioned in passing,” Jedao said to himself, “but that’s a hell of a lot of ‘preliminary market research’ by the locals. Marketing what? The demographics are right there on file, unless...”
“What is it?” Cheris said.
“I have an overactive imagination,” Jedao said, “that’s all. I recommend that we bring a Shuos intelligence team for analytical support and a full company of Shuos infiltrators. There are going to be Shuos teams in the swarm anyway, but they’ll be watching you for signs that I’ve gotten to you. We need people who are devoted to figuring out the enemy. The more eyes the better.”
The more eyes the better. The Shuos watchwords. She hadn’t heard them in a while, but it was reassuring that even a Shuos as old as Jedao lived by them.
“I would be more comfortable,” Cheris said, “if I knew more about your plans to deal with invariant ice.”
She looked at the Nirai’s game again. He was constructing an elaborate card fortress. This must be what bored Nirai did. She had clearly missed out by becoming a Kel.
“When I was alive,” Jedao said, “an assault on the Fortress was a standard exam question at Kel Academy, and it was common as one of those no-hope wargame exercises in simulation. Is that still the case?”
“I’m not an examiner,” Cheris said, “but we might be able to get that information released to us. Sixth display?”
“Might as well.”
Cheris stared in fascination at the categorization system for responses to that particular exam question. Who knew Kel examiners had a sense of humor? Two categories that caught her eye were “heretical thinking” (expected) and “irredeemably stupid” (expected, but not phrased so bluntly).
“No wonder they didn’t want me as an instructor,” Jedao said in fascination. “I’d never have fit in.”
The Immolation Fox, an instructor? She hoped not. “Which category were you interested in?” she asked.
“Let’s check the distributions in ‘heretical thinking’ and ‘promote tomorrow.’”
A worm curled in her belly.
“Just the distributions, Cheris.”
Two percent of exam responses were classified heretical. Cheris suspected those cadets hadn’t lasted long, or had been shunted into less desirable positions with permanent warnings in their records. She probably had a similar one in her full profile, the one she wasn’t allowed to see, for deciding to wake Jedao up.
“I know better than to suggest you hack this for more details,” Jedao said wistfully. “You Kel are awfully stiff about that sort of thing.”
“I’m glad you think so highly of us,” Cheris said.
“Shuos habit, that’s all. You’ll notice you’re the ones with all the weapons?” He sounded as though he was pacing around the room.
“She’s not stupid enough not to have realized that the Shuos are the ones who decide where to point them,” the Nirai said unkindly. The fortress was bigger than ever. Cheris was impressed that it hadn’t fallen over in a blizzard of cards.
“Why did you apply to the Kel army?” Cheris asked Jedao.
Jedao stopped, or at least his voice wasn’t moving anymore. “It was a better fit,” he said. “I wanted to serve, and picking over intelligence reports made me twitchy.”