She was shaking. When Jedao said “recommend,” it came with the force of an order. She clenched her hands.
She was only a brevet general, but she had conviction on her side. Even if it meant defying Jedao. She straightened, prepared for the next lash of that familiar voice. “I’ll discuss details with the commander when he has them,” she said harshly. If Jedao didn’t like it, too bad. It was his turn to defer to her.
Brief silence, then savagely correct courtesy. “You know the numbers, General. I await your convenience.”
The grid didn’t want to add servitors to the simulated formation she had input. It was un-Kel. She was using one of the earlier heretic formations they had identified. Cheris cloned the necessary levels of the simulator – Doctrine wasn’t going to thank her for messing up their sandbox – and yanked out baseline assumptions and their associated implications.
“So that’s where you’re going,” Jedao said, right in her ear.
Commander Hazan interrupted her to present her with the plan. Cheris stared at the schematics for a few seconds before she could convince her brain to switch tasks. “General,” she said to Jedao, not exactly a peace offering, “I would welcome your input.”
Jedao said scathing things about the Nirai team’s choice of demolition targets, which Cheris passed on undiluted. But Hazan’s basic plan was sound, and a mediocre plan implemented quickly was better than an excellent plan two hours too late.
“Implement now,” Cheris said.
“Sir.” Hazan bent over his terminal and began parceling out orders. He probably wanted to question her priorities, too, but he wasn’t going to do it in front of everyone. Jedao didn’t need to worry about that.
Cheris returned to the formation simulator, seeding an appalling number of values based on intuition. Her cleaver-work with the code convinced the simulator to regard servitors as quasi-human for the purpose of generating formation effects.
The Kel used servitors on the battlefield for reconnaissance and the occasional spot of flyby shooting, but the reason for the servitors’ reduced status wasn’t only hexarchate regulations. It was because servitors generated negligible formation effects under the high calendar, and the Kel defined themselves by their formations. Formation effects were also of limited use against servitors, but this wasn’t exactly useful if you didn’t expect to be fighting other Kel.
The heretics had designed a calendar where these axioms weren’t true. If servitors weren’t formation-neutral on the Fortress, this cut both ways. Servitors could demonstrably be harmed by formation effects, so they might be able to generate exotic effects themselves as part of a Kel formation.
She changed one parameter, two, more. Adjusted the spacing of the defensive square until she had a rough reenactment of the incident Shuos Imnai had described: a servitor unwittingly spoiling a formation and allowing the amputation gun’s influence to mutilate everyone, including itself.
“I see it now,” Jedao said.
It was all the apology she was going to get from him. “We can do this,” Cheris said. “And I’ve got a better use for those propaganda drops.”
“I thought you might,” he said, “although I would have come up with something different.”
His approval should have worried her, but all she felt was hellfire triumph. The heretics had decimated her soldiers. It was time to hammer them dead in return.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis
Priority: Urgent
From:: Vahenz afrir dai Noum
To: Heptarch Liozh Zai
Calendrical Minutiae: Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Peahen, Day of the Earthworm, and it’s about to be the name of that other snail whose name I can’t pronounce, unless Doctrine has had another vote.
I’m glad you’re not celebrating our latest success, my dear Zai. Stoghan and his cronies might think we’ve scored a decisive blow, but you and I know better. That Kel swarm hasn’t left and we still have an infestation in one ward.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t possess the utmost faith in the relief swarm’s ability to deal with the threat, but it will be more impressive if we handle that part ourselves. Negotiate from a position of strength and all that.
Anyway, it’s been impossible to get Doctrine’s attention. Stoghan’s soldiers might be entertaining themselves passing around videos of mutilated squirming Kel synchronized to dance tunes, a pastime that gives me the creeps, but Doctrine recognizes that the changed geometry of the Fortress alters its calendrical effects, and the fix will be nontrivial.
Although the Nirai are some of the hexarchate’s most inept conversationalists, when it comes to pinpoint demolitions, they can’t be beat. I’m no engineer, but it took serious coordination to remove that section mostly intact, stabilize its motion, and evacuate the wounded.
I would give a few cases of that delightful vintage from the City of Firefly Desires to find out where they scared up their primary gunner. It’s probably the same person Jedao delegated to dispatch the kaleidoscope swarm, someone with an unusual intuitive grasp of mathematics. Any fool can feed numbers to a grid, but it takes knowledge of the underlying systems to know which numbers matter.
The thing to consider is Jedao’s next move. It’s certain that the Shuos infiltrators stayed behind to provide intelligence and make nuisances of themselves. They’re hard to locate and we’re short-handed. An overly helpful couturier turned in an “infiltrator” two days ago, but the woman was some unfortunate social rival. That’s the kind of luck we’ve been having.
The bright side is that most of the Kel in the Umbrella Ward are gone, but Jedao will land more troops when he can. He’s barely touched the infantry complements on all those bannermoths, which is a substantial reserve.
One more thing about the Shuos before I forget. Analysis Team Two has for once accomplished something without handholding and found proof of tampering with the Fortress’s financial flows. What’s more impressive is that someone inserted time-delayed logic spikes into Gerenag Abrana’s systems, and that’s just what we know of. No one’s found anything amiss with your personal systems, but I suspect the problems are better-hidden.
Everyone’s abuzz over the Hafn transmission, but your people aren’t familiar enough with the Hafn to interpret it correctly. I tried to make this point twice at the last meeting, but Abrana was the only one taking me seriously. It’s not a coincidence that she’s the only upper-level ally who’s spent significant time off-Fortress.
The Hafn have a bias toward understatement. They prefer to get things done with little fuss, and they’re not above what the Kel would classify as Shuos tactics. The Hafn may sound diffident, but the Kel are going to be in for a hard time.
In any case, the game isn’t won, but it’s good to allow yourself the occasional moment of careful optimism. I suggest you follow my example here.
Yours in calendrical heresy,
“YOU’VE BEEN AT the formations for hours,” Jedao said. “Are you sure you shouldn’t rest?”
“You’re a great believer in rest,” Cheris said. She grimaced at the leftmost pivot of the latest formation. Would skew symmetry get her the results she wanted? The whole thing was moot if they couldn’t wrench the heretics’ calendar into a more favorable configuration, but she preferred to prepare just in case.