“You know my name,” he said with a bite of humor. “You don’t seem to have done a very good job executing me.”
His gaze was drawn immediately to the commander he recognized as Kel Talaw. Talaw was a stocky alt whose eyes narrowed as they stared back at Jedao. And Talaw’s hostility wasn’t muted at all. Their face blazed with naked hatred even as the entire hall plunged stone-silent.
Fuck, Jedao thought. What had possessed him to say that? Especially in that tone of voice?
He couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t apologize. That would only make him look weak. Better to be a callous bastard than to lose credibility.
Besides, there was no getting around the fact that everyone knew more about Hellspin Fortress than he did. Trying to win the Kel over with charm would have been disastrous anyway. At least they had no idea what was going on inside his head. He would just have to lie too well for them to deduce how out of his depth he was. The sad thing was that the lie was better for morale.
Bad sign: Kujen’s eyes had crinkled faintly in approval. The expression only lasted a fraction of a second, but Jedao had been watching for his reaction.
Fine. Jedao let his smile narrow. “I understand there was an earlier failure of discipline in the hexarch’s direction.” Stupid to pretend it hadn’t happened; might as well address it head-on. “If you feel like betraying someone, you can start with me instead.” Great. He had just challenged all the commanders to duels or the next best thing, and a lot of the Kel excelled at dueling, but he couldn’t stop. “We’re going to be fighting other Kel. Is this going to be an issue?”
He wished he could blame the uniform for messing with his head, but he knew better.
Commander Nihara Keru raised her head: Tactical Two. The plainness of her face was offset by her startling pale gray eyes. Everyone else in the front row had brown eyes. “I would speak, sir,” she said. Her voice, high and crisp, had its own lilt of humor.
She might be the first person besides Kujen who didn’t hate him, not that Jedao had met many people yet. That also made her a potential threat. Don’t pause, don’t pause, don’t pause. “Commander Nihara Keru,” he said. Her eyebrows flicked up: she hadn’t been sure he’d know her name, although he had made a point of memorizing names and faces. “Say what’s on your mind.”
Talaw’s mouth twisted. The rest of the commanders, less senior than Talaw or Nihara, were grimly attentive. For that matter, the staff heads looked even more uncomfortable. Jedao was trying to determine whether Talaw and Nihara disliked each other. If so, his life had gotten more interesting.
“Sir,” Nihara said, “what are our objectives? This is a large swarm, but it’s an immense galaxy.”
Jedao already liked her. “Our purpose is calendrical warfare to reunify the hexarchate so it can stand against incursions from foreigners,” he said, meeting her eyes. He was lying about this, too. Kujen’s strategic notes had suggested that he cared about the restoration of the hexarchate’s historical boundaries, but, weirdly, not so much about the occasional trifling invasion. Jedao would have to figure out what that implied later.
He continued talking. “We will start with attacks to realign the calendar in the Fissure”—the border region contested by the Compact and some smaller states, where the high calendar had lost its dominance—“and expand from there. There’s only this one swarm to start with, but I killed an entire army of you once and I got back up, and you’re the fucking military faction. I say we have a chance. But it’s a better chance if we’re all pointed in the same direction.”
There was a stir at that. He couldn’t believe he’d just joked about massacring Kel, except at this point there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have believed about himself.
Nihara interrupted by laughing. Talaw’s mouth tightened in disapproval. “All right, sir,” Nihara said. “That’s fair.”
“Charmed,” Jedao said. “Major, if you’d bring up the map—”
Dhanneth did as requested.
Jedao didn’t expect that his overview of their target, Isteia System, held many surprises for his audience. The system used to house a major mothyard, specifically for the construction of cindermoths, before falling victim to sabotage. Kujen wanted the swarm not only to destroy it before it resumed production, but to do so on the anniversary of Kel Command’s demise. Isteia was expected to be on high alert. If they could carry off a victory on that day—the more spectacular the better—the resulting calendrical spike would, according to both Kujen and everyone in Doctrine, swing the disputed territory back to Kujen’s preferred calendar. Jedao had snooped on some of the mathematics for the hell of it, querying the local grid for help with the computer algebra system. The junior Doctrine officer whose work he’d spot-checked had looked as if he’d rather arm-wrestle a tiger.
Jedao finished going over intelligence on antimissile defenses and suppressed a sigh. Lecturing statues would have been more fun. The statues might have been friendlier.
“We have a few advantages,” Jedao said, not because he thought they hadn’t figured it out, but because he believed in clarity. “First, our mothdrives look different on scan, and that will throw them. We can take advantage of that during the first engagement. Second, the Compact and the Protectorate are currently at peace, if an uneasy one, and the vast majority of you Kel ended up with one or the other. They won’t expect a Kel swarm to suddenly turn up and fight them. That’s something we only get to confuse them with once, but since it’s lying around it’d be stupid not to use it.”
One of the junior commanders asked about travel formations, which was a good question. “No,” Jedao said, “we won’t be traveling in formation to begin with. We don’t want them to know for sure that we’re Kel. Uncomfortable as it will be, it’s more important to preserve surprise.”
“Sir,” Talaw said. “If we’re attacked en route, what then?”
Another good question. Jedao was relieved that Talaw’s hatred of him didn’t preclude them from participating usefully in the briefing. “We’ll be avoiding the known listening posts to the greatest extent possible,” Jedao said, “but the beautiful thing about space is that it’s difficult to get pinned. If someone shows up, we sprint away. Our mothdrives will allow us to outrun most of what’s out there. It’s ignominious, but the calendrical spike takes priority. We’re not here to get into random brawls, especially considering our limited resources. You’ll get the order to fight in formation when the time comes and not before.”
Would Talaw argue with him for the sake of it? But all they said was, “I concede your logic, sir.”
Jedao was starting to like Talaw as well. So what if they hated him? It might be good for him to have someone to keep him from getting sloppy.
“All right,” Jedao said. “Infantry assignments. Although we have some boxmoths for personnel, I have assigned complements of infantry to some of the bannermoths and to the shearmoth to accommodate the regiments.” He smiled at the senior infantry colonel, Kel Muyyed. “I expect infantry to drill formations while we’re in transit.” Dhanneth had radiated grudging approval when Jedao came up with that, although he hadn’t come out and said so. “Per standard procedure, refuse the primary pivots during drill.” Leaving primary pivots unfilled would prevent the formations’ effects from activating. He doubted the colonels needed the reminder of the precaution, but Muyyed and the junior colonel nodded sharply.