Ninefox Gambit

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

Priority: Normal

From:: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

To: Heptarch Liozh Zai

Calendrical Minutiae: Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Chicken, Day of the Rooster. Why both chicken and rooster? Who knows. I’ll ask during the next vote.

In the meantime, Zai, you really must reconsider that ascetic diet of yours. That alarmingly excellent confectionary has come up with a whole new flaky pastry with alternating layers of jujube filling and lemon custard, and I shudder to think what the fillings are going for these days considering what they’re charging for the pastries. I have been very good about rationing myself to one a day.

You wanted my take on Scan’s reports, so here goes. Analysis of the long-range readings confirms we’ve got an incoming Kel swarm. There are one or two cindermoths in the lead, impossible to conceal them entirely, and ignore the fact that Scan is equivocating on the formants, I’d bet on two. I would estimate a dozen bannermoths and maybe some miscellaneous transports, but their formation has been chosen to obscure scan readings and it’s going to be impossible to get an exact count until they’re closer.

What interests me more is their choice of general. Luckily, this is the Kel, so most of the options are in our favor. I could tell you were losing patience during all the old tedious debates, and who could blame you, Stoghan won’t shut up when he has an opinion to drone on about, so I’ll sum up the possibilities as they stand. The most dangerous full general who might be available is Kel Cherkad, who’s served with the Andan. I’ve never liked her emblem – I swear that bizarre spiral pattern gives me migraines – but there’s no denying her effectiveness. The next worst prospect would be Lieutenant General Kel Daristu, who’s still young enough to be open-minded about assessing the political situation. However, based on the last reports before the communications blackout, I judge that Kel Command is unlikely to pull him off the Ivenua border. We’re just lucky the scariest one, Kel Inesser, is on the other side of the hexarchate.

I’ve attached the file with my detailed breakdowns of the options, but this is just killing time until we see what banner the Kel broadcast so we know who we’re dealing with. There’s an outside chance they’ll composite their general with a Shuos higher-up, but I can’t imagine the Kel would admit to that kind of desperation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to talk to some of the people responsible for maintaining the new exotics. They’ve been delinquent in turning in performance reports and I find that sort of laziness unacceptable. You know how to reach me if there are any new developments.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

THE TWO TEN-WEEKS passed more quickly than Cheris had reckoned on. Her first experience at high table was awkward. People tended to talk to her shadow rather than her face. Kel Nerevor didn’t do this, but instead made cheerful remarks that played up her experience and Cheris’s lack thereof.

Cheris had thought that she had recovered the ability to use chopsticks without fumbling them, but nerves made her drop them on the floor. A deltaform servitor brought her a new pair, and she thanked it, grateful that her voice didn’t shake. The deltaform chirped and bobbed before it returned to its duties.

“I’ve noticed your affinity for the servitors, General,” Nerevor said toward the end of the meal.

Cheris considered her response. “I like to think of them as allies,” she said. She hadn’t had much time to talk to the ones on the Unspoken Law, mostly because there was far more paperwork involved in being a general than she had realized.

“Never too many of those,” Nerevor said, but she clearly thought Cheris was eccentric.

Afterward, she reviewed available information on the Fortress of Scattered Needles, singling out the six wards and their associated factions for attention. The Andan, Shuos, and Rahal were represented by the Drummers’ Ward, Dragonfly Ward, and Anemone Ward; the Vidona, Kel, and Nirai were represented by the Ribbon Ward, Radiant Ward, and Umbrella Ward. She still didn’t like the fact that all the wards’ communication posts had been taken over simultaneously. Then she tried to make a dent in her paperwork.

“You should take a break,” Jedao said while she was in the middle of parsing a particularly disorganized report on Medical’s preparedness. “Isn’t there something you do to relax?”

“I should –”

“Trust me, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to work yourself to death later. Do something fun while you can.”

Cheris was dubious, but she invited some servitors to join her for a drama. A deltaform and a mothform came by, and they exchanged friendly greetings while the drama began playing. The mothform lit up in ebullient golds, magentas, and oranges every time the heroine’s sidekick, who was supposedly a Nirai, wrote so-called equations.

For her part, Cheris quizzed the deltaform about its opinion of the cindermoth’s Kel, especially Commander Nerevor. Maybe it was underhanded to turn to a servitor for intelligence, especially since most people didn’t take notice of them even when they were right under their noses, but she needed all the help she could get. As a captain she’d been able to associate with her lieutenants and the other infantry captains and listen in on a little gossip. Here, the greater difference in rank, to say nothing of Jedao, made it impossible to talk to people in the same way.

In any case, in between sarcastic comments on the heroine’s taste in power tools (many servitors had definite opinions about power tools), the deltaform told Cheris that Nerevor was popular among the crew for her flamboyant style and the fact that she was unstinting with her appreciation when her subordinates did something well, even when it involved outsmarting her. Competitive but fair. For that matter, the servitors had no quarrel with her, and it said philosophically that the Kel were as well-mannered as Kel ever were. Cheris smiled wryly.

Jedao didn’t seem to be paying attention to their discussion at all. “I had no idea your taste in entertainment ran to romantic comedy,” he said quizzically during one of the pauses. “Romantic comedy with a rogue engineer, at that.”

“Oh, they all duel each other, too,” Cheris said. “Every episode the heroine makes a whole new calendrical sword out of paper clips and metaltape.” The dueling was the reason she liked this show. “The dueling is ludicrous, but the special attacks are really funny. Like that one just now with the galloping horses.”

The deltaform said that if someone summoned horses to attack it, it would just surrender.

“Given that they outmass you by lots, that would be sensible,” Cheris said. “Jedao, weren’t you a duelist? If you hate this, we can watch something else.”

Jedao laughed. “And here I was thinking that you have much better taste in dramas than my mother.”

She was disconcerted by the thought that Jedao had had a mother. She didn’t know anything about his family.

“I’m told someone murdered her while I was being interrogated,” Jedao said, as though he were reporting the number of cucumbers a battalion ate in a month. “My father was already dead. We were never close to begin with. My brother –” Suddenly the unsentimental voice became raw. “My brother shot his partner and their three daughters in their sleep exactly a year after Hellspin Fortress, then killed himself. And my sister vanished. Probably ran right out of the heptarchate. She was always the practical one.”

“I’m sorry,” Cheris said, because she couldn’t think of what else to say. The servitors blinked lights at her inquiringly, then subsided. They continued to watch the drama in silence.

As the episode wound down, Jedao said, “You’re not doing badly with Nerevor. She’s expecting your nerve to crack and it hasn’t yet.”

“Jedao,” Cheris said, “I’m stapled to a bigger threat. I’m worried about her, but when you get right down to it, my situation is already worse.”

“Good,” he said.

“Good what?”

“Be more assertive. You tend to defer to Nerevor. The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you. You have to act like a general or people won’t respect you as one.”

Cheris frowned, but he was right. Feeling twitchy, she started doing some exercises. She was still dealing with having a stranger’s patterns of motion stamped into her. The more she thought about ways to compensate, the more she fell over her feet.

On the fourth day at high table, as everyone finished the cinnamon-ginger punch with floating pine nuts that was the day’s indulgence, Kel Nerevor leaned over and said, “I haven’t seen you sparring with anyone since you arrived, General.”

Nerevor had chosen day four – four for death, the unlucky lucky number that suicide hawks favored – for this conversational gambit. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to indulge me with a duel?” she went on. “Some of my officers have been speculating about your style.”

It would have been terrible protocol to refuse, although it wasn’t good protocol for Nerevor to ask, either. “I’ll oblige you,” Cheris said, because she liked dueling, “although I’m sure you’ve had more challenging opponents.” This was bound to be true even without Cheris’s current difficulty getting her body to cooperate. The servitors had told her that Nerevor enjoyed a fair deal of success as a duelist, and that her style was flashy and aggressive. She remembered Jedao’s words on authority and added, “In one hour.”

People were talking and eying her speculatively. Her clumsiness had not gone unremarked. Clumsy Kel were rare.

“This will be interesting,” Jedao said once she was back in her quarters. She was never going to get used to how big they were. She didn’t have to look at the general’s wings on her uniform most of the time, but there was no escaping the rooms. “I had hoped your coordination would recover faster than this.”

“Did your other anchors perform better in this regard?”

“Yes, but please don’t think this reflects badly on you. I have an idea of what’s going on, but it doesn’t help you, and if I’m right you’ll figure it out immediately.”

“I hate it when you’re cryptic.”

“Well, you might as well warm up.”

Cheris did so. Twelve minutes before the appointed time, she took up her calendrical sword.

When Cheris reached the dueling hall, Nerevor was already there. Nerevor’s calendrical sword had a burnished bronze hilt with scrollwork in green: elaborate, but a cindermoth commander was entitled to it. A fair number of Nerevor’s officers were there, including the Rahal captain-magistrate, Gara. Most of the Kel were intent. Shuos Liis had a seat near the front and was smiling openly. Cheris avoided looking at her.

“You’re exactly on time, sir,” Nerevor said. It was impertinent of her to make the observation, but she spoke with real delight.

Cheris raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t help appreciating the other woman’s forthrightness. “I trust best of five will do, Commander?”

“Of course, sir.”

Four servitors marked the corners of the dueling rectangle, birdforms rather than deltaforms. Cheris bowed slightly to each of them as she took her place across from Nerevor. Nerevor raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. The servitors might not divulge their names to humans, but service was still service.

Numbers flashed backwards, then forwards, as Nerevor readied her stance and activated her calendrical sword. Hers was fierce yellow-white. It was too bad they couldn’t be allies. Under other circumstances Cheris would have enjoyed serving under someone with such obvious enthusiasm for the Kel cause.

Cheris’s sword was blue and red. The academy instructors had assured them that the colors had no meaning, but people liked to speculate anyway.

“Count of four,” Nerevor said.

The servitors made four clicks, perfectly synchronized.

Nerevor was fast. The blade leapt in her hand and took Cheris in a great slash across the chest while Cheris was still trying to work out what her feet were doing. The slash stung momentarily, but the blade wasn’t in lethal mode.

At least Nerevor didn’t humiliate Cheris with commentary, although her mouth pulled down in disappointment. She was unnecessarily cautious in the second round. Cheris suspected she was trying to squeeze out a more exciting victory. Although Cheris knew better than to slow down and think through her responses, she did it anyway. Her parries were soft and uncertain, and Nerevor tired of the exchanges and ran her through.

Well, this will be over with quickly, Cheris thought. She hated to make such a poor showing, even though Nerevor was legitimately better than she was. On the other hand, this was hardly the worst of her problems, so there was no use fretting over it. In a way, it was a relief to know herself so thoroughly outclassed.

As Cheris took up her position the third time, she smiled at Nerevor, feeling genuinely calm. Nerevor’s eyes slitted, and a line formed between her brows.

Nerevor came at her fast again. Cheris stopped thinking through moves and counters and footwork, and simply reacted. There it was, that funny thing with her balance, but she let herself keep moving, aware simply of the necessity never to stay still. Nerevor wanted a flashy exhibition of sword-skill, but Cheris had no intention of letting her have it. She pivoted neatly, slipped under Nerevor’s guard, and took her between the ribs at a precise angle.

“Point to the general, I believe,” Nerevor rasped. “Really, sir, was it necessary to feign such incompetence?”

Cheris blinked at her, trying to connect what had just happened to what Nerevor was saying. She couldn’t pretend she had been feigning – that would just be insulting – but she didn’t think it would be any better to explain that she had surrendered to a dead man’s expertise. “Fight harder,” she said instead.

“I will indeed,” Nerevor said, smiling.

Cheris won the last two rounds faster than she meant to. Apparently Jedao had believed in ruthless, decisive action. She was uncomfortably aware of Jedao’s dueling record. He had only lost to one Kel.

Nerevor saluted her without any trace of irony. “I will remember not to underestimate you,” she said. “This has been most informative.”

“I’m honored to have faced you,” Cheris said, because it was true.

People were staring at her shadow with its inscrutable eyes, but there was nothing to be done about that. Liis looked worryingly pleased.

Nerevor nodded, then walked off, looking cheerful.

“That was the thing,” Jedao said the instant they were back in her quarters. “You kept thinking about what you were doing. Calculating. The body isn’t about thought. It’s about reflex. Especially in combat. You would have figured this out sooner if somebody had come at you with a real weapon, but I couldn’t very well advise the commander to set her sword to lethal mode in a friendly duel.”

“You could have told me,” Cheris said, looking at her hands as she turned them over, palms down. They were the same hands she had grown into, but she kept expecting them to be larger, longer. She was momentarily convinced that if she took her gloves off, her hands wouldn’t belong to her anymore. “Does this go away after you’re not anchored to me anymore?”

“I don’t have that information,” Jedao said. Then: “You’re not in a good mood.”

“That obvious?” Cheris said.

“Seriously, what’s bothering you?”

“It wasn’t a fair fight.”

Jedao’s brief silence spoke volumes. “The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don’t fold,” he said. “Besides, you didn’t use any resources Nerevor didn’t know of in advance. She knew I was anchored to you. If she couldn’t compensate for it, that’s not your fault.”

“That’s a good way to save lives,” she said, a chill in her voice.

They weren’t discussing the duel anymore. “The faster it’s over with, the fewer people die,” Jedao said. “I realize you have delicate Kel sensibilities, but please accept my advice. You can’t leave advantages lying around, either, or people will use them against you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cheris said stiffly.

Jedao sighed, but didn’t press the point.

ON THE NINETEENTH day, Cheris was reviewing the New Anchor Orientation Packet, hoping for clues on how to handle Jedao, when the chime came. “Commander Nerevor requests your presence,” Communications’ voice said. “Scan indicates possible guardswarm contact.”

“I’m on my way,” Cheris said.

“We’re going to try to coax some information out of the enemy,” Jedao said. “You’re going to have to talk your swarm commanders through it. Be ready.”

The cindermoth realigned itself briefly so she could reach the command center more quickly, although the savings in time was a matter of seconds. Cheris entered and looked around. Nerevor was pacing.

“General,” Nerevor said with a rapid salute. “I don’t like it. There’s something peculiar going on with the formation effects, probably the jinxed calendricals, but that looks like a full defense swarm and it’s moving to intercept.”

“Let me see the formation data,” Cheris said. Scan routed the information to her terminal. She looked through the decay coefficients, then set up some preliminary computations, frowning to herself. “Doctrine, what do you have on the rot?”

“Summary or equations, sir?” Rahal Gara asked.

“Equations,” Cheris said. Subvocally, she said, “Jedao, you need to tell me what the plan is or we’re going straight to the fight.”

“We can’t surprise them,” Jedao said, “but we can confuse them. Listen, they have to have some plan beyond sitting under siege for, what was it, thirty years? They won’t have supplies for that long. They must expect a relief force to make their heresy viable. It could be a conspiracy, but whatever Captain Ko’s suspicions are, I don’t think the hexarchate is quite that lax. Which leaves foreign intrigue. Pretending to be their allies might do the trick.”

Cheris started to say, But that’s treason, then reconsidered. “We can’t act like a foreign swarm! They know what Kel moths look like. And we don’t even know who they’re expecting.”

“True, but we can be the next best thing: opportunistic domestic allies. Just be prepared to be firm with your officers.”

“There it is,” Scan said. “See that odd formant in the readings, sir? That’s got to be a rot effect, and I’m convinced it’s keeping me from getting a closer look at the lead warmoth.”

Cheris looked up from the fever-tangle of equations and numbers long enough to ask, “They’ve transmitted no banner?”

“We should be so lucky,” Nerevor said. “Should we transmit ours?” She had reason to be enthusiastic even about the null banner: once banners had been exchanged, battle could be properly joined.

“Not yet,” Jedao said. “They know we’re here, but the banner is additional information. We want to give it when we can provoke a response we can read for clues, and they’re too far away. Now would be a good time to explain to Nerevor that we’re going to try a ruse.”

“Commander,” Cheris said, “when they’re close enough for scan to give us better detail, we’re going to try to trick some information out of them. Communications: warn the swarm commanders of the same.”

“How very Shuos,” Nerevor said, “but orders are orders, sir.”

“I heard that,” Jedao said, a little testily.

Scan and Doctrine consulted with each other, and agreed that the guardswarm was 1.7 days out from the effective range of the Fortress’s shields.

“That swarm isn’t out here for defense,” Nerevor said. “It’s here to scout us.”

“Have you hailed it?” Cheris asked sharply.

“We were awaiting your instructions.”

“Good,” Cheris said.

“I hate tripwires,” Nerevor said, “but why so close to the Fortress proper?”

“We need to get closer,” Cheris said. “Look –” She mapped the calendrical gradients. “The fractal boundaries are a mess, but we can’t define them better without active probing and that’ll take too long.” She pointed out the key equations. “There, there, and there. If you solve for the roots and iterate –” She demonstrated. The map updated itself accordingly.

“My guess is they’re hoping to meet us in that yellow zone,” Jedao said. “They’ve got something planned for the phase transition.”

Cheris concurred and relayed the assessment.

“I didn’t know you were Nirai-trained, sir,” Nerevor said, scrutinizing Cheris.

“Mathematics was my specialty in Kel Academy,” Cheris said patiently. She had known this would come up.

“Trip the wire?” Nerevor said. “Or lure them out here?”

“We need information,” Jedao said. “We need to take the hit more than they need to make it.”

Cheris didn’t like the idea, but there was no getting around the fact that they had to crack the Fortress, and that meant getting past the guardswarm.

“I’d ordinarily scout them right back,” Jedao added, “but go in with the whole swarm. I saw the grid data on how fast you tested calendrical effects against the Eels on Dredge. You can take them by surprise.”

“Sir?” Nerevor said at what she perceived to be Cheris’s inattentiveness.

“I was consulting with General Jedao,” Cheris said, since she couldn’t keep a secret of it. “We’re going in with the full swarm to see how they react.”

Nerevor was clearly ill at ease with the decision, but said only, “What formation?”

Cheris plotted it out. “That one.”

Rahal Gara double-checked the formation, as it didn’t belong to Lexicon Primary. “Sir,” she said, “that’s going to have vulnerabilities at three pivot points. I assume you’re doing it for speed of modulation.”

“Yes,” Cheris said, pleased that Gara had figured it out. To Nerevor, she said, “Do it.”

Nerevor confirmed the order. Cheris had expected to feel something when the communications chatter began, but all that came to her was a glassy calm.

“Prepare a message,” Jedao said. “Plain text, no audio, no video, nothing. Don’t pass it over to Communications yet. I find the Kel react better – sorry, Cheris – if you just take things out of their hands. It would be better if I could record it myself, but oh well.”

“I’m listening,” Cheris said.

“This is Garach Jedao Shkan –”

It had never occurred to her to wonder what his name had been before he became a Shuos.

“– and I have a score to settle with the hexarchate. You’ll need allies to hold out until help arrives, because I know how to get past the shields. Call off your guardswarm so we can talk, or I’ll make a point of sharing the trick.”

Cheris entered the message and squinted at it. “They can’t possibly fall for that.”

“The beautiful thing about that message is I’m not bluffing.”

This gave Cheris pause. “You’re serious?”

“Even the Shuos occasionally tell the truth, I hear.”

Nerevor was talking to some of the composites. Cheris watched, then said to Jedao, “What do you think of her command style?” People were largely ignoring her.

“Very hands-on,” Jedao said. “I see why you like her. She’s combative, but she gets involved. I also suspect she’s erratic, so use her accordingly.” Interestingly, he didn’t sound as though he approved of her himself.

“You never stop analyzing people, do you?”

“There are worse habits to have.”

“They’re accelerating toward us, sir,” Scan reported. “Toward the phase transition zone.”

“We’ll meet them there,” Cheris said.

They couldn’t see the Fortress directly on scan due to the shields, although it stamped its calendrical influence throughout space as distinctively as a fingerprint. Cheris imagined it staring at them like a winter eye, cold and cunning and infallibly patient.

The Kel swarm served to meet the guardswarm, each moth oriented in accordance with formation logic. Although Cheris knew better, she kept expecting the world to change around her in response to the calendrical rot: for the walls to run like water, the light to shiver into turbulent colors, the sounds of human voices to shred into the cries of migrating birds. But that was the trouble: you had to use exotic effects to analyze the rot. If quotidian human physiology had much sensitivity to calendrical effects, the hexarchate would have destroyed itself with its own technology base.

The minutes trickled past. Cheris could almost feel them creeping down her spine. Silently, she thanked Jedao for keeping quiet.

“We’re 13.4 minutes out of dire cannon range,” Weapons said. “We’re unlikely to hit with the erasure cannon at these speeds.”

“All right,” Jedao said intently, “maneuver until we’re twenty-five seconds out of dire cannon range at present speed, then transmit the message along with our banner. Such as it is.”

Cheris passed on the instructions.

Communications swiveled to stare at her. “Sir, are you –”

“You have your orders,” Cheris said. “Tell the swarm: hold formation.”

“We’re masquerading as what?” Nerevor said. “Sir –”

Communications indicated queries from other moth commander as well. Cheris’s command panel lit up accordingly.

“I’m not taking questions,” Cheris said. “The order stands. Any response from the guardswarm?”

“Correlating formants with the previous assault swarm’s signatures, sir,” Scan said. “The bannermoth in the lead is Ungentle Paragon. The one at the next pivot point might be Forever Minus a Day, but the formants keep changing around so it’s hard to be sure.”

“I went to academy with the commander of Forever,” Nerevor said in outrage. “I can only hope he gave a good accounting of himself for his moth to be taken from him like this.”

“I wouldn’t make any assumptions about who’s commanding that bannermoth,” Jedao said.

“Enemy swarm has bannered,” Communications said.

“Let’s see it,” Cheris said.

The banner was a white wheel with seven spokes, not the hexarchate’s six, and a golden flame in the center. Cheris remembered what Subcommand Two had said about central integers.

A murmur went around the command center. “Well,” Nerevor said, “they’re not making any attempt to hide their heresy.”

“Liozh,” Jedao said, very quietly. The seventh faction, which had been destroyed for its heresy. Cheris hoped she had misheard him.

“Thirty seconds out of dire cannon range,” Weapons said.

“Message and null banner transmitted per instructions,” Communications said just after that.

“They’re shifting formation in response,” Scan said. “We may be able to catch a glimpse – that’s odd.” The marionette bit off a curse. “There only seem to be five moths in the swarm.”

“Of course,” Cheris said, angry with herself. “Look at those pivots –” Those pivots, those coefficients. “They maximized their scan shadow. Unless they’re feigning low numbers by feigning high numbers” – baroque, but you could never be sure – “that might mean they only captured five moths.” Had the rest been destroyed?

“They’re transmitting a message to the Fortress,” Communications said. “I’m dumping it to the crypto team, but this is military-grade and we don’t have the session keys, so it’ll take time to see if there are vulnerabilities.”

“Let’s see if the Fortress responds,” Jedao said. “Someone over there might have an attack of nerves.”

Were the heretics really going to believe the preposterous claim that they could break the shields?

Jedao said, “Wake up, that’s not a standard –”

Cheris spotted the incoming object in the scan summary.

“That’s a bomb!” Scan said. “Don’t understand the trajectory. It’s going to catch more of them than us in the blast radius.”

Anomalies never worked in your favor. Especially since the five-swarm was moving toward the bomb, not away from it.

The bomb went off. It did not, in fact, catch any of the Kel swarm in its radius. It did, however, encompass the entirety of the five-swarm, in a sphere of rippling light the color of broken glass, and it shifted the moths around in a dizzying swirl.

The Kel swarm was now surrounded by a kaleidoscope of phantom bannermoths, a hundred of them. Only five of them were real, but the phantoms could undoubtedly do some kind of damage. Cheris immediately mapped the symmetries: it was a radial force multiplier, it was probably only going to last as long as the bomb’s radiation lingered, and if they didn’t come up with a counter, they were going to be nailed full of holes by a numerically superior force.