Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

TEREBEG SYSTEM. JEDAO’S swarm had already had to alter their approach several times. He’d ordered scoutmoths ahead of them to gather information. Each time, picket swarms had emerged from the asteroid belt beyond Terebeg 6 and harried them. Thanks to carelessness, his first casualties had been three scoutmoths that hadn’t dodged quickly enough. More names in the long litany of names; but he couldn’t afford to linger over them now.

The hardest part would not be fighting the enemy. According to his staff, Inesser was likely to be guiding the defense of Terebeg herself, and she would meet him in battle for the express purpose of crushing his swarm. Jedao remembered the expressions on their faces: half-faith that he’d crush Inesser first, half-resentment that they were obliged to follow him. He longed to tell them that he had no intention of mass-murdering them, but even if Kujen wasn’t listening, he doubted they’d believe him.

No: the hard part would be convincing Kujen to make an appearance in the command center. This Jedao thought he could achieve. All evidence suggested that Kujen feared the infantry most, not the moth Kel. He wasn’t entirely wrong—but he wasn’t entirely right, either.

Jedao sat at the command center’s heart. He had arranged the displays to his satisfaction. He’d gotten good at switching them around when he needed access to some different morsel of information. Under other circumstances, he would have awarded himself a minor commendation for resisting the urge to fiddle with the displays while waiting for the action to start.

“Communications,” Jedao said, aware of Dhanneth standing at his side like a shadow in search of morning. Dhanneth had insisted on returning to duty. Jedao didn’t like it, but he had judged that indulging Dhanneth would make him feel better. “Anything from Terebeg?”

“A lot of low-level chatter,” Communications said “There was a spike in system traffic when they noticed us, but that’s no surprise. To them either. They knew we were coming eventually.”

Where by “eventually” he meant on Hellspin’s anniversary .

“Thank you, keep me apprised of any new developments,” Jedao said. “Dig around and find me some maps of their capital city, if you would. Something to supplement the intel the infantry’s been staring at all this time.”

“I should be able to scare something up, sir. There will be basic maps that people consult using their augments. Those won’t be encrypted.”

“Good,” Jedao said. “I want to talk to Tactical One and Tactical Two.”

Communications correctly interpreted this as meaning that he wanted a conference set up with Commanders Talaw and Nihara Keru as the principals, and the tactical groups’ other moth commanders as lower-priority participants.

“They’re being awfully uncooperative, aren’t they?” Jedao said without preamble. “But then, I didn’t expect them to charge at us.”

Scan had only picked up the occasional faint whisper. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain, however, that Inesser had concealed her defense swarms behind Terebeg 4 and its moons. Certainly she’d had enough time since detecting his approach to reposition her units. What worried him more was the possibility of ambushes from shadowmoths.

“They can’t be blamed for exercising sound tactical judgment,” Nihara said.

“Yes,” Jedao said. “That’s all right. Sound tactical judgment isn’t going to save them.” From the corner of his eye, he saw someone carefully not-flinch. “They’re prepared for us to fly straight in. Of course, all the defenses they’ve thrown up are so unwelcoming, they’d be surprised if we did that with no preliminaries. So that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

This was the part of the charade he hated most, and which he couldn’t reveal that he hated—not because of Inesser, but because of Kujen. If only he didn’t have to deploy the winnowers. He didn’t see any way to prevent a panic. At this point, he had no choice but to trust that Inesser and her people would be able to handle the situation.

“We have weapons enough to scare them,” Nihara said, callously professional. “Surely it’s just a matter of chewing them up as they come at us.”

“You do have such a colorful way of putting it,” Jedao said.

“Then we should begin,” Talaw said.

“Fine,” Jedao said, his tone artificially bright. “Thank you, commanders. Let’s get started, indeed. Communications, open a line to all units. All units banner the Deuce of Gears inverted.” The emblem glowed from a brand-new subdisplay, as if he needed the reminder. Irritably, he dismissed it.

“Do you wish to address the enemy, sir?” Commander Talaw said.

“Oh, why use words,” Jedao said. “Weapons are a more universal language anyway.” He avoided looking at Dhanneth. “We have the threshold winnowers.”

The atmosphere in the command center chilled. His signature weapon, but to deploy it so soon, before they reached the Fortress of Pearled Hopes or the planet it protected? And against their own people? Jedao had not looked up how many people had family or comrades or friends in Terebeg, on the grounds that he shouldn’t be seen to care. True, the Protectorate was vast—but the system, as the new center of government, had particular significance to the Kel.

After an impossible pause, the enemy bannered back, not from the swarms he couldn’t see, but from the Fortress. A murmur of discontent went around the command center. Jedao didn’t take offense; applauded Inesser’s pragmatism, rather. He admired the Three Kestrels Three Suns—another pop-up subdisplay—before dismissing that one too.

Time to set the trap. “Continue shield modulation sequence until I say otherwise,” Jedao said. “We’re heading straight for Terebeg 4.” He’d drawn their trajectory on the tactical map. “They’ve already seen us coming, so why draw out the suspense?”

He would try to do this with as few casualties as possible. He wasn’t, however, under any illusions that he’d be able to pull it off without killing anyone.

“Entering the asteroid field in twelve minutes, sir,” Navigation said after a while.

Jedao wasn’t worried about crashing into overgrown space rocks. The asteroids were too widely dispersed for that, unless all the moth pilots had collectively gotten really drunk without telling him. Even a swarm the size of his didn’t require that much space. Rather, he worried about more pickets lurking in the scan shadows of said space rocks, or stealthed attack forces.

The pickets didn’t materialize. That didn’t surprise him either. Their purpose fulfilled, they would have withdrawn to offer support to one of the primary defense swarms. It did mean that Inesser didn’t control so many moths that she could afford to throw some away to slow him down, especially this early in the battle. That, or she was feeling paranoid.

In spite of knowing better, Jedao was faintly disappointed not to see overgrown space rocks hurtling by on the viewscreen like in the video games he remembered playing with Ruo. He reminded himself not to be frivolous. They’d spot hostiles soon enough, and he’d be too busy to tempt the universe with snide thoughts about astronomy.

“Eight swarms launching!” Scan said, her voice shaking only slightly. She rattled off their initial vectors. Jedao’s tactical display updated with masses of moving gold triangles. Swarms One, Two, Three, Four, and Five had flowered outward from behind Terebeg 4, while Swarms Six, Seven, and Eight emerged from the Fortress of Pearled Hopes. The Fortress unleashed a barrage of missiles for good measure.