Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

“I hadn’t realized you were going to take an interest in the infantry, too,” Cheris said. Truth to tell, she found it heartening.

“We have to,” he said, hard and sharp. “Our aim is to crack open the Fortress. The people going into the Fortress will be the infantry. We’re looking at companies operating autonomously for periods of time. We’ll need to rely on the low officers, which means understanding them so we can motivate them.”

“Are we going to be permitted to join the troops on the Fortress?” she asked. She knew it was a stupid question the moment it came out of her mouth. She’d have to do better.

“You’re thinking like a company commander, not a high officer. Lose that habit. Besides, I guarantee that our keepers will shoot us if we get off the command moth. They won’t trust me out of their sight. We’ll just have to work around it.”

“I’ll remember that,” Cheris said.

After a moment, he went on, “Do you know what you’re going to say to your swarm once they’re assembled, Cheris? It’s best to prepare it in advance. The first time they put me in charge of a swarm, I thought I was going to forget my own name.”

“I’m listening to any advice you have,” Cheris said carefully. “In the past I’ve had some chance to meet my company in person. It makes a difference.”

“I don’t dispute that. Half your swarm commanders will be eager to take a crack at the Fortress – there’s something to be said for Kel eagerness – but they’ll resent you for jumping rank on them. Don’t let on that it bothers you, if it bothers you. And above all don’t let them pity you for being a pawn. Nothing kills respect faster than pity.” Jedao thought for a moment. “Besides, if they pull me early, you might have to go it alone, and you want to be prepared for that contingency.”

“Chain of command –”

“Kel Command said you’re brevetted for the duration of the campaign. You might be stuck.”

He was right. In an emergency, there might not be time to send to Kel Command for new orders. She might end up retaining command. Although she had taken the requisite primers on space warfare in academy, she had only fought as infantry, and experience made a difference.

“Keep it short,” Jedao said kindly. “If you’re not a natural speech-giver you get into less trouble that way.”

“How did you manage?” she asked.

“I like talking to people,” he said. “It’s the same thing, only with more averaging. You’ll get better at it with practice. That’s what it comes down to.”

Cheris stared at the names and photos of the officers in their proposed swarm. They looked unreal, but Cheris knew she had to take this seriously. All too soon she and Jedao would be in charge of these people, and she couldn’t afford for him to know anything about them that she didn’t.

THE SWARM ASSEMBLED piecemeal, each moth taking up a lattice position as assigned by the research station’s command center. Cheris and Jedao viewed the feed from display six. The voidmoths were varied in shape, even those in the same class. Commanders were allowed to put in for customizations if they could scratch anything out of the budget for it. For the most part, the moths were lean triangles, hound-sleek. The two cindermoths were particularly notable, and not just for their size. Each sported a spinal-mounted erasure cannon, and she could see the mounts for their complements of dire cannon as well.

The swarm was now fully assembled, only one hour and seventy-three minutes behind schedule. Cheris notified them that she would address them in twenty-eight minutes. She added that she wanted to see individual commanders, not command composites.

“An interesting decision,” Jedao said, without judging.

“We’re going to need to know their capabilities as individuals,” Cheris said. They couldn’t gamble that composite wiring would work near the Fortress. Besides, as a recent infantry captain, Cheris wasn’t wired herself. “We might as well start figuring that out.”

The Nirai wandered in at one point. Uncharitably, Cheris wondered if his superiors didn’t have enough to keep him busy with. He was wearing a deceptively understated black jacket with moths embroidered in dark thread along the front, and lacelike silver earrings. “You’re going out of my care,” he said to Cheris. “I wanted to warn you to be vigilant.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir,” she said.

“When you come back,” he said, “we should talk about number theory. I looked up one of your student papers, the critique of Nirai Medera’s formation generator. A novel approach.”

Cheris relaxed. Trust a Nirai to get distracted by something irrelevant to the mission. Then again, it wasn’t his mission. “Of course,” she said.

The Nirai smiled at her, and the beautiful eyes were almost kind. “Burn brightly,” he said, a Kel farewell, and left.

Cheris spent the next fifty seconds trying not to hyperventilate at the thought of addressing the swarm. It hadn’t been so long ago that she had had Eels trying to kill her. She would rather go back to that than face all those commanders, who would ordinarily be her superiors.

Jedao didn’t tell her to relax. Instead, he kept up a reassuring patter as he analyzed everything that came across the displays, including the graphical conventions and fonts used to show data. She wouldn’t have thought a general would show such interest in good interface design.

“Have you given thought to your emblem?” Jedao asked out of nowhere.

“My what?” She saw what he meant. As a brevet general she wasn’t entitled to one, but it would disappoint the swarm not to have one as an identifier. Jedao’s Deuce of Gears, while technically available, was a bad idea for obvious reasons.

“You’re having a thought,” Jedao said.

“They won’t like it,” Cheris said.

“They don’t have to. They’re not in charge.” Another moment, then: “I see. It’s appropriate.”

“How do you do that?” she demanded.

“Well, my guess could be wrong. But you think with your face, Cheris. Dangerous habit. I don’t have a better suggestion, so we’ll go with that. Six more minutes. You’d better be ready. Do you want them to see the shadow or not?”

“Yes,” she said. “They ought to know who they’re following.”

“Do you have the lights figured out?”

Adjusting the lights was easy, a matter of angles. It was the talking part that concerned her.

“Reorient displays,” Cheris told the grid, and gave the parameters. “I want to be able to see everyone I’m talking to.”

The displays arranged themselves according to rank and, when the time came, lit up simultaneously. Two cindermoth commanders, thirteen bannermoth commanders, an infantry colonel, an intelligence captain, and seven boxmoth commanders made for a crowd. She could see why Kel Command preferred to deal with composites.

They were saluting her. Cheris bit back the urge to apologize for the irregularity. “At ease,” she said. “Brevet General Kel Cheris for the duration of this campaign by order of Kel Command. I am being advised by General Shuos Jedao.”

She couldn’t see the shadow behind her, but she could tell they were watching it. She tried to see all their faces at once and figure out who was stiff and who seemed receptive to this development, but it was too much.

“Our mission is to retake the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics,” Cheris went on.

“I knew it!” The speaker was Kel Nerevor, commander of the cindermoth Unspoken Law , a lean, middling-dark woman with white streaks in her hair and a laughing mouth. “Everyone’s been talking about it. It will be a great honor to retake the Fortress for the hexarchate.”