To distract himself from the pain, he was thinking about the bridgelights and their resemblance to falling petals when Scan alerted him that the Lanterners had shown up. “Thirty-some moths in the van,” the officer said in a commendably steady voice. “Readings suggest more are behind them. They’re moving rapidly, vector suggests they’re headed down the Yellow Passage toward the choke locus, and they’re using a blast wave to clear mines.”
As if he’d had the time to plant mines down a hostile corridor. Good of them to think of it, though.
Menowen’s breath hissed between her teeth. “Our banner—”
His emblem. The Kel transmitted their general’s emblem before battle. “No,” Jedao said. “We’re not bannering. The Lanterners are going to be receiving the Deuce of Gears from over there.” Where the Rahal were.
“But the protocol, sir. The Rahal aren’t part of your force,” Menowen said, “they don’t fight—”
That got his attention. “Fledge,” Jedao said sharply, which brought her up short, “what the hell do you mean, they’re not fighting? Just because they’re not sitting on a mass of things that go boom? They’re fighting what’s in the enemy’s head.”
He studied the enemy dispositions. The Yellow Passage narrowed as it approached the null, and the first group consisted of eight hellmoths, smaller than fangmoths, but well-armed if they were in terrain friendly to their own calendar, which was not going to be the case at the passage’s mouth. The rest of the groups would probably consist of eight to twelve hellmoths each. Taken piecemeal, entirely doable.
“They fell for it,” Menowen breathed, then wisely shut up.
“General Shuos Jedao to all moths,” Jedao said. “Coordinated strike on incoming units with missiles and railguns.” Hellmoths didn’t have good side weapons, so he wasn’t as concerned about return fire. “After the first hits, move into the Yellow Passage to engage. Repeat, move into the Yellow Passage.”
The fangmoths’ backs would be to that damned null, no good way to retreat, but that would only motivate them to fight harder.
If the Lanterners wanted a chance at the choke, they’d have to choose between shooting their way through when the geometry didn’t permit them to bring their numbers to bear in the passage, or else leaving the passage and taking their chances with terrain that shaded toward the high calendar. If they chose the latter, they risked being hit by Kel formation effects, anything from force lances to scatterbursts, on top of the fangmoths’ exotic weapons.
The display was soon a mess of red lights and gold, damage reports. The computer kept making the dry, metallic click that indicated hits made by the Kel. Say what you liked about the Kel, they did fine with weapons.
Two hellmoths tried to break through the Kel fangmoths, presumably under the impression that the Rahal were the real enemy. One hellmoth took a direct engine hit from a spinal railgun, while the other shuddered apart under a barrage of missiles that overwhelmed the anti-missile defenses.
“You poor fools,” Jedao said, perusing the summaries despite the horrible throbbing in his left eye. “You found a general who was incandescently talented at calendrical warfare, so you spent all your money on the exotic toys and ran out of funding for the boring stuff.”
Menowen paused in coordinating damage control—they’d taken a burst from an exploding scout, of all things—and remarked, “I should think you’d be grateful, sir.”
“It’s war, Commander, and someone always dies,” Jedao said, aware of Korais listening in; aware that even this might be revealing too much. “That doesn’t mean I’m eager to dance on their ashes.”
“Of course,” Menowen said, but her voice revealed nothing of her feelings.
The fangmoths curved into a concave bowl as they advanced up the Yellow Passage. The wrecked Lanterner hellmoths in the van were getting in the way of the Lanterners’ attempts to bring fire to bear. Jedao had planned for a slaughter, but he hadn’t expected it to work this well. They seemed to think his force was a detachment to delay them from reaching the false Kel swarm while the far terrain was hostile to the high calendar, and that if they could get past him before the terrain changed, they would prevail. It wasn’t until the fourth group of Lanterners had been written into rubble and smoke that their swarm discipline wavered. Some of the hellmoths and their auxiliaries started peeling out of the passage just to have somewhere else to go. Others turned around, exposing their sides to further punishment, so they could accelerate back up the passage where the Kel wouldn’t be able to catch them.
One of Jedao’s fangmoths had taken engine damage serious enough that he had ordered it to pull back, but that still left him ten to work with. “Formation Sparrow’s Spear,” he said, and gave the first set of targets.
The fangmoths narrowed into formation as they plunged out of the Yellow Passage and toward five hellmoths and a transport moving with the speed and grace of a flipped turtle. As they entered friendlier terrain, white-gold fire blazed up from the formation’s primary pivot and raked through two hellmoths, the transport, and a piece of crystalline battledrift.
They swung around for a second strike, shifting into a shield formation to slough off the incoming fire.
This is too easy, Jedao thought coldly, and then:
“Incoming message from Lanterner hellmoth 5,” Communications said. Scan had tagged it as the probable command moth. “Hellmoth 5 has disengaged.” It wasn’t the only one. The list showed up on Jedao’s display.
“Hold fire on anything that isn’t shooting at us,” Jedao said. “They want to talk? I’ll talk.”
There was still a core of fourteen hellmoths whose morale hadn’t broken. A few of the stragglers were taking potshots at the Kel, but the fourteen had stopped firing.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Akkion Dhaved,” said a man’s voice. “I assume I’m addressing a Kel general.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Jedao said. “This is General Shuos Jedao. Are you the ranking officer?” Damn. He would have liked to know the Lanterner general’s name.
“Sir,” Menowen mouthed, “it’s a trick, stop talking to them.”
He wasn’t sure he disagreed, but he wasn’t going to get more information by closing the channel.
“That’s complicated, General.” Dhaved’s voice was sardonic. “I have an offer to make you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jedao said, “but are you the ranking officer? Are you authorized to have this conversation?” He wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the direction of the conversation. The weight of collective Kel disapproval was almost crushing.
“I’m offering you a trade, General. You’ve been facing General Bremis kae Meghuet of the Lantern.”
The name sounded familiar—
“She’s the cousin of Bremis kae Erisphon, one of our leaders. Hostage value, if you care. You’re welcome to her if you let the rest of us go. She’s intact. Whether you want to leave her that way is your affair.”
Jedao didn’t realize how chilly his voice was until he saw Menowen straighten in approval. “Are you telling me you mutinied against your commanding officer?”
“She lost the battle,” Dhaved said, “and it’s either death or capture. We all know what the heptarchate does to heretics, don’t we?”
Korais spoke with quiet urgency. “General. Find out if Bremis kae Meghuet really is alive.”
Jedao met the man’s eyes. It took him a moment to understand the expression in them: regret.
“There’s a nine-hour window,” Korais said. “The Day of Broken Feet isn’t over.”