“Sir,” Nerevor said, “this would be the pivot framework of a grand formation if we had exactly seventy-nine more moths to fill the rest up—”
The grand formation Nerevor was referring to was Glory of Roses. “New firing pattern,” Cheris said. “On my mark.” She consulted the terminal’s clock. The moths took up their positions, absurd long triangles on the display. “Mark.” Gold lights again.
This time fire blazed up in a definite pattern, lines and swirls of light outlining the familiar shape of the Andan kniferose. The colors were wrong, no help for that, and this wasn’t going to work either, the shields were – wait.
“Replay first six seconds of shield response,” Cheris said. “One-tenth speed.”
There it was. A fractional delay, as the operator pieced together the pattern. Then the shields glimmered with a tempest of roses falling, petals pierced by curving thorns. Interspersed with the roses was a curious figure, three dots arranged in a triangle, each oriented so the apex pointed toward the Fortress’s primary pole, and each lit up balefire-red. No holes in the shield, however.
“The pictures mean something?” Nerevor said.
“Not an Andan,” Jedao said, “but a definite reaction. The operator identified the grand formation and reacted to it, so they have some background in space tactics. Of course, that could be anyone who watches the right dramas—”
“Sir,” the Communications officer said, “it’s Captain Shuos Ko. Says he has something for you.”
“I’ll hear him,” Cheris said.
It was too much to hope that Ko ever looked less than imperturbable. “General,” he said. “How familiar are you with Shuos security suites?”
“I’m not,” Cheris said.
“Oh, this will be interesting,” Jedao said. “I bet they look completely different now.”
“Five years ago, the standard interface was overhauled in accordance with new Rahal guidelines, something to do with calendrical adjustments,” Ko said. “The old symbol for high alert was a red chevron. It’s now the triangle of dots with all three lit up. Whoever is working the shields has recent security experience.”
“Good man,” Jedao said. “I wouldn’t have known that.”
“Thank you,” Cheris said to Ko. “Anything else?”
“That’s all, sir.” His face winked out.
“Run through the following signifiers in this order and tabulate results,” Jedao said. “Kniferose Thorns Wild, Pierced, Burning Sweetly.”
Cheris was increasingly convinced that the Fortress was going to open a hole in its shields to fire at them, even though the heretics had nothing to worry about yet. Still, the chaff shifted with a responsiveness that she could only describe as human.
They set up the pivots for the next ghost formation, which with a grand swarm of ninety-three would have been Carrion Strike. They patterned the Rahal scrywolf to accompany it. Cheris looked over her shoulder at Rahal Gara. The other woman’s mouth was pale, compressed.
The shields didn’t react as strongly this time, although some chaff manifested anyway: a brief glimpse of the high alert triangle, the dendritic shapes of coral, the occasional glassy hexagon. Flickers of numbers. Gara confirmed that they were consistent with what they knew of the heretics’ calendrical keys.
Jedao laughed shortly. “Definitely not a wolf. A wolf’s mind would be better-disciplined. All right. Hunting Alone, Uncircled, Trapped in Glass, Ambushed.”
Cheris wondered what he was looking for. The signifiers changed the chaff, but the shields didn’t show any signs of going down.
Next was the Shuos ninefox. It scarcely produced any result, as if the shield operator had gotten bored. Cheris was expecting Jedao to try the signifier Crowned with Eyes, which he was known for, but he chose four others.
They went through the three low factions according to schedule: Kel, Nirai, and finally Vidona. With each one, the chaff dwindled until it became faint smudges, the shapes hard to guess even with interpolation.
“Now what?” Cheris asked subvocally, watching Nerevor pace.
“I hate my hunches sometimes,” Jedao said. “Marketing and demographics. I might have guessed.”
She hoped he would explain that to her sometime.
“For the next one, we want to use pivots from the grand formation Skyfall. The firing pattern should sketch the Web of Worlds. Not the basic mirrorweb emblem, but specifically the Web of Worlds.”
Cheris plotted it out, but had to refer to the archives to make sure she had it right. Surely the heretics weren’t really thinking of reviving a dead faction?
“One more, General?” Nerevor said. She was still pacing. “If we could just get the shields down—”
Cheris tried to remember what she knew about the Liozh as she relayed the order. It wasn’t much. The details of the heresy had been suppressed. Kel Academy hadn’t had much to say about it, as most military actions against the Liozh insurrectionists had been sufficiently one-sided as to be, as one instructor had put it, “militarily uninteresting.”
The significance of Skyfall was easier. General Jedao had used it to devastating effect against the Lanterners at the Battle of Severed Hands.
Cheris was jolted back into paying attention when Scan called, “Pinpoint breach at—” He gave the coordinates. Seven more appeared in rapid succession.
“Scan,” Cheris said, but Scan was already working. “Focus fire on the pole spine. We want to scare the operator.”
Between the chatter in the command center, Nerevor’s terse orders coordinating the tactical group, occasional status alerts from the moth commanders, and Jedao’s hellishly confident voice, Cheris could hardly hear herself, let alone shape a thought of her own.
An opening formed to permit return fire. The swarm dispersed to avoid available angles of fire. The two cindermoths’ erasure cannon slung their projectiles one after the other.
“Pull up the dictionary of signifier responses we’ve compiled,” Jedao said. “This will hurt. Tactical One and Two, nail the Deuce of Gears onto surface structures.” His personal emblem. “They can do what they have to as long as the pattern is recognizable. Cheris, ask them to sort the dictionary on antonyms. Have Tactical Three fire on the shields, not the breaches. Every time they see chaff, they’re to hit with the antonym. A fast response is more important than a certain one. Make sure Commander Rai Mogen is clear on this.”
Nerevor frowned at the orders when Cheris gave them. “Sir,” she said, “that’s practically bannering the Deuce—”
Cheris flexed her half-gloved hands to draw attention to them. “We’re using the arch-traitor,” she said. “We’ve admitted as much. If his reputation benefits us, we’ll keep using it. The order stands.”
Nerevor’s mouth was tight, but she didn’t protest further.
Tactical Groups One and Two began hammering the Deuce of Gears on the Fortress’s armor with weapons at twenty percent. It was hard to see the gears as anything but a large circle and a smaller one, the teeth obliterated to nubs, but in context Jedao’s emblem was clear.
The red triangles showed up at greater and greater scale, lightning flashes of anxiety bleeding across the shields like a haywire fractal gasket.
“There we go,” Jedao said.
Guns spoke from the Fortress, a beam raking Kel Shan’s Trading in Solstice from a momentary opening, then fell silent.
Tactical Three was still responding to the maelstrom of chaff – fissures, broken teeth, bridges swaying dangerously, red splashes – with the antonym attack. Cheris made herself breathe evenly despite the gasps and stutters in the images. She was finally convinced that, for whatever reason, the shields were tied to the operator’s inner world, the knots in their heart. But why would you design a defensive system that –