Ruler of Naught (22 page)

The captain’s compad beeped and she held up one hand.

Stop talking.
That signal Warrigal didn’t need L-6
for.

“Ensign Ammant, Communications, Captain.”

L-6 didn’t work without sight of the speaker’s face, even
for someone Warrigal knew, and Ammant’s crisp bridge cadence didn’t help.

“A crypto neuraimai working on the incoming cutter reports
popped up a com fragment that I think you need to hear. It’s apparently a leak
from the destroyer in high orbit, of a communication relayed through the
frigate.”

“Put it on.”

The compartment comm crackled to life. “I don’t care what you
think. If you break position I’ll hunt you down and pull your guts out through
your nose—or better yet, send you to the Avatar. You won’t like how he treats
the chatzers who run out on his orders, and there’s no place anymore to run,
anyway.”

Warrigal couldn’t track the sudden eruption of words from
the other officers, couldn’t read the sudden pulse that ran through the room,
her eidetic imagery of the L-6 glyphs overturned by her own strong
emotion.

The Avatar. There’s only one authority who uses that
title: the Dol’jharian murderer. It really happened, then, just as the
Aerenarch expected.
Warrigal breathed deeply, counting heartbeats to quell
the sense of unreality that threatened to turn into giddiness. She discovered
her fingers moving toward her class ring, and she forced her hands to her sides
as she assimilated the new facts. She’d been just a child during the
Dol’jharian War, the title “Avatar” merely something from the history vids
until her year at Narbon, where everyone had been absorbed in the Aerenarch’s
determination to be ready for the next Dol’jharian attack.

And now, it seemed, he’d been right. A light day and a half
away burned the proof in a funeral pyre of five thousand victims.
Wait.
Wait. Wait
, Warrigal thought, holding herself ready, though the words felt
piled up behind her lips.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” Navaz whispered
over and over.

Totokilli glared, his teeth showing, a vein pulsing in his
neck.

The captain had stilled, though the signs of anger were
there in her lips, the tension of her hands.

“... of a Shiidran brood-fouler.” Krajno’s curses died to a
mutter.

“Thank you, Communications.” Ng tabbed off the comm and
looked at each of the officers around the table. “This time we’ll finish it.
Continue, if you please, Ensign.”

Warrigal had readied her words. “As part of my proof I
constructed a physics-neutral semantics for the Tenno, and then generalized it
using a Kovloskian game-theoretic structure based on L-4 Phalanx to
enable further investigation.”

Totokili-single-stroke-upper-quadrant-approaching-acceleration-required.
The impatience module triggered and she spoke faster.

“This enabled me to set a wide range of initial conditions
and then play out tactical scenarios to determine how the Tenno must be
modified to enable the construction and evolution of coherent tactical
propositions, statements, and resolutions under those conditions. In order to—“

“Ensign,” Rom-Sanchez interrupted. “Why don’t you bring up
that extract from the L-5 game that we discussed—where Ensign Wychyrski pulled
off that triple finesse?”

Too late, Warrigal recognized the L-6 signals from the
other officers indicating that she’d gone off course, again. The meta-levels of
L-6 obviously needed further tuning, although she didn’t know when she’d
find time for the eidetic transcription she’d have to make first.

Rom-Sanchez-role-abstraction-station-keeping.

Gratefully, she bent over her compad as Rom-Sanchez began to
explain L-5 to the senior officers, and let him set the course.

o0o

Nearing the end of his explanation, Rom-Sanchez cleared his
throat as he glanced Warrigal’s way. She was twiddling with her ring again,
which had to mean that the officers were intimidating her into confusion, which
diffused her focus. So he finished up.

“So you can see how the action in the L-5 game extract we
just viewed almost exactly reproduces the salient aspects of the Treymontaigne
ambush, based on initial conditions that assumed ship-to-ship hyperwave at the
same speed as ship travel.”

“Is that what you think we face here?” asked Lieutenant Commander
Nilotis. He was leaning forward, neither his expression or his tone hiding his
hope. “Ensign Warrigal, what if the Rifter... hyperwave... is much
faster than that?”

Warrigal could deal with that—it was straightforward.

“It doesn’t matter, sir,” she said. “I used the next series
of games to establish that the Tenno programming isn’t sensitive to changes in
hyperwave speed once it’s faster than a skipmissile.”

“Since then,” Rom-Sanchez added, “we’ve played L-5 assuming
instantaneous communications for the sake of simplicity. Our analysis of the
ambush at least does not contradict that assumption.”

“And you’ve been playing this game since the beginning of
our tour?” asked Captain Ng.

Rom-Sanchez permitted himself to look her way. He hadn’t
dared—not with everyone watching. Or glaring, in Totokili’s case. Relief
ballooned inside him when he saw the captain’s intent expression, the one she
wore when she was mentally in fiveskip.

“Actually only about four months on a regular basis,”
Rom-Sanchez said, and then held his breath so he wouldn’t blush.

A corner of Commander Krajno’s mouth twitched, almost a
smile, but not quite. For it did not reach the acute misery his gaze could not
hide. “Four months longer than anybody else. Sounds like there’s going to be a
serious shake-up in billeting. Who all is familiar with L-5?”

Rom-Sanchez was startled by Krajno’s acceptance of L-5’s
utility. “Ensign Warrigal, first and foremost, of course,” he replied. “Myself,
Ensigns Wychyrski, Ammant, Hjivarno, Sidelmar—I have a list here, with their
player rankings.” He tapped his compad and echoed it to a subsidiary viewscreen
with open local access. Commander Krajno immediately began tapping at his
compad.

“Ensign Warrigal also prepared a lexicon of weapons-related
changes to the Tenno semiotics for Lieutenant Commander Navaz to inspect.”

As the Armorer eagerly tapped her compad to access the data,
Commander Hurli leaned forward. “Captain,” she said. “Surely you’re not
suggesting that we reprogram the Tenno in accordance with this... game?”

“What else can we do? You saw that the standard Tenno are
useless in the face of whatever technology the Rifters are using.”

Hurli shook her head. “Limited, sir, but not useless. And
once you add the new modules and strip out the relativistic linkages where
appropriate, it will take hundreds or thousands of hours to trace all of the
changes as they propagate through the Tenno to make sure it’s tactically
consistent. Better to go slow here, especially since few if any Rifters use the
Tenno Major, anyway.”

“Permission to speak, Captain.” said Warrigal.

“Go ahead.”

“We have played 49.2 hours of L-5 since we standardized on
the game assumptions I used in the digest that I showed you, which I have used
to seed self-replicating sixth-chthon
neuraimai
evolutions in my
personal dataspace. As of 0800 hours today, that represents 3.46 X 10
⁵
hours of evolved semiotic algorithms available for analysis, which I already
would have done if my array allotment had been sufficiently large.”

Rom-Sanchez winced at the implied criticism, which he knew
Warrigal had not intended, but Hurli just gazed at the ensign, her expression a
perfect Douloi mask, then she leaned back in her chair. “Simulations are one
thing, battle is another,” Hurli said, the slowness of her words the only hint
of her doubt. She turned a hand upward toward the viewscreen showing the
death-agony of
Prabhu Shiva
. “But that puts us a lot closer to what I’d
be comfortable with.”

“Good,” said Ng. “We don’t have a lot of time. Please get
started on the consistency check with the ensign.”

Rom-Sanchez could not suppress the flush as the Captain
focused on him, leaving Hurli to bozlink Warrigal. “Lieutenant, assuming we can
reprogram the Tenno, what’s the tactical situation look like?”

Rom-Sanchez straightened his spine. At least he had a
definite answer. “The resonance field is down and we have IDs for the
first-tranche Alpha and the frigate in Treymontaigne orbit, plus some small
stuff. Signals analysis also implies that there are three other Alphas—they’d
be third tranche if Eichelly’s bonus chip is right. And two or three more
frigates in-system.”

“They’ve probably got a hyperwave-equipped ship watching
each of the standard naval emergence points, ten light-minutes normal to
Treymontaigne,” said Nilotis.

Another ambush,” Totokilli said. “Not much imagination,
there.”

“That’s not surprising,” Navaz put in without raising her
head from her compad.

“Rifters.” Commander Krajno snarled the word, his manner
forbidding.

“No.” Navaz looked up, her fingers still busy. “What I mean
is that they’re not likely to have had FTL communications very long. How long
do you suppose the Rift Sodality could keep a secret like that? So they’re not
likely yet to fully understand its tactical implications.”

“That’s one of three factors that are in our favor,” said
Rom-Sanchez. “Signals analysis leads us to believe than only three
destroyers—doubtless the third tranche ones, so not the one in orbit—and the
frigate in orbit have the hyperwave. According to our L-5 scenarios, there are
tactical soft spots in that combination that the new Tenno will help us
exploit. More important is that our L-5 play to date has demonstrated that in
most mid-battle scenarios, the advantage conferred by the hyperwave is far less
than it is at the beginning or end. This is especially true for close in-system
actions, where tacponders can be leveraged most effectively.

“That will make the fourth factor even weightier, then,” Ng
commented.

“Fourth factor, sir?”

Ng looked around the room. “There’s got to be more tactical
imagination in this plot room than in that whole Rifter squadron.”

She looked across the table at her head tactical officer,
her palm up. “Mdeino, what’s your recommendation?”

o0o

Mdeino Nilotis tore his gaze away from the tac-holo, now
running a series of evolutions under the control of Hurli and Warrigal.
Best
to get the worst over with first
, he thought.

“Commander Krajno will, of course, have his own billeting
suggestions, but I’d recommend you put the Lieutenant in the Tactical pod to
help you fight the ship in the coming action,” he began. “He’s got four months
on me or any of his seniors with these new Tenno.”

Krajno caught his eye and sketched a salute.

Ng lifted her chin, her approval underscored by her reply. “I’ll
frock him LTC,” she said.

Rom-Sanchez reddened to the tips of his ears and sent a
revealing glance of gratitude toward Nilotis, his forehead puckered with
self-doubt. Nilotis knew that Rom-Sanchez was aware of what it meant for an
officer to so advance a junior.
Now he’ll be doubly determined to make this
work
.

“I’ll shadow him, of course, as I assume other seniors will with
their juniors experienced with the L-5 Tenno,” Nilotis said. He drew a breath.
This next would be perilously close to personal trespass, but this, too, duty
commanded: “I also strongly recommend you consider an Augmented sim session for
yourself, Captain, to drive the new semiotics as deeply into your mind as
possible.”

Ng grimaced, but nodded again. The combination of blood
agents, EM fields, and neural alligation were too hard on both mind and body
for anything but an emergency—there was a real risk of permanent impairment.
Even best case, she would pay for her accelerated learning with a period of
mental and physical lethargy that could be ameliorated only for a time with
stimulants.
Long enough to fight the battle.
She could deal with the
other side effects that would come later in her recovery.

“As for tactical dispositions, we need to find the other
hyperwave-equipped ships, since all their other assets will have to be in EM
range of one of them. Assuming they took up position shortly after our first
emergence, they’ll have been on station long enough to put them inside the
asymmetric detection envelope of
Grozniy
’s sensor platform, even without
a VSA.”

“Better and better,” said Krajno. The battlecruiser could
roughly confirm enemy dispositions from farther out than their targets’ sensors
could detect emergence.

“
I also agree with the Armorer, and recommend that
Grozniy
take what looks like a by-the-book approach via one of the emergence points
while leveraging our superiority in tactical support materiel to prepare the
volume of battle to our advantage. The enemy will undoubtedly choose to fight
through cis-lunar space, using the Highdwellings and other installations to
impose tactical asymmetry on our engagement. What they probably don’t realize
is how much that will mitigate the advantage of their hyperwave.”

Ng nodded again and addressed the armorer. “Lieutenant
Commander Navaz. That means in addition to tacponders we’ll need a large
quantity of antiship weapons for dispersal by the corvettes and even cutters,
as well as heavier devices that
Grozniy
will discharge. Do you concur?”

“Yes, sir.” Navaz’ voice was soft, almost hesitant.

Nilotis hadn’t spoken to Navaz much, but sensed she was less
comfortable with people than with her cims, the machines that created
expendable weapons as needed, making a battlecruiser largely independent of its
base. “We’d be best tooling up a large number of gee-mines and leeches, I
think,” said the armorer.