5
RORY
I stood in front of thirty-seven Velkorin warriors who could each bench-press a small car, and I thought about the time I'd had to explain to a group of fourteen-year-olds why you couldn't just rush the enemy spawn point over and over and expect different results.
Same energy. Bigger audience. Higher stakes. Way more teeth.
"Okay," I said. "Here's the deal."
The war room had been reconfigured at Vrex's order.
His officers had cleared the tactical displays and given me the central floor—a circular space surrounded by tiered seating.
Vrex stood to my left, arms crossed. Zenir stood to his right, her expression somewhere between skepticism and morbid curiosity.
"You're fighting this war like it's a test." I pulled up the tactical map on the display—I'd spent all night learning the interface, and my fingers only fumbled the controls twice, which I counted as a victory.
"You're doing everything by the book. Correct formations, correct timing, correct weapon deployment.
And you're losing. Not because you're bad at fighting.
Because you're good at it. Specifically, you're good at fighting the exact same way every time, which means Krenix is also good at predicting exactly what you'll do. "
A murmur rolled through the room. Not agreement. The vibration of pride meeting an uncomfortable truth.
"General Krenix is also doing everything by the book. Same book. Same chapter. Same page. Which means every time you fight, you tie. And ties don't win wars."
"She suggests we dishonor ourselves," someone said from the upper tier. The older voice was cold and clipped.
"I suggest you stop treating the honor code like a ceiling and start treating it like a floor.
" I zoomed the map to the eastern engagement zone.
"Section twelve, subsection four of the Ceremonial Combat Code permits, and I'm quoting—'tactical approaches not explicitly addressed in prior subsections, provided they do not violate existing prohibitions. ' Know what that means?"
Silence.
"It means anything that isn't specifically banned is legal. And I've read your honor code cover to cover." I held up my tablet, which now had approximately four hundred annotated bookmarks. "Twice. There are gaps in it big enough to fly a ship through."
Vrex's scales flickered gold. I was starting to read his color palette—gold for surprise, amber for frustration, deep bronze for the emotion he didn't want me to notice.
"Explain," he said.
"Gladly." I pulled up my first proposal.
"First, battle scheduling. Your engagement rotations are predictable because you've been using the same scheduling pattern since the war started.
Every two weeks, same zone, same time, same formation.
The honor code doesn't dictate scheduling—that's an administrative decision, not a combat one.
So we randomize. Different zones, different times, different force compositions every engagement.
Krenix prepares for Zone Three, we show up in Zone Seven. "
Interest rippled through the younger soldiers. It was subtle, the Velkorin version of leaning, which involved a slight tilt of the head and a brightening of their bioluminescent markings.
"Second—team composition. You assign units to zones and keep them there. That's stable, but it's also predictable. Cross-train your teams. Rotate your best tactical minds between zones so Krenix can't prepare for a specific commander's habits."
"That violates—" an officer began.
"It violates nothing. I checked. Article nineteen governs weapons and engagement rules.
Article twenty-three governs combat zone designation.
Neither says a word about personnel assignment.
That's internal logistics, and internal logistics is my specialty.
" I smiled. "I once restructured the entire Battlezone floor schedule to accommodate a wedding party, a corporate team-building event, and a children's birthday party running simultaneously on a Saturday.
This is easier. You only have two clients, and one of them is the enemy. "
A sound from the lower tier—the Velkorin version of a surprised laugh, was suppressed quickly. One of the younger soldiers, a lieutenant whose bronze scales marked him as barely out of training.
"Third—communication protocols." I pulled up a diagram I'd drawn at three in the morning.
"Your current comm system uses standardized signal patterns.
Standardized means predictable. Predictable means anyone with a scanner and half a brain can track your troop movements from the signal traffic alone.
We're switching to randomized burst communications with rotating encryption.
I've already sketched the protocol—your tech team can implement it in two days. "
Zenir's head turned. Not toward me—toward the diagram. She studied it for three seconds. "That would require reprogramming every field communicator."
"Yes."
"We have four hundred twelve field communicators."
"I'm aware. I counted them yesterday." During the armory inspection I'd insisted on, which had taken seven hours and involved learning the Velkorin word for "inventory manifest," which was nineteen syllables long.
"Your tech corps can handle it. From what I've seen, they're bored.
Give them a problem to solve and they'll love you for it. "
Zenir looked at Vrex. The silent communication of people who had worked together long enough to hold entire conversations without speaking passed between them. Vrex's scales shifted—amber, then gold, then something warmer.
I laid out three more proposals. Terrain utilization—natural features of the engagement zones that no one had used because the textbook formations didn't account for them.
Morale restructuring—rest rotations, individual recognition, and what I called "the halftime debrief," which involved pausing mid-engagement to reassess and adjust. And force deployment timing.
Dawn raids were legal. No one had tried them because no one had thought to read the fine print that defined "standard operational hours" as sunrise to sunset, not the gentlemanly mid-afternoon schedule they'd maintained for three years.
"Dawn raids," Gorthal repeated, as though I'd suggested something indecent.
"Dawn raids. Krenix's morning formation drills run from oh-six-hundred to oh-seven-thirty. That's ninety minutes where his forces are scattered, half-armored, and thinking about breakfast instead of battle."
"That is—"
"Legal. Article seven, subsection two. 'Engagements may be initiated during any period within standard operational hours.' Dawn is within standard operational hours. I checked. I checked three times, because I knew you were going to argue about it."
The room split as I'd predicted. Young soldiers leaned forward, eyes bright with the hunger of people who had been told to keep doing the same failing thing for three years and had finally heard someone say let's try something else.
Senior officers went rigid, arms crossed, radiating the stiffness of expertise under assault.
And at the back, just visible in the upper tier where he'd appeared during the scheduling proposal, Therak—watching me with the focus of someone building a case.
Vrex listened to the debate for four minutes. Then he stood. The room went abruptly silent.
"We implement the new strategy beginning with the next engagement cycle. Lieutenant Zenir will coordinate schedule randomization and communication protocol updates. Sullivan will oversee tactical restructuring." He looked at me. "Dismissed."
The room emptied in waves. Young soldiers first, several casting glances at me curiously.
Then the senior officers, their muttered conversations carrying the cadence of men processing a disruption.
Therak was last, pausing at the doorway to look at me with those cold green eyes before disappearing down the corridor.
Then it was just me and Vrex and the humming tactical display.
"You have made enemies today," he said.
"I'm aware."
"Therak will use your proposals against me in the Council."
"Probably."
He was quiet for a moment. The war room hummed around us. That low vibration I'd learned to hear in every Velkorin structure. The tactical display cast blue light across his scales, picking up the bronze undertones, and the effect was striking in a way I was trying very hard not to notice.
"You are certain these changes will work," he said.
"I'm certain that doing the same thing you've been doing for three years won't work."
He studied me. In the blue light, with the tactical display reflected in his amber eyes, he looked less like a commander and more like a man who had been carrying something too heavy for too long, and was just now considering the possibility that someone else might be willing to help hold it.
"You should eat," he said. "You missed the morning meal."
"I'm fine."
"You have not eaten in—" He checked his wrist device. "Fourteen standard hours."
"How do you know that?"
"The quartermaster logs all ration requests. You have made none."
The fact that he was tracking my eating habits should have been strange. It wasn't. When was the last time someone at Battlezone had noticed whether I'd had lunch?
"I'll walk with you to the commissary," he said. "There are aspects of the honor code you may find useful to discuss."
It wasn't subtle. I was learning that subtlety wasn't in the Velkorin toolkit. He wanted to talk to me. He was engineering an excuse.
We walked. The corridors were built for Velkorin proportions, which meant I felt like a child in a very fancy office building. Vrex shortened his stride to match mine without being asked—either cultural courtesy or evidence that he'd calculated my stride length. Honestly, it was a toss-up.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You may ask anything."
"Why seven strategists? Before me. You hired seven professional military strategists, and none of them worked. What went wrong?"