Page 11 of Accidentally Fearless

Gorthal, a senior warrior with silver-streaked scales and the stiff bearing of someone who had served since before I was born, stepped forward. "The human presumes to lecture us on honor."

"No." Rory did not step back. She did not flinch. She tilted her head up to meet his gaze, and the size difference was almost comical. She barely reached the middle of his chest, but her posture communicated absolute refusal to yield. "I presume to point out that you're losing. And you're losing because you've confused honor with passivity. Honor isn't letting someone beat you. Honor is winning in a way you can be proud of."

"She is right." The words came out of my mouth, and every eye on the platform turned—including Rory's, wide with surprise. "We have been fighting reactively for three years. Our honor code permits far more than we have attempted. I share responsibility for this failure."

"Commander." Therak's voice cut across the platform. "You would take tactical advice from a human who, by her own admission, manages recreational activities for children?"

"I would take tactical advice from anyone who can identify an enemy's pattern that seven trained strategists could not."

Therak's markings flared bronze along his neck. It was a dominance display. I had learned to ignore it years ago, but I noted the officers who leaned toward him and the officers who remained neutral. Political mapping. The constant subsurface work of command.

"The Council will hear of this," Therak said. The words were directed at me but pitched for the platform. A public promise. A threat dressed in procedural language.

"The Council will hear of our fourteenth consecutive loss if I do not act." I turned to Rory. "Show me."

She blinked. Then her expression hardened. She smiled. The smile of someone who had been given permission to break things.

"Okay," she said, flipping open her notebook to a page already dense with her writing. "But you're not going to like it."

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."