The Hesht worked her feet into a solid position, a cool breeze gusting across her pelt. She carefully took a pair of monofil gloves from a pouch on her climbing harness and tugged them on. Inside, the banging on the door had ceased and she could hear a drill whine sharply against ceramic. Dust puffed from the center of the portal. Both gloves on, she powered them up and watched for the winking green light indicating descender field strength at maximum.

The hexagonal door shattered with a crack! and bits of ceramic rattled against the windowpanes. A cloud of dust billowed into the room. Maggie heard a cheerful beep from the gloves, clenched hard on the monofil line and kicked back. Wire hissed between her gloves and she, Parker and the duffel bounded back a half-dozen meters. Her feet hit a section of blank concrete and started to skid. She leaned further back, forcing her boots flat on the wall.

Parker felt cold wind ruffle his hair, the cawing of native avians from far below and absolutely nothing beneath his swinging feet. "Oh goddddd," he bawled, clutching tight.

Takshilan guardsmen burst into the apartment, one ducking left, one right and another dodging forward in the middle. All three were clad in bulky cloth armor plated with hand-sized ceramic lozenges. Their long snouts were covered with leather facings, their deep-set eyes masked by bulging goggles. The one on the left turned, the muzzle of his automatic rifle sweeping across the empty room.

"Kramat -" he started to call out, beckoning the rest of the squad forward with one claw.

The black packets pasted beside the doorway detected heat and motion within their limited perception and blew apart. Choking white smoke blasted out, hiding the near-supersonic expansion of tanglewire coils. A thread-end smashed into the chest of the lead commando, puncturing his armor. He was thrown down, gasping, and the wire stiffened, tearing through scale and muscle. The room filled with a glittering black cloud. The other two soldiers had leapt back in time to avoid the brunt of the blast, but the knockout gas in the smoke flooded over them.

Someone in the hallway – spooked by the high-pitched ting-ting-ting of wire anchors punching into the walls – fired accidentally and the entire squad opened up, blazing away at the smoke. Tracers ripped through the haze, smashing the remaining windows. The lead commando, still tangled, was torn in half by the fusillade, his body jerking violently. Ricocheting bullets whined through the apartment, scoring the walls and clattering into the corners.

Magdalena looked up, saw the windows shattering into a cloud of glittering, plunging glass and kicked off again. Her legs were starting to cramp. Parker was a thin little human, but his squirmy weight was no furless kit clinging to her pelt. They bounded into another section of concrete and she kicked off again, flying past a row of windows.

Inside, a wide-eyed Jehanan child stared out, caught sight of a completely unexpected apparition, fluted in terror and scrambled under its sleeping rack.

The broken windows rained past them, forcing Maggie to duck her head and swing in close to the wall. Slivers of greenish glass caught in her pelt and spanged away from the concrete. Without looking up, the Hesht pushed off, monofil whirring through her harness and gloves. This time her legs were tired and they bounced into a row of windows. Glass splintered under her boots, and Maggie crabbed to the side, trying to reach concrete. The window groaned under the stress, cracked lengthwise and burst inwards.

One leg plunged into the opening, crashing through a shelf of potted plants. There were outraged hoots inside. Maggie kicked her leg free, shoved off with the other and swung past three more intact windows. She glimpsed two very large, very angry Jehanan males inside. The monofil whined, complaining, and she clenched hard with the gloves. She flew down the line as the descender released, their weight swinging them into a shallow arc.

Maggie forced her paws to release, skipping across ceramic facing. Their swing slackened, losing momentum, and they bounced to a halt against a concrete rib jutting from the face of the building. Parker grunted, suddenly jammed into a rock-hard surface, and his eyes flew open. The Hesht braced her feet, panting.

"Ooooh…my stomach feels…" The pilot stopped, squinting, his goggles automatically zooming in on the rushing shape as he focused. "What in the Nine Hells is -"

A shrieking roar filled the sky. Maggie snapped her head around, alarmed.

A huge, winged silver shape blasted past – less than a kilometer away – between the apartment tower and its nearest neighbor. Sunlight gleamed on swept-back triangular wings and blazed from a mirrored canopy. Slender black canisters nestled under the wings. Bright red insignia were blazoned on the double-finned tail. Superheated air howled from twin fairings at the rear of the aircraft.

"Yeeeee-hah!" Parker screamed, his entire body jolted with adrenaline. "Lookit that!"

The Jehanan jet fighter boomed past, slicing between the skyscrapers. One of the black cylinders suddenly broke free from the wing, ignited in mid-air and raced off to the southeast at supersonic speed. The boom of its passing hammered at Maggie's ears, making her blink with pain. The jet hooked left, flashing out of sight between the towers. A corkscrew of shimmering air remained, slowly untwisting in the haze.

"I can fly one of those," Parker shouted – half-deafened – in Maggie's ear. "I can!"

"Of course," Maggie choked out, twisting her neck to clear her airway. "Leggo!"

Parker relaxed his arm, looked down automatically and went white. "Eeep!"

The Hesht kicked off and they sailed down another twenty meters, passing more windows and sections of bare concrete. This time they touched down within spitting distance of a building adjoining the apartment tower. Maggie clenched her hand repeatedly and they bounced down onto whitewashed plaster. Parker's legs touched slate tile and he collapsed bonelessly.

Magdalena grunted, taking his weight in her legs, and unclipped the monofil tabs. Squeezing the tabs twice, she threw them up into the air and ducked down.

The microspools clicked into retract and both tabs began reeling in the monofil at top speed. They vanished in the blink of an eye, racing up the side of the building.

Pushing the terrified gardener in front of her, Anderssen hurried them back to the opening. The floodlights were still shining bright as the sun. Wiping blood from her face, Gretchen crouched down, casting a wary eye at the chamber of the kalpataru.

The survey comp lay undisturbed on the floor, but now it had woken up and was happily scanning away.

"Get ready," Gretchen said, voice tight with strain, as she picked up the comp. A rising sense of fragility was swelling in her mind, as though the stone under her feet, the bulky shoulder of the gardener, even her own skin was growing thinner and thinner with every passing second. The comp was reporting a steadily rising level of ambient electromagnetic energy in the vault. She adjusted her goggles, making sure they were on tight. "In a second, I'm going out there. When I do -"

Anderssen closed Malakar's claws round the handle and trigger of the captured pistol.

"You have to shoot out those floodlights. Do you understand?"

Malakar stared at her with huge, wild eyes. Gretchen tried not to focus on the section of wall slowly becoming visible through the Jehanan's head or the white scars slowly emerging from her brown old hide. "Shoot? Me?"

"Yes." Anderssen fixed her with a fierce glare. Her fingers were trembling as she tucked the survey comp away. "You have to shoot out the lights."

"I…this old walnut's never used a gun like this before," the Librarian stuttered, gingerly holding the bulky shape of a beam-pistol in her claws. "I can't do this – she's the kujen ! Our Queen! You're talking treason and murder."

"There's no time -" Gretchen heard the second generator whine up to full speed and threw herself through the opening, cutting tool tight in her right hand.

"There's only moments to spare," a voice hissed from her mouth. "We should have listened to the Jeweled-Kings when they tried to warn us… Now it's almost toolate."

The heavy power cable shivered, current flowed through to the induction plate. The technicians – Gretchen caught a flickering double-image glimpse as she rolled up, Jehanan scientists in leather harnesses and too-small-seeming Imperial tools superimposed over much larger counterparts in advanced armor, festooned with tools properly fitted to claw and limb – were stepping back from the gleaming black arc of the tree.

This time the single ringing tone leapt instantly into immanence. The green void unfolded, rushing out to encompass the room. Gretchen stumbled, feeling the shining, sparkling effusion as a physical pressure on her face and hands. The arc unfurled, countless threads stiffening, forming a sharp-angled triangle. Then another, inverted triangle blossomed within the first, then another, inverted again. The shivering, endless hnnnnnnnnnnnnnng of the device slid upward, shrieking into ever higher registers.

Anderssen pushed forward, feeling time grind slow. The floor mottled and cracked and she became terribly aware of the vast pressure the artifact exerted on its surroundings. Stone crumbled an atom at a time, the air congealed, electrons crept sluggishly from valence to valence. Only the arc itself remained immobile, impenetrable and immune to the crushing press of time. The blaze of its power pierced the vault above, lancing towards the sky hidden beyond the marble dome, and down, plunging into the roots of the world.

The flood of visions touched old memories in Anderssen's mind, culled from endless days spent in library carrels, stacks of dusty books piled up around her 'net terminal.

Two eagle-faced abzu lift their sacred cones towards a juniper tree surmounted by a winged sun-disk. In the leaves of the divine tree are held all knowledge, as well as the fruit of eternity.

A cold, implacable awareness flooded out from the kalpataru, touching every comp within its purview.

Murdered Osiris is placed by divine hands into the heart of a tamarisk whose roots burrow into the earth, reaching the land of the dead, and stretch up to the heavens, entangling the stars. The god's eyes fly open, his sundered body returned to life.

The comp behind her on the floor turned itself off.

A gnarled ash rises against the abyss, branches spread out over all the worlds and across the sky. Three of the tree's roots reach far indeed. One winds among the Aesir, the second among the frost-giants, where Ginnungagap once was. The third extends over Niflheim, which is the source of all that is cold and grim. It was created many ages before the earth was formed. Under that root is the spring Hvergelmir in the midst of Niflheim, and Nidhogg the Serpent gnaws the bottom of this root. From this spring flow the rivers Svol, Gunnthra, Fjorm, Fimbulthul, Slidr and Hrid, Sylg and Ylg, Vid, Leiptr, and Gjoll, which is next to Hel's gates…

Gretchen's own perception attenuated, grown suddenly vast.

Photons flooding from the floodlights continued to crawl forward, brushing aside the thick soup of molecules floating in emptiness. Every computer-controlled object in the chamber – her chrono, the generator fuel regulators, the Jehanan commander's hand-comm – stopped working.

Waiting.

The wave of electron paralysis leapt outwards, permeating the bulk of the ancient ship, flooding across Takshila and its myriad buildings, washing through the jet fighters howling in the late afternoon sky, licking across every comm and comp and Imperial device within the planetary magnetosphere.

Every device halted, set aside its allotted tasks and fell quiet, seized by the irresistible power of the kalpataru.

Listening.

In that same still moment of time, Gretchen perceived all this, ears flooded with sound, eyes drowned by a million unfiltered points of view.

And the shimmering tone of the kalpataru changed: a keen, sharp wail echoing out of the abyss of time trapped in the ancient metal. The matrices of form inside the howling green void shifted, attempting to attain proper alignment. Gravity dragged against them and the wear of millennia fouled the trembling dance, but the machine adapted, resorted, shifted, pressed mightily on time and space, trying to fold aside barrier after barrier.

The dials on the Honda fuel-cell generator pegged over to maximum and the entire machine began to whine dangerously.

Here, the kalpataru wailed after an eternity of patience. I am here! Command me!

All this Gretchen perceived, but she found herself powerless to act.

In her mind, at one instant, she was everywhere within the purview of the machine, a helpless passenger swept along in the tide of radiant power.

In that one instant, she was with Magdalena and the Hesht was growling at Parker, urging him to stagger forward across a wet, rainy rooftop. The buildings around them were unfamiliar and their faces were tense.

Maggie, Gretchen wailed, you've got to run! Get out of the city! Run, Maggie, run!

 

Parus

District of The Ever-Turning Wheel

 

Itzpalicue moved through a large dim room with a ceiling of hard-fired yellow brick. Sunlight streamed through openings piercing a succession of domes. The Arachosians filling the room regarded her with curiosity as the little old NГЎhuatl woman examined their archaic-looking weapons and ammunition bandoliers.

"You are hunting an invisible enemy," she rasped, mouth contorted to pronounce the harsh highland dialect of the tribesmen. Her earbug was running hot, providing a simultaneous translation of every voice in the room, and two vibrating 'sounders' taped to the sides of her throat managed to produce a facsimile of the thrumming overtone present in Jehanan voices. "A deadly one, quiet as a xixixit in the forest or a huungal in the marsh. The kind of enemy which never strikes with its own claw, only those of a pawn or a decoy. No open battle, no heroes clashing between arrayed armies, no charge of mounted man against mounted man. This is not a mudfoot you seek…"

A throaty trill of laughter boomed from the Arachosians. They were tall and wiry, scales stippled brown and tan, with narrow, cold eyes. They were garishly adorned with rows of fore-teeth and ear-bones. Long cowls shrouded their triangular heads and layered cloaks hid elaborately scaled armor of ceramic plates, leather harnesses hanging with knives, punch-daggers, pistols, ropes of grenades, the queer strangling rope called than-tan and bags of loose cartridges for their long-barreled rifles. Most had their modern, Imperial weapons laid out for cleaning and inspection. Strings of ammunition coils were stacked on the floor.

"You say," rumbled their kurbardar, a notorious chieftain named Gher Shahr, "we are hunting a man from the hills? Something like an Arach? In this fetid, wet den of fools a canny hunter might hide forever…"

"Even so." Itzpalicue removed a black lozenge from the folds of her dress. "Do you feel the fire and smoke quickening in the air? Soon the divine liquid will be spilled in plenty. The lowlanders will strive to drive the Imperials from their cities, their towns, from the land of the Five Rivers. When that happens, my enemy will move. He will press his pawns to attack, he will reveal his hidden strength to strike at the Empire – and he must make his will known somehow." She held up the lozenge. "These detectors ignore Imperial and kujenate comm traffic. They will lead you to anyone else operating advanced equipment in the city. If he is here…even an encrypted voice makes a sound."

Gher Shahr accepted the lozenge – the device vanishing in his huge hand – and made a passable human-style nod. "Hu-hu-hu…You have hunted before, little one. You are using the lowlander fools and their prideful war to flush prey from the deep thickets and ravines." The Arachosian tilted his long, scarred head to one side, nostrils flexing. "You are cold – like old ice always in sunshadow – you send your own tribe out to die, just to spook a single kaichesh from cover!"

Itzpalicue smiled warmly, patting his scaled thumb. "Divide your men into claws of four – there are enough detectors for all – and spread out – quietly! – through the streets. Vehicles have been provided to allow you swift movement. Be mindful of my voice! I will be watching over you."

One of Lachlan's technicians began handing out the black lozenges to the Arachosians, who crowded around in interest, hot breath snuffling in the elderly man's face. Itzpalicue watched carefully, making sure the tribesmen sorted themselves out properly. They began to file out of the old thread-dyeing factory. A dozen nondescript Imperial-built trucks in assorted makes and models were waiting, engines idling, specially trained Jehanan drivers sitting at the wheel.

"Get back to operations," the old woman told the technician as the last detector was handed out. "I will run all of this from another location."

Her earbug chimed in a two-up, one-down pattern indicating an incoming Flower Priest network call. Itzpalicue grimaced, pulled out a hand-comp and thumbed up Lachlan's video channel. The young man appeared instantly, now sporting several days' growth of beard.

Mi'lady?

"You've kicked a xochiyaotinime call to me? Are they having cold feet?"

It's started, Lachlan replied, the corners of his eyes tight with tension. You wanted overwatch on their opening response.

"Ah…" The old woman smiled beatifically. "Right on time. Patch me in."

Mi'lady. A hurried, agitated voice came on-line. The darmanarga-moktar have jumped the starting gate! We've reports of full-scale fighting in Gandaris, Takshila and the outlying districts of Parus! The locals have acquired some kind of comm-jamming system…and it's not something we gave them!

"Is the 416th regimental combat net down?"

No, it's handling the jammers. They've gone to tertiary frequencies in some cases. Yacatolli's aggressive dispersion has nearly every Imperial detachment in combat with rebel elements. The Arrow Knights are going to chew up the initial attacks faster than we anticipated, keeping the moktar from massing their forces…Should I drop their network?

"The Regimental net? No. Patience, child, patience. Let Yacatolli and his officers test themselves. That is what we wanted, isn't it?"

Very well… The priest's voice was still tinged with panic, and Itzpalicue knew the Whisperers working in orbit were a little shaken by the precipitate reaction of the natives. For herself, she was not terribly surprised. Any large conspiracy tended to gather momentum as it rolled downhill. The air had felt right this morning, clear and a little hot, and her Arachosians were already fanning out through the city. Today was as good as any to fight her war.

Wait… The priest's voice quickened. Regimental is adapting. Yes, they've restored comm across the board. Battle data is flooding in… By the Painted Lord, there are reports entire native military units have mutinied in Sobipurй and southern Parus! The spaceport has been overrun. Wai t…wait…what is this?

Itzpalicue raised an eyebrow at Lachlan, who was drinking some coffee at his station and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

This is impossible, the Flower Priest pronounced. The Mercantile Exchange House in Takshila has been attacked by hostile air elements firing guided munitions of some kind. There are hundreds of dead. By the Mother's Son, these creatures have managed to buy or hire atmospheric aircraft! Yacatolli is calling on Fleet to provide suppression fire.

"Lachlan?" The old NГЎhuatl woman raised her chin questioningly. "Did we provide them with aircraft of some kind?"

No, he answered, covering a yawn. We're getting scattered reports of the mutineers deploying archaic Jehanan war machines of different kinds – tanks, aircraft, artillery – which survived the nuclear exchange six hundred years ago.

"Numbers? Enough to make a difference?" Itzpalicue was impressed by the self-discipline of the native princes. This was the first mention she'd seen of any pre-Collapse military equipment surviving in an operable state. The prospect the kujenai had restrained themselves from wasting any possible advantage over one another during the last century of internecine conflict raised her estimation of them markedly.

We don't think so, Lachlan said. The Flower Priest was still babbling, alternately outraged and baffled by the steadily increasing reports from elements of the 416th in combat with squadrons of heavy tanks and being bombed by solitary Jehanan jet aircraft. Assets in action are still too few to tip the balance. Now if someone has a whole armored division in his pocket… Analysis section thinks all of thisgear was in storage or non-operable until Imperial pochteca started selling enough metal parts, lubricants and civvy-grade power-cells to get things working again.

"Ha!" Itzpalicue laughed heartily, having to wipe away a tear from her eye. "And we took such pains to supply them with near-modern anti-armor missiles and automatic rifles… Well, get combat efficiency reports when you can. The Mirror will be interested to see how the indigenous manufactures stack up against Army issue."

Lachlan started to nod -

– and the comm channel went dead.

Itzpalicue blinked, staring at the blank comp in her hand. The signal strength indicator was showing zero and the lighted front panel was dark. A cold chill washed down her spine. "Lachlan?"

Above the Sobipurй-Parus Railway

North of the Spaceport

 

The howling roar of shuttle engines suddenly faltered, pitch dropping precipitously, and Heicho Felix felt her gut flip over as the aircraft shuddered from nose to tail. She clutched tight on the support rails beside her jump seat, eyes squeezed shut.

And then realized her earbug had fallen silent, that her z-suit environmental controls had stopped humming, that aside from the shriek of air rushing past the hull, the inside of the shuttle was utterly quiet. Her eyes flew open – and there was nothing but darkness all around her – not so much as the gleam of a readout or a comm screen.

"What the hell!" Her shout tumbled over the exclamations of the rest of her squad and Sho-sa Kosho as well. "We've lost power!"

"We're not hit," Susan growled in the darkness. Felix could hear the lieutenant commander's fingers jamming fruitlessly against a control pad. "Comps are dead – everything's off-line."

"Everyone brace," Felix shouted, trying to grapple with the kind of weapon which could knock out all their comps inside of a shielded Fleet shuttle. "Hang on, we're going down!"

"Like a brick," Kosho muttered, forcing herself back into the seat.

Takshila

Near the Intersection of Panca-Sapta

AndTrieka

 

In the apartment, a stiff breeze from the windows was clearing away the smoke and once more the Jehanan commando squad entered – this time very cautiously – rifles moving restlessly from side to side. The web of tanglewire stopped them for a moment, until two of the brawnier guardsmen crashed through the barrier with a large table from an adjoining apartment.

A commando scuttled through the gap, swung to the right, and then caught sight of the pair of missing windows. Gingerly, booted feet crunching in scattered glass, he crept up to the opening and peered out, rifle at the ready. The durbar following him paused halfway into the room, staring suspiciously at the monofil anchors embedded in the floor. In the smoky air, his goggled eyes did not catch sight of the two wires stretched to the window frame, where a strip of magnetically charged 'lipping' material kept the monofil from shearing through the wood and concrete.

Both tabs zipped up to the window, bounced over the lipping strip, started to coil automatically – sliced cleanly through the neck and left arm of the commando on point – snapped into their anchors and demagnetized.

The durbar poked at one of the anchors with the muzzle of his rifle, then looked up – a question on his lips – in time to see the point commando topple over, blood spurting from a severed neck and gushing onto the floor from the arm. Eyes wide in shock, the durbar made a sound like a steam boiler venting overpressure; his rifle twitched towards the window and his claw clenched tight. One round boomed from the HK-45B, vanishing through the opening, and then the rifle jammed, the chamber fouled with substandard propellant.

The rest of the squad, having whirled at the gunshot, stared in horror at the body sprawled by the window. None of them had seen or heard anything. The durbar continued to try to fire the rifle, which made a click-click-click sound in the sudden quiet.

Malakar lunged after the human, her claws snapping on empty air, and shouted heedlessly with fear, seeing Anderssen stagger across the marble floor of the vault, in plain sight of the soldiers, every detail plain in the fierce, omnipresent glare of the floodlights.

"Hoooo!" A wail of fear burst from the gardener's old throat and she wrenched the heavy, clumsy pistol up, claw-tip scrabbling on the trigger.

Technicians whirled around at the unexpected noise. The Jehanan durbar stepped out, snatching for his automatic. His deep-set eyes widened, seeing an ancient monk waving a weapon at him. Then he caught sight of a smaller figure dashing for the artifact.

"Guards!" he shouted, enraged, and swung the iron-sights of his gun towards Gretchen. "Kill them both!"

His finger tightened – there was the sharp crack! of a gunshot – for an instant the durbar thought he'd been hit himself, claw convulsing on the automatic's trigger. There was the booming, echoing report of a second shot.

The secondary Honda generator shuddered, spewing hydrogen from a punctured cell. A mechanical pressure safety tripped and the current flowing to the kalpataru abruptly cut off.

Parus

District of the Ever-Turning Wheel

 

Itzpalicue stared at her comm with a sensation of icy dismay welling in her stomach.

"Lachlan?" She could barely whisper.

Gingerly, she turned the hand-comm over, then rotated the thumb control. Nothing happened. The usual whispering thread of voices from her earbug had fallen silent. She raised her eyes to the elderly technician and found him staring at her with equal horror.

"Mine is dead too," Nacace said in a frightened voice. "My earbug is dead. Everything just…stopped working."

"What about your other equipment?" The old NГЎhuatl woman tapped experimentally at the sounders clinging to her throat. They made a dull drumming sound. "Are any of your comps working?"

Nacace shook his head after a moment. He was sweating profusely – the environmental control in his suit had failed.

Our control network is dead, Itzpalicue repeated to herself, trying to grasp the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken her entire plan. Without comp on-line, there's no way to communicate with anyone. The Army will be blinded, unable even to fire most of their weapons. O merciful mother of Tepeyac, guide our spears true to the heart of the enemy, for we have nothing else with which to fight…

Her earbug suddenly squawked to life. Itzpalicue jerked as if she'd been shot.

"Lachlan! Are you there?"

Static and a confused babble of voices answered her.

The v-pane on her hand-comp flickered as the comm software reset – the Mirror-built system cycled through seventy or eighty thousand channels and popped back into synch with operations. Lachlan reappeared, but now he was standing and shouting orders at a chaotic room. His technicians were yelling in panic and the old woman could see dozens of monitoring screens showing nothing but static. Restart, Lachlan shouted again, we've lost the primary network. Shunt to secondary, then restart the primary. Go to battlefield beta cycling and rekey all encrypt sequences!

Itzpalicue waited, weak with relief. Sotto voce, she said: "Nacace, primary comm has suffered severe damage. We'll move to the secondary operations center immediately."

Then she made a sharp hooting sound, summoning the pair of Arachosians she'd chosen for bodyguard detail. By the time they arrived, Lachlan was staring out at her, still frightened.

"What happened?"

I don't know what that was! The Йirishman was sweating, jaw clenched. Everything just turned off. Everything had power – but nothing was working. Then the whole system just restarted itself.

"Do we have primary comm back?"

Lachlan managed a feeble grin and shook his head. Another new wave of jamming has hit the modern comm networks groundside – ours, the Flower Priests', and the Army's – this is modern, Imperial-style battletech too. Absolutely nothing we imported. Analysis says the xochiyaotinime didn't bring it in either. We're running the emission signatures now…

"Our network is back up?" Itzpalicue was walking quickly through the factory sheds, heading for an armored truck parked in a nearby garage. The elderly technician was jogging ahead, checking each doorway with a drawn automatic. The two Arachosians flanked her, kalang knives drawn and the grips of their pistols turned forward for swift access. "Do we have full coverage back? Spyeyes still in the air?"

No. Lachlan's voice was filled with despair. Whatever knocked out our comps killed their hover controls. One of our men on the roof is picking up the pieces of several right now.

"I see." Itzpalicue tried not to clench her jaw. "Shift as much traffic to ground-line or line-of-sight laser as possible. Do we have replacements to launch?"

Some, the Йirishman said, looking haggard. We're running a broadband restart command to try and wake up any of them that survived dropping out of the sky. They're pretty tough, so we'll get a few back. I'll have any reserve hives launched as soon as we have comm back.

"Other alternatives?"

Commercial comm is completely dead, the Йirishman said sadly. Every single relay node probably shorted out with this level of feedback. The xochiyaotinime are chasing their tails – they suffered three primary node failures and have lost nearly a quarter of their coverage. He grinned ghoulishly. The Mirror network had lost its eyes, but the backbone was still up. The Army is bouncing back – I think they'll have a full recovery in about six minutes – but the colonel is going to blister some hides for this… Their net is supposed to be hardened against exactly this kind of jamming.

The old woman slowed to a halt, waiting until the technician had climbed into the cabin of the truck, fired up the engine and put the transmission into gear. One of the Arachosians loped over to unbar the garage doors. "Will there be more outages?"

I don't…wait a moment. He looked off-screen, listening to one of the Analysis section technicians. Then he nodded, turning back to Itzpalicue. We've an ident on the attacking system, mi'lady. Albanian work – the latest version of their Seitaj IV battlefield countermeasures system – usually sold to mercenary brigades working the Rim. Good – very good, really, for a backwater like this – but we'll be able to keep comm up for the duration.

"Unless whatever neutralized our comps happens again." Itzpalicue swung up into the back of the truck. One Arachosian was in front, a brace of pistols and his Macana on the seat beside him, while the other rode with her in tepid darkness. The surprised chill of losing all contact was fading, but a tickling, unpleasant feeling of things being badly out of joint replaced her initial alarm. "A battlefield ECM system like that would only be useful against a modern opponent. Against the Empire."

True enough, Lachlan replied. But whoever brought in the Seitaj knew they'd be fighting some kind of Imperial troops. Only surprising they managed to get it on-planet without anyone noticing. They must have some mercs running the gear – quick-trained natives wouldn't be able to mount an attack like this.

"Pertinent," the old woman nodded sharply. The truck shuddered into motion under her and rolled out onto the street. "Dispatch a report to the Mirror. Whoever provided this equipment needs to be dealt with. As for the Seitaj itself, my Arachosians will find and destroy it soon enough…"

Lachlan signed off and she leaned back against the jostling side of the truck, frowning in thought. Something is out of place. They launch an escalated attack…three surprises now…near-modern arms, this comp neutralizer and modern countermeasures to try and level the field of combat. Do they have more in hand? She laughed softly to herself. We didn't need to meddle at all! Yacatolli and Hadeishi will have quite a time putting these lizards back into their bucket! Now wait… Something about the presence of the Seitaj nagged at her. A system like that is useless against troops fighting with sword, shield and lance. Did someone know an Arrow Knight regiment was coming here or did they expect us to equip the native princes with modern weapons?

The old woman scowled, fingertips tapping on her cane as the truck shook and jostled around her, engine rumbling, speeding through the streets of Parus. Rain-heavy clouds began to blot out the sun as the afternoon advanced.

The Fane of the Kalpataru

Deep Within the House of Reeds

 

A succession of sharp popping sounds rippled across the vault. The banks of floodlights hanging from the wooden scaffolding flickered and died. Darkness engulfed the Jehanan soldiers scrambling to react to Gretchen's mad dash across the floor. The durbar blinked, suddenly blind.

"Lights!" he shouted, edging backwards, claw out to find the cover of the generator housing. "Get some lights on in here, you fools!"

His wild, panicky voice touched Anderssen's ears as a long, muffled huuuummmaaa. For her, the air was still thick and impenetrable – the glorious radiance of the shining black arc was failing, swallowed by the air, by the stone dome overhead, by the inert marble of the floor – but its influence still pervaded the vault. Ghostly forms thronged around her – both the Jehanan workers in the distant past as they cleared away the shockfoam from the kalpataru, and those in the present, who were cowering wherever they could, fearful of being struck by a stray bullet.

She turned, the delicate shining curve of the divine tree drawing her eye.

The boiling green void was dimming, the vast array of sharp angles collapsing, softening, the buckling vortices of space and time folding back in upon themselves, the half-open gate disintegrating as quickly as it had begun to form.

Gretchen saw: A jagged stone plunging from the sky, white-hot with atmospheric friction, spearing into a green mountainside with a burst of flame. Spindly-looking trees toppled, blown down, and the stone – hissing and popping – lay inert at the bottom of a crater.

Tri-lobed grass grew with dizzying speed, violet-colored fern-trees lifted themselves from the ashes. Millennia passed. The forest was swept away by fire, then renewed, over and over again. The sun darkened. The violet-leafed saprophytes failed and were replaced by hardier species that could live on the slowly dimming radiance of Bharat.

Gods raged in the heavens, splitting the clouds, fighting among themselves. Cities rose, glittering, on the plain below the mountain and then failed, wiped away by the relentless pressure of time. Still, the sun continued to dim. Slowly the forest darkened as the implacable hand of circumstance winnowed the weaker species away.

Something came pacing in the nighted forest – a shining chitinous creature with long bifurcated legs and shimmering wings bearing a glowing eye – in the radiance of the eye, the mossy stone was ablaze with light. The Jeweled-King plucked it from the heather and carried it away.

The stone sat alone in a blue-green room, undisturbed until slender machines descended from the roof, poking and prodding, examining the striations in the jagged surface. Then the stone split, falling into three equal portions. Behind glassite windows, the jewel-colored insects chimed in horror as a single glistening dark seed was revealed.

The seed split and split again, unfolding into a sharp, jagged arc of darkness which lifted towards the sky…

Anderssen wrenched her attention away from the distant past. Furtive images of burning cities and vast armies of insectile creatures warring upon one another for custody of the dreadful arc slipped away from her awareness.

The vault was aglow with shifting, subtle patterns. Gretchen turned with enormous effort – everything seemed frozen, but now she realized her perception of time was drastically altered. Something was approaching her – a cylindrical bullet, corkscrewing through the heavy air, leaving a twisting trail of disrupted gas behind it – and she dragged her head out of its path.

The Jehanan durbar was caught in mid-lunge, lurching towards the freshly punctured fuel-cell generator.

Technicians were scattering, claws over their heads.

One of them was crouched by the entrance, beside the dead generator, hands placing packs of blasting gel and triggers into a metal carrier bearing the Sandvik logo. Gretchen saw him, perceived a shining glide path in the air between her and the back of his scaly skull, felt the heaviness of the cutting tool in her hand.

Breathe, she commanded herself, struggling to wrench her arm back. Let yourself breathe.

A dry, acerbic voice cut through her thoughts – Clarity is the enemy of action, Green Hummingbird said mockingly – and the illusion of elapsing time snapped violently back into synch with her perception.

The bullet snapped past, spanging away from the glossy metal. Gretchen thumbed the cutting tool to life and pitched the heavy rod in one desperate motion. Malakar was hooting wildly, her pistol blasting again and again. The durbar rolled behind the generator, his own automatic blazing back at the stuttering flashes of the gardener's weapon.

Ducking low, Anderssen spun and scrabbled wildly across the floor. "Malakar, go go go!"

The old Jehanan flung the empty pistol away and scrambled towards the hole.

The cutting tool clipped the Jehanan technician on the back of his head, hissing plasma-jet searing the side of his face, and bounced away into the auditorium beyond the broken wall, still spewing flame. Crying out in terrible pain, the technician jerked to the side, mashing the trigger pack in his hands down into the container of cutting gel. There was a sharp, hot spark.

Gretchen threw herself into the crevice, cracking her shoulder against the marble, and immediately had her nose smashed by Malakar's wildly lashing tail. "Ahhh! Move move move!"

The gardener bolted up, reached back to seize hold of Anderssen's jacket collar and staggered off down the tilted passageway.

Sixty kilos of cutting gel ignited in the container. Ravening flame burst upwards, incinerating the wounded technician and engulfing the wooden scaffolding. Marble groaned, tormented by raging heat. The air in the vault rushed inwards, fueling the flames roaring outwards. The kalpataru was wrapped in liquid fire, though the ancient metal remained unmoved and untouched. All three fuel-cell packs blew apart, adding yet more heat to the incandescent explosion. Stone ribs flexed, expanding violently, and then the roof of the dome splintered, raining debris down on the huge room below.

A shockwave of white-hot flame, smoke and dust boomed out through the adjoining corridors, overcoming more Jehanan soldiers rushing towards the fane. The entire structure, buried deep within the body of the House, buckled, crashing down, burying the divine tree in thousands of tons of limestone and marble.

The Captain's Launch

In Orbit Over Jagan,

Approaching the Tepoztecatl

 

An indicator on Hadeishi's navigation plot spun downwards, showing the launch closing rapidly with the freighter. Asale began her braking maneuver, swinging the launch below the main axis of the ship as the most suitable boat bay faced the planet. The Chu-sa was listening intently to reports being relayed to him from the bridge of the Cornuelle. The burgeoning revolt on the planet looked to require Fleet intervention.

"Can you patch me through to Yacatolli?" Hadeishi reached out and touched the pilot's shoulder while he waited for the communications duty officer on the Cornuelle to respond. Asale looked over questioningly, dark face composed and attentive. He signed for her to hold position.

"Groundside comm is shot to hell, kyo," a very sleepy Three-Jaguar replied. Both the first and second watch communications officers had taken his advice to get some sack time – and then had been jarred awake by the combat stations alert only an hour later. "Smith-tzin is trying to reestablish comm to the Legation, to Sobipurй and to the Army cantonment, but the main relay station at the landing field is off the air and some kind of general jamming is flooding the whole area."

"Where did the request for atmospheric suppression come from?" Hadeishi caught Asale's eye, made a circling motion with his z-suited finger and pointed towards the Cornuelle. The light cruiser had completed its initial maneuvering burn and was now sliding into a lower orbit, one almost directly over Parus. The pilot nodded, twisting her control yoke, and the launch shuddered, dumping the last of its velocity.

"We're picking up fragmentary fire-control requests from elements of the 416th in Takshila in the north and near Fehrupurй in the south. They're being engaged by atmospheric attack craft – old-style supersonic jet airplanes – with a variety of munitions. The jamming storm is interfering with their vehicle-mounted fire-control radar. They want us to establish air superiority from orbit."

Hadeishi coughed in polite amusement. "Well, it is a welcome change to be appreciated. What does Hayes think – one moment…"

The quiescent channel to the freighter flickered to life and the face of Captain Chimalpahin appeared. His choleric expression had been replaced by a pale sheen of sweat and worried eyes. A claxon was ringing in the background.

"Chu-sa Hadeishi! The situation on the planet has deteriorated. A number of our surveillance networks have been destroyed and we've lost touch with the Legation and Regimental command. We need your ship to take over master relay from lower orbit, allowing us to reestablish comm."

"We're already working on that," Hadeishi said in a dry voice. "Our first priority is to resynch the combat comm net with the Regiment and any dispersed elements. Then we will work on contacting the Legation and the consulates. After that…we'll see about your surveillance networks."

"Chu-sa!" Chimalpahin's face turned dark red. "Fleet is not the command authority here! Our precedence is well established -"

"I am not concerned about your little war of flowers and padded swords." Hadeishi let a little of his anger flare, shocking the man into silence. "You've put thousands of citizens in harm's way – once we've seen to their safety, then we will help you restore your comm network. Do you -"

An enormously bright light flared off to Hadeishi's right and above his shoulder. For an instant, he saw everything in the cockpit of the launch cast in sharp, unadulterated shadow. The view ports polarized a microsecond later and an alarm blared in his ear.

"Evasive!" he shouted, pressing himself reflexively into the shockchair. "Full power!"

Asale had already thrown the launch into a break to the left, engines howling, the entire frame of the little ship groaning with rapidly mounting g-stress. Hadeishi felt his chest compress, then the z-suit kicked in and the shockwebbing took the brunt of the acceleration. His fingers darted across his command board, bringing up a situational plot and tasking the two realtime cameras on the launch to track the Tepoztecatl and the Cornuelle.

A tiny fragment of his mind heard the two Marines shouting in alarm and Sho-i Asale hissing through clenched teeth as the launch tumbled into a random series of spins and hops, hoping to avoid whatever enemy had crept up out of the dark.

His eyes focused on the video-feed of the freighter. In the seconds since the blast – another part of his mind had already correlated the flare of light with the detonation of some kind of anti-ship mine – a third of the Tepoztecatl had been smashed into ruin. Sections of the freighter's hull were glowing white-hot, while atmosphere boiled out in white clouds of ice crystals. The fans of comm relays on the outer hull were twisted wreckage. A secondary explosion ripped through the engine spaces as he watched, spewing a cloud of debris and short-lived flame. The fore part of the ship still seemed to be intact, but all of the habitat rings had stopped violently, their guide-rails torn and mangled. Inside, he knew from cruel experience, every compartment would be in chaos, filled with mangled bodies, crushed equipment and a cloud of paper, unsecured objects, fire-suppression foam, droplets of blood from the wounded and the stink of burning electrical circuitry.

"Situation report," Hadeishi rasped, wrenching his attention back to the plot. He hadn't served as weapons officer for nearly a decade, but an eternity of cadet drill did not die easily. "Comp shows twelve orbital detonations. Dirty anti-matter signatures are coming in…bomb-pumped x-ray lasers…" He snarled in disgust. The flash plot on the tiny board matched up perfectly with traffic control's last update showing the Development Board's planetary communications network satellite array. "Max acceleration, pilot, match orbit with -"

Hadeishi stopped, heart in his throat, a chill feeling of horror flooding his z-suit. Six of the mines had erupted in a nearly perfect flower-box formation around his ship. Even at this distance, the v-feed of the Cornuelle showed massive ruptures in her hull, atmosphere venting in an ever-expanding cloud, the intermittent flare of secondary explosions, and worst – one maneuvering drive still firing in an orbital correction burn while the other five were silent. The light cruiser slid sick-eningly towards the upper atmosphere of Jagan, spewing bodies, debris and radiation.

"Jaguar-tzin!" Hadeishi's face froze. "Hadeishi to the Cornuelle, come in. Hadeishi to the Cornuelle, come in!"

Static roared across the standard comm bands, popping in and out as the launch's little comp attempted to restore communications with the ship. Hadeishi flinched as the display flared again. Two thirds of the way around the planet, the free merchantman Beowulf – struck by only one of the mines – suffered catastrophic reactor failure and vanished in a sun-bright burst of hard radiation. The flare rippled across the launch – now racing to catch the wounded Cornuelle – only seconds later, and Hadeishi watched grimly as his display sparked, shuddered and went dark. The launch's shipskin groaned, toasted by the wave-front. The lights flickered and went out.

Asale released her hands from the control yoke. She flipped the main system reset control experimentally. Nothing happened. "Comp is down. The radiation tripped a safety."

Hadeishi leaned back in his shockchair, staring out at the vast tan-and-blue shape of Jagan. He breathed slowly through his nose, counting to ten with each breath. His z-suit had automatically switched to internal atmosphere. His heart slowed, his mind settled and he watched with cold eyes as the launch coasted ever deeper into the planetary gravity well.

Aboard the Cornuelle, the senior officer's ward-room was empty. Though there were no crewmen present to take heed, the battle-stations alarm blared from speakers hidden in the ceiling. Decompression warning lights flashed above both doors, which had automatically sealed themselves when the call to battle-stations went out. A terrible groaning sound echoed through the walls as the ship's spine flexed unnaturally. Unlike some of the other compartments, the mess had been tidied up long before the combat alert sounded. Isoroku had finished the repairs to the floor himself and made sure everything was shipshape before moving on to other, more pressing, duties.

The resulting floor was a beauty to the eye. The varnished surface glowed golden in the light of the overhead lamps. The subtle hexagonal accretion pattern in the lohaja fit well with the rice-paper paintings hanging on the walls and an expanse of native carpet. Even by his own high standard, Isoroku had done an excellent job in refurbishing the dining room.

The only things marring the elegant space were nearly a ton of spare lohaja flooring sections tied down in one corner with a web of magnetic straps and the box of custom-made Sandvik cutting and finishing tools, which had been carefully tucked away on a shelf beside the gaping hole where a command display had been mounted for the convenience of the senior officers.

Space on the Astronomer-class light cruiser being at a premium, most of the common interior spaces had been fitted to do double duty as necessary. The senior officer's ward-room was no exception, possessing a relatively large table and room for eight or more to sit, and the design firm handling the class specifications had provided appropriate furnishings to allow the room to function as a planning center with full access to main comp if the need arose.

The alarms continued to blare and gravity failed in the command spaces. Battle-lights came on as normal lighting dimmed. The mess was plunged into near-darkness. Inside the Sandvik box, a sensor tripped and one of the spare power cells – hidden beneath two of its fellows – hummed to life. A cutting beam sparked, cut through the shockfoam around the tools and out through the side of the wooden case in a perfect circle. A moment later a disc of wood popped out and a small 'bot – a cylinder no more than the size of a man's pinky – crawled out on six joined legs.

The infiltrator rotated, scanning the surrounding volume for a data-port, and found nothing. Secondary programming kicked in and a different set of patterns was loaded into its minuscule processor. This time the scan identified a comp conduit interface hanging in the void where the command display had been. The 'bot climbed the wall easily, reached up two forelimbs and seized hold of the hanging cable. A moment later the 'bot matched interface to interface, negotiated systems access, and disgorged a flood of wrecker viruses directly into the Cornuelle's master comp network.

The infiltrator then waited an eternity – three seconds – and exhausted the last of its tiny power cell with a piercing burst of hi-band radio noise.

Four meters away, a series of organic detonators woven into the lohaja wood tripped at the infiltrator's signal and initiated a catastrophic chain reaction through the six hundred kilos of nitro-cellulose explosive forming the plank cores. The officer's mess vanished in a shocking blast of flame and super-pressure plasma. The internal doorway to the galley blew apart and the blast engulfed two storage spaces and the dishwasher. Vent covers for removing waste heat and cooking smoke – closed by the battle alert – crumpled and flames roared down four air circulation shafts – two heading aft and two forward. The main door to the officer's mess was torn from its hinges and smashed into the opposite bulkhead.

A damage control party kicking past at that moment – heading for the number three boat bay, which was at that moment open to naked vacuum and venting atmosphere – was engulfed in plasma and their z-suits, shredded by flying splinters of steel-sharp wood, failed. They all died instantly. The whole center section of the command ring convulsed, ripped by the explosion, and then filled with a rushing wall of flame.

The wall behind the officer's mess, which contained one of the three primary nerve conduits handling all of the ship's data networks, buckled, and most of the blast boiled through the gaping hole where the command panel had been mounted. Luckily, the critical networks were encased in heavy armor, and the blast – though the conduit was severely kinked and sections were badly melted – did not penetrate into the datacore.

A third of the ship's comp, however, did go momentarily off-line as the automatic damage control system shut down the conduit and rerouted traffic into the other two cores. The wrecker viruses, which had already permeated the ship's neural web, began a systemic attack on every sub-system, interface and command and control system within their reach.

Asale counted under her breath, hand on the manual system restart. "Two…and one!"

The lever clicked forward, there was a chirping sound, and the command panels in the cockpit of the captain's launch jolted awake.

"We have system restart," Hadeishi announced, watching the boot log flash past on his display. "Fitzsimmons, Deckard – you still with us?"

"Hai, kyo," Fitzsimmons answered, sounding a little rattled. Both Marines had been completely silent while the pilot and the Chu-sa were working feverishly to get the launch controls operating again. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Yes," Hadeishi said, perfectly calm and collected. "The Cornuelle has been severely damaged, if our sensors are reporting the atmosphere and radiation cloud around her properly. We are going to match velocity and go aboard. The locks and boat bays may be damaged, so hunt around back there and collect anything we can use to cut into a lock or handle damage control and medical emergencies once we're inside. Take everything you can carry."

"Engine restart in three…two…one…" Sho-i Asale twisted the ignition handle, felt the drive reactor in the back of the launch rumble awake and mimed wiping sweat from her high brow with her free hand. "The gods are smiling, Chu-sa. We've lost comm and external video and some of the navigational sensors, but we can still fly."

"Good." Hadeishi cleared a display showing all comm interfaces offline from his panel. "Get me to my ship as fast as you can."

The launch trembled, the drives lit off and they jolted forward. Jagan continued to swell before them, and Hadeishi imagined he could see the matte black outline of the Cornuelle ahead, growing nearer every second. His face became a mask, his eyes cold obsidian.

The Chu-sa was trying to keep from bursting into tears. I've failed my men, my ship…everyone. What did I think I was doing – haring off on a political visit with combat imminent? Ah, the gods of chance are bending against me tonight. The only thought which gave him some shred of hope was the knowledge that Susan was on the ground, far from their dying ship, perhaps safely ensconced in a command bunker at Sobipurй or the Regimental cantonment.

Hold on, he prayed, watching the fragmentary navigational plot for signs of the Cornuelle. Hold on, I'm coming. Hayes knows what to do, he'll get maneuvering drive back and pull you into a safe orbit. Just hold on, just a little longer…

Six thousand kilometers behind the launch, the Tepoztecatl continued to shudder with explosions as more systems failed. Atmospheric venting continued unabated and the long, curving rooms filled with communications equipment drifted with clouds of paper, globules of vomit and blood and water. Bodies clogged the doorways where the explosive decompression of the ship had sucked the hapless priests to an ugly, instant death. The main reactor had shuddered into an emergency shutdown, preventing the kind of catastrophic failure which had claimed the Beowulf, but only isolated portions of the ship glowed with emergency lights.

The bridge and command spaces were twisted wreckage – the laser burst from the nearest mine had smashed lengthwise into the ship directly through the control deck. Chimalpahin and all of his subordinates had been instantly killed, either incinerated or boiled alive as the internal atmosphere roared out through the shattered hull.

All possibility of the Flower Priest network being restored was wiped away with one brilliant flash of light. Across Jagan, the Whisperers working quietly in town, countryside and metropolis stared in alarm at their comms, finding the ever-present voice from the sky had fallen silent.

Warning lights flared, nearly blinding Isoroku as he struggled back to consciousness. The engineer raised a hand, found his ears ringing with a warbling emergency alarm, and seized hold of the nearest stanchion. The engineering deck was in chaos, filled with drifting men, loose hand-held comp pads, tools and broken bits of glassite. Weakly, he tapped his comm.

"Engineering to Bridge…ship's status?"

Static babbled on the channel and Isoroku stared at his wrist in alarm. "Hello the bridge! Hayes? Smith?"

His comm continued a sing-song wail, warbling up and down the audible frequency. Isoroku shut it off and swung to the nearest v-display. Finding the display still up by some miracle, he mashed a control glyph with a gloved thumb and the blaring alarm shut off. In the following silence, his breath sounded very harsh in his ears. The engineer stared at the panel, felt his stomach fall into a deep pit and clenched the sides of the station to keep from drifting away.

Every readout and v-pane was filled with random, constantly changing garbage. Isoroku glanced around the engineering deck, finding his staff struggling back to stations, though at least two drifted limply, one leaking crimson from a shattered face-plate. He tried tapping up the all-hands channel on his comm. A blast of scratchy music assaulted his hears, accompanied by a wailing voice like a lost soul writhing in the torment of a Christian's hell.

Comms are down, he realized, feeling even sicker. Main comp is corrupted – or at least the interfaces are. This is a cold day indeed. Isoroku lifted his wrist, eyeballed the environmental readouts, saw the air was still breathable and unsealed the helmet of his z-suit.

As soon as he tasted burned circuit and fear in the air, he kicked across to the main comp station and rapped his fist on the helmets of two crewmen trying to get the panel to reboot. Alarmed, they unsealed their faceplates, staring at him with wide eyes. Fleet discipline was very strict about keeping z-suit integrity in an emergency.

"Main comp is corrupted," Isoroku barked as soon as they could hear him. "Drop the entire ship-wide network – every node, relay and interface – and keep main comp off-line. We'll need altitude control and environmentals back as quickly as possible, but we'll have to bring them up as standalone systems."

Before they could reply, he turned and kicked across to the cluster of stations controlling the main reactor and the massive hyperspace drive systems. Chu-i Yoyontzin, his second, was already at the panel, haggard face sheened with sweat. The NГЎhuatl officer's helmet was tipped back behind his head, though Isoroku could see the engineer was nearly paralyzed with fear at the prospect of losing pressure on the deck.

"Reactor is still up," Yoyontzin reported, biting his lip. "Main drive was on standby, but I think we can bring her on-line in thirty minutes…"

Isoroku shook his head, the dull glare of the emergency lights shining on his bald pate. "Shut down main power and the transit drive and maneuvering. Right now – manually, if you have to."

"But, kyo, we were in the middle of a maneuvering burn! One engine was still firing. We need to adjust attitude control and establish a stable orbit!"

"Can't do that while the comp network is corrupted." The lead engineer stabbed a thick finger at the sidepanel displays flanking the reactor and drive subsystem. They were crowded with garbage and wild images. Pornographic three-d's pulsed on two of them, emitting a shrieking wail of sound and the whompwhomp-whomp of electric drums. "We need cell power to bring up critical systems and we can't spare it to keep the main drive hot. Shut down all drives right now."

"Hai!" Yoyontzin bleated in response, bending over his panel.

Isoroku spared himself an instant of relief that the corruption had not managed to penetrate the isolated reactor and hyperspace drive systems, and was even happier when Yoyontzin managed to initiate a controlled shutdown without missing a step and tipping the hyperspace matrix into some kind of catastrophic transit gradient.

"Communications are down," he bawled, drawing the attention of every other rating in the compartment. Everyone who was still up and mobile had at least cracked their helmets. "We need shipside comm up so we can handle damage control – every third man to the repair lockers – pull the commwire spools and local relays. Every z-suit comm switches to local point-to-point mode, no central relay allowed. Four teams – one for each fore-aft access way – run those spools out from here and affix local repeaters at each bulkhead. Move!

"Environmental section! Bring up your systems isolated from main comp, reflash your control code from backup and get the air recyclers working again." More ratings scattered and the engineer fixed his gaze on the damage-control section, which was staring helplessly at rows of displays which were showing flashing, endlessly repeated images of an animated rabbit hopping through a field of psychedelic, oversaturated flowers.

"Damage control is -"

Main comp shut down hard and every single display on the ship went black with a pitiful whine. The rabbits flickered wildly before vanishing with a pop! The engineering deck was suddenly very, very quiet.

The subsonic background thunder of the main reactors stuttered and failed.

Even the space-bending, subliminal ringing tone of the hyperspace coil fell silent.

Isoroku swallowed, suddenly feeling cold, and realized he was trapped in the heart of a nine-thousand-ton tomb of hexacarbon and glassite and steel.

The House of Reeds

Within the Nautilus

 

Dust billowed along a trapezoidal passage, enveloping Gretchen and Malakar in a dirty tan cloud. Coughing, the Jehanan fell to her hands, overcome. Anderssen, thankful for her goggles, bit down on her breathing tube, seized the gardener under the shoulders and forged ahead. Twenty meters on, a ramp cut off to the left and they staggered up the slope, rising out of the toxic murk stirred up by the collapse of the vault three levels below.

Snuffling loudly, Malakar collapsed on the stone floor, gasping for breath.

Gretchen knelt beside the gardener and shook a thick coating of limestone powder from her field jacket. Everything was permeated with the fine gritty residue. "Can you breathe?"

Malakar responded with a wheezing snort, spitting goopy white fluid on the ground.

"I guess you can." Gretchen offered the Jehanan her water bottle.

Watching the alien drink, Anderssen was struck again by the dilapidated age of the entire structure. The grimy sensation of every surface being caked deep with the debris of centuries was only reinforced by the strange, massive pressure the kalpataru was exerting on her mind.

"Do your people – the priests, I mean – do they ever make new halls, cut new passages?"

"Is there need?" Malakar shook her head, returning the empty bottle. "Even I can become lost – once a Master ordered maps and charts made – but after a hand of years, the project was abandoned. I saw the room of books so made, when I was a short-horn, they were rotting. Paper is treacherous with its promises. No, all the priests do now is close up the places they fear to tread."

Gretchen nodded and helped the Jehanan to her feet. "Do you know the way out?"

"This old walnut doesn't even know where we are," Malakar grumbled, sniffing the air. "Perhaps this way."

After an hour or more, they turned into a long narrow hall, spaced with graven pillars reaching overhead to form a roof of carved triangular leaves. Malakar picked up her pace, forcing Gretchen to jog along behind. Here the floor was cleared of dust and ahead a gipu gleamed in the darkness.

"Quietly now," the gardener whispered. "We will reach the first level of terraces soon, and there will be priests – or even more of those profaning soldiers – about. The closest outer door known to me is some distance away, but that one is watched and guarded. We must reach one of the forgotten ones…"

They reached the end of the pillared hall, found themselves in an intersection of three other passages – all of them lit – and Malakar turned down the one to the right, then immediately stepped between two of the pillars – into a shadowed alcove – and began climbing a very narrow set of stairs. Once they had ascended beyond the lights, the gardener brought out the gipu and held the egg aloft. Picking her way along in the faint light, Gretchen ventured to speak again.

"Do you call this place the Garden because of the terraces?"

Malakar shook her head, still climbing. "They are new – or as new as such things can be in this hoary old place. Once they were broad platforms edged with rounded walls on each level above the entrance tier. One of the Masters – six of them ago now? – decided they should be filled with earth and planted. Some fragments still surviving from those times speak of a dispute with the kujen over the provision of tribute to the House."

"They provide all your food now?" Gretchen was thinking of the countless rooms and dozens of levels and the failure of her comm to penetrate the walls of the massif. "How many priests live within the House?"

"Two hundred and nineteen in these failing days," Malakar said, coming to the end of the stairs. "We no longer use the Hall of Abating Hunger – too many echoes and shadows for so few. But there I wager over a thousand could comfortably squat and stanch their hunger with freshly grilled zizunaga." Her long head poked out into a new passage and sniffed the air. "We are very near the terrace where I hid the pushta in the soil."

"I can find my way back to the entrance I used from there." Gretchen checked her comp. The mapping soft was still running, showing her path as an irregular, looping line of red through half-filled-in rooms, chambers and halls. The cross-corridors fanned out like spines from the back of a broken snake. "Was I wrong before, when I said this was one of the spacecraft which brought your people to Jagan? Was this a fortress, a citadel raised at the heart of their landing, to secure the new conquest? And all these new halls and tunnels and rooms cut from the rock – they're not as ancient as they seem – only hundreds of years old, from the time of the Fire."

Malakar did not answer, but waved her forward and they hurried down another curving passage. A faint radiance began to gleam on the walls ahead, a slowly building light, promising a smoggy sky and clouds pregnant with rain.

The Jehanan remained silent, head moving warily from one side to the other, until they reached a junction where – suddenly and without warning – Gretchen's goggles picked up a UV-marker arrow pointing down a side passage.

"There!" she exclaimed, enormously relieved. "That's the way I came."

"Hooo…" Malakar squatted down in the passageway with the pierced stone screen, claws ticking against the floor. The bright light of afternoon filtered through the trees and picked out shining scales on her head. The gipu was tucked away. "I know this path. A steep stair with many broken steps leads to a laundry and a bakery selling patu biscuits. I had not thought the entrance still open, but…memories fade and fail. Hoooo… I am weary now."

"Both the inner and outer doors are frozen open." Gretchen knelt as well, thumbing her comp to the display showing the analysis results from the scan of the kalpataru. "Are there stories of the House during the time of the Fire? Could the entire population of the city fit inside? Is it that vast? Are there – were there – other citadels like this one?"

The Jehanan opened her jaws, trilling musically. Anderssen guessed she was laughing.

"So hungry, so hungry…W ith your claws full, you reach for more! Does this hunger ever abate or fade?"

"No, not often." Gretchen shook her head sadly. "Sometimes, when I am at home, with my children – I have a hatchling, as you would say, and two short-horns – I forget for a little while. But then I rise one morning and my heart wonders when the liner lifts from port, what quixotic vista is waiting for me, what dusty tomb will reveal the lives of the dead and the lost to me. Then I am happy for a little while, until I miss my children again."

"Hur-hur! One day you will catch your own tail and eat yourself up before you've noticed!"

Anderssen grimaced at the image, then held up the comp. "There is a preliminary analysis, as I promised, if you still want to know the truth of the kalpataru."

Malakar raised her snout, flexed her nostrils and hooted mournfully. "Does it matter now?" She stabbed a claw at the floor. "Everything is buried for all time…Who could say how many lie mewed up in that bright tomb? Will truth taste as bitter as the other fruit I've plucked from your tree?"

Gretchen shrugged and looked the gardener in the eye. "Neither sweet nor sour, I venture. Not, perhaps, what you expected."

"Tell me then, meddling asuchau. Dare I ever sleep again? May I feel just, righteous anger at the fools who run squeaking in empty halls, pretending to be the kujenai of old? Should I weep for what you've destroyed?"

Gretchen ran a hand through her hair and grimaced at the gritty feeling. She desperately needed a shower. Should I tell this old one what I saw? About the ghosts?

She gathered her thoughts, looked Malakar in the eye and said: "The stone floor holding the root of the tree was a particularly pure, seamless marble. These readings show it was all of one piece. Marble, you should be aware, does not conduct heat, vibration or electricity well. The domed chamber around the tree also served to dampen electromagnetic waves or currents. I think the chamber was completely enclosed. It was a tomb."

The Jehanan hooted questioningly. "Why would they hide the -"

"Because they thought the tree was dangerous!" Gretchen stared at her grimy hand. Her fingers were trembling. Are there scorch marks from the green fire that washed over me? Is this how Hummingbird feels every day of his life? Merciful Mary, please keep my thoughts from sin, drown my curiosity, still my reaching hand. "Because they knew it was dangerous. So they built a prison in their strongest fortress, and they set a particularly devout order – the mandire – to guard the cell and keep it safe."

Malakar's eye-shields rattled. "Safe? Safe from what?"

"From other Jehanan? From the last of the Haraphans?" Anderssen clenched her hands together. "Whoever they captured it from…"

The gardener hissed, confused. "You are filled with riddles. My snout is cold from all these twisty thoughts. The only matter to claw is – did any life remain in the cold metal? Was aught revealed to the Masters when they embraced the kalpataru down through these endless years?"

Taking a deep breath, Gretchen tucked the comp away. "I believe…" she said in a ragged voice, thinking of the fuel-cell generators. "Without power the tree slept for millennia. I believe the machine was very, very old. Older than the arrival of the Jehanan, older than the Haraphans. Once, the kalpataru had a power source of its own, but that mechanism failed long ago."

Malakar peered at Gretchen, turning her long head from side to side, letting each eye gaze upon the human. "Without power…and those whining boxes, they were feeding the tree? Would it have woken to life?"

"For an instant – Mother Mary bless and protect me! – for less than the blink of an eye, it did." She smiled grimly. "Don't worry about the Master of the Garden and his propaganda. If he had truly beheld the visions of the device, his mind would have been destroyed long ago."

"No loss!" The Jehanan hooted in amusement, rattling old, yellowed claws on the floor. "He might gain some wit thereby!"

Gretchen shook her head sharply, feeling a curdling, acid sensation stir in her stomach. "He might gain more than wit – if something filled his broken mind with new thoughts. You would not like what happened then -" She stopped, wondering if Hummingbird would tell the gardener of the cruel powers which had shattered lost Mokuil and still lay in dreaming sleep on desolate worlds like Ephesus. "You were right to mistrust the kalpataru and feel its worship unwholesome."

"But," Malakar said, "without rain and sun, it lay fallow."

"Yes," Anderssen allowed, rubbing her face with both hands. She was beginning to feel truly exhausted. "But not dead, only dormant. Waiting for meddling fools to come along and give it life again."

"Hrrr…" Malakar fell silent, watching the human with an intent expression. Anderssen grew nervous, wondering if the Jehanan would attack her again. After a long time, the gardener stirred. "This slow old walnut suddenly realizes even rich asuchau humans must spend shatamanu to buy tasty food, to travel the iron road, to stay in tall khus where the wind is always cool in the windows – but the rich never get their claws soiled with dirt, or split by toil. Never."

Malakar's fore-claw extended, gently touching the scars on Gretchen's hand. "These are not the claws of a rich woman," the gardener said softly. "Yet you are here… Who paid to send you so far? Someone who heard of a divine tree standing in an ancient Garden, this old walnut thinks. Do they desire the kalpataru? Will they dig in the ruins with greedy claws? Will they fall down and worship it? Will they feed it?"

Anderssen squared her shoulders and forced herself to not bite her lip. "They – the Honorable Chartered Company – sent me to Jagan to look upon the kalpataru, to take the readings I have in my comp now, and to bring them back. No more."

"Hoooo! Well, you've twisted my tail, sure enough." Malakar's jaws gaped. She hissed angrily. "Everything you wished, I've done, haven't I? What a good servant this old one proves! The Master of the Garden would be stricken dumb to see me bow and scrape!"

"Here." Gretchen held out the comp. "Everything is in here. If you take this, then I will return home with empty hands. The secrets of the kalpataru will be safe. No one will ever return to disturb the Garden. Go on, take it."

Malakar stared suspiciously at the comp and hesitated, just for an instant.

A howling, shrieking noise pierced the triangle-leaved trees and the stone screen. Malakar jerked back her claw and both she and Gretchen stared towards the terrace with alarm.

"What was that?" Gretchen blurted. "That sounded like…no, that's impossible…"

"I have never heard such a noise before," the old Jehanan said, striding down into the passage out onto the overlook. Anderssen hurried after her and they both stepped out into the ruddy sunshine of Bharat. Takshila lay before them, the sprawl of the apartment buildings and factories and refineries half-hidden under a dirty yellow haze. There was a distant, rippling boom.

Gretchen tugged the goggles down over her eyes and scanned the horizon. After only a second she pointed, stabbing her finger. "There – in the sky to the southeast! A silver flash!"

"Hrrrr!" Malakar shaded her eyes. "I see – a yi of enormous size, racing faster than the wind! Trailing smoke and fire!"

"Not a yi," Anderssen said, alarmed and puzzled by turns. "That looks like an old-style jet fighter – but they've not been used by the Empire for hundreds of years…"

The distant dot swept low over the sky, flashing through the rising fume of hundreds of smokestacks, then darted skyward. Below, there was a bright flash among the buildings. A sharper roar trembled across the city to reach their ears. A black smudge billowed up, lit from below by the red-orange glow of flames.

"What are they attacking?" Gretchen zoomed the magnification of her goggles, but the haze in the air obscured everything. "The train station?"

"No…" Malakar pointed off due south. "The iron road is there… That fireis where the asuchau merchant houses stand."

Gretchen pushed back her goggles, heart thudding with fear. "I have to get back to my friends right now. If Imperial citizens are being attacked, they are in danger."

Without waiting for a response, she turned and bolted down the passageway, goggles jammed down to her nose, the filter keyed into ultraviolet. There was a startled hooting from behind her, and then the slapping of leathery feet on stone. Anderssen didn't wait, plunging down the ramp at the end of the perforated hall, survey comp clutched to her breast.

Near the Boulevard of Stepping Cranes

District of The Wheel, Parus

 

The hue of sunlight falling through the back of the truck changed, even as the driver swerved into a narrow lane between two buildings of painted brick and plaster. Itzpalicue looked out, puzzled by the shifting light, and then two things happened at once: her earbug roared painfully with static, making her flinch, and the dappled shadows beneath the trees lining the lane shifted wildly.

Another attack? My hand-comp!

Queasy with fear, the old woman wrenched out her earbug with a gasp of pain. The Arachosian stared at her, puzzled himself, and watched in concern as she snatched out her comp, saw the machine was showing wild, fragmentary garbage on its screen, and then hooted with surprise as she vaulted the tailgate and bolted across the flagstone-paved courtyard the truck had just entered. Radiation attack, she realized, her medband squealing an unmistakable alert.

The sky over Parus rippled with queer, diamond-hard light. The sun gained three smaller companions, each brilliant pinprick glaring down through gathering cloud. The Arachosian warrior jumped down from the truck – now coughing to a halt – and stared up, one long, tan claw shading deep-set eyes. The tiny suns burning the sky were already fading, leaving scattered spots in his vision. He blinked, tear ducts flushing his seared retinas. The black spots did not disappear.

Itzpalicue hurried down a flight of stairs into the empty basement of the safe-house, pressed one hand against a hidden security sensor and then threw back her scarf as a second door opened in the floor, allowing her to descend a flight of newly built wooden stairs.

She cursed, seeing the lights had dimmed to dull red emergency filaments powered by an on-site power-cell. A handful of humans stared up at her, eyes wide in the near-darkness. The banks of comm displays, comps and monitoring apparatus were silent and dead.

"What are you doing?" Itzpalicue snapped, eyes going cold. "Bring up emergency power! Switch to the landline network!"

"But…" One of the Mirror technicians, eyes dark in the poor light, lank black hair shining with grease, started to stand up. "What happened? All the networks have gone down again – the Tepoztecatl relay is off-line, we can't…"

"Sit down and get to work," the old woman said in a hard voice. "Or you will be replaced."

The man sat, flushed, sweating now with fear.

"Operating power can be provided by the power-cell array in the other chamber," she barked, stabbing a thin finger at an engineer. "Start them up!" She stared around at the rest of the frightened people, lips twisted into a sneer. "There is work to be done, children. Get about it! You know what to do if the primary networks fail. I want status reports within ten minutes!"

Everyone started awake and – prodded by her sharp voice – returned to their stations. The whine of power-cells firing up echoed in from the other room and the lights flickered back on.

Itzpalicue waited by the stairs, gimlet eyes fierce on every sweating face. Under her baleful gaze, everyone settled down with remarkable efficiency. The comps were reset and came back up, filling the room with a hard, jewel-like glare.

Itzpalicue let herself take the tiniest breath of relief. We still have some comp.

"Over-the-air networks are still down," the lead technician reported a few moments later. "We've lost the line-of-sight relay on the roof and our aerials aren't picking up any comm traffic at all, just undifferentiated static."

"No military traffic?" Itzpalicue raised an eyebrow. "The 416th should have been able to ride out an EMP burst. Any broadband from orbit?"

The technician shook his head, lips pursed. He was staring questioningly at the old woman.

"What?" Itzpalicue's expression hardened to granite and she wondered if Yacatolli had been more careless than she'd planned. He'd better have had his command tracks in hardened mode, or the Field Officers' School will be making a test question out of his utter failure on the plain of battle.

"EMP shock, mi'lady? Is…is that what knocked out our comm network?"

Itzpalicue grunted. "And the spyeyes back aloft as well, I'm sure. We'll be blind until Lachlan can launch fresh ones." If he has any left – two blows now aimed at our aerial surveillance capacity – very thorough, very thorough indeed.

"An atomic on the ground, mi'lady?" The technician was looking a little green. "At the spaceport?"

"Exoatmospheric," Itzpalicue said, softening her voice a little, realizing the operators in the sub-surface room had no way to tell there had been a series of nuclear explosions at the edge of the Jaganite atmosphere. "Multiple detonations in orbit. If the Flower Priest network has gone off-line and there aren't any recog codes being transmitted from orbit, assume the Tepoztecatl has been destroyed." She frowned, thumb to her lower lip. "What about the Fleet cruiser?"

"We're trying to get linked back to main operations now… We'll knowabout other stations and relays in…" The technician swallowed nervously. "…an hour? Then we'll be able to broadcast to orbit – but we don't have that capability here."

The old NГЎhuatl woman's lips twitched into a sour grimace. Deployment planning, operations manual, revision six thousand and three…deploy backup orbital uplink with tertiary communications center. Deploy ground-based surveillance mechanisms.

"Get me verification on all ships we knew were in orbit. Get me a radar scan or visual – something! As soon as possible. If something has entered orbit and destroyed both of our support ships…we will need to revise our planning." Go underground and scatter, she thought grimly. With Yacatolli's regiment dispersed and under attack, and no orbital support, we may lose the Legation and our entire presence here. Even one Danish privateer would be enough to tip the balance…

She placed the thought firmly aside. Until more data was available, she'd assume things were as they stood and no more. Which, she allowed sourly, is bad enough.

"Landline status?" Some of the technicians were talking into their voice-phones. Most of the comp displays were live again, though none of them were showing v-feeds.

The technician scratched his head, glancing over his shoulder. "Station two," he pointed, "has gotten ahold of one of the techs at main operations. She's transcribing their status. We're trying to raise the other city operations teams, but so far we've only managed to get through to the one at Sobipurй. They've had to move to their backup site – the landing field has been overrun and the Imperial citizens there slaughtered."

"Hmm…what about Fleet staff at the base?" Itzpalicue leaned over the display showing the transcript from Lachlan's conversation. "Were they killed or captured as well?"

The technician shrugged. "No news. We're operating nearly blind, mi'lady."

"Yes," Itzpalicue pursed her lips. "What about datacomm over the landlines?"

"Ten minutes," he said, swallowing again. "I think. There is a problem with -"

She fixed him with a stony glare. "Fix it. Now, where is my station?"

The room had returned to a proper feeling of busy efficiency by the time Itzpalicue had settled herself in a distant corner, half-hidden behind a stack of heat exchangers and storage crystal lattices. The tension and fear was ebbing from the voices around her, though everyone was on edge. The old woman was pleased. Losing all prospect of support and even, possibly, their way home had not reduced any of her staff to uselessness from panic or fear.

They have spirit, she thought, as I have always maintained.

A mingled sensation of bitterness and pride filled her. A traditional Mirror field team would have leaned heavily on older, more experienced staff. Ones with 'proven skills' and spotless efficiency records, drawn from well-connected members of the great clans or the military families. None of the young men and women in the room had been recruited from within the Four Hundred. Nearly all, in fact, were from colony worlds or mining stations or the slums of AnГЎhuac. Patronless, making their way only by skill, tenacity and a blithe disregard for the danger around them. A more experienced team, she allowed privately, would not heed my orders so effortlessly. They would argue and quibble and question. And dwell too much on the prospect of failing to return home in a critical time.

The comp displays before her came to life at a touch, showing audio transcripts from the operators in the room. She inserted a fresh earbug and twisted the comm-thread around to her lips. The chatter in her ear was confusing for a moment, but she let her eyes relax, let the room fall away and plucked a maguey thorn from her sleeve.

Blood welled from her breast and the sharp stab of pain focused her mind.

An array of glyphs appeared on her main display, including one associated with Lachlan. Pleased, Itzpalicue tapped the glyph and a moment later Lachlan's voice was threading its way through the stream of conversations washing over her.

"Did you suffer any losses in the shockwave?"

No, mi'lady. No human casualties at least. She could hear him smiling grimly. The gods of war favored us a little – we hadn't relaunched our surviving spyeye assets when the EMP shock blanketed this face of the planet – so we didn't lose any more. Still, we've lost three-quarters of our coverage. We've sorted out twelve primary detonations and one secondary. The first set were anti-matter cascades, the last a fusion explosion. A ship's reactor core by the emissions signature.

"Which ship?" Itzpalicue reached into her mantle and squeezed an oliohuiqui tablet from a sewn-in pocket. The round pill felt grainy and sharp under her fingertips. "The Tepoztecatl?"

We think not, he replied. The orbit position was wrong – best guess says it was the merchanter Beowulf, which had recently arrived with a cargo of recycled aluminum blocks and miscellaneous 'spare parts'.

"More guns for the local trade. Well, they'll not be missed. The native princelings seem to have accumulated enough fuel for a hot little war as it stands." The old woman placed the tablet under her tongue, feeling a familiar bitter taste well in her mouth. "And the detonations themselves?"

Orbital mines. The Йirishman's voice was flat. The Imperial Development Board's satellite network down to the meter. Civilian power plants replaced with military grade anti-matter packs and converted into cheap bomb-pumped x-ray laser platforms. The Tepoztecatl didn't mount the armor to shrug off even a single hit…

"A long-prepared trap." Itzpalicue blinked as everything around her became very sharply defined. "Do you concur?"

I don't know how long someone spent setting this up… Lachlan clicked his teeth together in thought. But someone here has been preparing for battle. We're not picking up any signs of another ship in the system, so I think the mines were used as a cheap way to cripple or destroy any assets we had in orbit. A one-off cast of the patolli beans, if you will. Costing nothing if the gambit failed, but carrying the potential for inflicting heavy casualties…

"This entire world is a snare for us, for the Regiment, for the xochiyaotinime." The old woman's voice was perfectly confident, and in the thought-accelerating clarity of the morning-glory extract dissolving into her bloodstream, all known data aligned and portentous signs emerged from the chaos of noise and data around her. "Someone knew we chose this world for the Flowery War – someone acquainted with our policies and customs."

Can you be sure? Lachlan's voice quickened in disbelief. Everything they've done could have been put in place on a very short timetable. Six months, perhaps a year. How long ago was Jagan chosen?

Itzpalicue consulted the serried ranks of her memory, plucking out one dusty tome loitering in the back of her mind. Pages unfolded before her, yielding brilliant visions of red and black, the smell of dried flowers and the echo of chanting voices. "The Flower Priests are not hasty," she said. "They have been planning their exercise here for almost four years."

Plenty of time to prepare, the Йirishman mused, if this enemy cabal has an ear inside the Temple of Mayahuel, or among her servants abroad on this world.

"Not a cabal," the old woman said sharply, "pawns and decoys aplenty, yes – minions dancing on unseen strings – but only one hand on the thread of destiny. Only one true enemy."

Lachlan did not respond, and Itzpalicue knew he was frowning, staring at an empty v-pane, wondering how to disagree. A flood of eager confidence rushed in her veins, straining her voice, making her words tumble like a swift stream. "We have our own ears here, Lachlan-tzin! Our own eyes. To hold such a trap secret for so long requires the tightest of conspiracies. Supremely trustworthy confederates. All of this has been arranged by a single mind. One enemy! As I have feared and suspected. But he shows his hand at last. Now I begin the see the outline of a face!"

Lachlan held his peace; Itzpalicue could hear him breathing and the muted chatter of the technicians in the distant room. She fought down the urge to giggle or shout aloud. She knew she was right. She was certain the bitter god guided her thoughts unerringly and they were clear, clear as a placid stream under willows.

Most of our data network is back up, the Йirishman said in a neutral tone. I will route you a copy of everything coming into main operations.

"Good." Itzpalicue felt her voice shine with bright colors. "My hunters are afield – their scanners still work – as soon as he reveals himself, we will strike."

You know your quarry is in Parus? Lachlan tried to hide the skepticism in his voice, but failed.

"No." The admission was painful. She had tried to acquire the services of more mercenaries from the highland tribes, but spending the time to win their trust and establish her power fully in their minds had taken too long. "But the Legation is here, and the darmanarga conspiracy will gauge failure or success by its capture. I believe…he will keep close watch upon them, for even if this is only a spine-prick to bleed us, such a victory would be hard to resist."

Very well. The Йirishman's tone held a disbelieving sigh. We are launching the reserve spyeyes now. We should have about twenty percent coverage within the hour.

The old woman smiled, bony hands flat upon her knees, eyes half-lidded, waiting and listening to the flood of sound surging around her. Her perception expanded, filling the world, penetrating even the most minute crevice, winging across the rooftops, hearing the distant voices of men in battle and pain.

The smell of blood and incense was sharp in her nostrils. Again, she felt young and strong, as if the years had dropped away, a heavy, jeweled mantle discarded upon the floor.

The Junction of Provincial Route Twenty-Two and the Railway

North of the Mйxica Mandate at Sobipurй

 

The sick, sinking feeling rushing up in Heicho Felix's stomach slammed into a stone wall as the air-breathing turbines on the Fleet shuttle suddenly regained comp control. The engine fans shrieked up to an ear-piercing whine and kicked over, igniting. The pilot, who had been struggling to deadstick the shuttle into the nearest river, felt his ship come alive.

He jammed on full thrust and slewed his control yoke over and back, sending the shuttle clawing for altitude.

Massive acceleration slammed Felix back into the shockchair for an endless, crushing time. Then, suddenly, they leveled off and the aircraft banked sharply. For the first time in their headlong flight, Felix took a breath, realizing the enemy missile team in the shantytown had failed to peg them with a second rocket and comp control had come back on-line. Still rattled, she tucked loose hair back behind her ears and tuned the eye-v on the inside of her visor back to the cameras in the nose of the shuttle. The whine of her suit systems had never been so welcome.

The tiled roof of a farmhouse flashed past, followed immediately by the blur of a wide field flooded with water, green shoots poking up from the mud. The Heicho grimaced, stomach churning with vertigo. The shuttle pilot was clinging to the deck like a baby to the teat, roaring over roads lined with flowering hedges, fields gleaming with sheets of water, and long stretches of trees planted in regular rows. The slender figures of Jehanan on the ground were glimpsed for fractions of a second and then left behind. Felix felt dizzy, thinking I'm glad I'm not a bleeding pilot… and toggled her view to one of the side-mounted cameras.

With more distance between the lens and the landscape, the frenetic passage of the shuttle didn't upset her stomach so much. She saw broad plains stretching out to the horizon, dotted with conical mounds surmounted by villages. Every square meter seemed to be tilled, planted, farmed or covered with clusters of tiny, compact houses. Heavy rain clouds scudded across the bucolic landscape, chasing their own shadows across byre and barn alike.

A trail of dust rising from a long dike caught her eye and she zoomed the camera. An elevated road sprang into focus and at first Felix thought she was watching a column of vehicles from the 416th Tarascan Rifles regiment burling down the highway. Then her mind sorted out the jumble of exhaust, dust, dull gray vehicles and marching columns of antlike figures. The AI in her comm link steadied the frame, causing details to spring into view, sharp and clear.

Lines of Jehanan soldiers were moving down the sides of the road at a brisk pace, rifles canted over their shoulders, bodies heavy with bags of ammunition, canteens, trenching tools and flaring helmets which reached from their eye-shields back down their necks. Armored cars, tanks and Saab-Scandia trucks rumbled past the infantry, raising a thick pall of yellow dust. The entire force was moving steadily north.

Felix swallowed and keyed her comm. "Kyo, you should switch to camera six on the shuttle 'net. The slicks are rolling hot today."

Kosho looked up, focused on an infinite distance, and the corners of her lips tightened minutely. "I see. Those tanks are not of Imperial manufacture. Do you recognize them?"

"No." Felix grimaced, panning the camera ahead, flitting along the column. "They look like local work – but I thought they'd lost all their tech?"

"Apparently not." Kosho's eyes twitched to the side. She tapped her comm. "Pilot, swing more to the west. We want to avoid the altercation at one o'clock."

Felix looked back to the eye-v and saw a sudden bloom of smoke and fire along the road. Jehanan soldiers scattered down from the dike, splashing through muddy fields. Tracers flashed out from a cluster of buildings sitting beside the road. One of the squat-looking Jehanan tanks was burning, vomiting flame from its engine compartment. The flash of heavy guns rippled between the buildings. Felix felt the shuttle bank again, and the view twisted. Suddenly they were looking down at a high angle into the crossroads.

The marching column was deploying – tanks rumbling ahead while squads peeled away into the fields and everything else ground to a halt – and she could see rows of hastily dug emplacements in and around the village. Jehanan artillerists scrambled to reload crew-served weapons in pits and she caught a glimpse of another native tank hiding in the shadow of a barnlike building, long gun traversing the elevated road. The entire machine bucked backwards, flame gouting from the long muzzle. Then the entire scene was gone as the shuttle continued to roar northwards.

"They're fighting each other?" Felix looked to the Sho-sa, hoping the officer had some clue what was going on. "Different native factions?"

"We've more pressing problems than the disputes of local warlords." Kosho was busily tapping commands into her hand comp. "The Cornuelle is not responding to my direct hail." Her dark eyes looked up, fixing Felix with a grim stare. The Heicho swallowed, seeing an unexpected ashen pallor tingeing the Nisei officer's usually immaculate face. "Twelve anti-matter detonations have occurred in orbit. All comm relays are down, save ones which happened to be shielded. Navplot shows at least one starship destroyed."

"Oh." Felix tested her grip on the Macana between her legs. The assault rifle had a cheerful solidity. Her eyes flicked across the Marines seated on either side of the cargo bay, counting ammunition coils, grenades and gear. There'll be some ammunition in the shuttle stores, too. Plus we've got Helsdon and his engineers for repairs and support… "We'd better make for the Army cantonment at Parus then. They'll need the shuttle for air support and medevac."

Kosho stared at her for a long moment, dark eyes flat and emotionless. Then she stirred, nodded and began working with her comm again. "The shuttle relay node is picking up scattered transmissions," she said in a toneless voice. "Sort through these while I try and raise Regimental command or the Legation. We need to know what the situation is before we set down."

"Hai, kyo!" Felix tapped her comm, letting the node built into her combat armor range free, scanning up and down through the comm bands, looking for the distinctive signatures of Imperial transmissions.

Almost immediately she began to pick up garbled voices, the whine of encrypted bursts and stabbing eruptions of white noise. Grimacing at the violent sound, the Heicho pulled out her own comp and started to filter background noise and countermeasures out of the voice streams.

"Comm is pretty well shot," she said on Kosho's command channel twenty minutes later. "Someone's jamming the Regimental net and the only other clear transmission I can pick up is some scientist yelling for help down at Fehrupurй."

The Sho-sa barely reacted. Kosho had been keeping an eye on the shuttle's flight path and trying to raise the Cornuelle. The ship had still not responded. With an effort, she focused on the Marine sitting across from her. "The University excavations are under attack?"

Felix nodded, wondering how long it would take the officer to break out of her funk. "It's a big operation, I guess. They've barricaded themselves in the camp and are keeping a mob of slicks back with sidearms and jury-rigged flamethrowers." She glanced at her chrono and a map on her comp. "If we turned around, we could be at the dig site in just under an hour…"

"No." Kosho stirred. Her face was beginning to lose its ashen tone. "We're heading directly to the Legation in Parus. I expect the Regimental cantonment to be under heavy attack by…whoever is attacking the Imperial presence here. We can set down in the gardens and disembark behind fortified walls." The Sho-sa tabbed through a series of displays on her comp, then nodded to herself. "There is a primary orbital uplink at the Residence as well. We can use that to punch through the jamming to the Cornuelle."

Felix said nothing, carefully examining the service patches on the man squeezed in next to her. Purely hopeful of the Sho-sa to believe the ship's still up there and not shattered wreckage and a slowly expanding plume of radiation. She clenched her teeth together. They're all dead. Huйmac and Fitz and the captain and everyone. All just ash and vapor.

"The city is coming up, Sho-sa," the Heicho said, recognizing the steadily increasing sprawl of buildings appearing in the camera view. They raced over kilometers of warehouses and rundown apartment blocks and scattered parks and gardens. The streets appeared to be deserted, which the Marine didn't think was a good sign. Huge clouds of black smoke blotted out the horizon, mixing with puffy rain clouds. "Looks like there's fighting…"

"Turn right on the next boulevard," Susan said briskly, one eye on a map of Parus on her comp and one eye on the forward camera feed. "Keep low."

The shuttle boomed across a district of row-houses and sliced into a shallow curve. Lines of trees blurred past beneath the wings, the shockwave of the aircraft's passing shaking their limbs and stirring up whirlwinds of leaves and dirt from the streets. Those few Jehanan still out fled into the doorways of abandoned shops or cowered under their runner-carts.

Empty intersections appeared and flashed past, and the sweeping arc of an ancient Haraphan road led them towards the center of the city. Tall buildings began to appear – the clifflike shapes of khus and the lower, elaborately domed structures of old palaces and temples. Kosho saw the first evidence of fighting – a bus of Imperial manufacture burning beside the road – and then running Jehanan with guns.

Brief glimpses of gangs of natives pillaging shops and overturning imported vehicles followed. A Jehanan tank rumbling down a side-street, main gun swinging from side to side. A line of civilians on a rooftop, handing packages from hand to hand out of a building gushing flame and smoke from its windows. Hundreds of snouted faces in a courtyard turning up at the booming sound of the shuttle's passage overhead. Clouds of sparkling glass bursting from the faces of buildings rocked by the supersonic shockwave rolling behind the shuttle.

I've got the Legation in sight. The pilot's voice cut across her reverie. We've got hostile fire.

Kosho stiffened, automatically checking her shockharness. The forward camera views expanded to fill her visor.

The dull red walls of the Legation were already shrouded with dirty gray smoke. Small-arms fire sparked here and there, but the majority of the haze was the result of a rippling wave of explosions bursting among the gardens and wooden buildings. Susan could see projectiles falling into the compound from the east. At least one structure inside the walls was already on fire.

"What is that?" she snapped, looking to Felix.

"Mortar fire," the Heicho replied, working her comp. The camera view rippled and the spidery web of a radar track superimposed on the image. Trailing arcs from puffs of white smoke raised by bursting mortar rounds arrowed back over the wall to a nearby park. Susan zoomed part of the image on a subsidiary v-pane, saw rows of tubular weapons squatting amid crowds of busy Jehanan gunners and support vehicles. Scowling, she locked the coordinates of the park into comp and mashed an override glyph.

A Sagant free-flying munitions canister spat from a pod embedded in the right wing, making the shuttle jerk slightly before the pilot could correct.

Hey! he complained over the channel. Let me know before you -

"Get us down." Kosho snarled, expanding her radar coverage, fingers light on the tiny display. "I'll handle weapons."

Felix watched with professional interest as the Sagant flashed away from the shuttle, popped up over the park and blew apart into hundreds of sub-munitions. The Jehanan on the ground were already scattering from the sharp crack! overhead, but none of them was fast enough to escape the cloud of black marbles spilling down out of the sky.

A roughly circular area two blocks wide erupted in flame. The park, the trees, the mortars, the trucks carrying their ammunition and fifty or sixty houses were obliterated in an instant. Air rushed into the blast vacuum, igniting dozens of fires in the shattered rubble. A black cloud whooshed up.

The shuttle braked again, engines roaring as the thrust ducts rotated down, and ornamental fruit trees in the gardens below lost their foliage. A whirling cloud of dust, rocks, splintered wood and debris clattered against the windows of the Legation buildings. Landing gear rotated out of the hull, maneuvering jets flared and the pilot slewed down to a perfect three-point landing. One of the wheels crashed through a gazebo of light wood, crunching into hand-laid blue and yellow tiles.

Felix was already at the landing door, hand slapping the controls. Servos whined and a crack of daylight appeared. "Gear up!" she shouted on the command channel. "Dispersed deployment on the deck – the enemy has artillery – we don't know where the friendlies are! Engineers in the back with the Sho-sa!"

The turbines whined down as the landing gear groaned to take the full weight of the shuttle. Heicho Felix darted down the loading ramp, her Macana at the ready. Sunlight blazed on her visor and she ducked to the left, rifle sweeping the face of the nearest building. Her Marines scattered left and right, forming a perimeter twenty meters from the shuttle. Felix turned, waving the engineers out of the aircraft.

"Everybody -" There was a shriek of rocket engines and something blurred at the edge of her vision. Her visor flashed a warning, silhouetting an arrowlike shape. Instantly, Felix threw herself behind the nearest cover, which was an ornamental hedge in a brick planter. "- down! Incoming!"

The missile impacted on the rear ventral surface of the shuttle, shredding armor and metal as its warhead erupted. The surface flexed, tormented by a piercing jet of superheated plasma, and the shuttle convulsed as the ablative armor drank up the heat-flow like a sponge. The outer skin layer shattered, sending white-hot hexagonal flakes whistling across the gardens, breaking windows and shredding the trees. Dozens of secondary fires sprang up where they fell.

A pressure wave of heat and flame smashed down, grinding Felix's visor into the dirt. Cursing, she rolled up, her combat visor reacting to the blast with a polarizing sheen and a flashing icon showing the firing source for the attack.

"Missile team in the skyscraper south-southeast," she bawled, swinging the Macana to her shoulder. "Top quarter, right-hand side! Suppressive fire, all units!"

The roar of a Whipsaw cutting loose off to her left deafened the Marine, and her own fire from the automatic rifle was instantly lost as the flechette storm from the squad support weapon stabbed across the intervening distance – the khus was at least four blocks away – and ripped across the face of the building. Windows exploded, concrete disintegrated and an entire apartment vanished in a gout of flame as the stream of 1mm stiletto rounds licked across the second KГ¤rrhГ¶k as the missile team was maneuvering the weapon into position.

Felix dropped her rifle, eyeballing the plume of smoke belching from the side of the building. "Whipsaw on artillery suppression," she snapped, gesturing for the squad support weapon fireteam to head for the main buildings. "Get onto the roof, cover these skyscrapers, torch anything that moves!"

Then she had time to turn back to the shuttle. The aircraft was engulfed in flame, the entire rear third smashed into ruin. Oily black smoke roared up from burning vegetation all around. One wing had been torn straight off and now tipped forward at an awkward angle. The matching landing gear was skewed out like a broken leg.

"Sho-sa Kosho!" Felix felt her stomach twist into a cruel knot. She scrambled forward through smoldering rose bushes. "Second team, with me. We've got to get Fleet out of there!"

Waves of heat beat at her face and the Heicho wished she were in full powered armor. She ducked under the broken wing once she saw the entire rear loading ramp structure was twisted into a snarl of blackened metal and armor plating. The fire-suppression system inside the aircraft was coughing foam, but failing to dampen the blaze. The hex-skin of the shuttle popped and hissed, glowing cherry red. She ran forward, wondering if the forward crew doors were still operable.

The door seemed intact, but the access plate cover was bent and refused to open under her reaching fingers. I'm too damn short, she snarled to herself, quick fingers unfolding a cutting tool. "Carlyle! Get over here and lift me up -"

A white-hot point appeared at the edge of the door. The two Marines who'd come at her call fell back, surprised. Felix watched for a bare second – saw the point travel upwards, shearing through the armored door – and jumped out of the way before the cutting torch beam clove through her right arm.

"Stand back," she shouted, ducking down under the curve of the shuttle body itself. She was sweating furiously – the whole shuttleskin was bleeding heat at a tremendous rate – and the grass under her boots crisped black.

The cutting torch cut off, a ringing clang followed and the entire lock mechanism flew out. Two Marines reached up as the door ground up and seized hold of the first body pushed out of the stricken aircraft. Felix wiped her brow, half blinded by sweat, and keyed up her all-units channel.

"Form on the shuttle," she barked. "We've got wounded and we need to get them under cover to medical."

Another explosion shook the grounds and the upper floor of the Library tumbled down into an ornamental pool. The staccato roar of the Whipsaw followed before the rumbling boom of the rocket blast had faded. Felix slid out into the open, turning to cover the gardens with her rifle, and caught sight of a dull black Fleet z-suit being lowered from the shuttle door. Helsdon was silhouetted there, his back to raging flames, face tight with pain, hands steady as he handed Sho-sa Kosho down to Carlyle.

The commander's face was sheened with crimson and her visor was gone, ripped away by the explosion. Long black hair, matted with blood, clung to her neck and suit. Felix felt time slow, hand reaching out to seize the woman's medband and turn the strip of metal around. There were too many winking red lights.

"Let's go!" The Heicho slapped Carlyle on his shoulder, shoving him and his burden towards the Residence. "Go-go-go!" Felix reached up, took Helsdon's hand and helped the engineer jump down. The broken shuttle groaned, metal twisting in the inferno burning inside, and they ran across the flat, trimmed sward of a zenball field towards the garden doors.

The Whipsaw on the roof roared again, now mounted on a tripod and slaved to the gunner's suit sensors. Another rocket shrieked across the grounds and brushed a stream of flechettes. The weapon staggered in the air, belching flame. Riddled with millimeter-wide punctures, the remains of the missile plowed through the rose bushes, crashed into a low brick wall and failed to detonate.

A Sub-Basement

The District of Poisoners, Parus

 

Lachlan scowled, black hair falling into his eyes, and thumbed up a system status display on his primary v-pane. He itched, his stomach was cramped from hunger, and the entire room smelled very sharply of sweat, fatigue and half-heated threesquares. Dozens of tiny rectangles appeared on the v-pane, showing the status of his surveillance network in the cities of the Phison valley. Two-thirds or more of the v-feeds were blank or showing a skull-glyph indicating the spyeye or stationary relay camera was dead or unreachable.

A truly enormous headache was being held at bay by his medband, but the Йirishman could still feel the pressure behind a thin drug-induced veil.

"Sir?"

He looked up and saw one of the surveillance technicians, her shirt stained with sweat, standing up at her console, an old-fashioned landline phone in her hands. "What is it?"

"I've…I've got a call for you, sir." The technician held out the ancient-looking, enameled plastic device. "From a long-distance office in Gandaris. It's the Resident's wife, Mrs. Petrel. She says…she says the city has risen up against the Imperial presence, Prince Tezozуmoc has disappeared, there's rioting in the streets and she needs immediate extraction for herself and her ladies-in-waiting."

Lachlan rubbed his eyes. This just gets better and better, doesn't it? He cleared away the spyeye diagnostic with a sweep of his hand and tapped up a map of the northern city. "We've no way to pick her up by air. She'll have to make her way out on the ground. Where exactly are they?"

The technician mumbled into her phone – the Йirishman stifled a brittle laugh, amused to see her using such an antiquated device. But here? It's the very latest in native-tech! When the Old Woman had pressed him to use the ancient native telecom network linking Parus and some of the larger cities, he'd balked – arguing their work crews and technicians would be better employed ramping up the comm relay network – but she'd insisted on having a backup for the backup. Now six-hundred-year-old cables are carrying nearly a third of our data traffic…

Until the arrival of the Imperials, the old Arthavan-period fiber-optic network buried beneath Takshila, Parus and the other cities had gone unused and apparently forgotten. The sealed cables and their conduits were still in place – the lack of tectonic activity in the land of the Five Rivers had allowed them to remain mostly untouched as the centuries passed – but the new Jehanan civilization struggling up from the ruins had lost the equipment to access the physical network. Rigging adapters to allow Imperial comm to use the outmoded multiplexed fiber had been a bit tricky, but Mirror technicians were nothing if not resourceful.

"She says they're hiding in one of our safe houses downtown. Number sixteen, on Quelling Tongue street." The technician rubbed her ear, waiting for Lachlan to consider the alternatives displayed on the map.

"I see. They're four blocks from the railway terminal." He tapped up a timetable, nodded to himself and tabbed through a series of native agent biographies the comp had on hand. "Tell her to get to the station and find a ticket clerk named Hundun Pao – he's one of ours – there should be an express train to Parus leaving in about…three hours." The Йirishman smiled grimly. "Assuming the trains are still running, and Petrel and her girls aren't killed or captured on the way."

The technician swallowed and began speaking rapidly into the phone.

I'm a travel service, Lachlan thought, rather bitterly. What a disaster… Fetching and carrying for the Anglish of all people!

The District of Open Eyes

Takshila, Where Once Sra Haykan Devised a Perfect Grammar

 

Gretchen was running along a walkway, dusky-yellow flowers carpeting the rooftops on either side of her, when the overcast sky turned the color of spoiled milk. Her comm had only just woken to life, and she caught Magdalena's voice growling imprecations at Parker, when a roar of static drowned everything out and her earbug squealed painfully.

Disoriented, she fell sprawling on the wooden planks. Her right knee twisted painfully and the survey comp jammed into her stomach.

"Oooof!" Anderssen dug out the earbug, eyes watering, and flung away the suddenly-hot metal, a brief spark of metallic glitter disappearing into the field of poppylike flowers. "Damn!"

Gingerly, she rubbed her ear, wondering if she'd been burnt. The queer light in the sky began to fade and Gretchen looked up, childhood memories waking in response to the odd radiance stabbing through the clouds.

A misaligned three-d projector is buzzing behind her, casting an image of gray seas under a leaden sky at the front of her classroom. A shape moves beneath the waters, an enormous black whale of steel and carbon-composite fibers. Hatches open, something bursts forth from the heaving sea, an engine ignites and a sleek dagger roars away across the wave tops. Rain hammers down from the storm clouds, muting the distinctive sound of the launch.

The Swedish Royal Navy cruise missile extends stubby wings and increases its speed, darting in and out of wave troughs thrown up by the storm. The North Sea is blanketed by a raging gale, the first onset of winter pressing down from the pole. Under the cover of howling winds, three Vasa -class attack submarines lead off the strike against the Skawtish mainland.

Dozens more cruise missiles, interspersed with decoys and Shrike -class radar jammers burst from the waters.

The cruise missile flashes across the Firth of Forth, dappled skin matching the waves, countermeasures shrugging aside the backscatter of Imperial over-the-horizon radar watching the sky and sea. The complex of submarine nets beneath the water do nothing to slow the missile and the choppy whitecaps confuse the low-altitude radar mounted on Arthur's Seat above the city. Even the coast watch is inside, huddled around their heaters. The winters have been growing worse again – too much atmospheric dust remains from the Blow at the beginning of the war. The bleating of alarms from their comm panels is ignored for a moment – the European Alliance fleet has been nosing about for months, tripping the sensors deployed across the sea floor – and until today there had never been a hint of actual hostilities.

At the mouth of the river Forth, the missile pops up above the dockyards, maneuvering vents jetting flame, and at last exposes itself to the fortifications on the hills above the bombed-out town. The nearest air-defense bunker retracts its armored dome, gatling cannon nosing out. But the guns react a fraction too slowly to prevent the cruise missile from detonating.

For the first time in the European theatre of war, an atomic weapon is used. Everything is blotted out by a sun-bright flash as the Varkan -class tactical nuclear warhead detonates. The city districts nearest the river mouth are instantly engulfed in raging, superheated plasma. A shockwave batters the town, toppling the ancient walls of the Castle, smashing windows and crumpling houses all up the long valley of the Forth. Buildings shatter, trapping thousands of women and children in their shelters. Every radar installation within line of sight is blinded and most are wrecked outright. The Imperial troops in the fortifications around the Firth are incinerated or stunned by the glare of the pocket-sized star.

Further north, Aberdeen and Dundee suffer similar fates. The entire air-defense network of eastern Skawtland fails, mortally wounded. At sea, wrapped in the raging storm, a combined Swedish-Russian-Danish fleet races forward. Already steam catapults are hurling aircraft from the decks of the carriers, filling the sky with a raging howl as they race treacherously westward against the island fortress…

For a moment Anderssen saw nothing but rushing clouds heavy with rain. Then a tumbling, flashing spark of light caught her eye. One of the archaic aircraft was spinning out of control, plunging towards the city. Anderssen watched in fascinated horror as the raptor-winged jet whistled down, engines dead, and plowed directly into the side of one of the towering khus rising from the center of the city. The metallic shape slammed into a cliff of yellowed concrete in a gout of dust and black smoke. A dirty cloud roiled out, spilling glittering debris down the face of the apartment building. A tongue of flame stabbed through the dust, followed by a rush of black smoke. In the blink of an eye, the aircraft was gone, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the khus. Dull reddish light spread across the row of windows.

Gretchen turned her wrist over, exposing her medband. A warning glyph flashed, indicating a radiation exposure warning. She bit her lip, watching the indicator change. Not bad, she saw. Still a good thing I've got a medband and my allotment of children. "Beautiful…all our comms will be shot."

The clatter of broad, leathery feet on wooden planks made her turn. Huffing and puffing, long snout gaping wide, Malakar approached at a run. Seeing the human had stopped, the Jehanan slowed in exhaustion and dropped long hands to the walkway.

"What – hoooooo, I've not been so hot in an age! – makes you pause in your flight, little thief?"

"Did you see the lights in the sky?" Gretchen was breathing shallowly and felt a little dizzy. The medband was dumping radiation cleansers into her bloodstream and they made her skin itch. "The crashing aircraft?"

"I did." Malakar slumped forward. Her back scales flexed up on ridges of muscle beneath the integument, increasing her surface area and making the Jehanan look like a huge porcupine. "This makes you give pause? Pricks your conscience?"

Gretchen shook her head. "You've no stories of Arthava's Fire in communal memory? No tales of the heavens bleeding flame or cruel killing light stretching from horizon to horizon?"

"Hrrrr…" The Jehanan looked up, eyes searching the clouds. They continued to roll past, spitting rain over some neighborhoods, parted here and there by gusts in the upper air. "I see no demons towering over the sky, flesh made of smoke, eyes roaring pits of fire…"

"No, not today. You're describing a citykiller cloud. This was an ECOM suppression blast at the edge of the Jaganite atmosphere." She tapped her ear, trying to muster a wry smile. "Every unshielded electronic device in this hemisphere will have just died. Every exposed comp will be scrambled."

"And so, why do you – ah, your stolen data is no more." Malakar trilled heartily. "The grilled skomsh has fallen to the ground! Soiled! Inedible! All your clever tools and devices rendered useless…" She laughed again, bellowlike lungs heaving.

Anderssen grimaced, stung by the accusation of theft. Cheater! A voice from memory cried, sounding very much like little Isabelle. You took my share!

"I don't care about the data right now," she said. "My friends have fled that khus and they're in danger and I can't find them without my comm."

The Jehanan looked up, nostrils wrinkling. "Why would they flee a fine warm sleeping pit?"

Gretchen pointed across the rooftops towards the southeast. "Someone is attacking Imperial citizens, remember? Our landlord will inform the authorities of our presence… Who else but the kujen could have attack craft likethose?"

"Hoooo… Some truth there." Malakar swung her head from side to side. "The kujen has a face of paper and ink, he does. He snuffles in the dirt before the asuchau and then spits on their tails as they turn away." A claw scratched the side of her jaw. "One wonders…Rumor has long legs among our people; often soft voices flutter about the lamps in the night, telling tales of secret excavations in the old cities and forgotten machines made whole again…"

"Like the kalpataru," Anderssen said grimly, testing her knee and wincing a little. "I need to find my friends. My apologies, but I must go."

"Hooo now!" Malakar levered herself up, alarmed. "Do not be rash! There is the matter of the divine tree…" Her voice trailed off abruptly.

Gretchen unsealed the pouch around her comp and removed the device. The screen was dull, showing no lights. "You see? It's been fried like a skomsh. I'll need another undamaged comp to extract the data from this one. Then I'll need time to analyze the remains… I don't know ifI would be able to answer any of our questions. Please, let me go. My friends may be hurt, or taken prisoner or dead."

"Then leave them behind!" The old Jehanan reached out a claw, beckoning for the comp. "I know places to hide, perhaps we can even find a working one of…these things…from a merchant."

"I'm sorry." Gretchen placed the comp in Malakar's hand. "Magdalena and Parker aren't quite my hatchlings, but they are my family. I won't abandon them." She straightened her shoulders, gave Malakar a sharp look and turned away.

"Hoooo! You can't…come back here! Human! Where are you going?"

The sound of glass shattering and angry hooting gave Anderssen pause. She had been following a lane heading down towards the khus holding their rooms and now the narrow street had reached a boulevard. A steep flight of steps led down to the edge of the curving road. Pressing herself against a plastered wall, she peered around the corner.

The broad avenue was empty of runner-carts and wagons and the usual throng of busy citizens – but a large crowd of Jehanan youths were busily smashing windows and dragging merchandise out onto the sidewalks. One store was on fire, belching clouds of heavy white smoke. An angry, grumbling sound filled the air. Gretchen squinted, letting the goggles zoom in, and saw two short-horns then hurl an Imperial three-d set into the flames with a resounding crash. A hooting cheer rose at the burst of sparks.

"Well, that's just typical…" Anderssen looked the other direction. More gangs of youths in fancy scale-paint and masks prowled the avenue, smashing windows and throwing firebombs into the shops. Some of the short-horns had bags of loot hanging from their shoulders. A bitter, sharp smell of burning wood and plastic permeated the air. Thin, flat drifts of smoke coiled between the ancient trees lining the road.

There seemed to be no way to reach the khus without crossing into plain view.

Worried, Gretchen turned, wondering if she could find a way around on the rooftops. The walkways above had been completely deserted and she guessed the more sensible locals had gotten the hatchlings inside, locked their doors and were going to wait out the rioting with eyes closed. The tall shape of the apartment building seemed intact but she couldn't get close enough to see the lobby entrance.

Malakar was waiting, looming over her, the dead comp strapped to her chest bone beneath the usual Jehanan harness. Anderssen flinched and made a face, angry with herself for not hearing the creature creep up behind her.

"Hoooo! You jump like a skomsh fresh-caught in a net! I hear angry voices out there… They are not snuffling before the Empire today, no…but how will youfind your friends? They are far away if you cannot cross the boulevard!"

That is an excellent question, Gretchen thought. "I made a mistake," she snapped. "I expected our comms to work – our first rendezvous is at the train station. But they might still be waiting -"

Malakar stiffened, raising a single clawed finger, head turning to one side. "Wait, asuchau, I am hearing strange sounds…like a steam-loom of vast size…"

Anderssen peered out onto the street again and swallowed a curse. A huge tracked military vehicle – an armored personnel carrier? – rumbled down the avenue. At the sight of the apparition, the gangs of looters scattered, throwing down their prizes. Jehanan in body-armor loped alongside the clanking, rattling machine, and they held stubby rifles in their claws. Their eyes were in constant movement, yet they ignored the fleeing short-horns.

"The army," she breathed, ducking back. She looked up at Malakar. "The kujen's men are sweeping the streets. But not for looters! Is there somewhere I can hide until they pass?"

The old Jehanan's snout twisted in disgust. "The kujen…he will let the paigim short-horns run wild, wrecking the livelihood of many a shopkeeper, and do nothing as long as they bite Imperial tails! But do you asuchau suffer? No! Only the meek who sought to turn over a single shatamanu in profit. So are the powerless ground fine between mill stones…" A rumbling and muttering followed. The growl of engines and the stamp of swift feet grew closer.

"Come on," Gretchen said, seizing Malakar's arm, trying to drag her back down the lane. "Up the stairs at least!"

"No, not that way." The gardener wrenched her arm free and strode past the stone staircase. She ducked behind the out-thrust stone and down into a ramp cutting into the earth. "This way, if you must cross the avenue…"

Anderssen followed, one eyebrow raised as they shuffled down the ramp, past one, and then two thick layers of rubble and into a vaulting hallway running at an angle to the lane above. Lamps hung from the vaults every ten meters, spilling a warm oil-glow through faces of colored glass. Her eyes flitted across other openings, recognizing doorways built to a different esthetic. The floor beneath her feet was uneven, but lined with irregular slabs. This is an old city, layer heaped upon layer over the millennia.

Gretchen hurried after the gardener, who had pressed on while she gawked at the archaeological evidence all around her. Other Jehanan passed in the opposite direction, glancing at her suspiciously as they passed. "Malakar – do these tunnels run under the whole city? Are there more levels below this one?"

The passage reached an intersection, splitting into three branches, and light spilled from an open doorway. A squat dome – cracked in places and repaired with brick pylons – hung over the open space. Many lamps hung down on chains. A Jehanan matron followed by two hatchlings emerged from one of the shops, two woven bags in her arms. Anderssen smelled fresh baked bread and realized she was terribly hungry.

"Hrrr… yes, there are many hidden ways beneath the city. These are the districts where the poor live, far from the sun, but warm withal. Do you feel the age of these stones? Sometimes one can find old doors like the ones in the Garden, but only down where it is dangerous to tread." The old Jehanan paused, her gaze following Anderssen's intent expression. "Do asuchau eat milled grain baked and risen? You look much like a hatchling eyeing the pastry as it cools!"

"Yes – that smells delicious. My grandmother baked bread every day when we were little."

Malakar went to the doorway, nodding politely to another customer leaving the bakery. In the warm lamplight light she seemed younger somehow, or less burdened by age and care. The old Jehanan made a clicking sound with her teeth and pointed with her snout. "Do you see the figurines of clay above the hearth?"

Anderssen nodded, looking around curiously at the shelves filled with bread. The bricks were markedly different in shape from those she'd seen in the buildings at street level. From the slightly irregular pattern, she guessed they had been hand-pressed into wooden forms and fired in a kiln on sheets of marble. Behind the stone-topped counter, a short-snouted Jehanan was kneading dough into loaves. Above the hearth and the half-circle mouths of his baking ovens, she saw rows of small figures – most seemed Jehanan in outline, though some were insectile and a few were outright monsters with horrific features. The lamp-and fire-light danced upon them, giving their painted features uncanny life.

"Are they gods? Protective spirits? Amulets to ward away disease and poison from the bread?"

Malakar nodded, clasping her claws to her chest. She seemed pensive. "This one believes in the old ways. Legends even in the annals of the Garden. Look at him," she whispered in Gretchen's ear. "I envy this one. He is content at his task – as was his father and his father's father – there has been a bakery here for an age of Jehanan… There he spills grain meal every day, paying homage to all the faces ofgod. A tiny offering, a single prayer. And for him this suffices; brings him closer to the yigal, what you might call the real. For this – his work, his prayer, his simple life – is the proper path for him. He is the luckiest of Jehanan – and his pastries and milled loaves are the finest in the city."

"You envy him?" Anderssen frowned a little, suddenly understanding the half-hidden grief in the gardener's voice. "You've lost your own path, haven't you? You were the last teacher to use that school room in the depths of the House. The last person to look at the murals on the walls…"

Malakar hooted sadly. "I was happy there, tending young sprouts and making them grow strong. Perhaps even wise…I was not the only gardener, but I was the last to teach the old ways, tell the tales of ships which passed between the stars and the might of the Jehanan of old. But I could not still this unwary tongue of mine and those with more cunning minds saw I was left with nothing but scraps and broken shells."

Gretchen pressed her hand against the old Jehanan's scales, feeling the heat of the body beneath, feeling tough scalloped ridges and parchment-thin edges. "Could you leave the House? Seek a position elsewhere? Find some other garden to tend?"

"Hrrrr… perhaps I could have done such a thing, when I was younger, but I did not. A great nuisance I made of myself instead! Bitterly I plagued them, until I had not even a mat to sleep on, or someone to sleep beside. But no one listened…and I was weary then, content simply to take my ration and avoid the eyes of those who'd once looked to me for guidance."

"Your life is not yet over," Gretchen said tentatively. "You could leave…"

The old Jehanan wrinkled her snout, giving Anderssen a sharp look. "So easily the words slip from your tongue, asuchau wanderer! If I mark your words right, you are sent hither and yon at the whim of your Company. You delight to see the unseen, to turn over rocks left alone for a hundred years, just to see what wiggles out! You are treading a path of choice and one which fits you well, if the look upon your pale, flat face when you are filled with questions is a reputable guide!"

"Working for the Company is not like that! Not all the time." Gretchen said, remembering endless days spent grubbing in the dirt for nothing, risking health and life to plumb the depths of some burial site or midden filled with explosive gasses. Remembering friends and acquaintances crippled or killed in accidents, or simply forgotten when crews were reassigned and split up. "There are moments though," she allowed, "when the toil and bureaucracy and misery of parting are worthwhile. But how often do those days come about? They are very rare!"

Malakar made an amused fluting sound. "Then why are you digging in my garden, poking about among my trees and stealing secret glances at my idols? You've not eaten for two days, you've forgotten your friends, and you just let these questions drag you by the snout from place to place without the slightest care!"

"Maybe." Gretchen felt disgruntled. Stupid lizard, pointing out the obvious to me! "If this is my path to the real, then I would like another! One where I can stay home and read books by the heater and watch my children grow up and be successful! One without all the mud and grime and dirt and sleepless nights in spaceport terminals, watching to make sure my baggage isn't stolen!"

"Hur-hur-hur!" Malakar swung her head from side to side. "How long would that last? You would be sneaking away to spaceport with your traveling bag in hand by year's end. Hurrr… Do you wish a pastry? I am hungry now."

The Jehanan went inside, fluting a greeting to the baker.

"I need to find Maggie and Parker," Gretchen called after her. But they're not going to know about these tunnels, which means if they've not been captured, they will head to the train station and then south to Parus. If they heard my voice – I think they did, but how much of what happened in the vault was real?

Malakar reappeared and pressed a bun straight from the oven into her hand.

"Ow! These are hot!" Anderssen tossed the crusted pastry from hand to hand.

The Jehanan chewed vigorously, having swallowed the bun whole, and nodded her head.

"Ah…very tasty. These are stuffed with pang nuts and melle. Very sweet. They will drive your hunger away. What were you saying?"

Gretchen pointed with her chin at the ceiling. "Does this passage lead to the khus?"

"There is a ramp quite near your building." Malakar allowed, eyeing the uneaten bun in the human's hands. "But if the prince's soldiers are in the streets, will your friends wait? I cannot imagine any creature with an ear and an eye could miss the sound of that machine in movement."

"You could be right," Anderssen nodded, nibbling at the edge of the still-hot pastry. "They'll try to reach the train station and get south to Parus if they don't find me there."

"Hooooo…" Malakar tapped Gretchen's chest thoughtfully, one claw brushing against the dead comp. "Will the Magdalena and the Parker have another device like this? One which works?"

Gretchen frowned up at the Jehanan. "If they were under cover of some kind when the EMP wave hit the city, yes. Maggie has four or five comps with her – she collects them like Parker collects…well, Parker doesn't really collect anything but tabac tar…"

The gardener pointed down one of the passages. "The iron road can be reached by following certain ways beneath the city – but if the kujen is hunting for asuchau I fear his servants will throng the station like yi upon the corpses of fallen heroes. If your friends flee that way, they will be taken." Malakar's nostrils crinkled up. "If memory serves, there is only one train to Parus each day and that one not for many hours yet."

"Is there another way south?" Anderssen wracked her memory, trying to remember if there had been other options for local transport. I shouldn't have just accepted Petrel's arrangements – we should have gotten an aerocar somehow, or a truck at least…

"There is." The old Jehanan indicated a different passage. "Beyond the edge of the city is a tikikit station. We could be in Parus by morning if our legs are long enough. The tikikit do not care if Jehanan and asuchau are fighting!" She clicked her claws together in amusement. "They have seen such things many, many times and are no longer impressed."

Gretchen licked her lips, feeling worry surge in her breast. What if Maggie and Parker are still waiting for me at the apartment? But the brief perception of them on a rooftop implied they were already on the run, and somehow she thought they had heard her cry out of the green void. The kalpataru was connected to every other communications device and comp on the planet in that one instant, I know it was. Mother Mary, please keep them safe. And me too. Keep me safe until we're all together again.

"All right," Anderssen said, trying not to chew her lip. "Will you take me to this place? Are you sure we can get to Parus by morning?"

Several hours later, Gretchen and Malakar emerged from a tunnel on the eastern side of the city, following a footpath between disintegrating rows of concrete pilings. The sun was setting, the eastern sky growing dark, though the fields of grain on either side of the old subway line were gilded pink and bronze. Anderssen glanced up automatically and was disturbed to see the sky to the west bruised with odd, harsh colors. Auroralike patterns of filmy lights were strewn across the twilit sky.

Long trails of smoke rising over the city glowed in the failing light. High up, what looked like contrails criss-crossed the sky, though she didn't think any aircraft could have survived the electromagnetic shock wave from the explosions in orbit.

"How far is this station?" Anderssen wondered aloud, seeing the orchards on the far side of the grain fields were dusky with oncoming night. She automatically checked to make sure she still had her flashlight, and was relieved to feel cold metal under her fingers. "Have you taken this path before?"

"Not so long ago," Malakar answered, her stride quickening. The Jehanan's snout was raised, tasting the evening and the hum and chirp of insects rose and fell as they walked. There was a moist, humid feeling to the air and Gretchen was reminded of the lowland farm country around New Canarvon back home. "There is a wood-lot and then a village. The station is beyond, on the old road – but it is not far, not far at all."

They walked in silence for a time, passing out of the fields and onto a larger path – not quite a road, but close – which ran through rows of planted trees. Long straight trunks rose up over their heads, merging into a spreading roof of branches lined with heavy leaves. Anderssen's eye was drawn to the signs of pruning and trimming and guessed the section of woodland was a farm growing lumber for the city markets. Some of the newer prunings revealed a hexagonal pattern in the underlying wood.

"These are lohaja?" She gestured at the rows of trees. "This is a plantation?"

The old Jehanan grunted, twitching her nostrils. "Not every soil is suitable for the better woods – but these hills around Takshila are famous for their abundant crops and strong-growing trees. Even the Nem flourish here, though you cannot claim their taste is sweet."

Then the creature sighed, grief settling over her and she fell silent.

"I'm sorry," Gretchen said, feeling guilty at having raised the question. "I've been lucky to do so much of what I wanted. My family sacrificed a great deal to see me on this long road – they still do, with my mother taking care of my children – and the pitiful wage the Company pays is not enough, not really, to make up the difference."

A low humming sound rose from the back of the Jehanan's throat. She fixed Anderssen with one dark eye. "And you say you've not found the right path to yigal? Do you bite your own tail in spite? Do you have two mouths to argue with yourself?"

"Ha! I suppose." Gretchen smiled. "I know how it feels to be denied, ridiculed, opposed at every turn. My clan is poorly favored in the Empire. We have no powerful friends. There are no tenured positions for me, no research grants or stipends. Most of my fellows from graduate school have actual posts at actual universities – or they oversee important sites – and me? I grub in the refuse on the edge of human space for a scattering of quills a day, looking for sites of interest to others. Then they do the real work, and I'm on to another world, bag in hand, exhausted, my boots needing repair…"

Malakar trilled, her mood entirely restored. "A perfect path for your tiny feet to walk! Do you truly enjoy the dull work of counting and measuring and making reports which must come after all this poking and prodding and prying into dusty, hidden places?"

"Yes, I do." Anderssen's professional sensibilities were outraged at such a suggestion, though at the same time a little voice was saying Oh god, no! "Survey is only the first step in a long process – the real work is in the analysis and conclusions at the end. I mean, how else will I get a position somewhere without publications? Without discrete evidence of my work?"

"Hur-hur-hur!" The gardener hid her snout behind both claws. "This old walnut thinks your path does not lead to the stuffy chambers of a Master, with acolytes fawning and snuffling at your feet. Your path lies at the edge of furrowed soil, it does, where there are strange shadows and queer lights among the trees, where every step is into the unknown. What wonders might you see, with undimmed eyes?

"Hoooo… Now, how do I interpret such a look as you now wear?"

Gretchen felt pressure grip her chest, driving the breath from her lungs, and a startlingly clear vision overwhelmed her seeing eyes, blotting out the rows of trees looming in the twilight, covering the wagon-tracks they had been following through the grass…

Bitterly cold wind lapped around her. Her hands were in the sand, one leg throbbing with pain. Glorious jewel-colored lights shone beneath her, lighting her face. Threads of crimson and sapphire and diamond-blue clung to her forearms, dragging her down. Something was moving in the darkness, a voice was speaking, but all she could see were the glittering pinpoints of the hathol and the firten swarming to the bounty of her exhaled breath, drinking her carbon dioxide and waste gasses; growing, swarming, building chains of fire to trap her so they might feast on the energy reservoir of her body…

"Ahhh!" Anderssen flinched back from Malakar's reaching claw and she stumbled into the brush lining the road. The Jehanan drew back in surprise, hissing. For an instant, before she blinked, Gretchen thought the rule-straight trees were limned with pale light, and the gardener was softly glowing in the twilight, every scale distinct in disturbingly clear sight. Then twilight enveloped her again and there were only stray glints of the sun on clouds high in the sky.

"What happened?" Malakar regarded her warily. "Your countenance changed."

"It's nothing." Anderssen was trembling and she batted uselessly at her legs and arms. There aren't any crawling threads of living light on me. None. Not even one. She felt strangely hot, as if she'd plunged her face, hands and arms into boiling water. I don't think I was supposed to remember that. Hummingbird should complain to whoever sold him that memory eraser. "Just old memories. Don't think this business of poking and prying is without peril."

"Hooo! True words." The gardener took hold of Gretchen's shoulders and set her back on the track with a gentle touch. "Paths are dangerous – if you follow, does it not lead? If you follow all the way, it must take you far from the safety of your own garden, out into brambles and marsh and among twisted rocks."

"I suppose." The last gleam of the sun faded, leaving them in complete darkness. Anderssen produced her flashlight. A cool light sprang out, illuminating the roots of the trees and setting stems of grass in sharp contrast. The flashlight made her feel better. See? I can drive back the darkness! "I don't want to follow a dangerous path! I want to do my job, get paid a reasonable wage and go home and talk to my kids about how their day went at school."

She laughed hollowly. "I've already been offered your far-traveled path, filled with spines and pricking wounds and bitter pills. A path into shadows and hidden places – where true secrets lie, not just the grave-goods and barrows of the dead. I said no then, and I'd say no now."

The gardener made a deep humming sound in the back of her throat. "Hooo… Of course. But this old walnut wonders…" Malakar reached out her claw into the beam of the flashlight, making a jagged, monstrous shadow spring up against the silver-barked trees. "Shadows imply light." Her claw withdrew, revealing the track winding ahead of them. "And a path, direction. You remind me of how much I have lost by fearing both."

"Fearing?" Anderssen began walking, finding the bare, widely spaced tree trunks oppressive. "You didn't fear to oppose the Master and his policies!"

"Hooooo… I feared to leave the Garden. What sprouts have gone untended elsewhere as I lay anguished on a mat in the common room, biting my own tail and dreaming useless thoughts of revenge and malice? Will I ever know?" Malakar lifted her snout, pointing ahead. "Do you see the lanterns?"

Gretchen angled the flashlight towards her feet. Her eyes adjusted and she saw – ahead, obscured by a line of trees – gold and silver lights and heard the rattle of drums and pipes. In the faint glow of distant lamps, she caught the outline of buildings, sharp rooftops, banners and the hot glow of a bonfire.

"Do you hear the voices?" The gardener picked up her pace. "Nemnahan has begun!"

The Gemmilsky House

Gandaris, "Bastion of the North"

 

Crouched in darkness, Colmuir squinted at the view from one of the perimeter spyeyes. This one was focused down on the front gate from a realspruce tree, where the Jehanan soldiers had found the portal held closed by more than a simple wooden bar. Their commander – even at this range, staring at a reptilian face mostly obscured by black rubber goggles, the master sergeant could pick out an officer – waved his men back, then stepped smartly away. The entire gate structure shivered as the tank approached, cobblestones cracking under heavy treads. The armored behemoth – Colmuir counted one main gun, four cupola-mounted machine guns, some kind of grenade launcher on the turret and a smoke dispenser – ground down the lane, stopped, chuffed diesel smoke, and rotated ponderously on one set of treads.

"Just a moment," the master sergeant whispered. "He's at th' gate now."

The rumbling of dual engines carried even through the tiny microphone on the spyeye, as did the grating scrape of dozer blades emerging from the front of the machine. Gears shifted, generating a violent rattling sound, and the tank rolled forward, belching exhaust, and slammed squarely into the gate.

"Go!" Colmuir growled, feeling the ground shake. He thumbed a glyph depicting a conical mountain belching flame. In the spyeye view, he saw the front gate shatter, torn off its hinges by the weight of the tank. The stone pillars on either side of the entrance shuddered, but stood firm until the armored shoulders of the machine ground into them. Then ancient granite split, spewing dust and the entire structure collapsed backwards. The tank rolled up over the debris, treads spinning and crashed down on the other side. Jehanan soldiers darted into the opening, automatic rifles at the ready.

Two Imperial Marine issue Fougasse antipersonnel mines hidden in the verge a dozen paces back from the gate detonated as the tank rumbled past onto the lawn. Each popped up from the hedge to chest height and blew apart. A shockwave of flame, choking smoke and fingertip sized needles smashed across the Jehanan infantry. The invaders were thrown backwards by the blast and their body armor, uniforms and exposed scales were shredded by the glassite projectiles. Wherever the needles punched through scale into flesh, they splintered into wicked monofil buzzsaws, shredding muscle, ligament and bone. The entire lead squad crumpled in a spray of blood.

The Jehanan officer cursed, ordered his men to hurl grenades into the foliage and led the second squad onto the grounds at a rush as soon as the blasts had cleared the way.

In the sub-basement of the house Dawd knelt between a sump pump and the old boiler, a blazing white-hot spark howling between his hands. Limestone flooring volatilized, boiling up around him in a dusty cloud. At the far end of the room, Colmuir had his back turned, attention wholly focused on his remotes. Tezozуmoc stood between the master sergeant and the cutting beam, hands over his ears, desperately wishing for a drink, any kind of drink, even the barely refined gasoline the natives liked so much.

Dawd shifted his knees, drew the engineering tool back around to complete the circle and felt the stone and brick give way. The circular opening collapsed, spilling bricks and dust into a hidden pit. The edges glowed a dull red where the beam had sheared them to a glossy smoothness. The Skawtsman kicked the rest of the debris away.

Four meters below, a dry sewage tunnel was now filled with the litter from his efforts. Gemmilsky had installed new pipes and a modern sewage recycling module in one of the gardening sheds. The previous owner, however, had been forced to pump all of his waste into the common city drainage. During construction of the new house, all of the old sewage, water and power adits had been sealed up with brick, plaster and a new coat of paint.

"Clear!" Dawd called to the prince and the master sergeant. He squeezed himself down into the opening, hung by his hands for a moment and then dropped down into the old tunnel. The sergeant's combat visor switched into infrared, he glanced both ways and saw the passage was empty. "Come on, mi'lord. We've got to move quickly."

The prince swung over the edge, closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to the Beneficent and Merciful Jesus and dropped into the Eagle Knight's waiting arms. Dawd set the young man down in a rubble-free section of tunnel and tapped his comm. "Master Sergeant? Let's not be waiting about!"

"Just a second, lad. There's a wee bit more work to be done."

Colmuir rotated one of the spyeyes to scan the horizon. The aerocar which had brought them to Gandaris had departed at first light to deliver Mrs. Petrel and her ladies to the palace and return with 'refreshments.' The master sergeant assumed the use of kujenai troops to attack the mansion meant Clark, the aerocar and the civilians had all been seized by the kujen. He was waiting until the last moment, hoping the corporal would reappear.

The sky was overcast and gray and threatening a day of drizzling rain. There was no sign of the aerocar. Colmuir muttered six and a half kinds of curses to himself, tapped the last glyphs on his fuse screen and scurried to the pit.

A muffled series of thuds and booms filtered through the roof of the sub-basement. The old foundation groaned, feeling the house above shift and sway. A distant crashing sound followed, and the lean Skawtsman imagined the entire portico toppling onto the tank and trapping the metal behemoth in a ruin of double-paned windows, marble statuary and triply-varnished lohaja-parquet flooring. He slapped two bomb packs on either side of the opening, gave them twenty minutes to live and dropped down into the darkness.

An hour later, Dawd used his combat knife to saw through the bar holding a sewer-grate closed and, after listening cautiously, stepped out into a domed, brick-lined roundabout deep under the center of Gandaris. His Fleet medband chirped politely, informing him of excessive levels of methane, carbon dioxide and airborne bacteria in the newly entered atmosphere.

"Oh, gods of my fathers," the prince exclaimed, splashing clumsily into the grand sewer. "This place smells…urk… oh god…" Tezozуmoc doubled over, nearly falling into the stream of dark brown effluvia streaming towards the river, and added a gagging heave of yellow bile to the greater collection of Gandarian waste. Dawd seized him by the upper arms and waited for the boy to finish his business.

"Excellent nose for navigation, lad." Colmuir closed the gate to the dry tunnel behind them and replaced the bar. "You've got a fix on the airport, then?"

"No airport in Gandaris, Master Sergeant." Dawd consulted his comp, which had been keeping track of the twists and turns in the sewer system. "Or we'd have landed there when we arrived… That's odd, we've lost any comm signal but ourown. The jamming must have gotten worse." He shook his head in dismay. "If Clark managed to escape with the aerocar, he won't be able to raise us, or find us, unless we're out in the open as he flies over, waving the locust-flag of Chapultepec over our heads."

"That won't happen," the master sergeant said, peering over Dawd's shoulder. "Options?"

"We could walk about a thousand kilometers to Parus," the younger Skawtsman said, tabbing up a map of Gandaris and the greater valley. The city spread up a series of terraced hillsides from the banks of the Kophen to reach the embrace of the higher peaks. The far side of the river was subdivided into agricultural plots, and then bisected by the railroad running southeast towards Bandopene. "We could steal an aerocar, if there was one to steal, and be back in Parus tonight."

"What…" The prince spat and cleared his mouth. "What about calling for someone to come and pick us up with a combat shuttle?"

"No comm," Dawd replied, shaking his head. "Or we could find a place to hide out, sit tight…"

Colmuir considered the map, removed a tabac from a half-crushed paperboard case, smelled the cigarette and put it back. Then he nodded to himself. "We take the train."

"What?" Dawd stared at him, surprised and horrified at the same time. "We'll be arrested at the station!"

"The train?" Prince Tezozуmoc frowned. "Wait a moment…wasn't someone saying something about the train the other day? About…oh, who was that?"

Both Eagle Knights stared at him expectantly, but the young man shook his head, bemused. "Huh. Nothing." He rapped his head with his knuckles. "Empty as a gourd! I've forgotten who it was. Don't mind me."

"We don't," Colmuir said in an offhand way. He gave Dawd a tight little smile. "Now, laddie, you haven't lived until you've jumped a train, as my da would say. And he jumped one or two in his time. Now, which way t' the station?"

Dawd made a sour face, hitched up the assault rifle on his shoulder, consulted his comp and pointed up a tunnel spilling a slow, turgid sludge into the main sewer. "That way."

A gloved hand reached up, grasped hold of a marble lip around the urinal and Dawd heaved himself up and onto the floor of an empty restroom. The chuffing sound of a steam engine mixed with the hooting and warbling of Jehanan adults echoed in through high windows. The sergeant glanced around, making sure the large, stone-floored room was empty, and knelt to take the prince by the arms and hoist the boy up. Colmuir scrambled up through the wide-mouthed opening – Jehanan bathrooms were well appointed with ornamental stone, delicate carvings and elegant fixtures but consisted solely of a deep pit to raise tail over – and took a moment to let himself breathe cleaner air. The sharp smell of hot metal, coal dust and hundreds of natives rushing about trying to get aboard the afternoon express train filled his nostrils and he beamed a smile of relief at Tezozуmoc, who was batting at legs dripping yellow-green ooze.

"Ah! Much better." The master sergeant considered their appearance and his smile faded. "Now, we must make ourselves presentable enough to cross the tracks and get aboard a luggage car – Dawd you think these faucets will work?"

The sergeant was at the doorway, peering out into the waiting hall with a perplexed expression on his face.

"Sergeant Dawd? Can you hear me?"

The younger Skawtsman shook his head, breaking out of something like a daydream and nodded. "Yes, Master Sergeant. I'll have a look at the faucets – but you should scope this…"

Grumbling to himself and waving the prince to stand beside the marble sink lining the wall – and out of the line of fire from the entrance – Colmuir edged up to the door and looked out. At first, all he saw was a melee of Jehanan – young and old alike, all dressed in harnesses hung with flowers, long narrow sun-hats and gaudy drapes and accompanied by a great deal of luggage in woven bags and heavy-looking steamer-style trunks – surging past. And then, much as the clouds might peel back from the mountaintops looming over the city, a troupe of monks in very tall, saffron-colored hats stamped past and he saw, waiting patiently beside the number four track schedule board, Mrs. Petrel and her two young ladies with no more luggage than their handbags, traditional Imperial festival clothes over flesh toned skinsuits and Army-issue umbrellas for parasols.

The Resident's wife seemed entirely composed and perfectly at ease. None of the Jehanan rushing about, hooting and trilling and warbling in their alien tongue, seemed to pay her the least attention.

Colmuir pursed his lips and wished he had a fresh pack of tabacs to hand. He looked back to the prince, saw Dawd had affixed a length of hose from his duty bag to the nearest faucet and was sluicing the sewer ooze from the boy's legs, made up his mind to escape the train station somehow and looked back in time to have his heart lurch into his throat.

The auburn-haired of the two girls accompanying Mrs. Petrel was hurrying through the crowd, directly towards the bathroom, with a very determined expression on her face.

"Ah that's torn it," Colmuir cursed, stepping back out of sight. "Dawd, get that hose on me swift-like, we've company coming t' dinner."

The master sergeant had managed to clean off his gear, though his uniform legs and underlying combatskin were still dripping wet when the girl strode into the bathroom and took the sight of the three of them in with a frown.

"Do you have any other clothes," she said, in a brisk tone very reminiscent of her mistress. "Capes or something to drape about all your…guns and tools and things?"

"We do," Tezozуmoc said, while both Eagle Knights were goggling at the audacity of a rather prim-looking Nisei girl barging into the gentleman's restroom. The prince tapped Dawd on the shoulder. "Sergeant, do you have a rain-cape in the back pocket of your gunrig?"

Dawd blinked, nodded and turned to let Tezozуmoc unseal the pouch and drag out a rain poncho. "They're autocamo -" the sergeant started to say, but the prince had already turned the poncho inside out and found the little control panel woven into the waterproof fabric.

"Very useful," Tezozуmoc said cheerfully, using his thumbs to switch through the settings, "if you'd like to just sit quietly outside of headquarters and, ah, have a smoke or something…" He winked at the girl, which made her stiffen slightly. "Big enough for two, most times."

The rain cloak settled into a dull pattern of interlocking brown and yellow-green triangles. The prince swung the garment around Dawd's shoulders, drew the hood mostly over his face and snapped the bottom straight. The sergeant stared down at himself and realized the young man had chosen a pattern close to the coloring of Jehanan scales.

"You too, Master Sergeant." Tezozуmoc nodded to Colmuir and then looked at himself. The Fleet skinsuit he'd donned in the house was dull black, like most Imperial garments, and had its own autocamo capability, but being skin-tight, made him look far too human in outline.

"Miss." He looked at the Nisei girl. "Does your mistress have any local money?"

The Parus Express shuddered into motion, the linkages between the cars drawing tight one by one, clouds of steam and coal-smoke billowing up against a glassed-in ceiling. In the next to last car, Colmuir squeezed into a reserved compartment and immediately drew the window curtains closed. The clashing of wheels on the tracks drowned out all other sound until the door slammed shut behind Dawd.

Then something like silence – save for the swinging rattle of the train car itself, and the assorted sighs of relief from the six humans in the compartment – settled around him.

"Now," the master sergeant said, sitting down beside the prince, "that was some quick thinking, mi'lady."

Greta Petrel smiled at the Eagle Knight and carefully removed her hat from the high, coiffed, hairpinned and gelled pompadour she had elected to sport for the festival. "Nonsense, master Colmuir, I always reserve an entire compartment for myself and my young ladies. Otherwise," she glanced in amusement at the Nisei girl and her Anglish companion, "we would be forced to endure the company of reprobates, villains and men with sacks of smelly ham sandwiches."

"Or those who smoke," the Nisei girl said, glaring pointedly at the master sergeant, who had just fished the last tabac from the crushed box in his vest pocket. "There is no smoking."

"Mei," Mrs. Petrel said, leaning a little towards the master sergeant and smiling faintly, "has asthma."

"Your pardon, miss," Colmuir replied, licking his lips and returning the tabac to its box. "Wouldn't want t' be a bother, now would I?"

"Not at all," Mrs. Petrel said. "You are very, very welcome company. I was afraid the Lord Prince had fallen into the hands of the kujen and his fellow conspirators."

"A conspiracy?" Sergeant Dawd glanced at the prince, who was sitting between him and Colmuir, now dressed in flowing native robes and a wickerwork sun hat which hid his entire face behind a long visor designed to protect the snout of a Jehanan matron from the fierce sun. "Just in Gandaris, or…"

"I expect the whole of the Five Rivers has risen up." Mrs. Petrel said, turning sideways so Mei could undo her hair. "There have been rumors for months of a secret cabal among the native princes – a society called the moktar – which is devoted to expunging the taint of Imperial thought, goods and presence from Jagan." She sighed with relief as the last of the pins came out. The white streaks sweeping back from her temples emerged as she shook out her hair.

"We have never been terribly welcome here," she said, turning back to Colmuir. "They will do their best to drive us off-world. I'm sure kujen Nahwar hoped to snare the lot of us – the Lord Prince included – once we'd arrived for the festival of the Nem."

Tezozуmoc laughed softly, face still hidden under the long hat. His hands were clasped tight on his knees and he'd said nothing from the time they rushed him out of the bathroom, across the platform and onto the train just as it prepared to pull out of the station.

"Wanted again," he said, most of the bitterness leached from his voice by an aftertone of adrenaline. "I should let them take me – I'd have some use then, as a bargaining chip between princes and the Empire."

"No, dear," Mrs. Petrel said, shaking her head. "Your purpose is doing what you've already done today, seeing your sworn men are looked after. And now – though I'd imagine master Colmuir is about beside himself with the added risk – you've three dainty Imperial ladies to see home safely as well."

This did not please the prince at all, who fell silent and slumped back into his seat, hiding behind the hat. Dawd tipped back the corner of the drapes over the window and watched carefully as the train picked up speed out of the station and began rattling down the tracks leading out of the town. The rail line crossed over a bridge; a thoroughfare passed below and the street was filled with a huge mob of Jehanan marching up towards the center of town, waving banners and placards over their heads. The sergeant guessed the crudely drawn figures on the wooden boards were supposed to be human, though most humans he knew did not have two heads or breathe fire.

"We've cut it fine," Dawd said to Colmuir and Petrel. The sergeant was beginning to shake a little bit, coming down off the steady adrenaline and combat-drug high he'd been on since the door of the prince's dressing room exploded. "But if the train doesn't stop until Parus, we might make it."

"Oh." Mrs. Petrel made a dismissive motion with her hand. "I've taken this train before – last year when the rains were full on – there are stops in Bandopene and Takshila, but I'm sure we'll be fine. They'll only check our ticket once after we've boarded. The conductors are very discrete – we shan't be asked again."

Really? Dawd kept his opinion to himself, though he guessed Colmuir would be of much the same mind. Then we'll have to shoot our way off this train at one station or the other…

Mindful of these realities, the sergeant set about checking his weapons, cleaning the last of the sewer sludge out of his equipment and trying to look impassive and professional while two rather attractive young ladies sat no more than a meter away and watched him – or were they watching the prince? – with unsettling interest.

Several hours later, the train jerked into motion again at Bandopene and Dawd let himself relax from hair-trigger readiness. Behind closed velvet drapes, the noise of the hot little hill-station echoed loudly, and every footstep in the passage made him tense. Colmuir stood poised inside the closed door of the compartment, automatic in hand, watching a longeye feed of the corridor, until the train doors closed at last.

Mrs. Petrel's calm demeanor proved warranted. No one bothered them save an elderly conductor who checked their tickets just outside Gandaris. To Dawd's eye the Jehanan had seemed oddly unsurprised to find a compartment full of humans on his train. But with the second station falling away behind them, the younger Skawtsman let himself relax a bit. Feeling the train rattle up to speed and boom hollowly over a bridge, he ventured to part the window curtain again and peer out.

Decaying slab-sided buildings lined the tracks. There were no windows and the wooden siding was turning gray and black with age. Tall brick smokestacks rose above sooty tiled roofs and the Skawtsman closed the window, disheartened to be so distinctly reminded of the industrial neighborhoods where he'd grown up. Alien worlds are supposed to be exotic and beautiful, he thought. Filled with never-before-seen vistas and unimaginable grandeur, not shuttered mills and tumble-down factories and fences of spikewire like Pollokshields.

"Well," Colmuir said, drawing the attention of everyone in the hot, stuffy compartment. "That's a bit of luck, I'd say. By my comp, we'll be in Takshila by dark and then overnight t' Parus."

"If nothing happens in Takshila," Dawd said cautiously. The sergeant turned to Mrs. Petrel, who had spent the day sitting quietly, cooling herself with a silk hand-fan bearing a hand-stitched image of Mount Tahoma rising above interwoven clouds and stands of pine. Both of her young ladies had fallen asleep in the heat, though now they were stirring, woken by the renewed movement of the train. "Mi'lady, a thought strikes me… What happened to Corporal Clark? Didn't hetake you to the station?"

Petrel's face tightened slightly and her eyes seemed to darken. "We walked – or rather, ran – to the station, Sergeant. Corporal Clark delivered us to the temple of the Immanent Sun quite early. The processions and prayers and ceremonies to greet the solar deities' first light upon the newly ripened Nem begin at a dreadful hour. But then he took off for the palace to secure more refreshments for the prince and for dinner. After that…" Mrs. Petrel sighed and shook her head slowly. "We've neither seen him nor the aerocar."

"Ah, now, that is too bad." Colmuir grimaced. "If he went t' the palace, they'll have seized him and the aerocar. Poor sod."

Mrs. Petrel folded up her fan. "If he was not taken unawares, he might have escaped. But where would he go?" She nodded to the Anglish girl, who had come quietly awake. "They sent men to arrest us at the dawn ceremony, but the captain of the soldiers fell to arguing with the head priest. Cecily noticed the dispute and we were able to slip away. Then I thought of the train…"

Dawd rubbed his nose, beginning to feel nervous. These girls see quite a bit, I would guess. A bold set of ladies these are, larking about on an alien world in their Sunday best. He pursed his lips, a nagging thought surfacing.

"Your pardon, mi'lady, but…you had train tickets for today? How did -"

Mrs. Petrel smiled whimsically, unfolding her fan in front of her face. The compartment was growing hotter with every kilometer they sped south. "I believe in planning ahead, sergeant."

"But -" Dawd fell silent, seeing the lady's eyes tighten slightly and feeling Colmuir's glare. He shrank back into his seat, wishing he hadn't asked so many questions. He was guiltily aware of the master sergeant warning him, more than once before, to keep quiet and mind his manners. "Your pardon, mi'lady. It's none of my business."

Mrs. Petrel nodded politely and began fanning her face again. Colmuir settled back into his seat, one hand still on his Nambu. Both Mei and Cecily closed their eyes and the sound of the train wheels clattering along the tracks and the jingling sway of the car and the susurration of people breathing filled the silence.

The prince, still sound asleep, began to snore softly, his head leaning against Dawd's shoulder.

Bloody hell, the Skawtsman grumbled to himself. I've never been able to sleep on trains. He snuck a look at his chrono. Another four hours until we reach Takshila. And our comms are still jammed. Poor Clark. Doubt we'll see him again…

Then Dawd closed his eyes, Whipsaw cradled in the crook of his left arm, right hand resting on the hilt of the combat knife strapped to his leg, and tried to rest.

The Parus express reached the outskirts of Takshila just after sundown and began to slow in preparation for stopping at the main rail terminal. The train engineer, however, saw that the skyline was lit by widespread fires and a pall of heavy smoke lay over the city. The sprawling slums lining the railroad approach were relatively quiet. Very few Takshilans had ever seen an asuchau human, but rumor of the kujen's war had permeated the city within minutes of the first bombing attack on the Mercantile Exchange House. The usual traffic of heavy wains piled with ceramics and bundles of flowers and stacks of fresh-cut lumber, runner-carts, tikikit buses and crowds of busy Jehanan out and about, shopping and bartering, was noticeably lighter than the engineer expected.

All of this made him wary and he kept one eye-shield peeled for warning lights along the spiked barricades lining the tracks. As a result, as the express slowed to barely twenty kilometers an hour, he caught sight of a diversion indicator light and swing-board at the first spur line. The engineer depressed the main braking lever, felt the entire train shudder at the squeal of brake linings on massive iron wheels, and leaned out as the express chugged onto the secondary track.

Seeing the warning light relieved some of the engineer's fears – the fires silhouetting the khus rising at city center were centered around the train station – and he had no desire to plow a sixteen-car train into a mob on the tracks or through a burning station. He eased up on the brakes, let a little steam build and the express settled out onto a straightaway.

The train chuffed past a rail yard traffic tower overlooking a section of cargo sidings, but though the engineer waved at the lit windows, he did not see anyone inside. This was puzzling, but not entirely out of the ordinary. The express rattled through the warehouse district at a modest clip. Inside the comfortably hot driver's compartment, the engineer hooted at his second, who bent over a laminated diagram of the rail network in and around Takshila. After a moment's scrutiny, the junior engineer warbled back, pointing at the map.

The engineer nodded, soot-stained snout bobbing, and prepared to reduce speed. He bled steam from the boiler, slowing the clattering wheels. The secondary track began to curve off to the south and the map showed a tunnel at the edge of town, just before the spur rejoined the main line. Tunnels were a dicey business sometimes, particularly if there was trouble in the city and the railroad temple guards were distracted by fires or rioting.

The engineer leaned out again, snout into the rushing air, and made sure the huge glassed-in lamp on the front of the train was burning, illuminating the pair of iron tracks snaking away into the darkness. One claw was firmly on the brake lever. In his twelve years of service, the engineer had seen stray molk on the tracks, short-horns daring the rushing speed of the wheels, even brigands trying to pry up the rails themselves. His mouth gaped, breathing in the tepid, smoky air of the city rushing past.

The train slowed, spitting sparks into the darkness, rumbling and swaying as the incandescent glare of the main lamp was swallowed by mossy brick walls. Steam and smoke boiled back, suddenly trapped in the tight confines of a tunnel. Car after car vanished into the side of a long ridge cupping the southern side of the city.

The tunnel mouth was faced with slabs of imported granite and a builder's plaque had once surmounted the capstone of the arch. The plaque was long gone, stolen by local crook-tails, but the railway easement itself was lined with spiked wooden barriers to keep looters, children and animals away from the tracks.

This had not, however, stopped two figures from cutting through the barrier with a monofilament saw. Now, as the end of the train came into view, the larger figure scrambled up the gravel easement, long kheerite-style cloak flapping around her legs as she ran alongside, grasped the step-rail up to the baggage car and swung aboard. The second figure jogged beside the train, gasping for breath, and then a clawed hand reached down, seized forearm-to-forearm and dragged Parker aboard.

Inside, by the dim light of a yellow bulb, the pilot coughed a little and untangled his cloak, leaning against a stained wooden wall. Outside there was nothing but darkness as the train clattered through the tunnel.

"See – wheeze! – very simple. Easy as pie. Anyone could do it."

Magdalena wrinkled her flat black nose and drew the cowl of the cape down over her eyes. The duffel bags on her back made standing difficult in the narrow passage. Most Jehanan were a little larger than a human, but they didn't have a hump of heavy comp and surveillance equipment strapped to their backs either.

"Yes, I can see this." The Hesht twitched her long, tendril-like whiskers. "Now where do we lair up? Not so many places to hide on a train…"

"Didn't I say I had everything covered?" Parker grinned, face bright with sweat. "You are a cat of little faith! You'd think, after diverting the train worked, you'd begin to believe in me…"

"Hrrr! We were blessed by the Huntress herself to find a switching station unguarded. The trouble in the city has driven all these groundcrawlers into their holes…"

Undaunted by her pessimism, Parker dug into his jacket, tossed away two crumpled tabac boxes and drew out a paper envelope. His eyes twinkled with delight. "And you just wanted to wait near the apartment…See, train passes! All we need to do is find a seat."

Magdalena beckoned with her paw, examined the papers and sniffed loudly. "Forgeries, I suppose. Or stolen…"

"They are not!" Parker snatched them back. "I paid good solid shatamanu for them. The only problem is…" The train rumbled out of the tunnel and suddenly everything grew a little quieter without the reverb of walls outside. "…they're not reserved seats. So we might have to stand."

"I see." Magdalena's lips curled back from her shiny white teeth. She stuck out her tongue, testing the humid, warm air. "At least my tail won't freeze to the door of the baggage compartment this time."

Parker scowled, crossing his arms. "That was not my fault. Anderssen decided we should take that night train!"

Maggie started to hiss, then restrained herself. She was very tired. "Enough. I will lead, you will follow and we will find seats, if any exist on this benighted contraption."

The Hesht turned, squeezing the duffels through the doorway into the passage running down the side of the train. Every time she swung her shoulders, the bags jammed against the wall, which made for slow going. Parker hitched up his own duffel bag and followed along behind.

He wondered, as his legs acclimatized themselves to the swaying motion of the train, if Gretchen had managed to escape the city, or even the monastery. Oh god, what if she's waiting back at the apartment right now? What if she's been captured?

But there was no way to tell and no way to go back. He wasn't even sure the voice blaring in his earbug had been hers, but what else could he do? It was enough to keep from falling as the train shuddered into a long curve, heading down out of the hills towards the plain of the Phison.

Aboard the Captain's Launch

Approaching the Cornuelle

 

"Hold on," Sho-i Asale said, twisting her control yoke. The launch dodged to one side as a section of hull plating flew past. The fragment was only a dark blot against the abyssal darkness beyond the windows. Hadeishi, standing beside the airlock, felt a twinge in his gut, realizing they had entered the corona of debris around the Cornuelle.

"We're clear for final approach." The pilot eased back the thrusters. "I have visual on the aft shuttle bay."

Hadeishi braced one arm against the side of the lock, peering through the forward windows. The aft bay doors seemed intact, though he could see the starboard ventral point defense mount had taken some kind of directed beam damage. The shipskin was bubbled and twisted like taffy. Two stubby anti-missile railguns were exposed, the armor over their emplacement entirely missing, leaving a ragged edge. Mottled, ashy expanses of the shipskin showed the rippling effects of an energy overload to the reactive armor.

"Any response to your access code?" The Chu-sa could hear himself breathing harshly.

"None." Asale twisted around in her seat, looking back at the captain and the two Marines. "I can take us around to the other side. The launch bay is well armored, perhaps -"

"No." Hadeishi tapped the EVA bag clamped to his chestplate. "Too far from engineering. We'll need to get there first, if any good is to be done. Open the lock. We'll jet across and cut our way in if need be. Keep transmitting our ident codes. Something might wake up in time to let us inside."

"Hai, kyo." The pilot turned back to her controls and began nudging the launch sideways towards the hull a meter at a time.

Hadeishi craned his neck, watching for the surface of the shuttle bay doors to appear in the tiny window of the airlock. A cold band twisted tighter around his heart each time his chrono elapsed another minute. The Cornuelle had failed to reply to their hails as they approached, and even the navigational display in the launch showed the light cruiser's wildly degraded orbit. The two-minute-long irregular burn by the out-of-control number three engine had thrown the Cornuelle into a sharp dive towards the planetary atmosphere.

The Chu-sa was sure the abrupt cut-off of the misfiring engine had been the work of someone still alive, aboard, throwing the ship into emergency shutdown. The damage inflicted by the mines was severe – Hadeishi had never seen his ship vomit so much atmosphere, so much radioactive debris, in any of her countless engagements – but the loss of navigational control was a mystery. Something else has happened, he thought grimly, pressing his forehead against the inside of his helmet. Perhaps main comp was damaged, or one of the control nodes severed. He refused to believe everyone aboard was dead.

On her new heading, the Cornuelle would not corkscrew to a fiery doom – gravity had already seized hold and she was wallowing towards a tentative orbit – but the upper reaches of the Jaganite atmosphere were already reaching up to clutch at her battered surface. Friction would follow as the cruiser settled deeper into the thermosphere, and that would steal her angular momentum. The end would come, later rather than sooner, with a glowing, red-hot hull and the stress of re-entry tearing the crippled starship apart.

"Twenty meters." Asale tapped the braking jets and the launch gentled to a halt relative to the crippled ship. "Cycling airlock."

The inner door irised open and Hadeishi stepped in, followed by Fitzsimmons. The launch airlock was too small to allow more than two men in z-suits with all the repair gear which could be salvaged from the launch strapped to their bodies inside at once. Hadeishi squeezed to one side – the Marine was nearly a foot taller than he – and took hold of the outer door locking bar.

Deckard waved cheerfully as the inner door closed between them. Hadeishi waited, listening to Asale breathing and counting their displacement from the Cornuelle, while air pumped out of the lock.

"Nineteen…back to twenty…nineteen…holding at twenty meters."

The outer lock blossomed open. Hadeishi clenched his fists around the jet controls and puffed out of the opening. The vast bulk of the Cornuelle loomed before him, a wall of ebon darkness slanting up against a rampart of stars. He thumbed the thruster control and swept toward the bay doors outlined on his visor by suit comp. Fitzsimmons waited two breaths, and then followed himself, careful to keep from fouling the medical aid pack on his back in the airlock.

"I have the bay access door in sight," Hadeishi said, changing course slightly.

Understoo -

The autonomic targeting system in the nearer railgun suddenly identified the launch as a hostile vessel launching self-propelled missiles towards the Cornuelle. The anti-missile mount flared a brilliant blue-white. A depleted uranium needle two millimeters long accelerated to near-relativistic speed, exited the magnetic 'racetrack' and punched through the captain's launch from end to end. The needle pierced the forward pressure windows fifteen centimeters from Asale's head, flashed the length of the tiny cabin, drilled directly through Deckard's z-suit, his ribs on the right side, one lung and then out the other and impaled itself in the launch's magnetically shielded Hosukai-Tesla reaction drive chamber. An enormous amount of energy vomited into the interior of the tiny ship as the needle stopped abruptly. Deckard was incinerated as thousand degree plasma flooded in through the rupture in his z-suit. Asale lasted a moment longer, smashed against the control panel, her suit withstanding the pressure and heat for three and then four seconds, then suffering catastrophic structural failure. The launch spaceframe buckled, unable to contain the explosion and then sublimated into a blast of heat and light and debris.

The explosion flared out, smashing into Hadeishi and Fitzsimmons and hurling them against the side of the Cornuelle. Both men were still accelerating towards the boat bay door. Fitzsimmons and his heavy load afforded the Chu-sa a tiny fraction of protection, but the Marine's corpse became a missile a half-second later and Hadeishi was slapped against the armored hull of the ship by a giant, raging hand of flame.

The z-suit stiffened on impact, trying to bleed away the shock of collision, but the violence was too much for Hadeishi's nervous system to absorb and he grayed out, grasping fruitlessly at the smooth metal surface of the hull. His medband triggered, flushing his system with adrenaline, anti-radiation agents and painkillers. Tangled in Fitzsimmons' body, fragments of the launch smashing against the bay doors around him, the Chu-sa skidded across the hull, impelled by the dying wavefront of the explosion.

Jolted back to awareness by the drugs, his heart hammering violently in his chest, arms and legs numb, Hadeishi twisted, trying to get his hands and feet face-front. Fitzsimmons' charred z-suit sloughed away, breaking up as the straps for the Marine's ruck disintegrated. A cloud of blackened and melted medpacks flew out around the Chu-sa. Hundreds of hours of z-suit drill as a cadet and a junior officer reasserted themselves in a reflexive, four-square crouch. The gripper pads in Hadeishi's gloves and boots realized they were in proximity to shipskin and activated. Friction increased dramatically between the two surfaces and the Chu-sa slid to a halt.

Ionized gases and plasma-hot particles blew past, dinging on his faceplate and z-suit. Hadeishi focused, saw the boat bay door was a hundred meters away, and tried to grapple mentally with the concept his launch, his pilot and two of his men had been obliterated from the universe in less than sixteen seconds of sidereal time.