White smoke vomited through the perforated door, strobing with the afterimage of a brilliant flash. Dawd flung the panels open and rolled in on the floor, automatics snapping in both hands. He emptied both coils within five seconds, spraying the room with whining flechettes. Jehanan soldiers – there were easily twenty in the luxurious suite – staggered and howled, flayed by the bullets. Colmuir swung around the corner, his visor outlining the prince crawling underneath an enormous mound-shaped bed, and fired a grenade at each side of the room.
Heavy bullets slammed into his shoulder and chest. Colmuir grunted, flung back by the impact and felt something break in his shoulder. Twin blasts tore through the enemy, flinging scaled bodies in every direction. The master sergeant's medband swamped the injury with stabilizer and nopain. The Macana in his hands roared, ripping a stream of flechettes across three Jehanan soldiers blazing away at the door with their HK-45B's. They exploded in a cloud of red mist and their pulped bodies collapsed, shattering a thin-legged table.
Dawd sprang up, darting forward, smoking ammo coils ejecting from his pistols. His boot smashed into the face of a Jehanan soldier trying desperately to clear the action of his rifle. The slick went down squealing, and the sergeant smashed its eye socket with an empty pistol. Undaunted, the soldier twisted, tail lashing around to crack across Dawd's wounded arm. Gasping, the Skawtsman pitched to the side, losing the automatic.
The Jehanan staggered up, producing a dirk-style blade as long as Dawd's arm.
Colmuir slumped to the ground outside the doorway, teeth gritted, numb fingers managing to eject the emptied coil in his rifle. He caught the double-wrapped clip, swapped it end for end and jammed it back into the Macana.
The sword slashed down as Dawd rolled to the side, piercing carpet and the wooden floor beneath. Hissing in outrage, the Jehanan stamped down with a broad, leathery foot, catching the Skawtsman on the hip. Pinned, the Eagle Knight jerked up and a combat knife was in his hand. Dawd stabbed the slick in the stomach and a flood of entrails, half-digested noodles and blood spewed out, drenching him. Snout gaping wide in a dying hiss, the Jehanan toppled over.
Dawd rolled out of the mess, jammed a fresh coil into his Nambu and popped up.
A handful of Jehanan soldiers, stunned and disoriented by the grenade blast, blinked owlishly at him. The Eagle Knight, rather rattled himself, squeezed the trigger of his automatic in quick succession. Slicks jerked, strings cut, and more gore patterned the walls.
"Get the lad t' safety!" Colmuir shouted, managing to swing himself around. More Jehanan soldiers were storming up the main stairs into the third-floor hallway. Some of the other doors on the passage had banged open, surprised and wary slicks staring out. The master sergeant fired his last grenade through the nearest door as it slammed closed. There was a heavy thump and smoke leaked out from the sill.
A crowd of soldiers burst from the staircase. Colmuir switched his Macana to full automatic and sprayed the lot of them as they boiled up. Bodies staggered, shredded by the cloud of flechettes, and there was a cacophony of screams. The wall behind them exploded in a cloud of plaster dust and splintered wood. The flash-suppressor on the assault rifle began to glow red.
Dawd kicked the prince's foot, still exposed under the edge of the bed. "Mi'lord, come on! We've got t -"
The sound of the bathroom door opening had been drowned by the wailing of crippled and dying Jehanan soldiers. The sergeant caught a glimpse of something leaping towards him and then his head slammed around, combat visor flying askew, and he went down like a sack of meal.
Half-blinded by sparks flooding across his vision, Dawd tried to heave himself up. His medband squeaked angrily. Someone was dragging the prince out from under the bed by the foot. A horrified squealing sound penetrated the Eagle Knight's groggy daze as Tezozуmoc clutched the bedlegs for dear life. Heartsick at the sound, the Skawtsman staggered up.
In the doorway, Colmuir had switched back to semi-automatic. A reckless Jehanan popped out of one of the hallway doors, automatic rifle stuttering bright yellow flashes. The master sergeant potted him with one burst, sending the creature sprawling.
With a second's breathing room, the master sergeant rolled back into the room and whistled with delight to see the nearest Jehanan corpse was festooned with old-style Pakrit fragmentation grenades. He snatched up the bandolier and parked himself against the wall.
Then he realized neither Dawd nor the prince was in the room.
A fresh burst of gunfire tore across the wall above his head, spilling dust into his hair. Colmuir grimaced, plucked four of the grenades from the belt and slapped them together with stickytape. More rounds whined across the room, shattering the rest of the glassware which had so far escaped the fighting.
"Good morning," he mumbled, waiting for the trample of rushing feet in the hallway, packet of grenades at the ready. He started to hum to himself. "It's a fine, fine day on the banks o' the Clyde an' I'm waiting for a bonny lass to come singing in th' sun…singing with her hair in braids an' bonnets, waiting for me lass t' come singing…" He flexed his trigger finger, poised, hearing the rustle of many native feet on the carpeted floor outside. "She's coming for me, an' I'm waiting, sun on my face, breezes in my hair, waiting by th' freshet Clyde, waiting…"
An armored personnel carrier rumbled past on the street, rubberized tracks grinding ancient concrete to gravel. A squad of Jehanan soldiers clung to the metal roof, peaked caps tight under their long jaws, legs hanging over the side. Mrs. Petrel shrank back into the shadow of a ruined shop front, one hand behind her to press the Hesht into the wall.
Now, the insect chittered in her hair, step out and wave cheerfully, dear.
"Here we go," Mrs. Petrel muttered and marched out into the thin sunlight, both hands raised. A cloud of diesel smoke drifted over her, eliciting a cough and then a short Jehanan riding in the commander's cupola of a truly enormous tank spotted her.
"Halt!" Bhrigu shouted into the driver's compartment of the Gorond-class heavy tank. There was a grinding sound of clashing gears and the engine belched dirty gray smoke as the machine ground to a halt. The kujen leaned down, taking in the unexpected sight of the Imperial Resident's wife in a tattered festival gown standing beside the street, broken shoes in her hand. He rubbed the tip of his snout. "You look lost, human."
Behind the prince, a column of tanks, armored cars, and trucks rolled to a halt amid a thick cloud of exhaust. Two columns of infantry jogged up, their sergeants bawling commands, deploying a screen of Jehanan riflemen to watch the buildings and the road ahead.
"I've come looking for you, mi'lord," Greta replied, straightening herself to stare icily up at the little Jehanan in a helmet adorned with golden horns perched on the massive turret. "It's time to put an end to this insurrection, I think."
"Do you?" Bhrigu hooted wryly. He felt itchy, sitting atop the rumbling bulk of the tank, his back exposed to so many relatives carrying guns. "Our mutual friend" – he tapped an Imperial comm tucked into the front pocket of his armored vest – "suggested I make haste to a building nearby – I understand the conspirators behind all this…" He waved a claw at the sky crisscrossed with gleaming contrails. "…are gathered to plot my overthrow."
"Yes," Mrs. Petrel said, climbing up onto the track housing. "They are only a few streets over. Kurbardar Humara has betrayed you, you know."
"Has he?" Bhrigu expressed great surprise. Swaying a little, Petrel laid her hand on the enormous barrel of the main gun. From the higher vantage, she was suddenly aware of many attentive ear-holes turned towards her and the prince. Quite a number of Jehanan officers had gathered unobtrusively near the tank. They were all very well armed.
"Yes," she said. "He plans to use the civil disturbance – unrest fomented, I must say, by enemies of the Empire who seek to dupe the more radical elements among your people into destroying themselves and weakening Venadan – to murder you, your loyal officers and to seize the kujenate himself."
Bhrigu hissed in alarm and outrage. He struck a commanding pose – slightly diminished by the nervous flutter of his right claw. "Then we will crush this nest of vipers with a swift, sure heel! All units prepare to advance!"
Mrs. Petrel hooted softly at him, trying to recapture his attention, wishing she'd hadn't lost her resonators in all the fuss. She was looking back down the road, past the columns of vehicles. A truck was barreling along the sidewalk at a dangerous speed. "Wait just a moment, mi'lord. There is someone approaching who should accompany you in this moment of victory."
"There is?" Bhrigu turned, unsettled, and bleated in outrage as the Scandia two-ton swerved, scattering his soldiers and screeched to a halt only inches from the side of the tank, dust and gravel spattering against dull gray armor. "What is this? Who are -"
The door of the truck banged open and a pale rose-colored female climbed out, stepping daintily onto the rear deck. She was immediately followed by a Jehanan of impressive size, all cloaked and cowled in the manner of the highland tribesmen. One hand, scarred and chipped, rested on the female's slim shoulder with a proprietary air. The other rested on the silver-chased hilt of a cruel-looking sword.
"You are Bhrigu," the chieftain growled, raising the hackles on back of Petrel's neck. The creature radiated undiluted menace. "I've something for you." Roughly, he shoved the female forward, drawing an outraged squeak as she fell against the turret.
Mrs. Petrel became aware of every single Jehanan within sight growing completely still. Bhrigu stared down upon the girl at his feet and turned a queer, pasty-yellow color.
"Bhazuradeha? What -"
"The spoils of war," boomed the highland chieftain, gesturing dismissively at the poetess. "The traitor Humara is doomed, unable to even keep his choicest prize in safety. See how she cowers before you? She knows well who the victor will be…"
Bhrigu was struck speechless for a moment, but then he turned, snout wrinkling in furious suspicion, to Mrs. Petrel, who had been glad to catch a breath or two.
"You…" The kujen started to sputter in outrage. "You had her stolen!"
"Fairly captured, mi'lord," the girl proclaimed in a clear, carrying voice, taking the opportunity to stand up, brush herself off and kneel – as best she was able – before him on the turret ring. The crowd of Jehanan soldiers in the street had now grown quite large and every long reptilian face was turned towards the tableau atop the tank. "Taken in a sudden, daring raid by you r…loyal vassals." She turned, inclining her slim head towards the Arachosian. "Oh, there was a terrible struggle, but they overthrew nearly a brigade of Humara's finest troops to pluck me from a perfumed, flowered garden where I languished, a cruelly kept captive!"
Gher Shahr twitched at the words loyal vassal but managed to keep hold of his temper.
Mrs. Petrel, gently reminded by the locust in her ear, climbed painfully down from the tank and picked her way through the rubble back into the burned out shop front. Parker was lying on the ground, a roll of cloth under his head, breathing irregularly.
Outside, Bhazuradeha gazed adoringly up at the stunned kujen, hands crossed at his feet, her voice rising in a plaintive song describing her captivity and long adoration of the distant, noble prince, the only person who could possibly rescue her from such a powerful master. The entire street was perfectly silent, nearly five thousand soldiers listening keenly to her crystal-clear voice.
"Let's lift him up," Mrs. Petrel said, leaning down beside Magdalena and taking hold of Parker's hands. The Hesht blinked her eyes open, stirring from exhaustion. "There is a truck outside with medical equipment. A doctor is coming, too, but he won't be here for a bit. There's a bit of a traffic jam…"
Sergeant Dawd eased through a servant's doorway and found himself in a long, low hallway running behind the suite. The passage was very dimly lit – there were some small bluish lights spaced along the roof – but he could hear the prince snif-fling somewhere ahead. A massive whoomp! boomed behind him, followed by the rattle of gunfire and faint screams.
The master sergeant is hard at work…I'd best be quick! He'll need my help…
Combat knife in one hand and his remaining Nambu in the other, the Eagle Knight crept forward, keeping his wounded shoulder to the wall. He could hear someone walking quickly, accompanied by the sound of dragging feet.
A door-wheel rattled open and light spilled into the hallway. A human silhouetted against the light pushed the hunched-over shape of Tezozуmoc through the opening with a warning growl. The prince cried out, hitting his shin, and there was a cold laugh.
"You're a pitiful specimen," the creature wearing Timonen's shape declared in a heavy Finnish accent as he stepped through the door.
Dawd lunged out of the darkness, slashing his combat-knife at the man's neck.
The Finn blurred aside, reacting with incredible speed. The Eagle Knight's gray-green eyes widened as his blade clove thin air. Timonen spun, face peculiarly empty of expression and smashed a fist into Dawd's chest. The Skawtsman coughed blood, flew across the hallway and bounced from the wall. He staggered, finger clenching on the trigger of the Nambu. A double-flare of propellant blazed in the darkness, sketching the outline of the Finn lunging low, head twisted to one side at an impossible angle, one arm stiff to stab elongated needlelike fingers into the Eagle Knight's unarmored armpit. Dawd felt a rushing cold chill leach the strength from his arm.
Gasping, he looked down and saw razor-sharp fingers dripping with blood withdraw from his side. Ice flooded his chest and he slid down the wall, leaving a crimson smear. The Lengian loomed over him, cold blue eyes gleaming in the darkness. Dawd gaped, paralyzed, watching the man's head shift gelatinously, sliding back onto his neck. Unnaturally long arms coiled back into shoulder sockets and the creature flicked droplets of blood from his fingers, once more in their proper shape.
The Lengian leaned close, seizing the Eagle Knight's head with his hands, thumbs pressing into the corners of Dawd's eyes. The Skawtsman cried out in horrible pain once, and then he choked into silence. The creature crouched over his body and there was a slithering, sticky sound in the half-light.
Panting, his stomach clenching angrily, Tezozуmoc managed to get to his feet. He was in some kind of dimly-lit stairwell. The smell of urine, rotten bread and ancient candle wax permeated the air.
"Hello?" The prince groped about, finding a railing and stepped back to the door he'd been so roughly pushed through. "Is…is anyone there?"
"Here, mi'lord," a half-familiar voice issued from the darkness, followed by the flare of a hand-lamp. Tezozуmoc blinked, blinded, and raised a hand to shield his eyes. "Ah, sorry. There's a bit of a mess to clean up – just wait a moment."
The prince shuddered with relief, glad beyond measure to hear the Skawtsman's voice. "You've killed the…the Swede then?"
There was an affirmative grunt. "He was a Finn, I think," Dawd said, his voice hoarse and dull. "Facial structure is a little different…" A hissing sound cut the air and Tezozуmoc flinched, his nostrils assailed by a sharp acidic smell. "But he's done for now."
The Eagle Knight turned back, lamp shining on the floor. The prince saw the young Skawtsman was drenched with blood, his gunrig in disarray, armor pocked by bullet impacts, hair haggard and awry. Dawd tucked his Nambu away and held out a hand to Tezozуmoc.
"Step carefully, mi'lord, the floor is a bit…slippery."
The prince swallowed, nodded and hurried past the body dissolving on the ground. Dawd gestured for him to go ahead.
"Where's Master Sergeant Colmuir?" Tezozуmoc asked, starting to feel ill again. He hadn't had a drink in hours and hours and he was feeling very poorly. "How will we get out of here?"
Dawd coughed wetly, but patted the young man on the shoulder. "Not to worry, I'm sure the master sergeant and I can figure something out…Yes, just through that door there."
Tezozуmoc crept through the entry to the bathroom, tense as a rabbit on a full moon night, but was surprised at the silence pervading the wrecked suite of rooms.
His head held high, kujen Bhrigu stamped up a flight of grand, red-carpeted stairs and onto the third floor landing. A wall of soldiers preceded him, rifles at the ready. A young sirdar from the 111th Assault Brigade checked the passage, eyeing the scattered corpses with a disdainful eye and waved his king forward. Smoke clogged the air and several sections of wall were burning.
"Clear the way!" The officer barked. Two of his troopers stepped aside.
Bhrigu stepped over a drift of bodies and into a mangled, bullet-riddled doorway. Mrs. Petrel had hung back a bit as the royal presence entered the hotel – a large number of dazed mutineers were being rounded up and herded out of the building, but she was careful to keep out of the line of fire if some zealot jumped out of a closet with a gun – but now she stepped up to the kujen's shoulder and took in the scene before him.
Prince Tezozуmoc stood near the middle of the room, a heavy Imperial assault rifle slung over his shoulder, the muzzle – still glowing cherry red and steaming softly – covering a pack of haggard, bloody Jehanan officers kneeling against the wall. The young man was watching his captives with a fixed, grim expression, teeth clenched tight. His hands were very steady on the handgrips of the weapon. His black skinsuit did not show any smudges, gore or dust.
"Ah, superbly done!" Bhazuradeha exclaimed, stepping past the kujen, who was staring very suspiciously at the wreckage, bodies and debris scattered around the room. "The prince of the air has swooped down on pinioned wings, seizing the conspirators in their very lair! Look, mi'lord, see who he has taken captive for you: the king of land and sea, the conqueror of the four quarters!"
The kujen tore his eyes away from the sight of two battered, exhausted Imperial Eagle Knights sitting with their backs to the wall, cleaning their weapons and reloading with numbed, trembling fingers. The younger one had a pair of darkened goggles over his eyes and half his face swathed in quickheal gel. Bhrigu glanced at Mrs. Petrel, gave her a lingering, suspicious stare and then turned back to the poetess, who had stepped to the largest of the captive officers and twisted his head around, her tiny rose-colored hand tight on his snout.
"Kurbardar Humara," Bhrigu said solemnly, looking down on the battered-looking officer. The scar along the Jehanan's snout twisted, but with the girl holding his mouth shut, he could say nothing. "Your treachery has cost many lives, but by the quick thinking of many loyal men…and women" – he nodded to Bhazuradeha – "your foul and treasonous rebellion has been crushed."
The kujen made a slashing motion with his hand. "Take him away!"
The troopers from the 111th swarmed forward, binding the captured officers and dragging them roughly away. Humara was the last to disappear through the door, his eyes filled with rage.
"That one," Mrs. Petrel said quietly to the kujen, "will have to be killed."
"They will all be executed before nightfall," Bhrigu said, tongue flicking between his teeth. "All these traitors will be rounded up and shot. Their families will be exiled, their estates and properties confiscated."
Mrs. Petrel nodded, beginning to relax. She felt terribly, terribly tired. "What about the rebellious elements in the countryside, in Takshila and Gandaris?"
Bhrigu regarded her rather slyly. "I'm sure the Imperial Army can take care of such rabble as runs amuck in the other principalities. Aren't your Colonel Yacatolli's men already deployed across the length and breadth of the Five Rivers?" He wrinkled his snout. "Parus is wracked by civil unrest. There is no way my forces could essay to campaign against these other princes while my position is insecure at home!"
"I see." Mrs. Petrel forced a cold smile. "And if these mutinous lords are suppressed, then Imperial forces will be required to…maintain order…in the north. For some goodly time to come. Are you sure some Parusian regiments could not be spared to maintain civil administration in the rebellious towns? Taxes will have to be collected, the law enforced…"
Bhrigu clicked the point of a small claw against his teeth. "A pressing point," he admitted. "Perhaps an arrangement could reached, apportioning these taxes in an equitable manner…"
On the other side of the city, in a quiet suburb, Itzpalicue rubbed her hands together, well pleased. The darkened room around her was lit by the glow of v-displays and filled with the hum of machinery and men and women talking rapidly into their comm-threads.
"Cut!" she barked, tapping a nail on her display.
In a side-pane, Lachlan scratched his head, leaning back in his chair in relief.
"Freeze feed, scrub out the jitter from those spyeyes and post a copy to the Mirror as soon as a t-relay is available." The old NГЎhuatl woman opened a channel to all of her operators. "Well done, all. Very well done." She smiled, showing yellowed old teeth like a row of grainy pearls. "Once the city is secured by loyalist troops, go to half-shifts. Release time-delay on all controlled comms. Time for the army to clean up our mess. Everyone can get some sleep."
She yawned herself and sat down in a wicker chair from upstairs, completely spent. The warm feeling of a job well done, despite unexpected adversity, filled her breast. Itzpalicue turned to speak to Lachlan and saw the young man had already leaned back in his chair and was snoring softly. As she watched, one of his technicians draped a patterned blanket over his chest and arms, then reached out and shut down the v-feed.
"Well done, my boy," Itzpalicue said to the darkened screen. "Ah, I should rest myself. Tomorrow will be just as bus y…" She consulted her chrono and bared her teeth. "Villeneuve should arrive soon and my services will be required again. Ah, this work is never done."
The Cornuelle
At the Edge of the Jaganite Atmosphere
Wincing, Hadeishi settled himself into the command station in secondary control. Two medical orderlies assisted him, but despite their gentle hands, every nerve and muscle in his body throbbed with pain. At the navigator's station, a deathly-looking Sho-i Smith stared at him with haggard eyes.
"Kyo?" The boy's voice was a frail whisper.
"Prepare for maneuvering burn," Hadeishi gasped in response, shifting his hips in the shockchair. "Engineering – are you live on this channel?"
The Chu-sa had two earbugs and two comm-threads tacked in, one on each side of his face. Static and warbling interference intermittently flooded both channels.
We're here, an unfamiliar voice responded. This is Yoyontzin. Isoroku has gone up into the drive deck access to control the engines from the maintenance panel on level two.
"What?" Hadeishi kept his face still. Smith and the other junior officers in the secondary bridge were already on the ragged edge. All of them were injured – the communications officer had taken a bad cut on the side of his head and had one arm taped to his chest. A little less than half of the equipment was working – most of the control panels were dead – and there were signs of an explosion near the roof. A bitter taste of electrical smoke hung in the air. "What happened to the telemetry relay?"
Keeps dropping out. Yoyontzin's voice was cracking, veering into panic. We've replaced the hard-line twice, and it just keeps dying. I have comm to the Thai-i on a separate channel. I'll…I'll just relay what you need by hand.
"Understood. Stand by." Hadeishi muted the channel and stared at Smith. "Navigational scanners? External sensors?"
"Up and running, kyo." The midshipman tapped his panel. "On your pane now."
The command display curving around Hadeishi flickered to life. A set of v-panes unfolded, showing minimal altitude, position, direction and velocity data for the ship. The Chu-sa's jaw tightened and he forced himself to focus. The pain in his legs was wearing away at his concentration one bite at a time. "We're deep," he said, checking the altitude of the ship. "Hull temperature?"
"Rising, but slowly." Smith crouched over his panel, working the glyphs with one hand. "A shallow descent."
"All that's kept us alive so far," Hadeishi said, reaching up to smooth his short beard. He grimaced – the Medical techs had shaved half of his face to get gel tape on his radiation burns – and switched back to the engineering channel. "We have navigational control. Stand by for burn plot. Smith-tzin, we're going to have do a preprogrammed maneuver – the live relay to the engines is down. Isoroku will have to fire them remotely."
"Hai, kyo." The boy began tapping on his display. Hadeishi opened a Navplot pane himself and searched around on the console for a stylus. They had all disappeared, despite magnetic adhesive which was supposed to keep them in place. Somewhere there are millions of panel styli in a bucket, he thought blackly, millions of them.
Remembering a trick from the Academy, he slipped a rank tab from the collar of his z-suit and twisted the retaining clip out. The metal point had the right kind of electrical signature to activate the sensor layer on the v-pane. Leaning over, he began sketching a trajectory on the display showing the round bulk of Jagan, his ship and the multiple layers of ever-thickening atmosphere.
"Burn pattern is done," Smith said a moment later, knuckling the glyph to transfer his work to the captain's station. Hadeishi leaned back a little, watching the calcs load – so slowly without main comp to supplement the display panel units! – and nodded. He meshed his own path-plot, double-checked the fuel levels last reported for the engines and tapped his comm thread awake.
"We're transferring burn parameters now," he said to Yoyontzin, whose rapid breathing sounded very loud in his ears. Hadeishi tapped the runner-glyph. The panel winked green, reporting a successful transfer.
Hadeishi tapped his other thread up and said: "All hands, prepare for maneuvering burn. Secure yourselves and your compartments. Burn will begin in…"
Yoyontzin was saying "Wait a moment, wait a moment…I've lost Isoroku's comm. Oh, there it is. I'm transferring…" There was unintelligible muttering on the channel. "He's loading the params now. Should be ready in about six minutes…"
"Stand by for maneuvering burn in eight, I say, eight minutes," Hadeishi announced. He lifted his chin at Smith and the other officers in the secondary. "Tack everything down in this space. No loose debris!"
Seven minutes later, maneuvering drives one, three and six ignited. Hadeishi felt the trembling vibration in his spine, stiffened into his shockchair and then he heard – for the first time in the six years he'd served aboard her – the Cornuelle groan in pain. The bulkheads twisted as the ship began to accelerate, emitting a deep basso moan. Overhead panels shivered, the lights flickered, and his command console began to evince a strange wavering effect.
He could feel the ship twisting as she surged forward, her prow biting into the upper atmosphere.
"Yoyontzin! The drives are out of balance," Hadeishi snarled, sweat seeping down the back of his neck. "Tell Isoroku to shut down the burn!"
Endless seconds passed and then the engines fluttered to silence. The hull creaked and groaned, flexing back into shape. Hadeishi slowly unclenched both hands from his armrests. He tapped the thread along his left cheekbone.
"Yoyontzin," he said very slowly and clearly, "you have to get that telemetry relay working properly. All I need is engine control live on my panel. Just patch the line from the drive access directly through to me, that's all. Don't use a relay."
But, kyo , we'll lose comm with most of the ship -
"You will do this right now, engineer, or you will be shot."
Hadeishi shifted in his chair, swallowing a gasp of pain. His legs were growing numb. "Smith-tzin, shut down your panel and reroute the Navplot to my station. Then come over here and stand secondary pilot. We'll take the ship out of atmosphere by hand."
The midshipman scrambled up, tapping the skull-glyph to kill his console. A moment later, he was squeezed in beside Hadeishi, the smell of his sweat pungent with body-toxins.
"Navplot is live," Smith said, watching a new set of v-panes unfold. "Telemetry is…Kyo, we're losing altitude again."
"I see." Hadeishi was listening to the comm from engineering. The channel clicked off. "Stand by for a second burn."
"But we can't warn -"
"I know." The Chu-sa forced himself forward, ignoring the throbbing in his hip. A set of engineering panes appeared. "Drive six is entirely out of synch. We're going to go to a burn with four, five, one and two." His fingers skipped across the panel, keying a fresh set of fuel metrics. He stabbed a finger at a status display, dragging the pane across the console. "Watch this reaction mass reservoir. Six is misfiring because there is a rupture in the fuel exchanger, the drive is getting too much mass. The cross-feed might be damaged as well. I'm going to go to minimal burn on the other four – if they start drawing too much fuel, override me and shut everything down."
"Hai," Smith swallowed, focusing on the status pane. His hand was poised over an override glyph of an eagle twisted around the pads of a cactus. "Ready for burn."
Out of habit, Hadeishi cleared his throat. "All hands stand by for two-minute burn."
He slid four fingers up the controls for the engine array. The ship trembled to life again. Vibrations cascaded through the hull and decking, riding up into his spine. Hadeishi closed his eyes, ignoring the readouts and graphs. His fingers moved delicately, adjusting thrust.
"Altitude stabilizing," Smith whispered, watching the captain's thin fingers making minute adjustments, altering second by second. Some of the motions were almost invisible.
"Eyes on the fuel feed!" Hadeishi snapped. Cornuelle began to drag against the atmosphere, against gravity, her nose coming up, prow breaking free from vanishingly thin waves of air. The Chu-sa began to surge more thrust to the lower drive nacelles. The ship's vibration changed pitch. A groaning sound began to shudder through the decking and the Chu-sa backed off a fraction. His fingers were beginning to tremble. A cramp stabbed in his left calf.
"Fuel is good," Smith said, blinking sweat out of his eyes. "Burn is clean. Fuel exchanger is holding."
"Advancing to thirty percent," Hadeishi announced. "Everyone hold on."
Two forefingers slid up, the subsonic roar of anti-matter annihilating ratcheted up into the audible range. The console began to shiver, making the rank badge dance loose from the crevice where the captain had secured it. Outside, the black hull of the ship began to glow, here and there, as atmospheric particles collided at higher and higher velocities.
"Fuel is holding," Smith declared, watching the reservoirs sink lower. Without the comp to microcontrol the reaction chambers, too much fuel was dumping into the system. "We're going to clog if we keep this up…" he warned.
"I know." Sweat purled down the side of Hadeishi's nose. "Twenty seconds."
The Cornuelle evened out. The Chu-sa cut to just two drives, and then feathered them back. He could feel the ship settle, the vibration in her hull idling down, bulkheads shifting and stretching. Gravity clutched at him in an infinitesimal way, tugging at his sleeve. Hadeishi glanced at the Navplot, saw the ship had reached a nominally safe orbit and breathed out.
"Engines all stop," he ordered himself. All four controls slid to zero with a careful, controlled movement. "All stop."
The ship creaked, bulkheads shifted minutely and the deck ceased to vibrate.
The Cornuelle coasted into a new orbit.
"Get down to Engineering," Hadeishi said to Smith. "Take all six drives off-line. Main power to minimal – and make sure someone has pulled the plug on point defense and the shipskin!"
The Chu-sa stared at the Navplot with a wan, haggard face. Something was approaching. He could see the flare of engines against the curve of the world on a feed from one of the forward maneuvering cameras. Smith leaned over his shoulder, clinging to the railing.
"Go on!" Hadeishi slumped back into the stiff confines of the chair. His eyes were fixed on the burning mote speeding towards him. At least someone survived groundside… I hope it's one of ours.
The lone Navplot v-pane emitted a warning tone. Hadeishi blinked awake and was instantly furious with himself for falling asleep. Smith had not returned from engineering and the two ratings on the bridge turned to stare at him, expecting a command response to the warning.
The Chu-sa stared at the plot, saw dozens of transit signatures appearing in a series of evenly spaced concentric circles and relaxed a little.
"A fleet battle group," he said, realizing neither of the ratings had an active Navplot on their consoles. "Villeneuve must be returning from Keshewan with Tecaltan 88. Is our point defense finally off-line?"
The midshipman at the weapons panel bobbed her head, face sheened with sweat.
"Good." He tapped his comm thread to engineering. "Yoyontzin, do we have broadband commcast capability?"
Ah, soon, kyo. Soon. We're trying to decouple the external comm array from the power grid for the shipskin and point defense. Isoroku says…he says we'll be done as soon as we're done!
Hadeishi started to laugh, relieved, then coughed, feeling his chest constrict. "Ah, that hurts!"
On his plot, the ident codes of a cloud of destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers began to firm up. The mass of dreadnaughts, fleet tenders and troop ships in the middle of the globe were still indistinct behind a screen of countermeasures, but the Chu-sa could tell the Flingers-of-Stone had dropped into the system 'hot' and ready for battle.
The jarring realization reminded him of the Flower Priests and their plot. Villeneuve knew. He knew and his operations officer knew. His fingers curled into a tight claw on the armrest. They left us here to be expendable. So they could return – at a pre-planned time, or summoned by a relay drone waiting at the transit limit – just in time to rescue the situation on the planet. And be welcomed as heroes.
The muscle in the side of his neck spasmed and both of the ratings on the bridge looked away, purely terrified by the expression on Hadeishi's face.
Shuttle three drifted across the starboard ventral drive cowling of the Cornuelle, maneuvering to mate hatch with the access door beside boat bay two. In the boat's airlock, Sho-sa Kosho watched the cruiser glide past, face impassive, teeth clenched tight.
She looks horrible, Susan thought. The outer hull of the light cruiser was ripped and shattered, huge gouges torn from the shipskin, revealing tangled metal and ruptured compartments. Debris tinged and clanged from the shuttle, sending a queer ringing noise through the cargo compartment. The Sho-sa clicked her teeth.
"Kosho to the Cornuelle, come in please. Anyone? Come in."
There was a sputtering echo of static. Then a voice made itself recognizable out of the distortion. Sho-sa Kosho? Is that you? This is Yoyontzin in Engineering! Are you outside the hull?
"I'm here with shuttle three," she replied, wondering how bad things were aboard if an engineer-second was running communications. "Are the boat bay doors working?"
No, kyo. Nearly everything is dead. We've got a system infection. We do have power in the mains, but the Chu-sa says the weapons arrays and tracking are malfunctioning, so shipskin and most systems are unpowered for safety.
"I see." Susan turned to look at Felix and Helsdon, who were standing behind her. The cargo bay itself was crowded with the enormous shape of a reinforced cargo bladder. Water shimmered inside the translucent plastic, gently sloshing from side to side. "We're not going to be unloading today," she declared, "but I'm going across. Helsdon, do you feel well enough to come with me? Isoroku could use your help on damage control."
"Of course, kyo." Helsdon's z-suit and gear were charred and still marked with soot, but he had managed the shuttle flight up from Parus. "With this much damage, the Thai-i will need another six pairs of hands."
Susan nodded. "Heicho, with power down and the ship chewed to ribbons, we're not finding any medical attention for the wounded here. Take this shuttle back and shift everyone to the cantonment. Regimental medical can take care of them. Just make sure no one steals their boots. Understood?"
"Hai, kyo." The Marine nodded dully. She was exhausted and her armor was glassy with heat damage and scored with bullet splashes and bright, metallic scars made by Jehanan sword blades.
The shuttle glided to a halt and a green light winked on over the airlock.
Sho-sa? The pilot's voice was tentative. We're at the boat bay airlock…but it looks terrible out there! Are you sure you want -
Kosho thumbed the access panel and the inner door cycled open. "Going EVA now. Stand by until I'm inside. I'll comm you."
Helsdon followed, the remains of his toolkit slung over his shoulder and a package of scavenged comps in his hand. The lock doors irised closed behind them. Felix turned away, yawning, and went to find a place to catch a nap while the shuttle was downbound.
"Do we have tightbeam to the flagship?" Hadeishi slumped in his command chair, only barely illuminated by the emergency lights on the secondary overhead.
"Yes, sir." The midshipman tapped the ident code and recog passwords for a secure channel. "We're getting the response carrier wave…hello, Cornuelle calling the Tehuia, come in please." Two-Dog paused, listening. "I have a command priority call from Chu-sa Hadeishi, commanding the Cornuelle, for Admiral Villeneuve. Yes, it is urgent."
The acting communications officer turned to look at her captain. "They say only the Admiral's aide is available right now…"
"Put him on." Hadeishi's voice was cold and even.
Two-Dog keyed the transmission relay to the command chair. Hadeishi heard one of his comm threads warble to life. A v-pane unfolded on his console, showing Flag Captain Plamondon's broad, bearded face. The Novo French officer looked haggard and out-of-sorts.
Hadeishi! We've been calling you for at least an hour! What's your status? Long-range scan shows signs of fighting on the planet and wreckage in orbit. The officer's voice was tinged with panic. What the devil is happening down there?
"Put me through to Villeneuve," the Chu-sa said flatly. "Immediately."
Plamondon drew back at the harsh tone. Are you well, Chu-sa ? This v-feed is quite poor, but I don't believe you're on the command deck of an Astronomer -class cruiser…
"I have no time for you, Plamondon. Put me through to the admiral."
Watch your tongue, Hadeishi! The flag officer looked off screen for a moment. Sweat beaded along his collar and hairline. Has your ship been attacked? Are you injured? What happened to the freighters in orbit? Do you need combat support?
"My ship has been severely damaged," the Chu-sa snarled, rising up. His mutilated face came into clearer view on the v-feed pickup and the Frenchman recoiled. "My crew slaughtered, hundreds of common spacers murdered on two independent freighters and perhaps thousands of Imperial citizens killed, wounded or driven into flight on the planet below. Now put the admiral on the comm!"
Plamondon blanched momentarily, but then he rallied, outraged by the hectoring tone in the junior officer's voice. You do not demand things of the admiral! You will calm down and deliver a proper status report, Chu-sa, or you will be relieved of command!
"Will I?" Hadeishi started to laugh, making a horrible croaking sound. "My ship is crippled, Frenchman. There's been a full-scale revolt on the planet and I doubt the Army will give you a polite greeting either! Now, put Villeneuve on the channel and he can explain to me, face to face, why seventy of my crew died for no reason at all! Why you abandoned us here with a ship in desperate need of repair to jaunt off to a planet where I'm sure there was exactly nothing going on, until you were told to return!"
Told? That's a lie - The flag captain's voice chilled. You are making accusations -
"I am," Hadeishi interrupted, voice rising steadily. "One of those freighters was a Xochiyaotinime covert operations ship – this entire war was a flowery excuse for certain officers to be promoted and get good marks on their combat record for bravery and expedient dispatch of the enemy! A safe way to move up!"
Plamondon turned a sickly shade of parchment white. That is insane! What are you implying? We've no knowledge of -
Hadeishi stabbed his hand off-screen, pointing out to spinward, beyond the indisinict frontier of the Empire. "If your curst admiral wants battle, he should go hunting Khaid or Megair in the empty systems beyond the Rim! Then he can see how real battle feels! Then he can watch the dead pile up in Medical, hanging in the hallways like sides of rotted beef! Then he can buy his precious medals with honest bl -"
A slim hand, still gloved in the matte black of a Fleet z-suit, slashed down on the Chu-sa's panel, severing the connection.
"What?" Hadeishi blinked away tears, trying to force himself up from the chair. Another hand pressed into his chest, holding him prisoner. "Why did you do that?"
Susan Kosho stared at him, the corners of her mouth tight with anger, eyes fierce. "What are you doing? Have you lost all sense of self-preservation?"
"They betrayed us," Hadeishi whispered, feeling his last vestige of strength drain away, leaking from arms, legs, and chest like a spilled jar, leaving him hollow and spent. "We were chosen to die – as soon as we arrived, they saw our service jacket – they knew we could be cast aside without cost…"
Kosho leaned close, trying to catch the last of his words, but the Chu-sa fell silent. The lieutenant commander looked around the bridge, saw the two midshipmen were staring back at her with ashen faces and gave them both a steady, fulminating glare.
"I am taking the Chu-sa to Medical. Remain at your posts. If anyone calls from the Tehuia, inform them we're heavily damaged, the captain is wounded and I will call them back as soon as the situation has stabilized."
Two-Dog nodded weakly and hunched over her station, concentrating fixedly on the display.
Kosho levered back the arms of the shockchair and gently eased her captain up. He seemed very small and frail. In z-g, she could carry him under one arm, kicking from stanchion to stanchion. The corridor outside was blackened with fire damage and nothing seemed to be working, but after years of service aboard she could find her way through the ship by touch if need be.
Instinctively, she moved up-ship, heading for the Chu-sa's cabin, but just past bulkhead sixteen, she found the passageway blocked by a temporary pressure seal. Everything beyond the damage control barrier seemed to be in ruins. Guiding his limp body ahead of hers with one hand, Susan turned aside, descended the gangway to the portside hallway and found herself, fifteen minutes later, at the door to her own cabin.
The pressure door had lost power, but she managed to force the panel aside and drifted in, head-lamp glowing on the walls and glancing across her personal effects. For a wonder, everything seemed to be intact. The tiny pair of rooms had not lost pressure or suffered fire damage. Her collection of hand-sized paintings of Imperial Court ladies was crooked on the wall, but still intact.
Kosho bundled the Chu-sa onto her bed and tucked a cotton quilt around him, strapping the edges down to hold him in place. Hadeishi's eyes were still open and staring into the darkness, but he said nothing. Worried, she tacked the lamp to one wall, letting the beam shine up on a section of patterned silk covering the overhead. White-winged herons and cranes interlocked in a delicate geometric pattern. The reflected beam suffused the room with a soft, greenish light.
Her helmet came undone with a soft click and Kosho wrinkled her nose at the smell of burned plastic and electrical insulation tainting the air. Her medband said the atmosphere was breathable, though chill. Turning off her comm, she unlatched the captain's helmet as well, letting his frayed gray-black hair float loose on her pillow. The bed was very narrow, but just wide enough to sit by his side, one booted foot braced against the desk to hold her in place.
"What happened to you?" Susan brushed greasy hair out of his eyes, her fingertips gentle on the patches of gel covering burns on his face. "What happened to our ship?"
Slowly, Hadeishi's eyes turned towards her. They seemed empty, as if his soul had fled already, leaving only a pale, drained husk behind. Weary, he swallowed to clear his throat. "I made a terrible mistake, Susan. I thought we would be safe once the ship was home – once we were in Imperial space."
"A mistake?" Kosho's forehead wrinkled with a single sharp crease. "A saboteur rigged the satellites in orbit as mines – Helsdon and Felix found the power plants had been replaced. No one could have -"
"Months ago." Hadeishi said. "Months ago. Do you…do you remember the day the malfunctioning message drone reached us?"
"In the dead G-4 system beyond Kahlinkiat? Yes, radiation had damaged the -"
"I wiped the drone message store," Hadeishi said, so softly she could barely make out the words. "Or most of it, anyway. The common news, the things the men look forward to, those I left intact…but not the personnel and fleet orders. I erased them all."
"That is impossible." Susan pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He was icily cold. "Only the ship's political officer has…" Her eyes widened and horror crept into her expression. "Hummingbird gave you the control codes when he left us at Mimixcoa?"
Hadeishi nodded, making the thin, worn linen on the pillow rustle.
"I wanted…the orders…" He stopped speaking for a moment, gathering his strength. "We were ordered home, Susan, to report to Toroson as soon as possible."
"Mitsuharu!" Kosho cupped his pale, worn face with her hands. "That was nine months ago! We've been living on dregs and scraping from system to system…" She drew back, comprehension slowly dawning in her face. Her expression softened minutely. "What did the orders say?"
"We had a good ship," Hadeishi said, eyes distant, staring through her at the overhead. "A good crew. All these years of training and learning how to act as one…moving so smoothly, so effortlessly, without the slightest hesitation…the best crew I've ever had. A fine ship."
"Mitsuharu," Susan tried to catch his eye. "What did the orders say?"
"They were…we were recalled to Toroson to deco mmission the Cornuelle, Susan. They were going to break her up, use her for maintenance parts for other Astronomer-class cruisers. They're…the whole class is being retired from service, or sold, or parted out."
"Oh." Kosho sat back, nostrils flaring, her face perfectly still. "The ship."
"You…" Hadeishi's face twisted and his eyes filmed with tears. "You're a captain now, Susan. A Chu-sa yourself. You deserve the honor, I must say, more than any officer I've ever served with. And Hayes – he…he…made lieutenant commander. And Smith…ifthey're still alive. If any ofthem are. You're bound for the Naniwa – and she's a fine, fine ship – fresh from the yards. You'll…" Tears began to leak up from his eyes in tiny silver droplets and Susan had to turn away.
Imperial officers did not cry. Susan herself did not remember Hadeishi ever showing such raw emotion before – oh, he was fond of laughing and making sly hints and poking fun at her when he thought no one was looking – and he treated the junior officers very gently, by Fleet standards, but this…this was too much for her. She held herself very still, hands white at the knuckles as they clenched on the edge of the fold-out bed.
"You were all being taken away from me," he rasped, barely able to speak. "I was left with nothing. No ship, no crew, no purpose. You see…" He stopped, racked by a gasping heave. "There was nothing for me. No promotion. No new ship. Only orders to proceed to Jupiter to wait on The List. Hayes…Hayes is for the Taiko, Smith for advanced school…Huйmac and the Marines for a training cycle at Syria Planum on Mars. You will all do so well."
Susan closed her eyes, forcing herself to ignore the dreadful sound of his voice. His exhaustion was creeping into her as well, filling her heart with a cold emptiness.
"I just wanted a few more months of your company, Susan. A few more days to have a purpose."
Kosho turned, pressing her hand across his mouth. Her eyes were very bright. "Don't say anything. Nothing. No more." She shook her head slowly, appalled and anguished in turn. "We were out too long, Chu-sa! Worn down to nothing, spent, exhausted…did you think we were ronin in some old tale? Wandering from town to town, helping the peasants, fighting bandits…"
She stopped, her skin turning the color of fresh ash. "You should have told me. We are Imperial officers, Mitsuharu. We have an honorable duty to attend. We can't just ignore orders…even if…even if they're painful to consider. And the ship…" Kosho looked up at the dead lights on the overhead. "She is dying despite all you've done…we're badly damaged, kyo, they won't even bother to haul her back to Toroson."
Hadeishi closed his eyes, turning his head away.
"Oh," Susan said, the brief flare of anger dying, falling away into darkness. She put her hand on the quilt over his heart. "I don't know what will happen to you…"
The room remained cold and quiet, even after he had succumbed to a fitful, weary sleep.
Kosho watched him for a long time, checking his medband now and again. At last, she stirred and forced herself to stand up. The little washroom lacked water pressure or lighting, but she managed to repair her makeup, now badly streaked and smeared, and make herself look presentable.
Then Chu-sa Kosho let herself out and headed for the secondary control bridge. There was work to be done, and – if she could manage to placate the gods of the Fleet – save the careers of her junior officers. Those who lived, at least.
The dead will keep their honor. They will be remembered at the Feast of Spirits as heroes.
The Sobipurй Bus Terminal, Parus
Near the Court of Yellow Flagstones
Clouds of exhaust fogged Gretchen's view of the city as the Tikikit bus slowed to a crawl. A huge crowd of Jehanan townspeople blocked the street, voices raising a huge, frightened murmur, claws scraping alongside the vehicle and clattering against the windows. Anderssen stared out in alarm, barely able to make out the stone awnings over the bus stands through the moisture on the windows. Torrential rain poured down, turning the street into a muddy river.
"Hoooo… Taste the fear in the air!" Malakar leaned at her shoulder, long snout pressed against the glass. "Such a crowded city this is!"
"This is much worse than last time," Gretchen said, feeling the bus shake from side to side as the crowd surged against the vehicle. A clamor of hooting and warbling made it hard for her to hear. "Everyone is trying to flee -"
"Should we leave the bus?" The gardener folded one claw over the other, eyes wide. "Where will we go? How will we pass through such a throng?"
"Our hotel isn't far," Gretchen said, wondering if they could manage to move through such an enormous press of people. A wild face appeared momentarily at the glass, a young Jehanan trying to scramble up onto the roof of the bus. The window made a splintery sound as his clawed feet scrabbled on the sill. "What else can we try? If we stay here, they'll push the bus over."
Anderssen took a breath, readied herself to plunge into the fray and patted Malakar on the shoulder. "Come on."
Chuffing exhaust, the Tikikit bus inched into one of the quays in the station. Hundreds of Jehanan, nearly every one of them laden with baggage, pots and pans, bedding, and wicker baskets filled with personal effects, overflowed from the waiting ramps into the road and packed the open floor of the station itself. Gretchen pushed down the stairs from the bus, shoving aside a Jehanan matron trying to claw her away aboard while shrilling wildly in an unknown tongue. Malakar tried to apologize, but had to stiff-arm a frantic male to keep from being thrown to the ground.
A stifling blanket of heat and humidity started to choke Anderssen before she'd taken two steps into the surging, agitated crowd. Her medband squeaked an alarm before being drowned out by the booming roar of thousands of panicky townsmen. She reached back, seized hold of Malakar's harness and started plowing forward, head down, shouldering natives out of the way on either side.
Claws scraped her face, clutched at her shirt and pants, then fell away behind. Malakar hooted mournfully, hands tight on the back of Gretchen's field jacket. Intermittent blasts of some kind of alarm horn shook the air. A sea of noise rolled back and forth over them, echoing from the vaulting roof and the awnings over the buses. The stench of the crowd faded, replaced by the smell of smoke and burning plastic.
Anderssen stumbled through a wood-and-glass door at the front of the bus station. Broad flights of steps littered with discarded goods – potted plants, shoes, smashed sun-hats, broken bottles and fallen, ripped paperbacks, sections of sod, torn clothing, harness buckles and straps – led down to the curving road. The huge crowd inside petered away to a few mournful souls sitting on the sidewalk, huddled in blankets or staring sightlessly at the sky, rain sluicing from their scales.
Despite the rain, a thick pall of smoke hung over the city, hiding the upper reaches of the ancient Khus.
Gretchen shifted her pack, checked her jacket and pockets. Malakar was still clinging to her back, panting, snout down. Water streamed from her long head.
"You all right?" Anderssen put her arm under the old Jehanan's shoulder. The human was soaked already, shirt clinging to clammy flesh, hair plastered to her forehead. "It's not far."
"This…this old walnut has never seen so many people in one place in all her life."
The avenue was empty. The usual throng of runner-carts and wagons and trucks was gone. A long, low building across the street was on fire, belching smoke into the rain. The gutters were already full, flowing sluggishly and spreading into huge ponds where debris blocked the drains. Gretchen searched for a landmark, realized the burning edifice was the train station and turned right. "This way."
They hurried down the sidewalk, feet splashing through oily pools, past abandoned stands advertising sweets, grilled meat, newspapers, religious votives and icons, all the paraphernalia of a living city. The kiosks were abandoned and empty, shutters banging against empty stalls, garbage heaped in drifts across the sidewalks.
The doors of the hotel were locked, drapes drawn tight behind barred windows. Gretchen banged on the wooden panel, her shoulder pinched with the effort of keeping Malakar upright. The gardener was staring curiously back down the lane, rain spattering on her long snout.
"Hello!" Anderssen called through the mail slot. "I'm a guest here! I have a room!"
"I think," Malakar whispered in amazement, "those were actual Araks who passed us! I've heard they're bloody handed savages from beyond the vale of Acare! They eat the flesh of their own kind – or whatever live prey they can catch. Did you see the necklaces of teeth?"
"No. Can you ask these people to open the door?"
After Malakar had hooted and trilled and generally sounded like a reasonable, polite lizard, someone peered out at them through the drapes and then, grudgingly, opened the door to let them in out of the rain.
"Very dangerous," the desk clerk declared, shaking his stumpy triangular head in dismay. "You do not know what kind of horrific creatures have lately been here! They threatened to chop down my door and eat the yolks of my eggs raw! While I watched!"
Gretchen nodded politely and dragged the gardener away and up the stairs before Malakar fell to discussing the proclivities of the mysterious Araks. Anderssen really only wanted to lie down in a real bed. Her stomach was growling with hunger.
"Hello?" The door to the room swung open and Gretchen winkled her nose, smelling burning tabac. She held Malakar back out of caution. "Is someone here?"
"Hrrr!" A rumbling growl answered and a disheveled black shape appeared out of the bedroom. Anderssen felt a tight band around her heart ease and sagged against the wall, so vastly relieved she could barely comprehend the pressure which had been dragging at her. "Maggie. You're alive."
"Hunt-sister!" the Hesht yelped in delight, seizing Gretchen in an enormous, bone-crushing hug. Then Maggie held the human out at arm's length, paws gripping Anderssen's shoulders. "You are whole and undamaged? We thought a ghost was whispering to us on the comm…"
"I know, I know." Anderssen hugged the Hesht back, sagging into her soft, plushy fur. Magdalena felt wonderfully warm and dry. "We tried to reach the khus, but there were troops everywhere… I'm glad you ran when you did."
"Hoooo!" Malakar made a pleased sound, long snout snuffling at Magdalena. "Your friend is not a human at all. Such strange, soft scales she has!"
"No," Gretchen stepped aside, wiping her eyes. "Malakar, this is Magdalena. She is a Hesht – another asuchau race – they live in great clan-arks which travel between the stars, but she works with me for the Company. Maggie, this is Malakar, she was a gardener at the House of Reeds; which is to say, she was a teacher-of-kits."
"Well met," Magdalena said, ears twitching forward. She bowed politely. "If you are a friend of the hunt-sister, then you are welcome to our pack."
"Hoooo…" The gardener seemed pensive, covering the tip of her snout in embarrassment. "I do not know if clever-thoughts counts me as friend or not."
Gretchen smiled crookedly. "We've chased each other over enough rooftops, I think we can say we are friends. You didn't turn me in to the Master of the Garden, though I haven't given you any answers to your questions."
Malakar nodded, emulating the Hesht's bow. Magdalena twitched her whiskers at Anderssen and winkled her plushy nose. "Parker is here too – but he has been hurt."
"Hurt?" Alarmed, Gretchen pushed past Maggie and into the bedroom, where she stopped and stared at the pilot, who was buried under a pile of quilts. "He doesn't look hurt to me," she declared. "He is smoking in my bed, and has plenty of colorful magazines filled with interesting pictures to entertain him."
"Hi, boss." Parker took a long drag on his tabac and offered her a pained smile. "They're for my health – the tabacs, I mean. A restorative! All these" – he gestured at the native magazines scattered on the coverlet – "are really Maggie's. I'm just trying not to move too much."
Anderssen leaned over him, eyeing the bandages taped to the side of the pilot's head, his neck and the visible part of his shoulder. "What happened to you?"
Parker grunted, his lips a little white. "The side of a train kind of, uh, hit me, boss."
"You are injured." Gretchen gently peeled back the top of the quilt. The pilot's chest, arm and side were a dark, angry purple under a layer of quickheal gel. She hissed, concerned. "How bad is this?"
"I can't walk," Parker said, watching her nervously. "My leg and arm are…uh…broken. The doc said I've got a concussion and I chipped some teeth." He grinned. Two of his bicuspids were jagged. "I'm kind of doped up right now, so I hope you don't need me to fly anything…"
Gretchen shook her head, looking pale. "You were hit by a train?"
"No." Maggie wrapped her arms around Gretchen's shoulders, holding the anguished human close. "We were in the train and there was a wreck. Parker can't land on his feet, so he used his side and leg and arm instead." The Hesht blew mournfully through her fangs. "We were lucky – many passengers were killed."
"Ok-ke." Anderssen patted the Hesht's furry arm and sat down in a chair beside the bed. Feeling dizzy, she put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. "Is…is there anything to eat?"
Malakar shifted in the doorway, looking expectant. "Even gruel would be welcome," the Jehanan said softly. "We had pies yesterday…"
"I will find food," Magdalena announced, bustling out. "Silly kits, going all wild and forgetting to hunt! You would all perish in a forest filled with fat juicy marmosets if I wasn't…" Her voice faded into the hallway.
"She doesn't even know what a marmoset is," Parker said from the bed in a sulky tone. "She never goes to get me food…"
Gretchen began digging in her pockets, hoping to find a threesquare but instead her fingers closed on her survey comp and she pulled the battered device out with a sigh.
"So much trouble you caused…" she muttered, staring at the blank-faced device. "And for what?"
Parker stirred, staring at her hopefully. "Did you find the tree of gifts, boss? Was it really a First-Sun artifact? Did you get me any presents?"
Anderssen looked up, running her hands over the comp. "Yeah, we found the kalpataru." She nodded at Malakar, who was now squatting in the corner, damp tail wrapped around her feet. "Malakar led me into the heart of the Garden and…it was real, Parker."
"What?" The pilot sat up slowly, eyes wide. "It was real? A real First-Sun device?"
Gretchen nodded, and then started to laugh. "All you had to do was see the thing and…it was so old, Parker. Like it had seen the first light of the first star to condense out of the birth-caul of the universe. You could just…feel the weight of millennia in the metal, pressing on the world around the device. It felt like so much time had passed, every atom had collapsed…"
"Oh." Parker took a drag on his tabac. "Sure, a feeling. Like, that time in the cave-shrine on Shimanjin when you felt where the little girl was, or…or when we were at the Resident's party and you felt the way to the door?"
Gretchen looked up, fixing the pilot with a sharp stare. "What do you mean?"
The pilot shrugged. "Just, you know…we've noticed that from time to time you can…um…you can tell where things are without seeing them, or, uh, you can find your way when there's just no way you could know the proper path…"
Anderssen made a face and avoided looking at him. In the corner, Malakar's head rose slightly, her dark eyes bright with interest.
"I'm lucky sometimes…"
"Sure, boss. Whatever." Parker pointed with his tabac at the comp. "So, did you get enough data on this eldest tree-thing to make the trip worthwhile?"
"No." Gretchen hefted the comp with a bitter expression. "There was so little time. I had this on broadband scan, but we were outside when the sky lit up – I'm sure this comp, and all the data, are minging dead. My medband went crazy with radiation warnings…and these little hand-helds aren't shielded against EMP flash."
"Crap." Parker stubbed out his tabac and held out a hand. "Lemme look."
Gretchen tossed him the comp and slumped back in her chair, watching the pilot wince with pain as he fiddled with the device. She was feeling worse and worse with every passing moment. Oh, Mother Mary, I nearly got poor Parker killed. I nearly got myself killed, I ran Malakar out of her home, dragged Maggie all over the back of beyond…for what? For a prize beyond price I had to destroy.
"Does look kind of fried," Parker admitted, turning the comp over. He pressed a tab on one side of the unit, popping the back cover free. The data cartridge fell out on his chest. "I've got a spare in my kit, can you hork it over here?"
"Sure." Gretchen got down on the floor and began rummaging in the filthy, oily mess of odds and ends in the pilot's spare duffel. "God, Parker, don't you ever clean this stuff up?"
"Never," he said, keying a self-test on the cartridge. "Rusts if you keep it clean. Gotta protect the tools, right?"
Anderssen found a working comp and handed it over. Malakar watched them intently, snout hidden behind crossed arms. Parker popped out the data cartridge in the new unit, swapped in the old one and thumbed the unit awake. The comp beeped, made a squeaky sound and the screen glimmered awake.
"See…might have something left to say." The pilot thumbed through to a diagnostic screen. "We'll just let it check itself out." He smiled wanly, tired just from using his hand. "Maybe we'll get a bonus after all!"
"We do not have gruel," Magdalena declared as she bustled in with a tray heavy with covered bowls. "But there are edible things to eat."
Gretchen accepted a warm plate covered with freshly cut vegetables, a bowl of murky-looking broth and hunks of brown bread. A little amazed at the Hesht's ability to produce something other than reprocessed threesquares, Anderssen made an amused face. "What, no chocolatl?"
"Do not complain, wet-nose, about the food on your plate," Maggie said testily, curling up on the end of the bed with a head-sized bowl of red meat swimming in a dark oily sauce. "Unless you have caught and skinned the prey yourself!"
"I'll bet these were hard to catch," Parker mumbled, mouth full of food. He waved something like a bright-green carrot at the Hesht. "Tasty, tho'. Is there butter for this bread?"
"No," Maggie said, lips wrinkling back from her fangs. "There is no butter. There are no cows on this planet."
"But they have cheese…" Parker's voice trailed away at the expression on the Hesht's face.
"Ahhhh…" Malakar breathed in the aroma of her bowl, which was filled with noodles slathered in black paste. Gretchen's nose twitched, assailed by an astringent smell of salt, pepper and garlic. "You are kujena of tasty foods," the Jehanan said, pressing her snout to the floor in respect. "I have not had such a delicacy in many years."
Maggie winkled her nose, watching the gardener inhale the noodles. "Gruel! Indeed."
The comp sitting beside Gretchen chirped to itself, announcing the completion of its tests. Parker and Malakar stopped eating. Anderssen put down her bowl of soup and picked up the device. The screen displayed her usual set of tools and interfaces.
Well, she thought, tabbing into the archive of sensor logs. What did we see?
Gretchen scrolled through the data, frowned, loaded some AI to process the raw feeds, frowned again, slid out of the chair and sat cross-legged on the floor. Without looking up, she took a notepad from her jacket pocket, found some writing pens and began making notes. Her soup grew cold. Magdalena turned onto her side, bowl empty of entrails, curled her tail over her nose and went promptly to sleep. Parker was already snoring.
Late afternoon sunlight crept across the floor, washing over Anderssen's back, and vanished as the sun passed into the clouds again. Malakar stirred after watching for a long time, picked up all the dishes and shuffled off into the kitchen. Anderssen's face remained tight with concentration, her brow furrowed. The comp hummed warmly in her hands. Her control stylus made faint squeaking sounds on the panel. At one point she took off her field jacket and carefully examined the durafiber surface for marks.
"Ahhh…" An hour later, Gretchen looked up with a grimace and stretched her back. She creaked and said "Ow!" before rubbing her sore muscles.
Malakar appeared at the doorway. "What did it see?"
"Nothing." Anderssen laid the comp down on the rug. She looked disappointed and relieved at the same time. "Nothing but dust."
"How can this be?" Malakar knelt beside her, leathery tail flipping around and out of the way. "I felt the air tremble with unwholesome power! Such strange lights there were in the old fane! Those technicians did not fall unconscious for no reason…did not your mind reach across thousands of pan in the blink of an eye, giving warning?"
"I did." Gretchen spread her hands on either side of the comp. Her face was impassive. "Yet, none of my instruments detected anything. All of this data just shows the kalpataru standing inertly in the shrine. No power fluctuations, no radiation emissions from the tree itself – nothing but the generator signatures of the kujenate equipment."
"Nothing?" Malakar rolled back on her heels, claws tapping her snout. "But -"
"We heard you!" Parker tapped his earbug, confused. "Both Mags and I heard you clear as day -"
"Whatever happened was beyond the capability of these sensors," Anderssen said, trying find the words to explain. "But I saw…" She paused, remembering something which Hummingbird had once said.
"A teacher once said to me: Every time we do something, anything – eat, sleep, read a book – we leave an impression upon the world. Usually, normally, the impressions are wiped away by new things happening – someone else comes into the room, opens the door, picks up the book – but if a solitary object has been in one place for a very long time, if the same things keep happening in its immediate presence, then that repetition leaves a mark, a memory, a shadow of substance upon the pattern of the world…that pattern can be enormously strong."
"Hoooo…" Malakar twisted her head from side to side. "You saw – experienced – what the divine tree had done in the ancient past."
Gretchen nodded, wondering how much to tell. The food she'd eaten lay in her stomach, undigested and heavy. I can't tell them everything – that the artifact woke to life, if even for an instant – what if they told someone else? The Company would tear down the whole city just to dig out the fragments of the thing…
She took a breath, and then said: "The gift of the kalpataru was to reveal the unseen, to reach across the abyss of space and yield up sight, sound, vision, allowing instant communication across thousands of light years. Over millions of years of use, the artifact gained such a massive pattern of repetition it began to twist the fabric of time and space around itself, even when there was no power to drive the ancient machine.
"I think…when the kalpataru first came into the hands of the Jehanan, great wonders were revealed to them, even though the device had failed thousands of years before they laid claw on the divine tree. So strong were those events, so much power had been loosed in its presence, the memory is immanent in the metal itself. If one of the ancient Jehanan was…sensitive…if the machine was disturbed by a power-source…then that Jehanan's mind would have been filled with stupendous, terrifying, ecstatic visions."
Gretchen felt a chill steal over her. And that was the salvation of Jagan. The beacon was damaged, unable to reach across the void to touch the sleeping thoughts of its makers, summoning them to feed upon the Jeweled-Kings and then the Jehanan. Not unless a truly powerful mind blundered into the trap. Oh Holy Mother, preserve me from gaining such skill!
"For some time – centuries? decades? – it seemed the kalpataru was still functioning. But there were only fragments of the past, only this…residue, repeating over and over. Mechanical sensors, like this comp, can't even detect the pattern. But my mind is…more sensitive."
"I knew it," Parker said quietly, watching her with wide eyes. "You were different after you came back from Ephesus. What…what did that old nagual do to you?"
"Nothing, Parker. Mind your own business." Gretchen glared at the pilot. "Go back to sleep."
"Wait a minute." Parker said, distressed. "What will the Company say about all this?"
"Nothing," Gretchen said, hands clasped around her knees. "I'm not going to tell them what really happened. I'll file a 'survey-found-no-evidence-to-indicate-First-Sun-artifact' and leave well enough alone. So, no bonus."
"Crap." Parker flopped back on the bed. "I break half the bones in my body for this?"
Anderssen said nothing, resting her forehead on her arms.
Oh, Sister of God, what am I going to do? The Company won't even pay us back for all the gear we lost… What a black hole this was.
Parker lit a fresh tabac with an angry gesture and puffed smoke at the ceiling. No one said anything.
The Petrel Townhouse
Near The Court of the King of Heaven,
Central Parus
Leaning down, Mrs. Petrel picked up the broken half of an alabaster dish incised with tiny blue geometric figures. With a groan, she held the ancient plate up in the sunlight streaming through the porch windows. Her fingers appeared behind the translucent shell-like material, glowing pink and rose-red.
"That was a beautiful piece," a raspy voice said from behind her.
Petrel nodded, but did not turn around. Instead, she set the plate down. The terrace was scattered with debris. Broken cups and plates and statuary. Fire had charred the perfume trees in the garden and the rice-paper shoji between porch and the house proper were torn and ripped. Some of the panels had been wrenched from their tracks and lay askew. In some places, blood dried on the floor.
"Everything here was carefully chosen," Greta said, wondering where to start cleaning. "I was just trying to make a harmonious room…"
Leather sandals shuffled on the sisal-carpeted floor and a wizened old NГЎhuatl woman moved into her field of view. Itzpalicue leaned heavily on her cane, casting about for somewhere to sit.
"There are no chairs," Mrs. Petrel said in an empty voice. "All stolen."
"Ah." Itzpalicue hunched over a little more. "Your servants?"
"Gone. Dead." Mrs. Petrel looked out into the garden. The ground was torn up, as though the rioters who had invaded the house had been digging for buried treasure. Someone had taken an axe to the fruit trees, though the limbs and trunks lay where they had fallen. "Even old Muru, who has been with me since I was a little girl." She lifted her hand, pointing at the garden buildings at the back of the property. "The Marines found their bodies behind those sheds."
The old woman tapped her cane on the floor and shifted her feet. "You made a fine place here, but -"
"Yes, I did." Mrs. Petrel turned, fixing Itzpalicue with a steady, even stare. "I was happy here, my husband was happy. This was a planet with promise, Skirt-of-Knives, before you came meddling with your wrinkled old fingers."
The NГЎhuatl woman did not reply, merely returning the Anglish woman's gaze.
"Tell me one thing," Greta said. "I happened to pass a little time with your man Lachlan while Bhrigu's troops were securing the hotel, and he says all of this…" Her hand made a wide circle, encompassing the ruined house, the troubled city outside, the sky, the entire planet. "…was to find something you could not name or identify. A 'ghost of mist and shadow,' he said."
An angry hiss escaped Itzpalicue's lips and she straightened angrily, eyes flashing. "The boy should not have said anything about such matters!"
"Really?" Mrs. Petrel's eyebrows rose. "Did you find your quarry? Did you trap the ghost in your nets?"
Itzpalicue did not reply, her face hard and still.
"So." Greta bent down and picked up a pale green porcelain tea cup, still intact, from amid the rubble. "My husband's name is blackened, my house destroyed, my servants murdered – thousands of Jehanan civilians are killed – the Residency flattened – a Fleet cruiser wrecked – Duke Villeneuve's reputation and career smeared with undeserved charges of incompetence – for nothing." She cradled the cup in her hands. "It seems only Bhrigu benefited from all this. Humara is dead and the rebellious princes are fugitives, hunted by Marine patrols and your lovely highlander mercenaries… Was this what you wanted?"
"No, but it will serve," Itzpalicue said in a whisper-soft voice. "Villeneuve needed taking down a peg – and those orders came from the Light of Heaven himself! – and he'll live longer, with such black marks on his record."
The old woman allowed herself a bit of a smile at the thought. An ally of Green Hummingbird's is deftly removed from the game mat at the same time. And the Nisei admirals have their ruffled feathers soothed – Hadeishi is ruined, but his sacrifice will be legendary in the Fleet.
"And there was something here – we caught a bit of the trail…but now it's gone cold. We know the xochiyaotinime priesthood is compromised – that will require some spadework to clean up – but the true enemy is gone. I can't even…feel it anymore."
"It?" Greta wrapped the cup in tissue paper and placed the package in a waiting cargo crate.
"Something inhuman. An alien presence." The old woman shifted her grip on the cane, her expression distant. "I am sure of it…Lachlan does not believe me, and I see you do not either, but I am sure in my bones of this. Not Jehanan, not human. Not any of the races we've met before."
Mrs. Petrel shook her head, making the white streak in her hair shimmer in the sunlight. "There are many alien powers which have no love for the Empire. Any of them would find it…amusing…to turn your flowery game back upon the Emperor. But do you have any proof?"
"No." Itzpalicue's lips tightened in disgust. "Nothing. Not so much as a feather."
"A waste, then." Greta made a dismissive motion. "Oh, surely the Foreign Office will be pleased – Bhrigu has sold us half the planet for a share of the taxes – the pochteca will have fresh markets to exploit – but those are such tiny gains to measure against our cost."
"Huh!" The old NГЎhuatl woman started to smirk. "The prince's reputation has been brightly burnished – he is acclaimed as a hero the length and breadth of the Empire! That, at least, went well. Better, I say, than expected."
Mrs. Petrel turned on Itzpalicue, real anger flushing her face pink. "You leave that boy alone! He meant no harm and did none. Did he ask to be a pawn, to be manipulated in this way? His heart is not tempered for this – you will twist him, force him down a path which can only lead to tears."
"And so? He is a Prince of the Imperial Household!" The old NГЎhuatl woman laughed hoarsely. "He was brought into this world to serve the needs of the Empire – let him! He is worth so little, otherwise. A disappointment to his family, which is not surprising given his mo -"
"Is he?" Greta interjected, giving the old woman a reproving look. "I think he behaved admirably in a terrifying situation. He is just a young man with a quiet soul, not a warrior, not a king. You should leave him be."
"Too late!" Itzpalicue grinned. "The Emperor has already seen the footage we put together and is very pleased with the results. Young Tezozуmoc has a bright future before him now. This whole episode saved his reputation, just as we planned."
"As you planned." Mrs. Petrel resumed searching through the wreckage for more of the cups. She found only ground-up blue-white dust. "Nothing need more be said of the matter."
Itzpalicue grunted, nudging a broken table aside with her cane. "You have lost possessions before… The Mirror will pay you well for your part in our littleplay."
"Not well enough," Greta sighed, finding the remains of a Khmer dancing Saiva in pieces underneath one of the fallen paper screens. "I brought too many beloved things with me – do you know, I lost James's pistol in all the fuss?" She swallowed, shoulders slumping. "That was the last of his things…now it's rusting underneath a railway trestle somewhere between here and Takshila."
"It was just a tool," Itzpalicue said, her face softening. "Not your brother…"
"I suppose." Mrs. Petrel righted the screen, finding the ink-brush paintings were disfigured by crudely slashed graffiti in some local dialect. "The lack only reminds me of his death."
"The past is always filled with the dead," the old woman said, taking a breath. "I came to see you before you left on the starliner. To wish you a safe voyage and…to see if you were all right."
"Very kind, Papalotl." Mrs. Petrel grasped the next screen in line with both hands and set the wooden railing back into the floor-track. "You'll be fluttering away soon?"
Itzpalicue's lips twitched into a smile. "No one's called me 'butterfly' in years, child. Yes, a Fleet courier is waiting for me in orbit."
Greta nodded, finally turning to look at the old woman. "In future, if you are planning one of these little…soirйes…do not invite me. I would take it as a great favor if you did not involve me in any more of your activities. They have acquired a bitter taste."
Itzpalicue shrank back a little, surprised, shoulders collapsing at the cold tone in the younger woman's voice. "You have always…you said they were amusing diversions. You have always had a talent -"
"I remember what I said," Greta replied softly. "But this time my husband was nearly incinerated. He is quite shaken by the whole experience."
"Ah." The old NГЎhuatl woman nodded, lips pursed disapprovingly. "This decision is not for yourself, then."
"It is entirely my decision." Mrs. Petrel stiffened. "But it is not yours."
Itzpalicue nodded, shrugged and went out, her cane tapping on the scarred floorboards.
Greta Petrel watched her go, keeping an eye on the old woman until she had departed the grounds, passing through mossy stone gates and climbing into a truck driven by some very disreputable-looking natives in long robes.
When the old woman was gone, Mrs. Petrel sighed, dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief and went back inside. There was a great deal of cleaning and sorting to do before she could leave this humid, damp planet. The prospect of Earth and a cool, dry vacation beckoned. Switzerland, she thought, trying to cheer herself up. Her husband had always liked little villages under high snowy mountains.
She pushed open the doors to the sitting room off the main foyer. Her other guest looked up from a book of photographs and woodblock prints made nearly four centuries before, showing the cities and towns of Russia as seen by the eyes of a Nisei artist named Yoshitaki.
"This is very interesting," Gretchen said, closing the antique volume. "I have never seen anything like this before. Russia seems to have been quite civilized, from the evidence of these pictures."
Greta smiled faintly. "That is because such books are forbidden to the public. That particular item was found by my brother James when he was serving on AnГЎhuac itself, in the Desolation, in an abandoned bunker."
"Oh." Anderssen pushed the book away and folded both hands in her lap. "I see."
Amused by Gretchen's contrite expression, Mrs. Petrel sat down in the other chair. Of all her furnishings, only these two moth-eaten settees remained intact, having been put away in storage in one of the attics. "If there were tea," she said apologetically, "we could have some, but…"
"No tea is fine," Gretchen said, squaring her shoulders. "May…may I ask a question?"
Mrs. Petrel nodded, finding the soft red velour of the chair a welcome support against her aching back. "Of course, dear. What is it?"
"Who was that old woman? I could hear her voice through the doors…she sounded terribly familiar."
"Really?" Greta raised an eyebrow, considering her fair-haired guest with the scarred hands and rough knuckles. "She is an old teacher of mine, from when I was attending university in TenochtitlГЎn. I did not realize our voices were so lou d…"
Anderssen dimpled, offering an apologetic smile. "My hearing is sometimes distressingly good. I did not mean to pry. She just reminded me of someone else I know."
"No offense taken, though you should be more circumspect in the future." Mrs. Petrel said, mustering her concentration. "Now, what about our business? Was your trip successful?"
Gretchen swallowed nervously. "Well," she began, "I cannot say I set eyes upon a single Nem plant, but…well, there was something in the House of Reeds, something extraordinary…"
Mrs. Petrel listened quietly while Anderssen related an abridged version of what had happened, her face growing stiffer and stiffer until the younger woman fell silent and then Greta sighed quietly, rubbing her brow with thin, well-manicured fingers. "You destroyed the kalpataru."
Gretchen nodded, tensing herself for a furious tirade.
"You're sure?" Mrs. Petrel's complexion slowly drained of color as Anderssen nodded. "You destroyed a known, working First-Sun device! Sister bless us, child, why? The Army could have made do without comm -"
"I had to." Gretchen said flatly. "The Jehanan weren't even using a fraction of the thing's power – the kalpataru would have infected and overwhelmed every single computing device on this planet – I doubt the Fleet and Army could have done much with their weapons and vehicles rendered useless."
Mrs. Petrel's ashen expression did not improve. Her hands were trembling. "But you could have used the thing yourself…Loving God, what the Company could have done with…We'd never have to lift a finger again! The Emperor's favor alone would -"
"Mean nothing," Gretchen said, shaking her head slowly. "I understand how the Company will feel about this. I particularly understand what the Empire's reaction would be if they ever knew what actually happened in the House of Reeds. But, Mrs. Petrel, I also know such artifacts must never be allowed to fall into human hands. Never! The danger is too great!"
"What danger!" Mrs. Petrel snapped, surging up out of her chair. "There's certainly no danger now! The only danger is allowing such a thing to remain in Jehanan hands! Even the debris will need to be seized and analyzed…" She turned around, staring angrily at Gretchen. "Fool! You've cast aside both our futures! My god, I daren't even make a report…"
Gretchen's voice was very calm. "Just say there was nothing in the monastery, the initial report was only a rumor, unsubstantiated, a false lead. I'll say the same." She smiled grimly. "Don't worry – no one will ask questions – the nauallis will make sure of that."
"The -" Petrel stepped back, suspicion flickering in her eyes. She looked Gretchen up and down and her lip curled back in disgust. "You've been playing a double-game – you're an agent of the Judges!" Her hand made a sharp slashing motion. "Don't think I won't report that to the Company!"
"I'm not…" Gretchen paused, jaw tight, and thought: She's right, even if I refused Hummingbird's offer two years ago. I've done just as he would have.
"I am not a naualli," she continued. "Nor am I their 'agent.' But I have worked with them in the past. Some artifacts simply cannot be used. There are traps laid for the unwary – and the kalpataru was one of them. We have escaped – I hope we have escaped! – terrible calamity by only the thinnest claw-tip."
Mrs. Petrel said nothing. Anderssen gained the impression of fulminating, terrible anger roiling in the older woman – but then she raised her hands and let out a bitter sigh. "There is nothing to be done about this now," Greta said in a thin, leached voice. "Get out. Just get out."
Nodding, Anderssen stood up – almost stumbling, her legs weak with tension – and reached the door before Mrs. Petrel's voice echoed in the ruined room.
"I know what the Judges told you." Cold, clear anger permeated Greta's voice. "But you should know they lie. They lie constantly – even when the truth would serve – and they care nothing for any human alive."
Gretchen turned in the doorway and saw Petrel clutching Yoshitaki's book tightly to her chest. "Who did you -"
"That doesn't matter," Petrel said, her face filled with anguish. "Just remember, they will sacrifice you and anyone else – anyone! – to gain their ends. They are like sharks – without emotion, without remorse."
"And if those ends mean the survival of humanity?" Gretchen said softly, feeling the woman's pain as a hot pressure on her face. "Isn't our sacrifice necessary for our children to live? For the race to continue? How do you weigh that balance, Petrel-tzin?"
Greta put a hand on the back of the chair to steady herself and then she turned away, saying nothing.
Anderssen went out, quietly, and found the sky clearing. Hot, bright sunlight streamed down through the clouds, gilding the ruins of the Legation. Plumes of smoke were rising over the city, but the worst of the fires had died down. Her boots – worn and dirty, as always – crunched through drifts of broken glass.
Yi birds were fluting in the trees, Jehanan workers were picking through the debris, Marine guards were on every rooftop, keeping a wary eye on the surroundings. Everything seemed blessedly normal.
I'm alive, Gretchen thought, and her heart lifted to be out of the ruined house. The prospect of Petrel telling the Company what she'd done and their inevitable termination of her employment made her feel giddy. We're all alive – my little pack of troublemakers – and now I am going home. And my babies will be waiting, and my mother and even that feckless husband of mine. Even penniless, they will be glad to see me!
Anderssen smiled cheerfully at the guards in the Legation gateway and turned out onto the street, hands in the pockets of her field jacket. Around her, the city was beginning to stir to life again, citizens out chattering in the streets, aerocars droning overhead, the distant lonely sound of a steam-whistle hooting from the rail-yard.
Aboard the Starliner Asuka
Preparing to Leave Orbit Over Jagan
A first-class cabin door hissed open and Tezozуmoc stepped into a clean, sparkling room filled with inviting furniture. Soft music wafted on the cool, climate-controlled air. The young man stared around, drinking in every gram of luxury and his face brightened, looking into an adjoining bedroom.
"Oh, gods of my fathers and blessed Mother, look at the size of that bed! Four or five girls would fit easily!" The prince dropped a battered, grimy Army jacket on the floor and – before Colmuir or Dawd could say anything – stripped off his Jehanan cloak and discarded his skinsuit in an ugly, blood-and-oil-stained pile. Entirely naked, Tezozуmoc padded into the bathroom adjoining the main room of the suite and began to laugh hysterically.
"A shower and a tub! And towels, look at these towels!" The prince's head appeared in the doorway for a moment, one brown hand waving a plushy, gleaming white bath-towel and then vanished again. The sound of water running followed, and a yelp of mingled pain and delight as Tezozуmoc turned the taps on full hot.
Colmuir stared at the clothing discarded on the floor, dully noted the mess the boy had made of the carpet and wearily set down his duffel and gunrig on the couch. "This is a nice room," he said, on the verge of collapse himself. The Army medical staff had worked him over enough to get him aboard ship, but the master sergeant was in a bad way. He hurt from head to toe and even the resilience of his combatskin and the constant attentions of his medband couldn't overcome the bone-deep bruising and internal injuries he'd suffered. Worse, Colmuir felt unaccountably nervous and he didn't know why.
M' hackles are up, he realized, like we're still in th' thick of it…
Dawd let the door close behind him and stowed his own baggage. "We've the other bedroom, then? Better than the floor, I suppose."
The younger Skawtsman's face was bandaged and his combat goggles were still on. The lenses were dull black, as though he were standing outside in full sun. With a groan, Dawd slumped into a hugely overstuffed chair opposite Colmuir. In the bathroom, Tezozуmoc had begun to sing lustily, voice muffled by the rush of water. Clouds of steam drifted through the doorway.
The master sergeant managed a smile. "Well, our lad seems happy at last."
"You're not?" Dawd asked, letting his head fall back on the chair. "We're alive, he's alive. We'll be home on AnГЎhuac soon. A great victory all around, I think."
"Truth." Colmuir considered the prospect. "You're right. The boy didn't embarrass himself when the shooting started or get one of us killed. The Emperor might even be pleased by how things turned out…"
Dawd tried to laugh, producing a croaking sound. "I'm sure someone will decide the prince saved the day, crushed the rebellion and saved more than one fainting maiden by the time news gets back home."
"Ah, now, you're getting cynical." Colmuir gestured at the younger man's face. "Your eyes still recovering? Didn't they give you a supplemental 'band to speed up th' healing?"
"My eyes?" Dawd touched his goggles absently and then shook his head. "I'd forgotten I had these on." The sergeant lifted his head, indicating the bathroom. "Do you suppose he'll leave any hot water for us?"
"Probably not," Colmuir snorted, forcing himself to his feet. He stared at Dawd, tight-lipped. "Let me have a look at this injury of yours – if yuir eyes are still hurting, it's best you visited the ship's medbay…"
"Master Sergeant, I'm fine!" Dawd lifted a hand, stopping Colmuir – who was looking rather pale – from touching his goggles. "Another day or so and they'll be good as new."
"Let me see," Colmuir said, making a sharp, beckoning gesture. "I can tell when a man's hiding something – and you are, Sergeant – there's no sense in being stoic about an injury."
"Of course," Dawd said, rather stiffly. He lifted both hands and slowly removed the goggles. Behind them, his eyes were closed tight, and puffy with dark red bruising. Scorch marks scarred his left socket, and his bushy black eyebrows were ashy smears.
"Ah, lad, you look terrible!" Colmuir peered closer. A queer tickling sensation at the back of his neck was making him even more nervous. "D' they work at all?"
The master sergeant gently peeled back the lid of Dawd's right eye, revealing a massively dilated pupil surrounded by the thinnest verge of green. The whites were a rough, angry red. The sergeant hissed in pain, flinching away.
"Sorry," Colmuir said, shaking his head and turning away. "Tha' looks quite bad."
"No…trouble, Master Sergeant." Dawd gingerly put his goggles back on. In the brief instant before the glassite lenses once more obscured them, the ruined eyes rippled and shifted, subsuming the hastily extruded skin and swollen veins. Cold watery blue irises emerged from beneath the camouflage and purpled bruises faded as the shiftskin of the Lengian ‹sower|teacher|adjudicator› returned to an efficient and optimal configuration.
This ‹protector|guardian|hound› will have to be destroyed, the creature thought, with the faintest tinge of dismay, watching Master Sergeant Colmuir sit again, his lean old face pinched with pain. It is suspicious – heart-rate is elevated, senses are sharpened – by the Makers, its perceptual gestalt has determined I am not Sergeant Leslie Dawd at all. Now this one must be destroyed. What a waste of a superior gene-line…
Dawd licked his lips, then said: "Master Sergeant, if you don't mind my asking – have you any children?"
"Me?" Colmuir was entirely taken aback by the question. He laughed, running a scarred hand through short, springy gray-black hair. "Oh, scads, I'm sure. Somewhere. Why?"
Dawd nodded to himself, pleased. "Nothing, Master Sergeant. I was just suddenly curious."
"Ah!" Tezozуmoc bounded back into the main room, glistening and clean, his long hair tied back in a ponytail. The prince seemed, for once, actually happy. "Let's order room service," he declared, grinning foolishly at his two bodyguards, and snatching up a portable comm-plate emblazoned with the swan-mon of the liner. "Let's see just how good their liquor cabinet is!"
Colmuir grunted, but a smile was beginning to show on his lips. "Ah, I would not refuse a fine Skawts whiskey today, mi'lord, no I would not."
"Excellent!" Tezozуmoc turned to the creature sitting so comfortably in the shape of a man. "Dawd, what'll you have?"
"Whatever you're having, mi'lord," the Lengian replied, making a bit of a bow towards the prince. "Whatever you're having."