House of Reeds

The Captain's Launch In Orbit Over Jagan, Approaching the Tepoztecatl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 His choleric expression had been replaced by a pale sheen of sweat and worried eyes.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Engineering to Bridge…ship's status?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Damage control is -"

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

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

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

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