House of Reeds

Takshila Near the Intersection of Panca-Sapta And Trieka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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