House of Reeds

The Imperial Legation Within the Red Fort at Parus

The distant pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire permeated the air as Felix jogged up a flight of ancient steps within the southern bastion of the dhrada. Her skin was stretched tight and tingling with the aftereffects of too much stayawake. Her med-band should have locked itself out – or put her to sleep – if she hadn't disabled the safety features immediately after her last equipment review. The Marine Heicho ducked out a heavy stone embrasure, keeping her head low, and scuttled along a broad parapet lined with granite merlons. The ancient Jehanan stonemasons who'd raised the Rusted Citadel expected to defeat sinew-driven catapults, onager-driven stones and sheer muscle power; but the fortification they'd raised in the heart of Parus was proof against 8mm caseless as well.

A squat octagonal tower bulked against the night sky at the end of the parapet and Felix slipped into the shelter of a doorway with relief. Despite the intermittent snap! of Imperial guns along the perimeter, and the occasional mortar round whistling over the walls – the situation in and around the fortress had been quiet since dusk.

This does not, she reminded herself, hustling up a circular ramp, prevent some canny slick from potting me with an elephant-rifle at six hundred meters. There were four dead Marines in the makeshift medical bay as proof of the ability of massed native firepower to overcome light Fleet combat armor. Now, if we'd shipped down with powered armor suits, Felix thought, licking her lips in anticipation of the likely outcome, we'd be herding the survivors into detention camps by the morning.

But her troops did not have heavy armor, or weapons, and the Legation guards were no better equipped. Her lone Whipsaw was tasked to anti-artillery duty. Everyone else was scrounging ammo coils and whatever sharp sticks they could find in the Residence. Communications with the Regimental cantonment on the southern edge of the city were out – native jamming continued to snarl the comm channels – and there was no prospect of relief with the nearing dawn.

An attack is what we'll get with light, the Marine grumbled to herself. I should have taken my mother up on that offer to manage her hotel on Corcovado…

Her head rose through a hexagonal opening in the roof of the tower and the Heicho stopped. "Clear to enter the satellite relay station?"

"Clever, Corporal, very clever," Helsdon replied from the shadows on the far side of the rooftop. "Best to crawl – I've avoided attention by showing no lights and very little motion – but I am sure someone is watching out there in the darkness."

Felix bellied down and sidewindered over to the chief machinist's mate, who was sitting cross-legged in the protection of a heavy square flagpole mount. The engineer was surrounded by a motley collection of comps, toolkits, comm gear and miscellaneous lengths of pipe fitted together into a rough antenna array. The Heicho stopped at his feet and tilted her combat visor up so they could talk without resorting to comm.

"The runner said you'd gotten a fix on the ship?"

Helsdon nodded towards a crude parabolic antenna hand-wired to Sho-sa Kosho's Fleet command comp, which had survived the destruction of the shuttle. A heavy-duty Fleet comm laser was mounted on a motorized tripod nearby, metal legs thick as wrists with their hydraulic stabilizers extended. The engineer had a handful of wire-leads and earbugs pressed to the side of his head. "Skyscan picked up a matching radar silhouette about twenty minutes ago. I've been playing the comm-laser over the surface since then, trying to get a fix on an active data aperture. Haven't had much luck until just a minute ago…"

Helsdon tilted his head, listening to the warble of static and chattering machine noise on one of the earbugs in his hand. "Shipside comm has reset – these are all default negotiation messages in the data-stream – the Thai-i changed them all years ago…"

"What does that mean?" Felix tried not to growl impatiently.

"I'm not sure." Helsdon pursed his lips, puzzled. "One moment, an aperture has come on-line…"

He pushed an earbug into Felix's hand. She popped out her Fleet one and screwed the new one in. Immediately, the background warbling and chirping of the local jamming vanished and she could hear the cool, even tones of a Fleet comm relay.

Stand by please, your call is being forwarded to the appropriate personnel.

"Huh! Didn't think I'd ever be happy to hear Miss Manners…"

Connecting…

"Hello?" The Heicho twisted the comm thread on the bug around to her lips. "This is Felix groundside, calling the Cornuelle, can anyone hear me?"

I hear you loud and clear, the tart, grumbling voice of Isoroku replied after a second's delay. Where is Sho-sa Kosho?

"In medical," Felix said, vastly relieved the ship was still in operation.

First tour recruits were treated to a variety of ghoulish stories by the twenty-year veterans. Most of them began with a variation of "when I was serving on the Cotopaxi…" and ended with the slow horrible death by mutilation of the officers or enlisted men who had not heeded the sage advice of their sergeants in matters of war, personal hygiene or keeping Fleet-issued equipment spotlessly clean. One of the more lurid tales concerned a company of Marines stranded on a primitive world when their troop transport had been shot up by a Megair battlecruiser. Lacking even the most primitive food-processing technology, the troopers had been forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Since hearing the gruesome tale of the Margaret Acatl and her survivors, the Heicho had harbored a recurring, paranoid fear of being stranded after her ship had been disabled or destroyed.

"We lost a shuttle on landing to an ATGM," Felix continued, wrenching her mind back to the matter at hand. "The Sho-sa was wounded, but she'll be fine. What happened to the ship? Where's Chu-sa Hadeishi?"

In medical, Isoroku said blandly. Stove some ribs in and nearly asphyxiated himself by dumping most of his suit air. He'll live – if we can get the ship in a stable orbit – so listen, Heicho – we can't help you. No fire support, no evac shuttles, not even much comm relay, until we get the ship stabilized and under control.

"I understand," Felix said, feeling queasy. She looked across at Helsdon, who'd turned a little pale. "How bad is it?"

Bad. We took six mine strikes simultaneously and the 'skin overloaded. Then there were secondary explosions in the officer's mess and galley. Don't really know what caused that, but we're clearing the wreckage, so -

"Six anti-ship mines?" Felix's brow furrowed. Helsdon jerked back a little in surprise, alarmed by the news. "How did Navigation miss mines parked in orbit? Wait a moment…"

The Development Board – the engineer started to say.

"The satellite power cells!" Felix cursed. Helsdon turned green and his eyes widened. "The civilian power cells had been replaced by anti-matter fueled ones…"

Good to know that. Now. The engineer's voice was very flat and tense with strain. A little late, Heicho but I'm sure you'll get a nice note in your personnel jacket at some point.

"Sabotage," Helsdon muttered, nervously counting the tools in his kit. "The Board foreman who sold us all those spare parts was in charge of the satellite network repair and maintenance." The older man's head lifted, eyes narrowing. "He sold us all that lohaja wood too…"

"Thai-i?" Felix ventured. "Did you hear -"

I did. Isoroku's voice affected a zero-Kelvin chill. We put nearly six hundred kilos of lohaja flooring into the officer's mess the day before yesterday. Helsdon, did you bioscan those supplies before they came aboard?

The machinist's mate blanched. "Hai, kyo! But I just scanned them for biological infestations – worms, beetles, egg cases, pupae, virus filaments – I didn't scan them for cellulose-based explosives. Or for shielded fuses or detonators."

There was a hiss of rage on the comm. We put our neck right in the noose!

Felix heard an impatient chime on her other earbug, cursed and switched devices.

…are you there? Heicho?

"Hai, Sho-sa Kosho!" Felix started to sweat, overcome with nervousness. "I'm here! I'm on the roof of the south tower with Helsdon, we've got comm back with the ship! The Chu-sa is fine – he's wounded, but stable in medical -"

Be quiet. Kosho sounded irritable. The Chu-sa can take care of himself. Listen, the eastern perimeter lookouts are reporting suspicious heat plumes two streets over and out of line-of-sight from their position. Can you eyeball anything from up there?

"I'm on it," Felix blurted, sliding over to the eastern side of the tower. From the clear, concise sound of the officer's voice, one wouldn't have thought she was laid up in an antique four-poster bed in a guest bedroom in the Residence with a medband on each arm and under-pain-of-death orders not to move while her ligaments reknit. The Imperial Resident wasn't a military commander – and didn't pretend to be – but he knew how to sit on recalcitrant Fleet officers who needed to recuperate after being nearly incinerated.

But that's our dear old wind-knife, the corporal thought, relieved to have someone confident in command, and ran a longeye up over the embrasure and swung the sensor from side to side. "Kyo? I've got visual of the streets east of the main wall…"

She paused, watching the feed very carefully. Between the southern tower and the eastern wall was a wide expanse of wooden buildings, ornamental gardens, a twisting pump-fed stream and a variety of huge, carefully tended fruit trees. The outer wall was a solid red cliff rising over acres of flowers. Felix twitched her lips, starting to frown. The composite image included ambient light, infra-red and high-spectrum radiation – whatever the longeye could pick up – all integrated into one color-corrected, annotated image. At the moment, a motion flicker was outlining the roof of a house just across the street from the eastern ramparts.

While the citadel had once protected the northeastern corner of Parus from assault, the centuries since its construction had engendered kilometers of suburbs beyond the squat towers. A variety of brick-and-plaster buildings crowded each side of the old fortress, separated from the wall only by the width of a city street. Even a governor of kujen Barak's time would not have allowed civilian buildings so close to the defenses…

"There's a building shaking from foundation to gable, Sho-sa." Felix's voice was taut with suspicion. "I've seen that before…a tank is cutting through the interior! Tell eastern perimeter to fall back – they're about to come under fire!"

The composite image shifted, focusing as her battle comp recognized something of interest. A long barrel crashed through a window on the ground floor of the building. The muzzle swung to one side, clearing away four tall panes of glass and belched flame. The boom of the gun firing reached Felix a heartbeat later. A plume of dust and shattered brick puffed up from the eastern wall. The plaques of two Imperial soldiers bolting back across the ornamental gardens were very clear on her visor.

All hands to battle stations! Kosho's voice rang clear across the Imperial com channels. Attack underway on the eastern perimeter…attack underway at the south gate…all fire teams to overwatch positions!

Felix wedged her shoulder into one of the granite embrasures and thumbed the safety from her Macana, activating the sighting reticule on her visor. Another explosion rocked the eastern wall and the clatter of tank treads on cobblestones rose in counterpoint. The clamor of voices on the comm faded into the background as her attention focused. Dust drifted white among the fruit trees. The two Marines who'd fallen back took up firing positions in the shelter of a delicate gazebo of marble and alabaster. The Heicho cranked a lever to load the grenade launcher housed under the rifle's main barrel. She licked her thumb, rubbed a spot from the targeting viewer and settled her breathing.

Whooomp! The air trembled and the eastern wall shuddered from top to bottom. A huge blast reverberated in the air, followed by a string of sharp reports. The inner face of the rampart collapsed, tumbling down in a landslide of bricks and dirt and shattered concrete. Something growled mechanically in the opening, treads spinning and the prow of a tank emerged from the ruins.

Felix drifted the targeting indicator for her grenade launcher over the rear deck of the tank, saw running shapes emerge from the cloud of dust and squeezed the trigger. The Macana banged against her shoulder, the grenade whistling away, and she immediately switched to single-shot flechette.

She began firing methodically, tracking the swift, blurring shapes of Jehanan soldiers spilling out of the breach one by one. The grenade burst in a bright flare, knocking down some of the invaders. The tank lurched, smoke boiling from plated armor, but did not slow down. Three Jehanan dropped, smashed to the ground by the flechette rounds from her assault rifle.

Only seconds later, the granite shielding her rang with the impact of native bullets. Stone chips scored her visor and slashed at her shoulders. Ignoring the shrapnel, the Marine dropped another two slicks, but hundreds more were swarming through the gap. The tank rumbled forward and its long gun boomed again. The marble gazebo disappeared in a cloud of dust and flame. Felix clicked her teeth, breaking into the chaos of voices on the combat channel.

"We need the Whipsaw in the eastern gardens with armor-piercing," she growled. "This tank nearly took Carlyle's head off!"

We can't spare the 'saw from anti-artillery duty, Kosho responded curtly.

The tank fired again, obliterating another of the ornamental buildings. The two Marines down in the gardens leapfrogged back again to a low wall only meters from the Residence. Felix gritted her teeth and fired five grenades in quick succession, dropping them right across a line of Jehanan troopers crashing forward through the rose bushes and beds of orchids.

The grenades burst in a rippling wall of fire. A hailstorm of bullets smashed against the granite around her, filling the air with whining shrapnel. Felix ducked down, hearing the high-pitched wail of mortar rounds dropping out of the sky. The Whipsaw on the roof of the Residence stuttered, snapping out interceptor rounds with a piercing whine. The sky blotted with black puffs of smoke.

"Stupid-always-right-officers…" The Marine flexed her trigger-hand and thumbed her visor to full automatic tracking. Bullets continued to spang! off the merlons. The engineer laid himself down, still fiddling with his comps and antenna array, trying to keep the channel to the ship open. "Carlyle, Renton, go to full auto! Helsdon, get below!"

Felix shifted position two embrasures and popped up. The Macana jerked in her hand, a full-automatic burst ripping from the rifle. Her visor lit up with hundreds of possible targets, glowing red crosshairs dancing across the gardens. She let her conscious mind subsume in the twitch-reflex of the gun/visor interface and emptied a two thousand round magazine coil into the charging Jehanan soldiers.

If I had a powered-armor rig… Felix had applied for transfer to a powered armor regiment before being posted to the Cornuelle. A rejection letter had caught up with her nine months ago, precipitating a mild funk. Luckily, the ship had immediately encountered a Khaid raiding group and been plunged into a ferocious battle for survival, which had cheered her up immensely.

Flame stabbed out from the other two Marines as the passage of so many hypervelocity flechettes made the air incandesce. For an instant, a whirlwind of ionization and metal lashed the Jehanan battalion spilling through the breach and hundreds of the natives staggered, torn to shreds. The tank continued to grind forward, lurching up over a carved alabaster retaining wall, the forward glacis spotted with smoking, red-hot impact scars.

Then the tank turret swung towards the southern tower and flame blossomed from the muzzle with a crack! Felix shouted at Helsdon and flung herself to the side, curling automatically into an impact resistant ball. The granite merlons shattered in a ball of plasma. The engineer's carefully pieced-together antenna array disintegrated, the comps were blown into the far wall and flame washed over both Imperials. The concussion threw Felix into the opposite stonework, where burning debris pelted her armor and face, and Helsdon – who had scooted towards the stairs – was flung down into the tower itself. Smoke and dust billowed up from the gaping hole torn in the parapet.

The Jehanan tank turret whined around towards the Residence, long gun sliding down.

On the roof of the main building, the Whipsaw team ran to the edge of the rooftop and set down the tripod-mounted weapon. The lead gunner cycled the ammunition coil to armor-piercing, flipped the targeting display on and squeezed the firing lever. A lance of super-heated flame – engendered by the supersonic passage of dozens of depleted uranium-core munitions – boomed out, leaping down to draw a white-hot line across the front of the tank and across the turret.

Metal squealed in agony as multiple jets of metal plasma spewed into the crew compartment. There was a deep, resounding whoomp! and the entire machine blew apart as the munitions and fuel inside brewed up. Flames engulfed the chassis and the turret, blown free by the explosion, crashed down into an apple tree, setting the leaves and trunk alight.

On the southern tower, Felix – wheezing and tasting gravel – rolled over, groping for her rifle. The Macana had vanished, along with the communications array and half of the tower wall. Pea-sized rubble and granite fragments slid from her thigh and arm as she sat up.

"Oh, crap." The Marine spat blood to clear her mouth and realized most of the gear strapped to her gunrig and belt were gone with the assault rifle. She tapped her comm with a trembling hand. "Helsdon? Engineer? You still alive?"

In her sick-bed, Kosho heard the distant crash of artillery and tried to sit up. She winced immediately, her porcelain face twitching with pain as her head spun. "Who is attacking?" She snapped into the combat channel. "Can anyone see unit blazons, idents, regimental flags, anything?"

The Resident was parked at her bedside, one long hand to his ear, listening intently to the chatter of servants, troops and wayward Imperial citizens who had taken refuge in the Legation. He was still dressed in a formal mantle, cotton shirt and trousers – the rising had caught him amid a state luncheon and he hadn't found time to change. Between them, they represented Imperial command authority in central Parus. Attempts to contact the Regimental cantonment had failed. He shook his head, listening to a babble of reports from throughout the sprawling building.

"This doesn't sound like a single military unit," Petrel said, voice hoarse with weariness. "The rising must have split dozens of regiments along clan or parish lines… One of the lesser princes will have taken control of the forces in thisarea." He adjusted one earbug, rubbing an eye swollen by a bad cut. "This attack on the garden gate in the south – the harness and traveling cloaks on the dead sound like those worn by religious pilgrims… Rural zealots must be entering the city, looking for asuchau – the unclean – to expunge from holy Jagan."

"I see. They will be discerning, I'm sure." Kosho felt faint and tried to lie still on her pillow. The feeling of fine silk under her neck was disconcertingly at odds with the patina of dust on her coverlet and the acrid smell of burned metal and propellant hanging in the air. The banging sound of hammers resounded from the hallway where the household servants were busily fortifying the windows and doorways. At the edge of hearing, a human baby was crying hoarsely. "Do we know where kujen Bhrigu stands in all of this? Is he part of the rising, or a fellow target?"

Petrel shook his head in dismay, silver hair mussed by the events of the past two days. "He is a nervous, untrustworthy creature – ever at odds with his generals and the priests. No one trusts him either. I would wager, however, that someone is attempting to overthrow him amid all this chaos." The diplomat smiled, rather grimly. "If not, then he is hiding in the basement of his palace, waiting for the dust to settle."

Kosho sighed, wishing she'd stayed on the ship. I wanted to feel the wind on my face – and see what kind of vacation I am having. Battle reports continued to bark in her ear. Tireless dogs, tireless… "We needn't look to him for relief then." Exhausted, she made a courtly gesture of resignation to fate. "The enemy has withdrawn from the southern gate. But we will not be able to stop up the breach in the east. Not if they have another tank to send against us."

Petrel stared at her hand, surprised and a little alarmed. "Without holding the outer wall…"

"The Residence is large," Kosho replied. "Move the civilians into the basements. Once sufficient rubble has been generated to block their armor, we will be able to hold them off while we have ammunition -"

The combat channel cleared abruptly, leaving only the disgusted voice of the gunner commanding the Whipsaw on the roof shouting: Incoming aircraft! Three of them on my scope, on an attack run! We're swinging the 'saw round…

"Bah!" Kosho's rude exclamation took the Resident by surprise. "Where is our aircover? Are they jets?"

Fragmentary reports from the 416th had indicated the natives had several jet aircraft in inventory. The Sho-sa would have laughed at the futility of deploying air-breathing, turbine-powered atmospheric aircraft against Imperial forces in the field, save for her complete lack of orbital fire support to knock them down. The counter-battery guns on an APAC would do the trick as well, but she didn't have an armored personnel carrier on hand either.

No, answered the gunner. These look like prop-driven fixed-wing models.

"Antiques?" Kosho made a face. "They're emptying the pantry…" She looked at the Resident questioningly. "Have we sold the kujen any antique propeller-driven aircraft?"

Petrel shook his head. "Not that I've heard of…"

Kosho tapped up the helmet feed from the gunners on the roof. Three heat-emission signatures appeared in the relayed feed, stark against a cold pre-dawn sky. They swung into a banking turn, heading straight for the Legation. She automatically reached for her comp, intending to call up a recog soft and then stifled a curse – Helsdon had borrowed her command comp to drive his communications relay.

Heicho Felix picked her way down a rubble-strewn ramp and hissed in alarm as a body appeared in the light of her hand-lamp. The chief machinist's mate was sprawled on the landing, one arm twisted beneath his body, scalp and face streaked with blood.

"Helsdon?" The Marine knelt down, shoving broken bricks out of her way. "Can you hear me?" Gently, she turned the body, lips tight to see the older man's head fall limply to one side. Felix tugged back his uniform jacket sleeve, exposing his medband.

The silver band was a mixture of amber and crimson, but he was breathing.

"Not dead yet," Felix breathed in relief. She wiped blood out of his eyes with the edge of her hand. "You and the Sho-sa will make a fine pair in medical bay together. But at least Isoroku won't stripe my hide bloody for getting you killed."

Grunting, the Marine heaved the engineer up onto her shoulders. Goddamn, she thought, straining to lift his body, bones like lead! He doesn't look this heavy…

A resounding boom! shook the tower, precipitating more rubble to cascade down the ramp and nearly knocked Felix from her feet. Swaying, she leaned against the wall, tapping her comm awake. "What the hell was that?"

Got two more tanks coming through the breach! Carlyle bawled on the channel.We're out of here! Whipsaw to anti-armor, Kosho's voice followed, cutting clear and cold through the Marine's panic. Ignore the aircraft for the moment. Kill that armor, in the breach if you can. Felix swore, shrugged the engineer into a slightly less uncomfortable carry, and waddled down the ramp as fast as she could. The opening onto to the retaining wall was only meters away and she turned sideways in the narrow doorway. Outside, the night was alive with the crash of heavy guns, the rattling sound of small arms and the clanking rumble of armor treads chewing more brick to dust. Intermittent tracer fire jagged into the sky. Burning vegetation lit the stones of the wall with a ruddy, orange glow. Craning her neck, she stared down into the gardens.

Sure enough, two more of the flat-turreted tanks ground noisily through the ornamental trees. A fresh attack out of the breach had developed while she'd been inside – this time the slicks were sending the armor first, with the infantry holding back and scuttling from cover to cover.

Sure are a lot of them, she thought with a sinking feeling. A couple hundred this time…

A sharp basso droning sound overhead made her turn. "What the -"

Her visor adjusted, scanning the pitch-black sky. The image changed tone and hue, and three cross-shaped aircraft roared over the Legation. Felix blanched, goggling at the antiques winging towards her, and took off at a run for the next tower on the wall.

The Whipsaw on the roof of the Residence shrieked. A hard white streak of light intersected the first of the prop-driven planes and the machine shattered in a violent burst of flame. Debris rained down, trailing smoke and flames. The other two planes broke away from their attack run, dumping their bomb loads.

Cease fire! Kosho barked on the channel. Kill the tanks first!

Four heavy black canisters plummeted out of the night sky and crashed through the canopy of leaves spreading over the garden. One bomb bounced up, skidded across a lawn of short-cropped grass and plowed through a clutch of scattering Jehanan soldiers. There was a bright spark in the darkness as a phosphorus igniter cooked off.

Felix flinched back, one arm thrown up by reflex to shield her eyes, even though her combat visor mirrored immediately. The bomb detonated with an ear-shattering roar, spewing liquefied flame in every direction. Three more napalm canisters exploded in succession, filling the air with a burning white-hot mist. The burning cloud rolled across the gardens, incinerating the Jehanan soldiers, consuming every scrap of vegetation and engulfing the tanks. A wave of terrific heat boiled up over the walls, shattering brick and splintering marble, granite and alabaster alike. The windows of the whole eastern side of the Residence shattered, cracked by the concussive effect of the blast and then coated with blazing jelly.

The crews of the Jehanan tanks survived a moment longer – protected from the flame and explosion by thick armor – but none of the three vehicles were secured for a zero-pressure environment and carbon monoxide flooded in through the gun aperture and air recirculators. The crewmen succumbed to paralysis and violent hallucinations within seconds, then strangled on their own blood.

Felix bolted forward, chased by a wall of fire, and hurled herself and the unconscious engineer into the secondary tower. Her combat visor sealed itself automatically as the monoxide level in the air spiked, fresh oxygen hissing into her nostrils.

On the comm, Kosho was bawling commands and Felix could hear Carlyle scream helplessly for a long drawn out second before his voice cut off. Then she was rolling down the ramp as the ceiling roared with billowing flame and everything turned red-orange from the furnace glare howling at her back.