"Tell me then, meddling asuchau. Dare I ever sleep again? May I feel just, righteous anger at the fools who run squeaking in empty halls, pretending to be the kujenai of old? Should I weep for what you've destroyed?"
Gretchen ran a hand through her hair and grimaced at the gritty feeling. She desperately needed a shower. Should I tell this old one what I saw? About the ghosts?
She gathered her thoughts, looked Malakar in the eye and said: "The stone floor holding the root of the tree was a particularly pure, seamless marble. These readings show it was all of one piece. Marble, you should be aware, does not conduct heat, vibration or electricity well. The domed chamber around the tree also served to dampen electromagnetic waves or currents. I think the chamber was completely enclosed. It was a tomb."
The Jehanan hooted questioningly. "Why would they hide the -"
"Because they thought the tree was dangerous!" Gretchen stared at her grimy hand. Her fingers were trembling. Are there scorch marks from the green fire that washed over me? Is this how Hummingbird feels every day of his life? Merciful Mary, please keep my thoughts from sin, drown my curiosity, still my reaching hand. "Because they knew it was dangerous. So they built a prison in their strongest fortress, and they set a particularly devout order – the mandire – to guard the cell and keep it safe."
Malakar's eye-shields rattled. "Safe? Safe from what?"
"From other Jehanan? From the last of the Haraphans?" Anderssen clenched her hands together. "Whoever they captured it from…"
The gardener hissed, confused. "You are filled with riddles. My snout is cold from all these twisty thoughts. The only matter to claw is – did any life remain in the cold metal? Was aught revealed to the Masters when they embraced the kalpataru down through these endless years?"
Taking a deep breath, Gretchen tucked the comp away. "I believe…" she said in a ragged voice, thinking of the fuel-cell generators. "Without power the tree slept for millennia. I believe the machine was very, very old. Older than the arrival of the Jehanan, older than the Haraphans. Once, the kalpataru had a power source of its own, but that mechanism failed long ago."
Malakar peered at Gretchen, turning her long head from side to side, letting each eye gaze upon the human. "Without power…and those whining boxes, they were feeding the tree? Would it have woken to life?"
"For an instant – Mother Mary bless and protect me! – for less than the blink of an eye, it did." She smiled grimly. "Don't worry about the Master of the Garden and his propaganda. If he had truly beheld the visions of the device, his mind would have been destroyed long ago."
"No loss!" The Jehanan hooted in amusement, rattling old, yellowed claws on the floor. "He might gain some wit thereby!"
Gretchen shook her head sharply, feeling a curdling, acid sensation stir in her stomach. "He might gain more than wit – if something filled his broken mind with new thoughts. You would not like what happened then -" She stopped, wondering if Hummingbird would tell the gardener of the cruel powers which had shattered lost Mokuil and still lay in dreaming sleep on desolate worlds like Ephesus. "You were right to mistrust the kalpataru and feel its worship unwholesome."
"But," Malakar said, "without rain and sun, it lay fallow."
"Yes," Anderssen allowed, rubbing her face with both hands. She was beginning to feel truly exhausted. "But not dead, only dormant. Waiting for meddling fools to come along and give it life again."
"Hrrr…" Malakar fell silent, watching the human with an intent expression. Anderssen grew nervous, wondering if the Jehanan would attack her again. After a long time, the gardener stirred. "This slow old walnut suddenly realizes even rich asuchau humans must spend shatamanu to buy tasty food, to travel the iron road, to stay in tall khus where the wind is always cool in the windows – but the rich never get their claws soiled with dirt, or split by toil. Never."
Malakar's fore-claw extended, gently touching the scars on Gretchen's hand. "These are not the claws of a rich woman," the gardener said softly. "Yet you are here… Who paid to send you so far? Someone who heard of a divine tree standing in an ancient Garden, this old walnut thinks. Do they desire the kalpataru? Will they dig in the ruins with greedy claws? Will they fall down and worship it? Will they feed it?"
Anderssen squared her shoulders and forced herself to not bite her lip. "They – the Honorable Chartered Company – sent me to Jagan to look upon the kalpataru, to take the readings I have in my comp now, and to bring them back. No more."
"Hoooo! Well, you've twisted my tail, sure enough." Malakar's jaws gaped. She hissed angrily. "Everything you wished, I've done, haven't I? What a good servant this old one proves! The Master of the Garden would be stricken dumb to see me bow and scrape!"
"Here." Gretchen held out the comp. "Everything is in here. If you take this, then I will return home with empty hands. The secrets of the kalpataru will be safe. No one will ever return to disturb the Garden. Go on, take it."
Malakar stared suspiciously at the comp and hesitated, just for an instant.
A howling, shrieking noise pierced the triangle-leaved trees and the stone screen. Malakar jerked back her claw and both she and Gretchen stared towards the terrace with alarm.
"What was that?" Gretchen blurted. "That sounded like…no, that's impossible…"
"I have never heard such a noise before," the old Jehanan said, striding down into the passage out onto the overlook. Anderssen hurried after her and they both stepped out into the ruddy sunshine of Bharat. Takshila lay before them, the sprawl of the apartment buildings and factories and refineries half-hidden under a dirty yellow haze. There was a distant, rippling boom.
Gretchen tugged the goggles down over her eyes and scanned the horizon. After only a second she pointed, stabbing her finger. "There – in the sky to the southeast! A silver flash!"
"Hrrrr!" Malakar shaded her eyes. "I see – a yi of enormous size, racing faster than the wind! Trailing smoke and fire!"
"Not a yi," Anderssen said, alarmed and puzzled by turns. "That looks like an old-style jet fighter – but they've not been used by the Empire for hundreds of years…"
The distant dot swept low over the sky, flashing through the rising fume of hundreds of smokestacks, then darted skyward. Below, there was a bright flash among the buildings. A sharper roar trembled across the city to reach their ears. A black smudge billowed up, lit from below by the red-orange glow of flames.
"What are they attacking?" Gretchen zoomed the magnification of her goggles, but the haze in the air obscured everything. "The train station?"
"No…" Malakar pointed off due south. "The iron road is there… That fireis where the asuchau merchant houses stand."
Gretchen pushed back her goggles, heart thudding with fear. "I have to get back to my friends right now. If Imperial citizens are being attacked, they are in danger."
Without waiting for a response, she turned and bolted down the passageway, goggles jammed down to her nose, the filter keyed into ultraviolet. There was a startled hooting from behind her, and then the slapping of leathery feet on stone. Anderssen didn't wait, plunging down the ramp at the end of the perforated hall, survey comp clutched to her breast.
Near the Boulevard of Stepping Cranes District of The Wheel, Parus
The hue of sunlight falling through the back of the truck changed, even as the driver swerved into a narrow lane between two buildings of painted brick and plaster. Itzpalicue looked out, puzzled by the shifting light, and then two things happened at once: her earbug roared painfully with static, making her flinch, and the dappled shadows beneath the trees lining the lane shifted wildly.
Another attack? My hand-comp!
Queasy with fear, the old woman wrenched out her earbug with a gasp of pain. The Arachosian stared at her, puzzled himself, and watched in concern as she snatched out her comp, saw the machine was showing wild, fragmentary garbage on its screen, and then hooted with surprise as she vaulted the tailgate and bolted across the flagstone-paved courtyard the truck had just e
ntered. Radiation attack, she realized, her medband squealing an unmistakable alert.
The sky over Parus rippled with queer, diamond-hard light. The sun gained three smaller companions, each brilliant pinprick glaring down through gathering cloud. The Arachosian warrior jumped down from the truck – now coughing to a halt – and stared up, one long, tan claw shading deep-set eyes. The tiny suns burning the sky were already fading, leaving scattered spots in his vision. He blinked, tear ducts flushing his seared retinas. The black spots did not disappear.
Itzpalicue hurried down a flight of stairs into the empty basement of the safe-house, pressed one hand against a hidden security sensor and then threw back her scarf as a second door opened in the floor, allowing her to descend a flight of newly built wooden stairs.
She cursed, seeing the lights had dimmed to dull red emergency filaments powered by an on-site power-cell. A handful of humans stared up at her, eyes wide in the near-darkness. The banks of comm displays, comps and monitoring apparatus were silent and dead.
"What are you doing?" Itzpalicue snapped, eyes going cold. "Bring up emergency power! Switch to the landline network!"
"But…" One of the Mirror technicians, eyes dark in the poor light, lank black hair shining with grease, started to stand up. "What happened? All the networks have gone down again – the Tepoztecatl relay is off-line, we can't…"
"Sit down and get to work," the old woman said in a hard voice. "Or you will be replaced."
The man sat, flushed, sweating now with fear.
"Operating power can be provided by the power-cell array in the other chamber," she barked, stabbing a thin finger at an engineer. "Start them up!" She stared around at the rest of the frightened people, lips twisted into a sneer. "There is work to be done, children. Get about it! You know what to do if the primary networks fail. I want status reports within ten minutes!"
Everyone started awake and – prodded by her sharp voice – returned to their stations. The whine of power-cells firing up echoed in from the other room and the lights flickered back on.
Itzpalicue waited by the stairs, gimlet eyes fierce on every sweating face. Under her baleful gaze, everyone settled down with remarkable efficiency. The comps were reset and came back up, filling the room with a hard, jewel-like glare.
Itzpalicue let herself take the tiniest breath of relief. We still have some comp.
"Over-the-air networks are still down," the lead technician reported a few moments later. "We've lost the line-of-sight relay on the roof and our aerials aren't picking up any comm traffic at all, just undifferentiated static."
"No military traffic?" Itzpalicue raised an eyebrow. "The 416th should have been able to ride out an EMP burst. Any broadband from orbit?"
The technician shook his head, lips pursed. He was staring questioningly at the old woman.
"What?" Itzpalicue's expression hardened to granite and she wondered if Yacatolli had been more careless than she'd planned. He'd better have had his command tracks in hardened mode, or the Field Officers' School will be making a test question out of his utter failure on the plain of battle.
"EMP shock, mi'lady? Is…is that what knocked out our comm network?"
Itzpalicue grunted. "And the spyeyes back aloft as well, I'm sure. We'll be blind until Lachlan can launch fresh ones." If he has any left – two blows now aimed at our aerial surveillance capacity – very thorough, very thorough indeed.
"An atomic on the ground, mi'lady?" The technician was looking a little green. "At the spaceport?"
"Exoatmospheric," Itzpalicue said, softening her voice a little, realizing the operators in the sub-surface room had no way to tell there had been a series of nuclear explosions at the edge of the Jaganite atmosphere. "Multiple detonations in orbit. If the Flower Priest network has gone off-line and there aren't any recog codes being transmitted from orbit, assume the Tepoztecatl has been destroyed." She frowned, thumb to her lower lip. "What about the Fleet cruiser?"
"We're trying to get linked back to main operations now… We'll knowabout other stations and relays in…" The technician swallowed nervously. "…an hour? Then we'll be able to broadcast to orbit – but we don't have that capability here."
The old NГЎhuatl woman's lips twitched into a sour grimace. Deployment planning, operations manual, revision six thousand and three…deploy backup orbital uplink with tertiary communications center. Deploy ground-based surveillance mechanisms.
"Get me verification on all ships we knew were in orbit. Get me a radar scan or visual – something! As soon as possible. If something has entered orbit and destroyed both of our support ships…we will need to revise our planning." Go underground and scatter, she thought grimly. With Yacatolli's regiment dispersed and under attack, and no orbital support, we may lose the Legation and our entire presence here. Even one Danish privateer would be enough to tip the balance…
She placed the thought firmly aside. Until more data was available, she'd assume things were as they stood and no more. Which, she allowed sourly, is bad enough.
"Landline status?" Some of the technicians were talking into their voice-phones. Most of the comp displays were live again, though none of them were showing v-feeds.
The technician scratched his head, glancing over his shoulder. "Station two," he pointed, "has gotten ahold of one of the techs at main operations. She's transcribing their status. We're trying to raise the other city operations teams, but so far we've only managed to get through to the one at Sobipurй. They've had to move to their backup site – the landing field has been overrun and the Imperial citizens there slaughtered."
"Hmm…what about Fleet staff at the base?" Itzpalicue leaned over the display showing the transcript from Lachlan's conversation. "Were they killed or captured as well?"
The technician shrugged. "No news. We're operating nearly blind, mi'lady."
"Yes," Itzpalicue pursed her lips. "What about datacomm over the landlines?"
"Ten minutes," he said, swallowing again. "I think. There is a problem with -"
She fixed him with a stony glare. "Fix it. Now, where is my station?"
The room had returned to a proper feeling of busy efficiency by the time Itzpalicue had settled herself in a distant corner, half-hidden behind a stack of heat exchangers and storage crystal lattices. The tension and fear was ebbing from the voices around her, though everyone was on edge. The old woman was pleased. Losing all prospect of support and even, possibly, their way home had not reduced any of her staff to uselessness from panic or fear.
They have spirit, she thought, as I have always maintained.
A mingled sensation of bitterness and pride filled her. A traditional Mirror field team would have leaned heavily on older, more experienced staff. Ones with 'proven skills' and spotless efficiency records, drawn from well-connected members of the great clans or the military families. None of the young men and women in the room had been recruited from within the Four Hundred. Nearly all, in fact, were from colony worlds or mining stations or the slums of AnГЎhuac. Patronless, making their way only by skill, tenacity and a blithe disregard for the danger around them. A more experienced team, she allowed privately, would not heed my orders so effortlessly. They would argue and quibble and question. And dwell too much on the prospect of failing to return home in a critical time.
The comp displays before her came to life at a touch, showing audio transcripts from the operators in the room. She inserted a fresh earbug and twisted the comm-thread around to her lips. The chatter in her ear was confusing for a moment, but she let her eyes relax, let the room fall away and plucked a maguey thorn from her sleeve.
Blood welled from her breast and the sharp stab of pain focused her mind.
An array of glyphs appeared on her main display, including one associated with Lachlan. Pleased, Itzpalicue tapped the glyph and a moment later Lachlan's voice was threading its way through the stream of conversations washing over her.
"Did you suffer any losses in the shockwave?"
&
nbsp; No, mi'lady. No human casualties at least. She could hear him smiling grimly. The gods of war favored us a little – we hadn't relaunched our surviving spyeye assets when the EMP shock blanketed this face of the planet – so we didn't lose any more. Still, we've lost three-quarters of our coverage. We've sorted out twelve primary detonations and one secondary. The first set were anti-matter cascades, the last a fusion explosion. A ship's reactor core by the emissions signature.
"Which ship?" Itzpalicue reached into her mantle and squeezed an oliohuiqui tablet from a sewn-in pocket. The round pill felt grainy and sharp under her fingertips. "The Tepoztecatl?"
We think not, he replied. The orbit position was wrong – best guess says it was the merchanter Beowulf, which had recently arrived with a cargo of recycled aluminum blocks and miscellaneous 'spare parts'.
"More guns for the local trade. Well, they'll not be missed. The native princelings seem to have accumulated enough fuel for a hot little war as it stands." The old woman placed the tablet under her tongue, feeling a familiar bitter taste well in her mouth. "And the detonations themselves?"
Orbital mines. The Йirishman's voice was flat. The Imperial Development Board's satellite network down to the meter. Civilian power plants replaced with military grade anti-matter packs and converted into cheap bomb-pumped x-ray laser platforms. The Tepoztecatl didn't mount the armor to shrug off even a single hit…
"A long-prepared trap." Itzpalicue blinked as everything around her became very sharply defined. "Do you concur?"
I don't know how long someone spent setting this up… Lachlan clicked his teeth together in thought. But someone here has been preparing for battle. We're not picking up any signs of another ship in the system, so I think the mines were used as a cheap way to cripple or destroy any assets we had in orbit. A one-off cast of the patolli beans, if you will. Costing nothing if the gambit failed, but carrying the potential for inflicting heavy casualties…
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