"Ha!" Bhrigu hooted with laughter, appreciating the female's bone-dry delivery of the news. "What do you see, eye-of-knowing-all-things?"
"They have been hurt," she replied, moving to the chart. A thin claw indicated the rail-line south to Sobipurй. "Where forces loyal to the moktar managed to surprise the asuchau soldiers in exposed positions, such as along the elevated highways in the farm country, many enemy vehicles have actually been destroyed. Several groups of the enemy have been wiped out."
"And here in Parus?"
The scribe shrugged, tilting her head to one side. "There are too many places to hide in the city. One Imperial in the rubble can kill a hundred times his number before being chased to ground." A delicate claw tapped the diagram of the Cantonment. "The defenders of their main base are grinding up our men as quickly as fresh brigades can be shoveled into their maw. Zhern and Kuvalan will not be able to take this place, not without massing all our forces there."
Bhrigu ground his teeth together in dismay. In the twenty hours of battle which had passed, the kujen had been very careful to hold his best troops out of the fray. Humara had taken the field with his own household guards, various brigades of rural levies and the not-so-secret armies of the religious brotherhoods. Thousands of common Jehanan had joined the rising, venting blind fury at the Imperials. Their pride ran deep – even now, after so many disasters and catastrophes – even the lowest beggar knew Jagan had once been ruled by a glorious civilization.
All my enemies are dying, he realized. Humara is truly too reckless to ever be kujen. Should I take a hand? There are hundreds of tanks and dozens of aircraft ready to strike, artillery by the battery…all of the newly trained troops with modern equipment…
Bhrigu's grandfather had been a far-sighted old snake. When Jehanan industry had recovered to the point where scrap iron and hoarded steel could be worked again, and the chemical processes described by the old books could be followed, he had invested decades in scrounging up all of the detritus of the cataclysm which had swallowed the Arthavan civilization. Old Vazur had known the day would come when the cities of the Five Rivers would contest for supremacy with more than bow and shield and lohaja-bladed spears.
On that day, the old kujen had sworn his dynasty would prevail over their many rivals. The coming of the Imperials and their greedy merchants had vaulted a plan requiring decades of painstaking work to the edge of reality in only five years. Entire catalogs of machine tools and raw materials and prefabricated engines and pure, refined source chemicals had been presented to the kujen by the NГЎhuatl pochteca – all for the picking, if the quills could be had.
Now I must choose to show my hand…or not. Bhrigu stepped closer to the map, deep-set eyes searching the icons and flags and pins for an answer. How fragile is the balance in this moment? How much of a push is needed…
"How many tanks does Humara have?" he asked curiously after a long moment of consideration. "How does he plan to attack the Legation?"
"Three Aganu-class medium tanks, sire. Heavy cannon, machine-guns, composite armor…not the most powerful weapons we have in inventory, but sufficient for the task, if there are as few asuchau in the Legation as we suspect." The scribe searched around on the table and unrolled a large plan of the old citadel. "At least one company of engineers from the 3rd division has joined his attack, sire. They'll cut open the eastern wall with explosives and send at least a brigade through in support of the armor."
"Against how many humans?" Bhrigu wondered if his grandfather ever felt faint and dizzy in the midst of battle. Never! He breathed fire and spat steel nails…
"Reports from our spotters in a nearby khus say there are ten to fifteen Fleet Marines in light armor, plus another hundred or so unarmored civilians with a variety of small arms. They have some kind of high-speed cannon on the roof of the Legation, which has been shooting Humara's mortar and artillery rounds out of the sky as they drop in."
"Hrrrr! They have quick eyes," Bhrigu scowled, remembering diagrams in the old books of such systems. More toys we cannot afford and desperately need. He measured the length of wall around the citadel and frowned. "Old Scar will get inside if he breaches that wall – there's too much perimeter for the humans to hold the whole length…if that roof-mounted gun is destroyed, he could flatten the whole complex and let them suffocate in the ruins…"
I know what to do, he realized. Where to push, and just how hard.
The kujen turned to his guard-captain, scaleskin around his eyes tight. "Tell the pilots to get in the air and make for the Rusted Citadel with all speed."
Then Bhrigu hefted the comm in his hand and toggled the switch. The device came to life, made a fluttering noise while the unit searched for a relay node and then beeped happily, showing a green 'ready' indicator. This is what Vazur the Great felt like, he thought, feeling both stomachs unclench. He felt light, as if the weight of ages had been lifted from his shoulders. When his lancers burst from hiding upon the highlander left at Acare and shattered their great army. And then, as now, timing and leverage are everything…
His claw depressed the control button and the kujen raised the comm to his lips.
"This is Bhrigu," he said. "Tell your mistress I've matters to discuss with her."
Of course, mi'lord, Lachlan answered, sounding pleased. One moment, please.
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 w
as 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 Im
perial 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.
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