"Clear the way!" The officer barked. Two of his troopers stepped aside.
Bhrigu stepped over a drift of bodies and into a mangled, bullet-riddled doorway. Mrs. Petrel had hung back a bit as the royal presence entered the hotel – a large number of dazed mutineers were being rounded up and herded out of the building, but she was careful to keep out of the line of fire if some zealot jumped out of a closet with a gun – but now she stepped up to the kujen's shoulder and took in the scene before him.
Prince Tezozуmoc stood near the middle of the room, a heavy Imperial assault rifle slung over his shoulder, the muzzle – still glowing cherry red and steaming softly – covering a pack of haggard, bloody Jehanan officers kneeling against the wall. The young man was watching his captives with a fixed, grim expression, teeth clenched tight. His hands were very steady on the handgrips of the weapon. His black skinsuit did not show any smudges, gore or dust.
"Ah, superbly done!" Bhazuradeha exclaimed, stepping past the kujen, who was staring very suspiciously at the wreckage, bodies and debris scattered around the room. "The prince of the air has swooped down on pinioned wings, seizing the conspirators in their very lair! Look, mi'lord, see who he has taken captive for you: the king of land and sea, the conqueror of the four quarters!"
The kujen tore his eyes away from the sight of two battered, exhausted Imperial Eagle Knights sitting with their backs to the wall, cleaning their weapons and reloading with numbed, trembling fingers. The younger one had a pair of darkened goggles over his eyes and half his face swathed in quickheal gel. Bhrigu glanced at Mrs. Petrel, gave her a lingering, suspicious stare and then turned back to the poetess, who had stepped to the largest of the captive officers and twisted his head around, her tiny rose-colored hand tight on his snout.
"Kurbardar Humara," Bhrigu said solemnly, looking down on the battered-looking officer. The scar along the Jehanan's snout twisted, but with the girl holding his mouth shut, he could say nothing. "Your treachery has cost many lives, but by the quick thinking of many loyal men…and women" – he nodded to Bhazuradeha – "your foul and treasonous rebellion has been crushed."
The kujen made a slashing motion with his hand. "Take him away!"
The troopers from the 111th swarmed forward, binding the captured officers and dragging them roughly away. Humara was the last to disappear through the door, his eyes filled with rage.
"That one," Mrs. Petrel said quietly to the kujen, "will have to be killed."
"They will all be executed before nightfall," Bhrigu said, tongue flicking between his teeth. "All these traitors will be rounded up and shot. Their families will be exiled, their estates and properties confiscated."
Mrs. Petrel nodded, beginning to relax. She felt terribly, terribly tired. "What about the rebellious elements in the countryside, in Takshila and Gandaris?"
Bhrigu regarded her rather slyly. "I'm sure the Imperial Army can take care of such rabble as runs amuck in the other principalities. Aren't your Colonel Yacatolli's men already deployed across the length and breadth of the Five Rivers?" He wrinkled his snout. "Parus is wracked by civil unrest. There is no way my forces could essay to campaign against these other princes while my position is insecure at home!"
"I see." Mrs. Petrel forced a cold smile. "And if these mutinous lords are suppressed, then Imperial forces will be required to…maintain order…in the north. For some goodly time to come. Are you sure some Parusian regiments could not be spared to maintain civil administration in the rebellious towns? Taxes will have to be collected, the law enforced…"
Bhrigu clicked the point of a small claw against his teeth. "A pressing point," he admitted. "Perhaps an arrangement could reached, apportioning these taxes in an equitable manner…"
On the other side of the city, in a quiet suburb, Itzpalicue rubbed her hands together, well pleased. The darkened room around her was lit by the glow of v-displays and filled with the hum of machinery and men and women talking rapidly into their comm-threads.
"Cut!" she barked, tapping a nail on her display.
In a side-pane, Lachlan scratched his head, leaning back in his chair in relief.
"Freeze feed, scrub out the jitter from those spyeyes and post a copy to the Mirror as soon as a t-relay is available." The old NГЎhuatl woman opened a channel to all of her operators. "Well done, all. Very well done." She smiled, showing yellowed old teeth like a row of grainy pearls. "Once the city is secured by loyalist troops, go to half-shifts. Release time-delay on all controlled comms. Time for the army to clean up our mess. Everyone can get some sleep."
She yawned herself and sat down in a wicker chair from upstairs, completely spent. The warm feeling of a job well done, despite unexpected adversity, filled her breast. Itzpalicue turned to speak to Lachlan and saw the young man had already leaned back in his chair and was snoring softly. As she watched, one of his technicians draped a patterned blanket over his chest and arms, then reached out and shut down the v-feed.
"Well done, my boy," Itzpalicue said to the darkened screen. "Ah, I should rest myself. Tomorrow will be just as bus y…" She consulted her chrono and bared her teeth. "Villeneuve should arrive soon and my services will be required again. Ah, this work is never done."
The Cornuelle At the Edge of the Jaganite Atmosphere
Wincing, Hadeishi settled himself into the command station in secondary control. Two medical orderlies assisted him, but despite their gentle hands, every nerve and muscle in his body throbbed with pain. At the navigator's station, a deathly-looking Sho-i Smith stared at him with haggard eyes.
"Kyo?" The boy's voice was a frail whisper.
"Prepare for maneuvering burn," Hadeishi gasped in response, shifting his hips in the shockchair. "Engineering – are you live on this channel?"
The Chu-sa had two earbugs and two comm-threads tacked in, one on each side of his face. Static and warbling interference intermittently flooded both channels.
We're here, an unfamiliar voice responded. This is Yoyontzin. Isoroku has gone up into the drive deck access to control the engines from the maintenance panel on level two.
"What?" Hadeishi kept his face still. Smith and the other junior officers in the secondary bridge were already on the ragged edge. All of them were injured – the communications officer had taken a bad cut on the side of his head and had one arm taped to his chest. A little less than half of the equipment was working – most of the control panels were dead – and there were signs of an explosion near the roof. A bitter taste of electrical smoke hung in the air. "What happened to the telemetry relay?"
Keeps dropping out. Yoyontzin's voice was cracking, veering into panic. We've replaced the hard-line twice, and it just keeps dying. I have comm to the Thai-i on a separate channel. I'll…I'll just relay what you need by hand.
"Understood. Stand by." Hadeishi muted the channel and stared at Smith. "Navigational scanners? External sensors?"
"Up and running, kyo." The midshipman tapped his panel. "On your pane now."
The command display curving around Hadeishi flickered to life. A set of v-panes unfolded, showing minimal altitude, position, direction and velocity data for the ship. The Chu-sa's jaw tightened and he forced himself to focus. The pain in his legs was wearing away at his concentration one bite at a time. "We're deep," he said, checking the altitude of the ship. "Hull temperature?"
"Rising, but slowly." Smith crouched over his panel, working the glyphs with one hand. "A shallow descent."
"All that's kept us alive so far," Hadeishi said, reaching up to smooth his short beard. He grimaced – the Medical techs had shaved half of his face to get gel tape on his radiation burns – and switched back to the engineering channel. "We have navigational control. Stand by for burn plot. Smith-tzin, we're going to have do a preprogrammed maneuver – the live relay to the engines is down. Isoroku will have to fire them remotely."
"Hai, kyo." The boy began tapping on his display. Hadeishi opened a Navplot pane himself and searched around on the console for a styl
us. They had all disappeared, despite magnetic adhesive which was supposed to keep them in place. Somewhere there are millions of panel styli in a bucket, he thought blackly, millions of them.
Remembering a trick from the Academy, he slipped a rank tab from the collar of his z-suit and twisted the retaining clip out. The metal point had the right kind of electrical signature to activate the sensor layer on the v-pane. Leaning over, he began sketching a trajectory on the display showing the round bulk of Jagan, his ship and the multiple layers of ever-thickening atmosphere.
"Burn pattern is done," Smith said a moment later, knuckling the glyph to transfer his work to the captain's station. Hadeishi leaned back a little, watching the calcs load – so slowly without main comp to supplement the display panel units! – and nodded. He meshed his own path-plot, double-checked the fuel levels last reported for the engines and tapped his comm thread awake.
"We're transferring burn parameters now," he said to Yoyontzin, whose rapid breathing sounded very loud in his ears. Hadeishi tapped the runner-glyph. The panel winked green, reporting a successful transfer.
Hadeishi tapped his other thread up and said: "All hands, prepare for maneuvering burn. Secure yourselves and your compartments. Burn will begin in…"
Yoyontzin was saying "Wait a moment, wait a moment…I've lost Isoroku's comm. Oh, there it is. I'm transferring…" There was unintelligible muttering on the channel. "He's loading the params now. Should be ready in about six minutes…"
"Stand by for maneuvering burn in eight, I say, eight minutes," Hadeishi announced. He lifted his chin at Smith and the other officers in the secondary. "Tack everything down in this space. No loose debris!"
Seven minutes later, maneuvering drives one, three and six ignited. Hadeishi felt the trembling vibration in his spine, stiffened into his shockchair and then he heard – for the first time in the six years he'd served aboard her – the Cornuelle groan in pain. The bulkheads twisted as the ship began to accelerate, emitting a deep basso moan. Overhead panels shivered, the lights flickered, and his command console began to evince a strange wavering effect.
He could feel the ship twisting as she surged forward, her prow biting into the upper atmosphere.
"Yoyontzin! The drives are out of balance," Hadeishi snarled, sweat seeping down the back of his neck. "Tell Isoroku to shut down the burn!"
Endless seconds passed and then the engines fluttered to silence. The hull creaked and groaned, flexing back into shape. Hadeishi slowly unclenched both hands from his armrests. He tapped the thread along his left cheekbone.
"Yoyontzin," he said very slowly and clearly, "you have to get that telemetry relay working properly. All I need is engine control live on my panel. Just patch the line from the drive access directly through to me, that's all. Don't use a relay."
But, kyo , we'll lose comm with most of the ship -
"You will do this right now, engineer, or you will be shot."
Hadeishi shifted in his chair, swallowing a gasp of pain. His legs were growing numb. "Smith-tzin, shut down your panel and reroute the Navplot to my station. Then come over here and stand secondary pilot. We'll take the ship out of atmosphere by hand."
The midshipman scrambled up, tapping the skull-glyph to kill his console. A moment later, he was squeezed in beside Hadeishi, the smell of his sweat pungent with body-toxins.
"Navplot is live," Smith said, watching a new set of v-panes unfold. "Telemetry is…Kyo, we're losing altitude again."
"I see." Hadeishi was listening to the comm from engineering. The channel clicked off. "Stand by for a second burn."
"But we can't warn -"
"I know." The Chu-sa forced himself forward, ignoring the throbbing in his hip. A set of engineering panes appeared. "Drive six is entirely out of synch. We're going to go to a burn with four, five, one and two." His fingers skipped across the panel, keying a fresh set of fuel metrics. He stabbed a finger at a status display, dragging the pane across the console. "Watch this reaction mass reservoir. Six is misfiring because there is a rupture in the fuel exchanger, the drive is getting too much mass. The cross-feed might be damaged as well. I'm going to go to minimal burn on the other four – if they start drawing too much fuel, override me and shut everything down."
"Hai," Smith swallowed, focusing on the status pane. His hand was poised over an override glyph of an eagle twisted around the pads of a cactus. "Ready for burn."
Out of habit, Hadeishi cleared his throat. "All hands stand by for two-minute burn."
He slid four fingers up the controls for the engine array. The ship trembled to life again. Vibrations cascaded through the hull and decking, riding up into his spine. Hadeishi closed his eyes, ignoring the readouts and graphs. His fingers moved delicately, adjusting thrust.
"Altitude stabilizing," Smith whispered, watching the captain's thin fingers making minute adjustments, altering second by second. Some of the motions were almost invisible.
"Eyes on the fuel feed!" Hadeishi snapped. Cornuelle began to drag against the atmosphere, against gravity, her nose coming up, prow breaking free from vanishingly thin waves of air. The Chu-sa began to surge more thrust to the lower drive nacelles. The ship's vibration changed pitch. A groaning sound began to shudder through the decking and the Chu-sa backed off a fraction. His fingers were beginning to tremble. A cramp stabbed in his left calf.
"Fuel is good," Smith said, blinking sweat out of his eyes. "Burn is clean. Fuel exchanger is holding."
"Advancing to thirty percent," Hadeishi announced. "Everyone hold on."
Two forefingers slid up, the subsonic roar of anti-matter annihilating ratcheted up into the audible range. The console began to shiver, making the rank badge dance loose from the crevice where the captain had secured it. Outside, the black hull of the ship began to glow, here and there, as atmospheric particles collided at higher and higher velocities.
"Fuel is holding," Smith declared, watching the reservoirs sink lower. Without the comp to microcontrol the reaction chambers, too much fuel was dumping into the system. "We're going to clog if we keep this up…" he warned.
"I know." Sweat purled down the side of Hadeishi's nose. "Twenty seconds."
The Cornuelle evened out. The Chu-sa cut to just two drives, and then feathered them back. He could feel the ship settle, the vibration in her hull idling down, bulkheads shifting and stretching. Gravity clutched at him in an infinitesimal way, tugging at his sleeve. Hadeishi glanced at the Navplot, saw the ship had reached a nominally safe orbit and breathed out.
"Engines all stop," he ordered himself. All four controls slid to zero with a careful, controlled movement. "All stop."
The ship creaked, bulkheads shifted minutely and the deck ceased to vibrate.
The Cornuelle coasted into a new orbit.
"Get down to Engineering," Hadeishi said to Smith. "Take all six drives off-line. Main power to minimal – and make sure someone has pulled the plug on point defense and the shipskin!"
The Chu-sa stared at the Navplot with a wan, haggard face. Something was approaching. He could see the flare of engines against the curve of the world on a feed from one of the forward maneuvering cameras. Smith leaned over his shoulder, clinging to the railing.
"Go on!" Hadeishi slumped back into the stiff confines of the chair. His eyes were fixed on the burning mote speeding towards him. At least someone survived groundside… I hope it's one of ours.
The lone Navplot v-pane emitted a warning tone. Hadeishi blinked awake and was instantly furious with himself for falling asleep. Smith had not returned from engineering and the two ratings on the bridge turned to stare at him, expecting a command response to the warning.
The Chu-sa stared at the plot, saw dozens of transit signatures appearing in a series of evenly spaced concentric circles and relaxed a little.
"A fleet battle group," he said, realizing neither of the ratings had an active Navplot on their consoles. "Villeneuve must be returning from Keshewan with Tecaltan 88. Is our point defense fi
nally off-line?"
The midshipman at the weapons panel bobbed her head, face sheened with sweat.
"Good." He tapped his comm thread to engineering. "Yoyontzin, do we have broadband commcast capability?"
Ah, soon, kyo. Soon. We're trying to decouple the external comm array from the power grid for the shipskin and point defense. Isoroku says…he says we'll be done as soon as we're done!
Hadeishi started to laugh, relieved, then coughed, feeling his chest constrict. "Ah, that hurts!"
On his plot, the ident codes of a cloud of destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers began to firm up. The mass of dreadnaughts, fleet tenders and troop ships in the middle of the globe were still indistinct behind a screen of countermeasures, but the Chu-sa could tell the Flingers-of-Stone had dropped into the system 'hot' and ready for battle.
The jarring realization reminded him of the Flower Priests and their plot. Villeneuve knew. He knew and his operations officer knew. His fingers curled into a tight claw on the armrest. They left us here to be expendable. So they could return – at a pre-planned time, or summoned by a relay drone waiting at the transit limit – just in time to rescue the situation on the planet. And be welcomed as heroes.
The muscle in the side of his neck spasmed and both of the ratings on the bridge looked away, purely terrified by the expression on Hadeishi's face.
Shuttle three drifted across the starboard ventral drive cowling of the Cornuelle, maneuvering to mate hatch with the access door beside boat bay two. In the boat's airlock, Sho-sa Kosho watched the cruiser glide past, face impassive, teeth clenched tight.
She looks horrible, Susan thought. The outer hull of the light cruiser was ripped and shattered, huge gouges torn from the shipskin, revealing tangled metal and ruptured compartments. Debris tinged and clanged from the shuttle, sending a queer ringing noise through the cargo compartment. The Sho-sa clicked her teeth.
House of Reeds ittotss-2 Page 49
