House of Reeds

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 finally 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