House of Reeds

miscellaneous spare parts. All Imperial issue. Not the latest revisions, but then the ship is not exactly fresh from the Jupiter Yards.

'Excellent. Be aware the situation on the ground is starting to cook. If you've space on the shuttle, take a squad of Marines. I've – ah – freed some up from Isoroku's repair projects. If anything happens, evac to orbit immediately. We need you and those crewmen back here more than the repair parts.'

Understood. Felix's fireteam is already standing by with Helsdon and two of his technicians. We'll see you in about twenty hours. Kosho, out.

On the bridge of the Cornuelle, midshipman Smith leaned heavily on the armrest of his shockchair, eyes half-closed, one finger pressed to his earbug. His free hand drifted across the v-display, tweaking frequencies and absorption ranges. A constant stream of static, chattering, booming music, lilting singing voices, twenty-second advertisements and encrypted bursts of garbage noise washed over him. In comparison to the spare interstellar communications environment he usually worked in, Smith felt like he'd thrust his head into a hive of angry, polyphonous bees.

A particular warbling squeal caught his attention. 'I've heard that before. Three-Jaguar, can you isolate the comm spike at six-thousand-and-fifteen?'

The second watch communications officer, a petite Tlaxcalan girl with perfectly straight ink-black hair, nodded, tapping up a new pane on her display. The frequency isolated and Smith leaned in, watching the main comp apply a score of decrypt filters in dizzying succession.

'Doesn't that look familiar? I'm sure it's an Imperial code…'

Jaguar nodded absently, her attention wholly focused on the v-display. Short, neatly manicured fingers skipped across the board, pulling slates of Fleet, Army and Diplomatic code images from archive and queuing them for decrypt comparison. After a moment, she paused and lifted her sharp chin. 'I remember this,' she said slowly, 'it's from commtech school – an old-style encrypt used by one of the priestly orders.'

'A military order? Like the Knights of the Flowering Sun?' Smith started scanning through the code archive. After a moment, he found something which looked vaguely like the pattern flowing across their panel. 'Might be an upgraded version of this one…I'd tell the captain. Jag, look at this other thing…' He swapped in a completely separate v-display showing clusters of locator signals scattered all along the Parus-Sobipurй-Fehrupurй axis. 'Run down these locator idents – there are Imperial signatures all over this countryside – like school let out or something…they're encrypted too and we'd better find out who they are.'

The second watch tech nodded, transferring the v-display to her panel, quick mind already nibbling away at the new problem. Smith changed his earbug channel to the command push and thumbed the priority glyph for Chu-sa Hadeishi. Not for the first time, he found it amusing the main comm system was required to route a talktime request to the captain, who was seated behind and above the comm station and no more than two meters away.

'Yes, Sho-i Smith?' Hadeishi spoke quietly into his comm-thread. A particular feeling was beginning to steal over him, a sensation he associated with patrolling in hostile space. A sense of impending action, as if a steadily building weight was pressing on his mind. He had been keeping an eye on the communications station – Smith had not left his station when second watch arrived on the bridge, which meant he had gotten wrapped up in the analysis project. Hadeishi let him stay; Three-Jaguar did not appear to mind and they made a good team.

'Have you found something?' The Chu-sa was keeping track of Isoroku and his repair crews who, despite the mournful protests of the senior engineer, were making excellent progress at securing all of the repair supplies and adapting to a more conservative schedule. If only we had received some kind of munitions resupply. Fresh soap has a laudable effect on morale, but will do little for us if we have to provide ground-support for the Army.

Unfortunately, despite considerable investigation, the local industrial base simply could not provide the Cornuelle with fresh sprint and shipkiller missiles, or even capacitors and munitions for the point-defense network.

'Hai, kyo.' The boy's face was keen with anticipation. 'First, we've started to pick out a lot of chatter on fringe Imperial bands – all encrypted – using an old-style code formerly associated with certain Imperial religious military orders. We've had no indication there are any Templar or Tlahulli brigades operating on Jagan, so that's a little strange.'

Hadeishi considered this for a moment, turning the indication over in his mind. That does not seem to fit at all. So it must be a foundation piece of the puzzle…'And?'

Jaguar leaned over, whispering in Smith's ear. Hadeishi waited patiently. As the two junior officers consulted their panel, the Chu-sa kicked off a ship-wide request for departmental status.

'Second, kyo, it looks like the 416th Arrow Knight regiment has taken to the field. Motorized elements apparently departed their cantonment south of Parus two and a half hours ago. The furthest afield are almost at Fehrupurй, but they're encountering sporadic resistance.'

'What?' Hadeishi stiffened, his entire body suddenly and completely awake. 'We've had no notification of an operational deployment! Get me Colonel Yacatolli right now.'

Jaguar immediately began speaking into her comm-thread, the glow of a fresh v-feed from the surface shining on her cheekbones. Smith tapped a copy of his locator map to Hadeishi's station.

'What kind of resistance is the Army encountering?' Hadeishi tagged the flight paths of his shuttles into the map. Number three was already on the ground, while Susan's shuttle two was inbound to the main shuttle field at Sobipurй. Shuttle One, with a Marine drop-squad standing by, was still in boat bay one. 'Local military contingents?'

'No, kyo.' Smith shook his head and copied a set of thumbnails to the command station. 'Kids throwing rocks and firebombs – mostly methanol and soap in glass. Some of the squad commanders have reported roads blocked or bridges under repair where satellite sweeps yesterday showed plenty of local traffic crossing.'

'I see. Jaguar-tzin, do you have Yacatolli on comm for me yet?'

The Tlaxcalan ensign shook her head, pixyish features immobile with anger. 'Regimental headquarters is saying he's busy and doesn't have time to talk to you right now. They say…they say they'll call us when he's free.'

Hadeishi's eyes narrowed and he considered overriding the channel himself. For a moment. Then he pushed the anger aside and turned his attention back to the two junior officers. 'Very well. Smith- tzin, find out where all this priestly traffic is coming from. Yacatolli's belief in the superiority of his regiment over the locals is a known quantity – this other business is more disturbing.'

Takshila

District of the Molt

Humming softly to herself, Gretchen gently drifted her hand across the control surface of a Zeiss-Hanuman field camera. The lens and imaging body of the surveillance scope were mounted in a north-facing window. She was sitting cross-legged, watching the 60X image of the monastery with great interest.

On the v-display, a line of Jehanan elders was slowly climbing one of the external staircases cut into the rock of the hill. One by one they bent down and entered a T-shaped doorway near the summit. Some kind of domed building nestled in the rock, filling what the geodetic survey revealed was an old ravine. Gretchen was interested in this particular vignette because a similar number of monks made the same journey every morning. They did not return the same way. None of the penitents – if they were, in fact, performing a religious service – carried anything, as far as she could tell, and had dispensed with the usual leather harnesses and disc-shaped signs of status and rank.

A purification bath? she wondered.

She moved her hand again, and the camera scanned to one side. More cliffs pierced by tall narrow windows and occasional doors leading onto precarious walkways or steep sets of steps blurred past and she found the terrace Magdalena had labeled 'Southern Orchard' on the comprehensive three-d map their cameras, radar packs, and geomagnetic sensors were building on a base of out-of-date satellite photos. The orchard was filled with slender- trunked trees with perfectly rounded crowns. Gretchen's lips twitched into a faint smile – the ornamental arrangement of the naragga trees was the result of meticulous daily maintenance by a