House of Reeds

native military units have mutinied in Sobipurй and southern Parus! The spaceport has been overrun. Wai t… wait…what is this?

Itzpalicue raised an eyebrow at Lachlan, who was drinking some coffee at his station and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

This is impossible, the Flower Priest pronounced. The Mercantile Exchange House in Takshila has been attacked by hostile air elements firing guided munitions of some kind. There are hundreds of dead. By the Mother's Son, these creatures have managed to buy or hire atmospheric aircraft! Yacatolli is calling on Fleet to provide suppression fire.

'Lachlan?' The old NГЎhuatl woman raised her chin questioningly. 'Did we provide them with aircraft of some kind?'

No, he answered, covering a yawn. We're getting scattered reports of the mutineers deploying archaic Jehanan war machines of different kinds – tanks, aircraft, artillery – which survived the nuclear exchange six hundred years ago.

'Numbers? Enough to make a difference?' Itzpalicue was impressed by the self-discipline of the native princes. This was the first mention she'd seen of any pre-Collapse military equipment surviving in an operable state. The prospect the kujenai had restrained themselves from wasting any possible advantage over one another during the last century of internecine conflict raised her estimation of them markedly.

We don't think so, Lachlan said. The Flower Priest was still babbling, alternately outraged and baffled by the steadily increasing reports from elements of the 416th in combat with squadrons of heavy tanks and being bombed by solitary Jehanan jet aircraft. Assets in action are still too few to tip the balance. Now if someone has a whole armored division in his pocket… Analysis section thinks all of thisgear was in storage or non-operable until Imperial pochteca started selling enough metal parts, lubricants and civvy-grade power-cells to get things working again.

'Ha!' Itzpalicue laughed heartily, having to wipe away a tear from her eye. 'And we took such pains to supply them with near-modern anti-armor missiles and automatic rifles… Well, get combat efficiency reports when you can. The Mirror will be interested to see how the indigenous manufactures stack up against Army issue.'

Lachlan started to nod -

– and the comm channel went dead.

Itzpalicue blinked, staring at the blank comp in her hand. The signal strength indicator was showing zero and the lighted front panel was dark. A cold chill washed down her spine. 'Lachlan?'

Above the Sobipurй-Parus Railway

North of the Spaceport

The howling roar of shuttle engines suddenly faltered, pitch dropping precipitously, and Heicho Felix felt her gut flip over as the aircraft shuddered from nose to tail. She clutched tight on the support rails beside her jump seat, eyes squeezed shut.

And then realized her earbug had fallen silent, that her z-suit environmental controls had stopped humming, that aside from the shriek of air rushing past the hull, the inside of the shuttle was utterly quiet. Her eyes flew open – and there was nothing but darkness all around her – not so much as the gleam of a readout or a comm screen.

'What the hell!' Her shout tumbled over the exclamations of the rest of her squad and Sho- sa Kosho as well. 'We've lost power!'

'We're not hit,' Susan growled in the darkness. Felix could hear the lieutenant commander's fingers jamming fruitlessly against a control pad. 'Comps are dead – everything's off-line.'

'Everyone brace,' Felix shouted, trying to grapple with the kind of weapon which could knock out all their comps inside of a shielded Fleet shuttle. 'Hang on, we're going down!'

'Like a brick,' Kosho muttered, forcing herself back into the seat.

Takshila

Near the Intersection of Panca-Sapta

AndTrieka

In the apartment, a stiff breeze from the windows was clearing away the smoke and once more the Jehanan commando squad entered – this time very cautiously – rifles moving restlessly from side to side. The web of tanglewire stopped them for a moment, until two of the brawnier guardsmen crashed through the barrier with a large table from an adjoining apartment.

A commando scuttled through the gap, swung to the right, and then caught sight of the pair of missing windows. Gingerly, booted feet crunching in scattered glass, he crept up to the opening and peered out, rifle at the ready. The durbar following him paused halfway into the room, staring suspiciously at the monofil anchors embedded in the floor. In the smoky air, his goggled eyes did not catch sight of the two wires stretched to the window frame, where a strip of magnetically charged 'lipping' material kept the monofil from shearing through the wood and concrete.

Both tabs zipped up to the window, bounced over the lipping strip, started to coil automatically – sliced cleanly through the neck and left arm of the commando on point – snapped into their anchors and demagnetized.

The durbar poked at one of the anchors with the muzzle of his rifle, then looked up – a question on his lips – in time to see the point commando topple over, blood spurting from a severed neck and gushing onto the floor from the arm. Eyes wide in shock, the durbar made a sound like a steam boiler venting overpressure; his rifle twitched towards the window and his claw clenched tight. One round boomed from the HK-45B, vanishing through the opening, and then the rifle jammed, the chamber fouled with substandard propellant.

The rest of the squad, having whirled at the gunshot, stared in horror at the body sprawled by the window. None of them had seen or heard anything. The durbar continued to try to fire the rifle, which made a click-click-click sound in the sudden quiet.

Malakar lunged after the human, her claws snapping on empty air, and shouted heedlessly with fear, seeing Anderssen stagger across the marble floor of the vault, in plain sight of the soldiers, every detail plain in the fierce, omnipresent glare of the floodlights.

'Hoooo!' A wail of fear burst from the gardener's old throat and she wrenched the heavy, clumsy pistol up, claw-tip scrabbling on the trigger.

Technicians whirled around at the unexpected noise. The Jehanan durbar stepped out, snatching for his automatic. His deep-set eyes widened, seeing an ancient monk waving a weapon at him. Then he caught sight of a smaller figure dashing for the artifact.

'Guards!' he shouted, enraged, and swung the iron-sights of his gun towards Gretchen. 'Kill them both!'

His finger tightened – there was the sharp crack! of a gunshot – for an instant the durbar thought he'd been hit himself, claw convulsing on the automatic's trigger. There was the booming, echoing report of a second shot.

The secondary Honda generator shuddered, spewing hydrogen from a punctured cell. A mechanical pressure safety tripped and the current flowing to the kalpataru abruptly cut off.

Parus

District of the Ever-Turning Wheel

Itzpalicue stared at her comm with a sensation of icy dismay welling in her stomach.

'Lachlan?' She could barely whisper.

Gingerly, she turned the hand-comm over, then rotated the thumb control. Nothing happened. The usual whispering thread of voices from her earbug had fallen silent. She raised her eyes to the elderly technician and found him staring at her with equal horror.

'Mine is dead too,' Nacace said in a frightened voice. 'My earbug is dead. Everything just…stopped working.'