House of Reeds

ship's data networks, buckled, and most of the blast boiled through the gaping hole where the command panel had been mounted. Luckily, the critical networks were encased in heavy armor, and the blast – though the conduit was severely kinked and sections were badly melted – did not penetrate into the datacore.

A third of the ship's comp, however, did go momentarily off-line as the automatic damage control system shut down the conduit and rerouted traffic into the other two cores. The wrecker viruses, which had already permeated the ship's neural web, began a systemic attack on every sub-system, interface and command and control system within their reach.

Asale counted under her breath, hand on the manual system restart. 'Two…and one!'

The lever clicked forward, there was a chirping sound, and the command panels in the cockpit of the captain's launch jolted awake.

'We have system restart,' Hadeishi announced, watching the boot log flash past on his display. 'Fitzsimmons, Deckard – you still with us?'

'Hai, kyo,' Fitzsimmons answered, sounding a little rattled. Both Marines had been completely silent while the pilot and the Chu-sa were working feverishly to get the launch controls operating again. 'Is there anything we can do?'

'Yes,' Hadeishi said, perfectly calm and collected. 'The Cornuelle has been severely damaged, if our sensors are reporting the atmosphere and radiation cloud around her properly. We are going to match velocity and go aboard. The locks and boat bays may be damaged, so hunt around back there and collect anything we can use to cut into a lock or handle damage control and medical emergencies once we're inside. Take everything you can carry.'

'Engine restart in three…two…one…' Sho-i Asale twisted the ignition handle, felt the drive reactor in the back of the launch rumble awake and mimed wiping sweat from her high brow with her free hand. 'The gods are smiling, Chu-sa. We've lost comm and external video and some of the navigational sensors, but we can still fly.'

'Good.' Hadeishi cleared a display showing all comm interfaces offline from his panel. 'Get me to my ship as fast as you can.'

The launch trembled, the drives lit off and they jolted forward. Jagan continued to swell before them, and Hadeishi imagined he could see the matte black outline of the Cornuelle ahead, growing nearer every second. His face became a mask, his eyes cold obsidian.

The Chu-sa was trying to keep from bursting into tears. I've failed my men, my ship…everyone. What did I think I was doing – haring off on a political visit with combat imminent? Ah, the gods of chance are bending against me tonight. The only thought which gave him some shred of hope was the knowledge that Susan was on the ground, far from their dying ship, perhaps safely ensconced in a command bunker at Sobipurй or the Regimental cantonment.

Hold on, he prayed, watching the fragmentary navigational plot for signs of the Cornuelle. Hold on, I'm coming. Hayes knows what to do, he'll get maneuvering drive back and pull you into a safe orbit. Just hold on, just a little longer…

Six thousand kilometers behind the launch, the Tepoztecatl continued to shudder with explosions as more systems failed. Atmospheric venting continued unabated and the long, curving rooms filled with communications equipment drifted with clouds of paper, globules of vomit and blood and water. Bodies clogged the doorways where the explosive decompression of the ship had sucked the hapless priests to an ugly, instant death. The main reactor had shuddered into an emergency shutdown, preventing the kind of catastrophic failure which had claimed the Beowulf, but only isolated portions of the ship glowed with emergency lights.

The bridge and command spaces were twisted wreckage – the laser burst from the nearest mine had smashed lengthwise into the ship directly through the control deck. Chimalpahin and all of his subordinates had been instantly killed, either incinerated or boiled alive as the internal atmosphere roared out through the shattered hull.

All possibility of the Flower Priest network being restored was wiped away with one brilliant flash of light. Across Jagan, the Whisperers working quietly in town, countryside and metropolis stared in alarm at their comms, finding the ever-present voice from the sky had fallen silent.

Warning lights flared, nearly blinding Isoroku as he struggled back to consciousness. The engineer raised a hand, found his ears ringing with a warbling emergency alarm, and seized hold of the nearest stanchion. The engineering deck was in chaos, filled with drifting men, loose hand-held comp pads, tools and broken bits of glassite. Weakly, he tapped his comm.

'Engineering to Bridge…ship's status?'

Static babbled on the channel and Isoroku stared at his wrist in alarm. 'Hello the bridge! Hayes? Smith?'

His comm continued a sing-song wail, warbling up and down the audible frequency. Isoroku shut it off and swung to the nearest v-display. Finding the display still up by some miracle, he mashed a control glyph with a gloved thumb and the blaring alarm shut off. In the following silence, his breath sounded very harsh in his ears. The engineer stared at the panel, felt his stomach fall into a deep pit and clenched the sides of the station to keep from drifting away.

Every readout and v-pane was filled with random, constantly changing garbage. Isoroku glanced around the engineering deck, finding his staff struggling back to stations, though at least two drifted limply, one leaking crimson from a shattered face-plate. He tried tapping up the all-hands channel on his comm. A blast of scratchy music assaulted his hears, accompanied by a wailing voice like a lost soul writhing in the torment of a Christian's hell.

Comms are down, he realized, feeling even sicker. Main comp is corrupted – or at least the interfaces are. This is a cold day indeed. Isoroku lifted his wrist, eyeballed the environmental readouts, saw the air was still breathable and unsealed the helmet of his z-suit.

As soon as he tasted burned circuit and fear in the air, he kicked across to the main comp station and rapped his fist on the helmets of two crewmen trying to get the panel to reboot. Alarmed, they unsealed their faceplates, staring at him with wide eyes. Fleet discipline was very strict about keeping z-suit integrity in an emergency.

'Main comp is corrupted,' Isoroku barked as soon as they could hear him. 'Drop the entire ship-wide network – every node, relay and interface – and keep main comp off-line. We'll need altitude control and environmentals back as quickly as possible, but we'll have to bring them up as standalone systems.'

Before they could reply, he turned and kicked across to the cluster of stations controlling the main reactor and the massive hyperspace drive systems. Chu-i Yoyontzin, his second, was already at the panel, haggard face sheened with sweat. The NГЎhuatl officer's helmet was tipped back behind his head, though Isoroku could see the engineer was nearly paralyzed with fear at the prospect of losing pressure on the deck.

'Reactor is still up,' Yoyontzin reported, biting his lip. 'Main drive was on standby, but I think we can bring her on-line in thirty minutes…'

Isoroku shook his head, the dull glare of the emergency lights shining on his bald pate. 'Shut down main power and the transit drive and maneuvering. Right now – manually, if you have to.'

'But, kyo, we were in the middle of a maneuvering burn! One engine was still firing. We need to adjust attitude control and establish a stable orbit!'

'Can't do that while the comp network is corrupted.' The lead engineer stabbed a thick finger at the sidepanel displays flanking the reactor and drive subsystem. They were crowded with garbage and wild images. Pornographic three-d's pulsed on two of them, emitting a shrieking wail of sound and the whompwhomp- whomp of electric drums. 'We need cell power to bring up critical systems and we can't spare it to keep the main drive hot. Shut down all drives right now.'

'Hai!' Yoyontzin bleated in response, bending over his panel.

Isoroku spared himself an instant of relief that the corruption had not managed to penetrate the isolated reactor and hyperspace drive systems, and was even happier when Yoyontzin managed to initiate a controlled shutdown without missing a step and tipping the hyperspace matrix into some kind of catastrophic transit gradient.

'Communications are down,' he bawled, drawing the attention of every other rating in the compartment. Everyone who was still up and mobile had at least cracked their helmets. 'We need shipside comm up so we can handle damage control – every third man to the repair lockers – pull the commwire spools and local relays. Every