House of Reeds

pane, saw rows of tubular weapons squatting amid crowds of busy Jehanan gunners and support vehicles. Scowling, she locked the coordinates of the park into comp and mashed an override glyph.

A Sagant free-flying munitions canister spat from a pod embedded in the right wing, making the shuttle jerk slightly before the pilot could correct.

Hey! he complained over the channel. Let me know before you -

'Get us down.' Kosho snarled, expanding her radar coverage, fingers light on the tiny display. 'I'll handle weapons.'

Felix watched with professional interest as the Sagant flashed away from the shuttle, popped up over the park and blew apart into hundreds of sub-munitions. The Jehanan on the ground were already scattering from the sharp crack! overhead, but none of them was fast enough to escape the cloud of black marbles spilling down out of the sky.

A roughly circular area two blocks wide erupted in flame. The park, the trees, the mortars, the trucks carrying their ammunition and fifty or sixty houses were obliterated in an instant. Air rushed into the blast vacuum, igniting dozens of fires in the shattered rubble. A black cloud whooshed up.

The shuttle braked again, engines roaring as the thrust ducts rotated down, and ornamental fruit trees in the gardens below lost their foliage. A whirling cloud of dust, rocks, splintered wood and debris clattered against the windows of the Legation buildings. Landing gear rotated out of the hull, maneuvering jets flared and the pilot slewed down to a perfect three-point landing. One of the wheels crashed through a gazebo of light wood, crunching into hand-laid blue and yellow tiles.

Felix was already at the landing door, hand slapping the controls. Servos whined and a crack of daylight appeared. 'Gear up!' she shouted on the command channel. 'Dispersed deployment on the deck – the enemy has artillery – we don't know where the friendlies are! Engineers in the back with the Sho- sa!'

The turbines whined down as the landing gear groaned to take the full weight of the shuttle. Heicho Felix darted down the loading ramp, her Macana at the ready. Sunlight blazed on her visor and she ducked to the left, rifle sweeping the face of the nearest building. Her Marines scattered left and right, forming a perimeter twenty meters from the shuttle. Felix turned, waving the engineers out of the aircraft.

'Everybody -' There was a shriek of rocket engines and something blurred at the edge of her vision. Her visor flashed a warning, silhouetting an arrowlike shape. Instantly, Felix threw herself behind the nearest cover, which was an ornamental hedge in a brick planter. '- down! Incoming!'

The missile impacted on the rear ventral surface of the shuttle, shredding armor and metal as its warhead erupted. The surface flexed, tormented by a piercing jet of superheated plasma, and the shuttle convulsed as the ablative armor drank up the heat-flow like a sponge. The outer skin layer shattered, sending white-hot hexagonal flakes whistling across the gardens, breaking windows and shredding the trees. Dozens of secondary fires sprang up where they fell.

A pressure wave of heat and flame smashed down, grinding Felix's visor into the dirt. Cursing, she rolled up, her combat visor reacting to the blast with a polarizing sheen and a flashing icon showing the firing source for the attack.

'Missile team in the skyscraper south-southeast,' she bawled, swinging the Macana to her shoulder. 'Top quarter, right-hand side! Suppressive fire, all units!'

The roar of a Whipsaw cutting loose off to her left deafened the Marine, and her own fire from the automatic rifle was instantly lost as the flechette storm from the squad support weapon stabbed across the intervening distance – the khus was at least four blocks away – and ripped across the face of the building. Windows exploded, concrete disintegrated and an entire apartment vanished in a gout of flame as the stream of 1mm stiletto rounds licked across the second KГ¤rrhГ¶k as the missile team was maneuvering the weapon into position.

Felix dropped her rifle, eyeballing the plume of smoke belching from the side of the building. 'Whipsaw on artillery suppression,' she snapped, gesturing for the squad support weapon fireteam to head for the main buildings. 'Get onto the roof, cover these skyscrapers, torch anything that moves!'

Then she had time to turn back to the shuttle. The aircraft was engulfed in flame, the entire rear third smashed into ruin. Oily black smoke roared up from burning vegetation all around. One wing had been torn straight off and now tipped forward at an awkward angle. The matching landing gear was skewed out like a broken leg.

'Sho-sa Kosho!' Felix felt her stomach twist into a cruel knot. She scrambled forward through smoldering rose bushes. 'Second team, with me. We've got to get Fleet out of there!'

Waves of heat beat at her face and the Heicho wished she were in full powered armor. She ducked under the broken wing once she saw the entire rear loading ramp structure was twisted into a snarl of blackened metal and armor plating. The fire-suppression system inside the aircraft was coughing foam, but failing to dampen the blaze. The hex-skin of the shuttle popped and hissed, glowing cherry red. She ran forward, wondering if the forward crew doors were still operable.

The door seemed intact, but the access plate cover was bent and refused to open under her reaching fingers. I'm too damn short, she snarled to herself, quick fingers unfolding a cutting tool. 'Carlyle! Get over here and lift me up -'

A white-hot point appeared at the edge of the door. The two Marines who'd come at her call fell back, surprised. Felix watched for a bare second – saw the point travel upwards, shearing through the armored door – and jumped out of the way before the cutting torch beam clove through her right arm.

'Stand back,' she shouted, ducking down under the curve of the shuttle body itself. She was sweating furiously – the whole shuttleskin was bleeding heat at a tremendous rate – and the grass under her boots crisped black.

The cutting torch cut off, a ringing clang followed and the entire lock mechanism flew out. Two Marines reached up as the door ground up and seized hold of the first body pushed out of the stricken aircraft. Felix wiped her brow, half blinded by sweat, and keyed up her all-units channel.

'Form on the shuttle,' she barked. 'We've got wounded and we need to get them under cover to medical.'

Another explosion shook the grounds and the upper floor of the Library tumbled down into an ornamental pool. The staccato roar of the Whipsaw followed before the rumbling boom of the rocket blast had faded. Felix slid out into the open, turning to cover the gardens with her rifle, and caught sight of a dull black Fleet z-suit being lowered from the shuttle door. Helsdon was silhouetted there, his back to raging flames, face tight with pain, hands steady as he handed Sho-sa Kosho down to Carlyle.

The commander's face was sheened with crimson and her visor was gone, ripped away by the explosion. Long black hair, matted with blood, clung to her neck and suit. Felix felt time slow, hand reaching out to seize the woman's medband and turn the strip of metal around. There were too many winking red lights.

'Let's go!' The Heicho slapped Carlyle on his shoulder, shoving him and his burden towards the Residence. 'Go-go-go!' Felix reached up, took Helsdon's hand and helped the engineer jump down. The broken shuttle groaned, metal twisting in the inferno burning inside, and they ran across the flat, trimmed sward of a zenball field towards the garden doors.

The Whipsaw on the roof roared again, now mounted on a tripod and slaved to the gunner's suit sensors. Another rocket shrieked across the grounds and brushed a stream of flechettes. The weapon staggered in the air, belching flame. Riddled with millimeter-wide punctures, the remains of the missile plowed through the rose bushes, crashed into a low brick wall and failed to detonate.

A Sub-Basement

The District of Poisoners, Parus

Lachlan scowled, black hair falling into his eyes, and thumbed up a system status display on his primary v-pane. He itched, his stomach was cramped from hunger, and the entire room smelled very sharply of sweat, fatigue and half-heated threesquares. Dozens of tiny rectangles appeared on the v-pane, showing the status of his surveillance network in the cities of the Phison valley. Two-thirds or more of the v-feeds were blank or showing a skull-glyph indicating the spyeye or stationary relay camera was dead or unreachable.

A truly enormous headache was being held at bay by his medband, but the Йirishman could still feel the