pressure behind a thin drug-induced veil.
'Sir?'
He looked up and saw one of the surveillance technicians, her shirt stained with sweat, standing up at her console, an old-fashioned landline phone in her hands. 'What is it?'
'I've…I've got a call for you, sir.' The technician held out the ancient-looking, enameled plastic device. 'From a long-distance office in Gandaris. It's the Resident's wife, Mrs. Petrel. She says…she says the city has risen up against the Imperial presence, Prince Tezozуmoc has disappeared, there's rioting in the streets and she needs immediate extraction for herself and her ladies-in-waiting.'
Lachlan rubbed his eyes. This just gets better and better, doesn't it? He cleared away the spyeye diagnostic with a sweep of his hand and tapped up a map of the northern city. 'We've no way to pick her up by air. She'll have to make her way out on the ground. Where exactly are they?'
The technician mumbled into her phone – the Йirishman stifled a brittle laugh, amused to see her using such an antiquated device. But here? It's the very latest in native-tech! When the Old Woman had pressed him to use the ancient native telecom network linking Parus and some of the larger cities, he'd balked – arguing their work crews and technicians would be better employed ramping up the comm relay network – but she'd insisted on having a backup for the backup. Now six-hundred-year-old cables are carrying nearly a third of our data traffic…
Until the arrival of the Imperials, the old Arthavan-period fiber-optic network buried beneath Takshila, Parus and the other cities had gone unused and apparently forgotten. The sealed cables and their conduits were still in place – the lack of tectonic activity in the land of the Five Rivers had allowed them to remain mostly untouched as the centuries passed – but the new Jehanan civilization struggling up from the ruins had lost the equipment to access the physical network. Rigging adapters to allow Imperial comm to use the outmoded multiplexed fiber had been a bit tricky, but Mirror technicians were nothing if not resourceful.
'She says they're hiding in one of our safe houses downtown. Number sixteen, on Quelling Tongue street.' The technician rubbed her ear, waiting for Lachlan to consider the alternatives displayed on the map.
'I see. They're four blocks from the railway terminal.' He tapped up a timetable, nodded to himself and tabbed through a series of native agent biographies the comp had on hand. 'Tell her to get to the station and find a ticket clerk named Hundun Pao – he's one of ours – there should be an express train to Parus leaving in about…three hours.' The Йirishman smiled grimly. 'Assuming the trains are still running, and Petrel and her girls aren't killed or captured on the way.'
The technician swallowed and began speaking rapidly into the phone.
I'm a travel service, Lachlan thought, rather bitterly. What a disaster… Fetching and carrying for the Anglish of all people!
The District of Open Eyes
Takshila, Where Once Sra Haykan Devised a Perfect Grammar
Gretchen was running along a walkway, dusky-yellow flowers carpeting the rooftops on either side of her, when the overcast sky turned the color of spoiled milk. Her comm had only just woken to life, and she caught Magdalena's voice growling imprecations at Parker, when a roar of static drowned everything out and her earbug squealed painfully.
Disoriented, she fell sprawling on the wooden planks. Her right knee twisted painfully and the survey comp jammed into her stomach.
'Oooof!' Anderssen dug out the earbug, eyes watering, and flung away the suddenly-hot metal, a brief spark of metallic glitter disappearing into the field of poppylike flowers. 'Damn!'
Gingerly, she rubbed her ear, wondering if she'd been burnt. The queer light in the sky began to fade and Gretchen looked up, childhood memories waking in response to the odd radiance stabbing through the clouds.
A misaligned three-d projector is buzzing behind her, casting an image of gray seas under a leaden sky at the front of her classroom. A shape moves beneath the waters, an enormous black whale of steel and carbon-composite fibers. Hatches open, something bursts forth from the heaving sea, an engine ignites and a sleek dagger roars away across the wave tops. Rain hammers down from the storm clouds, muting the distinctive sound of the launch.
The Swedish Royal Navy cruise missile extends stubby wings and increases its speed, darting in and out of wave troughs thrown up by the storm. The North Sea is blanketed by a raging gale, the first onset of winter pressing down from the pole. Under the cover of howling winds, three Vasa -class attack submarines lead off the strike against the Skawtish mainland.
Dozens more cruise missiles, interspersed with decoys and Shrike -class radar jammers burst from the waters.
The cruise missile flashes across the Firth of Forth, dappled skin matching the waves, countermeasures shrugging aside the backscatter of Imperial over-the-horizon radar watching the sky and sea. The complex of submarine nets beneath the water do nothing to slow the missile and the choppy whitecaps confuse the low-altitude radar mounted on Arthur's Seat above the city. Even the coast watch is inside, huddled around their heaters. The winters have been growing worse again – too much atmospheric dust remains from the Blow at the beginning of the war. The bleating of alarms from their comm panels is ignored for a moment – the European Alliance fleet has been nosing about for months, tripping the sensors deployed across the sea floor – and until today there had never been a hint of actual hostilities.
At the mouth of the river Forth, the missile pops up above the dockyards, maneuvering vents jetting flame, and at last exposes itself to the fortifications on the hills above the bombed-out town. The nearest air-defense bunker retracts its armored dome, gatling cannon nosing out. But the guns react a fraction too slowly to prevent the cruise missile from detonating.
For the first time in the European theatre of war, an atomic weapon is used. Everything is blotted out by a sun-bright flash as the Varkan -class tactical nuclear warhead detonates. The city districts nearest the river mouth are instantly engulfed in raging, superheated plasma. A shockwave batters the town, toppling the ancient walls of the Castle, smashing windows and crumpling houses all up the long valley of the Forth. Buildings shatter, trapping thousands of women and children in their shelters. Every radar installation within line of sight is blinded and most are wrecked outright. The Imperial troops in the fortifications around the Firth are incinerated or stunned by the glare of the pocket-sized star.
Further north, Aberdeen and Dundee suffer similar fates. The entire air-defense network of eastern Skawtland fails, mortally wounded. At sea, wrapped in the raging storm, a combined Swedish-Russian-Danish fleet races forward. Already steam catapults are hurling aircraft from the decks of the carriers, filling the sky with a raging howl as they race treacherously westward against the island fortress…
For a moment Anderssen saw nothing but rushing clouds heavy with rain. Then a tumbling, flashing spark of light caught her eye. One of the archaic aircraft was spinning out of control, plunging towards the city. Anderssen watched in fascinated horror as the raptor-winged jet whistled down, engines dead, and plowed directly into the side of one of the towering khus rising from the center of the city. The metallic shape slammed into a cliff of yellowed concrete in a gout of dust and black smoke. A dirty cloud roiled out, spilling glittering debris down the face of the apartment building. A tongue of flame stabbed through the dust, followed by a rush of black smoke. In the blink of an eye, the aircraft was gone, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the khus. Dull reddish light spread across the row of windows.
Gretchen turned her wrist over, exposing her medband. A warning glyph flashed, indicating a radiation exposure warning. She bit her lip, watching the indicator change. Not bad, she saw. Still a good thing I've got a medband and my allotment of children. 'Beautiful…all our comms will be shot.'
The clatter of broad, leathery feet on wooden planks made her turn. Huffing and puffing, long snout gaping wide, Malakar approached at a run. Seeing the human had stopped, the Jehanan slowed in exhaustion and dropped long hands to the walkway.
'What – hoooooo, I've not been so hot in an age! – makes you pause in your flight, little thief?'
'Did you see the lights in the sky?' Gretchen was breathing shallowly and felt a little dizzy. The medband was
