House of Reeds

The engineer leaned out again, snout into the rushing air, and made sure the huge glassed-in lamp on the front of the train was burning, illuminating the pair of iron tracks snaking away into the darkness. One claw was firmly on the brake lever. In his twelve years of service, the engineer had seen stray molk on the tracks, short-horns daring the rushing speed of the wheels, even brigands trying to pry up the rails themselves. His mouth gaped, breathing in the tepid, smoky air of the city rushing past.

The train slowed, spitting sparks into the darkness, rumbling and swaying as the incandescent glare of the main lamp was swallowed by mossy brick walls. Steam and smoke boiled back, suddenly trapped in the tight confines of a tunnel. Car after car vanished into the side of a long ridge cupping the southern side of the city.

The tunnel mouth was faced with slabs of imported granite and a builder's plaque had once surmounted the capstone of the arch. The plaque was long gone, stolen by local crook-tails, but the railway easement itself was lined with spiked wooden barriers to keep looters, children and animals away from the tracks.

This had not, however, stopped two figures from cutting through the barrier with a monofilament saw. Now, as the end of the train came into view, the larger figure scrambled up the gravel easement, long kheerite-style cloak flapping around her legs as she ran alongside, grasped the step-rail up to the baggage car and swung aboard. The second figure jogged beside the train, gasping for breath, and then a clawed hand reached down, seized forearm-to-forearm and dragged Parker aboard.

Inside, by the dim light of a yellow bulb, the pilot coughed a little and untangled his cloak, leaning against a stained wooden wall. Outside there was nothing but darkness as the train clattered through the tunnel.

'See – wheeze! – very simple. Easy as pie. Anyone could do it.'

Magdalena wrinkled her flat black nose and drew the cowl of the cape down over her eyes. The duffel bags on her back made standing difficult in the narrow passage. Most Jehanan were a little larger than a human, but they didn't have a hump of heavy comp and surveillance equipment strapped to their backs either.

'Yes, I can see this.' The Hesht twitched her long, tendril-like whiskers. 'Now where do we lair up? Not so many places to hide on a train…'

'Didn't I say I had everything covered?' Parker grinned, face bright with sweat. 'You are a cat of little faith! You'd think, after diverting the train worked, you'd begin to believe in me…'

'Hrrr! We were blessed by the Huntress herself to find a switching station unguarded. The trouble in the city has driven all these groundcrawlers into their holes…'

Undaunted by her pessimism, Parker dug into his jacket, tossed away two crumpled tabac boxes and drew out a paper envelope. His eyes twinkled with delight. 'And you just wanted to wait near the apartment…See, train passes! All we need to do is find a seat.'

Magdalena beckoned with her paw, examined the papers and sniffed loudly. 'Forgeries, I suppose. Or stolen…'

'They are not!' Parker snatched them back. 'I paid good solid shatamanu for them. The only problem is…' The train rumbled out of the tunnel and suddenly everything grew a little quieter without the reverb of walls outside. '…they're not reserved seats. So we might have to stand.'

'I see.' Magdalena's lips curled back from her shiny white teeth. She stuck out her tongue, testing the humid, warm air. 'At least my tail won't freeze to the door of the baggage compartment this time.'

Parker scowled, crossing his arms. 'That was not my fault. Anderssen decided we should take that night train!'

Maggie started to hiss, then restrained herself. She was very tired. 'Enough. I will lead, you will follow and we will find seats, if any exist on this benighted contraption.'

The Hesht turned, squeezing the duffels through the doorway into the passage running down the side of the train. Every time she swung her shoulders, the bags jammed against the wall, which made for slow going. Parker hitched up his own duffel bag and followed along behind.

He wondered, as his legs acclimatized themselves to the swaying motion of the train, if Gretchen had managed to escape the city, or even the monastery. Oh god, what if she's waiting back at the apartment right now? What if she's been captured?

But there was no way to tell and no way to go back. He wasn't even sure the voice blaring in his earbug had been hers, but what else could he do? It was enough to keep from falling as the train shuddered into a long curve, heading down out of the hills towards the plain of the Phison.

Aboard the Captain's Launch

Approaching the Cornuelle

'Hold on,' Sho-i Asale said, twisting her control yoke. The launch dodged to one side as a section of hull plating flew past. The fragment was only a dark blot against the abyssal darkness beyond the windows. Hadeishi, standing beside the airlock, felt a twinge in his gut, realizing they had entered the corona of debris around the Cornuelle.

'We're clear for final approach.' The pilot eased back the thrusters. 'I have visual on the aft shuttle bay.'

Hadeishi braced one arm against the side of the lock, peering through the forward windows. The aft bay doors seemed intact, though he could see the starboard ventral point defense mount had taken some kind of directed beam damage. The shipskin was bubbled and twisted like taffy. Two stubby anti-missile railguns were exposed, the armor over their emplacement entirely missing, leaving a ragged edge. Mottled, ashy expanses of the shipskin showed the rippling effects of an energy overload to the reactive armor.

'Any response to your access code?' The Chu-sa could hear himself breathing harshly.

'None.' Asale twisted around in her seat, looking back at the captain and the two Marines. 'I can take us around to the other side. The launch bay is well armored, perhaps -'

'No.' Hadeishi tapped the EVA bag clamped to his chestplate. 'Too far from engineering. We'll need to get there first, if any good is to be done. Open the lock. We'll jet across and cut our way in if need be. Keep transmitting our ident codes. Something might wake up in time to let us inside.'

'Hai, kyo.' The pilot turned back to her controls and began nudging the launch sideways towards the hull a meter at a time.

Hadeishi craned his neck, watching for the surface of the shuttle bay doors to appear in the tiny window of the airlock. A cold band twisted tighter around his heart each time his chrono elapsed another minute. The Cornuelle had failed to reply to their hails as they approached, and even the navigational display in the launch showed the light cruiser's wildly degraded orbit. The two-minute-long irregular burn by the out-of-control number three engine had thrown the Cornuelle into a sharp dive towards the planetary atmosphere.

The Chu-sa was sure the abrupt cut-off of the misfiring engine had been the work of someone still alive, aboard, throwing the ship into emergency shutdown. The damage inflicted by the mines was severe – Hadeishi had never seen his ship vomit so much atmosphere, so much radioactive debris, in any of her countless engagements – but the loss of navigational control was a mystery. Something else has happened, he thought grimly, pressing his forehead against the inside of his helmet. Perhaps main comp was damaged, or one of the control nodes severed. He refused to believe everyone aboard was dead.

On her new heading, the Cornuelle would not corkscrew to a fiery doom – gravity had already seized hold and she was wallowing towards a tentative orbit – but the upper reaches of the Jaganite atmosphere were already reaching up to clutch at her battered surface. Friction would follow as the cruiser settled deeper into the thermosphere, and that would steal her angular momentum. The end would come, later rather than sooner, with a glowing, red-hot hull and the stress of re-entry tearing the crippled starship apart.

'Twenty meters.' Asale tapped the braking jets and the launch gentled to a halt relative to the crippled ship. 'Cycling airlock.'

The inner door irised open and Hadeishi stepped in, followed by Fitzsimmons. The launch airlock was too small to allow more than two men in z-suits with all the repair gear which could be salvaged from the launch strapped to their bodies inside at once. Hadeishi squeezed to one side – the Marine was nearly a foot taller than he – and took hold of the outer door locking bar.