House of Reeds

Deckard waved cheerfully as the inner door closed between them. Hadeishi waited, listening to Asale breathing and counting their displacement from the Cornuelle, while air pumped out of the lock.

'Nineteen…back to twenty…nineteen…holding at twenty meters.'

The outer lock blossomed open. Hadeishi clenched his fists around the jet controls and puffed out of the opening. The vast bulk of the Cornuelle loomed before him, a wall of ebon darkness slanting up against a rampart of stars. He thumbed the thruster control and swept toward the bay doors outlined on his visor by suit comp. Fitzsimmons waited two breaths, and then followed himself, careful to keep from fouling the medical aid pack on his back in the airlock.

'I have the bay access door in sight,' Hadeishi said, changing course slightly.

Understoo -

The autonomic targeting system in the nearer railgun suddenly identified the launch as a hostile vessel launching self-propelled missiles towards the Cornuelle. The anti-missile mount flared a brilliant blue-white. A depleted uranium needle two millimeters long accelerated to near-relativistic speed, exited the magnetic 'racetrack' and punched through the captain's launch from end to end. The needle pierced the forward pressure windows fifteen centimeters from Asale's head, flashed the length of the tiny cabin, drilled directly through Deckard's z-suit, his ribs on the right side, one lung and then out the other and impaled itself in the launch's magnetically shielded Hosukai-Tesla reaction drive chamber. An enormous amount of energy vomited into the interior of the tiny ship as the needle stopped abruptly. Deckard was incinerated as thousand degree plasma flooded in through the rupture in his z-suit. Asale lasted a moment longer, smashed against the control panel, her suit withstanding the pressure and heat for three and then four seconds, then suffering catastrophic structural failure. The launch spaceframe buckled, unable to contain the explosion and then sublimated into a blast of heat and light and debris.

The explosion flared out, smashing into Hadeishi and Fitzsimmons and hurling them against the side of the Cornuelle. Both men were still accelerating towards the boat bay door. Fitzsimmons and his heavy load afforded the Chu-sa a tiny fraction of protection, but the Marine's corpse became a missile a half-second later and Hadeishi was slapped against the armored hull of the ship by a giant, raging hand of flame.

The z-suit stiffened on impact, trying to bleed away the shock of collision, but the violence was too much for Hadeishi's nervous system to absorb and he grayed out, grasping fruitlessly at the smooth metal surface of the hull. His medband triggered, flushing his system with adrenaline, anti-radiation agents and painkillers. Tangled in Fitzsimmons' body, fragments of the launch smashing against the bay doors around him, the Chu- sa skidded across the hull, impelled by the dying wavefront of the explosion.

Jolted back to awareness by the drugs, his heart hammering violently in his chest, arms and legs numb, Hadeishi twisted, trying to get his hands and feet face-front. Fitzsimmons' charred z-suit sloughed away, breaking up as the straps for the Marine's ruck disintegrated. A cloud of blackened and melted medpacks flew out around the Chu-sa. Hundreds of hours of z-suit drill as a cadet and a junior officer reasserted themselves in a reflexive, four-square crouch. The gripper pads in Hadeishi's gloves and boots realized they were in proximity to shipskin and activated. Friction increased dramatically between the two surfaces and the Chu-sa slid to a halt.

Ionized gases and plasma-hot particles blew past, dinging on his faceplate and z-suit. Hadeishi focused, saw the boat bay door was a hundred meters away, and tried to grapple mentally with the concept his launch, his pilot and two of his men had been obliterated from the universe in less than sixteen seconds of sidereal time.

Ah, he moaned inwardly, so many ghosts will haunt me. So many ghosts. Is there enough incense in all Shinedo to placate your wailing cries?

Then the Chu-sa settled his breathing, forced every thought from his mind but the necessity of survival and began spider-walking across the hull towards the access door. Hidden by the z-suit, his med-band was burning crimson. A too-familiar stabbing pain rippled up his side with each movement, but Hadeishi only bent his head and continued to force arms and legs to move.

I will never fear loneliness, he sang to himself, crawling forward. I will always be accompanied.

Before long, I shall be a ghost

But just now, how they bite my flesh

These autumn winds.

Parus

The District of the Wheel

Rain poured down from a muddy, discolored sky. The gutters rushed with dark water, swirling around ancient drains clogging with leaves, paper bags and discarded wreaths of golden flowers. Four Arachosians – faces hidden under sharp-brimmed, waxed rain-hats – splashed through spreading pools and up to the ornately carved doors of a temple squeezed in between two larger, newer buildings.

Two of the highlanders swung a spike-headed ram between them. The wooden doors crashed aside, lock and bar broken, and the others leapt in, kalang-knives flashing. Inside, a lookout was hewn down – no priest he, in the gaudy harness and trappings of a pimp – and the Arachs bounded down age-blackened steps and into rooms once dedicated to a now-forgotten god. They burst into a chamber filled with hazy layers of drifting tchun-smoke and the hot neon glow of dozens of modern three-d gambling machines. Soft-scaled lowlander patrons surged up, horrified by the sight of long, lean highland reavers plunging among them, and the sound of wailing screams rang clearly through the spyeye feed. Blood spattered through the intricate holovee writhing in the heart of the nearest machine.

The kujen's board of taxation should pay me a stipend. Itzpalicue's wrinkled lips twitched in amusement and she shifted the active feed, searching for the next of her hunting teams. But this is not the lair of my enemy.

Arachosians loped through an empty warehouse, narrow snouts questing for signs of any inhabitants. The old NГЎhuatl woman could see the tracks of heavily laden carts on the dirt floor.

She switched the feed.

An Imperial-model truck careened around a corner, highlanders hanging off the sides, sopping-wet cloaks clinging to muscled scale, sending a wave of dirty water splashing against the wall of a house. Rain drummed on the roof of the cab. Arachosians on the runner boards pointed the driver towards a row of beehive-shaped workshops. Smoke puffed up into the rain from a forge chimney. The gate to a muddy yard crashed open, smashed aside by an armored bumper. The Arachs sprang down, striding through deep mud, assault rifles at the ready.

A sliding door on the side of the long, low building flew open and a crowd of angry metal-workers poured out into the yard, claws filled with hammers, tongs and lengths of iron bar. The spyeye darted past over their heads as the first burst of bullets tore into the workmen. Itzpalicue muted the sound on the feed – the warbling cries of dying Jehanan irritated her – and shook her head in disgust. The gleaming, modern shapes of two industrial welders sat on wooden platforms on one side of the long forge-room. Cables snaked across a spotless floor to four fuel-cell generators.

Stacks of recycled Imperial iron, aluminum and steel ingots stood behind a locked barricade.

Disappointed, Itzpalicue switched the feed.

An Arachosian glided out from behind a wagon heaped with firewood, assault rifle raised to a shoulder armored with quilted padding. Two more of the highlanders crept along behind, grenades and knives in their claws. Without warning, the rifle stuttered flame. The spyeye view rotated and lowland Jehanan in the livery of the kujen of Parus were staggering, raked with bullets. A heavy plastic case fell to the ground between the infantrymen and Itzpalicue straightened up in her nest of blankets, recognizing the shape of a military ordnance crate.

The woman tapped her comm alive. 'Take some of them alive,' she rasped, catching the attention of the Arachosian durbar commanding the hunter team. 'Don't damage the goods!'

The knife-wielding Arachosians surged forward, broad feet light on the muddy ground, and were upon the surviving Jehanan in the blink of an eye. Two of the survivors were thrown to the ground and secured with ziptight