House of Reeds ittotss-2

by Thomas Harlan

  In that one instant, she was with Magdalena and the Hesht was growling at Parker, urging him to stagger forward across a wet, rainy rooftop. The buildings around them were unfamiliar and their faces were tense.

  Maggie, Gretchen wailed, you've got to run! Get out of the city! Run, Maggie, run!

  Parus District of The Ever-Turning Wheel

  Itzpalicue moved through a large dim room with a ceiling of hard-fired yellow brick. Sunlight streamed through openings piercing a succession of domes. The Arachosians filling the room regarded her with curiosity as the little old N'huatl woman examined their archaic-looking weapons and ammunition bandoliers.

  "You are hunting an invisible enemy," she rasped, mouth contorted to pronounce the harsh highland dialect of the tribesmen. Her earbug was running hot, providing a simultaneous translation of every voice in the room, and two vibrating 'sounders' taped to the sides of her throat managed to produce a facsimile of the thrumming overtone present in Jehanan voices. "A deadly one, quiet as a xixixit in the forest or a huungal in the marsh. The kind of enemy which never strikes with its own claw, only those of a pawn or a decoy. No open battle, no heroes clashing between arrayed armies, no charge of mounted man against mounted man. This is not a mudfoot you seek…"

  A throaty trill of laughter boomed from the Arachosians. They were tall and wiry, scales stippled brown and tan, with narrow, cold eyes. They were garishly adorned with rows of fore-teeth and ear-bones. Long cowls shrouded their triangular heads and layered cloaks hid elaborately scaled armor of ceramic plates, leather harnesses hanging with knives, punch-daggers, pistols, ropes of grenades, the queer strangling rope called than-tan and bags of loose cartridges for their long-barreled rifles. Most had their modern, Imperial weapons laid out for cleaning and inspection. Strings of ammunition coils were stacked on the floor.

  "You say," rumbled their kurbardar, a notorious chieftain named Gher Shahr, "we are hunting a man from the hills? Something like an Arach? In this fetid, wet den of fools a canny hunter might hide forever…"

  "Even so." Itzpalicue removed a black lozenge from the folds of her dress. "Do you feel the fire and smoke quickening in the air? Soon the divine liquid will be spilled in plenty. The lowlanders will strive to drive the Imperials from their cities, their towns, from the land of the Five Rivers. When that happens, my enemy will move. He will press his pawns to attack, he will reveal his hidden strength to strike at the Empire – and he must make his will known somehow." She held up the lozenge. "These detectors ignore Imperial and kujenate comm traffic. They will lead you to anyone else operating advanced equipment in the city. If he is here…even an encrypted voice makes a sound."

  Gher Shahr accepted the lozenge – the device vanishing in his huge hand – and made a passable human-style nod. "Hu-hu-hu…You have hunted before, little one. You are using the lowlander fools and their prideful war to flush prey from the deep thickets and ravines." The Arachosian tilted his long, scarred head to one side, nostrils flexing. "You are cold – like old ice always in sunshadow – you send your own tribe out to die, just to spook a single kaichesh from cover!"

  Itzpalicue smiled warmly, patting his scaled thumb. "Divide your men into claws of four – there are enough detectors for all – and spread out – quietly! – through the streets. Vehicles have been provided to allow you swift movement. Be mindful of my voice! I will be watching over you."

  One of Lachlan's technicians began handing out the black lozenges to the Arachosians, who crowded around in interest, hot breath snuffling in the elderly man's face. Itzpalicue watched carefully, making sure the tribesmen sorted themselves out properly. They began to file out of the old thread-dyeing factory. A dozen nondescript Imperial-built trucks in assorted makes and models were waiting, engines idling, specially trained Jehanan drivers sitting at the wheel.

  "Get back to operations," the old woman told the technician as the last detector was handed out. "I will run all of this from another location."

  Her earbug chimed in a two-up, one-down pattern indicating an incoming Flower Priest network call. Itzpalicue grimaced, pulled out a hand-comp and thumbed up Lachlan's video channel. The young man appeared instantly, now sporting several days' growth of beard.

  Mi'lady?

  "You've kicked a xochiyaotinime call to me? Are they having cold feet?"

  It's started, Lachlan replied, the corners of his eyes tight with tension. You wanted overwatch on their opening response.

  "Ah…" The old woman smiled beatifically. "Right on time. Patch me in."

  Mi'lady. A hurried, agitated voice came on-line. The darmanarga-moktar have jumped the starting gate! We've reports of full-scale fighting in Gandaris, Takshila and the outlying districts of Parus! The locals have acquired some kind of comm-jamming system…and it's not something we gave them!

  "Is the 416th regimental combat net down?"

  No, it's handling the jammers. They've gone to tertiary frequencies in some cases. Yacatolli's aggressive dispersion has nearly every Imperial detachment in combat with rebel elements. The Arrow Knights are going to chew up the initial attacks faster than we anticipated, keeping the moktar from massing their forces…Should I drop their network?

  "The Regimental net? No. Patience, child, patience. Let Yacatolli and his officers test themselves. That is what we wanted, isn't it?"

  Very well… The priest's voice was still tinged with panic, and Itzpalicue knew the Whisperers working in orbit were a little shaken by the precipitate reaction of the natives. For herself, she was not terribly surprised. Any large conspiracy tended to gather momentum as it rolled downhill. The air had felt right this morning, clear and a little hot, and her Arachosians were already fanning out through the city. Today was as good as any to fight her war.

  Wait… The priest's voice quickened. Regimental is adapting. Yes, they've restored comm across the board. Battle data is flooding in… By the Painted Lord, there are reports entire native military units have mutinied in Sobipurй and southern Parus! The spaceport has been overrun. Wai t…wait…what is this?

  Itzpalicue raised an eyebrow at Lachlan, who was drinking some coffee at his station and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

  This is impossible, the Flower Priest pronounced. The Mercantile Exchange House in Takshila has been attacked by hostile air elements firing guided munitions of some kind. There are hundreds of dead. By the Mother's Son, these creatures have managed to buy or hire atmospheric aircraft! Yacatolli is calling on Fleet to provide suppression fire.

  "Lachlan?" The old N'huatl woman raised her chin questioningly. "Did we provide them with aircraft of some kind?"

  No, he answered, covering a yawn. We're getting scattered reports of the mutineers deploying archaic Jehanan war machines of different kinds – tanks, aircraft, artillery – which survived the nuclear exchange six hundred years ago.

  "Numbers? Enough to make a difference?" Itzpalicue was impressed by the self-discipline of the native princes. This was the first mention she'd seen of any pre-Collapse military equipment surviving in an operable state. The prospect the kujenai had restrained themselves from wasting any possible advantage over one another during the last century of internecine conflict raised her estimation of them markedly.

  We don't think so, Lachlan said. The Flower Priest was still babbling, alternately outraged and baffled by the steadily increasing reports from elements of the 416th in combat with squadrons of heavy tanks and being bombed by solitary Jehanan jet aircraft. Assets in action are still too few to tip the balance. Now if someone has a whole armored division in his pocket… Analysis section thinks all of thisgear was in storage or non-operable until Imperial pochteca started selling enough metal parts, lubricants and civvy-grade power-cells to get things working again.

  "Ha!" Itzpalicue laughed heartily, having to wipe away a tear from her eye. "And we took such pains to supply them with near-modern anti-armor missiles and automatic rifles… Well, get combat efficiency reports when you can. The Mirror will be int
erested to see how the indigenous manufactures stack up against Army issue."

  Lachlan started to nod -

  – and the comm channel went dead.

  Itzpalicue blinked, staring at the blank comp in her hand. The signal strength indicator was showing zero and the lighted front panel was dark. A cold chill washed down her spine. "Lachlan?"

  Above the Sobipurй-Parus Railway North of the Spaceport

  The howling roar of shuttle engines suddenly faltered, pitch dropping precipitously, and Heicho Felix felt her gut flip over as the aircraft shuddered from nose to tail. She clutched tight on the support rails beside her jump seat, eyes squeezed shut.

  And then realized her earbug had fallen silent, that her z-suit environmental controls had stopped humming, that aside from the shriek of air rushing past the hull, the inside of the shuttle was utterly quiet. Her eyes flew open – and there was nothing but darkness all around her – not so much as the gleam of a readout or a comm screen.

  "What the hell!" Her shout tumbled over the exclamations of the rest of her squad and Sho-sa Kosho as well. "We've lost power!"

  "We're not hit," Susan growled in the darkness. Felix could hear the lieutenant commander's fingers jamming fruitlessly against a control pad. "Comps are dead – everything's off-line."

  "Everyone brace," Felix shouted, trying to grapple with the kind of weapon which could knock out all their comps inside of a shielded Fleet shuttle. "Hang on, we're going down!"

  "Like a brick," Kosho muttered, forcing herself back into the seat.

  Takshila Near the Intersection of Panca-Sapta And Trieka

  In the apartment, a stiff breeze from the windows was clearing away the smoke and once more the Jehanan commando squad entered – this time very cautiously – rifles moving restlessly from side to side. The web of tanglewire stopped them for a moment, until two of the brawnier guardsmen crashed through the barrier with a large table from an adjoining apartment.

  A commando scuttled through the gap, swung to the right, and then caught sight of the pair of missing windows. Gingerly, booted feet crunching in scattered glass, he crept up to the opening and peered out, rifle at the ready. The durbar following him paused halfway into the room, staring suspiciously at the monofil anchors embedded in the floor. In the smoky air, his goggled eyes did not catch sight of the two wires stretched to the window frame, where a strip of magnetically charged 'lipping' material kept the monofil from shearing through the wood and concrete.

  Both tabs zipped up to the window, bounced over the lipping strip, started to coil automatically – sliced cleanly through the neck and left arm of the commando on point – snapped into their anchors and demagnetized.

  The durbar poked at one of the anchors with the muzzle of his rifle, then looked up – a question on his lips – in time to see the point commando topple over, blood spurting from a severed neck and gushing onto the floor from the arm. Eyes wide in shock, the durbar made a sound like a steam boiler venting overpressure; his rifle twitched towards the window and his claw clenched tight. One round boomed from the HK-45B, vanishing through the opening, and then the rifle jammed, the chamber fouled with substandard propellant.

  The rest of the squad, having whirled at the gunshot, stared in horror at the body sprawled by the window. None of them had seen or heard anything. The durbar continued to try to fire the rifle, which made a click-click-click sound in the sudden quiet.

  Malakar lunged after the human, her claws snapping on empty air, and shouted heedlessly with fear, seeing Anderssen stagger across the marble floor of the vault, in plain sight of the soldiers, every detail plain in the fierce, omnipresent glare of the floodlights.

  "Hoooo!" A wail of fear burst from the gardener's old throat and she wrenched the heavy, clumsy pistol up, claw-tip scrabbling on the trigger.

  Technicians whirled around at the unexpected noise. The Jehanan durbar stepped out, snatching for his automatic. His deep-set eyes widened, seeing an ancient monk waving a weapon at him. Then he caught sight of a smaller figure dashing for the artifact.

  "Guards!" he shouted, enraged, and swung the iron-sights of his gun towards Gretchen. "Kill them both!"

  His finger tightened – there was the sharp crack! of a gunshot – for an instant the durbar thought he'd been hit himself, claw convulsing on the automatic's trigger. There was the booming, echoing report of a second shot.

  The secondary Honda generator shuddered, spewing hydrogen from a punctured cell. A mechanical pressure safety tripped and the current flowing to the kalpataru abruptly cut off.

  Parus District of the Ever-Turning Wheel

  Itzpalicue stared at her comm with a sensation of icy dismay welling in her stomach.

  "Lachlan?" She could barely whisper.

  Gingerly, she turned the hand-comm over, then rotated the thumb control. Nothing happened. The usual whispering thread of voices from her earbug had fallen silent. She raised her eyes to the elderly technician and found him staring at her with equal horror.

  "Mine is dead too," Nacace said in a frightened voice. "My earbug is dead. Everything just…stopped working."

  "What about your other equipment?" The old NГЎhuatl woman tapped experimentally at the sounders clinging to her throat. They made a dull drumming sound. "Are any of your comps working?"

  Nacace shook his head after a moment. He was sweating profusely – the environmental control in his suit had failed.

  Our control network is dead, Itzpalicue repeated to herself, trying to grasp the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken her entire plan. Without comp on-line, there's no way to communicate with anyone. The Army will be blinded, unable even to fire most of their weapons. O merciful mother of Tepeyac, guide our spears true to the heart of the enemy, for we have nothing else with which to fight…

  Her earbug suddenly squawked to life. Itzpalicue jerked as if she'd been shot.

  "Lachlan! Are you there?"

  Static and a confused babble of voices answered her.

  The v-pane on her hand-comp flickered as the comm software reset – the Mirror-built system cycled through seventy or eighty thousand channels and popped back into synch with operations. Lachlan reappeared, but now he was standing and shouting orders at a chaotic room. His technicians were yelling in panic and the old woman could see dozens of monitoring screens showing nothing but static. Restart, Lachlan shouted again, we've lost the primary network. Shunt to secondary, then restart the primary. Go to battlefield beta cycling and rekey all encrypt sequences!

  Itzpalicue waited, weak with relief. Sotto voce, she said: "Nacace, primary comm has suffered severe damage. We'll move to the secondary operations center immediately."

  Then she made a sharp hooting sound, summoning the pair of Arachosians she'd chosen for bodyguard detail. By the time they arrived, Lachlan was staring out at her, still frightened.

  "What happened?"

  I don't know what that was! The Iirishman was sweating, jaw clenched. Everything just turned off. Everything had power – but nothing was working. Then the whole system just restarted itself.

  "Do we have primary comm back?"

  Lachlan managed a feeble grin and shook his head. Another new wave of jamming has hit the modern comm networks groundside – ours, the Flower Priests', and the Army's – this is modern, Imperial-style battletech too. Absolutely nothing we imported. Analysis says the xochiyaotinime didn't bring it in either. We're running the emission signatures now…

  "Our network is back up?" Itzpalicue was walking quickly through the factory sheds, heading for an armored truck parked in a nearby garage. The elderly technician was jogging ahead, checking each doorway with a drawn automatic. The two Arachosians flanked her, kalang knives drawn and the grips of their pistols turned forward for swift access. "Do we have full coverage back? Spyeyes still in the air?"

  No. Lachlan's voice was filled with despair. Whatever knocked out our comps killed their hover controls. One of our men on the roof is picking up the pieces of several righ
t now.

  "I see." Itzpalicue tried not to clench her jaw. "Shift as much traffic to ground-line or line-of-sight laser as possible. Do we have replacements to launch?"

  Some, the Йirishman said, looking haggard. We're running a broadband restart command to try and wake up any of them that survived dropping out of the sky. They're pretty tough, so we'll get a few back. I'll have any reserve hives launched as soon as we have comm back.

  "Other alternatives?"

  Commercial comm is completely dead, the Йirishman said sadly. Every single relay node probably shorted out with this level of feedback. The xochiyaotinime are chasing their tails – they suffered three primary node failures and have lost nearly a quarter of their coverage. He grinned ghoulishly. The Mirror network had lost its eyes, but the backbone was still up. The Army is bouncing back – I think they'll have a full recovery in about six minutes – but the colonel is going to blister some hides for this… Their net is supposed to be hardened against exactly this kind of jamming.

  The old woman slowed to a halt, waiting until the technician had climbed into the cabin of the truck, fired up the engine and put the transmission into gear. One of the Arachosians loped over to unbar the garage doors. "Will there be more outages?"

  I don't…wait a moment. He looked off-screen, listening to one of the Analysis section technicians. Then he nodded, turning back to Itzpalicue. We've an ident on the attacking system, mi'lady. Albanian work – the latest version of their Seitaj IV battlefield countermeasures system – usually sold to mercenary brigades working the Rim. Good – very good, really, for a backwater like this – but we'll be able to keep comm up for the duration.

  "Unless whatever neutralized our comps happens again." Itzpalicue swung up into the back of the truck. One Arachosian was in front, a brace of pistols and his Macana on the seat beside him, while the other rode with her in tepid darkness. The surprised chill of losing all contact was fading, but a tickling, unpleasant feeling of things being badly out of joint replaced her initial alarm. "A battlefield ECM system like that would only be useful against a modern opponent. Against the Empire."