Helsdon tilted his head, listening to the warble of static and chattering machine noise on one of the earbugs in his hand. "Shipside comm has reset – these are all default negotiation messages in the data-stream – the Thai-i changed them all years ago…"
"What does that mean?" Felix tried not to growl impatiently.
"I'm not sure." Helsdon pursed his lips, puzzled. "One moment, an aperture has come on-line…"
He pushed an earbug into Felix's hand. She popped out her Fleet one and screwed the new one in. Immediately, the background warbling and chirping of the local jamming vanished and she could hear the cool, even tones of a Fleet comm relay.
Stand by please, your call is being forwarded to the appropriate personnel.
"Huh! Didn't think I'd ever be happy to hear Miss Manners…"
Connecting…
"Hello?" The Heicho twisted the comm thread on the bug around to her lips. "This is Felix groundside, calling the Cornuelle, can anyone hear me?"
I hear you loud and clear, the tart, grumbling voice of Isoroku replied after a second's delay. Where is Sho-sa Kosho?
"In medical," Felix said, vastly relieved the ship was still in operation.
First tour recruits were treated to a variety of ghoulish stories by the twenty-year veterans. Most of them began with a variation of "when I was serving on the Cotopaxi…" and ended with the slow horrible death by mutilation of the officers or enlisted men who had not heeded the sage advice of their sergeants in matters of war, personal hygiene or keeping Fleet-issued equipment spotlessly clean. One of the more lurid tales concerned a company of Marines stranded on a primitive world when their troop transport had been shot up by a Megair battlecruiser. Lacking even the most primitive food-processing technology, the troopers had been forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Since hearing the gruesome tale of the Margaret Acatl and her survivors, the Heicho had harbored a recurring, paranoid fear of being stranded after her ship had been disabled or destroyed.
"We lost a shuttle on landing to an ATGM," Felix continued, wrenching her mind back to the matter at hand. "The Sho-sa was wounded, but she'll be fine. What happened to the ship? Where's Chu-sa Hadeishi?"
In medical, Isoroku said blandly. Stove some ribs in and nearly asphyxiated himself by dumping most of his suit air. He'll live – if we can get the ship in a stable orbit – so listen, Heicho – we can't help you. No fire support, no evac shuttles, not even much comm relay, until we get the ship stabilized and under control.
"I understand," Felix said, feeling queasy. She looked across at Helsdon, who'd turned a little pale. "How bad is it?"
Bad. We took six mine strikes simultaneously and the 'skin overloaded. Then there were secondary explosions in the officer's mess and galley. Don't really know what caused that, but we're clearing the wreckage, so -
"Six anti-ship mines?" Felix's brow furrowed. Helsdon jerked back a little in surprise, alarmed by the news. "How did Navigation miss mines parked in orbit? Wait a moment…"
The Development Board – the engineer started to say.
"The satellite power cells!" Felix cursed. Helsdon turned green and his eyes widened. "The civilian power cells had been replaced by anti-matter fueled ones…"
Good to know that. Now. The engineer's voice was very flat and tense with strain. A little late, Heicho but I'm sure you'll get a nice note in your personnel jacket at some point.
"Sabotage," Helsdon muttered, nervously counting the tools in his kit. "The Board foreman who sold us all those spare parts was in charge of the satellite network repair and maintenance." The older man's head lifted, eyes narrowing. "He sold us all that lohaja wood too…"
"Thai-i?" Felix ventured. "Did you hear -"
I did. Isoroku's voice affected a zero-Kelvin chill. We put nearly six hundred kilos of lohaja flooring into the officer's mess the day before yesterday. Helsdon, did you bioscan those supplies before they came aboard?
The machinist's mate blanched. "Hai, kyo! But I just scanned them for biological infestations – worms, beetles, egg cases, pupae, virus filaments – I didn't scan them for cellulose-based explosives. Or for shielded fuses or detonators."
There was a hiss of rage on the comm. We put our neck right in the noose!
Felix heard an impatient chime on her other earbug, cursed and switched devices.
…are you there? Heicho?
"Hai, Sho-sa Kosho!" Felix started to sweat, overcome with nervousness. "I'm here! I'm on the roof of the south tower with Helsdon, we've got comm back with the ship! The Chu-sa is fine – he's wounded, but stable in medical -"
Be quiet. Kosho sounded irritable. The Chu-sa can take care of himself. Listen, the eastern perimeter lookouts are reporting suspicious heat plumes two streets over and out of line-of-sight from their position. Can you eyeball anything from up there?
"I'm on it," Felix blurted, sliding over to the eastern side of the tower. From the clear, concise sound of the officer's voice, one wouldn't have thought she was laid up in an antique four-poster bed in a guest bedroom in the Residence with a medband on each arm and under-pain-of-death orders not to move while her ligaments reknit. The Imperial Resident wasn't a military commander – and didn't pretend to be – but he knew how to sit on recalcitrant Fleet officers who needed to recuperate after being nearly incinerated.
But that's our dear old wind-knife, the corporal thought, relieved to have someone confident in command, and ran a longeye up over the embrasure and swung the sensor from side to side. "Kyo? I've got visual of the streets east of the main wall…"
She paused, watching the feed very carefully. Between the southern tower and the eastern wall was a wide expanse of wooden buildings, ornamental gardens, a twisting pump-fed stream and a variety of huge, carefully tended fruit trees. The outer wall was a solid red cliff rising over acres of flowers. Felix twitched her lips, starting to frown. The composite image included ambient light, infra-red and high-spectrum radiation – whatever the longeye could pick up – all integrated into one color-corrected, annotated image. At the moment, a motion flicker was outlining the roof of a house just across the street from the eastern ramparts.
While the citadel had once protected the northeastern corner of Parus from assault, the centuries since its construction had engendered kilometers of suburbs beyond the squat towers. A variety of brick-and-plaster buildings crowded each side of the old fortress, separated from the wall only by the width of a city street. Even a governor of kujen Barak's time would not have allowed civilian buildings so close to the defenses…
"There's a building shaking from foundation to gable, Sho-sa." Felix's voice was taut with suspicion. "I've seen that before…a tank is cutting through the interior! Tell eastern perimeter to fall back – they're about to come under fire!"