The infiltrator then waited an eternity – three seconds – and exhausted the last of its tiny power cell with a piercing burst of hi-band radio noise.
Four meters away, a series of organic detonators woven into the lohaja wood tripped at the infiltrator's signal and initiated a catastrophic chain reaction through the six hundred kilos of nitro-cellulose explosive forming the plank cores. The officer's mess vanished in a shocking blast of flame and super-pressure plasma. The internal doorway to the galley blew apart and the blast engulfed two storage spaces and the dishwasher. Vent covers for removing waste heat and cooking smoke – closed by the battle alert – crumpled and flames roared down four air circulation shafts – two heading aft and two forward. The main door to the officer's mess was torn from its hinges and smashed into the opposite bulkhead.
A damage control party kicking past at that moment – heading for the number three boat bay, which was at that moment open to naked vacuum and venting atmosphere – was engulfed in plasma and their z-suits, shredded by flying splinters of steel-sharp wood, failed. They all died instantly. The whole center section of the command ring convulsed, ripped by the explosion, and then filled with a rushing wall of flame.
The wall behind the officer's mess, which contained one of the three primary nerve conduits handling all of the ship's data networks, buckled, and most of the blast boiled through the gaping hole where the command panel had been mounted. Luckily, the critical networks were encased in heavy armor, and the blast – though the conduit was severely kinked and sections were badly melted – did not penetrate into the datacore.
A third of the ship's comp, however, did go momentarily off-line as the automatic damage control system shut down the conduit and rerouted traffic into the other two cores. The wrecker viruses, which had already permeated the ship's neural web, began a systemic attack on every sub-system, interface and command and control system within their reach.
Asale counted under her breath, hand on the manual system restart. "Two…and one!"
The lever clicked forward, there was a chirping sound, and the command panels in the cockpit of the captain's launch jolted awake.
"We have system restart," Hadeishi announced, watching the boot log flash past on his display. "Fitzsimmons, Deckard – you still with us?"
"Hai, kyo," Fitzsimmons answered, sounding a little rattled. Both Marines had been completely silent while the pilot and the Chu-sa were working feverishly to get the launch controls operating again. "Is there anything we can do?"
"Yes," Hadeishi said, perfectly calm and collected. "The Cornuelle has been severely damaged, if our sensors are reporting the atmosphere and radiation cloud around her properly. We are going to match velocity and go aboard. The locks and boat bays may be damaged, so hunt around back there and collect anything we can use to cut into a lock or handle damage control and medical emergencies once we're inside. Take everything you can carry."
"Engine restart in three…two…one…" Sho-i Asale twisted the ignition handle, felt the drive reactor in the back of the launch rumble awake and mimed wiping sweat from her high brow with her free hand. "The gods are smiling, Chu-sa. We've lost comm and external video and some of the navigational sensors, but we can still fly."
"Good." Hadeishi cleared a display showing all comm interfaces offline from his panel. "Get me to my ship as fast as you can."
The launch trembled, the drives lit off and they jolted forward. Jagan continued to swell before them, and Hadeishi imagined he could see the matte black outline of the Cornuelle ahead, growing nearer every second. His face became a mask, his eyes cold obsidian.
The Chu-sa was trying to keep from bursting into tears. I've failed my men, my ship…everyone. What did I think I was doing – haring off on a political visit with combat imminent? Ah, the gods of chance are bending against me tonight. The only thought which gave him some shred of hope was the knowledge that Susan was on the ground, far from their dying ship, perhaps safely ensconced in a command bunker at Sobipurй or the Regimental cantonment.
Hold on, he prayed, watching the fragmentary navigational plot for signs of the Cornuelle. Hold on, I'm coming. Hayes knows what to do, he'll get maneuvering drive back and pull you into a safe orbit. Just hold on, just a little longer…
Six thousand kilometers behind the launch, the Tepoztecatl continued to shudder with explosions as more systems failed. Atmospheric venting continued unabated and the long, curving rooms filled with communications equipment drifted with clouds of paper, globules of vomit and blood and water. Bodies clogged the doorways where the explosive decompression of the ship had sucked the hapless priests to an ugly, instant death. The main reactor had shuddered into an emergency shutdown, preventing the kind of catastrophic failure which had claimed the Beowulf, but only isolated portions of the ship glowed with emergency lights.
The bridge and command spaces were twisted wreckage – the laser burst from the nearest mine had smashed lengthwise into the ship directly through the control deck. Chimalpahin and all of his subordinates had been instantly killed, either incinerated or boiled alive as the internal atmosphere roared out through the shattered hull.
All possibility of the Flower Priest network being restored was wiped away with one brilliant flash of light. Across Jagan, the Whisperers working quietly in town, countryside and metropolis stared in alarm at their comms, finding the ever-present voice from the sky had fallen silent.
Warning lights flared, nearly blinding Isoroku as he struggled back to consciousness. The engineer raised a hand, found his ears ringing with a warbling emergency alarm, and seized hold of the nearest stanchion. The engineering deck was in chaos, filled with drifting men, loose hand-held comp pads, tools and broken bits of glassite. Weakly, he tapped his comm.
"Engineering to Bridge…ship's status?"
Static babbled on the channel and Isoroku stared at his wrist in alarm. "Hello the bridge! Hayes? Smith?"
His comm continued a sing-song wail, warbling up and down the audible frequency. Isoroku shut it off and swung to the nearest v-display. Finding the display still up by some miracle, he mashed a control glyph with a gloved thumb and the blaring alarm shut off. In the following silence, his breath sounded very harsh in his ears. The engineer stared at the panel, felt his stomach fall into a deep pit and clenched the sides of the station to keep from drifting away.
Every readout and v-pane was filled with random, constantly changing garbage. Isoroku glanced around the engineering deck, finding his staff struggling back to stations, though at least two drifted limply, one leaking crimson from a shattered face-plate. He tried tapping up the all-hands channel on his comm. A blast of scratchy music assaulted his hears, accompanied by a wailing voice like a lost soul writhing in the torment of a Christian's hell.
Comms are down, he realized, feeling even sicker. Main comp is corrupted – or at least the interfaces are. This is a cold day indeed. Isoroku lifted his wrist, eyeballed the environmental readouts, saw the air was still breathable and unsealed the helmet of his z-suit.