As soon as he tasted burned circuit and fear in the air, he kicked across to the main comp station and rapped his fist on the helmets of two crewmen trying to get the panel to reboot. Alarmed, they unsealed their faceplates, staring at him with wide eyes. Fleet discipline was very strict about keeping z-suit integrity in an emergency.
"Main comp is corrupted," Isoroku barked as soon as they could hear him. "Drop the entire ship-wide network – every node, relay and interface – and keep main comp off-line. We'll need altitude control and environmentals back as quickly as possible, but we'll have to bring them up as standalone systems."
Before they could reply, he turned and kicked across to the cluster of stations controlling the main reactor and the massive hyperspace drive systems. Chu-i Yoyontzin, his second, was already at the panel, haggard face sheened with sweat. The NГЎhuatl officer's helmet was tipped back behind his head, though Isoroku could see the engineer was nearly paralyzed with fear at the prospect of losing pressure on the deck.
"Reactor is still up," Yoyontzin reported, biting his lip. "Main drive was on standby, but I think we can bring her on-line in thirty minutes…"
Isoroku shook his head, the dull glare of the emergency lights shining on his bald pate. "Shut down main power and the transit drive and maneuvering. Right now – manually, if you have to."
"But, kyo, we were in the middle of a maneuvering burn! One engine was still firing. We need to adjust attitude control and establish a stable orbit!"
"Can't do that while the comp network is corrupted." The lead engineer stabbed a thick finger at the sidepanel displays flanking the reactor and drive subsystem. They were crowded with garbage and wild images. Pornographic three-d's pulsed on two of them, emitting a shrieking wail of sound and the whompwhomp-whomp of electric drums. "We need cell power to bring up critical systems and we can't spare it to keep the main drive hot. Shut down all drives right now."
"Hai!" Yoyontzin bleated in response, bending over his panel.
Isoroku spared himself an instant of relief that the corruption had not managed to penetrate the isolated reactor and hyperspace drive systems, and was even happier when Yoyontzin managed to initiate a controlled shutdown without missing a step and tipping the hyperspace matrix into some kind of catastrophic transit gradient.
"Communications are down," he bawled, drawing the attention of every other rating in the compartment. Everyone who was still up and mobile had at least cracked their helmets. "We need shipside comm up so we can handle damage control – every third man to the repair lockers – pull the commwire spools and local relays. Every z-suit comm switches to local point-to-point mode, no central relay allowed. Four teams – one for each fore-aft access way – run those spools out from here and affix local repeaters at each bulkhead. Move!
"Environmental section! Bring up your systems isolated from main comp, reflash your control code from backup and get the air recyclers working again." More ratings scattered and the engineer fixed his gaze on the damage-control section, which was staring helplessly at rows of displays which were showing flashing, endlessly repeated images of an animated rabbit hopping through a field of psychedelic, oversaturated flowers.
"Damage control is -"
Main comp shut down hard and every single display on the ship went black with a pitiful whine. The rabbits flickered wildly before vanishing with a pop! The engineering deck was suddenly very, very quiet.
The subsonic background thunder of the main reactors stuttered and failed.
Even the space-bending, subliminal ringing tone of the hyperspace coil fell silent.
Isoroku swallowed, suddenly feeling cold, and realized he was trapped in the heart of a nine-thousand-ton tomb of hexacarbon and glassite and steel.
The House of Reeds Within the Nautilus
Dust billowed along a trapezoidal passage, enveloping Gretchen and Malakar in a dirty tan cloud. Coughing, the Jehanan fell to her hands, overcome. Anderssen, thankful for her goggles, bit down on her breathing tube, seized the gardener under the shoulders and forged ahead. Twenty meters on, a ramp cut off to the left and they staggered up the slope, rising out of the toxic murk stirred up by the collapse of the vault three levels below.
Snuffling loudly, Malakar collapsed on the stone floor, gasping for breath.
Gretchen knelt beside the gardener and shook a thick coating of limestone powder from her field jacket. Everything was permeated with the fine gritty residue. "Can you breathe?"
Malakar responded with a wheezing snort, spitting goopy white fluid on the ground.
"I guess you can." Gretchen offered the Jehanan her water bottle.
Watching the alien drink, Anderssen was struck again by the dilapidated age of the entire structure. The grimy sensation of every surface being caked deep with the debris of centuries was only reinforced by the strange, massive pressure the kalpataru was exerting on her mind.
"Do your people – the priests, I mean – do they ever make new halls, cut new passages?"
"Is there need?" Malakar shook her head, returning the empty bottle. "Even I can become lost – once a Master ordered maps and charts made – but after a hand of years, the project was abandoned. I saw the room of books so made, when I was a short-horn, they were rotting. Paper is treacherous with its promises. No, all the priests do now is close up the places they fear to tread."
Gretchen nodded and helped the Jehanan to her feet. "Do you know the way out?"
"This old walnut doesn't even know where we are," Malakar grumbled, sniffing the air. "Perhaps this way."
After an hour or more, they turned into a long narrow hall, spaced with graven pillars reaching overhead to form a roof of carved triangular leaves. Malakar picked up her pace, forcing Gretchen to jog along behind. Here the floor was cleared of dust and ahead a gipu gleamed in the darkness.
"Quietly now," the gardener whispered. "We will reach the first level of terraces soon, and there will be priests – or even more of those profaning soldiers – about. The closest outer door known to me is some distance away, but that one is watched and guarded. We must reach one of the forgotten ones…"
They reached the end of the pillared hall, found themselves in an intersection of three other passages – all of them lit – and Malakar turned down the one to the right, then immediately stepped between two of the pillars – into a shadowed alcove – and began climbing a very narrow set of stairs. Once they had ascended beyond the lights, the gardener brought out the gipu and held the egg aloft. Picking her way along in the faint light, Gretchen ventured to speak again.
"Do you call this place the Garden because of the terraces?"
Malakar shook her head, still climbing. "They are new – or as new as such things can be in this hoary old place. Once they were broad platforms edged with rounded walls on each level above the entrance tier. One of the Masters – six of them ago now? – decided they should be filled with earth and planted. Some fragments still surviving from those times speak of a dispute with the kujen over the provision of tribute to the House."
"They provide all your food now?" Gretchen was thinking of the countless rooms and dozens of levels and the failure of her comm to penetrate the walls of the massif. "How many priests live within the House?"
"Two hundred and nineteen in these failing days," Malakar said, coming to the end of the stairs. "We no longer use the Hall of Abating Hunger – too many echoes and shadows for so few. But there I wager over a thousand could comfortably squat and stanch their hunger with freshly grilled zizunaga." Her long head poked out into a new passage and sniffed the air. "We are very near the terrace where I hid the pushta in the soil."