"Have you found something?" The Chu-sa was keeping track of Isoroku and his repair crews who, despite the mournful protests of the senior engineer, were making excellent progress at securing all of the repair supplies and adapting to a more conservative schedule. If only we had received some kind of munitions resupply. Fresh soap has a laudable effect on morale, but will do little for us if we have to provide ground-support for the Army.
Unfortunately, despite considerable investigation, the local industrial base simply could not provide the Cornuelle with fresh sprint and shipkiller missiles, or even capacitors and munitions for the point-defense network.
"Hai, kyo." The boy's face was keen with anticipation. "First, we've started to pick out a lot of chatter on fringe Imperial bands – all encrypted – using an old-style code formerly associated with certain Imperial religious military orders. We've had no indication there are any Templar or Tlahulli brigades operating on Jagan, so that's a little strange."
Hadeishi considered this for a moment, turning the indication over in his mind. That does not seem to fit at all. So it must be a foundation piece of the puzzle…"And?"
Jaguar leaned over, whispering in Smith's ear. Hadeishi waited patiently. As the two junior officers consulted their panel, the Chu-sa kicked off a ship-wide request for departmental status.
"Second, kyo, it looks like the 416th Arrow Knight regiment has taken to the field. Motorized elements apparently departed their cantonment south of Parus two and a half hours ago. The furthest afield are almost at Fehrupurй, but they're encountering sporadic resistance."
"What?" Hadeishi stiffened, his entire body suddenly and completely awake. "We've had no notification of an operational deployment! Get me Colonel Yacatolli right now."
Jaguar immediately began speaking into her comm-thread, the glow of a fresh v-feed from the surface shining on her cheekbones. Smith tapped a copy of his locator map to Hadeishi's station.
"What kind of resistance is the Army encountering?" Hadeishi tagged the flight paths of his shuttles into the map. Number three was already on the ground, while Susan's shuttle two was inbound to the main shuttle field at Sobipurй. Shuttle One, with a Marine drop-squad standing by, was still in boat bay one. "Local military contingents?"
"No, kyo." Smith shook his head and copied a set of thumbnails to the command station. "Kids throwing rocks and firebombs – mostly methanol and soap in glass. Some of the squad commanders have reported roads blocked or bridges under repair where satellite sweeps yesterday showed plenty of local traffic crossing."
"I see. Jaguar-tzin, do you have Yacatolli on comm for me yet?"
The Tlaxcalan ensign shook her head, pixyish features immobile with anger. "Regimental headquarters is saying he's busy and doesn't have time to talk to you right now. They say…they say they'll call us when he's free."
Hadeishi's eyes narrowed and he considered overriding the channel himself. For a moment. Then he pushed the anger aside and turned his attention back to the two junior officers. "Very well. Smith-tzin, find out where all this priestly traffic is coming from. Yacatolli's belief in the superiority of his regiment over the locals is a known quantity – this other business is more disturbing."
Takshila
District of the Molt
Humming softly to herself, Gretchen gently drifted her hand across the control surface of a Zeiss-Hanuman field camera. The lens and imaging body of the surveillance scope were mounted in a north-facing window. She was sitting cross-legged, watching the 60X image of the monastery with great interest.
On the v-display, a line of Jehanan elders was slowly climbing one of the external staircases cut into the rock of the hill. One by one they bent down and entered a T-shaped doorway near the summit. Some kind of domed building nestled in the rock, filling what the geodetic survey revealed was an old ravine. Gretchen was interested in this particular vignette because a similar number of monks made the same journey every morning. They did not return the same way. None of the penitents – if they were, in fact, performing a religious service – carried anything, as far as she could tell, and had dispensed with the usual leather harnesses and disc-shaped signs of status and rank.
A purification bath? she wondered.
She moved her hand again, and the camera scanned to one side. More cliffs pierced by tall narrow windows and occasional doors leading onto precarious walkways or steep sets of steps blurred past and she found the terrace Magdalena had labeled 'Southern Orchard' on the comprehensive three-d map their cameras, radar packs, and geomagnetic sensors were building on a base of out-of-date satellite photos. The orchard was filled with slender-trunked trees with perfectly rounded crowns. Gretchen's lips twitched into a faint smile – the ornamental arrangement of the naragga trees was the result of meticulous daily maintenance by a stooped old Jehanan and a swarm of children who carefully plucked wayward leaves from the trees and trimmed the stems with scissors.
"I'm amazed those trees are still standing. A dozen kids should have reduced the whole terrace to a desert by now."
Magdalena looked up from her comps – now laid out on a low wicker table Parker had found in the district furniture market – and twitched her ears lazily. "Perhaps the orb-trees grow quickly in this nnningurshimakkhul climate. Perhaps the kits are specially trained guardians who protect the world from being consumed by leaf demons."
"Ha!" Gretchen laughed, grinning at the Hesht. "You're in a good mood this morning."
"Hrrr… This ssshuma will be in a good mood when we find the gifting-bush and leave this nose-biting place."
Anderssen shrugged, looking at the northeastern sky through the windows. A pall of yellow-gray smoke filled the sky, drifting west from a huge district of chemical refineries. The noxious cloud choked the city whenever the wind turned. Magdalena had been particularly revolted to find the smog left a gummy residue on her fur.
"Any luck on getting the ground-penetrating radar to work?"
The Hesht shook her head and the tip of her tail lashed from side to side in annoyance. "There must be shielding beneath all the ornamental carving." She tapped a claw on one of her displays. "Each open window and door gives us a paws-breadth slice of the interior, but only for six, seven meters – then nothing. Without sensor relays placed inside the complex? No more than this."
Magdalena flexed her claws, letting them slide out of cartilage-sheaths, and tipped her chin at the three-d map. Three quarters of the surface of the hill had been mapped in painstaking detail by the array of sensors clipped to the windows or mounted on tripods. The far northern quadrant was still a mystery, though Gretchen intended to hike around to the far side in a day or so and mount their two spare cameras and radar packs on a rooftop, if she could find a suitable location.
Everything within the hill was also beyond their reach, at least while they observed from a distance. Sadly, the Company had neglected to provide them with antigrav spyeye remotes. Every indication pointed to a warren of tunnels and chambers and hidden rooms. The personage identifier system in Maggie's number three comp was counting silhouettes, facial pictures and stride lengths – when they could be captured on camera – and the count of inhabitants of the hill of the 'relentless ones' stood at four hundred so far.