Asale released her hands from the control yoke. She flipped the main system reset control experimentally. Nothing happened. "Comp is down. The radiation tripped a safety."
Hadeishi leaned back in his shockchair, staring out at the vast tan-and-blue shape of Jagan. He breathed slowly through his nose, counting to ten with each breath. His z-suit had automatically switched to internal atmosphere. His heart slowed, his mind settled and he watched with cold eyes as the launch coasted ever deeper into the planetary gravity well.
Aboard the Cornuelle, the senior officer's ward-room was empty. Though there were no crewmen present to take heed, the battle-stations alarm blared from speakers hidden in the ceiling. Decompression warning lights flashed above both doors, which had automatically sealed themselves when the call to battle-stations went out. A terrible groaning sound echoed through the walls as the ship's spine flexed unnaturally. Unlike some of the other compartments, the mess had been tidied up long before the combat alert sounded. Isoroku had finished the repairs to the floor himself and made sure everything was shipshape before moving on to other, more pressing, duties.
The resulting floor was a beauty to the eye. The varnished surface glowed golden in the light of the overhead lamps. The subtle hexagonal accretion pattern in the lohaja fit well with the rice-paper paintings hanging on the walls and an expanse of native carpet. Even by his own high standard, Isoroku had done an excellent job in refurbishing the dining room.
The only things marring the elegant space were nearly a ton of spare lohaja flooring sections tied down in one corner with a web of magnetic straps and the box of custom-made Sandvik cutting and finishing tools, which had been carefully tucked away on a shelf beside the gaping hole where a command display had been mounted for the convenience of the senior officers.
Space on the Astronomer-class light cruiser being at a premium, most of the common interior spaces had been fitted to do double duty as necessary. The senior officer's ward-room was no exception, possessing a relatively large table and room for eight or more to sit, and the design firm handling the class specifications had provided appropriate furnishings to allow the room to function as a planning center with full access to main comp if the need arose.
The alarms continued to blare and gravity failed in the command spaces. Battle-lights came on as normal lighting dimmed. The mess was plunged into near-darkness. Inside the Sandvik box, a sensor tripped and one of the spare power cells – hidden beneath two of its fellows – hummed to life. A cutting beam sparked, cut through the shockfoam around the tools and out through the side of the wooden case in a perfect circle. A moment later a disc of wood popped out and a small 'bot – a cylinder no more than the size of a man's pinky – crawled out on six joined legs.
The infiltrator rotated, scanning the surrounding volume for a data-port, and found nothing. Secondary programming kicked in and a different set of patterns was loaded into its minuscule processor. This time the scan identified a comp conduit interface hanging in the void where the command display had been. The 'bot climbed the wall easily, reached up two forelimbs and seized hold of the hanging cable. A moment later the 'bot matched interface to interface, negotiated systems access, and disgorged a flood of wrecker viruses directly into the Cornuelle's master comp network.
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.