From the look on Festina’s face, I figured this was the last time Kaisho would be allowed to run anything but her own wheelchair.
"All right," Kaisho announced in her usual whisper. "The signal came from Unshummin city — practically inside Verity’s palace."
"What the fuck are Explorers doing there?" Tobit asked.
Me, I was looking at the bridge’s main vidscreen where a map display showed the source of the beep. It was just outside the palace walls, on the south edge of Diplomats Row. "That’s the Fasskister embassy," I said. "At least it was. It could have got wrecked in the war."
"Stupid spot for the Explorers to hole up," Festina muttered. "If I wanted to avoid trouble, I’d head for open country, not the very heart of Unshummin."
"Perhaps, Admiral," said Prope, "the people from Willow are more comfortable in the city. Not everyone is from such a rustic background as you are."
Festina glared. "Thank you, Captain," she replied icily, "I’ll take that as the compliment it was surely meant to be. As for the supposed dangers that city-dwellers believe infest the wilderness…" She waved her hand dismissively. "The most dangerous creatures on Troyen right now are the Mandasar armies, and I guarantee Unshummin palace is crawling with soldiers. No matter who’s winning or losing the war, someone will have a huge military presence there… for the sheer symbolic appeal of holding the high queen’s throne and sitting on it from time to time. If I were in the neighborhood, I’d hightail it out of town — off to some nice quiet nowhere without the slightest strategic importance."
"Ah, dear Festina," Kaisho whispered, "suppose you didn’t have that option."
She pointed at the vidscreen and turned a dial on her console. The map display changed to an actual overhead photo of Unshummin — a high aerial perspective with the palace in the middle and a good chunk of property all around. A big circle, maybe ten kilometers across. At that scale, the palace itself was no bigger than the palm of my hand, but still recognizable by its hive-queen shape: head to the north; claws fanned out west, northwest, northeast, and east; the body stretching back to the south, with its huge five-story brain hump and those two glass domes nestled where the tail met the torso — the venom sacs, glistening bright green from the plants in the two conservatories.
Surrounding the palace were the canals, artificial waterways forming concentric circles that divided the city into rings; and crossing the canals by more than a hundred bridges were the radii, good-sized streets running straight out from the palace grounds. The whole layout looked like a dartboard with the high queen sitting in the bull’s-eye… which was a pretty lousy place to be when you thought about it.
As far as I could see, the city seemed pretty much intact despite twenty years of war — the only obvious destruction was a big burned swath between the fourth and fifth canals. A fire had taken out almost the entire ring, flattening everything black; but it looked like the flames hadn’t crossed the water on either side, so the damage had been contained.
Of course, there might have been other wreckage that didn’t show up on the picture. We’d caught the city at sunset, as long shadows stretched from west to east, jumbling up the patterns and perspectives. With all the computer gadgetry at her disposal, Kaisho should have been able to filter out those shadows and give a crystal-clear view of everything… but I guess she preferred the dramatic night-is-coming effect.
"Unshummin palace," she whispered. The ship-soul brightened the center of the picture to make it stand out.
"The signal source," Kaisho said. A blue pinpoint of light flared up on Diplomats Row. I squinted, trying to see if that really was the Fasskister embassy. Yes, that’s what it looked like… though the building’s front facade was missing, as if someone had mushed it in. No big surprise, I guess — considering how folks on Troyen felt about the Fasskisters, it was a wonder they hadn’t blown the embassy to rubble.
"The perimeter," Kaisho said. A green circle-ish loop appeared over top of Prosperity Water, the fourth canal out from the middle. It sure wasn’t the perimeter of the city itself — there were ten more canals beyond Prosperity, plus a sprawl of developments that had sprouted after the original zoning plan was set up.
"Perimeter of what?" Tobit asked. "The fire zone?" Prosperity was the inside edge of that burned-out area I’d seen.
"You could call it a fire zone," Kaisho answered. "It’s actually a perimeter of defense. For the palace. They’ve blown up all the bridges, making the canal a moat. I imagine they burned down everything in that ring so they’d have a clear shot at anyone coming in. Because here’s where the enemy is."
The photo blossomed with scarlet dots: thousands of them, maybe millions, covering the whole city outside the fire zone. They didn’t just block the radius roads; they were everywhere, hunkered down along the canals, at the bridges, inside buildings, sealing off every possible exit.
A vast red deluge of firepower… and our Explorers were trapped at ground zero.
33
APPRAISING THE RISKS
"Are you sure?" Dade asked Kaisho. "I mean… the sensors are just picking up heat sources right? Ones that match the Mandasar profile. So how can you tell the difference between one set of soldiers and another? How can you tell they’re soldiers at all? Those people outside the perimeter could just be civilians."
Kaisho gave a soft chuckle. "Next picture, ship-soul." As if she’d expected him to ask precisely that question and had already set up an answer.
The screen image split into halves, both sides showing Mandasar warriors. The warriors on the left were tucked under an urban camo awning, but the perspective came down at enough of an angle that we could see the front parts of their bodies. They all had black patches painted on their shells at the upper shoulders, like blobby epaulettes; for weapons they held wooden crossbows with big ugly arrows whose heads were nasty enough to penetrate Mandasar armor.
The warriors on the right half of the picture had crossbows too, and sharp steel tips attached to their claws. No epaulettes, black or otherwise. This group was slinking along the edge of a street, keeping well into the sunset shadows.
"The ones with black markings," Kaisho said, "are outside the perimeter. The unmarked ones are inside. And before you ask, Mr. Dade, no, I haven’t checked every warrior on both sides… but I’ve looked at enough to be confident of my sampling. The army of the black has surrounded a much smaller force based in the palace. Both sides are holding their positions rather than trying to kill each other."
"A cease-fire?" Festina suggested. "Perhaps their leaders are trying to work out a surrender."
"I suspect the palace army doesn’t have a leader," Kaisho replied. "Let me suggest a scenario."
"Oh good," Tobit muttered. "Someone thinks she can explain this mess."
Kaisho nodded, her hair bouncing slightly over her face. "Willow was supposed to find a queen. Where would the Explorers look first? Queens could be practically anywhere on the entire planet. Do you start going to every army camp your sensors pick up, asking, ‘Excuse me, do you have a queen here?’ Or do you go to a known position that’s almost certain to have a queen in residence?"
"Unshummin palace," Festina said.
"Exactly. It’s easy to find, and you can be sure some queen must have claimed it for her own. That’s where Willow went first; and they found a queen who was pantingly eager to go to Celestia, because she happened to be in deep shit: encircled and besieged by the Black Army.