Thomas Harlan - House of Reeds

She yawned herself and sat down in a wicker chair from upstairs, completely spent. The warm feeling of a job well done, despite unexpected adversity, filled her breast. Itzpalicue turned to speak to Lachlan and saw the young man had already leaned back in his chair and was snoring softly. As she watched, one of his technicians draped a patterned blanket over his chest and arms, then reached out and shut down the v-feed.

"Well done, my boy," Itzpalicue said to the darkened screen. "Ah, I should rest myself. Tomorrow will be just as bus y…" She consulted her chrono and bared her teeth. "Villeneuve should arrive soon and my services will be required again. Ah, this work is never done."

Wincing, Hadeishi settled himself into the command station in secondary control. Two medical orderlies assisted him, but despite their gentle hands, every nerve and muscle in his body throbbed with pain. At the navigator's station, a deathly-looking Sho-i Smith stared at him with haggard eyes.

" Kyo? " The boy's voice was a frail whisper.

"Prepare for maneuvering burn," Hadeishi gasped in response, shifting his hips in the shockchair. "Engineering – are you live on this channel?"

The Chu-sa had two earbugs and two comm-threads tacked in, one on each side of his face. Static and warbling interference intermittently flooded both channels.

We're here , an unfamiliar voice responded. This is Yoyontzin. Isoroku has gone up into the drive deck access to control the engines from the maintenance panel on level two.

"What?" Hadeishi kept his face still. Smith and the other junior officers in the secondary bridge were already on the ragged edge. All of them were injured – the communications officer had taken a bad cut on the side of his head and had one arm taped to his chest. A little less than half of the equipment was working – most of the control panels were dead – and there were signs of an explosion near the roof. A bitter taste of electrical smoke hung in the air. "What happened to the telemetry relay?"

Keeps dropping out . Yoyontzin's voice was cracking, veering into panic. We've replaced the hard-line twice, and it just keeps dying. I have comm to the Thai-i on a separate channel. I'll…I'll just relay what you need by hand.

"Understood. Stand by." Hadeishi muted the channel and stared at Smith. "Navigational scanners? External sensors?"

"Up and running, kyo ." The midshipman tapped his panel. "On your pane now."

The command display curving around Hadeishi flickered to life. A set of v-panes unfolded, showing minimal altitude, position, direction and velocity data for the ship. The Chu-sa 's jaw tightened and he forced himself to focus. The pain in his legs was wearing away at his concentration one bite at a time. "We're deep," he said, checking the altitude of the ship. "Hull temperature?"

"Rising, but slowly." Smith crouched over his panel, working the glyphs with one hand. "A shallow descent."

"All that's kept us alive so far," Hadeishi said, reaching up to smooth his short beard. He grimaced – the Medical techs had shaved half of his face to get gel tape on his radiation burns – and switched back to the engineering channel. "We have navigational control. Stand by for burn plot. Smith- tzin , we're going to have do a preprogrammed maneuver – the live relay to the engines is down. Isoroku will have to fire them remotely."

"Hai, kyo ." The boy began tapping on his display. Hadeishi opened a Navplot pane himself and searched around on the console for a stylus. They had all disappeared, despite magnetic adhesive which was supposed to keep them in place. Somewhere there are millions of panel styli in a bucket , he thought blackly, millions of them .

Remembering a trick from the Academy, he slipped a rank tab from the collar of his z-suit and twisted the retaining clip out. The metal point had the right kind of electrical signature to activate the sensor layer on the v-pane. Leaning over, he began sketching a trajectory on the display showing the round bulk of Jagan, his ship and the multiple layers of ever-thickening atmosphere.

"Burn pattern is done," Smith said a moment later, knuckling the glyph to transfer his work to the captain's station. Hadeishi leaned back a little, watching the calcs load – so slowly without main comp to supplement the display panel units! – and nodded. He meshed his own path-plot, double-checked the fuel levels last reported for the engines and tapped his comm thread awake.

"We're transferring burn parameters now," he said to Yoyontzin, whose rapid breathing sounded very loud in his ears. Hadeishi tapped the runner-glyph. The panel winked green, reporting a successful transfer.

Hadeishi tapped his other thread up and said: "All hands, prepare for maneuvering burn. Secure yourselves and your compartments. Burn will begin in…"

Yoyontzin was saying "Wait a moment, wait a moment…I've lost Isoroku's comm. Oh, there it is. I'm transferring…" There was unintelligible muttering on the channel. "He's loading the params now. Should be ready in about six minutes…"

"Stand by for maneuvering burn in eight, I say, eight minutes," Hadeishi announced. He lifted his chin at Smith and the other officers in the secondary. "Tack everything down in this space. No loose debris!"

Seven minutes later, maneuvering drives one, three and six ignited. Hadeishi felt the trembling vibration in his spine, stiffened into his shockchair and then he heard – for the first time in the six years he'd served aboard her – the Cornuelle groan in pain. The bulkheads twisted as the ship began to accelerate, emitting a deep basso moan. Overhead panels shivered, the lights flickered, and his command console began to evince a strange wavering effect.

He could feel the ship twisting as she surged forward, her prow biting into the upper atmosphere.

"Yoyontzin! The drives are out of balance," Hadeishi snarled, sweat seeping down the back of his neck. "Tell Isoroku to shut down the burn!"

Endless seconds passed and then the engines fluttered to silence. The hull creaked and groaned, flexing back into shape. Hadeishi slowly unclenched both hands from his armrests. He tapped the thread along his left cheekbone.

"Yoyontzin," he said very slowly and clearly, "you have to get that telemetry relay working properly. All I need is engine control live on my panel. Just patch the line from the drive access directly through to me, that's all. Don't use a relay."

But, kyo , we'll lose comm with most of the ship -

"You will do this right now, engineer, or you will be shot."

Hadeishi shifted in his chair, swallowing a gasp of pain. His legs were growing numb. "Smith- tzin , shut down your panel and reroute the Navplot to my station. Then come over here and stand secondary pilot. We'll take the ship out of atmosphere by hand."

The midshipman scrambled up, tapping the skull-glyph to kill his console. A moment later, he was squeezed in beside Hadeishi, the smell of his sweat pungent with body-toxins.

"Navplot is live," Smith said, watching a new set of v-panes unfold. "Telemetry is… Kyo , we're losing altitude again."

"I see." Hadeishi was listening to the comm from engineering. The channel clicked off. "Stand by for a second burn."

"But we can't warn -"

"I know." The Chu-sa forced himself forward, ignoring the throbbing in his hip. A set of engineering panes appeared. "Drive six is entirely out of synch. We're going to go to a burn with four, five, one and two." His fingers skipped across the panel, keying a fresh set of fuel metrics. He stabbed a finger at a status display, dragging the pane across the console. "Watch this reaction mass reservoir. Six is misfiring because there is a rupture in the fuel exchanger, the drive is getting too much mass. The cross-feed might be damaged as well. I'm going to go to minimal burn on the other four – if they start drawing too much fuel, override me and shut everything down."