Wasteland of flint ittotss-1

by Thomas Harlan

  Her tail started to lash again, very, very slowly. "What a clever monkey. She's hacked the t-relay!"

  Hummingbird's face lit with the soft glow of a display panel, weary old eyes glittering with the spark of glyphs flashing awake. Reassembling his surveillance systems had taken much longer than he expected — he'd considered calling Isoroku for help — but resisted the urge. There was really no reason to let the engineer see Mirror equipment in operation, not when the man was entirely competent and a boon to his ship. Dealing with an angry Chu-sa Hadeishi would only waste more time. So Hummingbird stretched in place, broke open a threesquare and swallowed the vile mixture. Four panels faced him — a control display between his knees — then three v-panes in a wing. To his left, an array of local camera feeds showed him the corridors and rooms of the ship, now suddenly crowded by the arrival of the scientists from the planet. To his right, a mirror of the planetary view maintained on the bridge shimmered in the display.

  Despite his earlier decision to let Anderssen and her people find the missing scientist, a thought had occurred to Hummingbird while he was working. Setting up a search will only take a moment, he said, arguing with himself. Then they can make the pickup themselves.

  In truth, the scientists were all taxing the water and power supply of the ship with a half-dozen simultaneous, extended showers. After that they'd want to stuff themselves with food — Hummingbird smiled, noting the shipboard mess was entirely barren, save for the same kind of threesquares the crew had been subjected to on the planet — and sleep. So I have a few moments to spare.

  He tapped up a schematic of the coverage afforded by the meteorological satellites the expedition had deployed in a long string around the planetary equator. The weather surveillance system managed nearly pole to pole coverage. "Good," he said with a trace of smugness. "Now show me what kind of video feed…"

  More images flashed past on his displays. The peapods maintained an historical archive, which Hummingbird pillaged, looking for a highview shot of the base camp the day Russovsky delivered her deadly cylinder. A second later, the system chirped apologetically — the satellite array did not contain information older than a week. "Odd…" Hummingbird tapped up specifics on the Texcoco ISA-built satellites. "Ah, too much data to store locally." He queried main comp to see if there was an off-array archive. Moments later, an answer came back: a partial archive was maintained in crystal storage at base camp, in the laboratory of Smalls, Victor A., doctoral candidate, Mars Academy of Sciences.

  Hummingbird nodded, glad the young man had taken proper care to protect his work. Seconds later, the main comm array had thrown a whisker to the base-camp station, and Hummingbird's search was causing dozens of pale firefly lights to wink on in Smalls's crowded lab. An entire wall of c-storage rippled awake in response to the tlamatinime's request.

  On the ship, Hummingbird sat back, eyes closed, breathing steady, waiting.

  "Gretchen? Are you awake?" Magdalena bit nervously at a length of metallic support strut, leaving dimpled marks along the black metal. "It's Magdalena, hunt-sister. Are you mating? Cleaning yourself? Answer, please!"

  "I'm here," came the muffled reply. The vid showed nothing, only darkness. Impatient, Maggie dialed up the light amp and image interpolate on the channel. This revealed the matte surface of a sleepbag, which then split open to reveal the mussed, tousled head of a very sleepy Anderssen. "What happened?"

  "I think…oh, a fine hunt! I think I've found ss'shuma Russovsky." Magdalena grinned tightly, careful to keep her teeth covered, but the pink tip of her tongue poked gleefully between her lips. "At least, I know where she was sixteen hours ago, when the sun came up."

  "Okay." The image of Gretchen rubbed her eyes and a giant hand reached out to adjust the comm band so she could see Magdalena. "Tell me."

  "I was trying to find Russovsky's mail — like you asked — and I couldn't. Very strange, but then a message processed through the Palenque main comm array — a message from Russovsky's Midge, from the groundside — and my watchers picked it up. Hunt-sister, the doctor didn't have any mail waiting for her because she's been picking it up all this time!"

  Gretchen, wondering why her mouth tasted so foul, managed a "Huh?"

  Maggie looked off-screen for a moment, her ears pricked up. "The Midge houses a comm array in the upper wing, a big, broad surface. A great transmitter and receiver. So Russovsky changed her messaging configuration here on the ship — I found where she broke into the system and tweaked some access settings — so her Midge could connect to the Palenque on a maintenance channel and transmit her messages. The burst I intercepted was big — because it's filled with video from the cameras on the ultralight — and she uploads every morning."

  Gretchen blinked. "Wait — so she's keeping a record of where she flew during the day?"

  "Better," Maggie grinned, and this time she didn't bother to hide her fangs. "She's transmitting all of her data from the geosensors on the Midge; each day she flies, she's mapping the planetary surface, taking gravity measurements, even spectroscope of exposed rock formations…everything she can pick up."

  "Ah." Gretchen felt her mind begin to work, sleep-rusty gears ticking over. "But her data doesn't go through a known channel — and nothing that Clarkson would notice. So everything's stored in Palenque main comp?"

  The Hesht's ears flicked and a queer, pleased gleam spilled into her eyes. "Not at all. The Midge sends the data here with a tail-twister of a routing header — notes on where the message should go, who it's intended for — to sit on the t-relay until main comm traffic is low. Then Russovsky's message wakes up and sends itself to Ctesiphon Station. She lets it break up into sections if need be, so if there's a lot of traffic, her entire message won't get through for a couple hours. But once at the big emitter on Ctesiphon, it gets forwarded all the way to the University of Aberdeen, on Anбhuac!"

  "She's sending the data to herself, at home, in her lab." Gretchen made a face. Her tongue tasted strange. I am never drinking Blake's "special" vodka again. Ever. No matter how much he begs. "That's very clever. She's not paying for the transmission time, is she?"

  Maggie laughed out loud, a rumbling, crackling cough. "The accounting system here, and on Ctesiphon, always allows a certain amount of synchronization traffic between relays. Each station has to identify itself and make sure messages are passing properly between them. Russovsky's data goes over in the checksum of the synchro packets, or attached to other messages. If anyone pays, it's the Company."

  "Fine. Fine." Gretchen didn't really care about the technical details. "The comm array has to get a fix on her transmitter then, right?"

  The Hesht nodded. "I have a fix, to the centimeter, of where she set down at sunrise today. She's flying tonight, I suppose, but when she transmits in the morning…"

  "Tell Fitzsimmons and Bandao to gear up," Gretchen said, lying back down, the sleepbag helpfully curling up around her shoulders. "They need to be ready to drop shuttle one as soon as you've got a fix and pick her up. Bring her back to the ship. Parker and I will come up in the other shuttle as soon as we can."

  Maggie nodded, but Gretchen was asleep and snoring softly before the channel flickered closed.

  Hummingbird's eyes opened and he looked expectantly at his display. A moment later there was a chiming sound and a v-pane unfolded with the results of his search. Smalls had been capturing an enormous amount of data — the entire planetary surface in visual, plus air temperature and density scans — for weeks and weeks. Scanning such a volume, looking for the silhouette of an ultralight flying a low altitude, proved far more time consuming than the tlamatinime expected. Now he unfolded himself from a waiting posture and tapped the first of the search results.

  A highview shot of a Midge sitting on the landing field at base camp appeared.

  "No…" Hummingbird flipped through the rest of the results. None of them were useful, though each picture was — with clouds, dust and other interference scrubbed away — a fine picture of
a Midge-class ultralight seen from above. "Strange. Why only base camp? Oh, I see…"

  Smiling at his own naivetГ©, Hummingbird expanded his search criteria to include an aircraft in flight, one where the silhouette changed as the ultralight banked or turned, or the recorded image was only partial due to heavy clouds or sandstorms. The search started again and he began reciting a long memory chant to pass the time.

  "Even if a man were poor, lowly," he sang, "even if his mother and his father were the poorest of the poor, his lineage is not considered. Only the matter of his life matters, the purity of his heart, his good and humane heart, his stout — "

  Another chime interrupted, which made Hummingbird frown suspiciously. "That's too quick!"

  He tapped up the image, expecting to find a sand dune or rocky flat. Instead, the glittering shape of an aircraft wing catching the sun was frozen in the satellite picture. Hummingbird blinked in surprise, then zoomed the image. And again. At first the image was blurry, barely the shadow of an angular shape against a field of shattered black lava, then the display panel kicked in and the view sharpened. The tlamatinime pursed his lips. He'd found an aircraft — but not Russovsky's ultralight — or one of the Javan Yards shuttles from the Palenque. Something else, something without Company markings.

  "Show me the rest," he muttered, dialing forward. Far below, in Smalls's lab, one particular c-storage lattice woke to life, reeling off snapshots of the planetary surface taken weeks before. On Hummingbird's panel, a jerky series of images spun past. But the mysterious shuttle was already gone. He backed up, frame by frame, then realized with disgust that Smalls's satellites were only shooting an image every half hour — more than enough time to track a storm, but not swift enough to capture more than an instant of a shuttle's swift passage through the atmosphere.

  "Where did you go?" Hummingbird began composing a more detailed search. At the same time he kicked the one image to the Cornuelle's main comp for identification. Then he waited, pondering the grainy, low-def image on his v-pane. The ident came back moments later and Hummingbird nodded, unsurprised, at the identification.

  "A Valkyrie," he read from main comp's concise, clipped summary. "Mining shuttle, one hundred fifty tons displacement, four engines, sub-light capable. Usually paired with a Tyr-class mobile refinery." A schematic of the spacecraft was attached — a huge assemblage of ore tanks, drives and shuttle bays. Hummingbird was not familiar with the class of ship — he rarely devoted his attention to navy matters — but the manufacturer was well known to him from certain other business. His lip curled. "Ship design and construction by Norsktrad Heavy Industries, Kiruna system. A Swedish ship…"

  The destruction of the ancient Kingdom of Swedish-Russia on Anбhuac in the previous century had not prevented tens of thousands of Swedes and Russians from leaving the homeworld for the colonies. Indeed, strict Imperial control of their home provinces had probably precipitated the exodus into the outer worlds. Entire companies — some once no more than Swedish governmental departments — had moved offworld as well. Two cold, desolate worlds — yet still habitable — orbiting Kiruna Prime were the center of a thriving manufacturing and shipbuilding industry.

  No one, particularly not the Voice of the Mirror, could say the Kirunan companies engaged in treacherous acts. Such an event would have precipitated the destruction of both the colonies and their orbital habitats. Despite this — despite a scrupulous and timely payment of taxes and every outward sign of loyal service to the Empire — far too many Kirunan-built spacecraft found their way into the hands of pirates, rogue miners, Communards, and insurrectionists of all kinds.

  "Hummingbird to the Cornuelle," he said, tapping open his comm. "I need to speak with Chu-sa Hadeishi immediately."

  The Cornuelle

  Finally.

  Hadeishi nodded sharply to Hummingbird's image and closed the channel. He swung his command chair to the threat-well at the center of the bridge, a speculative expression on his face. "Sho-sa Kosho, ship to alert status one. All hands to stations."

  Immediately, even as the captain's words faded from the air, the exec's slim finger stabbed a double-size glyph on her control panel. A sharp hooting sound rang out through every pressurized space on the light cruiser and every comm flashed an attention signal. Kosho was unable to keep a fierce smile from her face, though the cultured, exact voice issuing from the comm was perfectly devoid of emotion. "All hands to battle stations. All hands to battle stations. Ship will lock down in one hundred eighty seconds. Gravity will be zero in one hundred seconds. All hands…"

  Hadeishi felt suddenly awake, his vision clear, hearing acute, his hands filled with an immediate quick energy. His combat display had already split — keyed by the alert — into four sections, one showing the status of his ship, another the immediate space around the Cornuelle, another with a summary of all known threats — empty for the moment — and the fourth filled with palm-sized v-feeds from the various divisions. Everything was entirely familiar, save for Engineering, where a suddenly sweaty and perturbed-looking Sho-i Ko-hosei Yoyontzin had started in horror at the sound of the alarm horns.

  "Mister Hayes," Hadeishi snapped, feeling a cold, invincible calm settle over him. "Status?"

  "No threats," the weapons officer replied, his broad face showing no emotion at all. "Palenque orbit is stable, engines cold. One shuttle docked, the other groundside at base one. Recon drones and survey satellites show no motion, no hostiles. Passive scan is quiet. Shall I go active?"

  "No, Hayes-tzin, not at this time. Sho-sa Kosho?"

  The exec tucked a curling trail of raven-dark hair behind one ear. She was leaning on her panel, one hand knuckled against the glassite, an antique gold stopwatch in her free hand. She was counting silently. After the briefest moment, she raised her eyes to the captain and said "fifty-eight" while clicking the stopwatch. Hadeishi waited while the lieutenant tapped open the all-hands ship channel. "Ship in lockdown," she announced, and the captain felt a distant rumble through his chair as the hab rings spun to a stop and locked in place, then a hissing clang as the main bridge pressure hatches sealed. At the same moment, his shipsuit stiffened and a warning tone sounded beside his ear.

  "Gravity zero," Kosho announced, securing the watch and taking hold of the edge of her display. "Engines hot."

  "All systems tracking," Hayes announced at almost the same moment. "Beam nacelles are live, missile racks one through nine are cleared to load. Shall I load out?"

  "Rack with flash loads by evens," Hadeishi replied in a crisp voice. "Timing, Mister Hayes, I want timing." He turned slightly to look at his exec again. "Time, Sho-sa?"

  Kosho came to attention, though no one save a shipmate could have told the difference from one moment to the next. "All hands to station in ninety-six seconds, Chu-sa. Engines hot, systems secured in one hundred fifty seconds."

  Hadeishi's chair vibrated again and he knew the missile racks were loading, magazine carrels rotating into place, the slender shapes of Hayai Roku sliding into their launch tubes.

  "Admirable," the captain replied, looking to the communications station. "Emissions status, Mister Smith?"

  "T-relay offline," the midshipman replied, cheeks flushed, the beat of his heart thudding in the artery at his neck. "Main array in passive. Comm array on the Palenque forced down, ship to ground forced down, emissions are at minimum. Shipskin neutral."

  "Hayes-tzin? Backscatter from civilian sources? Visual confirmation?"

  The weapons officer suppressed a start — he'd expected to report the even-numbered missile racks loaded and their launch status green — hands moving in a blur across his panel. Hadeishi watched keenly — the request to double-check the light cruiser's emissions status from local civilian sources was unexpected, though they were rarely in position to take direct control of civilian sensor apparatus — and counted the seconds until the Thai-i responded. Out of the corner of his eye, the captain watched Kosho counting as well, ancient watch magically back in her hand.
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  "Civilian sensors are blank," Hayes said, his voice a fraction rushed. "Visual confirm is…is positive. I have outline from Palenque navigational cam." A finger speared sideways and a new v-pane unfolded on Hadeishi's display. With interest, the captain examined the image. "Backscatter from satellites is null, backscatter from Palenque main array is…null."

  "Interesting." Hadeishi folded his hands in his lap. The civilian ship mounted an entire array of exterior cameras to assist in docking at a station or other orbital facility. Apparently they also included moderately sophisticated pattern-matching soft, which had picked the outline of the Cornuelle — even at one hundred kilometers — out of the background starfield. The Palenque comp could not make a match for ship type or registry, but it knew something was within its programmed avoidance limits. "Maintain feed from the civilian ship, Hayes-tzin. Sho-sa Kosho, please adjust ship orientation by degrees."

  Cocooned in his command chair, Hadeishi could not feel the massive bulk of the Cornuelle begin to move, though the video feed on the Palenque picked up the spark of her maneuvering engines as they began a topwise spin. The threat-well and most of the displays remained constant — only the one pickup showing the arc of Ephesus shifted, the planet turning slowly upside down.

  "Five second burn." Kosho's face remained porcelain, her eyes calmly tracking the movement of the ship. "Burn halted."

  Hadeishi watched the comp on the Palenque adjust, seeing the image — and the identifier — flicker in and out, adapting, adapting…then the lock vanished and the civilian software declared the "foreign ship" to have vanished. "There you are… Reverse roll, Kosho-san."

  The Cornuelle reappeared for a moment on the civilian display as momentum carried the cruiser back into a recognizable configuration. A second series of burns halted roll, then nudged her back, second by second, into an unidentifiable "hole" against the wall of night.