Maggie nodded, her face contorted as she queried main comp through the medical display. "We've only got local power and environment back. The main system is still restricted—someone's dropped a shipwide lockout on us."
"Who ordered that?" Gretchen examined a secondary panel controlling the medical bay environment. A thought had occurred to her and she wanted to just check one thing....
"I can guess," Maggie snarled, exposing her incisors. "A cursed carrion bird watching us from the branches of a dead, rotting tree!"
"Who?" Gretchen found the control set she wanted and tapped out a series of commands. A pale violet light flickered on in the examining room. "A bird? Oh—you mean a hummingbird." She glanced up at the surveillance camera. "He's just making sure our guest doesn't get out. Dai—does the outer hatch work?"
The gunner shook his head. He'd been trying to get the lock to override for five minutes—all to no avail. The door out of Medical into the rest of the hab ring was sealed tight. "We're still trapped," he said, running his hand over the metallic surface. "High-ex rounds from this Luger might penetrate."
"Not inside the ship," Gretchen said in a sharp voice. Her whole attention was fixed on the examining room, where the slow pulsing violet glow seemed to etch every surface in sepia tone. "Well, now... "
THE CORNUELLE
Hadeishi overhanded onto the bridge, tunic straight, uniform jacket entirely neat. Koshō and Hayes were seated at the main navigation station, heads bent over the display. The Marine heicho standing watch near the hatchway coughed sharply, then straightened to attention. A difficult task in z-g, but he was an Imperial Marine.
Heicho Tonuac started to announce Hadeishi's presence, but the captain shook his head minutely as he slid nimbly into his shockchair. Koshō and Hayes looked up in surprise, catching sight of his entrance, and the exec immediately moved to her own station.
"Sho-sa, sound battle stations. Recall all work crews and prepare to take us out of orbit," Hadeishi said without preamble as he settled into his chair, powered motors whining to align the shockfoam with his back and legs. "Full emissions control. Thai-i Hayes. Release active control of the weather satellites and spin the hyperspace generators down to minimum. Tell Engineering I want as shallow a gravity dimple as possible."
The bridge was filled with immediate activity; men and women shifting to combat stations, low voices keying comm to the various ship's departments. There were no questions, only a swift response. Hadeishi felt a stab of pride. A fine crew.
Koshō keyed open the all-hands channel, her oval face only showing the faintest hint of exasperation at Hadeishi's abrupt announcement. "All hands, zero-g in five minutes. Acceleration in nine minutes. All hands stand to battle stations."
A warning tone sounded throughout the Cornuelle and every starman and Marine aboard rushed to secure whatever compartment they were in. Even through the mass of the ship, Hadeishi felt the rumble of the hab rings spinning down, and the more distant, muted thunder of the hyperspace drive wicking to a low flame. A schematic of the ship unfolded on his side panel, each compartment showing status, each airlock and transit point glowing in a soft outline. One by one the sections changed color as they sealed and locked.
"One minute to z-g," Koshō announced, finally sitting down and letting the arms of her shockchair fold around her. There was a flurry of movement and a tousled-headed midshipman Smith slid into his own station, fingers working busily to seal his jacket. Hayes looked back to the captain from his panel.
"Satellites are ready to release—shall I force orbital decay?"
Hadeishi nodded, his stylus sketching a trajectory on his main panel. "A lengthy descent, Mister Hayes. I want no debris to reach the ground. Work crews?"
"All aboard," Koshō replied, listening to the boat officer on her earbug. "Hyperdrive has spun down. Skin mesh is active, comm arrays withdrawn, active tracking cold. We are on passive detection only."
"Sublight engines at low power, Mister Hayes. Here is your plot." The captain flicked a glyph with his stylus and the motion plot appeared in the threat-well. Hadeishi felt a tug of disappointment—Ephesus Three had no moon, which would have made the Cornuelle's escape path much shorter—and he'd been forced into a long ellipse to swing away from the planet. "Refine please—we must orient our engine flare away from the planet. Once we have moved out of the plane of the ecliptic we can go to higher power, but only if the body of the ship blocks line-of-sight to our thrust plume."
"One minute to boost." Koshō began to count seconds.
Hadeishi felt the engines come up as a faint, thready vibration in the panel under his hand. Acceleration tugged at his sleeve, but in the tight embrace of the shockchair he barely noticed.
The Cornuelle began to move, slowly and carefully, swinging away from the planet and the distant dot of the Palenque. From Hayes's reworked plot, Hadeishi saw they could shift to cruising speed in approximately sixteen hours. A long slow pull, he thought with a flash of irritation. My thoroughbred forced to plod in the mud.
"Time?" Mitsuharu looked to Koshō with interest. The exec flushed, one slim hand diving into the pocket of her duty jacket, then looked guiltily to the clocks on her command panel.
"Seven minutes," she said. Hadeishi thought he could see a faint blush on her cheeks.
"Excellent."
After thirty minutes of acceleration gentle enough to win Thai-i Hayes a pilot's berth on a Pochteca starliner, Hadeishi ordered the crew secured from battle stations and raised himself from the captain's chair. Feeling Koshō's eyes on him as intent as any targeting laser, the chu-sa turned to the Navigation and Weapons stations. "We will discuss finding the Tyr in thirty minutes, after the duty watch changes."
Hadeishi returned to his cabin, where the steward had cleaned up his abandoned tea and put away the usual litter of books and 3v readers which accumulated around the captain's desk and workstation. Ship's night had already come, the dinner hour passed and a fresh off-duty uniform was laid out for him. Hadeishi took a moment to strip down and shower. After his allotted six minutes, he combed out his hair—grimacing at the threads of white beginning to appear among the oily black—and tied back a heavy queue behind his head. Koshō might boast a longer fall of raven hair, but Hadeishi thought he could present himself at court, if the need arose.
Which, he thought ruefully, is extremely unlikely. He owned an admirable service record, but his "secret" personnel jacket—where a Fleet officer numbered one's patrons among the Imperial clans or in the Diet—was sadly lacking. There was a single letter, carefully preserved, expressing the gratitude of the Laird MacLaren for the timely intervention of the Bara-class destroyer Toge during a Megair raid on the MacLaren-owned mining world of New Devon. But Mitsuharu doubted the MacLaren household even remembered the incident at this late date.
When he returned to the bridge, Koshō and Hayes—who had obviously not had the luxury of a shower—were waiting on either side of the threat-well, the softly glowing holospace crowded with indicators, icons and velocity markers. Hadeishi paused in the entryway and spoke softly into his comm. "Kusaru-san, please bring three teas—very sweet—and two tubes of miso."
There was barely a grunt in answer from his steward, but Hadeishi knew the old man would see to the matter immediately.
"So," he said, bringing himself to a halt by grasping the rail girdling the threat-well. "How do we find this miner? Or has he left, even before we begin our search?"
A lesser being than the lieutenant commander would have given Hadeishi an open glare, he was sure, but the young Sho-sa contented herself with failing to bow before beginning to speak. "We know the Tyr-class refinery was here, Hadeishi-san, not only from the evidence of the shuttle photograph, but from the results of our navigational survey." Her stylus tap-tapped on the control display for the threat-well. A series of points winked in the holo, describing a long, rough arc.
"This is a compressed display of the Ephesian system," she said. "This gray section is the aste
roid belt occupying the orbits between Three and the distant, irregular orbit of Four. We acquired the navigational scans made by both the original Imperial probe and by the Palenque upon arrival in the system. Luckily," and she allowed herself a wintry smile, Sho-sa Cardenas was a careful man. Like yourself, he ordered his navigator and exec to conduct a systemwide navigation survey as soon as they arrived in Ephesus orbit."
Koshō made a sharp motion with her stylus and most of the objects in the well vanished.
"This is the condensed version of the Palenque scan. You see it is moderately detailed. Luckily for us, Navigator Gylfisson concentrated a fair amount of his long-range scan activity on the asteroid belt. I believe that he—like the presumptive miner—was looking for planetesimals bearing heavy ores, radioactives, rare metals and so on. We made the same kind of scan during our survey ..." The stylus moved again, and a second layer of data appeared, showing a much thicker representation. "... with superior equipment. Hayes-san has been running orbital comparisons of the three sets of data, looking for disturbances and anomalies."
The stylus indicated the arc of winking points.
"Something has moved through this cloud of asteroids, altering spins, altering orbits, producing a faint—but identifiable—trail. We believe this was left by the Tyr as she worked through the belt. I also believe the refinery is still in the system."
Hadeishi raised an eyebrow. Koshō's eyes glittered, though she remained outwardly calm.
"We have gravity scans from the moment the Palenque entered the system up to the accident. During that time, we see no evidence of a hyperspace transit. Our trail of sensor fragments begins in the middle of a dense pocket in the asteroid belt. I suspect the Tyr was already here—and working—when the Palenque arrived. The trail continues up to the end of the Palenque data."
"And now?" Hadeishi had been watching Hayes's face grow longer and longer. "Wouldn't the miners have been monitoring the Palenque's transmissions? Wouldn't they realize something had happened and jump out as soon as the coast was clear?"
"I don't think they did." Koshō glanced sideways at Hayes. "Thai-i Hayes does not agree, but... the Valkyrie was photographed only three days before the accident. At that moment, the time to transit between Ephesus Three and the presumptive location of the miner was almost twelve days. So at best the shuttle has to go meet the refinery, which leaves the asteroid cloud to rendezvous between the belt and Three. If the shuttle leaves Three the same day; if they just dropped in, grabbed whatever they were looking for and jetted out, then the minimum time to transit is eight days."
Koshō's wand sketched a box in the air, describing a fat volume of space between the red disc of Ephesus and the gray scattering of the belt.
"So at event plus five, they could have met—somewhere in this volume—and made gradient to hyperspace. Now—a Tyr masses in excess of three hundred million tons empty and I think she'd have taken on at least another hundred million tons of ore samples, or more, by this time. The departure spike from such a large mass leaves a lasting footprint—and I don't see one in this volume."
"Hayes-san?"
"Chu-sa, I'm not sure we'd see one in this system for more than a few days, no matter where the departure took place." The weapons officer scratched his eyebrow. "The planetary orbits in this system are all messed up and irregular, there are queer gravitational tides and eddies. Our own footprint is barely discernible today and we know our entry-point to the centimeter!"
Koshō made a dismissive motion with her stylus. "We're a fraction the mass of a Tyr and our hyperdrive is tuned to leave as little footprint as possible. Look—" A new set of data clouded the well. "There's no spike on any record; not ours, not the Palenque's ... and I believe our scans of the asteroid belt in the projected path of the Tyr show evidence of further disturbance. I think the refinery ship is still here. I think her captain is greedy and kept right on working after the accident on the Palenque. He badgered as soon as we entered the system, hoping we'd go away. Now he's stuck—ore holds are full of rich samples—and he doesn't want to dump mass. If he tries to make gradient to hyperspace, he'll have to light up like a temple tree and we'll see him."
Hadeishi raised a hand. Kusaru appeared silently with the tea and miso. Both of the junior officers took the light meal with grateful bows, though only Hayes drank from his z-g tight cup.
"I understand," Mitsuharu said. "Is there a swift way to tell if the refinery ship is still here?"
Koshō nodded sharply. "Yes." Her stylus stabbed at the last winking point. "We creep in here and check the area of disturbance—if he's slagged out a rock, we'll be able to get a reading on his drive exhaust and be able to tell how long ago he was working." A flicker of hungry pride flashed across her composed oval face. "To the hour and the minute."
Mitsuharu nodded, privately calculating their course and time to intercept. "Hayes-san, plot us a course and execute. But gently, very gently. We must creep away from the planet and approach this prey with equal caution."
THE PALENQUE
The main hatch into the Medical bay opened suddenly, sliding into the overhead with a soft thump. Gretchen looked up from where she was kneeling on the deck of the examining room, her work lenses dialed to hi-mag. She heard Bandao hiss and step back and a low growl from Magdalena. Flipping up her lenses, she found herself staring into the black snout of a shipgun, held in the hands of one of the Marines—she couldn't tell which one—in combat armor.
"Over against the wall," the Marine said, his voice a buzz through the suit. Bandao moved back, automatic held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The Marine crabbed into the room and was immediately followed by another, taller, man also in matte-black combat armor. "Just lay the gun down on the deck."
Gretchen rose, spreading her hands wide to show they were empty. A heated sense of outrage was warring with the urge to laugh aloud at the insectlike appearance of the soldiers, and she managed to remain composed. The two Marines surveyed the room, then relaxed fractionally.
"Clear," the taller one—Fitzsimmons, Gretchen guessed—said, his voice almost unrecognizable through the faceplate of his suit. Then she stiffened as his rifle swung toward her. From this vantage, the weapon seemed very large. "Doctor Anderssen, please leave the examining room and stand over here by Bandao-tzin."
Almost tiptoeing, she ducked through the damaged doorway and moved to join Bandao—who had adopted a very calm expression—and Magdalena, who was emitting a near-subsonic growl which raised the hackles on the back of Gretchen's neck. Worried, Anderssen took hold of the Hesht's paw to restrain her.
The lean, wrinkled shape of Hummingbird stepped into the room. His high forehead gleamed like polished mahogany in the overheads and his dark eyes swept across the three of them to settle on the debris in the medical bay.
Without speaking, the Méxica judge went to the adjoining room and knelt to examine the deck. The Marines said nothing, one of them covering the nauallis with his rifle, the other keeping a strict eye on the three civilians. Gretchen itched to speak, but guessed this was not the time and place to annoy Imperial authority. He could just ask politely....
Hummingbird moved around in the examining room and Gretchen couldn't really see what he was doing but there was a strange muttering sound, and the man seemed to go back and forth, sometimes turning this way and that, making a slow, convoluted circuit around the long table. At length he returned to the doorway and motioned for the nearest Marine to hand him a small black bag. Hummingbird took out a small electrostatic vacuum and a specimen container.
He returned to the room and resumed moving slowly around the table. Again, Gretchen thought she heard a peculiar sound, but it was so faint and the acoustics in the two rooms so poor, she couldn't make out what he might be saying. Neither Marine showed any reaction, and even Magdalena was starting to settle down.
Eventually, Hummingbird returned to the nurses' station and stowed a newly-heavy specimen container in the carryall. The bag closed
with a heavy click.
"The dust is inactive," Hummingbird said, looking up, his eyes dark as flint. "What did you do?"
Gretchen took a half step forward and felt both Bandao and Magdalena tense behind her. "I think the organism started to die the moment Parker's shuttle left the Ephesian atmosphere. When the radiation shielding dropped, it just came ... apart. But five minutes of high-UV flooding the chamber seems to have stopped all remaining molecular activity."
The Méxica nodded, glancing at the control panel for the examining room. "Like the spores infesting the shuttle engines. You think they are a related species?"
Gretchen felt a certain familiar hollowness in her gut. And now, she thought, the Imperial authorities will step in and a great deal of work—months of observations, countless crystals of data, maybe a man's entire career—will vanish like night dew. "Sinclair-tzin has a theory—and as expedition microbiologist, he should—which points to a commonality across all Ephesian life."
"All current Ephesian life?" Hummingbird's tone grew sharp, as if he already knew her answer. "Since the destruction of the surface?"
Gretchen's eyes narrowed and she felt a subtle tension tighten in the old Méxica. He's fishing, she thought, but for what? Then she thought of the cephalopod fossil and the entombed cylinder. Too much had been happening for her to show Sinclair that bit of evidence. In any case, she was familiar enough with the types of organisms trapped in the ancient limestone to know there was no evolutionary descendent among the microbiota flourishing on the surface today. The violent arrival of the First Sun builders had separated the two epochs of Ephesian life as night from day. "All current life," she said. "Like the spores in the intakes or whatever organism gave fruit to this ... copy of Russovsky."
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