Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  The creature towered over the slightly built Nisei by at least a meter and its shipgun lashed out hard, butt-first, to slam into Hadeishi’s faceplate. The tempered glassite rang with a clear, bell-like tone and Mitsuharu was thrown to the decking. Teeth clenched, he snatched a fresh clip from the bandolier and snapped open the Bloem-Voss’ cartridge bay—then froze, the glowing bore of a Khaiden zmetgun jammed hard into his faceplate. Smoke curled across his vision and the glassite popped with the heat. Hadeishi groped for a suitable koan. No time left, he thought sadly. For a proper parting.

  The Khaiden kicked the human’s shipgun away, and then wrenched the bandolier from his shoulder.

  Ah, Mitsuharu realized with dismay. They do prize technicians—a life of servitude awaits.…

  * * *

  With two of the enemy in close proximity, there was nothing to be done but clasp both hands behind his back and feel the bite of a heavy pair of steel cuffs through the z-suit gel. Hadeishi kept his eyes lowered as the Khaiden dragged him down the corridor past the bodies of Azulcay and the other starman. The Marocâin’s face was invisible behind shattered glassite coated with congealing blood. The Khaiden in front of him kicked the corpses aside, ignoring their tools and comm bands.

  They are in a hurry, they haven’t taken my tool belt. Mitsuharu hurried along between the two invaders, chin tucked to chest, trying to see anything he could out of the corners of his eyes. The shipcore was swarming with the enemy, most in battle armor—the usual grab-bag of stolen equipment—but some were kitted out in dark blue z-suits with a gold-colored icon of some kind of hunting bird. The tight, blocky script on the sides of their helmets was hard to read, but Hadeishi thought it might be something like Qalak, or Khaerak. Those are custom-fitted uniforms, he realized with a little chill shock. He did not remember ever seeing a Khaiden raider sporting standardized equipment, much less uniforms or heraldry.

  Mitsuharu was herded up the shipcore, following a swing-line with three other crewmen from the Wilful, and then into a cross-corridor marked with heavy yellow stripes warning of environment change ahead. The port, forehull airlock, he guessed. They had passed several more squads of Khaiden, and now he was thinking the dark-blue z-suits were officers. The boarding parties—the equivalent of the Fleet marines—showed little standardization in their arms, armor, or personal gear. That’s business as usual.…

  At the entrance to the airlock, he stopped abruptly as the lead guard jammed the other prisoners against the wall without warning. Four Khaiden jetted past, z-suit maneuvering jets spitting exhaust, with two more of their fellows on litters between them. Still keeping his head bowed, Hadeishi smiled tightly. That little gun did some good.

  Ahead, the airlock cycled open, sending a gust of damp, hot air into the corridor. The medical party disappeared through without a pause. Mitsuharu weighed his chances, but then the guard behind him was pushing him forward. They passed a cross-corridor leading upship and for the first time Hadeishi caught a glimpse of the command deck. There was a drift of corpses—all of them apparently human—pinned against one wall with a net of sprayfoam. More of the dark-blue-suited Khaiden were busy at the consoles. The doors were pitted with thousands of tiny sparkling blemishes where shipgun flechettes had impacted.

  Fierce smugglers in these parts, he thought, seeing a cloud of tiny ruby-colored droplets drifting in the hatchway. Then the momentary vision was gone, and the airlock was cycling around them. Hadeishi tensed, feeling the hot, humid air of a Khaiden ship wash over him.

  The Qalak, then, he thought. Into the belly of the carrion bird.

  The guard jammed him in the back with the muzzle of a tribarrel, pushing him forward, and as they passed into the dull, redlit space beyond, his earbug cycled frequency—losing contact with the Wilful’s shipnet—and for just a moment, before an encrypter kicked in, he caught a burst of Khadesh.

  “—blood-drinking Maltese! A pestilence upon their—!”

  THE NANIWA

  IN THE KUUB

  Koshō sat easily in the captain’s chair, one leg crossed over the other, comp control surfaces arrayed to the left to allow an unobstructed view of the engineering stations on her right. Midafternoon watch was nearly half over and there were crewmen at every station. The threatwell forming the center of Command was filled with light—the hard diamonds of the battle-group and a contorted maze of filaments representing the dust clouds they had been passing through for the last three days.

  On her central board, the transit shielding status displays were flickering crimson and amber much like the fluttering of hummingbird wings—nearly too swift for the eye to follow. One of the graphics surged into red, and then scarlet, and a soft ding-ding sounded. Susan looked up from the readiness reports filling her displays and frowned, a sharp crease splitting her forehead.

  Gravitational densities were fluctuating in an uncomfortable way, causing the protostellar debris to congeal in ever-moving eddies. The Naniwa’s newly installed deflectors were easily shrugging aside the constant stream of impacts, but she was beginning to worry about the other smaller, older, ships in the convoy. At present the combat elements made a widely dispersed globe around the Fiske, Eldredge, and Hanuman. The squadron was currently arrayed to prevent wake overlap and further damage to the smaller ships following the heavy warships.

  Koshō brushed the readiness reports closed with a flick of her wrist, then keyed into battlecast with her stylus.

  After a few minutes of considering telemetry from the noncombatants, she tapped her earbug awake and paged Engineering.

  “Hennig here, kyo.” The Kikan-cho was a dough-faced Saxon of very conservative mind. Koshō found him refreshingly direct and, like many engineers, disinterested in politics of any kind. Had he shown any flickering of concern for the past glories of Imperial Denmark—of which Saxony had been long part—he would not have found a posting in the Fleet at all.

  Which would be a shame, Susan thought, because we are short enough of talented officers as it is.

  “Emil,” she said aloud, “how does the shielding on the Fiske or Eldredge compare to ours, in this dust, at our current velocity?”

  “Poorly, Chu-sa.” He looked off-pane, and Koshō was heartened to see that the engineer already had the ’cast telemetry on his own monitors. “We’re pegging up to five or six percent capacity—that last bolus deflected from the port shielding at nineteen percent—but Fiske is showing sixty or seventy percent just in the easygoing.”

  “You’d agree the densities are increasing, the deeper we go?”

  He nodded. “Kyo, whatever gravitational sources are causing all of this debris to collect are—more or less—dead ahead. The closer we come, the tighter the influx spirals are going to be. Right now, if you plot back to our entry point, you can see we’re cutting across deeper ‘valleys’ in the clouds. The interval between each ridge is growing shorter as well.”

  “Sensor efficiency?”

  “Declining, Chu-sa.” Hennig smoothed back short-cropped gray hair. “Have you been watching the cycle-rate on the battlecast itself?”

  Susan shook her head, no.

  “Increasing as well. Tachyon relay times are starting to vary—which indicates we’re getting deep into a gravitational eddy as well—and ’cast timing is starting to slow. Not noticeable to you, or I, kyo—but our ability to supplement the navigational suites of the smaller ships is starting to degrade.”

  “And if—when—we’re attacked?”

  Hennig showed a set of small, pearl-like teeth. “Chu-sa, below-decks chatter says the gunnery officer on Mace nearly lit off a sprint missile into the Falchion two watches ago … a distortion interposed between them and he lost ident lock. So it will be interesting.”

  “Delightful.” Susan sat back, her face calm and composed. “Thank you, kika-no.”

  Thirty minutes later, after reviewing the incident reports from the rest of the battle-group—or at least those she was privy to—Koshō lifted her chin and caught the duty Com
ms officer’s eye.

  “Pucatli-tzin, I would like to talk to the battle-group commander on the Tokiwa directly, captain’s line.”

  * * *

  The Chu-i stiffened and then immediately began speaking into his throatmike. Koshō stood up, stretched, and took a roundabout of the bridge. This caused a wave of activity to move with her, as the staff checked and rechecked their status displays. When Susan came around to the threatwell, she was standing well away from everyone else. Only Oc Chac had remained on-task with the gunnery control officer, testing the launch control relays for the main missile batteries spaced along the “wing” of the battle-cruiser. Six or seven control modules had already been replaced, having failed their workup.

  Now the Mayan’s attention was fixed on her from across Command, and he lifted one eyebrow in question.

  Susan shook her head, then tapped her earbug live as Pucatli reported the channel was open, secure, and the admiral on-line. A holocast of the Chu-sho’s face appeared before her, surrounded by a wedge of informational glyphs. Xocoyotl was a little overweight for a Méxica officer, with hard cheekbones and a northern—or Anasazi—cast to his features and a deep, gravelly bass for a voice. So swift had been their departure that Koshō had yet to actually meet her commanding officer in person.

  “Report.”

  “Chu-sho, battle-group ’cast is showing increasing shipskin erosion from the cloud. Naniwa’s deflectors are fresh from the yards and we’re still failing to make a perfectly clean channel—the smaller ships are doing worse, with an increased risk of equipment failure.”

  “Your point, Chu-sa? We are still behind schedule to reach rendezvous. If we slow—”

  “Understood, kyo. If I may—our projections show that slowing one-half—or reorienting the battle-group for overlapping coverage—will reduce the chances of losing the Fiske, Eldredge, or Hanuman by almost sixteen percent.”

  The admiral’s expression did not change—it was habitually disapproving—but Susan thought there was a brief flicker in the deep-set, black eyes. She missed Hadeishi again—discussing something like this with him would have been brief, efficient, and to the point.

  “We’ve no time to experiment,” he said at last. “All ships will stay on course and make do.”

  “Hai, Chu-sho!” Koshō nodded sharply in acknowledgment. Then she paused, wondering if there was enough of an opening to—

  The v-cast folded away in the air before her with a soft ding!

  Shaking her head, Susan returned to the captain’s chair, her fingers tapping in thought on the shockframe. Oc Chac was almost immediately at her side.

  “What were you going to ask him, kyo?” The XO asked in an undertone.

  Susan tilted her head, considering the engineer for a moment. Then she said, “What we discussed earlier: live-fire exercises for our command and gun crews. But given the rush, I doubt he’d approve the expenditure of munitions or time that it would require.” She sat down in her chair and flicked open the v-panes on her control surface. “Not that I am easy about pulling power from the deflectors in this muck—even without the stress of gun exercises—it’s eating my ship.”

  Oc Chac stiffened at the light tone in her words. “This does not seem amusing to me.”

  He stared at the convoluted patterns in the threatwell for a long moment, then continued in a low voice: “I cannot laugh, kyo. All this reminds me of Hunahpu’s description of the road to Xibalba:

  Here there is no light but what we wayfarers bring with us.

  We grapple in the dark with degraded, phantom faces.

  Only treachery awaits us.”

  Susan frowned. “It’s long since I read the Popol Vuh; what canto—”

  “It is as if we are finding our way to the underworld,

  To the dark stairs which bisect the sky.”

  The low, chanting tone to his voice began to raise the hackles on Susan’s neck. His face—normally striking, given the strength of his features—now seemed cold and still. The long oval shape, the distinctive nose, the wide lips punctured by labrets of jade and turquoise—a living statue dredged up from the wreck of old Palenque or Copán.

  “Chu-sa, you know the legend of Mictlan?”

  “I do, Sho-sa. The tutors of Chapultepec are diligent in their application of Méxica history.”

  He waited expectantly. For what? she wondered.

  “Kyo, did they teach you that the Méxica Kingdom of the Dead is but a weak shadow of Xibalba, place of phantoms, place of fear? That deadly trials and cruel, prankish Gods and whirlwinds of knives bar the way to that awful kingdom?”

  Susan frowned. The Mayan had her full attention. “You believe we’ve chosen such a road ourselves?”

  “Those who go that way have no choice, kyo. It is only for those who are dead.”

  Before she could reply, Susan’s earbug crackled with the peculiar static endemic to the region. Pucatli was speaking, his normally calm voice tight with adrenaline.

  “Hai, Chu-i, put him through.”

  “Chu-sa Koshō,” Xocoyotl’s voice rumbled in her ear. “I have decided to reform the squadron. Tokiwa, Asama, and Naniwa will lead with the cruisers forming a secondary wedge. Set your transit shielding at maximum extent and clear a path through the dust for those who follow. New vectors will be on your navcomm within the quarter hour.”

  “Hai, Chu-sho!”

  Susan turned, feeling the chair motors kick in quietly. She tapped up the intraship channel and waited for Pucatli to confirm green across his repeater boards. Chac said nothing, his attention turned inward. Koshō’s attention lingered on him for a moment, before she shook her head and opened the channel.

  “All hands, all section officers. Be advised that Chu-sho Xocoyotl has commanded the squadron to reform our flight pattern. We will be shifting vector in fifteen—I say fifteen—minutes. Engineering sections be aware that we are going to full transit shield power. Stand by for maneuver on my mark.”

  When she closed the circuit, Oc Chac was standing at the edge of the threatwell, seemingly lost in thought.

  “Do you truly believe what you just said, Sho-sa?” Susan’s voice was soft, given they were surrounded by a busy Command deck. “That we’ve stepped onto some cursed road, leading only to destruction?”

  Chac turned, his face somber. “Such thoughts come to me in this place unbidden, kyo—and if they assail my mind, they will afflict the soldiers, starmen, and scientists aboard the squadron doubly so.”

  He nodded sharply to her, and now everything about him seemed professional and direct once more. “There is work to be done, Chu-sa.”

  “Dismissed,” she replied, and then watched him with interest as he strode off.

  Can he really make the men forget—or put aside—this apprehension? That would be a boon indeed.

  ABOARD THE MOULINS

  IN THE KUUB

  Gretchen sat squeezed in behind a narrow fold-out table on the mess deck, a mug of coffee clinging to a stickyplate by her right hand and a battered field comp balanced on her left knee. The crew was grumbling in and out of the tiny space, getting their threesquares heated and coffee refreshed, and passing what gossip had managed to evolve in the last shift. The room was cold, crowded, and noisy. Every surface felt worn with age and constant, hard use. Like the rest of the ship—or the parts she’d seen—it was spotlessly clean, but the freighter was of an age that no amount of scrubbing and polishing could make the walkways, walls, or counters seem fresh.

  Despite this Anderssen felt almost happy for the first time in nearly six months, her nostrils filled with the stink of cold diesel and burning rubber. Abstracts from a good year’s worth of the Extraplanetary Archeological Review flipped past on the comp’s screen. From time to time she recognized names or remembered the faces of old coworkers or rivals or long-standing dignitaries in her field. Occasionally an obituary cropped up—leaving a small, cold chill behind as she paged to the next document.

  How did I get so far behind? Al
l of the time spent toiling at the Technical College seemed to have faded from memory already, as though the whole interlude had been a fever dream, and her last “real” assignment and this one were running together with only a few idle weeks at home in between. Easy to forget the last half year, I guess. She hoped that was true.

  The articles were the same as ever—plenty of insights promised, but the results were always a few pages of heavily censored data, some halfhearted conclusions, and hopes for further funding. The good stuff, of course, was never in the public journals. The Honorable Company, or the Mirror Which Reveals, saw to that quickly enough. Our Secret Histories, she thought morosely, where the truth goes to be stuffed, buried, and forgotten.

  Her coffee cup suddenly shivered—dark liquid pulsing into a sharp spike and then collapsing. Her stomach did the same thing, at the same time.

  The freighter had dropped from transit. The g-decking in the mess area failed momentarily, eliciting curses from a crewman trying to refill his cup from the dispenser. Gretchen’s mug had a clear cover, which kept it from disgorging a flight of brown-and-white globules into the air. Without thinking, she put her thumb over the drinking spout—gravity returned—and she wiped her finger on the thigh of her field pants.

  Hummingbird ducked into the room, even his short frame needing to bend to get through the hatchway from the passenger cabin they’d booked for this leg of their journey into the unknown. Like the crew, the old Méxica was kitted out in a workaday mantle over his z-suit with a broad leather belt at his waist and deep pockets. As he passed, Gretchen looked up curiously. The old man lifted his chin, indicating the hatchway to the control deck.

  “Are you ready to transship?”

  Anderssen nodded. Next bus, now departing … “How soon?”