Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  “No one can stay here, Esteemed One. We’re taking you to a place of safety.”

  The Knights seized the creature’s shoulders and kicked off, carrying the Hjo towards the door. There was another outburst of growling and snarling, interspersed with a long tirade in the unknown tongue. But the Hjo remained tightly curled up, trying to hide its long tapering head, and this made it possible for the two Ocelotl to hustle the alien along.

  Back outside, once they’d left the security corridor and its intrinsic shielding, Xochitl’s exo conjured up a deck plan in his field of view. “Ah, good,” the Prince said aloud on the local comm circuit. “There’s an escape pod rail not far from here.”

  The Jaguars looked at him, puzzled. Their sergeant gestured at the comp built into his suit. “Nothing on shipnet, my lord. Everything’s down.…”

  “No matter, Cuauhhuehueh, I’ve a backup copy. This way.”

  They turned left, jetting down a main corridor—large enough to drive two grav-sleds side-by-side—filled with drifting debris. Constellations of smoke globules parted before them, bumping into their facemasks as they sped along. Though they passed scattered corpses and even some wounded, Xochitl did not stop. Hidden by his facemask, the Prince’s expression was set and hard.

  THE NANIWA

  Susan watched her bank of displays with a fixed, stony glare. The threatwell showed their situation only too well. On the hull of the once-great Firearrow, the last of the battle-shield projectors flickered and died. The Khaid ships which had survived the reckless pursuit were underway at last, pulling back from the unexpected weapon which had consumed their fellows. From what she saw on her ’well they would be successful in escaping the trap if they just reversed along their own drive trails.

  They’re going to figure this out pretty fast, she mused, her thoughts filled with foreboding. They’ve got too much data on hand, and now they have the time to let it all sink in.…

  But for the moment, her way forward was clear. Behind, however, the flotilla of destroyers that had been nipping at the Naniwa’s heels was still there, slowly closing range, their beam weapons snapping past or flaring out as the aft point-defense knocked them down. None of these hounds had the missile throw-weight to punch past her counter-missiles and Konev had gathered up fifteen or sixteen remote weapons platforms initially deployed by the Tokiwa and Asama in the early stages of the battle.

  The platforms were low on munitions, but still had some capacity left. They were keeping pace, extending both her missile intercept envelope and the battle-cruiser’s sensor range, and in this kind of knife-fight Koshō would take anything she could get. Susan sat stiffly, back ramrod straight, and her eyes flickered across the arrayed data one more time. “We need to determine if there are any survivors,” she said softly, drawing Oc Chac’s attention. “We can take on several thousand, if we triple-bunk.”

  The Mayan shook his head in dismay. “Chu-sa! We’ll overtax environmentals in a few days with that sort of passenger load! Only we remain,” he ventured. “We dare not help them—”

  There is no time for reckless gestures, Susan realized, brow furrowing sharply. We have to get out.

  “Status of our hypercoil? How long to make gradient?”

  The Mayan Zosen stared at her blankly, one dark-complected finger pressed to his earbug. “Kyo?”

  “How long,” she said steadily, staring at him with a cold, considering expression, “to make transit to hyperspace?”

  Oc Chac swallowed, dark eyes darting to his status panel. “Coil is down, Kyo. We’ve taken fragmentation damage along cells nineteen to thirty-six.” He looked up, expression impassive. “I need two hours to make her right, Chu-sa.”

  Susan nodded, looking back to the threatwell. “We have no more than thirty minutes before they come at us again, Sho-sa. Take direct command of the repair crews.”

  “Hai, kyo!” The engineer bolted from Command, speaking rapidly into his throatmike as he ran.

  Plasma detonations blossomed in the threatwell, bracketing the Naniwa as she maneuvered.

  “They’re getting our range, kyo,” Konev reported, voice hoarse. “We’ve lost two of the remotes.”

  Susan’s gaze swept across her console. Though mauled, the battle-cruiser was still game for a fight, but against so many Khaid? Her eyes flicked up, fixing on the long-range sensors. The Pinhole was still abroil with radiation and shattered ships. Their emissions blocked any sign of what lay beyond in the ever thicker dust-clouds. She grimaced, tapping her earbug.

  “Medical? Get our Swedish passenger up here—awake—right now!—with all of her possessions.”

  * * *

  Xochitl, the suited creature, and his Ocelomeh arrived at the evac-capsule cluster to find only one pod remaining. The other access-doors showed only empty cradles beyond thick glassite windows. The door to the last capsule was apparently stuck, as a motley collection of officers and ratings was banging away at the hatch with pry bars and other tools cribbed from the nearest damage control closet.

  “Is it working?” the Jaguar Knight Cuauhhuehueh demanded, his voice booming on the local circuit.

  A pale, sandy-haired man with Engineer’s insignia turned to face the Prince’s party. His light brown eyes registered the unit insignia of the Jaguars and his face grew still. “Yes. The capsule’s intact. The launch rails are clear and the release subsystems are showing green across the board. We just have to get the hatch open.”

  Xochitl could see the pod was last in queue on the shared maglev launch tube. A rough ride out of Firearrow’s guts. And then where?

  «Staying mobile and capable of reacting to circumstance improves our chances of survival by several orders of magnitude,» the exo stated, displaying a variety of helpful graphs and comparison metrics on the Prince’s field of view.

  Without orders, the Jaguars bulled forward and gestured the sailors away from the hatchway. Two of them—a cook and a midshipman from laundry—started to protest, but the engineer waved his companions back. He was watching Xochitl with a wary expression, his mouth a tight line.

  The Prince met his gaze with a level stare. “How many of us will fit?”

  The man’s eyes lost focus for an instant, and then he looked down at his hand-comp. “This one holds ten, Great Lord.”

  Xochitl’s eyelid twitched. Including his Jaguars, there were twelve people floating in the compartment, most staring at him with suddenly wide eyes. His expression hardened as he considered the larger-than-human-size of his guest with a sidelong glance.

  “Three of you must remain behind,” Xochitl declared, his exo whispering details of skills, time in service, and political reliability in one ear. A pistol-model shipgun was already in his hand and leveled on the two cafeteria attendants. They froze. The Prince’s face remained utterly cold as the pistol snapped twice, punching a flechette through each of their suit masks.

  Everyone else jerked in surprise, stunned. One of the petty officers cried out, horrified, and jetted away down the corridor. One of the Jaguars raised his shipgun, but Xochitl waved him off. “Let him go—the rest of you, get the hatch open!”

  Five minutes later, the Hjo clambered into the capsule, helped by the Cuauhhuehueh. The Prince watched the creature, whose mere existence had caused the loss of two Imperial lives, with barely controlled fury, then followed.

  Moments later there was a reverberating bang and the evac capsule accelerated violently down the launch rail.

  IN THE KUUB

  SIX LIGHT-MINUTES FROM THE PINHOLE

  The Wilful moved stealthily through the debris of battle. Hadeishi had the little freighter’s engines pulsing only intermittently, letting momentum carry them through the wreckage as silently as possible. With only the two of them aboard, he’d isolated all of the compartments save the bridge, medical closet, and the passages connecting them. Everything else was powered down to reduce signature. Though it made no difference to a hunter’s active scan, Mitsuharu had also dialed down the lights on the b
ridge. He sat at the command station in darkness, his face lit only by the glow of the console and the ruddy gleam of light from the external camera displays.

  Bodies, broken equipment, ruptured evac capsules, chunks of decking floated past the Wilful’s cameras. Where he could, Hadeishi angled the little ship to hide in the emissions shadow of larger sections of blasted hull, or to follow the agitated particle trails of now-dead ships. Where he was forced to cross unbroken “ground,” he moved as swiftly as the Wilful’s engines would carry them.

  “You make a fine mouse hunting in a stubbled field,” De Molay observed, her voice low and quiet, though she could have shouted wildly and none of their putative enemies would have noticed.

  “An eye out for owls and foxes all the while, Sencho,” Hadeishi nodded companionably. “You’ve lived on a farm?”

  “My grandmother’s. May Our Blessed Lord guard her soul.”

  “Ours as well.” Hadeishi put the helm over a point, nav plot revealing a cluster of wreckage ahead. A light tap on the engine control shifted their heading and a long cylindrical panel drifted past on the dorsal cameras. The structure—seventy or eighty meters long—had been ravaged by a plasma detonation. The battle-steel was puckered and wrinkled. In the coppery glare, some fragments of warnings and informational inscriptions remained on the outer surface.

  “Imperial?” De Molay asked softly.

  “Yes. A reaction mass tank from a battle-cruiser or strike carrier.”

  Hadeishi sighed deeply. Remembered faces and fragments of conversation distracted him. A tremendous feeling of sorrow was welling up in him. Thoughts of the Cornuelle were prominent in his memory. Now he wished he’d carried the samisen up from Engineering. Lacking the instrument, he tapped his fingers on the console, setting a slow, mournful beat.

  “A phantom greenish gray,

  Ghost of some wight,

  Poor mortal wight!

  Wandering

  Lonesomely

  Through

  The black

  Night.”

  Then he stopped, the shattered cylinder falling away behind them.

  “What more can you offer?” De Molay shook her head, silver hair falling into her eyes. She brushed the strands away. “This is the fate of all sailors on this dark sea, to perish at last in the void, and find repose on the surface of the deep.”

  Mitsuharu did not respond, his thoughts far away. Then, as he sat quietly, watching the dust clouds slowly change color, one of his scan alerts chirped. The Nisei’s head turned, eyes focusing once more on the present. A familiar silhouette coalesced on the main viewer. Using the vector from passive scan, two of the cameras had focused, picking out the outline of a vessel. Ship’s registry reported an initial identification—a Fleet Varanus-class cargo shuttle.

  “See, Sencho? A sheaf of wheat is still standing among the broken stalks.”

  Though the ship’s boat seemed intact and free of obvious battle damage, there was no sign of life aboard. The portholes were dark, engines cold, and the shuttle was tumbling end to end. Hadeishi steered alongside, smoothly matching her rotation with a deft play on the drive controls.

  De Molay pursed her lips, eyes narrowed. “A derelict, do you think?”

  “Sensors can lie, Sencho. If there are survivors aboard, would they advertise themselves?”

  The old woman shook her head. “I would not!” She paused, thinking. “Our decrepit appearance will suggest we are some kind of scavenger.”

  “Just as you planned, Sencho,” Hadeishi offered a faint smile. “Just as you planned. But as fortune has provided, they are not deceived by our appearance. They are correct. Wilful is a scavenger—of the lost. Matching airlocks now.”

  “Very poetic,” De Molay muttered. Mitsuharu did not reply, his whole attention on matching the lock interfaces and running out the freighter’s gangway. A moment later, a faint tunk echoed through the decking and he had a string of green lights on the airlock status board. Then he double-checked the seal on the Wilful-side of the lock, making sure everything was secure, set the drive controls to automatic, and hurried downstairs.

  * * *

  His captured shipgun slung under-arm, Hadeishi looked in on De Molay in the medical closet. He’d gathered up a portable medpack and a bag of threesquares and water bottles. The silver-haired captain was trying to sit up in the tiny bunk, which was not as easy as it seemed.

  “Lie quiet, Sencho. I’m going to cycle the lock in a moment—so I’ve switched Command to this console.” He reached under the medbay overhead and reconfigured the display. “You’ve got full control of environmentals and even the drives, if need be. But try not to run about, you’ll do yourself an injury.”

  The look she gave him eased his worry for her safety. “And yourself, Engineer. I can manage from here.” She smiled tightly, tapping the grip of the Bulldog, whose holster and gunbelt were strapped across her chest. “Watch yourself, this wouldn’t be the first time the Khaid have booby-trapped an Imperial evac-capsule, or shuttle.”

  “Or put a half-dozen marines aboard an unsuspecting rescue ship,” Hadeishi added brightly.

  * * *

  The shuttle hatch irised open, battle-steel partitions folding back into the hull. Mitsuharu crouched just out of sight around the corner of his own lock—standing wide open—watching the other end of the gangway via a remote. There was a long still minute, and then a wary, soot-stained Fleet ensign peered out—his own shipgun at the ready. The fellow stared uncertainly into the lighted, but vacant gangway. “Hello the ship?”

  “I’m stepping out,” Hadeishi called, “no trouble, Sho-i.”

  Then he stood up, shook out his shoulders—offered a quick prayer to Ameratsu to preserve him for just a few more minutes—and stepped around the corner, the muzzle of his shipgun pointed at the deck. The ensign had disappeared, though Mitsuharu was certain he—and his friends, if any—were only just out of sight. “We’re the Wilful, shipping out of Shinedo uchumon. My name is Mitsuharu Hadeishi—I’m the Engineer’s Mate. We are prepared to lend you aid, if you need it. Have you wounded aboard?”

  The Sho-i reappeared, looked him over, and then held up two fingers. Behind him a tall Méxica with lieutenant’s flashing on his torn and bloody z-suit pushed past on the arm of a smaller man, a wiry little marine. Hadeishi stood aside while they limped into the freighter’s airlock. Three more followed, one rating in the middle—with no boots and only one foot—was being carried by his fellows. The ensign remained on the shuttle, face pale under the black coating of volatilized plastics.

  “We have no medic,” Hadeishi said, watching the injured rating’s face grow paler by the second. “But there is an amputee kit in the medical closet.” He glanced over the five men in the Wilful’s airlock—to his naked eye, they all seemed properly human—before turning to the ensign in the shuttle doorway. “Are there others?”

  Without waiting for an answer, the Nisei stepped far enough inside to scan the interior of the shuttle. The boat was bare, even of equipment, and stank of burning.

  “No, Kyo. We were lucky to get out ourselves. The ship was…” The Sho-i, who seemed even younger than usual for an ensign, twitched every time Mitsuharu moved. “They came in fast. Thai-i Tocoztic says they—they were Khaiden.”

  “They still are. We cannot keep the shuttle, Sho-i. Move over there with the others.”

  He took one last look around, in case there were useful supplies to bring with them, and then cycled the shuttle hatch closed. The gangway rang hollowly under his boots and then he was back aboard the Wilful, fingers quick on the locking mechanism. Another thunk boomed around them and the gangway separated. Hadeishi keyed open the inner lock to the freighter, his refugees huddled uncertainly together. Out the viewport, the shuttle tumbled away, one more fragment of debris swallowed by the greater sea of the kuub.

  “We should not abandon that shuttle!” the wounded Thai-i objected. “We’ll need her if this vessel suffers the same fate as the Falchion.”


  “I do not intend to lose this ship,” Mitsuharu replied evenly. “And a cargo shuttle will only take up valuable stowage we will soon need for the others.”

  The airlock chuffed, separating from its seal, and then swung aside. Hadeishi nodded at the lieutenant, whose face had acquired a formidable glower. “If you are truly concerned, we have an escape pod aboard. Welcome to the Wilful. Medical is that way.”

  * * *

  The lieutenant, despite his injuries, did not follow the four ratings. He and the marine Nitto-hei remained in the roundabout off the airlock while Hadeishi secured the hatch. “I am Thai-i Tocoztic, gun deck officer from the heavy cruiser Falchion.”

  Hadeishi turned and gave a slight bow. He kept his expression meticulously polite. “Mitsuharu Hadeishi at your service, Thai-i, Engineer’s Mate of the Wilful and her acting XO.”

  Tocoztic looked Hadeishi up and down, jaw thrust forward. The Méxica officer was taller and wider than the norm, with a dark chocolatl tone to his complexion. From his slight accent, Mitsuharu guessed the young man hailed from Ciguayo or Arawak—islands in the Eastern Sea which had been part of the Empire since the fourteenth century. The Nisei was pleased to see that despite falling into poor circumstance, the boy had lost none of his fighting spirit or sense of duty. Whether dead or alive, within two campaigns he will be worthy of his braid.

  “I am an officer of the Imperial Fleet. In the name of Emperor Ahuizotl and by the Regulations covering the use of civilian assets in a time of war, I am assuming battlefield command of this vessel! Nitto-hei Cajeme, secure his sidearm.”

  “I am also the Emperor’s servant,” Hadeishi said softly, his shipgun already centered on the Thai-i’s chest. The marine private had failed to leap into action, despite his officer’s command. His demeanor remained watchful, his movements contained. Mitsuharu was impressed, for the young Thai-i had quite a snap to his voice. Could the marine be a Yaqui from the south? He commands excellent stillness.