Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  He clicked channel. “Found one working, Sho-i.”

  Lovelace was still far down the ship, barricaded into the Engineering compartment, with the remains of Team Four as her guardians. Between them, the shipcore was momentarily in Fleet hands, but there were still gangs of Khaiden roaming the side passages, exchanging intermittent gunfire with the Team Three commandos. Locked out of all of the control interfaces, the enemy had little chance of mounting an effective defense, but the Khaid were nothing but persistent. In some places they had cut their own way through the internal doors—but none of them had any heavy equipment, which meant the frame bulkheads and the main hatches were a serious barrier. “Keying in.”

  Got your login, kyo, she responded a moment later. Handing off shipnet on deck one to your console.

  “Received.” Weary, he sat down in the chair, ignoring the foam which spilled onto the floor. His first thought was to check in with De Molay, so he activated the intership channels and pinged around until one of them locked onto the Wilful.

  The freighter captain’s face appeared on the display a moment later and she brightened to see him. “Well, if it isn’t our Engineer’s Mate, gone missing the last day.”

  “Fortune has smiled,” Hadeishi replied, glad himself that she still lived. “Did you take any damage?”

  De Molay shook her head. “Your wounded have been coming over in a steady stream—didn’t someone tell you?” She looked off-screen. “There are at least a dozen more laid out in what space we can spare. But we’re entirely out of meds and ancillary supplies.”

  Mitsuharu levered up his faceplate, scratching a terrible itch beside his nose. “The sickbay here is all Khaid supplies, but I’ll have Gunso Ad-Din peel someone off to search the holds—there may be useful meds somewhere…” A shipbug scuttled across the console, wearing a crown of foam. “Are you low on vermin? We have more than I can stomach over here.”

  She shook her head. “I can live without them. How stands your new ship? Does she have a name?”

  “The Khaid called her the Kader. I haven’t found a hull-plate or record to indicate the Fleet designation.” Mitsuharu rubbed one eye. Adrenaline was draining from his system, leaving only the ache of lactic acid buildup. “The Khaid failed to destroy the communications equipment and their sensor records. Sho-i Lovelace reports we have all of the telemetry of the attack on the Tlemitl, the Research Station, and the IMN escort fleet—if I understand her correctly. But she is speaking far too quickly today for me to follow. Can you come across and take over cleanup here in Command? I need to go back downdeck and make sure the Khaid holdouts are run to ground.”

  De Molay nodded, pursing her lips. “You want me to break down the Khaid battlecast?”

  “With Lovelace’s help, yes.” Hadeishi suddenly looked thoughtful. “Also, you will want to bring a cushion.”

  “A cushion?”

  He shrugged. “Khaid chairs do not fit us so well. There’s no sign any of the Fleet interior fittings survived, which is a great pity.”

  De Molay laughed in delight. “You are having trouble sitting down these days. I will see you in an hour or two.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, after one of the burlier Team Four kashikan-hei had carried her up from the cargo bay where the Wilful was now docked, De Molay stared around at the wreckage of Kader’s Command deck and wrinkled up her nose. The thick musk of Khaid blood was mixed with the astringence of fire suppression foam to make a particularly foul smell. Beyond that, the chair at the weapons officer’s console she’d been offered by a slightly built, worried-looking Sho-i gave her serious pause. “A beetle shell?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lovelace offered an apologetic smile. “Haven’t found anything better.”

  De Molay shrugged and fitted an instafoam pillow into the peculiar dished chair back, then sat down gingerly. “We’re underway again? I felt the drives light up while that big fellow hauled me up ten decks on his back.…”

  “Hai, Sencho.” The Sho-i called up a navigational plot, showing the past track of the Kader, as well as the projected patrol pattern. “I recovered this from one of the engine control nodes—when we flashed the whole ship, temporary storage went too—but some of the secondary systems had working copies, and this was one of them.” The route spidered out from the main Khaid elements near the Pinhole, covered an irregular section of the stellar vicinity, and then angled back to join the pack again. “The Chu-sa wants us to be as inconspicuous as possible—so we follow the ordered route, submit status reports at the requested times, and so on. I’ve already sent one, cobbled together from the last transmit from the t-relay system, but we’re due for five more before getting back to tau zero.”

  “This course was intended to cover the area of battle?”

  “Hai, Sencho. The Khaid commander peeled off these three ships to mop up.”

  De Molay smiled, tapping through the navigational interface. “Well, let’s press on then, shall we? I believe these three signals are Fleet evac capsules.” Her stylus sketched in a slight change in vector to overrun all three icons on the plot.

  * * *

  Mitsuharu frowned, reviewing a comm-system composition pane. The Monkey of Fate, he thought with considerable irritation, is laughing. Now I have to submit status reports to some Khaid overlord! He looked over at Inudo, lately of the Scout Corduba, who was now sitting pilot for the Kader. “How many men have we recovered in total, Thai-i?”

  “Over a hundred now, Chu-sa.”

  Hadeishi sighed, and then picked up his stylus again: Our mission continues to be successful. We have found and destroyed nine Imperial escape pods. Additionally thirty useable z-suits, numerous small arms and edged weapons were recovered. Return to the hunting pack is expected within twenty-three hours.

  A firm tap on the running-man glyph spooled the message off into the t-relay system. Done, he thought, with that exercise—for another six hours.

  “Isn’t that strange,” De Molay said from her seat at Navigation. Somehow the old woman had acquired a puffy black expedition jacket and mittens. Hadeishi didn’t think it was so cold in Command, but he allowed that the Khaid had not set environmental to warm either. “The ship’s previous course indicates they took no prisoners, captured no equipment … just a missile or beam into each pod and on their way.”

  Mitsuharu tried to swivel the beetle-chair at the captain’s console, found that the chitin was sticking again, and stood up. He had been sitting too long in any case. “That is an odd course for a military so very in need of technical expertise, as well as slave labor. Haste overthrew their normal procedure, I think. They always took the time to dig every last beet from the fields before.”

  The old woman shook her head. “Wasteful.”

  Then she frowned, indicating the navigational plot on his console. “Do these raiders believe they can pick up the mystery weapon and use it like a shipgun? Every vessel we’ve seen is a warship—have they no scientists along, to analyze these phenomena?”

  “That is an excellent point.” Hadeishi nodded thoughtfully. “Do we have a breakdown of the battle around the science station yet?”

  “Five minutes, Chu-sa.” De Molay yawned and turned back to where Lovelace had continued unraveling the encoded Khaid ’cast logs. “Five minutes.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Mitsuharu was sitting on the edge of the uncomfortable chair, wholly engrossed in stepping through the debacle around the science station one more time. The Spear-class light cruiser had gone out of service fifteen years before his old Cornuelle had even been laid down, so it lacked a wide variety of modern innovations. No threatwell, no reconfigurable consoles. But the dedicated v-display built into the side of the captain’s station was enough to show him what he needed to see. To his eye, structure was slowly emerging from the seeming chaos of racing ships and sun-bright detonations. One ship, in particular, stood out amongst the confusion. An Imperial battle cruiser. A brand new one, he guessed, from the drive-fl
are and the outline the Khaid cameras had captured during the fighting.

  Ah, she is beautiful. And her commander will win himself more than one medal if he sees home again. See how deftly he handles her … so sure in every maneuver, parsimonious in his launch patterns … and if my eye does not deceive, still alive, having fled down this opening in the Barrier wall.

  “Chu-sa?” Leaning over from her console, De Molay broke his concentration. “I think our toil is showing fruit. Listen, isn’t this the Khaiden battlecast?”

  “Wait.” Hadeishi signaled Command for quiet. “Please confirm that we are not broadcasting, Sho-i Lovelace. The Khaid have acute hearing.” The old women handed over her earbug—though internal comm was operating again, the Khaid-specific systems were still cut from the main loop. He wiggled the uncomfortable object into his ear, listening closely to the resulting ebb and flow of alien chatter.

  After a few minutes he nodded to himself and signaled for Lovelace to kill the circuit.

  “I think you’re right. Now we need a working real-time translator.” He smiled wanly at the two women. “In about twelve hours?”

  De Molay made a face, looking sideways at Lovelace. The Sho-i shook her head in dismay. “I don’t think that’s possible, Chu-sa. I know they exist—but we don’t have one!”

  Mitsuharu frowned, sitting back in the beetle-chair. Now he was thankful for the rigid armor which kept him from being stabbed in the side every time he moved. “Do we have a lexicon at least? My Khadesh is very poor—is anyone on-board fluent?”

  “You mean besides the four Khaid we’ve captured?” The old woman shook her head. “Can we get a couple hours of shuteye, then try and work a new miracle for you?”

  “Of course, Sencho. There are mats in those rooms down the main corridor. Lovelace-sana can show you where they are.”

  * * *

  A full watch later, Hadeishi had coaxed the display into allowing him to zoom in on sections of the battle, even though the Kader’s shipnet core complained when he used so many computing cycles. De Molay and Lovelace had settled back into their seats, some kind of hot, nasty-smelling beverage in their hands. He rotated the shattered hulk of the Tlemitl, examining the debris field the super-dreadnaught had generated.

  Sure enough, a cloud of evac capsules is huddling behind the wreck. He scratched behind one ear with his stylus.

  The warship had lost two major sections to the Barrier weapon, but had remained largely intact. Whoever remained aboard had managed to cut the engines, contain the reactors, and get the surviving crew away into the evacuation pods. They had not kept the two severed sections from continuing forward, to be diced into ever smaller debris by whatever lay beyond … but the main mass of the hull had halted its rush to destruction. Affording a paltry shelter to the survivors.

  “Here, Sencho, here are the ones who need us most. Their oxygen, water, and food is ebbing away like the outgoing tide. Even the Firearrow’s corpse will not shield them from the Khaid much longer.”

  He turned to find De Molay regarding him pensively. “You don’t intend to leave a single man behind, do you?” she asked. “Even if this means risking nearly two hundred lives you’ve already saved and this fine ship you’ve taken?”

  “It is not my ship,” Hadeishi replied absently. “I cannot be held to account for its loss. But there are skilled officers and men out there waiting to die in the dark, either by fire or from cold, and their spirits will weigh heavy upon me if I do not try.”

  “Even if they would leave you behind without a second thought?”

  Hadeishi gave her a sidelong look. The rest of the men and women on the bridge had paused in their work and were listening intently—though, out of deference to the two senior officers, not openly. Save Lovelace, of course, who was just staring at the two of them in dismay.

  Mitsuharu tapped the helmet ring of his captured Khaiden armor, which he had not had time to take off since boarding the Kader. “I am already dead,” he said quietly. “While they still live and breathe. I would keep grave-dust from their mouths as long as I can. In this way, even a spirit can serve.”

  De Molay made a disbelieving face. “I do not understand this fatalism, Chu-sa. It is not my way.”

  Hadeishi spared a moment to regard Tocoztic, who had taken the weapons officer’s station. The young man looked pale, trying to escape notice by shrinking down into his seat. “With time and experience, that which was once obscure becomes clear,” Hadeishi said softly. Then he picked up his stylus, eyes again fixed upon the little display, his whole attention focused on the tactical puzzle before him.

  THE NANIWA

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUNFLOWER

  Though proper quarters had been provided for him, Prince Xochitl remained in Secondary Command, staring fixedly at the incomprehensibly large shape of the artifact four thousand kilometers from their bow, and doodling on his console. Doctor Anderssen and a rotating set of sensor techs and weapons officers had been working through all of the data captured by Konev’s shuttle before its destruction, along with everything else flowing into their limited set of radiation-hardened sensors.

  Chu-sa Koshō, who seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Main Command, had directed the technical team to modify one of the remotely controlled bots used for hull repairs and use the resulting “probe” to plumb the convoluted architecture of the structure without loss of life.

  Xochitl found it interesting, in a nasty way, that the Nisei officer was concerned for the life of even the least of her crewmen. Yakka won’t last long in the Fleet, he decided, without someone to sponsor her. I wonder … He paused a moment, half expecting his exo to kick in and present a list of advantages and disadvantages accrued by his patronage. When nothing happened, Xochitl felt the absence as a kind of unquenchable hunger, twisting his stomach into emptiness. He had not realized, having the exo present his entire adult life, how heavily he relied on the device.

  My eyes are flawless, the Prince reminded himself, but how do I see when the world around me is not annotated, described, outlined? It was difficult for him to even navigate the hallways of the ship—no map presented itself, directing his steps, and the kanji-lettered signs and warnings were unreadable. Xochitl was a little stunned to realize that he did not actually know the meanings of all of the rank badges, flashes, and glyphs which informed the knowing observer of all of the hierarchies and authorities within the Fleet. Exo had always been whispering in his mind, guiding his interactions with the military, with the provincial governors, with—with everyone in his life.

  I’m a cripple. The thought was bitter ash in his mouth. While the Hjo remains in my proximity.

  This, Xochitl realized, was both the core of the problem and the obvious solution. He stood up abruptly and paced over to the xenoarchaeologist at the comm station.

  “Follow me,” he said before turning away, scanning the doors leading off of Secondary Command for a room which would suffice. There! Thank Yacatecuhtli, Guide of the Lost, that someone’s put up a sign in Náhuatl!

  * * *

  Xochitl gestured for Anderssen to enter the conference room, and then closed the door lightly behind them. She sat on the edge of a fine-looking red mahogany table which made a hollow circle. The base apparatus for a holocast projector filled the center of the room. Gretchen looked the Prince up and down with open interest, wondering what was on his mind. Something is, for certain. Then she narrowed her eyes, trying to gain a sense of him, wondering if her gift—if it was a gift, and not the product of drugs or the unknown influence of the Adh’atr—would work on a person as well as a potsherd.

  Xochitl said nothing, leaning against a cedar-paneled wall ornamented with recessed watercolor paintings of flowers—they looked like pansies to Anderssen’s eye, but she was no expert on the flora of old Earth—and scowling at her with a disturbingly unblinking gaze.

  This is very strange, Gretchen thought—but she played along, saying nothing, idly kicking her feet and trying not to fid
get. She felt the desire to be back at her console, digging through the reams of 3-v data, or the spatial model, or measurements of the enormous structure, as a physical pain. But still, she waited.

  After quite a long time, the door recessed into the wall with a soft chuff and Chu-sa Koshō stepped in, her white dress uniform as immaculate as ever, her fine-boned face perfectly composed.

  Seeing her, the Prince snorted rather rudely in amusement and then lifted his chin at Anderssen.

  “This is the one who led you through the Barrier?”

  Koshō paused at the edge of the conference table, regarding him levelly, and then nodded slightly.

  “Then we have a problem,” he declared. “The Naniwa must leave this area immediately. My noble guest, the sian-fengh, has made his desire to flee very clear. I cannot refuse him. Yakka, I need you to keep a close eye on him for me. He’s truculent, difficult and, as you saw—unexpectedly dangerous, but I don’t think he’ll give you much trouble if you put a nargile and some opium back in his hands.”

  “Where are you going?” Koshō clasped both hands behind her back, falling into an easy parade rest.

  Xochitl smiled, showing a large number of perfectly formed white teeth. “I’ve been thinking about what you said before, about my father—I’m going to do exactly as he asked. I’m taking that little merchant ship in the rear cargo hold and staying behind, while you return to the Barrier wall. I understand she’s well shielded, and won’t cost you something off your manifest if we suffer the same fate as that cargo shuttle.”

  He tapped the side of his head sharply. “Find us a way out, Yakka. We have to get out of here before we starve or are baked inside the shipskin, and there’s no sense in you wasting time here while we poke and pry.”

  “Thus your problem,” Koshō said coolly. “I’ll need Anderssen-tzin and her comp models to find a way out, but you can’t get inside the artifact without her. She can’t be in both places at once, can she?”