Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  “How?” An officer from the Mace blurted without thinking. “Our sensors can’t even…”

  “We do not know how,” Hadeishi said quietly. “But the telemetry we’ve deciphered from this ship indicates they did so. It is also possible that the battle-cruiser took aboard at least one evac capsule from the super-dreadnaught which was destroyed in the Pinhole itself—”

  “Surely your Prince Xochitl left the field of battle in haste, then!” De Molay said loudly, drawing a round of glares from the Imperials seated or standing around her.

  Hadeishi continued, unperturbed. “Speculating about who may have lived or died is useless.

  “And we are not concerned with the Prince.” The stylus in his hand circumscribed a constellation of glowing dots on the plotting board. “There are sixteen evac capsules from the Tlemitl hiding in the sensor-shadow of the dreadnaught’s hulk. We are going to go in and get them out.” A smile lit his face for a moment. “And if some Khaiden ships fall afoul of our passage, well then—all the better.”

  “Impossible,” breathed an ensign, now the sole officer remaining from the Gladius. “We haven’t a third the weight of a single Hayalet! We’ll be shot to bits within moments of our initial missile salvo!”

  “Therefore,” Hadeishi said, turning and surveying them all, “we will not attack until it is too late for them to respond. And preferably, we will not attack at all while achieving our goal.”

  The Imperial officers stared at him in confusion. Then there was a babble of questions.

  “Show us,” De Molay said loudly. That quieted the group. Her seamed old face showed skepticism, but Hadeishi saw that her eyes were merry with anticipation. “Show us what you plan to do, Chu-sa.”

  WITHIN THE SUNFLOWER

  The Moulins crept forward through the dark, exterior floods stabbing into a colossal empty space. Hints of enormous structures wreathed in shadow ghosted by on either side. On the bridge, Gretchen had her eyes half closed, fingers drifting lightly across her console. The oliohuiqui she’d taken was burning at the back of her throat, and the flood of data populating her v-displays had coalesced in her perception, becoming a fluid thing, shifting and deforming with each passing moment, as more and more information flowed into the array of comps. Dozens of passageways branched off in all directions as they moved, but only one thread through the maze seemed proper to her. If pressed, she would have said the volume of the channel they were following felt the most used, though nothing obvious about the ranks of triliths they passed would have indicated this.

  “Six hundred k from the entrance now,” the pilot said quietly. “How deep are we g—”

  “As deep as necessary,” Xochitl snapped. His mood, if possible, had worsened while sitting in the darkness at the back of the bridge. He doesn’t like it that Europeans are handling the ship. Gretchen clearly felt the nervous tension throbbing in the Prince, as though a wire were being twisted tighter and tighter around some fulcrum. His discomfort was now beginning to cause her physical pain.

  Xochitl stirred, glaring accusingly at Anderssen. “We have passed several hundred thousand openings into the structure, Swede. Why haven’t we stopped?”

  Though her attention was focused far from the Prince, after a lengthy pause Gretchen remembered to reply: “None of them are suitable.”

  “How so?” The Prince brought up the internal map of the structure being constructed by the sensors on the Navigator’s console. “We’ve passed numerous secondary openings—are these doors?—large enough for a dreadnaught to enter—how are they not suitable for our entry?”

  “They are closed to us,” Gretchen said, attempting to smile reassuringly at him over her shoulder. The resulting expression was almost feral, for a wild, heedless light had come into her face. “We need just the right kind of way in … nothing fancy, Tlatocapilli. That would be dangerous.”

  “And you can tell that which is dangerous and that which is not?” His attempt at sarcasm sounded shrill, for his voice was tight with fear.

  “We are still alive, aren’t we?” Gretchen turned back to her console. Oh, what is this?

  Illuminated by the Moulin’s running lights, a constellation of new structures emerged from the darkness. Tall pylons ascended from pooled shadow below to disappear into equal indigo above. Between them, another of the structures which seemed to be a portal door had appeared: a triangular shape several hundred meters high, comprised of four smaller triangles. Each of the inner triangles contained a further inverted, and recessed, triangle. This arrangement, unlike many others they had passed, held a darker hue—almost night-black itself, but irregularly mottled.

  Anderssen’s console flickered, all of the v-panes abruptly closing and then reopening again. She stiffened, feeling a flood of heat warm her chest, even through the z-suit and the equipment rig. The edges of the analysis displays on the console began to distort, the lettering transforming into the unintelligible glyphs which had overcome the Naniwa’s navigational system during their transit of the Pinhole.

  Uh-oh. Node 333 is connecting—but it’s not plugged in! Gretchen felt the pattern of her analysis matrices shifting. The pulsing back-and-forth of her comps and storage nodes shaded as well, starting to move faster—much faster than she could follow. Dreading what she might feel, Anderssen slipped her right hand under her jacket, fingertips brushing against the surface of the bronze block. It was very warm and vibrating faintly. She looked down and was stunned to see that a hot, golden glow was shining between her fingers. What the—

  “Anderssen, what is that?” Xochitl had finally noticed the grouping of pylons.

  “We are very close,” she managed to say. Löjtnant Piet, without even a look to Captain Locke, had turned the freighter towards the four-sided diamond. Their speed slowed, now the Moulins was inching along. The exterior floods angled forward, trying to illuminate the blackened surface. The beams played across the portal, but did not even generate a reflection, as though the material were drinking in the light.

  Then a point of hard jewel-like radiance appeared at the center of the innermost diamond. A distinct collimating beam stabbed out and washed over the Moulins, causing the forward cameras to polarize, reducing their view to nothing but a scintillating white point. In Anderssen’s equipment rig, the bronze block stopped vibrating and went cold. Gretchen gasped in pain as her perceptual gestalt abruptly collapsed, leaving her blinking owlishly at her console, which had terminated all of the v-panes simultaneously.

  Behind her, the Prince stiffened in alarm.

  * * *

  The vision overlay generated by Xochitl’s exo was awash with unknown and indecipherable datagrams and hieroglyphs. Voices were speaking in his mind in a lilting, singsong tongue like calling birds; but though the cadence of the sounds seemed terribly familiar he knew none of the words. Alarmed, he surged upward out of his shockchair. “What the—”

  “A Gate opens before you,” said an unexpected voice. A seamed old hand, hard as bog oak, settled on the Prince’s shoulder and forced him back down. The Méxica looked up, astounded to see that Green Hummingbird—now clad in a Fleet z-suit—had slipped quietly into the back of the bridge. The dyspeptic face of the Hjogadim Sahâne peered down over his shoulder, red-rimmed eyes staring accusingly at the Prince. The nauallis met Xochitl’s gaze with a serious expression. “I advise you not to enter this structure.”

  “You would exhaust God’s patience, sorcerer.” The Prince threw aside the old Náhuatl’s arm and pushed up from his seat. “You do not command me! You serve the Empire and in this place I am—”

  “It is my purpose, Tlatocapilli,” Hummingbird interrupted, “to keep humanity from harm—and this place is beyond our skill to use, our power to hold, and our intellect to understand. We must leave before we come to grief. Or worse, bring disaster home with us.”

  “You threaten me?” Xochitl bit out the words, struggling to keep his temper.

  The Prince’s exo had already summoned Cuauhhuehueh Koris and
the marines, who now appeared in the hatchway. The Jaguar Knight ducked inside, shipgun leveled on Hummingbird’s back.

  Sahâne found himself surrounded by the marines, who were watching the alien warily, but they kept their distance. The Hjo licked his lips, long head darting from side to side.

  Hummingbird affected no notice of the activity: “My duty to your father compels me to try and save your life.”

  Xochitl drew his sidearm, thumbing off the safety. “Unwise choice, old man. You are utterly—”

  “Lining up a new approach vector,” Gretchen’s voice cut in. She had ignored the Prince and the Judge and their spat, even the appearance of Sahâne, instead watching the progress of the diamond-hard light which had traversed the hull. Now the radiance flickered out as swiftly as it had appeared, and the Navigator’s panel in front of her woke to life again. Now, however, all of the v-panes and controls were displaying the tight curlicues of the alien hieroglyphics which had come and gone from her vision over the past days.

  Landing beacon locked, one of them suggested to her and, nodding in acknowledgment, Anderssen tapped the glyph. The nav system on the freighter kicked in, adjusting their approach. Piet started in alarm—then looked to the captain for guidance—his face tight with distress. Locke shook his head no, the movement barely visible even to Gretchen, who was seated only two meters away. Both men watched her intently and Gretchen suddenly tasted a little of their desire, which matched tone and color with hers.

  Let us see what lies beyond, a memory echoed, bringing with it the smell of oiled wood and a perfume she’d last worn as an undergraduate. Beyond the door of the unopened tomb, beyond the rise of the next hill, within unplumbed space, beyond our conception. This is the fever which drives us to create, to innovate, to overcome.

  Outside, the mottled black wall had divided into three parts, and each triangle receded from sight. Beyond, in a chamber whose comprehensible size—only a few hundred meters in each dimension—seemed puny and cramped, was the age-etched shape of a landing cradle.

  “Entering an active g-field,” Piet reported, taking over the controls. “Docking jets adjusting…”

  THE KADER

  INBOUND TO THE PINHOLE

  Hadeishi listened intently to the z-suit radio, his throatmike replaced by a vocoder Cajeme had assembled from the components of an entertainment 3-v scavenged from the main mess deck. As he listened, the eager voice of a Khaiden Kabil Rezei aboard the battleship Sokamak buzzed away into silence.

  “Yes, my lord.” Mitsuharu keyed into a v-pane on his display. A second later, the ’coder produced a yipping bark ending in a sibilant growl. To Hadeishi’s poorly trained ear, it sounded like proper Khadesh.… “One of the Imperial capsules had a scientist aboard—he sought to barter service—and questioning has revealed a way to detect the Wall-of-Knives. I am bringing him to you now with his instrumentation.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hadeishi observed the other officers standing watch in Command were keeping their mouths shut, as ordered. They were, however, grinning and signing “victory” to one another. Morale is good, he thought, waiting for a response. As befits those snatched from Mictlantecuhtli’s dreadful embrace.

  The Kader plowed through the dust at a swift pace, transit deflectors up full, shrouding the ship in a cascade of brilliant interference. The Pinhole was now only moments away. The Hayalet-class battleships deployed around the broken hulk of the Imperial research station showed clearly on her sensors.

  Five minutes to deceleration burn, Thai-i Inudo keyed to each of the other stations.

  Hadeishi bid proper farewell to the hunt-lord, then closed the circuit. I miss Captain De Molay. But she has her ship back, only a little worse for wear. The old woman had not been happy about the mess they’d left behind on the Wilful, but accepted it as the cost of survival. A handful of the walking wounded had been left with her as well, to crew the little freighter.

  In their last conversation, on comm between the two ships, she fixed him with a bellicose stare, saying, “If you were my fosterling, I would rap your knuckles sharply, Chu-sa. You play recklessly, risking yourself at every turn—but I cannot fault your consideration for the other children. They are always in your thoughts, and you are always the first to offer them a hand up from the ground. I hope—and I doubt we will meet again—that you will consider that your life may be just as precious, to others.”

  The Wilful had slipped away hours before, vanishing into the vastness of the kuub, leaving no trace of its passing which the Kader’s sensors could detect.

  “All stations secure?” Mitsuharu asked on the command channel. A frenzy of confused activity followed amongst the Imperials on the unfamiliar bridge. “Weapons—confirm that guns are cold? Missile racks and penetrator pods are locked down? All hands, brace for combat acceleration.”

  A ragged chorus of Hai, Chu-sa arose, both in Command and on the channel from downdeck.

  Hadeishi nodded to Inudo. “Pilot, point-and-a-quarter to ventral. Begin deceleration burn.”

  The Thai-i rotated a glyph on his display just a fraction and then slid a gauge lower. “Hai, kyo. Point-and-a-quarter, ventral. Beginning deceleration burn.”

  On the plot, the Kader’s icon closed swiftly with that of the Sokamak, the largest of the Khaid battleships. Lovelace’s translation of the ’cast chatter had gleaned only fragmentary information for Hadeishi, but he knew some of the ship designators now, and a little bit about his enemy. He knew that one of the more vocal Khaid commanders was named Zah’ar, and he had at least two rivals. The late, unlamented captain of the Kader had been Begh-Adag—and that fellow seemed to have been the least respected of the clan-lords involved in this escapade.

  “Chu-sa, point-and-a-half turned. Deceleration burn complete.” Inudo shook out his shoulders and hurriedly called up a new slate of course and speed settings on a side pane.

  “Joto-Heiso Cupan, ready shuttle in bay three for launch,” Hadeishi said into the throatmike. “Damage control parties, starboard wing, stand by for decompression.”

  The chief petty officer from the Asama tapped in amongst the chorus of Hai, kyo from the damage control teams. “Shuttle in bay three, ready for launch, Chu-sa.”

  The light cruiser matched velocity with the Sokamak, and the shuttle jetted away on an intercept course for the battleship. A v-pane on his console showed Mitsuharu the boat-bay-three doors cycling closed.

  “Shuttle away, kyo,” Cupan confirmed.

  Hadeishi shifted uncomfortably in the shockchair, one eye on a replay of the missing battle-cruiser’s escape, the other on a series of panels showing thermal readings from the profusion of broken ships, fusion detonations, and other hot-spots in the immediate area. The dust clouds, which seemed to have thickened around the invisible Barrier, were slowly shifting color as the component particles soaked up the hard radiation.

  “Pilot, turn two points to starboard, one point dorsal.”

  Inudo nodded, his neck shining with sweat. “Hai, kyo. Two points starboard, one dorsal.”

  The Kader’s maneuvering thrusters flared briefly as she turned away from running parallel with the Sokamak, her nose angling towards the entrance to the Pinhole itself. There, the walls of dust were burning with a deep orange and azure, making a sea of fire to blind the unwary eye.

  Against this background, Hadeishi thought, the thrust-signature of our so-able friend would be nearly undetectable if one did not know exactly what to look for.

  But Lovelace and Tocoztic had painstakingly reassembled the course taken by the battle-cruiser, and now Mitsuharu was watching for traces of her drive plume wending its way amongst the hidden shoals and reefs of the depthless ocean.

  Musashi stands poised on the bridge at Windlodge, goose-feathers brushing the enamel of his cheek-guard, the Iroquois swarming up the levee in a numberless, copper-skinned mass. One of their ohnkanetoten surges through the ranks of charging pike men astride a roan stallion … sun-dogs gleaming from his garishly ornamented
plate-mail, his long sword shining silver in the summer light.

  THE NANIWA

  OUTBOUND FROM THE CHIMALACATL

  The battle-cruiser had clawed its way back up out of the interlocking g-fields wrapped around the singularity in realspace, finally reaching a point where the hypercoil could punch them through to transluminal. In Command, Koshō sat in her shockchair, one slim leg crossed over the other, watching the threatwell rotate slowly. The cloud of broken ships was fast approaching as they climbed gradient, and the sight of such colossal devastation weighed heavily on her thoughts. Helsdon, having completed his mandatory sleep cycle, was sitting at the Nav station with Thai-i Olin. Together they had reconfigured nearly half of the shipskin to watch for the kind of quantum disturbances the engineer suspected heralded the movement or presence of the Barrier threads.

  Better than nothing, Susan thought tiredly, but I am already missing Doctor Anderssen’s presence.

  She paced over to their console. “Any luck, Kikan-shi?”

  “There must be a defensive Thread array associated with the Sunflower,” Helsdon muttered, one pale hand trembling over a plot of the broken armada. “Most of these ships were cut apart, just as ours were.…”

  “An attack?” Koshō leaned over his shoulder, puzzled. “They’re bunched together so tightly…”