Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  The old Náhuatl could do nothing at the moment—guarded and bound as he was—but Hummingbird could let himself become aware of the tenor of men’s voices, the speed and direction of their movements, even their smell if they passed by close enough. What he absorbed from all of this was troubling. The very character of the Moulin’s crew had gradually transformed from the ne’er-do-well collection of roustabouts he and Anderssen had first encountered, to a far more focused team with a well-defined air of something he could only describe as fierce intent.

  They, too, have a mission here. One unknown to the Prince, or he would have warned his men.

  The great unknown in the nauallis’ mind was—were they Maltese, or some other as-yet-unknown faction who had decided to step into the great game? The Knights he believed he understood and could manage, if they kept their tempers, but if it were some other organization? There is no path to take, yet, while they—ah, now, how interesting!

  From his vantage in the mess, Hummingbird could pick out the respiration of the navigator and Captain Locke on the bridge, as well as two crewmen climbing up from downdeck. And in this very moment, each of the four men was breathing quietly and deeply in unison.

  Now, a path is opening. Hummingbird tensed without open movement, preparing for violence.

  “Captain, want a kaffe?”

  Through the hatch opening onto the bridge, the nauallis saw the gray-eyed Pilot stand up, his motions easy and assured. Captain Locke looked over from his console, shaking his head. “No, not right now. But—”

  Without the slightest hesitation, Piet slapped a gel-tab against the neck of the marine watching the main boards. The man stiffened, paralyzed before he could shout a warning. The Imperial toppled backward into Captain Locke’s waiting arms. Hummingbird, watching with interest, noted that both civilians moved with an admirable and soundless efficiency.

  The other two marines on the bridge were out of sight, but Piet and Locke both produced slender, matte-black pistols from their jackets—sighted—and there was an almost unnoticed pfft. A series of clunking sounds followed, which drew the attention of the marine Heicho sitting across the mess from Hummingbird. The corporal rose, shipgun in his hand, eyes swinging to check the nauallis, then darting back to the two crewmen coming up the gangway—they were chattering about a zenball scandal on Langkasuka colony—and in that moment of inattention, Piet was behind him. Another gel-tab downed the Imperial, and the two crewmen were across the mess deck at a run to secure the fallen marine.

  Locke emerged from the bridge, exchanged a series of complex hand motions with the other three—patterns which, to Hummingbird’s great interest, were neither Fleet nor Army battlesign—and then remained behind while Piet and one of the other men disappeared down the gangway.

  Ignoring the old Náhuatl, Locke and the remaining crewman dragged the three marines from the bridge and lined up all four men in the middle of the mess area. When the captain removed a breakerbox from his jacket, Hummingbird decided that he was impressed by Locke’s resources and expertise. These men can only be Knights out of New Malta, and see—he is being so very careful not to violate the compact between the Grand Master and the Emperor.

  To that end, Locke shorted out the combat armor on all three marines before tucking the tool away.

  “Deft,” Hummingbird said quietly, watching the Maltese with intense interest. “Am I still a captive?”

  Locke nodded as he removed the comm crystals from the marines’ headsets and pocketed them. When he did look up, his greenish eyes were cold. “The Old One said you would be carrying the tablet, but you’re not. Regardless, the Saints smile upon us. Better by far for her to be his messenger than one of your kind.”

  Hummingbird’s eyebrows rose and he shifted slightly, testing the zipcuffs. Patience! he reminded himself. The Templar raised the slim little weapon. One pfft and Hummingbird felt a chill wash over him. Then … darkness.

  DEEP WITHIN THE SUNFLOWER

  The very long hallway ended in a sloping wall of dark metal pierced by a triangular door. This particular portal seemed to have become jammed, for at the top of the triangle they could see a portion of the valve itself. The edges of the massive frame were also mottled and streaked with carbon scoring and sections of the metal had melted before cooling into odd shapes. Beyond the door, illuminated by the hard white radiance of their helmet and hand lights, stood a nonagonal chamber of moderate size—only thirty or forty meters across.

  “Nine walls.” The Prince’s voice was filled with irritation. “Three was sacred to them, then? And a dead end, Doctor.”

  “I think, Lord Prince, that they are doors,” Gretchen amended. “All alike save this one, which has been damaged.”

  “Massive.” Xochitl did not spit on the floor, but his impatience was very clear.

  “They fought hard here.” Cuauhhuehueh Koris traced his light across the signs of ancient battle—huge discolorations from plasma discharges covered the walls, there were melted panels here and there, and the inlaid floor was scored with deep gouges. The Jaguar Knight dug at the wall with his monofilament combat knife, but left no mark. “Huh!”

  Sahâne offered no comment, standing amid them with his shoulders tucked in, radiating unease.

  The glyphs and signs ghosting across Anderssen’s vision pointed her to the right, collecting like ephemeral birds over a collection of interlocking triangles scribed into the floor.

  “Which way?” the Prince snarled, nervously swinging his assault rifle from side to side. “Is this a transit nexus? Swede, all we need is—what are you doing?”

  Gretchen had nudged Sahâne down onto the floor, just where he could step onto the triangles illuminated by her hand light. At the touch of the Hjogadim’s boot, there was an almost imperceptible tremor. Eight of the walls shuddered, spilling faint clouds of dust into the air. Behind them, the triangular door slid down with unexpected violence, grinding along hidden tracks with a squeal. The party turned in alarm, their lights sending a cluster of gleaming circles dancing across the battered walls. The door failed partway down, momentarily revealing the hallway beyond dropping away with dizzying speed. This brief visual cue was the only indication they were in motion. Then the door closed as firmly as its eight counterparts, vanishing into the larger expanse of the wall without leaving a visible join.

  Xochitl cursed—a long, bitter oath—and his face suddenly cleared, dark eyes glinting through his faceplate. Anderssen felt his “mask” stir. In her Sight, hidden signs and symbols flared to life around the Méxica lord as though he were wreathed in ghostly flame. Fascinated, she watched them solidify first into a wholly alien symbology and then flicker into the more recognizable glyphic alphabet of the Méxica.

  Customized, she had time to think, before a dissociative jolt jarred her mind. There had been no noticeable physical sensation of movement, but Anderssen was suddenly sure they had passed over a threshold. What a peculiar sensation—as though we’d stepped through a doorway within a doorway, leading into a room within the room where we were already present.

  Slowly, she withdrew her gloved hand from Sahâne’s arm and turned to stare at the alien. “Revered Sahâne,” she breathed, as though addressing him for the first time.

  “Get away from him,” the Prince ordered. The marines and Koris turned as well, catching a peculiar tone in her voice.

  Ignoring the threat in Xochitl’s command, Gretchen marveled as the Hjogadim’s periphery gleamed brightly with a dizzying array of symbols. Far more in number, and far more varied, than the ghostly effusion accompanying his outburst in Secondary Command on the Naniwa. Now his z-suit and fur were literally crawling with signs and symbols of all varieties. Yet as she watched, they began to settle down, consolidating into a rotating, half-seen mesh of glyphs which almost entirely obscured the alien.

  Apparently unaware that he had changed, Sahâne returned her gaze with one of great curiosity.

  Her awareness of the symbology congealed as the glyphic aura a
round the creature settled down. Vectors of meaning began to emerge, revealing the shadow of a greater pattern. Anderssen found she could not—did not want to—look away, but at the same time she felt her own memories begin to fray.… Hummingbird, she howled mentally. You evil old man! Nothing ever happens around you by accident.

  “Your eyes are … quite golden,” Sahâne said in puzzlement. The Hjo didn’t remember if this toy had expressed such a peculiar appearance before. Then he flinched back as the Prince’s Macana assault rifle jammed past his snout and against Gretchen’s head, muzzle wedging in between her neckring and helmet.

  “Where are we going, Swede?” Xochitl’s voice was flat, menacing, much like the flash-suppressor digging into her ear. “Is this a transit car?”

  “You know it is, Tlatocapilli,” she squeaked, forcing her unwilling tongue to form human words. The peculiar jolt in her perception made her aware of two distinct identities occupying the same physicality—her old self and now something new. This evolving Gretchen rode at the edges of her nerves, altering her perceptions of the universe … supplying meaning, context, and direction. Constellations of glyphs began to appear in silhouette around the Prince, the marines, the Jaguar Knight—even Sahâne had his own annotations. A Hjogadim epithet suddenly sprang to mind: A sure and certain Guide to my thought!

  “I assure you, Lord Prince, we are going where you wished to go.”

  “I do not think so,” he said, eyes narrowed. His exo—and by the Risen Christ, it was a vast relief to have his exocortex operating again—was reporting a flurry of unexpected changes in Doctor Anderssen’s breathing, in her kirlian field, in the tension visible in her skin and bone. “I think you have become infected with something.”

  Gretchen raised her arms, turning fully towards him. The flash-suppressor clinked across her helmet, coming to rest square on her faceplate. “I am very sure, now, that Hummingbird did not expect you to be here, Lord Prince, nor indeed, the Holy One.” She opened her hand towards Sahâne. “He expected to need just one key—myself.”

  “Key?” Sahâne said, curiosity winning out over naked fear. “Key to what?”

  The transit core suddenly came to a halt and everyone froze as they felt the ancient device grow still. In motion, none of them had been aware of anything, but now that the room had completed its travels, each of them felt their equilibrium settle. The door that showed the worst battle damage ground up, shedding dust from long-unused mechanisms, allowing a pale roseate light to shine through the opening. Armored corpses spilled into the nonagonal room, tumbling away from the hulks of shattered war-meka. Even Xochitl jumped back in surprise as a cascade of broken battle-steel bounced away across the floor.

  There was a buzz of static on their comm channel, but then the earbugs cycled frequency and the irritating sound died away. The Prince was the first to regain his composure. He whistled in astonishment at the size of the chamber revealed behind the long-dead combatants.

  “Now, Swede, now you’ve found us something.” Xochitl felt a great lightness rise in his chest. “We are the first beings to look upon this vista in ten thousand years,” he said. “Marines—patrol pattern! There may be automatic defenses left active, even after so long…”

  Sahâne’s long snout peeled back from his fore fangs in horror to see the faded signs and symbols emblazoned upon the shattered fragments of armor. Hundreds of corpses slithered down out of the doorway, many of them bearing recognizably similar diagrams.

  “The place of the Celestials,” the Hjo whispered, unable to believe his eyes. “And The Fallen Thousand … the Banner Crimson and Black. My revered ancestors. This is … impossible. This is a children’s fable!”

  “All too real, Esteemed One,” Gretchen said in a thick, hollow voice. Her facial muscles jumped randomly as her old self struggled to regain neural control from the gold-tinged invader. “My Lord Prince, your control structure.” She pushed his assault rifle aside and stepped down from the sled, hands spread wide to frame the vast chamber lit through a clear wall by the glare of the accretion disc’s light-year-long plasma jet shining far, far away to her left. Beyond the wreckage at the doorway, where some ferocious battle had denied an equally forgotten, unknown enemy entrance, long rows of triangular crystalline cradles rested upon the floor in such numbers as to vanish, uncountable, into the distance. Far, far away, a tall pylon rose from the flame-lit darkness. It shone with subdued green and gold lights, crowned in shadow.

  Xochitl pushed past a seemingly frozen Sahâne, following Anderssen cautiously, gun at the ready. The xenoarchaeologist moved slowly, trying to keep control of her limbs, the visible world a riot of conflicting data. The Méxica prince signed for one of his marines to shadow her, while the other four set themselves to the points of the compass. Koris followed slowly in the sled.

  Left alone in the transit core, the Hjogadim heaved violently into his waste-tube and wept purple tears into his matted, unkempt facial pelt. He trembled uncontrollably, leaning against the door frame, overcome by stunned fear. Oh Guide of Thought, he blubbered to himself, why have you sent your worthless servant into such a terrible place? I am no priest, no demagogue—I know nothing of the rituals of greeting or awaking! What cruel, cruel fate has placed me here, among barbarians and slaves and discarded toys, at such a time? To place me before the Gods themselves? He could not bring himself to step across the threshold.

  But the toys are already inside the Holy of Holies. The voice in his mind was faint and hard to understand; by far the most ancient of all his teachers. The others, who had begun babbling in counterpoint, fell silent.

  You must go in, young smoot. Your only way home lies forward.

  THE KUUB

  Loitering in the dark, shipskin aligned to full absorptive mode, the Wilful lay at the edge of the debris cloud generated by the destruction of the Khaiden battleship Khorku. The region of radioactive metal ash left behind by fusion containment failure served the little freighter as an extra screen, hiding her from the intermittent lidar scans emitting from the enemy ships still in the vicinity of the Pinhole. On her bridge, De Molay had moved back to the captain’s station, her puffy black jacket, blankets, and the shepherd’s cap supplemented by thick woolen gloves. The environmental systems were still trying to recover from their ill-use during the rescue efforts.

  The old woman had her eyes closed, and a faint snore escaped her lips.

  Thai-i Patzanil—who seemed very young to De Molay, far too young to be aboard a ship-of-war, much less acting as her navigator—was watching the plotting projection and the status boards. Weary himself, he stood and paced around the periphery of the tiny Command, peering at the old-fashioned dials on the equipment and idly fingering the cracked leather seat-backs. When he’d returned from the head, something had changed on the plot and he sat down hurriedly, red-rimmed eyes scanning the boards.

  “Sencho? Sencho De Molay?”

  The old woman opened one eye halfway, squinting at the boy.

  “The Khaid main fleet is in motion, kyo. They’re making for the Pinhole.”

  De Molay sat up, rolled her neck, and gestured for him to update the plotting projection. When the holo had refreshed, she pursed her lips, brows drawing tight. “Tired of testing the waters, hey? Has there been any sign of the Kader?”

  Patzanil shook his head. “They’ve been down behind the radar shadow of the Tlemitl for at least two hours. Recovery operations must be complete by now, so I don’t know—”

  “Chu-sa Hadeishi has something in mind, I’m sure.” The old woman scratched at the edges of the gel sealing her face wound. On the plot, the Khaid battlewagons had formed into an evenly spaced line and were picking up velocity. The other, smaller ships were also in motion—save one.

  “What are they leaving behind, Thai-i?”

  Patzanil was already correlating the emissions data. “Something in a destroyer’s mass-range, kyo. Might be a Mishrak-class—we’d identified a couple of them in the attacking force before the Gladius
went down.”

  “We’ll stay well away,” De Molay said, settling back into her cocoon. “Any others left behind?”

  “Hai, kyo. Three others—same general class—at the corners of the box.”

  “Sentries, then.” On the plot, the last of the Khaid heavies had disappeared behind the seemingly invisible veil of the Barrier. She nodded to herself, making some mental calculation. “Very good.”

  The boy looked at her expectantly for a moment, but De Molay closed her eyes again.

  “Ah, Sencho-sana?” His voice was tight, hinting at an internal conflict between well-ingrained Fleet duty and the plain fact that the old woman was not a Fleet officer.

  “Yes, Thai-i,” De Molay responded. “You can get something to eat.”

  “Thank you, kyo!” He was up and out of his seat and through the hatchway before she could open both eyes. When she had sat up fully, he was long gone. De Molay laughed softly to herself, then keyed into her console and—after negotiating several authorization screens—brought up the t-relay interface. Then she sat for a moment, considering the plot and tapping her fingers slowly on the edge of the console.

  Not that much time to dither, the old woman thought. The boy will be back soon, and I’ve no surety the Khaid will not return swiftly, or that reinforcements have not been summoned. The iron is hot, so we must strike. She wondered if Hadeishi and his reclaimed cruiser were still busy recovering the crew of the super-dreadnaught, but her window of opportunity was terribly short. The Order masters would say to act in the moment of balance, De Molay remembered from an old book she’d been forced to read in the collegium.