“Crow! Come back to me. Captain Kosho is trying to use the Barrier as a weapon, and the Imperial data we have is no good for this sector. Break me into the command circuit, right now!”
***
“Rack eight away,” Oc Chac announced, as a fresh cluster of plasma mine icons popped up on the threatwell. “We’re done, kyo.” The Mayan looked back at Susan, his chiseled face questioning.
“Not enough,” the Nisei woman said, watching the last of her area denial munitions spin away behind the Naniwa. The battle-cruiser was pushing hard at maximum-v for the level of particulates in this area of space, and there were still nine Khaiden cruisers and destroyers racing after her. “Weapons, start dumping delayed-fuse bomb-pods into our wake. I want them on a timer and dark until they tick over on intercept.”
Then she swiveled around, considering the threatwell. Naniwa was now closing fast on the forbidden area indicated by the Mirror scientists. Stabbing flares started to pop up behind them, catching one of the Khaiden cruisers with a direct hit. The enemy ship staggered, losing way, and then plowed through three more plasma mines. Atmosphere began to vent from dozens of punctures, but the other Khaid ships dodged past, their captains and crews alert enough to realize the danger and begin laying down a sweeping pattern of computer-controlled ballistic rounds.
“Pilot, prepare to rotate ship,” Kosho announced, glaring at Holloway. “Rotate in one minute, sixteen-”
Stop, you’ve got to stop!
She jerked, hearing an unfamiliar voice shouting in her earbug.
“Belay that order,” Susan snarled, “who is this?”
Gretchen Anderssen, Captain Kosho. Your charts are out of date-I’m updating your display-now!
“ Jigoku-e ochiro! ” The Chu-sa’s shouted curse startled everyone on the bridge, and Oc Chac turned to stare at her in surprise. Susan’s complexion shaded almost porcelain. The threatwell display mutated wildly, the Mirror coordinates for the invisible Barrier wiped away and replaced by a series of veil-like patterns, overlapping on one another and filled with pockets and eddies.
“Forty seconds to intersection, kyo,” Holloway yelped, his console throwing a dozen alarms.
“Pilot, hard over!” Kosho snarled, punching the collision alarm glyph on her console. Then her stylus stabbed out, marking a new course in the ’well.
“Thirty-nine seconds!”
Naniwa groaned from stem to stern, engines cutting out as the ship rotated, and then flaring as they slewed around into a new heading. Shedding velocity to make the turn, the battle-cruiser was suddenly seconds “behind” where the constant stream of Khaiden missiles expected her to be. Penetrators rained onto her newly exposed “roof,” their onboard comps triggering detonation. Hammerblows boomed across the shipskin, shredding tiles and overloading the thermocouples. Radiating fins splintered all across the Naniwa ’s hull. Secondary plasma charges pierced the shipskin itself, blowing enormous gaps through to the secondary hull. Behind the plasma charge, the penetrator rounds themselves collided with the inner armor at tremendous speed. The triple layer of armor mesh convulsed, trying to shed impact energy across the whole shipframe, but dozens of tiny ruptures punched through, spewing thermonuclear plasma into two compartments just fore of Engineering. Atmosphere vented, blowing out a chaff-cloud of debris.
“Multiple punctures,” Oc Chac bawled, “we’ve lost environment on decks nineteen and twenty. Four compartments compromised. I have a radiation fire in compartment eighty-one.”
“ Sho-sa, get your teams in,” Susan barked, “Pilot-get me some headway!”
Her engines intact, the Naniwa accelerated away on a sharply different vector. Kosho held her breath, watching her ship veer hideously close to the shimmering veils plotted on her ’well.
***
In their cabin on six, Gretchen and Hummingbird were torn through their restraints and slammed hard against the wall. Gravity fluctuated violently for a microsecond and the comps ripped free as well, smashing into the walls, displays splintering into ruin. Bloody, one arm stabbing with terrible, blinding pain, Gretchen found herself pinned against the ceiling. Alarm Klaxons screamed and the bitter smell of burning insulation flooded the air. Crushed by a giant hand, Anderssen struggled to breathe. “Crow! Crow!”
Hummingbird was pinned as well, though his head lolled limply to one side.
***
Four hundred thousand kilometers behind the Naniwa, the pack of Khaiden ships reacted as well, shedding velocity to make an equally abrupt course change. Three of them managed this quite smartly, matching the battle-cruiser’s relative angle. They continued to spit missiles at the Imperial ship, though their rate of fire slacked off sharply. The other five also made the turn, but too slowly. Their icons interpenetrated with the first of the veils plotted on Susan’s display and abruptly winked out.
“Score on goal,” Kosho breathed, only too aware of how close she’d come to blundering into the same fate. “Pilot, get me a new intercept to the Tlemitl!”
***
Aboard the Firearrow, Xochitl grimaced as one of his Jaguars cut away the mangled wreckage of his shockchair. Flag Command was filled with smoke and guttering flames from a shipkiller impact which had torn through the secondary hull. Able to move once more, the Prince crawled free, shaking off bits of burning metal and fabric. Two of his bodyguards were down, along with most of the junior officers and ratings who had been at their stations.
“Raise damage control,” Xochitl ordered his exo. “ Cuauhhuehueh Koris, status of the rest of your squad?”
“Only us in comm contact, Tlatocapilli.” The Jaguar Knight shook his head slowly. “I’m not getting a response from Command either.”
«Thai-sa Yoemon is dead,» reported the exo. «Autonomic systems report that Main Command has lost environmental control due to a penetrator hit. No life signs remain in the compartment.»
“Mains are down,” the Prince said aloud, replying to Koris. “Find me the secondary and let’s get moving.”
The intership comm channel was fuzzing with static, making even short-range conversations impossible. “Exo, what is this?”
«A Khaid disruptor bug has entered the ship via a penetrator. Internal communications on the regular channels will be impossible until the module is located and destroyed or damage control reroutes around the infection.»
“Find me a clear channel, then.”
The Jaguars were already moving, hustling the Prince out into the corridor. The hatchway tried to close behind them and stuck, flat streamers of black smoke oozing along the roof. A fire suppression system kicked in, flooding the hallway with foam. Xochitl wiped his faceplate clear and jogged on. The assistive mechanisms in his suit would let him run a long way without tiring.
***
Four decks away, Engineer Second Helsdon and two of his crew slipped pry bars behind the cover of a section of shattered comm conduit and wrenched hard. The cover tore away, revealing six meters of shredded, blackened crystal. Freezing wind, howling down the passageway from some hull rupture, pummelled their z-suits, laying down frost on every surface. Malcolm jammed a cutting tool behind the junction at his end of the conduit and popped the interface free-off to his right, the other two men were doing the same.
“Clear!” Two Jun-i hustled up, bearing a length of replacement crystal. They shoved the new conduit into place and Helsdon locked down his end, a hand-comp tucked into his elbow. A moment later, with diagnostic leads attached, he had a string of green lights on the status display. The circuit came back up with a few hiccups. “Done here,” he shouted. They’d manually switched to a little-used comm channel when the main network went down, but there was still interference. “On to the next.”
“Doubt if we have all the holes patched, Engineer,” one of the warrant officers remarked with a strained laugh.
“Yeah, only ten or twenty to go,” someone else’s voice came through the suit-to-suit line. “What now?”
“Wait one.” Helsdon grunted wi
th exhaustion, thumbing through a succession of panes on his hand-comp, the team crowded around him, faces expectant for the next task.
***
The battle-steel hatchway to Secondary Command cycled open and Xochitl and his Jaguars crowded in. The Sho-sa, who had found himself commanding the dreadnaught when primary Command and Flag had gone off-line, jerked around, his face ashy.
“ Tlatocapilli, I’m glad to see you! We’ve-”
“Out of the chair,” the Mexica lord seized the lieutenant commander by the arm and dragged him away from the command console. “You’re XO now-get me damage control back on-line and report munitions inventory!”
The main threatwell was still functioning as Xochitl settled into the shockchair, taking stock of the situation. He’d been out of contact for nearly thirty minutes, but his exo jacked in to the main boards and the Prince saw the gun decks were still in operation, hammering away at the swarm of Khaiden battleships pacing the dreadnaught. The new battle-shields wavered in and out of existence, flaring bright with missile impacts.
«Forty percent coverage remaining,» exo reported. «Launchers are at sixty percent, though four port-side are jammed.»
The Asama had fallen away behind, crippled and shuddering from secondary explosions deep in her core, crew bailing out in a cluster of shuttles and evac-capsules.
Xochitl waved his hand and the threatwell reconfigured; the myriad points of Imperial distress beacons vanished, leaving only the combatants.
“Lord Prince,” the Sho-sa ventured. “We have stowage to take them aboard-”
“Leave them,” Xochitl growled, his command console flickering with alternate course plots at a blinding rate. At main navigation, the Thai-i sitting at the station had drawn back, finding his v-panes and control displays no longer responding to his touch. Suddenly the alternates dropped away and the Prince nodded to himself. “New course by my mark, full power. We need breathing room!”
Engines thundering, the decking vibrating with a deep basso roar, Tlemitl charged away from the wrecked Asama, all surviving launchers and gun nacelles concentrated on two Khaid heavy cruisers which had drawn the unlucky course to stand in the Prince’s way. Both broke off, trying to change vector as multiple shipkillers slammed into their deflectors, breaking through to sear armor and shatter their engine rings. Undaunted, the Firearrow accelerated towards the Pinhole.
***
Three-quarters of a million kilometers behind the swirling firefight around the super-dreadnaught, Kosho grasped the Prince’s intent immediately. The Naniwa was already accelerating to join him, having shrugged aside the last of the lighter ships, but now the Khaid battleships had reformed, relocking their point-defense and fire control. Swift as harriers, they came hard on the chase and stood directly between the battle-cruiser and the flagship. Thoughtful, Susan tapped up the channel to deck six.
“Anderssen- sana, can you get me better telemetry?”
There was no response, only intermittent static and then a “ cabin inhabitants are unavailable at this time ” message generated by shipboard comm. Face tight with dismay, Kosho switched channels.
“Damage Control, Medical. Get teams to cabin nine on deck six, immediately!”
In the ’well, her course and that of the Tlemitl were fast converging on the outer edge of the debris field from the Can. Beyond the wrecked station loomed the invisible passage of the Pinhole, though now Susan realized that even if the Scouts had found an opening-there was no surety it led anywhere save into a veil of threads which would gut her ship like a teppan -chef.
“Comm, any response from the Flag?”
The comm officer shook her head, eyes huge. “Nothing, Chu-sa. She’s still moving and fighting, but I’ve no response from any shipside system, not even on identicast.”
Does he even see we’re here? Kosho discarded the thought. “ Chu-i , you find me someone to talk to. If anyone can circumvent the Khaid jamming, the interference from the dust cloud, and the radiation blaze from so many wrecked ships, you can.”
“ Hai, Chu-sa, hai! ”
Then she turned to Holloway and Oc Chac, who were heads down over the navigational console.
“ Sho-sa, can we get a reading on that Barrier? Anything?”
The Mayan shook his head. “Sensors show a clear field, save for the omnipresent dust. Only empty space beckons beyond the shattered dead.”
“Not good enough.” Susan tapped her fingers rapidly on the edge of her shockchair. “Get me an update from the medical team on six. Now.”
The Wilful
The main hatch to Engineering cycled open with a pained groan and Hadeishi slipped through the opening. The machete was sheathed, the serrated knife tucked away in his tool belt. Two bandoliers of shipguns-in a wide variety of models-were slung over his shoulder. De Molay was leaning heavily on the console, her face tight with pain.
“You’re tracking blood on my deck, Engineer. But,” she gestured at her leg and side, “who am I to complain?”
Mitsuharu laid down the captured weapons and knelt beside her. His lips pursed, gentle fingers tightening the press-pak on her leg wound. The bandage was saturated and the status strip across the blue material had shaded to red as well. The old woman’s color had deteriorated in his absence.
“No geisha ever had a whiter brow than you, Sencho. I will carry you to the medbay.”
Moving the freighter’s captain would not improve her condition, but Hadeishi saw no other option. He was not a corpsman and there were no doctors to hand. He rigged a sling, eased her into the fabric, and then set off, his own weariness offset by a jolt of stimulant from his medband. Dead Khaid sprawled in the nonengineering corridors, their bodies chittering with shipbugs. As they moved slowly through, De Molay glanced at the tight, distorted faces, all gray with the mark of carbon monoxide poisoning. After the first dozen or so, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his back.
“Don’t sleep yet, Sencho, you’ve landing papers to sign, manifests to review…” He hoped the medbay, if there was such a thing on the freighter, was equipped with an autobot of some kind. Aren’t all ships as well equipped as a Fleet light cruiser?
The reality was far more spartan, but the medical bay-more properly a closet with a fold-out bed-did have a diagnostic and treatment module for trauma cases. Hadeishi broke open a shock-pak and applied the first IV tabs. De Molay shivered from head to toe, and then her eyes fluttered open. She gave a short breathy laugh when she saw the image of her mashed thigh on the overhead display. “Just a flesh wound,” she gasped.
Hadeishi peeled away the press-pak from her leg. Bright red blood oozed in tiny pinpoints from an enormous bruise easily the length of his forearm.
“Severe tissue damage. No broken bones,” an androgynous voice announced from the trauma unit. “Apply anti-inflammatory agents as needed. Apply fresh press-pak. Leave on forty-eight hours. Set patient medband to dispense pain control agents as needed. Bed rest is recommended to speed recovery.”
De Molay made a face at Mitsuharu. “Give me those press-paks. Where’s the Bulldog?”
Hadeishi fished out the Webley and checked the magazine before handing the automatic over. “Full up, Sencho. But I think we’ve finished off the other gunslingers.”
De Molay shot him a pained glare. “You’re a clever engineer with the toxic air, but I’ll keep my old Humbert handy. He is very reliable. Now”-she paused, clenching her teeth and waiting for the medband to kick in-“I’m already a patient. I can be my own corpsman. You-you’re all the command crew we have.”
Hadeishi nodded, rummaging through the trauma station. He laid out the necessary medpacks, made sure her comm bracelet was responding and the overhead v-display toggled to show shipnet. “You’re the only backup I have, Sencho-sana.”
“So I’m not permitted to die, then? I’ll consider the suggestion.”
***
Stepping around the bodies fallen at the entryway to the bridge, Mitsuharu entered gingerly-a Kh
aid shipgun cradled in his hands, safety off-and checked all the corners before turning his attention to the command station.
The Khaid officer was still slumped against the console. Hadeishi grunted with effort, heaving the body onto the floor with a clatter. Then he cleared the session on the boards-the Khaid had loaded some kind of interpreter to allow them to enter transit coordinates-and authorized himself with De Molay’s codes.
Much better, he thought, seeing a whole series of v-panes unfold, all seeming very modern and closely modeled on the standard Fleet executive interface. I do believe this ship has illegal software loaded. Excellent.
For a moment he considered drilling into the ship’s manifest and construction logs, looking to see who-exactly-had updated the freighter. But then Hadeishi brushed those panes aside. His suspicions could wait, for there was far more interesting business afoot.
He shut off the transit alarm and then ran through a postgradient checklist. The hyperspace coil was still in operation, though now quiescent, and maneuver drives were primed and idling. Exterior cameras showed the Wilful drifting in a region of fantastically colored dust and gas plumes. As the little ship’s passive sensors woke one by one, they revealed distant shoals of wreckage, multiple radiation sources, shattered ships, and the far-off wink of distress beacons. His hand lingered over a set of controls which would initiate an active scan, but then he passed on, unfolding up a comm channel to the medical closet.
“We’ve come to the right place,” Hadeishi said, when De Molay’s face appeared. “Hachiman has passed this way with scythe and spear. I’m picking up both Khaid and Imperial transmissions, so the outcome is still in doubt.”
The Wilful crept forward through the murk, emissions signature as low as Mitsuharu could manage with his rough understanding of the freighter’s capabilities.
Land of the Dead ittotss-3 Page 19
