Land of the Dead ittotss-3

by Thomas Harlan

  “Hostile is less than a light-second away,” Tocoztic breathed, sounding anguished. “She’s accelerating. We’re getting side scatter from an active scanning array-”

  “There!” The old woman sighed in relief. “Memory still holds true!”

  At the same moment, the Wilful ’s engines died and the lights dimmed markedly. The constant vibration of the reactor drew down, and then entirely faded away. Hadeishi watched with intense interest as each on-board system shut down in swift succession. On his console, the myriad v-panes and controls faded away-the threatwell went dark-and the environmental monitors indicated that every compartment had dialed down air circulation and scrubber activity to the absolute minimum. The only activity registered on the shipskin, which was assuming a new aspect-one that Mitsuharu had never seen before. Part of the forward hull was visible in the camera display, which was still active, and there he saw that the hull had deformed into a strange, “fuzzy” configuration, the surface extruding millions of what appeared in close-up to be tiny matte-black cilia.

  Truly we have turned into a creature of the abyss!

  He gave De Molay a curious glance. “We’re in an absorptive mode?” he asked quietly.

  “We are,” she replied with the hint of a smile. Hadeishi hid his reaction, suddenly mindful of Tocoztic and the other Fleet ratings who might be listening down deck. There’s no heat sump on this ship capable of absorbing the impact radiation on the skin. Nothing big enough to swallow our own emissions, not for more than a few seconds. So-what lies behind those closed-off compartments on the Engineering deck? Something to hide us completely?

  The thought gave him a chill down the back of his neck.

  “Here it comes,” the Thai-i breathed, “we’ll have visual in-”

  The Khaid destroyer emerged from a screen of stellar dust, black bulk dwarfing the Wilful, flanks etched with the landing lights outlining her boat-bay doors. On the camera display, Mitsuharu could make out rows of launcher hard-points, the shallow pits of particle beam emitters and point-defense guns. The hypercoil ring to aft and the maneuver drives were arranged in an unfamiliar pattern, but close up the Nisei could guess at her manufacturer. A refitted Megair Vampyre -class light cruiser. Interesting-the Khaid Zosen must have bought her as a hulk and replaced all of the internal systems-the Khaiden body form doesn’t fit very well to the arthropod. Those drives look new, too.

  Regardless of her provenance, the destroyer sailed on past, showing every sign of being unaware of their presence. Tocoztic stared at his console, stylus busily tapping away. He checked and double-checked the paltry stream of data available. “Their active scan is pinging right over us!” he whispered loudly.

  Suddenly Hadeishi had to suppress a full-on grin; not a proper hint of a smile or a careful mask of command, but a fierce, predatory snarl.

  The Khaid rolled on past, and the Wilful shuddered a little as the wash of radiation from her engines pelted the shipskin. Mitsuharu, properly somber again, paid close attention to the status displays from the hull configuration. What excellent engineering, he thought. The emission wave from the enemy radar failed to spike our surface temperature. The drive wake has been absorbed as well. But… how could shipskin cool to relative zero so fast?

  The Nisei sat back, nearly overcome with wonder. Then he noticed that the subsonic vibration of the reactor interface had soared up, almost to an audible level. He looked to De Molay in concern, but the old woman just shook her head minutely. Her gray eyes rested steadily on him. For the first time in a long time, Mitsuharu felt nervous, jumpy. A tramp freighter, eh? I am six kinds of a fool.

  Tocoztic squirmed in his chair, looking around curiously at the walls. “What’s that weird vibration?”

  “Engine phase-transition, Thai-i. Every ship has its own quirks and noises,” Hadeishi replied with deliberate calm as he reviewed his console again. Power output is up 300 percent. But-we’re not leaking heat, the internal temperature is actually cooling… The reason was obvious, but Mitsuharu was having a hard time believing the data before him. Every engineer in the Empire would fall on his sword to bring this secret home. Someone has developed an effective thermodynamic shunt. And it’s working and it’s on this ship, on my ship.

  “ Thai-i Tocoztic, eyes on your console, mind on the mission.” Hadeishi’s voice was sharp, ringing with hidden elation. The tone gained the younger officer’s complete attention. “Pilot De Molay, plot a course for the next surviving evac capsule. We still have work to do, even if the Khaid are careless and blind. The next patrol ship may be more attentive.”

  “ Hai, Chu-sa! ”

  Hadeishi felt something tight in his chest release at the long-familiar words: Ah, now my heart is beating again!

  The Naniwa

  The last of the officers and ratings who’d ridden through the Pinhole had crawled off to their bunks by the time Thai-i Goroemon managed to reach Command. Kosho was still in her shockchair, reviewing the telemetry captured by shipnet during their passage, looking for somewhere to hide her battered ship.

  “ Chu-sa? Holloway- tzin said you needed me to stand officer of the watch?”

  “I do, Thai-i. I am very glad you survived. Can you handle another eight hours awake?”

  Goro shrugged, broad shoulders stretching the gel of her z-suit. “Hard to sleep with all the racket, kyo -but we didn’t get hit too hard down in the Backbone. Two magazine conveyors went down due to jams, but nothing punched past into the inner hull where we were.”

  The lieutenant rarely stood a Command watch, though she was technically fifth on the roster. Her usual duty station was in the munitions roundhouse controlling the network of high-speed magnetic railways threading between the primary and secondary hulls of the battle-cruiser. The Naniwa ’s main magazines were spaced along the shipcore itself, as far from hostile fire as possible, while a network of secondary-or “ready”-depots served each hard-point, launch-rail, or gun-pit. Managing the Backbone ammunition network was third in complexity among the ship’s systems, behind the engines and shipskin.

  “How soon will we be reloaded?” Susan asked, frustrated with herself that she hadn’t already checked in with logistics.

  “Another hour, kyo, and we’ll have all the conveyors back in operation,” Goro replied. “ Kikan-cho Hennig’s men have both of the jammed ones torn apart right now. He said there’s some fabrication problem with the pass-along sensors, so they’re getting pulled, hand-tested, and replaced as needed.”

  “Better than I expected.” Kosho was pleased. For a ship so fresh from the yards, the Naniwa had experienced very few outright component failures. “What I need you to do, Thai-i, is-”

  She turned to the navigational plot shipnet had pieced together from data recorded during their passage. Oddly, the changes made to the navigational interfaces-and to the threatwell and other Command systems-when Anderssen had taken them over, had all reverted to their Fleet-standard configurations. Even the massive rush of topology information which had allowed Susan to navigate through the Pinhole had purged itself. Only second-by-second Command camera images of the threatwell remained, but from them shipnet had reverse-engineered a model of their exit point and the surrounding area.

  “-find us a place to lie up while all immediate repairs are completed. We’ve moved into a peculiar area of space-one without charts, and which may obey different physical laws than we’re used to-so I don’t want to rush about until we’ve laid down a tight nav plot. But here”-Kosho indicated a convoluted set of folds in the nearest dust clouds-“is a region free of the Barrier threads, and excited and dense enough we may be masked from passive sensors if someone comes along, banging on the temple-wall with a stick. Drop a remote to watch the Pinhole for us, and then move the Naniwa in there and go to zero-v. The engines need maintenance as well-we’ve taken enough dings, dents, and outright punctures to warrant a thorough inspection.”

  “ Hai, kyo.” Goro covered a yawn with her salute and settled herself gingerly in the com
mand chair.

  Susan looked around the bridge one last time, saw that Anderssen had already been taken away, nodded to herself, and strode off to find her own cabin.

  ***

  A monofilament saw shrieked, cutting away at the airlock on a badly battered evac capsule. Two burly engineers, their combat armor awash in a flood of sparks, were sawing away the last of the hinges holding the hatch closed. The portal itself was badly scarred and had been slightly twisted in the framing socket by some massive impact. The evac capsule had fared no better-carbon-scoring had turned nearly the entire surface black and the view ports were milky with tiny fissures. Another crew of engineers were dragging away a couple hundred meters of high-v cargo netting-the net Thai-i Holloway had arranged to snatch up the capsule at speed, while the Naniwa barreled past in the Pinhole-though its landing in boat-bay one had been… rougher… than the navigator intended.

  “Clear!” barked the Joto-Heiso bossing the team of engineers. He stepped back, swinging the saw up onto his shoulder. Hot hexacarbon fragments littered the deck, filling the air of the cargo bay with thick spirals of smoke. “Get ’er open.”

  The hatch squealed as pry bars dug in around the periphery, then popped free with a ting! Four of the Joto-hei on hand seized hold with magnetic grapples and wrestled the enormously heavy block of battle-steel, hexacarbon, and glassite onto a waiting grav-sled. As soon as the portal was removed, there was movement inside the capsule and two battered-looking Jaguar Knights emerged, shipguns at the ready. The Joto-Heiso stood his ground, unsuccessfully hiding a sneer behind a thick walruslike mustache. “Muddies,” he muttered under his breath to the engineers standing behind him.

  “Xochitl- tecuhtzintli, welcome.” Heisocho Von Bayern was waiting for the next man to emerge. Prince Xochitl stamped out, his armor streaked with vomit and stippled with fresh dents. The Mexica lord’s face-his helmet was now canted back-was glacial with fury, his dark eyes flashing dangerously. One of his high, chiseled cheekbones had acquired a dark, purpling bruise. The Diplomatic Service warrant officer bowed appropriately, and then saluted sharply. “ Gensui on deck,” he barked.

  A dozen meters back, Socho Juarez and the full remaining complement of marines aboard the battle-cruiser stamped their right feet in unison, presented arms-they’d scrambled to unpack their Macana assault rifles-and then held rigid while the cruiser’s piper wailed through the Imperial March.

  Xochitl stared at the welcoming committee, his expression congealing into something very much like icy mud. Nothing about the reception was in the least irregular, though rousting out a piper for the March was generally falling from fashion. Von Bayern offered the Prince a gracious smile, hands clasped behind his back, until the drone of the bagpipes had ceased.

  “My lord, I hope you will accept our apologies for detaining you and your crew within your evac capsule during transit. Your physical safety is of tremendous concern to Chu-sa Kosho. And… here are the medics.”

  A pair of corpsmen had arrived with orderlies and stretchers. They immediately climbed in through the mangled airlock to help out the men still inside the capsule. The first to emerge was the hulking, seven-foot-high shape of the alien, in its unfamiliar armor. The marines and engineers stiffened, hands going to personal weapons. The creature looked around; head tilted back a little, and then saw the Prince. Xochitl looked back to the warrant officer.

  “Take me to the Chu-sa immediately. Quarters for my men can wait. I will not. This one”-he pointed to Sahane-“send to whatever cabin is reserved for me. I will take something else, anything else.”

  Von Bayern nodded amiably, apparently unaffected by the fury radiating from the Prince like a furnace draft. “Of course, my lord Prince, our transport is standing by.” He gestured to a nearby grav-sled-a regular cargo carrier which had a pair of bench-seats bolted on and draped with fabric in colors approximating the Imperial eagle crest. Xochitl shook his head, now beyond words, and climbed aboard.

  As the grav-sled whined away, one of the corpsmen helped Helsdon out of the capsule, supporting his shoulder. The engineer looked ghastly, but was able to keep his head up as they loaded him onto a stretcher. The Joto-Heiso from the work crew was waiting with a flask, along with Juarez and four of the marines.

  “Welcome aboard, kyo. The Chu-sa says you’re straight to a spare cabin and twenty, thirty hours of sleep.” The engineer flashed a broken-toothed smile behind his white mustache, pressing the flask into Malcolm’s hands. “Here, this’ll set you right. She sent it down. A twenty-year malt uisge-beatha -like velvet!”

  Helsdon laid his head back on a pillow, puzzlement pushing aside his exhaustion for a moment. “Who-who sent this?”

  “ Chu-sa Susan Kosho, Engineer.” Juarez patted him gently on the shoulder, and then motioned for the marines to escort him away. “Welcome aboard the Naniwa. The captain apologizes for keeping you in the can so long, but there wasn’t time to peel you out properly until now.”

  ***

  All Gretchen could see was corridor roof, gleaming with overheads, and occasionally the superstructure of a hatchway as the grav-stretcher zipped along. A corpsman was jogging along beside her, though she could hear his voice only intermittently. Her left arm was throbbing with tremendous pain hidden behind a wall of meds, and now the rest of her had seemingly converted into an enormous ache. At least the bees are gone, she thought blearily. Her skin had settled down, which was a mercy. Whatever had happened when her hands had been on the corroded bronze block seemed to have faded, leaving only a faint golden tinge at the edges of her vision.

  The stretcher whisked through a double-wide hatchway, and she was suddenly enveloped by the smell of antiseptics, blood, and urine. A face appeared above her-a junior medical officer, his lean visage spotted with crimson, his eyes hollow with sixteen hours on watch. Despite his appearance, however, he flashed a cheerful smile and palpated her arm. His touch made everything whirl around her like a sudden tchindi and someone, somewhere, groaned aloud in terrible pain.

  “This temporary block is shot,” a voice said. “Load her up and knock her out. Back to room eight for her, with the old-”

  There wasn’t even a needle-prick, just sudden sleepiness and then… nothing at all.

  ***

  The orderly guided the stretcher into the second base station in the assigned room, confirmed the med-interlocks were set and showing green on their little status panel, then covered Anderssen with a blanket and adjusted the pillow under her head. Given the possibility that the g-decking might fail if combat resumed, he strapped her down and lowered a protective glassite shroud from the ceiling. Then, given he was in the room, the medic raised a similar covering over the old Nahuatl man in the next bed and tested his retinal responsiveness with a hand-light.

  “Nothing,” muttered the orderly, shaking his head in dismay. “Facial pallor, weak and thready breath, heart arrhythmia… grandfather is in poor condition.” He charted the necessary notes with his stylus, then turned out the lights and closed the door behind him.

  Once the room was dark and empty, however, Green Hummingbird let out a long, slow breath, and then wiggled his fingers and toes. After a moment to let his body stabilize, the old man turned his head sideways, looking at Gretchen’s supine form in the next bed. His forehead creased with worry, wrinkles drawing up at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Deftly, he worked an arm free of the restraints, and then raised the shroud himself. The monitoring panel on the stretcher beeped questioningly, to which the nauallis responded by keying an override into the machine.

  With his bed showing nothing but green status lights, Hummingbird padded to Anderssen’s shroud, raised the cover, and then drifted his right hand over her face, forehead, shoulders, and then down the length of her body. He was careful not to touch her skin or the fabric of her shirt or trousers. Instead, eyes half-lidded, he seemed to be feeling for something perceptible only a centimeter or less from her body.

  “Hsss… that was near too much for you, chi
ld.” He frowned, green eyes dark with worry. His gnarled old hands had paused over her wrists, where there was a sensation of terrific heat. So, too, at her clavicles and the right side of her face. This was apparently unexpected, for Hummingbird drifted his hands away from each location and then back again several times.

  Still frowning, his lips tight with concern, the nauallis opened the stowage bin under the stretcher and drew out the parchment envelope holding the bronze-colored block from Gretchen’s jacket. Curious, he examined the device carefully-but could see no signs of change or transformation in the corroded metal. Shaking his head, he put everything back where he’d found it, closed Anderssen’s shroud, and then crawled back into his own bed. This time, before strapping himself down and closing the glassite cover, he made sure both earbugs were inserted and responding, then yawned mightily-activating his dropwire-and pressed a fingertip into the cavities beneath either side of his jaw, turning on his throatmike.

  Immediately, his earbugs filled with interesting chatter. As he lay motionless, his heart slowing, diagrams and images began to play out on the inside of his eyelids. One of his search dorei active in the v-network stitched through the fabric of the battle-cruiser was waiting with a video feed-complete with sound. Prince Xochitl had been shown into Chu-sa Kosho’s private quarters.

  ***

  The Mexica lord stared around obstinately at the subdued colors and simple, even spartan furniture that Susan maintained in her suite of rooms. Kosho was sitting at her desk, the collar of her uniform undone and her jacket hung on the back of a chair which swiveled out from the wall. She seemed entirely unimpressed by his battered appearance and lank hair. He, in turn, could not help but see the Chu-sa was worn almost to the point of exhaustion. And that, somehow, she had aged during the past ten years, becoming a formidable-looking woman with more than a passing resemblance to her maternal grandmother.