The chu-sa started to frown. "How extensively will sensor systems be degraded by this change?"
Smith swallowed nervously and looked hopefully at Koshō. The corner of the exec's wine-colored lips twitched. Hadeishi recognized the motion as the equivalent of a wry smile.
"While the array is in this mode, Chu-sa, we will be blind to gravitational events outside the immediate area of our detection sweep."
"So a ship could make gradient into, or out of, the system and we would be unaware."
Koshō inclined her head gracefully. "Yes. But inside the five to six light-minute range, we will have an excellent picture of the g-field and any related events."
"How long to switch the array between normal operation and this special mode?"
Smith shrank down in his chair, but Koshō merely gazed readily at the chu-sa. "Five to six hours for the initial changeover, Hadeishi-tzin. Each skin array node will have to be reprogrammed and tuned by hand. We will, however, retain a comp image of the previous configuration for each node. Then, if we have to reset the nodes, we can do so very quickly." Hadeishi gave her a look. He'd gone through more than one shipboard comp upgrade in his time. "Very quickly" meant one thing during normal operations and quite another in the heat of combat. He had a momentary vision of plunging into battle with the shipskin sensor array out of action. That would be unfortunate.
"Hayes-tzin, what do you think of this approach?"
The weapons officer's broad face was conflicted. "I'm worried, sir. If we take the g-array offline we'll be partially blind. I don't like that. On the other hand, we'll be able to search the belt far faster than we can now with the drones. And this way will be really, really quiet."
"What if we segment the shipskin nodes and only reconfigure half of them for this detailed search?" Hadeishi mused. "Leaving the other set for normal sensor work?"
The suggestion drew a slight frown from Koshō and hopeful looks from Hayes and Smith.
"Initial setup will be more complicated," the exec said. "We will have to divide the sensor feeds to the bridge into two discrete sets, which will require some work. The regular array will be reduced in capability, but we will not lose long-range g-spike detection."
"Combat effectiveness, Hayes-tzin?" Hadeishi raised an eyebrow at the weapons officer.
"Reduced, sir. Though truthfully there's a great deal of redundancy in the sensor array. We could probably lose half of the nodes and only be reduced ten to fifteen percent."
"Very well. Sho-sa Koshō, I entrust this project to you—with the able assistance of Smith-tzin, of course—and expect regular status reports. This has priority over other duties. Thai-i Hayes, pull in the Outriders for refueling and a maintenance check Yoyontzin—" the engineer-second started with surprise and tentatively peered around the slim, stiff shape of the exec. "Master's Mate Helsdon and his section are reassigned to provide Koshō-tzin with the hands she needs to change out the sensor array. You will take charge of the Outrider refit when the drones are back in bay."
The engineer-second looked a little queasy. Hadeishi's eyes narrowed fractionally. I'll have to discuss this one with Isoroku when he's back aboard. But not now.
Hadeishi gave them all a stern look, saying "The Emperor expects you to do your duty!"
Then he stood up, forcing them to do the same. "Dismissed."
Koshō did not join the general stampede for the door, taking a moment to straighten her already perfectly arranged v-pad and notes on the table in front of her.
Hadeishi waited for the passageway door to close before he spoke. "Yes, Susan? Is something bothering you?"
"Will you be holding more of these meetings in the future?" The woman's face showed even less expression than usual. "Will you be soliciting comment and advice from junior officers?"
"If circumstances warrant," Hadeishi replied, wondering at her choice of words. They had a familiar ring to them... .Ah yes, he remembered, recalling an Academy first-year course, circumstances of sedition and mutiny aboard ship. "We will not," he continued, "be discussing opinions of command authority competence or operational concerns."
"I am very glad to hear that, Chu-sa." Koshō seemed to relax a fraction, though it was very difficult to tell. "Did you know Smith-tzin and I had been working on this g-array reconfig?"
Hadeishi nodded. "I did. Main comp informed me when the sho-i ko-hosei requested data about systems outside of his security area. I saw you had approved the request."
"You said nothing."
"There was no reason to say anything, Sho-sa. Both of you ire fine officers and understood the problem at hand. I saw no benefit to be gained from interfering in your work."
Now Koshō did relax and Hadeishi felt a sudden warm affection for her. She worries about the boy, he thought. "You did well to encourage him, Susan. He's very bright."
"Hai," she said, making a properly polite bow. "But he does not understand Fleet tradition."
"I know. He's still young and he's only served aboard the Cornuelle." Hadeishi sighed, stroking his beard. "I fear he will not do so well if transferred to another ship. We will have to help him if something like that happens."
As a general rule, Fleet did not like to shift crews around from ship to ship. The Great Clans, in particular, resisted attempts to reform the recruitment and staffing policies of Fleet. However, as men and women advanced in rank, they were often required to change posting to secure the proper duty slot. Within a clan-squadron, a junior officer would be taken care of by higher-ranking relatives. In such a case, Smith would be posted to a heavier-gauge ship—a battle cruiser or a dreadnought—where he could find clan-relatives to guide and protect him in the new environment.
The Cornuelle, unfortunately, was on detached duty—another result of Hadeishi's low status in Fleet—and if Smith were promoted as he should be, then a posting to an entirely different squadron would be inevitable. Circumstances weighed against the bright young Englishman finding as understanding and lenient a commander as Hadeishi.
"We could keep him here, Chu-sa," Koshō offered.
Hadeishi shrugged. "We've a full allotment of junior lieutenants, unless someone dies or requests a transfer off-ship."
"What about Yoyontzin?"
Hadeishi's lips quirked into a half-smile. He looked sideways at Koshō. "You think he will suffer an accident in the coming action? A regrettable incident with a shorting panel or falling structural beam?"
Koshō drew herself up stiffly. "Of course not! I suspect he may request a transfer when this duty patrol is complete."
"Well," Hadeishi said, giving her a considering look. "I would certainly give such a request my full attention."
The exec nodded, gathered up her v-pad and notes and bowed.
"Dismissed." Hadeishi watched her stride out. Poor Yoyontzin, he thought in amusement. Caught between Koshō and Isoroku... like a bug between granite and steel.
SOUTHEAST OF MONS PRION
Two Midges flew south, southeast—tiny silver specks against the dark immensity of the Escarpment. Sharp peaks towered thousands of meters above them, a sheer wall of basalt with sandstone feet. Deep canyons split the face of the range, spewing out kilometers of rubble to be swallowed by enormous dunes below. Gretchen fought to keep her eyes from straying to the horizon. When they did, her stomach twisted with a start of fear. The horizon tilted at a strange angle, one entirely at odds with her inner ear and the sensors on the Gagarin.
The mass of the mountain range to her right was so great that "down" had shifted, swinging off to an angle pointing at the base of the Escarpment. Hummingbird was suffering from the same problem—every so often his Midge would twitch over as he tried to correct an unexpected, unfelt bank.
Progress had been slow all day, but the navigation v-pane on Gretchen's console now showed they were very close to slot canyon number twelve. Russovsky's logbook had a note indicating the geologist had set down inside the canyon, where there was a sheltering cave. A second entry reported discover
ing a "cylinder."
Anderssen scowled at the tiny shape of the nauallis's ultralight. The Méxica had remained silent all day despite her attempts to engage him in conversation. Hundreds of kilometers had rolled away under them as they flew past jagged peaks, steeply plunging canyons and endless bony ridges. Gretchen felt oppressed by the lack of human contact, but she'd held her tongue for the last six hours. In that time she'd thought a great deal about what the old crow had claimed in the cave. While Gretchen didn't doubt something had happened and had no doubt the nauallis held closely guarded secrets, she thought his out-of-hand dismissal of human-built technology was dangerously self-centered.
How could we survive down here? She grumbled to herself, without spacecraft and ultralights and pressure masks and z-suits? Millions of tools—an entire civilization—specialists by the planetfull... all of which were sustained, informed and generated by human science and technology.
Is he jealous? she wondered. The tlamatinime must be descendants of the priestly caste of ancient Azteca. Curiosity stirred an eager head and she wondered just what kind of secret history—what hidden, almost-forgotten tales—had been handed down from priest to priest over the fifteen hundred years since the first Nisei merchant landed on the coast of Matlalzinca with a shipload of iron ingots, steel sword blanks and huge, long-legged riding "hornless deer." A tale worth knowing, Gretchen thought, biting her lip. So much of the public record was lost in the Second Blow. .. .
Despite an angry desire to shout at the thick-headed old man over the comm, Anderssen restrained herself. We'll have to land eventually, she thought grimly. Countless questions had come to mind since their last conversation on the slopes of Prion. And then I'll sit on him if I have—
"Hummingbird, look out!" Gretchen's voice rang thin and shrill in the cabin of the Gagarin.
The nauallis's Midge had suddenly jerked sideways, toward the looming wall of the Escarpment. What at first seemed to be a black crevice in the mountainside was now visible as a huge canyon. Hummingbird's ultralight was sweeping toward the opening at tremendous speed. Gretchen immediately hauled right on the control stick and Gagarin swung round with gratifying speed. She stared out of the port side of the aircraft, searching for a telltale—There!
Far below, the sand was in constant motion, gusting thin streamers of reddish dust toward the face of the Escarpment. The dunes made sort of a nozzle where speeding clouds of grit rolled across the valley floor. Anderssen cursed, realizing they had come unawares upon the mouth of the canyon.
Static jammed the comm band and Hummingbird's Midge had disappeared from view. Gretchen stabbed a gloved finger at the control panel and the nav pane appeared. Keeping one eye on the controls and the other on the looming wall of basalt ahead, Gretchen saw the other ultralight had gone down near the mouth of the canyon. Winking amber lights indicated some kind of damage. Gritting her teeth, Andersen let the Gagarin spin into a precipitous spiral.
The little aircraft swept down out of the sky, skimming across the tops of the dunes. Sand and grit rattled against the windows and Gretchen angled away from the funnel-path centered on the entrance to the canyon. Her sensors now showed nearly a two hundred-k wind rushing into the slot. The nauallis had flown right into an invisible wall of air.
"Hummingbird, can you hear me?" Gretchen powered up the comm and began broadcasting on multiple channels. Maybe microwave will work. "It's Anderssen, I'm coming in to get you."
The Gagarin sideslipped low across the valley floor, droning up and down over dune after dune. The wall of the Escarpment rose to blot out the sky. Gretchen flew into shadow and the wind grew massively worse. The Gagarin shuddered in the twisting crosscurrents, wings rippling and flexing. The invisible river kept trying to suck her into the canyon mouth.
Waves of red and tan sand ended abruptly in a glassy, polished wall of black and gray stone. Gretchen pulled up, her stomach doing loop-de-loops, and circled. Peering out of the side door, she caught sight of a glittering rainbow flash very near the canyon entrance. Swallowing, mouth dry with fear, Anderssen rolled the stick right and Gagarin heeled over as gently as a turning shrike.
"Careful," she muttered, keeping an eye on the radar display. The entrance to the canyon flickered on the panel and the kilometers between her and the deadly opening spiraled down quickly. A kilometer short, she turned again, away from the cliffs of the Escarpment and touched down on the side of a sloping dune. Gagarin slid to a halt on a thirty-degree slope, though Gretchen's stomach told her the rippled sand was as level as a kitchen floor.
Engines growling, Gretchen retracted the wings and disengaged the brakes. Bouncing over the slope, sand spurting away from the wheels, she drove the aircraft up over the crest of the ridge. Three more dune ridges separated her from Hummingbird, but Anderssen took her time, letting the ultralight jounce along, all three fat wheels shimmying in the heavy sand.
The other Midge came into view, canted sideways, one wing crumpled into hard-packed gravel. Hummingbird rose as Gagarin approached, djellaba snapping around his legs. He waved. Gretchen waved back and let the ultralight putt-putt to a stop.
"Are you all right?" Local comm was awash with warbling static and queer shrieking echoes.
The nauallis nodded, tapping his earpiece, and began trudging across the sand toward her. Wind hissed past the door and whined across Gagarin's wings. A constant rattle of grit pattered against the canopy. Gretchen pulled a heavy lever set into the floor and felt a sharp thump-thump as the sand anchors fired into the dune.
"... hear me?" Hummingbird's voice cut across the interference. "Anderssen?"
"I hear you." Gretchen swung the door open, feeling a buffet from the gusting wind. Her right hand was already dragging a tool belt out from under the seat. "How bad is the damage?"
"Manageable. Perhaps." Hummingbird ducked under the wing, his head tightly wrapped in the folds of his kaffiyeh. Even at such short range his voice was distorted by the comm cutting in and out. "Both pumps switched over, so not much H2 was lost, but the wing and landing gear are badly damaged."
Gretchen gave him a grim look, shook her head and began making her way in the heavy wind toward the damaged ultralight. Hummingbird stared after her, then followed, head bent against the blowing sand. Though she couldn't see his face, the old Méxica looked worried.
"Push!" Anderssen growled, putting her shoulder against the bent wing. Hummingbird was right by her side and together, straining and grunting with effort, they managed to free the honeycombed length of composite and hexsteel from the clinging sand. The entire Midge tipped over, rocking back on the port and forward wheels. Wind gusted, threatening to tear the aircraft from their grasp. Gretchen peered under the wing and her face screwed up into a grimace. The starboard landing gear was twisted into something very much like a pretzel. She looked sideways at Hummingbird. "Can you hold this weight?"
He nodded, legs braced in the sand, broad shoulders against the underside of the wing.
Anderssen scrambled around under the tail and threw open the cargo door. Two heavy canvas duffels were squeezed inside. She grabbed both by their straps and hauled them out. Slinging one over her shoulder, Gretchen staggered along the length of the unbroken wing, the second duffel in her arms. Wheezing with effort, she dumped the heavy bag on the ground beneath the wingtip and shrugged the other into her hands. A recessed hook for a ground anchor flipped down from the underside of the airfoil, giving her enough purchase to hang the duffel. The entire Midge shivered and Gretchen heard Hummingbird cough in surprise as weight lifted from his shoulders.
A moment later, the second duffel was adding its weight to the counterbalance and Gretchen could nip around to starboard again. The Midge creaked into precarious balance on the two good wheels. Hummingbird was holding the wingtip steady with both hands, a questioning look on his face.
"Keep hold," Gretchen said as she dug into her tools. She found a powered wrench, tested the tool—which responded with a high-pitched burring sound—and smiled
. "Just for another thirty minutes or so."
Night came on suddenly in the shadow of the Escarpment. One moment Gretchen was working in a diffuse blue dimness, the next everything had plunged into complete darkness. She stopped, a welder sparking blue-white in her hand, and looked up. Hummingbird had found a cave, a deep overhang a kilometer and a half from the mouth of the slot, where they'd dragged the Midges and their gear. Some shelter from the gusting wind was better than nothing.
"I need some light," Gretchen said into the gloom. There was a click on the comm circuit and the bright white glare of a camp lantern set on high flared around her. "Too bright... thanks."
The circle of illumination dimmed to a reasonable level. Hummingbird's feet appeared out of shadow, boots crunching on scattered, shalelike debris covering the floor of the overhang. The nauallis squatted, watching her work.
Gretchen had laid out an old blanket covered with the bits and pieces of the broken landing gear on top of one of the hextile pads. The main strut had snapped clean off when Hummingbird's Midge corkscrewed into the dunes, and the rest had been badly twisted by the impact. Gretchen was straightening each section of hexsteel with a set of wrenches and a jimmied-up guide. The little welder was on its last legs, but had lasted long enough to get most of the sections patched back together.
"You've done this before," Hummingbird said, fingers intertwined between his knees.
"All the time." Gretchen adjusted her goggles and flicked the welder to life. The burning white point hissed and spat, but there was very little smoke in such an anemic atmosphere. "Mechanical things are born to break in the field—no matter how new they are. Mostly the Company sends me places where there's no support—no handy machine shops, no supply dumps, no warranty service."
She grinned, thinking of the dig water filtration tower on Ugarit. Eighty-six light-years was a long way for a Poseidon SureClean Filtration Systems tech to travel to replace gunked filters or a bacteria separation unit which had failed to separate the more vigorous organisms living in the brown flood of the Hagit River. "You have to be handy with fixing things if you want to survive."
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