The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3)

by Catherine Asaro

  No. You need to finish healing or it could do permanent damage.

  I grimaced with frustration. Almost nothing worked tonight. After Talon went back inside the ship, Daan and Bessel resumed their search along the ruins.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Jak said. “They aren’t even using their gauntlet sensors.”

  I told him about the spy dust. “I’ll bet it’s screwing up their tech-mech, too.”

  “That’s a pretty crappy defense, if it also works on them.”

  “Indeed,” Max said. “They should have coded it for neural recognition.”

  “You mean tell it how to distinguish friends from foes?” I asked.

  “Essentially,” Max said. “It should recognize their brain waves.”

  “We need to get Ruzik and Angel out of there.” Jak rested the mount of his coilgun on his shoulder. The readout on his weapon glowed dimly, just enough to show its full charge. Whatever had gummed up our tech-mech hadn’t yet penetrated the gun’s shielding.

  “Jak, no lethal force.” I said. “You kill anyone here, it’s murder, plain and simple.”

  “Not them.” He motioned toward the desert south of the ships. “I can make a distraction.”

  “Ah. Smart idea.”

  Jak sighted on the dunes and fired, his shoulder mount absorbing most of the recoil. Although the gun produced no flash or smoke, the explosive projectiles went at supersonic speed, with a great cracking sound. When they hit the desert, the dune exploded in a geyser of sand.

  Bessel and Daan spun around, staring to the south. “What the fuck?” Daan yelled.

  “For gods’ sake,” Jak muttered. “He’s as bad at sneaking around as he is at playing poker.”

  Bessel grabbed Daan and they sprinted toward the third ship. As Talon opened the hatch, Bessel pushed Daan inside and followed him. Talon fired her automatic rifle, hammering the desert where Jak’s shot had landed. Jak and I took off in the opposite direction, to the north, running in a crouch behind the dunes. Talon fired again, this time closer to where we’d been a moment ago. With a grunt, Jak skidded to a stop and fired to the south, sending up clouds of sand and filling the night air with grit. Yah, good. I hoped it played havoc with their spy dust.

  Talon returned fire, aiming to the south. When she stopped to reload, Bessel stepped out and took over with another gun. Jak and I sprinted in the other direction.

  “Where go?” Jak asked.

  “First ship.” Given how Bessel and Daan had focused on that one, Angel and the lieutenant were probably trapped inside.

  “Take too long to go around,” he said.

  “Not if I cut across the open ground.” Talon, Bessel, and Daan were all in the third ship, which I hoped meant they couldn’t detect me, given the problems with our tech-mech. I climbed over the dune and slid down the other side. Sprinting across the open area, I kept the bulk of the second ship between me and the third ship. Talon and Bessel had stopped shooting. I suspected they fired more to prevent combatants from approaching than because they expected to hit anyone in the dark.

  I reached the hatchway of the first starship and tapped on its panel. Of course the damn thing wouldn’t open. I couldn’t bang against the hull or yell for Angel, not without alerting Talon.

  Jak came up beside me. “Need combo code.”

  “Yah.” I tried the combinations Max had recorded from the lieutenant, but none worked.

  “Come on,” I muttered. “Open!”

  “Maybe it needs brain waves,” Jak said.

  “I don’t have time for weird go-to-sleep shit.” Someone fired a burst of shots from the other side of the ships, moving in our direction. “Can you distract them again?”

  “Yah.” Jak faded into the dark.

  If Angel and the lieutenant are in there, Max thought, the lieutenant must have entered the combination that opens the hatch. Maybe the hull remembers it.

  Of course this panel knows. I tried another combo, with no success. Unfortunately, I don’t.

  I don’t mean the panel. I mean the hull itself, or at least the sand-weaver web on it.

  What? More shots came from the south, Jak’s coilgun it sounded like.

  I’ve been trying to figure out why the army cleans the webs off these ships.

  They corrode the hull.

  They covered these ruins for thousands of years and the hulls survived just fine.

  Are you saying the webs remember stuff? I don’t see how.

  They sense movement. That’s how the sand-weaver knows it caught dinner. The web also remembers patterns that lured in its prey. If anything walks on the web, it learns the motions that resulted in that success and recreates the patterns to tempt in more prey.

  You think it remembers the code taps? No wonder the army was always cleaning the hulls.

  I don’t see why not. The taps are small, like the motions of their prey.

  So how do I get the web to give me the code?

  I’m afraid I have no idea.

  I ran my palm over the sand-weaver mesh. All right, sneaky web, I’m an unsuspecting prey. Entice me into your trap. I tapped a code against the web. Nothing happened, except I heard more gunshots to the south. Moving fast, I tried other codes, with no success.

  Tap harder, Max suggested.

  I used more force. Still no luck. Frustrated, I did the same code again and again—

  The web began to pulse, just slightly. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been so attuned to the feel of it under my fingers. It was giving me back a code, not the one I’d just tapped, but a similar pattern. I memorized the sequence and tapped it into the access panel.

  Nothing. Someone fired a burst of shots, this time even closer. Another few moments and they would reach this side of the ship. I tried again—and the hatchway irised open.

  Ho! Finally something had worked. I edged my way inside, keeping my revolver drawn. I couldn’t see squat. Max, what happened to my IR filters? Turn them back on.

  They don’t work, he thought. The dust— His thought cut off.

  Max?

  I spoke in a low voice. “Angel? Lieutenant? It’s Bhaaj.”

  “About time,” Angel growled in the darkness.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  Two figures stepped forward, into the starlight pouring through the open hatchway.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Yah, fine,” Angel said.

  “Someone locked us in here,” the lieutenant said. “My gauntlets don’t work.”

  “You hear those people firing?” I said. “They’ve got some dust that screws up tech.” I edged to the hatchway, scanning the area outside while I kept the lieutenant in my side vision. Somewhere to the south, more bullets hammered the night. I didn’t know how much ammo Talon and Bessel carried, but Jak was probably almost out of his.

  We stepped outside and moved along the northern edge of the ships. “How many hostiles are out there?” the lieutenant asked.

  “At least three,” I said. “Maybe more. They were trying to open the hatch on your ship when we distracted them.”

  Angel stepped past me, her knife drawn. “Enough of this.” She sounded pissed.

  “We need to get back to the city.” Max, I thought. Can you contact the red beetle?

  No answer.

  “Max?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “It’s the conduits from your gauntlet to your wrist socket that aren’t working. That’s why you can’t access the neural functions of our link.”

  It sounded like pretty soon my gauntlets wouldn’t work at all. “Can you reach the red beetle we sent out into the desert passages?”

  “No luck.”

  “And Ruzik?” Angel asked.

  “Third ship,” I said.

  “We get him,” Angel said. “Finish off these slicks.”

  “Armed with what?” the lieutenant asked. “Your knife? Against automatic rifles?” Apparently she understood at least some of the U
ndercity dialect.

  Angel didn’t answer, but her gaze glinted and so did her dagger. The lieutenant had the sense not to push it. The gunfire was more sporadic now. Talon didn’t seem to know our location, which meant the dust hadn’t warned her. If this was technology created by the High Mesh, their R&D department needed an overhaul.

  When we reached the third ship, I caught Angel’s arm. “Slick inside.”

  She slowed down, and I brought my EM pulse revolver up by my shoulder.

  “If you fire that,” the lieutenant said behind me, “it will trash my heat gun. Its electronics aren’t shielded against the directed EM pulses your gun produces.”

  “Sorry.” I didn’t even know if my gun still worked.

  “Damn it, Major.” Anger crackled in her voice. “I don’t want anyone hurt. Your friend with his let’s-pretend-it’s-not-a-fucking-stolen-super-gun better be exploding sand and not people.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “Neither does Jak.” I hoped.

  “I can’t believe you got Majda to okay this,” the lieutenant muttered.

  She and I both. I didn’t want Lavinda to pay the price if we screwed up here. “I’ll be careful. You have my word.”

  Angel said nothing, just kept edging toward the third ship, staying within the cover created by the curving bulk of the second ship. The staccato bursts of the gunfight had ceased.

  We moved forward, slow and careful. Closer to the hatch—

  Detective Talon lunged out of the ship and fired straight at us.

  CHAPTER XIX

  IN THE DUNES

  I threw myself sideways in the instant Talon’s boot appeared in the hatchway, a fraction of a second before she fired. She aimed at me, apparently assuming I was the greatest threat. This time she used a pulse revolver, and its serrated bullet slammed the ground, just barely missing my foot when it blasted a small crater in the rocky soil. As I crashed into the second ship, I fired at Talon, but she was already ducking back into the ship.

  “Gods damn it,” the lieutenant said behind me. “Nonlethal force, people.”

  Angel stayed in the front, utterly unfazed by the gunfire. When she stepped forward, I grabbed her muscled bicep and pulled her back into the protected dent where the hull of the second starship curved in to meet the bulk of the third.

  “Stay here,” I said. “Cover.”

  “Can’t stab shit from here,” Angel growled.

  An explosion came from the south, probably Jak’s coilgun. No one returned fire. Talon lunged out for another shot at us—and Angel threw her knife.

  The blade whirred through the air like a flash of starlight. It hit Talon’s right arm, and the detective grunted as she dropped her gun and jerked back into the ship. Never pausing, Angel sprinted forward, scooped up the detective’s revolver and her dagger, and darted back to us, her actions so fast, I barely had time to breathe.

  “Well, I’ll be fucked,” the lieutenant said. “You’re wicked good with that knife.”

  “Eh?” Angel continued to scan the area, her fist gripped around Talon’s gun.

  “Talon,” I yelled. “We have your weapon. Come out. Bring Daan with you.”

  In response, Talon leaned out just enough to fire a machine gun in our direction. She wasn’t moving as steadily as before, and we were still in the cover of the ships, so she missed. It didn’t matter; she’d made her point. We didn’t have her damn weapon, at least not all of them.

  “We get Ruzik,” Angel said.

  I spoke in a low voice. “Max, can you locate Ruzik or anyone else in that ship?”

  “My sensors aren’t operating well,” Max said. “I’m getting life signs from two people on the top level, but I can’t tell if anyone is on the lower deck.”

  “Two armed fighters with good cover, and one more in the desert,” the lieutenant said. “They have at least two automatic weapons. We have two revolvers, and maybe your friend’s coilgun, but he must be almost out of ammo. It’s crappy odds, Major.”

  “Yah, but we’re better at this,” I told her. At least, I hoped we had that advantage. “What is it about those three caskets? Are they why these people want to kill us?”

  “I have no clue,” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t even know they were there.”

  Angel stepped forward. “Get Ruzik.”

  I pulled her back. “You go out, you get shot. Need better way in.”

  “That ship has no other way in,” the lieutenant said.

  “What about the sand-weaver webs?” I asked. “Can they affect electronics inside the ships, or do they just pick up tapped patterns and give them back?”

  Silence.

  “Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Could this thing you have no idea about affect equipment inside the ship?”

  Another silence.

  “Lieutenant, we’re almost out of time.” No more shots came from the south, so either they’d quit fighting or they were dead. No, Jak couldn’t be dead; I’d feel it. The curve of the third ship wouldn’t give us much cover if someone moved to the dunes opposite us.

  “Sand-weaver meshes can’t activate anything,” the lieutenant said. “Their webs pick up vibrations and give them back to you. They might try to echo music, if it shakes the mesh. That’s it.”

  “We’ll have to go in ourselves, then,” I said. “I’ll go first.”

  “No,” Angel said. “You stay. I protect.” With that, she took off for the hatchway.

  I swore under my breath and sprinted after her, with the lieutenant bringing up the rear. I expected Talon to fire, but she didn’t appear in time. We stopped at the hatchway and edged into the ship, our weapons ready. Starlight flooded the interior—the empty interior.

  “Where they go?” Angel asked.

  I glanced at the lieutenant. “Any way they could hide in here?”

  “Just the lower deck,” she said.

  “Ruzik.” Angel’s eyes glinted. “He kill.”

  Damn! If Ruzik was trapped down there, he’d be more pissed than a cop chasing a dust rat back to the aqueducts. So much for the lieutenant’s nonlethal force.

  “Come on.” I went to the hatch for the lower level.

  The lieutenant joined me. “They couldn’t have opened it. They don’t know the codes.”

  “They know a lot they shouldn’t. They must have someone on the inside at Majda.”

  “That someone is a traitor.” The lieutenant knelt and tapped in the code for the hatch. As it slid open, we all moved back. No sound came from below.

  “Angel, you stay here,” I said.

  She turned to me, her gaze dark. “I go. Get Ruzik.”

  “Need you here.” I tilted my head at the lieutenant. “Not trust.”

  Angel clenched her fists, but she didn’t refuse. The lieutenant said nothing. She had to realize I hadn’t ruled her out as the person who warned Talon and crew we were here.

  “You go first,” I told the lieutenant. “Call out if it’s safe.”

  Her face was pale in the starlight. We both knew I’d just made her a target for anyone down there. Even so, she lowered herself through the hatchway and dropped to the deck. The thud of her landing vibrated through the ship. No other sounds came up to us, no words, no fighting, no gunfire.

  “Lu Ten, move back,” Angel called. She waited, then fired Talon’s gun down the hatch. Bullets slammed into the deck below.

  “Stop!” I grabbed her arm. “Hit someone.”

  “Ruzik not under.” She tapped her temple. “I’d know.”

  “Hit Lu Ten.”

  “Nahya. Aimed at other place, not her.”

  “Lieutenant?” I asked. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Why did you fire?”

  “Threaten enemy,” Angel said. “Warn them. Behave.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” the lieutenant said.

  “Is anyone there?” I
asked.

  “No one,” she said. “This deck is empty. They must have gone into the cave.”

  I spoke softly. “Max, can you analyze the lieutenant’s voice for stress?”

  “She exhibits tension,” Max said. “However, I don’t think she is lying or being coerced.”

  “You want me to open the lower hatch?” the lieutenant called.

  “Can you?” I asked.

  Taps came from below, then more, then again. “Damn it,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “This one is jammed shut,” she said.

  “They might have gone out the way Jak and I did,” I said. “Along the tunnel.”

  “Need to find Jak,” Angel said.

  “Yah.” I hadn’t heard any gunfire for some time.

  “Let down the ladder so I can climb up,” the lieutenant said.

  I didn’t move. If I closed the hatch, she would be trapped until either her shift or this fight ended and someone let her out. She might escape if she had the Kyle ability to work the ancient tech-mech, but it seemed unlikely. The army wouldn’t waste an empath on night duty here. Although I didn’t want to trap her if she had nothing to do with Talon, neither did I want to worry about her stabbing me in the back, literally as well as figuratively.

  Angel was watching my face. “Bring Lu Ten.”

  “You trust?” I hadn’t expected that.

  “Not foe.” She shrugged. “Slick, yah. But trust.”

  Angel had a good sense of people. And she’d been trapped with the lieutenant for some time in the other ship. If Angel trusted her, that told me all I needed to know. I let down the ladder, and the lieutenant clambered up to us. As she stood up, she spoke firmly to Angel. “No more shooting in the dark, all right?”

  Angel frowned at her.

  “Not shoot at her,” I told Angel.

  “Nahya hit,” Angel told her. “Ken.”

  The lieutenant looked at me. “I didn’t get that.”

  “She said she knew she wouldn’t hit you.”

  “How could she know?”

  “Empath,” I said.

  The lieutenant’s forehead creased. “That’s not possible. She’s from the Undercity.”

  I’d become so accustomed to knowing that one third of our population were empaths, I’d forgotten almost no one else knew, only a few people high in the military or government.