Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  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 Khaid 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.

  “Where are you taking us?” De Molay asked, watching his face intently through the monitor. Now that she was lying down and had proper meds, her color was improving rapidly. The trauma unit had also dispensed a drinking tube of complex carbohydrate-based rehydration fluid. This substance was a lambent green, but the old woman didn’t seem to mind the taste.

  “There are Imperial evac-pods within range,” Hadeishi answered, eyes flitting from screen to screen. “And this ship needs a crew to be useful.”

  De Molay did not respond immediately, though Hadeishi could hear her breathing tensely as he double-checked the feed from the scanners. Their immediate area seemed to be clear of combat—he couldn’t pick up any missile drive plumes, anion beam spikes, or the gravity dimples of mainline starships. But then, the sensor suite on this barge is … limited. His fingers tapped briskly on the console.

  “You should take us out of here, back into hyperspace—” De Molay was frowning.

  “Not while we can rescue some of these men.” Mitsuharu felt strange—alive again, with the v-panes of a starship under his fingers. He felt the hum of the engines through the deck, the tickle of a comm implant snug in his ear canal. But he had a sensation of riding in emptiness, alone on a deserted road, astride a strange horse with no known companions. Where is the chatter of my crew? Where is Susan’s slim, fierce shape at the secondary console? There are only ghosts.

  “We’re not equipped to fight, Engineer. This is not an IMN ship of war!”

  “I know.” Hadeishi settled himself in the command chair, feeling the cracked leather dig at his skin. Even the shape of the civilian shockchair was odd and unfamiliar. The console was too far away for his taste, and could not be adjusted. There was no threatwell, or even a holotank to give him a working view of the field of battle!

  Dishes rattled in the kitchen of the little noodle shop. Musashi was hungry—starved would be a better word, he thought—and was busy shoveling udon into his mouth, feeling the first hot rush of chicken broth like the wind from Nirvana, with a pair of chopsticks. The yakuza, four of them, entered with unusual swiftness, their faces blank as Nōgaku masks, and before even he could react, their leader had snatched up his bokutō and hurled the
wooden blade away, out into the night-shrouded street.

  “This is the one,” the gangster barked, his own katana rasping from a cheap bamboo sheath. His arms bulged with muscle, gorgeously colored tattoos peeking from beneath both kimono sleeves.

  Musashi looked up, expressing dumb astonishment and curled his left hand around the bowl of soup. “The one, what?”

  “Haiiiii!” The other three yakuza drew their swords with a great flourish, kicking mats and tables aside.

  Musashi turned slowly to face them, rising with the bowl in one hand, the chopsticks between his middle fingers in the other. “Pardon?”

  But the scanner display was dusted with the signatures of evac-capsules. Mitsuharu lifted his hand towards the screen: “We’re the only chance they have to escape a slow agonizing death, or slavery. We’ll save as many as we can, before we have to run.”

  “I gather Command has spoken,” De Molay replied, her expression pinched.

  “You bear a simple cross of silver at your breast, Sencho. Would you leave all these travelers abandoned in the dark, prey to our enemies? Where is your charity then?”

  The old woman did not reply, her eyes narrowing to tight slits.

  Mitsuharu shook his head. “I cannot abandon them, kyo. We go forward.”

  THE NANIWA

  “The fool! He should swing back to meet us.”

  In her executive ’well, Susan watched the Tlemitl barrel towards the Pinhole, closely followed by a phalanx of Khaid battleships, the entire conglomeration ablaze with the snap of beam-weapons, streaking missiles, and the constant stuttering flare of fusion detonations. The massive radiation signature from the battle was threatening to wash out passive scans and hide the whole affray from view.

  “They’re not going to make it,” she hissed to herself. Dragging her attention away from the doomed flagship, Koshō checked in with the repair crew cutting away the door to cabin nine on deck six. A medical team was lifting the body of the Swedish woman and the old nauallis out on stretchers. Susan tapped her earbug, jaw clenched. “Are either of them alive?”

  In the v-pane, the gun-i holding a medpack to the old Méxica’s chest nodded, Yes.

  Anderssen raised her head feebly, a bronze-colored comp clasped tight to her chest. “Captain, you’ve … got to slow the ship.…” She coughed as the medical team loaded the stretcher onto a grav-cart. “The outer surface of the Barrier shifts and moves, billowing like a sail … or a permeable membrane … it’s not stable. All of the Mirror data is outdated, too old to use.”

  “Get her to medical,” Koshō snapped, “stabilized and jacked into shipnet with her comp!”

  What next? she wondered, turning back to the threatwell. “Pucatli! Get me someone on the flagship—I don’t care who, the kitchen staff supervisor will do!”

  * * *

  Three hundred thousand kilometers ahead, the Tlemitl swerved into the confines of the Pinhole. Susan could see they were following the pathway divined by the Mirror probes. But the newer information the Swedish woman had loaded into the Naniwa’s nav system clearly showed one of the veils had begun to occlude the opening. The phalanx of Khaid battleships and lighter elements charged in directly behind the crippled dreadnaught and catastrophe ensued.

  Koshō couldn’t help but grin ferally as first one and then a dozen of the enemy ships interpenetrated with the invisible Barrier—a rippling string of icons winked out abruptly on her ’well plot. Moments later, the camera views on the side panels studded with the blue-white flare of ships disintegrating. A storm of chatter erupted on a channel Pucatli had picked out of the storm of electromagnetic noise. Susan couldn’t understand the Khaid traffic—the message bursts were encrypted and in a tongue foreign to her—but the cadence of the staticky noise said nothing but panic.

  For another minute the Tlemitl dodged and weaved, exercising her maneuver engines to the utmost, following a corkscrew path known only to—and then the dreadnaught brushed against one of the invisible threads. The battle-shields, which were mostly active at that moment, did nothing to prevent nearly a third of the behemoth from being cloven away in one dumbfounding instant.

  At this distance, on the cameras, there was nothing to see but a jagged smear of light where the hull rupture was decompressing explosively.

  On the Naniwa’s bridge, however, there was loud confusion. Konev and Holloway, who had access to enhanced telemetry feeds from the battle-cruiser’s sensors, shouted aloud in alarm. Pucatli and the others turned, staring at Koshō in raw, open fear. The threatwell updated, showing the enemy ships in disarray.

  “What happened, Chu-sa?” The comm officer ventured. “The Khaid battleships—”

  “Are gone,” Susan said steadily. “Holloway-tzin, tracking update please.”

  “Ten containment failures, kyo,” the navigator reported, shaken. “Three more badly damaged and losing way. The Khaid battle-group is trying to reverse course. The Tlemitl … she’s … she’s a dead ship, Chu-sa. Battlecast status is flickering in and out, but the last report says she’s lost nearly a quarter of her compartments. Reactors are intact, but her drives are dead. She’s coasting…”

  Belching atmosphere and debris, the giant ship spun inexorably into another thread. Aboard the Naniwa, the Command crew watched in horror as another infinitely thin razor dissected the super-dreadnaught, shearing through decks, bulkheads, hapless crewmen.… Now they were close enough for the cameras to interpolate, picking out the disintegrating flagship through iridescent streamers of dust.

  “Gods,” Konev blurted, his face shining with sweat. “They’re sure to lose containment now!”

  We’re alone, Koshō thought, forcing herself to look away. A tight knot was forming in her stomach. The Khaid are as badly shaken as we are—but they still outnumber me by five to one, at least.

  THE TLEMITL

  Emergency lighting sputtered, flickering on and off in a red-lit haze, along the corridor. Helsdon rotated slowly in midair, disoriented. Then his eyes caught on a doorway swinging past and his mind snapped back into focus. “We’ve lost the g-decking,” he wheezed, suddenly aware that his chest and side were throbbing with pain. “Damage control team, report.”

  A chorus of groans and cursing answered him. The engineer tucked in, giving himself a little momentum, and his boots adhered to the nearest surface. Stable, he found himself standing on the wall of the passageway. Debris was loose everywhere, filling the air with clouds of paper, broken bits of furniture, loose shoes—anything which hadn’t been secured when the Tlemitl had suffered an enormous blow.

  Swallowing against a very dry throat, Helsdon retrieved his hand-comp—which was attached by a retractable cord to his tool-belt—and thumbed the device awake. Status lights flickered and then a display came up. “Power is down across the whole grid,” he said aloud. The others were gathering, hauling themselves along the walls and floor. “No gravity, no environmental control.” He blinked rapidly.

  “What the hell happened?” One of the midshipmen was staring around wildly.

  “We hit the—we hit the phenomena,” Helsdon croaked, feeling a horrible constriction in his chest. “Part of the ship—most of the ship?—has been cut away from—from us.”

  A cook caught his shoulder, holding the engineer steady. “We’ve gotta get off, chief.”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” Helsdon whispered, watching his hand-comp scan uselessly for a live shipnet node. “The reactors are in shutdown, but who knows how long that will last?”

  “Help the chief, he’s hurt.” The cook gestured for the midshipmen to lay hands on the engineer. “Anyone see an evac capsule sign? That way? Chop-chop, everyone, let’s go.”

  * * *

  A grav-sled had been thrown the length of the entryway to the flag admiral’s quarters, smashing into the stone pillars framing the monumental door. Broken chunks of stone floated in a slow eddy, making Xochitl’s progress difficult. Both sets of mural walls had shattered, adding a glittering drift of glassite wh
ich flared and shimmered in the suit lights as he moved. One of his Jaguars led the way, combat suit jets puffing whitely, and another followed. Here in officer’s country, the internal damage seemed worse—there had been more ornamentation to rip free from the walls and smash into things—than down on the deck holding secondary command.

  His men hadn’t asked what had happened, but the Prince had an excellent idea.

  «The Mirror plotting data was flawed,» his exo supplied, completing his thought.

  “I know,” he whispered, forgetting to concentrate on the thought-interface between them. “I know.”

  The Jaguar sergeant in the lead pushed aside the fallen statuary—his powered combat armor made the task possible—and forced open the door beyond. Xochitl swung through the opening, thankful for the moment that they were in z-g. With proper EVA gear, they had made very swift progress through the wreckage. The sitting room beyond was utterly destroyed—tables, screens, personal artifacts all jumbled together in a drifting cloud of flotsam—but in one corner, curled up into a turtle-like shell, was a larger-than-human figure in a dark metallic z-suit. In their suit-lights, the metal surface gleamed with thousands of tiny, incised glyphs and markings. Their meanings were unknown to the Prince.

  «Recording,» the exocortex reported, tucking away thirty seconds of high definition video for later analysis. «Seven hundred and twenty-nine distinct ideograms identified. Spawning subtasks to collate comparisons against known Hjogadim character sets.»

  Xochitl drifted close to the figure—careful not to touch the alien z-suit—and oriented himself face-to-face. The suit mask was almost opaque, but he could make out the gleam of helmet lights flickering in a pair of deep-set eyes.

  “Come, Esteemed One,” Xochitl commanded, barely polite. “We must get you to safety.”

  He was answered by a long, violent harangue in a lilting, sing-song tongue, and entirely inhuman growling. The noise was abrasively loud on point-to-point comm. The Prince grimaced, his ears ringing, and then he gestured at the two Jaguar Knights.