Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  “But Esteemed One, the Prince is at the focus of action, in Secondary Command…” Gretchen started to speak—seeing Hummingbird gesture towards the glyph for deck thirty-nine on the lift controls—but kept her peace, wondering what the old Náhuatl intended.

  “Yes. There shall be a confrontation.” The creature was mumbling again. “And explanation!”

  Hummingbird bowed obediently and pressed the call button for the lift. When the doors cycled open, the Hjo lurched inside—making a snuffling whine upon seeing the confined space—and then Hummingbird and Gretchen slipped inside as well, keeping to the corners and out of the way of the long, furred arms. The creature swung its head from side to side as the lift raced between decks.

  * * *

  By the time the blast-doors to Secondary Command irised open, the ambassador had managed to straighten up to his full height and—somehow—his z-suit and exposed fur had shed the vomit. Anderssen found the creature tremendously interesting; when first she’d set eyes upon it, the Hjo seemed shrunken and withered. He—yes, this is a male, I’m sure of it—felt incomplete. But now it is filling out, becoming more sure of itself. She eyed the armored suit curiously. Was a med-band at play here, injecting some kind of confidence-building med into the creature?

  “Account for this wretched treat—” Sahâne stopped, long mouth yawning open, his dark eyes reflecting a hot white glow. All of his newly won assurance staggered, quailed, and then fled. A pained whimper emerged from his throat. Gretchen looked away from the creature in surprise and then her own eyes went wide with delight.

  Secondary Command had been reconfigured to create one massive v-display which stretched from floor to ceiling and wrapped around three-quarters of the chamber. The Command consoles had been relocated to the sides and back of the room, their smaller v-displays filled with ever-changing data. On the vast canvas, a live camera feed of the Sunflower filled the room with the hot white glare of the ejection jet boiling up out of the singularity. The three bloated orbs of the brown dwarves studded the sky and the dark mass of the accretion disc formed a backdrop for the tri-lobed structure. Those surfaces at an angle to the jet glared with reflected light, throwing the Chimalacatl into high relief.

  “How big…” whispered Anderssen, fumbling in her jacket pockets for a hand-comp. “My god, it’s five thousand kilometers on a side!”

  A Jaguar Knight in combat armor suddenly blocked her view, a gauntleted hand crushing her fingers and plucking the comp from her grasp. Another Ocelotl had moved in on the other side, immobilizing Hummingbird, who was standing quite still, all of his attention focused on the Hjo and a slim, handsome man of middle age rising from a shockchair placed at the center of the room. Seeing him in the flesh, Gretchen felt a pang of disappointment—he’s not nearly so pretty in real life—but then caught sight of the Prince’s face and felt a bolt of adrenaline flush through her limbs. He is furious, though!

  The Jaguars picked up the wave of displeasure radiating from Xochitl as well, and the one holding Anderssen seized her neck with an armored hand. Servos whined in her ear and the metallic grip dug into her flesh. Oh god, he’ll just twist and—

  “Esteemed One.” With a visible effort, the Prince halted his angry pace and bowed, face contorted with the effort of mouthing peaceful words. “I am relieved to see you are feeling better, but I urge you to return to Medical. You will be safe there and your diverse stomachs set in order.”

  The Hjo trembled from head to toe, but managed to squeak out: “Turn us about, mad creature! The radiation levels in this sector must be immense. Have you no care for your offspring to come? We must depart immediately!”

  Anderssen experienced a strange sensation, watching the ambassador swaying before the Prince. The jolt of fear which had struck the alien dumb now seemed to supplement the earlier sense of assurance. She could taste a stark, unadulterated desire to live, and wondered if the creature had ever felt that particular spike of self-awareness before. Then Gretchen blinked rapidly, half-blinded by the glare from the v-display, and wondered if she was hallucinating. The air around the creature seemed to be flickering or twisting with tiny fleeting gleams of light. A reflection? But of what?

  As she turned her head—feeling the armored fingers still digging into her neck—the spectacle on the v-display drew her eye like a magnet. The panorama seemed terribly familiar—something she’d seen, or read in a book, or—What is it? Those triliths are … damn, but it’s just beyond reach!

  Behind her, Hummingbird had somehow moved closer to the Hjo, a supportive hand under one arm, and she could hear him whispering: “Departure, yes. An excellent idea, Esteemed One.”

  Anderssen and the Prince spoke simultaneously: “It is not!”

  Xochitl turned towards her with a scowl, jaw tight. “Get her out—”

  “This object can only be a First Sun artifact,” she blurted, catching his eye. “The Ik-Hu-Huillane tablets speak of an ‘abode of the waking mind’ which is formed in threes and multiples of three—this structure is the very image the Yithians speak of!”

  “Yes … At last.” The Prince’s face cleared, the words striking a chord in him. “I’ve a remote going aboard that structure within moments, and we’ll—”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Gretchen caught sight of an entire console filled with v-panes wink out. The comm officer sitting at the station cried out in alarm.

  “Chu-sa! My Lord Prince!” A man’s voice echoed in the air. “We’ve lost contact with the shuttle.”

  A section of the Prince’s console unfolded into a large v-pane, showing Chu-sa Koshō’s face, which was now cold and alert, her eyes flickering from side to side. Xochitl stepped back to his shockchair, intent on the Nisei officer.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “The cargo shuttle has exploded, Gensui.” Susan’s lips were a tight line, her brow furrowed. “No warning, no energy emissions … we’re rewinding the telemetry, but I don’t believe there is anything left to recover.”

  The Prince cursed, unable to keep rein on his temper a moment longer, and slammed a fist into the side of the shockchair. The Hjo recoiled, though Hummingbird’s grip was tight enough to keep the creature from falling down. “We must flee,” Sahâne wailed, “reverse your course, human. Reverse now!”

  Without considering the ramifications, Gretchen slipped free of the Jaguar’s grip—the Knight was staring at the console display, his attention distracted for a moment—and slid into a shockchair beside the horrified comm-tech.

  “Roll that feed back, my dear,” she said, voice calm and commanding. “Frame by frame.”

  The parchment envelope was opened and one of the octopus arms snaked from her pocket into a socket on the console without anyone noticing. Gretchen snugged her earbug tight against the background noise. The Prince and Koshō were disputing the merits of sending another shuttle towards the Sunflower. “Give me broad-spectrum passive scan at 20X for surface of the structure directly adjacent to the explosion…” Should be some impact scarring now, from the debris. Crude—but I’ll take the infopoints.

  * * *

  “My lord…” Xochitl turned away from Susan’s impassive visage, feeling thwarted at every turn, and advanced on the Hjogadim with a fierce expression. “We must determine the provenance of this—object—and if it poses a threat to Méxica space! Then we can—”

  “Stand away, toy!” Sahâne yelped, frightened by the Prince’s fierce movement, reflexively making a form of obedience with his hand, as though the human were a servant in the house of his fathers. Xochitl staggered, eyes wide, his face draining of color.

  «Heart failure induced,» his exo said brightly. «Cortex shutdown expected within ten seconds.»

  The Prince collapsed to his knees, and then tipped to one side when his arms failed to support his weight. A great rushing sound roared in his ears. He saw the two Jaguar Knights lunging forward, weapons out, striking at the Hjo with all the speed they could muster. Sahâne’s exposed fur shifted c
olor and tone, and the first bodyguard to reach him—butt of his shipgun reversed as a club—saw his knockout blow glance away from a sudden effusion of spiked scales which covered the Hjo’s z-suited arm in a blur.

  The creature, furious and sick at the same time, backhanded the marine with a long, gray arm. There was a crack of electricity and the Jaguar Knight was flung back, armor coiling smoke, to strike the floor, limp and lifeless.

  «Cortex shutdown in seven seconds.»

  Everyone in Secondary Command froze. The other Jaguar fetched up, weapon raised, suddenly unsure of how to attack the fully armored apparition. Sahâne stared down at his arm, the dark, rune-scribed z-suit now glittering with a spiked metallic shell, in astonished horror. “I did not do that,” he declared in a weak voice. “I could not. This is impossible.”

  “Esteemed One, stay your merciful hand!” Hummingbird’s voice was clear and direct, ringing in the air as the nauallis prostrated himself on the deck. “These shiau har-e will not serve without their lord being shun tzing. If he bends to your will, then all will be harmonious and we may flee this accursed place in speed and safety!”

  Xochitl, barely able to see, gasped for life on the deck. The exo’s implacable voice continued to count down the seconds left before his brain starved from oxygen deprivation. The Hjo loomed over him, blocking out the light of the overheads. A pair of black eyes stared down and the long mouth twisted in a snarl.

  “Let this toy live, when it has raised a paw against me? Why should I?”

  “Think, Esteemed One,” Hummingbird said, his voice controlled—persuasive—without a hint of disobedience, “Think of your offspring in their thousands to come—we must be away from this accursed place swiftly and this one”—the nauallis’ boot toed the Prince’s side—“is their Authority. Through him, you control the others and may achieve a swift departure.”

  «Four seconds to cortical failure.»

  Xochitl fought to form a coherent thought, and found he could still command his conscious mind, despite the annoying overlay of the exo. Desperate, feeling his mentation slipping away, he brought to focus a string of numbers—three, five, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-nine and … the voice of the exo abruptly stopped. There was no audible sound, no flashing overlay informing his vision of the event—but the fail-safe tripped, shutting down his implant.

  Wheezing, his chest thudding with pain, the Prince closed his eyes, hoping to avoid further agony. His mind, suddenly, seemed quiet and empty—desolate. His limbs weak, helpless. The Prince began to panic, realizing that his interface to the shipnet would now have to be managed manually—and he didn’t even have a hand-comp stowed in his luggage.

  * * *

  “Get us underway, nongmin.” The Hjogadim stepped away from Xochitl’s body, careful to keep his eyes averted from the vast panorama filling the v-display. Then he loped from Command, making a beeline for the lift a corridor away.

  Gretchen looked up questioningly from her pirated console, trying to catch Hummingbird’s attention. The nauallis had tilted his head, watching with great interest as the Prince struggled to his feet. Xochitl’s skin had turned waxy and he blinked incessantly. Without the exo to refine his vision, he did not see well at all.

  “My Lord?” The old Náhuatl offered the Prince his hand.

  “We’re not leaving,” Xochitl rasped, his throat raw. He slumped weakly into the command shockchair. He pointed at Gretchen. “You—the one with the ugly hair—what happened to our probe?”

  Turning slightly in her chair, Anderssen shrugged. “The relic is guarded by the same kind of protective lattice as the whole star system.” She caught the Prince’s eye and grinned. “But if we stay, I can get you inside.”

  “We should leave,” Hummingbird snapped, glaring across at the Swedish woman.

  Xochitl looked the nauallis up and down, realizing he did not know who the old man was or where he’d come from. “Who the devil are—wait, you’re one of the tlamatinime!” His face contorted in a snarl. “Cuauhhuehueh Koris—get this old witch off my bridge! Put him in the brig—someplace locked tight! With nothing on him but his skin.”

  The remaining Jaguar Knight rose from inspecting the body of his comrade. The master sergeant’s visor was opaque, having shifted into combat mode, but his voice boomed hollowly. “As you bid, Lord Prince.”

  Hummingbird clasped his hands behind his head without a fuss and was escorted away. Gretchen watched him go with interest, wondering what the old Crow was up to now. He’ll be closeted with that alien in sixty seconds, she wagered with herself. He doesn’t really want us to leave—just nudge the Flowery One in some direction of his choosing. But, she thought, two can play that game.

  Seeing the initial results from her analysis of the Chimalacatl’s surface—even just on the battle-cruiser’s shipnet, much less after node 333 had taken the datastream apart and put it back together—had solidified a chaos of options vying for her attention. I need to set foot on this thing, if that can be managed safely; even a half-hour would make all of this worthwhile. Another certainty had formed in her heart, crystallizing out of a thousand points of long-held despair, anger, hatred, and delighted curiosity. Hummingbird needs to be there, too. Oh yes, he does.

  “Now you, woman, what is your name?” Xochitl blinked owlishly at her, trying to glare in a properly Imperial manner.

  “Doctor Gretchen Anderssen, xenoarchaeologist, University of New Aberdeen, Lord Prince.”

  “Are you now?” The Prince sat up straight in his chair, surprised and pleased at the same time. “How did you get out here?”

  Gretchen said the first thing that came to mind. “I was supposed to be with the others, but I missed the survey ship, so I came on this one.” She spread her hands, encompassing the whole of the Naniwa.

  “How fortunate for you.…” Xochitl’s attention, now that he still lived and breathed, was drawn inexorably back to the enormous shape of the Sunflower. He bit nervously at his thumb. “Do you … do you know what this thing is?”

  Anderssen felt something like an electrical shock, a tingling jolt from crown to toe. In that instant, something blossomed in her mind and, for an instant, she was back under that overhang on Ephesus III, staring up at a rock-face which had grown so impossibly detailed and distinct in her vision that she could barely process the flood of sensation streaming into her from the totality of the world. But now there was a sensation of discrimination and all of the extraneous data could be discarded, leaving the Flowery Prince isolated in her perception and laid bare before her.

  She absorbed all of the Prince’s frailty, fear, doubt, ignorance. She glimpsed a fading half-image of a peculiar, inhuman second self which had shrouded him like a ceremonial mask. A façade which had worn him, completing his persona, investing him with a thousand subtle cues to authority and rule. Without that, he was only a shadow, less than half himself.

  “No, Tlatocapilli.” she said, supremely confident. “But if you give me leave, I will peel back all of its secrets for you—every last one. But … didn’t you tell the ambassador we were leaving? What will you do about him?”

  Xochitl swallowed, blinking again, his hand trembling in physical memory of incandescent pain twisting in every nerve. “I’ll have to kill it—kill him—and atomize the body. Or, or cast it into the sun—or…” The Prince seemed paralyzed by the decisions before him. Without his exo providing summaries and risk-vectors, everything seemed suddenly gray and murky.

  * * *

  In Main Command, Chu-sa Koshō watched the Prince and Doctor Anderssen discussing the attributes of the Chimalacatl on her surveillance cameras. Though her mien was impassive and controlled, she was deeply troubled by what she’d seen. A command sequence was waiting on her console, constructed in great haste during the scuffle and now refined, to vent the entire compartment to the void, and flood the evacuated rooms with hard radiation. Would that be enough to kill this “ambassador” with the self-generating combat armor
? She was furious with herself for not attaching more security to the alien.

  Susan had never encountered a “Hjogadim” before, and shipnet had nothing for her—no detail, no rumors, and no warnings—despite the fact that the creature spoke passable Náhuatl and was obviously well known to both the Prince and the nauallis. The thought of Hummingbird loose upon her ship made Koshō’s stomach twist. Brow growing thunderous, she tapped up the security cameras for the ship’s brig.

  The remaining Jaguar had brought the old Náhuatl to a primary security cell and stripped him naked before locking him inside. Oc Chac, at Susan’s direction, had already scrambled the codes and reviewed the list of those crewmen with access to the compartment.

  His kind will not remain contained for long, Sayu.

  Alone in the bare room, the old man looked up into the cameras and the faintest hint of a smile crossed his lips as he lowered himself gingerly into a cross-legged position on the floor.

  Koshō sneered back, wishing once more that her sensei Hadeishi were on hand to deal with his “old friend” and all these intrigues. I am not cut out for this, she thought darkly. We should flee this place, not stay, poking at a dark hole in the cliff with sticks … no matter what the Emperor demands.

  ABOARD THE KHAID CRUISER

  Hadeishi wiped a coating of yellowing foam from the captain’s console of the light cruiser. His armor was blackened and scored by flechette impacts and all of his grenades were gone. Cajeme and the other Team One survivors were dragging the last of the Khaid corpses away, for the enemy had tried to make a stand on the Command deck. The console was flickering in and out of focus—part of the glassite surface had shattered—and the Nisei officer shook his head in dismay. Disgusted, he shut down the entire console, then went to the Navigator’s station where he was pleasantly surprised to see the Fleet standard interface was up and awaiting input.