“No…” Helsdon replied, scratching nervously at a week’s beard. “They’ve fallen into a balance point in the gravitation of this system. This is an eddy of flotsam … the ships might have all been destroyed out by the Barrier itself … or even closer to the artifact.”
“Why not a battle?”
Helsdon seemed to shrink, shoulders hunching in, and an expression of pain flitting across his face. “These weren’t warships, Chu-sa.” His stylus tapped unevenly across the control panes and a series of comp-projected reconstructions sprang to life. The alien craft were revealed as sixty-kilometer-long trihedrons with bulky drive fairings at the rear.
“Tens of thousands of cargo containers—suspension pods, I would guess—are held in each of those three lobes. But that’s only what we see nearby in this image. In the whole of the debris swirl, there are over four thousand ships, the comp says.…”
Koshō’s eyes widened, taking in the lift capacity of the dead fleet. “Troop transports for a million-man army?”
“Colony ships?” Helsdon shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe refugees? A million isn’t much to lift from some dying world—but it’s sure better than what we could pull together.”
“Was all this a fortress?” Susan wondered softly, her eyes turning to the system plot and the delicate balance of the brown dwarves, the singularity, and the Chimalacatl. “It must have been, hidden behind the wall of knives. But not a refuge, not in the end…” Her voice strengthened. “Engineer, can you find out if these ships were empty or full when they were destroyed?”
Helsdon nodded. Koshō turned to Oc Chac. “Meanwhile, we need another way out of this pocket, one that is not barred by the enemy. You’ve the search-pattern set?”
“Hai, Chu-sa … starting from the Pinhole and spiraling out.”
“Excellent.” Susan nodded approval.
“But Chu-sa, if what Engineer Helsdon mentioned is true—if the whipping knives destroyed this great fleet of souls—why haven’t we been attacked?”
“I do not know, Sho-sa, but I hope our luck holds.” Koshō returned to her station, intending to comm up Engineering and see how Hennig was getting along, then stopped, looking quizzically around Command. Something’s not right … Frowning, she tapped open a v-pane showing the guest quarters, then scanned through a series of empty cabins with rising alarm. Damn his scrawny bones! She commed Ship Security, “Thai-i, can you determine if either of our diplomatic guests are available to meet me in the command bridge conference room? This is urgent.”
Beside her, Oc Chac glanced up nervously, saw her stormy expression, and ducked back to the search pattern. Five minutes went by with no word from the brig. “Very well,” Susan said. “Full speed ahead, Sho-sa. We’ve no time to waste.” Hummingbird would not have taken that “ambassador” with him—contravening the Prince’s express order—if the creature were not part of the old witch’s plan. Another ugly thought came to her. He has his own ship—if he knows a way out of here, then we’ve been left behind to decoy and delay the Khaid. But even so—I would not trade places with Sayu now.
WITHIN THE SUNFLOWER
Forty minutes after the Moulins was secured in the landing cradle and Captain Locke’s crew had completed their set-down checklist, the marine fire team disembarked from the freighter in full combat armor, assault rifles at the ready. They confirmed what the exterior cameras had already shown Gretchen and the others on the bridge.
The rest of the chamber was filled with an enormous drift of bones, plasma-scored metal, and the desiccated corpses of thousands of inhuman creatures. Fifteen minutes after the marines had signaled the all-clear for the immediate vicinity, the Prince, Gretchen, and a very nervous Sahâne stepped out of the cargo elevator and crunched their way across a slope of crumbling bones to a platform facing an exit door.
There Xochitl stopped, panning his helmet light across the ossuary in grudging wonder. “Battle,” he commented, eyes drawn to the shattered limbs and broken armor thigh-deep in the bay. “But not here … these bodies were dumped.” His gaze traveled upward, the light picking out the angled shape of a monstrous crane hanging over the chamber, and beside it another, and another. They were folded up against the ceiling like a resting spider’s knobby legs. The Prince turned to Gretchen. “What kind of entryway did you choose for us?”
“Garbage disposal,” Sahâne said, his alien voice thick with bitterness. He knelt and lifted one of the cadaverous skulls. It was long-snouted, with a tapering jaw, and a mouth filled with rows of crushing molars aft and shredding incisors forward. Some remnant of a pelt remained, preserved by vacuum, apparently a mottled black or dark gray. “For discarded husks which could not be properly cremated.”
Looking over his shoulder, Anderssen nodded, unsurprised. I will send Professor Griffiths in the Comparative Languages Department a thousand roses, should I ever see Imperial space again!
She wanted to handle the bones, but wondered if the ambassador would take offense. A skull much like that of a Hjogadim, though larger in cross-section. Perhaps only a difference in nutrition, but if I could look at the whole thing, it might turn out to be a genetic difference. Maybe the old Hjogadim were a different sub-species. Wouldn’t that be interesting!
Curious, Gretchen moved off across the midden, her fingers brushing lightly across the most exposed of the corpses. Most of them seemed morphologically similar, though there were other, more alien-seeming races among the dead. Has the history of these others been wholly lost? Is this where they became extinct? How long ago did all this occur?
She stopped, going to one knee, and pulled out her field comp.
“This is your suitable entrance?” Xochitl crunched over to her, his voice a harsh rasp. “How far are we from a control structure? From whatever mechanism manages the entrance to the Barrier?”
Anderssen flashed a wintry smile up at the Prince. Her field comp had flickered awake and she was scanning one of the better-preserved skulls with her sensor wand turned to short-focus x-ray. “I am not sure we can enter the control spaces of this device. But I believe that he can.” She indicated Sahâne with a tilt of her helmet. “If he chooses to lead us there.”
Looking back at the alien, the now-familiar sense of disassociation stole over her, filling her chest with pleasant warmth, drawing her mind far from her body, which seemed to recede below her. Standing in this ancient place, her eyes filled with glorious Sight. The snap and glare of plasma guns, the screams of the wounded and dying dinned against her ears. A swirl of faint ghosts washed over her, as the ancient Hjogadim struggled and died, slaughtering each other in the corridors and control spaces. Then machines came, bearing the dead, laying them in ordered rows in the disposal bay, even as the tide of battle washed on to other shores. In her vision, a solitary Hjo—in comparison to the others, seeming almost solid—moved among the dead, giving some kind of last blessing. His skin and armor were anointed with the same glyphs and markings as Sahâne bore.
Watching the—priest?—passing among the dead, Gretchen became peripherally aware of a golden tinge tainting her sight. Tentatively, her fingers moved, drifting to touch the bronze block. They stopped short, encountering an aura of heat, almost hot enough to scald.
“We had best move on—if we are to stay,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the Prince. “If you intend to carry through with your purpose.…”
“I do,” Xochitl said, his face pinched and pale.
He’s removed his mask again. Only a frightened man remains in Huitzilopochtli’s place.
“Sahâne-tzin, what do you say to this?” Xochitl asked.
The living Hjo’s face greatly resembled that of the long-dead priest walking in Gretchen’s golden vision, a ghastly mask of suppressed horror. His limpid gray-black eyes fixed on Gretchen for the first time. “You know what this place is … how can this be? How can a toy know what I—one of the Guided Race—do not!”
“There are legends,” she replied carefully, �
�and fragments out of the past that still endure. Not all fantastical tales are false … but all that I know is that this whole enormous structure”—she extended her arms, taking in the entirety of the Chimalacatl and the singularity—“is the work of your people. Are you not pleased to look upon their greatness?”
“I despair,” Sahâne croaked, voice thick with emotion, “to find myself amid this ruin and find the greatness of my people is ash!”
Xochitl seemed confounded. His face went blank. Gretchen caught a fragment of his helplessness, but made no move to enlighten him.
Sahâne favored them both with a contemptuous stare. “Apes! Such skills as tore suns from their orbits and compressed matter into ultimate annihilation, such skills as made this … this mausoleum … are lost to us. This place, it might as well have been made by the gods themselves! By the Living Flame which Guides! We are so petty now…” His voice trailed away into a disgusted, lamenting mumble.
A flicker of emotion lighted Xochitl’s face. He scrutinized Gretchen warily. “Team one, to me.” The Prince ordered half of his men forward. “Team two, secure the ship. Doctor Anderssen, you help the Esteemed Sahâne here find a command structure!”
With the heavy black assault rifles of the marines at her back, Gretchen reached up to place a gentle hand on the young Hjogadim’s armored wrist. “Lord Sahâne, let us go further on. Is this not a cathedral of your caste? Has not the place of it been lost to your line? Have a care here. So many lie untended.”
She led the Hjo onward, picking their way out of the disposal chamber through a triangular doorway. As they passed through, Gretchen caught sight of a faint radiance shining in the metal. After all this time there are still glimmers within the material. What marvelous alloy could this be? Or are there bioluminescent organisms trapped within?
“Ah!” The pale gleaming strengthened rapidly, becoming a floodlight of gold. Glyphs inscribed beside the entrance swam and cavorted in her sight, a vision now drenched in brassy light. On the floor, on the walls, as high as their hand lights could reach, meanings leaped out, indicating direction and time and purpose in an ever-dancing overlay to the solid world. Murals began to emerge from the plain-seeming walls, showing the edifice of a great civilization—towers piercing cloud-streaked skies; endless multitudes moving below, in enormous cities. Thousands of races were represented and not one of them seemed to be placed above the others, though the massive Hjogadim were well represented.
Oh boy, Anderssen thought. Is this how the structure functions? Or did the ancient Hjo see the world this way all the time?
“Keep moving,” Xochitl gritted. They stepped out into a leviathan hallway, stretching off far beyond the reach of their lights in either direction. Only a few meters from the doorway, a row of diamond-shaped compartments was visible at floor level. The Prince, curious, advanced to the closest one—his marines pacing him ahead and behind. As their lights moved, Gretchen bit her lip, seeing another row of compartments above the first, and then another, and then another.…
Xochitl rapped on the closest door, then shone his light inside. “It’s like glassite. Sealed, but empty.” He stepped away from the dark, silent chamber and swung with the beam of his lamp off into the distance, following the wall.
“They go way up, too,” the marine behind Gretchen added. “Way up.”
Sahâne stared morbidly into the sealed spaces as he passed by. The gleam of the helmet lights was swallowed up by the enormous spaces surrounding them. After walking fifteen minutes without seeing any end in sight, Xochitl ordered a halt.
“Koris—take two men back and get us a grav-sled from the freighter.”
* * *
Once aboard the sled, they made excellent time, zipping along the massive passageway. After nearly an hour of travel, they reached an intersection.
“I think, this way,” Gretchen urged, seeing the glyphs flowing and dancing in the air congregate around the right-hand avenue. “Yes, definitely.”
Sahâne peered into the darkness, staring at the patterned sigils cut into the walls of the intersection, and then shuffled over to stand beside Anderssen at the cargo rail. She scrutinized what she could see of his face within the helmet. He’s interested. Not as tired. Not as fearful.
The Jaguar Knight turned the sled, sending them down another long vaulted hallway. More rows of compartments appeared, yet like the others they were spotless and empty.
THE KADER
APPROACHING THE PINHOLE
“Pilot, acceleration up a point,” Hadeishi announced, preternaturally calm. The light cruiser moved forward, picking up speed as the realspace drives burned mass. In his earbug he could hear a sudden rise in chatter from the Khaiden battleship. Someone is paying attention—but the shuttle is far more interesting than we are. Before him on his plot, a faint, faint trail gleamed.
“Pilot, course one-quarter point to starboard. And not one meter more.”
Warning! the navigation officer on the Sokamak barked in alarm. You’re too close to the …
“All hands, brace for impact!” Hadeishi snapped into his shipside comm.
The Kader’s starboard wing, a long pylon holding missile racks, bomb-pods, and an array of other weapons, sheared directly into a Thread and neatly separated with a squeal of metal Mitsuharu could hear in Command, and then spun away from the light cruiser. Secondary explosions cauterized the shattered pylon almost immediately. Damage control parties rushed down suddenly vented corridors to patch the ruptures. Mitsuharu felt the whole ship tremble. He punched new course settings into the plot. “Full speed, Thai-i.”
A stabbing azure flare burst from the engines and the Kader leaped forward like a scalded cat, racing away from both Thread and the Sokamak at maximum acceleration. An instant later, the Méxica officer at the Kader’s comm station punched up a prerecorded distress call—translated to Khadesh—on all frequencies, interspersed with pleas for “a clear path, give us a clear path!”
Hadeishi’s attention stayed on the plot as the battleship receded in the viewing screen. The shuttle carrying the “Imperial scientist” was only seconds from entering the assigned docking bay. Mitsuharu nodded to Lovelace, who was poised with a preprogrammed transmission burst ready to send. “Comm, go.”
The shuttle floated delicately into the open boat-bay of the Sokamak and set down in a rush of maneuvering jets. As soon as the landing pads had touched the deck, the entire boat blew neatly apart into six sections. Four Khaiden penetrator pods deployed out of the debris cloud. Their on-board comps recognized the environment, sorted out targeting in a nanosecond, and burst away from the broken shuttle.
The Khaiden sub-officer in the boat-bay shrieked “Penetrators aboard! Incoming! Incoming!” into his comm an instant before being obliterated by an energy flare. The penetrators raced away down loading corridors and access ways, their plasma cutters shearing through locks and bulkheads.
Mitsuharu considered the likely effects within the Sokamak with satisfaction. It is a poor Khaiden commander who has not prepared for the day when he must put the knife to his superior.
As the severed wing spun away behind the Kader, the on-board weapons systems woke up and spewed a cloud of free-seeking missiles, bomb-pods, and chaff. The other two Hayalet-class battleships reacted to the sudden appearance of live munitions on their plot by lighting off their own engines and swerving away from both the invisible Barrier and the “weapons accident.” The attendant destroyers and support ships followed, while their commanders were tremendously amused to see a brace of sprint missiles from the “accident” flare across the prow of the proud Sokamak.
Their ’cast chatter was quick and violent, but now Hadeishi was beginning to pick out sentences and phrases:
“See, Begh-Adag covers himself with glory again!”
“Fireworks to celebrate his demotion.”
“What other captain could guide his ship to such renown, eh Hunt-lord Zah’ar?”
“Are you volunteering for something, Geh’zir
?”
“No!”
“God of a Thousand Eyes forefend! The Sokamak!”
The battleship was still quite clear on Mitsuharu’s v-display. The massive hull convulsed, ripped by four fusion blasts deep within its core. Then it shattered as jets of plasma erupted from gaps in the outer hull, tearing apart in a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated radioactive debris.
Hadeishi smiled, nodding to himself. At Kurētāko Shrine, Musashi slew sixteen adversaries with only a wooden bokutō when they ambushed him at prayer. Not one of them believed he was truly in danger.
The Kader cut her main drives, lighting off a hard deceleration burn as soon as the ship had rotated aspect. Inudo laid the light cruiser into the shadow of the Tlemitl as they slowed. Hadeishi watched him handle the old Spear-class cruiser with great appreciation. The helmsman was exceeding himself today, despite wrestling with an archaic control system. The Nisei officer was gladdened by his men’s undaunted spirit.
“All boat-bay doors open, recovery teams stand by,” Mitsuharu ordered. Then he tapped open a broadcast channel to the cloud of Imperial evac capsules hiding in the shelter of the stricken flagship. “All Imperial survivors, stand by for identity confirmation.”
ABOARD THE MOULINS
IN THE GARBAGE CHUTE
Green Hummingbird found himself in the tiny mess area of the freighter, two seats down from the kaffe dispenser, his hands secured with a pair of zipcuffs. The Fleet marines remaining aboard had sorted themselves out—three were on the bridge, one was keeping an eye on the nauallis and the shipcore, while the remaining man was downdeck in engineering. All of them had armored up while the first team deployed into the landing chamber, but the men inside the ship had slung their helmets over their shoulders on a lanyard.
No one, the old Náhuatl observed, likes breathing their own recycled waste.
For his part, Hummingbird was sitting quietly, being as unobtrusive as possible, while the marines and the crew went about their business. Captain Locke and his men, particularly Piet the navigator, had acquired a still, waiting quality over the last hour. The marines were all listening to the chatter of the Prince and his party banging around amongst the dead corridors of the artifact. The expedition had been dropping repeaters at every junction as they moved. The Europeans—Hummingbird had made careful note that all of the freighter crew were of a distinct genotype—were listening as well, but for something else.
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