Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  Then she smiled tightly at Helsdon, who had looked up from his console for a moment.

  Blanching, he set himself to work again.

  “Kyo?” Pucatli looked up from the Comms console, where he was sharing space with the duty officer. “We’ve synched a channel to the remote at the Pinhole. You should see this…”

  Susan tapped up the feed on her own console and pursed her lips, whistling in surprise. The relay telemetry showed three ships erupting from the aperture, engaged in a long-distance missile duel. All three of them popped up on the display with the familiar collection of Khaid glyphs. The pursued—a light cruiser tagged “Kader” by shipnet from the ’cast traffic they’d captured during the initial fighting—was taking a beating, shedding a coiling cloud of debris and weaving drunkenly. In comparison, the two pursuers seemed sleek and fast, shrugging aside any counter-fire with contemptuous ease.

  “A clan dispute, kyo? Did one of the ship commanders try a coup?” Oc Chac peered at her display.

  “No.” Susan’s hand clenched on the armrest beside the shockchair. He tried to reach me.

  “No,” she continued. “This must be the Khaid ship captured by Chu-sa Hadeishi. He found himself in the same predicament as we did—and passed through the Pinhole as well.”

  “To no avail, Chu-sa.” The Mayan shook his head sadly. “See, they’ve lost that last drive—they’re ballistic now. If they don’t lose containment, the Khaid will finish them off with a single shipkiller.”

  Koshō nodded, feeling sick. The Kader’s maneuvering drives had sputtered out, leaving the cruiser a hulk coasting into the void. A cloud of tiny pinpoints popped, spilling away from the dying ship.

  He’s ejected pods, she thought, feeling an enormous distance open in her heart. Reactors are off-line. She’s just scrap metal now, falling into infinity. Not even worth—

  The two Khaid destroyers cut their drives as well, and on the plot, the paths of the three vessels began to converge.

  “Why are—” Pucatli fell silent, seeing that Oc Chac was nodding to himself.

  The Mayan scratched at a tiny fringe of beard he’d started to accumulate. “The coil on that ship might still be intact, Thai-i, and her reactors are still working—even if they’ve had to shut them down. Some quick work by the engineers on those two Mishrak-class boats might salvage the whole ship. No reason to waste a shipkiller and a working starship.”

  Oc Chac looked to Koshō, a speculative expression on his face. “And the captains of those two destroyers haven’t read Chu-sa Hadeishi’s service jacket, have they?”

  “No.” Susan sat up, feeling an enormous, crushing weight begin to dissipate. “They have no idea the evacuation pods are empty. No idea at all.”

  Then she scowled forbiddingly at the Sho-sa and the rest of the crew. “Back to work! We need our drives back on line, missile racks refreshed, guns working!” She clapped her hands sharply, making a fierce explosive sound that made everyone in Secondary jump in alarm. “Banzai!”

  THE PYLON OF THOUGHT

  Burning shapes impressed themselves upon Gretchen’s perception, even with her eyes squeezed tightly closed, even without the power of the bronzed tablet flowing through her nervous system. A shining rainbow streak coiled around the Thread tethered at the center of the shaft. The low consoles and the floor itself were filled with quiescent corkscrewlike patterns of brass and silver. Far above, the roof of the enormous room was flowing with filmy curlicues drawn in white, rose, and violet. Dimly, she felt these were the sleeping patterns of control systems, comp nodes, and other undecipherable systems.

  In her ghost-sight, the phantasmal bodies of uniformed Hjogadim congealed from the air, busy at the control consoles on either side of the platform. There were other beings with them—slighter of form, indigo-blue-pelted, with thin, ancient-seeming faces and depthless eyes. These creatures stood apart from the Hjo operators though they were intensely focused on the work underway.

  Are those the Vay’en themselves? she wondered for an instant, before something else climbed onto the platform. The powerfully built physicality of the Hjogadim was barely visible as a vaporous skeleton. The organic frame was obscured by the scintillating golden glare of something coiled at the top of the inhuman spine.

  A serpent of fire, was the first image springing to mind. Naga-kanya, the bringer of wisdom. Where are the five heads?

  The crack of assault rifles and the darting transparencies of the Prince’s marines were ephemeral to her. The shapes of the ancient past were far, far clearer. She rolled to her knees, taking in the valley-sized chamber below in one sweeping glance. Hundreds of thousands of ancient ghosts thronged the rows of platforms. Countless golden-haloed Hjogadim lay within the crystalline cradles, while swarms of slightly built blue-black creatures tended to the machines. Platoons of armored Hjo—massive in powered red-and-black battle armor—stood ready at the intersections between the triangular sectors. The hiss of her suit atmosphere escaping failed to register upon Anderssen’s conscious mind. Despite the cold pricking her chest as her clothing turned brittle in the near-zero atmosphere, Gretchen crawled unhindered to the edge of the shaft at the center of the pylon.

  Far below, the singularity swelled in her sight: a pulsating void streaked with fire as a constant, thin stream of matter plunged down to annihilation. The Thread descended beyond the limit of her sight, a cable of nine atoms stretched enormously thin, forming an unbreakable path into the abyss. The wavering mercury-sheen of some kind of force field blocked the full glare of annihilation from blinding her. Is this their heaven? They are below, somewhere between here and the event horizon. Millions of them, basking in the crucible of creation—are they healing? Giving birth to a whole new generation? Sleeping until it is time to wake again? Is this a natural cycle? A serpent’s egg warmed by the cascade of dying mass from three carefully-balanced suns?

  The stuttering roar of an assault rifle firing wildly only meters away broke her concentration. Gretchen scrambled back into the shelter of a console, gasping as bones ground raw in her chest and side. A Fleet marine staggered across her field of view, blood hissing to vapor from rents in his armor. Across the gaping maw of the shaft, she saw Prince Xochitl and Sahâne crouched behind another console. The Prince’s attention was on his attackers, his visage grim, teeth bared in a snarl of defiance. As she watched, he ejected an ammunition spool from his rifle and slammed in a fresh one. The Hjogadim, its long snout wrinkled up in fear, stared wide-eyed across at Gretchen. Is he capable of pleading for mercy?

  A priest, she remembered. Like those toiling on the field of abandoned husks below. But that isn’t right … a technician. A medical technician?

  Xochitl nosed his rifle around the corner of the console and squeezed off a burst of flechettes in the direction of the stair.

  But the cubbyholes in the halls were all empty, Anderssen thought, her mind drawn inexorably back to the puzzle at hand. Wheezing, she lay back and fumbled quickseal from a thigh pocket. Even in her elevated state, she could now feel bitter cold biting at her heart. Where did all the Hjo bodies … oh, the garbage disposal port. Outside, then, and into the maw of the black hole. Discarded servants.

  A little black cylinder bounced up onto the platform and before anyone could react, exploded. A web of glittering silver filaments sprayed out, tangling Gretchen, Sahâne, and the Prince. Xochitl cursed in two languages as he struggled to draw a monofilament knife.

  The gray-eyed navigator from the Moulins appeared in Gretchen’s field of view. Absurdly, she was relieved to see no trace of a golden glow emanating from his helmet. A regular old human, thank Christ the Sacrifice!

  Piet gave her an evaluating look, swinging a short-barreled assault rifle in her direction, but when his eyes fell upon the Méxica—still struggling to cut away the webbing—his face contorted into open hatred and the Frisian squeezed off a burst into the Prince’s faceplate. At such short range Xochitl’s glassite faceplate shattered as the armor-piercing rounds struck,
spraying blood across Sahâne’s helmet. The Prince’s corpse contorted violently, but the Méxica’s last movements barely moved the tangleweb. The Hjo squealed, as though he were the one who had been murdered. Gretchen felt a paralyzing shock run through her body.

  That was as cold and calculated an execution as I ever pray to see.

  Two more crewmen from the Moulins appeared. They quartered the platform, checking the bodies of the fallen marines in a businesslike way. Their battle-armor was scarred and pitted, but seemed to have held up far better than that of the dead Imperials. Their insignia—a red cross formed of three smaller crosses surmounting a descending spike—gleamed hot in the pale light of the accretion jet. Now, seeing them in motion with arms, armor, and heraldry revealed, Anderssen grasped who they were: Knights of the Order of the Temple of Jerusalem—the Templars of New Malta! But—they’re allies of the Empire, servants of the Emperor—aren’t they?

  Though her abdomen was beginning to warm, her z-suit working overtime to replace the heat lost through the punctured chestplate, she felt a chill memory surface. The Jehanan warred upon one another, each clan seeking to seize the false secrets of the Kalpataru for themselves, and so their unity was destroyed and—in time—their civilization fell into ruin, burned away by thermonuclear fire.

  “Which one do we need?” Piet inquired of his companions. His rifle muzzle indicated Gretchen and Sahâne in turn. “Her … or him?”

  “I suggest you keep both of them alive,” the voice of Green Hummingbird urged over the comm. The old Náhuatl stepped up onto the platform, tattered brown cloak drifting behind him. “Particularly now that the Prince is dead. You will need this Hjogadim to explain why Xochitl had to be killed. The Grand Master will want to know the Tlatocapilli was sent to seize this place for the Empire in defiance of the Pact.”

  Three black-snouted rifles swung ’round, fixing on the old man. The nauallis nodded genially to the Templars. “Though my lord Sahâne is entirely competent for the task at hand, Miss Anderssen has your master’s tablet in her safekeeping. Help her to a console, if you will.”

  That’s Mrs. Anderssen to you, Crow, Gretchen thought blackly, refusing to budge from the nice comfortable floor even when the tangleweb strands were cut away. Hummingbird and the wavering ghost-image of the serpent-headed Hjogadim Lord interpenetrated in her Sight. At that moment she perceived they were cut much of the same cloth, though they stood millennia apart. Equally calculating and barren of compassion, using entire civilizations as their … what did Sahâne call us? As their toys?

  Piet reached down and dragged her up, grimacing at the ruin of her chestplate, now bubbled shut with quickseal foam. “She’s been shot,” he said in an annoyed snarl.

  Hummingbird was at Gretchen’s side in an instant. He gently prodded at her z-suit, checking the med readout. She met his gaze with a cold, angry stare. He drew back minutely. She felt his thumb, hidden under her arm, adjusting the channel on her suit comm.

  “I’m sorry, Anderssen,” he said, face turned away from the three Europeans. “But these men have not the least respect for my authority.”

  “I’ll bet,” Gretchen growled, feeling faint. The ghostly Hjogadim lord was stalking amongst his servants, and the entire great chamber was lit from below by a wavering bronze-colored fire. Even without looking over the edge, she knew every Hjo body in every cradle was yielding up its guest, a serpentine ribbon of living flame, all of them flowing into the thread leading down into the singularity. “That was a dirty trick with the tablet.…”

  “I warned you the first time we met,” Hummingbird said, voice tinged with melancholy. “There are many things best left undisturbed.”

  “Will she live?” Piet broke in, leaning over the old man’s shoulder.

  “She will,” Hummingbird said. Gretchen realized he had switched the comm channel back. “But she is badly wounded.…”

  “Give me the Old One’s tablet, then,” the pilot said eagerly. “I can serve as his messenger, if she cannot.”

  Gretchen managed a sickly grin, and on the other side of the shaft, Sahâne made a barking sound like a dog choking on a too-large bone. Was that laughter?

  “Tablet?” she said innocently. “I don’t have any tablet.”

  Piet went quite still. Hummingbird’s eyes did not leave her face, but they grew large with surprise.

  ABOARD THE NANIWA

  “Kyo?”

  Susan opened her eyes, alarmed that she’d fallen asleep in her shockchair. Oc Chac and Pucatli were at the Comms console, and the Sho-sa seemed quite agitated.

  “What has happened?” Koshō sat up, feeling every bone and sinew complain.

  “Our remote at the Pinhole is gone.” Pucatli shook his head in disgust. “We’ve some telemetry from the aperture right before we lost contact, but it makes no sense.”

  “Show me.” Susan rolled her neck and flexed her fingers, trying to force some warmth back into them. Secondary Command seemed to have lost pressure and temperature control while she’d been sleeping. Oc Chac rotated a large v-pane towards her, and then tapped up a series of glyphs to replay the feed.

  “We’d picked up what seems to be a Khaid light cruiser about sixty minutes ago.” The Mayan’s stylus indicated a faint outline against the riot of color glowing from the Barrier clouds. “Lying dark, under full emissions control. Watching the back trail of the main squadron, of course. Doing a good job, too—the Thai-i only caught him out by replaying the gravity plot from our passage through the region.”

  Oc Chac patted Pucatli on the shoulder. “Then we get a gravity-spike from the Pinhole—see, here? Massing like a dreadnaught, kyo. As though the Tlemitl picked herself up and came after us. But then—wait, I’ll rewind again.” Susan had started, watching the emissions signature on the plot suddenly break apart.

  “Not one ship, but hundreds of smaller ones.” The Sho-sa shook his head in puzzlement. “Look at all the drive flares! Like they came in packed together, then deployed in a cloudburst. We’re still crunching the signatures in comp, trying to match a known profile but—”

  Susan’s eyes narrowed in speculation, a fingertip drifting across a line of metrics displayed on the console. “I’ve seen that kind of signature once before, Sho-sa, but not in such numbers. This is something like a Maltese assault carrier launching its complement. But I’ve never heard the Knights had something which could simultaneously deploy over three hundred fighters!”

  “Don’t know, kyo.” Pucatli grimaced, indicating the flood of contacts now racing across the plot. “But they’re at high-v and rolling right down the drive plume laid by the Khaid battlegroup!”

  “Huh!” Koshō’s attention switched to the Khaid light cruiser, which had suddenly exposed a pinpoint hot-spot on its shipskin. “We’re in line with a comm laser?”

  Oc Chac nodded, keying up a directional indicator. “Snap transmit to the main fleet, Chu-sa, but see—it’s already too late.”

  A brace of drive signatures suddenly flickered into view on the telemetry; ships a fraction the size of the Khaid light cruiser racing past the long black hull, and then the stuttering flare of shipkiller detonations rippled from one end of the warship to the other. In the remote’s camera view, a flurry of white-hot pinpoints appeared in the darkness and then the bright, sudden blossom of the cruiser’s containment failing enveloped the ship.

  The tiny ships had already vanished, just before the remote’s telemetry stopped cold.

  “They found our remote, too.” Susan clasped her hands behind her back, teeth clicking thoughtfully. “Sho-sa, did you notice how well shielded their drives are? Like ghosts…”

  The Mayan barked a hoarse, exhausted laugh. “Like they weren’t even there, Chu-sa. Until they were on that cruiser and firing.”

  THE KADER

  Humanoid shapes moved abruptly in the shadows, armor glinting in the intermittent strobe of emergency lights. Some sections of the old Spear-class cruiser had their own generators to run critical subsystems,
which meant there were pockets of atmosphere and occasional overheads still working. Hadeishi was crouched down behind a shattered section of interior wall, watching the advance of the enemy through a remote v-eye tucked into a dead lighting socket. A good dozen Khaid marines were leapfrogging up the main corridor into the habitat ring, five of the aliens in powered armor in the lead. Mitsuharu guessed they were a combat team detached from the main body of the attackers, who had managed to fight their way into the shipcore.

  The Nisei officer turned, signing Stand by to the four Imperials behind him with their motley assortment of weapons. When he checked the v-eye again, the Khaid were shifting smoothly from door to bulkhead frame to door, their heavy shipguns shining oily in the flickering light.

  Now. Hadeishi flashed a quick sign, and then tripped the switch on a portable fuel-cell generator they’d lugged down from the Command ring. Electrons flooded the local circuits and every light and door activated. The room hatches being forced by the Khaid suddenly cycled open, sending at least one of the invaders sprawling into the compartment beyond. The overheads flared to life, shedding a bright warm glow over the wreckage strewn along the corridor. The Khaiden marines swiveled, guns quartering the nearest openings—and found nothing. Their advance paused for an instant as each hunter assessed every possible threat within his field of view.

  Heated to flashpoint by the lights in the overheads, twenty or thirty pounds of fuse paper—all they had left from the landing site clearing supplies the Khaid had been dragging around—ignited with a rippling bang-bang-bang and the overhead panels popped free, swinging wildly in the oozing clouds of smoke. The Khaiden marines reacted violently, six of them ripping loose with suppressive fire to shred the ceiling tiles and shatter the remaining lights. The vanguard loped forward, looking to clear the “ambush” zone, while the rear-guard fell back to the closest intersection, ensuring their line of retreat was secured.