Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  “Welcome, brother,” Musashi replied, moving his legs out of the way. Both shins were bound in bandages. “I’d offer you tea—if I had any—or a rice ball—if I had one. But I’ve neither, so you’re welcome to the dry roof at least.”

  The blind man laughed, his stout face creasing into a merry smile. “The tamghachi have left this whole province hungry—or so they tell me in the inns, when there is nothing to eat.” He settled down on a little bench, head bowed over his cane.

  Outside, the drumming sound of the rain was supplemented—then replaced—by the rattle of hooves on the metaled road. At first one horse, then a dozen. “Hm.” The blind man dug vigorously at one ear with a blunt finger. “Someone is coming in a great hurry. I wonder—could it be the militia? I’ve heard there is a murderer loose—he slew a tax collector some days ago.”

  “Interesting.” Musashi yawned, hands behind his head. “But the militia does not ride war horses.”

  * * *

  Hadeishi awoke to find a sandy-haired man with knight-commander’s tabs standing beside his gurney. The familiar sounds and smells of medbay surrounded them, and De Molay was loitering behind the Templar. Her gray eyes wrinkled up in amusement at the look on Hadeishi’s face when he recognized Ketcham.

  “You were in a bad way the last time I saw you, Chu-sa Hadeishi,” the European observed.

  Mitsuharu smiled wryly. “Aside from far too much radiation exposure, I believe my wounds are only of the heart, Præceptor Ketcham. You found another ship, I see, and one better suited to you than wildcatting with an illegal ore refinery.”

  “I did.” Ketcham scratched the back of his head, failing to suppress a huge grin. “You seem to have gotten back into the hot-chair, too, by hook and by crook.”

  “By stealing my ship,” De Molay grumbled. Her good humor made the elderly woman seem a dozen years younger. “Twice!”

  “I returned it,” Hadeishi said quietly. He looked around the room, hoping for a comm panel.

  “Much the worse for wear!” De Molay objected, jutting out her chin pugnaciously.

  “He has that way.” Ketcham laughed. “You will want to know, Chu-sa, that Commander Koshō is well, though busy aboard her ship, which is somewhat … battered. We intend to ship your men across to the Naniwa as soon as she has atmosphere restored on all decks, and proper facilities prepared.”

  Mitsuharu felt his heart ease at the news of the battle-cruiser’s survival and lay easier on the gurney. “Then I can sleep at last.”

  He closed his eyes, feeling the tug of tremendous weariness, and wondered idly if it were possible for him to sleep for a full week. Then he sat up again, frowning at the two Templars. They had not moved, and were waiting for him expectantly.

  “My men, you say, to the Naniwa. Where am I bound, if not with them?”

  De Molay produced a data crystal, bound with gold and white bands. “If you recall, Chu-sa Hadeishi, you signed aboard the merchanter Wilful as an engineer’s mate. After Wilful’s unhappy experience with marauding Khaid, you assumed emergency captaincy until such time as you engineered the capture of the Khaiden light cruiser Kader. You served as de facto captain aboard her until the vessel was evacuated. From our point of view, you are still captain of the Kader, but her fate is yet to be decided. And you are still our employee, bound by contract. One possibility is to scuttle the cruiser and add her remains to the debris along the Barrier. Another is to affect sufficient repairs to allow transit to the nearest Temple shipyard where she may either be reborn, or recycled. In any case, she is your charge. These orders—” She tapped a fingernail against the crystal. “Affirm your employment and responsibilities.”

  De Molay reached for his hand and closed his thin, newly scrubbed fingers over the crystal. It seemed tremendously heavy, possessing a weight in his mind far in excess of the tiny dimensions.

  Hadeishi’s glance shifted to Ketcham. “What time is it and when does the next watch begin?”

  De Molay turned a snort of laughter into a sneeze.

  Ketcham shook his head, putting on a forbidding expression. “You, Chu-sa, are on medbay time. Down here, I’m XO of the Pilgrim in name only. When the Infirmarian lets you go, you can take your duty station. Until then—well, you’ll have time to sleep at last.”

  ABOARD THE NANIWA

  IN COMPANY OF THE PILGRIM AND HER SUPPORT FLOTILLA

  Chu-sa Koshō nodded in greeting to the two Imperial marines standing watch outside medbay pod twenty-seven, and then stepped inside without a pause, followed by Kikan-shi Helsdon. The pressurized door whispered shut behind them and Susan paused a moment, letting the portal seal, before turning around, hands clasped behind her back. The Naniwa’s commander looked civilized again—she’d had a shower, been out of her z-armor for nearly a day, and gotten a few hours of sleep. Helsdon, now sitting nervously in a corner chair, looked little different than usual. The engineering teams had been working around the clock to repair secondary hull damage and return normal living conditions to the hab rings and command compartments.

  “Anderssen-tzin, good afternoon.”

  Gretchen looked up from her field comp, face mottled with bruises, her tangled blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Her bare arms and neck were shining with quickheal, and her ruined civilian z-armor had been replaced by a matte black Fleet skinsuit while she remained in medbay. She was sitting on a bed of crates, spare insulation, and blankets—the regular pod bed had been moved somewhere else. A portable lamp hung from the ceiling, shedding a bluish-white glow. On her field comp’s screen, a relayed feed from the main navigational array was unspooling, showing the singularity and its attendant stars. The icon of the Sunflower was nowhere to be seen.

  “It’s gone.” The Swedish woman set the comp down, shoulders slumping in weariness. “Dragged down by irresistible gravity. The last sanctuary of the Vay’en is no more.”

  Koshō glanced to Helsdon, who shook his head in ignorance. The Nisei woman pursed her lips, frowned once, and then tilted her head questioningly at the xenoarchaeologist.

  “I do not know who these Vahyyyen might be, but I am very interested in determining what happened to Prince Xochitl and Ambassador Sahâne. Can you tell me?”

  “Oh,” Anderssen blinked, and then rubbed her face, trying to remember. “I had forgotten all about the two boys … they are dead, Captain. One of the Templars shot Xochitl in the face with an assault rifle, and Sahâne—well, he was burned alive by a plasma burst and then cut in half. Old Crow, he—” She nodded to herself, feeling light-headed. “He was shot, then stabbed, and then fell down a very, very deep pit. But—but I could not say for certain he perished, not being able to see the bottom of that pit. It was quite deep.”

  Susan’s expression congealed into a cold, immobile mask. “My marines found you drifting on a jury-rigged grav-sled outside the artifact, Doctor Anderssen, in the company of a half-dead, blinded Jaguar Knight who had been Cuauhhuehueh of the Prince’s guard detachment. The ship Xochitl commandeered—the Moulins—has disappeared. Do you know what happened to the freighter?”

  Gretchen shrugged. “One of the Templars survived the melee with the Prince and his men. He must have taken it out of the landing cradle—she was gone when Koris and I reached the garbage disposal port.”

  “I see.” Koshō’s jaw tightened in frustration. “Do you know how the freighter avoided our notice—assuming the ship left the vicinity of the Chimalacatl and boosted outbound, to join the rest of the Templar battle-group? Helsdon here and my techs have gone over the sensor logs at least three times—finding nothing.”

  “It was a military ship,” Anderssen offered. “Disguised as a freighter. But the crewmen were all Order Knights and they were using—at the end—powered armor and modern weapons. Better than the Prince’s men had, from what I saw.”

  Susan looked to Helsdon, clicking her teeth. “Then the Moulins could have been equipped with the same stealthing technology the Pilgrim’s fighters were showing off against the Khaid.”r />
  “No reason,” the engineer coughed, covering his mouth, “to believe otherwise, kyo.”

  “Why are you asking me, Captain?” Anderssen was watching them both with an odd, distant expression. “I’m just an archaeologist caught up in something far, far bigger than she expected.”

  “I need any information you can give me, Doctor, because I’m beginning to wonder if we will be allowed to leave this place.” The Nisei officer indicated the ship, the rosette, the universe with an encompassing wave of her hand. “I know these things: that my ship is alone, wounded and in desperate need of resupply. A presumably friendly fleet—including a strike carrier easily the size of the Tlemitl—has come to our aid, is providing medical assistance, and has sent across dozens of wounded rescued from other Fleet ships lost in the recent series of battles. But at the same time, you tell me that Knights of the Temple have murdered an Imperial Prince, the ambassador of a friendly realm, and also an Imperial Judge, and … I wonder if we are next, if the Knights decide to clean up this little mess before they go on their way.”

  “Oh.” Gretchen leaned her head on one hand, eyes half closed. “That is a problem, I guess.”

  “It could be … serious.” Koshō stood beside the bed, her attention fully upon the Swedish woman. “You came here with Hummingbird. I know he was at the center of all this. I have a horrible suspicion that he arranged all of this. But I do not know why—and I hope that you will tell me, for the sake of my crew, if not out of courtesy to me.”

  Anderssen regarded Susan sidelong, her expression still and distant for nearly a minute. Then she lifted her head, attention returning to the present, and she looked at Koshō with great curiosity. “Captain, do you remember that this is the third time our paths have crossed? Each time, great events have been in play—at Ephesus III, on Jagan, and now here.… I wonder, is Chu-sa Hadeishi here as well? I know you’ve your own ship now, but—”

  “He is.” Koshō’s stoic expression was suddenly and subtly transformed, cycling from glad relief to concern to suspicion and then grim certainty. “He is here. Hummingbird brought him here. Hummingbird brought me here, and the Prince, and—what in the Nine Hells was he doing? What were you doing with him?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Gretchen spread her hands. “You will find no ease to your worries!”

  “Tell me.” Susan’s voice sounded stretched and brittle.

  “The Crow found me on New Aberdeen,” Anderssen said, “and he needed help with something beyond his ‘capacity to evaluate.’ I thought he needed my technical skills as a xenoarchaeologist—but that was a gravely incorrect assumption. He never said—he never does, you know?—what he expected me to do.”

  “And you just came when he beckoned?” Koshō sounded disgusted.

  Gretchen shook her head, all expression draining from her tired face. “No. I had been waiting for him, or someone like him, to come nosing around. After everything that happened on Jagan, when I came home empty-handed, without a bonus check from the Company, I found that my boy Duncan had been killed while working on a trawler in the Northern Cape Sea. That—”

  She stopped, her attention suddenly far away from the medbay and the two officers. Susan waited, watching the subtle play of emotions on the blond woman’s face, until Helsdon stirred, looking at his commander beseechingly.

  “Anderssen-tzin, we don’t have much time. Please tell us what the Hummingbird was doing here.”

  “Oh.” Gretchen shook herself, grinding the heel of one palm into her left eye. “I have a recording, I think. My suit comm was on when he told me. You can hear it from his own lips.”

  She tapped up a sequence on her field comp, and then slid the volume to three-quarters. The sound of static and harsh breathing filled the little room, and then the old Náhuatl was saying:… the annihilation of the Prince, the Khaid, even the poor Ambassador and my own life in the bargain. A clean set of books—nothing falling into the Emperor’s hands to upset the balance at home—and time. Time we desperately need.

  The recording stopped and Anderssen made a face. “We came here in little tramp freighters and mail-boats before the Moulins, which seemed like more of the same. Hummingbird didn’t have anything on his side but some fancy comps in a case, me—for whatever I was worth—and his own invincible self assurance. Do you hear him? He was hurt when he said that, and afraid—not of dying, no, but of failing at the task he’d taken upon himself.”

  She stopped, running her finger across the navigational display. The Chimalacatl was already gone, torn to shreds as it fell. Comp projections showed the delicate balance holding all three of the brown dwarves was beginning to fail. In a hundred years, or a thousand, the entire rosette would succumb to the black hole and obliterate all traces of the Vay’en and their works.

  “I thought,” Gretchen continued, “when I sent them down into oblivion, that I defeated him. But listening to his voice now, I think I did exactly what he wanted … even better than he could have managed himself.”

  Susan made a soft, strangled sound. “He wanted the Sunflower destroyed?”

  “More than that,” Gretchen replied. “He needed—or the Judges needed—to ensure that not only was the artifact obliterated—but everyone who had come seeking its power was slain, denied, or convinced it did not exist. The Prince is dead, the Khaid massacred, the Order Knights left with empty hands … we are witnesses to the immolation of the evidence. The nav plot shows that the entire Barrier will be swallowed up in time, pulled into the black sack and made to vanish.”

  She laughed nervously. “Only three people remain who saw the heart of the structure, who know what happened there—me and an Order Knight who escaped, the one who departed in the Moulins. He will certainly carry the news to his masters—and I wonder how they will react?”

  “They came well equipped,” Koshō admitted grudgingly. “The Pilgrim is the core of a full-scale squadron and seems more than capable of mopping up the leftovers of our ill-fated expedition. If we’re on the books to be marked off—we won’t last long.”

  “If you give me to them, they will let you go.” Gretchen’s statement carried an odd weight of certainty. “I think they are very keen to know the fate of the Vay’en, and the Chimalacatl, and what transpired within.”

  “That seems, to me, Doctor Anderssen, an excellent reason not to put you into their hands.” Susan offered a tight, bitter smile. “I am still an officer of the Fleet and the Emperor’s servant. If we escape, then duty requires that I report what transpired in this benighted place. It seems unwise to leave all of the witnesses in the hands of the Temple. But what becomes of you after we return—I cannot say.”

  “It does not matter.” Gretchen’s expression was bleak. “I’ve done all I can. Like Hummingbird, my death or disappearance evens the books, leaving almost no trace of our passing.”

  “Untrue.” Koshō lifted her chin, indicating the icons of the Templar ships on the plot. “They are still here—they have possession—but what do they gain from all this, Doctor? Are they now an enemy of the Empire?”

  “No.” Anderssen scratched the back of her head, where a sore had developed from wearing her helmet so long. “They came seeking to ally themselves with something—with someone—they thought remained in this funereal place. Hummingbird alluded to needing time. He believed—and the Templars believe—some enormous calamity is fast approaching. One which we—humanity—cannot withstand without the assistance of the kind of powers which once dwelt here.”

  Helsdon stiffened in his chair, fear stark in his features. “My God, woman, this place was built by a race with the power of the Gods! We won’t have this level of technology for thousands of years!”

  Susan nodded in agreement, her complexion growing waxy. “Do you know what they fear? Do the Templars?”

  “They believe they know.” Gretchen smiled sadly. “I do not. But I can tell you the Order Knights are being used, as you and I were used by Hummingbird, by another agent—another pupp
et master hiding in the wings, out of our sight. This seems to me a skirmish—an opening move—where greater powers than the Empire are jockeying for position on the field of combat.”

  “These Vay’en,” Koshō said, after considering the Swedish woman’s words. “The Templars believed they were still alive, after millions of years? That they could be woken, or summoned? And bargained with?”

  Anderssen nodded. “Yes. It is even possible they were right—but none of the Vay’en remained, only their machines and devices. Of course, given the disparity of power between us, I don’t think bargained with would be the appropriate term. Subjecting humanity to slavery and servitude—yes, that would have been the likely outcome.”

  Helsdon glanced at Susan, who nodded, wondering what the engineer intended.

  “Doctor Anderssen—what happened to disrupt the equilibrium of the system? Did—did you do something?”

  Gretchen looked at him, seemingly puzzled, before saying, “Ambassador Sahâne attempted to harness the machine. But his exocortex was insufficient to the task. There was an interruption during the process—and what he intended did not come to pass.”

  Susan’s forehead creased sharply. “Why was the ambassador here? Did he know something about the artifact? Did his race—these Hjo—know something?”

  “He knew nothing.” Anderssen sighed. “But his race—yes, they had once served the Vay’en—long ago, they were servants, soldiers, bureaucrats … the linchpin of the Vay’en demesne. Like the Prince, like me, his presence had been arranged by those who set all this in motion. Three of us were needed to unlock the mechanism, so three were delivered by Hummingbird.”