In the first silence, the hummingbird dancer raised his arms, lifting one foot. As he did, the white mantle stiffened, conforming to his muscular arms, and the ends extended, becoming proper wings.
Stamp! His bare foot fell, striking the platform. In the same instant, Oc Chac struck the drum again. BOOM!
Thus the youth danced, first in an irregular pattern which wended this way and that, each light footstep ringing in the tubeway with the slap of his bare feet swallowed by the deep voice of the drum. Watching him, seeing the rapt faces of her crewmen and feeling a tension singing in the air, Susan felt chilled. Back and forth along the section of rail, the Huitzitzilnahualli danced as though flying, an irregular, swooping motion. From one end of the watching crowd he passed to the other, sometimes spinning, sometimes leaping in short, tightly controlled hops. The walls of the tubeway began to vibrate in time with the drum-faster now, as the dancer pushed himself, speeding through the intricacy of the pattern-and both of the Mayan’s hands were a blur on the huehuetl.
Suddenly, as the hummingbird dancer completed a high leap, the drum stopped cold.
The boy landed, instantly still, wings draped over his face, covering his head and shoulders.
Not even a breath disturbed the silence. Susan could feel her heart thudding in her chest.
A new sound entered-the soft wail of a conch-bellied mandolin-and the dancer contorted, flinging back his wings, exposing his iridescent chest to the roof of the tubeway. Kosho stiffened and more than one crewman gasped aloud. A thick crimson streak had appeared over the boy’s heart. It seemed as if blood were leaking from beneath the feathers, pooling under the green and gold. The Huitzitzilnahualli leapt straight up, flinging himself backward in a stunning reverse, and as he did so, the white mantle and the gleaming wings became speckled with irregular black spots.
He landed square on both feet, but now his stance had changed. No longer did he move with such delicate grace-instead he spun, wings inward, showing his broad back and mantle to the watching men-and with every revolution, swinging into ever tighter circles, the whiteness was pierced again and again by black, corrosive streaks. In a flurry of motion, the dancer was suddenly prostrate before Chac and Kosho at the end of the lines of watching men-and his mantle, his chest, his legs were all but consumed by stippled gray-on-black darkness, as though his limbs had washed away in a tide of corruption.
BOOM. The drum sounded fully one more time, the boy head down on the platform before them, his breath coming in audible gasps. Then Oc Chac struck the sides of the drum sharply with stiffened fingers, drawing everyone’s attention away from the Huitzitzilnahualli and onto himself.
“A poet once said:
Be joyful, there are intoxicating flowers in our hands. Put on these necklaces of flowers, flowers from the season of rain, fragrant flowers opening their corollas. Here flies a bird, he chatters and sings, he comes from the house of the Risen Lord. With flowers in our hands, we are happy. With songs upon our lips, sadness disappears. O great-hearted ones, in this way, your sorrow is put to flight. The Giver of Life, the Sacrificed One, he has sent them. He invents them, the joyous flowers, These put your sorrow to flight.”
When the Mayan’s basso voice fell silent, Susan realized the hummingbird dancer had vanished like smoke among the fir trees and the faces of all the engineers and Backbone kashikan-hei were open and glad, empty of fear or fatigue. Even she felt refreshed, in a strange way, as though some of the weight upon her shoulders had been lifted.
***
Several hours later, after taking her station in Command, Kosho saw Oc Chac enter, once more in his usual Fleet uniform. She beckoned him over, her expression curious. “ Sho-sa, my thanks for this morning’s invitation.”
The Mayan nodded grudgingly. “You were most welcome, kyo.”
“Did you need me to be present?” She tilted her head to one side, watching him closely. “Should the commanding officer attend these ceremonies?”
“ Chu-sa… No, it is not necessary. Most captains do not appear.”
“Was my presence helpful?” Kosho leaned back a little in the shockchair. “You let me stand-you made me part of the ritual. Were I absent, would you have taken my place?”
Chac shook his head. “No, kyo. The officer in charge of the damaged area would usually represent the Risen Lord-but Goroemon was off-watch, having stood in for mine, and I thought… I thought you might find it interesting.”
“It was.” She looked him up and down, nodding to herself. “I am glad to see you back on duty, however. Look at this.” Kosho turned to the executive ’well displayed by her console, stylus light in her hand, and marked a semicircular area deeper into the Pocket, partway between the Naniwa and the singularity and its attendants.
A dark mass emerged from the scan as the ’well zoomed in.
“There is an enormous amount of debris,” Susan said, “between us and the event horizon. Shoal after vast shoal of matter, all of it dark and cold. The dispersion pattern is very stable-only in a few places have we been able to pick out infall from the cloud towards the black hole. And it seems to be old.”
“Ancient!” Oc settled at his own console, keying up a copy of what she was looking at. He grimaced at the figures displayed on the sidebar v-panes. Other displays unfolded, showing him the results of the latest navigational scans. “We’re not receiving much data from deeper in the system, either, but look at the initial analysis on this formation: very heavy-metals, radioactives, high-order elements. And the size of the field-I wonder if the planetary systems from those brown dwarves made this up-after something pulverized them into rubble.”
Kosho nodded, rubbing her chin. “Or something cut them up into tiny pieces.”
Thai-i Holloway, who had been poring over the same data, hoping to find some clue in the pattern of dust clouds to indicate another Pinhole-like exit, looked up and caught Susan’s eye. “ Chu-sa, I think there’s something solid down at the horizon.” He stepped to the main threatwell and jabbed his stylus deep into the projection. “I can see just a faint ghost-here-on my long-range plot.”
The Chu-sa nodded. It must be enormous to show up at this range, but what else could we expect? All of this didn’t come into being by accident.
Kosho straightened her uniform, keyed up her own image in a v-pane looping from the comm system, and then tapped open a channel to Prince Xochitl in Secondary Command.
“Lord Prince?” she said briskly, when his grim visage appeared. “Status update. Still no way out, but we’ve confirmed the pocket is just more than six light-years across. We have also found indications of an artificial structure very near the event horizon of the singularity.”
Xochitl frowned, his expression impassive, as though carved from stone. “All of this was built, you say? The whole of the kuub and this hidden realm as well?”
“Almost certainly, Gensui.” Susan remembered the raw greed on Gretchen’s face very clearly. “I will keep you-”
“Let us consider our situation carefully, Chu-sa Kosho.”
The cold formality in the Prince’s voice stood the small hairs of Susan’s neck on end.
“The Khaid will have summoned reinforcements,” he continued. “They will not abandon the watch at our badger-hole. Indeed, they will be aggressively seeking a way in after us. A six-light-year-diameter surface will take years to search properly, and I do not believe we have years of supplies aboard this ship. If all of this is a ‘made-thing,’ then the structure at its core will be a control apparatus of some kind-”
“Or cheese!” Kosho interrupted in irritation. “Or the hostile fortress all of this was built to protect! Certain destruction in any case, as it will be defended-”
“Make course for the structure, Chu-sa,” the Prince growled. “Every recording device aboard on continuously. Dispatch message drones with the contents every half-hour.”
“Of course, Lord Prince.” Kosho closed the comm connection, then stifled a sigh and picked up a stylus to lay
in a new plot. “So, down into the black heart of the kuub,” she muttered. “And then out again as quickly as possible.” Grubbing for something to show his beneficent father, some prize to buy back favor. There’s a cold thread of fear in his heart now… and we’ll all likely pay for it. I should not have suggested he’d been sent out here to die.
Holloway and Oc Chac were waiting, faces pensive, when she looked up again.
“Yes, Sho-sa?”
The Mayan made a disgusted face. “And where, kyo, does he expect these message drones to go?”
Outside the Barrier
Once more, Hadeishi was sitting in the darkened bridge, the Wilful ’s day having wound down into the third watch, watching sensor traffic spool past in the holocast. De Molay was seemingly asleep in her chair-she rarely moved now, having given up her cabin to the worst of the wounded-and Tocoztic and a Mirror comm officer who just needed a place to lay her head were snoring on mats on the floor behind the Navigator’s station. The Khaid fleet at the Pinhole was still busy, various scattered ships returning to the main group, and the battleships standing watch were now gathering up and accelerating battle debris into the opening. At this range, Mitsuharu couldn’t follow the details of their mapping process, but he was certain they were making headway.
His hand moved on the controls, rewinding the last thirty-six hours of data, then letting it run forward at sixty-speed over and over again. Where are you, he wondered, keying up the commercial registry one more time. I can feel you’re there, given a fresh coat of paint, or at least a new nameplate…
His earbug fluttered with snatches of Khaiden message traffic as well. Their encryption was spotty, and sometimes they broadcast in the clear-though, to their credit, only on line-of-sight laser when in close proximity-but Mitsuharu had time, and the passive scanners stitched into the hull of the Wilful were very good, just as the old woman had promised. What he heard was mostly unintelligible, but occasionally he made out the names of ships, or Kabil -commanders, or perhaps curses used over and over again.
They are not pleased. That much was very clear. Mitsuharu also gained the impression that an argument was underway between the ship captains-some seemed bent on leaving, the others on wrinkling out the one Imperial ship to escape their trap. A battle-cruiser which, from what he could gather from fragmentary appearances on their long-range scan, had disappeared into the “passage” the Khaid were attempting to reconnoiter. So one of us got away with a working ship-excellent piloting-but now De Molay’s “whipping knives” are shown to have a chink in their armor. And what might lie beyond? That is a powerful draw for the Kabilizar…
Movement in the active holocast caught his eye. Three of the smaller Khaid ships had gotten underway, each building velocity with a steady burn. The corona flare of their engines stood out on his plot-and each seemed to be departing the main group on a different vector. Hadeishi scratched the back of his head, reached for a plastic jug of water someone had left in Command, and then grew very still.
Three drive flares, three ships-but not the same engine signature. His stylus was immediately busy on the console, capturing all three emissions profiles and then routing them into a spectral analysis module the freighter’s comp maintained for finding hydrogen strata in gas giants. There! There she is.
One of the three ships-perhaps a light cruiser from the mass index-was what he was waiting for.
“The Goddess watches over the patient,” Mitsuharu said to himself. His stylus tapped rapidly on the console, setting a new course. He frowned as the nav comp calculated the intercept, as the resulting numbers were not good. This gives us a very poor angle of approach. We need to trim that up.
De Molay opened one eye as the timbre of the Wilful ’s vibration changed, the maneuver drives going into their pre-ignition sequence. “And now?”
“We need to pick up some velocity, Sencho. How high can I push these engines?”
Both of the old woman’s eyes opened. “Are you mad? If you go to maximum burn, the Khaid will pick us up on long-range scan.”
“I know.” Hadeishi offered her a lopsided smile. “I want one of their light cruisers to come looking for us-or at least change their course enough to scan our area.” He paused, thinking. “The absorptive mode will work again, correct? It wasn’t a one-time getaway device?”
“Yes,” De Molay said, sounding wary, “it will work again…”
“And unless a Khaid camera is pointed directly at us as we occlude the star field-which is luckily very sparse here-or move across one of the more excited dust clouds, their sensors won’t pick us up?”
“That is the idea.” An acerbic tone crept into her voice.
Mitsuharu stood up, straightened his battered leather jacket, and gave her a very proper bow. “Then we’ve a great deal of work to do. Thank you, Sencho.”
***
Several hours later, Hadeishi climbed awkwardly up one of the gangways to the command deck, having trouble adjusting to the restricted field of vision and clumsy weight of his new armor. The bandolier of grenades strapped across his chest and the bulky Yilan -class shipgun over his shoulder banged against him with every movement. Maybe, he thought-a little late- this wasn’t a good idea.
Clomping in his heavy boots, the Nisei made his way onto the bridge and fetched up beside Tocoztic’s station at Navigation. The Thai-i looked up at the sound, about to snarl something rude, and yelped in alarm. Trying to leap backward while snatching out his service sidearm earned the lieutenant a hard collision with the second chair, a bruise, and a seat on the deck.
“Resume your station, Thai-i. I am no Khaid.” Mitsuharu opened the visor of the salvaged combat armor to expose his features. His face seemed a little small inside a helmet designed for the larger Khaidite cranium and jaw, but the foundation of the suit itself was composed of a gel similar to that used by the Fleet, and had sized itself to his frame as best it could. The chitin plates riding on the gelcore were now awkwardly distributed, but he hoped they’d still serve.
Tocoztic recovered himself smartly, climbing up from the floor with a doughty, “ Hai, Chu-sa! ”
“Status of that light cruiser, Thai-i?”
“Still holding course, dead on for the end of our burn, kyo.”
“Hm.” Hadeishi frowned, turning to the holocast to check their vector.
De Molay, working on a thermos of tea, raised an eyebrow at the Nisei officer. “I thought you wanted them to come hunting for you?”
“I want them to come-look-find nothing-and return to their initial patrol pattern.” He tugged a stylus from the holder at the edge of the Navigator’s console and sketched out a trajectory in the air. “Like so. Then, when we overlap course here-roughly-we’ll match velocity for nearly thirteen minutes.”
Mitsuharu looked over at the old woman, his face filled with speculation. “Unless… can your absorptive mode swallow our engine flare as well?”
“No, it cannot!” De Molay sat up, wincing at the pain in her side. “It is a passive system, as you can well guess. It is not a weapon, but a defense.”
Hadeishi laughed, brightening for a moment. “We will make do, Sencho.”
Feeling well enough to stand, the old woman limped over to him and examined the Khaid armor from top to bottom, testing the dark black-and-green fittings and running a fingertip along the tight, blocky lettering on the upper arms. Nodding in approval, she said, “You make a fine raider, Chu-sa Hadeishi. I think you’ve been in the wrong business all along!” Then her face grew more serious. “How many are you taking in with you?”
“I leave you our esteemed Thai-i here as pilot,” he said, “plus two in Engineering and Galliand in medbay. But not Cajeme, he’s in the first team with me.”
De Molay’s expression darkened and she rapped him sharply on the arm, making the chitinous armor ring hollowly. “That would be fifty-five men sent to their deaths, Chu-sa, if your calculations are wrong.”
“ Wilful carries no missiles, no guns, Sencho. We canno
t overcome this Khaid from a safe distance. We must do this the hard way, as your ancestors did in the old days.” He flashed a brief smile. “And so we need at least eight minutes at zero-delta, but thirteen would be better.”
“We could abandon this place, take these men to the nearest Fleet depot.” The old woman’s voice was beginning to sound tired. Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Saving some would be better than losing all, would it not?”
Hadeishi shook his head. “These men and women are Fleet, Sencho. It is not in them to flee the battlefield when their comrades can still be saved, or when they can still strike out at our enemies.”
Then he carried her back to the shockchair, and the Thai-i helped him tuck her into the blankets.
***
“Ten minutes to intercept.” Tocoztic’s voice echoed in Mitsuharu’s earbug. Within the Wilful ’s port cargo-bay, ship-comm was still working. The Chu-sa had the Khaid radio in his armor working as well, which let him hear the rasping breath and muttering of every man and woman crowded into the bay with him. The alien armor was lacking any number of features-no personal vitals, no med-band-style dispensers-but it would hold pressure, the chitin-scale armor was tough, and the maneuvering jets had propellant. No complaints.
“All teams, equipment check,” Hadeishi announced, rotating to the crewmen who’d drawn Team One duty with him. There were five-Cajeme and his two assistants, who were heavily laden with demolitions packs and a pair of magnetic rams-then a marine for security, and the junior comm officer from the Eldredge, who had survived the destruction of her ship by an utter miracle, and was kitted out with the most powerful field comp they could salvage from the Wilful and a satchel filled with tools, spare parts, and data crystals. Mitsuharu ran through a careful check of Cajeme’s z-suit and his demolition packs. “Can’t have you lose air while we’re working, Nitto-hei. You might drop something that makes a loud bang.”
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