Behind her, the Prince stiffened in alarm.
***
The vision overlay generated by Xochitl’s exo was awash with unknown and indecipherable datagrams and hieroglyphs. Voices were speaking in his mind in a lilting, singsong tongue like calling birds; but though the cadence of the sounds seemed terribly familiar he knew none of the words. Alarmed, he surged upward out of his shockchair. “What the-”
“A Gate opens before you,” said an unexpected voice. A seamed old hand, hard as bog oak, settled on the Prince’s shoulder and forced him back down. The Mexica looked up, astounded to see that Green Hummingbird-now clad in a Fleet z-suit-had slipped quietly into the back of the bridge. The dyspeptic face of the Hjogadim Sahane peered down over his shoulder, red-rimmed eyes staring accusingly at the Prince. The nauallis met Xochitl’s gaze with a serious expression. “I advise you not to enter this structure.”
“You would exhaust God’s patience, sorcerer.” The Prince threw aside the old Nahuatl’s arm and pushed up from his seat. “You do not command me! You serve the Empire and in this place I am-”
“It is my purpose, Tlatocapilli,” Hummingbird interrupted, “to keep humanity from harm-and this place is beyond our skill to use, our power to hold, and our intellect to understand. We must leave before we come to grief. Or worse, bring disaster home with us.”
“You threaten me?” Xochitl bit out the words, struggling to keep his temper.
The Prince’s exo had already summoned Cuauhhuehueh Koris and the marines, who now appeared in the hatchway. The Jaguar Knight ducked inside, shipgun leveled on Hummingbird’s back.
Sahane found himself surrounded by the marines, who were watching the alien warily, but they kept their distance. The Hjo licked his lips, long head darting from side to side.
Hummingbird affected no notice of the activity: “My duty to your father compels me to try and save your life.”
Xochitl drew his sidearm, thumbing off the safety. “Unwise choice, old man. You are utterly-”
“Lining up a new approach vector,” Gretchen’s voice cut in. She had ignored the Prince and the Judge and their spat, even the appearance of Sahane, instead watching the progress of the diamond-hard light which had traversed the hull. Now the radiance flickered out as swiftly as it had appeared, and the Navigator’s panel in front of her woke to life again. Now, however, all of the v-panes and controls were displaying the tight curlicues of the alien hieroglyphics which had come and gone from her vision over the past days.
Landing beacon locked, one of them suggested to her and, nodding in acknowledgment, Anderssen tapped the glyph. The nav system on the freighter kicked in, adjusting their approach. Piet started in alarm-then looked to the captain for guidance-his face tight with distress. Locke shook his head no, the movement barely visible even to Gretchen, who was seated only two meters away. Both men watched her intently and Gretchen suddenly tasted a little of their desire, which matched tone and color with hers.
Let us see what lies beyond, a memory echoed, bringing with it the smell of oiled wood and a perfume she’d last worn as an undergraduate. Beyond the door of the unopened tomb, beyond the rise of the next hill, within unplumbed space, beyond our conception. This is the fever which drives us to create, to innovate, to overcome.
Outside, the mottled black wall had divided into three parts, and each triangle receded from sight. Beyond, in a chamber whose comprehensible size-only a few hundred meters in each dimension-seemed puny and cramped, was the age-etched shape of a landing cradle.
“Entering an active g-field,” Piet reported, taking over the controls. “Docking jets adjusting…”
The Kader
Inbound to the Pinhole
Hadeishi listened intently to the z-suit radio, his throatmike replaced by a vocoder Cajeme had assembled from the components of an entertainment 3-v scavenged from the main mess deck. As he listened, the eager voice of a Khaiden Kabil Rezei aboard the battleship Sokamak buzzed away into silence.
“Yes, my lord.” Mitsuharu keyed into a v-pane on his display. A second later, the ’coder produced a yipping bark ending in a sibilant growl. To Hadeishi’s poorly trained ear, it sounded like proper Khadesh… “One of the Imperial capsules had a scientist aboard-he sought to barter service-and questioning has revealed a way to detect the Wall-of-Knives. I am bringing him to you now with his instrumentation.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Hadeishi observed the other officers standing watch in Command were keeping their mouths shut, as ordered. They were, however, grinning and signing “victory” to one another. Morale is good, he thought, waiting for a response. As befits those snatched from Mictlantecuhtli ’s dreadful embrace.
The Kader plowed through the dust at a swift pace, transit deflectors up full, shrouding the ship in a cascade of brilliant interference. The Pinhole was now only moments away. The Hayalet -class battleships deployed around the broken hulk of the Imperial research station showed clearly on her sensors.
Five minutes to deceleration burn, Thai-i Inudo keyed to each of the other stations.
Hadeishi bid proper farewell to the hunt-lord, then closed the circuit. I miss Captain De Molay. But she has her ship back, only a little worse for wear. The old woman had not been happy about the mess they’d left behind on the Wilful, but accepted it as the cost of survival. A handful of the walking wounded had been left with her as well, to crew the little freighter.
In their last conversation, on comm between the two ships, she fixed him with a bellicose stare, saying, “If you were my fosterling, I would rap your knuckles sharply, Chu-sa. You play recklessly, risking yourself at every turn-but I cannot fault your consideration for the other children. They are always in your thoughts, and you are always the first to offer them a hand up from the ground. I hope-and I doubt we will meet again-that you will consider that your life may be just as precious, to others.”
The Wilful had slipped away hours before, vanishing into the vastness of the kuub, leaving no trace of its passing which the Kader ’s sensors could detect.
“All stations secure?” Mitsuharu asked on the command channel. A frenzy of confused activity followed amongst the Imperials on the unfamiliar bridge. “Weapons-confirm that guns are cold? Missile racks and penetrator pods are locked down? All hands, brace for combat acceleration.”
A ragged chorus of Hai, Chu-sa arose, both in Command and on the channel from downdeck.
Hadeishi nodded to Inudo. “Pilot, point-and-a-quarter to ventral. Begin deceleration burn.”
The Thai-i rotated a glyph on his display just a fraction and then slid a gauge lower. “ Hai, kyo. Point-and-a-quarter, ventral. Beginning deceleration burn.”
On the plot, the Kader ’s icon closed swiftly with that of the Sokamak, the largest of the Khaid battleships. Lovelace’s translation of the ’cast chatter had gleaned only fragmentary information for Hadeishi, but he knew some of the ship designators now, and a little bit about his enemy. He knew that one of the more vocal Khaid commanders was named Zah’ar, and he had at least two rivals. The late, unlamented captain of the Kader had been Begh-Adag-and that fellow seemed to have been the least respected of the clan-lords involved in this escapade.
“ Chu-sa, point-and-a-half turned. Deceleration burn complete.” Inudo shook out his shoulders and hurriedly called up a new slate of course and speed settings on a side pane.
“ Joto-Heiso Cupan, ready shuttle in bay three for launch,” Hadeishi said into the throatmike. “Damage control parties, starboard wing, stand by for decompression.”
The chief petty officer from the Asama tapped in amongst the chorus of Hai, kyo from the damage control teams. “Shuttle in bay three, ready for launch, Chu-sa.”
The light cruiser matched velocity with the Sokamak, and the shuttle jetted away on an intercept course for the battleship. A v-pane on his console showed Mitsuharu the boat-bay-three doors cycling closed.
“Shuttle away, kyo,” Cupan confirmed.
Hadeishi shifted uncomfortabl
y in the shockchair, one eye on a replay of the missing battle-cruiser’s escape, the other on a series of panels showing thermal readings from the profusion of broken ships, fusion detonations, and other hot-spots in the immediate area. The dust clouds, which seemed to have thickened around the invisible Barrier, were slowly shifting color as the component particles soaked up the hard radiation.
“Pilot, turn two points to starboard, one point dorsal.”
Inudo nodded, his neck shining with sweat. “ Hai, kyo. Two points starboard, one dorsal.”
The Kader ’s maneuvering thrusters flared briefly as she turned away from running parallel with the Sokamak, her nose angling towards the entrance to the Pinhole itself. There, the walls of dust were burning with a deep orange and azure, making a sea of fire to blind the unwary eye.
Against this background, Hadeishi thought, the thrust-signature of our so-able friend would be nearly undetectable if one did not know exactly what to look for.
But Lovelace and Tocoztic had painstakingly reassembled the course taken by the battle-cruiser, and now Mitsuharu was watching for traces of her drive plume wending its way amongst the hidden shoals and reefs of the depthless ocean.
Musashi stands poised on the bridge at Windlodge, goose-feathers brushing the enamel of his cheek-guard, the Iroquois swarming up the levee in a numberless, copper-skinned mass. One of their ohnkanetoten surges through the ranks of charging pike men astride a roan stallion… sun-dogs gleaming from his garishly ornamented plate-mail, his long sword shining silver in the summer light.
The Naniwa
Outbound from the chimalacatl
The battle-cruiser had clawed its way back up out of the interlocking g-fields wrapped around the singularity in realspace, finally reaching a point where the hypercoil could punch them through to transluminal. In Command, Kosho sat in her shockchair, one slim leg crossed over the other, watching the threatwell rotate slowly. The cloud of broken ships was fast approaching as they climbed gradient, and the sight of such colossal devastation weighed heavily on her thoughts. Helsdon, having completed his mandatory sleep cycle, was sitting at the Nav station with Thai-i Olin. Together they had reconfigured nearly half of the shipskin to watch for the kind of quantum disturbances the engineer suspected heralded the movement or presence of the Barrier threads.
Better than nothing, Susan thought tiredly, but I am already missing Doctor Anderssen’s presence.
She paced over to their console. “Any luck, Kikan-shi?”
“There must be a defensive Thread array associated with the Sunflower,” Helsdon muttered, one pale hand trembling over a plot of the broken armada. “Most of these ships were cut apart, just as ours were…”
“An attack?” Kosho leaned over his shoulder, puzzled. “They’re bunched together so tightly…”
“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…”
Kosho’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. Kosho 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.” Kosho returned to her station, intending to comm up Engineering and see how Hennig was getting along, then stopped, looking quizzically around Command. S omething’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 Sahane 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,” Sahane 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-s
pecies. 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 Sahane 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 Sahane bore.
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