Land of the Dead ittotss-3

by Thomas Harlan

  As he worked, he felt a slow, steady sense of outrage building in his mind. A pity they couldn’t accept me as a fellow brother of the Order! Sra Osa will be most displeased by their shortsightedness. Protecting humanity from itself requires broader thinking.

  Pulling the skinsuit back on was also a bit of work, but now he was fully awake and feeling quite limber. The compartment door was locked, but liquefying the suit had also deposited a number of tools from the gel matrix on the floor. He found them by feel, sorted them with deft fingers and then cut open the locking mechanism with a tiny plasma torch no longer than his little finger. Then he duck-walked out into one of the crew cabins and-thankfully-stood up.

  As Hummingbird did so, the dissonance of his thought patterns concerning the crew of the Moulins finally caught his attention. An initial sensation of puzzlement was swiftly replaced by shock. I’ve been “pushed,” he realized. That “Old One” is stronger than I suspected. Disgusted, he spat on the floor of the empty room. I’ve made a deadly mistake in helping an Order ship come here. They are after the same prize as the Prince. Christ the Guardian curse them down through all nine hells!

  Fifteen minutes later having recovered his clothing and z-suit, he padded onto the mess area and found the marines had been taken away. Worried, the old nauallis moved carefully through the rest of the little ship. Finally, he found the Imperials laid out on the floor of a cargo area above Engineering, trapped in their dead armor. Hummingbird squatted next to the squad leader with a pleasant smile. Something to salvage. We are all “friends” here… the Order hasn’t broken fully with the Empire yet. The marine glared back at him, sullen-eyed and gagged.

  “ Go-cho Pequah,” the old Crow greeted him amiably, running practiced fingers down the desealer strip at the marine’s shoulder. The wrecked armor sighed; tension released from the gelcore, and it fell away in a limp pool of black oil and plexisteel laminate. The Iroquois flexed his fingers, toes, and then rolled up-clad only in his service skinsuit, his body stiff as lightning with restrained fury. The other four marines made angry, muttering sounds behind their gags.

  “We’ve all been played dirty,” Hummingbird commented, peeling a flattened sleepytime capsule from Pequah’s neck. “And I appreciate your natural desire to eviscerate someone, but your first concern must be the Prince’s safety.”

  Released, all five marines nodded slowly, grudgingly, as they flexed oxygen-deprived limbs. For a long moment the nauallis met their eyes in turn, then nodded, satisfied. “Leave the Europeans to me. The Prince has a tracker in his suit. Follow the repeaters until you find him and make sure he gets back here in one piece.”

  Leaving the marines to scavenge for weapons and tools, Hummingbird slipped out into the dim, chaotic vastness of the landing bay. Packing foam lay scattered at the base of the landing cradle. He grimaced, seeing that the Order crewmen had brought, and assembled, a grav sled. Prepared, were they?

  He ducked back inside the ship and returned moments later with a single-rider grav-ski. The device unfolded in swift, programmed motions. A bit of a smile shone in the old man’s face, remembering long summers wasted skidding around the alleys and avenues of Coyoacan with his classmates, a tight noisy pack of boys. Then the sense of fleeting time gripped him. He hopped on and grasped the controls.

  “Go now.” He sped away with the wide flare of the running lights searching the enormous corridor ahead.

  The Kader

  In The Pin hole

  Hadeishi frowned, his jaw clenched tight as Cajeme’s voice burred in his earbug. Capsule lock is completely jammed-we’re having trouble cutting through without frying the nitto-hei inside-and there are four more capsules outside we can’t bring onboard until we’ve got these men out.

  The Nisei officer’s eyes darted to the nav plot, which still showed the Tlemitl between them and the Khaid fleet-or what of the enemy they could see with their sensors greatly obscured by the Barrier, the radiation clouds from discharged weapons, and the sensor shadow of the broken dreadnaught. From his vantage, several Khaid destroyers were hanging off at a distance, but the rest of the enemy had disappeared.

  “ Thai-i, do we have a remote we can run out to the edge of the wreck?”

  Tocoztic shook his head in disgust. The Arawak’s beard was starting to grow in, which made him look particularly disreputable. “Nothing, kyo. We’ve got nothing useful aboard. I’d use an evac pod, but their maneuvering jets are exhausted once we get them into cargo one…” He gestured angrily at the plot. “Something is going on out there-I can pick up gravity-wave changes and some partial drive emission signatures-but we can’t see anything directly.”

  Mitsuharu’s expression darkened further, considering the movements of the enemy. Out of sight is not out of my mind… that battle-cruiser’s drive emissions could easily be visible to these new-model battleships of theirs. This Spear does not carry the most advanced electronics quills can buy. Not like the… wait a moment.

  “What about the Tlemitl? Are there any sensor booms or subsystems we can connect to and use?”

  “The-” Tocoztic stopped himself, initial disbelief replaced by curiosity. “I don’t know, Chu-sa, but she hasn’t lost all power to systems-just her mains. One moment…”

  Hadeishi swiveled his shockchair, feeling the carapace creak under him. All of the Command stations were now filled with crewmen from the pods they’d recovered initially. Cajeme and his engineers downdeck were busily shuffling off the newly recovered ratings and officers, which looked to swell the Kader ’s complement by another eighty or ninety bodies. Most of those recovered, however, had been injured to greater or lesser degree.

  Now for the second act, he thought, gaze settling on Sho-i Lovelace at the Comm’s station, despite being-perhaps-the junior-most tech aboard. The ensign had tucked two spare console styli into her hair, which was bound up in a blond bun behind her head. The young woman’s expression was distant, all attention focused on sorting out the confusion of signals picked up by their sensor booms.

  Hadeishi caught her eye. “ Sho-i? Are we still synched with the Khaid battlecast?”

  “No, kyo. I’m getting intermittent bursts of traffic, but we’re out of the loop now.” She offered a crooked smile. “I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re no longer running with the surtu.”

  “Very well. Route what you have to my earbug on sixty-three and-”

  Lovelace started to nod in acknowledgment, then became quite still. “Wait one. Wait one.”

  She stared at her console, gently adjusting the signal filtering, before scowling. “We’re picking up a rebroadcast, kyo. It’s the Khaid ’cast channel, but not from our immediate area. Routing to sixty-three.”

  A babble of excited Khadesh flooded Mitsuharu’s hearing. The translator kicked in, but the hunt-lords were yowling so quickly, and overlapping one another, that the software produced only a garbled mess on the secondary channel.

  “Fix a vector, Sho-i!” he ordered, barely able to hear himself think. “Are they behind, or ahead?”

  I want that ship! popped out of the howling. She escaped once, not again!

  Hadeishi twisted the earbug around, frustrated. That sounds like the one named Sylahdeposu-he’s quick off the mark, but who does he have in his sights? Has another Imperial combatant dropped into the area, or…

  “ Chu-sa Hadeishi!” Inudo had turned in his seat. The pilot had a finger to his earbug, his voice loud over the chatter on the Kader ’s crowded bridge. “I think he means the Naniwa. Comp says she is the one that survived the ambush and ducked into the Pinhole-a squadron of the Khaid must have slipped past us, following their drive track.”

  Mitsuharu blinked and everything seemed to slow. The Naniwa? The missing battle-cruiser is “How did they get through?” Tocoztic demanded of Inudo. “How can they track her- we can barely see her signature in this mess!”

  “Do we have comm to the Naniwa?” Hadeishi’s expression made Lovelace stiffen in her seat.

  “No, Chu-
sa! We’re just picking up fragments of battlecast from a relay the Khaid dropped behind them. I’m getting five or six different emitter tags-one per ship probably.” The Sho-i swallowed nervously. “She won’t last long if she’s alone.”

  “The Naniwa will fight to the last missile, the last gun…” Mitsuharu viciously suppressed an urge to order Inudo to take them to maximum acceleration and to the Eight Hot Narakas with the rest of the evacuation capsules. Despite this, his voice was a harsh growl which made every man and woman in Command straighten up in alarm. “ Chu-i, I want to see a ticker on the plot telling me how long the engineers have to get those capsules inboard. Tocoztic- tzin, get your crews to their guns, get me status on anything we have left to throw. Pilot-lock down that drive plume signature and stand by for battle acceleration.”

  The howling and yammering of the surtu pounded in his ear, though Hadeishi felt their bloodlust only as a ticking sense of time falling away into darkness. He eyed the plot-still no sign of the enemy moving against them-but now he was certain at least one of the surtu was loitering in the Tlemitl ’s sensor shadow, waiting for them to break cover.

  “Comms. Broadcast on the last frequency we had for the Wilful. Say only, “We are visiting Osaka.” Do not repeat the message.”

  Lovelace stared back at him, pale brow furrowed as she resolved the reference, her stylus poised over the v-pane. “Do you think Captain De Molay will hear?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “A little boat like hers-what could she-?”

  “Much depends upon the purity of one’s intent, Sho-i. Send the message.”

  Among the fallen

  Three light-years from the Pinhole

  In quick succession, a handful of widely spaced icons popped up enemy-red in the Naniwa ’s threatwell. The gravity spike of the Khaid ships dropping from transluminal reached the Imperial ship only instants after they emerged into realspace. Kosho was watching, elbow on the armrest of her shockchair, eyes hooded. Command was fully staffed, everyone having gotten at least a round of the showers and an hour off duty.

  “Confirming five transits,” Konev announced, the icons beginning to annotate with glyphs indicating expected speed, throw-weight, and countermeasures. “All cruisers or smaller- Mishrak and Aslan -class-acceleration and emissions are within expected ranges.”

  “Undamaged.” Oc Chac grimaced, tapping through a series of v-panes showing the wreckage being cleared from the battle-cruiser’s downship compartments. “Are they fresh, Chu-sa?”

  “Doubtful, Sho-sa. Their captains are pushing hard-the Khaid have little need of patience. They will be wounded, like us, but keen to bring us to ground. Time to cover?”

  Holloway eyed the plot. Fully half of the threatwell was a blizzard of icons representing the dead fleet. “Fifteen minutes to the nearest wrecks, Chu-sa. About twelve minutes until we’re inside the Khaid launch envelope.”

  “Deflector status, Chac- tzin?” Susan looked back to the Mayan. “Are we still running hot?”

  Oc Chac shook his head. “No, kyo. We can pull another three, four gravities.”

  “Give us a boost, Holloway- tzin. But don’t open the throttle wide-we need to be able to turn once we’re in the debris field.”

  The console under Susan’s fingers began to thrum with the vibration of the antimatter reactors chewing mass. “Nav-what are our options?”

  Thai-i Olin looked up from his console, shaking his head. “Active scan is showing a lot of small fragments between the hulks-no good avenues for us to maneuver down-no holes yet, to hide in.”

  “Find us something, Thai-i. Quickly now.” Kosho’s voice was pointed. “We have two minutes…”

  “Launch signatures!” Konev’s voice was relaxed, almost a drawl, but the tenseness in his arms was as clear to Susan as an ash-cloud over Mount Talol. “Sixty missile tracks are on the board.”

  “Initiating countermeasures.” Pucatli-at Comms-dumped the first of her spoofer pods.

  “Counter-fire, kyo?” Konev looked to Kosho with a fierce gleam shining in his eyes. “If we concentrate, we might knock one or two out before they close to gun range.”

  “Save your launchers, Thai-i. We need to conserve every shipkiller we have left.” Susan had already considered the fire rate from the on-rushing destroyers and their range of engagement. “Engage the missile cloud with kinetics and ECM starting at six minutes.”

  “Isn’t this a brawl, Chu-sa?” Oc Chac looked at her questioningly, his face pale with fatigue. “Even one or two of the enemy down at this range will even the odds appreciably.”

  Kosho lifted her chin, indicating the ’well. “Not yet, Sho-sa. This is 3-v Ullamaliztli with only one player left on our side. You played at Academy, I’m sure-”

  A warning Klaxon honked, cutting her off. A fresh icon popped into view on the ’well.

  “A Hayalet -class battleship, kyo.” Konev’s voice was tight as he reeled off the specifications of the new indicator. “Punched straight through from the Pinhole, right on our track.”

  Susan swiveled, lifting an eyebrow at Olin and Holloway. “Time to enter the maze?”

  “Five minutes, Chu-sa.” The pilot’s eyes were wide with fear. “I’ve picked up some options but-”

  “They’ll have to do. Pilot, take us in.”

  On the plot, the destroyers continued to close, their launchers cycling a new spread of missiles every one hundred and twenty seconds. The first wave was still three minutes out, but the Naniwa ’s point-defense was already hammering away at the incoming targets. Pucatli’s spoofer pod was squealing, flooding the spectrum with distorting noise and false signals. Khaid penetrators began to flare, and then wink off of the plot.

  Behind them, the Hayalet held course at an angle away from the Naniwa and her running firefight. Susan watched the vector firm up, heading in-system at a good clip.

  How could they fail to notice the singularity? The sensor suite on one of those battlewagons must be the equal of ours-some daring hunt-lord sees the realization of an entire race’s dreams of empire riding on that thread.

  This reminded her of Prince Xochitl and the missing Hummingbird, and her heart lifted at the thought of the Khaid howling in behind those two “gentlemen,” well stoked with blood lust.

  They’re all suited to one another, she thought bitterly. Then Susan felt a pang of conscience, just for an instant. An Imperial officer should be mindful of her duty.

  A proximity alarm sounded-the battle-cruiser sped past an outlier of the vast shoal of wreckage-even as the first wave of Khaid shipkillers began to flare around her. The Naniwa groaned, shipskin hammered by the stabbing flare of fusion detonations. Now the plot was filled with the tracery of outgoing kinetics, the flash of bomb-pods erupting and Command was loud with the swift, urgent voices of her crew reacting. Konev’s counter-missile wave banged away, shaking the secondary hull with the violence of launch rails cycling.

  Adrenaline flushed her limbs with a quivering, bright energy. The only thing missing was Hadeishi’s voice in her earbug, calm and controlled, his presence radiating a contained focus as he put the ship through her paces. I am alone. Susan felt a tight, stabbing pain in her diaphragm. On the plot, the density of the wrecks was soaring, and Holloway’s brow was dappled with sweat as he maneuvered. Here we go.

  Kosho detached a series of v-panes showing the movement of the Khaid battleship towards the Sunflower to her Executive console.

  A good six hours for them to reach the artifact, she saw. Long time to stay in this dance.

  A shipkiller blew only three compartments away, shredding the Naniwa ’s shipskin and venting a huge gout of atmosphere and flotsam. In Command, the overheads flickered, half the consoles cut out and someone cursed violently as their v-display shorted, spilling smoke globules and hot sparks into the air.

  Oc Chac was at the man’s side in an instant, a portable extinguisher spitting foam into the splintered console. “Damage control, this is Main Command, we’ve lost a ’net node and
five consoles.”

  Susan saw the wreckage occlude the pursuing destroyers as Holloway put them into a jinking curve, fleeing past another of the dead behemoths. “Weapons, tight pattern-rear launchers only-delayed fuse while we’re in scan-shadow.”

  “ Hai, kyo! ” Konev cycled his launchers, stylus darting across his console. Preconfigured munitions packages punched outbound, venting from the eight rearward rails at nearly a hundred g’s.

  At the same moment, Olin’s voice cut across the Russian’s. “New contact! New contact! Aslan -class cruiser to ventral-range sixty thousand kilometers-enemy is launching now, thirty missile tracks incoming! Impact in eighty seconds!”

  “Now, Sho-sa,” Susan said, her voice preternaturally calm. “Now we’re in the brawl.”

  The Kader

  Command was awash in confused voices as the last of the evacuation pods was winched into the cargo hold. Hadeishi tapped his med-band, injecting another dose of anti-inflammatory to suppress a spiraling migraine. Five or six conflicting channels of information were vying for his attention, and the low-level confusion amongst his scratch crew kept jarring his attention away from the Khaid battlecast. The enemy had started to frequency-hop, but Lovelace was keeping up, though the translator always seemed to be five or six words behind what he could make out himself.

  One of the new officers-his name had escaped Mitsuharu in the latest round of introductions-signaled cargo one was sealed, and the armored partitions were rotating closed over the bay doors. The Chu-sa switched to Cajeme’s team, catching the exhausted-looking Yaqui as they were hauling two corpses from the pod, along with one midshipman who looked like she might live.