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, Sahane, 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 Mexica-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 Sahane’s helmet. The Prince’s corpse contorted violently, but the Mexica’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 Sahane in turn. “Her… or him?”
“I suggest you keep both of them alive,” the voice of Green Hummingbird urged over the comm. The old Nahuatl 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 Sahane 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 Sahane 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, Sahane 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?” Kosho 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!” Kosho’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.
Hadeishi popped up as the lead Khaid sprang past a fallen beam, and the Yilan tucked into his shoulder stuttered, flash-suppressor spitting flame in a brief, brilliant cross. At point-blank range, the armor-piercing munitions tore up the chest, faceplate, and shoulder of the hunter’s armor, knocking him back into the Khaid following behind. The other Imperials also let loose, all fire concentrated on the same lead figure. By the time the hunter had collided with his companions, the armor had been punctured twice by the hundreds of rounds and he drifted limply away.
“Go!” Mitsuharu barked, ducking back. One of his men tossed a grenade-their last-into the midst of the enemy vanguard and then kicked off, sailing down their escape route. The other Imperials were already gone as the grenade cooked off in a sharp, hot blast. The Khaid hunters were thrown back by the pressure wave, but it was an even chance any of them suffered any lasting damage. Their armor was too tough for the lightweight weapons Hadeishi’s crew had managed to scavenge. The blast did collapse the roof, however, which had already been weakened by an engineering crew.
The spitting howl of a squad support weapon replied-Mitsuharu didn’t remember the code-name assigned by Fleet intelligence-but the flechettes tore a horizontal gap across the fallen debris and hot sparks chased him down the hallway.
***
Twenty minutes later, the Chu-sa ducked under a haphazardly strung line of glowbeans and went to one knee, his face seamed with worry. The main medbay had been abandoned an hour ago, when the Khaid attack into the shipcore had focused on the secondary command ring, which also held the medical section. The surviving Imperials needing a corpsman-and there were many now-had been hauled out by grav-sled or z-line to the armored compartment managing the boat and cargo bays in the primary hull, which had escaped the initial assault. On a properly equipped Fleet ship, Hadeishi might have had one or two spare shuttles tucked away in the boat-bays. But the Kader had nothing spare, so they’d cut power to the bays and vented as much debris and garbage as could be found through the doors to discourage the Khaid from trying to land in them.
Lovelace was tacked to the floor, her body wrapped in a survival blanket, leaving only the status readouts of her z-suit visible. Her rounded face was pale behind the faceplate, eyes closed. On her wrist, the med-band was a softly glowing bracelet of amber and green.
“Not dead yet,” Mitsuharu said softly, squinting at the tiny readout. “But you’re not going to last without proper facilities.”
“Sorry, kyo.” The Mirror Comms officer’s voice was a broken rasp. “They sealed the hull splinter in with me, but I can feel the knife twisting when I breathe.”
“Don’t talk then.” Hadeishi sat, his back against the wall, her wrist held lightly between thumb and forefinger. “We’ve all run out of time in any case. And the Khaid are sadly lacking in regen pods. They don’t eat their own dead, but do employ a species of shipbug blessed by their priests for the very purpose.”
“I taste terrible,” the girl said; her voice very, very faint.
Mitsuharu nodded, watching her respiration flutter. The pale blue light of the glowbeans painted her cheekbones a deathly hue. “I’m sure you do, Sho-i. It was an honor to serve with you. I am sorry I did not listen-you tried to keep me from this fool’s errand.”
“We-” A bubbling wheeze stopped her for a moment, but then she managed to say: “We were dead if we tried to run out past those two destroyers. You bought us another sixteen hours, at least.”
I did that, he thought. To no good end, save to bring down a few more Khaid before the black sea takes us all.
One of the lights on her med-band began to pulse red. Feeling a terrible sense of deja vu, he gently dialed the band to send the Comms officer unconscious. Plum petals are falling, sickle moon sharp as The poem faltered in his memory, the pace and tenor of the chatter and background noise on his comm suddenly changing. Hadeishi looked away from Lovelace, eyes closed, letting the voices of his men, his subcommanders, the sound and feel of the ship penetrating his back, his hands, the soles of his feet wash over him. On one of the channels, Tocoztic’s familiar voice-his breathing labored-said: “Is this getting easier, or is it my imagination?”
Mitsuharu stiffened, rising from the floor. “All units report. Are you currently in contact with the enemy?”
“No, Chu-sa,” worried voices replied. “It’s been quiet on either side of us for maybe five minutes.”
Just as Hadeishi thumbed the all-channel push control on his z-suit comm, the partially open bay doors flared into a white-hot bar. The debris cloud outside was ionizing as a particle beam ripped across the surface of the Kader. The impact reverberated through the frame of the ship seconds later, transmitting itself to Mitsuharu as a keening shriek rising from his boot-soles. Screams on the comm channels were snuffed out abruptly as the beam punched through the central ring of the cruiser.
The boat-bay doors crumpled as the primary hull twisted, suddenly torqued by a series of explosive blasts. Hadeishi dropped to the floor, crouching over Lovelace’s body, and felt the walls and floor ripple. Glassite shattered as the boat-bay windows tore from their frames. A second colossal impact followed as a shipkiller rammed into the gap torn by the particle beam. The missile vented plasma into the shipcore, immolating the dozens of Imperials still trapped wi
thin the secondary hull.
The concussive wave transmitted to the primary hull as well, tearing the bay doors away entirely. The old cruiser split open, though Mitsuharu knew only that he and Lovelace were thrown against the far wall of the compartment along with everyone else in the makeshift medbay. Cries of agony filled his ears, but the Chu-sa ’s attention was fixed on the violently glowing dust-clouds now visible through the gaping hole where the boat-bay had been. What tiny bit of atmosphere had remained in the management compartment now vented out into hard vacuum, crystallizing as frost on their suits.
Hadeishi’s suit visor flickered, trying to focus on the abyss outside, then suddenly picked out-and enhanced-the outline of a Khaid destroyer sliding past at ten thousand kilometers, a long black shape with a blue-white flare where the drive nacelles were burning at one-quarter power. The first thing springing to mind was the image of a missile hatch cycling open as he watched…
“We’ve got to get out”-he forced himself away from the wall, one arm snaking behind Lovelace’s shoulders to pull her with him-“of here.”
Before he could drag her away a stabbing white glare flooded the compartment, momentarily polarizing Hadeishi’s visor to black.
“What is-” someone shouted on the channel, before being drowned out by a tidal wave of static.
Hadeishi felt his skin burning painfully from residual heat the z-suit could not disperse and gasped, blinded by even the microsecond of exposure to the antimatter reactor annihilating itself. When his vision cleared, the compartment was filled with drifting corpses, the walls discolored by the blast of radiation.
Land of the Dead ittotss-3 Page 40