Land of the Dead (2 page)
The Altar of the Undying Flame
THE HOUSE OF FUMEIYO-IE
T
OROSON
A
DVANCED
F
LEET
B
ASE
, I
MPERIAL
M
ÉXICA
S
PACE
A slim Nisei woman, her back straight as a sword blade, glossy black hair coiled at her neck, paused before a
shoji
-panel of laminate cedar and redwood. She took a moment to straighten the crisply starched cuffs of her dress whites, to tuck her cap under one arm, and to adjust the four tiny golden skulls on her collar tabs. Then, prepared, she placed two fingers against the door itself.
There was a quiet chime—the sound of a temple bell filtered through autumnal leaves—and the panel slid soundlessly to one side. The Imperial Méxica Navy
Chu-sa
stepped out onto a covered porch, walked down a flight of broad wooden steps and out into a perfectly manicured Tokuga-period garden. A glassite pressure dome vaulted overhead, half of the armored panels polarized against the glare of the twin primaries of the Michóacan binary. Her boots clicked on a curving stone bridge crossing a swift, silent brook—the recycled water clear as crystal, reeds and tadpoles wavering in the current running over mossy stones—and she passed beneath the rustling branches of a stand of hothouse aspen.
A teahouse stood beneath the golden trees, ancient wood and paper walls meticulously assembled at the heart of the Fleet base, slate roof strewn with leaf litter. The newly minted captain knelt at the door and paused again—taking a measured breath—before drawing aside the old-fashioned panel of rice paper and varnished pine. The large interior room was quite barren. A tatami lay in the middle of the floor, a pale jute-colored island in a sea of gleaming dark fir planking. A man was kneeling on the mat, hands hidden in the folds of a plain civilian kimono. He lifted his head curiously at the sound of the opening door.
His thin face, pale and seamed from long exhaustion, was calm.
Then he recognized her and everything sure and composed about him disappeared in a jolt of surprise—delight—and then slowly dawning grief.
The woman removed her boots and padded across the spotless floor to the edge of the mat.
“Oh
Sho-sa
,” the man said, shaking his head. “You should not have brought me the honorable blades. A fine gesture, truthfully, but—”
“I bear no swords,” Susan Kosh
ō
said, kneeling gracefully and drawing a parchment envelope from the inner pocket of her uniform jacket. “The Admiralty tribunal has concluded its deliberations. You will not satisfy the Emperor’s Honor for the loss of our ship. As of only an hour ago, you are free to leave this place at any time you please.” She set down the envelope, touching the corners to align the rectangle properly between them.
“What is this?” Mitsuharu Hadeishi, recently captain of the ill-starred IMN
Astronomer
-class light cruiser
Henry R. Cornuelle
, eyed the parchment suspiciously. “This is not an orders packet.”
Kosh
ō
shook her head
no
, gaze politely averted from his, attention unerringly fixed on the hem of his kimono, which was frayed and showing a small tear. She wondered, seeing how shabby his clothing was, what had happened to the old manservant who had tended Hadeishi’s personal affairs aboard the
Cornuelle
. The rest of the crew—those who had lived through the disaster over Jagan—had scattered to the five directions.
Even my feet,
she thought,
are on a strange road, every compass awry with the influence of the fates. With every step, a crossroads appears out of the darkness.…
“I have been retired?” Hadeishi’s voice was thin with distress.
“No.” Susan met his eyes at last. “You have been placed on reserve duty, pending the needs of the Fleet. Your record … your service jacket is … all references to the incident at Jagan have been removed. A compromise was reached—”
“But I have no ship,” he said, blinking, trying to take in the abrupt end of his career as a plain envelope pinched between thumb and forefinger. “No duty, no … no…”
He stopped, lips pursed, dark eyebrows narrowed over puzzled, wounded eyes. Susan could feel his mind whirling—imagined touching his brow would reveal a terrible, fruitless heat—and her own face became glacially impassive in response to his distress.
After a moment, Hadeishi’s eyes focused, found her, remembered her words, and his head tilted a little to one side. “What of the others? Or am I the only one small enough to be caught in the net of accountability?”
The corners of Kosh
ō
’s eyes crinkled very slightly. “Great care was taken that no Imperial agency be found at fault. The Fleet Book shows you fought the
Cornuelle
against vicious odds—”
Hadeishi stiffened, astonished. “Fought? Fought! I was taken unawares by a
weather satellite network
—our ship crippled, our crew decimated—our only
struggle
was to stay alive while repairs were underway and the ship kept her nose up!”
Susan nodded, saying. “Representatives of the Mirror-Which-Reveals-The-Truth mentioned this on several occasions—as a mark against you. But the Admiralty has no love for spies and informers, or for the clumsy Flower War priests who sparked the Bharat revolt. They would not let you hang for a botched Mirror project. Not when it meant a smudge on their own mantle!”
“But—”
“They cannot give you a ship,
Chu-sa
. Not with so many powers quarreling over the blame.” Susan frowned, then allowed herself a very small sigh. “Colonel Yacatolli fared no better—he’s been posted to a sub-arctic garrison command on Helmand—while Admiral Villeneuve was actually
reprimanded
, with a black mark struck on his duty jacket for failing to provide
Cornuelle
with munitions resupply—and Ambassador Petrel has simply left the diplomatic service.”
Hadeishi’s eyes flickered briefly with anger, before he snorted in cynical amusement.
“Did the tribunal assign
any
blame in this wretched turn of events?”
Susan nodded. “HKV agitators have been blamed for inciting the local population to rebellion against the Empire.”
“The—they are blaming the
Europeans
for this?” Astonishment flushed Hadeishi’s countenance with a pale rose-colored bloom. “There has not been a
European
resistance movement in extra-Solar space for nearly fifteen years! Not since—”
“I know.” Susan’s voice was gentle. “Nonetheless, the tribunal has declared a Finn named Timonen ringleader of the whole sorry affair—and he is conveniently dead, his body disintegrated.”
Mitsuharu snorted again, dismayed. “Do they even care what
actually happened
?”
Susan shook her head. “They are overjoyed with the Prince’s performance.”
“The P— No, you make a poor, poor jest,
Sho-sa
. Not—”
Kosh
ō
—at last—let her properly impassive countenance slip, showing a flash of dismay. She dug into her jacket and produced a carefully folded tabloid. The busyink lay quiescent while Hadeishi unfolded the paper, before flashing alive with colorful diagrams, animated graphs, tiny low-res videos … all the appurtenances of modern news.
A sallow-faced youth with unmistakable Méxica features popped out, pockmarked walls visible behind his shoulder, smoke coiling away from hundreds of bullet holes, the glossy black of his Fleet shipskin spattered with blood, a heavy HK-45B assault rifle slung over one shoulder. The boy—he must have been in his late twenties, but he seemed much younger—was grinning triumphantly.
“The hero of the hour,” Kosh
ō
drawled, “savior of the legation, captor of the native ringleaders … Tezozómoc’s public image is shining and bright this week. Someone, somewhere, is very pleased with themselves for this bit of … editing.”
Hadeishi stared at the picture, impassive, eyes hooded, and then turned the tabloid facedown on the mat beside the parchment envelope. For a moment he pressed both palms against his eyes, head down, breathing through his nose. Kosh
ō
waited, wondering if her old captain would react as she had.
I should have brought a sidearm, a ship-pistol, something … to stun him with. When he becomes violently angry. When he threatens to—
“All this…” Mitsuharu did not look up. “Our dead—our broken ship—the wreckage on the surface—my career—it was all for
him
? To polish his reputation, to give this dissolute Prince some respectability in the eyes of the
public
?”
“The Four Hundred families cannot allow a Prince Imperial,” Susan replied, voice carefully neutral, “to seem the buffoon, to be known as a wastrel, a drunkard, a party-addict … the Emperor is no fool. Even the least, most laughable member of the Imperial Clan
must
be seen by the general populace as a potentially terrifying warrior of unsurpassed skill. Particularly when
Temple of Truth
runs a popular weekly featurette detailing his latest lewd binge.…”
Hadeishi rocked back, eyes still closed, fists clenched white to the knuckle. Susan waited, feeling a tight, singing tension rise in the pit of her stomach. After ten minutes had passed, the man’s eyes opened and his shoulders slumped. Hastily, Kosh
ō
looked away, giving her old commander the illusion of privacy, though they were no more than a meter apart.
“So I am the last, least fish caught in this flowery net.”
Susan did not reply, her gaze fixed on the rear wall of the teahouse.
“And I am left with nothing.” There was the crisp rustle of parchment. “You are to await the pleasure of the Emperor,” he read, “should he have need of your service.” Hadeishi sounded utterly spent. “How long,
Sho-sa
, do you think I will wait? A year? Two years?”
Forever,
she thought, feeling the tension in her stomach turn tighter and tighter.
You will be forgotten, like so many other disgraced captains before you.
“There is nothing to say, is there?” Hadeishi lifted a hand and scratched slowly at the stubble on his chin. “There are never enough combat commands for all those who desire them … who need them. Not without some great war to force the hand of the Admiralty and inspire a new building program.” A tiny spark of anger began to lift the leaden tone from his words. “Not when political favor can be exchanged to see some well-connected clan-scion at the helm of a ship of war—”
He stopped abruptly. For the first time, Mitsuharu focused fully on Kosh
ō
’s face. A clear sort of penetrating light came into his eyes, wiping aside the despair, but leaving something far more tragic in its place.
“You’ve your fourth
zugaikotsu
,” he whispered, lifting his chin at the gleaming skulls on her collar. “At last.”
Hadeishi bowed in place, as one honorable officer might to another. “
Sho-sa
, I regret the words just spoken. I do not impugn the nobility of your birth. Of any man or woman in the Fleet who has borne my acquaintance, you—you are worthy of a ship.”
The cable of tension in Susan’s stomach bent over on itself, wire grating against wire.
“The
Naniwa
, I hope,” Mitsuharu ventured, recalling a dim memory. “She should be out of trials by now … did they hold her for you?”
Kosh
ō
nodded and felt a sharp pain in her gut, as though the imaginary cable had frayed past breaking and steel wires spun loose to stab into her flesh. “They did. She is waiting at Jupiter for me right now.”
There was the ghost of a smile on Hadeishi’s lips. “She is a fast ship, Susan, new and bold … tough for her size, but still no dreadnaught! I pulled her specs months ago. A sprinter she is, not a plow horse, not a charger … you’ll need to keep her dancing in the hot of it—no standing toe to toe—not with the armor she lifts. In and out, missile-work and raids…” The momentary surge of energy failed, and his eyes grew dull again. “You’ll do well … a Main Fleet posting, I’d wager … something where you’ll be seen, noticed.…”
