Land of the Dead (55 page)

“What are they leaving behind,
Thai-i
?”

Patzanil was already correlating the emissions data. “Something in a destroyer’s mass-range,
kyo.
Might be a
Mishrak
-class—we’d identified a couple of them in the attacking force before the
Gladius
went down.”

“We’ll stay well away,” De Molay said, settling back into her cocoon. “Any others left behind?”

“
Hai, kyo
. Three others—same general class—at the corners of the box.”

“Sentries, then.” On the plot, the last of the Khaid heavies had disappeared behind the seemingly invisible veil of the Barrier. She nodded to herself, making some mental calculation. “Very good.”

The boy looked at her expectantly for a moment, but De Molay closed her eyes again.

“Ah,
Sencho-sana
?” His voice was tight, hinting at an internal conflict between well-ingrained Fleet duty and the plain fact that the old woman was
not
a Fleet officer.

“Yes,
Thai-i
,” De Molay responded. “You can get something to eat.”

“Thank you,
kyo
!” He was up and out of his seat and through the hatchway before she could open both eyes. When she had sat up fully, he was long gone. De Molay laughed softly to herself, then keyed into her console and—after negotiating several authorization screens—brought up the t-relay interface. Then she sat for a moment, considering the plot and tapping her fingers slowly on the edge of the console.

Not that much time to dither,
the old woman thought.
The boy will be back soon, and I’ve no surety the Khaid will not return swiftly, or that reinforcements have not been summoned. The iron is hot, so we must strike.
She wondered if Hadeishi and his reclaimed cruiser were still busy recovering the crew of the super-dreadnaught, but her window of opportunity was terribly short.
The Order masters would say to act in the moment of balance,
De Molay remembered from an old book she’d been forced to read in the
collegium
.

She shook her head and keyed open a comm channel. The message had been composed in her mind for at least a day, but she had needed the bridge to herself before risking a transmission.

Peregine, Pervicax transmito. Cohortes imperatoris deletae sunt. Khai sepulchrum intraverunt. Quinque custodes Khaianes consisti sunt,
whispered out into the aether.

De Molay felt a mingled sense of relief and wary anticipation. There had been a dozen times in the last week that she’d expected to be incinerated, or captured, or simply vanish in the blossoming flare of an antimatter detonation. But—somehow—she had won through, and now her entire purpose had been discharged with a single message.
One which will likely go—

The console chimed softly, indicating an incoming message spooling through the relay. She stiffened, startled to receive such a quick reply.

The message read
: Venimus. Signa transitu pone pro insertio directio teleportano. Evigila.

Ready we shall be, then. By the Lord, they must be close by.

Her attention shifted to the plot. All four Khaid destroyers on sentry duty remained in their watchful pattern. No missile launches were detected by the forest of sensors extruded from the hull of the
Wilful
, no movement towards her on their part. De Molay settled back, wincing a little at the enduring pain in her face, her side, and her leg.
I am far too old for this,
she grumbled mentally.

Which,
said a voice much like her own—damnable conscience!—
is why you’d retired. Why exactly did you volunteer for this excursion?

Patzanil clattered onto the bridge, a large bowl tucked under one arm. The smell washed over her like the tidal return from Port Valletta on a long, hot summer day.

“Is it meatlog?” she asked politely.

The
Thai-i
gave her a devil-may-care smile. “I don’t know, but if the Khaid can eat it, I can, too.”

De Molay suppressed a laugh. “Back to sleep for me, then. Nothing new on the plot.”

THE
NANIWA

Kosh
ō
felt her stomach quail and the lighting in Command pulsed twice as the battle-cruiser dropped gradient into realspace. Brisk, well-practiced chatter flowed across the bridge stations as the officers of the watch confirmed they had made transit properly, that ship’s systems were on-line and they had a solid navigational fix. The threatwell began to refresh as the remote watching the Pinhole unspooled the last eight hours of captured data. Oc Chac was working his checklist in a low fast voice, ensuring they still had maneuvering drives, nothing had lost pressure or vented during the transition, and all compartments were secure for combat.

Only Pucatli was frowning, and the tense line of his head drew Susan’s eye like a magnet from her consideration of the survey plot. “Comms?”

Puzzlement clouded the
Chu-i
’s face. “
Chu-sa
, there’s a recorded transmission on one-hundred-ten you need to hear.”

Kosh
ō
tapped her earbug, cycling channel. Immediately, she heard:
All Imperial evac capsules, converge on this signal.…

“An Imperial broadcast! Someone’s alive? How could…”

We have captured a Khaid vessel and come to take you home. Converge upon this signal with all haste
. The familiar voice spoke quickly, concisely. It hummed with adrenaline; its familiar tone was inextricably connected in her mind, in her body, to imminent violence and battle. Susan’s gaze tracked back to the threatwell—but there was nothing to be seen. The gravity-plot around the Pinhole remained quiescent.

“Mitsuharu?” she said aloud, without meaning to. Oc Chac—who had switched his own earbug to listen in—caught her eye, his head canted in a questioning pose.

Kosh
ō
replied to the unspoken question. “The Khaiden are not alone outside the Pinhole. That is the voice of a Fleet officer well known to me—it seems he is gathering up the fallen. But…” She paused, rewinding the message. “He can only have one ship under his command, and one taken from the enemy at that.” Despite herself, she started to grin in delight.

Oc Chac shook his head in astonishment. “A tremendous feat, if true. But,
Chu-sa
, this could easily be a trick—a stratagem of the Khaid to lure us into a trap!”

“It could.” Kosh
ō
straightened her shoulders, trying to quell a fierce and unexpected joy blooming in her heart. “But
this
officer was recently forced to the beach and the Fates would truly be against us if the Khaid intelligence services were so far-thinking as to capture
his
voice patterns for use against
me
. No, fantastic as it sounds I believe that
Chu-sa
Mitsuharu Hadeishi is—somehow!—beyond the Barrier, that he has captured a Khaid ship, and is using that same vessel to recover our lost evac capsules.”

The Mayan’s expression became dour. “Sounds brave as the deeds of Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the heroic stories of my people, but doomed, surely. There is a full Khaid
fleet
at the other end of the Pinhole,
Kyo
. And against them, one ship will not last long at all.…”

Susan laughed out loud. “Your twin heroes were fashioned from mortals who excelled at contests to the death,
Sho-sa.
In this living world, there is no ship commander more likely to achieve the impossible than the man whose voice we’ve just heard.”

Then her expression darkened, lips drawing tight. “But more likely, the Khaid fleet is no longer waiting outside the Barrier. No—they have likely found a way through as well, and will soon be upon us. Then
we
will be the lone lion amongst the wolf pack.”

Kosh
ō
turned to the pilot. “
Sho-i
Holloway, bring us about and prep the coil to punch gradient. We need room to maneuver. Weapons, prep your launchers!”

ON THE
MOULINS

D
OCKED WITHIN THE
C
HIMALACATL

A groan escaped Hummingbird’s lips as consciousness returned in fits and starts. He opened his eyes, finding nothing but darkness. He tested the movement of his arms and legs, and found they were tightly bound. Shifting his head from side to side, the old Náhuatl determined that something—a rubbery plastic—had been stretched over his eyes. He was not gagged, which indicated to the
nauallis
that there was no one within shouting distance. In any case, he did not like to make noise when he could not see who might be listening.

On my own, am I?
Hummingbird shifted his shoulders, feeling walls on either side.
A closet perhaps? But they were in a hurry—I am still wearing my skinsuit.

The old Náhuatl twisted his head from side to side, testing the limits of his ability to move. Discovering that both knees could reach his chin, he managed to roll forward gently and get both feet beneath him. Then, Hummingbird stood up slowly and found the roof of the confined space less than a meter above his resting position.
A bit cramped, but then I am not the largest of men.

He twisted one shoulder around to bring the sealing strip of the skinsuit within range of his lips and then spent a good fifteen minutes trying to catch the recessed plastic tab in his teeth. Finally, after relaxing all of the muscles in his neck, back, and arms individually, he was able to do so. When the tab popped free, the skinsuit puddled to the ground in a pool of gelatinlike oil, leaving only the neckring. With a two-millimeter clearance between his bonds and skin, the
nauallis
was able to shimmy free in another twenty minutes of hot, sweaty work in the closet.

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! Srá Osá 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.”