Land of the Dead (33 page)

Kosh
ō
looked up, sparing an instant’s attention from the threatwell, at the sound of someone gasping in pain as a grav-stretcher floated into Command. The Swedish woman, Anderssen, arrived in the company of two
gun-i
. Her left arm was splinted, her face and visible arm badly bruised. An extra med-band had been strapped to her off-wrist, leaving her face drawn and pale. Despite this, she met Susan’s gaze with equanimity.

“Put her next to
Thai-i
Holloway at Navigation,” Kosh
ō
said, inclining her sleek, dark head towards the semicircular console on the second tier. “Secure the shockchair, we can’t have her jolting about.”

Turning back to the ’well, the
Chu-sa
considered the movements of the Khaid ships at the Pinhole once more. Konev, now moved over to the XO spot, had dialed up a series of secondary schematics, showing the historical track of the enemy contacts over the last hour.

“They’re not leaving,
kyo
,” the Russian said, rubbing his eyes. He, like the rest of the command crew, was now standing their second straight watch.

“No, they are regrouping. They are curious—did the
Tlemitl
have a true goal in mind, or did it act in equal ignorance, hurling itself to certain doom?”

“They’re trying to guess the outline of the passage,
kyo
?” Konev sounded dubious.

Susan smiled, watching a series of darting lights emerge from one of the Khaid ship-icons. “But—wisely—they’ve stopped throwing ships into the grinder’s teeth.” Her stylus circled the minute flecks, directing the ’well to zoom in. “Instead they are testing the opening with missiles from this leeward battleship.”

On the threatwell, the cluster of missiles sailed effortlessly into the Pinhole. Some interpenetrated with the nearest veil, winking out in seemingly empty space, while others sped on, unmolested.

“
Kyo
, what are we doing?” Konev’s voice was very soft. Kosh
ō
nodded, accepting the bold question.

“Finding two more hours for
Sho-sa
Chac to complete repairs on the coil.” The
Zosen
were behind schedule, for the damage to some of the hypercells was worse than initially estimated. Susan lifted her chin, indicating the partial gap amongst the thready pattern. “We have this much of a map, and I hope—” She glanced over at Anderssen, who was carefully removing a bronze-colored comp from a parchment envelope and securing the device to the navigation console. The Nisei officer blinked, suddenly certain that the corroded-looking surface was actually gleaming very brightly, as though burnished and new. “I hope we have the rest near to hand.”

Gretchen spread her hands on either side of the block, took a deep breath, and then tapped open a pair of v-panes on either side.
Thai-i
Holloway, who had been watching her closely from his neighboring chair, stiffened and shot a panicky glance at Kosh
ō
.

Susan met his eyes, nodding.
We’re only alive now,
she thought,
because of what Anderssen deduced. If we try and flee into open space, the Khaid will run us to ground in no more than an hour. Chac needs time, and that means we need safe haven. Even a quarter-light-minute inside that barrier, drawing a veil behind us where the Khaid cannot follow, will be enough to complete our repairs.

Holloway swallowed, eyes dragged back to a flurry of geometric diagrams opening and closing on the console. Anderssen was now breathing deeply and steadily through her nose, fingers digging in another envelope from her jacket pocket. Two pale yellow tablets emerged, held gingerly between thumb and forefinger.

Oliohuiqui? wondered Susan. A nauallis
drug—ah now, how is our other passenger?

Mindful of the security risk he represented, Kosh
ō
attached one of her v-panes to the datastream from the security cameras in Medical. Green Hummingbird was in bay three, his small brown body curled up in a fetal position. The dull gray mantle, hooded brown cloak, and trousers he affected were stained and torn—though those limbs exposed to her sight were unmarked. The vitals feed from bed telemetry showed his heartbeat was slow, his breathing shallow, and his condition marked
UNCONSCIOUS
.

Susan frowned at this.
I wonder …

Holloway and Konev both distracted her from the thought by abruptly stiffening in alarm. A second later her own console flashed a series of warnings. Something had entered the shipnet and begun altering the code controlling the navigational interfaces—or replacing modules wholesale—at fantastic speed.

“
Chu-sa!
” The navigator had half-risen from his shockchair. “Are you
certain
this is a good idea?”

“It is the best chance we have,” Kosh
ō
replied softly. She directed her gaze at the Swedish woman. “Anderssen-
tzin
, can your mechanism perceive the Barrier as it ebbs and flows? Can it relay the telemetry we need fast enough to move through at high-v?”

Gretchen turned towards her and Konev hissed in horrified surprise. The woman’s pupils had grown huge, dilated by the drugs now coursing through her bloodstream. Her face had acquired a peculiar waxy sheen. “Zaryá protect us from all witches!”

“I do not know,” Anderssen said, her voice tight and distant, “if your interfaces are fast enough.”

“We will do our best,” Susan answered, nodding to Holloway. “Stand by for our entry run. Bring up main drives, angle deflectors tight in on the hull. Konev—
Thai-i
Konev!”

Startled, the Russian turned to face her, once more composed and alert.

“Bring the remote platforms in as well, inside our deflector array. I don’t want to lose them, but we’re going to be moving erratically. Gun crews stand by for a hot passage.
Chu-i
Pucatli, sound battle stations and acceleration alert.” Immediately, Klaxons began to blare.

Kosh
ō
turned back to Gretchen. “Anderssen-
tzin
, you have the con.”

Deep in the bowels of the ship, reaction mass channels opened fractionally and the main maneuver engines roared as Holloway advanced both of his speed controls. The
Naniwa
surged ahead, building v as fast as she could. The internal frame, already battered by multiple missile impacts, groaned with the stress. In every compartment, crewmen secured their stations and prepared for a rough ride.

*   *   *

At the navigation console, Gretchen settled back, letting the holocast unfold before her. Attached directly to the shipnet’s fastest interfaces, node 3
³
3 seemed to expand, releasing hundreds of the processing nodes which had previously been inactive or inaccessible. The discovery algorithm she’d loaded into her own field comp had mutated, evolved, and returned, rippling across the Imperial systems with blinding speed. Her model was now tremendously detailed, with some kind of interpolative subprocess filling in the gaps in the quantum data feeding back from the battle-cruiser’s sensor suite.

The science probes had been lost in the fighting, though in comparison to the
Naniwa
’s shipskin, they were tiny black birds, pecking at a leviathan wall of basalt blocks. The warship drank data with every surface, and node 3
³
3 swallowed it up just as fast. There was only one jarring note in the rising symphony. Gretchen was suddenly aware that something was out of place in the block pressed between her fingers.

You’re broken,
she realized, feeling that same rushing sense of
rightness
which had first come to her when the last fragment of an Old High Martian Period III bowl had fit into place on Old Mars and the entire object was whole and perfect in her hands, restored after five thousand years of separation.
This piece of you is out of place.
She felt the mechanism—was it like a clock? No, more a series of orbitals constantly in motion like the arms of an astrolabe, each ring a pressure-wave interlocking with the others in their emptiness—slip and slide under her attention. But then, when she focused her internal image of what
should be
, the whirling rings suddenly conformed to the pattern she desired.

The block seemed to change, under her fingertips, though she was sure nothing visible about it had altered, and felt—for the first time—as though it was in
proper
form. Unblemished, unbroken, at last intact.

In her elevated state, Anderssen’s perceptions shifted, the command deck and the tiny humans there falling away, her vision expanding to taste the dust clouds, the wreckage, the hot flare of the ship’s drives like brilliant jeweled stars. Agitated waves spun away from them as they built velocity, shifting the dust, even brushing the threaded veil which lay ahead, stirring its components with a hot wind.

The gap—the Pinhole—loomed, no more than a long jagged gap of darkness within darkness.

*   *   *

Prince Xochitl’s evac-capsule sped away from the wreck of the
Tlemitl
, the momentum imparted by the launch rail carrying them forward. Through one of the viewports Xochitl could see the great ship, now cut neatly into three sections, receding, plumes of burning atmosphere jetting from the black hull. A Khaid cruiser—now no more than a shattered hulk—was within sight as well. The Prince, his helmet faceplate levered up, bit at the corner of his thumb and considered a nav-plot on his tiny control console. There were other capsules in range, and at the edge of sensor capacity, an able-bodied Khaiden destroyer was edging back out of the danger area.

“We cannot detect the threads,” rasped a voice from behind him. Xochitl turned, surprised to see the engineer crouching in the door of the miniscule bridge. Looking more haggard than ever, fear radiating from him in waves, Helsdon gestured at the viewport. “Our sensors just aren’t designed to recognize such a distortion of quantum law. You will want to halt our movement, before we strike one of them.”

Though he was feeling something that—in a lesser mortal—might be termed terror, the Prince essayed a feeble joke: “There are laws at the quantum level?”

“As far as these pitiful computers are concerned, there are.” Helsdon squeezed in beside Xochitl, ignoring centuries of protocol and policy which would have relegated the commoner to some distant precinct of the Prince’s daily routine. The engineer’s fingers trembled as he jacked a hand-comp into the control console. “We were right in the middle of reprogramming everything to ignore known laws, to assume that the Planck-length components of these threads were … well then, you shut us down.” Helsdon laughed ghoulishly, his own fear cutting through any sense of social hierarchy.

Xochitl stiffened, his jaw clenching.
Whom do you think you address, Anglishman? No one reproves me. Not even the Imperial family. It is not permitted. My father depends on my judgment. He sent me here to secure this situation
.
He—

Then the Prince realized his mind was wandering, even his exocortex had fallen silent while his human consciousness whirled in a dozen directions.

«
Cognitive capability is impaired,
» the exo finally announced, «
by chemical reactions to the perception of incipient destruction. Injecting stabilizing compounds.
» Xochitl felt a cool tickling sensation in his wrists and raised his hands in confusion. A moment passed before the thudding of his heart slowed and his mind cleared.

When the Prince focused again on the engineer, Helsdon was looking up at him in puzzlement, and as if at an equal.
You shall not think me incapable of the task!
Xochitl took a deep breath. “Can this sensor array be reconfigured? Tweaked to detect the barrier?”

“It will be slow work.” Helsdon squinted at the intentionally simple capsule controls. “But we—” He paused, staring at the navigational plot. “Isn’t that one of ours?”

*   *   *

Kosh
ō
watched with interest as the Khaid flotilla in the area around the Pinhole—at last—reacted to the
Naniwa
’s approach. Intermittent bursts of message traffic came and went on the enemy channel and now they were chattering away again. The enemy battleships began to accelerate, swirling out and away from the entrance to the gap like a flock of huge, ungainly birds. Her eyes narrowed to see they were keeping reasonable cohesion and spacing, even when forced to redeploy from disorder.

But they had reacted a little too slowly, given her approaching speed.

“Salvo one away,” Konev reported, and the rumbling echo of launch rails discharging followed hard on his words.

A flight of shipkillers winged away from the
Naniwa
in a black wedge—exhausting the last of her ready magazines. Konev had been refining their attack vector for the past sixteen minutes and a formation of the remote platforms winged in, leading the swarm of
Tessen
missiles. With the response time from the remotes looping back through the main t-relay, the weapons officer had shortened his reaction time to the counter-missile storm erupting from the lead battleships. They had also pushed forward the reach of
Naniwa
’s countermeasures.