Land of the Dead (35 page)

“Now,
Sho-i
, I need Tadohao’s help to get up to Command, but I will send him back to you as quick as I can. I am certain you’ll have great use for him soon.”

“
Hai, kyo!
” Both men nodded in agreement, chewing noisily. De Molay leaned heavily on the Iroquois
Joto-hei
and took a moment to get the worst of her hair tucked back and the Bulldog stowed inside her jacket. “Your
Thai-i
and my new XO need us, Tadohao, before they both need the medbay!”

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Hadeishi had managed to chivvy Tocoztic and the marine up to the tiny bridge, where they stared around uneasily. The Nisei could tell they were put off by the ancient-seeming equipment, the cramped quarters, and the grime apparent on often-used surfaces.
It takes time to see her noble heart,
Mitsuharu thought to himself.
For she is a willing steed, and does not complain of the load.

“This is a small ship,” he said aloud, drawing their attention back to him, “compared to your
Falchion
, but you will find her able. Do not underestimate the quality of the ship’s fittings. Though not much to look upon, she is neither antique nor decayed. All critical components are in first-rate condition. I will wager they are the equal of anything found in the Fleet.
Thai-i
.” Hadeishi pointed to the pilot’s chair with the muzzle of his shipgun. “Your duty station.”

Expressionless, the Méxica officer sat. Immediately he began wiggling around, trying to find a comfortable spot on the old, cracked leather.

“Marines?” Hadeishi tilted his head towards the little
Nitto-hei
, who—despite the Nisei’s paltry height—was still shorter, though nearly as wide as the doorframe. “Cajeme, I believe?”

“
Hai, kyo
.” The marine clasped his hands behind his back for a moment, then—glancing sidelong at the lieutenant, who was grimacing at the Pilot’s controls—offered Hadeishi a proper salute.

Mitsuharu returned the gesture, trying to keep from bursting into a wide smile. The little man’s accent had confirmed his guess—
Out of the Atoyaatl Mayo, if my ear is still good.

“What was your duty station,
Nitto-hei
Cajeme? Your badging reminds me of the engineers.”

“This and that—
Chu-Sa
.” The Yaqui shrugged.

“You can be specific. I’ve been below-decks of late, plugging boilers and shoveling coal.”

The marine drew himself up. “Repair hand first class,
kyo
.”

Hadeishi nodded smartly. “There is much to do,
Nitto-hei
. If one of your fellows is able-bodied, round him up on the way to Engineering. I’ve shut off environmentals in nearly all the compartments, but we’ll start flushing in atmosphere as you work. Khaiden dead go out the airlock—but strip their gear first, even z-suits if they are operable condition. We don’t want to give up
anything
which might be useful later—guns, ammunition, identity packets, even shoes. Secure what you find along the main shipcore until someone can do inventory. If we are fortunate, there will soon be other hands to help you.”

Mitsuharu tapped a printed map of the ship tacked up on the bridge hatch. “Medbay is one deck down from the roundabout outside, and to port-side.”

Cajeme nodded, checked the equipment belt on his z-suit, accepted a spare hand-lamp, and double-timed out the hatch.

His immediate concerns addressed, Hadeishi turned his attention back to
Thai-i
Tocoztic, who had swung his pilot’s chair around and was giving him a sullen, obstinate glare. The Nisei affected to ignore this, pointing with his chin at the navigational display. “Check the plot,
Thai-i
. There were twenty or thirty evac capsules within range of our sensors when last I looked. Route us to the nearest—but take care with our engine signature. We should be underway at the first opportunity, but we want no attention.”

“I won’t take your orders, civilian,” Tocoztic declared, eyeing the shipgun angrily. “Certainly not under duress. Never at gunpoint!”

“I am not a civilian,” Hadeishi said calmly, keying up the internal surveillance cameras on the captain’s console with his free hand. A mosaic of v-panes arranged themselves and he could see the wounded man was under care in the medbay. De Molay—and a helper—were on the move.

He then settled his grip on the shipgun and met the young Méxica officer’s eyes directly. “I am a Fleet reserve officer of superior rank,” Mitsuharu said patiently. “Commanding this ship in a theater of war. Now that you are aboard,
Thai-i
, you will take my orders or I will consider you mutinous.” He frowned at Tocoztic. “And I would be well within Regs to shoot you for a treacherous and disloyal dog if you continue to be obstinate.”

The youth’s face assumed a mulish expression. “You can’t be a reserve officer—”

Mitsuharu reached into the document pocket of his z-suit and then paused; realizing he’d discarded every trace of his old life while languishing in Shinedo. He laughed softly. “I am—”

“Hadeishi, Mitsuharu; captain of the Imperial Méxica Navy,” croaked De Molay from the hatchway. Both men turned. The old woman was leaning heavily on
Joto-hei
Tadohao, but still had both feet under her. “Late of the IMN CL-341
Henry R. Cornuelle
, discharged from active duty four months ago. Service ID 9874662. Decorated three times for valor under fire, credited with eleven capital-ship kills against Khaid, Megair, pirate, and Kroom
ā
kh opponents.”

Wincing, De Molay slumped into the navigator’s chair next to the lieutenant. “Here”—she said, rather breathless from the effort, tossing Tocoztic an identicard packet—“are his papers.”

The
Thai-i
caught them, flinching as though from a water moccasin, and stared at the Fleet packet as though the snake itself were winding its coils around his hand. “A forgery—” he started to say.

“Read them!” De Molay growled, before leaning back in the chair with a relieved sigh. “I have—they are quite interesting. Particularly his duty jacket.”

Tocoztic made a sour face, but began paging through the packet, brows furrowed over dark eyes. While the youth convinced himself, Hadeishi studied the mosaic of v-panes from the cameras. Cajeme had made his way halfway down the shipcore, taking apparent delight in stripping the Khaid bodies, but he was alone. Mitsuharu looked up, catching the old woman’s eye.

“Another hand is needed with the cleanup. Can you spare your assistant, Captain?”

“Indeed. Thank you for your help,
Nitto-hei
.” She crooked a finger at Hadeishi. “There’s no point in wasting time making this gunner play pilot. I was a navigator in the old days; I can lay a plot for you better than he—with my own ship, no less!”

“He needs something to do, Captain, and he needs to be up here.”
Where I can keep an eye on him,
went unsaid.

“Second seat then,” sniffed De Molay. She made a puckered, terrible face, as though sucking on a salted tamarind. “You’ll be useless yourself unless you’ve my spot—I knew it from the first.”

“Well then,” Mitsuharu said, settling himself into the captain’s chair. “We are certainly overqualified on this watch, aren’t we?”

De Molay nodded, head held high. Her fingers were not as quick on the controls as they once had been, but in a few moments the navigational displays were reconfigured into a pattern closely approximating those used by the Fleet. Hadeishi clapped his hands, unexpectedly pleased to have all of the v-panes, slide controls, and other mechanisms in their familiar places.

“Thank you,” the old woman said, sketching a bow from her seat. “Now there’s one thing more you’re missing, I believe.” She tapped through a series of obscure panes, hunting for
something
, and then, after changing this and that, the air forward of the captain’s chair and behind the pilot and navigation stations shimmered with the distinctive heat-haze of a holocast projector. After several false starts, De Molay—frustrated by her inability to remember where the proper settings were—conjured up a threatwell. Not a large one, or as detailed as the data collection allowed by a warship, but a threatwell nonetheless.

“Excellent.” Hadeishi smiled in thanks. Then he leaned forward a bit, studying the display, while rolling a stylus between the fingers of his left hand.

“How about this one? Not too far away,” he said. “This heat signature implies a cooling plasma cloud, if the color coding is accurate.”

“This analysis program is at least as good as anything you’ve ever worked with,
Chu-sa.
” The old woman’s voice was aggrieved. “But one lifeboat is as good as the next. Engaging drives on your mark.”

“Underway then, Pilot.”

The
Wilful
’s maneuver drive flared briefly, and then the secondary thrusters kicked in, reorienting the freighter. On their new heading, the little ship glided forward into the darkness, hurrying towards its next rescue.

THE
NANIWA

Once the battle-cruiser had entered the Pinhole proper, Kosh
ō
was tempted to put on more speed. Unfortunately, only a thousand kilometers into the aperture the topology of the threads grew more complex, and she was forced to cut speed to three-quarters. This ended the brief respite from Khaiden bombardment. Fusion detonations began to flare around them, scattering the clouds of chaff which Konev and his crews had been liberally ejecting to mask their position. The scavenged remotes had been expended on their approach, so the
Naniwa
was back to her own resources.

The space-frame shook, rattling the consoles in Command, as a series of bomb-pods blew apart off their ventral quarter. The Khaid battleships were refining their firing solutions. Compartment alarms sounded, but Susan had no attention to spare for them.

“
Chu-sa
, we’ve about three hundred sixty sprint-class contacts incoming,” Konev warned.

“Understood,” Kosh
ō
gritted out through clenched teeth. She cast about in the topology rushing towards her, looking for a pocket she could lay the battle-cruiser into. Nothing sprang into view.…

“
Chu-sa!
We have to try and rescue the Prince!” Holloway had muted the comm channel, but his voice was near panic at the thought of abandoning the most superior officer he’d ever come into contact with.

“Sixty-five seconds to missile storm impact,” Konev announced, his voice flat. The weapons officer’s fingers were flying across his control surface. “All point-defense engaged.”

“Weapons, rolling aspect in thirty-five seconds.”
That’ll bring the dorsal batteries into play.

“
Hai, kyo!
”

Susan spared a glance for Holloway. “I won’t lift a finger for the Prince, not if it places my crew and ship in danger—he won’t be the first great lord of the Méxica to die gloriously in battle.” Kosh
ō
managed a tight, wintry grin as her fingers danced lightly on the control console. The threatwell was now fairly choked with gleaming strands of Barrier threads, yet the “passageway” had not completely closed. A fresh plume of the invisible razors now emerged from the chaotic storm on the sensors. The constant detonations of Khaid missiles were fouling the ship’s perceptions, and the
Naniwa
had lost enough shipskin to seriously degrade her capabilities in the best of circumstances.

“Incoming!” The ship rolled aspect, jets of propellant erupting along her flanks. A second later the decking vibrated violently as the dorsal point-defense erupted—clouds of counter-missiles erupting from the launch racks; beam nacelles discharging, the smaller gun-pits hammering away with ballistic munitions. The Khaid missile cloud staggered, nearly two-thirds of the incoming birds shattered or knocked aside. Konev’s spoofing pods and emitters whined into high-output, sending another sixth of the sprint missiles into electronic catatonia, or off into the void, chasing phantoms.

The dorsal armor took the rest head-on. Kosh
ō
felt the ship lurch, hammered by nearly a hundred impacts. Huge swathes of shipskin went dark, ruptured, and the damage control board—just visible off to her left—flared red along a jagged S-curve. The ship crabbed behind the plume of threads she’d picked out.

“
Chu-sa
, we’re down to minimal load on the external batteries,” Konev reported. “I’ve no shipkillers left on the rails and resupply is backed up. Magazines three, four, and seven are off-line.”

The bridge was filled with a sea of beeping alarms and the tense chatter of damage control teams reporting in. Only Holloway was still turned towards her, finger pressed to his earbug, his face growing longer by the moment. The
Thai-i
shook his head. “
Chu-sa
, he orders you to retrieve the capsule.”