Land of the Dead (46 page)

To Anderssen’s eye the Crow seemed to hop from one foot to the other, wings rustling nervously, before he took hold of the door latch again. “I need to speak to the ambassador—find your clothes, get dressed, and packed up. The
Chu-sa
needs you, remember?”

Then he slipped out quietly, the door barely making a noise as he passed over the threshold.

“Huh!” Gretchen began digging through the storage bins.
Now I do truly need Magdalena and Parker and even Dai Bandao, if he were available. I need backup. I should not have lost my temper with the Crow.
She sighed, suddenly weary.
I am an idiot. I could have done this just as easily back home on New Aberdeen. But no—I have to come haring out here to the back of beyond, just on the off-chance I’ll touch the face of the unknown one more time.

Finding a shirt, spare field pants, and the leather jacket, Anderssen had managed to get herself together by the time Hummingbird reappeared, radiating pleased satisfaction. “Quickly now, Doctor Anderssen—we are accompanying the Esteemed Sahâne to the bridge.”

Gretchen was holding the parchment envelope by her fingertips, careful not to actually press against the bronze-colored block inside. She shook her head angrily. “Why do you think I’ll come anywhere with you? You’ve used me as an experimental test subject to see if this … tool … would do me harm. Do you really think I would continue helping you, once I found out?”

Hummingbird paused in the doorway, watching her with an inscrutable expression. “If you do not come, Anderssen-
tzin
, then you will not see what they have found.” Then he nodded to the envelope. “Bring the device—one text I have seen names it the
Adh’atr
, which is the easiest for us to say—I think you will need its capabilities soon.”

Goddamnit.
Gretchen tossed the block from hand to hand, then stowed it in her backpack. Dragging everything with her, she hustled out into the corridor, where she found the Esteemed One clinging to Hummingbird’s shoulder, its face a ghastly hue. The plastic bucket had disappeared, but the z-suit—or armor or carapace—was liberally streaked with regurgitated fluids. Together, they were shuffling towards the nearest lift.

“I will compel action,” the Hjo declared loudly, long gray nose raised in defiance. “Someone will be Instructed for this. There is a Certainty!”

“If I may suggest—” Hummingbird said, his voice low, “there is a small but well-equipped ship aboard that could easily receive your person and take you to a safer location.…”

“No!” The creature’s reaction was abrupt and violent, though for the moment it lacked the strength to do more than flail one arm. “Order and harmony must be restored without resort to flight! Flight in a tiny, ill-equipped cylinder, crowded with apes and their acrid stench…” Sahâne muttered. “
They
will try again to destroy me, the last of a noble and laudatory descent. No … Take me to the place of authority!”

“But Esteemed One, the Prince is at the focus of action, in Secondary Command…” Gretchen started to speak—seeing Hummingbird gesture towards the glyph for deck thirty-nine on the lift controls—but kept her peace, wondering what the old Náhuatl intended.

“Yes. There shall be a confrontation.” The creature was mumbling again. “And explanation!”

Hummingbird bowed obediently and pressed the call button for the lift. When the doors cycled open, the Hjo lurched inside—making a snuffling whine upon seeing the confined space—and then Hummingbird and Gretchen slipped inside as well, keeping to the corners and out of the way of the long, furred arms. The creature swung its head from side to side as the lift raced between decks.

*   *   *

By the time the blast-doors to Secondary Command irised open, the ambassador had managed to straighten up to his full height and—somehow—his z-suit and exposed fur had shed the vomit. Anderssen found the creature tremendously interesting; when first she’d set eyes upon it, the Hjo seemed shrunken and withered.
He—yes, this is a male, I’m sure of it—felt incomplete. But now it is filling out, becoming more sure of itself.
She eyed the armored suit curiously. Was a med-band at play here, injecting some kind of confidence-building med into the creature?

“Account for this wretched treat—” Sahâne stopped, long mouth yawning open, his dark eyes reflecting a hot white glow. All of his newly won assurance staggered, quailed, and then fled. A pained whimper emerged from his throat. Gretchen looked away from the creature in surprise and then her own eyes went wide with delight.

Secondary Command had been reconfigured to create one massive v-display which stretched from floor to ceiling and wrapped around three-quarters of the chamber. The Command consoles had been relocated to the sides and back of the room, their smaller v-displays filled with ever-changing data. On the vast canvas, a live camera feed of the Sunflower filled the room with the hot white glare of the ejection jet boiling up out of the singularity. The three bloated orbs of the brown dwarves studded the sky and the dark mass of the accretion disc formed a backdrop for the tri-lobed structure. Those surfaces at an angle to the jet glared with reflected light, throwing the
Chimalacatl
into high relief.

“How big…” whispered Anderssen, fumbling in her jacket pockets for a hand-comp. “My god, it’s five thousand kilometers on a side!”

A Jaguar Knight in combat armor suddenly blocked her view, a gauntleted hand crushing her fingers and plucking the comp from her grasp. Another
Ocelotl
had moved in on the other side, immobilizing Hummingbird, who was standing quite still, all of his attention focused on the Hjo and a slim, handsome man of middle age rising from a shockchair placed at the center of the room. Seeing him in the flesh, Gretchen felt a pang of disappointment—
he’s not nearly so pretty in real life
—but then caught sight of the Prince’s face and felt a bolt of adrenaline flush through her limbs.
He is furious, though!

The Jaguars picked up the wave of displeasure radiating from Xochitl as well, and the one holding Anderssen seized her neck with an armored hand. Servos whined in her ear and the metallic grip dug into her flesh.
Oh god, he’ll just twist and—

“Esteemed One.” With a visible effort, the Prince halted his angry pace and bowed, face contorted with the effort of mouthing peaceful words. “I am relieved to see you are feeling better, but I urge you to return to Medical. You will be safe there and your diverse stomachs set in order.”

The Hjo trembled from head to toe, but managed to squeak out: “Turn us about, mad creature! The radiation levels in this sector must be immense. Have you no care for your offspring to come? We must depart immediately!”

Anderssen experienced a strange sensation, watching the ambassador swaying before the Prince. The jolt of fear which had struck the alien dumb now seemed to supplement the earlier sense of assurance. She could taste a stark, unadulterated desire to live, and wondered if the creature had ever felt that particular spike of self-awareness before. Then Gretchen blinked rapidly, half-blinded by the glare from the v-display, and wondered if she was hallucinating. The air around the creature seemed to be flickering or twisting with tiny fleeting gleams of light.
A reflection? But of what?

As she turned her head—feeling the armored fingers still digging into her neck—the spectacle on the v-display drew her eye like a magnet. The panorama seemed terribly familiar—something she’d seen, or read in a book, or—
What is it? Those triliths are … damn, but it’s just beyond reach!

Behind her, Hummingbird had somehow moved closer to the Hjo, a supportive hand under one arm, and she could hear him whispering: “Departure, yes. An excellent idea, Esteemed One.”

Anderssen and the Prince spoke simultaneously: “It is not!”

Xochitl turned towards her with a scowl, jaw tight. “Get her out—”

“This object can only be a First Sun artifact,” she blurted, catching his eye. “The Ik-Hu-Huillane tablets speak of an ‘abode of the waking mind’ which is formed in threes and multiples of three—this structure is the very image the Yithians speak of!”

“Yes … At last.” The Prince’s face cleared, the words striking a chord in him. “I’ve a remote going aboard that structure within moments, and we’ll—”

Out of the corner of her eye, Gretchen caught sight of an entire console filled with v-panes wink out. The comm officer sitting at the station cried out in alarm.

“
Chu-sa!
My Lord Prince!” A man’s voice echoed in the air. “We’ve lost contact with the shuttle.”

A section of the Prince’s console unfolded into a large v-pane, showing
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
’s face, which was now cold and alert, her eyes flickering from side to side. Xochitl stepped back to his shockchair, intent on the Nisei officer.

“Well?” he demanded.

“The cargo shuttle has exploded,
Gensui
.” Susan’s lips were a tight line, her brow furrowed. “No warning, no energy emissions … we’re rewinding the telemetry, but I don’t believe there is anything left to recover.”

The Prince cursed, unable to keep rein on his temper a moment longer, and slammed a fist into the side of the shockchair. The Hjo recoiled, though Hummingbird’s grip was tight enough to keep the creature from falling down. “We must flee,” Sahâne wailed, “reverse your course, human. Reverse now!”

Without considering the ramifications, Gretchen slipped free of the Jaguar’s grip—the Knight was staring at the console display, his attention distracted for a moment—and slid into a shockchair beside the horrified comm-tech.

“Roll that feed back, my dear,” she said, voice calm and commanding. “Frame by frame.”

The parchment envelope was opened and one of the octopus arms snaked from her pocket into a socket on the console without anyone noticing. Gretchen snugged her earbug tight against the background noise. The Prince and Kosh
ō
were disputing the merits of sending another shuttle towards the Sunflower. “Give me broad-spectrum passive scan at 20X for surface of the structure directly adjacent to the explosion…”
Should be some impact scarring now, from the debris. Crude—but I’ll take the infopoints.

*   *   *

“My lord…” Xochitl turned away from Susan’s impassive visage, feeling thwarted at every turn, and advanced on the Hjogadim with a fierce expression. “We must determine the provenance of this—object—and if it poses a threat to Méxica space! Then we can—”

“
Stand away
, toy!” Sahâne yelped, frightened by the Prince’s fierce movement, reflexively making a form of obedience with his hand, as though the human were a servant in the house of his fathers. Xochitl staggered, eyes wide, his face draining of color.

«
Heart failure induced
,» his exo said brightly. «
Cortex shutdown expected within ten seconds.
»

The Prince collapsed to his knees, and then tipped to one side when his arms failed to support his weight. A great rushing sound roared in his ears. He saw the two Jaguar Knights lunging forward, weapons out, striking at the Hjo with all the speed they could muster. Sahâne’s exposed fur shifted color and tone, and the first bodyguard to reach him—butt of his shipgun reversed as a club—saw his knockout blow glance away from a sudden effusion of spiked scales which covered the Hjo’s z-suited arm in a blur.

The creature, furious and sick at the same time, backhanded the marine with a long, gray arm. There was a
crack
of electricity and the Jaguar Knight was flung back, armor coiling smoke, to strike the floor, limp and lifeless.

«
Cortex shutdown in seven seconds.
»

Everyone in Secondary Command froze. The other Jaguar fetched up, weapon raised, suddenly unsure of how to attack the fully armored apparition. Sahâne stared down at his arm, the dark, rune-scribed z-suit now glittering with a spiked metallic shell, in astonished horror. “I did not do that,” he declared in a weak voice. “I could not. This is
impossible
.”

“Esteemed One, stay your merciful hand!” Hummingbird’s voice was clear and direct, ringing in the air as the
nauallis
prostrated himself on the deck. “These
shiau har-e
will not serve without their lord being
shun tzing.
If he bends to your will, then all will be harmonious and we may flee this accursed place in speed and safety!”

Xochitl, barely able to see, gasped for life on the deck. The exo’s implacable voice continued to count down the seconds left before his brain starved from oxygen deprivation. The Hjo loomed over him, blocking out the light of the overheads. A pair of black eyes stared down and the long mouth twisted in a snarl.

“Let this toy live, when it has raised a paw against me? Why should I?”

“Think, Esteemed One,” Hummingbird said, his voice controlled—persuasive—without a hint of disobedience, “Think of your offspring in their thousands to come—we must be away from this accursed place swiftly and
this one
”—the
nauallis’
boot toed the Prince’s side—“is their Authority. Through him, you control the others and may achieve a swift departure.”