Land of the Dead Read online

  * * *

  The starboard cargo lift rattled to a halt on the accommodation deck—not an area Hadeishi had ever set foot in before—and he eased out, pry bar in both hands like a bat, and stepped lightly towards the shipcore. Almost immediately he encountered a rec room strewn with burned fabric and paper, fallen kaffe cups, and broken plates. His boots crunched on scattered shipgun flechettes, and the walls and cupboards were badly torn up. Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor—both wearing the jumpsuits favored by the Wilful’s crew—and as he gingerly approached, they convulsed with a rippling wave of motion.

  “Shipbugs,” Mitsuharu muttered under his breath, skipping backward, face twisting in disgust.

  Both corpses collapsed into a tatter of cloth and white bone. The Khaid shipbugs, an insectile omnivore about the length of his thumb, swarmed across the floor, their silvery carapaces making a queer, shimmering mass. Hundreds of antennae turned in his direction, waved about tasting the air, and then the entire swarm turned away with a rustling tik-tik-tik, looking for more decomposing organics to consume.

  Why the Khaid—who were not one of the insectoid species known to the Méxica—employed the shipbug, Hadeishi did not know. One intel briefing he had seen suggested the Khaiden themselves had once been a subject race of the Kryg’nth or Megair and had adopted some of their past masters’ technologies and practices. Too, he understood they found the insects a delicacy. He found the bugs loathsome and stayed back, out of the room, until the swarm had departed for some other corpse-strewn pasture.

  Then he forced himself to search through the remains of the two men, and gathered up their identity cards, pocket multitools, and anything else of use he could find. The refrigerator in the rec area also yielded up more to eat and two bottles of Mayahuel brand beer, which he stowed in the leg pockets of his z-suit.

  Do they have a handler? he wondered, thinking of the shipbugs again. So far they are the only sign of life.… Perhaps the Khaid close off the ship, let the bugs scour everything clean, and then come in to gather them up. All fat and juicy and … He spat violently in the sink, then wiped his mouth. I need to find a real command console with access to all of the security cameras.

  * * *

  Hadeishi crouched at the junction between the shipcore and an access way to the main passenger airlock, morbidly amused to stand no more than a meter from where he’d been marched out in chains no more than an hour earlier. This time the roundabout was empty—all of the bodies had been dragged away and the Khaid marines were gone. Cautious, Mitsuharu held a small mirror mounted on a telescoping handle around the corner, looking for the expected guards. The airlock itself was open, but no one seemed to be in the gangway leading to the Qalak. There must be someone just out of sight on the other side.…

  Wary of showing himself in the crossroads, Mitsuharu backtracked to the nearest door and slipped inside. The room was one of a set ringing the top of the shipcore and seemed to be sleeping quarters for four. On the far side was a sliding doorway leading into a shared bathroom. Hadeishi wasted no time in passing through, giving the fresher a quick once-over—no weapons or tools—and then easing open the doorway to the second bunkroom.

  Here he found the bodies from the roundabout and bridge. They were thrown in a heap—and the tik-tik-tik of the shipbugs was loud enough to hear through his helmet. Suppressing an urge to vomit, Mitsuharu kept to the edge of the room and made a quick exit out the far door.

  Breathing fast, Hadeishi forced himself to stop—now he was in a short corridor leading back to the roundabout—and he was suddenly afraid he’d walked out in full view of any Khaiden camera pointing down the gangway between the two ships. Luckily, the corridor was not in line with the airlock itself. Breathing a sigh of relief, he ducked across to the other side of the passage and was about to chance angling back to the crossroads to get to the bridge itself when he realized that the thick trail of blood and offal leading into the charnel room had a companion. Not much more than a scrape of blood here and there, but a clear sign that someone had come out of the slaughterhouse—crawled across the corridor on hands and knees—and through a door at the end of the passage.

  Well now, they missed someone on their sweep. He followed the trail down a short maintenance passage filled with racked air filtration membranes and into a space holding the plumbing risers for the bathrooms.

  The blood trail led into an opening beneath the gray water return. Taking a risk, Mitsuharu cracked open his z-suit helmet, set down the pry bar, and then knelt on the deck, peering under the pipes.

  The dim glow of his helmet lamp glittered back from a pair of pale gray eyes.

  An elderly, silver-haired woman was squeezed in among the plumbing, her jumpsuit caked with blood, her face gashed open. Now he could hear her labored breathing and see the muzzle of an automatic—a Webley Bulldog, from what he could see—pointed in his general direction.

  “Sencho,” he said quietly, recognizing the rank tabs on her collar. “I’d better get you out of there.”

  * * *

  An hour later, on the bridge, Captain De Molay was lying back on the pilot’s shockchair, her face bandaged and a mug of instant kaffe clutched in hands shining with antibiotic biogel. She looked only marginally better and her breathing was still hoarse. Hadeishi was sitting at the captain’s panel, carefully paging through the onboard cameras, a long machete-like knife close by his hand, and two different earbugs inserted. The Wilful’s systems were more of a hodgepodge than he’d believed, but on-board power was up, the transit coil was spun down to a low idle, reactors were cooking, and every kind of weapon on the ship had been gathered up by the Khaid and hauled away.

  Well, he thought, almost everything. He patted the machete.

  “You’re our new engineer’s mate then,” De Molay wheezed, trying not to cough. “Azulcay said you were showing some promise.”

  “Kind of him,” Mitsuharu replied, glancing over at the main hatchway. The door was locked and barred, though he knew there was a shipbug swarm busily cleaning up the blood sprayed across the floor and walls outside. The thought still turned his stomach. “Are there any explosives on board? Grenades?”

  “If the bastards didn’t take it,” she coughed, pointing at the bridge gun locker—whose door was hanging open, the locks sprung. “There might be some blasting putty in there. I keep some on hand when we have to clear a landing zone.”

  Hadeishi nodded, distracted by a faint tremor suddenly running through the floor and making his fingertips buzz on the control panes. He checked the exterior camera feeds, and saw the Qalak’s shipskin was deforming. The forests of radiating fins were drawing inward, while the destroyer’s transit drive foils were unwinding.

  “She’s prepping to jump and take us with her. Finish that kaffe, kyo, we’re going to have to move.”

  “Move where?” De Molay managed to lift her mug and drain the rest of the sludge. “Two poor pilgrims are we, with only one tired horse—not even one we can fly out of here!”

  “No, not yet.” Hadeishi rummaged quickly through the gun locker—twice looted between the Wilful’s crew and the Khaid—and came up with a half-used cylinder of grayish putty, no more than a finger in length. “No triggers?”

  “Not in there, child.” De Molay attempted a smile, which made her cheek twinge. “Stowage bin beside the captain’s chair, the one with the broken lock.”

  “Ah.” Hadeishi fished out three putty triggers, one of which was a remote-controlled detonator. “Dōmo arigatō.” The triggers went into one pocket, the putty into another.

  On the camera pane pointing down the gangway into the Qalak there was sudden motion. Mitsuharu leaned over, caught sight of four Khaid in z-suits strolling across the gangway, and motioned to De Molay. “Time to go, Sencho-sana.”

  * * *

  Moments later, with the bridge hatch propped open once more, Hadeishi was climbing down a service tube running between the decks, with Captain De Molay clinging to his shoulders. The old woma
n was light enough to carry, but no burden he wanted to freight for hours. A clumsy set of straps tied them together, and he could do no better with the time allowed.

  He could feel, from the vibration of the ship, that the Wilful was underway, though her engines were still cold. Hadeishi assumed the Qalak was accelerating away from the ambush point and spinning up gradient. Hadeishi was hoping to find somewhere for them both to hole up before—

  The dim lights in the shaft flickered—his stomach sprang up, reversed, and crawled back down his throat. De Molay groaned, her abdomen clenching in protest. She gagged, but managed to choke down the vomit.

  “We’re away,” Mitsuharu said, when he felt steady enough to resume climbing down. “And who can tell where we’re heading?”

  “I can,” De Molay wheezed, “if we can get access to a control panel in engineering.”

  “Hai, kyo. At our first opportunity.” They reached a junction between decks and Hadeishi struggled to step off the ladder and onto the service door landing. De Molay had to help, grasping at a stanchion with her weak hands, while he navigated the corner. Then Mitsuharu keyed through the door and saw they had descended far enough to reach the lower cargo deck.

  “Wait here, kyo,” he muttered, setting her down. “I need to set some insurance.”

  Back in the maintenance shaft, he tore open a series of access panels until he found an orange-colored conduit the thickness of his wrist. Gingerly—who knew how stable the substance was!—he tacked the blasting putty behind the communications main and then wedged the remote detonator into place. Working his way back to the corridor, he closed and locked the entrance to the shaft and then checked the detonator relay.

  Cupped in his hand, the status light shone a pale green.

  “What did you mine?” De Molay asked, peering up at him from the floor. She was still too weak to stand.

  “Main shipnet relay from the bridge to down below, kyo.”

  “And how did you know it was there?” She was frowning, and had the old woman her full strength, her expression would have been formidable.

  Hadeishi shrugged. “Sencho, I have many bad habits.”

  Slinging her on his back again, Mitsuharu set off for his old quarters behind the fuel tanks.

  * * *

  Winter rain was pouring down, setting the mountainside streams to rushing, white-frothed torrents. Musashi was climbing the pass under Mount Murou, a plain wooden staff in each hand. A bitterly cold wind howled, nipping at his face, etching white streaks on the wolf-skin he wore as a cape. The old blind man clinging to his back was cursing endlessly, complaining about every jounce and jolt in the road as the swordsman climbed, step by step, his feet bleeding in the straw sandals, towards the summit of the pass. If he missed a step, the old man would strike the side of Musashi’s head with a begging bowl and shout—“donkey!”—over the hiss of the wind.

  * * *

  De Molay slumped into Hadeishi’s hammock with a relieved groan. Her face was very pale, her skin waxy. Mitsuharu pulled one of the bottles of Mayahuel from his leg pockets and popped the cap. The old woman drank noisily, but seemed a bit revived when he took the empty away.

  The main engineering console had been shorted out, which Hadeishi found a crude but effective way to prevent its use, but the secondary panels were still active. He retrieved his stylus from a corner and keyed up the interface. “Kyo, what code should I use?” he asked, looking to De Molay.

  “Hierusalem,” she said, and then spelled out the Latinate word for him. The panel quickened to life, showing a wholly different interface than he’d ever had access to before. Both of Hadeishi’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then he quickly navigated through the sensor options to find the transit display.

  * * *

  At the summit of the pass, where Toudai temple had once stood, there was a ring of shattered pillars and broken stones. Here the icy wind was howling like a demon, and the chill cut through Musashi’s cloak like a knife. Arrayed across the road, their own furs white and almost invisible against the blowing snow, stood a line of men with drawn blades. In his ear, Musashi heard the blind man sniff once, then twice. “Ah, idiot donkey—why have you angered the shugenja? Now we shall be late.…”

  * * *

  The engineering panel was not equipped to generate a full-up threatwell display, but Hadeishi could read the swarm of glyphs and icons as well as any Fleet officer. De Molay opened one eye, peering at him from the hammock. “Well, engineer’s mate, where are we going?”

  “That, I cannot tell. But we have found company … two dozen Khaid warships, I would judge—some of them larger than I’ve ever seen under their colors before—and we are all on the same heading.”

  He stepped away from the console, thinking. “I’m going to have to find a place to hide you, Sencho. The Khaid prize crew will come around soon enough.”

  NEAR THE PINHOLE

  Anderssen woke abruptly, finding herself in near-darkness, and for a moment she was certain the roof above was formed of bronze-colored metal, metal which gleamed and flickered with the light of constantly moving streams of flame. Something like wraiths, or fiery shadows, which moved throughout the tower around her, which tenanted the streets below, and darted through sullen, amber-colored skies above.

  Her mouth was filled with a hard, metallic taste and she tried to muster enough spit to clear her palate. Gods, what did I drink last night? She could not remember drinking anything harder than tea.

  Sitting in the darkness, Gretchen flexed her fingers, tied back her hair, and groped around for her comm band. She found the bracelet by touch and turned the device over. The cool blue glow of the readouts steadied her and the last of the flickering, flame-tenanted shadows faded from the edges of her vision.

  “I see,” she said aloud, suddenly wishing she’d brought Malakar along to watch over her while she slept. Or Parker, or Magdalena! Where are my friends, my team? In the old days I would never have hared off like this without them. The thought brought her up short and Anderssen realized—with a chill shock—that she had placed herself in a very precarious position. I am out here, in the middle of nowhere, with a crazy old sorcerer and a crew of religious fanatics, looking for … something … which by all rights ought be left well enough alone. Holy Mary of the Roses, what was I thinking? Magdalena would give me such a cuffing!

  Then she decided that Hummingbird had jobbed her again with his measly five hundred thousand quills. And why did he pay that out? she wondered. He must be desperate for … for a washed-up, out-of-work, out-of-her mind xenoarchaeologist. He could rent a graduate student from the Company for almost nothing!

  The obvious reason was disturbing. He knows about my talent, and how it’s grown. He’s expecting me to be able to find all of the pieces of some puzzle that would elude everyone else, even him. This is not going to be pleasant.

  She clipped on her medband and comm bracelet, swung out of the tiny bunk, and found her jacket, comp, and other tools. The Moulins had been poking along in the dark, following an uneven, zigzag course for several days. But now, she had a sense the ship had stopped moving. Have we arrived? she wondered. “Time to find out.”

  * * *

  After a detour by the mess deck to fill her mug with hot, weak kaffe—the dispenser seemed programmed to produce the most wretched version of anything requested—Gretchen climbed the gangway to the control spaces. Captain Locke, the pilot, and Hummingbird were sitting, watching the navigational displays with varying degrees of boredom. The screens showing the exterior view of the Moulins were filled with gorgeous, glowing dust clouds in every shade of red, violet, and viridian. Streamers of iridescent material arced across the field of view. Embedded in the murk—were they distant pulsars, or stars almost swallowed by this wrack?—were hot points of light.

  Anderssen slipped into the creaking, cracked-leather chair beside the old nauallis and strapped herself in.

  “What’s happening?”

  Hummingbird turned slightly, hi
s weathered old face impassive. “We’ve found what seems to be an Imperial battle-group. Most of the ships are stationary, but some are working patrol patterns around this whole area.”

  “But we’re waiting?” She felt itchy, knowing that the artifact—her life’s work if she could but touch it—might only be light-minutes away. “What for?”

  “The right ship. And the right commander.” His voice was very low, only barely audible to her, even sitting in the adjacent seat.

  “So, we’re thinking weeks parked here in the dark, watching the pretty lights?” Her light tone did not move him.

  Instead, he nodded minutely. “If need be.”

  A chime sounded from one of the console panels and a series of glyphs strobed on the main board. The pilot leaned over, interested. His stylus circled a moving icon on the display and the view focused in. Velocity and heading figures appeared in a sidebar.

  “Reckless idiot!” Locke shook his head in dismay, and then eyed Hummingbird. “This the one you’re waiting for?”

  “Target’s v is pushing the limit for this particle density.” The pilot sounded impressed. “It’s big and must be packing a serious set of deflector generators! I wonder if—”

  Locke snorted, saying: “I don’t think he can see any better in this than—”

  “Go dark!” Hummingbird’s voice was sharp as a knife and filled with an unmistakable tone of command. Without even thinking, the pilot jerked around in his seat, both hands busy on the controls. The level of ambient noise in the control space suddenly dropped and every light shaded down to a dull red, or turned off entirely. The sound of the air circulators ceased and the constant, low-level vibration in the decking stuttered and then died.

  “Captain, we are at zero emissions,” the pilot reported in a low voice. “Gravity generators are cold. Engines are cold.”