"Wasteland of flint" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harlan Thomas)
Ranks of the Imperial Mйxica Military
From the Annales of Cuauhtitlan
In the beginning was the First Sun,
4-Water was its sign;
It was called the Sun of Water.
For water covered the world,
Leaving nothing but dragonflies above
and fishy men below.
The Second Sun was born,
4-Jaguar was its sign;
This was called the Sun of the Jaguars.
In this Sun the heavens collapsed,
So that the Sun could not move in its course.
The world darkened, and when all was dark
Then the people were devoured.
The Giants perished, giving life to the Third Sun.
4-Rain was its sign;
It was called the Sun of Rain.
For this Sun rained fire from bleeding eyes
And the people were consumed.
From the torrent of burning stones,
The Fourth Sun was born.
4-Wind was its sign, and it was called the Sun of Wind.
In this Sun, all which stood on the earth was carried
Away by terrible winds.
The people were turned into monkeys,
and scattered from their cities into the forest.
Now, by sacrifice of the divine liquid, the Fifth Sun was born.
Its sign was 4-Motion.
As the Sun moved, following a course,
The ancients called it the Sun of Motion.
In the time of this Sun, there were
Great earthquakes and famine,
No maize grew, and the gods of the field
Turned their eyes from the people.
And all the people grew thin, and perished.
The Lord of Heaven cut the heart from his living son,
And so was born the Sixth Sun, which sustains
The universe with infinite light.
Its sign was 4-Flint.
Those who watch the sky say this Sun
Will end in annihilation, when the flint-knife
Severs the birthcord of the Sun, plunging all
Into darkness, where the people will
Be cut to pieces and scattered.
This is the time of the Sixth Sun…
Contents
The Great Eastern Basin, Ephesus III, in the Hittite Sector
Ctesiphon Station, the Edge of Imperial Mйxica Space
Aboard the
Geosync Orbit Over Ephesus III
Aboard the
The "Observatory" Base Camp, the Edge of the Western Desert, Ephesus III
Aboard the
The
The Western Badlands, Ephesus III
The
The
The
The
In Geosync Over Ephesus
The
The Edge of the Ephesian Atmosphere
The
Near the Stonespike Massif, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III
The
The Shuttle Wreck, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III
The Asteroid Belt, Ephesus System
The Shuttle Wreck, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III
Mons Prion, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III
Among the Broken Mountains
Outbound from Ephesus III
Mons Prion, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III
Aboard the
Southeast of Mons Prion
The
Slot Canyon Twelve
Deck Six Starboard, the
Near Slot Canyon Twelve, the Escarpment
The
Slot Canyon Twelve
Aboard the
In the Wasteland
The
The
The 'Observatory' Base Camp
Among the Broken Mountains
The
The 'Observatory' Base Camp
Aboard the
Base Camp One
Aboard the
Above Ephesus III
Aboard the
Ctesiphon Station, Just Within Imperial Mйxica Space
Appendix
The Great Eastern Basin, Ephesus III, in the Hittite Sector
The
Down on the deck, where a vast soda-pipe field slept among night-shrouded dunes, a haze of fine dust was beginning to lift, stirred by the wind's invisible fingers. The
Now she could feel the enormous mass of the Escarpment, looming darkness against a sky riotous with stars. The mountain range rose up endlessly and ran left and right to the edge of sight. She could feel the ocean of air around the ultralight changing, the quiet stillness of deep night falling away, disturbed by currents, eddies and whirlpools tugging and pressing at the wings. The mouth of the Slot loomed up, a hundred meters wide, an abrupt fissure cut into the mountain. Sweat beaded on her neck and along her spine, but the moisture wicked away into the skinsuit so quickly Russovsky did not chill. The radar threw back a confused jumble of images, trying to resolve the jagged cliffs and boulders at the mouth of the Slot.
She blinked twice and the radar image folded up and away. She clucked her tongue once, then twice. Her goggles gleamed and light-amp faded back for a second. She flew blind, the
The goggles adjusted automatically and Russovsky could see again. A rumpled floor of broken scree, cockeyed temple-sized boulders and blown sand whipped past below her boots. Walls hemmed her in to either side, kilometers high and relentless, all jagged surfaces and overhangs. The whine of the engines rose, reverberating in the thickening air. A low hissing sound began to grow behind her in the east.
The planet's air was thin, though a human could stand outside without a z-suit. She would need a compressor and a filter to breathe, but it was possible. Such thin air exacerbated the planetary weather, making the wind and sky a menace to man and machine alike. In some places, like against the world-girdling ring of the Escarpment, a storm roared at every dawn, as the rising sun heated the atmosphere and pressed it against an impassible barrier.
Slot canyons cut through the Escarpment, knife-blade thin in comparison to the bulk of the mountain range. Gusts darted down the Slot, and Russovsky felt the
By then a gale would be howling in the canyon, spitting sand, rock, and gravel westward like a cannon at three or four hundred k. The craft bucked, riding up on an eddy, and Russovsky's fingers gentled the aircraft back, away from the looming cliff. The wingtip, still glowing white, danced away from an obsidian wall, almost brushing against the ancient stone.
Russovsky corrected with unconscious grace. Ahead, a slab jutted nearly a third of the way across the canyon. Its eastern face was worn smooth as glass, a sweeping ebon wall rising up from the rubble. Russovsky's left hand brushed over the pressure control. Hydrogen hissed through fuel tubes running over her head. The wings stiffened, pressure rising. Motors whined and both airfoils levered up into a v.
The ultralight swept past the slab, wing lights reflecting in an inky mirror. Beyond the monolith, there was a curving bowl of sand and – the vid-eye flashed urgently. Russovsky glanced over and saw a sharp angle in the darkness, distinct against the irregular wall of the canyon. She dropped the wings back level, then airbraked as the ultralight started to gain speed and drifted the stick to her right.
Russovsky unfolded herself from the chair, thumbing loose her restraints, each motion quick and assured. Her left leg started to cramp, but she went stiff-legged for a moment, moving jerkily, letting the muscle relax. Working swiftly, acutely conscious of grains of mica and sand pattering down out of the dark sky above her, she triggered one sand-anchor with a
While
In the fading light of the wing phosphors, the rock glowed a pasty green. The angle stood out clear and sharp. Half of a trapezoidal opening, faced with cut stone – a door – yawned in the side of the cliff. Russovsky nodded to herself, unsurprised. Ephesus had been a dead, shattered world for millennia, but
Stepping carefully around the edge of the chamber, one hand on the smooth sloping wall, Russovsky slapped the winch-patch onto the wall opposite the door. Outside, the
Russovsky ducked in, her head turned away from the canyon. The wind was rising to a monstrous howl, and the lee of the jutting slab was filling with a swirling dance of dust, sand and fingertip-sized gravel. Working swiftly, she uncoiled a length of fil-tube from her belt, then tacked it along one side of the half-buried door. At the top of the tube was a thumb tab. Snapping the tab down and away, across her body with a sharp motion, Russovsky unfurled the filament screen and dragged the gelatinous material against the opposing jamb. Pressing firmly, she ran the thumb tab down the side of the door. The material sheened pearl for a moment, then stiffened. Dust and sand rattled against the polymer, skittering away from the charged filaments. Carefully, Russovsky used the thumb tab to seal off all the edges and corners. By the time she was done, the rattle of sand was a constant drumming.
Russovsky flicked another glowbean against the ceiling, where it spattered and stuck, making a spray of cold cobalt stars. Despite a sudden feeling of exhaustion, the woman moved around the ultralight, checking the exposed surfaces for cracks, wear or abrasions in the silvery composite. The dust on Ephesus had incredibly corrosive properties. At the starboard engine she paused, clicking her teeth together. Her goggles dialed up high into the ultraviolet, revealing the faint glow of pitting on the intake nacelle.
Shaking her head in disgust, Russovsky removed her helmet and the over-goggles, revealing high cheekbones and a seamed, weathered face. She was not young, and the hot sky of Ephesus had given her a steadily deepening tan. Clipping the helmet and goggles to the back of her belt, Russovsky adjusted her bugeyes – it was dangerous to leave the moist human eye exposed to the raw air of Ephesus – and took the big v-cam from a flat pouch on her left thigh.
"Recor…
She raised the v-cam and slowly panned around, pausing on the door. By now the sun would have risen in the east, but the canyon outside was still pitch-black. The wind was still rising, making the monofil membrane in the doorway shudder. Completing her slow turn, she walked away from the
One-handed, she kept the v-cam up while she flicked a glowbean into the passage.
More blue light filled the space – a corridor with slanted walls, matching the angle of the door. It ended no more than a dozen meters away, abruptly, in rough, uneven extrusion. Frowning with concern –
"Ah…
Russovsky bent down, examining one. They seemed to be stone, or crusted with ancient fossilized earth. There were three of them, regular in length and width. Sucking cautiously on the stone in her mouth, Russovsky backed away, still recording with the v-cam, and then walked carefully back to the ultralight. The smooth, almost mirror-smooth tunnel floor could have been cut with a plasma torch.
She was exhausted and hungry from the long night-flight. After choking down a threesquare bar Russovsky drank some more water and lay down on the sand under the
The storm beyond the door roared like a distant sea.
Ctesiphon Station, the Edge of Imperial Mйxica Space
"Porlumma…Flight sixty-two…
Gretchen Anderssen pushed through a heavy crowd, cursing her lack of height. The receiving bay of the station was hundreds of meters wide and at least sixty high, but the crowd of hot, sweaty, strange-smelling beings made her claustrophobic. The booming, distorted voice of a station controller announcing departing flights made the air tremble. Gretchen wiped her forehead, turning sideways to slide past two huge Kroomakh. Their scaly, pebbled skin smelled like juniper pine resin, but the sharp tang was not welcome, not in this heat.
The crowd began to thin, though when she stepped out of a milling group of Incan tourists, all in plaid and tartan and bonny caps with white carnations, she saw a power fence separating the landing bays and their high-vaulted tunnels from the exit doors. The whole huge mob of passengers was funneling down into six gates, each labeled by caste or nation. Gretchen stopped, standing in the middle of the grimy floor, and put down her bags. A migraine was beginning to tick behind her left eye.
Looking up, she frowned, seeing the first-class receiving bay above, half-visible through arching metal girders. There, in cool scented air, slidewalks were conveying parties of rich Imperials through station customs. Their glittering feather-capes flashed and shimmered with rainbow hues and shining jungle colors. Smiling dark-suited servants carried traveling bags, sleepy children, cold drinks for their masters. One of the nobles, glossy black hair trailing down below her waist, earrings flashing gold in the soft white light, looked down. Gretchen stared back at the Mйxica woman, then grimaced politely when the Imperial lady waved.
She looked down at her own hands, muscular, the left scarred by an accident with an ultrasonic cleaning tool on Old Mars, deeply tanned by too many hours exposed under alien suns. They were not smooth and soft. They were nicked and calloused and entirely inelegant. She had to work, with her hands, in poor conditions. She wondered, and not for the first time, what it would be like to be well-born, into one of the families of the Center. To be up there, above, in the cool air, gliding down a slidewalk, a beautiful feather-cape hanging from pale smooth shoulders, with jewels and gold around her neck.
Her grandparents' flight from the wars on Earth – on Anбhuac, as the Mйxica would say – had crushed any hope of social status – not only were they refugees from a defeated nation, but they had given up the properties they once held in Old Stockholm. On New Aberdeen, colony law prevented a newly emigrated family from owning land for at least six generations. Gretchen grimaced, thinking of how easy it would have been to get into university, or an Imperial
"Enough," Gretchen muttered and slung the duffel over her shoulder. It was almost as large as she was, but she was strong enough to carry the bag unaided – it was lighter than a hod of Ugaritic mud brick! The equipment case in her left hand was heavy too, but much easier to carry. She trudged across the broad floor, heading for the customs gate labeled MACEHUALLI. The line was longest there, with the "common" people queued up, much longer than the gates for nonhumans or landowners or those in military service. Suddenly anxious, she checked the inner pocket of her vest for the company papers and ID card. The thick heavy shape of the packet was comforting.
"Doctor Anderssen? Anderssen-tzin?"
Gretchen looked up, taking a firm grip on her bags. A thin, balding man with a short, neat beard was waving at her from the other side of the power fence. A flight jacket covered with patches covered narrow shoulders, and baggy combat pants hung on him like burlap sacks. He held up a hand-lettered sign marked with the Company's circle-and-moon glyph. Gretchen's eyebrows raised in surprise. The last message had not mentioned a guide or being met, just a kiosk number to pick up the ticket for the next leg of her journey. Ctesiphon station might be at the very edge of human space, but it was a convenient hub for travel along the frontier. Groaning to herself – leaving a line in the Empire was always a cause of dismay, since they never got shorter, only longer – she trudged over to the black warning stripe outlining the security fence.
"Yes?"
The man smiled, showing irregular smoke-stained teeth. "You're Doctor Gretchen Anderssen? The xenoarcheologist?"
"Yes," she allowed, not putting down the bags. "That's my name."
"Great! I'm Dave Parker, your new pilot. Come down to the Jaguar gate – they'll let you through."
"Why?" Gretchen began to walk, matching Parker's pace along the shimmering half-visible fence. "I don't have a military pass." Parker nodded, his head bent over a compressed tobacco stick. There was a hot spark and he took a drag.
"No," he said, blowing a fat ring of smoke, "but I do. Your mission's been upgraded, but we should talk about that later."
There was no line at the Jaguar gate, though there were two customs officers in pleated tunics and long white overcapes. Both men were copper-skinned, with slick dark hair. They were not Mйxica – Gretchen guessed they were from the old Shawnee lands. She bowed politely to both men, then waited quietly while Parker talked with them in low tones. There were no soldiers within sight, but Gretchen could feel a slow crawling sensation on her arms and neck. The gate was traditional, with heavy stonework and a huge, feathered Jaguar head jutting out of the apex. She was sure that if trouble occurred, the stone would answer with violence. The Imperials were very fond of traditional images that could move, speak, or strike.
"Come on," Parker beckoned from beyond the gate. The two Shawnee watched with cold, disinterested eyes as she shuffled through. The pilot stuck out a hand, which Gretchen shook. His grip was dry and firm. "Take a bag?"
"No. Thanks." Gretchen had her whole life packed up in the duffel, equipment case, and backpack. She wasn't going to give either bag over to some balding, smirky, fly-by-night Company pilot. She didn't trust her employers either. The Company might pay her to do the work she loved, but it had never gained her loyalty. Too many sites had been outright looted – ripped whole from the ground and packed up for shipment back to Anбhuac – for her to believe anything they said. "I've got it. Where are we going?"
"Downstation," Parker said, cutting away from the crowd of people coming out of the customs area. He kept inside the pattern marked with interlocking Jaguar heads on the metal floor. "Like I said, things have changed."
Five minutes later Gretchen was stuffed into a standing-room-only tube-car. Parker was pressed into one side, his hand covering the back of her duffel so no one could cut it open, and two Catholic priests on the other. The monks smelled funny – dust and paper and incense – but Gretchen was used to the smell of ancient things. She was not used to the complete lack of space and air in the car or the incredible humidity. The insides of the plastic windows were already running with thin streams of water, even as the car rose up on the tracks. A queasy moment followed, and then everyone in the car leaned slightly as it accelerated into the long-axis tunnel of the station.
"The Company has offices here," Parker mumbled into her ear. Gretchen made a face as smoke tickled her nose. "The main man is named Per Rubio Gossi – he's Maltese."
"A Knight of the Order?" Gretchen refused to look at the pilot, though that meant she was staring down at three small dark-haired children, all alike, with their hair cut in sharp bangs. They stared back at her, eyes huge and dark in pale white faces. They were dressed in severe blue capes and tunics. Gretchen wondered where their mother was.
"No," Parker laughed. He made a deprecating gesture. His hands were thin and wiry like brown sticks, and they folded over, flat, almost like flippers, the fingers lying together seamlessly. "He's fat and not very energetic. He's the Company rep here – handles outfitting, transshipment, that sort of thing. Warehousing is his big gig. He has the mission plan, though. Have you seen it?"
"No." Gretchen stiffened, feeling the car shudder as it switched from high speed to low. They were approaching a station. "Do we get off here?"
"Not yet," Parker said, craning his head over the people crushed in between him and the door. "This is only the first stop – temples, the market, the upscale hotels. We're going to the end of the line. Another twenty minutes, probably."
Gretchen felt mildly ill, but persevered. Twenty or thirty people crowded out and, thankfully, only two women with shopping bags got on. The three little children were gone. Parker sat down, brushing wrappers and bits of sweet roll off the seat. Gretchen also sat, ignoring the stains. The tube-car had once been painted a light orange, with a roof covered with a stenciled image of the Great City, the true Center, glorious Tenochtitlбn. Most of the mural had peeled away, leaving bare rusting metal. Graffiti, most of them
The car shimmied back up onto repulsion coils, then the outside – briefly visible with people hurrying back and forth, and neon, and huge v-screens showing a recorded
"Worked for the Company long?" Parker ventured, hands behind his head, watching her with half-lidded eyes. Gretchen supposed it was his "cool" pose. She shook her head.
"Three years, on Ugarit and Old Mars. Digging."
He nodded, making a wry half-smile. "I'm new, only six months. You said you didn't get the new mission plan?"
"No. Last I heard I was heading to Kolob Four to replace Dr. Fearing as xenoarch of the Singing Temple dig."
"Yeah. Well, you're not going there anymore. I was on another assignment, too, but they pulled me in to fly shuttle for you and your team."
"Team?" Gretchen's face screwed up like she'd taken a long gulp of bad coffee. "I don't have a team."
"You do now." Parker rubbed the side of his face. "You, me, Maggie Cat, and a gunner named Bandao. They're waiting at the office. You'll meet them in a minute."
The tube-car slid to a stop, then settled with a
"We're in-core?"
"Yeah." Parker blew a smoke ring into the air. It began to twist into a helix as the escalators rattled and clanked up to the top level of the tube station. "Rents are cheaper here, right? Hard to keep your coffee in the cup, though."
At the top of the escalators there was a security gate and a kiosk selling grilled dogs, mГ©zcal and tobacco sticks. There was a line, though Gretchen found it interesting there were no nonhumans to be seen. Most Imperial stations had a few Kroomakh or Hesht hulking about. The corridor outside was ill-lit and lined with small shops, showing signs in Norman or French or Imperial. Young men and women loitered around the entrance to a
The stairs up to the Company offices passed by a narrow shop crowded with different kinds of v-screens and senso-gear. Every screen was ablaze with a booming discordance of newscasters and chant videos. The landing stank of ozone and rotted meat. Gretchen's nose wrinkled for a moment, but she'd worked in worse. On Ugarit the excavation of a city midden six hundred feet deep had killed four of her workers in a methane pocket explosion.
The pilot thumbed open the door lock. Pausing, Gretchen raised an amused hand to touch the long list of companies residing at this address. There were six, and the Company was listed fourth.
"Greetings!" A very stocky human, not fat, but very round in features, limbs and body, rose from a chair. There was a table, too, surrounded by cheap office chairs. "I am Gossi. You would be Doctor Anderssen."
"Yes," Gretchen said, putting her bags by the nearest chair. She inclined her head politely to the two other people in the room. Parker was already pouring himself a cup of coffee from an ancient-looking silver pot on a side table. "There has been a change of plans?"
The Maltese nodded, his round face beaming. His dark hair was close-cut and flat across a high forehead, making him look like a doll. "Please sit. I will introduce you."
Gretchen sat, nodding to the human sitting on her right. He was short and muscular, in a nondescript patterned shirt and slacks. He had thick wrists and short, curly hair. Her immediate impression was of…very little. A man who sat back and watched, revealing nothing of himself.
"This is Dai Bandao, your gunner," Gossi said, inclining his head toward the man. Bandao smiled faintly and nodded back. He did not offer his hand, as Parker had done. "And this is Magdalena, your communications tech."
Magdalena looked something like a compact, sleek jagarundi with forward-canted shoulders. She seemed to be female. Gretchen smiled, but did not show any teeth. The Hesht was curled up in the chair, fat tail lapped around bare paws.
"Hello," Gretchen said, putting her fingertips to her forehead. The Hesht responded with the same gesture, her fingers covered with tightly napped fur. Glittering claw tips peeked out of the soft black pelt. "I am Gretchen, daughter of Jean, daughter of Elizabeth."
"Well met," purred the Hesht. "I am
Gretchen lowered her hands. The Hesht smiled by showing the tip of a pink tongue. Her claws slid out of their muscle sheaths, digging into the nostain fabric of the chair. A sequence of cuts was already visible, revealing torn foam padding.
"Well then," Gossi said smoothly, sitting down, "let us to business. A situation involving valuable Company equipment has developed. I have been directed by the home office to see these materials are recovered in an efficient matter."
The round man pressed both thumbs against the sealing strip of a courier package. The packet unfolded, revealing a set of
Gossi smiled at all of them, a tight expression that did nothing to betray the essential smooth roundness of his face. Gretchen suddenly wondered if the man were human at all. There was a plastic quality to him – an android? Some species requiring a humanoid environment suit? Were all Maltese this slick?
"Recently, the Company acquired a contract from the Imperial government to explore and assess this planet, Ephesus Three." His hand brushed across a panel inset in the tabletop. There was a slight hum and a holo image appeared in the air before them. A dusky tan globe appeared, rotating slowly. There were large polar ice caps and scattered whorls of cloud. There was a great deal of desert and low mountain, interspersed with glittering salt pans. Gretchen nodded to herself – thin atmosphere, brutal working conditions, no ozone layer; filters, day-suits and goggles required if you stepped out of your shelter – then raised an eyebrow as the image continued to rotate, bringing a mountain range into view.
"An Imperial scout probe surveyed the system six years ago and eventually the data was processed and flagged for human review. This notable mountain range is called the Escarpment. It girdles the planet, running north to south at an angle. As you see, it has a sharper incline on the east than the west. Some of the peaks pierce the atmospheric envelope. The Escarpment divides the world."
"It's not natural," Gretchen said, her mind beginning to shake off the travel fatigue. Her migraine was coming back, too. She really needed to sleep or take a real bath rather than go through a mission briefing. "Unless crustal tectonics are completely awry on this world?"
Gossi continued to smile, nodding. "You are correct. It is not natural. Initial analysis indicated a possibility the world had been
"To muck about for First Sun artifacts, you mean." Parker slumped in the chair next to Gretchen, hands cradling his cup. Steam drifted up in the moist air. "Poke about looking for something portable, easy to carry, easy to sell -"
Gossi raised a hand. "A full
"What happened?" Gretchen felt her patience fray. An exploration ship like the
Gossi's round face crinkled up in disgust and Gretchen felt a spark of amusement. She was getting grumpy, which was not wise. "My pardon, Gossi-
"Well." The Maltese visibly reboarded his train of thought, "Sixteen days ago a transmission was received from the
Parker tilted his head to one side, thinking, then said: "How long does it take a courier drone to reach Ctesiphon from Ephesus? A week? You're saying they've been out of contact for as much as three weeks?"
"No…" Gossi tabbed through the briefing document, glancing sideways at Magdalena. "The
The Hesht's ears flipped back and yellow eyes blinked as she came awake. "Why do you say
"Not as such…" Gossi seemed to struggle with the words. Gretchen leaned forward, interested. "I am told by the station technicians they have a
"It's turned off? And the crew haven't noticed?" Parker made a face.
"Something else must have happened," Gretchen raised her voice slightly. "But the ship still has power or the transmitter is on a battery of some kind… Can weturn on the transmitter from here? Send a wake-up command?"
Gossi spread his hands. "I am told…no."
Out of the corner of her eye, Gretchen saw Magdalena's whiskers twitch, but the Hesht said nothing.
Gretchen looked around at the others, then back at Gossi, eyes narrowed. "You have another ship to take us to the Ephesus system? I presume Magdalena knows how to fix the transmitter, and Parker can pilot the
"You're the senior Company field employee in the sector." Gossi's round smile had returned. He was comfortable with this avenue of discussion. "You are also the only person we could find, quickly, with experience in a biosphere like Ephesus's, due to your time on Old Mars."
Gretchen nodded slowly. The polar excavations had been her first posting. Tedious work in a very hostile environment, picking bits of an unidentified spacecraft out of permafrost. "What else are we bringing back? Something from the surface?"
"Perhaps nothing." Gossi tabbed the briefing packet again. The holo image of the planet expanded, then shrank, focusing in on a section of the southern hemisphere. Long shadows cut across a desolate plain. Some of them made what seemed, in the low resolution of the orbital scan, to be a double-circle. "One of the field reports from the scientists in the initial team says structures – manufactured structures – have been observed from orbit. I wonder – I fear – the team found something and brought it up to the ship for examination. It's an old story…everyone's heard it before, yes? A dangerous artifact, an accident, the crew so horribly slain. Another sixty-five million quills of Company money wiped out."
Gossi stopped, shaking his head in dismay, and there was a moment of silence. It
It was an odd moment. Gretchen thought later that time didn't stop, but it did
In that crisp moment, she saw blue smoke curling up past Parker's head, the glow of the holo-cast shining on his forehead; the points of Magdalena's teeth were showing, fine and white; Bandao was plucking at the sleeve of his plain cotton shirt, the subtle woven pattern almost obscuring the outline of a small flat pistol tucked into the back of his belt. A perfect full awareness filled her – this was
Gossi coughed, batting his hand at Parker's smoke. Gretchen picked up her briefing pad and tabbed through the pages, a dizzying red-tan-blue-white glow flashing in her eyes.
"The
The Maltese raised both hands, then flared them slightly. He smiled. Gretchen's nose crinkled up. "What kind of ship, Gossi-
"Oh yes! The Company does not have any ships in this sector, oh no. They are expensive, you know, and the Company is spread thin… I have arranged for you to be taken to the Ephesus system and delivered to the
"What ship?" Gretchen tabbed to the end of the briefing packet, watching budget figures and details of the original mission flip past. "A miner? Some tramp freighter working the Rim?"
"It is an Imperial ship." Gossi spread his hands even wider. "They were already going in that direction, you understand. It is…convenient."
"Imperial." Gretchen rubbed her nose, sharing an arch look with the others. Parker seemed amused, Bandao's face was even more expressionless than before, and Magdalena was puzzled. "No
"Or pilots," Parker interjected in a soft voice.
"- to the back of beyond, much less help them recover a derelict – possibly contaminated – spacecraft."
"The captain of the
"The
"A warship." Gossi cleared his own pad and keyed in a locator code. The holo image above the table flickered, was replaced by the station transmission screen for a moment, and then resolved into a view from an outside cam, showing an arc of star-filled sky, dominated by the twin primaries of Ctesiphon A and B, then the sleek black shape of an Imperial starship. "This is your conveyance," he said, smug pride creeping into his voice. "The
He paused, running one finger along the side of his pad. The holo image rotated, showing an elongated wedge shape with three heavy drive fairings at the back of the ship. Like most Imperial combat craft, she was matte black and the work-lights of the station barely limned the vague shapes of rounded weapons emplacements and recessed sensor arrays. "There have been some rumors, lately, of illegal mining in this area. Of solitary ships attacked by raiders. This is lawless space, so close to alien enclaves – your pardon, Magdalena-
"Fine." Gretchen looked at Parker, tilting her head in question. "Can you fly the
Parker nodded, running a hand back through thinning brown hair. "Sure. Six crew could run everything – shuttles, powerplant, environmental, flight control – but if all we do is a jump back to the station, Maggie and I can handle that." He looked down at his pad, brows furrowing. "This
The Hesht uncurled from her chair, light shifting on her glossy fur. A harness of leather hung around her shoulders and upper body, holding tools and storage pockets. Each wrist was circled by the gleaming mirror of a comm unit. A claw extended from a long finger and tapped the surface of the briefing pad. "This ship," she hissed in a grumbling voice, "has an older model brain, but it will take most of the newest control package. I might have it, or we can buy one here on-station."
Gretchen eyed Gossi. "Do we have any money for this?"
"Some." Gossi put on a poor face. "So much was invested in the original expedition -"
"How much?"
The Maltese looked away and Gretchen sat back in her chair. All the exhaustion of a long flight from the Jupiter Yards came crowding in. The migraine, which had been distracted while she started to work the problem of this recovery mission, woke up and began rustling around behind her left eye, throwing clouds of white sparks across her vision.
Without thinking, she thumbed her wristband, jetting a serotonin regulator into her bloodstream. It would hurt later, but she had to think clearly right now. All the bad things about being in charge started to come to mind.
"So…no money to speak of. How many days do we have to prepare?"
Gossi's face assumed the shining round mask again. "The
"Two days?" Gretchen tasted something sour. "Well then. We'll be busy employees, won't we?"
Aboard the
"Talk to me about the transmitter."
Space aboard an Imperial warship was at a minimum, so Gretchen was doing sit-ups hanging from a bar set into the ceiling. Working in the field was good exercise, but sitting in a three-by four-meter cabin for weeks on end during transit did nothing for her girlish figure. Magdalena was perched on her bunk, surrounded by data pads and printouts on quick-cycle sheets. The Hesht looked up, yellow eyes narrowed to slits over the top of amped-up sunglasses. The cat had an earbug as well, letting her hear the soft invisible voices of the processors riding in the pads. Gretchen had used field goggles before, with v-feeds and a sound interface, but they had been big, bulky units. Maggie's sunglasses were as sleek and dark as she was.
"It's an experimental unit, sister. A commercial version of the old military-grade Wayfarer ship-based transmitter. The Company is field testing it for Tera-Wave – according to the logs, it's a one-oh release. That means light encryption, no redundant power supplies or emitters, about a six to seven light-year range." Maggie made a chuckling sound like a hydrogen-powered chainsaw starting up. "Thirty or forty predefined channels – very primitive."
"But…
"No." Maggie clawed a pad and let some schematics drift past. "A little better than that. Each channel is identified by headers tacked onto the message packets, then thrown out in a single emitter stream. Sort of a faster-than-light telegraph. But it works and it's as cheap as you can build a tachyon unit. I've tested the connection myself by patching through Ctesiphon comm – they have a big industrial emitter and router – the unit on the
"That…
Maggie laughed again, rolling on her back and lolling her head off the edge of the bunk. Now she seemed upright to Gretchen, though her ears were pointing off at a strange angle. "The Wayfarer has a manual mode, where the operator can pick and choose which channels are live. This is also used for maintenance, where you don't have to shut down the whole system. Specific components can be turned on or off, even removed from the chassis. When I send a 'hello' across the t-link, the refused connection message comes back with an error code. Of course, the code isn't documented yet, not on a test system, but it matches the older military code for 'standby'."
"So…
"That's what the momma cat said."
Gretchen finished her count of two hundred and eight, then swung down off the bar. The
She frowned at the clothing spread out on her bunk. Playing in the dirt, as her father would say, did not require dress-up clothes. Unfortunately, this was an Imperial ship of war, which meant chu-sa Hadeishi would have a dress evening mess. Gretchen sighed, turning over her "good" shirt. It had stains. Ruin bugs had eaten a hole in one sleeve.
"A citizen is humble, simply-dressed, respectful, pious…" she mumbled to herself, fingers twitching her trousers straight.
Maggie laughed again, her tail twitching. "You're the kit who always has dirt on her nose and looks so surprised! Will this clan-lord Hadeshee nip your ears for a dirty pelt?"
"Yes. Miss
Gretchen squeezed into the end of her bunk, found a clean cloth, then picked up her boots. They were good boots – her mother had had them fitted and built for her by hand, of realcow leather, with shock-soles and brass fittings – but the dust of Ugarit fouled everything it touched. She sighed, seeing the soles were beginning to separate from the uppers.
"No matter…" She shoved them to the back of the bunk. Aboard ship they went about in light disposable deck shoes designed to adhere to the walking surfaces when they were in zero-g. She spat on the shirt stain, then began to gently rub it between her fingers.
Two Imperial Marines in sharply creased black dress uniforms with crimson piping stiffened to attention as Gretchen approached a hatchway outlined in pale blue. Each Marine had his hands behind his back, but heavy flat pistols were slung on their belts and they had visors as sharp and sleek as Maggie's. The Navy rating escorting her bowed politely and thumbed a comm pad set into the bulkhead next to the hatch.
"Doctor Gretchen Anderssen, Commander," he announced in a stiffly formal voice.
The pad chimed and the hatch recessed with a slight
"Welcome, Doctor Anderssen," Hadeishi said. Gretchen blinked in surprise – the Nisei's Norman was flawless. "Please, join us."
Gretchen slipped off her deck shoes before entering the room, turning the motion into a second bow.
The midshipman scooted a little to one side. Gretchen knelt, smiling politely at the boy. He couldn't have been more than sixteen. Like the other officers, he wore a perfectly white dress uniform, with the fire-snake emblem of the Imperial Navy worked in copper at his collar. Above his heart rode the sunburst symbol of the
The other officers remained still, heads lowered. The captain smiled down the table at Gretchen, and raised a thin porcelain teacup in polite greeting.
"Doctor Anderssen, welcome to the
"
"Your Japanese is excellent," Hadeishi said, smiling, eyes crinkling up. Gretchen felt an odd sense of dislocation. She had worked with many Nisei; at the university, on Old Mars, even on Ugarit. They were unfailingly polite but she had never encountered a Japanese man, particularly one her social superior, that had genuinely smiled at her.
"Thank you. Your Norman is perfect."
"No, please, I have a slight accent." Hadeishi set down his cup. "You have already met Lieutenant Kosho, my executive officer and pilot. This fellow next to her is Lieutenant Second Hayes, our weapons officer." Hayes nodded, somehow appearing deferential to Kosho, though the XO was a tiny woman, even slighter of build than the captain. Lieutenant Hayes was nearly six feet tall and powerfully built. Gretchen smiled politely.
"The young ensign is Smith-
There, on a bulkhead covered with inset wooden screens painted with mountains in cloud, were two portraits. They were not holo images, but traditional paintings on cream-colored rice paper, in a delicate ink-brush with faint washes of color. On the left, looking very young, was the Lord of the World, Ahuizotl, the sixth of that name,
Hadeishi bowed deeply to the image of the Emperor, then raised the jade cup.
"So, meditate on this, eagles and jaguars," he began, his Nбhuatl slow and measured, as flawless as his Norman. "Although you may be jade, although you may be gold, you too will journey to the fleshless land. We all must disappear, no one will remain."
The room became very still, each man and woman at the table looking down. The servant had disappeared. Gretchen saw the captain's face was composed and calm. She recognized the words, written nearly a thousand years before by a man who had opposed the policies of the Empire when it was still young. Her eyes drifted to one side, watching the faces of the other officers. The poetry of NezahualcГіyotl, the doomed prince of Tetzcoco, was banned throughout the Empire. The poet's philosophy did not express the ascetic martial spirit deemed fitting by the great powers of the Mйxica.
Hadeishi lowered the jade cup, pressing it against his lips, then raised it again, to the second portrait. This was a grumpy old man, his face pinched in a scowl, his hair bound up in the traditional samurai knot at the back of his head. He frowned, irritation alive in the smooth brushstrokes. He was Juntoku, the one hundred and thirty-sixth
Then he placed the jade cup into the hands of the little old man and turned to face the table again. The welcoming ritual complete, two ratings slipped out of the tiny galley behind the officer's mess and began serving the first course. Gretchen felt her stomach grumble, smelling sweet onions and broth. For a moment, she was frozen, watching everyone else pick up their spoons.
Then the captain somberly tasted the
"You were worried by my poetry." Hadeishi was sitting in his office, a tiny cluttered room dominated by a wall of old books and a great deal of quick-cycle paper in stacks on an inset metal desk. He cradled a heavy Jomon-style sake cup in his hands. The liquor was hot, steaming up in the slightly chill air of the ship. Gretchen was sitting opposite him, in a real chair, still uncomfortable, holding a similar cup. She cradled it gently, having determined as the captain was pouring that it was an artifact and possibly two thousand years old. Her training urged her to pack it in shockfoam and label it, not sip smooth, old sake from the broad-mouthed bowl.
"Yes. Is it treason for you to speak those words?"
"No." Hadeishi shook his head, a grin hiding in his dark eyes. His hair was long and a little stringy, though he kept it tied back. Here, in this softly lit room, filled with the familiar odor of old books and ink, he seemed elfin with delicate features and sharp little mustache. "It is traditional, among the Nisei and Nбhuatl both, to offer songs to the great. It is not disrespectful to offer a small portion of a masterpiece – particularly those composed by royalty. But I understand your situation. From your mouth, NezahualcГіyotl is treason. Where were you born?"
"On New Aberdeen," she said quietly, taking a small, careful sip.
"But you are not a Skawt? Surely not with a family name like Anderssen."
Gretchen shook her head. Her poor family situation had weighed against her in school, at university, in getting employment, even under the burning suns of Ugarit. As a child, her ancestry had been a fierce burden, but she had struggled, and survived, and she felt no need to hide or dissemble.
"No, we are Swedish. Refugees."
Hadeishi smiled over his cup, then put the bowl aside on the desk. "Your people fought well and accepted defeat honorably. It pains me you should suffer for this, but I suppose not everyone can be blessed like the Skawts, the Irish and the Nisei, with the favor of the Lord of Men. Someone, after all, needed to stand fast in the face of the Empire. Glory is impossible without a mighty opponent."
"I suppose." A little over a hundred years had passed since the Mйxica had crushed the last independent nations on Anбhuac. The Swedes and Russians, fighting on in the ruins of their great cities, had surrendered only when all else had fallen to the Jaguar and Eagle Legions. Many of the survivors had scattered to the trans-solar colonies, or even beyond the embrace of Sol. Gretchen's grandparents had managed to settle on New Aberdeen, one of the lusher, Earthlike planets the Empire had apportioned to those races of men who were "Third From the Center." Her grandparents and parents had never spoken of The War, but the colonial government's nationalistic propaganda had filled in the blanks. "That is past history."
"Perhaps." Hadeishi leaned forward, his face suddenly serious. "You are uncomfortable with me and my crew – we are not what you expected. You are even surprised I speak passable Norman."
"Yes." Gretchen set aside a stack of age-yellowed magazines and put down her cup. "I am surprised, though I have never been on an Imperial warship before. All of the Imperial officials I have ever met have been very forbidding men and women, ascetic and distant. I have never heard an official use any language save Nбhuatl. Isn't that the recommended style?"
"In many places, yes. You've stumbled into an odd corner of the Empire with us, I fear. The Imperial Navy is a strange creature, one head on two distinct bodies. I know you have found your place in society restricted by your birth – our Navy suffers the same fate. Certain kinds of ship commands – really, anything large and impressive – are reserved for commanders and senior crew drawn from those 'close to the Center.' This leaves the smaller ships – destroyers, cruisers, light cruisers – to those 'further away'. And among those who are not of the Great Clans, you will find the Nisei are the most trusted." Hadeishi paused, thin mobile lips twisting ironically. "So we are repaid for trading horses and steel for food and shelter so long ago.
"If you were to go down into the ship's enlisted country," he continued, "you would find crewmen and women of many races, even some with hair the color of beaten gold, like yours. Nearly a quarter of light-ship crews are of macehualli descent. Despite the nepotism of the Imperial Clans, crew rosters must be filled and the navy is not picky about lineage and birth – for crewmen at least! Haven't you noticed everything is labeled in Norman? Our manuals, our computer systems, everything is in Norman. Every Imperial officer must be proficient if they are to speak with their crews." He paused. "Of course, they have reliable officers to guide them, like myself."
Gretchen stifled a laugh. She was suddenly aware there had been sake with dinner too, and most of the Jomon bowl was empty. The air seemed chillier than it had been.
"I am still surprised," she said, fingertips brushing the medband on her wrist. It could dispense more than serotonin regulators. A cool sensation followed, rushing up her arm. Objects in the room began to assume a preternatural clarity. "Are you judged so reliable you lack a political officer? Someone to help you guide these clanless, landless crewmen?"
She stopped, aware of the bitter tone in her words. Hadeishi raised an eyebrow, shaking his head gently. He put a thin finger to his lips in warning. "Careful, Doctor. In this world, we must keep in our places, at least with open words. My command staff and I have been together for six years – first on the destroyer
He smiled gently, putting both forefingers to his temples. "Keep your true life here, inside, and you will be safe. Now listen, Doctor, for there are things I must tell you."
Gretchen straightened up, her mind now crystal clear. Something about Hadeishi had changed as well, the captain-ness of him coming forward. Now that she knew him a little better, she could see him change, his openness fading away, though he was still genial and polite.
"The sector admiral agreed to let you and your team ship with us to Ephesus because this benefits the Empire, not as a favor to your Company. The ruins on Ephesus Three, and the marks of shaping the planet bears, make it important to the Navy. Our own scientists have reviewed the data from the probe. At some time in the distant past, at least a million years ago, the world was violently transformed by the First Sun People. It may be an abandoned project – we have found those before – or may have been completed.
"Regardless of what happened to the
Gretchen sighed, weariness hidden behind the booster. "I understand, Commander. If we find anything
"I know." Hadeishi did not smile, but there was a trace of humor sparkling in his eyes. "On Old Mars – the Polaris excavation – under Director Huicton. You are young, Doctor, but you were chosen for this mission because of your experience and skill. Listen to me, I am here to
"Why?" The side of Gretchen's mouth twisted and she had to quell the urge to chew on the inside of her lip. "You certainly don't need my trust. You can order me to do whatever you want. What you are trying to say, politely, is that we are
Hadeishi nodded in agreement. "This is true. But this is not a military mission."
Gretchen's eyebrows raised in question. "I don't understand."
Hadeishi ran his finger around the top of his drinking bowl. He seemed pensive, uneasy. After a long moment he said, "This has become a matter of concern to the Smoking Mirror. We are both under the direct jurisdiction of an Imperial
Swallowing, her throat tight and dry, Gretchen managed to speak. "Is this
Hadeishi nodded, his face a tight mask. "Yes, you will speak to him soon. His name is Huitziloxoctic."
Gretchen thumbed open the hatch to her quarters, and stopped in the doorway, finding Parker and Bandao sitting on the deck amid drifts of bits and pieces of metal, plastic flasks and wads of cloth. The pilot was in a T-shirt and ragged work pants lined with pockets. Bandao, as ever, was in sharply pressed slacks and a dress shirt. Maggie was still on her bunk; though she had squeezed down to make room for the equipment cases that had been sitting on the deck.
"Hello. Why are you cluttering up my floor?"
Parker looked up, pale brown eyes twinkling. "Sorry, boss, but we don't have any room in our cabin." His hands were spotted with light oil. Gretchen could smell it hanging in the air, a bitter thick tickling in her nose and throat. The pilot had an automatic pistol in his hand, mostly disassembled, with the gas venting mechanism sticking out.
"They weren't clean already?" One of her eyebrows inched up. She stepped inside, letting the hatch slide closed, then stepped over the two men and swung up into her bunk. "What makes you think a pistol will be useful on Ephesus?"
"A gun is always useful," Parker grinned, sliding the top of his automatic back together with a sharp
Bandao nodded, his face as calm and composed as ever. A heavy cloth, almost a rug, lay over his knees holding a heavy round barrel and a dizzying array of smaller parts, as well as a stock formed of honeycombed plastic. His hands, which seemed small on a solid, muscular body, held a rag and a shining metal component. Unlike Parker's mess, the gunner had arranged his tools on a cloth in neat and orderly rows.
"Well," Gretchen smiled across at Magdalena. "If it makes you happy."
"How did the
"It went." Gretchen rummaged in her bag, frowning at the mess her rack had already become. She glowered sideways at Maggie – her bunk was carefully ordered, with everything in place.
Parker looked up, quizzical. Bandao continued to work on cleaning the assault rifle, but Gretchen thought the smooth, assured motion of his hands paused for a moment.
"A what?" Parker put down his pistol and scratched his chin, leaving a glistening smear of oil along the line of his jaw.
"An Imperial judge," Gretchen said, pulling a holocard out of her bag. The side of her mouth twisted unconsciously. She ran a fingernail along the back of the card, then jammed the holo against the bulkhead. It adhered to the painted metal, then flickered on. The image was set to 'still', extending its life from days to years. Three young children, a boy and two girls no more than six years old, were smiling up at the holocam. They were in a swimming pool, all blue water and glittering sunlight. In the high definition of the holocam the green tint of too many summer days spent in chlorinated water was very clear. "An agent of the Mirror. A spy. Both Hadeishi and I are under his jurisdiction. This is a government mission now, not the Company's."
Bandao looked up, forehead creased by a single frown line. Parker stared at Gretchen, grimacing. "The secret police? Sister's smile, this sucks!"
Gretchen nodded, turning away from the holocard. "Listen, we have to be careful with this. We still work for the Company and will be held responsible for getting back the
Parker shrugged. He didn't care. Bandao slid the barrel of the shipgun back into the firing block and locked it in place with a twist and a sharp
"Let's talk about the
The pilot nodded, fingering one of the patches on his jacket. "You bet, boss. My suit is in storage, but I'll pull it out and checklist it tomorrow. Who else goes? Or is it just little ole me with the big mean Marines?"
Gretchen pointed at Bandao with her chin. "Mister Bandao, are you qualified in a suit? Can you use this cannon of yours in z-g?"
The gunner nodded, looking up. He had very pale blue eyes.
"Do you ever say anything?"
"Occasionally." Bandao snapped the stock and the body of the shipgun together. "Parker talks enough for both of us."
The officers' mess seemed colder as Gretchen entered and sat down. The lights were dimmed and the hatchway to the galley was closed. A man was sitting cross-legged on the mat at the head of the table, watching her. He seemed to be of medium height, lean and wiry, with a solid nut-brown face and deep-set eyes. Gretchen sat quietly, her face impassive. She felt on edge, but not nervous. The man was wearing a plain white shirt, cut to resemble a traditional mantle with long sleeves. His hands were hidden under the edge of the table.
After a long period of silence, he said, "Do you understand how dangerous you are?"
Gretchen blinked, then shook her head. "I don't follow your meaning."
The man continued to sit. The nearest ceiling light illuminated the crisp white cotton of his shirt, but not his face. "You are a scientist, a thinking being. Tell me why you are dangerous."
"I am not dangerous," Gretchen replied, her voice acquiring an edge. "I am a loyal citizen of the Empire, a dutiful employee, a careful scientist. My work may place me in physical danger, but I am not, of myself, dangerous. I have never hurt anyone."
The man continued to sit quietly, watching her. More time passed.
At last, nervous, Gretchen said, "Is this interview complete?"
The man shook his head,
"You have not given me enough information to form a hypothesis," she said, after another long pause. Then she stopped before saying anything more. She realized that he had provided her with three – no, four – data points.
"You say that I am dangerous. I am a scientist. I think. If my work is successful, something unknown to our science becomes known. That would be something new. Newness is change, which may inflict pain, or suffering, or death. Do you think there is something on Ephesus I might find, where others have not? Something dangerous?"
The man leaned forward a little, and the overhead light caught in his eyes. They were a smoky, jadite green. "There is a man in your cabin. His name is David Parker. He carries a weapon. Is he dangerous?"
"I don't think so," Gretchen said, turning her head a little sideways, eyes narrowing. "I know him, he is a companion. He is not dangerous to me. But yes, I understand. He is, of himself, dangerous. He could kill or hurt another."
The man leaned backward, the smoky green light fading. "Is he very dangerous?"
Gretchen bristled at the new tone in the man's voice. Where before it had been calm and level, now it took on a patronizing tone, as if she were a small child having trouble with her maths. "No, not very. Not in a large context. He might kill one other, then be slain himself. The duration of his dangerousness is limited."
"Is yours?"
"Limited? It must be, for I am only one person. What could I do? I could be easily killed or imprisoned if I prove dangerous. Is that what you do? Do you watch for 'dangerous' persons and remove them from society? Is this what it means to be a judge?"
The man placed a small blue pyramid of what seemed to be leaded glass on the table. In the brief moment when his hand was visible, Gretchen saw that it was gnarled and twisted, muscular, a farmer's hand. Like her grandfather's hands, roughened and seamed by the elements. Fine puckered scars ran across the palm and the wrist. The stiff white shirt-cuff hid the forearm, but Gretchen was suddenly sure his whole body was marked in this same way, like etched glass.
"The
Gretchen raised an eyebrow in surprise. The blue pyramid did not look like a book at all, though she supposed it might contain a holostore or memory lattice. "Yes."
The green-eyed man smiled faintly, holding up the pyramid. "It is very dangerous. A world might be destroyed by it. But it is not as dangerous as you are, right now."
Gretchen felt a chill steal over her. She could not see the man's other hand, and she suddenly imagined the scarred fingers holding a gun, a weapon, a small flat gray pistol with a round black muzzle. The gun, she was sure, was pointed at the pit of her stomach. It would fire a shock pellet, striking her flesh, ripping through her shirt, then bursting violently, shattering her pelvis, gouging a huge gaping red hole out of her back. She would die slowly, as blood leaked away from her brain and the wrinkled gray organ asphyxiated.
"Why am I dangerous?" Her voice sounded very faint.
The man put the blue pyramid away. "Telling you why would serve no purpose. It is enough, for you, for now, to know you
"Yes."
"That is good. Are you afraid of death?"
"Yes."
"Better."
Then he was silent. Gretchen waited, sitting, her palms damp with sweat. She wondered what the blue pyramid contained.
Green Hummingbird stood up, moving stiffly. Gretchen realized he was very old, far older than his voice suggested. He looked down at her, his face grim, then limped to the door. Without turning her head, Gretchen tried to see if the man really had a pistol.
Geosync Orbit Over Ephesus III
"We have orbital match in…three…two…one…Orbit match locked."
"Main engines at zero thrust. Steering at zero thrust."
Around them, the officers of the
"Maggie, do you have anything on ship-to-ship comm?"
Maggie shook her head, long ears angled back. "Quiet as high grass, sister." Her claws made a
"What's this?"
Maggie worked the panel and the image cropped, then zoomed again. There was a brief ripple across the v-screen as the console kicked in to interpolate the image. Gretchen leaned in a little, squinting through her com-glasses. There was an amber light shining above a control panel on the inner door of the lock. She tapped her finger on the v-screen. "Do we have a pattern match for this?"
"Yes," rumbled Magdalena in her I'm-working-on-it-already voice. A v-pane unfolded on the console display. It contained a schematic of the airlock control panel, with highlights indicating the meaning and use of each control, light and display. "There is interior pressure, but the airlock is in manual mode – no power for the automatic mechanism."
Gretchen nodded, pressing a fingertip against her cheekbone. "Parker, did you hear that?"
"You bet, boss." The pilot's v-feed shifted as he looked around the
"One kilometer," Kosho announced. The
"Maggie, are there any other lights? Radio emissions? Any EM at all?" Gretchen leaned back in the chair. The shock-cushion adjusted, cradling her back. The Hesht tapped up an ambient light gradient over a ship schematic on her main control window. The derelict showed heat and light loss at the personnel airlocks and around the big shuttle bay doors.
"She's cold. Just waste heat from standby systems," Magdalena said, "but there seems to be atmosphere inside from end to end. The hull shielding is blocking everything else, but when Parker gets the telemetry relay in place, we'll know more. Still no response from the comm system or the tachyon relay." Her shoulders shrugged in a rolling ripple of muscle. "Station-keeping is still on line; she's not spinning or losing altitude."
"Two minutes," Kosho announced. "Correcting roll with braking thrust."
Gretchen felt a very faint shudder through the decking under her feet. The feed from Parker's suit suddenly showed the planet rolling past in the window of the airlock, huge and ruddy tan. Then the
"Parker, we're almost ready. Start your checklist."
"Copy that," the pilot replied and the feed-image bent toward Bandao. Each man would double-check his z-suit, his equipment, the telemetry relay, their weapons before the lock opened. The Marines were already checking each other's suits. All four men were wearing propulsion packs. Gretchen's request for a wire-tether fired from the
Gretchen turned, looking up across the control station behind her. Hadeishi was ensconced in a command chair, half enveloped in shock-foam and control consoles. Faint lights from his panel displays mottled his face and combat suit. Kosho sat slightly below him, on his left, and Hayes down and to the right. She and the Hesht were at a station in the third ring of the bridge, matching the position of the ensign, Smith, on the opposite side of the U-shaped deck. The Imperial commander raised his head slightly and smiled, meeting her eyes.
Hadeishi toggled on his voice channel. "Near space scan, Smith-
"Clear,
"Engines, Isoroku-
"Hot,
"Weapons, Mister Hayes?"
"Weapons are hot, Captain. One flash bird rigged and solution locked. Point defense system is online and tracking."
"One minute," Kosho said softly.
Hadeishi nodded to her. "Full stop."
Kosho ran her finger down a control bar on her console. There was another slight shudder. In Gretchen's displays, a counter indicating meters-to-target slowed and then stopped. "Six hundred meters," announced the pilot. "We have velocity match."
"Are you ready?" Hadeishi's voice was soft in Gretchen's ear and she started. A blinking glyph in the bottom right corner of her glasses indicated they were on a private channel.
"Ready," she said, swallowing. This was it. She changed back to the open channel. "Mister Parker, have you completed your checklist?"
"Copy that, boss. We are ready to take a walk."
Gretchen looked sideways at Magdalena. "Cameras ready? Suit telemetry online?"
The Hesht grinned, showing double rows of white teeth like tiny knives. "Cameras live. Recorders are rolling. Suit telemetry is clean. All bio readings are in the green." The cat flicked a claw at a newer, smaller window on the console. Gretchen saw it showed a string of beadlike lights circling the planet. The peapod survey satellites Hayes had picked up.
"Mister Parker, you are free to take a walk."
Unconsciously, she bit her lip, eyes fixed on the v-feed of the
Deckard stepped out into the void. He was briefly silhouetted against the monstrous glowing disk of the planet. Bandao followed, white jets of vapor trailing behind him. Parker followed and Gretchen felt a moment of vertigo as he stepped out over an infinite distance. Then the suit cam focused on the distant, surprisingly tiny image of the
"Five minute count to contact." Parker's voice was calm, even cheerful.
There was a faint
"Checking lock diagnostics," Parker said, his voice still light and cheerful. The camera view stabilized on the entry pad. All of the keys were dark. The pilot's fingers tapped on them experimentally. There was no reaction.
"Some emergency power is offline," Magdalena commented, tail twitching. Parker echoed her a moment later. Bandao's camera shifted and a plate sealed with four spring bolts came into view.
"Stand by," the gunner said. "We'll try a manual entry."
Despite surface pitting and a faint layer of ice on the shadowed entry plate, Bandao's quick fingers released all four bolts, then set the magnetized cover aside to adhere to the skin of the
Gretchen heard a slight hiss from Parker as the airlock recessed. Puffs of vapor squeezed out of the opening door as Bandao cranked the locking bar around and the hatch swung inward, revealing a dark cavity only barely illuminated by a single amber light.
"I am entering the ship," Parker said, only the faintest tremor in his voice. Gretchen blinked as the pilot's suit lamps swung to reveal the gleaming white and gray interior of the lock.
"No debris, no organic contaminates, no high-order radioactives," Magdalena said softly into a voice log, yellow eyes glued to the environmental sensors relaying from the z-suits of the men in the lock. The brass-colored snout of Bandao's shipgun appeared at the edge of Parker's video feed, swung back and forth, quartering the compartment, then withdrew. "Parker is inside the lock."
Gretchen looked back at Hadeishi, still sitting in the command chair, watching quietly, his face illuminated by lights from his combat displays. He raised an eyebrow at Gretchen's formal expression. "
"Lieutenant Kosho," Mitsuharu turned his head slightly. The executive officer was waiting with a politely interested expression. "Please render all aid and assistance to the Company representatives in securing their ship and restoring power and environmental controls."
"
"You may proceed with your recovery operation, Doctor Anderssen." Hadeishi nodded politely to Gretchen. In the cameras, the two Marines entered the airlock as Parker and Bandao moved aside to let them handle the ship-side hatch. A second plate was removed, and the inner airlock opened slowly as Deckard operated the manual release bar.
Gretchen bent over the panel, watching a hallway slowly emerge into the light. Everything was very dark. She looked sideways at Magdalena. "Atmosphere?"
"Clear," the Hesht replied, though she was frowning.
"What is it?" Gretchen tapped open the ship frequency. "Parker, hold up."
The video feeds stilled, and Gretchen caught sight of two stubby black Marine shipgun barrels swinging up, pointing down the newly revealed passageway. Parker's camera shifted as he swung to cover the now-closed exterior hatch.
"There's…" Magdalena twitched her nose, claws tapping softly on the display. "Mister Parker," she growled, "is your suit envirosensor working properly? Does it show green?"
"Yes," Parker said a moment later. "Everyone's does."
Gretchen started to turn toward Lieutenant Kosho, but the little Nisei woman's fingers were dancing on her own panel, and Magdalena's array of v-panes and gauges suddenly doubled in number, showing the telemetry feed from all four z-suits. The Hesht frowned again, black lips curling back from white incisors.
"Ship air is very, very clean," she said a moment later in a slightly disbelieving voice. "I show barely any contaminants, no waste products, only a slightly oxygen-rich standard oxy-nitrogen atmosphere. Scattered traces of free carbon and hydrogen."
"Dioxide levels?" Gretchen leaned over, searching out the air mixture readout for herself.
Magdalena waved a paw in dismissal, making the rows of bracelets on her wrists tinkle. "Negligible. Couldn't grow a fern if you wanted to. It's like no one is aboard, and never has been."
"All right. Parker, you're free to advance. Head for the bridge with all due precaution."
"Ok…" The pilot edged out into the hallway, his helmet light swinging across mottled gray bulkheads and an irregular-looking floor. "This is funny…"
While the observers on the bridge of the
"Discolored," Bandao commented, "like it's been flash-heated."
"Yeah…" Parker's camera shifted again, and fine gray ash puffed up from the deck at his touch. "Boss, could there have been a fire?"
"Huh." Gretchen slumped back in her shockchair, biting her lower lip. "Then where's the carbon scoring, the fire-suppression foam residue?"
Neither Bandao nor Parker had an answer. After a moment's pause, they pressed on.
Gretchen watched in silence, her frown steadily lengthening, as the four men moved forward along the main access passageway. Hatches revealing half-seen rooms drifted by. Everywhere, power was out, the ship dark and silent. When they entered what the ship schematic described as a crew common area just forward of the main lab ring, she opened the suit channel again.
"Parker, turn slowly. I want to see the whole room."
The camera view panned, and Gretchen doubled the size of the v-pane and dialed up feed magnification. Parker's camera slid across tables, chairs, counter-tops, drink dispensers, refrigerator and synthesizer doors. "Stop. Stop right there. Parker, do you see the door of the refrigerator?"
"Sure… What about it?" Parker's pistol could be seen on the bottom left of the screen, steady on the suspicious door. "Looks like a refrigerator door. Must be the snacks locker."
"Have you ever seen a ship fridge door that wasn't covered with stickers, leaflets, announcements, photos from home?"
Parker didn't answer for a moment, and his camera flicked back across the rest of the common area. "There's nothing here," he said, surprised. "It's like they cleaned up the place and left or…o rthere was a fire and it burned up everything."
"Made a very clean job of it then," Gretchen said in a dry voice.
"More than that, look at this," Bandao said, and his camera view drifted over to a food prep counter set into one bulkhead. Gretchen turned her attention to his display. There was a rack of chef's knives pinned to the surface on a heavy magnetic strip. She hissed in alarm.
The muzzle of Bandao's rifle touched the hilt of one of the knives. Where a heavy rubber or wooden grip should have enclosed the steel tang, there was nothing, only bare gleaming metal. "This was a set of Hotchkiss cooking knives from New France, on Anбhuac. These models have walnut handles and surgical-quality blades. Very expensive."
"Check the rest of the room," Gretchen said, feeling suddenly cold. "Check for anything organic, anything at all."
"Nothing here either," Parker said in a dead voice. He was standing on the bridge of the
Bandao's camera shifted, looking across the display panels of the command station. Like everything else, they were dark and mottled by heat. The gunner rapped the knuckles of his z-suit on the glassy plate. "Aren't these touch-panels plastic? What about the corridor walls, the doors – aren't they plastic of some kind? Why were they just melted a little, and not destroyed completely?"
Gretchen and Magdalena looked up. They had been poring over the shipyard diagrams and materials lists used in the construction documents on file for the
"Command panels are made with an electrically active composite, which is not a long chain polymer, Mister Bandao." Lieutenant Kosho's cool, correct voice intruded on the circuit. "The range of materials removed from the ship is rather distinct."
Gretchen's glasses flickered and Hadeishi's private channel glyph was winking again.
"Yes?" she said, turning away from Magdalena. She was starting to feel sick.
"We think the ship was attacked by a 'cleaner' agent of some kind." Mitsuharu's voice was very calm and steadying. "Only certain molecules and sets of longer-chain compounds were affected. Particularly, those which form organic life. Paper, glue, bedsheets…all those things were swept up in the general criteria."
"A weapon." Gretchen felt a band of tension release from her chest. Vague fears crystallized and she felt relieved.
"Perhaps." Hadeishi sounded thoughtful. "There have been reports of illegal activity in this region, but no
"Of course," Gretchen turned back to Magdalena. The Hesht was talking Bandao and Parker through the removal of an access panel under the command display. "Maggie?"
"Just a moment. Yes, Mister Parker, use some muscle. You won't break anything. There! Now look inside."
Parker hesitated, heart rate spiking on the monitor, and his pistol and a detached lamp went first. In the dark cavity, ranks of crystalline system modules sat quietly, without showing any sign of activity.
"Still no power," Maggie grumbled to herself. "
Parker muttered something obscene and crawled out of the access panel. Bandao said nothing. Both men kicked down the long central access passageway, gliding expertly from stanchion to stanchion, their suit lamps flaring on the white panels and dark openings onto surrounding decks.
"Kosho-
"
Parker grunted, putting his shoulder into a length of hexsteel pipe. The pipe extended the manual locking release on a massive pressure hatch marked with radiation warning symbols. Bandao had his helmet pressed against the metal surface, listening. The pipe squealed, the sound tinny and faint after echoing through the pilot's gloves and suit.
"Nothing," Bandao said over the open channel. "The bolts aren't backing out."
"Is there another way in?" Parker spoke to the air.
On the
"No, Mister Parker," Gretchen said wearily, only half-listening to the men on the ship. "Lieutenant Isoroku says the reactor has gone through an emergency shutdown procedure. That hatch is the only access, and the manual lock mechanism
"Sorry chief, there's no joy here." Parker worked the pipe free from the locking bar, and then slammed the length of metal into the hatch in frustration. There was another tinny echo. The pilot swore again, and this time he did not bother to keep his voice down. "We'll have to burn through
Gretchen listened to the other channel for a moment, chewing on her lip. "Too thick, Mister Parker. It's supposed to restrain the core in case of a failure."
"What do we do, then?" Bandao stood up, the pilot's lamp throwing a huge shadow behind him. "Run the ship from the batteries? We can't get at them either. Everything's through
Gretchen sat up straight in her chair, a vague thought trying to worm free of her tired brain. "Maggie, show me the electrical connections for the hatch mechanism."
The Hesht nodded sharply and a
A muttered acknowledgement echoed over the
"I agree," the exec said. She had her own echo of the schematics. Kosho turned to look inquiringly at the captain. Mitsuharu frowned.
"Hayes-
"No change, Hadeishi-
"Two ratings and a work carrel," Hadeishi said, nodding to his exec. "They'll need the cargo space for the power cell."
Gretchen turned back to her panel and toggled to Parker and Bandao's channel. "Parker, an engineering crew from the
"Understood," Parker cut in, already moving with his length of pipe. He kicked away from the blast door and tumbled gently to fetch up near the panel. "I see it -"
"All units, hold position!" A raspy voice barked across the shipside channel, overriding Parker's comment. Gretchen flinched back from the panel as a series of warning glyphs flashed on her display. An audible tone silenced the quiet chatter on the bridge of the
"Who is this?" Gretchen hissed at Magdalena, waving her hand at the display board. The Hesht bared her teeth in response, almost spitting, but white claws flashed and the video feeds of all the men aboard the
"This is Sergeant Fitzsimmons, Anderssen-
"I have it," Gretchen snapped, then she froze, grasping the image being projected from the Marine's suit camera. In comparison to the quality of the video thrown by the Company suits, Fitzsimmon's transmission was as sharp as a 3v broadcast at home. "What -"
"Three bodies, ma'am," the Marine said, gliding forward, his boots making a
"Where are they?" Gretchen muted her throat mike, whispering to Magdalena.
"The main shuttle bay, sister." Maggie zoomed both Marine camera feeds and jacked up the ambient light amplification.
A huge space sprang into view, curving walls looming overhead and the heavy, blunt-nosed shape of a shuttle filling the darkness to the right, a pale light gleaming in the cockpit windows. Directly ahead of the two Marines, three crumpled shapes in z-suits were sprawled on the decking only a meter or two from some kind of an access hatch. Gretchen felt a creeping chill at the loose, floppy limbs of the suited bodies.
"Maggie, what is behind that hatch?" Gretchen was whispering again.
"The starboard power, data and environmental venting lines." The Hesht was distracted, staring at her displays. "Wait one, wait one…"
Gretchen ignored her, watching in sick fascination as Fitzsimmons advanced on the bodies, the glare of his suit light throwing them in sharp relief against the corrugated decking. The Marine paused, gun high, and gave the side of one of the helmets a soft kick with his boot. There was no sound, but the glassine helmet rolled over, revealing emptiness. The suit tag read PГ‚TECATL.
"The chief engineer," Magdalena said after a moment. "PГўtecatl, Susan Alexandra. Company employee, six years. Master's chief certification and engineer aboard the
"Sergeant, check all the suit seals." Hadeishi's voice was very calm and even over the channel. "
Fitzsimmons's gloved fingertips slid back the metal plate covering the environmental controls on the empty z-suit. A row of faint green lights appeared. "Suit integrity intact, sir."
Gretchen sat back in her seat, a tiny bead of blood oozing from her lip.
"Check the other two," Hadeishi said in a conversational tone. "Deckard, advance to the power panel door and open the accessway. Isoroku-
A distant
Fitzsimmons stood up, his camera view swinging to check the rest of the boat bay. Though his shipgun was still at high port, Gretchen thought the man had ceased to worry about something leaping out of the darkness at him.
"Captain Hadeishi…" She started to say, but the commander met her eye and shook his head slightly.
"The
"How long -" Gretchen was almost immediately interrupted by Magdalena sinking a claw into her shoulder, and Isoroku's voice grumbling over the engineering channel.
"Hadeishi-
Deckard's v-feed showed the inside of the utility run, a circular space filled with the heavy blue shapes of air and water returns, the darker reddish channels of data feeds and the charred black traces of power conduit.
"What happened to this stuff?" Deckard snorted, poking at the ruin inside the utility tunnel with the tip of his rifle. "It's all burned up!"
"Stay alert,
The sergeant panned his lamps slowly over the tangled mess, letting the engineer get a good look.
On the bridge of the
The engineer scowled into the pickup. His bald head was shining with a faint, fine sheen of sweat. "Poor materials, Captain." A thick finger stabbed at a screen out of the field of view. "We'll need a sample, but I'll say now the material used to insulate and EM-screen the power conduits was substandard – using some kind of organic in the composite. Something the weapon attacked and stripped away." Isoroku shrugged his heavy shoulders. "The conduit temperature spiked from all the waste heat, and then the superconductors failed and power went out."
"Did conduit failure shut down the fusion plant?" Hadeishi was smoothing his beard again.
"Unlikely,
Hadeishi nodded to himself, sighing. "And fell dead on the way, consumed."
"Captain?" Gretchen had risen up in her seat, tucking one leg under. "We've found something interesting."
"Yes?"
"There are higher levels of waste products in the hangar bay," Magdalena said, her throaty voice rolling and rumbling. "Complex carbon chains, waste gases, long chain organics. The sensors on the Marines' suits are starting to pick them up. And…"
Hadeishi raised one eyebrow and leaned forward. "And what?"
Gretchen tapped a control on the display panel and a section of video doubled, then trebled in size. A window, glowing with light, and a shadow against a bulkhead were plain to see. "There's someone alive inside the shuttle."
"Clip on."
"Clipped," Deckard replied after testing the line. He slung the angular black shape of his shipgun over one shoulder, and adjusted his gloves, bringing magnetic surfaces around to the palms. Fitzsimmons removed the little winch from his belt and adhered the metal box to the doorframe of the power conduit accessway. "Anchored."
"Anchors away, then." Deckard grinned, white teeth visible through the faceplate of his suit. He kicked off from the wall and sailed across the boat bay. As he approached the nose of the shuttle, the Marine tucked in his feet and rolled. Now feet first, he slipped past the window and reached out with both hands. The gloves slipped along the pitted, rusted surface of the shuttle, then slid to a halt.
"Quietly now," Fitzsimmons breathed over the combat channel. "Show me what's inside." Deckard spidered up to the forward window of the shuttle and paused just out of sight of anyone inside. Tugging one of his shoulder cameras free, the marine eased the filament up to the edge of the window. The sergeant, watching the spyeye view on a tiny, postage-stamp sized popup inside his helmet, made a scooting motion with his hand. "Just a hair more…"
Then he could see inside the cluttered, dirty cockpit of the shuttle, and – through the pressure door into the main cabin – two people sitting on facing piles of bedding. As he watched, the man tossed a playing card onto a pile between himself and the woman. Moisture was dripping from the walls of the shuttle, and the sergeant made a face.
Taking a breath, Fitzsimmons dialed up the volume on his comm.
"…the ship is entirely safe," Gretchen said, again, her voice rising slightly. "We've had men aboard for two hours and no one has been affected, there are waste gases loose in the boat bay, and they have not been destroyed -"
Hadeishi, his patience fraying – though only the sergeant or one of the crew would have been able to tell – interrupted. "Doctor Anderssen, I will not put my men, or my ship, at risk. Until we know exactly what happened and why, I will not put another man or woman aboard the
"Ah, sir? Hadeishi-
"Hai,
"There are at least two people alive inside the shuttle, sir. They've been there quite awhile. Shall I go aboard and see what they know?"
"No," Hadeishi said, a slight edge in his voice. "If the contaminant is still loose on the
One of the other channels carried a muffled voice, and Fitzsimmons realized Anderssen-
"Aye, aye, sir." Fitzsimmons signaled to Deckard, then took two long, bounding steps to reach the shuttle's airlock. The corporal walked sideways down the hull to meet him, spooling up the monofil as he went. "Time for first contact, Corporal. Undog the comm port cover, would you?"
"We don't really know what happened. They just fell over, you know, and we couldn't raise anyone on the ship-to-ship comm channel."
Gretchen suppressed a sigh, staring at two grimy faces framed by the shuttle's v-cam. On her left, security team crewman Carlos Fuentes' bearded visage stared out at her with sick desperation. Beside him, nose screwed up in a grimace, her entire body turned away from Fuentes, crewwoman Delores Flores seemed equally despondent.
"Tell me what you saw," Gretchen said, again. "From the beginning."
"Well, ah…" Carlos groped for the proper words.
"Shut up, idiot," Delores said, pushing him out of the field of view. "I'll tell you, ma'am. We've been having problems with the shuttle engines since we arrived," the crewwoman began. "After five or six trips down to the base camp, they started showing warning lights in the afterburner and air intake ducts. Finally, shuttle two refused to power up groundside – claimed the engine would overheat. So we took number one down to base camp and pulled the entire engine assembly out of number two." She jerked her thumb over one shoulder. Something large and bulky, wrapped with shockfoam and cables, filled most of the cargo space on the shuttle.
"We brought up Doc Clarkson at the same time – he was in a big hurry! And Doctor McCue – she wasn't in such a hurry. They went upstairs, but we were working down here to prep this bastard to unload."
"Did anyone else ride up with you? Did you close the airlock after Clarkson and McCue left the shuttle?" Gretchen was chewing on the stub end of a pointing stylus.
"Always!" Delores nodded sharply, waving her hand off to one side. "Standard procedure. The bay doors are airtight, but the boat bay is considered an unsecured environment. You lock in and out of the bay, or the shuttles when they're aboard. And it was just those two. No one else wanted to ride up with them, not when they were in such a mood!"
"When did you notice something was wrong on the ship?"
"An alarm went off shipside," Delores said. "We heard the horn go off and I ran into the cockpit. Carlos -" The crewwoman's lip twisted slightly "- called the bridge. We heard some noise, some shouting for maybe thirty seconds, and then nothing." She pointed off toward the front of the shuttle. "Then the lock cycled and engineer PГўtecatl and two others ran into the bay. I called on the comm, and she said something was attacking the ship. Then she made sort of a choking noise, we saw a hot glow inside their helmets – and all three of them fell over."
"And then?" Gretchen frowned at the ragged plastic end of her stylus.
"They didn't move. We couldn't get anyone on the ship-to-ship channel." Delores shrugged. "The bay doors were closed, and we couldn't get them open by remote. We didn't dare go outside, not with three people dead in suits right in front of our eyes. With the shuttle parked inside the bay, we couldn't even raise groundside on the comm. So we've been waiting for weeks, hoping something would happen. Something good, I mean." She ventured a smile. "Can we get out of this tin can now and get a shower?"
"You can have a
She shut down the channel, then turned to face Hadeishi. The captain and Lieutenant Kosho were talking, heads close together, at the exec's display board. "Captain Hadeishi?"
"Yes, Anderssen-
"I would like to transfer my crew and supplies – and the loan of a fuel cell, if you will – to the
For a moment, Hadeishi said nothing, staring at her with narrowed eyes. At his side, the lieutenant allowed herself the ghost of a smile. Then the captain visibly shook himself and nodded.
"You're sure of your analysis? Sure enough to risk yourself and your team?"
"Yes," Gretchen said in a firm voice.
"Very well." Hadeishi glanced at his exec, who had stepped down to her own board, attention already focused on her lading schedules, thin rose-colored lips moving silently. "Kosho-
"Thank you," she said, making a heartfelt bow.
"Please don't damage my crewmen," Hadeishi responded on his private channel. "Good luck."
"There is one more thing…" Gretchen felt her stomach clench, knowing she was probably overstepping the bounds of hospitality. "If you could loan us an engineer's mate, I think we could get the power plant on the
Hadeishi frowned. Gretchen kept her face impassive. The captain looked sideways, listening. He frowned again and said something into his throat mike. While Anderssen watched, the captain argued momentarily with someone, then gave up.
"
Gretchen must have shown some of her astonishment openly. "I see."
"He," Hadeishi continued in a colorless tone, "wishes to see the damage caused by this weapon for himself. I believe he desires to submit a technical paper to the Fleet Engineering College on Mars. You should get ready to move your equipment."
Gretchen nodded again, in thanks, then began gathering up the v-pads, writing styluses and other bric-a-brac which had accumulated around the secondary weapons station. Magdalena was still hunched over her board, watching the feeds from the various suit cameras.
"I'll see you downstairs," Gretchen said, thumping the Hesht on one furry shoulder.
"Ya-ha," Maggie answered absently. "Be there in a bit."
The main lock of the
"You going to the command deck?" Gretchen lifted her chin in question. The Hesht shook her head.
"No, down to Engineering first. If we can get the hatch to the control compartment open we'll restart the ship's main comp before we try to bring up the reactor core. What about you?"
"I'm going to wander around," Gretchen said, looking at the readouts on her arm again. "The lab ring, I think. Keep channel four open." She looked over to Isoroku. "Lieutenant, could you use someone familiar with the ship systems?"
"Hai…" he answered dubiously.
Gretchen clicked her teeth, changing comm channel. "Sergeant Fitzsimmons, could you tell Miss Flores to suit up and go to Engineering? Lieutenant Isoroku will be waiting for her." She paused, listening. "I don't believe the ship is infected anymore, Sergeant. You and Corporal Deckard are proof of that, at least in my eyes. We would all be dead by now if the weapon remained active on-board."
There was an affirmative grunt on the channel and Gretchen smiled at the lieutenant.
"Crewwoman Flores will be along presently. Good luck – I'd love to see some light and heat in here."
Gretchen followed the battery pack – guided by Isoroku with a clever little hand-held gas-jet unit – down two main decks, then swung out of the access shaft to let her boots adhere to the doorframe of a large, doublewide portal labeled XA LAB ONE. The pressure hatch was closed, and she swore silently to herself.
Feeling foolish, she found the manual locking bar and – straining to keep her feet wedged against the bulkhead for leverage – managed to crank the hatch open enough to get her suit through. On the other side, she paused, staring at the opening. Her arms were sore, but part of her brain was making a frightened sound.
"No," she said aloud, though her throat mike was muted. "No I won't."
Dialing her suit lamps to a more diffuse illumination, Gretchen pushed off gently and made her way forward through the ring. After a few minutes, she pulled herself up short, staring through a thick oval window into the next lab. The hatch was closed tight, the chamber dark, but the fragmentary light of her suit lamps picked out the shape of a clean-box with something bulky inside. Some kind of debris was scattered on the deck, and there was a subtle sense of disorder among the white and steel surfaces.
"Damn." The hatch was sealed, the pressure seals closed. The chamber had no manual lock – indeed, a heat-distorted label declared the space beyond a "secured environment." Gretchen clicked her mike on. "Maggie? How long until we have power?"
There was no answer. Gretchen froze, listening to the warble of static and an intermittent, distant pinging sound. Suppressing a cold shiver of fear, she changed channel again. "Anderssen to the
There was still no answer, but – obscurely – Gretchen was a little relieved.
Only slightly less apprehensive, she made her way back to the access shaft, pushing away from the handholds set into the ceiling and floor. Squeezing through the hatchway, she breathed a sigh of relief to hear channel four wake to life with Maggie and Delores chatting amiably while they worked.
"Magdalena? How long until we have power?"
The Hesht made a coughing sound – laughter – then said: "We haven't opened the door to Engineering yet, but we're close. One of the hatch motors burned out and Isoroku is replacing the mechanism. So I'd say another hour, at least."
"Thank you." Gretchen muted the channel, staring around at the cold darkness filling the ship. The main accessway seemed bottomless, even with a receding line of glowbeans shining in the dimness. Somehow the faint little pools of light only made the gloom seem more encompassing and complete. Disheartened, she sat down, swinging her boots over the shaft. "I guess I'll just wait, then."
After an endless minute, she pulled a v-pad from the cargo pocket of her suit and thumbed it awake.
Steadily brightening light broke her concentration, and she looked up to see the pilot scooting up the shaft toward her. A little embarrassed, she tucked the v-pad away. "How goes, Mister Parker?"
"Good," he answered, cheerful humor returned. "Engineering is open, and Isoroku's got his battery hooked up. Looks like the ship's fuel cells still have some juice, though Environmental was still working for awhile after the accident. Magdalena's starting up the comp from local power. I'm heading for the bridge to check the relays and get the main comm array running."
Gretchen smiled. "Good. What about main power?"
Parker waggled his hand ambivalently, inducing a slow spin. "No promises there. Isoroku wants to check every centimeter of the reactor to make sure nothing got eaten away by our little friend. Can't say I blame him."
"No, I suppose not." Gretchen rose, one hand clinging to a railing surrounding the hatchway. "If power comes back up, I'll want you to unlock the hatches in the lab habitat for me. Don't open them, though. I'll take care of that."
Parker nodded, then kicked off, flying up into the darkness, his helmet haloed by the flare of his lamps. Gretchen watched him go, feeling the darkness close around her again. Her suit was starting to smell, even with only a couple hours inside.
The wall against Gretchen's back trembled and her eyes flew open. For a moment, she was disoriented – she'd fallen asleep listening to the hum of the fans in her suit – and saw only darkness sprinkled with faint lights above her.
Then she looked down the main shaft and saw a ring of lights flare on – a section of overheads a hundred feet away, near the ring hub into Engineering – then another and another. Gretchen stood up, grabbing hold of the nearest handhold, and the wave of lights washed over her. The deck continued to tremble, echoing the sound of a distant power plant turning over.
"Backup power is up in Engineering," Magdalena growled in her ear. "Some of the emergency lights are on. I'm starting the heat exchangers and air circulation."
Gretchen swung into the lab ring and crabbed down to the first tier of labs. Puzzled, she stared around – the lights were still out – then they flickered on, one by one, casting a steady daylight radiance. She blinked and her helmet polarized slightly. In the clear light, the stark emptiness of the work cubicles and rooms was even more striking.
She started to sweat again, and the fans spun up in the suit, trying to keep her temperature constant. Reflexively, she looked down, checking the pressure seal on the door. With power returned, the panel showed three green lights and one red. She blinked.
After a long moment, she clicked her mike open. "Magdalena, are you busy right now?"
A growl answered, and a string of curses. Gretchen smiled, though the motion felt strange. "Yes, sister, I can wait. I'm in lab ring one. Take your time."
Gretchen sucked the last of a threesquare from her food tube and stood up as Magdalena and Bandao drifted down into the lab ring. The Hesht was still surrounded by a cloud of tools and cargo bags, but the gunner seemed to have accumulated some of the bulkier items.
"What's our status?" Gretchen asked, catching Maggie's paw and drawing her to a stop on the deck. Magdalena yawned in response, showing an ebon mouth filled with white teeth. Her fur was rumpled and one ear lay flat back against her head while the other was canted forward.
"All we have is
Gretchen wrinkled her nose. "Bad parts?"
Maggie nodded. "The repair logs show they swapped out most of the original conduit for new two years ago, as part of a systems upgrade. The new conduit was supposed to have a higher load tolerance, so they replaced all of the high-draw lines with this
"Okay." Gretchen stared at the hatch into the clean room. "What about this one?"
Maggie shrugged. "The lights are on, try it."
Gretchen took a breath, nodded abruptly and stepped to the door. Then she stopped, unwilling to touch the controls. She felt Bandao and Maggie staring at her and became aware of the man's shipgun, raised and pointing past her at the door. A smile twitched her lips.
There were bits and pieces of metal and ceramic scattered on the deck. Gretchen recognized the metal inserts from the soles of a pair of dig boots much like her own. The deck surface was a dark, irregular metal, and she realized the usual nonskid coating had been destroyed. She padded across the deck, giving a wide berth to the tumbled parts of a belt, a pen, a scratched and dented v-pad. Her eye shied away from two irregular shining white pebbles.
The comp panel running the isolation chamber had power, but had gone through an abrupt shutdown. Gretchen studied the glyphs for a moment, then tapped in RESTART and RESUME. Magdalena leaned in at her side, staring into the chamber.
"These are the seal status indicators?" The Hesht ran a metal-sheathed claw across a line of winking red glyphs. Gretchen nodded, watching the system start up. The panel seemed sluggish, and one pane displayed a constant list of init errors. Magdalena hissed. "Sloppy work. The entire seal is gone. Why don't they make them of solid metal or ceramic?"
Gretchen shrugged, concentrating on getting the panel operative again. "Company probably bought from the low bidder. Here we go…"
A v-feed opened on the panel, showing the interior of the isolation chamber and the rocky, corroded-looking cylinder. Gretchen slid a control down, and the image rewound with a flash, ending with a similar image, though now the cylinder was intact and the lighting slightly different.
"Replay," Gretchen muttered, finding the glyph for movement-returning-to-the-source and tapping the stylized warrior in a loincloth holding two reeds crowned with white fluff. "…with audio overlay." Another tap, and a timer began to run in one corner of the image.
For a moment there was no sound and Gretchen frowned. Magdalena laughed softly and her claw-tip danced across a series of controls. An excited male voice suddenly filled Gretchen's helmet comm.
"…on day six-flint-knife, in the month of Offering Flowers, an artifact described by image log seven-seven-two was recovered from the surface of Ephesus Three with some assistance from Miss Russovsky, a post-doc performing a routine geophysical survey of the planet. This is the first artifact we have found which is of an obvious and patently manufactured origin." There was a throaty, satisfied laugh, and Gretchen's nostrils flared. She decided she did not like the speaker, whoever he was.
"Initial analysis shows a metallic cylinder surrounded by a matrix of sedimentary rock. The encrusting mixture is of interest, indicating the cylinder lay in mud or clay. Preliminary isotopic decay readings suggest an age for the matrix of nearly three million years." The laugh came again, and this time there was a sense of relief in the voice. "This places the artifact well within the timeframe of known First Sun activities."
Gretchen felt the cold chill flood back into her stomach.
"Doctor McCue has suggested that we isolate the artifact and send it back to the Company labs for more extensive examination, but I believe it is safer and more prudent for us to make an initial survey here, aboard the ship." The voice settled, becoming pedantic and measured.
"She suggests the object may be dangerous, but if so, would it not be wiser to examine the artifact here – far from inhabited space? Any violent event would then affect only this one ship, and of course, myself. A loss, to be sure, but far better than losing Mars or Novoya Rossiya!"
Gretchen shook her head in amazement at the man's ego. She could feel him thinking, even through the distance of the recording, and he was so, so eager to see what was inside the cylinder. Any real thought of caution or wariness was entirely disregarded.
"Luckily," the voice continued, "the limestone matrix does not interfere with most of our sensors here in the lab. I am going to try a low-power microwave scan first, just to see what the exterior really looks like…"
A succession of images unfolded – the cylinder's crusted surface was mapped, showing each ridge and bump and crevice in the stone – then the cylinder itself, a smooth metal tube, closed seamlessly at each end. There were no markings or signs on the outside of the metal, or at least none shown by the initial scans.
"I am initiating a low power intrusive scan, to see if the surface is permeable to x-ray."
Gretchen forced herself not to flinch as an emitter ring descended and began a pass along the length of the cylinder. At her side, she felt Maggie stiffen, and Bandao mutter: "Idiot – what if it's a booby trap, or a bomb?"
The image of the cylinder on the v-pane did not react, and a second image replaced the first. A murky picture showing the outlines of the limestone matrix, a metallic shell – very thin – and then a cavity within.
"Odd," echoed the voice from the past. "Half of the tube is solid, half empty. Wait – perhaps the solid half is only very dense…"
The image zoomed, focusing in, and zoomed again, revealing a dense, interlocking system of membranes and fluted, intertwined protrusions.
"Looks like a lung," Bandao said, staring sideways at the display.
"Some kind of structure," the voice continued, "very, very dense. The separations between the
Gretchen had to suppress a start; the hard, dry voice of Green Hummingbird was whispering in her memory.
"It must be a book," greed dripped into his voice. "Or a visual storage mechanism. Ah, what a prize that would be! But how is it accessed?" The image shifted to focus on the empty half of the cylinder. "And what is this space for? Why use only half of the container? Hmmm…perhaps the empty half is not exactly empty?"
A glyph appeared in one corner of the recording, showing the visual feed was switching to a different sensor. Gretchen squinted at the icon, but didn't recognize the symbol. "What's that?" she asked.
"Super-shortwave sensor," Bandao answered with a slight hesitation, face tense. "It interpolates to sub-x-ray definition for medical use – but he's a fool to use a high power probe on this thing."
"…beginning scan," the recording announced. The image tightened, flashed blank, then focused again. The "empty" half of the tube was momentarily revealed as a murky soup of tiny spinning particles, then the image jerked, the tube split in half and there was a warning whoop of sound from the recording. Then everything went black and the panel beeped quietly, indicating the end of the image file.
"Well," Gretchen said after a moment. "I guess you should have been here, Mister Bandao."
The gunner shook his head, his face a tight mask. "I'm not disappointed to come late. If I had been here before, I would have put the bastard down."
With that, Bandao left, swinging angrily out of the lab and bounding off up the ring toward the main accessway. Gretchen watched him go, but said nothing, and did not call him back. Instead, she turned to Maggie and said: "Can you make this panel play back the last part frame by frame?"
The Hesht coughed in amusement, her claws dancing across the display controls.
Sighing with relief, Gretchen thumbed the release mechanisms for her helmet and heard a sharp
"There's some creamer, but no milk," he said.
"Thank you. Black is fine." The cup was very warm in her hands. Three sugar packets from a pocket of her z-suit disappeared into the oily black liquid. She took a long swallow, feeling warmth flood her chest. "Better," she said after finishing the cup. "Better. Are the Lieutenant and Flores still down in Engineering?"
Magdalena nodded, her attention focused on sucking pale red fluid and chunks of raw meat from a mealbag.
Gretchen studiously kept her eyes away from the Hesht dinner. "Mister Parker, do we have flight control and comm up?"
"Sort of," the pilot said, putting down his cup. "Attitude controls are mostly working, though there are still miles of conduit to replace for the main engines. Luckily, the fine control jets use compressed air and need only on/off signals to operate. They work fine – since they're mechanical. Navigation is up, and we
He turned toward Magdalena, who was squeezing the mealbag in one paw, making thick goo ooze into her open mouth. Parker jerked back toward Gretchen. "Ah…we've found the experimental transmitter, which is on its own fuel cell system, but I haven't messed with it. The cat can do that later, I guess. The main comm array is down until we rebuild power, but we're close enough to the
"Unless you're in the labs," Gretchen commented, "which are shielded."
"What did you find down there?" Parker stole a glance at Bandao, who was sitting with his own cup in his hands, content to say nothing. The two Marines were equally quiet and unobtrusive, sitting back from the edge of the table. Out of his combat suit, Fitzsimmons was of medium height, very fit, with broad shoulders and curly blue-black hair. Deckard was thinner, with a lanky build and a ruddy complexion. Carlos, still looking miserable, sat beside Parker, slowly chewing on his thumb. "Did you find the…weapon?"
"Yes." Gretchen drained her cup and set it down on the spotlessly clean tabletop. "One of the scientists working on the planet – a geologist named Russovsky – found some stone cylinders in one of the canyons on the big mountain range. She brought an artifact back to base camp and showed her find to Doctor McCue, the dig supervisor. I think – not from anything said in record, but hearing between the lines – the lead archaeologist, a man named Clarkson, then took the cylinder from McCue and returned to the ship."
Gretchen looked down at the table, finding a ring of coffee-colored condensation where her warm cup had stood on the cold metal. She squeaked her finger through the liquid, drawing a line down the middle of the circle.
"Clarkson tried to see what was inside the cylinder with a high-powered sensor. Half of the tube seemed to be empty – but it wasn't, not really. Half seemed to be filled with a tightly packed membrane, like the filaments lining a human lung. The lab's isotope decay analysis estimates the cylinder is almost three million years old." A sharp, short laugh escaped her. "Clarkson was pretty sure the device wasn't working anymore, or if it was, it was a kind of
Her finger slashed across the circle of moisture.
"His probe injected enough energy into the empty chamber to make a sort of gas of very, very small particles expand violently. A thin wall between the two chambers broke down and the gas flooded into the membranes within a fraction of a second. They mixed, violently, and the cylinder broke open."
"A binary round," grunted Fitzsimmons, his brown eyes gleaming in the darkness. "But not the usual sort of explosion, I suppose."
"No." Gretchen shook her head ruefully. "The gaslike particles, I think, were some kind of tiny nanomachines. They dissolved the membranes – destroyed them – but at the same time they learned a pattern from the arrangement of the filaments. In less than a second, they were
Three fingers stabbed into the circle and swirled the last fragments of moisture out into an unsightly blotch on the tabletop.
"The weapon was released from its container and into the atmosphere." Gretchen sighed. "Clarkson had failed to evacuate the examination chamber, which ordinarily would not have been a problem, but in this case the waste gases in the unit atmosphere were fuel for more nanomachines. I'm pretty sure the machines ignore plain atomic components – O and N and so on – but they chew up CO2 for lunch, and any kind of long-chain molecule in their attack pattern for dinner. Pressure built in the chamber, and the eaters reached the pressure seals.
"If the Company had not purchased second rate containment pods," Gretchen continued, "the eaters would have been contained. Their programming did not happen to include the stainless steel forming most of the pod walls. Unfortunately, a flexible sealant forming the join between the instrument package and the main unit was composed of long-chain polymers which were on the 'menu.'
"They escaped into the power and data conduit above the containment unit. The sheathing of the power cables gave them more food, allowing them to reproduce at an exceptionally rapid rate. I would guess, from the cut-off time of the recording unit, that they dropped power in the lab ring within sixty seconds of escape, and had penetrated into the starboard side of the ship within two minutes. Less than ten meters away is the starboard power coupling beside the boat bay. As the wave front propagated, power collapsed, and the engineering team – who had no idea, I imagine, that Doctor Clarkson was even aboard – started an emergency shutdown of the grid.
"Within five minutes, everyone on the starboard side of the ship was dead. The engineers, who had suited up on the run, will have run right through the weapon cloud without even noticing anything. Then, by the time they reached the boat bay, the eaters would have reproduced inside their suits…and you saw the result."
"Wait a moment." Fitzsimmons leaned forward, his tanned forehead creased in thought. "What happened to the eaters after they filled the ship?"
"They ate themselves." Gretchen looked around for something to clean up the puddle, then grimaced.
"And what happened to that?" Fitzsimmons looked mildly disgusted.
Gretchen nodded toward the rear of the ship. "Most of it will have been circulated into the air purification system, which continued to run on backup power while it detected impurities in the air supply. But when the cloud was processed, there was nothing but pure air left, and the system shut down automatically. The rest will have collected here and there, as grainy white dust -"
Parker suddenly snorted, coughing and spraying coffee across the conference table. He made a horrible face as he turned to Gretchen. "You mean this isn't nondairy creamer?"
Her ears covered with a thick cap of New Aberdeen cashmere, z-suit helmet parked on the display panel, Gretchen leaned back in a chair reduced to metal strips in the lab ring control cube. Curving hallways lined with hatches stretched up to her left and right. Light from the lab holding the broken cylinder spilled out into the hall. It was still very cold – the heaters in the lab spaces had failed to turn on with the rest – and Gretchen's breath puffed white as she hummed to herself.
On the display – only half of which was working – v-panes were running, speeding through the day of the accident. A crewman wandered through one feed, eating pine nuts from a bag, then out of one frame and into another. Mostly she watched empty rooms and quiet machinery idling in standby. All of the scientists were down on the planet, working at the main camp. Gretchen sighed, bored, and speeded up the replay.
Almost immediately, blurred figures appeared and she dialed back ten minutes. "Finally!"
A tall, lean man with a neat beard and field jacket swung down from the hab access tube, landing heavily in the partial gravity. His hair was silvered, with a few streaks of black remaining, and he was wearing a heavy pair of sunglasses. A battered, grimy fieldpack, bulging with a heavy weight burdened narrow shoulders.
"Doctor Clarkson – coming home with his prize," Gretchen murmured, keenly interested, watching the man hurry into the number one isolation lab. A moment later, a woman entered the lab ring by the same tube. Her tied-back hair was long, orange-red and very curly. She was also dressed in field kit, with a pocket-covered vest, sunglasses perched on her forehead and linen pants tucked into her boots. "And our mathematician in residence, Doctor McCue."
Gretchen felt a pang, seeing such familiar-looking people. She'd never met either of them, though the faces matched the briefing materials provided by the Company. But they felt so much like her friends on Ugarit, or the other graduate students and professors at the university.
She ignored Clarkson in his lab, following McCue from camera to camera as the woman wound her way through the maze of cubicles and rooms. The mathematician was pushing a g-box in front of her, a dented steel case with a built-in anti-grav, controlled by a hand unit. On the far side of the lab ring from the main control station, she stopped in front of a heavy reinforced hatchway.
Gretchen sat up, puzzled. She'd walked through the whole ring…she hadn't noticed a
"Well. What does Doctor McCue have in her box, which was so valuable it went straight to the vault?"
She advanced the recording, flipping ahead ten minutes. No change. Then she blinked – a smoky haze swept down the corridor, flames leaping from empty air. The flooring blackened and warning lights began to flash. Lighting in the hallway flickered, then failed. Gretchen tasted bile, knowing what had to happen next.
The hatchway cycled up, and Doctor McCue stepped out, alarm clear in her round, freckled face. She started to call out, raising her left arm – the shining band of a comm winked in the remaining light. Gretchen bit her lip, teeth clenched tight. A cloud of gray coalesced out of the air and McCue staggered, throwing up her hand uselessly. Her clothing vanished in sudden flame, burning away with frightening speed, then her flesh sloughed away into nothing, and there was a flash of bone and red meat.
The gray-and-black cloud lingered for a moment, then dispersed in a drifting cloud of white dust and bits and pieces of metal scattered on the floor. The hatchway remained open for a moment, and Gretchen could see the edge of the g-box, then the door rumbled closed, cutting off the vault lights, plunging the hallway into darkness.
Video replay ended with a
"That's a hard thing to watch," rumbled a voice at Gretchen's shoulder. Sergeant Fitzsimmons was standing beside her, his black Marine z-suit blending into the dimness of the room. He had a bundle in his hands. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I thought you might need something for the cold." He grinned. "But that's a prettier hat than I had in my ruck. I like the…ah…reindeer?"
"Oh." Gretchen touched the thick, felty plush of the cap on her head. "My mum makes them for all the kids," she said, tugging at the brightly-colored, shapeless mass. "Thank you for the thought, Sergeant. But Ugarit had its own bad weather, and Mars was bitterly cold. I've plenty of warm things."
Gretchen managed a smile, thinking of trudging across the brittle, rocky permafrost to the Polaris site, stiff in a triply-insulated z-suit and respirator. The Marine had a gray-green service wool cap and a pair of gloves, also a foul olive color, in his hands.
"Good," he said, stuffing the cap and gloves into a cargo pouch on the front of his suit. "Do you need help getting that vault door open?"
Gretchen started to shake her head – she had a video of McCue's keycode – but then realized refusing the offer might be rude.
The vault door proved to be hidden behind a standard wall panel. Gretchen supposed the panel had slid down automatically during the power failure. Fitzsimmons's combat bar made a suitable lever to pop the panel free from the floor, and then he rolled it up with one hand. The vault hatch was closed, and Gretchen stepped in – lips pursed in concern – to find the keypad in ruins. All of the pressure surfaces had eroded away, leaving only a contact panel and some pitlike holes where wires, perhaps, had once run.
"This is just fine!" Gretchen rapped the panel without result.
"Ma'am, let me try," the Marine waited politely until Gretchen stepped away, then drew a v-pad from his belt, unfolded a set of waxy-looking stems from the back and – humming softly to himself – matched them up with the holes. After a moment the v-pad beeped and the schematic of a keypad appeared on its glassy face. "Try this," Fizsimmons said, suppressing a pleased grin.
Gretchen tapped in the code recorded by the surveillance cameras. The vault door made a
"We try," he said in a particularly dry tone, flicking a glowbean against the far wall. "Sister bless, do they make such a mess all the time?"
Gretchen stepped into a crowded room, now lit by a pervasive blue glow. Doctor McCue's g-box was sitting on the deck amid a wild jumble of straw-shaped mineral core samples. She stepped carefully around the striated tubes – most had broken apart, leaving a wash of grit and sand on the floor – and picked up the controller for the g-box. It hummed to life, and the box lifted up and drifted to an empty section of deck.
"No," Gretchen said absently, "the core samples will have been in packing material and a cargo crate – they're just stiffened cellulose and a sealant – very tasty, I imagine." She keyed the box to open, and the top latch released with a
"Oh, now…" She let out a long, low whistle of surprise. "That is beautiful."
Warily, Fitzsimmons leaned over. Inside the box was a chunk of stone – perhaps half a meter long and ten centimeters thick – a deep sandy red streaked with cream, glowing in the light of Anderssen's lamp. Gretchen brushed a fine layer of sandstone dust away, revealing a handsbreadth-wide whorl. A tapered tail of ribbed shell curled around the impression of stalklike legs.
"See, Sergeant? The fruit of some ancient Ephesian sea, preserved by chance in sandy mud, along with our…friend."
Most of the fossil was buried in the stone, and lying alongside the ancient cephalopod was the unmistakable shape of a machined metal cylinder. Like the artifact in the isolation lab, the cylinder was crusted with limestone aggregate.
Gretchen bit her lip gently, tracing the outline of the device with a gloved finger. "Russovsky's geological survey found wonders."
Fitzsimmons stood up, his face pale. "Ma'am – I know you won't like to hear this – but we should jettison this thing right away. What if it goes off like the other one?"
Gretchen looked up, face pinched with distaste. In that moment, she suddenly knew exactly how Clarkson had felt, clutching the prize close to his chest, rushing to make the first analysis.
"Ma'am?" Fitzsimmons touched her shoulder, gently, shaking her out of the reverie. His voice was soft and insistent. "Doctor Anderssen, we have to isolate this weapon. Right now."
"You're right," Gretchen stood up, shaking her head. She felt a little shaky. "Let's close up the g-box and put it in an airlock we're not using. That should hold the eaters if they escape, and we can vent the lock to space if necessary."
"Doc, listen to me." Fitz stood as well, towering over her. His dark brown eyes were filled with worry. "There's no way to know if this cylinder holds the same kind of nanomechs as the other one – this one could be an explosive, a nuke, an antimatter bomb,
"No, I don't think so!" Gretchen stepped between the Marine and the box. "This artifact is worth my entire career, Sergeant. Worse, it's worth an enormous amount of money for the Company
"I'm sorry, Sergeant, I've no business shouting at you." Gretchen put her hand on his arm. "Like you, I'm under pretty strict orders – and my first order is to make sure things like this are brought back intact and well documented. So even if we talk to Captain Hadeishi, the answer is going to be the same – the cylinder stays and comes back to Imperial space with us."
Fitzsimmons's eyes narrowed, and one hand made an abortive movement to his comm pad, but then he nodded, taking a long look at the battered, rusted box on the floor. "Are you going to try and study it on the ship?"
"I…" Gretchen paused.
Fitzsimmons gave her an arch look and she blushed. "Really, Sergeant. And we'll be sure to evac the airlock of any atmosphere.
"Sure, ma'am," he said, picking up the g-box controls. "Why don't you call Parker – or Bandao if our coffee-drinking man is still horking up his lunch – and have them get the number three airlock ready, while I angle our little friend here out of this place?"
"See? Safe and sound." Gretchen leaned against the wall of a cargo bay, watching the atmosphere gauge sink toward zero pressure. Fitz and Deckard were packing up a welding kit they'd found in one of the workshops. Inside the airlock, the chunk of shale and its ancient passengers were firmly secured in a hexacarbon cradle. The metal cage was oriented toward the outer lock door on a pair of rails. A scratch-built launching mechanism – half blasting putty and a comm-controlled detonator – rode underneath. A couple of metal-cased sensors Gretchen had scavenged from the lab ring were pinned up on the gleaming white walls of the airlock.
"You seem a little more relaxed," Fitzsimmons said, in an offhand way, as he coiled up a length of comm cable. He was trying not to smirk. "Now your precious baby is on the other side of the lock."
"Maybe," Gretchen said, nodding. "I -"
Her comm warbled, and Magdalena's voice filled the air around them. "Hunt-sister, the main comm array is working, and there's someone who wants to speak with you."
"Patch 'em through," Gretchen said, turning away from the two Marines. "Someone on the
"No," the Hesht said in a sly voice, "I managed to whisker the camp planetside. Everyone seems to be alive – but they're pissed and hungry and want to know if the showers are working."
"I wouldn't say half covers the strength of their feeling," Maggie commented. "You want to take this call from the bridge?"
"Doctor Lennox, I'm sorry, but Doctor Clarkson," Gretchen repeated for the sixth time, "is dead. Everyone who was on the
In the v-pane beside the captain's chair – now covered with an Imperial Marine field blanket – a thin, distressed-looking woman stared back at Gretchen, her face framed by the hood of a z-suit which had seen better days. Two men crowded behind her in some kind of shelter – Gretchen could make out the roof supports characteristic of an extruded building – and both of them seemed to have grasped the facts of the matter, to judge from their stunned expressions.
"I – I don't understand. He just went on the shuttle…" Lennox had faded blond hair and high cheekbones. Gretchen guessed she'd been very pretty when she was younger, but years spent in the glare of alien suns had not treated her kindly.
"Margaret," Gretchen leaned forward, catching the woman's eye. "I know it seems very sudden, but you've been out of contact with the
"Yes…" Lennox swallowed and seemed to become aware of her surroundings again. "I just hoped…he was still alive."
"I'm sorry, but there
"We're fine," rumbled one of the two men, a hulking, bearded face with a stout nose. "And very, very glad to hear from you, Doctor Anderssen. I am Vladimir Tukhachevsky –
"Good day to you, Doctor." Gretchen bobbed her head in greeting. "I know you all want to get a real shower and eat a different brand of ration bar, but there's going to be a delay before we can bring you back up to the ship."
"What do you mean? Is there still a problem?" The other man – a smaller, wirier fellow – pushed his face into the camera. "Don't you have a rescue ship?"
"Mister Smalls," Gretchen smiled amiably in greeting. "The Imperial Navy has been good enough to bring us here to help you, but accommodations are lacking on the
Tukhachevsky frowned, heavy black eyebrows beetling in concern. "What kind of accident, Doctor Anderssen? Has the
"She's…a little Spartan right now, Doctor." Gretchen – watching the faces of the three scientists on the planet – decided not to explain the events of the artifact and its activation.
"In any case, we should have a shuttle ready to go in a day, perhaps two, so call in your field crews and get everyone ready to ship up."
Lennox nodded, turning away with a distant, frightened expression on her face. Smalls was already gone, leaving only the bearlike Tukhachevsky with a troubled look in his eyes.
"Doctor? Is something wrong?"
"Ah…" Vladimir twisted the ends of his mustache with a nervous motion. "Almost everyone is already in camp. Since the
"Who?" Gretchen felt irritated, but at the same time she knew who it must be, even before Tukhachevsky said her name aloud.
"Our own dear Russovsky," Vladimir said sadly, scratching a sore on the side of his nose. "She left in her
Aboard the
"Captain? The civilians have established contact with their ground team. Do you want the recording on your number two?" The midshipman looked up with a painfully earnest expression on his face, fingers poised over the main communications panel.
Hadeishi shook his head. "No, thank you, Smith-
"
"Good. Carry on." Updating local navigational charts was dull – most of the time – but frighteningly essential to safe navigation and the rapid response of the Fleet to any threat. Hadeishi tapped up the boy's report and found the usual litany of planets, planetesimals, asteroids and stray cometary bodies.
The bridge was quiet and busy, filled with the little sounds of men and women working at routine tasks made fresh by a new duty station for the ship and at least the prospect of danger. Hadeishi let the shockchair take more of his weight, eyes roving idly from station to station. The well of the threat board drew his attention at last, as it usually did, and he frowned. The red sphere of Ephesus swam in the center, slashed with the white of enormous storms, surrounded by a scattering of tiny lights – each one tagged with ship identification numbers, directions of movement, thrust and mass figures – and there was absolutely nothing going on.
Even the tense atmosphere aboard the
The rest of the system was equally boring; even the Ephesian sun was quiet, without particular flare activity, or mottling or magnetic storms. Hadeishi swung his chair from side to side gently, eyeing a trail of motes drifting along in the upper atmosphere of the planet. He moved a control on his display and the far side of the planet rotated into view. Immediately he frowned, seeing the fuzzy mottled streaks characteristic of delayed or corrupt data.
"Mister Hayes?" The weapons officer became entirely alert, his massive frame tensing like a hunting dog preparing to leap to the chase. Hadeishi did not smile. "I don't like the lack of surveillance coverage for the far side of the planet. Please secure communications control of the civilian peapod satellites – how are they configured?"
"Meteorological and geophysics survey,
"Good, well leave them to their business, but establish a tap. I would also like two reconnaissance drones launched into polar orbits to give us a real-time eye on farside."
Instead of setting himself to his dull profession duty, Hadeishi tapped up the surveillance and comm feeds from the civilian ship.
"This doesn't look very experimental to me." Gretchen had both hands tucked into her armpits – her z-suit was dumped in the cabin she'd appropriated – and her mother's sherpa cap tugged down almost to her neck. She kicked the corner of the tachyon relay very gently, though even such a small motion drew a deep growl and hiss from underneath. "Shouldn't they repaint the case, or something?"
The relay occupied one corner of the forward cargo hold, sitting on a standard cargo palette bolted to the deck with standard retaining bolts. The device was shaped very much like a standard cargo container, save for military markings and the particular gold-gray-olive color scheme of Imperial Navy equipment. A rat's nest of cables ran out of the back of the relay and down through an open floor panel. A pair of bare, furry feet were visible under the edge of the container.
Gretchen sat on the edge of the palette, humming softly to herself. Clanking, more muttering and then a
"I think, hunt-sister," the Hesht said, slipping a stiff brush from one of the cargo bags tethered to the deck and beginning to settle her fur. "I think your human guardpack calls things 'experimental' when they want to sell them for more money than they're worth." Magdalena smiled, showing a large number of sharp white teeth. "But this thing works."
"It's back on main power?" Gretchen pointed with her chin at the tangle of cables. "And reset? Ready for business?"
The Hesht nodded, slicking back the fur along her neck and shoulders. "Recycling the system and acquisition of the sector relay emitter at Ctesiphon will take a few minutes, but then she'll be ready to send and receive." Maggie paused, glowering at Gretchen with one half-lidded eye. "You have messages to send? Greetings to your cubs? Your mate lying at home in the den?"
Gretchen nodded sheepishly. "And reports for Gossi and the Company."
"Them!" Magdalena made a sharp coughing sound. "They eat bark."
"I suppose." Gretchen couldn't hide a smile. "Listen, I need to ask you some questions about the main comm array – can you use it to pick up the transponder on a groundside vehicle?"
Maggie blinked slowly, showing two clear lenses fluttering across her yellow eyes. "You want to search for the missing hunter from the sky? For Russovsky?"
Gretchen nodded. "The scientists on the ground have no idea where Russovsky went on her survey. She left no flight plan. Lennox says…well, that's immaterial. Lennox doesn't like her. The others, though – particularly Tukhachevsky – are worried."
Maggie scratched the underside of her jaw. "Do we have to find her right now? Why not wait until she returns from hunting – there's only one watering hole, one den – she has to come back sometime."
Gretchen's expression turned dour. "I need to talk to her about the cylinders, and about McCue and Clarkson and what she did, and what they did, on the day of the accident."
Magdalena grunted, leaning back against the relay. "Huh. Now the pride's golden pelt is heavy on the shoulders, ya-ha?"
Gretchen made a face. A dull, queer churning started in her stomach at the thought. "My job, now. But really the Company doesn't care about all the poor people who died on this ship. They'll pay the wergeld to the families and a pension, if one is owed. But no more. What they want, and what I need to find, is the place Russovsky found those cylinders – and anything else that might be there."
Magdalena's ears flattened back, and her eyes narrowed to pale, golden slits. "Ya-ha, hunt-sister, they would indeed. Well, I know a little about the main array and a little about these dragonflies – the transponder has only a short range, but if we knew exactly where to look, we could open a direct comm channel to Russovsky's aircraft."
"If we knew where to look. Big planet down there." Gretchen felt disgruntled. "Can we search the surface visually? Slave some kind of camera to the comp and tell it to look for the outline of a
"Hrmph. Perhaps." Magdalena scrunched up her nose. "I'll see if we can do that."
"Good." Gretchen got up and pulled on a pair of mittens from her pocket. "How's Isoroku coming with the heaters?"
"Is it still cold?" Maggie's tongue poked out between her teeth, then coughed merrily at the human's disgusted expression. Her breath frosted in the air. "You should have a nice thick fur coat, like me."
"Fine," Gretchen grumbled. "I'll go play with my toys, then. You just find our missing scientist."
Hadeishi grinned, though he was entirely comfortable in his shipsuit, sitting on the climate-controlled bridge of a modern warship.
"What's your environmental situation?" Hadeishi didn't bother to hide his amusement.
"Cold and dark," Isoroku grunted. "We have power, but most of the heaters and lights are still down because we have no power conduit in place."
"Do you need more help?"
There was a short silence. Then the engineer ventured to ask: "Is the quarantine lifted, Hadeishi-
"No," Hadeishi replied, sighing in disgust. Regulations required another week of isolation for the
"Yes." Now Isoroku's voice changed and became wary. "We're pulling spares out of cargo storage here – most of the expedition supplies still in storage survived the attack because they were sealed in cargo pods – there should be enough to serve."
Hadeishi understood the engineer's decision.
"Carry on, then." Hadeishi tapped the channel closed. "Bah."
The number of reports in his message queue had not shrunk. Two more had popped in while he was malingering. "Enough, to work. Duty. Honor. Empire."
Somehow, when Gretchen reached the number three airlock,
"Ma'am." Fitz nodded genially. "Come down to take a look at your prize?"
"Yes." She scowled at him, then squatted down in front of a portable display pane she had salvaged from the lab ring. Since most of the ship was still dead, she could steal cycles from main comp for her analysis. Ignoring the Marine, who had maneuvered around to watch her work, she plugged her handheld into the panel, then loaded the suite of xenoarch software she'd been using on Mars and Ugarit. The pad and the panel beeped in synchrony, then a set of v-panes expanded, showing her feeds from the sensors in the airlock and the security cameras.
"Careful," Fitzsimmons breathed, radiating nervousness like a dark cloud.
Gretchen glared at him out of the corner of her eye. He was clutching the fail-safe for the lock ejection mechanism in both hands. "You should be careful," she snapped. "Nothing's happened…and if the lock won't hold back whatever comes out, you're not going to have time to push the button. An atomic or antimatter weapon will just vaporize us where we stand."
The sergeant gave her an equally fierce look. "I don't like the prospect of being disintegrated, or dissolved, or anything which involves the end of my personal self-awareness. So I'll just keep hold of this, okay?"
"Whatever." Gretchen turned away to hide her hands – which were trembling ever so slightly – from the Marine. "Let's see what we can see."
Inside the airlock, the passive sensors had been recording for almost a day and her volume analysis software had built a fine-grained map of the outside of the cylinder, the slab of limestone and every nook and cranny of the pitted surface. From this, the soft had extracted a map of the inner structure of the stone fragment and the cylinder. In both cases, large sections of the display were blank or an all-too-familiar fuzzy gray. "Not enough data to see inside, not yet."
Gretchen opened a log and started talking into her throat mike. Her awareness of Fitzsimmons faded away, replaced by a smaller, more tightly defined universe of stone surfaces and densities. "Previous sample – as shown in Clarkson's logs – activated when exposed to high-density sub-x-ray scan. Previous sample did not activate when subjected to microwave analysis. I am starting, therefore, with low-power ultrasonic and will advance slowly to microwave."
She tapped a series of quick commands and held her breath. There was no explosion, no ominous hum, only a flickering on the sensor command relays and then a new v-pane appeared, showing an echo-scan image building. After a few moments, the first scan completed.
"The sandstone is unremarkable," Gretchen said, resuming her narrative. "Though the embedded shell is really quite beautiful. A number of smaller cephalopods and annelids are also recognizable in the matrix. The cylinder does
Fitzsimmons coughed in alarm, but Gretchen didn't even hear him.
"I hope to build a more complete image by interpolating the scan results and taking, oh, four complete sets from different vantage points in the airlock. Luckily, the heavy shielding of the lock itself is blocking out a great deal of outside interference. In fact…" She paused, thinking. "…as we are in orbit, a gravitometric analysis may reveal a great deal about the object."
Gretchen stopped, stood up, stretched and noticed the Marine watching her, arms crossed, with a distracted expression on his face. "Are you all right?"
"What? Yes ma'am, I'm fine. Need a hand moving the sensors?"
"Sure." Her lips pursed. "Should we suit up to work in the lock?"
"Yeah." Fitz nodded. "A pain, but better than finding yourself outside without a jacket."
An hour later, Gretchen was sitting again, cross-legged, watching a second set of images build on her display. Fitzsimmons had given in to complete boredom and was sleeping with his head on a wadded-up blanket behind her. A small heater had appeared from somewhere and was baking Gretchen's righthand side, though her left was still very cold.
She dragged a fingertip, rotating the interpolated image of the cylinder.
"A densely-packed inscription covers the surface of the object. Each character is very small and quite complex. My IdeoStat says the least complicated ideogram is formed by seven strokes, the most complicated by nineteen. There is a noticeable distribution, though the average tends toward the complex, rather than the simple." She rubbed her eyes, feeling a peculiar, too-familiar twitching prick behind her left eye. "Adamski would argue this indicates a glyph-based language, like old Nбhuatl or pre-Kanji Japanese – one without a phonetic alphabet. I can't make any kind of judgment yet, not without even the faintest idea of the creator race's vocal apparatus or lack thereof. I would say, however, the information density on the object surface is very high. There are thousands of distinct ideograms, thousands…"
In the display, the mapping software unwound the surface image of the cylinder into a long luminous strip covered with thousands of tiny characters. The dizzying arrangement of glyphs filled Gretchen with an odd disquiet. They seemed to dance and twist across the v-pane and she was uncomfortably aware of a sensation the characters were shifting places as she watched, rearranging themselves into an almost recognizable pattern. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.
"The density of the exterior…" she continued, looking away from the IdeoStat display. As a result, she did not see the system monitor showing the translator drawing a gradually increasing rate of comp cycles. "…is far exceeded by the possible content of the interior. Unlike Clarkson's sample, this one is entirely filled with a dense membrane structure. If my hypotheses about the first device are correct, then this one contains an enormous amount of information, coded on the fine surfaces of the membranes."
Thinking, she chewed slowly on her thumb. "I think this one
"What a loss," she murmured. "I want to read this! Well, as long as it's not legal documents.
 |
Green Hummingbird was in near darkness, lying on a narrow bed in his quarters. Pale green and blue lights played across his angular face. A swing-out display hung above him, showing feeds from the cameras on the
As the scan image of the writing on the cylinder unfolded in the feed, Hummingbird stirred to life, attention sharpening. One hand, gnarled and scarred, brushed across the display, keying a series of preset searches. The panel chirped pleasantly, then began processing. Immediately, the video feeds flickered to a stop and the entire device dimmed noticeably.
In the small, crowded office beside his private cabin, Hadeishi cursed as his display slowed to a crawl, then snapped back to its normal responsiveness. A stiff finger jabbed a comm channel open. "
"No, Captain," came a quiet, level reply. "By ship's clock Hummingbird-
Hadeishi suppressed a curse, then curiosity washed away his anger. "What is he doing with that level of capacity?"
"I do not know, Hadeishi-
"Understood." Hadeishi cut the channel, forcing speculation from his mind. There were logistics and supply usage reports to review and sign.
Hummingbird scowled, lean old face twisting into a tight mask. Bits and pieces of the glyphs incised into the cylinder were coming back a match with examples from his archive. He thought briefly of using the blue pyramid, but discarded the notion.
What did match was troubling. Some of the more complicated signs were very like a series of temple carvings observed by a deep-range probe in a dead system beyond New Malta. Others suggested the contents of tablets secured by a Mirror agent from the marketplaces of Ik-hu-huillane. Both sets of documents were restricted to the highest levels of the Mirror – Hummingbird did not even possess translations of them, only symbol-match heuristics – and a series of winking red-and-white banded glyphs appeared alongside the comparison results.
"You say they're dangerous," he muttered at the panel. "But
He began to feel uneasy, watching the Anderssen woman work with her probes and sensors, slowly revealing more and more layers hidden inside the cylinder. The arrangements of the membranes inside the structure did seem to contain more data – a vast amount, far more than even the writing etched on the outer surface.
"Are they access instructions?" he wondered aloud, wishing the upper levels of the Mirror had seen fit to provide him with more information about dead Gulatith and whichever race had chipped the Ik-hu-huillane tablets from interstellar ice. "Could she decipher them, given time? Or is the device too old – broken by the wear of so many millennia… She has the inclination, I see." Hummingbird was glad Anderssen had such limited software.
On his v-pane, the woman was cursing at her slow panel and tapping commands at a furious rate. Hummingbird shook his head slowly – curiosity was a powerful drug – one whose effects he had felt himself and he wondered if the soldier was right.
"But then," he said to the dark room, "we would not
The densely packed strip of symbols taunted him from the display. He could sense – even through the filters running in his panel, even with well-ordered detachment – a tantalizing meaning in the angular, alien shapes. Hummingbird felt an urge to turn the power of his display – of the
"I think not," he said aloud, and tapped off the v-feed from the
"Delores…take a look at this." Parker dialed up the magnification on his work lenses, head cocked as he stared down the throat of shuttle number two's air intake. The heavy machinery had been – at last – removed from shuttle number one's cargo hold, the mold cleaned away and the entire assembly mounted on a diagnostic rack in the
Eventually, the pilot had given up trying to make the Javan and Swedish equipment play nicely and had settled for a visual inspection. A multispectrum lamp was clipped to the lip of the intake.
"What?" Delores, surly again for some reason – though she'd greeted both Parker and Isoroku with a big smile this morning when she came swinging out of the accessway – climbed up on the rack and worked her head and shoulders inside.
"Switch to UV-band on your lenses," Parker said, gently placing his fingertip on a curving section of the intake wall. The highly polished ceramic alloy gleamed like a mirror, reflecting his face as an enormous, distorted monster. "And hi-mag, about six hundred."
"Now I can't see anything but the surface of the composite." Delores didn't bother to keep mounting irritation out of her voice.
"Follow my arm, then just ahead of my finger."
Delores grunted, making a face. "You need to take a bath sometime. Your nails…" Then she whistled softly in alarm. "By the Sister – what
"Something alive," Parker said, watching a faint discoloration shimmer like a rainbow in the hi-mag view of his work lenses. He could see regular, symmetric structures in the discoloration – not the stolid honeycomb of the ceramic, but something delicate and far, far more complicated. "Something eating the hi-temp ceramic lining and making more…more metallic lichen."
"Oh, Sister!" Delores scrambled backward out of the intake. "It's the eaters!"
"No," Parker said, watching the tiny gleaming lights with a bemused expression on his narrow face. "No, it's not them…we'd be dissolved or turned inside out. This is different – this must have come from the planet. Is there any life down there?"
"No," Delores called from across the engineering bay. "Just rocks, sand and barren mountains. Nothing green, no trees, no water. Nothing."
The pilot wanted to scratch his nose, but couldn't, not in the close confines of the intake. On a hunch, he breathed on the discoloration, trying to focus the flow of moist gas with his lips. In the restricted universe of hi-mag, he saw the delicate tendrils wave in the wind, and the textures and colors brightened. He blinked, then squinted in disbelief. "I think they got bigger," he called excitedly to Delores.
The crewwoman was still on the other side of the bay. She had found a welding torch and was hefting the slender wand like a bat. "Well, don't do that again, whatever it was! Come on, let's tell the engineer or Anderssen-
"Hmmm…ok." Parker backed out of the intake and swung the UV lamp to mark the discoloration. Even from the vast remove of a meter, he could no longer make out the lichen. Sitting on the steps of a work ladder, he tapped open a channel.
"Doctor Anderssen? Parker. Can you join me and Delores down in Engineering bay four? Bring your hi-mag lenses, if you've got 'em handy."
Squeezed into the intake, with Parker, Delores, Isoroku and the ever-present Fitzsimmons crowding around outside, Gretchen stared dully at the glassy, curving surface. Now she felt too hot – the heaters were working in Engineering for some reason – and there were too many people around. "All right Parker, what am I looking at?"
"Right where I've got the UV spot shining," the pilot said, trying to wedge in beside her. "You can't miss them, not in hi-mag."
"I don't see anything," Gretchen said after a moment, "except some discoloration, like some kind of acid spilled on the ceramic." She turned her head, then made a face. The inside of Parker's nose was not the place to be looking with work lenses dialed high. Flipping up the goggles, she looked at him inquiringly.
"What?" Parker swung down his own lenses and hunched over the section of metal. Almost immediately he started cursing. "This is…they're all gone! There's nothing but some kind of mottled smear left." He sat up, cracked his head against the roof of the intake, then wormed his way back out with a snarl. "I saw them," Parker declared, stripping off his lenses. "They were
Gretchen looked at the crewwoman and she nodded her head in agreement. "He's not crazy. Well, ok, he saw what he said he saw."
"Fine." Gretchen looked at Isoroku. "Then what happened to them? Vanishing in thirty minutes is too great a rate of change for me. Did they cause the engines to overheat?"
"Maybe," Parker mumbled, scrunching up the side of his mouth. He took a tabac out of his pocket, shucked the wrapper and lit the stick on his belt. Gretchen stepped back, out of a rising gray whorl. In low-grav the tobacco smoke made corkscrew patterns in the air. "They grew – I saw them grow – with more moisture, more air, more oxygen. No, more carbon dioxide. Maybe they eat CO2, like a plant at home?"
"Would that cause an overheat?" Gretchen spread her hands questioningly.
"No…" Parker squinted into the intake, then at the fleet engineer. "But if they got inside, into the rest of the engine, they would make turbulence – the airflow surfaces wouldn't be smooth anymore – and they do seem to be eating away at the composite."
"Even in a Javan machine," the engineer rumbled, his Norman tinged with a thick accent, "there are close tolerances. We will have to examine the entire engine for contamination."
"Do it." Gretchen started to turn away, but then a thought struck her. "Wait – find another patch, if there is one. Record the…um…the infestation or planting or whatever. Then shine Parker's lamp on it for a half hour."
"Good idea." Isoroku's eyes glinted. "The simplest explanation."
"I killed them with the multispec?" Parker seemed incredulous. "But if they came from the planet…the atmosphere's thin – everything's bathed in UV! Why should it kill them?"
"Try it anyway," Gretchen replied, swinging up onto the ladder leading into the main accessway. "And let me know what happens." She disappeared up the shaft, followed moments later by Fitzsimmons.
Parker shared a glance with Delores, who shrugged and looked at him expectantly, and the Nisei, who had no discernible expression at all. The pilot hunched his shoulders and shuffled back to the engine, glaring at the machinery. "And I thought you were pretty," he grumbled as he flipped down his work lenses. "Shows what I know."
Gretchen woke from a dream of endlessly mutating gray-green ideograms to an irritating beeping sound. Groaning – the sound was her comm paging – she unzipped her sleepbag and peered out into darkness. The lights in the crew quarters were on some day-night cycle which eluded her – they certainly didn't match the schedule on the
"Oh Sister, mother of God, bearer of the Holy Savior…" Gretchen fumbled for her medband and pressed the cool metal against the side of her neck. A sensor flickered, there was a warning
"Its afternoon," he replied in a dead-sounding, slurred voice. "Planetside, anyway. I'm finished with your shuttle engine."
"Good," Gretchen said, clipping the comm to her duffle. She eeled out of the sleepbag and braced herself against the floor. A netted sack held her clothes, and she began dragging out an undershirt, pants, her skinsuit. "What did you find?"
"This engine is completely infested with these…these
The pilot glared owlishly at Gretchen, who was worming herself into a skintight shipsuit. When she was done, he continued. "Before you ask: Yes, we checked the other engine. It was infested too, but not so badly. Anyway, Isoroku cleaned up number one. So both will fly, eventually."
"What happens when we go groundside?" Gretchen asked, straightening her hair and pulling the heavy blond mane back into a ponytail. "They'll get infected again, right?"
Parker nodded, listlessly pushing another tabac into the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, and we'll clean up again, I guess."
"Okay," Gretchen said, her attention already turning to the puzzle of the cylinder. "One trip, then, to repair the other shuttle and load everyone up. Then it's back upstairs for the entire team. If we need to make an excursion groundside, we'll use the shuttles in rotation and not leave them on the planet for more than a day."
"Sure." Parker took a long drag on his tabac, then tapped off.
Gretchen stared at the comm, then shook her head.
Feeling much better, she banged the door open, then kicked off in a long arcing jump toward the main accessway. Behind her, a minute telltale flashed on her doorway, and not so far away, a chime went off in a cabin occupied by the two Marines.
A black sleepbag stirred in the dimly lit room, then an arm reached out from the cocoon and thumped the other sleeping soldier.
"Fitz, your girlfriend's up." Deckard closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.
Fitzsimmons crawled out of his own sleepbag, rubbed a chin covered with fine black stubble and started getting dressed.
His combat bar strapped to the side of one boot, a heavy utility knife to the other. The waist rig held eight flechette-wire clips, and a holster with the pistolstyled shipgun. The rest of the chest rig held various tools, lamps and spyeyes. His hand hovered over the squat, short-barreled shape of his heavy shipgun, then he plucked it away from the wall and slung the automatic rifle behind his back. Nervous fingers – this whole situation made him nervous – checked the loads in the pistol and the rifle. Both weapons were topped, lit green and ready to cook.
"Thank you,
The
"Not there?" Hummingbird made an amused clicking sound with his teeth. "But not sleeping, or eating." He flicked through the feeds from the Company ship and his brow furrowed. The archaeologist was nowhere to be seen. A stab of intense irritation twisted his lip, but then he calmed himself. Large sections of the
"Everything works here," he said aloud, "on a well-maintained Imperial vessel. There? On a private ship which has only known the attentions of the pious and dutiful Isoroku for a few days? Scattered feathers, filth, fallen shells."
Hummingbird switched the view back to the number three airlock, where the cylinder still rested quietly in its steel cradle. He bent close, though a fingertip's motion on the panel would zoom the image to almost any level of detail he desired. Red sandstone and milky white streaks of sediment filled the view. "But how could she leave your mystery, even for a moment?"
Anderssen had been spending every waking moment with the artifact for the past two days. The still-idle exploration ship's main comp was almost entirely tasked to her translation jobs, much to the annoyance of everyone else working aboard. Hummingbird suddenly closed the feed, feeling his own curiosity stir.
"A cunning lure," he muttered, then turned away from the panel and knelt before a small shrine set into the wall of the cabin. Nothing so fancy as the main chapel down in the heart of the ship, but this was a space reserved for him and him alone. The Blessed Virgin stared down, jade eyes looking upon him with radiant compassion. Hummingbird made the sign of the cross, bowed to the Lady of Tepeyac, she surrounded by so many shining rays, she of the dark cloak strewn with stars, with a mantle of flowers and shining feathers, possessor of the beneficence of man. On a narrow ledge before the icon sat a cup filled with milky liquid and a scattering of dried, perfectly preserved rose petals.
Hummingbird began to sing, his hoarse voice rising in the cabin.
The sound echoed and died, and he felt a great comfort from the long-familiar ritual. Hummingbird bowed again, before the image of the merciful one, then raised the cup of
"So does temptation wash over me, held at bay by your grace, Queen of Heaven, lady whose belt is a serpent, whose faith lifts the heavens and presses the earth." He made the sign of the cross once more, and pressed his forehead to the floor before the Sister. "So it is above, so it is below."
He stood, his heart easy once more, and passed his hand across the display set into the wall. The comm woke to life, and a blinking glyph – a youth bearing two rabbits by the ears – winked azure. Hummingbird grunted, feeling the moment of isolation and serenity pass.
"Yes, Sho-sa Kosho? Has something happened?" The
"Honorable one," the executive officer said, bowing her head slightly. "The Companymen have launched one of their shuttles – they are descending to the surface to repair the grounded shuttle at the observatory camp."
"Ah." Hummingbird was surprised. He had not expected the civilians to finish their repairs so quickly. "Are they going to retrieve the scientists on the ground as well?"
"I believe so," Kosho replied, a faint smile hiding behind her usual, stoic mask. "You left instructions to be informed. Shall I prepare a work carrel to take you and your luggage across?"
Hummingbird's face tightened –
The executive officer bowed again and tapped the channel closed. Hummingbird stared at the blank display for a moment, then his fingers stabbed at the panel, bringing up the surveillance view of the bridge. From this angle, he looked down upon Kosho's command station – an inset showed the ever-changing contents of her panel – and the soft lighting on the bridge gleamed in raven-dark hair. A long plait hung down her back, wound with copper, jade and pearl. The
In all of this, she betrayed no knowledge of his observation, though Hummingbird could only assume she knew he was watching. After ten minutes he closed the feed – the lieutenant had studiously continued about her business – and began packing his bags. A suspicion was beginning to ferment in his agile old mind, though he did not believe any officer would be so reckless to endanger her career in this way.
Hummingbird breathed easier when the artifact was safely stowed.
The door chimed, and he turned to let the midshipman in.
The "Observatory" Base Camp, the Edge of the Western Desert, Ephesus III
An orange spark swelled in the sky, the thin, attenuated roar of airbreathing engines piercing gathering twilight. The number one shuttle swept over the base camp, wings glowing with the heat of reentry. Dust swirled up from the landing strip – no more than a long rectangle of glowlights and flattened earth. Against the blue-black heavens, the long coiling contrail burned golden with the last light of day. The Ephesian atmosphere was thin, and even with the copper disk of the sun still hanging at the horizon, a wash of stars filled the east.
The shuttle set down, engines thrust-vectored to airbrake. More dust billowed up, burning red with jet exhaust, and the aircraft bounced and shivered down a thousand meters of flattened desert. The runway was a crude outline at best, scratched from the dry soil. At the far end, engines idling down to a rumbling shriek, the shuttle turned and began rolling back to the camp.
From a forward window, Gretchen peered out at a sprawling compound of brown huts and tall metal poles strung with swinging glowlights. Under fitful spots of illumination, she saw beaten paths winding between the buildings, a handful of figures shrouded in z-suits trudging toward the landing strip and the bulky shapes of crawlers parked under metal sheds. Everything was brown and tan or hidden in shadow.
The shuttle rattled to a halt and pressure lights came on. Cabin lights flared awake and Parker called back from the cockpit in a cheerful voice. "Please have your customs and immigration forms ready. Welcome to Ephesus Three. Please enjoy your stay."
Gretchen gathered up a heavy courier-style bag and checked the seals on her suit. Fitzsimmons had stitched her boot back together with some kind of adhesive goo and fishing line.
The gunner waited patiently, calm brown eyes watching the figures crossing the field toward them through the window. When she was done, he returned the favor and signed she was tight. Gretchen smiled in thanks and wove her way forward past Delores to the main hatch.
"Mister Parker, cycle the lock please."
The pilot nodded over his shoulder, flipped a series of switches and the inner door recessed with a dull clang. Two minutes later, Gretchen was standing on the landing strip, feeling a chill, cutting wind tug at her legs. She'd left a little of her face mask open and the smell of the planet flooded her nostrils.
Ephesus at twilight was sharp and cold, tart dust and crushed rock, the methane-stink of a recycler in the camp, a faint aroma of something metallic tickling the back of Gretchen's throat. She was glad she'd put on field pants and a shirt and jacket over the z-suit. The thermal heaters in her leg pads were already starting to run and her fingers were cold even with two layers of gloves.
Bandao rattled down the landing stairs and took up a position to the left and behind, while Parker and Delores went around to the cargo doors to start unloading the repaired engine. The gunner had a hand on the butt of his rifle – a stocky, evil-looking thing with a shining dark finish and a stubby, rubberized scope – and his attention moved in careful, measured sweeps, watching the distant, flat horizon and the buildings.
"Mister Parker," Gretchen called, her voice buzzing on the comm, nearly drowned by the keening wind. "Don't forget to put those seals in our engine intakes."
"Crap!" Both the pilot and Fuentes turned around and jogged back to the shuttle. Isoroku had machined up a set of shockfoam plugs to close the air intakes and – hopefully – keep the Ephesian spores out of the engines. They were unwieldy, and Gretchen watched in amusement as Parker staggered down the stairs with a pair of multispec worklamps around his neck, arms filled with the fat round shape of an intake plug.
"Doctor Anderssen?" A bluff, accented voice called through the darkness and Gretchen turned. Three shrouded figures approached, bent into the wind. She walked forward, hand raised.
"Doctor Lennox." Gretchen clasped the thin woman's hand firmly and nodded. "Smalls-
"Welcome to Ephesus," the Rossiyan answered, dark eyes sparkling over the green snout of his respirator. Neither Lennox nor Smalls said anything. "Come, let's get to the main hall and you can meet the rest of the crew."
Everyone began walking back toward camp, save for Smalls, who paused – indecisively, it seemed to Gretchen – and stared at Fuentes and Parker working on sealing the engine intakes. Then the meteorologist shook his head and hurried to catch up with the rest of the group. Gretchen watched him as they followed the path through the buildings – even in the poor light of the hanging lamps she could see he was a little pale.
The main hall was a two-story building framed with hexacarbon beams, the walls and roof formed by extruded slabs of local gravel and sand run through a reprocessor. Gretchen passed into the airlock in the middle of the group – a line of dust-streaked backs, shining respirator tanks, the local equipment pitted and gray. She paused at the outer door, fingertips brushing across the metal frame of the door. The hexacarbon was scored and dark, riddled with tiny pits, as if acid had splashed on the exposed surfaces.
Inside, she pulled back the cap of her skinsuit and tugged the respirator mask aside. She was in the building atrium – a close, crowded room filled with work-suits, boots, stained jackets and dirt – with Bandao close at hand. Smalls was already gone, leaving a tired-looking Lennox and a beaming Tukhachevsky behind.
"How is everyone doing?" Gretchen slipped her nose tube free and tucked it into the collar of her suit. "I guess you'll be glad to get upstairs and hit the showers."
"Yes, our water supplies have always been minimal. There's no local source of water, though we'd hoped…" Lennox sounded even more exhausted than her haggard face suggested. "I'm sorry, Doctor Anderssen, I'm very tired. Do you know when we'll be able to return to the ship?"
Gretchen spared a quick glance for Tukhachevsky, who was watching Lennox with concern, and Bandao, who was waiting patiently at the inner door of the atrium. She could see the acid glare of overhead lights and the tinny sound of someone's music box playing year-old tunes. The smell was entirely familiar and for an instant – setting aside the pale, worn face of the woman in front of her – she could have been standing in Dome Six at Polaris again.
"I think," Gretchen said gently, "we'll send you up to the ship tomorrow. Do you have your things together?"
"Oh." Lennox seemed to come awake, blinking. "No – I've been busy. I suppose I should -"
"Mister Bandao? Would you help Doctor Lennox pack her things up, and take them to the shuttle? Tell Mister Parker we'll be wanting to ferry up most of the crew tomorrow morning – early, I suppose, before the air gets too thin to fly."
Bandao nodded and shifted his rifle behind him, out of the way and out of sight.
"Doctor? Bandao-
Bandao nodded politely and introduced himself. While he did, Gretchen motioned to Tukhachevsky and they stood aside near the main lock.
"Is everyone still in camp?" She asked, quietly. The Rossiyan nodded, fingering his beard. The sore beside his nose was beginning to suppurate – Gretchen recognized the sign of an ill-fitting respirator mask – and he smelled of alcohol. "Have you heard anything from Russovsky?"
"Did she talk to you, when she was here? Did she talk to anyone – say where she'd been, where she was going?"
Tukhachevsky shook his head again, beard wagging slowly in counterpoint. "No, Doctor Anderssen. She landed while we sat at breakfast and immediately went to see McCue in the main lab. Then Clarkson…" The Rossiyan paused, nose twitching, and Gretchen could see him weighing dirty laundry in his mind. After a moment, he shook his head slightly and continued. "Doctor Clarkson went out to the main lab as well. An hour later – I would guess – I was packing a crawler to go reset the sensors at the edge of the White Plain and I saw Russovsky's
"When did the shuttle leave?"
"Later," Tukhachevsky said, a slow grin peeking out from his beard. "I heard Clarkson on the comm, shouting at Blake – he's the head of the security team – to get a shuttle ready. But number two was already sidelined on the field with some mechanical problem. So they had to wait for a shuttle to come down from the ship to pick him up."
"Him and the damaged engine, right?" Gretchen tucked a wayward tendril of hair behind her ear. "Carlos flew the shuttle down to pick them up?"
Tukhachevsky nodded. "Yes, Flores had been down for several days, working on the grounded shuttle. By the time the other shuttle arrived, Clarkson was about wetting his pants." The Rossiyan grinned again. "He was in a rare state – almost happy, if such a dour man could ever be happy – and he was even civil to Molly."
"You saw them while they were waiting for the shuttle? Were they waiting together?"
"No! They couldn't abide being in the same room." Tukhachevsky waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't see – I'd already taken the crawler out – but Frenchy told me Doctor McCue decided to go aboard at the last moment. Clarkson was already aboard, the engine already stowed. They had to delay departure a couple minutes for her." The physicist shrugged.
The Company dossier on McCue implied she was a careful, thorough woman. A mathematician from the Arkham Institute on Anбhuac, the dig coordinator and chief bottlewasher. Meticulous, detail-oriented…not the kind of person to rush a sample somewhere, even one so precious.
"What happened then?" Gretchen returned her attention to the Rossiyan, who was looking mournful, his memories of the past stirred up. "Did you hear anything more from the ship, from Clarkson or McCue?"
"No." Tukhachevsky laughed hollowly. "Blake received a call from
"I'm sorry." Gretchen squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sorry about what happened, and sorry it took so long to get here."
"But you did come," Tukhachevsky sighed, and shook himself. A weight seemed to lift from his broad old shoulders and he stood up straighter. "Please, we can't stand here talking all night – come and meet everyone else and – please! – have a drink, on me." His eyes twinkled. "You will find men and women's interests are reduced to their base constituents when faced with a slow, lingering death abandoned on an alien world, far from home, without hope of survival."
Gretchen made a show of sniffing the air. "I can tell," she said with a laugh. "It smells like a distillery in here! What are you making?"
"Vodka, of course. You can make vodka out of anything." Tukhachevsky pushed open the door to the common room and Gretchen stepped in. A dozen people rose to meet her, some young, some old, and a stained plastic cup was pressed into her hand, sloshing with jet fuel of some kind. The Rossiyan's meaty hand was on her shoulder, guiding her to a chair at the long table and Gretchen caught a swift montage of tired, haggard faces – men and women seamed by the elements, burned dark by the sun – and everyone was smiling, relief plain on their faces, babbling their names, questions, rude jokes.
"Hello," she said, when things had quieted down a little and she'd taken a suitably long drink of the "vodka" in the cup. "I'm Gretchen Anderssen, and I thought you'd like to know the water cyclers on the ship are working just fine."
Everyone smiled and the last of the heckling died down. Gretchen swung a heavy bag from her hip onto the tabletop. No one made any particular movement, but a sense of expectation pricked the air, like ozone spilling away from an oncoming thunderstorm.
"And our Magdalena has the t-relay working back to Imperial space, so there was some mail waiting for you."
"Blake." She called out, holding up the first set of letters. A stocky man, his pockmarked face twisted halfway from a grim snarl to disbelieving joy, scraped back his chair and leaned over the table.
"Thanks," he muttered, sitting down, almost-trembling fingers picking at the twine. "Thanks."
Gretchen nodded, then looked down. She'd already removed all the letters for the dead crewmen, for Clarkson and McCue. Strangely, there hadn't been any letters in the inbound queue for Russovsky, though her company file said she had an entire clutch of cousins and sisters at home on Anбhuac.
 |
The sound of a power wrench whining against a reluctant bolt roused Gretchen the next morning. She blinked, seeing actual, real sunlight spilling down a dirty brown wall above her head, then poked her nose out from the sleepbag. A pungent smell of cooking oil, coffee, sweat and heated metal washed over her. "Ah," she grumbled, sitting up, "home at last."
Surprisingly – considering how late she'd remained awake, talking to Tukhachevsky and Sinclair and the others about the dig and the planet – she felt good. Actually rested. "Gravity is a wonderful thing," she said, baring her teeth for a little hand mirror she carried in her jacket. "And whatever they put in the vodka here
Taking a carefully hoarded bottle of water out of her bag, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. "Two cups," she muttered, measuring the fluid level in the translucent canteen by eye. "I used to be able to take a whole bath in two cups."
Water rationing had been very strict on Mars, even with thirty meters of permafrost under their feet. The Imperial Planetary Reclamation Board guarded the native ice jealously, and charged the dig crews for every liter they extracted. IPRB had a vision of a green Mars, and weren't going to let some profligate scientists spoil their grand dream. Ugarit, for all the stink and humidity and flies and constant, deafening noise, had plenty of water. Some of it was even potable by human standards, but Gretchen had fallen out of the habits she'd learned on Mars. New Aberdeen was a wet, green world – flush with stormy gray seas, heavy forests and chill, cleansing rain pouring from massive, white thunderheads.
As Fitzsimmons had promised, his repair still held.
Downstairs, Gretchen found herself sitting at a table near the single window in the common room, a plate of eggs, toast and something which smelled – but did not taste
Hot food – and not a heated threesquare or mealbag – commanded her full attention until the plate was bare and the cup empty. She looked up, wondering if the kitchen was flush enough with supplies to allow her a second cup, and caught sight of the meteorologist Smalls's face from across the room. He was a thin, sallow-faced man in the sharp, bright glare of morning, with sunken eyes and lank black hair. Watching him, his body half-hidden behind Tukhachevsky's rotund bulk, Gretchen thought she'd never seen anyone so sad before.
A particularly sharp peal of laughter drew the man's eyes, his head moving with a sharp jerk. Gretchen looked over and realized the common room had already separated out, like some chemical precipitating out of solution, with the scientists – herself included – at one table, while the "crew" sat at another. Delores, her oval face slightly flushed with amusement, was telling a particularly poor joke at the other table. Parker and Bandao were watching her with amusement, while the groundside security people – Blake and a comm tech named Steward – were groaning.
"…so she said she'd rather date a cattle guard than a cowboy, so we left her sitting by the fence until she had the sense to walk home herself!"
Only Smalls was sitting alone, at the end of a table near the kitchen door. Gretchen realized he was watching Delores, as covertly as he dared, and she remembered how he'd moved toward her on the landing field the night before.
There was a pause in the flow of words from Tukhachevsky and Sinclair, and Gretchen realized they'd asked her something. She turned and raised a questioning eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"Would you like to see the main excavation site before we leave?" Sinclair repeated, hair in his eyes, ragged fingernails twisting a fresh tabac from papers. "It'll take all day to load the shuttles, and we won't want to take off until dark."
"I would," Gretchen said, standing up, coffee cup in hand. "About fifteen hundred? Good."
As it happened, Parker had already snorked up the last of the coffee, but Gretchen felt alive enough to face the day. Standing in the door of the kitchen, she found the crew clearing out – Parker and Delores for the landing strip and the shuttles, Blake and the others to start packing and loading.
"Mister Smalls?" The meteorologist looked up, startled, apparently unaware of her approach. "Do you have time to show me around the camp this morning? I'd appreciate it if you could."
In the full glare of midday sun, the camp seemed even more desolate than by night. The horizon stretched away to a dim white line, unbroken by the sight of mountains or hills in any direction. Gretchen blessed the field goggles she'd packed and the battered straw hat that had survived from her very first dig in the ruins of the ancient Il Dioptre observatory on Crete. Her suit was proof against heat and cold alike, but there was no sense in subjecting the temperature regulators to more stress than necessary. Smalls, for his part, had adopted a
Brittle sand crunched underfoot as they walked, a fine crust breaking away with each step. The ground sparkled and glittered, as if diamonds had been scattered among the gravel and stones. Tan and a cream-white color dominated, though as the eye reached to the horizon, the deep, deep blue-black of the sky made the distant plain seem yellow.
"How's the weather?" she said at last. Smalls had said nothing after suiting up and leaving the main building. He seemed lost in thought. "The prevailing wind is from the east?"
There were no east-facing windows in the camp, and every building had a smooth, sloping berm of compressed earth and stone facing the rising sun. Even the sheds for the crawlers were reinforced, as if fortified against enemy bombardment, with deep airlocked doorways. More than one of the huts was half-buried by sand, with sloping ramps leading down to battered metal doors.
Smalls said nothing, continuing to stump along. They approached the main lab – a long, low structure with tiny windows surrounded by reinforcing stone. Everyone seemed to sleep in the main building, on the second floor. Gretchen shaded her eyes, looking west. Sunlight flared on the raised tails of the two shuttles, and she could see dust rising from a crawler maneuvering around the back of one. She supposed they were preparing to remount the engine in number two.
Still silent, Smalls keyed the airlock. There was a squeal of tracks clogged with grit, and Gretchen stepped inside, into blessed darkness. She watched the outer door grind closed, seeing the frame was almost entirely eaten away.
"How bad are the storms?" She ventured again, hoping for some kind of response. Smalls pressed a softly glowing plate on the wall and the inner door cycled, dust swirling away at their feet. Beyond a line of glowlights shimmered awake, illuminating a dirty, narrow hallway. Despite the lock, the floor was covered with sand.
"The storms?" Smalls seemed to wake at last, his eyes dark pits in the bad light. Something like a smile twitched on his lips. "They're beautiful. Gorgeous, really."
Gretchen said nothing, only unclasping her mask and taking a moment to taste the building air. She could smell solvents, hot plastic, electrical components and the sharp smell of an overheated printer.
"We'd been here a week," Smalls said, turning away and shuffling down the hallway. "And my satellites weren't all deployed yet, when the first big storm swept over us. Two of the sheds were torn to bits and scattered – Fuentes found one of the roofing panels a couple weeks later, sixty k from here. A crawler got knocked over and we nearly lost shuttle one."
"Sounds bad…" Gretchen started to say, but then stopped. Smalls was still talking, apparently unaware of her comment.
"The planet got all smashed up, back at minus three million, and there aren't lots of mountain ranges to speak of, not big plate-driven ones like on Anбhuac or Hesperides. Heat builds up on these big open plains and you get enormous swings in air pressure as the sun moves. There's no humidity to speak of, not with such low temperatures. All the water is locked in the ice caps. No lakes, no oceans – nothing to moderate air temperature."
Smalls unlocked a door, and Gretchen followed him into a room filled with v-pane monitors, computer equipment and racks and racks of data-lattice storage. A huge map of Ephesus glowed in a mosaic of nine displays, half the planet shining bright in the sunlight, and half plunged into complete darkness. The meteorologist waved a hand across the face of the world.
"We have dust storms a thousand kilometers wide, with winds in excess of a hundred sixty k on a slow, quiet day. There are invisible tornadoes, which form and vanish in the upper air. When they touch down, rocks, stones, boulders get lifted and flung for twenty to thirty k." His finger stabbed at the mosaic display, tracing a thin black line just emerging from the terminator.
"And there's the escarpment. A wall across half the world, nearly from pole to pole. The planetary atmosphere's so tight on Ephesus there are peaks which brush the envelope." Smalls turned and looked at Gretchen for the first time. She was leaning against one of the tables, watching him quietly, arms crossed. "The sun is like a big broom, pushing a lot of air in front of the midday hot-spot. There's a fat gradient at dawn and when the wall of moving pressure hits the escarpment, well…" He shrugged, showing more than a little perverse pride.
"You get vicious storms in the canyons," Gretchen supplied. "The briefing packet says they're in excess of four hundred fifty k at 'high tide.'"
"They are." Smalls searched among papers and bits of equipment on one of the tables. After a moment, he handed Gretchen a heavy chunk of slate the size of her hand. "The wind rising from the sun compresses against the mountains and the only release is through narrow slot canyons. I have video – in places the walls are like glass, rubbed to near optical quality by sand and grit from a hundred k away. Look at the other side."
Gretchen turned over the piece of slate. The reverse was glossy and black, like fine glass, with a dimple near the center. In the depression was a spherical metallic marble. She looked up in surprise. "What's this?"
"Some bit of nickel-iron – native stuff, there are fields of it in some places, just sitting on the surface – rolling around for a few centuries, getting nice and round. Then a particularly bad storm picked it up and whipped it into a canyon. By the time the cyclone winds had slapped the marble downrange and it hit a certain section of cliff just right – the marble punched right into the slate and stuck. When Russovsky found that, the grit had worn away the splinter lines and cracks, but you can still see them with a…" His voice trailed away.
Gretchen put down the shale. She looked at Smalls, who was staring at his displays.
"Do you want to tell me about Russovsky?" Gretchen swung one foot up and sat on the table. "Did she find a lot of interesting things out there, in the wasteland?"
"She did." Smalls scratched the side of his face. The respirator had worn a deep groove across his upper cheek. "I guess Tuk told you she hasn't come back."
Gretchen nodded, politely looking away from the meteorologist at the view of the world.
"Are we going to try and find her, bring her back with us?"
"Of course," Gretchen said in a sharp tone. Smalls almost flinched, and she smiled in apology. "She's one of the crew, right? I won't leave anyone behind."
"Okay." Smalls seemed to relax and sat down. "Did…did she bring something back, that day, the day we lost contact with the ship?" He stopped, watching Gretchen's face. "There was a lot of shouting in McCue's lab – it's down the hall – that morning. Then, well, you know – my satellites route through the ship's main array for retransmit from farside, so I was the first to notice something had happened." Smalls shrugged. "The real-time map went out all of a sudden. At first I thought there was a malfunction in my equipment somewhere – the dust eats into things, you know, and they stop working. But everything seemed fine down here. I tried to raise
"Everyone was dead by then," Gretchen said softly. "Russovsky found something in the desert and she brought it back to camp. Did you hear what they were saying, when they were shouting?"
"Yeah, I guess." Smalls looked away. "Clarkson and McCue were always at odds over everything." He managed a bitter laugh. "You'd think they had been lovers or something, but they weren't, not those two." Smalls tapped the crown of his nose. "They just couldn't agree. Clarkson was very Company, very gung-ho, very – ah – results oriented. McCue just wanted to take her time, check things out, take – you know – a few more measurements, a few more readings."
For the first time, Gretchen thought she saw something like fondness in the man's sallow, exhausted face.
"She'd help with your data, you know? She'd take a look at it and do some raw analysis to see if you were getting instrument errors, or interference or something? And it would come back so clean…everything would be just…solid. Reliable. That was McCue. She was reliable."
Gretchen waited a moment. "Was Russovsky reliable? She and McCue were -"
"They understood each other," Smalls said, nodding. "Russovsky is like one of the old-timers out of Olympus Station, or the outbackers – you ever been to Mars?"
"Yes," Gretchen said, understanding. "I spent two years at the Polaris site."
"Ah." Smalls tried to raise an eyebrow and look knowing, but mostly he looked foolish and Gretchen felt a sudden warmth for the man.
"So Russovsky," Gretchen interrupted, "liked the emptiness. She liked to go out alone, in her ultralight, and just wander, looking for things. Just…seeing what there was to see."
"Yeah!" Smalls scratched the back of his head ruefully. "She was kind of pissed when we first got there – I mean, she's the planetary geologist, right? But Ephesus was smashed like an egg back in First Sun times, the whole planetary mantle was broken into about a million pieces and then slammed back together again.
"I see." Gretchen frowned. "So why the flights?"
"Well, that was another argument. See, Russovsky tried playing by the rules and duly reported all of this to Clarkson – and he said if she couldn't do
"Now, that set McCue off like a rocket, but Russovsky kept her cool and said – and I quote – 'I believe my data are in error, Doctor Clarkson. I will endeavor to rectify the situation.' – and then she just walked out of her office, loaded up the
Gretchen answered his smile with one of her own. "Good for her. How many times did she go out?"
Smalls pursed his lips, thinking. "About once a week, I guess. You can't carry too much on a
"Did you see what she brought back the last time?"
Smalls shook his head dolefully. "No. I was lying low! Clarkson was already in a mood about something, so when Russovsky came in and made a beeline for McCue's office with a big bundle in her arms, he was spoiling for a fight."
Gretchen nodded. "Why don't you show me her office?"
"Shuttle two to shuttle one, come in." Parker tapped his throat mike experimentally, watching the newly repaired shuttle's control panels light green section by section. Most of the cockpit was still dark, or winking amber. The long grounding had played havoc with the ship's systems. A cursory examination of the hull revealed deep pitting and large sections of discolored, infected metal. "Bandao, can you hear me? Delores, are you on this comm?"
"I hear you," the gunner's voice answered on a crystal-clear channel. "How does it look?"
"Good enough, maybe, sort of…" Parker wiggled one of the control panels and the black glassite suddenly flickered to life. "This boat's all eaten up by the damned spores."
"Will she fly?" Delores's sharp voice came online. "Do you have an engine readout yet?"
"I have diagnostics live from the engine," Parker replied dryly. The crewwoman was crouching in the aft engineering space, squeezed in beneath the housing, trying to match up relays and conduits in a maze of pipes and hoses. "And I think she'll fly – at least one-way – and everyone on board had better be suited up. Our little friends have been eating away for weeks."
"Cargo in the damaged ship, then? Passengers in this one?"
Parker nodded, attention distracted by another panel coming online. The wing and airfoil surfaces were showing only sixty to seventy percent response to a basic microcontrol flex test. "Yeah…why don't you prep for takeoff. We can load cargo with Delores, me and the security crew. Get all the civilians up to the
"Understood," Bandao replied. Parker squinted out the triangular window. Across the landing field, he could see the gunner rattling down the stairs from number one. "Delores – I still don't have any readout from the fuel gauges. They hooked up yet?"
A grunting sound was her only response. Smiling to himself, the pilot began running through the basic systems checklist. After an hour, he looked up, lean face creased with puzzlement. A line of people was climbing the stairs into shuttle one. He tapped open his throat mike.
"Chief? Anderssen? We're going to send shuttle one upstairs. Did you want to go?"
There was no immediate response, so he checked his comm band to see if Anderssen was in range. Her proximity icon was glowing green, so Parker tried again. "Parker calling Anderssen – hello? Anyone home?"
This time the channel chirped open, and the archaeologist's voice came back, a little thready. "Yes, Parker? What did you say?"
The pilot repeated his question. As he did, Delores climbed down into the cockpit and slid into the copilot's seat. Her hair was streaked with oil, her face shining with sweat and her work gloves were dark with grime. She looked pissed, but Parker made a point of looking respectfully off into the distance, listening to Gretchen speaking on the comm.
"Don't worry about me," Gretchen said, breath rasping as she scrambled up the side of an excavation trench. She squinted for a second while the work goggles adjusted to keep the flare of the late afternoon sun from spearing her eyes. "I'm out at the Observatory excavation site with Sinclair and Smalls. I believe
She tramped across a work ladder laid down over the trench as a bridge and passed one of the obelisks forming the main part of the observatory. The stone spire cast a long finger of shadow across the rumpled ground – each obelisk was at least twenty meters high. Four rings of the stones circled the "nave," which nestled at the bottom of a kilometer-wide depression in the desert floor, about three k from the camp.
A network of fresh trenches slashed across the ring arrangement. The expedition had been digging exploratory excavations at ten-meter intervals, trying to find the foundations of the edifice. Gretchen could tell from the desultory sensor grid layout in the trenches they hadn't found what they were looking for. Sinclair had admitted, as they were bouncing up the dusty road from the camp, the "observatory" did not seem to be anything of the kind. The current thinking proposed some kind of naturally occurring phenomena.
Gretchen walked quickly down the path between two trenches to the long rectangular sunshade. Sinclair and Smalls were sitting at a camp table, their goggles glittering mirrors. Cargo crates made more tables and work areas under the strip of shadow.
"They've called from camp," Gretchen said, doffing her hat under the awning. Her skin felt tight, already dehydrated by the parched air. "Shuttle one is ready to make a run back to the ship. You should go, I think, and I'll take the other crawler back."
Both men shared a glance, then Sinclair tilted his head in a sort of temporizing way. "One of us should stay – it's bad policy to go about solo – even so close to the camp."
"I understand," Gretchen said, taking no offense. "But I'll be staying overnight, which means one of
There was some more hemming and hawing, but Gretchen just waited for them to convince themselves, then waved as the Skoda Armadillo chuffed away down the road to the main camp. When they were mostly out of sight, she tapped her comm open.
"Mister Parker? Yes, you've got two more passengers coming into camp for your milk run. I'd appreciate it if Bandao-
There were some disgruntled noises and Gretchen had to smile as she adjusted her hat. Despite the crestfallen attitude of the dig team, she wanted to go over their excavation herself. It had been a while since she'd had a chance to do
"We'll
Still listening to Parker and Delores bicker about the damage to shuttle two, she hiked back down into the bowl and began a long counterclockwise circuit around the excavation. People working tended to fall into patterns, and her moderately-experienced eye could see most of the dig crew here were right-handed. All of the paths tended to circle to the right, to pass around the righthand – or western – side of the obelisks. So, keeping a close eye on the ground, she moved left, peering into the trenches, inspecting the gridding, generally being as nosy as possible.
The sun drifted with her, and the shadows in the excavation slowly lengthened. By the time she'd reached the far side of the bowl, the trenches were almost completely in the shade. A ladder let her climb down into one of the larger cuts and Gretchen paused, seeing something odd lying in a cross-trench from the main. She stepped closer, head dropping into blessed shade.
She stopped abruptly, her boots skidding in loose gravel. Her heart was pounding. "Oh, Mother Mary! Wait a minute."
Gretchen padded forward and knelt down. A
Crouching down, head almost on the ground, she adjusted her lenses to higher mag and gave the can – a
"Well now, this is interesting." Gretchen took an optical probe from her vest and moved around to face the opening in the top of the can, now lying sideways. Gingerly, she adjusted the tiny wand and eased it up to the mouth hole. Closing one eye, she clicked the worklens control around to match the input from the wand. A moment later, a highly magnified, light-enhanced view of the can sprang into view on the inside of her right lens. Then, gently, she drifted the wand into the opening.
The inside of the can was almost entirely filled with a delicate web of stonelike filaments. In the faint, reflected sunlight she could see hundreds – or thousands – of tiny cilialike fronds and a denser, hexlike structure of mineralized accretions. After taking a good look, she sat up, working a kink out of her shoulder.
"Personal log on," she said, cueing her throat mike. "I've found a discarded pulque can in the observatory dig. Looks like it's been here a couple weeks. Close examination finds the Ephesian microbiota Sinclair and Tukhachevsky tried to explain to me this morning in evidence. Something very much like what Parker found in the shuttle engines is eating the can." Gretchen stood up, stretching. She hadn't been grubbing in the dirt in months either. Her knees were already complaining. "Pretty soon the whole can will be gone, and the result will look just like everything else here, a mineral layer like sand and rock over this…mineral life form."
She stared up at the slender finger of the nearest obelisk. The pale cream texture made a sharp contrast against the blue-black sky. "Lennox's team was disappointed," she said, "to find their 'observatory' made of nothing but rock and mineral deposits – not set down by the hand of the First Sun people. They've decided the whole structure is just a natural formation, a quirk of geology. I wonder… I need to talk to Sinclair about his microbiota. There's something…something here almost makes sense. Log off."
Giving the
She switched on a lamp as she trudged up the slope to the crawler. In the starlight, everything seemed very quiet and still, frosted with silvery light. Her spot danced on the ground, a pale circle of yellow sliding over rocks, boulders, the tracks of the crawler. Gretchen paused, hands on the ladder leading up into the cabin.
The hum of the respirator masked most sounds and the wind had died with the passing of the sun. Gretchen turned off her lamp. Darkness folded around her again, then slowly lightened as her lenses adapted to the starlight. Everything seemed very still. She waited, listening.
Only the hum of the suit fans reached her ears. Annoyed, she shut down the respirator. There was a
There was a sound. Something like the wind stirring sand and gravel, a faint
Treading carefully on the fragile ground, she walked back to the crawler and climbed aboard.
Inside the cabin, her mask hooked to the vehicle's reserve air bottle, she sat for a long time, listening to the busy night and watching the stars slowly wheel overhead. Her comm was shut down, the crawler's engine cold. Gretchen thought, sitting there in the darkness, a rime of frost slowly congealing on her mask around the waste gas vent, she knew how Russovsky felt.
Sighing, she shook her arms, sending a cascade of CO2 frost to the floor of the crawler, then switched on machine power and let the big tracked vehicle start its diagnostic. A heavy rumble trembled through the seat and soles of her boots. Her respirator whined on, and the suit began to percolate heat through her limbs. "Damn!" Stabbing pains cramped her arms and legs. "Too cold to sit here."
Ten minutes later, she threw the Armadillo into gear and rumbled off down the road, the yellow headlights of the big tank dancing across the rutted track, a slow heavy cloud of dust rising behind. In the darkness, swathes of minute, glittering lights flared for a moment as the cloud of water vapor settled onto the desert floor, then faded as the windfall of energy from the sky was consumed.
Aboard the
Hummingbird swung onto the bridge of the Company spacecraft and paused, one hand on the railing leading up to the captain's command station. There was no threat-well, no gleaming banks of combat monitors, no subdued lighting or perfect climate control. Instead, bights of ratty wire and conduit hung from open panels in the overhead, there was an acrid, burnt smell in the air, and a racket of chattering comm feeds hissed from the communications station. Most of the control panels were dark and the deck had an uneven, mottled quality.
Lieutenant Isoroku started to say something, but the
"I've seen a damaged ship before,
Hummingbird pushed himself to the main comm panel, scarred fingers brushing over the controls. "How awake is main comp -"
"
Hummingbird turned and found the brawny shape of Isoroku blocking the movement of the Hesht female onto the bridge. The engineer's back was tense, though nothing in comparison to the slitted eyes and flattened ear-tufts of the alien. Enraged, the Hesht loomed over the human, her long arms poised to slam the engineer out of the way.
"I am Green Hummingbird," the Mйxica said, putting a warning hand on Isoroku's shoulder. His voice was very firm and he met Magdalena's eyes squarely. "I am an Imperial Officer from the
Magdalena bared her teeth, circling through the darkened, inactive navigator's station, glittering nails digging into the backs of the seats to propel herself along. "You may be queens-pride, old crow, but you are not welcome here! Look, if you must, but keep your dirty paws to yourself."
Hummingbird felt a flash of irritation – one he suppressed before the emotion could color his face or make him react – and gave Isoroku a little push. "My thanks, Isoroku-
The engineer, still watching Magdalena with a wary eye, made a sharp, properly polite bow and swam off down the access tube. The Hesht watched him go with undiluted, unfeigned hatred burning in her yellow eyes. The claws of her right hand slipped reflexively out of bony sheaths, then retracted. Hummingbird kicked away from the deck and drifted into her direct line of sight.
"
Magdalena bristled at the word, black lips curling away from gleaming white teeth. "I am not a child! Insult me again, monkey, and -"
"You will do what?" Hummingbird drifted closer, ignoring the bared claws. Startled at his boldness, Magdalena backed up. "You will lose your temper? Attack me, without the pack-leader's permission? Have your entire pride seized and imprisoned, this ship-den impounded by the Imperial Navy?"
The Hesht flinched as if struck, then her anger surged, a deep rumbling in the back of her throat. Hummingbird refused to move, refused to show any reaction at all. Magdalena stood poised and stiff for a moment, then suddenly gave ground. Her tail was twitching, both ears flat against the long angular skull. "What…what do you want?"
"A civil reception," Hummingbird said, testily. "Where is Anderssen-
"Yes," Magdalena hissed, twitching from head to toe. She swung gracefully over into the comm station seat, one leg bracing against the command panel. "She's just returned to the base camp."
"And the other scientists? Where are they?" Hummingbird took care to remain standing, so he could look down on the Hesht from at least a tiny height. The bitter smell of tension in the air was beginning to abate, but he did not wish to give up any advantage.
Magdalena pointed sullenly at a v-pane showing orbital tracks, the ring of satellites and various other objects in near-Ephesian space. "Bandao-
"All of the scientists? What about the security team?" Hummingbird chanted the names of the men and women on the surface – a quick mnemonic to remind him of their names, faces, specialties – under his breath.
"Not all." Magdalena's eyes narrowed again, yellow-amber wedges reflecting the intermittent glow of the instrument panels. "Our stray sister is still lost and Gretchen is hunting planetside until tomorrow. Blake and Parker and Fuentes are with her."
"Russovsky." Hummingbird nodded, remembering, and then turned a sharp eye on the Hesht. "You've not made contact with her by comm? Her ultralight is fully equipped, by my memory."
"She does not answer. Radar scans have not found her. The planet is large – perhaps you should go look yourself." Magdalena yawned derisively, showing a forest of razor-sharp teeth. "I am looking, but our search is slowed by the damage suffered by the
Hummingbird did not respond. He was watching the time-to-dock estimate for shuttle one and considering which path was swiftest to his goal.
"I am lair-guest, for a time,
Hummingbird shook his head, coming to light at the entryway to the hab ring. "A waste of time," he said to himself, eyeing the various cabin doors. Some of the locks were dimly lit with the closed hand of a privacy lock, others were entirely dark.
He found an unused cabin and tapped on his comm. "Sergeant Fitzsimmons? Yes, this is Hummingbird. I have some things by the number one airlock. Can you bring them to…" He read out the cabin number, then set about testing the lights, shower, refresher. Most things seemed to be working. The common, everyday motions served to settle his nerves.
A particularly disturbing thought had occurred to him.
By the time Fitzsimmons and Deckard arrived with his baggage – and he'd brought everything from the
"Master Hummingbird?" The sergeant paused in the doorway, surprised to find the wizened old man surrounded by a cloud of components and glassite panels. "Do you need help? I can call Iso -"
"No, thank you." Hummingbird looked up, measuring the two men with a critical eye. He was not displeased with what he saw. Even aboard this ship, the Marines were carrying their weapons and tools, within a moment's notice of combat readiness. "Put those things there, yes, against the wall."
Hummingbird watched them move, and was pleased to see they were entirely at home in the z-g environment of the ship.
"Tomorrow morning," the
"Aye, sir." Fitzsimmons seemed startled, pleased and concerned all at once. "With civilian help, or without?"
"Make use of their pilots," Hummingbird said. "Anderssen will be eager to find her as well. By tomorrow night, I want
The sergeant nodded sharply, then spun backward out of the door. Deckard followed, and both men shot away down the curving hallway of the hab ring. Hummingbird closed the door, then pressed the small round shape of a privacy bomb against the wall. The device shivered, then winked blue. The
"Curious, curious cats," he said softly, easing himself back into the cocoon of comp parts and conduit feeds. "Out of my house…"
"I'm a pap-sucking kitten, am I?" Magdalena's claw adjusted a filter control minutely. A jittery, scrambled image of the Mйxica
As it happened, Hummingbird was still assembling his comps, though Magdalena found the specifics of his equipment very interesting. Still, he was likely to be busy for a few hours. The Hesht turned her attention to the two Marines. After watching them for a few moments, her attention wandered. Her own kind might have amused her for hours, but these slick, shiny pink things…her claw idled over a glyph, then tapped out a save-for-later. "Males getting ready for the hunt. Hrrrr…boring. But hunt-sister might like to see. Hmm dee hmm."
A task-glyph popped to the top of her work queue – one marked with Anderssen's rabbit-ear symbol. Magdalena sniffed disdainfully –
"No mail?" Magdalena shifted in her chair and tapped up the message logs from ship's comm. In her experience, humans loved to talk more than anything – one of them actually keeping quiet did seem very odd.
The t-relay had never gone down, though the massive power failure on the
An hour passed in increasing, tail-chewing disgust before she managed to find the interface for viewing traffic statistics. Then she found an entire security module had been deactivated in the transfer to civilian control, which had disabled the usual logging features. Three hours later, the Hesht was carefully keeping her tail curled under the shockchair, and a section of light construction-grade metal paneling was floating in tiny pieces around her like a constellation of broken, blue-gray moons.
"There! Finally…" Magdalena scanned through the message queue storage facility. Her initial feeling of triumph faded quickly. The queue storage subsystem was encrypted and her commercial decrypt soft said the jumbled hash of characters and letters was a military code. Maggie reached out and dug her claws into the back of the command station behind her, tearing another section of paneling away. It felt good to feel something rend between her claws. "So…so how are readable messages coming through at all?"
She broke into the current t-relay queue and glanced over two of the messages. They were as readable and plain as any human letter could be. Brow furrowed, the little claw on her smallest finger tapping against her left incisor, Maggie began tracing the interface between the public messaging system and the relay. After thirty minutes, she was curled up into a tight ball, only the horizontal yellow gleam of her eyes visible over her arm. A constant stream of what seemed to be garbage – code, machine dumps, encrypted text – drifted past on her panel. Her usage of main comp had crept up into the sixteen percent range, billions of cycles diverted to a multitiered array of searches, all trying to winkle out the encrypt key protecting the storage system.
A chime sounded, waking Magdalena from a dream filled with tiny green birds fluttering around her head, each one singing in an annoying voice, flitting only millimeters from her grasping claws. She uncoiled, staring at the panel. A queue flag had popped up, bearing the ideogram code encapsulating Russovsky's comm ID. Magdalena frowned, then her claws skittered across the panel, diverting the message into unencrypted storage and starting a system trace to find where it had come from.
"Addressed to Ctesiphon Station?" Maggie shook her head, blinking, and stared again at the message routing header. The sizeable message – several gigabytes in length – was slated to go outbound on the r-relay at a very low priority. The Hesht frowned, looking over the routing instructions, which were much longer than the usual
Her tail started to lash again, very, very slowly. "What a clever monkey. She's hacked the t-relay!"
 |
Hummingbird's face lit with the soft glow of a display panel, weary old eyes glittering with the spark of glyphs flashing awake. Reassembling his surveillance systems had taken much longer than he expected – he'd considered calling Isoroku for help – but resisted the urge. There was really no reason to let the engineer see Mirror equipment in operation, not when the man was entirely competent and a boon to his ship. Dealing with an angry
Despite his earlier decision to let Anderssen and her people find the missing scientist, a thought had occurred to Hummingbird while he was working.
In truth, the scientists were all taxing the water and power supply of the ship with a half-dozen simultaneous, extended showers. After that they'd want to stuff themselves with food – Hummingbird smiled, noting the shipboard mess was entirely barren, save for the same kind of threesquares the crew had been subjected to on the planet – and sleep.
He tapped up a schematic of the coverage afforded by the meteorological satellites the expedition had deployed in a long string around the planetary equator. The weather surveillance system managed nearly pole to pole coverage. "Good," he said with a trace of smugness. "Now show me what kind of video feed…"
More images flashed past on his displays. The peapods maintained an historical archive, which Hummingbird pillaged, looking for a highview shot of the base camp the day Russovsky delivered her deadly cylinder. A second later, the system chirped apologetically – the satellite array did not contain information older than a week. "Odd…" Hummingbird tapped up specifics on the Texcoco ISA-built satellites. "Ah, too much data to store locally." He queried main comp to see if there was an off-array archive. Moments later, an answer came back: a partial archive was maintained in crystal storage at base camp, in the laboratory of Smalls, Victor A., doctoral candidate, Mars Academy of Sciences.
Hummingbird nodded, glad the young man had taken proper care to protect his work. Seconds later, the main comm array had thrown a whisker to the base-camp station, and Hummingbird's search was causing dozens of pale firefly lights to wink on in Smalls's crowded lab. An entire wall of c-storage rippled awake in response to the
On the ship, Hummingbird sat back, eyes closed, breathing steady, waiting.
"Gretchen? Are you awake?" Magdalena bit nervously at a length of metallic support strut, leaving dimpled marks along the black metal. "It's Magdalena, hunt-sister. Are you mating? Cleaning yourself? Answer, please!"
"I'm here," came the muffled reply. The vid showed nothing, only darkness. Impatient, Maggie dialed up the light amp and image interpolate on the channel. This revealed the matte surface of a sleepbag, which then split open to reveal the mussed, tousled head of a very sleepy Anderssen. "What happened?"
"I think…oh, a fine hunt! I think I've found
"Okay." The image of Gretchen rubbed her eyes and a giant hand reached out to adjust the comm band so she could see Magdalena. "Tell me."
"I was trying to find Russovsky's mail – like you asked – and I couldn't. Very strange, but then a message processed through the
Gretchen, wondering why her mouth tasted so foul, managed a "Huh?"
Maggie looked off-screen for a moment, her ears pricked up. "The
Gretchen blinked. "Wait – so she's keeping a record of where she flew during the day?"
"Better," Maggie grinned, and this time she didn't bother to hide her fangs. "She's transmitting all of her
"Ah." Gretchen felt her mind begin to work, sleep-rusty gears ticking over. "But her data doesn't go through a known channel – and nothing that Clarkson would notice. So everything's stored in
The Hesht's ears flicked and a queer, pleased gleam spilled into her eyes. "Not at all. The
"She's sending the data to herself, at home, in her lab." Gretchen made a face. Her tongue tasted strange.
Maggie laughed out loud, a rumbling, crackling cough. "The accounting system here, and on Ctesiphon, always allows a certain amount of synchronization traffic between relays. Each station has to identify itself and make sure messages are passing properly between them. Russovsky's data goes over in the checksum of the synchro packets, or attached to other messages. If anyone pays, it's the Company."
"Fine. Fine." Gretchen didn't really care about the technical details. "The comm array has to get a fix on her transmitter then, right?"
The Hesht nodded. "I have a fix, to the centimeter, of where she set down at sunrise today. She's flying tonight, I suppose, but when she transmits in the morning…"
"Tell Fitzsimmons and Bandao to gear up," Gretchen said, lying back down, the sleepbag helpfully curling up around her shoulders. "They need to be ready to drop shuttle one as soon as you've got a fix and pick her up. Bring her back to the ship. Parker and I will come up in the other shuttle as soon as we can."
Maggie nodded, but Gretchen was asleep and snoring softly before the channel flickered closed.
Hummingbird's eyes opened and he looked expectantly at his display. A moment later there was a chiming sound and a v-pane unfolded with the results of his search. Smalls had been capturing an enormous amount of data – the entire planetary surface in visual, plus air temperature and density scans – for weeks and weeks. Scanning such a volume, looking for the silhouette of an ultralight flying a low altitude, proved far more time consuming than the
A highview shot of a
"No…" Hummingbird flipped through the rest of the results. None of them were useful, though each picture was – with clouds, dust and other interference scrubbed away – a fine picture of a
Smiling at his own naivetГ©, Hummingbird expanded his search criteria to include an aircraft in flight, one where the silhouette changed as the ultralight banked or turned, or the recorded image was only partial due to heavy clouds or sandstorms. The search started again and he began reciting a long memory chant to pass the time.
"Even if a man were poor, lowly," he sang, "even if his mother and his father were the poorest of the poor, his lineage is not considered. Only the matter of his life matters, the purity of his heart, his good and humane heart, his stout -"
Another chime interrupted, which made Hummingbird frown suspiciously. "That's too quick!"
He tapped up the image, expecting to find a sand dune or rocky flat. Instead, the glittering shape of an aircraft wing catching the sun was frozen in the satellite picture. Hummingbird blinked in surprise, then zoomed the image. And again. At first the image was blurry, barely the shadow of an angular shape against a field of shattered black lava, then the display panel kicked in and the view sharpened. The
"Show me the rest," he muttered, dialing forward. Far below, in Smalls's lab, one particular c-storage lattice woke to life, reeling off snapshots of the planetary surface taken weeks before. On Hummingbird's panel, a jerky series of images spun past. But the mysterious shuttle was already gone. He backed up, frame by frame, then realized with disgust that Smalls's satellites were only shooting an image every half hour – more than enough time to track a storm, but not swift enough to capture more than an instant of a shuttle's swift passage through the atmosphere.
"Where did you go?" Hummingbird began composing a more detailed search. At the same time he kicked the one image to the
"A
The destruction of the ancient Kingdom of Swedish-Russia on Anбhuac in the previous century had not prevented tens of thousands of Swedes and Russians from leaving the homeworld for the colonies. Indeed, strict Imperial control of their home provinces had probably precipitated the exodus into the outer worlds. Entire companies – some once no more than Swedish governmental departments – had moved offworld as well. Two cold, desolate worlds – yet still habitable – orbiting Kiruna Prime were the center of a thriving manufacturing and shipbuilding industry.
No one, particularly not the Voice of the Mirror, could say the Kirunan companies engaged in treacherous acts. Such an event would have precipitated the destruction of both the colonies and their orbital habitats. Despite this – despite a scrupulous and timely payment of taxes and every outward sign of loyal service to the Empire – far too many Kirunan-built spacecraft found their way into the hands of pirates, rogue miners, Communards, and insurrectionists of all kinds.
"Hummingbird to the
The
Hadeishi nodded sharply to Hummingbird's image and closed the channel. He swung his command chair to the threat-well at the center of the bridge, a speculative expression on his face.
Immediately, even as the captain's words faded from the air, the exec's slim finger stabbed a double-size glyph on her control panel. A sharp hooting sound rang out through every pressurized space on the light cruiser and every comm flashed an attention signal. Kosho was unable to keep a fierce smile from her face, though the cultured, exact voice issuing from the comm was perfectly devoid of emotion. "All hands to battle stations. All hands to battle stations. Ship will lock down in one hundred eighty seconds. Gravity will be zero in one hundred seconds. All hands…"
Hadeishi felt suddenly awake, his vision clear, hearing acute, his hands filled with an immediate quick energy. His combat display had already split – keyed by the alert – into four sections, one showing the status of his ship, another the immediate space around the
"Mister Hayes," Hadeishi snapped, feeling a cold, invincible calm settle over him. "Status?"
"No threats," the weapons officer replied, his broad face showing no emotion at all.
"No, Hayes-
The exec tucked a curling trail of raven-dark hair behind one ear. She was leaning on her panel, one hand knuckled against the glassite, an antique gold stopwatch in her free hand. She was counting silently. After the briefest moment, she raised her eyes to the captain and said "fifty-eight" while clicking the stopwatch. Hadeishi waited while the lieutenant tapped open the all-hands ship channel. "Ship in lockdown," she announced, and the captain felt a distant rumble through his chair as the hab rings spun to a stop and locked in place, then a hissing clang as the main bridge pressure hatches sealed. At the same moment, his shipsuit stiffened and a warning tone sounded beside his ear.
"Gravity zero," Kosho announced, securing the watch and taking hold of the edge of her display. "Engines hot."
"All systems tracking," Hayes announced at almost the same moment. "Beam nacelles are live, missile racks one through nine are cleared to load. Shall I load out?"
"Rack with flash loads by evens," Hadeishi replied in a crisp voice. "Timing, Mister Hayes, I want timing." He turned slightly to look at his exec again. "Time,
Kosho came to attention, though no one save a shipmate could have told the difference from one moment to the next. "All hands to station in ninety-six seconds,
Hadeishi's chair vibrated again and he knew the missile racks were loading, magazine carrels rotating into place, the slender shapes of
"Admirable," the captain replied, looking to the communications station. "Emissions status, Mister Smith?"
"T-relay offline," the midshipman replied, cheeks flushed, the beat of his heart thudding in the artery at his neck. "Main array in passive. Comm array on the
"Hayes-
The weapons officer suppressed a start – he'd expected to report the even-numbered missile racks loaded and their launch status green – hands moving in a blur across his panel. Hadeishi watched keenly – the request to double-check the light cruiser's emissions status from local civilian sources was unexpected, though they were rarely in position to take direct control of civilian sensor apparatus – and counted the seconds until the
"Civilian sensors are blank," Hayes said, his voice a fraction rushed. "Visual confirm is…is positive. I have outline from
"Interesting." Hadeishi folded his hands in his lap. The civilian ship mounted an entire array of exterior cameras to assist in docking at a station or other orbital facility. Apparently they also included moderately sophisticated pattern-matching soft, which had picked the outline of the
Cocooned in his command chair, Hadeishi could not feel the massive bulk of the
"Five second burn." Kosho's face remained porcelain, her eyes calmly tracking the movement of the ship. "Burn halted."
Hadeishi watched the comp on the
The
Hadeishi nodded. Kosho was already making a note in the log, while Hayes and Smith spoke softly into their throat mikes, adding their own commentary. The captain waited until they were done, then lifted his chin. "Admirably swift," he said. "Lieutenant Kosho, please make a note to schedule an exercise – at a later date – to determine the detection envelope of the civilian cameras. Then double-check with Fleet to see they have the same information. Mister Hayes, you may stand down your missile crews." He glanced over his display again. Everything remained quiet.
"Now there is the matter of this mysterious shuttle. I want a full report by end of watch, which we will discuss over dinner."
Kosho and the others nodded sharply and Hadeishi cancelled alert status himself.
"Hrrmmm…" Magdalena was curled up again, both long arms lapped over her knees, snout resting on plush, close-napped black fur. One of her displays showed the faint traces of the
The Hesht was not pleased with the man's efficiency or the power of his comps. She had watched with entirely open avarice as the Mйxica had unpacked three copper-colored blocks – each one no more than a forepaw wide – from his baggage and set them up in a cluster with the cabin display. She could smell something secret and powerful about them, and her tail lashed slowly from side to side, fur itching with the desire to take hold of them for
At the same time, she was entirely convinced tweaking the tail of this human would be bad luck, for her, for her adoptive pack and for her hunt-sister Gretchen. So she watched impatiently, busying herself with a thorough search of the young skywatcher male's planetary scan archive. Magdalena had convinced herself there was a great deal of information hidden in the c-storage racks down at the observatory base.
She checked the progress of her image scan. The number was far, far too low to satisfy her desire, so a claw dragged an override and the
Hadeishi sat back, letting his steward remove the small dinner bowls from the table. The momentary burst of activity this afternoon had broken an almost imperceptible weight of boredom, though now – with nothing new to engage his attention – he felt the deadening effect of routine stealing up on him again. This pricked his mind to something like angry motion, and he'd spent the period between end of watch and dinner devising a series of sudden training alerts, each one timed to come at the most inappropriate or difficult time.
Standing on station like this – waiting, with nothing in the offing – was particularly trying. Hadeishi prided himself on being a calm man – particularly in the face of tumult or crisis – but amid this stultifying sameness he found himself reaching for something, anything, to enliven the day. Today, particularly after sensing
The steward set down small pale green plates, each one containing a single orange wedge. Hadeishi speared his with a single
"Very well, then," he said, after a decent interval. "What have you found?"
Kosho bowed politely. Like the others, she was officially off-duty, so she tied back the sleeves of her kimono with a deft motion and turned her head toward the captain with a very proper air. Beside her, Hayes moved aside, leaving a section of otherwise blank wall unobstructed.
"As Hummingbird-
The lieutenant commander motioned with the wand again. "We have scanned the snapshots for two-hour periods on either side of the sighting, and there is no evidence of the shuttle in flight. Given the altitude and location of the mining shuttle, we believe it was descending from orbit and then landed before the next set of pictures could be taken."
"And was hidden," Hadeishi commented. "Within thirty minutes."
"We believe so," Kosho said, inclining her head. "The
"I see. Any pirate or wildcatter would be entirely pleased to have one under his control. Was the shuttle's descent within line-of-sight of the
"No, Hadeishi-
"Then our friends knew of the expedition ship and its detection envelope."
Kosho nodded, though the stylus raised to indicate a point. "The miners may
Hadeishi frowned. "How did they hide the shuttle, then? Their first trip should have included a great deal of loitering in atmosphere, looking for someplace suitable to set down. They would have shown up on subsequent satellite images."
"This is true, sir. But what if they already knew where to land?" Kosho's eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. "What if someone had already found a place for them to set down, had left a beacon, one leading them to something of interest?"
Hadeishi's boredom – ephemeral as it was – dropped away like silk crumpling to a courtesan's tatami. "Doctor Russovsky."
"She is the most likely candidate," the lieutenant commander said, slowly. The Fleet had avoided a great deal of trouble by promulgating a policy assuming all citizens, regardless of national affiliation or descent, were innocent as lambs. Treachery and rebellion, of course, were instantly and brutally repressed. Making racial distinctions about reliability…Hadeishi was only too aware of his own failing in this regard. Even Anderssen's name set his teeth on edge.
"On the other hand," Kosho continued in a careful tone, "the other scientists have also made expeditions into the hinterlands. Russovsky's use of an ultralight, however, has allowed her to range far and wide across the northern hemisphere."
"Did the
"Before," Kosho said, cueing up a timeline. "But only by a few days."
"So – she could have found the cylinders, informed her compatriots and then headed back to base with
The lieutenant commander nodded, dark eyes glittering in the light of the overheads. "Yes,
Hadeishi grunted and a sardonic smile creased his face. "You mean,
The Western Badlands, Ephesus III
A burning spot appeared on the eastern horizon; Toniatuh lifting a gleaming limb over the rim of the world, his light gilding the crowns of a great army of stone pinnacles. Wind-carved tufa – fantastically sculpted into corkscrew towers, hollow mushroom-shaped domes, translucent veils and jagged peaks – began to glow yellow-orange as the dawn reached out. Beneath the shining towers, deep ravines and canyons filled with dust and sand twisted through the wilderness. Down below the gimlet eye of the sun, remaining night shone with a quiet, subtle glow. Myriad sparks and gleams hid among the sand, sheltering beneath meters of fine-grained dust.
The sun continued to rise, the pressure of his gaze sending gusts racing through the canyons and moaning between scalloped reeflike towers. With the keening hiss of slowly heating air came a second sound – something foreign to the sere landscape – a humming drone echoing back and forth between cliff and precipice and spire. Light glinted from metal and the broad-winged shape of an ultralight appeared in the eastern sky. A contrail of vapor twisted away behind shining metal and plastic, the
Day continued to broaden, his shining white coat rising to cover the east, driving the last shadows of night deeper and deeper into the ravines and crevices. The ultralight drifted among the towers, trending north and west, wings dipping as the pilot searched for a landing place. The thinning air was robbing the aircraft of lift, making the engine work harder and harder.
The ultralight banked sharply, the engine's droning pitch sliding up in scale, and the
When the sand anchors were set, she climbed a slope of pebbly, red sand to a shallow overhang. A flat stone blackened by carbon scoring made a rest for her cooking kit and a smudged line around the edge of the opening guided her hand in tacking up a mirror-bright sunshade. Then she lay down and closed her eyes, head resting on a tattered woolen blanket.
Below her in the basin, the
"We're not going to be able to set down," Fitzsimmons shouted, trying to make himself heard over the roar of four airbreathing turbines. He hung half out of the starboard side of the shuttle, one hand gripping a stanchion inside the cargo door. Wind howled around him, rushing up from the basin below, in a tornado of flying sand and dust. The
"There's no place else to land," Parker's voice chattered from his earbug. "Can you drop in?"
"Yes," Fitz leaned out, arm stiff. The ground below was obscured by the dust storm, but he'd jumped into worse. "Deckard – let's fly."
The shuttle adjusted, tilting, and Deckard crowded into the cargo door beside Fitz. Both men were kitted out in drop gear – full combat suits, a light loadout of weapons, ammunition and tools. Their descender lines spooled out and their combat visors painted the nearly-invisible wire a virulent green. Fitzsimmons waited for the shuttle's natural roll to top out, then stepped off, monofil zipping through the magnetic clamp-ons in his hand and attached to his belt.
He landed gently, jerking up a half-meter short of the ground and dropping catlike onto the sand. Fitz detached from the line and tucked his hand clamp away in one quick, automatic motion. Deckard was down a second later and both men broke away from the landing point at a run. Fitzsimmons led with his Iztanuma PRK80 riotgun – no sense in packing the combat rifle or even the lighter shipgun, not for a pickup – and sprinted up the slope toward the overhang they'd spotted from the air. Deckard swung to the right, laboring in heavier, softer sand, but he kept up.
Above them, the shuttle's exhaust vents shifted and the aircraft slid sideways, clearing the bowl. The whirlwind of sand gusted down, dropping veils of dust across broken stone.
A moment later, Fitzsimmons brushed aside the shimmering metallic drape covering the overhang entrance and found an older, sandy-haired woman staring up at him with a quizzical expression. "Doctor Russovsky?"
She blinked as if waking from a deep sleep. Fitzsimmons was struck by her lack of surprise or reaction to his appearance – he knew he must seem strange in a dust-streaked combat suit, pointing what was obviously a weapon at her. He glanced around the shallow cave. Her gear was neatly stacked against a sloping wall, the makings of dinner laid out on a stone.
"Ma'am, you'll have to come with me," he said, trying to keep adrenaline-fueled harshness from his voice. "We're going back to the ship, to the
"I have to finish my survey flight," she said in a serious, untroubled voice. "I've another two, three thousand k to cover on this leg."
Fitz jerked his head and the corporal sidled into the overhang, the muzzle of his riotgun centered on the woman's abdomen. "I've got her, Deck. Pack up the gear. It'll all fit into the
Russovsky frowned, lean face furrowing into deep wrinkles around her mouth and nose. "I really don't have time to attend some meeting, young man. I have real work to do."
"I don't like meetings either, ma'am." Fitz guided her down the slope, one hand under her arm – he was surprised at the heavy, solid feeling of her suit and the muscle underneath. For all her frail appearance, he realized she'd have to be pretty tough to fly the gossamer shape of the ultralight halfway across the face of an alien, unknown world. "Hold on to me."
Gathering her against his chest, her boots atop his, Fitz strapped them together with a beltline, then plucked his descender clamp free. The shuttle drifted overhead again, raising another whirling storm of dust and gravel, but the Marine's combat visor picked out the spiraling line of monofil as a writhing lime snake. He snatched the line with the clamp, then secured the end tab to his harness.
"Lift," he shouted into his throat mike, and high above, Bandao leaned out of the cargo door, guiding the winch with one hand. Fitz felt the wire draw tight, clasped the woman to his chest, and then they were soaring aloft with a smooth, effortless motion. Dust and wind roared around them, then Bandao caught Fitzsimmons's shoulder and swung them both into the cargo hold of the shuttle.
Russovsky staggered heavily as Fitz let go, releasing the strap, but Bandao was right there – all quiet efficiency – to take her in hand. The sergeant looked down, seeing Deckard piling gear into the cockpit of the
"Will it fit?" Parker's voice was faint – even with the earbug – over the roar of the engines. "Those wings are pretty big…and hurry, I'm really burning fuel too fast up here."
"The wings retract," Fitz said, stepping off again and hissing down the descender. The sand storm in the bowl was getting worse – an inch-long chunk of obsidian glanced from the armor on his leg, leaving a shining scratch on the ablative mesh. "It'll fit. If we don't blow away…"
"This is strange." Magdalena frowned, the tightly-napped fur over her nose wrinkling up. "Grr'chen, look at her flight path here…"
Anderssen leaned over, one white elbow on the edge of the display panel. Despite the luxury of sleeping in gravity down on the planet, she was glad to be back in the climate-controlled, amazingly clean bridge of the ship. A quick shower between arrival on shuttle two and hurrying onto the bridge to watch the pickup had washed away a layer of planetary dust. She supposed weeks would pass before the usual level of oil, grime and skin flakes built up in the human-occupied sections of the
Maggie zoomed in on a map of the northern hemisphere, with icons showing the Observatory base camp and other pertinent features. "This is the course Russovsky took upon leaving camp during the trip where she found the cylinders." A fire-bright line appeared on the map, swinging north and west from the base in a long jagged arc. The path wandered over barren plains, tumbled mountain ranges and seas of sand. Eventually the indicator circumnavigated the globe, jogged through the Escarpment and returned to base.
"And here's the path of her latest flight." This time a blue line leapt from the Observatory, heading north and west.
"They look the same." Gretchen was nonplussed.
"No," Magdalena said, zooming in the display to show the two lines as a burning purple trail. "They
Sitting in his cabin, door secured, surrounded by a steadily growing maze of comp boxes, display panels and conduits, Green Hummingbird's suspicious expression formed an uncanny likeness to Gretchen's on the bridge. The
"Sergeant Fitzsimmons? This is Hummingbird."
"What did you say, sir?" Fitz turned away from the ultralight, bending his head against the gale of wind and sand. His earbug hissed and sputtered with interference from the blaze of engines howling above and he could barely make out the sharp, commanding voice. "Aye, sir, I'll look in the cave."
Fitz waved Deckard to continue prepping the ultralight for extraction. The Marines had flushed the gas reservoirs in the wings and retracted them. Without their extent, the
"Deck, I'll be right back." Fitzsimmons jogged back up the hill, glad to be out of the immediate blast of wind. His combat suit was impervious to the flying gravel and sand, but he was worried about Ephesian dust seeping into his tools, weapons and even the suit itself. Isoroku had warned him about the unexpectedly corrosive nature of the local microfauna and Fitz didn't want to wake up with his shipsuit disintegrating into sand.
He ducked under the overhang and knelt, letting his camera pan across the rock shelter.
"What now?" He asked in a normal tone of voice. "The cooking stone? Aye, aye."
Fitz knelt by the blackened rock, gloved fingers brushing over the evidence of a heating unit and a meal. Hummingbird's voice was an intermittent whisper. The Marine rubbed a forefinger across the black streaks and was surprised to see the glove come away almost clean.
"This is an old fire," Fitzsimmons commented. "Really old. But who was here before Russovsky landed last night?" He felt a queer chill tickle his spine and his right hand drifted to the butt of the automatic slung at his hip. "Is there someone else out here?"
The
A pressure gauge mounted into the green, then steadied as standard atmosphere was established – at last – in the shuttle bay. Gretchen waited impatiently, one boot tapping against the heavy door. She could see shuttle one resting in its cradle in the bay, windows shining with cabin lights, the forward lock cycling through its own regulatory process. Her door opened first and Gretchen kicked off into a sharp, distinct smell of heated metal, ionized gasses and ozone.
Brushing a tangle of hair out of her eyes, Anderssen clung to the cargo netting around the landing bay while the shuttle lock opened, spitting red dust, to let Bandao help a tired, worn-looking woman in an old-style z-suit and tan-colored poncho across to the passenger airlock.
"Doctor Russovsky?" She put out her hand in greeting. "I'm Gretchen Anderssen, University of New Aberdeen. Very pleased to meet you."
The Russian gave her an odd, exasperated look, hands hanging at her sides. "I'm very busy," Russovsky said. "I have no time for your meetings and weekly updates. I'll turn in a proper report when I'm done with my survey."
Gretchen withdrew her hand and gave Bandao a surprised look. The gunner shook his head slightly and subvocalized on his throat mike.
Anderssen took a moment to look the geologist over. The older woman seemed physically fit. Her face was much as the Company holos had represented – weathered by too much sun and wind, marked by the calloused grooves of goggles and respirator mask, her hair turned to heavy straw – and her suit, though battered and worn, was obviously in good repair. Gretchen was surprised at the state of the woman's boots and the sand-colored poncho – given the effects of the Ephesian dust, they were in excellent shape.
Only her eyes belied a sturdy, no-nonsense appearance. Though as sharp and blue as the holos recorded, they stared coldly past Gretchen, past the wall of the ship, past everything in her immediate vicinity. Anderssen had a strange impression the woman was viciously angry, though nothing else in her demeanor or the line of her body suggested such a thing.
"Take her up to Medical, Magdalena's waiting," Gretchen said to Bandao. The gunner nodded silently and took Russovsky by the arm. The woman allowed herself to be led away.
"That was a stupid thing to do!"
The sound of Parker's voice sharp with anger, real anger, swung Gretchen's head around, eyebrows raised in surprise. She hadn't known the pilot for very long, but he seemed eternally calm. To her further surprise, she found Parker and Fitzsimmons glaring at each other in the shuttle airlock.
"…hang around for hours while you dink about recovering some salvage!"
Fitzsimmons's face grew entirely still as Gretchen approached, the corner of one eye tightening. Parker wasn't bothering to restrain his temper, his voice ringing through the entire shuttle bay.
"We don't leave equipment behind," Fitzsimmons replied in an entirely emotionless voice.
"Well, that's great," Parker snapped, "but we don't have unlimited fuel, like the navy, or some armored shuttle that can eat stone and bounce right back up!"
"What happened?" Gretchen settled on
"Your Marine," Parker said in an acid voice, "decided we should recover the Doc's
"Her ultralight?" Gretchen turned and stared up at Fitzsimmons. "Why? Do we need it?"
The sergeant gave her a look – a considering, not-quite-baleful, not-quite-outraged look. "Fleet does not leave working equipment behind, ma'am. We recovered Doctor Russovsky and her
"We didn't
"Mister Parker." Gretchen managed to chill her voice appreciably and caught the man's eyes with her own. A baleful stare usually reserved for naughty children worked equally well on the pilot, who abruptly closed his mouth. "The cameras and geological sensors on the u-light are Company property, as is the aircraft itself. It is incumbent upon us – as specifically stated in our contracts – to recover any misplaced, lost or stolen Company property with all due speed. Failure to do so will – in some cases – result in the cost of the equipment being deducted from employee salaries, as appropriate."
She paused, watching an expression of disgust spread across Parker's face.
Gretchen turned to the sergeant. "I'm glad no one was killed,
Deckard broke up – a big horse laugh – but neither Parker nor Fitzsimmons did more than stare at Gretchen in disgusted amazement. She didn't wait to see if they renewed their argument – she wanted to be in Medical. Russovsky, and the answer to so many questions, was waiting.
In comparison to the acrid heated-metal and testosterone smell in the shuttle hangar, Medical was quiet, cool and a little dim. The soft overheads had lost their matching pastel wall coverings during the "accident" and the bare metal of the ship's skeleton drank up what little light fell from the panels. Russovsky was sitting on an examining table in the main surgical bay, her pale hair glowing in a shaft of heavy white light. Gretchen paused at the doorway of the nurses' station. The geologist seemed entirely and unnaturally still to her.
"Doctor Russovsky? Victoria Elenova?
This time Russovsky turned to look at her, brow crinkling in puzzlement. For some reason, she seemed tired now, her formerly straight shoulders slumped, her skin a little ashen.
After her first tour on Mars, she'd taken a commercial liner home to New Aberdeen. After sixteen months crawling around on the ice, the thought of her mother's farmstead – of seeing her children, the gray sky pregnant with rain – the thought of domesticity had been overwhelming. A hunger she couldn't quench until she was in her own bed upstairs, listening to real spruce limbs brush against the roof, all three of her children packed in around her like loaves in an oven, so many quilts on top of them all, she could barely breathe. Mars had been bitterly cold.
For two days, she'd been entirely happy – able to smile again, able to feel safe again. Able to walk under an open sky without a respirator mask, without a z-suit chafing against her skin…feeling little hands clutch tight in hers.
On the third day, she'd come down sick. The rest of her vacation was spent shivering in bed, overcome with a succession of illnesses – flu, a cold, a sore throat, pneumonia and a racking cough. For three hundred and twenty days she'd lived and worked under terrible conditions at Polaris, never suffering any kind of sickness. Not so much as a sniffle. Then everything had caught up with her at once.
"I need," the geologist said, staring fixedly at Gretchen, "to get back to work."
"Of course," Anderssen said, nodding. "There are just a few things…were there more of the cylinder-shaped objects where you found the piece of limestone you gave Doctor McCue? Or just the two?"
"If," Russovsky said, in an inflectionless voice, "Clarkson wants me to do something useful, then he should let me do my work. I need to get back in the air."
Gretchen forced herself to remain standing at the edge of the examining table. She looked over to the nurses' station and was greatly heartened to see Bandao and Magdalena watching her with uneasy expressions. "Maggie, can you fire up the diagnostics on this table? Thanks."
"
Gretchen turned back to the geologist, watching her intently, as if the woman were a particularly fragile artifact dredged from the bottom of a deep trench. "Victoria? Do you know where you are?"
Russovsky looked up sharply, her eyes glittering. The strange anger Gretchen had seen in her eyes down in the hangar returned, and now the lean old face was tight with fury. "Here's your geld for the water,
The woman's arm blurred up as if tossing something away. Anderssen tried to jerk herself back, but a cupped hand smashed her head to one side. Gretchen flew into the bulkhead with a crash, and then fell heavily to the deck. Russovsky stood abruptly, her face in shadow as she stepped out of the light over the table. "I'll top up," she said in a conversational voice, turning toward the door. "And be on my way."
"Stop!" Bandao was in the doorway, the flat metallic shape of his automatic gleaming in the dim light. "No farther."
Russovsky stared at him, puzzled, hands hanging limply at her side again.
Gretchen blinked, stunned, then tested her jaw.
There was a long moan of a
Bandao took two steps back, his thumb flipping some kind of switch on the side of his gun. There was an answering
"The microfauna?" Gretchen stood uneasily, swaying slightly. Her medband hissed cold at her wrist. The woman, or the thing which looked so much like a woman, did not react, remaining as still as a statue. "But why…and
"Yess…" Magdalena hissed, her claws skittering across the unfamiliar medical display. "The shapes of things are there – but body temperature is even throughout – there are no fluids – no movement. It's nothing more than a cold copy."
Gretchen's lips parted, her entire attention focused on the marvelous creature poised on the far side of the table. "But she can walk, speak – she remembers bits and pieces of her life… The duplication must be at almost a cellular level!"
"They ate her," Bandao said, his voice tight with fear. The automatic in his hands was steady as a stone itself, but the gunner's face had grown paler by degrees. "They caught her somewhere – maybe she was sleeping and they came at night – and they ate her up, cell by cell. Like she was fossilized all at once."
"Mister Bandao," Gretchen's voice echoed his fear with a harsh tone. Sweat beaded her face. "Lower the gun and get out of the doorway. Maggie, cycle the isolation door closed."
"Sister, you're still in there!" Despite her outcry, a single claw stabbed the emergency isolation glyph and Bandao had to skip back to avoid being caught in the swift rush of the glass-and-steel door. A dull
"I was out at night, in the dig." Gretchen said, circling the immobile Russovsky and climbing onto the examining table. "The ground is alive, you know, filled with tiny life… Sinclair has video of them reproducing, expanding, building their geometric hives. Am I infected?"
"What?" Magdalena stared through the heavy isolation glass. "What are you talking about?"
Bandao stepped to her side, quick brown eyes sweeping across the medical display. "I can't tell," he muttered. "It's been too long since I used one of these… Wait, Magdalena, load up her medical record from Company files. Then we can compare." The gunner looked up, mouth tight. "What about the scientists from base camp?"
"Oh, crap!" Gretchen stiffened, then tapped her comm. "Parker, where are you? The bridge? No, I'm not mad at you anymore – listen to me! Seal the ship, we need pressure lock between each ring
In his dim cocoon of glowing displays and quietly chuckling comps, Hummingbird reacted immediately to the events in the Medical bay. His fingers slashed across the main input panel. There was a questioning chirp. "Four Jaguar," he said in a relaxed, unaffected voice. "Four Jaguar."
A tiny image of an outraged Parker jumped in one corner of the secondary panel. Hummingbird ignored him as well, lips tight, his eyes fixed on the v-feed from Medical. A preset routine spun through the civilian ship – even as the two Marines herded a gaggle of frightened, outraged scientists into the hab ring – closing hatches and ventilation ducts, sealing airlocks, isolating each section of the ship with brisk, invisible efficiency. Another preset shifted nearly sixty percent of
The
"We're matching…" Bandao muttered, face screwed up in concentration, his fingers gingerly moving the controls on the medical display. Maggie had a paw tight on his shoulder, the white arc of her claws digging into the padded armor hiding under his jacket. "What does
Gretchen crossed her legs and took a deep breath, head in her hands. Russovsky had not moved. Whatever lived inside her, whatever motivated her to action, to sudden motion, seemed puzzled by the closed door. The distant hooting of alarms, and the way – apparently unnoticed by either Bandao or Maggie – the main door to Medical had sealed itself, apparently without orders, was of more concern. She tapped her comm quietly, but there was no answer. No channel opened, no soft green light indicating the shipside comm band was awake and taking messages.
"…hear me?" Maggie's soft voice echoed in Gretchen's earbug. Anderssen nodded, moving back to the far side of the examination table. "Dai says your readings are okay, but there's some kind of
Gretchen looked down.
"Okay," Gretchen subvoxed, "can you tell what's happened on the ship?"
"I don't know," Maggie hissed. "Something's locked us out of main comp."
Gretchen stared around in mounting panic. The chamber was sealed and now she realized the air vents had sealed up. An ozonelike odor tickled her nose and she backed away from the Russovsky-copy again.
She saw Bandao lean over and speak into Maggie's comm. "Control the examination table, the lights, do an emergency atmosphere dump -"
"I don't want that – hey!"
Russovsky moved, reaching the glassite door, one arm swinging back. Before Bandao or Gretchen could react, the copy smashed a fist into the clear material and there was a resounding
"She's breaking down," Gretchen hissed into her comm. "She's been getting weaker the longer she's been aboard the ship. Bandao – what's her energy field reading?"
"Weaker, but still hot!" The gunner snatched up his automatic from the display.
The copy smashed into the door again, this time with both fists. Metal squealed, glassite splintered violently, sending tiny flakes whirring past Gretchen's head, and the entire door frame creaked. More blue sand scattered the floor and now deep rents split the copy's arms and shoulders.
"Is there radiation shielding?" Gretchen shouted into the comm, scrambling back away from the blue dust winking on the floor. Some of the particles flickered with an inner light. "Cut her off, cut her off!"
Bandao stabbed a series of glyphs on the panel. The copy wrenched at the side of the hatch, grainy fingers digging into the twisted frame. There was a sound of metal tearing, then a deep basso hum welled up, filling the entire room. Secondary panels slashed down from the overhead, cutting off the observation window. One panel, over the hatch, ground down against the buckling frame, then stopped with a whine. Gretchen switched on her hand lamp and was greeted with the sight of the copy turning toward her, shining bluish-gray sand spilling away from massive wounds on its hands, face and arms. Even the z-suit and the poncho were breaking down. The copy lurched blindly toward Gretchen.
"Lort!" She cursed, flinging the hand lamp away. The copy swung, tracking the spinning light, and lunged toward the flare of illumination. Gretchen dodged sideways, heard a crash as the copy slammed into a medical cart, then leapt to the deformed hatch. Bandao was on the other side, kicking at the twisted frame, trying to clear the jam.
Gretchen caught the door frame, then pulled hard, foot braced against the wall. The distended frame squealed, then popped back toward her. With a
There was a sigh behind Gretchen and she jerked out of the doorway. Her boots skidded on gravel and sand, but she managed to catch herself. There was no sign of the copy, only disordered bluish dust everywhere. Even the color was fading, moment by moment, leaving only a dull gray residue on the floor.
"Uhhhh…" Gretchen slumped against the wall, dizzy, her heart racing. "Maggie?"
There was no answer from the comm. Even the blinking light of the local suit-to-suit circuit had gone out.
Hummingbird looked away from the jumbled image on his display panel. A tiny Anderssen had her head between her knees, back to the bulkhead of the medical bay. He tapped open the comm channel to the
"What happened?" Hadeishi had put away his tea and his book, and leaned forward, dark hair – unbound and loose, as he was off duty – framing a thin, concerned face.
The
"She was a cartel agent?" Hadeishi's brown eyes had gone hard and cold.
Hummingbird laughed softly. The so-efficient
"Was anyone killed?" Hadeishi's jaw twitched slightly, which made Hummingbird wonder who the naval officer would worry about on the civilian ship.
"No. Though the shape – some kind of mobile crystalline lattice – has been reduced to its essential components. The immediate danger is past."
Hadeishi nodded and his shoulder shifted a fraction. Hummingbird realized the Fleet officer had prepared his own response, much like the
"There is a possibility of infection," Hummingbird continued. "But I believe Anderssen and the Marines have matters in hand. If not, then we will have to sterilize this ship."
Hadeishi nodded, black eyebrows beetling together. "What about you? We can relocate you in five minutes notice -"
Hummingbird shook his head. "There are more pressing matters than my safety. First among them is the matter of the mining refinery ship. Is it still in the system?"
The captain sat for a long moment considering the matter. "Perhaps. Hayes and Kosho are reviewing the sensor logs, looking for a transit spike – so far they've found none. Our arrival may have caught them by surprise, in which case they are hiding somewhere in the system, waiting for us to leave. Or they may have left before we arrived. We have been making a detailed survey of the system – those logs could be examined for traces of their passage or presence."
"Do it." Hummingbird stared at the Nisei captain for a moment, wondering how much to tell him.
Hadeishi started to speak, then stopped, eyes narrowing. Finally, he said, "By
The
"Without," Hadeishi continued, slowly stroking his beard, "the use of atomics, or antimatter weapons, or even – I venture – anything which might leave a lasting and detectable residue in the system, much less that which might be observed from the surface of Ephesus Three."
"Yes."
The captain straightened in his chair, tugging his tunic straight. He met Hummingbird's eyes with the slightest smile – barely a crease at his eyes, no more than the faintest twitch of his lips. "So the Mirror commands," he said, making a bow in his seat, "so we obey."
A sharp bark of laughter escaped Hummingbird, and he nodded, making a wry smile. A cold thread of fear was trying to wrap around his neck, but he kept such phantoms away by a concentrated effort. He hoped the blue pyramid did not reveal something beyond his power to comprehend, though the bits and pieces of this puzzle were assuming a dreadful shape. "But quietly,
"What about you? To find the whereabouts of this miner – or even to discover if the ship is still in the system – will take us out of orbit, well beyond easy reach if you need retrieval."
Hummingbird suppressed a further laugh, for he was long familiar with the ways of men, and with the Nisei in particular. The captain was not asking about
"Anderssen," Hummingbird said, trading time – which he felt pressing – for politeness, "is taking her own steps, even now. She has a quick wit, in her light-haired way. If she fails, then I will do what must be done. I hope," he added, "to return
Hadeishi made a sharp bow in response and the
"Is there anything you need, before we cut comm and boost out of orbit?" Hadeishi's attention was already far away, calculating angles and fuel usage and a dozen envelopes of detection. Hummingbird shook his head, then made a shallow bow of his own.
"The road is long, crags above, ravines below," the
"But our feet are swift, our eyes eager to see the home hearth," Mitsuharu said, and closed the comm.
 |
Hummingbird rubbed his face, wrinkled fingers bronze in the glow of the comp displays. Fleet and civilian records had no record of a mineral or crystalline lifeform which so deftly replicated a living human being. Too, he was intrigued by the degradation of the copy as time passed. It seemed, to his eye at least, the creature drew its strength from the planet in some undefined way. Travel to the ship, and then isolation behind the radiation barrier, had robbed it of the ability to move and hold shape.
"But what made you?" He wondered aloud, replaying the arrival of Russovsky on the ship at half-speed. "The world below was destroyed so long ago – has such a complex organism had time to flower in this barrenness? Or are you something left over from before – a ghost out of a dead epoch?"
There was a cheerful chirp from one of his sub-panels. Hummingbird looked over, a sudden feeling of unease stealing upon him. The blue pyramid had seen fit to reveal one of its secrets to him. He pulled himself to the display – which sat apart from the others, and was only connected to his comps by a series of cutout buffers – and tapped a convoluted glyph showing a flayed man's face draped over the blackened head of a priest.
A v-pane unfolded and Hummingbird began to read, his dark face barely illuminated by the soft lights playing across the glassite surface. In his eyes, a queer twisting flame burned, reflecting the images dancing before him in the depths of the pyramid.
"Urrrh!" The tip of a metal bar scraped under the ragged edge of the radiation shielding. Maggie twitched her fingers aside – barely avoiding a bad cut – and then squeaked her own makeshift lever into the narrow opening.
"Together," Gretchen shouted, hoping Magdalena and Bandao could hear her. Anderssen bore down with all her weight and the pleated metal groaned. An inch of bright lamplight was revealed and there was an answering grunt from the other side. "Again!"
They'd managed to lift the radiation barrier nearly a foot when the main lights suddenly flicked back on and the medical comp beeped to announce it had reconnected to the rest of the shipside network. Gretchen looked up, feeling the cold breeze of the air circulators on her sweat-streaked face.
"Oh, that feels good…" She stood up, wiping her brow, and stabbed a forefinger at the hatch controls. She was rewarded with a screeching sound, and the broken panel ground up toward the overhead. The radiation panel hissed back as well and she ducked through the opening into the nurses' station. "You two all right?"
Maggie nodded, her face contorted as she queried main comp through the medical display. "We've only got local power and environment back. The main system is still restricted – someone's dropped a shipwide lockout on us."
"Who ordered that?" Gretchen examined a secondary panel controlling the medical bay environment. A thought had occurred to her and she wanted to just check one thing…
"I can guess," Maggie snarled, exposing her incisors. "A cursed carrion bird watching us from the branches of a dead, rotting tree!"
"Who?" Gretchen found the control set she wanted and tapped out a series of commands. A pale violet light flickered on in the examining room. "A bird? Oh – you mean a
The gunner shook his head. He'd been trying to get the lock to override for five minutes – all to no avail. The door out of Medical into the rest of the hab ring was sealed tight. "We're still trapped," he said, running his hand over the metallic surface. "High-ex rounds from this Luger might penetrate."
"Not inside the ship," Gretchen said in a sharp voice. Her whole attention was fixed on the examining room, where the slow pulsing violet glow seemed to etch every surface in sepia tone. "Well, now…"
The
Hadeishi overhanded onto the bridge, tunic straight, uniform jacket entirely neat. Kosho and Hayes were seated at the main navigation station, heads bent over the display. The Marine
"
The bridge was filled with immediate activity; men and women shifting to combat stations, low voices keying comm to the various ship's departments. There were no questions, only a swift response. Hadeishi felt a stab of pride.
Kosho keyed open the all-hands channel, her oval face only showing the faintest hint of exasperation at Hadeishi's abrupt announcement. "All hands, zero-g in five minutes. Acceleration in nine minutes. All hands stand to battle stations."
A warning tone sounded throughout the
"One minute to z-g," Kosho announced, finally sitting down and letting the arms of her shockchair fold around her. There was a flurry of movement and a tousled-headed midshipman Smith slid into his own station, fingers working busily to seal his jacket. Hayes looked back to the captain from his panel.
"Satellites are ready to release – shall I force orbital decay?"
Hadeishi nodded, his stylus sketching a trajectory on his main panel. "A lengthy descent, Mister Hayes. I want no debris to reach the ground. Work crews?"
"All aboard," Kosho replied, listening to the boat officer on her earbug. "Hyperdrive has spun down. Skin mesh is active, comm arrays withdrawn, active tracking cold. We are on passive detection only."
"Sublight engines at low power, Mister Hayes. Here is your plot." The captain flicked a glyph with his stylus and the motion plot appeared in the threat-well. Hadeishi felt a tug of disappointment – Ephesus Three had no moon, which would have made the
"One minute to boost." Kosho began to count seconds.
Hadeishi felt the engines come up as a faint, thready vibration in the panel under his hand. Acceleration tugged at his sleeve, but in the tight embrace of the shockchair he barely noticed.
The
"Time?" Mitsuharu looked to Kosho with interest. The exec flushed, one slim hand diving into the pocket of her duty jacket, then looked guiltily to the clocks on her command panel.
"Seven minutes," she said. Hadeishi thought he could see a faint blush on her cheeks.
"Excellent."
After thirty minutes of acceleration gentle enough to win
Hadeishi returned to his cabin, where the steward had cleaned up his abandoned tea and put away the usual litter of books and 3v readers which accumulated around the captain's desk and workstation. Ship's night had already come, the dinner hour passed and a fresh off-duty uniform was laid out for him. Hadeishi took a moment to strip down and shower. After his allotted six minutes, he combed out his hair – grimacing at the threads of white beginning to appear among the oily black – and tied back a heavy queue behind his head. Kosho might boast a longer fall of raven hair, but Hadeishi thought he could present himself at court, if the need arose.
When he returned to the bridge, Kosho and Hayes – who had obviously not had the luxury of a shower – were waiting on either side of the threat-well, the softly glowing holospace crowded with indicators, icons and velocity markers. Hadeishi paused in the entryway and spoke softly into his comm. "Kusaru-
There was barely a grunt in answer from his steward, but Hadeishi knew the old man would see to the matter immediately.
"So," he said, bringing himself to a halt by grasping the rail girdling the threat-well. "How do we find this miner? Or has he left, even before we begin our search?"
A lesser being than the lieutenant commander would have given Hadeishi an open glare, he was sure, but the young
"This is a compressed display of the Ephesian system," she said. "This gray section is the asteroid belt occupying the orbits between Three and the distant, irregular orbit of Four. We acquired the navigational scans made by both the original Imperial probe and by the
Kosho made a sharp motion with her stylus and most of the objects in the well vanished.
"This is the condensed version of the
The stylus indicated the arc of winking points.
"Something has moved through this cloud of asteroids, altering spins, altering orbits, producing a faint – but identifiable – trail. We believe this was left by the
Hadeishi raised an eyebrow. Kosho's eyes glittered, though she remained outwardly calm.
"We have gravity scans from the moment the
"And now?" Hadeishi had been watching Hayes's face grow longer and longer. "Wouldn't the miners have been monitoring the
"I don't think they did." Kosho glanced sideways at Hayes.
Kosho's wand sketched a box in the air, describing a fat volume of space between the red disc of Ephesus and the gray scattering of the belt.
"So at event plus five, they could have met – somewhere in this volume – and made gradient to hyperspace. Now – a
"Hayes-
"
Kosho made a dismissive motion with her stylus. "We're a fraction the mass of a
Hadeishi raised a hand. Kusaru appeared silently with the tea and miso. Both of the junior officers took the light meal with grateful bows, though only Hayes drank from his z-g tight cup.
"I understand," Mitsuharu said. "Is there a swift way to tell if the refinery ship is still here?"
Kosho nodded sharply. "Yes." Her stylus stabbed at the last winking point. "We creep in here and check the area of disturbance – if he's slagged out a rock, we'll be able to get a reading on his drive exhaust and be able to tell how long ago he was working." A flicker of hungry pride flashed across her composed oval face. "To the hour and the minute."
Mitsuharu nodded, privately calculating their course and time to intercept. "Hayes-
The
The main hatch into the Medical bay opened suddenly, sliding into the overhead with a soft
"Over against the wall," the Marine said, his voice a buzz through the suit. Bandao moved back, automatic held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The Marine crabbed into the room and was immediately followed by another, taller, man also in matte-black combat armor. "Just lay the gun down on the deck."
Gretchen rose, spreading her hands wide to show they were empty. A heated sense of outrage was warring with the urge to laugh aloud at the insectlike appearance of the soldiers, and she managed to remain composed. The two Marines surveyed the room, then relaxed fractionally.
"Clear," the taller one – Fitzsimmons, Gretchen guessed – said, his voice almost unrecognizable through the faceplate of his suit. Then she stiffened as his rifle swung toward her. From this vantage, the weapon seemed very large. "Doctor Anderssen, please leave the examining room and stand over here by Bandao-
Almost tiptoeing, she ducked through the damaged doorway and moved to join Bandao – who had adopted a very calm expression – and Magdalena, who was emitting a near-subsonic growl which raised the hackles on the back of Gretchen's neck. Worried, Anderssen took hold of the Hesht's paw to restrain her.
The lean, wrinkled shape of Hummingbird stepped into the room. His high forehead gleamed like polished mahogany in the overheads and his dark eyes swept across the three of them to settle on the debris in the medical bay.
Without speaking, the Mйxica judge went to the adjoining room and knelt to examine the deck. The Marines said nothing, one of them covering the
Hummingbird moved around in the examining room and Gretchen couldn't really see what he was doing but there was a strange muttering sound, and the man seemed to go back and forth, sometimes turning this way and that, making a slow, convoluted circuit around the long table. At length he returned to the doorway and motioned for the nearest Marine to hand him a small black bag. Hummingbird took out a small electrostatic vacuum and a specimen container.
He returned to the room and resumed moving slowly around the table. Again, Gretchen thought she heard a peculiar sound, but it was so faint and the acoustics in the two rooms so poor, she couldn't make out what he might be saying. Neither Marine showed any reaction, and even Magdalena was starting to settle down.
Eventually, Hummingbird returned to the nurses' station and stowed a newly-heavy specimen container in the carryall. The bag closed with a heavy
"The dust is inactive," Hummingbird said, looking up, his eyes dark as flint. "What did you do?"
Gretchen took a half step forward and felt both Bandao and Magdalena tense behind her. "I think the organism started to die the moment Parker's shuttle left the Ephesian atmosphere. When the radiation shielding dropped, it just came…apart. But five minutes of high-UV flooding the chamber seems to have stopped all remaining molecular activity."
The Mйxica nodded, glancing at the control panel for the examining room. "Like the spores infesting the shuttle engines. You think they are a related species?"
Gretchen felt a certain familiar hollowness in her gut.
"All current Ephesian life?" Hummingbird's tone grew sharp, as if he already knew her answer. "Since the destruction of the surface?"
Gretchen's eyes narrowed and she felt a subtle tension tighten in the old Mйxica.
"Yes…" Hummingbird seemed suddenly older, the brief flicker of interest and tension ebbing away. He visibly slumped. "Everything made new, green shoots rising from desolation. You did well to destroy what remained, no matter how inert it seemed."
Gretchen nodded, and fought to keep from looking down at her boots.
"I have sent the
Fitzsimmons cracked his visor and pulled off his helmet. Gretchen noticed the Marine's hair had become a tangled, dark mass and had to stifle an amused smile. "Yes, sir. How many days' fuel and food?"
"As much as will fit," Hummingbird said wryly. His composure had returned, the brief appearance of fatigue falling away. "You will also need to rig for a high-altitude aerial insertion – I believe the
Fitzsimmons nodded sharply and motioned with his head for Deckard to leave the room. The other Marine backed out, lowering his shipgun, and Fitzsimmons followed. Hummingbird nodded to Gretchen and the others, and then picked up the bag.
"What are you doing?" Gretchen said in a disbelieving tone.
"That is my business," he said, giving her a sharp look. "But your project here is at an end. There will be no further flights to the planetary surface and Mister Parker should prepare this ship to make the jump back to Ctesiphon Station."
 |
Parker, seated on the bridge of the
"I am," Hummingbird said in an entirely reasonable voice. "These
"Damn right I'm a concern!" Parker fumbled a tabac out of his vest pocket and jammed it, unlit, into the corner of his mouth. "You'd better explain to me why I have to make an unpowered, ballistic skip approach to the upper atmosphere of Ephesus – without active instruments – and then let you bail out the back of the shuttle – with the cargo doors open in a six hundred-k slipstream."
The pilot squinted at the Mйxica, then lit his tabac with a sharp snap on the stubble underneath his chin. "Fitzsimmons there could shoot you just as dead, right now, without risking anyone's hide with such a reckless stunt."
Hummingbird looked consideringly at the Marine, who shook his head in answer to an unasked – but apparently understood – question. "Sir, our other pilot's Fuentes," the Marine said, "and he's not as steady on the stick as Parker. Neither Deckard nor I are qualified on a
The Mйxica turned back to the pilot, his eyes flitting across Gretchen – who was holding position with her hand on the back of the pilot's chair – without a pause. "Parker-
"But…no sensors? An unpowered drop into atmosphere? That's -"
"Necessary, Parker-
Gretchen heard a stone certainty in the man's words and felt a chill wash over her.
In all the busy confusion since her return from the surface, she hadn't had a chance to resume her translation work on the embedded slab. Thinking of it now, of the secrets which must lie concealed within, she felt a painful hunger wake.
"More than this," Hummingbird said coldly, interrupting Gretchen's train of thought. "I will not explain. You will obey without question or dispute. In this way, you may yet live. Now Parker-
Gretchen stirred, drawing the Mйxica's attention. "Hummingbird-
"Those things," Hummingbird said with a steely lightness in his voice, "will be taken care of. And in the meantime – no scans, no active sensors on the ship, no experiments, no communications traffic. Nothing."
Gretchen started to speak again, but the
"We are mice," he said sharply, "creeping in a field of maize. We must step gently, or the stalks will rustle."
The
The pitch of the vibration humming through the deck and walls shifted and Susan Kosho looked up from her v-panel, head cocked to one side. "We've reached safe distance," she said, turning her attention back to the schematics on her display. With their gravity signature pared down to the absolute minimum by shutting off the g-decking, the
Hayes nodded absently, chewing on a stylus, pale blue eyes sunken in dark hollows. Susan pushed a cup of tea toward him, letting the sealed container slide across the worktable in the senior officer's mess. "You should drink that – you need to eat."
"Yes, mother," he replied, still paging slowly through the schematic. He set the cup aside. "This thing is a monster. Look at the shielding…and these mining beam rigs look like a Mark Ninety-Six proton cannon refitted for a civilian power plant."
Susan nodded, then took a long sip from her own cup. The tea was very strong and thick with honey. She was certain the steward had added stimulants and some kind of vitamin supplement.
"Don't fool yourself," Susan said aloud, tapping a section of the
"Wonderful," Hayes grumbled, finally putting down the pad. He retrieved his tea, which had slid back along the table toward the rear bulkhead. Grimacing at the bitter/honey taste, he downed the whole thing in one gulp. "So let's consider – she's surrounded by ore carrels which – if they're full,
Susan nodded, finding a page she recalled from the Seeking Eye – Fleet Intelligence – report. "Pursuant to the Treaty of Rostov," she read, "the
"Sister bless!" Hayes tabbed to the same page. "They didn't leave the original sensor net and ECM intact, did they?"
Susan pursed her lips and pointed with her stylus at another section of the report. "Navigating in an asteroid belt, or an Oort cloud, is a tricky business. This
Hayes leaned back against the bulkhead, his broad face looking tired and pudgy. "Easy enough to replace from the black market – if the originals were ever actually removed in the first place."
"Or to upgrade," Susan said quietly. "K-schlacht hulls are over a hundred years old. Even a modern civilian rig would be superior in head-to-head with the old Royal Navy gear. And these ships are straight out of the Norsktrad yard at Kiruna – which means they have the very latest comp and scan on board."
Hayes rubbed his face and made a groaning sound. Kosho wanted to laugh derisively, but she felt a certain sisterly affection for the senior lieutenant. He was quick on his board, and quite adept at handling dozens of incoming threats and targets in the thick of the action – but he hadn't quite the taste for the hunt a commanding officer really needed.
"So," she said, in a brisk voice, "how do we kill this thing?"
Hayes stared at her, then leaned his chin on clasped hands. "Right. Kill it…well, the firing aperture of those mining beams is restricted – they can't have full traverse with the ore carrels in the way – so there are blind spots if we can get a target lock and proper orientation."
"Good." Susan laid down her comp pad and fixed him with her full attention. "And?"
"And…they probably don't have any missile capacity, unless they're hiding some kind of pods in the carrels – which they could be! But that wouldn't pass muster anywhere they docked – and they
"Yes, they did." Susan rolled her stylus between middle finger and thumb. "The ship's power-to-mass ratio is also against them – they will have a hard time outmaneuvering us, and a harder time hiding from us if they do move."
"Yeah." Hayes made a face. "So we have to maneuver for position, get into one of their blinds and just hammer them, knock out engines, break through the armor… Could be messy."
"No, we can't be messy," Susan said, flipping the stylus deftly in her hand so the sharp point pointed down at the table. "We must be exact -" she made a sharp stabbing motion with the writing tool "- and swift. One blow, thrust past all that armor will -"
"- not be necessary." Hadeishi's voice was soft from the hatchway. Susan stiffened, aware her hair was unbound, her uniform jacket untabbed at the neck, and she sat up straight. Hayes had also come to attention. The
"What about the
Hadeishi waved him to silence, settling into a chair at the end of the table, hands curling around the warm cup. "If we engage the refinery in any kind of shooting match, we've failed. I am under strict orders to secure the miner without the use of any kind of missile, beam weapon or weapon producing an electromagnetic signature."
He smiled gently at both of them – particularly at Hayes, who was staring gape-mouthed.
"What is the pinnacle of a warrior's skill?" Hadeishi turned to Susan, his mellow brown eyes capturing hers. She felt a chill shock, as if he'd splashed ice water on her face. But her mind was quick, and she remembered both the question and the traditional answer.
"To subdue the enemy without fighting." She frowned in distaste. "You're quoting from -"
Hadeishi raised an eyebrow and finished his tea. "That does not mean," he said quietly as he stood up, "it is not true. Good night."
Kosho watched the
In Geosync Over Ephesus
Pacing was almost impossible with the bridge of the
Anderssen had rarely felt such distaste for another human being. Even the thoughtless racism of her instructors at university had not inspired such a bleak mood.
Gretchen had been annoyed when Hummingbird took the remains of Russovsky away into "Imperial Custody," though her reaction had been mild compared to Sinclair's. The xenobiologist had begged to examine the strange dust, but the Imperial judge had flatly refused. The rest of the scientists were confined to quarters, which greatly reduced the possible range of disputes. Gretchen had been a little smug – she could go where she wished – but all of her good humor had evaporated when she finally made her way down to airlock number three.
Which was empty. The steel cradle remained, but her good field comp, the jury-rigged sensor panel, the
"What does he think is down there?" Gretchen rattled her feet noisily – now in stiff-bottomed shipshoes – against the railing separating the captain's station from the rest of the crew positions. "Leave
Magdalena peered over the top of the navigation panel. Her yellow eyes were bare slits. "What a whiny kitten you are," she declared with a sharp
Gretchen ignored her to stare sullenly at the planet. Most of her hair was twisted into a thick corn-tassel plait. She started to bite at the braid, head cocked to one side. "He must believe something's down there, something that can see us…" She paused, thinking. "No – it can't see us
Magdalena's tufted ears disappeared with a disapproving growl. Parker managed a subdued laugh, but his hands were filled with bundles of conduit. The power leads to the navigator's station were proving difficult to restore. The substandard cables had ended in metallic connectors, which were still embedded in the panel sockets. Sitting flush, without the usual cable run to grasp hold of, Parker was forced to remove them one at a time with a hand tool. He'd already wrecked one panel by shorting the connector with too much pressure.
"Maggie? How did Russovsky communicate with the
A low, ominous growl trailing away into a hissing snarl answered Gretchen's question. Magdalena crawled out of the utility space under the floor, her fur slick with sweat and snarled with bits of wire and the particular brand of sealant grease used by the Imperial Navy. The Hesht shot Anderssen a fierce, quelling look – an effort entirely lost on Gretchen, who was staring fixedly at the main v-pane.
"If I tell you, witless kit, will you be quiet?"
"Sure." Gretchen nodded, though even Magdalena could tell the human woman hadn't heard her. "Do you have a log of her transmissions? Could we find the relays that way? Does
Magdalena swung herself over the comm station – her toolbags and tail drifting behind her – and dug a claw into the back of the captain's chair to anchor herself. Gretchen finally looked at her with something like full attention.
"I think the dust would take care of litter," Maggie said, voice rumbling deep in her throat. "The base at the observatory – that's a problem – or our mystery shuttle – there's another difficulty."
"Why?" Gretchen gave the Hesht a puzzled look, then she grinned. "Oh, do you think the miners will come back? That would spoil our crow's plan to leave no trace!"
Magdalena twitched her ears. "They don't have to come back. I've been running nonstop image searches on Smalls's weather archive." One long arm reached out and tapped a command on the panel. "The mining shuttle didn't leave like everyone expected."
The big view of Ephesus shimmered away and the v-pane displayed a high altitude shot of the planetary surface. Gretchen could recognize the edge of the northern permafrost, as well as the tapering wing of the Escarpment running down to smaller mountains and then – almost at the pole – to nothing but barren, rocky plains. "I don't see -"
"Ow!"
"Watch. Quietly. Learn." Maggie moved a control and the image narrowed, the point of view zooming down from orbit. Mountains, valleys, vast plains of glittering sand flashed past. Suddenly, Gretchen caught sight of a triangular shape flitting across a queer-looking stone plateau. The ground was chopped up into smaller triangles of shadow, making the speeding shuttle almost invisible.
The shuttle was gone from the next picture – a half hour had elapsed – but the pattern of the ground had subtly changed. Gretchen stiffened in her chair. "What was that? What are those lines?"
"Interesting, isn't it?" Maggie's tongue was showing. Gretchen frowned at her. "Look at this," the Hesht said, moving the control again.
Another high-angle shot, but later in the planetary day. The image had been enhanced, but a long blackened gouge was clear, cutting across a rippling line of dunes to an abrupt end. Gretchen squinted as Magdalena zoomed again. The track ended in a welter of shining metal, a mostly recognizable wing canted at a queer angle, the twisted body of a shuttle scored with carbon and the signs of a fierce conflagration.
"The
"Jesu…" Gretchen zoomed again, though now the image was very grainy and large sections showed the gray rippling tone of comp interpolation. "They suck up too much dust?"
"Looks like they got hit." Parker had come up on the other side of the captain's chair. He made a sign against ill luck, face screwed up in a grimace. "That fire damage didn't happen on the crash, not in such a thin atmosphere. Something swatted them down. Maybe some kind of beam weapon."
Maggie's ears twitched again. "I found the crash site last night, after everyone had gone to sleep. Old crow has been searching too. But he's not as good with the comp as this
Parker and Gretchen gave the Hesht a disbelieving look. "How? Smalls's satellites only take pictures every half hour!"
"True enough," Magdalena said, a deep purr beginning in the back of her throat. "But they don't take their pictures all at the same time, and near the poles the fields of view overlap." A claw tapped on the panel and the view of the planet returned, this time with white rectangular grids superimposed. Near the poles, the rectangles overlaid each other in a flurry of lines. "All this lets us see
The claw went
The shuttle arrowed down out of the eastern sky, sweeping across the crisscrossed plateau. The flare of the twin engines was very clear in the vid. The
The vid skipped and they caught only a glimpse of the aircraft as it slammed into the desert floor and skidded wildly across the dunes, spewing debris, chunks of airframe, and engine parts. Then the vid ended, and the vast red disc of Ephesus replaced the grainy images.
"You see?" Magdalena had her brush in her paw and was smoothing out the kinks and twists in her fur. "Sometimes the planet eats more than your boots."
Parker shook his head, then flicked away his spent tabac and immediately lit another. Gretchen sat quietly for a moment, studying the images on the panel. She ran though the video again, her face composed and concentrated. After a moment, she said, "Did you extract more vid of this plateau with the lines?"
"Ya-ha," Magdalena coughed. "The second v-feed in archive – yes, that's the one."
Another series of images flowed past, these taken from weather satellite number eight at a slight angle from the west. Dawn spilled over the eastern horizon and the pattern of lines became apparent, elongated and stretched out, making a cross-hatching pattern. Day progressed and the lines shortened, shifted pattern, essentially vanishing at midday. Then, as the sun sank into the west, lengthened again – this time to the east – and went through a similar set of convolutions.
Gretchen played the vid again, but this time she stopped the feed about an hour after the sun had risen, then zoomed and zoomed again. The comp interpolated busily, refining the image, and then a forest of tall pipelike structures were revealed covering the plateau.
"Scale?" Parker was at her shoulder again, a coil of tabac smoke tangling in her hair and tickling her nose.
"They're four to five meters tall," Gretchen said, brushing invisible smoky gnats away from her nose. "But look…they bend as the sun passes. Not too much; the mineralized sheathing must be stiff to let them grow so high, but enough to follow the sun. Like flowers."
"Pipeflowers." Parker grunted. "What made the flash? Did they?"
Gretchen nodded, hand over her mouth. "Sinclair will have to look at this, but all of the microfauna he's found so far have used a kind of electron cascade as their…their blood, I guess. They store and release energy – the fuel that gives them life – by shedding electrons and storing potentials in segregated structures. And these…stems…must trap sunlight in some kind of photocell to sustain themselves."
Parker scratched the side of his head. "They don't look dark, like a solar array."
"No." Gretchen felt a vague thought rear its head. Something she'd almost grasped before, when she was in the medical bay, or when she was examining the book cylinder. "No, the sun gives life, but too much is deadly. Too much UV, right?" Her fingers drummed on the display. "So they build up a mineralized sheath – like the little creatures I found growing in the pulque can."
Gretchen felt the puzzle shift in her mind, some pieces falling into place and revealing a new orientation and shape for other sets of data. She suddenly felt alive, as if her skin were humming and everything became perfectly clear.
"The pulque can is the key," she said, looking up at Parker. "Because it's
"Okay," Parker said as he stubbed out his tabac. "Then how did all of this develop here? There's no ozone layer to speak of, no heavy atmosphere…the surface is a kill zone for the
Gretchen's expression changed and Parker thought she looked terribly sad.
"Because there were so many of them to begin with," she said in a hollow voice. "Unnumbered billions, covering the world in a terrible killing mist. They must have blotted out the sun, turned the sky dark with their numbers. But of course, there was no one to see them, not by then."
"Huh?" Parker's tabac hung on his lip, sending up a slow, coiling trail of smoke.
"They were the eaters," Gretchen said, grinding a palm heel against her eye. "The First Sun people came to this world and they scattered thousands of cylinders – just like those Russovsky found. The cylinders broke open and the
Parker drew back, an expression half of amazement and half of disgust on his face.
"Then the great machines descended from the sky and the whole mantle of the world was torn away and reshaped in a way which pleased the gods of the First Sun. Lennox thinks their project was interrupted, that they went away in haste and I think she's right. Because they left behind a ruin and some of their expendable tools were still alive. Some of the eaters lived, burrowing into the stone, hiding from the sun which turned the newly shattered surface into the harshest desert imaginable.
"Smalls is puzzled by the levels of oxygen and nitrogen in the current atmosphere. They're much higher than they should be – like there's a chlorophyll reaction working somewhere – and there's really very little CO2." A wan smile tried to intrude on Gretchen's face, but failed. "The descendants of the
Her hand opened, indicating the plateau of pipeflowers. "Some of them have evolved to get their energy from the sun, though even then in only a specialized way. They must…they must have thought the engine flare of the shuttle was a new sun – so bright, so close – but there was too much energy, too fast." Gretchen nodded to the pilot. "What's a beam weapon, but a directed stream of excited particles? That plateau is thirty miles wide, Parker, and there must be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of pipeflowers. And every one of them probably suffered a catastrophic electron cascade all at once."
"Ugly." Parker said after thinking about it for a moment. "Very ugly. Old crow better be careful flying around down there. Could get his tailfeathers singed."
Gretchen smiled broadly at the thought of the Imperial judge plunging in a ball of fire to the desert floor. The mental image was clear and vivid and accompanied by a very satisfying crashing sound.
"
"Yes…" Gretchen suddenly looked thoughtful. She was thinking of Hummingbird and his mysterious errand. "Parker, how much fuel does a
"So," Anderssen announced in a very satisfied tone, "he's not coming back."
Parker stared around in alarm, making a cutting motion at his throat. "Sister save us! Boss, don't talk like that! He's plugged into every surveillance camera on the ship."
The pilot had been working up fuel loads and the speed and range of a
"Maggie?" Gretchen swiveled her head toward the black-furred alien.
The Hesht shook her head, the overhead lights swirling across her work goggles, attention far away. "Crow and the Marines are loading supplies into the fresh
"See?" Gretchen grinned at the pilot. Parker made a face.
"Don't cost anything to be careful," he muttered. "Look – maybe he's expecting a pickup from the
"I suppose." Anderssen's face fell and her grumpy mood returned. In her heart, she knew there was no reason at all for the Imperial
"Sure." Parker settled back in the navigator's chair, his nervous tension draining away as Anderssen's voice became more reasonable. "Our shuttles aren't equipped with any kind of stealth tech, no antiradar alloys and composites…just commercial birds. So if he wants a quiet delivery, then this ballistic skip is an entirely reasonable way to go. Coming back? The
"Hmm. Only if the
"What do you mean?" Parker stubbed out his tabac. "People have been working down at base camp for months."
"Yes, in pressurized buildings and using de-dusting equipment when they come in from the field." Gretchen waved her hand for emphasis. "Plus, the observatory site is in the middle of a bright, well-lit plain – almost flat, a desert even by Ephesian standards – so the population density of the microfauna is very low. I checked the airlocks and storm doors – they're eroding, not quickly, but you can see signs of wear. If the camp was someplace sheltered, in a canyon and in shade part of the day? There'd be nothing but a mineralized sheath left, or even an animate copy, like Russovsky."
Parker's shoulder twitched in reaction. "That's a nice thought."
"Ah-huh." Gretchen looked at Maggie questioningly. The Hesht was still staring into the distance.
The pilot made a coughing sound – a conscious imitation of Magdalena's diesel generator laugh – and shook his head. "Sorry, boss. We lost the navy as soon as they went passive, shut down their hull lights and snuck off into the dark. Those light cruisers are built for snooping around, and the poor lot of matchsticks on this tub won't light them up even if we try."
Parker sighed, tapping a fresh tabac from a dingy plastic box he carried in the front pocket of his work vest. "As to a return date? I don't know. One of Maggie's tapes has Isoroku saying
"I see." Gretchen's expression had grown still. She started to speak, but Magdalena suddenly twitched, making a sharp motion with one hand.
"They've finished," the Hesht said, ears twitching. "Back to work."
Grumbling, Parker hitched up his work belt and swung himself gracefully up and over the ring of command panels. "Mags, I think we need to jimmy up some kind of specialized clamp to back these dead connectors out…"
Gretchen sat quietly, thinking, while the Hesht and the pilot worked in the tight space under the deck, cursing and sweating. After almost an hour, she leaned forward and keyed up the
A sleepbag muffled the sound of snoring, but Gretchen's work goggles were dialed up into light-amp mode and she pushed away from the door frame of Parker's cabin without a pause. She caught the far wall and bumped softly to a halt. With her free hand, she ran the sharp edge of her thumbnail down the sealer strip and a flap fell away, revealing the pilot's sleeping face.
"Breakfast time," she whispered, pinching his earlobe. Parker's eyes flickered open and he blinked in the darkness. Straining against her own exhaustion, Gretchen laid a finger across his lips before he made too much noise. "Quietly, Parker-
The pilot swallowed a curse, fumbled for his work shades, then hissed in disbelief at the hour. "Where -"
"I'll show you," Gretchen said, closing her eyes for a moment.
Parker eeled out of his bag with admirable skill, then started to gather up his work vest, toolbelt and clothing. The fingertips of Gretchen's left hand crept to the medband on her right wrist, and then a blessedly cool sensation began to prick up her arm.
Fifteen minutes later, Parker had a very sour look on his face as they followed a guideline into the rear cargo deck of the number one shuttle. The docking bay was dark, lit only by the faint glow of lights around the airlock. Gretchen drew herself to a halt at the loading master's station, one foot hooked into a step-up to hold her steady. The hold was filled from side to side by the inelegant shape of a cargo pallet squatting atop the shuttle's deployment rack.
"Stand clear," Gretchen said, keying the loading master's panel awake. Frowning, Parker stood aside, keeping feet, hands and head behind a wedge of crosshatched yellow lines on the deck. Anderssen ran her forefinger down a control ribbon, her thumb plastered against an override.
A deep hum filled the air and Parker jerked back from the cargo rails. The enormous pallet slid forward smoothly, tiny winking lights marking the outline of the pod. As the pilot watched in growing alarm, the pallet rumbled past him, then out of the back of the shuttle.
"Wha…" Parker turned to Gretchen, but she was watching the pod with a grim, fixed expression. "Please say Maggie has subverted the surveillance cam -"
"She has," Gretchen muttered, her fingers dancing on the panel. "And Bandao is watching outside, just in case."
Parker felt the air tremble and looked back. A cargo lading arm descended from the roof of the bay, entirely ominous in the darkness, only a suggestion of movement, of long reaching steel claws. Two massive lading braces appeared out of the gloom and slid into matching grooves on either side of the cargo pod. The pilot inched back – he'd seen more than one spaceport worker crushed between a pod and the side of a shuttle or the maneuvering arms. The pallet clanked away from the shuttle deck, then swung away into darkness.
"Here we go," Gretchen said in a strained, tight voice. "Better get behind me."
Parker slid past her, then flinched as a second pod – just as large as the first – emerged from the darkness. His hand tightened on a hold-on bar. "That's not -"
"- on the loading track?" Gretchen's busy fingers had slowed. Now they drifted gently across the control panel. "No. No, it's not."
The new pallet was held by a second pair of loading arms, and Parker knew – as he felt a cold curl of sweat slithering down the back of his neck – the new pod was approaching at a strange angle. He dialed up his work goggles and saw the lading arms from the adjoining number two shuttle cradle were holding the new pallet. "Sister! Boss…there's too much stress on that armature."
"It'll be fine," Gretchen whispered, featherlight fingertips inching the arms towards the bay doors. "Just fine. There's just enough…"
Metal squealed against metal, and the entire shuttle trembled. Parker bit back a shout of fear. Gretchen hissed, then stabbed a forefinger at a "backup" glyph. The pod shivered, there was another grinding sound and the huge rectangular bulk popped back. Parker was immediately into the gap, catching the upper edge of the shuttle cargo door.
"There's no clearance," he said in a strangled voice. "You've torn a sixty centimeter strip right off the edge of the seal." The pilot's upper half was invisible above the four-ton cargo door. "I don't know if it'll close properly now."
Gretchen blinked, then called up a schematic of the shuttle bay on the panel. When she looked up, she was startled to see Parker staring at her. For a moment, she'd forgotten he was there. "We have to get that second pod into this shuttle in no more than…" Gretchen's eyes slid sideways to her chrono, then back to fix on the pilot, "…two hours."
"What happens in two hours?"
"Hummingbird and his Marines will be down here," Anderssen said in a flat voice. "And they'll strap him into the
"What's in the new pod?" Parker asked in a suspicious tone.
"Me." Gretchen's face twisted into a tight simulacra of a smile. "And Russovsky's
"Oh, boss, now wait a minute! That's -"
"What we're going to do." A sharp hand movement cut him off. "Right now. Maggie's not going to be able to fool the surveillance system for much longer, not without leaving tracks all over the onboard environmental system logs."
Parker swallowed, wished he had a tabac, then wiped his mouth. "Okay. Okay. We've got to load up differently – having the number two arm reach across is all crazy. These shuttles are designed to load straight on, right from the back. So…" He stared at the schematic, then shook his head, long thin fingers stabbing tentatively at the display, "…we're gonna hope the
In the darkness of the bay, the number two arm shifted, servomotors whining, and rose up. At the same time, the number one arm slid aside, stabilized and detached from the pod. While Parker sweated below, both sets of arms retracted with a rattling scrape. Both cargo pallets hung suspended in z-g, unsupported and unsecured. The massive lading assemblies swung up and away, changing places in an ill-seen dance, then gently drifted forward to switch pods.
The pilot was sweating rivers, hoping he didn't bump one of the two-ton pods and send it careening across the shuttle bay. With infinite delicacy, the number one arm approached Hummingbird's pallet. The steel tongues caressed the locking grooves, and Parker held his breath, feeling each second drag endlessly as the lading arm's attractor field locked with the magnetic striping along the groove.
Gretchen leaned up against the wall, eyes closed, both arms wrapped around a hold-on. Her mind was whirling with frantic, useless details. Parker's constant stream of muttered commentary seemed to echo in a vast distance, supplemented by soft clangs and squeaks.
The number two cargo pod – gripped securely in the shuttle one lading arm – advanced into the black mouth of the shuttle hold. The rectangular shape clanked to the deck and a series of telltales lit, indicating an acceptable lock with the cargo deck. Shuttle-side motors kicked in with a whine and the pod slid smoothly to the back of the bay.
Fifteen minutes later, the number one pod completed the same maneuver and Parker shut down the cargo lading system with a heartfelt sigh. His watch said forty-five minutes remained before Hummingbird's wake-up. Very close.
Gretchen looked up from the shockchair of the
"Now Parker-
"I never – well, hardly ever – miss, boss." Parker's grin was half-hearted. "What if the
Gretchen shook her head. "I'm sure they'll come, but you be there, too. I don't like heights."
Bandao shook his head at their badinage, placid face as still and composed as ever. Gretchen caught his eyes with a wry look.
"You can't go in my place, Dai. You'll have to keep Parker out of trouble for me."
"Impossible." The little Welshman did not seem concerned. He handed her a heavy package wrapped in olive-drab canvas. "The Company is paying me to protect you, Doctor Anderssen. My contract requires I exercise due diligence. So here – you might need this."
Weighing the package in her hands elicited a metallic clank. "A weapon?"
Bandao shrugged, pale eyes showing no trace of humor. "A Sif-52 shockgun. Very simple to use. Breaks down into four components for ease of transport. Just jack the loading lever, then point and pull the trigger. The ammunition will work even in a low-oxygen atmosphere. There is a manual in the bag. And extra rounds."
"Thank you, Bandao-
Parker and Bandao disappeared from view. A moment later, the hatch cycled shut, leaving her in darkness. Gretchen tried to settle her shoulders comfortably into the shockchair and failed, though she was terribly weary.
The
Hadeishi watched the navigation plot in the threat-well shift, and the light cruiser's glyph swept across an entirely featureless volume of Ephesian space. The
"Main drives, if you please," Hadeishi said, leaning back a fraction in his chair. They were now at sufficient distance from the third planet to risk a larger signature. "And configure the hull for maximum scan."
Muted activity followed, but Hadeishi smiled faintly as he felt the ship shift and tremble as the main power plant spun up. A counter began to run on his main panel, showing the time until he could call on cruising speed, then on maximum combat acceleration.
Kosho turned her head slightly. "G-decking on?"
Hadeishi nodded. He was tired of living in z-g.
A second tremor flowed through the ship and the
"Deploy main sensor array," Hadeishi said, watching the threat-well stir to new life. Countless fresh details were now added to the holo as the hull and the main arrays began to soak up the sea of radiation and information sleeting past the light cruiser. He pointed with his chin. "Situation in orbit over Three?"
Smith perked up, nervously straightening his duty jacket. "I can throw a whisker to the
Hadeishi pursed his lips, considering his options. "Any motion?"
"All quiet at this lag and EM level," Kosho replied, her panel flickering with dozens of sensor feeds. The captain nodded. Without an active scan of near-Ephesian space, they were unlikely to pick up anything which was not in violent, reflective motion.
"Smith-
The young midshipman nodded, his face composed in concentration. Hadeishi watched his panel with interest – one section mirrored the communications officer's display – and was pleased to see the boy had maintained constant targeting coordinates for the main comm array on the archaeology ship as the
"I have a channel," Smith announced a moment later. He struggled manfully to hide his pride. "Engineer Isoroku is on voice-only comm, channel sixty-six."
There was a delay. Smith's comm laser trudged to the distant orbital, then back again.
"…shuttle one is away with
Hadeishi listened with mounting concern as the engineer related the judge's method of arriving on the planetary surface without attracting undue attention. A cold feeling began to well up in his breast, listening to the engineer describe Hummingbird's preparations.
"Speedily," came after a moment's delay. "Shuttle one will return in sixteen hours. We should have main drives operating today. Navigational control systems are also being repaired. In two days we should be able to ease out of orbit."
"Those are your orders?" Hadeishi clasped his hands. "From the judge directly?"
"
"I see." Hadeishi's eyes lingered on the burning red disk of the planet at the edge of the threat-well. "Then you should move ahead with all prudent speed.
The Edge of the Ephesian Atmosphere
Lying in darkness, Gretchen squirmed a little from side to side. The shockfoam in the cockpit of the
Anderssen doubted the Marines riding shotgun with Parker would bother to scan the interior of the cargo bay, but she wasn't going to risk discovery by powering up the
In the darkness, Gretchen tried to sleep. She was terribly tired, her nerves trembling with too many injections of eightgoodhours. The medband had finally stalled, passing some threshold, and refused to give her another jolt. Even requests for a sleep aid had been ignored. Anderssen picked at the lump the metal band made under the rust-colored layer of her suit.
Trying to relax was impossible. Her mind raced, thoughts rushing past in a constant, dizzying stream. Every moment of the mission crowded her mind's eye, each memory sharp and preternaturally distinct. The airlock of the
The Company did not pay her well. She was a junior scientist without a patron in the Company hierarchy. Her postings to Mars and Ugarit had gone reasonably well, but neither dig director had decided to keep her on after the initial assignment. So there'd been no re-up bonuses. Field scientists were expected to maintain their own gear and tools, though each expedition provided food, transport and most necessities. But Ugarit and Mars had eaten up her clothes, tools, comps…she was never going to get rich bouncing from site to site this way. She needed a patron, a permanent posting, some status. Something no clanless
In the darkness, Gretchen bit her lower lip, wishing she had something useful to do.
Junior-grade xenoarchaeologists were supposed to be solitary, clanless, without ties to home, hearth and district. They were not supposed to have three children of
Gretchen gasped, feeling a crushing weight press down on her chest. Heavy emotion welled up, tightening her throat. There was a little boy at home, and two little girls, who deserved better than working on a lumbering crew, or running drag lines on a fishing boat, while age stole their smiling eyes. But her salary didn't go very far – not far enough to get them into a
Now all they had was a marginal farm on the edge of cultivation, a big rambling wood and stone house hiding amid stands of realspruce and fir, a truck which ran more often than not and the flitter.
Gretchen felt the world lurch, the restraining harness biting into her shoulder. Her stomach dropped away and a thundering roar began to penetrate the heavy walls of the cargo pallet.
Comm woke up, tumbled across a dozen channels and then locked onto the sound of Parker's voice – gone icy cold and even, as if he were reading from a script. "Rate six hundred, rate five hundred seventy, rate…"
The scream of air across metal and ceramic drowned him out and Gretchen felt sweat spring out all over her body. She tried to reach the main wing controllers and failed, gloved fingertips failing to answer her mind's command. Cursing, she clenched her hand, mastered control of her arm and then – aiming carefully – mashed down a pair of control switches. A bleat of warning – lost in the shriek of reentry – answered her, but the locked-down wings began to stiffen. She'd need every second she could cheat from time and physics once the pallet blew out of the back of the shuttle.
"Five hundred," Parker's voice cut through the steadily rising howl. "Brace!"
Gretchen ground herself back into the shockfoam, legs stiff against the fire-wall beside the foot pedals. Her eyes screwed shut, though her forebrain knew it wouldn't make any difference…
The
A heavy hand pressed on Gretchen's chest and her fingers cramped on the control stick. The pressure spiked, crushing breath from her lungs and then lifted as quickly as it had come. There were two sharp flashes outside the canopy and the walls of the cargo pod flew away into a suddenly bright abyss. Gretchen felt her gut clench and the curving horizon swung past.
An enormous expanse of ruddy desert filled her field of view, then the horizon swung up like a hammer and she saw the stars glittering in velvet. The roof of the pod blew away, then the remaining walls. Rushing air shrieked through the web of netting holding the
She grayed out, head smashed back into the shockfoam. The horizon jerked from side to side, then stabilized. The parafoil – hundred-meter wingspan barely dragging in the nearly nonexistent atmosphere – and the pod dropped precipitously toward the distant surface of the planet. Panting, Gretchen came around, groping for the stick. In about five seconds she knew…
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