“ Hai, Chu-sa! ”
Hadeishi felt something tight in his chest release at the long-familiar words: Ah, now my heart is beating again!
The last of the officers and ratings who’d ridden through the Pinhole had crawled off to their bunks by the time Thai-i Goroemon managed to reach Command. Kosho was still in her shockchair, reviewing the telemetry captured by shipnet during their passage, looking for somewhere to hide her battered ship.
“ Chu-sa? Holloway- tzin said you needed me to stand officer of the watch?”
“I do, Thai-i. I am very glad you survived. Can you handle another eight hours awake?”
Goro shrugged, broad shoulders stretching the gel of her z-suit. “Hard to sleep with all the racket, kyo -but we didn’t get hit too hard down in the Backbone. Two magazine conveyors went down due to jams, but nothing punched past into the inner hull where we were.”
The lieutenant rarely stood a Command watch, though she was technically fifth on the roster. Her usual duty station was in the munitions roundhouse controlling the network of high-speed magnetic railways threading between the primary and secondary hulls of the battle-cruiser. The Naniwa ’s main magazines were spaced along the shipcore itself, as far from hostile fire as possible, while a network of secondary-or “ready”-depots served each hard-point, launch-rail, or gun-pit. Managing the Backbone ammunition network was third in complexity among the ship’s systems, behind the engines and shipskin.
“How soon will we be reloaded?” Susan asked, frustrated with herself that she hadn’t already checked in with logistics.
“Another hour, kyo, and we’ll have all the conveyors back in operation,” Goro replied. “ Kikan-cho Hennig’s men have both of the jammed ones torn apart right now. He said there’s some fabrication problem with the pass-along sensors, so they’re getting pulled, hand-tested, and replaced as needed.”
“Better than I expected.” Kosho was pleased. For a ship so fresh from the yards, the Naniwa had experienced very few outright component failures. “What I need you to do, Thai-i, is-”
She turned to the navigational plot shipnet had pieced together from data recorded during their passage. Oddly, the changes made to the navigational interfaces-and to the threatwell and other Command systems-when Anderssen had taken them over, had all reverted to their Fleet-standard configurations. Even the massive rush of topology information which had allowed Susan to navigate through the Pinhole had purged itself. Only second-by-second Command camera images of the threatwell remained, but from them shipnet had reverse-engineered a model of their exit point and the surrounding area.
“-find us a place to lie up while all immediate repairs are completed. We’ve moved into a peculiar area of space-one without charts, and which may obey different physical laws than we’re used to-so I don’t want to rush about until we’ve laid down a tight nav plot. But here”-Kosho indicated a convoluted set of folds in the nearest dust clouds-“is a region free of the Barrier threads, and excited and dense enough we may be masked from passive sensors if someone comes along, banging on the temple-wall with a stick. Drop a remote to watch the Pinhole for us, and then move the Naniwa in there and go to zero-v. The engines need maintenance as well-we’ve taken enough dings, dents, and outright punctures to warrant a thorough inspection.”
“ Hai, kyo.” Goro covered a yawn with her salute and settled herself gingerly in the command chair.
Susan looked around the bridge one last time, saw that Anderssen had already been taken away, nodded to herself, and strode off to find her own cabin.
A monofilament saw shrieked, cutting away at the airlock on a badly battered evac capsule. Two burly engineers, their combat armor awash in a flood of sparks, were sawing away the last of the hinges holding the hatch closed. The portal itself was badly scarred and had been slightly twisted in the framing socket by some massive impact. The evac capsule had fared no better-carbon-scoring had turned nearly the entire surface black and the view ports were milky with tiny fissures. Another crew of engineers were dragging away a couple hundred meters of high-v cargo netting-the net Thai-i Holloway had arranged to snatch up the capsule at speed, while the Naniwa barreled past in the Pinhole-though its landing in boat-bay one had been… rougher… than the navigator intended.
“Clear!” barked the Joto-Heiso bossing the team of engineers. He stepped back, swinging the saw up onto his shoulder. Hot hexacarbon fragments littered the deck, filling the air of the cargo bay with thick spirals of smoke. “Get ’er open.”
The hatch squealed as pry bars dug in around the periphery, then popped free with a ting! Four of the Joto-hei on hand seized hold with magnetic grapples and wrestled the enormously heavy block of battle-steel, hexacarbon, and glassite onto a waiting grav-sled. As soon as the portal was removed, there was movement inside the capsule and two battered-looking Jaguar Knights emerged, shipguns at the ready. The Joto-Heiso stood his ground, unsuccessfully hiding a sneer behind a thick walruslike mustache. “Muddies,” he muttered under his breath to the engineers standing behind him.
“Xochitl- tecuhtzintli, welcome.” Heisocho Von Bayern was waiting for the next man to emerge. Prince Xochitl stamped out, his armor streaked with vomit and stippled with fresh dents. The Mexica lord’s face-his helmet was now canted back-was glacial with fury, his dark eyes flashing dangerously. One of his high, chiseled cheekbones had acquired a dark, purpling bruise. The Diplomatic Service warrant officer bowed appropriately, and then saluted sharply. “ Gensui on deck,” he barked.
A dozen meters back, Socho Juarez and the full remaining complement of marines aboard the battle-cruiser stamped their right feet in unison, presented arms-they’d scrambled to unpack their Macana assault rifles-and then held rigid while the cruiser’s piper wailed through the Imperial March.
Xochitl stared at the welcoming committee, his expression congealing into something very much like icy mud. Nothing about the reception was in the least irregular, though rousting out a piper for the March was generally falling from fashion. Von Bayern offered the Prince a gracious smile, hands clasped behind his back, until the drone of the bagpipes had ceased.
“My lord, I hope you will accept our apologies for detaining you and your crew within your evac capsule during transit. Your physical safety is of tremendous concern to Chu-sa Kosho. And… here are the medics.”
A pair of corpsmen had arrived with orderlies and stretchers. They immediately climbed in through the mangled airlock to help out the men still inside the capsule. The first to emerge was the hulking, seven-foot-high shape of the alien, in its unfamiliar armor. The marines and engineers stiffened, hands going to personal weapons. The creature looked around; head tilted back a little, and then saw the Prince. Xochitl looked back to the warrant officer.
“Take me to the Chu-sa immediately. Quarters for my men can wait. I will not. This one”-he pointed to Sahane-“send to whatever cabin is reserved for me. I will take something else, anything else.”
Von Bayern nodded amiably, apparently unaffected by the fury radiating from the Prince like a furnace draft. “Of course, my lord Prince, our transport is standing by.” He gestured to a nearby grav-sled-a regular cargo carrier which had a pair of bench-seats bolted on and draped with fabric in colors approximating the Imperial eagle crest. Xochitl shook his head, now beyond words, and climbed aboard.
As the grav-sled whined away, one of the corpsmen helped Helsdon out of the capsule, supporting his shoulder. The engineer looked ghastly, but was able to keep his head up as they loaded him onto a stretcher. The Joto-Heiso from the work crew was waiting with a flask, along with Juarez and four of the marines.