“Of course, Lord Prince.” Kosho closed the comm connection, then stifled a sigh and picked up a stylus to lay in a new plot. “So, down into the black heart of the kuub,” she muttered. “And then out again as quickly as possible.” Grubbing for something to show his beneficent father, some prize to buy back favor. There’s a cold thread of fear in his heart now… and we’ll all likely pay for it. I should not have suggested he’d been sent out here to die.
Holloway and Oc Chac were waiting, faces pensive, when she looked up again.
“Yes, Sho-sa?”
The Mayan made a disgusted face. “And where, kyo, does he expect these message drones to go?”
Once more, Hadeishi was sitting in the darkened bridge, the Wilful ’s day having wound down into the third watch, watching sensor traffic spool past in the holocast. De Molay was seemingly asleep in her chair-she rarely moved now, having given up her cabin to the worst of the wounded-and Tocoztic and a Mirror comm officer who just needed a place to lay her head were snoring on mats on the floor behind the Navigator’s station. The Khaid fleet at the Pinhole was still busy, various scattered ships returning to the main group, and the battleships standing watch were now gathering up and accelerating battle debris into the opening. At this range, Mitsuharu couldn’t follow the details of their mapping process, but he was certain they were making headway.
His hand moved on the controls, rewinding the last thirty-six hours of data, then letting it run forward at sixty-speed over and over again. Where are you, he wondered, keying up the commercial registry one more time. I can feel you’re there, given a fresh coat of paint, or at least a new nameplate…
His earbug fluttered with snatches of Khaiden message traffic as well. Their encryption was spotty, and sometimes they broadcast in the clear-though, to their credit, only on line-of-sight laser when in close proximity-but Mitsuharu had time, and the passive scanners stitched into the hull of the Wilful were very good, just as the old woman had promised. What he heard was mostly unintelligible, but occasionally he made out the names of ships, or Kabil -commanders, or perhaps curses used over and over again.
They are not pleased. That much was very clear. Mitsuharu also gained the impression that an argument was underway between the ship captains-some seemed bent on leaving, the others on wrinkling out the one Imperial ship to escape their trap. A battle-cruiser which, from what he could gather from fragmentary appearances on their long-range scan, had disappeared into the “passage” the Khaid were attempting to reconnoiter. So one of us got away with a working ship-excellent piloting-but now De Molay’s “whipping knives” are shown to have a chink in their armor. And what might lie beyond? That is a powerful draw for the Kabilizar…
Movement in the active holocast caught his eye. Three of the smaller Khaid ships had gotten underway, each building velocity with a steady burn. The corona flare of their engines stood out on his plot-and each seemed to be departing the main group on a different vector. Hadeishi scratched the back of his head, reached for a plastic jug of water someone had left in Command, and then grew very still.
Three drive flares, three ships-but not the same engine signature. His stylus was immediately busy on the console, capturing all three emissions profiles and then routing them into a spectral analysis module the freighter’s comp maintained for finding hydrogen strata in gas giants. There! There she is.
One of the three ships-perhaps a light cruiser from the mass index-was what he was waiting for.
“The Goddess watches over the patient,” Mitsuharu said to himself. His stylus tapped rapidly on the console, setting a new course. He frowned as the nav comp calculated the intercept, as the resulting numbers were not good. This gives us a very poor angle of approach. We need to trim that up.
De Molay opened one eye as the timbre of the Wilful ’s vibration changed, the maneuver drives going into their pre-ignition sequence. “And now?”
“We need to pick up some velocity, Sencho. How high can I push these engines?”
Both of the old woman’s eyes opened. “Are you mad? If you go to maximum burn, the Khaid will pick us up on long-range scan.”
“I know.” Hadeishi offered her a lopsided smile. “I want one of their light cruisers to come looking for us-or at least change their course enough to scan our area.” He paused, thinking. “The absorptive mode will work again, correct? It wasn’t a one-time getaway device?”
“Yes,” De Molay said, sounding wary, “it will work again…”
“And unless a Khaid camera is pointed directly at us as we occlude the star field-which is luckily very sparse here-or move across one of the more excited dust clouds, their sensors won’t pick us up?”
“That is the idea.” An acerbic tone crept into her voice.
Mitsuharu stood up, straightened his battered leather jacket, and gave her a very proper bow. “Then we’ve a great deal of work to do. Thank you, Sencho.”
Several hours later, Hadeishi climbed awkwardly up one of the gangways to the command deck, having trouble adjusting to the restricted field of vision and clumsy weight of his new armor. The bandolier of grenades strapped across his chest and the bulky Yilan -class shipgun over his shoulder banged against him with every movement. Maybe, he thought-a little late- this wasn’t a good idea.
Clomping in his heavy boots, the Nisei made his way onto the bridge and fetched up beside Tocoztic’s station at Navigation. The Thai-i looked up at the sound, about to snarl something rude, and yelped in alarm. Trying to leap backward while snatching out his service sidearm earned the lieutenant a hard collision with the second chair, a bruise, and a seat on the deck.
“Resume your station, Thai-i. I am no Khaid.” Mitsuharu opened the visor of the salvaged combat armor to expose his features. His face seemed a little small inside a helmet designed for the larger Khaidite cranium and jaw, but the foundation of the suit itself was composed of a gel similar to that used by the Fleet, and had sized itself to his frame as best it could. The chitin plates riding on the gelcore were now awkwardly distributed, but he hoped they’d still serve.
Tocoztic recovered himself smartly, climbing up from the floor with a doughty, “ Hai, Chu-sa! ”
“Status of that light cruiser, Thai-i?”
“Still holding course, dead on for the end of our burn, kyo.”
“Hm.” Hadeishi frowned, turning to the holocast to check their vector.
De Molay, working on a thermos of tea, raised an eyebrow at the Nisei officer. “I thought you wanted them to come hunting for you?”
“I want them to come-look-find nothing-and return to their initial patrol pattern.” He tugged a stylus from the holder at the edge of the Navigator’s console and sketched out a trajectory in the air. “Like so. Then, when we overlap course here-roughly-we’ll match velocity for nearly thirteen minutes.”
Mitsuharu looked over at the old woman, his face filled with speculation. “Unless… can your absorptive mode swallow our engine flare as well?”
“No, it cannot!” De Molay sat up, wincing at the pain in her side. “It is a passive system, as you can well guess. It is not a weapon, but a defense.”
Hadeishi laughed, brightening for a moment. “We will make do, Sencho.”
Feeling well enough to stand, the old woman limped over to him and examined the Khaid armor from top to bottom, testing the dark black-and-green fittings and running a fingertip along the tight, blocky lettering on the upper arms. Nodding in approval, she said, “You make a fine raider, Chu-sa Hadeishi. I think you’ve been in the wrong business all along!” Then her face grew more serious. “How many are you taking in with you?”