“We are very close,” she managed to say. Lojtnant Piet, without even a look to Captain Locke, had turned the freighter towards the four-sided diamond. Their speed slowed, now the Moulins was inching along. The exterior floods angled forward, trying to illuminate the blackened surface. The beams played across the portal, but did not even generate a reflection, as though the material were drinking in the light.
Then a point of hard jewel-like radiance appeared at the center of the innermost diamond. A distinct collimating beam stabbed out and washed over the Moulins, causing the forward cameras to polarize, reducing their view to nothing but a scintillating white point. In Anderssen’s equipment rig, the bronze block stopped vibrating and went cold. Gretchen gasped in pain as her perceptual gestalt abruptly collapsed, leaving her blinking owlishly at her console, which had terminated all of the v-panes simultaneously.
Behind her, the Prince stiffened in alarm.
The vision overlay generated by Xochitl’s exo was awash with unknown and indecipherable datagrams and hieroglyphs. Voices were speaking in his mind in a lilting, singsong tongue like calling birds; but though the cadence of the sounds seemed terribly familiar he knew none of the words. Alarmed, he surged upward out of his shockchair. “What the-”
“A Gate opens before you,” said an unexpected voice. A seamed old hand, hard as bog oak, settled on the Prince’s shoulder and forced him back down. The Mexica looked up, astounded to see that Green Hummingbird-now clad in a Fleet z-suit-had slipped quietly into the back of the bridge. The dyspeptic face of the Hjogadim Sahane peered down over his shoulder, red-rimmed eyes staring accusingly at the Prince. The nauallis met Xochitl’s gaze with a serious expression. “I advise you not to enter this structure.”
“You would exhaust God’s patience, sorcerer.” The Prince threw aside the old Nahuatl’s arm and pushed up from his seat. “You do not command me! You serve the Empire and in this place I am-”
“It is my purpose, Tlatocapilli,” Hummingbird interrupted, “to keep humanity from harm-and this place is beyond our skill to use, our power to hold, and our intellect to understand. We must leave before we come to grief. Or worse, bring disaster home with us.”
“You threaten me?” Xochitl bit out the words, struggling to keep his temper.
The Prince’s exo had already summoned Cuauhhuehueh Koris and the marines, who now appeared in the hatchway. The Jaguar Knight ducked inside, shipgun leveled on Hummingbird’s back.
Sahane found himself surrounded by the marines, who were watching the alien warily, but they kept their distance. The Hjo licked his lips, long head darting from side to side.
Hummingbird affected no notice of the activity: “My duty to your father compels me to try and save your life.”
Xochitl drew his sidearm, thumbing off the safety. “Unwise choice, old man. You are utterly-”
“Lining up a new approach vector,” Gretchen’s voice cut in. She had ignored the Prince and the Judge and their spat, even the appearance of Sahane, instead watching the progress of the diamond-hard light which had traversed the hull. Now the radiance flickered out as swiftly as it had appeared, and the Navigator’s panel in front of her woke to life again. Now, however, all of the v-panes and controls were displaying the tight curlicues of the alien hieroglyphics which had come and gone from her vision over the past days.
Landing beacon locked, one of them suggested to her and, nodding in acknowledgment, Anderssen tapped the glyph. The nav system on the freighter kicked in, adjusting their approach. Piet started in alarm-then looked to the captain for guidance-his face tight with distress. Locke shook his head no, the movement barely visible even to Gretchen, who was seated only two meters away. Both men watched her intently and Gretchen suddenly tasted a little of their desire, which matched tone and color with hers.
Let us see what lies beyond, a memory echoed, bringing with it the smell of oiled wood and a perfume she’d last worn as an undergraduate. Beyond the door of the unopened tomb, beyond the rise of the next hill, within unplumbed space, beyond our conception. This is the fever which drives us to create, to innovate, to overcome.
Outside, the mottled black wall had divided into three parts, and each triangle receded from sight. Beyond, in a chamber whose comprehensible size-only a few hundred meters in each dimension-seemed puny and cramped, was the age-etched shape of a landing cradle.
“Entering an active g-field,” Piet reported, taking over the controls. “Docking jets adjusting…”
Hadeishi listened intently to the z-suit radio, his throatmike replaced by a vocoder Cajeme had assembled from the components of an entertainment 3-v scavenged from the main mess deck. As he listened, the eager voice of a Khaiden Kabil Rezei aboard the battleship Sokamak buzzed away into silence.
“Yes, my lord.” Mitsuharu keyed into a v-pane on his display. A second later, the ’coder produced a yipping bark ending in a sibilant growl. To Hadeishi’s poorly trained ear, it sounded like proper Khadesh… “One of the Imperial capsules had a scientist aboard-he sought to barter service-and questioning has revealed a way to detect the Wall-of-Knives. I am bringing him to you now with his instrumentation.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Hadeishi observed the other officers standing watch in Command were keeping their mouths shut, as ordered. They were, however, grinning and signing “victory” to one another. Morale is good, he thought, waiting for a response. As befits those snatched from Mictlantecuhtli ’s dreadful embrace.
The Kader plowed through the dust at a swift pace, transit deflectors up full, shrouding the ship in a cascade of brilliant interference. The Pinhole was now only moments away. The Hayalet -class battleships deployed around the broken hulk of the Imperial research station showed clearly on her sensors.
Five minutes to deceleration burn, Thai-i Inudo keyed to each of the other stations.
Hadeishi bid proper farewell to the hunt-lord, then closed the circuit. I miss Captain De Molay. But she has her ship back, only a little worse for wear. The old woman had not been happy about the mess they’d left behind on the Wilful, but accepted it as the cost of survival. A handful of the walking wounded had been left with her as well, to crew the little freighter.
In their last conversation, on comm between the two ships, she fixed him with a bellicose stare, saying, “If you were my fosterling, I would rap your knuckles sharply, Chu-sa. You play recklessly, risking yourself at every turn-but I cannot fault your consideration for the other children. They are always in your thoughts, and you are always the first to offer them a hand up from the ground. I hope-and I doubt we will meet again-that you will consider that your life may be just as precious, to others.”
The Wilful had slipped away hours before, vanishing into the vastness of the kuub, leaving no trace of its passing which the Kader ’s sensors could detect.
“All stations secure?” Mitsuharu asked on the command channel. A frenzy of confused activity followed amongst the Imperials on the unfamiliar bridge. “Weapons-confirm that guns are cold? Missile racks and penetrator pods are locked down? All hands, brace for combat acceleration.”