Susan almost took a step back, hearing the fury in the old man’s voice. “Instruct me, then, Zosen, for I have little time left to waste, not with the admiral-”
“Waste, kyo?” Chac cut her off with a harsh bark. “Waste is the root of my business, and the fullness of your ignorance. Listen!” He stopped abruptly, his anger having passed as quickly as it had come. “Listen, kyo.”
Kosho said nothing, waiting patiently. Grandmother had spent a long time teaching her to grow still, to pause in the instant of action, waiting for balance to emerge from chaos.
“The mind of a warrior must be clear, kyo,” Chac began, “undiluted by fear, unrestricted by disorderly thoughts. If he hurries the throw, his aim ever goes awry. You know this, you are samurai. Your family is noble with a long tradition, a great lineage… Your blindness in this matter is of great concern-both to me, and to your men.
“So listen. There is no mechanism yet devised by man which exceeds the complexity of a ship of war. Our Naniwa is small, as the great ships go, yet she holds within her every kind of system, every kind of compnet, sensor, power plant, engine of destruction we can devise. Her armor may be lighter than a dreadnaught, she may lack so many launch-racks as a carrier-but everything is present in her. A capsulation of all we can build… and she is fragile. A delicate bubble.”
Chac lifted his face to the vast, molten orb hanging over their heads. “Despite all her shielding and armor and bronzed hull, if Naniwa were plunged into the heart of Jupiter-tidal pressures would crush her shell, incinerate her inhabitants, and leave nothing but dust.”
His hand moved, indicating the radiating fins surrounding them, almost invisible against the ebon backdrop of open space. “If the thermocouples fail, we roast inside, broiled by our own waste heat. If Engineering does not balance containment properly, a fusion rupture obliterates us. In battle, the slings, arrows, and stones of the enemy will seek us-and one penetrator through the point-defense leaves us an expanding cloud of superheated plasma. Everywhere, failure is waiting to consume us.
“All this, beside the unforgiving environment of open space… a hideous broil of hard radiation, micrometeoroid swarms, gravitational eddies-you have seen what happens to a ship which loses transit shielding in the run-up to gradient! There is no soft margin upon which to fall, not for us.
“Thus the Zosen crawling through every compartment, access way, and control space on this ship. All of them seeking to find and eliminate as many sources of failure in this machine as they can. Your crew, too, is deep in the work. Preparing to take her out-then the real learning begins! And I am here, Chu-sa, trying to keep you alive with my… superstitions.”
The Mayan leaned close, the faceplate of his helmet almost touching Susan’s.
“What kills more ships, Captain, than pitiless space? More than microscopic black holes, the teeming ships of the Megair or Khaid or Kroomakh? More than solar storms lancing out from the heart of some unseen sun to overwhelm shielding and armor?
“What is my enemy, Chu-sa Kosho?”
Susan tilted her head; her face a quiet, still mask. “Tell me.”
“Your crew, kyo.” His left hand stabbed at the hull beneath their feet. “These men and women toiling inside, all effort concentrated to our safety. They are my enemy, and a cunning, devious one they are, too! More than a match for all fail-safes and interlocks, able to overcome every restraint we put upon them.
Kosho attempted to keep her expression still, but Oc Chac snarled at something in her countenance. “Still, Chu-sa, you do not understand. Listen!
“The Agarwal was a Fleet battleship in the Vishnu -class. A planetary commission financed by the colonies around Maghada Prime. Two thousand, five hundred crew. Lost with all hands off Tau Ceti during her second trials. The wreck was recovered and the Zosen tore the remains of the ship apart, seeking to understand her death.
“This much they found-” he held his thumb and forefinger apart by the smallest fraction. “One of the waste recirculators failed behind a bulkhead, seeping biochemical sludge into the between-hull. Line-sensors reported the initial leak, but the engineering tech investigating the alert did not enter the between-hull. Instead he checked the flow meters on either end of the line, saw they were within variance of each other, and then suppressed the alert.
“The sludge-containing a robust strain of mycelium-seeped through the between-decks, multiplying vigorously. Now it infiltrated the air circulators for a series of sleeping compartments and poisoned the men occupying those quarters. A contamination alert was triggered, but the men didn’t realize they were suffering from mycotoxic infection when they went on shift. A sanitation crew arrived after they had left-and by then it was too late. Two of the uchu were gunnery crewmen and began suffering violent hallucinations at their duty station. Agarwal was destroyed by a sprint missile ignited in the launch-rack by mistake.”
Susan said nothing, waiting for the Mayan to continue. After a long moment, Chac continued: “The technician refused to enter the between-hull because one of his coworkers had suffered a bad injury in the same area during construction. The man had lost his left arm when his z-suit was ruptured by a dislodged stanchion. His z-suit autosealed, of course, but the severed limb was too badly damaged by cyanosis by the time the rest of the work crew got him inside.”
“And what,” Susan asked, now truly curious, “would you have done to prevent this?”
“ Chu-sa, my purpose is to address kaach’al -the things which are broken. To mend them. One of the most curious things to repair is men’s apprehension-their fear of ill-luck. Had I been aboard the Agarwal, then my huitzitzilnahaualli and I would have attended to the compartments where the man was injured. And every crewman aboard would have known of what happened and how any ill-luck was taken away from that place.”
“What?” Kosho could not help herself. “How is this not wild superstition?”
Oc Chac shook his head in dismay.“How is a dwelling haunted, Chu-sa? There is nothing that can be measured, no true apparitions to behold-but you enter and feel a deadly chill, you walk night-drowned hallways and your heart races with quiet panic. What makes this dreadful place so different from your parents’ quiet peaceful garden where your heart finds ease?
“Nothing! Do not delude yourself, kyo, every centimeter of Anahuac is drenched in blood. No meter of the earth has not seen murder, rape, betrayal, theft… if you knew the provenance of every stone in that garden, you would recoil, your mind’s eye filling with the blood of the innocent, your ears with the shrieks of those enslaved or betrayed. There is no difference between the cursed dwelling and the beautiful garden, save that you do not know what has occurred there.
“This is the purpose of the huitzil -to go into these dreadful places, to show himself to all, for his feathered cloak to shine alabaster white, to take upon himself the burden of this ill-luck, these curses, this dreadful karma-before an entire crew, a nation, a planet. And by his sacrifice, to ease so many minds and lighten so many hearts that you can, once more, lift the tool, use the chamber, send the ship of war into the face of the enemy with an unburdened heart.”
He fell silent, and Kosho did not speak. Instead, she stepped away, circling among the radiating fins, her head bowed in thought. When at last her steps led back to the old Mayan, she regarded him with a new appreciation and a faint smile.
“Then you cannot leave the ship until all is done, can you?”
Chac shook his head sharply. “ Chu-sa, you cannot have her for-at least!-another three weeks. Then you can catch up with your admiral! I will not authorize release from the yards until then.”