At the entrance to the airlock, he stopped abruptly as the lead guard jammed the other prisoners against the wall without warning. Four Khaiden jetted past, z-suit maneuvering jets spitting exhaust, with two more of their fellows on litters between them. Still keeping his head bowed, Hadeishi smiled tightly. That little gun did some good.
Ahead, the airlock cycled open, sending a gust of damp, hot air into the corridor. The medical party disappeared through without a pause. Mitsuharu weighed his chances, but then the guard behind him was pushing him forward. They passed a cross-corridor leading upship and for the first time Hadeishi caught a glimpse of the command deck. There was a drift of corpses-all of them apparently human-pinned against one wall with a net of sprayfoam. More of the dark-blue-suited Khaiden were busy at the consoles. The doors were pitted with thousands of tiny sparkling blemishes where shipgun flechettes had impacted.
Fierce smugglers in these parts, he thought, seeing a cloud of tiny ruby-colored droplets drifting in the hatchway. Then the momentary vision was gone, and the airlock was cycling around them. Hadeishi tensed, feeling the hot, humid air of a Khaiden ship wash over him.
The Qalak, then, he thought. Into the belly of the carrion bird.
The guard jammed him in the back with the muzzle of a tribarrel, pushing him forward, and as they passed into the dull, redlit space beyond, his earbug cycled frequency-losing contact with the Wilful ’s shipnet-and for just a moment, before an encrypter kicked in, he caught a burst of Khadesh.
“-blood-drinking Maltese! A pestilence upon their-!”
Kosho sat easily in the captain’s chair, one leg crossed over the other, comp control surfaces arrayed to the left to allow an unobstructed view of the engineering stations on her right. Midafternoon watch was nearly half over and there were crewmen at every station. The threatwell forming the center of Command was filled with light-the hard diamonds of the battle-group and a contorted maze of filaments representing the dust clouds they had been passing through for the last three days.
On her central board, the transit shielding status displays were flickering crimson and amber much like the fluttering of hummingbird wings-nearly too swift for the eye to follow. One of the graphics surged into red, and then scarlet, and a soft ding-ding sounded. Susan looked up from the readiness reports filling her displays and frowned, a sharp crease splitting her forehead.
Gravitational densities were fluctuating in an uncomfortable way, causing the protostellar debris to congeal in ever-moving eddies. The Naniwa ’s newly installed deflectors were easily shrugging aside the constant stream of impacts, but she was beginning to worry about the other smaller, older, ships in the convoy. At present the combat elements made a widely dispersed globe around the Fiske, Eldredge, and Hanuman. The squadron was currently arrayed to prevent wake overlap and further damage to the smaller ships following the heavy warships.
Kosho brushed the readiness reports closed with a flick of her wrist, then keyed into battlecast with her stylus.
After a few minutes of considering telemetry from the noncombatants, she tapped her earbug awake and paged Engineering.
“Hennig here, kyo.” The Kikan-cho was a dough-faced Saxon of very conservative mind. Kosho found him refreshingly direct and, like many engineers, disinterested in politics of any kind. Had he shown any flickering of concern for the past glories of Imperial Denmark-of which Saxony had been long part-he would not have found a posting in the Fleet at all.
Which would be a shame, Susan thought, because we are short enough of talented officers as it is.
“Emil,” she said aloud, “how does the shielding on the Fiske or Eldredge compare to ours, in this dust, at our current velocity?”
“Poorly, Chu-sa.” He looked off-pane, and Kosho was heartened to see that the engineer already had the ’cast telemetry on his own monitors. “We’re pegging up to five or six percent capacity-that last bolus deflected from the port shielding at nineteen percent-but Fiske is showing sixty or seventy percent just in the easygoing.”
“You’d agree the densities are increasing, the deeper we go?”
He nodded. “ Kyo, whatever gravitational sources are causing all of this debris to collect are-more or less-dead ahead. The closer we come, the tighter the influx spirals are going to be. Right now, if you plot back to our entry point, you can see we’re cutting across deeper ‘valleys’ in the clouds. The interval between each ridge is growing shorter as well.”
“Sensor efficiency?”
“Declining, Chu-sa.” Hennig smoothed back short-cropped gray hair. “Have you been watching the cycle-rate on the battlecast itself?”
Susan shook her head, no.
“Increasing as well. Tachyon relay times are starting to vary-which indicates we’re getting deep into a gravitational eddy as well-and ’cast timing is starting to slow. Not noticeable to you, or I, kyo -but our ability to supplement the navigational suites of the smaller ships is starting to degrade.”
“And if-when-we’re attacked?”
Hennig showed a set of small, pearl-like teeth. “ Chu-sa, below-decks chatter says the gunnery officer on Mace nearly lit off a sprint missile into the Falchion two watches ago… a distortion interposed between them and he lost ident lock. So it will be interesting.”
“Delightful.” Susan sat back, her face calm and composed. “Thank you, kika-no. ”
Thirty minutes later, after reviewing the incident reports from the rest of the battle-group-or at least those she was privy to-Kosho lifted her chin and caught the duty Comms officer’s eye.
“Pucatli- tzin, I would like to talk to the battle-group commander on the Tokiwa directly, captain’s line.”
The Chu-i stiffened and then immediately began speaking into his throatmike. Kosho stood up, stretched, and took a roundabout of the bridge. This caused a wave of activity to move with her, as the staff checked and rechecked their status displays. When Susan came around to the threatwell, she was standing well away from everyone else. Only Oc Chac had remained on-task with the gunnery control officer, testing the launch control relays for the main missile batteries spaced along the “wing” of the battle-cruiser. Six or seven control modules had already been replaced, having failed their workup.
Now the Mayan’s attention was fixed on her from across Command, and he lifted one eyebrow in question.
Susan shook her head, then tapped her earbug live as Pucatli reported the channel was open, secure, and the admiral on-line. A holocast of the Chu-sho ’s face appeared before her, surrounded by a wedge of informational glyphs. Xocoyotl was a little overweight for a Mexica officer, with hard cheekbones and a northern-or Anasazi-cast to his features and a deep, gravelly bass for a voice. So swift had been their departure that Kosho had yet to actually meet her commanding officer in person.
“Report.”
“ Chu-sho, battle-group ’cast is showing increasing shipskin erosion from the cloud. Naniwa ’s deflectors are fresh from the yards and we’re still failing to make a perfectly clean channel-the smaller ships are doing worse, with an increased risk of equipment failure.”
“Your point, Chu-sa? We are still behind schedule to reach rendezvous. If we slow-”
“Understood, kyo. If I may-our projections show that slowing one-half-or reorienting the battle-group for overlapping coverage-will reduce the chances of losing the Fiske, Eldredge, or Hanuman by almost sixteen percent.”