Chilled and sweating, Gretchen slumped back against the bulkhead. The coffee cup squeaked in her hand. When she looked down, her knuckles were white. Oh. Well. I guess I don’t need Malakar’s singing to bring on this… this… whatever it is.
The peculiar perceptual gestalt which came and went-incited by stress, or by psychotropic drugs, or the presence of another being in a state of extreme agitation-had been absent from her daily existence while she’d toiled away in the basement office on New Aberdeen. The nightly visions or dream-states which caused her to speak aloud in the tongues of ancient Mokuil had been slowly diminishing as time passed and her body recovered from being exposed to the memory-echo of the kalpataru. Malakar’s notebooks were filled with drawings, songs, tales long lost to her people-Gretchen’s troubled sleep had yielded up an unexpected bounty for the old librarian-but even that had been drawing to an end when the Hummingbird had arrived.
Now, with her mind feeling awake for the first time in months, Anderssen licked her lips in unease. Is simply being in the presence of the nauallis enough to fray the veil blinding my perception? On Ephesus he had to give me a pill-a dose of oliohuiqui to part the shadows-but on Jagan all I needed was the presence of the Tree Which Gives What You Desire. And here? There doesn’t seem to be even so much…
The prospect of perceiving the true shape of the world around her, to glimpse the underpinning of men’s purposes, was both troubling and exciting. Now if only I could make it work when I want it to! That would be a bonus. What a tremendous tool. Just seeing the proper pattern of a broken pot would Then, with her mind alert to the present, she heard through the hatchway Hummingbird’s low, sharp voice speaking in an unfamiliar language, though the vowel cadence sounded terribly familiar. Locke’s astonished reaction was like a bucket of ice water.
“You? Pr?ceptor? Impossible!”
Peering through the partially open hatch, Gretchen caught sight of the old Mexica’s face. The nauallis nodded slowly, his arm lifted as though displaying some symbol to the merchanter.
Ah, a pity. Anderssen’s throat felt tight with disappointment. These men were not HKV, not Resistance. A crimson cross on a white field. A bloody spear and some secret language. No crew-women to be found. Just some marginal religious sect fallen prey to the Crow’s blandishments.
Disappointed, she gathered up her things and crawled back to their tiny cabin behind the food recyclers. Lying in the narrow bunk, with barely enough room for her shoulders, much less her feet, the hurt curdled in her breast. The thought that Grandfather’s cause-noble and doomed as it had been-was still secretly alive in the wilderness out beyond the Rim, had lifted a little of the weariness upon her heart. Now the same cold weight settled again, twice as heavy, and she fell into a fitful sleep, troubled by dreams of men’s voices singing beyond a golden doorway, in a lost tongue she ought to understand.
“Transit kick in three-two-one…”
Susan’s stomach flipped, settled, and she swallowed the faint taste of bile. At the pilot’s station, Sho-i Holloway counted down his post-insertion checklist, announcing all systems green; deflectors intact and the ship in proper spatial position. By then, two minutes had passed.
“Status of the squadron?” Susan had already reviewed her own boards, seeing that all three battle-cruisers had kept station after dropping to normal space, but it never hurt to check. Particularly with a piglike Fleet tender along. The Fiske and Eldredge had done well in keeping up so far, but she doubted they had any legs at all if things got hot.
“All present and accounted for,” Holloway replied. “We have three friendly IFF registers. Fleet says they are-” He reviewed a side-pane on his panel, making sure that the battlecast relays had come up, verified the new ships, that they matched registry entries and the Naniwa ’s long-range cameras had confirmed their outlines in the heavy murk. “- Temasek, Corduba, and… no name on the third vessel, but she’s registered as a ‘mobile science platform’-same as ours in the registry, but the silhouette is markedly different.”
That will be the Mirror hard at work. Susan nodded. Then the debris density they’d dropped into registered on her consciousness and she felt mildly ill.
In transluminal space, the physical protostellar matter collecting in the wasteland of the kuub was represented by both a gravity dimple and a quantum-level spore, or nugget, which interacted with the translated quantum-frame state of a ship much as a physical rock would interact-that is, smash into-the physical hull of a ship in realspace. Here, though, where physicality assumed its usual guise of solidity, the swarms of dust particles, or even micrometeoroids and outright boulders or asteroidal fragments, posed an even greater danger to the Naniwa and other ships trying to make realspace headway.
Everything within optical range of the battle-cruiser’s cameras was a thick haze of heavy dust and debris. What dim light filtered through the murk from distant, half-hidden stars was diffuse and red-shifted. It made an appalling sight for a Fleet captain. Even a miner’s scow would find heavy going in this environment.
“Impact rate?” The Naniwa was at very low v as she maneuvered into a parking station a safe distance from the unnamed research station.
“Forty-five percent,” responded the weapons officer. “And we’re nearly dead slow.”
Susan nodded, leaning back in the shockchair. “Holloway, you and Konev work up some velocity metrics for me-how fast can we go, how best to configure the transit deflectors. We need to make headway in this mess. I want something by end of the watch.”
“ Hai, Chu-sa! ” both voices chimed together in near unison.
“And get us a name for that station-something simple.”
Holloway smiled tightly. He’d already queried the Temasek -the lead of the two Survey Service frigates-for the latest news. “They’re calling it the Can, Chu-sa. Very imaginative.”
“That will do.” Kosho considered the threatwell for a moment, trying to map out the local terrain in her mind. This was just the situation-some nasty, unknown patch of space filled with hidden opponents, tangled local politics, and unsteady stellar phenomena-that Hadeishi excelled in. Nothing drains the strength of your opponent, he would say, faster than unknown ground. But if you are alert, even the most treacherous swamp can be your ally, a third arm striking at the enemy.
A message chime on her board interrupted the memory. Susan started to grimace, seeing the Tokiwa ’s mon chopped on the header, but then smiled slightly as the message unspooled.
“ Socho Juarez, I’ll need a shuttle prepped and a guard-party suitable for the squadron staff meeting.”
The marine, never far away by earbug, replied immediately: “ Hai, Chu-sa. We’ll be ready in fifteen minutes, boat-bay three.”
Good, she thought, relieved to finally get a chance to meet her fellow squadron commanders and exchange proper introductions with Chu-sho Xocoyotl. Now we’ll find out what the devil is going on out here.
The staff conference room on the Tokiwa was crowded, hot, and noisy as the last of the squadron commanders found their seats. Chu-sho Xocoyotl’s staff were arrayed along the walls, while everyone else was present at a long oval table which folded up out of the floor. The flag battle-cruiser was an older model than the Naniwa, though still in the Provincial class, and this same room did not exist in the current configuration of Kosho’s ship. If memory served, a suite of Logistics and Supply offices occupied the same internal coordinates.
“Admiral on deck,” barked one of the Tokiwa ’s marine sergeants and everyone stood.
Xocoyotl was of medium height, carrying a bit too much flesh on his bones, and the color of polished mahogany. His high cheekbones caught a gleam from the overheads as he took his place at the head of the table. “Sit,” he growled-his voice was even deeper in person than over stellarcast.