The hyperspace coil buried two decks below keened awake. His thumb mashed down-the glyph deformed-then disappeared. The ship spun up to gradient and then-with a shudder and a queasy slide-the Wilful was away as well, racing forward at transluminal speeds.
Vector confirmed, he thought, smiling to himself.
De Molay looked up at him questioningly. “What have you done?” she mouthed.
“A detour,” he whispered. “When one door shuts, another opens.’”
Kikan-shi Helsdon, formerly 2nd Engineer on the IMN DD-217 Calexico, squinted against the glare of a pair of work lights to see if he could help the shipnet specialist crammed down in the cramped bottom of a holotank housing. “Do we need to run in more power?”
The specialist coughed, his face spotted with flecks of data crystal interface cable. The sound echoed tinnily in the confined space. “Modelers always need more power, Engineer. And memory. And room. And… how long before somebody comes down here wanting to see a life-size model of the whole damned kuub?”
The other Mirror technicians in the upper chamber laughed. They were busy laying down conduit and hooking up racks of portable computation engines into the shipnet. The whine of cutting saws echoed from the outer corridor, along with the pang-pang-pang of a nail gun tacking up temporary wall sections.
Helsdon tried to grin. “Maybe we should have looked around when we appropriated this threatwell tank. Who knows what else Logistics threw in when they loaded up?”
“I could use less chatter in here,” one of the other techs muttered, “and more computational help. The volume of this flux data is unbelievable. We’re saturating the storage interface!”
“One moment,” Helsdon replied, wiping his hands clean. “Got a place for me to work?” He crossed to a computer station jammed in next to the pair of double doors leading into the chamber and took a handheld v-pane unit from the Mirror technician.
The sandy-haired engineer had barely sat down on the floor-no chairs were available-and started to drill down into the configuration of the interfaces when three figures appeared, their imposing bulk blocking the entire doorway. They said nothing, but every technician in the room, including Helsdon, turned instinctively towards them.
The Imperial Jaguar Knights entered silently, their armor etched with dozens of black spots overlaid on a mosaic of pale blue and yellow lines. Their helmets, the visors currently opaque, rippled with stylized black and white feathers. Though entirely functional, the Ocelototec Mark Sixteen articulated combat suit contained a simple stealthing technology which allowed the wearer to adjust the surface patterning at will. At the moment, all three Jaguar Knights had their distinctive regimental colors and emblems dialed down-but Helsdon had seen them on military parade in Tenochtitlan itself, and knew they could, with the addition of brilliantly feathered nanomechanical cloaks, shine like the sun itself.
The officer-there were no obvious markings on his armor to indicate this, but Helsdon had a sense of the Knight from the way he carried himself-surveyed the room. The Jaguar’s gaze settled on the engineer, which made Malcolm swallow nervously. Not good; someone has realized I’m the “survivor.”
“The Prince Imperial will speak with you,” the officer declared, his voice underlain by a vocoder-generated growl.
A firm grip helped him to his feet and down the hall. I guess consent isn’t required. Wisely Helsdon made no protest, simply following along where directed. Any instinct to resist had been suppressed by his tremendous weariness. A tubecar put him and his escort at the main shuttle bay, which had previously been the Calexico ’s cargo loading hangar. A mint-new shuttle was standing by, hull glittering with protostellar debris. He got a good look at the crest above the hatchway as he was hustled inside. The Imperial household! They did mean “the Prince.” Saint Ebba the Younger, preserve me from the attention of On High.
The shuttle drifted into a boat-bay on the side of the Tlemitl which could have swallowed the Calexico whole. The descent of the passenger boat to the landing stage seemed almost ludicrous to Helsdon as he watched acres of freshly constructed pressure wall roll past the porthole. Even the seats on the shuttle were so new they squeaked. Professional curiosity drove him to eyeball the curve of the air intakes, and peer out at the flaps and lifting surfaces on the shuttle wing.
Two versions up, at least, from the last of these Tegus models I worked on.
Inside the super-dreadnaught, he was struck by the emptiness of the passages. An SDN usually carried an enormous complement; freighting a Fleet Command staff, whole embassies, trade delegations, and a full regiment of marines. But here-as he and his escorts zipped along on a g-sled-most of the offices, or spaces for shops, were empty.
Only a combat crew aboard, he guessed. At one point they passed a pair of technicians rooting around in a series of access panels in an adjacent hallway. Still doing the fit and finish work. So this heavyweight has been rushed into service.
The sled passed through two checkpoints-both manned by more Jaguar Knights-and finally they found themselves in a tenanted precinct. Officers, technicians, and staff orderlies filled the passages, each moving with the kind of swift direction which implied a task of tremendous importance.
They dismounted in a double-height corridor lined with enormous mural-sized v-panes.
On the left side, as Helsdon hurried past, two towering volcanoes-the doomed lovers Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl-loomed over a vast, bowl-like city drowned in night. But so great was the glow of lights and fires and refineries in the valley that it seemed filled with rivers of molten gold. Beyond the dim outline of the two peaks, the night sky was split by the blazing white-hot descent of an enormous meteor, which would in just moments smash into the plain of Tlaxcallan a hundred kilometers to the east. The streaking fire-trails of thousands of anti-ballistic missiles-launched by the Mexica in a vain hope to destroy the incoming weapon-were frail in comparison.
That Blow-and even Helsdon, raised on a colony world far from the Center knew the story, which was a foundation stone of Imperial mythology-would shatter the neighboring province, triggering massive earthquakes which would level most of Imperial Tenochtitlan, and inspire a new ice age due to the dust thrown into the upper atmosphere. But all of this would not fatally wound the Empire and, indeed, the Mexica reaction to the attack would carry their armies victoriously to every corner of the globe.
Curiously, Helsdon could not-in his half-addled state-recall the name of the adversary who had struck the Blow. Must have been one of the European powers-was it Denmark? I cannot remember.
To the right, the mural panels were dark, showing only intermittent static and a wandering glyph indicating the v-server attached to them had suffered some kind of file corruption problem.
At the end of the hall, a massive, blocky stone gate stood closed. Each door post was formed in the shape of a jaguar standing on its hind legs, paws raised, talons unsheathed. The lintel was formed of a line of squared-off skulls, deep-set eye sockets filled with shadow. As the engineer approached, one of the jaguar heads swiveled towards him-and even after serving in the Fleet for nearly ten years, the sight still raised the hackles on the back of his neck-and the feline eyes burned a deep, lambent yellow for a moment. Both Knights paused, and their firm grip on Helsdon’s shoulders held him in place while they were scanned. Then the gate swung open, stone valves grinding ominously. The Ocelotl officer stepped inside, muttered something, and then gestured for Helsdon to enter.