“You should take us out of here, back into hyperspace-” De Molay was frowning.
“Not while we can rescue some of these men.” Mitsuharu felt strange-alive again, with the v-panes of a starship under his fingers. He felt the hum of the engines through the deck, the tickle of a comm implant snug in his ear canal. But he had a sensation of riding in emptiness, alone on a deserted road, astride a strange horse with no known companions. Where is the chatter of my crew? Where is Susan’s slim, fierce shape at the secondary console? There are only ghosts.
“We’re not equipped to fight, Engineer. This is not an IMN ship of war!”
“I know.” Hadeishi settled himself in the command chair, feeling the cracked leather dig at his skin. Even the shape of the civilian shockchair was odd and unfamiliar. The console was too far away for his taste, and could not be adjusted. There was no threatwell, or even a holotank to give him a working view of the field of battle!
Dishes rattled in the kitchen of the little noodle shop. Musashi was hungry-starved would be a better word, he thought-and was busy shoveling udon into his mouth, feeling the first hot rush of chicken broth like the wind from Nirvana, with a pair of chopsticks. The yakuza, four of them, entered with unusual swiftness, their faces blank as Nogaku masks, and before even he could react, their leader had snatched up his bokuto and hurled the wooden blade away, out into the night-shrouded street.
“This is the one,” the gangster barked, his own katana rasping from a cheap bamboo sheath. His arms bulged with muscle, gorgeously colored tattoos peeking from beneath both kimono sleeves.
Musashi looked up, expressing dumb astonishment and curled his left hand around the bowl of soup. “The one, what?”
“Haiiiii!” The other three yakuza drew their swords with a great flourish, kicking mats and tables aside.
Musashi turned slowly to face them, rising with the bowl in one hand, the chopsticks between his middle fingers in the other. “Pardon?”
But the scanner display was dusted with the signatures of evac-capsules. Mitsuharu lifted his hand towards the screen: “We’re the only chance they have to escape a slow agonizing death, or slavery. We’ll save as many as we can, before we have to run.”
“I gather Command has spoken,” De Molay replied, her expression pinched.
“You bear a simple cross of silver at your breast, Sencho. Would you leave all these travelers abandoned in the dark, prey to our enemies? Where is your charity then?”
The old woman did not reply, her eyes narrowing to tight slits.
Mitsuharu shook his head. “I cannot abandon them, kyo. We go forward.”
“The fool! He should swing back to meet us.”
In her executive ’well, Susan watched the Tlemitl barrel towards the Pinhole, closely followed by a phalanx of Khaid battleships, the entire conglomeration ablaze with the snap of beam-weapons, streaking missiles, and the constant stuttering flare of fusion detonations. The massive radiation signature from the battle was threatening to wash out passive scans and hide the whole affray from view.
“They’re not going to make it,” she hissed to herself. Dragging her attention away from the doomed flagship, Kosho checked in with the repair crew cutting away the door to cabin nine on deck six. A medical team was lifting the body of the Swedish woman and the old nauallis out on stretchers. Susan tapped her earbug, jaw clenched. “Are either of them alive?”
In the v-pane, the gun-i holding a medpack to the old Mexica’s chest nodded, Yes.
Anderssen raised her head feebly, a bronze-colored comp clasped tight to her chest. “Captain, you’ve… got to slow the ship…” She coughed as the medical team loaded the stretcher onto a grav-cart. “The outer surface of the Barrier shifts and moves, billowing like a sail… or a permeable membrane… it’s not stable. All of the Mirror data is outdated, too old to use.”
“Get her to medical,” Kosho snapped, “stabilized and jacked into shipnet with her comp!”
What next? she wondered, turning back to the threatwell. “Pucatli! Get me someone on the flagship-I don’t care who, the kitchen staff supervisor will do!”
Three hundred thousand kilometers ahead, the Tlemitl swerved into the confines of the Pinhole. Susan could see they were following the pathway divined by the Mirror probes. But the newer information the Swedish woman had loaded into the Naniwa ’s nav system clearly showed one of the veils had begun to occlude the opening. The phalanx of Khaid battleships and lighter elements charged in directly behind the crippled dreadnaught and catastrophe ensued.
Kosho couldn’t help but grin ferally as first one and then a dozen of the enemy ships interpenetrated with the invisible Barrier-a rippling string of icons winked out abruptly on her ’well plot. Moments later, the camera views on the side panels studded with the blue-white flare of ships disintegrating. A storm of chatter erupted on a channel Pucatli had picked out of the storm of electromagnetic noise. Susan couldn’t understand the Khaid traffic-the message bursts were encrypted and in a tongue foreign to her-but the cadence of the staticky noise said nothing but panic.
For another minute the Tlemitl dodged and weaved, exercising her maneuver engines to the utmost, following a corkscrew path known only to-and then the dreadnaught brushed against one of the invisible threads. The battle-shields, which were mostly active at that moment, did nothing to prevent nearly a third of the behemoth from being cloven away in one dumbfounding instant.
At this distance, on the cameras, there was nothing to see but a jagged smear of light where the hull rupture was decompressing explosively.
On the Naniwa ’s bridge, however, there was loud confusion. Konev and Holloway, who had access to enhanced telemetry feeds from the battle-cruiser’s sensors, shouted aloud in alarm. Pucatli and the others turned, staring at Kosho in raw, open fear. The threatwell updated, showing the enemy ships in disarray.
“What happened, Chu-sa?” The comm officer ventured. “The Khaid battleships-”
“Are gone,” Susan said steadily. “Holloway- tzin, tracking update please.”
“Ten containment failures, kyo,” the navigator reported, shaken. “Three more badly damaged and losing way. The Khaid battle-group is trying to reverse course. The Tlemitl… she’s… she’s a dead ship, Chu-sa. Battlecast status is flickering in and out, but the last report says she’s lost nearly a quarter of her compartments. Reactors are intact, but her drives are dead. She’s coasting…”
Belching atmosphere and debris, the giant ship spun inexorably into another thread. Aboard the Naniwa, the Command crew watched in horror as another infinitely thin razor dissected the super-dreadnaught, shearing through decks, bulkheads, hapless crewmen… Now they were close enough for the cameras to interpolate, picking out the disintegrating flagship through iridescent streamers of dust.
“Gods,” Konev blurted, his face shining with sweat. “They’re sure to lose containment now!”
We’re alone, Kosho thought, forcing herself to look away. A tight knot was forming in her stomach. The Khaid are as badly shaken as we are-but they still outnumber me by five to one, at least.
Emergency lighting sputtered, flickering on and off in a red-lit haze, along the corridor. Helsdon rotated slowly in midair, disoriented. Then his eyes caught on a doorway swinging past and his mind snapped back into focus. “We’ve lost the g-decking,” he wheezed, suddenly aware that his chest and side were throbbing with pain. “Damage control team, report.”
A chorus of groans and cursing answered him. The engineer tucked in, giving himself a little momentum, and his boots adhered to the nearest surface. Stable, he found himself standing on the wall of the passageway. Debris was loose everywhere, filling the air with clouds of paper, broken bits of furniture, loose shoes-anything which hadn’t been secured when the Tlemitl had suffered an enormous blow.