Susan’s gaze swept across her console. Though mauled, the battle-cruiser was still game for a fight, but against so many Khaid? Her eyes flicked up, fixing on the long-range sensors. The Pinhole was still abroil with radiation and shattered ships. Their emissions blocked any sign of what lay beyond in the ever thicker dust-clouds. She grimaced, tapping her earbug.
“Medical? Get our Swedish passenger up here-awake- right now! -with all of her possessions.”
Xochitl, the suited creature, and his Ocelomeh arrived at the evac-capsule cluster to find only one pod remaining. The other access-doors showed only empty cradles beyond thick glassite windows. The door to the last capsule was apparently stuck, as a motley collection of officers and ratings was banging away at the hatch with pry bars and other tools cribbed from the nearest damage control closet.
“Is it working?” the Jaguar Knight Cuauhhuehueh demanded, his voice booming on the local circuit.
A pale, sandy-haired man with Engineer’s insignia turned to face the Prince’s party. His light brown eyes registered the unit insignia of the Jaguars and his face grew still. “Yes. The capsule’s intact. The launch rails are clear and the release subsystems are showing green across the board. We just have to get the hatch open.”
Xochitl could see the pod was last in queue on the shared maglev launch tube. A rough ride out of Firearrow ’s guts. And then where?
«Staying mobile and capable of reacting to circumstance improves our chances of survival by several orders of magnitude,» the exo stated, displaying a variety of helpful graphs and comparison metrics on the Prince’s field of view.
Without orders, the Jaguars bulled forward and gestured the sailors away from the hatchway. Two of them-a cook and a midshipman from laundry-started to protest, but the engineer waved his companions back. He was watching Xochitl with a wary expression, his mouth a tight line.
The Prince met his gaze with a level stare. “How many of us will fit?”
The man’s eyes lost focus for an instant, and then he looked down at his hand-comp. “This one holds ten, Great Lord.”
Xochitl’s eyelid twitched. Including his Jaguars, there were twelve people floating in the compartment, most staring at him with suddenly wide eyes. His expression hardened as he considered the larger-than-human-size of his guest with a sidelong glance.
“Three of you must remain behind,” Xochitl declared, his exo whispering details of skills, time in service, and political reliability in one ear. A pistol-model shipgun was already in his hand and leveled on the two cafeteria attendants. They froze. The Prince’s face remained utterly cold as the pistol snapped twice, punching a flechette through each of their suit masks.
Everyone else jerked in surprise, stunned. One of the petty officers cried out, horrified, and jetted away down the corridor. One of the Jaguars raised his shipgun, but Xochitl waved him off. “Let him go-the rest of you, get the hatch open!”
Five minutes later, the Hjo clambered into the capsule, helped by the Cuauhhuehueh. The Prince watched the creature, whose mere existence had caused the loss of two Imperial lives, with barely controlled fury, then followed.
Moments later there was a reverberating bang and the evac capsule accelerated violently down the launch rail.
The Wilful moved stealthily through the debris of battle. Hadeishi had the little freighter’s engines pulsing only intermittently, letting momentum carry them through the wreckage as silently as possible. With only the two of them aboard, he’d isolated all of the compartments save the bridge, medical closet, and the passages connecting them. Everything else was powered down to reduce signature. Though it made no difference to a hunter’s active scan, Mitsuharu had also dialed down the lights on the bridge. He sat at the command station in darkness, his face lit only by the glow of the console and the ruddy gleam of light from the external camera displays.
Bodies, broken equipment, ruptured evac capsules, chunks of decking floated past the Wilful ’s cameras. Where he could, Hadeishi angled the little ship to hide in the emissions shadow of larger sections of blasted hull, or to follow the agitated particle trails of now-dead ships. Where he was forced to cross unbroken “ground,” he moved as swiftly as the Wilful ’s engines would carry them.
“You make a fine mouse hunting in a stubbled field,” De Molay observed, her voice low and quiet, though she could have shouted wildly and none of their putative enemies would have noticed.
“An eye out for owls and foxes all the while, Sencho,” Hadeishi nodded companionably. “You’ve lived on a farm?”
“My grandmother’s. May Our Blessed Lord guard her soul.”
“Ours as well.” Hadeishi put the helm over a point, nav plot revealing a cluster of wreckage ahead. A light tap on the engine control shifted their heading and a long cylindrical panel drifted past on the dorsal cameras. The structure-seventy or eighty meters long-had been ravaged by a plasma detonation. The battle-steel was puckered and wrinkled. In the coppery glare, some fragments of warnings and informational inscriptions remained on the outer surface.
“Imperial?” De Molay asked softly.
“Yes. A reaction mass tank from a battle-cruiser or strike carrier.”
Hadeishi sighed deeply. Remembered faces and fragments of conversation distracted him. A tremendous feeling of sorrow was welling up in him. Thoughts of the Cornuelle were prominent in his memory. Now he wished he’d carried the samisen up from Engineering. Lacking the instrument, he tapped his fingers on the console, setting a slow, mournful beat.
“A phantom greenish gray, Ghost of some wight, Poor mortal wight! Wandering Lonesomely Through The black Night.”
Then he stopped, the shattered cylinder falling away behind them.
“What more can you offer?” De Molay shook her head, silver hair falling into her eyes. She brushed the strands away. “This is the fate of all sailors on this dark sea, to perish at last in the void, and find repose on the surface of the deep.”
Mitsuharu did not respond, his thoughts far away. Then, as he sat quietly, watching the dust clouds slowly change color, one of his scan alerts chirped. The Nisei’s head turned, eyes focusing once more on the present. A familiar silhouette coalesced on the main viewer. Using the vector from passive scan, two of the cameras had focused, picking out the outline of a vessel. Ship’s registry reported an initial identification-a Fleet Varanus -class cargo shuttle.
“See, Sencho? A sheaf of wheat is still standing among the broken stalks.”
Though the ship’s boat seemed intact and free of obvious battle damage, there was no sign of life aboard. The portholes were dark, engines cold, and the shuttle was tumbling end to end. Hadeishi steered alongside, smoothly matching her rotation with a deft play on the drive controls.
De Molay pursed her lips, eyes narrowed. “A derelict, do you think?”
“Sensors can lie, Sencho. If there are survivors aboard, would they advertise themselves?”
The old woman shook her head. “I would not!” She paused, thinking. “Our decrepit appearance will suggest we are some kind of scavenger.”
“Just as you planned, Sencho,” Hadeishi offered a faint smile. “Just as you planned. But as fortune has provided, they are not deceived by our appearance. They are correct. Wilful is a scavenger-of the lost. Matching airlocks now.”
“Very poetic,” De Molay muttered. Mitsuharu did not reply, his whole attention on matching the lock interfaces and running out the freighter’s gangway. A moment later, a faint tunk echoed through the decking and he had a string of green lights on the airlock status board. Then he double-checked the seal on the Wilful -side of the lock, making sure everything was secure, set the drive controls to automatic, and hurried downstairs.