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Tocoztic’s face turned a rather mealy color. “I am Mexica. I am not afraid of death. I am an officer and sworn to sacrifice my life for the Emperor.”

“He said: If you put death foremost in your thoughts, if you resolve yourself to death each time you wake, then you will always strike your enemy with the utmost force.”

“To embrace death so readily! I don’t-This has nothing to do with-”

Hadeishi’s face suddenly became calm and still, as though the grief and weariness and fear etched in his features had been washed away by a sudden, unseen rain. His eyes were upon the holocast, looking far beyond the puzzled face of the Thai-i. De Molay’s attention snapped around, following his gaze.

“Stand to battle stations!”

Before the command was fully uttered, De Molay had activated the ship’s internal alarm. Tocoztic jumped, startled by the blaring sound, and then switched all his attention onto the pilot’s console. Thousands of hours of Imperial drill seized him up and put his hands, his thoughts, his entire purpose on the right path.

At the limit of their sensor range, a Khaid destroyer nosed through the dark towards them.

The land of the Dead

The Naniwa ’s acceleration faded off a point, and under Kosho’s gentle direction, the battle-cruiser slid around a particularly dense accretion of the veils. Beyond this-to her surprise-there was nothing on the navigational display. No queer, interlocking geometry of billions of infinitesimal razors, only emptiness. The Chu-sa blinked, easing off on the engines, dropping her acceleration to almost zero. The ship continued to speed ahead, but she left her velocity undiminished.

“I think we’re clear,” Anderssen announced to a hushed bridge crew. She took her hands away from the corroded bronze rectangle. As she did the threatwell’s sketchy, alien display faded away-showing only a few trailing quantum distortions at the edges-and then, nothing. The normal navigational plot flickered in and out of view, and then stabilized. A moment later, keyed up by Chu-i Pucatli, the long-distance camera feeds appeared on the main v-displays behind the threatwell.

There was a hiss of surprise from nearly every member of the bridge crew. Susan smoothed back her hair and then turned to the communications officer. “ Chu-i, pipe this to all of the news displays shipside. I’ll make an announcement momentarily.”

Then the Chu-sa turned to consider the long-range scan display now building on her console.

The plot confirmed what the eye beheld. Beyond the Barrier, deep at the heart of the kuub, the protostellar debris folded back to reveal three diminutive stars in a tight cluster. Between their sallow pinpoints, the hard white slash of an ejection jet speared “up” and “down,” bisecting the visible universe. Illuminated by its radiance, towering plumes and great walls of dust glowed with a brilliant, jeweled fire. If the gravity scan was to be believed, the rosette of stars concealed an infinitesimal black hole in their center. On the ship’s plot, the gaudy roil of an accretion disc spiraling into a maelstrom of distorted gravity reached out to lap around the suns. The dim stars were shedding long sinuous trails of mass, drawn down into the hidden maw of the singularity.

The sound of the main bridge hatch cycling open was jarringly loud in the silence.

Kosho looked over her shoulder, seeing an exhausted and work-stained Oc Chac limp onto the bridge. His combat armor-a necessity for engineers working in the midst of battle-was scored with dozens of impact dimples on the battle-steel. The Mayan’s face was uncharacteristically open, his lips parted, the muted glare of glowing night reflecting in his eyes.

“Mictlan,” the Sho-sa sighed. “Beneath the cold lands of the north from whence Quetzalcoatl retrieved the bones of the first people, a tomb filled with decay and rivers of ash, where reigns the dreadful god Mictlantecuhtli, his face covered with a bony mask, sitting amongst owls and spiders, ruling the land of the dead: The destination an unfortunate corpse must strive towards for four long years: first through a whirlwind of knives, then against icy winds, daring all the dangers of the underworlds, at last to cross nine waters and dissolve into the void. A dreadful place where the living dare not tread…”

“Approximately three light-years from us-three superjovian brown dwarfs in perfect balance,” Susan said quietly, fingernails brushing across the navigational plot. The images tightened, zooming in. Her med-band was pulsing, flooding her with stimulants to keep onrushing fatigue from overwhelming her mind. The tension of battle and headlong flight was beginning to fade, leaving her entire body throbbing with pain. “And a singularity at their center, drinking their mass like blood.”

At the navigational console, Gretchen stirred-tearing herself away from the wonder resplendent before them-and looked back to Kosho. The civilian’s face was fairly glowing with desire.

“No.” Kosho’s eyes were half-lidded, but her voice was firm. “We’ll be going no closer. Pilot, find us somewhere to lie up and rest the crew. We’ll repair what we can, and then we’ll move a goodly distance away from the Pinhole and see if we can reach gradient… Yes, Sho-sa?”

Oc Chac had moved to Holloway’s station at Nav and was shaking his head. “Even when repairs are complete, Chu-sa, and the coil is back in operation… Gravitometric readings around us are off the scale-we’ve passed over some kind of equilibrium point, where the curve of physical space has inverted-we can’t make transit out of this… this pocket. That inversion is forcing gradient well beyond ships’ capacity to punch through into hyper.”

Susan suppressed a curse. “What about inside the pocket? Can we reach superluminal here?”

“Perhaps.” The Mayan adjusted the scan controls on the navigational console. “We’ll need to move deeper in-see if gradient slopes off abruptly.” He turned back to Kosho, jaw clenched. “It may be, kyo, that the pinhole we’ve slipped through has taken us into a captive universe.”

“What do you mean?” Susan felt the tide of cold reach her sinuses, which abruptly made her head feel both light, empty, and clear. The engineer’s statement hung before her, seemingly profound, but also beyond practical reach. “What does that mean to us, Sho-sa?”

“It means, kyo,” Oc Chac said, considering his words carefully, “that here we may be able to punch through to hyperspace-but we won’t have anywhere to go. The Barrier itself may be wrapping gravity-and the core fabric of realspace-back around to the other side of the pocket. Indeed, if we traveled the six light-year-width of this place from end to end, we may well wind up at our starting point.”

Holloway-who seemed as confused as Susan-scratched the back of his head, then said: “But there’s a break in the fabric, right, because we just came through from the ‘outside.’ So the only way out, would be right back the way we came-and into the waiting claws of that Khaid battle-group.”

The Mayan shrugged. “ Thai-i, such may be our fate.” He lifted his chin, giving Kosho a questioning look. “Hennig’s crews are ready to tear into the coil and replace those damaged cells-if we’re done maneuvering at high-g for a couple hours.”

Kosho nodded. “Get to it, Sho-sa. Keep the duty officer informed of your progress and estimated time to complete. As soon as we can find somewhere to lie up, we’ll go off battle-stations.”

Gretchen stirred expectantly, her parchment-wrapped block tucked under one arm. The Swedish woman looked ghastly-her face was a sallow frame for enormous, fatigue-blackened eyes-but she was still game to plunge ahead into the unknown, seeking the thrill of first-light shining upon something lost eons ago.

“I said no.” Susan eased herself out of the shockchair, feeling every muscle and bone throb violently. “ Thai-i Holloway, we need to get third watch on duty stations and send everyone else to the showers. Myself included. Chac is busy, and you and Konev are due for a break, so see if Thai-i Goroemon survived the last sixteen hours and get her up here to stand in as officer of the watch.”