“With Lovelace’s help, yes.” Hadeishi suddenly looked thoughtful. “Also, you will want to bring a cushion.”
“A cushion?”
He shrugged. “Khaid chairs do not fit us so well. There’s no sign any of the Fleet interior fittings survived, which is a great pity.”
De Molay laughed in delight. “You are having trouble sitting down these days. I will see you in an hour or two.”
Three hours later, after one of the burlier Team Four kashikan-hei had carried her up from the cargo bay where the Wilful was now docked, De Molay stared around at the wreckage of Kader ’s Command deck and wrinkled up her nose. The thick musk of Khaid blood was mixed with the astringence of fire suppression foam to make a particularly foul smell. Beyond that, the chair at the weapons officer’s console she’d been offered by a slightly built, worried-looking Sho-i gave her serious pause. “A beetle shell?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lovelace offered an apologetic smile. “Haven’t found anything better.”
De Molay shrugged and fitted an instafoam pillow into the peculiar dished chair back, then sat down gingerly. “We’re underway again? I felt the drives light up while that big fellow hauled me up ten decks on his back…”
“ Hai, Sencho.” The Sho-i called up a navigational plot, showing the past track of the Kader, as well as the projected patrol pattern. “I recovered this from one of the engine control nodes-when we flashed the whole ship, temporary storage went too-but some of the secondary systems had working copies, and this was one of them.” The route spidered out from the main Khaid elements near the Pinhole, covered an irregular section of the stellar vicinity, and then angled back to join the pack again. “The Chu-sa wants us to be as inconspicuous as possible-so we follow the ordered route, submit status reports at the requested times, and so on. I’ve already sent one, cobbled together from the last transmit from the t-relay system, but we’re due for five more before getting back to tau zero.”
“This course was intended to cover the area of battle?”
“ Hai, Sencho. The Khaid commander peeled off these three ships to mop up.”
De Molay smiled, tapping through the navigational interface. “Well, let’s press on then, shall we? I believe these three signals are Fleet evac capsules.” Her stylus sketched in a slight change in vector to overrun all three icons on the plot.
Mitsuharu frowned, reviewing a comm-system composition pane. The Monkey of Fate, he thought with considerable irritation, is laughing. Now I have to submit status reports to some Khaid overlord! He looked over at Inudo, lately of the Scout Corduba, who was now sitting pilot for the Kader. “How many men have we recovered in total, Thai-i?”
“Over a hundred now, Chu-sa.”
Hadeishi sighed, and then picked up his stylus again: Our mission continues to be successful. We have found and destroyed nine Imperial escape pods. Additionally thirty useable z-suits, numerous small arms and edged weapons were recovered. Return to the hunting pack is expected within twenty-three hours.
A firm tap on the running-man glyph spooled the message off into the t-relay system. Done, he thought, with that exercise-for another six hours.
“Isn’t that strange,” De Molay said from her seat at Navigation. Somehow the old woman had acquired a puffy black expedition jacket and mittens. Hadeishi didn’t think it was so cold in Command, but he allowed that the Khaid had not set environmental to warm either. “The ship’s previous course indicates they took no prisoners, captured no equipment… just a missile or beam into each pod and on their way.”
Mitsuharu tried to swivel the beetle-chair at the captain’s console, found that the chitin was sticking again, and stood up. He had been sitting too long in any case. “That is an odd course for a military so very in need of technical expertise, as well as slave labor. Haste overthrew their normal procedure, I think. They always took the time to dig every last beet from the fields before.”
The old woman shook her head. “Wasteful.”
Then she frowned, indicating the navigational plot on his console. “Do these raiders believe they can pick up the mystery weapon and use it like a shipgun? Every vessel we’ve seen is a warship-have they no scientists along, to analyze these phenomena?”
“That is an excellent point.” Hadeishi nodded thoughtfully. “Do we have a breakdown of the battle around the science station yet?”
“Five minutes, Chu-sa.” De Molay yawned and turned back to where Lovelace had continued unraveling the encoded Khaid ’cast logs. “Five minutes.”
An hour later, Mitsuharu was sitting on the edge of the uncomfortable chair, wholly engrossed in stepping through the debacle around the science station one more time. The Spear -class light cruiser had gone out of service fifteen years before his old Cornuelle had even been laid down, so it lacked a wide variety of modern innovations. No threatwell, no reconfigurable consoles. But the dedicated v-display built into the side of the captain’s station was enough to show him what he needed to see. To his eye, structure was slowly emerging from the seeming chaos of racing ships and sun-bright detonations. One ship, in particular, stood out amongst the confusion. An Imperial battle cruiser. A brand new one, he guessed, from the drive-flare and the outline the Khaid cameras had captured during the fighting.
Ah, she is beautiful. And her commander will win himself more than one medal if he sees home again. See how deftly he handles her… so sure in every maneuver, parsimonious in his launch patterns… and if my eye does not deceive, still alive, having fled down this opening in the Barrier wall.
“ Chu-sa? ” Leaning over from her console, De Molay broke his concentration. “I think our toil is showing fruit. Listen, isn’t this the Khaiden battlecast?”
“Wait.” Hadeishi signaled Command for quiet. “Please confirm that we are not broadcasting, Sho-i Lovelace. The Khaid have acute hearing.” The old women handed over her earbug-though internal comm was operating again, the Khaid-specific systems were still cut from the main loop. He wiggled the uncomfortable object into his ear, listening closely to the resulting ebb and flow of alien chatter.
After a few minutes he nodded to himself and signaled for Lovelace to kill the circuit.
“I think you’re right. Now we need a working real-time translator.” He smiled wanly at the two women. “In about twelve hours?”
De Molay made a face, looking sideways at Lovelace. The Sho-i shook her head in dismay. “I don’t think that’s possible, Chu-sa. I know they exist-but we don’t have one!”
Mitsuharu frowned, sitting back in the beetle-chair. Now he was thankful for the rigid armor which kept him from being stabbed in the side every time he moved. “Do we have a lexicon at least? My Khadesh is very poor-is anyone on-board fluent?”
“You mean besides the four Khaid we’ve captured?” The old woman shook her head. “Can we get a couple hours of shuteye, then try and work a new miracle for you?”
“Of course, Sencho. There are mats in those rooms down the main corridor. Lovelace- sana can show you where they are.”
A full watch later, Hadeishi had coaxed the display into allowing him to zoom in on sections of the battle, even though the Kader ’s shipnet core complained when he used so many computing cycles. De Molay and Lovelace had settled back into their seats, some kind of hot, nasty-smelling beverage in their hands. He rotated the shattered hulk of the Tlemitl, examining the debris field the super-dreadnaught had generated.
Sure enough, a cloud of evac capsules is huddling behind the wreck. He scratched behind one ear with his stylus.
The warship had lost two major sections to the Barrier weapon, but had remained largely intact. Whoever remained aboard had managed to cut the engines, contain the reactors, and get the surviving crew away into the evacuation pods. They had not kept the two severed sections from continuing forward, to be diced into ever smaller debris by whatever lay beyond… but the main mass of the hull had halted its rush to destruction. Affording a paltry shelter to the survivors.