"Necessary, Parker-tzin. It is necessary." Hummingbird looked around at Gretchen and Magdalena and Doctor Lennox — who was looking entirely pale and washed out, like a cotton sheet left to hang in the summer sun for far too many days. "This is within my authority," he said, raising his voice very slightly, drawing every eye to him as iron filings to a lodestone. "As nauallis, as judge, as the voice of the Empire in this godless place. We have blundered into uncompromising danger and we will be lucky indeed to escape without harm."
Gretchen heard a stone certainty in the man's words and felt a chill wash over her. What does he know? Something about Russovsky's spooked him — and why not? Something duplicated a human being, down to memories and language. Did the same something send the eater cylinder aboard? Is the other cylinder a trap?
In all the busy confusion since her return from the surface, she hadn't had a chance to resume her translation work on the embedded slab. Thinking of it now, of the secrets which must lie concealed within, she felt a painful hunger wake. Those translation runs must have finished days ago! I'm so stupid — they could be waiting for me right now.
"More than this," Hummingbird said coldly, interrupting Gretchen's train of thought. "I will not explain. You will obey without question or dispute. In this way, you may yet live. Now Parker-tzin — during the next day, while Isoroku completes his preparations for the flyby, you will move the Palenque, very quietly, out of orbit. Minimal burn on the main engines, and you will do so by orienting us away from the planet. Anything we do must be unremarked from the surface. We are going to take care to leave no trace of our visit here."
Gretchen stirred, drawing the Mйxica's attention. "Hummingbird-tzin, your pardon, but if Palenque leaves the system, and Cornuelle has already departed, how will you leave the planet? And what about the base camp at the observatory? There are hundreds of tons of equipment, supplies, vehicles there. What about the observation satellites?"
"Those things," Hummingbird said with a steely lightness in his voice, "will be taken care of. And in the meantime — no scans, no active sensors on the ship, no experiments, no communications traffic. Nothing."
Gretchen started to speak again, but the nauallis gave her a fierce look, dark eyes glittering.
"We are mice," he said sharply, "creeping in a field of maize. We must step gently, or the stalks will rustle."
The Cornuelle, Outbound from Ephesus III Orbit
The pitch of the vibration humming through the deck and walls shifted and Susan Kosho looked up from her v-panel, head cocked to one side. "We've reached safe distance," she said, turning her attention back to the schematics on her display. With their gravity signature pared down to the absolute minimum by shutting off the g-decking, the Cornuelle creaked and groaned with odd noises. The main hull had picked up little tics and squeaks over time. In the depths of ship's night, you could hear her speaking, if you were quiet.
Hayes nodded absently, chewing on a stylus, pale blue eyes sunken in dark hollows. Susan pushed a cup of tea toward him, letting the sealed container slide across the worktable in the senior officer's mess. "You should drink that — you need to eat."
"Yes, mother," he replied, still paging slowly through the schematic. He set the cup aside. "This thing is a monster. Look at the shielding…and these mining beam rigs look like a Mark Ninety-Six proton cannon refitted for a civilian power plant."
Susan nodded, then took a long sip from her own cup. The tea was very strong and thick with honey. She was certain the steward had added stimulants and some kind of vitamin supplement. There's an undertaste, she thought, stealing a glance at her medband. The thin, flesh-colored circlet around her wrist was quiescent, indicating a lack of toxins. Of cinnamon.
"Don't fool yourself," Susan said aloud, tapping a section of the Tyr blueprints on her panel. "The power plant for one of these has more in common with our drive than any civilian liner. See? This report from the Mirror says a Tyr has three reactors, each capable of output matching or exceeding our own. She has to, to move so much mass."
"Wonderful," Hayes grumbled, finally putting down the pad. He retrieved his tea, which had slid back along the table toward the rear bulkhead. Grimacing at the bitter/honey taste, he downed the whole thing in one gulp. "So let's consider — she's surrounded by ore carrels which — if they're full, and loaded properly — give her the equivalent of a hundred meters of low-grade armor plating. Not a reactive shield, no, but enough to shrug off most of our lighter penetrators and beam weapons. Then her core section is clad in enough radiation shielding for a battle cruiser and she mounts the most godawful huge cutting beam assemblies I've ever seen. These are nearly dreadnaught-strength mounts!"
Susan nodded, finding a page she recalled from the Seeking Eye — Fleet Intelligence — report. "Pursuant to the Treaty of Rostov," she read, "the macehualli pochteca — or industrial combines — have been required to turn all armaments and munitions factories, orbital yards, workshops and other means of naval production to nonmilitary use. This they have done." A brief, fierce smile flickered across Susan's face. "In the case of the Tyr-class mobile ore refinery, the core of the civilian ship is a stripped down Kaiserschlacht-class heavy cruiser. Some of the early refinery models, in fact, are physically built around decommissioned K-schlacht hulls."
"Sister bless!" Hayes tabbed to the same page. "They didn't leave the original sensor net and ECM intact, did they?"
Susan pursed her lips and pointed with her stylus at another section of the report. "Navigating in an asteroid belt, or an Oort cloud, is a tricky business. This requires the refinery to carry advanced avionics and sensor equipment. The targeting systems and main comp aren't supposed to be military grade, of course. Just civilian models."
Hayes leaned back against the bulkhead, his broad face looking tired and pudgy. "Easy enough to replace from the black market — if the originals were ever actually removed in the first place."
"Or to upgrade," Susan said quietly. "K-schlacht hulls are over a hundred years old. Even a modern civilian rig would be superior in head-to-head with the old Royal Navy gear. And these ships are straight out of the Norsktrad yard at Kiruna — which means they have the very latest comp and scan on board."
Hayes rubbed his face and made a groaning sound. Kosho wanted to laugh derisively, but she felt a certain sisterly affection for the senior lieutenant. He was quick on his board, and quite adept at handling dozens of incoming threats and targets in the thick of the action — but he hadn't quite the taste for the hunt a commanding officer really needed.
"So," she said, in a brisk voice, "how do we kill this thing?"
Hayes stared at her, then leaned his chin on clasped hands. "Right. Kill it…well, the firing aperture of those mining beams is restricted — they can't have full traverse with the ore carrels in the way — so there are blind spots if we can get a target lock and proper orientation."
"Good." Susan laid down her comp pad and fixed him with her full attention. "And?"
"And…they probably don't have any missile capacity, unless they're hiding some kind of pods in the carrels — which they could be! But that wouldn't pass muster anywhere they docked — and they did come here to mine, didn't they?" He seemed to perk up at the thought.