Inside the Khaid ship, Hadeishi and the other prisoners were hurried out of the main airlock-a fresh squad of Khaiden marines was crowding into the space, preparing to board the Wilful -and immediately down a side passage. As soon as the hatchway groaned shut behind them-Mitsuharu’s ear caught the distinctive sound of a pump working overtime to compensate for a fouled hydraulic line-he lifted his head in the dim, fetid darkness and glanced around.
The last time he’d been aboard a Khaiden raider his Fleet sensibilities had been affronted by how poorly maintained the alien ships were. And his reaction had been mild compared to the outrage shown by the Engineering team he’d put aboard… that captured heavy cruiser couldn’t have been salvaged without a complete interior rebuild. Much of this, he believed, sprang from the paucity of resources afflicting the ill-defined and disorganized Khaid polity. Fleet intelligence bulletins indicated the hostile power was more a fragile alliance of feuding clans and stations than a real nation. In particular, they lacked a unified industrial base-most of their ships were captured, or stolen-and repair facilities were few and far between.
In the same situation, Mitsuharu believed he’d have taken pains to keep his ship-or ships, if he were some lucky Khaiden warlord-in the best possible condition. But then, he suspected the Khaid might do just that, for ships they had built themselves. But for a stolen ship? Some alien vessel jury-rigged to allow Khaiden operation? There was no reason to spend more than the most minimal resources on a captive vessel; particularly when it would likely be destroyed in the next raid.
Now, seeing the interior of the Qalak, he guessed they were being herded down to a holding facility-and from the look of the piping overhead, and the steadily growing heat, it would be close on to a thermocouple station. Then the guard behind Hadeishi interrupted his train of thought with a hard jab to the shoulder with a zmetgun.
Hadeishi fell clumsily, knocking into the sailor in front of him. The man turned, snarling. Mitsuharu took the opportunity to lose his footing and fall down. The guard kicked him, catching Hadeishi on the thigh, and then turned to warn off the sailor.
Curled up on the decking, Mitsuharu pulled his cuffed wrists under both tucked-in legs and-once his hands were in front of him-jimmied the bolt-cutters from his tool belt. Groaning with effort, he managed to twist the steel chain into the cutting blade. Seconds later, a heavy gloved hand seized his shoulder and dragged him up.
“Suk korek!” A throaty alien voice snarled in his earbug. At such short range, the conductive comm system in his suit was picking up the ’cast from the Khaid’s radio. Hadeishi turned, keeping his head down, and gritted his teeth. The cheap steel in the cuffs was resisting the cutters, and the tight pressure on his wrists was sending sharp, bright pains up his arms. “Napiyorzun?”
That’s done it, Mitsuharu gasped. A sharp ping! echoed in his helmet and his hands were free.
The Khaid reversed his zmetgun and made to slam the metal stock into Hadeishi’s chest, but the Nisei officer bounced up and slashed the alien across the neck of its z-suit with the heavy cutters. The blow sent a shock up both arms, but the creature’s trachea-or equivalent-ruptured. Dark blue-black blood suddenly gushed from the Khaiden’s mouth, sloshing into the bottom of his neck-ring. Its wide-spaced eyes-set into a skull resembling nothing so much as an Afriqan meerkat mated with a hyena’s coloring-glazed with pain.
That was enough-Hadeishi smashed the tool down on the Khaid’s gun hand, knocking the zmetgun free. The rifle skittered away on the metal decking. At the same moment, the lead guard-who had whirled at the gurgling cry from his fellow-triggered a burst from his weapon. The first of the sailors was lunging at the Khaid and caught the burst full in the chest and face. Shattered z-suit material, clothing, and blood sprayed back. The second two men rushed the guard, heads down. Hadeishi darted in behind them, desperate to silence the Khaid before he could sound an alarm. The guard knocked one sailor aside, then fired wildly-missing everything-and Mitsuharu speared the cutters into his faceplate.
Glassite splintered, turning the clear material milky white, but did not shatter.
Hadeishi hurled himself to the side as the zmetgun roared, barrel smoking red hot, and a spray of flechettes ripped across the ceiling of the passageway.
This is taking too long, flitted across Mitsuharu’s mind as he backhanded the Khaid’s helmet with the cutters. This time the blunt tool caught the creature in the join between neck-ring and the helmet proper. The z-suit gel-much the same technology as in a Fleet rig and designed to ablate high velocity impacts-gave way and metal jarred on bone. The Khaid staggered, clawing at its neck, and the other two sailors-hands now free-tore its zmetgun away.
One of them, his own faceplate washed red with blood, jammed the rifle barrel into the guard’s chest and triggered a burst. The corpse jumped and flechettes spalled across the deck.
“Back to the ship,” snarled the other sailor. He’d recovered the other zmetgun and ammunition.
“No!” barked Hadeishi, without thinking. He still had the cutters clenched in both hands and his whole body was shaking with adrenaline. Every instinct screamed to tear down the passage and lose themselves in the environmental conduits sure to be spidering out from the thermocouple into the rest of the ship. “We need to go down deck and look for a shuttle bay.”
“Idiot,” growled the other sailor, now armed himself. “Our only way home is the Wilful -and we can’t let the Khaid capture her. A shuttle will only make a quick coffin…”
“There are-” Hadeishi fell silent. Both men had already run back up the passage towards the main airlock. He shook his head once, and then snatched up the equipment belt from the nearest Khaid, something that looked like a document pouch on the creature’s thigh and-using the bolt cutters with a sharp, violent jerk-the guard’s right forearm. Then he ran in the opposite direction.
Past the next set of hatchways, Mitsuharu found himself at the top of a gangway leading “down” and paused for a moment to crack open his helmet. The smell of the alien ship was violently awful, but he forced down the urge to vomit and let the heat flowing up from the shaft wash over him.
Definitely a heat exchanger below and that sound -There was a gargling sort of wail echoing from the dripping walls.- will be the holding cells we were destined for. Now I do need that shuttle bay.
Which posed a dilemma: his Khadesh was limited to the barest courtesies-the human palate and tongue couldn’t really duplicate the high-pitched yelping and growl undertone that characterized the diplomatic language used by the clans-and he couldn’t read most of their written language. The ship itself, even if stolen from another starfaring race, wasn’t a model he recognized, so he was going to have a hard time guessing where to find the nearest shuttle bay.
From in here, he realized. I need to get outside, where I can make better time…
He cocked his head, listening again, and now-very distantly-he heard something like the roar of gunfire. Some of the overhead lights flickered and Hadeishi felt certain the sailors from the Wilful had found an honorable death.
No more distractions for the enemy. He picked a corridor that seemed-if he was not entirely turned around-to lead outward towards shipskin, and ran swiftly along, watching the maze of pipes and conduits overhead as he moved. A dozen meters on, a big pipe emerged from the floor and disappeared through the wall to the left. It was banded with bright mauve stripes and covered with blocky lettering.
Mitsuharu slowed, turning his wristband over to let the temperature sensor pick up the ambient radiation from the conduit. Five-degree spike, he saw. Just what I need.
Now he felt his shoulders creep with tension and a prickling at the nape of his neck, which usually meant something hostile was close by. He scuttled along the base of the wall, shining a hand-light at the joins in the passage molding. Fifteen meters down he found an unusually thick panel border and stopped.
His helmet was still open, so he squatted down and closed his eyes, listening.
Back the way he’d come, there was an echoing grinding sound. Hatchway opening.
The tool-belt produced a cutting torch and he thumbed the plasma emitter to quarter power and bit in along the edge of the panel. The join came apart, revealing a dark access way carpeted with mold. Ah, brown mushrooms! he thought, a fragment of an old song unspooling in memory. In we go.
The panel pulled closed behind him and, duckwalking, he scrabbled along by helmet light. After only a few moments, the shape of the huge heat exchanger conduit loomed up before him. This time the mauve striping had been replaced by bright crimson bands and, to his surprise, lines of a different-familiar-script ran between the warning markings.
This was a Hesht ship? Astounding. I thought they suicided their-well, maybe the Khaid bought it from some bankrupt pack. Or a shipyard switched clients in midstream.
He did remember a bit of low Heshok, as well as most of the more important letterforms, and what he could make out of the warnings indicated that yes, this was an air circulator attached to the heat exchangers. On one of our ships, that means the outbound air will circulate through shipskin radiators to cool before being returned to the sterilizers.
Feeling grimly determined-Musashi himself would have been impressed by such a stoic demeanor in the face of such calamity-Hadeishi hurried along beside the conduit until, after squeezing past a number of stanchions, he found an access port to the exchanger itself. Finally!
The panel popped loose with a little help from his pry bar, and then-after making sure the things he’d looted from the Khaid guard were secured to his suit by lanyards and his helmet was snugged tight-he crawled inside. Immediately, a hot wind roared around him and his z-suit began to squeak alarms about the mounting temperature. He also felt his stomach quease with the loss of gravity and guessed he’d just moved past the last of the g-decking.
Quickly then, he thought, scrambling along the pipe as quickly as he could. I wonder how long my temperature regulator will hold out?
Some time later the character of the conduit changed. The pipe came to an abrupt end in a wall filled with hundreds of dimples, each with a much smaller pipette opening recessed within. Hadeishi stopped, feeling the hot wind beating at his back, and then retreated. This proved difficult-going with the airflow, he hadn’t realized how hard it was pushing at him-but three meters back from the diffusion wall he found an access plate. Now he pressed his temperature sensor against the opening, and saw with relief that the plate itself was quite cold.
They’d be fools to have open vacuum adjacent to the air exchanger, right? Don’t want to trip a pressure alarm.
Regardless, he forced open the access plate and eeled out into a dark, congested room filled with more pipes and machines of unknown provenance. Getting the panel closed behind him was an effort, one that left him exhausted. Hadeishi hooked one leg around a nearby pipe and let himself float.
A search of his pockets found a threesquare bar, which-after checking his environment readings-he ate. That quieted his hunger, but did nothing for his thirst. He licked his lips, trying to remember how many days or hours he could survive without something to drink. Probably the least of my worries, he thought. Hopefully, he went through the equipment belt and pouch taken from the Khaid marine, but found nothing edible. He did find a brace of thumb-length cylinders on the belt. Turning them over, he sighed-despairing for his fellow man-for they were Mexica Imperial Army HM-240 grenades long past their expiration date.
Why sir, I found these lying in the street. They must have fallen from an air-lorry.
Fortified, Hadeishi checked his chrono and tried to gauge how much time had passed since the Wilful was attacked. No more than an hour, I hope. I’ve got to keep moving. He didn’t remember feeling the over-under nausea of punching into transit, which meant the Khaid were probably still cleaning up after their attack on the freighter.
Searching the machine room he found a small door and another access plate. Both seemed temperature neutral, so he eased the door open and found himself looking into a service way lit by only a thin strip of glowlights along the walls. This struck him as a proper maintenance shaft and he looked back, trying to gauge which way was skinside from the heading of the conduit.
That way? he guessed, pulling himself quickly “down” the corridor. Twenty meters on, the shaft turned to the right and a heavy lock-style door emerged from the gloom on his left. O praise Ameratsu, bringer of daylight!
Mitsuharu kicked away from one wall and touched down beside the lock. A control panel faced the heavy hatch, but there was no glassite window showing what lay beyond. He wanted to rub his face, but found himself nervously tapping on the faceplate of his helmet instead. The controls had a keypad with twelve buttons around a hex-shaped bezel, some kind of card-reader beside them, and a touch plate.
Time for the old guard to lend a hand, Hadeishi thought. The severed Khaid forearm had been dripping globules of blood behind him as he’d moved and now they gleamed fitfully in the air, drifting past like tiny blue-black planets. He pressed the glove against the touch plate.
Nothing happened.
Then he felt relieved- Idiot! If they found those bodies, someone will have noticed the missing hand, and shipboard security will be on the lookout for these credentials. That meant getting through the airlock the oldfashioned way… the keypad was a guessing game he didn’t have time to play, the card-reader had possibilities-but a quick search through the pouch and the belt he’d stolen didn’t find an access card or crystal-and the touch plate was too likely to trigger an alarm. Instead he cast around in the immediate vicinity, looking for an emergency access hatch that would let him cycle the airlock on an override. This led him farther down the corridor without success.
Back at the lock, Hadeishi felt his chances of escape eroding with every chrono tick. At a loss, he examined the control panel and its various components again. This time, something tickled in memory and he found himself staring at the hex-shaped bezel. A ship built for the Hesht, six fingers on each hand, six packs to a pride… He took out his pry bar and jammed the metal tip under the edge of the bezel, which was not made of the same heavy steel as the rest of the lock. Indeed, the plastic cap popped off, revealing a deep socket-also hex-shaped-running into the hatch.
Emergency access! he gloated, fumbling through both tool belts for something that would fit the keyhole. A moment later he was spraying some unlok into the opening-it was a fair guess no one had manually opened the hatch since construction!-and then he wedged a number six socket wrench into the opening and then ran one handle of the bolt cutters through the socket itself. Then Hadeishi braced himself against the sidewall-thankful for once that he was working in z-g-and put everything he had into cranking his scratch-built key around.
For a long, long minute the socket and cutter combination resisted, going nowhere. His arms started to burn and he felt a twinge in his chest. Then, with a creaky vibration felt through his boots, the wrench rotated a centimeter. Breathing harshly, Hadeishi stopped-sprayed more unlok into the hole-and then put his shoulder into it again.
Now the mechanism creaked again, but faster, and then began to rotate smoothly. Letting out a long hiss of relief, Mitsuharu worked the balky key around until a dull thud reverberated through his arms and the control panel flashed a magenta icon. At the same time, a pair of handles popped free from the metal.
Now, he thought, I will truly be on the clock. Before opening the door, he carefully stowed all of his tools and secured the lanyards and pouches on both belts. Even the severed hand was tacked down. Then he took hold of both handles and pulled. The hatch swung towards him a little ponderously, revealing a dull gray chamber with a perforated grating as the floor. On the opposite wall was a thick glassite panel and beyond that-the wink and gleam of distant stars.
Thirty seconds, Hadeishi counted, watching the airlock cycle. A number of warning lights had come on as soon as he’d secured the inner lock and vented atmosphere. Thirty-five seconds.
The exterior hatch opened and the dull, ruddy light of the kuub streamed in, throwing harsh shadows on the walls. Mitsuharu checked his wrist, watching the radiation indicator fluctuate and then settle into the orange zone. Thirty-eight seconds.
He swung out of the lock, oriented himself, and then dialed up the magnification on his helmet to thirty-x and took a quick three-sixty of the horizon line. To his right a long profusion of radiating fins emerged from the shipskin, blocking most of his view. To the left the hull arced away into nothing but the abyss of stars. Behind him, however, he felt his heart leap to see the drive cowlings of the Wilful rising over the horizon.
Forty-four seconds. Watching the radiation detector fluctuate wildly, Hadeishi wished he had a full EVA rig. His z-suit was airtight and temperature regulated, but it was not intended for lengthy stays outside of the shielding of a ship. Beggars cannot be choosers, he chided himself, and moved off towards the freighter as fast as his boots could adhere to the shipskin.
A hundred meters on he halted, catching sight of a pair of recessed cargo or boat-bay doors ahead. He crouched down and crept to the edge of the opening. The doors were closed, but he could see a porthole-like window not far away, on a smaller access hatch. Carefully he glanced around, checking the horizon. Nothing caught his eye, so Hadeishi worked his way down to the smaller hatchway, trying to keep out of line-of-sight from the window. Just a meter away from the opening, he froze, feeling the hull under his hands and feet begin to tremble.
One hundred and sixty seconds.
The bay doors began to separate, spilling a frosty wisp of atmosphere out into the void, and letting a sharp white light gleam through. Beneath him, the metal doors continued to roll back into the hull, carrying Hadeishi with them. One hundred, sixty-eight seconds.
He scrambled to the porthole and risked a look inside before the smaller hatch disappeared. Sure enough there was a boat-bay on the other side, holding a fair-sized shuttle. With the brief glimpse, he picked out a pair of Khaiden pilots visible through the beveled windows of the spacecraft. Then he took in the rest of the bay and froze, heart thudding in his throat, back pressed against the cold metal. The loading deck beside the shuttle was swarming with Khaid marines in combat armor; some of them were climbing onto EVA carts like the ones the Zosen used to ferry supplies and work crews around the hulls of larger starships.
Musashi was trudging through mud, in the rain, his head bowed beneath a peasant’s bowl-like straw hat, a simple bokuto over his shoulder, when the gates of the castle swung wide. Perforce, he stopped, moving to the side of the road, and watched in interest as a great column of samurai rode out, their armor gleaming wetly and their spear points bare to the sky. Weary, he squatted as they thundered past, wrapped in silken cloaks, their faces hidden behind armored masks. At the last, the banner man rode out, and though his uma-jirushi hung heavy in the pelting rain, Musashi could not avoid seeing the Tokugawa mon. Thus knowing the evil lord remained within the castle, his heart was gladdened-for victory or death over the Mongol overlords was close at hand.
Hadeishi glanced back at the shuttle, saw the bus-sized craft was not mounted on a launch rail like a strike-fighter, and raced to dig into his pouches. An instant later, he’d found the roll of stickytape he needed, then double-checked the grenades and the severed arm. Nerving himself, he moved to the edge of the still-moving bay door. Keeping out of sight of the Khaiden hunting party, he crouched down, tensing his legs.
One chance, he thought, feeling giddy. Watch for it…
The bay doors stopped with a clunk, and then the shuttle separated from the landing cradle. Ponderously, moving only under low-powered thrusters, the craft wallowed out of the boat-bay. Crouched just beyond the edge of the opening, Hadeishi waited for the right moment-then he saw the port-side passenger door slide past-and he sprang outward, hands and feet outstretched.
He hit the side of the shuttle with a heavy thud, let his knees and elbows flex to absorb as much impact as possible, and then flattened himself against the hull. Seconds later, the Khaid shuttle had cleared the Qalak and the entire spaceframe shivered as its main engines went into pre-ignition.
Two hundred seconds. A cool sensation tickled his left wrist as his med-band started to inject anti-radiation meds. Ignoring the sensation, Hadeishi scuttled forward to the passenger door and peered inside.
Perfect, he thought, suppressing a laugh. A Khaid sailor in a blue-and-black z-suit was just inside, watching an environmental control panel as the shuttle started to pick up speed. After a moment of preparation, Mitsuharu began banging hard on the porthole with the severed forearm. Then, before waiting to see what happened, he secured the limb with two quick passes of stickytape so that the bloody glove was easily visible in the window, and scrambled up and over the roof of the shuttle.
Crouching, he took his bearings and saw the shuttle was turning away at an angle from both the Qalak and the Wilful. It was hard to gauge distance with no backdrop, but he guessed the freighter was a good kilometer away. Two hundred, fifteen seconds.
Hadeishi pulled out the little plasma cutter, oriented himself towards the Wilful -looked back towards the passenger door with a wry twist to his lips-and when he saw the top edge of the door cycle outward, he rotated the strength ring to full and thumbed the control.
The plasma jet flickered out in a long, blue-white line and Hadeishi felt his boots tug-kicking away, he lost adhesion-and then saw the shuttle falling away below him. Long seconds passed… he imagined the hatch cycling open, the limb being retrieved, the Khaid sailor stepping back inside to examine the queer artifact. Then the portholes on the sides of the shuttle suddenly flared with a stabbing, orange-red light. The spacecraft shuddered, spilling debris. Out of the corner of his eye, Mitsuharu saw a swarm of combat suits boiling out of the Qalak ’s boat-bay. EVA carts winged towards the shuttle, which was now leaking spheroids of gray-white smoke as the interior fittings burned.
Two hundred, forty seconds.
He switched off the plasma cutter and curled himself up into a ball. It was a long fall to the freighter and he hoped-devoutly prayed-that the Khaiden commander on the Qalak didn’t decide to turn on full active scanning for the immediate volume around his ship. Then I would fry like a sweet dumpling!
At two hundred forty-five seconds a wave of metallic debris, intermixed with charred cushions, chunks of piping, internal framing, and bits of z-suit accelerated past him. Buffeted by the flotsam, he looked back and saw that the entire shuttle had vanished in a blast cloud. The Khaid marines-barely visible at this range-were in equal disarray. Score one for the army! Good thing, too, he thought. That combat armor will sport an IR mode for extravehicular combat. Gritting his teeth, he dialed down his suit temperature regulator. Can’t go to zero, but I can draw down my signature…
Sixteen minutes later, his limbs numb with cold and his radiation monitor strobing red, Hadeishi collided with cargo hold B on the Wilful ’s port quarter. Shocked out of a hypothermia-induced daze, he bounced along the pitted, scarred surface of the freighter for five or six seconds until he managed to get his hands flat against the metal hull and his z-suit adhered. The jerky stop sent stabbing pains up each arm, but he managed to hold on. Ah, now that hurt.
Now able to dial up his suit temperature, Mitsuharu scrabbled along on all fours, looking for the nearest airlock. If memory served, there was a cargo door between two of the drive fairings. The last six meters seemed a vast distance, but he managed to drag himself to the control panel and punch in his access code. Human-friendly lights flickered on inside the lock chamber and he fell in, feeling utterly drained. Hands shaking, Mitsuharu managed to get the outer lock closed and atmosphere cycling before he collapsed.
Gravity kicked in as he lay on the floor, inner door rotating open. For a long moment Hadeishi couldn’t even lift his head, but when he could, the cargo hold access way was empty. No alarms had triggered, no sirens sounded. Khaid haven’t reprogrammed the ship yet.
Dragging himself over the threshold, Hadeishi managed to prop himself against the nearest wall and close the hatch. His hands and feet were getting warmer, and he felt some strength returning. When he could get to his feet, Mitsuharu shuffled down to the cargo master’s office-really no more than a closet with controls to manage the gangways and cranes-and rummaged through the storage bins. This yielded up a Gogozen bar-a kind of high-fat candy he usually avoided, but now stuffed into his mouth without delay-and far better, three cans of Kuka-Kolo-a carbonated chocolatl beverage sweetened with the sap of the Nopal cactus. When all three were drained dry, Hadeishi began to feel human again. Ah, sugar. Very delicious. Now I need a weapon, or more than one.
He missed the grenades, but they seemed to have done well by the Khaid shuttle.
After searching the closet one more time, Hadeishi signed into the shipboard net and paged through the security camera views available to him. Restricted to below-decks, he found nothing in ten fruitless minutes. No Khaid down below… they must be up on the bridge.
Picking up a long pry bar stowed behind the comp panels, Mitsuharu slipped out of the closet and made his way towards the shipcore with his helmet external audio turned up, listening for anything beyond the usual groaning and hissing of the old ship.
The starboard cargo lift rattled to a halt on the accommodation deck-not an area Hadeishi had ever set foot in before-and he eased out, pry bar in both hands like a bat, and stepped lightly towards the shipcore. Almost immediately he encountered a rec room strewn with burned fabric and paper, fallen kaffe cups, and broken plates. His boots crunched on scattered shipgun flechettes, and the walls and cupboards were badly torn up. Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor-both wearing the jumpsuits favored by the Wilful ’s crew-and as he gingerly approached, they convulsed with a rippling wave of motion.
“Shipbugs,” Mitsuharu muttered under his breath, skipping backward, face twisting in disgust.
Both corpses collapsed into a tatter of cloth and white bone. The Khaid shipbugs, an insectile omnivore about the length of his thumb, swarmed across the floor, their silvery carapaces making a queer, shimmering mass. Hundreds of antennae turned in his direction, waved about tasting the air, and then the entire swarm turned away with a rustling tik-tik-tik, looking for more decomposing organics to consume.
Why the Khaid-who were not one of the insectoid species known to the Mexica-employed the shipbug, Hadeishi did not know. One intel briefing he had seen suggested the Khaiden themselves had once been a subject race of the Kryg’nth or Megair and had adopted some of their past masters’ technologies and practices. Too, he understood they found the insects a delicacy. He found the bugs loathsome and stayed back, out of the room, until the swarm had departed for some other corpse-strewn pasture.
Then he forced himself to search through the remains of the two men, and gathered up their identity cards, pocket multitools, and anything else of use he could find. The refrigerator in the rec area also yielded up more to eat and two bottles of Mayahuel brand beer, which he stowed in the leg pockets of his z-suit.
Do they have a handler? he wondered, thinking of the shipbugs again. So far they are the only sign of life… Perhaps the Khaid close off the ship, let the bugs scour everything clean, and then come in to gather them up. All fat and juicy and… He spat violently in the sink, then wiped his mouth. I need to find a real command console with access to all of the security cameras.
Hadeishi crouched at the junction between the shipcore and an access way to the main passenger airlock, morbidly amused to stand no more than a meter from where he’d been marched out in chains no more than an hour earlier. This time the roundabout was empty-all of the bodies had been dragged away and the Khaid marines were gone. Cautious, Mitsuharu held a small mirror mounted on a telescoping handle around the corner, looking for the expected guards. The airlock itself was open, but no one seemed to be in the gangway leading to the Qalak. There must be someone just out of sight on the other side…
Wary of showing himself in the crossroads, Mitsuharu backtracked to the nearest door and slipped inside. The room was one of a set ringing the top of the shipcore and seemed to be sleeping quarters for four. On the far side was a sliding doorway leading into a shared bathroom. Hadeishi wasted no time in passing through, giving the fresher a quick once-over-no weapons or tools-and then easing open the doorway to the second bunkroom.
Here he found the bodies from the roundabout and bridge. They were thrown in a heap-and the tik-tik-tik of the shipbugs was loud enough to hear through his helmet. Suppressing an urge to vomit, Mitsuharu kept to the edge of the room and made a quick exit out the far door.
Breathing fast, Hadeishi forced himself to stop-now he was in a short corridor leading back to the roundabout-and he was suddenly afraid he’d walked out in full view of any Khaiden camera pointing down the gangway between the two ships. Luckily, the corridor was not in line with the airlock itself. Breathing a sigh of relief, he ducked across to the other side of the passage and was about to chance angling back to the crossroads to get to the bridge itself when he realized that the thick trail of blood and offal leading into the charnel room had a companion. Not much more than a scrape of blood here and there, but a clear sign that someone had come out of the slaughterhouse-crawled across the corridor on hands and knees-and through a door at the end of the passage.
Well now, they missed someone on their sweep. He followed the trail down a short maintenance passage filled with racked air filtration membranes and into a space holding the plumbing risers for the bathrooms.
The blood trail led into an opening beneath the gray water return. Taking a risk, Mitsuharu cracked open his z-suit helmet, set down the pry bar, and then knelt on the deck, peering under the pipes.
The dim glow of his helmet lamp glittered back from a pair of pale gray eyes.
An elderly, silver-haired woman was squeezed in among the plumbing, her jumpsuit caked with blood, her face gashed open. Now he could hear her labored breathing and see the muzzle of an automatic-a Webley Bulldog, from what he could see-pointed in his general direction.
“ Sencho,” he said quietly, recognizing the rank tabs on her collar. “I’d better get you out of there.”
An hour later, on the bridge, Captain De Molay was lying back on the pilot’s shockchair, her face bandaged and a mug of instant kaffe clutched in hands shining with antibiotic biogel. She looked only marginally better and her breathing was still hoarse. Hadeishi was sitting at the captain’s panel, carefully paging through the onboard cameras, a long machete-like knife close by his hand, and two different earbugs inserted. The Wilful ’s systems were more of a hodgepodge than he’d believed, but on-board power was up, the transit coil was spun down to a low idle, reactors were cooking, and every kind of weapon on the ship had been gathered up by the Khaid and hauled away.
Well, he thought, almost everything. He patted the machete.
“You’re our new engineer’s mate then,” De Molay wheezed, trying not to cough. “Azulcay said you were showing some promise.”
“Kind of him,” Mitsuharu replied, glancing over at the main hatchway. The door was locked and barred, though he knew there was a shipbug swarm busily cleaning up the blood sprayed across the floor and walls outside. The thought still turned his stomach. “Are there any explosives on board? Grenades?”
“If the bastards didn’t take it,” she coughed, pointing at the bridge gun locker-whose door was hanging open, the locks sprung. “There might be some blasting putty in there. I keep some on hand when we have to clear a landing zone.”
Hadeishi nodded, distracted by a faint tremor suddenly running through the floor and making his fingertips buzz on the control panes. He checked the exterior camera feeds, and saw the Qalak ’s shipskin was deforming. The forests of radiating fins were drawing inward, while the destroyer’s transit drive foils were unwinding.
“She’s prepping to jump and take us with her. Finish that kaffe, kyo, we’re going to have to move.”
“Move where?” De Molay managed to lift her mug and drain the rest of the sludge. “Two poor pilgrims are we, with only one tired horse-not even one we can fly out of here!”
“No, not yet.” Hadeishi rummaged quickly through the gun locker-twice looted between the Wilful ’s crew and the Khaid-and came up with a half-used cylinder of grayish putty, no more than a finger in length. “No triggers?”
“Not in there, child.” De Molay attempted a smile, which made her cheek twinge. “Stowage bin beside the captain’s chair, the one with the broken lock.”
“Ah.” Hadeishi fished out three putty triggers, one of which was a remote-controlled detonator. “Domo arigato.” The triggers went into one pocket, the putty into another.
On the camera pane pointing down the gangway into the Qalak there was sudden motion. Mitsuharu leaned over, caught sight of four Khaid in z-suits strolling across the gangway, and motioned to De Molay. “Time to go, Sencho-sana.”
Moments later, with the bridge hatch propped open once more, Hadeishi was climbing down a service tube running between the decks, with Captain De Molay clinging to his shoulders. The old woman was light enough to carry, but no burden he wanted to freight for hours. A clumsy set of straps tied them together, and he could do no better with the time allowed.
He could feel, from the vibration of the ship, that the Wilful was underway, though her engines were still cold. Hadeishi assumed the Qalak was accelerating away from the ambush point and spinning up gradient. Hadeishi was hoping to find somewhere for them both to hole up before The dim lights in the shaft flickered-his stomach sprang up, reversed, and crawled back down his throat. De Molay groaned, her abdomen clenching in protest. She gagged, but managed to choke down the vomit.
“We’re away,” Mitsuharu said, when he felt steady enough to resume climbing down. “And who can tell where we’re heading?”
“I can,” De Molay wheezed, “if we can get access to a control panel in engineering.”
“ Hai, kyo. At our first opportunity.” They reached a junction between decks and Hadeishi struggled to step off the ladder and onto the service door landing. De Molay had to help, grasping at a stanchion with her weak hands, while he navigated the corner. Then Mitsuharu keyed through the door and saw they had descended far enough to reach the lower cargo deck.
“Wait here, kyo,” he muttered, setting her down. “I need to set some insurance.”
Back in the maintenance shaft, he tore open a series of access panels until he found an orange-colored conduit the thickness of his wrist. Gingerly-who knew how stable the substance was!-he tacked the blasting putty behind the communications main and then wedged the remote detonator into place. Working his way back to the corridor, he closed and locked the entrance to the shaft and then checked the detonator relay.
Cupped in his hand, the status light shone a pale green.
“What did you mine?” De Molay asked, peering up at him from the floor. She was still too weak to stand.
“Main shipnet relay from the bridge to down below, kyo.”
“And how did you know it was there?” She was frowning, and had the old woman her full strength, her expression would have been formidable.
Hadeishi shrugged. “ Sencho, I have many bad habits.”
Slinging her on his back again, Mitsuharu set off for his old quarters behind the fuel tanks.
Winter rain was pouring down, setting the mountainside streams to rushing, white-frothed torrents. Musashi was climbing the pass under Mount Murou, a plain wooden staff in each hand. A bitterly cold wind howled, nipping at his face, etching white streaks on the wolf-skin he wore as a cape. The old blind man clinging to his back was cursing endlessly, complaining about every jounce and jolt in the road as the swordsman climbed, step by step, his feet bleeding in the straw sandals, towards the summit of the pass. If he missed a step, the old man would strike the side of Musashi’s head with a begging bowl and shout-“donkey!”-over the hiss of the wind.
De Molay slumped into Hadeishi’s hammock with a relieved groan. Her face was very pale, her skin waxy. Mitsuharu pulled one of the bottles of Mayahuel from his leg pockets and popped the cap. The old woman drank noisily, but seemed a bit revived when he took the empty away.
The main engineering console had been shorted out, which Hadeishi found a crude but effective way to prevent its use, but the secondary panels were still active. He retrieved his stylus from a corner and keyed up the interface. “ Kyo, what code should I use?” he asked, looking to De Molay.
“Hierusalem,” she said, and then spelled out the Latinate word for him. The panel quickened to life, showing a wholly different interface than he’d ever had access to before. Both of Hadeishi’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then he quickly navigated through the sensor options to find the transit display.
At the summit of the pass, where Toudai temple had once stood, there was a ring of shattered pillars and broken stones. Here the icy wind was howling like a demon, and the chill cut through Musashi’s cloak like a knife. Arrayed across the road, their own furs white and almost invisible against the blowing snow, stood a line of men with drawn blades. In his ear, Musashi heard the blind man sniff once, then twice. “Ah, idiot donkey-why have you angered the shugenja? Now we shall be late…”
The engineering panel was not equipped to generate a full-up threatwell display, but Hadeishi could read the swarm of glyphs and icons as well as any Fleet officer. De Molay opened one eye, peering at him from the hammock. “Well, engineer’s mate, where are we going?”
“That, I cannot tell. But we have found company… two dozen Khaid warships, I would judge-some of them larger than I’ve ever seen under their colors before-and we are all on the same heading.”
He stepped away from the console, thinking. “I’m going to have to find a place to hide you, Sencho. The Khaid prize crew will come around soon enough.”