He landed square on both feet, but now his stance had changed. No longer did he move with such delicate grace—instead he spun, wings inward, showing his broad back and mantle to the watching men—and with every revolution, swinging into ever tighter circles, the whiteness was pierced again and again by black, corrosive streaks. In a flurry of motion, the dancer was suddenly prostrate before Chac and Kosh
ō
at the end of the lines of watching men—and his mantle, his chest, his legs were all but consumed by stippled gray-on-black darkness, as though his limbs had washed away in a tide of corruption.
BOOM.
The drum sounded fully one more time, the boy head down on the platform before them, his breath coming in audible gasps. Then Oc Chac struck the sides of the drum sharply with stiffened fingers, drawing everyone’s attention away from the
Huitzitzilnahualli
and onto himself.
“A poet once said:
Be joyful, there are intoxicating flowers
in our hands.
Put on these necklaces
of flowers, flowers from the season of rain,
fragrant flowers opening their corollas.
Here flies a bird, he chatters and sings,
he comes from the house of the Risen Lord.
With flowers in our hands, we are happy.
With songs upon our lips, sadness disappears.
O great-hearted ones, in this way,
your sorrow is put to flight.
The Giver of Life, the Sacrificed One, he has sent them.
He invents them, the joyous flowers,
These put your sorrow to flight.”
When the Mayan’s basso voice fell silent, Susan realized the hummingbird dancer had vanished like smoke among the fir trees and the faces of all the engineers and Backbone
kashikan-hei
were open and glad, empty of fear or fatigue. Even she felt refreshed, in a strange way, as though some of the weight upon her shoulders had been lifted.
* * *
Several hours later, after taking her station in Command, Kosh
ō
saw Oc Chac enter, once more in his usual Fleet uniform. She beckoned him over, her expression curious. “
Sho-sa
, my thanks for this morning’s invitation.”
The Mayan nodded grudgingly. “You were most welcome,
kyo
.”
“Did you need me to be present?” She tilted her head to one side, watching him closely. “Should the commanding officer attend these ceremonies?”
“
Chu-sa
… No, it is not necessary. Most captains do not appear.”
“Was my presence helpful?” Kosh
ō
leaned back a little in the shockchair. “You let me stand—you made me part of the ritual. Were I absent, would you have taken my place?”
Chac shook his head. “No,
kyo
. The officer in charge of the damaged area would usually represent the Risen Lord—but Goroemon was off-watch, having stood in for mine, and I thought … I thought you might find it interesting.”
“It was.” She looked him up and down, nodding to herself. “I am glad to see you back on duty, however. Look at this.” Kosh
ō
turned to the executive ’well displayed by her console, stylus light in her hand, and marked a semicircular area deeper into the Pocket, partway between the
Naniwa
and the singularity and its attendants.
A dark mass emerged from the scan as the ’well zoomed in.
“There is an enormous amount of debris,” Susan said, “between us and the event horizon. Shoal after vast shoal of matter, all of it dark and cold. The dispersion pattern is very stable—only in a few places have we been able to pick out infall from the cloud towards the black hole. And it seems to be old.”
“Ancient!” Oc settled at his own console, keying up a copy of what she was looking at. He grimaced at the figures displayed on the sidebar v-panes. Other displays unfolded, showing him the results of the latest navigational scans. “We’re not receiving much data from deeper in the system, either, but look at the initial analysis on this formation: very heavy—metals, radioactives, high-order elements. And the size of the field—I wonder if the planetary systems from those brown dwarves made this up—after something pulverized them into rubble.”
Kosh
ō
nodded, rubbing her chin. “Or something cut them up into tiny pieces.”
Thai-i
Holloway, who had been poring over the same data, hoping to find some clue in the pattern of dust clouds to indicate another Pinhole-like exit, looked up and caught Susan’s eye. “
Chu-sa
, I think there’s something solid down at the horizon.” He stepped to the main threatwell and jabbed his stylus deep into the projection. “I can see just a faint ghost—here—on my long-range plot.”
The
Chu-sa
nodded.
It must be enormous to show up at this range, but what else could we expect? All of this didn’t come into being by accident.
Kosh
ō
straightened her uniform, keyed up her own image in a v-pane looping from the comm system, and then tapped open a channel to Prince Xochitl in Secondary Command.
“Lord Prince?” she said briskly, when his grim visage appeared. “Status update. Still no way out, but we’ve confirmed the pocket is just more than six light-years across. We have also found indications of an artificial structure very near the event horizon of the singularity.”
Xochitl frowned, his expression impassive, as though carved from stone. “All of this was built, you say? The whole of the
kuub
and this hidden realm as well?”
“Almost certainly,
Gensui
.” Susan remembered the raw greed on Gretchen’s face very clearly. “I will keep you—”
“Let us consider our situation carefully,
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
.”
The cold formality in the Prince’s voice stood the small hairs of Susan’s neck on end.
“The Khaid will have summoned reinforcements,” he continued. “They will not abandon the watch at our badger-hole. Indeed, they will be aggressively seeking a way in after us. A six-light-year-diameter surface will take years to search properly, and I do not believe we have years of supplies aboard this ship. If all of this is a ‘made-thing,’ then the structure at its core will be a control apparatus of some kind—”
“Or cheese!” Kosh
ō
interrupted in irritation. “Or the hostile fortress all of this was built to protect! Certain destruction in any case, as it will be defended—”
“Make course for the structure,
Chu-sa
,” the Prince growled. “Every recording device aboard on continuously. Dispatch message drones with the contents every half-hour.”
“Of course, Lord Prince.” Kosh
ō
closed the comm connection, then stifled a sigh and picked up a stylus to lay in a new plot. “So, down into the black heart of the
kuub
,” she muttered. “And then out again as quickly as possible.”
Grubbing for something to show his beneficent father, some prize to buy back favor. There’s a cold thread of fear in his heart now … and we’ll all likely pay for it. I should not have suggested he’d been sent out here to die.
Holloway and Oc Chac were waiting, faces pensive, when she looked up again.
“Yes,
Sho-sa
?”
The Mayan made a disgusted face. “And where,
kyo
, does he expect these message drones to
go
?”
OUTSIDE THE BARRIER
Once more, Hadeishi was sitting in the darkened bridge, the
Wilful
’s day having wound down into the third watch, watching sensor traffic spool past in the holocast. De Molay was seemingly asleep in her chair—she rarely moved now, having given up her cabin to the worst of the wounded—and Tocoztic and a Mirror comm officer who just needed a place to lay her head were snoring on mats on the floor behind the Navigator’s station. The Khaid fleet at the Pinhole was still busy, various scattered ships returning to the main group, and the battleships standing watch were now gathering up and accelerating battle debris into the opening. At this range, Mitsuharu couldn’t follow the details of their mapping process, but he was certain they were making headway.
His hand moved on the controls, rewinding the last thirty-six hours of data, then letting it run forward at sixty-speed over and over again.
Where are you,
he wondered, keying up the commercial registry one more time.
I can feel you’re there, given a fresh coat of paint, or at least a new nameplate …
His earbug fluttered with snatches of Khaiden message traffic as well. Their encryption was spotty, and sometimes they broadcast in the clear—though, to their credit, only on line-of-sight laser when in close proximity—but Mitsuharu had time, and the passive scanners stitched into the hull of the
Wilful
were very good, just as the old woman had promised. What he heard was mostly unintelligible, but occasionally he made out the names of ships, or
Kabil
-commanders, or perhaps curses used over and over again.
They are not pleased.
That much was very clear. Mitsuharu also gained the impression that an argument was underway between the ship captains—some seemed bent on leaving, the others on wrinkling out the one Imperial ship to escape their trap. A battle-cruiser which, from what he could gather from fragmentary appearances on their long-range scan, had disappeared into the “passage” the Khaid were attempting to reconnoiter.
So one of us got away with a working ship—excellent piloting—but now De Molay’s “whipping knives” are shown to have a chink in their armor. And what might lie beyond? That is a powerful draw for the
Kabilizar.…
Movement in the active holocast caught his eye. Three of the smaller Khaid ships had gotten underway, each building velocity with a steady burn. The corona flare of their engines stood out on his plot—and each seemed to be departing the main group on a different vector. Hadeishi scratched the back of his head, reached for a plastic jug of water someone had left in Command, and then grew very still.
Three drive flares, three ships—but not the same engine signature.
His stylus was immediately busy on the console, capturing all three emissions profiles and then routing them into a spectral analysis module the freighter’s comp maintained for finding hydrogen strata in gas giants.
There! There she is.
One of the three ships—perhaps a light cruiser from the mass index—was what he was waiting for.
“The Goddess watches over the patient,” Mitsuharu said to himself. His stylus tapped rapidly on the console, setting a new course. He frowned as the nav comp calculated the intercept, as the resulting numbers were not good.
This gives us a very poor angle of approach. We need to trim that up.
De Molay opened one eye as the timbre of the
Wilful
’s vibration changed, the maneuver drives going into their pre-ignition sequence. “And now?”
“We need to pick up some velocity,
Sencho
. How high can I push these engines?”
Both of the old woman’s eyes opened. “Are you mad? If you go to maximum burn, the Khaid will pick us up on long-range scan.”
“I know.” Hadeishi offered her a lopsided smile. “I want one of their light cruisers to come looking for us—or at least change their course enough to scan our area.” He paused, thinking. “The absorptive mode will work again, correct? It wasn’t a one-time getaway device?”
“Yes,” De Molay said, sounding wary, “it will work again.…”
“And unless a Khaid camera is pointed directly at us as we occlude the star field—which is luckily very sparse here—or move across one of the more excited dust clouds, their sensors won’t pick us up?”
“That is the idea.” An acerbic tone crept into her voice.
Mitsuharu stood up, straightened his battered leather jacket, and gave her a very proper bow. “Then we’ve a great deal of work to do. Thank you,
Sencho
.”
* * *
Several hours later, Hadeishi climbed awkwardly up one of the gangways to the command deck, having trouble adjusting to the restricted field of vision and clumsy weight of his new armor. The bandolier of grenades strapped across his chest and the bulky
Yilan
-class shipgun over his shoulder banged against him with every movement.
Maybe,
he thought—a little late—
this wasn’t a good idea.