Land of the Dead (10 page)

Two long tables ran the length of the room and both were crowded with officers of all stripes, busily digging into bowls of rice, fried egg, picken, and chillis. As soon as she’d stepped across the threshold, the nearest ensign shot up out of his place on the tatami and bawled, “
Chu-sa
on deck!”

Everyone paused, chopsticks in midair, and the veterans cast amused looks at the clean-shaven young man, so fresh from Academy. No one else stood up, though everyone was paying close attention to the new commander’s response.

“As you were,” Susan announced to the room, which brought a rustling sound as everyone relaxed. Then she nodded politely to the ensign, saying: “We are not so formal at mealtimes,
Sho-i
Deskae. A well-fed crew is a hardworking crew. Please continue with your breakfast.”

The boy was back at his bowl of noodles faster than the eye could follow, bronzed skin darkening in embarrassment. Susan hid a smile as she paced along the tables towards her place at the far end. After a dozen paces she slowed, noting an empty
zabuton
between two senior petty officers from Engineering—but there was a little, mahogany-skinned man sitting cross-legged on the floor in just such a way as to block anyone else from sitting on the cushion.

Kosh
ō
stopped, looking down at his bald head and was dismayed to glimpse her own reflection.
Ay, I look haggard as a fishwife,
she thought.
Three months of sixteen-hour days wears … that it does.

Her initial postings to the destroyer
Ceatl
, and then the
Cornuelle
, had begun nearly a decade after the light cruiser’s commissioning, and though they’d been in dry dock or offlined for repairs many times, Hadeishi had always been in the middle of the actual repair work, leaving her to manage the local authorities and run security while he crawled around in the engines with Isoroku and the grease-monkeys. Under normal conditions, she’d have had the option to task her XO with the engineering review or take it herself—but
Sho-sa
MacMillan had not yet arrived from his previous command—and that left her very shorthanded.

Now
she
was the one in the conduits, banging her head and shuffling around after the construction foremen and
Kikan-cho
Hennig while the engineers talked nonstop about kinetic absorption rates in the between-frame armor and the spalling tendencies of the new model g-decking.

She had never felt better in her entire life, or more exhausted. Every cell in her brain had been stretched in three or four directions, and then snapped back into place.
But she’s my ship, and I have—at last—my own command.

It had not really occurred to her, until now, how long she’d spent on the
Cornuelle
, banging around in the dark, out beyond the fringes of Imperial control. She was years behind the others from her Academy class in achieving a ship command—
but there is a balance,
Kosh
ō
reminded herself,
none of the others were given a battle-cruiser.
None of them had her combat experience.

“
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
,” the man said, peering up at her with a pair of black eyes. The pupil and irises were almost exactly the same peat-dark brown, leaving only a thin white ring to outline them against his skin. He was wearing the somber black uniform of the Engineering service—not the shipboard branch, which was under the purview of the Fleet, but the station-side arm, which ran the sprawling complex of orbital habitats, forges, construction frames, and fitting stations which comprised the Akbal yards.

A Mayan,
she thought with interest.
Of an old, old family. What an astounding profile.

“Oc Chac,
kyo
,” he said, bowing stiffly to her once he’d stood.

“A pleasure,” she replied, then paused a split second before saying: “Is there something wrong with this
zabuton
?”

Chac nodded, lips thinning.

“Should it be replaced?”

He shook his head,
no
.

His silence was both amusing and irritating at the same time, and she was hungry.

Chac frowned, thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “
Chu-sa
, be mindful of this mess hall—always leave one seat empty. Always.”

“What suggests this?” She shifted the binders under the tray and started picking at her sliced fruit.

“Saving yours,
kyo
, there are only twenty-five seats.” He indicated the tables and Kosh
ō
saw this was indeed the case. “The last to sit will be—must be—in the thirteenth chair, regardless of how they enter.”

“Ah,” she said, suddenly realizing who he must be. “You are our
hafuri
priest.”

“No!” He shook his bald head abruptly. “The
jichinsai
rites to consecrate the hull will be performed by others, before you leave the yards. I am your fitting officer,
kyo
.”

But our
hafuri bonze
should …
“You’re not our fitting officer,” she said, voice suddenly cold. “You’re our
superstitions
officer.”

Chac’s impassive face seemed to congeal, and Susan bit down on further angry words.
That was not polite
.

“Starmen
are
 … superstitious,
Chu-sa
,” the Mayan hissed, trying to keep his voice down. Kosh
ō
realized she’d cut him to the quick with the heedless statement. “Do not tempt fate! You bring this ship bad luck enough,
kyo
, without provoking Camaxtli with your rudeness!”

“Bad luck?” Susan’s eyes narrowed to bare slits.

“Not that you are a woman!” Chac hissed, standing his ground. Though Kosh
ō
would never be accounted tall, she had a good two inches over the tiny Mayan. But he did not flinch away from her. “Your last ship died, her crew disgraced, captain sent down to the List … you think no one here
knows
what happened at Jagan? And you survived? Were promoted? How dearly bought was that last golden skull,
Chu-sa
? Did your family pay?—Or did you?”

“I see.” Kosh
ō
felt still and cold, the Mayan’s words a well-placed dart straight to the heart. She turned, sweeping the mess with a sharp, piercing glance. Every officer sat still as a statue—staring at the two of them in varying degrees of interest, horror, and uncertainty. “Rumor is fleet of foot, they say, and your ears will be filled with all manner of calamities.” Her voice echoed from the unfinished
shoji
. “I will say this—and no more—the
Cornuelle
was well and truly caught in a trap at Jagan. Her captain taken by surprise, myself trapped planet-side when the ship was stricken. The Admiralty made many excuses for us, but none of them are the truth. We had been out on patrol
too long
. We were far past tired, and our ship had worn down to nothing … a stupid, deadly mistake her captain rues to this day.
His
soul was in that ship, and now—with
Cornuelle
sent to the breaking yards—he is lost as well.”

Kosh
ō
inclined her head towards the ensigns sitting near the main door. “Remember this lesson.
Chu-sa
Hadeishi was one of the finest ship-handlers you could ever meet—and even he was caught out—defeated—by an enemy whose first weapon was patience. The odds
always
turn against you.”

“So is my belief,
kyo
,” Chac said, in a voice too low for the others to hear. “And what did you learn from this excellent teacher?”

Kosh
ō
’s right hand tightened on the breakfast tray. The Mayan matched her frigid stare without flinching, then raised one eyebrow minutely, bowed, and made his way out of the room. Susan did not watch him go, but stalked to her seat and sat down.

Kosh
ō
took two deep breaths, closed her eyes for a moment, and then set to eating the rice pudding.
A fine breakfast with my officers,
she thought, chewing mechanically.
Very fine.

*   *   *

The next week passed in a blur of construction review, sitting in with
Thai-i
Goroemon while the Logistics officer bartered with Supply Service to fill the ship’s holds with perishables and spare parts, and the lengthy business of actually meeting all of her department heads and their staff. In all the confusion of the tribunal at Toroson and the hurry to get to her new command, Susan had neglected to obtain the services of a manservant or—as she might have claimed—a maid. She’d always considered Hadeishi’s maintenance of old Yejin some kind of a charitable arrangement … until now, when she woke one morning, twenty-one days after reporting aboard the
Naniwa
, and found she had not a single clean uniform left in her closet. The ship, of course, boasted a fine, modern laundry, but
someone
had to gather up the dirty clothes and send them off to be cleaned.

Her comm chimed politely, reminding her that
Thai-sho
Kasir—the operational commander of the Yards—was expecting her on v-cast within the hour. A whole set of Fleet orders packets had arrived during shipnight and they required discussion with the
Zosen
officers responsible for the
Naniwa
’s construction, as well as other personnel issues she would have to manage herself.

Grandmother Suchiru would put her cane to the soles of my feet for this.…
Kosh
ō
stiffened at the thought of facing a superior Fleet officer in a less-than-immaculate uniform.
All night and all day. What to do? Improvise. I will improvise.

Frowning, Susan commed the laundry and asked the petty officer on duty to send someone around to collect everything, then she found a reasonably clean kimono and clipped her hair back.

Laughing a little at herself, Kosh
ō
sat at her desk, woke up her main comp, and unfolded three v-panes on the desk surface.
Chapultepec lower form never taught a better lesson than this!

Her stylus skipped across the control interface in a blur as she called up a skinning module, mapped her proper dress whites onto a splice of the v-cast feed routed back from the pickup nodes to pane two, then set pane three to show her what the admiral would see.

Six minutes before the v-cast started, she was finished tweaking herself and the door cycled open to admit one of the midshipmen.

“
Kyo
?”

“Everything is over there, Jushin-
tzin
.” She watched him for a moment, toying with a pair of reassignment packets from the bigger pile, as he bustled around, gathering up uniform tunics. A thought occurred to her while she was waiting. “
Ko-hosei
—do you know if our fitting officer is still aboard?”

“Chac-
tzin
?” Jushin’s expression was carefully neutral. “I believe so,
Chu-sa
.”

“Excellent.” Kosh
ō
considered the packets sitting on her desk, then shook her head.
I will just have to make do with the resources at hand.

*   *   *

Two hours later, Susan had an excellent view of the construction frame enclosing the six-hundred-meter length of the
Naniwa
. Beyond the spindly web of metal and the hundreds of canisters queuing to be unloaded into the cargo bays, the striated orb of Jupiter blotted out most of the visible sky. The constellation of orbital habitats holding station between Europa and the gas giant were off to her left, though invisible save for the tiny moving flares of shuttles or cargo lighters trolling between the wide-spread components of the Akbal complex.

Kosh
ō
stepped carefully, wending her way along the hexacomb pattern of the shipskin tiles. Her combat armor boots were magnetized, as were the narrow walkways installed for the final fit-out of the ship. Primary hull construction had been completed early the previous year—the last sixteen months had been spent by the
Zosen
installing crew compartments, weapon systems, fuel bladders, and so on.

With the loading bays and internal atmosphere operational, the shipskin had been laid down—a quarter-million tiles according to one of the binders now filling up the tiny office in her quarters—and punched down to the shipnet. Each tile was composed of a multi-phase composite which could deform—within limits, of course—upon command. Reflective or refractive surfaces could deploy within milliseconds, absorptive ones as well. They were tough, too. A diamond-bit saw could barely scuff their surface, much less cut the material.