Land of the Dead (26 page)

Hadeishi shrugged. “I struck down one reviewing our technical manuals—but how far they’ve gotten beyond the nav system—”

The crewman sat down in the captain’s chair, looked around in apparent puzzlement, and then suddenly pitched forward. The sound of his fall was audible in the camera pickup, and was more than enough to draw the attention of three more Khaid who had been working at consoles on the far side of the small bridge. These turned, then one of them pointed at an environmental display flashing a warning.

De Molay shook her head. “They see the air warning lights. How quickly will they be overcome?”

Mitsuharu looked thoughtful. “Not long, but it may be enough to cause us mischief. I will stand watch at the lift between decks.”

After a swift review of the weapons to hand—his machete and knife were now supplemented by another Khaid shipgun—the Nisei slipped out of Engineering. As the hatch closed behind him, De Molay ventured a crooked little smile, saying: “I’ll let you know if anyone resists taking a very long nap.”

AT THE PINHOLE

Sitting in the junior officer’s mess aboard the
Tlemitl
, Engineer Second Helsdon was acquainting himself with a fresh-baked chicken pie and a jug of Ceylon black tea. The Jaguar Knights who had dragged him before the Prince had no interest in escorting him all the way back to the
Can
—so they’d jobbed him off on Logistics to ferry over to the research station when convenient. This left the sandy-haired engineer at loose ends for six or seven hours, so cooling his heels in the well-appointed mess seemed the perfect answer.

But scuttlebutt from the ensigns slouching at the next table indicated the
Can
itself was being abandoned, with the Mirror scientists returning to their transports. Which left Helsdon with nowhere to go, but for the moment he wasn’t too concerned about finding a bunk—the chicken pie was excellent and he guessed the engineers aboard the
Tlemitl
would look out for their own in a pinch. He’d hot-bunked himself, more than once, when a fellow mechanic needed a place to sleep and hadn’t found an official posting yet.

A steward passed by, and Helsdon flagged her down. “Could I get another cuppa, please?”

She was pouring, the tea shedding curlicues of steam, when an alarm Klaxon sounded. The noise was harsh, shocking to the ear, and unmistakable.

“All hands to battle stations,” boomed the overhead, “all hands to battle stations.”

The decking itself suddenly shivered; every cup, saucer, and pot rattling on all of the mess tables. Aft of the cafeteria, in the engine ring, the super-dreadnaught’s maneuver engines were flash-heating to full combat power. Everyone was already up, on their feet, sealing the regulation shipsuit under their uniforms and scrambling towards the emergency lockers for helmets.

Helsdon seized hold of the edge of the table, stuffed the rest of the pie into his mouth, and then sealed his helmet. He, unlike many of the others present, was still wearing a proper z-suit and carried his full EVA helmet slung over his back on a lanyard. Surviving in the wreck of the
Calexico
had made him intimately familiar with every piece of survival gear Fleet provided.

“Incoming hostiles at all points,” bellowed the overhead. “Missile impacts expected in one minute, one minute. Brace for hull rupture, all hands secure compartments and brace for zero-g.”

Oh Lord of my Sainted Fathers.
Helsdon bolted for the nearest damage control station.
Work to do, I have work to do. I need to do my work
, he chanted as he ran, fearing he’d freeze up if he faltered for even an instant.

*   *   *

Kosh
ō
stiffened in her shockchair as the executive threatwell displayed by her console filled with a swarm of angry red icons, each circumscribed by rapidly mutating glyphs. The ship’s threat assessment AI triggered, sounding alarms the length of the
Naniwa
.

“Battle stations!” Kosh
ō
barked, feeling the shockchair fold around her automatically. A helmet was already lowering over her head and she reflexively tucked her hair in. Combat readiness subsystems were kicking in at every station, discarding the patrol-specific displays and replacing them with battle configurations. The lights shaded to red, and behind her the main hatchway sealed itself. Her eyes flicked across the storm of data flowing into the main threatwell. “We are under attack by a Khaid fleet—repeat, we are under attack by a Khaid fleet.”

The Khaiden armada—or nearly so, given the usual size of their raiding squadrons—had dropped gradient directly on top of the Imperial ships loitering around the
Can
. The
Naniwa
’s sensor suite was already flooded with the fury of beam weapons igniting, and the threatwell was filled with swarm after swarm of missiles and bomb-pods spewing into the void.

Kosh
ō
spared an instant to thank Hachiman they were in motion and a fair distance from the rest of the squadron.

“Message drone away,” Oc Chac barked reflexively. “Transit to hyper in one hundred thirty-six seconds.”

Susan’s habitual calm turned icy and everything around her narrowed down to the storm unfolding in the threatwell. She could feel Oc Chac’s attention on her, hot and wavering, an unsteady flame. The other officers were still scrambling to bring deflectors up, or confirm gun crews and missile teams were standing by. Pucatli at comm was speaking rapidly into his throatmike, confirming readiness of the interior compartments and sections.

Kosh
ō
caught the Mayan’s eyes. “
Sho-sa
, this is a brawl for dreadnaughts. I’ll handle maneuver, combat targeting, and tactics; you keep us able to move, fight, and react. Do you understand? We’re going to get hit hard, and you’re going to have to put us right with all speed.”

Oc Chac stared back at her for a second, almost paralyzed with panic, and then nodded sharply. “
Hai
,
Chu-sa, hai!
”

“Pilot, full ahead,” Kosh
ō
grated, seeing
Naniwa
’s velocity climb. They had not, luckily, been at full stop when the attack began. The initial confusion around the
Can
had started to stabilize and she could see every Imperial ship was trying to get underway.
They’ve jumped in “orumchek” formation,
she realized, watching the spiderweb attack pattern of the Khaid ships unfold.
And they’ve caught almost all of us at zero-v, pants down, finger up the nose.

“Weapons, all launch racks deploy, give me every sprint missile we can throw, configure for independent terminal tracking.” The stylus slashed through her copy of the threatwell, describing a second “shell” of target areas around the periphery of the combat area. “Pilot, full combat power, angle for thirty-two degrees off axis. Take us hard up along the Barrier line. Transit deflectors at maximum power.”

The
Naniwa
surged ahead, engines flaring sun-bright, warning lights flashing in every compartment as the crew raced to battle stations. Susan ran through a brief internal checklist, confirming all drives were showing green, no bay doors were open to space, and internal battle compartments were sealing. Already the ship shook with the vibration of the ammunition Backbone shuttling fresh shipkillers to the primary rails, while the missile racks rolled out from the hull.

“
Chu-sa
, targeting solutions are locked.” Konev seemed absurdly happy. “Hardpoints are clear to launch.”

“Weapons, fire.” Kosh
ō
felt a sharp bolt of elation as dozens of missile tracks sprang into view on the threatwell, spiraling out from the
Naniwa
, which was now accelerating hard. Holloway was sparing nothing to hit the mark she’d set for him.

“
Kyo
, salvo one away,” Konev reported, voice tight with adrenaline and fear. “Cycling launchers.”

*   *   *

In the center of the spiderweb, caught at a dead stop, battle-shields off-line, the surface of the
Tlemitl
rippled with white-hot explosions. Khaid particle-beam weapons savaged the enormous hull, chewing away at a shipskin four times the thickness of the armor encasing the
Naniwa
. Clouds of shipkillers rained in, flooding the point-defense network with a constant stabbing barrage of detonations. Behind them, bomb-pods stuttered, unspooling long chains of thermonuclear-pumped laser emitters. Despite being caught unawares, the
Tlemitl
’s on-duty gun crews were already in action—city-block-long emitter nacelles swiveled, flaring with the sidescatter radiation from beam weapons igniting. Missile launch rails were cycling as fast as their hardware allowed, disgorging heavy shipkillers in bursts.

*   *   *

In Flag Command on the super-dreadnaught, Prince Xochitl—who had been caught by the attack in transit to a meeting with the senior Mirror scientists and their political officers—staggered as a pair of shipkillers detonated against the
Tlemitl
’s hull. The internal g-field was fluctuating and even his coppery skin was noticeably pale as he dropped into a shockchair at the Admiral’s console. His Jaguars had been carrying the components for a full EVA suit with them, and now the Prince was locked down and encased in full armor.

The
Tlemitl
’s captain, Ikaru Yoemon, was in Main Command, fifty decks and half the length of the ship away, which left the Prince with whichever duty officers were within reach of FlagCom when the first alarms sounded. Despite being shorthanded, Xochitl tapped into the battlecast directly and immediately upon establishing comm lock, the Flag threatwell sprang to life, showing the whole chaotic scene in vibrant detail.

The
Fiske
and
Eldredge
were already shattered hulks, spewing wreckage and burning with radiation fires on all decks. Two of the heavy cruisers, the
Axe
and the
Mace
, were expanding spheres of ionized metal and plasma—containment lost on their reactors, weapons cooking off in a ripple of secondary explosions. By tremendous luck, the Fleet tender
Hanuman
had been at the periphery of the attack area and was now only minutes from making gradient to hyperspace.

The battle cruiser
Naniwa
, which had just rotated out on a patrol sweep, was also out of the immediate melee.

Though his first instinct was to comm
Thai-sa
Yoemon for ship’s status, Xochitl knew the captain was fully occupied with damage control and fighting for his ship. Instead he confirmed the status of the other ships in the squadron and added himself to the ’cast command channel. Immediately the chatter of six or seven commanders flowed through his earbug, including the harsh bark of
Chu-sho
Xocoyotl on the
Tokiwa
.

“Battle shields coming on-line now,” Yoemon reported on a channel specific to the
Tlemitl
.

The overhead lights in Flag Command flickered and the constant shattering vibration of bomb-pod impacts and particle beam detonations ceased. In the threatwell, the
Firearrow
’s glyph changed and Xochitl knew that outside—in the maelstrom of radiation, spinning debris, and streaking missiles—a wavering, rainbow-hued globe had sprung up around his ship. Within the second, one of the v-panes on his threatwell display was strobing, showing impact rates on the various shield cells managed by the massive Tototl-Aerospatiale generators embedded beneath the shipskin.

One corner of the threatwell spiked as an irregular sphere of plasma suddenly occluded the
Can
.

So much for the Mirror’s
sensor platform
, Xochitl thought, shunting the flood of data flowing over him to his exocortex.
Battlecast is up and synchronized … Xocoyotl had better get—ah, good, here they come.

The secondary beam weapons on the
Tlemitl
were now firing in staccato, sweeping the area ahead of the massive ship free of bomb-pods and penetrators. The Khaid were fond of strewing clouds of one-off mines when they engaged the enemy, then working to drive their prey into the shoals which resulted.

Four Khaiden battleships—Xochitl had never encountered the class before and his exocortex could find no references to them in the Fleet briefings and intelligence estimates—were now closing on the dreadnaught, seeking to bring particle weapons to bear behind three speeding waves of shipkillers.

An answering salvo of penetrators was already belching from the
Tlemitl
. Xochitl fought down a fierce desire to override Yoemon and take direct command of the dreadnaught, but the
Thai-sa
was doing an able job. Initial damage was already being attacked by Engineering damage control parties. Shields were up, the ship was building velocity, and the
Tokiwa
and
Asama
were closing vector with all speed.