Land of the Dead (62 page)

A vampire,
Gretchen realized, falling back into the waking world, her limbs clammy with shock.
A parasite of some kind, that … something like that was in the tablet! It was controlling me, guiding my mind! Xochitl was right—and there are hundreds of thousands more of them, down there, in the abyss … the deities of the Hjogadim.

“I will say these words, to the Gods,” Sahâne announced, breaking her train of thought. The priest made an elegant, human-style bow. “If you give me leave to do so.”

The three Templars shared a glance and nodded, almost as one. Piet gestured with his assault rifle, pointing Sahâne towards the nearest console. “Waste no time, then.”

Gretchen watched curiously as the Hjo paced deliberately to the largest, most centrally located console and then pressed fingertips to forebrain, a swift, mumbled litany on his lips.
What is he?…
Anderssen felt suddenly the fool. Her ghost-sight quickened, and she saw the air around Sahâne come alive with flickering glyphs and signs.
His masks are on overdrive and—spouting nonsense? They must be trying to decipher the control systems … but are too new to understand these older mechanisms.

Despite the confusion of symbols, the subaudible hum in the floor changed pitch. At once the consoles flickered awake, glowing with dappled green and gold. The air in the enormous chamber stirred. Long lines of lamps began to shine among the abandoned cradles. Anderssen crawled to the nearest panel and felt it becoming aware under her hands, waiting for guidance. She realized that despite the echoes of destruction reverberating in the ghost-world, the gargantuan machine around her was intact and functioning.

Automated maintenance,
she guessed.
Little bots or nanites always working to clean and fix and repair … gathering up the bodies of the dead, taking them away to be properly disposed of …
A frown creased her forehead.
But not by the great doors? Wouldn’t they … ah, but everything there is in a great untidy pile. Collected by the automated janitors, for something else, something larger to take away. But it couldn’t? Because the doors were locked tight, sealed.…
She suppressed an automatic reaction to look around the platform for the corpse of the last technician, the one that had sealed the doors, trapping himself inside, and then expired in due time.
Not here, not here … some chamber where he’d cached a bit of food and water, until he knew the tomb was forgotten and no one would return.

So, treachery.
Battle and slaughter in the midst of the great undertaking
.
Millions of stasis racks, all empty. Storage for the bodies drained of guiding flame. Waiting for their masters—their operators?—to return.…

Gretchen’s tongue awoke. “I don’t think you want him to do
anything
with that console, Löjtnant Piet.”

The pilot turned, politely curious.

“His race views ours as
slaves
and
toys
. I do not think the honorable Lord Sahâne will treat us kindly once he’s figured out how to work the controls of this fortress.” She forced a grin. “I think war-machines will come and we will all die. And then
he
will be in control of this place, and all that it contains.”

Piet stared first at her, then at Hummingbird, and finally at Sahâne. Gretchen was woefully aware of his sudden confusion, and fear, and the absolute depth of his ignorance.
If a penny will not do, then a pound must suffice.
She coughed wetly. “We don’t have much time, but I think I can deliver your message to his Gods—to the Vay’en who are sleeping far below us, in the singularity.” Another cough, this one unforced. “Even without the bronze tablet.”

Sahâne’s eyes were black as ink, his long face unreadable.

Piet blinked at Gretchen, and then eyed Sahâne suspiciously. Nodding, he raised his weapon. “Away from the console, creature.”

The Hjogadim moved back, slender hands raised.

“And him, too, get
him
away from
everything
,” Gretchen said, feeling her weakness returning, indicating Hummingbird with a tilt of her helmet. “You mustn’t trust him
at all
.”

The Templars were quick to action. They forced the
nauallis
away, to the top of the steps. Hummingbird went without complaint, though his eyes were fixed on Anderssen, his entire body tensed.

No, old Crow, I won’t tell you what I’m going to do. Not now, not ever again.

She suppressed a start of alarm when the still-open secondary comm channel squeaked in her ear.
Oh oh, not much time left!
Rubbing her gloves together, Anderssen placed her hands on the console.

The control surfaces gleamed like water under her touch. The glyphs swam to and fro in her unsteady vision. She closed both eyes, letting her mind grow quiet, feeling the pattern of the ancient machinery radiating against her outstretched hands.
Somewhere here …

“This is truly a construct of the Vay’en?” Hummingbird’s voice was reasonable, quiet, and far distant from her hurrying, busy thoughts. “A curious turn, to find the Hjogadim here in such numbers.…”

“I do not know of these
Vahyyyen
,” Sahâne replied testily. “My people built this fastness long ago, for our signs and symbols are everywhere. Even the passage-signs are in archaic Hjogadim, just as you might read in the Perfect Path. You trespass! This female of yours cannot have the first conception of how to—”

Gretchen moved along the control surface, following fragmentary memories, until a collection of glyphs under her hands suddenly felt
incorrect
.

A constellation of meanings,
she perceived,
where specific arrangements of the glyphs equal actions. Not verbs and nouns, but hieroglyphs. Like in the transit core outside.
She adjusted two of the outermost symbols, letting them flow under her fingertips into their long-accustomed, proper orientation.

A rippling groan permeated the air, rising up from the floor below the pylon. Everyone tensed, but nothing happened immediately. Anderssen craned her neck over the edge to see that the endless rows of cradles had tilted upright. Their restraining wings were unfolding.
Ready for the next fifty thousand passengers!

“I did that,” she said idly to the onlookers. Then she returned to letting her awareness expand and hoped against hope to grasp the meaning of these …
That is odd.
Two whole sequences of the controls were suddenly and clearly out of joint.
These feel … stuck.
She tried to move them back into what was so-obviously their proper configuration. Intermittent thought-images from her gold-tinged dreams surfaced, colliding with the glyphs on the control surface, but yielding faint guidance to her.
Yes, this first is a control constellation which means death. Transfiguration. Yielding to chaos.
But still, neither set of control symbols would move.
The controls are jammed,
she realized with a sinking feeling. Her focus turned to the second set.

This is birth;
borrowed memory told her,
rejuvenation.
Images of a blossoming flower invaded her vision—opening, wilting, dying, budding, opening, wilting—
no, not just any bloom, but a perennial. But why—

Gretchen grasped the totality of the puzzle in one shining instant. Many details were lacking, but the shattered pot suddenly fell together in her hands.
What cold calculating horror.
She knew what must be done.
Hummingbird is going to be displeased with me.

Anderssen laughed aloud, drawing a strained look from everyone arrayed around her.

NEAR THE SUNFLOWER

“Time to safety limit?” Kosh
ō
felt a great lightness steal over her as the
Naniwa
slipped past the last of the gargantuan wrecks. They were once more in open space, with nothing between her battle-cruiser and the distant speck of the artifact but vacuum. Somewhere ahead the ionized clouds of two
Hayalet
-class battleships marked the edge of the thread-weapon guarding the Sunflower. She hoped they would be able to use that—somehow—to their advantage in dealing with the rest of the Khaid. Her attention snapped to Helsdon, who was still crouched over his consoles, stylus tapping intermittently as he tried to tune the sensor array to detect the quantum distortions caused by the alien weapon.

Her other earbug was filled with bursts of chatter from out-system, where Pucatli’s sensor booms were trying to capture and decipher the enemy battlecast.

“The Khaid have counterattacked,” Oc Chac reported. He, too, was watching the sensor plot closely.

Thai-i
Olin laughed nastily. “If what I’ve heard is true, these Maltese would match Xipe himself in flaying them to the bone.”

“The Khaid assault anyone who assaults them,” Susan replied softly, her mind filled with disquiet. “They are ambitious. Destroying even one Order ship would win the survivors enough respect among the
Kovan
planets and stations.”
Those men on the little ship,
she suddenly realized,
were Order Knights. The
Moulins …
Hummingbird arranged all this!

An instant of pure fury was ruthlessly suppressed. Susan breathed in sharply, steadying herself.
Hummingbird arranged everything. Even the Khaid. Everything. The deaths of all those Mirror scientists and their support ships. He used me. He even used Sayu! Gods of mountain and stream, his ambition is without limit! He’s traded an entire Fleet battle-group—all of my dead crew—a super-dreadnaught fresh from the yards for that thing.

In the threatwell, the
Chimalacatl
loomed, growing steadily larger with every passing second.

“Up speed a quarter-point,” she spoke sharply at Olin, startling the Méxica officer. “
Sho-sa
, prepare a combat team—if any of our marines are left alive—for a boarding action.”

No one is going to miss a spare Judge amid all this slaughter. No one.

THE THREAD

Gretchen turned to Sahâne, her hands light on the console, fingertips floating a millimeter over the softly glowing hieroglyphs. “Holy One, it is blasphemy for me to complete this task. This is the abode of your Gods and you are their priest. Stand by me, give me your blessing, and I will rouse them from the long sleep. Let them guide your people again, if they wish.”

The Hjo goggled at her; suspicion, fear, and slowly growing wonder lighted his eyes. “You lie, toy. You will … you will … what
will
you do?”

“Look around, Holy one. You saw the bodies of the fallen at the last door. The Guard Imperial fell here—to the last man—defending this place. The enemies of your people could not pass that portal, not against their sacrifice. The traitors fled, unable to reach this”—once more she spread her arms, taking in the entire panorama of the accretion disk, the pylon, and the endless rows of cradles—“sanctuary.” She leaned towards him, voice fading to barely a whisper.

Almost against his will, Sahâne stepped within an arm’s reach. Gretchen continued. “But your Gods
did not die
. They are sleeping far below. Those Hjo who remained faithful to the end did that much. They sent the Wise One to safety.”

Sahâne’s fur rippled erect. His voice was hushed, barely audible even over the comm. “He … he is here?”

Anderssen met his eyes and nodded assent. “Why else should the Banner Crimson and Black fly
here
, save he was present?”
And perhaps he was,
she thought, remembering the Lord Serpent.
Perhaps he was.
“Will you help me lift him up, into the land of the living?” She tilted her head towards Löjtnant Piet. “Their message is for
him
, you know. They seek
his
help, to be guided, as The People are guided.”

Sahâne looked at Piet in puzzlement, and then he nodded as understanding slowly took hold. “I … I see. I did not know—that you believed as we believe.”

“All,” Hummingbird interjected very smoothly, before Piet could answer, “seek Guidance.”

“Then what can I do?” Sahâne’s nervousness was palpable.

Anderssen took his hand, feeling a cool shock as her fingers passed through the aura of glyphs surrounding the young alien. “We will move these constellations like … so…”

Codes unlocked at the priest’s touch and the great machine trembled awake. The Thread emitted an audible wail. Enormous energies, long held in abeyance, were released. Mechanisms spun to life, twisting the pattern of space, dragging at infinity like Herakles against the Promethean chain.