Everyone else jerked in surprise, stunned. One of the petty officers cried out, horrified, and jetted away down the corridor. One of the Jaguars raised his shipgun, but Xochitl waved him off. “Let him go—the rest of you, get the hatch open!”
Five minutes later, the Hjo clambered into the capsule, helped by the
Cuauhhuehueh
. The Prince watched the creature, whose mere existence had caused the loss of two Imperial lives, with barely controlled fury, then followed.
Moments later there was a reverberating
bang
and the evac capsule accelerated violently down the launch rail.
IN THE
KUUB
S
IX LIGHT-MINUTES FROM THE
P
INHOLE
The
Wilful
moved stealthily through the debris of battle. Hadeishi had the little freighter’s engines pulsing only intermittently, letting momentum carry them through the wreckage as silently as possible. With only the two of them aboard, he’d isolated all of the compartments save the bridge, medical closet, and the passages connecting them. Everything else was powered down to reduce signature. Though it made no difference to a hunter’s active scan, Mitsuharu had also dialed down the lights on the bridge. He sat at the command station in darkness, his face lit only by the glow of the console and the ruddy gleam of light from the external camera displays.
Bodies, broken equipment, ruptured evac capsules, chunks of decking floated past the
Wilful
’s cameras. Where he could, Hadeishi angled the little ship to hide in the emissions shadow of larger sections of blasted hull, or to follow the agitated particle trails of now-dead ships. Where he was forced to cross unbroken “ground,” he moved as swiftly as the
Wilful
’s engines would carry them.
“You make a fine mouse hunting in a stubbled field,” De Molay observed, her voice low and quiet, though she could have shouted wildly and none of their putative enemies would have noticed.
“An eye out for owls and foxes all the while,
Sencho
,” Hadeishi nodded companionably. “You’ve lived on a farm?”
“My grandmother’s. May Our Blessed Lord guard her soul.”
“Ours as well.” Hadeishi put the helm over a point, nav plot revealing a cluster of wreckage ahead. A light tap on the engine control shifted their heading and a long cylindrical panel drifted past on the dorsal cameras. The structure—seventy or eighty meters long—had been ravaged by a plasma detonation. The battle-steel was puckered and wrinkled. In the coppery glare, some fragments of warnings and informational inscriptions remained on the outer surface.
“Imperial?” De Molay asked softly.
“Yes. A reaction mass tank from a battle-cruiser or strike carrier.”
Hadeishi sighed deeply. Remembered faces and fragments of conversation distracted him. A tremendous feeling of sorrow was welling up in him. Thoughts of the
Cornuelle
were prominent in his memory. Now he wished he’d carried the samisen up from Engineering. Lacking the instrument, he tapped his fingers on the console, setting a slow, mournful beat.
“A phantom greenish gray,
Ghost of some wight,
Poor mortal wight!
Wandering
Lonesomely
Through
The black
Night.”
Then he stopped, the shattered cylinder falling away behind them.
“What more can you offer?” De Molay shook her head, silver hair falling into her eyes. She brushed the strands away. “This is the fate of all sailors on this dark sea, to perish at last in the void, and find repose on the surface of the deep.”
Mitsuharu did not respond, his thoughts far away. Then, as he sat quietly, watching the dust clouds slowly change color, one of his scan alerts chirped. The Nisei’s head turned, eyes focusing once more on the present. A familiar silhouette coalesced on the main viewer. Using the vector from passive scan, two of the cameras had focused, picking out the outline of a vessel. Ship’s registry reported an initial identification—a Fleet
Varanus
-class cargo shuttle.
“See,
Sencho
? A sheaf of wheat is still standing among the broken stalks.”
Though the ship’s boat seemed intact and free of obvious battle damage, there was no sign of life aboard. The portholes were dark, engines cold, and the shuttle was tumbling end to end. Hadeishi steered alongside, smoothly matching her rotation with a deft play on the drive controls.
De Molay pursed her lips, eyes narrowed. “A derelict, do you think?”
“Sensors can lie,
Sencho
. If there are survivors aboard, would they advertise themselves?”
The old woman shook her head. “I would not!” She paused, thinking. “Our decrepit appearance will suggest we are some kind of scavenger.”
“Just as you planned,
Sencho
,” Hadeishi offered a faint smile. “Just as you planned. But as fortune has provided, they are
not
deceived by our appearance. They are correct.
Wilful
is a scavenger—of the lost. Matching airlocks now.”
“Very poetic,” De Molay muttered. Mitsuharu did not reply, his whole attention on matching the lock interfaces and running out the freighter’s gangway. A moment later, a faint
tunk
echoed through the decking and he had a string of green lights on the airlock status board. Then he double-checked the seal on the
Wilful
-side of the lock, making sure everything was secure, set the drive controls to automatic, and hurried downstairs.
* * *
His captured shipgun slung under-arm, Hadeishi looked in on De Molay in the medical closet. He’d gathered up a portable medpack and a bag of threesquares and water bottles. The silver-haired captain was trying to sit up in the tiny bunk, which was not as easy as it seemed.
“Lie quiet,
Sencho
. I’m going to cycle the lock in a moment—so I’ve switched Command to this console.” He reached under the medbay overhead and reconfigured the display. “You’ve got full control of environmentals and even the drives, if need be. But try not to run about, you’ll do yourself an injury.”
The look she gave him eased his worry for her safety. “And yourself, Engineer. I can manage from here.” She smiled tightly, tapping the grip of the Bulldog, whose holster and gunbelt were strapped across her chest. “Watch yourself, this wouldn’t be the first time the Khaid have booby-trapped an Imperial evac-capsule, or shuttle.”
“Or put a half-dozen marines aboard an unsuspecting rescue ship,” Hadeishi added brightly.
* * *
The shuttle hatch irised open, battle-steel partitions folding back into the hull. Mitsuharu crouched just out of sight around the corner of his own lock—standing wide open—watching the other end of the gangway via a remote. There was a long still minute, and then a wary, soot-stained Fleet ensign peered out—his own shipgun at the ready. The fellow stared uncertainly into the lighted, but vacant gangway. “Hello the ship?”
“I’m stepping out,” Hadeishi called, “no trouble,
Sho-i
.”
Then he stood up, shook out his shoulders—offered a quick prayer to Ameratsu to preserve him for just a few more minutes—and stepped around the corner, the muzzle of his shipgun pointed at the deck. The ensign had disappeared, though Mitsuharu was certain he—and his friends, if any—were only just out of sight. “We’re the
Wilful
, shipping out of Shinedo
uchumon
. My name is Mitsuharu Hadeishi—I’m the Engineer’s Mate. We are prepared to lend you aid, if you need it. Have you wounded aboard?”
The
Sho-i
reappeared, looked him over, and then held up two fingers. Behind him a tall Méxica with lieutenant’s flashing on his torn and bloody z-suit pushed past on the arm of a smaller man, a wiry little marine. Hadeishi stood aside while they limped into the freighter’s airlock. Three more followed, one rating in the middle—with no boots and only one foot—was being carried by his fellows. The ensign remained on the shuttle, face pale under the black coating of volatilized plastics.
“We have no medic,” Hadeishi said, watching the injured rating’s face grow paler by the second. “But there is an amputee kit in the medical closet.” He glanced over the five men in the
Wilful
’s airlock—to his naked eye, they all seemed properly human—before turning to the ensign in the shuttle doorway. “Are there others?”
Without waiting for an answer, the Nisei stepped far enough inside to scan the interior of the shuttle. The boat was bare, even of equipment, and stank of burning.
“No,
Kyo
. We were lucky to get out ourselves. The ship was…” The
Sho-i
, who seemed even younger than usual for an ensign, twitched every time Mitsuharu moved. “They came in fast.
Thai-i
Tocoztic says they—they were Khaiden.”
“They still are. We cannot keep the shuttle,
Sho-i
. Move over there with the others.”
He took one last look around, in case there were useful supplies to bring with them, and then cycled the shuttle hatch closed. The gangway rang hollowly under his boots and then he was back aboard the
Wilful
, fingers quick on the locking mechanism. Another
thunk
boomed around them and the gangway separated. Hadeishi keyed open the inner lock to the freighter, his refugees huddled uncertainly together. Out the viewport, the shuttle tumbled away, one more fragment of debris swallowed by the greater sea of the
kuub
.
“We should not abandon that shuttle!” the wounded
Thai-i
objected. “We’ll need her if this vessel suffers the same fate as the
Falchion
.”
“I do not intend to lose
this
ship,” Mitsuharu replied evenly. “And a cargo shuttle will only take up valuable stowage we will soon need for the others.”
The airlock chuffed, separating from its seal, and then swung aside. Hadeishi nodded at the lieutenant, whose face had acquired a formidable glower. “If you are truly concerned, we have an escape pod aboard. Welcome to the
Wilful.
Medical is that way.”
* * *
The lieutenant, despite his injuries, did not follow the four ratings. He and the marine
Nitto-hei
remained in the roundabout off the airlock while Hadeishi secured the hatch. “I am
Thai-i
Tocoztic, gun deck officer from the heavy cruiser
Falchion
.”
Hadeishi turned and gave a slight bow. He kept his expression meticulously polite. “Mitsuharu Hadeishi at your service,
Thai-i
, Engineer’s Mate of the
Wilful
and her acting XO.”
Tocoztic looked Hadeishi up and down, jaw thrust forward. The Méxica officer was taller and wider than the norm, with a dark
chocolatl
tone to his complexion. From his slight accent, Mitsuharu guessed the young man hailed from Ciguayo or Arawak—islands in the Eastern Sea which had been part of the Empire since the fourteenth century. The Nisei was pleased to see that despite falling into poor circumstance, the boy had lost none of his fighting spirit or sense of duty.
Whether dead or alive, within two campaigns he will be worthy of his braid.
“I am an officer of the Imperial Fleet. In the name of Emperor Ahuizotl and by the Regulations covering the use of civilian assets in a time of war, I am assuming battlefield command of this vessel!
Nitto-hei
Cajeme, secure his sidearm.”
“I am also the Emperor’s servant,” Hadeishi said softly, his shipgun already centered on the
Thai-i
’s chest. The marine private had failed to leap into action, despite his officer’s command. His demeanor remained watchful, his movements contained. Mitsuharu was impressed, for the young
Thai-i
had quite a snap to his voice.
Could the marine be a Yaqui from the south? He commands excellent stillness.
“And my Fleet rank,” the Nisei continued, “exceeds yours. You may dispute me, or demand satisfaction at a later time. But not today, for there is a great deal of work to be done.”
“Your rank? You have no rank! You’re … you’re a smuggler, an outcast in a grimy z-suit! Barely human.” Tocoztic’s face flushed red as he struggled to express his outrage.
ABOARD THE
NANIWA