This is very strange,
Gretchen thought—but she played along, saying nothing, idly kicking her feet and trying not to fidget. She felt the desire to be back at her console, digging through the reams of 3-v data, or the spatial model, or measurements of the enormous structure, as a physical pain. But still, she waited.
After quite a long time, the door recessed into the wall with a soft
chuff
and
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
stepped in, her white dress uniform as immaculate as ever, her fine-boned face perfectly composed.
Seeing her, the Prince snorted rather rudely in amusement and then lifted his chin at Anderssen.
“This is the one who led you through the Barrier?”
Kosh
ō
paused at the edge of the conference table, regarding him levelly, and then nodded slightly.
“Then we have a problem,” he declared. “The
Naniwa
must leave this area immediately. My noble guest, the
sian-fengh
, has made his desire to flee very clear. I cannot refuse him. Yakka, I need you to keep a close eye on him for me. He’s truculent, difficult and, as you saw—unexpectedly dangerous, but I don’t think he’ll give you much trouble if you put a nargile and some opium back in his hands.”
“Where are
you
going?” Kosh
ō
clasped both hands behind her back, falling into an easy parade rest.
Xochitl smiled, showing a large number of perfectly formed white teeth. “I’ve been thinking about what you said before, about my father—I’m going to do
exactly
as he asked. I’m taking that little merchant ship in the rear cargo hold and staying behind, while you return to the Barrier wall. I understand she’s well shielded, and won’t cost you something off your manifest if we suffer the same fate as that cargo shuttle.”
He tapped the side of his head sharply. “Find us a way out, Yakka. We have to get out of here before we starve or are baked inside the shipskin, and there’s no sense in you wasting time
here
while we poke and pry.”
“Thus your
problem
,” Kosh
ō
said coolly. “I’ll need Anderssen-
tzin
and her comp models to find a way out, but
you
can’t get inside the artifact without her. She can’t be in both places at once, can she?”
The Prince nodded, clapping his hands lightly together. “That would seem a puzzle, save I have an answer.” He smiled tightly at the
Chu-sa
, an expression which made the little hairs on Gretchen’s neck rise.
“That pale, nervous Anglishman you’ve got stowed away in Engineering—yes, I know where he is—give him the telemetry from your passage through the Pinhole and he can reconfigure your sensors to reveal the spiderweb trapping us.”
Beyond a slight nostril flare, Kosh
ō
showed no reaction. But Gretchen could feel the woman’s entire body stiffen from across the room, and the answering surge of pleasure in the Prince.
What a foul dog he is,
she thought, watching the two of them as from a great distance.
“Helsdon is not wholly himself—”
“All the better,” Xochitl snapped, “near-mad as he is may prove to your advantage! I am taking Anderssen here into the artifact,
Chu-sa
, while you find us a way out of this hole. Is that perfectly clear?”
“
Hai
,
Gensui
.”
Anderssen felt an enormous surge of delight, like golden honey welling up within her, suffusing her arms, legs—even her thoughts—with anticipation.
* * *
Two hours later, Kosh
ō
looked up at a soft tapping at the door to her private office. “Enter.”
The door slid open and Green Hummingbird stepped in, his feet bare, attired in a simple Fleet undershirt and off-duty trousers. Without his usual cloak and hood, he seemed surprisingly small—until one met his dusky green eyes and then his true stature asserted itself.
“
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
,” he said politely. “A word with you, if I may.”
“I believe,” she said, rising and stepping to the door, “that you were confined to the brig, by order of the Prince Imperial himself.”
No one was in the corridor, though Susan was unpleasantly aware that nearly every centimeter of the
Naniwa
was under surveillance by some kind of recording device.
The old Náhuatl nodded. “I am. Thank you for your concern for my comfort. Your hospitality has been most adequate, but I am on my way to pay respects to the Esteemed One and shall not keep you further.”
With that, he made a polite bow and then slipped out the door again. Kosh
ō
stared after him, wondering if she should summon the marine ready squad, have the
nauallis
clapped in chains and then, perhaps, locked in a room for which there was no key.
But then,
she thought, starting to feel rising amusement at the thought of seeing the Prince’s face when the escape was discovered,
he would wrinkle his way out of that, too. I wonder …
Another thought brought her up short.
Does Hummingbird believe he will cheat death, too, in the end?
Juggling the possibilities in her mind, Kosh
ō
came to the unpleasant conclusion that letting the
nauallis
go about his business without interference was less dangerous than following the Prince’s orders. Particularly since she was quite certain that Hummingbird knew what he was doing, even if she couldn’t stand him personally.
However,
she thought,
I do need to keep an eye on the future.
Susan then went to her console and tapped open a channel to the brig. The marine officer on duty responded immediately, his young face intent and dutiful.
“
Heicho
Adamsky, has someone thought to provide the prisoner in cell one with something to eat?”
Then while she waited for the alarms to sound, most of her attention was on the supply manifests
Thai-i
Goroemon had forwarded up from Logistics for her review. They were desperately low on every kind of munitions, and only marginally better off for parts, meds, and food.
Six months of supplies left, eh? Only if you don’t get a quarter of your stowage vented by a penetrator.
* * *
Some time later, the tramp freighter
Moulins
maneuvered out of the rear cargo hold under its own power. The ship had been hurriedly resupplied with water, food, and other perishables. Reaction mass for the engines had been topped off and Prince Xochitl, his remaining Jaguar Knight, Doctor Anderssen, and a handful of marines borrowed from the
Naniwa
were on board. In the cramped Command space, Captain Locke and his pilot were watching the external cameras and docking control status with a weather eye. The Prince and his bodyguard had appropriated the Navigator and Comm officer’s seats and were glowering at the backs of the Europeans during the delicate maneuver.
Gretchen watched them all from the hatchway while the ship was decoupling, then left them all to stew and banged downdeck to the cargo area where all of their luggage had been piled by the middies from the
Naniwa
. Her duffle had disappeared, to her disgust, under an enormous quantity of marine gear.
And,
she thought, rather morosely,
here I am again on this damned tiny ship with these fanatics.
Locke had accepted this new commission without protest, having apparently spent his time in the brig playing cards and smoking a succession of foul Novo French cigarettes. Now free of the battle-cruiser and at the helm of his own ship again, his hostility towards the Prince and the Fleet marines cluttering up his decks was banked, but simmering. Löjtnant Piet was doing less well at hiding his antipathy, but Xochitl apparently did not care, showing not the slightest awareness of their anger.
They’ll find a way to get along,
Anderssen thought cheerfully, dragging olive-gray duffels aside. “There’s my—oh, what the hell are you doing in there?”
Beneath the pile of luggage, with his head resting on Gretchen’s field pack, Green Hummingbird had made himself a bit of a nest using a pair of folding kitchen tables. As she moved aside the last of the ammunition crates with a grunt, his lips fluttered with a soft snore.
“Does the Prince know you’ve come along, Crow?” Anderssen pinched his brown old ear as hard as she could. The old Náhuatl opened one eye, squinting at her, then sat up carefully and eased out of the tiny space under the tables.
Briskly chafing his wrists and ankles, he observed: “
Tlatocapilli
Xochitl is noted for his admirable qualities in battle, not for his legendary acumen.
Chu-sa
Kosh
ō
, on the other hand, is beginning to understand how to operate in the wide world, as befits a gifted student with an excellent master.”
Gretchen shook her head, retrieving her pack. She began digging through the compartments, confirming that everything she’d stowed was still in place and undamaged. “Why did they send him then? They knew what was out here, right?”
Hummingbird shrugged. “I believe he was judged the most expendable of the Emperor’s sons.”
“More so than the one that’s always on the 3-v? Tezozómoc the Glorious?” Anderssen was appalled.
“Not all stone flakes the right way,” the old man replied, pulling on a pair of boots he’d lifted from one of the other duffels. “What use is a pretty piece of flint if it cannot take an edge?”
“And Tezozómoc
can
?”
Hummingbird did not reply, instead he dug around in the bottom of his gear and came up with a plastic container filled with cheesecloth. Holding the jar up, the old Náhuatl turned it this way and that, checking the contents. Then he turned back the lid, smelling the small egg-sized rounds inside.
“Lady of Light!” Gretchen coughed, eyes smarting. “Those are strong! Is that
opium
? What the devil are you doing with a basket of knuckles?”
He smiled serenely at her, tucking the container inside a field jacket he’d stolen from someone, somewhere. “My traveling companion needs a little coaxing to leave his shipping container.”
Anderssen shook her head in dismay. “You know, Crow, I had a friend who had a fascination for doing archaeology in the ancient home of the Chichimecas. It was always dangerous, uncomfortable work. The land is harsh, the people were poor, running contraband was the only way to make money. All social hierarchies began and ended with some
pilli
in his fortified house surrounded by an army of goons. Not the kind of lord who likes strangers—particularly inquisitive ones—to come knocking around.
“But Harriet especially liked taking a gaggle of impressionable students out to do big ground surveys and to excavate just enough of an old city to intrigue the historical agencies, who would then give her more money and permits to do whatever she wanted so they could learn the next bit of the story she was telling. I think the reason
she
did it was because the challenge of facing sudden death and coming home with the bacon got her out of bed in the morning.
“As long as I knew her, she specialized in visiting the resident gang lord with a gift bottle of
uisge-beatha
. By the time she’d spent an hour chatting with him in an entirely charming manner, the fearsome and despicable toad had been transformed into her special, professional chum. I never knew her to break any laws, and somehow she always brought her crew home with all their fingers and toes.”
Green Hummingbird raised an eyebrow. “An enviable record, Doctor Anderssen.” He stood up, patting his pockets. “I believe you are going to need all of your equipment in a very short time.”
* * *
Six hours later, the
Moulins
had reached the edge of the
Chimalacatl
.
Gretchen had appropriated the Comm station from the Jaguar Knight and now watched her v-displays eagerly. Endless ranks of jagged architectural forms glided past as the freighter plowed along at right-angles to the surface of the artifact. The structure was apparently composed entirely of triangular sections, each holding a second inverted triangle recessed within. The bronze block was tucked into a pocket of her equipment rig, now strapped on over her z-suit. Her field comp and secondary equipment were tacked to the console, all components recording at maximum fidelity. Just for good measure, her interface to the
Moulin
’s shipskin, cameras, and the single sensor boom was running bidirectional—which allowed her to offload some processing to the shipnet itself when needed.