Wasteland of Flint

The Palenque

The main hatch into the Medical bay opened suddenly, sliding into the overhead with a soft thump. Gretchen looked up from where she was kneeling on the deck of the examining room, her work lenses dialed to hi-mag. She heard Bandao hiss and step back and a low growl from Magdalena. Flipping up her lenses, she found herself staring into the black snout of a shipgun, held in the hands of one of the Marines — she couldn't tell which one — in combat armor.

"Over against the wall," the Marine said, his voice a buzz through the suit. Bandao moved back, automatic held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The Marine crabbed into the room and was immediately followed by another, taller, man also in matte-black combat armor. "Just lay the gun down on the deck."

Gretchen rose, spreading her hands wide to show they were empty. A heated sense of outrage was warring with the urge to laugh aloud at the insectlike appearance of the soldiers, and she managed to remain composed. The two Marines surveyed the room, then relaxed fractionally.

"Clear," the taller one — Fitzsimmons, Gretchen guessed — said, his voice almost unrecognizable through the faceplate of his suit. Then she stiffened as his rifle swung toward her. From this vantage, the weapon seemed very large. "Doctor Anderssen, please leave the examining room and stand over here by Bandao-tzin."

Almost tiptoeing, she ducked through the damaged doorway and moved to join Bandao — who had adopted a very calm expression — and Magdalena, who was emitting a near-subsonic growl which raised the hackles on the back of Gretchen's neck. Worried, Anderssen took hold of the Hesht's paw to restrain her.

The lean, wrinkled shape of Hummingbird stepped into the room. His high forehead gleamed like polished mahogany in the overheads and his dark eyes swept across the three of them to settle on the debris in the medical bay.

Without speaking, the Mйxica judge went to the adjoining room and knelt to examine the deck. The Marines said nothing, one of them covering the nauallis with his rifle, the other keeping a strict eye on the three civilians. Gretchen itched to speak, but guessed this was not the time and place to annoy Imperial authority. He could just ask politely…

Hummingbird moved around in the examining room and Gretchen couldn't really see what he was doing but there was a strange muttering sound, and the man seemed to go back and forth, sometimes turning this way and that, making a slow, convoluted circuit around the long table. At length he returned to the doorway and motioned for the nearest Marine to hand him a small black bag. Hummingbird took out a small electrostatic vacuum and a specimen container.

He returned to the room and resumed moving slowly around the table. Again, Gretchen thought she heard a peculiar sound, but it was so faint and the acoustics in the two rooms so poor, she couldn't make out what he might be saying. Neither Marine showed any reaction, and even Magdalena was starting to settle down.

Eventually, Hummingbird returned to the nurses' station and stowed a newly-heavy specimen container in the carryall. The bag closed with a heavy click.

"The dust is inactive," Hummingbird said, looking up, his eyes dark as flint. "What did you do?"

Gretchen took a half step forward and felt both Bandao and Magdalena tense behind her. "I think the organism started to die the moment Parker's shuttle left the Ephesian atmosphere. When the radiation shielding dropped, it just came…apart. But five minutes of high-UV flooding the chamber seems to have stopped all remaining molecular activity."

The Mйxica nodded, glancing at the control panel for the examining room. "Like the spores infesting the shuttle engines. You think they are a related species?"

Gretchen felt a certain familiar hollowness in her gut. And now, she thought, the Imperial authorities will step in and a great deal of work — months of observations, countless crystals of data, maybe a man's entire career — will vanish like night dew. "Sinclair-tzin has a theory — and as expedition microbiologist, he should — which points to a commonality across all Ephesian life."

"All current Ephesian life?" Hummingbird's tone grew sharp, as if he already knew her answer. "Since the destruction of the surface?"

Gretchen's eyes narrowed and she felt a subtle tension tighten in the old Mйxica. He's fishing, she thought, but for what? Then she thought of the cephalopod fossil and the entombed cylinder. Too much had been happening for her to show Sinclair that bit of evidence. In any case, she was familiar enough with the types of organisms trapped in the ancient limestone to know there was no evolutionary descendent among the microbiota flourishing on the surface today. The violent arrival of the First Sun builders had separated the two epochs of Ephesian life as night from day. "All current life," she said. "Like the spores in the intakes or whatever organism gave fruit to this…copy of Russovsky."

"Yes…" Hummingbird seemed suddenly older, the brief flicker of interest and tension ebbing away. He visibly slumped. "Everything made new, green shoots rising from desolation. You did well to destroy what remained, no matter how inert it seemed."

Gretchen nodded, and fought to keep from looking down at her boots. Got to get these into secure storage, she thought guiltily, and figure out some way to keep them alive for study.

"I have sent the Cornuelle away," Hummingbird said, abruptly changing the subject. "As Thai-i Isoroku informs me this ship will be able to make gradient to hyperspace within the day." The tlamatinime looked to the two Marines. "Ship's records indicate there is an unused Midge in storage in cargo ring two. Please assist our engineer in readying the aircraft for operations on the surface."

Fitzsimmons cracked his visor and pulled off his helmet. Gretchen noticed the Marine's hair had become a tangled, dark mass and had to stifle an amused smile. "Yes, sir. How many days' fuel and food?"

"As much as will fit," Hummingbird said wryly. His composure had returned, the brief appearance of fatigue falling away. "You will also need to rig for a high-altitude aerial insertion — I believe the Midge class has the proper mounting brackets."

Fitzsimmons nodded sharply and motioned with his head for Deckard to leave the room. The other Marine backed out, lowering his shipgun, and Fitzsimmons followed. Hummingbird nodded to Gretchen and the others, and then picked up the bag.

"What are you doing?" Gretchen said in a disbelieving tone.

"That is my business," he said, giving her a sharp look. "But your project here is at an end. There will be no further flights to the planetary surface and Mister Parker should prepare this ship to make the jump back to Ctesiphon Station."

Parker, seated on the bridge of the Palenque in the pilot's chair, a mess of tabac butts, printouts of ship's systems and partially torn-apart comp panels strewn around him, stared at the Mйxica as if he'd sprouted a forest of eyestalks. "You can't possibly be serious."

"I am," Hummingbird said in an entirely reasonable voice. "These Komodo-class shuttles have flyout tracks in the cargo bay. Isoroku assures me he can mount a Midge on a breakway pallet. These are technical matters — easily solved by sweat and concentrated effort — but you concern me."

"Damn right I'm a concern!" Parker fumbled a tabac out of his vest pocket and jammed it, unlit, into the corner of his mouth. "You'd better explain to me why I have to make an unpowered, ballistic skip approach to the upper atmosphere of Ephesus — without active instruments — and then let you bail out the back of the shuttle — with the cargo doors open in a six hundred-k slipstream."

The pilot squinted at the Mйxica, then lit his tabac with a sharp snap on the stubble underneath his chin. "Fitzsimmons there could shoot you just as dead, right now, without risking anyone's hide with such a reckless stunt."

Hummingbird looked consideringly at the Marine, who shook his head in answer to an unasked — but apparently understood — question. "Sir, our other pilot's Fuentes," the Marine said, "and he's not as steady on the stick as Parker. Neither Deckard nor I are qualified on a Komodo or anything like it. Ground crawlers, sure…"

The Mйxica turned back to the pilot, his eyes flitting across Gretchen — who was holding position with her hand on the back of the pilot's chair — without a pause. "Parker-tzin, circumstances have conspired to put you in a position of responsibility. I need you to fly that shuttle — in the manner described — and I need you to return safely to this ship, so it can jump out to Ctesiphon Station as quickly as possible." As he spoke, the tlamatinime's voice hardened by degrees, making Parker sink deeper and deeper into his shockchair. "Given another alternative, I would relieve you of these tasks, but you are the tool to hand, and you will serve."

"But…no sensors? An unpowered drop into atmosphere? That's — "

"Necessary, Parker-tzin. It is necessary." Hummingbird looked around at Gretchen and Magdalena and Doctor Lennox — who was looking entirely pale and washed out, like a cotton sheet left to hang in the summer sun for far too many days. "This is within my authority," he said, raising his voice very slightly, drawing every eye to him as iron filings to a lodestone. "As nauallis, as judge, as the voice of the Empire in this godless place. We have blundered into uncompromising danger and we will be lucky indeed to escape without harm."

Gretchen heard a stone certainty in the man's words and felt a chill wash over her. What does he know? Something about Russovsky's spooked him — and why not? Something duplicated a human being, down to memories and language. Did the same something send the eater cylinder aboard? Is the other cylinder a trap?

In all the busy confusion since her return from the surface, she hadn't had a chance to resume her translation work on the embedded slab. Thinking of it now, of the secrets which must lie concealed within, she felt a painful hunger wake. Those translation runs must have finished days ago! I'm so stupid — they could be waiting for me right now.

"More than this," Hummingbird said coldly, interrupting Gretchen's train of thought. "I will not explain. You will obey without question or dispute. In this way, you may yet live. Now Parker-tzin — during the next day, while Isoroku completes his preparations for the flyby, you will move the Palenque, very quietly, out of orbit. Minimal burn on the main engines, and you will do so by orienting us away from the planet. Anything we do must be unremarked from the surface. We are going to take care to leave no trace of our visit here."

Gretchen stirred, drawing the Mйxica's attention. "Hummingbird-tzin, your pardon, but if Palenque leaves the system, and Cornuelle has already departed, how will you leave the planet? And what about the base camp at the observatory? There are hundreds of tons of equipment, supplies, vehicles there. What about the observation satellites?"

"Those things," Hummingbird said with a steely lightness in his voice, "will be taken care of. And in the meantime — no scans, no active sensors on the ship, no experiments, no communications traffic. Nothing."

Gretchen started to speak again, but the nauallis gave her a fierce look, dark eyes glittering.

"We are mice," he said sharply, "creeping in a field of maize. We must step gently, or the stalks will rustle."