Wasteland of Flint

Among the Broken Mountains

The Cornuelle glided through an inky deep, a matte-black ghost among invisibly tumbling leviathans. Her main engines were at minimal thrust in an attempt to reduce her sensor profile. The sleek hull was in absorptive mode, darkness against darkness, yielding no hint of comm traffic or EM radiation. On her command deck, Hadeishi was keeping one eye on the ship's heat sump and one on the latest personnel reports when Hayes's terse voice drew his attention.

"Outrider Two has lost particle track," the weapons officer declared, staring intently at his panel.

"Outrider Two, engine full stop," Hadeishi barked, eyes swinging to the glowing depths of the threat-well. Drone Two was their lead dog at the moment, deployed nearly a thousand kilometers "inward" of the cruiser. Outrider One was accelerating back toward the cruiser, on the downside of its duty cycle. Three was outbound, snaking its way through the three-dimensional maze of the asteroid field to catch up with Two. The entire area within sensor range was quiet; the bridge displays showed only thousands of dots colored "navigational hazard" amber. The Cornuelle was a blue spark at the center of the well, with the three drones appearing as miniscule turquoise arrows.

"How long until Three reaches duty station?" The chu-sa leaned back in the shockchair, considering the situation. He wondered if Kosho had gone to sleep yet — she'd gone off-duty an hour ago — and decided not to call her back to the bridge. She needs to sleep sometime.

"Two hundred and thirty minutes, sir." Hayes turned questioningly to Hadeishi. "Shall I back Two out of there?"

"No," Hadeishi said. "Badger the drone with a nearby rock. Reduce outgoing transmissions to locational data. No broadcast, no highband emission. Switch everything else to record." Hayes was already at work on his panel, squirting a new set of commands to the drone. "When Three comes in range, establish a narrow-beam link to Two and relay back to us."

"Pinhole mode, aye," Hayes acknowledged absently, his mind entirely on reconfiguring the drone and dumping a new set of engagement and maneuver parameters to Outrider Three. A moment later he punched two glyphs and took a breath. "Commands away."

Hadeishi nodded, but his attention was now on the main panel, where ship's comp was replaying the particle trail data. Curse my generosity, he thought with a trace of bitterness. I need Isoroku here to advise me, not stuck on a civilian pleasure barge — he knows engine patterns better than anyone. The replay showed a wash of decaying, once-excited particle byproducts of the refinery's main drive meandering through the debris field. "Hayes, come look at this."

The weapons officer was at his side as fast as humanly possible.

"A Tyr-class refinery is almost ten times our size," Hadeishi remarked, contemplating the plot. "Her helmsman is following a path of least density, trying to keep incidental meteoroid impacts to a minimum as she moves through the field. But look, here the refinery suddenly shifts course into close proximity with this cloud of debris."

Hayes nodded. "They must have picked something up." A stylus in his blunt fingers sketched a new trajectory on the panel. "They're cutting through a 'hedge' into another area with less debris. A clear lane between the larger planetesimals."

"And we lose the trail at the edge of the 'lane.'" Hadeishi grimaced. "Could they have picked up the outrider?"

The weapons officer shook his head. "No, Chu-sa. The decay rates indicate we're still days behind them. They must have reacted to something on long-range scan."

Hadeishi settled deeper into his chair, stroking his beard. "Break down those decay rates and all the data we have on their engine plume. If they've badgered and know someone is looking for them, we need to get a solid estimate on how far they might have gone on minimum power."

"Not very far," Hayes said, tapping his stylus on the panel. "Think about how much mass they're moving. Even empty, a Tyr is a behemoth. I think they scooted into this 'lane' so they could coast and gain some distance. Somewhere out here — " the stylus sketched a box in the 'clear' area "- there's a pocket of engine exhaust."

"Because they corrected course," Hadeishi said, "either for distance or vector."

"I could send Outrider Two into the lane," Hayes offered dubiously.

"No." Hadeishi shook his head slightly. "There's no reason to try and hide a course change if you don't drop a sensor relay — or a proximity mine — behind to welcome a pursuer. The refinery captain is not a fool. His cartel wouldn't entrust so much expensive equipment to a novice. He'll pick a random vector, pile on velocity and coast again until he has to maneuver to avoid a collision."

The chu-sa paused, considering the cloud of amber dots for a moment. Then he nodded again, this time to himself. Hayes waited patiently, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders square.

"Hold drone Two on station until Three arrives." Hadeishi's voice had lost its contemplative tone. His mind was made up. "Recycle drone One as quickly as it can be refueled. The Cornuelle will proceed at one-third power to catch up. I want all three drones ready on point when we reach Two's current location. We will advance in a box formation, scanning the surrounding debris clouds for evidence of a third course change."

"Hai, Chu-sa!" Hayes's jaw tightened and a gleam lit in the young officer's eyes.

Hadeishi waved him away and slumped back in the shockchair, staring into the threat-well.

Now we close with the enemy, he thought, troubled. Does he know we're here? Is he reckless? Is he wary?

That was the question. A prudent, patient captain would simply wait for an opportunity to make hyperspace gradient out of the system when no one could see him. But an angry man, or a reckless commander…A ship that large could carry a great deal of mischief in secondary storage. A single proximity mine could cripple the Cornuelle. Two or three might kill her, if the cruiser happened to blunder into a flower-box detonation.

The ceiling lights in Hadeishi's cabin were dark, the only illumination cast from a small table lamp on his desk. Mitsuharu knelt on a cotton mat, facing the wall opposite his bed. Two framed pictures — not modern holos, but yellowed paper, cracking with age — sat within a small alcove. An empty incense burner lay before the photographs; an old man and a middle-aged woman in formal dress. Both seemed grim, their faces composed, though in his memory they were always smiling.

"At dusk, I often climb to the peak of Kugami." Mitsu bent his head, palms pressed together, fingertips against his brow. Stringy black hair fell in a cloud around his shoulders. He rarely let his ponytail go unbound, but certain devotions required an expression of sacrifice. He thought the loss of personal control an adequate offering. "Deer bellow, their voices soaked up by piles of maple leaves…"

The sharp, pungent smell of incense should fill the air around him, but the air recyclers worked overtime already. Mitsu accepted the absence of pine and rose-wood as another sacrifice. His lips barely moved, offering the last of Ryukan's ancient poem to his mother and his father. "…lying undisturbed at the foot of the mountain."

What chant settled the racing hearts of my ancestors, Mitsu wondered, rising from his knees, when they rode into the high grass to fight the Dakota and the Iroquois? A deep bow followed and he closed the alcove with the tip of his finger. A metal plate sealed the little shrine, protecting the contents against a sudden loss of pressure or the g-shock of combat.

Hadeishi ran a hand across the spines of his books. His personal quarters should, by tradition, be spartan and bare. He was sure Sho-sa Kosho's cabin was a perfect example of approved Zen minimalism — all plain gray and white surfaces, perhaps small portraits of the Emperor and the Shogun, her tatami, the door to the closet always closed. Mitsu smoothed his beard, looking around at the terrible mess he'd made of this place. Every wall was covered with bookcases — well-built ones too, Isoroku was a dab hand for structural modifications — and every shelf was packed with storage crystals, audio-sticks, hand-drawn paintings in ink, paper-bound volumes, boxes of letters, Heshtic scrolls and paw-books, even things he'd found in the markets of Baldur, Marduk or New Malta. He was sure some of them held writing, but then again — who knew what they truly were? Laundry lists? Accounts of land disputes from some dead, forgotten world?

My whole life is here, he thought, aware of lingering sadness. If the Cornuelle dies, all this will be gone.

Hadeishi sat cross-legged on the tatami, picking up a hand-held comp. The pad came alive with his touch, displaying a set of ship schematics. Frowning, Mitsu considered the builder's diagrams for a standard-issue Tyr refinery. What a monster, he thought — and not for the first time — panning through screen after screen of floorplans. We could almost fit the Cornuelle into the main boat bay. The thought was amusing, but not helpful. He narrowed the view displayed on the pad to those sections housing the meteoroid defense system.

"Looks like an old Koningsborg-class battle cruiser point-defense array," he said wryly aloud after a half hour of examination. Finding the circuits had taken some effort — the sheer size of a Tyr made finding a single system difficult. "Hmm. But spread out over far more surface area."

He paused, brow furrowing in thought. How big is the crew for this leviathan?

Another hour passed before Mitsu found something like a crew-requirements list. Then he raised an eyebrow in cautious surprise.

Thai-i HuГ©mac slid down a gangway ladder into first platoon's sleeping deck and found the narrow room unexpectedly crowded. A small, wiry man with prominent cheekbones and the coppery-bronze coloring typical of the Tlaxcallan highlands, the senior Marine lieutenant went unnoticed for a moment. A crowd of Marines in off-duty fatigues, all hulking backs and shoulders, filled the walkway between rows of bunks on either side. Smoke curled against the ceiling and bit the eyes of the men lying on the top, staring avidly down at something in the middle of the barracks.

HuГ©mac stood quietly for a moment, cataloging the number of violations of shipside regulation visible to his experienced eye. He was impressed by the hushed, pregnant silence filling the room. The senior lieutenant had been wondering where all of second platoon had dissapeared too, but now he guessed the entire Marine contingent on the Cornuelle was packed into this one compartment.

A single voice, hoarse and pleading, rose above the quiet susurration of so many men and women breathing. "Oh great lord, oh gracious master, blessed Five Flowers. Look on these poor, pitiful subjects, see their smooth black bodies, their empty eyes, count the holes in their bellies. See them, see the four houses, see the black squares and the red. Please, master of flowers, giver of gifts, fickle one! Bless these five subjects, give them swift legs, strong hearts and every mercy!"

HuГ©mac rolled his eyes — but only because not a single Marine could see his reaction — and swung nimbly up onto the nearest rack of bunks. Carefully bending low under the pipes and conduits and cable guides crowding the ceiling, he stepped over a half-dozen men to look down into the common area at the center of the deck. None of the Marines on the top bunks paid him any attention, save Heicho Tonuac, who was reading an illustrated malinche titled The Tribulatory Life of Leda and her Swan while chewing gum. The corporal stiffened to attention as the lieutenant stepped over him.

At the middle of the room there was an open space where two facing sets of bunks had been folded back into the walls. HuГ©mac grasped hold of a return-air pipe and leaned out, looking down upon three men and one woman sitting on the floor below. Between them was a woven mat in the shape of a cross. Red and blue ceramic markers were scattered along a track of squares, filling each arm of the cross.

The woman was watching the man opposite her with a bored expression. In turn, he was rubbing both hands together, his voice now a mumble, a click-click-click sound rising up among the slowly curling trails of incense and tobacco smoke. Both men were staring sickly at the arrangement of the counters on the mat. HuГ©mac squinted a little and pursed his lips in appreciation. Five solid red tokens had reached safety in the house of the Rising Sun, five blue in the house of the Moon. One red disc remained, sitting a very likely three squares from exiting the board in victory. One blue token lagged behind, an almost impossible ten squares from journey's end.

HuГ©mac had played a little patolli in his time, but the pile of pay chits mounded up before the woman was of truly legendary size. The thai-i repressed a sigh. I have got to convince the captain to sign off on promoting Felix to sergeant… Then the little burgundy-haired woman would be forced to limit her shipboard gambling income to the other sergeants and the officers. Who might show a tiny shred of sense…and stay far away from her.

Gambling — particularly on patolli or tlachco competitions — was an entirely legal expression of religious piety throughout the Empire, which pleased the Marines and sailors in Fleet to no end. Even the foreigners were only too happy to offer up incense, maize and pulque to Macuilxohitl Five-Flower on payday, hoping to gain the god's blessing in matters of chance.

Down on the floor, the man praying suddenly seized the five polished beans in his right hand and cast them onto the mat with a flick of his wrist. HuГ©mac shook his head — throwing all five as 'spots' and doubling the roll to ten squares was entirely unlikely — no matter what promises the private made to Five-Flower. Throwing a one, two or three — any of which would help Felix, or even let her move the last token from the board and win — were far more likely.

The little black beans bounced, rattled and came to a stop. Private Martine was crouched on his hands and knees, muttering fervently. Three spots, two black.

"Face!" the private groaned. A hiss of indrawn breath filled the compartment as he advanced his blue token. Seven squares seemed an impossible distance. Felix reached out, nose twitching in amusement and scooped up the beans.

She did not pray or rub the beans. They left her hand with a simple flip and scattered across the mat. "Oh," she said in an aggrieved voice, "only eyes."

Her red token advanced two squares. One to go. Martine snatched up the beans and tried to match Felix's offhand toss. The beans scattered and rolled. Most turned up white. Four of them.

"Very good," Felix said, tucking wine-red hair back behind her ears. "Box is very good."

Martine gave her a sick look; blunt, chipped fingers sliding his blue token ahead. Three squares left. Felix gathered up the beans, smiled at the private and let them roll out in a lazy-seeming flip. They bounced on the mat, spinning, and four came up dark, one white. "Snake," Felix said, and removed her last piece from the board.

Martine stared hollow-eyed at the treacherous beans. His squadmates stared at him. Felix shoveled pay chits into an embroidered leather bag ornamented with a hand-stitched picture of a Scorpion ground-effect tank on the side. There was a tense silence. Perched above the tableau, HuГ©mac schooled his face to impassivity and then — when the men behind Martine fully grasped they'd lost their last month's pay in a single game of patolli — he dropped lightly to the floor beside corporal Felix.

"Officer on deck!" someone bawled in fear and surprise. "Attention!"

Twenty-five men scrambled to adopt something approaching proper posture. Even Felix was on her feet, the embroidered bag already hidden inside her field jacket. Martine was looking rather pale, his squadmates pressing around him on either side.

"At ease," Thai-i HuГ©mac announced, back straight as the vanadium core barrel on a squad shipgun. "Private Martine, whose mat and beans are these?"

"Mine, sir." The Marine swallowed and managed to stiffen to attention. More than one pair of surreptitious hands helped him. A squad had to stick together in the face of enemy fire.

HuГ©mac looked consideringly at Felix, who was not smiling but was very, very attentive. "Do you even own a patolli mat, corporal?"

"Sir," Felix said in a very earnest voice, "I do not."

HuГ©mac tried not to smile. Sometimes you have to play these things out, as a public lesson. "Do you like to play patolli, corporal? Are you a gambling woman?"

"No, sir," Felix said with an entirely straight face. "I never gamble."

The senior lieutenant looked around at the goggling faces of the Marines crowded into the barracks. Most of them were on the verge of apoplexy, though HuГ©mac could make out one or two — including the relaxed Heicho Tonuac and his pamphlet — who were trying not to grin. Squadmates, the lieutenant recognized, or men who'd bet on Felix rather than on poor Martine. HuГ©mac returned his attention to the sallow-looking private.

"Private Martine," he said very patiently. "Did you invite Heicho Felix to join your game of patolli? Is this your mat, token and beans?"

"Yes, sir." Martine's voice was very faint. He appeared to be having trouble focusing on the lieutenant's face.

"I see." HuГ©mac raised his voice, so everyone in the compartment could hear. "I am sure Heicho Felix only joined your game to be polite. I understand she does not like to gamble. I suggest in the future, you scrupulously respect her wishes in this matter. Private, you should pick up your patolli board before someone steps on it."

HuГ©mac stood there, stone-solid, until the crowd of Marines began to break up. They were glum, shamefaced and broke. Inwardly, he sighed in despair. What was Martine thinking? He knows Fourth Squad lost all of their money last month!

"Felix — you stay right here." The senior lieutenant did not turn, but he could feel the corporal freeze in her tracks and then resume a parade rest. HuГ©mac waited, thumbs hooked into the back of his uniform belt, until the Marines had returned to their usual pursuits. Only Heicho Tonuac was still watching the senior lieutenant out of the corner of his eye while he pretended to read. HuГ©mac turned, eyes narrowing to black slits, a hint of the steady anger he felt showing in his face. Felix stiffened, lips compressing into a bare rose-colored line. "The chu-sa," he said quietly, "in his infinite, godlike wisdom has tapped your squad, corporal, for some extracurricular activity. Normally, Gunso Fitzsimmons would be here to take on preparatory duties, but he is absent. So you will run every single man in your unit through a full workup on their combat z-armor, ship-to-ship assault gear and secure comm tech. Weapons is running up a simulator pack for you. I'd guess you'll have a couple days to run through the scenario."

HuГ©mac almost smiled. "You'll be assault leader, Felix, so I will be watching you very closely. Your squad will have a 'hot' target and I dislike losing men. The chu-sa will be paying close attention to how you do in the sim."

"Yes, sir!" Felix was starting to look almost as pale as Martine, though the thai-i knew the young Marine was aware of what was coming, where the foolish private had been led blindfolded to the butcher's block. "May the corporal ask a question, sir?"

"Go on." HuГ©mac tilted his head to one side, watching tiny beads of sweat begin to collect along the woman's hairline. He wondered how quickly a betting pool would start, wagering on the exercises in the sim. Within the hour, he supposed. Maybe by the time I leave the compartment.

"Who…who will be running opposition in the sim, sir?"

The senior lieutenant's smile widened, showing a full set of perfect white teeth. "Sho-sa Kosho has been assigned that role, corporal."

"Sir?!" Felix blurted, her face ashen. "The Wind-knife, sir? She'll — "

"She'll what?" HuГ©mac asked curiously.

Felix seemed unable to speak and HuГ©mac watched with interest while the Marine recovered her composure. Something like real dread had penetrated the corporal's usually unflappable demeanor.

"Nothing, sir." Felix stiffened to attention again. "Have mission guidelines been posted?"

"I have them," HuГ©mac replied, his bronzed face once more composed. "You'll find them…challenging, I think. But Chu-sa Hadeishi has expressed great faith in your abilities, Heicho Felix. I hope you do not disappoint him."

"Thank you, sir." Felix started to look pale again. Her voice had strangled itself into a squeak. "Hadeishi-tzin asked for me?"

HuГ©mac nodded gravely, a peculiar glitter in his dark eyes. "He did. He thinks you're lucky."