Wasteland of Flint

Aboard the Palenque

Parker ran his finger up a control gauge on the main pilot's panel and felt a subdued, distant roar shiver through the frame of the ship. "Commencing turnover," he announced on the public comm. "We are in z-g for sixty-five seconds."

The navigational display showed the Temple-class starship begin to tumble in place, a constellation of maneuvering drives on the engineering ring blazing with light. Parker watched silently, chewing on a rolled-up tube of plastic he'd scavenged from Anderssen's kit. Tastes better than the tabac, he thought, feeling a twinge of nervous urgency. His medband beeped sullenly, refusing to dispense more nicotine into his system. The pilot scratched at a red abrasion along the edge of the silver unit. Freakin' company medical policy…it's my religious right. Goddamit.

"Turnover complete," he said, sliding the maneuver drive control back to zero. Another set of readouts was rapidly spiraling down to nothing as the ship completed the roll. The flare of exhaust guttered out, equalizing the ship's forward momentum. Parker grunted in satisfaction. "Ship at…full stop. Main engines zero thrust. Maneuvering drives zero thrust."

The view in the main display had shifted, following the rotation of the ship, and a red spark glowed among black velvet and diamonds. Parker dialed up the magnification, causing the half-disc of Ephesus Three to swim into closer view. "Better."

He turned, looking over his shoulder at the captain's station. Magdalena was barely visible, hunched down in her nest of blankets and quilts, only the thin yellow slits of her eyes visible. "Orders, mon capitaine?" Parker tried to look properly attentive, which was difficult given his unshaven face, sallow complexion and weary, fatigue-smudged eyes.

"I'm not the pack leader," she hissed in response. Her fur was getting matted too. "But we should stay."

"Okay," Parker said amiably. "I can nudge us into a long parking orbit, maybe spiral us back in a little bit at a time."

Commander's privy comm made an abrupt squeaking sound and Magdalena swung her chair around, scanning the feeds from various shipboard cameras. "Isoroku is coming topship," she said briskly, the tight fur around her nose wrinkling up. "With one of the Marines. Fitzsimmons."

"Starting delay one," Parker replied, as he tapped a series of glyphs on his panel, initiating a detailed diagnostic test of the ship's hyperspace generators. "That's four hours at least."

Magdalena was also in motion, keying a private channel to their Welshman, who appeared on camera in the mess area of the habitat ring. Several of the scientists were also in the galley, trying to make an appetizing lunch from Fleet emergency rations and the remains of expedition supplies. "Bandao-tzin — Isoroku is heading to the bridge. He won't be happy we haven't left the system yet — see if you can locate Heicho Deckard. I can't find him on camera."

The gunner set down a cup of coffee and nodded, though he did not look up at the overhead. Instead, he said good-bye to Doctor Sinclair and wandered out into the main accessway, hands in the pockets of his jacket. Magdalena hoped he could run down the stray Marine quickly. She was a little on edge to be letting them run loose in the pack-ship.

The main door into the bridge cycled open, letting light from the access tube spill across a deck still showing gaping holes from their efforts to replace the damaged conduits. Magdalena wiped her hand across the surveillance v-panes and the entire panel went dark. She and Parker looked up with interest as Thai-i Isoroku pulled himself through the hatchway and kicked off to reach the edge of the command station. The Marine gunso followed, his hair a black, oily cloud behind his head, barely restrained by a snakeskin strap. Maggie thought Fitzsimmons looked a little worn down by the effort of restoring the engineering deck to service, though she supposed he might be worrying a little bit about Golden-hair. As he should!

"Repairs are complete." Isoroku's voice was gravelly and unused to conversation. He stared at Parker with narrow eyes, stonelike features showing nothing but incipient displeasure. "Transit status?"

"Running a preflight check right now," Parker said, concentrating on his control panel. "Should be finished in three, four hours."

"A waste of time," the engineer growled. "We've just finished tuning and adjusting every downside system — there's no reason to test them all again!"

"Procedure," Magdalena said, avoiding Fitzsimmons's searching gaze. The Marine was frowning a little and trying to get a good look at her control panel. "I'm sure everything will go smoothly with the test."

Isoroku turned his stone-hard expression on her and the Hesht felt a shiver of adrenaline. By conscious effort, she kept her ruff from stiffening, though facing a member of a strange pack without the restraining ritual of meeting-with-claws-sheathed made her queasy. "Our orders are to make transit from this system," the engineer said in a harsh voice, "for Ctesiphon Station as soon as possible. Both the main drive and the hyperspace gradient generator are now in working order. Pilot, have you plotted an entry vector and course?"

"He has not," Magdalena said, before Parker could reply. Her ears flattened back against her skull. She took care to speak slowly and carefully. "We are in no hurry, Isoroku-tzin. Nothing untoward has occurred on Ephesus Three or in the outer system. We are now at minimum safe distance for a transit, which means we can make gradient to hyperspace in minutes."

"We have our orders," the engineer said, a slight tic starting under one bloodshot eye. "The tlamatinime was very clear in his desire. This ship is to leave immediately. The Cornuelle will be following us with all speed."

"I understand your desire to rejoin your crew," Magdalena said, feeling her limbs tremble with the prickling rush of hunting-blood. "But I will not abandon my pack-leader in the midst of a desert with no hope of retrieval. The Cornuelle — "

"— will pick them up," Isoroku said in a sharp tone. He pulled himself sideways to the end of the command panel. Magdalena's chair turned smoothly, following him. Both of her hands — hidden under the blankets — flexed, claws sliding in and out of bony sheaths of cartilage. Deep grooves were already cut in the fabric.

"If they can," Magdalena said, black lips curling back from shining white teeth. "Yet the long-fang is far away, hunting among the flying mountains, farther than we from the planet. If something happens, then chaguh Hadeishi will have to race back at full acceleration to succor my pack-leader and your judge. The eldest- and-wisest wanted us to be quiet, Isoroku-tzin." She smiled, showing triple rows of curving white teeth. "Heshatun know something about being quiet. We will wait out here, for a few days, and see what happens."

"Our orders — " Isoroku's voice rose appreciably, twin spots of color appearing on his pockmarked cheeks.

"Are not valid aboard this ship," Magdalena hissed, body stiffening. "This is a civilian ship, not Fleet. Our salvage papers have been properly filed. You are our guests."

The peripheral vision of a Hesht happens to be particularly good, which let Magdalena keep an eye on both Parker — who had shrunk down behind his console with a waxy, distressed look on his face — and upon Fitzsimmons, who had anchored himself just inside the doorway, his back to the wall, fingertips on the grip of his sidearm.

"Our ship-den is in your debt, Isoroku-san," Maggie said, struggling to rein in her temper. "Your efforts to repair the engines are greatly appreciated, but we will not abandon our pack-leader."

The engineer looked to Fitzsimmons, who raised an eyebrow in response and shrugged. Isoroku's face screwed up in a bitter grimace. "What can you hope to do, if something happens to the judge and your 'pack-leader'?" Before she could reply, the engineer's nostrils flared minutely and he gave her a searching, sideways look. "How could you tell if they were in danger?"

"In just over a seven-day," Magdalena said, changing the subject, "Anderssen and the eldest-and-wisest will have returned to the observatory base camp. They will need to be picked up by a shuttle, yet we must be quiet in retrieving them." She looked curiously at Parker. "How far away is the Cornuelle?"

The pilot shrugged, spreading his hands. "No idea. They went 'dark' before reaching the asteroid field and we haven't seen a sign of them since. But if they are searching the belt, they must have moved further away from their point of arrival, which was two days at maximum acceleration from Three a week ago. I'd guess an intercept time of at least four days."

Magdalena shook out her shoulders, watching the engineer closely. She was sure the human male could estimate distance and speed as quickly as the pilot. There was just no reasonable or inconspicuous way for the Cornuelle to make the retrieval pickup. After a long moment, Isoroku's bitter expression grew worse, as though his face had been pickled in yee juice.

"Your 'pack-leader' has a plan?"

Magdalena nodded, swallowing a grin. "She does. We will pick her up — very quietly, very softly — in eight days."

"What if the Cornuelle — or one of her shuttles — arrives at the same time?"

The Hesht spread her hands, claws politely retracted. "Then we let long-spear-pack lift the wet cubs from the river and later, when we are all denned on Ctesiphon and fat with meat, we raise cups in their honor. But if they do not come, then Palenque-pride will be waiting and will snatch the drowning from the current and slip away, padding feet soft in the grass."

Isoroku's grimace did not waver, but the bull-headed man looked sideways at Fitzsimmons again. The Marine pursed his lips, tucked a wad of gum into his cheek and said: "Looks bad on the record, Thai-i, if you lose a judge by accident. There're not so many of them, you know."

The engineer's color deepened and he gave Parker and Magdalena a tight, angry stare. "I have no desire to see the tlamatinime or Anderssen-tzin die," he said, biting out each word with a click of his teeth. "Yet these orders were given for a reason. You are putting the lives of everyone on this ship at risk. You should consider what will happen if they die, if we die, or if something worse happens because of this course of action."

Magdalena stared back at him, a dangerous glitter in her eyes. "I will not be foresworn in my duty to the pack-leader, carver-of-stone."

Nodding sharply, Isoroku pushed away and sped off down the accessway. Fitzsimmons looked after him with a troubled expression, but then followed. He did not look back. Magdalena turned around in the circle of her nest once, then twice. Parker started to say something, but she hissed at him and he slunk off, avoiding her eyes.

Males, she grumbled to herself, feeling sulky. Her claws shredded the blanket. Useless copper-stinking males. Bah!

Later, when she had verified the locations of Isoroku, the Marines, Parker and Bandao on the surveillance cameras, Magdalena restored the v-panes showing the communications stream from Russovsky's Midge. Unfortunately, several of the peapod satellites had burned up in the atmosphere, reducing her 'eye' to a bare three orbital cameras. With such a reduced capacity to track and interpret the transmissions from the aircraft, she'd downgraded the feed to burst traffic, sending only compressed voice logs from the aircraft comm. She fretted about losing the video, but there was nothing to be done.

"In flight again," she muttered, watching a plot of the aircraft creeping across the vast curve of the planetary surface. A projected vector arced south-southwest. "Toward the observatory base. Hrrrr… three days at this rate, maybe four."

Checking again to make sure she wouldn't be disturbed, Maggie began listening to the latest set of voice recordings. After an hour, she gave up, rubbing sore ears. Philosophy…kittens complaining about the food! They must be bored down there, just flying all night.

The Hesht flipped quickly through some secondary data which had come up with the burst transmission, just making sure both aircraft were in good shape. As she did, a log section highlighted itself and chimed for attention. What's this? A leak?

"Parker," Maggie growled into her throat mike, "I need you to look at something."

"On my way," the pilot replied, sounding groggy and irritated. Maggie glanced over at the surveillance camera and her whiskers twitched to see the human male shuffling out of one of the cabins used by the scientists. His patterned shirt was on backwards. Turning her nose politely in the air, Maggie routed the log information to his navigation console and sat back, staring at the huge red disc of the planet filling the main v-pane.

A moment later, her head tilted to one side in confusion. "Where did that come from? What an odd color. Ah…" She opened another private channel to the crew's quarters. "Mister Smalls," she asked in a very polite voice. "Could you join us on the bridge?"