Wasteland of flint

sa Kosho set you to updating our navigational charts?'

'Hai, Captain!' Smith managed to come to attention in his shockchair, a talent Hadeishi remembered all too well himself. His first posting had been under a Mйxica captain with a very strict sense of propriety. 'All spare passive sensor time is already tasked.'

'Good. Carry on.' Updating local navigational charts was dull – most of the time – but frighteningly essential to safe navigation and the rapid response of the Fleet to any threat. Hadeishi tapped up the boy's report and found the usual litany of planets, planetesimals, asteroids and stray cometary bodies. Too early to find anything interesting. A pity.

The bridge was quiet and busy, filled with the little sounds of men and women working at routine tasks made fresh by a new duty station for the ship and at least the prospect of danger. Hadeishi let the shockchair take more of his weight, eyes roving idly from station to station. The well of the threat board drew his attention at last, as it usually did, and he frowned. The red sphere of Ephesus swam in the center, slashed with the white of enormous storms, surrounded by a scattering of tiny lights – each one tagged with ship identification numbers, directions of movement, thrust and mass figures – and there was absolutely nothing going on.

Even the tense atmosphere aboard the Palenque had abated – no new horrors had been discovered, the alien devices were secured – and everyone aboard was busy restoring ship's systems. Hadeishi considered remanding the gun control orders which kept two forward beam weapons targeted on the civilian ship. But he did not. Quarantine restrictions were strict and he had no desire to generate more paperwork for himself.

The rest of the system was equally boring; even the Ephesian sun was quiet, without particular flare activity, or mottling or magnetic storms. Hadeishi swung his chair from side to side gently, eyeing a trail of motes drifting along in the upper atmosphere of the planet. He moved a control on his display and the far side of the planet rotated into view. Immediately he frowned, seeing the fuzzy mottled streaks characteristic of delayed or corrupt data.

'Mister Hayes?' The weapons officer became entirely alert, his massive frame tensing like a hunting dog preparing to leap to the chase. Hadeishi did not smile. 'I don't like the lack of surveillance coverage for the far side of the planet. Please secure communications control of the civilian peapod satellites – how are they configured?'

'Meteorological and geophysics survey, Chu-sa.'

'Good, well leave them to their business, but establish a tap. I would also like two reconnaissance drones launched into polar orbits to give us a real-time eye on farside.'

'Hai!' The weapons officer settled into his seat, face lit with enthusiasm. Once Hayes was looking away, Hadeishi did smile, a little. He was flirting with boredom as well, which meant he should start working on the weekly reports for sector command. What a horror…

Instead of setting himself to his dull profession duty, Hadeishi tapped up the surveillance and comm feeds from the civilian ship. No 3v feed so far from home, he thought, rather guiltily, but you can always see what the neighbors are doing.

'This doesn't look very experimental to me.' Gretchen had both hands tucked into her armpits – her z-suit was dumped in the cabin she'd appropriated – and her mother's sherpa cap tugged down almost to her neck. She kicked the corner of the tachyon relay very gently, though even such a small motion drew a deep growl and hiss from underneath. 'Shouldn't they repaint the case, or something?'

The relay occupied one corner of the forward cargo hold, sitting on a standard cargo palette bolted to the deck with standard retaining bolts. The device was shaped very much like a standard cargo container, save for military markings and the particular gold-gray-olive color scheme of Imperial Navy equipment. A rat's nest of cables ran out of the back of the relay and down through an open floor panel. A pair of bare, furry feet were visible under the edge of the container.

Gretchen sat on the edge of the palette, humming softly to herself. Clanking, more muttering and then a chunk sounded from under the relay. Magdalena emerged, her fur awry, and sat down next to the archaeologist.

'I think, hunt-sister,' the Hesht said, slipping a stiff brush from one of the cargo bags tethered to the deck and beginning to settle her fur. 'I think your human guardpack calls things 'experimental' when they want to sell them for more money than they're worth.' Magdalena smiled, showing a large number of sharp white teeth. 'But this thing works.'

'It's back on main power?' Gretchen pointed with her chin at the tangle of cables. 'And reset? Ready for business?'

The Hesht nodded, slicking back the fur along her neck and shoulders. 'Recycling the system and acquisition of the sector relay emitter at Ctesiphon will take a few minutes, but then she'll be ready to send and receive.' Maggie paused, glowering at Gretchen with one half-lidded eye. 'You have messages to send? Greetings to your cubs? Your mate lying at home in the den?'

Gretchen nodded sheepishly. 'And reports for Gossi and the Company.'

'Them!' Magdalena made a sharp coughing sound. 'They eat bark.'

'I suppose.' Gretchen couldn't hide a smile. 'Listen, I need to ask you some questions about the main comm array – can you use it to pick up the transponder on a groundside vehicle?'

Maggie blinked slowly, showing two clear lenses fluttering across her yellow eyes. 'You want to search for the missing hunter from the sky? For Russovsky?'

Gretchen nodded. 'The scientists on the ground have no idea where Russovsky went on her survey. She left no flight plan. Lennox says…well, that's immaterial. Lennox doesn't like her. The others, though – particularly Tukhachevsky – are worried.'

Maggie scratched the underside of her jaw. 'Do we have to find her right now? Why not wait until she returns from hunting – there's only one watering hole, one den – she has to come back sometime.'

Gretchen's expression turned dour. 'I need to talk to her about the cylinders, and about McCue and Clarkson and what she did, and what they did, on the day of the accident.'

Magdalena grunted, leaning back against the relay. 'Huh. Now the pride's golden pelt is heavy on the shoulders, ya-ha?'

Gretchen made a face. A dull, queer churning started in her stomach at the thought. 'My job, now. But really the Company doesn't care about all the poor people who died on this ship. They'll pay the wergeld to the families and a pension, if one is owed. But no more. What they want, and what I need to find, is the place Russovsky found those cylinders – and anything else that might be there.'

Magdalena's ears flattened back, and her eyes narrowed to pale, golden slits. 'Ya-ha, hunt-sister, they would indeed. Well, I know a little about the main array and a little about these dragonflies – the transponder has only a short range, but if we knew exactly where to look, we could open a direct comm channel to Russovsky's aircraft.'

'If we knew where to look. Big planet down there.' Gretchen felt disgruntled. 'Can we search the surface visually? Slave some kind of camera to the comp and tell it to look for the outline of a Midge in flight?'

'Hrmph. Perhaps.' Magdalena scrunched up her nose. 'I'll see if we can do that.'

'Good.' Gretchen got up and pulled on a pair of mittens from her pocket. 'How's Isoroku coming with the heaters?'

'Is it still cold?' Maggie's tongue poked out between her teeth, then coughed merrily at the human's disgusted expression. Her breath frosted in the air. 'You should have a nice thick fur coat, like me.'

'Fine,' Gretchen grumbled. 'I'll go play with my toys, then. You just find our missing scientist.'

Hadeishi grinned, though he was entirely comfortable in his shipsuit, sitting on the climate-controlled bridge of a modern warship. Anderssen- tzin hasn't lost her sense of humor yet. Still… He remembered being constantly cold more than once himself. And wet. He tapped open a channel to his wayward engineer.

'Hai?' The old bull's voice was aggrieved and distant. Metallic clanking and spitting sounds nearly drowned out his voice. 'Yes, Captain?'

'What's your environmental situation?' Hadeishi didn't bother to hide his amusement.

'Cold and dark,' Isoroku grunted. 'We have power, but most of the heaters and lights are still down because we have no power conduit in place.'