Wasteland of flint

stations. Ship will lock down in one hundred eighty seconds. Gravity will be zero in one hundred seconds. All hands…'

Hadeishi felt suddenly awake, his vision clear, hearing acute, his hands filled with an immediate quick energy. His combat display had already split – keyed by the alert – into four sections, one showing the status of his ship, another the immediate space around the Cornuelle, another with a summary of all known threats – empty for the moment – and the fourth filled with palm-sized v-feeds from the various divisions. Everything was entirely familiar, save for Engineering, where a suddenly sweaty and perturbed-looking Sho-i Ko-hosei Yoyontzin had started in horror at the sound of the alarm horns.

'Mister Hayes,' Hadeishi snapped, feeling a cold, invincible calm settle over him. 'Status?'

'No threats,' the weapons officer replied, his broad face showing no emotion at all. 'Palenque orbit is stable, engines cold. One shuttle docked, the other groundside at base one. Recon drones and survey satellites show no motion, no hostiles. Passive scan is quiet. Shall I go active?'

'No, Hayes-tzin, not at this time. Sho-sa Kosho?'

The exec tucked a curling trail of raven-dark hair behind one ear. She was leaning on her panel, one hand knuckled against the glassite, an antique gold stopwatch in her free hand. She was counting silently. After the briefest moment, she raised her eyes to the captain and said 'fifty-eight' while clicking the stopwatch. Hadeishi waited while the lieutenant tapped open the all-hands ship channel. 'Ship in lockdown,' she announced, and the captain felt a distant rumble through his chair as the hab rings spun to a stop and locked in place, then a hissing clang as the main bridge pressure hatches sealed. At the same moment, his shipsuit stiffened and a warning tone sounded beside his ear.

'Gravity zero,' Kosho announced, securing the watch and taking hold of the edge of her display. 'Engines hot.'

'All systems tracking,' Hayes announced at almost the same moment. 'Beam nacelles are live, missile racks one through nine are cleared to load. Shall I load out?'

'Rack with flash loads by evens,' Hadeishi replied in a crisp voice. 'Timing, Mister Hayes, I want timing.' He turned slightly to look at his exec again. 'Time, Sho-sa?'

Kosho came to attention, though no one save a shipmate could have told the difference from one moment to the next. 'All hands to station in ninety-six seconds, Chu-sa. Engines hot, systems secured in one hundred fifty seconds.'

Hadeishi's chair vibrated again and he knew the missile racks were loading, magazine carrels rotating into place, the slender shapes of Hayai Roku sliding into their launch tubes.

'Admirable,' the captain replied, looking to the communications station. 'Emissions status, Mister Smith?'

'T-relay offline,' the midshipman replied, cheeks flushed, the beat of his heart thudding in the artery at his neck. 'Main array in passive. Comm array on the Palenque forced down, ship to ground forced down, emissions are at minimum. Shipskin neutral.'

'Hayes-tzin? Backscatter from civilian sources? Visual confirmation?'

The weapons officer suppressed a start – he'd expected to report the even-numbered missile racks loaded and their launch status green – hands moving in a blur across his panel. Hadeishi watched keenly – the request to double-check the light cruiser's emissions status from local civilian sources was unexpected, though they were rarely in position to take direct control of civilian sensor apparatus – and counted the seconds until the Thai-i responded. Out of the corner of his eye, the captain watched Kosho counting as well, ancient watch magically back in her hand.

'Civilian sensors are blank,' Hayes said, his voice a fraction rushed. 'Visual confirm is…is positive. I have outline from Palenque navigational cam.' A finger speared sideways and a new v-pane unfolded on Hadeishi's display. With interest, the captain examined the image. 'Backscatter from satellites is null, backscatter from Palenque main array is…null.'

'Interesting.' Hadeishi folded his hands in his lap. The civilian ship mounted an entire array of exterior cameras to assist in docking at a station or other orbital facility. Apparently they also included moderately sophisticated pattern-matching soft, which had picked the outline of the Cornuelle – even at one hundred kilometers – out of the background starfield. The Palenque comp could not make a match for ship type or registry, but it knew something was within its programmed avoidance limits. 'Maintain feed from the civilian ship, Hayes-tzin. Sho- sa Kosho, please adjust ship orientation by degrees.'

Cocooned in his command chair, Hadeishi could not feel the massive bulk of the Cornuelle begin to move, though the video feed on the Palenque picked up the spark of her maneuvering engines as they began a topwise spin. The threat-well and most of the displays remained constant – only the one pickup showing the arc of Ephesus shifted, the planet turning slowly upside down.

'Five second burn.' Kosho's face remained porcelain, her eyes calmly tracking the movement of the ship. 'Burn halted.'

Hadeishi watched the comp on the Palenque adjust, seeing the image – and the identifier – flicker in and out, adapting, adapting…then the lock vanished and the civilian software declared the 'foreign ship' to have vanished. 'There you are… Reverse roll, Kosho-san.'

The Cornuelle reappeared for a moment on the civilian display as momentum carried the cruiser back into a recognizable configuration. A second series of burns halted roll, then nudged her back, second by second, into an unidentifiable 'hole' against the wall of night.

Hadeishi nodded. Kosho was already making a note in the log, while Hayes and Smith spoke softly into their throat mikes, adding their own commentary. The captain waited until they were done, then lifted his chin. 'Admirably swift,' he said. 'Lieutenant Kosho, please make a note to schedule an exercise – at a later date – to determine the detection envelope of the civilian cameras. Then double-check with Fleet to see they have the same information. Mister Hayes, you may stand down your missile crews.' He glanced over his display again. Everything remained quiet.

'Now there is the matter of this mysterious shuttle. I want a full report by end of watch, which we will discuss over dinner.'

Kosho and the others nodded sharply and Hadeishi cancelled alert status himself. No need to disturb the cooks, he thought, though perhaps I should – an alert during dinner would certainly put everyone to the test… 'We will remain underemissions control, Lieutenant. Move the ship to a different orbit. No sense in being too predictable.'

Even though no one seems to be here to see us.…But Hadeishi knew exactly how easy it would be to hide in the interplanetary dark, unmoving, unnoticed, nearly invisible.

'Hrrmmm…' Magdalena was curled up again, both long arms lapped over her knees, snout resting on plush, close-napped black fur. One of her displays showed the faint traces of the Cornuelle shifting orbit – the flare of the big maneuvering drives were impossible to disguise, particularly at this short range – and the other presented an image of the 'mysterious' shuttle the little bird had found.

The Hesht was not pleased with the man's efficiency or the power of his comps. She had watched with entirely open avarice as the Mйxica had unpacked three copper-colored blocks – each one no more than a forepaw wide – from his baggage and set them up in a cluster with the cabin display. She could smell something secret and powerful about them, and her tail lashed slowly from side to side, fur itching with the desire to take hold of them for just a moment.

At the same time, she was entirely convinced tweaking the tail of this human would be bad luck, for her, for her adoptive pack and for her hunt-sister Gretchen. So she watched impatiently, busying herself with a thorough search of the young skywatcher male's planetary scan archive. Magdalena had convinced herself there was a great deal of information hidden in the c-storage racks down at the observatory base. Many secrets, she mused. Waiting to be revealed to the light of day, like a heep burrow peeled back by a gentle claw.

She checked the progress of her image scan. The number was far, far too low to satisfy her desire, so a claw dragged an override and the Palenque main comp began to devote nearly thirty percent capacity to her search.

Hadeishi sat back, letting his steward remove the small dinner bowls from the table. The momentary burst of