Wasteland of flint

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.'

The Cornuelle, Outbound from Ephesus III Orbit

The pitch of the vibration humming through the deck and walls shifted and Susan Kosho looked up from her v- panel, head cocked to one side. 'We've reached safe distance,' she said, turning her attention back to the schematics on her display. With their gravity signature pared down to the absolute minimum by shutting off the g- decking, the Cornuelle creaked and groaned with odd noises. The main hull had picked up little tics and squeaks over time. In the depths of ship's night, you could hear her speaking, if you were quiet.

Hayes nodded absently, chewing on a stylus, pale blue eyes sunken in dark hollows. Susan pushed a cup of tea toward him, letting the sealed container slide across the worktable in the senior officer's mess. 'You should drink that – you need to eat.'

'Yes, mother,' he replied, still paging slowly through the schematic. He set the cup aside. 'This thing is a monster. Look at the shielding…and these mining beam rigs look like a Mark Ninety-Six proton cannon refitted for a civilian power plant.'

Susan nodded, then took a long sip from her own cup. The tea was very strong and thick with honey. She was certain the steward had added stimulants and some kind of vitamin supplement. There's an undertaste, she thought, stealing a glance at her medband. The thin, flesh-colored circlet around her wrist was quiescent, indicating a lack of toxins. Of cinnamon.

'Don't fool yourself,' Susan said aloud, tapping a section of the Tyr blueprints on her panel. 'The power plant for one of these has more in common with our drive than any civilian liner. See? This report from the Mirror says a Tyr has three reactors, each capable of output matching or exceeding our own. She has to, to move so much mass.'

'Wonderful,' Hayes grumbled, finally putting down the pad. He retrieved his tea, which had slid back along the table toward the rear bulkhead. Grimacing at the bitter/honey taste, he downed the whole thing in one gulp. 'So let's consider – she's surrounded by ore carrels which – if they're full, and loaded properly – give her the equivalent of a hundred meters of low-grade armor plating. Not a reactive shield, no, but enough to shrug off most of our lighter penetrators and beam weapons. Then her core section is clad in enough radiation shielding for a battle cruiser and she mounts the most godawful huge cutting beam assemblies I've ever seen.