Wasteland of flint

his fingers through the pea-sand underfoot.

'Try an ultraviolet band on your goggles,' she suggested. 'They'll shine momentarily when you disturb the surface.'

Hummingbird straightened up, shaking dust from his gloves. 'How many days do we have?'

'Safely? About two weeks. Pushing our luck and assuming the buildings at the observatory camp are still intact when we get there, maybe twenty days.'

The judge stared up at the darkening sky. 'And the Cornuelle?'

'You can call them if you'd like. I'm sure the honorable captain will give you an estimate of when he hopes to return.'

Hummingbird said nothing.

'I thought so.' Gretchen marked out a rectangle with her boot, then dumped the tent bundle at one end. 'You're serious about removing the traces of our expedition, aren't you? Well, you're going to need me, my Midge and the extra supplies I brought if you want to succeed.'

'Will I?' The judge sounded irritated. 'You have no idea what I intend to do.'

'Doesn't matter,' she said, unsealing the bag. With long-experienced fingers she flipped the rolled mat out onto the sand. At the motion, the tent stiffened and snapped into a long, broad rectangle. 'I'll do my best to keep you alive so you can do…whatever you're going to do. Then, when we're back at the observatory camp, I'll make sure we get picked up before our suits erode and we wind up like Doc Russovsky.'

'I don't need your help,' Hummingbird started to say.

'Hummingbird-tzin, you are being stone-headed.' Gretchen tried to glower, but gave up. She was too tired. 'You cannot remove all evidence of human presence here if you remain.' She paused a beat. 'You are human, aren't you?'

The Cornuelle

Deep in shipnight, Hadeishi surrendered to futility and opened his eyes. The cabin was dark, only furtively lit by the soft glow of a chrono panel beside his desk. In the dim green light, shelves of books and papers loomed enormous against the walls. Hadeishi threw back the coverlet and swung out of bed. Sleep had eluded him, weary mind filled with a constant stream of images – phantoms of the day's events, wild imaginings of what would come, a nightmare of being dragged before a court of inquiry – and he felt worse than when he'd gone to bed.

'A fine hell awaits Hummingbird and Anderssen for inflicting this upon me,' Mitsuharu grumbled as he found a robe. Silk and velvet slid across wiry, muscled shoulders and he glared at the comp. Late in third watch, he saw. Four o'clock. 'What a wretched hour to be awake.'

His stomach grumbled, making the captain think of tea and hot soup. Breakfast was still hours away, but the act of waking had convinced his body it was time to eat. Shuffling his feet into a pair of shipshoes, Hadeishi tucked long, loose hair behind his ears and went out, kimono cinched tight. Shipsnight always felt cold, though environmental maintained a constant temperature at all times and the corridors were brightly illuminated.

He was not surprised, however, to find Sho-sa Kosho in the tiny rectangular space of the officer's informal mess. Hadeishi was amused to see the young woman was dressed informally – no jacket, the collar of her duty uniform unsealed, the sleeves of an oatmeal-colored shirt rolled back. The exec was removing a cup from the automat as he shuffled into the room.

'Hello, Susan,' Mitsu nodded at her, feeling stubbled, unshaven and out of sorts. Kosho, for her part, looked entirely composed. 'Are you up early or out late?'

'Late, Chu-sa,' she replied, studiously avoiding looking directly at him. 'Hayes has been running navigational scans of the asteroid belt. I was considering the data and time elapsed.'

Mitsu grunted, punching up a cup of bancha-grade yamacha. He waited, hands in the pockets of his robe, while a cup descended from the machine and filled with hot, black liquid. Cradling the tea, he shuffled to the table where Susan was sitting. She raised an eyebrow as he approached, nostrils flaring at the sharp, distinct odor wafting from his cup.

'With respect, Chu-sa, how can you drink such a cheap, bitter grade of tea?' Kosho seemed to shrink away from the harsh smell. 'It's barely cured at all!'

'This?' Mitsu swirled the liquid, watching grayish foam twist into a corkscrew pattern. 'My father used to make this for us every morning when I was little, before we went to school. If I rise early, I can't drink anything else. There is one thing missing, though.'

'Which is?' Susan put her own cup – filled with a delicate golden broth of steaming water, boiled rice and finely rolled leaves – aside with a grimace.

Hadeishi smiled fondly. 'The smell of diesel and wet pavement. In Shinedo there's rain almost every night, or fog…that's what I remember best. Sharp black tea and the sound of my shoes in the mist as I walk to school, hearing the heavy trucks on the old highway, bringing goods into the market district.'

Kosho's grimace eased a little, but her head tilted questioningly. 'What is a truck? '

Mitsu hid a smile. His executive officer's family background was not included in her service record, but no one who had spent more than a day in her company would classify her as anything less than a daughter of the nobility. In comparison to his own relatively low birth, Hadeishi was sure a great social gulf existed between them. His own family at the feet of an invisible mountain, hers somewhere in the clouds. Outside of the Fleet, he doubted they would have met, or even been allowed in proximity to one another.

'A truck is like an aircar, but it runs on wheels, on the ground. They burn petroleum distillate for fuel, which is cheap and efficient, though there is a distinctive smell from the combustion process. Very noticeable on a damp, cold morning.'

'Are they still used today?' Susan's tone implied such devices were remnants of some ancient, time-shrouded age of barbarism and chaos. 'On Anбhuac?' Or relegated to the colonies, where men struggled to carve a life from howling wilderness, only a single step from hunting with knapped-flint spears and knives of sharpened bone.

Mitsu nodded, eyes crinkling with a smile over the lip of his cup. 'I believe so. The markets of the lower city deal in bulk goods – agricultural products, raw materials, metal, ceramacrete, goods delivered in lots of thousands – in such circumstances the cost of freight is an important consideration. Shuttles, aircars, lifters – they are reserved for luxury items, not for bundles of steel pipe and casks of beer.'

'I suppose.' Susan's expression settled from a grimace to a tight mask. 'Efficiency must be profit in such an enterprise.'

'Yes,' Mitsu said in an equitable voice. I am surprised to hear the filthy, dishonorable word profit from your lips, lady Kosho. Again he suppressed amusement at her reaction. Hadeishi knew he'd never had a better second officer. Kosho was tenacious and hardworking and faultlessly competent, but there was a constant nagging tension between them. A divide which could not be crossed, though they had served together for the better part of three years. For his part, Mitsu was convinced his subordinate was aware of the division between them, but he was equally sure she did not know exactly why. Susan will think this is the isolation of command; my role as captain drawing such a distinct line between us. Yet, Hadeishi was certain the true gulf lay in the abyss of their respective births and upbringing. Their futures would be different as well, and therein lay the seed of bitter separation.

In time – in two years, or four, as Fleet decided in its infinite wisdom – Susan Kosho would leave the Cornuelle and be posted to a larger ship – a sleek battle cruiser or a light carrier – as captain and commander. Mitsuharu Hadeishi, of such low birth, would remain aboard the little cruiser, perhaps for the rest of his career. In twenty years, should luck favor him, he might become a flotilla commander, responsible for screening some larger battle group. In twenty years, Kosho would be an admiral and her inflectionless voice would descend to him from on high, ordering his ship into the raging maw of battle.

Fate, he thought and found solace there. But for now, my duty is to guide her, to make her better, by such means protecting myself and my crew on some later day.

'What did you find in Hayes's data?' Mitsu took another sip from his cup.

'Well, sir,' Susan settled back in her chair. The tension in her face and shoulders eased, her thoughts turning away from the disreputable mysteries of trade and back to the mission at hand. 'Young Smith- tzin had been reviewing our navigational data and found something he did not understand. He brought the data to me, expecting he'd made a mistake or an error.' The exec's lips quirked into the