Wasteland of flint

compartment.

'Who…who will be running opposition in the sim, sir?'

The senior lieutenant's smile widened, showing a full set of perfect white teeth. 'Sho- sa Kosho has been assigned that role, corporal.'

'Sir?!' Felix blurted, her face ashen. 'The Wind-knife, sir? She'll -'

'She'll what?' HuГ©mac asked curiously.

Felix seemed unable to speak and HuГ©mac watched with interest while the Marine recovered her composure. Something like real dread had penetrated the corporal's usually unflappable demeanor.

'Nothing, sir.' Felix stiffened to attention again. 'Have mission guidelines been posted?'

'I have them,' HuГ©mac replied, his bronzed face once more composed. 'You'll find them…challenging, I think. But Chu-sa Hadeishi has expressed great faith in your abilities, Heicho Felix. I hope you do not disappoint him.'

'Thank you, sir.' Felix started to look pale again. Her voice had strangled itself into a squeak. 'Hadeishi- tzin asked for me?'

HuГ©mac nodded gravely, a peculiar glitter in his dark eyes. 'He did. He thinks you're lucky.'

Outbound from Ephesus III

'Still nothing…' Magdalena was curled up in a nest of Navy-issue blankets over-flowing the captain's chair on the bridge of the Palenque. Slitted yellow eyes watched another set of scan data unspool on a secondary v-pane. There was plenty of noise, static and ghostly warbling filling the comm bands down on the planetary surface. But there was a singular lack of recognizable traffic on Imperial and Company channels. 'Parker, can you switch on the main array? Just for an hour or two?'

There was a grunt from behind her and the Hesht tilted her head back far enough to see one of the human's legs hanging out of a ceiling tile. Though the Navy engineer had managed to get the ship underway, the bridge systems of the Palenque were still mostly down. Coils of conduit, cable and guide- sheathing were exposed everywhere. Very few systems were working. There was no heat, no light. Other than the cold, the Hesht was very comfortable in the cavernlike space.

'Parker…' Magdalena began a harsh, throbbing growl at the back of her throat.

There was a scraping sound and the human pilot's face appeared in an opening between two of the tiles. Light from a glowbean shone around his balding head. 'Miss Cat,' he said, sounding wrung out, 'the main comm array is shut down, turned off and locked out by order of our dear judge. If you want it active, you will have to persuade Stoneface down in Engineering.'

'He eats moss,' Magdalena replied, ears twitching. Finely napped black fur curled back from her fore-incisors and she let an inch of claw expose on her left hand – just for a moment. 'Rrrrrr…they could be in trouble dirtside. Another pack might have them cornered. Her leg could be broken, she could be caught in the open, exposed!'

Parker sighed and crawled backward out of the overhead. His forearms were crisscrossed with scars and dried blood. Working in such an old ship was wearing on mind and body alike. He swung for a moment, feeling the gentle tug of the ship's acceleration, then dropped to the deck. Palenque was underway, engines barely lit, in a long corkscrew orbit out from the planet. In another five days, the pilot figured, she would be far enough away to switch to full power. Then – if Isoroku and his Marine helpers were really working down in Engineering, not drinking themselves insensible – the ship might be able to achieve gradient and enter hyperspace.

'Maggie…' Parker stumbled into the navigator's chair and wedged one thin shoulder into a space between two of the supports. The shockchair's heavy, plush seatback had been eaten, leaving nothing but a cage of metal strips. He reached for the pack of tabac in his shirt pocket and found only empty waxed paper., Crap. No smoke. 'I know Gretchen's your packleader now and all – I know that's important to you – but she's gone off on her own…thing.'

The Hesht did not look at him, once more encased in a suspicious number of blankets. Parker blinked, then stared at a blue sleepbag tucked in behind her. 'Is that my sleepbag? It is. You stole my sleepbag! Give over!'

'Rrr! I'm cold, monkey! You're not. You're working. When you go to your den to sleep, I'll let you have it back.'

'So – is all your fur for show or something?' Parker crushed waxed paper in his fist. 'You're…plushy. But you're cold all the time. I don't understand.'

'Heshukan,' Magdalena said, baring the tips of her incisors, 'was a warm, dry world.'

'Oh.' Parker started to hunt through his pockets for something else to smoke.

'You're out of bitter, smelly leaves,' Magdalena said, staring moodily at the v-pane. Still nothing but static and garbage. She turned off the feed and began flipping through the various comm systems available to her. Most were dead and dark. 'Maybe the hunters have some.'

'Ask the Marines?' Parker rubbed his face wearily. 'They were cadging from me yesterday. Stupid – why give them away? Have I lost my mind? I should have sold them, or kept them for myself!' The pilot pushed himself out the chair and gestured at Magdalena. 'I'm crashing. Give me my bag.'

Brow and nose wrinkled up in a grimace, the Hesht scooted to one side and let Parker recover his sleepbag.

'Agh. It smells like piss!' The pilot held his bag at arm's length, mouth pursed.

'You don't want it?' One of Magdalena's paws licked out and snagged the bottom of the bag with a curving white claw. 'I made it smell proper, like a denblanket should.'

'I do want it!' Parker snatched the bag back. He shook his head, then made his way carefully off the bridge, bag trailing behind him like a fat blue tail.

Magdalena hissed at his retreating back and then rummaged around, adjusting her blankets. When she was done, the Hesht resumed paging through the comm channels. Her mood was even fouler than before.

Bandao arrived an hour later, two bulky packages under one arm, and found the bridge dark and cold, save for Magdalena in her nest, with four v-panes casting a chill gray light on her face. Maggie ignored him. She was busy keying commands into the system in one pane while the others were filled with closely spaced documentation or remote console feeds. Her moodiness had departed, replaced by a near-maniacal concentration on the work before her. Bandao took no notice of the slight and began hunting around under the command deck.

After a few moments, he found what he was looking for and plugged a field heater into a power socket under the navigator's station. Five seconds later, the olive-colored unit woke up and began to radiate a warm, dry heat into the area around the captain's chair.

'Two and four are stabilized,' Magdalena muttered under her breath. Her claws made a constant, rattling click-click-click on the control panel. If she were a human, she would be sweating. If she were Parker, there would be a cloud of smoke like a forest fire around her.

Studiously ignoring the Hesht, Bandao paced around to the opposite side of her chair, installed a second unit and then disappeared back into the dark passageway leading into the main hab ring. Magdalena showed no sign of noticing his brief visit.

'Ah,' she said in relief, rolling her shoulders. 'That's better. Seven will do.' Magdalena's nose twitched – there was a sort of hot metallic smell in the air – but the images on the panel drew her attention before she noticed the two heaters.

On her main v-pane, a video feed had appeared. The image was broken into seven sections arranged in an exploded hexagon, each showing a different view of the planet now receding behind the Palenque. The tip of her pink tongue showing, Magdalena watched the feeds very carefully. Seven matching remote console windows were live on another section of her panel.

'Synch one to seven,' she muttered, tapping a series of glyphs with the little claw on her right paw. The upper left video shivered, then adjusted, conforming to the image mirrored in the center of the hexagon. 'Good…synch two to seven.'

Three-quarters of a million kilometers away, one of the peapod satellites still in orbit over the third planet made an adjustment, slewing to cover an equatorial region. The peapod's orbit had been degrading rapidly, but it was still in operation. The machine was aware – but uncaring – of a slight increase in the rate of collision with atmospheric