“My lord…” Xochitl turned away from Susan’s impassive visage, feeling thwarted at every turn, and advanced on the Hjogadim with a fierce expression. “We must determine the provenance of this-object-and if it poses a threat to Mexica space! Then we can-”
“ Stand away, toy!” Sahane yelped, frightened by the Prince’s fierce movement, reflexively making a form of obedience with his hand, as though the human were a servant in the house of his fathers. Xochitl staggered, eyes wide, his face draining of color.
«Heart failure induced,» his exo said brightly. «Cortex shutdown expected within ten seconds.»
The Prince collapsed to his knees, and then tipped to one side when his arms failed to support his weight. A great rushing sound roared in his ears. He saw the two Jaguar Knights lunging forward, weapons out, striking at the Hjo with all the speed they could muster. Sahane’s exposed fur shifted color and tone, and the first bodyguard to reach him-butt of his shipgun reversed as a club-saw his knockout blow glance away from a sudden effusion of spiked scales which covered the Hjo’s z-suited arm in a blur.
The creature, furious and sick at the same time, backhanded the marine with a long, gray arm. There was a crack of electricity and the Jaguar Knight was flung back, armor coiling smoke, to strike the floor, limp and lifeless.
«Cortex shutdown in seven seconds.»
Everyone in Secondary Command froze. The other Jaguar fetched up, weapon raised, suddenly unsure of how to attack the fully armored apparition. Sahane stared down at his arm, the dark, rune-scribed z-suit now glittering with a spiked metallic shell, in astonished horror. “I did not do that,” he declared in a weak voice. “I could not. This is impossible.”
“Esteemed One, stay your merciful hand!” Hummingbird’s voice was clear and direct, ringing in the air as the nauallis prostrated himself on the deck. “These shiau har-e will not serve without their lord being shun tzing. If he bends to your will, then all will be harmonious and we may flee this accursed place in speed and safety!”
Xochitl, barely able to see, gasped for life on the deck. The exo’s implacable voice continued to count down the seconds left before his brain starved from oxygen deprivation. The Hjo loomed over him, blocking out the light of the overheads. A pair of black eyes stared down and the long mouth twisted in a snarl.
“Let this toy live, when it has raised a paw against me? Why should I?”
“Think, Esteemed One,” Hummingbird said, his voice controlled-persuasive-without a hint of disobedience, “Think of your offspring in their thousands to come-we must be away from this accursed place swiftly and this one ”-the nauallis’ boot toed the Prince’s side-“is their Authority. Through him, you control the others and may achieve a swift departure.”
«Four seconds to cortical failure.»
Xochitl fought to form a coherent thought, and found he could still command his conscious mind, despite the annoying overlay of the exo. Desperate, feeling his mentation slipping away, he brought to focus a string of numbers- three, five, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty – nine and… the voice of the exo abruptly stopped. There was no audible sound, no flashing overlay informing his vision of the event-but the fail-safe tripped, shutting down his implant.
Wheezing, his chest thudding with pain, the Prince closed his eyes, hoping to avoid further agony. His mind, suddenly, seemed quiet and empty-desolate. His limbs weak, helpless. The Prince began to panic, realizing that his interface to the shipnet would now have to be managed manually-and he didn’t even have a hand-comp stowed in his luggage.
“Get us underway, nongmin.” The Hjogadim stepped away from Xochitl’s body, careful to keep his eyes averted from the vast panorama filling the v-display. Then he loped from Command, making a beeline for the lift a corridor away.
Gretchen looked up questioningly from her pirated console, trying to catch Hummingbird’s attention. The nauallis had tilted his head, watching with great interest as the Prince struggled to his feet. Xochitl’s skin had turned waxy and he blinked incessantly. Without the exo to refine his vision, he did not see well at all.
“My Lord?” The old Nahuatl offered the Prince his hand.
“We’re not leaving,” Xochitl rasped, his throat raw. He slumped weakly into the command shockchair. He pointed at Gretchen. “You-the one with the ugly hair-what happened to our probe?”
Turning slightly in her chair, Anderssen shrugged. “The relic is guarded by the same kind of protective lattice as the whole star system.” She caught the Prince’s eye and grinned. “But if we stay, I can get you inside.”
“We should leave,” Hummingbird snapped, glaring across at the Swedish woman.
Xochitl looked the nauallis up and down, realizing he did not know who the old man was or where he’d come from. “Who the devil are-wait, you’re one of the tlamatinime!” His face contorted in a snarl. “ Cuauhhuehueh Koris- get this old witch off my bridge! Put him in the brig-someplace locked tight! With nothing on him but his skin.”
The remaining Jaguar Knight rose from inspecting the body of his comrade. The master sergeant’s visor was opaque, having shifted into combat mode, but his voice boomed hollowly. “As you bid, Lord Prince.”
Hummingbird clasped his hands behind his head without a fuss and was escorted away. Gretchen watched him go with interest, wondering what the old Crow was up to now. He’ll be closeted with that alien in sixty seconds, she wagered with herself. He doesn’t really want us to leave-just nudge the Flowery One in some direction of his choosing. But, she thought, two can play that game.
Seeing the initial results from her analysis of the Chimalacatl ’s surface-even just on the battle-cruiser’s shipnet, much less after node 3^3 3 had taken the datastream apart and put it back together-had solidified a chaos of options vying for her attention. I need to set foot on this thing, if that can be managed safely; even a half-hour would make all of this worthwhile. Another certainty had formed in her heart, crystallizing out of a thousand points of long-held despair, anger, hatred, and delighted curiosity. Hummingbird needs to be there, too. Oh yes, he does.
“Now you, woman, what is your name?” Xochitl blinked owlishly at her, trying to glare in a properly Imperial manner.
“Doctor Gretchen Anderssen, xenoarchaeologist, University of New Aberdeen, Lord Prince.”
“Are you now?” The Prince sat up straight in his chair, surprised and pleased at the same time. “How did you get out here?”
Gretchen said the first thing that came to mind. “I was supposed to be with the others, but I missed the survey ship, so I came on this one.” She spread her hands, encompassing the whole of the Naniwa.
“How fortunate for you…” Xochitl’s attention, now that he still lived and breathed, was drawn inexorably back to the enormous shape of the Sunflower. He bit nervously at his thumb. “Do you… do you know what this thing is?”
Anderssen felt something like an electrical shock, a tingling jolt from crown to toe. In that instant, something blossomed in her mind and, for an instant, she was back under that overhang on Ephesus III, staring up at a rock- face which had grown so impossibly detailed and distinct in her vision that she could barely process the flood of sensation streaming into her from the totality of the world. But now there was a sensation of discrimination and all of the extraneous data could be discarded, leaving the Flowery Prince isolated in her perception and laid bare before her.
She absorbed all of the Prince’s frailty, fear, doubt, ignorance. She glimpsed a fading half-image of a peculiar, inhuman second self which had shrouded him like a ceremonial mask. A facade which had worn him, completing his persona, investing him with a thousand subtle cues to authority and rule. Without that, he was only a shadow, less than half himself.
“No, Tlatocapilli.” she said, supremely confident. “But if you give me leave, I will peel back all of its secrets for you-every last one. But… didn’t you tell the ambassador we were leaving? What will you do about him?”
Xochitl swallowed, blinking again, his hand trembling in physical memory of incandescent pain twisting in every nerve. “I’ll have to kill it-kill him-and atomize the body. Or, or cast it into the sun-or…” The Prince seemed paralyzed by the decisions before him. Without his exo providing summaries and risk-vectors, everything seemed suddenly gray and murky.
