it might as well have been made by the gods themselves! By the Living Flame which Guides! We are so petty now…” His voice trailed away into a disgusted, lamenting mumble.
A flicker of emotion lighted Xochitl’s face. He scrutinized Gretchen warily. “Team one, to me.” The Prince ordered half of his men forward. “Team two, secure the ship. Doctor Anderssen, you help the Esteemed Sahane here find a command structure!”
With the heavy black assault rifles of the marines at her back, Gretchen reached up to place a gentle hand on the young Hjogadim’s armored wrist. “Lord Sahane, let us go further on. Is this not a cathedral of your caste? Has not the place of it been lost to your line? Have a care here. So many lie untended.”
She led the Hjo onward, picking their way out of the disposal chamber through a triangular doorway. As they passed through, Gretchen caught sight of a faint radiance shining in the metal. After all this time there are still glimmers within the material. What marvelous alloy could this be? Or are there bioluminescent organisms trapped within?
“Ah!” The pale gleaming strengthened rapidly, becoming a floodlight of gold. Glyphs inscribed beside the entrance swam and cavorted in her sight, a vision now drenched in brassy light. On the floor, on the walls, as high as their hand lights could reach, meanings leaped out, indicating direction and time and purpose in an ever-dancing overlay to the solid world. Murals began to emerge from the plain-seeming walls, showing the edifice of a great civilization-towers piercing cloud-streaked skies; endless multitudes moving below, in enormous cities. Thousands of races were represented and not one of them seemed to be placed above the others, though the massive Hjogadim were well represented.
Oh boy, Anderssen thought. Is this how the structure functions? Or did the ancient Hjo see the world this way all the time?
“Keep moving,” Xochitl gritted. They stepped out into a leviathan hallway, stretching off far beyond the reach of their lights in either direction. Only a few meters from the doorway, a row of diamond-shaped compartments was visible at floor level. The Prince, curious, advanced to the closest one-his marines pacing him ahead and behind. As their lights moved, Gretchen bit her lip, seeing another row of compartments above the first, and then another, and then another…
Xochitl rapped on the closest door, then shone his light inside. “It’s like glassite. Sealed, but empty.” He stepped away from the dark, silent chamber and swung with the beam of his lamp off into the distance, following the wall.
“They go way up, too,” the marine behind Gretchen added. “Way up.”
Sahane stared morbidly into the sealed spaces as he passed by. The gleam of the helmet lights was swallowed up by the enormous spaces surrounding them. After walking fifteen minutes without seeing any end in sight, Xochitl ordered a halt.
“Koris-take two men back and get us a grav-sled from the freighter.”
Once aboard the sled, they made excellent time, zipping along the massive passageway. After nearly an hour of travel, they reached an intersection.
“I think, this way,” Gretchen urged, seeing the glyphs flowing and dancing in the air congregate around the right-hand avenue. “Yes, definitely.”
Sahane peered into the darkness, staring at the patterned sigils cut into the walls of the intersection, and then shuffled over to stand beside Anderssen at the cargo rail. She scrutinized what she could see of his face within the helmet. He’s interested. Not as tired. Not as fearful.
The Jaguar Knight turned the sled, sending them down another long vaulted hallway. More rows of compartments appeared, yet like the others they were spotless and empty.
THE KADER
APPROACHING THE PINHOLE
“Pilot, acceleration up a point,” Hadeishi announced, preternaturally calm. The light cruiser moved forward, picking up speed as the realspace drives burned mass. In his earbug he could hear a sudden rise in chatter from the Khaiden battleship. Someone is paying attention-but the shuttle is far more interesting than we are. Before him on his plot, a faint, faint trail gleamed.
“Pilot, course one-quarter point to starboard. And not one meter more.”
Warning! the navigation officer on the Sokamak barked in alarm. You’re too close to the…
“All hands, brace for impact!” Hadeishi snapped into his shipside comm.
The Kader ’s starboard wing, a long pylon holding missile racks, bomb-pods, and an array of other weapons, sheared directly into a Thread and neatly separated with a squeal of metal Mitsuharu could hear in Command, and then spun away from the light cruiser. Secondary explosions cauterized the shattered pylon almost immediately. Damage control parties rushed down suddenly vented corridors to patch the ruptures. Mitsuharu felt the whole ship tremble. He punched new course settings into the plot. “Full speed, Thai-i.”
A stabbing azure flare burst from the engines and the Kader leaped forward like a scalded cat, racing away from both Thread and the Sokamak at maximum acceleration. An instant later, the Mexica officer at the Kader ’s comm station punched up a prerecorded distress call-translated to Khadesh-on all frequencies, interspersed with pleas for “a clear path, give us a clear path!”
Hadeishi’s attention stayed on the plot as the battleship receded in the viewing screen. The shuttle carrying the “Imperial scientist” was only seconds from entering the assigned docking bay. Mitsuharu nodded to Lovelace, who was poised with a preprogrammed transmission burst ready to send. “Comm, go.”
The shuttle floated delicately into the open boat-bay of the Sokamak and set down in a rush of maneuvering jets. As soon as the landing pads had touched the deck, the entire boat blew neatly apart into six sections. Four Khaiden penetrator pods deployed out of the debris cloud. Their on-board comps recognized the environment, sorted out targeting in a nanosecond, and burst away from the broken shuttle.
The Khaiden sub-officer in the boat-bay shrieked “Penetrators aboard! Incoming! Incoming!” into his comm an instant before being obliterated by an energy flare. The penetrators raced away down loading corridors and access ways, their plasma cutters shearing through locks and bulkheads.
Mitsuharu considered the likely effects within the Sokamak with satisfaction. It is a poor Khaiden commander who has not prepared for the day when he must put the knife to his superior.
As the severed wing spun away behind the Kader, the on-board weapons systems woke up and spewed a cloud of free-seeking missiles, bomb-pods, and chaff. The other two Hayalet -class battleships reacted to the sudden appearance of live munitions on their plot by lighting off their own engines and swerving away from both the invisible Barrier and the “weapons accident.” The attendant destroyers and support ships followed, while their commanders were tremendously amused to see a brace of sprint missiles from the “accident” flare across the prow of the proud Sokamak.
Their ’cast chatter was quick and violent, but now Hadeishi was beginning to pick out sentences and phrases:
“See, Begh-Adag covers himself with glory again!”
“Fireworks to celebrate his demotion.”
“What other captain could guide his ship to such renown, eh Hunt-lord Zah’ar?”
“Are you volunteering for something, Geh’zir?”
“No!”
“God of a Thousand Eyes forefend! The Sokamak!”
The battleship was still quite clear on Mitsuharu’s v-display. The massive hull convulsed, ripped by four fusion blasts deep within its core. Then it shattered as jets of plasma erupted from gaps in the outer hull, tearing apart in a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated radioactive debris.
Hadeishi smiled, nodding to himself. At Kuretako Shrine, Musashi slew sixteen adversaries with only a
