shut behind them and Susan paused a moment, letting the portal seal, before turning around, hands clasped behind her back. The Naniwa ’s commander looked civilized again-she’d had a shower, been out of her z-armor for nearly a day, and gotten a few hours of sleep. Helsdon, now sitting nervously in a corner chair, looked little different than usual. The engineering teams had been working around the clock to repair secondary hull damage and return normal living conditions to the hab rings and command compartments.
“Anderssen- tzin, good afternoon.”
Gretchen looked up from her field comp, face mottled with bruises, her tangled blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Her bare arms and neck were shining with quickheal, and her ruined civilian z-armor had been replaced by a matte black Fleet skinsuit while she remained in medbay. She was sitting on a bed of crates, spare insulation, and blankets-the regular pod bed had been moved somewhere else. A portable lamp hung from the ceiling, shedding a bluish-white glow. On her field comp’s screen, a relayed feed from the main navigational array was unspooling, showing the singularity and its attendant stars. The icon of the Sunflower was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s gone.” The Swedish woman set the comp down, shoulders slumping in weariness. “Dragged down by irresistible gravity. The last sanctuary of the Vay’en is no more.”
Kosho glanced to Helsdon, who shook his head in ignorance. The Nisei woman pursed her lips, frowned once, and then tilted her head questioningly at the xenoarchaeologist.
“I do not know who these Vahyyyen might be, but I am very interested in determining what happened to Prince Xochitl and Ambassador Sahane. Can you tell me?”
“Oh,” Anderssen blinked, and then rubbed her face, trying to remember. “I had forgotten all about the two boys… they are dead, Captain. One of the Templars shot Xochitl in the face with an assault rifle, and Sahane-well, he was burned alive by a plasma burst and then cut in half. Old Crow, he-” She nodded to herself, feeling light- headed. “He was shot, then stabbed, and then fell down a very, very deep pit. But-but I could not say for certain he perished, not being able to see the bottom of that pit. It was quite deep.”
Susan’s expression congealed into a cold, immobile mask. “My marines found you drifting on a jury-rigged grav-sled outside the artifact, Doctor Anderssen, in the company of a half-dead, blinded Jaguar Knight who had been Cuauhhuehueh of the Prince’s guard detachment. The ship Xochitl commandeered-the Moulins -has disappeared. Do you know what happened to the freighter?”
Gretchen shrugged. “One of the Templars survived the melee with the Prince and his men. He must have taken it out of the landing cradle-she was gone when Koris and I reached the garbage disposal port.”
“I see.” Kosho’s jaw tightened in frustration. “Do you know how the freighter avoided our notice-assuming the ship left the vicinity of the Chimalacatl and boosted outbound, to join the rest of the Templar battle-group? Helsdon here and my techs have gone over the sensor logs at least three times-finding nothing.”
“It was a military ship,” Anderssen offered. “Disguised as a freighter. But the crewmen were all Order Knights and they were using-at the end-powered armor and modern weapons. Better than the Prince’s men had, from what I saw.”
Susan looked to Helsdon, clicking her teeth. “Then the Moulins could have been equipped with the same stealthing technology the Pilgrim ’s fighters were showing off against the Khaid.”
“No reason,” the engineer coughed, covering his mouth, “to believe otherwise, kyo.”
“Why are you asking me, Captain?” Anderssen was watching them both with an odd, distant expression. “I’m just an archaeologist caught up in something far, far bigger than she expected.”
“I need any information you can give me, Doctor, because I’m beginning to wonder if we will be allowed to leave this place.” The Nisei officer indicated the ship, the rosette, the universe with an encompassing wave of her hand. “I know these things: that my ship is alone, wounded and in desperate need of resupply. A presumably friendly fleet-including a strike carrier easily the size of the Tlemitl -has come to our aid, is providing medical assistance, and has sent across dozens of wounded rescued from other Fleet ships lost in the recent series of battles. But at the same time, you tell me that Knights of the Temple have murdered an Imperial Prince, the ambassador of a friendly realm, and also an Imperial Judge, and… I wonder if we are next, if the Knights decide to clean up this little mess before they go on their way.”
“Oh.” Gretchen leaned her head on one hand, eyes half closed. “That is a problem, I guess.”
“It could be… serious.” Kosho stood beside the bed, her attention fully upon the Swedish woman. “You came here with Hummingbird. I know he was at the center of all this. I have a horrible suspicion that he arranged all of this. But I do not know why-and I hope that you will tell me, for the sake of my crew, if not out of courtesy to me.”
Anderssen regarded Susan sidelong, her expression still and distant for nearly a minute. Then she lifted her head, attention returning to the present, and she looked at Kosho with great curiosity. “Captain, do you remember that this is the third time our paths have crossed? Each time, great events have been in play-at Ephesus III, on Jagan, and now here… I wonder, is Chu-sa Hadeishi here as well? I know you’ve your own ship now, but-”
“He is.” Kosho’s stoic expression was suddenly and subtly transformed, cycling from glad relief to concern to suspicion and then grim certainty. “He is here. Hummingbird brought him here. Hummingbird brought me here, and the Prince, and-what in the Nine Hells was he doing? What were you doing with him?”
“Do you really want to know?” Gretchen spread her hands. “You will find no ease to your worries!”
“Tell me.” Susan’s voice sounded stretched and brittle.
“The Crow found me on New Aberdeen,” Anderssen said, “and he needed help with something beyond his ‘capacity to evaluate.’ I thought he needed my technical skills as a xenoarchaeologist-but that was a gravely incorrect assumption. He never said-he never does, you know?-what he expected me to do.”
“And you just came when he beckoned?” Kosho sounded disgusted.
Gretchen shook her head, all expression draining from her tired face. “No. I had been waiting for him, or someone like him, to come nosing around. After everything that happened on Jagan, when I came home empty- handed, without a bonus check from the Company, I found that my boy Duncan had been killed while working on a trawler in the Northern Cape Sea. That-”
She stopped, her attention suddenly far away from the medbay and the two officers. Susan waited, watching the subtle play of emotions on the blond woman’s face, until Helsdon stirred, looking at his commander beseechingly.
“Anderssen- tzin, we don’t have much time. Please tell us what the Hummingbird was doing here.”
“Oh.” Gretchen shook herself, grinding the heel of one palm into her left eye. “I have a recording, I think. My suit comm was on when he told me. You can hear it from his own lips.”
She tapped up a sequence on her field comp, and then slid the volume to three-quarters. The sound of static and harsh breathing filled the little room, and then the old Nahuatl was saying:… the annihilation of the Prince, the Khaid, even the poor Ambassador and my own life in the bargain. A clean set of books-nothing falling into the Emperor’s hands to upset the balance at home-and time. Time we desperately need.
The recording stopped and Anderssen made a face. “We came here in little tramp freighters and mail-boats before the Moulins, which seemed like more of the same. Hummingbird didn’t have anything on his side but some fancy comps in a case, me-for whatever I was worth-and his own invincible self assurance. Do you hear him? He was hurt when he said that, and afraid-not of dying, no, but of failing at the task he’d taken upon himself.”
She stopped, running her finger across the navigational display. The Chimalacatl was already gone, torn to shreds as it fell. Comp projections showed the delicate balance holding all three of the brown dwarves was beginning to fail. In a hundred years, or a thousand, the entire rosette would succumb to the black hole and obliterate all traces of the Vay’en and their works.
“I thought,” Gretchen continued, “when I sent them down into oblivion, that I defeated him. But listening to his voice now, I think I did exactly what he wanted… even better than he could have managed himself.”
Susan made a soft, strangled sound. “He wanted the Sunflower destroyed?”
“More than that,” Gretchen replied. “He needed-or the Judges needed-to ensure that not only was the artifact obliterated-but everyone who had come seeking its power was slain, denied, or convinced it did not exist. The Prince is dead, the Khaid massacred, the Order Knights left with empty hands… we are witnesses to the immolation of the evidence. The nav plot shows that the entire Barrier will be swallowed up in time, pulled into the black sack and made to vanish.”
She laughed nervously. “Only three people remain who saw the heart of the structure, who know what happened there-me and an Order Knight who escaped, the one who departed in the Moulins. He will certainly carry the news to his masters-and I wonder how they will react?”
