Anderssen woke abruptly, finding herself in near-darkness, and for a moment she was certain the roof above was formed of bronze-colored metal, metal which gleamed and flickered with the light of constantly moving streams of flame. Something like wraiths, or fiery shadows, which moved throughout the tower around her, which tenanted the streets below, and darted through sullen, amber-colored skies above.
Her mouth was filled with a hard, metallic taste and she tried to muster enough spit to clear her palate. Gods, what did I drink last night? She could not remember drinking anything harder than tea.
Sitting in the darkness, Gretchen flexed her fingers, tied back her hair, and groped around for her comm band. She found the bracelet by touch and turned the device over. The cool blue glow of the readouts steadied her and the last of the flickering, flame-tenanted shadows faded from the edges of her vision.
“I see,” she said aloud, suddenly wishing she’d brought Malakar along to watch over her while she slept. Or Parker, or Magdalena! Where are my friends, my team? In the old days I would never have hared off like this without them. The thought brought her up short and Anderssen realized-with a chill shock-that she had placed herself in a very precarious position. I am out here, in the middle of nowhere, with a crazy old sorcerer and a crew of religious fanatics, looking for… something… which by all rights ought be left well enough alone. Holy Mary of the Roses, what was I thinking? Magdalena would give me such a cuffing!
Then she decided that Hummingbird had jobbed her again with his measly five hundred thousand quills. And why did he pay that out? she wondered. He must be desperate for… for a washed-up, out-of-work, out-of-her mind xenoarchaeologist. He could rent a graduate student from the Company for almost nothing!
The obvious reason was disturbing. He knows about my talent, and how it’s grown. He’s expecting me to be able to find all of the pieces of some puzzle that would elude everyone else, even him. This is not going to be pleasant.
She clipped on her medband and comm bracelet, swung out of the tiny bunk, and found her jacket, comp, and other tools. The Moulins had been poking along in the dark, following an uneven, zigzag course for several days. But now, she had a sense the ship had stopped moving. Have we arrived? she wondered. “Time to find out.”
After a detour by the mess deck to fill her mug with hot, weak kaffe -the dispenser seemed programmed to produce the most wretched version of anything requested-Gretchen climbed the gangway to the control spaces. Captain Locke, the pilot, and Hummingbird were sitting, watching the navigational displays with varying degrees of boredom. The screens showing the exterior view of the Moulins were filled with gorgeous, glowing dust clouds in every shade of red, violet, and viridian. Streamers of iridescent material arced across the field of view. Embedded in the murk-were they distant pulsars, or stars almost swallowed by this wrack?-were hot points of light.
Anderssen slipped into the creaking, cracked-leather chair beside the old nauallis and strapped herself in.
“What’s happening?”
Hummingbird turned slightly, his weathered old face impassive. “We’ve found what seems to be an Imperial battle-group. Most of the ships are stationary, but some are working patrol patterns around this whole area.”
“But we’re waiting?” She felt itchy, knowing that the artifact-her life’s work if she could but touch it-might only be light-minutes away. “What for?”
“The right ship. And the right commander.” His voice was very low, only barely audible to her, even sitting in the adjacent seat.
“So, we’re thinking weeks parked here in the dark, watching the pretty lights?” Her light tone did not move him.
Instead, he nodded minutely. “If need be.”
A chime sounded from one of the console panels and a series of glyphs strobed on the main board. The pilot leaned over, interested. His stylus circled a moving icon on the display and the view focused in. Velocity and heading figures appeared in a sidebar.
“Reckless idiot!” Locke shook his head in dismay, and then eyed Hummingbird. “This the one you’re waiting for?”
“Target’s v is pushing the limit for this particle density.” The pilot sounded impressed. “It’s big and must be packing a serious set of deflector generators! I wonder if-”
Locke snorted, saying: “I don’t think he can see any better in this than-”
“Go dark!” Hummingbird’s voice was sharp as a knife and filled with an unmistakable tone of command. Without even thinking, the pilot jerked around in his seat, both hands busy on the controls. The level of ambient noise in the control space suddenly dropped and every light shaded down to a dull red, or turned off entirely. The sound of the air circulators ceased and the constant, low-level vibration in the decking stuttered and then died.
“Captain, we are at zero emissions,” the pilot reported in a low voice. “Gravity generators are cold. Engines are cold.”
Gretchen was interested in Locke’s reaction-Hummingbird had given direct orders on his bridge-but the freighter captain seemed unperturbed. If he’d noticed at all? Anderssen found that peculiar, but the captain had been treating the old nauallis very deferentially for the last week. I need to look up what Pr?ceptor means.
The icon on the navigation board continued to show swift progress and Gretchen, peering over Hummingbird’s shoulder, suddenly realized that another icon-one shining green with a blue band around it-must be the Moulins. Which meant…
On the camera screens, a point of blue-violet light suddenly became visible. As she watched, it grew in size, resolving into a black speck surrounded by a brilliantly colored corona of violently excited particles. The wake of the approaching starship quickly became apparent as a corkscrew-like fan of burning motes.
The pilot cursed, looking first to Locke and then to Hummingbird. “Radiation from that drive plume is going to slam us hard. We need to-”
“Hold position.” The Crow’s voice was steely and his demeanor inflexible. “They are blinding their own sensors with all that electromagnetic trash. If we remain still, they will race past, unknowing. Otherwise, we’ll be a fine target for a sprint missile or particle beam practice.”
Locke nodded, swallowing hard. His hands clenched on the arms of his chair.
Gretchen was glad-she’d had the thought before-she’d already had her quota of children. Though just one more… no, it’s too late for that.
Twelve minutes later the Moulins groaned, her hull hammered by successive waves of particles-all hot and glowing with borrowed radiation-as the massive ship rolled past.
“A super-dreadnaught,” whispered the pilot in awe, camera interpolation yielding an enormous outline through the curtains of fire. “It must be four kilometers long, or more!”
Hummingbird was working his stylus in a quick, efficient blur on a hand comp. A lead had been jacked from the unit into the control consoles and Gretchen jumped slightly when he suddenly cursed aloud. Locke and the pilot turned in alarm.
“Xochitl!” The sound was harsh, abrupt.
Hummingbird stared at his comp, right eyelid twitching. Then, after a stiff moment with everyone staring at him, he looked up. “Captain Locke, spin up the mains as soon as we’re in the thrust shadow of that monster.”
“Delicate flower?” Gretchen ventured. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“One of the Princes Imperial has arrived,” the old nauallis answered, looking at her sidelong. She had been around him long enough to glimpse anger and unease behind his usual stoic mask. Could our all-seeing sorcerer be worried? Gretchen struggled to suppress a grin.
“We have to get in there immediately.” Hummingbird glared at Locke.
Xochitl-I remember, that’s “precious flower”-now where… Ah! Of course.
A flurry of 3-v magazine covers, each more lurid than the last, came to mind. Page after page of Temple of Truth filled with “candid” snaps of a young, heartbreakingly handsome man. The foremost of the Emperor’s “Mighty Sons,” Prince Xochitl was not the eldest, but he did shine the brightest in popular culture. A victorious Fleet commander-he’d driven the Kroomakh back from Al-Haram, recapturing two colony worlds and a series of critical mining stations-and a notorious duelist who had left a long trail of broken hearts and honorable deaths behind him.
So, she thought, feeling Hummingbird’s tension ratcheting up with each second. The pilot had the maneuver engines on restart and Captain Locke had pitched in to bring up the hyperspace coil. But she could tell it was all going far, far too slowly for the Crow’s frayed patience.
“Hm,” she said, drawing a baleful gaze. “He’s the pretty one, isn’t he? With the hair?”