The battle-cruiser had clawed its way back up out of the interlocking g-fields wrapped around the singularity in realspace, finally reaching a point where the hypercoil could punch them through to transluminal. In Command, Kosho sat in her shockchair, one slim leg crossed over the other, watching the threatwell rotate slowly. The cloud of broken ships was fast approaching as they climbed gradient, and the sight of such colossal devastation weighed heavily on her thoughts. Helsdon, having completed his mandatory sleep cycle, was sitting at the Nav station with Thai-i Olin. Together they had reconfigured nearly half of the shipskin to watch for the kind of quantum disturbances the engineer suspected heralded the movement or presence of the Barrier threads.
Better than nothing, Susan thought tiredly, but I am already missing Doctor Anderssen’s presence.
She paced over to their console. “Any luck, Kikan-shi?”
“There must be a defensive Thread array associated with the Sunflower,” Helsdon muttered, one pale hand trembling over a plot of the broken armada. “Most of these ships were cut apart, just as ours were…”
“An attack?” Kosho leaned over his shoulder, puzzled. “They’re bunched together so tightly…”
“No…” Helsdon replied, scratching nervously at a week’s beard. “They’ve fallen into a balance point in the gravitation of this system. This is an eddy of flotsam… the ships might have all been destroyed out by the Barrier itself… or even closer to the artifact.”
“Why not a battle?”
Helsdon seemed to shrink, shoulders hunching in, and an expression of pain flitting across his face. “These weren’t warships, Chu-sa.” His stylus tapped unevenly across the control panes and a series of comp-projected reconstructions sprang to life. The alien craft were revealed as sixty-kilometer-long trihedrons with bulky drive fairings at the rear.
“Tens of thousands of cargo containers-suspension pods, I would guess-are held in each of those three lobes. But that’s only what we see nearby in this image. In the whole of the debris swirl, there are over four thousand ships, the comp says…”
Kosho’s eyes widened, taking in the lift capacity of the dead fleet. “Troop transports for a million-man army?”
“Colony ships?” Helsdon shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe refugees? A million isn’t much to lift from some dying world-but it’s sure better than what we could pull together.”
“Was all this a fortress?” Susan wondered softly, her eyes turning to the system plot and the delicate balance of the brown dwarves, the singularity, and the Chimalacatl. “It must have been, hidden behind the wall of knives. But not a refuge, not in the end…” Her voice strengthened. “Engineer, can you find out if these ships were empty or full when they were destroyed?”
Helsdon nodded. Kosho turned to Oc Chac. “Meanwhile, we need another way out of this pocket, one that is not barred by the enemy. You’ve the search-pattern set?”
“ Hai, Chu-sa… starting from the Pinhole and spiraling out.”
“Excellent.” Susan nodded approval.
“But Chu-sa, if what Engineer Helsdon mentioned is true-if the whipping knives destroyed this great fleet of souls-why haven’t we been attacked?”
“I do not know, Sho-sa, but I hope our luck holds.” Kosho returned to her station, intending to comm up Engineering and see how Hennig was getting along, then stopped, looking quizzically around Command. S omething’s not right… Frowning, she tapped open a v-pane showing the guest quarters, then scanned through a series of empty cabins with rising alarm. Damn his scrawny bones! She commed Ship Security, “Thai-i, can you determine if either of our diplomatic guests are available to meet me in the command bridge conference room? This is urgent.”
Beside her, Oc Chac glanced up nervously, saw her stormy expression, and ducked back to the search pattern. Five minutes went by with no word from the brig. “Very well,” Susan said. “Full speed ahead, Sho-sa. We’ve no time to waste.” Hummingbird would not have taken that “ambassador” with him-contravening the Prince’s express order-if the creature were not part of the old witch’s plan. Another ugly thought came to her. He has his own ship-if he knows a way out of here, then we’ve been left behind to decoy and delay the Khaid. But even so-I would not trade places with Sayu now.