Hadeishi frowned, his jaw clenched tight as Cajeme’s voice burred in his earbug. Capsule lock is completely jammed-we’re having trouble cutting through without frying the nitto-hei inside-and there are four more capsules outside we can’t bring onboard until we’ve got these men out.
The Nisei officer’s eyes darted to the nav plot, which still showed the Tlemitl between them and the Khaid fleet-or what of the enemy they could see with their sensors greatly obscured by the Barrier, the radiation clouds from discharged weapons, and the sensor shadow of the broken dreadnaught. From his vantage, several Khaid destroyers were hanging off at a distance, but the rest of the enemy had disappeared.
“ Thai-i, do we have a remote we can run out to the edge of the wreck?”
Tocoztic shook his head in disgust. The Arawak’s beard was starting to grow in, which made him look particularly disreputable. “Nothing, kyo. We’ve got nothing useful aboard. I’d use an evac pod, but their maneuvering jets are exhausted once we get them into cargo one…” He gestured angrily at the plot. “Something is going on out there-I can pick up gravity-wave changes and some partial drive emission signatures-but we can’t see anything directly.”
Mitsuharu’s expression darkened further, considering the movements of the enemy. Out of sight is not out of my mind… that battle-cruiser’s drive emissions could easily be visible to these new-model battleships of theirs. This Spear does not carry the most advanced electronics quills can buy. Not like the… wait a moment.
“What about the Tlemitl? Are there any sensor booms or subsystems we can connect to and use?”
“The-” Tocoztic stopped himself, initial disbelief replaced by curiosity. “I don’t know, Chu-sa, but she hasn’t lost all power to systems-just her mains. One moment…”
Hadeishi swiveled his shockchair, feeling the carapace creak under him. All of the Command stations were now filled with crewmen from the pods they’d recovered initially. Cajeme and his engineers downdeck were busily shuffling off the newly recovered ratings and officers, which looked to swell the Kader ’s complement by another eighty or ninety bodies. Most of those recovered, however, had been injured to greater or lesser degree.
Now for the second act, he thought, gaze settling on Sho-i Lovelace at the Comm’s station, despite being-perhaps-the junior-most tech aboard. The ensign had tucked two spare console styli into her hair, which was bound up in a blond bun behind her head. The young woman’s expression was distant, all attention focused on sorting out the confusion of signals picked up by their sensor booms.
Hadeishi caught her eye. “ Sho-i? Are we still synched with the Khaid battlecast?”
“No, kyo. I’m getting intermittent bursts of traffic, but we’re out of the loop now.” She offered a crooked smile. “I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re no longer running with the surtu.”
“Very well. Route what you have to my earbug on sixty-three and-”
Lovelace started to nod in acknowledgment, then became quite still. “Wait one. Wait one.”
She stared at her console, gently adjusting the signal filtering, before scowling. “We’re picking up a rebroadcast, kyo. It’s the Khaid ’cast channel, but not from our immediate area. Routing to sixty-three.”
A babble of excited Khadesh flooded Mitsuharu’s hearing. The translator kicked in, but the hunt-lords were yowling so quickly, and overlapping one another, that the software produced only a garbled mess on the secondary channel.
“Fix a vector, Sho-i!” he ordered, barely able to hear himself think. “Are they behind, or ahead?”
I want that ship! popped out of the howling. She escaped once, not again!
Hadeishi twisted the earbug around, frustrated. That sounds like the one named Sylahdeposu-he’s quick off the mark, but who does he have in his sights? Has another Imperial combatant dropped into the area, or…
“ Chu-sa Hadeishi!” Inudo had turned in his seat. The pilot had a finger to his earbug, his voice loud over the chatter on the Kader ’s crowded bridge. “I think he means the Naniwa. Comp says she is the one that survived the ambush and ducked into the Pinhole-a squadron of the Khaid must have slipped past us, following their drive track.”
Mitsuharu blinked and everything seemed to slow. The Naniwa? The missing battle-cruiser is “How did they get through?” Tocoztic demanded of Inudo. “How can they track her- we can barely see her signature in this mess!”
“Do we have comm to the Naniwa?” Hadeishi’s expression made Lovelace stiffen in her seat.
“No, Chu-sa! We’re just picking up fragments of battlecast from a relay the Khaid dropped behind them. I’m getting five or six different emitter tags-one per ship probably.” The Sho-i swallowed nervously. “She won’t last long if she’s alone.”
“The Naniwa will fight to the last missile, the last gun…” Mitsuharu viciously suppressed an urge to order Inudo to take them to maximum acceleration and to the Eight Hot Narakas with the rest of the evacuation capsules. Despite this, his voice was a harsh growl which made every man and woman in Command straighten up in alarm. “ Chu-i, I want to see a ticker on the plot telling me how long the engineers have to get those capsules inboard. Tocoztic- tzin, get your crews to their guns, get me status on anything we have left to throw. Pilot-lock down that drive plume signature and stand by for battle acceleration.”
The howling and yammering of the surtu pounded in his ear, though Hadeishi felt their bloodlust only as a ticking sense of time falling away into darkness. He eyed the plot-still no sign of the enemy moving against them-but now he was certain at least one of the surtu was loitering in the Tlemitl ’s sensor shadow, waiting for them to break cover.
“Comms. Broadcast on the last frequency we had for the Wilful. Say only, “We are visiting Osaka.” Do not repeat the message.”
Lovelace stared back at him, pale brow furrowed as she resolved the reference, her stylus poised over the v-pane. “Do you think Captain De Molay will hear?”
“Perhaps.”
“A little boat like hers-what could she-?”
“Much depends upon the purity of one’s intent, Sho-i. Send the message.”