Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  “And in return, Phoenix will fight with House Harmony against the treacherous Aristan and his domestic allies?”

  “Yes, Tobenrah-sa. That was Captain Debogande’s promise to you.”

  Tobenrah said nothing. Eyes half-lidded as he considered many things, and the hush grew longer. Lisbeth wondered if he were having an uplinked conversation with his advisors — silent, where no one else could hear it.

  “Your friends on Phoenix are quite like a tobachi,” Tobenrah said finally. A tobachi, Lisbeth knew, was a popular style of parren theatre. Its form was highly melodramatic, with many set-pieces leading to improbable climaxes, frequently bloody. “They meet Aristan’s challenge to catharan by landing an assault transport on the steps of Parliament, and forcing him to challenge in full view. With nuclear missiles, no less. You know your brother, Lisbeth Debogande. Would he fire those missiles?”

  Lisbeth met Tobenrah’s eyes as firmly as she dared. “Given no other choice?” she said. “Yes.”

  “Thus likely killing all of us here as well,” said Tobenrah. “Even should the warheads be tactical, we are still likely within range. This seems drastic.”

  “Humans are not parren, Tobenrah-sa. It is not our preference to solve small conflicts with violence. Only large ones. With parren, I find it is rather the reverse.”

  Tobenrah’s eyes flashed. “And yet Phoenix is here. Victim of a very small, internal human war.”

  “That is also an extension of a larger war,” Lisbeth completed. “And I never said those warheads are tactical.”

  A stare from Tobenrah. “There are a million parren in this city,” he said coldly. “Your brother would kill them all?”

  “My brother will win,” Lisbeth said firmly. “Of that you can be certain. The fate of the Spiral depends upon his doing so.”

  “Odd,” said Tobenrah. “That is what Aristan says.”

  Lisbeth took a deep breath, mind racing. “Tobenrah-sa. I bring an offer from Phoenix. The capability to disable many of the ships arrayed against you in orbit. Aristan’s and the local government’s both.”

  “How many?”

  “It is unclear. Perhaps most. We did the same to Aristan at Pashan and Cephilae. He could not prevent it then, and he cannot prevent it now. Also, Phoenix possesses the capability to deliver the planetary communications network, in the event of any conflict.”

  Tobenrah’s eyes were wider now, as he grasped what she was saying. “No,” he said darkly. “You will not unleash that thing, that monstrosity, here in parren space.”

  “The monstrosities are coming, Tobenrah-sa. They have already killed thousands of parren, and they are many. We have just one, and it serves us… and you, should you wish it. With that power, you can defeat Aristan, and then the deepynines as well.”

  Tobenrah shook his head, holding up a finger as though arriving finally at the central point. “They would come here?” he asked incredulously. “They, who have hidden in alo space for all these years? Who have hidden the fact of their survival for far, far longer, and who fear that discovery above all else… they would attack us openly, here? Revealing themselves not only to the parren, but to all the Spiral? To humanity? To the tavalai?

  “No no, Lisbeth Debogande… these deepynines of yours, they are not here to fight me or my people. They are here to fight you. They came to Brehn System, and killed Mylor Station, in pursuit of Phoenix. Or rather, in pursuit of that monstrosity that you hold on board… that drysine monstrosity that inflicted upon the parren our worst ever calamities, billions of us killed. And now you ask us to fight with you, against them?”

  Lisbeth felt the terror building. She was about to lose this argument, with catastrophic results. Another time, she might have panicked. But now she felt the fear turning to anger, and leaned forward on her knees. “That thing in Phoenix’s hold is the only thing that can save your rulership,” she said coldly. “The deepynines chase it because they fear it. They fear it could destroy them, and they will do anything to destroy it first, even if it means revealing themselves. Understand what that means, Tobenrah-sa. It means that they no longer fear to be revealed. It means they’re almost ready. There’s only one drysine that Phoenix knows of. There could be millions of deepynines. And you now propose to make cause against the only thing that could stop them?”

  Tobenrah looked almost frightened. So did his advisors. For parren of the harmony phase, it was rare. “What war have you started?” Tobenrah muttered. “What horror have you brought upon my people?”

  “The war was already upon us,” said Lisbeth. “Phoenix just drew back the curtain and revealed it. The only question now, Tobenrah-sa, is whether you propose to be remembered as the man who helped to win that war, or as the man who lost it before it even started.”

  Skah liked wearing his EVA suit. The humans called it that because the human letters stood for something called Extra… Extra…

  “Mummy?” he asked, waddling back to his quarters in the fat, bulky suit. “What does EVA stand for?”

  “You asked me not long ago,” said his mother, still wearing her flight suit. Lately she’d been wearing it a lot, because of the high alert. It meant she might have to go running to Midships at any moment. “Have you forgotten already?”

  “But it’s a stupid name,” Skah complained, pausing as Mummy stood aside for some hurrying spacers carrying repair gear. “It’s another acronym.” That word he remembered. On a military ship, listening to the crew talking, it sometimes seemed every second word was an acronym. The two kuhsi spoke Garkhan, the only time in a rotation they got the chance to do so. Except for the human words that now peppered their speech.

  “Extra Vehicular Activity,” Mummy pronounced some of those human words now. “E-V-A.” She looked tired, ears drooping, eyes heavy-lidded. Everyone looked that way lately. Nearby, some more crew were shouting on another repair job. Skah tried to keep track of which corridors he should avoid, but the repairs kept moving, following the complicated internal systems in the walls. But most of the crew cylinder seemed to be fixed now.

  “What does ‘vehicular’ mean?” Skah asked.

  “It’s the same as ‘vehicle’. ‘Extra vehicular’ means ‘outside a vehicle’.”

  “But we’re not in a vehicle. We’re in a starship.”

  “It means the same thing,” said Mummy, ushering Skah to take a left into their home corridor — F-2, it was called, meaning the ‘F’ circumference corridor, on the second level. Directly alongside their home quarters was an emergency equipment locker.

  Skah entered, and found it occupied by two spacers — Bilai and Stenhauser, Skah had seen them around the corridors a lot, fixing things. Both wore heavy jumpsuits, and had removed helmets and facemasks, now stowing toolbags from their webbing into the secure lockers for second-shift to access when shift-change came. Both men looked exhausted, faces sweaty, hair matted. Stenhauser had some fingers taped beneath his work gloves, where it looked like he’d burned them. It always impressed Skah to see how the crew did not stop working just because they’d been hurt. It made him want to be brave like that too.

  “Hey Furball,” said Bilai, who was a smaller man, and black, while Stenhauser was brown, and huge. “You like that suit, huh?”

  “I don’t want to take it off,” Skah took the opportunity to complain again to Mummy, this time in English. “Can I wear it a bit longer?”

  “No, because now you’re going to bed, and you can’t wear it in bed,” said his mother. The spacers grinned, continuing to stow gear in the bigger equipment lockers. Some of the things in there looked scary, like tools to cut through steel. Mummy tapped their own locker. “Now show ne you know the conbination.”

  Skah took a moment to unclip one big glove, then pressed his fingertip to the reader. It blinked, then showed numbers. Skah input the code, and the locker clicked open. “I had suit driw,” Skah explained to the spacers.

  “Suit drill,” Stenhauser said to Bilai, in case he hadn’t understood.

&n
bsp; “That’s what I said!” Skah insisted, working the three-point chest release until it finally went clack! and the internal fasteners loosened. That let him work on the waist release, as the suit had to break into two halves for him to get out. Mummy watched impatiently, not helping. “I have to get in and out of the suit, on ny own. And I have to know how to nake the air work, and the conputer.”

  “Yeah, well that’s really important stuff, kid,” Stenhauser agreed. “You listen to your mother, that suit could save your life.”

  “She didn’t do it,” said Skah, struggling to get the waist latches up, so he could grip them. “Randaw did.” Spacer Randall was one of his friends from Midships, and had offered to take him through suit procedures when he had time — which had been a few hours ago, after late lessons. Then Mummy had come in her flight suit from working on her shuttle in Midships, and had sat with him at dinner in Bay Six. That wasn’t far from the kitchen, a storage room where some screens had been set up to show entertainment. The crew had been watching television of a parren play while they were eating dinner. Skah had had no idea what the play was about, and the humans didn’t seem to know either. Skah had asked Mummy, and Mummy had said everyone found the parren very strange, and were interested to know more about them. But then everyone had looked at Skah eating dinner in his big EVA suit, and found that funny. Skah had made faces at them while eating, and they’d made faces back, and said funny things.

  “I’ve been busy,” Mummy said shortly. “Now, do a ground exit. Lie down and show how you get out of the suit without the harness to hewp you.”

  “Lieutenant, where did you get the kids’ suit?” Stenhauser asked. Skah still thought it strange to hear crew call Mummy that. But she was official crew now, and had a big rank and everything. You needed that, he gathered, if you flew an assault shuttle. Assault shuttles were important.

  “One of the barabo stations,” Mummy explained. “I forget which. Suit for barabo kid.”

  “I was looking at the features before,” Bilai agreed. “It’s solid tech, barabo make some good stuff. Just be a little careful… I noticed, the override commands on voice activation? They’re a little sensitive, has someone shown you?”

  The tired spacer took another five minutes from his schedule to explain the issue. After that, Skah went with Mummy to the bathroom, which humans called ‘the head’, which was one of those dumb English things Skah still couldn’t figure the sense of. None of the humans seemed to know why it was called that either, when he asked them. In the cramped little cubicle he took his shower. Mummy did not, as she needed to go back to work.

  But first, she took him into their quarters, dried him off properly, then insisted he get into a clean jumpsuit, all ready for an emergency with flashlight, oxygen mask and tube, first aid and other things in the bedside webbing, prepared to clip to his jumpsuit when he got up. Mummy tucked him in beneath the blankets and netting, and Skah grabbed his AR glasses from their secure pouch, and put them on.

  “Not too long on the glasses,” Mummy told him sternly. “The bridge can see if you’re on them too long. Someone will tell me.” Skah nodded. Mummy didn’t like that gesture much — kuhsi didn’t use it, she said. But Skah couldn’t see how that mattered to him. “You remember to thank Spacer Bilai again when you see him. He was very tired and sore, and probably wanted to go and have his dinner and a shower, but he took that time to explain the suit for us. We’re so lucky to be on Phoenix, Skah. Never forget just how lucky.”

  Mummy told him that every day. Skah nodded dutifully. “Mummy, are the deepynines going to chase us here?”

  “Probably,” said Mummy. “But Phoenix is powerful. That makes us powerful, too.” She bent and nuzzled his ear. “Now not too long on the glasses, only ten minutes, understand?”

  “Mummy, why are the Captain and the Major down on the planet?”

  “Adult business, Skah.” She stood up to go. “The Captain and the Major are the greatest warriors of all the humans. They’re our clan leaders now. Always trust your clan.”

  She hit the door, and left. The door closed, and Skah was alone in the little steel room with the whine of ship systems, the gentle hush of air from the ventilation grille, and the steady thump of the rotation crew cylinder for company. Occasionally, from somewhere distant, he could hear the dull howl and rattle of powertools — repair crews still working somewhere, fixing things.

  Skah knew some of the Phoenix crew didn’t like him being on the ship. They liked him, he was pretty sure, they just didn’t think it was a good place for a kid. He’d asked Mummy, but Mummy didn’t like to talk about it. Mummy said kuhsi needed a clan… and without Phoenix… well, again, Mummy didn’t like to talk about it, and he’d learned better than to ask. They just didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  But everything was getting very dangerous now. Skah was young, but he could feel it. Could see it in the eyes of the crew, in the way everyone was more tired than he remembered. He could see it in the repair crews. Phoenix hadn’t been damaged like this before, and these deepynines, whatever they were up to, seemed like a very dangerous enemy. Sometimes Skah got scared thinking about it, but then, he couldn’t really remember a time when he hadn’t been scared. At least on Phoenix he had lots of friends, and if there was anything that made the fear go away, it was having fun with friends. Particularly friends who were fierce warriors, and would protect him from deepynines.

  He blinked on the glasses icons, and saw the dots light up alongside the names of his friends. That meant some of them were free, at least. Jessica was down on the planet with the Major, and most of his Midships friends were busy operating drones to help Engineering fix the damage from the hits Phoenix had taken. But some others had a little spare time in the last few cycles, at least. He was getting different teachers for lessons again, and that was fun. He loved Mummy, but Mummy could get very strict and serious with lessons. The humans were more fun, and he thought he probably got better at lessons when it was fun.

  A new, familiar icon appeared on his glasses, and he blinked on it. “Hello Skah,” said Styx. Styx was speaking Garkhan. She’d learned it some days ago and had just started speaking it to Skah, with almost no accent. Skah had asked how, and Styx had said languages weren’t hard, they were just data, like maths. Skah had no idea how language could be maths, but further questions hadn’t brought him any closer to understanding it.

  “Hello Styx. Mummy says I have to go to sleep. Do you ever sleep?”

  “No,” Styx admitted. “But some parts of my brain shut down sometimes to regenerate and cross-reference new data. I think that’s a little bit like sleep.”

  “But your whole brain doesn’t sleep?” Skah asked. This was why he liked talking to Styx. Styx was fascinating. “Just bits of your brain?”

  “In a rotating cycle, yes.”

  “I wish my brain could do that. Then I could stay up late, but still sleep.”

  “I’m not sure organics will ever work that way. Skah, would you like to play a game?”

  “What sort of game?”

  “A fun game.”

  “Mummy says I should go to sleep,” Skah said dubiously.

  “I know. Would you like to play a game anyway?”

  23

  Trace awoke to Lieutenant Hausler edging past her observer chair at the rear of the cockpit.

  “Sorry Major,” he said, climbing awkwardly into the pilot’s chair, through a gap designed to be accessed mostly in zero-G. “It’s nearly dawn. Breakfast’s up if you want some.”

  Dawn, Trace thought sleepily. Strange concept that was, to someone who’d spent most of the last six months on a starship. She levered herself up to peer out the long forward canopy. Beyond the trees that flanked either side of the great stairs to the Elsium Parliament, a faint, blue glow could be seen against distant hills. Sometime during the night, the parren must have turned off the stairway lights, and left them all in the dark. A small rebellion, perhaps.

  Ensign Yun was now climbing f
rom her front seat of the assault shuttle’s long cockpit, a well-practised manoeuvre better suited to smaller women like Yun than a larger man like her pilot. She swung over Hausler’s chair, wincing as stiff legs took her weight. Long groundings on alert were hell on pilots — they couldn’t spend more than a few minutes out of the cockpit, and now had to sleep in their chairs as well.

  “Exercise properly,” Trace told her, coming fully awake and stretching in the chair. “Get the blood moving.”

  “Yeah thanks Major, I got it,” said Yun, staggering to the rear. Trace followed. She had numerous tricks to waking up fast, and one of them was to attach herself to an immediate task. Commanding a marine company, there were plenty of those, but few were as entertaining as the chance to rev up some slack spacer who wasn’t putting in a full effort.

  Yun waited by the door to the tiny toilet cubicle, directly behind the cockpit, and Trace checked her command post just around the corner, where the shuttle’s centre core divided the main hold in two at Midships. Finding all in order, Trace flipped down her glasses, blinked an icon to review the night’s accumulated messages and reviewable intel, put in one earpiece, then grabbed an overhead locker rim and began doing pullups.

  After twenty, she indicated to Yun. “Your turn.” The Ensign gave her a look of pure despair. Just crawled from her chair after a many-hour stint, waiting at the toilet door with obvious need, and now she had Major Hardass Thakur telling her this was actually a gym session. Trace couldn’t help smiling. “Okay, it can wait till you’ve had a piss.”

  “Gee, can it Major?” Already, Private Rolonde was holding Trace’s customary morning mug of green tea before her nose — her special blend from the locker, there was always a little on board in case of long stays. This blend had no caffeine, or god forbid, sugar. She needed to be at her peak all day, not just for the next two hours until the caffeine crash.

  “Thanks Jess,” Trace told her. “What’s up?”

  “Quiet here,” said Rolonde, in a sweaty singlet from her own morning workout, bare arms knotted with even more muscle than Trace. Like a lot of marines, Rolonde had come to the service from being a civilian fitness junkie, and had a body fat percentage that Doc Suelo found borderline alarming for a young woman. “Lots of activity in the town, fair bit up on the hill, no idea what. Constant military flyers and shuttles.”