Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2)

by Joel Shepherd

  Ben Guring had some papers for them to sign, all in Palapu of course, and no electronic copy. Having been warned of barabo tricks, Erik scanned the documents back to Lieutenant Lassa on second-shift Coms, who ran them through translation and gave the all clear — they were very vague, no real indication of what transaction had transpired between Jigi Freight and Phoenix, but they satisfied whatever requirement Jigi had. Lieutenant Lassa, like all Fleet Coms officers, was legally trained at a high level, and not just human law.

  “So now you will be needing transport for sister Lisbeth,” Ben Guring pressed. “Safe transport, back to Mother.”

  “We will arrange that ourselves,” Erik told her.

  The barabo raised her eyebrows. “Because we can arrange most safe transport! Most safe, yes. Reliable captain, good ship, the very best.” Erik didn’t doubt it. Doing business with Alice Debogande was no doubt turning out very profitable for Ben Guring. Delivering Alice’s daughter safely to her arms would be rewarded with a very tidy sum. But Erik doubted whether the barabo had any real clue of just what the dangers were, and if she’d be quite so helpful if she did. People who worked only for money could always hand over the cargo if offered more… or have it taken from them if they could not or would not defend it.

  “We will arrange that ourselves,” Erik repeated with a smile. Ben Guring took the hint, and Erik and the marines took their leave with friendly farewells.

  “Fun to be young and running loose in the galaxy on mommy’s credit,” Kaspowitz offered as they refastened helmets, and stepped back onto the chaotic, teeming docks. “Is that trade with your mother even legal?”

  “In human space, no,” Erik conceded. “Here? Not much that isn’t legal. I just hope that big girl doesn’t get her throat cut.”

  “You think they’d do that, all the way out here?” Crozier wondered.

  “The people who are after us?” Erik replied. “Certainly.”

  * * *

  Their next stop was to meet with the Tuki Stationmaster, in a big office near the bridge. The Stationmaster was snow white, with yellow rimmed eyes and long, fine hair strung with beads, most unlike the scruffy, bristle-bearded majority.

  “I can assure you,” Erik told the anxious barabo, “no human Fleet vessel will hold it against you that Phoenix is here. Tuki Station is unarmed, there are no warships here to enforce your lanes. Phoenix is one of the most powerful warships ever built. Humans will understand.”

  “They want kill you?”

  “It’s unclear,” Erik said carefully. “The top leaders want to kill us. Tried to kill us. Those top leaders made a mistake, and now they look bad to the rest of Fleet. We want them brought to justice. Justice for Captain Pantillo.”

  The Stationmaster nodded nervously, chomping on the smoking cigar between his teeth. He’d offered one to Erik and Crozier, but they’d declined. “No want human trouble,” he said. “Many business here, many people. Want peace, yes? Barabo tried war, war no good. Barabo no good at war.”

  “I understand,” Erik said sympathetically. He could see the fear on the man. It was understandable. Barabo had been lucky in that their first alien contact had been the tavalai. Humanity had been unlucky, in that theirs had been the krim. Could the barabo have fought back to become the galaxy’s greatest warriors, had their homeworld been destroyed, as humanity’s had? Erik doubted it. Humans had been warriors well before they’d discovered aliens. Barabo knew violence and war, but in forms rare and disorganised. Erik thought that if a bunch of barabo got together and declared a war, a barbecue would break out instead.

  “Tavalai used come here,” the Stationmaster added, gazing out the big porthole window in the wall. They were on the darkside of Vieno, and there were no stars to be seen. “Tavalai kept safe. Now only small tavalai come. Most tavalai ships gone to war, war with humans. Only ships here are sard. Sard space close.” He turned back to Erik. “You think human ship come? Human Fleet?” Hopefully.

  “Probably,” Erik admitted. “We’ve big former-tavalai territories to administer, now that the war is over. But Fleet won’t like all this uncontrolled territory off their flank, either.”

  “When? When Fleet come?”

  Erik had to force down a surge of contempt. The Stationmaster wanted humans to save them. Once the tavalai had been the barabo’s guardians, and now they needed new guardians. Humans had learned the price of being defenceless. Barabo had not.

  “I don’t know when Fleet will come,” he said. “I’m just a Lieutenant Commander.”

  “I tell you this,” said the Stationmaster, jabbing with his cigar. “Damn sard everywhere. Merchant ship come, through dark point mass, for jump. They say sard, sard here, sard there. Too many. People here damn scared. Sard once tavalai ally… tavalai gone, sard no respect tavalai no more. Not just barabo scared. Tavalai scared too.”

  Erik doubted that — even defeated, the tavalai were still an enormous force in this region of space. And tavalai had known how to deal with sard for millennia, in both friendly and unfriendly ways. “You see tavalai out here too?” he asked. “Big tavalai ships?”

  An evasive shift from the Stationmaster’s yellow-rimmed eyes. “Just said. No tavalai, tavalai not come here anymore.”

  “Not the regular tavalai traffic,” Erik explained patiently. “Big tavalai fleet warships, made to fight humans. Tavalai had to give up fifty percent of their warships in the peace treaty. And all the human talk is that tavalai would hide many ships out here. Neutral space, humans don’t come here. Yet.”

  A shake of the head. “Tavalai not cunning. Not play tricks. Honest tavalai, yes? You do treaty, tavalai do treaty good.”

  “Maybe,” Erik conceded. “You don’t see any tavalai ships out here? Big warships hiding? Remote bases, built a long time ago?”

  The Stationmaster tapped ash into a tray. “I no see. Maybe human Fleet come and look for them, yes?”

  * * *

  “He’s lying,” Erik said to Crozier as they ventured back onto the docks. “That freighter captain the other week was pretty sure, big tavalai signatures on those jump readings. They’ve had decades to prepare for it, I bet they could hide a big fleet out here indefinitely if they wanted.”

  “I dunno,” said Crozier as they walked past stalls and crowds. “Stationmaster was right — froggies don’t play tricks. If Fleet caught them at it, and decided to punish them, lots of tavalai could suffer. If they violate the peace treaty, technically the war starts again.”

  Erik frowned. “Humans will never be like chah’nas. However bad they’ve been to us, we’re not just going to start punishing tavalai civilians indiscriminately.”

  Crozier looked at him warily. “Yeah? Well I guess we’ll see.”

  Erik’s com uplink blinked, and he opened it. “This is the LC.”

  “LC this is Lassa. Thought you’d want to know, a human-registered freighter just came out of jump, transponder says it’s the Grappler, just like Major General Connor said. ETA fifty-one hours.”

  “Thank you Lieutenant, keep an eye on it. LC out.” And to Crozier, “Our Worlder contacts just arrived."

  “Now we see if it was worth listening to that pain-in-the-ass Major General yapping for half-an-hour,” Crozier grumbled. Erik laughed.

  Phoenix’s main corridor was always chaotic when they were at dock. With three-quarters of the crew cylinder inaccessible at station-G, most crew were sleeping on station. That meant a big block of hotel space, accommodation for five hundred and sixty plus, as they currently stood.

  But with most of the crew off-deck, all supplies and things they might need had been pre-positioned in the main ship corridor. With marines, that meant a platoon’s worth of armour and weapons — the rest was accessible up in Assembly, but that took time, climbing ladders through the stationary core to the marines back-quarter, all of which was now upside-down. With two platoons of armour in the accommodation block, and one here, Phoenix had three platoons of heavy armour ready to deploy on dock at a moment�
��s notice… but it meant a mess of spacers and marines squeezing past each other in the crowded main passage.

  Erik left Delta Platoon and headed down to M-bulkhead at the cylinder’s rear. Usually access between the crew cylinder and midships was via the cylinder core down the central spine of the ship. But with the ship docked and the cylinder no longer rotating, midships access was via an airlock hatch from M-bulkhead that joined the two habitable ship sections.

  In that narrow space he was passed by the first marines from Echo Platoon, disembarking from PH-1 now locked to the midships grapples on Phoenix’s underside — no small manoeuvre, given Phoenix’s current one-G rotation locked into the huge station carry gantries. PH-1 had been up at the station hub, getting supplies directly from an insystem trader rather than hauling it through the station.

  “LC,” the marines greeted him as they passed, and Erik played his usual game of trying to recall every name, and where he knew the name, the nickname. As Lieutenant Commander he’d known all of the spacer crew, but not the marines… though now he was getting better. Inside midships was an open structure of gantries, cargo nets, acceleration slings and exposed machinery. It all worked much more elegantly in the accustomed zero-G, but here marines had to climb up from docking operations, where Grapples 2 and 3 held their two assault shuttles. Their ‘borrowed’ civilian shuttle, AT-7, was currently locked to Grapple-1, further up the midships side, and difficult to access at dock.

  He took a left through the central partition bulkhead, then down a ladder to where Operations crew held position amidst the big, exposed grapple mechanism, amber warning lights flashing. He took hold as the grapples crashed, huge hydraulics plunging and kicking as PH-4 hit them from below, after a sustained one-G burn to chase the moving station rim. Yells and signals from the crew, then a vibration as the access extended, the docking chief talking to Ensign Lee, the co-pilot on the other end.

  Trace arrived at his side, in light armour and a cap. At this station call, it was policy that she had to put the armour on just to cross the docks from their accommodation block. “Hope they had a nice holiday,” said Erik. Vieno was supposed to be very pretty, with big oceans and hundreds of thousands of kilometres of sandy beaches. There were many good arguments as to why it was silly to send a shuttle all the way down to the surface for a load of fish. But maintaining morale on ship was an even better argument, and Trace had agreed — and put Charlie Platoon on the shuttle for security, with instructions to find a beach for an hour or two while awaiting rendezvous trajectories, and relax.

  “Be funny if they got sunburnt, given all the radiation warnings we get up here,” Trace said. “I hear they got good fish?”

  “That’s the word,” said Erik, glancing at her. “Brought you running I see.”

  Trace smiled. “I want to talk to Jalawi about the planet. It’s called a debrief.”

  “A likely story. I’m glad at least we didn’t get jumped while Charlie Platoon were working on their tan.”

  “Kaspo says with the asteroid belt and outer gas giant’s gravity well, we’d get at least a two hour warning from most approaches.” Trace adjusted her cap to block the glare from a nearby light. Visual augments made marines fussy about such things. “Tif says she could have made it back for pickup in thirty-five, worst case scenario. Hausler says thirty-two.”

  “Yeah, well.” Truth was, Erik always felt nervous when any of his marines were off-ship. If they had to leave in a hurry, marines could get left behind. And he particularly disliked it when this marine was off-ship. Thankfully, she hadn’t asked to go.

  A private clambered down the G-ladder to Trace’s side. “Major,” Private Melsh said glumly. “LC.”

  “Private,” Erik acknowledged. And looked at Trace, eyebrows raised.

  “I gave Private Melsh Furball-supervision duty in the gym,” Trace explained. “And he failed to supervise the Furball. So the Private gets to help midships crew unloading all the fish, lucky man.” Erik sighed, and gave her an exasperated sideways look. Trace rolled her eyes. Melsh winced. “Private,” she said to Melsh, “make yourself scarce for a moment. We’re about to have a command discussion.”

  “Yes Major,” said Melsh, just as glumly, and retreated back up the ladder.

  “We’ve really got to do something about that,” said Erik.

  “So would you rather we aced every menial job and sucked at combat?” she said defensively.

  “Shouldn’t have to choose, Trace. I mean it’s just a menial job now, but what if the Furball really did go missing? What if they just wave someone through on guard duty who it turns out is carrying a bomb? Fail to inspect some random civvie who ends up killing a bunch of us?”

  Trace sighed, and didn’t argue.

  “They’ve been at war a long time, I get it,” Erik pressed while he had the advantage. “Combat is most important. But out here, we’re going to have to learn to be good at all the other, small boring stuff too. Because when people look at the size of us, and figure out how little chance they’ve got in a straight-up fight? They’ll figure the best way to kill us is that small boring stuff that our marines find too dull to bother with.” A hiss from the grapples airlock, as PH-4 opened it from below.

  “I’ve told the platoon commanders you’re pissed about it,” Trace offered.

  “Well that doesn’t help,” Erik said with exasperation. “Tell them you’re pissed about it.”

  “I prioritise,” Trace said stubbornly. She’d lost a bunch of them recently. A bunch more had been badly hurt, and were just now recovering. She only showed temper with them sparingly, when she thought morale could handle it. Clearly she didn’t think this was one of those times.

  “Well they’re your command,” said Erik. “Figure it out.”

  “Aye sir.” For a moment Erik thought she was being sarcastic… before recalling that Trace didn’t do sarcastic. He’d fallen into conversation-mode, but she’d taken it as a direct order. Well, fair enough. The best thing about arguing with Trace was that she didn’t do resentment either. “So when do I get to call you Captain?”

  Erik gritted his teeth. Not this again. “You don’t.”

  “Look, don’t give me this shit about how you don’t have the command authority to give yourself a promotion. I’m promoting Corporals to Sergeants and Privates to Corporals. The rank fits the job, and we need those jobs filled. You’re promoting Warrant Officers to Ensigns and Petty Officers to Warrants, as you need them. No difference here.”

  “Not now.” There were voices coming up from the grapples airlock.

  “When then? This ship needs a captain, not a temp.”

  “When I say so.” Trace’s look was skeptical. One nice thing about a promotion, Erik thought, would be that he’d properly outrank her, rather than this vague, technical thing he had over her now. But he didn’t think for a moment that she’d give him any more peace for it.

  Several Charlie Platoon marines emerged from the floor airlock, stomping and whining in heavy powered armour. Amidst the confusion, a lithe brown blur flew down the G-ladder and darted around several stomping suits.

  “Ware!” called the marines. “Furball at twelve o’clock! Hey Furball, careful now, stand back.”

  “Skah, over here,” Trace called, and Skah came. The little boy was kuhsi, tawny-brown furred and golden-eyed with the most impossibly big, wide ears. “Now keep out of the way of the marines, Skah. That armour is very powerful and it could hurt you if you get in their way.”

  “Not Skah, Furbaw!” Skah insisted. He liked the nickname the marines had given him much better. “Nah-ny on shuttuw?”

  “Yes, your Mummy is on the shuttle. She’s flown back up from the planet with lots of fish. Do you like fish?”

  Skah nodded enthusiastically, big ears flopping. “I catch fish with Nah-ny in Kuchik! Fish good!”

  “You caught fish?” Trace asked. Erik watched with mild surprise. Trace’s reputation said nothing of being good with children. “How did you catch fish
?”

  “Wike this, wike… grrr!” and Skah made a stiff-fingered thrust with one hand. Adult kuhsi had lethal claws that would skewer a fish, but like most kuhsi children, Skah’s had been clipped. Erik thought that just as well. “And… and then eat wike… wike grrr, and fish aw good, fish taste good!” Miming tearing into the flapping meal with sharp little teeth, all enthusiasm. Trace grinned and ruffled his ears. Three months ago Skah had been sickly and thin, but now he was a bright-eyed, glossy-haired handful. Busy in her new role as Phoenix shuttle pilot, his mother found no shame at all in using Phoenix marines and crew as her personal babysitting service. Far from minding, the crew had all but made Skah the ship mascot.

  “Skah,” said Erik. “Did you make trouble in the gym?”

  But Skah’s eyes widened at the sight of someone emerging from the airlock. “Nah-ny!” he shouted, and ran for Tif, who grabbed him up in her flight suit and oxygen tubes, helmet under one arm and little boy in the other. And he erupted in a torrent of coughs and growls in their native tongue, at which Tif blinked, and somehow managed to free her ears from the scarf that bound them over the top of her head — necessary for kuhsi in helmets.

  Then she looked up, and saw both of Phoenix’s commanding officers watching. “Skah!” she said accusingly. “You nake troubuw?”

  “Only small trouble,” Trace assured her. “He ran into a storage crate and spilled some equipment in the corridor.” She glanced at Erik. “Grenades. X-4s.” Erik’s eyes widened. “They’re inert until fired, no danger. Just looked a bit interesting, grenades all over the floor. That reminds me… Melsh!”

  “Yes Major!”

  “Get down here and help unload this fish!” And to Tif, “Is it good fish? I think we could all use some good fish about now.”

  “Fish good,” Tif agreed. “Vieno nice. Pretty. Barabo nice too, we no fight barabo?”

  “No Tif,” Erik agreed. “We don’t fight barabo. I like barabo too.”