6
Erik met Trace on the Phoenix dock. On orange alert this portion of dock was filled with fully armoured marines, and transiting dockside traffic was obliged to take an inner-wall route to pass both Phoenix and her accommodation block directly opposite.
Trace stood with her Lieutenants Dale and Alomaim, visors up and discussing deployments. Normally Erik would rather discuss command matters in Phoenix and away from prying eyes and ears, but Trace rarely allowed herself to be separated from an ongoing situation. In command matters, she was old school, and liked to talk to her deputies face-to-face wherever possible, and see what they described with her own eyes.
“I have seven ongoing deployments,” she told Erik without being asked. “We’ve got a group at the sard shootup with Jokono, he’s trying to get details before station security clean it up completely, station security’s not happy. Then there’s the first bomb explosion and droid ambush, a few of Corporal Barry’s people are gathering evidence but again, station security issues.
“I’ve got another group checking with people at Randal Connor’s office on Jokono’s instruction — they’re pretty distraught, but a few are being helpful. And I’ve got two more securing the last of our food resupply, now that it looks like they could use an armed escort.”
“Any idea where Romki is?” Erik asked.
“Hiro’s on it.”
“Because if the sard have him…”
“Hiro’s quite sure they don’t,” Trace said grimly. She didn’t sound any happier for that news.
“If he planted that damn bomb himself just to lose my marines,” Dale growled, “he’s going to wish the sard did grab him.”
Erik blinked at Dale. Then at Trace. “You don’t think…?”
“It’s a possibility we’ve been discussing,” Trace said flatly. “Romki’s too damn smart for his own good. He’s certain we’re wasting our time with peace conferences, he thinks aliens are really the problem and should be our focus. So naturally he’s gone to talk to aliens, minus our oversight.”
Dale didn’t look at either of them, and past the gel-smears on the little red scars on his face, he looked generally more pissed than usual. He’d let Romki get away. Meaning Romki hadn’t been fooled for a second into thinking that his ‘protection’ was only that, and at his first opportunity had given his marine escort the slip. Erik recalled his recent discussion with Trace about Phoenix marines being less-than-brilliant at things that didn’t involve actual combat. And thought further that if Romki were so desperate to wander Tuki Station on his own that he’d risk further attacks without any marines to protect him… hell, it was impressive enough that he’d retained the sense while under fire to grasp his opportunity. Impressive, and deeply suspicious.
“Be useful if we still had some friendly tavalai aboard the ship,” Erik thought aloud. They’d had a group of them, rescued from the research base at Merakis three months ago. But traumatised, homesick and desperate to report events to their respective institutions, those had all disembarked at the first neutral station, and caught the first ride back to tavalai space. “To translate for us at least, independent of Romki.”
“Yes, well we don’t,” Trace said shortly. “Lieutenant Alomaim thought it might be a smart idea to put a shuttle off station to keep an eye on the three sard ships we’ve got docked.”
“The Major doesn’t think those sard were warriors,” Alomaim added. He was the youngest and least experienced of Phoenix Company’s five lieutenants, but Trace rated him as high as any on pure ability. “They were caught off guard and they died too easily. More likely general crew off one of those ships — they’re sard so they can all fight, but the aptitude varies significantly.”
“I’m not sure what a shuttle on surveillance would achieve,” said Erik. “Aside from make them more jumpy. We can’t see anything from outside, and if they break loose we’ll have warning, it takes a while to fire up those engines.” He glanced across the dock, where some marines were waving down a dock transport, shouting loudly for it to find another way. Agitated barabo station workers shouted back, no doubt saying that the only ‘other way’ was to drive all the way around the station rim in the other direction. “It all depends on why the sard killed Randal Connor, and whether the bombing was also them, or someone else completely. It’s not like we’re short on people who might like to kill us.”
“Jokono says the sard definitely tortured Connor for information,” said Trace. “They wanted to know something. He’s not sure they actually intended to kill him, it’ll take a medical examination but station’s claiming jurisdiction.”
“Next of kin?”
Alomaim shook his head. “No, Connor was here alone. Some friendly staff but most of them are barabo, just a few humans. Nothing to overrule station jurisdiction of the body.”
“We could grab the body anyway,” Trace suggested, with clear-eyed calm. With Trace, that could mean blowing holes in people who got in the way. Erik wasn’t prepared to push that hard yet.
“No, Connor’s registered at Tuki Station,” he said reluctantly. “Even on a barabo station that counts for something. Does Jokono have any ideas what the sard wanted?”
“Jokono doesn’t guess,” said Trace. “Says it’s unprofessional. But I don’t work in his profession, so I can guess that someone wanted to find out what Connor talked about with us. Because the odds that he was tortured to death for information just after speaking to us, and it having nothing to do with us, seem pretty astronomical.”
Erik nodded. “That follows. But we discussed the peace conference at Joma Station. Why would sard be the slightest bit interested in human politics?”
“Sard have been known to work for money,” Trace reasoned. “It’s all resources to them. Fleet’s got lots of money. And Spacer Congress.”
Erik’s eyes widened. “Assassinating our Worlder contacts? Using sard?”
Trace made an off-handed gesture, with a whine of armour servos. “Sure, why not? After all else they’ve done?”
It made sense. Fleet considered themselves at war with the more militant Worlder elements. And doubtless they were very interested in knowing what Phoenix was up to with its upcoming peace conference. Sending human agents out this far was impractical — humans were rare out here, and could not operate covertly. Employing common non-human local species was far more practical, and the most ruthlessly efficient of those were the sard.
And yet…
Trace sensed his discomfort. “You’ve got a better idea?”
“No,” Erik admitted. He just didn’t like Trace’s idea. Trace’s command style was to demand that anyone who shot down a good idea replace it with a better one. ‘Don’t give me problems’, he’d heard her say more than once, ‘give me solutions’. Erik didn’t have one here, and so kept his opinion to himself. “I just feel like we’re missing something. I want all off-duty crew moved back to Phoenix for the time being, just in case we have to move. Pity we don’t have some friends among the barabo station security, it would be real useful to have someone else keeping an eye on sard movements on station.”
“The real pity,” said Trace, “is that we don’t have another ten Jokonos. Hiros too. You tell Phoenix Company to take this station by force and we’ll do it easy, but these investigations and cat and mouse games aren’t what we’re designed for.”
“Learn,” Erik suggested. “Next available opportunity, select marines with the best aptitude and pick Jokono’s and Hiro’s brains.” He headed back to the main airlock ramp. “Never too late to start learning new skills, Major. Good job here, keep me informed.”
* * *
Stan Romki sat in the tavalai bathing pool, warm water up to his chest as mist sprayed from hidden nozzles amid surrounding green plants. A tavalai waiter extended a long mechanical arm to place new food on the central table, and Romki smiled thanks. “Milidana gudiji-nah,” he said, and the waiter bowed her wide, smooth head, and moved on to the next pool.
Opposite h
im, his guest tried the vegetable dish in one of the small bowls. “It is passable,” he said, also in Togiri. Romki understood it well, though today that was harder, with his ears still ringing from the explosion. Thankfully he was uninjured, Gunnery Sergeant Forrest having taken most of the flying glass on his armour. “So difficult to get good lily-fry in the Neutral Territories.”
Romki tried it, and found it crunchy, mixed with salted fish and something much like vinegar. An acquired taste, very sour and thin, like most tavalai food. “You tavalai have been in space for forty thousand years,” he said, “so long you barely remember which of your many worlds is your homeworld. But still you manage to get homesick for it, whichever it is.”
The tavalai made an odd gesture, a tavalai shrug. He wore the light mesh shirt that tavalai wore in water settings, now slick and sticking to his mottled brown-green skin. Romki wore one similar — provided by the restaurant. “We are creatures of habit,” the tavalai said about another mouthful. “I hear you have a new human ship approaching station. Human ships are rare at Tuki Station, but this has a human-space ID, very unlike what we would expect to find in any alien space. More human politics?”
Nearby, some tavalai children splashed and yelled. Insects and butterflies flittered from broad leaves to water lilies. A thin mesh enclosure overhead held in the insects, and while it was too porous to increase the air pressure to tavalai preferences, it did capture the humidity. Beyond it rose the sheer steel wall of a geo-feature, soaring up to the station rim ceiling high above. Tavalai liked their familiar pleasures, and this recreational establishment took advantage of one of the best exposed views on Tuki Station. Losers in the Triumvirate War or not, tavalai still had money — often far more than barabo. Tavalai money had built many barabo space stations, including this one.
“More human politics,” Romki agreed. “I’m disinterested.”
“One notices,” said the tavalai with amusement. “What does interest you?”
“You know exactly what interests me. Tell our mutual friends that if they are also interested, they should head for Joma Station in Kazak System.”
“The human peace talks? Our mutual friend will be just as disinterested.”
“More happens there than peace talks. Whether the young fools who command Phoenix are aware of it or not.”
“Fools, you call them?” His guest sipped a tall, charcoal-coloured glass with a straw. “Are they really?”
Romki sighed. “No, not really. But they are soldiers, and their vision is narrow. In narrow military matters, I’m sure that I’m the fool, and they’re all geniuses. Humanity has spent all its one thousand plus years in space running from one war to another, avenging one catastrophe after another. The ‘human cause’, we call it. It is a filter, it blinds our view of everything. The filter must be removed before one can see clearly.”
The tavalai chewed thoughtfully. “Our mutual friend could probably assist in that. Your ship’s political situation with human High Command is fascinating. An opportunity.”
“Joma Station,” Romki said firmly. “Immediately, or you’ll miss it. Phoenix is a fast ship.”
“Oh I’m aware of that, believe me. Alo-powered. The real new power in the Spiral, whatever your human High Command thinks about it.”
“And I am most aware of that,” Romki assured him.
“Our mutual friend may still require another reason to be interested in Joma Station,” the tavalai pressed.
Romki nodded. “I have one more very good reason.”
After the meal, Romki stepped from the water and onto the dry-pad, where sonic vibration rid him of much of the wet. He put the mesh shirt into the bin provided, and was rubbing off the rest with a towel when he heard loud voices, shouts in Togiri and Palapu, and the crash of something being overturned. He peered through the green fronds that divided the many dining pools, and saw commotion near the entrance, hands waving, people running. Then he heard the shrill cicada-shriek, rising from one, then multiple sources, and glimpsed a stalking black figure, dodging past attempts to block its path.
Romki swore with real fear and struggled quickly into his clothes. He was unarmed of course — Phoenix marines were hardly going to trust him with firearms, and the restaurant would not have held a gun for him anyway. He pulled shoes on quickly, without time for socks, and as he turned to go was abruptly grabbed from behind and spun down against the base of a garden feature. He tried to fight the grip, but one attempt showed him the futility
“Don’t move,” said Hiro Uno in his ear. “Keep very still.”
Peering through greenery, his face pressed to sweet-smelling moss on false rocks, Romki glimpsed shiny black legs, like stilts. The sard moved silently, three-clawed feet upon the floor. Sard never wore shoes, he recalled… or not outside of combat armour or pressure suits. He gazed up, heart thudding in his ears, and saw that multi-eyed face, black beads arranged about grasping mandibles, looking this way and that. There were no restaurant staff yelling at this one, or trying to herd it. The other noise was a diversion at the entrance, he realised. This sard, and perhaps others, had snuck in some other way, while attention was elsewhere. Sard hunted in groups, and coordinated with effortless synergy. Individually they weren’t especially effective at anything, but together they were brilliant.
It stalked silently onward. “There’s five,” Hiro whispered in Romki’s ear. “Seven at the door for a distraction, five penetrating within. Five is a hunting party, seven is a command group.” Because sard loved prime numbers, and assigned different primes to different tasks. Hiro seemed familiar.
“Are you armed?” Romki murmured.
“Is a black hole black?”
“Are they armed? Who are they after?”
“Yes, and you.” Hiro waited a moment longer. “Very quietly, stay low and follow me precisely. Let’s go.”
He released Romki and moved off, low and crouched between the green partitions. Romki followed, trying to imitate Hiro’s effortless glide. They emerged onto a new pool, wider with several low tables and half-consumed food, filled with children and some adults who peered anxiously in the direction of commotion and shouts beyond the greenery. Several looked at Hiro in alarm as he passed, and Hiro made a motion of forefinger to lips, shushing them. The tavalai only looked confused.
“They don’t understand what that means!” Romki whispered harshly, then gave them a more familiar, calming gesture with both hands as he passed. Beyond the pool, Hiro immediately crouched, pressed low and motionless against a tree fern trunk. Romki copied, and ahead a tavalai staffer shouted angrily and waved his arms at something out-of-sight… and leaped back in fear at a torrent of rattling clicks, and the swipe of a long black arm. A knife flashed in that clawed hand, and the staffer yelled for help and retreated. The sard looked about, Romki ducking down just in time.
A moment passed, then Hiro was beckoning him on, and Romki went to find the sard departed. Another pool, this one empty, and some stairs beyond, leading down into the floor. A sard stood astride the stairs, peering down into the room below. Rather than scampering for cover before it turned, Hiro kept moving forward, drawing a silenced pistol from his jacket. He shot the sard point blank in the back of the head, caught the body as it fell, and lowered it soundlessly. Beckoned for Romki to follow him, and moved quickly down the stairs, leaving Romki to pick his way over the splayed limbs, one still twitching.
The callousness horrified him. Sard or not, this was a living, sentient, highly intelligent being. And Hiro had dispatched it like swatting a fly. Romki followed Hiro down the stairs and into a spotless kitchen with gleaming steel benches, and several tavalai and barabo chefs huddled warily in a corner, some brandishing knives.
“Come on,” said Hiro, moving rapidly down the next corridor.
“Stay here,” Romki told the chefs in Togiri, and followed. “Hiro. Hiro!” As Hiro paused in the corridor to glance back, thinking Romki had discovered something important. “No murder! Not for me, I won’
t allow it!”
Hiro frowned incredulously. “Murder? That was a sard.”
“Yes, murder! Just because we’ve been at war with them does not give you the right to go around killing them at your pleasure! They’re intelligent beings and humans should have standards!”
Hiro gave a humourless smile. “You think you know them because you’ve studied them? You’re an ignorant fool and you understand nothing. If you really understood how they think, like you’re always proclaiming you do, you’d favour genocide, like I do. There’s an access hatch ahead, now move.”
7
“Hey there guys!” Lisbeth said brightly, holding a food tray she’d brought from the hotel restaurant. Here on the second floor there wasn’t as much traffic in the accommodation block, nor were there the crates and armour lining the walls. But here beside the elevators were Privates Dagan and Katta from Echo Platoon, in light armour, guarding a door. “I brought you some food, I figured you must be hungry by now.”
“You can’t come in,” Dagan said apologetically. “Sorry Lis.” They didn’t really know her — there were about two hundred marines in Phoenix Company, and Lisbeth hadn’t been on the ship long enough to get to know more than a handful. But gratifyingly, word had spread amongst the marines that Lisbeth Debogande was a good sort, and most treated her like a familiar friend.
“Oh come on, it’s been a whole day!” Lisbeth protested. “Look, at least let me update him on…”
“His information updates are being restricted too,” said Katta. “LC’s orders.”
Lisbeth sighed. “Have you heard anything? Has he asked to speak to anyone?”
“Couldn’t tell you if he had.”
The door opened, and Jokono emerged, immaculate as ever with neat hair and lean, brown features. Seeing him in a Phoenix spacer jumpsuit took some getting used to… though probably not as much as it did for him, looking at her. That had been a recent change — typically he preferred civilian suits.
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 8
