Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2)

by Joel Shepherd

  Now he walked tiredly along the steel gantries of Assembly, with its endless racks of armour suits and weapons that climbed maze-like toward the outer hull. Automated stacking arms whined and crashed as marines shifted suits that no longer moved under their own power, and the repair bay howled and sprayed orange sparks as bare-armed marines did panel-beating jobs on battered armour. Some of the damage was scary, armourplate torn like paper. Some armour still had blood on it. Marines who had just recently been fighting, then pushing huge Gs through twin combat jumps, now blinked back exhaustion and got their gear back into fighting shape as best they could.

  Erik found Trace on a lower gantry by the ammo transport rails, big crates of Koshaim ammunition humming from level to level, and now being unloaded and snapped into empty magazines by hand. Trace wore an open jacket, sweaty like the rest in Assembly’s hot air, and shouted with several marines about their progress. Erik recognised one of them in particular — Lance Corporal Penn of Charlie Platoon, Second Squad, who had been personally escorting Lisbeth when things went bad.

  “LC,” said the Corporal with a nod. He looked grim — just a young guy, pale with dark hair and square features, in civilian life the kind of guy you wouldn’t look twice at if you passed him on the street. But Penn was a five-year vet, retired for one year but volunteering through mutual friends of Sergeant Hoon on Homeworld after seeing what Fleet did to Captain Pantillo. And now he’d saved Lisbeth’s life.

  “I just talked to Private Herman in Medbay,” Erik told him. “Docs say they can synth a new leg, he’ll be walking in maybe three weeks. Could even get back to service four weeks after that if he wants.”

  “He’ll want,” said Penn with conviction. “He’s a good marine.”

  “And I’m sorry about Bernardino.”

  Penn exhaled hard. “Yeah. He was a good marine too.” He managed a tight smile. “It’s a bit of a change from selling furniture.”

  “That’s what you were doing on Homeworld?”

  “Yes sir. It was a jobs program that places former vets, the owner was a vet himself. It was just temporary, I hadn’t decided what I really wanted to do… maybe go back to school. But then Phoenix happened, and…” He shrugged, and indicated around. “I guess I missed it more than I realised.”

  “You still think that?”

  Penn’s look was intense. “Hell yes sir. Best call I ever made.” Erik was surprised. “If we’re going after the hacksaws. And the bugs. We are going after them, aren’t we sir?”

  “That’s the intention Corporal. If we can find out where the hell they are, and what the hell they’re doing working with the sard. Our tavalai friends might have some ideas.”

  “I got no problem working with tavalai sir,” said Penn, surprising him again. “I mean they’re arrogant pricks and they had it coming in the war, but they’re still just normal folks. We can talk to tavalai. Can’t talk to those fucking bugs sir, and sure as hell can’t talk to hacksaws. They’re the real threat. People back home think the war’s over — I always told them they were kidding themselves.”

  Erik nodded in agreement. “And the tavalai don’t like them any more than we do. Or not the hacksaws anyway, and they may be coming around on the sard.” Ahead, Trace finished her conversation with another two marines. “Excuse me Corporal, I have to talk to the Major.”

  “Yes sir.” He departed, and Erik congratulated himself at his restraint at not thanking the Corporal for saving his sister. He knew what the reply would be — ‘just doing my job sir’, and knew that some marines actually took that kind of personal thanks as offensive. Marines didn’t fight for personal favours. Lisbeth was Phoenix crew, for now at least, and it was the job of marines to fight like hell to protect Phoenix crew. That she happened to be Erik’s sister, and heiress to one of the most powerful human families, was irrelevant, and to suggest otherwise was to suggest that marines were unprofessional.

  “What do you think?” Erik asked Trace, nodding after Corporal Penn.

  Trace glanced. “Good,” she said, which was enough. She didn’t look happy though. Not only exhausted and sweaty, but wound up tight and hard. “I’m sorry. We fucked up. Unacceptable spacer casualties and I’ve told them so. Ships function without marines but not without spacers. We let Phoenix down.”

  There were six dead marines and another fourteen wounded, against seventeen dead spacers and three wounded. Most of Erik’s just-completed rounds had been not in Medbay, but around the ship’s crew, talking to Ensigns and Warrant Officers about crew rotations to fill in the losses, and providing what comfort he could to grieving friends. Most of the deaths had been when hacksaws had breached the defensive perimeter on the evacuation of the accommodation block, firing chain guns onto spacers running on the open dock. Thus so many dead, and so few wounded, and it could easily have been far worse.

  Erik hung off the steel overhead and considered her. He wanted to disagree with her assessment, but that was the emotional thing to do — to comfort, to be nice. Trace hated that, in him especially. If she thought it was the case then it was probably so, and he’d be wise to listen. Procedure said they should get together and do a full review of what just happened, but that procedure was for the Triumvirate War, with its large-scale actions and organised pauses. Out here and alone, there was just no time to do everything by the book, and now was as good a time for a review as any.

  “So what happened?” he asked her.

  “Well firstly,” said Trace, “the accommodation block was too far from our berth. That’s my fault as well, they put us down the end of the dock and the block was near enough for the usual procedure — I thought having an empty dock full of construction activity and no permanent residents could actually work in our favour by increasing our defensive possibilities. Civvies always get in the way. But none of us appreciated the danger we were in, we’ve been blind the whole way up ’til now, so that’s mistake one.

  “Mistake two was Lieutenant Crozier took a defensive stance once the hacksaw threat was identified. She was thinking ‘withdrawal’, and so did not want to forward deploy too many marines too far from Phoenix, because they take time to recover when it’s time to leave. As a result, our crew furthest from the berth were nearly overrun, including your sister, because we had insufficient firepower on site to help them. When I arrived back from PH-4 I took command and sent out everyone we had, and we regained control of the docks from our berth up to the far section seal with overwhelming firepower. It cost us extra time getting out, but security for personnel on dock is always paramount, and we don’t leave crew undefended because it’s inconvenient — that’s no better than just shooting them ourselves.

  “Mistake three was the sloppy evac of the accommodation block, including one spacer hurt by a stray round and left behind — that’s Spacer Reddin, the guy your sister saved.”

  “And Furball,” said Erik. “Don’t forget the Furball. Reddin will make it, I was just talking to his team, they’re midships operations.”

  “And left the Furball unattended in crew quarters,” Trace continued angrily. “I’ve still no idea how that happened, but I’ll get answers, and someone will be apologising to Tif in person.”

  “We’ve talked about this,” Erik said pointedly. He didn’t like to rub it in, but he had to take the opportunity, and Trace wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t.

  “We have,” she acknowledged. “It was sloppy, and now it’s not just you that’s pissed about it.” It was an apology, Erik realised, for not pushing it harder before. Phoenix marines had to drop their attitude that if it wasn’t directly combat-related, it didn’t matter. In their present circumstance, anything could become combat related, at any time. And in that, the whole crew needed to adjust.

  “And the fourth mistake was Lieutenant Dale,” Trace continued mercilessly. “Who just completely screwed the pooch by allowing the former Supreme Commander of all human forces, and the greatest intelligence source we’ve had access to since this whole mess began, g
et assassinated right under his nose by a girl he got tricked into thinking was friendly. And she had a beard, so he can’t even claim he was thinking with his dick.”

  Erik nearly smiled. “What’s the thinking on why?”

  “Oh, Fleet probably.” Trace shrugged. “All those spies out to get him. Spies like Hiro, too damn smart for grunts like Dale, obviously.”

  “That’s a bit rough.”

  “He’s my lieutenant and I’ll be the judge of that. All these barabo stations bending over backwards to please Fleet, my guess is Fleet told Vola Station they wanted Chankow dead, and Vola obliged. We were stupid to get ourselves into that, Erik. Damn stupid.”

  Erik exhaled hard and stared at the nearby armament circle — two sections of marines feeding ammo into magazines, drudge work that was more easily done by hand than machine.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “And it got Edmund Chandi killed, most of the crew were dead when we got off. Another five came with us, a few of those have volunteered to help but I think most want to jump ship first opportunity. If ever the Worlders were going to listen to us, they probably won’t now.”

  “Oh they were just stringing us along,” Trace muttered. “Worlder politics is so big, and we’re so far away. They were interested in the Captain, not in us. We were an embarrassment to Fleet, but no more. Our chances of influencing the Worlder-Spacer conflict died with the Captain.” She gazed at Erik, a brow slightly furrowed, as though trying to figure something out. “How did we fall for that?”

  “Yeah,” Erik echoed. “We who don’t hope, and don’t kid ourselves wishing for impossible things.” Looking at her edgily.

  “Maybe Colonel Khola was right,” said Trace. “Maybe I have completely lost my bearings.” She took a deep breath. “It’s not the kind of mistake I usually make.”

  Erik frowned. “So why do you think you made it?”

  “Because I thought I knew everything when I first arrived on Phoenix,” Trace admitted. “I was only a green louie, but I was a crusty old Kulina since I was a kid.”

  “Still are,” Erik ventured.

  Trace smiled faintly. “And then the Captain said that things weren’t exactly as I’d imagined them. That all human institutions are flawed, even Fleet, and even the Kulina. That you have to separate loyalty to the institution from loyalty to the cause the institution serves. The Captain’s cause was humanity. That’s my cause as well. But serving that, and serving Fleet, aren’t always the same thing, and so many times he would second-guess Fleet doctrine and logic, and achieve superior results. It made Fleet question his loyalty, but he did more for the human cause than any of those robot yes-men Fleet were always promoting could ever dream.

  “For a long time I denied that final lesson, though. We’d have these arguments where he’d make his point, and I’d say, ‘Well yes, but…’ And then I’d just regurgitate everything the Kulina taught me to believe. I never really accepted the Captain’s final teachings until Fleet murdered him. And then I realised he was right.”

  She met Erik’s gaze. “Since then I’ve been serving his legacy. Kulina believe in mentors, you know. It’s old tradition, the student learning at the feet of his siksaka — his teacher. I felt I had to carry on his cause, and his teaching. He was all about keeping humanity together, stopping any civil war from happening. I became obsessed with that, I think. Keeping his cause alive.”

  “But the Captain didn’t see the whole picture,” said Erik. “I think we’ve come further down this road than he ever could. And now we’re going further still. I think if he could have seen what we’re seeing, he would have agreed with us that the main threat to humanity lies elsewhere.”

  “No,” Trace disagreed, but mildly. “No, I think he was focused on human politics because those were the tools he had. He could actually do something about it. He had the following, and the contacts and support. We don’t. But we have other things. He may have set us on this road, but at some point we have to stop asking ourselves what the Captain would do, and start choosing our own direction.”

  * * *

  “We had an experience on Tuki Station just before we left,” Erik spoke to the monitor in his quarters. On the screen, the wide face and mottled skin of Makimakala’s Captain Pram. “A human freighter named Grappler docked with station on autos, it had not been speaking to anyone on the way in. We thought it was just maintaining secrecy. Once it docked, we found it was empty and all the crew missing, with many bloodstains indicating many if not most had been killed. All indications are that the sard intercepted Grappler at a midpoint jump, took the crew and wiped the navigation logs to allow the ship to continue on automatic. We think the same may have happened on Joma Station, only sard not only removed the crew, but replaced them with hacksaw drones. Which means the sard and the hacksaws are somehow working together.”

  Captain Pram looked grim. “Then you have discovered our sard problem.”

  “You have a sard problem? That tavalai will admit to?”

  “Tavalai Fleet Command, no. They will not admit to anything that might damage the sard alliance. But Dobruta, yes. This is the true nature of Makimakala’s mission, Lieutenant Commander. We used to police sard space, because if ever there was a species likely to recover old hacksaw technology and use it, instead of destroying it, it is the sard. But then came the war, and then the manpower shortage, and for the last hundred or so of your years, the Dobruta have been forbidden by the highest tavalai command from policing sard space.”

  Erik took a deep breath. He thought it was pretty clear where this was going. “You didn’t come to see us at Joma Station because you heard we had hacksaw technology aboard. You heard that the sard were after us. With ships that are suspiciously advanced.”

  “Well both reasons, actually. In combination that we could not ignore. You see, we think the sard have found an old hacksaw base. A ship building base. Sard territory is very large, and even before the sard came into space, thousands of years ago, we had explored only some of it. We catalogued many old hacksaw artefacts, but in all that vastness, there was bound to be much we did not see. And the sard were always bound to find some of it. Thus our previous inspection regime, recently halted. And now, unsurprisingly, the worst Dobruta nightmare appears to be coming true. Sard, with hacksaw technology. In ships, at least.”

  “More than ships,” said Erik. “It suggests an alliance, between hacksaws and sard.”

  “Well well,” Captain Pram cautioned, holding up one webbed hand before the screen. “Perhaps. We took a crippled drone from the docks at Joma Station. It was not fully functional. Reprogrammed, we think.”

  “Reprogrammed? I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “With human or tavalai technology, it’s not. Sard computing is particularly advanced, but has little in common with this genus of artificial intelligence. So there is only evidence that the sard have found some old base, certainly with shipbuilding technology, and perhaps with some very old worker and warrior drones in storage, all deactivated. They may have reprogrammed them for this purpose.”

  “And which purpose is that? It’s clear the sard are after Phoenix in particular, but we do not know why.”

  Pram made a thoughtful, snaking motion of his head. A peculiarly tavalai gesture, Erik thought. He’d never seen it before. Pram tapped a finger on his jaw, as though coming to a decision. “Our information is that you have hacksaw queen aboard your ship. We would like to see it.”

  * * *

  Commander Nalben, Makimakala’s second-in-command, crouched before the nano-tank holding the queen’s head, and stared. About him stood Erik, Trace, Romki and as much of the senior Engineering crew that could fit into the little bay. Further back, several lightly armoured karasai, carefully watched by similarly armoured marines… but no one was especially concerned of treachery here.

  Nalben considered the queen’s head from many angles, eyes wide with an expression that might have been as much dread as fascination. About him, there was no sou
nd from the crowd gathered. Occasionally he’d murmur something into a mike, that Phoenix’s com function, activated upon Erik’s irises in a moment of curiosity, showed him was being transmitted back to Makimakala with Phoenix’s permission. The small camera on the Commander’s eyepieces was doubtless sending visual data back as well, for Dobruta experts there to see.

  After a long period of examination, Nalben got to his feet. “This one is a command unit,” he told them all. “You call her a queen. It could be accurate enough… I have studied English well, but the precise background of that word escapes me.”

  “A monarch,” Romki could not resist saying. “An old system of human governance, pre-technological.” And broke into rapid Togiri, while various Phoenix crew glanced at each other, and rolled their eyes. All save Lisbeth, Erik noted. She stood by Trace’s shoulder, watching Romki with intense interest. Almost as though she could follow the conversation. She’d never told him she’d learned any Togiri at university, though it was not surprising.

  “Yes,” Commander Nalben conceded, after Romki had finished. “Yes, a ‘queen’ is as good a term as any. Though this queen may have had others ranked above her in her time. She would have been more like you or I, Lieutenant Commander. Important in our local sphere, yet answering to higher powers in the greater sphere.”

  “Is she deepynine?” Romki pressed.

  “No,” Nalben said with certainty. And shook his head, with almost comical exaggeration, to make sure the humans understood. It was not a tavalai gesture. “No, she is not deepynine. She is drysine.”

  Gasps from several of the techs. Romki looked stunned. “Drysine?” Erik asked. “The ones who wiped out the deepynines with the help of the parren?”

  “Yes,” said Nalben. “There are modalities and technicalities that escape me, that escape all experts today. And in the millennia since the drysines’ fall, the few survivors have modified themselves many times. This queen appears to have many non-standard features. The body she had on the Major’s combat recording of that encounter is certainly non-standard. But the queens in particular are modular, they have many bodies — or they had many, in their prime. They would swap bodies at need, to assume different functions.” He indicated the nano-tank. “But the head remained relatively the same.” He looked slightly dazed, as though struggling to process what it meant. “Argitori, you say?”