by Tanya Huff
And they didn’t belong here.
Not when here had never been touched by war.
But they could. They could shop or learn or look at trees.
Would the Trun give them the chance, now the war was over?
Fukking Colonel Hurrs . . .
“Major Sujuno?” Verr stuck her head into the tomb, air filter glistening over her mouth and nostril ridges. “Pirate says he’s through any minute now.”
“He’s sure this time?”
Verr shrugged, Krai muscles and joints warping the motion just enough to be annoying. “He says he is, but I don’t know—maybe he just wants out of the air lock.”
That was likely, Sujuno admitted, following Verr out into the catacombs’ broad, central corridor. Most di’Taykan, di’Berinango Nadayki among them, didn’t do well without physical contact. Unfortunately for him, it had been more important to keep the omnipresent dust out of the control panel than to cater to his needs. Personally, she’d have been thrilled to have been behind plastic for a few days, locked away from expectations.
A raised hand held Verr in place for the moment it took for her vision to adjust to the lower light levels. Because the Krai, with their long, spreading toes, hadn’t quite caught on to the half glide, half stride that allowed the air to flow from the front of the boot to the back, creating eddies of fine particulate and throwing a minimal amount of dust up into the air, they walked a half a dozen paces behind both Humans and di’Taykan. As she led the way down the corridor, Sujuno wondered why Sergeant Toporov had sent Verr with the message. It had been a truism in the Corps that an officer was only as good as their NCO and with Toporov, she was operating at a disadvantage. He was solid and dependable, but there were days when she’d give her right arm—or possibly his—for solid, dependable, and clever.
The faint hum of the compressors sounded louder than usual in the absolute silence waiting at the corridor’s end. The security system the H’san had left behind reacted to noise above 45 decibels and a di’Taykan spice mix carried to make field rations palatable, and the zones it covered appeared entirely random. She doubted they were, but hadn’t the time to waste on deriving an alien pattern from limited data. Quiet and bland had become the order of the day.
Toporov nodded as she arrived and stepped aside.
She moved up close to the wall they needed to breach, turned, and peered through into the air lock. Nadayki’s lime-green hair lay flat against his head and he had so many light receptors open his eyes were nearly black, lid to lid. Smears on the clear plastic sheeting suggested he’d been rubbing against the barrier. Hopefully, only his hands and face. “Well?”
He leaned toward her, licked his lips, and that might have been because they were chapped although the odds were higher he was flaunting his lack of personal filter. “I’m sure this time.”
“Good. Put on the glasses. I don’t want to lose you again if the H’san set up another flash bang.” Cracking the control panel had taken longer than any of them had anticipated although she assumed sharing the air lock with a bucket of his own waste had kept Nadayki’s wandering attention on the job. Although, given the nine letters in his family name, he’d likely spent a good part of his life in filth. Being alone and untouched for those same days had probably provided a greater incentive.
“It won’t happen this time, I know what I did wrong.” Slender fingers sketched abstract lines in the air. “I know why the flash bang went off.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” She’d allow him a little leeway in response to the cramped quarters he’d been living in for the last few days, but only a little. The three days she’d lost to temporary blindness at the second panel were not to be repeated.
He licked his lips again and put the glasses on, ears twitching through his hair as he settled the arms.
“Start a ten count,” she told him. “Then open it up.”
Toporov fell into step beside her as they walked back to the nearest tomb. “Pirate’s looking a little twitchy, sir.”
“. . . nine, eight . . .”
“He has a name, Sergeant.”
“Nadayki’s looking a little twitchy, sir.”
“. . . seven, six . . .”
“Then let’s hope this works.” She glanced into the tomb, the spaces around the huge sarcophagus filled with the remaining eight of her ten-person crew.
Keo and Broadbent stood ready to rush the door when it opened, the stone they’d use to block it already in place by the air lock. A nod of her head moved them both a step to the left, and she slipped past without contact, the sergeant a solid barrier at her heels. She’d know soon enough if Nadayki was successful; she didn’t need to put herself at risk watching it happen.
“. . . two, one.”
The silence extended. Then . . .
“It’s opening.”
The two ex-Marines raced for the door. Toporov moved just far enough forward to be able to lean out into the corridor and report, his left arm still wrapped, skin red and inflamed, from the unexpected blowback during the last attempt. The scorch marks on the stone walls continued down the corridor for another three tombs.
“Block’s in, Major.”
Broadbent was big and strong, and almost stereotypically stupid. Fortunately, his years in the Corps had taught him to follow orders.
“Keo’s moving forward; she’s over the threshold.”
Keo was fearless. Which also made her stupid as far as Sujuno was concerned, but she could work with that. The heavy gunner carried the best black market exoskeleton money could buy along with a KC-12 and an obscene amount of ammunition. Her willingness to leap before she looked had saved their lives once already—where the definition of leap included firing impact boomers into irreplaceable H’san antiquities, destroying the weapons built into the wall behind them.
Toporov walked toward the door so he could pass on Keo’s report to Broadbent without the volume of their voices setting off the security system.
“Spiral stairs, made of stone, descending only.” His voice was a low, bass rumble. “The lights have come up in the stairwell . . .”
Most of the necropolis had automatic lighting, glass ovals set into the walls that they could only assume continued to work as designed, the power source as unknown as the reason for matching the days and nights on the planet above. The ancient H’san, Sujuno had concluded pretty much immediately after landing, were more than a little strange.
“. . . and Keo’s descending. Five steps. Ten. Fifteen. Halt!” Toporov’s last word had been a command, not a repetition. “Major, we have to extend.”
She sent Verr out into the corridor, allowing Toporov to move closer to the stairs, then she stepped into the corridor herself. Verr five feet away, Toporov five feet from him, Broadbent through the door and down the stairs, the top of his very blond head just visible at floor level. In the end, she had to add Wen, Nadayki, and Dion to the line—although Dion bitched and complained about how he was an expert and this was beneath him the whole time. He’d become skilled at keeping his voice just under the level that set off the sensors. If she’d given some serious thought to shooting him when he was no longer needed, it was his own fault.
The team descended the stairs as a unit until she stood alone in the catacombs.
The stairs went down sixty feet and ended in an enormous cave.
“A natural cave?”
“No idea, Major. I’ve never been in a cave before, natural or otherwise. But it’s got plenty of ambient lighting. Pink stone, like the first hall. It’s pretty.”
“Less opinion, Keo.”
In the center of the cave was a small lake, surrounded by stone benches and short pillars . . .
“Plinths,” Dion sniffed.
“Seriously? That’s a word?”
“Focus, people!”
Toporov’s bark froz
e Sujuno in place. The energy beams fired by the noise sensors hadn’t been fatal yet, but they hurt. If Toporov was going to be hit, best only he was hit.
“Smooth move, jarhead,” Nadayki muttered.
“Silence,” Sujuno hissed, the sibilants sliding past the sensors even at volume. At a sixty count, it became clear the stairs weren’t a zone the sensors covered, but she counted twenty more before she gave the order to continue exploring.
“Okay, the things on the plinths, they’re not statues. I think they’re bodies.” The sense of Keo’s lip curl made it undiluted through all seven repetitions. “All different kinds of bodies. They’re kind of, I don’t know, preserved. And they’re really fukking creepy. No visible weapons. No apparent security. Cavern is visually clear, floor is physically clear to six meters out from base of stairs where water begins. It’s safe to send Dion down.”
Dion, with little interest in the chain of command, started moving before Sujuno could give the order. “This is the bowl in the earth,” he said, his statement passed up to her through Verr and Wen and Nadayki. “The text reads that the bowl has been upturned over secrets. We should be close.”
Should be? Their intell was imprecise at best, poetry at worst, and the necropolis was significantly larger than expected. “Close is relative down here,” she said. And should meant nothing at all.
“The station sysop will be watching our signals.” Hands resting on the worn duct tape that held a split seam on the top of the pilot’s chair together, Torin watched Ressk slave his slate to Promise’s computer. “Shouldn’t you wait until we’ve detached?”
“No time to waste,” Ressk grunted, curled into a half circle on the second chair, fingers and toes flying over the control board. “Sliding into the traffic buoy’s more complicated than going to the JRM for a beer.”
“Yeah, but we can’t leave until the supplies are loaded,” Werst reminded him, popping open the panel that hid the coffeemaker—one of the few remaining pieces of the original ship. “Supplies,” he added, voice muffled by the sound of the reservoir filling, “that you bought.”
“Point of interest . . .” Craig nodded toward a red light flashing on the upper left corner of the board. “. . . that’s the docking master. The Trun want us gone, but we can’t blow until we can file coordinates with the traffic buoy and we can’t file coordinates until we . . . What’s that?” He spread his hands. “Have coordinates to file. We don’t even know if we’re heading in or out. Ressk’s right, he’s got no time to toss. We need to know where the Seelinkjer Cer Pen went.”
“Okay, first, let’s shorten that to Seeli. And second, why? We can always refile and change course.” Alamber leaned over the top of the second chair, eyes dark, head moving up and down as he scanned the streaming code, slate cradled in one hand.
Craig stroked yellow onto the board near the light, indicating a delay. “Given the density in the core, if we file one plan then switch, we’ll ping an inquiry. Usually not a problem, free Confederation and all, but we’re flying with a fake registration.”
“And under orders to remain unnoticed,” Binti put in.
“I don’t take orders from the military.” Craig slapped his fingers against the board with more force than necessary.
Alamber’s gesture might’ve been dismissal, might’ve been agreement. “Yeah, and those would be the same orders that sent us to Abalae. Fail on the low profile.” He rested enough weight on the chair that it creaked and bent forward. “You’re doing support with your feet, right?” He poked Ressk in the shoulder. “Nothing original? Because if you are, that puts an ability to walk and fuk at the same time into a kind of pathetic perspective.”
“Alamber.”
He straightened, fully aware of what Torin had intended his name to represent. “Yeah, well, I suppose I’ll just wait here until I’m needed.”
“You do that. Werst . . .”
“It’s brewing, Gunny.”
It was taking too damned long. She pointed at the board. “The red light’s flashing faster.”
“Because the docking master’s knickers are in a knot.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
Craig turned enough to grin up at her. “Yeah, you do.”
“I’m in,” Ressk announced before she could respond.
“How are you hiding the signal from the station?”
“They’re reading it as a traffic inquiry.” Right foot tapping a complex pattern across the bottom of the board, Ressk rubbed his hands together. “Because I’m just that good. Although, it helps that’s what they’re expecting to read. Give people what they expect and they get kind of stupid.”
“So it’s safe?” Torin nodded her thanks as Werst handed her a pouch of coffee, feeling muscles across her back relax as she breathed in the fragrant steam. Next time they went dirtside she was throwing half a dozen pouches into her duffel.
“No, not entirely safe. Not if someone actually takes a look at the code, then it’s pretty fukking obvious what we’re trying to do.”
“Someone like the facilitators?” Binti wondered, accepting a pouch.
“No, we’re off the planet.” Torin took a long swallow. “That’s all the facilitators care about.”
“Attention, Commitment . . .”
It took them all a moment to remember that was them.
“. . . this is Drone Control. Drone 77A is approaching Commitment’s cargo lock with container 12-8. Stand by to open lock.”
“Werst. Mashona. Delay them as long as you can.”
“On it, Gunny.” Binti drained her pouch and tossed it into the recycler on her way out the hatch.
“Why isn’t your throat entirely covered in fukking scar tissue?” Werst muttered, clutching his pouch of sah as he followed her out of the room.
The small cargo bay was, like the control room and the Susumi engine, part of the original Promise. Craig had used it more for salvage too delicate for the exterior pens than for supplies. Torin felt the deck shudder as the outer lock opened “It won’t take them long to unload one container.”
“It’s a big container, Gunny, and they’re not shoving it into an empty bay. It’ll be a tight fit, and Werst may have to suit up and clear out the old crap.”
“How much new crap did you buy?”
Ressk shrugged. “As much as would require a container as close to the dimensions of the bay as I could find. Don’t worry, Intell paid.” He leaned back, eyes locked on the board, nostril ridges half opening, half closing, not quite fast enough for Torin to call it a flutter. “It’s a good thing the traffic buoys are old tech.” The answering silence evoked a snort. “You must’ve noticed that the tech dirtside was way above the shit we see every day.”
Torin nodded, remembering the hard light. “The slates . . .”
“Everything,” Ressk interrupted. “And it’s all worn in enough that it’s clearly not new tech to the people of Commerce Three, Sector Eighteen, even if they’re on the lower branches of the local economic tree.”
“So we’ve been getting Granddad’s hand-me-downs from the Elder Races,” Torin said softly. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Maybe they wanted the Younger Races to advance on their own, to move forward independently instead of sitting around with their hands out in one of the displays of entitlement that Humans, at least, were prone to. Or, maybe, they didn’t trust the Younger Races with anything too sharp.
“Well, they’re not handing over the recent shit, that’s for sure. But the buoys, these things have been around for a while. Alamber’s program combined with my genius . . .”
Alamber flicked the top of his head.
“Ow. Fukker. Anyway, we should own this old sh . . .” The entire board flashed orange. “We have the buoy. And security’s spotted me! Go!”
The di’Taykan were graceful. It was part of the Taykan default—tall,
brightly colored, enthusiastically sexually indiscriminate, graceful. That said, it had never occurred to Torin to think a di’Taykan could hack a traffic buoy gracefully, but where Ressk looked efficient and in command of the board, Alamber’s fingers danced over the screen of his slate, his body rolling back and forth in small, sensuous curves, loose from his shoulders down.
He hadn’t been able to get into a buoy on his own. He and Ressk working together were unstoppable.
“Goes to prove . . .” Craig leaned back and caught one of Torin’s hands in his, holding it against his cheek, stubble prickling her skin. “. . . di’Taykan don’t do well alone.”
“You reading my mind again?”
He turned his head and kissed her palm. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Gunny.” Frustration bled into Binti’s voice. “The container’s on board. We’re closing now.”
Werst hadn’t had to suit up after all. “Seems the Trun have spatial skills.”
“Attention, Commitment, this is Drone Control. We will sound an all clear when drone 77A has exited your departure area.”
“Ressk?”
He shook his head, nostril ridges definitely fluttering now. “We need more time.”
Torin reached over Craig and thumbed the communications board live with her free hand. “Attention, Drone Control, this is Commitment. We need to examine the contents of container twelve dash eight for damage before we can allow you to leave the area.”
“Attention, Commitment, this is Drone Control. We are not responsible if the contents of container 77A shifted during delivery. Drone Control out.”
“Atten . . .” She frowned at the readings. “They’ve blocked us. They really want us out of here.”
“Yeah, well, really can’t, not yet,” Ressk muttered.
Hair moving in choppy arcs, Alamber pushed in between the two chairs, thumb tapping a one-two, one-two-three rhythm on his slate. He pinched up a small section of the board, dragged a line of code free, and tossed it to the left where it expanded into four fast moving screens.
