Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3)

by Shepherd,Joel

  7

  Commander Nalben was waiting for Dale at the broad, transparent entrance to the high landing platform. He was flanked by several of his karasai, arms folded and unbothered by the approach of the Alpha Platoon marines.

  “Lieutenant,” said Nalben, with what Dale had learned to recognise as a tavalai frown. “Are you sure it comes from here?”

  “Very sure,” Dale growled.

  “I must insist against any violent action,” said Nalben. “Believe me I understand the urge. State Department have long been enemies of Dobruta, and this action has killed one of our karasai. My thanks for the official condolences, by the way.”

  “Your warrior died in a good cause,” said Dale. “Phoenix honours him.” Nalben considered that cautiously, half-surprised, but suspecting some kind of trick. “I need a close look, Commander. Our analyst on Phoenix requires a very close look. We have marines on neighbouring platforms, coms reception configured precisely. Our analyst needs to be certain.”

  Nalben’s eyes widened slightly, as he understood. “The analyst is sure?”

  “The analyst is nearly sure. This will confirm it.”

  Nalben held a commanding finger at Dale. “No violent action, Lieutenant. Tavalai Fleet has its issues with State Department also, but they will not stand to see a State Department vessel or State Department personnel assaulted while under their protection. They will retaliate, Phoenix will be destroyed, and there is nothing Makimakala can do to stop it.”

  This tavalai, Dale realised, was expecting the humans to do something reckless and emotional. It was tavalai prejudice, of course. Humans thought tavalai cold, legalistic and unfeeling. Tavalai thought humans violent, unreasonable and unstable. Neither prejudice was particularly accurate, but like most prejudices, they were grown large from small grains of truth.

  “There will be no violence,” Dale said coolly. “Protecting Phoenix is my first and primary concern at all times.”

  Nalben looked most uncertain at that. Then he forced himself to nod — a human gesture. “Very well. Proceed, with caution.”

  “Commander,” said Dale, and moved past toward the big, heavy-glass door. The rest of First Squad — Forest, Tong and Reddy — came with him.

  On the cold, windswept landing pad outside sat a tavalai civilian shuttle. It loomed larger than a Phoenix combat shuttle, with an outline not nearly as ferocious. Standing before its open rear ramp were several well-bundled tavalai civilians, and some armed guards. The guards were civvies as well — VIP protection, with rifles, light body armour and other gear. Against marine armour at this range, they might as well have been unarmed.

  A single tavalai civilian strode to meet him — a smaller, slimmer stature than the broader tavalai men. Tavalai women were rare in the military, but Dale had heard they dominated some of the powerful bureaucracies.

  “This is the secure landing space of the Tropagali Andarachi Mandarinava,” the woman told him with firm hostility, and perfect English. “By whose authority do you venture here?”

  “Commander Nalbenaranda of the Makimakala,” Dale informed her. And dialled up his coms reception to the preset coordinates Styx had laid in. Behind him, his section did the same. “Your shuttle emits a command frequency. It is transmitting to multiple small drones at various altitudes about Doma Strana. The effect is a multi-phase jamming signal, military grade. This attack on Doma Strana is yours, and were you in human space, you would all be dead by now.”

  The woman blinked at him, the translucent third-eyelid flicking back and forth upon her big, wide-set eyes. Jelidanatagani, the Major had said her name was. Surely it was the same woman. The description matched, and Dale was sure he’d seen enough tavalai by now that they no longer looked entirely the same.

  “We are not in human space,” the State Department ambassador said coldly. “Any aggressive act toward Tokigala or her associated vessels, or her crew, will see Phoenix destroyed. I can assure you of that, Lieutenant.”

  “A little longer, Lieutenant,” came Styx’s voice in his ear. “I am processing now, my signal is good. Keep her talking.” Hiro had reconfigured the signal back to Phoenix through Doma Strana’s main communications uplink, a beast of a thing that even this jamming apparently could not block. It had allowed Styx into all associated Doma Strana functions. Dale had little doubt the entire temple could belong to her in seconds if she chose. From there, access to every temple sensor, and every marine sensor, had told her there was something very suspicious about the command signal coming from this Tokigala shuttle.

  “One of our crew is missing,” said Dale. “Lisbeth Debogande, the Captain’s sister. We hold you responsible for her safety.”

  “You have no grounds for such accusations here,” the bureaucrat snorted. “Even your own species has disowned you, and your firepower here in tavalai space is utterly outmatched. You are surrounded, and you have no friends save for one lonely Dobruta vessel whose captain shall surely in turn be called to answer for his protocol breach in inviting you here against all established rules of the Dobruta themselves. Soon you will lose even this protection, and then you shall be utterly defenceless, in tavalai and human space alike. Let us see who is throwing accusations about then.”

  Something flickered on Dale’s scans… and suddenly the visor readout of his coms reception flickered. Coms abruptly came clear, the static vanished, and with it, a full reestablishment of marine tacnet outside the Doma Strana. Now he could see the friendly blue dots of the marines alongside him, and the hostile red dots of the tavalai before him… and here, to one side of his graphic, blinked an incoming feed via relay from Phoenix, with one hundred percent clarity.

  One of Jelidanatagani’s guards came to whisper something in her ear, and she frowned, appearing unfocused for a moment as she checked her uplinks. And then retreated out of immediate hearing distance, to the shadow of her shuttle, discussing with handwaving alarm with those security, and two more civilians who emerged in haste from the shuttle’s ramp.

  “Phoenix this is Dale,” said Dale, no longer needing to go through Doma Strana’s big dish. “The jamming seems to have disappeared. Was that Styx?”

  “Yes Lieutenant,” came Styx’s reply. Pleased as he was to have the jamming gone, Dale didn’t like that. When he talked to Phoenix, he wanted Phoenix to reply, not the alien machine intelligence they’d once been sworn to destroy. “Their command codes are primitive, I have infiltrated the signal and disabled each transmission node. In fact, one of their aerial drones has now become a minor hazard, and should impact the mountains two point four kilometres north of Doma Strana in approximately eighty seconds. That was careless of me, I am out of practise.”

  Jelidanatagani’s hand waving ended, and she strode back to Dale with a look of accusation. “What did you do?” she demanded.

  The sheer nerve of tavalai still sometimes took Dale’s breath away. To a military officer, jamming coms was as much an act of war as shooting bullets, but here a State Department bureaucrat was horrified that Phoenix should defend itself against unmanned jamming drones, as though the humans weren’t playing fair.

  “Lisbeth Debogande,” Dale replied, having no intention of discussing how they’d done it. “Where is she?”

  “No human technology can infiltrate and disable our secure networks so easily,” the bureaucrat retorted with deep suspicion. She shot Commander Nalben a dark look, back by the access doors. “Higher powers forbid that the Dobruta have shared high-level secrets with you.”

  “No need,” said Dale, turning to go, with a signal to his marines. “We’ve been dealing with cheap tavalai junk like you for decades.”

  A loud boom rattled the ceiling, and rained dust in fine clouds. Erik squinted to avoid getting any in his eyes, and tested the weight of his pistol in his left hand. Further up the hall, Private Krishnan emerged from cover against one wall and peered up at the opening in the ceiling.

  “Didn’t get through!” he called. “I think they’re testing the amou
nt of explosive they’ll need, too much and they’ll bring the roof down and won’t get a clean breach.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” Erik muttered. There were running footsteps behind, and Erik glanced, but obviously it was Trace, running up from the stairwell.

  “Okay, I’ve hidden the glasses in a small alcove by one of the airvents,” she said, unhitching her rifle and pressing several grenades into Erik’s hands. “We’re not getting any reception, this rock is too thick for transmission, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Be a pity to have downloaded the whole of Drakhil’s message just to have these assholes steal it,” Erik suggested.

  “Wouldn’t it?” Trace agreed. “I’ve set up the lower fallback position, it’s just spare ammo with the excess gear, we need to move lighter up here in first defence. Now, when the shooting starts, you’re to stay behind me at all times, and lob a grenade only when I say so. How’s your throwing?”

  “Oh, right handed? Great. Left handed, not so much.” He glanced at the ceiling, as Trace rearranged her remaining gear with purpose. “How long until they breach, do you think?”

  “Real soon.” Trace reconsidered the grenades. “Only throw when we’re falling back past you, or when there’s only one of us in front of you. Got it?”

  “Yeah, because otherwise I’ll throw short and blow one of you up instead.”

  “Which would be annoying,” said Trace, getting ammo into the correct webbing pouch, then sighting her rifle. “You did throw a grenade in training, right?”

  “Training grenade, sure. They don’t trust spacers with dangerous things.”

  “Just warships that can kill planets.”

  “Hey, I’m qualified to kill planets. Just not people.” Trace made a face at him, as though restraining a laugh. The kind of face you made at someone you thought was kind of funny, without wanting to encourage them too much. It was almost a goofy face, and it intrigued Erik because he’d seen it a few times before. No one else in the galaxy could have imagined Major Trace Thakur, holder of the Liberty Star, being goofy. But he was discovering that Trace had layers, and only very good friends of equal or superior rank, or outside her chain of command entirely, got to glimpse the inner-most layer. He wondered what or who she’d have been if she’d never discovered the Kulina, or become a marine in the war. Probably some nice, smart girl, he thought, who was very good at her job, liked a laugh, and was a bit of a nerd.

  The thought made him smile, in spite of everything. Trace Thakur, marine nerd. Her personality type was always going to be obsessively good at something. If she’d attached herself to computers, she’d have been like Lieutenant Rooke, a tech-nerd with obsessive focus and a head full of numbers. But instead she’d attached herself to the Kulina, and by extension the marines, with equivalent results.

  She saw him smiling. “What?”

  “You,” he said. “It’s been fun serving with you, Major. And I’m amazed we made it this far.”

  Trace’s smile was faintly incredulous. “Yeah, well I’m not done yet. I think there were only about ten chasing us up the mountain, Krishnan says he hit two with you back on the ledge, and getting in here through these narrow spaces is going to cost them. You stay behind me and don’t blow yourself up, we’ll get out of here yet.”

  “Yes ma’am.” And Trace gave him a full ‘what’s got into you’ look, but not displeased. It wasn’t that Erik wasn’t scared. It was more that he’d become accustomed to being scared, and Trace’s reassuring presence was the best cure he knew. And if he was about to die, then damned if he’d miss one final chance to needle her, and get her back for all the times she’d aggravated him, while he still could.

  “Shit, I haven’t been called ‘ma’am’ since my last school visit.” And she took position ahead of Erik, and called up to Krishnan, “Private, what can you hear?”

  “I hear them working!” Krishnan replied, fifteen meters further up. He was placing grenades, and setting a timer. “Two charges, left and right! They should survive the entry blast, then catch them at best cover when we get them under fire.”

  “Don’t hang around or they’ll bring the ceiling down on your head!”

  “You did school visits?” Erik asked her. “Before or after the Liberty Star?”

  “Oh before,” said Trace, sighting down her rifle, braced in a crouch. Erik flattened himself to the wall directly behind. “That fucking medal made it nearly impossible for me to go out in public. One more reason I hate it.”

  It surprised Erik. She’d never talked about it so openly with him before. “That medal inspired a lot of people,” he told her.

  “I don’t care,” said Trace. “Public inspiration is a job for pop stars, politicians, and other frauds and con artists. To find that overnight I’ve been put into that company, in the minds of billions, is depressing.”

  “Inspiration got us through the war,” Erik countered.

  “Firepower got us through the war,” Trace retorted. “If people want inspiration they should search for some in a mirror. And if they don’t find any, well it’s not my job to give it to them.”

  Erik snorted derisively. “Well shit,” he teased her. “Aren’t you awesome.”

  “Yeah I know, right?” she said, and Erik could hear the grin in her voice. “Some of it’s even rubbing off on you, I see.”

  A big explosion rocked the hallway, and Erik ducked as a cloud of dust and bits of rock came down from cracks in the marble ceiling. Trace barely flinched. Then Krishnan threw himself back as a second explosion blasted dust and rock. Erik pulled his pistol, squinting into the dust and aiming left-handed, not liking his chances of hitting much and hoping that Krishnan kept well out of the way.

  After several seconds, the follow-up assault had not come. Krishnan began working his way back along the wall, aiming at the cloud of dust… and then they heard the shrill howl of engines. “That’s one of ours!” Erik declared with delight. “That’s one of…”

  Something dark and cloaked dropped through the opening, and both Trace and Krishnan fired. It hit the floor with an unmoving thud, as a second followed, ducked sideways off the ground as Trace and Krishnan adjusted aim… Trace fired once, and he dropped as well.

  “Nice shot Major,” Krishnan said tersely. “Beat me to it.”

  Heavy cannon roared outside, with an echoing shudder they could hear through the mountain, high velocity rounds designed to kill small spaceships, pulverising any parren still left atop the mountain ridge above. The engine-whine came no closer, the flyer at hold-off range, far enough to not expose itself to groundfire, yet close enough to make devastating short work of infantry.

  Suddenly Erik’s iris-icon was blinking at him, and he focused on it. A link opened. “Hello Captain!” came an anxious, familiar voice on the other end. “This is Ensign Lee on PH-4, are you there?”

  “Hello Ensign Lee,” said Erik with utter relief. “Hello Tif. We’re in a temple in the mountain, the entrance is right where you were just firing, and we’re right below it.”

  “Yeah, we just blasted some guys, they were fixing us with a missile-tracker, we didn’t wait around to see where the missile would come from. A couple of them escaped into that hole, are you guys okay?”

  “Yes we’re fine, Major Thakur and Private Krishnan just shot those two who jumped in, all three of us are okay.”

  “Are there any more up there?” Trace prompted him.

  “Are there any more hostiles above us?” Erik relayed.

  “Negative Captain, we blew a couple off, and the others kinda jumped, there’s not much room.” Erik shook his head at Trace, who signalled Krishnan. Krishnan moved carefully forward to examine the bodies, rifle levelled. “Look, we can get in and pluck you off that ledge if you can get out that way? Tif’s telling me the crosswind’s getting a bit hairy, so one at a time and nothing fancy.”

  “I copy that PH-4, if you could hold in proximity for ten minutes, we have some important stuff we have to recover first. In fac
t, if you could drop us a holograph scanner, that would be a real help.”

  “I’ll… we’ll check, should have one on board somewhere.” As Krishnan signalled to Trace — both bodies were dead. “Did you find something down there, sir?”

  “You could say that.” Trace looked at him with a relieved smile, and gave his good shoulder a whack. “I want to make sure we recover all of it — better get Styx on uplink to see if we’re about to miss something.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How’s everyone else? What’s the status on Doma Strana?”

  “The attack’s been dispersed, Doma Strana appears relatively secure and there are no Phoenix casualties.” A nervous pause. “Um, sir? There’s something else, about your sister.”

  Erik’s smile faded, and Trace’s smile with it, to see the look on his face. “Lisbeth? What’s happened to Lisbeth?”

  Lisbeth awoke. It was a strange kind of awakening, uncertain of where she was or why she’d been sleeping. Or who she was, or what her name was.

  Her hands were bound, and she lay in total darkness, feeling loose canvas about her. Surely she’d suffocate… but there was an air mask of some sort over her face, feeding her cool, synthetic air. It smelled too clean, as all pressurised air did, devoid of other flavours. Probably, it occurred to her, it was feeding her some kind of anaesthetic, too. That would explain why her thoughts seemed to drift, and why the sure knowledge that she’d been kidnapped did not reduce her to a sobbing panic.

  The ground seemed to shake, a low rumbling. She had a memory, sleeping on the maglev from Shiwon to Dadri, on Homeworld. She’d been just a young girl, and had been travelling on her own for the first time, zooming through the night in her comfortable sleeper bed, comfortable in the knowledge of the forests and mountains rushing by outside. Well, just her, and a half-dozen well-armed security. She’d been going to stay with cousins, and see the sights, and do some shopping. She doubted they’d have shopping where she was going now.