Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3)

by Shepherd,Joel

  “Twenty-five stamps, wow,” deadpanned Lieutenant Rooke. “Exciting.”

  “To a tavalai bureaucrat, thrilling beyond words,” Nalben assured him. “Yet as Ben says, there is no mention of it elsewhere in the records. So very big, and very secret — this record could only be accessed by Captain Pram himself, even my security clearance was not high enough.

  “Anyhow, this object was then moved multiple times over thousands of years, as you might imagine — it is called a different thing on each occasion, it was a nightmare to find it in the records, but again, the scale of bureaucracy required on each occasion gives it away to the persistent. From age to age it has been moved, always in the deepest secrecy, always to and from the most secure facilities. And today, we think we have found it… though it will take further quiet research to be certain.”

  “I don’t get it,” Commander Shahaim volunteered. Suli Shahaim was always the first to admit that, if it was the case. Erik thought everyone could learn from her example. “How can you know that this object is Drakhil’s diary? It was found at the right location and is very important, but anything beyond that is speculation.”

  “Because,” said Commander Nalben with a twinkle that Erik had never seen in a tavalai before, “we have access to the current personnel records of the base in question. And please be aware, before I show these to you, that in doing so I am breaching such a huge number of security rules that the authorities will not have enough bullets with which to shoot me.”

  He activated the hololink once more, and tavalai faces appeared. Rows of them, with accompanying text. Formal identifications, such as might be used in a secure facility. “Now none of you humans here read Togiri save for Mr Romki, so allow me to translate for you.”

  He pointed to the first name. “Sidasani Masansarai. Professor of Parren Studies, Podi University, currently on state assignment to the facility in question. Her academic speciality? The life of Drakhil, and the end of the Drysine Empire.

  “This next one here,” and he pointed to the next, “is Jonarata Jeritali. Also a Professor of Parren Studies, but his speciality is linguistics. His special project has been an attempt to reconstruct the Klyran language… no doubt he would now love to meet Mr Romki and your drysine guest, and would doubtless be both thrilled and angry to find that you’ve translated that lost tongue before him.

  “The next one is Agital Periti. An advanced systems technician from Copibal, specialisation in theoretical drysine systems, parren-alliance age. And the next one, whose name is so long I shall spare you, a drysine-age encryption specialist whose last major project was to construct a working model of drysine thought-patterns in an attempt to create a drysine code-breaker. Evidently they are struggling, and from personal experience, I’d guess they have been struggling for many thousands of years.”

  He looked about at them all, and found only silence, and wide stares. Erik thought Nalben looked a little smug. For a tavalai, that was a more familiar expression. “Nearly all of the historians have some special interest in Drakhil,” Nalben summarised. “The rest are code-breakers. We cannot access personnel records back more than a few years, but in what we can access, the pattern repeats. Clearly the object found all that time ago was Drakhil’s diary, one of the five copies he mentioned. And by appearances, it’s in some kind of encrypted, electronic form, and they’ve been trying all this time to break it. Apparently without success.”

  Erik glanced at Romki. The professor was literally gnawing on his finger, as though to restrain himself. “Styx?” Erik said loudly to the air. “I’m sure you’re listening. Does any of this sound plausible to you?”

  “Hello Captain,” came Styx’s mild, feminine voice over room speakers. “All of this sounds plausible to me. Highly plausible. Given some time to examine the Commander’s data, I could come to a more exact analysis.”

  “And do you think it’s likely that the tavalai authorities have not been able to break Drakhil’s encryption for all these millennia?”

  “Yes Captain. Breaking drysine encryption is not simply a question of mathematical persistence. Drysine psychology is fundamentally different from organic psychology. We possess two very different types of sentience. Organics do not perceive many things that to the highest AI minds seem obvious. That being the case, endless amounts of time are of little benefit to those attempting to break this particular code.”

  “She’s right,” Romki added. “To pick a lock, you need a key. There are complications built into drysine thought that organics do not possess. You can try to pick a lock with your bare fingers for as long as you like — without the key, or any tool approximating one, time will not help you.”

  “An excellent analogy Professor,” said Styx. “Drakhil will have used the highest drysine encryption to encode his diary, making it impossible for any undesirables to read its contents. Probably this was achieved by the last drysine queen to see him alive. And no, in case you were wondering, that was not me.”

  The organics looked at each other. They had been wondering. “But you could decode it yourself?” Erik pressed. “If we could recover it?”

  “Certainly,” said Styx.

  “Wait a moment,” Kaspowitz interrupted, suspiciously. He looked at Nalben. “Which tavalai department now has the diary?”

  “The Tropagali Andarachi Mandarinava,” said Nalben. “Which you call the State Department.” Groans and rolling eyes around the group.

  “Of course they do,” Lieutenant Shilu muttered.

  Erik took a deep breath, and looked at Trace. She looked deep in thought, and in no hurry to take over this very spacer discussion. “And what do you think our odds are of finding another of Drakhil’s five copies?” Erik asked Nalben.

  “I think your Styx had better answer that,” Nalben replied.

  “Captain, as Professor Romki says, knowledge of parren society is not my strength. If Drakhil was using such references to influence his coding, then I will be as helpless at decoding it as tavalai are at decoding his diary. I have good human assistance on hand, but no parren assistance, and even today’s most academic parren have little accurate knowledge of Drakhil’s time. Perhaps progress could be made, but it could take years.”

  “We don’t have years,” Trace said with certainty. A silence followed, as everyone considered that. Trace looked at Nalben. “Can you get the diary back?”

  “From the State Department?” Nalben nearly laughed. “Not without a war, no.” Tavalai rarely if ever fought wars, at least amongst each other.

  “So,” said Trace, deliberately. “Can we steal it?”

  9

  “Maybe he didn’t do it.” Trace floated by Berth Three in Midships, zero-G in light armour as the regs dictated, with potentially hostile visitors coming aboard. About her, secured to the cargo net walls in case of shooting, the full Third Section of Bravo Platoon, similarly armed and armoured with weapons ready.

  Erik said nothing, floating in armour with just his holstered pistol, watching the Operations crew as they worked the airlock, and the parren shuttle docked at the far side. Aristan’s personal ship was now in geo-stationary orbit parallel to Phoenix, barely two hundred kilometres away. The ship’s approach had been by Aristan’s own request, as was this meeting. The berth crashed and hummed as outer airlocks opened, and a crewwoman signalled that someone was coming up.

  “Because it would seem a little reckless to come aboard Phoenix immediately after kidnapping Lisbeth,” Trace added. Watching Erik carefully, for any sign of response. Erik stared at the airlock. Trace was concerned at the pistol in his holster, he knew. She needn’t have been, he wasn’t about to shoot the one person whose safety was likely most directly linked to Lisbeth’s.

  The nearside outer airlock hummed, then a pressurising hiss. The inner doors slid, and immediately a marine moved to intercept the black cloaked figure that emerged, while two more angled for killing shots if he tried anything. The first marine frisked the parren, while an Operations crewman indicated t
hat the airlock scanners had found nothing on his person. The frisking marine indicated the same, and their Sergeant indicated for them to move.

  It left Aristan himself, cloak and hood billowing in zero-G, held in place by design with no more than velcro tabs. The indigo eyes were wide and unblinking, shifting first from Erik to Trace, then back again. He held to the airlock’s single control rail, designed for that purpose. Erik judged by the way he floated that spacetravel was not strange to him.

  Aristan activated his belt translator. When he spoke, English followed. “We have your sister. But I think you know.”

  Erik could have happily drawn and shot him, right between the eyes. But he could not. “Why?”

  “Options. She will be treated magnificently. Far more closely to that which she is accustomed, than aboard this vessel.” He looked up and about, and the high cargo nets, the storage bays, the grey steel and furled acceleration slings. Then the wide, alien eyes came back to Erik. “You found the lost temple. My people are now negotiating with the tavalai of this world for rights of access.”

  “What rights of access do you have on this tavalai world?” Trace asked coolly. She had the hard-eyed look that she got when figuring her way through a dangerous situation, accumulating information.

  “House Harmony has negotiated rights of access to Doma Strana, as you have seen. All of this was once parren space, in recent antiquity. We visit when we want. The tavalai respect antiquity. What the parren have built, the parren may claim, for all purposes but ownership.” The indigo eyes came back to Erik. “We will be granted access to the lost temple in time. What did you see there?”

  “Is that why you kidnapped my sister?” Erik asked darkly.

  Beneath his veil, Aristan may have smiled. “Drastic. Considering we shall know the temple ourselves soon enough. No, Phoenix. You are on the trail of Drakhil’s legacy. I am Drakhil’s legacy, as are my people. You will not keep these findings to yourself. You will share. Yet you have your own interests, as I have mine. Your people and mine barely know each other. Some persuasion, I decided, was in order. Without it, I have little leverage to bear.”

  “What ‘Drakhil’s legacy’?” Erik retorted. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are tales. Legends of the Tahrae, long lost yet still whispered. Tales of Drakhil’s last words, kept deep in tavalai vaults. Last words containing the greatest secrets of the old Drysine Empire, when the Tahrae were vast and powerful, and House Harmony ruled the Spiral at the Drysine hand.”

  “And you want them back,” said Trace.

  “Of course. It is my destiny. Have you found their location? With your Dobruta allies, I would not think it too much trouble to search ancient tavalai records and find what I seek. The tavalai are meticulous.”

  Erik gave Trace a wary look. Aristan knew entirely too much already. Someone must have told him, he decided. Probably the Dobruta, given that the Dobruta had been the ones to invite Aristan here, to meet with these strange, renegade humans who sought things that no humans had ever before been inclined to seek. Erik had that dark and recently-familiar feeling of vast forces moving behind the scenes, arranging things where none aboard this ship could see them. Arranging things for their own purposes alone. If Erik had come to appreciate any single thing since Captain Pantillo’s death, it was just how ignorant most humans remained of the older and most ancient powers in the galaxy. A naive and inexperienced human, in a very powerful warship, could stroll into such things unawares, all brimming with false confidence that he knew what was going on and could handle anything that came his way. If he had ever felt anything like that at first, since leaving human space, the feeling was by now long gone.

  “So you seek what we seek,” said Erik. “You only wish to ensure that you get your share, at the end of the search.”

  Aristan inclined his cowled head, a graceful bow. “Precisely.”

  “And we get Lisbeth back… when?”

  “When I am confident that there is nothing more to learn.”

  “When Phoenix has expended her usefulness to you, you mean.”

  “I have learned a human word. Honour.” He spoke it slowly, with his own lips, and the translator-speaker remained silent. “I have researched this word enough to be convinced — the concept is the same, between your people and mine. The parren have honour. We value it highly. Upon my honour, your sister is safe. So long as Phoenix does not seek to deny that which is rightfully mine.”

  “Will you help?” Trace asked. Erik did not like that at all, but Trace was not looking his way. “You seem to know a lot about this. Will you help us to reclaim what you want? Are you useful for anything, besides abducting harmless civilians and threatening their siblings?”

  Aristan regarded her for a longer moment. Perhaps the pause meant that he was displeased by her words. “We will do anything to reclaim Drakhil’s legacy. Anything. Should you discover its location and require of my people to spend their lives like coin to acquire it, we shall do so.”

  “We’ll let you know,” said Erik. “You’re dismissed.”

  “You have capabilities aboard,” Aristan pressed. “The data chip I gave you was in Klyran, a tongue long lost to my people. I do not see how you could have found the lost temple without first knowing Klyran. How did you learn it?”

  “Maybe if you kidnapped another ten of us we’d tell you,” Erik growled at him. “Only next time, I don’t think you’d survive the attempt.”

  “They have been trying to end the line of Drakhil for more than twenty thousand of your years,” said Aristan. “It is not ordained that they shall succeed.”

  The Gs pressed Lisbeth into her acceleration chair, wrists bound to the chair arms and sucking in the air in tight, gasping breaths as time aboard Phoenix had taught her. There had been a landing, then a transfer to a shuttle, a bag over her head and unable to see or smell anything. Then a hard climb to orbit, a sensation she knew from her co-piloting, and now an outbound run at 3G, heading for jump.

  She was still in the shuttle, clamped to the outside of some larger ship as Phoenix’s shuttles ran attached to the outer hull. It could have been owned by whomever had taken her, or it could even be a neutral freighter, taking a paying passenger where it wanted to go and asking no questions. She’d heard nothing of her abductor’s voices, yet she was fairly certain they were parren. Their silence alone indicated as much. Parren were disciplined, and conscious of appearances, while sard cared not at all what other species thought of them, and tavalai could not be kept quiet under wet cement.

  There were other, lesser species in tavalai-sphere space, but few of them would want to stick their noses into sensitive tavalai business, to say nothing of parren business. Tavalai dealt with transgressions firmly, but were capable of mercy in the face of contrition. Parren, according to everything Lisbeth had heard and read, were not. Moreover, parren space today was vastly smaller than it had been when they’d ruled the Spiral in the eight thousand years between the fall of the machines, and the rise of the Chah’nas Empire, but still it remained enormous. Romki had told her that in his opinion, the parren remained the fourth-most-powerful species in the Spiral, after humans, tavalai and — following recent alarming discoveries — the alo. One did not take parren lightly, nor meddle in their affairs and expect not to get burnt.

  The fearlessness of her earlier wakening was gone, along with the airmask that had no doubt provided it. Now Lisbeth was properly terrified, and almost thankful for the heavy Gs that gave her heart its excuse to thump and pound within her chest. Almost as bad as the personal terror was the fear of what use her predicament would be put to. Leverage against Phoenix? Against her family? By whom, and for what purpose?

  Worst of all, she’d just begun to think of herself as a contributing member of the crew. Not nearly as skilled and disciplined as most, yet useful, in her own small way. It had been such a battle to get Erik to agree to let her go down to the surface on Stoya III. And now this, proving all of Erik’s protect
ive fears correct. He’d been right to protest, because after all she’d been through, she was just a helpless little girl after all.

  Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, squeezed shut as she fought for breath, the familiar reflex of augmented circulation, bloodstream micros shuffling the blood along at double-time, irrespective of her pulse and breathing.

  Something buzzed by her ear. At first she thought it was some piece of com equipment malfunctioning, but there was no headset on her ears, under or over the bag on her head. Then she felt the tiny, sharp feet of something crawling on her neck. Another wave of panic struck her — some awful insect had gotten aboard and was inside her hood, where she was powerless to swat it with her wrists tied to the chair arms. If she cried out, no one could come to help her — 3Gs for a duration was immobilising for even augmented spacers, and in the roar of thrust shaking the hull and rattling everything within, no one would hear her anyway.

  She felt the insect walk up to her jaw, and tried to shake her head, hoping it would fly away. It buzzed again, an odd, repetitive pattern. Then she realised. Doma Strana had been very high altitude, over four thousand meters, and was very cold. Most flying insects, like the kinds that buzzed, used sunlight and heat for much of their energy. Thin air, cold, wind and snow were not their friends, and the insides of the temple itself had been pristine, and no place for bugs. Plus, even small insects would have better sense under 3G thrust than to walk up vertical surfaces.

  This was one of Hiro’s synthetic recon bugs, then. Lisbeth gasped upon her next exhaled breath, this time with relief. It must have been monitoring her, and stowed away in her clothes when it saw her in trouble. She feebly supposed that it was a bit odd to respond to a hacksaw-tech assassin bug, crawling on your neck, with relief. But this one, Hiro had insisted, had reliable objectives.