Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3)

by Shepherd,Joel

  “And when I tell you,” Admiral Janik replied with a more obvious smile, “you’ll understand exactly why you so badly need my help.”

  10

  “It’s in Kantovan,” said Erik. The senior officer crew, assembled in the briefing room about the central holographic space, were too professional to mutter in disbelief. But Erik could see it in their eyes.

  Kantovan System had been the seat of power for Spiral government for more than six thousand years — perhaps three-quarters of the time since tavalai had been the dominant species after overthrowing the chah’nas. Even human schoolchildren knew of Kantovan — the great Tsubarata parliament in orbit about the desolate-but-habitable world of Konik, the vacant seats for humanity in the great Chamber of Species left empty since Earth’s destruction a thousand years before.

  “That’s one of the busiest systems in tavalai space,” Kaspowitz observed. “One of the busiest systems in the Spiral.”

  “Yes,” said Erik. He sat on the edge of his chair beside Trace, and indicated to Stan Romki, who stood. “Stan knows tavalai space better than any of us, so he’ll take it from here. Stan?”

  “Thank you Captain.” Romki usually looked self-conscious, talking to military people whose intelligence he didn’t always respect. In the past, the disrespect had often been mutual. But now, he looked calmer, perhaps more confident of his place here amongst the crew, despite his ongoing lack of rank or uniform. He flashed a holographic map of Kantovan System in mid-air within the circle of chairs. “Kantovan has a single G1 Class star, and three middle-distant gas giants with some enormous industrial operations — those three between them account for two-thirds of all the system traffic, there’s nearly a hundred million tavalai in those facilities alone.

  “The other third of the traffic is here, at Konik.” He zoomed the image, upon a yellow-brown world with white-capped poles, and a scattering of temperate seas and lakes. Orbiting was a very large moon, shining white with thick cloud, and a single, very small planetoid in much closer orbit. “Konik was settled during the Parren Age — it was an unbreathable dustbowl when they started, but the terraforming kicked in a thousand years later, and now it’s quite pleasant. Some greenery and natural water systems about the poles, but the equatorial belt’s still largely dead.

  “Konik declined under the chah’nas, but came roaring back under the tavalai. There were already parren, chah’nas and other species living there in settlements thousands of years old when the tavalai took it over, so rather than boot them out, the tavalai allowed free cities, where the usual restrictions of tavalai citizenship are waived, and species from all across the Spiral can emigrate and settle if they choose. There’s about thirty of them on Konik, countless smaller settlements, total population about a billion, barely a fifth of them tavalai.

  “The biggest city you’ve probably heard of is Gamesh, right here on the temperate fringe.” Another zoom, to an overhead image of a sprawling settlement across yellow-brown plains. It looked huge. “I think it’s about forty million people now — the tavalai are very vague, the whole point of free cities is to keep the bureaucracy to a minimum. And it works, because there’s real money there, along with some truly depressing poverty, but beings keep coming. I even met a few humans when I was last there.”

  “You’d think the froggies would learn that they’d do better without their bureaucracy,” Shilu remarked. It had been a pet hate of his, since Phoenix’s first entry into tavalai space. As Coms Officer, and legally trained, Shilu was the one who got stuck with all the paperwork. “Given that when they remove it, that happens.” He indicated to the huge, thriving city.

  “Yes, that does happen,” Romki agreed. “And so does poverty, crime and even malnutrition. By ‘free cities’ they really do mean free — the tavalai government doesn’t provide much in the way of services, and people who go there are on their own.”

  “Sounds fine by me,” said Lieutenant Dale, on Trace’s other side. Trace smiled faintly.

  “Isn’t the marine corps a curious place for a libertarian?” Romki asked him condescendingly.

  “Sure,” said Dale. “Isn’t academia a predictable place for an asshole?” Nearly everyone laughed. Erik saw Romki uncertain for a split-second, and on the verge of temper, or upset. But a glance Erik’s way, and Trace’s, showed them both smiling broadly, and Romki joined them. Very slowly, he was learning what on Phoenix passed as basic social skills.

  “Yes,” Romki admitted, adjusting the AR glasses on his bald head. “Yes, I suppose it is. Anyhow, Gamesh is a central control and supply node for the entire system, more than any other Konik city, and operates many of the Tsubarata’s security functions from the ground.

  “The Tsubarata, of course, is in geo-stationary orbit directly above Gamesh.” The holographics zoomed on the small planetoid. It looked like a big rock wrapped about its girth with a pair of giant, metal bands. “The rock itself is about eighty kilometres in diameter. Those twin bands are habitation rims, as on any space station, but on about ten times the scale, running on magnetic rails about the rock. Within are huge zero-G storage and manufacturing regions, but the primary business of government and all its attendant bureaucracy lives in those habitation rings. The population is about a million permanent staff and other civilians, but on important political occasions that can as much as double. But, if what the Captain tells me is correct, the Tsubarata is not specifically what we’re interested in.”

  “The State Department have headquarters there,” said Kaspowitz. “The vault isn’t in their Tsubarata HQ?”

  “No,” said Romki, with a quizzical look at Erik. He switched the holographics again, and the image zoomed upon the large, white-clouded moon, in much further orbit about Konik. “Apparently the vault is here. Kamala, Konik’s moon.”

  “Kamala?” said Kaspowitz. A disbelieving smile spread across his face. “Kamala’s a hell hole. It’s a greenhouse world, it’s mostly CO2, the surface is high-pressure and super hot. You land a regular shuttle there, you get crushed, then incinerated.”

  “Exactly,” said Erik. “They use heavy descenders to get to the surface. It’s fast work, even the biggest of them can’t last more than an hour or two, and every now and then they lose one.”

  “And the Kantovan Vault is at the bottom of that?” asked Shahaim, pointing at the thick blanket of high-pressure cloud.

  “Hell of a hiding spot,” said Erik with a nod. “If it were anywhere else, anyone could access it. On the surface of Kamala, it’s nearly impossible. Heavy descenders are rare, difficult to fly and in tavalai space, even more difficult to licence. Taking one into Kantovan System will immediately raise suspicions.”

  “And where exactly is the vault, on the surface?” Shahaim pressed.

  Erik smiled grimly. “No one knows. Descending ships must first visit one of the atmospheric floating platforms above the clouds, then wait for security clearances in a coms and navcomp blackout. The atmospheric platforms circle the moon every five or six days on high-altitude winds, and take the platforms random places — by the time clearance comes, you could be anywhere. With clearance comes descent coordinates, which the pilot flies semi-manual because the conditions are so unpredictable, but without external reference he’s got no idea where he is. And upon ascent, the descender’s navcomp is erased, so there’s no record of where it’s been. Even tavalai Fleet doesn’t know where the vault is on the surface, and no orbital scanning can penetrate those clouds. Radar won’t do it — the vault is underground. From orbit, it looks like just more hot rock, and State Department control all orbital permission anyhow — only State Department vessels are allowed in close enough orbit to scan.”

  Kaspowitz extended long legs, and crossed both them and his arms, regarding Erik skeptically. “Well that sounds nearly impossible. Basically we’d need permission from State Department before we go down to rob their vault.”

  “It gets better,” said Trace. “The vault has the highest level security on all accesses, so
you can’t sneak anything inside — no weapons, bombs, tools, nothing. There are armed guards too, with considerable firepower, so we’d have to deal with them as well.”

  “Bare handed,” Dale grumbled.

  Trace nodded enthusiastically. Erik found himself watching her. If he’d seen her like this before he’d gotten to know her better, he’d have suspected she was enjoying herself. Now that he did know her better, he was certain of it. “And lastly, here’s one for you, Rooke.”

  “Yeah?” Lieutenant Rooke perked up. He’d already been listening intently, as expected of Phoenix’s Engineering Commander and all-round whiz-kid.

  “Graviton capacitors.”

  Rooke’s eyes went wide. “No!”

  “That’s impossible,” Kaspowitz snorted. “There’s no such thing as artificial gravity.” As Navigation Officer, gravity in all its aspects was a central feature of Kaspowitz’s professional life.

  “What do they use them for?” Rooke pressed Trace, ignoring Kaspowitz completely.

  “Defence of the inner vault,” said Trace, eyes gleaming. “The actual storage vault. It’s ringed with graviton capacitors to the force of one hundred Gs. Anything attempting to approach it will be crushed.”

  “Cool!” Rooke exclaimed. Trace nodded in agreement, and even Dale looked amused, to see his Major’s mood.

  “They’d collapse the entire chamber,” Kaspowitz snorted. “Hell, if it worked as well as all the nonsense I’ve heard about artificial gravity, they’d collapse the entire moon, it’s nuts.”

  “I thought you just said it wasn’t possible in the first place,” Shahaim challenged him.

  “And I’m pointing out the many reasons why it’s not possible.”

  “Yeah,” Rooke interrupted, “and there’s a huge difference, Kaspo, between not possible for humans, and not possible for everyone else. There’s been high-tech sentience in the Spiral for tens of millennia before humans even got into space — how would you know if something wasn’t possible?”

  “It’s called physics,” Kaspowitz said firmly. “I’ve got degrees in it.”

  “Styx?” Rooke called to the empty air. “Artificial gravity, is it possible?”

  “Yes,” said Styx. Rooke gave Kaspowitz a ‘so there’ look. Kaspowitz scowled.

  “So let’s get this straight,” said Shahaim, calm and methodical as always. “If we’re even going to consider this, we’ll need to divide the mission into the following tasks…”

  “Hold… hold on a moment,” Romki interrupted, and got a hard look from Shahaim. “With apologies, Commander, but… let’s not just go tearing off on some new exciting mission before we’ve exhausted all the possibilities. Firstly, I mean, it’s quite obvious that this Admiral Janik character is setting us up for something. Let’s consider it — first the Dobruta invite us into tavalai space, having arranged a meeting with Aristan himself, a very controversial character in parren and tavalai space… and despite all the protestations of how unpopular the Dobruta are with tavalai Fleet, our friend Captain Pram just happens to have a friendly admiral here waiting for us and Aristan, who just happens to have an idea for breaking into this secret State Department vault?”

  He looked around at the circle of chairs, in moderate disbelief. As though thinking that surely he couldn’t be the only person here intelligent enough too see something so obvious.

  “Never occurred to us, Stan,” said Erik. Small smirks from the other officers. Realisation dawned on Romki’s face — Erik had to give the man credit, he was very fast to pick up things he’d overlooked. Like the fact that all of the officers here were privy to other command meetings, where things were discussed that Romki wasn’t invited to. “But now that we have you here — what do you think is going on?”

  “Well who can say, with the tavalai,” said Romki with some exasperation. Adjusting his glasses again, a nervous habit. “And my studies are focused more on tavalai civilian and social structures, military matters aren’t my specialty. But I’d guess some sort of power play. It’s not surprising that elements of tavalai Fleet are unhappy with State Department, but I’d severely doubt that their stated reasons for wanting us to rob that vault are their only reasons. Possibly not even their primary reasons.”

  “But they’ll never tell us,” Shahaim resumed, still displeased with being interrupted, “and we’ve already concluded that devious help is better than no help. And so, as I was saying — we’ll need to break the mission down into components.

  “Component one; we need a good reason to go to Kantovan System. A good lie, like the one we spun our own Fleet at Heuron, before they suspected we’d gone renegade.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Erik. “I’ll flesh it out a bit more before I spring it on you, but I think it’s promising.”

  “Is it as good an idea as the one we had at Heuron?” Trace asked.

  A few months ago, Erik would have demurred, saying that it wasn’t for him to make that judgement. “I think it might be better,” he said instead. “It’s certainly a lot bigger.”

  Trace smiled. “Can’t wait.”

  “Second component,” Shahaim continued, “we need as much intelligence on that vault as possible. We can’t possibly plan a robbery if we don’t know what’s down there. So we need to find a way to acquire that information.”

  “Well our king of acquiring information is currently down on Doma Strana,” said Trace. “Our two kings, actually. When Jokono and Hiro get back, we’ll put them onto it.”

  “We’re going to need a lot of tavalai help on that,” Shilu added, sitting with his usual elegance, legs folded, lean-faced and cool. “My Togiri isn’t wonderful, but Lieutenant Lassa’s is excellent, and she knows tavalai society quite well… not to Stan’s standard, but well enough.”

  Erik nodded — Lieutenant Angela Lassa sat Coms on Phoenix’s second shift, and was Shilu’s contemporary in all such matters. “That sounds like a team. We’ll put Lieutenant Lassa in command, Ensigns Jokono and Uno, plus Stan, of course. Stan, we’ll need you to help make a list of all the people who might be helpful to get us information on anything connected to the vault — anything about Gamesh, the Tsubarata, Kamala, etc. We need contacts.”

  Romki nodded, without enthusiasm. “I’m not certain I know anyone helpful in those fields, but I’ll try.”

  “Third component,” Shahaim continued, “we’ll need a heavy descender. A good one.”

  “There’s only one species that make those to specifications,” said Kaspowitz, gnawing a thumbnail. “And we’ll want the best.”

  “You’re the Nav Officer,” Erik told him, “you’d have as good an idea of where to look as any. We may have to send a party to acquire one, depending on how helpful Admiral Janik can be. My guess is he can get us cover, but can’t do anything so direct as buy or lend us one himself. He’ll want to cover his tracks from his enemies.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” Kaspowitz agreed. “I’ve heard a few things about where one might be found, maybe our tavalai friends can help us confirm if they’re true.”

  “Fourth component,” said Shahaim, ticking off another finger. “We’ll need some kind of crazy plan for fooling the State Department’s traffic control system to the vault from the inside. Because we sure as hell can’t blast our way down there — in Kantovan System we’d be dead faster if we tried something violent than if we did it right here in Stoya. Much faster.”

  “Anything run by computers, we’re good with,” said Rooke. Erik thought he looked nearly as enthusiastic as Trace. “We’ve got Styx.”

  “We do have Styx,” Erik agreed, though cautiously. “What’s five, Suli?”

  “Fifth component,” said Shahaim, “is the attack plan on the vault itself, assuming we can pull off all the rest, and fool the traffic control system into allowing our heavy descender down there. That component will have multiple sub-components, including how to get weapons and equipment past the outer doors, how to bypass or subdue any guards as needs be, and finally how t
o overcome those… “ she looked at Rooke again.

  “Graviton capacitors,” said Rooke, like a kid explaining to his mum about the latest must-have gizmo.

  “Right, sure.”

  “I’ve got that one,” said Trace. “Theoretically there’s not much difference between a covert assault mission and an advanced robbery. It’ll be interesting.” Which was why she liked it so much, Erik guessed. Professionals always wanted to test themselves, if only to learn new things. But a true professional could never afford to test herself on something frivolous. This, however, was incredibly important. In combination, it made a job like this, for Trace, a thing of genuine enthusiasm.

  “Might have you contemplating a career change,” Erik suggested. Trace rolled her eyes.

  “If I might venture,” Styx suggested over room speakers, “I may have an effective method of dealing with the graviton capacitors.”

  “You do?” Rooke almost gasped.

  “But if implemented, it will take some preparation. And I will need a more accurate description of the capacitors’ capability than has so far been supplied.”

  “Right,” said Erik, looking around. “Final thoughts?”

  “Yes,” said Dale, arms folded. “This is nuts.”

  “More nuts than Heuron or Tartarus?” Trace asked her second-in-command.

  Dale thought about it. “No,” he said finally. “No, I think this is about business-as-usual nuts. Which means, with all respect Captain, that we probably can pull it off, because we’re Phoenix and our capabilities are pretty nuts too.” Erik couldn’t help smiling at that parochialism from the gruff, cynical marine. And he could not deny that it warmed his heart. “But it’s a hell of a risk. And no matter how good you are, if you take enough crazy risks, one of them will bite you eventually.”

  Erik didn’t mind Dale’s observation. This was the place for such observations, if they were constructively put. And besides, Dale was right. “The Major has told me on a number of occasions that a risk is only a risk if there’s a choice,” said Erik. “If there’s a dangerous option, and a safe option, then the dangerous option is clearly a risk. But as I see this situation, our only safe option is sitting it out and doing nothing.”