“Yes Captain, Phoenix will adjust her hours to match yours.” Because in reality, the ship ran by the captain’s hours, not the other way around.
“Understood Phoenix, Captain out.”
“I hope whoever boards us has more information on Kantovan than the Admiral did,” said Trace, having shifted her pose to something slightly less excruciating. “And speaks some decent English.”
“Well, we have Romki on board if they don’t. And Styx.”
“Styx doesn’t like tavalai,” Trace reminded him. “She might be the most prejudiced member of the crew.”
“Yeah,” said Erik. “Alarming, given the power of life and death she once held over them.”
“We don’t actually know what she did during the Empire. She might not even be that old, she might just be making it all up.” Trace lowered herself, and splayed legs, head down to one knee. “She’s not going to like being shifted and hidden from that boarding party, either.”
“You really think she has that many opinions and emotions?”
“I’m sure of it. And I think it’s safer to operate on the assumption that she could at some point make an irrational and violent move. All this pretence at machine-calm and logic runs directly against the history of the Machine Age and all its wars. It could just be another show put on to fool us, like how she butters up Romki with praise, or how she pretends to be female. She could be seething with rage and resentment, just below the surface. We’d never know.”
Erik thought about it, watching the sunrise. “Why do you think she chose female?” he asked. “You think she figured she’d get an easier run with us?”
“Definitely,” said Trace, switching legs. “Firstly, we were already calling her a queen, but also, there’s more men on Phoenix than women, and men will forgive women more quickly than other men. Styx is easily smart enough to spot it. Just because she doesn’t share our psychology doesn’t mean she can’t apply that big brain to analysing it. Like Romki does to other aliens.”
“Or like an etymologist does with ants,” Erik muttered. He had so many things to think about, but all he could think of was Lisbeth. Where she was now, whether she was okay, what she was doing. He lost track of time for a moment, and then the bed shifted as Trace sat beside him, and handed him an odd-looking tavalai cup — oval shaped, to better fit webbed tavalai hands.
“We get Lisbeth out,” said Trace, reading his mind once more, “by getting that diary from the Kantovan Vault. Think on that. Focus on it, and get her back.” Erik supposed she didn’t need great powers of mind-reading to know his thoughts. It would have been obvious to less astute observers than Trace.
“You lost your brother?” Erik knew she had. He’d never asked her about it before.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Aran. He was nineteen. I was ten. A mining accident.” A pause, as lightning flashed near, and heavy rain made a dark mist of one third the view. “The difference between Lisbeth and Aran is that Lisbeth isn’t dead. And it’s within our power to keep it that way.”
Erik took a deep breath. “I think I’d like to be Kulina. All of these attachments make focus difficult. Everything hurts.”
“Still hurts as Kulina,” said Trace. “But channelled.”
“Did you become Kulina to escape that pain?” He looked at her. She looked troubled, but mostly for him. He wasn’t supposed to ask her this, he knew. No one else did. And with them, she had the rank to refuse to answer. But he was Captain, and Trace had said many times that Captain and Marine Commander should have if not no secrets between them, then as few as possible. Despite their very different jobs, it was always the closest working relationship on a carrier. When a carrier captain deployed his marines on a station, the marine commander had to know that he’d move heaven and earth to get them all off again. And when a marine commander was fighting to secure a dangerous facility, the captain had to know that she’d make any sacrifice to safeguard their ship. In many ways, the wider distance between them, as marine and spacer, made the need for trust that much greater.
“In part,” Trace said finally. “But I’d been interested in the Kulina for a long time before. Aran’s death was clarity for me, I suppose. And I think I thought I’d join him before long. That felt right, somehow.” She gazed away, out the windows. “I think the ten-year-old me still feels a bit guilty sometimes. That I’m still here, and he’s not. I loved him a lot. He was the only close family I ever did.”
Erik took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t put you on the spot. I know you don’t like to talk about it.”
“You don’t need to apologise to me,” said Trace, with a very flat stare. “For anything. Ever.” Erik thought about it. And realised that for all her often brutal prodding and riding, she’d never asked him to. “I don’t talk about it with the rest of the ship because I have appearances to keep up. Senior officers don’t advertise inner workings and frailties. When the people beneath you start psychoanalysing your orders, you’re screwed, and then they are.”
“You’ve never tried to work on appearances with me?” Erik asked her with an edge. She’d certainly used every bit of her Liberty Star-winning, hardass persona with him, to beat him into shape after Captain Pantillo had died.
Trace smiled slyly. “Well it’s not like I could compete on image with a Debogande.” And brushed at his shoulder, as though polishing. Erik shoved her, or tried to, because she caught his arm in a half-lock, but refrained from breaking his wrist. “Come on, you’re supposed to be thinking of a way around this State Department roadblock. You’re much better at this legal stuff than me, I mean there must have been a dozen attorneys present at your birth, you’re born to it. What’s your plan?”
“Take a shower,” Erik told her with a smile. “You’re sweaty and you smell.” Trace laughed, and got up to do that. Erik couldn’t help notice that the muscular body he’d found off-putting a few months before was starting to grow on him. “You’d really tell me anything if I asked?”
“What am I?” she retorted in mild exasperation. “Some bad-tempered dog that’ll bite your hand off if you look it in the eye? You’re the damn Captain, you get answers when you ask.”
“Are you a virgin?” Erik challenged. Because some had wondered, and it was the kind of thing genuine friends would know of each other.
“Because I don’t screw with crew?” Trace laughed, heading for the shower. “I get station leave like any marine, I’ve got money to spend, and there are facilities on station that cater to horny marines. Figure it out.”
“Seriously? You use professionals?”
“Hey,” said Trace, pausing at the bathroom door, “if you know one thing about me, it’s that I value professionalism.” Erik laughed. “You can do better than that.”
“Did you actually enjoy it?” Erik retorted. “Or just get it out of the way, like how you drink those horrible vegetable smoothies because you need the hunger to go away so you can concentrate on being a hardass marine again?”
Trace hung in the bathroom doorway for a moment, studying him with dark eyes no longer quite so amused. Not angry, just thinking about it… and perhaps considering what it meant he thought of her, that he’d asked her at all. Then she nodded slowly, as though conceding something. Exactly what, she didn’t say. “So,” she said. “Do you even have a plan for State Department?”
“Sure I do,” said Erik. “It’ll be fun. You didn’t answer my question.”
“That wasn’t a question,” she said sourly, and disappeared into the bathroom. “It was a statement with a question mark.”
12
Commander Suli Shahaim sat in her quarters just off the main corridor to the bridge, and sipped tea. The flavour was more agreeable to her guest, a tavalai warship captain named Konapratam. Lieutenant Kaspowitz alone of the bridge crew joined them, as Shahaim’s quarters were barely large enough for more.
Out in Phoenix’s corridors, the ‘inspection’ was underway. Konapratam’s people were putting on a good sho
w of making it look serious, with cameras to record everything, but the inspection’s route had been handed to Phoenix in advance, and hiding things they’d not wished seen had been a simple matter of avoiding those highlighted spaces. Admiral Janik at Stoya had set it all up in advance, of course. Suli thought it obvious, and increasingly suspicious, that Phoenix was being set up for something. Possibly something that went back to Makimakala, in granting them protective authority to enter tavalai space in the first place. Tavalai Fleet were locked in an internal struggle with State Department, and were limited in how far they could go themselves. In true tavalai style, they’d let the aliens do the truly disagreeable and dangerous things, and let them take the blame if it all went wrong. Phoenix was about to be used, then hung out to dry.
The real question was that if Phoenix truly wanted Drakhil’s diary, did they have any choice?
“It goes back a long, long way,” said Captain Konapratim, seated on the chair before Suli’s small wall-table. Suli and Kaspowitz sat side-by-side on her bunk. “Well before the Triumvirate War. Well before the destruction of Earth, and the end of the krim. Some of it is technical, in that State Department has an active charter, meaning that it has taken every opportunity to expand its legal capabilities over the millennia. Fleet has an inactive charter, meaning that our powers are endlessly limited. We are defined by what we cannot do, while State Department are the opposite. We have different philosophies of governance, and had you the time and the language skills, I could point you at a thousand expert histories describing this conflict of administrative posture. You have not read these works? English translations, perhaps?”
Kaspowitz repressed a smile. “No,” Suli said evenly. “In the Triumvirate War, we’ve been busy fighting. I’m sure there are people in Fleet Intelligence who have read those works, but human Fleet has no culture of sharing those things with line commanders.”
The tavalai Captain nodded gravely. “Human Fleet keeps its captains starved of information. There is no debate for broader matters, and no culture of enquiry.”
“Key point of difference between human Fleet and tavalai,” Kaspowitz said with typical dryness. “We’re a combat force. You’re a debating club.”
Konapratim’s thick tavalai lips pursed in a smile. “The Spiral is full of species that won the battle only to lose the war. We shall see which approach wins in the end.”
“With respect,” said Kaspowitz. “What we won was no battle. It was a war.”
“One hundred and sixty one of your years,” said the tavalai. “An eternity for humans. A blink of an eye for tavalai.” Kaspowitz might have retorted, but Suli silenced him with a warning look. Her ability to do that was a very recent thing, derived solely from her new Commander’s rank. It still felt odd, to use it like this on her old friend.
“Please continue,” she told Konapratim.
“Yes,” said Konapratim. “With this philosophical and structural difference as its foundation, State Department and Fleet’s differences have only grown wider. The alliance with the sard is one point of difference. Many in Fleet feel the sard are more trouble than they’re worth, and an eventual long-term threat to us. State Department feel differently.
“The krim were another matter. Developing relations with the krim, much of Fleet were also opposed to. But State Department meddles, and expands, and thinks like great empire-builders without a thought to the unpleasant business of those who must carry out the building. It got Fleet into a war with the humans when State Department told us to impose the peace, between you and the krim. It was only a little war by tavalai standards, but many in Fleet recall it bitterly. Some even say it was our very worst moment, fighting the victims of a terrible aggression, to force them to accommodate their invaders, mostly so that State Department could save face.”
Suli frowned. “You mean to tell me that tavalai Fleet sympathised with humanity?”
“Of course,” said Konapratim.
“And yet made war on us anyway,” Kaspowitz added.
“We are soldiers,” said the tavalai. “As are you. We follow orders. Tavalai governance is chaotic, but its rules and structures are firm. State Department run tavalai foreign affairs, and the foreign affairs of all the Free Age. Fleet’s opinion will be heard, but we have no command to dictate our own affairs.
“In truth, tavalai Fleet blame State Department in large part for making an enemy of humanity. We have never been able to entirely blame humanity for hating us. State Department had limited control of the krim, but that was itself by design — they could have restrained them, but chose not to. Krim-region space was not fully explored by us in advance of krim expansion, and so it was not especially surprising when the krim discovered a previously unknown, sentient-inhabited world in their path. And then, as many humans have noted, once humans were discovered, the State Department had a choice between two possible sentient allies — the krim, or the humans. But adopting humans as allies would have meant throwing the krim overboard, which for State Department would have meant a further loss of face. Fleet always felt this a poor choice.
“And from these compounded mistakes, you have the reemergence of the ridiculous chah’nas, and opportunity created for the conniving alo… a whole big mess.” Konapratim sipped his tea, as though to calm himself. Suli thought he looked agitated when discussing it. By tavalai standards, anyhow. “Fleet considers that State Department created the Triumvirate War by their own mismanagement. Many of us feel they should be brought back down to Earth… I believe is the unfortunate human expression.”
“What’s in the Kantovan Vault that you want so badly?” Suli asked.
Konapratim said nothing for a long moment. Suli thought that perhaps she wasn’t going to get an answer, and began readying her stern lecture on what poor form it was to expect Phoenix to risk itself doing tavalai Fleet’s dirty work without knowing why.
But then…”Records,” Konapratim said sombrely. “Many records. Things that State Department has never shared with anyone, despite so many statutes on the books requiring that they do so.”
“What kind of records?” Kaspowitz pressed suspiciously.
“Old records,” said the tavalai. “Records of decisions made within State Department. Who made them, and why, and what were the hidden details the rest of us were never allowed to hear.”
Suli’s eyes widened. “You mean… State Department decisions? The krim? Earth?”
“And many others of far less interest to humans,” Konapratim agreed. “But of very great interest to the tavalai of the Fleet, who over the many thousands of years have died in their millions, on the horns of these consequences. For that many years, we have insisted that those millions, and their ancestors, deserve to know for what they died. Yet State Department have refused. No longer. The Triumvirate War was one stupid conflict too many… what is the human expression? The straw that broke the…?”
“The straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Suli. “A camel is an Earth creature, used in the old days for carrying loads.”
“Yes, I see. In Togiri we say, ‘a bubble too many.’ For deep diving, you breathe out many bubbles to dive deeper. Too many bubbles, you go too far down, and never regain the surface.”
“Why not do it yourself?” Kaspowitz asked.
“Because if we were caught, it would be turmoil. Not civil war, but as close as tavalai come. Plus, you have the opportunity, as we do not.”
“Lucky us,” Kaspowitz muttered.
“And much of Fleet are not agreed,” Konapratim added.
“How many?” Suli asked.
“We are a trusted faction. Our interests coincide with yours. But we must act fast, for we cannot keep this secret forever.”
“And if State Department find out what you’ve done, after the fact?”
Konapratim smiled. “If we find what we expect to find, after the fact, there may be no more State Department.” Both Suli and Kaspowitz stared. “Thus rather solving several problems for both our peoples
, all at the same time, wouldn’t you say?”
Suli’s coms uplink blinked, and she opened it. “Go ahead Lieutenant Lassa.”
“Commander, we’re receiving a huge spike in relevant communications down on the planet.” Lassa sounded a little worried. “It… sounds like the Captain has made a public statement to the entire planet.”
Suli frowned. She couldn’t recall that having been discussed at a command meeting. “What did he say, Lieutenant?”
“That UFS Phoenix is in orbit about Ponnai, and that we’re seeking the human chair at the Tsubarata.” Suli and Kaspowitz looked at each other. “You know, all the stuff we agreed not to tell anyone, and tavalai Fleet agreed to keep secret too. In case it made a fuss. Commander, my… my screens are lighting up, I’m getting… oh, about several hundred queries? It’s like everyone on the planet suddenly turned their coms on us and started asking questions.” A brief pause. “Make that several thousand.”
“He was talking to Captain Pram and Makimakala’s legal officer about some stuff,” Kaspowitz said with eyebrows raised. “I guess this is it.”
“Well,” said Suli, not knowing what to think. “I suppose this is why they call it a ‘Captain’s call’. Captain Konapratim, we have a developing situation down on…”
“I heard,” Konapratim affirmed, looking disconcerted. “I was just uplinked to my ship, they told me. Your Captain makes a bold move, to declare himself so openly. Phoenix’s presence in tavalai space has not been widely known until now.”
“I think this is the Captain’s way of saying we’re all-in,” Kaspowitz told him.
“All-in?” Konapratim hadn’t heard that one before.
“A human gambling term,” Suli explained. “When you bet all the money you have on just one hand. Big risk, big reward.”
“Yes,” said Konapratim, still uncomfortable. “We would have preferred a more quiet approach. This seems… reckless.”
“Yes, but you see,” said Kaspowitz, a finger raised warningly, “you can’t play games with humans, and expect us to behave like tavalai.”
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 18
