Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3)

by Shepherd,Joel

  “Yes,” said Tooganam, in English. And then, with the aid of a belt-speaker, “Fleet sent you.”

  Dale nodded, then sucked up his misgivings and walked to him, hand extended. A human custom, but tavalai did something similar, sometimes. That he still felt as comfortable shaking hands with a tavalai as he did kissing a scorpion was neither here nor there — the Major had given him a job to do, and his personal feelings were irrelevant. “I’m Lieutenant Tyson Dale, Commander of Alpha Platoon, UFS Phoenix.”

  The tavalai took his hand, with equally little enthusiasm. Not rude, and not frightened. Just old, and cautious. “Tooganam. Former Djara, Partik Regiment.”

  Shit, thought Dale. Just wonderful. Djara was a rank roughly equivalent to Sergeant, and ‘partik’ was Togiri for the number thirty. “Karasai,” said Dale, darkly. It explained the watchful look in Tooganam’s eyes. Some Phoenix marines had adjusted to working with the karasai of Makimakala. Others took time. Dale had always gritted his teeth and done his job, because it was what Phoenix and Major Thakur required of him. She seemed to have no difficulty at all, which was not surprising, given how little of normal human trauma seemed to touch her. But for all that Dale truly believed the Major was twice the combat officer he’d ever be, she was still just a kid next to his years in the war. She’d lost dozens of friends and comrades to the tavalai, and the karasai-marines in particular. But Dale had lost hundreds. “How many years?” he asked, keeping his expression cool.

  “Forty-three of mine,” said Tooganam. “Maybe… thirty-five of yours?” Dale grunted. It sounded about right. “Three tours. The last was ninety years ago.”

  “The early war,” said Dale. Most humans thought he had been in active service an awfully long time, but Tooganam had beaten it by about five years. Tavalai lived very long lives, and Tooganam looked much nearer the end of his than the beginning. Probably that would put him in his late-two hundreds.

  “Why do you work with Fleet?” Tooganam asked.

  Dale couldn’t tell him. “You know the mission?”

  “Kamala. The Kantovan Vault. Some thought it might be a myth. Fleet tells me otherwise.”

  “Phoenix has some common interests with your Fleet,” Dale told him. “Things in the vault that need to be seen.”

  It seemed enough for the old ex-karasai. He snorted, a loud sound from wide nostrils, and waved for them all to sit, stomping in his kitchen to put some large pots on the stove. He moved heavily, with no grace at all, but he rummaged through drawers and utensils with the ease of a man at home in his own kitchen. “Food,” he said. “You’ll probably hate my food, but you’ll eat it. You’re not in human space anymore.”

  “Noticed,” Reddy grumbled, collapsing into a deep-cushioned sofa.

  “Thanks,” said Forrest, more diplomatically. “Tell him thanks.” With a warning stare at his Lieutenant. ‘Woody’ Forrest had been with Dale for two years, one of those at his present rank. It was long enough that he felt licence to let his LT know when he was being an ass. Forrest was as old as Dale, and had begun his working life with a comfortable career in banking. Then his marriage had ended, and at what had felt like a dead end in life, and with no kids, he’d signed up. Forrest was everything Dale was not — well-educated, somewhat wealthy, an all-round nice guy who got along with military and non-military alike. Had they met in Forrest’s previous, civilian life, Dale was certain he’d have found the banker irritating as hell. But two years of wartime service in Phoenix Company had a way of making natural enemies into inseparable friends, and he needed Forrest in Alpha Platoon the same way a body needed kidneys.

  Dale snorted in reply, and stretched his left arm over his head — that shoulder had never been the same since tavalai shrapnel had smashed it twelve years ago, in the Battle of Jericho System. He’d been Forrest’s rank, back then.

  “I heard you,” Tooganam answered Forrest, amidst clangs of pots and pans. “No need to thank me, I’m just the operative. I may be retired, but I have many old friends in those places. They tell me to do things for the tavalim, I don’t ask why.”

  By the windows, some fish and odd, turtle-looking creatures swam in a circular tank. Above the tank, mounted on a wall, were tavalai ribbons and braid. Tong peered at them. Dale knew that Tong had some similar, battlefield souvenirs. Tavalai liked ribbons, used them in ceremonies, and special ones served as humans would use medals.

  “Wow,” said Tong. “I think these are magoridi ribbons.”

  “Ma-go-ridi,” Tooganam corrected him gruffly from the kitchen — the same word, but utterly changed in the pronunciation.

  “What’d I say?” Tong retorted. “That’s a big deal. Like, maybe a Gold Starburst equivalent. One below the Liberty Star.”

  “And I knew a hundred tavalai who won no award nearly as big,” Tooganam retorted, “and all of them better karasai than me.” It was the kind of thing the Major would have said, Dale thought… only without the self-deprecation. “This will take time to heat. Tea first.”

  They all sat, while Tooganam brought them tea on a tray. The limp was pronounced — probably a war injury, Dale thought. It looked like a prosthetic leg — at a certain age they didn’t always link perfectly with the brain, creating limps. Tavalai tea was quite passable, hot and herbal. Tooganam took a chair the humans and parren had left for him, all now seated save for Jokono, who hovered in the shadow by a window, peering into the lane while listening to the marines talk with Tooganam. No doubt he figured the marines would have more in common, and held back to listen. But it made Dale that much happier, to have that experienced, watchful presence, non-military and familiar with both civilian environments and covert operations, taking everything in.

  Petty Officer Kadi sat with some particularly high-tech AR glasses on his face, making adjustments to various holographic icons that only he could see. Kadi was young, squat and brown, with lively eyes and a tech-nerd’s lack of people skills. But Dale had needed a serious network-tech on this mission, and asked Lieutenant Rooke to find a volunteer. Rooke had not been surprised at Kadi’s enthusiasm, and had told Dale that Kadi’s older brother had been a marine on the UFS Pursuit. He’d been killed in action three years ago, fighting to win some big mining facilities off the sard. Rooke thought that Kadi felt he had something to prove, and had warned Dale to keep an eye on him.

  “So explain this to me,” Dale asked of Tooganam, relaxing into a casual drawl with the tea in one hand, hooked over a raised knee. One marine to another over a drink, he thought, might make the old tavalai more talkative, and get his Gunnery Sergeant off his back. “Fleet and State Department. Tropagali Andarachi Mandarinava. What’s the deal? Because it seems like it goes back not just to the start of the Triumvirate War, but to the invasion of Earth by the krim.”

  Tooganam snorted laughter. “Boy,” he said, and Dale blinked. “Boy, how old are you?”

  “Forty-nine”

  “So you’ve been around for one-twentieth of the thousand years humans have been in space.”

  “FTL space, sure,” Dale growled.

  “In human years, I’m… what is it now… two hundred and seventy? Yes, two hundred and seventy. And I’ve still only been around for one-one hundred and fiftieth of the time the tavalai have been in space with faster-than-light travel. You need to realise the age of these issues that confront you. Tavalai Fleet have been at odds with State Department, as you call them, since the beginning of the First Free Age. Since the end of the Chah’nas Empire, do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I know what the Chah’nas Empire was,” Dale said sourly. “Why haven’t Fleet done something about it?”

  “Oh they have!” said Tooganam, eyes wide with indignation. “Many things. Many challenges to State Department authority, many attempts to wrest back control. But always the great legal institutions fight back, they have no love of State Department, but neither do they like to see Fleet with so much authority in its hands, to make the rules for all tavalai. We tavalai do not like tyrannies. Gi
ve it enough time, and they fear tavalai Fleet could become like your Fleet.” With a pointed stare at Dale.

  A year ago, Dale would have been mightily offended. Now, not only would it have been impractical, but he could not shake the unpleasant feeling that Tooganam might be right. “Humans had great, free democracies on Earth,” he said instead. “They died with the krim. Since then, we haven’t had the luxury of so much freedom.”

  “Never a luxury,” Tooganam disagreed. “Not for tavalai. No more than air and water. State Department think they know best. Fleet has warned them otherwise, with humans most recently. These mistakes have left us dead on the ground like leaves. We used to joke, in the karasai, even as far back as the early war when I was serving, that we’d rather be shooting at State Department than humans.” He took a deep breath. “And perhaps that is our greatest failing as a people, that we did not.”

  “No,” said Reddy. “You get aliens to do your dirty work for you. And so here we are. Reporting for duty.”

  Dale looked warningly at Reddy. ‘Spots’ was small for a marine, an orphan with a record of petty crime who’d been headed for nothing much at all before signing up. He had a quick temper and a quicker laugh, and was one of the best pure riflemen in the entire Phoenix Company.

  Tooganam looked at him too. “Maybe so,” he said sombrely. “Maybe so. You will need to infiltrate the State Department facility here. I know the way.”

  “And we’ll need weapons,” said Dale. “Good weapons.”

  Tooganam smiled humourlessly. “You’re in the right city for that. Unsavoury elements run deep in Gamesh. You have money?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Good. Today, you rest. Tomorrow, you get weapons. Then, we will see about displacing these State Department dry-skins from a pond or two.”

  16

  After dinner with the Satamala’s officers, Trace made her way back through the tavalai warship’s midships to the primary berth airlock, with a greeting to the tavalai Operations crew on station there. Not that they were ‘guarding’ the berth containing the human marines, of course. Just watching, unarmed and unthreatening, and reporting to the Satamala’s bridge about every human that passed through the airlock in either direction. Automated monitors could have done it, but the tavalai seemed to have some notion that these humans had tricks up their sleeve, and weren’t taking any chances.

  Wiser than they probably knew, Trace thought, as she floated through the lander’s main passage to the primary crew level. Tavalai Fleet had brought them this ship too, an unarmed and unremarkable cargo hauler, like tens of thousands of others through tavalai space. Latched onto the side of Satamala’s midships, it had many times the cargo capacity of a shuttle, but lacked the mobility. Satamala was making a cargo run to Kamala, primarily on the excuse of picking up something they had in storage on the Chara floating city. It was nonsense, but State Department had as little access to Fleet facilities on Chara as Fleet did for State Department’s, and could not stop Fleet from visiting even if they wished to. Today, the lander’s big holds held a most unlikely cargo.

  Trace over-handed her way down corridors and past accommodation doors, then through a stairwell with no need of the stairs in zero-G. The cargo holds were compartmentalised, a necessary feature on any manoeuvre-capable hauler, to limit the damage if loads broke free under thrust. In the compartment below, Staff Sergeant Gideon Kono and Private Leo Terez were doing zero-G marksmanship drills in their suits. In the nearby ceiling, Private Zale had cracked his suit with an armoured fist still locked magnetically to the big, empty cargo claws, and was making adjustments to a troublesome servo.

  He saw Trace, and called on coms to Kono and Terez, “Guys, the Major’s here. Watch your movements.” And to Trace, “How was dinner, Major?”

  “Salty,” said Trace, as the two manoeuvring suits in the cargo space ceased, with final jets of white thrust. “How’s the suit?”

  “It’s fine,” said Zale. And, a little embarrassed, “Actually I could use a hand on this.” Because Zale was quite new, a replacement for Trace’s old friend ’T-bone’ Van who’d died at Heuron, and Trace always made a point with the youngsters of insisting they ask for help if they needed it. Because if his suit malfunctioned in a firefight after he’d been too proud or embarrassed to ask for help, people were going to die.

  “Ask Jess,” Trace told him. “She’s good with suits and she’s always free.”

  “Actually, Jess is up on Satamala with Bird doing their PT…”

  “Jess is always free,” Trace corrected him, and pushed off across the empty space.

  “Major,” came Kono’s amplified voice from within his armour suit as she passed him, “you sure you don’t want to cut Jess some slack? Argitori was rough, and she…”

  “Jess can pull guard duty on the kid like all the rest,” said Trace, catching a floor brace and swinging. “If she begs off, there’s a price for that. There were a lot more in Argitori than just Jess.” She regathered, and pushed off for the adjoining door in the cargo partition wall.

  That door was left open for now, in case people needed to move quickly. Trace swung through. In the far compartment, the big cargo nets were deployed down the hold sides, and the claws open on the floor to take the weight of non-existent crates. Floating against the near cargo net by the door was Corporal Rael, Command Squad’s Second Section commander. Trace floated to him about the edge of the cargo net, and found him with visor open, the sound of music playing in his helmet. Rael was one of the best-looking guys in Phoenix Company, if she ever noticed. Trace thought he should really be an officer, but despite serious smarts, he’d just never been able to see himself applying for officer candidature straight out of school. As Dale had drily informed her, not every working-class meat-head was so fanatically devoted to self-improvement as she’d been.

  “Hey Major,” he said as she approached. The music stopped.

  “Leave it on,” said Trace. She didn’t mind a few distractions on this guard duty, with music at least. She didn’t actually think the danger was that great. Yet. “Maybe the kid likes music.”

  The kid, disconcertingly, was playing with some light, steel objects the Phoenix techs had fabricated for him before they’d left Ponnai. The objects were basic geometric shapes — squares, triangles, decahedrons, with odd sides magnetised. If arranged correctly, they could be joined to make all kinds of larger, more complex structures. The kid found them endlessly fascinating, with the prolonged concentration that only a machine intelligence could manage.

  “I played him a bit, on speakers,” Rael admitted. “Didn’t react much.” Unlike the rifles on training-setting in the next hold, Rael’s Koshaim-20 was fully loaded. He left it relaxed, pointed away, but for this journey, the rule was that at least one fully-loaded Koshaim should accompany the kid at all times, just in case.

  “Maybe he’s just got better taste than you,” Trace offered. “I’ve got something for him, I’ll stay to the right of your line of fire.”

  “Yeah, and why not do that from over here?” Rael muttered, readying the rifle at little.

  “Coz I like making your life difficult,” said Trace, and pushed off toward the near cargo claw. Within, close enough to push off the big, steel fingertips with nimble legs, the kid floated amidst his toys, tumbling them about, fixing them together, experimenting with position and contact. Learning.

  Trace caught a big cargo claw and swung to a halt. “Hey kid,” she said, and the drysine drone turned on her with startling speed. The direct stare of those twin, offset eyes was disconcerting. The drone was nearly twice her size unarmored, and looked much bigger than that with all ten pairs of multi-articulated legs extended. The dexterity of those legs was incredible, even at this early stage of development. The little forward pair operated like human hands, but with many times the joints and exploratory antennae. The second, intermediate pair would join them, to create a four-handed grip on anything larger and more complex. Its body was in two main segments lik
e an insect, a big central abdomen containing all the leg mechanisms and associated drive train, and a rear thorax for powerplant and weapon attachments. They’d brought weapon pods aboard with it, but kept them very, very separate for the time being.

  Trace still recalled the shock of seeing a non-human sentient for the first time with her own eyes. There were none on Sugauli, so she’d had to wait until leaving the Kulina academy there, and arrival at one of the big Homeworld Stations, on her way down to Fleet Academy in Shiwon. On the station had been chah’nas, whom every human child had seen many times on viewscreens… but still, to see them in person had been another matter entirely, so tall, six-limbed and alien. And smart too, often sarcastic and dry, and a green human kid’s brain had taken a while to process it all, like the shock of first encounter with zero-G, and sorting up from down where neither existed anymore.

  But all of that shock of the strange and new was nothing compared to what confronted her here. This was technology so far beyond what any sentient organic species was capable of producing. A technology so advanced it was alive, in the most inhuman, inorganic, alarming and unpredictable way imaginable.

  “Here kid,” Trace said, reaching into a pocket. “I brought you something.” She produced a plastic cube, segmented into squares. One of the tavalai crew said it had been left aboard by a child passenger, and now gave it to her to give to Skah, when she saw him again. She didn’t think Skah would mind the newest kid on Phoenix borrowing it for a bit. “You see, these squares are different colours. And you turn them around like this,” and she abandoned her grip to demonstrate, “to try and make all the colours line up on one side of the cube, or the other. Here, you try.”

  She tossed the cube to the drone, who caught it with a precise flick of one main leg. The little claws grasped, with astonishing gentleness, and transferred it quickly to the small, inner arms. The motion sent him drifting, and the kid caught one of the cargo claws with several limbs, his main attention on the toy cube before those twin drysine eyes. The eyes and head moved rapidly back and forth, calculating furiously. The little limbs tried twisting the cube. The colours rearranged. Then again. Then again.