Kono gave her a ‘hold’ signal, and looked aside at Chenkov, somewhere out of sight past the doorway. He'd brought various items of Styx’s technology along, and had tested them beforehand on sample tavalai network tech provided by Makimakala. State Department networks should have been nearly impossible to hack, but Kono’s relayed hand signal told her that Chenkov was already in, and had deactivated the security cameras and other monitors on this level. He’d assured them that the HQ controllers would never notice. Trace was wary of Phoenix techs becoming overconfident with their magical new abilities, but Chenkov insisted that this level of technology was for Styx like playing a child’s game. Trace had seen a hacksaw drone struggling with a child’s game, and thought that familiarity and experience counted for a lot too, surely.
Kono gave her the ‘go’ signal, and Trace got up, and walked as silently as stealth mode would allow. She tried not to think of all the jokes that marines made about stealth mode, which in reality was no stealthier than walking on a steel floor with bells on your feet. One artistic marine in the war had even illustrated a series of popular cartoons called ‘Stealth Mode Sam’, about a marine trying to get away with stealthy things in his half-tonne armour suit, like sneaking out of a girl’s bedroom after her husband came home early, or trying to duck out the back of a restaurant to escape a terrible date, with disastrous results. Marines who’d tried to actually use stealth mode in combat found those cartoons funny to a degree that civilians usually failed to grasp, not understanding that the humour was just what happened when you applied hindsight to terror.
Trace peered into the cargo access arm, rows of big rubber wheels on the floor where pallets would roll, its terminal-end opening into a wide warehouse with even more pallets, with an opposite side-access allowing personnel from the control terminal to take that shortcut. She waved to Kono behind, and he came as quietly as possible, then the others, single file. The kid had a little trouble squeezing his wide legs through the doorway, forcing him into a dainty tiptoe. When Zale arrived, she left before him, and let him guard their rear on the way in.
The descender’s main cargo holds were barely half the size of the lander they’d arrived on, squeezed between an extra-thick, double-layered hull, and a heavy coolant system. Instead of a quad-partition, the descender only had two holds. Secured to the wall of the central partition, amidst the securing frames for larger cargoes, was a cylindrical canister. Aristan, in his light environment suit and hooded jacket, was now examining it.
“Going to be a tight squeeze,” Kono observed. That canister was the entire reason for this mission. A Fleet descender to the vault would send the empty canister inside, wait until it passed the vault’s security checks, had the requested item deposited inside, and was then returned. Canisters had no lifesupport, and were certainly not designed to hold people, yet Aristan was going to be locked inside this one while it passed through the vault’s doors.
“There is enough space for perhaps twenty minutes of air,” Aristan observed.
“Doesn’t look like ten minutes,” said Rael, peering inside. “Looks tough though. This is all ceramics, temperature and pressure resistant, should stay cool.”
“Twenty minutes at a lowered rate of respiration,” Aristan insisted. Servos whined as the descender’s outer cargo doors began to close. “Transfer does not take longer than ten minutes.”
“I always bet on them taking longer than advertised,” said Trace. “You will have to hold your breath.”
“So long as my total enclosed period does not exceed forty minutes, there is no danger,” the parren said confidently.
“You could take something to read,” Kumar suggested.
Aristan actually smiled. “Perhaps.”
The outer doors closed with a thump and clang of locking mechanisms. Then came a hiss, as the Kamala atmosphere was sucked through the hold filters, with oxygen and nitrogen pumped in. Trace’s suit readout registered O2 increase of a fractional percent. A hold this large wasn’t going to be breathable for a while.
Between the big arms of the cargo floor supports, Rolonde and Terez were checking out the rigging on a number of large-sized acceleration slings. There were no seating posts in most cargo holds, so these slings would be the only thing keeping them from bouncing off the walls when the flight got bumpy. All the slings were kaal-sized, which made sense on a kaal-made descender, where kaal crew would often ride a descent down in cargo in case the coolant systems started overloading, or the airlocks needed manual help — the mission briefing had alerted them to all these possibilities. It also meant that the slings were going to fit marines in armour without breaking, in a happy coincidence of size-requirements.
Behind facemask and goggles, Chenkov sat against the partition wall beside his equipment bag, AR glasses under the goggles and manipulating icons in the air before him. Trace took a knee beside him.
“Chenk, anything from the cockpit?”
“No Major, I don’t have access to any ship system. I think that’s probably smart, State Department could monitor all of it.” Trace nodded, hoping Tif had things in good order up there. Surely if there was an issue, she’d come down in person to talk to them. And tavalai Fleet themselves had vouched for the descender company and its leader and pilot, the kaal Po’koo. But there was nothing she could do about it now anyway. “Major, are you sure I won’t need a weapon in the vault?”
He sounded anxious, which was understandable. Assaulting the vault was going to be quite a thing for marines, let alone for a Phoenix spacer tech. “You won’t have time for a weapon,” Trace told him. “You’ll need all your attention on your gear. I’ll need a constant feed of whatever you can tell me, and we’ll have security systems trying to lock us down — I want a full-time code breaker doing only that.”
“Yes Major.”
She gave a gentle touch at his shoulder, careful in her armour. “Don’t worry Chenk, if there’s one thing Command Squad have a lot of experience at, it’s keeping spacers safe in ground combat. You’re the most important person here.”
Chenkov grinned nervously, and glanced at Aristan, now standing in the canister as he examined its dimensions. “What about him?”
“Useful and important are two different things,” Trace said blandly. “You have everything you need?”
“Yes Major. Snug as a bug.”
“Good, we’ll get your sling ready, we should be leaving in less than twenty. Just keep your eyes on the screens.”
She got up and headed for the slings, thankful that of the two most-recommended of Phoenix’s techs for this mission, she’d got the nice one.
For once, Erik was too preoccupied and furious to be bothered feeling traumatised in the aftermath of almost being killed. He paced in the emergency ward between shouting matches with Tsubarata officialdom, and kept an eye on Private Ito, who sat on his bunk in defiance of instructions to lie down, his arm wrapped in nano-solution bandage that Doc Suelo informed them on uplink from Phoenix would probably be fine used on a human. But State Department had ordered Phoenix access to the Tsubarata sealed, so neither Suelo nor one of his corpsmen could come and check on Ito to be sure, nor could Ito return to Phoenix, as all of Erik’s team were now confined to this otherwise-empty medbay.
“State Department tried to assassinate us!” Erik shouted at the next tavalai bureaucrat to come and reason with them. Tsubarata officialdom seemed alarmed at events, and were surely skeptical of State Department themselves, given events. If ever there was a time when shouting at tavalai might achieve something, it was now. “I don’t care that it was parren doing the shooting — parren saw us with Aristan and there’s no shortage of parren who’d like to kill Aristan’s friends if State Department arranges the opportunity! So why is it us who are locked up, and not every fucking State Department administrator on this facility?”
Beyond the opening and closing doors to the medbay, Erik could hear many shouting voices in the hallway. There were tavalai guards on that door, and more a
t the entrance to this particular ward, but Erik thought that this time, they might be present as much to protect the humans as in fear of them. Clearly the entire Tsubarata was in uproar. Erik did not know how many other individuals had been hit in the crossfire, but he thought quite a few. And if Styx hadn’t spotted the ambush as early as she had, it would have been most of the humans as well.
“I can assure you we are looking into all eventualities,” the tavalai said via translator speaker, with a calming gesture of two webbed hands. Erik thought it an irony of the situation that the only tavalai who spoke English here were all their enemies. These Tsubarata bureaucrats might speak other alien tongues, but with humanity missing from these parts for a millennia, English had not been anyone’s priority for a long time.
“State Department did not want me to give that speech!” Erik laid it out for the bureaucrat, just in case it wasn’t crystal clear already. “They thought the speech was going to dig up some old dirt on them, and lay it out in front of all tavalai, and tavalai Fleet in particular, and destabilise their entire arrangement here.”
The tavalai bureaucrat blinked. “Was it?”
“Well now you may never know!” Erik retorted.
They were interrupted by several sulik, clad in the odd collar and tunic of their kind that embraced the base of long necks, and headwear with high-tech eyepieces. These approached in that half-flowing, half-jittery manner of their kind, like big, nervous birds, their little hands and skinny arms fidgeting with IDs and credentials, and a bound up bit of cloth. They skittered past Erik with small, muttered screeches and cackling that the translators were somehow not catching.
“Sulik have many languages the translators are not equipped for,” the tavalai explained. “These must be lower functionaries — I apologise, I do not know how they were allowed in.”
The sulik headed for Private Ito’s bed, and Gunnery Sergeant Brice stepped coolly before them, as the tavalai beckoned to the security guards. “No wait,” said Erik, as the sulik ignored Ito and Brice, and went instead to Private Cruze, seated on the end of a bunk beside Lieutenant Alomaim. “It’s okay.”
The sulik made a small bobbing gesture, and presented Cruze with the bound cloth. It unfolded to make a sulik collar, with a gemstone button at the front, and silken decoration tracing through the fabric with exquisite detail. Cruze looked it over, puzzled.
“A gift,” said the tavalai with surprise. “The collar denotes an informal rank. It makes one an honorary sulik, with privileges in sulik society. Common enough among sulik, but very rare to be granted to aliens.”
Of course, Erik thought as he realised. “Ambassador Tua, everyone saw him rescued?”
“The shooting was captured on camera,” the tavalai confirmed. “Tsubarata sulik saw your Private risk his life to save their ambassador. Soon all sulik will see, when the vision reaches their worlds.”
“Hey, we asked after him before!” Cruze called. “No one could tell us anything, is he okay?”
“I believe he lives,” said the tavalai. “That is all I know. I will have you informed if his condition changes, so be thankful if you do not hear more.”
“Are you supposed to put that on?” Alomaim asked, looking curiously at the collar. He gestured to the sulik, asking the question with his hands. There followed much bobbing and cackling, and general agreement. The neck hole was big enough that Cruze simply placed it over his head, and let it rest upon his shoulders, button at his collar.
“Looks good, Fuzz,” said Ito from his bed.
Cruze looked very pleased. “Thanks Scratchy.” And stood, extending his hand to the sulik. “Here, human-style. Like this, it’s called a hand-shake. Thank you.”
The sulik complied, awkwardly, and with more bobbing, cackling and screeching, backed away and retreated from the ward. Erik came to take a closer look at the collar. “Good job, Private,” he said. “Hero of the sulik. You know, I don’t think humanity’s ever had formal relations with the sulik — they’re too close to the tavalai, we never had a chance. Which could make what you did the single most important event in human-sulik relations. Ever.”
“I just hope the poor guy’s okay,” said Cruze, gazing down at his prize. “I mean, they’re real weird, but Tua seems like a nice guy.”
“Captain,” came Styx’s voice on coms. “I have received a troubling transmission from Ensign Uno. It is my first communication with him since I assisted him in the infiltration of State Department Head Quarters, since then a direct line of communications has been too hazardous. His message indicated that an identification request was received from Chara, and an affirmative reply was sent. Hiro says that State Department was unaware of his infiltration at the time, and remains unaware that this message was either received or replied to.”
Erik exhaled hard in relief, and gave a little clenched fist at his marines. It seemed that Styx was sharing this transmission with them also, because they replied in kind, though not too obviously, given the observation here. Again the medbay doors opened, and more tavalai marched in. “So why is the message troubling, Styx?” Erik formulated in silent reply.
“Captain Debogande!” called the new tavalai arrival, striding into the room. It was Jelidanatagani — Erik was becoming that much better at identifying tavalai on sight, he was nearly certain of it. With her were four big security guards — unarmed, Erik was pleased to see. Only the Tsubarata guards were allowed weapons around the humans. Clearly some in the Tsubarata shared Erik’s assessment of responsibility for the attack. “We have your man. Your infiltrator, the one we have registered on file as Ensign Uno. He was captured sneaking about our Head Quarters, and we are currently examining our systems to see what he was successful in stealing, little enough chance humans would have of that, given your pathetic indigenous systems technology.”
“What is she doing here?” Erik asked the senior Tsubarata guard, strolling to the new arrival with a hostile swagger to hide his dismay. He did not need to hear the last part of Styx’s message — he could guess. “How does she just get to walk in and out of here whenever she likes, given she probably gave the assassination order herself?”
“She does not have that authority,” the tavalai said cautiously, as several other guards shifted position. “She should leave, by order of Tsubarata Central.”
“I certainly do have that authority!” Jeli retorted. “By virtue of the statutes that place State Department in central authority to all alien relations! And I can tell, you Captain Debogande…”
“If she has no authority to be here,” Erik demanded of the guards, “then make her leave, or I will!”
“…that your intruder will be questioned by our best interrogators!” Jeli continued over his interruption. “I can assure you that the soft restrictions on those interrogations do not apply to State Department methods where State Department secrets are concerned! We will find out exactly what you’re up to, in your games with our traitors in Fleet, and then…”
Erik punched her in the jaw. She dropped hard, and then the State Department guards leaped on him, and his marines on the guards, and then it was on, bodies rolling and fists flying. Tavalai security at close range were powerful, but Erik was no lightweight and managed to flip one into a bunk frame, and land a good blow before another crashed into him. That one rolled and pinned him with augmented strength, but then Alomaim landed on that one’s back, applying full leverage to twist an arm, with a crunch as the tavalai’s shoulder separated.
Erik scrambled up, found Sergeant Brice struggling in the grip of a larger tavalai and swung at that guard’s head with a crunch that hurt his knuckles, and gave Brice the opening she needed to flip her opponent, lock out his arm and kick him in the jaw until he stopped moving.
And then the Tsubarata security were stepping in, not striking or defending their fellow tavalai, but holding their weapons cross-wise in neutrality, and gesturing the humans to move back before they started using the pointy end. “Back!” Erik shouted. “That’s eno
ugh, everyone back!” As Lieutenant Alomaim echoed his words, for anyone hard of hearing.
The marines all moved back, leaving two of the four guards unconscious on the ground, one now groaning as he slowly woke, and the third struggling with his dislocated shoulder. Add to that the unconscious Ambassador Jeli, and it left only one of the five State Department visitors still in any shape to walk out unassisted. The Tsubarata guards looked warily impressed.
Of the humans, Brice had a sore rib that Erik suspected might be broken, given she was even indicating it. Alomaim had a bloody nose, but the rest was all scrapes and bruises. Erik handed Alomaim a handkerchief for his nose. Alomaim repressed a grin, a rare expression for him, and gave Erik his own handkerchief, pointing to Erik’s left eye. Erik felt, and sure enough there was swelling from eyebrow to temple, and some blood. He hadn’t even noticed, just a dull throbbing.
“Sir, you look like a marine,” said Alomaim with appreciation.
“You mean I’m a mess,” said Erik, looking over his formerly-perfect dress uniform, stained with Tua’s blood, and now with drops of his own.
“Yes sir.”
“Captain hit a girl,” Cruze observed. Erik noted he’d had the presence of mind to remove his new gift before joining the fight, and so much for a marine’s affectation of disinterest in shiny things.
“That one doesn’t count,” Erik snorted. “The Major might give me a lecture about holding my temper, though.”
“The Major will be fucking thrilled,” Brice corrected, gingerly feeling her ribs. No more Mr Nice Guy, she meant. Erik thought she might be right.
More tavalai were entering, somewhat alarmed but with no levelled weapons, so Erik guessed the local guards had told everyone the score. Yet another senior bureaucrat approached, a little more cautiously than the others. “What happened?” she asked.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 35
