Then Dale saw it — a four-poster with turbofans, top-mounted guidance and an underside slung cannon, sidling down amongst the cars as a few pedestrians stared, used their recording devices, or scuttled away in fear. Gamesh employed cops to walk the beat and do bureaucracy, but in a free-city no one expected the cops to do more than the bare minimum. Despite the laissez-faire attitude to crime, there was a reason criminality never rose beyond a certain level in Gamesh, and that reason was the Gamesh Rapid Response Authority. They were largely automated, and highly lethal, and the thing about a city where the law failed to prosecute many criminals was that the law was equally reluctant to prosecute many Rapid Responsers who killed criminals in the line of duty. That most of the Rapid Responsers doing the shooting were non-sentient AI made the prospect of prosecution doubly difficult.
Many Gamesh citizens who got in the way of organised crime went missing, but those organised criminals who ‘disappeared’ too many citizens then also went missing, or got mown down by heavy weaponry in mysterious ambushes, sometimes along with their entire syndicates. The most successful organised criminals, Jokono’s intel briefings had confirmed, were those that learned to walk the line between too little criminality, and too much, because common knowledge said that when Rapid Response came looking for you, they didn’t bring handcuffs, just bullets.
“It’s getting closer,” Reddy said tersely. “If it’s got IR it’ll probably see that there are people in these two cars, and will wonder why we’re hiding.”
“Yeah, but it’s looking for the car we just left,” Kadi retorted. “It might just skate right by.”
Dale checked his rifle, wishing he had his familiar light rifle. Or a full armour suit and a Koshaim-20, but that would have been a curse in this small seat. “If it starts shooting on top of us,” he said, “then we’re screwed. It won’t miss at that range, and this car won’t stop shit.” He’d had to take them all through those basics before the mission, since operating on stations, none of them had ever gotten into firefights on the ground before. Basics like ‘don’t believe those stupid action movies you’re always watching — hiding behind a groundcar in a firefight is like hiding behind a box of tissues’. “Kadi, can you take control of it?”
“Um… it’s remotely piloted and on a hair-trigger,” said Kadi. “At this range it’s too dangerous — it takes a couple of seconds and if it fires first…”
“Yeah, got it,” said Dale. On his glasses, the drone was now within thirty meters, weapons and scanners swinging this way and that.
“I will distract it,” said Milek. “I will draw its attention, and Kadi will assume control while it pursues me.”
Twenty-five meters. “Good, go!” said Dale. “Once we’ve got control, we’ll pick you up.”
“I may not survive, you cannot wait for me.”
“Hey, you listen to me Mystery Boy,” Dale retorted. “You die needlessly, you endanger the mission. Now go.”
Milek gave him a puzzled stare with indigo eyes, then opened the door a little and slid out like water. Kadi fumbled with his directional hand-held whatever-it-was.
“Is that guy growing on you LT?” Reddy wondered. Dale didn’t reply. He’d fought sard before, and even some tavalai formations, that seemed convinced that success in battle was won more by dying than by winning. As an old Earth general had once said, you didn’t win wars by dying for your cause — you won them by making your enemy die for his.
Fifteen meters. From between some parked cars alongside, Dale glimpsed a faint movement, then saw something fly toward the drone. The object hit, with a faint metallic ping. The drone stopped, weapon swinging that way.
“Go Kadi,” said Dale, and Kadi aimed his hand-held through the windows and pressed something. The drone reacted as though stung, lurching backward and swinging side to side. Then re-aimed at where Milek had been, and opened fire. Car windows exploded and holes punched in doors. Then the shooting stopped.
“Got him!” Kadi said breathlessly. “He doesn’t like it, but I got him!”
“Good, let’s go.” Dale put the car on manual, reversed hard, then accelerated to the end of the parking row, slowing as he saw Milek running his way. And saw another drone ahead, approaching fast. “One more ahead!”
“I can’t do two at once!” Kadi yelped, as Dale reversed hard behind a support pillar. The drone opened fire, sending pieces of pillar concrete flying, then several loud smacks of bullets impacting the car. Then the first drone was firing on the second, sending it skittering sideways, then half-bouncing off a wall, turbines protected within thick nacelles. It fired back at the first drone, and suddenly there was a two-way crossfire tearing through the carpark, holes exploding in concrete and pillars, parked cars torn and glass flying. The drone ahead took more hits, then its ammunition detonated with a flash that sent wreckage hailing across the carpark, and set another ten cars on fire.
A door opened and Milek slid in. Dale accelerated, saw in his rearview that Forrest was directly behind. He left the carpark into sunlight, wove past slower vehicles, then got caught up behind two very slow cars on the narrow exit back onto the highway. He swore, and ducked from side to side, but there was no way through.
“Hang on LT,” said Kadi, aiming his directional controller. Suddenly the second of the two blocking cars accelerated, and hit the first from behind, pushing both forward at increasing speed. Both skidded aside as the off-ramp appeared, giving Dale a chance to gun the electric engine onto the highway, merging with and then overtaking traffic.
A glance in the rear mirror showed Reddy attending to Milek with concern. “Mystery Boy, you okay?”
“A few fragments,” said Milek’s translator, failing to capture the pain in his alien voice. “It is nothing.”
“Bit of shrapnel in the side and arm,” said Reddy. “If I can get this one bit out, the bleeding might stop.”
“I need no pain medication,” Milek snapped at Reddy’s attempt to administer one.
“Shut the fuck up and take it,” Dale told him, settling to match cruise speed with the surrounding traffic. “Woody, you guys okay?”
“We’re fine LT,” came Forrest’s voice from the car behind. “That was good work by you guys.”
“Joker,” said Dale, “what can you see?”
“They will trace the vehicle swap,” said Jokono with certainty. “I can see a number of aerial and ground units on their way to your last location. I can misdirect them, but they are beginning to run counter-infiltration programs through their network in an attempt to find me.”
Thinking about the kind of software construct Jokono must be running to actively infiltrate and play with Gamesh network security like this made Dale’s head hurt. Styx had built it, and Styx was a twenty five thousand year old sentient AI with an IQ beyond human ability to measure. That was enough for him. His primary concern was that Styx herself was not here to operate it.
“Right,” said Dale. “They’re going to trace two vehicles from the carpark, plus the third one we were in.” He hadn’t seen it leave, but obviously Jokono had sent it off through Gamesh’s highways to serve as a further decoy. “Forrest, you gotta split, but don’t go too far in case we need to rendezvous in a hurry. We just need to divide their attention for a while.”
“Got it, I’ll take the next exit left.”
“Lieutenant,” Jokono added, “I’m not at all certain that ground vehicles will give us the time window that the Major requires for her mission. Cars are too easy to trace, and I cannot block their attempts to find you indefinitely.”
“You want us to get out of the car?”
“I believe it is necessary. They will be on the look out for further vehicle swaps, and my attempts to steal new vehicles may inadvertently lead them to that spot in advance of your arrival.”
“Problem is, we don’t have parren robes with us,” Dale pointed out, steering them through a gentle bend as the highway left its trench and ran through an urban business district, tall buildings w
ith lots of glass. “There’s only a few hundred humans in Gamesh — we’ll attract attention, and we couldn’t hide our weapons.”
“I can send you robes from here. Or Tooganam can. The package will be waiting for you, we can arrange the rendezvous.”
“A rendezvous where?”
Tif sat in the enclosed room and fretted. She paced from wall to wall, and stretched her nervous limbs, and tried to control her tension. She’d always blamed kuhsi genetics for that, amongst Phoenix crew, but perhaps that was a lie. Perhaps it was just her, she thought. She’d have given anything to be more like the Major, able to wear her calm like a cloak, retaining focus and concentration in the face of great danger.
But then, the battle at the Tartarus had been perhaps the craziest fight anyone on Phoenix had ever been in. Fellow shuttle pilot Regan Jersey had been Tif’s wingman for that adventure, and she’d insisted it was easily the most intense action she’d ever seen, which included many fights over nearly ten years of the Triumvirate War. And Tif had done so well there, she’d impressed even Phoenix’s lead shuttle pilot, Lieutenant Hausler, and earned an officer’s rank where no other kuhsi had ever earned one before. No other non-human, in fact. Tif knew she functioned quite well when the dangerous things were actually happening. It was just the waiting, and the worrying, that drove her crazy.
Something buzzed past, and her ear flicked in reflex. The insects in her native Heshog Highlands were biters, and loved kuhsi ears, with the exposed veins beneath. The joke elsewhere in Koth had been that you could tell a highlander from the involuntary ear-flick at the slightest buzzing sound…
And Tif paused. Insects? On Chara? The carbon-dioxide atmosphere outside was heaven for plants, but would kill an insect nearly as fast as a human. And airtight habitats like Chara were swept regularly for insects, just as Phoenix underwent fumigation after every station call, just in case of stowaways.
Her gaze fell to the bare room’s single piece of furniture — a small desk. Upon it, a small insect crawled. Like a fly. And seemed to look at her, with all the animated enthusiasm of some children’s character in one of Skah’s kiddie movies.
Then her uplink crackled, and a voice spoke to her in Gharkhan — her second kuhsi tongue, but still far simpler for her than English. “Hello Tif. This is Styx.” Tif stared at the bug, trying to process what must be happening. “Please do not react, just take a seat and sit calmly. This room is being watched.”
Right, thought Tif, steadying herself. She took a seat at the table — technically the same furniture, as the two were welded together in the same base. “Those bugs have no transmitters,” she formulated in reply. “How are you speaking to me? And how is there a bug here? Did the Major bring it?”
“The Major has several of her own, but no. This one was on you. I apologise, you were not told.”
Tif couldn’t see how that mattered now. “Good. Fine.”
“It lost contact with you for a moment, and had to crawl through the ventilation to reach you. It has short range transmitters at difficult-to-monitor frequencies. Spacer Chenkov had established a network parasite program while he was aboard Chara, it helped to manipulate local systems. This bug gave me new access to that parasite program, and now I have patched in directly.”
Directly? Styx was on Phoenix, and Phoenix was docked at the Tsubarata. From Kamala to the Tsubarata was between one and one-point-five seconds light, depending on their relative orbital positions. Currently, they were quite close — more like one-point-one seconds for Styx’s transmissions to reach Chara. Possibly she was using Phoenix’s main transmitter, or perhaps she’d hijacked some other Tsubarata system… there were too many possibilities, when dealing with the many capabilities of Styx.
“You have direct access to Chara’s systems?” Tif formulated.
“I do,” said Styx. “It gives me enough capability to help you, but far from enough to do what needs to be done myself.”
“Help me do what?”
“Obviously you have been removed from the Major’s descender. This suggests a double-cross, perhaps a deliberate sabotage of the mission. We must correct this.”
“How?”
“There are several more heavy descenders on Chara. Two are fully flight-ready. You must steal one of them.”
Tif nearly laughed. It was all she could do to restrain her adrenaline-fuelled mirth. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“I am not. I suspect you have been removed from your descender because someone is going to abandon the Major, perhaps leave her trapped in the vault, perhaps intercept the descender on escape once she has acquired what she seeks. The possibilities are unknowable. With this reconnaissance bug, and my assistance, you will be able to move to a new descender. I can assist with pre-flight, and I can even be your co-pilot by remote for as long as atmospheric communications will allow. If you do not do this, it is almost certain that our mission will fail, and that the Major and her team will be either captured or killed. Second Lieutenant Tif. Will you comply?”
24
The descender hit ground with a thump and crash of heavy legs, and Trace bounced in her sling. The roar of thrusters ceased, and she unzipped and rolled from the sling with a practised fall, as Command Squad plus Chenkov and Aristan did the same. They moved fast without need of instruction, detaching the delivery canister from its wall hold, helping Chenkov with his less-easily portable gear, and checking the status of the hold-level airlock.
A coms uplink opened in Trace’s ear, location local. She opened it, and heard a synthetic, translator-voice. “Major Thakur, this is descender cockpit. We are down at the third vault pad. They are scanning us from secure door. No communications, as protocol.”
“Hello descender cockpit,” Trace replied, running through a final suit pre-ops check. “Is this Second Lieutenant Tif?” Because she could not hear the physical voice on coms, just the mechanical-sounding translator.
“Second Lieutenant Tif is doing co-pilot work. We have engine issue on descent, co-pilot must watch and fix, while pilot runs main profile. We anticipate that welcome arm will be extended soon, you prepare to deliver canister.”
“I understand, descender cockpit. We are preparing canister now, and establishing visual contact from main cargo airlock. I would like to speak to Second Lieutenant Tif, it will only take a moment.”
“Second Lieutenant Tif is not available. One mistake in this atmosphere, we miss ascent, we lose engine thrust, we do anything wrong, we die. Do job, Major.” The link ended with a click.
“Trouble?” Staff Sergeant Kono asked, watching with concern. They’d discussed this possibility — a double-cross, with Tif vulnerable and alone in the cockpit. But tavalai Fleet had recommended this operator, and his loyalties to tavalai Fleet in particular. Po’koo — and Tif guessed that was who she’d just been speaking to — was formerly of the kaal engineering corps, highly respected throughout the Spiral, and known for close links to kaal military, and thus to tavalai Fleet. His loyalty to the Fleet’s causes, and to tavalai military causes, was guaranteed, they’d said. Supposedly, that had included this mission, and Phoenix’s crew.
“Can’t do anything about it now,” Trace replied, picking her way past cargo rails toward the airlock. “And he’s right about this atmosphere — none of us can afford to waste a moment. We stay here too long, we’re crushed.”
At the airlock inner door, the marines had already placed the canister. Beside the doors, Corporal Rael was at the airlock controls, calling up a full-screen view of the scene outside. Peering over his shoulder, Trace saw that Kamala’s surface did look quite literally like hell. The light was dark red, almost scorched, as though by flame. The ceramic-surfaced pad was black, and shimmered with waves of heat that reminded Trace of the view across a bank of enormous cookers in the kitchen of a big Chinese restaurant. Not far away was the edge of the pad, and a great, black, circular door, set into blasted red stone. The door was laid back on a shallow angle, and was accompanied by a second, smalle
r door facing the pad. Those were ceramic alloys, to survive this constant temperature and pressure in working order… but even so, Trace suspected they’d have to be replaced every few years. God only knew how they’d constructed the landing pad.
“Yeah, I’m reading their scan,” said Rael, voice muffled within his lowered visor. The hold had oxygen and pressure now, but they’d kept faceplates down on descent, in case of a failure. “It’s laser-scan, we’ve no idea what’s passing back and forth. I hope Tif’s on the job up there.”
Trace refrained from biting her lip, thinking hard. She glanced at the canister, where Aristan was removing his excess outer clothing, stripping down to a skinsuit that revealed a lean and muscular alien physique. It was going to get hot in that can, even within the protection of the vault’s extension arm.
“Can you pan the view to the other pads for a bit?” she asked Rael. It had been a puzzle from the first plans they’d received — how many landing pads the vault actually had, and why they’d need more than one. Rael panned the camera, which was located inside the airlock and thus protected from the murderous atmosphere. And he paused on something nasty on the neighbouring pad.
“I guess that’s why they needed more than one pad,” he remarked. Trace peered at the image. On the pad was the melted black ruin of another descender, its hull caved and fractured in places where she guessed it had imploded. Then would follow a hideous fire, as everything combustible inside exploded — oxygen first, then synthetics… heck, even steel would burn if hot enough. Something of the ship’s inner-hull remained, like a blackened skeleton, made of graphite composite and harder than diamond. The rest was ceramic plating that would not melt… but all the internal metal was gone, melted into a blackened, multi-tonne blob on the pad. “Once they lose one, they can’t remove it. No bulldozer’s been invented for these conditions.”
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 37
