“It’s centrally located on the pad,” Trace observed. “So it landed okay, the failure happened afterward. And I bet the vault can facilitate a failure from inside, if they want.”
“Gee thanks, Major,” said Rael. “Very cheerful.” She could feel the tension in their voices, and see it on their faces, now they had a visual of what lay outside. Space was not a hospitable environment for humans, but compared to the surface of Kamala, pure vacuum seemed like paradise. The sheer oppression of it weighed upon them all, and Trace thought it no wonder that sard had been chosen to man the vault security. She doubted any other species could tolerate it.
Trace stepped to the canister, and Aristan, and refrained from asking if he was ready. It was a pointless question to someone like Aristan. And probably to someone like her, also. Aristan’s only possession was a steel blade in an ebony-black sheath. “We will seal the canister at the last possible moment,” she told him, with her suit speaker set to translate. “You should begin your meditation now, so that you consume the minimum oxygen for the entirety of your trip.”
“Yes,” her earpiece translated his reply. He could not take anything mechanical into the canister with him, lest the vault security systems detect it on the way in. His large, indigo eyes were utterly calm, with half-lidded contempt for the peril to come. Trace could not help but feel concern for him, and found that odd, given that she’d truly like him dead. But then, to be Kulina, and a Major on the UFS Phoenix, was to be engulfed in very odd things, of late.
“Do you recall my instruction on the weakpoints of sard?” Parren had not fought sard as recently as humans, making human marines the more reliable experts on the matter.
“Lower torso and hip,” Aristan said calmly. “Upper arm, shoulder, neck. Avoid the forearms, they have serrated edges and armour that may capture a sword. Strike the lower back from behind, not the upper, which has natural armour.”
“Good,” said Trace. “Those manning the security atrium will not be combat armoured, but may be environment-suited. For a true blade, it will not matter. Eliminate the guards, close and lock the access doors behind, and facilitate Command Squad’s entry. Simple.”
A faint, dry smile from Aristan. “Simple,” he echoed. After having barely breathed in the past half-hour, no one added. Aristan insisted it was possible, and Doc Suelo had agreed that parren physiology made it possible, though barely. Trace did not like Aristan, but she did not suspect him of being a braggart or a liar. She had, however, seen many apparently capable people, who were neither braggarts nor liars, fail spectacularly from underestimating the scale of the challenge ahead, or from overestimating their own ability to meet it.
“The extension arm is coming out,” Rael announced from the viewer. “It’s not moving fast, I’d guess we might have five minutes.”
“Let’s go,” said Aristan in English — an odd accent from those lips, and several of the marines actually smiled. He sat on the edge of the canister, pulled up his knees in advance of sitting, as there was not enough room to do it once inside, then slid down into the tight space. Once in, Terez handed the sword in after him.
“Okay,” Kono told him. “Aristan, we’ll give it another two minutes, then we’ll start sealing you in. Aristan?” Aristan made no reply, gazing sightlessly at the blank canister-side before him, barely seeming to breathe.
“He’s meditating,” said Trace. “He can’t respond, just do it when you have to.”
Tif could not bear the waiting. But with the confined room monitored by cameras, she could not pace, either… or rather, she feared that if she did, something in her urgency would give the game away.
“Prepare,” said Styx in her ear. “I believe I have found a path. You will need to do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” The smart people on Phoenix who understood such things called Styx a ‘super sentience’. If anyone could pull this off, Styx could. Tif repeated that over in her head a few times, willing herself to believe it.
“If you can acquire a weapon along the way, you must do so. And you must use it.”
“I’m not good with weapons,” Tif retorted. “My claws are better.” Besides, outside of a combat shuttle cockpit, she’d never before killed anything bigger than a rudok. Those, she’d roasted, above a cooking fire at the family home in Heshog.
“Kuhsi claws are effective weapons,” Styx agreed. Tif wondered if she truly understood the nature of ‘fear’. Or the moral reluctance to kill. “My bug has acquired new pathways. You will depart in just a moment.”
“If you hack these systems on Chara yourself,” Tif formulated as it occurred to her, “then… isn’t there a chance that they’ll realise what’s doing it? We’re trying to keep you hidden, aren’t we? And these State Department systems must be very advanced?”
“I haven’t the time to update you on other recent events,” Styx replied in that cool, ever-calm way of hers, “but let us say that the situation has progressed to the point where that may be inevitable. We will hope that our prize is worth that price.”
Tif blinked. “You know what’s happening elsewhere? Is it going well?”
“Thus far, yes,” said Styx. “But things can change. Ready yourself, I am monitoring corridors for tavalai movement. I will attempt to guide you through with minimal confrontation. Now.”
The door opened with a hum. Tif got up and walked through it. “Left,” said Styx. “Walk silently, there are guards. Pause at this corridor.” Tif paused, wondering whether to press herself to the wall, or just stand there. If some random bureaucrat saw her walking, they might just assume she had the right to be there. But if she was acting suspiciously, she would only draw attention to herself. “Cross quickly.”
Tif did, and continued down the bland steel corridor. There was a timelag between the Tsubarata and Kamala of zero-point-seven seconds, which Styx must have been somehow calculating ahead for. She wondered if Styx was hacked into all of the local cameras and systems, and could see every corridor, or just a few. But questions were pointless — she was in Styx’s hands, and had no choice but to trust her abilities.
“You have your breather still with you,” Styx reminded her. “Put it on.” Tif pulled the facemask from her thigh pocket — she had not been technically under arrest, and authorities in environments that required breathers rarely confiscated them, as the safety culture always dictated that too many breathers was preferable to not enough. The mask’s rubber seal fit onto her face and jaw — an imperfect seal, her fur still made a slight leak, despite Phoenix Engineering’s scans and custom machining to get the tightest fit to what humans found an unfamiliar face.
She paused at a corridor intersection, hearing tavalai voices ahead, and flattened herself to a wall, heart hammering. “You are located still in the landing pad complex,” Styx explained patiently. Tif’s ear flicked, involuntarily, as something buzzed past her ear, heading around the corner. “You must transition to the next building complex. It is on the neighbouring Chara platform, across the flexible hinges. There are no pressurised access tubes across platforms, given how they flex, so you must pass through an airlock and across an overbridge.”
“It’s exposed!” Tif retorted. “I’ll be seen!”
“There are no external observation decks, it is unlikely. These facilities are under-manned. I am acquiring control of an airlock. You must ascend one level. The stairwell, ahead on your left.”
Tif glanced quickly around the corner, and saw the steel staircase in its upward shaft. The tavalai voices ahead were close — perhaps coming from a room with an open door. She swore beneath her breath, and dashed for the stairwell, and climbed.
On the next level she peered about, and saw the big airlock down the end of the passage. About it was an open room, and she crept to the passage corner, and peered in. It was an airlock control room, much the same in pressurised habitats anywhere, with environment suits in general-access lockers on one wall, and airlock c
ontrols on the wall beside the doors. Those controls were flashing, and even now the outer door opened to greet her. Tif knew all the tales of hacksaws taking remote control of technology immediately before them, but she’d never heard it speculated that they could do it real-time from neighbouring planetoids. And suddenly the fear of it flashed through her adrenaline-charged mind — that here were they all, the entire crew of Phoenix, being guided through this escapade by a hacksaw queen, who saw success in this mission as the salvation of her entire, genocidal race. What in all the mad fates were they doing, risking their lives for this… thing, that in its previous incarnation had only lived to exterminate organic beings like her?
She thrust it from her mind, and ran silently to the airlock, crouching low to keep out of sight beneath the transparent sides as the outer door closed behind. She adjusted her mask feed as air hissed from vents about her, replaced by the CO2 from outside, and took some longer gasps of comfortingly cold oxygen. Her ears barely popped as the outer doors opened — a cool breeze blew in, almost comforting, and deceptive in its familiarity.
Tif edged out the door and peered about. This was indeed a smallish tower complex, right on the edge of one of Chara’s many platforms. Below, an enormous sealed hinge flexed and groaned. To the left and across, the next platform along was one enormous airtank, contained within a mass of regulator pipes and supporting framework, like a giant balloon trapped in a snare of industrial steel. Immediately opposite, a flexible walkway stretched like one of the ropeway bridges she recalled from her home in Heshog, spanning canyons in hunting grounds shared between her clan and several neighbours. This one had steel cables for supports instead of rope, and steel planks instead of wood, and led directly across the thirty-meter drop below to a similar support-tower on the far side.
“I have primed the airlock on the opposite tower,” Styx informed her. “I cannot monitor all windows, there is a chance you may be spotted, but you must go now.”
“And what if I am spotted?” Tif retorted.
“The descender is in pre-flight preparations behind this tower. I can get you in, and I can be your co-pilot for as much of the descent as time-lag and atmospheric conditions will allow. I calculate that State Department will not shoot you down, though they have that capability — this descender is on its way back from a vault visit just ten hours ago, and its cargo is marked ‘highest priority’.”
Tif’s eyes widened. She hadn’t even thought of being shot down. Something else occurred to her. “How do you know where to go? Vault coordinates are secret, that’s the whole point!”
“This descender’s navcomp has been wiped, but my constructs infiltrated the Major’s descender when it received its data…”
“Chara’s position’s changed since then!” Tif cut her off. “The coordinates change, you can’t just hope to get close and then spot it from a distance — you can’t see anything in that atmosphere!”
“I can get you close enough.”
“How?”
“There is no time for this argument,” said Styx, her voice betraying a clear impatience. Probably that was calculated for effect as well. “In this mission, I am the most personally-invested member of Phoenix’s crew, and I will not allow you to fail. But you must go now!”
Tif took a deep breath, and a final glance about. Then she moved, deciding on a brisk walk that someone casually glancing from a window might mistake for regular crew, not seeing that she was kuhsi from a distance. The suspension bridge swung and vibrated in the carbon-dioxide wind, and with the constant motion and flexing of Chara itself. She could sense its movement here, the rise and fall of air currents, in a way that was lost while indoors. Tif had always loved to fly, and the pilot in her soul would have loved it here, under other circumstances. And she thought that it must be quite something, when Chara passed through one of Kamala’s storms, and the blanket of white below was lit with lightning, and the platforms all heaving with updrafts.
“The far airlock has been overridden,” Styx said then with alarm. “Someone is entering, these manual controls will override my own. You must evade.”
Evade? Tif stared at the airlock ahead, and saw two air-masked tavalai inside. One was staring out at her, and pointing. She’d been found.
She could not turn back, she could not go forward. Her eyes found a platform she’d noted earlier — on the right and lower down, a good two floors below her current level. In regular gravity, the jump would be suicidal, but Kamala had only half of what kuhsi knew as 1-G, and she fancied herself somewhat expert at judging trajectories in a three-dimensional space. Before she could think again, she ran straight at the airlocked tavalai, one of whom was shouting something inaudible at the other, waving for the outer door to be cycled. In his hand was a pistol.
Tif ran as close as she dared, then climbed over the railing, and took a moment to contemplate the sheer drop below. The platform was only six meters below, and three meters away. In this gravity, the force would not hurt worse than a three-meter drop… but if she missed, it was a full twenty meters to the bottom, with jagged edges of Chara platform to bounce off, having hit them at something approaching Kamala terminal velocity…
The outer airlock on her left began to open. Tif jumped, and sailed outward, slowly picking up speed. The platform came at her plenty fast as she reached it, and rolled hard into the railing.
“Follow this walkway,” said Styx, evidently having followed events precisely. “It leads to another airlock, I can get you inside from there.”
Tif hurdled the locked gate to the engineering walkway beyond, a narrow thing with only a light railing between it and the downward plunge. A shot rang out behind as she rounded the corner, and found cover from the walkway behind. The tavalai from the airlock had fired at her, she realised, with fear and indignation. She ran the walkway past several thick windows, and saw the smaller, service airlock ahead, outer door already open and waiting for her. Something smacked a steel wall on her left, followed just after by the sound of a rifle shot from across the space to the tower she’d come from. Tif did not stop to look, and ducked into the airlock to huddle against a thick door frame.
“Tavalai are poor shots,” Styx assured her as the outer doors closed. The pumps hissed, and Tif saw a big, red button marked with tavalai script — that would be the ‘emergency entry’ button, and she hit it, the inner doors opening with a siren wail as CO2 concentration flooded the room beyond.
This room was an engineering space, with lockers for environment suits and breathers, spare air tanks with refill hoses, and a big, open equipment bay filled with tools that anyone from Phoenix Engineering would have recognised. A tavalai engineer was emerging from that bay, breather pressed over his mouth and coming to investigate the sirens… and stopped, frozen at the sight of Tif. Tif snarled, teeth bared and claws out, and the engineer retreated without challenge — just a tech, unarmed and uninterested in tackling runaway kuhsi.
“Go straight,” Styx commanded, “then the third passage on the right and take the stairwell up.”
Tif ran, pulling her claws in with effort, which forced the fingers straight until the segments slotted back and she could bend them again and remove her mask without the risk of slicing her own face. The mask was a problem, on the off-chance she did actually have to bite someone.
She ran the corridor, heard some shouting in Togiri, then found the stairwell and sprang lightly up it… and straight into a tavalai coming down the other way. She slid aside, grabbing the much bigger tavalai and yanking him onward with his own momentum, sending him stumbling and crashing as she spun and kept climbing three steps at a time.
“This level,” said Styx, and she left the stairs, bounced off a wall and ran straight into an oncoming tavalai who grabbed at her. Tif slashed, felt claws tear and the tavalai let her go with a yell, then a shot and more yells from behind. “Right,” said Styx, as calm as a navigator in an over-speeding vehicle, and Tif saw the hall ahead opening into the main room of a descender�
��s access tube, with airlock and docking controls, and a number of tavalai with weapons drawn, some of them levelled.
Styx had gotten her killed, was her first thought, and she nearly stopped… but one of the tavalai yelled and clutched at his arm, then swatted at something in the air, distracting others. Another clutched at his neck, as the first fell to frothing and convulsing on the deck, and the others split, staring about in horror for the invisible thing that struck down their comrades.
Tif sprinted, and both closed airlock doors opened on cue, revealing the access passage to the huge descender on the pad beyond. One tavalai recalled her in time to turn his gun on her, but she diverted to hit him first, dislodging the weapon before ducking down the passage, doors closing behind her, blocking any shot at her back.
“Get to the cockpit,” said Styx. “The crew are not yet aboard, just some Chara workers. I will convince them to get off by flushing the environmentals.”
Tif had barely entered the descender before a pair of engineering crew blocked her way, trying to get off. Tif snarled, claws extended, and was nearly astonished that both froze and moved aside, in obvious fear. One of her claws, she noticed, had snared a piece of clothing, and a little blood, from the previous tavalai she’d hit. Again something buzzed past her ear, toward the tavalai.
“Don’t kill them!” she told Styx, and edged past, then gestured the engineers off, and out the way she’d come.
“Your compassion endangers the mission,” Styx observed as they ran off. Tif had no doubt she’d have killed the engineers anyway if they hadn’t left immediately, and pulled her mask from her thigh pocket once more as she found the central access and climbed to the cockpit.
“It’s not necessary,” she said as she scampered up the ladder. And added, “If you flush the ship with CO2, it’s not going to scare engineers with facemasks.”
“This ship’s air coolant filters contain poisonous chemicals when flushed,” Styx replied. “They will leave.”
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 38
