Trace guarded the left forward doors as Kono and Terez pressed ahead, but it was the right-rear that abruptly blew up as Rael and Rolonde came past it. And then things were exploding and bullets ripping back and forth, sard pressing through the detonated doorway with the force of an organised counter-attack, and Trace put fire into the smoke and chaos, but aimed high for fear of hitting Rael and Rolonde who were on the floor in that mess…
And then there were chainguns roaring, as a multi-legged shape scuttled low and sideways about the sard breach, concentrating fire and cutting exposed sard armour to ribbons. Several sard found immediate cover behind heavy equipment, and the kid ceased fire to leap on them with terrifying dexterity, then a hum-and-flash of vibrato-edged limbs that Trace had nearly forgotten he possessed, and bits of sard armour and occupant were flying in different directions.
More sard came through behind him, but now Rolonde was up and shooting with her customary accuracy, taking two with two shots and forcing a third to cover. “Get back kid!” she yelled at him, put a grenade on the covering sard as the kid did that, and someone else put a missile through the breached doors, for a huge fireball result.
Kumar checked on Rael, who was on one knee with suit problems, while Rolonde and the kid switched facings once more with smooth coordination, each guarding a direction. Trace checked her suit readouts once more — the auto-safeties were still on the kid’s weapons, she saw. But here he was, firing. She could have kicked herself. Whatever else he was, the kid was a hacksaw drone, equipped by Styx herself for this mission. He was going to fire his guns when he wanted to fire his guns, uplink safety or no uplink safety.
“Cocky, report,” Trace demanded.
“I’m okay Major,” said Rael. “Suit’s overheated, gyros got rattled, give me ten seconds to cool.”
They didn’t have ten seconds — if Trace knew anything about fighting sard, you couldn’t give them time to get organised. Despite all her advantages against them, they still massively outnumbered her unit, and this was their home terrain. Already their defences were starting to solidify in small patches, and when those patches got larger, there’d be trouble. The one saving grace was that they didn’t seem to have weapons heavier than grenades, their commanders probably not wanting the vault trashed in its defence.
“Major!” came Chenkov’s voice in her ear, full of fear and alarm. “Major, I think… I mean I can see…”
“Spacer Chenkov,” Trace replied. “Calm down and talk to me.”
“Major,” came Aristan’s cool, translator-voice in Chenkov’s place. “Our descender is leaving. Their engines are firing up and they are lifting from the pad. We’re being abandoned.”
Somehow, Trace was not entirely surprised. It hadn’t felt right, the whole way down — Tif not talking to them, the excuses that kept her from coms. Hell of a time to realise earlier suspicions, she thought… but there really hadn’t been a choice, the plan had relied on everything going right to this point so that things like this wouldn’t happen. If the descender crew had betrayed them, then the problem lay in a portion of the mission beyond her ability to fix.
“Tif is leaving?” Kumar said in disbelief.
“I’m not sure she’s even aboard,” said Trace. “Something’s screwed up, we can’t fix it now.” She checked her weapon, then ran diagnostic on her suit, taking a knee to let the servos rest. “It changes nothing, we’re not far out now, we breach the last layer and get to the vault proper.”
“It changes something,” Kono offered, with typically dry deadpan. “How we gonna get out?”
“No idea, not our problem,” said Trace. “It’s not our part of the mission, someone else will fix it.”
“That was the only descender,” Kono pressed. “If we could set up a coms station…”
“The vault has no coms,” Trace reminded him, getting up as her diagnostic came back green-but-unhappy. “The only coms just flew off in the descender, and the emergency ascent beacon will bring State Department down on our heads. Phoenix and Styx will figure something out. Let’s go.”
Kono repeated her order, as Rael regained his feet. From his tone it was clear he thought she was ordering them on to their deaths, but Staff Sergeant Kono was used to that by now.
28
Petty Officer Kadi was in and out of consciousness by the time Tooganam’s small convoy of vehicles pulled into the narrow, underworld streets of his neighbourhood. Tooganam pulled the car up on a verge, scattering a few pedestrians, and flung open the doors.
“This isn’t your apartment!” Dale snarled from the shotgun seat. “Where the hell are you taking him?”
“Local healer,” his translator gave Tooganam’s reply, as the old tavalai stomped around the car and waved several tavalai from a trailing vehicle up to fetch Kadi. Reddy let him go reluctantly, having further dressed the bullet wound in the rear seat, through tunnels from the maglev station, expecting an ambush at any moment that hadn’t come. A big tavalai took Kadi carefully in his arms, then into a doorway and up narrow stairs as other tavalai came out of eateries and ground-level apartments to watch. More tavalai from the car convoy shouted to them, and Dale’s translator picked up some mention of ‘threats’ and ‘preparation’, setting off a general commotion.
Dale came up the stairs behind Kadi, and into an apartment whose door was already held open. Inside, a medical bed was waiting, surrounded by high-tech tavalai surgical gear, all flashing displays and sensors, and Dale blinked about as several more tavalai in decontaminated gloves and smocks moved in on the wounded spacer.
“LT!” Kadi said weakly, and Dale went, ignoring terse commands from tavalai doctors. Kadi reached to his pocket and pulled out the com module. “Gotta… gotta keep it safe.”
Dale took it, and grasped the young man’s hand. “You did good, kid. You did real good.”
Kadi managed a weak smile. “Would have made a good marine, huh?”
“Any day,” Dale agreed. “But if you couldn’t do all that techno-crap, we’d all be dead. You rest now, froggie doctors look like they’ve got this all figured out.” He gave a final squeeze of Kadi’s shoulder, then stood aside for the impatient doctors, putting the module into a secure pocket.
Reddy was waiting in the doorway, and Dale indicated for him to keep an eye on Kadi’s doctors, then gave a disbelieving final glance around the medical room before rattling back down the stairs. Out on the street, the cars had been driven off the sidewalk, but new vehicles had been parked up one end, making a blockage. There were more big tavalai in the narrow streets, bellowing up at the apartments around them, and tavalai heads that emerged from windows and balconies.
In the bright lights of an open corner store counter, Dale saw Tooganam amidst a small crowd of yet more tavalai, waving his staff and issuing instructions. The entire neighbourhood was in commotion, tavalai moving, shouting, spreading the word, as non-tavalai species stared about in confusion or disappeared indoors. Dale went to Tooganam.
“What the hell is this place?” he demanded. “That’s nearly a full-scale hospital ward in there.”
“Gamesh medical services are poor,” said Tooganam, watching the ongoing commotion. “This is a tavalai Fleet district, many retirees, not just me.” Dale wasn’t particularly surprised — many of the tavalai in the street were large and strong, and moved with a purpose. “Fleet pay our medical needs, and if Fleet ever needs us, we answer, even retired. Fleet civil mobilisation has been invoked, it came through an hour ago, though the community leaders didn’t want to move too early in case we gave it away.”
Civil mobilisation, Dale thought. Humanity had that too, in case a world or settlement was attacked, and former-Fleet or Army vets needed to mobilise. But in Gamesh, he was suspecting, Fleet didn’t just keep its retirees primed as a ready-reserve in case of alien invasion. Kantovan System was deep enough in tavalai space that alien threats were a long way away. More likely these ‘retirees’, many of them plainly still quite active in Fleet’s service, w
ere here to serve Fleet’s interests against the broader Gamesh and Konik administrations, and all those competitive tavalai institutions who would interfere with it — like State Department.
“You’re expecting an attack?” he asked, looking around.
“Not immediately. Gamesh administration have authority to kill meddlesome humans, but old tavalai war heroes? A different story.” A young woman came running up, gabbling questions at the old tavalai, who gave her calm direction and sent her on her way. Clearly everyone here knew exactly who Tooganam was, and respected him as all tavalai respected the old and wise. “We’ve bought you a little time, but now Gamesh administration will go higher up, and State Department will step in.” He gave Dale a skeptical look, observing his still-wet clothes, the bloodstains, and several bloody cuts from flying glass and light shrapnel that Dale had been studiously ignoring. “You tell me, Phoenix. Your people steal something from the vault. How badly will State Department wish them stopped?”
“Depends if they guess what it is,” said Dale. He suddenly felt exhausted, as the day’s constant, crazy action began to catch up with him. Visions of Milek, disappearing under the racing train. “Assuming they figure that out… I reckon they’d kill everyone on Konik to stop it.”
Tooganam took a deep breath through big, amphibious nostrils. “Well. Gamesh administration won’t allow that. But we should get the families and children out.”
“Definitely,” Dale agreed, as Tooganam found a new person to shout at, and issue instructions. That tavalai listened, wide-eyed, then turned and set a new wave of commotion in train.
“Human,” said Tooganam, stomping off up the sidewalk and waving for Dale to follow. ‘Chutak’, Dale heard the word from Tooganam’s thick lips, before the translator grabbed it. A chutak, all human soldiers understood, was a rubbery, spidery creature with spindly limbs from the tavalai homeworld that hung in trees and waited to drop on passing creatures before sucking their blood, leech-like. It was the tavalai slang-word for humans. “This way.”
“You know we call you froggies?” Dale volunteered as he fell in at Tooganam’s side.
“I did know that, yes,” said Tooganam.
“You know what a frog is?”
“Amphibious creature from your dead homeworld.” The leathery old warrior gave no impression that he cared. “Doubtless very unpleasant, and killed in large numbers.”
“No, they’re harmless.” Tooganam made an expression that Dale had learned to recognise as a frown, and glanced at him as he limped. “Just your basic little amphibian, like on most worlds. I grew up on Kosmima, same thing there, croaking all the time.”
“Croaking,” said Tooganam with amusement. “We don’t croak. Teena, we call them.” As the translator left that word alone. Tooganam’s amusement grew. “Actually it’s quite funny. Teena means ‘little brother’. I call my own younger brother ‘Teena’ to this day.”
Dale’s lips twisted in a smile, against his better judgement. “You are froggies.”
“I suppose we are. Teena were always swimming with us from our earliest days. It’s always been bad luck to eat them. They’re like family. This way.”
He turned off the sidewalk and up some new stairs, this time continuing up a full five flights to the top. Panting, he stopped at a door and rummaged in a pocket for a key, grumbling to himself. Finally he found it, and the electronic lock opened.
The apartment within was dark and dusty, and Dale blinked as Tooganam hit the lights. Racked against walls, and between benches of equipment, were light exoskeletons — the extreme light-weight version of a marine armour suit. These were tavalai-made, designed for stocky shoulders and wide hips, with back-mounted power packs and no advanced sensory or guidance gear at all. So they were dumb, Dale thought as he walked amongst them, but they could lift heavy things. Typically they were used on construction sites or in hospitals, anywhere that heavy things or people might need to be shifted by workers who weren’t built like weight-lifters.
“Well they’re hardly going to stop a bullet,” Dale remarked. Indeed, these had no armour at all. “And they’ll make me nearly as slow as you.” Tooganam grunted, stomping to a big, long case on one of the equipment benches. “What’s the use?”
Tooganam undid the latches, and flung open the lid. Dale looked within, and stared. It was a Viz, which was as close as human phonetics could get to capturing the numerical designation in Togiri. Fleet marines used Koshaim-20s, huge, armour piercing mag-rifles unusable outside of armour-suits for the simple reason they were too heavy to lift. The karasai Viz were about the same, only a little bigger.
“You old fucker!” Dale exclaimed, rounding on the tavalai. “You said you didn’t have any weapons!”
“You were going to swim into State Department HQ carrying that?” Tooganam retorted.
“Oh right, you’ve got this big fucking arsenal locked away, and you’ve got nothing small and human-size, huh?”
“Stop complaining. You needed to check me out, I needed to check you out. Now we are here, and there’s work to be done.”
“Great,” Dale snorted, running a hand over the weapon. He’d seen them so many times in the hands of his hated enemies. Had been shot at so many times by these guns, and been hit a few times, saved only by his armour. So many of his friends hadn’t been as lucky. “Which one’s mine?”
“Any but this,” said Tooganam. “This weapon served with me for seven years in my last enlistment. Fleet let me keep it. We froggies are sentimental.”
The power regulator room was like nothing Trace had seen before, a wide ceiling filled with thick black conduits, large enough to be water pipes for a major reservoir. “I think that’s heading to a straight power core,” Rael muttered, taking a knee further back, behind the cover of more pipes and braces. “I’m reading massive magnetic interference, even Tartarus didn’t have this much.”
“Chenkov!” Trace demanded by the huge black door at the room’s far end, searching in vain across its strangely-interlocking surface to find a control mechanism. “Chenk, do you read me? Can you get the damn door open?”
The tacnet map showed her it was the only way in. Sard defence had not been particularly tough getting this far. Trace suspected they were allowing access so they could bottle them in, and trap them here. But something about the whole place felt off, and she wasn’t the only one to notice. “Kid!” Rolonde snapped nearby. “Cover position! You’re covering fire, dammit!”
But the big drone was scuttling along the end wall by the door, prodding various things with his forelegs, head jerking and swivelling in fascinated attention, taking in every detail.
“This is not tavalai design,” Kono intoned at Trace’s side, staring up at the door, and the entire, humming, energy-filled room. “Doesn’t even look like a part of the same complex.”
Trace could only agree. Suddenly the kid abandoned his side of the door, and came rattling past Trace to her side, forelegs and small, sensory antennae examining another odd patch of detail on the smooth, black surface. Then he turned on Trace, and a lasercom beam lit a red dot on her faceplate. Trace had had a drone do this to her suit in the Tartarus, and did not resist as her visor display went abruptly crazy, data spinning and flashing too fast for a human eye to follow.
Then, with a series of enormous clanks, the metallic locks came undone, and the black door split in a zigzag across its surface, and parted in five different directions. Trace swung her Koshaim flat, and moved to the doorside for cover as the kid made way. Ahead was a stark, black passage, all in dark stone, lit by periodic rings of inexplicable light. Trace felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck.
“Damn right it’s not tavalai technology,” she said. “Right now, my bet’s on hacksaw.” Styx had been very certain that artificial gravity was possible. One way to be certain of such things was to be a part of the civilisation that had built them. Twenty three thousand years the AIs had ruled the Spiral. They were better at technology than most organic specie
s because they were technology, and it made sense to them. Romki said they worshipped progress and invention, and viewed such advancement as their civilisation’s ultimate existential purpose. Human technology had transformed utterly in the thousand-plus years since humanity had become a truly spacefaring civilisation. What could AIs as smart as Styx have achieved in twenty three thousand? And how much of it was Styx hoping to recover in Drakhil’s diary, and bring back to life?
“Styx knew,” Kono muttered. “She knew what this place was. That’s why she built the kid. She knew he could get us in.”
Trace didn’t disagree. “Chenkov?” she tried again, but received only static. “I think the walls are blocking him. We gotta go now.”
“Here, kid, wait,” said Rolonde, approaching his side. “You’ve got shrapnel in a shoulder joint.” The drone looked at her, tried swivelling that leg, then lifted it for Rolonde to access. She got armoured hands on the shrapnel and pulled, as Trace noted the lower-third of the steel leg was vibro-blade, of the kind that sliced armoured organics in half. “Got it.”
Rolonde withdrew, and the kid swivelled the leg once more, gave a fast multi-legged ripple to test them all together, then set off up the corridor. “He says thank you,” Trace translated. “Giddy, Jess, Bird, you’re with me. Cocky, hold the room until we get back.”
“Aye Major,” said Rael. She’d have taken him instead of Kono, but his suit was damaged. Kono was the better rifleman, though barely, and right now she wanted her number two holding this room. Chenkov was keeping all doors locked, but she didn’t trust that lasting long, given she could no longer even speak to him.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 43
