“Interesting,” said Styx, with cool calculation. “Thank you, Captain.”
30
“I just heard from Phoenix,” came Jokono’s voice in Dale’s ear. “I don’t know how, but they’ve found a way to send brief messages safely through main coms from Tsubarata to Konik.” Which meant Styx was doing it, Dale knew. “It was very vague for security reasons, but it sounds like the Major is in the vault right now and nearing extraction. State Department are probably aware, so we don’t have to keep that secret any longer. It might even be safer to destroy the module and cover our tracks completely.”
Dale was crouched in a deserted apartment overlooking an intersection. Surrounding apartment windows were similarly occupied by armed tavalai and a few other species they trusted, but this was primarily a tavalai military retirement village, and filled to the gills with armed tavalai who still did what their former commanders told them. The intersection was a T-junction, and Dale’s team were assigned to guard the stem of the T — a smaller road, adjoining the main one down which he now peered. “With any luck Gamesh security won’t bother hitting us,” said Dale, peering down at the roadblocks made from commandeered cars and vans. Further up the road were numerous parked police vehicles, their emergency lights turning the gloomy sub-surface streets to strobing blue and yellow. “If they already know the vault was the target.”
“More likely State Department will have ordered them to clean up the breach,” Jokono said grimly. Dale wasn’t sure exactly where Jokono was now — no doubt further from any potential gunfire, where he could maintain his command-and-control function for as long as possible. “They’ll want to know exactly how it happened, and implicate Phoenix in all of it. My guess is they’ll order this entire neighbourhood flattened. It’s just a question of how far Gamesh security will be willing to follow their orders — they can be heavy-handed, but even they will pay a large domestic price if they go too far.”
Tooganam entered the apartment door, thumping across the floor in his exo-frame, massive Viz-rifle hauled with an effortless grip. Dale thought he moved more smoothly with the weapon than without it, as though its absence from his post-military life had left him permanently unbalanced. “What does your man say?” asked the tavalai, thumping the weapon to the floor as he took a knee to peer through a neighbouring window at the flashing lights outside.
“Our operation goes well,” said Dale, “but State Department now know its target, so our secret is out. He thinks State Department are angry, and will want us rounded up, dead or alive.”
“I think more likely dead,” said Tooganam. “Either before they catch you, or after.”
“Yeah?” said Dale, testing the weight on his own Viz. “I thought tavalai didn’t do that kind of thing?”
“Tavalai military, rarely,” Tooganam confirmed. “State Department are not military.” He gave Dale a sideways glance. “Humans have not always been as honourable.”
“Army,” said Dale. It felt bitter to say it, but there was no arguing that all-in-all, tavalai had treated human prisoners of war better than humans had treated tavalai. “Some army units were poor quality. You guys wiped a few of them out, it made some of them scared and nasty. Fleet never did that to tavalai prisoners.”
“No,” Tooganam conceded. “Or not that I heard. But you weren’t as kind to sard.”
“If you were fighting sard,” Dale retorted, “would you have been?” Tooganam snorted, and did not disagree. “And there were stories of some of your prisoner-of-war camps filled with chah’nas that somehow went missing.”
“If you’d been fighting chah’nas,” Tooganam retorted, “you’d have made a few of their prisoners disappear too. Especially the ones convicted of murdering our civilians. Nothing lost more sympathy for humanity amongst tavalai than your befriending of the chah’nas. Eight thousand years under the Chah’nas Empire left us with no patience for those vermin or their friends.”
“Chah’nas were the only ones to help us against the krim,” Dale retorted. “Humanity would be extinct if not for them.”
“They didn’t do it for compassion. They did it to get back at tavalai.”
“You don’t think humans know that?” said Dale. “Chah’nas are assholes, but they made a smart choice when they backed humanity. Tavalai did some stuff well, but you picked the wrong damn friends, and the wrong damn enemies. Krim were horrible friends. Sard are worse. If you’d ditched the krim for us, back when you had that option?” Dale shook his head, amazed at himself for even having the thought, let alone saying it aloud. “Hell, son. We’d have ruled the galaxy between us.”
“We tavalai never wanted to rule anything,” said Tooganam, police-lights strobing across his mottled skin as he peered at the forces confronting them. “We were vermin beneath the boot-heel of the hacksaws, then we were boot-lickers to the parren, and then cowardly yes-men to the chah’nas. It took us forty thousand of your years, but we finally got tired of grovelling. The only way we can avoid it, in this galaxy, is to rule. And so we rule, without enthusiasm, and often without much competence or justice. But we are the best there’s been so far, and I can’t see that your crooked Triumvirate is going to be an improvement — for us or for you.”
Dale could think of several things to retort, but realised that all of them would be argument for its own sake. In truth, he didn’t actually disagree with anything Tooganam had said. Not since the crew of UFS Phoenix had discovered what they had about humanity’s Triumvirate allies, anyhow. Tooganam looked faintly surprised to find the argument ended.
“Dale,” he said, and the translator left the name alone, rough and gravelly. “That is your name, yes? Dale?”
“That’s my name,” Dale agreed. He’d had a nickname once, but most of the marines who’d known him by that were dead, transferred or retired. Besides which, no one ever called senior officers by their nicknames. On Phoenix, only the Major had that right, and she declined.
“Have you killed many tavalai?”
Dale gave the ex-karasai a glance. Tooganam looked to be meditating on something, calm and thoughtful. “Yes,” he said. “You and humans?”
“Hmm,” Tooganam agreed, with a long rumble in his throat. “And before today, rarely given cause to regret it.” He nodded out the window. “They’re moving. They’ll come up the middle, strikers forward, mobile fire support in the rear.”
Dale frowned. “How do you know?”
“Rapid response are mostly machines. Machines are predictable.” Dale knew some machines that were anything but predictable, but kept it to himself. “We will lure them, shooters at the end of the road, then an ambush from the flanks.”
“And if they don’t do what you predict?” Dale asked.
“Then we will adjust,” said Tooganam. “You humans and your remaining parren will hold this cross street, and disrupt any attempt at encirclement. Are we agreed?”
Dale nodded, before remembering tavalai didn’t know what that meant. “It’s your neighbourhood,” he said. “Are you in charge?”
Tooganam looked amused, climbing heavily to his feet, and back from the windows. “I was never more than a sergeant. We have an officer, his name is Prolipalatil, Proli for short. You have not met him. He was a karasai captain, and we will all do what he says.” Tooganam stomped for the doorway. “Humanity has a reputation to uphold, Lieutenant Dale. Do not let it slip.”
“You guys hear all that?” Dale asked his coms.
“Copy,” said the parren, Golev, from a downstairs window.
“I heard,” said Jokono.
“Proli get us all killed,” Reddy quipped. Dale thought of his friends Forrest and Tong, then forced it aside. It was too much to hope that they’d just turn up like the cavalry of old, but that fantasy was better than the alternative nightmare. “Looks like more of those combat droids,” Reddy observed from his vantage. “Got a couple of big armoured vehicles in the rear. Looks like old Toogs was right.”
Dale peered, and saw the creeping m
echanical figures making their way down the gloomy street, in two single-files on the pavement, in the shadow of closed doorways and shuttered storefronts. The vehicles behind weren’t big enough to be tanks — more like civilian law enforcement armour. It didn’t mean they couldn’t pack some firepower, though.
“Okay,” said Dale, “we’re gonna hold our street. Let the froggies hold the main road, our job is just to stop them from flanking…”
A rifle shot rang out, well behind Dale, down the main street near the heart of the tavalai neighbourhood. The shots became regular, a staccato, echoing retort, and Dale saw droids taking cover, fragments of road and paving flying.
“Not hitting much,” Reddy observed with displeasure.
“Not meant to,” said Dale. He had no intention of joining the fire — from this apartment window overlooking the street, a single RPG would take out him and the room. For now, he just wanted to see. “It’s just bait, they want to draw them in.”
If the initial fire was too heavy or effective, Rapid Response might just call up heavy units and start pulverising. The defenders wanted to get some of these droids exposed first, convincing them that the target was ill-equipped and a minimal threat, perfect for assault-by-manoeuvre. Sure enough, Dale could see the droids approaching in fast, measured dashes, now putting down sporadic cover fire by odds-and-evens.
The defensive rifle-fire then changed position, never more than one or two firing at the same time. Gas grenades popped from the armoured vehicles, sailing past Dale’s vantage from the end of the street. Smoke only, he thought, observing the arc they made through the air. “Looks like Rapid Response have decided not to use full force,” he told his team. “If State Department told them to flatten the neighbourhood, they’re ignoring that order.”
“State Department have limited jurisdiction in domestic affairs,” Jokono reminded him. “Even moreso in a free city. But if Gamesh authorities can’t get what they want, they’ll look bad with the tavalai domestic authorities that do matter. I suspect this will escalate.”
The combat droids were passing Dale’s position now. “I’m moving,” said Dale, getting up to do that. “Tell me if they make a right turn.”
“Nothing so far,” Reddy said tersely. “They’re going straight by.” Dale went through the door and along the corridor, finding the exo-frame awkward to use compared to a suit. He’d been wearing marine armour for so long it was intuitive, and the exo-frame didn’t give him nearly as much push-back, making it easy to overbalance or overstress. But it kept the big Viz rifle swinging in effortless alignment as he jogged. How well it handled recoil on a gun this size was going to be another matter, as was ammunition, which could not be stored on this lightweight frame, and had been pre-positioned at various points along the defensive road, in doorways and corridors. In addition to which, Dale was painfully aware that the frame gave him no protection whatsoever. Firing a weapon this size made one relatively immobile, frame or no frame. When immobile in a high-caliber firefight, defensive protection was desirable. Being deprived of it only made Dale realise just how much he’d come to rely on it, particularly for all those near-misses that sent shrapnel fragments flying like rain.
He thumped down some stairs further along the street, then paused in a doorway just as heavy gunfire erupted on the main road. This was the full orchestra of tavalai firepower, and as he peered about the corner, he saw the T-junction ahead filled with smoke and flying debris. Several droids were covering at the T-junction, presenting Reddy and Golev with clear shots that, with typical discipline, they refrained from taking.
“Some of ‘em are down,” Reddy reported from his higher vantage opposite Dale’s position. “Looks like they’re pinned. I think they’re gonna pivot any moment… yeah, here they come.”
And Dale saw the droids on the corner turn, with synthetic coordination, and he ducked back before they could see him. “Tell me when, Spots,” he requested.
“Nearly,” said Reddy, with the calm of a sniper sighting along his rifle. “Nearly there. Go.” A shot rang out, and Dale stepped around the corner with the Viz on full auto, and fired. Mayhem happened, the weapon leaping and thundering like an angry beast, droids, walls and parked cars dissolving in destruction as he fought the recoil to keep the muzzle flat and level.
He recalled Tooganam’s instructions and ceased fire least the gun jam and damage itself, pulling back around the corner to check the ammo readout by manual. “Hell yeah, LT,” said Reddy. “One more, I got him.” As another shot rang out. “He’s down. That was six, the rest are holding back. They’re not too bright, old Toogs was right again.”
Missiles came streaking around the corner and blew half a building face down onto the road in a huge explosion of falling masonry, and a shockwave that hurt Dale’s ears. “And old Jokono was right as well,” Jokono told them. “Now it’s escalating, that came from the fire support.”
“We got to stay well out of line-of-sight with that thing,” Dale commanded. “Displace and pull back one degree, we’ll dig in and see if they try again.”
He ducked onto the road, all view of the T-junction now hidden behind clouds of rolling dust that blocked the road, and moved backward up the street toward his first fallback position, big rifle trained in the direction of the enemy.
“Major, they’re cutting through,” Corporal Rael reported tersely. “It looks like tough going, might take them another ten minutes.”
Trace waited by the cable bridge to the vault, and expended all of her practise in the art of keeping calm. The power regulator room was an utterly different technology from the rest of the vault — perhaps preceding it by many thousands of years. Its walls and doors were incredibly tough, making it the most defensible room in the complex. Sard defenders seemed in no hurry to assault the main entrance airlocks, least Chenkov and Aristan open the outer airlock once more and boil them with a new wave of superheated air. She didn’t know how many sard were left — she reckoned perhaps half or more had died in the initial breach, given the duty rotations in and out of armour, and the non-functioning of atmospheric refuges once Chenkov had gained control of the complex’s doors. Sard preferred larger numbers to smaller, and for all their selfless aggression, could become quite demoralised when large numbers were turned into small numbers quickly. Those that remained still vastly outnumbered the attackers, but their capabilities were dramatically reduced.
The kid had been gone for eight minutes, and Tif’s final launch window was down to twenty-seven minutes. “Would sure help if he could talk on coms,” Kono muttered nearby.
“I think Styx may have limited his coms function for a reason,” Trace replied. And to help her marines’ nerves more than hers, she added, “We don’t know how large the vault is inside, we don’t know how far inside the external gravitational effects penetrate, we don’t know how hard it is to find the things that he’s after. I’m sure he’ll find them a lot faster than any of us would.”
“Movement!” said Rolonde, pointing upward. Trace looked, and sure enough, the elevator platform was reemerging, its shiny black surface molding once more to invisible edges. On the platform was the kid, and before him sat a pair of odd-shaped containers. Two things, he’d been instructed to retrieve — Drakhil’s diary, and the records requested by tavalai Fleet. Without the latter, Fleet would be angry enough for Phoenix’s further mission in tavalai space to be finished, or perhaps worse.
“He got them!” Kumar exclaimed. “Good job buddy!”
“Yeah, and now he has to lift them,” Kono said grimly. The cage-platform on which he’d travelled to the spherical Vault was barely two meters away, and the side ramp elevated barely twenty centimetres above the sphere’s surface. But at one hundred Gs, it was going to be a battle.
“Come on kid!” Kumar urged, abandoning all pretence at not anthropomorphising the machine. “You can do it!”
The drone inched slowly forward, evidently more accustomed to this style of motion now, and having had some time t
o recover down below, where the effects were minimal. Now returning into the full, ferocious clutches of gravity, he shuffled the boxes ahead of him, then slowly edged them onto the low ramp.
Trace heard a distant whine that seemed to emanate from the walls of the vast, spherical chamber, and then a loud thump. They all felt the shockwave, and gravity slammed them suddenly downward, like the unexpected manoeuvre of a warship in combat. The force was only several Gs, and straight down, so in full armour they all retained their balance. And stared at each other, uncertainly, as the cable-bridge adjoining to the Vault began a low, jangling vibration, like the bass string of a large guitar, poorly played.
“What the hell was that?” Rolonde wondered. As they were all reminded how they were currently standing upside down, repelled by this ‘whatever-it-was’ force of technology that shouldn’t be possible, by human reckoning.
And Trace noticed that out on the distant vault surface, the kid moved his head enough to look up, and consider the jangling wire. Then he resumed moving, up the ramp, his tiny, shuffling strides now a little faster, as he risked collapse for a little extra speed. The whining from the walls grew louder, and then Trace understood.
“Gravity’s increasing!” she said. “The capacitors are firing up, we must have missed something. It’s triggered a final defence.” And knowing that the kid could hear them even if he couldn’t talk back, she added, “Kid, you have to move. If the Gs get too strong we’ll never get you off the surface.”
The cable twanged and shuddered, the force pulling upon its far end, trying to separate the nearly-unbreakable strands. A second, louder twang, as one of them did snap. “That cable’s stressed far tougher than a hundred Gs,” Kono said grimly, kneeling by the cable winch. “It must be pushing one-fifty.”
From the building whine, Trace didn’t think the rate of increase was slowing. The kid pushed the containers fully onto the edge of the ramp, then stopped. “Just a bit more kid!” Trace urged him. “We’ll get you out, just another meter!”
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 46
