There was no reply, marines busy and preparing. Trace took her position behind Kono, and saw the final thumbs up to indicate the lids were on the cans. Trace looked at Rael, and indicated a go. What had Aristan said? Accept your fate with joy and wonder?
Rael hit the crash-exit, then the override as alarms screeched. Overhead, the inner airlock opened, then a blast-furnace rush as the outer door opened. It hit them with the force of a dreadful mistake, and Trace’s suit flashed multiple redlight warnings on her visor. Kono surged upward, into the main airlock and up the ladder to the outside, Trace close behind and feeling once again as though she was moving in soup — soup that roared and buffeted like a cyclone as it surged into the lower-pressure prospector.
Then they were out, and Trace’s visibility cleared to a hostile, swirling orange and red. Her face felt on fire, as even the impossibly non-conductive materials used in marine suit visors could not hold back the heat. Kono thumped toward the overhead bulk of the descender, stark and clear now despite the swimming haze, along the back of the prospector. Trace pursued, staring up at the dark, rectangular hole in the otherwise perfect spherical hull, and wondering how long the descender airlock could stay open until it too lost integrity, and destroyed the entire ship.
Kono stopped atop the prospector cockpit, directly beneath the airlock, and made a cradle of his hands. Trace got an armoured foot into them and took a boost up like a cadet on an obstacle course, grabbed the airlock rim and hauled herself up… and felt something come loose from her armour and fall. She rolled and stared back along the prospector’s back, seeing the rest of Command Squad pursuing — Terez with a canister, even a single armoured marine could carry a canister with ease, especially in one-half-G. As he ran, Trace saw his Koshaim fall from his backrack as the alloy clip that held it to his back melted and broke… and realised that was what had fallen from her own back — her rifle, now tumbled from the prospector onto the landing pad.
Kono grabbed the canister with Terez, and simply threw it up to Trace, who caught and dumped it in a far corner. Her suit temperature was spiking now, and her suit’s left shoulder joint was grating, as coolant failure led to seizure. Then Terez was scrambling aboard, Trace grabbing his armour one-handed and hauling, seeing he had time as Rolonde came up behind with the next can.
Kono helped Rolonde throw the can accurately to one side of Terez, and again Trace caught it, and fell with it as the shoulder seized completely and nearly made her drop it. She got up, rolled and bundled the can into its corner, as Terez got Rolonde aboard, then Zale. Which left her standing squeezed against a wall, the airlock already crowded and with no chance of fitting another three suits in neatly…
Terez yelped as his suit went dead, and his faceplate fractured within centimetres of his face. Trace elbowed Rolonde aside, grabbed Terez with her remaining hand and hauled him into Zale’s grasp. On the prospector, Arime was hauling the struggling Corporal Rael, whose rasping gasp was the only vocal thing she’d yet heard on coms since the exit. It sounded like agony, which meant his damaged suit had ruptured.
“Cocky’s in trouble!” she yelled. “Launch him at me!” As Kono stumbled to do that, grabbing the Corporal’s suit with Arime and between them heaving the damaged suit in the low-G. Rolonde caught him with Trace, a crash of heavy limbs as Rolonde pulled him on top of her, the only way he’d fit with two still to come.
Kono then gave Arime a boost up, Trace grabbing his hand and hauling. With the others piled atop each other, and the cans stacked by the wall, there was just barely room for Arime on the very lip. Trace knelt for Kono, held from falling by hands holding her back… and saw her Staff Sergeant had gone down on one knee.
“Giddy!” she yelled. “Giddy, get up!”
“Suit’s fucked,” he growled. “Damn thing’s melting. Not gonna make it.”
“You get the fuck up or I swear I will jump down there myself!” That got him moving, a struggle to grab the rifle that had also fallen to the deck, and use it like an old man on a walking staff, to haul himself up. But there was no way he could reach high enough to gain the airlock, and thanks to the melting straps, all aboard were currently rifle-less. “Giddy, grab my leg! Guys, you’ll have to pull me and Giddy up together!”
She turned, got her arms on the rim and lowered herself over the side. “Major, don’t you dare come down here!”
“Shut up and grab my leg, your arms are still working, just lock on! Or I swear none of us are leaving!” Her visor display flickered, coms crackling static as various systems warned of impending overload. But save for the left shoulder, the arms retained function, and others grabbed her to hold her in. From below, her leg registered a pull that she couldn’t personally feel, but…
“He’s on!” Rolonde gasped, and Trace let them pull her, straight up and into their midst so they could grab Kono as well, and collapse them all into a giant tangle of burned-out, malfunctioning armour. Trace nearly blacked out at the heat, then blinked amidst a blast of white gas from emergency airlock protocols, and saw the outer door was shut, and the inner doors opening.
“We reave!” Tif’s voice crackled, and then the floor was shaking, the unmistakable thunder of main engine ignition. For a brief moment Trace nearly lost her control at the thought of going through all that just to get plastered to the floor by excessive Gs, until she recalled that descenders in this atmosphere couldn’t go that fast, and they had a while yet until clear for full acceleration. “Find acce-ration sring, you got twenty ninute!”
Trace tried to move, but her suit was unresponsive, barely a flicker from the visor, one arm only moving if she put muscle into it, a dead-weight. “I can’t move,” she said. “Anyone who can move, get out first, secure those cans, then help the rest. I’m going emergency release.”
The emergency release ran on separate power and was nearly failsafe — it cracked her armour across the middle, dangerous to do without a proper upright brace, but she was small enough to wriggle her legs out when the clasps released, then somersault up and over backwards, pulling arms and shoulders out the same way. It left her sitting atop her suit’s chest, which immediately burned her backside with residual heat, though dissipating quickly as non-conductive super-alloys would.
Elsewhere in the pile of armour, others were performing similar manoeuvres, or trying to, and she helped pull Terez clear as Zale and Kono got Rael out, the Corporal limp and unresponsive, red burns on his midriff and shoulder as they got him out of his seared uniform. Zale had better medical skills than her, and everyone else was busy, so Trace staggered in the increasing gravity of a full-G thrust to reach the G-slings in their secured canvas on the wall. She tore them out and pulled the runners across the ceiling, and found there weren’t enough. Well, Tif hadn’t had time to inspect the ship for amenities before she’d stolen it…
“We’ve got five slings here!” she shouted. “Someone get next door to find some more!”
And went back to find Aristan, already risen, sweaty and wobbling in his tattered loose clothes, holding both of the vault canisters, indigo eyes alive as though he’d just been granted sole possession of the universe. Trace tensed in preparation for taking him down barehanded, but he was only searching for a secure locker in the confined cargo hold, she saw, and so joined him in the search.
“The child of the chosen ones has fallen?” he said, and Trace was surprised that her earpiece was still providing translation. The kid, he meant.
“Yes,” said Trace, finding a locker that opened. “He died bravely.” Aristan’s stare was intense at this close range, as though examining her for clues. Then he handed her the containers.
“So may we all do in this venture,” he said solemnly. Then grinned, with an unaccustomed flash of small, white teeth. “But not today.”
32
Erik had barely resumed the bridge from off the sulik shuttle when coded transmission reached him from a tavalai Fleet vessel that a Fleet cruiser had rendezvoused with a descender leaving Kamala orbit, and was now on its wa
y to Cherichal, a tavalai system thirty lightyears away. A second vessel was preparing to leave Konik orbit, and repeated queries confirmed that all Phoenix personnel were accounted for, and would meet them at Cherichal.
Erik wanted visual proof before leaving Kantovan, but now the airwaves were alive with screaming State Department officials suddenly aware that something had gone very wrong on Kamala, both on Chara and in the Vault itself, with accusations coming Phoenix’s way of acts of war, and demands that the Tsubarata authority hold them by force if necessary. But Fleet were telling them to leave, and though State Department had technical command over Fleet, they had very little command over the Tsubarata, who were run by the Pondalganam legal institution, who were in turn paying State Department very little heed. With heavily armed Fleet cruisers telling Phoenix to leave, a lone human vessel was hardly in a position to say no whatever State Department’s cries, and so after receiving Private Ito at their airlock via a Tsubarata escort, Erik undocked Phoenix and sent them on a course to Cherichal System, leaving various squabbling tavalai factions behind in Kantovan to sort out the mess.
Cherichal was a sparsely populated system, with no inhabited worlds and just a few mining bases. It served primarily, Erik guessed by the confident way their tavalai escort navigated the shortest route to rendezvous, as a transfer point for Fleet vessels, away from the prying eyes of others. At a deep space rendezvous, far from Cherichal’s weak sun and all but invisible to others, Phoenix pulled into close formation with three large tavalai cruisers, one of which carried the spherical bulge of a heavy descender at Midships, where the shuttles would typically dock.
There followed some tense moments as Trace communicated unspecified damage on the descender, and a problem with the docking attachment to the tavalai cruiser, preventing any exchange of personnel. It was a transparent lie, but the tavalai appeared to get the idea — she wasn’t about to just hand over their hard-won prize to tavalai Fleet while Phoenix was in a position of weakness, because of the quite reasonable estimation that there would then be nothing the humans could do to get them back. The tavalai commander, one Captain Delaganda of the cruiser Podiga, did not push his luck, but likewise would not allow the descender to leave Podiga’s berth and fly to Phoenix, claiming it as sensitive tavalai property that would need to be returned to State Department.
Erik wished to send a shuttle to dock with the descender directly and recover their crew, but Delaganda pointed out that this was against all operating protocol with human and tavalai Fleets, where crew transfer should take place through the larger vessel. Trace insisted that this was impossible thanks to the docking attachment malfunction, which Erik took to mean that there was some larger reason why the humans did not want to transfer through the tavalai ship. After half-an-hour of Erik’s calm insistence on the non-protocol thing, Delaganda finally relented, and Erik ordered Lieutenant Hausler on PH-1 to fly, very slowly and with active scan disabled, across to the Podiga, to dock with the descender’s outer airlock and recover their people.
It took a while, as it appeared that none of Trace’s armour was working, yet Command Squad were unwilling to leave so much as a spare sock behind. Zero-G made the transfer of loose armour and other equipment doable, but slowly, made slower by the fact that Corporal Rael was seriously hurt, while the rest were various degrees of beaten up.
Erik wanted nothing more than to head to Midships himself and greet Command Squad in person, but with the threat of a double-cross foremost in his mind he had no choice but to stay in the captain’s chair with a wary eye on all tavalai vessels, and let his crew handle the recovery without him. Only once everyone was aboard, and he had his first proper confirmation that Trace had been successful in recovering something that may or may not have been what they’d been aiming for, did he allow himself to believe that there was zero chance tavalai Fleet would endanger their own prize with any treacherous move. He left Lieutenant Commander Draper in the chair and made his way down to Engineering 14B, and found the corridor outside busy with Engineering crew running back and forth, yelling to each other about what equipment they’d need, then shouldering past their Captain in urgent haste.
Erik entered the room, full of repair racks and analysis machinery built into open bays, and found the crowd gathered about the centre, where Lieutenant Rooke and Stan Romki stood amongst others and used magnifiers to peer at the two forearm-length cylinders that stood on the workbench there. Beyond the immediate crowd of techs, moving new gear into position and manning analysis displays, Erik saw Trace, leaning with obvious exhaustion against a support — sweaty, grimy and with only a new jacket to cover clothes that could as easily be burned as washed. But she looked well, all things considered, and he made his way past the central gathering with delight… and spotted a nearby parren, clad in a spare Phoenix jacket and with a baseball cap, of all things, tugged over his smooth head.
The eyes looked familiar, and Erik paused to look closer. Aristan had promised them a top operative on Trace’s mission, the very best combatant that his order could produce, to assist and if necessary die on the mission. But this parren looked very familiar. The eyes, in particular… and Erik stared, as the parren saw him, and stared back, with calm indigo force. It looked like… but no, surely he wouldn’t have volunteered himself?
And then Trace was pushing through to her Captain, putting a hand on his chest to move him back to the door. And pushed harder as Erik resisted, guessing that it was in fact Aristan, or Trace wouldn’t be doing this, with evident concern for his state of mind. Erik felt a surge of fury, but realised just as fast that he couldn’t do anything with that anger, which would mean making a scene in front of everyone, which Trace was trying to prevent.
He backed off, and allowed himself to be guided out the door and into the corridor. “I only found out it was him once it was too late to do anything about it,” Trace explained tiredly. Her voice was hoarse, and she looked about ready to drop. But, being Trace, refused. “He performed excellently, we couldn’t have done it without him.”
Erik’s mind raced. He had Aristan now, and they had what they hoped was Drakhil’s diary — a prize valued by Aristan perhaps even more than by himself. Could he trade Aristan for Lisbeth? How valuable was Aristan to his people? Parren like Aristan seemed prepared to sacrifice their lives for the slightest thing… perhaps Aristan’s people would not care, and would simply produce a new leader whose attitude would be harder still, and could even take revenge on Lisbeth in some way. He needed more information on how to play this with the parren, and with Aristan’s kind of parren in particular. But damned if he was going to let any possible advantage go to waste where Lisbeth was concerned, and if Aristan’s presence as his hostage was going to give him that advantage…
And he realised that Trace was staring at him, warningly, waiting for this attack of selfish thoughts to end. He took a deep breath, and ran a hand over his hair. “Yeah,” he said, to calm himself. “Yeah, okay. How’s Corporal Rael?”
“Some burns to the skin, some worse ones to the windpipe, he was breathing hot gas there for a moment. Doc says he can fix it, it’ll take a week or two, he just needs rest. Everyone else is minor, we’re okay. Except that we lost the kid.”
Erik blinked. “Oh right, the drone. Probably just as well.” Trace said nothing. Erik put a hand on her shoulder, suddenly overcome by the relief that he’d felt a moment ago, before the sight of Aristan had displaced it. “You did it. Not that I ever doubted.”
Trace exhaled a hard breath. She looked less elated than Erik thought the situation deserved. “Don’t know what I’ve got yet. What’s the word on Alpha Platoon?”
“Tavalai Fleet picked them up, they’re a day behind us on a slower ship.”
“All of them?”
Erik smiled. “All of them. Or all of ours, anyway — the two parren are dead, Petty Officer Kadi’s hurt but stable, Sergeant Forrest and Private Tong were detained by Gamesh security and are a bit beat-up, but okay. Lieutenant Dale and
Private Reddy have minor injuries only.”
Trace blinked hard, and looked to visibly relax. Too much, as Erik took her by both shoulders to stop her sliding into the wall. She shook her head briefly, blinking back her focus. “I’m okay,” she assured him. “I really thought we’d lose people.” She refocused on him. “And Alomaim told me how you got Hiro back. And the rest of it. That was good work.”
Erik shook his head. “I was just trying to stay out of Delta Platoon’s way. And Hiro’s the one who intercepted the signal to clear Tif down to the surface.”
“And Styx suggested you kill Hiro instead?” Trace pressed.
Erik nodded. “And obeyed me when I told her not to. More’s the wonder.”
“She ran this whole thing,” Trace said sombrely. “Didn’t she?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” said Erik. “Got Tif out of trouble on Chara, got me and Alomaim out of trouble in the Tsubarata. She’s a drysine command unit, it’s what she does.”
“She’s got herself a nice little human army to do her bidding, while pretending to be our slave.”
“And what choice did we have?” Trace nodded. “Oh here, I got you something.” Erik reached into a pocket as he remembered, and pulled out the small buddha he’d liberated from the Tsubarata’s Krim Quarter. Trace gazed in surprise as he handed it to her. “Courtesy of the krim. He was their trophy of conquest. Now he’s your trophy of… whatever.”
“Oh, he’s pretty,” said Trace, genuinely touched. “You rescued him?”
“Yeah. I figured he should be with a Kulina.”
Trace thought about it, examining the buddha’s serene face. “You know the thing with this guy? He’s most use to those who struggle to find peace. I have my problems, but this guy? I think he belongs with you.” She put the figure back in Erik’s palm, and closed his hand. “My return gift to you.”
“Thank you,” said Erik, suspicious there was a criticism hidden beneath the gesture.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 49
