Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (30 page)

“Needs to find brains first,” said Jalawi, predictably.

“I was told technically what they were doing, but my eyes started to glaze over about thirty seconds in, so I got my buddy Lisbeth to translate tech-geek for me… she says what they’ve done is infiltrate a few of the queen’s cognitive systems, and well, apparently hacksaws are a bit like organics in that we have DNA in every cell. Hacksaws have something similar, like molecular-level instruction manuals, implanted all the way through each hacksaw’s CPU.”

“Bullshit,” said Dale, unimpressed.

“Which allows all their micro-systems to fix and re-grow damaged parts constantly.”

“I’m happy for them,” said Jalawi.

“Anyhow, our mad engineers made a copy of some neural constructs, not an entire brain, just bits of it. It’s a facsimile, and it’s on our hardware, so it’s not actually an AI at all… but it’s a cognitive function, and it’s doing stuff that’s got some of the froggies pretty excited. And a couple of our resident human froggies too.”

Jalawi smirked. “Human froggies,” he repeated, tickled by that. Of all the marine officers, Jalawi was the most frequently amused.

“They seem to think it can translate drysine codes, they ran some old stuff on it they haven’t been able to translate before, and it’s converting it to… well, whatever mad froggie engineers read.”

All marine officers were required to be somewhat technically literate. Space stations, ships and weapons Trace knew a fair bit about. Even bio-engineering wasn’t beyond her, given what she and everyone in the room had had done to their own bodies at some point to enhance performance. But hacksaw tech was nuts, and even the techs in Engineering didn’t really understand it. One of the first lessons every green marine was told by those more experienced, upon arriving on a combat ship, was that if you found some weird-looking alien tech that you didn’t understand, you didn’t play with it. Having
Phoenix
crew violating that principle on the same ship where everyone ate, trained and slept, made every marine uncomfortable.

“And they think this…” Dale waved his hand, looking for the word, “construct of theirs will translate whatever we find on this relic thing?”

“We’ll get to that,” said Trace. “First, Ensign Hale has been examining the data the
Makimakala
techs thoughtfully shared with us on the hacksaw corpses they recovered…”

“Is Ensign Hale okay?” Jalawi wondered. “I heard she lost a good friend on the docks.”

“She’s a bit shaken,” Trace confirmed. “But she’s doing her job.” Crozier stared at a wall and said nothing. Trace pretended not to notice. “She said the froggies think the Joma Station hacksaws were pretty much lobotomised. Not only weren’t they thinking for themselves, but they were below optimum neural function. Which is tech-speak for saying they’re not as good as the real thing… which backs up our own observations.”

With a glance at Dale and Jalawi, who’d been on the rock with her in Argitori. “Yep,” Dale said grimly. “There were half as many drones in Argitori, and they killed eighteen of us, and wounded twenty more. These ones got six and fourteen. Their coordination was shit, they didn’t press their advantages when they got them, and should have done a lot better than they did, given that situation.”

“I agree,” Jalawi said slowly, thinking back. “I think their advantages increase in zero-G, but even so.”

“The lesson,” said Trace, “is that the real things are much, much worse than those lobotomised copies. And they were bad enough. So when you’ve got some time, I want tactical analysis from Joma Station added to what we’ve done from Argitori, and see what else we can learn. I’m happy for you to toss it to your non-coms and lower, some of the best insights I’ve heard on alien tactics have come from privates. Just get it done because I don’t think we’ve seen the last of those fuckers.”

Grim nods about the group. “Speaking of,” said Trace, and pulled her AR glasses down, blinking on an icon to activate the room holographics. The lights dimmed, and the space between the chairs lit up with an irregular, ovoid shape, pockmarked with small craters. “This is the relic. It’s at Oran System, all of these schematics are courtesy of
Makimakala
’s karasai commander. His name is Nakigamana, we’ll call him Major Naki. The actual rank’s Djojana, but human-equivalents save time — he’s basically a major.”

She rotated the oddly-shaped planetoid. It looked a bit like a peanut, save the lower bulb was missing its lower half, in what looked like a very old catastrophic impact. “Tavalai call it TK55. It’s in a middle-inner orbit, probably a moon that failed to form properly during the solar system’s birth. The stars are a big M-class binary, quite active, so TK55 is not hot, but warm.”

She zoomed closer, and at several points across the planetoid’s upper bulb, small shiny spots appeared. “You can see the solar panelling across the inner, sun-facing side. It’s a pretty extensive system, though unsurprisingly there’s fusion as well. TK55 is about eighty-six kilometres long, forty-one across at the widest part of the lower bulb, thirty-five across at the same for the upper bulb. It’s made mostly of light stuff — a fair bit of dirt, chalky rock, good for tunnelling. It’s much harder in the core, not very mineral rich but a good spot for a system outpost.

“Now Oran System is nicely placed at a crossroads between several old drysine bases… if you want the old history I have that on file too. Suffice to say that a lot of drysine shipping came through here. But TK55 is too far insystem to be a big shipping post — all the big shipping stations were in the outer gas giant systems, as usual. Tavalai think this was perhaps a mix of a science station, a manufacturing and research lab for new hacksaw drones, and a secondary defence post — insystem where an outer-system attack will take longer to reach it, lengthening their response times.”

“So how old are we talking?” asked Lieutenant Chester Zhi, staring curiously at the hologram. Zhi had played a large role when
Phoenix
boarded the ancient O’Neill cylinder Eve last month, in orbit about the even more ancient temple world of Merakis. Since then, he’d switched from mainly military reading to academic histories about early Spiral civilisation, and had become one of Romki’s best friends on the ship.

“There’s been settlement here for nearly forty thousand years,” said Trace around her smoothie. “The drysines came later in AI history, so they refitted and expanded whatever was here previously maybe twenty eight thousand years ago, and were driven out of it three thousand years later when the parren turned on them. The rest of the facilities in this system were destroyed either by the deepynines, or by the parren alliance after the deepynines were defeated.”

She zoomed on the upper bulb, until the little solar panel spheres grew large on the rough, grey surface. “There’s ammunition storage here, possibly various other things that go boom, maybe nukes, maybe anti-matter or zero-point, we know they messed around with a lot of stuff. But they kept it up here in the upper bulb, a long way away from the main centre, though it is connected by a long central transit.”

She panned down to the lower bulb, then underneath where the rounded shape had been shorn off at the bottom. Amidst the exposed and fractured rock, structures emerged — docking ports, huge gantry systems, ship-sized tunnels boring deep into the rock. Kilometres and kilometres of it, like a small city, arranged in concentric rings about the dead centre where the main elevator would run through the entire planetoid, and join the upper and lower bulbs together.

“Wow,” said Zhi.

“
Makimakala
say it’s a hulk, all dead and stripped inside. But obviously there’s still something in there, or they wouldn’t have wanted to preserve it.”

“Eighty kilometres long in close orbit about an M-class binary is a heck of a thing to keep secret for this long,” Dale said skeptically. “How hasn’t anyone else found it yet?”

“Well the space is disputed with the sard,” said Trace. “They say. Personally I think they’ve mined the crap out of it — I talked to Lieutenant Kaspowitz and he agreed. Though we’ll have to wait until the bridge crew meeting is over before we butt heads and talk it out. Certainly the tavalai have booby trapped TK55 itself, to keep the sard out. My guess is they’ve been keeping the sard away from it for thousands of years — probably since the sard got into FTL space. Which means they’ve been concerned about the sard getting their hands on stuff like this for a long time.”

“You mean the Dobruta have been concerned,” said Alomaim. “Tavalai government’s had its head up its ass about this for even longer.”

“Well mind you,” said Jalawi, “they were pretty focused on this stuff before the Triumvirate War. But losing half your territory and your status as dominant species of the Spiral pretty much changed their priorities. They’ve been neglecting their job as galaxy police.”

“And so it’s humanity’s responsibility to take it over from them,” Trace said firmly. “But our Fleet’s happy to see anything that makes trouble for the tavalai, they don’t realise that this stuff could be a thousand times more deadly to humans than the tavalai ever were.”

“We all thought the hacksaws were dead,” Dale muttered. “Fucking retards, all of us.”

“Hang on,” said Zhi. “Does that mean we were fighting the wrong enemy all along? Because I don’t think that’s…”

“Hey!” Trace interrupted. “I don’t give a fuck about the politics. Not even a quarter of a fuck. We fight one enemy at a time. It was the tavalai. Now it’s this. The human race needs an alarm bell on this, followed by a swift kick in the ass. Our Fleet’s asleep or worse, so right now we’re it.” Quiet nods from all five. Save from Crozier, who looked subdued and troubled. Trace didn’t like it.

“So right now,” Trace continued, “the plan is that
Makimakala
will make the approach to TK55 and board directly.
Phoenix
and
Rai Jang
will give cover, but there is no intent for us to go aboard at this time. Now at the rate we’re going, I give the likelihood of that plan going as proposed pretty much zero percent. I expect sard trouble, given how badly they’re after us. I’m also not entirely ruling out the possibility of tavalai treachery, or even barabo. Ty, you’ve spoken to the LC about your barabo concerns?”

“Um, yeah,” said Dale. He scratched his scalp, an unaccustomed nervous gesture from him. He wasn’t used to screwing up, and would probably be unhappy about it for a while yet. “The cop who blew up Chankow had strange shaving marks on her neck, from the shoulder up to her jaw. I checked with Romki, he said lots of barabo have them, they’re usually institutional, they date back to some tribal thing or other…” he made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, it’s just as well we’ve someone on the damn ship reading
all
of our reports and compiling all the intel together, because otherwise we’d have missed it completely…”

“Who was that?” Jalawi wondered.

“Jokono,” said Trace. “A good thing about cops — they’re multi-taskers. We’re all specialists.”

“Because I didn’t get to meet
Rai Jang
’s Captain, that was Ahmed,” Dale continued with a nod at Alomaim. “And he didn’t get to meet my barabo cop assassin girl. But they’ve both got the same shave marks on the neck, and Jokono’s the only one who caught it. Romki doesn’t recognise it, the database has nothing, but that cop was military-trained and a
very
good actor.” With a grimace. “And
Rai Jang
’s Captain is pretty hardass for a barabo, so my theory is it might be a barabo military faction who are pissed their species are such a bunch of pussies. Romki says that fits, barabo military’s been dissatisfied for a long time, and Hiro says there was talk in Intel circles for a while of a possible barabo coup, if you can imagine that. But the barabo politicians purged the military of ‘warmonger’ captains, so they’ve kept their heads down since, but probably aren’t above forming secret societies with funny identifying marks.”

“Oh great,” Zhi snorted. “Get rid of all the guys who want to fight. With the sard on your doorstep, that’ll work.”

“It’s good work,” Trace commended Dale. “And now the LC has a reason to keep an eye on both
Rai Jang
and
Makimakala
, which I’m sure doesn’t make him happy, but it probably makes us safer.

“Given that every operation we go on lately has blown up, we’re going to go into this one on full condition red. Now that we have the shuttle capacity, we’re going to pre-deploy Echo and Bravo in PH-1 and PH-3 respectively. Command Squad will go with Bravo. Alpha and Charlie will be first reserve, Delta will be second reserve. We’re going into it expecting that the shit has already hit the fan, and take it from there. If we’re really lucky, we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

“If not, we’ll deploy accordingly. Bear in mind that this could mean deploying and working directly alongside karasai.” A calm stare at them all, to see that sink in. “So brush up on your karasai tacticals, and get all suit translators prepped with Togiri. Any questions?” No reply. “Good, let’s do it.”

“Major?” said Crozier. “Request permission to pre-deploy with Delta.”

“It’s not your turn,” Trace said shortly as they all climbed from their chairs. “Take a rest, and remember that if the tavalai really do find what they’re looking for, that’ll just give us the location of the
real
target. Plenty of work ahead for all of us.”

T
he first thing
Phoenix
knew for sure about TK55 as they came streaking out of combat jump was that the planetoid was not alone.

“She’s definitely got company,” said Geish from Scan, staring at
Phoenix
’s most intense long-range magnification. They were nadir of Oran System’s binary suns, and had a good angle on the planetoid’s shorn underside. “There’s an additional protrusion where it should not be, Scancomp estimates the size of a large vessel… unless the froggies have been building something else that wasn’t in their data…”

“LC,” called Shilu, “incoming from
Makimakala,
it’s the Captain.”

“Put him through.”

Erik’s earpiece crackled.
“Hello Phoenix, it appears we have a visitor. Our scan suggests a large vessel — either a tavalai ship that has surprised us, or more likely a sard ship that has bypassed our defences. I suggest combat formation and continue approach.”

“
Phoenix
copies,
Makimakala
. We will extend combat formation and continue approach on the assumption the vessel is sard and hostile. Hello
Rai Jang
, do you copy this communication?”

Pause for the reply, the coms-light counter ticking down…
“Hello, Rai Jang copies, we extend forward, scouting run, maybe draw fire. Big friends cover tail, yes?”

“Hello
Rai Jang, Phoenix
copies you will extend combat formation forward. Big friends will cover your move with full fire support,
Phoenix
out.”

Ballsy move from Captain Jen, considering those guarding his tail were a different species. But it was standard tactics for inbounds combat jumps — the smaller scout went speeding out in front to draw a reaction from insystem defences, thus revealing the location of those defences for the serious firepower coming in behind. The two big carriers had let the barabo scout jump twenty minutes earlier, and
Rai Jang
was now five minutes high-V deeper into Oran System, deep enough to make a five-second communication delay.

“Incoming lasercom from
Makimakala
,” Shilu announced. “Taccom feed, I’m sending it to Nav.” And Erik saw the tactical feed transform before his eyes, the 3D graphics showing ship positions, trajectories, light horizons and response times now abruptly adding a string of little red dots all across the approach vectors.

“Well yeah,” said Shahaim as she saw it too, “looks like they did mine the crap out of it.”

“LC,” said Kaspowitz, “I am counting… three hundred and sixty two tracker mines and another eighty ordinance stations. All look configured for maximum crossfire. Going in there as a hostile is a death trap.”

Tracker mines were really very large missiles with independent propulsion and networked targeting. Without jump engines, FTL ships could outrun small numbers easily, but if the mines were defending a fixed point in space, they knew where you were going and would get you eventually. They were too small to easily shoot, and accelerated at twenty-Gs or more when closing or evading — far faster than even
Phoenix
could manage. Ordinance stations were small floating gun-platforms, cheap and nasty, that could add regular gunnery to the mix, and defend themselves long enough to soak up incoming ammo. Kaspowitz was right — if
Phoenix
went in there as an enemy, she was dead meat.

“And the froggies have the code that can turn them on or off,” Shahaim observed. “Or decide to reassign them new targets at will.”

“I guess we better be on our best behaviour then,” Kaspowitz said drily. No one liked it. If the tavalai hadn’t earned their reputation for scrupulous principles, Erik would never have gone along with it.

“If that’s a sard ship docked on TK55,” he said, “then my guess is they’ve just put sard warriors aboard. They won’t extract, sard don’t care much about casualties, they’ll hold us up any way they can. If I’m right,
Makimakala
’s going to need us to help get them out.” He flipped channels. “Hello Major, are you reading this?”

“Sard carriers are all larger capacity than human carriers,”
Trace observed by way of an answer.
“If it’s a s45-class carrier it could have anything up to five hundred warriors. If it’s one of those new ships that have been chasing us, it’s anyone’s guess, but I’d reckon they’d be high capacity too. If we’re deploying in there, I’m going to want more numbers.”

“I copy that Major. If you want all four shuttles I can get Lieutenant Dufresne down there to pilot AT-7 and one extra platoon.”

“That is an affirmative LC, this will be a four platoon job. Delta will be reserve, and unless I’m mistaken, our only other qualified shuttle co-pilot is Lisbeth.”

Erik gritted his teeth. “Can’t order her Major, she’s not in uniform. I suggest you ask nicely.”

I
n combat jump
they shut down the cylinder rotation, so everyone floated in zero-G — no concern for crew who weren’t supposed to move anyway. In a chair station you were strapped in so tight you didn’t notice, but sealed into an acceleration sling you did. The mesh encircled Lisbeth, safety links clipped into her jumpsuit harness as she floated within the synthetic cocoon. At its top and bottom, big steel bolts held it tight between floor and ceiling runners, ready to swing in whichever way gravity took it, and conform to the shape of her body in the process. Directly behind her was Vijay, who bunked down the corridor from her, but usually one of the bodyguards would ride through jump alongside Lisbeth just in case. With Carla gone, Vijay had the job to himself.

“Hello Lisbeth, this is the Major. We need a co-pilot for AT-7, flying Alpha Platoon. I’ve been instructed to ask you nicely, Second Lieutenant Dufresne will be the pilot.”

“Hello Major, I’ll be right there. Lisbeth out.” She unhooked herself with increasingly practised skill and pulled the sling mesh open.

“I’m coming with you,” said Vijay, doing the same.

“Vijay, I don’t actually know they’ll have room on the shuttle.”

“Then I can at least see you get there.”

Heading down the main corridor in zero-G would have been good fun if it weren’t so nerve wracking. Lisbeth tried not to think about the ridiculous velocities they were travelling at, and certainly not about the mincemeat that any sudden moves on
Phoenix
’s part would make of both her and Vijay against the corridor’s walls. She wondered if Erik would actually make an evasive move, knowing she was loose on the ship… or if the ship’s automatic evasion could be stopped if scan saw a rock suddenly coming at them. Though almost certainly, the Major would never have asked her down to midships if it was particularly dangerous, and marines moved around in midships zero-G all the time on combat approach. But then, marines wore armour.

The variable-G ropelines were out in the corridors again, though this time instead of acting as an elevator, these acted as high-speed transport. Lisbeth and Vijay grabbed a handle and pulled, and the whole ropeline whined and squealed, pulling them at what would have been jogging speed in 1-G. Lisbeth fended off the dog-leg corners with ease, then finally let go as she saw the corridor-end airlock approaching. With cylinder rotation stopped, crew could access midships directly from the cylinder rim like they did at dock without having to go through the core — another reason why the cylinder was shut down during combat jumps.

Momentum took her straight into the midships airlock, evading one near-collision with a crewman exiting, then catching the rim to avoid catapulting straight into the working bustle of midships. She pulled herself hand-over-hand along one wall, amidst yelling Operations crew, then up an open vertical access between cargo nets and wall tethers where marines’ armour and equipment would be stored. Several long glides, then a turn out toward the three-grapple, where AT-7 was locked against
Phoenix
’s hull.

The access opened onto the three-assembly, a long space between cargo nets and rows of strung accelerations slings, typically filled with marines awaiting access to their shuttle. Half of those marines were now gone, vanished into the hatch amidst the grapple hydraulics on the hull, and Lisbeth shoved herself hard that way.

“Pilot coming through!” Vijay yelled behind her, knowing she’d be reluctant. “Pilot coming through! Make a path!”

And the armoured marines looked about with shouts of ‘pilot!’ and her path cleared enough that she sailed past them and straight to the airlock, where the next marine in line paused for her as she dropped straight in.

At the bottom, a familiar turn from the upper level hatch access, and a fast shove after the marine ahead of her, marvelling at how fast he moved in his bulky armour. At the cockpit she found Second Lieutenant Dufresne already strapped into the pilot’s seat and well into pre-flight, instrument displays alight and blinking. God knew how she’d gotten down here so fast, her quarters weren’t any closer to midships than Lisbeth’s.

“I’m here,” Lisbeth said breathlessly, squeezing past the pilot’s seat on her way to the co-pilot’s just ahead. “They’re about half loaded back there.”

“Ms Debogande, take a seat,” said Dufresne, cool and professional. “Systems startup has commenced, checklist ETA is two minutes.”

Two minutes for
you
maybe, Lisbeth nearly muttered as she pulled herself into her chair and tried to strap herself in — no small task when you weren’t as accustomed to zero-G as some, and every surface you touched tried to bounce you back off. She got it managed as the automatic fastening yanked her tight, and began to run furiously through her checklist — at least she was in a familiar civilian shuttle. She’d been practising with Lieutenant Hausler in her off-time, as he’d graciously agreed to get her simulation hours up, but that had been in PH-1 and those military systems needed serious training to get familiar with. Behind her, Second Lieutenant Dufresne probably felt she was flying a toy spaceship by comparison. Gratifyingly, Hausler hadn’t laughed at Lisbeth’s skill-level, and had even politely said she’d make a fine Fleet co-pilot… given about three more years of training.

Halfway through her checklist, Lisbeth remembered to pull on the helmet from its rear headrest clasp. Once the visor was over her eyes, filtering the cockpit light, she could suddenly see the stars outside. Billions of them. In the far distance ahead, a yellow globe growing brighter… no,
two
yellow globes, a binary system, two suns together, as was the case in more than half of the galaxy’s systems larger than a red dwarf. Far too far away from TK55 to see it yet, but it was always a shock to see the stars, after so long on a spaceship where you rarely had a view. Out this far from home, none of them were familiar.

“
H
e’s leaving fast
,” said Second Lieutenant Geish from Scan. “He’s full thrust and none of the tavalai mines are pursuing.” Erik could see TK55 much more clearly now, the twin, grey bulbs with a narrow ‘waist’, with scan conveniently highlighting in red all the surrounding tavalai mines. None of which were posing any threat to the sard vessel, which as Geish had said, was now leaving hard on a white tail of flame.

With an open channel to
Makimakala
, Erik didn’t need to ask Shilu for access, and just blinked on the icon. “Hello
Makimakala
, do you have any idea why the sard vessel is completely untouched by your defences?”

“Hello Phoenix.”
A short pause, as though wondering what to say. That wasn’t comforting.
“It is a known feature of hacksaw technology to manipulate foreign computer systems.”

“You mean gain control of them by remote?” Even more alarming.

“No. I mean hacksaws can disguise signatures and convince enemy systems that foes are friends.”

“Semantical bullshit,” Lieutenant Karle said from further across the bridge, and off-coms. “He’s talking about the same damn thing.”

“I copy that
Makimakala
,” said Erik. “Are there any records of hacksaw-technology vessels reprogramming automated systems to fire upon friendly vessels?”

Another longer-than-necessary pause.
“To my knowledge, no such records exist.”

“Well that’s just great,” said Shahaim. “Nav, I think we’d better arrange a plan for a very rapid withdrawal if the impossible happens.”

“Already got several,” Kaspowitz answered, furiously plugging in data, fingers racing across his screens. “But if we get deep in there and those bastards fire on us, we’re screwed.”

“
Makimakala
is going to need our help getting those sard out of their relic,” Erik replied. “Leaving troops behind like that is a standard sard delaying tactic. And the AI-facsimile from the drysine queen is aboard
Phoenix
as well, so we’re valuable to the tavalai.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re actually in control of this situation,” Shahaim replied. “They don’t
look
in control.”

“Against this new breed of sard,” Erik said grimly, “we might just have to get used to that.”

C
ombat V-dumps
were disorienting to the point of nausea, but Lisbeth still found them preferable to main-engine deceleration, flattened on her back at 10-Gs and struggling to breathe. Now she had time for a sip of water from her collar tube, and remembered to recalibrate the shuttle’s scan for much lower velocities, now that the light waves from surrounding objects were not dopplered into unfamiliar colours. The other shuttles were all talking to each other, and that scared her because it was all operational chatter and she barely understood one sentence in three.

Then the hard clank and crash of grapples releasing, and Dufresne gave them a downward shove to get clear of
Phoenix
, the armoured sides of the massive warship suddenly falling away, and then Lisbeth could see it in a way you rarely got to see a warship — a huge, long, three-segment bulk, the first segment all armourplate and weapons about the rotating crew cylinder within, then midships separate yet integrated into the main hull frame, and finally the colossal main engines. Usually FTL ships operated further from the sun, in the big gas giant systems where the big stations were typically built higher up the gravity slope. But TK55 was an inner-system rock, and
Phoenix
’s matte-black sides, normally invisible in the dark, now loomed and shone.