Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (39 page)

“Even if that refusal lets a far more dangerous and fully functional deepynine queen run riot?” Erik replied. “A deepynine queen with a drysine shipbuilding base at her disposal, and an army of sard to do her bidding?” Captain Pram appeared to grind his teeth. “We have a major threat, and a minor threat. The major threat are the deepynines. Reactivating a drysine queen to fight them might just be the only way of stopping them.”

“This,” the Captain insisted, jabbing a stubby finger at the nano-tank, “is not a minor threat! At full function it can take control of your technology, it can spin your computers full of false code that has them feeding you its lies. This queen
is
technology, and this is its world, not yours.”

“And I think,” said Trace, “that we might just have to take that chance.”

L
isbeth found Vijay in Assembly
, up on the third level of gantry racks, helping some Bravo marines with weapons calibration. “Yo Vij!” she yelled up at him above the racket. “You coming down to Engineering with me or what?”

“Better go Vij,” one of the marines teased him. “Your ride’s here.”

Vijay grabbed his rifle and half-slid down the ladders between levels, setting out after Lisbeth as she dodged between supports, racked armour, ongoing equipment checks and yelled conversation. “You actually want me along for once?” he asked in mild surprise.

“Well you said you wanted to be there whenever I went near the queen,” said Lisbeth. “And that’s where I’m going. Though you know, I really am well past needing a bodyguard on this ship. All of
Phoenix
Company are my bodyguards, most of the dangers I face aren’t things you could save me from.” There were no more issues with crew loyalties, that was for sure. All of
those
crew had gotten off at their first stop in Outer Neutral Space, or been pushed.

“I’m under contract, Lis,” said the big former-marine. “Even out here. That was the oath I took.”

“An oath to do unnecessary things?” She sidestepped some big men hauling belts of explosive ammunition. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the thought, but the Major could use every good marine available, and I don’t think we’re going to be getting more reinforcements from this point. You might be doing more to protect me by joining up properly, marines keep
Phoenix
safe and I’ll be on
Phoenix
for the foreseeable future.”

She knew he wanted to. Every moment he hadn’t been needed by her, which was most, he’d been hanging out with the marines, helping in Assembly, developing existing friendships and making new ones. She’d seen in his eyes that he wanted desperately to get back in one of the heavy suits since he’d first come aboard. Now with Carla gone, he wanted it even more. Something to belong to, and comrades who had his back, as old concerns and Debogande employment contracts faded further into the distance.

“You wouldn’t be lonely without me?” Vijay quipped.

“I barely get a moment to myself on this ship, how could I be lonely?”

As if to illustrate the point, Spacer Komorov appeared as she ducked into the aft corridor from Assembly. “Hey Lisbeth, the Professor’s looking for you.”

“I know, I’m on my way to see him now. So what do you think, can we fix the queen?”

Komorov was a computers tech, software more than hardware. With systems as powerful and complex as
Phoenix
’s, most with alien influence if not outright origin, it kept him busy. Now he made a face. “Fixing a hacksaw with our old tech? I can’t see how.” They pressed back as several spacers squeezed past. “I’m as tech-head as they get, but that thing gives me the creeps.”

He went on his way with a nod to Vijay, as Lisbeth pressed on. “I’d be more worried that the Dobruta blow us out of the sky for trying,” said Vijay.

“I dunno,” said Lisbeth. “I’m hearing that Captain Pram and Commander Nalben don’t agree. Nalben’s the more expert on hacksaws, word is that he’s less opposed.”

“Word from who?” Vijay asked suspiciously.

“From
whom
, Vijay,” Lisbeth said with a smile, hearing her mother’s voice as she did. “You don’t think that being the Lieutenant Commander’s sister wouldn’t give me a few special privileges?”

“You’re asking your personal bodyguard?” Vijay said drily. “Now why would I think that?”

Lisbeth located Romki by flipping her AR glasses down, presenting her with a locator icon up on third-level, Bay 16C. Where the Argitori hacksaw drone parts were stored, she noted without surprise, and made her way up the ladderwell with increasingly practised ease. But when she came in the doorway, she found that he was not alone. Romki stood with his back to a wall, his face alarmed and defiant as two marines confronted him. Neither was any taller than the Professor, but each was far more powerful, and their manner was threatening. Both turned to look at Lisbeth and Vijay as they entered.

“Ed?” Lisbeth said in alarm, recognising them both. “Anthony?” Corporal Edward Rael and Private Anthony Kumar. Command Squad, under Major Thakur and Staff Sergeant Kono. She’d seen them around many times, and they’d always been friendly. It had made her pleased to know that the Major apparently spoke well of her to Command Squad. “What’s going on?”

Rael turned back for a final glare at Romki, then left, Kumar following. Both nodded to Vijay, ignoring Lisbeth, and went past and out the door. Lisbeth watched them go, then turned back to Romki, who was straightening his jacket and controlling his breathing in a way that suggested a racing pulse.

“Stan?” Lisbeth pressed, coming to him. “What was that all about?”

“Oh, the marines seem to think I might be conspiring with our hacksaw queen against
Phoenix
and her crew,” Romki said bitterly.

“Now where would they get that idea?” Vijay deadpanned.

Lisbeth turned a glare on him. “Vijay, Stan would
never
!”

“‘Cept for that time he set
Makimakala
onto us,” Vijay continued. “‘Cept for that time he woke up the queen against orders.”

“We might never have made it out of Joma Station alive if it weren’t for
Makimakala
!” Lisbeth retorted. “And we’d
certainly
have no idea where this hacksaw base is, let alone have any real hope of destroying it. And the queen saved a whole bunch of marine lives when she warned them about the deepynines, not to mention let all the marines see where the sard were on the way in to TK55!”

“Yes, well the marines don’t seem to see it that way,” Romki muttered. He seemed quite rattled, Lisbeth thought. Upset, even. Consensus was that Romki was a very brave man for a civilian, but Lisbeth supposed it was something else to have the people you lived and worked with suddenly turn on you. Though maybe it hadn’t been that sudden.

“That queen commanded hacksaws in Argitori,” Vijay observed. “Killed eighteen of our guys, wounded as many more. Command Squad lost First Sergeant Willis and Private Ugail, Jess Rolonde barely survived.”

“Yes, and our guys killed
all
of the queen’s children,” Romki retorted, indicating the storage room in which they stood. “You think there’s only one side who dies in wars? She was defending herself.”

“Poor thing,” Vijay growled.

“Stop it, both of you!” Lisbeth shouted. “This doesn’t solve anything…”

But it was too late, and Romki was advancing on Vijay with determination. He jabbed the much larger man in the chest, staring up at him undeterred. “You listen to me, and you take this back to all your marine friends. I’ve been unpopular on this ship from the beginning because I was at odds with your precious Major. I thought she was wasting her time with human politics, and everyone agreed that yes, she must be right, and that Romki guy must be some kind of traitor.

“Well guess what? I was right, and she was wrong, and now she’s admitted it. All my life I’ve been fighting against knuckle-head morons like you who rely on someone else to do all your thinking for you. You think I’m an elitist? Fine, I am an elitist, and if you’d all listened to me from the beginning we might not have lost any crew killed on Joma Station because we would have been looking in the right direction and seen it coming. You lot think you’re special because you’re the first to face danger, but you refuse to listen to the people who can best help you avoid that danger because you’re repulsed by anyone who’s different to you, and you’re terrified of anything your tiny brains can’t easily comprehend. And then you get all misty-eyed when your buddies get killed, and blame me for it when
I’m the one trying my best to keep them all alive!
”

Lisbeth wasn’t sure Vijay wouldn’t just send him to the Medbay with a single punch. That was Carla’s death Romki was talking about. Possibly the only thing that stopped him was the sure knowledge that Lisbeth wouldn’t forgive it.

“I’m sick of all your hypocritical bullshit,” Romki concluded, without any trace of fear. “Stay out of my way.”

D
espite the chaos
about the rest of Engineering, Bay 8D was free of all people except a single marine, Private Sanga of Echo Platoon, sitting opposite the queen with a rifle on his lap.

“You can take a break if you like, Private,” Romki told him, stomping tiredly into the bay and around to the workbench beside the nano-tank. “She’s not going to leap out of that tank and strangle me, and all of her activity is monitored by Petty Officer Degras on the E-bridge.”

“Orders,” said the bored Private, distracted with his AR glasses down. That probably meant a movie, music, possibly even porn. Romki sighed and sat heavily at the workbench alongside the nano-tank, and called up the queen’s construct activity on the display. It interfaced with his glasses to create an intricate 3D map, the AI-construct on
Phoenix
’s own hardware, talking to the queen herself in the nano-tank via a million glistening connections.

Lisbeth took a seat opposite. “Why is there nobody here?”

“Because she told them she’d need an inventory of our other hacksaw parts before she could calculate an answer on how to best restore her brain.” Romki took out his portable, made the link and saw it gleam in brilliant light on the 3D model before him. “So that’s what I was doing, and what all the computer techs are now doing — getting her a list of available parts. We’ve also got a couple of very advanced fabricators in storage that the techs recovered from the Argitori rock, they’re chah’nas tech but it looks like the hacksaws made modifications to them.” He glanced at the doorway, and sure enough, Lisbeth’s big bodyguard had followed her there. But he did not come in, content to guard the entrance. “And the rest of the ship is doing prelims to figure if we can actually disguise our signatures to look more deepynine.”

“She gave us that data too?” Lisbeth asked.

“She did.” Romki felt tired. Partly it was physical, and partly emotional. He liked to be alone for a reason. People never agreed with him, and if he accepted their obstructions he never got anything done. Isolation was easier, because alone at least he knew the satisfaction of his own work would sustain him. Being here on
Phoenix
was a massive opportunity, but also it was a trap, because emotionally one could not be on
Phoenix
at a time like this and not feel something for their crew, some kind of connection. But feeling something just made trouble, and so here he was again, blinking at the data once more, burying himself in the comforting isolation of a fascinating study. “The signatures are mostly scan and coms, but there are some engine systems that Rooke’s examining that might help create the illusion. But it will all be for nothing if the queen can’t tell us how to fix her, because none of us have
any
idea.”

“It’s actually quite simple,”
said a voice in his uplink connection. Romki frowned. His glasses had audio, but that wasn’t activated. This voice had come directly to his inner ear, not the earpiece.

He peered at the construct. “Hello drysine queen, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re on audio. You can talk?” His heart beat a little harder. There was activity in the data construct that looked… odd. A multiplicity of new connections, but the data-volume remained low. He glanced at Private Sanga behind, and found him nodding away to some beat, eyes hidden and ears plugged.

“Don’t worry about the Private,”
said the voice.
“He’s preoccupied.”
Romki’s heart beat harder still. He indicated to Lisbeth’s ear, wondering if she was receiving this too. She frowned at him.
“Audio is a relatively simple matter. I did not wish to speak before the others. I feared they may not understand.”

And Lisbeth’s eyes widened, to indicate that she had indeed heard that last bit. So the queen was accessing uplinks — implanted cybernetics, protected by the deepest, most hightech encryption available. All
Phoenix
crew were permanently linked to ship information systems, enabling them to coordinate with the ship and with each other. But now the queen was accessing those systems.

“Just how awake are you?” Romki murmured, glancing now at the doorway. Vijay was mostly out-of-earshot, and the noise in all Engineering was constant, the ventilation, the echoing crash of something heavy shifting in a neighbouring bay. Voices in the corridor, the omni-present whine of cylinder rotation.

“I am far below optimal. But I already possess most of the functions I will need for this mission.”

“How is that possible?”

“My neural systems possess many autonomous functions. One of them is micro-machine interface. The micros in this nano-tank have been reprogrammed. They have been repairing and restoring many functions.”

“For how long?” Lisbeth gasped.

“Many days.”

“But… but we’ve seen nothing! We’ve been watching your status, the micros have been reporting to us and…”

Romki’s mouth dropped open as he realised. Then he started to grin. He couldn’t help it — it was so deviously obvious. “All of the tank micros work for you now?”