Crusade (Exile Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  In the middle of the spray cement was a laser-engraved metal plate with text in the blocks-on-blocks Assini script.

  “Siril-ki?” Octavio asked. “What does it say?”

  “It’s a memorial,” the Assini admitted. “A remembrance of the dead—not just for here but for everyone who died in the flare. I’d guess we’re looking at one of many that were mass-produced and placed here after the situation had stabilized elsewhere in the system.”

  “Major Chen, have your people take a small sample of the plate,” Octavio ordered. “Don’t dislodge it—a memorial for the dead deserves respect—but some surface shavings should help us confirm where it came from. If Shezarim’s databases have that much information?”

  “They should,” Siril-ki told him. “Get a material sample and I should be able to tell you where the metal came from. Might not be able to narrow it down beyond the planet or asteroid cluster.”

  “That gives us a good starting point,” Octavio replied. “Someone was stable enough to want to leave memorials behind for the people they’d lost. Let’s see if we can find them.”

  “And this place, sir?” Chen asked.

  “Search it,” Octavio ordered. “Top to bottom, as we planned. If there were survivors, that’s a different question than whether there’s evidence here on what drove the Escorts mad.

  “We can follow both questions, Major, but both of them need you to search that bunker.”

  “I figured,” the Marine agreed. “But I’ll admit I was hoping for a different answer.” Her helmet light was now shining into the entrance of one of the entrance bunkers.

  “That’s going to be a creepy dark hole.”

  “That’s why we sent EMC, Major. Good luck.”

  12

  Not only was the Validation Center every bit of the dark and creepy hole Chen had anticipated it being, it turned out to be a useless hole.

  “Nothing?” Octavio asked.

  “Nothing,” the Major confirmed. “I’m standing in the middle of what should have been the primary computer center, according to Siril-ki’s map. I can see debris where I’d guess stuff got torn out to make moving things easier, but I’d say the cores were stripped out.”

  “They wouldn’t even have been functional,” McGill objected. “I mean, you could access the memory if you had the right gear, but they’d never have worked as computers again.”

  Octavio had to agree with McGill. He knew how much Siril-ki’s team had put into building the gear to read that memory.

  “But it was crystalline silicon, already properly aligned to act as molecular circuitry,” Siril-ki injected, ki’s translated voice tired. “I presumed that the flare damage would have rendered it unusable, but it’s possible it was easier to repair the crystals than to make new crystals.

  “And the repair process would have wiped the memory core, anyway.”

  “They weren’t just here leaving memorial plaques,” Octavio concluded. “They were scavenging as much as they could from orbit and the ground. Major military bases like the Validation Center would have been treasure chests of high-power electronics and supplies, even if it would all have been damaged.”

  “As Siril-ki said, it was probably easier to repair damaged systems than build new ones,” Renaud agreed. “It wasn’t a long-term project. Belmont’s team is figuring the station they’re picking through was only occupied for ten years or so.”

  “They couldn’t have cleaned out everything of value on an entire planet in ten years,” Octavio objected. “And if they left in an orderly manner, they weren’t driven out by a flare.”

  “Not directly,” Renaud said. “But look at the orbit of the stations supporting the salvage effort. It’s not geostationary, Commodore. It’s at a level and a velocity designed to keep it on the opposite side of the planet from the star as much as possible.”

  “So, if the planet got hit by another bad flare, they’d have survived, but it might have been by the skin of their teeth,” McGill concluded for her boss. “They might have bailed, falling back to their home base to stay safe.”

  “Your thoughts are not in enough shadow,” Siril-ki told them all. “A bad flare would have been a warning to the scavengers to retreat, yes. A bad-enough flare would have devastated Sina.

  “If enough damage was done to the rest of my people, whatever herd members were here would have been needed back at their home base.” Ki made a sad sound Octavio could only describe as a whinny.

  “If enough people were dead, why pick through the bones of Sia for things that cannot help you?” ki asked. “Food and air would have become the priority, and if Sia and Sina were both dead, computer cores and robot sentries would not help you grow plants.”

  “They would have to focus on building new hydroponics facilities, like we did in Vista,” Octavio said. “As far from the star as possible, not even at Sina.”

  He shook his head.

  “But Belmont didn’t find anything to say where they retreated to?” he asked.

  “No,” Renaud confirmed. “Chen did manage to get us the spectrography of a sample of the plaques, though.”

  “Which gives us a compass we did not have,” Siril-ki agreed. “We are analyzing the data, but I can confirm that the metal came from Sina. Give me a few hours, maybe a day or so, and we shall be able to tell you where on the planet.”

  “Then that’s where we go next,” Octavio said with a grim sigh. “Unless anyone thinks we’re going to find something useful randomly poking around Sia?”

  “The only primary source for the answers we sought was in the Validation Center’s computers,” Siril-ki admitted. “There may be other pieces of the puzzle buried on the planet, but we don’t even know where to look.”

  “Then Sina it is. For now, at least.”

  Octavio turned his attention back to the dead world. The Assini had set into motion events that had doomed dozens of other species to death—the Republic literally had no idea how many sentient species had died as their worlds were transformed around them—but none of their technology had been able to fight the fatal entropy of their star.

  Part of him was sure the answer to stopping the Matrices was there, on the homeworld of the Assini. But with no idea where to even begin looking, a broader search was called for. They had to follow the clues and track the fate of the Assini—and hope that somewhere in that story of death and failure was a clue to the completely different question of how to stop the monsters the Assini had built.

  13

  The first time Isaac had seen the Skree-Skree System, it had been a battlefield. He hadn’t been physically there at the time, though. He’d actually been back in Exilium, overseeing the refit to Vigil, when Watchtower and Spring Dream had led their escorts to the rescue of the system.

  It had been the first true allied operation the Republic had undertaken. Spring Dream had been built in Exilium and handed over to the Vistans only a few months before the battle. They’d been called into action with almost no notice.

  But the two battlecruisers and eight strike cruisers had demonstrated that, yes, the ships could do exactly what they’d been designed to do. The Sub-Regional Construction Matrix handling the Construction process of the Skree-Skree’s home had never known what hit it.

  In the Hearthfire System, the ESF hadn’t had the firepower on hand to stop the Matrices from launching their terraformer spikes at Vista. They’d evacuated the survivors, but they hadn’t saved the Vistans’ world.

  In Skree-Skree, they’d arrived in time. Skree’s vibrant green ball still hung close to the inner edge of the liquid-water zone of the dull G-class star. The star might have had less energy than Sol or Exilium, but it was hot enough to keep its second planet warm.

  Skree was uncomfortably warm and humid for humans across most of its latitudes, and its equator was actively dangerous for them without protective equipment. The rodent-like aliens had mostly lived underground to avoid the very active animal life of their planet.

  They�
�d made it to the stars eventually, and there’d been a healthy spaceborne industry in place when the Matrices showed up. Much of it had been wrecked before the Exiles and Vistans had saved them, but the Skree-Skree had set to rebuilding it without hesitation.

  “Vigil and Dante have docking slots assigned,” Connor said behind him as Isaac studied the hologram of the system on the flag deck. “The strike cruisers are going right to the yards.”

  “How long until their battlecruisers are online?” Isaac asked. Two of the massive ships were under construction there, the centerpiece of the same yards his damaged escorts were moving toward.

  “Both are scheduled to leave the yards inside two hundred hours,” his operations officer replied. “At least that again in trials and exercises before anyone wants to call them operational, but they’ll be in space in less than eight days.”

  Probably ten of Skree’s nineteen-point-eight hour days, Isaac reflected.

  “And our own ships?”

  “Fortitude and Reliant are still about a week out,” Connor told him. “We’re still waiting on answers from the Tohnbohn about whether they can break free more ships, too.”

  “And the Matrices haven’t found anything yet,” Isaac said grimly. “We got snookered, Connor. They knew we were looking for the RCM and intentionally laid a trail of breadcrumbs to lead us away.

  “It’s only bought them time, but that time let them build these damn dreadnoughts.” A wave of Isaac’s hand swiped away the image of the Skree-Skree System and replaced it with the rotating black sphere of the new Matrix warships. “They’re not even in XR-13-9’s files. We keep forgetting the damn AIs can improvise, even with our allied Matrices doing it all the time.”

  Connor didn’t argue. He was studying the big warship himself.

  “No offense, sir, but I’m glad it’s your problem,” the operations officer said dryly. “I just have to keep military forces from four species and a bunch of computers talking to each other and moving in the same direction.”

  “Just,” Isaac echoed back. “I know better, Aloysius. We wouldn’t be getting anywhere without you and the others. Amelie thinks she might have some new allies for us, but these Sivar…” He shook his head.

  “They remind me of the Confederacy,” he admitted. “I almost wish they just reminded me of my mother.”

  “What’s the difference, sir?” Connor asked after a moment.

  Isaac turned to look at his aide. Captain Aloysius Connor was a tall and dark-haired man who’d never visited Earth in his life and had definitely never met the First Admiral.

  “The First Admiral earned the epithet Iron Bitch honestly,” he told his subordinate. “She fell into the trap of corruption that every absolute leader falls into, but her objectives were clear and she rarely lost sight of them.

  “Presented with a clear and present danger on the edge of the Confederacy, there would be no question what she’d do. She’d gouge potential allies for all she could, but there’s no question that the Confederacy Fleet would be heading out to fight the Matrices.”

  He shook his head.

  “But everything suggests that the Sivar have a dictator just like her…and we don’t know which way they’ll jump.”

  “I don’t think most people would be so confident in which way the First Admiral would jump, sir,” Connor admitted.

  “I know,” Isaac conceded. “She did herself no favors, but I did know her. By the end, her virtues were vastly outweighed by her flaws, but she had slivers left of them.”

  “Speaking of local dictators, though…”

  “What does the Grand Speaker want?” Isaac asked. Dictator was an unfair descriptor for the Grand Speaker. Like the Great High Mother of the Vistans, he was a strictly limited constitutional monarch—though, also like the Great High Mother, one with real power.

  Unlike the Great High Mother, the Grand Speaker was an elected post. The Speaker was elected for life on the death of the previous Speaker. The vote was a popular election that came with a strong expectation of a previous lifetime of service.

  Most Grand Speakers were already quite old when they took up the title. That was an inherent limiting factor on their monarch-for-life powers.

  The current Grand Speaker was old even for Grand Speakers, probably doddering into his last years, and had served his people well. It wasn’t LastBornVoice’s fault that he irritated Isaac.

  “The Grand Speaker has invited all of the battlecruiser captains and flag officers to attend a grand banquet held in their honor,” Connor told him. “It is to be held at the Palace of Frozen Earths.”

  “That’s appreciated,” Isaac murmured. That was the Grand Speaker’s secondary residence, in the very limited area of arctic tundra Skree possessed. So far as he could tell, it existed because of the novelty of building a structure out of bricks of frozen soil had never quite worn off for one of LastBornVoice’s predecessors.

  He sighed.

  “We will, of course, attend,” he told Connor. “I leave making sure they actually serve something we can eat this time up to you.”

  “Have faith, Admiral,” his subordinate murmured. “I have to eat whatever they’re serving too!”

  Isaac had to be grateful that the meeting was at the Palace of Frozen Earths, because his tattoo-comp was all too willing to tell him what the weather was like at the Palace of Broken Monsters. One hundred percent humidity, thirty-eight degrees Celsius and brilliantly sunny.

  The Palace of Frozen Earths was its own headache, but Isaac could live with temperatures just below freezing. His uniform could handle that without even trying. It was a lot harder for the uniform to handle the weather at Skree’s equator.

  “We’re coming in above the Palace now,” his pilot announced. “Air control is directing us in a wide circle, though. Someone—it sounds like a local guest—screwed up their landing and scattered an aircraft along the entire runway.”

  “Any survivors?” Isaac asked. That was…a bad way to start a not-quite-diplomatic-summit.

  “Not even a damn injury,” the pilot replied. “The Skree-Skree apparently go for ridiculous safety equipment.”

  As Isaac used his tattoo-comp to show him the feed from the shuttle’s pickups, he could see part of the need for that. The Skree-Skree might put insane safety equipment in their aircraft, but the planes were a collection of fragile half-winged nightmares he would have grounded on sight.

  The consistency of it suggested that was just the local style, but just looking at Skree-Skree airplanes made him shiver. The Skree-Skree didn’t have a human level of risk assessment, a necessary survival trait on their planet.

  They’d been into rifled firearms and mobile artillery before they’d been able to reliably take down the beasts the translation software dubbed terrormonsters. Even small cannonballs had just pissed the eight-meter-tall sauroids off. The Palace of Broken Monsters now had gates built of terrormonster bones…but the small aliens that had gone after them were now his allies.

  The Skree-Skree were basically the small furry rodent that had coexisted with the dinosaurs on Earth…except the dinosaurs had never gone away on Skree.

  “They say they’ll have the runway cleared in a few minutes, but they’re directing us to a second landing site,” his pilot continued. “Looks like they do have proper shuttle pads here, they just prefer the runway themselves.”

  “Land us wherever they ask,” Isaac said, sharing a long look with Connor. “Unless it’s actually a problem. Then we can argue.”

  “There is nothing I can’t land this bird on,” the pilot boasted. “We’ll be fine.”

  The Admiral concealed a snort. Pilots were always a special breed.

  The Grand Speaker’s people must have been used to this kind of chaos. Despite a crashed plane and their human guests landing on the opposite side of the palace than expected, there was an honor party out to greet Isaac and his officers as they exited the shuttle.

  The human group was small. He and Connor represented
the overall command. His two Vice Admirals, Giannovi and Anderson, had each brought an aide as well. The two Captains had come alone, bringing the total up to eight.

  Captain Alstairs was looking askance at Dante’s commander, but Isaac was used to that. Captain Robert Cavan had nearly missed ever getting a battlecruiser command, almost entirely due to a spectacular ability to irritate his colleagues.

  Isaac had never seen the slightest hint that Cavan punched down, though. Dante’s crew seemed happy enough with their Captain—and that was enough for him.

  Right now, Cavan was looking around their surroundings with an unconcealed expression of distaste, which Isaac couldn’t quite deny the validity of.

  The landing pad itself looked modern and functional, a dense nanocrete pad that would stand up to shuttles with ease. The buildings around them took a minute to identify as such, as they had all been built from cut turf. The temperature meant the frozen tundra making up the exterior of the structures stayed frozen, but the Palace of Frozen Earths very much lived up to the name.

  The formally dressed Skree-Skree soldiers didn’t help. Their near-rat-like appearance was only augmented by face-concealing red helmets that concealed their beaks in a snout-like structure.

  The shining silver armor wrapped around their hunched torsos was perfectly effective, but its decorative impact was undermined by the fact that each of the Skree-Skree honor guard had welded artifacts of personal importance to the breastplate, resulting in dress uniforms that looked like loose cutlery drawers.

  The appearance wouldn’t have been acceptable to EMC Marines, but these weren’t EMC Marines. They were Skree-Skree Speaker’s Guards, and Isaac understood that. He gave the honor guard a perfectly crisp salute as they raised their rifles to the sky with a chorus of predatory screams.