“And the kind of minds we’re going to need to deal with them,” Suli said grimly.
“Amen,” Kaspowitz muttered.
“Burn ends in ten,” Erik added. He cut thrust, and swung Phoenix nose-first once more, to give the scan suite the best possible angle on Cephilae’s surface.
A few minutes later, Geish made another report from Scan One. “Captain, I’m not reading any pieces in that debris big enough to suggest survivors. A couple are borderline, but I’d put the probability extremely low.”
“That’s still a chance,” Kaspowitz said stubbornly.
“No,” said Erik. The decision was obvious, and did not bother him as much as it might have a few months back. He had six-hundred-plus lives on Phoenix to watch over as his first and primary concern. Focusing on that put all other concerns in the shade, and the longer he spent commanding Phoenix, the more that became the case. “We’re too busy. Shilu, I want communications options for those marines on the surface.”
“Aye Captain.”
They orbited now, a hundred kilometres above Cephilae’s upper atmosphere, far closer than any warship captain wanted to be if the shooting started. Getting to a position from where they could jump would be an extra-hard burn from here, first to clear Cephilae’s gravity-well, then Pashan’s, while those approaching from further out would have far more freedom of mobility. But in order to find what they’d come here for, Phoenix had no choice.
For the first time, Erik allowed himself a moment to observe the feed coming in from Jiri’s Scan Two. It was Cephilae, a world of varied volcanic striations and deposits, of bare, rocky land, extensive polar ice caps, and many lakes, rivers and seas. Cephilae’s volcanism was not especially violent, but it was constant, partly a product of an unusual core composition, and partly due to the gravitational and magnetic interference from its huge, orange and malevolent mother planet, Pashan. Most of the land was rock, with very little soil, so not much grew. The forty percent of Cephilae’s surface that was not water looked uninspiring to everyone save geologists, and Phoenix had none of those aboard. Its plains were alternately grey, brown or black, and with little exposed surface older than a few tens of millions of years, there weren’t many interesting features to look at — no great mountains or valleys, just dreary, undulating rock, punctuated by the occasional volcanic crater, some hissing steam or smoke. Near the waterways grew expanses of moss, algae or lichen, making patterns of colour about the water’s edge, like green and blue mould on a cheese too long in the refrigerator.
It was in the waters where Cephilae grew interesting. The waters were rich with species, and dynamic with shallow coral reefs and deep water habitats alike. Volcanism kept the waters warmer than they ought to be, this far from the Cason System sun, fed from below by thermal vents. The vents also pumped a lot of nutrients into the water, and even in the deep cold places, sealife thrived. With so little growing on the land, few Cephilae species had found evolutionary advantage in climbing from the water, and save for a few shallows-feeders, there were no native lifeforms with anything resembling legs. All of this information had been widely available, in databases Phoenix had accumulated even in tavalai space, as tavalai had an endless fascination for xenobiology, and a glance at tavalai entertainment networks showed countless wildlife programs from systems all across tavalai space. Doubtless some tavalai experts were quite frustrated that they weren’t allowed to visit Cephilae themselves, particularly given the tavalai interest in aquatic life, and would be envious of Phoenix’s good fortune. But Erik hadn’t liked the chances of busting into Cason System illegally with a force of tavalai marine biologists, however appealing that might have seemed in the current circumstances.
What they now had to find was a position, in Drakhil’s own translated words, ‘four hundred and fifteen shterek, magnetic north-east of the lake’s northern shore, due east of a lava channel carved in basalt on a path north-by-south and plunging directly into the sea.’
A ‘shterek’, Romki’s Klyran dictionary had discovered, was approximately one-point-six human metres… making four hundred and fifteen shterek the same as six hundred and sixty four metres, or two-thirds of a kilometre.
The lake itself was described as, ‘equatorial, its south-eastern edge two thousand shtereks from a volcanic peak atypically tall for the moon.’ The lack of GPS, or any basic longitude and latitudinal coordinates was frustrating, but predictable of many less-central parren worlds. Parren were not the great colonisers and civilisation-builders that the tavalai were, and liked their secrecy. Besides which, Romki had informed them all, via Styx, that different branches of hacksaw civilisation had preferred different mathematical models, so while humans used a three hundred and sixty degree system, drysines had used five hundred and twenty degrees of longitude, and deepynines closer to a thousand. Styx was unclear on the details, but stated that the Tahrae in Drakhil’s age had borrowed a lot of such systems from the drysines… much of which had obviously been destroyed and replaced when the drysines, and the Tahrae, had fallen. Even if Drakhil had given coordinates, it was unlikely they’d mean much to people now… and perhaps that was why he did not use them, given he’d hidden the data-core at the time of the Tahrae’s collapse, and had guessed that in many thousands of years, Cephilae’s land features would be better recognised than drysine GPS coordinates.
There were other descriptive details too, and even as Erik looked, Second Lieutenant Jiri, in terse conversation with Romki, eliminated another two of their ‘potentials’ off the list. Their current orbit would sweep over all the remaining potential sites in another five hours, and hurrying it with a rapid burn, given all the other things they needed time to figure out, wasn’t going to help. Styx, Erik thought, seemed to be allowing the humans to talk, while calculating variables in the background and presenting them with possible matches, or points of discrepancy. No doubt she didn’t like the fact that they were searching for a surface location identified only by the obscure words of an organic spoken text in a long-dead language. She freely admitted discomfort with words, spoken or written, and their imprecise, misleading nature. When details were so vague, her great intellect was of no greater use than a human’s, and she probably judged it was better to allow those who understood organic things instinctively to take the lead.
“Styx,” he said to her, “are you able to give me any confirmation that our special defensive measure is in place?”
“Captain, in order to acquire that confirmation I will need to contact one of the parren ships. This active engagement is very difficult to disguise, unless you have some special plan for it. I am moderately confident that our measure is in place, though in how many of their ships, I cannot say. The variability increases with the number of ships.”
“I understand,” said Erik. “Monitor them for any clue on that status. If an opportunity to query further presents, run it past me first.”
“Yes Captain.”
Another ship Commander might have allowed a pregnant pause to see if he was going to explain it without being asked. Suli never bothered with passive-aggressive nonsense. “What’s that about?” she asked bluntly.
“Little plan I devised with Styx,” said Erik. “She’s been working with Hiro to make smaller versions of her assassin bugs. We snuck a few onto Aristan and his crew when they were aboard. Thought it was more likely to work if no one else knew, in case some behavioural clue gave us away.” It had been Hiro’s professional recommendation, but Erik wasn’t about to hide behind that.
“We’ve got bugs aboard their ships?” Suli asked. Caught between delight at a tactical advantage, and distaste at the method.
“We know for sure we got bugs aboard Aristan and two captains. Aristan’s on Toristan, with Captain Duoam, so probably only two ships, and we don’t know that they’ve been able to plug into any systems because we can’t talk to them without giving it away, obviously. We’ll only know if we have to send the signal to activate, and something happens. But it could take two s
hips out of the fight.”
“What will it do?” Suli wondered.
“Something unpleasant,” said Erik, noting Toristan and Deara’s climbing burn to a higher orbit had now ceased. “Styx says there’s no way to tell. They interpret their programming ingeniously depending on circumstance. With any luck we won’t have to find out.”
“Outstanding,” said Lieutenant Karle from Arms.
“Amen to that,” murmured his second, Second Lieutenant Harris from Arms Two. As though both the bridge gunners now felt they had a better chance.
“Styx also thinks she might be able to disable a parren ship simply by hacking in through coms,” Erik added. “But that’s more of a stretch, we’ll see.” There was no eager reply to that. Hacksaws could take limited control of some foreign technology in that fashion, and it was alarming. That Phoenix was contemplating the use of such technologies put everyone on a side of that technological divide they’d never expected to be on.
“Captain,” said Jiri. “I think we have a candidate for diversion flight one.”
“Show me,” Erik instructed.
10
Lieutenant Dreyfus ‘Skeeta’ Jalawi thought it unreasonable that a small world like Cephilae, with only two-thirds of a gravity, should produce this much poor weather. Phoenix assault shuttle PH-3 lurched and bounced through heavy turbulence, rattling Charlie Platoon marines in their armour like nuts in a shell.
“Sorry guys,” came the unruffled calm of their pilot, Lieutenant Regan Jersey. “Lots of warm water down below, all that underwater volcanism. Makes for interesting weather.”
Jalawi liked flying with Jersey. Who the hottest assault pilots were was a matter of constant contention on a carrier. The usual consensus was Lieutenant Hausler, and for sheer brilliance and nerve, there wasn’t much argument. But Jalawi didn’t buy it, because every time he’d flown with Hausler, the guy would pull the margins finer than he needed to, and the manoeuvres harder than he had to, just because he could. Jalawi understood that assault shuttle pilots had to stay sharp, and that settling into comfortable routines could lead to complacency, but he personally thought that Hausler overdid it.
Then there was Second Lieutenant Tif, who some were saying could even be the best of them all, and was currently undergoing training trials for a starship seat. And again, there was no argument against Tif’s skills, but Jalawi was old-fashioned in that he ideally preferred whomever he flew with to have a comfortable grasp of English, and a firm understanding of which weapon systems did what. Common knowledge had it that Tif, for all her raw ability, had neither.
But in all the times Jalawi had flown with Lieutenant Jersey, he’d never seen her do anything reckless or unnecessary, and she sure as hell knew what every system on her ship did. She was merely perfect, every time… but on a ship with standards as high as Phoenix, some people didn’t appreciate it as much as they should.
It didn’t mean he couldn’t give her a hard time, though. “Yeah, if you could hold it still enough that I could actually look at our landing point map, that’d be awesome girl.”
“For anyone else, Skeeta, I’d have flown an extra ten K route to give them a smooth ride. But not for you.”
Jalawi chortled. Most marine commanders didn’t like being called by their nicknames on an open mike, but Jalawi didn’t care. Built like a bull (but short for one), he hadn’t earned his nickname by physical appearance. The only officer on Phoenix whose patience his sense of humour hadn’t yet tested was Major Thakur. It was for that, almost as much as her quality as an officer, that she’d earned Jalawi’s undying respect.
They were three hours into Phoenix’s orbit, and PH-3 was the last shuttle to make a run to the surface. PH-4, carrying Echo Platoon, had already gone back up to Phoenix, having determined that their investigation site could not possibly be where the data-core was buried. Phoenix’s scan could penetrate the clouds well enough to make out landforms in considerable detail, but not detail enough to make out rock types, which some of Drakhil’s descriptions contained.
PH-1 was down with Delta Platoon, checking out a promising lake on the other side of the moon. Phoenix had put up two com drones at high geostationary, providing ninety percent coverage for the various deployments to talk to each other. The Pashan polar satellite filled in the gaps, but with a long delay. Private coms were of course impossible between grounded shuttles and low-orbiting ships, but no one on Phoenix wanted to rely on Aristan’s ships for a relay. They could not stop Aristan from listening to their conversations without invoking some very serious encryption that Styx had created for them, but that would rouse suspicions, and it was agreed only to be used in emergencies.
“So what do we do if we find it?” asked Sergeant Mishra, Third Section Commander.
“We’re here playing what they call a ‘shell game’,” Jalawi said laconically as the shuttle bumped and heaved through more rough air. “You know where the magician hides something under one of three cups, and you’ve gotta guess which one? We’re gonna try and make it hard for Mr Aristan Almighty to figure which one it’s under.”
“And what if he sends his own shuttles down to look?” wondered Corporal Riskin, Heavy Squad Commander.
“No idea, Beagle,” said Jalawi. “HDI.” HDI, in marine slang, stood for ‘happy, dumb and ignorant’. It described the pleasure one felt at the realisation that a very curly problem was the responsibility of someone further up the chain of command. Jalawi understood well that the ‘H’ in ‘HDI’ only really worked if you had people like Major Thakur and Captain Debogande in charge. And he wouldn’t have wagered ten cents on the odds of him thinking that about Debogande ever, six months ago. Strange how things worked out.
His command feed showed the shuttle view as they slid from cloud, and found a lake below. It was big, kilometres across in either direction, but turning to long fjords against dark, stony hills, where the water filled the grooves in the rock. Rain made drifting veils of mist, briefly passing, then a clear view of the far shore as Jersey brought them in.
“Matches the parameters,” said Ensign Singh from the shuttle’s nose seat. “That hill’s in the right spot. Just the lake isn’t, and that kinda hides everything else. Lieutenant Jalawi, I think you might need to send someone for a swim.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” said Jalawi, staring down at the lakeshore as they began a slow, thundering circle. Singh’s graphical display overlaid the view, showing the Charlie Platoon marines where the lake shore ought to be, if it was in fact the one Drakhil had used as reference to the buried data-core. “Okay, the way I see it, we’ve got three points of measurement we need to satisfy. We’re also taking our time on this deployment, we need to keep Aristan guessing, so if we’re going to be down here an hour I’ll want a defensive perimeter set up in case someone sends a shuttle after us.
“So, we’ll all hit the lakeshore together save for Heavy Squad, who will take up defensive position on that north-east hilltop. The rest of us will come down on the lakeshore directly facing the hill, then we’ll split. Second Squad will head north up the valley to the east of that hill, and establish a visual perimeter one klick out. Third Squad will move west along the lakeshore and look for any sign of that lava channel Drakhil mentions in the diary. Lieutenant Jersey will drop everyone save for Heavy Squad on the lakeshore, then take the heavies up to the hilltop. Everyone clear?”
“Lieutenant Jersey copies, PH-3 is now inbound.”
Jersey settled them down, and the rear ramp dropped as restraints came undone with a racket of disconnections, seating racks whining up and aside as marines departed orderly and fast out the back, and fanned onto the lakeshore. Jalawi was last out from his command position near the cockpit, and gazed across the bright blue lake, and the tall, thunderous clouds beyond. About the lake’s far shore rose low, dark hills. This northern side was relatively flat, an undulating expanse of hard, black volcanic rock, filled with pools from recent rain. Steam rose from somewhere near, one of Cephilae’s many g
eysers. The water that lapped upon the black rock shore was brilliantly clear.
With everyone out, PH-3’s ramp retracted, and thrusters roared again, marines making safe distance as those closest leaned their protective suits into the gale. The shuttle rose away, heading for the short hill nearby. Already Second Squad were following Master Sergeant Hoon, spreading wide across the rock and walking up the shallow valley that headed past the hill. Third Squad went left — west along the shore.
“So what’s a lava channel look like, Sarge?” Private Ban asked his squad commander.
“Like a riverbed cut into the rock,” said Sergeant Mishra. “Drakhil describes it as pretty deep, maybe four metres. But the lake shore is three hundred metres further north than it was in Drakhil’s time, so most of that channel might be underwater — Drakhil didn’t say how far north it went.”
“Just keep your sensor suite trained on the rock,” Jalawi told them all. “Get the analysis and transmit it back to the shuttle — the shuttle will feed it to Phoenix.” Needless to say, none of the marines were trained geologists. But marines were often deployed in strange places that smart people or computers back on a warship could learn more about, if the marines used simple analysis tools. On this trip, those were handled by the non-coms.
“So what are the odds of a lava channel surviving from over twenty thousand years ago?” Lance Corporal Tugola asked. “I mean, given this place is all so geologically active, and we’re walking on rock that might be much younger than that?”
“Hey Lance Corporal,” Mishra reminded him, “happy, dumb and ignorant, remember?”
“Sure boss.”
“Begs the question,” said Jalawi’s number two, Staff Sergeant Spitzer, from Jalawi’s side as they gazed at the lake. “If Drakhil’s burying something he doesn’t expect to be found for a long time, why does he choose a place that changes its surface so often?”
Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Page 13