Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  He uplinked to Doc Suelo, and got a fast answer. “Doc, just checking on Skah. What happened?”

  “He’s fine,” Suelo replied irritably. From his tone, it was clear he was working on five other things, and didn’t like bridge busybodies of any rank interrupting him. “Kuhsi physiology is particularly well suited to high G, plus his mother’s had the usual G-augments done, there is a light version for kids that’s apparently legal where she comes from, though it wouldn’t pass human laws. He was just feeling a little dizzy. Is that all?”

  ‘Is that all, Captain,’ Erik could have replied. “That’s all, thanks Doc,” he said instead. If it was worse than he said, Suelo would probably be lying anyway, as medical staff would often do with bridge queries. Not for the first time, Erik wondered who really ran the damn ship anyway. Technically it was him, but he couldn’t really tell Trace what to do, or Suelo, or Rooke. Sure as hell he couldn’t tell Romki or Styx. They’d give him a hand of cards, like some hustler on a street corner, and tell him to pick one. It gave him the illusion of control, but in truth, they were the ones who selected his range of possible choices.

  Alarm klaxons marked the last three minute warnings before the end of thrust, then cut to a sudden absence of gravity, which Erik rode by simply holding his feet to the floor and waiting until the cylinder rotation began once more. Once the spin fired up to normal, he grabbed a quick shower, skipped the shave, struggled back into uniform and emerged to take the few steps to the bridge with ten seconds to spare before scheduled changeover. Once settled into the captain’s chair, with first-shift similarly settling around him, he was able to look at their destination on the big screens for the first time.

  Clearly something was wrong. It was a rock, like all stations had to be in a dangerous system like this one. It rotated fast enough to suggest nearly a full gravity inside, where the hollowed-out hallways would circle the outer rim, a common enough design in most civilised parts of the Spiral. But this one had debris loose and floating, in spreading patterns that Navcomp suggested had come from station itself, and recently. Worse, there was a ship nearby, spinning lazily end-over-end.

  “Asteroid strike?” Suli suggested, with more hope than expectation.

  “We’re not that lucky,” Kaspowitz muttered. “The physics are all wrong, the damage doesn’t match up.”

  “We’ve got no emergency beacon,” Shilu added from Coms. “No chatter in the whole system, it’s just deadly quiet. Second-shift heard six transmissions all shift, all of them automated.”

  Phoenix was moving much more slowly now, given all her hours of straight if mild deceleration and course-correction combined. Typically of a messy, dangerous system like Brehn, most of the rocks and ice all circled the system centre in roughly the same direction and velocity, so relative V between rocks was typically low. It didn’t stop impacts from being deadly — just not as deadly as they were to a starship cutting through the flow of junk on a completely different heading, and at much higher V.

  “I can’t make out a precise image yet,” said Geish at Scan, squinting at his highest-definition visual. “But it looks like weapons fire. Nothing high-V, so close-range. Looks like the crew cylinder’s been holed, it’s only small. I’d guess no survivors.”

  “At that range you can bet whoever did it was aiming at the crew cylinder,” said Karle distastefully. “Couldn’t miss from there.”

  “That’s a starship,” Suli added. “Fast one, engine-to-mass ratio suggests light transport, possibly military. Can’t be heavily armed, if at all.”

  “There are more docked,” said Geish, focussing a second visual on the rotating, rocky side of the asteroid. “Insystemers, can’t tell if they’re damaged. But sure looks like they killed the only starship.”

  “If those insystemers aren’t damaged,” Karle wondered, “why are they still attached to station?”

  “Likely whatever killed the starship scared them so badly they don’t want to move,” Kaspowitz said grimly.

  The station was House Harmony — Domesh Denomination aligned, as was most of Brehn System. This sector of space was all House Harmony, as the parren arranged their politics, but some systems leaned in the direction of particular denominations, for reasons Erik had neither the time nor patience to learn. It did raise the question, however, of whether the main House Harmony sector government, located at the Drezen System thirty-two light-years from here, would bother to send help, given they were run by the ruling Incefahd Denomination. But Drezen System was too far away to help here anyway, against deepynine-technology vessels that could leap in and be gone again before the sectoral government would even hear about events in this minor, trivial system.

  “Anyone think the deepynines didn’t do it?” Erik asked, to be sure he wasn’t overlooking some possible treachery among the fractious parren. Silence from the bridge. “So how do we end up selecting exactly the same station as the deepynines did? Nav?”

  “We had about fourteen possible options from where we were,” said Kaspowitz, studying those old maps and trajectories with a frown. “We needed a station that starships would visit, within our forward arc of accessibility, and not too far against the grain of in-system motion. That erased about half, plus we figured from our logs last time we were here that this one might be trying to stay quiet, which suggests a House Harmony military facility, or at least a security function. Maybe the deepynines liked it for the same reasons.”

  Phoenix was already on full combat alert, though Erik couldn’t escape the feeling that this deserved a switch to something higher. Obviously it could be a trap.

  “We could try another station?” Suli suggested, evidently thinking the same thing.

  “Maybe,” Erik murmured, thinking hard, staring at the asteroid station and its crippled, spinning visitor. “I think if we can figure why the deepynines hit this station, we might be able to figure what they’re up to. I think if there were a lot of them here, we’d have seen another one by now. But they were guarding that jump entry point with just one ship.”

  “That nearly killed us,” Suli added. “They don’t need many.”

  “Which could further support my theory. They can cover an entire system with just a couple of ships. Scan, what’s your effective range around the station?”

  “Captain,” Geish said unhappily, with a helpless gesture at his screens, “if one of them’s hiding up against a rock, he could be right next to us and we wouldn’t see him.”

  “Coms, can we talk to station?” Erik pressed. “If we could lasercom them, they could tell us where they went.”

  “Captain, I’m not getting a thing from them,” said Shilu. “With the damage they’ve got, coms might not even be working. I could force it? We just need one working dish.” With Styx’s coms tech, that was. Styx was the ultimate hacker, and only needed coms reception to infiltrate any lower-tech computer system in existence. “My only concern is maybe the deepynines left someone aboard? Or something?”

  “If they call for help, we’ll hear it, right?”

  “Styx?” Shilu asked, not knowing that answer.

  “The deepynines could only hide a transmission from us if they had installed autonomous communications gear on the asteroid,” said Styx. “The asteroid is rotating, and I have not yet observed such equipment. Similarly there does not appear to be any nearby satellite or drone systems through which they could relay a signal. I think it unlikely that an enemy entity left behind on the station could call for assistance without us hearing it.”

  “We’ll risk it. Even if they get an alarm out, any attack has to come at us through this soup, so it won’t be fast. Styx, assist Lieutenant Shilu to infiltrate the station, if you can. I want to know if they know where their attackers went.”

  “Yes Captain. Captain, this may be the best moment to alert you to the possibility that your ship may be trying to get us all killed.”

  Erik blinked. He would have glanced sideways at Suli, to see if she shared his surprise, but could ba
rely see her past the wrap-around screens. Besides which, he already knew she did. “I’m sorry Styx, please clarify?”

  “Captain,” said Styx, like a teacher explaining something obvious to a particularly dull student, “this ship is alo-technology, which as you have recently discovered, means that it is also deepynine-technology. In the Argitori System, your ship’s navigation system somehow managed to find me, and my settlement, amongst all the other millions of possible hiding places. You have already concluded the likelihood that such alo vessels as your Fleet uses are likely feeding data secretly back to the alo about vital systems in human space, and particularly about the possibility of surviving drysines.”

  “Shit,” muttered Kaspowitz.

  “Styx,” Erik said urgently, “have you seen any indication that Phoenix’s subsystems might be giving away our position?”

  “No,” Styx admitted. “Captain, I know your crew privately believe that I have infiltrated every system in this ship against your instructions, but I assure you this is not true. There are some very sophisticated systems at the heart of this ship’s computer functions that even I cannot safely probe without a full scale and orchestrated effort. I would not dare to query those systems without such an effort, for fear that it may activate a defensive mechanism that could disable the ship.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t know if the ship’s trying to get us killed?”

  “Yes Captain, I don’t know. I am uncertain that I could stop it, should it try to. If you give me permission, I will further infiltrate some of Phoenix’s less vital subsystems. That would allow me to position against such a development.”

  Erik knew Suli and Kaspowitz didn’t like it. He didn’t like it either. But then, neither did he like the idea of Phoenix covertly giving away their position to a deepynine killing machine. “Talk to Lieutenant Rooke,” he said. “He’s busy with repairs. Tell him of your concerns, and he will report back to me with his opinion. I will make a judgement when I am better informed.”

  “Yes Captain. Captain, I have infiltrated the asteroid station. The light lag is insignificant, I am accessing control logs now, stand by.”

  “Coms, she’s done that already?”

  “Yes Captain,” said Shilu. “She did it while you and she were talking.” Because conversation, to Styx, was just the random bit of peripheral data she threw at the organics so their tiny brains could catch up to what her primary intellect was doing.

  “Captain, the station’s command systems are partitioned, I have limited access. However, I can confirm that the station has been attacked, and central logs have been wiped.” That was not surprising — if Styx could access station central, so could the deepynines. “I am able to access remaining fragments of short-term memory in various station functions, particularly internal security monitors. I have no direct confirmation of deepynine attack, but the damage to access points, and from firefight residuals, appears consistent with deepynines. Several surviving external tracking cameras show an engine flare departing on a trajectory one-eight-three by twenty.”

  Immediately that trajectory line appeared on Erik’s display, expanding into a cone of uncertain probability. That was from Suli’s feed — as Helm, she was responsible for plotting tactical projections, while Kaspowitz was concerned with the larger-picture spatial geography. Erik did not ask whether Suli was plotting the course herself, or Styx had simply input the course without asking.

  “That’s heading back past us,” Suli said with alarm. “Could have been an intercept course, we might have just missed him.”

  “Could be running silent,” said Geish, even more unhappy than usual. “In this mess we’d never see him.”

  “Well that first guy was trying his very best to kill us,” said Suli, running probable course projections and velocities, given the risks of going too fast in this system. “But this one might be stalking us. How are they coordinating if they’re not close enough for tightbeam communications?”

  “Captain, I have a time date on that ship’s departure,” said Styx. “The station security system says it departed directly following our arrival insystem. Eleven minutes later, in fact.”

  “We interrupted him,” said Erik. “That’s why he left. He headed to intercept, but either couldn’t find us, or otherwise decided not to engage. And the first ship is still out there somewhere, possibly it didn’t follow us into the thick stuff after Styx blinded it.”

  “Maybe they’re not trying to kill us,” Suli suggested warily. “Maybe they’re trying to herd us.” Erik stared at the rotating asteroid station on his visual. Herding them toward what?

  “Captain,” said Styx, “this station’s central data system has been compromised, but studying the available schematics, I think the security core may be intact. The security accesses appear undamaged. In that scenario, the secure log data we seek may still exist, and docking with any other station in this system would be similarly dangerous.”

  Erik’s display showed distances unwinding, numbers counting down. He was running out of time to make a decision. “Styx, you’re certain the deepynines would be unaware of this drysine moon we’re headed to?”

  “It was widely understood that deepynines were unaware of its existence in my time. Deepynine creation history was violent and ahistorical. Much old data was purged, and many things once known were lost to them. And before the fall of the Drysine Empire, the deepynines were destroyed, depriving them of any opportunity to learn the location.”

  “On the other hand,” said Kaspowitz, “they’ve been scouting all kinds of places lately, sucking up information from everywhere. Captain, you think maybe they’re looking for it too?”

  “Not as much as they’re looking for Styx, and maybe the data-core too, if they’ve figured that out.” Erik gave Phoenix a light, manual push for clearance past a newly-spotted rock. At these speeds he could dodge easily, without the autos. “But sure, it’s possible.”

  “Captain,” said Styx, “the deepynines cannot be allowed to discover the moon, assuming it survives in any reasonable condition, anymore than they can be allowed access to the data-core.”

  “Why not? What’s there?”

  “The means to read and analyse this data-core, and more technology of a similar level.”

  “I think the deepynines have got plenty of their own technology,” Kaspowitz murmured.

  “All the more reason to avoid giving them a monopoly,” Styx insisted.

  Erik realised he was out of time. His coms display showed him Trace was already listening, as were her platoon commanders. “Hello Major, this is the Captain.”

  “Go ahead Captain.”

  “Please prepare for station assault. Also, I would like someone to look at that wrecked starship — if you don’t want three platoons operational at once, we can just send a shuttle for external inspection and use drones to scan for survivors. I need you to move as fast as possible, we don’t want to stick around in this neighbourhood a minute longer than we have to.”

  “Hello Captain, we’re already looking at that. The station size suggests we’ll need two platoons, I’m preparing Delta and Echo, with Alpha as active reserve. With your leave, I’d rather we used only drones to look at the starship, I’ll need all three assault shuttles directly, and I’d like AT-7 on standby in case we run into trouble. Lieutenant Dufresne can pilot, and Styx tells me that at close range she can act as front-seat, Dufresne has agreed.”

  “I copy Major,” said Erik. He’d read that report too. Everyone had been too polite to say that Styx would likely make a better co-pilot for Dufresne than Lisbeth. “Arrival ETA is thirty-nine minutes, Phoenix remains at full alert, combat imminent, ambush likely. On the ball, everyone, I don’t want this one getting out of hand.”

  17

  Styx said the station’s name was Mylor, and it was deathly silent as they came in. Trace watched the rock’s rolling sides on her visual, strapped into PH-1’s command bay, Command Squad and Echo Platoon racked in armoured row
s around and behind. Styx had compiled a limited schematic of the station from what she’d learned probing its networks, and it now sat on marine tacnet, ready to be updated once they arrived.

  Also on Trace’s visual was some of the visual recording from station — some inset security cameras, other snippets from mobiles that fed jerky, distorted images to station networks before getting lost in the data-wipe that had apparently befallen station since. The visuals weren’t clear, but most seemed to show armoured suits, spidery and slim, and a lot of indiscriminate firing. Sard. Risking an interspecies war by being here, and attacking a parren station in a parren sector that had not apparently done anything to them.

  “They must have some real good insurance,” Lieutenant Zhi suggested, looking at the same images she was. “There’s a reason no one fucks with parren. If they ever got their act together, and stopped fighting each other long enough to team up, a lot of neighbours would get nervous.”

  “Tavalai were sure pretty nervous,” Trace agreed, flicking through the visuals. Here was a chaotic handheld, spidery shapes moving and firing, then a lot of running and panic. “State Department, anyway.”

  “Alo insurance,” Staff Sergeant Kono said grimly. “We’ve seen this party before.” Deepynine and alo technology ships, he meant, but apparently operated by sard. Or they had been, in Phoenix’s previous encounters. But at Tartarus base, there’d been deepynine drones, and a queen. And alo too, in the end, rescuing that queen when she’d been cut off and surrounded. Risking their lives to do it, as deepynines had risked theirs in turn for alo. Baffling stuff, for the branch of hacksaw evolution that had defined its time in the Machine Age by being as unsympathetic to organic life as possible.

  “Styx,” Trace called on coms back to Phoenix. “You said the damage bore signs of deepynine drones — do you have any visuals to prove it?”

  “Not of the drones, Major. Possibly the sard are using advanced laser cutters. I have no indication of alo, either.”