“We looked at the ship movement logs,” said Suli, sidestepping some spacers working on an airfeed bypass behind a wall panel. “No patterns. No secure facilities, none of the regular dark runs you’d expect to top secret bases. No top secret parcel transfers, no suspiciously timed rendezvous, nothing. There’s records from the two other most secure stations also, nothing. And the few ships that come through Drezen System, which Styx says is the best route, aren’t anything military or secretive. I think we can say the local parren government don’t know the moon exists. Something that size would be getting regular traffic, and this is the logical place to do near-term resupply from.”
“Kaspo, do you agree?” Erik asked, as they paused by the stairwell to rim level.
“You wouldn’t run a resupply to a place like that from anywhere else,” said Kaspowitz. “A few places aren’t too much further, but they’re too populated and visible. You run black ops from places like this, and there’s nothing.”
“Okay,” said Erik, stepping back as more repair crew crashed up the stairwell. “So that’s where we’re going. Kaspo, plot us a course, and see if you can get some kind of reliable charts off Mylor Station’s data.”
“Going to be winging it, heading out to a rogue planet orbiting a high-mass singularity,” the tall Nav Officer said bluntly. “And going through hostile parren space to get there. How do we get away from these fucking deepynines?”
“That’s for me and Suli to worry about,” said Erik.
“What about Styx?” Suli pressed, looking concerned. Erik didn’t think it was an accident they’d intercepted him outside Styx’s bay.
“What about Styx?”
“She denied everything?” Erik nodded. “What if she’s lying?”
“What if she is lying?” Erik retorted. “I can’t see that it changes anything. You want to kick her off the ship because she might be a more hostile entity than we previously thought? She’s already a hostile entity. And that’s okay, right now we could use a little hostility.”
“Genocidal is a little more than just hostile,” Kaspowitz muttered.
“One,” Erik said shortly, ticking off a finger, “the accusation comes from a deepynine who’d love us to fall out and start fighting. Two, I’m entirely comfortable with Styx so long as her interests coincide with ours. Right now, we’re all she’s got. Our survival is her survival, and she’ll risk her neck for us because we’re the best chance she has of getting something back of what she lost.
“Three,” he continued, before Kaspowitz could reply, “look at that damn station. You want a massacre? Look at what we’re up against. Humanity hasn’t seen evil like that since the krim. Tavalai would be horrified, even kaal would cringe. Sard have refrained from most things that bad only because the tavalai had their leash, but now the deepynines seem to be taking that leash, and that’s one nasty fucking combination right there. Compared to that, I’ll take Styx and the drysines as deadly and scary as they get.”
“Captain,” said Suli, with the calm formality of an experienced officer about to say something important. “I’d like it on the record that I disagree. I’ll back you one hundred precent because you’re my Captain. But this isn’t a pet dog, it doesn’t understand loyalty, it doesn’t reason or think anything like how we’re accustomed, however good it’s become at imitating and thus manipulating our emotional states. And I think we have to face the very real possibility that in the long run, even if we could help her to bring the drysines back, and they helped us to beat the deepynines and alo? We’d have created something far, far worse. Drysines won that war, they’re more powerful than deepynines, and that doesn’t make me feel safe at all. That makes me scared.”
Erik glanced at Kaspowitz. “I’m with her,” said Kaspowitz. “But you knew that.”
“I did.” Erik looked back and forth, coolly. Each of them was old enough to be his parent. Collectively, their combat experience eclipsed his by orders of magnitude. “So we’re agreed,” he said. “My way.”
“Yes Captain,” they replied, with no enthusiasm at all.
“Hello Captain,” Lieutenant Abacha interrupted from the bridge. “I have a single contact, nine seconds light, low relative V. He’s passing us, tangential heading two eighty-eight by twelve. He’s close enough he must have seen us, but he’s in no hurry.”
Erik, Suli and Kaspowitz were already moving, down the stairwell to rim level. “I’m on my way, Lieutenant. LC Draper, sound first-shift to the bridge, we may need to move in a hurry.”
“Aye Captain,” said Draper, and the alarm light flashed on Erik’s glasses. “Are we sounding full alert?”
“Not yet, at that range we’ll still have response time, and we’re going to be leaving marines behind anyway if we have to move. How did he sneak up on us?”
“I don’t know Captain,” said Draper, as Erik strode briskly around the circumference corridor, then turned onto the main trunk toward the bridge. “We’re getting a lot of reflectivity off the signal, Lieutenant Abacha thinks they might have deployed a panel to give themselves away on purpose. Which would imply that they’re stealthy enough to stay hidden in this luminosity at much closer range than this.”
That was alarming, but not surprising. Most ships struggled to stay hidden from advanced scan closer than a full minute’s light-distance away in clear space, and maybe ten-seconds-light in a cluttered system like Brehn. If the deepynines (and this was almost certainly a deepynine) could get in much closer without being seen, it raised all kinds of new, unpleasant possibilities.
“Okay,” said Erik, “keep a close watch on everything else, this guy might just be the bait.”
“Yes Captain, we’re watching that. He’s chosen a course that will give us adequate response time if he does attack, and put himself in some danger of our counter-attack. I think he’s just watching, and letting us know about it.”
Erik refrained from talking further until he was on the bridge, then leaned on Draper’s chair and stared over the Lieutenant Commander’s shoulder at the screens. “He’s waiting for our reply,” he realised. “He suspects we’ve got the message, and he’s waiting for the answer.”
“Captain,” Draper murmured, cutting his mike first. “I know we don’t submit to blackmail, but shouldn’t we at least consider if giving up Styx will buy us anything?”
“They don’t just want Styx, they want the data-core. That’s not negotiable.”
“Sir… what could they really learn from the data-core?” Draper wondered. “I mean, they survived. The deepynines, their civilisation seems to be doing fine over in alo space. They don’t need any data-core to help them rebuild, what harm would it cause to give them this one?”
“They didn’t survive,” Erik corrected, eyes fixed on the slow moving blip on Draper’s screen. “They were annihilated. Evidently a couple got away, probably a queen. Whatever she’s rebuilt with the alo over the intervening millennia, it’s limited. Probably no more knowledge than Styx has now. It’s still a lot, but nothing compared to what she had. Giving them this data-core would be civilisational suicide, for us and every other species. Drysines were superior, at their height. Their technology was better. We’ll destroy it before we give it up.”
“Styx might prefer we all die before we destroy it,” Draper suggested.
“Yeah,” Erik murmured. He patted Draper’s shoulder. “And she might be right.” He glanced over his shoulder, at the rest of first-shift, accumulating at the bridge entrance behind him. “Okay, we’ll change over now…”
“I have new jump contact!” Abacha called loudly. “It’s long range, I’m reading… twenty-three minutes light, three-oh-one by thirty-five, I am still waiting for a vector, but it looks like it’s coming from the direction of Drezen System!”
Drezen System was the sectoral government homeworld. Erik realised what might be about to happen. “Shift change!” he said loudly, helping Draper to fold back the screens and unbuckle from his chair. “Everyone except Lieutenant Ab
acha, stay on that scan!” Fast, orderly commotion followed, first-shift helping second-shift from their chairs, then being helped in turn to buckle in. If that deepynine reacted badly to the new arrival, Phoenix might be his first target, and the target of any of his nearby, hidden friends…
“I have a vector!” Abacha announced, “they are heading at one ten by nine, high-V. Jump pulse indicates something big, probably a warship…”
“New jump contact!” Second Lieutenant Jiri overrode his second-shift senior from Scan Two. “Identical position and heading to first contact, looks like we have a multiple jump emerging. And one more… no, two more! Four contacts total, looks like a combat jump!”
“There will be more,” said Suli, finishing the last of her straps and testing the armbraces on her hand controls. “Parren combat formations are usually a six ship minimum.”
“Our presumed deepynine contact is leaving!” said Abacha. “He’s heading two eighty by two hundred and climbing… massive burn, course correction to vertical on the system elliptic. I’m reading a nine… no, accelerating to a twelve-G burn!”
“Fucker can move,” Geish observed, standing to the rear of his customary post, but unable to take his seat while Abacha remained in the middle of his job. “Look at him go.”
“Might not be anything organic aboard,” Suli suggested. “Pull a lot more Gs that way.” Not for the first time, Erik wondered grimly how any human warship was supposed to match manoeuvres with a purely deepynine-crewed warship.
“No one else, though,” he observed, waiting for that second or third contact to appear on Scan, burning hard to escape. But nothing did. “Looks like his friends are staying to watch. They’re stealthy, a dozen parren warships could take weeks to find them in this mess.”
It was a relief, to see the deepynine ship leave. But not that much of a relief, because now they had parren ships from the local sectoral government arriving. That meant House Harmony, which remained led by Incefahd Denomination — the arch rivals of the Domesh Denomination. Given Phoenix’s recent allegiances, that could mean they’d open fire on sight.
“Captain,” said Lieutenant Shilu, “I’m receiving a coms transmission from the incoming ships… looks like it’s broadband, the whole system is receiving.” He put it through to general without having to be asked, and then a far-away voice was crackling through the earpieces of all bridge crew. But oddly, this voice was not parren, and not processed through the synthetic-sounding translator. This voice was human, female, and spoke English.
“Hello UFS Phoenix,” it said. “We have received your arrival buoy transmission, this is the Harmony warship Stassis commanding a detachment of the Drezen Harmony Fleet, swearing allegiance to Tobenrah, supreme ruler of House Harmony. This is Lisbeth Debogande speaking, I am under the formal protection of Domesh leader Gesul, who requests an audience with Captain Erik Debogande at his earliest convenience…”
And then the Phoenix bridge was full of laughing, whooping and shouting, while Second Lieutenant Geish, the only man unsecured, broke all protocol to rush the command chair and whack his Captain repeatedly on the shoulder. Erik grinned helplessly, and tried to watch his screens through the tears.
19
“Lisbeth Debogande,” came Gesul’s voice through the translator. “Please tell us what you see.”
Lisbeth stared at her screens, where a feed from Phoenix was arriving, forty-three minutes after the Stassis had sent its first transmission. Accompanying the vision was a voice — her brother’s, crackling with distant static. “Hello parren warship Stassis, this is the UFS Phoenix. This system has been infiltrated by multiple hostile alien vessels. One of them is currently departing vertical of system elliptic, he will have jumped well before you receive this message. There are others insystem, hiding among the rocks, we do not know how many.
“We are docked with the parren station Mylor. The alien vessels have assaulted Mylor, and nearly all of the parren civilians aboard are dead. We are recovering survivors, but they are few. We suspect alien vessels will attempt to V-strike Mylor station to hide evidence of their crime. All assistance offered will be greatly appreciated.
“Alien vessels are deepynine in origin. If you do not understand, please ask Lisbeth Debogande, she will explain. There are also sard warriors aboard, and possibly alo, though we have no confirmation. Vessels are highly advanced and extremely dangerous. Engage defensively and under no circumstances divide your forces. All of us together are still in great danger. We advise that you approach with haste, but exercise extreme caution. Phoenix out.”
Along with the message came a visual feed from Phoenix herself, as they were much too distant for Stassis to acquire a visual of her own, especially amongst the spectacular Brehn System clutter. It showed the great, rolling bulk of a huge asteroid, carved and built-through with steel docking frames and habitations at its rotational centre. Nearby, the long, cigar shape of a starship, cartwheeling slowly in a cloud of debris. Now the visual changed, and Lisbeth recognised one of Phoenix’s assault shuttles, locked against the low-G rotating side of an inner hangar. The feed must have been coming from another of the shuttles, shifting even now as the station rotated… and here from one of the big cargo airlocks above the docked shuttle, Lisbeth could see the small figures of marines, accompanying several smaller figures in EVA suits.
“I see that Phoenix has deployed her assault shuttles to the station,” Lisbeth reported to the warship’s bridge. “It looks like their marines are using station’s cargo airlocks in large numbers… I’m not sure why that is, normally they’d access their shuttle more directly. Perhaps those are parren station crew they’re helping.”
“How many souls on Mylor Station?” asked a parren somewhere on the bridge. With the translator, Lisbeth found it hard to tell who was talking much of the time.
“Forty six thousand,” came the reply. There followed a moment’s grim silence. “How can they all be dead when the station is intact?”
“Those airlock configurations include decontamination facilities,” said another. “There in the inner cargo airlocks, the outer airlocks do not have them. That would explain the concentration of marines there. Perhaps Mylor Station was killed by chemical or biological attack.”
“Captain Debogande suspects the aliens will V-strike this facility,” came the voice that Lisbeth was fairly sure belonged to Stassis’s Captain. “That would suggest an unpleasantness.”
“Lisbeth Debogande,” said Gesul from alongside. “Deepynines?”
“From the Drysine/Deepynine War,” Lisbeth affirmed. “Allied to the alo, as I explained. They still live. It seems that they are hunting Phoenix.”
Lisbeth sat to the rear of the wide bridge — an observer post, with wrap-around screens in unfamiliar configuration, and no controls whatsoever. She sat locked into the acceleration chair, with straps so tight they nearly cut off her circulation, her familiar glasses over her eyes to provide another virtual layer through which to filter the parren symbols.
No human ships had observer posts on the bridge, and Erik had been very clear in explaining the reasons why, when she’d asked him about so many such things as a little girl in Shiwon. There could only ever be one commander on the bridge, as any confusion over lines of command could result in catastrophe. Observers on human vessels would ride off the bridge, and contribute their observations via coms, like any other non-command crew. The only reason to put observer posts on the bridge was if, as in the case of the warship Stassis, there was a political requirement to place an officer of higher rank close to the action. On human ships, when an Admiral rode a warship into action, he or she would operate from a separate command post further back in the ship, and would have no more direct a line of communication to his own ship’s captain than to any other. He could thus pass commands to large formations, but not to the individual ship in which he rode, leaving that captain free to manoeuvre as the scenario required, without interference.
Parren did things differently.
Lisbeth had asked somewhat delicately, when she’d first come aboard at Prakasis, exactly how parren dealt with such issues of command. She’d been reassured that this arrangement was protocol for parren everywhere, and was thus effective. Lisbeth remained unconvinced. In her experience of parren protocol, ‘effective’ meant very different things than it did for humans.
Upon leaving Prakasis and the Kunadeen, Gesul’s entourage had been escorted to a House Harmony warship loyal to the dominant Incefahd denomination. From there, several jumps had brought them to Drezen System, another Harmony system with a strong Domesh presence in the government. Many of those Domesh, it had become clear, were Gesul loyalists, and no friends of Aristan. Tobenrah’s people had seemed to take great pleasure in announcing Aristan’s move against Gesul, and sure enough, some great commotion had begun on the surface of the primary world, Sanah, in response to those announcements. Tobenrah’s game was obvious enough — if Gesul and Aristan’s rival factions within the Domesh were in open conflict, the Domesh would split, leaving Tobenrah’s position as head of House Harmony unchallenged. Lisbeth had gathered that Gesul’s support was not nearly that strong, and the parren consensus was that such a division would likely only delay Aristan’s rise by a few years. But that, perhaps, was motivation enough for Tobenrah.
From Drezen, Gesul’s three loyal ships, led by the Stassis, were accompanied to Brehn System — the last known sighting of Phoenix and Aristan. They were accompanied by the Talisar, commanded by Tobenrah himself. Lisbeth gathered further, more from whispered conversation with Timoshene and Semaya than from Gesul, that Gesul had made a deal with Tobenrah to tell him precisely what Phoenix and Aristan were after. Perhaps Tobenrah had already known, as secrets in the Kunadeen were hard to keep… but regardless, Tobenrah now felt possessed of a desperate need to recover this artefact for himself.
Such a move violated many protocols, but parren protocols, of course, were made to be broken. The denominations set their own course, and rival denominations could only interfere under the most extreme provocations. Thus Aristan was perfectly entitled, under House Harmony law, to kidnap the sister of an alien captain to ensure his cooperation in the recovery of this artefact. To parren it was little more than the legitimate insurance to which a parren lord was entitled by his rank. In the old days, Lisbeth had learned, it was not uncommon that a farmer might beg a forbearance of his lord, or perhaps even a loan to help through a difficult period. In exchange, one of the farmer’s daughters, or sometimes a son, would become a member of the lord’s household, as a guarantee of return payment. Should the payment not come, most lords would marry the girl off, or find some other use for her… not always a bad fate for a poor farming girl, and there were many romantic old tales of girls risen to rank and fortune from such circumstances. But not all lords were so kind, nor all daughters so fortunate, and in modern times the practice continued, frequently ceremonial, but often with real blood as a final consequence.
Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Page 28