Slightly more than twenty seconds before the estimate, Lieutenant Jersey broke dock, swivelled and blasted full thrust toward Phoenix Midships, angling between the rotating ships within the docking cone, just offset from collision course so she wouldn’t hit Phoenix if something went wrong. Finding Berth Four precisely where she needed it, she spun tail-first and hit a long, then rapidly-decelerating burn that turned into a spin at the last moment to achieve correct alignment, then slammed firmly into the Berth Four grapples.
“Good lock!” said Operations, confirming what Erik could see on his own screen. “Berth is green, we are clear to go!”
Erik hit thrust, with still a good two minutes to spare and no need to rush it. He built to three, then five-Gs, and held it there, knowing five would be plenty to get them clear in time. By now Scan had identified a tight cluster of very low-luminescence rocks, approaching ridiculously fast. One of them hit something else, probably another even smaller rock, and the resulting explosion was larger than the biggest nuclear weapon that humans knew how to build. But such forces were tiny compared to the things that physics regularly threw at Fleet warships in peacetime or in war, and enough of the original cluster retained their course through even that conflagration.
They were travelling fast enough that at this range Scan could see reflected light coming back at a whole new dopplered spectrum, shifted several degrees out of alignment. Time on those rocks was progressing marginally more slowly than on Phoenix. Erik could never look at such things without feeling a chill dread at the horror of it, that such a simple thing as the transportation technology that made all Spiral civilisation possible, could also do this. The technology itself was blameless. The people who used it, sometimes less so.
Earth had not been V-struck, as tavalai law held it to be the very worst of crimes. Typically of lower-species finding loopholes in tavalai law, the krim had borne the far greater effort and cost to hit Earth with chemical and biological weapons instead, achieving much the same effect, but without quite the legal consequences. For that alone — the dispatch of the beloved homeworld through legal technicality — humanity would never forgive the tavalai. But the krim’s homeworld had been V-struck, three hundred years later, by humans who hadn’t cared a damn for tavalai laws. Humanity knew this weapon well, and having used it once, had advertised to others that they were not above using it again. Now, facing such warships as these, Erik wondered if that long-advertised strategic posture were such a good idea after all.
Precisely as Scan’s ETA reached zero, Mylor Station disappeared as rear scan blanked to white. No one on the bridge said a thing. Scan indicated a small danger from explosion debris, but Phoenix was headed perpendicular to the impact course, and most of the solid debris would continue in the latter direction. Other forms of shockwave dissipated very fast in a vacuum… a matter Erik recalled having to explain to young Lisbeth when she’d asked why he accused a movie she liked of not being very realistic. She’d be watching this, he thought. And others too, new friends of hers, presumably. Hopefully. Best to make a good impression.
“Coms,” said Erik. “Broadband transmission downstream of that explosion, warn everyone in its path that the lanes are going to be very dangerous for the next few hours. Give them our best trajectory plot as well — Nav, get him the data.”
“Aye Captain,” Kaspowitz acknowledged.
“Next few years,” Suli murmured, watching that awful spread of high-V micro-missiles. Most of them were too fast for the system’s gravity and would dissipate in deep space, but a lot more would hit other rocks, causing other explosions, which caused other, though lower-V bursts of debris, which caused others… etc. In truth, a V-strike like this, in a system like Brehn, would set off a chain reaction making everyone less safe for centuries. Erik was entirely certain that the deepynines did not care at all.
He called up Shilu’s stored message, the translator confirming that it had come from Stassis, and was now running analysis on the tongue. Porgesh, it told him, like most parren spoke. Parren had thousands of old languages, but were disciplined enough to agree on only one, for primary purposes. Humanity had had to suffer a near-extinction event to make that happen.
“The UFS Phoenix is notified that The Honourable Aristan,” said the cool translated voice, “Ruler of the Domesh Denomination, loyal servant of House Harmony, has declared a grievance against the UFS Phoenix herself, and her commander, Captain Erik Debogande. It shall also be noted that Gesul, Second of the Domesh, loyal servant of House Harmony, has also declared a grievance against Aristan, Ruler of the Domesh, loyal servant of House Harmony. According to parren law, it is decided that I, Tobenrah of the Incefahd, Ruler of House Harmony, shall decide the right of these matters, and will invoke a contest, to be held in the jurisdiction of the great House Harmony. The UFS Phoenix is informed that she will comply, or be destroyed.”
“A contest?” Erik asked his Coms Officer. “What the heck kind of contest?”
“Captain, the Porgesh word is ‘catharan’,” said Shilu, looking mystified at his screens. Tapping the translator’s input achieved nothing more. “It doesn’t know that word, it’s just telling us ‘contest’, but somehow I don’t think that grasps the entirety of it.”
“Contest,” Suli repeated hopefully. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Yeah right,” Kaspowitz said drily. “‘Cause we’ve been real lucky with that alien shit so far, huh.”
20
The city was Chirese. The planet, Elsium. It was about as far away from home as any human traveller had ever come, in this direction at least. Erik leaned against PH-1’s forward landing leg, glasses off for a moment beneath his helmet rim, to contemplate the Chirese Otuga.
Otuga was the parren word for house of government, though the translator seemed to quibble with the precise synonymity. Everything swam in the midday heat, nearly forty degrees celsius, and worse still in the armour, a rifle clipped to his back, sidearm in the front webbing. The parren had told them no full armour, and no more than twenty marines. Trace had brought Alpha First Squad and Command Squad, of course. Privates Chavez and Lauda stood guard before the hulking assault shuttle, unbothered by the heat, peering up the great ranks of steps toward the government buildings, and off the wide avenue to the sides, in search of movement. So far, there was none.
The avenue of stairs was one-and-a-half kilometres long, up a long, gentle hillside from the city of Chirese. The way was not especially steep, and consisted of a series of flat, rectangular platforms, each perhaps a hundred metres long and thirty metres wide. Each flat platform was joined by gentle stairs of equal width, all the way up to the huge, slope-roofed building atop the hill. Up there, many parren had gathered, little specks in the shimmering heat, to peer down at the insolent humans, as the cloud of dust kicked up by the assault shuttle’s landing jets slowly drifted on the negligent breeze.
Trace came to join her Captain, also in light armour though more heavily armed. Unlike Erik, she actually knew how to use all those weapons. She leaned on the landing leg’s other side. “I don’t think they’re impressed with you,” she remarked, gazing up the long, multiple flights to the house of government for this entire sector of space.
“They’re House Harmony,” Erik said grimly, swigging some water. “They can meditate and hold their breath until they pass out for all I care.”
It had been five cycles, ship time, since Gesul, Aristan and Tobenrah’s ships had arrived in Brehn System. Phoenix had been informed by Tobenrah, the head of all House Harmony, that they were now in the custody of the house, and would follow to Drezen System, or be destroyed. Phoenix’s damage ruled out a rapid escape, and against such odds, there was no chance of winning a fight. Minor repairs had been conducted, to ensure the jumplines would at least not fail in hyperspace, and then they’d single-jumped to Drezen System.
Drezen System was home to Elsium, a world of a half-billion parren where the administration of this whole sector was based. Once there, it h
ad been a long cruise into Elsium, in total coms silence. Erik had not been able to speak to Lisbeth, nor to enquire what the hell was going on. In fact, it looked as though the entire system had been banned from talking on open coms, to prevent the unwanted humans from learning a damn thing about anything. And it spoke to the total control that parren authorities exercised over their subjects, that they could order such a thing, and see it obeyed completely. Ships needed coms, as did stations, refineries, outer-system mining bases. In most of the Spiral, system navigation buoys would typically communicate recent news packages, to keep ships up to date with current events. Now, all was quiet.
Instead of docking with one of Elsium’s busy commercial stations, Phoenix had received instructions that the Captain would proceed to Chirese by shuttle, with instructions for how it should be done… in every aspect except for where they should land. The Chirese facilities included a large spaceport further down the hill, but with coms blacked out, there had been no guidance signal to tell PH-1 precisely what to do. Erik thought he’d figured enough about the parren to suspect that doing precisely as they were told would not increase the respect or esteem in which they were held. He’d told Lieutenant Hausler to land here, on the avenue of stairs, scattering the parren civilians who’d been walking here at the time. Multiple inbuilt weapons platforms had locked onto them as they’d done it, at which Erik had directed Hausler to open the shuttle’s missile bays and lock them back. No one had died, and PH-1 had settled here, blocking the main thoroughfare linking the government to the city, in obstinate defiance of them all.
Surely by now the local radiation sniffers had detected that several of PH-1’s missiles were nuclear-tipped. The only targets they could spend those missiles on would also reduce PH-1 to radioactive particles moments after detonation, but that fact alone made all the statement Erik had wanted.
“You think Tobenrah knows what we’ve got onboard Phoenix?” Trace wondered. She could have meant Styx, or the data-core, or both. The consequence would be the same.
“I’m certain of it,” said Erik. Being kept from talking to Lisbeth all the way here had seemed like cruelty, and he was in no mood for parren games. As always with Phoenix of late, the aliens appeared to hold all the cards. Only it wasn’t actually true, because Phoenix had some very important cards of her own. Unfortunately, those cards also painted a giant bullseye on her backside.
“Still no word from Lisbeth?” Trace asked. Erik shook his head, and sipped from his bottle. “If we knew what relationship she had with Gesul, I’d be happier.”
“If this battle between Aristan and Gesul is over parren history, maybe Gesul figures he’s got the key to the real thing, now. She’s actually seen deepynines and drysines. Most parren have forgotten there was even a difference.”
“If that real thing isn’t what the parren people actually want to hear,” Trace cautioned, “it might not do him any good.”
“Yeah, well there’s got to be someone in this fucking race that cares about the truth for its own sake,” Erik muttered. Trace glanced up at him, looking thoughtful. Erik looked back. For all the comparatively quiet last five days, they still hadn’t seen much of each other, each preoccupied with pressing routines in different parts of the ship. “You know, that time in the gym. When I nearly…”
“Don't you fucking say it,” Trace said mildly, but with a hint of real warning. “Don’t you dare. The Captain doesn’t apologise, ever. You’re not expected to be infallible, but whatever you do, the rest of us have to wear it. That’s not a privilege for you, it’s a burden. You don’t get to dodge that burden by saying you’re sorry. You do it, you own it.”
Erik looked at her for a moment. Finally a smirk twisted his lips. “I was feeling apologetic until the lecture,” he replied. “Now you can just fuck off.”
“Aye Captain,” Trace agreed with satisfaction. “That I can.”
“Captain,” came Ensign Yun’s voice from inside the assault shuttle. “I’ve no idea how, but I’m getting indirect coms from Phoenix. I think it’s Styx, she’s using local channels, she must have hacked something in orbit and gotten into local coms. We’re talking to her via the city coms network, just like any citizen, only she’s encrypted.”
Meaning PH-1 could talk to Phoenix without the locals being aware of it, or presumably being able to jam it. Right now, they had their regular Fleet coms, but those were subject to interruption. “Tell her to figure out just how much damage she can cause to the local coms network,” Erik replied. “You never know when we’ll need a distraction.”
“I don’t think she needs to be told that, Captain, but I’ll tell her anyway.”
“Yo, here we go,” said Hausler from the cockpit. “Big bunch of parren forming at the top of the stairs.” Zoomed visuals appeared on Erik’s glasses, a cluster of dark robes upon the stairs, spreading like an ink spill beneath white and black banners.
“Domesh,” said Erik. “Only Domesh, by the look of it. If it were a formal welcoming committee, you’d think all the denominations would be represented. Aristan is head Domesh, and he’s pissed at us. Keep an eye out, people. I don’t think this will be friendly.”
“Marines, full deployment,” Trace said calmly, and those marines not previously standing guard now descended the rear ramp to take up position. “It looks like these guys are coming at us in ceremonial formation. We don’t do that — we stay combat ready at all times.”
“Damn right,” Erik agreed, watching the Domesh as they began flowing down the stairs. There were hundreds of them. No, he thought a minute later, as the flow still came on. Thousands. Their formations were immaculate, precise rows behind their banners. Among most parren, these mass displays would be colourful. Looking at this advancing black tide, devoid of all individual colour or identity, Erik could see why many parren found the Domesh alarming.
Some camera drones buzzed and hovered nearby… cleared green by PH-1’s scans, free of weapons and harmless. “Looks like they want everyone to see,” Trace observed. “We could jam them.”
“There’s no point in having a ceremony if no one can see it,” said Erik. A part of him wanted to stand up straight before this alien scrutiny, to stop leaning against the landing leg, and put on a good show for the parren. But he declined, with deliberate defiance. “The Domesh want to impress their followers. That’s the point of this stuff — the followers they have are loyal until death or until they hit the next phase, but the new followers have to be won. They’ll just put up new drones, or higher altitude ones. Besides, we might want them to see this.”
Out the front of the black tide, Erik could now see a small knot of colour — parren in green tunics, marching beneath a similarly green banner.
“The marine commander is in command of ground operations,” said Trace, “but in this case I think any combat operations will be synonymous with ship diplomacy. Diplomacy is the captain’s prerogative, on or off ship. How do you want to proceed?”
“Defiance,” said Erik. “We’re not parren, we don’t play by their rules. The only orders we’re bound to follow are those where the cost of not complying will be our destruction or injury. Remember, we have something they want. I calculate that we’re safer by appearing dangerous, perhaps even a little unstable. Parren don’t like instability, let’s scare them with our alienness.”
“I agree,” said Trace. “Just remember that we don’t actually know how Aristan will calculate the value of the data-core. He might prefer it destroyed than in the hands of Tobenrah.”
“Yeah,” said Erik, thinking that. “Lieutenant Hausler?”
“Here Captain.”
“Give the cannon a noticeable twitch. Aim right at that front rank. Let them see it.”
“Aye Captain.” Behind them, the centreline cannon mount abruptly whined and lurched, humming as the electric drives prepared the ammo feed. The big barrel angled up the stairs, where the Domesh tide now crested the top of the flight of stairs two-distant from the shuttle. A prolonged bu
rst would kill hundreds, some from direct hits, most from the fragmentation of high-explosive shells. Predictably, the Domesh continued without hesitation, descending the steps. Erik was sure they’d seen.
First Squad’s Second and Third Sections were up on the right and left flanks when the parren finally arrived, rifles at cross-arms. Command Squad were deployed left and right on PH-1’s sides, while Lieutenant Dale guarded the rear with First Section, where he had the best view of the overall situation, and wouldn’t be distracted by this whole mob of parren in his face.
Erik and Trace stood side by side to the right, clear of the shuttle’s cannon, with obvious purpose. No doubt it irritated the parren, putting their formation off-centre. They had to perform a manoeuvre to realign, the green-clad parren at the front halting, then making a separate right-wheel to end up directly before the human commanders. There were gold-clad guards to either side, and some lower ranked aides behind, holding the banners aloft, while others carried slates and other items, ready to offer them forward if needed. The senior-most green-clad parren wore an enormous headdress, tall with tails that flowed down his shoulders. The one beside him had a less impressive headdress, but carried a large staff, half-again his own height. None of the green ones, nor their assistants, appeared to be armed. Of the sea of black robes behind them, anything was possible.
There were ten of the lead group in total — four in green, another six assistants in gold or blue. They stopped in a line, and waited. Obviously they expected Erik and Trace to walk up, and front them. Trace waited for her Captain’s lead. Erik considered them for a moment, baking in the hot sun. Then he recalled some gum, kept in a breast pocket. He rarely chewed gum — only when he’d just eaten, and had to talk to someone at close quarters, and feared his breath might smell. Now he pulled out the small packet, popped some gum in his mouth, and chewed. It was peppermint, and strong. He considered offering some to Trace, but that wouldn’t do — she had to be the calmly lethal one. Insolence would only work coming from him.
Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Page 30