Finally the Gs eased off, and she opened a forward visual to see where they were. At first she thought the screen was dead, for there was nothing to see. But the cockpit audio was clear, with pilot-chatter ongoing, and a second camera showed a brilliant starfield. But that was the dorsal camera, pointed away from the moon… and then she realised. This moon and its companion had been floating through deep space for tens of thousands of years. There was no light, because there was no sun nearby. It was, of course, why no one had found this place in all that time, because no matter how advanced the telescopes, unless they knew exactly where to look, a small dark spot in a large dark sky was utterly impossible to find, without a nearby light source to shine upon it. The forward camera was working fine, and the absence of stars was the moon, blocking out the starfield behind… but utterly in the dark.
More thrust kicked in, a manoeuvring thrust rather than a decelerating one, but her Scan access was limited to the relative position of shuttles. The pilots would have separate forward radar and infra-red, but Lisbeth couldn’t see it, and had to trust that everything was working as it should. Gs shoved her backward once more, then a brief vertigo as the shuttle spun on its axis, then fired again…
And suddenly the feed cut to infra-red, then multi-spectrum, and a surreal, glowing green image appeared of strange, angular towers and a great expanse of small structures across a vast horizon. It was a city, she realised. And it was enormous, stretching for hundreds of kilometres, with no design philosophy any human eye was trained to discern. Low gravity, airless, nestled into a missing portion of a large moon, and abandoned since the end of the Machine Age, but far older than that. Nearly twice that age, in fact. Beside her, in a brief pause in the roar of engine thrust, Lisbeth heard Gesul murmuring what might have been a parren oath… or perhaps a prayer.
“I have a beacon response,” came the familiar, calm cool of Lieutenant Hausler. He sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it. Lisbeth didn’t blame him. “I do not recognise the signal… wingman please confirm?”
“PH-1 this is PH-3, I have it too.” That was Jersey. “It’s a low intensity signal, could be a drained battery, hard to believe there’s any active power grid on this rock.” That would make sense, Lisbeth thought. A navigation beacon left behind by someone, possibly not even that long ago, could have survived a long time with a separate battery. There was no chance a reactor would have been left running, surely… and out here there was nothing to charge a solar panel.
A parren voice spoke in reply, and Lisbeth’s translator gave only static… struggling with the tinny, broken tone on coms. “Hello parren shuttle,” came Hausler’s reply. “Please say again, the translator missed that one.”
More talking, and finally the translator spoke. “Recognise parren signal,” it said. “Database confirm, very old signal.”
“I copy that, parren shuttle,” Hausler replied, as calmly as he’d discuss approach coordinates with control at a busy station. “Can you confirm how old?”
More parren talk. “Parren Empire,” said the translator. “Early period. Signal code say maybe Ruler Jin Danah.”
Lisbeth gasped. “The first ruler of the Parren Empire! That’s just after the end of the Machine Age!”
“It makes sense that Jin Danah came here,” Gesul said grimly. “I have not encountered any record of it, until now. We must now consider how long he may have stayed, and why he neither recorded this moon’s existence, nor destroyed it in accordance with policy at the time.”
Jin Danah, Lisbeth recalled from one of her readings, had been the leader of House Acquisitive who’d risen to rule over the new Parren Empire in the aftermath of the machines’ fall. Obviously the parren had come here at the end of that war — Styx herself recalled the drysine preparations for its defence. But all such hacksaw bases had been destroyed, either in the fighting at the war’s end, or in the determination of the victors to destroy every last symbol of their reign, and to destroy any technology that could conceivably one day lead again to their return.
“It’s coming from within the geofeature,” came Major Thakur’s voice. She would be sitting in the command post on PH-1, watching the unfolding displays of the ancient city, as more became visible. “AT-7 will deploy to investigate, find the best route down if our current intelligence proves inadequate. Alpha Platoon will lead, Lieutenant Dale in command. Gesul-Actual, do you copy?”
“Major Thakur, this is Gesul,” said Gesul. “Lieutenant Dale has command. We will proceed.”
The parren command structure was that Tobenrah, having the superior space forces, would command all parren ships, but that Gesul, as the second-highest ranked parren, would be parren commander on the ground. In practise, that command truly fell to Gesul’s marine commander, who although also outnumbered by Tobenrah’s forces down here, was a man of superior rank and experience.
Lisbeth had informed Major Thakur of the situation, but there had been no time to mediate a clear chain-of-command between humans and parren. Lisbeth had her hands full just acting as Gesul’s immediate translator — solving the debate of who was actually in command of ground defences on the moon would be the Major’s job.
The city tilted on her visor view, as the parren shuttle twisted to re-aim thrusters, then a sustained burn at three Gs. The steel structures were clearer now, as though glowing with reflective light in infra-red that brightened and dimmed every few seconds… and Lisbeth realised that the shuttles all had floodlights on, and were sweeping the city surface at random intervals as they manoeuvred. It seemed a little ridiculous, that single shuttles with their lights on could illuminate a city of this scale, but in the same way that a single candle could seem impossibly bright in a dark field, high-beam landing lights, in the depths of deep space, seemed as bright as suns.
The structures below did not look like any city Lisbeth had ever seen. Mostly they were a mass of cross-wise support beams, creating a mesh within which other structures were enfolded. This entire part of the moon was missing, and the artificial structure beneath was a replacement for this segment of moon circumference, in the same way that a man who’d lost his leg might wear a synthetic replacement. Yet the moon’s new outline was not entirely smooth and round, it heaved and bulged in places with large domes, then fell into deep, steel crevices. These were not buildings, as one might find in the cities of organics. They looked more like factories, or other industrial structures, utilitarian and without concern for aesthetics.
Ahead, Lisbeth saw the dark outline of AT-7, thrusters flaring in a low burn to hold altitude in the moon’s light G, now cutting forward thrust and gliding on momentum across the alien cityscape. Towers passed, more like observation posts than residential buildings… then the unmistakable outlines of large docking grapples, in the clustered profusion of a landing dock. In low lunar G, large ships could theoretically dock here… if the captain were willing to risk the descent. Such a civilisation, Lisbeth thought in the incredulous silence of the parren about her. It did not seem real that all of this had once been just another small outpost in twenty three thousand years of Machine Age dominance. Neither did it seem real that it could all vanish so completely.
“Geofeature ahead,” said Hausler. “AT-7, turn and burn.” The civilian shuttle silhouette rotated in a flash of attitude thrust, and was abruptly outlined against a vast darkness as the city detail vanished, replaced by a gaping void. Lisbeth’s own viewpoint shifted, as her inner-ear felt the parren shuttle spin, then she saw AT-7’s mains were glaring in the direction of travel, slowing them down.
Beneath them was an enormous hole. Entirely circular, it looked about two hundred metres wide. Below, its depths vanished into gloom, as even the shuttles’ highbeam lights failed to show a bottom. Both shuttles slowed, then descended as vertical thrust ceased and the pilots allowed the lunar gravity to take its course. Steel cliff walls rose up, and Lisbeth could see the great structural ribs that held the rest in place. Here and there were landing platforms for shuttle-s
ized vehicles on this descent, with unloading mechanisms sitting idle, the shadow of spindly robotic arms moving against the wall in the glare of shuttle lights. Lisbeth wondered how long it had been since bright light had fallen upon these steel structures. Possibly tens of thousands of years.
“Battle damage,” said a marine’s voice from AT-7. “Three o’clock low.” A camera zoomed, following that marine’s direction — sure enough, a ragged hole had been torn in the wall, surrounded by hundreds of smaller holes, in the way only a shrapnel blast-radius could achieve.
“Yeah, I saw some others as we were flying over,” said Sergeant Forrest, Alpha Platoon’s XO. The marines had a visual feed in the back, it seemed, despite the absence of an actual pilot up front. “Couldn’t get a good look until now. Looks pretty old.”
An unidentified parren spoke. “This feature will take us to the engineering core,” said the translator. “Its capture would represent a strategic victory, for the combatants long ago, or for us today.”
“The signal’s getting stronger,” said Ensign Yun from PH-1, monitoring their descent from above. On a secondary channel, Lisbeth could hear Gesul, and a voice that her visor told her was Tobenrah, discussing something with serious animation. She directed the translator to it, a blink on the channel icon, but the translator struggled with all the talk of past parren ages, ranks and formalities, many of which had names with no translation.
Another coms icon blinked, this one aimed specifically at her, and she opened it. “Hello Lisbeth, this is Phoenix,” she recognised Lieutenant Shilu’s voice. “The Captain’s too busy to ask himself, so you’ve got me. What are the parren saying about the previous history of this place?” It wasn’t just Shilu in search of a history lesson, Lisbeth knew. The last parren visitors could have laid defences, or run the city’s defensive systems, some of which Styx had suggested might still be operational.
“Hello Phoenix, Gesul and Tobenrah seem to think this beacon is from Jin Danah’s period — he was the first parren ruler of the Parren Empire after the end of the drysines. Look… bear with me Phoenix, I haven’t been able to get a question in edgewise yet, and I don’t have my parren historybooks with me, but I seem to recall Jin Danah’s rule being quite short lived. There was a lot of turmoil with the collapse of House Harmony and the Tahrae, and the casualties from the war were horrific, there were lots of disagreements about how to rebuild. I’m just guessing here, but it seems to me that if Jin Danah kept this place secret after the last drysine resistance was crushed, then that secret might have died with his rule a few decades later. Which would explain why the parren won this place in battle, didn’t destroy it, then forgot that it ever existed in the first place.”
“That’s as good a theory as anyone’s got at the moment Lisbeth,” Shilu replied. “Parren are disciplined enough to take secrets to their grave. I’ll inform the Captain as soon as he’s got a moment. Take care.”
“I read the ground at ten-point-four Ks below you,” said Lieutenant Hausler. “Better make some time, make it fast.” AT-7 upended nose-down, then a flash of thrust as the shuttle accelerated briefly to double terminal velocity. Some parren conversation followed, mutterings of alarm as the parren shuttle did not follow the humans’ lead. If Styx was flying AT-7, Lisbeth thought with mixed alarm and amusement, she’d learned to fly by watching Hausler.
“Human pilot crazy,” Timoshene translated that for Lisbeth’s benefit. “Against regulations in closed space.”
“That human pilot has learned from the best,” Lisbeth corrected her former tokara coolly, almost wishing she had the co-pilot’s seat up front. Her few combat ops as co-pilot had been nerve-wracking, but now she was discovering that doing it as a passenger was worse. At least up there she had some control.
AT-7 was already down when the parren shuttle approached the bottom of the geofeature, and Lisbeth could see Alpha Platoon marines already bounding wide, leaping with controlled jets of thrust in the low gravity, finding cover positions along the wall and clearing the landing position of possible ambushes. Then the parren shuttle was settling, only a light burn and touch of the landing legs, then a much larger vibration as the rear ramp extended and the doors opened, followed by the crashing of many disembarking, armoured parren.
Lisbeth undid her own restraints and waited until Gesul levered himself off the high seat row and dropped, following him to touch lightly on the deck, then duck beneath and through the shuttle’s empty infantry racks toward the rear. At the bottom of the ramp, several big, armoured figures with enormous rifles were waiting — Phoenix marines, their suits and weapons as proportionally larger than the parren’s as were their occupants. Immediately, Lisbeth recognised the saw-tooth decoration of the faceplate — it was Lieutenant Dale. Most Fleet marines had some custom decoration on their armour, a useful thing for identification in the low visibility of many operating environments. Dale’s snarling visor allowed his marines to tell it was him without having to put visible officers’ bars on his armour, which would only make him more of a target.
“Okay, we’re doing a tacnet check,” came Dale’s unmistakable growl, his armoured hand pointing at Lisbeth as she approached. “Lisbeth, is that you?”
“Hello Lieutenant Dale, yes, you’re pointing straight at me.” Her voice sounded even more tinny and strange in her helmet, here outside the shuttle where her brain kept expecting external sound, but found only the silent vacuum. “To my right is Gesul, to my left is Timoshene, he’s serving as Gesul’s close protection, as are these three parren behind us whose names I don’t know. On your right there is Chokala Raman — Chokala is a rank roughly equivalent to Major, his name is Raman, and he’ll follow your orders only because he’s been ordered to by Tobenrah.” So be polite, was her unspoken warning. “Do you need us to integrate tacnet too?”
“Our system will do it for you, just tell your boys to hook into it. Works on any hardware.” It was Styx’s setup, he meant, and would integrate opposing human and parren systems without difficulty. Lisbeth translated rapidly for Gesul and Raman, who passed it on to the others. Lisbeth wanted to stare up and about at the enormous, curving high walls, and the long tunnel down which they’d flown, toward the tiny circle of stars high above… but this was a combat op, and the thing she’d discovered with combat ops was that however amazing the location, there was very little time to admire the view. “Next thing,” Dale continued, “we’ve got something to show you, and your parren boys better not get alarmed and raise their weapons, because she will defend herself.”
He beckoned them to follow, over to where AT-7 sat with her ramp still open… and Lisbeth frowned, following with Gesul and the parren. Dale had said she will defend herself… Who was he talking about? And then she realised, and her jaw dropped a little. Surely the engineers in Chenkov’s crazy little fabrication team hadn’t finished already?
“Lisbeth Debogande?” Gesul queried. “What is this man saying?”
“Gesul-sa,” said Lisbeth. “You wanted to meet our drysine queen. Say hello to Styx.”
The thing that came down the shuttle’s rear ramp was like nothing in human or parren memory. It had many legs, three main pairs with several smaller pairs near the front for manipulation rather than walking. Its armoured abdomen made a base for a longer, segmented neck, atop which perched that familiar, spherical head with its single red eye… only now, the head was mounted within a flared, armoured carapace, protecting it from many angles and creating a fearsome, armoured skull. The eye within the skull gazed down upon them all now, from a height half again as high as an armoured marine, as though belonging to some mechanical dinosaur.
“Greetings Gesul-sa of House Harmony,” said Styx, on Phoenix Company coms. “And hello to you, Lisbeth. It is good to see you well and successful.”
“And it’s good to see you well and mobile, Styx,” said Lisbeth. She was pleased that her voice remained steady. Several of the typically immovable parren actually shrank back a step before her, this towering, dul
l-silver killing machine that moved with all the impossible grace of an organic creature, and possessed more raw intellect than all present combined. The lower shins of the forelegs were extra-thick, Lisbeth saw — those were vibroblades, the weapon that had given hacksaws their human name. The underside of the forward abdomen mounted a laser cutter, and the thorax doubled as a weapons mount with single-articulated arms holding twin rotary cannon, both in the style of drysine drones.
“This is a very simple chassis,” Styx admitted. “Many of the parts are recycled from drones, and my coordination is less than ideal. Yet the accomplishment of Phoenix crew to assemble it with as little manpower as available has been considerable. They have my gratitude.”
Gesul, Lisbeth saw, had not retreated a step. Now he stepped forward, gazing up as though in a trance. “Halgolam,” he breathed. “That after so many years, it should fall to me to learn the truth of it all…”
Styx considered him, from atop her new height. “I cannot promise you truth,” she told Gesul. “Organics of my experience have a tenuous grasp of the concept.”
“Ignore her,” Dale said gruffly. “She thinks humans are weird and parren are worse…”
“Hey… um, LT?” came a voice on general coms that Lisbeth’s visor identified as Sergeant Hall, commander of Second Squad. “I just found a little problem in the number four equipment locker. Over here, on the ramp.”
The humans all looked, as visors highlighted an armour suit on AT-7’s ramp as belonging to Sergeant Hall… and under one arm he carried what looked like a miniature armour suit. No, not an armour suit, Lisbeth thought — an EVA suit for children, like the emergency suit they’d given to Skah in case of a decompression so that he could… And Lisbeth’s heart nearly stopped. Oh no.
Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Page 39