Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  The suit was occupied, little limbs struggling against the Sergeant’s grip. Then a coms switch flipped, and a stream of child-like protest came loudly on the earphones, vowels all jumbled as happened with Skah when he was angry or upset. Lieutenant Dale nearly facepalmed his visor. “The Furball got onto the shuttle? When the hell did… oh fuck it, never mind.” Because Skah had lots of friends in Midships, and was always zooming about in zero-G, getting into places he shouldn’t, exploring when the adults weren’t looking. His mother was an assault shuttle pilot, and it wasn’t too surprising that he’d learned his way around the berths and airlocks.

  Hall came past Styx to Dale, and Skah, no doubt seeing the names light up on his visor display, recognised one in particular he knew. “Risbeth!” he yelled, and struggled and squirmed in Hall’s grip until the exasperated Sergeant let him go. He floated to the ground, little legs almost spinning in frustration at this slow moving gravity, then bounded like a gazelle straight at Lisbeth, nearly somersaulting in his out-of-control enthusiasm.

  Lisbeth dropped to a knee and grabbed him, and pressed her visor to his wider faceplate. Within, the big golden eyes were alight with excitement and emotion. And Lisbeth realised that it was going to be impossible to wipe her eyes inside her helmet, and for the next few minutes at least, she’d be blind, and blinking furiously. “Hello Skah,” she said past the lump in her throat. “Have you been a good boy?”

  Skah had the decency to look almost embarrassed. “No,” he admitted. Which got a laugh from some marines. “But Nahny work aw tine, and I do resson with Jessica, but Jessica aw work, and I read with Rael and do resson with Rael, but then Captain do big G and I go medbay, and…”

  “Skah, Skah!” Lisbeth interrupted, almost laughing. “Skah, you can tell me later, this is actually a combat operation…”

  “Yeah, go figure,” Dale muttered, though marines and parren were continuing to move and deploy about them regardless.

  “…and Lieutenant Dale is in command, and we all have to do what he says, do you understand?”

  “Not send back Phoenix?” Skah asked.

  “Skah, Phoenix is a long way out of range, and the shuttles have to stay here now.” And besides, she was realising as logic reasserted itself, the moon was probably safer than either AT-7 or Phoenix. Lisbeth stared past Skah at Styx, now in a separate coms discussion with Gesul and some others, and looking their way. Suddenly suspicious. There were no inbuilt restraints on AT-7 where Styx could buckle in with her present body, so she’d have had to pre-load in the port-side forward hold, opposite to the command post occupied by Dale. If she’d been aboard first, and she’d been flying AT-7 and had done all the pre-flight checks herself, then no one would have noticed any anomaly with the equipment locker except for her…

  “Hello Lisbeth,” came Styx’s voice in her ear, although Styx showed every sign of continuing her conversation with Gesul, and her eye did not look Lisbeth’s way. “Skah is safer with us.”

  She’d seen Lisbeth looking her way, obviously, and knew what that suspicious expression meant. How the hell she could see Lisbeth’s face through the narrow visor, Lisbeth had no idea… except that the visor displays worked off eye-motion, with the helmet tracking eye position and facial expression. With Styx in the system, all of that was immediately visible, and obvious to her whether her eye was looking that way or not. So had Styx let Skah aboard? Possibly after suggesting it in the first place? Lisbeth very much doubted it was out of concern for his safety.

  “Well Styx,” Lisbeth said coolly. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

  Skah looked back at the looming, mechanoid figure, and grinned. “Bug,” he said. “Big bug.”

  26

  Erik did not know the parren captain’s name, and did not particularly care. He was the pilot of Tobenrah’s flagship, the Talisar, which put him in effective command of the entire parren fleet. Or at least, he hoped it worked that way. Lisbeth had explained to him the complications with putting civilian commanders on warships, and the division between ‘overall’ command and ‘actual’ command. Erik hoped those issues would not raise their ugly heads here, and that Tobenrah would realise that he wasn’t a trained fleet tactician, and should allow his captain to make the command decisions.

  “This is interesting,” came the translator’s reply to the data Phoenix had sent to Talisar. It was an orbital deployment for the fourteen ships plus Phoenix that they had currently. “What is your confidence in this formation?”

  “Talisar, this orbital configuration is unknown to humans. But the Phoenix bridge has many years of combat experience against tavalai forces, and this is our best judgement.”

  “I will discuss with my combat crew. Please stand by.” Erik would have exchanged a pensive glance with Shahaim and Kaspowitz, his two main collaborators on that configuration, had the bridge layout allowed it. He did not even particularly want to be pushing for overall command — Phoenix was the alien ship here, the outsider whose comprehension of foreign commands would be slowed by the need of translators in either direction. In some ways, Phoenix taking command would be trouble for everyone. On the other hand, these parren had seen barely a fraction of Phoenix’s combat actions, as parren fought few foreign wars, and most civil conflicts rarely reached the level of starship combat. Plus, Phoenix was by far the most powerful ship here, and by long tradition, that ship would typically have command.

  “Are we going to surrender command if they insist?” Suli asked.

  “I don’t see that we can,” said Erik. “It could be tempting for a parren commander to use the powerful alien vessel as bait, or sacrifice her to advance his position. The only reason they’ve wanted us alive before was Styx and the data-core, both of which are now off-ship.”

  “I can’t see they’ll be any happier taking orders from us,” said Suli.

  The combat formation they’d proposed was an irregular orbital dispersal, with multiple ships making crisscross orbits of the singularity to bring them in and out of response-range to any deepynine jump arrival. It had the bigger, more powerful ships on a lower orbit, which given the irregular nature of the gravity-slope would make them considerably faster in any slingshot manoeuvres. Having bigger engines, they’d be able to climb free more easily than smaller ships, but at the sacrifice of any rapid V accumulation. It was worth it though, both Erik and Suli agreed, to bring the big ships more frequently into the response window, and positioned to intercept any move toward the moon at rapid orbital intervals.

  The smaller ships would be much further out, flanking the jump approach window. Already they were doing that, mining that window with inert rounds that would serve as mines against incoming ships by accelerating to intercept. Erik, Suli and Kaspowitz’s plan would put those ships around the jump entry window, which was absolutely tiny by normal standards, thanks to the rapidly converging force points between real and hyperspace on the irregular gravity slope. With such an accurate fix on where the deepynines would emerge, assuming they came from Lusakia System, the smaller ships could position on the flanks and chase the deepynines in, putting fire into their rear and forcing evasive action. Some deepynines would break to deal with those smaller ships, while the others would continue on — dramatically fewer in number, and a more feasible opposition for Phoenix and the larger parren vessels.

  Erik didn’t like it at all — burying Phoenix deep in a gravity slope this dramatic was against all training and instincts. But a deeper deployment jump-side of the attack would allow deepynine vessels to gang up on the more valuable big ships, and Erik had few illusions about how long they’d last if that happened. A deep deployment away from the jump-side would take too long to respond to, and leave the deepyines a clear run at the moon. And if the usual bad thing happened that happened to all ships buried deep in a gravity-well, and the deepynines dropped all kinds of ordnance on their heads that the force of gravity did not allow them to dodge, then the odd shape of this particular well would allow for a fast slingshot evasion
, while forcing all pursuing ordnance to chase them in a narrow orbital band that defensive armaments could easily destroy. In theory. None of them knew for certain, because obviously enough, no one had ever even imagined a gravitational phenomenon like this one before, let alone operated on one.

  “Hello Phoenix, this is Talisar. Your plan appears well judged. We will deploy, with adjustments for smaller ship positions. I suggest a joint command — Talisar has operational command, but Phoenix will supply primary strategic oversight. How do you reply?”

  “Suli?” Erik asked immediately, off-coms. To describe the suggestion as ‘Irregular’ would have been an understatement.

  “Imagine this battlespace is one giant bridge,” said Suli, as though drawing a giant diagram in her mind to visualise it. “We can’t be Coms, because of the translation delay, and we can’t be Captain because parren command probably won’t allow it. So we’ll be Tactical, which doesn’t actually exist, but if you imagine we invent it… I think it could work, and it’s probably the best we’re going to get.”

  Erik nodded slowly, relieved for the thousandth time to have Suli’s experience at his right hand where he needed it. “Hello Talisar, we have discussed and your proposal is acceptable.”

  “Phoenix will be Tactical Officer,” the parren confirmed. “Talisar out.”

  Erik switched coms. “Hello Rooke, what can you tell me?”

  “Repairs look good for now,” the whizzkid Engineering Chief replied. “All parameters stable, but I estimate a fifty percent chance that if we burn above ninety percent thrust, we’ll break something. How bad is anyone’s guess, anything from minor chamber breach to full detonation, and there won’t be anything we can do back here.”

  “So you’d ideally like me not to do any combat manoeuvres in combat.”

  “That would be perfect, yes Captain.”

  “Thank you Lieutenant, I’ll forward your request to the deepynines and see if they have any input on the matter.”

  “Sir, speaking of deepynines, Styx compiled for my Systems Team a list of suspicious functions in inbuilt system software, she didn’t want to probe too deeply, she said some of the functions may have retaliated and caused damage. But that’s kind of the issue — these systems didn’t like Styx being there, and reacted autonomously against her.”

  Erik wasn’t sure he could blame Phoenix’s subsystems for that. “And you think that might indicate they’re imbedded alo functions?” Of the kind that everyone feared might be spying on them. Phoenix’s computer systems were vast and deep enough that the idea of modifications to subsystems in the software going unnoticed for decades was not implausible.

  “We’re working on highlighting them now, but given we don’t know exactly what they do, assuming they do nasty things, we’re not entirely sure how to stop them.”

  “Just give me warning, Lieutenant. If parts of our ship start collaborating with the enemy, I want as much warning as possible, and I want you to be prepared to shut that entire function down.”

  “We’ll try, Captain. But if the entire system in question is the thrust chamber regulator, I’m not going to be able to do that, in combat, without killing the ship.”

  Marine armour thrusters possessed enough power for a one-G push, which felt like plenty when it turned a suit into a human-sized rocket across an airless void. But the speeds were low, and deprived of cover it wasn’t the sort of move a marine wanted to make in combat unless her objective was suicide.

  Trace’s current objective was reconnaissance and transport, hitting thrust until her temperature lights gave her an orange warning, then cutting to arc a silent trajectory apexing at three hundred metres above the sprawling alien city. Two kilometres ahead was the great geofeature hole into which AT-7 and the parren shuttle holding Lisbeth and Gesul had vanished. Surrounding the geofeature, the landscape was mostly transport infrastructure, large landing pads and silent cargo loaders, square-rail systems winding through the steel depths beneath the pads. The domes of large pressure tanks loomed between the pads, no doubt the hacksaws had found as many uses for pressurised gasses and liquids as organic species did.

  This section of the city looked industrial. As Trace looked north, the horizon was broken with an incredible vista of towers arrayed in razor-like ridges, dropping into steel canyons below. To the south, a series of enormous, low domes, each ten kilometres across and enough to qualify as a city in its own right. Here, it was just one more surface detail across the endless steel horizon.

  “Must have looked something when the lights were all on,” Staff Sergeant Kono suggested. He was floating now behind her, following on her arc across the star-strewn sky, with the rest of Command Squad strung out behind. Above, the stars were as brilliant as one would expect, on an airless moon without a sun or atmosphere, or even a planet to reflect a sun’s light onto a moon’s night-shadow. The effect of so many millions of stars, above this vast, alien horizon, was incredible.

  “Gotta hand it to you Major,” said Private Kumar. “You take us to some pretty cool places.”

  “What do you think, guys?” Private Rolonde asked them all. “Most crazy place yet? I thought that was Tartarus, but this is…” She couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “I thought it was Merakis,” said Private Terez. “But then we hit Tartarus…”

  “Don’t forget the Argitori rock,” said Private Arime. “That central hacksaw command nest was pretty freaky.”

  “…and then going through TK55 and all the old corpses from the drysine study lab,” Arime continued. “That was right up there.”

  “And then we got Chara and Kantovan Vault,” added Private Zale, who was the newest of the regulars. He hadn’t been with Command Squad for Argitori, Eve or Heuron Station, having joined with the replacements at Joma Station in barabo space, but he’d pulled his weight at Tartarus and Kantovan.

  Trace’s tactical display showed the gradual, descending curve ahead where the lunar gravity would drop her, a moving bullseye across the cityscape as she added little bursts of thrust to extend her range. Across a bundle of huge pipes running straight and long like a freeway, some big platforms loomed above what looked like a trench, cut across the city below. Another light thrust, as her landing circle moved toward that platform, then she cut as circle and target lined up.

  Across her visor, tacnet was gathering a picture of the visible city as her marines spread across the region within a five kilometre radius of the geofeature. Above, the three Phoenix shuttles, plus a number of parren, flew expanding, wide circles, scanning and projecting enough multi-spectrum light to make the near-city glow on suit visuals.

  “This is PH-3,” said Jersey, from five klicks north. “Tactical thinks this might be some kind of turbolift. Looks pretty big.” Vision came in from the shuttle, circling what looked like the cap-end of some large, vertical tubes beside another cargo facility. Everyone was hunting for vertical routes to the lower levels, to see if there were any alternative ways down to the core systems that Styx was aiming for. Styx, from her memory, suggested the geofeature was by far the fastest option. Any attackers wanting to reach the core systems faster, or wanting to intercept Styx herself, would be best suited by a direct pursuit down the hole.

  “It’s not going to work without power,” Trace replied. “I need a systems analysis of local power systems ASAP, it’s possible deepynines could restore local power to individual systems. If they can’t, we’re wasting our time defending transport systems.”

  “Major, just to clarify,” came Lieutenant ‘JC’ Crozier, who was south-east with Delta Platoon. “Styx didn’t know if these power systems could be restored or not?”

  “Styx says she was just a visitor,” said Trace, lining up her landing as the pad approached. She hit light thrust to decelerate at fifty metres, slowing rapidly. “And she always says she’s not a technician.”

  “No, she’s a mega-intellect and can build herself a new body from scratch,” Crozier said dubiously. “Whether she calls he
rself a technician or not, it ought to just be semantics for her.”

  Trace cut thrust at two metres and let gravity drop her lightly to the pad, then bounced clear toward the far edge to make space for Command Squad coming in behind. She’d wondered before how it was possible for Styx to forget anything. Computer memory did not become hazy with time, provided the systems were undamaged, and Styx’s systems were endlessly self-repairing to the point of being able to fill in a huge hole in her head. But then, when she’d first arrived on Phoenix, Styx had claimed to not be the same ‘person’ now that she’d been back then, all those millennia ago. Perhaps that was it, Trace thought, bouncing to the edge of the platform and looking across the view. Surely such an old, old mind would add layers of new data, accumulated memories and the processing nodes those new connections created. After so many years, perhaps she’d become layered like an onion… and if that was so, perhaps those most recent, outer layers began to have difficulty interacting with the inner layers. But Trace was too busy with combat operations to ponder it further, no matter how directly important to her current considerations…

  Immediately below the platform edge was the trench she’d seen from further back. It was narrow, no more than ten metres across, but deep, and crisscrossed by diagonal access platforms. It ran like a knife-slash, directly away in either direction for kilometres. Trace’s forward scan probed the depths with laser and broad-spectrum readings, but could not find a bottom.

  “If this thing goes all the way down, it’ll be a bugger to defend,” she said. “Vij, take Second Section and check it out.”

  “Yo Major,” agreed Corporal Vijay Khan. She’d borrowed him from Alpha Platoon, having a vacancy with Corporal Rael still recovering from injuries. As always, she disliked removing marines from existing units into Command Squad, but it had to be done, and Vijay was himself a recent addition to Alpha Third Squad, who’d managed without him for three months at least. “Just jump it,” Khan told Second Section. “Single line, spread wide, watch for anything still active.”