Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  He took a light jump off the edge, followed immediately by Arime, Kumar and Rolonde, and they fell together in a single line, thrust flaring lightly to keep their velocity below a comfortable level.

  In a wider circle about the geofeature, Trace could see the more numerous parren units moving in great, slow moving clusters, like fireflies above the dark skyline. Tacnet was beginning to integrate their feeds — a recently acquired capability. Trace understood that Styx’s software upgrades had something to do with it, and hadn’t had time to learn more. Suffice to say that these days, Phoenix’s network capabilities were pretty well unmatched by organic species anywhere in the Spiral, other than the alo. The picture it gave her expanded out to a ten K radius, in a full circle about the geofeature… nearly all the way down to the huge domes in the south, and the tower-canyons to the north. And all of this, just a twenty kilometre diameter circle of controlled surface, upon a five hundred kilometre diameter city. A small neighbourhood, she thought. Like controlling a few suburban blocks on Shiwon, on Homeworld.

  “How’d it get so damn big?” her old buddy Private ‘Leo’ Terez took the moment’s coms silence to wonder aloud. “What the hell were the hacksaws doing here?”

  “Well it’s big,” said Trace, “because one hacksaw group or another was occupying it over twenty thousand years. The oldest cities on Earth weren’t around much longer than two thousand. Hacksaws like to build, and twenty thousand years is a lot of building time.” As to exactly what they were doing here, she had no idea. And if she was right about Styx’s mental ageing issues, possibly Styx didn’t either.

  She blinked on the coms icon for the parren commander, and received a gratifyingly fast response. “Hello Commander Loubek. If we can stop the enemy from accessing vertical transport within this radius, we give our descending team a chance to reach the core and figure out how to reactivate this city, assuming it’s possible. Our technicians estimate it will take a number of hours to achieve, possibly many hours, so we have to buy them time. How do you see your deployment?”

  “Hello Major Thakur. Your assessment is the same as ours. I have three hundred and eighty four marines under my command, we are now analysing local systems for operational capability.” Trace nodded in slow relief — when operating with unfamiliar units, let alone alien units, it was good to know you were both on the same page. From the crevasse below, she could hear Second Section’s conversation, and see their feeds in a corner of her visor, but she left it to Sergeant Kono. Kono technically ran Command Squad anyway, providing the tactical bubble from within which she could command the whole company, and move between its various units. In a full deployment like this, she could get overwhelmed by competing data-flows very quickly, and delegation ceased to be a choice, and became a practical necessity.

  “I understand, Commander. When the assault comes in, we’ll have to be underground. Deepynine armaments are too powerful to risk direct exposure on the surface, particularly if they come down with assault shuttles.” She’d never seen a deepynine assault shuttle, and doubted the experience would be a pleasant one. “Likewise, our missiles will likely not penetrate their countermeasures. I calculate that any attempt from us to directly oppose their landing on the surface would result in catastrophic casualties for us, and moderate casualties for them. This calculation needs to be more in our favour. We need to draw them into close-range combat below surface level, and engage them where their disadvantage increases.”

  A moment’s pause on coms. “Yes Major. The geofeature is an obvious target. They will concentrate on it. Perhaps we should destroy it, and force the enemy to attack multiple locations?”

  Trace’s optimism grew some more — tactical logic was always nice to hear, even if she disagreed. “A good suggestion, Commander. But I feel that the geofeature provides excellent ambush opportunities, and we can kill many of them as they descend the tube. My idea is that we copy the landing beacon in the geofeature, and deploy that signal in many plausible locations. Perhaps we can even get some of these vertical transport options working, or give them the appearance of working, and the enemy will attempt to take other paths down to the lower levels, particularly when they see what a death-trap the geofeature is.”

  “Just to clarify, Major… you wish to activate alternative vertical transport methods?”

  “If it’s possible, and we’ll disable them before they can be utilised. We want to lure them, to force them to spread their assault, and channel those enemy forces into our most heavily defended positions. If we encourage them to send everything straight at the geofeature, they’ll suffer heavy casualties but will win through quickly. We want to not only inflict heavy casualties on them — we want to slow them down as much as possible. By encouraging them to divide forces, then hitting each of those concentrations hard, we may achieve both.”

  “Or,” said the parren, “they may ignore our invitation, and concentrate their forces whatever the casualties. These are machines, and sard. We cannot expect them to be sensitive to losses.”

  “That is true,” Trace agreed. “We maximise our chances, and I still would rather not destroy the geofeature if they do concentrate on it. Casualties on that scale are still to our overall advantage, and once they are below ground, in the one location, our advantage increases. But if we invite them to split up, we may achieve both a delay and heavy casualties.”

  “Yes Major. I have been instructed to concede to the tactical judgement of the one who defeated Aristan.”

  Trace considered that briefly. Curious that parren absolute discipline, which had caused so much trouble so far, now granted her this advantage. “It is appreciated, Commander. But I insist that you shall command all parren forces directly — the human command of individual parren units is impractical, and I respect your authority. I will set the lead, and we will coordinate. Do you agree?”

  “Yes Major. It is appreciated as well.”

  Maybe this wouldn’t be so impossible after all, Trace reconsidered as he disconnected. Parren, unlike some others, could be expected to do what they said they’d do.

  27

  The hangar bay was one of the most terrifyingly alien things Lisbeth had ever seen. As wide and long as a football field, its ceiling was low, its walls and interior cluttered with many-armed automated systems that had no obvious function she could think of. Human and parren marines advanced carefully, low-intensity IR light beaming ahead, reflected back in a two-dimensional tangle of spidery shapes and dead synthetic limbs. It was disturbing because hangar bays were such simple things, for humans, and for most organics. You put ships in here, down the bottom of an access-route like the geofeature, allowing fast-access transport to and from the surface. Ships would dock, cargo would unload while fuel or other supplies would be loaded, and empty space would be left uncluttered for easy access.

  The hacksaw hangar bay was nothing like that. It told her that for hacksaws, even simple functions were utterly different to those of organics. Arms would grab, interlock and hold to… what, exactly? Human-style shuttles would have no need of it, and lacked the umbilical receptors for all these arms and tubes to find a place to go. But then, human-style shuttles would hold organic crew in an airtight environment, while hacksaw shuttles… well, they could be alive themselves, Lisbeth thought. Could have been sentient, or interlocked with other sentiences in ways that humans or parren today could only imagine…

  Low gravity made it simple to jump obstructions, as Lisbeth followed Timoshene’s armoured back, and Gesul’s, never far from his personal guard. She tried to keep a hold of Skah’s gloved hand, but that was no simple thing with a boy whose natural instinct was to run, and was quite the natural in low or zero gravity. But now he hung back, subdued in this strange, unnerving, ancient place. Lisbeth dialled back her translator function so it wouldn’t bombard her with snatches of English whenever parren marines talked to each other, the standard operating chatter of soldiers holding formation, and advising of blind spots, or corners to be watche
d.

  Lisbeth figured Gesul would find her more useful if she listened to the humans instead, and tuned her coms to the Phoenix frequency. There the marines talked much the same language… only here was Lieutenant Dale, talking with Lance Corporal Ricardo, who was on point with Second Squad.

  “Should be another fifty metres, Ricky.”

  “Copy that LT.” Lisbeth recalled Ricardo — a big, short-haired woman, very obviously gay with tattoos, freckles and a steel tooth when she smiled. A Private, until her buddy Corporal Carponi had died on Heuron Station, shot in the leg and bleeding out as Erik had carried him to a shuttle. Now she was one of Dale’s two section commanders in First Squad.

  “Keep an eye on your systems, guys,” Dale added. “It’s a long walk back if you lose pressure down here.”

  Ahead, Lisbeth could make out the end of the hangar, the robotic arm or umbilical systems disappearing beyond an open pressure door. Or Lisbeth presumed it was a pressure door from the airlock-style double-door design, over ten metres tall and enormously thick. But why would hacksaws need an airtight environment?

  Human and parren marines hopped over the lower rim, as though in slow motion, each species holding to its own formation, humans on the left, parren on the right. Lisbeth was about to instruct Skah as they approached, but he took several bounces and jumped the two metre rim comfortably — no great feat in fifteen percent gravity, even for a little boy in an EVA suit. Lisbeth followed… and found marines ahead fanning into a colossal steel tunnel, ribbed with pipes and conduits.

  The tunnel ran left and right, and straight up as well, to make a giant T-junction without even including the hangar bay. On the right of the T-junction, armoured parren were gathering before a strange looking shuttle, parked by the inner wall. It looked atmospheric, with a delta body and wings, thrusters on the upper-rear fuselage and a big cargo ramp underneath.

  The parren platoon commander was talking to his men, in tones of mixed intrigue and suspicion. Then he switched to the general channel, and spoke to Dale. “Old parren shuttle,” said the translator. “An old class, early Parren Empire. Emperor Jin Danah in charge, House Acquisitive.”

  “Like we thought, then,” offered Sergeant Hall, fanning to the left with Second Squad and guarding that passage. The passage was nearly fifteen metres tall, wide enough to admit far larger vessels than assault shuttles. Across it, Second Squad looked like ants in a sewer pipe. “Jin Danah liberated this place from the hacksaws.”

  A parren squad advanced cautiously up the lowered ramp. “The navigation beacon is certainly emanating from inside,” Styx opined, clattering over. She’d acquired an interesting walking style in low-G, more of a slow-motion bounding, like a dog running in shallow water. It illustrated the separate articulation throughout her torso — the independently mobile shoulders for the big, forward legs, the long but thinner middle legs, and the big hindquarters kickers. In two separate ridges along her back, a series of spines were now raised… sensors, Lisbeth wondered? Behind the sinewy power of independently articulated arms and torso segments, the effect was not so much insectoid as mechanoid, like some strange new animal, part humanoid and part insect, steel-clad and heavily armed.

  Dale edged past her, warily, and looked at where a parren marine pointed to scars on the shuttle’s underside. “Battle damage, yeah,” he agreed. “Twenty five thousand years old. Looks like bullets, not shrapnel.” The parren commander asked him something on a channel Lisbeth couldn’t hear. “The Major says we leave the beacon on,” Dale replied. “This geofeature — anyone coming down it is going to get shredded. Ambush, you understand? We get good defensive positions, they come down a narrow passage, we cut them to bits. The beacon is a lure… bait, yes? It translates?”

  Some fist gestures from the parren, rapping their thighs. “That means yes,” Lisbeth told Dale. She demonstrated when he looked at her, a closed fist tapping her thigh. “Parren don’t talk as much as we do, to follow commands quietly is a sign of good order. It’s just like a handsignal, and they can’t see you nod in armour anyway.”

  “Makes sense,” said Dale. Lisbeth felt some relief at that. And wondered when she’d begun to feel so protective of these strange aliens who’d kidnapped her, and why it mattered to her that humans did not gain an entirely poor impression of them. Because so much of what they did, in fact, had a very good reason to it, however strange a human might find it.

  “It looks damaged,” came Gesul’s voice, from over by the engines. “Perhaps the last of Jin Danah’s forces to be here left it behind, with the beacon running to guide others when they returned.”

  “Couldn’t get through the cargo bay with all those arms deployed,” said Sergeant Forrest. He was Dale’s second-in-command, Lisbeth recalled, and she’d recently heard stories of his narrow escapes on the Kantovan world of Konik. “This tunnel must come off one of those access holes we saw on the way down. Better mark them before we post defences — any deepynines could take a detour off the geofeature and bypass lower defences to get here, otherwise.”

  “Hello Major, do you copy?” Dale sent.

  The Major’s reply was flecked with static. “Hello Lieutenant, I copy, what’s your status?”

  “We’ve secured the base of the geofeature. The beacon is coming from an old Parren Empire shuttle, dating to our predicted time period. It looks like they left it behind when it was damaged. We’re about to pick up the pace — if there were any old booby traps left, they’d have been here at the chokepoint.”

  “Yeah, I think speed would be a good idea from now. We’re going to spend a little longer up here before deploying, there’s a lot of space and we need to see what we’re getting into before we try and defend it.”

  “I copy Major. Hell of a place.”

  “Hell of a place. Let me know if your signal starts to weaken, I’m already getting static breakup.”

  “Skah,” said Lisbeth, looking down at the little boy, and somewhat surprised that he hadn’t tried to wander, or climb into the shuttle. But then, he knew this was serious, with all these armed marines around, and these dark, alien hangars and tunnels were creepy enough for adults, let alone small boys. “Skah, we’re going to have to move faster now.”

  “Bugs coning,” he agreed sombrely, gazing at the ancient shuttle. “Rots of bugs. I know.”

  In the Academy, pilot instructors had always told students to expect attack at any time, but particularly when, and in the manner, that the student would least prefer it. Thus Erik was not particularly surprised when Scan showed arrivals pouring out of jump, in a direct line along the Lusakia System approach, several hours sooner than he’d hoped they would. Worse yet, they were appearing largely inside the kill window where the smaller parren ships had been laying mine munitions.

  “That’s definitely inside!” Geish announced with hard alarm. “Arrival energy is plus one twenty, that’s right off the charts!”

  “Scan, I need a vector plot!” Because energy readings on that scale suggested ships utilising more power to enter and leave hyperspace than humans knew to be physically possible. Far more power. It meant that while the arrival window was as narrow as predicted on this extreme gravity slope, most of the attackers had overshot the minefield and now had a clear run at the moon. But it also meant that they’d be travelling insanely fast… and on a slope this steep, would have precious little time and space to use their engines and dump V. “Nav, escape projections to my main, I want options!”

  “They’re inside our mines!” said Suli, alarmed and shaken. That wasn’t good… but while she had more experience, Erik knew that he was somewhat better at this than her. And that most of his advantage was not skills or reflexes, but the simple ability to make sense of complicated scenarios faster than nearly anyone.

  “Yes,” he growled, “but they’ll need to dump V several times, and they’re about to run out of road.” A flash on scan, as one mine at least found its target. Course projections flashed to his screen from Kaspowitz’s post, sho
wing several ways Phoenix could whip around the singularity from here, and get quickly onto the offensive. And now the smaller parren ships, having been left behind by the incoming wave, were pulsing jump engines to build fast velocity in pursuit… but even with that boost, they were getting left quickly behind.

  “Big V dump!” said Geish. “They’re cycling hard… Captain, those engines just gain or lose more V with each pulse than we do! I think they might be okay!” As suddenly the feed was coming clear on Erik’s main display, and the three-dimensional projection before his eyes showed a mass of fast-moving lines, now racing through a flare of spherical distortion as they faded once more into hyperspace… and came out moving much more slowly. But a few of them, Erik saw, hadn’t had as much success finding traction on the gravity slope as their comrades.

  “Three of them are screwed,” he said, somehow calculating his escape manoeuvre on second screen even as he watched his main. And he blinked to command coms, the direct line established to Tobenrah’s ship, the Talisar. “Hello Talisar, this is Phoenix. We will slingshot the singularity and assault at high V, watch for our feed.” As the command feed was now sharing Phoenix’s tactical calculations realtime with Talisar, to save its Captain the trouble of having to translate human technical terms like degrees and seconds.

  “Hello Phoenix, Talisar will accompany. Do not go too deep, this gravity slope obeys no known laws.”

  “Phoenix copies.” Erik disconnected, orienting Phoenix for the burn to come, spinning the ship on its axis. “Nav, how deep is too deep?”