Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  “One hundred and twenty thousand kilometres,” said Kaspowitz immediately. There was no way Kaspowitz could know for sure, and Erik knew this was as much guess as judgement. But a guess from Kaspowitz was nearly as good, and clearly he’d anticipated the question, to answer without delay. “On maximum safe acceleration, but we have to accelerate all the way through or we’ll decay for sure.”

  That meant ‘orbital decay’, one of those technical terms that failed to match the drama of the event. Now on Scan, one of the three incoming ships Erik had identified slid half into hyperspace before bouncing back out again, already too deep on the gravity slope to cycle jump engines, as the curved shape of realspace and hyperspace compressed dimensionality and made space impossible for even deepynine engines to bend.

  “I’ve got one mark… no, make that three marks on terminal decay!” Jiri announced from Scan Two. “The Captain called it — those three are gone!”

  “Second dump!” called Geish, watching the main force. “That leaves eight!”

  “Burn in five,” Erik told them, as alarms blared throughout the ship. Engine lights glowed green in anticipation, and he hoped Rooke was right in calculating a ninety percent burn wouldn’t blow the engines and get them all killed. “Three, two, one, kick.”

  He started the mains slow, then built them up to a shuddering roar that turned the bridge on its end, and crushed them all into their seats. Fighting for air, vision and sense, Erik felt the augments kick in, that flash of ultra-bright vision and electric thought, the tensioners tightening supports around muscle and bone, the heart thumping wildly to push blood through suddenly wider arteries.

  With it came thoughts — the deepynines were commanded by someone, or something, extremely clever, to have calculated this jump course so quickly, and to have guessed the possible nature of the gravity slope on the other side, to push their entry beyond the ambush point. If Styx was right, and the deepynines had no memory of this place, then those calculations were all probability-based. There was no way the sard were smart enough, so it meant this force was led either by an alo, or by a deepynine considerably smarter than the average drone. One obvious possibility presented itself. If it was a deepynine queen, Erik hoped she was on one of those three ships now locked into an irreversible death-plunge toward the singularity.

  A new number appeared on the lower corner of Erik’s mass of graphical information — acceleration-per-second, the standard gravitational measure. Phoenix combat sims could not accurately predict future trajectories in close to the singularity, but sensors could measure their own shifting position and calculate just how far away from regular physics their predictions were. This new measurement was Kaspowitz, adding new displays to the Captain’s vision and hoping Erik could make the necessary adjustments in his head in time to avoid any catastrophe if the numbers began plunging more than expected. And Erik spared a brief thought for the drone team in Operations who’d been prepping to sacrifice a drone flyer into the gravity-well before the deepynines’ arrival had sent them running for acceleration slings. Another half-an-hour could have given them all the data they needed…

  “Captain,” came Kaspowitz’s synthesised voice in his ear, as the Gs made talking impossible, “it’s not impossible that this G-slope is a decaying fractal ratio beyond even what I initially thought it was…”

  “Not a good time to tell me, Kaspo,” Erik replied in kind, blurred vision fastened with fanatical determination on the shuddering lines of Phoenix’s projected trajectory. The moon orbited at a half-million Ks, and this plunge was going to take Phoenix within a hundred thousand. If the gravity was what they expected, it was going to give them a massive slingshot acceleration and shoot them around the polar nadir, then up and around at the deepynine fleet’s flank as they burned hard toward the moon. If the calculations were off by a fraction, he’d miss that approach and have to burn harder still to get them back on course, possibly making sitting ducks of themselves in the process. If the gravity was doing nothing like their guesswork, they’d join those three doomed deepynines in making an impressive pyrotechnic display upon the singularity, as the Gs grew so strong that not even Phoenix’s massive engines, and considerable pre-existing V, could save them.

  “We should be okay even if that’s true,” Kaspowitz replied. “But if we take a wider line to avoid it, the deepynines will hit the moon before we can intercept. But there’s a chance we’ll be pulled inside them on a low orbit.” And if we engage from that position, he didn’t need to add, they’ll pick us off from higher up the slope. Kaspowitz was a navigator, not a tactician, but he’d seen more than enough battles to know the outcome of that.

  “We have to risk it Kaspo,” said Erik. “Those lead ships will be loaded with troops, probably deepynine drones. If they get to the moon in large numbers, even Trace can’t hold them. We have to break them up, no matter what.”

  Lisbeth's suit was not made for fighting, but it did possess basic strength enhancement. Exactly how that strength enhancement worked remained a puzzle, as she blinked on the visual icons across her visor and managed to make enough sense of the Porgesh characters to dial up the suit’s leg power, and not get left behind by the marines. That was now a matter of bounding rather than running — a staggered, two-foot bounce-and-leap that propelled her another two metres into the air, and when she got a good rhythm going, another six or seven metres forward. Skah could not manage the same height, but Lisbeth’s concerns that he’d be left behind faded as he simply bounced more frequently, and with more energy, and actually managed a faster forward speed.

  The human and parren marines left the huge tunnels for a series of wide hangar complexes, these with umbilical arms more tightly curled upon walls and ceiling, like the curled fingers in so many alien fists. The hangars gave way to engineering spaces, where the technology was not so incredible, just an extended jumble of pipes and conduits that snaked overhead like the innards of some giant beast. The real technology that powered whatever went through those innards, Lisbeth guessed, would be elsewhere, in the plantrooms and power sources throughout this city.

  Ten kilometres beneath the surface and still Lisbeth doubted they were anywhere near the floor of the enormous crater torn by that mysterious science experiment more than forty thousand years ago. Styx guided them, and Lisbeth listened to her directions on tactical coms, but did not have access to the marines’ tacnet that might have shown her the way. And now Lisbeth was starting to see battle damage — the unmistakable star-pattern of rocket or grenade explosions, and the big holes of high-calibre weapons, some deep, others shallow and torn wide like scars.

  “Does Halgolam guide us by memory?” Gesul asked her now as they bounded beneath a spidery complex of interlocking tubes that appeared to make vertical access tunnels — a hacksaw stairway, Lisbeth guessed. These lower portions were very badly damaged, as though torn by concentrated fire.

  “Styx’s memory is not always perfect,” Lisbeth replied, now panting at the exertion, but by no means tired. “I suppose even AIs lose some memory function over twenty five thousand years.” She had no wish to speculate further — the coms channel was supposedly private, but Lisbeth knew that with Styx, there was no such thing.

  The engineering space opened onto a wide hangar and equipment bay… and Lisbeth saw that the formation leads had paused to consider the way, and possibly to stare in amazement. The wide floor was littered with the debris of war — the burned-out hulks of shuttles, large structural portions of ceiling that had collapsed under heavy fire, and even some big, armoured things that Lisbeth couldn’t identify.

  “Those are tanks,” said Lance Corporal Ricardo from up front, swinging her big rifle as though expecting the long-dead weapons to spring back to life. “Were tanks. Big ones, maybe ground-effect for low-G.”

  One of the parren said something that the translator didn’t recognise, but Lisbeth thought might be the model of tank. The parren sounded awed, as a human might who’d stumbled upon an old Earth ba
ttlefield, littered with the weapons of a war fought twenty five millennia ago, all perfectly preserved in sunless vacuum.

  “Not a parren weapon,” Gesul said with authority, bounding forward to look more closely. Timoshene went with him, and Lisbeth took a deep breath and followed, beckoning needlessly to Skah, who was already moving. “This is not a parren weapon, this tank. This is chah’nas.”

  The ancient machine looked deceptively simple, fronted by a back-angled circular armourplate, within which many large, forward-firing guns were mounted. Its wheels were big, and it appeared to have no side or rear armour or weapons to speak of. Which made its purpose simple enough, to Lisbeth’s eyes — plug up a big corridor with that armoured nose and soak up every shot that came its way, angling half of them into the ceiling with ricochets, while returning fire with maximum devastation. A weapon for an urban, underground fight, to push through tunnels with many armoured marines following behind.

  This one seemed to have been caught in the open, possibly during a pause to rearm, with several others. Its front armour was torn with an extraordinary number of holes, the angled steel looking more like an abstract work of art than a piece of military equipment. Its rear and chassis were utterly destroyed, peeled open like a blooming flower, spilling burned innards across the floor.

  “This is real interesting, Styx,” came Lieutenant Dale’s caustic opinion, “but we’ve got a deepynine fleet incoming and we’ve got to move fast. Where next?”

  “Lieutenant Dale,” said Styx. “Jin Danah may have occupied this city for several human decades at least, and possibly longer. If the city’s defences are as advanced as I suspect them to be, Jin Danah will have secured them, and those security measures may still be functioning. To deactivate those measures, it will be prudent to first know what happened here.”

  Lisbeth turned sharply to see the big, insectoid shape leap for the top of a fallen ceiling support, and survey the battlefield from that vantage, perched like a mantis upon a twig. She turned again to make sure Skah was nearby, constantly desperate that he’d wander as he often did, but here he was, right at her side with no intention of moving… and now Gesul came up to her face, indigo eyes aglow behind his visor, and leaned in close.

  “Lisbeth, Halgolam was not present for this battle?” It was unnecessary of him to lean close — with a vacuum between them, she could not hear him without coms. But she could see the wary intensity in his eyes, and the sense of great unease. This was the greatest parren history, suddenly alive before Gesul’s eyes. Here was the truth of all Aristan’s claims and lies, if only Gesul could slow down to examine them. It must pain him, Lisbeth thought, to hear Dale commanding them all to move quickly.

  “She says she was only here briefly,” Lisbeth replied. “Maybe a year before the end. She was made in the final years of the war against what became the Parren Empire, but she was sent out to fight on another front, she didn’t stay to see what happened here.”

  “And so for all this time,” Gesul reasoned, “she’s never known what happened here.” He turned his suit to look at Styx, in time to see her leap from her perch, and down amongst the wreckage. “That is a long time to wonder what became of your comrades.”

  Immediately, Lisbeth thought of what Lieutenant Kaspowitz, or Commander Shahaim would say when one of the Phoenix techs would start wondering at Styx’s state of mind — ‘don’t anthropomorphise the machine’. Somehow, she didn’t think Gesul would appreciate being scolded like that.

  “A long time,” she agreed. And besides, she knew that Lieutenant Rooke, Stan Romki, and probably even Major Thakur, were starting to doubt the wisdom of assuming that Styx was not fundamentally a sentient, thinking and feeling creature, on some level at least.

  Lisbeth beckoned Skah once more, and found a way to duck through the fallen ceiling support in pursuit of Styx, who was now trailed by a very impatient Lieutenant Dale.

  “Run that by me again,” Dale was demanding. “You think the defences here will be secured? How will knowing what happened here let you break that security?”

  “Lieutenant, the technology in this city is beyond organic imaginings.” Styx was moving calmly, peering back and forth, and under, the various wrecked equipment as she found it. Her big, right foreleg picked up a bit of torn debris, absently, and transferred it to her smaller, underside legs for sensors to consider more closely. “That it was not destroyed by V-strike, against all established norms at the time, should suggest as much. Jin Danah was intending to preserve this technology, and to preserve the moon as a secret known only to him and his people.”

  “But parren history records Jin Danah fell shortly after his victory over the drysines,” Gesul interrupted, now moving past Lisbeth in pursuit. “If he kept this moon a secret, then it would appear that secret died with him, thus explaining why organics forgot its existence shortly after its discovery.”

  “This seems a logical summation, Gesul,” said Styx, dropping the one piece of debris and selecting another as she moved. “And yet the resources required to capture this moon from the defences arrayed against it were clearly enormous. Regard the chah’nas model tanks, as you call them. Not commonly used in space battles. To keep all such forces from revealing the moon’s location would seem an unlikely feat, even for parren discipline, particularly given the change in loyalties that followed Jin Danah’s fall. Logically, Jin Danah must have gone to great lengths to secure the moon’s secrecy… I cannot speculate how he managed it, you parren are far more knowledgable about your own society than I will ever be. But clearly the man had grand plans for this place, and grand plans will be well protected.”

  “Styx?” said Lisbeth, grasping Skah’s arm to keep him clear of some sharp metal. Civilian suits were too tough even for swords, let alone sharp debris, but she was in no mood to take chances. “What’s down there? What are this moon’s defences?”

  “Lisbeth, I truly do not know. I was never given a tour, so to speak. But I know they exist, and I know they are formidable on a scale that might compel a power-hungry man like Jin Danah to bend every force at his command to see them preserved, protected and hidden from all those who might take them from him.”

  On coms came the call of a parren unit commander, sounding more puzzled than alarmed. But Gesul immediately turned that way, before Lisbeth could even figure out where the call had come from, and bounded that way. Lisbeth saw Timoshene’s face within his visor before he followed, nearly rolling his eyes at his superior’s endless curiosity for things that were, in Timoshene’s opinion, barely worth bothering with.

  Lisbeth followed with Skah, past the shattered engine of a shuttle, and found some parren marines gathered about several armoured figures on the floor. Marine armour, Lisbeth saw… and strangely familiar, though clearly not parren. This was far too bulky, and as she approached she saw that it was clearly tavalai, though looking considerably different to the karasai she’d become recently accustomed to…

  “We may have to rewrite the history a little,” the parren commander was saying as Lisbeth blinked her coms to that channel. “We have records of parren forces under Jin Danah and House Acquisitive, and we know there were some chah’nas units in this region. But no tavalai.”

  “No,” Gesul agreed, arriving alongside. He sounded puzzled. “At the time, tavalai were not considered warriors, just troublesome farmers, engineers and bureaucrats. And if Jin Danah wished to keep this moon classified, it seems unlikely he’d have invited a race to participate in the assault whom of all in the Spiral were least likely to keep a secret.”

  “This armour, too,” said another parren, pointing with his rifle. “This loading is light, there is no sign of extra ammunition, or empty carrying capacity. This is a defensive loading, not an offensive one.”

  “Defensive?” Gesul stared at the man, then down at the dead tavalai suit. There were others, Lisbeth saw, and from the severed arm of one, it looked as though the suits were still occupied, with leathery, withered remains. “And they have
been left upon the battlefield, while all other casualties have been removed.”

  And Lisbeth’s eyes widened slightly, as she recalled what that meant. Parren had been the victors here. Jin Danah’s forces. In great battles, the dead of both sides were treated with reverence, in accordance with customs as old as parren memory. The only foes to be left where they had fallen upon the field of battle were the despised, the dishonourable, the unworthy. Why would tavalai come to participate in this fight to end the hated Drysine Empire, only to be abandoned in death upon the field by their parren allies in the struggle? Unless… Unless…

  “What in the name of all departed ancestors is going on here?” Gesul muttered. From the incredulity in his voice, Lisbeth knew he’d had just the same thought she had.

  “The answer to that is simple, Gesul,” Styx interrupted this channel without invitation. “Your history is all lies.”

  28

  “Going to be some big fireworks in a moment,” came Commander Shahaim’s voice from Phoenix, crackling with static on Trace’s coms. “Three deepynine ships misjudged jump and are about to impact upon the singularity. That leaves eight, all headed straight for you. Three appear to be sard, those are coming in far too fast, we think they can’t pull Gs on the same scale — those lead five ships are currently at fourteen-Gs. The front three are pulling ten, they’re on a wider decelerating course, they’ll take a wider arc away from the moon and will be arriving at your location at A-minus-twenty-five by our current estimates. We’re going to try and extend that by as much as possible, and give you a smaller force to face.”

  Trace tried to process that as she thrusted long and high above the cityscape, its previous detail fading as more platoons found their way into defensive positions, and no longer shone low-vis light across the skyline. Though space combat was not her speciality, she knew that fourteen-Gs was not survivable for organic species, not even kaal. Which told her that the crew of those lead five ships were indeed mechanical. It also suggested that Phoenix was still deciding which of the approaching formations to try and intercept out of their slingshot manoeuvre.