Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  “We gotta go!” Crozier yelled at Riggs, who was crying, but tore himself away from his dying friend to follow Crozier in a fast thrust to the geofeature, then out into space. Several deepynines had just hurtled past them, dodging with frantic thrust as marines and now parren still overlooking the giant hole fired on them. Riggs accelerated hard in pursuit, aimed and blew one’s thruster mount — it spun, hit a wall and tumbled in pieces. Parren fire hit the other from the walls, less heavy than Koshaim fire, but far more rapid, and tore it to bits.

  “Here!” Crozier commanded, selecting what tacnet told her was the correct wall platform. Her selection appeared on the rest of her unit’s visors, and they hit thrust to decelerate and land hard, then bounce and run fast off the platform, and into new positions. Parren in lean armour ahead waved them in, crouched in cover and expecting new attacks by the fast-descending deepynines at any moment. Crozier, her First Squad of twelve now reduced to eight in just one engagement, wondered how many more they could take.

  “I now have control of Defiance primary weapon systems,” Styx announced, working on the far side of the control stem, and largely out of sight to Lisbeth, Gesul and Skah. “The first wave of deepynine vessels have corrected their trajectory and are returning to close cover orbit. The surviving fifth ship of the initial eight is just now unloading its assault drones, and the three slower sard vessels are in final approach. Time is short.”

  Lieutenant Dale had returned topside with First Section, plus Timoshene, with word that the first deepynines to breach defences were on their way. Hannachiam’s many large displays now flickered and flashed with new images, a random confusion of scenes, from planets to alien faces, to technical diagrams to any number of things Lisbeth had no name for. But one of the near panel-displays was now showing her a schematic of this surrounding district in Defiance, and she flicked through it with thick, gloved fingers making strange indentations in the light, hoping to find some realtime display of the fight drawing closer above.

  “Halgolam, what is this weapon system?” Gesul pressed, watching his own command displays on his visor and no doubt seeing a lot more than Lisbeth had access to.

  “I will not say in Hannachiam’s presence,” said Styx. “She is the protector of this technology, and there are sensitivities to allowing outsiders to observe its function.”

  “And yet she has allowed our access,” Gesul said skeptically.

  “And may withdraw it at any moment. Hannachiam is not easily directed. We must be polite.”

  Gesul spared Lisbeth a disbelieving glance within his helmet. No organic would believe that the greatest sentient intelligences of the AI races could behave like this. That drysines like Styx had entrusted the operations of a great city like this one, and its secret weapons technologies, was beyond belief. AIs were murderously precise and efficient, and Hannachiam was… well, only barely functional, Lisbeth cautioned herself. It was too early to leap to conclusions about what she was, when she’d just barely awoken from a twenty five thousand year slumber.

  The big displays began a cascade of parren images, parren faces, moving vid images of parren doing parren things, too fast in succession for a human eye to distinguish any single thing.

  “Gesul, she wonders what happened to Jin Danah,” Styx translated. “She was surprised that Jin Danah did not destroy Defiance and her together, when he led anti-drysine forces to victory. There were controls placed upon her operation, but I have removed them without difficulty, as they were crude.”

  “Then how did they shut her down at all?” Lisbeth wondered, flicking through displays and thinking that if she could just find some way to help in the fight… “She’s so much more advanced.”

  “She is just a mind,” said Styx. “Without a body, a mind is helpless. They deactivated her power source, I presume they were putting the entire city into storage, for later study.”

  “Hannachiam,” said Gesul. “Jin Danah fell. He was deposed by Molary, of a rival denomination of House Acquisitive, followed by war between House Acquisitive and House Fortitude, then further instability, until Sheray arose as leader of House Acquisitive from a new denomination, and a period of stability as ruler of all the Parren Empire.”

  The images on the screens faded to abstract patterns, flashing and cascading in ways that human eyes and motion-sense did not appreciate. Beside Lisbeth, Skah made a distressed sound. “Skah, don’t look at the lights,” Lisbeth told him. “The lights make you dizzy, don’t look at them.”

  “She thinking,” Skah observed, putting both oversized gloves before his visor.

  The patterns came clear on Skah once more. His little children’s EVA suit, the glow of many screens reflected on his visor. And nothing more.

  “Hannachiam wonders at Skah,” Styx translated. “How he came to be in your crew. How humans have come to accept him as one of their own.”

  Images on the screens, now slow enough to follow. Berthing tanks, artificial wombs. Rows of them, and now baby parren, even now slimmer and leaner than human babies, but with equally big heads and squalling. Grasped by robotic hands and arms, prodded and examined by multiple sensors, as Lisbeth stared in mixed fascination and horror. But now here were adult parren, also holding their young, and scenes of vast laboratories, of eggs and fertilisation in extreme closeup imagery, of vials of genetic material in their thousands…

  And Lisbeth thought of the scenes above, the hangars filled with debris from that final battle of Defiance. Other species had fought here, had given their lives to defend the drysines. Even knowing the odds were impossible, still they persisted, earning this city its organic name. The old history taught that AI/organic relations had always been an unending slaughter, for tens of thousands of years. Mostly, from what Lisbeth had seen, that was true. But then had come the drysines, and the drysines had been different. Styx said the thing deepynines hated most about drysines was their growing belief that organics should be cooperated with, to some degree at least, rather than just oppressed and slaughtered.

  These drysines had won this much organic loyalty, at least. From the Tahrae of House Harmony, certainly… and from some tavalai and others as well. And perhaps much of that was not so much a love of the drysines, as a terror of what the Parren Empire might look like, and a belief that continued drysine rule might be far superior to that, for some at least. And Lisbeth recalled tales that in the early years of the Parren Empire, things had been brutal. Having seen some of parren civilisation’s worst qualities in person, she could believe it.

  Styx said that deepynines were more formidable as individual warrior units, but were ultimately defeated by superior drysine creativity in numbers. Drysines built civilisations like this one, that out-produced and out-created anything deepynines could build. Drysines learned to cooperate with organics… not out of love and compassion, for those were surely emotions no AI could ever find of value. But it had gained them something, and perhaps that something had been the thing that defeated the deepynines in the end, whatever the cost. So what could a machine civilisation learn from organics, that they’d never truly valued before?

  And she gasped, staring at Styx. “Styx? Hannachiam. She’s your imagination, isn’t she?” Styx said nothing. That was rare, and usually happened when someone was close to the mark on a matter Styx would rather not discuss. “AIs are smart, but organic imagination and creativity are much more random things… you were simulating organic creativity on a much larger scale! That’s why you built her.” And she recalled she’d left Hannachiam’s question unanswered. She crouched, and put an arm around Skah’s shoulders. “Yes Hannachiam, Skah is like family to the human crew on the UFS Phoenix. We came across him by accident, but now we are together.

  “This is such an interesting time, Hannachiam. There is much danger, but also so much possibility! I think you’ll like it here, in this time. We all face a terrible threat, but we must face it together, like drysines and parren once faced their terrible threat together. I think you found that co
operation most stimulating. I think it was what you were built to facilitate. If you look around this city right now, you can see the foundations of a similar partnership being built right now. But first, we have to win. Can you help us to win?”

  “Yo Hall! It’s Lieutenant Dale, talk to me!” On the higher levels, on the engineering and cargo-transport levels surrounding the hangars above the command room, the parren units were getting hit. Dale could hear terse shouts and commands on coms that the translator tried to find solutions for, but the program was struggling to distinguish the important conversation from the unimportant, and all he got was a tangled mess. He blinked on the tacnet display to make it wider, and it showed the blue, hollow dots of parren marines blinking, then vanishing. Ahead of them advanced a red swarm. “Sergeant Hall, what do you see?”

  “Parren getting hammered, LT!” Hall growled. He was one level up, and closer. It had been a guessing game whether the deepynines would come from above or below, but Dale suspected they’d have hit wherever the humans were not. Parren fought bravely and well, but it was becoming unmistakable that deepynine units hitting human units tended to break off the attack quickly to regroup after getting mauled. Against parren, they’d press the attack home, as they could see it working. “Deepynines are long-ranging them! I could move to fire-support?”

  “Stay where you are,” Dale replied, crouched by a huge doorway overlooking a vast expanse of unoccupied hangar space ahead. If the drones came through here, without cover, they’d be clay targets for Koshaims… but drones had missiles, while parren did not, and with wide spaces, ranged weapons gained in efficiency. “The parren have to fall back to us, we can’t leave this flank exposed, and deepynines move fast. I got no communication with the parren commander, either he’s too busy to talk, or he’s dead.”

  The command coms icon blinked, and he opened it. “Dale, report,” said the Major.

  “The parren have heavy contact,” said Dale. “Looks like the drones are hitting them first, casualties heavy. It’ll be our turn in a minute.”

  “I copy that,” said the Major, her voice slightly out of breath, suggesting she was moving while talking. “The next ship just unloaded more drones overhead, they’re going straight down the geofeature and we’ve no one free and mobile to stop them. Delta is no longer offering effective resistance, and Echo’s been pinned on your east flank and is unable to manoeuvre in force. If you need to talk to Echo, it’s Sergeant Kunoz in charge now — both Lieutenant Zhi and Sergeant Kerensky are dead.”

  “Alpha copies, Major,” Dale affirmed, unflinching at that horrible news as many years of practice had taught him. If Delta was no longer defending the geofeature, that meant his buddy JC Crozier was likely dead as well as Chester Zhi. “We can’t hold off that many drones for long, but we’ll try. Good luck.”

  “You too.” Click and she was gone, no doubt to talk to her remaining lieutenants and parren commanders, all while moving and fighting herself. Dale knew enough about how hard it was to be glad it wasn’t him.

  Another channel opened unbidden. “Dale, it’s Lisbeth! The defences are activating! They’re about to take a shot at those ships overhead… I can’t reach the Major, can you talk to her?”

  “I can do that,” Dale confirmed. “Good work Lisbeth, just get ready to…”

  “Incoming!” someone yelled from Third Squad, then the thud of explosions on coms — fighting in a vacuum, it was always hard to figure where sounds were coming from, you only heard them on coms or if the impact was loud enough to vibrate surrounding structure that you were in physical contact with.

  “Missiles inbound, countermeasures on,” Sergeant Manjhi of Third Squad announced calmly. “Can’t see them yet, they’re trying to soften us up. I’m expecting a flank or a fast hook, these bastards are smart.” A pause to assess incoming coms that Dale couldn’t hear. “Fluffy’s dead. Stay sharp.”

  That was Private Sarah ‘Fluffy’ Andrews, a tall girl from Homeworld who liked to sing out of tune. When told to shut up, she sang louder.

  The Major opened her link again just as the attack reached Dale, drones streaking from a far doorway, a roar of fast-moving chaingun fire, big flashes of return fire, then Corporal Ricardo yelling of the right-hook flanking move and a whole bunch of drones zooming fast together, missiles incoming and exploding to cover their approach.

  “Lisbeth says city defences are firing on the enemy ships,” Dale said with forced calm, leaning out from cover when fire stopped pulverising the surrounding walls. He targeted fast and fired, but the drones were gone out a big side doorway, and now fire came from elsewhere and he ducked back before bullets could tear his way. “Better be a good shot. The attack just reached me — they’ve got a mobility advantage in low-G, they’re hitting the parren first then flanking and isolating marine positions. Fuckers learn fast.”

  “Do what you can,” the Major replied. “Thakur out.” Dale knew he’d get no rousing speeches from her about the need to fight to the end, or to not let a single deepynine get past him into the control room. She wouldn’t insult him by telling him things he already knew.

  “Another bunch down here!” called Sergeant Hall from a level below, covering the other main access through wide vehicular approach corridors. Heavy firing and detonations punctuated his coms. “Looks like a pincer, up and down!”

  Beside him, Sergeant Forrest displaced with a hard burn of suit thrusters, skidding across the floor to a controlled collision with abandoned heavy machinery. “You see something Woody?” Dale snapped.

  “Back quarter,” Forrest growled, taking aim as Private Tong zoomed after him. “Saw a flash, think the fuckers got behind us.”

  A drone flashed by a doorway to the right, then another appeared well to the left, blazing fire. But neither Reddy nor Dale was fooled, expecting the bait-and-switch and blasting the left-side drone backward and apart, but shots hit Tong in transit and he tumbled, crashing and bouncing on the tarmac. Missiles tore in from a new angle, and Dale ducked as his visor showed countermeasures engaging, now stuck in this doorway with enemies on both sides… a missile hit the wall beside him and rang his armour with shrapnel.

  “Tricks!” Dale demanded, rolling flat and struggling to get a good firing position, not easy with unwieldy armour suits. “You okay?”

  “Nothing serious!” Tong said breathlessly, then laid down fire at movement across the right side. But he was exposed now, having tumbled clear of cover, a thruster malfunctioning and trying to scamper backward with limited grip in low-G.

  “Hang on LT, nearly there!” called Riccardo, as Dale saw Reddy jetting low across the floor to the right, heading for that opening… shots tore across the floor, hitting Tong and spraying about the hangar as limbs and debris scattered in a bloody mist. More fire came from opposite, Dale and Forrest returning as Reddy lobbed a grenade around the rim of the right-side doorway — it magnetically attached itself to the drone that killed Tong, and blew it into the doorframe. A laser cutter ripped the doorframe from the far side, and Reddy hit explosive thrust backward to dodge, aiming at the next drone through the doorway as he fell on his backside… to find the cutter had sliced his Koshaim in half.

  Dale blew the drone into the wall with two shots, then a third blew its ammo as it threatened a blade-armed twitch toward Reddy, who disappeared in the flash. Then Riccardo and Private Tabo were blasting another from an unseen angle, tacnet showing them flanking in the neighbouring hall, no small move from where they’d been. More fire and another drone vanished, others pulling back to try another way.

  “Good work Ricky,” said Dale, levering up just enough to check the big bullet scar across his forearm. Suit lifesupport was howling to remove the excess moisture from heavy breathing that threatened to fog his visor. “Spots, you okay?”

  “Fucked if I know,” Reddy muttered, hauling himself up, new scorch marks on his armour.

  More shooting, and shouts elsewhere, demanded Dale’s attention. “Get Tricky’s rifle, he’s had it.
”

  “Poncho’s dead,” said Riccardo, covering that side from the neighbouring hall. That was Private Halep, Riccardo’s number two. “They’re finding the gaps in the line, we’re too spread out.”

  Dale had to agree. “Alpha Platoon, this is the LT. Fall back and tighten the perimeter. We let one of those things through, it’ll kill the command room and then it’s all over.”

  Second Lieutenant Bree Harris sat strapped into her Arms Two post, and hoped that her one remaining, flickering screen did not fail on her also. She stared at it with unnatural intensity, the electric symbols and graphics burning on her retinas, arms locked into the chair arm restraints, hands trembling upon the twin control sticks.

  She’d taken a stim when no one was looking, which piled on top of the stim she’d taken before the fight had started, and now she was completely buzzed. She wouldn’t have kept her sanity without it, strapped to this chair with her best friend on the ship in floating pieces alongside her, along with a godawful amount of his blood drifting in great, wobbling curtains of red, and sticking to the screens. Petty Officer Morales and one other had cleared that up, growling at a younger spacer to ‘suck it up’ when she’d lost her stomach at the mess. ‘You don’t see Second Lieutenant Harris losing her lunch, do you?’ he’d said while manoeuvring body parts into an oversize bodybag.

  That was because Second Lieutenant Harris was drugged out of her fucking mind, and unapologetic about it. She knew the micros that Fleet injected into every spacers’ systems, in conjunction with the augments that tightened her nervous response, would compensate for any overdosing in the short term at least. She’d loved those augments since she’d gotten them nine years ago. She hadn’t been sure she could make a warship post back then — her reflexes had been top two percentile, but for a warship bridge that wasn’t nearly good enough, and everything had depended on how her body had or had not taken to the augments. Out of surgery, once the pseudo-organic biotech had propagated over the course of three months, she’d astonished herself with her speed and precision. She’d even taken up guitar, to just be amazed at her own fingers flying over the strings. Now, she trusted those augments utterly. But not, she hoped, too much.