And probably Lisbeth would refuse to abandon Gesul even should Erik have commanded it. She had an importance at Gesul’s side that she had never had aboard Phoenix. Beyond simple ego, what she did there, translating between two species that knew each other very little and could so easily get things catastrophically wrong, was incredibly important. More important, conceivably, than anything else Erik might do in this whole mess.
The elevator slowed, momentarily approaching full gravity, then halted, and the doors hissed. Guarding the elevator here were four marines from different parts of Charlie Platoon — in full armour, legs locked out and sitting on the armour saddle, which was no less comfortable than riding a horse for long periods. Erik knew there might not be a single intact unit in all Phoenix Company, nearly every four-man section had someone missing through death or injury.
He stopped to shake their hands and talk — these at least had all had some sleep, a feed and a shower. All had new battle scars on their armour, but they seemed to be coping. One was the Second Squad Commander, Master Sergeant Hoon — a legend before his recent transfer to Phoenix, now a veteran of yet another epic battle. Another was Lance Corporal Graf of Third Section, First Squad… or ‘Eggs’, as she was known.
“You can come in, if you’d like?” Erik offered her, indicating the big, sealed doors opposite. “You found the thing, and I hear you’d probably have a better idea how it works than I do.”
“Thank you sir,” said Graf, a pale, brown-haired woman who looked far too ‘normal’ to be a marine. Her armour bore a spectacular spread of shrapnel scars, no doubt from a nearby missile strike. “But I’d just like to be with my people for a while.”
Erik had known before what it was to be proud of people under his command. But now, that feeling was multiplied many times. He wanted to hug them all, but couldn’t — they didn’t need his affection, they needed his leadership, and in Fleet the one could so easily conflict with the other. He settled for putting a hand on Graf’s armoured shoulder, and giving her a look of intense approval. Graf looked touched, and emotional, and nodded back as though it were all she needed. They all did, even Hoon.
Erik walked to the doors, which opened on his approach. Within, a central conduit dominated the room, a great cylinder from the ceiling to the floor, surrounded by many smaller power and support structures. Within one of those cage-like frames sat the data-core on a secured stand. Energy crackled about the containment frame, and Erik could smell the ozone in the air, and the scorch of electrical discharge. From the great conduit, clearly some offshoot of a much larger system running through the base of the tower and into the city’s depths, a deep bass note of power hummed and throbbed.
On the nearside stood Stan Romki, still in his spacer jumpsuit with harness and tools, as though he hadn’t changed from helping the rescue teams pulling trapped spacers from decompressed compartments. Opposite him, crouched like the terrifying insectoid monster she now resembled, was Styx. It was the first time Erik had seen her like this in person. With her main legs curled to let her fit into the cramped space, they created the impression of gothic pillars or ribs, framing the flanks of that single, unblinking red eye.
“That’s a good look for you, Styx,” Erik told her, making his way to them.
“I detect irony,” said Styx. Her small head was now contained within a much larger, flaring carapace, protecting neck and sides, like a giant collar or crest. Erik was not convinced it wasn’t also a calculated attempt at intimidation. Her head and eye peered and darted, her small forelegs dancing over controls with crazy dexterity. “Does this appearance alarm humans?”
“If you want less irony,” Erik told her, “try not asking questions you already know the answer to.”
“A fitting reply, Captain.”
“Ignore her,” Romki said drily, focused with equal concentration on his own screens, and not yet looking up. “She’s working on her repartee, and her answers are becoming more and more obtuse. One of these days I swear she’ll accidentally trip over a sense of humour and decide to adopt it.”
“The back of your hand stings, Professor.”
And Erik saw Romki actually shake his head in disbelief — not at the technological marvel that was Styx, but like an old friend increasingly tired of his comrade’s glib remarks.
“I was invited down here,” Erik reminded them drily. “If you’d rather squabble amongst yourselves, I could come back another time.”
“No no, Captain,” said Romki. “My apologies. We are attempting to access the deeper levels of the data-core — we’ve only scratched the surface so far, unloading the entire core could take months, and I’m not entirely sure we have a number large enough to describe the volume of data it contains.”
“We do,” Styx assured him. “It is large.”
Romki turned to look at Erik for the first time. His big owl-eyes were tired as always behind his glasses, and Erik wondered if he’d ever seen the man, in the past few months, when he’d been getting adequate sleep. “Thankfully,” Romki said, “it appears to have a reasonably sophisticated filing system. And so Styx has been able to pull out relevant data first, and leave the less relevant for later. The most relevant, I thought, were alien races, given that it is my speciality, and I couldn’t resist viewing a full catalogue of the sentient organic races around in drysine times.”
He activated holographic control on his glasses, turned an invisible icon in mid-air, and a nearby screen flashed to life between the cage supports. “Only, of course,” he continued, “the data-core contains records not only of the species living in the drysine era, but of those well before, back to the beginning of all advanced AI sentience. So far I have discovered reference to thirteen previously unknown alien sentiences… or unknown by humans, at least.”
An image appeared on the screen. This one was bipedal, as most of the Spiral’s organics were… and had tusks of some kind. Erik squinted past the headache that was threatening to make its return in defiance of the drugs that stopped it. “Never seen that before,” he admitted.
“I have not yet found a name,” Romki admitted. “Nor a location. The data is not complete, and the filing system accumulates over time, so we may have the data, but it is not yet filed as it should be. Styx, of course, is little help, having a long-term memory like a sieve on matters that do not involve immediate survival.”
“A sieve,” said Styx, with all the inattention of a parent working on adult matters while children made irrelevant conversation in the background. “Curious.”
“Well that’s very interesting, Stan,” said Erik. “And I’d love to see the full report once you’ve written it. But I don’t see what requires me to be here right now.”
Romki changed the screen again, and another face appeared. This one was familiar — black, with beady eyes above a large, open and rather delicate nasal cavity that made up much of the face. Side gills for breathing, in through the lower jaw and neck, out through that sensitive nose. “Alo,” said Erik with a ‘so what?’ frown. “Sure seen them before.” Romki just looked at him, the sombre look of a tutor waiting for his dull pupil to grasp something obvious. Erik’s frown grew deeper. Then he realised. “But alo appeared three thousand years ago…”
“And the Drysine Empire ended twenty five thousand years ago,” Romki finished. “So the drysines, it appears, knew who the alo were. All that time ago. While we today have no clue.”
Erik stared. “Do you have a location?”
“A very general location,” Romki agreed, and the display changed to show a star chart. “This particular record is taken second-hand, out here in croma space.”
“That’s the edge of the Spiral.”
“Well yes,” said Romki, adjusting his glasses. “An arbitrary border, like all of these things. The species that inhabit that border do not recognise it. To them, we are the edge of their geographic entity. Today, that is all croma space. This particular drysine record states that this alo encounter locates their homeworld out
beyond croma space.”
“Beyond?” Erik’s jaw dropped. “They’re not native to their current territory?”
“The drysine record lists them as primitive. We’ve only known alo as very advanced. Clearly it seems the drysine record indicates the more likely origin.”
Erik came closer to peer at the starchart. It was still all too foreign to him, too far away from anything familiar. Kaspowitz and De Marchi might have had better luck. “Styx?” he said. “You know anything about that space?”
“Perhaps once,” said Styx. “Memory like a sieve, I’m told.”
“I swear she lost her mind in that asteroid,” Romki complained. “So many thousands of years with nothing to do, and…” Erik shook his head at him. ‘No’, he mouthed, and glanced at Styx, meaningfully. Romki’s eyes registered realisation, and he stopped.
The emotional states of drysine queens remained a great mystery, and Erik had no desire to unravel this particular mystery by accident and disaster. That Styx had such emotional states, he had no doubt. Whether they were anything a human could possibly understand, he doubted. And Romki, being Romki, might just blunder along and stick his foot into something far more dangerous than his current level of familiarity with his twenty five thousand year old ‘friend’ could grasp. Erik did not particularly mind if Styx saw him cautioning Romki. He only hoped that she was capable, on some level, of appreciating the gesture.
“Captain,” Romki regained his equilibrium, “I hesitate to suggest this, given our current situation. But if we have finally the means to discover the origins of the alo, then we may also have within our grasp the means to discover the origins of the alo-deepynine alliance. If we face a war against them, we cannot hope to win it without knowing precisely what we face. Perhaps in learning their origin, we can learn exactly what they want. Because for all our thousand-year history with the alo, they’ve never once seemed inclined to tell us.”
“No,” said Styx. “This is a poor strategic choice. Defiance is a great resource. With the data-core, its utility multiplies. We should stay, and consolidate. There are political opportunities now, and the currency of technology and power to trade.”
Romki opened his mouth to argue, then thought the better of it, and looked at Erik.
Erik stared at the screen. “That’s croma space now,” he murmured. “We thought we knew little about the parren — the croma are just legend.”
“No,” Romki said sombrely. “You’re looking at croma space, yes. But the region indicated in the record suggests that alo came from beyond croma space. And out there, I’m afraid, are the reeh.”
Erik looked at him. “Seriously? I barely heard about them in the Academy either.”
“And they’ve barely heard of us, no doubt,” Romki said condescendingly. “It doesn’t make us any less real. From what I’ve heard, I’d rather leave them ignorant of humans completely, if that were possible.”
“Why? What have you heard?”
“The sard are bad,” said Romki. “The krim were worse. The reeh are worse again, and many times more powerful than the krim and sard at their very height combined.”
“We should not go there,” said Styx, with certainty. “It would be foolishness.”
“Captain,” Romki insisted, as seriously as he’d ever insisted upon anything. “I’m not sure we have a choice.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joel Shepherd is the Australian author of fourteen SF and Fantasy novels in three series. They are ’The Cassandra Kresnov Series’, ‘A Trial of Blood and Steel’, and ‘The Spiral Wars’.
For more information;
www.joelshepherd.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Page 51