Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “Is it reawy coow, Nahny?” Skah asked, excitement reemerging as fast as it had gone.

  Tif smiled at him reluctantly. “Very coow.” Her mouth tried to pronounce the L, but the tongue just didn’t want to go there, between the sharp front teeth.

  “Do yourself an injury,” Hausler observed.

  Tif flexed her finger claws at him in mock warning. And noticed Skah trying to eat a large meat slice with his fingers. “Skah! Put…” and she began again in Gharkhan as Skah put the meat down, and his mother leaned across the table, extending one finger-length claw and slicing the meat into smaller strips with that scary-sharp blade.

  “I’m glad my mother never had those,” Shilu observed.

  “Me too,” said Erik with feeling.

  The elevator car opened onto the inner hub of the rotating wheel, typically enormous like all the architecture on Defiance. A ten-meter-high inner circumference, rotating only slowly here in the middle, with an inner wall broken in parts by large, reinforced windows. On the far side of the wall were shuttle berths in the vacuum, lit with great floodlights. Opposite those berths, on the pressurised side of the wall, platforms adjoined from lower-level assembly points, filling the otherwise open space.

  Erik led Hausler and several Operations techs down stairs to the berth level and found Charlie Platoon in the final stages of suiting up, clustered in squads and sections, buddy-checking their armour and systems. They’d been up an hour before the spacers to get breakfast then prep their armour. Lieutenant Jalawi saw Erik coming and bounced over, armour whining and thudding with a familiar noise not loud in itself, but nearly deafening when multiplied by forty other suits.

  “Yo Captain!” Jalawi shouted above the noise, stopping with his visor up and saluting. Erik returned it — for formal purposes, Assembly on a warship was to be considered ‘outdoors’, allowing the giving and receiving of salutes, and so Assembly qualified here as well. Normally Jalawi was shorter than Erik, but now Erik had to tilt his head back. Jalawi was always reliable — full of business-like good cheer, his wide, brown face filling the helmet. The man was a bull, but a friendly one. “Loading’s in five, we’ll be ready in two!”

  “Our co-pilot’s in Medbay, so we might be a little longer than that!” Erik replied.

  Jalawi shot Hausler a look of concern. “What’s wrong with Cory?”

  Hausler put his hands up. “If it’s morning sickness, wasn’t me.”

  “We’re going to leave Third and Heavy with Phoenix,” Jalawi told Erik, continuing his mock-accusing stare at Hausler. “I’ll take the tower with First and Second. Got a poker game to finish with that thief Lassa.”

  “That’s Lieutenant Lassa to you, Skeeta,” Erik told him. A spacer lieutenant being one rank higher than a marine lieutenant — an O-3 against an O-2.

  “Yeah well she cheats, I’m sure of it.” Erik didn’t think for a moment that Dreyfus Jalawi and Angela Lassa were actually passing tower duty by playing cards. Jalawi was just a world-class stirrer.

  Sergeant Hoon bounced over in the light-G, and also saluted. “Captain.”

  “Sergeant,” said Erik. Hoon was smallish, but tall within his armour. His face was weathered, Asian eyes narrow, and though it wasn’t apparent to look at him, two of his limbs were synthetic. The most combat-experienced person in Phoenix Company, second on all of Phoenix only to Chief Petty Officer Goldman, he was now Charlie Platoon’s XO following the death of Jalawi’s previous XO, Staff Sergeant Spitzer, four months ago.

  Charlie Platoon had less holes in it than one might have thought considering the casualties in that desperate battle for Defiance. That was because Echo Platoon now ceased to exist — its commander, Lieutenant Chester Zhi, having been killed and the platoon suffering casualties second only to Bravo, Trace had had no choice but to simply disband Echo and fold its survivors into the remaining four platoons. That had still left a platoon’s worth of wounded, but in the four months since, most of them had now returned, or were about to, save for three who could not be rehabilitated to marine-level performance by any level of medical technology and were now retraining as spacers for the rest of the journey.

  The survivors of Echo hated it, and non-Echo marines were wise not to bring it up in their presence. Trace had reported on a few fights that broke out directly after, defused only by her loud insistence that Lieutenant Zhi wouldn’t have liked it — a rebuke that brought a few of them to tears. Echo Platoon, Phoenix Company, dated back to the commissioning of Phoenix herself, and like all of Phoenix’s platoons had a combat history rarely matched elsewhere in Fleet. To lose it was a blow to everyone’s morale, not just that of Echo’s survivors. Even today, Trace reported that tension remained, despite the best efforts of the Company’s surviving officers.

  For a moment Erik thought Hoon might speak to him, but instead he turned to his Platoon Commander. “LT, main channel’s a bit fuzzy, only seventy-eight percent resolution. I thought we could boost vitals onto the second-tier to clear the network, we need to preserve bandwidth and I don’t trust the local relays.”

  “Sure, let’s do that,” said Jalawi, excusing himself. “What’s your settings?”

  Erik made his way with Hausler to the berth, reflecting that he’d barely spoken five words to Hoon since he’d come aboard at Joma Station… half-a-year ago now. Hoon didn’t talk much, Trace said. But she liked him, and said he was just as good as the legends told, so that was good enough for Erik.

  He was buckling himself into PH-1’s observer chair behind Hausler when Ensign Cory Yun edged past him in the narrow space. “Captain.”

  “Ensign,” said Erik, and abandoned his buckles to get up and take her shoulder. Yun looked at him in surprise — a small, pretty face beneath her big flight helmet. She looked more worn and tired than she should have, considering everyone’s sleeping improvements. “How you doing, Ensign?”

  “I’m okay sir. Just coming down with something, I think. Doc says it’s nothing serious, gave me some meds.”

  Erik didn’t believe it. Cory Yun was usually a more cheerful, talkative version of her pilot’s drawling cool. Since the fight four months ago she’d been much the same, but patchy, like someone with a bad case of mood swings. Hausler had refused to see it, but Lieutenant Jersey had been concerned, and told Erik. Today, Erik thought, was one of Yun’s off-days, and he doubted she’d been in Medbay for a cold.

  “Cory,” he said with what he hoped was the right amount of gentle firmness. “If you need a day off sometime, we can do that. The roster’s not that full, and we’re not getting shot at.”

  Yun’s surprised laughter was all defensive denial. “I’m fine Captain! Seriously, it’s just a cold!” She turned and clambered over the shoulder of Hausler’s chair with a practised squeeze against the canopy. Erik sat and resumed buckling, concern growing.

  The irony was that none of the shuttle crews had actually been shot at in the Battle of Defiance. There had been nothing they could do against the forces they faced, and getting killed needlessly would have deprived Phoenix Company of much-needed mobility. So they’d hidden, avoided contact, and watched the battle unfolding around them. And, Erik thought grimly as the pilots took the shuttle through pre-flight, they’d had to sit helplessly and listen on coms as their marine friends had died, and call desperately for Phoenix, who had clearly been hit and was not responding at all. Ensign Yun and the other shuttle crews had all thought they were about to be left alone — pilots without a mother ship, unable to help as their family died around them. And that, perhaps, was more traumatising for Cory Yun than the prospect of having been killed herself.

  They were a broken crew, Erik knew, gazing now out the canopy at the great steel dome overhead, lit from below with the glow of floodlights. The strongest among them held the family together, but the cracks were showing. Morale had been so strong for those first frantic, exciting, terrifying six months. Today everyone insisted they were just as keen, but it was coming to feel like a facade, like the lies peop
le told themselves to avoid facing unpleasant realities. Like the look on Ensign Yun’s face when she’d refused Erik’s offer of a day off. Harder work and even the risk of combat might have kept them focused, but Phoenix was crippled, stripped and under repair, and there’d been little for the non-technicians to do but settle down and wait, in the grip of this strange new alien routine.

  We’d better start making some progress soon, Erik thought grimly, as PH-1’s engines roared and the grapples released, propelling them up toward the dome exit above. Or we’re going to start imploding under the stresses we’re pretending don’t exist.

  2

  Aronech Dar was only four kilometres from the the great shipyard berths where Phoenix was undergoing her rebuild, and seven kilometres from the great Tower District from where human and parren command centres overlooked this entire portion of the city. Theoretically it might have been possible to use Defiance’s own transit systems for such short distances, but even were it possible, it would have taken a lot of man-hours and been a security headache. This was not a human city, and with every day Defiance became a little less unoccupied.

  Erik gazed out now at the vast steel horizon in the short minute he’d have before arrival. Every trip it seemed that there were a few more lights somewhere, gleaming in industrial clusters, lighting domes and valleys, hard-shelled surfaces and a maze-work of exposed beams. Here and there across the surface, parren shuttles roamed, a blink of multi-coloured running lights. On one nearby industrial section he saw what looked like construction equipment, newly erected, and a number of small, suited figures dwarfed by the architecture, no doubt repairing some life-support system in this the organic-friendly part of Defiance.

  Overhead, if he’d bothered to look, he’d have seen the occasional thruster flare of an incoming or outgoing shuttle, heading to or from orbit. Beyond that, ships were impossible to see with the naked eye, in the blackness of space without any nearby source of sunlight. But they were up there, accumulating dozens of them, some military but lately many that were not. Those were Erik’s greatest concern, for they bore parren dignitaries and leaders from various factions and houses across parren space. Military parren were predictable in that they did what they were told. But parren house rivalries were always alarming, and on the matter of this newly discovered treasure-trove of hacksaw technology in particular.

  After a minute, Hausler swung them tail-first and made a short burn, cutting the small vertical thrust that kept them up and letting the lunar gravity bring them in. Beneath them were great circular holes in the steel, like the perfect burrows of some strange subterranean animal. About those burrows were enormous gantries and mobile arms, most lying idle, but one ablaze with white light. Hausler brought them neatly to a low hover above a neighbouring platform, then cut thrust entirely at several metres to let gravity bounce them gently down.

  “Thanks for the lift,” Erik told the pilots, unbuckling and hitting the cockpit door release.

  “Our pleasure Captain,” said Hausler. “I hope you have a pleasant and productive day.”

  “I always do, Trey. You fly safe, you hear?”

  “I’ll be as safe as a tavalai’s money, Captain.”

  Erik beat the first marines to the dorsal hatch, confirmed the connection himself with Spacer Alexander on the far end, got good pressure to override the shuttle airlock and popped both doors together. A short heave got him up, then through the overhead opening into the adjoining access arm.

  “Thanks Levy,” he told Alexander. “Heavy and Third Squad are coming up behind.”

  “Yes Captain,” said the tired-looking spacer. “Nothing here to report, we’re the same as yesterday.”

  Erik nodded and bounced in the low-G, knowing that Jalawi would have already told the Alpha Platoon marines currently guarding Phoenix that their replacements were here… but the Alphas wouldn’t leave their posts until personally relieved. It wasn’t strictly necessary or effective to guard the ship, nor their control center in the Tower District. There were easily enough parren forces here that if some factional warlord decided to wipe out the humans, they could do it easily. But Phoenix was important, if currently controversial, and besides, Erik had the best possible mole deep inside the most powerful local administration, and he was confident of her ability to keep them informed of possible dangerous developments.

  The docking arm ended in a wide assembly area, a thick steel floor for heavy use, and centred by a double-doored, pressurised elevator. Erik figured that the marines would be a minute at least assembling here, and the elevator was fast, so he got in alone and hit the main observation level. Doors hissed and his ears popped, and he put his feet firmly into the floor straps to avoid hitting the ceiling as the car accelerated downward.

  For a moment the curved glass-panel windows showed nothing, then the car broke into the gantry structure as it fled down the side of the vast hangar. And there, beyond the flashing blur of passing beams, was Phoenix. She stood on her tail within the great hole where Fleet regulations said no human starship should ever be. Support arms held her on all sides, blazing light on her matte-black flanks. Seeing her like this, in proportion to things on the ground, gave Erik the clearest sense he’d ever had of how big she was — four hundred metres long, and taking an elevator down her flank was like descending an enormous skyscraper in a big city. The workers on the ground far below looked like ants, and even now the Engineering second-shift crawled upon their latest points of interest, and cut new attachments into the old hull with showers of orange sparks.

  Erik’s eye picked out the new additions as he descended — the coms dishes, the scanning modules, the rail-gun turrets. New, armoured ammunition feeds, snaking along the hull-cage that contained the habitation cylinder. The cylinder had a new paint job too — just as spookily-black as the last one, but even less reflective. Despite all the floodlights, Phoenix sat dark and impassive, seeming to drink in the glare like a black hole. A shape this big and regular couldn’t be particularly radar-stealthy, but Lieutenant Rooke insisted that the new material would decrease radar reflectivity by another sixty percent. And then there were the stealth counter-measures, which some in Engineering were calling a ‘cloaking field’… Rooke discouraged that, saying it was nothing of the sort, only to then explain how it kind-of was, using a strange set of field generators to bamboozle incoming radar. ‘A field of what?’ Erik had asked, but hadn’t received a reply he could understand.

  But the changes to the forward third of the ship were nothing compared to what had been done to the rear half. Phoenix’s familiar old lines were gone completely, replaced by something that looked almost evil in its alien monstrosity. It was no bigger, and Rooke insisted was actually seven percent lighter — no small saving on a warship that needed mobility to survive. The powerplant that it contained was a brutal thing, even by the physics-bending technological standards of the old Phoenix. The jump engines first, directly behind Midships and ahead of the primary powercore, radiating the jump lines that forked and looped forward, past Midships to the hull cage about the crew cylinder. That, Rooke said, they’d have to test to precisely discover the performance of. Big, was all he’d say when Erik asked him for predictions. Very big.

  The main powerplant was an atom-smasher, like all modern starship drives, pulling power out of quantum states using understandings of those mechanics that humanity probably wouldn’t have reached by now if they hadn’t been handed all these things ahead of their time by the chah’nas and alo. But this particular powerplant did it differently to anything the crew had seen or even heard of before. The power it created was cheap, but it was not easy, and now Rooke’s Engineering heads were huddled to try and figure how they were going to maintain the thing once in operation, given that their understanding of the technology was limited and their current maintenance tools and procedures obsolete. More concerning for Erik was the distinct probability that this engine, if fired at full power, would kill everyone on Phoenix by sheer G-force alone. Exac
tly how he was going to use it in combat, if it came to that, he had absolutely no idea. Given how things had gone for Phoenix over the past ten months, he was pretty sure it was going to come to that eventually.

  The car reached hangar control, decelerated fast, then was enclosed by the pressurised compartment. Double-doors hissed and unlocked, then opened, and Erik yawned as he walked in, equalising against the small mismatch. Immediately the car resealed and shot upwards once more to bring the marines down. The control room was wide, with posts for many people, all presently unoccupied, display lights flashing as they monitored various of Phoenix’s new systems. A wide strip of windows overlooked the repair bay, and before it stood Lieutenant Rooke himself, sipping on coffee and gazing at his beloved warship.

  Erik joined him, and it took Rooke another two seconds to glance and do a double-take. “Oh, Captain! I’m sorry, I didn’t… I mean, I was just…”

  “Thinking, I know.” Erik gazed out at the familiar, yet now alarmingly alien ship that had for many months been his only home. “If you’d rather think, you can report to me later. Thinking’s important.”

  “No, that’s okay sir.” Rooke was nearly thirty, but looked more like twenty-five… if that number meant anything today with ageing treatments as they were. African-black, middle-height and slender, he was no athletic specimen to look at, and rumour was he would have flunked Fleet’s spacer standards by some record margin if it weren’t for the augments every recruit received just managing to push him over the line. More rumour said that he’d still managed to flunk those standards, but Fleet had given him an exception for being such a genius with tech. As Captain, Erik had seen Rooke’s files and knew that Rooke had actually passed those physicals, though borderline. The files had also shown the Academy’s assessment of his intellect, by whatever latest measurement the psychs now thought best to measure that nebulous concept. The number had been eye-wateringly high, and Erik had never been more pleased of the fact than now.