Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “I like to get here early during shift change,” Rooke explained, indicating the empty control room. “It’s the best time to review everything and gather my thoughts. I sometimes worry I don’t get enough time to just… think, you know?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Erik agreed, with feeling. “How’s it looking?”

  “Same as before, Captain. Good progress. Better than good, actually.” He sounded both excited and worried at the same time. “She’s going to be a beast, Captain. I mean, she was already a beast. But if I’m right about the numbers, I think she’ll be doing things even those deepynines can’t match.”

  “Big engines won’t help us if the crew pass out above 12G,” Erik reminded him. “Machines don’t G-LOC.”

  “Oh, it’s so much more than that, Captain.” Rooke shook his head faintly, coffee mug at his lips. “I’m not even sure they’ll be able to see us. The engines are one thing, the computers… oh yeah, that’s another thing. Ensign Kadi got the computer’s flight sim working. So you can sit the chair if you like.”

  Erik blinked. “Today?” Rooke nodded, with the barely restrained smile of a kid with a secret he was dying to share. “Is it good?”

  “I think you should just sit the chair, Captain. It’s not any of our speciality anyway, only you can tell how it flies.”

  Erik’s smile grew at the younger man’s manner. “You think it’s cool though, right?”

  “Well it looks fucking awesome.” Rooke grinned. “But looks aren’t everything, I guess.”

  “So I’m told. What would you say to some extra manpower?”

  It was Rooke’s turn to blink at him. “From where?” Because obviously, they weren’t inviting parren to come and look at their deadly new creation. The parren were too busy trying to build their own, with apparently mixed success, if Lisbeth’s tales were true.

  “The Major’s almost done with her babies,” said Erik. “She thinks. The first couple, anyway, might take another five days to be sure. Their technical skills are instinctive, she says. You program them with the capabilities you want, they’ll learn it in days.”

  “Wow.” Rooke gazed at the gantries around the ship, and the second-shift workers toiling away. Engineering was the one group of Phoenix crew who hadn’t all moved to parren daytime hours. They had just enough people to maintain a round-the-clock effort on Phoenix, and so that was what they did. To help, Rooke had been recruiting technically able crew from non-Engineering specialities, even if it meant higher ranks taking instruction from Engineering spacers and petty officers. If they’d only kept a single-shift, completion would still be months away. “We’d have to guard them too. Around-the-clock. Do we really want to leave them alone with Phoenix for that long?”

  “We’ll see,” said Erik. “Everything’s a judgement call at the moment, there’s no handbook on any of this. We’re the first humans to ever do anything like this.”

  “Don’t think we’ll be the last, either,” said Rooke. He sounded more excited at the prospect than Erik thought was wise. And he wondered now, again, what Captain Sampey of Lien Wang would think.

  Tif flew at a steady three kilometres off the surface, maintaining just a gentle vertical thrust to keep them level. There was quite a bit of traffic over Defiance these days, utterly unlike when they’d first arrived, and traffic control now gave shuttles a correct altitude for each direction they might fly. With all intersecting trajectories operating at different altitudes, and all co-altitude flights heading the same way, statistically unlikely collisions became nearly impossible.

  Tif looked across the horizon now, and her visor overlaid the blips of moving shuttles and a few larger runners and smaller skips. All were parren, most from House Harmony, though not necessarily friendly to each other, in the way of parren. Nearly as bad as kuhsi, Tif thought sourly to herself. An entire sector down south glowed with red navigation barriers, invisible walls erected by traffic control to shield all unauthorised entry. The number of those forbidden sectors was also growing. Tif gathered that the big hacksaw-brain underground in Sector KS-320 was not off-limits to humans yet, but not for want of parren trying. Hannachiam was Styx’s friend, and Styx was technically a member of Phoenix’s crew. That couldn’t be making the parren happy. It meant that Hannachiam would listen to humans first and parren second… and Hannachiam basically controlled everything on Defiance.

  A bright light flared off to the left — Tif looked, and saw a thruster tail maybe ten Ks distant, kicking in full power on its way to orbit. “Look Skah,” she said. “Off to the left, a big shuttle heading to orbit.”

  She rolled the shuttle thirty degrees left to let the boy see — he was in the rear observer chair, which only put his eyes level with the cockpit rim, limiting his field of view. Rolling the shuttle took the thrust off-vertical, pushing them left, so she cut it, tilted the nose up instead and gave them a light tap from the mains to avoid losing altitude.

  Skah made an impressed noise from the back, and she smiled. “Is that a big one, Mummy?” he asked.

  “That’s a big parren cargo shuttle,” she agreed. “It’s three times bigger than us, so it has bigger engines. But it still can’t accelerate as fast because it’s much heavier.”

  “Do you like that one, Skah?” asked Dave Lee from the front seat, in English.

  “Very good,” Skah agreed in the same. “Big ship.”

  Coms crackled. “Hello PH-4,” came Lieutenant Angela Lassa’s voice — usually second-shift Coms but working from the Control Tower now. Most of the bridge crew spent their day with Phoenix, working on their speciality systems with Engineering and learning how all the amazing new tech was going to work. But Coms was more use in the tower, so Lassa and Shilu took turns there. “We are reading a lot of parren activity near Sector KX-18. We’d appreciate it if you could swing by and take a look at what’s going on.”

  “Hello Tower,” said Lee before Tif could reply. “We’ve been receiving a flight alert to stay clear of that sector. They really don’t want us over there.”

  “Don’t penetrate their flightspace,” Lassa replied. “Just go past it. See what you can see.”

  “Tower, PH-4 copies,” said Tif. Lee flashed the course change onto her screen, and Tif checked to see if there was any traffic around to be upset by that correction. “Rewtenant Crozier, did you hear that?”

  “Hello Tif, I did hear that,” Crozier confirmed from her command post in the back. “Bravo Platoon has no objection to this course change.” That was irony, Tif was pretty sure. Bravo Platoon had no say in the matter, like all marines on spacer vessels. Crozier had Bravo First Squad plus Bravo Heavy Squad back there, as Phoenix shuttles had been flying ‘exploration’ missions every day since arrival. They’d found some interesting things, including the dead chassis of drysine drones that the Major was now taking charge of rehabilitating in the base of Control Tower. They’d recovered other technology too, and often just gone looking at interesting things, expanding their knowledge of the city. Tif was happy to fly the missions as it kept her busy, and suspected that was the main reason the Captain insisted they be flown. There wasn’t too much about Defiance they couldn’t learn directly from Hannachiam. But the Captain wanted them to stay occupied, and Tif was fine with it. Flying over Defiance was never boring.

  “Hold course for a moment, Lieutenant,” said Lee. “We’ll relay our course to parren control first, just to be polite. Give it ten seconds first.”

  Tif waited, then swung the shuttle’s tail out and wide, and gave them a mild 2-G push. Thrust grumbled rather than roared, and she gained altitude with the new heading until she was at the required two-point-one kilometres.

  “That wasn’t hard,” Skah complained from the back, in Gharkhan.

  “We’re trying not to upset the parren,” Tif explained. “This is a parren city, we have to be polite. Look ahead, Skah. That’s Tega Nen Sector. That’s where the big arches are.”

  “I can’t see,” Skah complained. Tif swung t
hem sideways once more, and tilted so he could. Looking left, in their direction of travel, Skah got a good look at the enormous two-kilometre-long arches, looming high above the city surface. They looked like the ribs of some great tube whose skin had been torn away, leaving only the skeleton. Light flickered across them, as their new parren owners explored and worked. “What for?” Skah wondered.

  “We don’t know,” Tif admitted. “They look nice, though.”

  “Someone in Engineering told me that Hannachiam said they were something to create a magnetic field,” Lee volunteered in English, evidently listening to their alien discussion on translator. “No idea what for. Hacksaws got up to all kinds of weird stuff.” He laid in the second part of their new course and transmitted that to parren central. Tif saw that it took them within two kilometres of the forbidden zone. Normally they’d get no closer than three… but Control Tower had asked them specifically.

  Tif waited, then cut vertical thrust to drop them on the new, required altitude, swinging to give them another shove through a ninety-degree course change. They flew lower, leaving the amazing high arches, and now passed over what looked like another old terrestrial shipyard — big vertical holes in the steel ground, surrounded by machinery arms and plants. This one was still abandoned, like most facilities on Defiance. What the place must have looked like in the height of the Drysine Empire, with all of this stuff alive with activity and crawling with drones, Tif could barely imagine.

  “Here ahead,” said Lee after a few more minutes. “On the right, the square blocks. That’s Komaren Es.”

  Tif looked, and saw yet another unique surface feature — kilometres of regular, square shapes, as though someone had half-buried a bunch of six-sided dice. The gaps between them glowed with illumination, creating a three-dimensional gridwork of light and dark. Atop one of the near squares, scan showed her a large combat shuttle had landed. About it, a series of com signatures that were parren and encrypted.

  “Parren marines on the ground,” said Lee. “There are more shuttles down in the gaps between those cubes, I can read their com signatures.”

  “Those marines look like top-cover,” came Lieutenant Crozier from down back. “They don’t usually do that unless they’ve found something important.”

  “Kind of dumb to give that away, though,” Lee remarked. And then, with sudden alarm, “We have a ground missile lock on us. It’s coming from those grounded marines.”

  “Phoenix Controw, prease advise,” Tif requested calmly. Missile locks were Lee’s expertise, but she knew enough to know that these were the marine-suit missiles. With recent upgrades to PH-4’s countermeasures it was nearly impossible that any of them could hit… and probably not from that big combat shuttle, either. This looked like a warning rather than a serious threat.

  “Hello PH-4,” said Lassa from the tower, “recommend you stay silent, do NOT retaliate in any way, do not change course. Just fly by, it looks like a warning more than a threat.”

  “PH-4 copies,” Tif replied. “Dumb parren cood just say ‘go away’.”

  “They’re parren,” Crozier said drily. “They never make a small threat when a big one will do.”

  Abruptly, some of the lights between the cubes went out. “Whoa,” said Lee. “I’m reading a big energy spike, a whole bunch of coms in that district just went to static. It’s like something’s jamming them.”

  “I can’t see missiw wock,” Tif complained. “Is that our systen or their’s?”

  “I’m getting green on all systems,” Lee replied, just as puzzled. “It must be them. It’s like something cut them all off, or jammed their systems completely.”

  “PH-4, this is Tower Control,” came Lassa’s voice once more. “We’re getting some alarmed-sounding encryption from parren ships in orbit and a few of the control bases on the surface. Whatever just happened down there, they’re upset about it. I think you guys had better come home and sit this one out, we don’t want things getting ugly.”

  “PH-4 copies, Controw,” Tif replied, already calculating her course for home before Lee could feed it to her. It was almost as though something hadn’t liked the parren aiming missiles at PH-4. But what?

  Erik met Trace opposite loading berth one in the command tower, and waited. The Lien Wang’s shuttle came down precisely on schedule, a dim flare of thrust through the airlock viewports. Not bright, as the Defiance moon’s gravity was barely a sixth of humanity’s preference. About them was open storage space, where crates of gear unloaded from Phoenix but so far not needed were kept, directly by the landing pads.

  “Rehnar’s people are lodging an official protest,” Lassa told him from tower control high above. “They’re demanding PH-4’s pilot be punished for an illegal flightpath. I’m sorry Captain, I shouldn’t have pushed Tif into it.”

  “I’m not sure you did the wrong thing, Lieutenant,” said Erik. “Clearly Rehnar’s people have found something important out at Komaran Es and they don’t want to share. Contact Lisbeth and request that she try to find out what it is through channels.”

  “Aye Captain.”

  “Large energy signatures out that way,” Trace remarked as the call ended. “Engineering’s best analysis is advanced manufacturing. Whatever it is, Rehnar seems to have gotten it up and running again.”

  “Yeah,” said Erik, watching the activity from the shuttle berth ahead. “Lots of secrets still on Defiance. For all the exploration, even the parren haven’t seen more than ten percent yet.”

  Spacer Lang indicated when the shuttle acquired an access tube match, then a pressure seal. Soon there were figures entering the airlock, and airlock scan showed no weapons. Given recent relations between Fleet and Phoenix, that was probably wise on the visitors’ part. The inner door opened, and a pair of men emerged. They wore spacer jumpsuits, pressure-tight linings beneath, airmasks in full webbing on their torsos and other equipment besides. Erik was pleased neither he nor Trace had bothered to don the full uniform, no matter how tempting to make a display before the visiting officers. Phoenix crew were a working crew, and evidently so were Lien Wang’s.

  The leading man wore a captain’s eagle wings on his shoulder, while the second, taller man was a Commander. They bounced, an easier motion than walking in light-G, and Erik recognised Captain Angelo Sampey from pictures — average height, dark, flat features with more curly black hair than Fleet regs typically allowed.

  “Captain Debogande,” he said with an easy smile, and extended a hand. Erik took it, a little relieved that Sampey was not choosing to question his rank here. He’d taken the rank himself by necessity, and Fleet HQ could challenge its validity if they chose.

  “Captain Sampey,” Erik replied. “You’ll know Major Thakur, of course.”

  “Major,” said Sampey, and shook her hand as well. “This is Commander Adams, Fleet Intelligence.” Ah, thought Erik, shaking his hand as well. Of course Fleet would send a spook. He didn’t know Adams, but was sure he’d be someone quite senior.

  “This place is just incredible,” said Adams, with genuine awe. He was a tall man, pale with thin, greying hair. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “We have,” Erik said grimly. “It’s eye-opening just how much like this there still is, for an era that I was assured had been completely destroyed. Who sent you?”

  “Fleet Admiral Reiko,” said Sampey. That was the new second-in-command of all United Forces, Erik knew. Replacing Fleet Admiral Anjo, who’d been eliminated by the Guardian Council after making the critical mistake of deciding to eliminate Phoenix’s old commander, Captain Pantillo, and putting half of Fleet’s senior captains perilously offside in the process. “We heard that the UFS Phoenix’s rampage across the galaxy had finally come to a halt.” The disarming smile couldn’t quite disguise the edge to Sampey’s voice. “So we pulled a few strings and figured out a way to reach you before you set off again. The repairs are progressing?”

  “They are,” said Erik. And left it at that, whatever the awkwa
rd silence. “And what is your intention in being here?”

  “To learn, Captain,” said Sampey. “That’s all, I promise. No threats, no instructions, no demands. We just want to learn what’s been going on, and the reasons behind all the… alarming things going on in tavalai space right now. And parren space too, by the looks of it.”

  Erik nodded. “Well then. We have a briefing prepared. If you’d like to come this way?”

  Erik took the Captain and Commander through it, in the room by the bridge they’d been using for a meeting room. It had a wide view over the steel canyon in which this cluster of tall towers was located, and the many domes and features beyond. Much of it was aglow, the long-dormant city of Defiance coming back to life as might a desert plain after heavy rains.

  Erik was surprised how long the briefing took. He handled most of it, seated at the circular table and resorting to holographics when there were things Sampey and Adams really needed to see for themselves. There were quite a few of those, and the open-mouthed astonishment on the faces of the two very experienced officers gave him more satisfaction than it probably should.

  By mutual agreement between himself and Trace, he concealed very little. Styx, he discussed openly, and their success with a reconstructed drysine drone. Aristan and the power struggles within House Harmony were all unavoidable. And the drysine data-core, most of all, captured their undivided attention. Trace told those portions of the story that she was best placed to, and spacers on bridge duty brought them parren tea and light snacks.

  When they were finished, with a final description of the Battle of Defiance that had left Phoenix shattered in space, and a hundred and twelve of her crew dead, nearly two-and-a-half hours had passed. Sampey and Adams did not bother to disguise their incredulity. Adams put both hands on his head, stretched out his long legs, lips pursed in a silent whistle. Sampey gazed past them all at a blank wall, momentarily oblivious to the spectacular view.