Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “Hello Lisbeth, this is Styx.”

  “Hello Styx, I take it we’re being jammed?”

  “Yes Lisbeth. Most communications pathways are blocked but I have established some more. I dare not route additional traffic through it, even this simple audio link is being rerouted every few seconds to prevent Rehnar’s people from detecting and blocking it.”

  “Well it sounds like they’ve gone to a lot of trouble if even you’re finding it hard to talk. It’s bad, then?”

  “Rehnar is assaulting the Domesh Tower. The Phoenix control tower is not under attack, we have been assured by Rehnar that Gesul is the only target. Domesh facilities are under close military observation, including yours, but it appears unlikely that there will be any attack other than the one upon the tower. Your brother is concerned that that could change if others join Gesul’s side.”

  Timoshene returned while Styx was talking and Lisbeth ignored whatever he said, holding up a hand to indicate she was uplinked. Timoshene frowned, and waited. “Which of the other factions is with Rehnar?” she asked. Timoshene said something in Porgesh… difficult to process when she was speaking to Styx in English. ‘Do you have an external link?’ she thought he said, and nodded impatiently.

  “It is unclear,” said Styx. “There has been no announcement. There is only fighting in the tower, it is moving from the base up toward the top. Gesul’s forces appear to be making a strategic withdrawal.”

  “Styx, the other denominations are supposed to announce,” Lisbeth said firmly. Other parren were gathering in the doorway beyond Timoshene, perhaps realising what was going on. Maybe she had the only external link in the entire habitat. She blocked them from her vision, turning side-on to look at the wall. “When a keresh happens the other denominational leaders are supposed to announce what side they’re on. If that hasn’t happened, it means they’re staying neutral. It’s just Rehnar, which means Gesul’s outnumbered but not by much. The other denominational leaders probably favour Rehnar, but they are restrained by their fear of you and Hanna, and by a parren sense of etiquette in such conflicts. Rehnar must prove himself alone and without help — if he cannot defeat Gesul in a limited contest, he does not deserve to be head of House Harmony.”

  “Rehnar is the head of the Incefahd, which rules all House Harmony,” Styx returned. “His forces here outnumber Gesul’s three-to-one, more if one counts non-military personnel. Furthermore, the communications blackout indicates parren participation and forethought beyond just the Domesh, whatever those other leaders say.”

  Why was Styx taking the trouble to talk to her, Lisbeth wondered? True, Styx could conduct twenty conversations at once with no difficulty, but if relayed communications were so problematic, this still represented some kind of effort, particularly given the risk if detected. Certainly Styx overstated her confusion with the politics and psychology of organics, but Lisbeth did not think it was entirely a lie. And Styx had not spent the time in close proximity to Gesul, and other high parren powers on Defiance, that Lisbeth had. Styx was looking for advice, for herself and for Erik. Situational awareness on a matter she was less well equipped to deal with than Lisbeth was.

  “Styx, the laws of the keresh dictate that the target is allowed to defend himself to an equal degree of violence as represented by the threat,” she said. “That means Rehnar has put himself in play.” Dear god, she couldn’t quite believe what she was suggesting. “The fastest way to kill the snake is to cut off its head. Of all your capabilities, that one could be the most useful now.”

  “That is your brother’s decision, Lisbeth. I would never take such an action unilaterally.”

  “Then tell Erik… look, can you get a link direct to him? Or to the Major?”

  “They are quite busy. I will relay this communication in full.”

  “Gesul’s defeat is not in the best interest of Phoenix, Styx. I’ve had this discussion with Erik many times and we are in agreement. Rehnar does not like us, he does not like our mission, and he particularly does not like you.”

  “That being so, for Phoenix to remove the head of House Harmony, under any circumstances, would be an extraordinary interference in the affairs of parren by outsiders. I am not always confident in my analysis of organic politics, but on this I am quite sure.”

  Semaya was gesturing most demonstrably for a parren, in a way that suggested huge importance. Lisbeth nodded for her to go ahead, straining her brain to change languages. “Lisbeth, our records show that new House Harmony ship at the jump-point was two jumps ago at Lumarei System!”

  Lisbeth winced. “Hang on a moment Styx, parren here are talking to me…” and in Porgesh, to Semaya, “Lumarei System? What are you saying?”

  “It was monitoring the count! The Jusica were conducting a count, to see if Rehnar remains head of House Harmony by number of supporters!”

  Lisbeth’s eyes widened. “He lost!” Semaya made a firm gesture of hand against fist — an affirmative, the parren equivalent of a serious nod. “Styx! Tell Erik that Gesul’s parren think that the Jusica were counting the numbers of followers to see if Gesul had overtaken Rehnar — that ship that just arrived was watching the count, and now it’s come rushing here to tell Rehnar something, and Rehnar attacks! He’s lost, only the count hasn’t arrived yet! That makes Gesul the true leader of House Harmony, Rehnar is trying to remove him before it can be enforced!”

  “This is conjecture.”

  “Look, ask Gesul yourself! He’s only next door…”

  “The connecting doors are down, there are external overrides, we do not control them.”

  “Then hack them yourself, surely you can do that?”

  “No Lisbeth, this is a mechanical system and network connections have been severed. Rehnar’s people appear aware of my abilities and are well prepared. If we blast through the doors we will be violating Rehnar’s instruction and involving ourselves directly on Gesul’s side.”

  “Laser-com between the two towers, then! Hell, you could use morse-code…” Which parren did not know, of course.

  “I believe it is being tried. Again, laser-com can be spotted, and would be a violation of Rehnar’s instruction.” Erik had to make a choice, Lisbeth thought desperately. Probably he was the only one who could.

  “Styx,” she tried again, “if Rehnar dies quickly, this entire question will end. Could it be an accident?”

  “Nothing would rouse parren suspicions against us more at this moment. I judge most parren would prefer outright murder, by their rules.”

  “Then maybe that’s what you should do!”

  “Acoustics indicate the fighting has moved to the tower’s mid-level,” said Trace, standing before the control room’s huge, curved window before the view. She didn’t need access to one of the room’s posts for command — with internal tower coms operational once more, external jamming was largely negated in the immediate vicinity, and her armour suit contained all the gear required. “Sounds like it’s becoming more intense, they’ll be running out of space to fall back into.”

  The tower bridge consisted of Erik, the second-shift bridge crew of De Marchi, Lassa and Zelele, plus Erik’s first-shift Scan Two, Second Lieutenant Jiri. The rest of Phoenix’s bridge crew were all at the ship, supervising the reconstruction. Trace finished some instructions to Jalawi, whose marines were covering all approaches from Gesul’s neighbouring tower, and stomped back to Erik.

  “I don’t like you being here,” she said in a low voice off-coms as the other posts all announced what they could see and hear, attempting to accumulate a picture of the unfolding attack. “This place isn’t armoured for an assault, Rehnar knows exactly where it is and that glass won’t stop a missile.”

  “He could blow this whole tower and there’s nothing we could do about it,” Erik retorted. On near-coms he heard a blast from the acoustics, the only way they were going to hear the fighting on this airless moon. “Lisbeth thinks we should kill Rehnar — what do you think?”

  “We don�
��t know where he is,” Trace said pointedly, leaning close, her visor raised. “The only person who could know is Hanna, but we can’t contact her. If we try and fail, we’re fucked.”

  “Captain,” called Jiri, “three new marks airborne at 281, they’re coming this way.” Erik glanced at the display — that was from one of the big Incefahd military bases. Incefahd airborne shuttles now totalled fifteen, with more no doubt on standby. Between them they had everyone covered — Phoenix at her repair facility, this tower complex, the rotary surface habitats, everything. And then there were the ships in orbit, where Incefahd’s advantage was larger still.

  “They can’t escalate,” Erik muttered. “That’s against keresh rules, it won’t turn into ship combat no matter what happens down here. And we’ve got gravity bombs even if it did.”

  “Hanna’s got gravity bombs,” Trace corrected him. Those weapon bays were now crawling with parren techs, but no one had wanted to disable them in case the deepynines came back. Neither had they been able to figure out how to transfer firing control to someone other than Hanna, a fact that remained central to Rehnar’s issues with how Defiance was being run at present.

  “I think he’s got us good,” Trace added. “We can’t risk the fight escalating, Rehnar could kill our crew in the habitat if he wants, or Phoenix itself, and neither we nor Gesul can ask for help because of the jamming. If we did move a platoon for reinforcements it would get shot down, and the other parren all assume Rehnar’s ascendence because he’s the head of House Harmony. They might challenge if they could talk to Gesul, but they can’t.”

  “If it turns out Gesul really has won the count,” Erik muttered, “Rehnar’s going to have hell to pay when word gets out.”

  “Which won’t help Gesul if he’s dead. Makes you wonder if Alired put Rehnar up to it.”

  “From what we know of House Fortitude’s leadership, I think we can count on it. We need Hanna. Styx, are you there?”

  “Yes Captain.”

  “Explain to me again why all your communications wizardry can’t let you get in contact with Hanna?”

  “Captain, communications run on operable hardware. In a civilian environment such as Kantovan System there were unguarded hardware nodes everywhere and I could function without restraint. Here on Defiance the Incefahd technicians appear to have shut down most of the nodes within range of our tower in anticipation of this event, and the heavy jamming is nothing I am equipped to…”

  There was a silence, filled only by the terse commands and questions from about the bridge. “Styx?” Erik pressed in alarm.

  “Captain, disregard my last. Hannachiam is in contact, I am directing her to your controls.”

  Erik took a seat for the first time, eagerly. “Hanna? Hanna, are you on coms?” Silly thing to ask, how could she be? Hanna didn’t speak.

  Erik’s main display was overridden, a simple image appearing in its center. It was Gesul, in his EVA suit, standing at Erik’s side and talking. They’d done that many times — gone to speak with Hanna in person, together. Gesul found her fascinating, and had been to see her as often as possible over the past six months, with or without company. And Hanna, as nearly as anyone could tell, had appeared to enjoy his company and his endless, curious questions. The image rotated now, compiled by multiple cameras and blended together — no doubt it would work better as a hologram, Hanna’s preferred means of communication.

  “Yes Hanna,” said Erik, heart thumping as he guessed her question. He could only hope he was right — he’d been wrong plenty of times before. “Gesul is in danger. He will be dead shortly if we don’t help him.”

  The image faded, and Erik’s screens returned to normal. A tower-display, tacnet showing the positions of Charlie Platoon spread between the tower’s various interconnections with the Domesh tower next door. Then a sudden eruption of new coms activity. External. His eyes widened.

  “Captain," said Styx. “The jamming has stopped. It appears Hannachiam has disabled it. All coms nodes are open, I can disable nearly every system arrayed against us if you choose. Against Gesul as well.”

  Because parren technology had gone significantly backward since the days of the drysine/parren alliance, while Styx was the original article, many thousands of years superior to anything under Rehnar’s command. Rehnar’s people, given four months to examine Hannachiam and her network systems, must have thought they’d found a way to shut her down, for long enough, at least. But unsurprisingly, they’d missed something.

  “If we do this,” Trace told him, “it will change everything. We’ll be playing kingmaker for House Harmony, probably against the wishes of House Fortitude itself. Humans choosing the leaders of all parren. It’s unprecedented.”

  “We’ve already chosen the leaders of House Harmony,” Erik said grimly, staring at the screen where Hanna’s single, simple image had appeared. “We put Gesul in power, or you did.” Trace gazed back, sombrely. “And I led the attack where Tobenrah died. Parren value strength, they tell us this all the time. Then Rehnar tries this right under our nose, when we hold all the cards, and he asks us to be polite little weaklings and undermine the respect in which we’re held? If we let him do it, we ignore every lesson parren have been teaching us since we arrived here.”

  He stared at Trace. She nodded once, in agreement. That was all he needed.

  “Major Thakur, new orders,” he said. “Ground operations. Save Gesul’s leadership, eliminate Rehnar’s threat. How you do it is up to you, though I believe we now have the tools to avoid escalation.”

  “Yes Captain,” she said shortly, and snapped down the visor on her armoured suit. It lit with full displays, hiding her face. “Styx, prepare to disable all airborne weapons platforms on my command. Leave flight control systems intact, we don’t want fatalities unless they start shooting.”

  “Yes Major.”

  “Lieutenant Lassa, prepare to signal the other denominations that Phoenix declares for Gesul and the Domesh. Assure them that our capabilities are now overwhelming and Rehnar’s defeat is assured. We would prefer him alive, and we assure all non-involved parties that their lives are in no danger once he is gone.”

  “Yes Major, on it.”

  “Lieutenant Jalawi, give me your best strength estimation of Rehnar’s forces in the tower.”

  “Could be nearly a hundred, Major,” came Jalawi’s grim assessment. “They’ve been staying inside, haven’t been risking the outside, probably scared they’ll get picked off from next door.”

  “Lieutenant, I want you to punch in below them and trap them between Charlie Platoon and Gesul’s forces at the top of the tower. Lieutenant Hausler will get airborne in PH-1 and apply covering fire as necessary, probably Gesul’s airborne forces will join as well.”

  “Yeah, they’ll be fish in a barrel pretty quick,” said Jalawi. “And I reckon they’ll abandon the tower pretty quick too, probably head for neighbouring towers, maybe even ours.”

  “If they run, let them go. The objective is to secure Gesul’s safety, we don’t have enough forces to stretch our perimeter chasing retreating Incefahd. How you do it is up to you, Lieutenant, just make sure we don’t get breached or flanked when you go in.”

  “Can’t guarantee that completely, gonna need to take enough with me that I can’t leave much guard behind. I suggest everyone in the tower grabs a rifle.”

  Irfan Arime ignored the pain in his side to cover the curved angle past the hydroponics bay. He was on Medbay level by the landing pads, where Doc Suelo kept a rapid response center open. It took ten minutes less time to evac a casualty to the tower than to the habitat, plus the low-G was better for blood loss and stabilisation. Fifteen minutes ago Arime had been in the Medbay himself, getting yet another check to his ongoing series of operations and procedures from the fragmentation wound he’d received four months ago. Several internal organs were synthetic now — no big deal with Phoenix’s bio-fabrication tech, but getting them all to work at optimum, in conjunction with everything
else, had been a challenge for doctor and patient alike.

  Now he was in one of the tower’s spare armour suits, struggling against both the poor calibration to his personal preferences and the pain in his side. Tacnet was a mess, internal tower coms were still being disrupted by something, and 3D vertical displays were difficult to read even in a perfect mental state. But Charlie Platoon’s rush into the neighbouring tower had left the human tower’s many levels exposed, and now some of those connecting passages had been blown back the other way as Lieutenant Jalawi had predicted. Thus his own mad rush for the spare suit, conveniently at the same level as Medbay — equal to the docking pads so shuttles could deposit patients with minimum transit time — and now to his standing here alone, in no real condition to fight, single-handedly covering the Medbay approach.

  “Irfy it’s Jess,” came Rolonde’s voice in his ear. “I see your position, I’ll be there shortly.” Or not entirely alone. Other than Charlie Platoon, there was Command Squad. For several years now Jess Rolonde had always had his back, and he her’s.

  “Copy Jess. Medbay’s locked up, Doc and a corpsman got themselves guns. Won’t be pretty.” Medbay was central to the tower, beside the elevators and thankfully away from any windows. Those windows were tougher than most steel but that hadn’t stopped many breaches in the neighbouring tower, leading to sectional decompressions. Just like in a warship, anyone without full suits had to lock themselves someplace airtight and hope.

  There was a lot of shouting and shooting on coms. Without even looking at tacnet, Arime could tell that Charlie Platoon were skinning them. The coms chatter just had that tone. In bad fights, voices got elevated, sometimes screechy. Now they were loud but controlled, commands clear, responses calm. But to judge from the scatter of red dots on the tactical picture, a lot of Charlie’s success was simply that the Incefahd parren realised their impossible position, squeezed between two forces, and were displacing fast. A lot had gone out the windows, using jumpjets to fly clear in the low-G, decompressing large regions of tower. And more had come into the human tower, blasted the hardware nodes that supported local security systems with unnerving precision, and were now up to who-knew-what. With large sections of local security down, no one could see them… but there weren’t that many sensitive targets in the tower. The control bridge was the obvious one, but very well guarded, with the rest of Command Squad and a section of Charlie Third Squad remaining behind. The eight marines from Lien Wang had been on this level where their shuttle had landed, but then redeployed to counter infiltrations on the higher levels where they’d been in some shooting. That left Medbay level, which also included the main dock and warehousing, and then the lower, secret high-tech bays.