Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “I think we understand each other quite well, Dse-Pa. And in return, I will agree to defend all drysines on Defiance as I defend my own parren people. Drysines will become strong within House Harmony. You will thrive, and your numbers will increase. Does this meet your requirements?”

  “Yes,” said Dse-Pa. Its synthetic tone, unlike Styx’s effortless vocal modulations, betrayed no pleasure or satisfaction. “This formulation is adequate.”

  Captain Angelo Sampey sat in Lien Wang’s primary engineering bay and stared at the source of his torment. As large as a gymnasium’s medicine ball, it sat dull grey and marked with innocuous lines within the brace of the ship’s best scanning array, patiently awaiting its time to be let loose upon the universe.

  Commander Tito Adams entered, face tired with sleep, and took silent hold beside Sampey’s chair at the displays. Handed Sampey one of the cold, pressed-grain snacks he was eating — an acquired taste from the parren, whose food had already converted most of the crew of Phoenix, and was now working its magic on Lien Wang.

  “Kind of does that to your sleep, doesn’t it?” Adams said laconically, nodding at the dull metal sphere. Sampey nodded, chewing on the snack. “Makes you wonder how Debogande’s been sleeping, with all the shit he’s been carrying the past year.”

  “I bet he sleeps fine,” Sampey drawled, eyes not leaving the sphere. “He’s young. I’m old. I’ve seen too much to sleep.”

  Lien Wang was in transit through Lusakia System — the only way in or out of Defiance. One major course change and they were heading for the far side and jump toward tavalai space. Broadcasting the latest codes direct from Harmony ruler Gesul himself, none of the parren ships currently transiting Lusakia on their way to Defiance had challenged them. Tavalai space was only two more jumps away, and Sampey churned with the tension of being so close, and yet so far.

  Once in tavalai space, Debogande’s friend Pramodenium had given them more codes and personal messages to play to the tavalai warships he expected them to encounter at Lonagonda System. Only Lien Wang wasn’t heading through Lonagonda System. Transiting through tavalai space on the way here, he’d picked the brains of their human Inspection Fleet escort, and learned the best fast routes if one wanted to take a ‘back way’ through heavily populated tavalai systems and back to human space in a hurry. A large warship could not have managed it, but Lien Wang, small, lithe and designed for precisely these kinds of deep penetration missions, was another matter.

  “How much chance do you give us?” Adams asked solemnly. “Of getting back untouched?”

  “Maybe two in three,” said Sampey. “Maybe less. It’s hard to say.” A silence, filled only by the hum and thump of the rotating crew cylinder, and the white noise of a thousand ship systems operating in the background. “Damned if I’m going to risk tavalai bureaucracy. Debogande has no real idea just how much of a mess they’re in at the moment. Someone will hold us up, guess what we’re carrying, and then we’re stuffed.”

  “I’m less scared of losing the data-core than I am of not reporting back on the bio-weapons,” Adams replied. “If the human population’s already been infected the same way Makimakala says the tavalai population has been…”

  Sampey shook his head. “Tavalai will already be telling us about that. Alo/deepynines are their enemy, this is their chance to convince Fleet HQ that they’re humanity’s enemy too. Split the Triumvirate Alliance… god knows which side the chah’nas will come down on…” he trailed off, and shook a finger at the data-core. “That’s our top priority. House Harmony have their own damn copy now, parren are about to become an elite power in the Spiral. Which will make them a target, just like we’re a target. Phoenix lost nearly a third of their crew finding that thing, their new tech looks like the only chance we have of beating those fucking machines. We just have to hope we’re not too late, and that the tavalai don’t steal it from us before we get there.”

  “If they try and intercept us on a transit…” Adams ventured.

  Sampey nodded hard. “We run. If they fire and kill us, well, it’s worth the risk. By the look of Phoenix’s flight logs against those deepynine ships, we’d lose half of human space in a month if the alo attack us right now. We’re that outmatched. And if they use the bioweapons once they’ve established space superiority…”

  He didn’t complete the sentence. He didn’t have to. Adams took the second secured chair and sat. For a long moment they said nothing. Every Fleet officer knew theoretically why they were fighting. Humanity had nearly died once. But they’d been winning for so long. That road had been hard and bloody, but it had mostly been in the one, inexorable direction — victory after violent, triumphant victory. Everyone had gotten used to winning, had begun to think of it as the natural state of things. Now this. It didn’t seem real, and it didn’t seem fair.

  Sampey glanced finally at his colleague from Intelligence. “You think we’ll see Phoenix again?”

  “My gut says maybe,” Adams conceded. “But my head says no. Not headed in that direction.”

  “Croma don’t talk much, but I hadn’t heard they were unfriendly?”

  “Croma aren’t the problem.”

  Sampey’s eyes narrowed. “What have you heard about the reeh that you’re not allowed to tell me?”

  “Bad things,” Adams said grimly, putting the last bit of parren food into his mouth. “Bad, bad things.” He glanced at the Captain, chewing. “What do you think Phoenix’s chances are?”

  Sampey repressed a self-deprecating laugh. “On the way here? I’d have said nil. Then I met those lunatics in person and now I’m not so sure.”

  Adams shook his head in disbelief. “Those combat records are something else, huh?”

  “Not just that. It’s Thakur. It’s the way she looks at him.”

  “Debogande?” Sampey nodded. “How’s that?”

  “Thakur’s the real deal. All the marine officers who know the story say she’s an A-plus freak of nature. Some of those I talked to before coming out here… you know, like everyone talks about Phoenix?” Adams nodded. Gossiping about the UFS Phoenix and the demise of Captain Pantillo had been every Fleet officer’s favourite pastime for most of the last year. “They said there’s no way Thakur would tolerate a jumped-up mommy’s boy like Debogande.

  “But Thakur would charge a hacksaw base barehanded if Debogande ordered it. I’m not sure Debogande realises it yet, but I’ve been doing this a very long time and that’s what I saw with them together. Not many people could win that kind of loyalty from her.”

  “You think everyone got him wrong, huh?” Adams wondered.

  “Heuron was something else.”

  “Debogande killed a lot of good Fleet spacers at Heuron,” Adams retorted.

  “Irrelevant to my point. Heuron was something else. He caught UFS Adventurer in the grapple talons and used her as a hostage to run through half of Heuron fleet with engines blazing, then extracted Thakur from a mess that should have killed her too. I’m not sure I could have done it, and I’ve been doing this a lot longer. Amazing crew, all of them.”

  “And if they pick a fight with the reeh, it’ll be the last we see of them,” Adams completed. “Let’s hope Debogande’s not that stupid.”

  “Stupid like running across parren and tavalai space with the galaxy’s most dangerous football and daring everyone to stop us?” Sampey replied, eyebrow raised. “The next couple of years are going to be crazy-dangerous. Crazy-dangerous might just become the default setting for us all.”

  11

  Twenty-three rotations later, Erik arrived on Phoenix via the cross-bridge from the ship-bay wall direct to Midships Berth 4, through the space where a shuttle would normally be docked. The transition still had to be made in EVA suits as no one yet trusted that improvised seal, but he had to get his personal suit onboard anyway since they were packing everything up. He hauled a rucksack with him, a big, easy mass in low-G holding all his clothes and personals, and climbed the deployed cargo netting
up the storage wall toward the access hatch to the crew cylinder.

  Midships was chaos, spacers moving gear, wall-side storage units flung open after five months empty, stuffed full of new things while supervised by several harried Warrant Officers keeping track of where everything went. Engineering ran final checks on systems, arriving crew hauled personal gear like Erik, and marines guarding armour suits awaiting their turn for transport up to Assembly argued with spacers over where marine things should be put so they didn’t get in the spacers’ way.

  Climbing was easy in low-G, and spacers descending the cargo nets made way for their Captain. At least two that Erik saw were tavalai, headsets on and earpieces in place, looking a little confused at all the human chatter but not out of place in the environment. Several carried small flasks in their jumpsuit webbing — eyedrops, as prolonged exposure to human-preference low-humidity made their eyes dry, to the complaints of many. Erik had suggested to Warrant Officer Kriplani, who was senior on life support systems, that they could lift humidity from thirty percent standard up to fifty, but Kriplani hadn’t liked the pressures that put on his filters, so they’d compromised by boosting pressure to 1.2 atmospheres with humidity at forty percent… Erik had no idea why that suited the systems better, but Kriplani knew a hell of a lot more about it than he did. But now the human crew were complaining that they sweated too much.

  Petty Officer Duryea was descending on the far ladder with a panel-clamp on one arm that would have weighed far too much in regular G. “We leaving, Captain?” he asked as Erik reached the ladder to the cylinder hatch.

  “Best guess is two hours,” Erik told her, and started climbing. Below him, his comment was relayed, and then Warrant Officer Krish was bellowing, “Two hours, people! Move your lazy asses!” Not that they didn’t already know, of course, but confirmation straight from the Captain’s mouth added an urgency that Warrant Officers weren’t above exploiting.

  “Hello Captain,” said Second Lieutenant Abacha in his ear.

  “Go ahead Kendall.”

  “Fortitude Squadron was just joined by three more, all toma-class cruisers, out of jump from Lusakia. Lorna is still weapons active, orbital spread unchanged.”

  The fact that Abacha was telling him personally meant that Draper was busy, and probably Dufresne as well. Twenty-seven hours ago the Fortitude squadron had arrived out of jump from Lusakia System, the only way anyone could get in or out of Defiance. At its head was the Lorna, Fortitude Leader Sordashan’s personal flagship, plus another nineteen parren warships, all of them top-class, three of them carriers, including Lorna.

  Phoenix had had warning, one of Gesul’s spies arriving two days beforehand to insist that Lorna’s arrival was imminent. Rooke insisted that he wasn’t ready, but he’d managed to at least get the ship in flying order, and the remaining work did not strictly require a berth and could be completed on the move… though at a much slower rate. And so they were leaving, Makimakala awaiting in close orbit, ready to escort them toward croma contacts that she insisted were real and waiting, and which Phoenix had no choice but to take her word for.

  And so for two rotations now they’d been completing the task of departure in a mad rush, sweeping up a dispersed crew from three primary locations, and all the equipment and belongings they’d been using, and cramming it into a ship that was not designed to be loaded while sitting on its tail at any Gs. Unable to use the shuttles, they’d been landing things on the berth-side pad and ferrying them to Midships by hand, to the consternation of some in Engineering who’d realised too late that several of their precious fabricators would have to be partially dismantled to fit through the airlocks. Just so long as the Warrant Officers could get him an accurate mass-count at the end of loading, Erik thought, reaching the top of the ladder and switching to the passage handholds, ignoring the ten-meter drop beneath his dangling feet and oncoming traffic threatening to jostle his rucksack. Somehow the volume of gear they’d removed from Phoenix upon arrival had added thirty percent in mass upon its return, and while it wouldn’t make an enormous difference to the power of the warship’s engines, it could certainly screw up the navcomp calculations on everything from evasive manoeuvres to docking to jump.

  The other problem caused by Fortitude’s arrival was that Fortitude Leader Sordashan was denying them permission to leave. Well, thought Erik, arriving on the cylinder-side of the hatch and pulling himself up to stand on what would normally be the end wall of the trunk corridor, he could only solve one problem at a time.

  Moving up the trunk corridor was by rope-line, and Erik hooked his EVA suit on at the harness, was made way for in the short queue, then rode up the long corridor with legs dangling, kicking off the walls where the safety doglegs brought the rope into contact. He exchanged greetings with various spacers on their way back down, seeing the side-corridors full of activity and people crawling in and out of the room entrances that were now vertical drops or climbs, and wondered if they were really all going to be ready in time for launch.

  Bridge entry had multiple big nets deployed in case stupid senior officers missed their hook and tumbled back down the long corridor, but Erik grabbed the deployed swing-arm and unhooked, which took him to the rear bridge wall. “Captain on the bridge!” called Second Lieutenant Zelele from Scan Two — usually the junior officer’s responsibility, and he must have been watching Erik’s signal tracking from his glasses, the only way he’d see the Captain’s arrival looking over his shoulder and ‘down’, as they all rode presently above Erik’s head.

  “Carry on,” Erik told them all, and bent to open the door to Captain’s Quarters at his feet. Spacer Chen was posted to bridge watch and came to help him with the suit, which Erik might normally have refused but any time saved the Captain was a strategic benefit to the whole ship. They got the suit segments off, then lowered into Erik’s quarters and stowed, and Erik forewent his usual neatness to just get it all sealed away, then climbed the bunk-end to reach the door once more and pull himself out.

  He ducked beneath Dufresne’s Helm chair, then tapped Draper on the shoulder, standing nearly head-level with the Captain’s chair. Draper looked at him, flat on his back from Erik’s perspective, his lowered visor indicating he’d been running various orbital simulations to counter Lorna’s current posture. Across the bridge, second-shift officers were similarly intent on business. Further forward of the Captain’s chair, the line of Navigation, Coms, Scan and Arms were more than three metres off the ‘ground’. In a one-G push they required a drop-rope and upper-body strength to reach, but in this G a simple hop would do it.

  “How’s it looking?” Erik asked.

  “Depends on how stubborn he is,” said Draper, meaning Sordashan. The Supreme Commander of not only House Fortitude, but all parren. The young Commander blinked his eyes to normal focus, pulling back the visor. “Or how stubborn we are.”

  “Well we’re leaving,” Erik said firmly. “One way or the other. He’s got good intel, we know he’s seen the grav bombs and our network dominance tech.” The ability to knock out other ships’ computer systems entirely via simple data transmissions, that was. “He’s heard how advanced we are now. The more he tells us to stay, the more embarrassing it becomes for him when we leave anyway.”

  “I dunno Captain,” Draper said doubtfully. “He’s got the exit window to Lusakia blocked up pretty good. We have to jump out that way, even with these engines. He could mine it, or put a solid positional block on those approaches. And we’ve got Makimakala with us — she’s good, but we’re now a lot better. Assuming everything works.”

  “Let’s just worry about getting off the ground first,” said Erik. He didn’t have to explain what he was thinking to the younger man — he’d be in the chair when it mattered, not Draper, and it took too long anyway.

  “Captain Debogande,” came a new, heavily accented voice by the steep drop into the trunk corridor. Both men glanced, to find a short, mottled green-and-brown skinned tavalai standing, custom headset
over each wide-set eye like blinders on a horse.

  “Hello Lieutenant Sasalaka,” said Erik. “All stowed away?”

  The tavalai gave a small frown at the expression. “Yes, Captain. Tavalai custom is for shift-crew to welcome the Captain when he returns to ship. Make certain he know who is aboard.”

  “A good custom,” said Erik. “But unnecessary here — I can see who’s aboard the ship.” He tapped the glasses riding on his head.

  “Yes Captain,” said Sasalaka. “I will continue pre-flight simulations in my quarters.” And she turned toward the humming rope-line motor, saw a handle and jumped to it, drifting down as it took her.

  Erik and Draper exchanged looks. “Who’s she sharing with?” Erik asked.

  “Some other tavalai,” Draper said dismissively. “Forget the name. I went into one of their quarters the other day — fucking dripping hot and humid. Smelt like fish. It’s that stuff they eat.”

  Phoenix had been loading moki into the kitchen along with their other things. Makimakala had plenty of it — a sort of fish-paste tavalai would spread on bread or crackers, or eat with grains, or sometimes alone. All humans hated the smell save for Romki, though Erik thought Romki just denied it to prove how small-minded everyone else was. Some of the other tavalai food wasn’t so bad, but Erik thought moki had the potential to start fights of the ‘don’t eat that stuff near me’ kind.

  But Erik knew that Draper wasn’t really concerned about the food, or the oppressive conditions in the tavalai quarters. He raised it now because he was concerned, but had been forbidden from worrying about the really important stuff, like whether Erik should really be the one flying with Sasalaka sitting Helm, given first-shift was undeniably more important than Second, and that everyone’s lives would be resting on a tavalai’s decisions, not to mention her ability to understand the language and procedures. They’d done lots of sims, of course, and every time the results had only convinced Erik further that this was the way to go — Sasalaka was an excellent pilot, but some of the communication problems became an issue. Furthermore, she was an actual pilot, like Erik, like Draper, Dufresne and Tif — more accustomed to the first seat than the second, and occasionally prone to overstepping the constraints of the co-pilot role. When that happened Erik wanted to be the one in the main chair, because he was pretty sure he could handle it, and stop it from escalating into something catastrophic. With Draper and Dufresne, he lacked such confidence.