Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “Looks like the Milan,” said Kaspowitz as they approached, forward visuals giving everyone a clear look at the rotund bulk, like some giant space whale in the dark.

  “What is the Milan?” Sasalaka asked. Lately she’d become comfortable enough to know that she could ask questions of strange human things she didn’t understand without anyone getting annoyed.

  “Human Resistance ship in the Great War,” Geish told her. “We had some home bases in asteroids and the like that the krim never found. But we had to keep them a long way away from major krim activity, so it was a hike to go back and forth. The Milan was a big hauler, probably bigger than this one. A mobile home base, we put all kinds of stuff on it — ship repair, medical facilities, R&R habitats.”

  “The outer rim had basketball courts,” said Bree Harris from Arms Two, watching the Resistance cruiser with casual wariness, targeting lock deactivated but ready at a moment’s notice. “For about a hundred years it was the only human location where gravitational sports were played.”

  “Must have been space-efficient?” Raf Corrig asked from alongside at Arms One.

  “Yeah, we only played basketball, squash, handball, a few others. Back home on New Brazil there’s a big sports facility called Milan Arena, it’s named after the ship.”

  “No swimming pools,” Kaspowitz volunteered. “Can you imagine that, Sas? For nearly two hundred years, humans forgot how to swim.”

  “You’re not designed for it anyway,” the tavalai sniffed.

  “Sasalaka,” said Erik, reading the processed schematics Scan sent his way, guessing what those Resistance ships might look like on the inside, “final manoeuvres are yours. I want us parked equidistant from all three on the nearside, attitude broadside.”

  “Aye Captain,” said Sasalaka, grasping her sticks and pre-testing before assuming control. “Navigation, please give me the appropriate parking position.”

  “Aye Helm, on your screen in ten seconds,” said Kaspowitz, able to do such mundane things one-handed while paying most attention to something else.

  “And Helm,” Erik added, “recall please to maintain broadside firing attitude at all times. You have control.”

  “Aye Captain, I have control, broadside at all times. Arms One and Two, please confirm?”

  “Copy Helm,” said Corrig, “arms uncapped but unaligned. Firing delay is two seconds, impact in five.” Meaning that if these Resistance ships did anything hostile, he’d have all ordnance out in two seconds, followed by the destruction of all three ships several seconds after that. At Arms Two, Harris’s defensive fire would almost certainly destroy anything they could fire in return before it hit. Not that they were expecting an attack, but Phoenix had been living by the whims of unpredictable aliens for more than a year now, and preparation for the worst-case scenario had become second nature to them all.

  “If you’re so much better at swimming than we are,” Erik asked his Helm, “what’s your one hundred metres time?”

  “One hundred metres is… eighty-seven garas?” Sasalaka replied, doing that fast conversion in her head. Captain Pantillo had done this to Erik often — quiz him on unrelated matters while he was conducting simple piloting tasks, either on the bridge or in the simulator. Pilots were supposed to be able to multi-task on many things at once, and Sasalaka knew that she had not yet passed the phase where her Captain would test her. “Tavalai rarely race over short distances.”

  “Because tavalai slow,” Jiri teased her from Scan Two.

  “The most prestigious racing distance is over ten thousand garas,” said the tavalai, unfazed as she held Phoenix’s light deceleration burn steady, coming tail-first toward their park. “That’s nearly twelve kilometres. The best tavalai swimmers can do that in about one hundred and fifteen minutes unaugmented. With augments, about ninety-five.”

  Erik did fast maths in his head. “That’s a bit faster than the fastest human can go over fifteen hundred metres. So maintain that speed for eight times the distance. Yeah, we can’t do that.”

  “You used to swim, Captain?” Jiri asked.

  “A bit. The school had a big pool, I was in the team.”

  “The servants would do the swimming,” Kaspowitz deadpanned. “Students rode on their backs.” Grins about the bridge. No one dared take it further.

  “I’d take you swimming there when we get back to Homeworld, Kaspo,” Erik said mildly. “But the water purifiers are tough on fungal lifeforms.” There were a few guffaws. Erik glanced at Sasalaka in case the human humour was causing her any consternation, but her expression was serene, wisely ignoring human silliness she didn’t understand. “Do you like to swim, Sasa?”

  “My pod seniors would take me diving off the Mitigiri Continental Shelf on Toraka,” said the tavalai. “The coral shelf goes down to a hundred metres, I would do it without a tank and take footage of the manda eels, they grow to ten metres and are very curious.”

  “Yeah, most humans can’t do that either,” said Shilu, twisting to glance past his headrest at Erik through his screens. “We’ve met our match, Captain.”

  “Tavalai run the one hundred metres in fourteen seconds,” Erik said, smiling. “I’ll not concede defeat just yet.”

  ‘Pod seniors’, Sasalaka said. Tavalai didn’t even have families as humans understood them, but pods — family groups of as many as ten adults and a hundred children, all fertilised together in the one batch. Tavalai kids still called their pod seniors ‘doja’ and ‘lila’ — Togiri for ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ — but a tavalai could have as many as five of each. Strange that the crew of Phoenix had become so familiar with tavalai on this trip, and yet such fundamental things still seemed so alien. The gulf between species could not be bridged so easily.

  Erik ended first-shift early after they reached their park, as communications continued with the new Resistance ships, names were registered and preparations made for a meeting. Erik hit the gym, grabbed a meal, had a final review with Kaspowitz about their position and possible escape routes if everything went wrong, then a review with Romki and Jokono together, going over all the latest intel they’d managed to accumulate about the Resistance from analysis of battles and wrecks they’d passed by along the way, plus some intercepted and hacked communications they weren’t about to admit to. Tiga had remained on Vrona Ma, as learning about the Resistance in person was her obvious new priority. Erik hoped they were all she’d wanted. The longer they travelled out here, sneaking quietly through reeh space via the unpopulated small systems and uncharted dark mass, the more it seemed like a desperately lonely choice for a life — to abandon a comfortable if isolated home surrounded by family and friends, to a life of endless spacetravel, no trees or fresh air, and the great likelihood of violent death in a war her people were almost certain to lose.

  The meeting was on Makimakala, who’d brought with her some top tavalai biotech expertise with a thought that it might come in handy should any more Mylor Station-like attacks be encountered. Now it seemed that expertise might prove a different kind of useful.

  Trace came too, and brought First Section, Delta Platoon with Lieutenant Crozier, rotating her accompanying marines as she usually did to avoid favouritism. With them came Augustine ‘Doc’ Suelo, one of the very few away missions Phoenix’s senior medical officer had been on, discounting his five month sojourn on Defiance. He brought Corpsman Rashni, his senior medical assistant, who was really a doctor in her own right, but was called a ‘corpsman’ by some ancient naval tradition from America on old Earth. Also along were Romki and Jokono, who in turn each brought a spacer assistant… to do what, Erik didn’t bother asking, except to guess that there was some kind of additional surveillance being run by both.

  The marines were left in Makimakala’s Midships to catch up with the tavalai karasai, and those corbi spacers left to guard the Resistance shuttle. If the corbi had marines, none were deployed here, and Erik wondered how they’d keep armour suits functional in this desolate, industry and supply-chain-
free environment.

  The rest of them went up Makimakala’s zero-G spine to the crew cylinder, the corbi gazing about wide-eyed at the long corridors and high-tech systems. Captain Bella was there, and Tiga too, exchanging a smile with Erik as they descended from the core to the warship’s heavy outer-rim. Tiga wore a spacer jumpsuit that fit a corbi — wide at the shoulders, short legs and torso with long arms. Not for the first time, Erik marvelled at how easily communication flowed between human and corbi, verbal and non-verbal. Already he knew that the tavalai were calling the corbi a ‘humanoid’ species, which coming from a tavalai was not entirely insulting, nor entirely a compliment. Corbi smiled, laughed and frowned in ways intimately familiar to a human, where tavalai expressions and reactions had to be learned by long and often counter-intuitive experience. But he was also gaining the impression that some of the senior Resistance corbi weren’t very pleased to be confronted with a species who could read them so easily.

  Makimakala’s Medbay was as large and advanced as Erik had expected, bunks rowed at efficient intervals, life support and monitoring scanners integrated into the walls, holographic displays that would show a medical practitioner every patient’s circumstances in large three-dimensions. It was the second Medbay, Erik guessed, as there were no patients present — most working ships had someone in a bed if just for a few hours, whether recovering from a recent accident or just undergoing some new procedure of medical micros.

  Introductions were made — Erik, Trace, Suelo, Romki and Jokono, in turn greeting Makimakala’s senior doctor, and a female tavalai with some medical function Erik didn’t understand. The corbi, aside from Captain Bella and Tiga, were four-strong from the new ships. None looked particularly martial, in rough spacer’s jumpsuits, carrying computer slates and some odd-looking cylindrical containers. The leader of these four was a corbi even shorter than usual, his mane tied in several places back from his face yet still untidy. He wore a one-eyed headset that plugged into one ear, giving him the look of some old monocled character from a black-and-white photograph. Tibor, he gave his name, and the other corbi deferred to him, though he did not seem to have any spacer command.

  “All us medical people must discuss things by ourselves later,” he said via earpiece translator, taking one of those cylinder containers from a comrade. “These things are best done among experts without needing to stop and explain simple things to the uninformed… my apologies if this sounds blunt.”

  “A sensible measure,” said Pram, speaking Togiri in his turn and letting the translator sort out the difficulties.

  “But first, a simple demonstration.” Tibor checked the interior of his cylinder. From within, something scuttled and hissed. “This is a native animal from my world — a tug, we call it. It is omnivorous, quite harmless to larger creatures such as ourselves, and generally quite pleasant in disposition. It gives me no pleasure to show you this, but the demonstration must be made.”

  The tavalai doctor presented Tibor with an automated trolley, with a flat surface more typically used for bringing meals to patients. Onto it Tibor opened, then gently upended the cylinder. A small, grey creature stepped out — furry with black eyes and a quivering pink nose, not unlike a possum, though a small one. It looked about in mild anxiety, sniffing the air, moving from one side of its new platform to the other.

  “This one is a species from Jona, near my family ancestral home,” said Tibor. “It lives in trees, usually… you can see from its feet, it likes to climb. The reeh take these specimens too. All of these specimens have been taken from Rando, where they are released by the reeh splicer facilities back into the wilds to form new populations.”

  “They release them back?” Suelo asked, frowning. “To what purpose?”

  Tibor gave him a look that might have been grim disdain from beneath that ragged white fringe. The look of someone resentful that others were uncomprehending of his pain. “Rando is a zoo, Doctor. It is no longer a natural ecosystem. It is a world of experimentation, breeding populations of genetic utilities, a resource designed for reeh profit.”

  He indicated the furry grey tug. “Tug have some interesting glands, producing chemicals of pharmaceutical properties. These are nothing too special, synthetic labs can produce them equally well. But the reeh have done some genetic tinkering to this one, and its glands now produce something closer to nerve toxin… a toxin that some individual tugs then develop resistance to, as this one has. The toxin is short lived and dissipates in contact with oxygen, rendering it harmless, so there is no threat to us presently.

  “Reeh alterations have also accelerated the rate of genetic mutation and epigenetic activation, so releasing such specimens back to the wild in large numbers will produce random mutations across entire populations. Reeh will then recollect specimens after a few years and see where these developments have brought them.” He gave the alien visitors a hard stare. “They also do the same to corbi. Millions of them.”

  Silence from the visitors. “Worse,” Tibor said, “some of these specimens are fitted with micro-machine colonies that self-replicate and pass from one to another within the same species. These micros can communicate short distances, and function as tracking collars, allowing reeh scientists to find individual populations and monitor their progress without having to recapture them. They also allow reeh direct control over individual animals, or over entire populations. Should they conclude that one population has ceased to be useful, they can do this.”

  He indicated to an assistant. That corbi moved a finger on a display screen. “By activating the micros, epigenetic triggers can be activated immediately. Most of these traits will take far longer to manifest themselves, cellular-level processes take time. But in the matter of the genes controlling immunity to the tug’s newly toxic glands…”

  The tug began to shriek. It curled up on its platform, clearly in pain, and began shuddering, little legs kicking the air. Several more shrieks, and the shuddering stopped. A longer, heavier silence from the group. Erik glanced at Trace, and saw her expressionless. Some people would take that for heartlessness, but Erik knew it meant that she was clamping down hard. Her eyes flicked, and found his gaze in return.

  “The reeh do this to corbi, too,” Tibor said darkly. “And if you have come all this way to see us, I suspect that some enemy of yours is proposing to do this to you.”

  No one could reply. The precise threat facing humanity and tavalai at the hands of the alo/deepynines was, for now, classified. No one liked to talk about their species’ weaknesses with aliens.

  Tibor indicated for the next cylinder to be brought forth, while a corbi wearing surgical gloves took the lifeless tug off the trolley and back in its container. Erik wanted to suggest that they’d seen enough, but he knew they hadn’t. This had to be seen, for the sake of everyone in the Spiral.

  The next tug deposited onto the trolley was black with white spots. It too sniffed at the air and wandered from one side to the other, with no clue what had befallen its fellow tug on this spot just moments before. Erik found the whole scene macabre.

  “As you can see,” said Tibor, “another apparently normal tug. This one is a southern species, from colder climates, it prefers the ground and lives in hollow logs. We’re still examining precisely what has been done to this one, but we know how those changes manifest. Could we have the light changed to red, please? Any red light will do.”

  The normal light faded, replaced by the red wash of emergency light, filling the Medbay with a sinister gloom. The tug, previously animated and curious, now stopped. It simply sat, four feet tucked neatly beneath its furry body, tail wrapped about them all. Tibor nudged at it, but the tug ignored the push, even when it threatened to turn him over.

  “As you can see,” said Tibor, “a complete behavioural change. In this state, the tug has become completely suggestible. Red light is the trigger to activate the state. Now, this one we have preconditioned, without pain. We just took a furry toy, a tug-simulator if you will, and droppe
d it off a ledge of similar height, repeatedly before this tug’s eyes. After five minutes, this happened.”

  He whistled at the tug. The previous immobile animal got up, eyes blank, and strolled nonchalantly toward the edge of the trolley, and stepped off. Tibor caught it, but despite standing further away, Trace was far faster, and would have gotten her hand underneath until seeing that it was unnecessary. She got up from her crouch, with no evident embarrassment, gazing at the tug, and at Tibor, with that hard, thinking-calm she got during intense moments.

  “No animal likes to fall,” said Tibor, ignoring her. “This one was trained in five minutes to step off a high ledge at a whistle. For the reeh, you can see the utility in being able to genetically condition creatures to do exactly what they’re told, with no thought of self-preservation.”

  “Do they do this to corbi too?” asked Captain Pram.

  “With less predictable results,” said Tibor. “Sentient minds are not as easily manipulated as a tug’s. But yes, they do this to corbi, and other sentient species, some with alarming success.”

  Erik looked at Doc Suelo. The oldest man on Phoenix, Suelo was African-dark with heavy features, jowls that even a Fleet exercise routine could not hold back, and a wide, creased forehead. He’d been a staple on Phoenix for as long as Erik could remember, and had found nothing more satisfying in all his long life than the challenge of keeping a Fleet crew healthy, and fixing the injured back to health. He’d run a surgical department in several major hospitals, and made a lot of money doing that, before returning to this, his life’s greatest passion.

  He stared now with slack-jawed horror at these helpless, furry animals. Erik found that expression even more frightening than what the corbi were displaying. In coming out here, he’d held to the stubborn, perhaps naive hope that Phoenix could find some sort of cure, or some reason for hope, against the threat from the alo/deepynines. Suelo’s was not the expression of someone who saw hope. It was the look of a man who saw doom.