Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  “Unhelpful,” Timoshene repeated, with the tone of a father instructing a slow-learning daughter on something that must have seemed obvious to parren. Lisbeth sighed.

  Ahead, Dse Pa stopped. Head raised, as though smelling the air. Then he took off sprinting up the tunnel, like a bug scurrying to avoid a giant boot. “Run!” Liala shouted, but Lisbeth was already going, feeling the suit receptors leaping into full propulsion, swinging the heavy weight of limbs just ahead of her pumping arms. The acceleration was alarming, and for a moment her balance swayed. To her left, Liala’s many-legged gait had consolidated into a four-legged gallop, suddenly more catlike than insect, pulling ahead of her with astonishing speed. “The next exit has been jammed, I cannot open it. Dse Pa and I will cut, the rest will prepare to follow.”

  “What is it?” Lisbeth gasped, struggling for rhythm with each heavy, pounding step. She’d practised running in armour over the past few days, but doing it in a state of genuine alarm was something else again. “Liala, what’s the threat?”

  No one answered. Dse Pa reached the exit door first, a three meter tall, heavy steel reinforced thing made to withstand the crushing pressures of a giant flood. He stood on hind legs, balanced against the door’s side for optimum laser position, followed by a brilliant light and molten steel fountaining from the door. Liala hit the door’s other side and did the same, commencing a great circular arc.

  Out of breath, her helmet filled with the sound of her own gasps, Lisbeth was last to arrive. Up-tunnel, Timoshene stood rigid, staring at the great concrete bend around the next corner. Then Lisbeth heard the rumbling, building until it was loud even over the shrieking of drysine lasers. There was one very simple way to get rid of unwanted visitors in a floodway. And now she could hear it coming, with the force of a starship’s engines.

  “Oh no,” she said. Out of sight around the concrete bend, the tunnel lights were going out. The darkness gathered, as the rumble turned to a roar, and the very concrete foundations between her feet began to shake. “No no no no no.”

  “Fifteen seconds,” said Liala, performing one half of a perfectly circular cut, both her and Dse Pa’s lasers approaching a meeting point amid flying molten debris.

  “Lisbeth, you first,” said Hiro, gesturing her to get in front of him to be first through the hole, even as his eyes remained fixed on the tunnel. Lisbeth had never seen Hiro frightened before. “There’s going to be a lot of water coming through this hole behind us, keep your feet and move fast, I don’t know if the door remnants will hold.”

  Being underwater was easy. Being hit by a wall of water moving at this speed would be like hitting the ground after falling out of a tall building. Suits weren’t designed for it, to say nothing of their occupants, and she doubted drysines were either. Twin lasers arced agonisingly toward their junction, and Lisbeth spared a glance past the drysines and parren in armour. A huge, frothing cliff hurtled about the corner, churning in its desperate haste to smash them all to pieces, blackening all light as it came.

  Lasers cut as the drysines’ legs pushed the cut segment inward with a crash, the drysines kept going and Lisbeth leapt after them, Hiro and the parren right behind. Hiro grabbed Lisbeth’s arm as she stumbled, and then the world erupted in water so powerful it blasted them forward, skidding down the passage ahead like the high-powered water hose from hell. Lisbeth crashed and slid, then tumbled as a great wave of water rushed over her… the remaining door had failed, she thought, and her armoured fingers dragged futilely at the walls as she jetted along.

  Her leg caught on something, spinning her painfully about, fighting past the spray and froth to see what she’d hit. And then she was being lifted, leg-first, upside down and then crashing to a steel walkway, drysine legs powering past her as either Dse Pa or Liala leaped over her then plunged legs into the water further along, dragging another armour suit from the torrent below.

  Lisbeth pulled herself upright, various segment-alignments protesting that they’d been knocked off-kilter and would take a moment to recalibrate. But vital systems seemed okay despite the bashing, and auto-heating evaporated water droplets from her visor in seconds. The walkway ran about a machine-plant room, filled with pipes and giant pumps, more likely for under-city infrastructure than anything to do with flood defences. The floor was under nearly two metres of water already, and climbing.

  “The flood will be passed shortly,” Liala informed whoever was still listening, as calmly as she’d ever discussed Jane Austen and human marriage practices. “This was a calculated burst designed to eliminate us, it will end shortly.”

  The next person Dse Pa had helped from the water was Ruei, kneeling as he completed an armour diagnostic and drained water from his rifle. Lisbeth thought to check her own, and found it still in place. Someone put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to find Timoshene, visor up, indigo eyes narrowed with what might have been concern.

  “I’m fine,” Lisbeth preempted his question. Suit lifesupport was showing a little stress on her indicators, so she raised the visor as well, giving the vents a rest as she gasped local air for a moment. Dse Pa was already clambering back into the water, submerging to look around. The water was now rising over the walkway to Lisbeth’s ankles, but the rate was slowing as Liala had suggested. “Useful to have along, aren’t they?”

  “Very useful,” Timoshene agreed, with the tone of someone not certain if that was entirely a good thing. “I read your diagnostic as good, does your suit agree?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Hiro… where’s Hiro?”

  “He is in the water, looking for our next direction,” Timoshene said. “We are close. Liala’s schematic shows the entry point very near here.”

  “Sure, only now someone upstairs in Fortitude command knows we’re coming,” Lisbeth said sarcastically, hauling to her feet with a whine of servos. “And tried to kill us by opening the flood control. Liala said she had complete control of all the sensors, so how does anyone know where we are?” With a pointed stare at her security chief.

  “Probably we have a spy,” Timoshene admitted the obvious. “It is not you or me, and not the drysines. The others are suspect.”

  “It’s not Hiro,” said Lisbeth with more confidence than she felt.

  “Human government will not like to see House Harmony rise,” said Timoshene. “Allowing Gesul to fall here is the sure way to prevent it.”

  “Humans don’t commit suicide for abstract goals,” Lisbeth retorted, feeling on surer footing. “Hiro doesn’t even know what Gesul’s sent us to do. Inviting Fortitude to crush us under a giant flood is the kind of thing a parren agent would do.”

  “I do not think it is Ruei or Tarmen,” said Timoshene. “The Domesh have analysed their choices and motivations since they first phased. Nothing is ever certain, but the unlikelihood is high.”

  “Yes, well Aristan probably thought the same thing about you,” Lisbeth retorted. “Are we going up or down?”

  “Down,” said Timoshene, closing his visor and turning to stomp along the gantry while waiting for the seals to close.

  Lisbeth took several deep breaths of real air, then closed her visor and waited for the suit to confirm the seal. She was vaguely aware that the old Lisbeth that still resided somewhere in her brain was terrified and clamouring to turn back, but knew just as well that that girl didn’t belong out here, and would have turned Gesul away in disgust. Besides which, turning back was now likely more dangerous than going forward. Dangerous situations had their own momentum, she was learning, and the path of greatest safety usually lay in not panicking.

  Life support indicated full function, and she stepped off the walkway into the deep, churning water. It was clear, which befuddled her as she plunged to the bottom and hit with heavy feet… the river water had been thick with sediment, and surely this released water had come from the river? But if it had been sitting for weeks or months, she reconsidered, the sediment would have settled, leaving this relatively clear view of the equipment plant,
surreal underwater like in some children’s tale.

  She waded through it, seeing Timoshene plunge through the surface ahead of her in a cloud of bubbles, then Ruei. “Follow my signal,” Liala spoke on coms, and a map-function overlaid Lisbeth’s vision, showing her the path ahead. Behind a tangle of machinery, a heavy steel door had been peeled open with scorch marks. Beyond that, a tunnel blasted with brilliant bursts of light and storms of bubbles.

  Lisbeth stepped over melted steel and approached the surreal sight of twin giant spiders blazing away at the floor. It was concrete rather than steel, and came apart in giant white clouds that filled the tunnel like a sandstorm.

  “Liala says the way in is just down here,” said Hiro, crouching alongside, tension and excitement in his voice. “Better make it quick, they’ll be right behind us.” He glanced at Lisbeth through the obscuring clouds. “So which one of your people betrayed us?” His rifle was in hand, and while Lisbeth could not see his eyes past the glare reflected on his visor, his helmet seemed angled to look at Ruei and Tarmen.

  “Timoshene thinks it was you,” Lisbeth retorted. “You’re the most expendable one here, Hiro. Keep your mouth shut before someone puts a bullet in you.”

  This time she knew he was looking at her. Astonished. “Fair enough, you’re the expert.”

  “And don’t forget it,” she warned him. He really had no idea how close he was to being permanently removed. If not by the parren, by Liala, who while far more pleasant than Styx was still a drysine queen and not about to let her mission fail for unnecessary complications.

  Something made a loud boom, then the clouds of chalk vanished as the water pulled abruptly sideways. Lisbeth braced herself with armoured power against the harsh current, and then her helmet was in clear air, spray erupting about her face as the room’s water disappeared down the hole Liala and Dse Pa had made like the drain of a bathtub.

  “The chemical composition of the lower concrete layer is many thousands of years older than the rest,” Liala informed them. Logically she’d have sensors in her body somewhere that could tell such things. “The timeline matches. I will proceed.”

  As the last water sprayed about her clawed feet, she unhooked twin cables, planted them firmly on the rim with a sizzle as the ends bit deep into the concrete, then swung head-first through the hole. An image appeared on Lisbeth’s visor — a projection from Liala, swinging as the cables pendulumed. For a moment, everything was a dark blur. Then, through several cycles of non-visible light, it appeared. A cityscape.

  The nearest rooftop was barely ten metres below — a giant spheroid, like the top of a big mushroom. Beyond it, disorientingly sideways as Liala swivelled her head, were other buildings — low, nothing above fifty metres tall, round-edged and squat. Dark, drab and decayed by the endless millennia, alone in the dark beneath a thriving city that never guessed they existed. Steep concrete and steel walls rose from several hundred metres in either direction. A thick base upon which the floodway defences had been built. Thick enough to block further ground-penetrating radar, and without any proper point of access.

  “That used to be the floor of the valley!” Lisbeth breathed. “A hundred metres down, at least. The whole city above is built on a false floor… look, they propped the whole thing up, but left this portion of the old city untouched.”

  “This is extraordinary,” Timoshene murmured, kneeling at the side of the hole, but seeing more from Liala’s projection on his visor than he could by looking down.

  “It’s actually pretty simple engineering,” Lisbeth offered. “But the scale is amazing…”

  “Not the engineering,” Ruei interrupted. He was staring at his own visor display, mesmerised. “Those buildings are nothing like House Fortitude preferred designs from the period. The appearance suggests some technological function built into the structures, but I could not guess what.”

  “I know exactly what they are,” said Liala, touching down on the rooftop below. The cables at the side of the hole went loose. “I know now exactly why my mother sent me here to perform this mission. These structures are deepynine.”

  19

  “So what do you think?” Erik asked the empty air. He sat on his bunk, contemplating the holographic display on his glasses, appearing to fill the room. Tentative meetings with the Resistance had turned into full exchanges, and lately joint simulations, allowing each pilot to see how the others functioned. The initial three Resistance ships had been joined by four more, and Vrona Ma, the recon vessel, had departed to bring others. Another eight days had passed, and Erik sensed the crew were becoming restless. They’d been in reeh space for a month now, never sighting a reeh vessel… but that was the point of covert movement, sneaking around took time. It had been the same against the krim, too, the human resistance maintaining a loose network across the less-travelled systems to keep track of krim movements, and ensure that human ships did not jump unsighted into ambushes.

  “I think,” came Styx’s voice on his earpieces, “that this mission’s success depends entirely upon the accuracy of the corbi’s intelligence. They say that the Zondi System splicer is established in an old croma station, but the location does not make sense for such a station. They say that there was heavy industry located on the system’s gas giants, and that is plausible, but the station design does not appear congruent with heavy industry, but rather with bulk trade. I am also unclear on why the reeh would establish such an important biotechnology research facility within two jumps of the Croma Wall, and in a facility that has not been purpose built.”

  “Captain Tagli says it’s the proximity to Rando,” said Erik, sipping water. Trace was right — he’d been drinking too much coffee, his latest micro-readout told him his bloodstream could use some cleansing. “There’s always an offworld splicer located close to a populated world, and several on the surface doing the close-range work. They put the offworld splicers in less obvious places. Tagli was of the opinion that they were hiding this one in plain sight, using an old facility the croma built. Building a new one could be too easily disrupted, he said, with hit-and-run raids entering system and picking off assembly components. Also, croma like their old things and are reluctant to destroy them.”

  “This is all plausible,” said Styx. “Yet there are systems that provide better options, and more protection from croma disruption. I am concerned that the corbi either have incomplete intelligence that they are unaware of, or worse, that they are perfectly aware of, but feed to us anyway as fact.”

  Erik nodded slowly, muscles aching from his latest workout. The rest of the crew wouldn’t like it if they knew he was consulting Styx on command matters. But within the space of a year he’d gone from being the least experienced command crew on Phoenix to the most. Six months ago he could have bounced ideas off Suli Shahaim, but now there were only Draper and Dufresne, who were still considerably below his level of strategic reasoning. Then there was Sasalaka, who was probably better, mostly by virtue of age and experience, but she had her webbed hands full just trying to come to terms with human operating procedures. In the meantime, Erik had the former drysine commander of fleet operations in his Midships, and he didn’t need to go and see her face-to-face to get good advice. Damned if he wasn’t going to use her.

  “Their reconnaissance methods seem reliable enough to ensure that their information on system defences is strong,” said Erik.

  “Yes,” said Styx. “If the defences are as the corbi say they are, we shall win comfortably, and capture the information we seek. With the forces available to us, I estimate that we can tolerate the corbi underestimating enemy defences by as much as thirty percent, and it will not make a significant difference to our chances of success. At fifty percent we may encounter problems, but nonetheless, our position is strong.

  “And so once again, I must return to the variables. The corbi may be lying. This may be a trap of some description. Many of the crew have noted how various aliens along our journey have been prepared to sacrifice Phoeni
x to achieve their ends, because logically they care far more for the objective than they do for Phoenix’s survival.”

  ‘You included’, Erik could have interjected, but didn’t.

  “Which means,” Styx concluded, “that the ultimate variable is to be decided by you alone, Captain. Is this objective worth the considerable risk?”

  Given that she would be sharing this risk, as a passenger on Phoenix, Erik decided that her concern was understandable. Certainly Styx could sabotage this mission if she chose, to save her own skin, and keep Phoenix out of the fight. Erik did not think it likely — Styx’s overwhelming concern was the survival of the drysine race as a whole. Her steps on Defiance to give the drysine race a foothold with the parren had been a demonstration of both strategic genius, and her determination that this should be a time of resurgence for her people. On Defiance, now there was Liala, and so the fate of all drysines no longer resided solely with Styx.

  That was selfless of her — many autocrats from organic species would never have elevated a possible competitor for ultimate power in that manner. But Styx was not in this for herself, she was in it for all drysines. Erik had little doubt that she would sacrifice herself in an instant should she calculate it necessary to further that goal. Selling out Phoenix to save herself would never enter her calculations, and she evidently saw further use for Phoenix in furthering drysine interests. But if she came to believe that this particular human cause would distract or damage collective drysine interests beyond what she could tolerate, then all bets were off.

  All of which led him to conclude that it would be safer for everyone if Styx were convinced that this mission had some utility for drysines as well.

  “Doc Suelo says the corbi biotech scientists are top notch,” said Erik, rotating the system display on his glasses before him. “But they’re mostly self-taught on this stuff. I remember stories from the Great War, of kids growing up on stations and only being allowed to learn science and tech, things that would help the war effort. Everything was rationed, education included. But some of those kids wanted to learn books and grand old tales, some wanted to make music and cinema and all that arty stuff. And they had to fight for it, access to a lot of that stuff was illegal, Fleet thought that wasting time on arts was a misuse of valuable resources. So those kids would devise hacking codes, would steal library time and sneak data-files back and forth with their favourite books and movies.