Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five)

by Joel Shepherd

  She could feel her power returning with each swing. Micros and augments meant her muscles wouldn’t lose power as fast as a non-marine would. Without exercise for a week, she’d still be nearly as fit. The micros and other enhancements manipulated the enzymes that released naturally in exercise, and she could feel them surging now, her skin flushing hot in that way a person typically only felt at the peak of heavy aerobic exercise.

  The window cracked. Two more blows and it broke completely, a dull noise that should surely have been louder. It occurred to her, as she stuck her head out the hole and looked around, that she was probably deaf from the coms screech she’d unleashed on her marines to keep the mind-weapon out of their heads. The micros would be trying to fix that too, but the micros couldn’t fix everything, and deafness was often structural.

  Outside the closet was a narrow walkway, and neighbouring closets. Something was burning, and she smelled smoke. The tubes still stuck to her arms, and she pulled the needles out in frustration, cleared the last fragments of reinforced glass from the window rim, then slithered out into a tumbling headfirst heap on the steel floor. And stood, shaking from muscles unused in god-knew how many days, both over and under-stressed at the same time, head spinning, half-concussed, ears hissing with damaged white noise, and stark naked but for her undershirt. A bad situation, but better than it had been five minutes ago. Much of combat, like life, was about momentum. One more success and she’d be on a roll.

  She stumbled to the next closet door and peered in the window. Empty. At the next one, a similarly tangled mess containing an unconscious alien she did not recognise — a round head, bony skull and horny beak for a nose and mouth. Next one, opposite her own, and here was her Command Squad Staff Sergeant Gideon Kono, similarly unconscious in the heap of his tubes and straps. She could have panicked to see him tangled and twisted like that, but she moved to the next window instead, finding nothing. That was at once a relief, and not — she was glad none of the others had been taken, on this shuttle at least, but another marine might have been useful.

  None of the doors seemed to have a local release control, so she couldn’t open them from here. She could smash the window to Kono’s closet as she’d done with her own, but he looked completely out cold and that might take time to reverse. In that time anyone or anything else could come in here to inspect the cargo, particularly if there were security sensors here. A man twice as strong as her still couldn’t wrestle Kono out of that window hole unconscious — it was either get the door open or get Kono conscious, and she lacked the time for either right now. She needed weapons, tools and clothes, in that order of importance.

  She crouched for a moment on the floor, hand to support herself, resting her shaking legs and faltering balance. There was no obvious door or way out — the room of prisoner-transport enclosures seemed to be a small, self-contained unit, like many specialised prisoner isolation transports. This shuttle was much larger, though… she could just tell by the way it had come through the atmosphere. Reeh dealt with organic specimens all the time. To the best of anyone’s knowledge they’d never encountered humans before. She and Kono, and whoever else they’d grabbed, would be the first, rare specimens. Thus this effort at specialised transportation.

  But transporting sedated prisoners on gurneys was hard to do through doorways, in or out of gravity. This place had no doors. So logically… she looked up. Fluid was leaking down one wall, over the window to one empty transport closet. And was it her imagination, or was the entire ceiling buckled on one side? She stood to stare at it in the pale blue light, pondering how to get a slab of steel open that would logically be secured by heavy locks and just as inoperable from the inside as the doors were, not to mention weighing a quarter ton…

  The entire ceiling screeched and shuddered, then began to lift. Trace dove for the end, figuring the light was dimmer there, and pressed to a wall in the vain hope that reeh shuttle crew would not see her. But as the top levered off, it was not some unfamiliar alien face peering over the edge, but big eyes within a humanoid facial arrangement, tangled long fringes under helmets, targeting eyepieces and camouflage caps. Corbi.

  One of them shouted urgently, seeing her and gesturing to others. Another was peering around intently, a rifle held ready, and distantly through her muffled hearing Trace could hear shooting. “Human?” one of them shouted at her. “Human? Fee-nix?”

  So the Corbi Resistance had discovered she was coming, and decided to rescue her. That meant she was on Rando. “Yes!” she replied, having no hope they’d also received a translator program for English. She strode to Kono’s cell door and pointed, then to the alien prisoner alongside. “My friend, one other prisoner! Doors!” She slapped at the doors, indicating they should be opened, then pointed up and about at the hold above that she could not see. “Doors, open!”

  The corbi seemed to get that idea, instructions issued, and then the doors were sliding open. Trace dove in to Kono’s cell, struggling to reach under and around the big man’s unconscious bulk to detach the straps that held him in. A thud, and a corbi was beside her, offering her something. Trace looked, and saw it was a blade in a sheath… and not just any blade, but a kukri. Her kukri. She did not waste time staring in astonishment, but unsheathed the familiar, long steel weight and sliced cords and tubes with expert cuts. The corbi wanted to grab Kono’s arms and drag him, but Trace put the kukri down and grabbed him in a proper underarm hold to protect head and neck, then laid him gently on his back.

  “Hey, Giddy!” She checked his pulse, found it strong, then put an ear to his mouth and found him breathing too. “Come on Giddy, wake up.” She slapped his cheek. “Staff Sergeant!” Louder, commanding. “Staff Sergeant, wake up! That’s an order!”

  Other corbi were removing the remaining alien prisoner, who was awake and complaining in some chattering, clicking tongue. Another corbi dumped her spare jumpsuit alongside… no doubt the reeh had taken her possessions from her armour suit, and the kukri for a prize, perhaps. Kono began to wake up, coughing and groaning, and she struggled into her jumpsuit with no particular interest in modesty, just the certainty that clothed would be better than naked in whatever came next.

  Kono’s jumpsuit was thrown down next, and Trace waved to the corbi who threw it. “Hey, shoes? Webbing?” Pointing at feet and elsewhere. The corbi was too busy to care, listening to the outside shooting and looking worried. Trace zipped herself up, and knelt at Kono’s side. “Giddy, the corbi Resistance grabbed us. I think we’re on Rando, I’m going to see if I can find more of our gear. Get dressed and get ready to move out.”

  It was unreasonable of her, Kono might have been injured, but she had no time to play nurse and couldn’t do all necessary things at once. In better condition she could have just jumped out of the pit, but her legs were jelly so she pocketed the kukri and climbed with easy leverage, rolling onto the floor above.

  About was the shuttle’s central hold, tall, narrow and dark, filled with spidery connections to absent armour suits, and grasping mechanical arms to lock them in place. The smell of smoke was stronger here, and an overhead loading mechanism had crumpled into the front of the hold, twisted like a car wreck up forward, blocking what she guessed was the way to the cockpit. Beneath it, amid the twisted engineering, corbi with rifles and makeshift uniforms rummaged through equipment lockers, already removing weapons and miscellaneous equipment and containers.

  Trace joined them, not asking permission, digging amidst the bits and pieces in search of additional gear from her or Kono’s armour. But she could see nothing — no doubt all the tech or gear had been taken elsewhere for analysis. Reeh would have brought the jumpsuits because nothing else would fit humans, but weren’t interested enough in prisoner comfort to bring shoes, underwear or more. But the kukri didn’t make sense.

  She pulled it out, and showed the corbi next to her. “Where?” She pointed around, wondering where it had come from. The corbi pointed to something amid the twisted loader mechanism. Tra
ce looked, and for the first time saw an armoured limb, neither human nor corbi. She ducked around and into the mechanism, and stood above the limb’s owner. It was humanoid, and wore a fearsome mask and visor. From the angle of its limbs, and the weight of the machinery that had crushed it, Trace judged it certainly dead. And the corbi said it had been carrying her kukri. A prize, like she’d thought.

  The facemask was partly askew, and she used the kukri to pry it further. Within was a big-jawed face, teeth prominent, making a lower-face snout that was vaguely reptilian. But the eyes were all advanced sentience, jet black and without iris. Trace recalled some xeno-anthropological study, perhaps something Romki had recommended, speaking on the evolutionary importance of irises to humans, letting other humans know what an individual was looking at. It mattered, to humans. Allowed them to read expressions, emotions, see the rolling of eyes, the sideways look of fear or evasion faced with unpleasant questions. Allowed humans to judge each other’s emotional states. To some other alien species, knowing what each other thought was less important. Sard had no irises. Krim hadn’t either. And hacksaws had no eyes, just optical sensors. Species without irises were trouble, the report had said. Psychopaths who did not care to process the emotional states of other individuals. Only ‘psychopath’ wasn’t the right word either. Psychopath presumed disfunction. The species-without-irises were optimally functional, they only liked to cause disfunction in others.

  Trace grabbed the reeh’s limp arm, and examined the armour. There was a join at the wrist, and she inserted her kukri and sliced. Bone cracked, and she gave the wrist another couple of accurate whacks. The hand came off, and she peered at the bone and arteries within, arrayed like a surgeon’s training model. Filament sparkled, inorganic and numerous. She’d read this classified report too, about the alo. Micro-filament, neither organic nor inorganic, made of intermediate carbon-based materials, reaching through the limbs to provide a sensory and coordination boost to hands and fingers. The internal organs were similarly synthesised, neither entirely organic nor synthetic. Humans did something similar these days, but that was genetics plus micros and ergonomic augments for raw leverage through the limbs. Alo took it to a whole other level. And now she’d become perhaps the first human ever to see with her own eyes that the reeh did the same.

  She dropped the hand and went back to the prisoner pit, ignoring the wary look one corbi gave her and her hand-severing knife. She found Kono dressed and standing, with the assistance of a wall. A corbi gabbled something at her, pointing earnestly to the sky and making some circular motion in the air — doubtless telling her just how little time they had before someone came looking. Trace nodded, with a palm-out gesture to indicate she understood.

  “Giddy, you good?”

  “‘Good’ might be overstating it,” her Staff Sergeant said blearily. He’d been sick on the floor, Trace saw. The corbi were trying to get the alien prisoner up, who seemed to be in worse shape. Corbi rarely stood taller than her shoulder, hauling the alien up to this level was going to be difficult.

  “Help them get that guy out of the pit,” Trace told him. “Let’s make a good impression, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get us out.”

  “How d’you know they were after us?” Kono asked.

  It was a good point, Trace supposed — she didn’t. “Let’s assume,” she told him. “Couldn’t hurt. I’m going to see what the shooting is about, see if I can get weapons.”

  The shuttle’s rear hold was sealed, but a side access door was open. Trace peered out carefully, noting the corbi she’d expected to be guarding the door. He or she stared at her, and Trace gave what she hoped was a reassuring hand gesture. And she pointed, out into the night — because it was night, she’d only just registered — toward the sound of sporadic gunfire. ‘Where?’ she asked the question with her hands.

  The corbi pointed, his other hand wrapped around the handle of an effective-looking short rifle. Trace nodded, and made a small jump onto torn ground. The shock of soft earth on bare feet was astonishing after so long in space. The ground was torn from the crash, and as she looked past the shuttle’s rear, she saw a gap torn in surrounding trees, broken branches hanging in the light of at least two moons. Ahead, the shuttle’s big engine nacelle was smashed, the thruster exposed and ruined, leaking fluids. Trace skirted around it, staying low, and peered into the surrounding trees.

  They’d crashed in a forest. The trees were large and beautiful in the moonlight. She was sure on any regular night the air would be filled with the sound of insects and small creatures, feeding beneath the moons, but the crash and the ongoing gunfire had silenced them. Or she thought they had, being in no condition to hear much anyway.

  An alien wandering this corbi forest was asking to get shot by nervous Resistance fighters. But just ahead, two corbi were standing over something fallen by the base of a tree. Trace walked that way, upright and obvious, and saw them glance her way as she approached. That was much safer.

  The thing they’d felled was reeh, one corbi standing guard while the other removed armour pieces and examined the contents of a container for useful things. Trace crouched alongside, conscious of her much taller profile, and how anything higher than a corbi would likely be considered a target. The reeh’s weapons lay on the grassy dirt beside his bullet-riddled body. Shuttle crew, Trace judged. Trying to get away. This was the corbi’s homeworld, and from the evolution of their bodies, corbi looked like a species familiar with trees. Trace didn’t like the reeh’s chances.

  She reached for the main weapon, a large rifle, and the corbi’s own rifle turned her way, but only warning. “Uh,” he made a sound, disapprovingly. Trace stared at him for a long moment. The corbi’s face was hard to read in the dark, a wide-brim hat covered with canvas on his head, to break up the outline, as a hunter might wear to obscure himself from prey. There was a livid scar on his jaw, where hair refused to grow, turning skin bright pink where it ran to his neck.

  Her eyes not leaving him, Trace reached for the rifle anyway, and carefully picked it up. Still not looking at it, she unchambered a round, guessing that mechanism by earlier sight, then took out the magazine with fast, certain hands. The corbi gazed back, perhaps realising what she was. A soldier, like him. Finally she looked at it, magazine out, and tested its balance against her shoulder. The grips were all different, made for reeh hands, and the trigger was fat and ugly. No matter — she could file it down later. The other weapon was a light handweapon, not unlike a pistol, but the mechanism suggested it was fully automatic. She checked it, wondering where the safety was before concluding that reeh might not use safeties. Perhaps fitting, she thought.

  Out in the dark, the shooting had stopped. Trace shouldered the rifle, held the pistol, and nodded to the corbi. He grunted, and she set off back to the crashed shuttle, face-planted in the forest amid a great mount of dirt and broken trees about its nose.

  Corbi were emerging from the side hatch when she arrived, then Kono, helping to carry the half-conscious alien. Back by the shuttle’s tail, more Resistance fighters were crouching in preparation of something landing. Trace could hear nothing coming, though that was likely just her ears.

  “Got you a present,” Trace said, falling in beside him and showing the pistol.

  “Rifle looks more my size,” Kono replied.

  “Who’s Major?” Kono nearly smiled… good. His voice was strained, and Trace didn’t think it was the half-weight of the alien. Kono was a big man, Trace barely stood past his shoulder, and some of the corbi were looking at him with awe. Trace wondered if they’d ever seen an elder croma. “How you feel?”

  “Feels like I broke a rib. Otherwise the body’s okay. Head’s fucked, can’t hear much.”

  “Me too.” They walked to the side of the shuttle’s path of wreckage, past a fallen tree trunk, stripped of branches where the machine had scoured it. “Looks like we’ve got an evac coming.”

  And then she could hear it, a dull hum past the hissing in her ears
. Several flyers appeared past the treetops, dark silhouettes with no running lights or interior illumination, and much closer than Trace’s hearing indicated they’d be. They dropped quickly onto the devastated earth, kicking up clouds of flying leaves, dust and needles.

  Corbi indicated Kono and the two corbi carrying the alien should move to the first one, a door was opened and the alien slung inside. Then fingers were pointed at the next flyer — Trace couldn’t see that there was enough room for everyone, there were still plenty of corbi emerging from the trees having finished their reeh hunt, but probably there were more flyers coming.

  They moved to it, aching legs nearly managing a run, then ducked past the big downward nacelles and into the rear seats. Corbi clambered into the seats ahead of them, doors closed, and the flyer lifted in a strangely soundless rush of vibrating power. Optimised for silent flight, Trace thought, plus her damaged hearing. She glanced around for seat restraints, but found none. Corbi beside and ahead of her put feet up, grinned at each other and exchanged drinking flasks. Clearly Resistance fighters had no time for seatbelts. Or probably, if they were discovered, a reeh precision weapon would kill them far too quickly for seatbelts to matter.

  A corbi offered Trace a flask. Trace realised she was parched, and drank without a testing sip. Thankfully it was water, cold and clean. She handed it to Kono, who did the same, then returned the flask with thanks. Corbi about the cabin turned to gaze at them. It was the simple curiosity of a sentient species they’d never seen before, but looked probably as familiar to them as corbi did to humans.