Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2)

by Joel Shepherd

  Lieutenant Parrikar looked at their handiwork, and surveyed the blood spatter on her hands. “Fuck,” she summarised.

  Khola nodded, scrunching the handkerchief and scanning his uniform for blood. “Always messy,” he said distastefully. “The dishonourable always are.”

  The doors opened, and more spacer uniforms walked in. They carried medical bags, and pulled on rubber gloves even now. “You two,” said their leader, “the washroom’s in there, make sure you’re clean before you leave. Anderson, go with them to be sure. We’ll take care of this.”

  “Yes, forensically we won’t fool anyone,” Khola said drily, handing one of the new arrivals the bloody rag. “Do a good job or Lieutenant Parrikar and myself will meet a similar fate in some prison cell, I’m sure.”

  The man opened his bag on Anjo’s desk, revealing an orderly arrangement of cleaning agents, cloths, magnifying lenses and tweezers. “Oh I’m sure they’ll know exactly who did it,” he told the two Kulina marines. “We’re just betting that at this point, they’ll understand the necessity.”

  * * *

  Alice Debogande was not particularly impressed by the sight of Rear Admiral Bedi. He was a little round man with a twitchy little face, who clearly had not seen any recent combat during his service. She had met Erik’s dear Captain Pantillo while he was still alive, and even at thirty years older than Bedi (her intelligence people told her) he’d looked far more spry and fit than this.

  Alice stood beside her chair in the mansion’s lower sunroom, surrounded on all sides by glass, and beyond them, wide green gardens. Bedi’s accompanying captain was invited to wait by the door from the gardens. About Alice, ten personal security, well armed with weapons prominent. In the gardens outside, many more. The Debogande family house had aerial radar and defence mechanisms. If she’d been allowed, she’d have had anti-aircraft installed. But Fleet, of course, said no.

  “Rear Admiral,” she said coolly, and indicated the chair opposite.

  “Madame Debogande,” Bedi tried, and offered her his hand. Alice ignored it, and took her seat. Bedi recovered well enough, and sat also. As serving Fleet, he got to keep his uniform pistol, and even Alice’s security could not by law argue with that. But if he was armed, they would be too. Bedi ran his eye across the wall of holstered weapons around him. It was unsubtle of her, but Alice was well beyond caring about subtlety, with men such as these. “You’ve heard the news then?”

  “I heard,” said Alice. “Fleet Admiral Anjo is dead. Apparently there’s even a note.” With dry amusement.

  Bedi cleared his throat. No doubt he would benefit from a drink. None was offered. “He did show an appalling lack of judgement. Your son was an unfortunate casualty of it.”

  “Not yet he’s not,” Alice said coldly. It terrified her, what had happened to Erik, and to Lisbeth. Yet on a level that she knew was most unwise, it made her proud beyond words. Family Debogande had once stood for proud and principled things. Following Earth’s destruction, when humanity had been reduced to a hundred million Spacers squeezed into overcrowded accommodations on stations or bases, a man named Junwadh Debogande, an ordinary stationhand originally from an African place called Burkina Faso, had emerged as a brilliant organiser of desperately needed industrial activity. When the Chah’nas Continuum had funnelled money and technology into those desperate few colonies, Junwadh had quickly risen to prominence, and been granted responsibility for a huge swathe of activity.

  When humanity began to win victories against the krim, humanity’s war footing had loosened enough to permit traditional capitalist enterprise once more, and Family Debogande had thrived. But they hadn’t just made money, as human interests expanded. They’d taken political stances that had at times cost them dearly — stances aimed at what the family perceived as humanity’s best interests at the time. The family had spent enormously of its wealth to promote those interests, and continued to do so today. At times Alice feared that her attempts to drum this legacy into her children had failed, with their unavoidably soft and comfortable lives. But they had not failed, at least, with Erik. Nor it seemed with Lisbeth.

  But always, with the pride, came fear. She was the family statesperson, presiding over empires and principles, but she was also a mother. And she wanted her children safe, and desperately.

  “Mrs Debogande,” Bedi tried again. He leaned forward in his chair. “Let me be plain. What that fool Anjo did to the UFS Phoenix has been an enormous embarrassment to Fleet. It has divided us against ourselves. Fleet against Fleet, and Spacer against Spacer. Now there will be a new leadership, and a chance to wipe the slate clean.

  “Phoenix will be granted a full pardon, along with all her crew. Captain Pantillo, and the others who lost their lives in Homeworld orbit, will be given heroes’ funerals, and their names etched into remembrance walls with all our other fallen warriors. Now believe me, this will not be easy for us. Phoenix was forced into a corner, and she fought very hard. Harder than many of our senior officers believe was proper… I know, easy for them to say, but instead of retreating to deep space and waiting for Fleet to sort out its own command problems, Phoenix went to Heuron, for reasons yet not fully known to us, and did a lot of damage there.”

  Alice frowned. “From what I hear, Heuron was already a mess due to the declaration.” The declaration was all they were calling it now, humanity-wide. The ordinances that relegated Worlders to second-class status in all human space. Fleet might be condemning Anjo, Chankow and Ishmael for Phoenix, but they weren’t condemning them for the declaration. Evidently that hadn’t been just their decision.

  “They did a lot of damage at Heuron,” Bedi repeated, refusing to be drawn. “But Phoenix is currently dividing Fleet, and so we shall grant them pardon, so that Fleet can unite once more behind the new leadership.”

  “Now that Captain Pantillo is conveniently dead and you no longer have to worry about him running for office,” Alice said drily. “How lucky for you.”

  “Mrs Debogande, I must press upon you that if you have any contact with your son, you must convince him to accept Fleet’s pardon. Fleet will only make the offer once, and it comes with conditions.”

  “What conditions?”

  “That Phoenix’s crew must all retake the oath of loyalty, and swear alliegance to the new leadership. They will be allowed to remain together as a crew, they will have our word on that. But they must commit to the Spacer cause, and abandon any of this foolish nonsense their old captain was toying with, supporting Worlders to upset the existing order. UFS Phoenix must once again commit to being one of us. And not one of them. I can’t put it any plainer than that.”

  “And should Phoenix refuse?”

  “Then their renegade status will be reinstated. And Fleet will commit to do what we do to all renegade vessels. Hunt them down and destroy them.”

  And wasn’t it just like Fleet, Alice thought, to turn an apology for trying to kill her son, into an attempt at blackmail. Make your son agree, or we’ll go back to trying to kill him. Some choice.

  She took a deep breath. “I will do what needs to be done,” she said heavily.

  5

  “Well this doesn’t feel inconspicuous at all,” Stanislav Romki complained as he hung on a strap in the thrumming train carriage. About him were four Phoenix marines in light armour and weapons. About them, the train was crammed with colourful barabo, plus a few tavalai, all staring at them.

  “You know, you complain a lot,” Lieutenant Tyson Dale remarked. Beside him, a barabo lady in a big green robe clutched a game bird of some kind that squawked and clucked. “Howdy,” Dale told her. The barabo blinked. “Dinner?” Looking at the bird.

  Romki rolled his eyes. “She’s a diji-do, the bird is a sacrifice, she’ll be taking it to a chan-chala in the hope it will grant her family good fortune.” Lights flashed by as the train hummed past steel grey gantries. “And instead, she ran into you.”

  “Good fortune right there, I reckon,” said Dale. He was bigger t
han most of the carriage’s barabo, save for a group by one door who towered over the others. Like his three marines, he wore glasses beneath his helmet, earpiece in, rifle pointed at the floor in one fist.

  “She’s a diji what?” asked Private Tong.

  “There are more than three thousand recognised religious forms on the barabo homeworld,” Romki said through gritted teeth. “Diji Ran is the third biggest, as you’d know if you read the basic material I provided for the ship-net before we arrived. They believe in fortunes and sacrifices, and they wear a figure-eight symbol around their necks.” He nodded to the woman’s necklace.

  “I was busy reading my latest Juggs & Ammo,” said Tong.

  Private Reddy leaned close, mouth open and staring at Romki like a drooling fool. “Gol-ly. You mus’ be some kinda real smart guy, huh?” Gunnery Sergeant Forrest sneezed laughter. Dale grinned. Romki fumed.

  “Now now boys,” their Lieutenant said. “Marines are taught to handle explosive materials with care.”

  The train arrived at a dark, crowded station with lots of bright overhead lights and flashing displays in various scripts. Barabo were carrying things everywhere, loads of garments, bangles, various arts and crafts, a load of wooden poles that Dale had no idea about. They hustled to get onto the train before it left, heedless of the marines’ rifles, and Dale used his armour to block one impact. When he looked about to make sure Romki was following, he found Romki had somehow edged ahead and was sliding through the chaos more easily than the heavy marines.

  Dale hustled to catch up, halfway between annoyed at the lawlessness, and reluctantly intrigued. Stations were not ships, you were allowed a lot more loose items on the former than the latter. But in human space, the rule still remained that on stations, things had to be more or less bolted down, and loose clutter was kept to a minimum. If human station inspectors saw this crazy mess, they’d have had an aneurism.

  The humans went with the flow of the crowd, as screens flashed odd messages that might be advertising, and live music thudded from just ahead. A group of barabo were busking on the platform side, mostly drums and other percussion… and damn good too, dancing and jiving with the typical barabo lack of restraint. Then they reached the upward stairs, as Gunnery Sergeant Forrest managed to get back in front of Romki with a stern look that the professor ignored. Romki wore his usual civvie pants and sleeveless vest with many pockets. He was far from a soldier, but as Dale was learning, he was also far more accustomed to this environment than anyone else on Phoenix.

  The station stairs opened onto a big steel canyon between apartment sides. Upper windows and advertising displays looked down onto a teeming market that made the stalls up on dock level look meek and organised. Products overflowed on all sides, cloth and silk, jewellery expensive and simple, exotic spices, honeys and other foods Dale couldn’t identify. A shouting barabo trader showed him a truly awesome set of stainless steel knives with curved blades. Another offered to spray some scent on him that smelled like tree moss. And always there were animals, from little long-armed things that shrieked to little four-legged things that shrieked, to jars of colourful insects to bouncing amphibians.

  “You see Lieutenant,” Romki shouted from amidst it all, “if someone really wanted to kill me from within this crowd, there isn’t actually a lot you could do about it. So I asked specifically to come alone because alone, I can blend in and avoid notice. But with four big steel monsters tramping after me, I make a much more obvious target.”

  “Yeah, well that sounds all nice to your exotic, alien-wandering ears,” Dale replied. “I bet you’d like to believe that. But you’ve never been hunted by the kind of folks now hunting you, so you’re not actually qualified to make that judgement.”

  Dale still wasn’t sure what had happened that Romki was suddenly allowed to leave the ship. Word was that neither the Major, Hiro nor Jokono wanted him wandering, but now, suddenly, orders came that he was allowed to visit a tavalai contact who might have useful information. The Major had told Dale to stick with the professor like glue, and Dale didn’t think it was entirely Romki’s safety that concerned her.

  Romki stopped by a stall selling precious stones, surprising a tavalai who was haggling with the owner. Romki chatted easily in Palapu, while the tavalai blinked in astonishment at the sudden appearance of this human — the demon race that had eaten half of all tavalai space in the last hundred and sixty one years. Possibly he’d never seen one in person before, and had least expected to see one out here, in Outer Neutral Space. Then he turned, and found four armed human marines standing behind and around him.

  “Gidiri ha,” Dale told him. The tavalai just stared, halfway between bewilderment and defiance. Had to hand it to tavalai, Dale thought — they didn’t scare easily. He’d always found their expressions hard to read, with their big long heads and eyes so far apart, it was hard to know where to look. Alongside the tavalai, a barabo security man looked on, massive within a big leather jacket, like the little cluster on the train. One of the big mountain races, from the barabo homeworld.

  “Man,” said Private Tong, looking at the same. “What do you think he lifts?”

  “Whatever he wants,” said Forrest, still watching the crowds.

  “Just up here on the left,” Romki told them, and thanked the stall owner. “Let’s go marines, double time.”

  “No one says that,” said Reddy as they followed. “Do you say that Sarge?”

  “I don’t,” Forrest admitted. “But I could if you’d like.”

  They turned left between stalls, and up a hallway past a flashing display. On the right was a barabo hair salon, animated displays showing the latest styles, while in the main room, barabo women gathered in ecstatic clusters to examine the latest crazy-beaded and woven arrangement being tied into another woman’s hair. Their yelling conversation and shrieks of laughter were deafening even from the hallway. Beyond that was a smoking den, where barabo men reclined on chairs and puffed on water pipes, and the haze was so thick it rolled in waves across the hallway ceiling.

  “How the hell do these people ever get anything done?” Tong wondered. “If they’re always stoned or putting things in their hair?”

  “That’s why we run the galaxy now,” said Dale.

  Romki smirked. “Is that what you think, Lieutenant? Well well.”

  A corner, then on the left a big glass wall with turnstile pressure doors, and images of lake reeds and lilies on steaming water. “Hey, tavalai baths,” said Forrest, quite intrigued. Ahead, tavalai were entering with small bags of bathing gear. Inside, the air looked steamy. Tavalai preferred the pressure and humidity much higher, and loved the water. Dale had been on their stations newly captured, with the environmentals set to tavalai preferences, and if you removed your helmet too quickly, it was agony on the ears, and breathing felt like mouthfuls of soup.

  “Just here,” said Romki, indicating past the baths, no doubt reading the Togiri script on the windows. On the right was a restaurant. Peering through the windows, Dale saw a tavalai layout — a smorgasbord of pots, lots of watery-looking things in rows, and big bowl seating where diners would sit in what looked to humans like uncomfortable proximity.

  “It’s empty,” said Dale.

  “It’s the wrong time of day,” said Romki. “Tavalai stick to routines, even on station time.” He went to the door.

  “Wait!” Dale barked. Romki paused. Beyond him, the next cross-alley showed the grand market resuming, bustling crowds and shouting hawkers. Dale peered through the glass once more. Beyond the reed-mat partition, where the chefs would be, he saw nothing. “There’s no one here at all. I don’t like it.”

  “Lieutenant,” Romki said with exasperation, “I can assure you that…”

  “Woody,” Dale interrupted, “check the door.” Forrest went to do that, as Romki rolled his eyes with impatience… and the world went sideways as the restaurant blew up, glass and debris crashing over them, Dale’s ears ringing and lungs full of smoke.
<
br />   ‘Up’, he forced himself with effort, as thirty years of combat reflexes imposed themselves and guessed what was coming next. “Up!” he yelled, scrambling dizzily back to his knees and a firing crouch, unable to see a damn thing through the smoke…

  “Contact!” Tong yelled, opening fire on something, and…

  “Down!” yelled Forrest, as return fire came from the market end, red tracer ripping through the smoke.

  Dale threw himself at the hallway’s opposite side, where glass surrounding the bathing house had collapsed, and sheltered behind the end wall. “Get cover!” he yelled, but his section had already done that, none as experienced as him but close enough. Rapid fire hit the wall and he ducked back, hoping one of them had grabbed Romki… and saw half-naked tavalai behind, shocked, crouched and staring, and too close to the line of fire. He gestured hard at them to get back and get down, and was uncertain as he did it that it wasn’t a tavalai shooting at them, and now he had a room full of them at his back.

  Fire redirected, and Dale put his rifle around the corner, sighted, and saw a dark shape advancing, movements flowing but clearly mechanical, heavy weapon swivelling from one marine cover position to another as it came. He put a burst on it, saw it hit but immediately swing his way, and ducked back as more rounds tore at his wall. “Droid!” he shouted. “It’s a fucking droid!”

  In heavy armour he’d have his Koshaim-20, twice the calibre and many times the hitting power of this light P-8. The Koshaim would tear a droid in half with a few shots, he’d even seen them kill hacksaw drones with accurate fire. The P-8, not so much.

  “I got him flanked,” came Reddy’s voice in his earpiece. “Fire in three, two, one, mark.” A hammering burst, Dale waited a moment for the droid to spin, then popped out and fired on full auto. The others joined him, and the droid staggered, lost pieces, then exploded in a fireball that demolished every surviving bit of glass in the hallway.