“Not at all,” Trace said impatiently. She hated it when spacers thought they knew a marine’s job because they’d watched a few operations from the bridge. “If I were them I’d let us in unopposed and draw us into ambush deeper inside.” Where superior human firepower with shuttle and warship backup wouldn’t turn them to hot dust.
“Access structures on the side,” Lieutenant Jalawi cut in, unable to hear this command-channel distraction, and good thing too. Trace flipped to Jalawi’s helmet feed and saw a series of large tunnels, gaping wide and black. “No heat signatures, if sard came this way they didn’t touch the sides.”
“Sideways is not our direction,” Trace told him. “The objective is ahead. If they surround us with inferior numbers, that’s their problem.”
“Major,” Erik cut in as Trace repressed a growl of frustration, “what if the sard have their own objective?”
“I’ve no idea and I don’t care,” Trace said coolly, “now please stop clogging my channel with conjecture.” Another flip. “Lieutenant Dale, what’s the armour config on your dead sard?”
“Looks pretty standard Major, light warrior armour, mid-cal rifle. Good tech, nothing fancy.” For sard, that was. Sard armour was not human standard, and neither were the soldiers in it.
“Same here Major,” said Jalawi. “But I defer to Lieutenant Dale’s expertise — only fought these bastards a few times.”
Ahead beyond the huge bulk of a starship-engine replacement rig, more access tunnels loomed, a single pair, each perfectly circular. “Lieutenant Alomaim, straight in,” she said, as her suit projected more infra-red light onto darkening walls as the gloom set in. Other suits did the same, and on her visor, IR reception made the walls glow.
“Movement!” someone yelled, and tacnet flashed a single red dot up the end of one of the tunnels.
“Split!” said Alomaim, and the marines in that dot’s line of fire went sideways in a hiss of white thrust. Fire erupted past them, red tracer rounds flashing by, but only single-sourced. “Paste it!” As several marines angled for minimal-exposure shots past the tunnel rim.
“All Phoenix units,” Trace announced calmly as return fire went back, “Bravo is under fire, harassing fire only, everyone watch your tails.” Indicating to her Command Squad as she did so to turn their backs on the incoming fire and look around in case the shooter was just a distraction.
Staff Sergeant Kono didn’t even bother to announce movement when he saw it by a ‘ceiling’ structure — tacnet lit four red dots and he opened fire a split-second before the rest of Command Squad joined him, auto-attitude adjusting for recoil with silvery jets as red muzzle-flash lit up the dark. Trace held fire, jetting to better cover by a gantry with Private Arime at her side, ignoring the shooting and watching the other platoons.
More gunfire from Echo Platoon, also light, terse chatter and commands going back and forth above the noise. “Lieutenant Zhi, your tacnet feed suggests harassing fire only?”
“Yeah, harassing only! Two shooters out in front as a distraction, then they sprung us from behind… only four of them, we got a couple already…”
“They’re just slowing us down.”
“It’s working too,” said Dale between gritted teeth. “We got ourselves a chain gun up here, maybe automated… we’re spending a missile on it, hang on.”
Another command-override communication blinked on her screen from Phoenix, but this time it wasn’t audio, but text. Romki thinks the sard are trying to reactivate part of the base.
Trace blinked at the text. And conceded that okay, that probably was worth being interrupted for. She’d apologise later… but damn, Erik needed to stop easing her into it gently and just hit her with it first time.
“All units, this is the Major. We think the sard might be trying to reactivate part of the base. That means we gotta move fast, I want heavies to the front, launchers on the second row, everyone light it up and move fast, I don’t care how much damage we do on the way in. Everyone clear?”
“You heard the Major!” Alomaim commanded. “Heavy Squad up front, split between the tunnels! Second and Third Squads, left and right, let’s go!”
* * *
“What do you mean you don’t know if that’s possible?” Erik snapped at Captain Pram of the Makimakala. “How much command infrastructure is left on that base?”
“I’m sorry Phoenix, we are not at liberty to give you that information.” Click, and disconnect. Erik stared at Shahaim. Only too well aware of the hundreds of tavalai mines now surrounding them, probably reprogrammable from Makimakala with a single command. They didn’t dare push the tavalai around here, and the tavalai knew it.
“They’re keeping secrets from us,” Kaspowitz observed.
“Probably they thought to capture the relevant systems before we can see it,” Shahaim agreed. “The Major is headed for the central reactors, but the tavalai are going for command and control.”
Erik thought about it, grimly chewing a nail. And then shook his head. “The Major can figure that for herself — she can’t just change assault plans in mid-execution or we’ll have humans and tavalai competing to reach the same location, we could end up shooting at each other. If the sard are trying to reactivate part of the base, they’ll need the power core to do it, so that still needs to be captured.”
He flipped channels to talk to Romki in Engineering. “Stan it’s the LC, you want to explain your logic to me a little more on this?”
* * *
Romki sat in his Engineering bay strapped to an operations chair with his visor down and a screen bank before him. Petty Officer Kadi was beside him in a similar chair, the restraints a necessity on combat ops, and now engaged in furious conversation on coms with Ensign Hale and Second Lieutenant Rooke, Engineering’s commanding officer.
“Well,” Romki said carefully, “Petty Officer Kadi and I decided to let the AI queen’s construct run overwatch on the operations feed. I mean this is supposed to be an interactive and interpretive program, and it’s specifically supposed to interpret drysine language and codes…”
“You mean you’re letting it watch our combat operations on TK55?”
“Exactly, we let it watch the entire feed and decide for itself what it found interesting… and for some reason it’s begun to home in on some odd background frequencies that Phoenix’s analytics actually thought were natural, the radiation signature of those binary stars or some such.” He glanced across at Kadi, still furiously debating with his superiors. “We don’t have very much to report yet, but the working thesis of Mr Kadi and Mr Rooke is that those frequencies might actually be sard transmissions disguised as background radiation so we won’t jam or translate them. And it strikes me as entirely possible that between the sard and their new hacksaw technology, it’s the kind of thing they might use for communications anyway… sard like to sing, don’t they?”
“Go on Stan.”
“But our AI construct finds it fascinating, it’s almost as though she… I mean it… recognises the signal. I think that… hang on, what is it Petty Officer?”
As Kadi waved a hand at him, staring at his screens with disbelief. “Stan, look at…” and he recalled his coms. “Sir? LC?”
“Go ahead Petty Officer.”
“Sir, she’s giving us a feed. I mean it… it’s giving us a… sir, this looks like a tacnet feed, only I don’t recognise the format.”
As Romki searched the mass of roiling, calculating data on his screen to find… aha! The output! They were only putting data into the construct, but now the construct was feeding them something back, and it was big. Romki flashed it across several applications, and found that it seemed to match with topographical data and fed it into a schematic…
“Holy shit!” Kadi gasped. Unfolding across the new schematic was a precise map of TK55. In fine blueprint detail, and far more precise than anything the tavalai had given them. “Sir, she’s giving us a map of TK55, every nut, bolt and circuit in the immediate vicinity of
our marines! It’s like she recognises it from her memories…”
“Or she’s reading that data out of whatever the sard are transmitting,” Romki finished, his heart thumping as fast as it had ever thumped at some amazing alien discovery. “Look Kadi, position markers. Those arrays of dots… see if you can highlight them. Talk to her like she’s talking to us, let her know those dots are important, I think those are our marines’ positions.”
Kadi’s fingers flew, and the dots lit up and changed colour. Blue dots for marines, and red dots for… “Sir!” Kadi yelped. “Sir, she’s giving us sard positions! She’s… it looks like she’s giving us all of the sard positions! She knows exactly where the fuckers are, she can trace them through these signals!”
* * *
“Please say again, I missed that,” Trace requested, turning down the volume on several of her shouting Lieutenants. In the huge tunnels up ahead, gunfire was thundering, marines dividing into squads to secure a wider path and force the sard ambushers to engage more targets simultaneously. Tacnet showed her platoon positions working deeper into the maze of tunnels, gantries and strange alien machinery — steady progress, but far slower than she wanted.
“The AI queen construct is intercepting sard transmissions and mixing them with marine tacnet,” said Erik, his voice a mix of restrained excitement and trepidation. “She’s got all of your positions pinged, it’s an exact match on tacnet. And she’s got a bunch of other positions here that look like sard positions — the few that tacnet already has registered from your current engagements are matching precisely.”
And Trace realised what he was asking. “Absolutely, send me that feed immediately.” A moment’s delay as Erik gave the order to Lieutenant Shilu on Coms… an icon blinked and she opened it, only too aware that she couldn’t both muster the required attention for this, and defend herself, at the same time…
The feed looked a lot like tacnet, only different — 3D and rotating as she angled her head within the helmet, one way then the other. Same matching tunnels and corridors ahead off the tavalai schematic, and sure enough, those targets tacnet had currently identified were matching… one flickering to disappear even now as Echo Platoon killed it. And beyond them, and scattered about, a small number of waiting ambushers, some moving about their perimeter even now. Further up, where the tavalai schematic said TK55’s power core was, a much larger number.
“How sure are you of this accuracy?” she asked in disbelief.
“I’m not sure at all,” came the logical reply. “Only you can determine the accuracy, and its utility.” Well the utility was obvious — sard couldn’t ambush her if she knew exactly where they were, and all numerically inferior forces relied on surprise and stealth to survive. With this, the sard lost both. But trust this AI construct to give them accurate information? It wasn’t intelligent, was it? This data was just the result of reflex processing. Surely it couldn’t be leading them into some kind of trap?
Tacnet also showed her the more distant positions of Makimakala’s karasai, fighting their way toward the planetoid’s command centre — an imprecise and sketchy transmission, as neither humans nor tavalai were sharing all data, whatever recent declarations of allegiance.
“I’m going to use it,” she decided. “You going to share with Makimakala?”
“Hell no,” Erik said grimly. “They hold all the cards here and they’re not sharing. I want some cards of my own.”
24
With exact sard positions fixed and known, Bravo Platoon began to accelerate. Forward elements moved with precise thrust, jetting to cover positions at corners, coordinating with heavies to use high explosive where the new data feed said sard ambushers were waiting. Regular squad units then rushed the stunned sard and hammered them point-blank before moving on, not giving the next bunch any time to set their traps.
Trace listened to the terse, fast commands as all four platoons worked methodically deeper into the base. The huge transit tunnels were gone now, abandoned in favour of better cover through the adjoining maze. Hacksaws did not need gravity, air or plumbing, and instead of the layered, square-angled corridors of a human base, the walls here became a 3D maze of odd-angled passages, open spaces, strange machinery and exposed conduits. There were no flat surfaces, none of the smooth solidity that humans valued — everything was exposed, a skeletal framework of structural beam and bulkheads, endless ribs and alcoves like the steel insides of some dead animal. It reminded Trace of the tangled maze the hacksaws had transformed the Argitori rock into, only that had been a renovation job — this was custom built from scratch.
It was perfect ambush territory, pitch black save for the UV light cast by the marines, full of shadows and hiding niches… but now she jetted past the slowly spinning corpse of a sard warrior, amidst armour fragments and globules of blood, the walls torn by recent fire. The AI queen’s data feed had not lied yet, and these walls held no danger so long as that remained true. The ribbed shadows shuddered and leaped as gunfire flashed further ahead, then a big explosion as the heavies used a missile to remove a stubborn holdout. Ahead and behind, Command Squad held protective formation as they jetted in the leaders’ wake, weapons seeking every blindspot and not trusting any datafeed whatever its results.
“Major,” came Alomaim from ahead, “big crazy-looking place at sunward ahead. Could be defended, if we go past it they’ll pump warriors into our rear.”
His helmet feed showed her an image of… something, and she squinted, trying to make sense of it. Everything here was so alien, it was hard for a human brain to quickly determine what it was seeing. “Lieutenant, forward deploy and prepare to push on, but hold. I’m coming up.”
Ahead of her, Staff Sergeant Kono put on the burners and accelerated, the others following, bouncing and fending off protruding steel ribs where their zero-G turns failed to make a bend. Trace glimpsed several flashes of white and grey amidst the black framework, then hit her forward jets as Kono stopped fast and found cover, angling his massive rifle on what lay beyond.
Trace arrived, grabbed a rim to stop herself fully… and hung there, staring at the grey-white monstrosity before her. It was like some crystalline organic growth had swelled within the dark steel tissue of the main complex — a pearl within the base, shining with glass and polish. The structure ahead was sealed, the doors transparent, the passages within as multi-directional as any. The white complex seemed enormous — she was on the rim of it here, glimpsing its huge perimeter curving away from her through gaps in the dark surrounds. She felt like an ant burrowing through dirt, and encountering a giant, buried golf ball… but hollow, and filled with passages. And possibly with sard.
“Those passages look all sealed and we’ll have to waste time blasting doors open,” said Trace. She didn’t have time for long contemplation, nor to query the Makimakala’s karasai commander, who currently had his own webbed hands full. “And it doesn’t look like a great ambush spot, too shiny and transparent — go around but keep your eyes peeled.”
Lieutenant Alomaim gave the commands, still fifty meters ahead of her and viewing the structure from a different angle. The formation had become a bit compressed in the halt, so Trace waited for the spacing to return.
“Hello Major, this is Romki,” came the unexpected override in her ear. “Our queen construct has just leaped another magnitude, she’s becoming quite agitated by something at the power core ahead of you… if you look at the tacnet feed now, there’s something else there and it looks very strange.”
Trace looked, and sure enough, amidst all the red dots of enemy sard was a large, discoloured blob. It seemed to throb and pulse, and grow another size even as she looked at it. “What’s your best guess, Stan?”
“Honestly Major, I’ve no idea.” A man of Romki’s ego did not admit to that unless truly baffled. “We’ve had to appropriate several mainframe clusters to boost her processing power on this end, she’s… she’s growing, and we’re starting to get readings on power surges and data f
eeds coming from… from directly ahead of you, right where that blob is…”
Another icon blinked urgently, as the formation stretched, and Kono began moving again, Trace following with a burst of thrust. “Hang on Stan, I have an incoming…” she switched channels. It was Djojana Naki, coms told her. “Karasai commander, I am reading you.”
“Major, we are reading activation signals from the power core!” He sounded quite alarmed, even through the translator. “Is that you?”
“No it’s not me. We are moving forward at maximum speed to intercept. Can you tell me what could be activating the power core?”
A deathly pause, broken by harsh warnings and gunfire ahead as Bravo Platoon intercepted another trap before it sprung. “Major, we read your formations accelerating their advance. Is your opposition light?”
“No, we’re just fast.” He was answering her question with a question — not only evasive, but suspicious. “Make your objective, Djojana. We will make ours.” She flipped to all-channels. “Phoenix Company, whatever is ahead of us is trying to turn on the power core. I don’t want to be in here when the power comes back on, let’s move fast!”
* * *
“Sir, we need another twenty-five Tegs on the compcore if she’s going to keep up this level of processing!” Petty Officer Kadi was insisting to Second Lieutenant Rooke, chief of Engineering.
“Is she interactive with the queen?” Rooke demanded. “The actual queen, she’s in nano-fluid, the fluid’s inactive but it’s designed to create new circuits around damaged sections…”
“Look,” Romki cut in with frustration, “the sard on that base are onto us, they’re not idiots, they can see we’re killing them and they’re modulating their transmissions, we’re not getting the same clear picture that we were. She’s…” and his fingers danced upon his screen as he ran the new data through new applications, “…she’s focused on this new thing in the power core that she doesn’t like and she’s getting some kind of… I don’t know… programming language…”
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 32