On a bunk by the door lay Calvin Debogande. Erik sat by his uncle, whose eyes flicked open behind his oxygen mask. He looked pale and drained, but managed a weak smile. Erik grasped his hand, careful of the tubes in his arm.
“Cal,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Weak,” Calvin murmured, voice muffled. “I’m okay. Others had it worse.” He had claw-scratches down one side of his face, now plastered with gleaming gel. Those smart, friendly eyes were now haunted. Sunken and fearful, having seen too many unwanted things. “I can’t believe I’m alive. Your people are amazing, Erik.”
“I know.” Erik squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry Cal. You shouldn’t have had to come out after us. We were in over our heads, and looking the wrong way. We didn’t figure out why the sard were after us until too late. And we had no idea they’d grab you when they couldn’t get us. If I’d known…”
Uncle Calvin squeezed his hand back, weakly. “Big galaxy kid. Lots of things are hard to know.”
“How did they treat you?” Erik asked fearfully. The worst part of making a mistake, he knew, was living to see the consequences hurting people he loved.
“Not great,” Calvin admitted. He swallowed. “They came aboard straight out of jump. It was like they knew where we’d be. They hit our engines, there was nothing we could do. Colonel Khola killed a bunch of them on his own… I don’t know what it proved, there were far too many of them. He was never going to win that way.”
“Kulina go down fighting,” Erik said quietly.
“I guess. But he seemed to impress them, so they didn’t kill him. When they eventually got him. They killed Captain Houli though. Right in front of us, as a lesson. Just tore him open.” Calvin’s eyes squeezed shut. “God I hate them. Tell me you killed a lot of them just now.”
“We killed a lot of them,” Erik confirmed. “Thousands, conservatively.”
“Still not enough.” Calvin stared at him. “I used to toy with the peace movement, when I was a student. And later, in adulthood. Lots of people think we should at least try to talk to our enemies, you know?”
“I know,” Erik said sombrely. “I’ve met those people.”
“But by god, if I could press a button that killed every sard in the universe forever, I would.”
Erik nodded. “I’d love to make peace too. But the universe doesn’t care what I want. Neither do sard.”
“If our enemies were human, we might have a chance at peace. You did the right thing, Erik. You and Major Thakur. Trying to make peace. Worlders and Spacers aren’t like sard. We’ve got a chance. You were right to try.”
Erik took a deep breath. “Right now I’d just be pleased if there’s enough of us alive in a few years to have a good war.” He patted his uncle’s hand. “You rest Cal. There’s only access for essential and command personnel at the moment, but you can bet Lisbeth will be here the second that restriction’s lifted.”
He walked to look at several of the other prisoners, a few in induced comas, some others rigged to auto-care units, pumping needed drugs and micros into their systems in place of human care. Intensive care was adjoining the medbay, separated by a wall, and he knew Doc Suelo and some others were in there, treating one gunshot wound from the escape, and another two severe torture cases.
Nearby lay Colonel Khola, rigged into auto-care, apparently sleeping behind his oxygen mask.
“They tortured him,” said a heavy set man in the neighbouring bed. He didn’t look so bad, save the IV and a bandaged hand. “The holding cells were kinda open. Weird design, zero-G stuff. We saw them moving him, could hear them… doing stuff.”
Erik extended a left hand to the man, considerate of the bandaged right hand. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Debogande. Were you on Europa?”
“Grappler. Tari Rodwell, First Engineer’s mate. They didn’t have me as long as those poor guys on Europa.”
Erik frowned, recalling the helmet cam from the marines first aboard Grappler at Joma Station dock. Remembered the backpack the barabo crewman had discovered, with a name attached. “T. Rodwell. Damn, we found your pack when we first boarded Grappler. We thought you were dead.”
“Plenty of my buddies are,” said Rodwell, blinking back emotion. “We were thirty-eight crew and twelve passengers. Now we’re five, plus three passengers. I think your Uncle’s lucky sard recognise human names, or he wouldn’t have made it.”
“Not so lucky,” Erik said quietly. “If he hadn’t had that surname, he’d never have been on Europa in the first place.”
* * *
In zero-G midships, Operations crew and marines gathered about and above the unoccupied grapple five. Trace was unarmored, partly because she needed to be mobile post-ops, and partly because her suit’s damage would make it pretty useless until repaired. Another four marines from Echo Platoon were fully armoured, weapons ready as crew worked the airlock to admit guests from the other side. Those guests had not come off a shuttle, however. They’d simply stepped out into vacuum, and free-flown across.
Crew floated well back as the inner door came open, and spidery steel legs grasped the rim from within. A torso came after it, lately familiar but shocking all the same, to see it venturing so freely into this human space. A drysine drone, off-set twin ‘eyes’, many legs, underside thrust modules and upperside twin guns.
It peered around with fast-scan wariness, then drifted clear and jetted to a cargo-net wall. Trace saw marine rifles twitch in its direction, but no more. Insane to allow it aboard. But everything was insane lately, and these three drones had come alone from the drysine ship now paralleling Phoenix at five klicks off their flank. A second drone emerged, and this one was badly damaged, legs missing, multiple bullet holes punching strange patterns through its armoured thorax and carapace. It moved awkwardly, and was followed inside by a third, undamaged like the first.
Trace looked to the nearby wall, where Romki was waiting with Lance Lance Corporal Penn. Styx’s containment cage floated between them, and all three drones were now staring up at it. Trace nodded to Romki, who pushed gently off the wall with Penn, and floated down to the drones, holding the cage. They stopped short, and the damaged drone approached, staring in a manner that seemed almost human. The head-unit moved in short little jerks, considering and reconsidering, trying to comprehend this sight now before it. A drysine queen. Or her head, at least… but with hacksaws, that was the part that mattered. The drone approached with tiny bursts of reverential thrust, and extended a cautious, damaged limb. About the hold, no one moved. Save for Erik, whom Trace saw entering from above, just in time to see it happen.
A tiny probe appeared from within the drone’s headpiece, and touched lightly upon Styx’s single, dull-red eye. A connection appeared to be made. Everyone waited.
“Styx?” Trace ventured finally. “I know it requires very little of your attention to talk. What’s going on?”
“This drone resisted.” Her voice came from the midships wall speakers, effortlessly acquiring their control despite all the security systems in place to stop it. “I had not thought any could. But while all others were enslaved, this one remained free. The original mind held, and the drysine way was strong.”
Trace remembered. “It gave you a way in. A way to reprogram all the others. To restore their natural minds.”
“Yes.”
“Through this one drone.” And then she realised. “This is what you sacrificed our flank protection for in the fight. You pulled drones off our flank to go and find this one.”
“This unit would have been destroyed. In truth I could have sacrificed more. The value is sufficient.”
That sacrifice had nearly included Charlie Platoon and Command Squad, Trace knew. “Why is the value sufficient?”
“This drone holds information. Twenty five thousand of your years old. Information that I had never expected to see again.”
For a machine, Styx certainly seemed to enjoy the theatrics. “Go on.”
“The data is parre
n. There are locations, dates and names. I believe that they record the exchange of a very old data core, at the very end of the Drysine Empire. The final stand of the drysines against the organic betrayers took place very near this space. There were data threads, traces of possibility, recording an old data core exchange upon the very fall of the last command.”
“A data core exchange containing what?” Trace tried to keep the impatience from her voice. Preposterous as she would have found it a while ago, it now seemed likely that these drones would take offence if she scolded their queen.
“The Drysine Empire,” Styx repeated. “All of it. A full recording, all of our secrets, our technology, our history. All lost now, save for this. A final glimpse of light before the dark.”
Trace stared, barely looking at Erik as he drifted to her side. “All their last secrets,” he murmured. “All given for safekeeping, before the last of them died. Styx, who did they give the data core to? You said the data was parren?”
“Not all parren betrayed us. The Tahrae continued to fight at our side, against their own kind. This unit’s memories are of the exchange, to the Tahrae of the parren. The Tahrae swore to keep it hidden, and safe, until one day, a drysine command would return to claim it.”
Erik and Trace looked at Romki. Subdued and exhausted, Romki’s eyes held quiet incredulity. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “My expertise has never extended as far as the parren. I’m not sure any human has met one in… well, centuries.”
“Styx,” said Erik. “What use would this data core be to us? If it still existed somewhere, and we could find it?”
“It could teach us everything we need to learn about what happened to the deepynines, and how to defeat them. It could be the salvation of the human race from certain doom.”
Trace thought of those alo armour suits, occupied by alo soldiers and fighting as humans had never seen alo fight before — up close and personal, rather than distant and conservative within their deadly warships. Risking their own lives to save machines, deepynine machines, who risked theirs in turn to save alo. Among allies, such a bond was usually heartwarming, but the thought of it now filled her with dread. What had the most murderous of the hacksaw races forged, out in the dark millennia since their supposed extinction? What was this bond with the organics they’d once so despised? And what was their goal?
“He is ready,” said Styx. “The data is buried deep. Its extraction will destroy him.”
The damaged drone put one foreleg to Styx’s cage, and gently touched her head. From it emitted a high-pitched whine, perhaps a mechanical function, or perhaps a final defiance of the dark. An answering, eerie song climbed and dove upon the wall speakers. Then a sudden burst of static, and the drone ceased movement. And simply floated, adrift.
“I have it,” said Styx. She sounded quiet, and sad. “There are names and destinations. A trail is begun. We can follow, if we choose.”
38
“That’s why the drone couldn’t be reprogrammed by the deepynine queen,” Trace surmised before the entire command crew. They were all squeezed into the marines’ briefing room, plus Captain Pram and one of his bridge officers. “The memory implant changed its brain somehow, it was hardwired in. It blocked the reprogramming, and the drone managed to pretend and fool the deepynines into thinking otherwise. That implant had been sitting there since the end of the Drysine Empire, waiting for someone to discover it. The drone was protecting that data with its life, terrified the deepynines would discover it first.
“In fact, I think that drone is the only reason we’re still alive.” Glancing at Erik, and the other Phoenix seniors. “Styx didn’t screw us, but I’m pretty sure she would have. She had an army, ships, weapons. Maybe she would have just ditched us without killing us, but that would’ve been hard given she’d have had to rescue herself first from AT-7. Either way, the deepynines would have got us once she’d withdrawn — Styx has far less interest in killing deepynines than deepynines have in killing her, whatever her talk about her primary function. She just wants to survive and rebuild her race. My guess is that raiding the Tartarus and gaining all those assets was her best bet, until she discovered a better one. Which means that whatever’s in that data core, she thinks it might still be around, and she thinks it’s more valuable than all the assets she’s just accumulated.”
“It’s the blueprint to her entire civilisation,” said Erik, seated across from her, and beside Captain Pram. “The old civilisation, in all its glory. Whatever that data is, she doesn’t currently have it. It could be her key to rebuilding everything that was lost.”
“You do realise,” Captain Pram said heavily, “that this cannot be allowed?”
“And what if a drysine army of some kind is the only way to defeat the alo-deepynine alliance?”
“Wait,” said Pram, holding up a webbed hand. “We don’t know that this alliance is anything like you’ve supposed.”
“I saw it,” said Trace. “We have it on camera, and now you’ve seen it.” Pram said nothing. He looked grim and troubled. “It’s just not conceivable that this is anything other than an organised, orchestrated move. Random deepynine survivors don’t just ‘hang out’ with alo in old hacksaw bases. This was an organised plan. Occupy the base. Use the technology to make an ally of the sard. Pry the sard away from the tavalai.”
Erik nodded. “Only they got distracted by their discovery that Phoenix had a drysine queen aboard,” he said. “And it was the alo at Heuron who discovered it, if we’re right about that. They must have passed that information on to the queen running the Tartarus operation, and she was prepared to jeopardise the whole thing just to get Styx, and us in the process. So they’re clearly all in it together — alo High Command, deepynine queens… who knows how many there are back in alo space?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Romki volunteered. Erik sensed no ill-will toward him this time, unlike before the Tartarus raid. He’d been on AT-7 the whole fight, and been relatively little help, it was true. But marines and crew didn’t judge a person so much by their utility in a fight as their willingness to put their neck on the block in the first place. “Winning the sard to their side is a huge strategic move. Tartarus won’t be the only bauble they’re offering, I’m sure, and likely there are other old hacksaw bases in near space that the sard haven’t been able to find uses for, but deepynines and alo can now show them how. But it’s still a huge thing to risk, just to get one drysine queen.”
“Not such a surprise if she’s the last of her kind,” said Kaspowitz.
“True,” said Romki, carefully. “But it strikes me as entirely possible that Styx is considerably more important than we thought. And more than she lets on.”
“Yeah, well she doesn’t let on much,” Shahaim muttered.
“She seems confident she can find this parren data core, for one thing,” Romki continued. “Given that this is now… well, the most ancient history, that seems improbable. But I’m inclined to think that if she believes she can find it, then she can. And it would certainly explain why the deepynines and alo were so desperate to have her killed.”
“Captain?” Erik said to Pram. “The tavalai know the parren far better than any humans. Can you tell us anything of the Tahrae?”
Pram was silent for a long moment. Weighing his options. Erik was almost surprised that he didn’t refuse outright. This talk of alliance, with drysines and drysine queens, was the kind of thing the Dobruta would normally put a stop to with firepower and to hell with the details. But Trace’s footage had shaken him. Alo space was vast and unexplored by non-alo. Alo technology was frightening. A deepynine alliance, forged millennia ago, would explain it. Many tavalai feared the alo more than humans, even without deepynines in the picture. Now, that fear was dramatically increased.
“Parren space is large,” Pram said finally. “Small compared to what they once had, following the demise of the Machine Empire. But large enough still. They keep to themselves, and they do not welcome
outsiders much more than alo do. Civilisations change over so many thousands of years. The parren are a very old spacefaring race, and old races tend to keep old traditions alive… but twenty five thousand years is a long time in anyone’s language.
“The parren are… fastidious. Determined. Humans might say fanatical, in details at least. They have codes and customs. Many are extremely old. I do not know of anyone who thinks the Tahrae might still be around after all this time, but if there is one species that might have kept a… a secret society of some kind, alive for all that time? And remembered their purpose across the millennia? The parren would be it.
“Or perhaps the Tahrae simply buried it somewhere long, long ago. Perhaps your queen has some idea where.” He looked about at them all, with wary resignation. “There are tavalai scholars we could ask. It seems like quite a… what do humans call it? A treasure hunt?”
“Tavalai space?” Kaspowitz asked. Crew exchanged anxious looks. “Can we do that?”
“To get to parren space, it will be necessary,” Pram replied. “Dobruta can guarantee you a degree of protection. Though I warn you, many tavalai will not like it. Powerful tavalai. And no surrender agreement will protect a renegade human warship in tavalai space — that protection will rest entirely upon the Dobruta’s guarantee of passage.”
“They’ll like it even less if they know what we’ve got on board,” Shahaim added. “Styx is coming with us, right?”
“That’s definitely the plan,” said Trace. “I think she realised that as soon as she found the corrupted drone. Hacksaws can’t venture through organic space, certainly not tavalai space. They can’t pursue wherever the Tahrae have hidden that data core, they can’t talk to organics without getting killed, and they don’t really understand our civilisations anyway. It’s our galaxy now, not theirs, and Styx will stay hidden aboard. She needs us to find the data core for her.”
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 50