“I got big power readings,” said Riskin. “Heading 290.”
Trace gave a thrust that way, rifle searching the shadows. Her hands wanted to shake, but knew better. On the climb, the shaking ones fell. It felt strange not to have Sergeant Willis here beside her, but she couldn’t think about that now. Preferably not ever. Sometimes she wished she could just crawl into a cave, and meditate, and never come out. So many connections to the world made so many conduits for pain, like raw nerves to her soul. If she could remove them all, she would.
Ahead, her audio fed her the deep, pulsing throb of an alien mega-core. Ten-thousand-year-old-plus engineering, purring away to make power for these new guests. She could see it now, the great toroidal arc of some older fusion design, surrounded by a thick mass of rubberised electrical work, like a writhing nest of eels that fed around these spidery strands.
Here before the reactor, a cluster of control plates and a lot of relatively exposed wiring. Within the control plates, something unlike anything Trace had ever seen before. Unlike anything most humans had ever seen before. Its body was snakelike, articulated, effortlessly adrift in zero-G. It had various protruding arms, thin and articulated like a slender spider. Its head was circular, numerous sensors encircling a single, giant red eye. And its body, silver in the dim systems light, was rippling, like wind across a field of wheat.
“Major?” It was the LC’s voice, faint and crackling. “Major, where are you? I’m getting reports that the fighting has stopped, can you confirm?”
“LC,” Trace murmured, and transmitted visual feed. “Take a look at this.” And to her marines, “Don’t shoot. Yet.”
She jetted past the last obstructions, and halted. The thing slowly writhed and turned within its control panels. The red eye lifted, as though to peer at them. Another ripple fled down its body, then back up just as fast. The effect was caused by thousands of tiny metal plates, Trace realised. Protruding from that long body like scales, and rippling in coordination to make this extraordinary effect. She’d never imagined AI might communicate like this. Creepy as hell, and chilling at this range… but oddly, mesmerisingly beautiful.
“Hu-mans,” it said. Or she thought it said. The voice modulators were odd, multi-toned and well-synthesised copies of human speech… and yet, somehow not. It was hard to pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from. “Hu-mans. Why did you kill the children?”
Trace drew a deep breath. And heard, through the static, the LC swear in disbelief. “So. You speak English.”
“Why?” Plaintively, almost aggressively. Ripples zoomed up and down, in great agitation.
“Your children were trying to kill us,” Trace replied. “We are soldiers. UF Marines. Trying to kill us is a very bad idea.”
“Humans always aggressive,” it said. The voice was changing even now, deeper, more melodious. As though perhaps this was its first encounter with humans, and it was learning from her speech what sounded right. “Humans always kill the children. We must defend ourselves.”
Trace gestured around. “Do you control all of this? Are you plugged into the entire asteroid system?”
“We always control. The children would not have hurt you. You should have gone.”
“We’re hiding,” Trace explained. “We needed this rock. Can you be unplugged?”
“Why?” Again plaintively. “You have already killed the children. What more?”
“We need this rock,” Trace repeated. “Can you be unplugged?”
It writhed, back and forth within its panels. “Major,” came Erik’s voice through the static. “There were a number of sides in the AI wars. They split at least six ways. The truly hostile ones were nothing like this. We might be able to talk to it.”
Trace switched channels briefly. “LC, that reactor can go critical if the controller wants it. We’ll have time to get clear, but we’ll lose the rock and draw every eye in the system onto our position.” Back to external. “Can you be unplugged? We will not harm you if you unplug. Give the systems to us. We will be gone in time, and you can rebuild your children in peace.” It was a lie. Hacksaw nests were always exterminated to the last circuit.
“Children cannot be rebuilt,” it said sadly. Yes, sadly. It certainly sounded sad. Trace refused to believe it. “We have not the resources. The humans always kill the children. They will lie to the children too, to get them to unplug. The children do not want to die, we have still so much to do!”
“Major,” Erik tried again. “This isn’t a warrior queen! It’s something else… talk to it, you might get something!”
“This rock is no use to us without control,” Trace told the queen. “You must give us control, or you will die.”
“There is no purpose without the children,” said the queen. The red eye glowed at her, unblinking and wise. For a moment, the ripples were still. “The humans always kill the children. I am ready.”
Trace shot it through the eye.
* * *
Erik did not want to go down to Assembly to greet the marines back aboard. The Captain had done so frequently, but it could be intense down there after casualties had been taken. There would be a lot of corpsmen treating wounded, a lot of life-and-death activity, and he did not want to be in the way. And he was not entirely sure that the marines would want him there anyway.
He had plenty to keep him occupied on the bridge, and went to Medbay when the chaos had settled down a bit. Medbay One was mostly full, fifteen out of twenty beds occupied. Medbay Two was also full — of bodies. A corpsman told him that the count was fourteen, but they weren’t sure they’d recovered everyone yet. There were marines in there, some in tears, but keeping clear of corpsmen doing organ recovery — no one begrudged them that, even with the latest bio-synth aboard, sometimes the only thing that saved a wounded marine was one of his dead buddy’s organs.
Erik returned to Medbay One and talked to a few of the less seriously wounded. One was Private Rolonde, one of the Major’s Command Squad, her leg on ice, white-faced and stunned. It wasn’t the leg that did it — First Sergeant Willis was dead, the guy who lead Command Squad and watched the Major’s back while she was commanding the entire formation. Willis had been thought as indestructible as the Major. His marines couldn’t believe he was gone, and Erik worried at the effect of this loss so soon on top of losing the Captain.
Trace arrived in the sweaty undershirt and light pants that marines wore under armour, and proceeded to talk to her people. Her touch was effortless as she clasped their hands, and spoke with quiet affection. She kissed several, put her hand in their hair, nothing like the cold-steel machine she was in combat. He could see how they looked at her, the relief at seeing her safe and here with them. The sense that despite everything, things would somehow work out, so long as the Major was here. Erik did not envy Trace her profession nor her lifestyle, but he envied the hell out of this. While he valued his many good friends on Phoenix, he doubted any loved him as much as this, nor needed his input as Trace’s people needed her. And he was scared, to think of what would happen to them all if they lost her too.
She came to him before finishing her rounds, knowing that debrief came first. “What’s the damage?” he asked her quietly as they stood by a wall as out of the way as they could get.
“Fifteen confirmed,” said Trace. “One there wasn’t enough left to bring back. Likely seventeen, there’s two missing and not much hope. Twenty wounded.” She indicated the adjoining emergency ward, where the most serious were in surgery or intensive care. “Five serious.”
Erik took a deep breath. Thirty-seven, out of ninety-six who went onto the rock. It was seventeen percent of all Phoenix Company. Even Trace looked a little stunned, that hard, glassy-eyed expression of someone accustomed to control but finding it difficult. Erik wanted to say that he was sorry, but that was redundant — sorry didn’t help, and too much emotion only made everyone feel worse.
“You took the rock,” he told her instead. “We’ve got a fighting chanc
e of getting the ship repaired now. It was well done.”
She nodded stonily. “Bravo and Delta are finishing the sweep, they’ll do a full recon. I could send Echo too since they’re relatively fresh, but…”
Erik shook his head. “I don’t want more than two platoons in there at a time. We still might have to move suddenly, and we can’t afford to risk more.”
Trace nodded in agreement. “I’m going to have to rearrange a bit to fill in the gaps in Alpha and Charlie. With any luck we’ll get maybe ten of these guys back in a week, the rest will take longer. Depends how much G we have to pull in the meantime.”
“We should get a rest for a few rotations at least.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about readiness. Just get your people healthy and make sure they get some rest. You included.”
“I’d like to go back in and help supervise the recovery,” said Trace. With anyone else, Erik might have been surprised. “I’ve got some ideas about those hacksaws, best to make sure Engineering don’t miss anything.”
“And of course the techno-nerds will need you to hold their hands and wipe their backsides,” Erik added, attempting humour.
He was surprised and relieved when she managed a small smile. “They’ll be okay. You’re letting Lisbeth go over?”
Erik exhaled sharply. A joke, he realised. “Fuck, don’t even say that. She’ll want to, just you watch.”
Trace smiled a bit more, and put a hand on his arm. “Sorry. We might get some tech out of it, at least.” Which was completely illegal in any Spiral Age. But right now, no one cared. “Those things are just…” She gazed into nothing for a moment. Remembering. “Twenty five thousand years old. How is that even possible?”
“Could be much older, the Machine Age went for twenty thousand more before that. But they die of age too, or something like it… presumably they change their parts when they need to. These ones might be relatively young, they were making new ones in there.”
“We didn’t find much mining equipment. Whatever they needed to make a fully functioning nest, they were short. If they’d been anywhere near full strength, we’d have been wiped out. They just fight like death itself.”
“Hey, you too,” said Erik.
Trace gazed at him for a moment. “You didn’t want me to shoot the queen. Why not?”
Erik did not answer her immediately. He still was not happy about it, but this hardly seemed the time or the place for another of their arguments over command and jurisdiction. “The Captain taught me things too,” he said finally. “Things I’ll remember all my life. One of them is that not every problem can be solved with a bullet.”
“You know what she could have done to the rock reactor,” said Trace. “This one needed a bullet. Ship safety comes first.”
“Trace… we’re in a unique situation here. I mean, a hacksaw nest. What are the odds?”
“We’re a warship, we don’t do alien diplomacy.”
Erik frowned. She seemed needlessly argumentative about it, when he hadn’t wanted this fight at all. Was it troubling her? Did she want him to convince her of something she wasn’t sure of herself? “Trace, that thing was smart. It was listening to you. Bullets are tools. Words are tools. You could have used either. But you chose the one you always choose.”
“I’m a tool,” she said flatly. “My life has a single purpose, and I’ve trained all my life to further my method of achieving it. I’m not some utility knife that can just activate a different blade — I have one blade, and it’s sharp.”
“And what is that single purpose again exactly?” Erik said with faint exasperation. “Service to Fleet? Who are now trying to kill us?”
Trace swallowed, and looked away. More unnerved than Erik had ever seen her. “Service to the human cause,” she said quietly.
“Ah yes, the good old human cause again. The Kulina serve the human cause through the agency of Fleet, which can do no wrong. No individual interests, no matter how strong and right, can compete with the righteous necessity of Fleet. If you still believed that shit, Trace, your best course would be to sabotage our engines and blow us all to bits, and save Fleet the effort.”
Trace stared at him. And had nothing to say.
Erik put the hand back on her shoulder. “If you died in that rock?” he said. “That would be a great loss to the operational integrity of this ship. But the far greater loss, to me, would be you. You’re not just a tool, Major. You’re my friend. All of these people here love you. And giant pain in my ass or not, I’d miss you.”
Trace looked emotional. And astonished him by putting her head to his shoulder — not a hug, just a quick half-embrace that two friends might use in passing. Then she parted, with a whack on his arm, and returned to her wounded marines.
13
At 0200 Erik was in bed and as far from sleep as ever. For one thing, his quarters were unfamiliar — these were the Captain’s quarters, all personal items thankfully sent to storage by someone else so he didn’t have to deal with that emotional burden. But he felt like a fraud lying here in this bed, like the servant in some wealthy house who tries on the owner’s clothes when he’s away on business. And he was certain others in the crew felt the same to see him here.
Crew rotations were a mess with all the holes in the ranks, though thankfully his junior officers were sorting that out without need of supervision. They simply lacked the bridge crew for three rotations, and so were down to two. That didn’t matter so much now, as in these circumstances he was in the Captain’s chair far more than a usual eight hour shift anyhow… but over the long haul it was going to become a drag. The main problem was they now lacked pilots. As acting-Captain, he was senior pilot. He toyed with the idea of making Shahaim second-shift commander, but dismissed it just as fast — he needed a good co-pilot, and she superb at that. As a senior-pilot, not so much, so she was more use where she was.
Lieutenant Draper had even better Academy scores than he did, but was green as grass. Lieutenant Prakesh had been second-shift Helm, but had been on PH-2 with Lieutenant Chia and Dean Chong when it was destroyed. That left another Academy whizz-kid, Second Lieutenant Dufresne, as Draper’s Helm and co-pilot. Kaspowitz had said drily that given some encouragement, experience, and a good bedtime story before sleepytime, they’d do fine. Draper and Dufresne were just a few meters away in the bridge right now as he lay in bed, in effective command of Phoenix in one of the nastiest situations the ship had ever seen. That alone made the thought of sleep laughable. And he wondered, lying here in the Captain’s bed, if Pantillo had thought similar thoughts about young Debogande in the Captain’s chair. Worse, Dufresne was a known Fleet loyalist from a family of loyalists, and no one was completely certain she wouldn’t just hit some fireworks to show everyone where they were. Right now the situation was desperate enough that they had no choice but to hope that her instincts for self-preservation overrode her grander loyalties.
His buddy Remy Hale was over on the rock right now, heading Engineering’s scouting efforts, accompanied by Bravo and Delta Platoons. Unable to part with more than a handful of people for their scavenger hunt, Remy was rounding up marines and some off-shift spacers to sort through the hacksaw nest. Phoenix had left Homeworld without the needed overhaul or resupply — Erik had listened as Rooke explained what they were missing, but about half of it had gone over his head. Trace was over there too, of course, foregoing sleep in search of whatever it was she was searching for. Erik was unconvinced that it had to do with anything beyond her troubled state of mind.
He lay now with the slate on his thighs, watching various vid-feeds from the rock on one side, and nav-feed on the other. Rooke’s ETA on repairs was now a vague sixty-plus hours. Lisbeth was still down in Engineering, as far as he knew. She had indeed volunteered to go to the rock — it only made sense, she’d argued, given she was non-essential and personnel were so short. Thankfully she’d only argued her case in Engineering, and even they’d turned her down. No doubt not wishing to be blown
out an airlock by the LC.
Nav-feed showed Abigail, now seven hours from her closest projected pass to their current position, on her way toward Maga, the Argitori fifth planet. She’d be turning over soon to decelerate, approaching mid-point of her one-G thrust journey. Still she was broadcasting Ito Industries ID in that unusual configuration, as were the rest of them. Approaching seventeen-seconds-light on a different vector was UFS Chester, a very familiar First Fleet cruiser. Two-seconds-light beyond her, was Fortitude, another cruiser.
Chester was commanded by Captain Lubeck, an old friend of Pantillo’s. Erik had met him a few times on station call. Would he be angry, blaming LC Debogande for his old friend’s death? Or would he be asking questions of why the Phoenix’s crew hadn’t done in the rich-kid upstart themselves? Surely it must have dawned on many that something was odd with Fleet HQ’s story. If LC Debogande had killed his Captain, then surely Phoenix’s crew would not be currently backing him, given how much more they’d loved the Captain than his supposed killer. There’d be a mutiny on Phoenix, or something else to stop them from ever getting this far in the first place.
But then there was Trace, who held the Phoenix crew in thrall with her legendary status. HQ could accuse her of being in on the murder, and point to the bloodbath in the holding cells as indication that she’d lost it. Her marines obeyed her unquestioningly, and once aboard Phoenix, spacer crew would find themselves with marine weapons in their face if ever they questioned the LC or the Major’s command. There had been isolated cases before, of marines hijacking spacer vessels. Given the utter mismatch in close-quarters combat skills, that was a fight marines would always win.
But for that whole conspiracy theory to work, Erik thought further, HQ would have to convince everyone that Trace had gone nuts in the first place, and plotted with her LC to kill her Captain. Anyone who genuinely knew her would know that was silly. Of course, most of those who genuinely knew her were marines — ship captains might have met her in passing, but spacers and marines lived largely in different worlds. Possibly there were a lot of ship captains out in Argitori system right now, hunting for them, who were personally prepared to believe evil things of Major Thakur… but those of them with marines aboard would likely be hearing it from their marine commanders. Had the situation been reversed, and Phoenix were out there hunting some other ship who was in Phoenix’s current situation, Trace would have been chewing the Captain’s ear off if she thought the accused marine commander incapable of what was being described.
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