“And what happens if the tavalai discover us using one of those,” Erik asked, pointing to the little thing on Hiro’s palm, “and trace it back to us?”
“Well they’ve got this real nifty self-destruct,” said Hiro. “Very high temperature, they just melt, there’s nearly nothing left. Styx says it’s nearly foolproof.”
Styx says. Erik knew he wasn’t the only person on Phoenix becoming increasingly sick of hearing of the things that ‘Styx says’. She was so much more advanced than them. At what point did the less advanced creatures become so dependent upon the more advanced creature’s technology that she took over completely, whether the less advanced creatures were aware of it or not?
“I was talking to some of the Pelligavani’s top lawyers at dinner,” Shilu volunteered. “They were asking some very pointed questions about Makimakala. I got the impression Makimakala wasn’t telling them much, so they were hoping to get more out of me.”
“Any clues as to how long we’ve got?” Erik asked his Coms Officer sombrely.
Shilu shook his head. “No. But I asked into it some more. It’s pretty much what Captain Pram told us — the Dobruta get their authority from the Godavadi, which is probably the oldest tavalai legal body. Everyone agreed that all tavalai institutions get their seniority through age, so being the oldest gives the Godavadi constitutional powers the others lack. And yes, the Godavadi are completely outside the military chain of command, and actually lay down many of the rules followed by State Department, so neither the tavalai Fleet nor the State Department can touch the Dobruta.”
“Thus Fleet and State Department all gathered over our heads,” Abacha muttered. “Ready to drop legal bombs on us.”
“But,” Shilu continued, holding up a finger, “everyone agrees that what Makimakala has done in declaring this joint mission with Phoenix is very irregular. Word has certainly reached the Godavadi by now, and their deliberations will be coming back. Everyone I spoke to at dinner thought Makimakala would be called back to explain herself. At which point we’ll be on our own.”
“Captain Pram insists that even if that happens, we’ll still be under Dobruta protection,” said Erik. “He says his independent authority as Dobruta captain gives him the power to declare superior objectives. They might be able to summons Makimakala, but they can’t overrule his decision to grant us protection.”
“Sir,” said Shilu with a firm stare, “you want my honest legal opinion?” Erik nodded. “This tavalai law is all fucked up.” Erik smiled reluctantly. “You know what I spent most of my time at dinner talking about? The origins of the Godavadi’s legal authority. You know how many legal authorities there are in the tavalai power structure? Thirty-nine. That’s just the lawyers. All their powers overlap, and most of their energies seem to be expended just figuring how who has what powers over whom.
“One of my dinner partners tried to explain to me the procedures for challenging legal rulings. Sir, it’s like listening to a physicist trying to explain quantum particles. It takes years. Yet after I suggested how complicated and difficult it all seemed, to which she agreed, I then suggested that maybe most of these legal institutions could be disbanded, or rolled into several big ones. And she was scandalised. They don’t even have courts or judges as we understand them, nothing decisive, no final authority. Just endless debates.
“The short point of it is this — Captain Pram may say that he has the legal authority to protect us from his fellow tavalai. But in my opinion, he might as well be claiming he’s going to win a lottery. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t — either way he’s got no control over it, and neither do we.”
“Sounds to me,” said Lieutenant Zhi, “that there’s not much difference between too much law, and total anarchy.”
“Exactly,” said Shilu, clicking his fingers at the marine. “Tavalai think all this law makes them civilised. To me it looks like the jungle.”
3
Lisbeth woke. It took a while to recall where she was, amidst PH-4’s tangle of marine armour berths, on a medical gurney with some detachable padding laid down for a mattress. It was all velcro and straps, and even through her sleeping bag something pressed, and made her hip sore, and her arm half-asleep.
It still amazed her that she’d learned to sleep in such places at all. It was all a far cry from home, with her big comfy bed, a smattering of stuffed toys and reading cushions, and a billionaire’s view across the hills to Shiwon and the ocean beyond. But it turned out that if you were tired enough, you could sleep anywhere. On Phoenix she’d discovered the true meaning of ‘tired’, and it was a very different thing to the ‘tired’ she knew from home — the ‘stayed out too late’ tired, or ‘pulled an all-nighter to finish an assignment’ tired didn’t really compare to the ‘two days straight studying hacksaw tech so advanced it makes your brain bleed’ tired, to say nothing of ‘post-combat and near-death experience’ tired.
Outside the combat shuttle’s hull, she could hear the wind howling. When she’d gone to sleep, the rear ramp had been open for access by the on-duty marine guards, and the temperature in the shuttle well below freezing. Now she peered over the lip of her bag, and tugged the heavy cap up her forehead to see, and found the air frigid, but the wind and sound distant. One of the marines had closed the ramp, then. Opposite her, Tif was bundled in a similar arrangement, and somewhere in her sleeping bag was Skah, mother and cub wrapped together for warmth.
Lisbeth needed the bathroom. It was a conundrum — outside the sleeping bag was cold. Did she really need to go? She suffered through two minutes of indecision before concluding that surely someone who’d survived being shot at, hunted by hacksaw drones, and flattened at 10Gs in ferocious space combat, could handle a cold trip to the toilet. She reached for jacket and gloves where she’d laid them earlier — inside the bag it got too hot while wearing them. If spacer kit did one thing almost too well, it was insulation.
Once bundled, she picked and ducked her way through the armour berths and up the starboard-side hold toward the cockpit. The toilet was behind the cockpit and near the marine-commander’s post. It was a tiny thing whose very design informed the user that he or she was a wimp for needing it, and should have shown some endurance and waited. Shuttles were not designed for lengthy stays. It made a howling vacuum racket while flushing, too, despite sensing full-gravity. Lisbeth thought that if she missed anything from her previous life, it was elegance. Beds that didn’t bite, toilets that didn’t screech, indoor air that didn’t cause hypothermia. Colours other than steel-grey or matte-black. Gravity that could be trusted. At least she had that here, for a short while.
She squeezed from the closet-toilet, from freezing air into frigid, and took a moment to peer into the cockpit. The door seal was open, and in one of the two off-set observer chairs lay Ensign Dave Lee — Tif’s co-pilot. Slowly Lisbeth was getting to know Phoenix people as people, not just ranks and surnames. With shuttle crew it was easy — she was an okay front-seater herself, and with Phoenix short of shuttle crew, Dave Lee and the others had given her many tips and simulator lessons over the past four months. Tif had offered to sleep in the observer chair tonight — Phoenix regs insisted that one of the two pilots had to remain in the cockpit at all times on grounded ops in uncertain security — but Dave had insisted that mum and kid should snuggle together, which was only possible down back. The blanket over Dave’s sleeping bag was slipping, and Lisbeth settled it gently back over him.
Outside of PH-4’s narrow armoured canopy, it was snowing. The snow blew in sideways, lit in a glare of floodlights that the auto-tint mostly blocked. Out in the snow, Phoenix marines stood guard. They wouldn’t be cold in their suits, Lisbeth knew, just very, very bored. One of them stood close to a tavalai armour-suit, the karasai gesturing as they talked. Not all of Phoenix’s crew wanted anything to do with their Dobruta allies, but some had softened, and a few had even struck up friendships. Lisbeth wondered if any of those friendships would last, once this was all over, and everyone g
ot to go home. How would marines and karasai keep in touch? Across a heavily-armed border that restricted communications? Twice-yearly recorded messages? Hi, how’s things? Let me introduce you to the wives and communal spawn?
Lisbeth shivered her way back to her makeshift bunk. At least it was nice to be warm in bed, while the freezing snow blew outside. It made her realise that discomforts aside, being within Phoenix security perimeters made her feel safe. Phoenix was safety to her now, despite her ongoing association threatening daily to get her killed.
Approaching her bunk, she noticed something on the steel-grid deck for the first time. A lily, like the ones the Pelligavani had given upon their arrival. Lisbeth frowned, and squatted to examine it. It hadn’t been there when she’d gone to bed, she was certain. Someone must have put it there while she slept… and certainly it had been ‘put’ there, its placement was too symmetrical alongside her bunk for it to have been dropped.
Surely a marine was playing a small prank, she thought, picking up the lily. Giving her flowers while she slept, the promise of a secret admirer. Then she noticed the ribbon, and the attached plastic case containing a data-chip. Or she thought it was a data-chip, the design was unfamiliar. Alien, no doubt. Out here, everything was. But which aliens?
She thought about it for a moment, freezing cold and wanting to get back into bed… but now feeling a slow prickling at the back of her neck. Marines pranked each other constantly, but never on anything approaching active duty, which this surely was despite the lack of gunfire. And prank the Captain’s sister? On Phoenix, there were macho marines known to hit on anything female, two-legged or four, human or not, on any port of call, yet gave Lisbeth nothing more forward than a wink. Not only was she the Captain’s sister, but she shared quarters with Major Thakur… and even were a marine fearless enough to defy the Captain, none were dumb enough to try the Major.
Lisbeth uplinked to local networks, and found the guards’ channel fast enough. On duty, they were most active by proximity. “Um… hello? Sergeant Kunoz?” Silently formulating to avoid waking Tif or Skah.
“Hello Lisbeth,” came back Sergeant Kunoz’s voice in her ear. He was commander of Echo Platoon, Second Squad, and had been stuck with landing-pad guard duty tonight. “What’s up?”
“Well, um… someone left me a lily. By my bunk. I was wondering if it was one of you guys.”
“In PH-4?”
“Yes.” She could hear the frown in Kunoz’s voice, formulated or not. “It’s got what appears to be a data-chip attached. Looks alien.”
A click as Kunoz flipped to what was presumably a command channel, to quiz his marines. Probably he’d use more profanity than he wanted her to hear. After a moment, another click.
“It wasn’t my guys. Maybe one of the tavalai. They like lilies.”
“A tavalai crept onto PH-4 to give me a lily?” It wasn’t hard to inject skepticism into her formulation. Another click, as Kunoz checked on something else. Probably realising how silly it sounded, when she said it.
Click back. “Lisbeth, all our cameras and scans confirm nothing’s been aboard PH-4 while you’ve been sleeping, except marines. It wasn’t Tif or Furball?”
“Sergeant, Tif sleeps through weapons drill, Skah too. And Ensign Lee’s not exactly romantic.” The prickle up her neck began to spread down her spine. If it wasn’t human, or other Phoenix crew, or tavalai…
“Yeah,” said Kunoz, warily. “I think we’d better take a look at that data-chip.”
“It’s definitely a parren data format,” came Petty Officer Kadi’s voice from somewhere in orbit. “It’s pretty obscure though, it could take a little while to reformat it.”
“How long?” asked Erik. He sat at the table with a mug of hot coffee, having brought his own supply, knowing better than to trust tavalai concoctions. He sat with Phoenix crew in this accommodation level’s dining room, with wide windows looking past floodlit landing pads onto further mountains. Dawn made a thin blue line above the jagged horizon. Four human months since any of them had seen a dawn.
“Um… well, we’ll need to scan through Phoenix databases to find the data format, and then…”
“Let me try,” came a new voice. Styx. Erik, Trace and Shilu looked at each other. Nearby, Lisbeth watched above the rim of her own coffee cup, while Hiro sat further away, dark glasses on and processing advanced security protocols to keep both this coms line, and the room, secure for talking.
“Captain, this is Rooke,” came the Engineering Chief before Erik could respond. “I’d recommend we let her — it could take us a full rotation to decode the contents otherwise, and if it’s time-critical information…”
“Do it,” Erik agreed. Shilu looked unhappy. Trace, unreadable as always. But of all the senior crew, she’d been the least opposed to Styx’s reactivation, despite having been the one who shot her in the first place.
“Aye sir.” And there followed some brief chatter between Kadi and Rooke, technical stuff, transferring data. Then some awed murmurs. And finally, from Rooke, a stifled laugh.
“Lieutenant Rooke?” Erik asked. “What’s going on?”
“Um… sir, she just reformatted an entirely new operating protocol in three seconds, from a blind start. It would have taken us…”
“A day, I know,” said Erik, sipping coffee. Around Styx, such things were predictable. “Styx? What is it?”
“The contents are images. They appear to be photo-realistic copies of old paper book pages. I recognise the text, but I cannot read its contents.”
“Why not? What language is it?”
“It is Klyran. It is an obscure text used by parren during my last contact with them, but the study of obscure languages was never a priority for my people.”
Also predictably, the coms crackled as someone else broke into the transmission. “Klyran!” gasped Stan Romki, as though startled out of whatever else he’d been doing. No doubt he’d been listening in, having clearance to do that on anything old and alien-related. “Good gods… Styx, can you transfer it to my… damn it, where are my glasses…”
“Transferring, Professor. Do you know Klyran?”
“God no, it’s been dead for twenty thousand years. It’s… it’s an old religious tongue, it was used by the Tahrae before they were all wiped out in the wars that followed the fall of the drysines… wow!” No doubt gasping at what Styx showed him, projected on the lenses of his AR glasses. “Now if I… what if…”
In the dining room, Erik, Trace and Shilu all looked at each other. Shilu rolled his eyes. Erik knew that if he let the big brains on the ship handle things, he’d still be sitting here an hour later listening to them gasp in delight. “Professor Romki,” Erik prompted, “it strikes me that if Styx is so smart, she ought to be able to figure the whole language if you could provide her with clues.”
“Um… well yes. Actually, that’s not a bad… Styx?”
“Ready when you are, Professor.”
It took ten minutes. Romki knew a few of the symbols, and Styx was very familiar with some extremely old parren language construction. From those certain points, Styx simply ran the billions of probabilities until things started to fit, and the ordering of vowels, consonants, nouns and verbs fell into place. After several key discoveries, the rest unravelled rather quickly, to new gasps of astonishment from Rooke and Kadi.
“And that could have taken a decade,” Kadi informed them all.
“Hacksaw queens sure are useful time savers,” Rooke agreed.
“You think Aristan’s people speak Klyran?” Shilu asked Erik, off coms.
“Why give it to us to decode if they can?” Erik replied. “These are their parren ancestors, they’d have much more chance than us. This tongue’s so old, even Aristan’s forgotten.” He glanced at Lisbeth. She looked a little rattled. No one had seen any comings or goings from PH-4, no explanation of who’d brought the lily. But if it had been one of Aristan’s people… then he’d gotten right to her bedside, through Phoenix’s heavily
armed security, and stood over her while she’d slept.
“Then aren’t we running a risk by decoding it?” Shilu persisted. “What else could decode that so fast? What if we’re effectively letting Aristan know exactly what we have on board Phoenix? Who other than a drysine queen could do that?”
Erik nodded slowly. “Then we’ll have to be very careful how much we tell him. Or any of his people.”
“These are coordinates,” Styx decided. “There are many coordinates, but I recognise some as describing topographical features that match the mountain range surrounding Doma Strana. There is a large middle section describing Doma Strana itself, quite precisely. From the volume of data, and its presentation, I would venture that these are the original planning blueprints for the Doma Strana complex, though coded to make them only accessible to those with knowledge of Klyran. The first entry of Doma Strana in Drysine Empire records predates Drakhil by more than a thousand human years. Those are documents of planning and intention to build.”
“From the Tahrae?” Romki breathed.
“Yes. The Tahrae were the dominant faction in House Harmony, and House Harmony was the dominant house among parren. This was a thousand years before Drakhil. Stoya III was a central world in the Empire. My people ascertained no harm in allowing the construction of parren temples here, for the political ascendency of the Tahrae among the parren.”
“Wait,” said Erik. “The Doma Strana was built during the Parren Empire. After the Machine Age had ended.”
“That is what the outside world is told. The actual temple dates to perhaps a thousand years before the end of the Machine Age. No organic today wishes to admit that the Machine Age did organics any good.” Erik and Shilu exchanged glances. Surely that wasn’t irony in her voice? “Curiously, these documents reveal a number of construction sites, although Doma Strana is today the only Tahrae temple known in the region.”
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 4