Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3)

by Shepherd,Joel

  And there were soap operas, and movies, and… she blinked, as a porn channel opened. Parren had put that on her entertainment package? Well, she supposed they had no idea what any individual human might want to watch. Captured and frightened (or she was pretty sure she was frightened, past the sedative) she was hardly in the mood.

  Mood. Parren were all about mood. Sedative in the air, and quite probably in the food as well. Happy, familiar things on TV, or even raunchy ones. Comfortable quarters. Everything a human captive might need to make her more manageable. Parren civilisation was dominated by the fear of changing moods.

  Only that wasn’t quite right, she thought as she switched channel to some horse showjumping, eating some tasty coleslaw salad. Parren called it a ‘phase’, she recalled from her meagre readings. There were five primary parren phases, and it was no accident that there were also five primary parren Houses, one for each. Each phase was a personality, and most parren switched personalities several times in a life. Usually it passed without drama, as an individual reached a certain point of life, or came to a new understanding of his or her place in the universe.

  Switching between phases was called a troidna, meaning a ‘flux’. When a parren switched phases, they moved from one of the great parren Houses to another. When common-folk fluxed, it caused little concern. When great leaders fluxed, the foundations of great institutions rattled. And when huge numbers of parren all switched together at the same time, in response to some calamitous event… then, sometimes, entire civilisations fell, and millions died in terrible wars.

  Aristan threatened such an event with what he was seeking, Lisbeth knew. Such a great revelation about the past history of House Harmony could send billions of parren fluxing from one phase to another in a great tide. And the tavalai’s State Department, it seemed, were terrified enough at the prospect to try and kill senior Phoenix commanders before it could happen. Or whatever they’d been trying to achieve with the attack on Doma Strana. Fat lot she’d know, she thought sourly, abducted and locked in the hold of a parren ship.

  It only took a day until the second jump, then another day to reach a planet. Lisbeth had no idea which planet, the screen display had not said, not even in that strange parren script she couldn’t read. But she was escorted from her quarters by more hooded and cloaked parren, through the zero-G central core into Midships, and then a shuttle.

  She was further surprised that there were no more bags over her head, and no restraints on her wrists or ankles. They did not consider her to be any sort of threat, she thought drily, as the shuttle clamps disconnected with a crash and lurch. And with parren it was difficult for a human to judge whether what seemed politeness was actually just formality, or scathing contempt dressed as formality. The books Lisbeth recalled reading on the subject had insisted that parren weren’t big on spontaneity. Now it seemed those books had been understating things.

  As with most shuttles, there was no view on the way down, and she had no uplinks or AR glasses to access external feeds. Finally the retros roared, and the shuttle came to a light thud as the landing gear touched, then the roaring ceased. Lisbeth disengaged her own restraints, as parren in the wide, otherwise-unoccupied cargo hold did the same. They waited for her, polite figures in rows, faces hidden, hands clasped beneath the sleeves of long robes.

  Lisbeth stared at them all, defiantly. Then the rear cargo ramp clanked and descended with a hum, and she squinted into the sudden rush of sunlight. One of the robed parren presented her with some dark glasses, for the light was bright indeed. Lisbeth put them on, and walked with her robed escort down the ramp and into the light.

  The first thing she noticed was the view. The landing pad was high, perhaps the height of a smaller tower in a large city. It sat upon the corner of a truly huge building, like a giant square, with tall, flat walls of what looked like stone. No, she reconsidered as she stared around — it was trapezoid, wider at the base and tapering slightly as it rose. The landing pad was two-thirds of the way up, upon a corner-shoulder of a separate level that ran right around the circumference, like the battlement of some old castle. The entire structure looked like a castle, Lisbeth thought, with yet another level rising above this, sheer walls and narrow, arched windows with balconies ending in turrets and crenellations high above. The base of the castle was the size of many city blocks, and the entire thing, she was certain, could have held hundreds of thousands of people… depending upon the internal layout, of course.

  Below was an enormous expanse of interlocking courtyards. They were flat, and made patterns like a patchwork quilt. Some were huge and featureless, great expanses of stone and paving that must surely heat to boiling temperatures in the midday sun. Others were smaller, intimate, and landscaped like gardens. Carefully tended hedgerows separated them, many with artificial streams, flanked with what looked like weeping willow trees, trailing long, golden fingers in the water. All of the courtyards were precisely square, but the size of the squares varied, creating a mathematical jumble of interlocking yet misaligned sides. Deliberately misaligned, Lisbeth thought, to create this precisely imprecise effect.

  The courtyards stretched for kilometres. Then came the buildings, old-style spires and tile rooves in one quarter, and low glass towers in another. Beyond those, hills covered in trees. The air was warm and the bright sunlight slanted golden and thick. Lisbeth turned full about, staring past the shuttle and her escort, and saw in another direction wide and featureless pavings, like a desert of blank stone, ending only in another castle-like structure of at least the same size as this. Perhaps this was a palace complex? A temple site of some kind? She wished she knew where she was, but was nearly embarrassed to admit to herself that even if she were told, it wouldn’t have helped her. From the distant buildings came the hum of city life, traffic and activity.

  Against the building sides, large doorways slid open, blast protection from landing shuttles. A row of robed figures emerged from each doorway, yet these were not the black and austere robes of Aristan’s kind. These were dazzling, red and gold and blue, their hems sweeping the black-scarred pad surface. Jewellery gleamed on tanned parren arms and fingers, and indigo eyes fixed on Lisbeth beneath headdress and crests of gold and other, precious decoration. Lisbeth stared, as both brilliant rows advanced on her from opposing sides, then met precisely in the middle, and stopped.

  One of Lisbeth’s robed captors strode forward to meet the greeting party. Words were exchanged, with elegant, almost lisping parren vowels. Lisbeth stared at the contrast they made — the dark robed parren who’d captured her, and these decorative newcomers. This was more like the human notion of the parren, brilliant and glamorous, dressed in finery that communicated signals of rank and identity that went back thousands of years. Aristan’s dark robed Domesh insisted that they were the truest, oldest part of parren identity. Lisbeth wondered if it were possible that both could be true.

  The dark robed parren seemed to be challenging the leader of the greeting party. The leader seemed unimpressed, and unyielding, glancing occasionally to Lisbeth. Finally the dark robed parren also pointed her way, and seemed to be describing her, and her situation. Lisbeth tried to draw herself up, thankful that she was at least well rested and well fed, whatever her other, recent ordeals.

  Finally the Domesh stood aside, and the leader of the greeting party approached. He looked down at her from an imperious height, and produced an ornamental staff, held crosswise before him. Then, with a single motion, the end of the staff was pulled, and a slim, silver blade was produced. Lisbeth’s heart, recently settled, abruptly startled… but the tall parren turned the blade around in his hands, and presented her with the hilt. Lisbeth blinked. Perhaps she should ask what the hell was going on, but it was all done in silence, and the presentation was so perfectly visual that somehow, she thought that words would spoil it. Did they even have translators present? Surely none of these magnificent aliens spoke English.

  “You have been transgressed upon,” said t
he tall parren, proving her wrong. The accent was strong, pleasant and slightly lisping. “You are offered recourse.”

  Lisbeth blinked again. “Recourse? Recourse against whom?”

  The English-speaking parren gestured with a flourish to her black-robed guard. They knelt, in unison. The one nearest removed his hood, exposing a bald, smooth head and slim neck. His eyes remained fixed on the landing pad, expression hidden behind his fabric mask.

  Again the tall parren gestured with the hilt of the sword. Demanding she take it. “Recourse?” Lisbeth said in horror as it dawned on her. “You mean I can kill them?”

  “You were taken against your will,” said the parren. “Harmony demands that a price must be paid.”

  “Against all of them?”

  “Should harmony demand it.”

  Abruptly, Lisbeth nearly laughed. It was all so absurd. “I’m not going to kill them! Besides, I’m sure they were just following orders.” Upon a wild impulse, she nearly asked if she could kill the one who gave the orders. But that would be reckless. Major Thakur approved of strength and bravery, but not recklessness.

  “You show compassion,” said the parren. “Compassion is harmonious. But a price must be paid, nonetheless.”

  The dark robed guards remained kneeling. In a flash, Lisbeth recalled something else she’d read about the parren — individualism was anathema to their societies, and they regarded tavalai and human versions of democracy with horror. For a society where individuals could swing from one psychological state to another en masse, creating the most frightening upheavals, too much individual choice could be genuinely catastrophic. And so parren had this, a formalised, ritualised society that put as many brakes on the sudden fluxing of psychological phases as possible. Ritual created stability, and structure. Without it, parren could flounder, and their societies become dangerous anarchy.

  Finding herself abruptly in the middle of it all, Lisbeth realised that these parren weren’t going to take no for an answer. Humans had abandoned a lot of old ritual because they could. Parren could not, and it was important to them not by whim or choice, but as food and water were important. She’d have to do something.

  Lisbeth took a deep breath, and grasped the hilt of the blade with one hand, willing it not to shake. She could do this, she thought. She was one of the heirs to Family Debogande, and she was not a total stranger to formality and ritual. It was just that none of those rituals had involved killing people with swords. She held up the blade and examined it. It was light and slim, and gleaming in the golden sunlight, looked very sharp indeed.

  She pointed the blade at the first dark-robed parren who knelt. “Tell this one to extend his arm,” she said. “Sleeve back.” The tall parren said something in the local tongue, and the kneeling Domesh did as she instructed. The exposed forearm was tanned almost to reddy-brown, and slim, as all parren were slim. The eyes remained fixed on the pad, unblinking.

  Lisbeth tried to steady her hammering heart. Several deep breaths to stop her hand from shaking, and she laid the sharp edge to the parren’s arm, and slid it. And nearly gasped, because she hadn’t intended to do it hard, yet the slide of sharp steel upon skin produced an immediate flow of dark red blood. She nearly apologised, but stopped herself in time. Her victim never flinched.

  “There,” she announced, turning on the tall parren. “The price has been paid. I am satisfied.” She offered the parren his blade back, without quite the stylish grace with which he’d given it, but he took it, and looked content. Words were exchanged, and the Domesh stood, and moved quietly off the pad, in flowing dark lines. “Now, I want you to answer my questions. Where am I? Which planet, and which system? And why was I taken?”

  The tall parren actually smiled. It surprised Lisbeth only because she’d never actually seen a parren’s mouth move before — the only ones she’d met to date were of Aristan's kind, dark robed and masked with only the eyes showing. “You are on Prakasis. This place is Kunadeen. And you were taken by long tradition of the parren clans, to protect the interests of the house and family. So long as those interests are met, you will be entirely safe. If your clan acts against the interests of the Domesh, it shall be otherwise. But come, Lisbeth of Family Debogande. I will show you your accommodations.”

  Erik strapped himself into the observer chair behind AT-7’s pilots’ chairs, as Lieutenant Jersey and Ensign Singh completed pre-flight. Trace took Observer 2, not her usual seat on a shuttle, but on the civilian AT-7 the rear layout was different, and there was no complement of marines to lead anyway, just Kono and Rael from Command Squad, plus Lieutenant Shilu. And on this flight, unlike others, they were promised a view.

  Phoenix held at geostationary orbit, nearly forty thousand kilometres above the surface of Ponnai, the single inhabited world of Tontalamai System. Tontalamai was a monster, tavalai heartland into which very few humans had ventured in the past hundred and sixty years, and few enough even before then. Even after eight thousand years of dominance, tavalai continued to value some parts of their galaxy more than others. That which they’d lost to humans were mostly less-important territory, which was not to say that losing it had not hurt terribly. But Tontalamai was a different place entirely, where tavalai had sunk their civilisational roots upwards of thirty thousand years ago, while the machines were still in charge, and tavalai had needed a place to hide and find some comfort in the places hacksaws rarely went.

  Erik gazed at it out the main canopy now, a big continent below, the edge of night sweeping across the blue-green globe, leaving a trail of gleaming civilisation in its wake — the lights of many cities. Twelve billion tavalai on Ponnai, it was said. Seven major stations and numerous minor ones formed great orbital rings about it, and between those and the big mining stations on the uninhabitable outer worlds, the system traffic had to be seen to be believed. Erik thought it was even busier than Homeworld, perhaps by as much as half, an endless stream of busy ships, and a new jump entry every ten minutes at least, coming from all corners of tavalai space. Some on Homeworld had thought the tavalai a beaten people in the wake of the war, their economy ruined, their confidence shattered. Captain Pantillo had warned him that the reality was nothing so drastic, a notion that Romki had seconded. Being here now, and seeing this, Erik began to see the truth of it.

  Lieutenant Jersey talked to the tavalai Fleet ships that had shadowed them through jump. Makimakala had a shuttle marked for descent as well, but now Erik’s feed from Phoenix Nav showed him another three projected tavalai military shuttles coming down as well. To an outsider, it would look like tavalai Fleet escorting an unfriendly vessel. But now, there was Admiral Janik’s offer of assistance to consider, and his declaration of common cause against State Department. As with all things bureaucratic and political with the tavalai, Erik doubted it was that simple.

  “Captain, I have the course feed now from Ponnai Central,” said Ensign Singh in PH-3’s front seat. Singh was the oldest of Phoenix’s shuttle crew, and had been baby-sitting less experienced pilots for decades. “Looks like we get in at two hours after midnight, local time.”

  That didn’t bother Erik — on Phoenix time that would be mid-afternoon, and Lieutenant Commander Draper was working a double-shift in the big chair. But the timing was curious. “Looks like they don’t want us down when anyone will make a fuss. Lieutenant Lassa, any sign of a reaction on the surface?”

  “No sir,” said Lassa from Phoenix Coms. “If the general population knows we’re here, they’re keeping quiet about it.” Tavalai security censorship was less severe than the human variety, on ship movements and general conversation both. Phoenix had not been broadcasting itself, transponders silent in a way that was itself conspicuous in a busy system. Surely the tavalai had amateur ship-watchers who scanned the skies for interesting vessels, and tried to figure the who, what and why from those movements. Some such amateurs had gotten themselves in big trouble on Homeworld. Erik recalled his Uncle Calvin talking about defending one such amateur in a pro-bon
o civil liberties case, who hadn’t realised his pastime could land him in such hot water. Calvin had argued hard, but as usual, Fleet had won. Two years in prison, for an innocent hobby.

  “Tavalai politics are completely different to human politics,” Trace said calmly from Observer 2. “The big institutions control all the vote, there’s no such thing as a big popular vote like we know it. I wouldn’t expect any help there.”

  “I’m not,” said Erik, as Jersey completed her pre-flight, and cut grapples with a clang. “But if we claim the human chair in the Tsubarata, it’s going to be a huge big deal. You have to wonder.” Jersey hit thrust, a gentle push toward the planet, all that these civilised space-lanes would allow, and Erik settled in to review personnel files and reports for the next hour.

  Reentry was in a four-ship formation, wide-spaced and safe, and a common sight for any of the millions of Ponnai residents below within visual of their fire-trails across the night sky. Then came descent, through some thick cloud and turbulence that bumped them around to a degree that might have been dangerous to an airplane, but was nothing to a shuttle with no truly atmospheric control surfaces, and designed to be treated like a pinball in combat.

  “You know, I always hated atmospheric turbulence when I was a cadet!” Erik yelled across to Trace as they thumped and rattled, bright flashes lighting the canopy and held to their seats only by the harness. “Nearly failed an early airplane solo because I got nervous in cloud!”