Konapratim did not look very happy about it.
The convoy of cruisers arrived at midday to take Erik and Trace to the Karlabarata, the Parliament of Ponnai. They sat in the rear and watched the passing towers for several minutes, then descended upon an enormous courtyard, circular about a central fountain. Around the fountain, Erik saw as he peered down, were a giant mass of tavalai, all staring upward. Many thousands, Erik thought. Away from the courtyard, a wide, straight path climbed numerous sets of stairs between the sheer walls of a monumental building complex in grey and green stone.
“Was your idea,” Trace reminded him.
“And you’re the one who wanted me to be Captain,” Erik retorted.
“No, I wanted you to realise that you already were Captain,” Trace said reasonably. “And I didn’t say it was a bad idea. How do I look?”
There was mild humour in it, as neither of them were dressed for grand public occasions. Erik had considered breaking out the dress uniforms, but that would have spoken of a self-importance exceeding Phoenix’s current circumstance. Phoenix was a fighting ship, not a diplomatic vessel, and he didn’t mind if everyone knew it. Trace wore her usual marine blacks, neat and trim, and quite presentable with the uniform jacket to cover the harness attachments and the worst of the wear and tear. His own spacer blues were the same, save for more pockets.
“Good,” he said, and meant it. “What about me?”
She looked him up and down. “Like a captain,” she said with satisfaction.
The cruiser touched down, the gull door cracked upward, and hot, thick air flooded in. Erik climbed out, then Trace behind… and a roar of tavalai voices hit him like a wave. All about were rows of tavalai security, some armoured and armed, holding back the great sea of tavalai civilians. Security drones hovered overhead, scanning the crowds, and many dignitaries scampered to their places, robes aflutter. One dignitary beckoned them on, and they went, completely at the mercy of tavalai decorum, and surrounded by mobs a fair proportion of whom sounded as though they’d like to tear them limb from limb.
Erik tugged on his cap and walked, Trace at his side in her own cap and glasses, scanning the crowd for any sign of trouble. It was all a lot more chaotic than Erik had expected from tavalai. Tavalai democracy was a democracy of institutions, not people. There was no such thing as ‘one person, one vote’ among tavalai — tavalai worked in institutions large and small, and voted for the leaders of those institutions only. The institutions were intensely democratic, on a level unmatched anywhere in human society, and it made tavalai politics generally free from the kind of opportunist populism that made human democracy such a double-edged sword. The institutions then regulated and controlled tavalai politics, and subdued the public reaction to sudden events… like the arrival of a blood-soaked human carrier whose Captain now wished to claim humanity’s long-vacant place in the Tsubarata.
But this public response felt anything but restrained. Erik saw media drones past the security versions, hovering behind the cordon lines, and more cameras watching from behind the great, multi-storey glass in the building walls to either side. The walk was a pedestrian avenue, through the grand architecture of the central world parliament of Ponnai. Erik had known that what he’d done would be enormous — a Spiral-shaking choice, at least in symbolism. Apparently it was now the leading story in all the news networks on Ponnai, and throughout the Tontalamai System. Soon it would spread to the rest of tavalai space. As an heir to the Debogande business empire, Erik was somewhat accustomed to the theoretical concept of fame. But to be confronted with it so starkly as this — the centre of attention for an entire world and all its twelve billion people, and shortly to the hundreds of billions beyond — was a different matter entirely.
As always in moments of stress, he took his cue from Trace — walking straight and cool, both calm and watchful, neither shutting anything out, nor overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds trying to clamour their way in. They climbed some great, wide steps, their footsteps in unison, and then the flanking crowds were ending, where civilians no longer had access within the Karlabarata Parliament. Atop the steps stood a particularly important-looking tavalai, in white robes with some sort of cape. In one webbed hand, a smooth black cane with a gold head… but he did not seem old, nor did he lean on it for balance. Ceremonial, perhaps, like so many tavalai adornments.
The white-clad tavalai rumbled Togiri, and his belt-translator spoke English at them. “Captain, Major, I am Prodamandam, Speaker for the First Chamber. We are late, walk with me.”
He turned and walked, very brisk and businesslike for a tavalai, usually so methodical and patient. Erik joined on his right, Trace on his left, many security making a phalanx before and behind as they moved, even in this absence of apparent threats. Though the crowds were gone, the steps remained full of tavalai Erik took to be parliament staff, come out to stare, and a few to record with personal devices.
“You play a dangerous game, Phoenix,” Prodamandam said as they walked, tapping the ground with his cane in rhythm. “This public announcement has activated a clause in many institutional legal charters that the institutions did not know they had. The restoration of the full Tsubarata, with all the Spiral species represented. It has forced a vote in the First Chamber, where all the institutional heads of Tontalamai now gather, and this vote can overrule anything that State Department can do to block you. It seems that you have been well advised in our laws. Troublingly well advised, for many.”
They weren’t happy with Makimakala, Erik knew. And not just State Department, either. Many tavalai didn’t think it proper that the Dobruta should be giving a human vessel such free-access to tavalai space, with full weapons and marine complement intact, whatever their escort. If only they knew the full extent of it, Erik thought.
“There are things in the Tsubarata that need to be said,” Erik replied. “By a human, as humans have not spoken there since the dark times of the war against the krim.”
“And what would you say, that has you headed there in such frantic haste?”
“I believe that it is my legal right to speak there,” Erik replied. “Which would make it the tavalim’s legal obligation to be patient, and listen when the time comes.” It was very forward of him, given his present position — a controversial and largely unwelcome guest in tavalai space. But tavalai were fond of blunt-speaking, which Erik thought had much to recommend it, given the dangers of the language barrier.
The Speaker smiled, as they ascended another flight of grand stairs. “This is the human daring that we have heard so much about in the war. You have a power-play in mind, and you have been well-advised by one of our own factions. But remember well, Phoenix — not every daring human act in the war was successful. Many met with disasters of your own making, from which not even the miracles of alo technology could save you.”
Erik only smiled. Of course the tavalai believed that their conservative, methodical way remained best, and that the only reason the humans had won was their ‘magical’ alo technology. Well, they could continue to believe that if they wished. As uncomfortable as this thrust into the tavalai political limelight was, Erik thought that the more noisy and visible, the better. Political institutions — and all tavalai institutions were political on some level, including Fleet — thought only in political dimensions. The more focused on political plots they became, the less chance that any of them would consider the true reason why Phoenix was headed to Kantovan System and the Tsubarata.
Atop the next stairs ahead loomed the enormous glass wall of the Karlabarata Parliament entrance. To the left of those stairs, Erik saw with alarm, were a small group of humans, in Fleet uniforms. His heart sank. Humans did come here, in small, controlled groups. This had to be one of the inspection crews, their presence arranged by the peace treaties, to keep an eye on tavalai Fleet and levels of disarmament, and to see that the beaten party was not violating any terms.
“The crew of Albatross,” said the Speaker as the
y climbed the final stairs. Erik thought he had not sweated so much from just a few stairs before in his life. “They do not seem pleased to see you.”
There were ten of them, Erik counted — seven spacers and three marines. One was a captain, and all were staring daggers at Erik and Trace as they passed. “Traitors!” one of them snarled.
“Millions of humans died to keep the Tsubarata out of human affairs!” another said coldly. “And now you piss on all their sacrifice!”
“Your mother will be finished when this gets back to human space, Debogande!” a third called as they passed. “Finished, you hear me?”
Trace’s hand brushed Erik’s as they approached the great glass entrance. She was not looking at him, but Erik knew it had not been an accident. He took a deep breath, as the glass wall loomed above, and then they went inside.
13
After a week on the austere parren ship, Tif was about ready to leave. The ship was one of Aristan’s, and she, Ensign Lee, Ensign Pratik and Second Lieutenant Hale had all transferred to her at Stoya System. They’d done it through Makimakala, on a routine shuttle flight, so no one watching would suspect that some of Phoenix’s crew had left their ship. Eight rotations had taken them across two jumps to Tagray System, which Aristan’s people claimed to know well.
Now they were disembarking at Ruchino Eighty-Six, an industrial station in orbit of the rocky inner world of Ruchino. The main airlock was crowded with dark parren robes, held in place only by light velcro tabs. Being kuhsi, Tif was spared the inconvenience of having to dress like one of Aristan’s acolytes. Humans were very rare in tavalai space, and suspicious too, given the nature of their mission. Kuhsi were human allies, and a long way from tavalai space, yet had not directly participated in the Triumvirate War, and so were afforded certain freedoms. Kuhsi did travel, even the occasional female, though that was dangerous. Tif checked her pocket once more for the short pistol the marines had given her, with grave instructions on its use. Aliens did not alarm her so much, out here. The prospect of meeting fellow travelling kuhsi did. Nearly all of those were males, and some reacted to a free-travelling female with violent offence.
The outer airlock door cycled, and cold air rushed in. Immediately Tif wrinkled her nose — Ruchino Eighty-Six smelled unlike any station she’d ever visited. Not a bad smell, but an industrial one, thick with operating gasses, industrial smoke, and the discharge of many operating machines. Most stations had filters to clean the air more thoroughly than this, but this station was old, and not designed for comfort.
She followed the lead parren out, hand-over-hand up the guide-lines from the airlock. The lead parren’s name was Toumad, and he was one of Aristan’s trusted operatives. Aristan had offered to help Phoenix on this mission, and it had been the parren who’d suggested Tagray System, and Ruchino. It had been parren who had first established industry at Ruchino, some twenty thousand years before. Ruchino Eighty-Six was far more recent than that, but despite this all now being tavalai space, parren had never lost their connection here. Toumad insisted that he had contacts here, who could provide what they needed. Tif did not trust him in the slightest, and knew the humans felt the same. But in this space, humans and kuhsi were the true aliens, and utterly reliant upon the assistance of locals.
Customs checks were a zero-G automated gate, with just a single odd-looking alien for security. ‘Koromek’, Remy Hale identified the species for her — with wide breathing-gills in a fan about the lower jaw, and big tusks from the mouth, looking more well-suited to water even than the tavalai. Koromek were one of the tavalai-sphere species that the rest of the Spiral rarely got to see, but were quite common in these free-range regions of tavalai space, where the non-tavalai had been so well entrenched before the advent of the First Free Age that the tavalai had not bothered to burden them with tavalai-style government and bureaucracy. Free-range regions could be chaotic, Tif had been told, and occasionally lawless. The koromek saw Tif’s pistol without expression, once the automated gate identified it, and waved her through. The parren-robed humans were not inspected beneath their cowls. Tif thought that an automated gate could probably identify a non-parren by biometrics… but if the guard didn’t care about her gun, he probably cared as little about disguised humans. Or perhaps Aristan’s acolytes had an understanding with local security.
Past the customs gate, they entered Ruchino Eighty-Six’s primary core. Residential hub stations were designed as much for people as cargo, but industrial stations like Eighty-Six had ninety percent of their mass here, in the non-gravitational core. It made an enormous hollow cylinder in space, with a double-shelled hull through which large cargos, and sometimes entire small ships, could be brought through giant airlocks to the inner, pressurised station. Ruchino Eighty-Six had multiple habitat rings, spinning about the primary core to make a gravitational environment for inhabitants, but those were only small, with four rings accounting for no more than fifty thousand people each.
The primary core was a maze of gantries and structures. Much of the central space was cargo, but just as much was machine shops and fabricators — great exposed workshops where mechanics from multiple species worked on heavy gear that could not be handled on a gravitational station — or haggled for contracts with passing customers. The parren hooked on to passing handlines through the transiting personnel passages, little more than open steel frames to guide people through the giant industrial space without getting minced by large moving parts, or electrocuted by something else.
Tif stared about at the haphazard, often ramshackle working spaces as she flew, one hand hooked into the humming handline, and wondered if they could really find what they needed here. Certainly there was little tavalai government. Tavalai bureaucracy would never stand for all this mess, for one thing. And probably they’d tax everyone a lot more, and have all these small, independent operators complaining, or shifting elsewhere to avoid it. She was familiar with some of those issues from her time with Lord Kharghesh in the royal residence of Koth. Lord Kharghesh, his handsome head on her pillow, discussing tiredly with her the difficulties of governance in their increasingly complicated and modernising world. His fingers tracing gentle circles in the fur at her belly, his warm breath in her ear…
She shook the memory off, as the handline turned a corner, swinging her out wide past oncoming traffic. Her Lord had been so pleased that the women of his nation would come to live in and see a wider world than the inside of some betrothed family’s kitchen. She wondered if he’d ever imagined she might see quite so much of the wider world as this.
They passed the great, rotating inner bearing of the station habitation arms, and then the leading parren took the off-line, abandoning handles for a new passage past huge haulage racks, where loader-arms the size of shuttles howled and shuddered on runners amidst the flash of warning lights. The new passage allowed progress only by hand and foot grips, but Tif was well used to that by now, and glided gently from hold to hold with little touches as they flew by. To the hull-side now were offices, zero-G glass fronts where more aliens worked and floated, and then some big, steel-framed workshops.
Here the parren turned off, and came to a halt at the framework personnel entry for one such workshop. Within, a huge brace held a ground-crawler of some description. It was cylindrical, with big, fat tires that appeared to be made more of gleaming ceramic than any kind of rubber or steel. Workers drifted over it, and orange sparks shrilled and fountained where a new part was shaped to fit a damaged section.
“That’s a heavy-duty prospector,” said Ensign Remy Hale with amazement from beneath her hood and cowl. “They must be using it on the surface of Ruchino.”
Ruchino had slightly less than what humans considered 2-Gs — a touch more than that for kuhsi. It was a big world, far bigger than Tif’s native Chogoth, with a dense metal core and an even denser atmosphere. Its plentiful minerals made it a miner’s paradise, and created these huge belts of industrial stations in its orbit, but the atmosphere and gra
vity combined made it a difficult proposition to operate in both safely and profitably. It was completely uninhabitable by any Spiral species, save for those that lived in pressurised habitats, and could handle a crushing 2-Gs for extended periods. Tif knew of only one species that could.
A tavalai worker came floating to the parren, and spoke to Toumad. Toumad then pointed at the humans, and Tif, and beckoned them on, while the remaining acolytes remained holding to the personnel entry frames. A simple rope line provided guidance to an office segment behind a transparent shield at one side of the workshop. Tif sprang from the framework in her turn, and a few gentle touches of the rope made sure she arrived at the office space entry frame, and caught a support.
The dark-tinted shield wall made a transparent view of the ongoing work on the heavy-duty prospector, saving more sensitive eyes from the glare of welders. Projection screens overlaid technical graphics onto parts of the shield, for engineers to come and peer at, or transfer onto personal units. A number of aliens examined those displays, or did other work at zero-G office stations, while others rummaged through an adjoining tool-storage section, assembling welders or changing out of safety gear. Perhaps half were tavalai, and the rest a mix of… four species, Tif counted.
Toumad led them drifting past wall-fixed terminals and partitions, then arrived at a rear office. There, a big, grey kaal sat comfortably braced between multiple displays, examining screens with his four eyes while eating something from a jar with stubby fingers. He fixed Toumad with a displeased stare, then unbraced his bulk from between the screens, and drifted to a near ceiling brace, which he caught with his upper hands. He growled something, a voice like large rocks grinding together underwater, a guttural rumble.
“What do you want?” Tif’s belt translator spoke to her in English. She could have had it set to her native Gharkhan, but that would set up a three-way translation in her head between English, Gharkhan, and whatever tongue the kaal spoke. English alone could make Tif’s head spin, and she thought she’d actually manage better if she kept Gharkhan out of the mix.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 19