“That’s Paris,” Shahaim breathed at his side, staring. “The main city of France, in Europe.”
“I know,” Erik said quietly. “They called it the City of Light.”
“The krim bombed it a hundred and fifty six years after First Contact,” Shilu said coldly. “In retaliation for the resistance. Several million dead, right there. The tavalai responded by trying to force the Landorf Accord onto us, at gunpoint, in the name of peace.”
The next banner was of a beautiful iron-arch bridge across a harbour, above an even more beautiful building like a yacht’s white sails. The next, an amazing city of clustered hundreds of old towers upon a narrow island surrounded by rivers and joined by big old bridges. And the next, an incredible, ancient white building with minarets and spires, carved with intricate inlays of the finest detail. All gone, along with most of their inhabitants of that time. Old human roots, old human origins. On so many worlds today humanity thrived, but there was nothing like this save occasional imitations, striving to remember what could never be properly recreated. All the Spiral’s other species retained the living memory of who they’d once been, but humans had lost theirs forever.
Erik was totally unprepared for how upsetting it was. The loss of Earth was old history now — the defining foundational myth of human civilisation. It had occasionally seemed odd to him that everyone regretted it as much as they did, given how much they worshipped the great tales that had come as a result — the glorious wars, the heroism and sacrifice, everything that had forged this current human age in the hottest fires, and given all humans a united purpose, and a steel resolve, as they’d never had before. But these Tsubarata halls were not the faded pages of some dull history book. This was real — faded and stiff with age, but frozen in time. All the species’ sections in the Tsubarata were decorated as their assigned inhabitants chose, and this was what the humans had chosen, a thousand years before, to remind them of all that was best about the place where all humans were from.
“Suli,” said Erik, “Tua said this place was last fully occupied a thousand and forty six years ago. Who do you think that was, exactly?”
“Damned if I can remember,” Shahaim murmured, and called the Phoenix bridge. “Hello Phoenix, I’d like a history check, please. Who was the last human ambassador in the Tsubarata?”
“Hello Commander,” came Lieutenant Lassa’s reply from Coms, “we were just wondering that ourselves. His name was Guo Chun. Humans had a presence here for a hundred and forty eight years, from just after the krim invasion, right up to the First Human-Tavalai War over the Landorf Accords. When we started fighting the tavalai, the order was given to vacate the Tsubarata, Guo Chun gave one final speech in the Parliament, and made a motion that the krim should be forced to vacate human space at gunpoint. That was the… seventy-second time a similar motion had been presented, thirty times by us, thirty-five times by the chah’nas, five times by the kuhsi, and twice by the alo.”
“Yeah, our good buddies the alo,” Shilu muttered, walking slowly up the hall and panning his light.
“After the krim were beaten, our next visitor was… three hundred and seventy three years after Guo Chun left. That was a multi-party delegation, all Fleet Admirals, and they were here for forty hours only. Long enough to deliver demands, and leave. Since then, another fifty-odd visits, none longer than a few rotations. All of those during the peace, none during the Triumvirate War, and all quartered on their ships. No humans at all, for any reason, for the last hundred and sixty three years.”
“Coming here is symbolic,” said Erik, remembering now to put on his AR glasses, to give Phoenix a visual feed of what he saw. “The real talking happens elsewhere. No humans wanted to give this place any status. This place made a lot of decisions that led to the loss of Earth. Humanity speaks for humans, this place does not.”
Alomaim peered into a doorway, and Erik joined him. It was a lobby, with a secretary’s desk before several large office doors. On the walls were photographs of a sporting event, great stadiums, athletes receiving medals, happy people celebrating, and people of different races embracing. “Oh my god,” Shahaim murmured, running her flashlight across the pictures. “It’s the Cairo Olympics. Some said it was the greatest Olympics ever. Two months after it finished, the krim fleet arrived.”
Erik went to the desk as the others fanned out. The inbuilt network systems looked fine on the outside, and he opened desk doors, searching for the main processor. On a shelf, stored out of sight, was a framed photograph, smothered in dust. Erik pulled on gloves, took it out, and wiped a thick layer of dust from the glass cover. The faded, cracked image was of a young man and two little girls, likely his daughters. Typically he’d have expected a family photograph to be all smiles, but the man and his daughters looked sad. As though they were trying to put on a brave face for the photo.
“Captain I’m running a search on those faces,” came Lassa’s voice, seeing what he saw. “Cross-referencing for known Tsubarata personnel at that time… I’ve got a match. That’s the husband and daughters of Michiko Tanada, she was a personal assistant to one of the ambassador ranks. All Japanese, the Japanese were hammered in the resistance wars of…”
“Twenty-six eleven to twenty-six fourteen, I know,” Erik murmured. “The planetary occupation preferred islands, they’re an easier landmass to control. The major krim groundstations were Japan, Britain, Java, Cuba, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan.”
There were classic films made about the uprisings, compulsory viewing for all schoolchildren no matter how upsetting. The krim had been rocked, and the retaliations were horrible. Erik stared at the little girls’ sad eyes in the photo. What had they seen?
“Records say one of those girls got off Earth before the end,” Lassa continued sombrely. “She was in Fleet, had three kids of her own, and contributed to Lifeboat. So she’s a Founder. Amazing.”
Lifeboat had been the great repopulation program, where genetic material had been taken from all survivors, and mixed to create vast new populations of children. They’d been grown in artificial wombs, in far-off parts of space where the krim couldn’t find them. They’d been raised Spacers, in spacer facilities, and like most of that generation had gone their entire lives without setting foot on a planet. Parentless children, raised in great communal groups, older kids looking after younger ones, all semi-military and regimented as much by organisational necessity as by the need to make more soldiers for Fleet. Lifeboat had saved humanity, and along with the hundred-year space-industrialisation program that followed Earth’s destruction, was one of the greatest successes to be pulled from the ashes of catastrophe. Junwadh Debogande, to the family’s everlasting pride, had played a prominent role in both.
“Captain,” came Lieutenant Alomaim’s voice on coms from the next room, “I suppose that means the krim’s quarters are still preserved here at the Tsubarata too?”
Erik peered up from behind his desk, to stare at Shahaim. She stared back. “Son of a bitch, I hadn’t thought of that,” she muttered. The old enemy, long extinct, suddenly seemed very real, and very near. Erik thought it one of the most surreal sensations he’d experienced since this whole mess had begun.
“Let’s go down there and trash it,” Private Cruze growled. “Full extinction’s not dead enough.”
“What did happen to the krim stationed at the Tsubarata?” Shilu wondered.
“They went home when they were losing badly,” said Erik, peering back under the desk to give the AR glasses a good look at the processor mechanism. “There were always rumours of tavalai-based krim getting away, or the tavalai hiding them so the species wouldn’t die out. Captain Pantillo said it was unlikely — krim don’t travel well and they’re a swarm-species, like the sard. They have a herding instinct, they all head back to the pack when they’re in trouble. I don’t trust Fleet on much, but the Captain said Fleet were pretty sure they got them all, and on this I believe them.”
Alomaim came back in, flashlight on the ceili
ng to make light without blinding anyone. “All clear in there, Captain. It’s a conference room, I think the ambassador’s quarters are further up.”
“Well,” said Erik, “the AR glasses seem to think the network systems could be working. Looks like we’ve found ourselves a base of operations in the Tsubarata.”
Alomaim made a face. “An unarmed base of operations. We can’t get weapons past the Tsubarata guards.”
“We will find a way,” Erik said with determination. “Phoenix, are you listening?”
“Here Captain.”
“I want an engineering party in here ASAP, I want portable powersources in case we can’t get power back direct from Tsubarata. I also want enough marines to guard the place without weapons, plus they’ll be doing a full recon on the human quarter — I’d rather keep spacers on Phoenix for now. And I want Hiro over here, and as many ideas as anyone’s got for how to get into State Department’s facilities from this location.”
“Aye Captain, we’re on it.”
17
Dale stood by the parked groundcar, and waited. They were directly beneath Gamesh’s steel roof that had once separated the old city from the inhospitable air outside. Now the huge gantries were wearing, many thousands of years old, but built so large it would take thousands more years until its age made for any danger of collapse. Support trusses made triangular shapes between beams that were larger than football fields. Larger, perhaps, than entire stadiums. They stretched away across the permanent shadow of the lower city, connecting to support columns that dwarfed the tallest towers rising from the ground below. Billions of tonnes of steel and reinforced synthetics, now just above Dale’s head.
Lower Gamesh was built in a series of deep bowls in the dirt between the mesas up above. Thousands of years ago, the first settlements had put simple but enormous steel caps on those bowls to keep the bad air out, and made them habitable. The high sides of those bowls now made for spectacular views, populated mostly by wealthy residences, save for these uppermost strips right up against the ceiling. Here the low steel felt oppressive, and the ground, loosened by ancient earthworks, was crumbly, and occasionally dangerous. Property prices here were poor, and in many cities access might have been restricted. But in Gamesh the businesspeople had moved in, and the entire rim-strip was a warren of warehouses, factories and workshops, and the most amazing view past the rooftops of the more expensive towers further down. Gamesh had a government, but unlike in regular tavalai space, in the free-cities the government rarely said ‘no’.
In middle distance, sunlight glared from a hole in the roof several kilometres across, beams of angled light making striations in the dusty air. Air traffic climbed in and out of that hole, a flicker of running-lights as they moved from day to dusk in a few seconds. Multi-legged robots clung to the roof gantries like great stick insects, with showers of orange sparks as they used tools to cleave away the rust, and re-weld the joins that sagged beneath the weight and age. Dale wondered what kind of catastrophe would occur if a section collapsed. Thousands killed, perhaps tens of thousands. It seemed to capture Gamesh perfectly — both old and new, decaying and thriving, on the brink of disaster and secure in its prosperity.
“Here they come,” said Jokono’s voice in his ear. “Two vehicles, the second one is a van. They’ve stopped at the gate, it will take them a minute to open it.”
Dale glanced at Tooganam. The old tavalai leaned on a cane that he needed for distances outside his apartment, big eyes fixed on the entry road. Dale would rarely have worried about a tavalai losing his nerve, but he worried about Tooganam even less. He glanced to his other side, at the robed and cowled parren. The parren’s name was Milek, which was all he’d volunteered about himself. He was a Domesh acolyte, one of Aristan’s most trusted, which presumably meant that he could fight. His primary task, with his partner Golev, had been to help the humans get past Gamesh’s security by assisting humans in dark robes to pass as parren. That was his purpose here now… for first impressions, at least.
“I’ve got it wired inside,” said Kadi, running up from the warehouse door, gloved hands stowing electrical tools, then activating glasses icons for operation as though making some strange sign language before him. “There’s lots of good hiding spots in the warehouse, if I can get a visual on them when they get inside…”
“You’ll give the detonator trigger to Private Reddy,” Dale cut him off. “He’s the marine, he’ll do the fighting.”
Kadi’s face fell. “But I just set it up! Look, I know blast radius better than he does, I know the trigger settings, there’s a two second delay and…”
Dale rounded on him. “Son, do you have a problem taking orders from all senior officers? Or just marines?”
The spacer glared defiantly. “I’m not just baggage!” he retorted, even as he retreated to do as he was told. “I came here to fight, not just carry the nerd-gear.”
“No, that’s exactly what you came here to do,” Dale growled at the Petty Officer’s retreating back. In any other circumstance he’d have torn a strip off the younger man, but there was no time. Besides, Rooke had warned him of precisely this with Kadi — headstrong and big-mouthed, but brave as any marine. Dale hadn’t wanted some frail programmer who’d faint at the first sound of guns, so he’d agreed. Now, he caught Tooganam looking at him. “Engineers,” he explained.
Tooganam grunted. “Among tavalai, too. They talk to machines, not people.”
“He is undisciplined,” Milek observed, as the translator made a tonal leap to the new language. “You should teach him some.”
“And you’re now telling me what to do,” Dale retorted. “So look who’s talking.” There were all too many aliens on this job for his tastes. Given the gulf between marines and spacers, to say nothing of tech-nerd spacers, that probably included Kadi.
“Turning in now,” said Jokono, and the approach road lit with oncoming headlights. Jokono, at least, Dale was more than happy to have along. Of them all, this was more his speciality than anyone’s. And it tickled Dale’s sense of irony, that the career policeman should now find himself in charge of orchestrating an illegal firearms purchase.
Two ground cars hummed toward them, across a concrete yard half-filled with building equipment. “Remember,” came Tooganam’s translator directly in Dale’s earcom, “I don’t know how they’re going to react to seeing a human. It would be better if you don’t reveal yourself.”
Dale grimaced within his acolyte’s cowl and robes. They’d had this argument before, and like all tavalai, Tooganam was stubborn. “I need to see the merchandise, and I don’t trust you or Mystery Boy here to do it for me.”
“I do know weapons,” Tooganam retorted drily.
“In your youth you knew weapons. How long’s it been, grandpa?”
The car and the van pulled up before them, turning sideways, then a slide of doors and some figures jumped out. Dale’s glasses tagged each one and fed its position to his companions. They weren’t running a full marine tacnet on the local Gamesh network — Gamesh did have security forces, and while they weren’t exactly proactive, they did take the threat of network attack very seriously. Any military-grade tactical network being run on local systems would bring official security to investigate, and so the marines were stuck with this — tacnet-light, as Forrest called it, with only half the data-density. It gave everyone some idea of where everyone else was, but without the accustomed precision.
Dale counted eight, four staying with the vehicles, the other four fanning to check the warehouse before which they stood, and several neighbouring buildings. Their footsteps raised dust, visible on his multi-spectrum lenses. Weird to be standing in a place where it never rained. Tooganam said some of the wealthier sections of Lower Gamesh had raised enough money to fund their own heavy sprinkler system in the ceiling, for artificial rain. But not everyone could afford it, and the low-tax free-city government never had enough money to pay for anything but essentials. Most residents preferred it t
hat way.
“I count eight,” Jokono confirmed. “I see two kratik, three shoab, one kuhsi, and… I don’t recognise those last two.”
“Peletai,” said Tooganam. “You’ve never seen peletai, wise old human?” Peletai were insectoid, Dale saw, catching a glint of chitinous shell past loose clothing. He’d heard of them, but like so much of the tavalai-sphere, it was all so far away from humanity.
“I have never seen peletai,” Jokono confirmed without a hint of bother. “Tell us of them.”
“Bugs,” Tooganam said grimly. “Just bugs.”
“Very informative. Private Reddy, you have one bug moving toward your current location, stay out of sight.”
“Copy,” said Reddy, who alone of the marines had some prior experience of illegal sneaking around, in his previous life.
Shoab were big, but not nearly as big as kaal. The heavy-worlders lumbered forward, big fists on the ground in a four-limbed walk, shoulders broad and heads thrust forward, low and flat between those powerful shoulders. The leader gestured to Tooganam, and Dale saw movement within the heavy folds of his cloak, suggesting a weight in a pocket, consistent with a gun. When the shoab spoke, the words were a thin, nasal vibration.
“Parren,” the translator said in Dale’s ear. “Domesh parren, unpopular with parren government.” Eyeing the cloaked figures to Tooganam’s sides.
“Not all parren,” Tooganam said reluctantly.
“So,” said the shoab, his wide, flat head turning to peer in Dale’s direction. He did not look surprised. “Come. Inside.” He gestured, and lumbered into the warehouse. At the van, the kuhsi and one of the peletai lifted large canvas bags that clanked, and carried them in. Behind them, with a soft whine, several hovering drones lifted into the air, then headed out to circle the warehouse.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 26