“Fucking tavalai,” Alomaim muttered, ducking back as bullets hit the alcove corner. And activated his translator to yell at the remaining guards, “Take cover! Tavalai, take cover! You don’t have position to match fire, manoeuvre to cover! Flank them!”
And Erik recognised the marines’ stories coming to life before his eyes — of stubbornly brave tavalai who died because principle demanded they not cower before a threat. Then Sergeant Brice was yelling at Private Cruze to stop, but too late, because Cruze slid and rolled across the broad hall floor toward the wounded sulik, grabbed a floundering leg as bullets snapped off the hall floor beside him, and pulled. For most people it would have been impossible, but marine augments gave Cruze the power to move Tua’s dead weight and slide. Then Erik grabbed Cruze’s leg, and Alomaim his harness, and pulled both human and sulik back to their slender cover against the wall.
“What the fuck are you doing, Private?” Alomaim growled.
“Sorry sir!” Cruze panted, badly frightened himself but struggling now to drag Tua’s ungainly shape to full cover between himself and Erik, as Erik searched for the location of the bullet wound. “Poor bloody guy, sir. Couldn’t just let him die out there.”
“Here Private,” said Erik, finding the hole in the side of Tua’s chest and pressing hard. “Pressure bandage now!” And as Cruze tore out the contents of his webbing pouch, “Styx! You know any sulik anatomy?”
“Half of your standard painkiller dose only,” Styx assured him. “More than that could stop a heart, and cascade to the second heart.”
“Half dose,” Erik told Cruze in case he’d missed it.
“I got it,” said Cruze, placing the bandage for Erik to hold while winding the compressor about Tua’s body. “Base of the neck, yeah?”
“The base of the neck will function,” Styx confirmed. As Tua trilled in agonised distress from his long throat, and Erik repositioned the oxygen mask on the beak-like face, and checked the breather for damage.
“Ito’s fine,” came Gunnery Sergeant Brice on coms from just across the hall. “Just an arm, he’ll live.”
“Gee thanks Sarge,” came Ito’s reply through gritted teeth.
“Well they got us pinned real good,” Alomaim observed, as sporadic shooting continued up and down the hall, interspersed with shouts from tavalai security, and squeals from the wounded. “We need weapons. They’ll make a move soon, they’ve only got a few minutes until security gets its shit together and flanks them.”
“I have a triangulation fix from your coms on one sniper in particular,” said Styx. “Upper left side. Sergeant Brice, you have the best angle.”
“Go Sarge,” said Ito. “I’m fine, go.” Finishing the bandaging that Brice had started, as the Sergeant slid from her cover, darted to a fallen tavalai weapon, then into cover up the same wall.
“Sergeant I will get you a targeting dot on your glasses,” said Styx. “Just hit the dot when I say.” As more fire exchanged further up the hall, tavalai below the elevated balcony positions firing upward. Return fire came down. “Now.”
Brice slid smoothly out, rifle on left shoulder with left-handed cover, aimed coolly and fired. “Got him,” she said, pulling back and checking the unfamiliar rifle. “Saw his arms fly.”
“An excellent shot,” Styx agreed. “One more, two levels below and twenty meters beyond. He is exposed now, whenever you’re ready.”
Brice repeated, exposing her left half for a moment, then fired and slid back. “Got him too. More please Styx.”
“They are taking more adequate cover. I believe they are alarmed.”
Erik was sure they were. That a good marksman could make a tough shot was no surprise — the difficulty was in identifying the shot in the first place. With only the simplest data-input, Styx made that look easy, which in turn presented Sergeant Brice with shots that most experienced marines could make. He’d never in a million years have thought that hacksaws and humans could make such effective partners.
“Hang on Tua,” he told the wounded sulik. “They’re in trouble now, just a few more minutes.” And then we see if we can pin it on the assholes who set it up, he thought, and watch the real fireworks start.
21
The night-time path beneath Chara’s main level was lit by an odd sequence of lights along a maintenance walkway. Trace took it to mean what it surely must mean — that Fleet’s co-conspirators up in Chara Fleet Control knew exactly where the Phoenix team were, and had arranged a safe route where they would meet no locals. Trace led the team in the dark, past beams of lattice-superstructure that, although huge, looked light compared to similar-sized structures she’d seen. About them were masses of pipes and unidentified mechanical innards — the systems by which the big floating city functioned.
Immediately upon leaving the pressurised compartment, the first light of dawn began to spill across Kamala’s clouds, turning the eastern sky to an escalating swathe of colour, in bright striations that climbed from the horizon. Light grew upon the cloud-mass below, turning that great, dark blanket to yellow and pink, and reflecting glare up onto Chara’s underside. Soon Trace could not see the guide lights at all, but now she was climbing stairs to an underside cargo platform, one half of which was filled with many tight-wrapped pallets of goods… perhaps engineering gear, Trace thought, for rapid deployment in case of structural emergencies.
The other half of the cargo platform was filled with plants, growing in rows, a thick profusion of green and red leaves, and even some flowers. It almost caused her to double-take at first, so strange it was to observe these leafy things thriving in air that would suffocate a human in minutes. But then the logical part of her brain caught up — the atmosphere was heavily carbon-dioxide, of course. Pure plant food, and this miniature forest was loving it. Some of the plants bore fruits and berries, and Trace thought that probably the tavalai crew were growing fresh food here and elsewhere about Chara. Grown in this atmosphere, it would probably taste good.
Trace paused to let everyone catch up, and to allow any early-morning strollers to show themselves. None did, and she commenced the stairway climb up steel rungs, deserted save for emergency breather stations with call buttons. Thankfully, she knew, no one at Chara Fleet Control would be watching them on surveillance cameras — those would have to be overridden, in case less-friendly Fleet elements saw those images. It saved her from having to explain to those friendly elements what the Phoenix team were doing with a hacksaw drone, for one thing.
They climbed past a great, flexing hinge, where this platform linked to the one beside it. It shuddered and groaned in the strain, a sound not unlike that which Trace recalled from a training voyage on a genuine old sail ship while at the academy on Homeworld. She was pleased that Chara did not rise and fall as notably as that old ship had done. Even after so long in service, she was not the best flyer or sailor, and the ease with which spacers like Erik handled motion-disorientation was something she’d have envied, if she hadn’t spent so long in meditations resolving not to envy anyone.
The team climbed through the space between platforms, like ants crawling up the gap between cupboard and door, until they emerged onto an upper platform. From here they had a view across Chara’s upper-side for the first time, in full daylight. Each square platform was perhaps three hundred meters wide, and Chara was an uneven twelve-platforms across at its widest point, or three-point-six kilometres. Every second platform was an enormous containment structure for the spherical ‘balloons’ of breathable gas within. Stored at low-pressure densities, those tanks held Chara aloft upon the ever-denser blanket of thick air below, unable to sink lower in the same way that a balloon would be unable to sink in a bathtub, no matter how hard you forced it. Chara was heavy, but nearly half of its volumetric mass was low-pressure gas tanks, and it was enough to keep the entire, multi-thousand tonne complex aloft upon the upper-atmospheric winds of Kamala, thirty kilometres above the ground.
The topside view was a series of great white spheres,
their upper domes glowing and half-shadowed in the low morning sun, like an endless pattern of half-crescent moons, arrayed in perfect rows. Chara itself existed between the spheres, a light-but-tough frame of interlocked platforms, arrayed with pressurised habitat levels, warehouse spaces, communication arrays, wind turbines and observation platforms. Here on the elevated rim, they were just above the height of a landing platform like the one they’d come down on.
“Too exposed,” Trace told her team, waving back down the platform side. “In there, clear it carefully.” Staff Sergeant Kono indicated them down stairs, and into spaces in the platform side between where hangar compartments had been stacked vertically alongside the landing pad. The marines cleared the space, then crouched down in the narrow spaces while Trace peered over some cargo netting splayed over the rail — possibly to ward any flying debris from the backblast of landing vehicles. She checked the time on her visor — it showed three minutes to scheduled touchdown. A squint at the sky showed nothing but pale yellow haze.
“This is a State Department facility?” Aristan asked at her side, gazing about behind dark-lensed goggles and breather mask.
“Yes,” said Trace.
“It is not well guarded.”
“They think Chara’s isolation is guard enough. They did not count on being betrayed by their own Fleet.” She thought she knew how that felt.
“Do you know the makeup of the lander crew?”
“No. One of ours, but they take two pilots, and two engineers. Phoenix knows, seems to think it’s fine.”
“A lot of faith to place, in one Phoenix pilot. Your kuhsi, I’d imagine.” No one had told him. But he’d been at Doma Strana. He hadn’t seen Tif on PH-4, but he’d seen Skah, coming in with Lisbeth, and greeted with fascination by the local tavalai. And he’d know that State Department would never allow a human down to the vault. “What if State Department recognise your kuhsi?”
“They’ve never seen her,” said Trace. “She never got off the ship in Doma Strana. We’re very recently from Kazak System, Joma Station. That’s the only place anyone’s seen her as a member of Phoenix crew. Our ship is faster than most, even if State Department agents have been gathering information on her…”
“And you know very well that they are doing that on all your crew,” Aristan interrupted.
“…they won’t have had time to gather and process that information yet.”
“You should not have brought the kuhsi or her cub down to Doma Strana,” said Aristan. “That was sloppy. It could now cost us all.”
“It was sloppy,” Trace admitted. “We did not foresee these eventualities. And we are new at these games.”
“One notices.”
“Hey kid,” Trace heard Terez saying on coms. “That’s a sunrise. Really nice, huh?” Trace did not turn to see if the drone had any response. “He’s just staring at it,” Terez informed them all. “It’s like he’s amazed.”
“Don’t anthropomorphise the machine,” Rolonde retorted. It was a word they’d all been using, since Trace had introduced them to it. “He’s just processing something new.”
“That’s what amazement is,” Terez retorted.
“Just hope our friendly tavalai prisoner doesn’t break loose before we get down there,” Kono grumbled.
“Tavalai Fleet will make sure they inspect that facility before anyone else does,” Trace assured him. “They’ll find him first, and keep him quiet for as long as it takes.” A bright light drew her attention skyward. A lander was beginning its terminal deceleration burn high above, a white, glaring dot against the pale morning sky. “There they are,” Trace informed her team. “Right on time.”
“Gonna be interesting if one of our teams isn’t in position,” Kono rumbled in warning, hefting his rifle.
“No doubt,” Trace agreed, watching the lander descend. It was big alright — far bigger than usual, an almost perfect, and quite unaerodynamic sphere, like a giant, flying golf ball. Its thrusters were arranged about that spherical underside in a deployed curve, not breaking the even, pressure-resistant shape. So there was no even-platform of thrust, Trace thought, her heart thumping a little harder to watch the approach. She was no ship-engineer, but she knew enough to know that such a design had to decrease flight stability. This ship was built specifically to descend into that burning hell below. And she was going to lead her team onto it. Of all the possible nasty deaths a marine had to face, she’d never considered this kind before. But then, for perhaps the first time in her military career, it occurred to her that she wasn’t here to die. She was on a treasure hunt, and this time around, being alive was too much fun to waste.
Tif watched the descender’s engine and thrust readings with no real concern — this part of the descent was easy, low thrust against moderately-low gravity, and Po’koo let the autos take over as they approached the Chara platform with a dull, rumbling roar. The most difficult part was that Chara was moving at over two hundred kilometres an hour, due to the powerful high-altitude winds. Kamala was barely twenty five thousand kilometres in circumference, meaning that Chara completely circled the moon every hundred hours or so, with only enough directional control to ensure it stayed in roughly the main equatorial jetstream.
Reaching Chara from orbit had taken some arranging, with the freighter Ikto having to perform some clever braking to release the descender on the correct trajectory to hit the moving target below. Second Lieutenant Hale and the others had of course remained aboard, as Ikto’s second stop in Kantovan was the Tsubarata, to deliver a cargo of perishables, where tavalai Fleet said there would be a discreet transfer to Phoenix. For now, Tif was very much aware that she was on her own. At least until she reached Chara, and passed State Department inspection… and then, hopefully, they’d somehow get the Major aboard without anyone seeing. She wasn’t familiar with the details of that part of the plan, having too much to worry about with her own plan. But she was certain that if anyone could make it happen, the Major could.
Chara’s moving target was no difficulty for the descender — all the airmass at this altitude was moving at a roughly identical velocity to the floating city, meaning that for the practical purposes of flying, Chara may as well have been stationary. Landing Pad Seven showed barely a gentle breeze of crosswind, accelerating briefly to a howling gale as the descender’s thrust reached it, then to flame and smoke as they touched, and the engines cut.
A tavalai voice chattered at them on coms. “Descender Ikto One,” said Tif’s translator, “you will secure all flight systems and open holds for immediate inspection. All coms traffic is now intercepted, any attempt by you to communicate with any external entity in a manner that this holding post cannot automatically read will see your filed flight plans cancelled, and your immediate return to your point of origin. Chara Holding out.”
“Descender Ikto One hears and complies,” the translator added, as Po’koo grumbled a reply in his native tongue. He pointed at the central-panel navscreen, for Tif’s benefit. “Did you see the pads on the way down? Chara Holding has five pads, all for the vault. Two are occupied, and one more looks like it was recently. Lots of traffic to the vault lately.”
“Two more descenders are here now?” Tif asked, a little chagrined that she hadn’t noticed. She’d been watching the lander’s alien systems, she couldn’t pay attention to everything. “Do you know whose?”
“No telling,” Po’koo rumbled. “Hard to put identification on a descender when they’re repainted every few trips. Both are kaal-make, similar to this one, though one was quite a bit older. Probably tavalai Fleet — State Department keep the better ones themselves. Fleet’s budget has been smashed lately, they don’t have money to spend on descenders.”
He sounded grumpy about it — no doubt he’d made more money in the old days, when tavalai Fleet had spent more on his speciality. He checked monitors, and rumbled something else into coms. Behind, one of his tavalai engineers replied, performing systems shutdowns that would allow, eventu
ally, the hold doors to be opened. Those doors weren’t a simple matter like on a regular lander — the mechanisms were complex due to the need to keep the hull strong, plus coolant systems running through the outer skin.
“Pretty sunrise though,” said the big kaal, disconnecting his harness. “Move, we have to meet the inspectors in person. Get your identification in order and let me do the talking.”
Tif fetched her facemask from its seat pouch, moulded to her face in a ten-minute scan-and-print at one of Phoenix’s printers. She followed Po’koo past the mid-cockpit bulkhead, through engineering where the two tavalai ship engineers studiously worked through their systems checks, as a complicated beast like a heavy-descender required every time it flew. Tif had spoken a little with the tavalai — the descender’s only other crew — and gotten little from them. It was curious, because tavalai were usually sociable. But then, she thought as she followed Po’koo down the access ladder to lower holds, kuhsi were supposed to be clan and family-centric, also. Yet here she was, several thousand lightyears from home, without any other kuhsi for company besides her son. Some individual paths could not be explained by species alone. Perhaps these tavalai were outcasts, or eccentrics like her, operating alone and in it for the money.
At crew-hold level she followed Po’koo to the upper airlock. The big kaal was surprisingly graceful for all his lumbering size, and vastly overpowered for this light gravity. He seemed to flow across the floor, with a four and occasionally six-limbed stride, with enough hands and feet to brace on every presentable wall or ceiling on the way past.
He cycled the inner airlock door, and checked the display that a firm seal existed on the far side. Seeing that one did, he closed the doors behind as precaution, and pulled on his own, kaal-sized facemask, as Tif did the same. The outer door cycled, and six tavalai stood waiting in facemasks and environment suits in the access tube beyond, extended from the landing pad’s adjoining tower. The two foremost tavalai were unarmed. The four behind were not.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 32