Renegade (19 page)

“Couldn’t hurt,” Trace reasoned. “Now I’ve got a boarding party to lead, and you’ve got a ship to fly in proximity. Try not to crash into it.”

“
T
hat’s definitely a docking port
,” said Geish, as
Phoenix
’s floodlights lit upon the rock’s uneven side. An arm protruded, only a few meters, but inviting. Directly alongside it, a big circular indentation, covered by a steel door within. Big enough to fly a shuttle into, were it open. “And that looks like a cargo port beside it.”

“We don’t design it like that,” said Shahaim, with awe. “That takes some massive structural work. Looks like they hollowed the whole thing, you could put a ship in that.”

“Might still be one in there,” Kaspowitz added. “Small one, anyhow.”

“Engineering’s too good for chah'nas,” said Erik. “They’re good at ships, but they never bother with rocks. This is tavalai work.” Which during the Chah'nas Empire had been basically the same thing. Chah'nas had done the ruling, and the head-kicking when required, while the tavalai had done the administering, building and money-counting. The Empire’s bureaucrats, they’d been called. Before the bureaucrats had gotten sick of their muscle and decided, with some success, they could do without them.

“Scancomp says Chah'nas Empire,” Geish agreed, flipping through multiple spectrums. “No idea what it is, could be some kind of command and control. Do we have records of what Argitori was under the Empire?”

“Far reach of tavalai space,” said Kaspowitz. He was something of a scholar, largely self-taught, on Spiral history. Long service on
Phoenix
had given him a lot of bunk-time spent reading. “There was mining, but the chah'nas were occupied with other species, had trouble keeping everything together further in. This could have been a watch post, or a mining scout, or both.”

“Any records of anything else like it around here?” Erik asked.

Kaspowitz shook his head, flipping through screens. “Nope. There were sizeable mining and refinery operations on Qualek and Iprosha, but those had support stations, all long gone, dismantled for parts in the fighting when the Empire came apart.”

Erik chewed a nail. After the fall of the Chah'nas Empire, the First Free Age had begun under the primary guidance of the tavalai. That had lasted the best part of ten thousand years. During the latter few thousand of those, a new race called the krim had crawled from their sulphuric hell of a homeworld and gained access to space, thanks to generous loans of tavalai technology. Krim claimed their territory here, their homeworld only a few jumps from Argitori. The range of the Free Age had expanded, and this former fringe territory became the centre of krim space… along with what humans now called Homeworld. Beyond that again, was Earth, separated from the Free Age Range by krim space.

“Tavalai gave all this up to the krim,” said Erik. “No chance at all this was a krim base?”

“Very unlikely no,” said Geish with certainty. “Krim didn’t like minor outposts, they went big with everything. And they redesigned everything they didn’t like.”

“Like Earth,” Jiri muttered.

“Krim could have occupied it for a while,” said Shahaim. “Especially when we were tearing them apart in this region. They didn’t have the resources for anything other than fighting, something like this they would have just left alone.”

“I agree,” Erik said grimly. “I think Order Four applies. I’m calling it — Second Lieutenant Karle, if you see any sign of hostile activity, you have my command to fire on your initiative.”

“Aye sir,” said Karle, adjusting his toggles and running main fire protocols on all
Phoenix
weapon systems. Order Four was one of Fleet’s oldest. Humanity was fairly sure they’d wiped out the krim, but the possibility of small surviving settlements remained. Even now, seven hundred years after the krim’s demise, Fleet captains everywhere were under orders to watch for possible survivors in remote places like this, and continue the extermination. In all those seven hundred years there had been no official sightings of living krim, but always there were the rumours, through Fleet and merchanters, of things kept quiet. Given recent events, Erik could easily imagine Fleet lying about such things, to maintain the happy illusion that the krim were all gone.

“They’re going to be very old and very self-sufficient if they’ve been here seven hundred years,” Kaspowitz suggested. “With all our insystem traffic, they won’t have been moving around much.”

“Krim have the emotional life of plankton,” said Erik. “Patience is a strong suit.” He flipped coms. “Major, I’ve commanded Order Four, be advised.”

“
I’m so advised,
” came Trace’s voice. “
I’ll be quite happy if the little bastards are in there.”

Erik raised eyebrows at Kaspowitz. It was a very un-Kulina thing for her to say. Though obviously she was playing to her marines, revving them up. “Sugauli was thick with krim,” Kaspowitz reminded him. “Hell of a fight taking it off them, that’s where the Kulina legend began. All Kulina are raised with those tales of the olden days. She probably
will
be happy if the little bastards are in there.”

T
race was locked
into the midships dorsal docking port, zero-G and hooked into wall handles in case they bounced. About her were Alpha Platoon, armoured and sealed like her, packed along the tight walls and ceilings like some heavily armed insect colony. Ahead of them, at the airlock mouth, was the DACU — the Docking Assault Clearance Unit, known by marines everywhere as ‘Plugger’ because it filled a docking tube like a plug, heavily armoured and returning fire if necessary.

“We think it’s at least ten thousand years old,” Trace told them. “Something this size is probably rotational, only the rotation stopped somewhere along the way. We might expect an outer gravitational rim, the inner core is probably fusion but we don’t know what’s still there. Keep an eye out for booby traps, if it’s an old Chah'nas Empire facility we don’t know under what circumstances it was abandoned or who moved in since. Order Four has been invoked.”

That got a growl of approval from Lieutenant Dale, who commanded Alpha.

“Alpha and Charlie will enter with me, we’ll split and take a half each. Echo will hold reserve here, Bravo and Delta on standby. Questions?” No reply. “Good. This might be an archaeological expedition, but
Phoenix
marines come prepared.”

“
Saddest thing about krim being all dead is that we can’t kill them anymore,
” Dale added. That got some loud, approving noises.

A crash of grapples. The dock operator indicated a seal, which was an aggressive operation some likened to forced sex. The inner airlock door closed on Plugger, which held itself steady with little bursts of compressed nitrogen thrust. The outer airlock opened onto a cold, yawning passage that Trace could see in inner visual as Plugger’s feed came back to them.

A burst of gas and Plugger drifted into the passage. Temperature sensors showed it was nearly 110C below freezing. “
Too cold for life,
” someone remarked. “
Looks dead.
”

“Let’s save that judgement until we’re in,” said Trace. “Anyone home would have seen us coming, they could have flushed the outer rim to freeze it, make it look deserted. Alpha Platoon, advance.”

As Dale’s marines unhooked from the surrounding walls and pushed forward, the inner airlock door opening once more, now that there was no immediate incoming fire. They formed a drifting formation behind Plugger’s advancing bulk, little thrusts from their suit jets keeping them in position. Trace would have led in herself, but she knew her Lieutenants didn’t like it when she put herself out front all the time.

When all of Alpha’s troops were past her, she went herself. As
Phoenix
Company commander she had a command section of eight, led by First Sergeant ‘Stitch’ Willis, who’d been wounded fifteen times, retired twice, and found peacetime didn’t agree with him. Willis was sometimes called her bodyguard, and took more pride in that than anything else he’d done in sixty-two on and off years of active service. He took position at her side now, as mist fogged her visor as warm
Phoenix
humidity froze in contact with ten-thousand-year-old air.

“
Got reasonable air pressure,
” Dale remarked. “
Some kind of life support’s been working.
”

“
Composition reading says it’s breathable. Freeze your tonsils though. Not much CO2, either the scrubbers are working or there’s no one breathing here.
”

“
Docking entry ends ahead,”
Dale said tersely. “
Keep it tight marines.”

Plugger broke into open space, Dale and his formation close behind. Trace heard someone catch breath at the size of the interior hold. They were inside a cross-corridor that you really could have flown a shuttle in — a good fifty meters across and nearly perfectly circular. Directly alongside this little docking passage, it opened into another huge circular passage, no doubt leading directly to the doors they’d seen from the outside. All in pitch black, save for the multi-spectrum non-vis light that Plugger shone through the space, lighting it all up on their IR.

“
Phoenix
, you seeing this?” Trace asked in a low voice. “Alpha Platoon hold here, let Plugger take middle position.”

“
Yes Major we’re seeing it,
” came the LC’s voice in her ear. “
Tavalai do good work.
” Ten thousand years ago, Trace thought. Or far longer, as ten thousand only marked the fall of the Empire. But the Chah'nas Empire had been around for eight thousand years before that. Eighteen thousand years ago, humans had been building with mud.

She recalled a memory, herself as a young girl, no more than ten and struggling through a period of poor meditative practice and general rebellion. She wasn’t entirely sure, she’d told one of her siksakas bluntly, that she wanted to be violently killed before the age of thirty, as the statistical likelihoods predicted. ‘But oh my child,’ the siksaka had told her. ‘The wonders you will see first.’

Couldn’t argue with that, Trace thought, gazing around. And more amazing yet, she was thirty-two years old, and still here.

“
T
ell
them if they do find any jumpline systems we can cannibalise, let me know,”
came Rooke’s request from Engineering.

“Could he actually cannibalise a ten thousand year old chah'nas jump engine?” Shilu wondered.

“Yeah, that kid probably could,” said Geish. Erik watched three screens — Rooke’s repairs on the left, Trace’s feed in the middle, and Geish’s scan feed on the right. Trace’s feed was the most fascinating, but his job wasn’t to be fascinated, it was to watch for threats to
Phoenix
. But it was hard not to stare at the helmet-cam visuals of those huge, precisely hewn caverns in the rock. Trace’s voice came through calm as she split her platoons, now a little fractured by static. Interference would get worse the further they went into that metallic rock.

“Those look like elevator shafts,” said Kaspowitz with amazement. “Huge ones. What the hell were they keeping in this rock?”

“Clearly it used to spin if it needed elevators,” Shahaim added. A spacer brought her some coffee, which she sipped. They were technically well into second-shift now, but when things got serious, first-shift always took charge if they could.

“
That’s a heck of a lot of air volume in there if it’s all pressurised,
” came Rooke’s voice over coms. “
Something’s clearly been running. Hell of a technical job if life support’s still running over ten thousand years. The better guess is that someone’s either using it now, or has been back periodically to keep it running in case they needed it.
”

“Thank you Second Lieutenant,” said Erik. “You wouldn’t be taking time away from repairs to watch the monitors, would you?”

“
I can do both,
” came the defensive reply.

“Make sure you do.”

“LC?” said Lieutenant Shilu from Coms. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, it didn’t seem worth mentioning. But the last thirty minutes I’ve seen a proliferation of transponder activity identifying itself as Debogande-related traffic.” Erik frowned and peered at his scan feed more closely. Shilu’s coms feed overlaid onto that image, showing which ships and bases were identifying themselves as what, if anything. “You see, usually the company name is last? After the ship name and registration? See how they’ve shifted to first?”

Shilu was right. Ito Industries — that was a regional group owned by Debogande Enterprises. Their primary operation here was a big industrial cluster in the lunar system of the fifth planet — a gas giant. Erik could count… five Ito Industries pushers at various velocities through this part of the system, and all had their corporate affiliation first, not last.

“That changed in the last half-hour?” Erik asked.

“Yes sir,” said Shilu. “I figure we could try and laser-com one… this freighter here,
Abigail
. She’ll be within one second light in eleven hours at her current course, assuming she holds heading.”

“Some of Fleet are very good at spotting laser-com if they’re close enough,” Geish cautioned. “We certainly are. And with so many of them running dark, we don’t know exactly where they are.”

Erik gnawed a nail. “Tell me again when
Abigail
approaches closest. I’ll have another look then.”

Did he really want to involve local corporates in this? Certainly he could tell them his side of the story. The Debogande network was enormous through human space. It could spread the word, possibly provide them with help and even shelter if they could just lose this damned Fleet pursuit. But that word would be getting out anyway, from Homeworld — Fleet couldn’t stop it, it would go where ever natural commerce took Debogande ships, which was everywhere. He
might
just be putting local civvies in harm’s way for no good reason, and they might not thank him for it. Just because they drew their paycheques from Debogande Incorporated didn’t suggest the kind of kill-or-die loyalty that existed on
Phoenix
. There were some diehard loyalists, and principled spacers who hated government interference in commerce, be it Fleet or otherwise. But there were just as many Fleet loyalists who’d squawk their location to the nearest Fleet warship.