Renegade (23 page)

But tavalai were a creative, intellectual and argumentative bunch, and many of them were naturally inclined to squabble amongst themselves, and with their then-overseers. And the chah'nas would eventually get sick of it, and start handing out punishments, and tavalai would recall that ultimately it was the people with the bigger stick, and the greater utility in its use, that got to make the decisions. They’d learned that lesson well, over the millennia. Though perhaps not quite as well as humans had.

One of the voices in the construct, Trace realised, was Second Lieutenant Rooke’s. “Hey Rooke,” she told him. “You’re not taking time away from fixing the ship to dabble in alien archaeology, are you?”

“
I had a choice between this or sleep,”
came Rooke’s voice. He was back in Engineering on
Phoenix
, watching all this on a VR setup. “
I chose this, it recharges me better than sleep.”

“Is it useful?” Trace asked dubiously, drifting across.

“
Well they’ve got some amazing fabrication tech up in the nest,”
said Ensign Hale. She was Erik’s friend from second-shift, which generally overlapped with bridge crew third-shift. With various absences, she was now second-in-charge of Engineering. Ensign was a low rank for that, but no one seemed too fussed — Engineering was one department everyone agreed was overflowing with talent. “
We think it was tavalai tech in the original base before the hacksaws arrived and took it. If we could find where a few more of those are, it would save us a lot of searching.
”

“
Lots of stuff we can’t fabricate on Phoenix,”
Rooke explained. “
A rock this size, we might be able to make stuff we’d normally have to go to station dock for.”

“You’re going to convert the rock into a factory to make parts to repair
Phoenix
?”

“
A small factory, yeah. We’re missing a whole chunk of jump line, it was a lucky shot, it’s not something ships just carry. But we should be able to fabricate a new section, if we can get the raw materials and the right fabricators, plus a little more manpower.”

“I can put some marines on it, if that would help.”

“
Do you have anyone with engineering experience?”
Rooke said skeptically.

“How many degrees does it take to push buttons on a fabricator?” Trace retorted. “We operate heavy equipment all the time, our suits for one thing. Tell them what to do, they’ll do it.” She glanced at Riskin.

Riskin nodded with a wary look around. “
If it means getting the hell out of here, hell yeah.”

Trace floated to Ensign Hale’s shoulder, to peer at a display of the data they were extracting from the cable port. “Are you seriously getting data you can read?” she asked.

“
Yeah.”
Hale looked excited.
“Incredible, huh? It’s an old tavalai coding routine. Ten thousand years old and we can still read it.”

“
I suppose there’s not much living here to age everything,” said Trace. She ran a combat glove tip across a dash frame. It collected a layer of fine particles. “There’s no humidity, and it’s cold all the time.”

“
No microbes,”
Hale agreed. “
We scanned it, there’s nothing else alive here. It’s incredibly old, but it’s in great condition.
” Trace prodded a seat cushion. The synthetic surface compressed oddly, and did not spring back when her finger left it. It was very old, certainly, but completely undisturbed. She wondered if the crew who’d sat in these chairs could have imagined this — suited humans, a race unknown to tavalai and chah'nas at the time, prodding around in their quarters ten thousand years later.

“
Actually it’s very interesting,”
said Rooke, as though continuing some earlier conversation that Trace had rudely interrupted. “
The human records from when we ran into krim for the first time showed a lot of them just didn’t believe it. Not the krim — the whole Spiral civilisation, fifty thousand years back to the Fathers. They talked a lot about the impossibility of technological stasis — they thought fifty thousand years was far too long for civilisation to remain essentially the same out here.”

“
Well it wasn’t the
same,” Hale corrected. “
The Fathers were the only ones in space that far back, everyone else came later.”

“
Sure, but humanity at the time was going through the Acceleration — we see it everywhere with all species, all the low-hanging fruit being plucked, I mean we were just a few centuries out from horse and carts, and no electricity. Just massive change, across about five hundred to a thousand years, heavy industry, micro-circuits, bio-tech, and finally FTL, etc. So they thought technology always moved at that pace, they didn’t realise how much it slowed down once you got out here, into large-scale FTL civilisation… I mean once you get into quantum computing there’s only so much further you can push it. Same with everything. They thought spacefaring aliens ten thousand years ahead of them would be unrecognisable, would have evolved beyond physicality and mortality, become trans-human gods. A lot of the science-folk didn’t like discovering that even the tavalai and alo were still far away from anything like that. Post-Acceleration, civilisation actually reverts to something more like what humans had for thousands of years pre-Acceleration — similar weapons, similar tools, similar lifestyles, relatively slow change.”

Trace left them to their work and conversation. Marines did not chatter as they worked, but Engineering was filled with different kinds of people whose brains and culture worked in different ways. She did not begrudge them that, so long as they were effective, and
Phoenix
’s techs were certainly that.

Back in the hangar, she found Delta Platoon’s second squad hauling large nets filled with hacksaw parts, heading back to
Phoenix
. Sergeant Lai gave them a halt when he saw Trace, marines jetting with difficulty to stop the nets of clanking, drifting parts getting away from them.

“And the techs say it’s entirely safe to bring these back aboard?” Trace asked Lai, peering at the assorted junk through the netting. It looked like someone had dismembered some giant robot spiders. Mostly these were power units, CPUs and weapons, she saw. Some dull sensor eyes stared out at her accusingly.

“
Techies insist it’s not a horror movie,”
Lai said drily. “
They don’t come back to life in the middle of second-shift and cut our throats while we’re sleeping.”

“
Better fucking hope not,”
someone muttered.

“And we can reverse engineer any of this?” Trace asked dubiously.

Lai made an exasperated gesture. “
Hey Major, the techs are still up in the core, screwing around in that nest. I’m just a marine.”

“Insects specialise, Spanky,” said Trace, prodding some of the parts. “Don’t be an insect.” Sergeant Calvin ‘Spanky’ Lai snorted. No two bits of molded body casing were identical. The head casings were all different, alloy steel of great strength and low mass. Probably it had insulating and conducting properties too. There was no reason to make them all different unless the insides were different too. Did hacksaws build natural variation into their designs? “I wonder how old they are. All of these parts can be made locally with the fabricators, except for the CPUs. They’ll have the knowledge to copy themselves, but without the fabricators that can actually print the circuits, it won’t do them any good.”

“
Maybe they take the CPUs of dead hacksaws with them,”
Private Ijaz suggested. “
From where ever they came from. Maybe they’ve only got a limited number of fabricators and they have to keep recycling their dead.”

“
Why can’t they just make new fabricators?”
someone wondered.

“This is crazy advanced stuff,” said Trace. “Pocket fabricators won’t do it, you need whole facilities. AI reproduction was never very efficient when they got this advanced. Big advantage for organic life — we don’t have to spend half of our resources and labour just reproducing new ones.”

“
Sure, but we don’t live forever, either.”

“
Neither do they, apparently,”
said Lai, looking at the broken parts.
“You know we’re violating ten kinds of Fleet law on the AI restrictions by studying this? Usually we’d have to report it, hand it over, or if that was impossible, destroy it.”

“Yeah, well Fleet are already trying to kill us, so there’s not much more they can threaten us with. And right now we need every edge — who knows what our techs will find useful in here.”

“
Major?”
Trace looked about at the floating armour. On coms alone, it was often hard to tell who was speaking. “
Here, it’s Melsh.”

“What is it Smat?”

Some repressed grins within faceplates. They loved that she knew all their nicknames, many of which were rude or silly. The lower ranks found it funny to hear those names on her lips. Ehud ‘Smat’ Melsh had earned his for being a ‘Small Man Always Talking’. “
If we’re recovering junk now? Does that mean we’re not going to be making a station call for quite a while?”

Silence amongst them, awaiting her answer. She looked around at them. “You’ve seen the Captain’s last recording?” There were nods — within articulated combat helmets you could see that. “Captain made that right before the LC went to see him in holding. I was only marginally surprised LC found him dead — I’ve told you why before. I think Spacer Congress was shit scared of him running for office, I think they’ve got the armchair admirals’ balls in a squeeze, or vice-versa, and they planned to have him framed. Ruin his political career, now the war’s over. Only he wouldn’t roll over, and the LC wouldn’t, so they framed the LC with his murder to kill two birds with one stone.”

“
That sounds right to me too Major,”
said Lai. There was a hard note of challenge to his voice, as though daring any of Second Squad to disagree with him. “
You’d know better than us anyhow.”

“No,” Trace said firmly. “No I wouldn’t. Your opinions matter. You didn’t just hand in your brains when you put on the uniform. I’m flattered that you respect my opinion, but don’t just replace yours with mine. This whole thing, the wars, the fighting, the service — it only works if you truly believe what you’re fighting for. So if you don’t believe it, tell me. And if you don’t feel this is your fight, and you’d like to get off the ship at some point, then I’ll do my best to accommodate that ASAP, and the LC has said he will too. At the moment however, given what they did to PH-2 and to the Captain, I can’t guarantee they won’t just whack you the minute they reach you. Because otherwise yes,” she looked back at Private Melsh, “we might not be making a station call for quite some time.”

“
Major?”
ventured Private Carter. “
You’re saying HQ will just murder us in cold blood? Their own marines?”

“They’ve already done it,” said Trace. “Ask the guys on PH-2.”

They said nothing more. Most of them were unmarried with no children — most marines left that for when their tours ended. For some of them, that was a long time, but the human race was fertile either internally or externally for 150 years plus, so the window of opportunity was wide. But even without families of their own, they still had other family and relatives to return to. This situation was keeping them from all of that, and could quite likely get them killed, just when it was looking like they’d survived the war. Yet despite her encouragement, none of them spoke.

Hell of a thing, Trace thought. She loved the loyalty of these men and women, and for the most part shared it. But at a time like this, she couldn’t help but feel guilty for it, and wish that someone, anyone, would speak up, so that she didn’t feel like such a tyrant.

“One more thing,” she added. “And I’ve told others to spread this around. Keep an eye on the LC for me. And his friends in bridge crew, and his sister. Because amongst us marines, I can go to sleep certain that even if any of you disagreed with me, you’d never be a threat to me. I can’t be sure I’d say the same for the spacers. That’s all.”

E
rik awoke
at 0500 on the dot, after a few hours’ sleep, and checked the scans. Positioning was not radically different from last he’d seen them, ships in similar places.
Abigail
was twenty hours out from closest approach. He checked Lisbeth, and her uplinks informed him she was asleep, and in Trace’s quarters. Trace was still on the rock, with Bravo and Delta.

A new broadcast was coming through, from
UFS Warrior.
Coms had a recording, it was looped, playing endlessly. He opened it. “
This is the warship UFS Warrior, to all vessels. The UFS combat carrier Phoenix has been declared a renegade vessel, by UF Fleet command. Repeat, the UFS combat carrier Phoenix has been declared a renegade vessel by UF Fleet command. UFS Phoenix is currently in hiding somewhere in the Argitori System. Do not be alarmed, UF forces and allies are here to help find and neutralise this dangerous fugitive.

“UFS Phoenix is under the command of Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, who is wanted for the premeditated murder of the Phoenix’s Captain Marinol Pantillo, and upon further charges of treason against the human United Forces. We urge all Phoenix crew hearing this message, remove this man from authority immediately. These charges stand only against Lieutenant Commander Debogande — I repeat, only against Lieutenant Commander Debogande. Remove him, and all Phoenix crew shall be considered innocent of all standing charges. Fail to do so, and Phoenix crew will be considered as guilty as the many they are currently protecting.

“Accompanying this transmission is video footage of the Lieutenant Commander’s violent breakout from holding cells in Shiwon, causing the deaths of ten military personnel.”

The footage began. It was the Shiwon holding cells all right, covered with bodies and blood. The camera did not spare any sensitivities. It was all Trace’s work, including the guard alongside Erik on his bed, head splattered across the wall alongside… and others. Numerous others. Dear god. Trace was no lone gun — like all modern soldiers, she was primarily a team operator whose real skill lay in group coordination and tactics under pressure. But even so, the gap between the average
Phoenix
marine, and these poor schmucks guarding the holding cells, was enormous. Many could have done damage like this. But Erik suspected only Trace could have gotten him out alive in the process. It was what separated her from most soldiers at any level — a laser-like focus on objectives. If she could have gotten him out without killing anyone, she’d have done that instead.

He called second-shift Coms. “Lassa, it’s the LC. Why wasn’t I woken when this transmission came through?”

“
Didn’t think it would change anything, LC. Draper said let you sleep.”
Erik snorted and cut connection. Probably right, sleep was more important. But still he’d have liked to know immediately.

He got up, popped a stim and threw on gym clothes. Outside his door, Private Carville scrambled to his feet from where he’d been sitting. Cocky kid from Lieutenant Dale’s Second Squad, spiky hair, chewing gum. “Hey LC. Gonna pump some iron?”

Erik frowned. “Private, were you sleeping in the corridor?”

Carville grinned. “No sir. Just dozing, you know marines, could sleep in a closet. I feel like hitting the gym too sir, let’s go.”

Erik rolled his eyes and threw a glance back into the bridge as he left, Carville following. The bridge looked calmly busy, monitoring a dozen things at once. Draper’s back, in the command chair. “You’re watching my back?” he asked as they walked. “Did the Major order that?”

“No sir,” Carville said cheerfully. “Just synchronising my location to yours. Nothin’ to it.”

“Glad we cleared that up,” Erik said drily, sidestepping traffic in the main corridor.

“Sir, how about you try out the marines’ gym today? We got some real cool kit in there.”

“You’ve got exactly the same equipment as the spacers’ gym,” Erik replied.

“Yeah but we use it better.”

Erik headed straight down the corridor, having no intention of heading around to back-quarter. Trace was spooked if she thought someone was going to jump him. And suffering from the usual marine prejudice about the reliability and loyalty of spacers. Still he got looks in the corridor, spacers looking at him sideways, with none of the casual calm they’d once used. Erik took a deep breath and tried to think of other things. It wasn’t like he didn’t have more important things to worry about than his personal popularity on ship.

The spacers’ gym had far less people than usual for shift-minus-fifty. Erik got on the treadmill, and figured that recent events had disrupted a lot of lives and schedules. He didn’t understand it himself, why people skipped gym when rattled. Routines kept him sane, and this one most of all.

He ran hard, Carville on the machine alongside, then did presses, the heavy resistance arms on the weights machine straining — no free weights on a warship, everything had to stay in place in 10-Gs plus. He did pretty well at it, which was partly inherited genes from his father, who was not a slim man, and partly the augments and micros that doubled the functional consequence of all exercise. In a sweaty singlet and bare armed, he was one of the bigger guys in the gym, but knew better than to think it counted for much. Carville was slimmer, yet could take him down in a gum-chewing heartbeat. Trace was smaller again, and could break his neck without effort. With augments, visible size counted for little — power came from speed, and when he and Carville took turns hitting the bag, Carville’s hands seemed to blur, and Erik nearly had the air knocked from his lungs just leaning on the leather. Marines were given an entirely different grade of physical augment, and trained endlessly for violence as spacers did not.

Kaspowitz came across from the treadmill, dripping sweat as Erik stretched down. “Hey LT,” said Erik. He had to use rank, with Carville here. “And the Major told me you never exercise.”

“I never exercise where she can see me,” Kaspowitz corrected, with a glance down at Carville stretching. The Private grinned. “It’s humiliating.”

“Know the feeling, LT,” said Carville.

Kaspowitz looked at him a moment longer. Knowing very well what he was doing here, in the spacers’ gym, a marine private exercising with the ship Commander. Probably everyone in the gym knew, but Erik was studiously not looking. He’d also know who ordered Carville here, especially given how well he knew Trace. Erik wondered just who was running this damn ship, anyway? Lately he was feeling as much a passenger as Lisbeth.

Kaspowitz sat down also to stretch, and Erik joined them on the floor. “We’ve all seen the Captain’s last recording,” said Kaspowitz, trying in vain to touch his toes. It was a long way to reach, for him. “I was thinking — ‘this story begins where the last story ends.’”

Erik nodded. There’d been quite a bit of speculation about that, he’d overheard. It fit, given the Captain’s love of books and stories.

“Have you heard of Operation Urchirimala?” Kaspowitz asked. Erik shook his head. “It’s tavalai. They worship the old ruins of the Ancients… or maybe ‘worship’ isn’t right, tavalai don’t really do religion. But they love anything old, and the Ancients are the oldest. So ever since it’s been looking like they’d lose the war, they’ve been scurrying around transcribing all the old symbols from all the Ancients’ sites they’ve got, before the barbarian humans get them. That’s Operation Urchirimala — it means something like ‘Operation Recovery’… or close, my Togiri’s a bit rusty.

“Anyway, it’s a story. Tavalai love stories too, anything about their elders, the older the story the better. Now the chah'nas tell stories as well — they have the Po’to’kul scrolls, those things every warrior carries around with him. The longer it gets, the more phases of the warrior’s life it covers, the more prestigious it becomes. There’s lots of terms in the chah'nas languages for ‘marking the scroll’, like we say ‘turning over a new leaf’. Each marks a new phase of life, and you know the chah'nas, always climbing their damn caste hierarchies.”

Erik nodded, holding his toes without effort. “You talk about this stuff with the Captain?”

“Oh he knew
way
more than me. He’d have been a great scholar, could have taught this stuff in university. Anyhow, Merakis.”

Erik frowned. “Merakis? The temple world?” Everyone who’d been to school had at least heard of it. It had been in tavalai space, recently captured by the UF. Strategically it was unremarkable, and had no special interest to industry. But it had been important to the Ancients, who’d built some of the most amazing old structures there in all the known galaxy. And being so old, and so interesting, it had become important to the tavalai as well.

Kaspowitz nodded. “Chah'nas never found it that important, but the tavalai did, and the chah'nas were interested in controlling the tavalai. So they restricted tavalai access — you know the chah'nas, things are only as valuable as other people’s desires make them. You want something, they’ll take it away just to see how hard you’ll push to get it back, everything’s a contest to them. So Merakis became a symbol of control, the unofficial seat of power. Whoever had it, the legends say, controls the galaxy.”

“Huh,” said Carville. “That might be
their
legend. We don’t give a shit.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Kaspowitz. “We only just got it last month, when Kalida fell. Big push, caught the last tavalai there by surprise. And Fleet’s said no one’s allowed in since, everything’s restricted. Big rumours about secret Fleet missions there, but no one knows for sure.”

“And the Captain talked about this?” Erik asked. He had to force down the hurt feeling that the Captain hadn’t talked about it with
him.
Kaspowitz had known him far longer, and far better.

“Just that he found it very interesting,” said Kaspowitz. “He wondered what they were up to, and said he’d love to go. It’s the place where the stories of this galactic civilisation begin and end.”

“He said
that?”

“Well no. But the tavalai caught there were involved in Operation Urchirimala. All archeologists, artists, academics, that’s the word. No soldiers. Recording stories, all the stuff they’d not had the guts to dig up for thousands of years because they hate disturbing old things.”

Erik nodded slowly, switching legs. “Yeah. That’s real interesting. I’ll have to check the latest Fleet orders on Merakis. Thanks LT.”

“No problem.” Kaspowitz got up. “Don’t be late.”

“Oh, one more thing,” said Erik as he recalled it. “The Captain said to the Major on the tape, something about ‘that man we’d talked about’. You don’t happen to know who that was?”

Kaspowitz shook his head. “No, a few of us were talking about that. But if he directed that straight at the Major, you can bet it was something he only discussed with her.”

“Yeah. Thanks LT.” Kaspowitz nodded, and left. Erik would have asked if he thought Trace was being honest when she said she didn’t know who the Captain was talking about… but one did not question the honesty of officers in front of the troops they commanded.

A minute later Erik got up with Carville and followed. Erik had a private shower cubicle in the Captain’s quarters — the only one that did on the whole ship — so he headed back to the bridge.

Just out of the gym, someone yelled to Carville, “Hey Benji! Got you that thing you wanted, right in here!”

“Oh hey, LC?” Carville scrambled up the side corridor. “Just one moment huh? Two seconds!”

He turned a corner. The door behind Erik opened, hands grabbed his throat and arms and dragged him backward before he could make a noise. Erik fought, got an arm free and caught a wrist — searing pain in his forearm as a knife cut him, and now the choke hold at his throat was tightening as he kicked and flailed in total darkness. He propelled his first attacker backward, they crashed into something, and he nearly lost control of the hand with the knife, surely headed for his throat if he did.

The second attacker hit him repeatedly in the midriff, trying to make him let go. Erik managed to get his teeth into the knife arm and bit as hard as he could, drawing a strangled yell. Fingers clawed at his face, and someone said harshly, “Give it! Give me the fucking knife!” As the two men tried to transfer the blade in the dark, and make it fast.

Combat training reasserted, with desperate fear, and Erik stamped on a foot, missed, then snapped his head back trying to headbutt the man who had him. The knife fell to the floor with a clatter, and Erik kneed the second man who bent for it, then kicked, then threw his first attacker back into a wall and swung, connecting with little. A body hit him and he went down against something hard, tumbled and wrestled with the man who fell on top…

Then a flare of light as the door opened, followed by the loudest expletive he’d ever heard as Carville leaped on them and began pounding the knife-man to a pulp with repeated, bone-breaking impacts and cries of pain. Erik had just acquired enough leverage on the man atop him when suddenly the weight was gone, Carville flung his attacker into a wall and began rearranging his internal organs.

“Benji!” Erik gasped. “Private! No, don’t kill him!” As Carville stopped punching. “That’s an order!” As others blocked the light in the doorway, and yells of alarm went up the corridor, calls for a medic.

“But sir!” Carville snarled, with a handful of jumpsuit beneath a lolling, balaclava-covered head. “I really, really want to!”

“Yeah me too,” Erik panted, as someone else helped him to his feet. “But I want to ask some questions first.”

E
rik sat
in one of the spare quarters off main corridor, ceta-b section, and watched a monitor. Behind him, Second Lieutenant Karle held his wrist so that his cut left forearm could stay vertical where Corpsman Rashni could staple it. Rashni had wanted him to go to Medbay to do it, but Erik wasn’t going to miss the interrogation for anything, let alone see it delayed to wait for him. And Medbay was full of marines far more badly hurt than him, and they deserved the peace of mind to not see their ship falling apart around them as their commander was sewn up after a mutinous attack.