Renegade (33 page)

But was there any choice? What would Trace say about doing nasty things about which there was no real choice, only anxious discomfort? She’d say shut up and get on with it. Another faint smile, and he flipped channels.

“Major, this one’s on you, however you want to play it.”

“
Copy LC, we will reconnoiter in force. Echo and Bravo platoons on the nearside, we appear to have multiple secondary docking ports outside of the current inclination of that ship’s weapons. Though if you’d do us the favour of blowing him away if he so much as twitches, we’d all appreciate it.”

“Major, I am pleased to inform you that we have every weapon available trained on the chah'nas vessel, with all active targeting engaged, just to let him know it. If one of those guns moves, he’ll die before it can fire.”

“
That’s what I like to hear. Departure in thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds, LC copies. Good hunting Major, and stay safe.” Which were two bits of oddly contradictory advice, but Erik was confident she’d know what he meant. They’d lost too many people lately. This time, he meant, let’s bring everyone back.

“I wish to hell she didn’t lead every damn away mission,” Kaspowitz read Erik’s mind. “Even she needs a break sometime.”

“Problem is,” Erik replied, “as good as all her Lieutenants are, when the shit hits the fan, she’s better than all of them. And they all know it.”

“
H
ere we go
,”
said Lieutenant Hausler from up front, and PH-1 broke
Phoenix’
s grapples with a crash. Then a shove of the mains, a brief burst, then back to weightless. Trace sat locked into one of her rowed seats in main hold, watching scan scrawling across her visor. She’d done assaults on O’Neil cylinders before, but had never imagined she’d be doing one on Eve.

PH-1’s maximum capacity was sixty armoured marines in a tight squeeze. Today she held fifty-two — Trace’s Command Squad of eight, plus Echo Platoon’s forty-four. The irreplaceable First Sergeant Willis had been replaced by Sergeant Kono from Delta Platoon Third Squad, who now received an on-the-spot promotion to Staffie. So now Lieutenant Crozier was unhappy that her Third Squad was without its leader, plus Trace had replacements for Ugail and Rolonde, the second of whom would be temporary. She’d have gone with just five in Command Squad, but none of her Lieutenants would hear of it, not even Crozier.

Again it didn’t feel right not to have Willis here. She glanced around within her helmet visor, saw the visored faces of her marines all about her. Echo was lately casualty free, and eager for action. There was always survivor guilt when some other platoon got hammered, while yours was stuck in the rear. Some sense that the survivors from the engaged platoons were looking at you with accusation — ‘where the hell were you?’ In reality there was nothing of the sort, Alpha and Charlie had just happened to be at the centre of the hacksaw attack by pure chance, and Echo had been fulfilling the strategically vital role of reserve, while defending
Phoenix
at dock. Every marine in Alpha and Charlie knew that. But every marine in Echo Platoon felt it nonetheless. A commander had to bear it in mind, and guard that they didn’t do anything reckless to make amends.

“PH-4,” said Trace, watching their position as the two shuttles drew up to Eve’s colossal side. “Hold off and keep those chah'nas gun turrets in view. We’ll do this one at a time.”

“
PH-4 copies.
” Combat shuttles had armament enough to make a serious mess of anything at this range, warships included. Now PH-1 continued to the dock, while her sister hung back, training every bristling missile on the chah'nas vessel alongside. Chah'nas didn’t write their ship names on the hull, and this one was playing possum.
Phoenix
database suggested it could have been any one of a hundred chah'nas ships of the class. The databases updated themselves automatically upon arrival in every new system, querying and exchanging data with all friendly vessels. But the Spiral was large, the chah'nas fleet was large, and a lot of its ships went unseen by humans for long periods, sometimes indefinite.

Ahead, the shuttle’s forward scan showed a minor dock beside the huge starship docks, all unmoving against the cylinder’s rotating bulk. This entire endplate was counter-rotating, to hold it steady for docking ships. No way had that mechanism remained functioning for fifty thousand years — the tavalai had occupied this system for the past ten thousand years, had lived on Eve, fixed her, operated her, revered her. No doubt most of them had only just left, ten thousand years of constant habitation coming to an end. They’d thought they were surrendering to the humans. Trace wondered if the tavalai who’d remained here to welcome the conquerors had yet had that chance. Or if these chah'nas vessels had been the first of the victorious Triumvirate to arrive.

The tavalai wouldn’t have liked that. Tavalai had overthrown the last Chah'nas Empire precisely because they’d grown sick and tired of their former masters. Chah'nas had never forgiven them for it. The Captain had always said, in quiet tones when only officers he absolutely trusted were around to hear it, that most of the reason the tavalai continued to fight so hard, was to avoid returning to the bad old days of subjugation under the chah'nas. He’d even gone so far as to suggest that in some ways, the chah'nas part of the alliance was a liability — chah'nas were often strategically unwise bordering on incompetent, and had the certain effect of motivating the tavalai to fight to the death. But the chah'nas alliance was the rock upon which human security had rested since the destruction of Earth. It was no propaganda to suggest that chah'nas were the entire reason humanity still existed — it was simple historical fact. Even now Trace felt uncomfortable with what they’d done to
Tek-to-thi
, and at the chah'nas prisoner held in the
Phoenix
‘brig’… no question
Tek-to-thi
had been asking for it by all the established rules of behaviour, but even so. ‘Ally’, the prisoner had said. That was something a lot of humans, and a lot of chah'nas, felt in their bones. And this current situation, whatever the chah'nas’s obvious wrongdoings here and in Argitori, was… uncomfortable.

Dock was an internal bay, rectangular and enfolding PH-1 in a total embrace. Grapples crashed, then a thud as the dorsal hatch engaged. Then a seal. “Go,” said Trace, and her people closest to the hatch lifted restraints and floated in an orderly, heavily armed cluster to ready positions. Inside the inner hatch, plugger junior, a smaller version of the big
Phoenix
Docking Assault Clearance Unit, came to life and was thrust into the airlock like a big, heavily armed ice hockey puck.

“
Echo Platoon, standing by,
” came Lieutenant Zhi’s voice.

“Copy Echo,” Trace said calmly. “Go hard.”

Outer airlock opened and Echo cleared the space with professional speed, unhooking in turn and filing patiently to the dorsal hatch, hands on the walls, overheads and each other to keep everyone together. No shooting came, and finally Trace unhooked, and fell in behind Staff Sergeant Kono as Command Squad followed the last of Echo Platoon out of the shuttle. Suit sensors showed abruptly plunging temperature, then recovering slowly.

The zero-G corridors were pressurised but no one was trusting the air. Echo Platoon moved fast through tight corners, Squads quickly capturing the docking bridge, which gained them a view of PH-1 quickly departing to make way for PH-4 with Bravo Platoon aboard. They wanted the dock of the chah'nas ship, but had to secure Eve’s end-cap first, jetting along corridors leading to cargo storage, leading in turn to personnel access to the huge, mechanised systems that fed the neighbouring starship docks with fuel, air and cargo. Lieutenant Zhi took First Squad into those mechanisms while Trace headed with the rest toward main habitat, through multiple airlock controls, everything spotless and modern with that familiar tavalai touch — abstract artworks on the walls, much potted greenery with leafy fronds that sprawled across entire corridors, and suit sensors reading an extra half-atmosphere pressure and humidity thick enough to drink.

And finally they arrived at an observation lounge, with huge, wide windows looking up Eve’s entire fifteen kilometre length, like looking up a great, green tube. It circled slowly, five kilometres wide and slowly revolving about the stationary central spine, with five wide spoke arms protruding from a central collar at regular intervals. That was how you got down to the rotating surface — out along the spine, then down elevators in the arms. To one side of her position, Trace could see the near-seamless join where the stationary end-cap met the rotating cylinder, and what should have been several billion tonnes of friction floated smoothly on magnetic rails that ensured no actual contact at all. Reactors powered it all, and the spine conducted it through the cylinder. Trace was sure most if not all of the subsystems were recent replacements, surely anything fifty thousand years old wasn’t going to be working in any shape or form, even if the tech had been good. But the old shell, with all its incredible scale, had been here longer than humanity had been farming.

With Echo holding all the end-cap strategic points, Trace sent Bravo to go and get the chah'nas ship at dock. Even as she did it, tacnet was identifying scattered gunfire across the vast expanse of the cylinder. Third Squad up at the spine got some people out an access hatch into clear air, and they could hear the gunfire, mostly near, up this end of the cylinder. Then came the reports, sightings of chah'nas in the ancient streets below, with guns.

“
What the hell are they shooting at?
” muttered Sergeant Kunoz of Second Squad.

“
Tavalai,
” said Lance Corporal Raif. “
My guess.”

Fair guess, thought Trace. Eve was clearly deserted save for whatever remnants of tavalai remained. Operation Urchirimala, Kaspowitz had said. Scientists, academics. Not soldiers — when the tavalai mounted a defensive operation it was obvious. And if they were, there’d be a lot of chah'nas dying down there. Tavalai were not equal to chah'nas one-on-one, but combat was rarely that, and tavalai were smart and disciplined. For all the chah'nas’s martial boasts, they rarely broke better than even against tavalai. UF marines had a better record, and
Phoenix
marines better still.

Trace flipped channels. “LC, you getting this?”

“
I see it Major. Looks like this ship of chah'nas was left behind to finish a job.”

“
It’s looking like the ship itself is empty. What are your orders?” A few days ago she’d have pretty much decided her next course of action alone, and dared him to stop her. But this was different. He was different. What she saw here had no obvious cause, and no obvious solution. Here, it seemed entirely possible that Erik Debogande might have a better idea what to do than her.

“
We signed a peace treaty with the tavalai,”
came Erik’s voice in her ear. “
I’m pretty sure it didn’t involve their civilians getting slaughtered. We let this continue, we are in violation of our oath as Fleet officers.”

“Right now our job is to defend
Phoenix
,” Trace replied. Near one of the close support arms, tacnet identified a burst of heavy gunfire, multiple sources. It lasted five seconds, then stopped, as though by command. It wasn’t a firefight, this was far too orderly. All of the gunfire seemed to be from one side.

“
Major, we came here to find out why the Captain was murdered. The Captain’s clues appear to point us here. I think
this
is what he wanted us to see.
”

Trace looked sideways at Staff Sergeant Kono. His return look was wary, and she could read it like a book — Kono didn’t want to get into some nasty firefight to save a bunch of tavalai. They’d all lost so many friends to the tavalai over the years. Chah'nas shooting up tavalai civilians was bad and sad, but it happened. The chah'nas alliance was important, tavalai weren’t. If you wanted to emerge from the war with your sanity intact, you ignored it and moved on.

“LC, if we go down there in strength, we’re likely to end up in a big-ass firefight. I can’t guarantee what happens from there.”

“
Well it’s your call Major. I can’t tell you how to do it. But chah'nas actions here aren’t in the script that any of us were sold. Fleet HQ’s running a different script, and my bet is that different script is the reason the Captain was killed. We have to find out what’s going on. How you do that, I’ll leave up to you.”

It wasn’t a cop out. It was what captains always did — give general orders, and leave it to the marine commander to figure out how to implement them. She was the grunt, ground combat operations were her speciality, not his, and if he’d started giving her tactical directions, she was well entitled to ignore him.

“Major,
” came Lieutenant Alomaim’s voice. “
I’m at the chah'nas ship’s dock. No sign of activity, no guards, nothing. The dock’s not even active, it’s not taking on fuel or air. Given the activity we see in the cylinder, my guess is they’ve left the ship empty to carry on their business down there.”

Erik was right, Trace realised. They’d come here to find out what the hell was going on with the chah'nas in particular. This was information. Like it or not, they were going to have to go down there. And the only way to go anywhere, with bullets flying, was in force.

“Okay, we’re not just going to wander into a firefight as dumbfuck peacekeepers. If we go in, we go in to enforce situational dominance, as far as we can spread it. So I’m requesting that
Phoenix
back us up for situational dominance on Eve.”

“
You won’t be able to enforce that very far with a few platoons in this monster.”

“I don’t care what happens elsewhere on Eve, I just need to control what happens near
me.
I’m going to try and carve out a safe zone around one of those support arms, stop everyone from shooting and try and get some sense from them. So I’ll want some translation assistance for a loudspeaker announcement, and maybe some technical assistance too for the speakers if we don’t have that expertise. Coms and Engineering could help see if we can talk to anyone directly, but given the chah'nas haven’t replied to hails, I’ll bet they know we’re human and are ignoring us.”