Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (29 page)

L
isbeth could not cry
at the 1400 memorial service. She tried, because she felt the situation deserved it, but instead she felt numb. As daughter of a very prominent family, she’d attended memorial services all her life, official and private, for the many fallen of the war. Those had eventually taken a formal predictability, especially as she was all too aware how her parents and elder sisters would use them as business meet-and-greets with all the VIPs in attendance. She’d stand in her nice coat amidst her family and other importances, and listen to the readings and testimonials, and then the minister’s sermons and perhaps some music, followed by everyone breaking for a drink and lots of talking and hand-shaking.

Certainly she’d never attended a memorial service amidst the very servicemen and women whose fallen comrades the service was honouring, and never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she’d be commemorating those who’d been killed in violence she’d actually been a part of. Her hearing was still ringing from the gunfire and explosions, yet still it didn’t seem like something real — not in her life. Violence and warfare was Erik’s reality, not hers, and she had no clue how to process it.

There was not enough space in Engineering for a proper gathering, so she stood in a crowded storage bay with those not so busy they couldn’t take a ten minute break, amidst the missiles Lieutenant Karle had brought back on PH-1 that techs were prepping for use, and listened to the brief service. Shockingly, her bodyguard Vijay, whom she’d never seen so much as wince, broke down beside her and sobbed for his lost buddy Carla. Lisbeth wanted to join him in tears, because Carla had been her friend too, and seeing her die had been the single most traumatic experience of her life. But there were no tears to come, and that made her feel horribly guilty. She wondered what was wrong with her.

She passed more hours with Petty Officer Srimula’s review team, giving engine systems a thorough going over in light of possible damage from Joma Station. She’d have found it thrilling not long ago, being trusted enough to assist on even the lowliest of technical jobs — they were a major warship’s engines after all, and she’d dreamed of working on such systems since she’d first had the idea to study engineering in college. Now she found the work mindless and repetitive… but that suited her well, because she really didn’t want to think about anything for a while.

At 1750 she made her way about the rim and up two flights to Engineering third or ‘C’ Level, as all the rear portion of the crew cylinder was Engineering, whatever its rotational quarter. In Storage 5C as she passed, someone had set up an Exodus shrine — a plastic tree with some decorations on it with the near-mythical blue globe on top. The tree was harnessed into a corner in light of ship regulations against unsecured objects, and instead of decorating its branches as they would on a Homeworld tree, some small Earth objects had been placed in a plastic storage container on the neighbouring shelf. A second box was quickly filling up with little objects, and Lisbeth pulled the small coin she’d acquired on Tuki Station, and put it into the empty box. On warships, she’d been told, there was obviously no room and no budget for larger presents, so little tokens would do. Romki had told her the coin was barabo — not at all valuable, more of a religious token than currency, but it had been curious to look at, for someone not accustomed to such things.

The B9 was playing, and some spacers were standing about the tree and swaying to the music. Inside the first box were odd, curious things — some coins, a very old pair of sunglasses, half a paper book cover, some bits of inexpensive jewellery. Her eyes settled on the little figurine of a curly-headed man sitting in the lotus position, meditating. She knew that one — the Buddha, the Kulina still followed some of his teachings. She wondered if the Major had donated this guy to the Exodus ‘lost’ box, long ago when she’d first arrived on the
Phoenix.
All objects from the old Earth itself, recovered by more recent teams in hazmat suits, then decontaminated. All that was left. Lisbeth recalled Exodus with her family on Homeworld, the songs and solemnity, the little gifts, the thanksgiving meal to follow. And for the first time since she’d come aboard
Phoenix
, the homesickness became truly overwhelming.

Deliverance in seven days, she told herself firmly as she left Storage 5C and headed to Romki’s Bay 8D. Deliverance was a far more festive and happy day than Exodus. Think on that, and as the marines would say, cheer the fuck up.

She arrived in Romki’s bay to find it looking like a scene from a mad scientist's fantasy. The hacksaw queen’s huge head, suspended once more in the
Phoenix
’s biggest nano-tank, now rigged with various attendant cabling that snaked across the floor like some rubber jungle plant. Linked to the cables were a number of workstations, large displays and Engineering crew with AR glasses and belt booster units for extra processing power, talking and gesturing as they set up the software construct that would monitor this process.

The nano-tank’s micro-bots were being reprogrammed to tavalai specifications. Those specifications included a basic understanding, for the first time, of hacksaw neurology. Exactly how much the Dobruta knew about that neurology, given that they were supposed to be destroying it and not spreading it,
Makimakala
’s specialists wouldn’t say. But the idea was to tap into the still-functioning sub-portions of the queen’s brain and draw enough responses from them to establish a neural construct on a
Phoenix
processor.

That construct would be a simulation, the tavalai’s experts said, of the queen’s brain… or as much as still existed. Much of it would still be guesswork, as an AI’s brain function depended on both hardware and software to work, and here the hardware was half-destroyed. But it would reveal enough of the neural language that the brain’s synthetic neurons used to speak to each other, to establish patterns and processing routines. And possibly, they thought, the embedded routines and codings in the communications-intensive parts of the brain that dealt with encryption.
That
was the grail that had them all excited. The ability to break drysine encryption, and read data from drysine civilisation that no organic eyes had ever seen.

“This music is fascinating,” said Commander Nalben as he peered at a display rig, melodies soaring from somewhere nearby. “You call it the B9?”

“It’s by a man named Beethoven,” said Romki from behind a similar rig. “This is his ninth symphony, the last he ever wrote. A long time ago on Earth, we had nations — you know, governments confined within geographical boundaries on the surface, like the kuhsi still have.”

“Yes, we had them once on our homeworld,” Nalben agreed. “So long ago it makes my brain hurt to think of it.”

“Anyhow, each of those nations had a national song, an anthem. So after humans lost Earth, we decided we needed a new anthem. None of the old national anthems would do because we were people from all nations, and picking one over the others would leave most people offended. So they had a vote for a single song that could summarise all that was best and greatest about humanity, and this is what they chose. We play it every Exodus, to remember what was lost, and it’s become the de facto anthem of the human race.”

“There are some very big performances,” Lisbeth added from the edge of the crowd of working humans and tavalai about the queen’s head. “My family sponsors a huge performance in Destiny Park in Shiwon, on Homeworld. It draws about a hundred thousand people, we sit up the front every year, it’s wonderful. Stan, can I do something?”

“Why yes, you can monitor the construct parameters at… screen three over there. With Spacer Gidjadagarno there, you can call her Gidj.” Lisbeth went and pulled out a folding wall-seat beside Spacer Gidj — a smaller, tan-skinned tavalai little bigger than Lisbeth. She wore a deep blue spacer’s jumpsuit and harness with pockets full of technician’s gear, and moved across a little to make space for Lisbeth behind the big screen.

“Hello,” Lisbeth said a little nervously, fishing out AI glasses and headset, and tuning herself into the local construct. “I’m Lisbeth.”

“Gidj,” said Gidj, just as nervously. No English, Lisbeth guessed, as Gidj leaned across to her buddy and said something in rapid, rhythmic Togiri. She smelt faintly floral. Lisbeth wondered if it was natural, or perfume.

“And was this Beethoven man killed when the krim struck Earth?” Commander Nalben asked.

“Oh no,” said Romki. “He died nine hundred years before Earth did.”

“But…” Nalben looked puzzled. Lisbeth was surprised she could actually read the expression. “That would put him very early in Earth’s history. Surely this music is post-industrial?”

“The dawn of the industrial age,” said Romki. “About one hundred years before electricity.”

“You are joking,” said Nalben, astonished.

“I’m most certainly not,” said Romki with amusement.

“This is far too sophisticated for pre-industrial art!” Nalben insisted. “The instruments… the structure and composition!”

Romki smiled and shrugged as he worked, rearranging code structures on his screen. “What can I say? Humans were early developers by galactic standards. The worst part is that our music got steadily worse after Beethoven, we haven’t matched him since.”

“Well
that’s
very subjective,” Lisbeth retorted.

“Ah, the young protest. But it’s true.”

“It might be true for this
type
of music but it’s not true overall.”

“I see the trees on the way up from midships,” Nalben interrupted. “Are they objects of worship?”

“They’re symbols of the green Earth that was lost,” Lisbeth answered before the tavalai’s brain was irreversibly filled with the Romki-view of human history. “They used to be a symbol from an old Earth religious holiday called Christmas that hardly anyone knows today…”

“Nonsense,” Romki snorted, “Christianity remains quite strong on a number of worlds.”

“But these days
most
people,” Lisbeth continued with a stern glance at the professor, “know them as Exodus trees. In some places it is tradition to wear black and refrain from alcohol or sex or whatever for a whole week until Deliverance comes. Then everyone goes crazy and there are huge parties and fireworks.”

“Seems odd to throw a huge party to celebrate the successful genocide of another species,” Nalben observed. Deliverance celebrated the final human victory over the species that had killed Earth. Having won through the intense defences about the krim homeworld, and confronted with the prospect of a bloody battle of pacification on the surface, a human freighter captain named Lien Wang had settled the issue by boosting her ship to high-V and hitting the planet hard enough to kill every living thing on the surface. With every Deliverance came great toasts to Lien Wang and her crew, and several Fleet marching songs made reference to ‘giving them the old Lien Wang’. The date had missed the anniversary of Earth’s destruction by a week. From there, Fleet had mopped up the rest, and the krim had not had any friends, like the humans’ friends the chah’nas, to save them.

“What would you have done?” Petty Officer Kadi said coldly to Commander Nalben. “To the species that murdered your homeworld, with tavalai weapons?” Human crew paused in their work to stare. Tavalai crew, slower on the pickup through their translators, looked about in confusion.

“Now now Petty Officer,” Romki intervened. “Not tavalai weapons. Krim made everything themselves, and the tavalai ceased most trade with the krim after they hit Earth.”

“After getting them into space and making them everything they were,” Kadi retorted. A few of the tavalai exchanged glances. None were armed.

“I merely make the observation, Petty Officer,” Commander Nalben said coldly, “that there is a cosmic irony in taking such joy in a successful genocide. Something that has only occurred twice in all Spiral history — once by these creatures we are studying before us, when they exterminated their creators long ago, and once by humanity.”

Cold silence followed. Lisbeth had heard tales of tavalai stubbornness. Even on a human warship on Exodus, tavalai would make no apologies for the past or the present. Another time, Lisbeth might have curled up in a corner at the sight of conflict and hoped that someone else would do something about it. But suddenly she could think only of Carla, dying to save her, and how pathetically unworthy she was of that sacrifice.

“
Phoenix
crew!” she said loudly. “You have orders to work with
Makimakala
crew to partially reestablish this AI’s cognitive matrix. Is this helping?” She gave a dirty look at Petty Officer Kadi, who should have known better. And if it made him suddenly wonder if she’d report him to her brother, so much the better.

“Okay people, back to work,” Kadi said suddenly, burying his attention once more in his display. Romki glanced across at Lisbeth, and gave a smile and a nod.

Lisbeth exhaled hard, and turned to Gidj. “Excuse me, Spacer Gidj? You have translator working? Yes, good. Can you explain this analysis matrix to me?”

T
race arrived
at Tactical straight from her workout, more relaxed than usual following aerobic sprints on the treadmill. Tactical was on the H-bulkhead beside Assembly, the rattle and whine of ongoing armour prep echoing through the walls. Her Lieutenants were already there, Lieutenant Zhi just settling in a chair with a meal on his lap. There had been a table here once, but Trace had had it taken out when she’d assumed command six years ago. The holographic setup had been put in the ceiling, and she liked to pace around in the centre space between encircling chairs.

“Okay,” said Trace, sipping a fruit smoothie as she sat on the edge of the commander’s chair. “News from the mad scientists in Engineering — the drysine queen did not come alive and eat everyone’s brains, so that’s nice.”