Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (38 page)

“He is under the protection of the Dobruta,”
Captain Pram said from behind.
“As is his vessel and his crew.”

“A traitorous thing,”
growled another of the captains.

“A necessary asset,”
Pram said firmly.
“You have had the nature of the threat explained to you. This human recognises the threat, as do the Dobruta. His actions are of greater value to the tavalai people than your own, should you refuse to join us.”

“The Dobruta judge the patriotism of the fleet?”
snorted another captain.
“We who have lost so many lives fighting the humans? Where were you, Dobruta? Off chasing ancient robots in the dark? That is a mighty ship you drive, and a mighty crew as well. We could have used its assistance in countless battles, but you were nowhere to be seen!”

Erik looked back up at Pram. While he remained stony-faced, some of his surrounding crew looked down, or sideways, or generally awkward. How were tavalai assigned to the Dobruta, Erik wondered? Did all go willingly? Because it looked like this accusation of cowardice from a regular fleet captain had stung, for some at least.

“I have described the threat to you,”
Pram repeated.
“You do not listen. Defeating it alone will be very difficult, even with the humans’ help. Those who will not fight in the moment have no right to speak of cowardice.”

“You do not dare to set foot on this ship and speak of cowardice…”

“YOU WILL NOT FIGHT!”
Pram shouted, as the translator amplified to be heard above the Togiri yell. It echoed off the high steel ceiling, and left in its wake the stillness of the rumbling cylinder rotation.
“I bring you these humans to shame you. We have fought them for half a lifetime, and by most accounts they remain our enemies yet, and STILL they are more use to tavalai security than you.”

Erik half-expected someone to start shooting, heart pounding at the dangerous escalation. Instead, there came a rumbling from many throats, spreading like ripples across the gathered tavalai. Some were low-pitched rumbles, and others high-pitched trills, descending the scale, then back up again. The captains waited as the noise continued. A decorum of some kind, Erik thought. He spared a glance at Trace. She did not return it, eyes up and watching from one side to the other with wary concern.

The trills and rumbling faded. Applause of some kind? Commentary? Some kind of debating formality? Erik wished Romki was present to make sense of it for him… but Romki was still in the doghouse for activating the queen without permission. And Erik reminded himself of how strange most Spiral species found such human oddities as the shaking of hands, not to mention banging them together to show appreciation.

“Human,”
said one of the tavalai captains, looking at Erik.
“You are at war with your own Fleet. Have you come to claim protection?”

“No,” Erik said loudly, to be sure his voice carried in this space. He hoped his translator picked up just the right amount of derision. “We need no protection from tavalai.” More rumbling, and he paused to let it pass. “And we are not at war with our own Fleet. Our Fleet is at war with us.”

“Are you a tavalai friend?”
another demanded.
“Do you wish the tavalim ill?”

Erik took a deep breath as the true answer occurred to him. He paused to look about first, and make everyone wait. His mother did that sometimes before an important answer, to make sure journalists and VIPs were hanging upon her every word.

“I did not wish the tavalim ill even
during
the war,” he proclaimed. No rumblings or trills this time. Just astonished silence. “I stand for humanity. My ship stands for humanity. We will stand alone if we must. We will defend humanity from all who choose to threaten it — our own Fleet included, if it comes to that.” He stared up at the tavalai captain who had asked him the question. “Are we a threat to the tavalai? That rather depends on you.”

“The tavalim command would like to meet with you,”
said another captain, in more friendly tones.
“You are alone, isolated. Everyone hunts you. To stand against your own Fleet is certain death. You could find shelter amongst the tavalim.”

Erik smiled grimly. “A kind offer. I struggle to find words to express the depth of my disinterest.”

Another rumble from the watchers. And some smiles, perhaps even laughter, of that odd tavalai variety. The offer had been clear enough — turn traitor to humanity, throw yourselves at the tavalai’s feet and become a pawn in their propaganda wars against Fleet. Trace gave Erik a glance for the first time. She looked impressed.

“We know you, Phoenix,”
spoke another.
“You are the butcher of our people. So many thousands you have killed, and now you come here asking us to fight with you against this dead and trifling threat.”

Erik shook his head. “I had no intention to come here — that was
Makimakala
’s doing. I came here running from my own Fleet, which is more interested in the last war than the next. This attitude is suicide. The threat is not dead and trifling, it is alive and well. We believe we have proof that the alo and the deepynines…”

More rumblings and trills, this time interrupting for the first time. Some of the tavalai made gestures of exasperation, as though wanting him to continue. But others were protesting.

“Makimakala made the same ludicrous accusations,”
another captain scoffed.
“We tavalai know the deepynines, boy, we lost billions of lives to them in the old days. The deepynines were unique among the machines because they believed with a passion that was almost a religion. And do you know
what
they believed? That artificial life would one day ascend to the next level of existence, that alternative dimensions would be found and accessed, all by the pursuit of machine-minds with machine-knowledge applying machine-science.

“They believed that organics would
stop
the ascension. They found our minds and logic too impure, too pointless. They valued progress, and viewed ten trillion organic sentiences as obstacles to be dismantled. The idea that some…remnant, of this murderous old race, has somehow survived and made common cause with an organic race? Ludicrous!”

Guffaws and rumbles of approval. Some trills of uncertainty. Were the high-pitched trills dissent? Or did they merely mark out the sides? Or was that just the women versus the men?

“And if you’re wrong?”
Captain Pram retorted.
“What a gamble to make, with the fate of the galaxy!”

“Humanity is our enemy!”
another shouted back.
“Alo are rich puppet-masters. You would have us start another war against them when they have killed so relatively few of us compared to humans?”

“You are declaring war on the sard!”
another added.
“If we attack we’ll start a war with the
sard
, let alone your damn alo! Our most valuable allies of the past thousand years!”

“The sard just attacked Joma Station with reprogrammed drysine drones!”
Captain Pram shouted at them.
“There are hundreds dead, probably thousands, possibly far worse than thousands! The tavalai fleet are the sworn protectors of this space and of our barabo allies, and here you sit, debating whether the murderous sard are still our friends?”

Uproar in the chamber. The translator failed to grasp most of it, the voices were too loud and too many, and the microphones struggled to tell one voice from the others. Erik stared up at Captain Pram, standing spacer-style with one gloved hand grasping a support, his face all grim defiance, and perhaps a little despair.

“They don’t know,” Trace said to Erik beneath the racket. “We’ll be the first arriving from Joma for days, we’re far faster than anything else. You think they might change their minds once they discover Captain Pram’s telling the truth?”

“No,” said Erik, feeling unexpectedly sorry for his tavalai counterpart. “No, I don’t. They’ll just find another reason not to help.”

“Then we’re wasting our time here.”

E
rik
, Trace and the marines paused with Captain Pram at a side-corridor stairwell before heading up to the core transit, and back to midships. The rest of the ‘meeting’ had been even less productive. Captain Pram looked downcast and grim.

“I trust you’ve gained some important insights into the functioning of the grand Tavalai Empire?” Pram said sourly.

Erik nodded. “I think I learned how you lost the war.”

Pram gave a small, bitter sound that might have been a laugh. “That is probably true. We were in power for so long, and it made us arrogant and blind. Now we have so many different interests, groups and bureaucracies, and each thinks their own concerns are more important than what needs to be done for the good of all. Even defeat has not taught us reform. If anything, it’s worse.”

“Should I be worried about them?”

Pram made an odd gesture of the head. A tavalai shrug, perhaps. “No. They will not risk the wrath of the Dobruta. Unlike humans, tavalai rarely come to blows. It is a good trait, in that we do not kill each other, and also a bad trait, in that our arguments become intractable, with each side unwilling to act decisively. It leads to paralysis. And
that
, if your historians wish to know, is why you won the war. Humans are not the tavalai’s worst enemy — the tavalai are their own worst enemy. Since the Machine Age, at least.”

“Listen,” said Erik, leaning on the doorframe and looking at Pram intently. “If that thing’s in sard space… well
Phoenix
has been declared an outlaw anyway, so we lose nothing. Sard never even signed a surrender treaty directly with humans, they just agreed to be bound by the one we signed with the tavalai. They’ve never really understood the difference between war and peace, their behaviour’s all the same in either state, so it won’t change much for human-sard relations if
Phoenix
violates their territory.

“So what about you? Because as annoying as those guys were back there, they kind of have a point — sard haven’t directly violated tavalai territory yet. If you’re the first to violate theirs, you could seriously damage tavalai-sard relations.”

Pram gazed at him directly. “The tavalai-sard alliance was based on numerous conditions. One of the largest of these was observance of all the old Spiral laws, like not digging up old AI technology and using it again. They always knew that doing so would sever the alliance. Our brave fleet captains may choose to forget, but I have not. Tavalai are nothing without our principles, and this principle we observe as the result of millennia of suffering ancestors beneath hacksaw rule. This trumps all others. I frankly don’t care if all two trillion tavalai want me skinned for it. I’m killing that base, and I’m killing it now. Show me where it is, and we’ll get started.” He gazed at Erik a moment longer, with dawning suspicion. “You say
if
it is in sard space? I think you already know.”

Erik glanced around. “Not here,” he said. “Tell you what, you come back to my place, we’ll have a drink, talk it over. I’ll introduce you to the disembodied head of a mutual friend.”

Pram’s eyes widened. “It
told
you?”

“A drink,” Erik insisted. “Your shuttle follows our shuttle. Let’s go, this party’s getting old.”

“
W
e’re going
to need a scout,” said Captain Pram, sitting in one of Engineering Bay 8D’s chairs an hour later. Before him rotated the most detailed display of the Gsi-81T base the techs had yet coaxed from the queen’s memory, displayed on portable holographics someone else had dragged in. One of the afore-mentioned drinks was clasped in Pram’s thick, webbed fingers — weak tea, as suited the tavalai taste. He pointed with his free hand at the spherical base before him. “There are a lot of weak points, but we’ll never get close enough.”

Several karasai warriors stood about with their helmets off, glaring at everyone with all the discomfort that Trace had shown on the tavalai vessel. Several of Trace’s marines stood opposite, unarmored with only light weapons, cool and watchful. One of the Captain’s accompanying crew — the tech expert called Gidj — sat with Romki and spoke in rapid Togiri, scrolling through copious data from the AI construct and the queen’s operations.

“Yes,” Kaspowitz agreed, standing by Erik’s chair at Pram’s side. The bay was not large, and all the techs, marines, and now command officers left little room to move. “Her schematics on the base are impressive, but her security details are twenty five thousand years out of date. Given the quality of the ships the sard are making here, jumping in without a scouting mission first will be suicide.”

If they’d had more numbers they could do it, Erik thought bitterly, staring at the display while sipping tea of his own. The scale of this threat should have warranted humans and tavalai acting together, perhaps with barabo security forces and whomever else wanted to join in. With overwhelming firepower, even something the scale of this base would be a relatively simple operation.

“Right, so let’s go over what we know,” Shahaim suggested. Experienced and methodical, she’d seen countless attack plans formulated across her long career. “We think a deepynine queen runs this thing. With or without alo knowledge and assistance. Are we certain the sard are only following her orders?”

“The probability is exceptionally high,” said Captain Pram. “Of course, we talk of deepynines and according to everything we know, the deepynines should never be cooperating with any organic species. So we must consider that in twenty five thousand years since their defeat, the deepynines have changed. But even so, it seems incredibly improbable that deepynines would follow sard instruction on anything.”

Again the dark cursor flickered, this time within the holographic display in the middle of the room.
Drysine drones attacking Joma Station could only be reprogrammed by deepynine command unit. Deepynine command supremacy is assured.
The words circled the drysine base several times, turning to allow all to see.

Pram looked toward the nano-tank with great displeasure. “This is most disconcerting.”

“We’d never have gotten this far without her,” said Erik. “And if you’d like to upload the data we went to TK55 to recover in the first place, we might discover something more.”

“It’s not a ‘her’,” Pram retorted. “It’s barely an ‘it’.”

“We can also expect that the base will be expecting us,” Shahaim continued, keeping them focused. “The sard ship at TK55 suggests they know we’re hunting for more information. They’ve tried to stop us acquiring it. It might also suggest they think they’re vulnerable.”

“Just as likely they’re just doing recon,” said Erik. “Like watching all the watering holes in a desert because you know your prey will most likely turn up there.”

“Well we can’t sneak in,” said Kaspowitz. “We’re a powerful ship but we’re not a quiet one. Nor is
Makimakala
. We enter that system, everyone sees the energy from our jump wave, and comes out to kill us.”

“Could run a diversion?” Shahaim suggested. “One of us jumps in, draws their attention, then the other enters and kills the base when they’re not looking?”

“They would have to be foolish to fall for that,” Pram said grimly, gazing at the holographic sphere as though it were an orange he’d like to peel. “And undermanned. We cannot assume either without better intelligence.”

Erik nodded. “A full attack run against a well defended base will be intercepted and destroyed well short of the target, along with any ordinance. The Captain’s right — we need better information first. Unfortunately, the only ship that might have had the stealth to enter the system quietly was
Rai Jang
. And even then, she’d have had to enter a long way out, and coast in silently over several weeks, then return once she was out the other side. Once we’d examined the intel, a month could have passed.”

Quiet nods around the group. That was how recon had been done in the war, and there was no way to rush it.

“Recon in force?” Shahaim wondered. “Pop in, take a look, pop out again?”

Erik shook his head. “We still have a little surprise on our side. Not much, but a little is better than none. If we expend even that just to take a look, we’ll have nothing, and then the odds of success just go way, way down.”

This ship is stealthy
, wrote the cursor on the hologram. The text did several slow laps, then faded.

“Silly computer program,” Pram muttered. “This ship is not stealthy. As the Lieutenant just said, the jump-entry wave is powerful and easily detected.”

No. This ship is deepynine.

Erik stared at those words for a moment. Everyone did. Then he got out of his chair and went to crouch before that single red eye, secured in its tank. “How is this ship deepynine?”

Systems function. Bridge function. Deepynine patterns. Deepynine powerplant, several evolutions separated from last recorded deepynine function. Comparable to sard ships that chase you.

With his back to the hologram, Erik had to crane his neck to see the words rotating there. At his side, Spacer Gidj turned her screen so that Erik could see the words there instead.

“Oh wow,” said Romki at Gidj’s side, as something occurred to him. “Lieutenant Commander, tell her… look, listen,” more loudly to make sure the queen could hear on whatever audio sensors she was plugged into. “Our ship, this ship, found your asteroid in Argitori out of millions of similar rocks. Hell of a chance, wasn’t it? If this ship has deepynine-origin sensors and computer systems, do you think that it just happened to find your rock by pure chance?”

A long pause. It was a theory that had been running around
Phoenix
since Heuron. It was the first time they’d volunteered it to the drysine queen. Erik stared into the dull, inoperative red eye, then up at Gidj’s graphics-intensive display.
Coincidence unlikely
, it admitted.
Subprogram likely, hidden in
Phoenix
scanning routines. Searching for possible drysine hidden locations.

“Oh well sure!” said Kaspowitz, with all the amazed exasperation of a Navigations Officer contemplating the enormity of that task. “But even then, hell of a lucky break. And how did this hidden routine in our scanners even know where to start?”

Unknown. Request detailed analysis of
Phoenix
computer routines.

“Yeah don’t hold your breath,” Erik told it, standing and putting both hands to his head and he turned back to the hologram. “Well we know
Phoenix
is alo-tech. And we suspect most of the alo technology came from the deepynines. It doesn’t seem unlikely that they’d bury routines in the computers so they could keep scanning for drysine survivors.”

“No, it makes perfect sense,” Shahaim agreed. “Alo are rarely allowed in our space, they can’t scan our territory for surviving drysines themselves. So they use our ships to do it, without our knowledge. The ships they built for us, anyway.”

“We’re going to have to do something about that,” Trace said warningly. She was still in full armour, keeping out of the way of a mostly-spacer discussion. “We have to be able to trust this ship.”

“Wait wait wait a moment,” Pram interrupted, waving a webbed hand for them all to stop. “It said this ship is stealthy. You, AI program… what do you mean ‘stealthy’? Can this ship be disguised to look like a deepynine ship?”

Yes.

“Dammit,” Kaspowitz muttered. “I don’t like this plan already.”

Visual contact negligible. Coms, scan, datalink can be disguised. Deepynine command unit may presume this is a deepynine ship.

“May,” Kaspowitz repeated.

“From a decent range, sure,” said Erik with intensity. “But we need to get in close. What then? Or when someone comes to inspect us? We look pretty close to one of their ships, but not completely, and they
will
see us at some point.”

AI trust data. Data communication valued above all else. Visuals secondary. Data is encoded. Sentient. Early AIs were easily misled with visual cues.
Erik looked about at the others, baffled.

“Wait,” said Trace, frowning intensely. “Lisbeth said something to me about the drone that killed her bodyguard Carla. She said it saw her in some broken mirrors above the bar where she was hiding. She said the mirrors were at all different angles, making a fragmented image. She could see it fine, but when it saw her, it hesitated.”

AI distrust visuals. Visuals are incomplete. Datalink is complete. AIs will prioritise raw data.

“Oh yes yes yes, look,” said Romki as it occurred to him. “They’re autistic. Literally, not the technological term — we don’t see autism in humans very much any longer because we have all the pre-birth genetic screenings that weed it out. But it used to be a common neurological condition where people had difficulty processing external data flows… I doubt it leads to behavioural irregularities in hacksaws as it does in organics, but it makes perfect sense as a hacksaw consciousness-paradigm. They’re AIs, they’re optimised to process binary and machine-language datalinks and they have one hundred percent control over that, it’s comfortable for them. But actual real-world data — processing vision and audio — it’s so cluttered and messy by comparison. And so for all their combat prowess, it makes sense that they’ll get a little confused sometimes, or get too caught-up data watching, like a kid who gets addicted to VR games and forgets to pay attention to the real world.”

Trace stomped forward several steps in her armour. “So we give the deepynine queen an alternative data signal to follow? A communication of some kind? To distract her?”

Yes
, wrote the holographics cursor.

“What communication?”

Another command unit. Repair this unit. With full function, I can go to meet deepynine command unit. Command units are rare, recovery of new deepynine command units will take immediate priority.

“No,” Pram said firmly. “We will not ‘repair this unit’, not in a million years.”

Erik stared at Trace. Trace was gazing at the words circling the holographics, as though someone had just offered her a glimpse of tantalising possibility. “Trace?” he asked.

“We fix her,” said Trace, pointing to the queen.

“No!” Pram insisted. “This is a stupid, lethal plan, and most likely a trick to get you all killed!”

“We fix her,” Trace repeated, “and put her in a shuttle with a platoon. We disguise
Phoenix
to look like a deepynine ship. We send the shuttle in to meet this deepynine queen. If our drysine queen can fool it into thinking she’s deepynine herself, it will be like long-lost sisters. We can make up some story about where she’s been all this time — the deepynine queen will have to let her in, finding a fellow deepynine after all this time will be top priority.”

“And then we’ll get our recon,” Shahaim said slowly. “If we’re a long-lost deepynine ship, even our unusual visuals can be explained. I don’t think any of them ever got close enough to us to see what we actually
look
like, just what our signatures look like on scan. And if we can disguise those…”

“And how do we explain that we’re flying a military shuttle into their base?” Erik wondered.

Trace shrugged. “AT-7’s not military. Common human design, used by some other species too, including barabo.”

“You’re going to go into a heavily armed sard and hacksaw base in an unarmed shuttle?” Kaspowitz asked. “Hoping that our newly repaired friend here can talk them into not blowing you out of the sky?”

“You have a better idea?” Kaspowitz rolled his eyes.

“And what then?” Erik pressed. “You go to meet the deepynine queen, she finds out you’re actually a platoon of human marines with a salvaged drysine queen’s head. She won’t be happy.”

“We’ll have to do something before that. We can’t take a nuke, they’ll have radiation scanners. If
Phoenix
were close enough, and we can find you a way in, you could do some damage.”

Erik shook his head. “Parked nearby with no V we’re not going to do much damage against something that size. But we could be in a position to take out the base defences so that
Makimakala
could make an attack run at high-V and finish them off.”

“This is lunacy,” said Pram. “First you want to reactivate a drysine queen to full capability, which I’m quite sure you lack the capabilities to do anyway — this is no plaything! This is one of the most malevolent entities in all of Spiral history! You saw TK55, you saw the medical rooms, the experiments they were conducting on live flesh-and-blood people! My people!”

“I saw,” Erik said calmly. He’d seen on vid-link, anyway.

“It’s dangerous enough in this half-functional state at present — if you
could
restore full function, it and all its kind exist only to kill organics and reinstate their own species to galactic dominance! It will say and do
anything
to restore itself to full function, and it absolutely cannot be trusted to do anything outside of its own interest.”

“Like every other species in the Spiral,” Trace said drily.

“You surely can’t be so naive as to
mean
that,” the tavalai retorted. “The Dobruta will not allow this. Our entire existence is devoted to killing things like this queen. We will not be party to its reactivation!”