Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (10 page)

He released Romki and moved off, low and crouched between the green partitions. Romki followed, trying to imitate Hiro’s effortless glide. They emerged onto a new pool, wider with several low tables and half-consumed food, filled with children and some adults who peered anxiously in the direction of commotion and shouts beyond the greenery. Several looked at Hiro in alarm as he passed, and Hiro made a motion of forefinger to lips, shushing them. The tavalai only looked confused.

“They don’t understand what that means!” Romki whispered harshly, then gave them a more familiar, calming gesture with both hands as he passed. Beyond the pool, Hiro immediately crouched, pressed low and motionless against a tree fern trunk. Romki copied, and ahead a tavalai staffer shouted angrily and waved his arms at something out-of-sight… and leaped back in fear at a torrent of rattling clicks, and the swipe of a long black arm. A knife flashed in that clawed hand, and the staffer yelled for help and retreated. The sard looked about, Romki ducking down just in time.

A moment passed, then Hiro was beckoning him on, and Romki went to find the sard departed. Another pool, this one empty, and some stairs beyond, leading down into the floor. A sard stood astride the stairs, peering down into the room below. Rather than scampering for cover before it turned, Hiro kept moving forward, drawing a silenced pistol from his jacket. He shot the sard point blank in the back of the head, caught the body as it fell, and lowered it soundlessly. Beckoned for Romki to follow him, and moved quickly down the stairs, leaving Romki to pick his way over the splayed limbs, one still twitching.

The callousness horrified him. Sard or not, this was a living, sentient, highly intelligent being. And Hiro had dispatched it like swatting a fly. Romki followed Hiro down the stairs and into a spotless kitchen with gleaming steel benches, and several tavalai and barabo chefs huddled warily in a corner, some brandishing knives.

“Come on,” said Hiro, moving rapidly down the next corridor.

“Stay here,” Romki told the chefs in Togiri, and followed. “Hiro. Hiro!” As Hiro paused in the corridor to glance back, thinking Romki had discovered something important. “No murder! Not for me, I won’t allow it!”

Hiro frowned incredulously. “Murder? That was a sard.”

“Yes, murder! Just because we’ve been at war with them does not give you the right to go around killing them at your pleasure! They’re intelligent beings and humans should have standards!”

Hiro gave a humourless smile. “You think you know them because you’ve studied them? You’re an ignorant fool and you understand nothing. If you really understood how
they
think, like you’re always proclaiming you do, you’d favour genocide, like I do. There’s an access hatch ahead, now move.”

“
H
ey there guys
!” Lisbeth said brightly, holding a food tray she’d brought from the hotel restaurant. Here on the second floor there wasn’t as much traffic in the accommodation block, nor were there the crates and armour lining the walls. But here beside the elevators were Privates Dagan and Katta from Echo Platoon, in light armour, guarding a door. “I brought you some food, I figured you must be hungry by now.”

“You can’t come in,” Dagan said apologetically. “Sorry Lis.” They didn’t really know her — there were about two hundred marines in Phoenix Company, and Lisbeth hadn’t been on the ship long enough to get to know more than a handful. But gratifyingly, word had spread amongst the marines that Lisbeth Debogande was a good sort, and most treated her like a familiar friend.

“Oh come on, it’s been a whole day!” Lisbeth protested. “Look, at least let me update him on…”

“His information updates are being restricted too,” said Katta. “LC’s orders.”

Lisbeth sighed. “Have you heard anything? Has he asked to speak to anyone?”

“Couldn’t tell you if he had.”

The door opened, and Jokono emerged, immaculate as ever with neat hair and lean, brown features. Seeing him in a
Phoenix
spacer jumpsuit took some getting used to… though probably not as much as it did for him, looking at her. That had been a recent change — typically he preferred civilian suits.

“Hello Lisbeth,” said Jokono with a frown. “Something I can help you with?”

“Yes! I just wanted to see Stan, thank you…” and she moved to step past him. He stopped her.

“I’m sorry Lisbeth, your brother’s orders were quite specific.”

Lisbeth looked at him in disbelief. “Hang on, you work for me! You’re the head of Debogande family security!”

“And the senior member of the Debogande family present is your brother,” Jokono said calmly. “And actually…”

“Erik’s the senior member of the family?” Lisbeth retorted. “Says who? He’s not primarily serving the family interests out here — he’s the commander of
Phoenix
! The only family member out here entirely on family business is me! So that means
I’m
the senior Debogande here!”

“And actually,” Jokono completed his previous sentence, “my contract is with your mother. How best to serve that contract is up to my discretion, not yours. I’m sorry Lisbeth — this is a
Phoenix
matter, and your brother commands
Phoenix
. He’s ordered that no one sees Romki. That’s final.”

Lisbeth glared at him. Anger was not usually her style. And the last time she’d tried to boss around family employees with the ‘don’t you know who I am?’ routine, she’d been five, and her mother had scolded her so harshly that she’d cried. But the lesson had been learned — in the Debogande family, you respected people according to how well they did their jobs, and not whether their job performance personally benefitted
you
in any way.

But she’d worked with Stan Romki a lot in the past three months, helping him with his analysis of the captured hacksaws. And perhaps it was her mother’s insistence on respect for ability above personal charms, but she didn’t find him half as aggravating as some of the regular crew appeared to. And she couldn’t stand seeing him locked in solitary like this for doing something that surely,
surely
had some kind of reasonable explanation…

“Hello Lisbeth,” came Romki’s voice from out of the still-open door behind. “Please don’t worry about me, they’re treating me very well, and I did violate their rules so I have only myself to blame.”

“Stan!” she called past Jokono’s shoulder. “Stan, do you need anything?”

Jokono hit the door-close before he could reply. Lisbeth gave him a genuinely angry stare. Jokono looked pained, not having seen that expression many times before. But he did not apologise.

“There you go boys,” Lisbeth told the marines, handing over the food tray. It was a barabo nut fudge, in tasty squares. The crew had taken a liking to it, and the chefs said it was healthy. “I don’t blame
you
, you’re just doing your jobs.”

She gave Jokono a final glare and departed toward where Carla and Vijay were waiting for her at the end of the hallway.

“
I
’m less
concerned with Romki being an ass than I am with the sard trying to kill him,” said Erik, chewing his thumbnail.

Just because
Phoenix
was docked, that didn’t mean the bridge crew shifts were any different. In fact, it meant that Lieutenant Draper,
Phoenix
’s second-shift commander, was getting a lot less sleep whenever Erik left his usual first-shift post to go attend to some matter on station.

“Tried to kill him twice, maybe,” Trace added. “The bomb might have been sard too.” The full first-shift crew were in their seats, watching scan, listening to coms, the same as they would in deep space. Trace had joined them, with Jokono and Lieutenant Dale, who had the most combat experience of any marine, including plenty against the sard during the war. They gathered about Erik’s command chair, holding to low overheads and screen supports in the crowded bridge. Standing was always uncomfortable on the bridge — seated was the only way to feel like you had any room, with all your screens and displays arranged about you. “If Romki didn’t arrange that himself to get away from his escort.”

“You seriously think that?” Kaspowitz asked her, a skeptical eyebrow raised.

“I might.”

“No you don’t.” Kaspowitz was one of the few on
Phoenix
who’d dare contradict her so openly. He thought she was starting to take her disagreement with Romki personally, and had told Erik so. She liked to pretend she was unemotional, Kaspowitz insisted, but in truth she was quite raw, and wrapped herself in thick Kulina armour to hide it. She’d broken the Kulina oath of unquestioning service to Fleet because she’d come to care about one man, and one ship and its crew, more than the oath that insisted she should have betrayed them. And now she was determined not to let that one man’s legacy — Captain Pantillo’s legacy, the father she’d never truly had — fade and die. Captain Pantillo had given everything to prevent civil war between Worlders and Spacers. Now that was Trace’s cause too, and she didn’t take kindly to Romki’s provocations.

“So what
does
Romki have to say for himself?” Erik asked Jokono.

“Oh, that conversation didn’t get much beyond him explaining to me how stupid I was and that I couldn’t possibly understand.” Jokono’s was the dry humour of a policeman who’d learned long ago to be amused by infuriating behaviour because that was easier. Erik thought he might be nearly as even-tempered as Trace. “But I don’t believe he’s capable of blowing anyone up, least of all people standing directly alongside himself.”

“I thought you didn’t make guesses?” Trace accused him.

“Getting a good read on a person’s character has a way of allowing you to narrow the possibilities,” Jokono replied, unruffled. “Romki’s no coward, he’s a very brave man considering he’s not a fighter beyond some chah’nas martial arts training. But he does value himself and his personal safety far too highly to attempt anything that reckless. Reckless acts are beneath him. He’s not one to leave things to chance.”

Trace listened with her nose wrinkled in distaste, but did not protest the analysis.

“So do the sard have it in for Romki?” Lieutenant Shahaim wondered from her Helm post at Erik’s side. “Or for
Phoenix
?”

“They killed Randal Connor,” Jokono reminded her. “Tortured him for information. Connor had no connection to Romki that we know of. As far as we know, they’d have done the same to Romki — tortured him and killed him. Which suggests that their interest in Connor and their interest in Romki is the same, and the only thing that links them is
Phoenix
.”

Erik frowned. “You’re saying they didn’t kill Connor to find out about his role in our peace conference?”

“Well who can say for sure?” said Jokono, with an expansive gesture. “But Romki certainly has nothing to do with the peace talks…”

“The sard don’t necessarily know that,” Trace interrupted.

“Yes, but attacking a tavalai recreational facility, evidently in search of one human occupant, seems a very public disruption even for sard. Sard have served the tavalai, and though tavalai influence here has reduced, the tavalai still built this station and have great status. Which indicates that the sard place great value on Romki, as a target, if they’re willing to upset the tavalai to get him. You don’t cause such a big disruption for someone who just
might
know something of what interests you. You cause it when you’re absolutely
certain
that person knows something of what interests you.

“Romki is quite well known for his knowledge of alien civilisations. He’s very disinterested in human politics by comparison. Even sard could discover this, with basic research, especially amongst the tavalai. Romki is particularly well known to the tavalai. Even famous, in some small academic circles.”

“So what’s your theory?” Erik pressed.

“No theory,” Jokono said calmly. “Just deduction. Sard are known to be very unsubtle in pursuit of their interests. If their interest was
Phoenix
’s role in human politics, then Romki was a very poor target. It seems unlikely. Which if true could mean that Connor was also not targeted for his interest in human politics.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know. Something concerning
Phoenix
. Something about us that interests the sard. Probably not about human politics, something else.”

“This ship was built by the alo,” Dale said grimly. “That might interest them.”

It was Romki’s pet theory — the alo having a hacksaw connection. Alo were on the human side of the Triumvirate War, sard on the tavalai side. Many tavalai found alo expansionism almost as worrying as the human kind, and speculated that the humans were really only puppets in the war, while the alo were the puppet-masters. Romki more or less agreed with them.

“It might interest them,” Erik agreed, glancing at his nav feed as Kaspowitz flashed the latest automated approach routines from the human ship
Grappler
. It had arrived twenty-one hours ago, its transponder stating its previous location as Cyranis, and clearly the ship that Randal Connor had told them about. The one carrying senior Worlder representatives, an advance party to discuss matters before the peace conference on Joma Station. “But if the sard had wanted to get information on
Phoenix
, they’d have been better off targeting our crew, not a passenger. I still feel we’re missing something. Something big. If you’re trying to run calculus without half of the data, you’re in real danger of getting misled by false conclusions. We need more data, I’m wary of too much guessing.” He glanced at Dale. “You’ve seen sard up close Lieutenant, more than any of us. Anything to add?”

“Don’t be fooled by sard,” Dale said grimly. “I’ve told all my marines when we fight them — they can seem stupid and primitive sometimes, but don’t believe it. Their maths are better than ours, for one thing.”

“Way better,” Kaspowitz agreed. “I’ve seen some of their navigation calculus off a captured ship. It’s insane. Their computing tech is the one indigenous technology they rock at.”

Dale nodded. “Sard play chess. Individual moves in isolation look reckless and suicidal. Only when you step back and see the whole game do you see how it all makes sense. They love maths and prime numbers, and they love patterns in those numbers. Everything is tactical, and everything we’ve seen them do so far is with some kind of big plan in mind. That’s not my prejudice — that’s just how they think. They can’t help it.”

“Excuse me, LC?” Erik looked to the speaker — it was Lieutenant Shilu on Coms, peering back past his heavy headrest. “I’ve just put in a second request to talk to
Grappler
’s captain, and again I’ve had no reply. The last request was thirty minutes ago.”

“What’s their range?”

“Now at thirteen seconds light, ETA on current approach path another seventeen hours. I’m getting an automated response, it just seems odd because according to Randal Connor, they’re here to see us, right?”

“Right,” said Erik, equally puzzled. “Maybe they’re worried about someone listening. Keep trying, if they don’t want to talk I suppose there’s nothing we can do. But keep an eye on them.”

“Aye sir.”

“And Major? Since we’ve got a situation on docks, it might be an idea to think ahead of time how we’re going to arrange our greeting party.”

Trace smiled at him benignly, like an adult to a small child who had just mentioned something obvious. Erik rolled his eyes and dismissed them.

L
ieutenant Wei Shilu
repressed a yawn as he stood on the late off-shift dock opposite Berth 30. On the berth display besides flashing lights, some barabo writing scrawled, then flipped unexpectedly to English text — Alberta Freightlines,
Grappler
, then its human-space registration.

“Hey look,” Shilu said to Lieutenant Alomaim alongside. “English. I didn’t know Tuki Station had any English.”

“They all think the humans are going to come and save them from the sard,” said Alomaim, glancing up-docks to where Second Squad were deployed in sections against inner and outer walls, watching dock traffic with weapons at ease. “They might make English compulsory next. Rather than learn to fight sard themselves.” He murmured low commands into his com, advising one of the sergeants.

Shilu felt very exposed out here, on the cold dock with no armour or weapons. Being surrounded by Bravo Platoon helped, Second Squad to his left, Third to his right, and First with their Lieutenant about and behind him. Even Heavy Squad was out, with full scary weaponry, chain guns and autocannon, in pairs against the inner-rim wall between barabo shopfronts. With three sard ships at dock, no one was taking any chances.