Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Read online

  Drysine Legacy

  The Spiral Wars

  Joel Shepherd

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  About the Author

  “Copyright © 2015 by Joel Shepherd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  Cover Illustration by Stephan Martiniere. http://www.martiniere.com/

  Titles by Kendall Roderick. http://rmind-design.com

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Four hundred meters above the valley floor, there was a strange kind of peace to be found, hanging by toes and fingertips in the mid-afternoon sun. Colonel Timothy Khola clipped his harness onto the next stretch of rope up the cliff-face, and took a moment to look around. The valley was beautiful, filled with tall green trees above which the cliff rose vertically, white and yellow stone aglow against the green forest below. What a joy to climb in this place, after the austere and brutal beauty of his native Sugauli.

  To his left, a young officer-cadet was struggling, breathing hard with obvious fatigue as she searched for her next set of hand and foot-holds in the rock above. “Cadet Lo!” Khola called across. “How you doing?”

  “I’m…” she gasped for more air. “I’m fine sir!

  “Slow and easy, Cadet,” he told her. “Slow and easy. Remember, you can’t be fast if you’re rushed. It’s all about rhythm and pacing.”

  Cadet Lo nodded intently. Beneath her, other cadets were following the rope up, like so many insects slowly crawling up a wall. From this height, it would take at least ten seconds to hit the trees if you fell. Such a view. Of course, with proper use of ropes and harness for beginners, falling was impossible. Not like Kulina trainees learned to do it on Sugauli, free-climbing, for that ultimate rush of focused concentration. Free-climbing one learned to lose oneself entirely within the task at hand, and learned that skill and execution, in the moments that mattered, were all the tools one needed to stave off certain death. Of course, he couldn’t recommend free-climbing to these marine officer-cadets. His job was to train them, not kill them. But for himself, with the ropes and harness in place, it wasn’t quite the same.

  To his right, a lean, brown figure flowed smoothly up the rock from one hold to another, as fast as his fellow cadets were slow. Cadet Rohan, Khola saw with little surprise. “Good afternoon Colonel!” Rohan called across to him with a calm smile as he climbed. “You were right, it is a beautiful climb!”

  “You just make sure you stop and help the next person you rocket past, Cadet Rohan!” Khola replied. “If you reach your target thirty minutes before the rest of your squad, the enemy will thank you, then kill you.”

  “Yes Colonel!” Rohan continued to scamper upward, fast but not rushed. Khola shook his head, and followed with fast, easy pulls of his strong bare arms.

  Fifty meters from the top, a cruiser howled overhead, black and official-looking, then vanished beyond the lip above. Khola kept his pace steady, giving encouragement to cadets around him. Ahead, Cadet Perris was in difficulty, having been passed by several since the bottom. Khola stayed with him until the top, not telling him where to put his hands and feet, for it was not his job to perform basic skills for these cadets. He simply reminded Perris to breathe and relax, and soon enough, in a better frame of mind, the young man made the top and hauled himself over the lip with obvious relief, and cheers from those already arrived.

  No-one gave Khola a hand up, that would have been temerity. Looking around as he unhooked, he found that three-quarters of those who’d started were already here. Now they sat exhausted and took in the view, or took turns helping others up, or put salves on sore and bleeding fingers. Beyond the cadets, the cruiser waited on the rock before the tree line. Nearby stood a man in blue spacer uniform with a rear admiral’s stars, talking with two others as they admired the view and watched the arriving cadets.

  Khola walked to them, displeased they’d not waited another thirty minutes until everyone had summited. Turning these kids into officers and warriors had been his life’s work for the past ten years. Even most admirals knew better than to interrupt him on the job.

  The officers saw him approach, and Khola pulled a crumpled cap from his pocket, and yanked it on in order to perform the proper salute. The officers returned it. Beside the Rear Admiral was Major Varika from the Academy, whom Khola knew well, and a spacer captain whom he didn’t.

  “Colonel,” said the Major. “Rear Admiral Bedi, and Captain Cain.” Bedi offered a handshake, which let Khola know that the formality-level was low. That wasn’t good. When Fleet brass came calling with friendly gestures, usually they meant to ask him something he wouldn’t like.

  “How are they coming, Colonel?” asked Rear Admiral Bedi.

  “They’re a good bunch,” said Khola. “They’re disappointed they’re not likely to see any action. I tell them to be careful what they wish for, but they don’t listen to me.”

  Bedi nodded. He was a smallish man, round-cheeked, a little portly. Amazing how fast some former ship captains put on the kilos, once back on station dock or planet-side assignment, with a table full of nice things every day instead of the usual ship food. “Colonel, I’ve been sent here by the Guidance Council.”

  Khola took a deep breath. “Yes Admiral.” This was why they’d come to him. He didn’t like it, but he was Kulina, and Kulina made a lifestyle of doing things that most people would rather not. “Why me?”

  “It must be someone beyond reproach,” said Bedi with certainty. “The group was in agreement. Your service record is exemplary, even by Kulina standards. You hold the Liberty Star. You have repeatedly refused higher promotion in favour of your Academy role. The wider Fleet hold a low opinion of officers who do their superiors’ dirty work just to win promotion. You are not that sort of officer, and everyone knows it.”

  “So this is about appearances, then.”

  “Isn’t everything?” asked Bedi. “Look Colonel, they screwed up. Captain Pantillo was a pain in the ass, but you can’t just kill the guy because he gets in your way. Or if you do, at least have the sense to do it quietly. Not court-martialled on Homeworld for millions of people to see, and billions more when the media grab it. And to try to pin it on Debogande. Of all the hare-brained schemes.”

&nbs
p; Khola did not agree with that. People were always wise in hindsight. But Rear Admiral Anjo had almost pulled it off. Lieutenant Commander Debogande was the son of one of the most powerful industrialists in human space, and such powerful people attracted distrust. Plenty of people would have believed that Alice Debogande would murder to get her way. They’d been prepared to believe it of her son, when Fleet had accused him of murdering his own Captain.

  The reason they hadn’t believed it, was Major Trace Thakur, Phoenix’s marine commander, and another of the four still-living Kulina officers, along with Khola himself, who wore the Liberty Star. Kulina were known to be incorruptible, and with Thakur on his side, the weight of suspicion had shifted away from LC Debogande, and onto the senior Fleet commanders who’d accused him. And now that Fleet had far larger battles to fight, the whole thing was becoming one enormous distraction they could no longer afford.

  “We’ve got the makings of a full scale insurgency going on with the Worlders,” said Bedi, gazing over the exhausted cadets. “Spacers are with us, Spacer Congress is with us… but they have sympathy for Debogande and Pantillo, and the entire Phoenix crew. They just don’t believe the story any longer, and the more they hear, the less they believe it. It makes us look nasty, and it makes us look stupid.”

  “It makes us look treacherous,” Khola added calmly.

  Bedi’s mouth twisted with displeasure. “Yes,” he conceded. “Phoenix got screwed. The more we deny it, the worse we look. It’s time to cut our losses on this one. And cutting our losses also means cutting the dead weight that’s associated with it.”

  “You want a scapegoat.”

  “Three scapegoats,” Bedi corrected. “Two Fleet Admirals, and one Supreme Commander. We’ll deal with Chankow and Ishmael. But we’d like you to handle Anjo.”

  “And what happens to Phoenix?”

  “We’ll make them an offer. With the people who screwed them gone, they’ll have justice for their Captain, and vindication. We’ll ask them to come home, and forgive their crimes.” Khola exhaled a hard breath. Bedi raised an eyebrow. “You disapprove?”

  “Major Thakur has committed grave crimes, against Fleet and against Kulina. She violated her oath. Amongst our own kind, the penalty is death.”

  Bedi looked surprised. “She is one of your best, Colonel. You’d really kill her?”

  “Admiral, if I had done the things she’s done, whatever the cause, the Kulina Council would kill me. And I’d deserve it.”

  Bedi nodded slowly. “Kulina swore an oath to serve Fleet. We’ll need you to hold to that oath once more, Colonel. If Phoenix accepts amnesty, you will let Major Thakur live. Whatever your custom, and whatever Fleet’s standing agreement that we will allow Kulina to practise their custom where ever possible.”

  “Phoenix will not accept amnesty,” Khola said grimly.

  “Well I think they might. And I know Fleet ask a lot of the Kulina, Colonel, but I must insist again that you forgo your custom in this instance. Should you have Major Thakur executed after Phoenix’s amnesty, Fleet will not look the other way. The perpetrators shall be punished, whoever they are, am I clear?”

  “Very clear, Admiral. But Phoenix will not accept amnesty.”

  “Very well. We will see.” Among the trainee-officers, Cadet Rohan was helping new arrivals to unclip, and showing them the finer points of ropes and harnesses. “That lad there looks Kulina,” Bedi suggested.

  “Cadet Rohan, yes. Since he arrived from Sugauli two years ago, he’s been leading his class on half of the disciplines, and is top fifth in the others.”

  Bedi whistled. “Some effort in this field. Was Thakur that good?”

  Khola smiled faintly. “Trace wasn’t great at everything. Her classwork and theory were never much better than class average. She coasted. Some assessors thought it could hold her back. I warned her about it, once. She said that obsessive focus on academia interfered with her field performance. She was all about field performance, rarely less than an A-plus on anything field related. I said that some assessors doubted not just her application, but her ability. Her next academic test came in at ninety-five percent, just to prove the point. And then dropped back to her usual eighty-five percent, like clockwork.”

  “How many years did you have her for?” Bedi asked curiously.

  “Just the one.” Khola’s smile grew broader. “She was more than a good cadet, she was a good kid. Somehow managed to combine real leadership with real empathy for the vast majority that couldn’t match her. Many young hotshots don’t manage it.”

  “Yes,” said Bedi. “I remember.”

  “And she remains the single most determined and focused individual I’ve ever met. Mental discipline like a steel trap.”

  “And yet despite all your admiration, you’d still rather see her dead?”

  “In all the seven hundred years of the Kulina, no serving warrior has ever violated the oath as she has, and been allowed to live.” Khola turned to the Admiral, and looked him in the eye. “When the time comes — and believe me Admiral, the time will come — I’ll kill her myself.”

  2

  Alone on the bed of her hotel room, Trace Thakur sat cross-legged and meditated. The bed was too soft. It was a joke among her marines, that she refused even small luxuries in favour of things that were tougher, harder, more unpleasant. But in this case it was true — the bed was too soft, and her posture suffered. She couldn’t sit on the floor because her full armour suit currently occupied much of it by the door, while her huge Koshaim-20 rifle took up the rest beside her bed.

  With much of Phoenix Company crashing about in the hallways, the hotel quarters were the only place quiet enough to meditate in. Usually when she meditated, she focused only on her breathing, making it slower and deeper until all time and space seemed to drift with the gentle rhythm of her heart. When she was younger, that focus had come naturally. In the last few years, however, that peace had been harder and harder to find.

  When inward focus abandoned her, she typically thought of clouds. In her quarters at the Kulina Academy on Sugauli, she’d watched them rolling in across the ragged black mountains, building into great, thundering storms. But thinking of Sugauli only made her think of Aran, and how she’d stared out of the dirty windows of the coroner’s office at age seven, having just seen his body, and wondering why the clouds looked so unchanged. Didn’t they know that her brother was dead? Didn’t they care? Her whole universe had changed, yet the clouds rolled on regardless. Like it didn’t matter. Like nothing did.

  Aran had been an apprentice miner in Sugauli’s many pits and shafts, having left home and school early, like so many Sugauli youngsters. The money was good, far better than a more advanced education might earn, but the safety conditions weren’t as great. A loader he’d been operating had malfunctioned in an earth tremor, and run off the side of a huge, deep pit. For perhaps twenty seconds, the coroner’s report confirmed, the loader had hung upon the edge of that pit, dangling, while Aran had struggled with the unfamiliar safety harness and shouted for help. Men had been near enough to help, but had not. They’d been scared. And sure enough, the loader had fallen, and taken Aran down with it.

  Trace had hated those men. She hated their weakness. Like she hated her own father’s weakness, in being the violent, drunken oaf who’d driven Aran away at such a young age. And like she’d hated her mother, for caring more about her dreary social life, gambling and drinking than she did about her own children. There had seemed to be so little virtue in the world. People put their selfish needs first, and disasters followed. From then, she’d dreamed only of becoming Kulina. The Kulina were at war with the tavalai, but the true war that Trace had wished to wage was the one within her own heart.

  On Phoenix she’d found comradeship and love — not the petty, selfish love of a girl with a boy, but the love of people who needed each other so profoundly, for simple survival, that their individual identities began to fuse into a single, greater whole. That love was the gre
atest happiness she’d ever known, and so she distrusted it. Love and happiness were selfish things. Selfishness had killed Aran. Since becoming Kulina, she’d devoted herself to scouring all selfishness from her soul. The Kulina did not simply want to make one person better — they wanted to make the whole universe better. Selfishness made bad karma, and bad karma would eventually destroy everything good in the world. Thus you could love and be happy, yet actually make everything worse, if you loved and were happy in a selfish way. Her father had been happy when dominating others. Her mother, when gambling with noxious friends. Tavalai soldiers were happy when killing humans. ‘Happiness’ in itself was no object worth seeking. Selflessness was all.

  And so she sat here, alone in the dark, and tried to purge the human attachment from her soul. The more attached she became, the more harm she would do the very people whom she loved. Lately, purging that attachment had become very hard indeed. Some people, individually and together, she simply loved too much. And it terrified her, that she might live long enough to see her own failings hurt those very people she’d most like to save.

  A heroic death was always the most she’d expected and wanted from the war. She’d come very close on numerous occasions. But that happy fate had not been granted, and so she was stuck here, worrying over the consequences of her own selfish failure to die, as so many other Kulina had had the fortunate good sense to do.

  Her uplink coms clicked. “Hello Major,” came Hiro Uno’s voice. “You promised me a sparring session. Is now a good time?”

  Trace took a deep breath, and unfolded herself from the bed. “Of course Hiro. I’ll be right down.”

  * * *

  The marines on guard in the hotel lobby did not bother checking Lisbeth’s ID — these days everyone knew her on sight. She dressed in spacer blues and harness with Fleet insignia on the shoulders and a UFS Phoenix cap pulled tight over her frizzy brown hair, and while she did not exactly feel like one of the crew, she looked the part in every way except for the lack of rank, and unorthodox haircut. Vijay and Carla walked with her, looking like marines in just the same way — except that they weren’t. Ex-marines, but now Debogande bodyguards, protecting their charge with the light armour and weapons that Phoenix’s officers had allowed them for the task.