Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4) Read online

  He glanced at Romki, tired as always, glasses pushed up on his bald head, and considering the parren with thoughtful hostility. That was new, from Romki. Usually he was the one instructing everyone on how important it was to not resort to base emotions when dealing with aliens. But Lisbeth had been one of his better friends on Phoenix — perhaps even his best friend. He usually approached these briefings with intellectual detachment. Now he looked like a poker player scheming how to take a hated rival’s money, house and savings.

  “Let’s begin,” Erik told them, and attention turned his way. “The data-core is in Cason System, in the Dofed Cluster. The planet is named Pashan, and its moon is Cephilae. We cannot plan what we will do there until you tell us about the Cason System’s defences, its politics, and that of the Dofed Cluster.”

  Aristan and his captains consulted briefly. Aristan sat back, with a cool flourish of robed sleeves, content to let Captain Duoam speak. “The entire Dofed Cluster is a single political entity,” said the Captain, via translator. “House Fortitude rules there. Cason System is not well populated. Cephilae is a scientific curiosity. There are interesting life forms there — animals that live in the seas. Intelligent animals, but animals all the same. Scientists study them, and other things. That is most of the population, and some wandering visitors, and temples for contemplation”

  “Tourists,” Romki interjected, having discerned the concept that the translator had not.

  “There is a single, small orbital station,” Captain Duoam continued. “A static population of perhaps a few thousand. House Fortitude fleet ships will visit there frequently. There is no way to know when. It is random, and often. Going there without invitation, we will take a chance.”

  “How many ships on that regular patrol?” Erik pressed.

  “Just one. A scout. But fast. The distances between Dofed Cluster systems is small. It can return with reinforcements within ten rotations. We must be faster than that.”

  Erik glanced at Trace. “You guys have to identify it first,” said Trace. “Once you do that, we can get it within a few days, I’d think, depending on whether we have to excavate. But it could be complicated.”

  She looked at Romki. Romki nodded. “Cason System’s star is of variable intensity,” he said. “Pashan and Cephilae are right on the outer edge of the habitable zone. Drakhil’s diary gives very precise directions to the location, but some of the language indicates a problem. He speaks of frozen lakes of liquid water, with ice on top but kept considerably warm in their depths by tectonic activity… no doubt where those interesting creatures live. The problem is that the only lakes on Cephilae that are frozen today are at the poles. Everything else is liquid. And obviously, liquid water, at warmer temperatures, expands to cover a much larger area. Drakhil’s directions to the data-core’s location are from a lake shore, and they are precise. But the lake shore has moved. I judge, and the Phoenix techs who helped me to simulate it agree, that it could have moved by more than a kilometre, as the Cason System sun has warmed, and the atmospheric temperature with it.”

  “But you’ve got other geographic features by which you can find the location?” Trace asked.

  “Yes,” said Romki, a little uncertainly. “There are hills mentioned, and other landforms that should not have moved in the twenty five thousand years since the diary was written. But we’re going to have to wait until we’re there. I know that military people like to have far more certainty than that, but I’m afraid it’s the best I can do. Even Styx agrees that the uncertainties are too many to be certain before we arrive. Doing so could be dangerous, and lead us to assume too much. It is safer to arrive, and then search for features that match the described terrain.”

  “So we don’t even have positioning coordinates?” Suli asked with faint dismay.

  “Just words Commander,” said Romki. “And words written in Klyran, at that. I am confident it will be enough, as is Styx, who is rather good at topographical calculations, as you might imagine. But it may take time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Somewhere between a lot and a little,” Romki said apologetically. “It’s the best we can do.”

  “Looks like it could be a water recovery,” Trace said to Lieutenant Jalawi. “You’ve got more experience of those than anyone else aboard.”

  Understanding dawned in Jalawi’s eyes, as he realised why he’d been invited. “I do,” he agreed. “Just hope those water critters aren’t carnivorous.”

  “Parren will undertake this search,” Aristan interjected. “You will hand over your coordinates to us, and we will perform the recovery. It is parren territory, a treasure left behind by the greatest parren of all history. Upon recovery, you can trust that we will share the data-core with you. After all, your drysine queen is the only entity capable of utilising such a treasure. Without her assistance, it is useless to us.”

  All the Phoenix crew looked at Erik in alarm. Erik gazed back at the cool, hooded parren gaze across the circle of chairs. “No,” he said, with a little more steel than he’d intended.

  “But Captain,” said Aristan, so very reasonably. “Surely you do not think that you alone recovered Drakhil’s diary? I recall that I was there too.”

  “You are one person. My entire crew put their lives on the line. No.” Their stares remained locked… or Erik thought they did. Within the folds of his hood, Aristan’s eyes weren’t entirely clear. Lisbeth. Again, the word that neither man needed to say. It hung in the air between them, like a dagger pointed at Erik’s heart.

  “And you will share this treasure with us?” Aristan asked mildly. “Once you have recovered it?”

  “That was the agreement that was imposed upon us,” Erik agreed. Lisbeth, again.

  Aristan considered him for a long moment. “Very well,” he said at last. “Given the lack of alternatives, we shall proceed.”

  After the parren had been escorted away, Suli looked at Erik with disbelief. “Does this seem as staggeringly obvious to everyone else as it does to me? I mean, he’s going to screw us, first chance he gets.”

  “Show of hands,” said Jalawi, and put his own hand up. Others followed — Romki’s immediately, then everyone else. Erik too. “Commander, I believe the answer is ‘yes, it’s staggeringly obvious to everyone.’”

  “We show him up, for one thing,” Suli continued. “You heard him just trying to take credit for recovering the diary, despite doing only a fraction what we did? Here’s a guy running the parren cult of personality to the max, and he’s not going to like sharing the credit. This has to be his success, or what’s it good for?”

  “It’s worse than that,” Romki said tiredly. “Aristan and the last half-dozen or so Domesh leaders to proceed him have built that cult of personality, as you put it Commander, around the figure of Drakhil. Yet now Aristan has discovered that Drakhil was not the man they’ve invested so much in. Aristan has a choice — he can either embrace the truth, and risk losing everything that the Domesh have built over the past few centuries, all their gains toward the restoration of great power at the head of all parren… or he can attempt to hide that truth, and make it all go away. ‘All’, in this instance, meaning us. Phoenix.”

  “But if he destroys us,” said Shilu, frowning, “then he destroys Styx. And how can he read the data-core then? Or make any use of it at all?”

  “We’ve just come to him with living proof that there is not just one hacksaw queen left in the Spiral,” Suli returned. “There are lots, all deepynines. Losing Styx isn’t the end of his chances. He thinks he may have to wait a long time, but this is a man who plays the long game. He can hold onto the data-core until then, and maybe use it to trade for influence with the deepynines.”

  “This would be almost comically unwise,” came Styx’s first interjection from the room coms.

  “No question,” Suli agreed. She was not in the habit of agreeing with Styx on anything. Erik could see her forcing herself. “Incredibly unwise. But Aristan is not a wise man.
He’s an extremely clever man. That’s a different thing entirely.”

  “And what a transformation in the man,” Romki said, in weary dismay of tediously obvious people. “Not long ago he was practically begging to make Styx’s acquaintance. Now we mention her and he barely reacts. He has learned that Styx is not his ally, and Aristan is only interested in those who will help him to power.”

  “You really think the deepynines would just kill him and take the data-core?” Shilu said skeptically. “I can think of a much worse scenario — that they don’t. Look at their behaviour lately. They’ve expanded into sard territory, obviously looking for a new ally there, to peel them away from the tavalai. We suspect they might be doing something similar to the chah’nas. Why stop there? If they were to gain a foothold with the parren, it would take an unscrupulous megalomaniac to do it, who didn’t care what evil he aligned himself with. They wouldn’t get a better opportunity than Aristan. And they could build him up, give him technology and power to impress his followers, and get their own pet parren leader. Maybe even bring him to power, to the horror of all the parren’s neighbours.”

  “Aristan’s not that bad,” Trace said sombrely. “He’s just… focused. Too focused.” She glanced at Erik. And saw that he understood. She nodded, a little glumly, at that recognition that not every character trait she valued was automatically good. And considered him a little longer, perhaps noting how he was not speaking much, but rather listening, and thinking, as Captain Pantillo had so often done in this room. He had a smart crew, and if he spoke too much, they’d shut up and listen to him instead of volunteering their own very useful opinions.

  ‘Good leaders lead,’ Pantillo had told Erik once. ‘Great leaders listen.’

  “Okay,” said Erik, seeing that the initial exchange of views was done. “We’re going to move forward on the assumption that our parren allies are going to try and kill us. Obviously they can’t do that before we’ve shown them where the data-core is. We might want to delay making that obvious until the last possible moment. We might even want to throw in a feint.”

  He glanced at Trace. Trace nodded approval. “We’ve got other platoons,” she said. “Not all of them have to be going to the right target.”

  Lisbeth, Erik thought again, with growing dread. If Aristan betrayed them, he would no longer have any use for her.

  8

  Lisbeth woke, thinking that she’d heard a buzzing. Probably she’d been dreaming. Her bug had killed a bird yesterday… or everyone assumed it had. One of the birds that hopped on the balcony in search of crumbs from a meal, or remaining seeds from the feeder that had spilled upon the tiles, had been found dead by a potplant. The theory was that her bug had been sunning itself, as it survived on solar power and would go dead without regular recharging, when the bird had discovered it, and mistaken it for a snack.

  Semaya had been the one to find it, and had been displeased. She’d laid the small, feathered body upon the footstool sometimes used for scents and candles, and a number of the maids, and even some of the Domesh guards, had taken a moment to kneel and wave a scented candle over it, before going about their other business. Parren called it toufik, and it was close to the human notion of karma, only toufik was the accumulation of psychic energy within a particular parren phase. Good or bad toufik could drive a parren toward flux, and Lisbeth was learning that not all fluxes were equal. It made a very human kind of sense, in fact, if one thought of bad toufik as the accumulated mental stress preceding a breakdown. But then, good toufik could lead a parren toward a toushar, or an enlightened flux — the kind of phase-change that could herald great new beginnings, and an evolution of self to a wiser and more authoritative plane. The death of a well-liked and often-fed species of bird on Lisbeth’s balcony did not represent the good kind of toufik, and it was clear that her staff felt sullied by it. Lisbeth wondered if there wasn’t still a little room in the tiny machine’s processor for extra programming about social protocols.

  She glanced at the gauze curtain separating her chambers from the wide balcony. It was reflex, given the assassin who had come from that direction about three weeks ago… but that assassin had met her own, very small personal assassin, and she had not been particularly nervous of the episode repeating itself. She could see a robed guard out by the railing now, but he was standing obvious and exposed, as an assassin would not. In fact, he seemed to be gazing upward. Somewhere above, a bright light was burning, moving slowly across the sky. Lisbeth could see the guard’s shadow, cast upon the curtain by the distant glare. Then came a boom, and the faint rattle of glass, and objects on tables. Then another, and one more. Sonic booms, at such high altitude that they possessed little force, like the high-altitude lightning in tall storm clouds that flashed directly overhead with brilliant light, yet only muttered and rumbled instead of booming. It was a common phenomenon over the Kunadeen, and occasionally over Lisbeth’s home of Shiwon. Three incoming shuttles all at once was a little strange, though.

  Lisbeth heard soft, running footsteps, and turned on her pillow to see Semaya, coming from the adjoining staff quarters in slippers and robe. She ran to the curtain, a slim shadow in the dark, and peered out and up to the sky. Then murmured something to the guard, and came to the bed, tapping at her ear. Lisbeth blinked, and fumbled for her AR glasses on the bedside table — they were easier than the straight earpiece, and the fact that they were also anti-social and rude would not bother anyone at night, amongst her personal staff. The earpiece went in, and suddenly the translator was speaking Semaya’s words.

  “Lisbeth, we will have visitors. You must be up.”

  Lisbeth blinked at her through the lenses. “Now?” The lenses showed her the time was an hour past midnight. Few other icons showed, as the temple system censored what she could access.

  “Yes now.” Semaya threw the covers aside, with most un-parren-like forwardness, and ushered her up. Bewildered, Lisbeth did as instructed, and now there were more maids rushing to assist, and others dressing themselves in preparation for visitors.

  “Who is coming?” Lisbeth asked, as she was helped into a long coat that was half-a-robe, black patterned with gold and silver thread, one of those regal parren inventions that Lisbeth would have loved to take back to Shiwon and wear at parties to the envy of all.

  “One of Aristan’s,” said Semaya. “We are not sure.” The guard from the balcony strode past — Timoshene, Lisbeth saw, meeting with two more guards, then going past the wide space of chairs and low bookshelves to the door.

  Lisbeth expected the maids to seat her, and make at least a pass at her hair, which was a frizzy mess just off the pillows, as usual. But Lilien, who was best at hair, simply pulled the robe’s hood up and tucked it over Lisbeth’s head. So they were truly going out then, Lisbeth thought as she moved to the central room by the chairs to take her place for the formal greetings. And the robe was dark, at night, and with the hood up she was not expected to show off her stylings, but to hide.

  Bells outside the entry doors rang, and the maids answered. Six Domesh guards in black robes entered, and behind them strode an ehrlic — Lisbeth recognised the gold robe, and the flat head-crest like a box. Ehrlic were high-level functionaries in most denominational administrations, the civilian equivalent, perhaps, to a general in an army. Some ran entire regions of government, while others performed important cabinet roles in the Kunadeen. Lisbeth was a little surprised to find one here. Beyond the balcony curtains at her back, she could hear the distant whine of approaching shuttles.

  Timoshene, as senior guard and tokara, stood before the ehrlic, as the newly arrived guards spread on either side. Timoshene produced a formality of rank — a decorated and studded piece of leather that Lisbeth had not learned the name of — and the ehrlic made a show of inspecting it. Then came the formal cry, and all the room’s occupants, save the new guests and Lisbeth, sank to one knee. Lisbeth reflected that she much preferred it when Gesul came calling, or one of her scholarly teachers, because th
at was so much less fuss. But ehrlic were rank and status personified, they did not truly have real lives, every moment of every day was ritual and structure…

  The guards advanced past the bowing Timoshene, and Lisbeth frowned, because the formalities were that her maids would accompany her into armed male company, but her maids were all on one knee… and then Timoshene moved, a flash of black robes like cloth in a gale of wind. Two guards fell in a flail of limbs and drawn weapons, then shots on Lisbeth’s right pop!pop!pop! with shattering force on her eardrum as she fell, somehow recalling the most basic training Phoenix marines had ever given her, to hit the deck when bad stuff happened.

  Down and scrambling back amidst the chairs, she heard yells and ringing steel, and more shooting. Then a final, gurgling cry, unmistakable in its horror. Lisbeth stared over a chairback, preparing to run in case that final death had been one of her protectors (whoever they now were) and saw instead that all of the new arrivals, including the ehrlic, were down and unmoving. Several had fallen some distance from where they’d stood when Lisbeth had dropped, and Timoshene stood over the body of one, cleaning his blade with a smooth swipe of his robe.

  Standing on the right, pistol in hand, was Semaya. But she was not aiming or prowling now, but rather standing silently, hands raised in an effort to look unthreatening. Lisbeth guessed what had happened, and ran close enough to see the little, thumbnail-sized dot hovering before Semaya’s wide eyes on a blur of wings.

  “Hey!” Lisbeth snapped at the bug, and was mildly astonished that her voice was not a trembling, fearful wail. To judge by her shaking knees and hammering heart, it should have been. “You don’t hurt Semaya, if she’d wanted to kill me I’d already be dead!”