Renegade (34 page)

“
Coms and Engineering are listening in, I’ll get them on it.”

“Good. Next I will need Delta to get in here and take that chah'nas ship, we can’t have the risk it’ll do something. Alpha and Charlie will remain as backup.”

“
Phoenix is so notified.”

E
ve’s
central spine was a huge structure of steel girders in interlocking triangles. They formed a tube through which rail cars ran, but
Phoenix
marines ignored the cars and jetted in formation up the enormous shafts between the girders. The spine was two-and-a-half kilometres from the habitation rim, and suit sensors here read the air a little less dense, like regular altitude on a planet, and centrifugal force pushed denser air outward to the habitation rim. Between the flashing girders, Trace could see great avenue layouts, wide roads and flat, wide buildings in oddly geometrical patterns.

The Fathers had lived here in their millions… or at least, Eve had that much capacity. Little historical record of actual settlement remained, as the Fathers were the only previous, known intelligent species to have met total extinction at the hands of another. The hacksaws had finished them, in a vastly earlier incarnation, destroying their own creators in order to take their place atop the galactic food chain. But the AIs had never had any interest in Merakis. Trace wasn’t aware if humans even knew what had driven the Fathers from this place — hacksaw attack, or something else entirely.

Nearly a kilometre out along the spine, the shaft met five equally enormous support pylons, spreading out across the habitation tube like a colossal pentagram. Here her externals picked up the fizz of generators powering the magnetic rims, huge circular collars to support the frictionless rotation of those support arms about the spine. Sleek rail cars blocked the shaft ahead, and Trace’s marines jetted to brake and slow themselves. They picked their way between girders, then out to the spinning rims, avoiding the capture nets and hand rails about the railcars that civilians would use in more peaceful times to enter and exit those cars.

Trace didn’t particularly like descending by elevator, it made them easy targets for anyone on the ground with weapons heavy enough to penetrate the hard carbon. But jetting out to the gravitational rim independently was impossible without a hard collision — armour suits had enough thrust to push in zero-G but nowhere near enough to lift off from one-G. She put Echo First and Second Squads on two different elevator arms, then took two later cars for Third, Heavy and Command Squads. Gravity slowly increased as they zoomed down the arm, the ancient habitation rim approaching fast, then arriving in a rush as the doors circled open and they all rushed out and down the steps of the biggest engineering support collar Trace had ever seen.

Echo First Squad already had position about the open space. It was paved, surrounded by trees and gardens like any pleasant, public space in a civilised, planetary city. Only now, looking up, the horizon bent all the way around overhead, and it was the central spine that appeared to rotate, not the rim. ‘The things you will see first,’, Trace recalled her Siksaka’s words. The O’Neil cylinders she’d been in before had been nothing like this big. The oldest had been a meagre two hundred years. What an infant species we are, she thought.

“
Major, we’ve got a patch on those speakers,”
said Lieutenant Alomaim with Bravo First Squad in the spine overhead, as Trace took a knee at a building corner for cover. “
We’re trying frequencies but everything’s jammed except for UF frequencies. It’s like they’ve left them open for us.”
Trace caught the note of hope in his voice. We might not have to shoot at chah'nas on the ground, that meant.
Tek-to-thi
was one thing, because
Tek-to-thi
had been abusing humans. This would be something else.

“Give me translation on coms.” A light blinked as her suit did that. “All residents of this facility, this is United Forces Ship
Phoenix
, human fleet.” That last for aliens who knew them by that name rather than the first one. “
Phoenix
marines are establishing a safe zone around the base of the fourth support arm, section O. I repeat, marines are establishing a safe zone around the base of the fourth support arm, section O. All individuals seeking safety must proceed there.
Phoenix
marines will not allow any individuals to be harmed within the safe zone.

“Should any individual seek to harm another individual within the safe zone,
Phoenix
marines shall fire on them, irrespective of species. I repeat, individuals harming other individuals within the safe zone will be fired upon.
Phoenix
claims command authority over this facility in the interim, and all individuals shall accept this authority or face consequences. Message ends.”

“
Got it,”
said Alomaim. “
We’ll put it out in Togiri and Gaida, and hope the translators don’t ask them for directions to the nearest massage bar.”
It was a
Phoenix
in-joke, having happened once in a distant sector of chah'nas space with an obscure dialect.

On tacnet, Trace could see Delta Platoon, having arrived by the Debogande civilian shuttle, flown by Lieutenant Dufresne of second-shift bridge crew, as they were now short of shuttle pilots. They were moving rapidly through the end-cap toward the chah'nas ship’s dock. She was quite sure Lieutenant Crozier could take a single chah'nas warship without supervision, occupied or otherwise. If there was going to be resistance, a fight on the docks would tell the story.

“All squads,” she said, noting their positions on tacnet display. “Let’s clear the zone. You have permission to fire only if you are fired upon, or if you see someone else being fired upon. I do not care if that someone else is chah'nas or tavalai, a safe zone is safe, and we shall enforce it.”

She could have come in here and wandered around in peacekeeper mode. She knew a few commanders who would have done that, and was damn glad she’d never had to serve under any of them. Marines existed to enforce situational dominance, and were poorly suited to any other role. The best way to stop people dying was to stop people shooting. And the best way to stop people shooting was to shoot them.

They fanned out, down adjoining roads between trees and low, wide buildings. Trace moved behind Sergeant Ong and Third Squad for a street, then took a left to spread the line further, and take them looping around the support arm. Four of Echo’s Heavy Squad came with Command Squad, usual procedure in this formation to keep Command’s numbers at a dozen. Buildings here had much less glass than in human cities. Humans needed windows and light, but these, while not unattractive, seemed almost to resemble brick or stone paving. Like the dwellings found in a desert town, she thought — lots of ceramic and mud for insulation.

“
So were the Fathers dry desert critters or not?”
Private Terez wondered at low volume as they moved at a steady walk along the street. It did not look made for vehicular traffic, but rather for pedestrians, with no markings nor sign of traffic coordination. Trace wondered if that was by original design, or what the tavalai had done to it since.

“
Sure feels like Serena where I grew up,
” said Arime. “
Everything’s brown, save the trees.
”

“
The Fathers were from a hot, heavy world,”
said the newly promoted Staff Sergeant Kono. “
Short build, big arms, inefficient body temp regulation. Now watch your spacing and admire the architecture later.”

“
Major?”
It was Sergeant Kunoz, Second Squad. “
We got bodies. Tavalai, five of them, on the street. Looks like they were running away, all recent.”

Trace took that position off tacnet — just two blocks away. “Copy Sergeant. Civilian or military?”

“
All civvies. No weapons in evidence, though those might have been moved.
” A visual came through, Sergeant Kunoz’s perspective. Circling two bodies, tanned green and brown, squat and clearly tavalai. Short sleeved jerkins, loose pants, nothing military. Blood stains like they’d skidded and rolled… shot while running, as Kunoz said. “
Evidence of automatic gunfire on the trees and walls. Very recent.”

“Lieutenant Alomaim, you see anything?” Lieutenant Alomaim’s viewpoint was providing tacnet with additional data, some movement two blocks from here, and more elsewhere, where
Phoenix
forces weren’t.

“
Laser acoustic registers some muffled gunfire,”
said Alomaim. “
I think they’re possibly indoors. Or underground, this place would have a transit system, right?”

“Yes, yes it would,” Trace confirmed. Command Squad reached another diagonal intersection, and along the left-hand road were taller buildings, perhaps apartments. Beneath them, two bodies lay on the road. “We have two more bodies here. Investigating.”

Command Squad needed no instruction, Kono waving his troops left and right, walking crouched with rifles ready, sensors on full for any movement. Neither of the tavalai appeared to have been shot. But they lay a crumpled, broken mess all the same, one of them with an arm badly broken beneath the body.

“
Thrown out of the building, looks like,”
said Private Van, scanning the high windows above. Trace crouched to look more closely, with total confidence that she was well covered. Tavalai had long, flat heads, with big, double-lidded eyes spread wide and slightly bulging. Their mouths were huge, throats bulbous, like the frogs they were sometimes derided as. But their bodies were strong, native to a heavier gravity than humans, and half again the air pressure. With combat augmentation, their soldiers were not quite as fast as humans, but comfortably more powerful.

This one’s eyes were gaping, mouth open in frozen horror. Trace wondered if in all her life, she’d seen more dead tavalai than live ones. Dead, she decided. These two had clearly been thrown from a height. Their thick limbs lacked the size and muscular definition of soldiers, and their clothes were utilitarian, with many pockets. She reached, and fished a computing device from one pocket. On it hung a metal symbol, like jewellery.

“
Watch!”
said Corporal Rael abruptly, rifle tracking a running figure up the street end. Trace stayed on a knee, but did not bother to aim, watching instead. The runner was tavalai, also civilian, unarmed and frantic. It sprinted at them in a powerful, loping gait that looked so different from what Trace was accustomed to seeing in tavalai battle armour.

“Hold your fire,” Trace said calmly, knowing there was little need. Tavalai did not play dirty tricks with bomb-rigged civilians. A chah'nas appeared behind the running tavalai, in light battle armour. “Target!” The chah'nas had two weapons in four hands, indistinct at this range. “If he shoots, take him down!”

Instead, the chah'nas strolled from the street, raising a launcher as he went. As soon as he was out of sight, a loud pop! sounded, and the marines hit the deck and rolled for cover without a word spoken. But the grenade hit short, and blew the running tavalai straight into a roadside tree.

“Go get him!” Trace instructed, and Corporal Rael took off up the road with his section, while Kono, Terez and Van moved with Trace to the tavalai. This tavalai was also dead, an arm nearly missing, horrid wounds from the shrapnel blast.

“
Major,”
said Lieutenant Alomaim from high above, “
we just saw what looked like a chah'nas use a grenade on a running tavalai…”

“Yeah I saw that too,” said Trace. Alomaim was the least experienced of her five Platoon Commanders, and not everyone caught everything first time on tacnet. “He was at pains not to shoot at us, only the tavalai.”

“
I guess they figured our tavalai IFF was bullshit when we were still hours out,”
Staff Sergeant Kono growled. “
Once they knew we were human, they got out and went to work. These guys don’t know what happened to Captain Pantillo.”

“
Major, he’s out of sight,”
came Corporal Rael up the end of the street. “
Shall we pursue?”

“No, hold that crossroad and wait for us. We’ll…”

“
Major. Look right.”
Trace looked, back where they’d come. A doorway onto the street was open, and a tavalai head peered out, fearfully. Looking at them. Things must be desperate for a tavalai to look at a human with such desperate hope. But then, she recalled the Captain saying that the tavalai’s great enemies in the Triumvirate were not humans but chah'nas…

“Weapons down,” said Trace, and jogged that way. Kono and his two came also, hurrying to take up position about the street opposite. Trace confronted the tavalai. Its leg was bloody, wrapped with a rough, makeshift binding. It retreated back into the passage, limping and grimacing, not wanting to be anywhere near the road. Trace followed, weapon out to one side, unthreatening. “Hogi dagalama?” she demanded of it. “Hogi dagala, doli ma?” ‘What happens here?’, that was, in her utilitarian Togiri. All marine officers knew a little by official requirement, and learned a lot more on the job.

The tavalai slumped back against the passage wall, and shook its head. “Chah'nas kill us,” it said… a deeper voice, Trace thought. In tavalai as in humans, that meant male. The vocals were a deep and multi-toned vibration, with a bubbling on sharp consonants that made understanding hard. “Chah'nas come two cycles, two days yes? Days? Two days, and they come here and they made us all line up… we are just scientists!” Frantic fear. Horror and grief, at what he’d seen. One didn’t think the tavalai face could convey such things, so different it was from anything familiar and human. But it could. “Where were you humans? We were told, command tell us, they surrendered to humans! To humans only, we were expecting humans, and then the chah'nas came and they kill us all!”

Trace looked at Staff Sergeant Kono, guarding the doorway. Within his armoured visor, his eyes were grim. The alien asked good questions.