Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (8 page)

“I’m sorry about Romki,” Dale said in a low voice, obviously ashamed. “I just couldn’t go chasing after him, I had to secure the scene, we’ve some light injuries and he’s pretty damn good at moving in these crowds…”

“Don’t worry about Romki,” Trace told him calmly. “We’re on it.”

Dale frowned at her. “You’re on it?” Trace nodded. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“We’re on it,” Trace repeated, and went to where the others stood in the ruins of the restaurant. There wasn’t much left, all the internal fittings had been torn down in the blast, or set aflame thereafter. What survived was the steel frame, pipes and wiring, to which the decor had been attached to create the illusion of a more pleasant indoor setting than a steel cage. Some ceiling attachments were hanging precariously, blackened and now wet from the sprinkler system that had since been deactivated.

“Major?”
came the LC’s voice in her ear.
“What’s it look like?”

“Here, I’ll put you on conference,” Trace told him, and linked the coms of those around her so he could hear. “LC’s on conference,” she told Jokono and Barry as they talked amidst the mess. “What’s up?”

“Well it’s not sophisticated,” said Corporal Barry, holding several twisted metal bits in his hand that had once been a bomb trigger. “Could be just that they used local materials, or maybe they were covering their tracks. Who do we think it was?”

Trace looked at Jokono. “We’ve got a list,” Jokono said wryly. “Tavalai, maybe. Sard, less-than-maybe. Alo, likely. Fleet, also likely. Given what Romki knows about the alo and deepynines.”

“Any forensics that might narrow that list down?”
Erik asked. Trace could hear the frustration in his voice, mostly, she thought, at being stuck on the ship while others roamed. When he’d been third-in-command, he’d sometimes tended to on-station situations, usually where some crew or other had gotten into trouble on station leave. But as Acting-Captain, he was far too valuable to risk roaming the station, and hadn’t taken any leave on Vieno either.

“Well there’s not an awful lot left,” Jokono replied. “The advantage of using a simple bomb, as Corporal Barry says, is that there’s not very much we can trace. I mean, I’d think half of
Phoenix
’s marines, and any spacer in Engineering, could have assembled this from simple store-bought parts in a day or two. We’ll hand what we know to the local cops, but they don’t like us very much right now, and even if they did like us enough to tell us what they find, I’m pretty sure they’ll find that there’s hundreds of people buying those parts every day. And barabo being barabo, lots of purchases aren’t even officially recorded.”

“What about the explosive?” Trace asked. “Surely you can’t buy that off a shelf, even here.”

“Would you like me to list the number of things on space stations that make explosives?” Jokono asked wryly. “Sublighter fuels, engine components, mining stores? Chemical supplies, hydroponics fertilisers, paint mixtures?”

“Gas filtration,” Corporal Barry added, sniffing a piece of debris.

Jokono nodded. “Before we even get to the blackmarket weapons. We could probably find out what it is, but good luck learning anything from it, out here. I’m much more interested in those attack droids. You’ve all got far more military experience, but to me it looks like the droids were the primary weapon. Whoever or whatever detonated the bomb saw that Lieutenant Dale was suspicious, so blew the charge before he could get really suspicious and withdraw, expecting the robots to handle the marines once they were down. But
Phoenix
marines are very hard to kill.”

“Who do you think?” Trace asked.

“Someone who knew Romki’s connections with tavalai?” Jokono ventured. “This tavalai in particular. Lieutenant Commander, if you can get
Phoenix
database working on station records from your end, that would be a start. Mr Romki said the tavalai’s name is…”

“Yes, he’s given us all that information, we’re tracking it now.”

“Someone’s watching us,” Jokono said thoughtfully.

“Everyone’s watching us,” Trace replied.

“Someone who’s not just curious. Someone who knows our interests.
Phoenix
is concerned of potential enemies, like tavalai. Like sard. We haven’t seen their warships since we’ve been in Outer Neutral Space, but I’ll bet that’s about to change.”

“No doubt,” Trace agreed.

“But we’re also concerned with our own politics,” Jokono continued. “Spacers versus Worlders. I called Major General Randal Connor through a neutral coms ID Hiro had set up when we got here. Can’t be traced to
Phoenix
. Got no reply. Connor’s often busy, I take it he goes out to drink a lot with his contacts, but now I’m thinking we might want to go check on him.” Trace frowned.

“We’re trying direct uplink right now from this end,”
said Erik.
“Personal uplink, not his office or remote construct. Nothing.”

“You have a location?” Trace asked.

T
he ride
on the station train was even stranger amidst fully armoured marines with Koshaim-20s, interlocked grenade launchers and full helmets. Trace kept her helmet on for convenience, visor popped for local vision, as even curious barabo stayed well clear. Powercells whined and hummed, and armoured limbs occasionally rattled with feedback tension, making a combat suit an intimidating thing even without the weapons.

They rode with Jokono two stops before the station nearest to Major General Connor’s office, on Jokono’s insistence that he had a fix on Connor’s location. How Jokono could do that, on an alien station using strange network protocols, Trace did not particularly want to know. It wasn’t in a police officer’s usual repertoire, but since he’d left public security, Jokono had been spending a lot of time with the likes of Hiro Uno in the Debogande Family’s personal security. Spies like Hiro had crazy network skills, their skulls crammed with the latest cybernetic interface that allowed him to break down com routines in his head. Jokono, Trace knew, had some of the same. If he said he knew where Connor was, Trace believed him.

The rail station was dark and ugly with none of the life and vibrations of the market stop. Seedy neon flickered upon dark platforms, and some torn posters flapped in the foul-smelling warmth of a ventilation grille. Jokono took them left down some stairs, then a dingy corridor where barabo nervously made way for thumping, armoured marines.

Trace dropped her visor as her squad did the same — she’d left Command Squad behind for a change, as half of them were still recovering from months-old injuries, and hadn’t been positioned to respond to this call anyway. She’d brought First Section of Second Squad, Alpha Platoon, instead — with four plus herself, five made an awkward number, but it hardly mattered. Tacnet propagated, blue dots upon her visor map, plus Jokono… though how an unarmored civvie showed up on marine tacnet, she also had no idea. Network skills indeed.

They turned again, onto a steel mesh walkway above a canyon drop of at least five levels, onto pipes and other utilities. More walkways ran the length of the canyon above and below, lined with grimy doors.

“Budget accommodation,”
Sergeant Hall remarked, looking around with distaste. Something eight-legged and insect-looking raced away from an armoured boot.

“Just up here,”
said Jokono, also on coms, the only way he’d be clearly heard now that the marines all had their visors down. Another stairway down, and the walkway canyon ended, replaced with wire gates and security doors. One asked Jokono for a clearance, which he somehow provided. Lights flashed green, and he led them inside.

Inside was very dark. Jokono tried the lights.
“No lights.”
Trace flipped to IR, and saw storage, rows of stacked pressure crates on old runners, some wheeled loaders sitting idle in the aisles. Condensation dripped from the ceiling.

“He’s in here?” she asked Jokono, with skepticism.

“That’s my reading. No more than twenty meters. Can’t pinpoint it, too much interference.”

“My audio just read movement ahead,”
said Private ‘Benji’ Carville, nervously.

“Yeah, I vote we go in quietly,”
Corporal Barnes suggested.
“Something’s in there, I read it too.”

Trace’s sensors weren’t reading anything. All these tight spaces were asking for trouble. “Jokono, you might want to stay here.”

“Alone? No thank you.”

“Okay then, stay between us.” Jokono pulled his pistol, and Trace wondered if his plain eyesight was augmented enough to see in this dark. No doubt he was a good shot with that pistol, but it would barely scratch a suit.

Sergeant Hall went first, then Carville, then Trace with Jokono just behind, with Barnes and Private Tuo guarding the rear. Moving quietly in a suit was a challenge, and the aisle between stacked crates wasn’t wide enough for a proper stagger pattern, so they were blocking each other’s field of fire. But dividing to move down separate aisles was poor craft in a built-up space, as it increased blind spots while decreasing the firepower response.

Hall put up a fist, and they paused at a gap in the crates.
“Through there,”
said Jokono, and Hall ducked under, stepping through the supports. And stopped.

“Son of a bitch.”
Tacnet gave Trace the feed from Hall’s helmet-cam. Slumped against the neighbouring crate in the storage rack, was Randal Connor. There were bits missing, and lots of blood. Death had not taken the fear from his eyes.

In the dark about them, there started a low, insect-shrill, like rainforest cicadas after a downpour. The shrill grew, and spread, from neighbouring aisles and dark spaces, echoing off the cold steel ceiling.

“What is that?”
Jokono asked, staring about with pistol ready. A policeman might not have heard it before. All of
Phoenix
’s marines had.

“Sard,”
Corporal Barnes muttered.
“Lots of sard.”
The shrill reached a throbbing shriek, pulsing in time. Jokono looked frightened. Trace didn’t blame him. If she’d been unarmored, she’d have been frightened too. As it was, she couldn’t keep the chills down.

“Everyone cover,” she advised them, crouched beside a container and keeping low with a good view of the container tops, and the spaces up near the ceiling. “Sard are light and like to climb. They’ll be up by the ceiling. Everyone load frags and prepare to manoeuvre. Jokono, stay low. If you have earplugs, now is the time.”

The shrill began to wind down, interrupted by sharp cackles. No one knew why sard did it, except that their brains were all ‘hive’ and ‘group’, and rhythmic harmonics told them all where everyone else was. And possibly they had some idea that it freaked most non-sard species the fuck out. But now tacnet was giving her an estimation of numbers, programmed to do that from sard harmonics.

“Tacnet tells me about twenty,” she said. “Let’s see if we can reduce that a bit. Fragmentation ready, rapid fire. Now.”

Four launchers spat grenades toward the ceiling, which exploded in a row of pyrotechnics and raining shrapnel. Shrieks and clatters as sard took cover. Free grenades replied, bouncing off the crate sides to hit the floor.

“Out!” yelled Trace, and dove the other side to roll and cover against the far crate wall. Explosions flashed, then movement up high and she hammered that spot with her Koshaim, thundering a series of holes through the ceiling as spent casings clattered away.

“High!”
she heard Hall shout.

Then,
“Low straight!”
as the others spotted targets, rifles hammering in the enclosed space.

“Hall! Displace and run straight for new cover! I’ve got your tail, go!” Hall ran, Trace saw them all moving on tacnet without needing to turn. She ran backward at a zigzag, no easy feat in armour, and blasted at something down the far end that fired a quick shot. Ahead, Hall reached his new spot, with Carville and Jokono close behind… but here to the side was another missing crate. “Beatle, hole on your left, take it!”

She dove in after him, and gestured Private ‘Beatle’ Tuo to silence, pressed against the crate wall. More fire tracked toward Hall and Carville, who returned it. “Porky, displace another three crates up, draw them after you.”

“Got it. Let’s go Benji.”
They left, and Trace looked at Tuo with a finger to the visor where her lips would be. Sard hadn’t seen them come in here, they were following Hall and Carville. Trace crept to one side and peered upward. There against the ceiling, IR showed her a slender, stalking figure, big rifle in its hands, keeping low and peering over the edge in search of a shot. On the other side, Private Tuo also peered up… and indicated to her that he saw another one. No, two, as he raised two fingers. And now to Trace’s left, up the aisle adjoining Hall’s, the light scrape of approaching weapons.

Trace fired a frag around the corner, then stepped out and mowed them down as the grenade blew others tumbling into steel. The one above her shot at her as she kept going across the aisle and pressed her back to the crate. The sard above leaned out to get a shot down, and she pointed straight up and blew its head off.

“Benji, Porky, get up top and knock these bastards down.” A short pause, then heavy fire streaking beneath the ceiling as Carville and Hall leaped quickly to the top crates, and put down fire. Trace hadn’t sent anyone up before because they were out-numbered and possibly out-manoeuvred up there — but after a nasty surprise, sard weren’t expecting it. Another one hit the ground nearby, and Carville gave a yell of triumph.

“Get some! Get some!”
As he hammered burst after burst at running, leaping sard. One more tumbled further up Trace’s aisle, rolling as it avoided fire, and staggered back to its feet in a daze. Trace blew it in half. Carville and Hall’s fire stopped. The red ‘enemy’ dots on Trace’s tacnet display were gone, replaced only by two ‘doubtful’ greens, somewhere vaguely among the crates.