Qualea Drop (The Spiral Wars #7), page 26
Off to one far flank, Rika could now see Alpha Platoon, a small web of dark-matte dots moving in parallel, barely visible against the brilliant starfield beyond. So many stars. That was the most disorienting thing about being in deep space, away from the glare of a sun, or the shielding glow of a planet's atmosphere. Stars by the billion. He'd always liked to look up at the stars, above the campfires and tall trees of Rando. On moonless nights, when Raina and Dogba were below the horizon, and the skies were free of cloud, he'd thought there were so many stars. Now he'd learned that even on clear nights, most stars had been hidden. It seemed unreasonable that there should be so many. And some of them, he'd been told, weren't stars at all, but far-away galaxies, each with hundreds of billions more stars, all pressed together with distance.
The humans had been concerned that he'd get something called agoraphobia, his first few times out. It was something that happened to people who hadn't been outside in a spacesuit much, and whose brains went abruptly crazy at being confronted with so much emptiness. Billions of tarans of nothing. Trillions of tarans. Rika could barely comprehend the sight of it. But he hadn't gotten agoraphobia.
On coms chatter he could hear humans talking about the drysine assault squad that had deployed on the iceball's far side. Even were they in line-of-sight, he knew they'd be impossible to see. Drysines didn't need suits -- they were suits, big and armoured and invulnerable to vacuum. Apparently they weren't protesting at the humans taking the lead on this mission, and there would be more marines on the iceball than drysine drones.
More talk from Lieutenant Dale, who was now acting Company Commander, with the Major down on Eshir. Lieutenant Alomaim answered him. Ahead, Rika could see the structures now -- habitation modules, cut deep into the ice. The protrusions were docking arms, he'd been told. There was no visible solar panelling, which had puzzled the marines. Even this far out, sunlight was free power, and large fusion powerplants were expensive overkill for what looked like a small water refinery operation. But solar panels made an iceball easier to spot from a distance, and gave notice that it was more than just an iceball. Perhaps whoever had been using this one hadn't wanted to be seen.
The habitations grew larger as the iceball approached, and Rika's heart began beating harder once more. Ahead, suits puffed white clouds as they decelerated, not even needing a command to do it all in unison. Rika eased his own thrust, and lost momentary vision to a cloud of white, from which he emerged travelling more slowly. He watched Corporal Rizzo, and kept the suits in line, and made sure he didn't drift from position.
Ahead, the iceball made a cliff, nearly close enough to touch. It had been floating out here for billions of years, Rika thought. Only in the last few thousands had someone decided to build these tube-like structures through the ice, and set up these big refinery tanks he could see protruding further up, no doubt to be filled with liquid water for some hauler to come and pick up. And maybe other things, if the iceball had them.
Second Squad moved up to try the airlocks. Sergeant Neuman reported that the airlocks were dead, meaning no one else had been using them lately. That was the only way a facility this old could still be functional. Second Squad set about getting the doors opened manually, which with marine armour usually meant brute force. After a few minutes more of floating, and checking his drift, and monitoring his lifesupport, and wondering just how dead they'd all be if someone with a heavy vacuum weapon opened fire as they all floated here, Neuman reported that the doors were open and he was progressing inside.
Heavy Squad went last. Rika thought to risk a turn, and look backward, as covering your rear was what soldiers were supposed to do on the ground, however redundant it became in deep space. A small dot to one side, he saw PH-3, where Lieutenant Jersey watched their progress with heavy weapons ready to support if necessary. Far beyond that, a small dark twig against the star's yellow dot, was Phoenix. Seeing it now, he abruptly realised why marines developed such emotional attachments to their ships. That small dark twig was safety, warmth, air-pressure, gravity, food and friends. So small and far, in all this blackness. Precious, to be protected at all costs. Without it, no one lived.
The drysine ships, he couldn't see. He wondered if their drones felt the same way about them. He turned back about, and began his own approach to the habitation, following Rizzo and Heavy Squad. Again Private Wu never left his side, without appearing to get so close as to shepherd. Ahead, the small, open airlock was swallowing the last of Third Squad.
"KJ," said Rizzo to Private Jenner, "you're lead, then Bis, then Rika." The middle of the formation, Rika realised. Obviously no one expected any action, or he wouldn't be here at all.
"Copy Riz," said Jenner.
"Copy," Rika echoed.
Lieutenant Tyson Dale floated down a main hall, allowing the AR vision feed back to Phoenix to analyse what he was looking at. Sections of wall panelling flashed, possible trunk electronics, then a cross-section of corridors toward mining well-heads down the arms. Follow the trunk-route electronics, was the rule. There was a thin atmosphere, most likely what was left after eight thousand years of neglect, or whenever the life support ceased working, with additional leakages after storage tanks failed from neglect and decay. Likely the air wasn't sufficient for mold, however, and a thin layer of water crystal over many surfaces suggested rust would also be minimal. Some computer system designs could last that long. Without constant maintenance, they'd be the only things that would. Phoenix crew had become so accustomed to dealing with very old things lately, everyone had learned the factors determining rate of decay. The drysines had various anti-aging treatments including nano-machines. The reeh might not have had those, but these material sciences were likely very advanced, and in a cold near-vacuum, everything looked well preserved.
"Manjhi," said Dale, glancing at Alpha Platoon's unfolding positions on tacnet, "take that next access, AR's telling me it could be living quarters."
"Copy LT," said Sergeant Manjhi, commanding Third Squad, and turned off that way. Ahead of Dale, Private Reddy and Master Sergeant Forrest drifted with the occasional nudge of attitude thrust, weapons up in case of the impossible. The only way something hostile was alive in here was if it had been visiting from another ship just recently. Phoenix and the four drysine warships had been monitoring this portion of space for the past eight days, and seen nothing. Surviving over weeks in a dead facility with no apparent power sources became a serious problem for suit-wearing organics, with the requirement for air, food and even toilet stops becoming impossible to service. But they'd all seen far too much weird shit over the past two years to take anything for granted.
The main hall ended in a T-junction, which Reddy and Forrest took to the right. Both suits glowed on Dale's nightvision, hot around the rear powerplants, cool along the armoured limbs. Ahead, the corridor was blocked by a big, square door. Reddy checked the cold, dead controls, then wiped ice crystals from a handle cover before pulling it back. "Manual looks like it might work," he said.
He clipped the big Koshaim 20 to its rear rack, secured a foot to stop him from spinning, and wound the handle. The big door, unmoved in millennia, slowly began to grind and move. It opened faster as Reddy's suit put power into the action, saving the Private's arm. Forrest peered through the widening gap.
"Living quarters," he said, and pulled himself through. Dale followed, peering up and around. Zero-G habitation was always a creative exercise in space allocation. This place had freezers and storage bays along one wall, certainly a kitchen, and that silvery sheen on flat surfaces was ice crystals on the glass fronts of microwave ovens. On stainless steel surfaces, everything sparkled. On the reverse side, a den of sorts, numerous hammocks around a central holograph projector. A mini-cinema, perhaps, or maybe sleeping quarters. The answer might depend on what species had been using this place.
"Phoenix, this is Dale. Any guesses whose facility this was?"
"We were just wondering that, LT," came back Lieutenant Shilu's voice. "Resource harvesting seems like menial work, and the reeh don't seem like the types to enjoy menial work. We're guessing probably some slave species."
"LT," came Forrest's voice. "Check this out." Dale grabbed a support and pulled, no need to waste thruster gas in tight spaces, and contaminate pristine surfaces that might offer clues. In an adjoining den, Forrest had pulled open a storage locker. From it, he'd retrieved something that looked like a clarinet, only metal. Several more instruments lay within.
"Probably not reeh, then," said Dale. "Can't imagine them liking music."
"Lieutenant, this is the Captain," came Debogande's voice in his ear.
"Go ahead Captain."
"Just to inform you that the drysine assault team is moving rapidly. At current speeds you might expect their advance team to reach you in fifteen minutes."
"Copy Captain. I take it they're sharing information?"
"Yes, and we're sharing our feeds with them."
"LT," came Sergeant Barnes' voice before Dale could reply. "You might want to look at this."
Tacnet showed that Barnes' Second Squad was several rooms across, in what AR was now optimistically tagging as a command center. Dale checked in with Lieutenant Alomaim on the way, and found progress good, nothing to report. The corbi kid hadn't gotten himself killed yet, so that was a plus. Dale thought it was dumb, putting some untrained farmer in an antique suit and babysitting him through an assault, however unlikely to see combat. The last two years' experience had taught everyone in Phoenix Company just how badly things could go wrong when you least expected it, and Dale bristled at anything interfering with his people's carefully-honed operational standards.
The Major had been a driving force in setting those standards, but the corbi kid had been her idea. Like so much with the Major lately, Dale had had no choice but to set his jaw and take it. And now she was gone again, down to Eshir with Command Squad, as though she hadn't just been rescued from four months on some other alien hellhole, away from her Company and trying to save the galaxy singlehanded, as always. Only the Major hadn't truly come back. She'd left a part of herself down on Rando, and to varying degrees, everyone knew it.
It left Dale in the impossible position of commanding Phoenix Company for damn near six months straight now, but without the rank or true authority to back it up. Captain Debogande respected his ability well enough, but not so much as he respected the Major's, nor liked him half as much either. After the Zondi Splicer Raid, and Phoenix had left without the Major and Sergeant Kono, and Bravo Platoon had nearly mutinied rather than leave her behind, the Captain had threatened to personally court martial and shoot Dale the next time he disobeyed a direct order. Fair enough, Dale had thought, and respected Debogande for having somewhere in the last two years grown the balls to do it. The Major had shown him how, of course, but before she'd gone to Eshir, she hadn't been speaking much to Debogande, either.
It was all such a giant fucking mess, and Dale hated being caught in the middle, beneath a Captain who did not particularly like him, and a Major who was lately never here.
It was easy to see why AR had labelled the next space as a command center. There was a bank of screens before chairs, a far more spacious arrangement than Phoenix could afford. Bucket was here, steadying himself with legs clasping several chairs, fiddling with his smaller manipulator arms at various controls.
Dale drifted to Sergeant Barnes, floating alongside to observe Bucket's work. "The translation matrix is saying that he's found something," said Barnes. "It's unclear on what he's found, but, you know, they're capable of taking control of foreign computer systems."
At Barnes's side, Dale could see tiny filament protrusions from the drysine's arms, like the tiny tendrils of some undersea reef creature adrift on the currents. "Looks like he's getting right into the network itself," Dale observed. "If he can provide his own power source... hang on." He flipped channels. "Hello Phoenix, this is Dale. Are you reading this?"
"Yes Lieutenant," came Shilu's reply. "Hang on, I've got Lieutenant Rooke watching."
"Dale, this is Rooke," came the young man's voice a moment later. "Bucket can't restart whatever's in there, but he can probably use his own power source to do some kind of scan on whatever physically survived."
"You think it's some kind of command module?"
"I can't see what else Bucket would be so interested in. AIs tend to find high level CPUs interesting."
Dale glanced at Barnes. Behind his armoured visor, he could faintly make out Barnes' eyes rolling in dissatisfaction at the answer. Barnes was another of Phoenix Company's newly promoted, from Corporal to Sergeant after the previous Second Squad leader, Dex Hall, had been killed on Defiance. The Major taking his best rifleman, 'Benji' Carville, to fill a Command Squad vacancy after her return from Rando, hadn't improved Barnes' mood, as even today First Section were a marine short, operating as a three-team.
"The other drysines coming?" Barnes asked his Lieutenant.
"Oh yeah," said Dale, checking his Koshaim with unthought reflex. "In a real hurry."
"Be nice if Bucket could actually tell us what the hell he's doing." Drones couldn't speak, or wouldn't speak. No one knew if the distinction was significant. "In fact, be kinda nice if Styx were here." Barnes sounded as though he couldn't quite believe he was saying it.
"Yeah," Dale replied. "Maybe." With their four drysine friends, he meant, there was no guarantee Styx would side with Phoenix. Barnes nodded his understanding, and made a sideways gesture at Bucket, asking silently if the same could be said for Bucket's loyalties. Dale nodded shortly. Drysine drones couldn't speak, but they could certainly understand, and marines kept such discussions off coms.
"LT," said Lance Corporal Teale from an adjoining doorway. "Phoenix AR just came to the conclusion that this is a reeh base. We've been feeding them bathroom pictures, I think the look at the handgrips in the showers convinced the computer." She sounded puzzled.
"What's the problem?"
"There's a damn recreation suite down that way." She pointed down the corridor she'd come from. "I mean, they've got some kind of big playing space set up, it's like air hockey."
Dale frowned. "Yeah. Computer must be wrong. I mean, it's not like the computer's as smart as Styx." With Styx offship, they'd have to rely on a dumb, non-sentient processor to make these analytical judgements. He couldn't help but wonder if Sergeant Barnes' earlier assessment had been right. "Woody found some kind of musical instrument back that way. Reeh don't do that shit."
"How the hell can a shower handgrip tell anyway?" Barnes wondered. "Dumbass computers."
"That's not how multi-factor analysis works, Sarge," said Teale, drifting across. "Hey Bucket. What'cha doing?" The drysine ignored her, wrapped around his screen-side seats like a spider over a fly, fiddling with control panels. Suddenly the entire bridge setup flashed, a dance of light across seven screens, coloured icons illuminating briefly, then going blank. "Woah."
Dale blinked on coms again. "Phoenix, Bucket seems to be right into the command network here, we just got a big flash across all the control screens."
"That means the main conduits are probably made of something that won't decay," came Rooke's reply directly. "Could be something crystalline, we've seen that a fair bit in reeh space."
One of the control screens flickered, then went unmistakably live, turning several shades lighter than the others. "Hang on. Bucket's got a screen live." Random shapes appeared. They began cycling, one after another, faster and faster, then accelerated to eye-blurring speed. "You got my feed, Rooke?"
"Yeah, I can see it." Predictably, Rooke sounded intrigued. Though starship engines were more his thing, like all the polymath geniuses who rose to command Engineering departments on warships, Rooke knew a lot about computers too. "Looks like there's some kind of functioning CPU in there. Bucket's providing the power and processing, he can just draw data from a dead machine, looks like."
The shapes were replaced by layers and layers of text, thousands of pages a second. "Can you slow that down?" Dale asked. "What is that?"
"Um... computer says that's some reeh language. Won't say which one, they've had a number over the years. No, wait a second... it's saying the language is old. It's something mathematically encoded, something their engineers might have used... damn, it'd be useful to know what exactly Bucket's drawing this stuff from. I mean, it could be a random data file or something else entirely. This is definitely a reeh-built base, though. Whether it was reeh-occupied I can't tell..."
"LT," Lance Corporal Yalen interrupted. "I got drysines approaching my position. Just two of them, looks calm enough. No, make that three. No real rush, they're not even using thrusters."
"Yeah, give them a wave and let them go where they want," said Dale. He didn't have to tell anyone to keep an eye on them. They knew.
"They just went past me," came Yalen again. "Headed for you, I think."
"Phoenix," said Dale, still watching as the alien data scrawled blindingly fast upon Bucket's reactivated screen. "Please query the drysines and ask what we can help them with."
"Doing that LT," said Shilu, always listening on this frequency.
"Hello Lieutenant Dale," came a strangely modulated female voice a moment later. "This is drysine warship Friendship. My drones will analyse your drone's discovery. Our analysis of this feed suggests there is a sentience-level AI built into the command post of this facility. Your drone's initial discovery suggests its primary core may be salvageable."
The marines looked at each other. "Makes sense with the timeline," Teale suggested. "We're figuring reeh society was even AI-run back then."
"Hello Friendship," Dale replied. "Can you tell what sort of AI? And from what period?"
"The capabilities of this AI will require a much more extensive study than is currently possible," Friendship replied. The voice sounded eerily like Styx, but not entirely. It was missing a personality, Dale realised. If one believed that Styx actually had such a thing, and had not simply constructed one to encourage human allies to like her better. "But the technological period designation of this AI is quite clear from the foundational language your drone has translated. It is ceephay."
