Qualea Drop (The Spiral Wars #7), page 53
In one automated maintenance cradle here sat Styx, old head back on original body, and currently running through a series of tests to make sure all systems were functioning properly. In the second cradle was Peanut, who'd taken several glancing hits and further shrapnel damage. Monitoring the cradles were Spacers Schultz and Hiram, and Ensign Kadi, VR glasses down to examine things in 3D that doubtless neither drysine required his assistance with.
Opposite Peanut, Private Rolonde had set up a small tools bench to double as a card table, and was playing a hand, Peanut reaching with small manipulator arms to flick cards with precision, as automated cradle arms performed intricate repairs. Erik wondered if Rolonde had noticed that Peanut was clearly far more interested in her expressions and conversation than he was in the cards.
Half-seated on workbenches against one wall were Trace, Sergeant Rael and Lieutenant Dale, nursing cups, pockets bulging with the wrappings from just-finished meals. Erik bumped fists with each, croma-style, that being all he could manage with his hands full. Trace's hair, he noted, was still damp from a recent shower, and he was prepared to bet that she'd hit the gym already, her second priority after making the rounds with all her Lieutenants and non-coms to see what had happened to her Company in her absence.
"How's Phoenix Company?" he asked her pointedly.
Another person might have made some glib, amusing remark about how badly things had deteriorated. "Top notch as always," Trace said instead. "Ready to go." Because Trace never played games with her people's morale, not even when it couldn't possibly do any harm.
She looked good, Erik thought as he chewed his sandwich. Calmly in control as ever, and apparently not worse for wear from her latest excursion. And yet, he thought, there was something in her eyes... or rather perhaps an absence. Some light, some hard-edged enthusiasm that should have been there, but wasn't. Asking her how the trip had gone was pointless -- they'd talk about it later, in time, with depth beyond the basic after-action report. And she'd not admit here to anything he was truly interested in, before her marines.
"Hello Styx," said Erik around a mouthful. "How's the head?"
"The head is well, Captain Debogande. Full function shall be restored shortly. My commendations on an excellent operation, my drysine friends were quite impressed."
"Well, that's why I came on this mission," Erik admitted. "To impress your drysine friends." Erik saw Sergeant Rael repress a grin, while the Alpha Platoon commander's lips actually twitched. Trace just regarded him, with calm affection.
"I admit to finding this gathering in proximity to be an odd human custom," Styx admitted. "This conversation could be conducted remotely."
"It could," Erik admitted. "If we were drysines. But we're not, so we aren't."
"Go on Styx," Rolonde protested from her card game. "Peanut definitely enjoys a face-to-face game more than a remote one, and I bet you know it."
"Indeed, Private Rolonde. But I was referring to significant matters of command discussion, not games of cards."
"Well screw you too," Rolonde snorted. "Hi Captain," she added.
"Hello Private. Good to see you well, but not surprised. How was Qalea?"
"Crazy," said Rolonde. "I think it's the most beautiful ugly place I've ever seen."
"The bits I saw looked spectacular," Erik opined.
"It is spectacular," Rael agreed. "It's incredible."
"Ugliness at scale," said Trace, nursing a cup of what Erik suspected was juice. "Humans are suckers for scale. Give us enough of it, we'll mistake it for beauty."
Sasalaka arrived, having finished her own rounds, and greeted Trace and Rael with pleasure. With the small, cool tavalai, that wasn't always easy to spot, but she actually exchanged a double handclasp with Trace, which Erik knew was a tavalai thing between good friends. Then Romki entered, and Kaspowitz, and Erik had all the senior crew he needed to start.
"Do you want me to leave?" Rolonde asked, realising that the bay gathering had turned into a command briefing.
Erik shook his head. "No, you stay and keep Peanut company. You were down on Qalea, your perspective counts."
"I'd like to start, if I may?" said Kaspowitz. Erik indicated for him to do so. Kaspowitz held to a frame of Styx's maintenance cradle, in take-hold spacer fashion. "Where are we going?" With the displeased sarcasm of a navigator in unfriendly space who'd been deprived of his most valuable knowledge.
The air above the gathering glowed, then lit in holographic display, projected from a ceiling mount used for engineering simulations. "I'd tell you what it's called in the reeh tongue," said Styx. "But reeh language has evolved to something more electronic than verbal, at least where technical matters are concerned, like navigation. I suspect it once held a different name, but I have not encountered it. We shall call it X-9."
Above, the holography displayed a starmap of Reeh Empire space, and the zig-zag line of jumps that Styx's course proposed to take. Five jumps, Erik saw. Some of the course-corrections looked like a pain, but significantly less-so following the Defiance upgrade. Maybe six days, all told.
"Is that where the Ceephay Queen is?" he asked.
"No," said Styx. "She's over here, in another system we shall call C-1." More stars lit on the map, and several more jump-interrupted lines. Three more jumps, right through the heart of reeh space. "That is the central reeh command world. They have attempted to hide its nature, and croma intelligence has sought in vain for this location for millennia. But it has become apparent to me."
A heavy silence in the bay, as they all contemplated that. Tension, at a course that looked like certain death. But Styx, while adept at calculated risk, showed no tendency to suicide.
"How are you certain?" Sasalaka asked the obvious question, seated on the engineering seat before Styx's frame controls.
"It is complicated to explain, Lieutenant," said Styx. "I am accumulating data. As you may be aware, I am rather good at it. On Eshir, I accumulated data enough to constitute a ten thousand year history of Qalea, with accuracy enough that I was able to predict geographical locations of specific buildings in specific time zones, and the roles they played in historical events. Major Thakur and Sergeant Rael can tell you."
Rael glanced at Trace, and saw her deep in thought, gazing at the holography. "Yeah, it was like she had a map of the place," he admitted, taking his invitation to speak. "It was incredible."
"Simulation," Kaspowitz repeated, skeptically.
"With sufficient data-points," Styx told him, "anything is simulatable. I gained gradual access to the data networks on Qalea, which opened many information sources. There is enough data on most planetary networks to deduce most things, but merely organic civilisations lack the data-processing capability to organise that information into a simulatory whole. Were I to visit your Homeworld today, it would not take me long to describe to you a full history of humanity, right down to individual details on important historical figures most of you have forgotten. I have deduced much of it already, simply from the more limited Phoenix databases. Everything is in some database somewhere, it is merely that Eshir's databases were restricted by superior network security, and thus took longer to access."
"Right," said Kaspowitz, frowning, "but you were trying to find things that the reeh themselves had forgotten, and weren't in any database."
"My knowledge of organic civilisations has been lately renewed via the drysine data-core," said Styx. "Processing trillions of data-points produces patterns. Patterns of settlement, of logistics, of sanitation, communications, civil disturbances, demographic spread, political division, psychological predilections on the individual and group scales. By cross-referencing those patterns against observable patterns on Qalea, I was able to observe the applicability of some patterns over others, and make adaptions to what you might crudely describe as algorithms. Create enough intersecting data-points, and new probabilities begin to emerge. On Qalea I learned much not only about the city and world, but about the Reeh Empire. By intercepting several high-ranking reeh after the temple assault, and interrogating them, I learned far more about reeh command structures than reeh would have believed possible."
"Interrogating," Romki said distastefully. Erik looked at him, then at Trace. Trace made a faint shrug. She'd looked the other way. Erik could not blame her.
"Doesn't answer how you know that's where the Ceephay Queen is," Kaspowitz said stubbornly.
"Actually it does," said Styx. "But you are not intellectually equipped to understand the answer. I could translate my calculations into human mathematical formula if you'd prefer?"
A new display overlaid the starmap in the air. A two-dimensional page of algebra, complicated with many illustrative graphs and lines in accompaniment. Erik had done rather well at that in the Academy, and Kaspowitz somewhat better, as befitted a navigator. Kaspowitz squinted at it. The page began to scroll, faster and faster, until it was an impossible blur of data.
"I could keep scrolling through the pages until they are ended," Styx explained, "and then you'd have your answer. At this speed it would take seventeen years and forty six days."
Erik gave Kaspowitz a dry look, communicating that he needed to let it go. This time, Kaspowitz didn't even bother rolling his eyes. This was what truly made him most uncomfortable, Erik knew -- that in a battle of intellect, with Styx, they were all so utterly outmatched as to be comical. What, then, were they all doing here? And why, if this were all her plan and her command after all?
"Thank you Styx," said Trace. "I've seen the powers of your analysis up close, and I trust your plan of action entirely. If you say that's where the Ceephay Queen resides, I believe you."
She gazed at Kaspowitz as she said it, then Erik. Trust me on this, her look said. Of them all, Erik knew that Trace was the one most able to look a fact in the face, however unpleasant its implications.
"Me too," Erik echoed, gazing back at Trace. He often thought that she probably understood Styx better than any of them, if only because she knew what it was to focus on an outcome with such intensity that all else became secondary. "So if that's where the queen is, why are we going to this other place? X-9?"
"Because that is where lies the greatest chance for restarting a long-dormant Reeh Empire insurrection," said Styx. "And if we are to reach this Ceephay Queen in her lair, and learn everything she knows about humanity's greatest threat since the krim, we shall first have to start a civil war."
"A civil war featuring who and who?" Erik asked suspiciously.
"Primarily the reeh, and the alo."
Silence in the room. "The alo are still here?" Trace asked quietly.
"Some of them are, yes," said Styx. "I've found what's left of them, extracted from the reeh senior officers we interrogated. They are the spark that I intend to ignite, creating a conflagration large enough to allow us access to the Ceephay Queen."
"And how can you be sure of that?" Kaspowitz asked, in cold alarm.
"Because the Ceephay Queen is going to help us."
"You've been very quiet, Shali," Erik said on coms as he walked the weary corridors after his own gym session and shower. Exhaustion threatened, vision nearly blurring as he navigated on automatic, but he was well used to that by now.
"Yes Captain," said the ceephay's young girl voice.
"What would you do, regarding Styx's plan?"
"I would stay very quiet, Captain."
Erik smiled. It was everyone's assessment that Shali was far more sociable than Styx. Shali had once been the right-hand assistant of the queen. One of seven, Romki had said, from that command room in the temple's lower levels. Those ceephay had been not so much the rulers of those earlier, more peaceful reeh, but their rulers-by-consent. So impressed the reeh had been by the queen's capabilities that they'd agreed to let her be in charge, with the supposedly-democratic input of the governed. They'd decide what they wanted, and she would dedicate her impressive analytical capabilities to figuring how to make it happen.
It wasn't hard to see how a ceephay queen, escaped from the endless AI wars of the Spiral, a conflict in which her people had been destroyed and she herself rendered surplus to requirements, might find a new purpose in empire-building with a new people in a region well removed from Spiral boundaries. In the AI wars, the queen had been made obsolete, by arbitrary AI standards at least. But here amongst the reeh, she'd been a marvel, a salvation from the tyranny of organic politics and self-destructive psychologies. No wonder they'd treated her like a god, and placed her upon a throne made especially for her. She'd improved their lives, their technology, their happiness. The reeh had gone from a small and frequently-abused people to the dominant rulers of their region. To hear Shali speak of it, even many of those non-reeh species they'd ruled came to consider it an improvement.
"You're safe here, Shali," Erik told her, turning onto the spinward corridor to back-quarter where Trace's quarters were. "Styx knows you are under my protection. Even if she wished to harm you, she would not risk my displeasure."
"With respect, Captain. Her warships outnumber yours four to one. Your capacity to tell her what to do is not as great as you suppose."
"She needs humanity, Shali," Erik said with determination. He hit the open on Trace's door, and walked in, finding the quarters empty as expected. "The primary advantage in her being here is to curry favour with humans and tavalai both. Humans are facing an existential threat, and Styx means to be the one who saves them, to benefit from their gratitude."
He sat down on Trace's bunk, and waited. "There are two flaws in your theory, Captain," said Shali. "One, Styx knows well that human and tavalai gratitude would be very short-lived without a long-term enemy to fight. Humans and tavalai both remain fearful of drysines, and drysine queens in particular, with good reason. Were Styx to assist you both in defeating the alo/deepynines, you would no longer have any need for Styx. I put it to you that Styx's most logical course of action is not to defeat your enemies, but to cultivate them, for without them, she and her drysines will become useless.
"Secondly, there is the reeh. My queen has found for herself a place at the head of reeh civilisation. That role continues today, although its nature has changed terribly. I fear that Styx is somewhat more advanced than my queen. What if she is not proposing to save or even to destroy my queen, but rather to replace?"
Erik nodded slowly. He'd already had that discussion, with Kaspowitz, Sasalaka and others. The possibility sparked a predictable paranoia, but today he wasn't moved by it. "She's made too many enemies amongst the reeh, coming in here as she has," said Erik. "And she has too many ties to the parren -- an alliance, in fact, revolving around the moon Defiance. She will not abandon her most promising developments in Spiral space to volunteer herself as a slave to the reeh."
"If her place among the parren is so strong, why doesn't she simply throw in her lot with them?"
"Because she doesn't trust the parren. She had many dealings with them before, a long time ago, when they were servants of the Drysine Empire. She liked them fine as servants, but now they're unstable, divided by psychological factions and largely xenophobic. They're an old spacefaring species, no longer so ambitious, and intensely resistant to outside interference. Being newer in space, humans are much more ambitious and expansionist, and not so worried about old traditions. Our old politics died with Earth. I think she smells potential there.
"And also, for so long as the alo/deepynines remain a force, I don't think she truly believes she's safe anywhere. Not even here. Not given how Styx measures time, millennia by millennia. She seeks to destroy them completely, and sooner is always better than later."
"Captain, I would like to thank you for allowing me to stay on your ship. I like you and your people. You remind me of my old companions, amongst the reeh, when the reeh were good."
"Thank you, Shali. You're entirely welcome to stay, particularly if you make yourself useful on our mission. You've seen how people of different types have integrated themselves into this ship's crew. I see no reasons why that should not also apply to you."
"I am honoured, Captain. But as your crew, I must warn you about the drysines. This is a warrior race. A race of conquerors and destroyers. You say that they changed, that toward the end of their reign they were in alliance with the parren, and with other organics as well. This may be true. Styx is a master manipulator, and a master of the tactics of convenience. I have spoken with her on a level humans cannot, an exchange of data at an intensity humans are simply not equipped to experience. And I must warn you, this is not a peaceful being. This is a warlord."
"And were ceephays any different? Back before you were driven from the Spiral, and found your home among the reeh?"
"I don't suppose we were. But we changed. I was constructed here, amongst peaceful reeh, guided by my queen. She changed, Captain. I don't believe that Styx can."
The door hummed open, and Trace came in, marine blacks and spacer harness, removing AR glasses to give her eyes a break from the endless status reviews. Erik rose, removing his own glasses, and Trace surprised him by simply walking in, as the door closed behind, and hugging him as she'd not been able to do before the others. Erik hugged her back, and they stood for a long moment, wrapped around each other in mutual exhaustion.
Finally Erik pulled back, and put his forehead to hers. "How'd you do?"
"Fine," said Trace. "Fine. I mean... not my worst trip. Crazy trip. I wish you could have been there."
Erik was astonished. She wished? It sounded sentimental, not like Trace at all. "I'd have liked to see Qalea," he admitted. "But warship captains don't get out much."
