Queen of Chaos, page 28
part #3 of Sequoyah Series
“Stations, everybody. They're coming out,” Moire interrupted. She hefted the headpiece and, with a resigned expression, carefully fitted it over her suit helmet. “The things I do to save humanity…”
Harrington could see them now, dark shapes emerging from the dust at the bases of their ships. Each had one hulking figure, flanked by two smaller ones with what looked like eyeshields, and a scattering of others harder to distinguish. They moved just outside the overhang of their respective airlocks and halted.
“Guess we go first,” said Ennis, after a pause. “Radersent?”
“Great–she begins,” said Radersent.
“That would be a yes,” Moire said. “Here we go.”
The blue primary of the system was bright yet distant, and the shadows cast by the crater walls were sharp and completely black. It gave the landscape a flattened look. The dust stirred up by their feet hung for a long time, and the plastic tape on Moire's coat was starting to stand out away from her body. Static electricity, perhaps? Harrington had to concentrate to keep his feet in contact with the ground and to remain at the rear of the parade, so he missed when the other crabs started to cross to the strange shelter. As he got closer he could see the webbing was slightly translucent, and there was an faint orange–red glow radiating from the ribs.
“That can't be heating—it must be lights. But why so faint?” Harrington wondered.
“They don't see in the same range as we do,” Ennis reminded him. “The group straight ahead—that's Agurwythen?”
“Yes. And I'm beginning to understand why she was so eager to find a permanent home,” Moire said. “She may be as desperate as we are.”
Harrington leaned to get a better view and started. All of the Hsurwyn females were huge, but Agurwythen was nearly double the size of the others, mostly due to her distended middle section. She was moving awkwardly even in the light gravity and making use of her forelimbs.
“Dear God, she's…how much longer does she have? I know they have something like eggs, but there has to be a point where they must come out, don't you agree?”
“She looks like she's about to explode, yes. I hope she knows what she's doing. This must be very important to her.”
Moire was now at the edge of the shadow cast by the shelter. She stepped inside. The other queens followed, Agurwythen going first. The crab lights didn't help much, with the glare outside. Harrington tried to focus only on the gathering, and slowly he was able to distinguish the participants.
It was strange. They were on an empty moon in a fairly sizable crater and yet the open–walled shelter seemed crowded. It didn't help that there were so many crabs compared to the humans.
“I guess I speak first too,” Moire said. She nodded to Perwaty. “Translator channel is open?”
“Yes'm.” Perwaty sounded like he had a lot on his mind.
“I am Moire Cameron, and I lead the humans of Sequoyah,” Moire declared.
In unison, every crab except Agurwythen tucked their chins. Agurwythen stretched her long, narrow head out so that it was horizontal.
“Agurwythen. She of three small. Having kinship these she.” One forelimb indicated each of the fighter queens. “Agurwythen small to Cameron.”
Which would mean she was declaring her alliance to Moire, Harrington realized.
Moire started to nod and then stopped, realizing the meaning was different here. “Yes,” she said. There was a long pause, where nothing happened. Agurwythen was motionless. “Radersent. What happens now?”
“Cameron–she make Agurwythen–she small.” Radersent's synthetic voice was barely audible.
“How?!”
“Put forelimb on head.”
Well, that made a certain amount of sense. If big meant power, a symbolic tap on the head would make that clear. The difficulty being, even with Agurwythen's crouched position her head was still higher than Moire could reach.
Moire jumped. It was a slow jump, straight up, and just high enough for her to reach out and touch the Hsurwyn queen's head with her gauntleted hand before descending again. Harrington saw a few twitches in the assembled crabs at this unexpected event, but they maintained discipline well.
Agurwythen tilted her head up, as Harrington had seen Radersent do to Moire many times. She was moving slightly from side to side. Happydancing, a good sign.
“These she fight for Agurwythen. These she fight for Cameron.”
The other queens ducked their heads again. “OK, now what?” Moire said. “I bop them on the head too?”
“Not for making small. All she touch manipulators.”
“That means tendrils, Captain,” Perwaty added quickly.
“Ah, just a handshake for allies. Um, I don't have tendrils. And they have big heads.” Moire sighed. “Let's see if this works.” She lifted her arms and crossed her forearms under her chin, fingers extended.
Slowly the queens edged closer. Their movements were stiff and jerky, and Harrington guessed they were not nearly as happy as Agurwythen to be there. Still, they came. The large, heavy tendrils of the queens lifted and entwined, all in the circle.
And both of Moire's hands were entwined as well.
Now he understood what Radersent had said. It was real now. They had done it. And he had seen it all.
Chapter 15
He Has Waged Cruel War
The control room, far underneath the main cavern, appeared at first glance to be very professional. Lots of screens and readouts, efficiently arranged consoles, and no obvious dangling wires. Looking more closely Moire noticed that only a handful of the screens had the same kind of frame and some still had the bracket mounts from where they had been ripped free from their original ships.
“Are you sure it works?” she asked.
Gren shrugged. “We caught you and your new best friend coming in,” he said. “Had about an hour warning before you dropped, more for them since they were taking it slow. My guess is Toren won't dare run the coupling as high as you do on that lineup, since they don't have the experience, so we should have an hour–plus when they show up.”
That would give them plenty of time to get everyone underground and buttoned up and ships in position, as long as they didn't try anything too complex. That was good. Staying underground and waiting was bad for morale.
“What about comms? You said something about capturing one of their long–range devices, right? Get any intel from that?”
“By the time we got it, Kostas had whacked the shuttle people and nobody else was transmitting much.”
Moire wandered to the far end of the room. Here the ad–hoc nature of the gear was even more evident, with some tools scattered about indicating the installation was still in progress. “Got the translator hooked in too. That was quick. Good job. Interfaced to the regular comms, looks like. Does Radersent have a…what the hell is this? That looks like the guts of a reader!” She pointed. Now that she looked more closely, there were two of them. The casings had been stripped off and a great deal of reconnecting had been done.
Gren rubbed his chin, glanced around, and yelled, “Inathka! Get in here!” When Inathka peered around the edge of the door, he waved her impatiently in. “Captain has some questions about your project there.”
“Um, it's them ships,” Inathka muttered in response to her raised eyebrow. “The remotes, right? We were gonna have somebody for each one, like. Not a lotta folk with shiphandling, then we got the controls n' signal and stuff an' Alice stepped on it 'cause a crypto or somethin' so I think mebbe multidendrite core with subfuzz but we sure don't got that in the junk pile an' then I hear your kid an' them talk about that game with the ship combat an' I say hey, that's got game AI an' we can use that!”
“You are saying you used a reader game to imitate an advanced multitrack computing guidance system for the remote ships?” Moire said after taking a moment to parse Inathka's rush of words.
“Used two, actually. Kids ain't half mad about it. I promised I'd get 'em new ones, an' they wanna watch the battle.”
Moire gave up. “Why two?”
“Game AI not so random all the time. Hadda do some bit–poking, get it to work, so we got the enemy location feed in to this one like it was someone playin' an' that feeds inta the other one like it was the game process an' then that goes ta the remotes. Gotta override too, if we wanna do somethin' different.”
“Very…nice,” Moire managed. She was not going to ask if it worked. “Have you had a chance to test it?”
Inathka gritted her teeth. “Can't test nothin' if I got no signal an' not supposed to move 'em,” she said, looking pointedly at Gren.
“OK, OK, that was the right thing to do,” Moire said waving her hands.“Now it's different. No point in pretending nobody's home now, since we plan to pound them as soon as they show up. We'll have to reposition the ships anyway. Oh, and make sure the crabs know what's going on. We can test the transponders too that way.” That part had better work. No point in having crab allies that couldn't tell the bad humans from the good humans. Even if some of the good humans were fake. “What about comms from the remote ships? It can be encoded nonsense, but there should be something or Toren will figure out they're empty.”
Inathka's mouth opened in surprise, then she shut it and nodded sharply. “Oops. I'm on it.”
Moire left the control room and checked out the rest of the underground facility. Every few meters she saw what Gren had complained about earlier—they'd brought back a lot of equipment from the sargasso, but it wasn't enough. Especially with the buried ships scattered over the planet, each needing its own sensor net and comms. Even here, they had barely enough vid sensors for the cave and the emergency exit. They'd only need them if the fight turned into a ground war, so it was her job to make sure it never got that far.
Kostas called in while she was walking up the long tunnel to the cave.
“Got 'em done,” he said.
His voice on the commlink was weak and crackly. Moire nodded to the guards at the blast doors where the tunnel entered the cave and headed for the cave entrance, where the signal would be better.
“Where are you now? Did you let them know?”
“On Raven. Heading in. Yeah, they told 'em and I guess they dropped down that minute. I hope they got some kinda sealer for those tunnels, though. They aren't gonna hold atmosphere and if they are gonna put their babies in there…”
Moire grinned. Kostas had gone from red–faced fury when he was told to build some tunnels on the rock world for the crabs, to worried concern when he learned what the crabs would be using the tunnels for. He still had flashes of paranoia, but they all did. “They have that goop they use for their hull repair, or something similar,” she said. “Better than plasticrete. Thanks for doing this on short notice. I know you would rather be back here doing the junior commando thing.”
He laughed. “Hey, I ran out of Toren grubs. Wish I could be sure I got 'em all, but they didn't leave me a list.”
“I just wish you could have captured one or two instead of killing them,” Moire said dryly. “We could use more information.”
“Mebbe. Outfit like that, the ones that know anything won't tell you. Not without getting nasty with 'em,” Kostas said, sounding doubtful.
Moire sighed. “You're probably right. Did you find anything useful?”
“Nope. 'Cept for the long–range comm. It was all standard exploration kit. Well, and we got their shuttle, which is handy.”
Kostas signed off, and Moire went back to worrying. No word from Ennis, which meant he was busy. Still would have been nice to hear his voice. There was too much to think about, too many things that could go wrong. The crab fighters hadn't arrived yet. People were starting to get stressed and snappish, herself included. She kept thinking there was something she had missed, and she probably had. Gren had done some drills and dry runs before they had returned from the crab rendezvous, so it shouldn't be anything major. But in war, little things could get you killed just as dead as big ones.
The greenish sun was setting over the bay facing the cave entrance, and the deep amber light was filtering through the huge trunks of the pseudotrees growing in the shallows. Moire called in to let Gren know where she was, and then she found a convenient boulder and watched the sun go down. It's going to be messy. Remember you're doing this for a reason.
The stars began to come out, and the last light drained from the sky. Then one of the bright lights got larger, and moved, and not long after, the long dark shape of the shuttle came in on the quiet whine of engines. She watched it land inside the cave, then got up and walked over.
Ennis was the first out. He looked worn and tired, but his eyes changed when he saw her.
“Everything with guns has ammo,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. “Maybe only five rounds, but ammo. I feel like I moved an entire reload ship by hand.”
“You probably did. I wish…”
He pulled back, looking at her. “What?”
“Nothing. We can't go back to the sargasso; it would take too long. I know this. But when you tell me five rounds per gun it sets off the panic alarm.”
“It's not all of them. Just a few.”
“Oh, well then. The war's won!”
She could feel his laugh before she heard it. “They'll never know what hit them.” A silence, then, “Have you told Kilberton?”
Moire sighed. “No. I kept hoping Fleet would show. He'll want to stay, but it's him or me.”
“You've had Palmer doing the webspace detection runs, why not him?”
“That's all short hops, close to this system. The anomaly doesn't kick in there. Palmer doesn't have the skill, and he knows that.” Moire grinned. “Besides, he wants to stay for the fight.”
Ennis shook his head. “Of course. What was I thinking?”
“Come on. You haven't seen the latest Inathka invention,” Moire said, tugging his arm. “Proof positive that computer games lead to violence.”
Her comm buzzed, in alert mode. “Multiple blips inbound,” Gren said breathlessly.
They ran for the control room. More people in the corridors; Gren must have hit the alert. The control room was crowded too, with all the positions manned. Even Inathka was crouched over the game–powered remote interface.
“What do we have?” said Moire.
“Three blips. They are pretty faint. Could be wreckage.”
Moire peered at the screen. “They are off the main vector, though. You retuned Frankenstein for human ships, right? How much overlap with crab drives?”
Gren paused, thinking. “Yeah, could be. Not much overlap, but we got the whole damn gravitic grid on that ship wired up now. Think it's the crab fighters?”
“No reason for Toren to come in from that direction, and the speed's very low. I warned them to do just that. When will they get here?”
“Approximately four hours,” Alice said, her voice calm. She'd designed the signal system, so she would know.
“We've got time, even if it is Toren. Sound the alert again if more show up, or if they change their speed. We'll treat it like a live drill for now.” Moire glanced around the room. “Stay sharp, people. For all we know Palmer kicked the detector comp and that's the invasion.” She glanced at Ennis. “Guess we'd better go find Kilberton now.”
She hadn't expected the discussion to go well, and it didn't.
“Look,” she said tiredly after half an hour of argument. “You won't be running away. I only want you to go into drive if Toren somehow wins. We hid our people pretty well and they might not find them. You'd be going to get help. Fleet apparently never got our messages. You can tell them what happened, and you are the only other experienced web pilot for this route. You'll get them here faster.”
Kilberton had his arms crossed across his chest and a stubborn expression set on his face. “I should not be leaving just when things are going badly. This will take a ship away from the few we have to use. How can you ask me to watch and do nothing?”
“You're the only backup we have,” Ennis said curtly. “That's not nothing. I'd have picked you even if you weren't the only one. You are calm and have good judgment in a crisis. If we lose here, it could still get worse if Fleet doesn't know what happened. Do you want Toren repeating this elsewhere?”
Kilberton shook his head.
“You'll also be the last chance out for anyone who has changed their mind,” Moire said. “I know you want to help. This is what I need you to do.”
Kilberton sighed. “I do not wish to go,” he said softly. “But if you require it, I will.”
“Thank you. I know it won't be easy. Better get your stuff together; we'll be leaving for Raven in less than an hour. Ennis can get you the coordinates to some reliable Fleet locations.”
Kilberton nodded and left.
“How many took up your evacuation offer?” Ennis asked.
“Just a handful. Plus some of the Created, the ones I could persuade. I'm glad Gip Farouz is staying. He can keep the rest out from underfoot.” Moire looked at him. “We'll be going out hot soon. Got everything you need?”
He smiled. “Everything important.”
She smiled back. “Me too.”
¤ ¤ ¤
There were echoes from shouting voices in the cavern. Moire sighed and resumed her preflight inspection of the attack ship. It was the second iteration, and she was getting jittery again. Where the hell was Kilberton? The shuttle with the evacuees had already left. It would be nice to have a web pilot for them.
A bleep in her ear alerted her that a priority channel was being piped through. She'd switched to the captain's earring for comms. “Latest web alert, Captain. Same three ships, no change in speed.”
“Thanks. Has Palmer changed to the shorter runs?”
“Yes, Captain. Less than an hour round trip.”
That was good. Palmer could only send the data when he was on the Sequoyah end of his loop, and there was a danger they could miss the invasion if the attackers came in fast.
