The queens spawn the wre.., p.18
The Queen's Spawn (The Wrecking Squad Book 4), page 18
“The orb,” she replied, the words like ash in her mouth. “The Senti transport orb at the edge of the system.”
“Gone? How?”
“Follow me, agent, and we will see. But there is residual debris, so you and I both know the answer.”
Part Two
Six Weeks Later
Chapter 25
In the Black
“Ahhhh,” growled Savvo, fingers running along the stream of data that flickered across his screen. “My eyes are so tired of this crap.”
“Like looking for a needle hidden inside a haystack, alongside … how many haystacks could you get into our planetary system? I mean, it’s got to be a lot, right? Millions? Billions? What did Trem say the other day, apart from ‘give me chocolate’?” Arin wiggled in the pilot’s chair, sighing before easing his spine a little.
“Trillions of Almaars would fit inside our system, not, of course, including the dead space where they don’t align,” replied Savvo, frustration coursing through his veins. They had been searching for the spawn queen now for so long that it must be obvious to everyone that it was near impossible. Arin’s crass attempts at breaking the monotony aside, he was right. A needle floating in an impossibly large stack of hay. And they had only begun the search along the ecliptic plane. Why would the Butcher choose that, when he could hide absolutely bloody anywhere?
“Shiiiit. How many haystacks on Almaar, times a million and a bit. If it keeps going on like this, I’m going to go insane.” Arin sipped at his flask, eyeing Savvo over the rim who was trying to ignore him, but failed.
“Going to go? I mean, you know, right? That happened a loooong time ago.” Savvo swiped over to the next screen of sensory data. “I’m just a figment of your imagination. Really, you’re on this tub alone with your robot lover and a last Danish with mouldy sprinkles.”
“Really? There’s a Danish left?” Arin was up and out of his seat, magboots clomping towards the galley.
Savvo couldn’t decide if he was just playing along, or the monotony had killed the last of his brain cells. And his. The cupboards banged shut, the internal magnets struggling as the sub-engineer slammed the doors closed.
“You lied to me, Savvo. Nothing here but mushroom powder and girls’ fingerprints.”
Savvo sniggered. He truly would have gone mad without his friend. “Time to break into the third month’s provisions. Only two weeks early.”
More magboots announced a new arrival, Savvo glanced behind to catch Dricks and Rebekah entering the galley. He gave a last look to the sensory sweep data, and set the system on auto for what felt like the five hundredth time ‒ thinking on it, it probably was ‒ before joining the spontaneous gathering. It had been monotonous, and despite the odd bad day, they had coped as a crew. The downtime a reminder of how things used to be.
“Did I hear we’re out?” asked Rebekah, pouring a coffee and settling into a galley bench. “You’ve scoffed everything, Arin?”
“Hey, no fair. We have two thieves in the night to account for most of it.” He feigned indignance, and despite his mood, Savvo grinned. “But yeah, Savvo’s right. Time to delve into the goodies saved for month number three of this fruitless search. Hey, you know how many haystacks you can fit in the system?”
“Want me to blow your mind?” replied Dricks. Arin looked up from the packet of soup he was looking at forlornly. “Think how many needles you could fit in.”
Arin’s eyes widened, then he looked to Rebekah who tilted her head to the side in return. “Head blown” he said, mimicking it, dropping the soup packet which steadfastly refused to float away.
“But food for thought,” said Dricks, her glance to Rebekah seen by Savvo. They must have been discussing it. They all had. They had followed up on the initial gossip, and that’s what it was, the usual miner and docker bullshit. Nothing. They were at the last site Trent had gleaned hints about from Eastern-Buckhold Corp, and they had found exactly fuck-and-all.
Rebekah sighed. “Anyone else want to tell me we’re wasting our time?”
Arin held his hand up.
“That was a given. Okay, break out month three’s shit. Let’s have cake and treats, then we turn around and head back to Karal.” She looked around, and Savvo gave a nod of approval, mimicked by the others.
“Cake?” he asked.
“Got to bribe the human engines into doing their thing,” Arin replied. “Supposedly this ‘folding space’ gig requires sugar-filled calories as well as inhuman levels of patience from their carers.”
Savvo sniggered, Rebekah and Dricks shook their heads, smiles in place. But there was no doubt a return was necessary, even if it was just to see a certain lady who still hadn’t made her mind up. But then, a ship filled with a semi-permanent cabbage aroma none of them could barely discern anymore was an unlikely lure. He sniffed his flight suit. Maybe he could.
Dricks stood, supping the last of her white coffee. “I’ll go let them know to dress for cake and sugar,” she said.
Savvo sat opposite Kefi, the Senti having intertwined its lower limbs into the bench legs to pull itself down, one shoulder tentacle wrapped underneath the table between them. The Senti took every opportunity to avoid its encounter suit, like the Kefi of old, but the occasional slip into her ‘other’ personality still gave him the creeps. Like a disgruntled noble-officer always one step from ordering them to the front to be slaughtered for their failure. Savvo had become Kefi’s liaison by default, Rebekah eschewing the role so that she was divorced from their situation when making decisions. Arin because he was Arin and would make too many fart jokes, and Dricks because of her history with the Senti. Surprisingly, Kefi was a different matter. Somehow, Dricks had come to relate to the alien once more. Savvo wondered whether this was because one half of the Senti had been with them through the dangers of the orb, stood alongside those she cared for. Or that the Senti had been broken apart and rebuilt. Something Dricks knew a lot about. And of course, the Senti had learnt humour from Rohan and possibly the rest of Rubel’s dead squad.
“There’s no easy way of saying this,” he started, receiving an off-gas almost immediately that bubbled out from under a flap. Savvo had become used to the Senti, and carried on knowing full well that indication of his own stress was probably seeping from his pores too. The Senti were sensitive to aromas ‒ human and alien ‒ and she would be feeling exactly the same as him right now. “We’re going back to Karal.”
Kefi’s shoulder tentacles twitched. “You’re giving up?” The Senti leaned in, pulling herself closer. “That’s not what you mean, is it?”
Savvo wasn’t sure if that was a question, or a statement of hope. He had concluded over the last few weeks that there was more flexibility in Senti thinking than he had first assumed. That perhaps the translators were the cause of the rigidity, unable to relate any subtleties in word choice or tone humans could read. And of course, the tells of body language. He suspected it would take years to truly understand their overall ‒ what was Arin’s word? ‒ nuance. The nuances of their language.
“We’re not giving up, no. But what we’re doing is fucking fruitless. We have followed every lead we had, but there’s nothing on the ‘field we can find and your ‘skills’ have not even hinted at the spawn queen’s presence.” Kefi shuddered a little, readjusting position. “I’m not sorry,” Savvo continued, “we believe our time would be better spent trying a different bloody tack. The fleets have sent no word of contact either, and they have been searching the planets and moons.”
“At distance, in a wide net for fear of being infected by the Butcher,” stated Kefi.
Savvo nodded. It was true, but sensors could spread wide and the Segfi wasn’t exactly tiny. “It’s been quiet since the attack on the Tweem shipyard. The countess reports the Navy base on Daphene has been wiped from the moon. They used enough ordinance to blow up twenty bases, but got through in the end. But the Captain feels it was merely a distraction as any static base will always be vulnerable.”
“Yes. They can be blockaded, and need defending,” said Kefi. The Senti went quiet. Almost distant. These were the moments when the crew concluded an internal monologue was going on, two minds speaking to each other. Not like the nest queen had done. Rebekah had hinted she thought that was a female thing, but wasn’t definite.
“The Nest Queen needs to know,” stated Kefi eventually. “I suggest you have an alternate plan before we make contact,” the alien added. The tone remained steady, electronic and clipped, but it didn’t feel that way.
Savvo recognised the implied threat. Not unexpected after the queen had sent them on their way. They assumed the officer Kefi had been subsumed with, had likely been charged with administering whatever punishment was built into the Sunstar. The most obvious being buried deep within the rail cannon that sat in the belly of the ship. Despite their efforts, Dricks and ZZ3 had come up empty-handed in their sensor searches.
“Any suggestions are welcome,” Savvo replied.
Savvo pushed the last cake crumb from the corner of his mouth between his lips. The chocolate bitter, just how he liked it, and tingling his tongue. The smallest kick of sugar followed, leaving an aftertaste that brought a smile. Nicky had the sweetest of tooths, and she was within touching distance.
Or her voice was.
Karal hung in the void before them, the four asteroids circling each other in a dance that had lasted the decades since Karal had set them spinning. Heki and Tremil had brought them home, their understanding of time and place growing with each fold. Kefi had taught them how to use simulations to envisage where they were going, four-dimensional images ‒ when you included time ‒ that they could model with increasing accuracy using Senti code. Given enough safety margin, and time to learn and therefore envisage the next jump, they were confidently expanding their reach.
“You ever wondered why Kefi is teaching them?” he said, prodding at Rebekah, restarting a conversation they’d had before the Senti first watched the girls’ symbiotes fold space.
“I have two answers,” stated Rebekah, easing the Sunstar towards M4 and the expected contact to come. “The first to report back on their capabilities to the Nest Queen. Obvious, but likely.”
“And the second?”
She glanced over, a grimace there. “You like Kefi, yeah?” she said.
He paused, but he did and said so. “But I have qualms about what happened to her. How she can slip into the other one. The officer.”
“We all do. So it, she, whatever, could be ingratiating her way into the crew to find leverage to use against us.”
“That’s Pshwa thinking, or Scarva. Either of those, I’d agree, and cut out whatever they have as a heart to fucking prove it.” There was a catch to his voice, almost a growl at the thought of those two aliens. “But that sounds more than a little paranoid to me.” He caught the flash of a scowl. Leaning back, he raised his hands. “But hey who am I to judge?”
“My second.” She cracked a thumb, almost distractedly, out of habit as the comms crackled.
“Welcome home, Sunstar.” It was Nicky’s voice, they had timed their approach to her usual shifts, though Heki and Tremil had positioned their arrival from void-space on a standard approach vector. One blocked by the swirl of the outer asteroid field. “Am I getting a hi from any co-pilot on board?”
Rebekah’s grimace broke, a smile appearing. Savvo had actually blushed. “He’s looking a little embarrassed right now, docking tower. I’ll say hello for the fuckwit, so he doesn’t have to.”
“He’s gonna pay for that. Transponder activated, Sunstar. You have bay 11c. I’ll let Mr Pike know you’re here. Tower out.” Nicky’s voice faded into the hiss of comms.
Rebekah’s smile also faded. “As we were saying. The Nest Queen rebuilt Kefi, like one of our printers. Knitted her together with the Senti officer like a scarf or jumper. We don’t know what she put in there, who this Kefi is. If all this with the girls and us is genuine, you could almost argue she’s trying to make the decision harder.”
“You really are paranoid,” said Savvo, his mind now churning over the possibilities.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter 26
Karal
“Damn.” Davina swiped her screen, running her finger quickly over the file options. Already up on the main office slate was the proposal from Karal’s board. Not a full agreement, but close, just the finer details to thrash out in which they would hide every possible get-out clause and trapdoor escape route from any financial penalties Mr Duboit, the baron, demanded. That part was not her job, and the document was already winging its way across the abyss to land in the hands of her hand-picked lawyers on Almaar. They would comb through, and set their own parameters and so the back and forth would go on until the agreement was thrashed out.
The tenets were set, and as an Incini she was happy. As Mr Duboit’s voice upon M1 she was not. As Rebekah would say, she was mightily pissed off.
Had the promise of her own estate been a little too fat? Had Jenkra smelt a trap, and gone digging? Indulged in her own industrial espionage?
“Damn,” she repeated. Her file on one particular asteroid was gone from her personal data bank. She was thorough, careful and, as her Incini trainer used to call her, a little paranoid about losing things. She couldn’t have wiped it by accident. Perhaps the system had glitched? A cross-reference showed a few other files were also missing. The dates matched, despite their contents being unrelated. She sucked in a breath, held it for a few seconds, feeling the air press against her repaired lungs before releasing it into the office. She managed to avoid the moan building in her throat.
She took the office slate and ensured the draft contract was safely stored, and began searching through for the identification file and the forms she had prepared for its, and several other less wanted asteroids in its vicinity, transfer to Mr Duboit’s ownership. These she found swiftly and then dug a little deeper for the survey info. She needed to register what they knew about its worth to ensure no fraudulent downgrading or, as she’d witnessed other companies do, over-stating its value as they searched for loans to secure against it. Of course, she was hardly going to be providing the latest survey, carried out without Karal’s permission, was she? No, she needed the first survey, which she found quickly, and the lost file. One an exogeologist could revise for a price, upgrading the asteroid’s projected worth enough for someone to understand Duboit’s interest, without overstating the composition of the metals her boss identified as the next stage in arms grade resource requirements.
Crossing the t’s.
Dotting the i’s.
Keeping the real truth under a shadow. Making creds by the bucketload.
There it was. The survey file she had copied and was now missing from her own slate. Locked in Duboit’s secured holding drive. She drew it up and decrypted, only to be thwarted by its absolute blank refusal to accept her code. Davina’s hand dropped to the desk, flexing her fingers as she worked through her wetware, checking over the code stored there. She re-entered it, only for the refusal to stare back at her. Taunting. At that moment the office door opened, and Erikson stood there staring, though his eyes appeared distant, lost. Over the last few weeks, he had appeared less and less from the room, often arriving before and leaving after her. Always perfectly turned out. But something was changing, his veneer peeling away layer by layer, as if he was fading away before her eyes. They rarely spoke, only for her to send any insights the Enforcer ‒ if that’s what he still was ‒ wanted forwarding on to Rebekah and crew.
“What are you doing?” he said, the words clipped and precise as always. He had hold of the office door, gripping the handle, grey eyes finally focusing on her.
“Work for Mr Duboit,” she stated. Unless he was investigating Baron Stimpson again, that was as much as he was getting. He stepped back a little, then gripped the door harder.
“I have things for you to do. Urgent. You need to drop whatever it is. I’ll send over the trawl I’ve completed of the latest rumours Pike has sent me.” She baulked at that, suddenly understanding why she’d not got anything from Trent in the last week. She was being bypassed, reduced to the menial. “There’s a potential lead or two Khan needs to know about. Now.”
He stepped back, leaving the door open. With a glance, she noted he’d moved his desk, positioned it so he could look through to her. It must have been recent. There was a whiff of something. Bleach perhaps, seeping from inside.
Was this it? She was going to be watched now? Had she become the next target for his Enforcer paranoia?
Her office slate pinged, and the new info he promised dropped in. A minute or two of rumour and dock worker supposition. It was no different from any she’d seen before. Yes names, places, asteroids and ship names differed, but the tone didn’t. A waste of everyone’s time that stank of desperation ‒ with a tinge of antiseptic. Overly clean.
Her personal slate then flashed, the ping silent.
It was Trent, the message brief. With a twist of her lips, she worked Erikson’s data into a file and sent it on to the Sunstar. It wouldn’t have far to travel according to the message, and she intended on making sure Rebekah understood its implications face-to-face. Her worries.
Am I now paranoid? Yeah, learned through experience.
A check on her schedule showed she had enough time. A meet, a chat, something to eat and then she could return and finish up the proposal for the asteroid’s re-registration of ownership. Davina made an addition to her timetable and slid the slate inside her jacket, then gently lifted her chair to place it beneath her desk. A check inside Erikson’s office implied he was likely too busy to be disturbed, and she quietly left. A breath sitting heavy again in her chest.
