by Dan Moren
“Define best.”
“Least likely to get us killed?”
“When was the last time you saw someone with this many certifications?”
“There’s a difference between certified and certifiable.”
“She may have some black marks here and there, but who doesn–”
“Seventeen? Insubordination? Gross misconduct? Failure to follow orders? How she’s escaped a court-martial so far is beyond me.”
“Hey, you didn’t like Brody either when we brought him onboard. But you can’t argue that he’s been an asset.”
“Look, the kid can pilot pretty much anything you sit him down in front of,” said Tapper, putting his hands up, “but we both know that he’s still no operative, even after Bayern. And he’s a pain in the ass. Specifically, my ass.”
Kovalic pressed a palm against the stubble on his jaw, feeling the bristles stand up as he ran his hand over them.
Tapper eyed him sideways. “Boss, you wanted to put together the best unit in the service, and you’ve done that. But this…this makes us a joke. They hear we’re taking washouts, and pretty soon every unit is going to be trying to dump their problem children on us.”
It wasn’t that the sergeant didn’t have a point, but Kovalic could care less what everybody else thought about his unit. As long as they got the job done, everybody could think they were total screw-ups, for all he cared.
“Look, I know what happened with Page threw you.”
Kovalic’s jaw set. “This isn’t about that.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” said Tapper, eyes to heaven. “Page was a hell of an operator and he was part of this team. You say he betrayed us – hard as I find that to believe, you’re the boss, and whatever happened on Bayern, I trust you had your reasons to do what needed to be done.”
Kovalic’s hand twitched at the memory of a heavy pistol there. Tapper was his most trusted confidant – they’d served together for more than twenty years. Keeping him in the dark was almost physically painful. But the decisions Kovalic had made were his and his alone; if the time came when someone had to answer for them, it was going to be him. No one else.
“If anything, maybe Page was too good,” Tapper continued. “He was playing us and we all missed it. I guess it’s not too hard to see why you’d seize on the person least like him to fill his spot.”
Kovalic ran a hand through his hair. “You didn’t see the rest of the candidates, sergeant. Qualified, sure, but cookie cutters, all of them. Not a single one ever had an original idea that didn’t come from their CO. That’s the last thing we need.”
“Well, what’s the damn hurry for replacing Page anyway? With you, me, Taylor, and–” he stifled a sigh, “–Brody, we’re still at operational capacity.” His eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about the commander, is it? Because she and I may not always see eye to eye, but she’s damn good.”
“No, it’s not about her,” said Kovalic. He almost believed it, too. “Nat and I are fine.”
“Oh sure,” Tapper muttered. “If only you could decide whether you were married or not.”
Kovalic ignored him. “But we’re not going to have the commander forever; she’s leaving at the end of this mission.”
“What?”
“Her secondment is up, and there’s a job waiting for her back at NICOM. So we need to start planning for the future.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you considered asking her to stay?”
He could. But Nat had always been ambitious, and he didn’t want to get in the way of her goals. Besides the two of them not just working together, but her working for him? Seemed like a recipe for disaster, and they’d made that one before.
“I would feel better if we had some new talent. And sometimes people deserve a second chance, don’t they?”
Tapper’s tch of disgust didn’t leave much room for interpretation. “I’m not so sure about an eighteenth chance. But you’re the boss. You want to waste your time with this burnout, then that’s your call.”
“And here I thought there was nothing holier to you than the chain of command.”
“Never kept me from speaking my mind to a damn fool decision before.” He tilted his head. “I kind of figured that’s why you kept me around.”
With a laugh, Kovalic slapped his sergeant on the shoulder, and rose to his feet. “I keep you around because we both know there’s no other unit that would put up with you. I guess you and Sayers have that much in common.” With that, he climbed the ramp into the ship, ignoring the glare Tapper shot after him.
It only took Brody about fifteen minutes to prep the Cavalier and get lift off clearance; Tseng-Tao’s Divide was not exactly a stickler for traffic control. The trip to Jericho would take eight hours or so, and once they’d broken atmo and were en route to the system’s gate, Kovalic headed for the ship’s galley. He’d laid in a store of produce before leaving Nova, because if he had to eat one more ready-cook meal, he was going to crash the ship himself.
Besides, cooking had a way of relaxing him. His father had been a baker, and a busy kitchen had been one of the hallmarks of his childhood. The bigger challenge was having the time, space, and energy to do it, especially in his line of work. Half the time he bought food to make at home, it ended up going to waste when he got called away on a job. But he still tried to make time for it when he could, and the Cav’s galley was surprisingly well-equipped. If the outside ramp was Tapper’s domain, the galley was his.
That said, they were still aboard a ship, and subject to the usual constraints: no open flames meant food was cooked via an induction range or convection oven; every implement and utensil had to be latched into place, covered, or magnetized; and the stovetop was mounted on gimbals to account for maneuvering. At least the invention of artificial gravity had made cooking in space feasible: trying to prepare food in zero-g was only a recipe for a mess.
Fortunately, the long, straight line trip to the Juarez gate from Tseng-Tao’s Divide provided ample time to prepare a simple meal. And it quickly proved that nobody could resist the wafting aroma of garlic and onion. It only took about half an hour for Nat to wander in, rubbing at tired eyes that had spent way too long staring at a screen. At the sight of the pan on the induction range, she perked up.
“Wait, is that your eggplant parmesan?”
Kovalic gave a modest wave. “Just thought everybody could use a decent meal after the last day or so we had.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Nat, reaching over and plucking a handful of shredded cheese from a dish, depositing it directly into her mouth. At Kovalic’s glare she returned a look of pure innocence. “What? Quality control.”
With a snort, Kovalic turned back to his pan, unlatched the cover, and stirred the sauce simmering there. “Tapper says you’ve been deep in the nets all afternoon. Any promising leads?”
“Well, uh, I might have gotten distracted and fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole.”
He smiled to himself, his back still to her. You could take Nat out of the intelligence analyst department, but you sure as hell couldn’t take the intelligence analyst out of Nat. “Oh yeah? What enthralling subject?”
“Aleph Theory.”
“Please tell me you haven’t been watching conspiracy theory videos from too earnest kids with way too little grasp of scientific rigor.”
Nat gave him a look. “Please, Simon. Give me a little credit. Respectable and vetted sources only.”
“I wasn’t aware that xenoanthropology had become a peer-reviewed field.”
Taking a seat on one of the stools bolted to the floor by the counter, Nat rested her chin on a palm. “I fully admit that hard evidence is sparse, but there are some interesting points nonetheless.”
Kovalic sighed, scraping at the sauce in the pan. “I’m going to regret asking this but, ‘Such as?’”
“Well, of the wormhole-connected systems that we’ve discovered, around eighty-five percent of them have at least one planetoi
d capable of supporting human life. Eighty-five percent! That’s absurdly high, especially given their astronomical dispersal.”
“Coincidence?”
“Coincidence?” Nat scoffed. “That we just happened to discover wormholes leading to habitable planets. Pull the other one.”
“It doesn’t exactly prove the existence of aliens.”
“Ooh, you guys talking about aliens?” said another voice.
Kovalic glanced over his shoulder to see Eli Brody emerging from the direction of the Cav’s cockpit, brushing a lock of sandy hair out of his eyes.
“Also, something smells amazing.” The pilot hopped up on a stool next to Nat, peering over the counter with the kind of hungry eyes usually reserved for teenagers.
Nat rolled her eyes, but her heart wasn’t in it. She’d grown fond of Brody over the past few months since the Bayern job – protective in a big sister way. Kovalic suspected that was because he reminded her a little bit of her actual brother: slightly hapless, but generally cheerful.
“And what exactly do you know about Aleph Theory?” Nat asked.
“Well, there was this video about an ancient Earth site at a place called Stonehenge and how aliens–”
Kovalic sidled over to Nat. “Oh, yes, your case is looking better and better,” he murmured, unable to keep a smug edge out of his voice.
She cradled her head in her hands as Brody continued to ramble. “There’s booze on the ship somewhere, right?”
“Ask Tapper.”
Thirty minutes later, Kovalic was dishing out fried eggplant to Tapper, Nat, and Brody, who’d gathered around the cramped table in the ship’s lounge. Sayers was nowhere to be seen, but he’d set a portion aside for her, just in case she got hungry.
Despite Kovalic’s best efforts to change the subject, Aleph Theory had continued to be the topic of the day, with even the sergeant venturing an opinion.
“Look,” said Tapper, “I’m just saying I’ve been around. And I’ve never seen anything to make me believe that super-intelligent aliens ever existed. Where’s the proof? They never left anything behind? No buildings? No civilization? No ships?”
“Maybe you’re just judging them based on our own limited human perspective. What about a dozen planets with human-breathable atmospheres, water, and around one g of gravity?” Nat said, punctuating the questions with jabs of her fork. “That not enough for you? What about wormholes between those systems?”
Tapper threw his hands up. “Oh come on, now the aliens made the wormholes? I suppose they built black holes and stars too.”
“Maybe,” said Nat. “I’m just saying that if humans were able to devise a way to artificially prop wormholes open, there’s no reason to believe that an advanced intelligent species couldn’t have figured out how to build the wormholes themselves in the first place.”
Brody piped up through a mouthful of food. “I saw this one thing that said maybe the Aleph were actually giant space worms who burrowed through…”
If there was a back half to that sentence, it didn’t register with Kovalic. He didn’t have a horse in this race. It didn’t matter if the Aleph Theory or the tablet were real. The only thing that mattered was perception, like the general had said. If anybody thought the Aleph Tablet was real, then Kovalic and the team had to treat it like it was, just to be on the safe side – and the fact that the tablet had been stolen certainly supported the theory that someone out there put stock in its value.
The sudden silence in the conversation brought him back to the present, and he looked up to see Adelaide Sayers pause on the threshold of the room.
Kovalic got to his feet. “Hungry?”
“Uh, sure,” she said, her eyes going to the crowded table.
“Pull up a chair,” said Brody, sliding his own to one side.
Kovalic pulled the tray out of the oven, smiling to himself while his back was turned. Brody’s value wasn’t limited to the cockpit.
“It’s fine,” Sayers was saying. “I can just take it back to my bunk.”
“Nah, plenty of room.”
With the look of someone who expected a trap to be sprung at any moment, Sayers took a seat. Kovalic put a bowl in front of her, along with a fork. “Hope you like eggplant.”
Sayers poked at it dubiously. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had it before.”
“Fry it up with enough cheese and tomato sauce and it’s pretty passable,” said Tapper.
“Thanks,” said Kovalic. “Don’t think I won’t remember that next time it’s your turn to cook.”
Spearing a piece, Sayers gave it a tentative bite and seemed to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t poisonous.
“So,” said Brody, leaning back in his chair. “We’re having a very important discussion on Aleph Theory. Care to weigh in?”
Sayers blinked, cornered, and Kovalic could see the panic in her eyes. “Uh…”
“Commander Taylor and I are of the opinion that millions or maybe billions of years ago super-intelligent aliens built wormholes between systems in which they’d terraformed planets to support human life, paving the way for humanity’s expansion into the stars,” Brody waved a hand, as if painting a picture. “Major Kovalic and Sergeant Tapper are, on the other hand, unenlightened heathens.”
Sayers’s eyes darted back and forth, going from the pilot to her superior officers, her jaw slowly working as she chewed. Finally she swallowed, took a deep drink of water, and looked at Brody. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Tapper barked a laugh. “She’s got your number, kid.”
Brody laughed too, not seeming particularly hurt by the pronouncement. Kovalic envied the younger man’s ability to let things roll off his back; Brody had been through a lot and he’d clearly learned to not sweat the small stuff. But despite that, Kovalic couldn’t shake the feeling that something was eating at the kid.
Sayers seemed surprised by the reactions, but a smile – a genuine one – tugged at the corner of her mouth, and the tension with which she’d held herself since the first moment Kovalic had met her, relaxed, if only slightly. He felt his own stress ebbing along with it.
“Well, the good news is that we finally have a tie-breaker,” said Tapper. “All these two-to-two votes have really put a crimp in things.”
“How long have you been a unit?” said Sayers.
“The major and I go back a ways… longer than is worth mentioning,” said Tapper, helping himself to a second piece. “But the commander and Brody here have only been with us about three months. Officially.”
“Three months?” Sayers echoed, wide eyed.
“Seems like longer most days,” said Brody. “Especially when you have to put up with Tapper’s snoring.” He was saved from a retort by the sergeant’s mouth being full. “What about you? How long have you been in the service?”
And just like that, it was as if a blast door had slid closed over Sayers. Her expression was once again wary, careful to not give anything away. “A few years.”
If Brody sensed the change, he didn’t show it. “What’d you do before that?”
“This and that.”
“A woman of mystery! Where’d you grow up?”
Sayers’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”
Even a frontal assault wasn’t enough to ding Brody’s enthusiasm. “We’ve got a real hodgepodge here. I grew up on Caledonia, during the Illyrican occupation… the commander here’s from Centauri.” He lowered his voice to almost conspiratorial levels. “Sergeant Tapper’s from the moon. We think that’s why he’s so cranky all the time.”
Kovalic methodically sliced up his dinner, eating each piece slowly and thoroughly. Sayers didn’t have to open up to them if she didn’t want to, but she’d need to if the team was ever going to gel. Their missions might be secret, but they shouldn’t be keeping secrets from each other.
There was a twinge in his stomach at that: it was an ideal that even he wasn’t living up to right now, keeping what hap
pened with Page from the rest of the team. But that was different. That was for the good of everybody, not just himself.
Brody’s persistence finally dragged an answer out of Sayers. “I grew up on Nova.”
“Commonwealth born and bred, eh? No surprise you joined up.”
Sayers’s lips thinned into a line and, abruptly, she stood. “I’ll be in my bunk.” She started to collect her food.
With a sigh, Kovalic waved her to sit back down; she didn’t look thrilled by the prospect. The chitchat hadn’t paid off, but they still had work to do. “Sorry, specialist. Afraid we’ll need you here a little bit longer.” He cast a glance around the table. “We’ll be at Jericho in a few hours, and we need to have our next move ready. What have we got?”
Nat tugged at her ponytail. “Not much, frankly. Whoever paid our thieves made a point of being discreet about it.”
“And we’ve ruled out the crims?” said Tapper. “We know they want the blasted thing.”
“Those mercs could have been cutouts, sure,” said Kovalic. Every intelligence agency used third-party go-betweens for deniability. “But Eyes has the resources to grab it themselves, and I feel like they wouldn’t be shy about letting us know.”
“So, who does that leave?” said Brody, picking at his teeth.
“Other governments,” said Nat.
“Big corporations,” added Kovalic.
“Anybody with money,” said Tapper.
“Well, we’re going to Jericho Station,” Brody pointed out. “That place is huge. Don’t you guys know people in low places?”
The kid had a point. His instincts were improving. Do anything long enough, and Kovalic supposed that you had to get better at it. He glanced at Nat. “Itzkovitz?”
She shook her head. “He left Jericho six months back; retired to someplace in Hanif space.”
“What about Warsame?” said Tapper. “She helped us out on that Centauri gig a few years back.”
“Dead, I heard,” said Kovalic. “Got caught in a tight spot between rival gangs.” He scratched his head. “There was that woman… Harjo?”