by Steve White
As Wethermere produced his palm-sized computer and started bringing up the biometric data—visual records and a few genetic samples that had been gathered by Magee’s Bloodhounds in the event that all other evidence was lost—Ankaht moved slightly behind him, peering around his arm to see what he did. At that close approach, she detected the characteristic, if faint, human musk. It was not an unpleasant odor: it evoked alien seas, but through that strangeness, it still carried the faint hint of common origins in briny waters. By comparison, the scent of Orions was thick and reminiscent of animal fats: their exclusively land-based evolution and predominantly carnivorous nature were clearly discernible even within the narrow range where Arduan olfactory sensitivity was greater than human. Humans had far better acuity detecting, and discriminating among, a far wider range of odors, but when it came to organics and esters, Arduans possessed a perversely sharp sense of smell.
Ankaht was almost surprised by Ossian’s voice. “Does this data strike you as strange as it strikes me?”
She hurriedly scanned the information on the small screen. “The crew all had criminal records. Not typical prospectors or surveyors, then.”
“Not typical at all. Not a single survey credential among them. But not true hardened criminals either—and not a single unidentifiable person among them: every one of the bodies that Li and his men actually got a sample from has a rock-solid identicode. None of the geneswap identicode forgeries we’ve found when investigating the black market types.”
Ankaht felt the lids of her two smaller eyes drift upward slightly. “So this is a change in the operating profile of our adversaries. This group was recruited for a different purpose than the earlier ones. Which implies that we have touched upon a different branch of our opponents’ operations.”
“Yes, but what is this new branch up to? Look at this.” Ossian poked one of his strangely segmented human fingers at the screen. “Half of these guys have records as accused or convicted claim jumpers, or unlicensed salvage operators. They’ve all roved around a bit, but most are local to the border space between the PSU and the Rim Federation. Which is exactly where Amunsit has been putting this crew to work: look at the most recent places their identicodes have shown up.”
Ankaht had already skimmed that information. “All systems on the chain of warp points that lead from Zephrain to Sol, but most of them here in Home Hive Three, Home Hive One, and Pesthouse. Which matches what we conjectured based on Ishmael’s information. Yet there is nothing of value in any of these systems, except the naval base the PSU maintains at Pesthouse.” She considered. “A base which sees very little traffic, and so is home to a number of secret testing and training facilities, if I am not mistaken. That might be of interest to Amunsit: the possibility of strategic intelligence to be derived from having a better idea of what is going on in that system.”
Wethermere shrugged. “Yes, maybe. But of the three systems, it’s the one in which they’ve spent the least time. It doesn’t add up.” The human frowned, called up the data on the “persons of interest” that had been gleaned from the extensive interrogations of Ishmael. Wethermere integrated the information they had on those persons’ movements with the biometric trail that had been left by the various crewmembers of the illfated prospector ship. He and Ankaht saw the flashing green flags denoting significant overlaps at the same instant. “That’s an awful lot of coincidence, don’t you think?”
“As you say, coincidences such as these are a rare and endangered species. Too much to imagine that the selnarmic courier activities are not directly connected to the visits to these three systems.” Ankaht studied the data more closely. “Interesting. The individual ships never comb these systems for very long. Although sometimes, the different ships have exchanged crewmembers.”
“And almost all of them are dead.” Wethermere’s finger ran down the column of red sigils attached to nearly all of the entries. “The rest are missing.”
Ankaht counted the different ships that had been associated with these crews, noticed that they were all declared missing in transit, had been found abandoned and adrift, or confirmed as destroyed. “Eight different ships. Enough crew for half that many again. Visiting these three systems and a few others, always ostensibly en route to somewhere else, but always staying long enough to search for—what?”
Wethermere’s frown had deepened. “The only two other systems they spend a long period of time in share something in common with the three worlds the we’ve been focusing on.”
“That they are systems in which you fought the Arachnids?”
“Yes, but a bit more than that, too. These weren’t just worlds where we fought the Arachnids: these are worlds where the Arachnids lived, where they had hives and immense infrastructures.” The human rubbed the bony protuberance that his species called a “chin”: “Ankaht, is it possible that this is somehow connected with the original Arduan fascination with—and doubts about—our war with the Bugs? Could it be that Amunsit—or someone—is still trying to prove that the Bugs weren’t real, trying to restimulate that as part of an anti-human propaganda campaign? That we aren’t reliable allies or neighbors because we exaggerated the danger the Arachnids posed to ourselves, rationalized the extreme measures we took to ensure our survival? Might Amunsit be hoping to gather enough contrary evidence to drive a wedge between our peoples, to skew our growing relationship and cooperation?”
Ankaht made sure the vocoder emphasized her overwhelming sense of the dubiousness of such a scenario. “Perhaps, but given the evidence we had gathered even before our war with your race was concluded, it is an improbable errand. Amunsit is certainly aware that even a cursory examination of these systems bears out the essential accuracy of your accounts of that war. She would thus discourage such inquiries: zealots—Arduan or otherwise—do not go in search of contradictions to their own beliefs. Rather, they avoid potential contradictions and gravitate toward further confirmations of whatever it is they have decided is the truth. That is not what Amunsit’s operatives would achieve by seeking for evidence in these places.”
“Then what is she achieving?”
Ankaht turned toward her rather hideous but endearing human companion and mimicked—badly—a shrug. “I do not know, Ossian Wethermere. But I think we have enough information to make excellent use of the analytical devices and specialists back at Bellerophon—including my Arduan investigatory team.” She reflected for a moment. “Indeed, particularly my team.”
Wethermere turned off his palm-sized computer. “Why ‘particularly’ your team?”
“There is an additional piece of information, of data, that came out of this encounter, Ossian.”
“You mean that the enemy missiles were selnarm-guided?”
“That is the piece of evidence most readily explainable to a human. What is more significant is the quality of the selnarm itself. It was—well, oddly withdrawn.”
Wethermere’s face contracted into what humans called a frown. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by that.”
Ankaht rippled a consoling tendril in her colleague’s direction. “Allow me to explain it this way: selnarm has many uses. We can use it for simple data transfer, for activating selnarmic control circuits, to merely signal our presence to each other. But we can also use it to impart our general emotional state, our shared narmata or speciate consciousness, our constant reflections upon how shaxzhutok—past lives—inform our present, and both our most superficial reactions and innermost thoughts. But the selnarm that was reaching out to those missiles”—she paused as she felt a pulse of fear, of having touched something monstrous, run through her before she could continue—“that selnarm was stunted. Almost like a slow-witted child’s. Among us, a Firstling with little selnarmic ability is as close as our species comes to having what you call a mental retardate.” She felt her tendrils coiling about each other and wrenching in worry and distress. “In our species, such deficiency in selnarmic connection is invariably connected with lower intellect
ual capacity—certainly too low to guide a missile and respond productively to both the routine and battle needs of a warship. But that was not the case here.”
Wethermere’s frown set more creases into his flexible face. “So, what does that mean, then?”
Ankaht shook the anxiety out of her tendrils. “It means that the Arduans controlling those missiles have fundamentally renounced the complexity—the richness and depth—of their selnarmic links, almost as if a human had removed their eyes so that they would develop more acute hearing. It is akin to an amputation. And that is a strange thing among my people.”
“And it worries you.”
“Yes, Ossian, it worries me. A great deal.” More than I can explain, just yet, my human friend.
Because those are the requirements of the compartmentalization that I must maintain, at the behest of my own Council of Twenty…
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was the first time the investigatory team’s alpha-clearance staff had all been together in one room since returning to Bellerophon. Ossian Wethermere stood, surveyed the faces, felt that the moment had a fateful quality to it.
The three Arduans—Ankaht, Mretlak, Lentsul—were as comparatively still as ever. Most humans would have probably characterized their demeanor as inscrutable, even vaguely threatening, but Ossian had long ago learned to watch for the subtle gestures and changes in skin tone that marked their emotional transitions. Ankaht and Lentsul were of the small and dark physiotype, Mretlak of the tall and golden variety. Of the three, only Lentsul’s skin possessed the dull, lusterless quality that was the Arduan equivalent of sitting with one’s arms folded.
The humans—Alessandro Magee, Harry Li, Jennifer Pietchkov—were not remarkably animated, either. Hardly surprising. Although none of the senior command staff knew exactly what was coming, they all had a pretty good idea—and mixed feelings—about the expected announcement. Well, Ossian reasoned, no reason to drag it out.
Wethermere glanced at Ankaht beside him, then gestured at the hardcopy—hence, un-hackable—reports in front of each person. “We have finished the investigatory summaries. Most of which you’re familiar with. All the results have been subjected to double-blind data crosschecks, meta-analyses, heuristic algorithm testing, and the result is the same every time. All the data we’ve gathered is one hundred percent consistent. And it is one-hundred percent inconclusive in regards to indicating which one—if any—of the various enemy objectives we have extrapolated is the most likely cause of the covert activities we have discovered.”
Harry Li, who had learned not be insouciant around Wethermere, raised a hand. “Sir, are you saying that the information we’ve been chasing is, in the final analysis, worthless?”
“Not at all, Harry. What I’m saying is that we’re pretty sure we haven’t misread any data, gotten fooled by disinformation, or generated any analytical artifacts of our own. The facts stand up to all the tests and crosschecks. But when we try to make them conform to some hypothetical operational outline, they don’t line up. It’s like having a bunch of points in a connect-the-dots picture—but so far, we’re not seeing any shape. Just a cloud of random dots.”
Ankaht’s confirming nod was as stiff and unnatural as ever. “We have explored and expanded almost every scenario that you—and our analytical staffs—have proposed to us, every clandestine plot that would explain why the opposition force has conducted these operations, what their final objective might be. And, to use the particularly human phrase, we have come up empty-handed. The opposition’s actions are interrelated—both in terms of operations and personnel—and demonstrate a number of strategic and paradigmatic similarities which all but prove that the same mind, or collection of minds, is behind all of them. But we do not know what information they have been passing, nor do we understand why they have been surveying and scouring old battlefields from the Bug War, or how the two might be connected.”
Lentsul’s skin seemed to become a bit more reflective. “Could it be an immense, and elaborate, counter-counterintelligence ploy?”
Jennifer goggled. “A what?”
Lentsul glanced at her. “An attempt to get us to reveal how our counterintelligence works, who drives it, its strengths and weaknesses.”
Harry frowned, leaned forward. “And to what end would they pursue such information?”
Mretlak shrugged. “It would enable our adversaries to either avoid or eliminate our counterintelligence assets as a prelude to mounting an overt military operation. However, I doubt this is the motivation behind the activity we have seen.”
Lentsul grew less reflective. “With respect, Senior Cluster Leader, I did not say I thought this alternative to be the likely answer, merely that it might possibly explain why we cannot identify an operational objective.”
“I understand,” returned Mretlak, “but that is the very reason I doubt this as the motivation for Amunsit’s covert activities within our borders. The mere fact that we cannot match the enemy’s actions to a clear underlying motivation would ultimately drive us to consider just what you have proposed, Lentsul: that it was all a goad to get us to reveal how we operate, and so, how to preemptively eliminate us. And so their actions would have been counterproductive, having alerted us to such an attempt. No, it would be much wiser for them to have set us an investigatory challenge connected to an actual, but minor, covert activity, one that we would have ultimately solved and thus paid no further heed. That would have been the most likely ploy they would have used to mount a serious counter-counterintelligence operation.”
“And we considered that possibility at length, Lentsul,” added Wethermere. “And we are indebted that you pointed it out. Frankly, it was the most plausible scenario suggested to us.”
Lentsul straightened slightly but his skin seemed to grow more lustrous: he had clearly not been expecting such a compliment from a human, was both surprised and gratified—and trying to reveal neither.
“So,” continued Wethermere, “we have only two choices: to abandon the investigation or to follow the only remaining leads we have.”
Ankaht stood alongside him. “And clearly, we cannot abandon the investigation. Although the opposition’s objectives become ever more mysterious, their fixity of purpose, their dedication to these operations, becomes correspondingly more obvious. Anything of such importance to them cannot be ignored. So we have no choice but to follow all the evidentiary paths back to the one thing they have in common: their point of origin.”
Jennifer saw what was coming now: her eyes closed as if she had just witnessed a friend die.
“We must journey to Zarzuela itself,” Ankaht finished, “or as close to its peripheries as we may venture.”
Harry leaned far back in his chair. “Counselor Ankaht, isn’t that rather—well, suicidal? And as I understand the situation, even more suicidal for you than it is for us?”
Ankaht’s vocoder alto was unperturbed. “While I would not call it suicidal, Lieutenant Li, it is indeed an action with considerable risks. And yes, while Amunsit has agreed to a limited and careful exchange of envoys and affiliated personnel with the PSU, her attitude toward the survivors of the First Dispersate—and me in particular—is that we must be discarnated as traitors.”
“So then just how do we—?”
“We’re not sure of that ourselves, yet, Lieutenant,” Wethermere broke in. “In large part because we are not cleared for receiving detailed information regarding the blockade protocols and contingents around Zarzuela. We have requested authorization for that access from Admiral Trevayne and expect that his approval will meet us at Zarzuela. At that time, we’ll be able to learn what we need about how access to the Zarzuela system is granted, how we might be able to get in, which of us are permitted, and which are least at risk if we do so. Or maybe we’ll determine that our primary task is to watch and assess who exits the system, who they talk to, where they go.”
“Either way, we must discern and observe who or what Amunsit is using to orchest
rate her operations outside of the Zarzuela system,” supplied Ankaht. “I suspect we will need to conduct both investigations—inside the Zarzuela system and without—simultaneously.”
“Agreed,” said Wethermere. “We’ll have a few more assets this time, but for the most part, it’s going to be the same team, with all of us running the operation.”
“Thereby minimizing the possibility of new internal security risks,” appended Mretlak.
“Exactly,” Wethermere agreed with a fast smile. He not only found Mretlak a skilled intelligence analyst but something of a kindred spirit: a person whom the war between humans and Arduans had thrust into unexpected and, in some regards, unwelcome prominence. “Our cover will be as new team of diplomatic and trade liaisons.”
“Won’t they have access to our actual identities already?” asked Jennifer glumly.
“Some of us, yes. It’s a near certainty that Ankaht will not be able to enter Zarzuela or be openly associated with us in any way. Given the migration of the First Dispersate’s Destoshaz-as-sulhaji from Bellerophon to Amunsit’s camp, we must presume that Ankaht is well known to our opponents. As to the rest of us—well, that’s one of the first things we’re going to need to determine: what Amunsit’s counterintelligence people know versus what they don’t. They’ve only been free to send a few envoys out, so they’ve had to conduct most of their intelligence gathering through human or Orion proxies.”
“Who have access to reams of data. Which will certainly mention you somewhere, Captain. Or even Tank, here.” Harry Li’s frown was one of genuine worry.
Wethermere nodded. “Yes, that might very well be the case. But then again, they can hardly be relaying all that data, Harry. And besides, having data is only half the problem: knowing the right questions to ask, the right people to research—that’s the tricky part. Fortunately, the internal security review we completed last quarter is paying some pretty big dividends as we enter this new operational phase. We found no leaks, and no evidence that our off-the-books investigation has been detected. With any luck, my name has not been heavily associated with Ankaht’s. Mretlak’s association with her is more likely to have been known by Destoshaz émigrés —but then again, if the émigrés aren’t thoroughly debriefed when they arrive in Zarzuela, it may be that the right information hasn’t been gathered. So they might never have tweaked to the wartime cooperation between Ankaht and Mretlak.”