Once they reunited with the Nova, Maker immediately gave the order to depart the station and rendezvous with the battle cruisers. Afterwards, accompanied by Erlen, he escorted their guest back to his quarters, where Skullcap once again tried to engage him in conversation. Maker rebuffed him, and then went to see Wayne. He found him in a small storage room that the younger Marine had commandeered as his own personal workspace.
“I brought you a present,” Maker said as he and Erlen walked into the workroom. He then handed Wayne the tracking device, which had been in his possession since he’d taken it from the ball-being.
“This is the tracker?” Wayne asked.
Maker nodded. “Affirmative.”
Wayne stepped to the side and placed the device on a nearby shelf. Maker, taking an opportunity to look around the place, noticed first and foremost a large worktable in the middle of the room. More specifically, he noticed what was on the table: Skullcap’s battle armor (although it was completely disassembled at present).
“So, this is it,” he muttered, stepping closer.
“Yeah,” Wayne stated with a nod. “All of the offensive capabilities were disabled before I got to it – presumably by some of our people. I’ve pretty much shut down the defenses as well, so now it’s basically just a metal suit.”
“How long will it take you to figure out how the interface with the tracker works?”
Wayne shrugged. “No way to tell. I mean, it’s alien technology, el-tee. I’ve first got to figure out which part of this actually is the interface, then I’ll concentrate on how to make it work.”
“So we don’t have a timetable for this.”
“Well, if you’re in a rush, there is a work-around.”
He glanced at Maker hopefully, only to see his commanding officer shaking his head.
“No way,” Maker stressed. “Absolutely not.”
“Fine by me,” Wayne stated noncommittally, “but I don’t want you breathing down my neck if I don’t produce results as fast as you’d like.”
Maker merely stared at him for a moment, then said, “Let me think about it for a minute and get back to you. In the meantime, just see if you can figure it out.”
Wayne nodded. “You got it, el-tee.”
Chapter 59
Upon leaving Wayne’s workroom, Maker went in search of Diviana. He found her in her quarters, at which point – after she invited him and Erlen inside – he immediately began questioning her about the situation with Kpntel.
“Okay, so how exactly did that debacle come about?” he asked.
“I was out gathering intel, just as we discussed,” Diviana began. “In general, I had no issues initially, and after about thirty minutes I was getting ready to wrap up and come find you when that bug-bear grabbed me.”
“Kpntel?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He was screaming something about me being his property and that I was coming with him. Naturally, I reacted.”
“I take it that explains his missing limbs.”
“When I want a man – or a male of any species – pawing me, he’ll know it,” Diviana declared. “But in the absence of an invitation from me, it’s hands off.”
“Or in this instance, arms off.”
“Well, he’s literally got like fifty limbs, so I doubt he even missed them. Plus, it didn’t seem to slow him down, because the next thing I knew, he and his cohorts were chasing me.”
“And the explosion?”
“Not my fault,” Diviana insisted, shaking her head. “Well, not directly my fault.”
“You’re going to have to explain that,” Maker said.
“When I mentioned that they were chasing me, they were actually riding in some type of vehicle. My chances of outrunning them on foot were nil, so I took the gun you’d given me and shot at what I thought was the engine.”
“Wait a minute,” Maker blurted out in a concerned voice. “You actually fired the gun?”
“Yes, but I made sure that no one saw me,” Diviana assured him.
He looked at her skeptically, but simply said, “Go on.”
“I was only trying to slow them down or – if I got lucky – make them give up pursuing me, but apparently their vehicles operate on principles of physics or mechanics that are somewhat different than ours.”
“Let me guess,” Maker interjected. “The vehicle blew up.”
“Not per se,” Diviana clarified. “It actually shot out a spout of flame that sent everybody around it scrambling. The flames ultimately engulfed something like an electrical transformer that was nearby, and that’s what blew up.”
Maker nodded, already knowing the rest of the story. “And a few minutes later, you ran up to us, with your new friends in tow.”
“Pretty much,” Diviana agreed.
“Okay, so let’s put aside your extracurricular activities for a moment,” Maker said. “Did you make any headway on the task you were actually trying to accomplish?”
“Of course,” she declared matter-of-factly. “What kind of intel agent do you take me for?”
“I don’t know,” Maker replied. “I’m reserving judgment in this instance until you actually give me some intel.”
Diviana crossed her arms in a huff. “Fine, but you need to bear in mind that I was limited by time, so it’s a small sample size.”
“Understood. What did you find out?”
“Following your instructions, I inquired – discreetly – about the presence of any Vacra anywhere nearby. Specifically, I asked if they maintained a permanent presence or outpost anywhere on the planet or in this region of space.”
“And?” Maker asked anxiously.
“Well, no one could swear to it on a stack of bibles, but according to the info I got, the Vacra don’t have anything like that here. They pass through occasionally, do a little business, and then move on. In fact, no one’s seen any of them around here in something like a month.”
Maker nodded. Her words gave him a little bit of comfort that there wasn’t a fleet of Vacra ships waiting to ambush them.
Not just yet, anyway, he thought.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Diviana frowned. “Yeah, actually. It’s a little weird, but everybody seemed to speak of the Vacra in these deferential tones.”
“You mean like fear?”
She shook her head. “No, it was actually…reverent. Like they respected them. And when I asked, I was told in no uncertain terms that the Vacra were among the most honorable and noble of any race around.”
“Ha!” Maker scoffed. “That has to be a joke.”
“No,” Diviana insisted. “I mean, I know what you’re saying – the Vacra have been nothing but deceitful and underhanded as long as we’ve dealt with them – but that’s not their reputation here. It’s the exact opposite, and has been for ages.”
Maker frowned. Assuming Diviana’s information was accurate, it didn’t mesh at all with his own understanding of and experience with Skullcap’s race.
“Maybe the Vacra are just like a playground bully,” he finally said. “They’ll pick on someone they think is smaller or weaker – like humans – but are on their best behavior around anybody they think can give them a thrashing.”
“I don’t know, el-tee,” Diviana muttered, shaking her head. “That’s not the impression I got. Maybe there’s something here we’re not seeing.”
“What we’ve seen is what they’ve shown us,” Maker countered. “And the last time I checked, my vision was twenty-twenty.”
Chapter 60
As he and Erlen left Diviana’s cabin, Maker couldn’t help feeling frustrated. The information about the Vacra purportedly being honorable was a new wrinkle that he really didn’t want to deal with. Frankly speaking, his method of processing that data was to simply disregard it, because it didn’t fit the Vacra behavioral paradigm from his perspective.
That said, it did solidify his desire to complete the current mission as soon as possible. And with that in mind, he ca
me to a decision.
***
It only took a few minutes to round up Skullcap and then march him to Wayne’s workroom. As expected, the young Marine was busy scrutinizing a portion of the insectoid’s battle armor when they entered, with the tracking device sitting on a nearby table.
“All right, we’re going to try this,” Maker announced without preamble.
“Great,” Wayne replied with a nod.
Upon seeing his disassembled battle suit, Skullcap made a short, low humming sound that Maker assumed was indicative of disapproval.
“I see you did not exaggerate when we spoke previously,” the insectoid stated. “My armor is in pieces.”
“As I said before, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” Wayne assured him.
“Let’s stay on task,” Maker prompted. He looked pointedly at Skullcap. “You said you needed your armor to interface with the tracker. They’re both here, so do your thing.”
Skullcap reached for a piece of armor designed to go over the tarsus – the end of his upper forelimb that would be roughly equivalent to a forearm on a human. He picked it up and was about to put it on when Maker spoke.
“Just as a reminder,” Maker said, “your buddy Deadeye occupies a comfortable niche in every room, including this one. Basically, if you try anything cute, he’s going to shoot you dead. And if he somehow misses, Erlen will melt your face off.”
Skullcap glanced at the Niotan, who had entered the room with him and Maker, and now sat attentively by the door.
Turning back to Maker, the Vacran said, “I surmised as much, but does that mean your own weapon is merely for show?”
He gestured toward Maker’s hand, which – as usual when he was around Skullcap – gripped his service weapon.
Maker almost chuckled. “To be honest, carrying this when I’m around you has become second nature to me, so I practically forgot I had it.”
“Indeed,” Skullcap muttered. Then, turning his attention back to the task at hand, he slipped the vambrace (as Maker thought of it) over his forelimb.
As the two Marines watched, the Vacran pressed what appeared to be a button on the side of the armor piece. Almost immediately, a number of diodes on the vambrace lit up, causing Maker to instinctively put his forefinger on the trigger of his weapon.
“The battle suit has a general power unit,” Skullcap explained, “but this segment” – he gestured to indicate the vambrace – “has its own battery because it has special functions.”
“Such as operating trackers,” Maker interjected.
“Among other things,” the insectoid noted. “However, the battery is of a low-grade variety and incapable of presenting a threat.”
“Oh, really?” Maker droned. “You must be disappointed.”
“I merely highlighted a fact that would diminish any misinterpretation of my actions,” Skullcap remarked, “as well as the odds of me getting shot.”
Without waiting for Maker to respond, he then reached for the tracking device. The moment he touched it, the frosted tube around the pyramid seemed to come alive with a soft glow.
“Everything appears to be functioning correctly,” Skullcap said after a moment.
“Awesome,” Wayne noted. “Which way is it saying we should go?”
“It is not specifying a direction at the moment,” Skullcap noted. “It is out of range.”
Chapter 61
There were four of them in the Nova’s conference room: Maker, Adames, Browing, and Chantrey – meeting together in an assembly that was strangely reminiscent of the brainstorming session they’d had days earlier in Browing’s apartment.
“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Adames said. “The tech we’re after is currently located on a Vacra ship, and said ship is in hiding on a distant planet.”
“Not too distant,” Maker corrected. “We can get there in a reasonable time without jumping to hyperspace.”
“Fine – it’s a stroll in the park,” Adames remarked. “On top of that, the tracker you retrieved is currently out of range and therefore useless until we reach the star system where the aforementioned planet is located.”
“Correct,” Maker confirmed with a nod. “After we get close enough, it’ll activate, thereby leading us to the Vacra ship. At the same time, it’ll give an all-clear signal to the Vacra on the vessel in question, letting them know they can poke their head up out of the sand. At that point, we’ll rendezvous with them, get the tech, etcetera.”
Adames frowned as Maker spoke, much as Maker himself had done when he had first gotten the information he’d just relayed from Skullcap. Rather than call everyone together to brief them on the change, Maker had instead simply announced it over the ship’s intercom, and then passed it along to the captains of the two cruisers in their convoy (along with the coordinates of their new destination). Almost immediately, however, he had gotten contacted on his p-comp by the trio with him now. But rather than powwow with each of them individually, he’d simply chosen to have a joint session with all of them.
“I’m sure this is starting to sound like a broken record,” Adames said, interrupting Maker’s reverie, “but this mission seems to get more complicated by the second. At every stage, there are additional steps that we never considered because we never knew about them. I know you, Gant. There’s no way you’re comfortable with this.”
“Frankly speaking, I’m not,” Maker admitted. “However, what we’re doing now is functionally no different than what we’d have done if the tracker had been within range of the target and simply indicated which direction we should go.”
“But if this is how it was supposed to happen, why didn’t our little insectoid friend simply tell us all that?” Adames virtually demanded. “He made it sound as though once we got the tracker, we were in business.”
“I think what might appear as lack of forthrightness may actually have something to do with linguistics and culture,” Browing offered.
“What do you mean?” Maker asked.
“The current situation is similar to our prior dealings with them,” Browing replied. “Basically, plans they made with us – such as arranging a rendezvous – were generally skimpy on specifics. They seemed to lack the granular detail that we take for granted. It’s a lot like if someone asked you to make them a sandwich, but didn’t tell you what kind of meat to put on it, or whether they wanted lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and so on.”
Maker pondered on Browing’s comment for a moment, then asked, “How’s it possible for them to overlook stuff like that?”
Browing shrugged. “It’s probably something in the Vacran vernacular that simply doesn’t translate when they speak Terran, or – most likely – something cultural that doesn’t require the level of particularity that we expect.”
“In other words,” Maker surmised, “Skullcap’s a ‘big picture’ guy.”
“For lack of a better term, yes,” Browing agreed.
“But as Maker noted, I’m not sure this changes anything,” Chantrey offered.
“I’d argue that it does,” Adames said. “At the very least, it alters how we should approach every step of this mission, because we don’t know if we’re getting all the facts.”
Chantrey looked as though she had another comment to make, but before she could form the words, Maker spoke.
“Actually, I think you’re both right,” he stated, glancing first at Adames and then at Chantrey. “From a macro level, we’re still behaving as we would have if the tracker had performed as advertised. But Adames is right in that we probably need to focus a little more on trying to read between the lines. And if that means making Skullcap give us more definitive data, so be it.”
Chapter 62
Their meeting broke up almost immediately after Maker’s last comment. Unfortunately, there were really were no takeaways (other than the general agreement to try to get more specific info from their Vacran passenger). As the others were leaving, Maker got Chantrey’s attention and clandestin
ely asked her to hang around.
“Feels like I haven’t seen you in a while,” he stated after the other two had gone. “You okay?”
“If you’re referring to your prior suggestion that I’m a lab rat in my own experiment, I’m fine,” she assured him.
“So you think I was wrong?”
“No, I think you were right on the money. They’ve got someone performing predictive analysis on me.”
“Are you mad?”
“Only at myself,” she admitted. “I should have seen this coming, but I guess I relied too much on my past performance and reputation.”
“Well, take it from me,” Maker said. “Those will only get you so far.”
“So I’ve learned,” she remarked. “But do me a favor: don’t say it.”
“Say what – that I told you so?”
Chantrey sighed. “You do know that’s the exact opposite of not saying it, right?”
Maker was silent for a moment, then asked, “So, do you regret it now – this thing between us?”
“That depends,” she replied candidly, stepping close. “Are you worth it?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a question only you can answer.”
“In that case, the jury’s still out,” she said with a wink. “But you’ll get a few more opportunities to make your case.”
“That reminds me,” Maker uttered, snapping his fingers. “I need to talk to you about something. Can I come see you later?”
“I’ve got time now,” she replied.
Maker shook his head. “I can’t right now – bridge duty.”
“You’re in command. You can be late.”
“The leader sets the tone,” Maker stressed. “If I want my people to be punctual, then I have to be as well.”
Chantrey gave him a skeptical look. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy to see me again later?”
“Maybe a little,” Maker admitted with a grin. “But I actually do have something I need to get your insight on.”
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