The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2)

by Alastair Mayer

  “So the paper records might be in a file drawer somewhere, but nobody knows which drawer or where, or even if it still exists.”

  “That’s the most likely situation, yes. We could get lucky, but that’s not the way to bet,” Carson said.

  “We’re still going to try looking for it,” Ducayne insisted.

  “But why?” asked Jackie. “The Hill incident was probably a pure fabrication.”

  “If it wasn’t, the record could contain information that could affect the security of human space. That’s worth spending some effort to find. If we can’t find it, or we do and it’s clearly bogus, then it’s just a bit of manpower wasted. That’s nothing new in the intelligence business.”

  “All right,” Carson said. “While you’re doing that, can we think about an expedition to Zeta Reticuli?”

  Ducayne shook his head. “I can’t approve that. That’s too dangerous a potential anthill to go kicking over blindly. We need to get more information first.”

  “But—” Carson began.

  Ducayne held up a hand to cut him off. One corner of his mouth curled up, just a bit. “Of course, neither you nor Roberts work directly for me, so I can’t actually order you not to go there. But whatever you do on your own time, stay out of trouble.”

  Carson looked over at Jackie and cocked an eyebrow. She smiled back at him with a slight nod.

  “One other thing,” continued Ducayne. “The agency is making some expensive upgrades to your ship, Jackie. We’d appreciate it if you were very careful with our property.”

  “Like it was my own,” she said, and winked. “By the way, I’ll want to give her a shakedown flight as soon as the repairs are finished; I’ll need to recalibrate the warp modules. And whoever signs off on the work is coming with me.”

  Her comment reminded Carson of the old Roman custom of requiring a new bridge’s chief engineer to stand under it while the construction scaffolding was removed. There was nothing like knowing your life depended on it to force attention to detail.

  Ducayne nodded. “Smart woman. I’ll let him know.”

  3: Rico

  Sawyer City

  Blam! Blam! The target disintegrated into a cloud of paper shreds. Rico decided he could get used to this; Ducayne’s facility had all kinds of toys to play with. He was enjoying himself, blasting at targets on the small-weapons range in sublevel three of the Homeworld Defense facility. He popped the now-empty magazine out of the pistol’s grip and was reaching for a full one when a voice came over the range’s PA.

  “Safe your weapon, Rico. Ducayne wants to see you in his office, now.”

  Rico sighed, locked the pistol’s chamber open to show it was empty and set it on the bench in front of him, muzzle pointed downrange. It sounded like the party might be over. He had wondered when they’d have a job for him.

  Rico had worked for a tomb raider—a dealer of illegal alien artifacts—named Hopkins until they’d tangled with Carson and come up on the bad end of the deal. Carson had rescued him from Hopkins’ crashed ship and put him in a traumapod. He’d repaid Carson by helping him out when they encountered a ship full of bad guys, Velkaryans, who wanted some kind of alien weapon Carson had found. Apparently—he’d been in a traumapod after that episode, too—that had been enough to persuade Ducayne to offer him a position with this covert Homeworld Defense operation rather than turning him over to the local cops. That was fine with Rico; with Hopkins gone he needed a new gig anyway.

  He reached Ducayne’s office and stuck his head into the doorway. “You wanted to see me, Boss?”

  “Yes. Come on in and grab a seat.”

  “What’s up?” Rico said, making himself comfortable.

  “I’ve got a job for you. It involves going to Earth. Any problem with that?”

  “Hell yes I have a problem with that! Not the job, Earth.”

  “If you want to work for me, you’ll go where the job takes you. If not, there are plenty of law enforcement types who’d love to talk to you—but not to offer you a job.”

  Rico didn’t flinch. He’d worked for tougher bosses than this character. At least, they’d been tougher on the surface. Something about Ducayne discouraged being messed with. “Look, Boss, I know you’re smart enough not to give me a job you don’t think I could handle—and I can handle a lot—but I’ve got a bit of, ah, history on Earth. History of the wrong kind. There’s too much surveillance, and I’m in too many databases. Send me to Earth and you might as well just turn me in.”

  “Some of the databases we can take care of. We can give you some body mods to avoid the surveillance.”

  “Sure, you can change my face, my gait, maybe even my prints—”

  Ducayne nodded at this. “Slightly, anyway.”

  “—but not my DNA.”

  “Actually. . .”

  “Seriously?”

  “Not everything, but we have a retrovirus that will modify several of the key markers used for DNA tagging.”

  “What’s the catch?” There had to be a catch.

  “You’ll feel like hell for a few days as the virus replicates, and it leaves a marker pattern which is a pretty clear indication that you’ve been modded.”

  “So I’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” That didn’t seem like an advantage.

  “Civilian DNA scanners won’t flag it. To most government scanners you’ll look like what you are, a government agent.”

  “So, effectively anonymous?” Rico considered the implications of leaving DNA at a crime scene that would look like any one of thousands of clones, at least as far as those markers were concerned. “That could be handy.”

  “Oh, you can still be identified if someone wants to check the less usual markers, so don’t get carried away.”

  “So this doesn’t involve, what do you guys call it, ‘wet work’?”

  Ducayne scoffed and shook his head. “There’s a term I haven’t heard in a while. No, you’ll be assisting Agent Brown with some, ah, research.”

  “Research? What the hell, Boss?”

  “He’ll be doing the research. You might have to help him access the data.”

  “Hacking?” Rico was no stranger to getting at data others might not want him to have, but he often relied on blackware to help, his own computer skills were more basic. His usual approach was physical: planting a sniffer, stealing a storage module, or if it came down to it, a bit of rubber hose cryptanalysis to persuade someone to give up a password.

  “The kind you’ve done before. And possibly getting access to paper files that someone would rather you didn’t.”

  Rico grinned. “Okay, I think I’m getting the picture. But paper files? Are you kidding?” Paper was still used, somewhat, out on the T-space worlds where low tech, home-grown solutions were favored. But on Earth? Paper was something you made targets out of, or towels.

  “We’re talking old files. But there’s more. You’ll also need to keep Brown out of trouble. He’s bright but he’s no field agent. He’ll be driving the mission as far as tracking down what we’re looking for. You’re responsible for implementation and security.” Ducayne fixed his gaze on Rico. “Got that?”

  “Sure Boss. That’s the way I like it.” Rico wasn’t much for the whys and wherefores but give him a task and he’d get it done. “What is it we’re looking for, anyway?”

  Ducayne sat back in his chair without saying anything for a few moments. Then: “Data on something called Project Blue Book, a study of unidentified flying objects from 150 years ago.”

  Rico whistled. “A hundred and fifty years? And it’s not on the net?” Huge amounts of data had been lost early last century, between old storage media becoming obsolete or wearing out before their contents could be transferred to newer media, and EMP and radiation damage during the Unholy War.

  “We don’t want what’s on the net, it’s unreliable. We want the original paper records.”

  Rico raised an eyebrow. Paper records from that long ago? Well, it might be possible. Th
ey’d be more likely to have survived than digital storage from that era, anyway. “Shall we bring back the Holy Grail while we’re at it?”

  Ducayne snorted. “Sure, if you happen to stumble across it, by all means.”

  “Right.” He considered the rest of what Ducayne had said. “Unidentified flying objects, huh? Does this have something to do with what Carson and company were chasing on Chara III?” Rico had been injured and unconscious when they had seen the flying pyramid, but he’d heard about it during the debriefings, and he himself had used—twice—the alien disintegrator weapon they had found. He’d managed to almost blow himself up both times.

  “It has something to do with it, yes.” Ducayne’s expression didn’t invite further questions.

  “Need to know, eh? Okay.” Rico had his own ways of finding things out anyway. “Anything else? What’s this guy Brown like?”

  “As I said, he’s bright. Don’t try to put anything over on him. You’ll meet him at the briefing, and you’ll have three days aboard ship to get to know each other.” Ducayne glanced at the omni on his wrist. “Okay, you have an appointment. Report to the infirmary on Level Two for the necessary body mods. You’ll be briefed at the same time. You and Brown are scheduled on a commercial flight four days from now.” Ducayne turned slightly to face his desk screen. “That’s all.”

  Rico knew when he’d been dismissed. He rose to leave. “Got it, Boss.”

  4: Prep for departure

  Sawyer Spaceport, Alpha Centauri

  The Sophie returned from her uneventful shakedown the day before Carson made his way, bag in hand, to the spaceport. Whatever Ducayne’s technicians had done to it, Captain Roberts’ ship looked much as Carson remembered her; a mid-size deltoid, almost a flattened, sideways cone with twin vertical tail fins and the outlines of various scoops, hatches and thruster ports breaking up the otherwise featureless white surface. It was hard to imagine that only a week ago it had been sitting in a hanger, largely stripped of its outer hull, while Ducayne’s team had made repairs and modifications.

  “They didn’t give it a new coat of paint?” he asked.

  “Which would burn off the first time I entered atmosphere?” Roberts shook her head. “Nobody paints spaceships, Hannibal, at least nobody with any sense. Anyway, the point was to make a few performance improvements, not to make it look pretty.” She paused, then added, “Prettier, that is. I think she looks just fine.”

  Carson had to agree. Sapphire-class ships had always been utilitarian rather than glamorous. They didn’t have a lot of living space; the control cabin, a galley, a head, and at most a couple of berths and cabins depending on the particular configuration. The rest was fuel and essential systems, and it all had to fit within the limited volume of an Alcubierre-Broek warp bubble. There was no arguing that the ships got the job done, and the Sophie in particular had got them through a number of close calls. Although it might be a stretch to call it pretty. But not her captain, on the other hand, the thought came. Carson checked himself. He and Roberts had been romantically involved for a short while some years back, when she’d been the executive officer on a larger ship, but she’d given strong hints that she was no longer interested. Pity.

  “Your gear’s already stowed,” Roberts said. “And again it takes up a good part of the living space.” She sighed. “You know, Carson, most of my charters involve people who know where they’re going and why, and pack accordingly. Which is to say, lightly.”

  Carson grinned. “Where’s the fun in that? Come on Jackie, admit it, those trips were boring.”

  Roberts turned to him, hands on her hips. “Carson, if you’re doing it right, space flight is supposed to be boring. On our last trip you almost got me killed, did get me kidnapped, again, and I almost lost the ship. That’s not exactly my idea of a good time.”

  “And yet here you are. We found high tech alien artifacts, proof of another spacefaring civilization, and came close to making first contact with them.” Well, they’d seen a clearly alien ship, in the form of a flying pyramid, from a distance. It had disappeared by the time they’d reached its apparent landing site. “Admit it, it was worth it.”

  Roberts said nothing, turning her back on him to face the Sophie, hands still on her hips. Carson wasn’t certain, but thought he’d seen a hint of smile just as she turned away.

  “Let’s just get aboard,” she said, and touched a sequence on her wrist omni. The port hatch slid open. “I assume we’re still headed to Taprobane to pick up Marten first?”

  Marten, a timoan archaeologist, had partnered with Carson on several expeditions, and had accompanied Roberts and Carson on their recent trip to the Chara system.

  “Yes. You said it was almost on the way to Verdigris.”

  “Epsilon Indi adds less than two days to a two-week trip, and gives us a stopover,” Roberts confirmed as they boarded ship. “Stow your carry-on and if there’s nothing else, I’ll get us clearance to lift.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Sawyer City, Homeworld Defense Infirmary

  “How do you feel?” a blurry figure in blue scrubs asked.

  Rico felt like shit. His eyes itched, his fingertips burned, and his head ached. He sat up on the cot and fought down a wave of nausea. “I’ve felt worse. But then I usually could remember enough of the party the night before to make it worth it.”

  Ducayne, and the med-tech, had warned him that the retrovirus would give him “flu-like symptoms” for a couple of days. If it got him past the routine DNA scanners so prevalent on Earth, he could put up with it. But Ducayne hadn’t said anything about the other procedures.

  The skin on his fingertips had been peeled off and re-grown under the influence of micro-manipulators to subtly alter his fingerprints. It could have been worse, Rico supposed, but his fingers felt like he’d tried to pluck hot coals from a fire. “You’ll experience some discomfort,” the doctor had said before the procedure. Yeah, that was one word for it.

  The doc had said the same thing about his eyes. They didn’t actually go in and modify his retina prints—that technique was available but long and involved, only necessary to permanently change someone’s identity. No, what they’d done was to lift up a flap of his cornea and insert a thin holographic film which would distort the view of the blood vessels at the back of his eyeball enough to fool a standard retina scanner. It also had the advantage of changing his iris pattern.

  “And everything looks kind of strange. Wobbly.”

  That was the disadvantage of the sub-corneal implant, aside from this infernal itching. It distorted his own vision slightly.

  “That will wear off soon, you’ll adjust to the distortion,” the med-tech said. “The human brain is remarkably adaptable.”

  “I know, you explained that before. It’s just annoying.” So was the pain in his fingertips and head, but pain he could deal with.

  “How’s the stomach? Are you ready to try eating something?”

  Rico considered the question. He felt better now that he’d been sitting up for a few moments, but . . . “No food. I’ll take a drink though. After I piss.” An IV tube trailed from the back of his forearm, they’d been keeping him hydrated.

  “Let me get you a—”

  “I can walk.” Rico stood up, ignoring the slight surge of dizziness. “And I think I’m done with this,” he said as he pulled the IV line from his arm. He tossed it on the bed. He ignored the tech’s protests as he closed the bathroom door behind him.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Before returning, Rico paused to study his reflection. They’d made some external changes too. His cheekbones looked more pronounced, and his skin tone was closer to the neutral yellow-beige now common on Earth. The eyebrows were somehow different, but he’d never paid enough attention to them before to be quite sure how. Maybe it was just the distortion from the sub-corneal implant. He had no doubt that collectively the changes were enough that facial recognition scanners wouldn’t raise any alarms based on his previous identity. If
I’d had access to this technology fifteen years ago, I might never have had to leave Earth.

  He splashed water on his face, dried off, and looked at the mirror again. No, Earth had been getting too stifling, outstanding warrants aside. There was something to be said for the freedom of the frontier. So why the hell was he going back to Earth again? Right, to chase ancient UFO reports. Un-fucking-believable.

  5: To Earth

  Deep space, en route to Earth

  “So what’s the plan?” Rico—now Richard Lee—asked Brown. They were in the lounge—sized more like a large living room—of the starship Southern Sky, a passenger liner dedicated to the Sol-Alpha Centauri run. No starship was huge— the physics of the Alcubierre-Broek warp prevented that—but on this limited run more of the ship’s volume was devoted to passenger accommodation and less to fuel for the fusion reactors. On the Earthbound leg of the trip ships ran emptier, since emigrants made up much of the outbound traffic.

  “Are we just going to stroll up to the American National Archives and ask to see the Blue Book files?”

  “If you’d paid more attention during the briefing—” Brown began.

  “You didn’t go through all the body-mods I did. My damn eyes itched.” The itching had actually worn off quickly. Rico—Richard—liked to play things on the dumb side; it encouraged others to underestimate him.

  “Quite,” Brown continued. “Anyway, that approach might work if they were files on agricultural output in the early twenty-first century or dam building in the 1930s. The thing is, Blue Book was an Air Force project and the US government, in a fit of post-war paranoia, buried all the Air Force files, even those which had been declassified. We don’t even know for sure the National Archives still has them.”