by David Tatum
But, at that particular moment, she was more worried about him than she’d ever been for any of her other friends or colleagues. He’s been working too hard, she thought suddenly. Come to think of it, I’ve only seen him get a regular night’s sleep once in the past three weeks we’ve been working on this project. Outside of that, he’s been catnapping or catching one or two hours sleep between classes. Maybe he really is just tired, but if so it’s because of undue stress. Maybe I’ve been riding him too hard.
“How’s the coffee?” she asked, hoping he would open up. Until that moment, Rachel hadn’t realized quite how hard she had been riding him over their project. She’d also been gradually squeezing out all of his stress relievers, she realized, like those chess games with Ensign Cohen or his usual hobby of restoring and adapting antique electronics. Their arguments were all he had left... and she’d been gradually wearing him down with those for weeks. She wasn’t sure what she could do for him to make amends, but she had to try something.
“Weak, like it always is here in the cafeteria. Modern coffeemakers just don’t cut it. You all laugh at my antique restoration, but often what I work on most is the more practical stuff. Like coffeemakers – my antique coffeemaker will brew a better, stronger cup of coffee than anything built in the past hundred years.”
Rachel winced. “I’ve drunk coffee from that thing. It’s just too strong. I think I’ll stick to the modern brew, thank you very much.”
Chris shrugged. “That’s not the coffeemaker’s fault, Rache. That’s me having poor-quality beans and you not taking cream or sugar with your coffee. If I had better beans or you diluted your coffee with some cream, I suspect you’d like it.”
Rachel raised a dubious eyebrow. “Maybe,” she said. “I haven’t left you much time to tinker with your toys these past few weeks, have I?”
“Not much, no,” Chris said. “But I’ve been able to do a little despite the extra workload.”
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed dryly. “At the cost of your chess games, your meals, your attendance, your sleep....”
Chris chuckled. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, I’m laying off, tonight. Get some sleep, that’s an order. Then, since we don’t have class tomorrow, I’ll see if I can borrow Jeff’s chess set.” She grinned ruefully at him. “I’m not nearly as good at the game as he is, since I haven’t played much, so maybe you’ll stand a chance against me.”
Chris raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “I didn’t think anyone else around here knew how to play chess. I’d love a game or two, Rache.”
Rachel smirked. “Good. Because after tomorrow, I’ll be going back to riding you hard. You’re a good tactician, but you still have a lot to learn about being an officer.”
He smiled back tiredly. “You’re giving me a temporary truce, aren’t you? Letting me recover before we lock horns again?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Rachel replied. “To put it bluntly, you don’t look too healthy at the moment. I figured you need the rest.”
“I’m fine!” Chris snapped back. “I just haven’t slept much, lately.”
Rachel was a little surprised at his heated reply, and in the awkward silence that followed she made a mental note to add it to her discussion with Schubert. She bit her lip to keep from arguing back, having resolved to let him recover from his problem, whatever it was, without adding to his stress by shouting at him.
Chris bit his lip and sighed. “Sorry. I guess I’m a bit edgy, too. Using several gallons of coffee to keep you awake will do that to you.”
Rachel was about to reply to him when a chime sounded. “Well, let’s get to class. Time to see what Captain Morrison has to say about your solution to our little sim.”
Chris sighed and nodded, downing the last of his coffee. “Yeah. Let’s get this over with. I’m looking forward to that nap,” he said, smiling at her good-naturedly.
Rachel frowned as she led him off. Something was off about that smile... but she didn’t have time to think about it just then. It was just another thing to file away for her talk with Schubert.
She had to schedule that talk, and soon.
CHAPTER II
Alcyone Star System, Pleiades Alpha, Hexagon Park
“Despite your so-called ‘best efforts,’ your Dr. Foley has managed to unearth the only thing that we actually didn’t want him to find.” The hooded, heavyset figure stood behind the desk of Pleiades Science Director, Ian Karlsson, looking distantly out a tinted window at the fountain area below, the center of Gov-Tech Hexagon Park. Turning around, he looked accusingly down at the man seated across the desk from him “There were probably a multitude of artifacts in that area which would have been perfectly fine for him to discover. Your bumbling, however, has now allowed him to find the graveyard! What are you planning on doing now?”
“It’s too late to do much,” Director Karlsson admitted, squirming a little in his seat. When that brought no immediate reply he started tapping his fingers on the surface of the polished mahogany desk, trying to think of something to say. “I had hoped that by planting some of our people in his group, we could direct the dig away from that area or stop them when they got too close. Unfortunately, his students decided to try and show some ‘initiative’ without informing Dr. Foley or any of our own staff.”
“In other words, you relied too much on trickery, when competent exercise of your authority as Science Director should have been enough.”
Karlsson shook his head. “Our system doesn’t work quite like that. Foley is a scientist, but that doesn’t mean he works for me or responds to my direction. He’s independent. Another month and we could have pulled his funding. With his reputation staked on this dig, the failure would have discredited him so that no one would back another attempt, and no one would ever ask to return to site thirty-nine. He would have been forced to abandon the hunt, and your burial ground would be safe from future digs. I didn’t count on a bunch of overly enthusiastic college students who shouldn’t have even been digging in the first place making the discovery themselves.”
“So hire him. The discovery he made is as good a pretext as any for offering him a position. Then he would be working for you, and you could keep him sidelined.”
Karlsson closed his eyes thoughtfully. “That might work. I’ll try it, but it may not be sufficient. I think our best option now is to try and contain the news, take over the dig, and in a few months ‘conclude’ that what they’ve found is merely a hoax. No-one will ever be interested in digging at site thirty-nine again after it’s been associated with such a hoax, and your burial ground will once again be hidden.”
“And if word has already spread too fast to be contained?”
“Well, we’ll have to set up some kind of distraction to keep people from pursuing the find until we can discredit it. Something big.”
“War.” The man stepped quickly out from behind the desk. His uniform, the hooded black wrappings of World Internal Security, Pleiades Republic, fluttered slightly in the breeze from the antique overhead fan. WISPR agents typically styled themselves after ancient Japanese ninjas. This one, however, looked bulkier and more menacing than average.
The Science Director flinched slightly. “That would definitely be distracting, but a full scale war wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“You’re concerned you might lose.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not seriously. I’m not disputing the benefit of the technology you’ve given us, and at this point we’ve had enough time to prepare and integrate your designs into almost a third of our Navy’s warships. It’s just that I don’t like the thought of starting a war before we’re ready just to be a distraction from one man’s findings in an archaeological dig. I’ll alert the Admiralty to start making contingency plans, but hopefully it won’t come to that. No, I’m actually more concerned about the possibility that your secrets might be discovered.”
“You had better hope not. If we are discovered, we’ll be forced to act openly
.” The man paused. “In that case, I’m not sure your species would survive.”
——————————
Earth Alliance Naval Academy, Earth Campus
Captain Anne Morrison surveyed her students with a critical eye. It was time for the presentation of everyone’s projects, and she had a twinkle in her eye as she noticed how many of them looked nervous. As always, no-one had believed her that the situation was virtually a no-win scenario, and all of them were expecting to be berated for having failed. Well, most everyone. Cadet Lieutenant Commander Katz and her partner seemed at ease, although said partner seemed decidedly under the weather. Morrison wasn’t surprised. In the cafeteria that morning, Lt. Commander Sanchez had drawn her aside, commenting on Cadet Desaix’s diligence in staying at the macrosim center until almost four in the morning. Presumably he had completed the computer evaluation of their initial tactical solution, but Morrison wondered if the pair had been able to make any serious revisions to their plan in the intervening hours.
Knowing the answer already, she asked, “Did anyone here manage to get to the macrosim and run trial evaluations on their project? I’m not expecting that you did, necessarily – I know how tough it can be to get by Lt. Commander Sanchez to run sims for a mere sophomore level tactics class.” Katz and Desaix raised their hands, of course. So did a rather reluctant Cadet Ensign Cohen and his partner. She nodded. “Okay, we’ll allow your two teams to go last. You’re likely to have more complex results, and if necessary we’ll postpone them to the next class, which will give you more time to evaluate things. Let’s hear everyone else’s first, then.”
As she suspected, the teams all had pretty similar results. For this particular assignment, Captain Morrison was not looking for success, but rather to see how they handled themselves. These scenarios were designed to encourage thinking outside of the box, so those who stuck too closely to the ‘book’ would be marked down, while those who showed creativity would be graded higher. She didn’t really care whether her students had succeeded in cutting down their enemy by half or not at all, though she did take note when someone was particularly successful.
As everyone’s projects were being presented, she watched the faces of her other students. Most of them looked decidedly relieved, knowing finally that she had been telling them the truth about how difficult the sims were. Ms. Katz had been relaxed the whole time, and her face never changed – but she had something of a stoic personality. Mr. Cohen and his partner, however, seemed downright elated – perhaps they’d achieved something the others hadn’t.
It was Lt. Desaix, Rachel Katz’s partner, who puzzled her the most. The more he heard of the other students’ efforts, the more perplexed he seemed. Even though they were tainted by exhaustion, his eyes were bright with interest. Morrison had no idea what that meant, but she figured she’d find out later.
Finally, the students who hadn’t had macrosim time were finished. The next pair of results would likely be more interesting – the macrosim allowed students to prevent more refined strategies and better post-simulation analysis.
“Well, Ma’am,” Cohen began. “We seem to have had a bit more success than the others in the class. Thanks to the results we received from the macrosim analysis of our tactical simulation, we were able to refine our plans to offer a good 50% chance of stalemate.”
That’s right up there with the best I’ve seen. Morrison made a mental note to start shepherding these two along better. She watched as the cadet laid out his team’s plans carefully. As he did, she could have sworn she heard Lt. Cmdr. Katz whisper something along the lines of, “…like my first response plan,” but shrugged it off. The odds that two people would devise such a particularly ingenious solution in the same class were slim.
Cohen finished up, and Morrison nodded, already planning in her head some syllabus revisions to start pushing his talents. It would be tricky to do without damaging the overall integrity of the class for those less gifted, but she was most impressed.
She felt a little sorry for Lt. Cmdr. Katz, having to follow a performance like that. It would be hard on the girl – especially since the cadet was a pretty good tactician herself – but those were the breaks. Maybe a humorous note to ease her in?
“So, Lt. Commander Katz. What do you have to show us to top that performance? A victory, perhaps?…” Morrison’s voice trailed off as she caught a smug look on Rachel’s face.
“Actually, ma’am,” Rachel said, her voice confident and cheerful. “Thanks in large part to Lt. Desaix’s fine work, we achieved something close to an 88% chance of victory.” Morrison’s eyes widened; the best possibility of a victory any student had ever achieved on their particular assignment was only rated at about 70% probability.
“That was, though, before we ran the solution through the macrosim, and compensated for our errors. We now have a virtual certainty... ma’am?”
Captain Morrison sat down in her chair, hard. As an instructor, she had her work cut out for her. “Please continue your briefing,” she said somewhat faintly.
——————————
Wolfgang Schubert looked up in surprise as the door chimed. He glanced over to make sure his bunkmate was still asleep before going over to answer it. He wondered who it was – he wasn’t expecting anyone and, as far as he knew, Chris wasn’t, either.
He stepped out of the room and saw, to his surprise, Rachel Katz standing there. Usually, she commed before coming over. “Hey, Rache. What’s up? I hear you and Chris practically knocked Old Lady Morrison out with your project!”
Rachel flushed slightly. “Well, we did do rather well.”
Schubert laughed. “Well, I’ve heard her nerves were the reason Morrison was grounded to a desk. The brass was worried she’d freeze up in the middle of a stressful action, but she was worth too much as a tactician to put her completely out to pasture. So what’s up? You aren’t here to ask me out on a date, are you?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. Is Lt. Desaix awake, Mr. Schubert?”
Schubert’s eyes hardened. “No. But I’m not waking him up this time.”
Rachel laughed bitterly. “I’ve woken him up a lot lately, haven’t I? Well, I don’t want you to this time – he needs his sleep. In fact, I ordered him to go straight to bed tonight, and not to tinker with his antiques or anything. I just wanted to talk with you about him privately.”
Schubert’s brow furled at that. “Oh? Well, then, let’s go somewhere else to talk. Like you said, Chris needs his sleep.”
“I don’t want to be overheard. My quarters are nearby, and I don’t have a roommate,” she said. She marched at a fairly rapid pace down the corridor, Schubert following swiftly at her heels. She keyed in the code to open the door and gestured for him to follow her inside.
Schubert was somewhat surprised by the room. As intensely military as she was, he somehow expected her dorm to be either very Spartan in appearance or (as he’d seen some of the more ‘dedicated’ officers he met) to be decorated in a manner that was the exact opposite of her outward appearance. Rather, it was neither. It was fairly well organized, although there were a few signs of impending clutter. A few tasteful decorations were scattered here and there, including a small collection of antique, replica, and miniature weapons from eras past. Schubert recognized one of those, a “radio controlled” (whatever that meant) model tank Chris restored. He’d had his eye on that one, himself – he wondered why Chris had given it to Rachel, instead.
There was a utilitarian desk and a perfectly made bunk bed, just like in every other dorm room. A few additional pieces of small, non-regulation furniture made a comfortable setting. A portable range which had recently been used to make some soup (another restoration project by Chris, Schubert realized), a rolled up futon in a corner, a nice leather desk chair, and a mini-fridge completed the picture. Schubert had a mini-fridge, too, but his was a restored antique, courtesy of Chris; Rachael’s was a modern masterpiece complete with all of the
latest devices to regulate the temperature of everything in it precisely. Not something Schubert would have expected Rachel to own, but not something he could say went against his read of her character.
Much to his surprise, he saw a poorly hidden case Schubert recognized as a storage unit for eyeglasses. So, Rache is the person whose secret Chris was protecting. And with all those other things he’s built for her....
Rachel turned to Schubert and frowned, chewing on her lower lip. “Is there something wrong with Lt. Desaix? He hasn’t been acting like himself the past few days.”
Schubert smothered a laugh – and the thought which inspired it – before answering. “I’m not sure. What, in particular, have you noticed?”
“Well, little things. First, it’s his exhaustion. Now, I know I’ve been riding him a little harder than usual these past few weeks – probably harder than I should have – but he seems even more tired than that should account for.”
Schubert scratched the stubble on his chin absentmindedly. “Well, now that you mention it, he does seem a bit more tuckered than usual.”
“If it was just that, though, I wouldn’t be so... concerned,” she winced. Schubert couldn’t help the snicker this time. He shut up quickly when she glared at him, but his suspicions were growing every moment. “You know how we always fight with each other? Well, he’s not fighting back like he normally does. At first I thought it was just the lack of sleep, but something’s telling me it’s more than that.”
Schubert shrugged. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to fight any more?”
“No, it’s not that,” Rachel said, frowning. “There’s more to it. His eyes are bloodshot all of the time, even after he’s had a chance to sleep for a bit and recover. And when I recently suggested that he looked like he needed a little shut-eye, he snapped at me. It was... disturbing. He got real defensive, claiming nothing was wrong, but that was blatantly untrue.”