by Jim Graham
Scat tapped some more:
‘Dream up way of getting info back to ISRA, or Picton out of here w/o us being shot—it’ll help.’
128
The main body arrived two days later, swamping the camp with even more equipment and a larger science crew. Scat stood to one side as he usually did at this stage, glad not to be involved in the management of so many overinflated egos. The noise levels increased dramatically as everyone played emperor and the machines played plebes.
They were bound to attract the attention of the natives at some point, despite their camp being more than a hundred kilometres from the nearest known settlement of wood and brush shelters. Earlier that morning, the drones had reported several foraging parties scouring the beachfront less than 20 kilometres away, and a bugbot had located a small, newly established camp, some 10 kilometres north of the isthmus. It hadn’t been there when they had first arrived.
The natives were much smaller than humans were, and carried nothing more offensive than long, sharp sticks and clubs. Sensors couldn’t detect any metal. Scat wasn’t overly worried, but nonetheless, he continued to track them.
By midday, Scat discerned a pattern. The two groups were likely to meet up a few kilometres west of where the isthmus met the mainland, although they were unlikely to do that before sundown. Again, it was nothing to worry about; the landward end of the isthmus was still some three kilometres away. It just meant that tonight no one could shine a light. The camp would slip into silent mode, and he would replace the drones with the bugbots: they were silent running.
Picton looked over his shoulder as the monitor continued to display the live feeds from both the northern and southern drones.
‘Have you noticed something, Scat?’ he asked
‘Yes. Little yellow men. Not the green ones of lore.’
‘No, I mean the colouring of their tunics.’
‘Brown,’ Scat replied, looking more closely at the feed from the southern drone. He then looked at the northern one. ‘And rust red.’
‘What does that tell you?’ Picton asked.
‘They’re from different families? Different tribes? They shop at different stores?’
‘Which means …?’
‘I know what you’re going to say, Picton. There’ll be a showdown. They’re marking their territory, or one side is encroaching on the other’s. What’s that got to do with us?’
Picton straightened up and shrugged.
‘Nothing, I guess,’ he said, as if it truly didn’t matter. But then he bobbed his head a little from side to side, as though he was weighing something up. ‘Unless you’re of the opinion that this isthmus might have some value to one side or the other.’
‘Would you be of that school of thinking?’ Scat asked.
‘I think it’s valuable, Scat. We know the lake is rich in local fish life. This isthmus has an unusually long coastline for its land mass and the headland to the east over there provides an excellent view along two long stretches of coastline. My guess is this isthmus is a strategic asset, or will be one once they become aware of it. And it’s defendable. It’ll be an ideal place for a settlement ... For one of them, that is.’
Scat sat back and considered Picton’s analysis. He wasn’t a student of anthropology, but he did remember his Greek and Roman history. Topography had played a hugely significant role in the development of military strategy during those periods, as it had for centuries afterwards. It was less of a factor now, of course: a modern military could gather its information from the air, or space, in relative safety, and it was possible to dominate large swathes of ground from the air no matter how it rolled, peaked, or troughed. But he could see Picton’s point: the shape of the land was always relevant to the grunts who had to defend it.
‘I guess you could be right,’ Scat said, reluctantly, understanding the consequences. They were under strict orders not to get involved with the locals for at least the first week. They needed a robust infrastructure in place before that could become an option. Prior to that, should the locals come too close, he was to collapse the camp and withdraw.
‘And that would be a decent enough excuse to get me back to Runnymede, right?’
Picton was pushing. Scat looked up at him.
‘It’ll piss Lynthax off. And, in any case, where to then?’
‘Will you help me? Are you agreeing to help me?’
‘I’m in neutral at the moment, Picton. Let’s say I haven’t ruled it out.’
‘But, if you do decide to help, there’ll be no mileage in us being stuck out here for the next three weeks. Somehow, you have to kill this mission. Get us back to Runnymede and we’ll have more options.’
‘Whoa there, Tiger! I’m not cancelling a mission just because I might need to be somewhere else and at someone else’s convenience.’
Picton stepped back from the monitor. He sensed he had pressed too hard. Scat laid into him, harshly, trying not to let his voice carry.
‘You need to get it into your head that these things don’t always play out the way you want them to. You’re also going to have to knuckle down and accept you might be here a while. Force the pace and you’ll “out” yourself. Petroff’s no fool—a dickhead maybe—but nobody’s fool, and he has a lot of capable assistants. He uses the God Programme on a regular basis, and he changes the routine so much you’d hardly call it a routine. Haven’t you yet cottoned on to why we’ve been working for the guy for all this time without complaint?’
Picton hadn’t a clue, so Scat spelled it out:
‘It’s because if we stepped out of line, we’d be whacked. And not just us: there are all the other rebel chapters, and then there are our people on the New Worlds—he watches all of them. To Petroff, this is just business: he’s aligned his moral compass with Lynthax’s view of north. It’s not connected to morality, or justice, or to human progress.’
Scat stopped himself from going on. He remembered he was supposed to be the nice guy. Goosen was meant to be the rough one. He softened his voice.
‘Picton, just dial it back a little. Slow down. Don’t hurry it. Things will happen when they happen. For your own sake, and ours, chill out a little.’
‘OK,’ Picton replied, sounding somewhat chastened. ‘But, seriously, are you planning to hang around in the middle of a Hobbit turf war?’
‘No. We’ll be leaving.’
129
The withdrawal was chaotic, but it was completed within a couple of hours. Although he hated the damned thing, having a dedicated, continuously open wormhole at least gave him the operational flexibility he needed. The orders for the extraction comprised a couple of sentences and no logistical preparation what so ever:
‘Get yourselves through the wormhole now. Leave nothing behind!’
They struck camp and tossed most of the equipment through the wormhole without repacking. Teams of Runnymede personnel collected the equipment on the other side, quickly moving the stores to one side, so there was room for more to be tossed through.
Goosen toured the campsite looking for evidence of their short stay. His personal bugbot, Charlie, flit around the deserted accommodation area, picking out litter in the grass.
‘Here… over here… and here!’ it called out, as Goosen zigzagged across the camp site, stooping to pick up discarded ration bags, plastic wrapping, tissue paper and bottle tops.
Scat called in the perimeter drones and ordered the bugbots to cease the their surveillance of the two tribes and to return through the wormhole. Finally, he waited for Goosen at the wormhole entrance, watching him stumble towards the eye with several loose and empty equipment bags in his arms, a water catchments panel slung over his shoulder and a surprising amount of trash in his pockets. Charlie chivvied Goosen on, shaking up and down in the air.
‘Keep going, you albatross! Keep going. Faster! Faster,’ it was saying.
Goosen eventually stopped, fumbled in this pocket and pulled out the bugbot remote. He pressed it repeatedly. Afte
r a few moments, he gave up.
‘Thanks for the help, Bud,’ he puffed, trying to swat Charlie out of the way as he passed by Scat. ‘I can’t switch the bloody thing back from personal trainer,’ he added, throwing the remote through the hole. ‘It’s clear.’
‘I wouldn’t bother switching it back, Birdie,’ Scat teased. ‘You move pretty quickly when he’s in charge.’
‘Oh, bugger off!’ Goosen replied just as Scat followed him through the hole. He then noticed Scat’s smile turn to a painful frown.
Folding his arms in satisfaction, Goosen inclined his head towards the spinning marble and grinned.
‘Did something wipe the smile off your face?’
Scat walked back into their accommodation dragging his gear along behind him, still trying to shake off the heebie-jeebies.
‘Petroff will reassess the mission and give us a new insertion date in a couple of days, Birdie,’ he said. ‘He was OK about it. They seem determined to settle Magna Carta despite the locals. They must’ve seen something in the geological survey to make it worth their while.’
Goosen sat on the top bunk, clipping his nails and flicking the debris over the side. Scat used the toe of his boot to flick them away from the bedside.
‘Picton and I have been chatting,’ Goosen said, looking up from his big toe.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah!’
‘About ...?’
‘Getting a message back to ISRA, of course.’
‘I’m all ears, Birdie.’
‘He has a rather unique Lynthax ID card.’
‘Yeah ...?’
‘Before he shipped out, he transferred an ISRA steg programme onto it.’
‘And ...?’
‘Well, all he needs to do is hook it up to the net and he can get a message out. He just doesn’t know how or from where. They don’t let him near interplanetary comms.’
Scat thought about that. He did know how, and he did have access. But ...
Steganography was unique to a user and came in two halves. Thomas had explained the workings of it the night they agreed to rescue Nettles. Balsom had used a steg programme to arrange some money transfers—to the Asian Bloc. It was almost undetectable. The trouble was no one whom Scat knew would have the other half of Picton’s programme: the bit that found the key to open a message.
‘It’s messy, Birdie. Even if we did sent a message to Nettles, along with Picton’s programme, none of our people would have the other half. And we don’t have it.’
He stopped to think.
‘I wonder. … Where’s Picton now?’
Goosen grabbed his socks and hurriedly put them back on. Scat was onto something.
‘He might still be in the debriefing room,’ he replied, sliding off the bed. ‘I left him to write up his notes on the Hobbits.’
They caught Picton just as he was leaving for dinner, which was fortuitous, as once he had left the debriefing room, they wouldn’t get to meet again until the next mission. Out front was the wormhole activity monitor. Scat took a quick look. There were no holes open on Runnymede for now, so they could talk.
Scat pretended to read Picton’s report. He spoke quietly.
‘Picton, how high are the chances that ISRA is intercepting messages to and from the New Worlds?’
‘Fairly high, I would think. We’d be “clowns” not to monitor the comms between the ex-rebel politicians,’ he replied, referring to Scat’s comment of the other day. ‘You’re all still of interest.’
‘And they’d run every code breaking programme they had on all of it, wouldn’t they?’
‘Again, they’d be clowns not to.’
‘Including your own internal programmes, such as your steg?’
Picton shrugged.
‘It’d be a guess, whatever I said, but let’s put it this way: it doesn’t take a second or a dollar to do. They are probably waiting for me, or my steg, to pop up on one net or another, anyway.’
‘So it’s worth a try,’ Scat said turning to Goosen. ‘Picton doesn’t actually need to send ISRA a specially arranged message, and we don’t need for Nettles to deliver one for us. We just need to tip them off that Picton still exists and has contacted us. Having Picton’s steg programme embedded in a regular message to Nettles will tip them off plenty.’ He turned back to Picton. ‘How well screened is it?’ he asked.
‘The steg? You mean: just how invisible is it? Pretty well, I think. The card gets me into my accommodation at least twice a day, and I use it to pay for meals and beer in the canteen. No one has queried it. Not even security.’
That settled it.
‘Then when we’re on our next insertion, I want you to transfer your programme to my ID. I can then use it when I send our next message to Nettles.’
‘It’s done, and, by the way, I collected a message for us,’ Scat said, throwing himself on his lower bunk. ‘Nettles confirms his visit for late August. Lynthax approved it a week or so ago without bothering to tell us.’
‘And Picton’s steg?’ Goosen asked, peering over the side of his bed.
Scat winked.
‘It’s in the bottle. The buggers at the Authority just need to be watching Nettles’ mail.’
Goosen took a breath and nodded.
‘Let’s hope they see it, and quickly,’ he said, lying back. ‘I’m beginning to see shadows behind me wherever I go. If this goes wrong, we’re dead meat.’
‘Too right,’ Scat agreed, sitting back up to look at the door. ‘Maybe we should get the guys together: warn them off.’
And hope that when ISRA does go knocking at Nettles’ door, he doesn’t clam up, he thought.
And they still needed for ISRA to act discreetly.
130
‘Take a seat Nicholas. Thanks for popping by,’ Flowers said, flipping a folder over to hide its contents as Orbatan approached his desk.
‘It’s a pleasure, as always, Charles. What can I do for you?’
Flowers stood up and pointed to the sofa along the side wall. He held down the intercom button. It squawked.
‘Art, two coffees, please, ’ he said, looking across his desk at his guest as he made himself comfortable. Orbatan held up one finger. ‘Mine as usual, and the other with one sugar, no soy. But Art, give us a few minutes before bringing them through.’
Without waiting for a reply, he released the button and wandered over to the opposite sofa, holding onto a memo from Cohen and a file filled with notes from Cotton. He laid the memo out on the coffee table facing Orbatan and flicked through some pages in the file.
Orbatan picked the memo up and tensed. Flowers could see that its bullet point contents had hit a nerve, Orbatan’s embarrassment was written plainly on his face.
‘Is there anything you want to add to this last report of ours on your NARR visa programme, Nicholas?’
Orbatan said nothing. He continued to read the memo.
‘Anything at all?’
‘Where did you acquire this nonsense from, Charles?’
‘From a very reliable source, Nick. An A1 source. The contents aren’t in question. Your actions are.’
Orbatan stared at the memo for a moment longer, before discarding it.
‘So we’re holding onto a few employees who haven’t completed their end of the contract to our satisfaction. At its worst, it’s a matter for an employment tribunal. Why your involvement?’
‘But it’s much more than that, Nicholas,’ Flowers replied, turning pages over in the file on his lap. ‘We also know about the wormhole. The planets you’ve been opening. The rebels you’ve been harbouring ...’ He looked up. ‘Frankly, Nick, Lynthax is in all kinds of shit. I’d say you were up to your necks in the smelly stuff.’
Orbatan’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t believe that the Authority had put all the pieces together. His counter surveillance efforts had been so very certain that as of last week, ISRA was still chasing its tail.
‘How did you put it together?’ he asked.
Orbatan pulled a facial shrug in a bold-faced attempt to mask his turmoil. He went on the offensive.
‘Nothing for the time being. It’s not as though we have broken any laws. We based the 250-year lease agreement on developing this space travel. The NARR programme, like wise. And as you no longer have jurisdiction over worlds beyond the 1000 light year limit, and none at all over NARR emigrants, I don’t think I need to answer.’
‘You’re mistaken, Nicholas. We still have jurisdiction over basic human rights, no matter where in the universe they are violated.’
‘Well good luck with that, Charles. Let’s see what laws you can enforce—a 1000 light years away.’
Orbatan got up and strode towards the door. Flowers called out after him.
‘Leave on that note, Nicholas and the next time you come through that door, you’ll either be pleading for our help, or our mercy. It’s up to you. As it stands and as I see it, once the Asian Bloc hears about this, it’ll feel threatened. It’s already straining at the leash ...’
But Orbatan was already gone.
131
Trevon Herald
18th Aug 2219
Stop Press
‘Instant Space Travel a Reality.’
‘ASP reports Lynthax has achieved its goal of instant space travel.
According to agency sources, Lynthax has developed a traversable wormhole, of the type first proposed by Kip Thorne and his graduate student Mike Morris in 1988. If this is true, then man has taken a giant leap forward.
The Herald is unable to confirm these reports: all calls to the Lynthax Corporation are being diverted to the Lynthax Information Bureau where queries continue to go unanswered…’