Breach of Containment

by Elizabeth Bonesteel

  “I wouldn’t work for a captain who didn’t allow it.” Interesting, Dallas thought, that she had the choice. “But I don’t lie to people’s faces, as a general rule. And I don’t sneak.”

  “Too bad. You’re pretty good at it.” She was, for an amateur. They had made it through the door, which was more than Dallas had expected when they left the flat. If she kept calm and got better at hiding her nerves, she might do all right.

  The mech room was crowded with more systems architects, along with a dozen delivery people. All off-worlders. That was curious. Smolensk was full of technical expertise; why would Villipova trust a bunch of strangers without any oversight from her own people? Maybe, Dallas thought, she’s counting on me for that.

  And maybe she thinks I’ll fail.

  The person in charge was obvious: a woman, shorter than Dallas but stockier than the average Smolensk citizen, who kept a manifest hovering by the corner of her eye, occasionally referring to it and talking to the delivery people. Dallas laid a hand on Commander Lockwood’s arm. “Wait here,” Dallas said, and thought, Stay calm.

  The woman looked up at Dallas’s approach, relaxed and not at all suspicious. Dallas introduced both of them. “I’m Dallas, and that’s my comms person. Governor Villipova sent us to double-check the equipment.”

  “Oh, of course.” The woman smiled, unconcerned. “Hang on, let me shoot you a copy of the manifest.”

  Dallas pulled it up as it arrived over comm, and scrolled through. Nothing at all that looked strange: ordinary environmental equipment, some new parts, some aftermarket. Nothing—on the surface, at least—that seemed like it didn’t belong. No wonder she’s not concerned with me. “Want to stay out of your way,” Dallas said. “Where’s the best place to start?”

  The woman pointed to a tall, slender unit standing in the corner. “If you start there and work to the right, we’ll miss each other, more or less.”

  Dallas returned to Commander Lockwood, and together they headed for the corner. “She seemed normal,” Lockwood said.

  Normal for what? “Just because there’s nothing strange in the manifest,” Dallas pointed out, “doesn’t mean the deployment is clean.”

  “She may not know, either.”

  Dallas looked down at Commander Lockwood for a moment. She was back in Corps mode, eyes shifting over every piece of equipment and person in the room, calculating and suspicious. What must it be like, Dallas thought, to have to doubt every situation you walk into?

  Dallas supposed, back on her ship, she would be able to let her guard down, and feel as comfortable as Dallas did walking through the city streets. But it struck Dallas as a heavy price to pay for a career.

  They settled into the work. Lockwood, good to her word, was expert at analyzing equipment, and any qualms she had about subterfuge seemed to vanish. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge would look over her shoulder and see an ordinary mechanic, scanning the function of each part of the system to validate that it was working. Even Dallas, with extensive experience handling equipment that looked like it did one thing but was designed to do something else, had to look closely to recognize when Lockwood was opening the exterior interfaces to check what was going on underneath. She was quick and efficient, and in this task, reflexively relaxed. Better at lying to machines than to people, Dallas thought.

  Dallas stuck with parts inventory, trusting Lockwood to find anything that was not functioning as designed. The system was, at the very least, radically over-designed for a domed city, which was annoying. Waste again. Just like the damn terraformers. So much of what was sold as upgrades was nothing but unnecessary, over-engineered bullshit. Very pretty, though, Dallas had to admit; but simplicity was so much more elegant than this convoluted system of redundancies and over-powered batteries and—

  What the hell is this?

  Dallas leaned forward, squinting. Had that been on the manifest? Dallas turned and scanned the document. There it was—or at least the pieces. They hadn’t logged it whole, which meant they’d shipped it in components and assembled it here.

  Subterfuge.

  “Lockwood,” Dallas asked, “can you have a look at this?”

  She abandoned her own unit and moved to stand next to Dallas. The light from her comm illuminated the interior of the cabinet, and Dallas moved aside to give her room. “This is a more sophisticated unit than the others.”

  Dallas nodded. “It’s a controller. What parts do you see?”

  She shot Dallas a look, but gamely began a visual inventory. “Logic core,” she said, “magnetic memory system, shadow system, volatile storage, comms storage, transmission booster . . .” Dallas could hear in her voice when she began to understand. “A big fucking transmission booster.” The frown on her face mirrored Dallas’s own. “That looks a hell of a lot bigger than what you’d need to coordinate an environmental system, even if you hooked it up to Baikul.”

  “Even if you hooked it up to a fucking satellite,” Dallas said. “That’s outgoing. There’s an incoming on the other side.”

  She voiced Dallas’s exact thoughts:

  “Why are they building a long-range comms system into a dome environmental system?”

  Dallas had agreed with Lockwood that she needed to wait outside the governor’s office. Even with her dark hair, she wasn’t going to be able to talk to the woman she’d spoken to only a few hours before without being recognized. And Dallas didn’t think Villipova would keep trusting Smolensk’s scavengers if one of them showed up in her office with a Corps commander in tow.

  Dallas affected an even, matter-of-fact tone. “I’m not a designer, Governor.” Dallas’s eyes took in Gladkoff, leaning in the corner, far too comfortable in the governor’s office, and Dallas wondered why Villipova would put up with him. “But a long-range comms system is a big power draw. Waste of battery. Waste of space.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” The amusement in Villipova’s voice was cruel, but Dallas was clear who the target was. “How about it, Gladkii? Why don’t you tell me why you’re burying a comms system in my free, upgraded env system?”

  “I hardly think—” Gladkoff began.

  Villipova froze Gladkoff with a glance, and Dallas abruptly remembered that this was the woman whose scores of political enemies had mysteriously ended up outside the dome without env suits. Gladkoff, who had clearly been briefed enough to understand, blanched and swallowed, then straightened, tugging at his jacket, and Dallas reflected the Ellis salesman could be taught. “Governor,” Gladkoff continued, far more formally, “I apologize if this aspect of the system was not adequately explained. The comms system is standard in our newest units. It’s intended to allow diagnostics to easily be sent back to a manufacturing facility, and for us to perform remote maintenance whenever possible. It is intended purely as a convenience, Governor. I can give you the names of other colonies where we have deployed similar systems. You may speak with them before we continue the installation, if you wish.”

  Smooth, Dallas thought. Easier for us if he’d stayed stupid.

  But where Gladkoff could learn, apparently Villipova could not. “I will contact those colonies, Gladkoff,” she said. “But don’t suspend the installation. We’ve waited long enough for this system, and the sooner we can get all of our businesses back to full capacity, the better.”

  And that, Dallas thought, is the problem with thinking you’re invincible. Villipova had allowed Gladkoff this much access; her ego would not allow her to reverse her position now. Dallas didn’t like to think she actually believed Gladkoff was telling the whole truth.

  “Excellent, Governor.” Gladkoff sounded palpably relieved, and Dallas caught the look of satisfaction on Villipova’s face. “I’ll send you the list of colonies right away.”

  Dallas left the office, and Lockwood fell into step as they headed back to the environmental building. “She’s not stupid,” Dallas said, frustrated. “So why let him continue?”

  “Pragmatism,” Lockwood specula
ted. “If he’s up to something, she thinks she can outsmart him.” She gave the scavenger a look. “Can she outsmart him?”

  Dallas considered. “Villipova is nobody’s fool. She wouldn’t have stayed in power this long if she was. But Gladkoff . . .” Dallas looked down at the soldier. “Makes me nervous. Not a lot of people make me nervous.”

  “Makes me nervous, too.” They walked in silence for a moment, and Dallas became aware Commander Lockwood was trying to figure out how to say something. “So at this point,” she said at last, “I need to ask you something. How would you feel about a hacker putting an entirely illegal hook into a potentially destructive long-range comms system being covertly built into your dome environmentals?”

  How did this person become a Corps soldier? “Better than I would’ve if you’d asked before we saw all this.”

  And Commander Lockwood flashed Dallas a bright grin.

  Chapter 26

  Galileo

  “Unidentified ship, this is Athena Relay, come back.”

  Elena heard an exasperated sigh.

  “Unidentified ship, this is Athena Relay. Your ident is malfunctioning. This is a monitored corridor. Please identify yourself.”

  There were muffled murmurings. “—no idea. Maybe asleep.” Laughter then. Laughter. “Maybe they’re too busy—” They went on at some length about the sorts of carnal antics a crew might be getting up to that would make them ignore a failed ident alarm. The comms officer had a filthy imagination.

  Used to. Used to have a filthy imagination.

  The final audio was mundane and unremarkable. The joking broke off, and the voice became curious and annoyed. Not afraid. Not even a little bit afraid.

  “—the fuck?”

  And then a loud, distorted noise, and nothing.

  “What’s the time stamp?” Greg asked.

  “Two hours ago,” Chiedza said. “Right around the time the First Sector went dark.”

  He asked Elena, “Is the loss of Athena Relay enough to explain the outage in the First Sector?”

  He was thinking what she was thinking, she knew: bad design. “Depending on the orbit of Artemis,” she said, referring to the First Sector’s secondary relay, “yes. They’re out of sync weeks at a time. In theory, once Artemis comes around again, it’ll all come back up. But that’s . . .” She did the math in her head. “Three weeks. A little more.” Too long.

  Greg turned back to Chiedza. “Your friends. Which tribe are they?”

  Chi shifted. She was unused to providing detail to anyone, much less a Corps officer. “They’re not my tribe,” she said. “They’re just old acquaintances.” When Greg kept looking at her, silent, Chi relented. “Syncos.”

  Lucky, Elena thought. Syncos traded in high-tech materials, which meant they would have resources. “What we need,” he told Chiedza, “is an interim relay. I don’t imagine they’d have all the necessary parts with them, but they’d know where to find them, wouldn’t they?”

  Because, Elena knew, they would have stolen similar parts from colonies in the area for decades, if not centuries.

  But Chi answered readily enough. “And how to work with them as well.”

  Greg gave a decisive nod. “Find Lieutenant Samaras,” he told her. “He’ll know how to put one together, and he’ll be able to get them through it quickly. Can you coordinate that conversation?”

  And damned if Chiedza, ex–Syndicate raider, professional irritant, didn’t straighten up as if she were coming to attention. “Of course.”

  Greg gave her directions to comms, and she left, determined and purposeful and no longer in need of Elena’s help. When she was gone, Greg slumped back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. “How many people know about this?” he asked, subdued.

  “From Chi, or from the Syndicate tribe?” Hesitantly, she sat in the chair across from him. “If it’s not out on the stream already, it will be soon.”

  She waited, knowing what he would have to do next, wishing she could do it for him. After a moment he opened his eyes and hit his comm. “All personnel,” he announced, over the ship’s comm, “convene in the pub in five minutes.” He looked across the desk at her, and she thought she saw, under his usual grim stoicism, a hint of bone-deep grief. “Ten thousand people, Elena.”

  She knew people on Athena Relay. Everybody knew people on Athena Relay. It had been humanity’s first FTL comms system, sturdy and iconic and unfailing for centuries. But more than that . . . if Athena had been destroyed deliberately, nobody in the First Sector was safe. “We need to find out what took them out, Greg,” she said. “Chi’s friends sent a pretty decent chunk of telemetry data. We may be able to ID the type of ship, at least.”

  “You want to put bets on it being something from the Fifth Sector?”

  “To what end?” She had been over it in her head a dozen times since Nai had told her what happened. “I could see taking out Athena in hopes of staging a stealth attack, but that’s sort of like setting off a fire alarm to distract people from the flames. Nobody in the First Sector has ever been complacent about defense, never mind Earth. They’ll all be on high alert for whatever’s coming now.”

  “I know.” He stood, walking around the desk. “Which means either the First Sector isn’t the target, or this involves some players we don’t know about yet.”

  “You think the Olam Fleet knew it was coming?”

  “I think nobody’s going to be upset anymore that they’re heading in to ‘defend’ the First Sector.”

  She stood with him, and together they headed out the door. There was a weariness about him, even with his straight posture, the crisp salutes he gave everyone they passed in the hall. He was on his own out here, she realized, with no command above him and almost no data, and he was about to tell his crew that what had looked like an annoying equipment outage was actually a tragedy that rivaled anything that had happened in their lifetimes. And there was Greg’s father, and his sister, and his nephews, all the people he loved, all the things that tied him to Earth. All the things he had thought he could protect, that might, even as he walked in step with her, already be gone forever.

  She wanted to ask him what he was going to do. She wanted him to tell her what to do. She thought of Herrod’s words: We need your help.

  Herrod had known, she realized. He must have known.

  Greg stopped outside the pub and turned to her. Her mind was spinning with everything she needed to tell him, but the look in his eyes silenced her. There it was: all his worry, all his insecurity, and she wanted to reach out and take his hands. But she did not expect what he said to her.

  “Will you stand with me in there, Elena?”

  She was not an officer, not anymore. Most of the crew knew her, but she had spoken to so few of them in the last eighteen months. He wasn’t asking for them, she realized, and she felt herself straighten.

  “Of course,” she told him.

  So she stood next to him while he spoke, while he weathered the gasps at the news. Stood with him while he talked, calm and calming, over murmurs and tears. She looked out over their faces, these people she had served with. Most of them looked shocked. Some had covered their faces with their hands; others were clinging to each other; many, like Elena with Greg, were just standing close to their crewmates, not touching, but taking and giving strength in silence. No one said anything until Greg told them about Chiedza’s Syndicate friends working on a temporary relay.

  “We can’t trust them!” Elena couldn’t identify the source of the outburst, but there were enough disapproving glares that she didn’t think they had to worry about total anarchy just yet.

  Greg held up a hand. “In other circumstances,” he said, “I’d agree with you. But think it through: the Syndicates rely on Athena Relay as much as any of us.”

  “How do we know they didn’t destroy it?” Another unidentified voice, this time followed by murmurs of agreement.

  “Because,” Greg said, raising his voice just enough to be heard above t
he crowd, “there’s no profit in it.” The murmurs died, and Elena saw him square his shoulders. “I need to ask all of you to keep your speculations to yourselves. Right now we don’t know anything, and everyone here has been through enough to understand how destructive baseless rumors are. This is going to hit the stream any minute now, and I’d like all of you to use whatever influence you have to focus people away from divisive conspiracy theories. Don’t lie, don’t embellish. Stick with facts. Which do not include, by the way, any suspicions about the actual mission of the Fifth Sector Olam Fleet.”

  That, Elena decided, had been a calculated statement. The Olam Fleet was concrete, a defined entity. The crew might not explicitly doubt Olam’s motives, but they knew the politics and they knew the capabilities. “Can we intercept, sir?” asked Emily Broadmoor.

  “We’re too distant,” Greg told them. “But Persephone and Tenko are on the way now, along with Aganju and Novoselov from PSI. And remember, Tengri’s ships started toward the First Sector as soon as the lights went out. If Olam is headed there for antagonistic reasons, they’re not going to find the place defenseless.”

  He paused again, and this time let his eyes sweep the crowd. Elena knew that look from the other side: each of them would feel he was looking just at them, speaking just to them. How he did it with two hundred people, she had never known; but it was undeniably effective. “We were sent here,” he reminded them, “to keep the peace on Yakutsk. At this point, our mission has not so much changed as widened. We must keep the peace here, in the Fourth Sector, to the best of our ability. We have knowledge and expertise. Whatever happened to Athena Relay, we will weather it together. Each and every one of you has my absolute faith.”

  When he was finished, the crew dispersed back to their duties, and Greg beckoned to Emily Broadmoor. “Commander, I need you to brief Lieutenant Bristol on the surface,” he said. “He’ll need to tell Commander Lockwood. I can’t risk comming her directly, and the off-grid is too unreliable.”