The Epherium Chronicles: Crucible

by T. D. Wilson

  Still, the full extent of the Cilik’ti telepathic communication had to be explored. Kree mentioned that with concentration he could listen to Jillian and the other colonists, but why couldn’t he speak to them telepathically?

  “Another reason to understand the effects of the Embrace on the colonists,” Hood mused.

  McCraken might not be a scientist, but he knew the technology and, for all intents and purposes, was the one most knowledgeable of the Embrace systems on board. But Hood wasn’t about to let him go about this alone. After Admiral Tramp’s message had come through, he’d ordered Dr. Patton down to the surface, along with a small team that had already run tests on the colonists. If they could find a link between the alterations made by the Embrace and Cilik’ti telepathy, it might provide Earth with a means to avoid any additional conflict with the Cilik’ti. It might just be the key to preserving this world for human colonization. According to Kree, a lack of communication had been the catalyst to start the Cilik’ti conflict, and he needed to take it away. Hood had put a strong amount of trust in McCraken to assist Dr. Patton, and he hoped he didn’t regret it.

  * * *

  Sanchez stepped out of his steam shower and quickly dried himself. His run after lunch felt good, and he hoped to be able to head planet-side during his rotation tomorrow. As he began to dress, his terminal chimed.

  Sliding on a shirt and his uniform pants, he sat down at his desk and checked the call. It was Greywalker. He opened the channel, and Maya’s face came into view on the terminal screen. “This is Sanchez, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, please meet me in Engineering,” she said, her voice light but serious. “I’ve got some information I want to review with you about those signal patterns.”

  That was fast. He reached to the side of his desk and grabbed his uniform jacket. “I’ll be there in ten, Lieutenant. See you there.”

  Sanchez closed the channel and walked out the door. After entering the elevator lift, he caught a glimpse of himself in the smooth reflective metal of the lift’s frame and realized he had forgotten to comb his hair. Not wanting to waste time heading back to his quarters, he hand-combed his short, thick hair into something less of a disheveled mess, buttoned up his uniform and waited for the doors to open onto the Engineering deck.

  Sanchez walked out as the doors hissed open. Maya was there waiting for him, carrying a security satchel. The chief engineer, Mr. Whitaker, was with her. Sanchez was surprised to see Whitaker here. But from what he’d learned about Maya, he was positive she would use all available resources in an investigation. “Lieutenant,” Sanchez said as he nodded toward Maya, “what have you found?”

  “Walk this way,” she instructed and motioned for him and Whitaker to follow. “It’s best if we discuss this in an area more private.” Maya led the two men down one of the Engineering deck hallways to a Security Station door. She typed in a code on the exterior keypad, and the door opened to a dark room.

  Sanchez and Whitaker followed Maya inside, and she closed the door behind them. Maya called for the lights, but they were slow to engage. After waiting for a few moments for the light to bathe the room in a soft glow, Sanchez could see the room was sparse and held no furniture, except the security terminal on the far wall.

  “This Security Station hasn’t been activated yet, so it should be safe to talk here,” Maya said. She opened her satchel and removed the comm unit retrieved from the canyon camp’s rover, plus her data pad. “As you may know, Commander, I do have some skill in communication surveillance and analysis, but Helms was my best man.” She held up the comm unit. “What I found here was far beyond my expertise. I decided it would be prudent to bring in Mr. Whitaker.”

  “You did the right thing,” Sanchez said, reassuring her. Whitaker was their best technical asset and if he couldn’t figure out how it worked, no one could.

  She handed the comm unit to Whitaker and activated her data pad. “When you first mentioned the scrambled signals from the canyon team’s communication gear, I did a quick spectrum analysis of the communication wave patterns. Most of the signals did see some distortion from the canyon walls, but that should have been handled by the communications repeater they placed on the outside of the canyon.” She showed the results of her analysis to Sanchez. “Lieutenant Commander Howard mentioned she and her team gave full daily reports of their activities to the main camp. The reports weren’t just sent, but communicated over the channel to a person who interacted with them. I’ve seen this situation before.” Maya pointed to the comm unit in Whitaker’s hands. “Open it.”

  Whitaker removed the loose screw on the side of the comm unit and opened it to expose the internal circuitry.

  Sanchez inspected the comm unit. “What I am looking for?”

  Whitaker pointed to a small, almost unnoticeable chip attached to the back of the main comm interface board. “This is your culprit, Commander, and quite an ingenious one at that. Took me over an hour to find it and I believe that is a failing on my part.”

  “Is it some sort of scrambler chip?” Sanchez asked.

  “Not exactly. A few years ago, I uncovered an operation by a pirate group who hacked an EDF mining outpost’s communication grid,” Maya explained. “The pirates managed to plant similar devices such as this during maintenance periods and used them to learn shipping times, manifests and security or EDF military rotations in the area.”

  “This device,” Whitaker added, “samples all traffic based on certain preprogrammed patterns. If it detects a match, it imbeds two signals into the outgoing comm traffic.” He went into an almost teaching mode. “One is a null that squelches the outgoing traffic at the next relay point, and the second is an encrypted redirect that sends that comm signal to another location on an unmonitored frequency.”

  “So wouldn’t a loss of communication be seen as an error and be reported?”

  “Normally yes, but the null places the relay into a test mode for a short time and the error is ignored.”

  Maya leaned against the door. “That’s how the pirates not only intercepted important information, but were able to keep up the illusion that all operations were normal and even reroute potential threats to their operation.”

  “Lieutenant Greywalker had the Marine detachment examine the comm relay at the canyon and they discovered the second device,” Whitaker stated with a flurry of excitement.

  The man’s almost exuberant attitude to the issue made Sanchez a bit angry. “We’ve got a security breach on our hands and you seem amused, Mr. Whitaker. Why?”

  “Not amused, Commander. I’m fascinated,” he explained. “The devices Lieutenant Greywalker talked about were based on current comm technology built for high-gain bursts that could maintain communication even after a space-fold jump.” He pointed to the schematic of the device on Maya’s data pad. “These were made from technology that was present over twenty-five years ago, well before our discovery of space-fold drives. Whoever created this little wonder was light-years ahead in their understanding of comm technology. I’m amazed it even worked without crashing the colonists’ comm systems. The signal that managed to get through to the colony from the canyon only succeeded because the device in the relay station had begun to malfunction due to a faulty power relay.”

  Sanchez started to get worried. “Do we know where the signals were redirected?”

  Whitaker shook his head. “Not yet. Those signals could have been designated to head somewhere on planet or out to space. We won’t know until we interface with the devices and analyze their programming.”

  “Not a good idea,” Maya warned. “After I completed my initial scans of the comm unit, I detected a fail-safe. Removing the full transmission board from this unit or the comm relay won’t trigger it, but if we interface with the devices or tamper with their programming in any way, they’ll erase themselves. Those things might be in place throughout the c
olony. If we attempt to hack into one that’s live on the comm network, it could bring everything down.” She leveled her blue eyes at Sanchez. “It would also alert those involved that we’re on to them.”

  Sanchez agreed with Maya and headed for the door. “I’ll inform the captain of what you two found. Lieutenant, I need your people to start searching all the comm gear down at the colony and look for those devices. If our friends out here in that stealth frigate are involved, then they already know a lot about the colony and that we’ve reached the planet.”

  Maya nodded. “I’ve already instructed some of Major McGregor’s people and a few members of the ship’s maintenance staff to inspect all comm and monitoring gear to make sure they can operate with our latest equipment. If they find anything, they’ll let me know.”

  “Good. Terrance, see if you can set up a detection grid and look for any of these signals now that you know the patterns. If we can see them, maybe we can triangulate a position.”

  Whitaker clasps his hands together. “Sounds like a challenge, Commander.” His face beamed.

  Sanchez shook his head in quiet disbelief, and Maya opened the door. After a quick check of the hallway, Maya and Sanchez headed for the elevator lift, and Whitaker went back to his station in Engineering.

  * * *

  Once Whitaker reached Engineering, he walked past one of his technicians and slapped him on the shoulder in excitement. “Break out the coffee, Harold, we’ve got more work to do and I need to focus.”

  “Aye, sir.” The technician grabbed Whitaker’s empty coffee mug from his desk.

  Whitaker sat down in his desk chair, stretched his arms forward with interlocked fingers and cracked his knuckles.

  The terminal screen in front of Whitaker flickered into view, and he opened his notes on the comm device. A detection net is child’s play. He wasn’t satisfied by easy. He wanted to figure out who was talking and what was being transmitted. To do that, he had to not only detect the signal, but sample and crack the comm encryption. That was the real challenge.

  The technician returned with a fresh cup of hot coffee, black and extra strong, just the way Whitaker liked it. He loved pulling an all-night shift to solve a problem, and he was determined not to give up until he finished.

  * * *

  McGregor held two neutronium plates in place as one of his Marines welded them to the superstructure of the defensive platform near the eastern entrance to the Magellan encampment. The new fortress was coming along nicely. McGregor was confident his troops would have it assembled and operational by tomorrow morning, but he knew this effort was makeshift at best. The Tikis were out there—regardless of what Hood thought or that damnable Tiki told him—and McGregor treated it as simple fact. He required time to get all the defenses online, and his boys couldn’t stay here forever. Command had to get more resources out here and the colonists, though McGregor disliked the thought of civilians in combat, would have to learn to defend themselves.

  The young Marine finished his welding, and a crane lifting one of the pulse cannon turrets came into view on the south end. He jogged over to help maneuver the two metric ton weapon into place. Everything was working like clockwork, and McGregor enjoyed how his people had cooperated well with the civilians in the colony. Without their help, he doubted any of the defenses would be completed before the week’s end.

  After he released the last strap, McGregor heard the telltale fire of ten millimeter rounds coming from M20 assault rifles just east of the platform. McGregor grinned as he walked over to the side and looked down. Several of the colonists had volunteered to learn how to defend themselves on the day after Hood’s speech, and this was their first day with live fire.

  At least thirty of the colonists were spread out below on the small firing range, and each was shooting at targets at varied distances. McGregor could see Sergeant Toronaga on the line, instructing one of the colonists, while the rest continued to fire. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d trained raw recruits to handle similar weapons. It took a firm hand to mold imperfect clay like the colonists into fighters. He trusted Toronaga. The man had mettle.

  After watching them run another target round, Toronaga took time to critique each of the colonist’s results and demonstrated how that particular colonist could improve or had excelled. McGregor could see how they watched his every move during each demonstration and it was like moths to a flame. The gunnery sergeant then executed a stellar five-target attack with three-round bursts at each range, but as he finished, he didn’t pose or boast. Instead, he went right to instruction, and they devoured it. They were eager to learn and, most importantly, he had earned their respect.

  McGregor watched in silence as the construction continued around him. The training group finished their exercise and was leaving the area when he felt something tap his shoulder. His head snapped around to look and almost missed the short blonde woman standing next to him. Unsure of why the young civilian lass was on the top level of his new defense platform, he stood to his full height and tightened the muscles in his arms and chest, which were amplified is his tight BDUs. McGregor put his hands on his hips and lowered his eyes toward her much shorter frame. “Aye, lass. What can I do for ya?”

  The woman to her credit seemed unfazed by the large Marine. “Dr. Helen Bertrum, Major. Dr. Rulio wanted me to update you on the findings from his team’s initial foray into the caves.”

  McGregor relaxed and folded his arms in front of him. With all the work focused around constructing defenses, McGregor had forgotten the geology team that had entered the caves near the canyon. “Aye. Did Dr. Rulio find a suitable cavern?”

  She handed him a set of handwritten notes, along with a printed map. “Actually, we’ve found several. Dr. Rulio had another team investigate a group of caves at the western slope of the mountain pass near the Magellan. With help from your satellite imagery, the teams located over four suitable caverns for storage and shelter approximately two hundred meters on average below the surface.”

  McGregor was speechless. The geology teams had covered a lot of ground over the past day and a half. He studied the map and made note of the locations the geology teams had selected for equipment and food stores based on his requirements. “Aye, this will do nicely, lass. When can ya escort my people down there for a look-see?”

  The young geologist held up another map of the area to east of the Magellan camp. “Dr. Rulio wants our teams to move east and follow that underground riverbed toward the lake. There might be a network of caverns that connect down to the far plateau, and we could find a few large caverns. The team that was going to scout the higher elevations just west of here ran into several wild animals and had to abandon their expedition.” She held up her free hand in a claw-like motion. “They mentioned horned bears defending their territory and more of those Night Cats.”

  McGregor wasn’t amused.

  The woman abandoned her feline interpretation with a shrug and continued. “I’ve already briefed that team on the caverns and we can lead your people there.”

  “What about equipment?”

  “The caves widen in most areas from the canyon eastward, except for a few ledges with some drop-offs, but the terrain is perfect for our rovers down there,” she stated. “The ceilings are constricted, so we can’t stack crates too high. After the first large cavern though, the caves get tighter and we’ll have to break down the crates and move things on foot.” She made a quick sketch on her paper and showed it to McGregor. “I figure we can use the rovers with one wagon each and that can get us moving for now.”

  McGregor agreed with the young geologist’s assessment. “Get your people together and I’ll have two platoons ready to help.”

  The young geologist folded up her map, waved to McGregor and ran down the stairs, almost barreling into Toronaga, who was jogging up the last flight. The gunnery sergeant deftly avoided the co
llision, apologized and reached the top of the stairs, all without breaking stride.

  McGregor smirked as he witnessed the incident and kept it in place when Toronaga walked up and saluted his CO. McGregor returned it and the smirk turned into a smile. He admired Toronaga. From the short time he’d spent with him, McGregor could tell he had strong leadership potential. Hell, he flat-out liked him, and that was not something that had come easy since the war. Friends died. In his mind, soldiers could have respect, duty and admiration, but friendships, especially for McGregor, made life hard when times got rough on the battlefield.

  “Sir, I was wondering if I could lead the men in a little R & R?” Toronaga asked.

  McGregor walked back to the edge of the platform and leaned on the rail. “The men have worked hard today, Sergeant. We’re ahead of schedule, so I don’t see why not.” He turned and raised an eyebrow at Toronaga. “What do ya have planned?”

  “A group of colonists have asked to take us on in a friendly soccer game,” Toronaga replied. He pointed down to several trainees already starting to practice down below with a few soccer balls.

  “It’s football, son, not soccer. Didn’t know they played much where you’re from.”

  Toronaga laughed. “You wouldn’t think so, but we have a lot of indoor facilities. Wrestling is big too, but socc—I mean, football—was very popular.”

  “Were you any good?”

  Toronaga smiled. “Captain of my high school team.”

  “Good man.” McGregor laughed and focused on the landscape beyond the camp. He let out a loud sigh.

  “Sir. Sorry for the intrusion, but you seem a bit distracted lately. What’s on your mind?”

  McGregor dropped his head, shook it slowly and gazed out at the fading afternoon. “Been a long time since I’ve been planet-side and not in my environment suit or in a dome.” He moved his hand down the rail and felt the cold, smooth edge of the metal on his skin. “And this place seems so familiar. Bah, it’s red, but it still reminds me of home in the Highlands. A man could breathe up there. Find himself.” He turned toward his sergeant. “After all these years, I guess I miss it after all.” He could picture his home sitting along the valley wall below. He even placed Regina into his vision of home. That woman could irritate a badger into submission. But he kept her there, and the euphoria it created made him smile.