by B. V. Larson
And she knew what Tachina had to trade. Poor Murdock…
“Sit down, Carla. Would you like some hot tea?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Engels, mostly to be agreeable, taking a seat at the small kitchen table. Since she’d entered Academy so long ago, she’d seldom visited a civilian’s house.
Her own bungalow with Derek was utilitarian and sparsely decorated, more like a large military quarters than a home. She’d never had a sense of homemaking. Even though the concept drew her powerfully at times, she never had time to do it, not with her many duties. Or maybe she just didn’t make the time.
“You have a lovely place here,” Engels essayed.
“Why thank you!” Tachina opened a box and lit a smokestick, an old-fashioned kind with flame and smoke instead of just vapor. Somehow, she made the indulgence seem elegant instead of crass, with a hint of decadence. “I try to make it nice for my man.”
Engels noticed she didn’t say “for Frank.” Derek thought Tachina was already angling for a man with higher status, and he might be right. However, there weren’t many men here more important than Murdock.
“Speaking of Frank,” said Engels, “it’s too bad he’s so busy right now. You must get lonely.”
Tachina set a cup of tea in front of Engels and took a seat across from her, smokestick pinned between her fingers. “I can always find someone to occupy my time.”
Engels felt the woman’s foot stroke her calf through her coverall and she moved her leg away. “I didn’t come for that,” she blurted.
“Oh, you don’t like sex?”
“Not with women, no.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
Recognizing that Tachina was trying to discomfit her and seize control of the conversation, Engels said, “I’m with Derek. I don’t want anyone else. I bet Frank feels the same. Why do you tease other people when you’re with him? Are you trying to destroy a good thing?”
“Who said it was a good thing?”
“Then leave him. Don’t play window-washer, grabbing onto one partner before you let another go. That’s…”
“Immoral?” Tachina laughed. “You people are so parochial… and you military types are the worst! Loosen up and live a little! What could it hurt?”
“I was going to say ‘disruptive.’ Even highly sophisticated people have plenty of petty jealousies, and you’re stoking them. In this parochial place, it’s even worse.” Engels rubbed her face. “How did I get sidetracked this way? Look, Tachina, I’m not trying to change who you are, but actions have consequences. If you wreck Murdock, he might become useless. He’s vital to this hab. If he crashes and burns because of you, everyone will know.” She leaned forward with folded hands. “We might not be able to protect you.”
“Ah, a threat. I was wondering when that would show up.” Tachina stared at Engels, a faint smile playing about her lips. “Okay. I take your point. I’ll be more discreet.”
Engels stared back. “You’re not nearly as dumb as you let on.”
Tachina patted at her long, lustrous hair, looking upward and away. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Engels realized she wasn’t going to casually trick this woman into giving her the information she wanted, so she decided simply to ask. “Look, I need to know what Frank’s working on.”
“And your man won’t tell you? How typical. They really don’t value us women like they should. Not until they want some of what we’ve got. Then suddenly they run their mouths like little boys afraid someone will steal their favorite toy. Good thing their favorite toy is firmly attached… and I know how to operate it really, really well. Hope you do too, because that’s all they care about.” She flicked ash off her smokestick. “That and their work.”
Engels rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to use sex to get what I want.”
“Too bad. It’s a woman’s power.”
“My love for Derek isn’t about power.”
Tachina’s smile grew cruel. “Poor little girl. Love is about nothing but power, and whoever loves the least, has it.”
“That’s a despicable attitude.”
“Oh, grow up. How old are you, anyway?”
“Almost thirty.”
Tachina shook her head. “Give it fifteen years and see how much he still loves you, what with that poor complexion, small chest and horrible clothes. I could help you with that, you know, though there are limits even to my powers.”
Engels felt herself whiten with anger. What Tachina had said stung, because she couldn’t shake the feeling it might be true. “Derek doesn’t care about a few flaws or my fashion sense.”
“Sure. That’s why he reprogrammed the autodoc to fix your face, right? Because he doesn’t care?”
“He did that because I hated what the Hok biotech did to me, not because he found me unattractive.” And yet…was it really only for herself, or did Derek dislike looking at her too?
“Sure he did…” Tachina went on. “Yet he makes love to you in the dark, I’ll bet. When a man is really turned on, he wants to see everything.”
“He did that for me! Out of consideration for me! I was embarrassed, not him!”
Tachina smirked. “Of course.”
Engels stood, steaming. “This was a mistake. I came to you in good will, and this is what I get?”
Tachina stood as well, grinding out her smokestick in a bowl. “You came to me to use me to get information you weren’t willing to pay for, and aren’t supposed to have. Who’s the naughty one now?”
“Aaugh! I’m out of here.” Engels turned to go.
“I do know what Frank’s doing,” Tachina called from behind her.
Engels stopped and turned back. “He’s working on a way to get our brainlinks synched up again while protecting them from being used against us,” she said.
Tachina’s lips twitched. “That’s only a part of it.” She took the teacups and busied herself rinsing them in the kitchen sink, slowly.
“What do you want in return for the information?”
“Oh, nothing right now. A favor, when I ask for it.”
“Depends on the favor,” said Engels.
“It always does.” Tachina turned and leaned her plush backside against the counter. “They’re working on a universal hack for Hundred Worlds brainlink networks. Some kind of malware or cyber-attack program. That’s the gist of it. The rest is too technical for me.”
“Hundred Worlds? Not Mutuality?”
“Frank already has a whole library of hacks and malware for Mutuality computers, but the Mutuality doesn’t use brainlink networks. They do have less-sophisticated single-brainlink setups, but never networked. They’re afraid of link-networks and how they could be misused. How they could be hacked, hmm? Apparently for good reason.”
“How do you know all this?”
Tachina chuckled. “You said it yourself. I’m smarter than I look. But I’m also a bred pleasure clone, so I’ll never be allowed to move past this body and its effect on people. There’s no point in trying to teach a fish to climb trees.”
Engels suppressed a flash of sympathy for the woman. It wasn’t as if Tachina was trying very hard to ‘move past’ her nature, after all. “Thanks. I owe you a favor, but remember what I said about consequences.”
“Another threat?”
Engels gave her a crooked smile. “A friendly warning.” She shut the door firmly on the way out.
So Straker had Murdock and his team of brainiacs trying to figure out ways to hack a Hundred Worlds network. They had Hundred Worlds equipment here on Freiheit to play with, so that made sense.
But such networks weren’t ubiquitous, and they weren’t monolithic. Military battlenets had multiple layers, cutouts and redundancies, to make sure one failure didn’t destroy the ability of the warfighters to function. Losing higher, broader layers merely dropped the user into lower capabilities, all the way down to manual controls and voice coordination if necessary. So what was so critical about a hack?
“You know, the techs can do that,” she said as she walked onto the assembly pad, an addition to the original parts factory and the only area large enough to do work on the giant robot-like mechanisms. The two men hadn’t even changed out of their work uniforms and were already covered in dust and lubricants as they pulled apart sections damaged in the recent battles. “The commander shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.”
“I like to get my hands inside my own mechsuit,” said Straker, wiping his fingers on a rag as he approached. “I’m learning a lot from the techs, too. What’s bothering you?”
Engels put her hands on her hips. “I need to talk to you—but not here.” Her eyes flicked to Loco and the mechsuit mechanics.
“Sure. Let’s take a walk.” They followed a path through the gardens and fields, a lane set transversely from the long axis of the habitat, so they would circumnavigate the interior of the hollow asteroid and return to where they started. “What’s on your mind?”
“I heard something about Murdock’s secret project.”
Straker sighed. “If you heard something, I guess it’s not so secret anymore.”
“It’s a small world here, Derek. People talk. They say he’s trying to devise a method to take over Hundred Worlds networks, not merely take them down.”
“Taking them down is hard enough, but I need to be able to hijack them. I want to send their crew, their pilots and their mechsuiters into deep VR immersion and make them see what I want them to see. I want to do what they might have done to us—control their brains during combat.”
“Why, Derek? So they can exchange one set of slave masters for another? I thought we were liberators!”
“We are. It’s just a temporary measure, for during battle. If we can hack into their networks, we could completely change Hundred Worlds forces’ perception of the fight. We could make them surrender, or if we have to, make them shoot phantom targets.”
Engels’ nostrils flared. Maybe Tachina’s cynical nature had infected her, but… “Or make them shoot each other?”
Straker nodded, slowly. “If we have to.”
“Those are our own people, Derek! The Hundred Worlds! Have you lost your mind? What happened to going after the Mutuality first? They have ten times the number of planets, and they’re the aggressors. Divert them from their attacks on the Hundred Worlds, and we’ll be reducing casualties.”
Straker shook his head. “That’s what you’d think, but I don’t believe that. I’ve been studying the databases Zaxby brought out of the Unmutuals. If the Mutuality backs off, the Hundred Worlds will simply use the breather to attack. That’s how generals and admirals think. That’s how politicians think. That’s how war works—unless there’s some actual peace treaty. So we have to have some method of pulling the fangs of Hundred Worlds forces if we need to.”
“If we need to? So that’s all this is? A contingency plan?”
“Contingency and long-range planning. Eventually we’ll have to deal with the Hundred Worlds. Maybe they’ll simply accept a truce and live in peace with a weakened, reformed Mutuality, whatever we call it—but I’ve studied enough history to know how unlikely that is. Making peace is far harder than making war.”
Engels stopped, throwing herself onto a bench set under a tree. “It seems very much the cart before the horse. Shouldn’t we work on the Mutuality before worrying about something years from now?”
Straker straddled the bench facing her and ran a hand over his buzzed sandy hair. “We are working on it. In fact, we’ll all be getting together and doing some brainstorming soon. You’ll be a key part of that process, as you’re my fleet commander.”
“Fleet commander without much of a fleet.”
“Hey, I just got you a frigate!”
Engels sighed. “That was good, but we’re going to need one hell of a lot more than that to start liberating whole star systems. I’m more worried about this attempt to synch up our brainlinks. How can we be sure someone doesn’t hack us in the process? Force us into deep immersion and send us to some fantasy land, like Shangri-La?”
“You don’t trust Murdock and Zaxby?” asked Straker.
“I don’t trust anyone with too much power. Power corrupts, Derek. People can be led astray. What if someone without many, ah, ethical boundaries, gets access? Someone like Tachina?”
Straker’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh, that again. I know you feel threatened by this woman—”
“Not in the way you think,” Engels snapped. “I’ve looked in her eyes, Derek. She talks a lot about having power over men, over people. That’s all she wants, power, and this could be a magic shortcut to power. You know where I found out about this ‘secret’ info? From her, because Murdock can’t keep his mouth shut in the sack. And Murdock was an Unmutual. He could use this hack to serve us up on a platter to DeChang again, to get in his good graces, or even to take over himself. Between the two of them, they could destroy all we’ve accomplished!”
Straker sat back, looking past her shoulder, pondering. “Who guards the guardians?”
“One of your book sayings?”
“Yes, from the Romans. Do you know the Ruxins have a lot of Old Earth material in their databases from before they lost their homeworld? They archived everything they came across. I can see why DeChang was spouting his references. It’s addicting, to read about where humans came from and how they got here.”
Engels put her hand on Straker’s thigh and squeezed. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your off-time entertainment, but what are you going to do about ensuring these magical hacks are never used against us?”
“My reading isn’t only for entertainment. The past is the key to the future. There is nothing new under the sun. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Straker took a deep breath and spoke firmly, a little sharply. “So I’ll handle it.”
Engels sat back. “Handle it how? With sayings?”
“I said I’ll take care of it! The less you know, the better.”
Anger flared again in her chest and she stood to look down at Straker. “I never thought I’d say this, but Tachina was right. You men and your secrets. I should be the first person you trust with this, not that last!”
“That’s not fair, Carla. I didn’t tell Loco either. It’s need-to-know. It’s elementary operational security.”
“I’m not just your woman, I’m your second-in-command. Your fleet commander, like you said. I deserve to know. And what if you’d been killed on this op? I take over and even I don’t have the info? Murdock would be working on this with no oversight at all!”
“Give me some credit, Carla. There’s a recording for you guys that would be triggered if I died.”
“A recording that no doubt resides on a networked system that Murdock can access to alter or delete whatever he wants. And what Murdock knows, Tachina will too.”
Straker stood, throwing up his hands. “Tachina, Tachina, Tachina! You’re jealous, and it’s messing with your head!”
“Now it’s your turn to give me some credit. Yes, her cynical ambition bothers me, and it should bother you. You said yourself she’s trouble. Look what she’s doing to us!”
“What she’s doing is twisting you up so much you don’t trust my judgment anymore!”
“I’m beginning to wonder about it, yes!”
Straker brushed off his coverall. “I have work to do. I’m sure you do too.” He rounded on his heel and stomped away, leaving Engels making frustrated fists so tight her nails cut into her palms.
Chapter 6
Starfish Nebula, Freiheit
Straker strode down the path back to the mechsuit factory, seething. Women. Just when you thought they were rational human beings, they proved you wrong. OPSEC was
fundamental to any military, and telling secrets to extra people just because they felt entitled, because they were close to the boss, was asking for trouble.
As he entered the assembly floor, Straker said, “Hey Loco, get these things up to spec ASAP. You have one week. I have to go do command stuff.”
Loco pulled off his tunic to work in his undershirt. “Okay, okay. I’ll make sure it gets done, boss. Manny and his team got things running good here. What was up with Carly?”
“None of your damn business,” Straker said. At Loco’s amused look, he relented. “It’s personal. Hey, what do you know about what Murdock’s working on?”
“Nothing. Any brainiac stuff above the level of mechsuit repair makes my head hurt. I’m more of a people-person, you know that. Why?”
“No reason. Speaking of people, I want you with me when I talk to Lazarus. Meet me at the brig in an hour. Then we’ll be shuttling over to Freenix Base. After that, a staff meeting at the BCC.”
“Aw, boss, I hate meetings.”
“Price of officership.” He pointed with his index finger. “Brig, one hour.”
Loco waved and went back to his repairs.
Straker headed over to the town hall, a small building that was now bursting at the seams with administrative personnel. Workers were building a wing onto the structure for additional space. Several tents had been set up for temporary shelter, though given the mild artificial weather, people could probably have worked in the open without difficulty.
The light from the optical bundle was dim, though. Straker stared up at it. Murdock was running all generators and reactors at full capacity, but Freiheit needed more power.
When he entered Mayor Weinberg’s office, she had three compscreens open and piles of hardcopy scattered across her desk. Her index finger pressed a comlink into her ear while she stared out the window at the activity. “No, Harry, you can’t have any more water right now. Pumping takes power. If you want to carry it by hand from the lake, be my guest. Otherwise, deal with the shortage like the rest of us. Bye.”