by P. R. Adams
We’re missing something. He knows it, but he can’t admit it. What would rattle him so badly? “Sir? How would they have known to ambush the task force here?”
Fripp froze, the panic touching his wide eyes again.
“The encryption’s compromised, Sir. Or they’ve scraped operational intelligence from someone’s thoughts.”
“It could be other elements compromised, but we can’t take that risk.” Fripp coughed nervously. “Commander Stafford, get a high-priority message out immediately to switch to alternate code keys. Emphasize encryption may be compromised. Pass along our recommendations on task force dispersal as well. And—” He looked back at Rimes. “Indicate our concerns and tactics regarding these telepaths, including the possibility they may have insight into our operations. Captain Rimes will confirm his theory with Miss Fontana.”
Stafford seemed on the verge of shock; he dazedly made his way over to the signalman. Uncertainty was visible in every crewman’s face and body language.
How many of us are like that, worried our next move will be our last?
“Captain Fripp, would you have a moment, Sir?” Rimes looked through the hatch to the passageway.
Fripp grunted, then exited the bridge; Rimes followed.
“Morale’s going to be a problem, Sir.” Rimes glanced meaningfully back at the bridge.
Fripp fixed Rimes with an icy stare. “Some things are obvious even to someone like me, Captain.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Submarine warfare has always depended on stealth. A crew walked on eggshells most every day of duty during war. One noise, one error in judgment, and the boat could be dead. It took a special sort of crew.”
Has he already lost faith in his crew?
“Sir?”
Fripp’s face stiffened. “We’ll find out what sort of crew we have soon enough, I guess.”
I can’t get him to accept that we all need to change how we operate, what we think, not without antagonizing him, and I can’t afford to do that more than I already have.
“We have to have some idea of the genies’ fleet composition, don’t we, Sir?”
“We have a good idea, but no one expected suicide shuttles with nuclear weapons onboard. No one uses nuclear weapons, damn it.”
How do I get across to him that the old, conventional approach to thinking about the enemy is the problem?
“Then we’ll need to start thinking along those lines—sicarii, asasiyuns, kamikazes, mujahideen, nerve gas, nuclear weapons…we can learn from their tactics, start to build out counter-tactics.”
Fripp puckered up as if he’d bitten into something rotten. “Give me a straight up battle any time. Regardless of the odds, it has to be better than this.”
Rimes rubbed his forehead. Fripp’s stubborn refusal to accept the new order of things was taking a real, physical toll. Rimes fought off the urge to cross his arms and instead bent his knees slightly. Fight the tension; don’t feed it. Stay loose; don’t lock up. “It can be a very debilitating thing, this sort of warfare. We’ll have that battle eventually, Sir. The limitation facing every extremist is resources. They’ll run out of weapons or the people willing to die using them.”
“I’m quite sure I don’t share your confidence in that assessment.” The puckering lingered for a moment on Fripp’s face. His eyes darted back to the bridge. “Get with the intelligence team and start working up some of those counter-tactics, Captain. I’d like to have my officers give them a good analysis. And run them by Miss Fontana. Maybe she can provide their perspective.”
Their perspective. Them. To him, she’ll never be one of us. “I’ll get on it, Sir.”
“Good.” Fripp lingered for a moment, clearly dissatisfied. His posture was tense and his face was pinched resentfully. He seemed ready to say something, but instead he returned to the bridge.
Rimes wondered if the genie mind was so alien that counter tactics were doomed to failure. He thought back to Fontana’s teeth and her insecurity about them. It was a human weakness.
Maybe they hate us because they’re more like us than they want to be.
He suddenly felt further apart from Molly and the boys than any distance could explain, and worried he would never see them again.
We’ll be together again. We just need to find a way to stop them. We will. If it’s humanly possible.
14
22 September, 2167. USS Valdez.
* * *
RIMES YAWNED AND STRETCHED, then pulled up the bunk’s covers. Even though he was alone in the compartment, his cabin seemed more compressed and confining than normal. Except for the subdued azure glow from his earpiece display, it was dark. Shadows—the pedestal sink, his and Durban’s environment suits hanging from the front of their lockers, the desk—seemed darker, the room cooler.
He shook off the imagined impressions and turned his attention to his earpiece’s display, pausing the playback for a moment. Kleigshoen sat alone in a conference room, bathed in the glow of data displays.
On their own at first, then consciously, his eyes ran over her face, lingering on her perfectly formed, full lips, the soft curls of her golden-brown hair. She had lost weight since their confrontation on the Broussard. Her outfit was tight, showy, expensive. Vanity or just a part of her game, she was a distraction he didn’t need at the moment. The memories and guilt were still tender, three years on. My fault. My weakness.
Three months since we lost the task force. General Durban had a message waiting for me. Dana had a message waiting for me. All these months, all this time and not a word from you, Molly. I have to believe everyone’s doing okay. I couldn’t go on without the three of you, baby.
He closed his eyes and breathed deep to fight off tears. The doubt and darkness disappeared as quickly as they had come.
A flick of his finger, and the star charts Kleigshoen had been discussing in the video filled a section of Rimes’s display. Another flick created a private workspace, a third dragged the star charts into it. He resumed the playback.
“Also, ADMP reports it’s lost all contact with DS Erikson.”
He paused the playback again. DS. Deep Space explorer. Odd for a metacorporation to be spending on deep space exploration in the middle of a genie uprising.
He made a note, then resumed the playback.
“I’ve included the Erikson’s last known location—Rendezvous Seven Bravo Echo—and destination. ADMP claims the Erikson was en route to COROT-7 after taking on crew and supplies at 55 Cancri.”
Rimes paused the playback again. For the third time in as many days, he plotted the Erikson’s supposed course. Rendezvous 7BE—the last known location—was in open space, nearly three light years out from Serenity Colony, where Erikson had almost certainly taken on its supplies and personnel.
He pulled up data on the Serenity colony and the 55 Cancri system. Brilliant colors flowed out from the displays—an indigo gas giant racked with storms of shimmering gold and amber, ice-crusted planetoids, Serenity’s lush, emerald jungles and tranquil, cobalt oceans. Rimes felt himself falling into those dark waters, drifting, sinking.
He shook his head, then released a frustrated sigh. Focus.
He navigated through to the orbital data. Most of the Serenity system space stations orbited the colony world, and the rest were less than an astronomical unit out. Their sensors wouldn’t have picked anything up from the Erikson.
He opened another workspace and dragged the ADMP file into it, teasing out the crew and cargo manifests. He started with the crew manifest, filtering out those who’d launched with the Erikson from the ADMP construction satellite. After a cursory examination, he opened another workspace and dragged the names that had been filtered out into it. He dragged the Bureau’s intelligence dossier on the Erikson into the new workspace and correlated the names with travel documentation and background portfolios.
Aboard any other ship, the crew picked up from Serenity would have simply been passengers: they were scientist
s—physicists, biologists, astronomers, chemists, not technically crew. On a deep space explorer, though, they likely had key roles in ship operations, at least once they reached their destination.
COROT-7? Was that their real destination?
Rimes randomly selected three crew names and read through their IB portfolios. Multiple degrees and certifications, long-term contracts with ADMP and other metacoporations: they were all relatively young, healthy, and highly sought after.
Is this Jared and Calvin’s future? A lifetime on the move, never really calling any particular place home. Am I already setting the stage for that, sending them out into the stars and living so long away from them before they’ve even begun to know me?
Nothing jumped out from the data. No historical gaps or questionable entries. The crew checked out, just as the IB report said.
He resumed play and was immediately drawn in by Kleigshoen's smooth, confident voice.
“Yours is the closest task force we’ve got to that position. We need you to make top speed. Even if there’s nothing to be found or if the Erikson re-establishes contact, that location is an ideal point with which to connect with Commander Rhee’s Task Force 31. The Charlotte will provide re-supply when you hook up. If you don’t receive a change of orders at that time, proceed to COROT-7. The Special Security Council has an interest in ADMP’s plans for that system.”
Global military forces dispersed throughout known space, and Dana’s calling the shots. Everything’s coming from the Special Security Council now, and that means the Bureau. The assassinations all but made that necessary. What makes COROT-7 so special to everyone?
Rimes brought up the available data on COROT-7 and skimmed through it again. More than five hundred light years out from Earth. Six known planets, two within the habitable zone. More than a decade before, probes had reported nothing beyond mining possibilities and deemed it a low priority system.
A quick search brought up the exploratory probe videos for the system, starting with the system examination, then proceeding to the planetary videos. The fourth planet was vaguely Earth-like, if Earth consisted mostly of sand dunes and mountains. Although the atmosphere was listed as breathable, it wasn’t ideal for long-term exposure—particulate matter, probable bio threats, elevated radiation. Near-Earth gravity. Two moons. The system made an odd destination for a multi-billion-dollar deep space explorer. He still couldn’t see a reason for the council to dedicate limited resources to what might amount to a land grab.
On a hunch, Rimes pulled up the data on the probes themselves. They were from The Dresden Group, a German corporation that had folded in a fairly public manner several years before, when interest in long-range probes had cooled, a classic gold rush case. He looked for more information on Dresden, but came up empty. He logged a query about the company and its officers. It would run against the Valdez’s library, and then it would fire out on the next communications packet to access databases on the Grid elsewhere. He didn’t expect anything from the query, but he was compelled to run down even long odds when things got bad enough.
The cabin hatch opened and Durban stepped in, head sagging from fatigue. His eyes were glassy, the lids heavy. He stretched his arms out, grabbed at something imaginary for balance, then twisted and rolled his shoulders. A moment passed with him frozen in that pose, then he shook violently and closed the hatch behind him. He stripped out of his uniform, looking up as he pulled off his socks. “Still researching? We’re going to be at the rendezvous soon.”
“I don’t want us heading into an ambush.” Rimes rubbed his face and yawned again.
“Meyers’s squad is on duty.” Durban sounded reassured. He hung his uniform from the front of his locker.
Rimes laughed quietly. “He’s a good soldier, warts and all.”
“That’s a lot of warts.”
“You run the duty roster.” Rimes looked Durban in the eye. “Are you trying to tell me it’s a coincidence his squad’s on duty at a critical time like this?”
Durban chuckled; it was an alien sound from him. “You have a problem with someone being practical?”
“Nope.”
“It’s just good sense to have your best on duty when things might go bad, don’t you think? Plus, I told him I didn’t like his effort during yesterday’s sparring. He didn’t agree. The late shift ought to get the message through.”
Rimes watched Durban at the pedestal sink for a moment. He seemed relaxed, brushing his teeth, checking his eyes in the mirror. They’d both settled into a comfortable rhythm after so long aboard the Valdez. “You been spending time with Sheila again?” The distraction’s good for you, even if you’re being a tightass about it.
Durban froze for a moment, then spat into the sink and rinsed, his eyes never leaving the mirror. “She’s an interesting woman. Did you realize she can see in the dark? Not like NVGs, mind you. Complete darkness. She’s colorblind as a result, or at least she thinks that’s what causes the colorblindness.”
People had been picking out traits for their kids for decades—likely hair color, tendency toward height or intellect. Of course, nothing in genetics was perfect. Switching a gene on or off for one trait could impact hundreds of other functions, and environment played an influencing role in the final outcome. The genies had seen many variables removed from the equation and had seen a few added in as well.
“She never had parents,” Durban continued, disappearing into the bunk beneath Rimes’s. “Think about that. Most kids—even adopted or in vitro or by proxy—know they have parents. She had so much constructed about her; she’s got nothing. Although I think she’s developed at least a slight maternal bond with Dana.”
Rimes blinked in surprise. “She said that?”
“No.” Durban’s voice was quiet, introspective. “It’s just the way she talks about her. I hear what she says and…well, I understand it. I feel the same way about my mother.”
Rimes considered how he would feel if he heard someone talking about someone else in terms that described his own mother. It was an uncomfortable feeling.
Would it really be so bad to never know your parents, especially when they were like mine? Cleo and Alejandra were…What did Alejandra ever give me? Is that really a mother’s love, or just the biological functioning? I hope others had better. It sounds like Durban did.
Rimes shifted so he could see down into Durban’s bunk. “Are you planning to talk with Meyers about his attitude?”
“Attitude? The sparring incident? No. He knows where I stand on it.”
“Does he understand why?” Rimes tried to be positive, but Durban’s passive-aggressive mood made it hard.
“He’s a sharp guy, isn’t he?” Durban frowned. “He never lets anyone forget that.”
Rimes sighed. He didn’t mean to, but the frustration simply slipped out. “He’s a scientist. You know how it is. They can be awfully obtuse about things like that.”
Durban’s features stiffened. “I’m really trying, Jack. Honestly. He’s a tough one to lead.”
Leadership’s tough, and it’s the problem ones you have to work the hardest on. “Yeah, he’s a tough one. Just…just don’t give up on him.”
Rimes rolled onto his back and shut the cabin lights off through his earpiece. He dimmed its display but continued to flip through more of the IB data, hoping he might find something he’d missed before. He stopped.
I can’t just give up on him. “Tim, what do you think of the team?”
“Overall or as individuals?”
“Both.”
“Well…“ Durban drew the word out. “I think we’re going to lean on Meyers and Kershaw a lot. They’re both a little overconfident, but that’s almost to be expected given the difference in training. I’m worried about Munoz.”
“You don’t think he can last?”
Durban sighed softly. The sound died quickly in the empty darkness of their compartment. “I’m not sure. I think we’re asking a lot of him if it comes down to endurance.
He’s so big. If it’s possible, he’ll do whatever he’s tasked to do. That has to count for something.”
“What about Lopresti and Gilbert?” Rimes asked.
“I—” Durban paused for a moment. “I think Gilbert has a lot of potential.”
“He’s still young. You think Lopresti’s trouble?”
Durban coughed uncomfortably. “She has her place. She’s smart enough. Maybe too smart. Like Meyers. But she doesn’t seem to have an off switch, does she? If Gilbert could get some of Meyers’s confidence and some of Lopresti’s assertiveness, he could go a long way.”
Rimes smiled. “Anyone else stand out?”
“A few. Bright spots here and there, good attitudes. I think the rest are all solid.”
“Yeah. Solid, reliable. With the right influence and training, maybe they can take it to the next level.”
“It’s good to see them getting this opportunity.”
That’s all it’s ultimately about, isn’t it? A chance? Like you? Just another opportunity, the right influence and training?
Rimes turned his attention back to the video, pulling up an image of Kleigshoen again and hating himself as he studied her face and wondered what might have been between them. Now who’s blowing their opportunity? Molly forgave me, and here I am dreaming about what-ifs.
“Better get some sleep while we can.”
RIMES JERKED awake at the call to general quarters. It was a shard of glass cutting into his sleep-fogged brain, a rising roar that dropped for just a moment before roaring again. Rimes instinctively checked his earpiece. It was 0420, an hour before he normally woke. He shook off his blankets, instantly missing their cocooning comfort, their familiar rough texture. Durban cleared the bottom bunk, then Rimes dropped to the deck, his mind vaguely registering the coolness of the floor.
Durban hastily inserted his earpiece as he pulled on the uniform he’d left hanging the night before. “Meyers, talk to me.” Durban’s voice was surprisingly calm. He flipped the earpiece into speaker mode, then took his environment suit from Rimes.