by C. R. Daems
After we had finished our meals, we ordered dessert and drinks and sat around talking. It was a relaxing time, and I learned more about my teammates as they talked about their growing up years. Adrian had been born on the planet Sutan—the one where I had picked to be a monk when Adela was having trouble placing me in a home. His mother and father had met while in the navy as ensigns. Several years later they decided to get married and his mother left the service to raise their family. Adrian was the oldest of four and grew up on stories of navy life and lived for the times his father was home. From a young age, his whole life had been in preparation to join the navy, which made him an intense student and a loner. Kris on the other hand was an only child and spoiled by her mother and her mother's sister. She related several incidents with her aunt, who used to take her shopping and to the theater. Her aunt sounded like a fun person to be around, and the two made a mischievous duo. I was sorry to see the lunch end.
I dropped Adrian and Kris off at their current residences—apartment buildings near work—and headed for home. I too hoped the team would stay together, even though I felt comfortable Stauffer would keep me on permanently if the team were disbanded. I arrived home early, grabbed a berry juice, and spent the time reviewing my bank account, which had one month's salary, a reimbursement for the mileage on my skimmer, and the minor expenses incurred on our trip to Stone Ring and Zespa. Then I started making a list of tentative expenses—fuel for the skimmer, periodic maintenance—and quickly realized I didn't have a clue what else. I would need Alexa's help. I wanted to contribute to her expenses now that I had money. She had spent tens of thousands on me over the years, and it appeared I'd have a lot of credits left over each month. Unable to continue, I inserted the chip Adrian had given each of us into my tablet and began reviewing each merchant's itinerary. Then I merged the six itineraries into one timeline, which turned out to be overwhelming. I had just begun to separate the timelines by solar system when Alexa arrived home.
"You NIA agents have better hours than bankers, and they pay you for a full day." She smiled and gave me a hug. "Let me freshen up and I can tell you what a working woman's day is like." She laughed as she headed upstairs. I had just finished my new timeline by solar system when Alexa came and sat next to me.
"Well, I went to the office, was given a chip, went to lunch with Adrian and Kris, and came home," I said, trying not to smile.
"Sounds like a tiring day for an NIA agent. I heard three very boring cases which each lasted more than two hours and then spent the next three hours writing up my decisions," she said.
"Glad I'm not a magistrate," I said, and we both burst out laughing. "I tried making a budget so I'd know how much money I could contribute to our expenses but found I don't have a clue."
"A budget is a good idea. It will be a good exercise, and you need to understand what it costs to run a house whether you choose to live here or not. If you don't need to work on something, we could spend an hour before dinner talking about expenses." She linked her tablet to mine and began listing her monthly and yearly expenses: utilities, food, Joetta the cook, Jason her driver, hydrogen for the car, and taxes. She owned the house and the ground vehicle but explained many people paid them off with monthly payments. Then she made a list of potential expenses: clothes; maintenance on the house, car, and skimmer; fuel for the skimmer; and miscellaneous items such as entertainment, eating out, clothes, and trinkets. My head was spinning by the time Joetta called us for dinner.
"That's worse than navigational math," I said as we rose. "I thought my pay was excessive for my needs ... and I'd have lots left over to help."
"You do. Most of these expenses I have whether you are here or not. We can work out some expenses you can contribute toward. For example, you can pay for the skimmer's expenses."
"I'd like to contribute now that I can. I should take care of the skimmer's expenses and help with some of the others."
"We'll discuss it again tomorrow. I don't need the money, but I think it will be a good experience for you, and I'd like you to understand what it takes to run our home." She didn't explain why, but I knew she hoped I would live to inherit the house from her. I doubted it, but I wanted to help her for the years of taking excellent care of me.
After dinner we sat on the couch, Alexa working on her caseload and me reviewing my new solar system timelines. That too turned out to be a bit overwhelming, as the Alliance had thirty-one planets and the merchants we were tracking visited the majority of those systems at least twice each year. In the end, I wasn't sure if developing a budget or finding a pattern for the merchants was more difficult. I decided I needed a break and retired early.
* * *
For the next two days, I slowly eliminated one system at a time because the merchants' travel to that system was either too random or too seldom. That left twenty-five. Then I assumed the merchants wouldn't each have a separate drop—although there might have been more than one and they might occur on different days—and eliminated all but six. Then I assumed only two drop systems and eliminated all but three. I wasn't comfortable with making so many assumptions without anything to base them on, but the only other choice was to give up. When I arrived at the office on the third day, everyone looked like I felt.
"Who would like to start?" Adrian asked.
"I admit to not having any fun because I went to bed every night frustrated and alone," Wilber said, shaking his head. "I believe the solution lies in the data you gave us, but damned if I could find it. Too many permutations with eight ships, thirty-one planets, and hundreds of visits. If I had to guess, I'd say Zespa."
"I agree," Kris said. "I like Eastar and Zespa but I wouldn't bet my rings on them."
"I had the same problem. The answer is there but buried in the mass of data. I liked Black Water but don't have a concrete reason. Anna?" Adrian asked.
"I had the same problem as you, so in desperation I made some rather unsubstantiated assumptions and narrowed it down to Eastar, Zespa, and Black Water."
"Now that's interesting. We all liked the same systems. What assumptions did you make, Anna?" Adrian asked. I spent the next hour going through my elimination process and each assumption.
"Reasonable assumptions, given we only know the merchants involved and the systems they show as having visited," Wilber said when I finished. "They could have stopped at an uninhabited system, but then they wouldn't need the celestial coordinates or the missiles."
"Agreed." Adrian linked his tablet to the large monitor in the room and began plotting the coordinates for the Wheeler's missile into each of the three systems. It could have been any one of them, as the location in each system was out of the normal traffic patterns and far enough away for the planet to be undetectable. "I'd suggest we send our conjecture to commander Stauffer. He might want to pass it on to someone."
"We need the time for the drop. From the timeline I created, the Wheeler doesn't appear to have visited any of those three systems on a regular schedule," Kris said, looking at her tablet. Reviewing my timeline for the Wheeler, I agreed.
Adrian sat staring at his table, then nodded. "That would make sense. This isn’t a production line where you know what and when something will come off the line. They would have to communicate by some means, probably coded messages. What if I put in a request for the incoming and outgoing messages to the Wheeler from each system it visited?"
"Worth a try," Kris said. "We don't have another project."
"All right, I'll get Stauffer to put in a request and let you know when I get it. Actually, I'll send it to each of you encrypted. After you get it, let's meet every three days here in the office. I will also verify with the commander that he is okay with us continuing with our current line of pursuit."
We all stayed while Adrian went to talk to Stauffer. I think everyone hoped we could solve the mystery, rather than the astronomers solving it. We all liked puzzles, and I suspected none of us wanted to hand the solution off to someone else. He returned an hour
later.
"Stauffer wants us to stay on the case and is making this the number one priority and agrees with our line of pursuit. He was pleased were doing it without waiting for approval. He had talked with Admiral Rawls, and she wants us involved. He was just about to tell us when I caught him."
Everyone left smiling. Like them, I wanted to solve the problem. I didn't care about the credit for solving it, just that we were able to do it on our own. And I guessed secretly, I thought that would increase the odds that the powers-that-be would be less likely to split us up.
The next two days dragged, since I was anxious to get started on the messages. Instead, Alexa and I spent time discussing budgets and expenses. I came to the conclusion that a junior lieutenant's salary wasn't that much—mid middle class at best. Alexa had a retirement at the rank of commodore, a salary as a magistrate, and more importantly thirty years of savings. Her wants had been minimal, and most of her money had gone into savings and investments. That was another thing I had to learn about and another reason I wanted those messages, so I could stop thinking about budgets and investments. Red didn't seem interested either.
To my relief, I received a coded package from Adrian the morning of the third day and quickly invoked Crazy Numbers and watched as the package slowly decoded. There were several hundred messages. I sat back trying to decide how to attack the problem. Just reading each one was not only slow but would make it difficult to see a pattern. So I decided to sort the messages into categories: from the Wheeler to a merchant, a merchant to the Wheeler, in-system message from the Wheeler, in-system message to the Wheeler, inter-planet messages from the Wheeler, inter-planet messages to the Wheeler, and lastly, all other messages.
That produced workable piles from twenty-five to seventy messages each. The next question, where to start? Which would be most likely to produce results? The Wheeler had to get pickup and drop-off times and maybe coordinates from an outside source, so communications between merchants seemed least likely. In-system to the Wheeler seemed inefficient since the Wheeler traveled to many sites over the months, consequently inter-planet to the Wheeler seemed more likely. That category included forty-one messages. I was getting ready to start when Alexa returned home from work, and I decided to take a break. Dinner was an important meal to me because Alexa and I used it to catch up on each other's activities.
"I'm glad you have something to work on because even I was getting tired of budgets and expenses." she laughed as we settled down on the couch with our drinks and reading matter.
"Me too. That was making me feel like an adult, and I'm not ready. You'll have to put up with your juvenile daughter a bit longer."
"Can't blame you; being an adult can take the fun out of life." She smiled as she picked up her tablet and began reading. I picked up mine and opened the group of letters that went through the Wave communications System, WCS, commonly referred to as the WavCom, which provided faster-then-light messaging between planets, and began reading. The messages were short, as you paid by the word. I finished my first pass in three hours. They fell naturally into subcategories: to the Wheeler from customers to the captain, personal to the captain, and personal to crew members. It was getting late, and looking for patterns when you are tired is a waste of time, so I selected the ‘customers to the captain’ messages, which contained eleven messages over the three-year period. Even so, it was late when I finished checking the seven company names and their product lines with the messages. I saw nothing out of place and decided to call it a night. Apparently Red didn't either, since he had retired into my sleeping smock an hour earlier.
After a quick breakfast, I returned to the problem. With Red on my forehead, I checked the ten sent directly to the captain. They were about scheduling, maintenance, and fees concerning the Wheeler. Three hours later I could find nothing that would suggest a further look. After a break for lunch, I began on the twenty sent directly to the crew. Since the messages were expensive, I wasn't surprised to find that only seven crew members had received personal messages. Four had one each, one had two, and the other two had the remaining fourteen. The fourteen messages concerned family members and sickness.
It was probably my imagination, but I thought Red seemed more interested in the messages to the crew than to the captain. A two-hour check of the Wheeler's crew rosters for the three years I was examining indicated that Dan Mcrae wasn't listed as a crew member. He had received nine messages concerning his ailing mother. Further digging revealed five Mcraes on Black Water where the messages originated, but no Vanessa Mcrae—his mother. The other crew member, Victor Decker who received five messages, did have a brother named Charles on Black Water. Hoping to speed things up, I sent a message to Adrian.
To: Lieutenant Adrian Shrader, Copy: Lieutenant Kristyn Sinclair, Lieutenant Wilber Weiss
There is no crew member named Dan Mcrae nor any mother named Vanessa Mcrae on Black Water, and the hospital has no record of a Mcrae being admitted during the period we are searching.
Signed: Paulus
I forced myself to take a deep breath, relax, and stop for dinner with Alexa. I had been at it all day and needed a rest. Two hours later, I felt relaxed as I settled down on the couch, opened my tablet, and began reading the nine messages. By midnight I felt certain the numbers were times and or coordinates, but I couldn't find the key to decode them. I went to bed hoping one of my team members had broken the code.
* * *
When I arrived at the office, everyone was there looking tired and nursing cups of coffee.
"We all feel you found the critical messages, but no one has managed to decipher them. Have you?" Adrian asked.
All eyes turned on me.
"No. I'll wager the coordinates we found are for Black Water and those messages are the pickup and drop off dates and times. But I couldn't find the key."
"I ran every code-breaking algorithm I know against them, and nothing," Wilber said looking frustrated.
"Lots of numbers, real dates, and times, but not meaningful for our purposes. The Wheeler wasn't in Black Water on those dates," Kris said, throwing up her hands.
"Or in Zespa or Eastar," Adrian said, confirming what I had thought to accomplish by sharing my findings—examination of the data from several different perspectives. If we could decode the Wheeler's messages, we could probably decode the messages to the other merchants, which would hopefully lead to the foreign connection. "What say we try brainstorming, since we are all here. Maybe we'll stumble on something." Adrian stood and began walking toward our conference room, with us following. The minutes passed in silence; every once in a while someone would get up to get something to drink or visit the latrine or stand and stare out the window.
"This is the quietest brainstorming I've ever participated in," Wilber said, breaking the two-hour-long silence. I had been pondering Red's lack of interest—my imagination—in Mcrae’s messages this morning versus last night. Probably disgusted I can't find the solution, I mused.
"Won't it be likely the entire crew was part of the smuggling? If that's true, maybe one or more of the other messages contains the key," I mused, thinking out loud. Suddenly, everyone had their tablets in hand. I shrugged and began my own examination of the other messages.
"There seems to be a correlation with the receipt of messages to the other individual crew members and Mcrae's messages. I wonder if the two crew members with family sicknesses are the pickup and drop off dates and times and the other messages contain the key," Kris said, her hands flying across her tablet.
"Let's first check out the senders of those messages. Maybe we can eliminate some as legitimate. Not only that, but also while the names are real, the facts in the messages appear inconsistent," Adrian said and proceeded to distribute names to each of us one at a time. As we finished one, he would give us another. Late in the afternoon, we finished. "Interesting, it appears except for one, none of the messages are real. The senders’ names are real but not the facts. Ironically, the Mcraes did liv
e on Black Water but moved prior to the start of the messages. I suggest we work independently tomorrow and meet the day after," Adrian said to nods of agreement.
* * *
That night I worked on the messages to the two crew members who had received their messages immediately prior to the messages to Decker and Mcrae, assuming they would contain the key to decoding Decker and Mcrae's messages. I gave up around midnight. It had been a long day.
The next day, I began working on them after a leisurely breakfast with Alexa. Red seemed interested as I worked, although silent as usual. The solution eluded me all day. I figured I needed a break, so I put the work aside and sat listening to an instrumental collection of music by the Metzger String Orchestra.
"I hear you're having a difficult day," Alexa said as she entered the living room.
"If I stare too long, my mind goes dead, and Red has given up trying to help," I said, only half joking.
"I understand. Some things just take time for your brain to sort out. You can't rush them. Judicial decisions are like that sometimes. Each solution I come up with just doesn't feel right, because it isn't. I need—" Alexa's head jerked toward the window as I jumped up. It sounded like shots in the distance. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. I looked around, desperately wanting my laser. Halfway up the stairs I realized I had left it in my bedroom. As we reached the landing, the front door exploded off its hinges, and I heard men rushing in. Memories of last time flashed through my mind, and I turned toward the door to my bedroom and my laser. Alexa nearly jerked me off my feet as she pulled me stumbling toward the guest bedroom. All I could think about was my laser, as I heard the intruders shouting to each other. They sounded professional, military-like in their approach.
"Clear," a man's voice, loud and scary as memories of last time came flooding back.
"Clear," a rumbling base voice responded.
A woman's voice, "Music is on, so she's here someplace."