Mahzarhi knew Zheng’s temper well enough to fear he might become physically violent. He didn’t put up the slightest bit of protest as Zheng manhandled him. He apologized and begged for a chance to explain.
“Yesterday morning,” he said glancing down at Zheng’s left hand and the death grip it had on his right jacket sleeve. “I was sitting at my desk in the digs, when Pedersen called me on a private channel. He told me he had just hit the deck of the personnel carrier and he would see me as soon as he could get a shuttle over to my tug. When he got there, he flashed a military ID, told me he needed a lieutenant and I was the only person he felt he could trust.”
Zheng’s expression told Mahzarhi he was not accepting the explanation. His glare also told Mahzarhi he was getting more upset by the minute. After all, Mahzarhi was here unannounced and he had yet to give a plausible reason why he was suddenly acting as a body guard to one of the two people in the universe that Zheng was certain they couldn’t take into their confidence.
Mahzarhi was a former pupil of Zheng’s and had nothing but the highest regard for him, and what he was trying to accomplish. He would rather be beaten than to have Zheng think he had betrayed his trust.
“Please allow me to finish,” he pleaded.
Zheng growled, but relented and let go of Mahzarhi’s sleeve.
Mahzarhi started pacing as if he were considering the best point at which to pick his narrative back up.
Zheng started to calm down a bit as Mahzarhi paced. He could tell the young Zunnuki was wondering if being there under these circumstances was something he could satisfactorily explain; not only to Zheng, but himself.
“Calm down, Nashur,” Zheng said. “Just start where you left off. I’m listening.”
“I was totally unprepared for a visit from the Bureau,” Mahzarhi continued. “I barely had time to tidy up and encrypt my notes. As soon as he got there he asked me if I had hyper-linked anyone to tell them he was there. I told him I hadn’t.”
“He had me inform the rest of the crew we were going to be in a communications blackout until further notice. I asked straight away why he was there unannounced and what reason he could possibly have for ordering my people to let the phones ring. He just looked at me without offering an explanation. It was quite unnerving.”
“How closely did you check the credentials,” Zheng asked. “The Fleet doesn’t pass stars out like candy, especially to yahoos who never seemed to have the ambition to be anything more than a first officer. It smells. Cozeremi has to be playing games. I’d be willing to wager he was hoping you’d be more apt to cooperate with Len if you thought you were dealing with a military stovepipe and not just a civilian project supervisor.”
“It occurred to me that Cozeremi could have had forged Pedersen’s credentials as a test of our security procedures,” Mahzarhi said. “But, if that was the case, when I ran the check, his badge should have turned up as a fake. It came back valid and active, as of sixteen years ago.”
“Sixteen years,” Zheng asked.
“Affirmative, Herb,” Mahzarhi replied. “Sixteen years.”
As far as Zheng could remember, Pedersen would still have been in the reserves at that time, pissing and moaning about being stuck in the Fleet and telling anyone who’d listen about how happy he would be to finally be done with it and start his civilian life in earnest.
He hadn’t even started talking yet about whether he would seek any employment to supplement his meager military retirement or not. It was a big surprise when he took a post at the Bureau, and an even bigger one that the directorate had chosen him to manage the Human Studies branch.
“That still doesn’t mean Len is an admiral,” Zheng said. “I don’t know how he pulled it off, but I still see Cozeremi’s hand in this. He knows I’m intrigued by now. He also knows that a single star trumps two full-birds and he expects us to follow along. What happened next?”
“After ordering the blackout,” Mahzarhi said. “Len asked for a pressure suit and told me to pull the plug on all the security monitors I had scattered around the yards. I asked him what he was about to do and if he needed any assistance. He refused to answer me and told me that my crew and I should have some lunch and wait on him to return.”
“I know he took a small shuttle out of the hangar, but I don’t know which hulk he visited or what he did there. He was back in about an hour with a scan-proof security bag. I don’t have any idea what was in the bag, but he dropped it into the case he has with him.”
“The last thing he did; before he ordered me to go with him or face court martial; was to brief my crew on their responsibilities under the League Security, Espionage and Sedition Act, Parts VII through X. What do you think that all this means, Herb?”
“I think it means he was trying to scare your cadets and junior officers into keeping quiet,” Zheng replied.
“I tried to think of every excuse I could not to go with him,” Mahzarhi explained. “But, I couldn’t come up with one that rang true. I can’t for the life of me figure out what he’s playing at and it’s goading me.”
“The most intriguing thing about this whole situation is the fact that he has a Gen Three shuttle at his disposal with a full crew. I’ve been on active status with the Fleet a full ten years and this is the first one I’ve seen up close.”
“This may have been the safest thing for you to do, Nashur,” the Historian replied. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Back on the commons,” he asked. “Len requested you tell me why you both were here. What did he mean?”
“He only told me he needed to speak with you,” Mahzarhi replied. “He would tell me nothing more. I tried to engage him in conversation more than once on the way here. He would only tell me I was better off not knowing everything until certain events took place.”
“Enigmatic as all Hell,” the Historian responded. “I guess we’ll have to wait until he tells me what it’s about.”
Before Zheng had finished speaking, there was a knock at the door. Zheng opened it and a shivering Pedersen stood there. Zheng asked him in.
“So, how is Gabrielle this evening,” Zheng asked as he offered to take Pedersen’s jacket. Pedersen motioned to Zheng that it wasn’t necessary. So, Zheng assumed he wasn’t planning on staying long.
“She’s wonderful,” Pedersen replied out of observation of etiquette. He really wasn’t interested in talking about his granddaughter and after making his obligatory response he got straight to business.
“Did Nashur tell you why we came,” he asked.
“He told me why he came,” Zheng replied, somewhat impatiently. “But he seems to have no good explanation for why you are here.”
“My apologies for all the cloak and dagger bullshit, Herb,” Pedersen replied. He then looked at Mahzarhi as if the next thing he was about to say would be of special interest to him. “I guess I should tell you right away I’m not here on Bureau business,” he said. “I can’t stay here for much longer, Herb. I have some information I need to give you and then get Mahzarhi back to the digs before his absence is noticed.” He then asked, “Did you get Mahzarhi’s parcel, yet?”
All of the color faded from Zheng’s face. He was about to ask Pedersen what package he was talking about when Mahzarhi spoke up.
“I received confirmation it arrived today, Commodore,” he said.
Zheng was about to become furious again.
“Calm down, Herb,” Pedersen said. “You know full well the Bureau is aware of what you have in your possession. It’s a non-issue.”
He turned to Mahzarhi.
“You should wait outside, Nashur,” he said.
Mahzarhi grabbed his jacket and put it on. He opened the door and stepped through. Before closing it, he said, “It was nice to see you again, Colonel Zheng. I hope we get a chance to see each other again in the near future.”
Zheng carefully repeated Mahzarhi’s farewell three times silently to himself to commit it to memory. It was a coded message for the His
torian to decipher later.
Once the door was closed, Zheng cornered Pedersen.
“If the Bureau is coming after me,” he asked. “Why not just use official channels?”
“You can’t force me into admitting I’ve breached some of the regulations regarding antiquities without risking exposure of my working agreement with the Bureau. Do you think that after all these years scare tactics are the best way to handle this situation? You may have Mahzarhi buffaloed because he is in a precarious situation. He is still in the Fleet and can’t retire for a while, but I don’t scare easily.”
“Please, Herb,” Pedersen said. “I told you I wasn’t here on Bureau business.”
“What could it possibly be then,” Zheng asked. “You’re straining my sense of the credible and my patience. If you aren’t here to bully me on behalf of the Bureau, why bother to mention the fact that Mahzarhi sent me something from the digs in passing? If you are playing games Len, I have acquaintances inside the Bureau who can tell me.”
“I’m not lying to you, Herb,” Pedersen said, raising his voice to the volume that Zheng was using. “Nobody at the Bureau even knows I’m here. I have some important information to share with you and I don’t have a lot of time to do it. So, Samson, unless you are ready to bring the stadium down around you, I suggest you listen to what I have to say and keep quiet until I can give you a full briefing.”
“So, does this mean you’re here on Fleet business, Commodore,” Zheng asked, tongue in cheek.
“I can’t say,” was Pedersen’s reply.
“I guess I suspected as much, Len,” Zheng said, chuckling cynically. “This better be worth my time.”
Zheng was past pretenses. He wanted to know why Pedersen was there.
“Cut through all the bullshit and just come out with it,” he demanded.
Chapter 12
30-November-2209
It was mid-morning and Russo was considering whether it would be better to get off the hospital deck for lunch or ask someone else to pick up something for her and bring it back. She sat at a desk next to the nurses’ station looking over some notes and drinking a cup of coffee.
It had been over a week since Morning Grass had been transferred to the incubation tank for her regeneration therapy and Russo was reviewing her progress carefully. She was ready to halt the process at any time if it looked like any abnormalities were cropping up that could harm the feline further or prove potentially fatal.
Russo’s superiors had made no secret of the fact they were unhappy she had insisted on offering regeneration therapy to Morning Grass. But, the major held to her guns and demanded the injured feline be given all the facts and be allowed to choose on her own behalf.
It wasn’t until after Russo received the technical data from the expatriate archives on the creation of the feline hybrids that she became afraid her superiors were more correct than she wanted to believe. Russo now felt she must personally monitor Morning Grass’ progress daily and not rely on the weekly reports from the medical technicians who managed the operation of the tanks.
Russo transferred the latest updates to Morning Grass’ records from the Armstrong’s medical database onto her portable tablet and shut it off. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
She tried to organize her thoughts into a coherent stream so she could properly brief the rest of the senior medical staff and the bridge officers. They were also concerned about the information pulled from the Ark’s database and how it impacted Morning Grass’ case specifically. Her briefing was required for the evening situational awareness report to Earth, because Russo was, in effect, treating a foreign national until the status of the felines could be determined.
The current political situation on Zunnuki was difficult to discern. Early reports from the Rear Command indicated that Earth considered the felines part of the crew of the Ark and that would make them war criminals along with the human colonists.
Then, after diplomatic relations with the natives were initiated, it was determined the felines held no loyalty to the human colonists. They had even helped the Zunnuki repel the invading expatriates and confine them geographically to two territories the native people agreed to give them. The Zunnuki insisted the felines were citizens of their planet and any diplomatic talks would require Earth to treat the felines as a sovereign entity and include representatives of the species in any and all negotiations.
To complicate matters more, word had come down just two days ago that the Zunnuki people were insisting any efforts to remove the expatriates from Zunnuki or attempts to prosecute them anywhere but the Zunnuki High Court would be resisted, by military force, if necessary.
Due to these complications the Forward Command, under direct orders from Earth’s Secretary of Defense, now left all dealings with the Zunnuki government to the Earth’s civilian diplomats. Those diplomats ordered the battle group to install a hyper-channel link directly on the Zunnuki communications grid. The link allowed real-time audio and video to be transmitted between the two worlds, as well as data.
The Forward Command happily complied, but declared jurisdiction when dealing specifically with the felines, who they saw as a military and not a civilian entity. They entered into negotiations with the felines as soon as a cease-fire was established. Even though diplomatic relations with the Zunnuki people started a full ten weeks before the cease-fire with the felines; the CEF talks with the felines were progressing far more rapidly than the civilian negotiations, because the felines spoke perfect English and there was rarely a need for a translator to communicate.
Although the official language of commerce on Earth was changed from English to Sino not long after the expatriates left; there were large numbers of people who still spoke pure English. Most of them spoke it in defiance of a world government that was run almost entirely by Chinese socialists who, by virtue of sheer numbers, had obtained most of the seats in the representative chamber of the bi-cameral legislative body.
A determined senate leadership was all that prevented a conversion of the lingua franca of Earth’s government from pure English to Standard Mandarin. Acceptance of Sino, a mixture of English and the Mandarin dialect that developed during the middle of the twenty-first century as mainland Chinese expatriates spread all over the world, was the final compromise.
Another reason the talks between the felines and the CEF were progressing so rapidly was because the felines knew they were doomed to extinction without the help of the Earth’s extensive scientific knowledge base. Earth not only had greater resources, but more than fifty years of advances over the science of the creators.
The Earth’s civilian government had already declared that no resources would be given for the continuation of the cloning of surrogates. They considered the surrogates to be victims of a failure to learn from the moral and ethical mistakes that brought about the predicament the original felines found themselves in.
Other options, that had been considered and summarily rejected, were to perform genetic therapy on the surrogates to allow them to start producing viable eggs, perform genetic manipulation on the next generation female felines in utero to give them wombs, or force the felines to accept the fact they would from then on require technical assistance to breed.
Currently, the complement of surrogates was quite large and the oldest of them were still thought to be twenty years from the end of child-bearing age. That gave the felines at least that long to come to a decision about what they felt was best for the species.
Russo’s mind had wandered from the issue at hand to the larger problem of the felines’ survival, but thinking about the reproductive conundrum brought her focus back to Morning Grass. All this talk about how to best enable the felines to continue to reproduce was essentially moot to her. Russo still had problems fighting back tears when thinking about her conversation with the feline in the hours before she decided to forego her chances of ever giving Teacher a child so she could regain her arm and leg.
&nb
sp; Russo clenched her closed eyes tighter as she once again tried to keep her focus on what she needed to stress during the SAR. The brass really hated it when they were forced to speak on an issue and realized they didn’t have the full story. She fought to keep her mind from wandering, but found she kept coming back to the topic of reproduction.
Russo decided she needed a break. She sat up straight and opened her eyes. She stood up to stretch and caught sight of Teacher walking through the ward.
“Sergeant Teacher,” she called. “May I help you?”
Teacher turned when he heard his name spoken and approached. He had traded his feline army uniform for CEF Marine Corps peacetime khakis.
Russo thought about how sharp Teacher looked as he walked toward her. She felt that he cut an imposing figure to begin with, but the crisp new uniform gave him an aura of real authority. When he had made his way to her, she complimented him on the new look.
“Now that, Sergeant, is a uniform,” Russo said.
“If you say so, Major,” Teacher replied as he saluted. “It’s a bit stiff and scratchy, but I believe I might get used to it.”
He made an inquisitive glance toward the closed door that blocked the view of the Regeneration ward.
“How is she,” he asked.
“She is doing wonderfully,” Russo replied. She picked up her tablet and dropped it into one of the pockets in the front of her smock. “I was just about to check on her again before taking an early lunch. Would you like to join me?”
Teacher nodded and followed Russo to the door.
An electronic voice asked for identification and Russo put her right eye to a knothole viewport on the panel. A blue light flashed, as Russo’s retina was scanned. She stepped back and the door clicked open. She and Teacher stepped through.
Teacher looked at Morning Grass through the glass of the incubator tank. Russo saw he was uncomfortable being there.
“I’m just about to change the recording from yesterday’s briefing to some of the training audios she requested,” Russo said. “If you like; I can open a microphone so you can speak to her for a moment.”
Chamberlain's Folly (The Terra Nova Chronicles) Page 11