by Randy Moffat
“So what do you know about TESS?” Bear asked curiously.
Murray grinned; his goatee and mustache gave him a Satanic look, as long as Beelzebub is fifty pounds overweight and looks like an evil doughboy with powdered sugar at the corners of his lips.
The question got a whole new tape started. At the end of it he had outlined a lot about the entire Q-Kink team, as well as their facilities, much of which Bear thought only he knew.
“Where did you get most of this?”
Murray smiled and shrugged and made the yahoo movement with his index finger.
“Lots of intel organizations around the world are sniffing you out. I have been reading their synopses and executive summaries.”
Bear thought about that for a few minutes and finally said cautiously, “Think you can do anything about sealing up these kinds of leaks? Craig here is doing a good job on physical barriers and security, but our intelligence sucks. We really need information on who is trying to get to TESS and why they are trying and work out how to shut them down before they try. It would be especially useful to know about the guys who pulled the raids on us.”
“Oh!” Murray said, surprised no one knew. “I know who that is all right. It is the Chinese.”
Bear’s mouth hung open. Craig’s would have too, but he was busy grinding his teeth.
“Why do you say that?” He demanded.
Murray lay his index finger along one side of his nose.
“They told me.”
Bear missed his all his later appointments.
Bear came out of the Panera late with Craig and Murray. A well built man wearing an Aloha shirt walked up to the threesome.
“Admiral MacMoran?” He looked at Bear.
Bear was not in uniform.
“Yes.” He said cautiously while surreptitiously assuming a defensive karate stance—shoulder forward, knees bent, and arms half-cocked.
The man grinned.
“I thought that was you, sir. I really admire what you are doing with TESS. Would you sign my placemat? It’s for my son.”
The guy brandished a paper placemat from his tray in the store and flourished a pen.
Bear felt like a rock star.
“Certainly . . . .” He took the placemat and wrote ‘Thanks for the support!’ Then signed it with a flourish and the title—Commanding Officer—TESS. “OK?” He asked as he handed it back to the man.
The man grinned again looking pleased.
“Thanks. My kid is gonna love this.” The man walked off admiring his prize.
Craig watched him leave.
“That happen much?” The Caveman asked wonderingly.
“Yeah! More and more lately.” Bear shrugged. “I imagine half get kept by genuine admirers and the other half are sold to collectors. I am in front of the cameras so much now that I am like a freaking Hollywood starlet . . . without the perks . . . .”
Craig grunted
“Or the big fake tits . . .”he said.
Bear thought a moment his mouth open a bit.
“Caveman! You have a sense of humor! Where’d you find it? Was it in storage crate at the back of the caves? Just unearthed by some archeologist?”
Graig grunted again and climbed in the car tiredly.
Bear and Craig arrived back at the Bat Cave the next day. Bear took his arm and dragged him up to the Aloha Lanai up by the spa which was nicely deserted.
“You were right about, Murray. The bit about that dead guy . . . Po . . . hiring the mercenaries and the other part about someone involving the Muslim whackos too was superb. I bought into him fully at that moment.” Bear said.
“Yeah.” Craig agreed, still master of the monosymbol.
“Murray will be here tomorrow. I want Van Zeigler to set up a special intel operations area for Murray here. Seal it off from the rest of the cave. Coordinate with Admiral O’Hara and get some workers escorted in to wall off a section tunnel removed from the main cave. You know the layout better than anyone so pick it yourself. There might be a section somewhere with a separate entrance that is a room or series of rooms. We will need to run in wires, lines and latrines to it that are not connected with the rest of the complex, but give Murray whatever access he needs to the outer world without going through the rest of the cave. He will need enough room to maneuver and grow so bury it deep. We’ll call it the haunted cave . . . . where our spooks go. I promised him a budget and free reign for three months to form his own group and start trying to protect us, but essentially you are his new boss so no nepotistic bullshit. You need to work out the rest of establishing and coordinating his efforts. I need them to support TESS in the long run and get us inside the dirty hijinks decision cycle of our opponents . . . . with first priority to the flaming dicks that killed Baxter. Comprende?
Craig thought and then nodded.
“I also want the college of admirals and you, as security chief, to have oversight capability. We will need bi-weekly briefing or something like it on what exactly is going on.” Bear held up a finger. “But I also have another concern. Let’s not be so lax that he starts hiring out wet boy operations and assassinating heads of state in the name of TESS’ leadership without us knowing about it, OK? Rule number one. No dirty tricks that O’Hara, Wong or I do not know about. Any questions, Captain Craig?” Bear asked formally.
Craig regarded him levelly over the top of his reading glasses. He rarely heard his new rank used. The security folk still called him ‘caveman.’ He had come a long way from the aged security guard of a forgotten broom cupboard.
“OK.” He said waxing loquacious.
Bear grinned and put a sincerely friendly hand on Craig’s shoulder.
“Nice job finding him though. If what he says is true, he is half-off the regular grid of intel services, but should be very very useful to TESS. Thanks.”
Craig kept looking at him, waiting for another shoe to drop. When it came to dour, the Scots were stand up comedians next to Craig.
Bear chose not to disappoint him.
“Make it clear to Murray that the team he builds will not be purely of his choosing. We will give him people from time to time as we find them. That is all he needs to know.”
Craig’s face got an extra crease in it, somewhere between the eyebrows.
“Why?”
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?”
“What?
“It’s Juvenal babbling——probably to Aristotle or Plato or some other doddering ancient. It means ‘Who shall guard the guardians.’ It also means I want you to send Murray three other guys this month. The first two are gonna be just ordinary guys tasked to do whatever job Murray gives them . . . nothing special. You find them, hire them, and assign them to Murray. Look at intelligence officers from military services with recent combat experience . . . who don’t hate out guts. That way they will probably be of some use. The third man out of the three will be a shill for the house—the first of our Watchmen’s watchman. His job is to make sure that Murray never gets out of control. They will be our version of internal affairs snitches. Over the coming months, you need to add more people at a rate of one or two a month and salt them with at least two other people at random who are harmless. The plants will send in ‘special’ reports through you to me. I want you and me to see what is going on in the new spook hole without Murray knowing it or editing it. Check? Spooks are valuable but dangerous watchdogs—acting below the radar. If we end up giving Murray a free hand these extra guys are simply our insurance to make sure the spooks never tell us a lie. They get to report to us once a week too on the QT.”
Craig thought about all that one for a while. Then exploded . . . for him.
“Wow! You think up the darn’dest shit!” He said and moved on
So did Bear.
CHAPTER 16—THE BU
SINESS OF TESS IS BUSINESS
Bear stood on the hull of the ship as it bobbed in the ocean. The United States of America had absolutely surprised him. They had asked that their first load be moved within three months of finding out they could move it. It was kind of record for the king of all bureaucracies. By the time they told him they were ready three other countries had also informed TESS that they too could have satellites ready for deployment in four months and the UK wanted to start a simple space station orbiting the moon in five. The US had taken all that personally . . . damned if anyone was going to be ahead of them in the TESS support line. Precedents were being set and the US wanted the precedent to be that they always went first. Their place in line would be number 1 . . . for all time. The federal government had somehow acted uncharacteristically fast. The pressures of the marketplace had been indirectly brought to bear by Bear.
Bear went along to watch the first time ever TESS, the extraterrestrial entity would handle cargo for a planetary nation.
In the distance two US naval frigates circled, protecting the operation. The SS Gaia lay in the water off Block Island in the sound south of Connecticut and rolled like a wet log in the grip of the swell, her aft end occasionally awash. A tender from the US Navy was close along-side her stern under the load. The tender was a ninety ton vessel and they had lashed her close up to the Gaia with lots of bumpers between the hulls to that there was no chance of damage, but they had become as close to Siamese twins as they could. A crane on the US vessel was hanging the second payload over the side and swinging it lightly from side to side under influence of the swell. Men on both hulls played tug of war with guy ropes to keep the swinging to a minimum while a skilled naval petty officer worked the winch controls like a brain surgeon. Wong and Pinta stood rocking on top of the container that would take the load and various other Q-Kinkers were evident in rather random clothing assisting in the operation with wet pant-legs and no shoes. The overall impression on the decidedly patchwork hull of the Gaia was of a bunch of pirates in the days of sail. Rivera was working the TESS winch controls that were pulling a taut cable tied to the load and feeding the weight of the shrink wrapped pallets by inches into the mouth of the container. If you tilted you head and caught the light right you could still see where the decals saying ‘Yellow Trucking’ were under the black paint that TESS had slapped over them with a spraycan. The load slid into the metal box, the Navy’s line unhooked, and the container doors were swung closed and dogged shut by a dexterous pair of bare feet while another TESS man flipped the security hook in place and tied it shut with a heavy duty zip tie. Bear nodded with satisfaction. It almost looked like TESS knew what they were doing.
The US had asked that a five man team go with the load to the moon. Bear had required that they be vouched for and their files sent to him. Since the bombing, TESS had gotten careful, slamming their barn door shut. The US protested the records check for forms sake, but complied. Four were NASA men of some standing and the fifth was a distinctly feminine astrophysicist from a university on the west coast who was added late. None looked the least likely to be a threat, but Bear had still insisted that their entire luggage be checked as thoroughly as the load going into the holds were. X-Rays, chemical checks, explosive sniffers, trained dogs and human eyes had all said everything was OK. All that remained was a strip search of the personnel before they boarded the ship. The US team had squawked like geese hearing a fox over that, but Bear had merely looked stone faced and inflexible. They wanted to go to the moon and they would have to get naked to do it. With efficiency typical of a brand new shoestring operation feeling its way, TESS had overlooked bringing a woman on the security team to conduct the search of the astrophysicist. Bear had volunteered to examine the woman, but somehow Maureen had gotten the honor of the near cavity search. She was ticked off, but did her duty in privacy of the hold of the boat alongside until she marched the woman aboard the Gaia while poking her tongue out at Bear and stripping off latex gloves in an ostentatious manner.
Eventually the loads were aboard and finally the people were too.
The Gaia was deeply awash and her nose mostly out of the water from all the weight aft, but that was actually a bonus since it forced her nose to point more in the direction she ultimately wanted to go. The Americans were jammed together in a forward compartment, one space back from the bow chamber and behind a locked door to the compartment where the Petrovski accelerators were mounted. The Americans were kept from roaming the ship and sat morosely under Gaston’s beady eye, while thumbing listlessly through old magazines stolen two days ago by Wong as an afterthought from a doctor’s office he had visited while checking Pinta out of the hospital. A member of the Q-Kink team added a punctuation mark by standing guard at the door as a secondary security measure. He wore an actual firearm. Gaston metronomed a finger, verbally warning the US Astronauts they could not move about unescorted. TESS’ objective was that the MacMoran drives mechanisms would not be seen by passengers, especially since the newly jaded Bear under Murray’s paranoiac tutelage figured the odds were 5 to 1 that at least one of the NASA people was taking pictures for the CIA and wanted to limit them to pictures of a near wrecked submarine. The US team settled in lethargically to wait out their ordeal of confinement. It wasn’t a long ordeal as ordeals go. The ship went hyper and in two pre-plotted jumps was suddenly in near lunar orbit. The NASA people had felt the weight go off momentarily and knew they were in space, but the TESS team had the ship put in spin fast, now quite practiced at doing so quickly. With artificial gravity the US passengers were unaware of the second two shifts without external reference. Five minutes after confining them in their compartment Bear walked into their space. Most of them got to their feet, though slowly. He was an admiral after all, but an admiral who had made the take their knickers off and let utter strangers stare and poke at their private parts.
The senior man among them was an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with a sour expression.
“We are here Colonel.” Bear said casually. “You should put your suits on.”
The LTC responded smartly like the trained professional he was.
“Huh?”
“We are now in Lunar orbit.” Bear spelled out.
That sucked his gut in and they all looked at each other a bit nonplussed. NASA flights to the moon took three days. TESS had done it in three minutes.
“Shit, Sir. Are you jerking us around?” The LTC’s words reeked of experienced incredulity.
Bear smiled.
“Easy enough to find out . . . put your suits on and climb out. My guys have built an airlock in the compartment abaft this one. Once in your suits and you’ve checked them to your satisfaction in here, then you will walk back in teams of two, enter the lock and leave the vessel escorted by my guys. Outside you will call and we will suspend the ship’s spin to ease your unloading process. Once you dig your gear out of the cargo holds and secure it to the hull with lines you can begin your assembly of the approach vessel alongside . . . .” They were still looking a little pole axed by the pace of events. Times had changed and they were still catching up mentally. Bear did not coddle them. “And hurry up will you . . . TESS has a timetable to meet even if you don’t.”