The B-Team

by John Scalzi

  “Relax, Hart,” Wilson said. “For my sake. You’re making me twitchy.”

  “Sorry,” Schmidt said.

  “It’s all right,” Wilson said. “Now, tell me what you’re going to do after I leave.”

  “I’m going to the bridge,” Schmidt said. “If you’re not successful for any reason, I will have the Clarke send out a message on our frequencies warning the Utche of the trap, to not confirm the message or to broadcast anything on their native communication bands, and request that they get the hell out of Danavar space as quickly as possible. I’m to invoke your security clearance to the captain if there are any problems.”

  “That’s very good,” Wilson said.

  “Thank you for the virtual pat on the head, there,” Schmidt said.

  “I do it out of love,” Wilson assured him.

  “Right,” Schmidt said dryly, and then looked over at the shuttle again. “Do you think this is actually going to work?” he asked.

  “I look at it this way,” Wilson said. “Even if it doesn’t work, we have proof we did everything we could to stop the attack on the Utche. That’s going to count for something.”

  Wilson entered the shuttle, fired up the launch sequence and while it was running took the high-density battery and connected it to the Polk’s black box. The battery immediately started draining into the black box’s own power storage.

  “Here we go,” Wilson said for the second time that day. The shuttle eased out of the Clarke’s bay.

  Schmidt had been right: This all would have been a lot easier if the shuttle could have been piloted remotely. There was no physical bar to it; humans had been remote piloting vehicles for centuries. But the Colonial Union insisted on a human pilot for transport shuttles for roughly the same reason the Colonial Defense Forces required a BrainPal signal to fire an Empee rifle: to make sure only the right people were using them, for the right purposes. Modifying the shuttle flight software to take the human presence out of the equation would not only require a substantial amount of time, but would also technically be classified as treason.

  Wilson preferred not to engage in treason if he could avoid it. And so here he was, on the shuttle, about to do something stupid.

  On the shuttle display, Wilson called up the heat map he’d created, and a timer. The heat map registered each of the suspect missile silos; the timer counted down until the scheduled arrival of the Utche, now less than ten minutes away. From the mission data given to Ambassador Abumwe, Wilson had a rough idea of where the Utche planned to skip into Danavar space. He plotted the shuttle in another direction entirely and opened up the throttle to put sufficient distance between himself and the Clarke, counting the kilometers until he reached what he estimated to be a good, safe distance.

  Now for the tricky part, Wilson thought, and tapped his instrument panel to start broadcasting a signal on the Utche’s communication bands.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Wilson said to the missiles.

  The missiles did not hear Wilson. They heard the shuttle’s signal instead and erupted from their silos, one, two, three, four, five. Wilson saw them twice, first on the shuttle’s monitor and second through the Clarke’s sensor data, ported into his BrainPal.

  “Five missiles on you, locked and tracking,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, through the instrument panel.

  “Come on, let’s play,” Wilson said, and pushed the shuttle as fast as it would go. It was not as fast as the missiles could go, but that wasn’t the point. The point was twofold. First, to get the missiles as far away from where the Utche would be as possible. Second, to get the missiles spaced so that the explosion from the first missile on the shuttle would destroy all the other missiles, moving too quickly to avoid being damaged.

  To manage that, Wilson had broadcast his signal from a point as close to equidistant to all five silos as could be managed and still be a safe distance from the Clarke. If everything worked out correctly, the missile impacts would be within a second of each other.

  Wilson looked at the missile tracks. So far, so good. He had roughly a minute before the first impact. More than enough time.

  Wilson unstrapped himself from the pilot seat, picked up the oxygen container, secured it on his unitard combat belt and fastened the mask over his mouth and nose. He ordered his combat unitard to close over his face, sealing the mask in. He picked up the black box and pinged its charge status; it was at 80 percent, which Wilson guessed would have to be good enough. He disconnected it from the external battery and then walked to the shuttle door, carrying the black box in one hand and the battery in the other. He positioned himself at what he hoped was the right spot, took a very deep breath and chucked the battery at the door release button. It hit square on and the door slid open.

  Explosive decompression sucked Wilson out the door a fraction of a second earlier than he expected. He missed braining himself on the still-opening door by about a millimeter.

  Wilson tumbled away from the shuttle on the vector the decompressing air had placed him but kept pace with the shuttle in terms of its forward motion, a testament to fundamental Newtonian physics. This was going to be bad news in roughly forty seconds, when the first missile hit the shuttle; even without an atmosphere to create a shock wave that would turn his innards to jelly, Wilson could still be fried and punctured by shrapnel.

  He looked down at the Polk’s black box, tightly gripped close to his abdomen, and sent it a signal that informed it that it had been ejected from a spaceship, and then, despite the fact that his visual feed was now being handled by his BrainPal, he closed his eyes to fight the vertigo of the stars wheeling haphazardly around him. The BrainPal, interpreting this correctly, cut off the outside feed and provided Wilson with a tactical display instead. Wilson waited.

  Do your thing, baby, he thought to the black box.

  The black box got the signal. Wilson felt a snap as the black box’s inertial field factored his mass into its calculus and tightened around him. On the tactical display coming from his BrainPal, Wilson saw the representation of the shuttle pull away from him with increasing speed, and saw the missiles flash by his position, their velocity increasing toward the shuttle even as his was decreasing. Within a few seconds, he had slowed sufficiently that he was no longer in immediate danger of the shuttle impact.

  In all, his little plan had worked out reasonably well so far.

  Let’s still not ever do this again, Wilson said to himself.

  Agreed, himself said back.

  “First impact in ten seconds,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, via his BrainPal. Wilson had his BrainPal present him with a stabilized, enhanced visual of outside space and watched as the now invisible missiles bore down on the hapless, also invisible shuttle.

  There was a series of short, sharp light bursts, like tiny firecrackers going off two streets away.

  “Impact,” Schmidt said. Wilson smiled.

  “Shit,” Schmidt said. Wilson stopped smiling and snapped up his BrainPal tactical display.

  The shuttle and four of the missiles had been destroyed. One missile had survived and was casting about for a target.

  On the periphery of the tactical display, a new object appeared. It was the Kaligm. The Utche had arrived.

  Send that message to the Utche NOW, Wilson subvocalized to Schmidt, and the BrainPal transmuted it to a reasonable facsimile of Wilson’s own voice.

  “Captain Coloma refuses,” Schmidt said a second later.

  What? Wilson sent. Tell her it’s an order. Invoke my security clearance. Do it now.

  “She says to shut up, you’re distracting her,” Schmidt said.

  Distracting her from what? Wilson sent.

  The Clarke started broadcasting a warning to the Utche, warning them of the missile attack, telling them to be silent and to leave Danavar space.

  On the Utche’s broadcast bands.

  The last missile locked on and thrust itself toward the Clarke.

  Oh, God, Wilson thought, and
his BrainPal sent the thought to Schmidt.

  “Thirty seconds to impact,” Schmidt said.

  “Twenty seconds…

  “Ten…

  “This is it, Harry.”

  Silence.

  X.

  Wilson estimated he had fifteen minutes of air left when the Utche shuttle sidled up to his position and opened an outside airlock for him. On the inside, a space-suited Utche guided him in, closed the airlock and, when the air cycle had finished, opened the inner seal to the shuttle. Wilson unsealed his head, took off the oxygen mask, inhaled and then suppressed his gag reflex. Utche did not smell particularly wonderful to humans. He looked up and saw several Utche looking at him curiously.

  “Hi,” he said to no one of them in particular.

  “Are you well?” one of them asked, in a voice that sounded as if it were being spoken while inhaling.

  “I’m fine,” Wilson said. “How is the Clarke?”

  “You are asking of your ship,” said another, in a similar inward-breathing voice.

  “Yes,” Wilson said.

  “It is most damaged,” said the first one.

  “Are there dead?” Wilson asked. “Are there injured?”

  “You are a soldier,” the second one said. “May you understand our language? It would be easier to say there.”

  Wilson nodded and booted up the Utche translation routine he’d received with the Clarke’s new orders. “Speak your own language,” he said. “I will respond in mine.”

  “I am Ambassador Suel,” the second one said. As the ambassador spoke, a second voice superimposed and spoke in English. “We don’t yet know the extent of the damage to your ship or the casualties because we only just now reestablished communication, and that through an emergency transmitter on the Clarke. When we reestablished contact we intended to offer assistance and to bring your crew onto our ship. But Ambassador Abumwe insisted that we must first retrieve you before we came to the Clarke. She was most insistent.”

  “As I was about to run out of oxygen, I appreciate her insistence,” Wilson said.

  “I am Sub-Ambassador Dorb,” said the first Utche. “Would you tell us how you came to be floating out here in space without a ship around you?”

  “I had a ship,” Wilson said. “It was eaten by a school of missiles.”

  “I am afraid I don’t understand what you mean by that,” Dorb said, after a glance to his (her? its?) boss.

  “I will be happy to explain,” Wilson said. “I would be even happier to explain on the way to the Clarke.”

  Abumwe, Coloma and Schmidt, as well as the majority of the Clarke’s diplomatic mission, were on hand when the Utche shuttle door irised open and Ambassadors Suel and Dorb exited, with Wilson directly behind.

  “Ambassador Suel,” Abumwe said, and a device attached to a lanyard translated for her. She bowed. “I am Ambassador Ode Abumwe. I apologize for the lack of live translator.”

  “Ambassador Abumwe,” Suel said in his own language, and returned the bow. “No apology is needed. Your Lieutenant Wilson has very quickly briefed us on how it is you have come to be here in place of Ambassador Bair, and what you and the crew of the Clarke have done on our behalf. We will of course have to confirm the data for ourselves, but in the meantime I wish to convey our gratitude.”

  “Your gratitude is appreciated but not required,” Abumwe said. “We have done only what was necessary. As to the data”—Abumwe nodded to Schmidt, who came forward and presented a data card to Dorb—“on that data card you will find both the black box recordings of the Polk and all the data recorded by us since we arrived in Danavar space. We wish to be open and direct with you and leave no doubt of our intentions or deeds during these negotiations.”

  Wilson blinked at this; black box data and the Clarke data records were almost certainly classified materials. Abumwe was taking a hell of a risk offering them up to the Utche prior to a signed treaty. He glanced at Abumwe, whose expression was unreadable; whatever else she was, she was in full diplomatic mode now.

  “Thank you, Ambassador,” Suel said. “But I wonder if we should not suspend these negotiations for the time being. Your ship is damaged and you undoubtedly have casualties among your crew. Your focus should be on your own people. We would of course stand ready to assist.”

  Captain Coloma stepped forward and saluted Suel. “Captain Sophia Coloma,” she said. “Welcome to the Clarke, Ambassador.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” the ambassador said.

  “Ambassador, the Clarke is damaged and will require repair, but her life support and energy systems are stable,” Coloma said. “We had a brief time to model and prepare for the missile strike and because of it were able to sustain the strike with minimal casualties and no deaths. While we will welcome your assistance, particularly with our communications systems, at this point we are in no immediate danger. Please do not let us be a hindrance to your negotiations.”

  “That is good to hear,” Suel said. “Even so—”

  “Ambassador, if I may,” Abumwe said. “The crew of the Clarke risked everything, including their own lives, so that you and your crew might be safe and that we might secure this treaty. This man on my staff”—Abumwe nodded toward Wilson—“let four missiles chase him down and escaped death by throwing himself out of a shuttle and into the cold vacuum of space. It would be disrespectful of us to allow their efforts to be repaid with a postponement of our work.”

  Suel and Dorb looked over to Wilson, as if to get his thought on the matter. Wilson glanced over to Abumwe, who was expressionless.

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to have to come back here again,” he said, to Suel and Dorb.

  Suel and Dorb stared at him for a moment, and then made a sound that Wilson’s BrainPal translated as [laughter].

  Twenty minutes later, the Utche shuttle left the Clarke with Abumwe and her diplomatic team aboard.

  “Thank Christ that’s over,” Coloma said, as it cleared the bay. She pivoted to return to the bridge, without looking at Wilson or Schmidt.

  “The ship’s not really secure, is it,” Wilson said, to her back.

  “Of course it’s not,” she said, turning back. “The only true thing I said was that we had no deaths, although it’s probably more accurate to say that we don’t have any deaths yet. As for the rest of it, our life support and energy systems are hanging by a thread, most of the other systems are dead or failing, and it will be a miracle if the Clarke ever moves from this spot under her own power. And to top it all off, some idiot destroyed our shuttle.”

  “Sorry about that,” Wilson said.

  “Hmmm,” Coloma said. She started to turn again.

  “It was a very great thing, to risk your ship for the Utche,” Wilson said. “I didn’t ask you to do that. That came from you, Captain Coloma. It’s a victory, if you ask me. Ma’am.”

  Coloma paused for a second and then walked off, with no response.

  “I don’t think she likes me much,” Wilson said, to Schmidt.

  “Your charm is best described as idiosyncratic,” Schmidt said.

  “So why do you like me?” Wilson said.

  “I don’t think I’ve actually ever admitted to liking you,” Schmidt said.

  “Now that you mention it, I think you may be right,” Wilson said.

  “You’re not boring,” Schmidt said.

  “Which is what you like most about me,” Wilson said.

  “No, boring is good,” Schmidt said, and waved his hand around the shuttle bay. “This is the shit that’s going to kill me.”

  XI.

  Colonel Abel Rigney and Colonel Liz Egan sat in a hole-in-the-wall commissary at Phoenix Station, eating cheeseburgers.

  “These are fantastic cheeseburgers,” Rigney said.

  “They’re even better when you have a genetically engineered body that never gets fat,” Egan said. She took another bite of her burger.

  “True,” Rigney said. “Maybe I’ll have another.”


  “Do,” Egan said. “Test your metabolism.”

  “So, you read the report,” Rigney said to Egan between his own bites.

  “All I do is read reports,” Egan said. “Read reports and scare midlevel bureaucrats. Which report are we talking about?”

  “The one on the final round of negotiations with the Utche,” Rigney said. “With the Clarke, and Ambassador Abumwe and Lieutenant Wilson.”

  “I did,” Egan said.

  “What’s the final disposition of the Clarke?” Rigney asked.

  “What did you find out about those missile fragments?” Egan asked.

  “I asked you first,” Rigney said.

  “And I’m not in the second grade, so that tactic doesn’t work with me,” Egan said, and took another bite.

  “We took a chunk of missile your dockworkers fished out of the Clarke and found a part number on it. The missile tracks back to a frigate called the Brainerd. This particular missile was reported launched and destroyed in a live fire training exercise eighteen months ago. All the data I’ve seen confirms the official story,” Rigney said.

  “So we have ghost missiles being used by mystery ships to undermine secret diplomatic negotiations,” Egan said.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Rigney said. He set down his burger.

  “Secretary Galeano isn’t going to be very pleased that one of our own missiles was used to severely damage one of her department’s ships,” Egan said.

  “That’s all right,” Rigney said. “My bosses aren’t very pleased that a mole in the Department of State told whoever was using our own missiles against your ship where that ship was going to be and with whom it was negotiating.”

  “You have evidence of that?” Egan asked.

  “No,” Rigney said. “But we have pretty good evidence that the Utche sprung no leaks. The process of elimination applies from there.”

  “I’d like to see that evidence about the Utche,” Egan said.

  “I’d like to show it to you,” Rigney said. “But you have a mole problem.”