COMMANDER

“A ship just popped in, Wolf, only an hour or two from orbital position. Captain says he’s never seen a ship like this one before,” Ronin said, passing information from the Rontar.

“Um, okay, now the captain is gone but Dotes is keeping me updated,” she added after a moment. “What do you think, JD? Got any advice?”

An instant of anger rose up at her use of my name and not my rank, then I remembered she was in command, and I had placed her there. I considered a moment.

“I would be thinking about our energy signatures and double-checking with Stitch to make sure he has ran every test imaginable on Miss Bonel here to ensure she had no listening or tracking device implanted anywhere. For sure the enemy knows we are here but they may not know exactly where, so they will be scanning the planet even now.”

Even as I finished speaking, team members were running into the AV carrying items used as makeshift chairs or other camping type stuff outside of the AV. Ronin grinned at me.

“That’s pretty close to what I was thinking, too.” She turned and called out, “Stitch, Spear, on the double!”

Those two appeared within seconds.

“Spear,” Ronin said, jerking a thumb at me, “this one is your responsibility until I relieve you.”

“Sir!” Spear responded. “The commander’s personal safety is my responsibility until relieved by you, sir!”

“Stitch,” Ronin said. Then she and Stitch were looking at each other intently for a moment before he nodded and she turned away to head toward the pilot compartment. More troopers, suited ones now, were pounding into the AV as Stitch turned to Tamaria.

“Tamaria, I need to get you laid down on an acceleration couch and put a restriction field over you. If we have to maneuver the vehicle quickly, the field will hold you securely in place and safe.”

“You also need to search me again for bugs or trackers, right?” Tam queried.

“No,” Stitch answered, “we already did every test I know about for those. This is just for your safety.”

I knew he was lying to her but I don’t think she did. He was pretty good with the straight-faced sincerity. I would have to remember that. Spear had disappeared momentarily and now appeared carrying a handgun, several knives, and my katana. She dumped it all with a clatter on the couch next to me.

“You might want to stow this stuff where you can reach it but so it won’t be uncomfortable, sir. I took the gun from your suit since you won’t be able to use it for a while. Now then, I’m gonna have Stitch lock you down in a suppression field . . .”

“Wait a minute!” I said loudly.

“Should we make it a restriction field, sir?” Spear asked sweetly, innocently.

Crap! I had created a monster, and now it was turning on me. Spear leaned toward me to speak quietly.

“Look, I know you hate being out of the action, boss, but you gotta get healed up a little more. At least I gave you some weapons, right?” She grinned at me as she began to strip her clothes off and stack them next to me on the couch. “Watch these for me while I get suited up, will you?”

Then Stitch was turning to me, obviously giving subspace commands to the trauma bot. I leaned back in resignation.

“How much more of this, Stitch? And tell me the truth. Don’t poker-face me, troop!”

He laughed. He was enjoying this! “Another day or two, sir. The cartilage and ligaments attaching the ribs to your spine have to get stronger before you put too much strain on them, otherwise you’ll just tear them again.”

At least I could move inside the suppression field. Tamaria was locked down much more tightly than I was. It had only been a minute or so since Ronin had given the first order when the outer airlock hatch swung shut and locked. We were sealed tight and running completely on internals and passive sensors. I could tell just by the timing, the smells, and the taps of fingertips on micro-switch pads and where they came from.

I found it amazing to realize, again, just how much background information the conscious mind passes over, yet is assimilated by the subconscious and used by the conscious in decision-making. Sure, we’d had psyche classes on this subject but it still seems like a new revelation each time the conscious mind thinks about it. All those background things like certain noises, smells, movements of air whispering across your skin, items seen in peripheral vision but not focused on, they were all cataloged and retained by the subconscious and used by the conscious without realization.

The troopers were all communicating by transceiver because subspace communications could not be traced. As far as we knew, they could not even be detected except by the transmitter or the receiver. It had something to do with the nature of subspace, of which I know nothing except the transceivers and sensors worked.

Spear approached in her suit, boots thumping softly on the deck. She took up a position beside the couch to let me have a full view of most of the main hold in the AV. Her voice suddenly sounded on her external speakers, loud enough for me to hear but low enough to not interfere with anyone else.

“Ronin has me copied in to her channel, sir, so whatever I hear that pertains I can pass to you for review and advice,” Spear told me.

I grunted in response as I turned onto my side for a better view.

“What about the ship?” I asked her.

“Mr. Dotes told us they were behind the gas giant, landed on a dead moon over a lake of frozen-over methane. He says there is just enough gravity from the moon to hold them in place but not enough to damage the hull or crunch through the crust into the liquid methane below. He says everything is on standby power just watching and waiting.”

Good, I thought, powered down but ready to go, just like us. With any luck, we would soon find out who these newcomers were. We didn’t have too long to wait. Within a few minutes an odd chattering, squawking noise came over the AV’s internal speakers.

“Ronin says this is what is coming in over the radio wavelength, sir.”

“The Torbor!” cried out Tamaria. “Why would they be coming here now?”

“I don’t know, Tam,” I replied. I knew Spear would tell Ronin, and Ronin would pass it to the Rontar. “It would help if we knew more detail of history but we can’t crack into your archival databases.”

“No, of course not,” she replied, “because they are protected inside a firewall constructed by the Torbor. They set it up so they could keep everything they did here with us secret from the Shaquaree. They never said so but this is what our government deduced. I mean, the files I have seen were supposed to be the full history archives of Hanos, but they only constituted a small fraction of the total amount stored in the mainframe.”

“You’ve seen it? The mainframe? You can access it?” I asked quickly.

“My access may be locked out since the incident at the ministry. But maybe the access for Grone Nefal could still be working. I can give it to you,” she offered.

“You weren’t even supposed to know about Grone Nefal being part of the RCF,” I said. “How did you find out about his access?”

“It was an accident,” Tam responded as Ronin entered the hold from the pilot compartment. “He dropped a piece of paper with a code word on it when he was pulling his ministry ID from his pocket one morning on the way into work. He didn’t even know I was near him, behind him. I saw the word as I came up behind him and he was picking it up before he put it back into his pocket, and I recognized it as a code word used in the RCF. I didn’t say anything but he became very flustered and couldn’t wait to get away from me.”

I looked at Ronin and her helmet turned to face me. I turned back to Tam.

“Are you absolutely certain there was no way he could possibly have known you were coming up behind him?” I asked. “Think carefully. Where were the two of you when this happened?”

“In the courtyard,” she replied, “about twenty paces from the entrance where we have to present our ID badges.”

“In the morning as you were going to work. When the sun was just up?” I pressed.

“Oh, Hatavia!” she cried, taking their god’s name in vain or prayer. “The glass in the doors! He could have seen me coming up behind him reflected in the glass of the doors. In the morning when we arrive the sun is just over the top of the ministry building and shining into your eyes as you go toward the entrance.”

Tamaria’s revelation had been as real as I had ever seen. I glanced at Ronin for confirmation, knowing she would have been monitoring the girl’s vitals and responses for indications of lies. Ronin’s helmet nodded ever so slightly. The girl believed what she had stated to be the truth.

It was all very confusing. Either these people were just plain naive and complete amateurs at playing spy games, or they were quite good and were using double-agents and triple-crosses. At least one point had been adequately clear. Tamaria was clean. She might be being used as a setup or a red herring but she was clean of any kind of bug and was telling us the whole truth as she knew it.

“We believe you, Tam. What happened next? Did you make contact with Grone to let him know what you saw or confirm his standing in the RCF?”

“No!” She was clearly horrified by the idea. “I would never do that! It would put too many lives in danger. If the RCF wanted me to know about him they would have told me.”

“So, what did you do?” I continued to press her. We needed to know.

Her head bent down in shame. “I . . . I hacked into the ministry system . . . into the personnel files and into Minister Nefal’s system and placed a key stroke log application on his terminal. Over a period of weeks I memorized his logins to certain parts of the system forbidden to me. I never used them, though . . . his access codes, I mean.”

“Tam, I’d like you to think about something. How long has Grone been in politics?”

“Oh, nearly twenty years.”

“Would you say he is adept at his work, or does he struggle?”

“No,” Tam replied with a shake of her head, “he is very good at his job. He really likes the in-fighting and the deal-making. That is one of the things that I really admire about him . . . he is so professional at such a young . . .”

Her words stopped suddenly, cut off like a switch. Tam’s eyes grew and tears appeared on her cheeks. Her voice had a tremble when she next spoke.

“The paper . . . with the code word. It was a setup, wasn’t it? He’s much too smart, too professional, to have written down a code word.”

She swore, the words sounding wrong and strange coming from such a young girl but she cursed violently and quite well.

“Let me think for a moment, please,” she said, as I began to ask another question. Several long moments passed before she continued, “I don’t think they know about me. I have been very careful. I did not react to the paper trick, nor have I tried to follow up on any of the other details I have been able to uncover. I have only gathered the intel and sent it on to the RCF through a double-blind drop system.”

“What about the hacking?” I asked. “Could they have traced it?”

She smiled. It was a very small one but a smile nonetheless. “Not to me. I never used my terminal to do any of it. Some of the other secretaries are, um, involved with some of the ministers. The horny old bastards use the secretary pools as their personal stable of se . . .” She stopped a moment and looked around at us red-faced, then finished her sentence. “. . . of sex toys. Some of them even have bedchambers installed in their office suites under the pretext they work so hard and such long hours they often sleep there in the offices. So, some of the secretaries are there for the real work, and the others are there for, ah, entertainment.”

“Have you ever been called upon for entertainment?” I asked, softly, and I hope gently.

“You’ve seen me naked!” Tam flared angrily. “Do I look like I have the body of a plaything?”

“You look all woman to me,” I answered.

“I’m sorry. I guess it was a legitimate question. The answer is no. I was hired for the real work. However, I know who the playthings are, and I would use their terminals to do my hacking and snooping. What I am saying is, there is a good chance the logins I stole for Grone Nefal might still be usable. I could give them to you and you could access the firewall and the history archives.”

“Thank you, Tam. That would be immensely valuable to us.”

I turned to face Ronin with a questioning look on my face. Her helmet faced me with no response for a short time while she thought about the situation.

Over the suit speakers she said, “Tam, I am going to have our computer expert sit with you and take the information you have. She will have several questions concerning the technical aspects of your computer networking and data storage systems and operations. When she is satisfied, we will see about how to use the information you can give us.”

Tam nodded her assent as best she could under the restriction field. Mouse approached her, removed her helmet, and squatted by the accel couch so they could speak softly to each other. Ronin began signing to me as soon as Tam was occupied with Mouse.

“Advice?”

“Use our stuff only, from the AV. If we get caught or traced, the ship is still able to stay hidden.”

“Agreed. Dotes agrees, too.”

“Put Dog on main weapons control but assign team to individual AV weapons. Keep them busy.”

Ronin’s helmet cocked to one side as she stared at me, as if to say, “No shit. Really?”

I shrugged, which hurt, and signed, “You asked for advice.”

After a half hour with Tam, Mouse went into the pilot compartment, then came back out and opened a terminal which folded out of a bulkhead. Ronin came out to look over her shoulder. After Mouse pecked away at the touch controls for a few minutes, Stitch moved to take Ronin’s place as she disappeared back into the pilot compartment. I figured Mouse was setting up the link to the Hanosian computer system and Stitch, our next best computer person, was working with the AI to scan for any tracers or alarms as Mouse worked.

Spear stood next to me on the edge of the accel couch.

“She’s in, sir. The login for Nefal worked and opened a port through the firewall. No apparent alarms yet, according to the AI. Okay, now Mouse is accessing the archives.”

Several minutes ticked by.

“Okay . . . Mouse found a series of historical files which should be what we are looking for. She is copying them now. She says she will compact them and then download as a packet the AI can digest,” Spear informed me in a voice just over a whisper. A few moments later she said, “Downloading the packet. So far so good. Mouse is cussing the old and slow technology of the terminals they use. Evidently, she hacked into one to use as a dummy shield. Okay! We have the packet and no evidence of alarms. The AI will begin digesting it immediately and we should have a report in a few minutes.”

Suddenly Mouse tensed and leaned forward at the terminal with an odd frown.

“Holy crap, sir,” Spear said, “Mouse found a huge set of encrypted files which look like technical data placed there by the Torbor. She’s gonna try to grab those, too.”

“Is there any indication by the AI whether the encryption is recognizable or might be accessible?” I asked.

“AV AI says it looks like a standard, low-level encryption, something any computer with math-based language could work with. It says the ship’s AI should be able to reconstruct the files in a matter of hours. Then it should be just a matter of translating the Torbor written language into human Standard.”

“The AI can do that,” I asked, “without some kind of known translation matrix? I mean, it doesn’t make sense that the Torbor would leave files in Standard on human computers.”

“According to the AI, with a large enough sample it can do a statistical analysis which should lead to a translation matrix. Then it is a matter of understanding the syntax of the language.”

I wasn’t fully convinced. Sure, the AIs were incredibly smart, and could do more computations per second, or cps, than any human. Plus, they had the complete store of human knowledge in databases instantly accessible. Still . . . a translation of an alien written language without some sort of Rosetta Stone?

We waited. Impatiently. Worrying. Frustrated. Okay, the last one was me, for sure. And waited some more. Finally, I could take it no longer.

“Ronin!” I shouted. There was no response. “Ronin!” I shouted again.

Still no response. I was getting pissed, now.

“Spear, get this damned suppressor field off of me. I need to get up!”

“No, sir.”

“What?” I was taken by surprise, then by anger. “Get this fucking thing off of me right now, damn it!”

“No,” Spear replied again. “I can’t do that, sir. You’re not ready to be up moving around.”

I tried to sit up, gritting my teeth and groaning with the effort and pain of fighting the suppression field.

Suddenly Stitch, still standing behind Mouse, swiveled his head to look at me. I caught the movement and knew Spear had contacted him. Just as likely, he was going to have the bot trank me. Which really set me off. I began cussing both of them, Spear and Stitch, the Gods-blasted conspirators. Who the fuck did they think they were to . . . um . . . were to . . . to . . . to defy . . . yeah, defy . . . someone . . . I think . . .

Tam and Stitch were talking when I woke up.

“. . . can’t help but admire him,” Tam was saying. “I mean, he’s hurt pretty bad from what you say, yet he was still trying to get up and take over, and he can barely sit up!”

“Well, he should be a lot better by now. When he does wake he’s probably going to be really peeved at me for tranquilizing him.”

“But you had to! He was bleeding again and wouldn’t stay still. You were wonderful.”

Stitch snorted. “It was the bot that did everything.”

Tam argued, “But you stood up to him, and you told the bot what to do. You were really brave.”

“Brave? You don’t know our commander, Tam. He may be a little intimidating at first but . . .”

“A little intimidating? You didn’t see him inside the ministry fighting those guards! I’ve never been so frightened in my life! It was . . . it was like a really bloody, violent, and terrifying ballet . . . like a dance for him. He was leaping and twisting and whirling, and always striking and kicking, with blood flying and bodies falling every time he did, and every move flowed from the previous move and into the next move. It was like seeing Death incarnate! I have never seen anyone move so fast!”

Stitch’s voice was quiet, but firm. “Tam, we are all trained in this manner, even me. We all have the same capability.”

“Even the women?” Tam sounded horrified.

“Ronin is . . . Gods Above, how do I describe it . . . her? I guess the best way is to just imagine the same scene in the ministry but imagine Ronin there instead of the commander. And she is better with knives, blades, than any of the rest of us, even Commander Rawlings.”

After a moment Stitch continued, “And that’s just with blades. We also have handguns and rifles, and all manner of other weaponry every one of us is expert with. Wolf makes sure of it. It’s funny, almost. He trains us harder and requires more of us than any other trooper in the whole clan, yet, he trains himself harder than any of us.”

Oh, Gods Above! Time to put a stop to this. I cleared my throat and sat up.

“Commander! You’re awake!” Stitch said loudly.

“Yes, Stitch, I am,” I growled. “What time is it and how long did you put me out?”

“It is 0340, sir, and you’ve been out for two more days.”

“I thought so,” I replied. “It didn’t hurt as much to sit up, I’m hungry as hell, and I have to pee. Where are we and where is everyone else?”