Gates of Hell

by Daniel Gibbs

  “Master Chief, please,” Ruth began, only to be interrupted.

  “Stow it, Lieutenant. This is not a training simulation. This is not a game… it’s real, do you get that? Do you both get it? I want my people to get home to their families, and I want to go home to my wife. None of us get to do that if you two don’t stop the John Wayne shit and get squared away!”

  “You done?” Ruth asked, her face turning red. Meanwhile, Susanna had slunk along the wall and collapsed in a heap, near tears.

  “Yeah, I’m done.”

  “Good. Because if you ever speak to someone who just saved your rear end like that again, I swear, Master Chief, I’ll kick you into next week.”

  “You and what army?” MacDonald answered as he smirked at her.

  “I’m younger, faster, and I’ve trained in Semper fu for years.” The other commandos had turned to watch the exchange, and Ruth felt their eyes boring into her.

  “Is that a fact… well, when we get back to civilization, thanks to the efforts of my team and me, I’ll gladly take you up on a sparring match, and show you my sixth-degree black belt level skills in TCMC martial arts. Until then, follow your orders, Lieutenant.”

  “Her quick thinking saved our hides, Master Chief,” Ruth insisted. “You could at least say thanks.”

  MacDonald looked toward Susanna. “Thanks,” he said, particularly exaggerated and sarcastic. “Now everyone kindly get back to work so we can get the hell out of here before the next patrol comes along.”

  “Susanna,” Ruth said, pointedly ignoring him. “Regardless of what the Master Chief says, that was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen. Actions like yours are consistent with the finest traditions of the Coalition Defense Force.” The last phrase was said directed at MacDonald’s back.

  “Thank God we’re all safe,” Ahmad interjected.

  Trying to defuse the situation in his own way, I guess. No one else spoke. Ruth settled in for the recharging cycle, hoping the enemy wouldn’t return until they were well on their way.

  14

  Pavlik jogged up the steps to the admin building. I can’t believe for the life of me that Pan might be right for once. He’d kept up the pace from the shuttle pad and had started to get sweaty in the warm summer evening air. As he cleared the front door, he exchanged salutes with a young guard and scanned the biometric ID chip in his hand for access. The device turned green, and he walked through the mantrap-like entrance and on into the building.

  Upon reaching Colonel Pan’s door several minutes later, Pavlik knocked politely on the door.

  “Come in!” Pan yelled out.

  Pavlik walked in to find Pan pacing back and forth in his office. “Good evening, Colonel.”

  “What do you have to report, Major?”

  “I’ve visited several farms today as well as the crash site,” Pavlik began. “I have some interesting findings.”

  “Out with it, Major.”

  “I believe I located the farm where our soldiers met their end.”

  Pan whirled around, his face turning blood red. “Did you arrest the traitorous criminals responsible or execute them on the spot?”

  “Neither, sir.”

  For a minute, Pavlik thought Pan’s eyes were going to explode out of his head. “What?” he demanded, in a loud and angry voice.

  “Colonel,” Pavlik responded, holding up his hand. “I made a judgment call based on the situation. The farmer who works the fields where I believe the crime was committed indicated to me that these soldiers had a fancy for his daughter. I confirmed that they were most likely killed in the barn, which further corroborates his story.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. We both know there’s a problem on this planet with undisciplined conscripts getting their jollies off with the locals. It’s been a problem for years. If they had been caught in the act by me, I would have shot at least one of them on the spot. Are we going to punish an old man for that?”

  “He has no right to pass judgment on anyone in the League, Major,” Pan snarled in return.

  “A man protecting his family? I’d do the same and so would you,” Pavlik said hotly. “If you were a man at all, that is!”

  “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Major,” Pan replied, nearly shouting.

  Pavlik forced his face to go neutral and bit his lip. I’d better dial this back before I get myself shot. Hiding my disdain for this moron gets harder every day. “There’s another reason why I spared him.”

  “Which was?”

  “It’s clear to me that an old man, no matter how skilled, didn’t sneak up on two young soldiers and kill them without any evidence of a fight. The Amish also can’t make a vehicle disappear in the way this one was. Something else is at work here.”

  “I told you there were Coalition spies!”

  “There well may be. I investigated the site of the crashed ship. It was military design, with advanced stealth features. I’m surprised it was even detected by our forces. What’s not readily evident is if anyone survived the crash. I’ve requested DNA tests on human remains found in the wreckage.”

  “When will they be completed?”

  “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll go to the lab and wait on the results,” Pavlik explained.

  Pan walked behind his desk, clearly sulking. “What of the farmer?”

  “I have my best men watching his land. If there’s a group of spies or Coalition operatives out there, they’ll come back. We’ll watch, wait, and learn… then capture them all at a time of our choosing.”

  “Good,” Pan finally said, his face still red. “I can accept that. When the time comes, however, I want everyone on that farm executed as an example of what happens when you defy the League.”

  I must find some way to keep Ezekiel and his family from being executed. “I believe the farmer is a decent man. They don’t deserve to be executed.”

  “Going native, Major? You cannot possibly condone killing a soldier of the League.”

  “I don’t condone it, sir. But executing his entire family? Collective punishment isn’t allowed by the political commissars on this planet. Its population is considered to be socialists in good standing.”

  “So you keep reminding me. I expect you to influence the commissar, in that case. I want an example made. Do not fail me, Major.” Pan barked.

  “Yes, sir,” Pavlik grated out. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Go find the spies and traitors, then kill them all, Major. That is your only duty until this is resolved.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pavlik replied, slapping his right fist to his chest before turning on his heel and swiftly marching out of the room.

  Tamir sat behind his station, perched on the operations floor of the CSV Oxford. He had three monitors going with various decryptions, testing out different algorithms to find the best one. Another analyst, Second Lieutenant Rodney Kellogg, leaned over from the station next to him. “Hey, Tamir. What’s cooking?”

  “Same thing that was cooking ten minutes ago, Kellogg.”

  “Don’t have to be like that.”

  “At least come up with a different intro to bug me with,” Tamir said, altering one of the decryption algorithms to take advantage of a new set of code words.

  “Looks like you’re as bored as I am.”

  “You’re in the wrong business if you want excitement, Kellogg.”

  “Except those rare occasions when something cool happens.”

  “Uh, huh. I’ll take your word for it,” Tamir replied, staring at his screen.

  “Hey, Tamir. Why don’t you try running last week’s decrypted codeword list against those messages?”

  “There’s a reason why it’s last week’s… the League has to change its cipher every week to stay ahead of our hypercomputers.”

  “All I’m saying is sometimes they get lazy, especially lately.”

  This is a waste of time, but it’s not like I don’t have all day to work on the probl
em. Tamir punched up the decryptor program and changed its list. Almost immediately, the message began to fill in, and within fifteen seconds, was fully decrypted.

  “Well, will you look at that. Lieutenant Kellogg, right again.”

  “It’s the first time you’ve been right all week, Kellogg,” Tamir deadpanned. “Proof that even a broken watch is right once a day.”

  “Twice a day.”

  “Not in the military.”

  “You’re something else, Tamir. Just because Sinclair likes you doesn’t mean you get to lord it over the rest of us.”

  “Sinclair doesn’t like me,” Tamir replied hotly. “He grinds me down.”

  “You’re his favorite,” Kellogg insisted. “Whatever, I’m going back to work.”

  “Wow, there’s a first time for everything.”

  Kellogg didn’t respond and put his nose back into his station, leaving Tamir in peace. Running the message through a translation matrix as it was in Russian, he eagerly read it over once that program had finished.

  Captain Baburin,

  Thank you for the recent update. Notwithstanding its accuracy, the enemy deploys a new tactic against us. The operation nearly ended in disaster and was it not for the sacrifice of many brave sailors, the Terrans would’ve gained insight into our intelligence source. In the future, make sure that we have all pertinent information and inform our asset failure to comply will mean the loss of our protection.

  – Commander Anikeyev

  “Holy crap,” Tamir blurted out, astonished as he finished skimming the message.

  “What’s got a bee up your shirt, Tamir?” Kellogg yelled over.

  “I’ve got to go,” Tamir said as he sprang up from his chair, locked his console, and took off running. Got to find Sinclair and show this to him… he was right, as usual!

  Major Pavlik walked through the sterile halls of the League medical facility within their military installation on Freiderwelt. The building was depressing and dull. It’s like it was designed by half-drunk architects that wanted us to feel their pain. With no decorations except propaganda posters urging everyone to watch what they use, report any capitalistic activity, and warning against the evils of religion, it was difficult to remember where exactly the pathology lab was located. After making wrong turns and backtracking, he finally ended up in front of a door with a plastic sign on the wall next to it marked “Pathology.” Opening the door, he walked in to find several white-coated individuals sitting around a metal table.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Pavlik asked.

  “No one, brother. This department has been fully socialized and has achieved the objectives of the proletariat,” one of the men responded without glancing up.

  “That might work on your supervisor,” Pavlik said dryly. “But I’m not your supervisor.”

  The woman in the group looked up, and her face contorted in fear as she elbowed the nearest technician to her. “He’s an officer!”

  “Why yes, I am an officer,” Pavlik repeated back to her. They send the worst of the worst here, I’m sure of it. All of them are a few cards short of a full deck if I were to judge by the quality of our conscripts. “Major Vladislav Pavlik, at your service,” he continued with an exaggerated smile. “Now who’s in charge?”

  “I am,” the woman stammered. “What can we do for you, Major?”

  “I sent badly degraded human remains to be tested from a crashed Terran Coalition ship. I specifically wanted the DNA compared to understand how many died.”

  “It’s in process, Major.”

  “When can I view the results?”

  “It’ll take some time, sir. We need to reach a consensus between the technicians.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “One of the regulations is we must all agree before publishing a report of our findings.”

  Bureaucrats. Idiots. “I don’t have time for a committee meeting, Doctor. What’s your name again?”

  “Doctor Anna Beridze, sir.”

  “Doctor Beridze, I want the results in my hand within the next four hours. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Major, it takes a long time to compare the DNA strands…” Beridze began.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Doctor,” Pavlik snapped. “You have a computer that does almost all of the work. All you have to do is sit there and compare two slides to ensure they match. Stop bullshitting me, put your card game away, and get to work!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get up!” Pavlik yelled, angrier by the second.

  The three scrambled to their feet, and the two men scurried toward the nearest computer station.

  “We’ll have it ready within two hours, Major,” Beridze managed to say.

  “See that you do,” Pavlik answered before turning on his heel and smartly walking out. It’s amazing we get anything done, he fumed inside. Pan better not be right. With the poor quality of troops on this planet, we’d be lucky to defeat a single of the Terran Coalition’s best, much less a squad or two of them.

  I wonder why the geeks always get stuck on the inside of the ship with the crappiest rooms and offices. Taylor strode into a tight-fitting office belowdecks on the Lion of Judah. Marked “Decryption Analysis,” on a small nameplate beside its hatch, the space held an interface to the Terran Coalition’s separate intelligence data processing network. It was air-gapped from the rest of the militaries tactical and unclassified networks, and access was tightly controlled.

  Taylor took a seat at the station and went through a series of biometric security checks of his fingerprints and retina after putting his security token into the appropriate reader. He finally entered a twenty-character passphrase, coupled with a voice print keyword. Yeah, whoever designed this thing is paranoid.

  Following the computer’s initialization, he checked his secure message log and found a request from Tamir to contact him regarding the Oxford’s findings. Quickly looking on the encrypted vidlink and seeing he was online, Taylor pressed the icon to connect. A few minutes of blank screen later, and Tamir’s face appeared on the screen in front of him.

  “Lieutenant Taylor, you got my message!”

  “That I did,” Taylor replied with a relaxed smile. “I take it you found something?”

  “Yeah. I’m learning to never bet against Colonel Sinclair. It’s like he has a direct line to God or something.”

  Taylor laughed. “I know what you mean. Colonel Cohen is the same way when it comes to outfoxing the League in ship-to-ship battle.”

  “Do you have the special codeword Space Keyhole?”

  “Yes, let me upload my authentication token. I worked signals on my last posting and was read in.”

  “They never debriefed you off?” Tamir asked, surprised.

  “Keeping it allowed me some flexibility to help out in intelligence-related matters on the Lion.”

  “Nice. I confirmed your token. What I’m about to say is considered codeword intelligence and is not to be repeated to anyone without that level of clearance.”

  “Including Colonel Cohen?”

  “Yes.”

  Taylor frowned and pursed his lips together. “Understood.” He reached over and pressed a button to engage the security lockout protocol that would prevent someone else from opening the hatch without his explicit okay.

  “Earlier today, I decrypted a message between the League External Security Service and the captain leading the raiding forces. The contents made clear they have a HUMINT asset in play.”

  “I—” Taylor stammered. “Find that somewhat hard to believe.”

  “I suggest you believe it, Lieutenant. Traitors exist, that’s a fact. Most of the time, we know little about them until they slip up. I think we got lucky here. Leaguers didn’t change out their crypto keys fast enough. They’re on last week’s, which we’ve already cracked. I’m reading these guys’ mail, if you will.”

  “That’s positive, I guess,” Taylor replied. “Any idea who the traitor is?”

  “B
y process of elimination, I have to assume that the crew of the Lion of Judah and Colonel Dyson’s ship are ninety-nine percent out of the running. I say this because if the traitor were onboard, they’d likely have known about the plan to trip up the League forces with the quick jump stunt.”

  “That makes logical sense to me. But if not one of us, then who?”

  “There’s a wide variety of personnel outside of those two ships that are suspect, all the way back to planners in SHAEF and staff on the joint chiefs panel.”

  “We need a way to narrow it down,” Taylor interjected.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. To use Occam’s razor on this,” Tamir began.

  “Huh?”

  “Occam’s razor… it’s the idea that all things being equal, the simplest solution is most often correct.”

  “Ah, okay,” Taylor replied. A nerdism I didn’t know. Interesting.

  “It’s got to be someone attached to the task force that is getting near real time, but not actual real-time information as to what Cohen and Dyson are up to.”

  “Don’t we have some forward deployed stealth raider assets in this sector?”

  “Great minds think alike. I had the same thought. There’s three, to be exact. The comm officer on any of them would get regular updates on friendly ships in the area, and would pass back intelligence on League vessels.”

  Taylor’s face broke into a grin. “We could smoke out whoever it is with flash traffic that suggests we’ve found a mole and are taking steps to apprehend the suspect. Send a slightly different version of it to each ship and announce the Lion will be performing inspections and an investigation.”

  “Then administer lie detector exams to the comms team on each ship.”

  “It’s tailored and direct. Colonel Cohen should buy off on it.”

  “It’s your idea, Taylor. I’m happy to let you write it up and present it to the colonels.”

  “How about a joint presentation? I’ve never been one for hogging the limelight.”

  “You’re on,” Tamir replied with a grin of his own. “I’ll have Colonel Sinclair set up the briefing for tomorrow morning. That’ll give us enough time to put it together and not sound like blathering idiots.”