by M. D. Cooper
Erin signed off and sent the message.
She could see that, until Leif returned to his ship, working with him would be an elaborate game of cat and mouse, with each of them playing both parts.
CHAPTER NINE
STELLAR DATE: 04.18.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: PETER (Planetary Exo-Thermic Extraction Ring)
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
“Seriously, Leif, what were you thinking?” Reiko hissed as they sat on the bed in his quarters.
He clearly wanted to spend the night together, but she was too pissed at him to even think about sex.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I thought tonight went really well.”
Reiko groaned and placed her head in her hands. “Only if you wanted to make Erin crazy suspicious. Even Jere and Hal were giving you looks. You were practically interrogating her.”
“Oh relax,” Leif rolled his eyes. “Jere’s too busy staring at Lark’s tits to notice anything else, and Hal was joking with Fazir the whole time. We’re fine.”
“ ‘Fine’ is what we’ll be when we get this mission over with and get out of New Canaan. These people aren’t slouches—if Kars hadn’t altered the baseline configs for the extraction nodes, they would have had the PETER fixed in a heartbeat.”
“Which means…?” Leif drew out the question.
“Which means that we need to be smarter than them. Not act like a hormone-driven dumbass.”
Leif gave her a questioning look. “I’m not into Erin. She’s a serious prude.”
“I didn’t mean that, I meant tonight. Right now.”
“Oh.”
Reiko was starting to wonder why Kars had trusted Leif with the mission…. Granted, if he’d stuck to the script, they’d be fine.
They still would be. She’d make sure of it.
“Look, we’re really close,” she told him. “When she tries to do a full manual reset—which will be soon—we’ll make our move. Then it’s all downhill from there.”
“Well, I hope it’s not too soon,” Leif said. “I’d like to get back onto the planet for one more night out before the place is unlivable.”
“Don’t be a moron,” Reiko chided. “Once we finish this mission, we can transfer to any dirtside posting we want.”
“Or Airtha,” Leif replied. “That’s the place to be.”
“Sure, whatever,” she nodded. “Let’s just focus on getting this done. Then the Transcend is our oyster.”
CHAPTER TEN
STELLAR DATE: 04.19.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: PETER (Planetary Exo-Thermic Extraction Ring)
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
The fact that she still hadn’t figured out the fault in the PETER frustrated Erin immensely. As she sat in the lounge area of the engineers’ living space, she seemed to be the only one who wasn’t feeling the good mood.
The previous evening’s relaxation at Marvin’s Bar in Delphi had triggered a change in the sense of camaraderie in the team. Jere and Hal had always been the friendliest of the Transcend’s delegation, and now they and Fazir and Lark were acting like they’d worked together for years. Leif was also buoyant and affable, though that was probably due to his belief he’d succeeded in getting Erin to let her guard down. Even sour-faced Reiko was cracking a smile every now and then.
It seemed that Erin was the only one who remembered that the Transcend’s engineers were all but de facto enemies, and that everyone was only there because they had a job to do.
Interrupting a conversation about the fight over the poker game at the bar, Erin said, “Today I want us to go over all the data from the last six months, from when the PETER’s—”
“But we already did that,” said Lark. “We showed it all to you when you arrived, remember?”
“I do, but the problem’s gotten worse since then, and we have more data now,” said Erin, irritated at Lark’s out-of-character objection. “A pattern might be visible that was not before.”
The engineers’ expressions had become glum. Erin ignored their reactions. It was true that numbers work was often tedious; it was mostly a job delegated to NSAIs, while human input often revolved around thinking out of the box. Like the rest of them, Erin preferred the hands-on, practical aspect of her job, but sometimes the key to a problem lay somewhere among trillions of data elements, and there was no alternative to wading through it all.
Erin outlined each person’s assignments and then walked out of the lounge. The team would take at least an hour to crunch the data, and she wanted some space to think over the problem. The sooner she found the solution, the sooner she could legitimately send the Transcend’s engineers back to Admiral Iysra’s flagship. Then her diplomatic mission would be accomplished, and she could return to her family.
She missed them; though she sent and received messages and vids, it wasn’t the same as being with them. She knew they were also impatient for her to return, waiting for her arrival so they could welcome the triplets into their lives.
Erin wanted that too, more than ever, especially now that her experiences with the Transcend’s team had brought the threat of eventual invasion more into sharp relief in her mind. Never had the struggle to defend New Canaan seemed more real.
Erin found herself at the landing bay, gazing into the black. The arch of the PETER curved away around Athens. The heat that the structure continued to leach away from the planet—albeit at a non-optimal rate—wasn’t visible to Erin unless she switched to augmented vision, but she imagined the energy rising from the hot core, oozing out through the uninhabitable equatorial band, and ascending to the PETER’s hundreds of thousands of nodes.
What went wrong?
Erin loved a challenge, but this one wasn’t paying out any sense of satisfaction or achievement. It was like trying to wrestle Usef. No matter what tricks and strategies she threw at the problem, she couldn’t make headway.
“Erin,” said Lark, entering the bay.
“Hi. What’s up?”
Lark joined Erin at her vantage point. Erin wondered what had prompted the woman to seek her out in person when she could have talked to her over the Link.
“It’s quite the sight, isn’t it?” said Lark looking out into space.
“Yes, but you must be used to it by now.”
“I don’t think you can get used to something like a PETER. I’m always in awe of it whenever I remember to take the time to really look at it…. I mean, it’s a planetary ring, and it’s just a throwaway structure for the FGT….” Lark seemed to be struggling to say something.
“Is this leading somewhere?” Erin asked.
“I want to apologize for complaining earlier. That wasn’t very professional of me.”
“Is that all?” said Erin. “Apology accepted.”
“It’s been hard getting along with the Transcend’s engineers, hasn’t it?” said Lark.
“That’s only to be expected. They aren’t exactly our friends.”
“I can tell it hasn’t been easy for you to keep relations smooth between us and them.”
Erin smiled. “Is it that obvious?”
“Honestly? Yes. If I can be frank, you probably aren’t as good at hiding your true feelings as you think you are.”
A snort of laughter came from Erin. “Guilty as charged. I’ll try to control my facial expressions better in the future. Thanks for the heads up.”
“I only wish I could say the same,” said Lark ruefully.
“Huh?”
Lark took a breath. “Jere and I have been hooking up.”
“Oh. You have?”
“Yeah, I guessed that no one had noticed. It gets lonely up here. He’s a nice guy, and we get along well. Fazir isn’t into women.”
“Lark, has Jere been asking you about New Canaan?” Erin asked, suddenly fearful. “You remember you have to be careful about what you say to our guests, don’t you?”
“I do, and he hasn’t asked me anything. You kn
ow I don’t know hardly anything of what goes on outside Athens.”
“Yes, but I still want you to be careful,” said Erin. “You realize this is going to be a blow to Marvin the bartender, right?”
Now it was Lark’s turn to laugh, but her expression quickly turned somber. “I really like Jere, Erin, and I think he feels the same. Only he’s from the Transcend, and I don’t want to leave New Canaan—this is my home. So one day soon….”
“You’ll be forced to part ways. I understand. That’s going to be hard.”
“I think that’s why I was griping earlier. I’m wound up about it all.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s okay. I’ve had worse problems from my teams, believe me.”
“You haven’t heard everything yet.”
Erin had a sudden premonition that Lark was leading up to something more serious than her personal affairs.
“Does this have something to do with our work on the PETER?” she asked.
Lark looked down.
“Okay,” said Erin. “Spit it out.”
Lark glanced over her shoulder to the entrance to the bay. “I saw something in the data that’s potentially explosive. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I’ve triple-checked, and it’s still there. But I can’t believe Jere has anything to do with it.”
Erin waited, leaving a silence for Lark to fill. She hoped that the woman hadn’t delayed in passing on crucial information due to misplaced loyalty to New Canaan’s enemy, or things would look very bad for her.
“Over the past two years, there’s been a slow change in the efficiency of the nodes that pull energy out of the equatorial rift on Athens—”
“Yeah,” Erin replied. “That’s been one of our biggest issues. The nodes drawing from the rift report near perfect efficiency, and the models of the tectonic layout on the planet show that we should be having better than expected energy extraction, not worse.”
“Right. You have no idea how much sleep I’ve been losing over that. But it’s changed.”
“Oh?”
“Not long after our friends arrived, the extraction rate began to shift.” Lark’s lips pursed and she blew out a slow breath.
“Shift?”
“Let me send you the figures. You can see for yourself.”
Erin perused the data and checked the timeline. “That’s some alteration. More like a freaking great leap. When did you notice this?”
“Just now.”
Erin’s apprehension eased.
“I didn’t say anything while I was with the others. I haven’t even pointed it out to Fazir yet. I thought it was best to come and tell you first, considering the sensitivity of the situation.”
“You did the right thing,” said Erin. “Well done for thinking about the wider implications, despite your personal concerns.”
Those implications didn’t need spelling out. Whatever was wrong with the PETER, it was possible that one or more of the Transcend’s engineers had discovered the fault and, rather than bringing it to light so that it could be fixed, had done something to exacerbate the problem.
“For what it’s worth.” Lark’s voice lowered. “If one of our new friends is responsible, I don’t think it’s Jere.”
Erin nodded absently, determined to let the evidence point to who may or may not be guilty. The engineer’s finding had narrowed down the possibilities, though hundreds of systems were involved in producing the relevant data. Erin guessed the perpetrator was Leif. If he was there to snoop on New Canaan, he had no incentive to fix the PETER and a strong motivation to prolong its faulty operation.
What to do about it, though?
Again, demanding his expulsion without any evidence was tricky. She was supposed to be avoiding a diplomatic crisis, not creating one. She had to find a way to fulfill Tanis’s plan to buy New Canaan more time before the inevitable invasion.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Erin said, “and for coming clean about everything. I’m not going to accuse anyone of anything. We can still use the information you’ve turned up, we just won’t draw attention to the dates—we’ll point out the leap and leave it at that.”
“I’ll do that,” Lark replied. “Are you coming back into the lounge?”
“Yes. I’ve thought of a way we might catch our culprit.”
* * * * *
Armed with the data from Lark’s discovery, Erin reconvened the team and told them that they were about to embark on a new tactic that she’d modeled out with Walter.
Lark and Fazir—and then Erin—had performed multiple resets on the equatorial nodes, operations that should have brought them back to default settings and ensured a standard operating efficiency. Normally that would have given a solid baseline for further adjustments.
However—despite the fact that the nodes were not performing properly—the resets did nothing more than cause efficiency to fluctuate outside the norm.
Whether or not it had been introduced on purpose, she was convinced there was a flaw in the automated reset procedures. What she wanted to do was walk each of the equatorial nodes through a manual reconfiguration in a pattern outlined in the operational guidelines for the PETER.
It was a task best performed in a fully immersive virtual reality, and although it was a documented procedure, it was tedious, especially with only six engineers and four AIs.
“All clear on what we’re doing?” Erin asked after assigning the tasks.
The engineers replied in a glum affirmative and began their work, hunched over consoles in the C&C, as sections of the PETER began to shut down for recalibration.
Erin hadn’t assigned herself any tasks, ostensibly to supervise, though in reality, she planned to watch only one member of the team. Leif would either comply with her instructions or reveal his true intentions.
There was a chance that he would give up his subterfuge and fix whatever it was he’d done, but Erin hoped he wouldn’t. She wanted to catch him red-handed, which would be a legitimate justification for kicking him out of New Canaan. At the same time, she would see steps he’d omitted and could use the information to finally fix the PETER.
While the team got started, Erin walked to a cooler in the back of the room and grabbed a cream soda, ready for a long shift. Once armed with her beverage, she found a console and closed her eyes, sinking into a virtual simulation of the orbital ring, traversing the hundreds of kilometers to Leif’s sections. After finding the node he was working on, she initiated a trace, following his actions.
Erin had gone on similar virtual expeditions with her AIs, entering the workings of something and accompanying them as they traveled through it. Though it was a mental strain, she enjoyed the experience. An AI felt more real to her at those times. It was like going hiking with Martin or Isa, except that the sensation was purely internal. At that moment, she could feel Walter’s presence almost as strongly as if he was walking beside her.
As always when deep in a virtual reality, Erin began to lose track of time. She also became less aware of her physical presence.
She opened her eyes and sat up. More than an hour and a half had passed. The engineers were slumped in their seats as if asleep. Hal was drooling. Erin took a drink of cream soda and closed her eyes again.
Walter reported that Leif had continued to act exactly as an innocent engineer would, and Erin couldn’t detect anything suspicious in his behavior. Perhaps he held her in greater esteem than she thought, knew she suspected him, and guessed that she and
Walter were following his every move.
Her concentration shattered, she replied,
Erin quickly withdrew from observing Leif’s section and looked at the ring-wide figures. She could hardly believe what she saw. Within the space of less than four hours, the energy extraction had moved back into a normal range and was now beginning to climb toward the top end of a safe rate.
As she watched, the rate of change shifted from a steady crawl to a near exponential increase.
Confused responses came at her.
She fixed her attention on the extraction levels, which had continued to rise at an alarming rate during her brief conversation with her engineers. She had no idea what had been done to cause the change, or who had done it. She was sure that none of Leif’s actions could have caused the over-activity, but neither she nor Walter had been closely watching anyone else.
Silently, the engineers worked to undo their actions of the previous few hours, their brows furrowed. Tense minutes tiptoed by. Ten of them passed, then another ten. Half an hour came and went as, one by one, the team reported progress on resetting the nodes to their prior states.
There wasn’t anything Erin could do. There was no time to scrutinize the steps that each of the engineers had taken while they’d been working to tell which of them had triggered the runaway effect.
The figures crawled higher, reaching unsafe levels for both the nodes and the planet below.
