by Brian Smith
“You will receive the same payout and benefits, Dr. Shu,” he continued, “along with a bonus sufficient to allow you either to continue your research independently or to retire. If you prefer, I can probably secure you a teaching position at Chryse Planitia University. That will be up to you. I’m aware this decision is rather sudden and probably comes as a shock. For that I apologize, but the decision has been made nonetheless. Awaiting your reply. Over.”
There really wasn’t much need for a reply on her part; Campbell was issuing the final marching orders for Janus Industries, and that was that. What he wanted was to see how Shu reacted to the news. Would she be surprised? angry? He doubted she would plead, especially when she stopped and weighed the value of the severance package he was giving her: it was more than enough to pick up and continue her work if she chose. She’d have to be careful, though, as OURANIA was still technically illegal, at least according to Earth’s national governments.
One thing Campbell noted was that in Shu’s first transmission she made no attempt to account for all the materiel in the Janus payload, merely the items she chose to address. He’d seen the full payload manifest before it even went to Titan, courtesy of Michael Ashburn—it contained far more materiel than what was needed for plant modifications and a half dozen new cores. Was it possible she was caching raw materials for the future, hedging her bets against just what he was doing today?
While Campbell waited for her reply, he thought about modifying the instructions he’d given the Tafuna Yaro security team already on their way up-well. A little extra exploration around the Buzzell Planitia might be in order, just to ensure that Shu hadn’t gone completely rogue. Or was that mere paranoia?
In the end, did it even matter? Shu and her quantum supercomputer had made him the richest man in the solar system, although nobody would ever know it. Rich in material wealth and rich in personal fulfillment, and when Daedalus reached Alpha Centauri and the first humans set foot on the new worlds there, his name and company would be immortalized. Although stung by a possible betrayal, he could afford to be magnanimous, to forgive and forget.
The transmission delay passed quickly enough this time. Campbell was lost in thought about Shu, OURANIA, and Janus Industries; eventually his mind wandered back to Federov’s revelation. He mentally delved into engineering mode, running numbers and idly tinkering with his torchship design until Shu’s reply came through.
She was emotional and looked as though she’d been crying; she even wiped away a couple of tears while she spoke. She said that she was pleased that OURANIA had allowed Federov Propulsion to make its breakthrough, and made a strong argument for allowing OURANIA to continue working on the problems of Tsong-related astrophysics and cosmology. That aside, she acknowledged Campbell’s instructions and informed him that, barring a change in the decision by the end of that Martian day, they would be carried out. She thanked him for the generous treatment she and her staff had received, and inquired as to when she could expect the arrival of his team.
Shu completed her transmission with one last entreaty for Campbell to reconsider the decision—to argue it in front of the Crandall board if necessary. Despite his self-admonition to forgive, Campbell couldn’t suppress a small taste of schadenfreude at Shu’s obvious distress—the truth was, he still didn’t know exactly what was going on out there. That uncertainty was stopping him from making the trip with the Tafuna Yaro. Ty Forester had been right about one thing: the loss of Dejah Thoris and the attack on Thuvia after Ashburn’s overflight of Janus Station seemed like a lot to swallow in terms of coincidence. Something wasn’t right, and Campbell wasn’t about to put himself in possible danger—he’d go later, when the job was almost done and his security people were onsite and could ensure his safety.
He began recording his closing response: “Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Shu. I appreciate your passion for your work and your point of view on the matter, but the final decision has been made. I reiterate, my expectation is that OURANIA will be shut down and in the initial stages of disassembly when my team arrives. They will contact you with a firm ETA within a week. Good day, doctor. Kevin MacDonald, signing off.”
October 2093 (Terran Calendar)
Halsey Naval Station, Mars
“What have you got for me, Rocky?” Cheryl Ayers asked.
“Thought you might find this interesting, ma’am,” Rockland replied, sending some information to her displays. “I did what you said: I ran the current registry database for Class I through III torchships through the AI sifting program, comparing it to the snapshot we took a few weeks ago when that big commercial freighter went missing.”
Ayers smiled indulgently behind her snoopers. “Did you find her, Rocky?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
Ayers’s smile vanished, and she immediately switched over to the data overlay Rocky had sent her. “Network in with me,” she ordered crisply, suddenly all business. He did so, and pointed out what he felt was the discrepancy.
“Here,” he said. “Commercial torchship Boris Polevoy, a PEA-flagged freighter, registered out of Vesta. According to the snapshot history, she’s spent the last several years running back and forth between the big agrocombines on Ganymede and either Ceres or Vesta, depending on which was more economical. Very occasionally, she runs down-well to Mars, and she’s made one trip to Earth. According to current data feeds, she docked at Juno a few days ago, sold a full cargo of foodstuffs, bought almost a full load of deuterium, and is scheduled to burn for Mars in about two days—skipping a sure-money stop at Ell-5 along the way. She’s a QE-2E-class torchship, Ms. Ayers. Do you see it?”
“Well, I see that the missing torchship— What was her name? Doris something? She was a QE-2E as well, but, other than that, nothing here looks like a discrepancy.”
“Dejah Thoris,” Rockland supplied. “Go back and look at the snapshot,” he urged her. “See? Boris Polevoy was originally scheduled to fly her normal run, in this case Ceres back to Ganymede. Three weeks later she’s on the wrong side of the sun, seeming to have gone the opposite direction.”
Ayers sighed. This sort of thing just didn’t interest her, which was one of the reasons she’d never bucked for a commission. Computers and cyber were her passion, not torchships and trade routes. “You’re losing me, Rocky. These commercial freighters change their plans all the time, based on market forces. Now, I’m not a SWO-dad, but even I know that you can go point to point just about anywhere in the asteroid belt inside of three weeks if you burn at a Martian gravity or more. Did the AI actually flag something, or are you taking shots in the dark here?”
“A little of both,” Rockland answered. “There’s more, ma’am—just bear with me. Here’s a list of what the AI turned up: if you go back to the snapshot you had me take, nothing really looks wrong except for the fact that these guys should have gone out of business long ago, but I’ll come back to that. Short version: the AI saw something it didn’t like and went back and reviewed about three more database snapshots that look even further back. Boris Polevoy was originally registered as a QE-2D-class ship, built by Aberdeen Astronautics. Two snapshots ago she suddenly pops as a QE-2E. Her drive signature was on file as well, along with Dejah Thoris’s. According to the AI, they’re transposed in the current registry. Here’s the oddest thing of all: according to the file, there hasn’t been any crew turnover on Boris Polevoy since she entered service—not one—and we both know that’s got to be completely bogus. Want to know what I think?”
Ayers was grinning again. “You’re thinking that Boris Polevoy never existed at all, that she was a hack from the start, a false-flag placeholder waiting for an actual stolen vessel to assume her identity. Am I close?”
Rocky seemed a little taken aback that Ayers had read his mind so easily.
“Um . . . yes, ma’am. It makes sense. There’s more, too, if you just think about it a bit.”
“I’m listening.”
“I know torchships aren’t your
thing, but a QE-2E is a big sumbitch with solar-system-wide range. They’re designed for moving large cargoes around the triangle, not this point-to-point there-and-back stuff. Also, no torchship captain looking to stay in business would ever make a run from Ceres to Juno—that’d be like buying ice from Eskimos in Alaska to sell to polar bears in Greenland. Torchships that size don’t buy deuterium in the asteroid belt, either—they sell it. Whoever set up this hack doesn’t know the first thing about interplanetary commerce, but then it’s not about commerce, is it? Boris Polevoy was never at Ceres, or anywhere else, because until Dejah Thoris was taken, Boris Polevoy didn’t really exist. Now she does and she’s at Juno. Any captain running a big commercial torcher the way Boris Polevoy has supposedly been run would be out of business within a few months, but the AI doesn’t look at economic factors when it’s doing a registry sift.”
“Did you pass this to intel?” Ayers asked.
“I was planning to, ma’am, but I wanted to run it by you first.”
“Good work, Rocky. Get it all formatted and highlight the part about the transposed drive signatures: that’s the real giveaway. Now that you’ve done the intel shop’s work for them and probably earned your next stripe, what do you recommend we do here, on the cyber-warfare side of the house?”
Rockland’s face split into a pleased grin. “Well, let me think. . . . We start digging into this hack a little more carefully. The AI didn’t catch anything looking only one snapshot back—it had to look two or three to find anything out of the ordinary. There could be more of these false placeholders hiding in the system.” His smile slipped a little. “They’ll be damned hard to run down, though. The only reason we caught this one is because the of the change in her class type and the transposed drive profiles.”
“Very good, son,” Ayers nodded. “Now think like an intel rating again: how could we confirm that the ship is really at Juno and this isn’t some other form of deception?”
“You can’t, from just the registry, Wait! We can query the Vestanet and find out if either there were foodstuffs sold on Juno during the timeframe in question or deuterium purchased. There are probably also video records of—”
“Okay, you’ve got it,” Ayers interrupted. “When you format the data, add your recommendations as well. The intel shop will probably try to steal your thunder, but if you make the recommendation and ops acts on it, the job gets done. One team, one fight. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“One more thing: make sure your name is at the top of the package. Route it through the chief and myself when you’re done, and I’ll make sure your name stays at the top. Sometimes a little extra work pays off, doesn’t it?”
“It will if we catch the bastards who took that ship!” Rockland said fiercely. That attitude impressed her more than anything else he’d said.
“Damn straight, Rockland. Okay, after you wrap this up, you’re off the Gabriel Rogan hunt for now. I want you to pull the last few years’ worth of registry snapshots and start working these database hacks, looking for more of these phantom placeholders. I’d like to know how and when these hacks occurred. A lead on who made them would be ideal. I’ll let the chief know about the change, and he’ll monitor your progress. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice or help, either. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bravo Zulu, Rocky. Get back at it.” No sooner had Rockland networked out to go about his business than a flag appeared in the corner of Ayers’s snooper display, asking her to report to operations forthwith. Her mind was chewing uncomfortably over Rockland’s findings as she made her way two offices over, to the bustling operations center. She was surprised to find the admiral’s chief of staff waiting for her along with the staff operations officer.
“Chief Warrant Officer Ayers,” the chief of staff said. “We’ve just gotten a strange request concerning you from another government agency.”
Ayers forced a tight smile. “It wouldn’t have been the U.S. Marshals Service, would it?” she asked.
“So you know about this, then?” the Ops-O asked, making it sound like an accusation.
“No ma’am,” she replied honestly, although it didn’t surprise her. Diane Hutton had been on the station just yesterday, to kiss Jim Ford and wave goodbye to the freshly repaired Reuben James as the ship throttled up to rejoin her squadron in the asteroid belt. Ayers had acted as Hutton’s base escort until Hutton caught the transport back Mars-side, and the two women had briefly discussed the idea of Ayers doing some cooperative work with the Marshals Service in the hunt for Gabriel Rogan. Ayers hadn’t thought anything would come of it, but apparently Hutton had taken the notion quite seriously.
“That’s the only other government agency I’ve had any recent dealings with,” she added.
“Well, it appears they want to borrow you,” the chief of staff informed her. “Someone down there believes you can help them run down Gabriel Rogan. Apparently, their own cyber gurus are stymied.”
“The MIM aren’t amateurs at this or we’d have rolled them up a while back,” she admitted. “I’ll be honest, I haven’t made much headway up here yet. It might not hurt to put our heads together with the marshals and compare notes. Sometimes you find a little discontinuity that jumps out and lights the way. Technically speaking, we could do that from here, but face to face would be more productive, and we’ll benefit from seeing each other’s methodology. How long do they want to ‘borrow’ me for?” she added, sounding a little dubious. She liked Halsey Station, its full gravity, and the way it was designed to mimic being on Earth. To her, Mars was a dusty, somewhat raw-boned frontier society where she’d never felt overly welcome.
“They weren’t specific about that,” the Ops-O admitted. “Frankly, I’m not sure how long we can spare you.”
Ayers shrugged. “My shop chief is perfectly capable of minding the store for a while. To be honest, the idea of living out of a sea bag in New Arizona isn’t all that appealing when I’ve just gotten settled in here. Like I say, however, it might be fruitful. How about a set of temporary duty orders not to exceed three weeks? That gives me an out to scamper back here if we aren’t making any headway. If we are, I can request an extension.”
“Ops?” the chief of staff asked.
The Ops-O shrugged. “No real objections, captain. She’d still be working toward the same objective.”
“Make it happen then,” the chief of staff ordered. Off to handle the next issue on his very full plate, he nodded at the two women and left them in his wake,.
“I’ll talk to admin about cutting the orders,” Ayers said. “One more thing,” she added.
The Ops-O had been about to shove off as well, but stopped short.
“Later today or early tomorrow you’re going to get a package from the intel shop. One of my guys has found the Dori— Whatever the hell that Martian freighter was named that went missing a few weeks ago—the big commercial one. All the details will be in the package, and it’s legit. I’m pretty sure Admiral Wright is going to want to act on it. Here’s the thing, though, from me to you to pass on however you feel is best: whoever gets the call on this, please tell them to be careful.”
“What has you spooked?”
“I’ve been doing this for a quarter century, and I don’t think I’ve ever come across a presumably covert data hack that was so cleverly designed to be found. The kid in my shop who made the find is smart and he did a good job on this, but he lacks the experience to see beyond the technical aspects. Cyber warfare is more than just coding and data analysis—there’s a good bit of guile involved as well. Whoever engineered this alteration of the registry designed it to be uncovered, either by us or by one of the other national entities out there. There’s a reason for that, and we don’t know what it is. What I do know is that if we send a ship to intercept and board this freighter, it won’t come as a surprise to whoever has her.”
“Where’s the advantage to the bad guys?”
Ayers shook her h
ead. “In order to answer that, we’d have to know who the bad guys are. I’m reasonably certain they aren’t just garden-variety pirates, though.”
“Do you think it’s MIM related?”
“There’s a distinct possibility, given the quality of the deception. It’s varsity-level work.”
“Thanks, chief warrant. I’ll make sure your concerns are known.”
The Ops-O went on her way, leaving Ayers alone in the large operations center. Several enormous displays lined the upper portions of the bulkheads, canted down slightly for easy viewing. Some were graphical, while others were walls of scrolling text concerning various matters pertaining to the U.S. Navy’s 4th Fleet.
Ayers glanced up at them, worry creasing her features as her gaze moved from display to display until she finally found the one she was looking for. It showed the portion of the asteroid belt in the region of Vesta and Juno, as well as which units were deployed there. She confirmed what she’d suspected: the nearest ships were those of her old squadron, arrayed in a patrol formation centered around USS Marineris. Her gaze flicked to another display, one that showed the solar system on a different scale. It didn’t take her long to pinpoint the icon labeled USS Reuben James. It showed the ship on the up-well burn, headed for a rendezvous with her tender and squadron.
Ayers watched the icon’s slow progress on the display for a long minute, thinking about her former shipmates. Watch your backs out there, she thought, not liking the feeling she had about all this. Then she shook it off and got back to work.
Chapter 12
November 2093 (Terran Calendar)
USS Reuben James
The Asteroid Belt
“Supervise the remainder of the docking maneuver, XO. Commodore Frieder said he wanted to see me soonest. I also want to say a word of farewell to our trusty MARDET. They’ll be glad to get back aboard their own roomy ship, I’m thinking.”
“Well, three weeks at Halsey Station and Mars-side didn’t go over too poorly with them,” Ford grinned.
