Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  “In which case we’ll be ahead of the curve and look even better,” Leonardo said.

  * * *

  “This-is-not-good,” Heather said. If she’d had a screaming fit it would have alarmed April less. When Heather spoke in a flat slow cadence it scared the snot out of her subjects who knew her. There were just enough instances of her doing it in her weekly court to make it a common meme in the Central population that such an emotionless pronouncement meant somebody was about to have a very bad day.

  “May one ask?” April said cautiously.

  “Our friend and ally, Lee Anderson, of the complicated Derf name, has run a search on the Earth Web. Not her hired men,” Heather noted, “but by her own dainty hand. She asks for a search since the rebellion of Home for ‘unnatural, unexplained, and low probability earthquakes’ and in a second search asks for the dates of known North American bombardments by Home during the military action.”

  “Well, she should get about ninety-five percent of the related action from that search. She’ll probably fail to tie in the minor earthquake in Japan from sinking a USNA aircraft carrier at their dock. I’ve always thought it was terribly reasonable of them to forgive us for that,” April said.

  “If it had just been parked there minding its own business yes,” Heather said, “but when they fired on you in orbit sitting tied up to a Japanese dock they really threatened to drag the Japanese in on a war they didn’t want to join.”

  “So they have a gravity lance or something very similar because they triggered a quake there,” April guessed. “Has there been enough time to be able to confirm a quake happened on Derfhome from conventional news sources?”

  Heather didn’t answer but there was a flurry of key clicks while she searched. She always turned the voice mode off with somebody else in the room.

  “Two weeks ago. What they describe as a hundred-year earthquake, with minor damage and no loss of life. We got the news report here two days ago in the data dump from the ship before the latest. It just didn’t fit any of our search parameters to pop up right away. She may not have even gotten the report to her inquiry back yet.”

  April sighed. “You can’t search everything. We should copy Jeff, don’t you think?”

  “The report was through Chen, so he already has a copy. He has it and has had time to read it, so he must not be too upset,” Heather said. “He hasn’t said anything.”

  “They have to have the same material Jeff’s mom makes or something very similar,” April decided. “It will bother him they beat him to it. There’s a bright side though.”

  “Pray, tell, I can use some good news,” Heather said.

  “They didn’t beat the news here in a super-luminal ship.”

  Chapter 14

  “Sir, I have additional details about the two agents returned to us unconventionally at Peace Station,” his head evidence tech told the Head of North American Interstellar Intelligence, Don Paul.

  “At this late date? I didn’t know somebody was still working it. They’ve been retired off active duty haven’t they?”

  “Yes, their memories were already corrupted and they were given additional false memories about their retirement to leave them content and sure they’d gotten a very good deal in their parting bonus and benefits. One has retired to the Gulf Coast and is nuts about recreational fishing. The other returned to his boyhood home, in of all God-forsaken frozen places, Minnesota, and appears to be stable and happy. However, we have continued working the extensive physical samples we took off them.

  “Between the two agents, we took about a thousand tape impressions to catch any tiny foreign particles or DNA. We also had fingernail scraping and several hair samples and callus shavings. Several of them returned unknown DNA that like theirs wasn’t in any of our databases. However, one returned a positive for Derf DNA. That led us to do a thorough scan of fecal material that was sampled in their early confinement. It returned a hard positive for a Derfhome berry that is used in confections and pastries popular with both Humans and Derf. I have to advise you, they appear to have not only been in contact with Derf but likely were on the world long enough to eat locally. We have found no examples at all of the fruit in question being exported commercially.”

  “I’m irritated,” Don Paul admitted. “They did not get the information we required on Fargoer missile systems and went haring off after some other target of opportunity. They probably were tired of the plodding day after day grind of their assignment and thought they were going to make a career-enhancing splash. They had no business going to Derfhome, and I can’t imagine what they pursued was worth it.”

  “And yet, somebody paid a lot to rub our noses in the fact they failed,” the tech said.

  His boss looked thoughtful, then nodded. “We have two long-term agents doing general intelligence gathering on that world. Tell them to be on the lookout to identify effective but unnamed local opposition. Format the report within their need to know limits and send it off in their next dispatch,” he ordered.

  * * *

  “They’re on the right track,” Jeff said when he returned, and did a slow elaborate shrug. It was a shrug accepting the inevitable, not of indifference. “Of course, we don’t know if they are on the same track since we have no clue how my mother makes the quantum fluid we use.”

  Jeff stayed respectful and never spoke against his step-mom, but his frustration was visible. She absolutely would not share the process. The lengths to which her nation of birth, China, went to control her and her work had only reinforced that resolve.

  It wasn’t them she didn’t trust but her lack of one hundred percent certainty that they could keep her secrets from China. They had after all lost one ship to Chinese capture, and the kilometers wide crater where Jeff bombarded the Chinese spaceport at which they’d landed it didn’t reassure her. Yes, he kept them from disassembling it and reverse engineering it. Two other devices had self-destructed from snoopers. She didn’t see it as three successes, she just saw it as three episodes way too close to catastrophic failure.

  “We’ve allied ourselves with them,” Heather pointed out. “I do not mind keeping an eye on their activities such as searching the Earth Web. But to actively snoop on them in their own territory I’d be as treacherous as the miserable Earthies.”

  “We had this discussion and determined there was no moral way to inhibit them before we associated ourselves closer with them. Less so now,” Jeff said.

  “Perhaps you are looking at this the wrong way,” April said carefully.

  They both looked at her, expectant.

  “We all decided to not interfere with their research and offer them protection in exchange for guarantees they wouldn’t share it with Earth. The more we see of the Claims Commission response to them the more I think it was angst over nothing. They never were going to come to any agreement with Earth, and by the time the Earthies ever decide how they will pressure Derfhome and their competing claims system. It will be too late. The Derf, or at least Red Tree clan Mothers and the owners of the Little Fleet will have a super-luminal drive and Earth won’t be in a position to do anything about them.”

  “Neither will we, come to that. There aren’t enough of us,” Jeff said.

  “The Owners of the Little Fleet is a silly euphemism for Lee,” April said. “Well you know it is,” she insisted when they both made faces. “Is that so hard to accept? You might as well fess up to the fact Heather is Central, same thing.”

  “That huge hairy father of her’s has a considerable interest,” Jeff insisted.

  “Yes, and she has him eating out of her hand,” April said.

  “What?” April asked of Jeff’s strained expression.

  “It’s just that’s such a mental picture.”

  “Oh, it is isn’t it?” April said.

  “We’ve drifted away from your thought,” Heather said.

  “Well yes, please don’t slap a Solar down and offer bets, but we’re pretty much all three reconciled t
o the fact they, Lee really, is going to have a drive as good as ours, or even better, in months at worse but certainly within a couple of years, agreed?”

  With the slightest hesitation, they both nodded. Jeff had changed his mind.

  “Why aren’t we moving closer to them instead of away?” April asked. “You said there aren’t enough of us to manage them, well why are we still holding off on giving them actual help to perfect their drive, so it isn’t us and them, it’s we?”

  “Because it makes us look weak and indecisive?” Jeff said.

  “If it were Earthies saying that you’d be complaining they were stiff-necked and too stubborn and full of Earth Think to change to altered conditions,” April said.

  “Why are we three still a tier distinct from our peers? Heather asked. “Even from my publicly declared peers as Sovereign? There are levels of trust that one does not just breach lightly. We’re talking about opening up and revealing the basic secrets that give us power and with which we trust each other. I know we all have others we’d say we love, but what we have is more complex. You don’t alter any part of that lightly and we’re talking about admitting Lee to those same levels of trust we wouldn’t extend to Dakota or Gunny or Mo.”

  “How do we make that plain? It’s not like we can ask her to marry us,” April said.

  “I’m sure you are being a little flippant,” Heather said, “but I haven’t seen anybody else like Lee who would come close to being able to contribute on a par with the three of us. Not because she is filthy rich, that’s the very least of it. Things seem to happen around her. We can’t just say we want to ally, we have to do it.”

  “She makes things happen around her,” April insisted. “Just like us, it’s true. The filthy rich part just naturally follows from that. I can’t see she will ever be around us long enough to grow close like we did, which is a shame really. She has her own interests far away, but I do admire her, and that’s not flip at all.”

  “I already get ribbed about you two in male company,” Jeff said. “They commonly just say ‘your ladies’. If we added a third lady, I can’t begin to imagine how they’d harass me.”

  “Since when do we care about gossip and snickering anyway? Figure it for jealousy. In the long-term, if we ally closer with Lee, we’d be merging the people under us too, most of Central certainly, and some from Home, with the people associated with Lee. That would be elements of both her Little Fleet and Red Tree clan. It’s not like they’re Earthies. They’re some good people. I see it as a positive,” Heather said.

  “She and Gordon are Fargone citizens now too,” April reminded her. “Not that we aren’t already working with Fargoers. We could lose some personal influence, but we might end up with a wider confederation that accomplished all the things we wanted including being an even better restraint on the old Earth philosophies and divisions. Can we spare a little power and influence? It’s not like we’d be exiled or paupers.”

  “It isn’t just the risk of sharing the drive,” Jeff said. “There will be other risks, some of which we can’t predict. We have no idea how Earth may react to our new relationship with Derfhome. They probably don’t see the fine differences we do between the Mothers and Lee. It’s too complex to predict all the consequences.”

  “But we’re halfway committed just by putting them under our protection,” Heather pointed out. So we’re just talking about expanding that.”

  “One hopes we’d be sharing some of the burdens of restraining the Earthies and creating a larger interstellar society with these new allies,” April said.

  “Let me put it another way,” Jeff offered. “If they are so close to a drive why do they need us? They are liable to say we’re doing just fine, we don’t think we need you now thank you. You should have helped us before when we really needed it.”

  “Mmm… I am simply hearing fear of rejection there,” Heather said. “Are you sure this isn’t a bit of male ego speaking? You aren’t usually a chest beater,” she added to soften it. Jeff still looked taken aback.

  “Do you want to hear a noble and selfless reason we could change our minds and help them?” April asked.

  “Yes, yes I would,” Jeff said. “I know you are nicer than me, forgive me Heather, but I think you may even be nicer than Heather, because being Sovereign forces many not very nice choices on her. However, I can’t imagine how helping them could advance to the level of noble and selfless instead of self-serving and pragmatic.”

  “You may be right,” April speculated, “I can be nicer because I’d rather avoid conflict, but Lee’s people just came within a hair of screwing up big time and causing a tragedy. If they have any brains at all, it should have terrified them how close they came to destroying a town and killing lots of people. You do remember the little problem we had known as the Great San Diego earthquake? Imagine doing that to your own people. It wouldn’t make you very popular.

  A look of enlightenment spread on Jeff’s face.

  “You get it I see. We can say we want to prevent them causing the same harm we did accidentally and if they get to the point of drive testing, spare them sending some poor guys off into the unknown never to return, like James Weir.”

  “That would work, wouldn’t it? This is why we work so well together, I’d have never thought of that,” Jeff admitted.

  “Nothing dishonest about it,” April claimed. “There’s nothing wrong with framing what you offer to do in the best possible light.”

  * * *

  “Master Leonardo, I found out where the physicist and his alien are taking the disks,” Atlas said. Leonardo seemed testy this morning and addressing him by his academic rank always helped smooth matters.

  “They’re selling them at the clump of booths the Humans call their flea market,” Leonardo predicted sarcastically.

  “Indeed, they might if they had sufficient imagination,” Atlas agreed. Leonardo used Atlas to sell scrap metal and university property they had unofficially declared ‘surplus’ in the common market, so he was familiar with the process. He got a small skim and the funds went in a cash discretionary fund.

  “They are saving them up in a common storage facility over past the ridge.”

  Leonardo looked thoughtful for a few heartbeats… “With no special security? In a public facility?”

  “Exactly,” Atlas nodded agreement, “Just a basic metal building with common slide latches and padlocks on the doors.”

  “We also need some extra storage I think. Be sure to get it in the same building, or with access to it, and take a few things there to establish visiting it as normal. Use the discretionary cash fund too,” Leonardo instructed.

  Atlas smiled and nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

  * * *

  “The latest dispatch warns us the missing agents we were asked to watch for are thought to have disappeared on Derfhome, and we are asked to be on the alert to identify any effective agencies in opposition,” Sam said.

  “Print it for me, would you?” Bill asked.

  “The header runs to over six pages, and the actual order three sentences I told you,” Sam said. “Do you really want the message number, authorizations to emit, parties to which it is copied, security level, all the preceding mission authorizations and crap like our location, which I presume you know?”

  “Point taken, it’s noise to us. They don’t put it in terms of watching our butts so we don’t end up disappearing the same way?” Bill asked.

  “You know we’re pawns, not knights. They just want to know who is taking their game pieces off the board and messing with them,” Sam said.

  “Does that mean they recovered remains?” Bill wondered.

  “They don’t say. We probably have no need to know,” Sam said.

  “Funny, it seems like we have the most need to know about it from where I am sitting if somebody is disappearing agents here,” Bill said.

  “You take everything so personally,” Sam said.

  * * *

  “I backt
racked the deliveries to the Foy’s storage,” Kirk said.

  “However did you do that?” Pamela asked.

  “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it, but there is a commercial service that orbits two high altitude drones around the city and will sell you video as a monthly service for a very reasonable subscription. Once you subscribe, they will sell historical data for a little higher fee than the current feed. It really made things much easier. I just never thought to look for anything like that because it would never be permitted back home. If they would allow it, they’d reduce the resolution until it was useless and blank out all the government facilities.”

  “They don’t blur them out here?” Pamela asked.

  “No, though I have to admit there isn’t much to blur out, and what’s there isn’t like military or anything, just city offices, and a tiny road repair yard,” Kirk said.

  “So what are they receiving?”

  “Food. They are getting food from a place called Capital Provisions, and it’s in boxes and cases so it’s not fresh or frozen stuff,” Kirk said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We were looking for them to do something like building a new shelter off in the boonies to store seed and genetic material,” Pamela said. “That’s what they have been collecting on Earth that triggered this whole investigation.”

  “They’ve managed to keep this out of the public record,” Kirk said. “If people hide stuff, I tend to think that is what they consider their important business. I don’t see them going to anybody like a construction company to build a seed vault. All their business building the embassy is right out in the open, and I checked where else their builders are working. It’s all common local stuff for other Derf.”

  “I’m mystified why they would need food, and why they would hide buying it,” Pamela admitted. “Do you think they are planning to bring people here? It would have to be a pretty big group, not just embassy staff, to need food stockpiled. Where would they live? There isn’t much rental space in the city and they aren’t building anything like apartments or barracks.”