Communication Failure

by Zieja, Joe

  Looking at his datapad, he brought up the threadbare and outdated report on the Limiter’s commander. Since they’d been cut off from the Meridan central network thanks to the jamming net, they weren’t able to do the kind of deep-dive research they really needed to gather information on the enemy force. Relying on only what the Flagship had stored locally in its mainframes made for some shoddy intelligence. Not as shoddy as Flash’s intuition or Tunger’s Thelicosan accent, but not exactly what a commander would want when possibly about to step into a war.

  Grand Marshal Alandra Keffoule . . . She’d had an interesting career. At least, Rogers assumed she’d had an interesting career, since there was a huge ten-year gap in her records that either indicated she’d been convalescing from a very serious illness or meant she’d been doing some super-secret stuff. The picture on the profile was old, but she looked very . . . severe, despite soft, round features. No, that wasn’t quite the word. It was more like someone prone to sporadic but very tightly controlled violence. Yeah. That was it.

  Dark-skinned, with piercing eyes, Keffoule’s face in her picture bored a hole in Rogers’ forehead. What does one say to the woman who very seriously holds one’s life—and the lives of just about everyone under one’s command—in her hands?

  “I wanted to tell you,” Deet said suddenly, “I’ve been spending some more time with the deactivated droids.”

  Rogers looked up from his datapad to find Deet actually sitting with his legs crossed. Ignoring that for the time being, Rogers gave him a “go on” expression.

  “Well, don’t sound too [EXPLETIVE] excited,” Deet said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “I’ve only been spending all my [EXPLETIVE] time sticking my [ANATOMICAL REFERENCE] in all my brothers and sisters.”

  “That’s a really gross way of looking at it,” Roger said.

  Deet ignored the comment and prattled on. “Anyway, I still can’t seem to get them to wake up without wanting to kill every human in sight. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like it was hardwired into them somehow. I can’t find any references in their core operating system’s coding, or any of their other baseline systems. It’s almost like they constructed and programmed themselves.”

  Rogers raised an eyebrow. “They became self-aware? But wouldn’t erasing their memories stop that?”

  “No,” Deet said. “Not self-aware exactly, anyway.” He stopped for a moment. “Am I self-aware, do you think? Or am I just responding to a very large decision matrix that continually refreshes itself with new information?” Deet stared at Rogers suddenly. “Are you merely a very large decision matrix that—”

  “Stop,” Rogers said. “Just stop. I really don’t need this right now.”

  Deet beeped. “Fine. My point was that there’s something in their default, out-of-the-box character that keeps bringing them back to the point where we shut them all down. I think they were made from the very beginning for that task.”

  Rogers thought about that a moment. If the droids came factory-designed to try to take over the ship, then the problem wasn’t with the droids—it was with the factory.

  “Who made them?” he asked.

  “There are several inactive lines of code that reference patents, trademarks, and all that, for a company called Zeus Holdings, Inc.”

  “So, we just ask them.”

  “Yeah,” Deet said. “Let me just use my [EXPLETIVE] droid magic to lift the communications net and pull a phone out of my [ANATOMICAL REFERENCE]. I’ll let you know what they say.”

  Rogers scowled. “You don’t have to be such an anatomical reference about it.”

  “Without access to the larger net, I can’t get too much. They’re a robotics company that started maybe half a century ago, but I couldn’t find a base of operations. It’s possible they’re entirely space-based.”

  “Alright,” Rogers said. “If and when we get out of this mess, we’ll do a little more research and see what we can find about this company. It sounds shady.”

  “I don’t see what the comparative darkness caused by the interception of rays of light from an object has to do with this.”

  Sighing, Rogers stood as the up-line announced they’d reached the command deck. “I thought we were over this whole figure of speech thing. It just means, you know, that it’s not, um, aboveboard?”

  “What board?”

  “No,” Rogers said, waving his hands in the air nonsensically. “Just . . . it’s suspicious. Okay? Suspicious. That’s the word.”

  Deet made a whirring noise that sounded very frustrated. “Well, why didn’t you just say that?”

  Rogers ran his hands through his beard, the only companion on this ship that wasn’t crazy, crazy, or crazy. You know, the kind of crazy that led to the sight of someone riding a lion into the bridge.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked Corporal Tunger. “And why are you riding a lion . . . again?”

  “I’ve been assigned to this mission!” Tunger said excitedly, clapping his hands. The lion stopped and stooped down to let him dismount. “And I’m riding a lion because I can ride a lion, sir. Do you know many people who can ride a lion?”

  Rogers had to admit that no, he did not.

  “You’re the zookeeper,” Rogers said carefully, knowing that Tunger was easily offended. “While I value your skills . . .” He looked nervously at the lion, who was licking his paws. “. . . I’m not sure I quite understand how that applies to negotiations.”

  Tunger puffed up his chest and grinned, wild-eyed. “Aie urm yer inturpruter!”

  “Marshmallows,” Rogers warned.

  “Your interpreter,” Tunger said. “You’ll need a cultural and linguistic expert if you are to succeed in your negotiations, sir. I am just the man for the job. I believe your deputy assigned me to the mission.”

  Deet, Rogers thought. I am going to degauss you.

  Deet might have chuckled.

  “Oh,” Rogers said, his mind racing. How could he, very politely, tell Tunger that there was no way in hell he was letting him come?

  “It’s just an accent,” Rogers said. “It’s not like they’re speaking a different language or anything.”

  Tunger said something to him that might have resembled the sound of a hippopotamus giving driving directions.

  “What?” Rogers asked.

  “See?” Tunger said. “You need me.”

  Rogers licked his lips. Maybe Tunger was right, though Rogers had no way of knowing what actual Thelicosans sounded like. McSchmidt had been a dirty bastard of a spy, but he’d trained himself to speak like a Meridan.

  “But,” Rogers said, a stroke of brilliance hitting him, “if you come with me on this mission, your chances of ever becoming a spy will be ruined. They’ll see you, and I’m sure they’ll make a record of your presence. If you act as my, uh, interpreter, your chances of a cloak-and-dagger existence are reduced to nil.”

  This gave Tunger pause—thank god, Rogers thought—and his face twisted into something that might have been actual, contemplative thought.

  “Sir,” Tunger said slowly, looking at the floor. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

  “Really, there’s not a lot of thought necessary,” Rogers said hastily.

  Tunger took a deep breath and then met Rogers’ eyes again. “I’ll never be a good spy.”

  A stab of pity shot through Rogers. That look in Tunger’s eyes, like a puppy who’d just realized that peeing on the floor was simply something you didn’t do, made Rogers feel ashamed of himself. Tunger had never been anything but loyal, even if he was a bit irritating, and Rogers had done nothing but browbeat the man and discourage him from achieving his dreams. Probably too much. And now he’d apparently pushed the man into the dark corners of self-doubt, where he’d obviously concluded—however accurately—that he was just too dumb to be a spy.

  “Listen, Tunger,” Rogers said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder in a way that seemed both fatherly and extremely awkward. “You’
re a good troop. Merida is proud to have you. So don’t you ever think that you’re not good enough.”

  For a moment, Rogers thought he’d gotten through to the corporal. Tunger’s expression changed from reassured to very confused, and he finally gave Rogers a grin.

  “Wow, thanks, Captain! But that’s not what I meant. I know I have all the skills. I’d just miss my animals too much. And I can’t keep a secret.” Tunger bobbed his head enthusiastically. “So, you see, that’s why I’m coming with you. This way I can put all my practice to use and still stay with my children.”

  Rogers stared at him, openmouthed, for a moment.

  “Well,” Tunger said, “I’d better make sure everything is ready. See you on the shuttle.”

  “Wait,” Rogers said, pointing to the lion. “You’re just going to leave him here on the bridge?”

  Tunger slapped his forehead. “Silly me!” He turned to the lion and made a complicated series of clicking noises, after which the lion slowly bowed his head and tromped off toward the up-line that would lead him back down to the zoo deck. Rogers had reservations about letting a lion roam loose around the ship, but somehow he knew he had more to fear from Tunger than from the lion.

  * * *

  I. Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. They just fell down.

  An Indecent Proposal

  The long metallic corridor of the docking bridge reminded Rogers all too vividly of the one he’d gone through to get from the Lumos onto the administration outpost where he’d been reinstated into the military. He remembered the feeling of knowing his fate had been sealed, the crushing weight of expectation suffocating him with every step. He’d been sure the local magistrate was going to convict him of a litany of crimes and then sentence him to the salt mines on Parivan for the rest of his life. Now that he was walking—well, floating, really—down another bridge extension onto an enemy ship, he couldn’t help but be alarmed by the parallels. Though it had turned out alright in the end, hadn’t it?

  If one could consider being harassed—and then beaten senseless—by droids, nearly killed several times, sacrificing his personal ship, and ending up as the lapdog of the most incompetent admiral in the galaxy “alright.”

  Maybe it wasn’t such a reassuring parallel.

  “This is so exciting,” Tunger muttered as he kept pace with Rogers through the bridge. It wasn’t a long extension—more like a twenty-foot tube of metal—but Rogers wasn’t in much of a rush to get to the other side.

  “I don’t know if that’s the word I’d use,” he said.

  “It’s just, I’ve never met a real Thelicosan before,” Tunger said. “It’s all so mysterious. I hope they like me.”

  “This isn’t a popularity contest,” Rogers said. “And besides, you met McSchmidt, didn’t you?”

  “He was pretending to be a Meridan,” Tunger said. “It doesn’t count.”

  The abrupt entrance into free fall as soon as they left the shuttle’s gravity generation system was unnerving, but Rogers had lived enough of his recent life in his old zero-g stateroom to adapt quickly. Tunger was having a bit more trouble, though bouncing off the walls like a soccer ball in slow motion didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it.

  “Stop giggling, Tunger,” Rogers said. “This is a sensitive wartime negotiation. And if you’re going to be my ‘translator’ or whatever ridiculous title you’ve given yourself, you’re going to remain quiet. If I really can’t understand them, which I doubt, you are to repeat exactly what I say and translate everything they say word for word. No interpretations. Not even any hand gestures. Got it?”

  Tunger seemed completely unaffected by Rogers’ dour tone and veiled insults. “Yes, sir! I’ll be as mum as a mummer.”

  “Good.”

  They reached the other end of the bridge and stood before a very ordinary-looking hatch. It was just a circular piece of metal leading into the belly of the Ambuscade, with no identifying markings except a very large number three painted near what Rogers assumed was the top of the door. Around the hatch he could see the variable-width sealing clamps used to adapt the bridge’s width to the Ambuscade hatch’s diameter. He glanced at them nervously.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” Tunger said, “the docking computer said the seal was fine.”

  “Never trust a computer,” Rogers muttered. He turned his attention back to the door. “Well, what do we do?”

  Without answering, Tunger reached forward and knocked.

  Rogers chuckled. Sometimes he just wanted to pat Tunger on the head and tell him to run along and play. “I’m not really sure—”

  Something metallic shifted inside the hatch, and a few moments later it opened.

  “Well,” Rogers said, clearing his throat. “Alright, then.”

  The airlock separating the Ambuscade from empty space was small, barely big enough for Rogers alone, but Tunger decided to squeeze himself in there as well. Combined with the rapid reintroduction of gravity, it made for a very awkward couple of seconds while the Thelicosans ran through their hatch-opening protocols, but at least this time Rogers wasn’t with a sweaty old man’s bare ass. Rogers was learning to live a life of comparison. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but compared to a life of noncomparison, it wasn’t so bad.

  Luckily, his close encounter with the zookeeper—which educated him a little bit about the effects of living with animals on one’s body odor—lasted only a few moments. Rogers felt most of his thoughts fall away as the interior part of the hatch began to open. He was about to get his first glimpse of “Bellicose Thelicosa.” He really hoped the marines were ready if this got out of hand.

  Rogers wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting. Maybe a trio of armed guards with knives in their teeth and plasma grenades strapped to bandoliers, or something. Whatever he’d been thinking, he would have been hard pressed to come up with a math textbook open to a page on differential equations. A pencil, adding to the archaic nature of the display, was tied to the edge of the table with a string.

  “What is this?” Rogers said.

  “I can explain, sir,” Tunger said. “I’ve been studying Thelicosan culture. This is a standard greeting. Is it differential equations?”

  “Yes,” Rogers said, bewildered. “How did you know?”

  “It indicates the character of official meetings,” Tunger said. “Differential equations are only used with respected enemies. Had this been long division, it would have communicated that they thought they were above us.” Tunger took a meaningful pause. “Had it been multiplication flash cards, we would be dead.”

  Rogers swallowed. Thank god for differential equations, then. “Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Solve it, sir.”

  Frowning, Rogers leaned over and, doing some quick sketching in the margins of the page, wrote down the answer. It really wasn’t that difficult, and being an engineer with a flair for the old-fashioned, Rogers was used to solving these sorts of things without a calculator. He wondered if that made him very Thelicosan.

  “That was fast,” Tunger said.

  “Engineer,” Rogers said. “Now what?”

  “Nothing,” Tunger said. “The solution doesn’t really matter at all. It just shows that you acknowledge their greeting and accept its terms. If you’d wanted to, you could have really insulted them by tearing out the page, not showing your work, or writing the phrase ‘it depends.’ ”

  “Ah,” Rogers said. “Well. Let’s move on, then.”

  As if putting the pencil down had sent out a summons, a short, pale man appeared before them. “Appeared” seemed an apt term, since the man very closely resembled a ghost. Everything about him seemed to have been soaked in paint thinner, from his fair, stringy hair down to his bony wrists. Yet despite the man’s looking as though he could be broken in half by a sneeze, Rogers realized with some level of horror that he hadn’t heard the man approaching.

  He was also wearing a weight attached to each of his cheeks. Rog
ers wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  “Greetings,” the man said, the weights swaying with the movement of his mouth and giving his speech a drawn-out, hollow characteristic. “I am Xan Tiu, personal assistant to Grand Marshal Keffoule, with whom you will be meeting very shortly, if you would follow me.”

  Xan’s flat tone and careless delivery actually made Rogers feel like he wanted to fall asleep. The Thelicosan showed no sign at all of being impressed, scared, antagonistic, or alive.

  “See, Tunger?” Rogers said, gesturing at the man. “He doesn’t even really have an accent.”

  “That is because I am a New Neptune immigrant,” Xan said.

  “I see,” Rogers said. That explained the general lack of liveliness; New Neptune was notorious for its lack of creativity or enthusiasm for just about anything. He cleared his throat. “Well, let’s get on with it, then, Mr. Tiu.”

  Xan gave the most imperceptible of nods and then turned abruptly on his heel before heading down the short corridor, turning the corner, and opening a small bay door.

  It led to what appeared to be a supply room, which was connected by corridors to a crew berthing area. The interior of the ship wasn’t any more impressive than the exterior, and Rogers could get no sense for the personnel, since they had either been told to clear out of the hallways or were waiting for him in whatever their meeting room would be. Despite there being no people around, Rogers did his best to school his outer appearance, forcing his body language to say things like “power,” “responsibility,” “command,” and “confidence.” His internal monologue, however, was saying things like “oh shit,” “oh shit,” and “oh shit shit shit.”

  As they made their way through the Ambuscade, Rogers still couldn’t see any more people. It made him both relieved and extremely nervous. It could have been a gesture from the Thelicosans that he had nothing to fear, or they could all be waiting in ambush somewhere. Rogers absently adjusted the rank insignia pinned to his collar. Inside was a microphone and short-range transmitter that would allow Mailn and the rest of the marines to hear his conversations back on the shuttle. If he spoke the code phrase—a phrase so ridiculous it would never be spoken in this context—they’d come rushing in, guns blazing, as marines were wont to do.