The bay doors closed behind me, and the overhead lights began to power on. The building was a large empty warehouse about ten meters wide by twenty meters deep by ten tall. Off to one side appeared to be an office space and a refresher room. I could see the bolt holes where racking had previously been and on the far wall was a charging dock.
I set the sloop down and shifted its reactors into standby mode. I was disengaging the canopy when I heard a thump on the front hood and nearly knocked myself unconscious jumping into it. “Ari, I cannot employ countermeasures. The controls are located center console.” I was reaching for a large red button on autopilot when I stopped dead, staring at what appeared to be a cat. No, definitely a cat. I had almost fried the poor thing because of our combined paranoia.
It sat down on the front bonnet and looked back at me, equally curious. “Ari, why is there a feline on the sloop?” Make that three of us. I told him the hood was probably warmer than the floor. Or the cat was letting us know who the boss was. “But what is it doing here?” That question got a genuine laugh from me, as I explained cats go where they want, and we were probably in its home.
I popped the canopy while the tabby kept looking. It was fearless, I’ll give it that. Probably also had a keen sense of how far away I was and how fast the average person could move. I wasn’t a threat to it, so it wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction.
I hopped out of the sloop and onto firm ground. Of all the places I had ever been in the last few decades, nowhere had felt like this rundown warehouse. Took me a moment to realize why, but I was no longer tensed up. On higrav worlds, I had to use my strength to counteract gravity. In low-g places, I was fighting my own abilities. But on Terra, I didn’t have to do that. I was able to actually relax all my muscles the way they were designed to be. The tension bled away. I hadn’t noticed it earlier because of flight from Heart to the city and the uneasiness while traveling in the open.
I was back in the singular place in the galaxy where I could be me. “Ari, is everything alright? You just had a major endorphin spike, but I am not seeing a cause.” I let him know I was fine. More than fine even. Time to get this mission going. We had work to do and I was finally in the right frame of mind to do it.
Chapter 21
Throwing enough money at them can make simple problems go away rather quickly, but some things take time like getting our base of operations up to spec. Getting equipment was easy. Heart rented a box van and ordered everything he thought we might need for pickup. Using the larger truck rather than the sloop made traveling around town less stressful. No one looks twice at a delivery guy when he is picking up items that are already paid for. Dockworkers want a signature and the bay cleared for the next customer. Setting up the equipment was the hard part. I didn’t have helpful drones like back on Heart. If we were on Luna, the tasks would have been easy but operating inside standard gravity turned out to be a huge time burner. I had forgotten how tedious things became when I had to deal with their full weight by myself.
We had converted the office into a bedroom for the cat and me. She had decided we were her new servants, resulting in ever-increasing deliveries to our hideout including tinned cat food, kibble, and litter. The nice part was we didn’t have rodents chewing through the maze of electrical wires running throughout the warehouse. The unfortunate part was dealing with a litter box. Our new mistress wouldn’t go near the automated model I had purchased, but seemed very content with a lower-tech solution. I think more from spite than fear. I counted the box as a fair trade-off, as I had slept in other places with vermin before, and was willing to put up with quite a bit to avoid rodents in the future. Nothing worse than discovering my apples had been eaten by rats.
We converted a solid corner of the warehouse into a command center of sorts. We used the sloop’s reactors for primary power so we didn’t need the charging dock other than as a backup. Our goal being to keep our external signature as small as possible. Certain things were unavoidable like net access, as we were trying to limit Heart’s direct links, but this solution was better than painting a target on him by connecting directly to a satellite. With that in mind, we set up the best computers we could find and some very large view screens. Nothing would replace Heart, but instead gave us another way to access the local feeds.
We probably could have done all of this from the physical safety of the trench, but as we started our research we soon found I would need to duck out into the city for information that simply wasn’t available on the net. The net was a powerful tool but it wasn’t all-encompassing. It couldn’t provide context like people could or help clarify things that didn’t make sense. I needed to be outside to do that. My reconnaissance training came in handy beyond only buying food. I did that as well being a slave to my stomach. Heart’s galley was well stocked and I’m a fair cook, but I know maybe thirty recipes off the top of my head. Just enough not to get sick of eating the same thing night after night. One of the greatest things about being planet-side is restaurants and street vendors. The smell of food is everywhere. I’d catch a whiff of something, be able to buy it, and eat the goodie right then and there. The more we scratched the surface, the more apparent it became establishing a base in Auckland was the right call. Of course, that was probably my stomach talking.
General Campbell had pointed out the Terra situation had blindsided him. Our keystone issue, so we started at Terra’s exit from the Galactic Union. There are a little over one hundred nation groups in the Terran Alliance, the organization who had previously belonged to the Union. Looking at the votes, there were eighty-four votes to secede. Just over three-quarters, but the votes for and against didn’t make any sense. Nations who were normally aligned weren’t, while other nations who voted against each due to nothing more than longstanding grudges voted together. We couldn’t find the pattern and were hoping the information added afterward would make the picture look right.
This had me thinking about an older model of jump jet the Legion used to have. It became notorious for a design flaw called “one switch too many.” What would happen was the power circuits could only handle so much energy at a time. If a pilot engaged too many systems at once drawing too much power, the largest power source would shut off. Unfortunately, the three biggest systems were the engines, weapons, and shields. Depending on what the pilot was doing any one of those could be the largest at that point. The problem is fairly obvious from a combat perspective. The pilot ran the risk of not being able to fight back, not having any defense, or not being able to move, and worse not knowing which if he happened to draw too much power from something completely unrelated like artificial gravity or even lights in the cargo bay. A seemingly unrelated power draw could cause a complete shutdown of everything else.
What was worse was it became almost impossible to determine there was a flaw in the first place. The triggering system could be anything while the systems being shut down were limited, each usually resulted in a catastrophic failure. Pilots weren’t walking away in big enough numbers to figure out what was creating the issue. The cause was unrelated to the effect. It wasn’t any of the systems fault there was a failure, but instead in the processes or programming themselves.
I fielded my idea to Heart to see if it made sense to him. “I think you may be onto something. We see many similar incidents throughout history where small skirmishes ignited much larger conflicts. If taken by themselves, they should not have had the same ramifications.” So it made me wonder how would that work with the GU and Terra? Were there bigger underlying causes maybe we couldn’t see? “For this much discord? I do not know. I can try to create a model, but I have not been able to identify a real triggering event yet. Logically, this should not have happened.”
That stopped me. I’ve had this explained enough to where I thought I understood it. If he was telling me there was something wrong with the logic, I definitely wanted to know what the hole was. I had him walk me through it. “I have been reviewing all the reports, and the me
dia assessments but they are logically flawed. They are making their logic fit the situation, not the other way around.” I know I wasn’t following now. “Cognitive bias,” Heart stated bluntly. “Because everything points to this, it must be this. However, that only works looking at the situation historically. It would not work if looking at the situation as an evolving event series. The players, for lack of a better word, would not have access to the requisite information for it to transpire that way. What is worse is the sources are feeding off each other compounding the issue.”
All right, I thought I understood that. It couldn’t happen the way folks said because the method required knowledge they wouldn’t have until after the fact. It created a paradox. I posed the question of how it could work if the media sources had it wrong. “Ari, I have to discard most of the data I have, but the only way I can logically see events progressing is if there are forces outside the government manipulating them. However, even though this is logical, it does not make much sense as there is little advantage gained.”
The screens shifted into a different arrangement of maps, charts, and what appeared to be a timeline punctuated by news reports. “Master Dixon always said to look for who profited. There does not seem to be any profit. Not financially, politically, nor any traditional metric. Things actually appear worse.” I watched as he rotated through financial charts and what I could only imagine was comparisons between nations, planets, and corporations. I didn’t want to interrupt him, but I couldn’t keep up. It made me feel like I had to keep asking questions. If no one was gaining an advantage, what was the purpose of attacking us? What would be the point?
“That is something I cannot figure out either. It does not fit in any of the models I have built. If we were interfering in some profit-generating venture, it would make sense. However, there does not appear to be one, therefore, attacking us does nothing.” Heart displayed the missiles and drones on the upper left display. “The action almost appears emotional, vice logical in nature.”
That made me pause. I asked who would have access to the kind of resource as well as a personal investment in wanting us dead. “I have not been able to answer either of those questions. The design used was a common variant. We were still entering the atmosphere when the missiles were launched so I do not know their point of origin. As for the interception drones, all I can reliably say is they came from the north, not a specific place. We were too close to sea level for long range radar to determine anything but a general heading, and due to our own speed and acceleration, there may have been a significant shift as the drones attempted to intercept.” Well, that covered the resource half but begged the question about desire. “It is so foreign a concept to me I cannot quite grasp it. How significant of a threat could we be if there were no advantages? Why would that require us to be removed? I simply cannot make the necessary connections.”
In addition to the General’s initial tasking of scouting Terra to identify any future escalations, we had more mysteries than we could reasonably deal with. We needed to find out who targeted us and why. We also had to find out what had caused the situation to develop.
Using my longstanding philosophy of trying not to overthink problems, we decided to break it down into manageable parts. Since we had essentially restarted the mission from this new location, we decided to rebuild the process from scratch as well. We knew what the General wanted, and had a good idea of how he wanted it done. Answering the questions became our major objective. Using those, we prioritized and decided the last question really needed to be answered first. If we figured out the cause, it should allow us to spot sequences leading up to it. As for our shadowy antagonist, that perhaps was the most complex task and had the least viable leads. We decided it was necessary information, but nothing we could focus directly on, therefore becoming our secondary mission.
Applying the old process reminded me of something. When I had taken the lead on this mission, I had forgotten the old adage; no plan survives initial contact. I had also forgotten no matter how good my leadership was unless they were with me, it was my show. I needed to start taking things into my own hands. That meant the cat, Heart, and I had to get this done on our own.
Chapter 22
My Legion time had prepared me for many of life’s challenges. Unfortunately, it had not prepared me for dealing with the colossal amount of information we were attempting to sort through. We were caught in a position where it became essential to filter information down to a usable rate, but almost impossible to know what was useful or not. My gut told me everything was important, where my brain told me there was no way I could use all the data.
“It is all about developing the correct model.” Heart was explaining how he was attempting to sort the data we already had. “If we can find a good comparison, we may be able to extrapolate information we need from that.” That made sense. Take two similar concepts, and try to apply similar logic to find missing information.
I was first introduced to the idea when I was going through demolitions training. We were started off on sims with what was considered a standard loadout. The gear we would normally have available. Our instructor had told us “Look, if you can knock down this building, you’ll be able to knock down any of them. It’s about knowing how it’s put together. The trick is remembering the small things and then taking those and applying them elsewhere.” He was right.
The sims got progressively more difficult, not just in understanding the engineering concepts, but also in learning how to manage resources. Applying enough force allows the destruction of anything. The purpose of the training was to teach us how to be both effective and efficient because we never knew when we would be able to resupply our munitions; therefore, beneficial to be extremely light with the explosives. More than that, the exercise involved understanding all of the tools we had available.
Much like our inventory after crashing into the trench, we had to reassess what we actually had available. I was used to operating as part of a two-man team. Part of Legion procedure was always having someone as backup. Having Heart check my math met the need. I’m smart enough to know when I need help and learned early to fight my ego enough to actually ask for it. My major flaw if anything was a tendency towards tunnel vision when coming to what I considered accomplishing missions. I don’t give up and even worse is I have a hard time realizing a situation may have changed enough to where the original objectives may have changed priorities. Heart was able to challenge me on that, and after we had basically reset the mission from scratch my approach changed to something I was much more familiar with.
Previously I had been so focused on our goal and the mission as a whole I failed to realize my personality wasn’t meshing with it. Not that I wasn’t capable, or willing, it was that I could do things much more effectively my own way. That epiphany allowed us to change the model we were operating under. Although I had a crash course in reconnaissance, I couldn’t claim it as my specialty any more than being a pilot. The skill relied on stealth, counter to how I had operated over my career. What we needed to do was make noise.
“Ari, are you sure that’s wise? We still do not know who attempted to murder us. Drawing unnecessary attention to ourselves may not be a good course of action.” I pointed out one of our major objectives was finding out who was behind the situation, and if we hunkered down, eventually our adversary could find us and likely at the least opportune time. Our safety relied on perfect vigilance, whereas their ability to remove us was simple in comparison. If we could draw them out in a controlled environment, we might be able to get some useful information.
“Are you suggesting we use you for bait? We barely survived the last time. Tempting fate again would be foolhardy.” I wasn’t a fan either. I told him I would prefer to create phantoms of ourselves to use as bait instead. We didn’t need to be anywhere near the trap. “That could work.” I could almost hear him thinking as he was running scenarios through his huge brain. “We have been hindered by the availability
of information. Perhaps we can use that to our advantage. It would be simple to create reports indicating our survival. Hiding the source of the information would be the most difficult aspect. But if our goal is only to create a decoy we may not have to expend as much effort.”
I was cautious about broaching the idea that came to me. I asked if we could use a lifeboat to create the impression we died, then was it possible to do the same to show we were alive. “Oh! An excellent thought. Rather than us creating the reports, we rely on nearby residents to do it. Doing so would remove a large portion of the risk, but still accomplishes our goal.” His genuine happiness at the concept took me aback. From my view, I had effectively asked him to cut off a leg, but he reasoned the approach was a good idea. I explained my trepidation. “It is not part of me. Any more than your boots are part of you. We constantly speak of resources, but we have not included much of my assets in those.” He had a hell of a point. I had always included myself as an expendable resource but hadn’t shown Heart the same courtesy. We were partners in this endeavor and I needed to treat him as I treated myself.
It was still hard to drop preconceived idea regarding Heart, but I outlined what I hoped was a simple plan. Within my experience, that less complex plans had fewer things to go wrong. All we needed was a seed we could grow from, and using the tools we already had we should be able to accomplish what we wanted. The idea was to have Heart jettison one of his other lifeboats, then direct it to shore. Anywhere we wanted since the lifeboat was remotely controlled, unlike the sloop. From there we would wait until word spread of its discovery and if lucky provoke a response. We hadn’t been able to track the source on the prior murder attempt because we weren’t expecting it. With proper planning, the same problem wouldn’t arise for this ruse.
Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata Page 12
