Outriders

by Ian Blackport

  “That isn’t how this works,” Harun affirmed. “Before we can discuss compensation, I have to understand your credentials, and how you came upon information implicating the Confederacy. Without a reliable source, your claims are worthless.”

  He hunched his shoulders and wiped a droplet of sweat from his nose. “I, uh, I worked for the Directorate of Espionage and Counterintelligence. My recording station was on Nemain, and I had a security clearance of Eta-7.”

  “Nemain? You were stationed on the moon orbiting Morrigan? Headquarters for the entire Confederacy Starfleet?”

  Jeffrey nodded and jerked his head over one shoulder at some unseen and no doubt imagined threat.

  “Calm down, son,” said Taylor. “You’re jumping at shadows and acting squirrelly, which does nothing but attract notice. The Confederacy marines you see walking around are likely to take an interest if you can’t stay still. Act normal, as though you haven’t got a care, and we’re just a few friends enjoying the day. You can start by lowering the damn hood.”

  A nervous nod greeted him and Jeffrey reached a tentative hand to his hood, pulling the fabric down and uncovering his disheveled mop of hair.

  “Much better. Now you can tell us about your work on Nemain.”

  “I helped monitor, collate and analyze communications collected in the Heliades and any system within two parsecs. We used a data mining quantum algorithm that separated certain key words or phrases from text and audio transmissions. If someone mentioned the word ‘explosion’, we knew about it. If someone mentioned the name of a classified project, unfinished warships still under construction or even systems used by Starfleet for training and exercises, we knew. My specific job was to help sort through transmissions flagged by the DEC and determine what threat they posed. Two months ago—”

  Jeffrey shriveled in nervous agitation when several individuals appeared on either side and he skittered upright, only to become entangled with his chair.

  Tessa planted one firm hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder and shoved him back into the seat as she and the others gathered around their table. “Don’t leave now. I believe you were in the middle of a fascinating story.”

  Jeffrey turned his panicked stare toward Harun, perhaps fearing betrayal or some other equally alarming scenario imagined in his horrified mind.

  “Everything is okay,” Harun assured him. “This is my team. They’re the people who’ll verify your information and ensure your safety. These are the ones who you want on your side.”

  The anxiety-ridden analyst steadied his breathing and nodded, though still surveyed each stranger with jerky motions resembling a bird. “Two, uh, two months ago I noticed odd communications originating on Jiaolong, but the recipient always shifted. Not only among the Heliades, but outside the system, too. Though never beyond the Neaera Sector. The receiver was aboard a Solstice-class battlecruiser currently assigned to patrols on the fringes of the Heliades. I identified the warship as Odysseus, commanded by Rear Admiral Ludovico Salamanca.”

  “You have your own naval officers under surveillance?” inquired Reyes.

  “We have everyone under surveillance. Navy, army, police and emergency divisions, politicians, government employees.”

  “Do they know?”

  “The highest ranked flag officers believe we only monitor junior personnel. But captains, majors, admirals are all watched as well. Our jurisdiction is anyone who might present a threat to the Confederacy, and everyone is a potential threat.”

  “I reckon you don’t deliver your findings to Parliament often,” Kyla quipped.

  “We don’t answer to Parliament or the chancellor.”

  “Ah, yes. The freedom of a democracy.” She beckoned with one hand as though casually giving him permission to continue. “Sorry for the interruption. Please continue. It’s enthralling to hear how all our supposed rights are trampled on with such routine disregard.”

  “Ignore her,” Harun affirmed. “She’s abrasive and doesn’t understand how intelligence work is conducted. Returning to the matter at hand, what was discussed between Admiral Salamanca and the person on Jiaolong?”

  “Typical military threat assessment,” Jeffrey said. “The kind undertaken by naval strategists. Warship strength, population figures, naval facilities, troop deployment, technological advancements. But the numbers and transponder identifications made no sense to me. Nothing corresponded with known Confederacy data, at least not until I investigated further and accessed our archives. The threat assessment matched a probability study done earlier in the year by Starfleet Intelligence under the codename Rogue Infinity, evaluating the capabilities of non-aligned worlds in the event of war.”

  “Admiral Salamanca was discussing the military strength of Elatha and Delbaeth,” Tessa said.

  Jeffrey nodded and fiddled with his fingers. “Frontline officers don’t ordinarily have clearance to investigate independent worlds, not during a time of peace. But he was providing information to someone that listed all your warships and construction facilities, along with every known outpost. He was detailing your ability to wage war.”

  “Who was he communicating with?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever it is, they have the highest clearance and security protocols. I couldn’t identify them without proper authorization from the Directorate’s chief analyst.”

  Harun leaned forward on the table, his interest and focus razor sharp. “But it was undeniably someone within the Confederacy, rather than a Delbaethi operative or a third-party individual hoping to profit from the data?”

  “Without a doubt,” Jeffrey answered.

  “How did you respond to this realization?”

  “I didn’t do anything at first, because the conversations didn’t trigger any official security flags. Naval officers discussing warships is deemed a legitimate aspect of their duty, rather than a threat. But I continued seeing these strange messages about the Elathan and Delbaethi militaries. Then one day the Toraigh system was mentioned, specifically the fourth planet Oilean, which houses a Delbaethi orbital shipyard. Only Rear Admiral Salamanca wasn’t discussing this with his mysterious contact located on Jiaolong, but with someone else on Turan in the Tarquinia system. Two days later a terrorist attack was launched against the Oilean shipyard that destroyed several warships.”

  “The Delbaethi government blamed us for the unprovoked attack,” Harun snorted, “which helped push us to the brink of war.”

  “I couldn’t ignore the intercepted data, not after the bombing. I brought the recordings to our Chief Analyst, but he refused to listen. He told me I was fabricating conspiracies and that mentions of the Tuatha system didn’t matter. The DEC handles internal surveillance; external investigations were a matter for the Federal Reconnaissance Agency, and the two organizations don’t have an encouraging track record of cooperating. Each time I was told to dismiss the communications as irrelevant and lacking merit. When I repeated my concerns with him the following day, he reassigned me to go through low priority backlogged recordings in our archives. The least experienced analysts handle that normally.”

  “That doesn’t sound like routine incompetency. Someone in the DEC is actively trying to make the investigation disappear.”

  “Our Chief Analyst was accused of corruption and accepting bribes last year, but the allegation was dismissed on lack of credible evidence. Even if he isn’t actively crooked, I knew I couldn’t get anyone to notice this information by going through him. And our agency is rigidly stratified. If I tried going over the Chief Analyst’s head, I’d either be ignored or find myself relocated to a non-essential position without access to our network. But I couldn’t stay quiet, not if my suspicions were true. So I copied all my data to an external drive, purged evidence from my computer and reached out to the Elathan government.”

  Tessa sucked her teeth and frowned. “If what you say is true, none of this constitutes irrefutable proof. Discussions of our fleet capabilities can be linked to a leak of the Confederacy’s
own Rogue Infinity analysis, which is unsettling though entirely legal. Even the mention of Oilean before the bombing can be written off as a coincidence. If you searched long enough, it’s only natural you’d find someone, somewhere, discussing a world before it was attacked. Sixty-odd billion humans in the Astraea Cluster, of course every star system is mentioned at any given time. That’s statistical probability for you.”

  “There’s far more than I’ve mentioned,” Jeffrey asserted. “When I downloaded the data, I included every related file with a wide range of keywords. I have everything we’ve recorded in the past year connected to the Tuatha system, Admiral Salamanca, the Odysseus and the unknown beneficiaries on Jiaolong and Turan. I don’t have the resources to sift through it all by myself, but your intelligence agency does. You’ll find your evidence in there. I’m certain of it.”

  “Speaking of which, where is your evidence?” questioned Harun.

  “I have it, uh, with me.” Jeffrey quietly waited for Harun to speak again, but when nothing further was said the analyst understood the implicit message. With reluctance he reached deep into a pocket and brought out a square disc with narrow, perforated extensions running the length of each side.

  “What in the hell is that?” asked Connor.

  Rinko leaned forward and held out one hand with chipped fingernail polish, though did not touch the disc. “Holy shit. You transferred the data onto a TL-wide?”

  “Internal security doesn’t search for documents in this format,” Jeffrey answered. “The frequencies don’t register in their scanning and surveillance protocols. Not to mention if I was accosted by security, they have no readily available method for scanning its contents. TL-wide discs are a curiosity rather than a threat. This was the only way I could get the information off Nemain.”

  Taylor sighed and tried to remain composed in the manner befitting a patient person. “Rinko, what pray tell is a TL-wide? I don’t understand tech-speak.”

  “Right. Sorry, boss. The format was common for storing data close to seventy years ago, primarily preferred for its high capacity and difficulty to crack without authorization. But something better came along within the next decade and TL-wides fell out of favor, as is the norm. The main takeaway point is that our freighter can’t read this.”

  “You mean we can’t access the information stored on here?”

  Jeffrey lifted his hands in a compliant stance. “I promise everything you need, every little secret and intercepted communication, is here.”

  “Oh, goodie,” said Taylor. “A promise. That’s worth risking our lives and ship for. Some stranger’s say-so.”

  “It’s all here. You can take the disc and check for yourselves.”

  “After paying you, presumably,” Kyla asserted. “Trouble is you can’t prove anything to us at this moment.”

  Taylor grinned, though he felt no mirth or conviviality. “You mean to tell me this trip, the entire reason we’re here, the whole mission itself, might all be for nothing?” He uttered a wilful, irrepressible bout of laughter and faced Harun. “If this errand is a waste of our time, I’m leaving you and sunshine stranded on an uninhabited planet. If you’re real lucky and I’m feeling magnanimous, it’ll be one with an atmosphere.”

  “The question then,” Harun said in his maddeningly stoic voice, “is whether we trust him.”

  “I don’t even know the kid. And he was employed by the Confederacy, which is already two strikes against him. I would’ve preferred if he was a freelance mercenary, because at least we’d have a little something in common.”

  Harun held the disc in his hand and looked at Rinko. “Kaneshiro, what facilities would have a machine able to read this data?”

  “We need an ArcaVox. Except they’re difficult to find. The technology is more than fifty years outdated.”

  “But there must still be places that have a functioning one. If only for archiving purposes.”

  “Sure. Trouble is I can’t tell you with any acceptable level of confidence. But my best guesses are collectors, certain schools, maybe some corporations that have old data storage. Truth be told, your secretive government service probably has one locked away.”

  “Returning to Elatha is not an option at the moment. Not until the evidence is already translated.”

  Rinko shrugged and accepted the disc from Harun, turning it over in her fingers as though hoping to unlock its secrets. “Lex has a weird fascination with retro technology, and might know where to find one. She’s the better person to ask.”

  “I intend to. Hopefully she knows of a location.”

  Connor furrowed his brow and leaned forward on the table. “Are we prepared to say our goodbyes to Jeff here and just trust he’s being honest with us?”

  “It’s putting a lot of faith in someone who might not deserve it,” added Tessa. She cast an entirely unsubtle glare toward the analyst, finally expressing a thought Taylor agreed with. “Maybe too much.”

  Harun tapped a gentle forefinger against the TL-wide disc perched between everyone. “If what Jeffrey claims is true, isn’t the potential worth risking our lives for?”

  “Your lives,” Taylor corrected. “Not ours. We didn’t sign up for someone else’s damn crusade.”

  “I…I thought you were all with Elathan intelligence,” Jeffrey remarked.

  “Nah. I’m little different from you, kid. Not thrilled to be here.”

  “Your motivation and willingness to help are not issues requiring our attention,” Harun countered. “I’m certain we’ll be hearing about them ad nauseam in the coming weeks anyway.”

  “Maybe you’ll finally acknowledge my grievances,” muttered Taylor. “Wouldn’t that be a treat?”

  Tessa smacked the table surface and offered one of her ever-so-charming glowers. “We aren’t doing this now. Swallow your bitterness, Captain. Our sole concern is deciding what to do with the freelancer.”

  “We could always abduct the skeevy analyst and hold him until we get a chance to verify his promises,” suggested Kyla.

  Jeffrey eyed her in unbridled terror with his gaping mouth laboring to form words but finding the task too demanding.

  Harun spoke before another person could frighten the lad beyond compliance. “What compensation did you have in mind?”

  “Uh, fifty million.”

  To Harun’s credit, he scarcely flinched when their analyst demanded such an absurd quantity. “You’d better consider the benefits of removing a zero from that figure. Five million is exceptionally generous for your contribution.”

  “No, I need fifty,” Jeffrey claimed. His voice steadied with a newfound resolve. “I thought I could steal this data and then return to Nemain with no one the wiser. But I…I wasn’t good enough. I reached Morrigan without any difficulty, and when I tried to access a network in the Heliades relay I noticed that my security clearance was revoked.”

  Tessa leaned in close enough for him to feel her hot breath on his face, and she spoke between clenched teeth. “You’re wanted by the damned Confederacy?”

  “I, uh…I don’t know. Security clearances can be withdrawn if someone is under suspicion of breaching protocols. I might only be suspended and then reinstated if they can’t pinpoint the data leak on me. They may not even know what I stole, or whether anything was stolen at all. Irregularities in my work performance would be enough to warrant an investigation. But I didn’t take any chances. I bribed my way onto a freighter leaving Morrigan and coming here, and I’ve stayed on the station since.”

  “All I’m hearing is that the Authority’s intelligence branch might be searching for you as we speak. And despite knowing this you were stupid enough to lure us all to Balor, which is under the guns of two entire fleets.”

  “I wanted to reach the Valkyries or Eridanos, but I can’t get to any independent systems from here without passing through at least two under Confederacy control. Staying on Milesian seemed safer than risking detention in several customs and immigration centers.”

  �
��Safer for you, but not us.” A fire blossomed in Tessa’s jade eyes and she appeared ready to shoot him on the spot. “If your Directorate thinks you’re guilty of a crime, then we’re all culpable by association. We’ll all be arrested you fool, independent citizenship or not.”

  Jeffrey shook his head, though uncertainty was written on his face. “I’ve been monitoring Confederacy security broadcasts and my name hasn’t appeared.”

  “Not publicly. If the Authority doesn’t want to announce an embarrassing data breach, they’ll come for you quietly. They might even decide silencing you with a long-range shot is the safer alternative. You’ve put us all at risk with your stupidity. We ought to take your disc and abandon you right here.”

  “No, please. I…I don’t know if I can go back to Morrigan. I need the money to reach an independent system and build a new identity.”

  “What you need is to convince me why I should spare your life.”

  Panic crept into Jeffrey’s voice as it teetered on the edge of cracking. “I brought you proof the Confederacy is responsible for the war in Tuatha.”

  “Little good it’ll do us if we’re all arrested as dissidents and traitors.” Tessa faced her commanding officer with tension evident in her stiff body language. “We need to leave now.”

  “Agreed,” replied Harun, his gaze still focused on Jeffrey. “We’ll transfer five million to the account you provided us.”

  “But—”

  “The price is non-negotiable. Consider yourself fortunate we’ve deigned to reimburse you at all, since your data is worthless without a specific machine we might not even be able to find. However, I can’t afford to dismiss your claims entirely, which leaves me trapped in an unenviable position. I think you know my hands are tied and are hoping to exploit my situation for your own financial gain. But I can only tolerate your disingenuous behavior to a certain degree. Accept five million, or accept nothing. In either case, we’ll be leaving with the data. The only question is what you want to go home with.”