All of the repair work — and tending to the casualties — had worn him down. And he was not alone. He blinked the acid cobwebs out of his eyes, and scanned the mess hall. Tired faces everywhere, the usual background noise of the mess replaced by low murmurs and the sharp clink of cutlery.
“Good morning, Klaus.” A weary voice rasped behind him.
He barely recognized the voice. “And good evening to you, James.” He waved tiredly to the seat opposite him. Because of all the casualties, everybody's work schedules had been scrambled, and so Klaus and the miner were now on different day/night cycles. Even more annoying, Klaus was stuck on standard repair duty while James's unique programming ability got him the far more interesting assignments. “What's on your plate for today?” He realized the double meaning only afterwards.
“Lots.” Klaus couldn't tell which question the miner had answered, and was too tired to care. James set down his plate. Half-pound hamburger with a side of cheese tortellini. Apparently the food menu was just as abnormal as the crew schedules. “Couldn't get the communications pulsers repaired, but I've an idea.”
“Sounds interesting. What's your idea?”
“Well, they can't repair the pulsers. They're scrap. But my idea...” James took a bite of his burger, talking around the edges, “It turns out the number-six reactor only lost its fuel feeds. The grav foci still work.”
“Ah, I see where you're going. But the code on those is proprietary, and quantum-encoded. We don't have the tools to re-write it above base level.”
“Yeah, Rockman's always been tight-lipped when it comes to programming. Never heard of anybody even reading their code, much less editing it.” The miner grinned. “But, as you said, they didn't block access to machine-level programming.”
Klaus did a double-take. He'd never known James to be so long-winded. Not unless something was on his mind. “So? Nobody can write —”
James' smile grew.
“Oh, you must be joking.” Klaus continued. He grinned, shaking his head. “You can actually write base-level?”
“Yep. Learned it years ago. Have to, really, out here. Can't be soft, like you Earthers.” He smiled to take the edge off his words, then shrugged. “Others I know out here who've done the same.”
“Huh. Well, that makes sense.” Klaus shook his head. “Still, though, what an enormous pain. Just the thought of looking at all that binary makes my eyes hurt.”
“That's 'cause you read it with your eyes, not your mind.”
Klaus snorted. “That's cheating.”
“Perhaps.”
“Heh.” Klaus leaned back, looking around the compartment. This mess hall was the one nearest to the civilian section, and so the majority of the remaining civilians on board ate here. Their heads were down, and they ate largely in silence. And he did not understand it. He waited till James looked up, then asked, “Look, could I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
Klaus waved his hand to the room around them. “This is the first time I've eaten down in the civilian decks, and everybody seems so glum. D'you know what's got everybody so down? I mean, we're alive, for God's sake! We survived an ambush, a pitched battle, and the first mass-scale teleportation ever!”
“What, you can't figure that out?” James looked back at Klaus, head tilted to one side. .
“I can't think of a reason. I figured I'd ask you, since you'd know the people here better," he paused, uncomfortable in the sudden silence. He added, quietly, "Being a local, and all.”
“No, I'm from the Asteroid Belt. Born and raised there. Not a local.” James pointed down along the table they sat at. “There're people from a dozen different colonies here, each colony as different from the others as they are from Earth.” James shook his head and stood to leave. “You Earthers aren't going to be any more popular off-planet if you keep thinking we're all one group. Sure, I disagree with the rebels' actions. That doesn't mean that all of the folks here feel the same." He paused, looked down at the table, then back up. "Some of 'em are pretty shook up about what happened to the Verdun, too.”
“But the rebels attacked us.” Klaus frowned. “Hell, when they ambushed us a week ago, they threw their own men to their deaths just to lure us into attacking. Then they tried to kill us. All of us." He pointed. "Them, too. How can people feel sorry for the rebels after that?”
James balanced his tray in one hand, pointing to himself with the other. “Look, I'm happy enough that we survived. But in order to do that, we had to 'cheat. as you would say, a weapon of mass destruction aboard the Verdun.” His voice hardened. "I had to, God forgive me."
He sat back down, and leaned forward. His voice was serious. “Did you hear? There weren't any lifepods leaving what was left of her. And I can guarantee that some — Hell, most — of the crew on the Verdun were just people, conscripts or near enough to it, doing what they had to do. They didn't deserve that sort of destruction.”
His gaze bored into Klaus', eyes tinged with red.
Klaus blinked. "Er, I never thought about it that way. I'm, ah, sorry that Johann, Murphy and I got you into —."
"Did you know Roberta is Oort Cloud?" interrupted James, his eyes hard.
"What?" blurted Klaus. "I never knew that. If so, I never would have asked her to double-check the code that you were —"
The miner laughed, a dry sound that held absolutely no warmth. "Check my code?" he hissed, "I checked hers. She would have landed that explosion outside their hull, just far enough that your checking software wouldn't spot it." He hung his head. "But I did. God-dammit, I did."
James looked up, eyes glaring at Klaus. Then he shook his head, and added in a low voice. "I dropped it just inside the forward section. Where the officers would be, as far from the crew, from my friends, as I could."
Without another word, he left his tray, stood, and walked out of the room.
Klaus sat still, stunned. He felt bad for James, and for Roberta, now that he knew. But it had all been necessary. Hadn't it? If the rebels hadn't been stopped, they likely would have used their plan to attack Andromeda station, which would have lead to thousands more casualties, even more miners dying. And if they had managed to destroy the main Navy base out in the Oort Cloud, the situation could easily have spiraled out of control, maybe even all-out war. Everyone might have died.
The only way to avoid that had been to destroy the Verdun, and all aboard her.
Of course, nobody in the room, besides Klaus himself, had any idea about the rebels' presumed plans for Andromeda station. And Klaus couldn't tell them, either. Not if he wanted to remain a free man. The Captain had made that clear enough.
He stared at the doorway through which James had left. He had an amazing talent, that miner. Had even tried to find a solution where most everyone could live. It had never occurred to Klaus to fine-tune the warhead's destination as closely as James had. But for someone as skilled as James, it was easy, though. And it might have worked, at least against a more modern ship. Except that the Verdun had an anti-matter drive. It wasn't the warhead that killed that ship, and all aboard her. It was their drive.
It occurred to him that maybe James didn't know that. He was a gifted programmer, to be sure, but that didn't mean he knew anything about drive engineering. Even so, Klaus did not think that the exact mechanism of how the Verdun exploded would make that much difference. Dead was dead.
Still, their actions had saved lives, whether or not they realized how many.
Small consolation for James, though. Or Roberta, for that matter. He was shocked to think that she had nearly gotten them all killed. No wonder she had not returned his calls. Truth be told, if Roberta had sat down right in front of him at that moment, he would have had nothing to say to her, either. It seemed that family and friends were what the Oort Cloud miners truly valued. Duty third, maybe. He would probably never see her again. Logically, he should report her betrayal, but he didn't have the heart for it.
He smiled wryly to himself. W
as he also guilty of putting friends — former friends, at any rate — above duty? So be it.
Review complete, Klaus sighed. That question wasn't so important now. What mattered was the big picture, the rebels and their plot. He clung to the fact that he had acted logically. They had all done the right thing.
He stood to leave, giving the room one last look-over. Every so often, one of the civilians would give him a blank, unreadable stare, and go back to eating. Klaus shivered, his rationality and reason suddenly of little comfort to him. How much did they know, and what did they truly think of him? Maybe he would eat at a different mess hall from now on. He did not feel welcome here.
But that wasn't right, either. One of these Clouders had saved them all. At a great personal cost. His earlier smugness was gone. True enough, Klaus' choices had worked out well enough for him, for Antoniy, for Johann, but certainly not for everyone. With a painful knot in his stomach, Klaus realized that he had much to learn. He took a deep breath, and decided that he would keep eating here, where he could learn.
He'd spent his life learning what made machines work. He was good at it. But it was people, not machines, that had saved his life. Maybe he should think more about what made people work.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Antoniy entered the Captain's office, and stood painfully at attention as the door closed behind him. His hip and leg had been treated well enough in sick bay, but he had refused the pain meds. He needed all his wits about him. “You asked to see me, ma'am?”
Captain Conagher only glanced up briefly from her work. “Yes, have a seat.” She turned around the display on her desk. It showed the security code extracted from the Tannenberg's systems. The one that the rebels had used to wrest control of the ship “Any progress on identifying where this came from?”
“No, ma'am.” Antoniy shook his head. “Our security files had nothing on it. It's not a recognized Navy passcode, and yet the Tannenberg accepted it. I just can't understand it.”
“Did you test it on the system emulator?”
“I thought you'd ask that. Yes, I did — the code had no effect on the Overlord's computers. They ignored whatever code the rebels used.” Antoniy leaned back in his seat. “But that makes no sense, either."
Antoniy waited for the Captain to say something, but she only returned his gaze, face unreadable. He fidgeted, feeling once again like a schoolboy, as the professor waited patiently for some insightful answer. But what did he have, other than a host of unanswered questions? Still, the Captain had summoned him for a reason. He had to venture something.
"You told us this mission was to suppress the rebels, Ma'am, and destroying the Verdun and Podera pretty much accomplishes that. I would guess that even Petrakov believes that was the mission."
"But?" she encouraged.
"But if that's not true, then that means you know something the Commodore does not." He paused. "And there is a bigger game." A flash of insight hit him. "This has something to do with why I was sent aboard the Ad Astra, doesn't it?"
She smiled at him, a thin smile that gave nothing away. "Possibly. Go on."
He pondered. "My boss sent me as decoy, supposedly in secrecy. But somehow you knew that, and the rebels knew that. Which means, if there was a bigger game, then it was aimed at the Andromeda intel section." He snapped his fingers, leaning forward in his seat. "But even that would not explain why they sent the Overlord. It had to be something bigger yet, somebody behind everything. Somebody on Earth, most likely, and very high-level. So the true mission was to find out who is behind..." he pointed at the security code they had captured from the rebels, "that."
"Exactly. If we use this, plus the identities of the pirates who ambushed the Ad Astra, we now have the evidence we need for our investigation."
"Once we crack the code, of course." Antoniy stroked his chin and stared at the ceiling, remembering his own mission, and the ambush that nearly got him killed. "There's one more piece, I think. I've learned a lot about who the rebels are, and who they are not. Hell, I think some of our supposed allies were the ones who betrayed me in the first place."
"Glad to hear you figured that out," Conagher smiled, steepling her fingers. "Somebody else did, as well, someone you know." She brought up a schematic for Andromeda Station. "The rebels had plans to destroy this. With simple rocks."
Antoniy whistled softly. He had read the classified report on the damage to the Overlord, which included details on the hardened projectiles. The station would have been a sitting duck. "They aimed high, didn't they?" He sat back again, thinking. That report had been filed by Commander Li, the engineering officer, which made sense. Except that Antoniy did not know Li. So who had really figured it out? Someone on the Overlord, most likely, since the Tannenberg had not been hit with the projectiles. Someone with access to classified material.
"Do you mean Klaus?" he asked.
Conagher said nothing.
"I'll be damned," mused Antoniy. "Who would have thought that old gear-head would have come up with that?" He rocked forward in his chair and leveled his eyes at the Captain. "Ma'am, I would like an opportunity to talk with our former, er, allies. In person."
Conagher smiled at that. "No need to wait, Lieutenant. We have some miners aboard, some of whom sabotaged my ship."
Antoniy raised one eyebrow in surprise. The Captain's voice had risen on the last two words, and he had never known her to lose her temper.
She pounded one finger on her desktop. "I would like to find out who sent them."
"Ma'am?" Antoniy's eyes were furrowed into a question.
Her voice grew quiet and even. "And when you are done with the miners, we have another resource for you. The Union sent us a liaison, to help with communication and all that. I believe he can be very useful to the Navy, but not in the way he thinks." She steepled her fingers. "His name is Mr. Jones."
Antoniy smiled. He liked where this was going. "Yes, ma'am."
"You are still a Marine, Lieutenant," she added, "but as of now you are re-commissioned back to Intel." She stood and proferred her hand.
"Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. Again."
Glossary of Terms
CEE
Light-Speed
Cislunar
The area between the Moon's orbit and Earth
CO
Commanding Officer
Co-ax
Short for 'Co-axial'
CPO
Chief Petty Officer
CWO
Chief Warrant Officer
ECM
Electronic Counter-Measures
elint
Electronic Intelligence
ENV
ENVironmental
ETA
Estimated Time of Arrival
EVA
Extra-Vehicular Activities
Fobbit
Slang for soldiers who try to avoid dangerous assignments
Fricsim
Reactionless space drive
FTL
Faster-Than-Light
FUBAR
"Fouled" Up Beyond All Recognition
grav
Gravity
HUD
Heads-Up Display
Humint
Human Intelligence
ID
Identification
IFF
Identification Friend-or-Foe
ITB
Interceptor Torpedo Boat
KIA
Killed-in-Action
Klick
Kilometer
LIDAR
Laser Detection and Ranging
LOS
Line-Of-Sight
MRE
Meal Ready-to-Eat
NCO
Non-Commissioned Officer
PO
Petty Officer
Potemkin Disguise
An object made to look like another object
QMP
Quantum Multi-Positioning
Raven
Small, stealthy shut
tlecraft
sitrep
Situation Report
SNAFU
Situation Normal - All "Fouled" Up
SOS
Oort Rising Page 23
