by Andrew Beery
“What I have to say will disturb you greatly. Hell, a hundred years ago it would have disturbed me greatly. My fear is you may not yet fully grasp the realities of the universe as it exists today.”
Chapter 5: Discovery…
“YOU ARE LEADING AN INSURGENCY?” Cat yelled in disbelief.
“I wouldn’t call it an ‘insurgency’,” Sherry protested. “I was ordered to cease operations by the Grand Senate. I elected, in the best interests of the GCP, to resign and covertly continue to fund and direct an investigation of BCI corruption. What I discovered led me to believe more drastic measures would be required to save the GCP.”
“You are personally funding a rebellion,” Cat sighed softly. “How can I look the other way?”
“I don’t want you to look the other way. If you look the other way then the corruption which leads all the way up to the Grand Senate itself will continue unabated. Billions upon billions of sentients will continue to live in what can only be considered slave-labor conditions. Don’t you understand? The GCP you and I helped create all those years ago is dead. It was killed by greed and personal self-interest. It died over the course of several centuries so slowly that most of us didn’t even realize it had died… until my teams found incontrovertible proof of what is going on.”
“Why not report it?” Cat said. “Why not tell the universe?”
“Report it to who? The Grand Senate is the source of the corruption. They have most of the armed forces in their pockets. The mega-corporations have bought them out lock, stock and barrel.”
“Leak it to the press. Force them to hold recall elections. Force the Grand Senate to be accountable.”
Sherry shook her head. “Senate seats are life-time appointments now. There are no elections. This was done to prevent corrupt officials from buying elections. Besides no reporter would touch a story like this. Any who would, would find themselves waking up dead in some back alley. Trust me Cat. I have been looking for a way to fix this mess for the last eighty years.”
Cat turned to look at her friend closely. “And in those eighty some years I’m assuming you have discovered a way to set things straight?”
Sherry smiled, “I have. But you’re not going to like it.”
***
Rhino grunted and pushed harder. The damn door refused to budge. He and Sam Eddington had made their way down to the main BCI computer core in the sub-basement. Unfortunately their goal, one of the direct access terminals, was behind a door that an overly ambitious security officer had decided to seal. The officer in question was now napping with twenty or so of his compatriots; the victim of an electro-stun grenade borrowed from the security office earlier.
“Just give me a second big guy,” Sam said. He reprogrammed his dwindling cache of general purpose nanites to digest the latching mechanism on the door. In a few seconds there was a satisfying click as the mechanism fell away. Unfortunately, it meant he was now dangerously low on nanites. If they needed them again it was doubtful he would have enough to do anything meaningful.
Rhino gave the door one final push and it ground open. The door gave way to a small room with a series of holographic displays and a state-of-the-art computer interface. The interface itself required a biometric authentication but this had been anticipated by the team that had planned this operation several months before. That team was remarkably well connected despite being a completely off the books operation.
Admiral Sherry Melbourne, although technically retired, was the head of a secret black ops organization dedicated to rooting out internal corruption and restoring the Galactic Coalition to its more honorable past. The fact that Sam and Rhino were operatives within that organization -- with second-level covers that made them out to be insurgents -- was an indication of just how far Melbourne’s Maniacs, as they liked to call themselves, were willing to go to hide the true nature of their activities within the GCP.
Sam pushed his way into the room. Getting into the correct BCI holding facility had proven itself expensive. They had had to give up cover ids that he and Rhino had spent years establishing. As he looked around the room he could not help but hope the cost had been worth it. Planting a specially developed self-cloaking worm in the BCI mainframe’s AI would be a major coup for the organization – if indeed they were successful.
The computer console they needed was just to the right of the main holographic display. Rhino reengaged his cloaking system and reached forth a hand that now appeared to belong to a thirty-something young lady. Her DNA had been sampled at Rhino’s Midway bar a few weeks before. The special emitters embedded in his hand spoofed the sensors on the biometric scanner and the terminal lit up.
Sam removed the cap on a second false tooth and deposited the silver nanites near the data port on the device. They flowed towards the exposed connectors and immediately began to follow the tracing into the unit. Within a few minutes they had control over the interface circuitry and were querying the central AI for the access codes they would need to do their work.
Sam knew the nanites would begin their long crawl along the optical cables connecting the terminal to the BCI’s AI. Once they reached the computer core the battle would be done. No secret would be safe and Melbourne’s Maniacs would have full access to the data they needed to take down the leaders within the BCI that were intent on fleecing the masses for their own personal gain. At least that was the plan, Sam thought to himself. A shame it was that plans rarely survive encounters with reality.
***
Honey looked over the table at Ricky Valen in his Harry Bedmore persona. He was a natural for the role as he was a swashbuckler at heart. Her current role as the naïve BCI officer, Lieutenant Heather Arris, was a bit more of a stretch. She had to continue to remind herself to act appropriately scared and cowed in the presence of the pirates manning the Brown Recluse. Her Heshe fabricated android body was never in any danger from these men but should they learn her true nature, the mission she and Ricky were on would be a bust.
“You going to eat that potato, Lieutenant?” Harry asked as he wolfed down the last bit of his steak. The captain, in an effort to help his newest officer win the confidence of their young prisoner, had opened up the preferred food stores in the galley. Before she could answer his question Harry reached over and forked the potato off her plate.
“Here let me pay for that with some more wine,” Harry said as he reached for the bottle.
Honey put her hand over her glass. “I’ve had quite enough thank you.”
Harry grunted something intelligible and proceeded to pour some more wine into his glass. “So can I call you Heather or do you want me to continue calling me Lieutenant?”
“My friends call me ‘Honey’ – I’ve never been fond of Heather,” she answered.
“Whooo, are we friends now?” Harry said with amusement.
“I won’t go that far but it’s better than letting you call me Heather.”
She knew that every word they uttered was being recorded and relayed directly to the captain. What the captain could not know was that Harry and she were both outfitted with subdural quantum entangled communication nodes that allowed them to communicate with a mere thought… almost as if they were truly telepathic. In fact, for all practical purposes, they were. The only reason they spoke out loud with each other was to keep up appearances and to insure they stayed in character.
So do we have a plan for finding their base yet? Honey thought between nibbles of her salad.
Harry smiled while wiping some butter off his handlebar mustache with a napkin. I’m going to make the captain think I’m close to breaking you and that we should get ready to sell your unlocked data core. That should encourage him to head the ship to the nearest ‘meet’. We should be able to find a ship there that will have the information we need.
And how are you going to convince him that I am ready to cave and give you the access codes to our little ship?
Harry sipped his wine. I’m going to have to seduce you
.
I see, Honey thought back with a smile.
***
“We are coming up on our jump point captain,” Harry said from the navigator’s station. The AM Brown Recluse was getting ready to engage her hyperfield emitters. Lieutenant Heather Arris stood next to him. She no longer wore her BCI uniform. Several weeks of play-acting and the crew of the Recluse was completely fooled into believing that she was a victim of Harry’s amorist charm. After only a week she had agreed to release a data manifest for her ship that showed she was carrying a Bitcoin archive worth millions of credits as well as a master encryption log that was, in a word, priceless.
Less than a week later she offered to unlock the data itself in exchange for ten percent of the eventual proceeds and permission for her and Harry to take her shuttle and leave. The captain refused but countered with another offer. They eventually settled for five percent and she became crew but retained ownership of the shuttle. The conversion of the young and highly attractive lieutenant did nothing but cement Harry’s reputation as a modern-day Casanova with the crew of the AM Brown Recluse.
The only person not happy about the situation was Randy Duggal who continued to hold a grudge against Harry for the beating he took when Honey first came onboard. The fact that the rest of the crew kidded him about being beat-up by an old man and a girl did nothing to ease the sting or soften the bitterness.
Captain Randel Hoffman-Cunningham III, leaned back in his command chair. This was going to be an extremely profitable venture. The data from the BCI fast courier was even more valuable than he had dared to hope… and he dared to hope quite a bit.
To have a GCP encryption log from the BCI in hand was unheard of. There were very few locations within the pirate league equipped to access and utilize that type of data. He had been tempted to sell it at a meet for a quick profit but that would have meant taking mere pennies on the credit. This was a payday to make a career. In his mind, that meant going the extra mile to maximize profits. That meant taking the Recluse directly to Talus IV.
“Ya be so good as to jump the ship, Mister Bedmore. The coordinates have been sent to yer station. We be heading to Talus.”
Honey looked at Harry and raised an eyebrow. They both had expected to be heading to Sagitta or Delphinus where known pirate meets typically occurred. On the other hand, Talus IV was reputedly a major stronghold for the pirate syndicate. No one within Melbourne’s organization knew precisely where it was. It was on the top of their very short list of objectives. Could they really be so lucky?
“Engaging jump drive,” Harry announced as he transferred the coordinates and hit the drive button. Immediately hyperfield emitters throughout the ship flooded with energy from the primary fusion generator and a space-time wake began to form around the ship. Within the blink of an eye it was hurling the Recluse through the hyperfield vortex that had formed in front of the ship.
The Brown Recluse emerged about half a light year from a blue giant that Honey immediately identified as Bellatrix. A star this hot could not be their destination. Even though it was over eight times the size of Sol, it had burned through its hoard of stellar hydrogen in a mere 20 million years or so. As a result,Bellatrix and blue giants like her were what were called variable stars in that their relative intensity changed by as much as ten to fifteen percent over the span of a few months.
Captain Cunningham entered a code into his command chair’s console and a new set of jump coordinates where fed into Harry’s navigation console.
“Proceed to these coordinates and prepare to jump her agin,” the Captain barked at Harry in a gruff voice.
Harry nodded and engaged the sublight engines to move the Recluse to the next jump point. This pattern of blind jump after blind jump proceeded for the better part of four days. With each jump however Melbourne’s Maniacs got a little closer to fulfilling another part of a much larger plan.
Chapter 6: Deception…
“Admiral, we have an incoming message from some organization called the Central Operations Center.”
Cat turned to look at Sherry while raising an eyebrow.
The retired admiral smiled back. “I was wondering how long it would take for the COC to contact you directly. Central Operations is headquartered in the Sol system. Since the GCP as an organization is now a collection of geographically isolated stellar domains, the Central Operations Center has assumed the role of a centralized coordination hub for data and command traffic between the regions. In many ways the COC is a proxy for the Grand Senate. Fleet Admiral Imera is, or rather was, the ranking Admiral. He is stationed in Sol and uses the COC as his base of operations.”
“You said ‘was’,” Cat interjected. “Surely you don’t mean I outrank him?”
Sherry’s smile deepened to the point it threatened to become an all-out grin. “As strange as it may seem Admiral… that is exactly what it means. Your promotion was awarded decades before his was. You may have only just learned about it but you have more time in grade… therefore technically you outrank him. Although I suspect he may challenge that should push-come-to-shove.”
Cat turned back to her communications officer. “Open the channel, Mr. Toppel, let’s see who we are working with.”
The forward holographic view screen shimmered for a brief second and was replaced by a life-like image of a middle-aged man of Indian descent. His uniform matched Sherry’s except for the five silver stars arranged in a circle on his collar. When he saw the bridge of the Yorktown appear on his screen a look of consternation briefly flashed across his face to be replaced immediately with a seemingly warm and affectionate smile.
Cat could tell from Sherry’s body language this was not a man she admired. Cat waited without saying a word. The silence became awkward. Finally Fleet Admiral Imera executed a slow and begrudging salute. Cat returned the salute immediately.
“Greetings, Junior Fleet Admiral Imera,” Cat said crisply. “I expect we have much to talk about.”
“Indeed we do… Fleet Admiral. May I suggest we conduct a private briefing on a secure channel? There are topics to be discussed that probably should stay between you and me for the moment.”
“I will have my communications officer transfer this connection to my Ready Room. I have reactivated Admiral Melbourne. She will be acting as my special advisor until such a time as I am comfortable with the local situation in this time-line.”
“Ah…,” Admiral Imera began, “about that… I would prefer if she were not a part of this first conversation.”
“Objection noted. Nevertheless, she will be joining us. If in the course of our meeting you convince me she should step out… I will ask her to do so. Is that acceptable?”
Admiral Imera did not look happy but he reluctantly nodded. Cat almost felt sorry for him. Up until a few hours ago he had thought himself the senior most member of the armed forces –answerable to only the Grand Senate. Suddenly this was no longer the case.
***
“The reality is,” Admiral Imera said patiently, “the universe is a very different place from the one you left Admiral. I’m asking you to make the smart choice.” The often heated conversation had been going on for the better part of two hours.
“You’re asking me to step down,” Cat said dryly.
“I am asking you to step aside until you can be fully briefed on the current state of affairs,” Imera insisted. “We live in a delicate balance that has taken years to establish. We have the core worlds that founded the Coalition striving for continued relevance balanced against the new worlds striving for a greater say in what happens. In the middle of all this, we have a pirate syndicate that is growing more powerful and bold with every passing year. This is not the time to introduce a new and untested element.”
Sherry stiffened. “With all due respect sir, Admiral Kimbridge is many things… untested is not one of them.”
Admiral Imera smiled wanly and nodded. “Undoubtedly a poor choice of words on my part,” he admitted. “The point remains
however that the Admiral is in the position to do quite a bit of damage were she to push the wrong faction at the wrong time. All I’m asking for is an abundance of caution until the Admiral is more familiar with the particulars of this day and age.”
Cat stood up and looked around the Ready Room. This was familiar territory. It was easy while being encapsulated within the confines of the Yorktown to forget the very universe had literally changed in her absence. As much as she might wish otherwise, Admiral Imera’s points were valid ones.
“Here is what we are going to do,” Cat began after a brief pause. “You, Admiral Imera, will maintain your day to day activities. I want a copy of your daily’s and a briefing. Admiral Melbourne will continue as my special advisor. I am going to take an indeterminate period of time, a few months at a minimum, to evaluate the current state of the GCP. At the end of which, we will revisit our respective duties. Will that satisfy your immediate concerns?”
“It will Admiral,” He said carefully. Looking directly at Cat through the holographic projector, he cleared his throat. “And now for a more delicate question... Do you have any Hupenstanii serving on your ships?”
***
Munch stroked his feathered beard with his long prehensile tongue. His mate, Matti, stood on one leg next to him on the bridge of the small ship. It was strictly a sublight vehicle meant for planetary hops. In this case they were headed to Mardarus III’s largest moon Ciru.
Munch had a lot to digest. The crew of the small ship had been discussing the latest rumors floating through the intergalactic airwaves… namely that Admiral “Cat” Kimbridge was back from the dead and there was going to be a reckoning to shake the very core of the cosmos. Munch didn’t know what to think. The rumors of Admiral Kimbridge’s resurrection were almost as old as the Coalition. Her exploits were the thing of legend and fodder for countless holodramas. For the moment however, he needed to focus on the airless moon they were approaching.
