System Failure

by Joe Zieja

  Officer Atikan seemed unfazed. “Thank you so much for your courtesy! You don’t at all seem like the pirates I read about in Rogers’ reports. Just one moment, please.”

  The comms went dead.

  “Um,” Cynthia said. She suddenly started to get a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Sjana turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Reports?”

  Cynthia shrugged, trying to remain nonchalant. What kind of reports would Rogers be sending to anyone about pirates? He wasn’t smart enough to be covert about anything; he complained too much to keep anything a secret. If he’d been tasked with keeping tabs on the pirates, he would have been loudly blustering about it for the last two weeks. Besides, the pirates had been immediately dispatched. There would be no way for Rogers to watch the pirates without an insider . . .

  Everyone was looking at her.

  Oh, shit.

  “No,” Cynthia said, holding up her hands. “I swear, no. I ditched the MGN fair and square. This is AWOL, not spy . . . uh . . . WOL.”

  Everyone was still looking at her.

  “I’m serious!” she said, slowly backing toward the door. Sjana’s expression was flat, which was her version of being extremely emotional. The more nonchalant Sjana got about anything, the more it meant she actually cared. Hideko was getting up out of his seat.

  “Come on!” Cynthia said. “What would be the point of me spying on you? Just to make sure you didn’t go pirating without prior Meridan approval? You’re all looking for clemency. Why would you come all the way out here to fight Jupiterians if you were going to steal stuff along the way? There’s no reason to watch you.”

  “So what are these reports?” Hideko asked. Normally, the first mate was jovial, even when threatening to throw Cynthia out the airlock. Now, however, he looked as cold as a surgical robot performing a triple bypass. One of his hands was on his pistol.

  “I have no idea!” Cynthia said. And she really didn’t. Was it possible that Rogers had guessed she was going to join the pirates and bugged her things? She hadn’t even kept a datapad. And again, Rogers wasn’t smart enough to do any of this without some serious help.

  She didn’t know what else she could say to diffuse this situation, so she just stared at Sjana with a hopeless, pathetic expression that she knew wasn’t going to work.

  “Throw her in the brig,” Sjana said, and turned around. Hideko drew his pistol.

  “Wait! Why don’t you ask the MPD guy for more information about the reports? It could have been something from a long time ago, you know? Or maybe he and Rogers are drinking buddies, and ‘reports’ is just a funny word that they throw around. Right? That’d be funny, ha-ha?”

  “Hilarious,” Hideko said. “Get moving.”

  Sjana wasn’t looking back at her. In fact, the entire crew seemed to have mentally settled the issue and gone back to working their consoles silently. Only the tapping of keys and the footsteps of Hideko and Cynthia could be heard.

  Cynthia really did not want to spend the rest of her time on the Africanus in the brig. She didn’t give up everything, forsake her fellow marines, and throw a hissy fit at her captain just to have her wife throw her in prison.

  “Sjana, please,” Cynthia said, now having to look around Hideko’s hulking form to even see her wife. “Come on. At least ask. We’ve done a lot of things to each other over the years, but never this kind of betrayal.”

  Except that one time when Cynthia had siphoned off a bunch of Sjana’s credits to pay off a loan shark. But that had been a long time ago, and they had threatened to break Cynthia’s knees if she didn’t pay. Surely Sjana didn’t hold that against her, or even remember it.

  “You mean except that one time when you siphoned off a bunch of my credits to pay off a loan shark?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Sjana, ask the question!”

  She didn’t respond. Hideko, who had rolled his eyes at Cynthia’s suggestion, stopped, which Cynthia supposed was at least some form of progress. Unless he was about to just haul off and shoot her, which was totally possible.

  “Boss?” he asked.

  No immediate reply followed. Cynthia held her breath. A long sigh escaped Sjana’s lips, and she leaned forward to press a button.

  “Officer,” Sjana said. “While your staff is reviewing our documentation, I have a question for you.”

  “Of course!” Atikan answered immediately. “I’m always up for a friendly chat between spacefaring aficionados. What can I do for you?”

  “These reports that Captain Rogers has been giving you. Can you tell me a bit more about them?”

  There was no reply for a few moments. Sjana cast a meaningful glance over her shoulder. Cynthia swallowed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You know, sometimes I forget that he’s a captain now. When I met him, he was still a civilian! Well, technically he was only acting undercover as a civilian. He’d been commissioned as an ensign just a few months prior, according to the records. It was all so exciting! The way he infiltrated the Garliali and the Purveyors to bring them both down in one fell swoop was nothing short of brilliant. Did you know that I planned a whole series of parades in his honor? None of them have happened yet, of course, because of all the hubbub around the galaxy being in dire threat and all, but . . .” He made a lip-smacking noise, like he was tasting something delicious. “I can’t wait to see them! It’s going to be great.”

  Cynthia’s mouth opened. Rogers an undercover agent? There was no way. It might explain the fact that he kept getting promoted in weird circumstances, but . . . bringing down pirates? It just didn’t seem right. If anything, Rogers should have been the one running away to join the pirates in the first place.

  Hideko, at least, was no longer pointing the pistol at Cynthia. Sjana turned her chair halfway around, but didn’t look at anyone. She merely gazed at a nondescript spot on the floor, frowning intently. It felt like minutes went by without anyone saying anything, Cynthia still standing in the middle of the bridge wondering if she was going to have to fight for her life or submit meekly to being thrown in the brig.

  “Anyhoo, thanks for being patient,” Atikan said. “I’ve examined your paperwork and everything seems in order. And, ooh, speak of the devil! It looks like you’ll be meeting Rogers’ new fleet when you get to the Grandelle system. Tell him I said hello, won’t you? He and I go way back.”

  Now Rogers was in charge of the new joint whatever-it-was? None of this made any sense. Then again, almost nothing that had happened during her entire tenure on the Flagship had made any sense, so why expect things to start coming together now? If Rogers was really some kind of superspy that could outsmart all of them, so be it. Cynthia would just go drink herself into a stupor, and watch all of the pirates completely obliterate Rogers at the next available opportunity.

  Which was, apparently, when they both got to Grandelle to hunt for the Galaxy Eater. Wow, Rogers was screwed.

  And, she guessed, so was the galaxy.

  How Is Everyone Doing?

  Okay, even if “taking over the galaxy” was hidden somewhere in the job description of being Mr. Snaggardir’s assistant, Lucinda was nearly positive that acting completely normal while standing on the precipice of total annihilation was absolutely not.

  Yet that’s what everyone here seemed to be doing. Everyone walking around, living their normal lives, getting food, and bashfully asking attractive members of their species for quiet moments around a cup of coffee. Just yesterday Lucinda had overheard a husband talking to his wife on the phone, planning their next vacation! As though there would be anyplace left to go sit on the beach if they were forced to use the Galaxy Eater. The level of confidence that the Jupiterian resurgence was predestined was bordering on both arrogance and willful ignorance. Perhaps the rank-and-file Snaggardir’s employee didn’t have the same insight that Lucinda did, since she was the assistant to the CEO, but she didn’t feel very optimistic about the whole thing.

  How could she? The pirate
s had been able to break a significant amount of the blockades, forcing the Jupiterian fleets to reorganize and fall back to defend Snaggardir’s HQ and a few other strongholds in the galaxy. General Szinder didn’t seem to have a solid plan to carve out any territory for themselves through military force, even though they’d managed to capture a huge amount of ships and man them with loyalist personnel. Dr. Mattic was mysterious and quiet as always—Lucinda never had any idea what the man was thinking—and Sara hadn’t offered anything in the way of strategic communication at all. Mr. Snaggardir, who Lucinda still thought was exceedingly intelligent, if a little insane, just smiled at it all and seemed to expect it to go his way. It didn’t make any sense. From what Lucinda could tell, the full force of the galaxy was moving right now to destroy the Galaxy Eater, the only Jupiterian trump card they had.

  That meant that either Mr. Snaggardir was very convincing at pretending to be sane, or he had some other trump card. But what? Lucinda felt like she was still missing something.

  The whole station was filled with Jupiterians or Jupiterian sympathizers, people who had been closely vetted by Snaggardir’s extensive employee background check system. That system had, apparently, been the way to track Jupiterian lineage, sympathies, and relationships for hundreds of years. The Snaggardir security system was tighter than most government programs for establishing security clearance eligibility for top secret information.

  Somehow, though, they hadn’t figured out that Lucinda was having doubts and had been sending secret messages to Captain Rogers, now the commander of the new joint force coming to hunt them down. She realized that he’d never know it was her who had been giving him the subtle hints, and that at any moment they could launch an attack with her information that would result in her death. But, in truth, this was bigger than any one life, including hers. If the congratulatory Snaggardir’s messages that she’d been having Sara read could help save the galaxy, it would be worth it.

  “Are you sure this is necessary?” Sara said, looking at the script she’d been handed. “I thought all of these had been standardized a decade ago to give away free balloons and all that.”

  “It’s a market expansion effort,” Lucinda said. “We’re trying to plan for more eventualities to give the impression that Snaggardir’s is everywhere, even in cases like this.” She pointed at the script.

  “I guess I understand that,” Sara said, “but how many times is one of our customers going to form a force to try and blow up the Galaxy Eater? And is that really something we should be rewarding?”

  Lucinda shrugged, trying to hide the horrible blush creeping up into her face. “I don’t write the scripts, Ms. Alshazari.”

  “Well, alright,” Sara said. “Seems like there’s been a lot of this lately, that’s all.”

  “Perfectly normal,” Lucinda said. “I would have thought you were in the know on this, you being the strategic communications expert and all that. Don’t these messages go through you?”

  Sara shrugged, standing up and grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair. She was a small woman and was always complaining about the temperature of the room. The recording station, situated near the other rooms designed for radio broadcasts and other audio/visual productions, didn’t have a dedicated thermostat, so it was a bit warmer.

  “There’s a lot going on right now,” Sara admitted. “I can’t quite pay attention to everything.”

  That’s what I’m counting on, Lucinda thought. “Are you going to be at the staff meeting tonight?”

  Sara sighed. She seemed very distracted, which wasn’t something that Lucinda was used to seeing in her. Normally she was a driven, hard-faced woman who spared little notice for her feelings, much like her uncle. Unlike Mr. Snaggardir, however, she didn’t put out the kind, warm façade. In a way, it made Lucinda like her a lot more, and not just because she was the only other woman in this man-filled coup. Something about Sara reminded her of herself. Maybe it was her focus or her determination, two things that Lucinda strove for every day.

  “Something the matter?” Lucinda asked when Sara didn’t answer her question. She’d stopped, her jacket halfway on, her gaze nowhere in particular.

  “Hm? Oh.” Sara slipped her jacket on the rest of the way and walked slowly toward the door. Rather than leading the way, Lucinda stepped aside, allowing the older woman to pass so that she could have some extra time to observe her. “We’ve all been working long hours lately with all of this going on. Uncle Sal can be a stickler for dedication during crunch time.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Lucinda muttered, then bit her lip. Insulting Sara’s uncle was probably not the right way to maintain the level of trust that would allow her to continue sabotaging their plans.

  To her surprise, Sara actually chuckled. “I bet you do. You’re a brave young woman—you know that?”

  Lucinda grimaced. “I don’t know if brave is the right word. I’m not sure anyone could be aware they were signing up for . . . this.” She lifted her arm and gestured broadly around her, indicating, well, everything.

  “We all get things we didn’t sign up for,” Sara said, turning to walk down the hallway. “I know I did. I’ll see you at the staff meeting tonight.”

  Dodging past a couple of other producers, who were doubtlessly preparing more propaganda to broadcast all over the galaxy, Sara left the audio/visual booths and exited to the main part of the ship. Several employees stopped doing their work to watch her go, though not in a weird, ogling way. Sara Alshazari was somewhat of an icon in the company, and also not very prone to being out and about so much. Seeing her around was probably a rare event for everyone who wasn’t close to her.

  Quickly, before anyone else came around needing the room, Lucinda went back over to the terminal where Sara had been recording and began making all the changes she needed to in order to get the audio to sound exactly like she wanted. She couldn’t very well hand Sara scripts that were too blatant; she mixed up the words and would unscramble them in post, concatenating them with other archived audio to put together the messages she wanted to send out. Though, she realized as she did the little bit of editing that was required, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out. Really, it was kind of a shock that she hadn’t been caught doing it yet. Strange.

  There was no time to wonder, however. She made sure the message got off to the right channels. Hopefully this would help.

  Lucinda swallowed, sweating. She wondered how Captain Rogers was doing.

  • • •

  “Congratulations on heading toward the Galaxy Eater in an attempt to save humanity!” the voice said. “You are entitled to one free term life insurance policy, redeemable at any of the many Snaggardir’s Sundries locations in the galaxy. Remember, whatever you need, you can Snag It at Snaggardir’s™!”

  Rogers and Deet looked at the console.

  “You see what I mean?” Rogers asked. “I just came down here to get a cup of coffee that wasn’t going to spray boiling liquid in my face, and the in-line controls start telling me about top secret plans that nobody is supposed to know about, especially not a disembodied, automated voice that comes from the very enemy we are trying to fight.”

  “Pretty strange,” Deet agreed.

  “And Snaggardir’s doesn’t even sell life insurance. I checked.”

  “Dubious,” Deet said.

  “Yesterday, the sink congratulated me for getting up in the middle of night, exactly one thirty-five AM ship time, to go to the bathroom.”

  “I’m not sure I really want to know,” Deet asked, “but what did it offer you for free?”

  “A prostate exam.”

  “Yes,” Deet said. “This is a question I should have withheld.”

  The two of them currently occupied an empty in-line car on the way to the bridge. It had been a few days since their fateful meeting in the war room, and everyone was just about to make the journey to what Rogers hoped would be the first and final battle of his joint force. Experience, however, had
taught him to be cynical about anything he hoped for.

  Once at the bridge, Rogers didn’t estimate it would take very long to make the few hops to their destinations, especially if the pirates had cleared the way. It actually felt a little too easy for Rogers. Compiled intelligence reports, combined with the surveillance that Holdt had ordered to confirm the Astromologer’s findings, had revealed that the Galaxy Eater was actually quite a simple device, with simple construction that didn’t have any particularly strong shielding. They still had no idea how it worked, but based on observation, it was overkill to send an entire fleet to blow it up. A couple of torpedo haulers could have done the trick. Flash might even get to use a Lancer without killing everyone around him.

  “Hey, Rogers,” Deet said. “Your razor hasn’t congratulated you on anything that’s just completely ridiculous lately, right? Nothing like failing to locate a ship full of droids, or anything?”

  “No, why? That would make even less sense,” Rogers said. “The only things it’s been telling me about are things that I’ve actually done that nobody else is supposed to know about. That’s why I think there’s a spy somewhere.”

  “I see,” Deet said. “Yes, it certainly wouldn’t make any sense at all for the Snaggardir’s voice to tell you about ships full of droids that had recently received a message, since you yourself did no such thing and likely would never do any such thing. Correct.”

  Rogers blinked. What was going on with Deet? His voice had gotten all monotone and weird.

  They arrived at their stop outside the bridge on the command deck, and the two of them shuffled out into the chaos, Rogers hurriedly deploying his antisalute sling before he got caught in a salute loop that would keep him off the bridge for the next three to four hours. As usual, it worked like a charm, though it seemed to confuse most of the lower-ranking officers.

  “What the hell are all these people doing?” Rogers muttered. The command deck was always so full of people who seemed to be doing nothing except walking back and forth, saluting each other, and making concerned faces while they looked at their datapads. He supposed if there were any three things that symbolized command in the Meridan Galactic Navy, those would be them.