by Lewis Dually
“Sir?”
“It’s a long story and we don’t have time to rehash it right now. Captain Scott and Captain Kind know all the details as well as Walters. As far as I am concerned they are the only three people we can trust at this time. You stay out of it! Keep the ship safe! That’s your mission. Got it?”
“Yes Sir!”
“One other thing. Ensign Blain is Croiddan. No one knows it except us and Walters. For her safety it needs to stay that way for now.”
“Yes Sir. I kind of figured that out the first time I saw her. I’ll keep her out of the Admirals sight. I like her. She’s head strong and I’ve already had to chew her butt once but I think she has what it takes Sir.”
“Good. Now show the Admiral and his party in and just play dumb when they ask you about any of this.”
‘I’ll have to play dumb Sir. You haven’t told me anything.”
Chaffey turned and exited my office just as Walters voice came over my coms.
“Sir. Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Sir. I have Blain stowed in a safe place. Do you want me up there?”
“No. If you’re not here then you have a reasonable degree of plausible deniability. After this goes down help Chaffey get the ship ready. Don’t do anything to help me. I’ve got friends working on my behalf. No use getting yourself muddied in all this.”
“Yes Sir.”
The coms unit went silent and I settled down in my chair and reached for my can of snuff. As I opened the lid a terrifying thought hit me. I was about to be thrown in the brig with nothing to do but wait. The one thing that absolutely drove me nuts was doing nothing. I would crack up. Pulling open my drawer I retrieved two more unopened cans of snuff and slid them down inside my boots while hoping the security officers wouldn’t bother strip searching the hero skipper of the Battle of Neptune. Then I opened the phone Baca had given me on the Belinda and typed out a brief text message.
“The Vicario’s and wild stallions are coming. Make tracks!”
I waited a few seconds until the message shown SENT and then deleted it, powered off the phone and slid it down in my boot with the snuff. Then I stuffed two of the Tabaco pouches in my cheek and flipped the record switch on the personal voice recorder I carried in my shirt pocket. I placed the recorder under the corner of the lamp base on my desk and sat quietly waiting for Albright and his party.
“Where’s Hoag?” Albright demanded as he entered my office without as much as a curtesy knock. “These boys have a warrant issued by the Alliance for his arrest.”
“I don’t know. I left him with the Rangers.”
Albright stopped dead in his tracks and Agent Larson walked straight into him. The two of them stumbled together and did an awkward little shuffle around the corner of a chair before regaining their balance.
“What do you mean you left him with the Rangers? He’s the best lead we have to the location of the vaccine shipment and you left him with the Rangers?”
“I mean I left him in their custody. I have no jurisdiction to detain a civilian on Earth.”
“My intel says he and two of the Rangers boarded your shuttle at the Ranger ranch. Are you telling me that didn’t happen?”
“O, yes, we did pick them up at their ranch and gave them a lift to a detention facility.”
Albright’s face was turning red and I could see his pulse beating through a vein on his temple.
“WHAT FACILITY?” He demanded.
“SR1.”
“What the hell is SR1?”
“If you want Hoag to lead you to the Trojan Horse virus then you’re wasting your time. He doesn’t know where it is and he didn’t know what it was either. He also doesn’t know where the missing people are or why they were chosen. He was just a middle man who arranged their transportation and abduction. What I can’t figure out is why you’re dead set on getting it back. Best I can tell, your plan was to let the Krueg distribute the vaccine to their population, inoculating themselves against the bird flu while simultaneously being infected with some other virus that would kill off their entire race and protect Earth from invasion. So why the sudden change of heart? Why do you want it back?”
“We don’t want it back! We want it delivered!”
I leaned forward in my chair and put both elbows on the desk. “Who’s we?”
Albright started to say something but clamped it off just as his mouth opened. Then Agent Booker stepped forward and asked. “What do you mean by Trojan Horse vaccine?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I should have called it the Wooden Horse vaccine!”
Booker eyeballed me for a second and then asked. “What do you know about operation Wooden Horse?”
“Well I’ve pieced it together over the last couple of days and this is what I’ve come up with. Twenty some odd years ago the CIA and the Croiddan hatched a plan to kill off the Krueg race before they had a chance to invade Earth. The CIA provided the Croiddan with medical supplies and laboratory equipment at an off planet facility in the Kuiper belt. The Croiddan developed a vaccine against the Bird Flu for the Krueg. Why a vaccine I’m not sure other than maybe you could get the Krueg to administer it to themselves. Seems like it would be easier to just send them the Bird Flu. But they made a vaccine and that vaccine is a Trojan Horse. It will infect the Krueg with some other deadly virus that will kill them off. What virus I don’t know, but it would have to be something slow reacting to allow the Krueg time to administer the vaccine to their entire population before it started working. Turns out the only way to make a vaccine for the Krueg was to take the antibodies directly from living human hosts with a natural immunity so that’s where the missing persons came into play. But somewhere along the way things went wrong and the Croiddan skipped out on their end of the deal. Probably about the time we made our first successful warp jump and the Croiddan hightailed it off planet. You couldn’t find them so you sent me looking. I’m a little upset about that. Had I known the whole plan I could have made a few better decisions and saved us some time. So what went wrong?”
Albright pulled out the chair he had just stumbled over and sat down. Looking first at the PDA suit and then back to me he said.
“I wasn’t sure how much I could trust you and you needed a reasonable degree of plausible deniability. There were a couple things that went wrong. At first we were going to use the Bird Flu itself. The Croiddan developed a new strain that had a near one hundred percent infection rate among humans but only a one percent mortality rate. It would act as a defense shield to keep the Krueg away from Earth. It was also supposed to have a one hundred percent mortality rate among the Krueg, which it did, but it was too fast. We wanted something that would have a fourteen day incubation period. What we got was severe symptoms in six hours and death in seventy two. Not enough time to adequately spread through their population. The second thing that went wrong was the Krueg developed a subspace radio system we didn’t know about. The Krueg scout ship that opened the Bird Flu test canister had one of the radios and were able to warn their command about the Flu before they died. As a result the Krueg initiated a quarantine zone around Earth and put into place some pretty effective infectious disease controls on Croiddan. After that we had to come up with a new strategy for infecting their population.”
“Well that explains the vaccine idea. Another thing I struggled with was what do we get out of it? I had a hard time believing we were helping them take out the Krueg when the Krueg were no longer a threat to Earth. Then I remembered something you said at our first meeting. The Mars terraforming project will take two hundred years to produce a livable surface. Crop shortages and overcrowding are reaching critical levels. You even implied that we’ll end up in World War III unless we find new ground soon. It was never about helping the Croiddan take back their planet. It was about us colonizing Croid. With the Krueg gone and a remaining Croiddan population of two million there would be plenty of space for us to settle. We need new ground. Croid is that new ground. S
o at what point did the Croiddan figure that out and decide to run? When we made our first successful warp jump and those twelve ships hightailed it off planet?”
“That was just a little hiccup in the plans. We were able to work out a new deal with the Croiddan at that point. Then things changed about a month ago. The Croiddan cut off all contact with us, moved their research base and hid. At the time we didn’t know why and I didn’t really care why, I just wanted the two things they promised. The radios and the vaccine delivered. I knew if you got me a radio we could use it to track down their outpost and get the vaccine. That way I could keep you unaware of the main goal. But you’re an over achiever and you got me the radio and the Croiddan. Fortunately I’ve been able to work out a new deal with them but they don’t know where the vaccine is. Apparently Antwon’s brother has absconded with the vaccine ship and all the producers.”
“Producers?” I asked.
“The producers of the Bird Flu antibodies.”
“You mean the captives?”
“Captives, producers, whatever you want to call them, they are necessary collateral damage in our efforts to avoid World War III. With the sacrifice of that thousand plus souls we will save millions.”
“One more question. How are you going to administer the vaccine to the Krueg? I doubt if they are going to take your word about this vaccine you have for them.”
“That’s the brilliant part. We’re not going to administer the vaccine. We’ve fed the Krueg misinformation that we have weaponized the Bird Flu and are going to use it on them as a first strike weapon. We also let it out that we have a stockpile of a vaccine to use on our invasion forces and we’re hiding it in the Kuiper belt. The Krueg came looking for that vaccine. If they had found it, they would have stolen it, taken it back to Croid and administered it to themselves.”
“So they infect themselves and we can honestly say we did not do it.”
“Pretty much.” Albright replied. “Help us find the vaccine. When you do, radio its location to us on an open channel. The Krueg will pick up the broadcast and do what they came here to do and in the process open up a new world for us to inhabit. So are you in or out?”
“Don’t you mean conquer? No matter who is there now or how they got there, you’re going to kill them all and take their planet. That ain’t’ inhabiting. That’s genocide and I have no intention of participating and I will do everything in my power to stop it!”
Albright stared at me for a few seconds. I had expected to see another flush of red as his temper flared but instead his face drained of all color. He stood, leaned down, put both fists on my desk and said. “Sorry you feel that way Commander. I thought maybe you were a team player but I guess not. Gentlemen, he’s all yours. You better pick up Miss Walters too. She hasn’t updated me on any of this so I think it’s safe to say she’s siding with the Commander.”
CHAPTER 22: Easy Time.
I was right. The security officer didn’t have the stomach to search the Battle of Neptune hero. I was also wrong. Walters ended up in the cell across the hall regardless of her not being present in our meeting. What really surprised me was the extent of our charges. Insubordination, refusing a direct order from a commanding officer, dereliction of duty, conspiring with the enemy and treason. For those charges we were transferred to the U E One and placed in full isolation in the maximum security brig. We wouldn’t even be allowed a Jag officer until our formal hearing in front of the Judge Advocate which could take as much as a week. I was glad I had stowed my emergency snuff supply but wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to use it, knowing Walters was sitting across the hall with nothing more to occupy her time than her thoughts. But as I looked across the hall to her cell, it appeared to me that she was asleep.
“Now that’s a good idea. Sleep! I could get into that.”
I had been running a mental count somewhere in the back of my brain and the best I could come up with was twelve hours sleep in the last ninety one. Some of that wasn’t sleep as Walters had pointed out earlier. Being knocked unconscious doesn’t count as restful sleep. I caught a movement across the hall and looked up to see Walters shifting on her bunk. She was praying, not sleeping. I could use a little prayer time too. I prayed every day to some extent but it had been almost three years since I went to church. Partly because of my job, partly because I don’t generally like being around people. A hand full of people is fine. Even a large number of them when I’m the one in charge as I am on the Dawn Rising. Was on the Dawn Rising. Not anymore.
“Well crap.” I blurted out loud. I kicked back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. This sure was a dang mess.
At some point I fell asleep and was awakened by the guard making his rounds. He walked by tapping his night stick across the bars. “You alive in there?”
“Yep. Still kickin. What time is it?”
“Thirteen fifty hours Sir. Dinner is at sixteen hundred. The Admiral placed you on C-rations but I think I can scare up something better than that.”
“Thanks. Are we aloud to dip snuff in here?”
“No Sir. No tobacco products of any kind.”
“Well that’s just cruel and unusual punishment right there.”
“Yes Sir. Actually if you were an enemy prisoner I would have to give you cigarettes or chewing tobacco but not for our own. Kind of silly if you ask me Sir.”
“There’s been a lot of silliness going around lately.”
The guard continued on down the corridor and I closed my eyes and slipped back into the void.
Clank, clank, clank. The sound jarred me awake again and I looked up to see another guard making his rounds. A different guard on duty meant there had been a duty change and I realized I had been asleep for quite a while.
“What time is it?”
“Zero seven hundred Sir. Breakfast will be here in about a half hour.”
“Crap! How long have I been asleep?”
“Not sure Sir. I came on duty at zero hundred and you were asleep then. I was a little surprised to find the hero of Neptune in my cell block.”
“Yeah. It’s been a screwed up couple of days and I think I missed supper.”
“Yes Sir. They tried to wake you but you were out of it. Your Aide said you needed sleep more than food so they let you be.”
“Bless her.”
Looking across the hall to Walters cell I could see her lying on her side, face to the wall and covered with the drab grey blanket that served as a comforter in this place.
“Well don’t let me sleep through breakfast. I got my rest and now I’m starved.”
“Yes Sir.
“Any news about the fleet?”
“I’m not supposed to discuss those sorts of things with prisoners Sir, but for you… The entire fleet has left space dock, except for the Dawn Rising, and we are on high alert. That’s pretty much all I know Sir.”
“That’s enough. It tells me everything I need to know Chief.”
Breakfast wasn’t much, oatmeal without sugar and vitamin water. I watched Walters crawl out of the cot, fold her blanket neatly and place it on the foot of the pad which served as a mattress. Then we both ate in silence as we traded glances back and forth across the hall at each other. When she finished she washed her plate and cup in the sink next to the toilet box and placed them on the shelf in the door pass through. I finished my food and did the same except I kept my cup. Reaching in my boot I pulled out the can of snuff I’d stowed, opened it, took out two pouches and slipped them in my cheek. Then I placed the can of snuff back in my boot and looked up to see Walters grinning at me. Then I took out the phone Baca had given me and powered it on. After a few seconds the screen lit up and showed two messages. The first was from Baca and I opened it.
“Our host says to tell you Pinky’s!”
Understanding Ray’s message perfectly, I erased it from the phone’s memory and opened the second message which was from Clair.
“Just heard about your incarceration. I’ve been told you
have a way of getting this message, I hope so. I have contacted the Vice President on your behalf. He’s an old friend of my late husband and may be able to help.”
Well it’s nice to have friends with friends in high places. I deleted that message also and turned off the phone, slid it back into my boot and spit a shot of tobacco juice in my cup. Then I looked over at Walters and was surprised to see her chewing on something. I got her attention and pointed to my own mouth while making an exaggerated chewing motion and then held both hands out in that universal ‘what gives’ gesture. She grinned and held up a small piece of paper except it wasn’t paper, it was a tootsie roll wrapper.
“Now where did she hide that?” I said under my breath. The more time I spent with her the more she amazed me. Hopefully this little incident wouldn’t be a stain on her career. Even if exonerated, this sort of action could mark her as a trouble maker and hinder her chances of command. Mine too for that matter but I never wanted the Navy as my life long career anyway. Had I not been recalled I would probably be working some desk job by now. Probably have a wife, two cars, two and a half kids and a dog. If the Navy decided it no longer wanted me then great. As long as I get discharged and not incarcerated. But Walters wanted a Navy career. She had everything to lose. Of course right at this moment it wasn’t careers we were both thinking about, it was just getting out of jail. I slid back on the cot and rested my back against the wall as my thoughts returned to the Croiddan, the Krueg and the missing persons.
I awoke with a start and gagged slightly as some of the tobacco juice seeped down into my wind pipe. Falling asleep with a mouth full of the stuff was a chewer’s hazard that I had suffered through on more than one occasion. I spit out the snuff and dumped the cup of juice in the toilet. Then I rinsed out the cup, filled it with water and took a long slow drink. After regaining my composure I went back to the cot and laid down. Staring at the tiled ceiling I wondered if we would ever get clear of this.
