Beta Testers

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Devoted being the keyword, hon…” Silo said.

  “Oh dear,” Garotte said, glancing to her screen briefly. “Are the Piranhas not remaining dedicated to their cause in the face of adversity?”

  “Anything but. There are loads of videos of gang members abandoning their insignias and submitting to custody. … Look at these blast craters… I can’t blame them for deserting. It looks like they’re only armed for man-to-man combat. If the Broadliners have any more of those rounds you showed me a hunk of, I can understand why anyone who sees it go off will lose their nerve.”

  “Mmm...” Garotte said, still a bit distracted by his own investigation. “They were formerly better equipped to meet like for like, but a certain recent mission may or may not have inspired them to gather much of their more potent equipment into a single convoy, which may or may not have been manipulated into an ambush situation.”

  She shook her head.

  “Any chance the video you are looking at is propaganda?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s all propaganda, but the footage is legitimate to my eye.”

  She tapped a command and unmuted a video stream. The images depicted were large semiautonomous vehicles patrolling the streets of a sun-bleached and clearly poverty-stricken town. Both the vehicles and the armed and armored individuals managed to perfectly straddle the line between overequipped police force and underequipped military. A gritty-voiced narration gave the whole scene the overall feel of a commercial for a private security contractor.

  “The men and women of the Broadline Syndicate fearlessly take to the streets to mop up the criminal scum who have for too long made the residents of Vye-7 fearful to leave their homes. Utilizing the latest in crowd suppression, anti-gang, and nonlethal technologies, our proud peacekeepers are making great inroads to the eradication of urban aggressors.”

  “One must admire any organization who has the gall to use the word ‘peacekeeper’ in the same sentence as ‘eradication,’” Garotte said.

  “And there are an awful lot of smoking holes in the ground for nonlethal technologies,” Silo said. “That said, hon, I’m not seeing a huge amount of evidence of weapons of the level you brought me here to stop. Granted, that could just mean their editors aren’t completely incompetent.”

  “In my observation, the corrupt paramilitary corporation flavor of world-conquering organization tends to have an above-average public relations department.”

  Garotte shook his head as he went through the available data. “What I wouldn’t give for a proper satellite network over this blasted planet. A few decent orbital sensors would make this a snap. They’ve made some genuinely impressive improvements in identifying weapon signatures. I ought to know. On most planets the first obstacle to covert operations is blinding the eye in the sky to what we’re up to, and it is getting more difficult year by year.”

  Now it was Silo’s turn to shake her head. He glanced in her direction, but she held her tongue.

  “Something on your mind, my dear?”

  “My mother always told me if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I may as well keep it to myself.”

  “Never let it be said I was a man closed to a bit of constructive criticism.”

  “This isn’t that.”

  “Ah. So judgment then. Best to listen to your instincts. I’m not liable to gain any unique insight from your no doubt skillful illustration of just how much holier thou art than I.”

  She scowled. “See, now you’ve got it coming to you.”

  “So be it.”

  “How do you do this stuff? Under the radar, and outside the bounds of law. How exactly do you put your head down on a pillow knowing you can’t even do your job while folks are watching because they’d lock you up? It isn’t exactly the work of a hero.”

  “Bah. The universe doesn’t need heroes right now. When things are looking bleak, when they’re spiraling out of control, that’s when you need a hero. To take something wrong and set it to rights. I’m not that. If you need that sort, there’re a thousand men and women lined up and chomping at the bit to have their chance. I’m not a hero, nor would I aspire to be. I, my dear, am a handyman.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “A handyman.”

  “Certainly. Spies are the handymen of society. Think about it for a moment. We both serve a vital purpose. A messy purpose too, and despite what popular fiction might have to say about spies, an unglamorous purpose. We make sure things flow smoothly. We clear the path for civility and comfort. We seal leaks and remove clogs, take steps to keep the creeping rot from spreading. With little pushes here and little patches there, we keep things in shape. And when we fail, when the leaks get out of control and short out the wiring, things leap to flame. It is then heroes must be called to save the lives and put out the fires. And when they are through, we slip right back in, patching up the damage and slapping on a fresh coat of paint so that the great, glorious saviors can have their well-earned rest on their laurels. I’ve got my share of problems, my dear, but when my head touches the pillow, I sleep like a babe.”

  “... So do they teach you that speech in espionage training?”

  “Some variation of it, yes. As I recall he said we were plumbers and had some wordplay based upon the wet-work concept, but what’s the point of a psychological salve if one doesn’t give it that personal touch? If you don’t mind returning to the mission, I believe I have narrowed the ideal targets to three.”

  “Let’s see them.”

  He moved the map to the main display. “After removing major urban centers, which could just as easily be the homes of the employees in question, and the handful of recreational locations like a few football fields and houses of ill repute, I believe we have found two locations in the lowland plains south and east of the main developed area and one in the equatorial mountains more or less on the opposite side of the planet from the rest of the population.”

  “If I was going to try to hide something, the other side of the planet seems like a good place to do it.”

  “Not a tremendous decision with regard to logistics, but then, we must make compromises in the interest of secrecy. That is as good a target as any.”

  “Good. Let’s get down there. And we’d better hurry,” Silo said.

  “Find something unfortunate in your investigation?”

  “Have a look,” she said.

  She shifted another video to the main display. This one prominently featured a much more organized, much more disciplined force squaring themselves against the shock troopers of the Broadline Syndicate. The same gritty voice narrated this footage as well.

  “People of Vye-7. Ask yourselves, who has helped to clean up the menace of the Piranhas? And who allowed them to fester and grow. The Kruger Militia claims to have your best interests at heart, but they gather themselves in the cities and turn their back on half of the citizens. They leave the Broadline Syndicate to defend the people. If that’s what they want, that’s what they get. The Syndicate needs your support. Let the Militia know they should stand down and leave planetary law enforcement and defense in the hands of those who can handle it.”

  Garotte smirked. “I may have spoken too soon regarding the skill of their public relations department.”

  “I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time, Garotte,” Silo said. “Near as I can tell, these militia people are regular army. They set up their defensive posts and headquarters away from civilians, the way you ought to, which means there won’t be any reason for the Syndicate to hold back. With the weapons they’ve got, this could be over before it starts.”

  “Agreed. To the surface.”

  #

  Silo watched as the endless, featureless expanse of gray landscape drew more sharply into focus. “What did the scientists see in this world anyway? There’s no oceans. And I’ve only seen one lake outside of the glacial zone. I thought water was one of the main reasons they even considered a planet for colonization.”

  “This planet is goin
g to get a good deal more valuable in about thirty years. That’s when a long-term hauling project finishes repositioning a few ice comets into orbit. Should be enough to get a nice little water cycle going.”

  “Then why not wait until that happened? For heaven’s sake, they’ve got their cities at the bottom of the lowland plains. Isn’t that where the ocean will turn up if they decide to start one?”

  “The placement of the cities and the earliness of the colonization can both be traced to the same few answers. Platinum, gold, uranium, thorium, titanium, and tungsten. This planet has some of the most significant and accessible mineral deposits in the known galaxy. My briefings prior to my previous mission here indicated a fairly sophisticated bit of scheduling with the intent of clearing out the bulk of the low-altitude deposits before the ocean shows up. Until then, water is shipped in to meet the planet’s requirements and then reprocessed.”

  “So the survival of the people is more or less dependent on a steady, well-maintained supply chain,” Silo said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Exactly the sort of thing that becomes impossible during a large-scale conflict.”

  “And now you see the value of intervention. And why those pesky accords preventing direct intervention by established colonizing bodies can, while designed with good intentions, really cause their share of problems.”

  “You know what else causes problems, hon? Thinking you know better than the folks who make the rules.”

  “The ‘folks who make the rules’ are a massive committee. Actually, I must correct myself. They are a massive committee of massive subcommittees. And when have you known any group of people larger than can comfortably sit at a booth in a pub come to any useful conclusion about anything? Honestly, I’m beginning to think the intelligence of a group is a fixed number that just gets divided amongst each new member until everyone has just enough of an IQ to stave off suffocation and starvation.”

  “You really don’t think very highly of politicians, do you?”

  “When one hundred percent of the problems I’m asked to solve come from the same two professions, I think a bit of distaste is reasonable.” He squinted at one of the ship’s displays. “Still no sensor sweeps. You know, one of the handfuls of useful aspects of having a poorly developed planet with no unified defense, at least from the point of view of a benevolent infiltrator such as myself, is the utter lack of high-altitude surveillance. At this rate we’ll be able to practically park on their roof without drawing their attention.”

  The system beeped and a thin red line traced out a perimeter on the navigational screen.

  “Should’ve knocked on wood, hon.”

  “I’ll endeavor to have some about for future missions.”

  He eased the ship to a stop. The evolution of starships and the ever-improving nature of thrusters meant that aerodynamics were largely an afterthought. Barbara Belle looked more like a brick than anything intended to travel. It had four tiny things that looked like wings near the front and rear of the vessel, but they existed simply to move things like maneuvering thrusters and shield emitters away from the main body. By using brute force to remain aloft, a few somewhat ridiculous options became possible, such as cutting all forward motion and hanging in the air like something gravity had forgotten.

  Garotte tapped the indicators on the control panel. “That new reactor Dr. Dee gave us is worrisome.”

  “Is it not working right?”

  “It barely seems to be working at all. That is to say, I’m seeing less than five percent utilization. Normally my ship would be huffing and puffing after shoving its way through an atmosphere for as long as we’ve been up here.”

  “Based on his behavior, I wouldn’t have trusted that man to fix a sandwich. Suppose we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”

  “When the cover depicts a casual attempt to decapitate someone with a deli tray, I think a harsh initial judgment can be excused. However, as we are now approaching the point at which we might be observed, the time may have come to try out some of his other gadgetry.”

  He stood and maneuvered through the narrow hall. The ship was cramped enough in zero-g; now that he had to cope with actually using the floor, it was bordering on unusable.

  “Oxygen masks on, if you would. The oxygen concentration is fairly low as it is, what with the plant life rigidly refusing to take root, and we are still rather high up.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know the drill, Garotte. This isn’t my first mission.”

  He clicked a safety strap to his belt, then to a loop beside the cargo door that occupied a reasonably large section of the ship’s side.

  “Simply giving you forewarning, my dear. Your ears may pop as well. There’s not an ideal amount of pressure out there.”

  “Just get on with it. I’ve never been too confident about these early-warning systems and their ability to keep us out of sensor range.”

  “As you wish.”

  He gave the surrounding cargo a quick tug to ensure it was secure, then popped open the cargo door. It hinged downward and offered a bit of a walkway leading out into the thin air. Below him, aside from the hum of the thrusters keeping them stationary, there was little more than several thousand meters of parched atmosphere. Nevertheless, he stepped fearlessly onto the extended cargo door and deployed what looked like a shoddily built vacuum cleaner with a rifle grip on one end. Two stout cables trailed from hefty connectors on the device and plugged into a panel beside the door controls.

  A small, old-fashioned but exceedingly rugged display screen sat atop the device. As he raised the gadget in the general direction of the coordinates they surmised might be the secret Syndicate base, flickering red lines traced out some geometric shapes over a zoomed-in section of the landscape.

  “Are you seeing this in the main viewer?”

  “What I’m seeing mostly is a mountain with some half-baked overlays. What is this thing supposed to do?”

  “It is supposed to be an ‘undetectable ground-penetrating viewer’ utilizing all sorts of proprietary techniques. I’ll just zoom in and see what it can do.”

  He twisted some knobs on the side, just one of a long list of elements that illustrated Dr. Dee’s fondness for older design principles—and watched the image magnify and clarify. Soon a stretch of mountain just barely visible in the distance filled the viewer in crystal clarity. Here and there digital artifacts suggested some sort of postprocessing was going on, likely correcting for heat distortion or the motion of the imager. Once the image fully resolved, red lines once again traced across the screen. This time they were clearly forming a sort of wireframe of structures that certainly hadn’t formed naturally within the mountain. He adjusted the viewer to try to take in the full facility the imager had detected, but it soon became clear there was far more of it than could comfortably be viewed at once.

  “Good heavens…” Garotte said, sweeping slowly. “This supposedly has an export feature… activated… But look at that… If this thing is detecting correctly, I’m seeing… easily a square kilometer of excavated tunnels and rooms.”

  “Looks like that export is working,” Silo said. “I’m getting a floor-by-floor layout.”

  “The man makes quality tools,” Garotte said, angling the imager downward. “It looks like it has an upper limit on the amount of ground it can penetrate. I’m getting glitchy display on anything below the… seven, eight… the eleventh subfloor. Though there are other settings. Let’s see what we get in high-fidelity mode.”

  He flipped a switch and the red wireframe faded to gray. Blue lines traced out along power and plumbing lines. Within seconds the full wiring diagram of the facility was available. Another switch, labeled “Higher-fidelity” faded the new lines to gray and started to overlay blobby messes of pixels that slowly resolved to skeletons and bits of mobile hardware.

  “… Now this is just cheating,” Silo said.

  “War is largely the process of manufacturing an unfair advantage and you know it. I
’m seeing a personnel count of perhaps a half-dozen. Lots of automated equipment I can’t quite identify. That would definitely be consistent with a storage facility.”

  “Any other tricks up that thing’s sleeve?”

  “One more switch. It is labeled ‘More Magic.’ I imagine that is Dr. Dee’s idea of wit. I’m flipping it now.”

  He activated the final switch, and for a moment, nothing happened at all. Then, ever so slowly, the visuals that had been constructed during the first few stages began to take on some impressively realistic lighting. The process continued, floor by floor, until the first half of the visualization looked as if he was peeking through the mountain into a live video feed. This abruptly stopped when a control panel on the top floor exploded into a cloud of sparks, then the lights leading away from it flared and dimmed in rapid succession.

  “That’s… interesting,” Silo said.

  “Right, well, I believe we have discovered what can be called either a major flaw or an unexpected bonus of this device, but all the same, best to discontinue this bit of surveillance before we accidentally destroy the facility before we have confirmed its contents.”

  “Why does it not surprise me that the lunatic tried making a telescope and still managed to blow things up?”

  “A man after your own heart, no doubt,” Garotte said, stowing the device and deactivating the cargo door.

  “I prefer my explosions to be on purpose.”

  Once the door was secured he joined her. “Keep the scanners up and take us down low, into the foothills to the north.”

  “Less than a dozen soldiers and some load lifters. Not bad even if they are on high alert now,” Silo said.

  “Yes indeed. No reason to suspect the initial plan won’t work as expected. We get inside, confirm contents. If it is indeed a stockpile of military-grade parts, we find out who is getting them here and how. Once that information is in our back pocket we crack into their network, learn what it will take to defeat them, then let them know we’ve got their toys and let them come at us until we puncture their forces to the point of no longer being any concern to the Militia,” Garotte said.