by John Scalzi
“A dicey risk,” Schmidt said.
“When I want a military assessment from you, Hart, I’ll be sure to let you know,” Wilson said.
Schmidt smiled again and then held up what he was carrying. “Maybe this will be to your liking, then,” he said. “CDF-issue hard connector with battery.”
“Thanks,” Wilson said. The black box was dead; he’d need to put a little power into it in order to wake up the transmitter.
“Are you ready to fly this thing?” Schmidt asked, nodding toward the shuttle.
“I’ve already plotted a path to the black box, and put it into the router,” Wilson said. “There’s also a standard departure routine. I’ve chained the departure routine to the predetermined path. Reverse everything on the way home. As long as I’m not required to actually try to pilot, I’ll be fine.”
* * *
What the hell? Wilson thought. On his shuttle’s forward monitor, on which he had pumped up light-source collection to see star patterns over the glare of his instrument panel, another star had become occluded. That was two in the last thirty seconds. There was some object in the path between him and the black box.
He frowned, powered the shuttle into motionlessness, and pulled up the data from the surveys he’d run on the Clarke.
He saw the object on the survey; another one of the debris chunks that had been ever so slightly warmer than the surrounding space. It was large enough that if the shuttle collided with it, there would be damage.
Looks like I have to pilot after all, Wilson thought. He was annoyed with himself that he hadn’t applied his survey data to his shuttle plot; he now had to waste time replotting his course.
“Is there a problem?” Schmidt asked, voice coming through the instrument panel.
“Everything’s fine,” Wilson said. “Something in my way. Routing around it.” The survey heat data noted the object’s size as approximately three to four meters on a side, which made it considerably larger than anything that the standard scans had picked up, but not so large that it required a major change in pathing. Wilson created a new path that dropped the shuttle 250 meters below the object and resumed travel to the black box from there, and he inserted it into the navigational router, which accepted the change without complaint. Wilson resumed his journey, watching the monitors to see the object in his way occlude a few other stars as the shuttle moved relative to it.
The shuttle arrived at the black box a few moments later. Wilson couldn’t see it with his own eyes, but after he had first located it he’d run supplementary scans that fixed its location to within about ten centimeters, which was precise enough for what he was about to do. He fired up the final navigational sequence, which made a series of minute maneuvers. This took another minute.
“Here we go,” Wilson said, and commanded his unitard to wrap around his face, which it did with a snap. Wilson hated the feeling of the unitard’s face mask; it felt as if someone had tightly duct-taped his entire head. It was simply better than the alternative in this case. Wilson’s vision was totally blocked by his face mask; his BrainPal compensated by feeding him a visual stream.
That accomplished, Wilson commanded the shuttle to air out the interior. The shuttle’s compressors sprang to life, sucking the shuttle’s air back into its tanks. Three minutes later, the interior of the shuttle had almost as little open air in it as the space surrounding it.
Wilson cut off the shuttle’s artificial gravity, unstrapped himself from the shuttle pilot chair and very gingerly pushed off toward the shuttle door, stopping himself directly in front of it and gripping the guide handle on its side to keep himself from drifting. He pressed the door release, and the door slid into the wall of the shuttle. There was an almost imperceptible whisper as the few remaining free molecules of human-friendly atmosphere rushed out the open portal.
Still holding the guide handle, Wilson reached out into space—gently!—and after a second wrapped his fingers around an object. He pulled it in.
It was the black box.
Excellent, Wilson thought, and released the guide handle to press the door button and seal the interior of the shuttle once more. He commanded the shuttle to start pumping air back into the cabin and to turn the artificial gravity back on—and nearly dropped the black box when he did. It was heavier than it looked.
After a minute, Wilson retracted his face mask and took a physically unnecessary but psychologically satisfying huge gulp of air. He walked back to the pilot’s chair, retrieved the hard connector and then spent several minutes looking at the box’s inscrutable surface, searching for the tiny hole he could plunge the connector into. He finally located it, lanced the box with the connector, felt it click into position, and waited the thirty required seconds for enough energy to transfer over and power up the black box’s receiver and transmitter.
With his BrainPal, he transmitted the encrypted signal to the black box. There was a pause, followed by a stream of information pushed into Wilson’s BrainPal fast enough that he almost felt it physically.
The last moments of the Polk.
Wilson started scanning the information with his BrainPal as quickly as he could begin opening the data.
In less than a minute, he confirmed what they already strongly suspected: that the Polk had been attacked and destroyed in the battle.
A minute after that, he learned that one escape pod had been launched from the Polk but that it appeared to have been destroyed less than ten seconds before the black box itself had been launched, cutting out its own data feed. Wilson guessed that the occupant of the escape pod would have been the mission ambassador or someone on her staff.
Three minutes after that, he learned something else.
“Oh shit,” Wilson said, out loud.
“I just heard an ‘Oh shit,’” Schmidt said, from the instrument panel.
“Hart, you need to get Abumwe and Coloma on the line, right now,” Wilson said.
“The ambassador’s in her preparatory briefings right now,” Schmidt said. “She’s not going to want to be interrupted.”
“She’s going to be a lot more upset with you if you don’t interrupt her,” Wilson said. “Trust me on this.”
* * *
“The Polk was attacked by what?” Abumwe said. She and Coloma were tied into a conference video, Coloma from her ready room and Abumwe from a spare conference room Schmidt had almost had to drag her into.
“By at least fifteen Melierax Series Seven ship-to-ship missiles,” Wilson said, talking into the pilot instrument panel and the small camera there. “It could have been more, because data started getting sketchy after enough systems failed. But it was at least fifteen.”
“Why does it matter what type of missiles destroyed the Polk?” Abumwe asked, irritated.
Wilson glanced over to the image of Captain Coloma, who looked ashen. She got it, at least. “Because, Ambassador, Melierax Series Seven ship-to-ship missiles are made by the Colonial Union,” Wilson said. “The Polk was attacked with our own missiles.”
“That’s not possible,” Abumwe said, after a moment.
“The data says otherwise,” Wilson said, choosing not to go on a rant about the stupidity of the phrase “that’s not possible,” because it would likely be counterproductive at this point.
“The data could be incorrect,” Abumwe said.
“With respect, Ambassador, the CDF has gotten very good at figuring out what things are being shot at them,” Wilson said. “If the Polk confirmed the missiles as being Melierax type, it’s because it was able to identify them across several confirming points, including shape, size, scan profile, thrust signature and so on. The likelihood of them not being Melierax Series Seven is small.”
“What do we know about the ship?” Coloma said. “The one that fired on the Polk.”
“Not a lot,” Wilson said. “It didn’t identify itself, and other than a basic scan the Polk didn’t spend any time on it. It was roughly the same size as the Polk itself, we can see t
hat from its survey signature. Other than that, there’s not much to go on.”
“Did the Polk fire back on the ship?” Coloma asked.
“It got off at least four missiles,” Wilson said. “Also Melierax Series Seven. There’s no data on whether they hit their target.”
“I don’t understand,” Abumwe said. “Why would we attack and destroy one of our own ships?”
“We don’t know if it was one of our own ships,” Coloma said. “Just that it was our own missiles.”
“That’s right,” Wilson said, and raised his finger to rebut.
“It’s possible that we sold the missiles to another race,” Coloma said. “Who then attacked us.”
“It’s possible, but there are two things to consider here,” Wilson said. “The first is that most of our weapon trades are for higher-end technology. Any one race who can make a spaceship can make a missile. The Melierax Series are bread-and-butter missiles. Every other race has missiles just like it. The second is that these are ostensibly secret negotiations. In order to hit us, someone had to know we were here.” Coloma opened her mouth. “And to anticipate the next question, we haven’t sold any Melierax missiles to the Utche,” Wilson said. Coloma closed her mouth and stared stonily.
“So we have a mystery ship targeting the Colonial Union with our own missiles,” Abumwe said.
“Yes,” Wilson said.
“Then where are they now?” Abumwe said. “Why aren’t we under attack?”
“They didn’t know we were coming,” Wilson said. “We were diverted to this mission at the last minute. It would usually take the Colonial Union several days at least to have a new mission in place. By which time these particular negotiations would have failed, because we weren’t there for them.”
“Someone destroyed an entire ship just to foul up diplomatic negotiations?” Coloma said. “This is your theory?”
“It’s a guess,” Wilson said. “I don’t pretend that I know enough about this situation to be correct. But I think regardless we have to make the Colonial Union aware of what happened here as soon as possible. Captain, I’ve already transferred the data to the Clarke’s computers. I strongly suggest we send a skip drone with it and my preliminary analysis back to Phoenix immediately.”
“Agreed,” Abumwe said.
“I’ll have it done as soon as I’m off this call,” Coloma said. “Now, Lieutenant, I want you and the shuttle back on the Clarke immediately. With all due respect to Ambassador Abumwe, I’m not entirely convinced there’s not still a threat out there. Get back here. We’ll be under way as soon as you are.”
“What?” Abumwe said. “We still have a mission. I still have a mission. We’re here to negotiate with the Utche.”
“Ambassador, the Clarke is a diplomatic vessel,” Coloma said. “We have no offensive weapons and only a bare minimum of defensive capability. We’ve confirmed the Polk was attacked. It’s possible whoever attacked the Polk is still out there. We’re sending this data to Phoenix. They will alert the Utche of the situation, which means they will almost certainly call off their ship. There is no negotiation to be had.”
“You don’t know that,” Abumwe said. “It might take them hours to process the information. We are less than three hours from when the Utche are meant to arrive. Even if we were to leave, we will still be in system when they arrive, which means the first thing they would see is us running away.”
“It’s not running away,” Coloma said, sharply. “And this is not your decision to make, Ambassador. I am captain of the ship.”
“A diplomatic ship,” Abumwe said. “On which I am the chief diplomat.”
“Ambassador, Captain,” Wilson said, “do I need to be here for this part of the conversation?”
Wilson saw the two simultaneously reach toward their screens. Both of their images shut off.
“That would be ‘no,’” Wilson said, to himself.
VIII.
Something was nagging at Wilson as he punched in the return route to the Clarke. The Polk had been hit at least fifteen times by ship-to-ship missiles, but before any of them had hit, there had been an earlier explosion that had shaken the ship. But the data had not recorded any event leading up to the explosion; the ship had skipped, made an initial scan of the immediate area and then everything was perfectly normal until the initial explosion. Once it happened everything went to hell, quickly. But beforehand, nothing. There had been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.
The shuttle’s navigational router accepted the path back and started to move. Wilson strapped himself into his seat and relaxed. He would be back on the Clarke shortly, by which time he assumed that either Coloma or Abumwe would have emerged victorious from their power struggle. Wilson had no personal preference in who won; he could see the merit in both arguments, and both of them appeared to dislike him equally, so neither had an advantage there.
I did what I was supposed to do, Wilson thought, and glanced over to the black box on the passenger seat, looking like a dark, matte, light-absorbing hole in the chair.
Something clicked in his head.
“Holy shit,” Wilson said, and slapped the shuttle into immobility.
“You said ‘shit’ again,” Wilson heard Schmidt say. “And now you’re not moving.”
“I just had a very interesting thought,” Wilson said.
“You can’t have this thought while you are bringing the shuttle back?” Schmidt said. “Captain Coloma was very specific about returning it.”
“Hart, I’m going to talk to you in a bit,” Wilson said.
“What are you going to do?” Schmidt asked.
“You probably don’t want to know,” Wilson said. “It’s best you don’t know. I want to make sure you have plausible deniability.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Schmidt said.
“Exactly,” Wilson said, and cut his connection to his friend.
A few minutes later, Wilson floated weightless inside the airless cabin of the shuttle, face masked, holding the guide handle next to the shuttle door. He slapped the door release button.
And saw nothing outside.
Which is not as it should have been; Wilson’s BrainPal should have picked up and enhanced starlight within visible wavelengths. He was getting nothing.
Wilson reached out with the hand not gripping the guide handle. Nothing. He repositioned himself, bringing his body mostly outside of the door, and reached again. This time there was something there.
Something big and black and invisible.
Hello, Wilson thought. What the hell are you?
The big, black, invisible thing did not respond.
Wilson pinged his BrainPal for two things. The first was to see how long it had been since his face mask had gone on; it was roughly two minutes. He’d have just about five minutes before his body started screaming at him for air. The second was to adjust the properties of the nanobotic cloth of his combat unitard to run a slight electric current through his unitard’s hands, soles and knees, the current powered by his own body heat and friction generated through movement. That achieved, he reached out again toward the the big, black, invisible object.
His hand clung to it, lightly. Hooray for magnetism, Wilson thought.
Moving slowly so as not to accidentally and fatally launch himself into space, Wilson left the shuttle to go exploring.
* * *
“We have a problem,” Wilson said. He was back on the conference call with Coloma and Abumwe. Schmidt hovered behind Abumwe, silent.
“You have a problem,” Coloma said. “You were ordered to return that shuttle forty minutes ago.”
“We have a different problem,” Wilson said. “I’ve found a missile out here. It’s armed. It’s waiting for the Utche. And it’s one of ours.”
“Excuse me?” Coloma said, after a moment.
“It’s another Melierax Series Seven,” Wilson said, and held up the black box. “It’s housed in a small silo that’s
covered in the same wavelength-absorbing material this thing is. When you run the standard scans, you won’t see it. Hart and I only saw it because we ran a highly-sensitive thermal scan when we were looking for the black box, and even then we didn’t give it any thought because it wasn’t what we were looking for. When I was looking through the Polk data, there was an explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, before the Polk was attacked by the ship and missiles we could see. My brain put two and two together. I passed by this thing on the way to black box. I stopped this time to get a closer look.”
“You said it’s waiting for the Utche,” Abumwe said.
“Yes,” Wilson said.
“How do you know that?” Abumwe asked.
“I hacked into the missile,” Wilson said. “I got inside the silo, pried open the missile control panel and then used this.” He held up the CDF standard connector.
“You went on a spacewalk?” Schmidt said, over Abumwe’s shoulder. “Are you completely insane?”
“I went on three,” Wilson said as Abumwe turned to glare at Schmidt. “I was limited by how long I could hold my breath.”
“You hacked into the missile,” Coloma said, returning to the subject.
“Right,” Wilson said. “The missile is armed and it’s waiting for a signal from the Utche ship.”
“What signal?” Coloma asked.
“I think it’s when the Utche ship hails us,” Wilson said. “The Utche send their ship-to-ship communications on certain frequencies, different from the ones we typically use. This missile is programmed to home in on ships using those frequencies. Ergo, it’s waiting for the Utche.”
“To what end?” Abumwe asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Wilson said. “The Utche are attacked by a Colonial Defense Forces missile, and are damaged or destroyed. The original Colonial Union diplomatic mission was traveling by CDF frigate. It would look like we attacked the Utche. Negotiations broken off, diplomacy over, the Colonial Union and the Utche back at each other’s throats.”
“But the Polk was destroyed,” Coloma said.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Wilson said. “The information I was sent by the CDF about the Polk’s mission said it was slated to arrive seventy-four hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival. The black box data stream has the Polk arriving eighty hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival.”
