No Remorse, page 13
“Why do I inherit an oversized share of the survey while you sit on your delightful butt to watch a machine look for limpet mines?”
“Because you’re an oversized lummox who’s overly interested in my delightful derriere.”
**
“Zack.” Talyn’s voice echoed through the engineering compartment. “Find the nearest display. The droid found something tucked away under the port nacelle pylon it says isn’t part of the most recent specs it carries in memory.”
“Shit.”
Decker reached out and stroked the main panel’s screen. It came to life with a feed from the small inspection robot clinging to Haukka’s hull. A targeting reticle was centered on a small blister that almost seemed part of the ship, something a casual surveyor might miss. It was as scarred and stained by atmospheric re-entries as its surroundings were, but the droid obligingly highlighted a faint seam between the bump and the hull.
“What do you think?”
“My first guess would be a subspace tracking beacon. It doesn’t look big enough for an explosive device able to penetrate the hull, let alone damage the pylon. At least not in a vacuum.”
“Master Gunner’s opinion?”
“Yep.”
“What should we do?”
“We won’t do anything about it right now. I will finish inspecting the lower deck and engineering spaces while you keep the droid running. Then I’ll hand the inside survey over to you while I suit up and go out with my tools. If it’s a beacon, we may want to leave it right there for now, so as not to alert whoever planted the thing we’re on to them.”
“Do you think Garrett would modify the ship and not note it in the specs?”
“Sure, but changing stuff and not taking notes eventually leads to a shipload of problems so I won’t use that as my first premise. Remember our Sécurité Spéciale friends had plenty of time to tag Haukka between Garrett leaving and our arrival.”
“Without the AI taking note?”
“It might not if port inspection droids are crawling around the pad, as I’m sure they regularly do to verify that berthed ships are properly secured. I’m willing to bet the harbormaster sent out a swarm after Garrett walked away. But until I examine the blister in person, all we know is that the engineering droid doesn’t remember it.”
Half an hour later, a pressure-suited Decker climbed out of the port side secondary airlock and attached his harness to the patiently waiting engineering droid that would carry him to the mysterious blister. Walking on the hull using his suit’s magnetic soles would be awkward in the moon’s one-sixth gee gravity since his target was on the ship’s underside. It was best to hang off the droid which could move several times Decker’s weight while its centipede-like traction belts adhered to Haukka.
He made the robot stop less than a meter from the object and scanned it with a high-powered military-grade unit. After digesting the results, Decker reached out and ran his hand over the seam he’d seen via the video feed. He stopped when the tactile sensors built into the glove’s fingertips alerted him to a small depression on the side facing the pylon.
Talyn, who’d been watching via his helmet camera feed asked, “What is it?”
“Can I ask the starship pilot version of you a hypothetical question?”
“Of course.”
“What happens if an explosive charge, one that’s not powerful enough to breach the hull, explodes inside our hyperspace bubble when we’re FTL? I know hyperspace torpedoes force a ship back to sublight speeds, but they’re designed to disrupt the bubble by blowing against its outer edges. I’m talking a nasty bang inside our own little pocket universe.”
She was silent for a few moments, then said, “No one actually knows, but it can’t be good. If I recall correctly, the Navy carried out tests long ago to see what would happen if a ship suffered from internal explosions while FTL. The test drones they used were never found.”
“So they could be roaming through hyperspace for eternity, each stuck in its own permanent bubble?” Decker asked.
“Or they’ve been wrecked during a catastrophic translation back to sublight.
“In other words, there’s probably no good outcome.”
“Doesn’t seem like it. What do you intend?”
Decker chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, then exhaled noisily.
“Assume my scans correctly identified it as a mine, find a way to defeat any anti-lift device and remove it. If I try to pry the damned thing off just like that, I doubt you’ll find enough left of me to fill a small envelope. Or we put the ship on automatic, get off, and let the AI fly it into Scandia’s sun.”
“Why would someone use such a device?”
“No idea. Mind you, to the casual and even not so casual eye, it looks like a normal hull patch. Something with enough punch to break us open would look exactly like what it was, even to the dumbest space cadet. However, if our culprit knows about the Navy experiments, he’ll think it was worth a try.”
“But the Sécurité Spéciale or whoever has put them onto Haukka want the ship and its data banks intact,” Talyn protested. “Not turning into space debris or a mythical Flying Dutchman.”
“I know. It doesn’t make much sense. Unless...” Decker paused. “You’ve worked with Garrett before. Is he a big sideways thinker?”
“About as twisty as most of us.”
“Check the ship’s log and tell me if he inspected the hull in the days between landing here and going walkabout.”
“You think he planted that limpet?”
“It’s no stranger than thinking the Sécurité Spéciale did so.”
“What about third parties? People Garrett offended in his undercover role?”
“Check the log,” Decker repeated.
After almost a minute of silence, Talyn’s voice rang out again.
“Garrett took an inspection tour in a pressure suit a few hours before he was last seen in the docking arm.” A pause, then, “It’s not really an explosive device, is it, Zack?”
“Nope. Just something cunningly disguised as a mine. Garrett wouldn’t booby-trap his own ship. Not if he plans on lifting off in a hurry.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Points — plural. Or so I figure.” Decker ran his finger along the seam between the supposed patch and the hull. “If the ship is stolen and the thief surveys it before hauling ass into the badlands, he’ll think he has a real problem on his hands. Besides, civilians like the Sécurité Spéciale goons might not know offhand how much explosive you need to punch a hole through the hull and think this is a huge problem.”
“Plausible, if not necessarily probable, but okay — a decoy to mess with the bad guys. What else?”
“Where would you hide something that only your equally twisted colleagues from the netherworld of black ops should find?”
“A hull patch pretending to be a limpet mine?”
“Precisely.” He chuckled, pleased with himself. “Does that sound like Garrett?”
“It does. But how will you get confirmation?”
“Simple. If it’s what I believe, I need is a code of some sort.” He paused. “A recognition code that can be given to whatever is hidden inside the hull patch without using a keyboard, touchscreen, optical sensor, or another direct interface.”
“And an arm you can afford to lose if things go wrong. Would it respond to a radio transmission?”
“Possibly, but if you’re trying to hide something in plain sight, you might want to use a method that can’t be picked up by a receiver aimed at your location. I have an idea...”
— FIFTEEN —
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Look who’s talking,” Decker replied after removing his pressure suit helmet. The squat, boxy engineering droid carrying the hull patch waited patiently inside the now re-pressurized airlock for orders.
“What if your assumptions were wrong?”
“The little fella over there would be gone,” he nodded toward the droid, “and we’d face a long conversation with the harbormaster. But my assumptions were correct. We’ll likely find he uses that droid to help set and remove the fake patch, then wipes its memory, hence the alert when it came upon a feature not in the specs. And that’s probably by design, so people like us investigate. I can’t wait to unpack the thing and see how Garrett did it.”
“And what in the big, wide galaxy made you think of playing ‘Silver and Green’ at it. Or at least having the droid latch on and send electromagnetic pulses that would sound like ‘Silver and Green’ if passed through a speaker?”
“It’s the Naval Intelligence branch’s march, isn’t it?” He gave her a satisfied smile. “Once I decided Garrett planted the hull patch himself, I had to decide how he’d disarm the thing. Not that it was actually armed in the first place, but you know what I mean — make the threatening appearance of a mine with anti-lift disappear and release the magnetic seal holding it to the hull. His method was bound to be something others from our spook shop might figure out. I’m willing to bet he programmed it for a few different pieces of music.”
“And what if it your attempt didn’t work?”
“Then I’d still be running through the repertoire. Now how about I look at what our missing friend hid.” He turned to the droid. “Go to cargo hold number one.”
“Why there?” Talyn asked as they followed the droid toward the lift.
“Easier to contain problems and if necessary, eject the patch. I still need to account for the zero point one percent possibility I missed something, or that Garrett added another layer of security I can’t see.”
“Should I don a pressure suit?”
“No, because I’m doing this alone as well. Someone still needs to finish the mission and find the missing people.”
An urgent chime forestalled Talyn’s response, and the AI’s voice came over the ship’s public address system.
“A human male at the main airlock is attempting to gain entry. He has entered an invalid access code.”
“Shit. The Sécurité Spéciale again?”
Talyn held up her hand. “Perhaps not. Give us a visual.”
A holographic image of the gangway immediately outside the airlock materialized in the center of the passage. It showed the familiar shape of a powerfully built man in his forties, with long hair gathered in a queue and a thin beard around his full mouth. His clothes were those typical of a spacer, including a jacket loose enough to conceal a spacer’s arsenal.
“That has to be Garrett,” Decker said. “Back from his unannounced excursion.”
“A face different enough to fool police sensors, but not too different. I presume he entered the access code used by Captain Mattias Kenly?”
“Yes,” the AI replied.
“It’d be nice if you mentioned it right away,” Decker grumbled.
“My apologies.”
“How about we go to the airlock and confirm it is Garrett instead of a Sécurité Spéciale puke in disguise?”
“Are you armed?” Talyn patted the needler on her hip.
“No.”
“Then we’ll stop by our quarters for your gun. I don’t want to run through the recognition sequence out in the open where we can be seen. Our friend knocking on the door will need to come in. That means I want you able to shoot if anything goes wrong.”
“Agreed.”
The AI spoke once more. “The human male at the airlock has asked to speak with the ship’s captain.”
“Ah, he finally figured out there’s been a change in management,” Decker said.
“And is hoping it’s a friendly face.”
Once the Marine was armed and standing by the airlock, needler at the ready, Talyn ordered the AI to open. The muted clang of mechanical locking bars withdrawing was followed by a soft groan as the heavy outer door pulled inward, then slid to one side, revealing the flexible gangway tube and its sole occupant. The latter’s eyes widened slightly when he saw Talyn and Decker, weapons aimed at the center of his chest.
“Please step in,” Talyn said in a soft tone.
The man complied, his gaze never leaving her face, even when the airlock’s outer door closed again with a solid thunk.
“I was praying it was you who took over my ship.”
The man raised his right hand to waist level, then his fingers began a frantic dance.
Talyn nodded, raised her own hand, and answered in kind before glancing over her shoulder at Zack. “I don’t know if you caught that, but it’s Garrett Montero, and he’s not under duress.”
“Good to see you again, Hera.” A broad smile lit up Montero’s solemn expression. Then, he turned his eyes on the Marine. “And you must be the notorious Zack Decker, ravisher of everything that’s noble in our sordid trade. I heard a lot about you.”
“Likewise.” Decker lowered his gun.
“I was hoping to be back before someone called Universal Exports for overdue berthing fees, but I was waylaid. However, it’s just as well you’re here. Serious problems are brewing on Scandia, problems that are more in your area of expertise than mine.”
“We arrived earlier today aboard a Courier Group aviso, but intended to take Haukka planetside in another twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” Talyn said.
Montero nodded. “It’s what I would do in your place. Does the pressure suit mean you were doing a hull survey, Zack?”
“I removed your improvised safe with the help of the engineering droid. We were trying to figure out why you disappeared.”
“That didn’t take long. I guess my unorthodox solution isn’t as good as I thought.”
“Among other things, the big guy is a born improviser. He can pretty much figure out most puzzles in less time than you’d believe. This was child’s play.”
Decker whistled a few bars from ‘Silver and Green,’ then winked at Montero.
“Cute. Considering half of the intelligence branch couldn’t whistle it to save their lives, your musical choice would easily stump the Sécurité Spéciale and its various pets, let alone pirates and other scum.”
The latter inclined his head. “Nicely done, good sir. Your reputation does not lie.”
“Neither does yours.”
Talyn speared both men with a suspicious glance, wondering whether this was the start of a mutual admiration society.
Montero pointed at Zack. “May I suggest you take that tin suit off? Then we can grab a coffee and discuss what caused me to be absent without authorization for so long. I’m afraid we must move quickly if we want to avert a disaster in this system.”
**
“Your message to be on the lookout for Saga Lagman caught me shortly after I returned from a trip into the Protectorate Zone. I was chasing down reports that supposed Shrehari corsairs were actually undercover units from the Imperial Deep Space Fleet.” Montero cradled a coffee mug in hands that rivaled Decker’s for size and callouses. “Why are we interested in her? I’m asking because my story involves her mother to some extent.”
Talyn, sitting across from him in the saloon, nodded at Decker. “She’s Zack’s daughter.”
A fleeting expression of surprise crossed Montero’s face. “Am I right that Zack was therefore involved at one time with Saga Lagman’s mother, Ingrid Lagman?”
“It’s been two decades, but yeah, we were married for five years and a bit. She couldn’t take my long absences on patrol with the 902nd Pathfinders and left me to return home.”
“You know who Ingrid Lagman is nowadays, right?”
“The worried mother of someone who dropped out of circulation, and who might be missing too,” Talyn said. “Other than that? No.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t research her before setting out for Scandia. How much do you know about local politics?”
“Not a lot,” Talyn confessed. “This system has been quiet for so long, and we always find plenty of other problems to keep us busy.”
“That calm is wholly deceptive. The Scandians are so proud of what they think is an exceptionally enlightened society they’ll do anything to hide what is fast becoming a bitter cultural war between two competing visions of Scandia. Visions represented by the two major political parties, the People’s Alliance on one side and the Reform League on the other.”
“Planetary politics can turn nasty.” Decker shrugged. “What’s this to do with my kid’s disappearance?”
Montero raised a placating hand. “It may be related. You need to understand what’s brewing.
“Fair enough.”
“Four years ago, the Reform League finally won a majority of parliamentary seats and for the first time in sixty years, formed a government. Needless to say, after three generations of unchallenged People’s Alliance rule, it didn’t please the powerful and influential folks who underwrote the Alliance for so long. The Reform League wasn’t supposed to win elections anymore. A large part of that stemmed from Alliance policy in recent times of supporting unrestricted immigration, which they hoped would create a large, mostly urban voting bloc loyal to its generous social policies.
“Except the Scandian-born and those immigrants who came here for the opportunity to colonize new areas of the planet, grew tired of shouldering the increasingly heavy financial burden. Tired enough, in fact, that the Reform League, once decried as un-Scandian by the chattering classes, became a viable alternative, and is now the ruling party. And it looks like they’ll hold on to that parliamentary majority in the next elections. A lot of people are happy with what they’re doing, especially by overturning the more contentious and expensive Alliance policies that turned what was once a high trust society into something a lot less pleasant.”
“Not a new story.” Decker drained his mug. “Political parties throughout history have tried to dissolve the people and elect another so they might retain power.”
