Here we stand, p.6
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Here We Stand, page 6

 

Here We Stand
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  “Which is why I continue to be vigilant,” Solomon said.

  “Spying, you mean.”

  “No, I mean vigilant. You know my position on intruding into people’s private lives.”

  “I did say it was inevitable.” Alex polished his glasses. Marc was convinced he only wore them so he had something to fiddle with when he was feeling uncomfortable. He could have had his vision fixed years ago. “They’re not stupid. They know it’s not over and that we’ll be watching in case someone decides to sabotage something. They’re not a single homogenous mass of white coats, either. Some of them are seriously pissed at the die-back team for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is getting them tarred with the same brush. And they’re wondering how they could not know about Abbie. So like I said when this blew up, the damage has been done, even if everyone’s innocent. It’ll take time to heal.”

  “It’s done now,” Ingram said. “And we were right to do it.”

  “It wouldn’t have made things any better if we hadn’t,” Marc said. “People would have been suspicious of Ainatio staffers anyway. Human nature.”

  “Maybe we should stop calling them staffers,” Trinder said. “Ainatio doesn’t exist now.”

  “Changing words doesn’t change what people think. It’s like swapping price tags. It doesn’t change what’s in the tin and they know it.”

  “Well, let’s treat them like we don’t think they’re Mother Death sleepers, at least,” Ingram said. “Anything else? We may well finish in record time today.”

  Chris raised his forefinger to speak. The more polite and formal he got, the bigger the problem he was about to unload.

  “Captain, a word of caution about the teeriks’ security analysis.”

  “This is an oh-dear moment, isn’t it?”

  “Possibly. I tested Gan-Pamas’s gun last night. Has Hiyashi mentioned it to you?”

  “I haven’t seen him today.”

  “Okay, Gan-Pamas might not have intended to kill anyone.”

  “Oh. Go on.”

  “Hiyashi and I tested the weapon he used on Dan and it wasn’t set anywhere near maximum power. I think we should be more cautious about how we evaluate intel from Fred. Nobody’s got all the facts in any situation and we’ve all got our biases.”

  “Are you saying Jattans aren’t a threat?” Marc asked.

  “I’m saying they might not be set on killing any random stranger they meet. The whole reckless shock-troops thing might be too broad a brush stroke.”

  “Okay, let me play devil’s advocate,” Marc said. “Maybe Gan-Pamas didn’t know how much juice it would take to kill a human. Maybe he thought we were nice guys, but he’d still have gone home and told everyone we were here and that we had their missing ship. Maybe the gun was faulty. Not frying Dan doesn’t necessarily mean he’s our friend, and there’s no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, just less than lethal. Some susceptible people still die.”

  Trinder looked a bit annoyed. “As the guy who was nearly fried, let me tell you it didn’t feel non-lethal.”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, I should have dropped him the second I found him, because I was the one mouthing off about the need to do it,” Chris said. “All I’m saying is there’s enough doubt in my mind now to be wary of starting wars on the sole basis of Fred’s assessment.”

  Ingram tapped her pen on the table. “Are we saying Fred’s got his biases or might make mistakes, or are we saying he’s lying? Sol, you’re the only one who can process languages and clear this up.”

  “If I had more Jattan source material, Captain, I’d make more progress,” Sol said. “The more of the language we can hear, the more the linguistics algorithm can analyse and identify patterns. I’d ask Fred outright, but I don’t want him to clam up. You know teeriks find it hard to volunteer information. They seem to hesitate to speak Kugal among themselves now, and I can’t tell if it’s to improve their English or to appear as transparent as possible.”

  “Or limit your ability to understand it because Marc scared them by hinting that he did.”

  “Do Kugin use radio or broadcast anything?” Chris asked. “If all you need is a source of raw Kugal, there must be a way to listen in, even if it’s just a cookery show. If they have them.”

  “Good idea,” Ingram said. “Can we do that, Sol?”

  “Probably. I’d still need to consult Fred on the safest way to eavesdrop, though, and by doing so I’d be telling him that I’m determined to learn Kugal even if he’s being obstructive.”

  “If he’s not, he’ll offer to teach you,” Marc said.

  “Sol, just find a way to eavesdrop on the Jattans, and preferably the Kugin as well.” Ingram sounded impatient. “We need much better intel. We don’t have a hope of understanding this civil war, if that’s what it is, unless we can form an objective picture of the situation. And we need it to find out whether anybody else knows we’re here or if there’s a Kugin fleet heading our way.”

  “If they knew we had the ship and the teeriks, they’d have been here by now,” Chris said.

  Marc didn’t think it would take a whole fleet to ruin their day. “The Jattan opposition’s the most likely to visit first. They already found us and we still can’t rule out someone knowing where Gan-Pamas was going, even if he didn’t manage to call home. Or at least they found the ship, which now amounts to the same thing.”

  Ingram nodded to herself as if she’d just thought of something. “Perhaps we can use the teerik relays the same way we do with Earth. Sol, let me talk to Fred first. I’ll sound him out and then we can come up with more specific measures.”

  “I’ll continue to analyse the conversation Fred had with Gan-Pamas,” Solomon said. “I’m still relying on what I learned from the message we composed. I can coax him into more help with Jattan once I have a list of specific questions I need to ask.”

  “Why’s it so hard to get him to translate?” Searle asked. “Unless you don’t trust him.”

  “I’m more concerned about innocent errors that might prove disastrous,” Solomon said. “But he might simply be making sure we always need him. We have to remember they see secrecy as their protection.”

  Ingram sighed. “The sooner we don’t have to rely on this drip feed of information, the better. Very well, unless there’s anything else, let’s crack on.”

  Marc wondered how long it would be before she got tired of the slow diplomacy of alien contact and just threatened Fred with a packet of stuffing. The meeting broke up and Chris steered him off to the staff canteen with Trinder. They sat in a quiet corner and dissected the situation over bacon sandwiches.

  “I’ve had breakfast.” Marc pushed the untouched half of his sandwich across the table to Chris. The bloke never wasted a crumb. “I can’t finish this.”

  Chris pounced on it and reached for the sauce. “Thanks. Are we overthinking the whole Gan-Pamas thing? I’m not one for meetings. We never had time. We just got on with it.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to war-game it. But you’re right, our entire assessment of this sector comes from Fred and his commune. They’re rebels, the ones who stole a ship and did a runner. The rest of the teeriks didn’t bother to show up for the revolution, for whatever reason. What does that tell us now?”

  “Maybe Fred’s bunch are troublemakers.”

  “Do you really trust them, Chris?” Trinder asked. “We’re relying on your paranoia superpower.”

  Chris reassembled the heavily-sauced sandwich. “If I don’t trust them, it’s not because I think they’re traitors like Abbie. I’m just not sure about their judgement. If someone asked us about APS, our opinion’s shaped by nearly being nuked and then having our launch sabotaged. The teeriks have spent their lives in a cosy silo, just creating warships and weapons, and that means they’re focused on threats. They’re brought up to see the other side in terms of the damage it could do and how to kill it. It doesn’t make for a balanced assessment.”

  “What if the Jattans turn out to be the good guys like Bissey said, we get on like a house on fire, and the teeriks don’t like it?” Trinder asked. “Whose side are we on?”

  “Ingram’s already promised Fred she’ll defend the teeriks no matter what.” Chris was the proverbial poker player, but he was looking at Marc like he expected him to be offended by any comment about Ingram. “But we all know that means ‘We won’t let you be captured alive because the stuff you know about Earth will drop us in the shit too.’ I’m not criticising that, by the way.”

  “She’s already planning how we make sure we’re not dependent on them to use their technology,” Marc said. “She’s a pragmatist. And you can say what you like about her. We’re not an item.”

  Trinder said nothing and studied his coffee carefully. Chris just nodded and moved on.

  “Look, I like Fred,” Chris said. “And I feel sorry for his commune if they’re escaping slavery, but the people who are good for you aren’t necessarily the ones you like, and vice versa. I just want to do right by the people I promised a safe haven. If I can do that without compromising Fred’s commune, great. If not, I know whose welfare comes first.”

  Marc respected Chris’s clarity. “Yeah, we look after our own.”

  “But what about you? You’ve got friends and family stuck on Earth and we can’t give them FTL.”

  “You mean Tev.”

  “And your ex. And a lot of other folks. You’re not the kind of guy who leaves people behind.”

  Marc kept thinking about Tev and his family. APS knew who and what Tev Josepha was — they’d even flown him to Fiji when Pham and his rummage team moved into Ainatio HQ — but he’d been confident he could keep up his pretence of being an ordinary army vet who just happened to be working on the same security contract as Marc, no special forces background at all. He knew he’d be watched. After the sabcode attack on Asia, he’d probably have been of more interest to Tim Pham, but now Pham’s own Ainatio informant had given Asia a dose of die-back, Pham would almost certainly go after Tev. Pham had seen the Caisin gate working. The bastard hadn’t understood who built it, or exactly what it did, but he knew dangerous and desirable technology when he saw it.

  “It wouldn’t be any easier if we could share the technology,” Marc said. “Just calling Tev puts him at risk. I could do it without saying where I am, but you know how Pham’s mind works. If he hasn’t got someone watching Tev right now, I’ll be surprised.”

  Chris raised an eyebrow. “Locate Tev, open a Caisin gate, put the situation to him, agree an RV point, and ship out whoever you need to.”

  ”Y’know, I’ve rehearsed how I’d break the news to him. Then I work out who he’d want to bring with him, and how many loose ends that leaves when the whole Josepha family vanishes, or what happens if some decide they don’t want to leave friends and neighbours. And what if die-back never reaches Fiji?”

  Deciding whether to save someone from a sinking ship was simple. If you didn’t do it, they’d drown right away. But Marc wouldn’t know if evacuating Tev and his people would save them in the long term until it was too late to undo it.

  “I’d want to get him out,” Chris said. “Especially as that fucker Tim Pham’s still around.”

  “Yeah, I know I’m the one who convinced Tev to try again with his ex, so it’s my fault he’s stuck there.” Marc noticed Trinder fidgeting uncomfortably with his cup and inching back from the conversation. “You don’t need to remind me.”

  “No, I’m saying if you do it, I’ve got your back,” Chris said. “But I know it isn’t simple. It’s not about whether we’ve got room. It’s about what happens if word gets out. But APS can’t reach us now, so what’s the worst scenario?”

  “You being rhetorical?”

  “Brainstorming in the colder light of today, maybe.”

  “You’ll wish you hadn’t asked,” Marc said. “Okay, short answer is what Annis Kim said when we first talked about this. Long answer is Earth finds out there’s a possible FTL lifeboat, the elite book their ticket to Shangri-La, governments fight over the technology, and everyone else scrabbles for a place or starts riots. People die in the time it takes to build the ships or just trying to join the queue. Would that be our fault? Well, we lit the fuse. But not throwing a lifeline also means people die. It’s almost as bad as opening the Caisin gate, getting overrun, and not being able to feed and care for anybody, including our own people. Everybody dies.”

  Chris ate a crust. “You’ve got to stop reading those Russian novels, buddy.”

  “I’m just pointing out there’s no way of taking our next breath without being somehow responsible for someone dying, no matter what we do.”

  “So fuck Earth, it doesn’t make any difference which way we jump.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I was worried you were getting all high-minded and theoretical.” Chris put on his distracted vicar expression, the thousand-yard stare with a hint of witnessing a moment of divine revelation. “Caring about humanity doesn’t count. Saving one guy does. We go get Tev.”

  “If he wants to leave.”

  Trinder picked up his cup. “Guys, can you excuse me? I need to sort out some rosters. Catch you later.”

  Chris watched him go. Marc raised an eyebrow. “Fonseca does the rosters.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it something I said?” Marc asked.

  “Saving people stuck on Earth. Family issues.”

  “Ah, shit. I’d better apologise.”

  “He’ll be okay. Change the subject. Chuck says Howie’s doing well in school. You’ve done a good job.”

  “He only started a few days ago.”

  “I know, but Chuck’s been teaching him since he joined the convoy. He can see the difference.”

  “I worry that it’ll all come crashing in on the kid one day. He’s holding too much back.”

  “I wish I’d asked him more questions about his family.”

  “Did he ever live with anyone in the camp?” Marc asked.

  Chris shook his head. “No shortage of volunteers to take him in, but he wanted his own little cabin from the start. We just humoured him and kept an eye on him.”

  “Yeah, he told me that. Do you know why?”

  “I guess letting himself be absorbed into another family was like shutting the door on his folks and accepting they were gone.” Chris frowned like he was wondering about it for a moment, then moved on. “Look, we’re going to have to make a decision about the dead aliens. I think we should do tests. We need a better idea of what kills Jattans, just so we know we’ve got the right weapons to defend ourselves. I asked Haine but he told me to come back later.”

  “Yeah, that’d be my fault,” Marc said. “I told Ingram to hold off while we worked something out. If we ever need to be friends with the Jattans, we’ll have to show some respect and repatriate bodies. We’d go mental if we found some bastard had desecrated our mates’ corpses.”

  “True, but there’s a compromise.”

  “I’m not gagging to kill Jattans or Kugin unless that’s the only way we’ll survive out here. If there are other ways, like reaching an agreement with them, I’ll try that too.”

  “I asked Dr Mendoza if he had any ideas,” Chris said. “Turns out he’s got all the data to run computer modelling if he can analyse actual tissue. He can build a virtual Jattan and blow the shit out of it.”

  “So you still want something for analysis.”

  “Yeah. Ingram’s blocked it, apparently, so if you’re the one who got her to do that, tell her what we need.”

  “How much? I mean how invasive? They might believe that all your bits have to be accounted for or else you go some kind of hell.”

  “Just tiny plugs of tissue. I’d ask Ingram myself, but she hates my guts. She listens to you, though.”

  Marc couldn’t imagine Chris being scared of Ingram or anyone else, so he was probably trying hard to be diplomatic and not give her a reason to say no.

  “Okay. I’ll get it sorted,” Marc said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d better be going. I’ve got a bunch of boffins to turn into killing machines.”

  “So they’re volunteering.”

  “This batch, yeah. The ones who want to go off-camp sometime. The reluctant but capable will be leaned on later. Everyone’s got to be able to defend themselves, if nothing else.”

  “This is how militarised nations start.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Not at all. We ought to do more survival and self-sufficiency training, too. If we ever get into a war and the worst happens, we need to be able to rebuild without technology to do everything. And building an army and teaching common skills keeps people together. We’ve got too many fault lines forming in this base already.”

  Someone — Trinder or Fonseca, Marc couldn’t remember which — had said that people enjoyed apocalypse movies because they liked the idea of pulling down the old order and having a fresh start without the elite. Building a new society from people still marinated in their own history was going to be a challenge, but if anything could get a bunch of random people to see themselves as a single group with a purpose, it was military training. A Nomad boot camp would be the settlement’s salvation in more ways than one.

  “I wasn’t thinking of kicking the shit out of them until they sign up,” Marc said. “I’m luring them with promises of freedom to explore Opis without a bodyguard.”

  “One more thing before you go, then.”

  “Shoot.”

  Chris hesitated for a heartbeat. “I’m sticking my nose in, but you could have a memorial in the churchyard for your boys. Just a thought. We all need a focus.”

 
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