Queen of Chaos, page 12
part #3 of Sequoyah Series
Max gave him a dubious look, shrugged, and pulled out a handful of textsheets from his jacket pocket. Svena pounced on them and started scrolling with an eager expression while the rest of the group tried to look over her shoulders.
“Awww. It’s just stupid circulars,” Svena announced with great disappointment.
Ennis nodded. “Just like I said. Now pay up.”
“What did they think they were?” Max asked, now completely confused.
“Love letters, blackmail demands, pornography, illicit copies of Cosmographica, compromising vid of the entire Fleet Supply Home Division wearing nothing but chocolate and having an orgy, or fashion magazines. And those are just the ones I heard about,” Ennis added, pointing to the little plastifiber box taped to the wall of the commons, labeled “Party Fund.” The bet losers cheered up marginally and deposited their chips inside. Ennis knew the fine line between an officer acting friendly to enlisted (willing to make bets) and taking advantage of them (taking their money). This way, everyone stayed happy.
Max scratched his chin. “Waaal, if there’s a market for that, maybe I can…but I won’t do fashion mags. Man’s gotta have some standards.”
“You should have thought of that before you agreed to smuggle circulars into FarCom,” Ennis said, gathering up the textsheets and placing them next to his datapad. “Everything quiet out there?”
He pretended to work while Max described the latest courier run and relayed gossip and rumor from some of the outposts. When enough time had passed that most of the original group had wandered off or focused on some other source of entertainment, he gathered up his gear, got a leisurely refill of his mug, and left the commons. That little scene should handle any overactive imaginations. Now they knew Commander Ennis had some unusually lowbrow tastes, like reading circulars. The others knew he’d been enlisted once, like them, and still had friends in the ranks, and that would account for him occasionally being seen in the commons.
As soon as he could get to his workspace in the secure area Ennis sat down and quickly scanned through the relevant circulars. He’d been bitterly disappointed so many times before that it took him a moment to realize the message he had been waiting for was real. There it was, in the Warning/Bad Hire section. Even devout circular readers didn’t place much reliance on those entries; too prone to vindictive and false accusation. Supposedly ship captains could put in warnings about bad former crew, but he’d never heard of any of them actually reading them. Which made that section perfect for coded messages that would never be discovered as fake.
Michael Ivan Sanchez, cargo joey, claimed employment on Yonjin Star Line IV, Cullen Station, Lady of Leisure, Fred’s Folly, actually employed Core Ore Freight, Labrador Star, dismissed for assault, theft, malingering, and breach of promise. Sworn by Captain Alan of Munchausen.
Mentally reviewing the simple code they’d agreed on, he raised an eyebrow. Lady of Leisure? Why was that name familiar?
He went to see Namur, racking his brains without success. It was technically still downtime on Namur’s schedule, but Ennis checked Namur's access status and it was green. Namur would want to know about this even if he was just waking up.
“Contact, sir,” Ennis said as he entered. Namur regarded him from behind the desk, eyes gleaming in the shadows.
“You are quite sure? This method of communication you had set up would seem a trifle prone to false positives, would it not?”
Ennis handed over the textsheets. “That’s why there are multiple messages. Two in the three datasheets I just got, both with the same information. You can’t tell what will get dropped off with each stop when they add new content, so redundancy is built in. Cameron called it packets and bit–checks. Some kind of antique comp term,” he added offhand. “Look, see the reference to ‘Captain Alan of Munchausen’? All the fake messages have something like that.”
Namur sat up, or the support structure of his chair sat up. Working with Namur for so long, Ennis had learned why the head of Umbra was never seen anywhere but in his office and behind his desk. The “desk” was his life–support system. Ennis had not asked, but any injuries so severe that they could not be handled by regrows or support webbing or neuro–prosthetics implied that most of Namur’s bodily functions had been replaced in some way.
“Ah. What manner of transport has been arranged? Where do you go to meet it?”
“Ship called Lady of Leisure, and port of call is Cullen. Never been there, but the poop sheet says it’s a pretty law–abiding place for the Fringe. What’s the status on the reward?”
Namur gave a thin–lipped smile. “I admired Toren’s technique so much I decided to borrow it. We carefully leaked information that you were already apprehended and the reward paid out, and also started rumors that the reward scheme was a slaver lure, and just to make absolutely sure we rerouted the contact address to us and sent spurious messages on in their place. You will want to be cautious in any event, but I believe you can survive a brief visit to Cullen. The messages we have intercepted have died down considerably, in any event.”
“And what have you intercepted from Toren?” asked Ennis, feeling skeptical. Umbra’s tricks probably had fooled the eager volunteers, but Toren itself would not be fooled.
Namur was silent for a moment, apparently absorbed in studying the simple ceramic teacup in his hands. “Something strange. We have heard from…sources that they are quite perturbed at what happened at Bone. More than a simple mission gone wrong would imply. For one thing, they don’t really know what happened and are trying desperately to investigate without drawing attention.”
“Which is next to impossible to do on Bone, as I found out.”
“Precisely. Some of the more eager elements in Umbra wanted take advantage of the situation to either infiltrate or spread disinformation,” Namur said, looking regretful, “but the risk was too great. Anything connected with this project, whatever it is, receives the highest level of scrutiny. Which brings me to your briefing before you depart. There are…we have been able to confirm some suspicions recently, thanks to that highly informative data drum Cameron managed to obtain. Someday I would like to know how the thermal bomb chemicals got on the casing—but I digress. Encryption was light, possibly because the data drum was in a place considered sufficiently remote and secure.
“We found personnel lists, and after some research patterns emerged. A small subset of people were officially dead. These generally had no close family or were estranged from them. Others, if they had family, those family members were employed in highly classified Toren projects and usually on remote Toren–controlled stations.”
Ennis frowned. “Hostages?”
“Say perhaps an insurance policy against sudden pangs of conscience. None of them appear to have been coerced. Quite a number of medical specialists of various types, bioengineers, et cetera, that would be useful to the superworker production facility. However, there were others on a separate list that were completely different. Ship builders, mechanics, even gravitics engineers. We’ve checked them as well. Every single one was once employed in Toren’s military shipyards.”
Ennis felt a growing chill as he thought about this. “What, they want their own Fleet? With their own grown–to–spec soldiers. Sir, what the hell are they planning?”
“Add in their penchant for corporate colonies, majority control of civilian space travel, and a strange reluctance to tell us what they have learned from all their investigations of the crabs, and suspicious minds, mine among them, think they have very grand plans in play,” Namur said dryly. “Plans that appear to have no need of a strong or victorious Fleet. They were rather upset when your Captain Cameron took out that crab carrier.”
Hoping his startled reaction hadn’t been noticed, Ennis hastily said, “But wouldn’t they be worried about the crabs? It would take them years to build up a fleet big enough to handle them on their own, and they couldn’t hope to keep it hidden from us.”
Namur lifted an eyebrow. “They wouldn’t need a big fleet if we had already weakened the crabs for them. You understand that at this point we can only speculate that is their intention. We need more information, hard information, and you will be in a position to get it for us.”
“Sir?”
“Cameron knew where to find this superworker facility. We didn’t even know it existed. She managed to get a large amount of extremely sensitive data out of it and I very much doubt she did it alone. I’m ordering you to find out as much as you can about how it was done and if she knows of any other such facilities.”
“I’m tolerated there, sir, but not confided in. Cameron’s setup is our only uncompromised source of information on the crabs. Is it worth risking that to pursue the Toren lead? If they think I’m being too nosy they could kick me out and refuse to have anything more to do with Fleet.” It was wise, Ennis thought, to protest at this point.
That earned him a narrowed glance. “Toren is just as much a threat as the crabs—more so, since they hide among us. The crabs attack openly. Either one can destroy us. We need information on both.” He paused. Ennis realized that Namur had been uncharacteristically hesitant throughout the conversation, which was not reassuring. Had Namur figured out his primary motivation for returning? Did he doubt his loyalty?
“There is one other thing you should know,” the head of Umbra said slowly. “There are only two others besides myself who do, and I would not tell you if you were not heading where you might discover…we received a transmission three days ago, from Kulvar. It was sent to an older Umbra commcode, but one that no one outside of Umbra should have known.”
“Did it use Umbra encryption schemes?” Ennis asked.
Namur smiled. “It was unencrypted. Plain data. All about Toren, most of which we already knew…but it was completely accurate. The rest we are checking on. What we want to know is, who sent that message, in the clear? None of our people would have done it. But who else would have sent it to that code? And who else knows so much about Toren and wants us to know as well?”
¤ ¤ ¤
Harrington stepped aside to allow one of the crab crew to go past him. The corridors were rough and rounded, like most surfaces in the ship, and had the occasional alcove in the wall which was quite handy for the smaller humans to take refuge in to avoid being trampled by accident. They’d managed to repressurize most of the remaining ship, which was also rather useful. Even if he couldn’t breathe the stuff, atmosphere permitted sounds to be heard. Fortunately his helmet dampened the volume. Crab voices had some low, almost subsonic components that caused eventual headaches if he listened to them too long.
Strange how his suit now seemed like a second skin since he spent all his waking hours in it. Doubtless it smelled like his skin at this point, and none too pleasant, but how many chances would he have to experience this? Hygiene could wait.
Sometimes it was too much. He found himself almost frantic for a handlight to cut through the gloom, to see the huge, lurching figures before they were less than a meter away. Each time he had to remind himself crabs found human levels of light painful, and the humans were guests here.
Helpful guests, he hoped. The emergency capsule he and Perwaty were using as their quarters had solved a problem for the crabs, namely a huge hole nobody had additional material to patch. By cementing the capsule in place as part of the hull the crabs had recovered some of their ship. It couldn’t be any fun for them to spend all their time in suits either.
Suddenly a section of the wall moved toward him and he cried out, terrified. When he realized it was just the giant crab who appeared to be in charge, not a hull breach, Harrington was slightly relieved. His knees were still weak and his heart was hammering in his chest. Then he noticed she wasn’t moving, even though he was plastered against the wall and there was plenty of space for her to go by.
She appeared to be looking at him. He shook himself mentally and made the deep head–nod that they had adapted as the human version of the crab salute.
One massive forelimb lifted and pointed at him. “HOOOMIN,” the crab boomed, and Harrington tried not to wince as the sound bounced through his head. Now what was this all about? Then the crab bent the joint at the end of the forelimb and indicated herself. “HSSSSURRRWYYNN.”
He blinked, suddenly understanding. Earlier, during his shift attending Radersent, he had attempted to discover what the crabs called themselves. The giant crab had been present. No one had answered him and he had thought his question had not made any sense to the crabs. He nodded to her again.
“Hsurwyn. Thank you, I’ll make a note of it,” he said shakily, even though she couldn’t hear him. She moved off, and he let out a sigh of relief. It was never comfortable talking to something the size of a rhinoceros in close quarters.
The anomalous human walls of the emergency capsule were now visible in the murk, and he hurried toward them and the sanity they represented. Harrington struggled with the awkward and highly annoying airlock, which was really little better than a thick door, and not for the claustrophobic.
“Oh, there you are,” mumbled a drowsy Perwaty from the one and only berth. “S’pose I’d better get up then.”
“He’s doing much better,” Harrington said. “Talking more like he used to, anyway. Do you know what they are doing with that device over his wound?”
Perwaty scrubbed his bristly hair with both hands, yawned, and blinked. “Not a clue. Looks like it’s doin’ something good—hope they finish with it soon, though. Got a message. They gonna drop out in ten hours an’ get everybody switched over.”
“Ah. And does our little home away from home remain?” Harrington asked, switching places with Perwaty and compacting himself as best he could while Perwaty wrestled his suit free.
“Guess so,” Perwaty grunted. “They didn’t say.”
Harrington fiddled with his vid camera, shaking his head when he saw the results. “Blast. I still can’t get anything decent with their light levels, and this unit doesn’t have built–in gain. Over a week living with bloody crabs and not a scrap of vid to show for it!”
“That communications thingy’s got a vid setting, don’t it?” Perwaty said, shrugging his suit into place. “Want me to turn it on for ya?”
“Worth a try, anyway. Thanks. Oh, and according to the big one, crabs are called Hsurwyn.”
Perwaty grinned. “The She?”
“Sorry?”
“That seems to be what the others call her, anyway. Ever get the feelin’ we aren’t really usin’ the same words?”
Harrington sighed. “Altogether too frequently, I’m afraid. The She? Are there no other female crabs on board? There aren’t that many crabs total, true, but I would have thought…” He trailed off, realizing he had no data to base any speculation on.
“Dunno. Maybe the others died in the fight.” Perwaty shrugged. “I’m off. Anything you want me to do ‘sides the vid?”
“You might try asking them how we take care of Radersent once they’ve gone,” Harrington suggested.
Perwaty nodded, sealed his helmet, and wedged himself into the airlock. Once he was gone and there was room, Harrington struggled out of his own suit and left it hanging to air out while he wrote up the notes for the day. As tiny and annoying as the shelter was, he wondered how he would have survived this long without it—something that wasn’t alien. Would Radersent have survived so long in a human ship without his place of refuge?
Even so, the only reason he and Perwaty were there was Radersent’s plea that he not be “alone.” It still didn’t make sense. The crab wanted humans there, even though he would at last be with his own kind? How much did Radersent think of himself as a crab now, or was there something they were missing?
He slept fitfully, dreaming of full, fluent conversations with the crabs he had gotten to know during his stay, his mouth somehow uttering the deep, loud sounds of the crabs and they speaking the human tongue with, strangely, a Chinese accent. Clearly his subconscious needed a bit of cleaning out.
The communications buzzer woke him and dissolved all memory of what they had actually said in this flight of fancy.
“Harrington here.”
“Menehune. Captain says take all the comm gear out of the shelter but don’t worry about the rest. We gonna do this quick, gottit?”
“Right, then. When do we drop out?”
“‘Bout an hour. Don’t tell them, but we’re maybe three hours from where they said. Just say somethin’ like ‘soon,’ read?”
“Very well.” Harrington looked at his dangling suit wearily. It would be much more comfortable back on board, he had to admit.
He gathered as much of their personal gear and the communication equipment as he could before leaving. The ship link he left for later, just in case something came up.
Perwaty was in what he privately thought of as Crab Medical, though for all they knew it had been an equipment bay before. That was where Radersent was, and whoever was treating him.
“We’ve got less than an hour before dropout. Is he ready?”
Perwaty nodded. “Guess so. They know, anyway. Far as I can make out only thing is he’s not supposed to walk by himself yet. Got a clever rig all made up ta carry him with,” he said, pointing to a strange jumble of gear.
There were two crabs present, one Harrington had seen frequently called Star Watch Mover. The other had never given his name or even gotten near the communication device; he seemed to think it was radioactive, as were the humans. Star Watch Mover was more friendly, but was not communicative now, apparently busy with last–minute medical tasks. Harrington occupied himself with his datapad, sketching the crabs. He would have some visual record of all this!
The crabs all had what looked strangely like ascots around their necks. Radersent had never worn anything like that before, and Harrington wondered what it meant now that he was. At first he had trouble telling them all apart, but now he could see the differences in the bony head structures and subtle grey shadings. None of them had the black marks Radersent did, and when the strange device was removed from his injury and Harrington saw a fresh black mark on his skin he understood—those were scars. Radersent had been badly injured before, then, but was it before he was wrecked in the sargasso? Or had he survived some accident while there?
