Ariane and Matt entered the hallways, turned sixty degrees toward the right, and he balked again. “Why does this place now feel oppressive? The ceiling isn’t much lower than in the great hall.”
“First, the dimensions don’t feel right.” She pointed out that the halls and doors were tall, but narrow for their height, violating what felt balanced to humans. The symbols and door controls were almost at her shoulder level. “Second, we’ve found these angles are disquieting to our minds. Third, their ventilation system automatically humidifies the air. The Builders liked their atmosphere a bit thinner, so when we push up the pressure from life support, it gets more dank than we like.”
By now, they’d arrived at Pike’s makeshift operations center, which also happened to be the message center. Abram had likewise chosen this room as his operational center. Ariane shivered, trying not to remember.
Pike introduced himself. “You’ve really stirred up the teams, Mr. Journey. When that translator downloaded a couple of hours ago, everybody was rousted, even the off-duty personnel. It’s been a wild techno- clusterfuck ever since.”
“That’s good?” Matt’s hesitancy with Sergeant Pike was understandable. Ariane hadn’t been around shock forces much herself, and Pike’s rough edges made Sergeant Joyce seem cuddly by comparison.
“Yes, sir, it is.” Lines at the corners of Pike’s eyes deepened, which might be as close to a smile as he’d allow. He put his broad hand on Matt’s shoulder and gently pushed him toward the woman commando standing at a Builder console. “Why don’t you have Technician Greco scan your palm so we can get you into the Nautikos rooms. I need to speak with Ms. Kedros.”
There was no resisting that calm, authoritative tone. Matt went over to Greco, who gave him a wide natural smile, and Ariane followed Master Sergeant Pike into an interior room. He closed the door and cocked his head, telling her that he’d checked for listening devices. The room was secure.
“You’ve got your queue responding with a recording, ma’am,” Pike said reproachfully, once the door closed. “And Sergeant Joyce says you don’t often pick up your calls.”
“Emergency calls come through. I figure I can handle all other calls later.” She touched her implant panel on her inner arm above her wrist, but didn’t change the settings. “Besides, there wasn’t much comm support on the surface the last time I was here.”
The lines deepened around Pike’s eyes. “We’ve made improvements, Ms. Kedros. Emergency calls can be originated, and received, in the elevator. We’ve added nodes in the great hall, so you have mesh coverage for local calls. We even have an extra relay, but our bandwidth is being eaten up by this R&D. You should check with the message center regularly, particularly if someone must send you a large—or classified—payload that has to be fragmented.”
“Someone, like Sergeant Joyce?” She pulled out her slate, showing its military encryption and secure- storage identifier.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded as she authenticated with thumbprint and voiceprint, tapped the slate, and requested the download. “I gave your sergeant a piece of my mind, for swamping our comm.”
“I’d like to have seen that.” She couldn’t imagine that picture. The table of contents for Joyce’s package displayed on her slate, showing that she was scheduled to testify to the ICT
tomorrow
from oh nine thirty to eleven hundred. She’d give the testimony virtually, which brought up the question: where?
“You’ll have to give it from Beta Priamos, where they have the equipment and authority,” Pike told her.
I can forget about doing anything useful during first shift tomorrow
. However, her slate now contained Joyce’s mission notes about Maria. Back on Beta Priamos, she’d be able to make real-time calls if she had questions for Joyce.
Pike must have guessed her thoughts. “If you’re going back up to the station, you might make time to stop in at the Terran Space Force brig. There’s a prisoner, name of Frank Maestrale, who wants to speak with you.”
She sighed. Frank had been a friend she’d met in an earlier solar system opening. But her most vivid memory, now, was seeing Frank point a weapon at her, having been seduced by Abram’s cause.
“He’s cooperated with the Terrans, and been helpful in wiring more ComNet support into the station.” Pike looked sideways at her. “I think he’s holding on to something, some bit of information that he only wants to give to you.”
“I’ll think about it,” was all she could say.
“And don’t forget to keep a watchful eye, Ms. Kedros, considering the recent attempts on your life. Any orders, before I transmit the daily report to you?”
“Excuse me?” Then she remembered Edones saying she’d have authority to take emergency mission command of the platoon, but this wasn’t an emergency and—“What daily report, Sergeant?”
“With both the colonel and
Bright Crescent
offline, you’ve got command, as the local ranking officer.” Pike didn’t look ready to argue about this, adding a final punctuation of, “
Ma’am
.”
“Er—I’m not—” She stuttered to a stop. She was, technically, on active duty. Not wearing her uniform for this covert operation didn’t mean she could opt out of sudden administrative tasks. She wasn’t risking her plainclothes mission—everyone on Priamos and Beta Priamos Station knew she was AFCAW. Reluctantly, she said, “I can go through whatever you’re sending Colonel Edones. What kind of reports?”
“Security issues here on the moon surface. As well, the colonel wants us to keep an eye on the comm in and out of here
and
the station.” Pike nodded firmly, as if to forgive her previous and un-commandolike indecision. He tapped and pointed his slate to directly transfer the report to hers.
“You can track the command post and out-of-system messages up on the station?” She brought up the report on her slate.
“Well, what we’re allowed within CAW exploration law for open systems. And whatever TSF Ensign Walker lets CP give us. Surprisingly, the ensign has been quite generous. We get tallies of bandwidth used and gigabytes sent to other solar systems.” Pike’s gravelly voice became sterner, giving her the same prickles on her scalp as the sound of active armor tearing off a ship. “I’m sure Ensign Walker has noted the
interesting
distribution of outgoing comm this past couple of days.”
Looking at highest recipients of data and messages, she was surprised to see District Six systems at the top of the list. She’d expected Autonomist solar systems, given that both Hellas and Konstantinople Prime had research centers and universities contracted to process data. The same went for the Sol system, with Terra and Mars supporting significant research, but
not
for New Sousse or Zhulong, the official seat for the Terran League’s District Six. Frowning, she said, “This might be due to SP Duval’s staff, or because the ICT defense—”
Pike stopped her with a tight negative nod. “That doesn’t show out-of-system traffic originating from the
Pilgrimage
or its docked ships. But, keep in mind that the destination addresses can be forwarders or bouncers. We’re not allowed anything specific about the receivers.”
“Can you determine who sends each message?”
“Only that these transmissions originate from Priamos and Beta Priamos. Pilgrimage statutes don’t allow anyone—including Ensign Walker—to monitor comm to that level of detail. To do that, we’d need authorization from a Pilgrimage command officer to install special software and equipment.”
“Strange,” she murmured.
“I figure the colonel would want someone keeping an eye on this, ma’am. Until he comes back online.” Pike’s shoulder, under his impeccably pressed uniform, twitched with a shrug. He didn’t seem concerned about appropriating both her eyes for security issues beyond her civilian job.
Pike opened the door to the outer center, where Matt was playing with Builder technology, specifically the palm reader that extended a holographic four-clawed appendage. Greco was explaining how these readers allowed Builders, and now humans, to open doors within the facility.
Ariane said good-bye to Pike, as she thumbed off her slate and its puzzling report.
This was much worse than an operational readiness inspection, which was the only similar event Lieutenant Oleander had experienced. Normally, inspectors were uniformed military personnel with experience in the same operations they were evaluating. In this case, called the “Ad- hoc Senate Investigation into AFCAW Response to the Pilgrimage Mission 145 Crisis,” the
Bright Crescent
crew had to deal with civilian auditors and data collectors.
After Myron pulled her from the
Pilgrimage
maintenance shop, Oleander spent the next shift escorting auditors around the
Bright Crescent
, helping them collect logs and recordings. She and Floros had this onerous task because they were Directorate personnel. The auditors were Myron and two other politicians-in-training, a young man and woman displaying severe deficiencies of humor or even basic cordiality. When being audited, crew members had to shut down their systems and remain at their stations to answer questions.
By the time she could go off duty, she was exhausted and filled with impotent ire at Myron and his two political clones. In her tiny quarters, as she unsealed her Alpha jacket with trembling fingers, she tried to calm down.
There was a disturbing pattern to the questions Myron and his lackeys had asked. They would ask what “decision process” was performed before the task, even if it was merely following orders to load missiles. The answer was usually that the task was performed
rapidly
and
instinctually
, because the crew member had performed the task many times under training. This would elicit a look of consternation and dismay, usually followed by a patronizing comment about needing to fully analyze one’s actions.
This was the antithesis of the military goal of a well-trained crew.
Did they really want us to spend time dithering?
She threw herself on her bed. Even though they hadn’t arrived in G- 145 to do battle, there had been a ticking clock: prevent Abram from detonating his stolen temporal-distortion weapon.
The worst part had been Myron’s interest in the early casualties they’d had, right after dropping into the mine-field. She tried not to blame herself; she’d been targeting the mines with slugs to push them away. Several of the mines had blown up, a statistical probability of one in ten. Unfortunately, one mine damaged the compartment the commandos occupied. One soldier was seriously injured and one would never see home or family again.
She’d already gone over the logs herself, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t responsible. The pilot who was orienting the rail guns had also combed through the data and had concluded that they couldn’t have done anything different. Now, after seeing an uncharacteristic gleam in Myron’s eye as he’d looked over the same log, she dreaded her upcoming testimony.
“Command: Display messages.” She rolled over to face the bulkhead, expecting to see messages from Matt.
A view port opened on the wall with the error message, “Queue for Lieutenant Oleander is currently unavailable.”
What did that mean? She called the comm officer on duty, luckily getting Lieutenant Kozel, who she knew better than the others.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but you were off-ship when we made the announcement. They want to keep our queues and data cores static, so they diverted our queue traffic to the
Pilgrimage
. You won’t lose any calls, but you’ll have to use the
Pilgrimage
’s systems to go through them.”
After concluding her call with Kozel, she lay on her back, feeling her eyelids droop. She was too tired to get dressed, get permission to debark, and process through security to get off the
Bright Crescent
. Now she
really
hated whoever was behind this audit.
Ariane looked down at the small packing crate filled with Mr. Barone’s belongings. On top of his clothes, she’d laid a picture frame that cycled through still portraits of him and his family. The big, quiet man with the deep voice had left a wife and a daughter on Hellas Prime. She’d flipped through everything loaded in the frame, just to see the wide smile on his face. In the photos, there was artwork made by his daughter, who looked to be about six years old.
There was also a lumpy sculpture beside the frame, on Barone’s working surface. It was a reptilian creature formed of polymer clay and painted with dabs of lime green, dark green, and yellow. When she turned it over, she saw “Pattie” scratched on its belly. She decided it was supposed to be a sibber, an amphibian that lived near the equatorial shores of a continent on Hellas Prime. Sibbers were smart; they were easily house- trained, loved interacting with children, and had quickly become domesticated pets after Hellas Prime was colonized. She gently laid the sculpture in the zero-gee shipping container and sealed it. The address of Barone’s family residence on Hellas Prime brightened on the top.
Dr. Lowry stuck her head in the door. “Do you need any help?”
“We’ve finished all but one. You can help us with Peter Katsaros’s quarters,” Matt said, taking a last look around Barone’s office.
“You said you were close to Peter. If you don’t want to do this . . . ?” Ariane let her voice trail off into a question, remembering Lowry’s stricken look when speaking of Peter.
“Yes, we were—starting to date.” Lowry looked sideways, then cast her gaze downward. “But I can manage.”
“This way.” Matt led them to the next room down the hall. He eagerly held his hand over the glowing symbol, to meet the extended four-clawed holographic scanner. The door opened for him; the researchers figured the scanners performed sensitive topographic mapping and thus, one alien palm was as good as any other for identification.
Ariane smiled, standing back to watch. Despite the somberness of their task, Matt was still exuberantly interested in the novelty presented by the Builders’ technology. Beside her, Dr. Lowry made an impatient sound under her breath and followed Matt into Peter Katsaros’s quarters.