Chapter 16. DNA and Side Gigs

  Sitting around a scabbed together table in the main auditorium on the asteroid base were a bunch of irritated Navy people. Base power had been restored, the air systems were working, and bug remains were tossed out the main hanger and fried by the fighters. The human remains were stacked in an evacuated cold storage room below medical. In typical Muschivk dark humor he called it the ‘larder’. The base had a small morgue, but it only had 6 drawers. Crunch thought that was strange for a working high-risk facility. They were irritated because nothing seemed to make sense, and the general consensus indicated total cluelessness in how to respond.

  “We can’t wake them up,” said Crunich, the IDC attached to the Teams.

  “I suppose not,” said Muschivk who, under his surly, immense exterior hid a Ph.D. in Psychology.

  “How else can we find out what happened to the base?” asked Rainwater.

  “I suspect this will be a continuing problem until we get support. We just don’t have the resources to treat the victims. If we wake them up from Hibernation, they’re going to experience those events all at once. It’s not going to work. There’s nobody left alive outside the cabinets?” asked the disembodied head that represented the Captain.

  “No, sir,” said Muschivk.

  The other disembodied head, Captain Morgan said, “The fighters and launcher all worked pretty much the way we thought. I’m not sure if the bugs actually tried to set a trap and we just tripped them up with circumstances or we got lucky. I don’t want to get overconfident. I think they’re kind of like the Army, the individuals are not intelligent, but overall they can make some pretty good choices.”

  “Nice,” said Sevrinofsky, at the table in the semi-cleaned up conference room.

  The conference room, auditorium, control center just got lights and power back, after Banner, Brennan, O’Malley and Rainwater worked for six or seven hours on the power plants and controls and they drafted Sevrinofsky for the AI systems. The two ship commanders were present virtually, the fighter group commander had landed and joined the effort in restoring the base control systems. She was the premier AI expert in the quadrant and the time it took from her Naval Career she found irritating. The surface incursion cleanup was reaching its final stages and the second squadron was supporting Combat Air Patrol (that’s what Perez called it) and zapping leftover bugs on the surface.

  Sevrinofsky looked around and said, “I know what this is. Usually asteroid bases are just ships docked to the rock, they take a big graser or maser and spin the rock and hollow it out. Because the composition is so tough and dense and this thing is the size of a small moon, I bet they brought in one of those modular exo-bases. They land them on the surface of ‘difficult worlds’. This one looks like a heavy grav setup. They were very popular in the literature a couple of hundred years ago.”

  “You mean they dug a hole and buried it? Why? Why not just set it on top?” asked Morgan, “That’s crazy!”

  “Dunno. It might have been a smugglers or pirate base originally. It seems the information AI’s on the ship didn’t even know this was here,” said Sevrinofsky, “Smuggling is profitable if you run the right stuff.”

  “What do they do now?” asked Rainwater, “I haven’t seen anything but living quarters and medical?”

  “There’s a set of tech labs, workshops, and a big bay of asteroid mining gear if you go south and down instead of towards the living and medical. Shoehorned in under Medical are some bio labs and some storage. No bugs down there. Nothing to eat,” said Muschivk.

  “I think this is a university research facility. My guess is that they found this rock made of crazy stuff and got a grant. They bought the labs and equipment ‘as is’ and shipped the whole thing out here. Why they buried it? I’m not sure yet,” said Eagles, “My degree is in Electrical, and I don’t recognize any of the names on the room plaques in the living section.”

  Rainwater’s own search of the medical section turned up nothing he recognized, but he’d been too tired to do anything but crash in one of the unused living compartments once they got the air and power back on. The fusion plants were just... off. Two main plants (if small) and an emergency backup generator, all off. The backup generator came right up. There were no AI controls and no links between power plants. It was all incredibly frustrating, like the whole complex was centuries old, but the survival cabinets were a relatively new invention someone added on.

  “Right now, I am taking over that installation as a repair and resupply facility and putting it under Naval Command Authority. If we save it, right now, we own it. We don’t have enough resources as it is to keep protecting this sector. Does it move?” asked Cohen.

  “Sir, we haven’t found the propulsion. They have to have some kind of orbital stabilization system but I think there might be more installations around the asteroid. I don’t think they’re manned, but that’s where the engines are. They aren’t enough to move it, certainly not through subspace,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Sir, I realize we’ve been calling it an asteroid, but it’s really a dwarf planet, the size of Pluto and has a density higher than Earth. The local gravity is around .1g,” said Muschivk, “The artificial gravity system here is set up to apply additional acceleration toward the center of mass, the bodies radius is around 800km and its density is 7.6 g/cc.”

  “Well, now. I must have missed that little detail. It might take a little bit to move that thing. We are going to have to look into it though, it’s not really defensible where it is,” said Cohen.

  “Captain, given a few years we can put it wherever you want in the system, within reason, but I don’t think you mean years,” said Morgan.

  “I guess I didn’t. All right, timeline: assuming OutSystem command got our messages then our relief force should be here in about 15 days. We should receive a confirmation of that in about 6 via the relay. I’ve been sending daily updates, though I read back over them and they sound insane. It might be easier to believe the entire system has gone nuts than what’s actually happened,” snorted Cohen, “Our biggest shortage are trained people, or untrained monkeys, whatever we can get. Getting a couple of days of relief from the random attacks should help.”

  “They’re not exactly random, sir. I’ve done some checking with the pilots, and they fall into two categories. Feeding incursions of workers and some soldiers and follow up incursions after a feeding expedition vanishes,” said Rainwater, “PIM, list the attacks and the follow-ups.”

  A chart appeared over the conference table showing the locations of the attacks and the follow-ups.

  “So, I think, since you Navy types have removed all the easily accessible food laying around, the next couple days will be calm. After that, it depends on what the intelligent bug leadership decides to do. There has to be that leadership because they avoided your base in the first place,” Rainwater said, steepling his hands in front of his chest, “So far it looks like we are dealing with more or less instinctual responses to simple colony scenarios. If the bug leadership decides we are dangerous, they will attack in force. It’s an even bet which side gets here first.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Sevrinofsky, “and you are one of us Navy types now, Specialist.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot. Ummm, I’m not positive about this, but I think they’re army ants. I think. I need to do a DNA comparison, but I’m pretty sure they are Terran ants,” said Rainwater.

  “Terran ants can’t travel in subspace,” said Cohen.

  “The way they get into my house, they must!” said Reagan, who was on CAP in his ship, listening in.

  “I don’t think they’re current ants at all, but I think they are Terran. If they have DNA it will prove it.” said Rainwater.

  “Why? Doesn’t everything have DNA?” asked Eagles.

  “No. Seriously? I know they don’t teach xeno-bio till college but… really?” asked Muschivk.

  “DNA as the traditional double helix is specific to Terran organisms, as far as we know. New Jerusalem life uses a similar protein setup, but it’s stacked concentric circles, and the simple protein un-zippers are fascinating, they look like a double buzz saw. The only life on the planet was microorganisms, proto-bacteria, but Terran microorganisms eat them just fine,” said Cohen, “The odds against the same genetic coding system being used are astronomical.”

  “So, Rainwater, you drop a bombshell like that on us with no analysis?” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Oh, I have a short write-up that I did this morning, but without a DNA all I have is the obvious similarities and behaviors. I’ll send it to all of you right now,” said Rainwater, “Once I get the DNA it’ll be substantial evidence. I don’t think they are current ants, either. They bear a pretty close resemblance to 100 million-year-old ant fossils, except for the size. I’m kind of curious to see how they move around under full gravity,” said Rainwater, “They shouldn’t be able to stand. I mean it is possible that DNA and concurrent evolution exist in the universe, but this close? Unbelievable, without some agency.”

  “So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that Terran dinosaur ants are terrorizing the galaxy?” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “Well, dinosaurs are reptiles. Ants are Hymenoptera, but yeah, sort of,” said Rainwater, ”You have any idea of the odds against some kind of parallel evolution that produces a colony insect that has the same type of behaviors? My PIM balked at the numbers and just said, ‘Impossible to evaluate.’ We need to run a sample and see if it has DNA. So... Intelligent species are not just separated by space, but in time. Suppose that some space travelling race stopped on Earth say, right before the K-T incident, and got ants in their food or something. Those ants end up where-ever and 65 million years later we have an intelligent species of colony ant,” said Rainwater, “I think that’s far more likely than some whacko parallel evolution, and by far more likely I mean ridiculously unlikely.”

  “Dude, you are going to be famous,” said Banner.

  “If we survive. The entire local colony is probably going to come at us next, if ant behaviors are a guide. They lose a number of feeding groups and the colony attacks and the next attacks will be directed by the ant leadership with brains (that's just a guess),” said Rainwater, “I have some questions about all this, and I could be wrong about the whole thing. Where the heck does the power go? Do they use it to fill up their internal subspace drive energy source?”

  “I just want to know if whacko is a new scientific term, Mr. Expert,” said Sevrinofsky.

  Eagles asked, “K-T incident? Is that a new name for the asteroid that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs?”

  Brennan said, “Not new, no, and no it didn’t, it was more the icing on the cake, the straw that broke the camel’s back, the... “

  “Okay, Mr. Aphorism,” said Cohen, “We get the idea.”

  “So, in every one of these incursions, the bugs somehow kill the power, dump the air and find all the carbon-based living things and stuff and eat them,” said Reagan, “How do they do that?”

  “I think they use electrical impulses to see. Your internal galvanic field,” said Muschivk, “That’s why they couldn’t find the crew in the cabinets. The life support modules in the cabinet detected the panic or whatever reaction, sensed the overall condition and put the occupants into hibernation which lowers their brain activity to practically zero. I don’t think they dump the air, I think the AI’s do, when they try and expel the impossible intruders. I do think they suck down the power somehow. It seems as if the two events are connected the individuals communicate. I know that when we kill a bunch of them, they all know it somehow.”

  “I think the problem is that you don’t look that smart,” said Banner.

  “Ooooh, got ya back!” said Brennan.

  “Don’t forget about practice tomorrow,” rumbled Muschivk.

  “Bring it on, old man... Hulk, smash!” said Banner.

  “All right, you guys can play later,” said the Captain, “It’s like having a room full of preschoolers.”

  “Is it circle time?” asked Eagles.

  “Let’s talk about intelligence,” said Muschivk, “We don’t have any. We need some. Especially in here.”

  Everybody at the meeting bodied or disembodied agreed, then Sevrinofsky said, ”Hey!”.

  Cohen said, “This is what I get for improving morale. How about those long-range recon modules that Perez designed?”

  “We’ve been working so hard on building up combat capability, we haven’t gotten there yet,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Perez said a four module EVA would give enough room and mobility to create an almost undetectable subspace recon craft. He called them Seekers,” said Muschivk.

  Kosnar nodded and added, “The general design is brilliant, but I think we should add a module and some light anti-proton weaponry. They should be fast enough to get out of trouble but still able to shoot back. The power to mass-ratio of the EVA modules with the new batteries is pretty impressive. I suggest widening the front section like a bigger fighter and then staggering the back two to make it look more like an Earth type ray. That way it will have more room internally and still look really cool.”

  “Because that’s important?” asked Cohen.

  “Yeah, it is, pilots like to fly cool looking ships,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “I have a design ready for the bigger Seekers. He had a short range in-system surveillance craft as well, a two-module version, totally undetectable, and really really fast. He called it Lookout. I liked that one, but it has only a small laser turret for defense, and it’s shielded but lacks a subspace capability, but the design supports shorter range subspace communication,” said Kosnar, “It’s dangerous to fly.”

  “How many of those can we turn out in the next week,” asked Cohen.

  “Twenty, maybe,” said Kosnar, “We’re reaching the point where everything is imperative, and we need parts to keep the ships we have flying.”

  The Captain shook his head and said in short, directed, no-nonsense sentences that he used when switching from conversation to orders, “Right. So... Mr. Rainwater, you did very well in your first outing with the Team. Thank you. Ms. Morgan can enlighten you about the benefits of Special Forces support sometime. We are always looking for people who can keep their heads while being attacked by monstrous ant-like insects. We will put you together with Senior Chief Tunney and you can take the bugs apart. We have a pile of hand-weapons or whatever, and we need to get those to Perez and Ortiz for analysis. We need to man that base and defend it, for the future, but we are out of people to do that. With Perez’s new weaponry, fixed orbital installations have become impractical without shielding, and it might be that we can’t shield anything against his new ship-killers. Will the aliens copy our new weaponry?”

  “Probably, sir, but I’m betting it will take quite a while. Insect colonies are extremely conservative, especially when they move or swarm. The queens are so vulnerable that they have to be,” said Rainwater.

  “So, their next move is to attack in three or four days?” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “Minimum I’d say, maybe. But if they have directing intelligences, they may shift to another mode. They’ve lost every single ship and bug they’ve sent this way. They may attack, they may explore, or give up on this direction and try another,” said Rainwater, “Bugs don’t have pride or desire or anything like that, or ours don’t. They simply want the colony to survive and perpetuate itself. If the food supply permits, they will raise another queen and split the colony in half. Sometimes, in wasps, they don’t even split the colony, yellowjacket colonies keep getting bigger until the food supply declines, then they split. Otherwise, they scale back I guess I’m saying if they shift to another mode it will delay the attack but it will be bigger.”

  “So, we get a little breather,” said Muschvik.

  “Yeah,” said Rainwater.

  “Excuse me, I’ve been listening, and thank you for having me,” said Tatsaya Sado, the Comm Officer equivalent on the Grasberg Moon Base, present as a little picture, “I have sort of a suggestion. We have sent about 30 people to help your manning in various shipboard roles, but we also have an internal security force of about 100 employees. A lot of them are ex-military from the various services. Would you like to talk to them?”

  “Where did that come from? Why didn’t you say something yesterday,” said Sevrinofsky.

  Sado colored and said, “I must confess, I just thought of it.”

  “Oy,” said Cohen.

  “Double Oy,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Ken is sitting next to me on the ship. He just nodded and said he would head back over. Do your guys have suits?” asked Cohen.

  “No, not full augmentation suits like you have, they have suits similar to the engineering suit that Steven Rainwater is wearing. I am glad to hear you are becoming part of the team, Rainwater-san. We are sorry for your trouble with the Company; I have put in a request to release you from your contract with danger pay and continue your stipend while you are attached as a representative to the Navy,” said Sado.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sado,” said Rainwater, rising and bowing, “I think this is good. However the Navy has elected to buy out my contract, and I have already accepted.”

  "I will discuss the details of your release with your leadership. You will not lose by it," said Sado.

  “He was grinning like an idiot the whole time. This boy needs some combat training, and he’ll be fine,” said Brennan.

  “Any... Way! We need to rotate the squadron at the Lagrange Point; we need to retrofit all the fighters with the new systems; get the LAC’s running better; get those scouting ships built and crewed; finish the hull coating on the Wanderlust and coat the plants and the hull of the Phoenix; we were talking about putting normal space propulsion on the relay; so we can make it harder to find locally; get back in a training regimen; get off Priority One; try to figure out what the bugs were doing and where they were going when our sensor range expanded; we need to figure out why the bugs wipe the computer system, even when they aren’t AI’s,” said Cohen, “Have I missed anything?”

  “Probably, sir,” said Muschivk, “It’s a good start.”

  “All right, Ada, make that list and disseminate it, and we’ll make a log entry and send this back to Quadrant on the next relay, thus confirming my commitment to an asylum when our relief gets here,” said Cohen, “Thank you everybody, and good work. Cohen off.”

  The heads all disappeared, and the local group all got up to take care of their own tasks.

  “The shuttles have moved into the hangar bay upstairs, and we got the door fixed,” said Banner, “Showers for everybody, then we go back to the Phoenix for transit.”

  “I’d like to leave a fighter complement here, but I can’t right now. We don’t have enough,” said Sevrinofsky, “We’re stuck at three squadrons and two gunships until we get more pilots.”

  “I’m pulling all the cabinets back to the Wanderlust, we have storage for them there. There’s only 20 or so. As long as they have power the people will be okay,” said Crunich.

  “So, are we pulling out of this installation?” said Muschivk.

  “For the next couple of days, yeah. After that, I’m going to recommend moving the Wanderlust over here. There’s no reason we can’t move that rock here,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Okay. Can you lock everything down here and put in a supervisory AI that will tell us if anything goes awry?” asked Banner.

  “Yes. Already done,” said Sevrinofsky, “I have several AI templates, and some more modern hardware that we kludged in to run the place. The maintenance AI will bring up and activate systems on a set schedule, and she can start up and enable other AI’s as needed.”

  “All right folks, let's go,” said Muschivk.

  * * *

  Perez opened his eyes feeling relatively well rested for the first time in several weeks. There was a click and a hiss, then he felt his body move towards his feet and slowly get heavier. The glow of the drawer like chamber illuminated his body, and then jets of warm air dried the skin. His hands twitched and moved a bit. The warming drawer slid out into the open antiseptic realm of Medical. All the Medical units smelled and sounded the same wherever he got hurt. The eyes were working but weren’t registering anything, so he closed them and sort of took inventory: feet, hands, arms, legs, torso, head, all seemed to be there, more or less. He thought back and remembered how he got into medical, and the conversation with Cindy. He opened his eyes again and looked around without moving his head.

  “Good morning, Randy-kun. How do you feel? Don’t try to move yet,” came a voice from the head of the drawer in Japanese.

  Perez checked his voice by clearing his throat. It appeared to work, ”Good morning, Cindy. I feel rested and all my parts are attached it seems. How long has it been?”

  “About 72 hours since your injury. Your PIM has a complete update and as soon as we get you up and in uniform you can review to your heart’s content. You are on 24 hours light duty, and 72 hours limited duty after that. Barbara-kun is at a little station on a dwarf planet called Cerro Verde, I think. You’re going to get a walker for a few days,” said Cynthia Tunney.

  “I must have done it up good this time,” said Perez.

  “Do you remember our conversation a couple of days ago?” asked Tunney.

  “I think so, yes. I remember you told me I’d taken a big hit to the back of the seat and it penetrated the suit and me,” said Perez.

  “Yes, that pretty much sums it up. You need to protect yourself more, and Barbara-kun a little less,” said Tunney.

  “Oi, Oi, Oi, I hear you. I just can’t help it. When she’s in danger I move to cover her. I know she really doesn’t need it.”

  “Oh, but this time is different, Randy-kun. If that thing had hit her with her smaller body mass it would have killed her. She is stronger than you on a pound for pound basis, but you are double her body mass or more. More. You saved her life this time, so enjoy it. She knows,” said Tunney.

  Perez got a warm glow, “You mean I didn’t screw up this time?”

  “No, Randy-kun. Depending on how you define screwing up,” said Tunney.

  “That’s good. Are you transferring me to a bed?”

  “No, once you get the exo-suit on, you can go do some light work. I think they have some analysis they want you and Ortiz to work on. Someday you’ll have to tell me why that man dislikes you,” said Tunney, “Barbara-kun stood him on his head for it.”

  “Ortiz dislikes me? Since when? I help him out all the time,” said Perez.

  “He was complaining about all the extra equipment you use up,” said Tunney.

  “Oh, that! He’s been bitching about my property list since he was our support tech on Team One. Barb couldn’t stand it then either, would drive her crazy,” said Perez, “She told him a few years ago that if ’he thought it was that funny to make an album’... He did.”

  “What?” said Tunney.

  “He made her an album with all his complaints about the crap I brought back. It’s a vinyl album in a jacket, with about 70 minutes of bitching about my burned, broken and destroyed equipment. Pretty damn funny, too, and set to klezmer. Especially the one about the flaming sword,” said Perez, “I had to make her a turntable to play it.”

  “I feel like I am missing something here,” asked Tunney,” what is an album, what is a turntable, and what flaming sword?”

  “A turntable is a device that spins a vinyl plastic disk, usually black, which has grooved tracks in it to move a crystal needle to make sound. In my case I used a laser. Was easier. I never told you about the flaming sword I made for Barbara? She was watching the remake of this old cartoon anime and the main female character had a flaming sword. She said ‘it would be really cool if she had one of those’, so... I made one for her. It wasn’t even that hard. I mean I made the axe for Muschivk,” said Perez.

  “The axe? What axe?” said Tunney.

  “Oboy. How much time have you got? I know we haven’t caught up in a while, so this might take some explaining,” said Perez, ”On leave, we never really get to talk. My hobby over the past couple decades became duplicating the magical weapons in books and shows. So... I made myself a copy of the staff of the Monkey King in Journey to the West, Cohen has a pretty cool hammer if I do say so myself, there are a few others... Do you remember Jill Gitowsky? I made her a special HVW sniper rifle railgun like Deadshot, in the comics I used to read to you. Muschivk has a copy of Thor’s battle axe, the one he used before he got the hammer.”

  “This sounds like a good story, Randy-kun. Perhaps I will keep you for another 24 hours,” said Tunney, “There are some patients coming in from that research outpost in about 6 hours, but I am free till then. Would you like some coffee and biscuits?”

  “Thank you, little sister, I would, very much,” said Perez.

  Tunney went over to the office and got her coffee and punched in an order, while Eemu got Perez up and into a walker, a simple sheath with artificial muscle fibers to give an assist and a simple idiot AI to prevent falls. Barbara once set one up to teach him how to dance, but it didn’t work, Perez was permanently rhythm impaired. He put a simple shipsuit over that and wobbled over and sat down in the very comfortable chair next to her workstation. Picking up the coffee he started in, “It was about twenty years ago and we were both on Team One. I had just transferred back from instructor duty and Barb had just graduated... we weren’t breaking any rules at that point, ‘cause we were both enlisted, but we were spending a lot of time together...”

  The Medical door zipped open and a body bounced in yelling, “Hey, Perez, I heard you were up!”

  The body zipped into the office and said, “Hey, you’re in one piece!”

  “Robert?” asked Tunney.

  “Entirely different, isn’t he? Hello, Robert,” said Perez.

  “Yes. I guess you and Joe were correct about the personality changes,” said Tunney.

  “English, please, my Japanese is not up to your speed. How is Perez a native speaker?” asked Reagan.

  “Onii-chan is my cousin. Our mothers are sisters. We were raised together after his father died when he was very small and I was a baby,” said Tunney slowly in Japanese.

  “It’s sort of a closet secret. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t spread it around, and Cindy also speaks Spanish and Hebrew as well as English and Japanese,” said Perez also slowly in Japanese.

  “Wow,” said Reagan in English, “You don’t look anything alike!”

  “And I thank God for that,” said Tunney in English.

  “Well, I could stand to look more like her,” said Perez glibly in English, "I've always wanted to be a gorgeous Japanese woman Amazon."

  “So, are you okay? I saw the chunk of stuff that hit you. It’s amazing, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s going to take an anti-proton beam to cut off a chunk for analysis,” said Reagan in rapid fire English.

  “Oh yes,” said Tunney, switching to English, “That reminds me, I have some more of your unidentified material, right here.”

  She reached in a drawer and handed him a clear plastic block with several black chunks of stuff suspended inside and handed it to Perez, “You can add this to your collection.”

  “You keep the stuff they pull out of you?” asked Reagan.

  “Oh, yes he does. He has a wall, he calls it the trophy wall in his room at home, simply covered with little plastic blocks like this,” said Tunney.

  “Perez, that’s demented,” said Reagan.

  “I have my reasons,” said Perez.

  “That is the reason I became a Corpsman. I was always patching him up when we were little, so I decided to keep doing it after we grew up,” said Tunney.

  “You never told me that!” said Perez.

  “You never told me about the flaming sword, either!” said Tunney.

  “Flaming sword? What flaming sword?” asked Reagan.

  Perez looked at the expectant faces and sighed. He was hoping that Reagan showing up was going to get him out of telling the story. Guess not, he thought. So he took a deep breath, noticed that it didn’t hurt and got started,” As I was saying before Zippy here busted in and started yapping, about twenty years ago and we were both on Team One, right before you joined, I had transferred back from instructor duty three months before and Barb had just graduated about ten months before, even then she was in charge and fire team lead... we weren’t breaking any rules at that point, but we were spending a lot of time together and the short version is, I have this hobby of making working replicas of ancient magic weapons...”

  Perez started in on the story, with two expectant faces staring at him. He felt like a kindergarten teacher…

  “The Asteroid Mining Company on Rigel B lost control of their workforce, or so they said, and they called for help from the Navy to put down the ‘revolt’. This happened three times before, about once a decade, since the company got absorbed into some large InSystem mining concern. They expected a regular fleet intervention force, but the OutSystem Navy and the Master Chief intervened. We landed on Rigel B-III, a terra-formed earthlike planet, still working on the ecosystem, the team under fire, the entire team in two dropships. Squad One, all four Fire Teams hit the ground in three groups. Me, Brennan, O’Malley, Lin, some others were given the task of disabling the nuclear weapons the miners stole, supposedly, before we let Cohen, then Lieutenant, start the negotiating process. The whole ‘get your employees in debt and don’t pay them enough the clear the debt and still live scam’, company town, loan fees... the whole works, it’s so common it makes you puke.

  There were too many things that didn’t jibe up for this to be a normal mission, and that’s what brought it to Muschivk’s attention in the first place. According to Joe, the mission package and the intelligence package matched exactly and that never happens, there’s always some little discrepancy. We snuck into their weapons building, found the nukes and a control system hookup with a weird handheld deadman switch. Who does that, except a super-villain in a comic book? We disabled the deadman switch and the guy holding it, took control of and then destroyed the nuclear weapons and then ran over to help Sevrinofksy. Sevrinofsky was supposed to rescue the hostages.

  She finds them, and there are three or four hundred high school students and teachers stuck in the school building with these explosive restraining collars around their necks. The collars were the real deal, and they were manufactured in a super hurry and more dangerous just sitting around and waiting so we had to get them off of the victims. We captured a few guards, who didn’t know anything, knocked out a hostage and grabbed her collar for analysis and Sevrinofsky put together a team to get them all off, while we spoofed the activation codes. While all this is going on, nothing else goes right. The entire city of support personnel, the families of the miners, the employees of the corporation just disappears. Thirty thousand people, just gone.”

  “Sorry, Perez, I am confused. What city?” asked Reagan.

  “Oh, right. The AMC local headquarters, the smelters, the processing plants all hung out on Rigel B-III. They named it ‘Vulcan’ of all things! They had a whole lot of people working there. Grocery stores, shops, services, schools, the whole thing,” said Perez, “It was a pretty fair size town for a frontier world.”

  Perez continued, “So, Barbara starts looking for them, did I mention the guards at the school and the deadman guy were company security service, very strange.”

  “Randy-kun, you are a terrible storyteller,” said Cindy, “What about the restraining collars?”

  “The restraining collars were these black circlet things that go around your neck, and they were made out of lightweight aluminum, but if you broke the circle they detonated, if you went outside this predetermined box, they detonated, if they commanded it, they detonated, essentially the circuitry held the detonator capacitator high and if the controls lost power. Stupid design. Sally hated it,” said Perez, “The PIM hated it so much she actually said something about it in the analysis. I still have it.”

  “Barbara found the hostages at the city high school, they had the hostages crammed into the gym and cafeteria. and Brennan came up with a plan to get them off and keep the people safe at the same time and Sevrinofsky handled the implementation before she got called out to create a diversion and...”

  “You are the worst storyteller, ever!” said Tunney.

  I know. I’m working on it,” said Perez quickly, “So, Muschivk grabbed some of the more competent of us and we went to the headquarters building to try and shake loose some answers and find their data store, anything that would tell us where the people went. Sevrinofsky and some of the others went to cause a diversion, and Brennan and I busted into the AMC headquarters in the swanky walled VIP section. We snuck into the top level suites and stole a bunch of data.”

  “What about the flaming sword, Randy?” asked Tunney.

  “I’m getting there… While we were doing that… as a diversion and a secondary info stream Sevrinofsky and Wamamere and some others broke into the Director’s own house and stole the whole computer system. In the process they tripped the alarm and waited for security to arrive. When it did, they bounced the guard around a bit and tripped his health sensor. The management sent some kind of security hit team, and when that team got there, they busted in and shot Sevrinofsky and Wamamere before they could blink. Sevrinofsky got mad, pulled out the sword and pretty much leveled the place, mostly because I was too chicken to properly to tell her how it worked. It generates a plasma cloud around the blade and it’s sort of sensitive to how hard you grip it. She leveled the house, brought it down in flaming rubble, then couldn’t figure out how to turn it off and destroyed most of the neighborhood. They distracted the security long enough that we could just walk in and steal the servers, including the director's private server which gave us enough evidence to arrest them all for several gross constitutional violations. Most of them are still in prison and will never get out. The Navy owns the system now, and it’s the primary shipyard outside Sol.”

  “What happened to the people?” asked Reagan.

  “The whole operation was window dressing to hide the plummeting profits for the last years, and to feather the golden parachute of the board of directors. They intended to kidnap all the people and blow up the city and hostages to cover their mismanagement. The miners never revolted at all, they simply stopped receiving communications from their families and after a couple of days of corporate stalling were preparing to go get them back by force. The company was waiting for that.”

  A much higher contralto with a lilting voice spoke from behind Perez, “The population was sold into slavery InSystem and we managed to find and save about half of them on that op, but that spawned two more missions, and all of this is classified at the highest level. Eventually we got back all but about 10 of the victims. They didn't make it,” said Sevrinofsky, soberly.

  “Barbara-kun,” said Tunney, “Randy can mess up a story like no one else. Welcome back. How are you?”

  “Fine, my sister,” Barbara said in Japanese, “We did well, but we missed our resident super-genius. Found another possible candidate though.”

  “Wait, can you all slow down? I can’t understand if you go that fast,” said Reagan, looking confuzzled.

  “I was pretty mad at the scale of the destruction, it took me weeks to get over it,” said Sevrinofsky in English, “The blade produces a 15 nano-second plasma burst, through a linear accelerator down the length of the blade. It pretty much blew out all the walls in the direction I was pointing the silly thing.”

  “Slavery is illegal, there’s no slavery InSystem,” said Reagan, "It's against the law."

  “Oh, really? Why were you such an asshole when you got here, Robert?” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “You know, I’ve been trying to figure it out myself. I don’t really know. It’s not like me at all,” said Reagan.

  “Yeah, you were adjusted. You know, brainwashed, conditioned, and artificially changed to perform certain tasks. That’s why Muschivk set up that whole fight thing. It was about breaking the conditioning. The pain and the multiple impacts override the nano-wetware impulses controlling the nervous system, which allows Tunney here to remove the connections and dissolve the wetware without messing you up permanently. You weren’t hurt that bad,” said Sevrinofsky, “It was a fairly mild compulsion, but still enough to change your personality.”

  “We would have done it sooner, but Muschivk was busy getting rid of the former CO and getting evidence to find out who he was ‘in cahoots with’ to steal an old phrase,” said Perez.

  “How did he know I wasn’t just a jerk? Adjustment is illegal,” asked Reagan.

  “He always knows. He’s got a couple extra senses that help us out from time to time, either that or he’s a really good guesser,” said Perez, “When he says duck, you duck. Dig a hole under the ground.”

  “When you ‘hire’ somebody, but you put stuff in their head that takes away the impulse to quit, regardless of pay or working conditions, and allow the employee’s contract to be sold without your input, what is that? Slavery or indentured servitude at the least and both are unconstitutional. Listed directly in the constitution. InSystem legal law doesn’t allow it, but the administration ignores it,” said Sevrinofsky, "In addition to that, the children of indentured servants inherit the indenture. Direct violation of the 14th Amendment, but the InSystem court says 'That amendment only applies to people who are sold and bought.'

  “It was a little tricky, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen the adjustment software, it wasn’t that difficult,” said Tunney, forcibly changing the subject.

  “That’s probably enough about that for now, don’t you think?” said Sevrinofsky, “Why don’t you tell them about your sticks.”

  “They are not ‘sticks’, it is a collapsible staff,” said Perez, “I did. I mentioned it.”

  “Perez is really shy about his hobby,” said Sevrinofsky, “He makes some seriously cool toys for us.”

  “I am not shy about my hobby!” said Perez.

  “Sure you are. If you wanted to work at your real rank, you’d be in some lab somewhere, and spend much less time in Medical,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “His real rank?” said Reagan, “Do all of you guys have super-secret identities?”

  “Nah. Mine is just honorary. Joe’s super-secret rank is his real rank,” said Perez, “He has this special deal where he can be a Master Chief because he gets results that way... And doesn’t have to do any paperwork. He can get away with it because…”

  “Randy! You can’t discuss that here!” interrupted Sevrinofsky, “We get results. We help people and you did his paperwork and there are other reasons why Joe has his ‘special deal’.”

  “What about the rest of the people?” asked Tunney.

  “Can’t tell you that,” said Perez, “First, that’s Barbara’s story; second, it remains classified.”

  “We found and freed most of them,” said Sevrinofsky, ”And in the process put the skids under a number of Galactic Republic elected officials. Because there are things even the GR won't tolerate.”

  “Why are you here? I thought you were across the system fixing that mining base?” asked Tunney, ”

  “We fixed it, but we can’t protect it right now. Perez, do you understand what makes the bugs enter a certain place? Muschivk says electrical brain activity, skin galvanism,” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “Ma’am, I have no idea, I understand you have a bug expert who has some clue about them,” said Perez.

  “Yeah, his name is Rainwater. He’s pretty bright and gutsy. He walked right through a hall full of bugs and didn’t blink to put a mark on a door. Once he learns how to defend himself, I think he’ll be right useful,” said Sevrinofsky.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “You know, Team Seven is all here, right?” said Perez in Japanese.

  “Yes, I know. Interesting, isn’t it? Muschivk’s core group of nasties is also here, and there are only three of us who overlap,” replied Sevrinofsky.

  “Four now, Wamamere joined up,” said Perez, "Joe finally talked him around. He had to promise not to promote him anymore."

  “I hadn’t heard that. That’s good,” said Sevrinofsky, “It’s hard for three of us to save the galaxy.”

  “Sarcasm aside, I think the end goal of one Republic is a pretty good one. Some of us might be alive to see it,” said Perez.

  “We are one Republic,” said Reagan.

  “Oh, that was so timely and appropriate, Lieutenant,” said Sevrinofsky, “You are from Earth, even, North America. Of course you think so.”

  “Are you aware the OutSystems don’t vote?” asked Perez.

  “What?” asked Reagan, not understanding.

  “The OutSystem planets don’t have elections. The Representatives are selected by the various governments,” said Tunney, “On our planet the Representatives are selected by the council of Warlords, a silly name as they are all scientists or business leaders and are generally hereditary. It’s feudal, but a different look to it.”

  “On my planet the Rabbinical council selects ours,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Oh…” said Reagan, “This isn’t broadcast widely.”

  “We know. Most of the planets do a lot to keep their citizens happy, but in the end most of us get no say,” said Perez.

  “Earth might be the only planet where representative democracy is representative,” said Tunney.

  “And the Amended Bill of Rights doesn’t apply OutSystem. Specifically exempt in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. The Constitution is a direct continuation of the Constitution of the US, same verbiage even, but with some additions. Like the part that says that persons from States outside of the Sol System can be represented indirectly. That `indirectly` is the problem,” said Sevrinofsky, “That allows every loser wannabe dictator to set up a proxy representative InSystem.”

  “The silly part is that citizens OutSystem have more effective rights than InSystem. Because we have more room, and less people; generally, there is less conflict. InSystem citizens have a lot more trouble getting problems fixed. It’s a recipe for disaster in the long run. The Roman Empire ran that way, and just came apart when all the resources of the provinces were going to support the bloated ruling class,” said Tunney in her measured precise voice.

  “The sticking point is the Levy. The tax the OutSystems pay for the Navy is much higher per capita than InSystem,” said Perez, “The rationale being that all the bad stuff happens OutSystem."

  “All this is great, but what happens next? I think the alien bugs change everything. Our first contact with an alien race, except maybe they’re not aliens, and they see us as food,” said Reagan.

  “Next, we see if we can train up more people, fix everything that’s broke, get some more forces in the two locations we protect and hope. Assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, we should receive some response back to our Code Omega in another 72 hours and a task force some 8 days after that,” said Sevrinofsky.

  Perez told a couple more stories, some silly ones and some serious ones, and his audience sort of dissolved leaving Sevrinofsky and Tunney sitting in the Medical office. Regan ran out to get ready for his CAP tour. Perez looked at Sevrinofsky and said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?” said Sevrinofsky.

  “I think I’ve had just about enough of this saving the galaxy crap. Can we go home?” asked Perez, speaking in Japanese.

  “You say that every time you get hurt,” said Sevrinofsky, ”Then you think better of it. Shoot, you’re an officer now.”

  “Yeah, I know somehow that was your fault,” said Perez, “As much as you’ve talked about it over the years.”

  “I didn’t even suggest it. Cohen came up with that one on his own. If it makes you feel better, Ken was just as pissed as you were and he was a Master Chief. You get to analyze the bug tech, redesign the scout ships they want, and generally rest for 72 hours. And you will, or I’ll break all your bones and make Cindy fix them again,” said Sevrinofsky.

  “Well, that’s nice,” said Tunney.

  * * *

  Wamamere sat in the XO’s little stateroom (office), where Wamamere delayed his departure by a few hours to assuage some of his lingering doubts.

  “You want to take an entire assault squad?” asked Brennan.

  “I wanted the whole damn team. This base doesn’t get any nicer the second time. Rainwater practically ran the hell out of there last time I was there,” said Wamamere, “They didn’t like him much, which is strange, he’s a nice little guy and tough. I really want all of Seven, but we’re kind of busy.”

  Brennan said, “The company is Japanese, the management is Japanese, how about the workers?”

  “About half.” said Wamamere.

  “Okay, so what are we doing? We need pilots and scouts and recon, right?” said Brennan.

  “We need ‘Warm Bodies’. We can dispose of them as we see fit,” said Wamamere, “Corporate security people are adequate for that. They can stand watch, take logs, do system patrols in light craft, that kind of thing at least. We might be able to train and keep some as well. I might be surprised and they might be competent. ”

  “You’re just being mean,” said Brennan.

  “No, I don’t think so. Rainwater left in a big hurry. He almost beat me to the shuttle. That leads me to believe he was physically or mentally abused, or both” said Wamamere, “Who can do that in a small mining station? Security, mostly. Why do they have 100 security people? There aren’t more than about 500 employees and their families on that installation, so what 1500 people?”

  “You think something else is going on?” asked Brennan.

  “You bet I do. I think Sado is sending us a message in big, bold letters. I want you, Banner, Liu, Roark, for sure. I’d like Perez, but he’s busy. Who else do we have in the evil snooper department?” asked Wamamere.

  “That Lee kid isn’t bad. He’s got a gift,” said Brennan.

  “That’s four, we need twenty. I’ll call Joe and see who he’s got available,” said Wamamere.

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” said Brennan.

  “Yeah. I think... well there are a few possibles, but I’m getting that feeling that something bad is going down. The bugs might be serendipitous in their timing.”

  “You talk more like an officer every day, XO,” said Brennan.

  “Nice, asshole... Go get me the bodies I need. We might need to own that base. I don’t plan on being an officer for one second more than necessary,” said Wamamere.

  “Hmm, I recall David saying the same thing about 15 years ago,” said Brennan, “Right after that mess InSystem when we bailed out the Guard.”

  “Get out of my office,” said Wamamere, holding up both middle fingers.

  Brennan scurried out to scrape up 15 more qualified nasty unpleasant Suit troopers. Perez would be his first choice, but Perez was broke in Sickbay. He headed for the Mess looking for volunteers.

  Wamamere walked next door to the CO’s stateroom and knocked.

  “Enter!” came from within.

  Wamamere opened the door and walked in. He looked at the CO, “Did you listen in to that?”

  “I did, thank you.” said Cohen.

  “What do you think?” asked Wamamere.

  “I wish I could go with you,” said Cohen, “My every instinct says we need to burn that place to the ground.”

  “I wish I could have Perez, he has a gift for untangling sticky situations by leveling buildings,” said Wamamere.

  “Sorry, you don’t get any of the usual miracle workers on this, Mr. Cat,” said Cohen, “You’ll just have to get your hands dirty.”

  “It’s irritating. I’ve been coasting so long, letting those guys fix icky things that I’ve lost my will, I think.”

  “You’ll get it back. That’s one of the reasons I promoted you,” said Cohen, “You were comfortable.”

  “I like being comfortable, I like being not responsible, and I like being the wise old owl advisor,” said Wamamere.

  “Too bad. I need you. Get off your ass and go free those people. That’s what the Navy is for, in the end,” said Cohen.

  “You think it’s that bad?” asked Wamamere.

  “You heard that guy, ‘Just didn’t think of it’, my ass!” said Cohen, “This whole sector was a cesspool. He was crying for help... Or I’m too old and suspicious anymore. Take a squad like you’re planning, and have Sevrinofsky detail you some support, and have a couple more suits standing by. If the shit gets really deep, Joe and I will come bail you out.”

  “Rainwater says we have minimum three days, probably more before the next bug appearance,” said Wamamere, “We need to get this wrapped up before then.”

  “My gut feeling, upon which I have no evidence whatsoever, is that he is really thinking that we have about 10 days, and they are going to hit us with whatever their fleet equivalent is, to try and swamp us with pure numbers. It will probably work unless we get reinforced,” said Cohen, “Those miners could very easily make the difference. Now get your ass out of my office and go to work.”

  “Heh. All right,” Wamamere took a breath, “Joe makes it look so easy.”

  “He’s a freaking demi-god. What do you expect,” said Cohen.

  “He is not,” said Wamamere.

  “Perez says he is,” said Cohen, ”Said he saw him take plasma rounds straight to the face and shrug it off.”

  “I know, I was there. He got his face burned off and they had to replace most of it,” said Wamamere.

  “That’s why Perez said ‘Demi’. You or I would have been so dead they couldn’t have scraped up enough to have a funeral,” said Cohen.

  “Okay, whatever, but my point is that Joe doesn’t really get involved, he trains, he teaches, and he promotes. He got into hand to hand with the bug soldiers but didn’t do anything amazing,” said Wamamere, “He makes it look easy.”

  “You asked to be on the in... that’s what ‘in’ means. We go do Joe’s dirty work, we help people, fix problems. The regular Navy doctrine on situations like this involves report and ignore. Muschivk doesn’t do that. We change things. Go detect and fix. Now.”

  “Fine. So... I have your permission to take any action I see fit?” said Wamamere.

  “Sure. Don’t be an asshole. Just help them,” said Cohen.

  Wamamere nodded and headed out to collect his team. He stopped by Control and gave Kosnar a two-minute briefing on the state of the ship, and then went aft to see what Brennan dug up. He found Brennan talking to Ortiz in Propulsion One, and went over the list of Special Operatives they could spare and managed to collect a full team. Brennan set out to get all the logistics straight and Wamamere talked to Ortiz about transport.

  “Got a surprise for you, COB... Crap.. I mean Chief,” said Ortiz.

  “What’s that? I hate surprises,” said Wamamere flatly, “Don’t piss me off Jose, I’m not in any mood.”

  “I know... you’ll like this one, though, come on,“ said Ortiz, and he waved Wamamere toward the exit.

  Wamamere shook his head and followed. He knew his chances of getting Ortiz to come clean were nil. They went on over to the ship’s hangar bay and in Bay 3 sat the single ugliest craft the Warrant Officer had ever seen. It was medium size a little smaller than a SAR, squat, and black. It looked like a cross between an armadillo and a hedgehog, and Wamamere had only book knowledge of either of these creatures. It had a simply silly number of turreted weapons, a large cargo bay, flipper like ‘fins’, two extremely large aft pod mounted directional engines and an extended pilots console. Underneath the ‘shell’ was a big squat boxy sausage with tubes on the outside pointing down. The ship sat on extended flamingo legs extended for access to the boxy thing. Maybe 30 meters long, 12 meters high, 20 wide. Imagine an ugly snail shell with stickers.

  “What... the... hell... is... that?” asked Wamamere.

  “Space to space trooper delivery craft. Those suit jumps are dangerous, so we built this, using Perez’s scoutship design. It’s a little rudimentary but watching the fighter squadrons attempt to clear off that rock made us realize you needed some dedicated air support. It’s so ugly it’s bound to catch on,” said Ortiz.

  “Who the heck can fly that thing? It’s different than anything I’ve ever seen,” said Wamamere.

  “Thought I’d let Morgan take a crack at it. She can fly anything, anywhere. If she can’t than how about that crazy SAR driver, what’s her name? Han?” asked Ortiz.

  “Morgan is the new carrier CO. She’s a bit busy to go on a two-bit investigation missions,” said Wamamere, “Han is a good choice... I don’t know if she’s crazy enough to try flying that thing! I think she’s driving that little jump fighter carrier thing that you welded together to get fighters to the LP.”

  The LP is the LaGrange Point, a relatively small area in local space where subspace and real space exist in parallel. Gravity from the local group balanced it out creating a ‘flat spot’ in 4-dimensional space.

  “Squad Three is patrolling the LP right now, so Han is here. I’ll ask her if she wants to go,” said Wamamere.

  “Is Randy Perez going with you?” asked Ortiz.

  “Nope, he’s still busted up, got another 2 days of bed rest. I asked Barbara, though, she said she might come along. She was going to designate a pair of fighters for our cover anyway,” said Wamamere.

  “Lt. Reagan said about half an hour ago that he was going, wanted to see what he’d be escorting,” chuckled Ortiz.

  “What’d he say?” asked Wamarere.

  “He was in shock and open mouthed for a bit, then said we needed to name it ‘The Warthog’ for some reason,” said Ortiz, “He thought it was perfect.”

  “You made it atmosphere capable?” said Wamamere.

  “Yep,” said Ortiz, ”Those plane type designs are stupid. Our newer accel compensators are well able to handle wing type loadings.”

  Wamamere walked up to the thing and realized it was beefier than he though. The whole understated design made it look smaller than it was. Ortiz must have used 6 modules plus the shell and the pods. It looked like there were internal thrusters as well, for redundancy. He looked again. There were 4 downward angled multi-barrelled cannons, two on each side, and they looked like slightly modified versions of the fighter cannon but mounted on gimbals under the front ‘fins’ instead of embedded in the fins.

  “When can we leave,” asked Wamamere.

  “We?” asked Ortiz.

  “Oh, yeah, you built this monster, you’re the engineer on it,” said Wamamere.

  Ortiz pumped his fist and said, “Yeah, baby, lets rock! Can I have a suit?”

  Wamamere lifted his eyes skyward, a good trick in space. Ortiz had that effect on people. The inside of the squat little ship was more or less as expected, a big central cargo cavity, seats around the perimeter and a pilot’s station up forward with pilot, copilot and engineer stations, up a ladder, with a small galley, a (surprise) armorer’s station with workbench, small 3d printer and basic tools, and a firecontrol station just aft of the pilot, but facing backwards. Surprise, surprise the ship was subspace capable. Wamamere didn’t ask how they managed that in such a small platform. Maybe putting the Thrusters outside the hull container freed up enough space to allow more goodies. Certainly the standard power budgets had changed. Perez’s little miracle coatings increased efficiency on the portable plants and batteries and they were getting swapped in everywhere the tech guys could find a spot.

  About an hour later the hastily assembled squad of nasties in full armor trooped into the little ship and they were met by Han and Ortiz, as pilot and copilot/engineer. Han looked at Liu and said, “Get up into firecontrol, just in case and let me try this thing out. It looks like it will be a total dog. Nothing this ugly can fly.”

  Ortiz said, “Oh, prepare to eat some crow, Petty Officer Critic.”

  “Have you flown it?” asked Han.

  “Yep,” said Ortiz, “Go easy on the throttle, please. I want my head still on my neck. I suggest you folks all strap in.”

  “Oh, you’re a barrel of laughs, Jose,” said Brennan.

  The squad strapped in, and Wamamere followed Ortiz up the ladder and buckled into the Engineer’s seat and looked it over. Pretty standard EVA systems, only bigger numbers on the readout. His eyebrows rose and he looked over at the copilot.

  “Ortiz... is there a fusion plant in this thing?” asked Wamamere.

  “Why... now that you mention it, there might be. With the new materials and shielding, we could scale down the plant in the SAR, and shoehorned it in here,” said Ortiz, chuckling, “Ain’t that some shit?”

  Han said, “So this is like flying my SAR but only a quarter the mass and four times the vectored thrust?”

  Ortiz winked at the Flight Petty Officer. She put her hands on the control pads and they started to hum powerfully as the drive systems came online.

  “Oh, my,” said Han, “You just moved way up on my favorite persons list. You put force feedback in here?”

  Ortiz nodded, grinned and said, “Warthog, request status?”

  A small face with a cowboy hat and mustache appeared on the console in the triangle between the three stations, “Ready to fly, Senior Chief... who’s the lovely lady? I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” in a strange drawling accent, and a very Sam Elliot attitude.

  Ortiz looked over at Wamamere, “I asked Sevrinofsky to set up a better AI and controls system with an ‘appropriate’ personality.”

  Han said, “I think I’m going to like this one.”

  “You guys need closer watching,” said Wamamere.

  Ortiz looked back at the console and said, “Warthog, this is Petty Officer First Class Jessica Han, SAR Pilot and Carrier Jump Pilot Commander. She’s going to be handling you this trip. We think there might be some problems at Alpha Moon Base, Designate Grasberg. See the file I uploaded about an hour ago labeled Mission.

  “Accessing... Ah. Nice to meet you Petty Officer Han, I am Warthog. Lt. Reagan explained the ancient reference about 30 minutes ago and I am proud to carry it. Chief Warrant Officer Wamamere, I understand the mission, and I have several intel gathering features at your disposal, if you so allow I can link to your PIM and we can get started. Have Brrrrrip! Will Travel!”

  “Thank you, Warthog, go ahead,” said Wamamere.

  The console beeped and the face shifted to Reagan’s, “Nerdboy and Frenchie here, we are your escorts on today's tour. Waiting for you about 300 klicks south of the station on a line toward the base. Our ships are not yet subspace capable, so Normspace transition time is about two hours, your ship has about the same straight-line acceleration profile as our fighters,” and the console shifted to a status display showing the relative positions of the fighters and a proposed flight path.

  “Okay, Robert, this is Goddess, that’s excellent on the escort and we are leaving the bay as soon as I get a go from our cargo, and thank you,” said Han.

  “Warthog, request departure clearance and file a flight plan,” said Ortiz.

  “Already done, Senior Chief, we have clearance, all we need is to give Wanderlust two minutes,” said Warthog.

  Brennan’s icon came up on the display and he said, “All secure back here. We grabbed some semi-portables too. They’re powering up now and will be at full charge on arrival.”

  “Thank you, Petty Officer Brennan, hang on, this is the first time I’ve done this,” said Han, and she switched to local Control, “Wanderlust, this is Warthog, two minutes to departure, lifting now.”

  “Roger, Warthog, good luck,” said the Control AI, “Updating Control... Captain Cohen says, ‘Good Luck’.”

  Han lifted the little ship and pulled in the landing struts and spun it around on the pad. She energized the shields and let the capacitors charge up for about 90 seconds, watching the in-flight status checklist roll. Some lights flashed in the hanger and sirens bleated and the hanger bay doors irised out. Warthog drawled, “We are Go, Pilot. No threats detected, flight path to rendezvous is clear and the weather is sunny and clear with no chance of precipitation.”

  Han snorted, “I like you, Warthog, applying 10% vectored thrust.”

  The ship smoothly sailed out of the hanger and Han turned left and brought up the compensators and arrowed out to meet the fighters. The two small ships took up station on either side and they set course for Grasberg base, burning a hole in space at 3g’s of accel. Wamamere used the time to look over communication records from the buoys near the stations and analyze the traffic.

  “Chief Warrant, the mean amount of encrypted traffic from Grasberg is double the average. Normally only financial and trade comms are encrypted, but from this station almost all traffic is encoded,” drawled Warthog.

  Wamamere’s PIM chimed in with, ”It appears that it is ciphered as well as encrypted, the patterns of code groups do not follow any known language pattern. We can thus postulate that some illegal activity is occurring. Transmission frequency over the last 30 days has decreased but maintained a base level over that of the monitored medium.”

  The PIM’s were saying that there were too many ciphered transmissions for a normal business pattern, and that number and pattern was way outside the error margins. They talked too much, but they were probably right. PIM’s with Intel Modules were capable of a great many quick situational analyses and generating simple reports. Wamamere leaned back and reflected. He and Brennan elected to configure the suits for Intel, as opposed to Recon or Battle. This gave them less armor and firepower, but more EM analysis and camouflage. An intel suit could and was worn under a uniform, and the helmet and gauntlet were retractable. An operative could shake hands, kiss, eat or drink meals, that kind of thing. An intel suit could also lean back in a chair. And take a rifle round to the face. And be generally invisible.

  The real question wasn’t ‘whether or not something was wrong’, the interaction with Sado clearly indicated something was very wrong, the question was ‘what were they doing’. The possibilities went from simple worker indenture to piracy. The traffic to the outlying sectors was small in volume but high in frequency, and over the last year or so the number of missing ships tripled. Some of that could be attributed to the aliens, but it seemed to Wamamere that the number missing was either too high or too low for the ‘bugs’ to be solely responsible.

  “Grasberg, this is Warthog and two escorts, Chief Warrant Wamamere, Commanding, request instructions for final,” said Han on the comm about 80 minutes later.

  “Warthog, this is Grasberg. Final approach approved and I am uploading the pattern and dock to your AI now. There are interviews scheduled and meetings planned for the next couple hours. I published your problem and goals, as well as the company policy and we had 35% of the base population volunteer. Including myself,” replied Sado.

  “Sado, is this circuit secure?” asked Wamamere.

  The ship AI overrode the console and replaced it with its own icon, “Sir, this circuit is being monitored. There is a consistent 25 nanosecond delay on the average.”

  Sado’s face came back up and he blinked twice, “This is not a secure circuit, it is nominally encrypted with standard commercial 2048 bit keys. Do you wish to switch to a secure circuit? It is only 10 minutes until you arrive, and we can talk then.”

  “That’s fine,” said Wamamere, “Fine then. See you in 10.”

  “PIM, Warthog, what did you make of that?” asked Wamamere.

  “Insufficient data for analysis. Surmise: subject is wonky,” drawled Warthog.

  “Translation: Subject is nervous for indeterminate reasons, desires to approach you personally and discuss. He just relayed the total dissatisfaction of a large segment of the base population to the point where they are willing to sign up for assured combat duty,” said Wamamere’s PIM, “He is afraid for his safety, his heartbeat and respiration are higher than nominal.”

  “Thank you. That’s what ‘wonky’ means then?” asked Wamamere.

  “Sarcasm detected. Ignoring,” drawled Warthog airily.

  Ortiz said, “Do you want us to stay in the dock?”

  “Yeah, Jose. Suit up and stay hot. I don’t think anybody will be stupid enough to try and attack this … thing... as nasty as it looks, but you never know. Try not to burn down the base with us in it,” said Wamamere.

  Wamamere slid down the ladder and motioned to Brennan and Liu and the rest of the squad, “Huddle up,” he said.

  “Your PIM’s all have the base plans. Team 1, I want you to infiltrate and blend in and in 30 minutes or so be outside the main security office. Team 2, secure base environmental. Team 3, Base Medical, once medical is secure, join me in Admin. There are no family services here, so no kids, thankfully. I don’t mean secure and kill them all unless they try and resist. I mean secure as in don’t allow any violence. We are trying to maintain normal operation of the base unless they try something ugly. If what we suspect is happening, base security or whomever will try and prevent personnel from attending our recruitment pitch. I’ll have Sado make an announcement to be in the main auditorium in around an hour. The whomever baddies should try and stop people from attending that meeting or try and make examples of them. We’ll see. I think we can handle it either way. Sado said there were 100 security guys on the base. Seem excessive anyone? I think the whole population is around 1500.”

  Liu asked, “How do we handle it. Do we interfere?”

  “Yep. If we get a pattern of obviously sanctioned incidents, we have the authority to shut the whole operation down and start asking really hard questions. This sector is under martial law, according to Cohen. All we do is notify them and then... I brought some AskMeAnything with.”

  “That stuff is illegal! We get caught carrying that we could get shot,” said a troop in the back.

  “Who’s that? Donner?” asked Wamamere, who looked at Brennan, “You want to tell him how this works?”

  “Donner, see me after class and you need to read section 142 of the policy manual,” said Brennan, “But as of the moment Wamamere activated us, we are Federal Republic Agents. Congrats on your promotion. As a federal officer he has the authority to investigate, call witnesses and file charges. As federal deputies we have the authority to arrest and detain suspects, investigate, question witnesses, all that stuff. Captain Cohen has certain powers in an emergency that allows him to ignore the 4th and 5th Amendment. This is kind of an emergency.”

  “Okay, so don’t let the baddies intimidate the locals,” said Donner.

  “The problem is that we don’t know who the baddies are.... and my guess is the people won’t talk until they’re off the base. This leads to another problem, where do we put them? And how do I conduct an investigation with no time? Baddies always leave records,” asked Brennan.

  “Petty Officer Brennan, perhaps this entity can help,” said Warthog, his icon popping up on their display, “This entity has several intelligence-based extensions, and this entity rivals PIM’s Astarte and Salome in cognition and performance. Chief Ortiz has an encrypted network extension router that he uses for drive telemetry. It is possible that several of these modules placed around the station will give this system access to find your records.”

  “Warthog, I know you’re not supposed to, but use ‘I’, the whole ‘this system’ and this entity sounds dumb,” said Brennan.

  “Thank you, Petty Officer Brennan,” said Warthog, "I saves a lot of time."

  “That’s a pretty good plan,” said Wamamere, “I wish I had known, saved me a lot of fretting. One to each team.”

  “5 minutes,” Ortiz said, nodding from the ladder.

  Ortiz scurried off and aft into the engine compartment.

  “Chief, what about Cerro Verde? We can stick them there, train them and use them as we need them,” said Lin.

  “How are we going to take on 300 people?” asked Dribble.

  “We call the shuttle from the frigate as soon as the station is secure. Two trips with that and the two pinnaces should cover it,” said Brennan.

  “One module in Security, One in Engineering, and one in Admin,” said Wamamere, “I’d like one in medical if Ortiz can come up with a fourth. Once you have the modules planted, stay camo for about 20 minutes. We should have the network mapped and at least a better idea of what’s going on.”

  “Drugs, skimming, transhipping, it’s probably all going on. This is a small outpost to hide a large illegal operation,” said Brennan.

  “All right, when Sado comes to the hanger lock, you all disperse. Good luck,” said Wamamere, opening a channel and calling Sado, “Mr. Sado, we’re here. Would you like to meet me in the lock as before?”

  Sado’s image popped up in the bay monitor, “Certainly, Chief Warrant Officer. I will be down there shortly.”

  Wamamere slid down the deployed ladder and sauntered over to the main airlock. Warthog hadn’t lowered the main aft ramp for some reason. Ortiz came back up with 5 telemetry modules and passed them out, giving two to Brennan. The troopers slid down the boarding ladder and disappeared. Wamamere punched the airlock for ingress, and the door hummed and slid aside. Sado and another man in a dark uniform stood in the lock behind him.

  “Ah, Mr. Sado, it is good to see you again,” said Wamamere in smooth Japanese, bowing, “I have been asked to escort you to the ship for a personal word with your niece, Sado Miyuki... And this is?”

  “This is Mr. Wright, Chief of Security,” said Sado, “He offered to escort me down here safely. In politeness, I could not decline.”

  “Well, he can remain here for a few moments, while you talk to your relative. Her time is limited as well,” said Wamamere.

  “I must remain with Mr. Sado,” said Wright in Basic, “He is imperative to the operation of this sector.”

  “Excuse me,” said Wamamere, “I think he’ll be safe on a Naval Landing Craft. Give us a moment, please.”

  “No can do, swabbie, I stay with the comm officer,” said Wright.

  “Mr. Wright… I wasn’t asking. You’re starting to irritate me. Go back inside,” said Wamamere, sounding irritated.

  “He stays here,” said Wright, reaching under his uniform jacket.

  Wright’s hand never reached the weapon under his jacket. It froze right before it slipped under the flap, his eyes went wide, and then limp as he fell to the floor. Liu materialized standing over the unconscious idiot.

  “One life saved today,” said Liu.

  “I’m sure Chief Wamamere is grateful, I know I am,” said Sado,bowing.

  “Ha! Not the CWO,” said Liu, chuckling, “His,” pointing down at Wright, “There’s no way that augment vest he’s wearing would save him.”

  “No telling tales, Teddy. Did you buzz the video in here?” asked Wamamere.

  “Yep, sir. It shows you all heading off to the ship. That Warthog is a piece of work. He’s got Wright picking his nose,” said Lui.

  Wamamere looked at Sado and shrugged, “So. You want to tell me what’s going on around here? Do I have to discover it myself? Do I get a hint?”

  “Of course, Chief Wamamere, do you want to go back to your ship, or to my conference room. Unless my niece really wants to talk to me.”

  “I’m sure she does, Mr. Sado, but it’s not pressing. Why don’t we go to your conference room, and talk this out,” said Wamamere.

  “I believe that we are way past the ‘talking’ point in our problem. Mr. Wright is a uh... ‘gangster’ I believe you call them,” said Sado and he walked out of the lock into the base access corridor.

  “We figured. You laid it out pretty clearly when you said 100 security guards were on the station,” said Wamamere, following.

  The Chief looked around and nodded. The wall patterns were ghosting subtly, meaning that the troopers were following him out of the lock. They went down the long access corridor and into an open round chamber with lots of hallways heading off. The chamber was some 30 meters high with a semi-sourceless glow in the ceiling and plants and dripping water all around. Downright homey. His HUD wasn’t deployed but the PIM was chiming softly as it detected weaponry and hostile movement all around. Sado turned into the first side corridor and stepped into an executive style empty conference room. Wamamere took out a small box and placed it on the conference table in the center of the room.

  “Chief, Warthog here. Three listening and four viewing devices detected and neutralized. I’m playing episodes of Battlestar Galactica over them right now,” drawled the ship’s AI over his comm circuit.

  “Concur. Devices neutralized. It appears they are using tech several generations behind. It seems to be of InSystem design,” said his PIM, "And well behind the appropriate patch schedules."

  Wamamere looked at Sado and waved and nodded, “All clear, Sado Tatsaya. We can speak freely. How much trouble are you in?”

  “Chief Warrant Officer, welcome to Grasberg,” bowed Sado, “Thank you for understanding my message. It didn’t occur to me when you were here last that you might help us resolve our difficulties. It only occurred to me when we were on the comm with Captain Cohen.”

  “Understandable. The Navy doesn’t generally interfere unless we have reason to believe that civil rights violations are occurring, or we’re asked. It’s hard enough to get the budget to keep ships in space. That’s irrelevant now... Your boy Wright attempted to assault a Naval Officer in the course of an investigation. I’ve informed the Wanderlust and I assume that he’ll just tell me to take the base over. Your problem is solved as of now,” said Wamamere.

  “We used to be a mining Co-op, but this group of gentlemen came in to the base and forced enough shareholders to sign over their shares, change the bylaws to create an executive council and basically took over,” said Sado, “Up until about 5 years ago you had to own a ship or a processor in order to have shares and vote at meetings. Now they are issuing shares to the admin people, employees, everyone. And they are voting us out.”

  “Ah. Somebody’s been reading history,” said Wamamere, “Doesn’t matter now. I assume the co-op takes a cut of the price of copper? And they turn and sell it on the open market?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” asked Sado.

  “I’m clairvoyant,” said Wamamere dryly, “It’s a pretty common scam used by organized crime everywhere. They find a business they want for some reason and they are extremely skilled in taking them over. Most times they do it legally. There’s another reason though, they wouldn’t mess with a small operation like this unless they wanted something else. I’m betting they’re laundering money and drugs through here for the sector. They can’t resist squeezing the legitimate business for profit and that’s where they trip themselves up.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sado.

  “My guess here is they passed some stupid rule that co-op members can only sell through the co-op, and that they’ve been slowly lowering the price they’re paying,” said Wamamere, “And then various accidents happen to ship owners that sell their ore other places.”

  “Yes. Why is that ‘tripping themselves up’?” asked Sado.

  “Because they lower the price below the operating costs for the ships and crews and start running up debt. They can’t resist. And that runs them right afoul of the Constitution. That’s indenture. Can’t do that. And then they make employees sign some sort of agreement that says they can’t resign with debt. That’s enslavement.” said Wamamere.

  “You’ve just described the exact situation here. Most of the employees and miners are so in debt to the co-op they can never repay, and we don’t know how it happened,” said Sado.

  “Confirmed. Warthog just downloaded the HR files, and is working on the internal security network. They have two separate networks in Security. He says 15 minutes or so he should have the lot,” said Wamamere’s PIM, “Your prediction is spot on, they even have a database entry called ALLOWED_TO_LEAVE. Mr. Rainwater’s entry is unmarked.”

  “Can he do it tracelessly? If he can’t then we’re going to have to fight them. They’re going to have to try and kill us all and blow the place,” said Wamamere.

  “Excuse me?” asked Sado.

  “One second,” said Wamamere, looking up, ”Talking to my PIM.”

  “The first network yes, he says, second network probably not,” said the PIM, “He’s relaying through me because he doesn’t want to waste the processing power. That second network has real encryption on it. He’s using that module that Sevrinofsky wrote.”

  “Okay. Tell Brennan to find the armory and blow it. Second, tell all the squaddies to put everyone they see in uniforms like that Wright guy’s on ice. If they resist, kill them,” said Wamamere.

  Several seconds went by, then the PIM replied, “Right, I have so informed the team and they have acknowledged. They are beginning as soon as Warthog starts cracking the inner Security network in about 5 minutes.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Wamamere and he looked up at Sado, “Do you have a base admin team? Can you get them in here in a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course. With 35 percent of the base and mining personnel volunteering for service, they are awaiting your direction,” said Sado and he stepped out the door and called some names while Wamamere sort of drifted over behind the door and waited for the admin contingent to arrive.

  A woman, a man, and another man came in the room, followed by a wide muscular fellow in a gray uniform without a weapon drawn. Wamamere tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Drop your weapon on the floor, please.”

  The uniformed man spun around and started to draw his weapon, but froze when Wamamere pistol lined up on the bridge of his nose. “Open your hand and turn back around,” said Wamamere.

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” said the man.

  “I believe that’s my line,” said Wamamere, “Exactly what is it that ‘I’m not going to get away with’?”

  “Stealing the company work force and conscripting them,” said the man.

  “Thank you. You are under arrest under suspicion of enslavement and human trafficking. Hands behind your head please. Ah that’s better.”

  Wamamere whipped out a set of bracelets and locked them on the wrists of the man and then guided him to a chair in the corner of the room. He ran his hands (what looked like his hands, they were gauntlets with camouflage) over the uniform and removed a communicator unit, another pistol and a PIM, to which he quickly removed the power cell and put it in a little baggie then said, “Excellent. Those cuffs are set to silent, so if you speak without me asking you a direct question, they will give you about 30,000 volts. You have the right to remain silent. Use it. Now... if we could all sit down. Thank you.”

  The civilians in the room looked scared and relieved at the same time.

  “Who is this fellow?” asked Wamamere.

  “He’s the Assistant Security Director. He said that he intended to take you into custody and force you to order the Navy to leave the base alone,” said the woman.

  “Does this honky have a name?” asked Wamamere.

  “Wilkes. Andrew Wilkes,” said Sado, “He calls himself Lt. Colonel. The other one, Wright, calls himself Colonel.”

  “Cute,” said Wamamere and he turned and addressed the prisoner in cuffs, “Mr. Wilkes, your clever plan just landed you a straight trip to Federal Prison. I am a Naval Officer, what did you think was going to happen exactly when you ‘took me into custody’?

  Wilkes just sat there.

  “Answer the question, Mr. Wilkes,” said Wamamere.

  Wilkes twitched as if jabbed with a pin.

  “That’s fine, Mr. Wilkes. PIM, render the prisoner unconscious, please,” said Wamamere.

  Wilkes twitched then collapsed.

  “All right, PIM, where are we?” said Wamamere.

  “Medical is secure, Engineering is secure, the living sections are mostly empty because the base population is in the auditorium awaiting an address you’re supposed to be making, Warthog says another few minutes. He has some side leakages and one node on that internal network. My inference is he’s done some clever stuff with a process on their main server and is just waiting for something to call it,” said the PIM.

  “To much information. I’m a Firecontrol Technician not a programmer,” said Wamamere, “What about Security?”

  “Brennan is waiting on Warthog, he assumes they’ll react unfavorably, and he doesn’t want to destroy any evidence,” said the PIM.

  “You are conversing with your PIM?” asked Sado, “That’s amazing. How did you get the relationship function that high?”

  Wamamere looked up, “You’ve met Barbara Sevrinofsky, look her up. She’s one of OutSystems leading AI developers, and she works closely with one of our sailors who is probably one of the best micro-engineers in the galaxy, Randall Perez. Not to brag, but due to a bunch of coincidences you have some of the best sailors in the service solving your little problem.”

  “Brennan says there are three big dudes standing outside the conference room door working up the courage to bust in. They haven’t heard from their boss and it makes them nervous,” said the PIM.

  Wamamere stood up and looked at the three business people and said, “Can you all line up along that wall,” pointing at the wall behind the door, and pulled out a couple of thin sticks and tapped them on the table; the sticks started to glow and hum a low little tune and he swung them around a bit. The three civilians hurried over and pressed themselves against the wall.

  Wamamere looked satisfied and stood in front of the door, idly spinning the sticks in each hand, “PIM, let me know when they’re about to come in. Oh, lock the door.”

  “Locked,” said the PIM and he stood there, patiently waiting. The longer he stalled them, the more time Warthog had to break the network security, and the more time the Security forces took, the tighter the noose. Time was on his side.

  “They’ve decided to break in. It shouldn’t be hard for them, it’s just a partition door,” said the PIM.

  The door thudded in the frame and bulged. The inside of the frame splintered and cracked and the door flew inward and bounced off the wall behind, but Wamamere was already moving. He swung the first stick down toward the pistol the goon in the doorway pointed into the room, and connected with a blinding flash of light. The second stick spun through the door and smacked the thug behind, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. The stick reversed itself and spun back to its partner where he grabbed it and spun it back out the door again spitting little lightning bolts. It sailed through the door spun around in the opening and floated back to the other stick.

  A third ugly dude stuck his head in through the door and yelled, “Freeze!”, and pointed his gun at Wamamere, too late as the tall Chief leaned to the side and round-kicked the man in the head and rapped it off the doorframe. Security dude fell to the ground, out cold.

  PIM said, “Warthog says he’s in, boss. We were right and wrong, because they were shipping weapons through here as well as drugs and untaxed metal. There is a warehouse in the terminal on the other side of the moon loaded with missiles, plasma projectors, guns, explosives. Doesn’t look like they have any nukes. Oh. Drugs and metals too, of course. Captain Cohen says ‘Good Work and you have permission to do whatever you can work out to get those people in uniform. We need them. Today.’”

  Wamamere made the twin sticks vanish and motioned the civilians back to the table.

  “Brennan, this is the Chief Warrant. Take them down, and I want this place under our total control in under an hour. Get moving,” said Wamamere.

  “Miracles are not on the menu today, Ken, but we can have the guards in the pokey by then and be working on cleanup. They have a nice brig here,” said Brennan, “We have all the important parts under control already, even if they don’t know it. We’re moving now.”

  Wamamere grinned and said, “Okay, but if I catch you slacking, you’re joining Ortiz listening to his country music on the way back!”

  “Now,” said Wamamere, looking at the admin group, “The Navy now owns this base. They were running guns. We can settle up the financial details later, but who is the chief controller here?”

  “Me,” said the woman, little, dark, curly haired, in a formal shipsuit, “My name is Jill.”

  “Clear all the debt. The Navy doesn’t allow negative pay balances, return the prices for meals and supplies to pre-mob levels and return the pay to pre-mob level. What’s this about a speech I’m supposed to make?”

  Sado said, “We told the base you were coming to recruit them. I figured it would get them out of the way.”

  “Good plan. I’m going to take advantage of it, and you. Congratulations, Mr. Sado, you just joined the Navy. Who is the director here?” asked Wamamere.

  “I’m the Co-op representative. The corporate Director is at headquarters on Thursday, in Sirius,” said the other man.

  “Congratulations, you are now in (or work for) the Navy. You are responsible to me as Chief of Staff for running it according to the Uniform Code. Let me go talk to your people and tell them what their options are. I can’t really guarantee back pay, the government has to sue the holding corporation for that, but we can return the pay to a normal level, etc,” said Wamamere, “We can get the lawyer types to impound and seize the cash based on the stuff we found on the other terminal.”

  “Stuff?” asked Sado.

  “Guns, drugs, high priced isotopes, stuff like that,” said Wamamere.

  “What other terminal?” asked the controller whose name was Jill.

  “I guess we’re going to be here for a little bit,” said Wamamere, shrugging.

  * * *

  Petty Officer Peter Brennan stuck his head around the corner and pulled it back. The baddies had a semi-portable plasma cannon pointed his way. Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. They blew the door open into security, an entire separate wing. Warthog had given them the plans for the place and the names and location of the prisoners. They set up a clever plan. Two points of access, the main corridor and the hangar bay. Brennan would enter the main corridor and keep them occupied and Warthog and Han would blow open the hanger bay portal and then seal it without killing anybody, hopefully. The hangar door was remotely monitored but manually controlled, a lever and wheel of all things. Brennan thought that half his specially trained troopers couldn’t figure out a doorstop, much less a hatch. Probably made of sabertooth tiger teeth and dinosaur bones. So far, the plan was working perfectly, except for Brennan, who was facing a cannon.

  “Roll a grenade out there, boss!” said Liu.

  “Don’t be an idiot, there are prisoners. The overpressure would kill them,” said Brennan.

  “What are we going to do?” asked James Dandy, the newest SO troop, the senior guys were taking bets about that being his name

  “We aren’t doing anything. I am going to wait until Warthog hits the outer door, then cloak and rush them while you try not to shoot me,” said Brennan.

  “That’s a terrible plan,” said Lin.

  “I know. Got a better idea?” asked Brennan.

  “No.” said Lin.

  The plasma rifle was chewing hell out of the corridor corner. It busted through the metal skin and started in on the rock facing, chips spewing everywhere. Brennan figured if they kept this up, they’d have a new room. The suits were holding up fine as long as they didn’t have to take direct hits. The SO troops were taking potshots from the corners to keep them busy.

  “Why the hell would they have a semi here. They worried about attacks from the office monkeys? Wouldn't you put it in the hanger?” asked Dare, a big Greek woman from InSystem.

  “I dunno,” said Liu, “It doesn’t make sense to me either, though if your corporate policy is enslavement, it seems that it might. Guns are cheap.”

  “Cut the chatter and focus. Ortiz said Han is getting ready to move the ship now. He’s got some kind of thingy set up to seal the hanger corridor if it loses pressure,” said Brennan.

  “That dude is almost as bad as Perez,” said Lin.

  “Brennan, Ortiz here,” said the comm, “Beginning now. We’re not sure what that hatch is made of, so it might take a couple of salvos. Warthog insists he can bring it down in 30 seconds but it doesn’t profile on echo or radar, I think he’s wrong and it will be twice that or more.”

  There was a thud and a bang and the whole base shook. It dumped some of the newer troopers off their feet, and cause the semi-portable to stop firing. Brennan cloaked and headed down the corridor. The floor jumped and shook again.

  “Shit!” said Dare, “Is she trying to put us in orbit?”

  “This is no biggie, the corridor linings aren’t even buckling,” said Lin.

  Screams echoed down the corridor as Brennan reached the semi portable.

  “Let’s go!” and Lin scurried around the corner and leaped forward about 20 meters to put himself right in front of the cannon. The operator tried to pull the trigger and Lin put three holes in his armored suit and he slumped over the controls. Liu came up next to him and put several shots into the accelerator of the cannon and kicked it over. Brennan was battling a huge fella in another armored suit.

  Brennan ducked as the dude kicked out straight, then reversed his gravity and fell to the ceiling and pounded the suit on the helmet, cracking the visor. Real battlesuits don’t have real visors, it's just a decoration. He put three round kicks into the head and chest of the guy and let him slump. Lin came up and fried the suit with a quarter million volts. Dare thumped another suit with her rifle and knocked him back, and another troop hit his electronics with the EMP. The squad broke up and started chasing the Security guards as they broke and fled.

  Brennan caught one and tossed her into an alcove that crumpled on impact, punched her in the head and then fried her electronics. This is the kind of thing the SO troops did regularly. Pirates and criminals weren’t trained or equipped to stand up to regular troops. Brennan looked around and said, “Update.”

  “Well, Peter, it looks like the buggers are on the run. Tally ho! You and your merry band of savages have routed them. The Goons are headed for the hanger door. That should go well. There’s what... 400 cannon on that monstrosity?” said Jeeves, Brennan’s PIM, “That Warthog is slavering at the chance to test out his anti-idiot armament.”

  “Good. Prisoners? Casualties?” asked Brennan.

  “37 Prisoners, 3 dead, no SO dead, 2 injured, both sprains from overusing augmentation. Their AI shut the suits down,” said Jeeves, “There are three pocket of resistance and one hostage situation, a secretary or some such. I suggest intervention.”

  “Man, I suck at negotiating. Get hold of Wamamere,” said Brennan.

  “He’s going to tell you to handle it,” said Jeeves.

  “How do you know that?” asked Brennan as he ran down the corridor toward the location.

  “Because I just asked him, and that was his immediate response,” said Jeeves, “Do you want the wording?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why not make me feel really bad,” said Brennan.

  “He said, ‘tell that lazy SOB to get down there are make it right, and feel no need to take prisoners,” said Jeeves.

  “He swore at me?” asked Brennan.

  “No... He used a Swahili word for ‘son of no mother’ so I improvised,” said Jeeves.

  “Damn,” said Brennan, “He must be neck deep in shit. All right. Carte blanche, right?”

  “Carte Blanche,” said Jeeves.

  Brennan came round the corner where a couple of troops were standing in a door way, just standing there, staring into the compartment.

  “What’s going on,” said Brennan, acting like he’d no clue.

  “This guy took the woman hostage. Said he’s gonna kill her if we don’t let him get to a ship,” said Lin.

  “Update: what’s the guy’s name?” asked Brennan, trying to remember his Hostage Response training.

  “His name is John Jones, according to the personnel database,” said Jeeves, “But the bloody whanker is in our files as a potential terrorist, Buttdolphe Carter.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Brennan,”What is it with the crazy names?”

  The PIM made that buzzing noise that Brennan had come to recognize as a shrug, “Dead serious, Petty Officer.”

  “No wonder he’s a criminal,” said Brennan, “All right.”

  He motioned the two troops, Dare and another one he didn’t recognize because he didn’t personalize his suit, out of the way and strode into the room, looked at the guy holding the gun up against the little womans head and said, “Hi. I’m Petty Officer First Class Brennan. What’s your problem?”

  The short ugly guy was in one of those engineering type suits the InSystem Guard called Battlesuits. It wasn’t AI capable and had no augmentation. He was holding girl around the neck and pressing a large pistol against her head. She was whimpering in fear.

  “I’m fine, you’re going to give me a ship and let me go or I’m going to kill this bitch,” said Carter.

  “I see. So that’s how it is, is it?”

  “Yeah, pig, that’s how it is.”

  “Well... Mr. Carter, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” said Brennan levelly, “I am not a police officer. I am a Navy Sailor, a Propulsion Electronics Technician. That means that you’re not going anywhere. What we are going to discuss is you getting out of this room alive. If you put the gun down and let the girl go, you get to join your friends alive. Otherwise you get to join them dead.”

  “Either you let me go or the girl dies!” shouted Carter.

  “If you kill her, I kill you. How about that?” asked Brennan.

  Brennan subvocalized to his PIM, ”Sim helmet off.”

  The PIM used the phototropics on the outside of the suit to show him removing his helmet and his own face and buzz cut above the suit. The suit normally displayed a standard ships tunic, trousers and boots in any event.

  Brennan said calmly, “I assure you, Mr. Carter, that my career, such as it is, would be over if I let you escape, and I estimate about 50-50 chance that I can drill you before you pull the trigger anyway. I don’t care whether you kill the girl. I would rather you didn’t, of course. Drop the gun. Live or die, Mr. Carter.”

  “You wouldn’t, you cops are all the same, noble blah blah....” said Carter.

  “I don’t think you’re listening. I’m not the police. I am a Naval Special Operative. I’ve killed lots of people. One more won’t weigh on my conscience at all,” said Brennan, “How did you get to this point, anyway? You’re willing to kill a person on the off chance it might help you get away? We know who you are, we have your DNA records. You’re not getting away regardless.”

  Brennan leaned up against the door frame and sighed, “I’m not putting any pressure on you here, but I can’t really let this go on too long. Listen.. I’ve had my back up against the wall myself a few times. Let the girl go. I’m probably not going to be inclined to take you alive if you kill her, and I might be irritated enough to make sure you take a looooong time to die.”

  Carter said, “I need to talk to someone in authority.”

  “I am in authority. You’re being pretty silly here. I can’t let you go, but I can let you live. What’s it gonna be?” said Brennan.

  “You wouldn’t kill me, not when I’m not a threat,” said Carter.

  “I would, you know. I keep telling you I’m not a cop. I don’t about you, her, or any laws or regulations. Your luck ran out when we landed on this rock,” said Brennan calmly, and he drew his pistol and stepped forward and sticking the muzzle against the bastards’ forehead, “You’re pretty brave when you think you’re in charge. Right now, that girl is the only thing keeping you alive. She stops breathing, hell... she gets a scratch, I blow your brains out the back of your head.”

  “Pushing too hard,” said Jeeves softly over the link.

  Carters eyes got bigger as he focused on the gun pressed against his forehead.

  “Nope. This dude is a sissy,” said Brennan sub-vocally, “Tell Lin to execute.”

  “Right,” said Jeeves.

  “Mr. Carter, you can’t accomplish your objectives here. I really suggest you put the gun down. How does it feel, exactly?” said Brennan, “Knowing that I could just squeeze a little bit and blow you away, and you can’t do anything about it?”

  “You bastard! I’ll kill you!” said Carter.

  “How?” asked Brennan calmly, “Killing people is what I do. You can’t take me hand to hand, you can’t move the gun from the girl’s head, you kill the girl, you’re dead. I might just kill you anyway. Probably not, I would get a stern talking to by my Captain. He hates unnecessary casualties.”

  “You’re nuts!” yelled Carter.

  “Lin’s in position,” said Jeeves.

  Brennan stepped forward again and raised the pressure on the asshole’s forehead, ”Come on, pull the trigger… you know you want to!”

  Carter shrank back from the muzzle and pulled the girl back, and Brennan said, “Now.”

  The handgun in Carter’s hand disappeared, and then reappeared pointing up. Brennan punched the pirate in the face with his other hand and grabbed the girl and wrapped his arms around her and turned towards the door in one motion. Carter shrieked and coughed and banged against the bulkhead.

  “Secure,” said Lin, the bleeding thug in a broken suit hanging from his arms like a busted rag doll.

  “Are you all right?” Brennan asked the girl, pointlessly, she’d fainted when he grabbed her.

  He handed her to Dare, and said, “Medical.”

  Dare looked at him and asked, “Would you really have let her kill him?”

  “Nope. I have a daughter about her age. If I thought he was crazy enough to kill her for kicks I’d have blown his hand off, and then his head, but there’s always some risk that way. This way, he focused completely on me and Lin could walk up behind him and take the gun away.”

  “Clever,” said Dare.

  “Medical. Now. If I have to ask you again, you get punishment detail,” said Brennan.

  “Sorry, Petty Officer Brennan, on the way!” and she loped off to Medical with the girl in her arms.

  “Ortiz, everything is pretty much under control here… what about up there?” said Brennan.

  “Couple of dead Security thugs, and some holes I have to patch in the hangar bay. No biggie, and about 30 prisoners. Why do they always try to fight us?”

  “No idea,” said Brennan, “but we have a bunch of cleanup to do and I guess we’d better get at it.”

  * * *

  Wamamere sat in his chair at the conference table and leaned back, reflecting. He’d just got the reports from Ortiz and Brennan that the base was secure and he had some 500 volunteers, including Sado, who wanted off the station regardless, to get to the various Naval stations all with minimal experience and no equipment. A conference call scheduled in two hours with all the players just popped up in his calendar and he still had to address the station crew with no idea what to do. Just another day in the Navy.

  That Warthog was worrying him, its AI was too aggressive and opinionated, the ship too powerful, plus the sailors seemed to really like the thing. He was missing 18 Security members and Fire Team One was combing the base looking for them. Warthog and Han and Ortiz was headed over to the spaceport on the opposite side to inventory and disable any weaponry. More worrisome, he was thinking more like an officer every day.