Privateer Tales 3: Parley (20 page)

“What about military grade scanners?”

“Let’s not even go there. Pirates are one thing, but we don’t want to get mixed up with military,” Marny said.

“Have to wonder why the Navy’d want to drop a MINT agent way out here,” Nick said.

“You can drive yourself nuts with speculation,” Marny answered.

“Agreed. So tomorrow 0800. I’d like to accompany Ada out to the co-op to pick up the barges too,” I said.

“You hear from Qiu yet? It’s got to have been six hours by now,” Marny said.

“Not yet.”

“Hope she’s not going to test us on that.”

“I just hope nothing’s happened to her.”

I’d excused Marny and Nick from watch that night. I knew I
wouldn't sleep much, since I still hadn’t received a comm from Qiu. At 0400, I heard a request to enter the bridge. It was Tali’s voice.

“You up, Liam?”

“Yes. Come on in.”

“Any word on Qiu?” she asked.

“Nothing yet. I’m thinking about sending a comm off to the Navy.”

“She’s more than six hours late, and as much as she didn’t want to communicate with us, she wouldn’t jeopardize her mission by ignoring the communication protocol. I’d be careful about sending off a comm, it could be intercepted.”

I wasn’t thrilled to share with Tali that we had special Navy issued communication equipment. But it seemed like she needed to know, as it could possibly change the way we moved forward.

“I’d like to show you something in my quarters,” I said.

“Not sure we’re that good of friends yet,” she quipped. I didn’t initially catch it and then snapped my head around to look at her. A single raised eyebrow and a slight grin clued me in. “Am I really so old you didn’t see that coming?”

Confusion coursed through my brain as I tried to come up with a face-saving response. Tali was an incredibly attractive woman, but she was also very intimidating, especially after working out with her. Her lithe body had caught my attention more than once, but I didn’t consider myself to be in her league. So many cluttered thoughts left me incapable of answering her with any speed.

“I’m hurt.” Tali pouted her lips.

“Oh, no … that’s not … no … I don’t …”

“Just frakking with you, Liam. Let’s go to your quarters to see your thing,” Her smile was almost predatory.

I sighed, exasperated, and gave up. “This way.” I knew I was outmatched as I pushed the bridge door open and walked into the captain’s quarters, Tali following close behind. Indicating to her to close the door, I pulled out the chair locked in beneath the desk and sat
and palmed the unremarkable panel on the wall next to the hull of the ship. The panel retracted and I pulled out the keyboard.

“What’s that?” Tali asked.

“Encrypted Naval comm. It’s coded to a single recipient.”

“I see that,” Tali said. “I’m familiar with the model. Instant comm within 2 AUs. Very nice, very discrete. Who’s it coded to?”

“My contact in the Navy and it always takes him some time to get back to me.”

“Well, he’s holding out on you. Not that it matters, but when I said instant, I meant it. I’d let him know what’s going on either way,” Tali said.

I typed in,
Agent missed check in, six hours late. Please advise
. I palmed the screen closed.

“Did Marny talk to you about the fact that Qiu got off the ship without us knowing about it?”

This got Tali’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Sometime before we made it to our berth, she got off the ship.”

“You don’t know how she got off? What about the video?”

“Haven’t looked yet, she was due to get off anyway, so what did it matter?”

“Don’t know. I just don’t like mysteries.”

“Easy enough to look through the video, although it’ll be easier on the bridge.”

“Do you mind?”

“I’m gonna need some coffee …”

I started a fresh batch, disappointed that I’d let it run dry. We went back to the bridge to use the holo-projectors.

Show Lieutenant Qiu leaving the captain’s quarters, yesterday
.

The soft male voice of the ship’s AI replied,
No holographic playback available for requested subject
.

Track backwards from our docking at Jeratorn berth to first recording of Lieutenant Qiu Loo.

No information available for requested subject
.

“Try the mid-point dinner, she was there,” Tali suggested.

Show seven days ago when the crew of Adela Chen boarded this ship
.

The AI chose to start outside the ship where Ada and Jordy were arc-jetting from the tug over to
Sterra's Gift
. They cycled through the airlocks and walked down the hallway. Just as they were turning the corner the scene froze.

No source of data for continued playback
.

“How’d she do that?” I asked aloud.

“I think we have some idea what Qiu was doing in her room on the way out. Removing that much data is darn near impossible. It must have taken quite a lot of effort.”

“Do you suppose that’s just how MINT operatives work?”

“Maybe, but what if it wasn’t her? What if someone else wanted to wipe out the record of her trip?”

“Who’d want to do that? Moreover who’d have access?”

“Governments have been denying the existence of covert intelligence operatives for centuries. It’s just a lot harder nowadays. It’s the same reason the Navy contracted you to deliver her. They didn’t want people to know where she came from. So far, I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job.”

“So they can just bust into my ship and wipe my records? Doesn’t that put Qiu at a lot of risk?”

“Probably less than if you had it. Right now if the bad guys, whoever they might be, captured your ship, they wouldn’t be able to learn anything about her.”

“I suppose. Kinda pisses me off,” I said.

“Sure. That makes sense.”

“So, you think we should just drop it?”

“Think you can?

It was 0600 and I rationalized that Nick and Marny would want to be informed more than they would want additional sleep.

Hail Marny
.

“What’s up, Cap
?” She sounded like she was wide awake even though I knew I must have just woken her.

“Nothing imminent, but we have a situation I think you should look at.”

“Permission to enter bridge.”

One thing was certain, nobody was ever going to get the drop on Marny. I wondered how she kept herself at the ready all of the time.

“Granted.”

Nick followed closely on Marny’s heels and once again he looked like you’d expect from someone who’d just jumped out of bed. Marny, of course, looked like she’d been up for hours.

I explained the missing video data to them and that I’d sent a request for instructions to Lieutenant Belcose on the
Kuznetsov
.

“We might have a response by now,” I said. “I’ll check. See if you can find anything I missed.”

As I left, I heard Nick providing instructions to the ship’s AI. He wouldn’t easily accept that the data was lost. In my quarters, I opened the panel in my desk, once again revealing the communication equipment.

A message was waiting for me.

Hold action for eighteen hours and then return to Mars if no further communication is received. Belcose Out
.

My stomach sank as I read the words. Belcose would simply have us abandon her. I wasn’t a MINT agent, but I couldn’t imagine just giving up on Qiu. I sent a reply.

Will hold position until 2400 and reassess
.

I rejoined the crew on the bridge. Nick was fast forwarding through the recordings. By the look on his face, he hadn’t found anything yet.

“Any word from Belcose?” Marny asked.

“Yes. We’re to wait for eighteen hours and if we don’t hear anything we’re to leave.”

“That’s pretty cold,” she said.

“Not really,” Tali interjected. “That would put her out of communication for
twenty-four hours. If she doesn’t have an exfiltration team then she’ll have to find her own way out. Not much you can do.”

Nick hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the conversation up to this point.

“You know how hard it would be to remove all of this data? We’re talking tens of thousands of micro nodes that had to be wiped. She couldn’t possibly have had enough access to do all that.”

“Anything in the logs?” I asked. I had no idea what I was talking about, but when Nick went on a hunt for something, he always ended up talking about log files.

“No. It’s crazy. They’re clean too. I couldn’t do what she did even if I wanted to. Even with all my access. Wish I knew how she did that,” Nick's frustration came out in his words.

“How bad do you want to know?” Tali asked.

“What do you mean? Do you know what’s going on?” he asked her.

Tali pulled out the small object she’d placed on the table when we’d talked to Qiu in my quarters. She thumbed it on and placed it on the console next to where Nick was sitting. My ears popped again and I could feel a weird pressure against my ear drums.

“No, but I know someone who could figure it out … for a price.”

“How much?” I asked

“Normally she gets three hundred an hour. I’d guess she could find it in three or less.”

Nick looked at Tali skeptically but didn’t say anything.

“Let’s send her a message and see if she’s willing to poke around. It’s a big deal that someone can wipe systems on our ship,” Nick said.

“I’ll send it right away. Marny, I bet with a little detective work and the nanite tracker we can figure out how she got off the ship. Want to help?”

“Aye. That I do.”

Nick continued to sift through images from different sources and I heard him growling with dissatisfaction. I decided my efforts would be best used on a navigation plan back to Mars. When we finally left for Mars, I didn’t want any delays for lack of planning. At 0700 Marny and Tali re-entered the bridge.

“Hold on to your seat Cap, you’re not going to believe what we found,” Marny said. She definitely had my attention. I noticed that Tali was holding several objects.

“What do you have?”

“She exited the ship using the secondary airlock.”

“Under the bridge? That’s crazy, how’d she get down there?”

“There’s a hatch in her bunk room that looks newly installed. She dropped down below decks and gained entry to the airlock.”

“Shouldn’t that be locked out by security?”

“It is, and as you might expect, there’s no record of her using it. The nanite trail is very clear, though. We sent the timestamps to the ship, so we should have been able to watch her walk through the ship virtually. Except, when we tried that, all those records were missing, too. You can’t actually see those locations at the times when she’s there.”

“Hang on, I’ll superimpose them onto a different time sequence. We won’t see her, but we can at least see where she went,” Nick said. He
started typing into a reading pad.

“She stashed a few things in a compartment - also newly installed. They aren’t important, just items that could identify her as Navy; an ident bracelet and her wedding ring, along with a few other personal items.”

“She’s married?” It was hard for me to think of Qiu Loo as being friendly enough to hook up with someone. It struck a chord with me, finally humanizing the enigmatic woman.

“So someone has taken control of your ship, installed secret compartments, and broken your security and the big revelation for you is that she’s married?” Tali asked
wryly.

I looked back and smiled sheepishly, “No, sorry, it was just the most surprising thing. I guess I’d already started to suspect the other stuff.”

“Got it,” Nick pushed his hand across the reading tablet with a flourish and projected a gray mono-chrome woman’s figure in the doorway of my cabin.

We watched her walk back from the cabin to BR-2. She entered and moved around the cabin. The AI did a reasonable job of inferring what direction she was pointing, but without understanding what she was doing with her hands, the movement didn’t always make sense.

“Hey, that’s not supposed to be there,” I said, when a compartment popped open on the exterior wall of the room while she stood next to it.

“It looks like that was installed while the ship was at the shipyard,” Marny said.

“You think they did something to the AI core that gave Qiu the ability to mess with the ship’s recordings?” Nick asked.

“It’s a reasonable guess, but it’d just be speculation.”

We watched Qiu’s image lie down for a period of time. Nick sped the time sequence up and finally she got up, opened a small hatch beneath the bunk and made her way through the emergency airlock. The time sequence lined up with when we docked at Jeratorn.

“Well, mystery solved. It seems like that was a lot of work to go through instead of just exiting through the normal airlock,” I said.

“Can you think of a reason why she’d want to hide the fact that she’d been on this ship?”

“I see no advantage in us sharing that information,” I said.

“I don’t think Belcose was very straightforward with us about what is really going on here. What if one of us was taken hostage? Perhaps Qiu had to take precautions in case one of us was made to talk,” Marny said.

“Agreed.
Now I hate to sound like a mercenary, but we have a load to put on in twenty minutes, so this will have to sit for now.”