He stared at Miranda for a moment, apparently taken by her charm or her beauty or both. “You must be Miranda Smith,” the man said.
I wondered if I would grow old before he finished his next sentence.
“
Yes, and this is my boyfriend Max Anderson.” She gestured to me. “How many rooms does our cabin have?”
“
Two rooms,” he said. “The living room area doubles as a dining room, and there is a bedroom. Well, there’s a bathroom if you count that.”
“
We brought a guest. Can we get a cot for the living room?” she asked.
Without looking away from Miranda, he started to polish the gun lovingly with an oil cloth as if we were interrupting private business.
“
No need. The couch is a hideaway bed.” The manager looked at Tyler, who had managed to get the door open and the luggage inside. “Have you stayed here before?”
“
Never been here,” Tyler said.
The manager frowned. “I never forget a face. I think it was four years ago.”
“
Sorry. Maybe it was somebody who looked like me.”
The innkeeper frowned.
“
What’s the gun for?” I asked. Tyler shot me a what-are-you-doing look.
“
Hunting,” the man replied. “This baby shoots ten rounds per second.”
I nodded. “Ten rounds per second. Maybe hunting isn’t your sport, Tex.”
He grinned. “You haven’t seen the game I’m after.” He pulled a key out of a drawer and handed it to Miranda. “Cabin thirteen, down by the lake. It’s very rustic. You kids be safe.”
“
We will,” Miranda said.
I leaned in close to her and asked in a stage whisper, “You did bring protection, right?” She flashed a peek into her jacket where only I could see her Voltaic Fusion Pistol. I nodded toward her chest. “Can’t wait to get my hands on that,” I said a little louder than necessary.
She gave me a flirtatious slug on the chest. She really knew how to act the part, which I hoped meant she was going to make a good partner. We’d see how she did when things got dicey.
I followed Miranda into the darkening evening, I hoped toward cabin thirteen because it was getting cold as hell outside and I didn’t fancy being lost even a few minutes. Tyler trudged along behind us, bearing the luggage without complaint. As much as I hated him, I had to admit that he was a real trooper—not that I was going to offer him any encouragement.
Calling the cabin rustic had been generous on the part of the gun-cleaning former hockey-playing desk clerk. The place was not just old but broken and musty. Tyler dropped our bags on the floor with the sort of care you’d expect from airline baggage handlers. He walked to the kitchen and filled a glass with orange-tinted water from the tap. He sniffed the water and then dumped it out.
The walls of the cabin had peeling wallpaper with purple floral designs. There was a small sink between a small stove and a small refrigerator. A sign above the sink written in crayon on a piece of notebook paper reminded us to wash our own dishes. I noticed that the sink had dark orange stains in the basin where the water would flow. A brown corduroy couch with sagging cushions and a number of nasty stains sprawled across the middle of the room. A television as old as it was tiny stood in the corner. In another corner was a bookshelf with a bible, two children’s books, and a chess board.
Miranda dug around in one of the bags and threw Tyler and me each a small candy-bar shaped package. The wrapper had the label “Bar-F” on it. Tyler appeared to open his with ease while I wrestled with the packaging for a minute.
He grinned. “Do you need help opening that?”
“
I’ve got it,” I grumbled. I wasn’t going to let him show off his super strength, and so I pulled out my utility knife from my boot and slit the package. Inside was what appeared to be a chocolate candy bar. I ate it in two bites.
“
Did you eat the whole thing?” Miranda asked.
I noticed that she had only nibbled a little off of the end of hers. “Does that mean you aren’t going to finish yours?”
“
I’m definitely not going to finish mine. That was ten thousand calories. You just ate the equivalent of a dozen sticks of butter.”
“
I am pretty hungry,” I admitted.
She resealed her wrapper—who knew they were resealable I thought—and tucked the bar into her pocket. “We should get some rest. It’s probably best to check out the site in the daylight. We’ll get up at dawn and scout for evidence.”
I cleared my throat. “As mission leader, that sounds like an excellent idea. Let’s hit the sack.”
Miranda walked into the bedroom. I was a step behind her.
“
Do you mind if I have the window side?” I asked with a nod toward the bed.
When she turned around, we were inches apart and I almost walked into her. She hit me in the chest like a little girl might, and so I knew she was flirting. Any agent, regardless of gender, could knock you out cold. “Ya big dummy. You’re sleeping on the couch.”
“
Big?” I asked indignantly. I put my arms around her waist. “Besides, aren’t we supposed to be undercover?”
“
Yes, but not under covers.” She gave me a playful push. “Behave, and get to bed.” She stepped into the room and closed the door in my face.
“
Denied,” Tyler whispered.
I showed him the Bar-F that she had discretely slid into to my pocket. I didn’t mess around with the wrapper this time though. I went right for my knife to open it.
“
So, how did you really end up on our plane?” I asked.
“
I told you…”
“
Seriously, don’t give me that crap. Why are you here?” I asked.
He sighed. “Look, I just need to show that I still have it.” He looked away. “There’s been some talk of me retiring, and I need this mission.”
“
Won’t they be upset if they find out you showed up here without permission?”
Tyler frowned. “Those bastards sit in their comfortable boardrooms calling the shots, but they don’t know shit. We’re the ones out here putting our lives on the line. I’ll make them see that I still have it in me. I’m not going to retire on their piss-poor pension, not yet.”
I nodded. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Chapter 5. Miranda
When I closed the door on the boys, I immediately took out my com link, which doubles as a computer, and logged into the Intergalactic Secret Service servers. The blue three-dimensional holographic display and interface appeared in the air before me. I pulled up the assignment briefing.
The ping was triggered when a fishing guide and two of his clients went missing the same day that a tachyon ripple was detected in the region. The tachyon signature resembled that of a Delta class ship. The briefing had a second attachment, a report from the Stellar Command stating that a Phoenix 5000, a Delta class ship, had been stolen from a repair dock four months prior.
As I was reading the Stellar Command report, the hologram flickered and turned into a blank blue slate and then reloaded. The report was gone. Now the briefing showed that the ping was merely a suspicious disappearance of a fishing guide and two of his clients. I refreshed the report and the information about the Phoenix was still missing. I did a search across the Stellar Command newsfeed and found nothing.
Confused, I swished my hand through the air, changing the com link interface to communication mode and called Wendy.
“
Hello, Miranda,” she said.
“
Wendy, I’m so glad you are there this late. I was just reading the mission brief, and it changed.”
“
Let me look.” There was a moment of silence. “The briefing has no history of change.”
“
I was just looking at it, and believe me, it changed.”
“
The document has an origination timestamp of earlier today, and there are no modifications listed. There’s no reason to believe it has changed.”
“
There was a report of a missing Phoenix 5000 as part of the ping, information about a tachyon radiation signature. If that information is gone and the new briefing isn’t listed as modified, whoever did this has sufficient system access to cover their tracks.”
“
You might be right,” she said. “I’ll contact security and we’ll investigate. You’ll have to make do with the information you have for now.”
“
As mission coordinator, don’t you remember the briefing from earlier today?” I asked.
“
The Texas assignment was more critical. The low priority nature of your assignment did not warrant that level of my attention,” she said. “I will look into it. Good night.”
I hadn’t slept in forty hours, I told myself, and so it was possible I had imagined the report. But I didn’t think so, if for no other reason than Wendy’s reaction. She was too defensive.
The com link’s projection of Wendy disappeared, replaced by the holographic computer interface.
I touched intangible buttons in the air and started searching the Internet for details on the area. Humans wouldn’t have picked up on tachyon radiation, but maybe they would have seen the bright lights of a ship coming in for a landing. I was new to being an agent, but I was sure the report of some missing fishermen wouldn’t, by itself, be enough to create a ping at the Service. We were only sent on missions where extraterrestrial activity was detected.
I found a blog post by a person who lived nearby. He claimed he saw a falling star that night, a coincidence maybe. The local paper had three different small postings of owners looking for lost dogs that went missing the same day. More coincidence perhaps.
I hooked into the Service servers again and started looking for more events reported on that day. The servers recorded virtually all news from around the world in every locale, and an artificial intelligence correlated the data to identify anomalies, which the Service called a ping. However, the server had nothing for the Ely region on that day other than the missing fishing guide and his clients. The sheer lack of data made me suspicious. I looked at other regions across the state on the same day and found random bits of news that didn’t flag a ping. It was simply information.
“
Computer, why is there no data for August 26th in Ely, Minnesota?” I asked.
“
Agent Miranda, my name is Jasmine, not ‘Computer.’ There is data for August 26th in Ely, Minnesota.” The hologram showed the article for the missing fishermen.
“
Okay, Jasmine, but why isn’t there any other data?”
“
No other data is available.”
I wanted to pull my hair out. “Yes, but why?”
“
Agent Miranda, I do not understand your query. The data is not present because it is not there.”
“
Was it removed?” I asked.
The computer was silent for a moment. “There are no records of data being removed.”
“
Has anybody accessed the brief for my assignment in the last hour?” I asked.
“
Only you and Agent Wendy.”
“
Besides the two of us, I mean.”
“
No other access has been recorded within the last hour,” Jasmine said.
“
Thank you, Jasmine.”
I swiped off my com link and tucked it into my backpack. There was apparently a tremendously skilled hacker in the system with access to highly classified data, somebody who didn’t want information about the stolen Phoenix to be available. I could only hope Wendy would uncover the culprit.