Authors: Bennett R. Coles
He frowned. “Is that a black or a red terminal?” Black terminals aboard the ship were restricted to lower classifications of data, while red terminals—specially encrypted and shielded—were the portals used to view the Astral Force’s most militarily sensitive information.
She didn’t look up. “Black, why?”
He pointed at the cosmographic survey data. “Has that been de-classified? On my last deployment that was top secret, need-to-know stuff. How did you get it on a black terminal?”
“Jack, relax. Research ships don’t worry about that sort of thing. We have to be able to access the best information to ensure the validity of our data. I don’t want to be slogging through classification fields every time I want to check a static parameter. If you think I’m going slow now, imagine if I had to play by your combat rules.”
“Uhh, yeah…” he said doubtfully. “But there’s this little thing called Terran security. You know, that thing we all defend?”
Amanda started to roll her eyes, but as she looked up directly at Jack she changed her mind, and grinned.
“Mr. Mallory,” she hissed in her best impression of Helena, “I’ve had just about enough of your cheek.”
He grinned back and stuck his belly out as far as he could.
“Oh, Helena, good,” he warbled with a high squeak. “I was just thinking I’d like to see a bit of cheek.”
She pulled her skin back taut over her features.
“Oh, Admiral Bush, you can see my cheek any time.”
A low, dangerous voice interrupted them. “What is going on here?”
He looked over to the door, and felt his heart sink as Lieutenant Helena Grey crossed her arms sternly. Her deep-set eyes bore into him, then into Amanda.
“Hi, ma’am,” he said with forced cheer. “We’re retrieving the data from the broken probes.”
“By making stupid faces at each other?”
He couldn’t help but laugh, although he knew it wouldn’t improve the situation.
“No, sorry,” he said. “We’re really tired.”
“You think you’re tired?” Helena stormed through the lab to stab a finger in Jack’s face. “I was up for hours last night proofreading Amanda’s sorry attempt at a solar wind article, then I had to ensure that our regular weekly reports were submitted.” She lowered the finger, but continued. “Now I’ve just spent three hours in Admiral Bush’s quarters, explaining why we’re so far behind on our core research—and when I come down here, I find you two acting like school children!”
Amanda pointed at the screen. “Ma’am, look,” she said. “We have sixty-eight percent of the data recovered, and I’m already working on filtering for the weakbrane influence.”
Helena glared at the screen, her eyes flicking between the patterns of dots and colored patches. Jack had often seen Thomas or Katja conduct rapid info assessments, but in Helena’s stare he saw none of the same piercing awareness. Her furious expression remained frozen on her wrinkled face.
Eventually, she simply humphed.
Jack had long ago realized he was never going to be in Helena’s good favor, but he also knew that she was required to sign off on Amanda’s field time, prior to her thesis defense. So he was happy to draw the fire.
“Ma’am, we’ll be able to work faster if we can get a red terminal set up in the lab,” he suggested. “We may need to refer to top-secret info, in order to ensure that accurate baselines are established.”
She silenced him with a sharp wave of her hand.
“Don’t feed me that!” she snapped. “Just because you did a combat deployment doesn’t make you some kind of scientist. Red terminals are slower, they require authentication codes, it takes forever to transfer data from one system to the other… and they just aren’t needed. Weapons ranges and intelligence reports aren’t important to our work.”
“No, but hyper-accurate astro spatial data like this is.” Jack pointed at the cosmographic survey info on Amanda’s screen. “And we shouldn’t be able to access it on a black terminal.”
Her face seemed to crinkle like thin plastic as it screwed up in confusion. Jack wondered idly if his own face looked like that when he frowned.
“It’s right there,” she said. “So what’s the problem?”
It took him a moment. “The problem,” he said slowly, “is that a non-secret terminal is displaying secret information. That’s a security breach.”
“That’s not your concern.”
“Yes it is,” he blurted before he could stop himself. “It’s everybody’s concern.”
“Not mine… and
not
yours.”
“I’d bet it will be a concern to Lieutenant Commander Kane.” He regretted the words as soon as they escaped his mouth. Thomas’s recent inquiries hadn’t sat well with Helena—a fact that quickly became evident.
Her face reddened with anger, but her voice remained very quiet.
“Don’t waste my time with that nonsense,” she said grimly. “Are you a Centauri spy?” She tossed her chin at Amanda. “Are you? We disabled those security protocols years ago, because they just got in the way. I don’t need any more interference from outsiders who don’t understand Research—and don’t think you can go crying to our new acting-XO just because you’re both from the combat Fleet. Keep your cloak-and-dagger for the bridge, Sublieutenant Mallory, and stop wasting my time and that of my team.”
Jack made to reply, but she held up a finger for silence. Then she tapped Amanda so hard on the shoulder Jack heard the impact.
“Admiral Bush wants to know how many other science teams were at the asteroid rendezvous,” she said, “and he wants a preliminary report on this Dark Bomb experiment by the evening brief.”
Amanda didn’t even glance up. “Yes, ma’am.”
Helena shot Jack another glare, then stalked out of the lab.
He suddenly remembered the probe in his hand. He struggled to open the casing as he rounded the table again and took his earlier seat across from Amanda. Data card removed, he handed it to her.
“So how many science teams
were
there at the asteroid ballet?”
Amanda shrugged. “There were seven vessels, weren’t there?” She focused dully on her console.
“Yeah, but I wonder if some of the planet-based institutes shared observation ships. It’s not cheap to RV with an asteroid, let alone two.”
“You did it pretty well.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“Oh yeah?” She glanced up at him, a flicker of interest in her eyes.
“Stealth ships are harder to find in the Bulk than asteroids. They’re smaller, they change course, and they’re actually trying to hide.”
“How do you track them?”
Jack scrubbed at the dust on another probe for a moment, wondering just how much Amanda really wanted to hear about anti-stealth warfare. He thought it was pretty cool, but he was beginning to realize that sometimes he blabbered on a bit too much about things. He looked at her tired eyes, and decided she was just being polite.
“There’s a reason ASW is called Awfully Slow Warfare,” he replied. “I’ll tell you sometime, when you’re not already almost asleep.”
“I’d like that.” The corners of her lips curled up appreciatively. She looked at him for a moment longer, then went back to her work.
“How did your asteroid report come together in the end?”
She sighed. “Well, apparently we were the first to submit to the Martian Academy, so that made the captain happy.”
“Are you pleased with the results?”
“No, they’re garbage.” She scoffed. “Just like everything we’re slinging out of here these days.”
“Why’s that?”
A yawn blanked out her answer momentarily, and she hunched her shoulders in a suppressed stretch.
“Because we don’t have time to do anything properly. It’s just one damn special experiment after another. As soon as I finish analyzing one set of data, I have to switch gears and take on another.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “It’s not like they’re even in my field! Sure, the gravimetric interaction of two asteroids passing near each other is sort of close to Bulk research, but while you were laying these sensors I was writing up that stupid report on fluctuations in solar wind.”
“Why are we studying solar wind?”
“Because apparently it’s a hot topic in some scientific circles, and Captain Lincoln wants us to get in on the action.”
“But it’s got nothing to do with the Dark Bomb.”
“Doesn’t seem to matter.”
“So why are we doing it?”
“Because the fucking captain
wants
it!”
Jack leaned back in his chair, startled by her rudeness. Then an idea struck him. He placed the broken piece on the table and rose.
“I have something that might help us get this experiment done—and done right. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Trudging out into the clean, well-lit passageway, he couldn’t help but compare it to the frigid, dim, reinforced honeycomb that had been the central route through the
Rapier
. He rubbed his hand across his rebuilt cheekbone, blinking away the memories of piloting the ship in zero-g and zero-atmo, toward a collapsing jump gate, fighting the pull of the singularity with every ounce of power he could wrench from the fast-attack craft.
And these scientists think they know stress.
With sudden violence, he punched the control to his cabin.
They don’t know shit.
At the back of his locker, in a small, black medicine bag, was a bottle of amphetamines. He’d been issued them during the deployment, when he’d been hunting stealth ships sixteen of every twenty-four hours. He hadn’t finished the bottle before combat ceased, and no one had ever asked for them back. They weren’t pretty, but Amanda was burning out fast. If he was going to help her, he thought he might pop one himself.
He made a quick side trip to the wardroom galley to bring her some water.
And maybe a snack
, he thought suddenly. It was mid-afternoon, and the galley was empty, so Jack quietly helped himself to a pair of drinking pods before glancing through the fridge to choose a snack.
Over the ever-present hum of machinery, he heard a pair of voices coming from the wardroom, but it wasn’t until he closed the fridge that he recognized them to be Helena and Thomas. He delicately placed his forage on the counter, and inched toward the narrow servery door.
Thomas was sitting forward in one of the armchairs, listening and nodding as Helena spoke. Jack was too late to hear what she had said, but he clearly heard Thomas’s reply.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees this,” he said. “These special experiments are wasting all of our resources. I’m not sure I get why we’re chasing these civilian issues. What’s the captain’s thinking?”
“Prestige,” Helena replied with an exaggerated sigh. “Lincoln has always wanted to be a famous scientist, but he’s not very good at research himself. Instead, he focused on promotion so he could direct a team of good scientists. Being the leader of a team can bring just as much fame as being the person who does the discovering.”
“Okay, I get that,” Thomas said, leaning back thoughtfully. “But why so many? Can’t he see that by trying to tackle every topic that comes along, we’re doing a half-ass job on each one?”
“I spoke to his previous ship, the
Katherine E. Page
,” she responded. “He was in command for fifteen years there, and they say it was constant chaos. He was always chasing the hot topics, always counting how many times
Page
papers were cited, always trying to get media exposure.”
“Well, he must have done a good job,” Thomas said. “He told me that
Page
won Research Institute of the Year last year.”
“He tells everyone that. He’s very proud of it, and no doubt he wants to do the same with
Armstrong
.”
“I’d think if we can conduct strategically vital research to develop the Dark Bomb,
that
would be worth some notoriety,” he suggested.
Helena reached out to place a hand on Thomas’s knee.
That’s interesting
, Jack mused.
“Not if the research remains top secret,” she said. “Lincoln doesn’t want Astral praise—he wants to win a Nobel prize.”
Thomas smiled. “So it’s up to you and me to get the core research done, and still keep Captain Lincoln happy.”
She squeezed his knee. “I’m so glad you’re here, Thomas. It’s refreshing to see some common sense again.”
Jack was stunned. Who was this charming, agreeable woman? If he hadn’t recognized the dyed-blonde hair and bony hands, he might have thought Thomas was talking to a complete stranger.
“How long have you been on board?” Thomas asked.
“Thirty years. I joined as an admin assistant,” she said. “The early years were hard work, but then we got a new captain—a very young Randall Bush—and he gave me the chance I’d always wanted when he transferred me to the science department as a junior analyst.”
“So you worked all the way up?” he asked. “No formal training?”
“I don’t even have a degree, but sometimes experience counts for a lot more than a piece of paper.”
“You must know Admiral Bush quite well.”
“Oh, yes, and when he’s on board he still calls me to his quarters, to get my opinion on how things are going. He was captain here for a long time, and in his heart he still thinks of
Armstrong
as his ship.”
Thomas nodded wearily. “Layers upon layers of politics, I see.”
“Research has always been a tight community. Did you know that Captain Lincoln’s life-partner is in command of one of our scout ships, even though he’s not qualified?”
“Really?”
Helena nodded. “And just last year Admiral Bush used resources from
Armstrong
, including me, to provide data gathering for his daughter’s PhD thesis.”
“What? How can he do that?”
“Who’s going to check? Nobody’s ever cared what Research does.” Her voice changed. “Down at our level, we just have to roll with the whims of our commanders.”
Jack felt himself stiffen with indignation. No wonder things were so messed up around here. Thomas frowned, apparently sharing Jack’s opinion.
“But what if I wanted to speak to the admiral about Captain Lincoln’s priorities?” he asked. “Would he listen to me?”
“Bush hand-picked Lincoln to succeed him, so you’d have a tough audience.”