Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) (28 page)

“I … well, I was um… intrigued, and searched the web for more information. That’s when I came across additional information in SSP’s database …”

“Wait. Back the bus up. How on earth did you manage to look in the State Security Police database?”

The young woman blushed again and bit her lip. “You … you won’t report me if I tell you, will you … sir?”

“Good god no, girl. Why on earth would we do that?”

She looked from Brock to Scott, still biting her lower lip. “I hacked their database,” she whispered as Brock passed the file to Scott.

The file was the girl’s 201 file, and Scott had to suppress a wince as he read it. The poor girl had failed everything. Basic training, Physical Ed, field craft, advanced infantry training, marksmanship, the lot. Except one thing. Give her access to a computer and she was a super soldier. It still didn’t explain why Pete Mitchell had sent her over to see Brock.

“I see,” Brock acknowledged, “and what did it tell you?”

“That … that all of you arrived here … in our time, by a process of cold sleep.”

“Do you know what that is, Private?” Scott asked.

“Oh yes. I looked it up. It took me a while, but I finally found several papers, by a doctor, or professor, named Kessler. In them he described how the process worked, and how long you all had been asleep. It was fascinating reading. How people in your time, with the primitive equipment they had at their disposal, managed to freeze you all and send you forward in time is just amazing—” She spluttered to a halt, seeing the amused expressions on Scott and Brock’s faces.

“I take it you haven’t been to the education facilities yet, Private.”

“No, sir. There’s little they could teach me that I don’t already know.”

Brock smiled and picked up his remote control unit. The wall monitor came on, and flicking through the menu, he picked a video and hit play. The video ran for several minutes, showing scenes from several major cities, open farmland, the inside of a steel mill, including the launch of a space shuttle, and generally a cross section of a modern industrial nation.

“Do you know what you’re looking at, Private?”

“Um … yes. I’d say that was a cross section of our world. .. I think.”

“Oh, it is. But that is a cross section of this world three hundred-odd years ago.”

Private Akilah Allway blinked, looking from the frozen image of the space shuttle taking off, to Brock’s face.

“Not so primitive after all, huh.” Brock smiled. “If you’d taken the time to visit the ‘educational’ section as you were supposed to, you would’ve found out that the history of this world you thought you knew, is in fact a lie.” The girl’s mouth formed into an O, and she turned bright red.

“Tell me about your father and mother, and how you come to be such a wiz with computers.”

The girl looked down at her hands for a moment. “My father was arrested by the SSP for something … I never found out what. My grandparents would never say.”

“And your mother?” Scott asked in a gentle voice, seeing the young woman was on the verge of tears.

“She … she,” Allway let out a small sob, “she was stoned to death after being accused of being a prostitute.” Sad tears rolled down her soft cheeks, and she angrily wiped them away. “She wasn’t … and …”

“It doesn’t matter to us, Akilah. You are here now, and won’t ever have to worry about the SSP any more. But how did you learn to work a computer.”

“Um … you know that females don’t get a proper education, so after I went to live with my grandparents, they let me play on their computer terminal. I couldn’t go out much, not without a male family member, so I started teaching myself.… I soon learned how to read and write code, and it wasn’t long before I found I could, um … well, hack, as they say, into other systems.” She shrugged, and gave them a weak smile. “It wasn’t long after that before I found I could hack my way into most computers. And after that, I learned more and more.” Brock nodded to Scott. They both knew of nine-year-old kids back in their world that could do that.

“But that aside. Why did Captain Mitchell send you to me?”

Giving herself a little shake, she recovered. “Um … well, sir. It’s about your resource usage.”

It was Brock’s turn to blink. “My what?”

“Resource usage, sir. You aren’t utilizing all the tools at your disposal to maximize their potential.” Now her voice had taken on a disapproving tone, as if the failure to use the resources was Brock’s personal failure. “If I could show you, sir, I’m sure that I could explain it perfectly.”

“I’m sure you can. Please sit and explain away.”

Brock’s tone of irony was lost on the young Private. She took Brock at his word and sat, clearing off the corner of his desk for her minicomp. Intent on what she was doing, she didn’t see Brock cock his head to one side and raise an eyebrow at Scott. Scott in turn suppressed a smile and shook his head. This young woman was two people in one. On one hand she was so unsure of herself, she stuttered and blushed, and on the other, she was this self-assured, logical, competent individual who took charge. The holoscreen came to life while she tapped the keyboard, but neither Brock or Scott was in a position to see what it showed.

“So, how did you arrive here?” Scott asked.

“Oh, that. I discovered that you ran recruiting shuttles to several major cities, so I located the closest, left home dressed as a boy, and hitched a ride. It wasn’t hard to get past the SSP goons and sneak aboard the shuttle.” She spoke absently, with no nervousness or hesitation, as if explaining how she’d gone down to the corner for a loaf of bread.

She looked up. “Can I use your monitor? The data will show up better there than on my small screen.”

“By all …” Even as Brock answered, the space shuttle vanished, replaced by what looked like a spreadsheet with graphs. She pulled out a mesh glove and slipped it on her right hand, and used it to push data around the screen, opening and closing files at will.

“I started with analyzing the core group here, and discovered that all the people who came out of cold sleep eat twice as much as a normal person of your size and age. You also move at a much more rapid pace than anyone else.”

“Huh?”

“Well, sir. It’s a little difficult for the best recruits to keep up with the instructors, even when they’re going slow. Other than a result of the cold sleep, or something else, I can’t find out why. Your metabolism works twice as fast, with a corresponding increase in physical activity.…”

“What else have you been able to put together?” Scott asked. Allway manipulated the files and data on the screen.

“This side represents the currency amount presently available to you. As you can see, it’s replenished on a regular basis from the sale of metals and other products. This line represents your current expenditures. Here they cross, which means you’ll be working with a negative cash flow within three years—”

“Wait!” Brock growled, holding his hand up. “I’m not the financial wizard around here. You need to talk to the finance department about this … wait. We do have a finance department, don’t we?” He looked at Scott, and saw him shrug.

“Never thought about it, really.”

“That’s the problem, sirs. No one around here has!” They both looked at her. “You’re doing great on your manpower and equipment utilization, but that’s expected from you, Colonel Brock and Admiral Drake— oh. Um … military protocol … I mean, sirs.”

“Forget the protocol for the moment,” Brock said. “What else have we overlooked in our mad dash to stop the aliens from stealing more young men and women, like yourself, from this planet?” There was a slight edge of anger to Brock’s words.

“I’m … I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean to offend.…”

“It’s all right, Private. Let’s just say that our priorities are a little different from yours.”

Hearing Scott, Brock leaned back in his chair and blew out his cheeks. “Admiral Scott is correct. And I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Tell us … in general, what else we have overlooked?”

“For one thing, you aren’t using your available resources to gain a position in the stock market.…” She stopped. “You do know they have a stock market … don’t you?”

“No we didn’t. Nor do we have the expertise to use it,” Scott murmured.

“Well, sirs. I can set up a holding company and start buying available shares in some corporations. It’s easy really, once you have an algorithm to look at the future potential of a particular corporation.”

“Humm, we have taken over a lot of orbital manufacturing facilities,” Scott said.

“Yes, sir. I noticed that, and that you’re paying way too much compensation to the facility owners. It would be better to buy them out and take over ownership yourselves.”

Scott and Brock looked at each other, and Brock tapped his comm unit.

“Sergeant Rinehart here, Colonel.”

“Jango, report to my office as soon as you can.”

“On it, sir. Be there in twenty or less.”

“Private Allway,” Brock said, “I can see where you’d be an asset to this command.” It was a little scary to think this half-woman, half-child could look through their databases so easily. It said something about their security and the strength of their firewall. It also spoke of her courage: in this time, hacking carried the death penalty.

“Thank you, sir. I only want to help. I believe in what you’re doing.…”

Brock had held up his hand again. “However, the rule here is: everyone in the Marine Corps is a rifleman first.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. At any moment we, and you, could come under attack. That means you have to be able to pick up a rifle and defend yourself and your fellow marines.” The girl looked crestfallen.

“I would like you to set up a cyber division, with the objective to utilize all our resources to the fullest, as you put it. Would you be interested in such a position?”

“Who would I have to report to … who’d be in charge … sir?” Obviously, she was very smart, and didn’t want to report to, or be ordered around by some dunderhead who didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“You would, and you will report to me, or Admiral Drake. We’d give you all the necessary resources you need to do it.”

“Oh … my … I mean, yes, sir. I’d be very interested in doing that.”

“Good, but,” Brock paused and looked at her with a stern expression, “to get that, I expect you to qualify as a rifleman first. Do you understand?” He always did like the carrot-and-stick approach.

“Yes, sir … but … well, I’m not very good with weap—” There was a knock at the door.

“Come.”

“Sergeant Rinehart reporting as ordered, Gunny.” Jango came in and saluted in his usual sloppy way. “Hello, Admiral, how have you been?”

Scott smiled in greeting. “Not bad, considering.”

“Jango. I’d like you to meet Private, soon to be Junior Lieutenant Akilah Allway. Allway, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Jango Rinehart. The best sniper in the company.”

“Oh, um … hello, Sergeant.” Allway looked up at him in awe. To most recruits all the “immortals” were living supermen and women.

“Hello, Allway.” As they shook hands, Allway noticed Jango was missing two fingers of his right hand. Jango looked at Brock over her head and raised an eyebrow in question.

“Your assignment is to take Private Allway, and teach her how to shoot.”

“You have to be … wasn’t she supposed to qualify in basic, Gunny?”

“Yes, she was, and didn’t. But, what she knows about computers is probably a lot more than you know about shooting.”