No Direction Home (4 page)

Vinter realised that he was staring unseeingly at the aircraft carrier, with just a single thought in his mind:
How could they have been so stupid?
‘You said–' he had to clear his throat to carry on. ‘You said it was seventy four years ago?'

‘Yes.'

‘So we were only a fraction of a light year out then? Close enough for long range spectroscopic analysis? Radiation levels, or signs of nuclear winter, that sort of thing?'

A momentary flash of surprise crossed Lahtinen's face, possibly at the extent of Vinter's knowledge, before he nodded. ‘Yes, we were.'

‘And?'

Another nod, more reluctant this time. ‘High radiation levels. Too high.'

Vinter raised a hand towards the screen. ‘So that wasn't a fake?'

‘No, it wasn't.'

Vinter leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and rubbed his face wearily with both hands. ‘Jesus fucking wept,' he muttered. ‘The fucking idiots…'

‘Indeed,' Lahtinen replied, to Vinter's surprise; the other man had struck him as being completely strait-laced so far. ‘However, the point is that whoever is in that ship behind us belongs to a power bloc that, even if it didn't start that conflagration, didn't do anything to prevent it either. And if they can do
that
, what are they likely to do to us once they catch up?'

Vinter stared at Lahtinen, wondering how he could appear so unmoved by what had happened before it dawned on him that the other man had already seen the footage and had thus had longer to come to terms with it. ‘OK,' he said, tiredly. ‘This ship behind us – presumably, they left Earth orbit
before
this happened?'

‘Yes – about a year before. Why?'

‘So they're just as much on their own as we are now. Whatever their mission might have been before they left Earth, it could well have changed by now.'

‘You mean they might not have hostile intentions now, even if they did before?'

‘Possibly.' He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, it works both ways. If they didn't have hostile intentions before they left, they might have now.' He paused for several seconds, collecting his thoughts. ‘The bottom line is that, if they're refusing to talk to us but are instead trying to contact agents aboard here, they don't seem to want to reach out to us across the interstellar gulfs, do they?' He shook his head as another thought struck him. ‘Not only that, but has anyone analysed their actual course since leaving Earth? Have they deliberately set up a rendezvous with us?'

‘You mean, are they on their optimum course for Delta Pavonis? No, they're not. Given their later departure and the relative movement of the Solar System in the meantime, they would not be passing this close to us if they were. They've deliberately made a detour – only a slight one, but enough.'

‘OK, so that doesn't look very promising either, does it?' He looked up at the now blank screen again, then, trying to make his voice sound brisk, said, ‘I take it that this broadcast remains secret?'

‘Would it particularly benefit anyone aboard here to know what has happened? None of us could ever have gone back again anyway, could we?'

‘No… OK, Captain, I'll try and find your agents. I'll need to have a Security Team revived as soon as possible.'

‘Already in hand – they're being revived as we speak. Six officers – I'll have their details sent to your comp.'

‘Right – but I might want more put on standby.'

‘Very well.'

‘I'll get started on it – unless you have any more orders?'

‘No. The very best of luck to you, Inspector.'

Vinter was completely unaware of the speculative looks he was given as he crossed the bridge on his way back to his quarters because all he could see in his mind's eye were the bright glows that had once been cities containing millions of people, gone in a flash – literally.
Shit… in all probability, then this ship and the one following us could be all that's left of Mankind and we're going on a war footing in case we have to wipe those other guys out…

Haven't we learned
anything
?

*****

Vinter looked around the other people in the briefing room, reflecting irrelevantly that it was a pretty representative cross section of UN personnel in terms of ethnicity, but not of age; at forty-two, he was the oldest there by fifteen years or so. Hardly surprising – he was (or had been) a fairly senior officer in UNSEC, but… He recalled a joke that was probably as old as police forces –
One sign of age is when policemen start looking young –
and stifled a smile as he realised that it certainly applied to him at the moment…

However, the fact that they were all still reading the files he had placed on their data comps enabled him to take the opportunity of adding his visual impressions to the ones he had already formed from reading their personnel dossiers over the past few days as they had been taken through the revival and rehabilitation process, gaining a perverse pride in the fact that, although he was, indeed, fifteen years older than any of them, none of them had come close to recovering from the cryosleep effects as rapidly as he had.

OK… Sitting to his right was Kari Sondgren: age twenty-seven, the next oldest, a lieutenant who had been based in New York, still the most important UN posting outside Canberra
– before it was vapourised, of course…
Tall, with short light brown hair, she pretty much gave away her Swedish ancestry, but she had, in fact, been born in the USA –
Bruce Springsteen…

He almost shook his head in irritation – he was going to have to do something about these random flashes of memory, only they weren't memories, because he didn't have a clue who Bruce Springsteen was… Kari Sondgren: excellent record, played a significant part in uncovering an EarthCorp cell that had penetrated the New York office – she would be his second in command.

Next to her was the only other woman in the group – were they sitting together as some sort of female solidarity? – Becky Adebayo, whose skin was as dark as Sondgren's was pale; she was petite and, even sitting down, was noticeably shorter than the other woman. Her speciality was data analysis and she had worked out of Cape Town, whose status had been upgraded following the transfer of UN headquarters to Canberra twenty years earlier; her record was as impressive as Sondgren's.

As were all of them, actually – ‘the brightest and the best'; they would not have been aboard at all otherwise. Anand Mendis: his speciality was as a covert communications specialist, with a detailed knowledge of how terrorist or undercover cells passed information or instructions between each other – cut out procedures, fallback options, use of ‘mules', one time pads, even hacking into comsats to pass ELINT messages … Luis Moreira, interrogation specialist, infinitely patient and persistent, expert at catching out suspects in minor slips in their stories, with the looks of an old-style gigolo, but with an incisive brain… Doctor Takeo Naragama, an authority in the field of forensics in his own right, an affable façade disguising the fact that he would spend days at a time tracking down the microscopic item of evidence that would prove to be crucial… And, on Vinter's left, Goran Simunic, the cryptographic expert; anyone could feed encrypted material into a computer and tell it to decode it, but only someone like Simunic could get the computer to come up with a solution within a reasonable time frame, say less than six weeks in some cases…

A good team –
but then it damn well should be…

But, were they a far more high-powered counter-intelligence team than was absolutely necessary? The only reason they were aboard at all was as a result of unconfirmed reports that the starship project had been infiltrated by either EarthCorp or New Dawn agents or both, so did they really need this much specialist firepower? Not that he was complaining, but it did seem like a case of using the proverbial sledge hammer to crack a walnut. Unless, of course, they'd known that someone was going to send a starship after them – which would explain the hundred Peacekeeper troops currently being revived.

There again, if they
had
known that something like this might happen, they might have bloody well warned us…

Realising that all but Mendis had finished reading their briefing material, Vinter cleared his throat for attention. ‘OK, does anybody have any questions on what you've seen so far?'

As he had expected, Simunic spoke up first. ‘These signals – has there been any attempt to decrypt them so far?'

‘Some, yes, but only enough for them to realise that it needed an expert to get anywhere with them.'

Simunic smiled briefly, acknowledging the compliment. ‘At first blush, it looks as if they're going to take a while.'

‘Which is how long?'

‘At least a week, but probably longer. Possibly a lot longer. These signals have all the signs of very heavy encryption – we could be reduced to straight number crunching.' Simunic shrugged. ‘Or we could get lucky and find it next week.'

‘But you don't think so.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘Fair enough – just do what you can. You'll have access to all the comp resources you need.' He looked around at the others, but there were no more questions, which didn't surprise him – Simunic was the only one who had anything substantial to get his teeth into. ‘OK – this is what we're going to do. We need a detailed breakdown of where in the ship anyone can receive signals from outside and, once we've got that, a log of who's got access to those places, especially those who can be there without attracting attention. Mendis and Adebayo, you're the experts here – you'll need to run all that through the comps, but we'll all need to get involved at gathering the data. I know it's not what your specialities are, but we don't have anything for the rest of you yet. I'm requesting more revivals for people to do the legwork, so they should come on stream fairly quickly.'

‘It doesn't look as if there's any need for Naragama or me at all yet,' Moreira pointed out, with a hint of peevishness.

‘I know,' Vinter acknowledged. ‘It wasn't me who drew up the list in the first place – you were already being revived before I was even briefed.' He put an edge into his voice. ‘But you're awake and the others aren't, yet, so you'll just have to get on with it, won't you?'

Moreira's eyes held his for a moment, then the other man nodded. ‘True… and this does seem rather urgent, I must admit.'

‘Indeed,' Vinter said curtly; he did not have time for any
prima donna
moments. He addressed the others at the table, although Simunic already seemed oblivious to his surroundings; he was already typing in queries and instructions on his comp pad. ‘The other line of enquiry involves even more legwork, I'm afraid.'

‘That'll be me, then,' said Sondgren, brightly – and there was a series of smiles in response to her comment around the table. Within seconds, she had defused what had become a tense atmosphere and Vinter looked at her with increased respect; he had no doubt that had been her intention. ‘I suppose it means going through the files of everyone currently awake?'

‘Got it in one. But we'll both be doing that.'

She shrugged. ‘OK.'

‘Right, unless anyone has any further questions, that's the end of the briefing as far as I'm concerned. I'll be assigning more officers to each of you once they're revived, but, for the moment, Mendis, Moreira and Naragama – you'll be assisting Adebayo. It shouldn't be for long. Lieutenant, you're with me.'

Vinter and Sondgren watched as the others filed out, then Vinter turned to her once the door had closed. ‘Well?'

‘Simunic is perfectly happy – you've given him a bone to chew on and he'll worry away at it until he gets there. Same with Mendis and Adebayo – once they the data, they'll get going on it. The other two are definitely feeling hard done by.'

‘I can't honestly blame them,' said Vinter. ‘There was no way either of them needed to be revived yet. Moreira doesn't have anyone to interrogate and there's no forensic evidence for Naragama to put under the microscope. Lahtinen, or whoever it was, didn't really think ahead, just simply chose five section heads to cover a wide range of expertise – too many chiefs and not enough Indians.'

‘OK, so we go through the files,' she said. ‘I suppose it's occurred to you that everyone on the
Terra Nova
will have been rigorously checked and evaluated during the selection process, so there's probably not much chance of us turning up anything the original screening might have missed?'

‘Yes, it
has
occurred to me,' Vinter replied, sighing. ‘It's also occurred to me that our agents might not even be awake at the moment – how would anyone in that ship behind us know who would be on what shift? They've been sending the signals for weeks now, the same ones over and over, so they're hoping that someone will be around to pick them up and act on them, but we can't afford to assume that our agents are actually on this present shift. The next batch will be revived in two months' time – they could be amongst that lot – or they could have gone back into the chambers four months ago.'

‘Oh, terrific… But, unless they're banking on a very lucky break in terms of their agents being amongst only forty people awake at any given moment out of two thousand, then they must be banking on there being at least some awake in every shift.'

Vinter nodded. ‘Exactly. If that's the case, then there could be a hell of a lot of these agents in the chambers, which would mean that the screening process is a load of manure. Or… someone here has sent a signal to the ship behind us that they're awake and ready for orders.'

‘Which they could act on at any time… We'd better get moving, sir.'