The Human Division #1: The B-Team (6 page)

“It’s possible that we sold the missiles to another race,” Coloma said. “Who then attacked us.”

“It’s possible, but there are two things to consider here,” Wilson said. “The first is that most of our weapon trades are for higher-end technology. Any one race who can make a spaceship can make a missile. The Melierax Series are bread-and-butter missiles. Every other race has missiles just like it. The second is that these are ostensibly secret negotiations. In order to hit us, someone had to know we were here.” Coloma opened her mouth. “And to anticipate the next question, we haven’t sold any Melierax missiles to the Utche,” Wilson said. Coloma closed her mouth and stared stonily.

“So we have a mystery ship targeting the Colonial Union with our own missiles,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“Then where are they now?” Abumwe said. “Why aren’t
we
under attack?”

“They didn’t know
we
were coming,” Wilson said. “We were diverted to this mission at the last minute. It would usually take the Colonial Union several days at least to have a new mission in place. By which time these particular negotiations would have failed, because we weren’t there for them.”

“Someone destroyed an entire ship just to foul up diplomatic negotiations?” Coloma said. “This is your theory?”

“It’s a guess,” Wilson said. “I don’t pretend that I know enough about this situation to be correct. But I think regardless we have to make the Colonial Union aware of what happened here as soon as possible. Captain, I’ve already transferred the data to the
Clarke
’s computers. I strongly suggest we send a skip drone with it and my preliminary analysis back to Phoenix immediately.”

“Agreed,” Abumwe said.

“I’ll have it done as soon as I’m off this call,” Coloma said. “Now, Lieutenant, I want you and the shuttle back on the
Clarke
immediately. With all due respect to Ambassador Abumwe, I’m not entirely convinced there’s not still a threat out there. Get back here. We’ll be under way as soon as you are.”

“What?” Abumwe said. “We still have a mission. I still have a mission. We’re here to negotiate with the Utche.”

“Ambassador, the
Clarke
is a diplomatic vessel,” Coloma said. “We have no offensive weapons and only a bare minimum of defensive capability. We’ve confirmed the
Polk
was attacked. It’s possible whoever attacked the
Polk
is still out there. We’re sending this data to Phoenix. They will alert the Utche of the situation, which means they will almost certainly call off their ship. There is no negotiation to be had.”

“You don’t know that,” Abumwe said. “It might take them hours to process the information. We are less than three hours from when the Utche are meant to arrive. Even if we were to leave, we will still be in system when they arrive, which means the first thing they would see is us running away.”

“It’s not
running away,
” Coloma said, sharply. “And this is not your decision to make, Ambassador. I am captain of the ship.”

“A diplomatic ship,” Abumwe said. “On which I am the chief diplomat.”

“Ambassador, Captain,” Wilson said, “do I need to be here for this part of the conversation?”

Wilson saw the two simultaneously reach toward their screens. Both of their images shut off.

“That would be ‘no,’” Wilson said, to himself.

Something was nagging at Wilson as he punched in the return route to the
Clarke
. The
Polk
had been hit at least fifteen times by ship-to-ship missiles, but before any of them had hit, there had been an earlier explosion that had shaken the ship. But the data had not recorded any event leading up to the explosion; the ship had skipped, made an initial scan of the immediate area and then everything was perfectly normal until the initial explosion. Once it happened everything went to hell, quickly. But beforehand, nothing. There had been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

The shuttle’s navigational router accepted the path back and started to move. Wilson strapped himself into his seat and relaxed. He would be back on the
Clarke
shortly, by which time he assumed that either Coloma or Abumwe would have emerged victorious from their power struggle. Wilson had no personal preference in who won; he could see the merit in both arguments, and both of them appeared to dislike him equally, so neither had an advantage there.

I did what I was supposed to do,
Wilson thought, and glanced over to the black box on the passenger seat, looking like a dark, matte, light-absorbing hole in the chair.

Something clicked in his head.

“Holy shit,” Wilson said, and slapped the shuttle into immobility.

“You said ‘shit’ again,” Wilson heard Schmidt say. “And now you’re not moving.”

“I just had a very interesting thought,” Wilson said.

“You can’t have this thought while you are bringing the shuttle back?” Schmidt said. “Captain Coloma was very specific about returning it.”

“Hart, I’m going to talk to you in a bit,” Wilson said.

“What are you going to do?” Schmidt asked.

“You probably don’t want to know,” Wilson said. “It’s best you don’t know. I want to make sure you have plausible deniability.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Schmidt said.

“Exactly,” Wilson said, and cut his connection to his friend.

A few minutes later, Wilson floated weightless inside the airless cabin of the shuttle, face masked, holding the guide handle next to the shuttle door. He slapped the door release button.

And saw nothing outside.

Which is not as it should have been; Wilson’s BrainPal should have picked up and enhanced starlight within visible wavelengths. He was getting nothing.

Wilson reached out with the hand not gripping the guide handle. Nothing. He repositioned himself, bringing his body mostly outside of the door, and reached again. This time there was something there.

Something big and black and invisible.

Hello,
Wilson thought.
What the hell are you?

The big, black, invisible thing did not respond.

Wilson pinged his BrainPal for two things. The first was to see how long it had been since his face mask had gone on; it was roughly two minutes. He’d have just about five minutes before his body started screaming at him for air. The second was to adjust the properties of the nanobotic cloth of his combat unitard to run a slight electric current through his unitard’s hands, soles and knees, the current powered by his own body heat and friction generated through movement. That achieved, he reached out again toward the the big, black, invisible object.

His hand clung to it, lightly.
Hooray for magnetism,
Wilson thought.

Moving slowly so as not to accidentally and fatally launch himself into space, Wilson left the shuttle to go exploring.

“We have a problem,” Wilson said. He was back on the conference call with Coloma and Abumwe. Schmidt hovered behind Abumwe, silent.

“
You
have a problem,” Coloma said. “You were ordered to return that shuttle forty minutes ago.”

“We have a
different
problem,” Wilson said. “I’ve found a missile out here. It’s armed. It’s waiting for the Utche. And it’s one of ours.”

“Excuse me?” Coloma said, after a moment.

“It’s another Melierax Series Seven,” Wilson said, and held up the black box. “It’s housed in a small silo that’s covered in the same wavelength-absorbing material this thing is. When you run the standard scans, you won’t see it. Hart and I only saw it because we ran a highly-sensitive thermal scan when we were looking for the black box, and even then we didn’t give it any thought because it wasn’t what we were looking for. When I was looking through the
Polk
data, there was an explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, before the
Polk
was attacked by the ship and missiles we could see. My brain put two and two together. I passed by this thing on the way to black box. I stopped this time to get a closer look.”

“You said it’s waiting for the Utche,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“How do you know that?” Abumwe asked.

“I hacked into the missile,” Wilson said. “I got inside the silo, pried open the missile control panel and then used this.” He held up the CDF standard connector.

“You went on a
spacewalk
?” Schmidt said, over Abumwe’s shoulder. “Are you completely
insane
?”

“I went on three,” Wilson said as Abumwe turned to glare at Schmidt. “I was limited by how long I could hold my breath.”

“You hacked into the missile,” Coloma said, returning to the subject.

“Right,” Wilson said. “The missile is armed and it’s waiting for a signal from the Utche ship.”

“What signal?” Coloma asked.

“I think it’s when the Utche ship hails us,” Wilson said. “The Utche send their ship-to-ship communications on certain frequencies, different from the ones we typically use. This missile is programmed to home in on ships using those frequencies. Ergo, it’s waiting for the Utche.”

“To what end?” Abumwe asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Wilson said. “The Utche are attacked by a Colonial Defense Forces missile, and are damaged or destroyed. The original Colonial Union diplomatic mission was traveling by CDF frigate. It would look like we attacked the Utche. Negotiations broken off, diplomacy over, the Colonial Union and the Utche back at each other’s throats.”

“But the
Polk
was destroyed,” Coloma said.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Wilson said. “The information I was sent by the CDF about the
Polk
’s mission said it was slated to arrive seventy-four hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival. The black box data stream has the
Polk
arriving eighty hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival.”

“You think they arrived early and caught someone setting the trap,” Coloma said.

“I don’t know about ‘caught,’” Wilson said. “I think whoever it was was in the process of setting the trap and then was surprised by the
Polk
’s arrival.”

“You just said these things were looking for the Utche,” Abumwe said. “But it sounds like one of them hit the
Polk,
too.”

“If the people setting the trap were nearby, it would be trivial to change the programming of the missile,” Wilson said. “It’s set to receive. And once the thing hit the
Polk,
it would be too busy focusing on that to pay much attention when a strange ship popped up on its sensors. Until it was too late.”

“The early arrival of the
Polk
ruined their plans,” Coloma said. “Why is this thing still out there?”

“I think it
changed
their plans,” Wilson said. “They had to kill the
Polk
when it arrived early, and they had to get rid of as much of it as possible to leave in doubt what happened to it. But as long as there’s enough CDF missile debris among the wreckage of the Utche ship, then mission accomplished. Having the
Polk
go missing works just fine with that, since it looks like the CDF is hiding the ship, rather than presenting it to prove the missiles didn’t come from it.”

“But we know what happened to the
Polk,
” Abumwe said.

“
They
don’t know that,” Wilson pointed out. “Whoever they are. We’re the wild card in the deck. And it doesn’t change the fact that the Utche are still a target.”

“Have you disabled the missile?” Coloma asked.

“No,” Wilson said. “I was able to read the missile’s instruction set, but I can’t do anything to change it. I’m locked out of that. And I don’t have any tools with me that can disable it. But even if I disabled this one, there are others out there. Hart’s and my heat map shows four more of these things out there beside this one. We have less than an hour before the Utche are scheduled to arrive. There’s no way to physically disable them in time.”

“So we’re helpless to stop the attack,” Abumwe said.

“No, wait,” Coloma said. “You said there’s no way to
physically
disable them. Do you have another way to disable them?”

“I think I might have a way to destroy them,” Wilson said.

“Tell us,” Coloma said.

“You’re not going to like it,” Wilson said.

“Will I like it better than us standing by while the Utche are attacked and then we are framed for it?” Coloma said.

“I’d like to think so,” Wilson said.

“Then tell us,” Coloma said.

“It involves the shuttle,” Wilson said.

Coloma threw up her hands. “Of course it does,” she said.

“Here—” Schmidt thrust a small container and a mask into Wilson’s hands. “Supplementary oxygen. For a normal person that’s about twenty minutes’ worth. I don’t know what that would be for you.”

“About two hours,” Wilson said. “More than enough time. And the other thing?”

“I got it,” Schmidt said, and held up another object, not much larger than the oxygen container. “High-density, quick-discharge battery. Straight from the engine room. It required the direct intervention of Captain Coloma, by the way. Chief Engineer Basquez was not pleased to be relieved of it.”

“If everything goes well, he’ll have it back soon,” Wilson said.

“And if everything doesn’t go well?” Schmidt asked.

“Then we’ll all have bigger problems, won’t we,” Wilson said.

They both looked at the shuttle, which Wilson was about to reenter after a brief pit stop in the
Clarke
’s bay.

“You really are insane, you know that,” Schmidt said, after a moment.

“I always think it’s funny when people get told what they are by other people,” Wilson said. “As if they didn’t already know.”

“We could just set the autopilot on the shuttle,” Schmidt said. “Send it out that way.”

“We
could,
” Wilson said. “If a shuttle was like a mechanical vehicle you could send on its way by tying a brick to its accelerator pedal. But it’s not. It’s designed to have a human at the controls. Even on autopilot.”

“You could alter the programming on the shuttle,” Schmidt said.

“We have roughly fifteen minutes before the Utche arrive,” Wilson said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence in my skills, but no. There’s no time. And we need to do more than just send it out, anyway.”

“Insane,” Schmidt reiterated.

“Relax, Hart,” Wilson said. “For my sake. You’re making me twitchy.”

“Sorry,” Schmidt said.

“It’s all right,” Wilson said. “Now, tell me what you’re going to do after I leave.”

“I’m going to the bridge,” Schmidt said. “If you’re not successful for any reason, I will have the
Clarke
send out a message on our frequencies warning the Utche of the trap, to
not
confirm the message or to broadcast anything on their native communication bands, and request that they get the hell out of Danavar space as quickly as possible. I’m to invoke your security clearance to the captain if there are any problems.”

“That’s very good,” Wilson said.

“Thank you for the virtual pat on the head, there,” Schmidt said.

“I do it out of love,” Wilson assured him.

“Right,” Schmidt said dryly, and then looked over at the shuttle again. “Do you think this is actually going to work?” he asked.

“I look at it this way,” Wilson said. “Even if it doesn’t work, we have proof we did everything we could to stop the attack on the Utche. That’s going to count for something.”

Wilson entered the shuttle, fired up the launch sequence and while it was running took the high-density battery and connected it to the
Polk
’s black box. The battery immediately started draining into the black box’s own power storage.

“Here we go,” Wilson said for the second time that day. The shuttle eased out of the
Clarke
’s bay.

Schmidt had been right: This all would have been a lot easier if the shuttle could have been piloted remotely. There was no physical bar to it; humans had been remote piloting vehicles for centuries. But the Colonial Union insisted on a human pilot for transport shuttles for roughly the same reason the Colonial Defense Forces required a BrainPal signal to fire an Empee rifle: to make sure only the right people were using them, for the right purposes. Modifying the shuttle flight software to take the human presence out of the equation would not only require a substantial amount of time, but would also technically be classified as treason.

Wilson preferred not to engage in treason if he could avoid it. And so here he was, on the shuttle, about to do something stupid.

On the shuttle display, Wilson called up the heat map he’d created, and a timer. The heat map registered each of the suspect missile silos; the timer counted down until the scheduled arrival of the Utche, now less than ten minutes away. From the mission data given to Ambassador Abumwe, Wilson had a rough idea of where the Utche planned to skip into Danavar space. He plotted the shuttle in another direction entirely and opened up the throttle to put sufficient distance between himself and the
Clarke,
counting the kilometers until he reached what he estimated to be a good, safe distance.

Now for the tricky part,
Wilson thought, and tapped his instrument panel to start broadcasting a signal on the Utche’s communication bands.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Wilson said to the missiles.

The missiles did not hear Wilson. They heard the shuttle’s signal instead and erupted from their silos, one, two, three, four, five. Wilson saw them twice, first on the shuttle’s monitor and second through the
Clarke
’s sensor data, ported into his BrainPal.

“Five missiles on you, locked and tracking,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, through the instrument panel.

“Come on, let’s play,” Wilson said, and pushed the shuttle as fast as it would go. It was not as fast as the missiles could go, but that wasn’t the point. The point was twofold. First, to get the missiles as far away from where the Utche would be as possible. Second, to get the missiles spaced so that the explosion from the first missile on the shuttle would destroy all the other missiles, moving too quickly to avoid being damaged.

To manage that, Wilson had broadcast his signal from a point as close to equidistant to all five silos as could be managed and still be a safe distance from the
Clarke
. If everything worked out correctly, the missile impacts would be within a second of each other.

Wilson looked at the missile tracks. So far, so good. He had roughly a minute before the first impact. More than enough time.

Wilson unstrapped himself from the pilot seat, picked up the oxygen container, secured it on his unitard combat belt and fastened the mask over his mouth and nose. He ordered his combat unitard to close over his face, sealing the mask in. He picked up the black box and pinged its charge status; it was at 80 percent, which Wilson guessed would have to be good enough. He disconnected it from the external battery and then walked to the shuttle door, carrying the black box in one hand and the battery in the other. He positioned himself at what he hoped was the right spot, took a very deep breath and chucked the battery at the door release button. It hit square on and the door slid open.

Explosive decompression sucked Wilson out the door a fraction of a second earlier than he expected. He missed braining himself on the still-opening door by about a millimeter.

Wilson tumbled away from the shuttle on the vector the decompressing air had placed him but kept pace with the shuttle in terms of its forward motion, a testament to fundamental Newtonian physics. This was going to be bad news in roughly forty seconds, when the first missile hit the shuttle; even without an atmosphere to create a shock wave that would turn his innards to jelly, Wilson could still be fried and punctured by shrapnel.

He looked down at the
Polk
’s black box, tightly gripped close to his abdomen, and sent it a signal that informed it that it had been ejected from a spaceship, and then, despite the fact that his visual feed was now being handled by his BrainPal, he closed his eyes to fight the vertigo of the stars wheeling haphazardly around him. The BrainPal, interpreting this correctly, cut off the outside feed and provided Wilson with a tactical display instead. Wilson waited.

Do your thing, baby,
he thought to the black box.

The black box got the signal. Wilson felt a snap as the black box’s inertial field factored his mass into its calculus and tightened around him. On the tactical display coming from his BrainPal, Wilson saw the representation of the shuttle pull away from him with increasing speed, and saw the missiles flash by his position, their velocity increasing toward the shuttle even as his was decreasing. Within a few seconds, he had slowed sufficiently that he was no longer in immediate danger of the shuttle impact.

In all, his little plan had worked out reasonably well so far.

Let’s still not ever do this again,
Wilson said to himself.

Agreed,
himself said back.

“First impact in ten seconds,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, via his BrainPal. Wilson had his BrainPal present him with a stabilized, enhanced visual of outside space and watched as the now invisible missiles bore down on the hapless, also invisible shuttle.

There was a series of short, sharp light bursts, like tiny firecrackers going off two streets away.

“Impact,” Schmidt said. Wilson smiled.

“Shit,” Schmidt said. Wilson stopped smiling and snapped up his BrainPal tactical display.

The shuttle and four of the missiles had been destroyed. One missile had survived and was casting about for a target.

On the periphery of the tactical display, a new object appeared. It was the
Kaligm
. The Utche had arrived.

Send that message to the Utche NOW,
Wilson subvocalized to Schmidt, and the BrainPal transmuted it to a reasonable facsimile of Wilson’s own voice.

“Captain Coloma refuses,” Schmidt said a second later.

What?
Wilson sent.
Tell her it’s an order. Invoke my security clearance. Do it now
.

“She says to shut up, you’re distracting her,” Schmidt said.

Distracting her from what?
Wilson sent.

The
Clarke
started broadcasting a warning to the Utche, warning them of the missile attack, telling them to be silent and to leave Danavar space.

On the Utche’s broadcast bands.

The last missile locked on and thrust itself toward the
Clarke
.

Oh, God,
Wilson thought, and his BrainPal sent the thought to Schmidt.

“Thirty seconds to impact,” Schmidt said.

“Twenty seconds…

“Ten…

“This is it, Harry.”

Silence.