Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Thirteen

At first light, James and Brew tried to work out where the intruder had disappeared from the field. James, who had been working in the colony buildings for four years, thought that he knew what happened.

“There’s an access tunnel running from the marine barracks basement to the reactor which a person can use. There are air and access shafts to that tunnel, including one about where our guy vanished.”

Sure enough, following the plans, they found the hatch to that access shaft which looked as if it had been used. Unlike on earth the hatch was not locked to prevent unauthorised use.

“If he can get in at the barracks end why not get out at the vat building?” asked Brew. “Why get out at this shaft?”

“’Cause it doesn’t come out in the vat building,” said James, “or at least not so a person could access it. Water and sewage pipes go in there – don’t ask – but there’s no access for people unless you want to start drilling. It comes out at the reactor building. Our guy could have worked around to the vat building by using the pedestrian tunnels but there would be too much risk of meeting a townie.”

“Okay, that leaves what he was doing in the vat building in the first place?” asked Brew. “Why take the risk of messing around there?”

It was a fair question. After a lot of searching in the control system racks, which had not been looked at since installation, they found a small device that looked like a personal music player, hidden behind an AI control unit into which it had been plugged.

“Unless one of the original engineers left it behind,” said Brew, “this is what we’re looking for.”

In short order, now that they knew what to search for, they found similar units in the reactor control area and the room containing the main colony AI control system.

“Our guy is thorough,” said James. “He wanted to make sure that our new bosses had full control of the base from the start. No messing around.”

“Wouldn’t one be enough?”

“There’s an emergency plan somewhere that each AI control section seals itself off from the others. The Mercs seem to know a lot about how the colony works.”

“Okay, so we unplug these things?”

“I don’t want our guy to realise that we’ve found them – is there any way to get them away from the system without the units realising this and signalling the master unit or whatever.”

Brew thought about this for a moment. “You have spare AI units that are identical don’t you?”

“Pretty sure we do.”

“And there’s bound to be test systems which emulate the control load for each unit, right? Software would still be there.”

“Set the units to emulation mode, cut them off from the main system and replace them with the spare units,” said James. “Just a little wrangling with the AI in each area. Brew now I know what Lou sees in you.”

“Really?” said Brew. “I thought it was just about her having no one else to date out here?”

Like almost everything else connected with the Merc agent hunt the extraction of the units took a lot more time and effort than James had expected – which he complained about to May.

“This agent has cost me a lot of effort. I hope out of all of this I finally get to shoot him.”

“Leave the shooting to the marines,” said May, “it’s what they’re good at. But what’s this I hear about you having a knock-down, drag-out with Claire?”

James told her what had happened with Maddie, and how Claire had wanted to know what was happening, and that maybe he had not made the right choice of words.

“Hmmm! Big concession, but none of that is a deal breaker, especially when she realises you’re giving her deniability. If you leave her alone for a few days she may think the break is serious and come crawling back.”

“Maybe if I leave her alone she’ll forget about me entirely and take up with a honey, as girls say, from The One Five.”

“Pickings are slim in The One Five, my girls tell me. The Two One is better but from what I’ve seen of Claire she doesn’t seem like the sort of girl, having let a bad boy in, to shut him out quickly.”

“We both agreed it’s about having fun, not getting serious.”

“That’s a good start to any relationship and then stuff happens, or so I seem to recall. Anyway, you don’t have much choice but to leave her be for the moment.”

Out on the valley floor, on a break from company manoeuvres, Claire and her friends were also tossing around the issue of who should call whom, and when.

“It would help a lot if you’d tell us what the fight was about,” said Adria. “This advice business is difficult enough but we’re in the dark here.”

“We know that Claire was in the right,” said Lou, “because she always is.”

“That’s not what you said when we last argued,” said Claire.

“You’re always in the right when men are involved, and I’m not a guy.”

“Don’t speak for a while then when you meet again you’ll fall into each other’s arms, and forget whatever the argument was about,” said Taylor.

“You’ve been watching too many soaps,” said Lou.

“Maybe, but in those things, they get rid of one dreadful problem and another crops up almost straight away,” said Taylor. “At least Claire and James aren’t likely to find out that they’re really brother and sister.”

The ladies collectively “ewed!”

“It happened on my favourite soap to two of the main characters,” said Taylor. “I was hoping for more romance and I got that.”

As someone pointed out, in Devil’s Pit there was not much else better to do than discuss Claire and James’ problems.

When Claire was alone with Lou she told her friend to switch off comms.

“Okay, off, but we gotta be back in a couple of minutes, what’s up?”

“The argument was about James not being honest with me about what he was doing.”

“Okay, but what was he doing?”

Claire told her what Maddie had found and how James had tried to fob her off with a story about it all being scenarios.

“Wait, what? A Merc agent here.”

“Yes, and not so loud.”

“That’s explosive,” said Lou, duly lowering her voice. “That.. that could mean they’re coming here!”

“I don’t know what it means,” said Claire. “But Maddie did say that Brew was part of this spy hunting ring. Maybe you could ask him?”

“I could do that I guess, but an agent here? Who could it be?”

“James shut me out, without telling me anything. Said I just get myself in trouble repeating any of it.”

“Man had a point – the moment we say a word about this it’ll be all over the base and our officers will want to know how we know ’n’ Maddie‘ll be dragged in.”

“Hmmm! I don’t want Maddie questioned. She’s had enough of that, just see what Brew knows.”

“I will, but you know who does act strangely is Adria.”

“What?”

“She’s always texting and on days off she vanishes for hours. Never says where she’s going except to go for a walk. Never seen her walking.”

None of The Two-One, including Adria, had ever been on James’ list of suspects, but the two Stellers did not know that. It had never crossed Claire’s mind that the medic was anything other than a medic, putting her disappearances, which she had also noticed, down to eccentricity. Then again, Adria always seemed to lend an air of style to everything she did, which bewildered the female marines, entranced the males, and seemed out of place on Devil’s Pit.

“Girl always looks as if she’s escaped from a fashion shoot and put on a marine uniform by accident,” said Lou, echoing Claire’s thoughts.

Adria had her back to the sniper and spotter, talking to Taylor.

“Let’s not do the accusation thing yet,” said Claire. “It’s real hard to think of Adria as a spy of some kind. Let’s just watch.”

Back in his study in downtown Devil’s Pit, for want of anything more constructive to do, James went over the records of the four remaining suspects, Major Horne, captains Culp and Wells, and Lieutenant Gibbon. Lieutenant Gibbon had been duty officer at the time James was being shot at, with security cameras showing him at his post. That meant either Horne, Culp or Wells had been shooting at him. James took a closer look at all their records and realised that the ne’r do well Captain Wells had been a last-minute replacement for another, more qualified officer who had suffered an unfortunate accident – drowned while out swimming.

“Now that,” thought James, “is a cliché if ever I saw one.”

The next day, while James was still tossing up just how to approach the delicate question of declaring a marine officer a traitor on almost no evidence, James and Brew were invited to a meeting way out in the valley with a group of officers that happened to include his short list of suspects, led by Major Horne.

“The colonel sends his apologies,” said Horne.

“He does?” said James.

“Well he told me to deal with this, and that’s the same thing.”

“If you say so.”

“These are the marker posts,” said Horne, pointing to a metal post painted white, stuck in the ground and surrounded by rocks. “One-Five working parties are now placing one of these every one hundred metres in a straight line to the cliffs.” The major indicated the line by holding his arm at right angles. I’ve sent you the co-ordinates.”

“The townies don’t come out this far, but I’ll tell them.”

“No mining or prospecting is done out this way,” said Brew. “I’ll distribute the co-ordinates and the miners’ll stay away. If it means avoiding Shades, they’ll be all for it.”

“Good,” said the Major. “No one goes east of this line or north of the Alph without good reason, which includes clearing it with the colonel. Then we can forget about the Shades until the Space Admin guys tell us otherwise.”

“Didn’t feel like fighting in tunnels at all,” said Culp.

“Try fighting in marshy caverns,” said Horne. “No sooner are you in them, than you want to be out of them.”

Business concluded James walked a little way towards the Alph. In the distance, he thought he could see more marines.

“The Two One on company manoeuvres,” said Horne walking up. He had noticed James looking that way. “With your Private Williams in the thick of it.” James looked questioningly at him, the major shrugged. “Even majors hear gossip – hear you and she had a falling out.”

“Maybe that’s close to being resolved,” said James.

“Anyway, this is a lot of trouble to go to for these creatures. How many of these Shades would be back there, do you think?”

James shrugged. “I can only guess. The time I met them personally, there were about four I think. There can’t be all that many otherwise we’d have seen them before now, and what would they be eating back there? At a guess maybe a hundred tops, but that’s just a guess.”

“Good a guess as any,” said Horne.

Back in his study, James took another look at the record of the officer that had originally been slated for deployment to Devil’s Pit – a Captain Mooney. The captain’s record had been sent to the post and not deleted after his death. Then he checked the date at which the personnel photos on the different files been changed.

So that was it, thought James. It had been right in front of him the whole time – staring him in the face. Like most mysteries it was simple, once you knew the answer. But knowing the answer was different to proving it. The agent still had to show his hand and that meant James had to close off some of his options. James sighed. There was more work ahead of him, including a visit to the base through the tunnel used by his intruder.

On the base the Merc agent typed into his comms unit – it looked like an ordinary phone but was configured differently, including being linked to a powerful communication system he had left out in the expanse of the valley floor – “all in place – Archie.” The answer came back in a matter of hours, not days, and by ordinary radio communication, not the squeezed light technology used to communicate with earth – “incursion set - Veronica”

The agent smiled. His forces were a matter of days away and then it would be all over. When the fun started, he would take a little personal revenge.