Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Ten

Maddie’s only comment on Claire being at breakfast the next day, wearing one of James’s shirts, was to point out that they kept spare toothbrushes at the back of the pantry. Claire smiled and thanked her. After breakfast James, Claire and Maddie returned to the site of yesterday’s encounter, along with Brew and another miner armed with home-made cross bows in lieu of the firearms they were not permitted, ready for any close encounters. Lou came with Brew.

“Interesting first date you two had,” said Lou, after hearing of the encounter. “Did you get back to the barracks last night?”

“One thing led to another.”

“I’ve heard that.”

In Devil’s Pit marines did not have to be in the barracks at night provided they were not on stand to and they turned up for morning parades, which were not held on weekends.

They found the knife with a brownish residue on the blade far from where it would have hit the Shade, as if it had been withdrawn from the creature’s body then flung with great force against the cavern’s wall. They found a small pool of the same, brown residue about where the knife should have hit the creature and drops of this “blood” in the tunnel in which Claire and Maddie had their close encounter. They followed that tunnel, cautiously, until it ended abruptly at a steep drop. There were narrow steps, little better than series of ledges, leading down the wall which a Shade might have been able to use judging from the way they moved in the previous day’s encounter, but not a human and they had no climbing equipment with them. They brought up a mining light from the transporter and pointed it outwards. It lit up another cavern along the same lines as central, although very much smaller, with enough tunnels leading off it to make the job of tracking the Shades difficult.

“Another dead-end,” said Brew. “They must have a base somewhere in here but where?”

“Considering the way they can make people disappear, maybe we shouldn’t be too keen on finding it,” said James, “but I’m betting it’s further east. Seems to be the way we’re going. Let’s come back another time with a cable and winch and check out the bottom. There may be a blood trail that gives a hint.”

After lunch, which they all had together, Claire thought that she should get back to the barracks, as she did not really want her association with James to become common knowledge just yet. She could sneak back and pretend to have been there all along. Unfortunately for that plan, the base duty officer that weekend was Lieutenant Ada Addington, who occasionally talked with May over coffee. That meant she knew far too much of the gossip of both the town and the base that was, in Claire’s opinion, good for an officer. When Addington spotted Claire slipping in to the base through the admin block she barged through the duty office door and bellowed down the corridor.

“And where have you been Private Williams?”

So much for discretion, thought Claire.

“Out in the community, ma’am,” she replied.

“Is that what it’s called these days is it?”

“Ma’am?”

“Never mind.”

Claire turned to hurry off.

“And Private Williams.”

Claire turned back. “Yes ma’am?”

“It’s just as well there are no banks to rob in Devil’s Pit.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Much later, Claire’s choice of boyfriend was raised by Colonel Murchison at an officers meeting on personnel issues.

“I have heard that one of our female privates, Private Williams in the Two-One, has formed a relationship with that Truslove, the fugitive bank robber,” he told the meeting in general and Lieutenant Addington in particular. “Is this the sort of association we want to encourage? He’s a wanted criminal!”

“Maybe we would start looking at that,” said Addington, careful to keep her tone brisk and businesslike “but then that might raise the question of the number of marines, including marine officers, who have been to the Dollhouse in the past week. One of the workers there, a Jade, has been kept busy, I understand. I’m told she also has a colourful past.”

The meeting paused for a few heartbeats. A few officers shuffled their feet and tried to keep their faces expressionless.

“Maybe we should move to the next item on the agenda,” said Major Horne. “Complaints about the canteen.”

The meeting shifted to that item, never to go near the James-Claire issue again. Claire never heard about it.

Unaware that the base’s senior officers had any interest in her love life, Claire faced the daunting possibility of a reaction by a far more formidable force – her mother. Should she tell her mother about James?

“You could say you’re seeing this guy but it’s just about the s*x and it ends when you rotate away,” suggested Lou. “No need for details that might upset her like, by the way, he’s exiled from earth for lifting a big mess of gold from a bank.”

“That sounds terrible,” said Claire, “anyway, if I do mention him she’ll find out the details. You remember I told you she hired private detectives to check on my boyfriends.”

“Makes my mother seem almost hands off,” said Adria, “and that’s saying something.”

In the end Claire did tell all, and the response from her mother, when it arrived two weeks later, was much calmer than she had expected. Mrs Williams had already come to the grim conclusion that at a message distance of one week, or two for a message and a response, her control was limited. Although James was clearly unsuitable he was stuck on Devil’s Pit. Barring a pregnancy, which the SMC took care to prevent in front-line personnel, there was also a definite end date on the entanglement, as she thought of it. She limited herself to warning Claire to keep her bank account details confidential, then showed some interest in the arrangements of the James-Maddie household of which she had been sent pictures. Claire’s brother, Logan, on the other hand, thought the association was “way cool”.

Life in Devil’s Pit went on, with James struggling to produce consumables that the SMC and the Space Administration preferred not to have to lug over vast distances to supply the colony. He and Brew put together a package of the images and blood traces found, including the knife which they shipped to academics on Earth for analysis. Unfortunately, the idea that Shades were the off-world equivalent of Yetis was too entrenched for the material to be accepted.

A leading academic, a Dr Ricketts, dismissed the images as “bad fakes”. He also rejected an initial analysis of the blood stains which found that they were of ‘blood-like material, origin unknown’. A re-analysis by a forensic pathologist more aware of the accepted theories on Shades returned an inconclusive finding. Dr Ricketts was then free to lampoon the notion of Shades in an academic conference presentation – a presentation which, James heard later, laid them in the aisles.

Dr Ricketts had a number of valid points, James conceded. The planet had been thoroughly surveyed and, apart from some fossilised microbes, there had never been any evidence that life had flourished there. In any case, the atmosphere had been changed completely to be breathable by humans. What kind of species would survive such major changes and still wander the tunnels killing humans and taking away the bodies, without leaving a trace? The contention that these Shades reacted to electronic equipment of all kinds was also absurd, without any precedent in nature, the academic fumed.

Unknown to James or Dr Ricketts, two other academics asked for the samples of the blood which they analysed to conclude that it was from a previously unknown species. They also took another look at the pictures and judged them to be probably genuine. However, the academics held off sending their findings to scientific journals for publication. With the academic community convinced that Shade sightings were the result of too much local hooch, before they could submit a paper to a recognised journal and hope to get the required approval of two referees (one of which was bound to be Dr Ricketts), something had to change.

Brew and Lou, James and Claire, with Maddie tagging along, spent a couple of weekends cautiously probing around Small Central as the second cavern came to be known, but found no further blood traces or footprints. After her first encounter with the Shades, Claire warmed up to her alien hunting activities. It was at least more exciting than company manoeuvres out on the valley floor. But the Shades stayed away. After Claire returned to the barracks James worked on his various projects, which included finding evidence of Merc agents among the marines.

With other lines of inquiry tapped out, James followed his next guess that a Merc agent would be expected to sabotage the marine’s computer systems. There was no question of blowing anything up, or of killing civilians. The Mercs would need the civilian side of the base operational and its food and fuel vats in full working order from day one. Ships carrying supplies to cover any shortfalls would take weeks to arrive. Instead, a Merc agent would want to disable key marine military systems just as an invasion started. Mess up key systems and both the base and any marine forces out in the valley, including Claire and Lou, would be sitting ducks.

Very well, thought James, had there been any suspicious additions to the software in key systems? If so how in all creation was he supposed to find them? Searching the code itself was pointless. It had been written by AIs for other AIs; no human was going to work it out, and he dare not run diagnostic checks. The marines in the admin block would notice.

After rummaging around in various menus to no result, James thought to look at the base system’s changelog, which he knew something about through the previous adventure that had earned him administrator status. The base systems were updated with the latest and best every six months, and typically that was the only activity that showed on the main logs. When James looked, however, the log showed a burst of activity well out of cycle, about one week after The One-Five had arrived a few months back. The changes involved the communications, command and control, tactical, personal comms and threat tracking systems – all the systems that a battlefield commander and the marines out on the valley floor needed to survive.

A chill touched James’ spine. May had been right. There was an agent and the Mercs were coming to Devil’s Pit.

James doubted that whoever this agent was, he or she would have the coding skills to mess with the base AI. The individual must have a small unit to plug into the system and maybe a keyboard for on-the-fly modifications. Far more intelligent than the old-fashioned worms and viruses that used to plague systems on earth, the AI on this portable unit would insert code designed to strike only when triggered. How did he know the code had not been triggered? Because the base systems were still working. After some more trudging through menus, he found that the changes had been made through a direct connection, rather than wifi, from a jack in the colonel’s office. James thought that was case closed and that he should speak to Major Horne, then he took another look at the time of the changes. They had occurred at 11 PM.

“Why then?” thought James. “Why not during the day when the colonels are supposed to be at their desks? Maybe it’s someone who’s not the colonel who wants to muddy the waters. Maybe it’s the colonel who wants to be able to deny the changes. Hmmm!”

He duly reported all this to May.

“Doesn’t that mean we’ve got hard evidence now and the colonel is the man,” she said.

“Harder evidence than we had, maybe. I’m pretty sure that there’s a Merc agent, that he’s very likely an officer and he may be the colonel, but you don’t accuse colonels of treason lightly. A list of changes in a changelog isn’t going to amount to much with an investigator – especially if it’s been pointed out by a totally unauthorised civilian tramping around in a supposedly secure Marine system. They’d want to investigate me first.

“Then there’s the time question. It’s one week to get a message back to earth, and an investigating officer would have to come out here – that’s another six weeks, assuming the Marine command reacts and doesn’t just dismiss the whole thing as due to a fugitive from the Federated Police involved in Shade sightings stirring up trouble. Worse, they could refer the whole thing back to the colonel – look what the civilian whack jobs out your way are saying?”

May conceded this but pointed out that there was still a Merc agent somewhere and something had to be done about it.

“I’ll have to bring in Brew,” said James. “He was a software engineer before turning miner. There’re security cameras in the admin block, including one for the corridor outside the colonel’s office. Maybe our friend was careless enough to be caught by them.”

“Security cameras? You know about this from the system?”

“You remember we went to the colonel’s office. My granddad taught his little Jimmie to keep an eye out for security cameras.”

May crossed her arms and eyed James quizzically. “Was this granddad your mum’s dad or your dad’s dad.”

“Mum’s side. Is that important?”

“Just curious. Young James had an odd education. Did your granddad get rich from robbing banks?”

“As far as I know he left this world with about the same amount of money he came into it with, the police having grabbed all the Federated Reserve gold by that time. He told me once that he didn’t regret anything, but I should make a big score and get out.”

“Your big score didn’t work out.”

“Nope, so now what granddad taught me is being put to use chasing Merc spies in Devil’s Pit. The next step is to bring in Brew, and to organise poker nights.”

“Poker nights?”

“Yep, the enlisted men have their own games running continuously, but this’ll be between members of the community and officers. It’s about building rapport between marines and community, or at least that’s what we’ll say. The actual aim is to hope our Merc agent says something stupid, so he can be identified. I also want you to sit in.”

“My husband was the poker player of the family.”

“You must have learnt something. watching him admiringly?”

May snorted.

“What about Lieutenant Addington? Does she play poker? You can alternate with her. I just want a woman there. If it’s all guys the conversation can get into stuff like comparing Dollhouse workers, which I don’t think is going to help us.”

“Hmmm! Might have to let her in on our little project. Is she a suspect?”

“The changes occurred before she came out of hyper sleep, I checked. We can rule the support group out, along with The Two One, for the same reason. They weren’t here when the changes were made. We’re looking at the five officers of The One-Five, as well as the major and the colonel, with the colonel on top of the list.”

“What about your poker playing skills? Did your granddad play poker?”

“Not him, but I can get by – this will be a social gathering, incidentally, only a couple of credits in total a night. I want to keep it friendly.”

The first poker night, limited to officers of The One Five — others would be invited in following weeks — was a success. The colonel disdained the occasion, but the major came along, more to make a statement about building relations with the community than about any interest in three card Texas hold-em, or so he said. It was also difficult to plead a prior engagement in Devil’s Pit. May came along, as did The One-Five commanding officer Captain Culp, his deputy Captain Wells who also headed the company headquarters platoon, and platoon commanders Lieutenant Morrissey and Lieutenant Gibbon. That made four of the five officers of The One-Five, plus the Major. The other, a Lieutenant Barrett, had to finish an assignment for a course he was doing by email. At least that’s what he told the others. May would check later to see whether he had gone to the Doll House instead. May, James, and Brew made up a full poker table.

James kept the conversation on neutral subjects to begin with – distance from earth, expansion of the SMC and so on, hoping that someone would bring up politics. Sure enough, Captain Wells, a solidly built, cheerful man who had been recently promoted, asked for two cards and then said, out of the blue, that he thought the Mercs were more of a threat them usual.

“They’re always threatening,” said Captain Culp, a tall, lean man with the look of a fighter “they never seem to do anything.”

“True sir,” said Lieutenant Gibbon. “They talk a lot about their rights and access to lift crystals.”

“They can buy them on the market like everyone else; there aren’t any restrictions,” interjected Brew.

“The rights and wrongs of the issue don’t really concern us,” said Culp, “isn’t that right, major?”

“If the Mercs come here, then we’ll have our pay to earn and not through political discussions,” said Major Horne. “We’ll be out on the valley floor fighting for our lives.”

“Would they come here, sir?” said Gibbon, a short, squat man with a deceptively sleepy air. Gibbon’s service record showed a lot of applications for courses and a protest over not being given a post. He was an ambitious man, James judged, but that might just mean he was looking for promotion to captain.

“I wouldn’t know,” said the major throwing his cards down to concede that hand.

“I mean, both Prime’s Hollow and Willow Run and many other systems are all closer to Merc space and produce more crystals,” said Gibbon. “Why would they come here, or to Diamond’s Peak?” Diamond’s Peak was the closest colony to Devil’s Pit. Its mining output consisted entirely of the so-called smart crystals that were coming into use in the advanced AI systems being developed on Earth. It was more attractive than Devil’s Pit as a destination as terraforming had created a rain forest that made the valley floor more interesting.

“More lift crystals are coming out of here then Willow now,” said Brew. “And it’s a much smaller garrison.”

“That’s true,” conceded Gibbon. “Once you start moving companies of Merc infantry around it doesn’t matter much how far you cart them, and both Prime and Willow have five companies apiece. They could move enough troops here to overwhelm us quickly, which is what they probably want. A quick fight, then negotiate from strength.”

“While politicians run around in circles and makes diplomatic protests, the Mercs will reinforce here,” said Culp. “When they do decide to do something, it’ll take six weeks to get a force here from Earth – longer, as they wouldn’t expect us to be targeted in the first place.”

“Do what your enemy least expects,” said Captain Wells, “Isn’t that Sun Tzu, or von Clausewitz or someone?”

“Napoleon once said that you should never do what your enemy expects you to do,” said Major Horne, “and that fits – if the Mercs come here. But it could all be just noise.”

That’s what the rest of the poker night was, as far as James was concerned, noise. He was sitting in the same room as a Merc agent, or at least he thought he must be, and he had no idea who that agent might be. It could still be the colonel, but further analysis pushed the base commanding officer down the list of suspects.

“Your guy just masked the relevant camera for the time he was in the office,” said Brew later, after looking at the security feeds. “Does anyone monitor these feeds?”

“Don’t think so – they’re more to see what happened after the event.”

“Well your guy put something in front of the cam and removed it afterwards.”

“That may tell us it’s not the colonel,” said James. “Why bother to disguise the fact that he’s going into his own office? It must another officer. Come to think of it, can you check on any of the other officers at that time or who’s in the officer accommodation?”

After a lot of keyboard activity Brew said: “Morrissey is watching something on a screen in the orderly room – not a film, looks like comedy skits – during the time window. Roster says he’s orderly officer. Look at that.” James saw Morrissey stop laughing at the screen and turn as if he had heard a noise. “He’s looking towards the corridor just about the time our mystery guy would’ve been coming out of the colonel’s office.” After a few moments Morrissey shrugged and went back to laughing at the screen.

“Probably had a lucky escape,” said James. “Our master spy might have done something drastic if Morrissey had seen him. But that means it’s not Morrissey and it’s highly unlikely to be the colonel.”

“We’re down to five,” said Brew looking at the list James had made, “Horne, Culp, Wells, Gibbon and Barret.”

While James and Brew grappled with this mystery, Claire and Lou were fighting their own battles out in the valley. First there were company battles against imaginary enemies. Then both companies fought imaginary enemies side by side. Then the two companies fought one another, equipment and weapons locked in training mode. After that, the snipers fought their own contest, just as they had for the sniper’s cup back on earth – one on one, two on two and death match. Claire and Lou came out ahead of The One Five sniper team Chad and Bron in those contests, but only just. The boys had the grace to acknowledge that they had been beaten.

“Never mind the score guys,” said Lou, “it’s all about style, and we beat everyone on that.”

“Can’t defeat you on style,” admitted Chad, “not dragging Bron and his comic books around.”

“Maybe I’ll get to the end of the 60s and then switch to Batman for a while,” said Bron, sitting with his back to a beast. “Now there was a dude with serious identity issues.”

Chad sighed. “But we’ll see what we can do about the points.”

Later Bron commented, “The Annies are good, like you said. We gotta lift our game.”

“They’re sharpening us up,” said Chad, “and if the Mercs come that’s all that’ll really matter.”