Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Eleven

Brew tried to check whether the mobile devices of individual officers were being used to see if that eliminated anyone. This was easier than the snooping that had done to date in the Marine AI. Although the base had its own network, non-military devices such as phones or game boxes came under civilian control. The job of supervising that network had been handed to James long ago, despite his protests, and never taken away. However, just knowing where the device was at any given time did not tell them much, as James pointed out.

“He’d have a custom device. You can’t hack marine base AI with just an app on an ordinary notebook or digital assistant – you want something fast and powerful with specialised software you can carry around. Now that I think of it, that’s why he used the colonel’s office. Hacking through the wi fi is likely to set off alarms, and the device can be identified. Easier to disconnect the unit on the colonel’s desk at night when no one’s paying much attention to the system, and use that connection to deliver his software package.”

“Any reason for it to be the colonel’s office?” asked Brew.

“Probably just knew the colonel was in bed or elsewhere, and he might as well go to the top. Speaking of the offices being elsewhere, let’s check with May. There’re cams in the Doll House entrances and common areas – some of our guys might be on them at the right time.”

May was not supposed to keep Doll House cam recordings for more than a week for privacy reasons, but when they spoke to her in her own rooms at the Doll House she produced a separate drive with several months’ worth of recordings. A search of the images for the night in question showed that Lieutenant Barrett had been enjoying the services of Samantha at about the time the base computer system was being hacked.

“Nice boy,” commented May. “Fresh out of the academy and Sam had to show him how things worked. I never saw him as a Merc agent.”

That left Major Horne, captains Culp and Wells, and Lieutenant Gibbon.

“What about a senior sergeant?” asked Brew. “They’re capable sorts.”

“True,” admitted James. “And they’d carry more weight with the rank and file than any lieutenant. I looked at the non-coms records. The senior ones have been in the corps longer than even the major, are close to their pensions and smart operators in their own right. Suborning them would be a tough job. In fact, suborning any of these guys would be a tough job. Any approaches are likely to be reported.”

“How would they have found Henshaw and Gellert?” asked May.

“My guess is that they didn’t. Henshaw and Gellert made contact with them, then they were given some sort of contact procedure – a code phrase and response or an email address maybe – and told to hang tight. They’d have some grunt value, but you wouldn’t trust them with any information, you wouldn’t give them a device to hack a full marine base AI system, and they certainly wouldn’t be roaming around the officer’s admin block in the dead of night. Has your guy in the barracks reported anything, incidentally?”

“Just the usual testosterone nonsense,” said May. “No one likes Henshaw and Gellert. One of the sergeants had to speak to them about them trying to bully the younger marines. They’ve been in fights around the back of the barracks.”

“Heard someone got knocked around,” said Brew.

“Gellert did that – sergeants spoke to him about it. The fight was fair, but the sergeants said they could fight fair too any time Gellert was ready.”

“Hmph! Like I said the senior sergeants are smart operators,” said James, “but I can’t see them easily wandering around the officer’s block. They would’ve found another way. No, one of our four suspects is a Merc agent.”

“What do we know of these guys,” said Brew.

“The major’s record shows that he’s a reliable sort and, from what I’ve seen of him, he’d make a better commander than the colonel. Culp did well at the academy and has shown promise since; Wells just scraped through and was on a charge once for losing a sidearm. He narrowly escaped being thrown out of the corps when the pistol was discovered under some papers in his desk drawer. He got to captain because the corps is expanding.”

“Man knows how to bluff,” said Brew. “You saw him at the poker night?”

“Gives the impression of being a clown then takes a big pot,” said James. “He might be one of those underachievers who do well in a crisis. That leaves Lieutenant Gibbon, who is a few years out of the academy and his superiors think well of him – nothing much else to say.”

“My money’s on Culp,” said Brew.

“I’d lay odds on the major,” said May.

“Why him?” asked James.

She shrugged. “The higher the rank the better.”

“That’s a thought. Although the man doesn’t give the impression of being a traitor, no good Merc agent would. We still need proof, however, connecting any of our happy band with the Mercs; solid proof, and that’s the hard part. We can’t get search warrants, which wouldn’t find much anyway, or interrogate any of these guys without them wanting to know why.”

“At least we can undo the damage the software changes will do,” said Brew.

“You have a plan?” said James.

“I sort of know where the implanted software is, but I dunno how to get rid of it. What I can do is set things up so that the base AI will revert to an earlier version, as you did that other time. All the systems will have to reboot and recompile, but you gotta make sure this portable AI device is not connected, otherwise it’ll just do the same thing to the older version.”

“Hmmm! That’s a plan, but we’ve still got problems. Unless we get the goods on someone, he won’t show his hand until the Mercs land. That means we’ll have to get into the base while it’s on high alert and start looking for devices to disconnect, while accusing various officers of treason. Robbing banks is easy compared to this.”

While James’ trio of spy hunters wondered what to do next, Lou received news from home.

“Hey, everyone, I’ve become an aunt,” she told the female common room. “My sister in law has had a little boy.”

“Being an aunt – that’s very important,” said Adria, “but you’re now Aunt Lou – that sounds as if you own cats.”

“A nephew is better than a cat,” said Lou cheerfully, “and my mum is over the moon. She’s been known to grumble about me finding a guy and giving her grandchildren. Now she’ll shut up and let me play.”

“Is Brew a play guy?” said Adria.

“Of course he’s a play guy,” said Lou lightly.

Claire suspected that Lou was quite taken with Brew but said nothing and admired the pictures and videos that were handed around. Lou’s nephew, Ben, was adorable she thought.

That weekend, when James was absent for a time fixing a problem with one of the production vats, Maddie mentioned that something was going on.

“Any idea what?” said Claire, suspiciously.

“It’s not another girl or anything like that,” said Maddie. “He’s spending a lot of time with system stuff on his computers and he’s been meeting with May and Brew. They whisper to each other and stop if I come in.”

“Could be council stuff.”

“Brew’s not council. They’d need Dog. Maybe you could ask him what’s up. If there is stuff going on, the poor little orphan girl would like to know about it. Otherwise the poor little orphan girl gets upset.”

“The poor little orphan girl shouldn’t speak about herself in the third person – it’s creepy – but I’ll ask.”

Over after-dinner drinks, when Maddie had gone upstairs to her virtual friends, Claire commented that Maddie thought “something was up”.

“Maybe,” said James, “but nothing I can really talk about, especially to a marine, no matter how much I like her.”

“Why not to a marine? You’re not planning sabotage so that the Mercs can get in?”

“Nope – as I said, I like the marines here, especially those of The Two-One. I don’t want the Mercs to take over.”

“Humph – but it’s still about fun, right?”

“Of course. There’s nothing wrong with liking my fun.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what it’s about?”

“Nope, but it is nothing to do with Maddie. She’s taken to referring to herself as ‘poor little orphan girl’ too much. We need some more evidence about Shades. We should go back to hunting them in the tunnels.”

For the next two weekends, that’s what they did, exploring around the Access Point, the space where the trees had been cut down, and the tunnels off Little Central – the space Claire and Maddie had been heading towards when the encountered the Shades. They did not find anything. Then James thought to set a trap.

“We’ve got some spare mobile assistant-phone units, courtesy of the Space Administration. I’ll put one of those in the Access Point with an app running so that it’s electrics are active, and then set a camera to monitor the site.”

“Won’t the Shades also take the camera?” asked Claire.

“Good point fellow alien hunter. I’ll set the device at the entrance and then put the camera on a stand some distance away. We’ll need one with a good telescopic lense, but I think Brew uses something like that for checking surface texture on the sides of the pit.”

The trap was set, with the additional refinement of putting the digital unit on a tarpaulin covered in a blue power. They should have used a fluorescent powder that only shows up under ultra violet light, but there was no such powder or ultra violet scanner in Devil’s Pit. Blue powder from the vats – James didn’t think it would toxic to Shades – would have to do.

On the third night of the trap, while Claire was on night exercises down near the valley’s lake, the Sunless Sea, a Shade took the bait. The result was a video of reasonable quality of one of the creatures, which looked like a hairless, pale gorilla, picking up the device in an apparent rage and bashing it hard against a rock. The Shade appeared to notice that it was covered in blue powder before stalking off. When James checked the next morning he found traces of blue powder in the tunnel in which Claire had faced down the Shades and the space beyond that, Little Central. He found blue marks in a tunnel leading North West off Little Central’s ground level, and traces on the Western branch of the next junction in the tunnel. Then he had to return to his fix-it duties in Devil’s Pit.

“I wasn’t keen on facing Shades alone, anyway,” he told Claire later. “I can build a drone that can fly down tunnels taking pictures. The Shades will smash it if they catch it, but at least we’ll know where it was smashed.”

A refinement on the trap without the blue power (there was no more to spare) but with motion detectors set to trigger a camera close to the action was put in the Access Point. The camera would turn on for a few moments, take pictures for transmission to another unit and then shut down completely. This resulted in a high-quality video of a Shade, with a squat, powerful humanoid body with no visible s*x organs or n*****s. In the video the creature picked up the unit in one, powerful hand with two fingers and a thumb, and smashed it against a rock. It turned towards the camera before the video stopped. The camera survived.

James packaged up the pictures and videos and this time sent them to news feed services, rather than academics, creating a modest sensation. The few journalists who worked on those feeds contacted the academics in the field to be told that it was all nonsense, and those comments were added to the story. However, the images were difficult to ignore and, as the image files were publicly available they could be analysed by private groups, which found no evidence of faking. Scientific papers entitled Aspects of the psychology of mistaken creature sightings at the Space Administration settlement on Devil’ Pit, came to an abrupt end, to be replaced by papers with titles like A re-evaluation of evidence concerning creature sightings on the Space Administration settlement of Devil’s Pit.

One result was a directive from a Sentient Creature Awareness, Research and Engagement Directive (SCARED), a part of the Space Administration, directing James to cease all investigatory work on the Shades, and not to comment further about them to news organisations or anyone else. This pause was necessary “in order to work out a regulatory framework for the fostering of supportive, non-adversarial relations with the non-human creatures on Devil’s Pit”. James had never heard of SCARED – it was newly formed – and was concerned that a new “regulatory framework” meant a lot more pointless forms to fill in. But if the Shades left him alone he was happy to leave them alone. In a few months, now that the creatures were not just figments of the imagination of miners, he would rouse Dog to make another attempt to clear up the status of the “poor little orphan girl”. In the meantime, he would get back to searching for the suspected Merc agent.

About all that he could think of new to do on the Merc agent front was to ask his father, via squeezed light link, to check out whatever was publicly available on his four suspects, without telling him what was going on. His father had not approved of his son’s career choices. He had specialised in raiding the houses of the wealthy, and thought his son should too.

“No big scores and no partners son,” he had told James. “Never draw attention to yourself and never lift anything that’s distinctive – too hard to fence quietly.”

Now Truslove senior was an honest security consultant, occasionally called to houses that he had robbed, to tighten security. As he thought his son had learnt his lesson he was happy to help out. James was still waiting for a response to his query when he was summoned to a meeting in the base conference room with the colonel, Major Horne, and company commanders Captains Culp and Chan.

“The gang’s all here,” said James.

“Sit down Mr Truslove,” said the Colonel, looking as if he had swallowed something distasteful.

“Everyone just calls me James.”

“Never Jim or Jimmy?” asked Chan.

“James right from the cradle, except for my grandfather who called me Jimmy.”

“Gentleman,” snapped the Colonel. “The reason I’ve called you all here and the reason I’ve asked Mr Truslove to attend, is to discuss this request from this new sentient creature directorate in the Space Administration.”

“You mean SCARED?” said James.

“I understand that’s the acronym.”

“How did they come up with that one?” said Culp.

“Never mind that now,” snapped the colonel. “You have the request on the screens in front of you. In essence, they want us to make contact with the Shades and initiate some sort of negotiation with these creatures.

“Initiate a dialog that will lead to peaceful resolution of differences between this species and humans,” said Captain Chan reading from the screen.

“Say what?” exclaimed James. “Have those guys lost their minds? Haven’t they been reading the reports?”

The colonel sighed. “Tell us, Mr Truslove, what’s the problem?”

“The Shades have never been anything but hostile. There were several disappearances, suspected deaths, until anyone went searching from them seriously – an activity scorned by the academic community convinced we were chasing ghosts. We know that anything electric or electronic seems to drive them crazy, but if any human is around they still attack, and they’re powerful creatures. Apart from that we don’t know anything about them at all.”

“The request mentions a homeland,” said Chan.

James shrugged. “If we knew where they lived that might be a home land, but we don’t.” He outlined how far they had tracked the creatures, indicating on a holographic map on the table.

“If we sent marines down those tunnel, they’ll meet Shades?” asked Horne.

“Or not, but if you do meet them it’s more than likely to turn into a shootout, and I don’t think that’s what this new directorate wants.”

“What do you suggest?” said the colonel.

“I’ll write you some stuff pointing all this out. We will simply stay away from where we know they are. Get the miners to agree to some boundary in the tunnels and if you guys do your military games down that way, do it on the other side of the river Alph. There you are you’ve held discussions with miners and town folk about where they should not go to avoid an unpleasant death. Then suggest that this directorate send a proper academic investigation team for the Shades to kill, instead of marines. What’s a few dead academics anyway? I’ll send my notes to Major Horne who will put them in marine speak for you to review. At the very least that puts off the problem for two weeks, if not longer.”

“Humph!” said the colonel. He did not want to take advice from fugitive bank robbers, but he also did not want to send his marines down unmapped tunnels to face hostile life forms, and possibly start a war. He wanted them out in the valley where any Merc force was likely to be. “Major Horne will organise something along those lines, and I will review it.”

“Yes sir,” said Major Horne. The other officers visibly relaxed. They also had no wish to be involved in a war in tunnels – one which was likely to be deeply unpopular back on Earth.

“Thank you gentlemen, thank you Mr Truslove. You know the way out.”

Major Horne walked with James to the admin block entrance.

“I thought Space Administration proper was out of touch with reality, but the guys at SCARED seem to be on a different planet,” said James. “In the name of peaceful co-existence they wanted to start a war with these creatures.”

“Tell me about it,” said Horne. “Parts of marine command inhabit another reality where time and space are of no account. They don’t understand that messages take one week to get here, and the reply takes another week for the return trip. I’m sometimes asked why I’ve taken so long to reply to queries.”

James laughed and left thinking that he had heard the last of the Shades for a while, then spent a part of the evening reviewing files sent by his father on his four suspects. These were largely material on social media accounts of the four officers, plus a few snippets from the news feeds. Only the media accounts of Wells and Gibbon had publicly available pictures, showing those two officers with family and friends. In one, Captain Wells, obviously drunk and in civvies, was draped over a woman who was laughing. That eliminated a couple of possibilities James had been toying with, but otherwise added little to the investigation. None of the officers, James realised, had been in the same bases or units before ending up on this remote outpost. What about those in The Two-One, had any of those known The One-Five officers? A lot of cross-checking later, James found that only Captain Culp would have been known to the other officers. Perhaps that was not surprising, The Two-One was newly raised, while The One-Five had been reformed after many of its personnel reached the end of their enlistment or were transferred away.

As part of his thinking about this problem, James had written out a few notes in longhand. Proper writing had not been taught in schools for decades, but James could scrawl. He often found that, despite all the advances in technology, scrawling notes on paper helped him think. In the middle of his agent hunting work he was called away to an emergency with the vats, incautiously leaving the notes on his desk. As the notes were barely legible, even to James, that would not have mattered, but one phrase could be made out “Merc agent?”