By Other Means (16 page)

“Aye sir!”

*****

“Everything is in place, Sir.”

“Good,” The older Parithalian said, sounding pleased. “Be sure that it is all put to rights, we can’t afford any mistakes here. If we should fail, the next step is…”

Both shuddered, involuntarily thinking about the third, and hopefully unnecessary, phase of the plan they’d embarked upon. That level of destruction wasn’t to be contemplated idly, or at all if it were possible.

They would still follow their orders, but no one would be particularly pleased about it.

Becoming a martyr was acceptable, but it wasn’t something any of them were looking forward to.

*****

“Have you located the cause of the problem yet, Chief?”

“No Sir, Commander,” The Chief said tiredly, “However we’ve managed to adjust our stance to compensate. The Major should be sleeping better now at least.”

A smile played at Commander Bristol’s lips, “While I’m sure the Major will be grateful for your work on behalf of her beauty sleep, we still need to find the
cause
of the problem, Chief.”

The Engineering Master Chief nodded, “I know that Sir, but it’s a sneaky little bugger. Did you get any information from the Alliance?”

“Station Master Parath told the Captain that they’re tracking the same problem, they think it may be a minor variance in their own reactor,” Chisolm said, “but they can’t confirm it. Something about the system not being used to dealing with this many ships coming through.”

“Ech,” The Chief grumbled, thinking about it, “yeah, that would make a mess of your systems if you’d gotten used to minimal interference.”

“He also made a snide comment, or we think it was snide anyway,” Bristol shrugged, honestly not sure because of the alien culture, “about how much was leaking from our own reactor’s shielding.”

“Oh now that’s just below the belt!”

Bristol chuckled at the indignant reaction of the Engineer, though in all honesty he’d had much of the same reaction himself. Sailors had love hate relationships with the ships they sailed, but it was their prerogative to issue forth the hate speech and god help any outsider who dared… particularly if said outsider was an enemy, truce or not.

“I’ll have you know that our shielding is within ten percent of the best we’ve seen of theirs! Any bellyaching from them is bullshit… pardon my frankness, Sir.”

Bristol smiled dryly, “Don’t talk like that in front of the Captain… unless we’re in an emergency, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Suffice to say, I agree with you, Chief.” Bristol said simply, “They have better tech… or, I should say, more refined tech than we’re using, but it’s not so much better that they can be rubbing our noses in it with impunity.”

“I should say not.”

“Barring the Goulies, of course.” Bristol sighed.

“Right,” The Chief curled up his lips, like he’d just swallowed something nasty.

As much as any human would hate to admit it, particularly those in charge of defending the human controlled systems, it was quite clear that the Ross had a control over spacetime that made them almost… beyond mortal. The few humans who’d chanced a peek at the inside of the captured Ross starship had seen a fraction of what they could do, and most of them… the Commander and Chief included, were stunned that the Ross hadn’t simply rolled over Earth’s best like adults fighting children in the part.

For whatever reason, and it really was one of the mysteries of the war, the Goulies hadn’t acted like they wanted to win. Oh, sure, they pulled out the stops toward the end when the Alliance got fully involved, but with their portal ship there seemed little reason why they didn’t just march an invading army across Hayden within the first week.

Even the Alliance found the Ross to be near inscrutable, however, so they supposed it wasn’t a huge shock that Terran analysts were having minor nervous breakdowns over the puzzle they presented.

Bristol sighed, “Well this isn’t really getting us anywhere, unfortunately. Let’s get back to work and see if we can’t pinpoint that gravity interference source.”

“Aye sir.”

Goulies were one thing, but whatever was messing with the Mexico’s drives were a clear and immediate risk factor that couldn’t be ignored.

Bristol just wished they could figure out where the hell the variation was coming from.

*****

On the Alliance station, a single canister left in the loading bay shifted slightly in its place, as if moved by an invisible force.

Admiral Ruger looked out over the view of the alien system from the observation deck of the Mexico, eyes particularly drawn to the Parithalian starship parked just beyond and above the station, her guns not
quite
trained on the Terran cruiser.

These people know their intimidation techniques, I’ll give them that.

He suspected that, if the Alliance fully trusted them, there would also be a Ross ship floating out there just to drive the point well and truly home.

If course, turnabout was fair play on that, which was why the Captain of the Mexico had ordered all weapons and scanners turned
off
.

The Mexico was sitting there, effectively defenseless against enemy weapons,
daring
them to do something. It was subtle, but from what they’d read into the enemy motivations and concerns, since the Alliance still didn’t have a clue what happened to their fleet, this sort of casual dismissal would probably eat at them more than a show of force.

Of course, it if SOLCOM weren’t just as much in the dark about what the hell happened to the fleet the whole technique would be less unsettling on the crew of the Mexico.

Can’t have everything.

*****

Sorilla was decked out in her SOLCOM dress blacks again, no plan on infiltration this time around. She knew they’d be watching for it, and there was no point making anything easy on the enemy forces at the moment. If she ever did make it easy on them, she wanted to be damn sure that she had the ambush ready to take advantage of the fact.

The assembly for the hop across to the station was routine now, they all knew their parts and where they were supposed to sit and/or stand. That didn’t make it dull, however, or not exactly dull at least. There was a tedium in it for most of them, but it was stressed by the constant knowledge that things could go to hell at anytime… but until things did just that, they all had to act that they were on dress parade.

In many ways she preferred open combat, it was less stressfull.

The burr in the back of her mind was back as soon as the shuttle left the Mexico, an itch she hadn’t yet figured out how to scratch, but there wasn’t much she could do about it so Sorilla fought to ignore the sensation as best she could. It got worse on the station, however, as soon as she was within the artificial gravity she felt the variance like a needle in her brain.

Where the hell is it coming from, anyway?

There were times she cursed her implant suite, despite how useful it had shown to be in combat against the Ross. When you’re not hunting down and facing gravity superweapons, the ability to sense flux in local gravity fields was far from as useful and attractive as it might seem. She’d never been motion sick in her entire life until her brain rewired itself to intercept the signals from the accelerometers before her CPU could process them and, frankly, she’d rather be
shot
than motion sick ever again.

Her steps across the deck of the alien space station were made with deliberate aforethought, she had to focus on every step to keep from looking like she wanted to stagger like the proverbial drunken sailor. It was just damned distracting, enough so that she killed her CPU’s accelerometer feed.

That helped, primarily by removing some of the conflicting sensory data from her brain, but the accelerometers themselves were solid state and powered by her own body heat and neural electric field, so shutting them down wasn’t something anyone had planned for. Still, without the time delay on the CPU feed, she was feeling less like a drunken sailor after a binge and more like one just going
into
a binge.

Given the choice, she’d pick the latter every time.

*****

The day’s meeting was just the same points they’d been going over for the past several, but Sienel was watching with interest this time as his subordinates had reported to him that the Terran Sentinel was once again with the group. He had to admire the sheer level of gall it took to walk calmly into potentially hostile territory after having simply vanished the previous visit, it was the sort of thing he looked for in operatives himself, after all.

She was sitting calmly with the entourage, apparently taking notes with a portable computer. He suspected that was pure stage craft, however, since reports from the war indicated that the Terrans made liberal use of internal enhancements that would likely handle recording duties, among other things.

What worried him most, however, was that she was so blatant about what she was doing.

That usually meant that she would be playing the role of a decoy while others in her group got about with the real business of gathering information. Unfortunately, since this was a whole new species, Sienel couldn’t tell if that was what was happening or if the species was really this blunt about their actions.

Frustration was often part of his role, but even he had his limits and he suspected that the Terrans would shortly be pushing him to them.

Sienel was settling in for what was looking to be a long day when he noticed the object of his attention flinch and glare off at an apparently random section of the bulkhead and deck like the station itself had somehow offended her. He examined the offending spot for a few instants himself, but finally gave it up as yet another aspect of Terrans that befuddled him.

*****

That gravity spike is getting worse,
Sorilla growled internally as she felt a moment of disorientation and queried her CPU for more precise data.

Her implants were capable of startling precision, but only through the calculations of the CPU. The disorienting spikes she got as a side effect of the neural transmission of the data tended to be a little more fuzzy. Like seeing something out of the corner of her eye, or imagining a sound, Sorilla often sensed gravity shifts long before any computer would report them, but confirming it took time and computer cycles.

In combat, she usually skipped that part, but right now there was nothing to react to, so she had her CPU processing everything to the highest degree possible. Maybe something would turn up that the ship’s sensors missed because she was mobile.

Either way, at least she felt like she was getting something done.

That was more than she could say for the negotiations, which still seemed to be centered around the same minor bullshit she’d listened to them yammer on about the first day she’d come out. Sorilla wasn’t going to pretend that she understood how political discourse worked, but her idea of negotiation took five minutes and generally involved violence or the threat of violence if it lasted much longer.

Probably best that I’m not a diplomat,
She supposed idly, wondering for a brief moment how the Alliance negotiator would take it if she threatened to break his arm if he didn’t get to the damn point.
I think those are arms.

Sorilla suffered through the morning and was contemplating the pros and cons of self inflicted injuries to get her sent back to the ship by the time they broke for lunch. So it was with considerable relief that she packed away the portable computer she’d been tapping random letters into while using it’s CPU cycles to supplement her own internal processor, and joined the rest of the delegates as they headed for the local eatery, or what passed for such at least.

Food had, perhaps surprisingly, not been a big issue. The Alliance, with its myriad of species, was used to catering to fairly complex requirements. Apparently humans barely mustered a blip on that radar, and after a little initial confusion due to language issues, it was quickly determined that there were several staples of Alliance food consumption that suited humans quite well.

Sorilla, well used to eating whatever was available and being particularly fond of trying cultural cuisines had adapted to the Alliance ‘table’ quickly. She wasn’t too picky with what was served and knew too damned well that the worst question you could ask was, “This is great, what’s in it?”

The meals were held on the other side of the promenade, which was probably poor planning on the part of the locals but it made things easier for Sorilla when it came to picking up new intelligence. Of course, that could be part of the Alliance’s plan, she supposed. The station was a relatively controlled space, they could easily monitor it and control what came in and went out.

Most likely, if she’d been planning the setup at least, very little real value would be available on the station’s computers, or in the heads of anyone present. For all that, however, she wasn’t worried. She wasn’t after anything top secret, and it was devilishly hard to hide cultural trends. So hard, in fact, that it didn’t even occur to most people to
try
.

So when she recognized the pickpocket working the crowd as they passed, Sorilla noticed that he brushed close to one of the delegates. The man didn’t seem to notice anything, but Sorilla made her way over to him and followed him into the cafeteria style eatery they were heading too.

Her target looked a little uneasy when she dropped into the chair next to him, pushing another delegate aside to do so. Sorilla ignored him and picked up the stylized utensil that bore little resemblance to a form, but got the job done well enough, and began eating even as he cast a glance at his friend and started to get up.

Sorilla’s iron grip on his shoulder brought him back into his seat with alacrity.

She hadn’t even looked up in the process.

“Uh…”

“Left pocket,” She said, still eating. “Empty it.”

The poor man, looking increasingly flustered, just stared for a minute but finally did as he was told. His shock when he found something in his empty pocket was almost funny, but Sorilla didn’t think laughing at the moment was a great idea.