The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (26 page)

Chapter 43

The tableau
that greeted Townsend in Med Services today was almost as interesting as the earlier one with Alison Morgan.

Holchuk and the Doc were apparently engrossed in a staring contest, while Lydia stood nearby, one hand at her throat, the other clenched helplessly at her side.

“Drew!” she exclaimed with evident relief as he came through the doorway. “I’m sorry — I know you’ve got a headache, but I didn’t know what else to do. They’ve never had an argument like this before.”

“Over what?”

Doc Ktumba broke eye contact with Holchuk then and drew herself up to her full, imposing height before proclaiming indignantly, “He knows about Yoko, he says the Nandrians know too, and he wants me to clone her!”

Drew swore under his breath. He was no expert, but he knew enough to understand that Yoko was an ongoing experiment. It was the falling dominos all over again. Until she died, there could be no tampering with her, just monitoring and observation. What was more, Yoko was Nayo Naguchi’s experiment, one in which he’d invested a lot of time and effort. He’d left explicit instructions with the Doc, knowing that she could be relied upon to follow them to the letter. And now Holchuk was pressuring her to mess with Naguchi’s work?

“Holchuk, what the hell were you thinking?” he demanded wearily

“Go on, Gavin, tell him your brilliant plan,” the Doc dared him.

The Chief Cargo Inspector stared at the deck for a moment, perhaps thinking things through for the first time and realizing, too late, that it was never a good idea to argue with the Doc.

“It’s a way to avoid
ssalssit essendi
,” he said at last, “and to speed up the consolidation of the alliance. The ritual is all about trust, about putting our most precious belonging into the safekeeping of our ally. Next to each House’s
tseritsa
, that would be offspring. Offspring is problematic for us, but Yoko is our ‘living staff’, and Nagor was so honored that we let him care for her for a day or two, that I thought—” He broke off, blowing out a frustrated breath. “I still think the
Hak’
kor
would go for this.”

“Not to mention Teri…?” Lydia muttered, just loudly enough for Drew to hear.

Well, there was that too, Townsend had to admit. Aloud, he said, “Please, tell me you haven’t said anything to Nagor yet.”

Holchuk shook his head. “I wanted to discuss it with the Doc first.”

“And you did, and the answer is absolutely not!” she declared.

But Townsend was getting another glimmer of an idea. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “You figured that if we were to offer Trokerk a copy of our ‘living staff’, the Nandrians would accept her in lieu of the egg exchange?”

“I’ve already begun mapping their genome,” protested the Doc. “The procedure is doable. I just need a little time.”

“This is no reflection on your skills, Doctor,” Drew assured her. “But I’m getting the distinct impression, from everything else that’s been happening lately, that we may not have the luxury of eight standard years to finalize this alliance. Maybe we should consider Holchuk’s alternative.”

“This is insane,” she sputtered. “Nayo would never approve of—”

“Naguchi couldn’t possibly have foreseen the situation we’re in right now,” Drew pointed out. “Mr. Holchuk, am I correct in assuming that the offerings would have to match?”

“That’s right, boss man.”

“So, if you’re suggesting that we offer them a cloned rat, that must mean they’re capable of trading us an exact copy of
their
‘living staff’.”

Holchuk’s expression, a mixture of surprise and approval, gave him the answer. “You understand,” said the Chief Cargo Inspector, bowing slightly from the shoulders.

“They would have to know from the beginning that they were receiving Yoko’s daughter, not our actual
tseritsa
. We don’t run cons on the Nandrians,” Drew warned him.

“Mr. Townsend, I must object,” broke in the Doc.

“Noted, Doctor. But for the moment I just have one question for you: if O’Malley were to ask her very politely, do you think Yoko would be opposed to donating some of her eggs to ensure the continued survival of this space station and its crew?”

Expelling an audible breath, she glanced away from his face, then back again. This was the make-or-break moment. Drew looked into her defiantly flashing eyes, saw the stubborn set of her mouth, the tilt of her chin, and recalled: this was the Doc he’d confronted the day he’d arrived on Daisy Hub, the one who could make a charging rhino stop in its tracks. If she stood her ground, they were all back to square one.

Never argue with the Doc
, repeated a mocking voice inside his head.

Then, “Ruby was right about you,” she declared. “You are a lunatic. However, your other crazy schemes seem to have worked, so if you’re determined to go ahead with this one, and Yoko agrees, then I guess I have no choice but to support your plan.”

It was all he could do not to sigh with relief. “Thank you, Doctor. Now, could I please have some pain medication for this headache?”

***

Something drew him back to AdComm, something Bonelli had said that kept looping and repeating in his mind: “They wanted you off the street and completing your education. You were no good to them without your Eligibility.”

“They” could only be Earth Intelligence. And since Bruni Patel was the only reason that Drew had worked so hard while in detention to earn his secondary and post-secondary certificates, and had later persevered to qualify for reinstatement of his Eligibility, Patel must have been on their payroll from the beginning. He hadn’t befriended Drew out of the goodness of his heart, or because he saw untapped potential in an angry young man. He’d had a job to do for Earth Intelligence, and he’d done it.

As the depth of this betrayal sank in, the strength drained from Townsend’s legs, dropping him heavily onto one of the guest chairs in his workspace.

He’d been hand-picked, Bonelli had told him. Drew had assumed he meant recently, for this assignment. But pieces were finally falling into place in his mind, and they were making a very disturbing picture. For the past eighteen years, Earth Intelligence had apparently been grooming him, turning him into something they could use, a tool or a weapon — and Bruni Patel had been Townsend’s first handler.

Hand-picked. They’d all been hand-picked, everyone on Daisy Hub, including the current station manager. And what about the previous station managers? As he cast his gaze over the filing cabinets beside him, a bright yellow label caught his attention, on a second drawer from the bottom: Readiness Reports.

Readiness for what?

Curious, Drew reached over and pulled the drawer open. Inside it he found a box of small brown envelopes, each bearing a name and containing a datawafer. Aziz, McCarthy, Naguchi…. There were six altogether. Six former station managers. And underneath the box sat an old-fashioned red cardboard file folder. Drew pulled it out and opened it. It held two sheets of printout, each with the handwritten initials M.R. in the bottom right corner.

He’d seen those same letters before, in the same script, on hard copies of Security documents. Melville Ridout was very fond of paper. But there had been no mention of Ridout serving as station manager in any of Drew’s EIS briefings about Daisy Hub. Perhaps the Chief had visited the Hub in his capacity as Deputy Chair of SISCO and had left the file folder behind. Or maybe it had been brought aboard by someone else, with or without Ridout’s knowledge.

The first sheet appeared to be a list of requirements: job titles, numbers, desired qualifications. The numbers added up to 53, so this was probably a shopping list. Drew scanned down to the Manager of Hub Operations and read: “Logical, a strategist, able to use psychology to his advantage, street smart, willing to bend rules, trained in security and espionage techniques, risk-taker, able to take charge.”

The accuracy of that description put an unpleasant flutter in Townsend’s stomach. If Ridout had produced this document, then it appeared that either SISCO and the EIS had parallel plans to make use of the station and its crew, or, even more troubling to contemplate, the two organizations were working together.

With alarms already going off in his mind, Drew turned to the second sheet and felt a chill race down his spine. It was an attack plan, outlining the most efficient way to take control of Daisy Hub, and it listed all the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the station.

That answered his earlier question about the datawafers. The station managers were reporting on the Hub’s readiness for battle. As he sat frozen in his workspace, holding the blueprint for Daisy Hub’s destruction in his hand, every instinct Drew possessed was screaming a warning at him. There were bad times coming. Forty-six people were about to become collateral damage. It would take everything he had plus a lot more to keep the Hub secure and her crew safe. And the time to begin preparing was yesterday.

Chapter 44

Day shift
was half over when Holchuk received Nagor’s commcall. The Chief Officer had just awakened, hung over, had realized what sort of mood the rest of his crew would be in when they regained consciousness, and had consequently decided it would be prudent to move his guests back to Daisy Hub as quickly and quietly as possible. The Nandrians were, after all, responsible for the safety of a
tseritsa
.

Once inside the tube car, Holchuk used his wristcomm to summon O’Malley, Lu, and Mossman to join him on A Deck. Technically, the boss man ought to be there as well, but his official presence would necessitate the sort of scripted ceremony that Nagor was anxious to avoid.

The cage and gurney were already off the
Krronn
and standing in the middle of the deck when Holchuk stepped out of the car. The other three men arrived less than a minute later and took up positions behind him, waiting for his signal to transport Yoko and Bonelli down to Med Services.

Yoko was fidgeting inside her cage, but Bonelli was lying very still. The Nandrians wouldn’t have intentionally harmed him. Nonetheless…. Holchuk watched the Ranger for a moment, reassured by the sight of his chest slowly rising and falling. Then he initiated the protocol.

“Nagor ban Nagoram, we are honored that you deemed us worthy of your assistance,” said Holchuk, bowing deeply.

Nagor, his skin an alarming shade of yellow, was too hung over to bow. Pronouncing the words with some difficulty, he replied hastily, “And I am honored to accept your gratitude, Gavin ban Samuel. Please remove our guests to safety.”

Holchuk waved his detail forward. Within seconds, O’Malley had disappeared into a tube car with Yoko, and the door to another car was closing on Lu and Mossman and the anti-grav gurney.

That should have been the end. As he was about to bow, speak a scripted farewell and get into the third tube car, Holchuk heard Nagor growl, “Please accept this gift.” The Nandrian was thrusting a compupad into his hand. Every additional minute spent in the vicinity of a hungover Nandrian increased his peril, but Holchuk didn’t get many gifts. He grinned and called up the pad’s directory.

“It’s in Gally,” he remarked.

“I translated it for you. Time is too short,” said Nagor.

It was the instruction manual for the field generator. The boss man would be ecstatic.

“Nagor, I’m deeply grateful, and amazed! I am honored to accept this. But shouldn’t you be presenting it to Drew, son of…
Dammit!
?”

The Nandrian snort-wheezed softly. “There is no script for helping someone cheat on a test. You may give it to him if you wish. But it would be more useful, I think, to give it to your engineers.”

Then Nagor bobbed his massive head briefly and headed for the tube car door.

Holchuk decided to stop in at Med Services to check on the Nandrians’ guests. Halfway there he heard his wristcomm bleep.

“This is an all-hands announcement,” said Lydia’s voice. “By order of the station manager, there will be a crew meeting in the caf fifteen minutes after the Nandrian ship departs. He’s got something important to tell us, folks, so we’d better all be there.”

Chapter 45

This time,
the boss man was the last one to enter the room. He didn’t look too happy. So what was the meeting about? Holchuk wondered. Around him, everyone was sitting, chatting quietly in groups of three or four. He looked for Teri and found her surrounded by Ruby, O’Malley, Jason Smith, and Nora Duvall, Fritz Jensen’s
sous chef
. Then he remembered what was on the compupad in his hands and looked around the room for Gouryas and Singh. Nagor was right. They were the ones who needed the manual. Let them look like geniuses when they cracked the codes on that damned field generator in a fraction of the expected time — they could use the stroking. They could all use some stroking, come to that.

Lydia slid into a seat directly ahead of him and smiled at him over her shoulder.

Holchuk leaned forward to ask quietly, “What’s going on?”

“Not sure,” she replied with a shrug. “He looked at something from one of the metal cabinets lined up around his desk, cursed, threw the folder back into a drawer, and told me to call this meeting.”

Interesting.

Before he could speculate any further, however, the room went suddenly quiet. Townsend was standing at the front of the caf, looking around expectantly. Counting heads, Holchuk realized. Lydia had been serious when she said they’d better all be there.

“Thank you for coming to this meeting, people. There are some important things you need to know, and we may not have a lot of time.

“First, some bad news. We’ve heard from Zulu. Unfortunately, Major Cisco managed to elude the trap the Rangers had set for him. He made his escape on the shuttle
Tripoli
, which had just been refueled. The Rangers suspect that he’s heading for a pre-arranged rendezvous point. They are sending warnings to all the colonies within three days’ travel of this system, and Lieutenant Rodrigues has confirmed that Earth will be issuing an arrest warrant, based on the documentation and death certificate we’ve provided for the late Captain Bonelli — but we’re not to hold our breath waiting for Cisco to be apprehended in the near future.”

Hagman let out a gusty sigh. “So we’re in the soup, and he gets away. Slippery little devil, isn’t he?”

There was a scattering of mirthless laughter.

“Mr. Hagman is right — we are in the soup. As you’ve all experienced at first hand, there’s a lot wrong with Earth’s government right now. And here we sit, three Gates from our home world, unable to do anything about it until we start working together. The mission to Zulu was successful, because we worked together. I know that made you feel good. You told me so.

“Each one of you has a special talent or skill or quality that makes you a valuable member of this crew. Just look at the expertise in this room.” As Townsend began singling people out, Holchuk watched for their reactions. He caught the occasional shy grin, and plenty of blushing. The Daisy Hub crew were unaccustomed to being so publicly praised. “Most of you are highly-trained technicians and engineers,” the station manager continued. “Ruby, you’ve been the backbone of AdComm ever since you arrived. Holchuk, you know more about the Nandrians than any other Human alive. Hagman, you and your team are the real Security on this station. Thanks to Jensen, we eat better here than many people do on Earth. And between them, Lydia and O’Malley have given us the best communications and intelligence system anywhere.”

Holchuk saw sudden frowns, heard sudden muttering. Okay, he thought, brace yourself, boss man — here it comes…

“What exactly did O’Malley do?” demanded an incredulous female voice.

Predictably, the kid leaped to his feet and retorted, “I hacked Zulu, that’s what, Vera. We know everything they do, forty nanoseconds in advance. And they haven’t got a clue.”

…
yet
, Holchuk supplied, slowly shaking his head. The Rangers didn’t know anything about it
yet
. But that would change pretty damned quick if O’Malley couldn’t learn when to keep his mouth shut. Would he ever understand?

Now the Doc was on her feet, the picture of righteous indignation. “You mean we didn’t have to wait for Alison Morgan to wake up to discover her identity? We could have asked you?”

“Yes, if we’d known,” Townsend replied for him. “And that’s precisely my point. You’ve all been following Naguchi’s recommendation to keep learning and improving yourselves, but you’ve been doing it privately, not letting anyone else know what you’re capable of. Well, there are big changes coming, and I’m afraid that won’t be acceptable anymore. We are going to have to share all of our skills, all of our knowledge, all of our strengths, and all of our talents, if we’re going to survive what’s ahead.”

At the word “survive”, there was a collective intake of breath. Then Soaring Hawk piped up, “Can you be a little more specific about these changes, boss?”

“When Mr. Holchuk was adopted by the Nandrians, we effectively seceded from Earth and made a formal defensive alliance with an alien race. When that hits the fan, ladies and gentlemen, Earth will send out a force to retake Daisy Hub. If we have to ask the Nandrians for help, we’ll be starting an interstellar war. So, we’d better get busy developing the means to defend ourselves.”

You do understand
, boss man
, Holchuk thought grimly. It was a good thing someone did.

“So, that’s why they gave us the invisibility field?” Singh wondered aloud.

There was an immediate chorus of excited voices, echoing, “Invisibility field? We have an invisibility field?”

“Yes,” Townsend confirmed, silencing the room once more, “it turns out that the Meniscus Field generator is capable of producing more than one kind of field, when combined with the molecular paintbrush. The one that was discovered over on Zulu gives us a stealth cloak. But I don’t believe the Nandrians were foreseeing problems with Earth. Apparently, we have other enemies out there that Earth High Council isn’t even aware of. Indirectly, that’s why I’m here.”

This meeting was becoming more and more interesting. Holchuk leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Until there’s been a planet-wide housecleaning at all government levels, Earth will remain completely vulnerable. People on our home world have already begun the process. They’re targeting the corruption, clearing out the dead wood. They’re making a difference. And even though we’re stuck out here in the boondocks, we can make a difference too. The other day, someone asked me whether there would be any more missions. The answer to that question is yes, but not until we’re ready. Our first priority has to be the defense of Daisy Hub. Once we have those defenses in place, I’ll contact the resistance movement on Earth and ask them how we can help.”

Hearing that, Holchuk’s entire body perked up. There was a resistance?

“I’ll bet my brother’s neck-deep in it,” murmured Smith, shaking his head indulgently.

“I’ll bet my uncle started it,” countered someone else.

“Drew,” said Ruby, loudly enough to cut through the chatter, “what exactly is your plan for getting us ready?”

He sucked in a deep breath. “Okay, people, listen up. You’ve been working shifts on multiple details in order to learn all you can about maintaining and repairing the Hub. That will continue. But in addition, I’m going to reorganize the duty schedules to give everyone time to attend classes. Ruby, you once offered to teach me how to fly
Devil Bug
. Does that offer still stand?”

Grinning, she replied, “You bet it does, Chief.”

“Good. Who else would like to learn?”

There was a clamor of voices. Ruby gazed around the room in astonished delight.

“That’s how it works, folks. Ruby is now a flying instructor. The same thing will apply to any skills that might be needed in defense of the Hub or on a mission. Martial arts, for example. Commando strategies. Beginning after the next two station days, we’re all going to become teachers as well as students. Ruby and I will set up an interim schedule and post it on the station’s InfoCommNet. Each one of us will be expected to take at least three classes per interval, with the following exceptions: Mr. Gouryas and Mr. Singh, your ongoing and only assignment is to master the field generator and figure out the stealth cloak. And I’m ordering the Midnight Muralist, whoever you are, to report to these two gentlemen on L Deck and teach them everything you know about the paintbrush. Are there any questions?”

“Do we have a deadline, Mr. Townsend?” asked Jason Smith.

The station manager sighed. “All I can tell you at this point is that it will probably be sooner than we expect. Major Cisco is at large, and he knows a lot more about what we’re doing here than I would like.”

Someone made a disgusted noise that carried right to the front of the room.

“And there’s one more thing,” Townsend added. “We need someone besides the Nandrians watching our backs. Someone close by, and Human.”

“And armed to the teeth?” teased Ruby.

“That would be a plus,” he agreed, smiling. “Bonelli is officially deceased, so he won’t be returning to Zulu. And I couldn’t help noticing that without Bonelli around, and in the presence of a common enemy, the Rangers are actually not too difficult to get along with. So, when the new commanding officer arrives on Zulu, I’m going to meet with him and see if we can come to an arrangement.”

“You’re going to recruit him into the resistance, boss?”

“I’m going to give it my best shot, Mr. O’Malley. Wish me luck.”

As the meeting was breaking up, Ruby fell into step beside Townsend. Walking behind them, Holchuk heard her say, “I take back what I said about you earlier, Chief.”

“Oh?”

“I believe there’s some Naguchi in you after all.”

No, thought Holchuk, not Naguchi. Naguchi’s mission had been to distract them from their situation by keeping them all busy and useful; Townsend was here for another purpose, which he may or may not have revealed to them today. He was such a manipulative bastard that it was difficult to tell. But one thing was certain: there were some big ugly changes coming down the pipe, and the fact that Townsend was on Daisy Hub meant that someone on Earth must give a damn about the station and its crew. For the moment, that would have to do.