Текст книги "The Human Division"

Автор книги: John Scalzi

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“It’s a guess,” Wilson said. “I don’t pretend that I know enough about this situation to be correct. But I think regardless we have to make the Colonial Union aware of what happened here as soon as possible. Captain, I’ve already transferred the data to the Clarke’s computers. I strongly suggest we send a skip drone with it and my preliminary analysis back to Phoenix immediately.”

“Agreed,” Abumwe said.

“I’ll have it done as soon as I’m off this call,” Coloma said. “Now, Lieutenant, I want you and the shuttle back on the Clarkeimmediately. With all due respect to Ambassador Abumwe, I’m not entirely convinced there’s not still a threat out there. Get back here. We’ll be under way as soon as you are.”

“What?” Abumwe said. “We still have a mission. I still have a mission. We’re here to negotiate with the Utche.”

“Ambassador, the Clarkeis a diplomatic vessel,” Coloma said. “We have no offensive weapons and only a bare minimum of defensive capability. We’ve confirmed the Polkwas attacked. It’s possible whoever attacked the Polkis still out there. We’re sending this data to Phoenix. They will alert the Utche of the situation, which means they will almost certainly call off their ship. There is no negotiation to be had.”

“You don’t know that,” Abumwe said. “It might take them hours to process the information. We are less than three hours from when the Utche are meant to arrive. Even if we were to leave, we will still be in system when they arrive, which means the first thing they would see is us running away.”

“It’s not running away,” Coloma said, sharply. “And this is not your decision to make, Ambassador. I am captain of the ship.”

“A diplomatic ship,” Abumwe said. “On which I am the chief diplomat.”

“Ambassador, Captain,” Wilson said, “do I need to be here for this part of the conversation?”

Wilson saw the two simultaneously reach toward their screens. Both of their images shut off.

“That would be ‘no,’” Wilson said, to himself.

VIII.

Something was nagging at Wilson as he punched in the return route to the Clarke. The Polkhad been hit at least fifteen times by ship-to-ship missiles, but before any of them had hit, there had been an earlier explosion that had shaken the ship. But the data had not recorded any event leading up to the explosion; the ship had skipped, made an initial scan of the immediate area and then everything was perfectly normal until the initial explosion. Once it happened everything went to hell, quickly. But beforehand, nothing. There had been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

The shuttle’s navigational router accepted the path back and started to move. Wilson strapped himself into his seat and relaxed. He would be back on the Clarkeshortly, by which time he assumed that either Coloma or Abumwe would have emerged victorious from their power struggle. Wilson had no personal preference in who won; he could see the merit in both arguments, and both of them appeared to dislike him equally, so neither had an advantage there.

I did what I was supposed to do,Wilson thought, and glanced over to the black box on the passenger seat, looking like a dark, matte, light-absorbing hole in the chair.

Something clicked in his head.

“Holy shit,” Wilson said, and slapped the shuttle into immobility.

“You said ‘shit’ again,” Wilson heard Schmidt say. “And now you’re not moving.”

“I just had a very interesting thought,” Wilson said.

“You can’t have this thought while you are bringing the shuttle back?” Schmidt said. “Captain Coloma was very specific about returning it.”

“Hart, I’m going to talk to you in a bit,” Wilson said.

“What are you going to do?” Schmidt asked.

“You probably don’t want to know,” Wilson said. “It’s best you don’t know. I want to make sure you have plausible deniability.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Schmidt said.

“Exactly,” Wilson said, and cut his connection to his friend.

A few minutes later, Wilson floated weightless inside the airless cabin of the shuttle, face masked, holding the guide handle next to the shuttle door. He slapped the door release button.

And saw nothing outside.

Which is not as it should have been; Wilson’s BrainPal should have picked up and enhanced starlight within visible wavelengths. He was getting nothing.

Wilson reached out with the hand not gripping the guide handle. Nothing. He repositioned himself, bringing his body mostly outside of the door, and reached again. This time there was something there.

Something big and black and invisible.

Hello,Wilson thought. What the hell are you?

The big, black, invisible thing did not respond.

Wilson pinged his BrainPal for two things. The first was to see how long it had been since his face mask had gone on; it was roughly two minutes. He’d have just about five minutes before his body started screaming at him for air. The second was to adjust the properties of the nanobotic cloth of his combat unitard to run a slight electric current through his unitard’s hands, soles and knees, the current powered by his own body heat and friction generated through movement. That achieved, he reached out again toward the the big, black, invisible object.

His hand clung to it, lightly. Hooray for magnetism,Wilson thought.

Moving slowly so as not to accidentally and fatally launch himself into space, Wilson left the shuttle to go exploring.

*   *   *

“We have a problem,” Wilson said. He was back on the conference call with Coloma and Abumwe. Schmidt hovered behind Abumwe, silent.

“ Youhave a problem,” Coloma said. “You were ordered to return that shuttle forty minutes ago.”

“We have a differentproblem,” Wilson said. “I’ve found a missile out here. It’s armed. It’s waiting for the Utche. And it’s one of ours.”

“Excuse me?” Coloma said, after a moment.

“It’s another Melierax Series Seven,” Wilson said, and held up the black box. “It’s housed in a small silo that’s covered in the same wavelength-absorbing material this thing is. When you run the standard scans, you won’t see it. Hart and I only saw it because we ran a highly-sensitive thermal scan when we were looking for the black box, and even then we didn’t give it any thought because it wasn’t what we were looking for. When I was looking through the Polkdata, there was an explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, before the Polkwas attacked by the ship and missiles we could see. My brain put two and two together. I passed by this thing on the way to black box. I stopped this time to get a closer look.”

“You said it’s waiting for the Utche,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“How do you know that?” Abumwe asked.

“I hacked into the missile,” Wilson said. “I got inside the silo, pried open the missile control panel and then used this.” He held up the CDF standard connector.

“You went on a spacewalk?” Schmidt said, over Abumwe’s shoulder. “Are you completely insane?”

“I went on three,” Wilson said as Abumwe turned to glare at Schmidt. “I was limited by how long I could hold my breath.”

“You hacked into the missile,” Coloma said, returning to the subject.

“Right,” Wilson said. “The missile is armed and it’s waiting for a signal from the Utche ship.”

“What signal?” Coloma asked.

“I think it’s when the Utche ship hails us,” Wilson said. “The Utche send their ship-to-ship communications on certain frequencies, different from the ones we typically use. This missile is programmed to home in on ships using those frequencies. Ergo, it’s waiting for the Utche.”

“To what end?” Abumwe asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Wilson said. “The Utche are attacked by a Colonial Defense Forces missile, and are damaged or destroyed. The original Colonial Union diplomatic mission was traveling by CDF frigate. It would look like we attacked the Utche. Negotiations broken off, diplomacy over, the Colonial Union and the Utche back at each other’s throats.”

“But the Polkwas destroyed,” Coloma said.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Wilson said. “The information I was sent by the CDF about the Polk’s mission said it was slated to arrive seventy-four hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival. The black box data stream has the Polkarriving eighty hours prior to the scheduled Utche arrival.”

“You think they arrived early and caught someone setting the trap,” Coloma said.

“I don’t know about ‘caught,’” Wilson said. “I think whoever it was was in the process of setting the trap and then was surprised by the Polk’s arrival.”

“You just said these things were looking for the Utche,” Abumwe said. “But it sounds like one of them hit the Polk,too.”

“If the people setting the trap were nearby, it would be trivial to change the programming of the missile,” Wilson said. “It’s set to receive. And once the thing hit the Polk,it would be too busy focusing on that to pay much attention when a strange ship popped up on its sensors. Until it was too late.”

“The early arrival of the Polkruined their plans,” Coloma said. “Why is this thing still out there?”

“I think it changedtheir plans,” Wilson said. “They had to kill the Polkwhen it arrived early, and they had to get rid of as much of it as possible to leave in doubt what happened to it. But as long as there’s enough CDF missile debris among the wreckage of the Utche ship, then mission accomplished. Having the Polkgo missing works just fine with that, since it looks like the CDF is hiding the ship, rather than presenting it to prove the missiles didn’t come from it.”

“But we know what happened to the Polk,” Abumwe said.

“ Theydon’t know that,” Wilson pointed out. “Whoever they are. We’re the wild card in the deck. And it doesn’t change the fact that the Utche are still a target.”

“Have you disabled the missile?” Coloma asked.

“No,” Wilson said. “I was able to read the missile’s instruction set, but I can’t do anything to change it. I’m locked out of that. And I don’t have any tools with me that can disable it. But even if I disabled this one, there are others out there. Hart’s and my heat map shows four more of these things out there beside this one. We have less than an hour before the Utche are scheduled to arrive. There’s no way to physically disable them in time.”

“So we’re helpless to stop the attack,” Abumwe said.

“No, wait,” Coloma said. “You said there’s no way to physicallydisable them. Do you have another way to disable them?”

“I think I might have a way to destroy them,” Wilson said.

“Tell us,” Coloma said.

“You’re not going to like it,” Wilson said.

“Will I like it better than us standing by while the Utche are attacked and then we are framed for it?” Coloma said.

“I’d like to think so,” Wilson said.

“Then tell us,” Coloma said.

“It involves the shuttle,” Wilson said.

Coloma threw up her hands. “Of course it does,” she said.

IX.

“Here—” Schmidt thrust a small container and a mask into Wilson’s hands. “Supplementary oxygen. For a normal person that’s about twenty minutes’ worth. I don’t know what that would be for you.”

“About two hours,” Wilson said. “More than enough time. And the other thing?”

“I got it,” Schmidt said, and held up another object, not much larger than the oxygen container. “High-density, quick-discharge battery. Straight from the engine room. It required the direct intervention of Captain Coloma, by the way. Chief Engineer Basquez was not pleased to be relieved of it.”

“If everything goes well, he’ll have it back soon,” Wilson said.

“And if everything doesn’t go well?” Schmidt asked.

“Then we’ll all have bigger problems, won’t we,” Wilson said.

They both looked at the shuttle, which Wilson was about to reenter after a brief pit stop in the Clarke’s bay.

“You really are insane, you know that,” Schmidt said, after a moment.

“I always think it’s funny when people get told what they are by other people,” Wilson said. “As if they didn’t already know.”

“We could just set the autopilot on the shuttle,” Schmidt said. “Send it out that way.”

“We could,” Wilson said. “If a shuttle was like a mechanical vehicle you could send on its way by tying a brick to its accelerator pedal. But it’s not. It’s designed to have a human at the controls. Even on autopilot.”

“You could alter the programming on the shuttle,” Schmidt said.

“We have roughly fifteen minutes before the Utche arrive,” Wilson said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence in my skills, but no. There’s no time. And we need to do more than just send it out, anyway.”

“Insane,” Schmidt reiterated.

“Relax, Hart,” Wilson said. “For my sake. You’re making me twitchy.”

“Sorry,” Schmidt said.

“It’s all right,” Wilson said. “Now, tell me what you’re going to do after I leave.”

“I’m going to the bridge,” Schmidt said. “If you’re not successful for any reason, I will have the Clarkesend out a message on our frequencies warning the Utche of the trap, to notconfirm the message or to broadcast anything on their native communication bands, and request that they get the hell out of Danavar space as quickly as possible. I’m to invoke your security clearance to the captain if there are any problems.”

“That’s very good,” Wilson said.

“Thank you for the virtual pat on the head, there,” Schmidt said.

“I do it out of love,” Wilson assured him.

“Right,” Schmidt said dryly, and then looked over at the shuttle again. “Do you think this is actually going to work?” he asked.

“I look at it this way,” Wilson said. “Even if it doesn’t work, we have proof we did everything we could to stop the attack on the Utche. That’s going to count for something.”

*   *   *

Wilson entered the shuttle, fired up the launch sequence and while it was running took the high-density battery and connected it to the Polk’s black box. The battery immediately started draining into the black box’s own power storage.

“Here we go,” Wilson said for the second time that day. The shuttle eased out of the Clarke’s bay.

Schmidt had been right: This all would have been a lot easier if the shuttle could have been piloted remotely. There was no physical bar to it; humans had been remote-piloting vehicles for centuries. But the Colonial Union insisted on a human pilot for transport shuttles for roughly the same reason the Colonial Defense Forces required a BrainPal signal to fire an Empee rifle: to make sure only the right people were using them, for the right purposes. Modifying the shuttle flight software to take the human presence out of the equation would not only require a substantial amount of time, but would also technically be classified as treason.

Wilson preferred not to engage in treason if he could avoid it. And so here he was, on the shuttle, about to do something stupid.

On the shuttle display, Wilson called up the heat map he’d created, and a timer. The heat map registered each of the suspect missile silos; the timer counted down until the scheduled arrival of the Utche, now less than ten minutes away. From the mission data given to Ambassador Abumwe, Wilson had a rough idea of where the Utche planned to skip into Danavar space. He plotted the shuttle in another direction entirely and opened up the throttle to put sufficient distance between himself and the Clarke,counting the kilometers until he reached what he estimated to be a good, safe distance.

Now for the tricky part,Wilson thought, and tapped his instrument panel to start broadcasting a signal on the Utche’s communication bands.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Wilson said to the missiles.

The missiles did not hear Wilson. They heard the shuttle’s signal instead and erupted from their silos, one, two, three, four, five. Wilson saw them twice, first on the shuttle’s monitor and second through the Clarke’s sensor data, ported into his BrainPal.

“Five missiles on you, locked and tracking,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, through the instrument panel.

“Come on, let’s play,” Wilson said, and pushed the shuttle as fast as it would go. It was not as fast as the missiles could go, but that wasn’t the point. The point was twofold. First, to get the missiles as far away from where the Utche would be as possible. Second, to get the missiles spaced so that the explosion from the first missile on the shuttle would destroy all the other missiles, moving too quickly to avoid being damaged.

To manage that, Wilson had broadcast his signal from a point as close to equidistant to all five silos as could be managed and still be a safe distance from the Clarke. If everything worked out correctly, the missile impacts would be within a second of each other.

Wilson looked at the missile tracks. So far, so good. He had roughly a minute before the first impact. More than enough time.

Wilson unstrapped himself from the pilot seat, picked up the oxygen container, secured it on his unitard combat belt and fastened the mask over his mouth and nose. He ordered his combat unitard to close over his face, sealing the mask in. He picked up the black box and pinged its charge status; it was at 80 percent, which Wilson guessed would have to be good enough. He disconnected it from the external battery and then walked to the shuttle door, carrying the black box in one hand and the battery in the other. He positioned himself at what he hoped was the right spot, took a very deep breath and chucked the battery at the door release button. It hit square on and the door slid open.

Explosive decompression sucked Wilson out the door a fraction of a second earlier than he expected. He missed braining himself on the still-opening door by about a millimeter.

Wilson tumbled away from the shuttle on the vector the decompressing air had placed him but kept pace with the shuttle in terms of its forward motion, a testament to fundamental Newtonian physics. This was going to be bad news in roughly forty seconds, when the first missile hit the shuttle; even without an atmosphere to create a shock wave that would turn his innards to jelly, Wilson could still be fried and punctured by shrapnel.

He looked down at the Polk’s black box, tightly gripped close to his abdomen, and sent it a signal that informed it that it had been ejected from a spaceship. Then, despite the fact that his visual feed was now being handled by his BrainPal, he closed his eyes to fight the vertigo of the stars wheeling haphazardly around him. The BrainPal, interpreting this correctly, cut off the outside feed and provided Wilson with a tactical display instead. Wilson waited.

Do your thing, baby,he thought to the black box.

The black box got the signal. Wilson felt a snap as the black box’s inertial field factored his mass into its calculus and tightened around him. On the tactical display coming from his BrainPal, Wilson saw the representation of the shuttle pull away from him with increasing speed, and saw the missiles flash by his position, their velocity increasing toward the shuttle even as his was decreasing. Within a few seconds, he had slowed sufficiently that he was no longer in immediate danger of the shuttle impact.

In all, his little plan had worked out reasonably well so far.

Let’s still not ever do this again,Wilson said to himself.

Agreed,himself said back.

“First impact in ten seconds,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, via his BrainPal. Wilson had his BrainPal present him with a stabilized, enhanced visual of outside space and watched as the now invisible missiles bore down on the hapless, also invisible shuttle.

There was a series of short, sharp light bursts, like tiny firecrackers going off two streets away.

“Impact,” Schmidt said. Wilson smiled.

“Shit,” Schmidt said. Wilson stopped smiling and snapped up his BrainPal tactical display.

The shuttle and four of the missiles had been destroyed. One missile had survived and was casting about for a target.

On the periphery of the tactical display, a new object appeared. It was the Kaligm. The Utche had arrived.

Send that message to the Utche NOW,Wilson subvocalized to Schmidt, and the BrainPal transmuted it to a reasonable facsimile of Wilson’s own voice.

“Captain Coloma refuses,” Schmidt said a second later.

What?Wilson sent. Tell her it’s an order. Invoke my security clearance. Do it now.

“She says to shut up, you’re distracting her,” Schmidt said.

Distracting her from what?Wilson sent.

The Clarkestarted broadcasting a warning to the Utche, warning them of the missile attack, telling them to be silent and to leave Danavar space.

On the Utche’s broadcast bands.

The last missile locked on and thrust itself toward the Clarke.

Oh, God,Wilson thought, and his BrainPal sent the thought to Schmidt.

“Thirty seconds to impact,” Schmidt said.

“Twenty seconds c

“Ten c

“This is it, Harry.”

Silence.

X.

Wilson estimated he had fifteen minutes of air left when the Utche shuttle sidled up to his position and opened an outside airlock for him. On the inside, a space-suited Utche guided him in, closed the airlock and, when the air cycle had finished, opened the inner seal to the shuttle. Wilson unsealed his head, took off the oxygen mask, inhaled and then suppressed his gag reflex. Utche did not smell particularly wonderful to humans. He looked up and saw several Utche looking at him curiously.

“Hi,” he said, to no one of them in particular.

“Are you well?” one of them asked, in a voice that sounded as if it were being spoken while inhaling.

“I’m fine,” Wilson said. “How is the Clarke?”

“You are asking of your ship,” said another, in a similar inward-breathing voice.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“It is most damaged,” said the first one.

“Are there dead?” Wilson asked. “Are there injured?”

“You are a soldier,” the second one said. “May you understand our language? It would be easier to say there.”

Wilson nodded and booted up the Utche translation routine he’d received with the Clarke’s new orders. “Speak your own language,” he said. “I will respond in mine.”

“I am Ambassador Suel,” the second one said. As the ambassador spoke, a second voice superimposed and spoke in English. “We don’t yet know the extent of the damage to your ship or the casualties because we only just now reestablished communication, and that through an emergency transmitter on the Clarke. When we reestablished contact we intended to offer assistance and to bring your crew onto our ship. But Ambassador Abumwe insisted that we must first retrieve you before we came to the Clarke. She was most insistent.”

“As I was about to run out of oxygen, I appreciate her insistence,” Wilson said.

“I am Sub-Ambassador Dorb,” said the first Utche. “Would you tell us how you came to be floating out here in space without a ship around you?”

“I had a ship,” Wilson said. “It was eaten by a school of missiles.”

“I am afraid I don’t understand what you mean by that,” Dorb said, after a glance to his (her? its?) boss.

“I will be happy to explain,” Wilson said. “I would be even happier to explain on the way to the Clarke.”

*   *   *

Abumwe, Coloma and Schmidt, as well as the majority of the Clarke’s diplomatic mission, were on hand when the Utche shuttle door irised open and Ambassadors Suel and Dorb exited, with Wilson directly behind.

“Ambassador Suel,” Abumwe said, and a device attached to a lanyard translated for her. She bowed. “I am Ambassador Ode Abumwe. I apologize for the lack of live translator.”

“Ambassador Abumwe,” Suel said in his own language, and returned the bow. “No apology is needed. Your Lieutenant Wilson has very quickly briefed us on how it is you have come to be here in place of Ambassador Bair, and what you and the crew of the Clarkehave done on our behalf. We will of course have to confirm the data for ourselves, but in the meantime I wish to convey our gratitude.”

“Your gratitude is appreciated but not required,” Abumwe said. “We have done only what was necessary. As to the data”—Abumwe nodded to Schmidt, who came forward and presented a data card to Dorb—“on that data card you will find both the black box recordings of the Polkand all the data recorded by us since we arrived in Danavar space. We wish to be open and direct with you and leave no doubt of our intentions or deeds during these negotiations.”

Wilson blinked at this; black box data and the Clarkedata records were almost certainly classified materials. Abumwe was taking a hell of a risk offering them up to the Utche prior to a signed treaty. He glanced at Abumwe, whose expression was unreadable; whatever else she was, she was in full diplomatic mode now.

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Suel said. “But I wonder if we should not suspend these negotiations for the time being. Your ship is damaged and you undoubtedly have casualties among your crew. Your focus should be on your own people. We would of course stand ready to assist.”

Captain Coloma stepped forward and saluted Suel. “Captain Sophia Coloma,” she said. “Welcome to the Clarke,Ambassador.”

“Thank you, Captain,” the ambassador said.

“Ambassador, the Clarkeis damaged and will require repair, but her life support and energy systems are stable,” Coloma said. “We had a brief time to model and prepare for the missile strike and because of it were able to sustain the strike with minimal casualties and no deaths. While we will welcome your assistance, particularly with our communications systems, at this point we are in no immediate danger. Please do not let us be a hindrance to your negotiations.”

“That is good to hear,” Suel said. “Even so—”

“Ambassador, if I may,” Abumwe said. “The crew of the Clarkerisked everything, including their own lives, so that you and your crew might be safe and that we might secure this treaty. This man on my staff”—Abumwe nodded toward Wilson—“let four missiles chase him down and escaped death by throwing himself out of a shuttle and into the cold vacuum of space. It would be disrespectful of us to allow their efforts to be repaid with a postponementof our work.”

Suel and Dorb looked over to Wilson, as if to get his thought on the matter. Wilson glanced over to Abumwe, who was expressionless.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to have to come back here again,” he said, to Suel and Dorb.

Suel and Dorb stared at him for a moment, and then made a sound that Wilson’s BrainPal translated as [laughter].

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, the Utche shuttle left the Clarkewith Abumwe and her diplomatic team aboard. From the shuttle bay control room, Coloma, Wilson and Schmidt watched it depart.

“Thank Christ that’s over,” Coloma said, as it cleared the bay. She pivoted to return to the bridge, without looking at Wilson or Schmidt.

“The ship’s not really secure, is it,” Wilson said, to her back.

“Of course it’s not,” she said, turning back. “The only true thing I said was that we had no deaths, although it’s probably more accurate to say that we don’t have any deaths yet. As for the rest of it, our life support and energy systems are hanging by a thread, most of the other systems are dead or failing, and it will be a miracle if the Clarkeever moves from this spot under her own power. And to top it all off, some idiot destroyed our shuttle.”

“Sorry about that,” Wilson said.

“Hmmm,” Coloma said. She started to turn again.

“It was a very great thing, to risk your ship for the Utche,” Wilson said. “I didn’t ask you to do that. That came from you, Captain Coloma. It’s a victory, if you ask me. Ma’am.”

Coloma paused for a second and then walked off, with no response.

“I don’t think she likes me much,” Wilson said, to Schmidt.

“Your charm is best described as idiosyncratic,” Schmidt said.

“So why do youlike me?” Wilson said.

“I don’t think I’ve actually ever admitted to liking you,” Schmidt said.

“Now that you mention it, I think you may be right,” Wilson said.

“You’re not boring,” Schmidt said.

“Which is what you like most about me,” Wilson said.

“No, boring is good,” Schmidt said, and waved his hand around the shuttle bay. “This is the shit that’s going to kill me.”

XI.

Colonel Abel Rigney and Colonel Liz Egan sat in a hole-in-the-wall commissary at Phoenix Station, eating cheeseburgers.

“These are fantastic cheeseburgers,” Rigney said.

“They’re even better when you have a genetically-engineered body that never gets fat,” Egan said. She took another bite of her burger.

“True,” Rigney said. “Maybe I’ll have another.”

“Do,” Egan said. “Test your metabolism.”

“So, you read the report,” Rigney said to Egan between his own bites.

“All I do is read reports,” Egan said. “Read reports and scare midlevel bureaucrats. Which report are we talking about?”

“The one on the final round of negotiations with the Utche,” Rigney said. “With the Clarke,and Ambassador Abumwe and Lieutenant Wilson.”

“I did,” Egan said.

“What’s the final disposition of the Clarke?” Rigney asked.

“What did you find out about those missile fragments?” Egan asked.

“I asked you first,” Rigney said.

“And I’m not in the second grade, so that tactic doesn’t work with me,” Egan said, and took another bite.

“We took a chunk of missile your dockworkers fished out of the Clarkeand found a part number on it. The missile tracks back to a frigate called the Brainerd. This particular missile was reported launched and destroyed in a live-fire training exercise eighteen months ago. All the data I’ve seen confirms the official story,” Rigney said.

“So we have ghost missiles being used by mystery ships to undermine secret diplomatic negotiations,” Egan said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Rigney said. He set down his burger.

“Secretary Galeano isn’t going to be very pleased that one of our own missiles was used to severely damage one of her department’s ships,” Egan said.

“That’s all right,” Rigney said. “My bosses aren’t very pleased that a mole in the Department of State told whoever was using our own missiles against your ship where that ship was going to be and with whom it was negotiating.”

“You have evidence of that?” Egan asked.

“No,” Rigney said. “But we have pretty good evidence that the Utche sprung no leaks. The process of elimination applies from there.”

“I’d like to see that evidence about the Utche,” Egan said.

“I’d like to show it to you,” Rigney said. “But you have a mole problem.”

Egan looked at Rigney narrowly. “You better smile when you say that, Abel,” she said.

“To be clear,” Rigney said, “I would—and have,you’ll recall from our combat days—trust you with my life. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s everyone else in your department. Someone with a high enough security clearance to know about the Utche talks is engaging in treason, Liz. Selling us out to our enemies. Which enemies, we don’t know. But our friendsdon’t blow up one of our ships and try to go after a second.”