Merkiaari Wars: 01 - Hard Duty (12 page)

Shima chose plants from different rows and sections of the field at random labelling each cutting with the time, date, row and field numbers, before putting each in its own sealed sample container. She tagged each plant she cut with her name embossed on a red plastic label so that anyone coming out here could see it and would know who to refer to with queries. That was procedure, and she followed it to the letter, especially now she knew that someone had failed to tag an earlier sampling. She wondered why anyone would want to hide taking a simple cutting like that. She shoved the thought away as irrelevant to her work and moved to the adjacent field. Adonia’s again worse luck.

Twice more in different fields, she noticed signs of surreptitious sampling of the plants and no tags left behind to explain matters. It was very puzzling. She didn’t draw attention to what she found this time. There was nothing to be done about it now and such cuttings did not risk the parent plant in any case. Still, it made her wonder if perhaps the elders had sent someone to make an independent inspection... a verification of their reports? Such a thought angered her. Did the elders think they would falsify reports? How dare they... no wait, there was no evidence of that. No evidence of anything really. It could just as easily be another researcher wanting to run his own tests, but why do it this way. Anyone at the centre who wanted to could come out and take cuttings any time they liked. All they need do is ask and leave their own tags.

Shima was just finishing up and was about to return to Adonia who had sat out the last field’s inspections in the car, when she found the culprit. She didn’t know at first that it was responsible for the cuttings, and didn’t think about it when she saw movement down low among the plants. One moment she was sitting on her haunches writing out a label, the next she had sprung full stretch in a dive to capture the... it. What under the Harmonies was it?

Shima stared at the thing gripped firmly in her paws. It was some kind of machine, not an animal at all. It struggled in her grasp, but she held it easily. It was shaped like a flattened ball and had shapes and designs moulded into its dull grey surface. Her father was an engineer, and she recognised a remote when she saw one, but what was it doing here? Tahar and others used such things but only in space where it was too dangerous to go, or was simply easier to programme a remote to do the work. Shima had never thought to find one in her fields.

Holding it with one paw, she held it up to her face and sniffed. It smelled alien, like nothing she had ever encountered. Little doors opened in its sides and mechanical arms reached out probing its surroundings. Shima watched in fascination as it reached all around itself, obviously trying to find what had caught it. It touched her paw and tried to lever her fingers up. It didn’t hurt, but she moved her paw and took hold again in a place it couldn’t reach. The arm retracted and the door closed. Another opened and another arm came out, a different one because the end terminated in something she recognised as a sampling tool. It was used for making cuttings. She wasn’t letting that touch her.

Shima turned the device over looking for its off switch. It still struggled in her grip, but had no obvious means of propulsion. Maybe it was using anti grav like the hover cars? Shima wondered if Tahar knew that engineers had managed to miniaturise things to this degree. She decided to give it to him. He would enjoy taking it apart and learning how it was done. She turned it over looking for an off switch and found more hatches. She forced a claw into one and popped it open. She recognised the controls for what they were, but she frowned at the markings on each one. None of the characters made any sense to her, but above the keypad there were two more buttons coloured red and green. She pushed green, thinking that green obviously meant safe and this cursed thing would only be safe when off, but nothing happened. She pressed red and the remote became a dead weight in her hand. Good enough.

Shima put the deactivated machine in her bag with her sample containers and went to join Adonia in the car. She decided not to mention her discovery. She didn’t want to make a fuss, and besides, if she told anyone someone might claim it before Tahar could look at it. Behind her, two more grey shapes slipped out of cover and began taking samples unworried that their brother had been captured. They were very stupid machines and didn’t recognise what Captain Colgan would call a shit storm, even when confronted with one.

Shima didn’t notice.

* * *

Aboard ASN Canada, inner asteroid belt, Shan system

Specialist Yager glanced worriedly around and back to her station. She had to tell someone, but the captain was still here and he would yell at her and... she sighed morosely. It wasn’t her fault, really it wasn’t. She was a good avatar driver. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Sure, she’d had her share of glitches come up, who hadn’t? But she had always been able to get herself out of trouble. Why, once she had gotten a commendation when one of her remotes went dark on the job. She had saved it, and many thousands of dollars, using a pair of recon drones to find it and another sampler remote to bring it on home. She had deployed them on her own little SAR (search and rescue) mission complete with a properly planned search grid and everything. It got a few laughs from the guys and free drinks. It was a good story, but this time she was fucking screwed, and she knew it.

“Captain?” Yager said quietly still feeling sick. This reaming was gonna hurt. “I sorta have something to tell you.”

* * *

“Say that again?” Colgan said calmly. He was quite proud of how calm he sounded.

Yager’s face heated. “I lost a remote, Skipper. I mean I know where it is but... but... well, it’s gone.” She swallowed sickly and the rest came out in a rush. “Oh crap, I screwed the pooch! Shit sir, I know I did but I don’t see what I could have done different! The Shan woman... female? Whatever, she was busy doing her own thing and I made my boys all hunker down out of sight, but she saw one of them somehow. I don’t know how, sir. I can’t believe she saw it, but damn she was fast! She was on me... I mean the remote. She grabbed it faster than lightning and I couldn’t get free.”

“Where is it now?” Colgan said noting the misery on Yager’s face and swallowing the temptation to comfort her. This little disaster had potential. Oh yes indeed, it had potential to spiral right out the airlock, the system, and the entire stellar neighbourhood. “I assume you are tracking?”

Yager mumbled something.

“What?”

“I can’t track it. She shut the fucker down! Excuse my language, sir... sorry.”

Colgan nodded, not caring about Yager’s slip, he had more on his mind. “Play back the incident for me.”

Yager seemed glad to be able to do something. She quickly faced her station and began working it with speed a precision.

Colgan watched as Yager’s team of remotes took their samples and analysed them. He remembered reading some of the results of prior samplings. The crop had grown now, another month and it would be harvest time. The Shan were not as advanced in genetics as the Alliance, but from his reading of past data taken from these same fields earlier in the growing cycle he knew the Shan were within sight of some pretty spectacular breakthroughs. They had been huge advances when the Alliance made them. Given a hint here, a hint there, the Shan would leap decades ahead of where they could be if left alone. They had the understanding right now to implement current Alliance genetic enhancement methods. They just needed a little push and the technology to make use of what they learned.

“Here she comes, sir. See, I sent them all into cover?”

Colgan nodded. Two of the samplers were in the irrigation channel and there was plenty of foliage to cover them. One was in the next row over from the Shan female. Yager had told it to go to ground and it had done so before the Shan scientist arrived. Yager was right. It shouldn’t have been detected, but it was.

“Holy...” Colgan hissed as the alien dove toward the remote from a crouch. She had just leapt at full extension like a cat after a mouse. She caught her mouse, and started examining it. “Well...”

“Yeah,” Yager said sourly.

Colgan watched as the remote tried to free itself, and winced when the Shan female popped the main access hatch in its underside. Talk about luck, she had opened the right hatch first time. Opening any of the others would have dumped the contents of its sample bays.

“And lights out,” Colgan said as the female hit the off switch on her second try. “Okay, we need damage control here. No saying what she is going to do with it. She might not tell anyone, or she might go screaming about aliens to their version of the newsies. She might do something else entirely. Nothing we can do now, no matter what she decides. Tell me about samplers, Yager.”

“Like?”

“Like how screwed are we if they take it apart. Like can they find the others using anything they can learn from it? Can they find the satellite relays, and backtrack the data feed to us?”

Yager whistled silently and frowned in thought. It was obvious she had thought about some things in advance but not that the satellites might be endangered, and certainly not the ship.

“Okay, they will learn that someone not Shan is in the system, no way will they miss that, sir. The remotes are not very advanced compared to their own tech, but there are some differences. There’s the anti grav for one thing, and then the controls are all labelled in English. They can’t find any of the others we have deployed, but I’m sure they will guess we have them down there. They all use different channels and they’re all encrypted. They will
theorise
the presence of the relays,” Yager winced at Colgan’s sharp look. “The transmitters aboard our equipment, any remotes the Alliance uses for that matter, are low powered. They have to be for security. The Merkiaari taught us that, sir.”

Colgan nodded. “So they will figure out the satellite relays exist. Can they find them using your sampler?”

“No sir, but they can start a search. The relays are relatively tiny things and stealthed real good, and I mean
really good
, sir. The Shan would literally have to stumble into them. I’m pretty sure they won’t find them, sir. The area they need to search is vast.”

Tension eased in Colgan’s shoulders. “Good, and what about us?”

“If they don’t find the relays, they can’t use them to find the ship,” Yager said quickly and obviously vastly relieved to be able to say something positive.

“If they don’t find the relays,” Colgan repeated.

“If,” Yager nodded.

“If they do?”

Yager swallowed. “If they do, they can’t find us if we move, but they could take the relay apart and figure out its range. They will learn we are in the inner belt somewhere. I mean, we could be running silent anywhere in range of our relays. We don’t have to be in here, but they will think of the asteroid belt first, won’t they, sir?”

Colgan nodded. “I would.”

As far as Colgan could see, there really wasn’t much point in relocating. Not yet. They couldn’t retrieve the remote, and without that there was nothing he could do to stop whatever happened from happening. All he could do was watch and be prepared to move if and when the time came, which he was already doing anyway. So, the only thing he need be concerned about was preventing any more losses, and especially in the same location. The Shan female might, unlikely though it is, keep silent about the incident. She might not think the remote was alien tech. She might be dim as a stump and think it was home grown. Hey, it could happen right? Whatever she did now, finding more of them in her back yard would be a bad thing.

“Right, recall all your remotes and move to another sector well away from this one. This place is now off limits to everyone. Let’s hope she doesn’t tell anyone, but if she does, I am not letting them get their paws on any more of our stuff. Clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

Colgan nodded and walked away frowning in thought. Yager slumped in her chair, relieved to have avoided a reaming, but then stiffened when Colgan turned back to regard her. “Oh and Yager?”

“Sir?”

“If I catch you running missions so close to a populated area again, I’ll have your arse up on charges for negligence. We’re not playing games here. I know you’re good at your job. I don’t need you trying to prove it with stunts. You could have sampled that field during local night and avoided all this. Are we clear?”

“Very clear, sir!”

Colgan turned away and pretended not to hear Yager say, “Holy shit,” under her breath.

* * *

Zuleika, Child of Harmony

Shima didn’t get the chance to give Tahar the device she had found, he was working on Hool Station and couldn’t visit so soon after taking up his duties there, so she simply took it home and put it away as a surprise. She and Chailen still spoke with him every few cycles on the comm, telling him about work and friends. Chailen spoke often about Sharn. Shima had the feeling that unlike other times a male had caught Chailen’s eye, this time it was serious. Tahar agreed privately that Chailen was smitten for good, but he wasn’t concerned. He had talked to Sharn’s family in confidence and had checked certain things were in order. They were in good standing with their clan; Sharn’s father was warrior caste, while his mother belonged to the healer caste. She could trace her lineage back through the generations with many notable healers among her ancestors and was more than worthy herself to rank alongside them.