Alpha strike, p.9
Alpha Strike, page 9
Once Alan got the mothership core set up and the terminal online, he began showing the hacker the kind of files he was talking about and playing both the original audio and the translated files for her.
“You’ll see that each of the files is linked by the names,” he said as she looked at the screen. “My guess is the translation to the alien language will be imprecise. That means translating them back will make the errors even more pronounced, yet it’s all we can do. The problem is that we know nothing about how the alien language operates. Are all meanings based on the words, or do the tones change the meanings? Or even something even more esoteric?”
He scratched his ear. “Right now, I suspect you’ll need to create a series of algorithms that predict how the human words are translated until you get to the point where you can also create those translations from any file, including those you might produce yourself. That would match what the Locusts were doing.”
She nodded as she considered the terminal’s screen. “That’s what I was thinking, but that’ll only take me so far. Even once I get an algorithm that translates these files, that’s when the hard work begins. I think you’re underestimating how fast I can get the first portion of that done, so you’ll have to decide if you want to tell me the entire story now or wait until later.”
“The whole story?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not certain what you mean?”
She shot him a smug look. “You’re hiring me because I’m smart, so don’t treat me like an idiot. If you want to be able to translate alien audio files to our language, then you’ve got some other files lurking somewhere. I find it difficult to believe the Locust motherships and drones communicate in anything as primitive as audio, so somewhere you’ve gotten your hands on files created by living breathing aliens.”
“I’m not able to speak to that,” he said with a prim smile. “Either you’re interested in the job, or you’re not and I need to speak to someone else.”
She started to answer, but her comm sounded on the desk beside the bed. She excused herself and walked over to answer it. After a short conversation, she disconnected and came back.
“It sounds like we’ll have a visitor in a few minutes. I have to be honest with you, Professor. This sounds like an interesting job, but my time is valuable. If you want me to devote myself to this to the exclusion of everything else, you’ll have to pay for the privilege, which won’t come cheap.”
She quoted him a price in doubloons that sounded like quite a lot. Still, it wasn’t his money.
“I’m willing to pay that, but I have to discuss things with my Navy friends so they can arrange for a line of credit with the people in charge here. Right now, things are still up in the air, and I’m not certain how that will play out.”
His comment made her chuckle. “You can settle that yourself if you like. The person that just called me is the one that runs Port Royale, and he’s got another hot job for me. If you two can work out the details amongst yourselves, I’m willing to accept his word that I’ll be paid.”
She spent a moment staring at the terminal before she spoke again. “While I do live in a cave, I’ve heard about what you folks did for us in stopping the Locusts. Yes, some of them did bleed through, but they’d have destroyed us if the full swarm had gotten by. With that in mind, I’ll take twenty percent off my fee.”
“I appreciate the gesture, but it’s not my money. I’m a researcher at heart, and if they’re going to pay the one fee, they’ll pay the other. I suggest you take the money.”
That made her grin for the first time. “You’re a man after my own heart, Professor. I hope you can work out the details with Connor because this sounds like it’ll be fun. And, if my suspicions are correct, there’s a lot more to the story than you’re telling me.”
A few minutes later, someone signaled at the door, and she went to answer it. Standing on the other side could only be Mark Connor, who was dressed just as implausibly as Alan had been led to expect.
Connor stepped into the room and started to say something before noting Alan and the Navy people standing there. “You didn’t tell me you had guests.”
“There was no reason to. The professor and I were just discussing a potential project. He’ll want to talk to you once you’re done with me.”
“That sounds suitably mysterious,” Connor allowed. “I have some data chips that I need the contents of, but I suspect they’ve been rigged to erase themselves if accessed inappropriately. It’s linked to an attack on the Navy personnel and me earlier. I’ll pay your priority fee if you can get them opened up within the hour. Also, someone slagged the computers used by the flight operations team. I’ll need you to recover the sensor data to find the people associated with these data chips.”
Gane took the chips and walked over to her own computer. “I’ll get started on these while you talk with the professor. By the time you’re finished, I might have the work done. Then we’ll see if we need the sensor data. No need to pay for extra work, right?”
The smuggler looked Alan over and smiled. “Mark Connor. The way she keeps calling you ‘the professor’ implies you’re the academic that Jack mentioned in passing. Am I right?”
Alan extended his hand. “Doctor Alan Prescott, director of the Locust War Historical Society. Everyone calls me that because I used to teach at the university level. I’m one of the folks aboard Hunter with knowledge about the Locusts.”
He gestured toward the computer core. “As you can see, I’ve brought a mothership core for Miss Gane to do some specialized work on. She tells me that rather than working through Jack to get the funding for her services, I should perhaps speak to you.”
Connor walked around the side of the terminal and looked at the screen. “I can’t say this means anything to me, so you’ll have to tell me what you’re trying to do. I feel confident we can arrange a line of credit if it’s important enough. We know frighteningly little about the Locusts.”
Alan considered how to respond. He wasn’t going to reveal the presence of the alien vessel they’d salvaged at New Copenhagen or the fact they had living aliens they might be able to revive, but he had to tell him something if he wanted to get this work done.
“As I told Miss Gane, there are limits on some of the details I can speak about. I’ve been researching the Locusts for over a decade, and I’ve managed to crack one of their cores and retrieve some interesting files, including translations of human audio transmissions to an alien language. I want her to create a program that can reliably do the same and then reverse engineer it so we can take alien audio files and convert them to our language.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded. “People don’t pay good money without reason, so I’ll assume you already have some of those files you’d like to know the contents of. Who sent them? I thought the Locusts were machines.”
“They are, but somebody built them, and we’d love to know more about them.”
“Without actual aliens to speak to, don’t we know everything important about the machines? They’ve attacked every world inside the cluster by now, and they’re bent on exterminating our people in space. Will knowing what they said to their machines change anything?”
“Again, without getting into the details, yes. Jack can authorize giving you a rundown of what we’ve found, but I think the information we’ll gain by translating these audio files will have critical implications for the war.”
Connor crossed his arms and looked over at the hacker working on her computer. “She doesn’t come cheap, so you’re not asking for an insignificant sum. If this is some researcher’s scheme just to get historical data, I’m not going to be pleased. Convince me this has real-world implications and isn’t just an intellectual exercise, Professor.”
Alan pursed his lips. Maybe it would be worthwhile if he let out a bit of information. He could still play his cards close to his vest and keep their big secrets hidden.
“We got our hands on a different type of computer on our way here,” he said after a few seconds. “It was inside the wreckage of a new type of Locust vessel. It has many audio files, and they aren’t translations of human speech. They’re true recordings of aliens.”
He smiled in his best scholarly manner. “Do I know that they will change the course of the war? No. Will we ever know if we don’t try to translate them? Also no. Sometimes promising research comes to a dead end, but I promise I wouldn’t be pursuing this if I didn’t think it was critically important we obtain all the answers that might be available to us.”
Connor considered him carefully before nodding. “I think there’s a bigger story behind this, but I also think you’re telling me the truth, and I suppose that’s what’s important. Here’s the deal, Professor Prescott. I’ll open a line of credit for this research, but we need to be read into what you’re doing and why. Whatever secrets you’re hiding, our lives are on the line with yours.”
Alan shrugged. “Commodore Romanoff is the only one that can agree to release the details about what we found. All I can tell you is that he thinks this is the most critical research I’ve ever done, and it’s one of our highest priorities.”
The pirate sighed. “Then I’ll want your promise that you’ll at least try to convince him to share that information with our governing council and me. You don’t have to tell everybody what you’re up to, yet if you want our full-throated support, you’ll have to convince us that it’s worth our while. I’m willing to trust this is important, but you need to be willing to trust us as well.”
Alan rubbed his face and pulled his comm unit off of his belt. “I’ll call Jack and see if I can convince him to get behind this. That’s the best I can do.”
“And a man can’t ask for better than that, can he? I’ll see what Lisa’s up to while you have your talk. Be convincing, Professor. Be very convincing.”
Once Connor had stepped away, Alan connected to the station network and placed a call to Hunter. As far out as it was, there was a five-second delay going in each direction, but that couldn’t be helped. Once he got a hold of someone on the ship, he asked to be connected to Jack, only to find out that he was in a cutter between the station and Port Royale.
He disconnected and had the station route his call to the cutter. This time, Jack answered. “Professor, what’s going on?”
“I’m on Port Royale looking for help translating the Locust audio files. Both the computer professional and Connor have made inquiries about why we need to do this type of work, and I’ve answered as best I can, but they understand there are things I’m not saying. Without going into things over an open channel, Connor is willing to fund what needs to be done, but he wants to know why we want this research done.”
There was a short stretch of silence that lasted longer than just the transmission lag, so Alan knew Jack was considering how much could be allowed out into the wild.
“I won’t say that I trust Connor completely, but he’s right,” Jack allowed. “Tell them whatever you think best, but that information has to stay restricted to a very small group of people. If the whole story gets out, there’ll be an uproar. Hopefully, if anyone is trying to monitor this transmission, the built-in encryption will keep them from hearing anything.”
Alan had forgotten he was using one of the old-style military coms with built-in encryption. That was far better than speaking in the clear, but he still wasn’t going to mention anything that would give their secrets away because he was standing in the quarters of someone that could crack the protections on the transmission.
“I’ll tell them everything we know, though I’ll keep some of the details to myself,” he said. “Everything revolving around why we need these files translated is on the table. Is that acceptable?”
“Use your best judgment, Professor. Romanoff out.”
Alan put his comm back on his belt just as the hacker returned the data chips to Connor. Based on her smug expression and his pleased smile, she’d cracked whatever encryption or safety protocols had been in place.
“So I have good news on one front, Professor,” Connor said as he walked over with Gane at his heels. “Tell me I’ve struck gold twice.”
“When we were on our way through New Copenhagen, we chanced across the wreck of a new type of Locust ship. It had a tremendous number of suspended animation pods aboard with aliens inside them. We assume these are the aliens that created the Locusts. Not only did the computers from that ship have many audio files, but we managed to recover a dozen pods in functioning order with living aliens still inside them. We haven’t tried to wake them yet, but that will come.”
For once, Connor looked taken aback. “So there are living aliens behind these machines? I hadn’t ever considered that possibility. Nevertheless, if what you’re saying is true—and I have no reason to doubt you—this task is essential.”
Connor turned his gaze to Gane. “Port Royale will guarantee your full fee. I want you to give this your undivided attention, and I’m willing to pay a premium to make it happen. Everything you do here will be under a seal of confidentiality. You don’t talk to anyone other than the professor, Commodore Romanoff, and me.”
She nodded, her expression a bit worried. “You found this ship full of aliens, so you suspect there are even more scattered throughout the cluster? We’ll need to interrogate the ones you found, and we’re going to have to start negotiating with the ones you didn’t, so I’ll agree this is a vital project and give it everything I have.”
Alan extended his hand and shook Conner’s when he took it. Then he did the same for Gane.
“I’ll make sure you get access to everything you need, but at some point, we’ll be speaking with a living alien face to face. I’ve seen them, and it’s an unsettling experience, so I hope we can avoid misunderstandings. Lives will depend on the accuracy of these translations.”
She shook her head. “I can’t promise perfection, and I won’t. We have no frame of reference with these aliens, and there needs to be a back-and-forth process with someone knowledgeable in their language before I can refine the algorithms to be certain of their accuracy. Even then, it’s going to be a crapshoot. There will be subjects and words that have no literal translation.”
“Do the best you can,” Alan said.
“I’ll take the information Lisa unlocked and speak with your man Turner while the two of you focus on this. It seems the people that attacked us didn’t clean up as well as they’d hoped, so we can go pay them a visit.”
Connor smiled without a hint of amusement. “I’ll wager that Colonel Turner will be inclined to make them regret their life choices, and working with him to make that happen is good for both our peoples.”
“Then I’ll leave you to that with my good wishes,” Alan said. “Let’s hope we all have a productive time of it.”
12
Mac listened as Connor explained who he thought was behind the attack with more than a hint of skepticism. All the smuggler had to go on was data stashed away by a dead man. Data they couldn’t confirm.
He was willing to grant that the dead flight controller had believed these people were behind hiring him but was it true? If he’d been working behind the scenes with someone, he’d want to misdirect that person’s attention if they betrayed him. In fact, it would’ve been one of his highest priorities. When the hammer came down, he’d want to make sure it fell on someone else.
When Connor finished explaining who he thought the bad people were, Mac laid out his thoughts.
“I can see where you’d think that,” the smuggler agreed. “In fact, it’s the kind of thing I’d do myself. If that were the only evidence, I might be willing to entertain just a bit more skepticism, but it’s not.”
He grinned at Turner. “My hacker friend took a look at the computers in the flight control center. Whoever set them up to crash deleted all the sensor data and did so in a way they were certain would make it unrecoverable. Sadly for them, they’re not as good at that sort of thing as she is. She recovered a good portion of today’s data, and we verified that the unauthorized cargo shuttle came from the battleship Scorpius. Well, the asteroid that used to be that battleship, in any case.”
“And you’re sure the data isn’t faked?”
“She’s certain, and that’s good enough for me. One way or the other, my people and I are going in. I’m not asking you to do the hard work. I’m asking if you want to come along and represent your commodore and the Confederation.”
As much as Mac wanted to agree, he had to get this cleared with Jack first. He and his people worked for the Navy, and he couldn’t just go off on his own personal vengeance tour.
Once he’d contacted the commodore, he laid out what Connor had discovered and what the smuggler intended to do. “He wants to know whether we’re going with him. Do you think we should?”
“Probably not,” the officer said, “but this is one of those situations where they’ve asked for our assistance, so I’d like to give it. Technically, Connor and his people are the lawful authorities in this system, and you’re there as backup. Let him run the show, and if things spin out of control, you’re authorized to do what’s necessary to put things right.”
“I’m thinking you have something else in mind as a secondary objective,” Mac said.
“True. We need to know the condition of these ships. We’ve got to start somewhere, and that one just nominated itself to be our test case. Once everything is secure, we’ll send some engineers over to see if it’s even possible to get it back into service. If not, we’ll see what can be done to make it a mobile weapons platform to help defend against any Locust incursions.”
Mac nodded. “I think that’s a great idea, sir. We need a base of operations that’s not under the control of the locals. Right now, it’s Hunter, but our people will be at their mercy once we leave the system, and I don’t like that. Based on the condition our Marine weapons were stored in, I suspect the Navy left these battleships in good shape. Sadly, squatters don’t have the same standards. Also, there were pirates here long before these people arrived, and there’s no telling what was removed and sold.”
