Jungle colony book 2, p.31
Jungle (Colony Book 2), page 31
“Anyhow,” he continued. “Recon-FO stands for ‘Recon-First Operations.’ The kind we send in first to an unstable situation. Quiin’s training is quite varied—advanced woodcraft, survival skills, the like—but the aspect you’d be most interested in is his GR-Ops training.”
“GR-Ops?” Sweets asked.
“Guerrilla Resistance operations,” Walters said, grinning again. “The idea is that his squad can be sent in deep behind some sort of controlled enemy territory, gather intelligence, and encourage and train supportive locals in proper guerilla warfare resistance techniques.”
“Huh,” Sweets said. “Sounds like the kind of thing you’d do if there were a revolution or an uprising on the colonies.”
“That I can’t comment on,” Walters said, his friendly voice growing momentarily stony.
Right … Sweets thought. He might be military, but he’s still UNSEC. Still … “Has he used it?”
“Or that,” Walters said, his expression falling another notch. “If you’re uncomfortable with—”
“No, no.” Sweets shook his head, holding up his hands. “Just curious. Inquisitive.” As far as I’ll say. Still, the thought left no doubt in his mind as to who the training had probably been developed for.
“Well, you might want to keep that kind of curiosity under control, considering everything that’s been going on across the colonies,” the sergeant said. “There are a lot of hot tempers out there. Best you stay quiet.”
He nodded. “I’ll do that.” Definitely about where I came from last, he thought. “So he’s good at training people then?”
“Within our parameters, yes,” Walters replied. “But Quiin’s training was designed to be flexible. I don’t doubt that he’ll be able to teach you something if you take the time and are interested in actually learning.”
“No, no, I’m definitely interested,” Sweets said, leaning forward. “I might not be any good at it, but I’m interested and I’ll try.”
Walters nodded. “I’m sure if he does feel like you’re wasting his time, he’ll let you know.” He spun the display back around, tapping at something. The blurry, reversed image faded, replaced by a bunch of fuzzy, colored bars. Likely a schedule of some kind.
“It looks like he’s got a few openings that he can work with.” The sergeant’s eyes flitted up. “You looking for any weapons training with that? Guns and the like?”
“I … uh …” In truth, he hadn’t thought about it. Anna did give me a pretty quick rundown back on the way to Pisces. “Not at the moment,” he said, making a split-second decision. “I actually got some training in that on my last job.” I guess I was all right at it, too. At least, that was what Anna had said. Personally, he’d thought it was luck.
Then again, you did all right working those turrets on the Python … All the same however …
“Suit yourself,” Walters said, his large, heavy head nodding. “If you change your mind, Quiin can probably give you the basics. Don’t think he’ll let you use UNSEC gear or munitions, but he can give you a few pointers if you want ‘em.”
“Just the hand-to-hand stuff,” Sweets said. “Punches, kicks … You know, stuff like that.”
Walters grunted in reply, his eyes still on his display. “Well,” he said at last. “Quiin looks like he’s got the time, and since the captain suggested it, I can go ahead and make it a bit more official.” The display shifted, though the fuzzy security filter still prevented Sweets from seeing exactly what was being done.
“And … we’re good.” The display flickered again, then shut down, and Walters looked up, a friendly grin on his face. “As soon as my runner gets back I’ll have him send for Quiin and give him the assignment. He’ll contact you when he can, probably through Varus.”
Sweets frowned, his forehead creasing. “Why not just send a message? Or have Varus contact him?”
Walters chuckled. “Well, for starters, we’re a marine detachment, Varus is a Navy AI. Also the ship’s artificial XO. His concern is for the ship—more than usual for an AI of his position—but not to any marines onboard.”
“And sure,” he continued. “I could send a message through the terminal, and if we didn’t have time to kill I’d do just that. But on route to who knows where, to do who knows what in an infowar exercise that likely won’t have jack-all for us to do … I need something to help keep everyone busy.”
“Anyhow,” he said, giving Sweets a nod. “It’s all taken care of. He’ll contact you. Anything else I can help you with?”
“No,” Sweets said, rising from his seat. “Thank you.”
“Hah! My pleasure,” Walters said, stretching a hand across the table. “Always glad to talk with another Georgia boy. You need anything else you think I we can help with, just ask.”
“Thanks,” Sweets said as the sergeant’s hand eclipsed his own in a warm, stone-solid shake. “I’ll do that. Have a nice day.”
“Oh, I’ll try,” Walters said, releasing Sweets hand and immediately turning his attention back towards his desk. “And if these meatheads don’t screw anything else up, I might actually have one. Someday. Before I retire.”
His booming chuckle followed Sweets out of the office echoing between the bunks.
Well, Sweets thought as he made his way out of the barracks. That’s a couple of things off of my list. What’s left? He could only think of one thing.
Back to my quarters I go, I guess … he thought as he entered the hall, turning towards the front of the ship.
I’ve got a report to go over.
Chapter 10
Day four, Jake thought, hands clasped behind his head, his eyes on the ceiling. Of … who knows how many …
The common area was surprisingly empty, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Through the door to the galley, he could hear quiet bits of chatter, but it was one-sided. A member of the ship’s crew—not the expedition’s—watching a movie, maybe, or a video from home. Nothing vital or important. Certainly nothing to be suspicious of.
Which was part of the reason he was currently stretched out across one of the couches in the commons, hands clasped behind his head, eyes staring up at the shutters that covered the expansive windows, keeping him from looking out on the distorted, nausea-inducing view that was an FTL jump. There was nothing suspicious going on. Nothing at all.
It was almost enough to make him suspicious, but he wasn’t quite that paranoid.
Yet, he reminded himself. Then he let out a sigh. If I do start getting that paranoid, though …
Around him, the ship hummed on, tunneling through space towards its destination. A loud laugh echoed out of the galley, an echo to a joke from whatever the crewman was watching.
Four days, Jake thought, shifting his weight slightly. And a couple of more to go. According to the ship’s captain, McCormack, the pace they were setting would bring them to their destination sometime in the morning on the eighth day out. Commander Ikeda had replied that it was convenient timing for their purposes, and the captain had just shrugged and said he’d seen no reason to push the drive any harder since the team would want to be awake when they arrived anyway.
The explanation had made sense. Just like everything else on this ship, Jake thought, trying not to scowl. It felt almost too good to be true.
Four days. He’d spent four days talking with everyone, getting to know them, making friends, and surreptitiously checking each of their stories in his head, memorizing facts and comparing dates.
Everything had matched up.
Oh, there had been red flags, of course. False ones, or ones that would be slightly more worrisome if their mission had been something else, but as it was, they’d merely been attention-getting. Nothing that pointed to any of the members of the team being UNSEC agents, just people who’d had a storied existence. Naomi Lankiss, the team biochemist, for example, had been guarded, almost impossible to ply any history out of past that which she’d given at the first meeting. But he’d narrowed the reasoning behind it down to skittishness and background, not suspicion. Her time on Hades—which she would only sporadically talk about, and almost always in relation to her work—had apparently given her a thick layer of armor. But by focusing his conversations with her to center around the kind of work she’d been doing, he’d reached the conclusion that she, like the rest of them, was merely another passenger on a trip not quite of her own choosing. What few details he’d picked up past that had merely been observational asides—such as her devout belief in what he could only describe as “neo-Buddhism.”
Nothing Earth-shattering or helpful to his investigation there. Though he’d learned quite a bit about her work, which she clearly felt was undervalued. Though to her credit, he couldn’t quite disagree. Finding native life—even simple life—that was capable of digesting stable island metals was one thing in and of itself. Her insistence that her studies had been pointed in the direction of such creatures being capable of synthesizing stable island metals had sounded even more fascinating … but her attempts to explain that to the megacorps had been what had landed her on the expedition in the first place.
Though to hear her tell it, they simply hadn’t liked the suggestions she’d been making about moving mining operations elsewhere. To Jake’s ears, it had sounded much more like an attempt to steal her research and apply it to someone a little more under their thumb.
He’d kept quiet about that, however. To start, he couldn’t say for certain. Second, he hadn’t wanted to press a team-member who had already been slightly put off by his forward string of questions.
Still, in his opinion, Lankiss was solid. She’d given no indication of ulterior motive, been friendly—if curt—with the rest of the team, and had even spent the first three days of their trip working on finishing a detailed report for the members of her research team she’d left back on Hades—a sort of guiding prompt that the Sojourner would be able to send for her as soon as they reached their destination.
Committed then. Laser focused. And almost as hard as the world that she’d hailed from. But a UNSEC sleeper agent?
Not likely, he thought, shifting his weight again. Something clattered in the galley, likely a glass being cleaned in the sink. A moment later there was a loud thump as the garbage compactor activated, but no footsteps entered the common room.
Dessert, Jake thought. There had been a whole selection of them in the ship’s galley. Maybe I’ll have one later.
He continued to run his mind back over the last few days. Several of the team members had been easy enough to “vet” even before his conversations with them. But following actually engaging with each of them, he’d found the interactions casual enough that he’d all but stopped suspecting them.
Mostly. The doctor, Moria Kombes, had clearly picked up on his probing, though she’d misread his intentions and assumed that he was doing his job as a member of the security personnel to check the backgrounds of each member of the team. She’d then followed up not only by explaining her own background, but by giving concise, quick assessments of the team’s mental condition and reminding him that it was her job to deal with any breakdowns that ultimately occurred. Along with an aside that as far as she was concerned, the most liable member of the team to snap seemed to be his partner, Anna.
Either way, over the course of the frankly embarrassing turn to the conversation, he’d come to the conclusion that if she was some sort of UNSEC agent, she was either one skilled enough that he’d never notice otherwise, or there in an observational capacity only. In addition to her normal tasks, which she seemed to be taking to with casual familiarity.
He’d keep an eye on her, as a result, but only with the same amount of care he was giving the rest of the team. Questions that he would have expected to come up if she were an UNSEC agent—such as what had really happened on Pisces—hadn’t even been broached. The closest she’d gotten was asking him to let her know if he or Anna had difficulties adjusting to their new conditions.
The commander, Ikeda, he’d been forced to put in the same category. If she was an UNSEC agent, she was a very deep one. So deep it defied logic. Her mannerisms, her behaviors, her background … all of them seemed perfectly up front and consistent with her role, which she seemed to be striving to fulfill to the best of her ability.
No, he thought, his eyes tracing one line of the shutters. She’s not an UNSEC agent. That, he was certain of. Even without too much proof, he’d learned to trust his gut from time to time. And with Ikeda, his gut told him she was on the straight.
Of course, that still left the other members of the team. But as he’d spoken with them one by one, getting to know each of them as best he could and learning about their background and skills … he’d been forced, inescapably, towards a singular conclusion.
None of them had the markings of an UNSEC double-agent. And, the more he learned about each of them and the mission, the less likely it seemed that they’d even need one. The mission was a sideline, a way to get each member’s voice to go silent for a time. That was it. Once they were on K-247-2, there was no way for any of them to get off. No signals that could be sent except to the relay satellite in orbit. The Sojourner would depart to pick up another expedition crew or carry out another survey elsewhere, leaving the expedition crew on its own until their scheduled pickup date. If things got really bad, they could hole up in the bio-hab and activate the emergency beacons, which would be enough to keep them safe until pickup in all but the most unexpected of accidents.
In other words, he thought, staring up at the ceiling, summarizing his last four days findings. Who needs a watchdog? There’s no fence. We’re going to be on an island in a sea of space with no boat, and no way out.
The more he looked, the more it appeared he was hunting for something that didn’t exist. Eidre had chosen her mission well. Unless the captain of the Sojourner decided to pull a fast one on everyone—and there didn’t seem to be any reason for that particular scenario to occur—Eidre and the rest of the crew’s “enemies” didn’t have any reason to worry about where any of them were or what they would be up to. The answer, for the next few weeks, would be straightforward and simple: K-247-2. Or whatever the team ended up deciding to name it.
And if we did get up to something, he thought. The cameras in the bio-hab would sell us out pretty quick. He’d checked on that two days into the trip, only to find that not only were all areas of the habitat under observation at all times, but that such records were also housed in a “black-box” drive that was copied to the satellite with every upload. Commanders and mission personnel could review what had been recorded with the proper access codes, but they didn’t have access to change anything. It could likely be done, but the means to do so would leave evidence of physical tampering with the box itself, and the backups being held with the local satellite meant that even that wouldn’t be a complete victory.
In other words, there wasn’t much of a need for a double agent to be among the expedition’s crew. Not when an UNSEC-loyal AI could scan the entire results of their mission within hours of their pickup and make a choice about their behavior then and there.
And even then, they wouldn’t need to do much to silence one of us if there was a problem, Jake thought. They could just leave us behind—
He cut the thought off, pushing himself up from the couch and shaking his head. That’s too far down the rabbit hole. It was a pointless recursion. At some point, all of his investigation seemed to arrive at the same conclusion: That if UNSEC wanted to kill them or sabotage the mission in some way, there were much easier methods. More straightforward methods. Same with keeping someone around to watch them. Why bother planting a double-agent when the bio-hab’s own systems would do just as good a job keeping an eye on everyone? And if Eidre or one of the other UNSEC officials who’d had their cage rattled by a member of the expedition had wanted one of them dead rather than out of the way, well … There were plenty of ways to do that too that didn’t involve sending a team out on an admittedly expensive exploration mission.
Which, thankfully, did not mean that his last four days had been wasted. He slumped back against the back of the couch, the smooth surface conforming to his shoulders. He’d learned a bit about each member of the team, which given his and Anna’s new position, would likely be useful in the weeks to come. His conversation with Daniel Silva, for instance, had painted the man as very relaxed and down to Earth … if a little stubbornly old-school about his approaches.
Not that I blame him, Jake thought. He’s got almost more experience with this kind of operation than anyone else. He’d even gone as far as to offer some suggestions, alterations to the standard security operating manual that Jake had been simultaneously going over, on how to streamline particular measures and operations to make everything easier for everyone involved.
Silva, he’d already concluded, would only be a problem if his own interpretations of what needed to be done conflicted with Jake or Anna’s. Outside of that, the man seemed easy going, relaxed, and experienced with working with a small team of individuals. Which was good, considering the relatively close quarters the team was about to be in, combined with their lack of experience.
There had almost been problems already. Johan, Jake had learned, had not been in rare form the first time he had met the man. Rather, it appeared that he was the type who wanted to be included in anything that went on—whether or not he actually knew anything about it. If there was a question, or even a topic at hand, Johan would speak up and insert himself into the conversation, even if he knew absolutely nothing about what he was talking about. Already it had gotten him into hot water with Anna on two occasions, and a shouting match with—of all people—the otherwise quiet Jane Wells. Though that last one, near as he could tell, might have been combined with what was obviously unreciprocated flirting.
