By Other Means (20 page)

“Will the cloaking hold up that close to another singularity?”

That, the elder Parithalian had to admit, was the catch.

Hiding a gravity source was possible, but it was extremely tricky. Since gravity propagated in waves, the easiest way to cloak a source was to use a secondary source that was offset by a half phase point. That way the two sources of gravity waves functioned to cancel each other out, so in order to mask gravity you had to first
double
it.

The most difficult part of this was keeping containment on the two opposing gravity sources, since one of them had to be created from extra-universal material. If one lost containment on an artificial singularity, particularly in the presence of another in an opposing phase… Well, the results were generally spectacular, impressive, and final.

“We’ll make it work.”

*****

Sorilla got up, irritably glaring around the room as she stalked over to the comm panel and jabbed at one of the buttons.

“Yes Major?”

“What’s going on with the gravity, Parker? I can feel a burr trying to roll me out of bed, it’s damned freaking annoying.”

The young voice on the other end paused for a moment, coming back quietly and more than a little nervously.

“S-sorry, Ma’am. We’re having a hard time tracking down the exact vector on it, but it’s not internal to the Mexico.”

Sorilla sighed, “Must be a new ship arrival.”

“No Ma’am, nothing new in sector for over twelve hours.”

“Tell the Chief to calibrate his scans eighteen degrees starboard, down plane.” She ordered, “and request that the Mexico be re-oriented eight degrees, same.”

“Aye Ma’am,” The crewman told her. “Wilco.”

“Good. I’m going back to sleep.” Sorilla grumbled, closing the connection.

Sometimes the subconscious interception of her implant data was more trouble than it was worth. Her brain was actually better at interpreting the data than her processor was, but the filters on her brain
sucked
. At least with her implants she could shut the feed off, but in order to function correctly the accelerometers in her body had to be constantly re-calibrating themselves.

That gave her a lot of advantages, including a basically infallible dead reckoning guidance system… she didn’t need no stinking GPS to know where she was to within ten centimeters, but it also meant that the feed system was always being intercepted by her hind brain and that was a pain she didn’t want to deal with.

Not that she had a choice, of course.

If I get my hands on the bastard who’s running an uncalibrated singularity around here, I’m gonna strangle them and feed them to their own tech.

Sorilla climbed back into bed, sighing softly as she felt the Mexico shift in space to compensate for the gravetic variation. At least the crew of the Mexico were on top of things, even if one of the alien groups out there wasn’t.

*****

“Damn, how does she do that?” Parker shook his head as he watched the flux fade from his instruments, leaving all scanners nominal.

They were still tracking the unknown gravity fluctuation, of course, it hadn’t been eliminated by a simple course change, but now at least it was no longer screwing with the calibrations of their systems.

“Who?”

“Major Aida,” Parker said as he glanced up to see a Senior Navy Hand approaching.

Sr NavHand Miller made an instant face, “The Jinx? What did she do?”

“Don’t call her that,” Parker growled, “and she pinned down that gravity flux we’ve been hunting for the last hour.”

“How the hell did she do that? Where is she?” Miller looked around, “I didn’t see her here.”

“She did it from her room,” Parker shook his head, “I don’t know what they crammed into that lady’s skull, but it’s more accurate than anything we’ve got here.”

“Our instruments are the size of frigging elephants, Lieutenant,” Miller scowled, “I know she’s some special forces bitch, but there’s no way that their toys are that advanced.”

Parker just shrugged, “All I know is that she called up complaining about it, told us to adjust our position so she could get some sleep.”

Miller just stared at him for a long moment before finally blurting, “Are you frigging kidding me?”

“Nope.”

“That’s not even humanly possible.”

“Look, all I know,” Parker said, again “Is that she’s called us twice now, and locked down the flux both times. She’s more accurate than the shipboard accelerometers by at least a factor of ten. If we see action on this run, I hope she’s on the bridge telling the Captain what direction to steer because I bet she could beat the computers to locating the zero of a singularity assault.”

Miller shook his head, mumbling something about Sorilla being a freak under his breath. Parker let it pass, he was aware of her reputation on board ship, but didn’t put much stock in the paranoid delusions that some were passing off as ‘tradition’.

So far, in his admittedly limited interactions with the lady, he’d been impressed every shot.

That was enough for him.

The next ship-day, the Mexico was almost literally abuzz with the combined motion of practically ever crewmember rushing about to make things
perfect
for the arrival of the alien diplomats. Never mind that basically no one on board liked the aliens, most would have happily dropped a few of the gigaton nukes on the station and sailed off whistling, but that didn’t matter. This was as matter of pride, both as representatives of humanity and the more important shipboard pride as a crewmember of the Mexico.

Decks were swabbed, inspections were inspected, and anything out of place was put back in… with a hammer, if necessary.

As the Admiral had said the day before, putting on a show was one of the things that the crew of any Navy ship… be it brown, blue, or black Navy… did best.

Sorilla found herself once more in her SOLCOM dress blacks, with only the forest green berets and medals to provide any sort of color to the figure she cut. She’d have done away with the medals too, if it were her option, but the Berets and emblem was one thing they’d have to shoot her to remove.

As they were waiting for the diplomatic shuttle to arrive, she allowed herself a moment to close her eyes and lean on a bulkhead, hiding a grimace as she felt the first twinges of nausea forming deep in her guts. Whoever was messing with the gravity fields nearby was at it again, and he was really riding on her last nerve.

“You alright, Major?”

“Yes Sir,” Sorilla straightened to attention, recognizing the Admiral’s voice.

She should have seen his approach on her HUD, but had been distracted.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ghost gravity signal is back, someone keeps moving it around,” She said, barely managing not to growl. “I’d like five minutes with that jackass… pardon the language, Admiral.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Ruger said, musingly. He’d heard about the ghost signal, of course, it made it into his daily reports but no one had pinned it down yet. His knowledge of Major Aida’s implants was far from complete, but he was surprised that she could sense it so clearly. “I didn’t know your accelerometers were so sensitive, Major.”

“Technically, they’re not,” She said, sighing. “the white sheet specs only put them around twenty percent better than standard issue portable units, and in truth they may not be that good.”

“I don’t understand,” Ruger frowned.

Standard issue portable units were decent, but he knew for a fact that there was zero percent chance that they’d be able to differentiate the ghost signal from the Mexico’s own singularity. There was just too much interference, even with full diagnostics off the Mexico’s reactor you couldn’t pick out a signal as tight as the ghost was proving to be short of multiple shipboard units, and even those were spotty.

“Were you briefed on the implant suite I use?” She asked.

“Yes, neural link instead of the near field tech that’s become standardized.”

“Right, well there was an unexpected complication using neural paths for communication,” She told him. “The neurons are marginally faster, and completely secure… there’s zero percent chance my systems could be jammed short of killing me.”

Ruger snorted, “That seems like a good way to ‘jam’ any system.”

“Yeah, it’d do the job,” Sorilla smiled tightly, “however there was a… let’s call it a complication, Sir.”

“What sort?”

“the hardware interfaces with my wetware,” She tapped the side of her skull, “outside cleared channels. Basically, my brain has adapted to the signals running through my neural system and is processing them faster… and better… than my CPU can.”

Ruger whistled softly, “Better? Really?”

“Yes sir. I can  actually feel the distinct pulls from multiple vectors, instead of just the total vector combination,” She told him, “Even the biggest shipboard accelerometers take seconds, at best, to cut up the vectors based on known data. Somehow, my brain does it almost instantly,
without
access to a database of known gravity sources.”

Ruger stared at her for a long moment before finally blurting, “Why did they let you out of the lab?”

She snorted, “Because it didn’t happen when they turned it on. The system worked as advertised for months or more, until my brain started decoding the military encryption used in the implants.”

Ruger groaned, that alone sounded like pure fiction. He knew the specs on those systems, and they were so complicated that the best computers in existence couldn’t decode them in any practical time period. The idea that they could be cracked by accident, rankled his professionalism to say the least.

“Since then it’s been getting… stronger,” Sorilla admitted.

“Amazing,” Ruger said, “I’m surprised you haven’t been pulled off into a lab somewhere.”

“They did all their tests, couldn’t find anything.” Sorilla shrugged, “one Doc wanted to yank my implants, but during the war my experience was more valuable.”

I wonder who made that decision?
, Ruger mused, he wouldn’t have let her out into the field until he knew exactly what was going on in her head.

Sorilla glanced over at him, easily reading the Admiral’s expression and body language even before her implants filled her in on the same.

“Relax, it’s not like I broke the encryption key, Sir. Somehow I just subconsciously recognize the patterns.” She said, “They took all their scans, and I’m sure someone is working on repeating it even now.”

“I hope so,” Ruger said, “because if it gets out that it can be done, I have no doubt the Russians and the Chinese will throw every warm body they can at it themselves.”

“Probably,” Sorilla admitted, “but they’d still need to jack someone’s wetware into a neural implant, and SOLCOM doesn’t even make those anymore except in a few small labs. You can’t crack broadcast encryption this way, and it takes months at least to even start basic pattern recognition.”

“I suppose,” Ruger admitted after a moment’s thought.

Put that way he realized that it was a seemingly huge development that actually had very little practical application, as things were currently run. Sure it did the impossible, but it did it in such a way that you almost couldn’t do anything with the results.

Very strange
.

Also, he had to admit, that the continuing development of the implants and their interface with Aida was far more interesting. Looked at it that way, having her out and about, gaining as much experience with gravity sources as possible, made sense. Eventually, though, there was no question that they were going to have to break that secret and figure out exactly how it was that she did what she did.

Ruger shook his head clear as a whistle sounded, alerting him to the arrival of the alien diplomacy team.

“Alright, Major. Enough shop talk,” He told Sorilla, “Time to get back to work.”

“Aye Sir,” She said, a little more grimly that the situation warranted, but he let it go.

She was obviously dealing with problems of her own.

*****

The massive airlock on the Mexico’s hangar bar cycled smoothly, permitting the alien ship access to the pressurized section. Sorilla had seen the alien’s combat shuttles in action in previous encounters, but this was probably the first time she’d see one of their VIP transports.

The ship was bulky, large for a personnel transport in her estimation, with the chunky lines of something never designed to enter the atmosphere. Instead it seemed optimized for cargo capacity, if she were to judge just based on the exterior.

It rolled to a stop on a gantry slide, locking into place with a metallic clang that reverberated for several long moments before the large lock on the ship itself hissed and began to open.

The crew of the Mexico was arrayed in ranks, standing at attention as the heavy doors slid open to reveal the first rank of the Alliance diplomacy team.

“Atten-Hut!”

The call went out as the first member of the Alliance team stepped off the ship and set foot on the deck of the Mexico, causing every member of the SOLCOM ship’s crew to snap to salute as one. Over three hundred men and women moved in sync, the sound of their motion startlingly loud in the large bay.

The Alliance people had seen it before, of course, but a few of them shifted nervously as they disembarked and walked down the center line to where the Ambassador and Admiral were waiting.

“Welcome back aboard the Mexico, Ambassador.” Admiral Ruger said as the Alliance delegation approached. “We’ve cleared one of the Observation Struts, I believe you’ll enjoy the facilities. The view is magnificent.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” The Alliance Ambassador said stiffly, not looking especially happy to be on the Mexico, but certainly unwilling to show or admit as much. He turned stiffly and nodded to the human Ambassador in greeting, “Ambassador.”

“It’s a pleasure to have you on board again.”

Ruger let the two diplomats do their thing, turning half away to sweep the delegation with an intense stare. The alien they’d identified as a commando was apparently there, along with another that they had tentatively labeled as an Intelligence Officer.