For Honor We Stand (55 page)

“What does ‘here is your share of the meat’ mean.  I don’t see any meat anywhere.”  The doctor sounded irritated, as though he had been looking forward to meat furnished by the Vaaach.

“I think I do,” said Gilbertson, pointing to two dark green boxes on the deck right behind Chief LeBlanc’s station, in the precise center of CIC.  They had apparently appeared out of nowhere.  Clouseau was standing near them, his back arched, hair standing on end. 

“Fantastic,” blurted Bhattacharyya.  “Positive confirmation that the Vaaach have matter translocation technology!”  Everyone looked at him as though he had started reciting Tri-Nin Courtship Poetry (including the traditional requirement that the poetry be recited while dancing naked and placing a flower petal at the feet of one’s intended at the end of every line).  Seeing all eyes on him he raised his hands defensively.  “But, but, but . . .  that’s been a major intelligence question for years.”

“I’m sure it has been, Mister Bhattacharyya.  I’ll need you to draft a paragraph or two on the issue for my report,” Max said warmly.  After all, geeky enthusiasm for minute details about the militarily relevant capabilities of other species was a desirable trait in an Intelligence Officer.

Max went back to his station and punched in a voice channel.  “Engineering.”

“Werner, any sign that the Vaaach have turned off whatever it is they turned on to lock us out of FTL?”

“As a matter of fact, there is.  Test impulses show that the compressibility of this space is returning.  We should be able to go superluminal in ten minutes or so.”

“Outstanding.  Let Chief LeBlanc know as soon as it’s available.  You know how he doesn’t pay attention to status lights.”  LeBlanc snorted.  He hadn’t missed a status light change in more than twenty years.  “I’d like to get out of here before we overstay our welcome.”

“A wise course of action, to be sure.”

“It doesn’t take a Naval War College graduate to figure that one out.  Skipper out.”  Max, of course,
was
a graduate of the Naval War College.  He walked over to stand by Bales, looking warily at the two boxes sent over by the Vaaach.

Meanwhile, at the Fire Fighting and Hazard Control Console, Chief Ardoin stuck Spacer Sanders in the ribs with his elbow.  Sanders did not appreciate the interruption, as he was immersed in untangling a malfunctioning toxic gas alarm.

“What?”

“I’ve got it,” said Ardoin.

“Got what?”

“The nickname.”

“What?”  Sanders was starting to sound monotonous.

“The nickname.  For the Skipper, dummy.”

“OK, Ardoin.”  Sanders made a point of pronouncing the name to rhyme with “coin” instead of ending it correctly--with a sound like the “a” in “plant.”  “Let’s have it.”

Ardoin held up his hand, palm out, moving it in a sweeping motion, in time with his words, as though reading the name written in enormous letters on a gigantic sign or the side of a mountain, “The Swamp Fox.  We need to start using that Vaaach name when we talk about him.  Whaddya think?”

Sanders thought for a moment.  “Ardoin, you have never had one good idea in your whole life.  Not one.  Ever.”  He paused.  “Except, maybe, for this one.”  They both smiled.

Having had his fill of standing and looking at the alien gear, Max turned to Bales.  “All right, get a dolly in here and get these things rolled—rolled very carefully—into Captured Hardware and let’s see what we’ve got.  The Vaaach have sent us some meat.  I’m betting we’re going to like the flavor. 

***

They liked the flavor.  A lot.

“This box,” Bales explained just over an hour later and pointing to the larger of the two, “is probably a standard memory module from the Vaaach ship.  It’s got traces of metal from the mounting brackets that used to hold it in place.  The shape is consistent with the kinds of brackets we use to hold racks of similar-sized components in an array.  We don’t know for sure, but it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the Vaaach may have dozens, even hundreds of these things and use them as the primary storage device for their computer system.  God knows their ship is big enough that they could have ten thousand of the dang things for all we know.”

 He pointed to what looked like a small blue light attached to one end.  “This tiny, glowing blue bump stuck on the back is a power supply.  Don’t ask me how it works.  And, there’s no opening in the case of the main unit, so we’ve got no idea about how the power gets from the power unit to the inside of the data unit.  For all I know, the thing runs off of bright blue fairy dust and the fairies transfer the power by waving their tiny pink wands.  I’ve measured the rate of decay, though, and from all appearances the power will last something on the order of a thousand years.  Maybe two thousand.  Maybe more.  Forget the memory unit, Captain, the Vaaach’s freaking
battery
is five hundred years ahead of us.

“The memory unit is shielded from external scans by some sort of scrambler on the inside.  So, we have no idea of how it works.  None.  The case is one solid metal piece.  No rivets, fastenings, bolts, or welds.  Just smooth metal all the way around without any openings of any kind.  We haven’t a clue as to what the metal is.  The scrambler keeps us from getting any kind of useful readings from any kind of scan we can put together, including the ones we have that are designed to defeat scramblers, and the material is so hard that we can’t scrape off a sample for the mass spec.  Not even a few molecules.  We even poked it ten or twelve times with an old Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer and got zilch.”  

Max broke in.  “OK, Bales, that’s good, but I’m a lot less interested in what the box is made of than I am in what’s inside it.”  Bales, far and away the best computer man on the ship, had a tendency to get drawn into technical issues because they were intellectually interesting, not because they materially related to killing Krag and winning the war.

“Right, sir.  Sorry.”  Bales was aware of the problem.  He tried to keep his focus where it belonged.  But, it was just so darn
cool
to have his hands on a piece of Vaaach technology.  He felt like John Glenn might feel if he had gotten transported from the 1960s and put behind the controls of the Union’s brand new FS-104 Wildcat Fighter-Interceptor.  “Sir, we don’t know what’s inside this box and we’re never going to know what’s inside this box.  All we will ever know is what we get out of it through
this
box.”  He pointed to the second, smaller box.  The two had no connection that anyone could see.

“As near as we can tell, this smaller box is an adaptive interface.  It communicates with the big box.  Somehow.  We can’t read any RF between the two and no metaspacial modulations, so the only thing we can think of is that there’s some sort of controlled, artificial quantum tunneling effect between the two, but that’s only a WHAG.  Or maybe it’s fairies with tiny crystal balls.  I’m thinking we’ll never know, at least not in my lifetime.  Anyway, the two boxes talk to each other.  The small box has got the same kind of magic blue thousand year battery on the back powering it.  And, here is the only part of the whole package that we recognize.  The small box has got a standard IDSSC Type 17 FODIC coming out of it.  I suppose the Vaaach have scanned enough of our computers to know exactly how our systems work because the dang thing is totally plug and play, sir.  I mean, the Vaaach made it so any hatch hanger could make it work.  I just take this cable coming out of the box, stick it into a Fiber Optic Data Interface Cable outlet, and it just boots up as a standard external device, just like I plugged in one of our secondary data modules.”

He touched a key that brought up a menu on one of the wall displays.  “Right now, we’ve got it running but under Level 5 digital sequestration.  I’ve got it hooked into one of the quarantined computers we use to interface with alien gadgets—you know, absolutely no connection whatsoever with the computers that run the ship.  Even a totally separate power supply, plus devices with any data storage or wireless transmission capability that come into this room can never leave, all to keep any alien malware from getting into our system, which is why you had to leave your percom . . . .”

“Bales,” Max interrupted, “They don’t give you command of a rated warship just because you have a loud voice and an ENTJ personality.  I know the elements of level 5 data sequestration.  Now,” Max said, pointing to the wall display, “that’s not our standard menu format.  Why the change?”

“Because, sir, that’s not our menu.  That’s a Vaaach menu being generated, presumably, by the interface device.  Except for differences in the colors, the type faces, and some of the formatting conventions, it could easily be something that my department would put together using one of the standard Navy templates.  This is the top level menu.  We’ve got two options:  ‘Access Database Directly,’ and ‘Access Database Through Linguistic/Symbolic Translation/Transliteration/Conversion Matrix.’  Naturally, we’ve done both.  The Conversion matrix lets us read the database, including all the scientific symbols, translated into Standard and converted into the symbol set and units we use.  So we can read it all.  For the first time!”

“Read
what
, Bales?”

“Captain, don’t you get it.  Remember how the Vaaach read our entire Main Data Core the moment they snagged us?  Well, they did the same thing with the Krag ship before they destroyed it.  They put the whole freaking thing in that little box, gave us a way to read it, and gave it to us as a present.  We have the
entire database
of a Krag
Crayfish
Class Medium Cruiser sitting right there.  We’ve never gotten even a part of one of these before—the best we’ve done is pull a partial dump from some of their base mainframes and get some logistics data and some low level decryption keys.  Their warship memory cores have a quick reset.  They just hit a button and all the bits instantly go to zero leaving not a trace of the data.  We’ve got a whole Main Data Core!  Sir, it’s the biggest intelligence haul in, well, I’m no Intel guy, sir, but . . . .”

From the back of the room, Bhattacharyya spoke up.  “I am.  And, sir, the intelligence implications of this, well, they take my breath away.  Literally.  I’m not kidding.  I feel like I might need to lie down.”  He steadied himself by grasping the edge of a work table.  “Sir, if that is what Bales says it is, this represents the most important involuntary transfer of information from one belligerent power to another in the history of Intelligence.  Ever.  I don’t just mean space combat; I mean going back to guys like Hammurabi and Ramesses.  Sir, think about what’s in our MDC and imagine an enemy getting his hands on it.  It means . . . .”

He was right.  The implications
were
breathtaking.  “Thank you, Mister Bhattacharyya, I get it.  What we’ve got sitting on that table right there can change the course of the war.”  He walked over to the comm panel and punched up a voice channel to CIC. 

“CIC, DeCosta here.”

“XO, this is the skipper.  Are we back in Union space yet?”

“Yes, sir.  Even by the most expansive reading of the Vaaach territorial claims, we’ve been in Union Space for the last four minutes or so.  We’re now on direct course to rendezvous with the pennant.”

“Change in plans.  Alter course to rendezvous with the
Halsey. 
We’ve got a delivery to make to Admiral Hornmeyer and his N2 Section.  Tell Engineering to crack on everything they’ve got.”

“But, sir, we’ve just got orders from Commander Duflot to rejoin the pennant ship and escort it to the repair yards at Pfelung.”

“Not gonna happen.  XO, could you please punch Chin in on this circuit.”  There was a click and a quiet beep. 

“Chin here.  What can I do for you, skipper?”

“Chin, please signal Commander Duflot that we are unable to comply with his order due to Naval Regulations, Article Fifteen, Paragraph 5.  Have the signal state further, that due to security requirements, we are unable to provide further explanation at this time but that a full justification of my actions will be provided at the earliest opportunity.”

“Aye, sir,” said Chin, reluctance showing in every tone.  “He’s going to be hot.”

“Don’t I know it.  But not nearly as hot as the potato we’re carrying.  Not even close. 

“And send the following to Admiral Hornmeyer and to the Chief of Naval Operations in Norfolk.  Priority: 
Flash Z
.”

“
Flash Z
, sir?  That’s reserved for the highest, highest priority communications.  Stuff on which the entire course of the war could turn.  Things like that.  Are you sure, sir?”

“Mister Chin,” Max said with perfect and patient calm.  “I know what
Flash Z
means.  This message easily meets the criteria.  If they had a higher priority than that, I would use that one, instead.  Now, are you ready to take the message?”

“Yes, sir.”  He actually sounded a little shaky.  Chin had never sent anything higher than “Urgent.”  The man knew his job but he tended to be a bit on the twitchy side.

“All right, Chin.  Message begins.  Enigma.  Repeat.  Enigma.  That’s Echo, Nebula, India, Galaxy, Mike, Alfa.  Got that, Chin?”

“Aye, sir.  ‘Enigma.  Repeat.  Enigma.’  The message will go out in less than three minutes, sir.

“Chin?”

“Yes, skipper.”

“Make it two.”

***

“I don’t see why we are in such a furious rush to rejoin the task force,” said Doctor Sahin while sipping his coffee.  “It’s not as though we have just been handed the keys to the kingdom and we have to rush to put them in the right hands to open the gate.”