The turquoise queen, p.31
The Turquoise Queen, page 31
part #1 of Coalition Series
His dreadnought, like many others, remained in orbit of the Aquatic homeworld. The very transit route that made the system valuable was now a path through which a punitive imperial attack might flood in, so they must remain vigilant.
In the days that followed, Rohaifril carried out his duties with the same diligence as always, overseeing exercise routines, emergency drills, and other routine tasks. Unless the ship was boarded, or they had to go planetside, there wasn't much for his troops to do, except train and prepare for the worst. It left him with plenty of spare time. He spent as much of it as possible in the ocean below, far away from his army buddies, where he could get some true privacy.
On a casual swim through Scarlet Reef's canyons, his fins carried him to a busy street he hadn't been through in ages. Lines of pods swarmed above, near the surface, while crowds of Aquatics and Sencris rushed past him. Neon signs and holographic projections covered every centimeter of free wall space, lighting up the depths. In this part of the city, most of the billboards had a tactile component, like high relief, so that sonars could pick them up. His attention was drawn to one with a serpentine figure made of square segments joined together by pistons, with three exaggerated antennae jutting from its mechanical looking head. The facade of a huge electronics shop.
He went in, started perusing the communicators section. Front and center were rows of neatly arranged, well lit, gleaming earplugs, each identical to the next, except for some minute detail or some technical specification mentioned in the plaque below it. Not what he was there for. Further inside the shop, he found a shelf filled with bulky apparatuses. They had hefty price tags and were locked behind glass resistant to both railgun and energy blasts.
They still were affordable, on his salary. Even the most expensive one, with the most impressive claims written on its box. It would make a dent in his tide to tide budget, no question, but he could get a high-grade secure transmitter, if he really wanted one.
He pondered the idea for a long while, unsure of why he was even considering it in the first place. Professional curiosity, paranoia? Perhaps. They had, after all, erased his suit data without asking him for any consent. No, it was something else, he knew it. He hailed a vendor, pointed to the one he wanted. The aquatic led him to a fortified cabinet, showed his own eye to its lock, and pulled out the product.
As Rohaifril left the store with the heavy package under his arm, he felt an immediate pang of regret. He didn't know what to use it for, or even how to operate it. The most immediate problem, however, was where to put the thing. It was not illegal, per se, for an officer to keep a personal secure transmitter aboard a dreadnought. Under the present circumstances, however, it would put a huge target on his back for anyone looking for potential spies and traitors. It would make him interesting for intelligence agents, like the ones Three Purple Screams now commanded.
For the moment he stored it, still sealed in its box, in his old apartment on Scarlet Reef. In a locked cabinet in his bedroom, not too different from the one in the store, except with thinner walls.
He left the package there for a while, burying the noise of repeating railgun fire, and the sight of shredded bodies, under routine. He conducted drills, addressed the worries, big and small, of his subordinates, provided reports to his superiors. It left him with too much time on his hands.
A nagging feeling, that he should do something about what he'd seen the Aquatic assassin do, persisted. A distressed shipboard soldier told him a tale he'd heard from a close friend in the ocean below. The friend, an Aquatic, had watched a neighbor, an old Sencris woman he'd known for hundreds of tides, get dragged from her home by authorities. A retired officer, it turned out she'd been caught trying to transmit classified data into imperial space. How she'd got her hands on that information, the soldier continued, was a mystery the government was eager to unravel.
As he heard the story, Rohaifril pictured the old lady strapped to a chair, a mesh of electrodes glued to her head, cables flowing like tendrils into a mind probing device. In front of her, asking pointed questions while a technician monitored her brain for answers, he pictured Three Purple Screams. A chill ran through his spine when he wondered if asking questions was all she'd be doing. Because she liked her work too much.
It made that nagging feeling that much stronger. So, when news arrived that his dreadnought would soon be relocated away from Illuminated Ocean, he made one last trip to his old apartment. He opened the box, and downloaded the communicator's instructions manual to his personal computer, so that he could watch it without having to use a network connection. Because those could be monitored.
He wrapped the device in a change of clothes, brought it aboard in secret. No one would search his cabin, he was trusted enough by his peers to be certain of that. Just to be sure, he stashed it in an empty space under his bed.
Studying how the communicator worked took up much of his free time in the following days. There were various security protocols one could employ when sending or receiving transmissions, it turned out. Each with its own advantages, risks, countermeasures. There were tricks for disguising a message, as it leaped from one interstellar relay to the next, and tricks to make the message reveal itself before it was supposed to. It was all in the very detailed manual he'd downloaded. It also notified the user about the next level options available to, say, a head of state trying to communicate incognito.
In the mess hall, along with his old friend and a crowd of other crewmates, he watched footage of Earth's invasion. In youth he might have cheered as imperial dreadnoughts overwhelmed the Earthlings' feeble orbital defenses. He saw shock, disbelief, anger and more on the other officers' faces. While he no longer felt pride at Senchrien's might, he was surprised to notice he did not feel any of that either. Only a deep regret that all of this was happening at all.
Word of another fleet movement arrived. After what turned out to be a short stint patrolling a border colony, his dreadnought would be returning to Illuminated Ocean, to participate in a large-scale operation of some sort. The rumor he heard from above was that it would take them into imperial space itself. He caught a few young, inexperienced soldiers celebrating that they'd see some action at last.
This could only mean one thing. The Coalition was planning a counterattack, which would force him to fight and kill other Sencris. That was expected. He'd known it was a possibility from the moment he pledged allegiance to the new Republic. But these people to whom Corhadriam had given power made him wonder. What else, besides battling imperial troops, might they ask of him? Attacking civilians, for instance, had seemed unthinkable before the transition. After watching his leader give Three Purple Screams a position of power, he was not so sure at all.
That day, at the end of his shift, Rohaifril retreated to his cabin, locked its door, and unpacked the secure transmitter. After studying it for so long, he decided the time had come to give it a try.
There were no second chances with something like this. He had rehearsed the necessary steps. What buttons to press, what options to select and when to activate what. How to connect it to the ship's main antenna, override its security protocols, cover his tracks afterward. If he got a single step wrong, it would be his own troops knocking at his door, lances in hand.
He took a deep breath, controlled the slight shaking in his hand, and pressed the on switch. He had pondered what message to send, and to whom. He inputted the contact information for the viceroy's office on Aknossindeli, the nearest Empire controlled transit hub.
The text he typed was minimal. An inconspicuous blip, easy to annex to any data package. His full name and rank, contact instructions, and the lines "willing to provide strategic information. Awaiting orders." As a show of sincerity, he added a copy of his warship's future itinerary.
He hit the button to send. It felt as if it had delivered an electric shock to his finger, making him recoil from the machine with open hands. It was done, for better or worse.
He had timed his actions to coincide with a routine data transmission to Illuminated Ocean. Disguised as a letter to relatives, his encrypted message piggybacked on that, on its way to the local system's interstellar relay. From there, it took a different route, beaming straight into imperial space, where, upon arrival, it would unravel its true contents.
For the next hour, Rohaifril listened for the sound of rushing soldiers in the corridor outside. They never came. He had succeeded in this second betrayal, the first having been against Senchrien itself. His conscience was clear. Clearer now than it had ever been since the raid on the government offices. After all, Corhadriam's betrayal had been a much deeper one, a betrayal of his own principles, and of every person under his rule.
As for the viceroy's people on Aknossindeli, they'd have cause to distrust the transmission about to reach their office, even with the small token of verifiable information attached. It came from an untrustworthy source within the treacherous Sencris-Aquatic Republic's military. But Rohaifril hoped they would overcome their suspicions and allow him the chance to right his wrongs. He wished now to return to the Empire's fold, to help defend it, and its people, from this government he'd played a small part in creating.
Listening to the Sun
The Aquatic surveyor swam up the dreadnought's unfamiliar hallways. So rare for one of his kind, or of any native species of a colony in fact, to be allowed in there. Warships were the domain of the rulers, of the Sencris. Yet he heard this would be changing fast. In the new Republic, all inhabitants were granted citizenship, and all citizens allowed to apply for a position in the Armada.
Not his case. He was a civilian. A specialist, procured by the newly appointed co-head of intelligence to perform a specific task. Discretion was of the utmost importance, she'd stressed, and there would be severe consequences for breaching it. He'd found her to be an utterly terrifying woman, so betraying her trust was out of the question.
The swim was tiring. Twice he had to ask for directions from passing officers. Once, his path was blocked by an armored lancer, who politely informed him drone operations was off-limits, before pointing up to an open doorway on the ceiling. This was good, it meant he was on the right path. He assumed drone operations couldn't be too far from the main hangar, where he was headed.
A few turns later, he reached a corridor wider than the others. One bulkhead was lined with evenly spaced hatches, each leading into a docked corvette. The Aquatic browsed them until he found the right one. It was near the end of the corridor, just before where it curved to go around the hangar bay. He pressed a tentacle tip to the large button by the hatch, let the biometric sensor do its work. A moment later, the hatch opened with a hiss and a cloud of little bubbles.
"You're late again." The ideograms flashed on the upper right side of his field of view, translated from the original ultrasound.
Coiled on a chair in the Corvette's cockpit was a young Sencris, the scales of his face covered in the teal freckles of a shallow water dweller. He wore a form-fitting white uniform with golden shoulder plates.
"Sorry, still getting used to working on this ship. The corridors all look the same," the surveyor flashed in frustrated yellows that his colorblind companion couldn't see.
The Sencris shook his head, as if to convey that over a third of a tide was time enough to get accustomed to the ship's layout, regardless of differences in culture and sensory perceptions.
As the Aquatic took his seat, the Sencris imputed the commands to detach the docking clamps and fire up the engines. The corvette's silhouette differed little from others of its kind. Upon close inspection, however, it was clear to see it had been modified. A set of high sensitivity antennae jutted out from its underside, where its torpedo launcher ought to be. It's sensors arrays, in general, had been enhanced to perform a specific task.
The hangar doors slid open, and the small vessel flew free of the dreadnoughts gravity well. It headed straight towards the brightest spot in the sky. Below them, a bleached crescent, a world it's inhabitants considered just arid enough to be pleasant.
Moments later, a voice popped up in the ship's communicator, low pitched and dull.
"This is Arjosat ground control to Sencris corvette. Your launch was not cleared by central. State your intentions." It sounded like an order.
The two crewmen exchanged incredulous looks. One of Uljer Nourdolvi's cronies, it must be, trying to establish some measure of authority over the star system, when in reality they had none. On the planet's surface, yes, the Galxij revolutionary ruled supreme. With an iron fist, the surveyor had heard. Up here, however, Nourdolvi had less say than any random lancer aboard the dreadnought they'd just left.
Still, it helped run things smoother if everyone played along, their superiors had instructed. Obedient, the Sencris pilot opened a channel to the planet's surface, to explain himself.
"Ground control, we are conducting a routine scouting mission, as authorized by the Sencris-Aquatic Republic's government. Please contact them for confirmation."
That should keep them busy enough, the Aquatic thought. More likely the locals would just allow them to mind their business, rather than going through the trouble of seeking confirmation from Illuminated Ocean. Meanwhile, they stayed on course, Arjosat's angry sun growing steady in their front window.
As predicted, there was no further challenge from the planet's surface. This wasn't the first time they had to deal with some local bureaucrat acting tough. They'd had several episodes like that. Always, the person on the other side of the communicator acted as if it was the first time their corvette conducted a survey, rather than the tenth, or twentieth. Just to pester him and the other crews, the Sencris pilot was convinced. Nourdolvi made sure to point out his authority at every chance he got. Even if it meant hindering or inconveniencing the very forces sent to protect him from imperial retaliation.
The pilot brought the modified bomber to a stop, while the surveyor got to work, activating the sensors array. In his main screen, a series of images of the sun appeared, each in a different wavelength, while smaller screens displayed graphs and bits of data.
This had been his routine for the past ten days. Stare at those screens, take notes, make adjustments to the equipment when necessary. On occasion, watch his Sencris colleague negotiate with meddlers from Arjosat.
Today there was a moment's break in that routine. He found what he'd been instructed to look for. The first signs of a storm brewing in the sun's inner layers, inching towards the surface, towards the planet behind the ship.
They would need to take the data back to the dreadnought for further analysis. Whoever had commissioned this endeavor demanded precise results, with particular attention to the timeline of the predictions being made. Their patrons also demanded secrecy, so transmitting it right away was out of the question. They would only have confirmation of what they'd found once their shift was over. Still, it was promising, very much so. They took a break to celebrate their discovery, before returning to the old routine. A few more hours to go, before another modified bomber, with another surveyor onboard, came to take their place.
Meanwhile, on Arjosat, on a dilapidated, battle-scarred control tower, the Galxij bureaucrat who had questioned the corvette pilot also had a few hours left on his shift. He, and a crew of seven others, were in charge of monitoring objects in orbit over a section of the sky. In a room with narrow windows, he stared at a screen with countless moving dots, shapes and lines, representing ships, shuttles, satellites, and their trajectories. For the most part, the traffic control system itself saw to it that none of those lines intersected when they shouldn't. The Galxij's task was only to contact the people on board and question them, when one of those objects deviated from it's declared path.
That Sencris pilot, for example. The people in that dreadnought overhead could do as they saw fit, they could disobey the rules all they wanted. Theirs was the power to reduce every city on Arjosat to rubble, and only by their grace was the Empire kept from doing just that, in retaliation for the rebellion. The Galxij ground control operator knew all that.
But he could at least remind them that there were rules. He'd clenched his fist at the thought, as he saw the icon representing the corvette detach from its mothership and head out to parts unknown. All without offering any kind of explanation to the star system's inhabitants. Yes, at every chance he got, he would remind the Sencris of who this world truly belonged to, just like Uljer said in his speeches. Be they from the Empire or this new Republic, he would remind them.
So he had opened a communication channel, to demand satisfaction from that stray corvette. Its pilot, after apologizing for his transgression, had stopped to request authorization from his government for a routine patrol. But the operator could tell there was more to it, he'd noticed it in the pilot's voice, even trough the translator.
That was how the Galxij operator told the story to an incredulous bunch of his workmates, as they walked to a nearby female pen to unwind. He failed to notice that the newest of these workmates, a young man at this job for less than a month, was an Arjosatij. Not an immigrant from the homeworld like him, but a born and raised Arjosatij.
After his rebellion, Uljer's guerrillas had been quick to purge Arjosat natives from all positions of power, and from all jobs related to planetary security in the slightest. As the days went by, however, they'd begun to creep back in. After all, it was difficult to keep the majority of a world's population away from running most of its public services. No native would ever be entrusted to hold a weapon. They were underpaid. They were monitored, the tiniest mistakes liable to be interpreted as a sign of treason, and punished accordingly. Still, native bureaucrats and technicians were, soon enough, back in the fold.
