The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Read online

  “How do you know if you're being watched?” Tanya asked.

  “Depends on who's doing the watching.”

  “Say T'Chillen,” Derek suggested.

  “You start dying,” Chris offered.

  “He's probably right,” Minu admitted.

  “Yeah,” Michael added.

  “Doesn't do you any good to entertain worst case scenarios,” she told them. “Most species aren't nearly as blood thirsty, aggressive, or as well equipped as the T'Chillen. All the better junk piles are staked out by species, some with the ability to enforce their claims, others with less dubious skills. Deep Blue here is about as worthless as you get. I've been here a dozen times over the last year and didn't even see another being. Only backwards species like us come here looking for stuff. Not even the Rasa messed with it. We've run into them here, years ago in my father’s time. Now, it's just a good place to train kiddies like you.” Minu didn't have to look to know that Chris was making a face at her back.

  “Okay, so I want you to spread out and find something useful.”

  “Like what?” Orlando asked, “We're not techs or anything.”

  “You've all been trained in salvage operations including how to recognize operational Concordian devices that we use. So find something, and bring it back. First one back gets bonus points, best find gets more points. Get going.” She found an old overturned aerocar and perched on a crumpled door panel. Most of the team was off individually, they'd been trained to keep an eye on each other’s backs. She could see Chris and Michael staying close together and shook her head. “I wonder if they're homosexuals,” she wondered for the first time.

  Once they were all out of sight in the ruins she took out her tablet and tabbed it to life. Deep Blue was indeed a good choice for a quick run to the frontier with her team of misfits, but the data on the computer was a better reason. They were a few kilometers from the usual junk zone in an area that her salvage maps said held nothing useful. Another map she owned, one left for her by her father, told a different story. Her father's secret logs spoke of the dozens of caches he'd left all over the frontier, each containing both rare and valuable goodies, and hints that would eventually allow her to unlock the deepest encrypted files left for her. And beyond that, hopefully a way to reach the unnamed system provided by the Squeen.

  The Squeen, now that was a mystery. Ted was digging a little deeper for her, trying to find out some more details on the supposedly long dead species. Their own hints given to Minu on their last meeting proved enigmatic at best. How could a species have no leasehold and also not be a squatter somewhere? And if GBX49881 was the world they'd evolved on, what was done to it and how? Maybe they blew the crap out of themselves in a nuclear apocalypse. Judging from the ground water, it was a possibility.

  The system Strong Arm suggested resided in the Tog database of stars and was noted as dangerous, classification FCZ1011. Minu named it Enigma in the database, for her convenience. Sector F of the galaxy was mostly quiet, not like G where they were now. Sector G was often called the Frontier and contained only a couple of leaseholds scattered around. Sector F contained no leaseholds, but more than a few valuable resource locations and junk piles considered 'high value', which meant they were usually claimed by a species. Atmospheric designation C meant it wouldn't be nice to visit. The C worlds were considered 'survivable' by human standards, but only just. And as went along with being in sector F it was a Z ownership designator. An X meant no one wanted it, a Z meant it was in constant contention. Open warfare was not only possible, but common.

  Since taking on the misfits she'd hatched a plan. If those five losers could be formed into a real team perhaps they would be the ones for a high risk mission to Enigma. She justified the danger she would put them through by rationalizing that they would not have been scouts without her. It was the least they owed her.

  “Found something,” she heard over the radio in her ear. It sounded like Chris, which would make sense since it was not called in by procedures.

  “I'm not listening if you're not doing it right.”

  “Chris calling team leader, I have something.”

  “Roger that,” she smiled, “squawk your location, other team members continue your sweep. That includes you, Michael.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  As soon as Minu entered the collapsed building, once a power distribution center, she knew this was it. In each corner of the remaining open space was a small pile of rocks, the top most rock was different from the rest in the pile. Standard Chosen cache marker. Chris was kneeling next to a corroded control panel sweeping his energy sensor back and forth. If he was following procedures, that would be the last step.

  “No EM, no life signs, no flux from a shielded plasma charge, and nothing from the bio sensors.”

  “Very good, scout, proceed and open the cache.” He nodded his head and carefully began opening the panel. Once the four fasteners were released it swung open easily, final confirmation that it was a cache. Inside were three small standard Concordian packing crates, somewhat flat and thin they would hold no more than a cubic meter each.

  “What could be of any use in these?” Chris asked as he examined the crates.

  “Something small,” Minu offered as he looked.

  “They're code locked. I'll try the standard code group.” Chris typed in a sequence to the script keyboard. A single light flashed white, negative in Concordia tech-speak. He tried four more before giving up. “None of the standard codes work.” Minu nodded and leaned over the cache. She typed in a sequence and the light flashed blue, the case making a pinging sound as the magnetic locks released. “How did you know the code?”

  “A little birdie told me,” she joked. Actually it was her father. The access code was recorded in his journal next to this location. It was the first time she'd made it out to one of his secret cache locations, and the first proof of what he promised. “Let me,” she said and nudged him out of the way, “rank has its privileges.”

  “Whatever,” Chris grumbled and made room for her. “Say, why do you wear that old knife in the field?” he asked and gestured at the blade riding in a thigh holster. “It looks like one of those crappy steel jobs they gave us during the trials.”

  “It is, the very one I used, actually.” She shrugged as she prepared to swing open the case. “Call it sentimental purposes.” The case lid swung up to reveal three rows of carefully packed dragonfly-bots. Their gossamer dualloy wings were nestled one on top of another, brilliant green visual receptors and sensors glistening in the sunlight shinning in through the shattered walls.

  “Woof,” Chris said, dumbfounded at the find. “That's a mother lode of D-bots,” he said. Minu nodded, a little bemused at the younger Chosen’s habit of abbreviating everything. She used her code and checked the other two cases and found them all similarly stocked. Each case held thirty D-bots, as Chris called them, ninety all together. In the last case, one of the bots wings was not folded precisely. She plucked it from its case and held it in her hand.

  “Activate,” she said.

  “It probably doesn't even have a battery,” Chris said, but the bot twitched and stood up on its six tiny legs, wings swirling around and humming audibly. “I'll be damned.”

  She held up her tablet and the bot touched its antennae to the device. The tablet beeped once, a secure connection was established. Minu pressed the download button and a single file transferred. It only took a moment to verify that nothing more was in its memory. “Shut down and secure,” she told it and a second later the wings were folded back and it was nestled into the box with the others. “Go through and check them all for any files or intel,” she ordered Chris as she glanced at the file nestled into her tablet.

  “What's in the file?” he asked. Minu ignored him and turned to leave. “Keeping secrets from your team? Is that what command is all about?”

  “If you survive long enough as a Chosen, you'll understand that the universe is made of secrets.”
He opened his mouth to give a smarmy reply then thought about what she said, and thought better of it. “Michael, you might as well come in here and help your buddy check these bots.”

  “Yeah?” came the voice from outside.

  “Sure,” she said as she walked by, “and I'm entering your disregard of orders in the report.

  “Yeah,” he said, shook his head and went inside. “How the hell?” he asked Chris.

  “X-ray vision, I think. Get your ass over here and give me a hand. Can you believe this shit?”

  Outside, away from the two misfits prying eyes, Minu extracted the file and opened it. As she expected it was a code cypher. Taking it from there she dropped it onto one of Chriso's top secret files after another. On the third and last file, it dropped into place. “One of three complete,” the access encryption responded.

  “Crap,” Minu said dejectedly. “Well, it's a start.” Three files, three cypher strings per file, nine total. But there were a hell of a lot more than three 'special caches' in Chriso's journals. Was it just luck that she'd found one on the first try?

  An hour later the team was reassembled at the rally point, Minu with one case over her shoulder, the other two carried by Derek and Orlando (a conscious choice on her part, the bots were very valuable). The team also found a small pile of power control modules and rare sizes of empty EPC that could be reused. Deep Blue lived up to its reputation of a safe training ground, and also gave Minu her first step towards unlocking the remaining mystery of her father.

  It was a week later during a meeting with the combat readiness sub-council of the Chosen that Dram caught up with her. The meeting was breaking for lunch when he got her alone. “What the fuck did you do to Terrence?” he asked.

  “Good to see you, old friend.”

  “Don't give me that, answer my question.”

  “Why?”

  “Okay, fair enough. He's asked for you to be reassigned. Said you did a great job and suggests you be given command of the scouts.”

  “Heh,” Minu grunted and shook her head. She'd been quietly expecting much worse. After her encounter Terrence took a medical leave for a week and then completely avoided her after that. She shrugged and told him, in brief, what happened in the Training department leaders office.

  “That bastard,” Dram snarled, and Minu saw real rage for the first time on his face, and it scared her. “What happened? You didn't...”

  “Hell no. No, I basically grabbed him, in a very delicate place, and threatened to rip it off if he ever tried that sort of thing again. I also told him I'd recorded everything because I thought he'd try something like that, and if he made trouble I'd give it to Jacob, and the press.”

  “Did you record it?”

  “No, wish I'd thought of it though. Never even considered that someone would do something like that.” She chuckled and shook her head. “It's not the first dick I've seen, but to turn around and see the old fart sitting there with his boner pointing at the ceiling...” she blanched, then laughed long and hard. Dram looked shocked, then his facade broke and he joined in.

  “I never told you, but I promised your dad to keep an eye on you.”

  “You didn't have to tell me,” she said and winked. He shook his head again and patted her arm.

  “Anyway, after he got me to promise to watch out for you, he laughed and said maybe I should watch out for everyone else around you. I have to say, he had a point.”

  “No, Terrence had a point, but it might not work as well as before.”

  After more laughter they got it together and continued their conversation over sandwiches. “Those bots you brought back are incredible,” he told her, “ninety state of the art dragonfly-bots.”

  “D-bots?” Minu asked with a smirk.

  Dram gave her a queer look. “All the young Chosen have taken to abbreviating like that.”

  “Oh, gotcha. We must have sent a thousand teams to Deep Blue over the years. EPCs, some other barely useful junk, maybe a rare control panel, that's about it. You take a training mission and come back with a couple million worth of the best bots made in the Concordia. You care to tell me how?”

  Minu considered telling him for a moment. Telling him about her father’s message from beyond the grave, the talk with P'ing, the Weavers, her plans for the trip to Enigma, everything. Then she let out a long breath and shook her head. Even though this was her father’s best friend, she didn't dare take the risk. If he knew she meant to mount up a team and take off into the hinterlands of the empire he'd have her locked behind a desk, probably chained to it. Especially now that he'd admitted what she'd already known in her heart, that he'd been shepherding her all along.

  “Okay, I understand. Secrets make the galaxy go around.”

  “Isn’t that the damn truth?”

  “I always thought your dad was the sneakiest, most double dealing SOB I ever hoped to meet. Now I see you are his kid, through and through.” Minu wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not. “Tell me some day?”

  “Sure, I promise.” He nodded his head, good enough for him. More sandwiches came and they concentrated on refueling their bodies.

  After the conference she got a rare chance to do some cornering herself. In this case it was Ted Hurt and Bjorn, probably the two smartest people on the planet. She found them both just down the hall from the conference center, hard at work in the lab they jointly operated. As was the case for the last year they were still hard at work on the joint role fighter she'd needed for the Rangers. Most of the fabrications design work was done and they were just tinkering with the systems integration. The center of the lab was dominated by a large pod holding two seated Chosen, both with helmets covering their entire faces and heads. The pod simulated the interior controls of the fighters; the helmets provided the simulated operating environment. Before the battle with the Tanam Minu was spending at least one afternoon a week here working with them. The first twenty fighters were already in service, an ingenious hybrid of existing old fashioned Concordian transports and state of the art fields to help reform the hull and add weaponry.

  Bjorn, white hair still wild and unkempt, was typing furiously at a holo-keyboard while Ted watched a projection of the simulation on one wall of liquid display. The pilots were running through a strafing maneuver exercise against an armed target, dodging and weaving through realistic looking hills and valleys. Inside the pod the pilots jerked and bumped around, the simulation made it as realistic as possible through the use of small hoverfield projectors. Ted was shaking his head from side to side, his long but meticulously kept graying black hair waving. She noticed the bald spot on top had grown wider. “I was wondering when you'd make an appearance,” he said without looking up.

  “How?” she asked.

  “My dear, that subtle body lotion you use is enough to make me sit up and grin.” Minu rolled her eyes. He'd never missed a beat in his attempts to get into her pants. She wondered if she just gave up and let him if he'd give it a rest, or become completely uncontrollable. “Is my massive sex appeal finally getting to you, lass?”

  “More like a slight case of nausea,” she said and came closer to look at the displays.

  “Hi Minu!” Bjorn called without missing a key stroke. “Where the hell have you been? You're supposed to come by once a week, remember?”

  “She was reassigned months ago, Bjorn,” Ted barked at him, “do you remember?”

  “Can't say that I do,” he replied. Minu observed for a few more minutes as they strafed the ground target over and over.

  “What's wrong?” she finally asked.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Ted grinned. “We just locked down the last control problem, the one that caused the crash last week.”

  “Crash! No one told me about a crash.”

  “Aaron must have considered it unimportant. He was the pilot. Now calm down, I said it wasn't bad. They were simulating strafing runs and the controls developed a feedback wobble. The fighter clipped a hill and nosed into a riv
er. Aaron is an excellent pilot and managed to roll over and level them before they hit.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Three injured, he was the worst with a broken wrist. I hear he's already back in with the training cycle.”

  Minu made a face and reminded herself to give him a hard time for not telling her. Then she remembered she wasn't in charge of the Rangers any more. Would she have called her friends if the same thing happened? Unlikely, she was forced to admit. “Okay, so you’ve got it taken care of?”

  “Yep, old Bjorn over there just made us go through a full dress rehearsal. They'll take one out next week at Ft. Jovich and do a live test. It was just software, a skipped digit in the dynamic feedback resistance subroutine.”

  “If you're done, do you have time to talk?”

  Later the three shared a table in the corner of the cafeteria. Minu saw they'd painted the walls, but the food was the same, filling and unspectacular. Over meatloaf, tasting suspiciously like kloth, with potatoes and gravy she told them why she'd come.

  “Original Concordias?” Ted asked, his face at first confused then intrigued.

  “Been wondering that for a long time,” Bjorn said around a mouthful of potatoes.

  “Kloth shit,” Ted said.

  “No, really. It's kinda like the chicken and the egg, but bigger.”

  “Eloquent, as usual.”

  “Whatever. It’s part missing link, part creationism versus evolution.” Minu always loved when the two got going, it at least it was amusing. Often it was educational.

  “The only advantage of getting our home world blown up, the fundamentalist view is mostly dead.” Ted grinned wide. “The Concordia had to start somewhere, right? All the aliens I've spoken to go every which way. Most don't think there was an original Concordia, they think it just became an alliance of species that grew and grew, maybe beginning a billion years ago.”

  “I don't buy that,' Minu said.

  “Me neither,” Ted agreed.

  “Then we're in consensus. The other two theories are such. An ancient and powerful species evolved at the beginning of time, and being all alone seeded the galaxy with a nearly infinite variety of genetic seeds, then died off before any of them matured, leaving behind the Portals as a gift to their progeny.”