Chapter 4: Crisis

He swore under his breath.

Why couldn’t he remember the ship’s registration number? Why hadn’t he paid more attention to the customs officer when he had first heard about it? Now it was gone, and all he could recall was that it had a 9 in it and that it ended with a C. But with a thousand Sunguard scout ships out there, the search space was simply too large.

If he were to stumble upon it, he would probably recognize the number, Colonel Reynolds thought. But the other way around? There was no way he would be able to remember it on his own.

Briefly, he considered logging time with a neural writer, hoping the machine would help the memory resurface. The sophisticated circuitry of the writer, carefully controlled by the operating intelligent computer, could induce currents into the nerve cells of his brain and thus affect them with stimuli indistinguishable from those that came from his own senses. It wasn’t writing anything, per se. Stimuli, yes, perhaps, but certainly not memories.

But in order to write, you had to know not just what, but also where, and how to combine those new signals with what already existed in his head. You didn’t perform brain surgery with your eyes closed. And so the neural writer, while far more famous for its ability to deliver data straight into a human brain, was just as good at reading what was already there.

Unfortunately for him, though, its reading limitations were exactly the same as those that regulated its writing—it could interpret the currents in his nerve cells, his thoughts and his emotions, but not his memories. Not unless he actively thought about them. If he recalled his own memories, the neural writer could record them from his conscious thoughts.

Which, of course, made the whole idea unfeasible. The whole problem was that he couldn’t remember in the first place. And what’s more, logging time with the machine without working on an official, active case that required such use would be highly suspicious anyway.

No, he would have to find the ship the old-fashioned way.

Feeling despair threatening to overwhelm him, he decided to try to look at the problem from a different perspective. Whoever was out there was certainly both very capable and very far-reaching, but she, he, or it wasn’t omnipotent. They still lived in the real world.

They might be able to erase the travel record of the scout ship. But they wouldn’t be able to erase the vessel itself, not unless they decided to blow it up. And this wasn’t some civilian craft where the only questions about its disappearance would come from the insurance company. No, this was a military ship, a Sunguard vessel. If it were to blow up, there would be questions. And in line with Codex Vindicta, those questions would be very severe indeed.

So, he felt it safe to assume the ship still existed, which meant the records of it would exist as well, or it would be useless within civilized space. Not that that helped him exactly. He still didn’t remember its registration number.

But he did know the ship had arrived at Beta Comae Berenices on the 20th. Obviously, it was no longer there, or removing it from the records would have been pointless. If it had gone somewhere else on or after the 20th of September, he should be able to find it at its new destination. There, it’d be just one more ship arriving from Beta Comae Berenices, without any connection to Eta Boötis. That leg of its trip would not be suspicious in the slightest, and Colonel Reynolds felt certain his adversary wasn’t foolish enough to draw undue attention to it by erasing a travel log that only contained legitimate routes.

His first search came up empty. Given that Arcturus was the closest major Sunguard base in the area, it seemed likely the scout ship had gone there once it had washed its digital trail of Eta Boötis. Briefly, Colonel Reynolds thought he had found it when the arrival records from Mandela Base showed that a Sunguard ship with registration number SG-742905/C had arrived there on the 21st. The number sounded vaguely like what he remembered. But when he dug a little deeper, the vessel turned out to be a troop carrier, not a scout ship.

Disappointed, he moved on to the next Sunguard base on his list.

Still nothing.

Four hours later, with only Europa and Mars left to check, he was about ready to give up. He had assumed his unknown adversary was hiding out there in the dark void between the stars, not here in the heart of the Solaris system.

How wrong he had been.

On September 21, 2803 AD, Sunguard records, corroborated by visual recordings from nearby security cameras, showed that the small scout ship SG-89034/C had touched down on Landing Pad 14 at Sunguard Headquarters on Europa at 17:52 Universal Standard Time.

The unseen enemy wasn’t out there. They were right here, in the heart of the Sunguard’s operations.

Colonel Reynolds was not surprised in the slightest when his further examination of the records showed that the ship was currently assigned to yet another biotic Special Agent.

At first glance, the evidence seemed damning. His gut told him he was looking at a conspiracy involving the Special Agents, and yet, when he looked more closely at the data, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Nothing in the details pointed to any actual wrongdoing. The travel ban on New Caribbean obviously didn’t apply to the Special Agents themselves. It wasn’t that they were going to a forbidden system that was suspicious—no, that could just be Special Agent business. What felt off was that they had been going to the lost colony, despite claiming there was nothing there.

What were they really up to? First, Special Agent Ellie McBrian had gone to Eta Boötis, stayed there for a day or two, and then returned. And then, just a couple of weeks later, Special Agent Paul Williams had gone there too—again, just for a few hours before returning to Sunguard Headquarters. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they were just going there for a coffee break.

He laughed to himself. It was a ridiculous thought.

But the laugh turned into a snort when he remembered Special Agent McBrian munching on that cinnamon roll in the conference room where they had met, and how she had taken care to bring him a coffee before dressing him down.

What if they really were going to Eta Boötis for coffee?

* * *

“We need to escalate this to Solar Command,” he said to her, nervously fiddling with the lining of his pocket.

General Talerk looked up, a frown on her face. He wasn’t supposed to talk about this. Not here, not in her office. He knew that. But the implications of what he had found were simply too staggering. Too important.

“You know I can’t do that,” she replied. He knew she’d say that, of course. She had to. He also knew she would eventually listen to what he had to say.

The unknown factor was what she would do about it.

“Can I at least tell you what I’ve found?”

She sat in silence, the fingers of her hands intertwined as she contemplated his request.

“Close the door,” she said eventually. In the end, her curiosity had gotten the best of her. When he returned to her desk, he noticed she had closed the blinds of her office windows, too.

“What’s so important?”

“Myan Lami is alive.”

There. He could see on her face that he had her attention now. Still, she was careful in her response.

“That was one of our original hypotheses,” she replied. “We theorized that he had ordered the communications blackout himself and then taken his own hyperspace connection to Europa offline. Remember? That was our best-case scenario.”

“We also shelved that theory because we couldn’t prove it,” Colonel Reynolds reminded her gently. “And besides, back then the premise of that line of thought was that he had taken it upon himself to initiate the blackout. But now we know at least two other Special Agents are involved. That changes things from a command decision by a Special Agent to a conspiracy.”

He was, perhaps, a bit too liberal in how he sprinkled his argument with big words like that. He didn’t actually know what was going on. Even his assertion that Lami was alive was just conjecture. But of all the ideas they had come up with to explain the Eta Boötis incident and the subsequent cover-up by Special Agent McBrian, this was the one version he felt fit the facts best.

There was one more big word he could use. General Talerk would not like this one, not one bit.

“I think he has defected from the Sunguard.”

That got her attention. The Jerrassian woman sat up in her chair, her back straight and her eyes fixed on him. In the military, that was not a word you wielded lightly. In the context of the Special Agents, you did not use it at all.

He could see the gears churning behind her temples. She had warned him not to get them into trouble with his investigation, but back then she had been talking only about his insubordination.

This was something else.

This was treason on Colonel Reynolds’s part. Treason of the highest order. You simply did not accuse a Sunguard Special Agent of defection. If you weren’t even allowed to question how they took their coffee in the morning, you most certainly were not allowed to have an opinion about why they might have cut off contact with Headquarters.

“Just look at the evidence, ma’am,” he said, before she had a chance to shut him down.

“Once we had discarded all the unlikely scenarios, like the asteroid impact or the Sonmai uprising, we had three plausible theories left.

“First, a stellar event. Second, deliberate action on Special Agent Lami’s part. And third, an external threat.

“Now, considering that Special Agent McBrian went there and came back, we can discard the first theory. If it were something that dangerous going on there, even she wouldn’t be back to tell the tale. And as for an external threat… well, I have evidence that a second Special Agent went to Eta Boötis a week ago. If two Special Agents went there and both saw an external threat to the Terran Federation, and yet didn’t act upon it—and we know they didn’t, because we’re not at war—they’re either incompetent or treasonous.

“We know they’re not the former, and while I suppose, in light of my accusation of Lami going rogue, it wouldn’t be unthinkable that others could betray the Federation too, I don’t think we need to go quite that far. Not yet.

“No, I think the far more likely explanation is the one that’s left. This was a deliberate act on Special Agent Lami’s part, and the Special Agent corps is covering it up.”

She mulled that over for a moment before pointing out a flaw in his reasoning.

“Yet our assumption when we discussed that option before was that if the blackout was on purpose, it was a benign event. A Special Agent always acts in the best interest of the Terran Federation. We know that. Whatever reason he might have had for cutting off New Caribbean from the Federation, we assumed it was a good one.”

Colonel Reynolds sighed.

“You’re right,” he said carefully. “But that was before we knew other Special Agents were involved. One Special Agent doing something we don’t understand is just a Special Agent doing Special Agent things. Two of them covering up what a third has done? That’s not benign. That’s a conspiracy.”

She drummed the fingers of her right hand against her left.

“There’s one other thing,” he continued, saving his best argument for last. “Remember the other day, when we talked about the Fotar-mer Incident? Ever since you mentioned it, something about it has kept nagging at me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, so I read up on it. Do you remember who the Special Agent responsible was?”

General Talerk seemed to squirm a little in her chair. “Rehema Nyasi has been the Special Agent in charge of Jerr for several centuries now. She was responsible for Jerr back then, too. But she didn’t participate in the massacre. She stopped it.”

“I know,” Colonel Reynolds admitted. “But someone else was there, too. On October 12, 2718 AD, a Sunguard Special Agent killed twenty-three unarmed civilians in Fotar-mer District. That Special Agent was NL-27. Myan Lami.”

When the general looked at him, her eyes were filled with sorrow. She knew very well what had happened there that day.

“On his first mission—five days old. And on direct Sunguard orders,” she countered. “He can’t have known what he was doing. And don’t forget he also took down several terrorist cells actively engaged in hostilities against the Terran Federation. He saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers that day, too.”

“Perhaps,” Colonel Reynolds said, humoring her. “Or perhaps not. There’s a pattern here. If he was capable of killing twenty-three civilians back then, it’s not inconceivable he could kill a hundred thousand today.”

He could see her ambivalence. He could smell her fear in her sweat, sweet and pungent in the small room.

“You do know this is career-ending if we’re wrong?” she finally asked. It was, perhaps, an understatement.

“I do.”

“You understand this is career-ending even if we’re right, yet go about it the wrong way?”

He nodded.

“All right,” she said, then paused. It was a lot to take in.

“All right. So it’s a conspiracy. But what is the conspiracy?”

He snorted. “Having coffee.”

The general raised an eyebrow. Despite the tension, she smiled weakly at his joke.

“No, I don’t think they’re literally going to Eta Boötis to have coffee with Myan Lami,” he explained. “But they’re going there to talk to him. Socialize. Then they come back. They’re taking care of their own. He’s done something unheard of, and they’re trying to understand why. And they want to do it without involving us.”

General Talerk seemed to relax a bit. “That I can buy. If that’s a conspiracy, it’s a benign one.”

“I don’t agree,” Colonel Reynolds replied, shaking his head. “All right, maybe what they’re doing is in line with the Special Agent mandate. They can do whatever they want, of course. But Lami? Mass murder isn’t benign. And defection is treason.”

She seemed to consider that.

“If that’s true, then that’s inexcusable, I’ll give you that,” General Talerk said after one more long pause. “If he has defected, he has violated his loyalty to the Terran Federation. If. It’s still just a theory, right? I haven’t seen any concrete proof.”

“Agreed.”

“But I can’t see any fault with the actions of Special Agents McBrian and Williams. They’re investigating what has happened. They’re under no obligation to involve or inform us. Not unless Lami is a threat to the Federation.”

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of his investigation. But at least he had won her over to his side.

It would have to do for now.

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While Guardian of the Wolf is entirely standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge, I think you’ll particularly enjoy Soldiers of Heart and Steel and Choices of Steel, both which are prequels to this story, as well as Conscience of Steel and From My Point of View, which are sequels.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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