Communication Failure Read online

  “You,” she said, pointing at him when she caught his eye. “Leftennant Faraz. Here. Now.”

  The leftennant came with enthusiastic alacrity. At least, he did after Alandra shouted his name three more times. What was wrong with him? She’d only kicked him in the head once. He’d only disappointed her once.

  “Yes, Grand Marshal?”

  “Can you repeat back to me the words I asked you to send to the commander of the Meridan fleet?”

  Faraz looked at her sideways for a moment, his bottom lip trembling a little bit. Any small amount of military bearing he was maintaining was belied by the hunch in his back and the way he shuffled his feet. And the fact that he was quietly sobbing.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “I don’t understand how you want me to feed the birds some random feet.”

  Alandra’s eyes narrowed, her voice growing louder. “I told you to repeat the words I asked you to send to the commander of the Meridan fleet!”

  Faraz, in a gesture that Alandra found very disrespectful, turned his face partially away from her, hiding the bruised portion. Maybe he thought it would only remind her of his previous failures. For some reason, he was nodding now.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said, his head moving almost spasmodically. “Absolutely. I can. You told me to tell them ‘we’re invading.’ And that’s what I said, ma’am. I said it exactly like you said. Just like you said to say it. I said it.” He swallowed, then tilted his head, squinting. “What is that ringing? Do you hear ringing? I’ve been picking up my datapad all day, but nobody is on the other end. I think someone is prank-calling me.”

  Alandra took a deep breath. She let it out slowly, making a sound like a snake, hissing through her teeth. Her hands trembled as they clutched the armrests of her commander’s chair.

  Then she sprang up and started shouting instructions.

  “Call back the Strikers,” she barked. “Tell all the Battle Spiders to start an immediate weapons cooldown procedure.”

  “But Grand Marshal,” Zergan said, his face confused. “What are you doing? You can’t just tell the Battle Spiders to fire and then pull out at the last second. It ruins the their attack coils.” He grimaced. “I hear it’s also very painful.”

  “If they have to discharge, have them discharge into empty space,” Alandra said with a wave of her hand. “Get the fighter screen back into patrol position.”

  Leftennant Faraz was slowly slinking away.

  “You!” Alandra said, making sure she was loud enough to be heard and understood. “Stay where you are.”

  He started sobbing again, which was really starting to annoy her. Communications officers didn’t sob. Thelicosans didn’t sob. They were tough, relentless, resilient descendants of the hardened scientists who had been the first to colonize the rough, unforgiving terrain of old Mars. If you made a mistake, you acknowledged it, internalized it, then took the punishment and moved on. Then you made sure never to make another one or you would get kicked in the face by Alandra.

  “I want radio silence immediately!” she shouted. “Set up a wide-frequency jamming net. No communications are authorized unless they go through me.”

  “That’s already been done, Grand Marshal,” Zergan said, some of his confusion fading into pride. “I gave the order as soon as we came out of Un-Space. The Strikers took out some of their comm relays, and the jamming equipment will do the rest.”

  So shots had already been fired. Alandra was too late. Still, she could salvage this, somehow. Or at least prevent it from getting any worse. Thankfully Meridan comm relays weren’t manned, or she’d have blood on her hands already.

  “Good,” she said. “Good. I don’t want the Meridans talking to anyone until we have a chance to clear this up.”

  “Clear this up?” Zergan said. His face had been alternating so quickly between utter confusion and triumphant zeal that one of his cheeks was now rapidly moving up and down of its own accord. It made the dark caterpillar of his eyebrows look as though it was doing a mating dance. “I thought you were going to crush these worms. Or at least negotiate a humiliating surrender after they’d had a chance to taste our overwhelming force. What is there to clear up?”

  Alandra tapped her fingers on the armrest. How could she fix this?

  “Send a message to Captain Rogers,” she said. “I want it to—”

  “We can’t send a message to Captain Rogers,” Leftennant Faraz said, his face still turned to the side for some reason. “All their communications are down. Commodore Zergan’s jamming net is very thorough. Even if we sent a message, they wouldn’t get it.”

  A few deep breaths later, Alandra finally got control of herself to look at Zergan.

  “Don’t you think that was a bit much?” she asked.

  “No!” Zergan said, throwing his hands up in the air. “This is war! How is anything too much? Grand Marshal Keffoule, what is going on here? I thought we had a plan.”

  “We did,” Alandra said. “And I didn’t alter it.”

  Zergan’s eyes widened as he began to understand.

  “Leftennant!” Alandra said loudly. “Are you certain that was the message I gave you?”

  Faraz looked at her full-on now, his eyebrows turned down in confusion. “Yes, ma’am, I have eaten lunch.”

  Alandra blinked, then repeated herself.

  “Oh—oh,” Faraz stammered. “Yes, of course. Exactly.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It’s not?” Faraz said, his voice cracking slightly.

  “No. What I told you to tell the Meridan commander was ‘We’re inviting you to a discussion aboard a neutral trade ship.’ ”

  “Right,” Faraz said, nodding. “ ‘We’re invading.’ That’s what I told them. Really, does no one else hear the ringing?” He looked around the bridge helplessly, hoping someone else would validate his hearing deficiency. His face sank when he undoubtedly realized that everyone in the bridge had gradually quieted down; the entire crew looked at him with something between horror and sympathy.

  Alandra stood up.

  “Oh,” Faraz said at a whisper. “Oh, oh no.”

  Alandra ignored him. She was too busy looking at the little leftennant who had completely screwed up her plans. Perhaps completely screwed up the galaxy. She cursed herself for relying on someone so incompetent. Such an important message should have been sent by her personally, but she’d wanted Captain Rogers to see her as a woman of power. Women of power didn’t send their own messages.

  “You have failed me,” she said simply.

  “No,” Faraz said, shrinking into himself but, to his credit, not running away. Of course he knew what was coming. The entire bridge knew what was coming. Even Zergan knew to back up and wait patiently while Alandra corrected imperfections.

  And there was only one way to correct imperfections. Pivoting on her left foot, she gave Leftennant Faraz a spinning back kick to the face.

  Every person on the bridge recoiled, the resounding crack echoing seemingly forever in the semispherical chamber. Faraz spun fully around, tumbling over the back of a support rail and crashing atop one of the consoles. Whatever he connected with set off an alarm, all the lights on the bridge going a dull amber as sirens blared. Faraz rolled off the console, knocking whoever was working that console to the ground. The two troops tangled in each other for a moment before Faraz, surprising nearly everyone, jumped to his feet, looking a little manic for someone who had just been kicked in the face. Adrenaline could do strange things to people.

  “What?” he shouted. “Who? Where am I?” He put a hand on his cheek. “Where is my face?”

  “Someone turn off that alarm!” Alandra shouted.

  Faraz, who had been staring at her lips intently, raised an eyebrow. “What alarm?” he shouted.

  Luckily the troop who had been manning the console before being floored by a flying leftennant managed to get to his feet and press a couple of buttons. The alarm stopped.

  “That was a drill,” he said i
nto the public-address system. “All units stand down. Repeat, all units stand down.”

  “Who is Stan Brown?” Faraz shouted, spinning around dizzily. The side of his face that was not bruised from his previous failure was already starting to swell, to the point where the young leftennant was rapidly turning into some sort of demented squirrel with a face infection.

  “Get him out of here,” Alandra said, sitting back down in her chair. Her stomach felt like it was doing flips, her blood pounding in her ears. What was supposed to be the beginning of her renewed rise to power had instead begun with chaos and face-kicking. “And everyone get back to work!”

  As a pair of women dragged the confused, rapidly fading Faraz out of the room, Zergan, seeing that Alandra’s time of disciplining had ended, approached her again. He spoke low enough in her ear that he was able to address her with the familiarity they had become used to over the last fifteen years of their careers together.

  “Now do you want to tell me what-the-fundamental-frequency is going on?” he asked. “What is all this about inviting the Meridans to tea and then deciding to invade instead? Have you lost your mind?” He paused. “You didn’t . . . you know . . . again . . . did you?”

  “No,” Alandra said, shooting him a cold glare. “I did not.” She paused, thinking. “This is a mess, Edris. We’ll have to improvise.”

  Zergan folded his arms, grinning. “I like improvising.”

  “I know you do,” Alandra said, though she was sure they had different ideas on how to go about it.

  “Well, we’re already here, and we’re already in an aggressive stance. Why not invite them to a meeting, then blow up the ship? Cut the head off the snake.” He leaned in even closer, whispering conspiratorially. “They’d have to reinstate you then, Alandra.”

  Alandra sighed. Faithful—if a bit bloodthirsty—Edris Zergan. A distant part of her wanted to reach out and touch his face, but those days had long since passed. All she felt now was guilt and shame.

  “We’d never get the Council to buy off on it,” she said. She almost felt like pouting, which was very unlike her. There was, of course, another reason why she didn’t want to just blow up Captain Rogers, but she hadn’t been able to confess it to Zergan quite yet. Those intelligence reports . . . the ratio.

  “That didn’t stop you the first time!” A shrill voice came from the entrance to the bridge. Secretary Quinn was walking in, her face showing that same expression of disapproval mixed with anger. She stormed up to the bridge—she was probably the only person in the Colliders who had the guts to storm anywhere near Alandra—and stood, alternating her glares between Alandra and Zergan.

  “What’s this about blowing up neutral ships? Now you’re not only violating intergalactic treaties, you’re violating the laws of armed conflict?”

  Zergan sneered at her. “Are you afraid our enemies might get a boo-boo, Council dog?”

  “I’m afraid of our galaxy imploding because of an itchy trigger finger,” Quinn said. She turned to Alandra, ignoring Zergan completely. “What are you going to do now? Start blowing up trade ships?”

  “For once,” Zergan said, “I’m interested in the same thing the Council dog is. What’s next, Grand Marshal?”

  Alandra drummed her fingers on the chair. The truth was, she had no idea. They couldn’t communicate with the Meridans; any opening in the net would allow them to get a message back to their headquarters. They couldn’t attack and start boarding ships without escalating things. Miraculously, the Meridans hadn’t yet responded to their strikes on the communications relays, but that didn’t mean they weren’t standing on a very narrow precipice over the cavernous ravine of a messy war.

  “For now,” Alandra said, settling back into her chair, “we think. And wait.”

  If there was anyone in this galaxy who could figure out what to do in this situation, it was Captain R. Wilson Rogers.

  * * *

  I. Don’t ask.

  They’re Invading

  Rogers had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation.

  “No,” Deet said, his makeshift robotic body partially hidden by the other droid he was examining. “You can’t just take an entire fleet of ships and run away.”

  “Why not?” Rogers asked. He knew he was supposed to be paying attention to the huge number of reports coming across his datapad, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the massive, shiny, deadly array of enemy ships that had come out of Un-Space. Thelicosans. Here. In Meridan territory.

  “For one,” Deet said, “they’re blocking the Un-Space point. Unless you’re going to ram them—in which case good luck getting volunteers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the 331st—there’s no way you’re getting through.”

  Rogers fell back into the commander’s chair on the bridge—and promptly bounced off it into the air. The ship’s gravity generator hadn’t been repaired yet, but Master Sergeant Hart, the engineering chief, had assured him that the parts were in and it’d be done soon. The rest of the personnel were doing a decent job of keeping up appearances, even though a large part of the ship’s systems was still down from the battle with the droids.

  “What if we tried to hightail it to the next Un-Space point? It’s only like . . . a couple million miles away, right?”

  Deet stopped examining a decommissioned droid and looked up at Rogers, though there really was no reason for him to be so dramatic about it. His mannerisms were becoming more human-like every day. Rogers wasn’t sure which he preferred: the incessant wisecracking of a droid with half a personality or the mechanical function-calling of the automaton masses.

  Suddenly the droid that Deet was examining kicked on, its eyes flashing between blue and red.

  “CALL FUNCTION [PROTOCOL 162]. OUTPUT STRING: DIE, HUMAN!”

  Deet hurriedly shut it off just as Rogers was deciding that he preferred Deet over maniacal robots.

  “Still nothing?” Rogers asked.

  Deet shook his head and beeped. “No. I can’t seem to figure out why no matter how many times we reset their memory banks, they come back wanting to kill everyone on the ship. We’ll have to function without the droids for a while until I can un-murderify them.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “It is now,” Deet said. “Hey, I just created something. Does that make me God?”

  Rogers sighed. “No, Deet.”

  One of Deet’s latest forays into human consciousness had been to start asking complicated questions about spirituality, philosophy, God/gods, and chocolate. Rogers wished he’d stuck to trying to figure out metaphors and jokes.

  What were the Thelicosans doing? Ever since they’d charged out of Un-Space and blown a couple of comm relays up, they’d just . . . sat there, doing nothing. That really didn’t seem like much of an invasion. Rogers had thought about sending a counterattack, but he couldn’t talk to anyone else in the fleet to coordinate one. That, and he had absolutely no idea how to conduct a counterattack. He also generally didn’t like violence, because it was scary and had emotional complications he wasn’t ready to deal with.

  In his mind, he was still an ex-sergeant looking for a stiff drink, but with every passing moment he was realizing that maybe that wasn’t the best mentality for someone who’d been given temporary command of a giant military fleet and the responsibility for thousands of lives. Being the acting admiral of the 331st Anti-Thelicosan Buffer Group was a lot more complicated than poker.

  One of the Thelicosan Battle Spiders—at least he thought it was a Battle Spider; he didn’t know the first thing about enemy ships—within visual range of the scanners fired up its engines and made some nondescript maneuvers. Rogers leapt out of his chair—which, even with his gravity boots on, catapulted him into the ceiling.

  “They’re moving!” he said, pushing off with his hands/face and coming back down to the command platform. “We have to get out of here! Is there a plan for that?” He looked at the recently promoted Commander Belgrave, the helmsman. “Init
iate Operation SAVE OUR ASSES immediately!”

  Belgrave, a dispassionate man for someone of so high a rank, looked at Rogers with something between concern and disappointment. “Um, no, sir, there’s no such operation. We’re still cleaning up the damage the droids did to the ship’s systems; it’s still hard to maneuver.”

  Damn those droids! He’d spent the entirety of his second stint in the military hiding from them and making every attempt to avoid confrontation. Even though he’d recklessly crashed his most valuable possession—his personal ship—into the Flagship’s gravity generator to stop them from killing everyone aboard, they were still causing him problems. The damn robots had spent so long putting themselves in important positions that without them, the 331st was almost completely worthless. The cargo manifests were so screwed up that nobody really knew what was on the ship anymore, the intraship transportation system kept dropping people off near the refuse deck, and absolutely nobody had gotten a haircut.

  Sitting back down in his chair, Rogers immediately jumped up again, grabbing the handrail this time.

  “Look!” he said, pointing to a blip on the defensive systems display. “Look!”

  “Sir,” the defensive technician said. “Please, calm down. That’s the toaster. My bagel is ready.” She plucked the bagel out and buttered it, taking a large bite before continuing. “The THEY’RE ATTACKING US light isn’t even on. We’re safe for the moment. I’ll update you the moment I have any indication that we’re all going to die.”

  Rogers sank back into his chair. This was too much up and down. One minute he was sure they were about to be blown to bits, the next it seemed like the Thelicosans were just playing with them. Was this part of a psychological operations plan designed to weaken them for the kill? But that didn’t make any sense; they were already weakened for the kill.