What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

Lines in italics designate speech from an alternate dimension.

Chapter 21: So Where Are They?

Suzee relaxed as Harlan brought the little ship into line, between two freight carriers headed into the warring sector. Fortunately there was a steady stream of traffic in the freight lanes, and a little ship like theirs wouldn't be worth scrutiny. It had been a tense couple days…their time on the Centauri ship had been decidedly unpleasant. They'd kept appearing at the hatch or comming at unusual times, obviously hoping to draw information out of their passengers. Goddard hadn't gotten any sleep trying to fend them off. Things had gotten a little better once they'd been back under their own power, but it had still been a long two days. Made longer by the knowledge that unless they could find someone to refuel the scout without noticing what it actually was—decidedly unlikely—it was a one-way trip. Stress levels were rising…Harlan had started something with Radu, or at least something he'd said had annoyed the Andromedan enough to make him fight back and they'd been going back and forth ever since. Goddard had been keeping to himself as best he could on the small ship—most conversations with him ended up revolving around the functionality of the little scout. Apparently overwork was how he kept himself from worrying. And honestly, Suzee was feeling pretty on edge herself…her ribs felt better, but her head was still hurting. She'd just gotten up from a nap, but her concussion still wasn't fully healed and the headache wasn't helping matters.

"Why don't you two grab a nap?" Goddard suggested, looking at the pilot and navigator.

"I'm not tired," Harlan responded.

"Me either."

"Gentlemen, there is no point in all four of us standing here for the four or five hours it will take this line to reach the heart of the sector. Suzee and I had the last rest period, and this may be the last opportunity any of us get for awhile."

They glanced at each other with more animosity than either had shown in quite awhile. "Fine," Harlan agreed after a moment.

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous," Suzee said after they'd left command. "I thought they'd declared a truce after you made them run all those diagnostics for waking us up with their yelling. What's going on?"

"I have no idea," Goddard said after a moment. "They started this back on the Centauri ship, and it's just gotten worse. I know it's mostly due to stress, but we all need to be working together if we're going to help the others. Hopefully some rest will give them some perspective."

Because that's always worked so well in the past. I suggest smacking their heads together—at least it will get their attention. I mean, what are they thinking? You don't have enough problems; they should go and revive these idiotic arguments…I mean, I'm pretty sure Harlan brought up his father and the war again! He knows damn well Radu didn't have anything to do with any of that! And then Radu makes some stupid comment about Harlan trying to control ev…

Catalina hadn't stopped speaking, Suzee had just stopped listening. Not that she disagreed—of all the ways to relieve tension, picking fights with crewmates was pretty stupid—but ranting about it wasn't going to help. They had more immediate problems. "How are we going to find the Christa? I mean…space is big, and we don't even know for sure that it's this sector they were towed to. There are three others that border Kalrabi space."

"I'm not sure, honestly. Farthil is in this sector so I think it's the best place to start, but you know as well as I do that there are no guarantees. Shipping manifests should be listed somewhere, but I'm not sure how the Christa would be listed. If she'd be listed. Could we use the scout to listen in on military channels? Like an old-time CB radio? I know the comm system has quite a bit of filtering capability."

"Well, I can try…we probably have some of the encryption codes. I don't know how often they change them though." It had to be often enough to keep enemy spies from getting them, but if they changed too often there's no way the ships in combat would be able to keep up. She crossed to the communications console. "I'll see what we've got."

"Will we be able to use the universal translators on the transmissions, or should I wake Radu up?"

Suzee frowned for a moment. "There's no reason we shouldn't be able to use the translators." After all, the signals would be coming through the comm channels.

And if he gets up Harlan will too and you don't want to listen to them arguing, Cat added.

"That too," Suzee agreed under her breath. "I'll see what I can do, but this is more Rosie's area of expertise. It might take me some time to figure out what is what."

"Just do your best."

"Cat, give me a hand…there are a lot of frequencies to sort through."

Six hours later found both girls still staring in frustration at the communications console. You know, I suddenly have a lot more respect for Rosie if she has to go through this every time the Christa gets an unclear signal, Catalina said with a sigh. I mean, we're getting nowhere.

"I don't think it's this bad, most of the time…at least she has somewhere to start with garbled messages. We've got a couple thousand possible transmission frequencies—probably more like tens of thousands—a good portion of which had some form of data on them. And who knows whether any of the data is any good?" That drew a glare at one of the possible frequencies they'd caught almost immediately…two hours and a minor migraine later they'd found out that what they'd so meticulously isolated was some sort of Spung game show. Apparently some form of encryption was used on entertainment broadcasts to prevent random citizens from tuning in without paying. And all the numbers that had sounded so promising when coming through were actually contestant identification numbers and prize amounts. The only positive aspect had been that it had allowed them to work out some of the bugs in isolating frequencies and putting them through the translator and the different decryption sequences without distorting the information beyond recognition—since then they'd been able to do checks and discards much faster. "There has to be a better way to do this. I mean, the computer is cycling through the frequencies as we speak, but we have to actually listen to the ones it flags as possibles to figure out whether it's any good…there's just too much data to work with here."

"Some sort of filter?" Goddard suggested.

She shrugged. "If I knew what to filter on, maybe…I wish Miss Davenport was here. She's good with all this programming stuff. Give me a hyperspanner any day." As soon as the words were out of her mouth Suzee realized how stupid the comment was—if Miss Davenport was with them, they wouldn't be searching for her—but…hell, she was tired and her head hurt and they weren't getting anywhere.

Does he know you're talking to me? Catalina asked absently, studying the readout in front of her. He's been answering all along, even when it doesn't make any sense for you to be talking to him.

"Probably not. Made a couple good suggestions though, no point in saying anything."

"About what?"

"Just something Cat said." She glanced out at the line of ships still stretched out in front of them. "How much longer are we going to be stuck in this mess? I thought we were supposed to reach the heart of the sector an hour or two ago."

"We were…unfortunately we seem to be caught in the first space-traffic jam I've ever seen. I'm not even sure why we're moving so slowly…I think we'll be in a safe area to pull out and hide the scout in another hour or so though. Are you having any luck with that?"

"Sorry, Commander. I'll keep trying."

"All right. How's your head?"

"It's okay."

Liar.

Suzee rolled her eyes at her best friend. "Shut up."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, not you, Commander. I was talking to Catalina. Are you going to wake up Harlan and Radu?"

"Not just yet…I'd rather let them rest while they can. Do you need to take a break?"

"No, I'm fine. I was just wondering." She glanced back at the console. "Cat and I have plenty more work to do here."

What about this one? It's got one of the more obscure encryptions on it…might be something military.

"Something military as in ship listings, or something military as in some Warlord's dinner orders?"

How am I supposed to know? Play the message.

"Right. Sorry." If they could just identify a military frequency or two…then she would rest. And take another dose of pain medication. Just as soon as they found a useful channel. She forced her attention back to the voice coming through the speakers. "Varadirium? That's seriously radioactive, isn't it?"

I'm pretty sure…and I was doing okay in science. What do you think he's talking about radioactive materials for?

"Well, I doubt it's anything good. Probably some kind of explosive. This sounds more like research, though, not anything they're using now." They'd found a few channels like that, although the others seemed to concentrate on biological and chemical weapons. "I'll flag it anyway."

Maybe we could narrow the search patterns for a specific encryption? Try and get a smaller selection we actually have to clean up and listen to?

"We've already done that though…we're discarding the ones we know are civilian and merchant, but we don't have anything else we know of to block on. Different entertainment broadcasts use different ones, each merchant company has their own…there are just so many possible encryptions…. I mean, just look at how many decryption files the scout has access too…we haven't even touched on more than a fraction of them!"

Well, this one looks like research, and it's not one that's been common. The computer pulls all the rough possibilities, right? And then we go one- by-one to narrow them down to something we can actually listen to and work with and figure out whether it's actually anything we care about. That's what's taking so long.

"Right" That was what they'd been doing for the past several hours…why Catalina felt the urge to point it out again now was beyond Suzee. "You have a better way to do it?"

Kind of. Well, not exactly…see, the research is an uncommon encryption. The computer knows that…it can determine the frequencies of each type of encryption code. Right?

"Yeah. So?"

Catalina shook her head, obviously frustrated. So that's it, don't you see? The military is doesn't give out their encryption codes to just anyone, so they aren't going to be very common.

"And since we can determine approximately how much of each type of encryption is being used…that's brilliant!"

"Suzee?" The commander turned to look at her. "What is it?"

"We have to search for the uncommon encryptions! I'm programming the computer to bring in signals ordered by type of encryption used. If we're lucky, different portions of the military will be using different types of encryption so if we can just determine what kind the ship-stealing ones use..."

"Do you have something that will work?"

"I think so…I'm not totally sure, but I think it will work better than what we've been using. It's still going to take some time to figure out, but if we do only one or two messages per encryption type instead of just working our way through random messages the computer identifies…I think we'll be able to find something useful."

"Excellent work."

Here's one…the least common encryption the computer has seen. Let's hope this works.