What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

Chapter 22: Distractions

Harlan yawned, sitting up on his bunk and narrowly missing hitting his head on the bunk above. "Why do they build these things so low, anyway?"

"Hm?"

He glanced over to see Radu move to a sitting position on the bunk beside his, rubbing at his eyes. Normally he'd have made a joke about the accommodations, but he wasn't feeling particularly humorous. "Nothing. How long were we asleep?"

"Sev—seven hours!"

"What? The commander should have woken us up as soon as we got into the center of the sector." Radu didn't comment, standing and moving towards the door. Harlan pushed past him and led the way onto the command post. "Commander? Suzee? Is something wrong? Why didn't you wake us up earlier?"

"Everything is fine, Mr. Band, and there was no point in waking you. Traffic is moving slower than expected…apparently the sector guard posts are a little undermanned. We made it past the check point without even being scanned; they're concentrating on the merchants and cargo ships."

Harlan heard Radu come up behind him but ignored the navigator. "How close are we?"

"I'm planning on pulling out of the main traffic path in a few moments...we should be able to remain hidden in the primary Farthil shipping yard for at least a short amount of time."

"But…what happens when they notice us?" Radu asked.

"Well, then I guess we leave," Harlan replied, sarcasm in his voice. What the hell did the navigator think they were going to do?

Radu ignored his baiting. "Do you have any ideas about how to find the Christa? Unless she's in the yard here?"

"Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. Suzee is working on identifying military communication channels. Hopefully we'll be able to identify one that will have some information on the Christa, or at least is used to transmit that type of information. Then we listen in until we find out something useful."

Well, that was good news, anyway. Maybe they wouldn't be searching completely blindly. "Anything yet?"

"No." Suzee seemed distracted, staring off into the space beside her, away from the rest of the crew. "Cat, this doesn't seem to be working right…we're finding all kinds of unusual information—some of which I absolutely never wanted to know—but there's nothing military coming in. Nothing! Do you think they might have changed comm codes and now they're coming in with encryptions we don't have?" Whatever Catalina's reply was, she shook her head sharply. "But we should still be hearing something! Even encrypted static."

"What are you listening for?" Radu asked.

She ran a hand through her hair. "We've got the communications lines separated by frequency of encryption used. The computer is doing that. Since the military doesn't give their codes to everyone, we're starting from the least commonly used, cleaning up a couple signals from each enough that we can listen and determine what that encryption is used for, and deciding whether it's useful or not."

"And you've gotten nothing so far?"

She shrugged. "Well, we've only been working on this method for a little over an hour, and it takes about ten minutes to clean up one of the isolated messages enough to listen to, but…no. We now know what size of dress some shipyard chief's mistress wears, what type of fungus is currently infecting the grass in the Farthil botanical gardens, and several other useless random facts, but nothing so far is even vaguely military."

"It's all right, Suzee," Goddard assured her. "You just started. Now that you've got a method for testing, why don't you show them how you're doing it and you can go get a short rest yourself?"

"I'm fine, Commander, honestly, and Cat wants to keep working too."

"Why don't you show them anyway? Maybe we could modify one of the other consoles enough to allow us to listen to more than one channel at once. The computers should have the capability."

"Well…yeah."

Harlan looked around the command post. "I think we better leave the helm alone…and tactical…" That left engineering and navigation for their attempts to add a new function. Navigation was a possibility—even if they messed it up royally, Radu could probably manage on his own—but not engineering, not if they needed the special engines again.

Suzee was shaking her head. "I think we better leave everything down here alone. There were a couple extra consoles up in the engine room that didn't look very used. We should be able to modify one of those without worrying about other functionality. In fact…we should probably check first and see if they don't have a secondary command post up there."

Radu nodded. "If there is, there should already be a second communications console."

"No way we're that lucky."

"Well, it can't hurt to look."

Harlan was about to snap at the navigator when Suzee interrupted, showing them how they were cleaning up the signals the computer had identified and then passing them through the translation program. The one she picked to test didn't have any useful information coming in…some sort of class-by-vid type of thing, but at least the process wasn't difficult to follow. "So we check out engineering and figure out what might be able to be rigged for spying?"

Goddard nodded. "That's the plan. Radu, I'm going to be pulling into the shipyard in a moment so I want you down here in case anyone has any questions. Suzee, Harlan, you go see what you can work out in the engineering bay."

"All right, Commander. Come on, Cat." Suzee led the way, climbing the ladder into the hidden room carefully.

"Are you okay?"

"My ribs are still a little sore," she admitted.

He had a suspicion that they were more than a little sore if she was actually admitting she was hurting, but there wasn't much he could offer. "Is it time for another dose of the painkiller?"

"Not for another hour. I'll be fine, honest." She moved towards the engine core, checking consoles as she went.

He followed her, unsure of what he could do. He hadn't been doing all that well in engineering in school…not that he wasn't pretty decent at math when he wanted to be, but sitting working on wiring just didn't interest him. "Anything we can use?"

"Well, there's definitely no secondary comm console here—"

"Knew there wouldn't be," Harlan muttered. "It's just a scout for goodness sake, what does he think, they've got unlimited room?"

"It didn't hurt to check," Suzee replied with an odd look on her face. "What's going on with you two, anyway? You two have been sniping at each other for the past two days. Haven't seen you acting like this since before Catalina and I traded places. It's starting to drive me any the commander a little crazy."

"I don't know…he started it. He just says this completely pointless stuff…"

"Radu? Half the time he doesn't open his mouth when he should! Come on, something must have happened."

Harlan shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't really know. I just…I keep getting irritated when he's around, and he's jumpy when I'm around too."

"Probably because you've been snapping at him every time he says something!" She turned slightly off to the side for a moment. "I'm not…I'm not saying it's all your fault or anything. This whole situation is hard on all of us, and he can be pretty irritating too when he wants to be. But can't you just—can't you call a truce or something?"

The whole situation was kind of ridiculous, even he was willing to admit it…the whole thing had started with an argument about Jacie and Aslinn leaving—not even an argument, really, since they'd both agreed that the other two had to go, they just didn't agree on the timing—and he'd said something stupid about Andromedan loyalty. Radu hadn't taken it very well. Harlan hadn't even meant Andromedans, really, since he'd only been talking about the Ashrach boy, but comments like that had become part of his repertoire back at the StarAcademy. Since he and Radu normally avoided sensitive topics when they talked, he'd never bothered to break the habit. Unfortunately, loyalty was one of the areas Radu was sensitive about, and he'd responded with a comment about Harlan wanting to control everyone and how they acted. Just because he was a good leader didn't mean he always took over everything! It's not like he wasn't trying to take over Suzee's job while she did complicated things to the Christa's engines or tried to tell Radu how to navigate—he really wasn't any good at that subject, anyway—he just was better at quick decisions than them. Anyway, the argument had escalated and they hadn't been able to agree about anything for the past couple days. Which was a pretty bad situation to be in if they had to get into a fight with the Spung. "I guess a truce would be okay. It was a pretty pointless argument in the first place." He wasn't going to be the one to make the first approach, though—he hadn't even been talking about Radu, the navigator was the one who made it personal.

"Wonderful."

She crossed back to one of the other consoles and he moved closer. "Will that one work?"

"I think so. It's pretty generic…there are some references to a shield generator, but nothing specific. Maybe something they have in development. Anyway, it can already tune to different frequencies, so it's just a matter of telling it to look at the communication ones instead of the ones for shielding harmonics."

"Are you sure the ship doesn't have a shield using this stuff? I don't want to end up in a firefight and find out we disabled our best defense." A shield would have come in handy back when they were dodging missiles.

Suzee shook her head. "Unless the Spung have designed invisible shield generators, they never finished installation. I'm not really surprised…they take up a lot of space and a lot of power, and for a ship this size I don't think a shield would be worth it."

"So why did they put the console in?"

"How would I know?" She was silent for a moment. "Cat thinks they might be using the scouts to test a bunch of new experimental stuff, like the drives we were using before. She could be right—if something goes wrong they don't lose much material, not like if they lost a cruiser, and there are only a few crewmembers on each."

"I think I'd rather not have known that. But can we use the console to listen in on their conversations?"

"I…yeah, just give me fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most. You might want to go down and tell Commander Goddard that we found something."

"Yeah, sure. Be right back." Radu didn't even look up at he reentered the command post, although Goddard turned back towards him with a frown. "Mr. Band? Is something wrong?"

"No, Suzee just wanted me to let you know that she found something she thinks will work. I guess it was supposed to be for some kind of experimental shield generator that never got built, at least that's what she and Catalina think."

"All right, excellent work."

"Commander? I think she might not be doing as well as she says she is."

Radu did look up sharply at that. "What do you mean?"

Harlan fought down the urge to ask just what else he thought it could mean. "She actually admitted she's in pain…she says she can't take any more painkiller for awhile yet though."

"She's right. Still…Radu, why don't you go up with Harlan, and send Suzee back down here? The lights are dimmer in here, and I can pull them down even more. There's not a lot you can do to dim the power core up there."

"Why do you want to dim the lights?" Radu asked.

"I suspect her concussion still isn't fully healed, and bright lights and loud noises tend to aggravate the condition. The best medicine would be rest, but we just don't have the time. There's no more piloting to do so I'll take the communications console now, you two do on up and send her down as soon as she's finished making whatever adaptations she needs to make."

Radu nodded without commenting, following Harlan into the bunkroom and up the ladder. "How's it going?"

"Pretty well. Just finished crossing the wires I needed to, now it's just a matter of telling the computer what I want it to do. Why are you both here?"

"Commander Goddard wants you to work down there with him and we'll be up here."

She glanced up at them in disbelief but didn't comment. "All right…I've got another ten or fifteen minutes to finish this up." The three of them sat in silence until she finished and moved towards the ladder. "I'll call up the encryption code the commander is on right now, you work the one after that, and we'll each go every other one until one of us hits something."

"Yeah, right."

"Radu moved up beside him as he sat down in front of the console. "She's right, you know."

Harlan didn't bother asking what he was talking about. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it wasn't nice to listen in on other people's conversations?" He couldn't get much heat in his voice…he kind of doubted Radu could avoid hearing everything that was happening on this tiny ship.

"I heard my name…it's kind of automatic. But she is right. About the argument, I mean."

"I know. I wasn't…I didn't mean you, you know? You're about the last person who'd leave someone in trouble."

"I…" He ducked his head. "I'm sorry about the controller comment. Wasn't any reason for it, I was just mad."

Harlan shrugged. "Guess we're both pretty on edge. Truce?"

"Yeah."

He offered a hand, and Harlan reached out, bracing himself for the bone-crunching grip he'd felt the last time the two of them shook hands. And was surprised that Radu's grip was barely any tighter than his own. Radu looked…suspiciously amused. "You did that on purpose before, didn't you? Crunched my hand back on the Christa after that stupid family tree assignment?"

The Andromedan ducked his head but didn't manage to hide a grin. "I might have been still a little annoyed. Besides, if you could hear the bones in your hand grinding, you had to know I could."

"I couldn't hear them, I just felt them," Harlan admitted. "It was a pretty good trick. And if you ever do it again I'll get a gizbot to squeak continuously every night for the next six years."

Radu didn't seem too concerned with the threat. "Suzee says they're on encryption pattern 11b75."

"All right, let's see what the next least-common one is. Better grab a chair or something." Radu nodded, pulling over a stool from one of the other consoles, and the next hour and a half was spent in near silence as they began to scan through frequencies. It went a little quicker with Radu there—he didn't always have to wait for the translation program to know whether it was anything useful or not. "Suzee's right, you know…there's just too much information here to go through."

Radu blinked. "What?"

"Too much information…you know, too many messages being sent? You feeling okay?"

"I…yeah, sorry, I've just been concentrating so long on filtering static it took a minute to process what you said." He grinned slightly. "I think we were talking more when we were fighting."

"Yeah, it is kind of weird to hear a voice without crackling in the back—wait. Say that again."

"I was concentrating more on filtering static?"

"No, no, the part about fighting."

"We were talking more when we were fighting?"

"That's it! We're thinking about this wrong…we're assuming the military channels will be the least commonly used since not too many people have them, but they're fighting now—they're in a war!"

Radu nodded. "So they have to be talking to each other more…we need to look at the most commonly used encryptions?"

Harlan shook his head. "Maybe not the most commonly used…those are probably still civilian channels…but we should be starting in the middle of the range at least."

"I'll tell the commander and Suzee."

"Wait." If he was wrong, the engineer would never let him live it down. "Let's do some quick checks ourselves first, just to see if we can find anything." Radu didn't look thrilled with the idea, but he'd go along with Harlan's idea for at least a little bit, of that the human was sure. "Come on, we'll just try a couple. If it doesn't work, we'll ask the commander and see if he thinks we should keep working this way. Worst case we lose maybe an hour."

"All right."