John Scalzi - We Only Need the Heads

“And if they find out about the CDF members among them?” Abumwe asked.

Rigney pointed at Schmidt. “We have them,” he said. “We have them both. More specifically, we have their heads, where their BrainPals are.”

Abumwe gawked at the three of them. “You’re joking, right?” she said. “The Bula are not that stupid.”

“No one said they are stupid,” Rigney said. “But all our intelligence suggests that the Bula don’t know the wildcat colony was there, and they weren’t the ones who attacked it. We’re going to proceed with the negotiations as they are.”

“And if they ask me directly about it? Contrary to all expectation they might,” Abumwe said.

“Then you don’t know anything about it,” Rodabaugh said.

“To be clear, you’re asking me to lie to the Bula,” Abumwe said, to Rodabaugh.

“Yes,” Rodabaugh said.

“You understand I think this is a bad idea,” Abumwe said.

Rodabaugh looked annoyed with Abumwe, but it was Egan who answered. “The directive for this is coming from over all of our heads, Ambassador,” she said. “And none of us have the luxury of arguing with it.”

“Right,” Abumwe said. She got up and walked out of the room without uttering another word.

From their side of the table, Rodabaugh, Egan and Rigney looked over at Schmidt.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, tried to smile, and failed.

Harry Wilson entered the bridge of the Tubingen; a surprised Captain Jack Augustyn looked up, along with his executive officer and other bridge crew. He gave them a couple of seconds for their BrainPals to register and label him. Then he said, “I think we’re in trouble.”

Wilson saw Captain Augustyn have an internal debate whether to jump on him for his unconventional entrance and then make a choice, in the space of half a second. “Explain,” he said.

“We have a couple of CDF corpses in the meat locker right now,” Wilson said.

“Yes,” Augustyn said. “So what?”

“I think there should be another one in there,” Wilson said.

“Excuse me?” Augustyn said.

“We have two dead CDF,” Wilson said. “I think there was another one on the colony. I’ve been going through Vasily Ivanovich’s data. It’s where I found the data stored in a BrainPal-readable format. But some of the documents aren’t originally Vasily’s. Some of them are from Martina Ivanovich, who forwarded them to Vasily using a BrainPal-to-BrainPal protocol. And some of them are from a guy named Drew Talford. Who also sent them BrainPal to BrainPal.”

“We have our people on the planet now, identifying the dead,” Augustyn said. “They’ll find him.”

“They have found him,” Wilson said. “I wouldn’t be bothering you with this if I hadn’t already checked.”

“If they found him, then what’s the problem?” asked Selena Yuan, the Tubingen ’s executive officer.

“They didn’t find all of him,” Wilson said. “He’s missing his head.”

“I would imagine a lot of the colonists are missing limbs and body parts,” Augustyn said. “They were attacked. And it’s been a week since the attack, so scavengers have been at them.”

“Lots of them are missing body parts,” Wilson agreed, and then sent Augustyn and Yuan an image through his BrainPal. “None of the rest of them are missing a body part that’s been cleanly separated from the rest of their body.”

There was a moment while Augustyn and Yuan examined the picture. “No one’s found the head,” Augustyn asked, after a minute.

“No,” Wilson said. “I’ve been having them look intensively for a couple of hours. There are bodies missing heads, but the heads are usually found not too far away, or the separation is ragged. This guy’s head isn’t near the body. It isn’t anywhere.”

“Some animal could have run off with it,” Yuan suggested.

“It’s possible,” Wilson said. “On the other hand, when the head of a CDF soldier has been cut cleanly from his body and his head is nowhere to be found, I’d suggest it’s not prudent to assume some animal is making a snack of it.”

“You assume it’s been taken by whoever attacked the colony,” Augustyn said.

“Yes,” Wilson said. “And while I’m at it, I think that whoever told us that the Bula didn’t know the colony was here guessed really badly wrong. I think not only did the Bula know it was here, I’d be guessing they’re the ones who made the raid. If they didn’t know it was here, I’m willing to bet whoever attacked it took that head to the Bula, because evidence of a CDF presence on one of their planets is worth more than a little bit of cash.”

“But they couldn’t have known about the CDF presence here,” Yuan said. “ We didn’t.”

“At this point, I don’t think it matters if they did before, ” Wilson said. “I think it matters that they do now . And if they do now-”

“Then they know we’re here now,” Augustyn said.

“Right,” Wilson said. “In which case it’s not the colony that’s the CU’s biggest diplomatic problem at the moment. It’s us.”

Augustyn was already ignoring Wilson to focus on contacting his ground forces to get them off the planet.

They’d gotten only about half of them up before six Bula warships skipped above Wantji and trained their weapons, already hot, on the Tubingen .

Abumwe’s negotiations with Sub-Ambassador Ting were winding down when Schmidt heard a pleasant ping from the sub-ambassador’s PDA. Ting excused herself for a moment, picked up the device, appeared to read a note there and performed the Bula equivalent of a smile.

“Good news?” Abumwe asked.

“It might be,” Ting said, and set the PDA down. She turned to her assistant, leaned over and spoke quietly into his closest ear. The assistant got up and walked out of the room.

“I apologize, but there are things I will need to conclude our negotiations, and I don’t have them with me at the moment,” Ting said. “I hope you don’t mind waiting a moment while my assistant retrieves them.”

“Not at all,” Abumwe said.

“Thank you,” Ting said. “I think you and I have established a good rapport, Ambassador Abumwe. I wish every negotiating partner I’ve had could be as pleasant and easy to work with.”

“Thank you,” Abumwe said. “We have enough issues to deal with without adding unnecessary conflict to the negotiations.”

“I agree entirely,” Ting said. The door behind her opened and her assistant returned, carrying a medium-sized case, which he set on the table. “And I believe that this common belief will aid us both now.”

“What is that?” Abumwe asked, motioning to the case.

“Ambassador, you remember yesterday, when we were talking about Ambassador Zala’s appendix,” Ting said, ignoring Abumwe’s question.

“Yes, of course,” Abumwe said.

“I noted to you how it was strange such a small part of a system could threaten the entire health of the whole,” Ting said.

“Yes,” Abumwe said, looking at the case.

“Then you will understand when I say that what you tell me now, here in our little side room, away from the larger negotiation between the Colonial Union and the Bula, will have an immediate impact on the health of the whole process,” Ting said. “I asked for the right to do this, on the grounds that the specifics of our negotiation-the physical visitation of our people between our planets-lent itself to this particular task. All I had to do was wait until we had all the information we needed.”

Abumwe smiled. “I’m afraid I’m not entirely following you, Sub-Ambassador Ting.”

“I’m very sure that’s not true, Ambassador Abumwe,” Ting said. “Please tell me what you know about the Colonial Defense Forces presence on Wantji.”