John Scalzi - The B-Team

“So we have a mystery ship targeting the Colonial Union with our own missiles,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“Then where are they now?” Abumwe said. “Why aren’t we under attack?”

“They didn’t know we were coming,” Wilson said. “We were diverted to this mission at the last minute. It would usually take the Colonial Union several days at least to have a new mission in place. By which time these particular negotiations would have failed, because we weren’t there for them.”

“Someone destroyed an entire ship just to foul up diplomatic negotiations?” Coloma said. “This is your theory?”

“It’s a guess,” Wilson said. “I don’t pretend that I know enough about this situation to be correct. But I think regardless we have to make the Colonial Union aware of what happened here as soon as possible. Captain, I’ve already transferred the data to the Clarke ’s computers. I strongly suggest we send a skip drone with it and my preliminary analysis back to Phoenix immediately.”

“Agreed,” Abumwe said.

“I’ll have it done as soon as I’m off this call,” Coloma said. “Now, Lieutenant, I want you and the shuttle back on the Clarke immediately. With all due respect to Ambassador Abumwe, I’m not entirely convinced there’s not still a threat out there. Get back here. We’ll be under way as soon as you are.”

“What?” Abumwe said. “We still have a mission. I still have a mission. We’re here to negotiate with the Utche.”

“Ambassador, the Clarke is a diplomatic vessel,” Coloma said. “We have no offensive weapons and only a bare minimum of defensive capability. We’ve confirmed the Polk was attacked. It’s possible whoever attacked the Polk is still out there. We’re sending this data to Phoenix. They will alert the Utche of the situation, which means they will almost certainly call off their ship. There is no negotiation to be had.”

“You don’t know that,” Abumwe said. “It might take them hours to process the information. We are less than three hours from when the Utche are meant to arrive. Even if we were to leave, we will still be in system when they arrive, which means the first thing they would see is us running away.”

“It’s not running away, ” Coloma said, sharply. “And this is not your decision to make, Ambassador. I am captain of the ship.”

“A diplomatic ship,” Abumwe said. “On which I am the chief diplomat.”

“Ambassador, Captain,” Wilson said, “do I need to be here for this part of the conversation?”

Wilson saw the two simultaneously reach toward their screens. Both of their images shut off.

“That would be ‘no,’” Wilson said, to himself.

Something was nagging at Wilson as he punched in the return route to the Clarke . The Polk had been hit at least fifteen times by ship-to-ship missiles, but before any of them had hit, there had been an earlier explosion that had shaken the ship. But the data had not recorded any event leading up to the explosion; the ship had skipped, made an initial scan of the immediate area and then everything was perfectly normal until the initial explosion. Once it happened everything went to hell, quickly. But beforehand, nothing. There had been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

The shuttle’s navigational router accepted the path back and started to move. Wilson strapped himself into his seat and relaxed. He would be back on the Clarke shortly, by which time he assumed that either Coloma or Abumwe would have emerged victorious from their power struggle. Wilson had no personal preference in who won; he could see the merit in both arguments, and both of them appeared to dislike him equally, so neither had an advantage there.

I did what I was supposed to do, Wilson thought, and glanced over to the black box on the passenger seat, looking like a dark, matte, light-absorbing hole in the chair.

Something clicked in his head.

“Holy shit,” Wilson said, and slapped the shuttle into immobility.

“You said ‘shit’ again,” Wilson heard Schmidt say. “And now you’re not moving.”

“I just had a very interesting thought,” Wilson said.

“You can’t have this thought while you are bringing the shuttle back?” Schmidt said. “Captain Coloma was very specific about returning it.”

“Hart, I’m going to talk to you in a bit,” Wilson said.

“What are you going to do?” Schmidt asked.

“You probably don’t want to know,” Wilson said. “It’s best you don’t know. I want to make sure you have plausible deniability.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Schmidt said.

“Exactly,” Wilson said, and cut his connection to his friend.

A few minutes later, Wilson floated weightless inside the airless cabin of the shuttle, face masked, holding the guide handle next to the shuttle door. He slapped the door release button.

And saw nothing outside.

Which is not as it should have been; Wilson’s BrainPal should have picked up and enhanced starlight within visible wavelengths. He was getting nothing.

Wilson reached out with the hand not gripping the guide handle. Nothing. He repositioned himself, bringing his body mostly outside of the door, and reached again. This time there was something there.

Something big and black and invisible.

Hello, Wilson thought. What the hell are you?

The big, black, invisible thing did not respond.

Wilson pinged his BrainPal for two things. The first was to see how long it had been since his face mask had gone on; it was roughly two minutes. He’d have just about five minutes before his body started screaming at him for air. The second was to adjust the properties of the nanobotic cloth of his combat unitard to run a slight electric current through his unitard’s hands, soles and knees, the current powered by his own body heat and friction generated through movement. That achieved, he reached out again toward the the big, black, invisible object.

His hand clung to it, lightly. Hooray for magnetism, Wilson thought.

Moving slowly so as not to accidentally and fatally launch himself into space, Wilson left the shuttle to go exploring.

“We have a problem,” Wilson said. He was back on the conference call with Coloma and Abumwe. Schmidt hovered behind Abumwe, silent.

“ You have a problem,” Coloma said. “You were ordered to return that shuttle forty minutes ago.”

“We have a different problem,” Wilson said. “I’ve found a missile out here. It’s armed. It’s waiting for the Utche. And it’s one of ours.”

“Excuse me?” Coloma said, after a moment.

“It’s another Melierax Series Seven,” Wilson said, and held up the black box. “It’s housed in a small silo that’s covered in the same wavelength-absorbing material this thing is. When you run the standard scans, you won’t see it. Hart and I only saw it because we ran a highly-sensitive thermal scan when we were looking for the black box, and even then we didn’t give it any thought because it wasn’t what we were looking for. When I was looking through the Polk data, there was an explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, before the Polk was attacked by the ship and missiles we could see. My brain put two and two together. I passed by this thing on the way to black box. I stopped this time to get a closer look.”

“You said it’s waiting for the Utche,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“How do you know that?” Abumwe asked.

“I hacked into the missile,” Wilson said. “I got inside the silo, pried open the missile control panel and then used this.” He held up the CDF standard connector.