Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

“Oh? And who would that be, sir?”

“Richard Downing.”

Keith smiled a big, congenial, shit-eating smile. “Richard Downing? Never heard of him. Or of you, Mr. Riordan. Or of your walk-about on Dee Pee Three which indirectly brought us to where we’re standing right now. No — never heard of any of that.” Macmillan’s Scottish burr was so faint as to be almost unnoticeable.

Like a ghost emerging from shadows, Bannor drew up from the other side, jerked his head toward Keith. “Told you,” he muttered at Caine.

Caine ignored him. “Mr. Macmillan, what was your mission after providing security for Spookshow Prime?”

Macmillan kept smiling but stood a little straighter. “I have no knowledge of any missions relevant to your inquiry, sir, and would not be disposed to discuss them if I had.”

Okay, so his responses were as genuine as the IRIS ID codes in his dossier. No reason to belabor the point. “I presume you had special orders embedded in the personal effects they shipped with you?”

“Yes, sir. From this same Mr. Downing I’ve never heard of.”

“And those orders are—?”

“I’m to be your eyes and ears within the group, sir.”

So, internal security. Prudent, although it was hard to imagine how even the Ktor could have managed to infiltrate the delegation with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. “Very well, Mr. Macmillan. What’s your cover role in the legation, then?”

“As far as the personnel roster goes, I’m just a warrant officer from the integrated Commonwealth task force. Jack of all trades, master of none. In terms of command structure, I’d be below Miles O’Garran, and on a par with Trent Howarth.”

Caine smiled. “Well, then”—he raised his voice—“Mr. Buckley, do you have a list yet? Mr. Macmillan is still waiting around for something heavy to carry.”

Buckley came over with his palmcomp, transferred the defense and emergency stores inventory to Caine, Macmillan, and Bannor. “I don’t envy you guys. You’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Bannor scanned the list. “We’re not going to get this done today.”

“No, we’re not. So let’s get going on the priority items. Bannor, you find Tygg, Wu, O’Garran, and Howarth. We’re going to need all hands for this. Macmillan, you go with Buckley and have him electronically tag all the containers so they show up on our smartmaps.” Caine started to move off.

Bannor held up his hand. “Whoa, Boss. Don’t take off until you tell us where to find you. What will you be doing?”

Caine shrugged. “Moving the boxes. Like I said, ‘all hands.’ Let’s get going.”

Caine stepped back, hands on his hips and shirt clinging to his sweaty back, as Yiithrii’ah’aash’s two helpers sealed the cargo mod once again. Bannor nodded at the dull gray door, moved past Riordan. “Let’s get a beer. Sir.” He continued on to the pod-bus.

Caine followed, discovering most of the passengers they traveled with on the previous ride. Sleeman and Lymbery had tarried to examine the quasi-biological extrusions that had extended into the module’s interior, up its sides and, after seamlessly merging with the docking sleeve, reportedly reemerged out in space, fusing into the mooring arms.

As the pod-bus began the short run back to their hab mod, Sleeman, still staring at the strange, grainy growths, leaned toward Lymbery. “That extrusion is not just a reinforcing structure. Through it, they’re extending their power and data grids to mesh with the ones in our cargo module. And I’ll bet it didn’t break any seals when it pushed out into free space; it just resumed growing in the vacuum. Probably completed the encystment of the cargo mod.”

Lymbery may have nodded.

“But what’s really interesting is that the extrusions are not homogenic. They’re comprised of diverse strands, some of which seem to be evolving into power conduits, judging from the havoc they played with my magnetometer. It looks like the parts that are now in contact with our electrical and data junctures began as probes, gel cysts that contact, sample, and assess the interface. They measure and learn to replicate its electromagnetic ‘flavor,’ so to speak. Then, about an hour later, I saw what looked like a custom-grown interface biot being budded off from the end of that bioelectric vein. By the time we come back here again, I’ll bet that biot has evolved into a power transformer which converts Slaasriithi data and electric current into Terran equivalents and vice versa.” She waited, unaware that the entirety of the pod-bus was staring at her. Tygg’s face was a mix of awe and wonder. When Lymbery failed to react to her hypotheses, Melissa leaned in closer. “Well, whaddya think, Morgan?”

Morgan Lymbery blinked as if roused from a waking dream, winced in annoyance. “All possible but excessively speculative. I remain focused on first matters.”

“What first matters?” pursued Melissa, undeterred by Lymbery’s snappish response.

“The chemical nature of the primary extrusions. I posit supramolecular liquid crystal templating or thermoplastic elastomers.”

“Elastomers?” Melissa echoed skeptically. “Natural rubber and polypropylene isn’t likely to be biogenically organic. Its softening temperature is too high and its glass transition temperature is still not rugged enough for—”

“That analysis is unrealistically constrained to current human standards. Theoretical limits and permutations point toward lower temperature production ranges and broader operational durability limits. There are—”

Melissa interrupted: Caine had the impression her focus on the topic was so intense that she wasn’t even aware she was being rude. “Yeah, but polypropylene is really nasty stuff. Even if its reliability regime could be expanded, how would an organism that’s carbon based not find that lethally toxic?”

“Analysis flawed at root. Example: hydrochloric acid in the human stomach would be lethal to the parent organism if it escaped containment. Directly analogous internal safe containment systems possible. Also, capability for polypropylene extrusion does not require the storage of propylene itself. Raw stock for combination could be stored as separate constituent parts. Conversion into propylene occurs in peripheral organ or sac, which then immediately expels the compound as extrusions.”

“And how—?”

“Storage mediums could include ethylene and other compounds, exploiting olefin metathesis to reverse the necessary—”

“Can someone translate?” Bannor grumbled. “Or get them to stop?”

Caine smiled. “Melissa, Morgan, you might want to save the rest of your debate for the ride down to the planet tomorrow. We’re home.”

“Home?” said Lymbery, rousing out of what had sounded like demonic possession by a chemistry computer. His wistful reaction to the word “home” hardened into adult resignation when he saw the entry to their hab module. Perhaps, Caine speculated, he had expected to see the quaint roofs of the small Cotswold village from which he had revolutionized human naval architecture. “Oh. Here.” Lymbery sighed, exited the pod-bus.

Caine was the last to step down from it, and was immediately set upon by Joe Buckley. “Captain,” Buckley began without the courtesy of a preamble, “I didn’t have enough time to get a full inventory of the contents of our individual survival packs.”

Caine hadn’t minded being made an officer — until now. “Uh, Joe, if you have the standard allotments of each item in each pack, and you have the total number of packs, then you just multiply and you have your inventory totals, right?”