Terry Pratchett - The Long War

Maggie faced the cub. “Carl, I hereby appoint you to the crew of the Benjamin Franklin . For now, you’ve the rank of acting ensign. Santorini, make a note. XO, when we get back aboard, make it so.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And, Nathan—give me your mission patch.”

The emblem of Operation Prodigal Son was an astronaut-type shield showing the dirigible hovering over a stylized chain of worlds. Nathan ripped the patch off his uniform, and Maggie used her own dog-tag chain to fix it to the troll’s arm. Carl hooted, apparently in pleasure.

“Nathan, try to tell him what we’ve done here. Although I think he knows already.”

Nathan deployed his troll-call—the townsfolk stared curiously at the instrument—and started murmuring to the troll about being part of the Franklin family.

Maggie stared around at the gawking hicks with distaste. “That, citizens, is what we think of trolls.”

Sheriff Kafka looked utterly out of his depth. “So what now? You want Wayne to give his testimony?”

“Hell, no. I want to hear the testimony of the troll.”

The hicks goggled as Nathan used the troll-call to converse carefully with the captive.

“He remembers the incident. Well, of course he does. They know to avoid cultivated fields. They weren’t in the fields. But a couple of the young were lagging, and the band scattered. Then these boys found them. Throwing stones. Trying to trip up the young. The trolls didn’t fight back… You understand, Captain, you don’t really get a linear narrative out of a troll. It’s more impressions, bits of emotion. I’m having to interpolate—”

“That’s OK, Nathan. The picture is clear enough.”

Wayne snorted. “What the heck is this? It’s a joke. It’s only a talking animal.”

That got roughly translated through the troll-call. And the speed with which Carl moved, grabbing Wayne’s leg and holding him upside down by one hand, was remarkable.

Maggie smiled. “Your point is refuted, I think. And your testimony. Sheriff, it’s not your people who deserve respect from the trolls but the other way around.” She tilted her head to look at the inverted Wayne. “As for you, I’ll leave you in the hands of your parents, in the hope of a better future.”

The boy wriggled in the grasp of the placid troll, all but scraping his scalp on the ground. “Screw you. Everybody knows about you and your damn ship. It’s all over the outernet. Captain Troll Lover.”

She felt her blood rise. But she said calmly, “Drop him, Carl.”

And she turned away, heading back to the ship, before the boy hit the ground with a cry of pain.

The Benjamin Franklin hovered over the township of Cracked Rock through the night.

Still fuming from the sideswipe from that kid Wayne—how could a slimeball like him in some dump world like this know so much about her?—Maggie called her chief engineer. “Harry, who’s the nerdiest geek you have down there? You know the kind—”

“Ensign Fox,” Ryan said without hesitation.

“Fox. Toby, right? Listen—send him up.”

As she waited for Fox she scanned his personnel file. He really was a geek, of the barely tamed variety: a wretched sailor, but an IQ of a zillion. Just what she needed.

When he arrived, Maggie demanded, “Ensign Fox. How often do you guys do a serious systems scan? I mean, sweep for bugs, Trojans, all that hacker shit?”

Fox seemed distracted by the presence of Shi-mi, who was watching from a basket on the floor. But he looked hurt to be asked the question. “Well, Captain, we in Tech run sweeps more or less all the time. Of course we’re mostly running Black Corporation software; it’s self-policing, though we do have some independent firewalls which—”

“Black Corporation software. I bet we uploaded even more of it back in Detroit, right? System upgrades, replacements.”

“Well, yes, Captain. That’s routine.”

“And I know I had Harry scan the ship from stem to stern after the refit. But still—how much control does Black software have of this ship? Give me a non-technical answer.”

Fox thought for a minute, his small face crumpled. “Well, Black is the principal contractor. Their software—it suffuses the Franklin , Captain.”

Maggie said, “The ghost in the machine. Seems to me we leak like a damn sieve, Ensign. Even if it is under our level of detection.”

He didn’t seem too perturbed, as if that were known and accepted. “Yes, Captain.”

“Thank you, Fox. By the way, how’s the Aegis census going?”

Fox’s small face worked as he sought a concise answer. She imagined Harry Ryan beating that kind of verbal skill into the head of a boy who must once have suffered from the hyper-volubility of the typical nerd. In the end he said simply, “Frustratingly incomplete, Captain.”

“Well, keep at it. Dismissed, Ensign.”

“Captain.”

When he’d gone she came around the desk, grabbed the cat, and set her on the desk. “That guy George Abrahams and his damn troll-calls.”

“Captain?”

“This is supposed to be a military mission. This is my command . I bet every communication we attempt with the trolls is relayed back to him.”

“I couldn’t say—”

“You’re probably riddled with bugs too, aren’t you? Listen, kitty litter. I want you to set me up another meeting with Abrahams. Understand? I’ve no doubt you can do it.”

The cat only mewed softly.

The next day, she got through her business at the township as quickly as possible. That mayor from a couple of worlds over, summoned at last, seemed totally in awe of Maggie, promised to do his best to learn the lessons of the event, and offered the Benjamin Franklin crew the freedom of the local stepwise cities, which Maggie politely declined.

She had one more meeting with Sheriff Kafka outside his office. When he tried to apologize for his screw-up, she slapped him on the back. “You did your best last night. You’ve got a lot to learn—but then, who hasn’t?”

He nodded gratefully. “Godspeed, Captain.”

And now for George Abrahams.

She couldn’t keep her intention to meet him again a secret from her senior officers. So she wasn’t very surprised when Joe Mackenzie showed up in her sea cabin with a couple of coffees, and sat, watching her like an X-ray machine. “Patient confidentiality guaranteed.”

Maggie said, “You know what the issue is, Mac. Do you trust the Black Corporation?…”

“What’s to trust?”

“I think someone is up to something.”

Mac grinned. “Well, everybody is up to something . And the military have been in bed with Black for years. Which is why he was on the podium with Cowley when our mission was launched.”

“Yeah, but does that give Black the right to monitor us routinely? This is a military expedition, Mac. I get the impression that everybody from the Pentagon on down is turning a blind eye.”

Mac shrugged. “So Black has a lot of power. So have military contractors had all the way back to World War Two. That’s the reality of life, I guess. I mean, there’s no evidence of malice on the part of Black, is there? Or a lack of patriotism.”

“No, but… Now it’s personal, Mac. This is my ship, my mission. Me . It’s just a feeling—but it’s like I have a searchlight on me. Do you think I’m losing my way?”

“No. I think you’re following your instinct, and it’s never failed you in the past.”

“What, even about keeping the cat?”

“Except for that,” said Mac.

The airships Zheng He and Liu Yang steadily forged towards their target of twenty million worlds East of the Datum.