Chapter Twenty-One
Timmy Uggs, Murphy’s new and very young adjutant, was typing on Makarov’s computer at the arduous and tortured pace of a beginner. A high school sophomore in Brooklyn when the bombs fell in Pearl Harbor, he’d had little to no experience with a typewriter, so his relationship with a computer keyboard was uncertain, to say the least. But he didn’t lack determination.
Still, with so many operations under way and coordination between various Hound and Dog leaders especially delicate, Murphy felt Makarov’s absence keenly. And not just on a professional level. For all his formality and often dour pessimism, the Russian had been someone Murphy could actually talk to: a peer in terms of age, epoch, and even experience. Now, with Max Messina gone, too, Murphy felt more alone than ever. Ironic, considering that he had already been convinced he was as isolated as a CO could be.
That was arguably your stupidest assumption yet, Murphy: thinking the universe lacked an infinite capacity to make things worse than they are—including your loneliness. Which brought Naliryiz’s face to mind.
He brushed away the image as quickly as possible. “Timmy, is the drop mission still on track and on time?”
“Uhh…”
And once again, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: will he find the right program and menu this time?
Happily, Timmy did. “Aye, aye, sir: numbers are right. Major Bowden is, uh, five-by-five, sir.”
Despite a hit-and-miss relationship with post–World War II military slang, Timmy Uggs was still doing pretty well for a kid who’d been sitting in Makarov’s chair for less than two weeks. But, unfortunately, “pretty well” didn’t even come close to filling the gap left when Murphy had approved Major Pyotr Makarov’s request to be the Lost Soldier CO of the boarding team. No one besides Tapper had the zero-gee qualifications, and neither the Hounds nor the Dogs had the experience or mindset for running the op—despite being ruthless and vicious when prosecuting their highly polished equivalents of gang wars.
Unfortunately, it was equally true that no one else had Pete’s facility for juggling a wide array of diverse activities, data streams, and comm threads. Part adjutant and part master data manager, Makarov hadn’t merely understood how the various facts and figures fit together, but more importantly, how they blended into a whole picture that was much greater than the sum of its disparate parts. Perhaps one day Uggs would develop similar capabilities, but the chance of that day ever coming was a long shot.
As was the chance that anyone would ever address him by his actual name: Timothy Uguex. Bored and overworked officials at Ellis Island had Anglicized without caring—or possibly even noticing—the brutally comic result. His father had legally changed it back years later but died while waiting for confirmation that never arrived. So, when his son enlisted in the Navy, the only surname on record was the bastardized one and, inasmuch as it matched the one on his birth certificate, Timothy Uguex was once again Timmy Uggs.
Happily, Timothy was the opposite of his dull and plodding moniker. Small and clever, he was a natural for assignment to submarines. There, he quickly confirmed what his incomplete high school transcript promised: a marked aptitude for math and machines. To the initial delight and eventual envy of the warrant officers who determined the prelaunch setting for torpedoes, Timmy was always the first to finish the calculations.
However, Apprentice Seaman Uggs’s reputation went beyond having a head for numbers; he gained notoriety for having the temperament most commonly associated with his shock of bright red hair. Before he ever saw combat, he’d racked up so many drunk and disorderly charges that he’d not only lost any chance of promotion, but had forfeited more pay than he was likely to earn in the course of his enlistment. Bitter and largely unrepentant, Timmy underwent a transition from hot-tempered extrovert into sullen loner who preferred the company of books to that of his crewmates.
As it so happened, Timothy was an avid science fiction reader. So while one part of him was just as dismayed and depressed as the rest of the Lost Soldiers when they awakened in the twenty-second century instead of the twentieth, another part was fascinated by the world of wonders in which he found himself. A great number of the changes that he’d encountered between the often lurid covers of his favorite books and magazines were now reality. However, he confessed to two related disappointments: the unchanged dullness of both duties and uniforms. He had very much liked the thought of wearing capes while on ever-changing adventures across the cosmos. So it seemed unfair to him that, 150 years later and 150 light-years from Earth, living in this brave new world of technological miracles still entailed wearing dull clothes and doing dull paperwork—even if there was now a great deal less actual paper involved.
The brisk opening of the hatch swept away Murphy’s reflections upon his hapless new adjutant. “Sir?” inquired Uggs.
“Yes, Timmy?”
“Major Lee has arrived. She says she is here on your orders.”
“She is. Please show her in.”
Mara “Bruce” Lee breezed past him. Her clipped gait not only told Murphy there was business to discuss, but that it had to remain private. “Timmy?”
“Sir?”
“Before that hatch closes, make sure you’re on the other side of it.”
“Sir!” Uggs said as he snapped a salute on the move.
When the hatch had sealed behind him, Lee came to attention. “Permission to speak freely, Colonel?”
Oh, for the love of… Murphy waved a weary affirmative.
“Sir, what the hell did you say to Naliryiz?”
“What did I say to her? Don’t you have that a little backward?”
Lee’s answering frown was puzzled. “Maybe so, sir. She’s extremely upset, but is also being really vague.”
“And how’s that last part any different from usual?”
“She may be indirect with you, sir, but she is direct with me. Very direct. But this time, all I can tell is that she’s distracted, irritable—which I’ve never even seen before!—and was determined not to let me become involved. But I’m…well, persistent.”
Murphy chose to ignore Bruce’s staggering understatement. “Well, I understand a whole hell of a lot less than you do, Major. Last time I saw Naliryiz, I thought I’d be friendly and express how nice it would have been if she, too, had been able to come to R’Bak during my last planetfall. Her reaction was a wary look and a solemn warning.”
“A warning? About what?”
“About what I was suggesting. Specifically, that it would have been a very bad idea, politically.”
“And then?”
“And then I resolved to accommodate her judgment on the matter.”
Lee frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Thank you, Mara. I’d appreciate that.”
Lee blinked—whether at his use of her first name or his frankly personal tone, he could not tell. “Don’t think twice about it, sir. Adoptive sister or not, if her behavior is being constrained or coerced for political reasons, getting clarity on that is job one—as is anything that might complicate our strategic relationship with the SpinDogs.”
Murphy managed not to reveal his surprise at Mara’s crisply professional tone. But her always powerful emotions were coursing behind her regulation exterior. He shook his head, smiled. “Not sure I’ve ever heard you so damn serious, Lee.”
She shrugged. “I am serious, sir. Given the stakes we’re playing for up here, you might say I’m deadly serious.”
A faint knock on the hatch “Sir,” Tim’s muffled voice reminded from the other side, “coming up on the comms window.”
“Thanks, Timmy. Return to your post.”
“Aye, sir,” his young adjutant responded. The hatch opened and he almost ran back to the computer. “Monitoring the prearranged wavelength via the, uh, alien satellites.” He sounded like he was on the verge of giggling every time he uttered the word “alien.”
“Very good. Watch the clock closely. Seconds matter.”
“Sir?”
Mara looked over her shoulder at him. “Sometimes, the precise clock-time when a signal is sent is the signal.”
Uggs frowned, then brightened. “Sure, I get it! We just listen for a…a squelch break. There’s no code for an enemy to crack, because the clock-time of the empty send is tied to a preset message.” His smile disappeared as he realized what he’d forgotten to add: “Ma’am!” He flushed. “I mean, sir.” The last word was uttered like a question; like others of his era, Tim was still becoming accustomed to the practical and formal realities of having women in the ranks.
Lee smiled. “Either works.” She turned back to Murphy and moved to where she could look at his computer screen. On the left side was a list of one-minute clock intervals: the “signals.” Each such signal was separated on either side by two minutes of “dead time.” In the right column were the messages associated with each interval. They were already thirty seconds into the first “signal” minute.
When it had elapsed, Mara leaned back with a relieved sigh. “Well, no deal breakers. Still ‘mission go.’”
Murphy only nodded. His deepest concern was not in connection with any particular message, not even the first one, which was “MISSION ABORT.” Murphy’s nightmare scenario was if, at the end of the comms window, there had been no signal at all. The explanation could be anything from equipment malfunction to the elimination of Chalmers’s entire team. And worst of all, they’d never know, because now comms windows were becoming very rare and carefully scheduled events. Within days, there would be too many surveyors on site who’d be listening for their own—and the possibility of any unidentified—radio traffic.
They waited through two more silent intervals before a squelch break came out of the speakers as a squawk of static. As Murphy released a very slow and silent sigh of relief, Mara leaned over to look at the message associate with that “signal minute.”
“NO EVIDENCE OF ACTIVE ENEMY SIGINT MONITORING. NO DETECTION OF NEW CYPHERS IN ENEMY COMMS.”
Another minute, another squawk: “FURTHER VOX COMM SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY.”
Mara frowned. “They worried that the surveyors could get lucky and hear us?”
Murphy shrugged. “Possibly, but I’m guessing they’re just being cautious regarding bandwidth and signal density. Sending Morse code at irregular intervals is darn close to background noise. But voice communication is a constant ‘here I am’ notification to anyone who happens to be spinning around the dial.”
Another squawk emerged: “WILL USE PRESET TIMES TO NOTIFY OF UPCOMING SAFE COMMO WINDOWS.”
Mara nodded. “Sounds like the surveyors are already getting into a predictable pattern of check-ins and updates.” She turned to him. “I’m glad you asked me to be here for this, but you didn’t need to, Murph.” She glanced at the way his hands were resting on his desk, palms flat. “Not yet.”
Murphy shook his head, kept his voice beneath the level of the static. “I agree; my ‘condition’ hasn’t reached the stage where I have to worry about…about something occurring suddenly. I wanted you here because someone else in the chain of command should be present. That way, no matter what happens to one of us, the other can still confirm the comms and carry the operations forward.”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured. At that moment, her gentle tone reminded him of how his younger sister had said good night—at least, before puberty caught up with her.
The timer in the right-hand corner of the computer screen ticked down and reached the final interval.
The last squawk went on for twice as long as the others, as if insisting that everyone should stop what they were doing to hear it.
They leaned back with relieved sighs, knowing the associated message by heart:
“FINAL PLANS SET. MISSION IS A GO.”