Chapter Seven
By their very nature, secrets are invariably contained in imperfect vessels that crack and leak, given the right set of circumstances.
—Lorenzo del Velli
On the strangest morning of General Jacopo Nehr’s life, he awoke to hear alien voices jabbering inside his bedroom, as if people had seeped through the walls from somewhere outside. But as he sat up and yawned the voices drifted away, and finally fell silent.
Swinging out of bed, he shambled to a bay window, thinking it must have been a dream. Still, the voices had seemed to come from somewhere around here. At a window seat, he pushed a mobile nehrcom transceiver out of the way and sat down to gaze out toward the front walkway of his forested estate.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Nehr saw two of his blue-uniformed security men working with a large black dog, doing training exercises. The men did not appear to be concerned about anything, and Jacopo had observed this sort of activity many times before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
A fuzzy, staticky noise near his leg caused him to jerk, before he realized it was the shiny black transceiver he always carried, which he had forgotten to turn off. But it never made that sort of noise, because nehrcom transmissions were always crystal clear, even when made across great distances of space.
Perplexed, he lifted the unit and fiddled with the digiscroll settings. He heard a static pop, followed by voices again, this time unmistakably alien. Jacopo did not understand the rapid-fire words, but felt a sinking sensation. The way he had set up the nehrcom installations around the Merchant Prince Alliance, all under Human control, he should not be hearing anything but Galeng—the common galactic language—and clear signals.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Perspiration formed on his brow as his mind whirled. If aliens had taken over a nehrcom station and figured out how to transmit and receive, the signals should still be clear. It didn’t make sense. The system was unproblematic the way he had set it up; it couldn’t possibly go out of adjustment. It was either completely on or completely off, and trouble-free either way. Jacopo knew the technology well.
He also knew the security system. As the nehrcom inventor and the appointed Supreme General of the MPA Forces, this information was etched indelibly into his mind.
The secret workings of nehrcom transceivers were protected by internal explosive devices that would go off if anyone scanned or tried to open them. The booby traps were common knowledge, and there had been widely publicized explosions and deaths. They were not ordinary blasts either, because they left absolutely no evidence behind about the original composition of the transceivers. Every piece was left unrecognizable, with even the cellular structures changed. He had devised an extraordinarily clever method of protecting his priceless secret.
Nonetheless, something had gone dreadfully wrong.
Jacopo locked on to the mysterious signal and sent a tracer, bouncing the nehrcom transmission back to its source. A holo-image of one of the galactic sectors popped up from the transceiver, and floated in front of the astonished inventor’s eyes.
The signal was coming from one of the Mutati strongholds, the planet of Uhadeen!
Utterly impossible. He rechecked, and rechecked. No doubt of the source, and he found additional transmissions going back and forth between Uhadeen and Paradij, the capital world of the Mutati Kingdom.
But how could that be?
A nehrcom unit could not be moved from its original place of installation, unless one of two people personally deactivated the detonator. No one knew how to do that except him and his daughter Nirella, whom he trusted implicitly. The two of them worked closely together, so he would need to confer with her about this disturbing situation.
Jacopo was developing an intense headache. His clothes were drenched in perspiration. He couldn’t stop shaking.
The holo-image shifted as the transceiver tried to pick up a visual of whoever was talking on the other end. Nothing came across, no matter how much he tuned it, just static.
One unmistakable conclusion occurred to him. The Mutatis now had their own version of the system. But how did they accomplish that? They didn’t seem to have perfected their version yet, since it was making static sounds. He recalled having had that problem himself early in the development process, and then figuring out the solution.
Another voice came out of the transceiver. This time it was in Galeng, but with a whiny Adurian accent, complaining that the Mutatis had no access to podships anymore, and could no longer launch “Demolio attacks” against merchant prince planets.
Demolio attacks?
Jacopo’s pulse was going crazy. His thoughts could not keep up.
Thinking back, struggling desperately to comprehend, Nehr remembered one unfortunate leak in security two months ago. On that day, Doge Lorenzo’s Royal Attaché , Pimyt, marched into Nehr’s office and showed him a holo-image of the internal workings of a nehrcom transceiver. Nehr had been startled half to death, but felt immensely relieved when Pimyt promised not to reveal the secret—and ruin him—if Nehr just performed a few innocuous tasks for him. Discreetly, Nehr had launched an investigation to determine the source of the leak, but nothing had turned up.
It was blackmail, to be certain. But the penalty had not seemed too great. Nehr only had to send occasional communiqués—provided by the Hibbil—to all planets in the Merchant Prince Alliance. The messages had been about corporate and military matters, the moving of business assets and war materiel around.
Nehr had been adhering to their secret agreement. It seemed to be some sort of war-profiteering scheme that Pimyt had come up with, a way of boosting his government salary. Nehr had seen countless examples of greed in the Alliance, and he had learned to look the other way more than once.
As for Pimyt, he was beyond reproach from a security standpoint, having once served as the Regent of the Merchant Prince Alliance during a brief period when the noblemen could not agree upon the election of a new Doge. If he made some extra money during wartime that just made him like so many others in the government.
And now, Demolio attacks against merchant prince planets? Nehr would have to discuss the matter with Lorenzo. Perhaps … probably … it had something to do with the MPA planets that had been destroyed.
But he couldn’t discuss any of this with Lorenzo. Pimyt had threatened to ruin him if he revealed their little arrangement to anyone, and the little Hibbil had mentioned the Doge by name. Beyond that, Pimyt had insisted that Nehr come to him first if anything unusual happened involving nehrcom transmissions. This certainly qualified.
Demolio attacks.
Nehr and Lorenzo knew the Mutatis had a terrible planet-buster weapon—was it called a Demolio?—and the Doge had taken steps to block it. Steps that had worked only too well, cutting off all podship travel in Human and Mutati sectors. But should Nehr keep this new information from him? Having made his bargain with Pimyt, Nehr had no choice. If any of this got out, he could be charged with treason, based upon an accusation that he had sold nehrcom secrets to the Mutatis.
He thought of his younger brother, how he had vanished. Could Gio have contacted the Mutatis and told them something about nehrcom technology? No, it wasn’t possible. Gio had not been privy to the information, and besides, the two of them were brothers. At times Jacopo wished they had been closer, but it hadn’t been in the cards. Now Gio was gone … probably killed on one of the destroyed merchant prince planets. So many deaths in this war. So many innocent lives lost.
Nehr cursed at the situation in which he was caught, and shut off the transceiver. The resulting silence held no answers for him.
***