"Youre a hedonist, Mayhew," Sanko growled.
"Nonsense. Im simply the product of a hostile planetary environment," Mayhew said comfortably. "Its not my fault if that sort of insecure life experience imposes survival-oriented psychoses on people. All us Graysons get horribly nervous when we have to operate out in the open, with unfiltered air all around us." He gave a dramatic shudder. "Its a psychological thing. Incurable. Thats the real reason Lady Harrington assigned me to this, you know. Medical considerations. Elevated pulse and adrenaline levels." He shook his head sadly. "Its a terrible thing to require this sort of air-conditioned luxury solely for medical reasons."
"Yeah, sure."
Mayhew chuckled, and Sanko shook his head and returned his attention to the com console. He and the Grayson were about the same ageactually, at twenty-nine, Mayhew was three years olderand they were both senior-grade lieutenants. Technically, Mayhew had about three T-months seniority on Sanko, and hed been Lady Harringtons staff intelligence officer before they all landed in enemy hands, while Sanko had been HMS Prince Adrians com officer. By ancient and honorable tradition, there was always an unstated rivalry between the members of a flag officers staff and the work-a-day stiffs who ran the ships of that officers squadron or task force, even when they all came from the same navy. But Mayhew was a comfortable person to work with, and however laid back he cared to appear, he was sharp as a vibro blade and, like most Graysons Sanko had met, always ready to lend a hand. He was also some relation to Protector Benjamin, but he seldom talked about it, and he seemed thankfully immune to the arrogance Sanko had seen out of certain Manticorans of far less exalted birth.
Unfortunately, it didnt really matter how pleasant ones partner was if there was nothing for the two of you to work on, and that seemed to be the case here.
It should have been simple, Sanko thought balefully. After all, the Peeps had a planet-wide com net whose security they trusted totally, for reasons which made perfectly good sense. Not only did the StateSec garrison have the only tech base and power generation facilities on the entire planet, but their com messages were all transmitted using the latest in secure equipment. Well, not the absolute latest, even by Peep standards, but pretty darn good. Sanko was a communications specialist himself, and the SSs equipment was considerably better than any of the classified Navy briefings hed attended had suggested it ought to be. Not as good as the Star Kingdoms, but better than it should have been, and Camp Charon had received the very best available when it was built.
Fortunately, Hell seemed to have fallen a bit behind on its upgrades since then. The planetary garrison had an impressive satellite netwhy shouldnt they, when counter-grav made it dirt cheap to hang comsats and weather sats wherever you wanted them?but their ground stations were getting a little long in the tooth. And, of course, the people they didnt know were trying to eavesdrop on them just happened to have a pair of assault shuttles which, up until very recently, had also belonged to StateSec... and had been fitted with the very latest in secure communication links. In fact, the systems Sanko was using were probably at least fifteen or twenty T-years newer than the Peep ground stations, and theyd been expressly designed to interface with older equipment as well as their own contemporaries. Which meant Sanko and Mayhewand Senior Chief Harkness and Lieutenant Commander Tremaine, or Lieutenant Commander Lethridge and Ensign Clinkscales, whod pulled the other two watches for the same dutyought to be able to open up that "secure com net" like a pack of e-rats.
Unfortunately, the Peeps didnt seem to use the net very much, for aside from routine, automatic downloads of telemetry from the weather sats to Camp Charons Flight Ops, there was no traffic on it at all. And weather data was completely useless for Sankos and Mayhews current purposes.
But I guess it actually makes sense, he acknowledged sourly. After all, theyre all parked on their butts up there at Camp Charon itself. They dont need comsats to talk to each other, and they couldnt care less what happens in any of the prisoner camps, so theres no reason to install ground stations at any of them, either. Hell, their CO can probably just stick his head out the window and shout at anybody he actually wants to talk to!
There wasnt much for the eavesdroppers to do under the circumstances. If theyd just had some decent computer support, there wouldnt even have been any need for them to be here at allthey could have left the routine listening watch up to the computers. Well, to be honest they could probably have trusted a simple listening watch to them anyway, but they were talking about Peep computers, which brought the ancient and honorable term "kludge" forcibly to mind every time he had anything to do with them. No wonder Senior Chief Harkness had been able to fry the net aboard that damned battlecruiser! Worse, the shuttles had extremely limited computer support compared to their Allied equivalents. What they needed for flight ops, fire support missions, troop drops, and that sort of thing was adequatenot great, but adequate. But most functions that werent absolutely essential were done the old-fashioned way... by hand, or at least by extremely specific, canned software so limited, and with such crude heuristic functions, it made a man want to sit down and cry. Which meant real live human beings had to sit here to watch over the computers, because their AI functions were so stupid they would have gotten lost in downtown Landing on a night with a full moon if
"Base, this is Harriman," a bored voice said suddenly, spilling from the com speakers. "You want to give me the count on Alpha-Seven-Niner?"
Sankos eyes widened, and his hands darted for the console even as Mayhew snapped upright in his chair at the tactical station.
"Harriman, you dickhead!" an exasperated female voice replied in a tone that could have blistered battle steel. "I swear, you are stupider than a retarded rock! How the hell did you lose the numbers again?"
Mayhews fingers flew over the keyboard of the shuttles main computers while Sanko worked equally frantically at the communications station. All the information on Hades that Horace Harkness had managed to pull out of Tepes data bases before her destruction had been dumped from his minicomp to the shuttles larger memory, and Sanko heard a sound of triumph from Mayhew as something correlated between the overheard conversation and Harkness stolen data. At the same time, Sanko himself was working with the comsat serving as the relay link for the exchange between "Harriman" and Camp Charon. His equipment might not be up to the high standards of the Royal Manticoran Navy, but it was newer than the oppositions, and his updated software had let him into the satellites on-board computers without anyone dirtside knowing a thing about it. The tight-beam tap hed set up had been cut entirely out of Camp Charons net, which meant the bases traffic computers didnt even know it was there to log, and his eyes glowed as information from the comsat began downloading smoothly to his own station. All the security and encryption data buried in the transmissions automatic security linkages spilled over the display before him, and his lips drew up in the snarl of a hunting Sphinx hexapuma.
"How do I know what happened to them?" Harriman growled at his critic. "If I knew where the damned grunt list had gone, then it wouldnt be lost, now would it?"
"Oh, fer cryin out loud!" Base muttered. "Its in your computers, dipshitnot scribbled down on a scrap of paper somewhere!"