Resolute Alliance (The War for Terra Book 6) Page 5

  Lee looked into the office of the chief in time to see Henry and Farthing flanking the stocky Tonal bank president. Although they had worked with Tonal for years, the sight of one with combed fur and a business suit and torq was strange even to them. Alice smiled back at Lee, who tried to keep his expression as professional as possible.

  “Mister President?” Lee said, stepping into the room to present his identification. “My name is Leo Pennington from Terran Security.”

  “Terran Security?” replied the porcine bank president. “What does Planetary Security have to do with this? You Alliance people don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  “Give me that,” Henry said, reaching across the smaller man and taking the proffered identity card. “Who called you in, Pennington?”

  “Excuse me,” Lee said, as Henry swiped the card from his hand. “Aren’t you Henry Moore? I’ve read all your statements, Mister Moore. You are somewhat of a hero to me and my … partner, Anna.”

  Although Henry’s fame had not extended as far as Lee’s, the tactic of distracting the bank president from asking any more questions seemed sound. Henry pretended to examine the identity document carefully. In actuality, he had been the one to create the cards on board Resolute.

  “Alright, kid,” Henry replied with a look of annoyance. “Your papers check out. What do you want here?”

  “Yes,” interrupted the banker. “What is a planetary security investigator doing on Tonal? The explosion occurred on Vadne. Go bother the felines.”

  “We are running down one last lead in regards to Mister McGraw, and would like access to your mainframe to check for a few records of transactions on Earth.”

  “Mister McGraw has run up some pretty important debts over the last few years,” Alice added with a perfect impersonation of professionalism. “Security wants to be sure the people he owed the money to weren’t involved. It should only take a minute. Did Mister McGraw have any personal boxes?”

  “If he did, the Alliance Security vultures already found it and took it,” replied the Tonal. “You damn vultures swooped down and ran off my trusted customers during business hours yesterday. Imagine, the most trusted bank in the galaxy raided as if we were just some branch operation….”

  “Just to be sure, we want to go over everything a second time,” Lee added with a smile. “We can be out of here in an hour at most, then you can get back to business as usual.”

  “Only if this goon stays away,” replied the president. “Follow me, all of you.”

  Lee stepped in close behind the porcine executive. Alice and Henry followed with Farthing and the two security guards close behind. They were escorted into the heart of the bank’s inner security area. Each of them had to surrender their comms and recording devices, as well as undergo a weapon scan. After the scans, they were taken to a small room with an octagonal console in the center. There were no chairs and the lighting was harsh. The executive explained it was because they weren’t expected to stay in the room for very long. The terminals were hard-lined straight into the banking mainframe and could only be accessed with his personal key-code.

  He placed a four-fingered hand on the panel and spoke a few words in the guttural Tonal language. After this, a small metal key was extracted from around his neck. He placed the key into the console and the screens lit up. Alice and Lee took up positions next to each other, while Farthing and Henry moved to terminals opposite. Each was given a specific code to operate the system and was told the code would be monitored to avoid any impropriety in the collection of data. Finally, the president moved away, stepping out of the room and locking the door behind him.

  After entering their codes, the quartet began tapping keys and accessing data. Lee was the first to activate the plan by taking a tiny micro-dot from behind the rank pin at his collar. The dot contained a single piece of a virus and was uploaded by contact with the pad. Farthing was the next, and eventually they had all moved the microdots into place. Lee accessed rudimentary data about McGraw and the admiral while at the console to avoid suspicion. With dismay, he noted a large sum of money that had been transferred by Chang to the aide two weeks ago. The evidence became clear as more deposits, some from outside accounts, were transferred around from Chang to McGraw and back out. Lee didn’t know if the evidence was real or false, but it certainly looked suspicious enough to him to warrant the caution Alliance Security had shown.

  “That’s all I need,” Henry said, stepping away from the console and waving to Farthing. “If you two ground pounders will excuse me, I have real security work to do.”

  “”Of course, Sergeant Major,” Lee said, keeping up the banter. “By the way, I saw a spider on the way in. You may want to interrogate it, but I think you might need a few extra sets of binders…”

  Henry waved them off and stepped to the door. Lee glanced over to Alice to see her finishing up her own search. Each of the four had been given different areas of data to search, and hers involved the financing of the Raoists. She looked as if her search had not provided much. Truth be told, neither had his, but he wasn’t worried. The search strings were monitored and they were meant to find innocuous data. He packed his own keyboard away and stepped away from the console.

  “I think we got what we needed,” Lee said to Alice. “I saw a great sandwich place outside. Do you want to get a bite?”

  “Not a chance, Leo,” Alice replied. “You know what alien food does to my stomach.”

  The door slid open and the four moved back to the hallway. Henry gathered his security escort and they all moved back up the corridor to meet the president. He had an expression on his face which they had come to understand was a Tonal smile.

  “I hope this will conclude your activities with our bank?” he asked. “Of course, we will always stand ready to assist in any investigation, but I hope this will be the last one for a while?”

  “Of course,” Henry replied. “We will be in touch.”

  “Oh,” the Tonal said, raising a stubby finger. “I wonder if I could ask that you exit from one of our … lesser used exits. Having Security forces during the banking hour makes our depositors nervous.”

  “Of course,” Lee replied, turning in the direction the man was pointing. “This way?”

  “Of course, and may I suggest a shop about two blocks down which serves a delicious variety of sandwiches for your gastronomic delight. It’s to the right.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said with a grimace. “He always thinks with his stomach when we’re working.”

  “Explains a lot about you ground punters. Try using your head once in a while,” Henry added with a smile. “You might actually make better investigators.”

  Together, the six security investigators left the Banking Commission from an alley exit and went their separate ways. On the transit ride back to the putrid landing port, Lee pulled up a display from his wrist comm. It showed a stream of data being pulled from the banking commission mainframe. Each of the four had inserted the virus into a different area of the computer files. The program was less of a virus and more of a data sieve, filtering through every part of the search stream to find correlations. When they returned to Resolute, they would merge the data and try to find anything that might lead them to the Raoists’ backers or whoever was responsible for the explosion. As Lee watched the files scrolling, a single file brightened and was swept to a secure sector on his comm. The file was heavily encrypted and labeled with only a single word.

  Gizzeen.

  *

  Battleship Resolute

  “So what the hell is a Gizzeen?”

  “I don’t know, Henry,” Lee replied, staring at the quarantined data file on the computer display. “It keeps coming up, but only as a peripheral file, isolated from the rest of the data.”

  “Let’s try to focus on what we do know, boys,” Alice said, stepping up behind Lee to look at the display. “Large amounts of money have been getting transferred from off-world accounts into Chang’s personal hold
ings. That money is getting distributed through McGraw to all kinds of accounts. The problem we have is the encoding.”

  “I cannot access any of the names or account numbers without the primary key-code,” Farthing said, trying different combinations to access the hidden files. “I cannot unlock enough data to find a correlation or even a name to follow.”

  “So we went through all that and we’re still no closer to finding out who was behind the attack,” Alice said.

  “I have found something important,” a synthesized voice interrupted the officers. The octopod had been examining the data as well, and now waved a tentacle to get their attention. “The data is not translated in three dimensions.”

  “What do you mean?” Lee asked, stepping away from his own console to look at the holographic display in front of the alien. An object hung in the air, pulsing with photonic energy and rotating slightly. It appeared to be a twenty-sided object with streams of information moving from one side to another in a continuous stream.

  “What is it?” Alice asked. “I don’t understand what I’m seeing.”

  “The data is organized to flow in more than a single dimension,” the weapons officer said through his vocoder. “When you arrange the data streams thusly … the movement of data across planes of existence begins to make some sense.”

  “Can you understand it?” Lee asked. “What does it say?”

  “I do not know, Captain,” the octopod replied. “M-space geometry is not my field.”

  “M-space geometry?” Lee asked, looking back to Farthing. “What does this have to do with M-space?”

  “It seems every time we open a new door of inquiry…” the octopod replied. “Several more hallways are revealed.”

  “This is still not getting us where we need to be,” Henry said, stepping closer to the others. “A multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and an explosion at an Alliance peace conference. What do they all have in common?”

  “McGraw?” Lee theorized. “He’s the only piece of this we know fits.”

  “Alliance Security has probably already gone over him with a fine tooth comb,” Alice said, stretching her back and pulling her red hair back into a tail. “What do we do?”

  The conspirators stood around the conference table, looking at the dodecahedron floating above the table. There a small tone as a signal came in from the bridge. Farthing tapped a key and read the message. After his whiskers twitched slightly, he tapped off the screen and stood to face his captain.

  “I think we have another problem,” the felinoid said. “Alliance Security has put out an order to apprehend you, Captain.”

  “Me?” Lee asked. “Why me?”

  “Our presence in the Tonal system triggered an automatic call to the investigators. It seems you may have become involved in the plot.”

  “That’s absurd,” Alice said, releasing her hair and slapping the table. “Lee lost his father and nearly got killed himself. Why would they want him?”

  “Lee, who was the last person you spoke to before you left Vadne?” Henry asked, taking a deep breath. “It was the admiral, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I spoke to both him and McGraw. The little guy was the one who patched me through to you.”

  “Well, there you go,” Henry said. “You are now a suspect. If they traced you that far, then they probably know I’m with you.”

  “Resolute is ordered to return to Earth by any means necessary,” Farthing said. “The fleet has ordered the ship be fired upon if found, and disabled.”

  “This is crazy!” Lee said, raising his hands to the ceiling.

  “This is like old times,” Henry replied with a slight grin. “So now we’re all fugitives.”

  “Not all of us, Sergeant Major,” Farthing replied. “Just you three. I’m just a hostage.”

  “Well, I am a fugitive as the captain is,” the octopod said in his synthesized voice. “I could use some running and shooting. I have been very bored with parades.”

  “Wait,” Alice said, holding up a hand. “So now we’re wanted criminals with a stolen ship. Our commanding officer and his aid are in jail for blowing themselves up, and we have a puzzle that can only be opened by the man who apparently created it. Did I miss anything?”

  “Only how we unlock that puzzle,” Lee replied, looking around the room. “We need McGraw.”

  “Can’t happen,” Henry said with a shrug. “He’s being held on Vadne under highest security. We won’t be able to get anywhere near him. They won’t let us get any closer than the nearest cell. Besides, by now, the Alliance has already found all this and unlocked the code.”

  “No they haven’t,” replied the weapons officer. “They have retrieved the Raoists’ data as we have, but not the puzzle. I have been able to track their movements through the files.”

  “But why wouldn’t they have been able to find the puzzle?” Lee asked.

  “They weren’t looking for it. Our algorithm was set for anything McGraw or Chang may have touched. They were apparently only looking for data pertaining to the Raoists. They wouldn’t have even known to look for this file. It was very well hidden.”

  “How did we catch it?” Alice asked.

  “This file was hidden inside the encoding for the Gizzeen data. It was only when Chang’s accounts brushed this file several months ago that our trace picked it up. It is unmistakable, though. This file was hidden by Preston McGraw. His digital fingerprints were embedded with the file.”

  “Back to McGraw again,” Lee said. “So that’s it. We need to get to Preston McGraw and get him to unlock this file.”

  “But he’s in prison, Lee. Remember?” Henry said. “On top of that, even if we could get to him, none of us can read that geometry.”

  “I know someone who can,” Alice said, looking straight at Lee. “An M-space propulsion and physics expert.”

  “And she just happens to be attached to someone with experience with prisons,” Lee said, a wide smile growing across his face. “And I think I know where they both are right now.”

  “A protected place outside the Alliance…” Alice continued.

  “With enough resources to get us back to running speed…”

  “No!” Henry shouted, looking to his friends. “Absolutely not!”

  “What else do we have, Henry?” Lee said. “Farthing, set a course for—”

  “I said no!” Henry said, holding up a warning hand. “Lee, don’t you think we’re in enough trouble?”

  “We really don’t have a lot of options, Sergeant Major,” Alice said with a grin. “It’s him or nothing.”

  “Turning ourselves in would be a better option,” Henry said, backing away. “Hell, blowing ourselves up would be a better option. Anything but that.”

  “Farthing,” Lee started, before he was interrupted by the felinoid.

  “Course heading, sir?”

  “Set our course to Aleinhelm, Commander,” Lee said, looking at Henry. “Tell Connor Jakes I need to call in a favor.”

  6

  The sound of boots hitting the conference room table was almost more than Henry Moore could take. As he looked across the table, the former pirate smiled back and waved. He was wearing his trademark sleeveless shirt and black utility vest over black trousers and he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. Henry clenched his teeth harder as the man leaned back in his chair and surveyed the room as if he owned it.

  “About time y’all called me,” Jakes said. “I was gettin’ bored down there.”

  “If it had been up to me, you would rot down there with the rest of the criminals,” Henry Moore replied, folding his arms across the chest.

  “What you call criminals, Henry,” Connor replied. “The good people of Aleinhelm call politicians.”

  “Connor, get your feet off the desk,” Melaina Petros added, taking a swipe at Connor’s booted feet. “We’re guests here, remember?”

  “I remember them callin’ to ask for help. If they need me so bad, they can just deal with boot scuffs o
n the furniture.”

  “All of you, stop it,” Alice said, standing by the door as Lee entered. “We really don’t have time to argue about this. Connor, we did ask for your help and you are a guest on our ship. Henry, sit down and listen. We need him if we have any hope of succeeding.”

  “I don’t understand why we need the man, Commander,” Henry said, taking a seat opposite the pirate. “He couldn’t figure out how to break out of Harpy for three years. What makes you think he can break into this prison?”

  “That’s what I always liked about you, Henry,” Connor replied, leaning forward and taking his shoes down. “You always look to the brighter side of the road. You’re right. I didn’t escape from that hellhole until you kind folks came and unlocked the door. That’s true. It wasn’t because I didn’t think about it, though. I could’ve been out of there any time if I really wanted to. I had, as you said, three years to figure somethin’ out.”

  “So you just enjoyed the Ch’Tauk hospitality so much you stayed?” Henry asked with a smirk.

  “Where would I have gone?” Connor replied with his typical grin.

  “Alright, enough. Alice is right. We don’t have the time to bicker about this,” Lee said, interrupting the two as he took his place at the conference table. “I assume Henry has briefed you on what we need?”

  “He tried, but most of his information was wrong,” Jakes replied with a wink. “I already started thinkin’ about this before you got here. You guys are even crazier than I am if you think this is gonna be easy.”

  “What Connor means is that breaking into a maximum security Alliance prison is nearly impossible to do overnight,” Melaina added. “There is good news and bad news, though.”

  “Here’s the good news: it ain’t an Alliance prison,” Connor said.

  “What do you mean?” Lee said with a frown. “He’s being held at the Alliance Supermax on Vadne under heavy guard.”