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Leia and Radmer did not get to leave their locked room when reinforcements arrived. Radmer insisted the doors be kept closed and locked when there weren't people in the doorway; he didn't want to let anyone else who might be hanging out in the room slip out.
Once the suited alien had been removed to lockup on Hazard, Leia, Radmer and several of the recent arrivals worked to clear the room. They did not find anyone else, although Leia pointed out that someone could conceivably have been levitating over their heads the entire time. Radmer was okay with that; he planned on leaving the doors locked after they all left. If there was anyone still in there, they'd presumably find out about it when they got sick of being unable to go somewhere else like, say, the facilities, or whatever transportation they had arranged for after whatever nefarious actions were going to follow on their subterfuge with the command and control systems on Upper Andal.
Nor was Radmer done monitoring the n-ary cross. They ate dinner near the monitors. They took turns napping. After about thirty hours of absolutely no developments – no one turned up on camera in the locked room, no more pings to the n-ary cross, no bombs, no nothing – they got a visitor from the technical teams who had been working on security policy.
"We've found something you might be interested in," said Olon.
Radmer and Leia got up from cot and chair respectively and greeted Olon, who continued. "I understand you've gotten two confirm-connect messages on the cross?"
"Yes," said Radmer.
"If the cross were still connected to C&C, those confirm-connects would have triggered this stored program." Olon used one of the displays to show them. "The first effect would have been to completely shut down the passive missile defense. We checked with the teams who got that up and running consistently; they say that's what would have happened. The second part of the program may or may not have executed properly. The program would have targeted any ship in system within certain parameters and fired the active missile defense system repeatedly. The team who worked on that think it would have been lucky to get even one shot off."
There was a pause while Leia and Radmer digested that.
"Would it have damaged Hazard?" asked Leia.
"Probably not," replied Olon.
Radmer nodded and added, "At least not directly. Our shields are more than capable of dealing with the power the active missile defense was generating when we arrived. I hope we would not have fired back, but if we had, with the shielding down. . ." Radmer shrugged. "Not good. It would have been another in that long string of incidents that's being investigated now as possibly not just being a string of bad luck."
"We wanted to make sure you heard about it. Janji has a suggestion for how you can clear that room, if you're still interested." At Radmer's nodd, Olon continued, pulling up diagram of something that looked like a sail. "Janji can make a flexible screen you can unfold in the space that will be the exact dimensions of any plane you choose on the inside. You can then sweep it through the space. I think that would give you good confidence there isn't anyone else in that space."
"Yes! How soon?"
"I've got it with me," Olon indicated a bag about the size of a large laptop case. The three of them returned to the locked room and went in. Olon unfolded what looked even more like a sail in person, but with a stiff frame. It was a little tricky getting it lined up correctly, but they were able to run it the length of the room without encountering any thing. They would keep the doors locked and the room would continue to be monitored, although it was increasingly beginning to feel like they had successfully locked the barn doors before the horse was stolen and, further, caught the would-be thief.
Over the next day or so, the political teams shut down their investigations. A scientific team that had gone down to Andal to collect specimens and do data collection, then returned to Hazard for analysis and speculation, had identified several microorganisms, some bacteria and some virii, which collectively could account for the failure of the crops to germinate. Remediating the problem was going to be hard. None of them would survive a hard freeze, but Andal wasn't subject to hard freezes most years. The first solution was to introduce some crops not subject to the same problem. Test beds had already been planted and germination had occurred, although they would not know if those crops would make it to maturity or not for some time. The next step would be to either kill off some key element in the collection of microorganisms responsible, or come up with resistant varieties of the crops the Andalese had been growing. That might take longer. If at any point there was a freeze, the problem would probably go away.
The Andalese had mixed feelings about the discoveries of the last few days. They were happy to have an effective missile defense system. They were embarrassed they had had people trafficking that had to be addressed. They were largely indifferent to the smuggling operations. They were happy their crop problems were improving; they were pissed off that they had been targeted to draw Hazard into a trap. Leia wondered about the state of PR in this culture; she couldn't imagine that particular piece of information being revealed back on Earth.
The bombs on Upper Andal, in the end, totaled 152, substantially more than expected. The various investigations had produced clear evidence of who was responsible and what they were intending to target; none of that seemed at all related to Hazard but, then, the Andalese authorities were perfectly capable of dealing with that kind of disaster. Regardless, nearly everyone on Andal seemed to know someone who might know someone who might possibly have been on Upper Andal and at risk when one of those had gone off. Anyone who didn't pointed out that the bits of Upper Andal falling out of orbit and landing on Andal might have damaged their home or person, never mind all the orbital mechanics suggesting those bits would continue orbiting with Upper Andal and primarily constitute a hazard to navigation.
Between having been saved from their own internal politics (however temporarily), and having a really good security refit done without any cost to them other than loss of use of their own station, constituted a good enough reason for a really big party on Andal.
By the time the details were arranged, all the teams on Upper Andal had concluded their work and the results turned back to the Andalese, albeit with substantial ongoing monitoring by Hazard, at least as long aas Hazard's crew was on planet and Hazard was in system. Even more of Hazard's crew was on planet for the party than had left Hazard during the entire course of the operation. Leia was tempted to say something along the lines of, "Boy, wouldn't this be a perfect time to attack Hazard?" but she was pretty sure that as sophisticated as these people were, they had a very different sense of humor.
Nothing untoward on a grand scale happened during the course of the party. Leia learned some Andalese dances which were, for the most part, variations on dances she had already learned, and a couple of really dumb ones that she was told had been huge, galactic fads around the time Andal was founded. Nice to know that when the superculture found out about the Macarena, they'd have a framework to fit it into already.
When Leia stopped to catch a breath, Esifwu plopped down beside her and asked, "Have you heard?"
Not having any clue what Esifwu might be talking about, she said, "No. What now?"
"They found the coordinates for the planet you were picked up from!"
Leia was stunned. She told herself she was happy, but mostly, she was just stunned. She'd just adjusted to the idea that if she ever saw home again, it would be after everyone she knew had been long dead. She had reached the point where she could talk about whether she even wanted to return or not. But Esifwu's blunt announcement made her realize she still had no real idea what she wanted.
Esifwu took Leia's silence as an opportunity to continue, oblivious, as usual, to how her listener might be reacting. "Hazard will be going, of course, as part of the support team – uh," Esifwu stopped abruptly with a grunt when Dulak slapped her on the back, apparently in greeting, but in practice, in a not subtle at all gesture that now would be a great time to shut up.
"I hear Esifwu got to you first with the news, Leia."
She looked up into Dulak's face and, as always, was surprised at the look of sympathy she saw there. He could be such a jackass, but usually he was just the right kind of jackass that the moment demanded.
"Bit of a shock, them getting through the data that quickly."
"Yes."
"There's a big team going, of course, to try to handle that first contact better than we handled yours."
"You weren't really my first contact."
"I don't count car-crash as a first contact, more of a nightmare that fortunately didn't go on too long for you, anyway. Long enough."
"True."
The three of them sat in silence for amoment, Esifwu glaring at Dulak, he responded by massaging where he'd smacked her.
"Hazard will be part of that team, as emergency support," added Dulak.
Leia considered that for a moment. She could delay her decision for that long.
"If you want to avoid being part of the liaison team, you'd better come up with some really serious psychological pathology. Soon. Maybe commit a few murders, things like that."
Dulak might appreciate her joke about how this party would be a great time to attack Hazard or Hazard's crew. Then she saw Radmer headed their way, slowing down when he saw Esifwu and Dulak sitting next to her. She tried to smile at him, but it must have looked weak and sickly, because he frowned and hurried over to them.
"They told you?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You don't look happy," he observed. He had a hopeful look about his eyes.
"I should be," she said, trying not to cry. "There'll be at least one new novel each by Suzanne Brockmann, Elizabeth Moon, David Weber. . ." She trailed off. Actually, it would be great to get some books, movies and music. She tried to imagine Esifwu, Dulak, Radmer, Wrinton, Ysbo and Baylen watching the Star Wars trilogies. That would be truly weird. It did, however, cheer her up a little.
"God, everything is going change. I mean, it was one thing when it was just me, and I could imagine that if I ever got back home, it would be the same as it was, maybe a few years gone by, maybe a lot of years. But that was never really going to happen, was it? If I can go back, everything changes, right? You're all going to want to confirm what I told you about monkeys and shit, and the fossils. Then everyone else is going to want to visit the Lost Home of Humanity. There's so much there that has got to fixed, too. I mean, the violence is one thing, but our biosphere is in really bad shape and I cannot even comprehend what will happen with religion. You think what I told you about our economy is bad; just wait until you see how corrupt every institution we have is. I mean, yay, you're going to save us, but when you see us, I'm not sure you're going to think there's anything worth rescuing."
"You have not been paying attention," Dulak said. "You did hear about the 152 bombs on Upper Andal, right? I don't think you should expect us to save you."
"Dulak, we have nuclear weapons."
Leia was not surprised to notice Dulak's face acquire the distant expression of someone hearing a long, complicated technical explanation. She'd spent quite a lot of time with ship-mind on weaponry, initially because she was afraid of what her planet might do to any visitors. Eventually, she realized she had the concern backwards, but it took a while.
"And you wondered why we don't let the young people off-planet. This is exactly the kind of bright idea they tend to have. But you do not need to worry about that; that sort of problem is very simple to handle."
Nanotech will save the world from itself, thought Leia.
"The real problem," Dulak continued, "as I'm sure you've realized, is going to lie in finding ways to help people adjust to a dramatic change in what is possible, and what is not longer necessary."
She scrubbed her face with her hands and felt Radmer's arm lift from where it had circled her waist. He got up and massaged her shoulders. It sounded so easy when these people said it. It was not going to be easy.
"Maybe you don't yet understand what it is that Hazard does," teased Radmer. "We show up. We change things. We look around in hopes that someone will say thank you and give us presents and throw us a party. If they are, instead, throwing accusations or things, we duck out immediately. Otherwise, we soak in a little glory, and move on to the next disaster. All we do is mess around with other people's insoluble problems. Your planet is just another insoluble problem. Plus, it's going to be a huge tourist attraction, and we get to go there first. There is no way this can be a bad thing. At least, not any worse than anything else we do."
"Would someone please explain to me why Leia is not happy about this," asked Esifwu, plaintively. "I thought she wanted to see her home again. I thought she'd like it if there was some help to make her home a safer, better place. Where's the problem?"
No one had an answer to that one, not even Leia.
When the music switched to a song that any number dance to, they all got up at once, and started on the repetitive, but complex, hand slapping that accompanied the repetitive, but simple steps. Leia added a little swing to her hips, took a deep breath, and sang along with the chorus.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2012.
Created: July 9, 2012 Updated: July 9, 2012