Brigadier Park nods at the administrator, who returns the nod curtly. Colonel Campbell merely shrugs.
“Fine,” the colonel says when the tech restores his audio. “That’s settled, then. But I’m still not excited about transitioning back blindly. Even under stealth, they’ll shoot Indy to shards if they’re staking out the Alcubierre node. And you all wouldn’t know what happened until we were overdue a few weeks later. At which point you’ll have no options left other than a suicide run of your own. And I have to be honest, General: It bugs me to know that you SRA boys and girls will have no skin in the game.”
“I am not familiar with that idiom,” Brigadier Park says. “What does ‘skin in the game’ mean?”
“That means you are risking nothing in this operation,” Sergeant Fallon supplies.
Brigadier Park looks at the officer next to him and mutes the audio feed on his end. They engage in a short discussion. The general is as calm as he has been since he joined the feed, but whatever they’re discussing must make the other officer uncomfortable or upset, because his expression gradually turns from neutral to visibly perturbed. Then it looks like they come to some agreement as the other officer nods and lowers his gaze. Brigadier Park turns back toward the camera and turns his audio feed back on.
“We know that the enemy is aware of the Commonwealth’s transition point and is very likely guarding it from the other side,” he says. “But we cannot say for sure that the same is true for the transition point controlled by our own Alliance.”
“Are you volunteering to send one of your own ships through, then?” Colonel Aguilar asks.
The SRA general allows himself that tiny smile again, one corner of his mouth barely arching upward by a few millimeters. “No,” he says. “Your stealth ship will go. None of ours have the ability to stay hidden and conduct clandestine operations.”
He pauses for a heartbeat or two. “But we will volunteer the location of the Alliance’s transition point, and provide the access codes for successful passage.”
There’s a moment of shell-shocked silence at this, and then the comms tech has to cut everyone’s audio feed again as all the participants save the SRA officers burst into loud and animated discussion at the same time.
The colony administrator lets out a low whistle next to us.
Sergeant Fallon looks at me and raises an eyebrow. Then she folds her arms in front of her chest, leans back, and plops her artificial leg onto the console in front of her with a grunt.
“Well, well, well,” she says. “Isn’t this shaping up to be an interesting month.”
It takes a few moments for the general commotion to die down. Brigadier Park waits out the cross-talking discussion that follows. Finally, Colonel Aguilar takes the reins again and speaks up.
“You will hand us the coordinates of your Alcubierre point and the transition access codes? Just like that?”
Brigadier Park shakes his head. “Not precisely. We will share the location, but we will have to supply personnel to your ship that will be in control of the access codes. Regardless of our current situation, I do not believe that it is wise to give you a way to break our encryption protocols. We may not be at war with each other anymore, but we need to keep some of our secrets.”
He smiles curtly and addresses Colonel Campbell. “Does this satisfy you regarding the amount of skin we contribute to this game?”
Colonel Campbell nods slowly. “That’s a mighty big secret to give away, though. I don’t know if they’ll be happy with you back home if they learn that you gave away your number one military-intelligence nugget in Fomalhaut.”
“It is of small consequence,” Brigadier Park says. “Besides, it is—how does the idiom go—fair turnabout? We already know the location of your transition point, and we have in fact used it alongside your own ships. This way the scales are balanced.”
He almost-smiles again, the barest hint of amusement reflecting in the corner of his mouth briefly. “We need your ship to find a safe way back for us. If it does not, then we will all die soon, and there will be very little point in keeping military secrets. We will just have to make new ones if things change back to the old ways.”
“How much personnel do you wish to assign to this mission for Indianapolis?” Colonel Aguilar asks.
The general considers the question and confers with his staff officer briefly.
“One would be enough,” he says. “A communications expert, one of our own battlespace coordinators. That might also be useful if the . . . Indianapolis . . . encounters other Alliance fleet units that may not be aware of our current truce.”
“Wait up for a moment,” Colonel Campbell says. “You want to put an SRA combat controller with advanced comms and data gear on the most advanced electronic-intelligence boat in the fleet? I know this is supposed to be the dawn of a new era of cooperation and all that happy horseshit, but that strikes me as a monumentally unwise idea. You know, just in case we go back to shooting the hell out of each other.”
“You can limit access to sensitive areas of your ship,” Colonel Aguilar suggests.
Colonel Campbell shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter if I lock him in the brig for the trip if he has his ELINT gear right with him. And even if I take away his hardware, I have to give it back to him as soon as we get close to their Alcubierre point. All it takes is three minutes on our network, and they can reverse engineer this ship from master blueprints at the New Dalian fleet yards in six months.”
“Well, what do you suggest? There aren’t too many other options on the table right now,” Colonel Aguilar says. “We need Indy to scout, and Indy needs the access code for the SRA node, unless you want to take your chances with the NAC node instead.”
“I don’t like either option,” Colonel Campbell says.
I clear my throat and chime in. “Sirs, I can ride herd on that combat controller. Be his minder, make sure he doesn’t do stuff he’s not supposed to.”
I’m the most junior rank in the conference by a fair margin, and the sudden undivided attention from a dozen staff officers is a little unnerving. I shift around in my chair and try to tune out the other officers by pretending I’m just talking to Colonel Campbell alone.
“Are you positive, Mr. Grayson? That trip may be a one-way ticket.”
“Yeah, I’m positive,” I say. “I know the job, so I know what he should and shouldn’t do. And I’ve worked with their guys on the Fomalhaut b drop, so we have a bit of a working relationship. It’ll be fine, I think.”
The colonel chews on his lower lip while he considers my reply. I can sense that everyone in the ops center is looking at me, Sergeant Fallon next to me foremost, but I keep my attention on the screen.
“I still don’t like either option, but I don’t like that one a little less than the other one, if that makes sense.”