“Name it,” Ocampo said.
Someday soon they will give me a mission. My first real mission, not the simulated ones they’ve been having me running. It would mean a lot to me if, on that day, you and Vera Briggs came to see me off.
“You mean, there on the Chandler.”
Yes, sir. I realize that to some extent, in my condition—and that was an intentional knife thrust to the guilt centers of Ocampo’s brain, right there—it wouldn’t matter whether you said good-bye inside of the Chandler or outside of it. But it would mean a lot to me. You and Ms. Briggs are the only people I know now. I’d like someone to see me off. Just a couple of minutes here before I go. If you would.
Ocampo thought about it for a minute, which was either him figuring out the logistics or trying to see if he could get out of it. “All right,” he then said. “We’ll do it.”
You promise? I asked. Because this was the guy who just trailed off on “If there’s something I can do for you.”
“I promise,” Ocampo said, and I believed him.
Thank you, Secretary Ocampo, I said. You’re a good man.
Ocampo either smiled or winced at that.
Either way, then he waved and cut the signal.
* * *
Things I learned from Ocampo’s PDA:
One, there was no doubt Ocampo had known he was going away. He stocked himself quite a library of entertainments—several thousand videos ranging from classic movies from Earth to the latest serials from Phoenix, an equal number of books and musical tracks, and a fair sampling of video games, although these were mostly a decade or more old; I guess when you’re running the universe, you don’t have time to keep up with everything.
Oh, and mountains of porn.
Look, no judgment. Like I said, it’s clear he knew he was going to be away for a long time, and probably without significant human companionship. I’m not going to say I wouldn’t do the same thing in his shoes. I’m just saying there was more of it than any other sort of entertainment.
And yes, I looked at some. I may be a brain in a box, but that saying that the biggest sex organ is the mind? In my case, both literally and figuratively true.
Also I was curious to see if lack of gonads meant lack of response.
The answer: definitely not. Which was more of a relief than you might think.
Anyway, I might have just gone on about porn too long.
The point was: Ocampo planned for the long term.
Also in the PDA: a truly impressive amount of confidential information from the Colonial Union.
To begin, all the information I think there might have been on the Colonial Union’s military capabilities—not just the general Colonial Defense Forces but also its Special Forces and its capabilities. Information on ships, their capabilities, and their state of readiness.
Information about the manpower of the Colonial Defense Forces, its fatality rate over the years, and information about how the lack of relationship with Earth was having an impact on CDF readiness—after all, if you can’t get new soldiers, every soldier you lose becomes one less soldier you can muster.
Detailed files on the civilian arm of the Colonial Union government with particular emphasis on the Department of State, which made sense considering who Ocampo was, but every aspect of the CU bureaucracy was gone over in what looked like exhausting detail (I did a lot of skimming).
Information on the Colonial Union merchant fleet—the thousands of trade and cargo ships that crossed between the planets—including which ones were purpose-built and which ones were repurposed from CDF ships, and their most recent trade routes.
Briefs on the current relationship between the Colonial Union and every known nonhuman intelligent species, as well as the Conclave as a political entity, and the Earth.
Briefs on every single Colonial Union planet, population, defensive capabilities, and a list of targets that would offer maximum damage, either to population, to infrastructure, or to industrial capacity.
Blueprints and assessments of Phoenix Station, the seat of the Colonial Union government and humanity’s single largest spaceport.
In other words: just about every single bit of information you would want to have in order to plan an attack on the Colonial Union and make it stick. Or at least what I thought you would need. I’m not an expert. But that’s what it looked like to me.
Now, not all this information was classified. Some of this information you could get just from looking at an encyclopedia or public records. Ocampo or anyone else using this information wasn’t exactly going to have the ability to just access a local data network. Ocampo brought with him everything he’d need—or thought he’d need.
But then there was the rest of it.