Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(48)

“This is where I can answer your question: Nobody is listening, nobody is recording, especially now that I’ve turned off all the tracking in your suit. And in case you think it would be fun to turn the tracking off at any other time, I can assure you: The tracking system will not respond to your touch. Only to mine.”

“Only yours?”

“And your barracks officer. Urska Kaluza can’t even turn it off. Clear?”

“So I may speak freely?”

“If you mean, do I promise not to tell on you, absolutely not. If you’re an egotistical idiot—which all accounts say that you are—I’ll report whatever I want, to whoever I want. But if you have something of substance to ask or to tell, then I’ll do whatever a prudent and intelligent security officer would do. That’s the best I can do, and if it isn’t good enough, then back we go.”

“She’s Slovene and you’re Russian,” said Dabeet.

“She’s Slovene and I have a made-up Russian name. Sort of. Robot is Czech for ‘worker’ and Smirnov is a Russian name meaning ‘meek.’ My name means ‘docile worker.’ It’s ironic. I’m a Finn. There, now you know my dark secret. Finns have a long history of hating Russians and getting along with them anyway. But we have never cared a rat’s ass about Slovenes, and vice versa. She’s neither friend nor foe. Now say something worthwhile, Ochoa.”

Dabeet wanted to go on with an explanation about how he wanted to know how to open doors and go outside so he could get some practice in the cold dark vacuum, but since that was all bullshit and a security officer probably had training in reading the microexpressions that betrayed even the best of liars, he closed his eyes, then reopened them and said, “I think Fleet School is being used as a base for smuggling, and I have no way of knowing how much of the current Fleet School administration is in on it.”

“What if it’s station security that’s running the operation?” asked Robota. “What if you’re telling your suspicions to the person who would be most likely to put you out this door without a suit in order to keep you silent?”

“If that were the case,” said Dabeet, “I’d already be on the other side of that door with the air getting pumped out.”

“So you took a flying leap and decided to trust me.”

“I took a flying leap and decided that if anyone could be trusted, it was you, and if you couldn’t be trusted, then we’re all dead anyway.”

“What an interesting theory. How would we all be dead?”

“Don’t you want to hear my evidence about smuggling?”

“You were one of the tallyboys on a shipment several weeks ago. I’m betting you found several small and hidden crates that weren’t on the manifest, and they were off-loaded before you could get the numbers.”

“I know the numbers,” said Dabeet. He repeated them, clearly articulating each number and letter.

“Interesting,” said Robota. “Was this what you wanted to meet with MinCol about?”

“The Minister of Colonization is aware of some of the circumstances I now have no choice but to tell you about. I thought that if I could speak to him first, there’d be less to explain, and less chance of getting myself in deeper jeopardy. But he hasn’t responded, and I thought I should report this to somebody before an unfortunate accident left me tetherless, slipping into the dark of space.”

Robota nodded her understanding.

“Before I was accepted to Fleet School, but after I was first visited by MinCol and challenged to prepare myself for leadership rather than mere intelligence tests, I was kidnapped and taken from my school, on an airplane manned by various latinoamericanos.”

“From?”

“They pretended to be from one country or another. Does it matter? Nothing they said was true, except this. They believed that some very dangerous weapons-grade bioagents were being smuggled to Earth—presumably to some nation or faction that they opposed—and these bioagents were passing through Fleet School Station.”

“So they already know. What is the point of this?”

“They didn’t know. They suspected. They also suspected that the IF officers running Fleet School were all complicit.”

“So why didn’t they take their suspicions to MinCol?”

“For all they knew, it was this smuggling operation that funded ColMin’s ambitious program of colony ship construction.”

“They couldn’t trust anybody, but they trusted you.”

“My mother is still on Earth. In effect, she’s a hostage to guarantee my obedience.”

“I know she’s not your mother,” said Robota.

“I know it, too,” said Dabeet, “in the genetic sense. But Rafa Ochoa is the woman who raised me and educated me and was proud of my achievements and ambitious for my future. That makes her my mother, as you must already have surmised. They’re waiting for my signal.”

“Signal. You have some kind of enciphered message, then, to send in an email to Rafaella Ochoa?”

“Codes and ciphers reveal themselves to those who know how to detect them,” said Dabeet. “It’s something much simpler. If I don’t respond at all, then my mother dies. If I do respond, I must send one of the following messages. ‘There is no smuggling here.’”