The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)

Madira Valley Beach Spaceport

Saturday, 6:20 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Saturday, 2:20 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time

On the thirty-minute flight to New Tharsis, Kira and Allison began filtering through the data she had downloaded from the battle cruiser. The biggest issue was that all the data were encrypted using fairly state-of-the-art algorithms. Allison was fairly confident that she could decrypt the files using techniques she had learned from other CIA AICs during her training for this mission.

Allison could easily manage flying the single engine cruiser, the decryption, and DTM the datadump at the same time. The biggest issue was if Kira could stay awake through it. Hopefully, the data would be interesting enough to keep her alert.

It hadn't been just any battle cruiser that Kira had decided to infiltrate. After four years of spying on the Seppies from a fairly influential family, she had come across the fact that the Separatist battle cruiser Phlegra was special for some reason. Why it was special and what was just so special about it needed to be uncovered. Kira knew that the ship was different because it had received some very interesting visitors over the four years that it had been commissioned at the Madira Valley Spaceport.

Elle Ahmi herself had made multiple trips to the spaceship and even been aboard during several of the test flights. What would Ahmi care about the test flights of a common battle cruiser? Kira would've understood if it had been a supercarrier or hauler, but a simple battle cruiser? There was something important about the Phlegra, and that is what her trip to the beach had been all for—to uncover the truth about the battle cruiser.

So, start DTMing anything you get unencrypted. Kira leaned back in the pilot's seat and yawned. She looked out the window at the treetops as they flew by underneath just a few meters away. Then she looked up at the night sky filled by a major portion of the limb of the gas giant that Ares orbited. "Breathtaking," she sighed, and tried to relax.

Her arm itched where she had been shot, so she rubbed at it subconsciously. The immunobooster had done its job, and the wound was healed nicely. There was little scarring at all. It still itched. She still rubbed.

Okay, I have several files now complete. Feel free to start in on them, Allison said.

Well, have you read any of it yet?

Not yet. I'm busy flying and decrypting.

Got it.

The first file was fairly mundane, mostly of flight manifests for materials for the different Seppy military ships at the Madira Valley Spaceport.

Here is the battle cruiser's manifest list.

Yes?

Looks like the ship has only skeleton crew and supplies. Shit, the hangar deck was full of people. If that was a skeleton crew, I'd hate to see how crowded that thing gets with a normal one. Kira continued to look through the manifest list.

I've got another one decrypted.

Good. Kira ran her fingers through her hair and continued to read. Looks like the Phlegra's captain hasn't put in any requests for next month's supplies yet. Other ships' lists are here, but not Phlegra's.

What do you mean?

There are no other supply lists past today's date for the ship. Odd, isn't it?

An interesting piece of data anyway. Maybe the captain is a procrastinator.

Maybe . . . Kira yawned. Supply lists were boring and were not going to keep her awake. It might be interesting to follow the money trail, but it was no immediate smoking gun that she could see. Besides, that type of work was far too tedious for Kira to wrap her head around after such a long day. She would need to sleep before she could think more about it.

The next few files were similar and fairly anticlimactic. There was one very short memorandum from the White House marked "Top Secret" and signed by President Moore three years prior about a field test of a prototype QMT site-to-site test with the U.S.S. John Tyler. Kira had no idea what that meant. The fact that somehow a highly classified document from the White House made it to Tau Ceti startled her and told her that there was a highly placed mole somewhere within the U.S. government.

There was a second file marked with the three letters "QMT" that immediately caught her eye. It was large, very large. Kira toggled it open in her mindview, and to her amazement, a report with U.S. Department of Defense markings appeared. The report was again Top Secret. Somehow it had been pilfered from a U.S. classified database.

Aha.

What?

I might be on to something here. Another QMT-related document. Would you give it a quick read and see?

Okay. Hold on. Allison would have to slow her decryption efforts for a moment in order to give the report more processor power, but Kira had a hunch it would be worth it.

Hey, I think you're right, Kira. At first this thing reads like a science research paper, explaining how QMT is possible by transferring energy wavefunctions through any of the multiple dimensions of the space- time membrane outside of normal space.

Uh huh. And?

Well, then you realize that this is a U.S. classified program, and from the dates and markings, it is over forty years old. The interesting part is where it describes applications for large ship teleportations and finally for personnel transport as well. There is a design for a star-to-star QMT bridge.

What do you mean?

This is obviously the basis concept for the transportation mechanism that took us from Sol space to Tau Ceti in such short notice four years ago.

I figured that. So they stole the idea from us. Wonder why we haven't been developing it and using it if this is forty years old? Kira was beginning to realize that there was something bigger than just a rebellion going on with the Separatists. But what she wasn't sure.

Not sure on that one. Could be that we are, but it is classified.

I doubt it, Kira replied. We haven't sent a lot of help to the colonies because it takes so long to get to them. This technology would make a big difference in the colonization growth.

Right. Anyway, the final suggestion of this report is that single human transport between stars is possible. There are even some preliminary calculations suggesting that it is possible to do this accurately to within meters.

Sounds out there. Kira rubbed at her arm some more.

So did exporting thirty million people from the Sol System in one day.

Point taken. Anything else?

No, not really.

Okay, get back to decrypting the files.

Right.

Kira flipped through the file, looking at the preliminary design drawings in it. There was one drawing of a proposed facility with concentric octagonal structures. At each vertex of the outer octagon there were towers. In the very center of the octagons was a larger tower that stood at least twice as tall as the others, and it extended in both directions above and below the structure. The caption for the image read "Quantum Membrane Fluctuation Projector." Kira studied the three- dimensional image a while longer and then moved further through the file, looking at other interesting graphics.

Well, we've for certain seen this thing, she thought.

Right. Oort Seven Three Nine Nine Zero One and the one in orbit above New Tharsis here. Been there. Done that.

A smaller version of the large octagonal structure appeared in the personnel transporter section of the report. The design looked more like a pad, though. The octagonal concentric structures were there, but there were no towers at the corners or in the center. However, there were small silver circles in their place. "Interesting," she said verbally, hoping that the sound of her voice would help keep her awake. "We haven't seen that. Have we?"

"Not sure."

In order to avoid the eyes-glazing-over effect of reading too technical a report, she closed out the stolen classified technical paper and opened the next file in sequence. This file consisted of flight plans scheduled for the Phlegra. The battle cruiser had been conducting flights for more than a year since it was commissioned, and there seemed to be little of interest there until she came to a flight plan labeled with the present day's date on it. There were future flight plans for the ship, but the one for today was intriguing.

"Holy shit," Kira laughed. "We got off that thing just in time. It's scheduled to go back to Sol space today through the QMT bridge."

"Really?" Allison replied over the ship's speakers, realizing that Kira must want—or need—the verbal stimulation.

"Yeah, it just has experimental flight test listed as the reason. It's supposed to depart about two hours from now. One battle cruiser can't be a threat to the system all the way out in the Oort Cloud, could it?" Kira rubbed at her eyes with her palms and then shook her head, flinging her hair loose about her face.

"I don't see how."

"Let's keep this in mind as we filter the rest of the data."

"Makes sense to me."

Several minutes passed, and there was little of immediate use found in the data. Kira yawned and struggled to stay awake as the cruiser approached the outskirts of New Tharsis. Fifteen minutes later, Allison was waking her up telling her that they had landed.

Kira dragged herself to the parking lot of the small suburban airport and crawled in her car. Allison took over again, driving her to the Tangier estates across the county. On the way, she stripped down and tossed her clothes in a bag to drop in an incinerator along the way. She ran a bathwipe over her body and changed her hair back to its normal color. Then she dressed in clothes that she had stored in her car earlier. The clothes reeked of tobacco smoke, spilled cocktails and a mixture of perfumes and colognes.

Five minutes.

Okay.

The gate at the mansion read the wireless ID tag for Kira's car and opened silently. The automatic taxi AI took command of the vehicle and steered the little blue sportscar into Kira's usual garage spot. As far as anybody at the Tangier house was concerned, it had just been another night out on the town for Kira.

"What a long freakin' day," she muttered. Her hovercar came to a halt and dropped to the floor. Kira took a quick glance at herself in the mirror for any telltale signs that she was a spy and assured herself that she was clean. The canopy of the car slid back and the door dropped to the floor, step-ramp style. Kira took a deep breath and shook her head.

"Home sweet home," she said almost sarcastically. She actually hadn't had a real home in decades since she had become an operative for the CIA. Her home was in Virginia, or at least that was where she had grown up. Her father was a Virginian and her mother a Martian. Her natural appearance was a mix of the two. Her hair was straight and dark, and her big brown eyes and her once milky skin gave away that she had Martian heritage. Her parents were still together after more than fifty years of marriage and still lived in Herndon. They had no idea if their daughter was alive or not. The last they had heard from her had been about seven years prior, just after she returned from New Africa and started training for this mission at the CIA "Farm."

The last four years, though, the Tangier estates—there were several of them spread out through the Tau Ceti system—had been her home. People back at the Sol system would be amazed at how vast the Tau Ceti colony was. Nobody on Earth had any idea how much the place had grown. The Separatists had been using their QMT bridge to funnel supplies and equipment back and forth to Tau Ceti for decades and had created a system that nearly rivaled the United States. The economy was similar, supporting work from low to upper class. There were the Sol system equivalents of multibillionaires here, including the Tangier family. The Tangiers had been one of the largest shipping families for the Martian Reservation, and they had levied that power into the Tau Ceti colony.

Kira had luckily stumbled into the family during the Exodus. And she had fit into the billionaire's lifestyle with vigor. Her many trips to the beach properties along Madira Valley had left her tanned and taking on many of the mannerisms of the Separatist locals. She had become one of the second-tier wives in the family so quickly, most likely because, Kira thought, both Elise and two of her husbands enjoyed having her in bed with them on occasion. Any time Kira had the chance, she had gone out of her way to please the Tangiers in any way she could. Any. Way. Her enthusiastic approach toward the Tangier family had enabled her to gain access to business matters of the powerful shipping juggernaut that otherwise might have been unattainable. Kira had learned a long, long time ago to do whatever the mission required. She had fit right in, and her cover had worked perfectly.

Kira clicked the door open with her palm print. The machine didn't actually read her palm and finger prints, but instead it thought that it had and accepted the false one that Allison transmitted to it. She began the process of dragging herself up the two stories and across to the south hall where her apartment was. To fit in with her persona, she stumbled noisily, as if she were inebriated, down the hallway, bumping into a few pieces of furniture here and there until she reached her room. The door opened for her, she stepped through, and it squeaked lightly as it closed behind her.

"Lights," she sighed, half expecting to find one of the Tangiers waiting for her in her bed. She was tired, but would have to keep to her cover and play her part. "Dim."

Kira, look out!

The lights flicked on at a moderate level, just enough for her to see that there were several people in the room with her. Before she could react, a man in military dress and an armored torso step forward and coldcocked her across the bridge of the nose with the butt of a rifle. Kira saw stars briefly and blood poured down her face. Two men wrapped up her arms from the sides, while somebody else grabbed her from behind and sat an airgun against her neck, injecting her with something. The lights tunneled around her and began to close in on her.

Allison, our cover has been blown were her last thoughts as her mind went black and her body limp. Allison . . .

Kira! Kira Shavi!