Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Seven Things Cadet Blanchard Learned From The Trade Summit Incident

“Seven Things Cadet Blanchard Learned From The Trade Summit Incident” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 2014.

I knew I was in trouble when the air vents in the ship’s gymnasium started farting.

Cadet-Captains Padma Rajan, Kiyan Sherazi, and I were on the pull-up bars, just after 1930 hours.

“Seven…Eight…Jesus, Blanchard, what’d you do?” Rajan said.

I caught the look on her face and sniffed the air. It smelled like a wet fart. That’s when I noticed the light puff of smoke coming from the nearest air vent.

“It wasn’t me,” I said.

Sherazi finished his set. “Someone probably programmed the MECUs to print stink bombs,” he said. “It happened a few times on my last ship. Cheap prank. You’ve pulled off way better.”

Lesson #1: The Stinson’s safety systems can tell the difference between a hazardous gas and a stink bomb, and won’t activate for the latter.

Rajan dropped to the deck. “Command’s going to come looking for you, Blanchard.”

I finished my last rep and dropped down beside her. Cadets on the track were starting to moan and pull their shirts up around their noses. “It wasn’t me,” I said again. “I mean, stink bombs? What am I, eleven?”

“I didn’t say you did it. I said they were going to come looking for you.” She glanced up at the vents, which were now emitting a steady fog of brownish smoke. “I’m guessing in about three—two—”

The gymnasium’s main hatch swished open.

Commander Sherazi entered.

The cadet nearest to her on the track skidded to a stop. “Ten-hut!”

“As you were,” she called, before we could finish coming to attention.

“Oh, that’s not a good face,” Cadet Sherazi said, under his breath. “Trust me, Blanchard, you don’t want to back-talk my mother when she has that face.”

“Cadet Blanchard,” the commander called. “Hallway. Now.” She turned around and walked out.

“—one,” Rajan said.

“Thanks, pal.” I smoothed my hair and followed the commander out.

Commander Sherazi was waiting for me in the hall.

“Cadet-Captain Blanchard, reporting as ordered, Command—”

Commander Sherazi gestured to the nearest air vent. “Do you think this is funny, Blanchard?”

Lesson 2: Stink bombs are not funny.

I resisted the urge to point out that the unparalleled record of inspired, class-one pranks I have allegedly orchestrated aboard the Stinson should put me well above suspicion for something as budget as stink bombs. However, I reserve my right to submit a formal protest at a later time. “No, sir.”

“You had better not, Cadet, because your little prank has just disrupted the trade summit.”

“Sir, I didn’t—”

“I do not want to hear it, Cadet. You think we didn’t have enough trouble with Earth’s agricorps rep dragging his heels on samples? Now we’ve had to suspend the summit entirely until we can scrub the air. I cannot believe I actually have to tell a cadet of the Associated Planets this, but you are not permitted to modify the Matter-Energy Conversion Unit code for any reason, ever. Am I understood, Cadet?”

I wanted to tell her again that I wasn’t involved. And I’d like to point out that if I had been allowed to defend myself at the time, I would not have needed to undertake the actions for which I’ve incurred this Disciplinary Action Plan. But because I am a model soldier who shows excellent restraint in the face of patently unfair accusations, I said instead, “Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t hear you, Cadet.”

I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and repeated, “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” she said. “I understand you think yourself something of a wit, Cadet, but the captain is not happy about this. You’re going to be explaining yourself to him tomorrow morning. Now change your clothes, report to the mess hall, and fix the MECU code.”

I blinked. “Fix the MECU code, sir?”

“Did I stutter, Cadet?”

“No, sir, but you did just order me not to modify the MECU code for any reason, ever.”

Lesson 3: No one likes a smartass.

Lesson 4: Ordering a cadet to use a terminal at stink bomb ground zero is not a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Titan Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, or the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child. I am not entitled to a tribunal to redress this heinous injustice.

Even though I could have fixed the code from any other terminal on the ship.

The mess hall itself didn’t smell so much like a wet fart as it did like an uncleaned lavatory in a norovirus-infested sick bay.

The commander hadn’t been on the Stinson long enough to internalize the slanderous gossip about my reputation for alleged involvement in works of staggering comic genius. But once I logged in, I could see why she had come gunning straight for me.

The malicious code had been checked into the MECU repository from my account.

I looked up the terminal ID from which I had supposedly vandalized the MECUs. It was assigned to the personal terminal in Commander Sherazi’s quarters.

My thoughts immediately went to Cadet Sherazi, talking about this happening on his last ship. I reverted the code to the previous commit, then copied the blame log onto my tablet and headed back to the gymnasium.

Cadets Rajan and Sherazi had reached the aft end of the track when I finally caught up with them. I grabbed Cadet Sherazi by the collar and yanked him behind a stack of tumbling mats.

“Hey, what the puck, Blanchard?” I may be approximating our choice of words. I have no recollection of any words or phrases unbecoming officers in training, but I believe the time I spent in the stink-infested mess hall had a deleterious effect on my short-term memory. I may need several days’ R&R to recover.

“You’re a real piece of ship, Sherazi.”

Cadet Rajan joined us behind the pile of mats. “What’d he do?”

“What’d he do? Gee, Sherazi. Your mom just read me the riot act and sent me to the mess hall—which, by the way, smells like an open-air latrine on Titan—an odor I don’t think is ever coming out of my clothes—and—”

“Stop right there.” Sherazi pulled away from me and straightened his shirt. “You do not get to come after me because my mom disciplined you for setting off stink bombs.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said again.

“So show her the blame log on the MECU code.”

“Yeah, funny thing about the blame log,” I said. “It’s got my name in it.”

“Maybe you should secure your passwords better, Blanchard.”

I shoved my tablet to his chest. “It’s also got the terminal ID for the personal terminal in your quarters.”

Cadet Sherazi frowned and grabbed the tablet. “This is from 2100 hours yesterday,” he said. “I wasn’t there.”

“Yeah? And where were you, exactly?”

Sherazi paused for a second. “Somewhere else.”

I scoffed. “Well you weren’t down here, or I would have seen you. So…?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “I went for a walk.”

“Where, outside?”

“Oh for puck’s sake,” Cadet Rajan said. “He was with me.”

I stopped. “Oh.”

Sherazi looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

(Cadets Rajan and Sherazi have asked me to clarify, for the record, that they were playing chess, and that they remained in authorized areas of the ship the entire time.)

“So, what?” I said. “Your mother added the bad code, then blamed me for it?”

“My mother was entertaining some of the Earth trade delegation,” he said, “trying to figure out what to do about their agricorps rep—he’s been a pain in everyone’s neck since the talks started.”

“Could one of them have done it?”

Cadet Sherazi furrowed his brow. “Why would they?”

“I don’t know, maybe one of them is secretly an eleven-year-old boy? Login credentials can be used anywhere, but you can’t spoof the terminal ID in the blame log. It had to come from that terminal, at that time.”

Sherazi ran a hand over his hair. “Well, at least this exonerates you, right?”

Cadet Rajan and I shook our heads.

“What?”

“I don’t know how things were on your last ship,” I said, “but here, you can remote into a terminal from a tablet even through a bulkhead. They’ll just say I was standing outside.”

A bell sounded the end of Physical Training.

“Well,” Sherazi said. “Let’s see if any tablets were synced to the terminal at that time.”

I had expected the XO’s quarters to be larger.

The main room was the exact same layout as the cadets’ wardroom on deck twelve, but her sofa still had all its stuffing, and her dining room table didn’t have a cover that came off to convert it for billiards.

“Maman, you around?” Cadet Sharazi called.

There was no answer.

The terminal was built into a desk tucked behind a partition. Next to it was an external porthole with a decent view of Earth and its moon.

Sherazi sat down at the console, signed in, and pulled up the logs. “My mother’s tablet was synced in,” he said, pointing.

Cadet Rajan leaned over the desk. “Could a guest have used her tablet?”

I shook my head. “It was idle. No packets transferred.” I pointed at the next line. “Whose pad is this?”

Cadet Sherazi copied the device ID and did a whois lookup.

“It’s registered to Clark Ward,” he said. “Agricorps trade representative. I don’t think he was even here. My mom had the leaders of his delegation up to talk about him.”

I leaned over and tapped back to the logs. “And would you look at that? Mr. Ward’s connection was transferring data to and from this terminal at precisely 2100 hours.”

“But he wasn’t even here.”

I pulled up the ship’s directory on my tablet. “Guess who’s staying one deck directly below you?”

Sherazi sat back in his seat. “No one is going to believe a trade representative set off stink bombs. Why would he?”

“Let’s find out.” I pulled up the network options on my tablet and scanned the list for the same ID we’d seen in the logs. “Oops, looks like someone doesn’t have his tablet locked from remote sync requests.”

I set up the sync, then ran a search on his files for one of the lines I’d found in the MECU code.

It came up attached to an email:

Yesterday, Clark Ward wrote:

Look, I’ve done everything I can, but everyone is losing patience with me. The XO has invited the heads of the Earth delegation to her quarters for dinner tonight, and you can bet she’s going to tell them to bench me. They want those samples.

Before that, Emile Deveroux wrote:

We just need a few more days. The nerds in the lab are sure they can fix the corn problem. We really need this contract. Can’t you ask them to go over the terms again?

Four days ago, Clark Ward wrote:

ETA on the corn?

Nine days ago, Clark Ward wrote:

Understood.

Ten days ago, Emile Deveroux wrote:

There’s a serious problem with the corn. They thought the modifications we made to deal with the new Martian superbugs were solid, but the Marsies in our test kitchen all ended up in the ICU. We’re keeping it quiet down here. Stall the talks until we can get hold of some nonmodified corn to send up for samples.

“Well,” Cadet Sherazi said, “that ought to prove you didn’t do it.”

“There’s more,” Cadet Rajan said. She showed me her own tablet, on which she’d pulled up another of Ward’s emails:

I showed the message to Sherazi.

He read it over and rose from his chair. “We have to show this to my mother immediately.”

The door hissed open. “Show me what, Kiyan? Oh.”

Rajan and I bolted to attention. “Commander—”

“As you were, Cadets. Kiyan, I didn’t realize you were bringing guests.”

“Commander,” I started again. “Clark Ward was responsible for the stink bombs.”

“Cadet, you’d better not have asked my son to bring you to my quarters so that you could—”

“Maman,” Cadet Sherazi interrupted. “You really ought to have a look at her tablet.”

The commander stared at me for a long moment, then held out her hand. “This had better be good.”

“I found some messages between Ward and one of his people back on Earth,” I said.

She looked at my tablet, and I guess she got as far as realizing I had his files before she stopped to glare at me. “You found some messages, Cadet?”

Lesson 5: I am not permitted to access trade delegates’ tablets without permission. This is true even if there is no law against accessing a system that’s open to remote requests, Ward has no proof that his system was locked, and the cracking tools I allegedly used are apparently so ingeniously hidden that no one inspecting my tablet has been able to find them.

I met her gaze. “Yes, Commander, I found some messages, and you really ought to read them.”

She turned her attention back to my tablet. When she was done reading, I directed her to the message Cadet Rajan had found.

Her eyes widened. Then she handed my tablet back, turned on her heel, and headed for the door. “Go to your wardroom and stay there, Cadets.” Into her wrist cuff, she said, “Sherazi to the bridge. Secure all airlocks immediately. Inform Captain Mbata I need to speak to him at once.”

When the door had closed behind the commander, Rajan, Sherazi, and I all looked at each other.

“I bet he’s on his way to the brig,” Rajan said.

Sherazi smiled. “The brig’s on the way to our wardroom.”

“For definitions of ‘on the way’ meaning ‘I owe that guy a polite gesture of contempt which in no way resembles conduct unbecoming an officer in training,’” I said, starting for the door.

We arrived in the corridor outside the brig just in time to watch Ward being walked out of the lift.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the bulkhead, glaring.

“You,” he hissed, as the marines walked him past us.

“Yeah, me,” I said. “You’re a giant bag of Richards, Mr. Ward.”

Commander Sherazi rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, with Captain Mbata beside her.

“This doesn’t look a thing like your wardroom, Cadets. Do you need a marine to escort you?”

“No, sir,” we said, and scurried for the lift.

Lesson 6: An order to “Go to my wardroom and stay there” means go directly to my wardroom and stay there. It does not mean “Go to my wardroom by way of deck ten to watch Clark Ward, Corporate Tool, be perp-walked to the brig.”

“Blanchard,” Captain Mbata said.

We all stopped in our tracks.

I turned around. “Yes, sir?”

“You want to tell me why the voice-lock on my console asked me to recite ‘The Purple Cow’ in front of the entire bridge crew this morning?”

I coughed. “Perhaps you should ask Mr. Ward about that, sir.”

“I know it was you, Blanchard.”

Lesson 7: Never suggest that Captain Mbata “can’t prove a thing.” He can and he will.