thateveryone can be broken. Because of this all my access, all securepasswords, all encryption keys, and so forth must be changedimmediately after Red takes over. Furthermore, I will not becontacting any of you for any reason. All communications from mewill be directly to the captain. If you do receive a communicationfrom me it will be a signal that I was captured. Inform the captainimmediately. He will know what to do.”
“Sir, you do not expect to return, do you?”asked Red.
“Well, the odds are stacked pretty highlyagainst me right now, but that will not stop me from doing all Ican to complete the mission successfully.” I paused a moment, thenplowed on. “The appointment of Red will stand uncontested untilsuch time as it is determined that I am dead. If that shouldhappen, a different replacement for me may be chosen, and if thatis the case it is likely to come from outside our department. I amtelling you this now so that if it happens you do not see it as areflection on you. High Command prefers to bring leaders in fromoutside a given department in order to keep ideas and methods freshand new.
“Inform all your teams that we will be havinga department-wide meeting at 1800 hours tomorrow. I will beannouncing Red’s promotion there. Until then do not speak of itoutside these chambers to prevent the rumor mill from going intooverdrive.
“That will be all for tonight. Everyone otherthan Red is dismissed.”
After goodbyes and well-wishes were exchangedand everyone had left the room, I locked the door and turned offall internal recording. What I planned to talk about was notsomething I wanted on record.
“Red, I guess that title no longer fits.Lieutenant Commander Peter is more appropriate. As you will betaking my position, you will need to be more fully briefed. Soonthe captain will be looking to you to solve the problems that wecurrently face.
“The mission I will be leading is codenamedQuiet Storm. I will be leading a small assault force to penetratethe planet where the Magi are at present, with the goal ofestablishing a foothold there. I have prepared a data disk for youwith all the information that we have on the Magi, and the logs ofall the command meetings about them to date. You should know thatthis is considered a suicide mission, and our last chance toprevent war with the Magi. A war with the Magi could be a very badthing. They have displayed technology that is at least a centurybeyond what we have reached. I do not need to tell you what thatmeans for our chances of winning such a war.
“You will know the success or failure of mymission in about two weeks. The captain has orders to destroy theplanet if I am not successful. If at any point he launches thisattack you will know that he has reason to believe I have failedand am probably dead.
“High Command believes that the Magi arepresently contained on this planet only, and if that is true thewar can be won there. If the captain’s attack fails, we can expecta full retaliation from the Magi, and we really do not know whatthat means yet. I would say we have good reason to think that wewould suffer many casualties.
“As you know I always look for a backup plan,and in this case you are it. Do you recall all the cycles ofdecryption challenges we did, especially the one I called the DuckCode?”
“Yes, sir. As I recall no one, not even thecentral computers, ever cracked it,” he responded.
“Also on that disk is a complete explanationof the Duck Code, including how to encrypt and decrypt it. It isactually a fairly simple code. But it is specifically designed totake advantage of a weakness I found in our decryption methods.Because of this, no computer in the Empire can decode it; it has tobe done by hand. I am giving you this code so that if I should needto contact you, you will know it is from me. Of course, there willalways remain the possibility that I have been captured and broken.You will just have to do your best to determine that for yourself.Do not share the Duck Code with anyone; do not even admit knowingof its existence, ever. After you have memorized it, destroy thatdisk completely.”
He took the disk and stared at it for a longwhile, then slipped it in his inner jacket pocket. After that Igave him some advice on how to run the department and how to choosea new red team leader, then sent him on his way. It was gettingnear the end of Dr. Rannor’s shift, and if I hoped to catch him Iwould have to move quickly.
Chapter Nine
I made my way quickly to Dr. Rannor’s officein the medical wing. I wondered why he wanted to see me. Larath’ssuggestion that he planned to offer me a way out did not seemlikely; he was not the type to get mixed up in games of deceptionand politics. Well, if nothing else it gave me a good excuse tomeet with him as the captain had requested.
As I entered his office, the ensign behindthe desk snapped to attention and stood there silently. “As youwere, Ensign. I am here to see Dr. Rannor,” I said, rememberingthat junior officers were not permitted to speak unless spoken to,a rule I had done away with in my department. All this formalityjust got in the way of getting anything done.
“Sir, he is with a patient,” was his concisereply.
“That is fine. I will wait here until he isfinished,” I said. I sat in one of the chairs provided for waitingpatients and began to think about the Magi again. This mystery keptgrowing more and more complex. I began to focus more and moredeeply on all the threads of information I had, slipping intopuzzle-solving mode. I continued by building a wall of thoughtaround my mind to block out distractions, and once that was set upI began to deeply focus both my subconscious and conscious mind onthe problem.
Once in this mode, I lose almost allconnection to the outside world and that nearly got me killed once.I was working on some puzzle as a small child when our home caughtfire. I never heard the alarms, or felt the heat. The only memory Ihave of it is my mom screaming as she ran out of the house with mein her arms. Because of that, I learned to save a bit of myattention to watch and listen for trouble around me.
I do not know how long I had been working onthe mystery of the Magi when I heard alarms sounding. I wasextremely deep into the puzzle but for the first time ever Isuccessfully managed to separate my awareness of my surroundingsfrom the puzzle solving. It was very odd. I could see everyonerunning, and hear commands being called out, but everything wasgoing very slowly. I knew it would take me at least thirty, if notforty-five seconds to fully come out of my deep focus, and I sawDr. Rannor coming towards me. As my brain became more aware I stoodand walked towards him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw all thecolor leave the ensign’s face as he attempted to stand up, withoutmuch success. Slowly the world started to come back up to normalspeed and I heard Dr. Rannor call out, “CANCEL ALERT! EVERYONESTAND DOWN!”
I realized the alarms had stopped ringing.Suddenly, without any warning, a feeling of deja vu hit me with theintensity of a tidal wave. Instinctively I grabbed a hold of thatmemory thread and started to follow it when I was struck by anagonising feeling, like liquid ice pouring through my veins. Theintense pain threatened to break my concentration on thatmemory.
“Pain is but an illusion, the mind is themaster of the body,” I chanted to myself over and over until I hadcontrol of the pain. I could not let go of the memory thread, and Ichased it to a locked door. “A door is merely a temporary obstacle;a lock is but a pattern begging for a solution,” was what I foundmyself chanting next. I had no idea where either chant came from,but that was the least of my worries. I needed to open the lock andsee where the thread led. The lock proved too simple to stand up tome. I opened it and suddenly I was transported back in time …
“Academy-Level Ensign Vydor reporting for myyearly physical, sir!” I stated as I stood at attention at thefront desk.
“Have a seat, Ensign. The doctor will see youwhen he can,” said the officer behind the desk.
This was likely to take a while; they did notattach much importance to ensigns’ physicals. It was probably doneon purpose to teach us humility or patience. This time I had comeprepared to occupy myself while I waited.
I had managed to find a contact that couldget me real encrypted messages from the communications systems ofthe Empire. I used them to keep my mind sharp, especially duringbreaks. So far most of them had been boring messages about fleetpositions and the like. This would be extremely useful if anyonewas trying to mount an attack on the Empire, but to me they weremuch more interesting as decryption problems. This latest code wasmuch more complex than the others. I had been working on it for afew days now without any real progress. As I began to focus on it,tiny pieces of it started to emerge, but nothing that made muchsense. Whatever it was, it
