obviously see the top I was wearing, and she didn’t approve of me calling when I wasn’t in uniform. Didn’t the idiot woman realize I was with a whole crowd of civilians and had to hide the fact I was in the Military?
‘I need to speak to the Colonel urgently.’
Major Tar Cameron gave me the fake smile of someone who plans to be as unhelpful as possible. ‘I’m afraid the Colonel is …’
The image on my lookup suddenly changed to show Commander Leveque. ‘Nia is at Echo base with the Attack team, and the Colonel’s asleep, so I’m in command here, Jarra. Should I wake Colonel Torrek?’
Oh chaos, the Colonel was asleep. I hesitated. Fian was silently watching me with a panicky look on his face. Maybe I should have explained to him first, and spent a while thinking things over. My idea could be totally wrong, but …
‘Wake the Colonel,’ I said. ‘I’d better explain to both of you.’
There was a delay of several minutes before Colonel Torrek appeared, neatly dressed in uniform but looking rather bleary eyed. ‘Go ahead, Jarra.’
‘Sir, the alien sphere appeared only weeks after a solar super storm. My theory is that was no coincidence. Suppose the aliens came to Earth a very long time ago. Planet First has found two neo-intelligent races and put their planets under quarantine to allow them to continue their natural development. The aliens did something similar, leaving the sphere hidden somewhere in Sol system, and a device on Earth that we could use to communicate with it when we reached an appropriate level of technology.’
I paused. No one was saying a word. Were they thinking me a complete nardle? ‘We never found the device, the power cells eventually died, but then we had a solar super storm. It induced electrical currents in wiring and equipment on Earth’s surface, and gave the alien device a freak moment of power which sent a message to the sphere. That responded by heading to Earth, and now it’s up in orbit waiting for another message. It won’t get one because the solar super storm is over.’
Colonel Torrek spoke at last. ‘So the sphere is waiting for us to communicate, but not with random messages, with the specific one from an alien device that we never found. Where would that device be, Jarra?’
He wasn’t yelling at me for waking him up. He was taking this seriously. ‘The sphere is in geostationary orbit, sir, holding position over Earth Africa. Logically, the first place to look would be directly beneath it.’
‘We checked there already,’ said Colonel Torrek, ‘but not for this reason. We were looking for signs of an attack, but everything appeared perfectly normal and the sphere’s orbit was so far out from Earth that …’
‘The device would be underground,’ said Leveque. ‘Hidden and protected from damage. There would probably be a signal to attract our attention, but the power has run out. If it was buried thousands of years ago, any surface indications would be long gone.’
He paused. ‘When the portals are back, I’d recommend investigating this, sir.’
‘It’s the best idea we have at the moment,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘How would we do this, Jarra? Military excavation methods involve blasting techniques, and we don’t want to damage anything.’
‘Archaeologists often blow things up when they’re working in the old cities abandoned in Exodus century, but with older, rarer remains, they do very delicate excavations. I’ve done very little of that, they don’t let school kids play around with irreplaceable ancient relics, but there are plenty of experts on the dig teams.’
‘We’ll want to keep this very quiet,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘Your lecturer is Stasis Q, so he’s already taken the Security Oath and appreciates the need for secrecy in some areas. It would be simplest to call in people like him to help you with your excavation. If we get the sphere talking to us, it changes everything, but if we find nothing at all … ’
‘My excavation?’ I was grazzed.
‘They’ll expect the Military to be in charge,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘This is your idea, and only you and Fian have the appropriate knowledge. The Military Academy sometimes sends cadets to the amateur dig sites for a week of practical experience working in impact suits and using lifting equipment, but that wouldn’t qualify anyone to lead this.’
‘Yes, sir, but I’m not qualified either. I’d be giving orders to experts who know far more than I do.’
Colonel Torrek laughed. ‘I do that all the time, Jarra. Do you think I have the faintest idea how Mason comes up with the numbers he tells me, or could match Nia’s scores in a flight simulator? The answer is no, but I don’t need to do their job, I need to do mine.’
He paused. ‘You know what needs doing, Jarra. You get the real experts to do it for you. If they hit a problem, or give you conflicting opinions, you listen and assess their reliability. You then decide whether to do something, to do nothing, to call in extra specialists, or refer the decision further up your chain of command. Simple.’
I was sure it wasn’t that easy, but I comforted myself with the thought that I’d only have to play the part for a few hours in front of some archaeologists, and I could depend on Lecturer Playdon to help me. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’ve got plenty of time before Earth is out of portal lockdown. We’ll send you a list of possible personnel and the data we’ve got on your excavation site before then. You can brief your lecturer now if you wish.’
‘Thank you, sir. He’s about to play drums in a music group, so I think I’ll wait until after that.’
Colonel Torrek smiled. ‘I’d heard there were huge parties going on all over Ark. We may have to let your recruits sober up before you start your excavation.’
‘Possibly, sir. Things are fairly quiet and well-behaved here, but I don’t know what’s going on at the other dig site evacuation areas.’
The call ended, and Fian looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. ‘Jarra, you’re going to be in charge of this excavation.’
‘Apparently, yes. I’ll need you to help me of course.’
‘It’s just …’
‘Yes?’
‘Surely everyone will expect you to wear an impact suit.’
I stared at him. ‘Oh chaos!’
28
As we headed down to the main hall, I did some urgent thinking. ‘We have two options. First option, you lead the excavation.’
‘Me? Oh no!’ Fian shook his head. ‘Me Captain, you Major.’
‘You know as much about excavations as I do.’
‘I don’t know nearly as much about the Military.’
‘I scanned a lot of texts, watched a lot of vids, that’s all. I don’t really know what I’m doing.’
‘If you don’t know what you’re doing, then you’ve been giving a chaos good impersonation of it, Jarra.’
He had that stubborn look on his face. I sighed and gave in. ‘Second option, I call the Colonel back and tell him I’ve talked him into following up my theory, but totally forgotten I couldn’t wear an impact suit.’
‘How about a third option?’ said Fian. ‘You give instructions from inside a dome. You can watch everything by using vid bees. If something needs a closer inspection, I can go and take a look.’
‘People will think it really peculiar.’
‘So explain it to them,’ said Fian. ‘Remember what Playdon said earlier. It isn’t unusual to have a problem after a serious accident.’
‘It would be horribly embarrassing, but …’ I sighed again. ‘One way or another, I’m going to look a complete nardle. I’ll watch the band and then talk to Colonel Torrek. He’ll have to decide if he’s happy with me telling people about the problem, or if he prefers to put someone else in charge.’
‘So long as it isn’t me.’
‘He could draft Playdon.’
Fian gave a choke of laughter. ‘I don’t think Playdon wants to be Military. If he did, he could have signed up himself years ago.’
We reached the main hall, and saw the band already in position, floating in midair at the far end.
