The Alexanderov Federation

#2 - Growing Pains

By Robert Huntingdon

Chapter Eight - 007 he is not

Admiral Gretskov tapped impatiently on his chair. He knew Goodman well and did respect him, in part because of how favorably his brother spoke of his commanding officer. But they had completely different command styles. Goodman had his massive collection of ships and an extensive chain of command to allow so many ships to be properly led; Gretskov preferred to command his own ship from his own bridge as well as the rest of his much smaller fleet. He had a brilliant tactical mind, but he preferred to use a small number of ships like a scalpel rather than a large number as a club. At least that was how he thought of it. The fleet admirals had merely noted that he had performed better with a small fleet than a large in the simulations and assigned him appropriately. Indeed, few other admirals could do as well with 400 ships as he could with 50. Many of his peers while he was still in Fleet Command School had enviously attempted to belittle his skill by calling him "lucky". But eventually, as time after time he annihilated them in simulations, his detractors were slowly silenced.

Though still in transit to Beta Celtsi, where the Kilora Tribe was staging their forces to both defend their worlds and still be able to quickly counterattack, he was by no means cut off. The tachyon-based real-time communication systems that all races used were quite capable of functioning just as well when one or both parties were in hyperspace. So he continued to receive updates on the progress of all four Federation fleets and news from his allies as well.

As he had little better to do while still in transit, he studied each and every communiqué for any hint of tactical advantage it might give him in the upcoming battle, or any future one. Baring a crisis situation, he made no distinction between information that would help him win a fight he expected tomorrow and a fight he expected 10 years from now. For he fully expected to be there for both battles and wanted to be ready well in advance of each.

One report today grabbed his attention. With his photographic memory, he effortlessly recalled all the communications from Agent Rttangss and all other information he had ever read or heard about the Raas. Something about the last communication was not quite right, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He decided to pull up previous communications just to make sure his memory was not faulty. It was not. Each communication was exactly as he remembered it. But this last communication was now the third in a row that did not seem to quite fit with the pattern established by the previous ones. Of course, he couldn't read the original language of the Raas but instead read a translation. But the original text was available, so he pulled it up and ran it through his automated translators. And suddenly it made sense.

"Get me Fleet Admiral Mulkahey immediately!" he snapped to his communications officer. "Purple channel, omega encryption!" The officer quickly moved to comply. Right now he had no time for niceties. If he was right, the whole operational concept of the conflict with the Raas would need to be rethought, and it was imperative that the top leadership of the Navy know this immediately. His chair tapping now became much more urgent as he waited. After a few minutes, he turned to his officer and asked what the delay was.

"The channel has been opened, sir, but omega-level encryption takes time to sync up, sir. Speaking of which, and with all due respect, sir, but should you take a communication of such importance from the bridge?"

"Good point. Transfer the communication to my ready room as soon as it's ready. I'll take it from there." He stood and walked off his bridge to the ready room, and sat down at his desk. He very rarely used this room, preferring to do his work from the bridge. But what he had to say was better said in private. Finally, Mulkahey appeared on his screen. Due to the encryption level, the bandwidth available for actual signal was significantly lower than normal. The picture was grainy and of poor quality, even on a small screen, and the sound quality was bad enough that the voice could barely be recognized. But he would make do. "Sir! I have urgent news. I believe I have found evidence of a spy in our ranks, one whose presence threatens to require a complete rethinking of our war plans for the Raas!"

"Goodman is late checking in. A few hours ago he reported successful destruction of the enemy fleet in-system. We have heard nothing from him since. Will this affect him as well?"

"Yes, but it is not necessary to do a conference call just yet. Sir, I believe that we have planned on his attack being a diversion, a strike at the top to disorganize their fleet while the Ninth grinds through in a frontal assault and hopefully rolls over them in a relentless system-by-system pattern. However, this was based heavily on the input of our primary agent in Raas territory, Agent Rttangss."

"Yes. Unfortunately, it appears now that he is a double agent. This is giving us a serious case of heartburn as we try to figure out what we're going to do about things now."

"Unfortunately, the news is worse than that, Admiral. In studying the last three messages from him I have found a distressing pattern that I believe means Rttangss was not the author of these messages."

"What!?"

"If you pull up the last three messages from him, you will note that the grammar appears to be somewhat improved from previous messages. At first, I failed to notice this, writing it off to improvements in translation technology, even though I had not been informed of any. But in the last message, the author made a bad mistake. He used an idiom."

"And, of course, our translators are not capable of translating an idiom from their culture into an equivalent in ours. Meaning that message was a fake."

"Exactly. However, even this did not quite register with me at first. It is, after all, theoretically possible Rttangss had learned more of our culture, and chose to write the exact literal translation of the idiom in his language. But as I looked at these messages, I knew something was wrong, but I did not know what. So I pulled up the original Raas-language text and ran it through my translator. And that was when I knew for sure. The three last messages are quite clearly bogus! Although the words are Raas, the grammar is English!"

"Well. That is indeed proof something is not right. We'll have to look into this. Thank you for your help."

Gretskov's desk beeped at him, and he looked at another display for a minute. "Admiral, hang on a minute please." He punched several buttons, then turned back to Mulkahey. "My computer just alerted me to something else. All three messages were supposedly received, decrypted, and translated by Gregoriy Vilson. I just used a security override to get into his personal financial records. Sir, he has been spending far more than his salary from FIS, living well beyond his means, yet he has no indication of receiving a windfall through inheritance, and no investments that could account for the extra funds."

"Yes, yes. Thank you very much for this information. This is excellent news. Now we know why none of our top agents' recent reports have been accurate or done any good. And I bet he's also the person who planted the spy device on the flagship of the Ninth. That ship was built in Kitjef orbit, and it would not have been hard for him to slip on board to do his work before the ship was commissioned. Gretskov, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I must go now to see what I can do with it. Mulkahey out."

Mulkahey quickly contacted the head of the FIS and explained what was going on. The investigations began immediately, and within hours they had not only found plenty of proof of Vilson's guilt in the crimes he'd been accused of, but also found where in the computers he had electronically hidden the original dispatches that he had replaced with his own creations. Fresh with significant amounts of 'new' data, the intelligence community and the Navy planning committee began working together on redrawing all their plans for the war effort. Unfortunately, the Ninth had already departed for Mahktoz, but they could always transmit the new intelligence to them while en route.

Vilson, meanwhile, was not having a particularly good day. He'd tried to escape when the soldiers came for him. That was a mistake and a half. Furious that one of their own had betrayed so many of their fellow soldiers to their deaths by misleading the Navy and Army into making bad plans, the soldiers used somewhat excessive force to subdue him, and though the officers got the situation under control quickly, Vilson would need some reconstructive surgery should execution not end up being his fate.

Though in no way in mortal danger, the injuries were severe enough to provide their own narcotic effect. This turned out to be somewhat to the benefit of his interrogators, as the extreme levels of dopamine in his brain left him nearly incapable of refusing to answer a question. A few hours of picking his brain resulted in a fair bit of intelligence of value, though all of it was checked by very suspicious case officers before using any. But, though he did lie some of the time, some of what he told them allowed them to expose and neutralize several additional spies they had not caught yet, and expel several diplomats whom were actually working as agents of the Raas intelligence organs.

Although very busy leading the war re-planning sessions, a few hours into things Mulkahey received a call from Goodman, which he immediately ducked out to take. The underlings could handle the analysis for awhile, besides, they were still spending most of their time debating what the statements from the agents actually meant, not what to do about them yet, and Mulkahey's greatest strengths were not in analysis. So he was quite willing leave things in the hands of the so-called 'experts' until they managed to figure out what they felt things 'really' meant.

Goodman quickly brought Mulkahey up to speed on all that had occurred since the system battle. Paying special attention to the story of Admiral Thazzdss and his apparently sincere story of the revolt of the Raas population, Goodman laid every bit of information he had out for Mulkahey and then asked if he had any idea what was going on.

"Well, Goodman, I can't say for sure just what is true and what isn't at this time. But we do know that much of the intelligence we based this war effort on has been nothing more than the imagination of a nefarious traitor in our midst. Fortunately, he did not have access to the real names of any of the agents whose dispatches he was processing, so we expect most if not all of them are still alive and quite confused as to how their efforts on our behalf could have borne no fruit whatsoever. The Raas somehow managed to compromise one of our dispatch clerks in our main office, who was responsible for translating the dispatches and forwarding to the appropriate case handlers. He took every message from the spies he had access to and replaced it with false flags, fake information, and outright lies. We aren't quite sure why he chose to betray us so, but whatever the cause the effect has been devastating. The attack that nearly overran the Wasilkoff system was warned about by four separate agents, but their warnings were lost to his deception. The lack of popular support for this war has been mentioned by nearly every single agent we have, but until we found the original messages it seemed that not one of our most trusted agents felt this way. It has been quite embarrassing to our counter-intelligence agencies that they did not catch onto this sooner."

"How was he caught?"

"Admiral Gretskov noticed several discrepancies between the last few dispatches from Rttangss and the earlier ones, and kept digging until he found a satisfactory explanation. It seems Vilson had a separate translation program he had created himself. In the hope of not drawing undesirable attention to his activities, he did not use the normal translation programs when creating his fake dispatches. Instead, he created the text in English and then translated them into Raas. But his program just substituted the words, and didn't fix the grammar. So when Gretskov tried to translate the 'originals', the real translation programs alerted him to the deception."

"Very well, sir. Do you have any revised instructions for me at this time?"

"Unfortunately, we are only just now getting started with re-analyzing the situation in light of all this 'new' information. I'm afraid that for now all I can tell you is that it certainly appears likely very Thazzdss is telling the truth. I'm sorry I can't help more, but I have confidence you'll chose your path wisely. I must return to the meetings now. If they haven't already, soon the grunts will surely be bickering over some unimportant nuance of language and I'll have to help them get back on track."

At this, Goodman actually laughed. "Well, that sounds like almost as much fun as trying to figure out how to establish a working relationship with Thazzdss based on trust, while being unable to honestly tell him why we trust him since doing so imperils our sources of information among his people."

Mulkahey was not amused. "Not funny. You know the rules of the game, Goodman. Spying is a dirty and unpleasant game, but we have no choice but to play it. Besides, it is not necessary to tell him that members of his people are spies for us. He's probably smart enough to know it already anyway, and if he truly wants peace he'll know better than to fight it too vigorously. In fact, if all goes as he claims, perhaps it will no longer be an issue at all soon. But even if it does not, all you have to do is tell him that we found a spy working for the previous regime that, once captured, gave us sufficient information to decide to trust him."

"Perhaps. We shall see. I'll let you get back to your meetings, Admiral."

"The line's always open, Goodman. Call if you need me. Mulkahey out."

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