So, thirty-two twitches gave him a sequence of binary numbers: 0001 0000 0101 0000 0101 0010 0000 1001. He shook his head in disbelief. Only a love-struck idiot would have picked it, and he was one of those; Michael was sure he was the one person in all of humanspace who would have spotted what she was doing. One of the fancier pattern recognition AIs might have cracked it, but who would have bothered?
He had a new problem. Converting the string of binary numbers to base 10 was the obvious next step; that gave him 10505209. But the longer he looked at it, the less sense it made. He was baffled. What the hell did it mean? After hours of trying, he gave up. He was getting nowhere. It was time to get some expert help, he decided.
He commed the duty intelligence officer.
Thursday, May 10, 2401, UD
Conference Room 10, Space Fleet headquarters
Foundation, Terranova
The president of the board of inquiry, Captain Shavetz, a warfare officer with a combat record a kilometer long and medals to match, sat flanked by officers from every major specialization in the Fleet. He watched Michael take his seat.
“Lieutenant Helfort. Do I need to remind you that the oath you swore on accepting your commission as an officer in the Federated Worlds Space Fleet requires you to tell the truth at all times?”
“No, sir,” Michael said, “you do not.”
“Thank you. The board has studied your report of proceedings carefully. It has reviewed your report in light of statements from the Reckless’s crew and those of spacers from other ships together with the reports of proceedings and datalogs from the ships of the dreadnought force and the rest of Battle Fleet Lima. I have to say that your report is entirely consistent with those latter sources of information, a view that is supported by the AIs analyzing the evidence”-get on with it, for chrissakes, Michael said to himself, fuming; the way the man talked, no wonder the board of inquiry took so long-“but we have a number of issues which require some clarification.”
“Yes, sir.” Michael replied woodenly.
“Good,” Shavetz said. He turned to a young warfare officer sitting to his left, the junior member of the board. Michael knew him only by reputation: a hotshot navigator, massively ambitious, and probably no friend of dreadnoughts. “Lieutenant Commander Grivaz?”
“Thank you, sir. Lieutenant Helfort, I have two questions. First, when Reckless deployed for Operation Opera, what did you understand that operation’s primary military objective to be? Second, and please be precise when answering, why did you think that?”
“Well, sir …”
Late into the evening of a long day, Captain Shavetz glanced at each of the members of the board in turn. “Are there any more questions for Lieutenant Helfort … no? Good.”
He turned to Michael. “Lieutenant Helfort. I think that is all. Thank you. The board secretary will advise you if we need to talk to you again. You are dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Michael struggled out of his seat. It had been a tough day, one of searching examination interrupted only by a short lunch break. The process had wrung him out. One after another the questions came. They never stopped, the pressure intense, the pace relentless. Not that any of that bothered him; telling things the way they happened was easy. What bothered him was the fact that even after hours of unremitting scrutiny, he had no idea what the board was really thinking.
Michael hoped they saw things his way. His future depended on it. When he limped out of the room, a chief petty officer stood in his way.
“Lieutenant Helfort?” the man asked.
“Yes?”
“Chief Tarkasian, sir. Vice Admiral Prentice’s compliments. She appreciates that it’s late in the day but wonders if you might spare her ten minutes.”
What on earth? Michael wondered. “Vice Admiral Prentice? Yes, of course. Now?”
“I really think that might be best, sir,” Tarkasian said.
Michael nodded. “Lead on, chief.”
Tarkasian was right: Late in the day or not, junior officers were well advised to treat requests from senior officers, however politely phrased, as direct orders. He limped after the man, wondering what the Fleet’s director of intelligence wanted. It was something to do with Anna’s mysterious binary code message, of course, but what?
Five minutes later, they arrived at Prentice’s office. He was shown straight in. Prentice-a severe-looking woman with thick black hair pulled back tight from an austere, angular face, penetrating brown eyes, and a fearsome reputation as one of Fleet’s toughest and smartest officers, a woman for whom fools were to be stomped into the dirt-waved him into a seat in front of her desk. Almost immediately, a captain arrived, dropping into the seat alongside Michael’s.
“Lieutenant Helfort. Welcome. We’ve never met. I’m Admiral Prentice. This is my chief of staff, Captain Cissokho.”
“Sirs.”
“I know this is important to you, so I thought it best if we talked face-to-face. Besides,” Prentice said with a fleeting smile, “I wanted to meet the man who pulled the Federation’s ass out of the fire. Opera would have been a complete dud without you, so well done.” Her smile broadened. “Just don’t tell anybody I said so. I’m unpopular enough as it is.”
Surprised, Michael blinked. “Thank you, sir. That means a lot, more than you know.”
Prentice waved a hand. “It’s nothing less than you deserve. Now, to business. Bill?’
“Admiral,” Cissokho said. He turned to Michael. “We followed up your analysis of Lieutenant Cheung’s vidmail. You were right. She had encoded a binary message. Extremely clever of her, I must say, and equally clever of you to work it out. Anyway, it translated to 10505209. Of course, that begs the question. What does a string of eight numbers mean? It took one of my analysts a while, but I think she’s cracked it. Here, have a look.”
A map of the Hammer’s home planet, Commitment, appeared on the admiral’s wall-mounted holovid. Cissokho stabbed a marker at a point southeast of the capital, McNair. “10 degrees south, 50 degrees west is more or less where Camp J-5209 sits. That’s where the survivors from the Damishqui are. It’s the only place that fits the numbers 10505209. All the other options are either in the sea or have nothing that fits the last four numbers. It’s a new camp, so we’ve only seen it referenced in intercepts of low-grade administrative traffic. We don’t have recon vid of it, but now that we know where it is, we will. I’ll let you know when it’s been uploaded to the Fleet knowledge base.”
“I’ll be damned, sir,” Michael said. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Wish it was something more exciting, but you never know. The information might come in handy one day. The Hammers never tell us where they keep our prisoners.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Happy to help,” the admiral said. “We’ll keep an eye on things. If we hear anything about Camp J-5209, provided we can release it, of course, we’ll let you know.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you both.”
Michael walked away from the admiral’s office feeling better than he had in a while, his body reenergized, and not just because he knew where the Hammers had imprisoned Anna. That was part of it, to be sure, but as important was the realization that despite the overt hostility expressed by the overwhelming majority of Fleet officers and the unremitting hammering he was getting from the trashpress, there were people-important people-both sympathetic and supportive.