going to get their shorts twisted in a knot over this.”
The technician nodded. “Yeah, but if everybody were where they were
supposed to be all the time, they wouldn’t need us, would they?”
Busby motioned to a chair sitting next to his desk. He reached for
his coffee cup, curling his fingers gratefully around the warm, rough
ceramic mug. The temperatures in CVIC–Carrier Intelligence
Center–consistently hovered around the sixty-degree mark. Maintaining a
stable, cool temperature inside the most sensitive spaces on board the
carrier was one of his continual headaches, and no one had ever been able
to come up with a compromise between the needs of the sophisticated
equipment jammed into these small spaces and the human beings who operated
it. As usual, operational requirements won out over human comfort.
“Okay, we need a game plan,” Busby said finally. “Make me look smart
here, Jackson.”
The technician scooted his chair over next to Busby’s and picked up
the printout. “You can read it yourself, Commander; I know you can. Maybe
some of those fellows believe you don’t know everything that goes on back
there, but not me.”
“Pretend I’m dumb for a minute. Chances are, you’ll explain something
I would have forgotten to ask about.”
The technician shot him a sardonic look. “Okay. See, here’s the
first detection,” he said, pointing his pencil at the fifth line from the
top. “Short duration–only two minutes. High frequency–you see, right
here in this column?”
“Yeah, I’ve got that. But tell me how we know it’s tactical
communications.”
“The signal breaks up. If this were a large transmitter, one drawing
a hell of a lot of power, it would blast right around some of the
obstructions. Instead, we get these changes in signal strength that
indicate somebody’s moving around. Or maybe walking around a rock, or
something like that. Not something you see, except on mobile field
communications.”
“You ever seen these frequencies before?”
The technician shook his head, paused, and a thoughtful look crossed
his face. “Something like it, but not this one exactly. Way back in A
School, when we were studying the old Russian Bear. You remember, back
when we had an enemy? Hearing about the Bear-J that’s been in the area
reminded me of it.”
“So what does it look like?”
“I’m not certain, sir, but I remember one day they played back for us
some short-range Spetsnaz communications. Looked a little bit like this.”
The technician shrugged. “Course, no telling who’s using all that gear
these days. They could’ve farmed half of it out to the border guards.
And, like I was saying, there’s nothing really unique about this, except
for the frequency. In the range of short-range tactical communications,
and not one of ours. That’s about all I can tell you for certain.”
Busby thought for a minute, then hauled himself out of his chair.
“Guess I’m about as smart as I’m going to get, then. Thanks for the
briefing, Jackson. I’ll let the admiral know what’s happening.”
The technician took the hint, and rose to walk out of the office. He
turned right at the doorway, heading back to the even chillier operating
spaces within CVIC. At the heavy steel cipher lock that shut his spaces
off from the rest of the intelligence center, he paused, then turned back
to watch Commander Busby’s figure disappear around the far corner.
Lab Rat. The technician chuckled a moment, wondering who had first
hung that moniker on the diminutive Commander Busby. Good call, whoever
had done it, although he thought the commander might have wished for a more
impressive nickname. But with his pale, almost colorless hair, bright blue
eyes magnified behind thick Coke-bottle glasses, and generally frail,
nervous appearance, Commander Busby hadn’t had a chance in the world of
avoiding that one.
Wish all officers were more like him, the technician mused, punching
in the numbers that would open the cipher lock to his outer door.
Professionally demanding, tough to work for, but he took good care of his
troops. And no pussyfooting around when it came to threat signals. The
commander had said he’d take this straight to the admiral, and he would,
carefully shielding his technicians from the myriad political