The Girl in the Tank: Galactic Consortium, Season 1

Episode Four: Spies, ch. 4

"I'll talk to you guys later," Kleppie said as they entered the lounge for supper. "Gotta talk about my class," he lied. He was in Naval history. He didn't have a huge interest but what else was he supposed to do? Take art classes? Learn to cook? This class had one big advantage, most of the people in the class we up and comers, people looking to get ahead.

He grabbed a dish, tonight's meal was baked in a deep dish and covered in a wheat crust.

"Did someone asked if it had crickets?" Davies joked as picked up his fork and poked the dish.

"Wasn't on the ingredient list," Kleppie said. He didn't say that a couple of ingredients were considered common weeds back home, like dandelion leaves. "I'm sure it's okay." He poked his crust, letting the steam and smell waft over him.

"Did you see the update?" Hornbeck asked.

Kleppie nodded. "Anyone got their slate?"

Davies did. He set it on the center of the table. He hit a few buttons and opened the earth portal.

"Now we can contact them back home, right? All we need is the contact information for someone in intelligence," Kleppie said.

"No, dufus," Hornbeck said. "Not so simple. We can't just contact someone on an open channel. We have to encrypt the signal first."

"You know how to do that?" Kleppie asked.

"There are apps for that. We can download one and use it," Hornbeck said.

"Won't they know if we download something like that?" Kleppie asked.

Hornbeck looked uncertain. "I don't know. It's hard to say how much surveillance they have in place. I mean they just hooked up our two systems. Can they know what's what?"

"We should choose a less common app, just in case," Davies said.

"And we should download it right away and then wait, see if they notice," Hornbeck said.

Davies gulped. "But it's my slate..."

"It's a calculated risk," Hornbeck told him.

"I just don't want to end up on some martian penal colony," Davies muttered.

"Like the rest of the POWs?" one of the other men snarled.

The president had issued a statement saying the CIA operatives had not been acting on orders from the present administration. They were rogue agents. It was, everyone knew, a polite fiction, plausible deniability, or so the news was saying.

Conservatives were labeling the men prisoners of war and calling them heroes. Of course the video footage wasn't being shown on those channels.

The trials, along with the arrival of the first few ships of Princess Sarasvat's fleet had everyone jumpy. The continued assurances that they weren't here to conquer was harder to swallow when they had enough ships in the sky above us to easily do it. The Hoshi-Toska had entered the earth's atmosphere and was settling in the pacific ocean. In a matter of hours they would begin the search for the Chinese sub.

"They won't send you to a martian penal colony," Kleppie said. "They only do that with the worst criminals."

"Yeah, worst you're likely to get is a few months in Africa," Hornbeck said. "I asked. They've another penal colony there. That's where non-violent criminals get sent. A few weeks of working in a refugee camp and they'll let you go."

"Fine, I'll risk it," Davies decided.

"Okay, we'll wait to start entering information. Once we start our report, we should encrypt it right away, as soon as we enter it on the slate, in case they seize it at some point. Anyone got any intel?"

"I asked someone how to bring up the map on this," Davies said, pointing at his slate. "If I can figure out how to save it in a format that we can download, that has lots of information."

"Good, anyone else?"

Kleppie thought about his conversation with Kavi, but he hadn't understood enough to call it intel. He shook his head. None of the others had much either.

######

"How are you doing?" Fox asked as he sat next Runningbear.

Runningbear gave him a dark look. "Like you care," he muttered.

Fox made his face a mask. Truth be told, he didn't care. He was still pissed at what Runningbear had put him through, the danger he had put the whole crew in. He could have easily created an international incident or made the Consortium crew afraid of the barbarians they had brought on board.

But Fox had an assignment. He wasn't thrilled about that either. Let the damn wanna be spies hang themselves. But he was supposed to infiltrate them and try to keep them out of trouble.

There was no way Hornbeck would trust Fox. The two hadn't gotten along ever and he'd been pissed that the Cambridge Master of Arms were assigned to help Consortium security keep peace.

So Fox would have to worm his way into their midst. He'd start by patching things up with Runningbear. They had the history for him to do that. Then he'd start hanging with the munitions crew.

"For what it's worth," Fox said. "Before the blast I was looking for you. That's what I was doing in the hallway next to the munitions locker."

"Why were you looking for me?" James asked.

"I found a bottle of pills that didn't belong to you, in your bunk," Fox said.

"You were spying on me?" James spat.

"I was doing my job," Fox snapped. "But I was planning on talking to you first before I went to the Captain, just so you know. In fact, I haven't told the Captain about the pills."

"You have no proof," Runningbear said. "Those pills are long gone."

"I know. What am I trying to say is this, I was going to give you a chance."

"A chance for what?"

"To get treatment, if you had promised to kick the habit, I would have covered for you. Look, maybe you and I aren't best friends, but we are tribe. We gotta stick together."

"Yeah," Runningbear said, "yeah, thanks. We are tribe, aren't we? You know I didn't mean to get hooked, man. It just, sort of happened."

"I know," Fox said. "How's the detox?"

He shrugged. "Once they realized what was going on, they did help. That tank shit of theirs, it makes you feel a ton better. Still get cravings, you know. They make me sit in this room with all these lights and music. Say they will put something like that on a slate if I want, but I'm not sure."

"It's meditation," Fox said. "They gave me a cube for my slate. Say it'll help with PTSD, from the explosion and shit. You should give it a try."

"Yeah, I don't know. They have this drink, Soma Achai Chai. Got something in it, some herb. It's pretty mellow, but it takes the edge off."