Chapter Text
Two weeks.
For two weeks Captain Shay Alban had been working as second-in-charge of the personal security detail of Galaxy Security’s Chief of Staff, Dr David Anderson.
She was beginning to wonder if taking that call from Alberta Jones hadn’t been a mistake.
Shay had been working an assignment on Lucavia, which in retrospect didn’t seem quite so bad.
No, Shay decided. No, in retrospect – or any other-spect for that matter – Lucavia was bad.
The ISO base where she’d been assigned to head a detail guarding some scientists working on one of Galaxy Security’s many euphemistically named ‘special projects’ was in an area of the planet where it rained at least four times a week. Sometimes it rained five times a week. Sometimes it rained six times a week. Worse still, sometimes it rained once a week - for seven days straight without stopping. The location had been chosen for a secret base, Shay realised, because no sane person would ever want to go there, which made detection unlikely.
At least on Earth, it was possible to style her hair without having it end up looking like a rusty dandelion half an hour later and keep a pair of leather boots the same size for more than a week at a time.
There remained, however, Security Chief Anderson.
And possibly five of the worst-kept not-so-secret identities in the history of modern warfare.
As the incoming 2IC of one of the most important security details in the organisation, Shay’s first week had been a tightly scheduled series of orientations, introductions, meetings, travel, meetings, meetings and more meetings.
Shay had managed to sign the lease on a nice little apartment in the uninspiringly named but secure and gated Sunset Mews complex which catered exclusively to ISO and senior government staff. She had been allocated a space in a secure parking lot about a block from the ISO Tower. She had been lent a pool car to use until she managed to obtain a vehicle of her own. With a couple of days off looming on her schedule, Shay planned to go car shopping. Not with Alberta Jones, however. Friend she might be, but Jones knew next to nothing about cars and even less about how to choose one that had any kind of style.
Major Jones was now Shay’s superior as well as her friend. From their Academy days, Shay and Alberta had level-pegged in their careers and since Shay had undertaken extra study and qualifications, she had begun to edge ahead in the seniority stakes. Then had come the fateful day at the Federation’s Embassy on Planet Riga when they’d had to evacuate under fire from a Spectran attack ship. One of the diplomats had been refusing to move and Shay had hit him to keep him from killing himself in an act of idiocy. She’d been decorated for courage under fire and demoted on the same day. Had she not hit the man (who in the privacy of her own thoughts she had designated, “Numb Nut”) she’d be in line to make Lieutenant Colonel by now. As it was, she was aware that Jones had done her a favour by arranging her recall from Lucavia.
“If there’s one place where you can get your career back on a fast track, it’ll be with the Office of the Chief of Staff,” Jones had said.
“So you got me back here for my sins?” Shay had quipped.
Jones had turned a solemn gaze on her old friend. “Not your sins, Shay,” she’d said. “I brought you here for his.” In her youth, had she put in a lot of effort, Alberta Jones might have been described as a blonde bombshell. Approaching forty and having put a lot of effort in the opposite direction, she was quietly understated and professional in her appearance. Shay Alban, on the other hand, was tall and athletic and while she was considered attractive, she preferred to be admired for her abilities rather than her looks.
“Should I be afraid?” Shay had asked.
“Quite possibly,” Jones said. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have asked you to take the job if I didn’t think you could handle it. Or him.”
Shay recalled her orientation with her predecessor, Captain O’Malley. With his blonde hair and ready smile, Tom O’Malley looked as though he ought to be riding a surfboard, but there was a discipline in the way he held himself and on closer inspection, he wasn’t as young as Shay’s first impression had suggested, merely a youngish-looking thirty-something.
“So,” Shay had ventured. “Presidential Security Detail huh?”
“Dream job,” O’Malley had said, grinning. “I thought my career was going down the toilet after that incident on Vega, but here I am. I owe Al and Chief Anderson big time.”
“Speaking of,” Shay ventured, “what’s he like to work with?”
“A little eccentric. Does a lot of science to things. Not fun to be around if he doesn’t get his coffee. Al sums him up as ‘what you get if you cross a puppy with a minefield and promote it to the rank of General-in-Chief.’ Personally I’d have said ‘Rottweiler’ rather than puppy, but that’s just me.”
“Typical protection assignment,” Shay sighed.
“You know about his kids?”
“I read the file,” Shay said.
“Al told you anything?”
“She said not to ask questions.”
“Okay,” O’Malley said. “You know elephant jokes?”
“Elephant jokes? I used to as a kid. Why?”
“You know the difference between an elephant and a grape?”
“Their colour,” Shay said automatically.
“Right. What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?”
“Here come the elephants,” Shay said, frowning slightly.
“What did Jane say?”
“Here come the grapes,” Shay answered. “She was colour-blind. Where exactly are we going with this?”
“We’re colour-blind, Shay.”
Shay had shaken her head, bemused. “There’s probably a planet somewhere in the galaxy where that made sense.”
“You’ll see.”
Shay had not seen the elephants. Or the grapes.
There had been staff meetings and of course Jones had introduced Shay to the heads and 2ICs of most the other security details based in the ISO Tower. Fortunately, Shay had always been good with names and faces but as with all new assignments, there was a lot to take in.
The Chief of Galaxy Security spent quite a lot of time at Center Neptune, the secret undersea G‑Force base. The commute was claustrophobic. On the plus side, Shay didn’t have to stare at the ocean and risk seasickness during the journey. On the minus side, this was because the Multi-Modal Transport Kestrel kept the viewports tightly shuttered for the duration of the trip.
“What did you expect?” Jones had remarked on Shay’s first trip to Neptune. “It’s a secret base. I did warn you.”
“You didn’t warn me about the fricken elephants,” Shay muttered.
“Oh, that’s Tom’s little joke,” Jones said. “He does it to everyone when they start. He’s referring to the elephant in the room. The beast will become apparent in due time, but it’s way above our clearance level, so we don’t know about it.”
“You’re not going to give me the story about the three blind men and the elephant are you?” Shay asked wearily.
“Oh, no. It’s nothing like that. You get to see the whole elephant. An elephant in five parts, in fact. A pachydermid pentalogy.”
Shay made a study of the cabin ceiling. “This is your idea of hilarity, isn’t it, Al?”
“I’m deadly serious about this, trust me.”
Shay’s introduction to Security Chief Anderson turned out to be something of an anti-climax.
Shay’s first impression of Center Neptune was of the shuttle hangar with its echoing spaces and steel-lined walls. The smell of seawater was strong in the hangar but eased as the security officers passed through a checkpoint with an air curtain. Jones and O’Malley made a couple of calls to someone named Zark and then on the strength of these bundled Shay back into the hangar and into another transport, this time a little mini-sub whose windows were not obscured. Shay gazed out at coral and brightly coloured fish as O’Malley negotiated the curves and troughs of a large reef.
An undersea structure loomed ahead. It was anchored to the sea floor with stabilisers and a set of thrusters protruded out from its sides, suggesting that it could be moved if need be. Struts at the top connected it to an artificial coral cay and a hangar entrance glowed yellow against the blue of the sky which filtered down through the water.
“Science Center,” Jones said. “Sister installation to Center Neptune. They’re identical twins, but Neptune’s prettier if Zark’s to be believed.”
“Who’s this Zark guy anyway?” Shay asked.
O’Malley grinned. “You’ll get to meet Zark,” he said. “Roll with the punches, Shay.”
“This is turning out to be a real magical mystery tour, y’know?” Shay remarked. “How does a complex like this stay secret, anyway? The structures should be clearly visible from the air at this depth!”
“It’s the tech,” O’Malley said. “There are transmitters on the cays which send false returns to aerial photographers and satellites. The area’s off limits to civilian traffic – you remember all the stories about nuclear weapons testing from the twentieth century damaging areas of the Pacific and making them unsafe due to radiation?”
“Seriously?” Shay said.
“People believe it,” O’Malley said, “and Zark subscribes to all the weird conspiracy theory channels. He’s a regular on all the far-left, far-right and far-anything boards, leaking phony information and maintaining our cover.”
“Sounds like a full-time job. Doesn’t it drive him crazy?”
“There’s a theory,” O’Malley said, “that this may already have happened.”
“Tom,” Jones said, “you know that’s not possible.”
“Would you be prepared to bet on it?” O’Malley asked.
“Um… no, probably not,” Jones conceded.
“Anyway,” O’Malley said, “we’re pretty safe. You’d need a small army to get to us, or possibly a giant mechanical vampire squid [1] or something."
Shay stared. "Excuse me, did you say 'vampire squid'?"
"You know... those weird deep sea critters with the teeth on their tentacles?"
"Vampire squid?"
"Okay, so a real vampire squid wouldn't survive at this depth..."
Jones folded her arms. "Captain O'Malley, are you suggesting we could be attacked by undead calamari?"
O’Malley shook his head in defeat. "Just forget I said anything."
Shay looked from Jones to O’Malley and back again. “And this is a normal day at the office for you guys, huh?”
Like most ISO bases, Science Center was a maze of corridors, companionways and checkpoints. The three security officers made their way up several floors until they reached a large laboratory. Several lab-coated scientists were working on a series of seawater samples which had turned various shades of red.
A little knot of three were debating something. The terms, “RC Factor” and “Red Mist” kept coming up.
Jones cleared her throat and tapped at the door frame. “Doctor Anderson?”
The tallest of the scientists, a broad-shouldered man with a mane of dark red hair glanced up. “Oh, it’s you. What is it?”
“My new Second-in-Charge, sir,” Jones said. “Captain Alban.”
“Oh, right. O’Malley’s replacement.” The Lab Coat – Chief of Staff, Shay reminded herself – put his electronic clipboard down on the bench and wandered over. “Captain,” he said by way of greeting.
“Sir!” Shay saluted.
“At ease,” Anderson said, seemingly uncomfortable with the gesture. “Do you drink coffee, Captain?”
Shay had been warned about this, too. “Yes, sir. Make a mean cup as well, sir.”
“Good. Good…” Anderson glanced back at the seawater tanks. “I need to get back to this. Major Jones, why don’t you give Captain Alban the grand tour?”
“It’s on our list of things to do, sir,” Jones said.
“Fine…” Anderson’s focus had apparently already wandered off. “Dismissed.” Anderson followed his errant focus back into the lab and resumed his work.
Shay waited until the little group had walked a good distance down the companionway before speaking. “That’s our Chief of Staff? A Lab Coat with a coffee addiction and the attention span of a goldfish?”
Jones chuckled. “That’s our Chief of Staff, but don’t dismiss him out of hand just yet.”
“You’re not going to tell me he has hidden depths are you? Because I may puke.”
“Oh, they’re not hidden,” Jones said airily. “He’s just in Lab Coat mode. You wait until he remembers he’s a Suit.”
Shay cast her eyes heavenward but found only the ceiling. “How do you keep from going crazy?”
“I stopped fighting it ages ago,” Jones said.
At the end of their shift, Shay and Jones relaxed in the staff room over coffee and tea.
“Did you really tell O’Malley that Anderson’s like a cross between a puppy and a minefield?” Shay wanted to know.
“I might have said something to that effect,” Jones said with a sly smile.
“Because…?”
“The expression on Tom’s face at the time was priceless.”
“You want to come clean and tell me what Anderson’s really like?” Shay asked.
“He’s a gifted scientist and a formidable individual. He’s achieved things in one lifetime that most people couldn’t manage in three. He’s brilliantly sarcastic, politically savvy and well-informed. His field experience was relatively short, just a few years, mostly working with Marshall Hawking before Hawking was killed in that crash, then Doctor Anderson became Chief Conway’s right hand man. He’s kept himself physically very fit and up to date with his combat training. Fortunately, he tends to exercise in the gym rather than by running so you and I are both faster than he is. Unfortunately, he thinks he’s invincible and doesn’t need security to do anything other than keep him well supplied with coffee, which I make a point of not doing, by the way.”
“How do you avoid it?” Shay asked.
“Do you remember that time back at the Academy where we had that stupid competition to see who could rig the coffee machine to make the most disgusting, undrinkable cup of coffee?”
“Yeah. I won that. Free drinks for a week.”
“You showed me how you did it,” Jones said, “and I never forgot, you know, not to this very day.”
“You didn’t!”
“I do.”
“Seriously?”
“Deadly.”
“What are you going to do if he ever finds out?” Shay asked.
“Cross that bridge when I come to it,” Jones said.
Security Chief Anderson had turned out to be an odd mix of Lab Coat and Suit. It was clear that science was his first love but he was also clearly very capable as a Chief of Staff as long as he wasn’t being distracted by a machine that went “Ping!” [2]
Of the famed and fabled G-Force, there was no sign.
Shay was aware that she would see them eventually but as the first week eased into the second, her assignment seemed to be a fairly standard, ‘protect the bureaucrat,’ kind of thing. She’d done this for years and fell into the rhythm of the days and nights without difficulty.
- Vampire Squid are an actual thing. Read about them here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid
- To be fair, they don’t all go, “Ping!” Some of them go, “Pong!”