Cosmosis

Interlude-Actuary

Vorak were not especially steady sleepers.

Kraknor had produced few ethnicities that, historically, had kept more to dry land. Looking at the history of Vorak civilization, the majority of it had been amphibious. Consequently, that majority hadn’t acted so diurnally.

That had changed as Umtane’s planet had industrialized, but his species had never entirely bought in to sleeping at night.

In the past, tide watchers would go spear fishing in the dead of night with dawn still hours away. Other professions had been shaped similarly. Nowadays there weren’t going to be many Vorak depending on their local hunters to avoid starvation, but there was a great deal more activity in the average Vorak night than there was for Casti or Farnata.

Umtane was having one of those nights. He’d snatched a few hours of sleep after their bumbling investigative team had broken for the night, but here he was, wide awake more than three hours before the Human’s next appointment.

The way Caleb Hane moved gave him chills. Few habitable planets had gravity like Kraknor, so Vorak travelling to other planets had to learn how to move less forcefully. It also gave them an eye for when others were doing the same thing. Umtane had gotten a peek at the Human’s physicality on the second day, but that whole time Caleb Hane hadn’t really seemed pressed.

He shuddered thinking of what the Human was hiding.

Umtane knew that most Casti thought of Vorak as ‘physically superior’. The reality wasn’t quite that simple, but in the broadest of senses, their homeworld had squeezed the vulnerabilities out of the ancestral Vorak. The planet’s gravity had left them with dense, muscular bodies.

Smart Casti compensated for that with longer reach and an unbelievable capacity to recover from damage. Casti could heal a bone in a couple weeks. Even light fractures could linger in Vorak skeletons for multiple months.

Umtane was positive he was overreacting to the creature. Surely it was just his imagination playing to his fears of the unknown. Even the Vorak, for all they lived in, on, and under the seas, did not venture into the darkest depths of their waters.

It was hard not to fear the alien though.

It was even an Adept, which raised even more questions. Umtane was sure that he was hiding something unimaginable.

Vorak Adept powers had a tendency to be self-focused. There were three times the number of augmented Vorak Adepts than Farnata. Almost three quarters of L2 and L3 Vorak were limited in range instead of magnitude or intricacy.

Farnata Adepts were almost universally more versatile: typically that meant for any one reliable creation a Vorak had, their Farnata equivalent would have two.

The trends weren’t set in stone. Both species had produced Adepts capable of the other’s abilities, but looking at the whole of both populations the patterns were undeniable.

So what were these Humans capable of?

Well, just ‘Human’, singular, Umtane supposed.

From what little he gathered about his background, there were some other humans abducted with him. But not anymore.

The first time he’d heard the alien’s circumstance, he’d been disturbed to find himself sympathizing.

That first day had been…bad.

It wasn’t every day that the Warlock herself showed up.

Worse still, she’d actually gone and proved he wasn’t wasting his time here.

They’d been pretty sure there was a bioweapon. But he hadn’t been able to definitively prove to the Director one way or the other. Umtane had thought Hom-Heg’s reaction to the situation had been a bit extreme in the days before the Coalition arrived. He’d locked down the entire complex for almost a day and demanded access logs from every department without even telling them why.

And that had been the bulk of the evidence the four Vorak had been investigating for almost a week.

After they’d catalogued most of the access logs, finding plenty of questionable entries, but nothing conclusive, Umtane had been ready to leave. Let Director Hom-Heg and Chief Niza hunt for the culprit and turn the investigation over to a more qualified Rak than he.

And then Humans and Warlocks had come into his life.

At one point in that life, Umtane had been quietly smug about his ability to function despite stress.

He hadn’t imagined just what stress could entail.

With nothing to do until Caleb Hane’s visit to the Ecology & Biosphere department, Umtane elected to practice his Adeptry.

He was L1 for life. His powers had activated more than a decade ago and had never grown enough to be anything more than just convenient.

But as things were, he was stuck with not just the Warlock, but a new alien Adept. And Umtane was positive Caleb Hane was more experienced in combat Adeptry.

Although that wasn’t saying much at all. Umtane was rather confident that even non-Adepts like Tae Tasser were more than capable of trouncing him in a fight if it came to one.

Technically, he’s not ‘Tae’, Umtane mused. Strict military traditionalists would balk at the wrong rank, even if the Vorak ‘Tae’ and Casti ‘Rahi’ were roughly equivalent.

Umtane was simply not a military traditionalist.

Contrary to the Warlock and Caleb Hane's doubts, Umtane Fromil was an actuary. Just an actuary, in fact.

He had never fired a weapon outside of a shooting range. He hadn’t even seen combat. He’d technically been a civilian hire. One of the Deep Coils battalions had been looking for a financial mind, and Umtane’s name had stood out.

The fleet had put him through basic training, but that was it. His job was poring over numbers, tabulating and indexing values. Every time he opened his mouth, he’d been forced to speak with a steady confidence he did not feel. Any second, it seemed like the Warlock or one of the other Coalition soldiers would call his bluff.

But was it really a bluff? He hadn’t lied to them at all. He’d told them nothing but the truth. He was an actuary. He was here to investigate, what turned out to be, a bioweapon.

It wasn’t his fault that they were choosing to draw their own, warier, conclusions about him. He and his team of accountants had caught whispered rumors that they were specialized wet-work operatives.

It would have been amusing if he weren’t in so far over his head.

Nowhere in his job description was ‘clandestine investigator’.

And yet, there was no chance of any Deep Coils personnel reaching him any sooner than two weeks. Asking the Red Sails for backup was tantamount to suicide, given what Caleb Hane claimed about them.

Even broadcasting updates to the Deep Coils daily, there was no backup for him.

So he practiced his Adeptry, materializing and dissolving a knife, trying to force the action to be familiar, reflexive.

It probably wouldn’t save him if it came to a fight. But surprisingly, he had high hopes that possibility would be avoided.

Nai Cal-Yan-Ti had proved to be much more even handed than her fiery reputation would have led Umtane to believe.

Umtane was rather relieved to have seen much less of her co-commander. It kept things simple. He frowned. What was the Casti’s name? Namu-something?

It hardly mattered. All he had to do was keep things civil while they tracked down this bioweapon and its creator. If the Coalition started digging in its heels once those things were revealed?

Well, he was hoping they wouldn’t. But things were likely to get worse before they got better.

Director Hom-Heg had done an exceptional job keeping a lid on information. Everyone in the facility knew something was abuzz. But so far only the security team and a few of the section Chiefs knew that it was a bioweapon, and among them only two or three knew it was a Lestrazine vehicle.

The upshot was that the culprit had to be one of the few people who knew what was actually going on. Most of the staff would assume any oddities were related to Caleb Hane’s presence and First Contact.

Umtane was just taking a guess, but it seemed like a bad thing for an investigation for the culprit to be so aware of circumstantial factors.

Because from the moment Umtane had confirmation someone was covering anything up here, he’d been paranoid about new developments. But all the new problems had been revealed—preexisting that is. It didn’t seem like the culprit was doing anything new or reacting to the hunt in any way.

Did that mean they were betting on getting away with it clean? Caleb Hane had been right in that sense. Their evidence was too thin to nab a culprit in any reasonable amount of time. So they needed to force a mistake out of their target.

Without knowing who they were.

Or where the bioweapon was stored. Or if it had even been made yet.

Umtane forced himself up to his feet. This was too much to think about this early in the morning. He would get some food in him and get some momentum for the day. A short note to his coworkers told them his radio configuration in case they needed to reach him.

The Vorak slipped out, taking care not to wake his staff. The domicile Director Hom-Heg had moved them to after the Coalition arrived was one of the nicer units. It had surprised Umtane at first, but then it occurred to him that it would surprise the Coalition too. Which was rather the point.

Nice as the quarters were, they were still not large, so he was pretty sure at least one of his coworkers stirred.

But if he was awake with some time to burn before poking around for a bioweapon...maybe he could get proactive.

·····

“Warlock,” he greeted a few hours later.

The Farnata in question, Caleb Hane, and the Casti—Tasser—appeared at the point they agreed. Rather conspicuously, they only had one security officer shadowing them—one of Chief Niza’s most trusted.

“If I were a very unaccomplished Adept worried about getting in a fight,” Umtane said, forcing his voice to stay steady, “what advice would you give me?”

“I’m sure you know plenty unaccomplished Adepts,” Caleb Hane said.

“One in particular…” Umtane replied, giving him his best enigmatic stare.

It was uniquely fascinating to watch the Human hesitate. Umtane had no doubt the alien could trounce him if it came to violence. He’d killed Sendin Marfek but still hesitated if Umtane said something even remotely ominous.

“Run, don’t be proud,” the Warlock said simply.

Tasser nodded sagely. “When outmatched, don’t fight,” he agreed.

“Why do you ask?” Nai asked.

“No reason,” Umtane said. “Idle curiosity.”

That too wasn’t a lie, though perhaps ‘idle’ was. He was intensely curious how he might avoid being killed.

Nai snorted, but didn’t press.

“This will work?” she asked.

“I believe so,” Umtane said, nodding toward the door they had agreed to meet. “Chief Niza is watching in the nearest security booth—” Umtane gestured toward a camera covering the hallway’s closest intersection “—so as long as one of you can slip away long enough to open this door, I can look at their files while you three talk to Chief Mo.”

“You can’t Adept your way through the door?” Caleb asked.

“Not without leaving a trace,” Umtane said. “The point of this is to investigate the culprit without our suspect knowing where we’re poking…which makes me curious exactly what you’re going to ask him?”

Nai shrugged. “I was going to keep it vague. The culprit’s own imagination is one of our best allies. Their own fears can work for us.”

“Well, good luck,” Umtane said.

All he could do was wait by the door.

To his surprise, he wasn’t waiting long. He’d only been waiting a minute when the door popped open just an inch.

Umtane pried it the rest of the way with a claw and slipped inside. He saw Tasser wordlessly walking away. Umtane gave a silent nod of approval. The Casti gave no pleasantries, and didn’t even look back after opening the door for him.

Dr. Mo had drastically scaled back his personnel presence in the labs in anticipation of Caleb Hane’s visit. It made it significantly easier to steal through the halls without being seen.

This was going to be a bit of a delicate affair.

Dr. Mo’s Ecology & Biospheres department stored most of the on-site materials you would want to make this kind of bioweapon. Other labs stored all those materials, but in much smaller quantities, and not so many in one place.

Every department had their stores of incredibly useful biological materials, but Dr. Mo’s was the one that worked most with non-Casti molecules. The same stuff you would want to use if you were creating a bioweapon to target non-Casti.

Dr. Mo’s office was not equipped with one of the magnetically sealed doors like the entrances. But it was still locked.

Even if Chief Niza was still on the suspect list, it was rather helpful to have him involved in the investigation. His office kept very carefully monitored keys to nearly everything in the complex, and the Farnata had been more than ready to share.

The logs tracking those keys’ usage were immaculate, so Umtane was fairly confident the Chief of Security hadn’t made any illicit keys. He couldn’t imagine how digital records like that could be falsified, but if they somehow were their entire investigation would have to be scrapped.

Umtane inserted the shard-like key into the door which gave a satisfying mechanical pop.

Easy.

He walked over to the computer and entered the overriding password he’d been given. That was at least one relief. Their investigation didn’t depend on any one critical figure. They could demand keys from Chief Niza, permission from Director Hom-Heg, and computer access from Auditor Norgi.

While the machine booted, Umtane’s eyes roamed. The office itself was extremely organized, everything on the desk sitting at right angles, even the plants decorating the office were kept inside small terrariums.

Umtane had to squash down the impulsive distrust he had for a creature this meticulous. Some aliens just preferred things neat. Sterile even. Actually, considering he was an ecological spheres expert, it was little wonder the Casti liked everything staying in its proper place. It was helpful to remind himself that even some (if few) Vorak were this obsessively neat.

The Coalition folks had actually come up with a neat little plan to snoop on the Complex staff’s computers. Instead of trawling the computer itself, it was simple to just clone the computer’s contents and immediately leave.

Umtane had needed to fight to keep his face from showing how clever he thought the idea actually was. These soldiers were much more experienced in espionage like this, and it was all he could do not to let it show.

The trouble with this whole situation was, he was just barely keeping up with events.

Financial risk assessment wasn’t exactly criminal investigative work, but there was just enough overlap that he’d been getting by keeping the same scrutinous attitude he kept when he was making summaries for the Deep Coils.

He might have held a rank in the Void Fleet, but he wasn’t a soldier, spy, and he was barely, barely an investigator. He was just a consultant! Not even a strategic one! The whole of his job was to evaluate certain decisions from a financial perspective.

Who was likely to be costly to promote? Who would be costly to train? Which version of a given mission plan posed the least risk to Deep Coils resources and operating budgets? Which version of a mission plan posed the least risk to Deep Coils personnel?

For the millionth time, Umtane cursed that dira idiot who’d gotten him into this.

Some whelp on medical leave had been relegated to one of the other office groups similar to Umtane’s. The Rak was clever and idiotic all at once and had the bright idea of flagging a few randomly selected transactions and exaggerating the likelihood of them being related to forces hostile to the fleet. He’d thought he could use it as an excuse to ship off to a solid planet and lazily turn over some rocks while he recuperated instead of shutting up and doing his office work like anyone reasonable would.

He’d been found out almost immediately, and even been court martialed.

But out of the two that he’d flagged, the idiot managed to accidentally stumble onto two accounts that really did have some suspicious activity on them.

The whelp couldn’t very well be rewarded, so Umtane and three of his clerks had been tapped to go poke around.

Command was just covering their bases, sending some very unessential personnel to investigate what should have been wildest of all muk hunts.

And yet somehow…

Umtane redoubled his focus on scouring Dr. Mo’s office computer.

The dials Casti used to operate their computers were clumsy for most Vorak, but Umtane was ready for that at least. He worked an office job in a Casti colonized star system: he wasn’t reliant on a proper keyboard.

Umtane keyed up the machine to duplicate the computer’s contents onto a not-quite-blank drive.

Chief Niza had the stroke of genius to suggest copying the data onto a preformatted drive rather than a completely blank one. It would let them skip any files that already existed on both drives and only copy over new information from Chief Mo’s computer.

Cloning the entire hard drive would have taken two hours. This took about ten minutes.

Which still left Umtane sweating.

The progress graphic on Dr. Mo’s computer was agonizingly slow, and halfway through, Umtane thought of locking the door like how he’d found it.

The extra measure turned out to be unnecessary though. No one disturbed him.

Umtane tucked the drive into his largest pocket and slipped out. He wound through the halls of the Ecology department, retracing his steps back to the side door. A left from Mo’s office, another left after the cubicles, and then—

Umtane walked straight into another Casti. Right into.

The Casti bowled over, scattering the contents of a folder and some medical samples. Umtane managed to keep his feet, both literally and metaphorically. It would have been a bad idea to run. He would have preferred that no one learn he was ever here, but that ship had sailed.

“Sorry friend,” Umtane said, extending a hand to the toppled Casti.

“No trouble,” he grunted. “I didn’t realize you were here, senior. Chief Mo cleared out most people.”

“Well I’m following the human for today, he and the Warlock are helping my investigation to keep things civil…”

Umtane’s eyes found the Casti’s nametag. Deputy Chief Berkha.

He was on their suspect list.

Deputy Chief Berkha scooped up the rest of his folder, keeping an eye on Umtane.

“What ah…what exactly are you investigating for? I’m only curious.”

“Probably nothing,” Umtane lied, desperately trying to keep his voice steady. “There was a toxic mold found on one of the deep void stations the Coils have out past Paris. We’re just here trying to find out who it’s hitched a ride on. Poor whelp probably doesn’t even know what they’re carrying.”

The deputy gave a long ‘ahh’-like click. “Well we haven’t done too much with molds recently…but this is the supply and admin floor. The experimental pods we’ve got are one level down.”

“Well I’m following the Human today,” Umtane said. “To be entirely honest this whole affair is low priority. I’m even dragging my feet a little to check on the Human more.”

“It is frustrating the Director was so aggressive about something so low priority,” Berkha said. “We had to postpone experiments by half-a-day just to organize and turn over the facility logs he asked for. It only got worse once the First Contact rolled in…”

“You’d like any help picking up those, er…samples, are they?”

“No, it’s fine,” the Casti said. “Er, yes, they’re samples, but I’m fine. Chief Mo is actually waiting for me, is there anything else?”

“No…” Umtane said, grateful for the opportunity to get away. But the sign on one particular room caught his eye. “Actually, I do have one question…behind that door are the storage containers for base materials right?”

Berkha clicked in the affirmative.

“How many different base materials do you have in there? It’s not a small room.”

“More than a thousand,” Berkha said. “I’d show you in, but I’d need Chief Mo with me. Is there a particular material you’re thinking of?”

Umtane’s mind spun a little. This wasn’t the only kind of storage room in the facility, but looking at it had reminded him of a possibility they hadn’t considered before.

The knew someone had ordered an unjustifiable quantity of a catalytic agent necessary to make the nutrient that Lestrazine bacteria needed to be cultured. They’d looked into the materials you would need to make that nutrient, but they were harder to track and less incriminating by themselves. Almost half the complex could access those, much simpler, materials. They’d considered the logs on any given department’s storage, but it was possible the culprit could have covered their tracks by retrieving materials from multiple different departments’ storage…

And while plenty of their suspects would show up on their own and even other department’s access logs, if they looked at what combinations of molecules suspects avoided gathering from their own department, they might be able to identify the culprit through their own countermeasure.

“…No particular material,” he said. “But who could I talk to for the access and quantity logs, not just for ecology, but for every department? Is there someone who can look at all of them, or would I need to talk to departments individually?”

“Director Hom-Heg could request the logs from every department, but it would be easier to just talk to the Auditing department."

Umtane nodded. “Good…good,” he muttered, making a plan. Running into this Casti had been a small disaster, but a fruitful one in the end.

“Do you mind showing me to where the Human is getting tested, back there, I mean? I seem to have turned myself around,” Umtane asked.

“No trouble, Senior,” the Casti said. “I’m heading there too.”

Berkha took Umtane downstairs, winding between different labs in the department until they found the one Caleb Hane was in.

Nai and taknak Casti were there with the Human, Chief Mo, and a pair of other Casti researchers helping out.

While walking there, Umtane had thought back to when Caleb Hane had materialized the pages he’d perceived with his cascade. He subtly conjured up a small placard for himself where Berkha wouldn’t see it, and flashed it to Nai.

She caught sight of him before anyone else did, and so was the only one to see his placard read ‘play along’ before it dissolved.

“…incredibly unlikely, but we don’t exactly have a wide sample size to base this off.” Dr. Mo said.

“…Rak, there you are. What took so long?” Nai said.

“My detour got sidetracked, ran into this one. Literally,” he said, jutting his head at Berkha.

“Was it a productive detour?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said honestly, subtly tapping the pocket he was carrying the computer drive in. “I think I have an idea of how we might track down this ‘mold’.”

Nai’s expression flickered dark for a moment, but she nodded.

“Chief Mo was going over some of the new discoveries about Caleb,” she said.

“It’s fascinating!” the Casti said. “We’d already found that Humans and Farnata both used glucose as the starting molecule in cell respiration. But we’ve since learned that’s only a consequence of the deeper trait they have in common. Up until now, biosphere science has been able to study four, three realistically, life origins. That is, every living creature from the same homeworld has DNA made of the same molecules as other organisms from that same homeworld.”

“But Farnata and Human DNA is made of the same molecules?” Umtane asked, shocked, but not quite grasping why it might be important.

“Partially,” Chief Mo said. “They share a base pair of nucleotides. Their DNA is still alien to each other, but it’s utterly staggering that two different biospheres even half-reached the same macromolecule like this. There’s going to be papers about this for centuries.”

Umtane was more than glad to watch quietly and let the conversation play out. No one was questioning why he was there, the Chief and his deputy didn’t seem concerned with what he might have been doing.

He didn’t allow himself to feel any relief though. The work wasn’t over yet. But he did let himself wonder if he might be better at spycraft than he might have first thought.

Caleb and Nai were both vocal about Chief Mo’s latest discovery, though for different reasons. Nai wanted to know how much of a coincidence such a phenomenon was, while Caleb was more focused on the immediate consequences like ‘will this make it easier to figure out what I can eat?’

The Human had told the physicians about ‘scratch testing’ which was apparently a marginally safe way to test for more allergies. The vials that Berkha had spilled running into Umtane were filled with dilute quantities of substances to test on Caleb.

The Human was very eager to finish his INI testing. Umtane knew how bad rations could be. You’d have to be very dedicated or desperate to only eat such for as long as Caleb had.

That morning’s testing concluded with much less interrogating than Umtane had expected. Nai had done exactly what she’d said and talked to Chief Mo only very vaguely.

Umtane didn’t say a word until the four of them exited the whole department and found themselves back in the main halls of the Green Complex.

“Did you get the drive?” Nai asked once they were near the atrium.

“Yes,” Umtane said, retrieving it from his pocket. “I think we’re going to wind up clearing Chief Mo though, I had an idea on how to make some progress.”

“Spill,” Caleb said.

“The culprit only ordered the one illicit material because almost any other biological material they’d need to make a weapon could already be found on site, correct?”

“We’ve checked access logs on the storage rooms, the basic materials are too common. There are dozens of people who have accessed those materials, even in the specific combination we’d be watching for.”

“Indeed,” he said. “But if I’m a dastardly bioterrorist, I’m going to cover my tracks. I might go out of my way and avoid accessing that combination of materials from my own department—even if I had a good reason to anyway.”

“We would have to cross reference the access logs of every department to see who avoided the combination,” Nai said. “That could take days.”

Umtane shook his head. “Only if we’re looking at the printed logs we’ve already been given. You and I are talking to Auditing tomorrow.”

Nai nodded in agreement.

“We should try to do it through a low-level employee,” Nai said. “There is someone from Auditing on our suspect list.”

“Agreed,” Umtane said.

Maybe he was alright at investigating.

·····

Trying to actually talk to Auditing was slightly harder than anticipated, but Umtane wasn’t going to let bureaucracy spoil his good mood.

“Not tomorrow,” he told the Warlock an hour later. “It has to be the next day apparently. There’s only six people in the whole department, and they’re all busy.”

“Fine,” she said. “This afternoon Caleb is going to the Genetics Department. Are we snooping on them or Virology next?”

“Caleb Hane makes a useful distraction,” Umtane said honestly. “No one is quite settled around him, not even you Coalition folks. It makes them pay less attention, so I think our next target is Chief Kullo’s computer.”

“Suits me,” the Warlock said.

·····

The next morning, Umtane swung by the accursed broadcasting room to receive an update from the Deep Coils, and give them one of his own.

Umtane glared at the camera in the corner. If the Complex’s system could store security footage for longer than a month, none of this would ever be a problem.

Still, there was plenty to report.

They were picking through Chief Mo & Chief Kullo’s computers, looking for anything incriminating or exculpatory.

Their appointment with Auditing was set and waiting.

The investigation was making headway. Finally.

His commander, Sten Limar, had almost left him instructions on what steps to take next in the investigation, but it was more advice than definitive orders. Much to his chagrin, none of his superior’s pointers were anything new. The most strategic Deep Coils minds had come to the same conclusion Caleb Hane had. They said there was not a strong enough trail to guarantee catching up to the culprit.

They needed to thin the list of suspects some more, then they could try to force the culprit into revealing themselves. Hopefully the trap Umtane had in mind would force the culprit to take some action instead.

Today though, his Deep Coils commander had left a second message though which was unusual.

Tashi Umtane, be advised, an allied Prowler team seen moving through Cordani region. You are formally recognized as the ranking officer concerning the scenario. Go deliberately.

Umtane’s jaw clenched as he read the extra message.

‘Moving through the region’. That was a weak euphemism. They were coming here. Why else even mention it?

He’d known the Red Sails had asked for help on the ground after Korbanok’s raid. Umtane’s own fleet hadn’t been ready to spare any significant number, so the Sails had reached out to the Prowler fleet instead.

It was surprising that there were any Prowlers still in the system this many months later, but if there were even a few allied forces nearby…

For a split second Umtane allowed himself to feel relief, only for his brain to grasp the full implications of the message.

In his last broadcast, he’d outlined his concerns about the risks of reaching out to the Red Sails even though they were the ones formally occupying the planet. His commander had agreed and left the situation in his hands with Deep Coils backup coming as quickly as it could.

His commander would have told him if they were reaching out to a lingering Prowler group though…so these Prowlers were acting independent of him.

That was why he’d been ‘formally recognized’. The Prowler’s might know that First Contact was happening and poke their noses in. If they showed up, they would nominally be obligated to follow Umtane’s orders.

He was to show the Prowlers that formal ranking, so they couldn’t wrest control of the situation.

Except knowing the Prowler’s fleet…

They would almost certainly try anyway.

“Dark tides, I’m dead,” he swore.