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36: The Infiltrator
Juji hopped through the packed up camp, peering around stacks of supplies and examining sleeping tanninim, occasionally jumping up onto the creatures' backs and squawking at them to wake up. After about an hour of this with no results, Juji left the reptiles to find someone else to bother.
There were so many things going on today. Even though the packing was pretty much done there were other things to do, such as briefing the troops on what their itinerary would be for the next few days. Right now most of the soldiers were in a meeting with the funny red-haired man Juji had come to know fairly well over the past years.
He waddled through the entrance that led down to the meeting area, following the path he knew well now. He finally came to the hollowed out area where he saw everyone just starting to leave.
He weaved his way through the sea of feet, heading towards his most favorite person besides Dommel, his owner. Finally, he met his target and squawked up at him. The man looked down at the bird and laughed.
"Come on." he said, patting his shoulder.
Juji chittered happily and leapt up onto Wolf Frakken's shoulder and then onto his head. Where he remained perched through the entire walk back out into the camp. The whole time, the bird sat contentedly, looking out at everyone else as they scurried around loading up the ships.
"Alright, time to get down." Wolf picked Juji up off of his head and placed the animal on the ground in front of him.
Juji chittered and waddled away without another thought as he saw someone else he liked walking across the camp a dozen yards away.
He flapped his wings and honked at the young woman. Hearing the bird, the turned to look in his direction.
"Hi, Juji." Constance squatted and gestured for him to come to her. He waddled as fast as he could over to her and rubbed his head on her outstretched hand chittering as he did so. "What have you been up to?"
The bird made his signature yodeling noise and cocked his head sideways as if to answer Constance. She laughed and patted him on his feathered head.
"Go on, go say hello to everyone else and then find yourself a transport to get onto."
Juji honked his approval and nodded his head up and down like he'd seen many of the people do in response to the tone of voice Constance had just used.
The girl laughed and shooed Juji on.
The bird left Constance and continued waddling, eventually finding Masterson. He greeted the young man with his usual warble.
Talan looked down at the bird chuckling and shook his head.
Juji never really knew exactly what to make of the curious young man, but Masterson had always been nice to Juji – ever since that first night in the inn when he'd walked in with his friend drenched from that rainstorm.
Juji shook his feathers as he remembered that wet, chilly night. Then he chittered goodbye and waddled off to finish his tour. He made his rounds, seeing Dommel and Elisa, Garen, David, Dara, Deror, and finally Desslok.
He found the red-haired man standing off by himself – as usual – staring at his hand, but the appendage looked strange to Juji. Instead of his usual black glove, he was wearing something light-colored and glowing.
Juji cocked his head at the funny thing and watched as the red-haired man stared at his hand for a very long time as it continued to glow. After a while, the man took off the glowing thing and tucked it into a pocket.
Juji noticed that the hand he'd used looked strange. It was two different colors instead of one like the rest of the camp. But Juji didn't care of course. Such things did not alter his bird-world.
Seeing that the red-haired man was no longer preoccupied by the glowing thing, Juji waddled up to him squawking.
"What?" Desslok asked the bird without looking at him.
"Chirp." Juji replied.
"We're leaving. I suggest you find Dommel and Elisa."
"Chitter." the bird protested.
"Forget it; you'll not be coming with me." the man said, still not looking at Juji."
"Chitter, chirp!" Juji said, hopping over to Desslok and waddling around in front of him.
"No." Desslok repeated. "Go on now." he tried to shoo the bird away, but Juji would not be shooed. Instead of leaving, the bird yodeled at the young man incessantly until he gave in.
"Alright! Very well, you feather-brained lout. But do not ever say that I didn't try to dissuade you."
"Chirrup!" Juji replied happily and suddenly raced around the young man's feet in joyful circles until he was stopped by a stern look from Desslok. The leader was about to speak again when Masterson suddenly appeared.
"Sir, we're ready to move out on your order."
"Excellent, Talan." Desslok nodded to the other man before walking over to a small scout ship and swinging himself up and into it in one smooth motion.
Juji stood still for a moment, unsure of what to do. He stared at the tiny ship, then chirped at it.
"Come on." the red-haired man glared at the bird and then gestured for Juji to jump into the cockpit too.
With a happy chitter Juji flew up to his new temporary perch inside the ship with Desslok.
"He's finally doing it." Eliora said, looking up from a report she'd gotten from one of their sources inside the palace.
"Who's doing what?" Naomi asked without turning her eyes away from what she was doing.
"Leader Desslok." Eliora replied, "He's finally moving against Deun; his forces attacked one of the zealot outposts two days ago. They leveled it."
Naomi finally looked up. "Then he'll be in Rapha'owr soon."
"By the will of Adonai," Eliora replied, a look of hard determination on her face. "I hope he will." she looked down at the screen she'd been reading, "Or else Gamilon will never be the same again. Scarred though she be, she is still saveable if her true king comes to power once again."
"I just hope he doesn't come too late." Naomi sighed, "The tsarebetim are becoming more numerous. There are even a couple of locations on the other side of the planet where the ground has caved in, creating a massive crater extending all the way through the crust of the planet, revealing the hollow layer beneath it."
"Such destruction..." Eliora whispered, "And all from one act of revenge..."
"Indeed." Naomi nodded, "If only... things were different..."
"There's no use in wishing, my friend." Eliora patted Naomi on the shoulder, "We must do the best we can with what we have."
"I know." Naomi replied, "But I can still hope for a solution."
"As can we all..." Eliora agreed.
Just then Raymond walked into the room, his face more grim than usual. "If things were bad, they just got worse." he said, holding out a cargo manifest for the two women to see.
"I don't see the problem." Naomi said after reading through the document.
"The weight is off." Raymond said, "It's too heavy. There's no way that the things on this list weigh that much." he indicated the supposed number.
"Then what have they been running?" Eliora asked, puzzled.
"That's the troubling part..." Raymond's eyes clouded, "Even though we don't know what they're shipping exactly, we know that it's been shipped out past Balan."
Naomi and Eliora's eyes widened at the same instant.
"And the've been shipping it for the past six years." His words made the two women blanche.
"And where exactly has he been sending it?" Eliora asked hesitantly, not wanting to hear the answer.
"I don't know the precise location." Raymond replied. "That information has been classified beyond my ability to access."
"What about Mossad? Could your son get into it?" Eliora asked.
"I've gotten others to try." he replied, "But they've not been able to get in. It's been restricted so that only Deun may access it."
Eliora winced. "Surely we can break into it." she turned to her own computer and brought up a record of some other similar escapades they'd been involved in in the past, "We've done it before. Why not this time?"
Raymond paused before answering and when he did, he did so hesitantly, "This time... they have the ability to pinpoint the location and identity of anyone who tries to break in. To try to hack into this information is to write your own death sentence... The ones who've tried are all dead now... We've lost two of our best to this effort..."
All three were silent for a long time before Eliora replied. "Let me try."
"No!" Naomi protested. "We can't afford to lose you."
"But I think I might know how to get around Deun's little trap." she protested. "Just let me try."
"Raymond, don't let her do this." Naomi pleaded with her husband.
"Eliora," the admiral said to the other woman, "My wife is right; we can't afford to lose you – not now."
"But I have to try it." Eliora pleaded. "Let me do this. I know I can get through without his forces finding me."
The admiral and his charge stared at one another for a long, silent moment. A hundred thousand reasons ran through Raymond's mind as to why he shouldn't – even couldn't – let Eliora do this. But at the same time, he saw the look of determination in the woman's eyes and something in him sensed that, with Masterson unavailable and Desslok pushing back Deun's forces, this was the best chance they had to be able to find out what Deun's was really doing. Raymond also knew somehow that if they didn't find out what was going on that more people would die, and that he knew he couldn't live with.
Finally, he said, "Go, Eliora. And may the hand of Adonai be upon you."
The woman nodded, "Thank you, sir. I will return soon." With that she turned and left.
It took her half the day to reach the destination she wanted, but Eliora made it far into the mountains, to a deserted valley she had found several years before while out scouting once. She'd marked the area, noting it for future use. She just had never imagined that she would be using it as a decoy.
Settling into a cave on the far side of the valley and hiding her small ship, she settled in to begin her work. In leaving the base she had taken her first step in hiding her true whereabouts from Deun. Now, she pulled out a computer she had never used before.
She set up the device quickly, attached a machine that would scramble her device location signature (DLS), took a deep breath and dove into her work. She quickly stripped away the outer layers of security that the palace information network had been equipped with.
This was no surprise. Hundred, likely even thousands of amateur hackers had gotten this far. She had nothing to fear from this particular sector of the network. Yes, there were a few security measures here, but she easily avoided them. Safe for now, she looked around for anything that might be important. Finding nothing, she kept going.
From there she went deeper, cutting subtly through a few more security walls. Each new wall came down more slowly and when it took her a full twenty minutes to break through one of them, she knew she was getting close to Deun's secret covert.
Here, the network began to look strange. Instead of the usual lines of code she was used to seeing, the file paths transformed into a literal holographic maze of walls and doors.
She watched in fascination and trepidation as the final obstacle formed.
"Please state your name." a mechanical voice said from somewhere inside the maze.
She paused for a moment, catching herself before she said her own name in automatic response, "Adva Wygoda." Eliora replied with no hint of deception.
"So that's one of the ways he knows who's getting in." she thought, "To answer without thinking is to die."
"Welcome, Adva." the computer replied, "You may now enter the maze."
"I'm so thrilled." she replied sarcastically.
"Command unknown. Please restate command."
"Nevermind." she waved absently at the hologram, then suddenly froze, "They have my voice print now!" she thought, horrified. "I can't use my voice to get through this... That's how he identified them even if they gave fake names..." she could have slapped herself for being so un-attentive. But there was no going back now. The only thing she could do was continue on in silence.
She gritted her teeth and used the holographic interface to proceed through the maze entrance. Once in, she made a series of turns, mapping out the maze in her head. Somewhere along the way she discovered that she could jump over and punch through walls if she attacked the barriers in just the right way.
The exercise reminded her a lot of hacking manually, the way she was used to, but there were key differences. Every once in a while, she would be stopped by impassable barriers that would ask her a question she would have to answer before continuing on – much like giving a password or phrase. Many of the questions were straightforward, if obscure, and she had little trouble traversing the maze, that is, until she came to one barrier in particular.
She approached a door that looked just like all the other doors she had gone through on her virtual journey. She reached out for the control pad to open it and her avatar jumped back as if shocked by the panel.
"You are not authorized to enter." the computer droned as it had every other time, "Who is the rightful heir to the Guardiana line?"
Eliora stared at the door, dumbfounded. It was a question she had never thought would be in a maze of Deun's creation. She didn't even think he knew anything about the Malha's history or succession. Then it dawned on her that perhaps this maze was not of Deun's making...
Getting past the shock of her discovery, she thought about the question, going over the history that she had lived through in the not-so-distant past. Aurelia Guardiana's daughter had been the Queen, Talonka who had rejected the role of Malha, and Talonka had given birth to two sons, neither of which could ever fill the role. And then there was... But no, she decided that her final option could not be the answer. Settling on the option she thought had to be right, Eliora answered the computer, "No one."
"That is incorrect." the machine droned, sending a pale red light pulsing through the maze walls. "Who is the rightful heir to the Guardiana line?"
Eliora groaned, knowing that she had just triggered an alarm of some sort, but she tried again, "Aurelia."
"That is incorrect." the computer repeated. "Who is the rightful heir to the Guardiana line?"
"Talonka." Eliora tried in desperation, not knowing any other option, but again the reply came, "That is incorrect. Who is the rightful heir to the Guardiana line?"
"I don't know!" she finally blurted out in frustration, oblivious to the fact that she was now speaking to the machine instead of keying in her responses.
"That is incorrect. Who is the rightful heir to the –"
Not caring what alarms she triggered now and desperate to get past this door, which she was convinced now was the final one, she wrenched the holographic door open, forcing her way through, sending her avatar into an unhealthily sluggish state as it took the full jolt of current from the door it had been punched through.
The maze began to flicker before her eyes as her computer started to die.
"No! No, not now!" she pleaded with the failing machine, "Adonai, please, let it stay on." she prayed.
As soon as she had cleared the now-sparking door, the hologram stopped flickering and Eliora breathed a sigh of relief.
Knowing that her time here was limited she began to download everything she could, beginning with the files nearest her avatar's position. She picked up a copy of everything she could. Every time a file had been downloaded, it disappeared from the the stack in her hologram's arms.
It took much longer than she was comfortable with and by the time she had reached the other side of the forbidden room she could see virtual sentinels swarming around the mangled door, working to open the sad-looking orifice.
She was on the last file when they finally broke in. Dozens of guards flocked toward her hologram, trying to seize it and rip the last file away from her protective arms. She clung to her precious copy, fighting off her attackers, "Just a few more seconds," she prayed, "Please, let me hang on for just a few more seconds."
Just when she thought the guards would get the best of her, the file disappeared, downloaded and now out of the sentinels' grasp. The originals lay strewn on the floor just where they had been before she copied them. Then the maze disappeared, replaced by familiar lines of code.
She'd been kicked out of the forbidden room and sent back to the beginning of her journey into the palace network.
Immediately she manually downloaded the files from the computer onto a data crystal before wiping the computer multiple times to make sure that no vestige of her ordeal would ever be found. Then she quickly gathered everything together and went back to her ship.
Jumping in, she hurriedly started the thing up and zoomed away.
He instincts were screaming at her to run. She knew that, even though she had scrambled her DLS that the zealots would be able to break through the cipher and find out her physical location soon if they hadn't done so already.
She went as fast as she could as far out into the wilderness as she dared before stopping to drop the used computer into the deepest tsarebetim she could find. She watched as the device sizzled, then melted into the crack, never to be seen or used again.
Satisfied that the evidence of her tampering was gone, she flew on for several miles before heading back the way she had come, making sure to fly through tsarebetim-heavy areas so that the time-delvers couldn't track her back to the base.
Something about the putrid things made it almost impossible for the trackers to find an accurate trail, for which Eliora was thankful. She had used them on numerous occasions to escape the time-delvers.
Sticking to her foul-smelling route, she finally made it back to base.
She docked her ship in the hidden hangar, which was now almost empty, and, clutching the crystal with the stolen files she ran up to the control center where she knew the Talans had been waiting for the many hours she had been gone.
She burst through the door, panting after the mental and physical stress of the ordeal she'd just gone through.
"Here!" She held out the crystal in triumph. "I haven't looked at it yet."
Both Raymond and Naomi stood to greet her, looks of relief on their tired faces.
"Thank Adonai you made it!" Naomi hugged the other woman, "The word from the palace is that security caught someone breaking into the information network. How did you get out?"
"Very quickly." Eliora replied. "Unfortunately, they do have my voice print and the DLS of the computer I was using, but by now they're swarming over a very empty piece of wilderness looking for someone and something that are no longer there." she paused, then continued, "And I don't think that Deun set up that security perimeter around his own information. Judging by the final question I was asked by the computer, I'd say our friend the Malha has been working on this much more than Deun."
"What question?" Naomi probed.
"It asked me who the heir to the Guardiana line was." she replied, "And it wouldn't take 'Aurelia' or 'Talonka' as an answer. I even offered 'No one,' and it wasn't satisfied."
An air of heaviness descended over the room, as the three understood the implications of the exchange, knowing what the real answer to the last question had to be, "The line of the Malha ended twenty-seven years ago... Or so we've always thought." Raymond said under his breath, "If it is true that Aurelia herself made this final security barrier, then where is the heir to the line of the Malha?"
"Perhaps the answer lies in the crystal." Eliora suggested.
"Perhaps." Raymond nodded slowly.
"So how did you finally get in?" Naomi inserted.
"I broke through the barrier the old-fashioned way – with brute force. Which is why I had to leave so quickly."
The Talans were both visibly shaken by that news and Raymond finally took the crystal Eliora was holding out. He accessed the information and began flipping through file after file.
"Most of this is nonsense, or so encrypted it will take weeks to decipher." he said dejectedly. He kept going through the information, becoming evermore discouraged as he did so, until he found something he could at least understand a little bit.
"It looks like a map." Naomi offered.
"Yes; and it's a world I've never laid eyes on before." Eliora said, staring at the three-dimensional globe that floated before their eyes.
Raymond rotated the object, zooming in to make the planet larger. There were oceans, mountains, rivers, several continents, and many more normal geographical features arranged strangely. He chose a spot on the map an random and zoomed in as far as he could. He roamed around for a while aimlessly, unable to read the strange characters.
Tapping on a number of cities, he tapped one too many times on one and a menu appeared. He couldn't read it, but he tapped something that generated a list of mostly unrecognizable words, each one in a different character type.
He was looking through the words when suddenly he saw one that he could read. He tapped it and instantly the globe glowed and all the characters transformed into something very akin to his own tongue.
Words he had never heard or seen before appeared. He navigated most of the way around the globe and stopped in shock as he recognized one of the words – which he now realized were the names of major cities.
Both Naomi and Eliora saw the name at the exact instant he did and a thrill ran through them all, until they saw he words, "Scheduled for termination" followed by a date in the not-so-distant future.
Naomi's eyes began to well up with tears. "No... Oh Adonai, let it not be so..." she cast her eyes toward heaven.
"I think we've found where Deun's been sending his excess cargo..." Raymond said, righteous anger beginning to build within him as cold reality settled heavily upon him.