- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
i told you not to
So now I feel better! You lovely people brought Dana back! I promised you that if you did, I would show you a page I snuck from the Queen's diary, so here it is!
McKaskill, I said. Got a moment?
Sure, Operator!
They call me the Operator because, you know, I work the system to take care of my crew.
McKaskill was a nice kid, family from Durban, on the outer colony world of Biko, which had been glassed years ago. But hed grown up in refugee apartments in the inner colonies and he had the look of someone who spent his childhood in concrete places under artificial lights.
Weedy.
He was doing a check in the tool crib now. The go-to kid for tools and parts. The stacks of shelves were his little kingdom, probably more his own than anything hed had growing up. I liked him a lot.
McKaskill, I said, I was checking the slipstream packets. I do that before I send them out. You knew that, right?
His eyes went to the grating at his feet and he got all casual inner city dont screw with me, because he knew I was onto him.
Somebody has been talking to you, I said. And now youre sending him a message back.
So?
I sighed. McKaskill, bad people are putting bad thoughts in your head.
He tried to get righteous. Op, that thingwhatever it is, in the hold. Theyre keeping big-time wraps on it. You know that. I heard the Captain. The way shes talking, theyre not gonna let people look at, its goin' to a basement in ONI. A sub sub sub basement. They cant just take something that big andshove it away somewhere.
McKaskill, I said, sending messages off to people without clearance, you know, that could be construed as treason.
Op! Melissa! I didnt mean
And were at war, crewman. Which makes treason a capital offense.
His eyes got wide. But-but-but you got it, he said, it didnt go nowhere.
Youre my crew, and no one is going to touch my crew without going through me. Ive got your back, McKaskill. But youre going to have to tell me about this contact.
Some old guy. You know, bad taste in clothes. But he was cleared to come aboard, so he has to be Intel.
You know his name?
Probably not his real one.
[Edited on 8/13/2004 5:46:51 PM]