Found in Translation

“Greg, come up right away. Oh, and tell the analysts to drop anything they’re working on right now, this takes priority.” She returned the handset to the cradle. The hard-line communication system was older than anything else in the building. In fact, it was older than anything on the moon that wasn’t in a museum or itself a tourist attraction. It was secure, though, and that mattered most.

The swarthy, mustachioed man burst into her office with a harried air and unkempt hair. “What is it, Grace? Did the signal office pick something up?”

Grace turned her monitor around to show Greg. “Not exactly. I got copied on a conversation thread, that I don’t think I was meant to be included in. Sent from the office of Pritnan Antinan.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“If the sound of that name didn’t give it away, he’s from the Nannanan Exclave.”

“I figured that, I just don’t know that name.” Greg studied the message closer and began to point out the other names. “But that’s the Ambassador’s aide, that’s their security chief on the station, and I think that’s their Premier.”

“Right on all. Pritnan Antinan is their Minister of War.” Grace shook her head. “I can’t figure out what this would be about, or why my name would be in the Minister’s contacts. We met here, briefly, at the gala last year. Charming enough for a mass of tentacles, if a little intense, but that’s all I know.”

Greg produced a data crystal and tapped it to the screen. “I’ll get this downstairs to the analysts. We’ll get it decrypted, and then you can figure out what translator to call in, since you’ll have to read them in.”

“The analysts can’t—”

“No. They have one job. Don’t try to confuse them with others.” Greg stopped halfway out the door. “I didn’t know they even had a Minister of War.”

“Seems wholly unlike them, right? They have a Minister for everything they do, and everything they try to avoid at all costs, like the Minister of Disease.”

Greg just grunted and ran back to his underground office. “I’ve got a hot one for you two,” he said.

“Thank you, Greg,” Analyst One said. “We look forward to assisting.”

“How much data do we have?” Analyst Two asked.

“A message thread. Looks like a dozen or so messages, some of them pages long.”

“May I suggest Analyst One begins overall parsing while I start with the shortest messages first?”

“Whatever works best, A-Two,” Greg answered. He tapped the data crystal against the stack of machines in his office, marked ‘A-1’ and ‘A-2’ before sitting at his desk.

“You’ve probably already realized, but the messages are between Nann-Ex members, so I’m unsure what the language will be,” Greg said.

“That’s odd,” Analyst Two said. “These short messages all correspond directly to English and decrypt as such using a simple replacement cipher. There’s really nothing here to challenge us.”

“How do you figure that?” Greg asked. “I’m looking at the encrypted message and the English, but I’m not seeing how it lines up.”

“Does this help?” Analyst-Two asked, displaying the English text written in the symbols of the Nannanan common language.

“The entire message chain is ready for download,” Analyst One said. “If that is all, we shall return to our previous assignments.”

“Thanks,” Greg said, tapping the crystal against his terminal to download the decrypted messages.

He sat beside Grace as they read the decrypted messages together. “Their English is atrocious,” he said.

“It’s not used outside human space. Maybe they figured they’d be able to better hide what they were talking about.” Grace paused. “We don’t have a ship with my name, but that’s what this message says. Is it possible the routing AI passed it on to me when it identified my name?”

“Possible,” Greg answered. “We set up all the infrastructure for the Nann-Ex. Of course, that depends on whether they left it on the default settings.” He paused. “Yeah, that’s probably what happened.”

“I’m more worried about this,” she said, “here. We’re going to war against ourselves?”

“What would make them think that?” he asked.

Grace picked up the handset of the relic and clicked the buttons it rested on a couple times. “Get me General Ochoe.” She listened for a moment. “Good morning, General. We have a worrying message from the Nannanan Exclave. … Sure, come over. I’ll start a fresh pot of coffee.”

As she hung up, Greg was already moving across her office to the coffee pot. “I got this. Extra strong, just like she likes it.”

The general came in as the coffee maker dinged, signifying it was ready to dispense. “Looks like I’m right on time,” she said, putting her Marine Academy mug under the spout. “No cream, no sugar.” The coffee maker filled her mug.

Greg offered her the seat he’d been using, next to Grace. “Something odd’s going on in Nann-Ex.”

“Hello, Greg, Grace,” she said.

Grace took the hint about the niceties. “Hi, Nandi. This message chain is concerning.”

The general sat and sipped her coffee while reading through the messages. “Their English is about on par with half the junior officers.” She chuckled. “This is obviously about the training exercise on Breton. The ship they misidentified as the Grace Alvarez is the Greta Andreesen.”

“How do you figure that?” Grace asked.

“Because the Andreesen is part of the OPFOR for the Breton Resolve exercise, and auto-correct is a thing that will forever haunt us.” Nandi leaned back. “I think we should bring a couple of the Nannanan higher-ups in as observers, including Minister Pritnan.”

“You can do that?” Greg asked. “I know you’ve got some pull, but I didn’t realize—”

“I served with Evan — the SecDef — when we were both butter-bars,” Nandi cut him off. “I’ll send a message and let him know that we should be including them in several training exercises. At least until they get the concept.”

“I don’t understand.” Grace said. “Surely they train.”

“That’s one of those things that was redacted from a number of reports. When the Nannanan were still under Kalari rule, ‘training exercise’ meant something else entirely.” The general sighed. “The Kalari Empire would take the fresh troops along on a sure-win mission in order to get them blooded. It was usually against weak resistance forces, and usually from their own home world.”

“Oh,” Grace closed her eyes. “Damn.”

“Let Ambassador Ritnannan know that we’re inviting his people to the exercise. I’ll call Evan, and we’ll have Minister Pritnan on his way to Breton by this afternoon. Thanks for the coffee.” Nandi stood, downing the last of her coffee, then left the office as though it had been nothing more than a casual chat.

“I’m curious about something,” Greg said. “Can you load up the original message?”

“Why?” she asked, even as she loaded it.

“Examine headers.”

Grace followed his instructions to peer into the formatting of the message.

He chuckled and pointed. “Yep, default settings.”

There, buried in all the metadata from the communication software was the log line, “Contact added to CC; Name found in translation.”