“Anyway, first we’ve got to actually kill Setrákus Ra, right?” Adam says, patting me on the back. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“I’m going to throw everything I’ve got at him,” I say. “And then some.”
“We’ll help, too, you know. You’ve got friends in this.”
I nod. “Yeah. Of course. I know that.”
Adam starts walking towards the elevator and motions for me to follow. “You got another few minutes? There’s something else I want to show you.”
I raise my eyebrows and follow after him. The military types coming and going down the brightly lit halls give the two of us a wide berth. I wonder which one of us they’re more afraid of.
I did a cursory exploration of the Patience Creek facility when I first arrived, familiarizing myself with the important areas—the officer sleeping quarters where we’re staying, the barracks, the holding cells, the gym, the garage—and glossing over the areas where the military are doing their thing. I’m not sure what Adam could’ve discovered in the brief time he was being held prisoner that I haven’t already seen. Then again, a place built as a hideaway for spies would have a lot of secrets.
“After they interrogated me, they took me down here,” Adam explains as we ride the elevator down two levels. “I guess they didn’t have much hope of this project paying off, so they stuck it out of the way.”
The level that we exit onto is mostly storage. I passed it over pretty quickly during my walk through. Half the lightbulbs in the hallway need changing. Adam brings me by a few rooms completely filled with dusty crates of dry rations and boxes of Tang, plus a storage space cluttered with seventies-style beach chairs and a moth-eaten volleyball net. Finally, we turn a corner, and Adam opens a door into a room cluttered with stacks of books. A library. At a glance, I realize that most of these yellowed hardbacks are dedicated to topics a spy might find useful in a post-apocalyptic pinch: volumes on gardening, electronics repair and medical treatment.
I flinch. The small room is filled with the harsh and guttural sounds of Mogadorians barking at each other.
On a desk in the middle of the room, there’s a wide piece of electronic equipment that looks vaguely familiar. The Mog voices emanate from that. It’s about the size of a car dashboard and covered with strange knobs and gauges. The thing looks like someone recently set fire to it and then dropped it off the side of a building. It’s hooked up to a tangled mess of wires and batteries, apparently drawing a lot of power.
Then it hits me. What I’m looking at is the control console of a Mogadorian Skimmer, ripped out from the rest of the ship. The console is powered on, thanks to some complex wiring, and that means the communicator is active.
Seated in front of the dissected console is an olive-skinned guy who I’d put in his early thirties. His dark hair is cut short, and his cheeks are losing ground to a few days’ worth of stubble. I think I’ve seen him before, although I can’t quite place where and when.
“Adam, you’re back,” the man says, nodding tiredly. “Been pretty quiet.”
I turn to Adam and raise an eyebrow.
“This is Agent Noto,” Adam tells me. “Formerly of MogPro.”
That’s where I know him from. He was part of the group that Walker brought to Ashwood Estates after they turned on the Mogs.
“I was worried you wouldn’t be coming back when the soldiers hauled you off earlier,” Noto says. “Got pretty Orwellian for a minute there.”
Adam smiles at me. “See? I told you my detainment wasn’t all bad. I made a friend. I’ve been helping Noto with his Mogadorian language skills.”
“You speak their language?” I ask, taking a fresh look at the man.
“I was liaison to the Mogs during my MogPro days,” Noto explains. “Picked up a few phrases here and there. I can understand so long as they talk slow and at a kindergartner’s level.”
I step farther into the room, peering at the open notebooks fanned out on the desk. They’re filled with symbols I recognize as Mogadorian letters, each of those represented by a phonetic translation.
“We’re monitoring the communication between the Mogadorian warships,” Adam says. “I’ve encrypted this module so they won’t have any idea we’re listening in.”
“With the security you downloaded onto here, we could broadcast back to them, and they still wouldn’t be able to find us,” Noto says admiringly.
Now I realize why Adam looks so utterly exhausted. It wasn’t just the interrogation keeping him up all night. He’s been sitting here listening to these Mog transmissions, knowing he’s the only one who can translate them.
“How long does it take to teach basic Mogadorian?” I ask him with a glance at Noto.
Noto rattles off a series of harsh noises. “It’s not so tough.”
Adam laughs. “Your accent is getting better, but you just said you’d like a stomach filled with leeches.”
Noto makes a face. “I thought I was asking for some coffee.”
“I helped Noto make a list of key words to listen for,” Adam tells me. “‘Beloved Leader,’ warship call signs, ‘Garde’—any time he hears those words, he makes sure to flag the transmission.”
“I’m recording everything in case I need to listen again,” Noto says. “Which I usually do.”
“This is good. It’ll be really helpful to know what the Mogs are saying to each other,” I tell them, putting a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Don’t burn yourself out, though. We’re going to need you.”
Adam nods. “I know. I won’t.”
I say good-bye to Agent Noto, then lead Adam into the hallway where we can talk privately.
“So, from what you’ve listened in on so far, what are the Mogs saying?” I ask him.
“They’re freaking out about Setrákus Ra,” he replies. “Well, freaking out as much as Mog trueborns can freak out. There’s a lot of concern about why he hasn’t ordered the attack or made any announcements to the fleet, but they won’t outright question him because to do so is pretty much treason. Mostly, they’re like . . . ‘This is warship Delta, awaiting orders, requesting guidance from Beloved Leader.’”
“That alone tells you they’re freaking out?”
“Mogs don’t go around asking for orders, John. They do what they’re told. They speak when spoken to. They don’t passive-aggressively prod their Leader.”
“And there’s been no response from the Anubis or the West Virginia base?”
“Nothing,” Adam confirms. “Radio silence.”
“Hmm.”
The plan I’ve been formulating is a little crazy, a lot dangerous, and, you know, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it probably should. I mull over everything that Adam has told me about Mogadorian culture, in particular the likelihood of them descending into civil war once Setrákus Ra is dead. If they took out each other, that’d make it a whole lot easier on the rest of us. What if there was something we could do to speed that process up? To get the Mogs at each other’s throats before Setrákus Ra is even turned to ash? A little bit of psychological warfare.
Before I can give that any more thought, Noto pokes his head out of the library and waves Adam over. “There’s a lot of chatter all of a sudden,” he says.
Adam and I jog back into the room. I cock my head to listen to the transmission coming through, but it all sounds like angry barking to me. The Mogadorian who’s broadcasting sure is excited, though.
Watching Adam’s eyes slowly narrow, I can tell this isn’t good news. After a few seconds, he turns to me.
“John, we should get the others,” he says. “Someone’s made a terrible mistake.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEVER POST ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET. IT’S like Rule #1.
Granted, all of us have broken Rule #1 at some point and ended up hunted by Mogs as a result. Because sometimes desperation outweighs your desire not to be stupid. It happens. No judgment.
But man, it’s dumb to post things on the internet.