Damage Control - ARC Read Online Free PDF Page B

glamorous as it looked from the outside. Sure, there were a lot
of people who respecte d and even admired Chegg, but they relied on him as well. Their
lives — and worse,
their careers — were in his
hands.
    And now there was this
mess. Some wannabe spy from the Alien Command had blown his cover
and potentially ruined the whole Sandfruit Planet
project.
    It wasn’t the spy’s fault,
probably. The Alien Command had a reputation for sloppy training of
their supposedly-covert data collectors. And to top it all off,
they had promoted the kid too soon.
    But none of that could be
helped now. The damage was already set in motion. At this stage in
a civilization’s development, uncontrolled contact with aliens
could cause devastating panic.
    And then there was the
question of microbes. Zuke wasn’t the only alien life form that had
been traipsing around in that Sandfruit woman’s kitchen.
Technically, the Medical Command should have already had a presence
on Earth by now. Every day they waited, the chances of an epidemic
increased.
    But the medical issues were
not Chegg’s job to worry about. Chegg was the commander of the
Counter-Intelligence force responsible for preventing the loss of
sensitive information to the Aberikekk-speaking population of
Earth.
    The question before the
Committee was whether to accelerate the Sandfruit mission or cancel
it. Delaying contact until everything was ready for a proper first
contact would almost certainly mean giant death tolls on Earth from
disease, as Chuzekk microbes spread around a planet where they
didn’t belong. But premature contact would probably cause panic,
and panic would cause war. It always did.
    In the end, the question
came down to an economic one: whether the trade benefits of having
contact with Earth would likely outweigh the costs of military and
medical intervention.
    When Chegg felt his
Personal Device vibrate on his hip, he slipped the pruning shears
into his pocket and opened it. “Yes!” he barked.
    “They decided to accelerate
the project,” said the image of his boss on the tiny screen. “You
will depart in twelve days.”
    It was a short
conversation. He waited until the Kirove had terminated the call
before closing his own Personal Device and hooking it back on his
uniform. “That was the Kirove,” he said to his daughter. “We’re
being deployed.”
    “Good!” Jett replied.
“Bring me back a monkey.” She was so close he could have touched
her, but he could barely see her. Her face was hidden in the lush
foliage.
    “I don’t know if I can take
a monkey,” he said. “It depends on a lot of things. The planet may
not have enough monkeys. In that case, I’d have to leave them all.
It’s time to come down now. Hold on with your hands and let your
body hang down like we practiced. I won’t let you fall.”
    He would have liked to call
his wife first, but he didn’t have time for sentimentality. She was
half a world away, studying how seaweed prices affected population
trends. There was nothing she could do, except call the rest of the
children to let them know. He called the twelve
zirodes — captains — who worked for him directly, and then his wife, and then his
car.
    “I have to leave, my girl,”
he said to Jett, touching her nose with the middle knuckle of his
left index finger. The spines of her head were starting to grow in.
He wondered how sharp they’d be the next time he saw her, how tall
and wise she’d be.
    “But you have twelve
days.”
    He squatted to bring his
face to her level and looked her in the eyes. “I have twelve days
to get the whole ship and crew ready. I have to go to the ship now
and start.”
    Together they walked to the
pool and slipped in. The water, like the air, was warm and rich
with plant life. Jett found her little sibling — the legless, genderless tadpole who would one day become a
bipedal child like herself — and placed him
gently in his transport case. Chegg picked up the case and they
both