Surveillance (The Directorate Book 5) by Pam Uphoff

Author:Pam Uphoff [Uphoff, Pam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iron Ax Press
Published: 2017-04-09T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

30 Emre 1405 yp

Scrublands Base, World EH 2946

"Eep!"

Paer sidestepped as Tayc recoiled. Peeked in the door of Ajha's Electronics crawler.

The tall woman sitting at the comp hardly looked worth an "Eep!" In fact she looked a lot like Xen. Wearing a Disco uniform.

"Ah. I'll bet you're Q." Paer stepped in.

"Yep." A quick flash of a grin. "I hadn't realized I was so scary."

Paer snickered. "Your reputation is interesting. Not as bad as Xen's, mind you. So, you're doing translations?"

"Yep. And boring as hell, but useful. If you guys can automate the translations, it'll make picking out the important information a whole lot easier and faster." She waved at the computer. "These radio intercepts are patrol reports, supply trucks checking in after every delivery, and so forth. Let me send you the first three tracks . . . there you go. Good luck. I'll finish the fourth one in an hour and get the last two quickly. Hopefully by lunch."

"Excellent. Oh, I'm Paer, this is Tayc."

"Ah. Xen's buddy. Pleased to meet you."

Paer cocked her head. "You use a Oner accent when talking to us, too."

"Oh, it gets automatic, using the dialect of the people you're around." She glanced at the comp. "Whole new languages are much more fun."

Paer got bumped from behind . . . all the analysts were gathering.

"So . . . what's it like, merging?" Pause just had to go there.

"I don't actually know. It took, I think, about three days for the spell to maintain myself to catch up with the mess. Pity. As best I can tell I missed out on a huge orgy." She shrugged. "Anyhow, you've all got the first translations, and I'd better get back to the rest."

They all sort of edged away.

Eyed each other . . . somewhere between appalled and boggled.

Pause finally shook himself. "Well . . . it would take a very drunken orgy for me to want to have anything to do with her."

Hioz snorted. "I'm not the gender to notice, but they do say she's got a anti-sexual-desire aura."

Tayc nodded. "Must be nice."

Paer managed to keep her face straight. Nope. I like the way Ebsa lights up when he sees me. But I am glad this bunch doesn't.

"Well. Shall we see what we've got?" Paer led the way to the pavilion and sat down to read.

A phonetic transcription, followed by a translation. Word for word, then when it wasn't clear, a restatement.

Patrol reports. Supply runs checking in at departure and delivery.

"Boring routine stuff." Paer sighed. Anything really interesting will come later . . . and I'll probably be handing out band-aids by then.

Offe nodded. "This at least gets us a large working vocabulary."

The translations of other channels popped up on the comps all through the morning.

Paer stuck her head in the electronics crawler, but Q was already gone. Do they have their own gates? Or do they use ours?

She blinked and looked around. No sign of Ajha, Fean, Hob . . . the Action Teams . . .

"Are they all across, already?"

Offe raised his head and frowned around the abandoned site.

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