Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (17 page)

It was a depressed group of senior officers and NCOs that gathered in Solace’s office the day after entering FTL. Michael had brought Kalers along to help speak for the Space Force personnel aboard the ship, and was pleased to see that Solace had invited Belmonte – and that Major Caleb Norup had brought Peng Wa.

Michael hadn’t interacted much with the commander of the short battalion – four companies with no heavy weapons element – of Marines embarked aboard
Avalon
but the broad-shouldered man seemed solid enough. Master Sergeant Wa seemed to think so, anyway, which was enough for the CAG.

The seventh person in the room was Ship’s Marshal Barsamian, and she looked at the collection of more senior officers and more experienced non-commissioned officers with a calm Michael wasn’t sure he’d possess in her place.

“We have completed the process of taking the ship to Counter Intelligence Level Three,” she said calmly. “Per the Code of Military Justice, we are required to inform all personnel inside a full communication review zone within twenty-four hours of the review commencing. Delivering that notice falls to the senior officers and NCOs of each service branch.”

“I downloaded the message template before everything came apart at Kematian,” Michael told the others. “This isn’t my first go around with potential spies.”

“It is mine,” Solace replied grimly. “I’ll take a copy of that template if you will, CAG.”

“Of course.”

The XO turned back to the Marines.

“For some reason,” she continued calmly, “second-rate carriers and Home Fleet cruisers don’t see many spies. I haven’t been involved with any sort of counter intelligence sweep. What do we do next?”

“First, we monitor all communications and watch for
anything
suspicious,” Barsamian explained. “This is honestly the part most likely to turn up something useful. Even knowing that messages are being monitored, conspirators have to communicate home somehow.”

“What if they have a Q-Com linked to the Commonwealth network?” Solace asked. “That would bypass any attempt on our part to intercept, wouldn’t it?”

“In theory,” the Marshal allowed. “In practice, the
containment
fields
necessary to maintain an entangled particle have a distinct energy signature that can be detected at distances of up to five or six hundred meters. Shipboard sensors automatically scan for them – and private Q-Coms are not permitted aboard warships.”

“What else?”

“There are some smart programs we will run in the ship’s surveillance systems to check for suspicious behavior,” Barsamian told them. “They’re notorious for false positives and not likely to turn out anything incredibly useful, but they may point us to something we might have missed.”

“All of this is very vague and circumstantial at best,” Solace noted. “Is there… something more active we should be doing?”

“Counterintelligence work is almost never active,” Michael pointed out quietly. “Last time I went through this, we never caught the spy. It was peacetime, so we don’t even know who they might have been working for. Void knows, there might have not even been a spy.”

“This time, we are quite certain some form of enemy agent is aboard,” Barsamian replied. “But the CAG is right, Commander. At this point, there is very little we can do to bring this agent into the open. All we can do is wait for them to act and be ready.”

Peng Wa shook her head, the senior Marine NCO looking frustrated.

“Is there anything I can shoot in all of this?” she demanded, only half-joking from her tone of voice. “For that matter, are we sure this isn’t tied into those rumors we were hearing about Sanchez?”

The office was silent for a very long moment, and then Michael finally spoke, very quietly.

“I don’t think anyone in this room
likes
Sanchez,” he said bluntly. “And I definitely think she is stirring up trouble in ways that are at the least… questionable.

“But her record and her history speak for themselves. Senior Fleet Commander Sanchez is a decorated officer with twelve years in Navy Intelligence. I don’t
like
her,” he repeated, “but I don’t think her loyalty to the
Federation
can be questioned.”

“Nonetheless, we need to keep an eye on that situation as well,” Solace pointed out. “Sanchez speaks for Vice Admiral Tobin. It’s possible that what we’re hearing is exaggerated, a cynic’s view of an attempt to get a feel for the officers under his command.

“But with one thing and another, my shoulderblades are feeling itchy,” the XO told them all. “Worse, I don’t think I’m the one being measured for the knife. We need to keep poking, people. If Sanchez
is
trying to put together some kind of fifth column of our crew and Marines, we need proof we can take to the Captain.”

“Tobin’s the Admiral,” Norup objected. “Even if we can prove something, what can the Captain do?”

“This is Kyle’s ship, not Tobin’s, Major,” the XO replied harshly, to a sharp nod of agreement from Michael. “Even Admirals have things they cannot do.”

“If what rumor suggests is correct,” Marshal Barsamian explained, “it would be within Captain Roberts’ rights to arrest and detain both Sanchez and Vice Admiral Tobin for mutiny.”

The room was silent again as everyone considered the firestorm that would ensue from that action.

“Mostly, I think
that
worry falls on you, Marshal,” Michael said quietly. “The rest of us, well,” he shrugged. “We need to worry about catching a battleship.”

Technically, Kyle was holding down the FTL dark watch, back-stopping Commander James Anderson.

Since, like many of
Avalon’s
crew, Commander Anderson was an experienced and competent officer, Kyle had ordered the younger man to advise him if anything came up, setup a video link to the bridge, and settled down in his office to do paperwork.

While no one was going to question anything that had been dropped off on Kematian, or the starfighter transfers, or any of the activities of the scant hours they’d been in the system, all of it still needed to recorded, tracked, and approved.

When Solace stepped into his office without bothering to buzz for admittance, he was glad for the interruption. He closed his files with a thought and an unnecessary gesture and regarded his executive officer as she closed the door behind her and took a seat in silence.

The shock in Kematian which had awoken his awareness of her attractiveness had faded, but the awareness hadn’t. Tonight, though, she looked utterly drained. Her hair was uneven, looking in need of either being recropped or a
very
good stylist to make growing it out look good. She hadn’t bothered with a uniform jacket, though her shipsuit had the distinctively perfect creases of one pulled directly from the refresher.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked gently. His own dreams were starting to feature the destruction of Kematian alongside the memory of flying the old
Avalon
through a battleship and the wreckage inside
Ansem Gulf
after his old crew had retaken her from pirates. He couldn’t imagine that Solace, for whom this had only been her second ever combat, was dealing any better.

“We just watched a world die, Captain,” she replied, her voice soft and sad. “How… how could I even
begin
to sleep?”

“Your implant is perfectly capable of forcing you into dreamless sleep,” he pointed out. “It isn’t great in the long-term, but trust me, it’s better than not sleeping at all.”

Solace blinked, it clearly taking a minute for what he was saying to sink in.

“You too?”             

“After
Gulf
,” he agreed. “Then again after Tranquility. And now Kematian added in. Have you talked to Cunningham yet?”

She shook her head.

“Feels… weak,” she confessed.

“There’s a reason every Doctor on this ship is as rated for counseling as they are for trauma surgery,” Kyle told her. “There’s a lot, even ignoring counseling, that the Surgeon-Commander can do for you. Our implants have some useful functions for this – functions that are even better than we had in the last war.”

He hadn’t realized his bitterness over that had leaked into his voice until he saw her eyes narrow.

“That sounds personal, sir,” she replied.

“Mira,” he said gently, “it’s the middle of a dark watch and we’re in my office. You can call me Kyle.”

“Very well… Kyle,” she accepted. “But… what happened in the last war?”

He sighed and stood. The wallscreen behind him was blank, but he faced it and brought up an image of Amaranthe as he turned to face it.

“My father was in command of the Marine garrison assigned to the Federation Embassy on Amaranthe,” he said quietly. “As the Terrans were landing, he was evacuating the Embassy personnel and anyone who’d come with him.

“He was leading from the front, with a company of Marines and almost two thousand civilians behind him, when the nano-weapon went off.”

Kyle stared at the splotchy planet for a long moment.

“He escaped,” he said finally, the memories rushing back of the official inquest after the suicide, and the recordings and reports he’d desperately watched and read as a teenager to try to find some kind of answer. “Most of his company, and almost all of the civilians they were escorting, didn’t.

“Somehow, he held it together for years. Came home. Had me.” He wasn’t sure how Solace was taking this. She was silent behind him, and he was focused on the world that killed his father.

“Then, on the day the war ended, Major James Roberts blew his brains out with a service pistol, leaving behind a wife and an eight year old son. One of seven post-traumatic suicides from the Federal forces in the war.”

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Solace said behind him. “I really didn’t know.”

“It’s very specifically
not
in my service file, Mira,” he replied. “We are shaped by what we survive, but I don’t need or want pity for it. I do my job.”

“How?” Solace’s voice was torn. He turned to see her face was in her hands, but she looked back up at him. “We just watched a world die,” she repeated. “Somewhere on this god-damn ship is a spy. The Admiral’s staff is playing political games, and I’m not sure who I can even trust. How do we do the job like this?!”

“Because we swore an oath, and we put on the uniform,” Kyle said gently as he crossed over to her. “We can’t control the politics. We can’t magically find the spy. So we go on. We factor them into our decisions, we remember who we can trust, and we do our job.”

“I don’t even know who I can trust,” she admitted. “I’ve never dealt with a spy, or this kind of political
bullshit!
”

The shouted curse echoed in the office, and Kyle turned his best shit-eating grin on his executive officer. Apparently, there was
definitely
a human being in the statue. He stepped over to his fridge and dragged a pair of cups of tea from the dispenser.

“We can trust the crew to do their jobs,” he told her. “Beyond that? I trust Michael, I trust Belmonte and Kalers – because Hammond recommended her, if no other reason – and I trust you. Everything else is chain of command – I can’t not trust my crew because there’s one bad apple. I
need
them – and they need me to trust them.”

“I haven’t exactly been giving you excuses to trust me,” she pointed out, taking the cup gratefully.

“You’ve given me no reason not to, Mira,” Kyle said softly. “So you haven’t been the friendliest or warmest officer I’ve ever worked with – so what? You’ve being doing your job, and you’ve been doing it well.

“You were dumped on this ship with no warning, told you were expected to fill an inexperienced Captain’s holes, and then handed your third male Captain in a row. When the previous list includes one of the most flamboyantly homosexual Captains in the Navy and a man who tried to use his position to
rape
you, a little distance was inevitable.”

“That isn’t in my file either,” Solace replied, looking down at her tea.

“I read between the lines,” Kyle said. “And I’ve heard stories about Captain Haliburt. Any Captain who has JD-Personnel marking his reports as of questionable worth should be drummed out of the Navy.”

“He’s always on the right side of the line,” his exec said quietly. “Just barely. He knows just where it sits.”

“It won’t save him in wartime,” Kyle promised. “Mira, I understood why you needed distance. I needed you to work with me – and you did. So I trusted you. Anything else…” he made a throwaway gesture and spilled tea on himself.