Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (29 page)

Kyle glanced to Solace.

“Mira?” he asked. “I am all too aware that Commander Sanchez hates my guts, for whatever reason, which may be biasing my opinion here.”

“It’s… possible,” Solace admitted. From the sour expression on her face, the thought hadn’t occurred to her either. “However, all of our preparations are defensive in nature,” she pointed out. “We’re not preemptively brigging Sanchez.”

“You could, sir,” Barsamian pointed out. “Even with only rumors, with a suspicion of mutiny we could arrest her and search her quarters and files. About the only thing we can’t do is force her to submit to implant download.”

Kyle sighed and shook his head.

“You didn’t hear this, Major,” he said quietly, “but the Admiral and I are… at somewhat of loggerheads over the continued pursuit of
Triumphant
and how he has handled the latest communication lockdown. Arresting his Chief of Staff would be
extremely
counter-productive to our working relationship at this point.

“If you find even the slightest scrap of evidence? She’s going straight in the brig until we know more. But I need something
solid
. Something more concrete than lower decks rumor-mongering. Until then, all we can do is make preparations for a worst case scenario.”

“I understand, sir,” Barsamian nodded. She didn’t look happy. “With your permission, then, I should get to it.”

“Carry on, Major.”

It seemed dark in Dimitri’s office. He’d turned the lights up as high as they could go, and it hurt his eyes to look at them, but everything still felt vaguely dim. Shadowy. Like a dark veil was draped over his gaze, even though everything seemed perfectly clear.

The paperwork and minutia of his job were on his computer, waiting for him, but he could barely muster up the energy to face them. The big Admiral paced his office. Ten steps one way. Ten steps the other. It wasn’t a particularly large room, but he’d never noticed that before.

With a curse and a hand gesture, he cut the lights to a lower level, reducing the lighting in the room to match his mood. That only made the flashing red icon on the screen more obvious.

Right now, no messages could leave the buffer stack of
Avalon’s
interstellar Q-Com array without Dimitri personally approving them. If that hadn’t been the case, he never would have seen the message the warning icon was advising him he
must
release.

It was a Priority Alpha One communiqué. A recorded message, because the Joint Chiefs knew the ship was on communications lockdown, for Captain Roberts’ eyes only. If Dimitri hadn’t abused the strange situation with one ship under his direct command, he never would have seen it.

Priority Alpha One was reserved for either overriding orders or ‘your position is about to come under attack’. Since
Avalon
was in FTL and untouchable to any force known by man, it could only be the former.

The specific exclusion of Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin from a message being sent to the Captain of the ship could only mean one thing: Admiral Meredith Blake had almost certainly learned that
Avalon
had left the Alizon system.

An Alpha One message
excluding
Dimitri at this point could only contain one set of orders: for Captain Roberts to arrest him and turn the carrier around.

The admittance chime to his office sounded, and Dimitri froze like a panicked animal, his stare switching back and forth between the screen with its ominous warning and the door.

When the chime sounded again, he forced himself to calm down and hit the button dropping the message back into the buffer. He couldn’t
delete
an Alpha One message – but he could make sure no one saw it until it was far too late.

“Enter,” he ordered.

Senior Fleet Commander Judy Sanchez stepped through the door, the blond woman blinking in the dim light.

“Sir, we have a problem,” she said bluntly as soon as the door closed behind her.

“Between the spy aboard, the mass murderer we’re chasing, the system we just liberated, and the whole god-damn war, which exact problem do you mean?” he snapped.

“How about a new one?” Sanchez replied. “One where your flag captain is having paranoid delusions?”

Dimitri sighed. He knew his Chief of Staff didn’t
like
Roberts, but the depths she seemed willing to plumb to try to discredit the man were starting to grate. If anyone on this ship had mental issues right now, it was probably Dimitri himself. He wasn’t entirely sure.

“Commander, do you have
any
basis for this?” he asked bluntly. “You have spent far too much of your time since you arrived aboard this ship trying to denigrate Captain Roberts. Would you care to explain where this latest notion came from?”

“Sir, I have made no secret of my opinion of Captain Roberts,” she said flatly. “But he’s placed armed guards on the bridge and engineering. I was actively
denied
entrance to engineering by these guards.”

“Commander, you do realize there is a spy aboard?” Dimitri reminded her. “I’m surprised we haven’t had guards around the ship already – certainly that’s entirely within Captain Roberts’ discretion given the situation.

“It’s also within his discretion to restrict access to the critical portions of the ship to the personnel assigned there. You have no need to be in engineering, Commander Sanchez – or on the bridge, for that matter.

“I can understand that being short-stopped by Marines is an unpleasant experience, Judy,” he finished gently. “But I hardly see paranoid delusions in Captain Roberts taking reasonable precautions. Even if I found his actions unreasonable, Commander, the security of this ship is his responsibility – not mine, and most definitely
not yours
.”

Sanchez had remained silent as he lectured her, but her eyes flashed and she glared at him as he spoke.

“Sir, your faith in Captain Roberts is blatantly misplaced,” she told him. “The man is clearly out of his depth and unable to deal with the current situation. If things continue on this course, I cannot be sure I can keep you safe.”

“I am concerned about the completion of our mission, Commander, not my safety,” Dimitri told her. “Your concerns are noted, but I must warn you – if you ‘continue on this course’ you risk your career.”

Of course, it was unlikely that when the dust settled,
he
would be able to save or destroy anyone’s career. But Sanchez was already heading for a damning assessment report.

“I understand, sir,” she grounded out. “I will… endeavor not to cause issues with the Captain. But I
will
keep an eye on this. That is, after all, part of my job.”

Michael had been having difficulty sleeping – something to do with nightmares about assassination attempts and watching worlds die. Normally, he’d see if Mason was awake so they could talk, but with the communication lockdown even that wasn’t an option.

Which left him in his office three hours before his shift technically began, catching up on paperwork. He was still over a month away from having to provide assessment reports on any of his people, but getting them ready in advance never hurt.

It was also boring enough he was grateful, if surprised, when a com alert pinged.

“Vice Commodore Stanford,” he answered, without bothering to even check who it was.

“I’m glad you’re awake Commodore,” Lieutenant Major Barsamian greeted him briskly. “I need to ask a favor.”

“What do you need, Major?” he replied, wondering if any of his people had managed to get into serious trouble while the ship was in FTL.

“Put simply, sir, I need hands,” she told him. “There are thirty-six Military Police and forty-seven Marines aboard
Avalon
at the moment. All of them are either currently asleep from pulling multiple shifts, or on guard duties I can’t pull them away from.

“However, one of my forensics people was burning the midnight oil and has finally tracked down the source of the drone that tried to kill the Captain. The Captain was pretty clear that we shouldn’t try to investigate anything without an armed escort, but I don’t have one. And he told me you were handling security for the flight deck.”

“So you’re wondering if I have a few leg-breakers to spare?” Michael asked dryly.

“Yes, sir.”

“I can rustle up a few boys with guns,” he offered. “Where am I meeting you?”

“You, sir?”

“I’m not up at this time because I’m
busy,
Major,” he pointed out. “Besides, you may end up needing a few more gold circles for firepower.”

“Won’t object, sir. We’ve identified the source as Auto-Fabricator Sixteen.”

The auto-fabricators were scattered throughout
Avalon’s
hull. Michael was most familiar with the four attached to the flight deck that provided emergency parts for his starfighters, but he was aware that there were twenty or so in the ship.

Sixteen was buried deep in the lower half of the ship, down on Deck Fifteen and towards the engines. It was technically in engineering, but not anywhere near the main spaces containing the engines or zero point cells. It was in the section of the ship Michael tended to hear engineering crew refer to as ‘the Dungeon’ – and that the rest of the crew tended to forget existed.

He had collected four of the Specialists he’d inducted into Guinevere and drawn weapons from the arms locker before joining Barsamian. All were big guys – or gals, in one case – and cradled the shipboard security shotguns like they knew how to use them.

“Stun blasts, people,” he reminded them as they met up with Barsamian and her tech. “If for some Void-cursed reason we actually have to shoot at someone, we want them
alive
.”

“Of course, sir,” Space Force Specialist First Class Anaru Tinker told his CAG. Tinker was a massive man, a shaven-headed tattooed individual who’d served on the old
Avalon
since before Michael had come aboard, and transferred over to the new ship with the fighter group. He looked almost insulted at the thought that he might shoot anyone he didn’t fully intend to.

“I’m glad to see you,” Barsamian told them. She gestured to the petite young woman next to her. “This is Corporal Filipa Kaczka, my forensics team lead.”

Kaczka was a sallow-skinned woman of perhaps one hundred and fifty five centimeters. Like Tinker, her head was shaven, but where the big Space Force enlisted was covered in tattoos, a glitter of silver circuitry ran over the forensic tech’s skin. Her augmentation clearly went significantly past the usual in-head implant and medical nanite suite.

“We’ve identified multiple serial number fragments inside the drone,” she said calmly, her voice strangely vague as if her attention was only half on reality. “While an effort was made in the manufacture to prevent any intact serial numbers surviving, statistical extrapolation of the fragments, combined with analysis of several chemical markers, eventually enabled us to identify the source as this fabricator.

“Primarily, I will require access to the fabrication material log and the local physical backup of the video footage. We hope that our perpetrator is unaware of our breakthrough and we will not be accosted. Given the degree of penetration demonstrated to date, this cannot be guaranteed.”

“Hence asking for your help,” Barsamian told Michael. “Let’s go, Filipa.”

The Marshal waved the golden badge of her office over the access panel for the auto-fabricator, which happily chirped acknowledgement of her authority and slid open.

The lights inside came up as Michael and the others entered, shining on a complex nightmare of computer screens, automatic arms, lathes, and other machines and tools the CAG couldn’t name.

“Have at her, Corporal,” he told Kaczka and stepped back to watch the door. The security shotgun weighed heavily against him – he
was
qualified on the weapon, but he’d last tested on it a long time ago. It had three separate magazines, each holding three shells. Right now, he had two loaded with stun blasts – ‘shells’ that contained one-shot electron lasers designed to disable a human without killing them – and the third loaded with flechettes.

He didn’t want to have to fire the weapon at all, but he
really
didn’t want to use that third magazine.

“The physical backup for the camera is missing,” Kaczka’s vague voice announced. “We’ve already checked records. The online records for this camera have no less than two hundred and seventy six hours of looped footage fed in at various periods over four weeks. There are also hundreds of hours where the fabricator is empty and unused which may contain looped footage we missed.”

“At some point, the cameras on this ship are going to actually be of
use
,” Barsamian half-snarled. “I’m getting sick of this garbage.”

“Given the previously demonstrated capabilities of our spy, we did not expect useful camera footage,” the forensics Corporal noted as she approached the main fabricator console. Instead of bringing up the screen or activating a hologram, she laid a visibly circuit-laced hand on the side of the console and paused.

“This is statistically improbable,” she said after a moment. “The fabricator material logs do not exist.”

“You mean there’s no record of us?” Michael asked.

“No. The logs do not exist,” Kaczka repeated. “There is no subtlety to this except that the alerts elsewhere in the system did not trigger. The entirety of the material usage log for this fabricator has been deleted, and the delete command wiped from the system.

“This should not be possible without high levels of access and sophisticated computer worms.”

“Much the same as our agent has shown again and again,” Barsamian concluded. She looked like she wanted to swear. “This spy has short-circuited every failsafe and every security measure aboard this ship. If Commonwealth Intelligence is this good, we are utterly outclassed in this war.”

“None of this adds up,” Michael pointed out. “If CI was this good, this war would already be
over
– plus, if their agent is this good, why are they wasting their time trying to off our senior officers? Just having this level of access on a Battle Group flagship is worth
Avalon’s
weight in gold to their war effort.”

He shook his head, looking at the clearly frustrated Barsamian and the not-quite-there Kaczka.

“You might be looking at this the wrong way,” he thought aloud. “We keep thinking of it as a security problem, but the hardware is being circumvented as well. Perhaps we should look at an engineering solution?”

“What do you mean?” Barsamian asked.

“You identified the fabricator from fragments of the serial code,” Michael noted. “My understanding of computers sucks, but I seem to recall that something isn’t actually deleted unless you write over it with junk. There could still be retrievable fragments of data.

“I think we want to talk to Wong,” he concluded. “If our enemy is beating us at every turn, we need to change the ground underneath them.”

“You’re all up very early,” Wong told Stanford and his current collection of Space Force leg-breakers and Military Police as they entered his office. The room was surprisingly cluttered, with datachips and actual physical system parts scattered on every surface. “I presume there is something I can do to help you?”

A pair of engineering enlisted personnel stood guard outside the Chief Engineer’s door, though they’d happily stood aside when they’d recognized the CAG. The two big Specialists weren’t visibly armed, though Stanford made a mental note of a standard issue Navy duffel bag concealed under a bench only just out of reach.

“We had a breakthrough on identifying the source of the drone,” Barsamian told him. She took a seat, gesturing Kaczka and Stanford forward as well.

Michael leaned on the back of a chair, and sent his Specialists outside to mingle with their engineering equivalents with a jerk of his head.

“We then ran into a problem,” he added to Barsamian’s explanation. “And I realized that we were going at at least some of this the wrong way around. Corporal Kaczka?”

“The fabricator logs for the unit used to manufacture the drone that attempted to assassinate Captain Roberts are missing,” the strange Corporal announced. “Both the materials usage and the user logs have been completely deleted, turning the last week of my endeavors into a dead end.

“The Commonwealth agent is disturbingly capable and appears to have even greater access to our systems than we do,” she said flatly. “Stanford suggested speaking to you. I am not sure what assistance you can provide that is outside my own skillset.”

“I’m no forensic computer tech, if that’s what you mean,” Wong agreed, leaning back in his chair and eyeing his visitors. “If the logs were deleted and properly hashed – and I doubt our spy would suddenly become less than thoroughly competent – I would have no more success with the fabricator’s computer than you.”

“Then why…”

“What I
am
, Corporal Kaczka,” the gaunt shaven-headed Chief Engineer cut her off, “is a paranoid son of a bitch with direct access to all of the hardware on this ship.”

Wong smiled coldly, his dark slanted eyes sending a chill down Stanford’s spine.

“I may hide down in engineering – especially when we’re pushing the drives like this – but I am not oblivious to the ship’s affairs. Those two gentlemen outside didn’t position themselves there without my suggestion, after all.

“What you have missed, Corporal, and what Vice Commodore Stanford was expecting me to have thought of, is the people involved here – not the software, not the hardware, the people.

“Auto-fabricators are the single most abusable and abused pieces of machinery on a warship. I’ve seen them used for everything from illegal weapons rings to assembling entire drug labs aboard ship.

“The people who abuse them are, sadly, almost always engineering personnel who know the systems inside and out. These are very intelligent men and women who are determined not to be found out. Fabricator logs get edited or go missing a
lot
, people,” he finished calmly.

“And?” Michael prompted.

“And after getting caught up in an investigation that went on way too long and ended way too inconclusively back in the dawn of time when I was a mere Lieutenant Commander, I realized I needed to find a way to make sure that didn’t happen again.

“So, since you ask so nicely,” Wong continued with a cold smile, “it happens there is a hard, uneditable, backup being run on every single auto-fabricator on this ship. A backup that is
not
on the books and not otherwise linked to the ship’s systems. Which fabricator did you say built that drone?”

Corporal Kaczka was actually
looking
at Wong. In the most of an hour since he’d met her, Michael hadn’t seen the augmented tech actually directly look at a human being, and he mirrored Wong’s smile.

“Auto-Fabricator Sixteen,” the MP finally admitted.

Wong closed his eyes for a second, and one wall of his cluttered office flashed, the screen activated and covering the wall with hundreds of lines of text.

“Even with modification allowed, the fabricator logs are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of data,” Wong warned. “The hard backup records every change, every step back to fix a typo, every edit as a separate item. Finding anything useful in here, well,” he shrugged. “You have to know what you’re looking for.”