“The Lieutenant-Major is leading the team himself,” Stanford offered timidly, checking the controls of the shuttle as he began to decelerate towards the Station. “We figured it would be more efficient if he kept me under his eye.”
“Right,” Roberts replied dryly. Stanford noted that his new superior made no mention of the two Falcon starfighters Stanford had ordered to escort the shuttle.
“I have news from Neilson,” the Wing Commander continued. “Williams is safe – she’s in the Station Infirmary now, being treated for a dose of paralytic nanites. Neilson has his most trusted men guarding her.”
“Paralytics?” the pilot hissed. Even subvocalized, he drew the attention of his co-pilot, but he waved them off with a gesture towards his ear that every human with a neural implant would recognize.
Paralytic nanotechnology had been invented in the Commonwealth over a century earlier, as an attempt at a more ‘elegant’ solution to disabling someone non-lethally than the variety of methods currently available, most of which involved delivering an incapacitating electric shock. Paralytics blocked conscious nerve signaling, and could also disable neural implants.
Unfortunately, blocking conscious nerve signaling turned out to also often block unconscious nerve signaling. The chance of heart attack, suffocation, and similar fatalities was worse with a paralytic nanite than it was with a proper electric shock weapon, so scientists had gone back to the drawing board.
Paralytic nanites were still the favorite of kidnappers and assassins, people who didn’t overly care if their victim lived or died – mostly because the nanites could be ordered out of the victim when you were done, leaving no traces.
“Is she okay?” Stanford demanded.
“She’s fine,” Roberts told him. “But she was being kidnapped by Chief Liago. He drew on the Station MPs and killed one. They fried him. He’s dead.”
Stanford was silent for a long moment, considering and watching the station grow in his screens.
“If Liago was involved, Larson was in this up to his neck,” he said quietly.
“We already knew that,” his boss told him. “But with this, Blair is entirely on-side. You and Lieutenant-Major Khadem are to proceed immediately to Vice Commodore Larson’s office and place him under arrest.”
Stanford glanced back at Avalon’s top MP, who had dropped himself into the spare seat at the back of the cockpit. The MP flashed him a thumbs up, confirming that he was on the call as well.
“Understood, sir.”
Stanford quickly checked in with his co-pilot to confirm they were clear to dock, and took the shuttle slowly, carefully, into the Station Flight Deck Alpha. As the gravity trap caught them, Stanford looked down the neat rows of Badgers lining the Deck – another six squadrons to go with the six they’d brought from Avalon and stored in Deck C.
“CAG,” he said distractedly, checking that the line was still open to Roberts, “quick question for you.”
“What is it, Commander?” Roberts asked in a sharp voice.
“How many Badgers are supposed to be on the Station?” the Flight Commander asked, eyeing the nearly fifty obsolete starfighters.
“SFG-279 had six squadrons assigned to them,” Roberts replied immediately. “I assumed those were the ones that ended up on Avalon.”
“Between yesterday and today, sir, I’ve seen twelve squadrons worth,” Stanford said quietly. “Shouldn’t there be at least some Typhoons aboard?”
Silence answered him for a long moment, and the pilot unstrapped himself from his seat and turned back to face Khadem before Roberts finally answered.
“Pin Larson down, Commander, Major,” he said quietly. “I think we have more questions for him than we thought.”
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
12:30 July 6, 2735 ESMDT
New Amazon Reserve Flotilla Station, Station Commander’s Office
Stanford really had no business accompanying Marshal Khadem’s MPs to Larson’s office, and both he and the Marshal knew it. Khadem had still said nothing as the pilot joined the six MPs they’d brought to the station in drawing a stunner from the shuttle racks, and allowed Stanford to lead his team through the Station.
“Where are the station MPs?” he asked Khadem after a few minutes. He’d half-expected them to be joined by some of Neilson’s men.
“Neilson doesn’t have enough of them he trusts,” the dusky Marine replied grimly. “He’s keeping them busy and out of our way. Once we’ve seized Larson, we’ll probably have to take him back to Avalon.”
Further discussion ended as they reached the Station Commander’s office, where Larson exercised his command of the New Amazon Reserve Flotilla’s defenders. It was a relatively plain door, tucked away less than a minute’s walk from the Station Combat Information Center, where the Vice Commodore would exercise command of his squadrons in an emergency.
“Open it,” Khadem instructed one of his men. He drew his own stunner up to the ready position and hit the ‘charge’ button on its grip.
Stanford imitated the Marshal and felt a reassuring hum from the weapon as it cycled up its charge chamber.
The selected MP stepped up next to the door and hit the panel that should have opened it. The security door failed to respond. The MP turned his gaze towards it, focusing on it for a moment, and then turned back to Khadem.
“Standard overrides aren’t working, sir,” he told his boss. “It’s locked down under the Commodore’s personal code.”
The Lieutenant-Major nodded grimly, stepping up to the panel and tapping the golden badge of his office, a layered block of molecular circuitry that could override almost any lock in the Navy, against it.
The panel flashed bright red, and then slowly conceded to the police override. The door slid silently open, revealing the last sight that Stanford had been expecting to see.
The office was the same as it had been when Larson had threatened him. The viewscreen behind the desk still showed Avalon – only now it was spattered with blood.
Larson was sitting in the chair at his desk, the retractable monitors extended around him for what looked like daily paperwork. A service automatic, the standard seven millimeter caseless high-velocity sidearm issued to every officer, was in his right hand, and his brains had been blasted all over the wall-screen behind him.
“Stop,” Khadem ordered as Stanford started forward. “No offense, Flight Commander, but you have no idea what to do at a crime scene. My men have forensics training.”
The Marshal waved his MPs forward around Stanford, each carefully stowing their stunners and pulling out white gloves to cover their hands.
Stanford, standing back out of the way, contacted Roberts over the com. He made sure Khadem was copied in, in case the MP had something to add.
“Larson’s dead,” he said flatly. “Looks like he committed suicide.”
“What the fuck,” Roberts replied, his voice just as flat. “He shouldn’t even have known you were coming – and he sure as hell didn’t strike me as the type.”
“He wasn’t,” Khadem interjected grimly. “Looks like we showed up faster than someone was expecting – this was a botched job.”
“Botched job?” Roberts asked over the channel.
“I’ll flip you both visual,” the MP replied. “I don’t want Stanford getting his boots in this mess.”
The image that flipped up on Stanford’s optic nerves almost made him throw up. Khadem was looking very closely at the shattered back of Larson’s head.
“Looks like he blew his brains out to me,” the pilot muttered.
“It’s meant to, but the man pulling the trigger was in a hurry and botched his angles,” the MP explained. “See these wounds up here?” Khadem, apparently oblivious to the gore and mess, pointed to a set of smaller holes, just above the gaping wound where the hollowpoint had exited. “Those are entrance wounds, gentlemen – someone shot him in the back of the head with a needler. Once he was dead, they started positioning him t
o make it look like a suicide – only they realized we were on our way and rushed it.”
“If they’d got the angle right, the first wounds would have been obliterated, and we would probably have written it off as a suicide,” the Marine finished. “But someone botched it – I’d say an amateur with a professional’s tool and game plan.”
“Liago’s tool, Liago’s plan?” Roberts asked quietly. “That would explain the amateur.”
“Possible,” Khadem replied. “I’ll need more time to examine the scene, see if the station’s internal sensors picked up anything that wasn’t wiped.”
“I think we’re missing a question here,” Stanford said slowly, wiping the horrifying image of his old boss, the man who’d made his life living hell for two years, from his implants. “I thought whatever the hell was going on here had Larson in charge. But if Larson was running things, who shot him?
“And why?”
6
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
09:00 July 7, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Captain’s Break-out Room
It was a small staff meeting. In the aftermath of Larson’s death and the questions it raised, Blair had ordered the ship’s senior officers to convene to discuss everything they’d dug up. Kyle had brought Stanford, now his senior Flight Commander, with him.
Blair had been joined by Ship’s Marshal Lieutenant-Major Khadem, who’d been running the investigation, and a tall blond woman he didn’t recognize.
“Wing Commander Roberts, this is my executive officer, Senior Fleet Commander Caroline Kleiner,” Blair introduced the woman. “We’ve had an exciting few days since you arrived, or I’m sure you’d have met already.”
Kleiner extended her hand for a perfunctory handshake, and Kyle felt like he was being carefully measured – and not necessarily judged to measure up.
“Everyone here is aware of what’s transpired over the last few days, leading up to Larson’s murder,” Blair continued once all five of them were seated in the tiny table in his break-out room. The little meeting room, directly next to the Captain’s office, was even less decorated than the office. A small Navy-standard table occupied the center, and the only decoration on the wall was a duplicate of Avalon’s commissioning seal from the office next door.
“How is Lieutenant Williams?” Kyle asked. “I haven’t heard anything since Stanford brought her aboard.”
“Doctor Pinochet assures me she will recover,” Blair answered. “The nanites inflicted some nasty internal damage, though, and the Doctor won’t clear her for service until she’s had a chance to assess her mental state.”
“She deserves everything we can do,” Kyle said softly. “I don’t think the Space Force has ever failed one of our own so badly.”
“I agree, Commander,” the Captain told him. “She’s under guard now, and Dr. Pinochet is one of the best I’ve ever known. She will be as safe as we can make her, and we will make this right.”
Kyle nodded, satisfied for the moment, though he resolved to check in on the Flight Lieutenant himself later.
“Ahmed, if you can fill us in on what you and Major Neilson have discovered since Larson’s death,” Blair instructed the Marshal after a moment of quiet.
“Mostly, what we’ve discovered is that whoever did it was better at covering their tracks than committing the crime,” Khadem told the others. “All security cameras and scanners in the station section that Larson’s office is in were disabled for a seventy-six minute period by a short-out in the wiring. It looks natural, but we’re assuming sabotage as the timing is too convenient.
“Currently, we have about four hundred and twenty people who were in the zone at the time,” he continued. “None should have had access to a needler, but a large fraction would, theoretically, have known how to trigger the wiring short-out.”
“Can we search their quarters for the weapon?” Kleiner asked.
“Even on a military base, that wide a search would require a warrant,” the Marshal replied. “We could get it, but it would be a waste of time: I know what happened to the gun. One of the waste disposal units in that section reported a spike in high density materials during the recording blackout. The gun was incinerated before we even found Larson’s body.
“Neilson is still digging through everything he can find of Liago and Larson’s movements, trying to see if we can track down someone who would have had a motive for this, but in the absence of further information it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to identify the killer,” Khadem concluded.
“What about Larson’s actions?” Blair asked.
“Most of those have fallen into my area,” Kyle interjected. Khadem gestured for him to continue, and the bulky Wing Commander flicked a command from his implant to the projectors hidden in one of the blank walls.
“When Commander Stanford boarded the station to deliver the Lieutenant-Major and his MPs, he drew my attention to something odd,” Kyle explained. The screens warmed up, showing four images of flight decks with rows of fighters, all almost identical.
“These are images of Flight Decks Alpha through Delta on the Flotilla Station – all taken late last night,” the Wing Commander continued. “Over the last two days, Michael has landed on both Alpha and Charlie,” the two images flashed. “He noticed that both bays were full of Badger-type starfighters, equivalent to those we’d taken off of Avalon, and asked how many there were supposed to be.”
Kyle gestured, and the other two images flashed.
“As you’ll note, Bravo and Delta also only contain one type of starfighter – all Badger-type.”
“Is this supposed to mean something to me, Commander?” Kleiner asked.
“The Badger starfighter design dates back to the end of the War, ma’am,” Kyle told her politely. “The design is twenty-one years old, and the Space Force hasn’t purchased any for twelve. They are a Class Two export, and the design, less the positron lance, was recently released for civilian design and manufacture.
“In short, the Badger is utterly obsolete,” he concluded. “Because this station is an utter backwater, Starfighter Group Two-Seventy-Nine was assigned fully half of the Badgers still in service.”
“So we have forty-eight squadrons of these ships in service?” Kleiner asked. “That seems excessive if they’re as obsolete as you claim.”
“No, Commander,” Kyle said quietly. “The Force currently, officially, has twelve squadrons of Badgers in service. There are twice as many Badgers on the New Amazon station as we’re supposed to have in the entire Space Force.”
As that sank in, the CAG looked over at Captain Blair.
“When we first discussed the issues on Avalon, you said you didn’t think things had fallen so far as to worry about starfighters being stolen,” he reminded him. “It looks like you were wrong.
“Avalon should have had six squadrons of Typhoons aboard – a Class One Export, restricted to our allies, and still in service in secondary duties throughout the Navy and Space Force,” he continued. “SFG-Two-Seventy-Nine should have had six squadrons of Badgers, yes – and ten of Typhoons and two squadrons of Cobras, our current frontline starfighter.”
“We are missing an entire modern carrier’s fighter group, eighteen squadrons, of frontline and last-generation starfighters,” Kyle explained to a silent room. “That is what Larson was blackmailing Randall to protect. That’s why Larson was killed – because he sure as hell didn’t sell a hundred and eight starfighters and replace them with obsolete junk without help.”
Silence filled the room.
“How?” Kleiner finally asked. “Shouldn’t the pilots and squadron commanders have noticed when their ships were sold out from under them?”
“A posting like this turns over its people a lot, except for those shoved here as a punishment,” Stanford told her, his voice soft. “If they were careful and co-opted some of those officers posted here as long-standing punishment, they could hide a lot from us. I
know my squadron was fully equipped with Badgers when I arrived.”
“And no one except another Vice Commodore or a Navy Captain could override Larson’s security lockouts to see the records,” Kyle reminded them. “And why would someone check the records for what ships were on station according to the station, versus what Joint Command recorded?”
“With Larson dead, do we have any way of learning what was going on?” Blair asked.
“Randall,” Kyle said reluctantly. “With everything going on, we can pin treason on him as well as rape. Both are firing squad offenses, and both would be open-and-shut cases. We can offer clemency if he comes clean on everything that happened – offer life in a JD-Justice penitentiary rather than a bullet.”
“I really want to see that fucker hang,” Kleiner snapped. It was the first fully human moment she’d shown so far and Kyle suddenly liked her a lot more.
“You’re his CO, Kyle,” Blair said. “Can I trust you to handle it?”
Kyle nodded grimly, and then tilted his head as a message came through his implant.
“I’ve just been advised by Doctor Pinochet that Lieutenant Williams is awake,” he told the others. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I have a new pilot I need to welcome aboard.”
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
09:25 July 7, 2735 ESMDT
DSC-001 Avalon – Main Infirmary
It took Michelle a minute or so to even begin to orient herself when she woke up. The last thing she remembered was the burnt pork smell of Liago falling beside her, and then darkness. Now, at first all she could recognize was pain. Her entire body ached.
After a moment, she realized that the pain, while pervasive, was muted. She recognized the sensation of pain medication, and slowly opened her eyes to confirm that she was in a Navy infirmary. That realization had her unconsciously pressing further into the bed, away from the wall.
Dr. Donner, the senior physician on the New Amazon station, was not her friend – he’d repeatedly signed off on the evaluations that said there was nothing wrong with her.
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 6