“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.”
22:00 January 2, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Captain’s Office
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 was
n’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.
“Crap.”
That seemed to work. Senior Fleet Commander Mira Solace disintegrated into schoolgirl giggles as he dabbed desperately at his uniform with a napkin.
Once he’d finished cleaning himself up, and she’d regained composure, she leveled the same smile that was causing him issues at him again.
“Thank you for understanding, Kyle. It shouldn’t have been necessary, and it is very appreciated.”
She offered her hand across the desk and he took it, feeling the firmness of her grip and the warmth of her skin.
“Partners, then?” he asked aloud, remembering Pendez’s words.
“Partners,” she agreed. “Gives me a starting point for who to trust.”
He lifted his teacup in a mock toast: “To partners – and damnation to the Commonwealth!”
23
Deep Space, En route to KG-779
09:00 January 5, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Main Engineering Bay
The main engineering bay of the new Avalon was smaller than her flight deck by a significant margin. There was no other open space on the ship that rivaled it, though it hardly felt as immense as it was. Machinery ran along every side of it, and Avalon’s array of primary zero point cells ran along the center of the bay.
The bay, and the warrens of tunnels, capacitors, fuel tanks, antimatter reactors and engines that wove through the entire ship like veins and muscles, were the domain of Senior Fleet Commander Alistair Wong.
“I see you finally made your way down to the dungeon,” that worthy told Kyle as the Captain entered the bay, as if the inspection hadn’t been scheduled for two weeks.
“I still think the dungeon is Barsamian’s brig,” Kyle pointed out, glancing around at the gleaming equipment and reporting stations at Wong’s command center. “Everything ship-shape? I believe there’s some kind of inspection scheduled.”
“Oh crap, I knew there was something I was supposed to tell my crew!” Wong exclaimed.
Kyle shook his head and grinned, looking past his Chief Engineer to the neatly drawn up ranks of those members of the current engineering shift not doing anything critical. He knew engineers – there was no way this many of them were clean an hour into their shifts by accident.
“As it happens,” Kyle told the crew, “Commander Wong and I have a little bet. He tells me that he’s pulled together the cleanest, most efficient engineering department in the Navy. I think you’re good, don’t get me wrong, but I served on Federation herself back when I was a fresh Space Force pilot. I really don’t know if you’re better than the Navy flagship!
“But since I always put my money where my mouth is, there’s a very large case of beer – conveniently, enough for everyone in engineering – riding on this inspection. Shall we get started?”
“Right this way, sir,” Wong gestured for Kyle to head into the center of the engineering center. Displays surrounded him, permanently fixed to show the energy densities of the zero point cells, temperatures of the antimatter secondary plants, and capacity of the positron capacitors.
Everything critically important was instantly visible. More information was easily available to the engineering team via their implants, but this was still the nerve center of engineering, which made it the beating heart of Avalon to the bridge’s brain.
“How’re the engines holding up?” Kyle asked quietly. Three days of pushing the ship ten percent past its rated faster-than-light acceleration put an extra edge on the importance of this inspection.
“Not as well as I’d hoped, not as poorly as I’d feared,” Wong replied. “We’ll make it to KG, but…”
“I don’t like ‘buts’ with the Alcubierre Drive, Wong.”
“We’ll be fine,” the Engineer replied sharply. “But I don’t think we’re going to want to do a full ten points over again. She can take it, but… well, she can take a mass driver hit. Doesn’t mean it’s good for her.”
“We need to catch that battleship,” Kyle pointed out. “If it isn’t possible, I’ll take that hill for you, Commander, but…”
“I didn’t say we can’t go faster than that ten year old hunk of rust,” Wong snapped. “I said we shouldn’t go ten points over after this trip. Five should be perfectly safe.”
“All right,” the Captain allowed with a sigh of relief. “Not a hill I want to die on with the Admiral. I want that fucker.”
“So does the entire crew,” Wong replied. “My best guess is that we can run at ten points for about fifteen days, after which we’d need to recalibrate the stabilizers and the Class One manipulators. That’s a three week process, Captain. We’re burning most of those days getting to KG, but we should be good for almost as long as normal with re-calibrating at five points.”
“Should be good enough. If we can’t catch them with a five
percent acceleration edge…”
“That’s your problem, Captain,” the Engineer replied quietly. “I’ll guarantee that five percent edge. Anything more…” He shrugged.
Kyle glanced over the displays. They were similar to, though far more complex than, the equivalent displays and implant feeds on a starfighter. The difference was more a matter of scale than anything else, so he really could tell at a glance that everything on the ship was running well within tolerances.
“Shall we get to that tour, then?” he asked. “I need to at least look at your people’s work before I agree with you and give them the beer.”
“Let’s start with the main zero point cells,” Wong agreed, leading the way down the row of immense spherical power cells, each sixty meters in diameter. Inside each, incredibly powerful magnetic fields spun through the ‘quantum soup,’ extracting the charged particles from the constant creation and destruction of particles that formed the background of the universe.
“Every cell is running at one hundred percent efficiency,” the Engineer told Kyle. “Obviously, we’re not running at a hundred percent capacity – we would only ever go past ninety-five percent if we were under heavy missile attack and firing every laser aboard.”
Only Avalon’s missile defense lasers would actually draw from the ship’s main reactor. Her positron lances were zero point cells all on their own, and actually fed power back into the ship’s grid when they fired – the electrons pulled out of vacuum to offset the positrons they shot into space.
“Any problems down in engineering?” Kyle asked as they walked up to and checked over each of the massive cells. “I’m leaving the hunt for our spy to Solace and Barsamian, but I hear rumors.”
“I know the ones,” Wong said grimly. “None of my NCOs or juniors have said anything, but that doesn’t mean much if someone’s talking… trouble. It’s not like Stanford or Hammond suspected O’Madden.”
Kyle nodded as he stepped around the cell. A work-cart, loaded with tools, sat in the way. It was the first item out of perfect place in the tour, and he frowned slightly. If someone was working on the big zero point cell, where were they?
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 49