by C. R. Daems
"Kris, you should leave. I caused all the trouble. There is no reason for you to be court martialed."
"Yes, there is. I agreed with all of your actions except maybe I would have chosen a couple of different words when sparring with Sharat." She laughed. "But I agreed with the sentiment."
Just then, the marine on guard opened the door and a tall stocky middle-aged man entered. He filled the doorway, and the room seemed to shrink with his presence. Bushy eyebrows did nothing to hide bright intelligent eyes, and an amused smile showed below his bug-nose.
"Lieutenant Paulus," he said, looking from Kris to me. I nodded. "I'm Captain Maclin, commanding the Vulcan, and I'm pleased to inform you that the charges against you have been dropped. I've arranged for more suitable quarters for you and Lieutenant Sinclair and would like you both to have dinner with me and the other two captains you invited to the party." His smile grew larger.
"Thank you, Captain Maclin," I looked to Kris, who nodded. "We'd like that, sir."
"Good, see you at nineteen hundred hours. Petty Officer Milborne will show you to your quarters and get you anything you need." He turned and left, and a petty officer appeared in his place.
"Lieutenants, do you need any help with anything?"
"No, Petty Officer, we seemed to have left our luggage on the Tityus," Kris said as she stood. "Lead on."
He led us to a two-man room, which didn’t surprise me as the ship must be crowded even if they were equally distributed among the three ships. The good news was that it had its own bath facilities. Milborne managed to get us toiletries to wash and freshen ourselves.
The petty officer returned ten minutes before nineteen hundred hours and escorted us to the captain's dining room. When we arrived, the three captains were already present.
"My guests of honor have arrived," Maclin said as the door closed behind us. "Captains, may I introduce Lieutenants Sinclair and Paulus. You might recognize Paulus as the sender of the request for help. Ladies, Captain Hargrove commands the Cabiri, and Captain Thayer commands the Lapis."
Hargrove was a tall thin man with black hair and a mustache on a long narrow face and eyes that were clearly evaluating us. Cabiri was a pretty middle-aged woman who reminded me so much of Alexa that my heart ached—I missed her so much.
We were served drinks. Kris took a white wine, and I selected the half coffee, half milk concoction I'd come to like.
"You risked a lot arguing with captain Sharat and sending that urgent message asking for help for the Tityus," Thayer said, cutting straight to the point.
"I didn't consider it a risk at the time. All I could think about were the five-hundred crew members who were going to die if it was a trap, which appeared probable based on the information we had gathered. And I guess I'd do it again in similar circumstances," I said, realizing the truth of the statement.
"Lieutenants don't question captains’ decisions," Hargrove said, watching me intently. Red chose that moment to suddenly exit my blouse and wind around my neck.
"Only if getting promoted is more important than the lives at risk," I said, feeling like I was being propelled toward another confrontation. Maclin roared with laughter and slapped the table.
"Paulus, you can sail with me anytime." He looked to the two captains, who nodded agreement. "Tell us about your red-headed friend who has taken an interest in us."
"My favorite topic. I was four and dying of the Coaca Virus when Red found me ..." I spent most of the dinner talking about Red and answering questions.
"I noticed that before you replied to me, Red appeared. Coincidence?" Captain Thayer asked staring at Red, who was wound around my neck with his head on my shoulder.
"Maybe it's my overactive imagination or because Red has become a close friend over the years, but his presence does relax me and clear my head, and as you might have noticed, he does seem to appear when I need him." I reached up and touched Red. Silence followed as they digested what I had said. Kris finally broke the quiet.
"As Paulus and I were in the medical unit and missed the action, would someone mind telling us what happened?
"Captain Thayer and I were on Shadows Rest to conduct training exercises with Captain Hargrove. My XO was on duty when he received your message. He wasn't sure what to do, as he had never seen anything like it before, so he wisely chose to push it up the chain of command, even though it meant disturbing his captain's well-deserved leave. I happened to be dining with Captain Thayer and others when the priority call came. About the same time, Captain Thayer got a priority call from her XO. We debated it for a few minutes, but it was too intriguing to ignore. I declared all shore leave cancelled, had my XO validate the message, and returned to the Vulcan. Within eight hours, I had most of my crew back on board and we departed for your location," Maclin said, and took a drink of his Westar Lager, which he had claimed was an old Earth recipe that Westar had improved upon.
"I left about an hour behind the Vulcan. A couple of my critical positions were slow to return," Thayer said, and her lip curled. "That will never happen again. Anyway, when I arrived, the Vulcan was engaging two of the smuggler ships. I doubted they were a match for Mac, so I pursued the smugglers dogging the Tityus. The Tityus looked barely operational."
"I had just left the Wave when your urgent message came in. I wondered if this was part of the training exercise but decided that didn't make sense. I verified its authenticity and proceeded to the coordinates in the message. When I arrived, the fight was in full progress. I joined Mac, as he was outnumbered," Hargrove said.
"And we won." Maclin raised his glass, as did Thayer and Hardgrove.
"Again," all three chimed together.
"How did you know it was a trap?" Maclin asked, looking from me to Kris.
"Thanks to Agent Paulus discovering the method the smugglers were using to drop off contraband, we were able to identify the UAS merchants that were part of the smuggler operation. That led us to discovering their method of communicating pickup and drop-off locations and times. They communicate via encrypted messages to the crew. That in turn led to the formation of the current task force and the subsequent destruction of the armed FPU merchant during their rendezvous with the merchant ship, Spinner."
Kris stopped to look around the table for questions. When no one said anything, she continued.
"Then we received an encrypted message that looked suspicious. The encryption was amateurish, the location too fortuitous, and when we checked, it was impossible for the merchant ship, Dreamer, to make the pickup in the time stated in the message," Kris explained to nodding heads.
"So when Agent Paulus couldn't convince Captain Sharat to wait, she sent the urgent request for help without the captain's knowledge," Hardgrove said, glaring at me. "That was a huge gamble and unauthorized and not without legal consequences."
"One of those decisions that can cost you your career even if it was the right thing to do," Thayer said, thoughtfully.
I didn't care. I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't done it. While I had their attention and Maclin and Thayer were on my side, I thought it a good time to see if they would allow a search of their communications system.
"My career is important because I love what I do and the people I work with, but not as important as preventing the unnecessary deaths of innocent people. So, at the further risk of my career," I reached up and touched Red and looked to Kris, who grinned and nodded. "We would appreciate you allowing us to examine your message logs."
"Why?" Hardgrove asked. To my relief, Kris answered.
"On the Tityus, we had a petty officer who sent a suspicious looking message to Westar. It strongly resembled the messages sent to the merchants supporting the smugglers. It appeared to be information for drugs. We subsequently discovered that the smugglers have a very sophisticated information network that tracks Alliance ships."
"You can start with me. I don't think I have a problem, but if I do, I'd like to know," Thayer said. "I'd hate to think we have crew i
nvolved, but the crew is a cross section of the Alliance's population, so we have to expect a few bad apples."
"The Cabiri next. That would certainly explain how drugs get on cruisers and why we have had so much trouble finding the smuggler ships," Hardgrove said.
Maclin laughed. "Directing us to those smugglers was like rubbing Aladdin's lamp. Now you get several free wishes. Take me last. I believe I will be escorting you from here on out. And on a serious side note, thank you. I've had your urgent message framed and hung in my office, to remind me you spooks are on our same team. And of course that message is going to be the talk of the navy for years to come—and the Vulcan, Lapis, and Cabiri were the ships that answered it."
* * *
"That was fun," Kris said as we rode the shuttle to the Lapis. "I almost choked on my dessert when you asked to examine their message logs. Not that it wasn't a good idea."
"It's scary. Those captains are drawn to battle like a moth to fire, as was Sharat." I didn't know them well enough to know how they would have reacted to the Shadows Rest incident but wondered how many would've reacted like Sharat.
"War is their occupation, and they go where and do what they are ordered. But I know what you’re thinking—how many would disregard logic and its consequences as Sharat did for their own personal glory?" Kris shrugged. "Would Sharat have been portrayed a hero if you hadn't sent that message and the Tityus had been destroyed?"
I suspected she would have been hailed a hero and the crew of the Tityus awarded a place of honor for their bravery. And the crew did deserve to be honored, because they had fought bravely against overwhelming odds. But how many unnecessary lives were lost? I shook myself out of my depressing thoughts as we exited the shuttle and were met by a lieutenant commander.
"Good day, Lieutenants. I'm Commander Jackson. Captain Thayer has asked me to escort you to the Bridge. She says you're good snoops," he said while smiling.
"Thank you, Commander Jackson. We try." Kris smiled back. When we reached the Bridge, Thayer was there and quickly got us access to the Comm panel. Kris sat and began the search with me watching. I thought she enjoyed learning the functions of a Comm officer even though she never intended to serve on a space submarine. She found six messages that fit our criteria: messages sent to someone on planets the Lapis was visiting. On an impulse, I pulled any messages to Oasis.
"Captain Thayer, can we have someplace to sit and review these messages so we won't disrupt Bridge operations?" Kris asked. Thayer nodded and led us to her office and had drinks brought in.
"What did you find?" she asked. I sat my tablet on her desk with the six messages. She sat reading them, and then shrugged. "Look normal."
"That's the idea. A normal message to be ignored, and most if not all are just normal messages." I took back my tablet, sat, and began reviewing them. Before too long, Kris sent me three of the six. All three had been sent by the same individual—from different planets. They didn't quite look like Dotson's, but within the hour Kris and I had found the keys and had decoded the messages. Basically, they read: Have schedules, need supply. Kris laid her tablet on Thayer's desk and returned to her seat. In each case, it showed the original message and the decoded version.
"Interesting, your project team finds and solves puzzles. What next?"
"That is for you to decide, Captain. We don't know what this petty officer does with the drugs or other contraband he obtains or what information he sells. It would be interesting to know but may take weeks or months to determine."
"You're right. I need to know. This is my puzzle to solve." She had lunch served and invited the XO in and briefed him. We departed shortly afterward.
"That was easy, and she took it well."
"And we didn't get pushed down any stairs."
* * *
The next day we visited the Cabiri. Captain Hardgrove was equally helpful. We pulled seven messages and retreated to his office. An hour later, Kris handed him four messages from a marine sergeant showing the before and after results.
"Since you've found three people, one on each of the three ships you've been on, we can anticipate every ship has someone selling information. That's depressing. And now it's my responsibility to find out what he's selling, what he gets in return, and what he does with it. If he's selling drugs on my ship, I think I'll just space him." He twitched a smile but seemed serious.
I laid my tablet on his desk. The message read: Ambush destroyed, NIA involved.
"Private Cardova sent this?"
"I doubt it. I think we'll find someone with the ability to manipulate outgoing messages did. They send it from someone else's account and reverse the charge, so the individual never sees it and therefore can't question it."
"A Comm officer," he said more as a statement than a question.
"More than likely, but it will take time to determine."
"We don't have time. We've received orders back from command and will be leaving soon. And I believe you have orders awaiting you on the Vulcan. You can leave it in my hands to resolve. Their actions would constitute treason in a time of war, and I believe this qualifies."
"Thank you, Captain Hardgrove, for your support," Kris said. We saluted and left, excited to find out what Admiral Rawls wanted us to do.
"What do you think?" I asked Kris, since I didn’t have a clue.
"I just heard from Adrian and Wilber. They say they’re being released back to their assigned areas, so maybe that's it." She gave a slight shrug. It would be logical yet illogical. Within days if not hours, the smugglers were going to know what happened and cease activities until they could reorganize.
Hoping that the smugglers wouldn't cease sounded illogical if you believed their communications network was a hodgepodge of random bits of information and we had to just hope they stopped on their own. I didn't think it was random. It felt like a very sophisticated network carefully built over the years. The inclusion of UAS Comm officers screamed that it was comprehensive and organized.
Kris getting up broke my musing, and I followed her out of the shuttle. Petty Officer Milborne waited a few meters away.
"Lieutenants, Captain Maclin would like to see you in his office, if you will follow me."
"Lead on, Petty Officer," Kris said. She was as eager as I was to find out where we were headed. "You don't suppose it's Oxax and my passionate pleas to the space gods have been answered?" she quipped.
"No, you and I have probably been assigned as permanent crew," I said, maintaining a serious expression. Kris stopped, and I almost ran into her.
"Don't even say that in jest. This has been an exciting experience, something to tell my children—if I ever get back home alive to find a husband to have them with," She said with a sharp nod. Milborne had stopped and stood some ten meters away staring back at us in surprise. "What about you?"
"I miss home and Alexa. And I think I'm not suited for cruiser duty."
"Why not?"
"I haven't learned adult-speak yet. I just say what I feel, and that doesn't work well in the military."
"You have a point. Come, our escort is waiting on us."
As we approached the captain's office, the guard announced us and had the door open by the time we reached it. Inside, we saluted.
"At ease, lieutenants, and have a seat. Admiral Webb has requested an inquiry into Captain Sharat’s actions at Shadows Rest and has requested I transport Sharat and you to Eastar for the hearing." Maclin appeared particularly sober and ill at ease. I felt his nervousness and thought he was waiting for something from us.
"Captain Maclin, I'm not mad at Captain Sharat, nor do I want her punished for anything. I told her what I thought and hoped to change her mind, but I never thought it my decision to make."
"But she wanted ... still wants you court martialed."
"I probably was out of line—I'm new at this military protocol stuff. I accept that my conduct was ... unbecoming of an officer, that I was wrong, and the consequences of my actions. But as I said a
t dinner, I've no regrets and would do it again." I could feel his mood change.
"Thank you, Agent Paulus. You’re young, and I was afraid ... I shouldn't have been. I judged you correctly the other night at dinner."
"She's eighteen going on forty, Captain," Kris said, and he laughed good-naturedly.
"So we are returning to Eastar and then I hope I'll return with you to Sharat's original area of responsibility. You two are exciting people to be around. Oh, I've ordered Captain Sharat, per Admiral Webb's instructions, not to talk with either of you prior to the inquiry. That's standard procedure and applies equally to both of you. And Admiral Rawls had your special WavCom equipment installed here, so you are welcome on the Bridge at any time, with access to the Comm panel. I know you still want to review our message log. Any questions?" he asked. Kris and I shook our heads, stood, saluted, and left.
"What do you think will happen to Sharat?" I asked, thinking Kris with her eight years of service would have some idea.
"Not a clue. It will come down to whether the review board considers her actions overly aggressive or reckless, and that might hinge on her past record. Could go either way."
"What about me?" I asked, more curious than worried. Long ago I had concluded worrying about the future was pointless. I was already living on borrowed time—thanks to Red.
"They probably won't hang you." She looked serious, but I could feel the amusement.
"I'll blame it all on you. You took advantage of my innocence."
"Then we'll rot together in the same penal institution." She put her arm in mine as we marched down the hallway laughing.
* * *
The next day, I visited the Bridge.
"Good day, Captain Maclin. I thought I'd review the logs."
"Good day, Agent Paulus. Let me introduce you to the first shift." He proceeded to go around the room naming each individual. "Commander Jimenez, let Lieutenant Paulus have the Comm panel. She has NIA work to do."
"Thank you, Captain." I took the seat vacated by Jimenez and began searching the logs, for both crew messages to the planet the ship was headed and for messages to Oasis. It took a while, since I had to check the ship’s location against each message's date to verify it was being sent out of system. When I finished and sat back, I realized Kris was there. She was talking with Maclin.