Silence reigned for a moment, then Warspite’s commander spoke up. “Class Six? Is there any way to deceive or mislead a Class Six?”
“Specialized training can suggest ways to avoid answering questions in deceptive ways, sir, but I and my personnel have been trained to identify when someone is using those techniques,” Lieutenant Iger replied. “We might not be able to pin someone down into saying what we want, but we can tell if they’re evading the real question so they don’t register as deceptive. Co-President Rione did not employ such methods. Her answers were direct and unambiguous.”
“So, what does that mean? Someone tried to frame Senator Rione?”
“That would be my conclusion, yes, sir.”
“That’s treason, too.” Warspite’s commanding officer leaned back, shaking his head in disbelief.
Geary leaned forward slightly and spoke louder than he usually did. “I’ve known ever since assuming command of this fleet that some officers did not approve of my command, that some have spread rumors about me, that some have tried to generate opposition to me. But this is not just politics over who commands this fleet. Someone tried to destroy three major warships. The ships your friends and comrades are serving on, the ships that have fought beside you. I don’t care how much any of you might have been involved in speaking against me in the past, nor at this point do I care about past actions. This isn’t about me. Whoever did this was striking at the fleet as well, and at ships I wasn’t present on. If any of you have been rendering support in either passive or active form to the people behind this, please rethink your allegiances. I promise in front of all of you that anyone who comes forth with information regarding this treasonous sabotage will not be subjected to disciplinary action as long as they were not actively part of the creation and planting of these worms or were not aware of their content and intended use.”
Silence again, but then he hadn’t really expected anyone to leap up, point a dramatic accusing finger, and cry, “Captain X did it!” That would have been a nice outcome in a work of fiction, but things just didn’t resolve themselves so neatly in the real world.
Captain Badaya spoke for the first time. “Someone willing to kill Alliance personnel and destroy Alliance ships. We lost a shuttle before we left Lakota to a supposed accident.” He glared around the table. “A very rare sort of accident, but believable in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing. Captain Casia and Commander Yin died on that shuttle, and I now suspect they died because of fear that they would identify some of those with whom they were working against Captain Geary. Anyone involved in this should consider that whoever is leading the effort is willing permanently to silence possible weak links. If you have to be caught, I’m certain that the fleet commander will have you shot. If you remain silent, you run the risk of being silenced forever by your co-conspirators. The only chance you have is to reveal yourselves.” Badaya subsided, his angry gaze traveling around the table.
“Why would anyone do this?” Intrepid’s commanding officer asked. “Everyone knows some people have been unhappy with Captain Geary being in command. I had my own doubts. But he’s proven himself. Most of the doubters, myself included, are now very pleased to be led by him.”
Captain Duellos answered. “You may have stated the reason for this. Those responsible can no longer hope to convince this fleet’s ship captains to oust Captain Geary from command. Their only chance of success is to eliminate Captain Geary.”
“But anyone even suspected of murdering him and the crews of three other warships—!”
“Consider what would have happened if these worms hadn’t been found. Dauntless, Furious, and Illustrious would have disappeared into jump as if their drives had worked normally. The rest of us would have found the worms preventing our jump drives from working, and jumped as well once our systems were back online. This would have taken a few hours at least. We would have assumed that for some reason the worms found in our systems didn’t work on the three ships that jumped as scheduled. When we arrived at Wendig, the other three ships wouldn’t be there awaiting us as we’d expected. No trace of them would ever be found, no evidence that their jump drives had been infected with a very different worm from that in the rest of the ships.”
Commander Neeson nodded, his face like granite. “No evidence of the deliberate destruction of three warships. Very neat. Most of us would be grief-stricken by the disappearance of the three ships and Captain Geary, but we’d have to choose a new fleet commander. I wonder who would have stepped up to fill that job?”
“What about Numos?” Captain Armus asked.
Geary shook his head. “In light of the seriousness of the attempted sabotage against this fleet, I’ve ordered that Captain Numos be interrogated for any knowledge of whoever is behind this. I suspect, however, that he won’t be able to tell us anything.”
“Why not?” Badaya asked.
“Because Orion didn’t have the same worm as Dauntless, Furious, and Illustrious. Numos wouldn’t have a prayer of being accepted as fleet commander, but if Numos did know who was behind the loss of those three ships, he’d be able to blackmail those individuals. They would’ve tried to get rid of him.”
Rione gave Geary a surprised look, then nodded to him with a trace of a satisfied smile, like a teacher whose pupil has revealed unexpected attention to lessons.
“Numos tried to leave Captain Falco to swing,” Warspite’s captain agreed. “You think he’s not actually connected to whoever planted the worms?”
“I think those people might have been willing to use Numos,” Geary explained, “but that they wouldn’t have trusted him.” He gave another look down the virtual length of the table. “Every ship is making additional scrubs of its systems to ensure that there’s nothing else dangerous hidden among them. When we have a clean bill of health reported for all ships, we’ll jump to Wendig. Before we jump, I strongly urge anyone who knows anything to inform me or someone else in authority whom they trust. Our enemies are the Syndics. Not each other. Some individuals in this fleet have forgotten that, and now they’re on the side of the Syndics.”
Captain Badaya nodded firmly. “Anything Captain Geary chooses to do will have the backing of this fleet.”
A flicker of unhappiness crossed Duellos’s face, but he said nothing.
For his part, Geary knew he couldn’t afford to offend Badaya’s powerful faction right now, not when he had another internal danger to this fleet to worry about. “May our actions remain those which our ancestors will look upon with favor,” Geary stated carefully. “As we approach the time for jump to Wendig, I’ll inform all ships whether the jump will take place as scheduled.”
Images of commanding officers vanished in a flurry, Lieutenant Iger gratefully hastening out of the room, with Co-President Rione following haughtily. Captain Desjani, her eyes on Rione’s back, went out as well.
One unexpected figure remained. Geary checked the identification. Lieutenant Commander Moltri, commanding officer of the destroyer Taru. “Yes, Commander?” Geary asked.
Moltri swallowed, then averted his eyes as he spoke. “Sir, I think I know how the worms were propagated through the fleet and were able to bypass security.”
“Were you involved in that?” Geary kept his voice calm with some effort. Moltri seemed not only frightened but also extremely embarrassed, which didn’t make sense.
Lieutenant Commander Moltri shook his head very quickly. “No, sir. Not … not knowingly.” He closed his eyes, visibly nerved himself, then focused on Geary and spoke steadily. “There are … certain programs that get passed around to those … interested in them. Because of their nature, they have to be passed through means that avoid fleet security checks. There’s a whole subnet within the fleet that handles those programs covertly.”
Pulling out his data pad, Moltri tapped a few commands, his face grim and his hand shaking. “I’ve sent a sample to you, sir. Your security personnel will be able to use it to identify the means by which it was being passed.
I swear, sir, that I had no idea that someone might use the same means to propagate a dangerous worm, but I think that’s what must have happened.”
“Thank you, Commander Moltri,” Geary stated. “I’ll take a look at it. You may have done this fleet a great service.”
Moltri gritted his teeth in what seemed to be pain. “Please don’t reveal my connection to the content of what I sent you, sir. I’m not proud of it. Not at all. I’ve never really hurt anyone. I swear.”
“I understand.”
“I know there’ll be some disciplinary action, sir. Please, don’t let the full reason be part of the record.”
Geary, increasingly disturbed by Moltri’s distress and statements, spoke evenly. “If it’s not germane, it won’t be. Thank you, Commander.”
Moltri’s image vanished as if the man were fleeing. Geary checked his message queue and found what Moltri had just sent him. He called up the program in it, then stared, his stomach roiling, at the images displayed. No wonder Moltri and the others interested in this kind of thing had distributed it by undercover means. Hastily shutting off the program, Geary called Captain Desjani and her systems-security officer.
Desjani hadn’t gotten far and was back quickly, but it took the security officer a few minutes to get there. Geary offered his data unit. “Take a look.”
The security officer seemed first outraged, then both sickened and resigned. “They keep finding new ways to spread this stuff, sir. May I forward it to my address?” Geary nodded. “I’ll be able to use this message to locate and monitor the subnet it was originally sent on,” the security officer advised.
“Will you be able to tell if that’s how the worms were spread?”
“We’re unlikely to be able to prove it, sir, if this subnet is typical of what I’ve seen before, but I’d lay bets that this is what was used. This subnet would have been set up to access every ship in the fleet.”
Geary’s reaction surely showed. “There’s someone on every ship in the fleet who likes this kind of thing?”
“No, sir,” the security officer corrected hastily. “Subnets that handle this sort of material are designed not to leave fingerprints when stuff is uploaded or downloaded. It automatically spreads to every communication node on the net, meaning every ship. Anyone on any ship who knew about it could get to it, but it’d be almost impossible to identify anyone who actually had done it or even what ship they were on.”
The implications of that were clear enough. “So the odds that we’ll be able to figure out who put the worm into this subnet are pretty dismal.”
The security officer made a helpless gesture.” ‘Dismal’ is probably an optimistic term in a case like this, sir. We can monitor this subnet now that we have its characteristics identified, and that means it can’t be used for that again.”
“Monitor it? Shut it down. Are we sure there aren’t other covert subnets active?” Desjani demanded.
This time the security officer appeared surprised by the question. “We know there are, Captain. The net linking the fleet is riddled with unofficial subnets, handling anything that’s not authorized officially, like gambling.”
“Why haven’t they been shut down?” Desjani pressed.
“Because my people are responsible for security, not law enforcement, Captain. As long as we know where the subnets are, we can monitor them and know what people are doing on them. If we shut one down, it’ll eventually reappear and have to be found again, and until we find it, we can’t know what’s going on in it. Like this one. If we’d known about it, we’d have picked up the worm when it was introduced into the subnet, so whoever used this particular subnet probably did it for that reason.” The lieutenant commander held up Geary’s data unit. “But you told me to shut this one down, so I will. The people who like this will have to set up a replacement, and that takes time.”
Geary pondered the moral difference between allowing material like that to be spread through the fleet so worse misuse could be tracked and shutting it down at the risk that the replacement would be used for sabotage as well. “How much time?”
“For a replacement subnet, sir? Under current conditions?” The security officer’s eyes went distant. “Half a day.”
“Half a day?” Geary exchanged an aggravated look with Desjani. The choice didn’t really exist, given the nature of the threat to the fleet posed by another worm like that. “Keep it up and make sure it’s monitored.”
Captain Desjani gestured to her security officer. “Get on it. But give me that first.” The security officer hesitated, looking to Geary, who also hesitated, then waved a quick, reluctant assent.
“This one?” Desjani opened the file on Geary’s data unit, staring dispassionately for a few seconds, then clicked it off. “Is what it shows real?”
The security officer shook his head. “Usually not. Producing this stuff is bad enough, but if they used real people, the producers would find themselves facing eternity in prison. They use very realistic computer-generated images.”
“But it looks real,” Geary stated, feeling unclean for having viewed it.
“Yes, sir. That’s, uh, the point.”
“Thanks. Take care of it.” He shivered when the security officer had left.
Desjani looked as if she’d swallowed something vile. “I know why you agreed to leave the subnet up, but I also know how you must feel about that. Where’d you get that download? ”
“From someone I never would have guessed would like that kind of thing, judging by appearances.”
“Whoever it is needs a full psych workup.”
“Yeah.” Geary drummed his fingers on the table surface. “Can I order a psych workup confidentially?”
She nodded. “Yes, though I don’t know why you’d want to protect whoever this is. Just possessing that is a serious violation of regulations.”
“Because that person was willing to let me know this about himself so I could protect the fleet,” Geary explained.
Desjani made a face. “That can’t have been easy. I won’t ask who it was.”
“Had you ever seen something like that before?”
She shook her head this time. “I’d heard about it, but never seen it.”
“Me, neither.” Geary rubbed his face with both hands. “Excuse me, Tanya. I need to call the fleet psychs and a fleet officer, then I need to take a shower. Let me know what your security officer finds out.”
“Yes, sir.” Desjani paused at the door and turned back to face him. “I wish to apologize for not trusting your assessment of Co-President Rione, sir.”
“That’s all right, Captain Desjani. It never hurts to have someone keeping me honest. And at least you’ll say her name.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing. Please let me know when the rescrub of Dauntless’s systems is completed.”
Three hours later, every system in the fleet triple-scanned and certified as malware-free by security officers who knew their lives might well depend on not missing anything, Geary ordered the fleet to jump for Wendig. Despite a tight feeling in his gut as Dauntless entered jump space, nothing went wrong.
NINE
It wasn’t hard at all to figure out why Wendig hadn’t gotten a Syndic hypernet gate, nor why Syndic records indicated the star system had been abandoned once the Syndic hypernet had been constructed. The only puzzle was why anyone had actually remained in the system. Only three worlds orbited the star, along with a mess of asteroids. Two of the planets were in distant orbit, frozen balls of rock orbiting more than five light-hours from the feeble warmth of the dim red star. The world nine light-minutes from the weak star had too little atmosphere, and what it did have was poisonous to humans, but it had once boasted at least two covered cities. Taking another look at the data, Geary decided that even at their biggest, “town” had been a better description than “city” for both of them.
Absolutely no other trace of humanity remained in the Wendig Star System. Now one of those towns was
dark and cold, but the other was still inhabited even though many portions of it seemed inactive. “They, or their parents, might have been abandoned here when the Syndic corporations employing them pulled out of the system,” Desjani remarked.
“Yeah. I can’t see any other reason they might have stayed.”
“Captain?” The communications watch-stander gestured toward his display. “There’s a distress signal being broadcast. It’s from the inhabited world.”
That brought up unpleasant memories of Lakota. Desjani frowned as she and Geary both punched their own displays to bring up the signal.
It was audio only, a voice speaking with labored calm. “Anyone passing through or near Wendig Star System, this is the town of Alpha on the world Wendig One.” The corporate minds of the Syndic leaders hadn’t tended to grant poetic names to worlds or towns, Geary reflected for maybe the hundredth time, unless the names had been created for advertising purposes. “Our remaining life-support systems are at risk of imminent failure,” the message continued. “We’ve cannibalized everything left on this world to keep them working, but all resources are now exhausted. There are over five hundred and sixty remaining inhabitants who require emergency assistance and evacuation. Please respond.” A pause, then a universal time and date register, then the message began repeating.
Geary checked the date on the message again. “They’ve been sending this for a month.”
“Anyone near Wendig?” Desjani asked. “They must know that no one would be closer than the nearest inhabited star systems, and this message will take years to get to those. Even then, it’s too weak to be heard across interstellar distances. Unless an astronomical researcher scanning that frequency band picks it up, it’ll go unheard, and researchers avoid bands used for human communication systems because they’re so full of noise.”
“Maybe these people have been sending rescue requests for years, then, which have gone unheard. Are they still alive?” Geary wondered.
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