“Inspection, interrogation… what’s the difference?” I laughed.
“I can take you to see whoever you need to, Sir,” Gants said.
“Excellent,” I said, standing up, “lead the way, McDuff!”
“My last name is Gants, Sir,” the head of the Armory said cautiously.
I rolled my eyes. “I know that,” I said. Gants might be one of the most loyal and eager people in the MSP, and no idiot either, but the smartest person I’d ever met he was not, “Let’s go!”
“This way, Sir,” Gants motioned toward the door of my ready room as if I was unaware of the main exit lading out of the room.
“Did you want me to come too?” Lisa Steiner asked me.
“Why not?” I agreed and just like that the three of us left the room.
As my team of Armsmen swept around us, we entered the lift and punched in the code to take us to the brig.
Chapter 26: A Delay in Interrogating The Prisoner
“Did you have someone particular in mind when you came down here?” Gants asked curiously. “Most of the Imperials—actually all of the Imperials—have already been shipped out to Tau Ceti for the prisoner exchange. All that’s left are men and women in here for petty ship board infractions, although we did sweep up a small ring of data thieves we believe were attempting to smuggle data—specifically the point transfer coordinates of Gambit Station—out of the star system. They’re up on treason and espionage charges.”
I stiffened. “What?” I asked, surprised that this was the first I was hearing about this.
“These are just low-level idiots that stuck a sensor probe on the hull of their ship. Nothing to worry about,” Gants said scornfully, “they thought that by hooking it up to their data slates they’d be able to stealthily extract our astrological position, but when their slate couldn’t crunch the data they hooked up to one their ship’s sub-nodes and the Distributed Intelligence sounded the alarm,” Gants said scornfully.
Immediately, my blood pressure shot through the roof.
“The location of this star system is our most important secret. How long have they been in the brig and why wasn’t I informed about this?” I demanded hotly.
Gants brows rose. “You were informed, Sir. I sent you a notification personally,” he explained with surprise, “why, they’ve been in the brig for the better part of a week while Fleet Legal builds an airtight case against them. Both myself and Harpsinger have been sending you daily updates.”
As this was all news to me, I stood nonplussed, my good head of steam completely broken up. Had my electronic mail been hacked or perhaps intercepted by the good Ensign Jones? Because this was exactly the sort of priority information that simply couldn’t wait, and I’m sure I would have looked into immediately.
“I’m extremely curious as to exactly what happened to the notification I didn’t get,” I said stiffly, “as well as why Lieutenant Harpsinger failed to mention this during the command briefing.”
Gants splayed his hands and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t invited to the meeting,” he said.
I gritted my teeth. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark and I only hoped that it was an innocent foul of some type that could be explained by overwork and simple incompetence.
“An oversight that I’ll be sure to correct for the next one,” I said tightly, “if for some reason you don’t get an invitation, don’t send another message—call me or my new Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Steiner, directly.”
“I’ll make a note to include Lieutenant Gants on our next meeting attendee list and I’ll personally look into what happened in this case, Admiral,” Steiner said smartly.
Just to be sure, I once again opened my electronic message and failed to find anything from Gants, the Armory or the Legal Department. “Please do that,” I affirmed. “Are you sure you swept them all up?” I questioned Gants.
“Pretty sure. We intercepted all their electronic correspondence between one another as well as sweated the people themselves. Several of them broke down crying during the interrogation and confessed everything they knew. It’s all been verified by the electronic intercepts. It seems they were to be hired by a wealthy corporation to sign up for the fleet and discover this information. After it was found they were to transmit the information via courier, a freighter which we’ve already identified, and await for payment and extraction from the military. The corporation has been traced back to an independent world in Sector 26 that is known to practice an extreme version of free market capitalism that seems to exceed all practical bounds set by most other provincial star system nation states,” Gants said.
The fact that it had happened was bad enough all by itself, but that I had missed it for more than a week was intolerable. This time it was a captured espionage ring. Next time? I shuddered to think.
“Make a note. We need to go over our electronic lines of communication with a fine toothed comb and ensure we haven’t been hacked. I want those files found yesterday,” I told Steiner.
“Aye aye, Sir,” she said.
I was quietly stewing as the lift opened on the brig.
It was a subdued group that followed me through the various security checks to make sure we were both authorized and carrying anything with us into the brig that could potentially assist in an escape attempt.
“Bring up the prisoner list I want to take a look at them myself,” I said.
“It’s here, Sir,” said the shift supervisor.
I slowly scanned through it. Most of it was just like Gants had said: a bunch of petty crimes, the espionage ring, and I made careful note of which cells they were inhabited and finally…I blinked.
It seemed there was also a deserter from 3rd Elysium who tried to shoot his supervisor, a petty officer, in the back and…I opened the full file to continue reading. He was caught with a thumb drive full of top flight Imperial design specs stripped from the computer banks of the Invictus Rising minutes before her systems crashed and…my screen flashed red and orange with a security lock.
Irritated at the interruption, I reentered my security clearance and the screen started to clear and then re-locked, stating that it required Fleet Command level clearance. What was I, chopped liver? Right now there was no higher authority in this fleet than myself. Angrily, I entered my top level codes the ones that were supposed to get me into any system on the ship and it still wouldn’t unlock.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded, gesturing for the shift supervisor and our former com-lieutenant both to take a look.
“I don’t know. That file has been locked ever since this prisoner transferred over here,” the shift supervisor shrugged.
I gave him a piercing look and turned back to the former communication specialist. Steiner synced up her pad with the brig system and started playing around with the file.
“Anything?” I asked shortly, moments before the orange-red security block out flashed one last time and disappeared.
“Looks like it required double verification from two high level sources before it would unlock,” she said with a 'voila' motion of her hand.
“Is that normal?” I grunted, not sure if I should start feeling paranoid about it or not.
Her mouth made a small moue and she shook her head. “I’ve read about it but other than master database backups and certain critical engineering areas like the ship’s scuttling charges, I’ve never seen it used in the MSP before. But then I’m no expert on brig protocols,” she said, turning the palms of her hands up and swiveling her head to look over at the brig supervisor.
“Don’t look at me, I just work here,” the supervisor raised his hands in the air.
“You’re in charge of the brig and that’s all you’ve got to say, ‘you just work here’?” I asked dangerously.
The brig supervisor broke out into a fresh sweat. “I used to run the brig on the Flaming Franklin, one of our Destroyers, but it was only a part-time job and I knew everything there was to know about it. A few of the boys got to
drinking too much or a couple was caught in a crawl space violating the fraternization standards, that's all I dealt with—not hardened criminals!” he protested, pointing to the cells down the hallway. “Then, during our last battle in Easy Haven, our ship survived but was determined to be irreparable. Most of the crew made it off her, thank the Sweet Saint, but now I’m sitting there unassigned when suddenly I receive a notification from the Fleet Personnel Department that I’m supposed to report for duty as the new shift supervisor on our highest security brig. That was a week ago, and the previous supervisor received a shipboard assignment and transferred out after only two days of showing me the ropes. As it is, I’m still just studying manuals and trying to play catch up to learn my new security protocols. Sweet Crying Murphy, I’m a trained ship’s assistant gunner—what do I know about dealing with hardened criminals??!” he paused and then seemed to realize how far he’d gone and then hastily added a belated, “Sir!”
Activating my slate, I pulled up the personnel chart for the brig and opened the Supervisor's file. “Were you aware the new Supervisor is new?” I asked Gants, who was looking taken aback by the Supervisor’s impassioned defense.
“I mean, I knew Cartwright wanted to transfer back out to ship duty. No one really likes being assigned to the brig,” Gants said, looking perplexed, “especially when the choice is sitting here or being out there actually doing or making something. So I wasn’t surprised when his request finally went through and a new supervisor slotted in to take his place. Most of the boys here like to rotate back out into the Fleet before too long.”
I looked back at the file of the prisoner and then switched to looking at the supervisor’s transfer orders. My brows rose. “It says here the ship supervisor’s transfer orders came through from the Fleet’s Tracto-an Personnel Department. Is it normal for our Personnel Departments to be issuing orders in completely different star system from their current location?” I asked Lisa.
“We do have a lot of inter-system transfer orders, thanks to our recruiting efforts and the need to screen recruits thoroughly through Tracto and run security checks before bringing them over to Gambit. They do issue a lot of orders to transfer them back out again but that’s almost always coordinated with the Fleet’s Gambit Personnel Department. I don’t think it’s normal practice for them to be issuing intra-system transfer orders, and if it is then it needs to be stopped,” Lieutenant Steiner said, and as a woman who had helped spearhead our initial recruiting drive she was more of an authority on the subject than me. My usual stand was that if it wasn’t broke I wasn’t going to try and mess around with it. But this required more investigation.
“Another thing to look into,” I said, my lips a hard thin line. The more I dug into things the less I liked them. Nothing stood out as outright enemy action but it was either that or the stink of incompetence, corruption or cronyism wafting past my nostrils.
“I think we need to issue strict orders that the personnel department in Tracto is not to be issuing orders that transfer officers and crew around in Gambit and visa versus. With your permission, I’ll draft the orders,” she said.
“That’s fine,” I said shortly, “but what do you think about this?” I pointed to the unlocked security file for the prisoner that started this entire discussion. “The prisoner, a former shuttle pilot who supposedly joined from one of the border alliance worlds, is suspected by his supervisor, an old salt from Capria, of Parliamentary connections,” I informed the others. “It says he all but admitted to it either right before or after he shot his supervisor in the back.”
“He what?!” Sean D'Argeant demanded, stepping forward to look at the information himself. “We have a potential parliamentary agent aboard? Why wasn’t I made aware of this?”
“Again: how was this missed?” I asked rhetorically, ignoring the Chief Armsman.
“Who was the person that placed a lock on the file?” Gants asked.
Steiner frowned and immediately tried to look it up. “At first glance it appears to have been code-locked, but after it’s opened,” her frown deepened, “it says the lock was issued by security officer Jim Dane—a warrant officer who couldn’t possibly have the sort of authority necessary to issue such a lock.”
“Find this 'Jim Dane.' I suddenly find that I very much want to speak with him,” I said.
Steiner smiled fiercely tapped away on her slate and then stopped in shock. “I tried to send a message but it bounced, returning with a notification that Warrant Officer Jim Dane is deceased,” she said.
I felt a chill. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. A warrant officer who shouldn’t have been able to do what he had done; a prisoner that had almost slipped through the system, if not for a bored-but-suspicious Admiral; and a shady set of transfer orders from someone in the Tracto-an Personnel Department?
“I think we’re going to need to investigate whoever sent those transfer orders from Tracto, and I want to speak with that prisoner—now, if not sooner,” I said.
Which was exactly how I soon came to be speaking with the prisoner.
Chapter 27: Suspicious Circumstances
I waited until the prisoner had been escorted into the room and restrained to the table before stepping into the room. The prisoner blinked and then eyed me coolly
I sniffed and moved to sit down in the chair opposite the supposed parliamentarian.
“I presume you know who I am,” I said, rather than asked, sitting down smoothly in the chair, “which means you’re aware of just how much trouble you’re in at this moment.”
The other man snorted. “I’m just another prisoner; a coward who tried to run in the face of the enemy and shot his supervisor when the man went to bring him back into a hopeless battle,” the prisoner shook his head. “I confess I know who you are. I did what they say. So shoot me already. Or send me out to do hard labor for the rest of my life, or whatever it is you’re going to do anyway,” he said with a grunt.
“Now why would I go and do a thing like that?” I prompted, hoping to provoke an answer. I was disappointed. He just leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “After all, you and I are going to be such good friends,” I prodded.
“You and me friends? Oh, that’s rich!” he chuckled. “Normally I’d say 'not in a thousand years' but, hey, I’ve got nothing to lose. So sure, why not? I’ll be friends with you, Admiral. Whatever you want.”
“After all,” I continued, as if oblivious to the sarcasm dripping from his voice, “I always try to be friends with every Parliamentary Agent that boards my ship.”
It was there and gone so quickly that I almost missed it, but I spotted the moment when the man on the other side of the table froze.
“Agent? I’m no agent, Admiral, Sir! Just a deserter who knows how to drive a shuttle,” declared the prisoner. “Besides, even if I was an agent, back home we have a congress not a parliament,” he finished as if he’d just said something particularly funny.
“Riiight,” I drawled mockingly, “anyway, like I was saying, I hope we can do this the peaceful and friendly way. Because you know how us Montagnes get when things don’t go our way: kind of irritated, and when we get irritated…” I trailed off meaningfully.
“Montagnes? Huh huh huh,” he laughed , unconvincingly to my ears, “so the rumors are true and you're a big wheel back on your world, because I can assure you I’m not with the CBI, the Congressional Bureau of Investigation—or anyone else for that matter. I’m just a low level enviro-tech and shuttle pilot who-”
“Who has multiple skillsets, shoots his superiors in the back like a pro, and was found with multiple Imperial tech schematics on a high tech data penetration and storage device,” I rolled my eyes. “So far this all fits the MO of a Parliamentary Agent, so please, seeing as I find this increasingly amusing, tell me another one.”
“You can’t blame a man for a little smuggling on the side!” protested the Prisoner.
“And murder? What’s that supposed to be, just the cost of doi
ng business?” I asked mildly.
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” the other man shrugged.
“Oh ho-ho,” I chortled, “another admission of guilt. It looks like you are one eager man to meet the headsman.”
“You can fight tyranny but you can’t fight city hall, Sir. And in this case it’s like you’re city hall; I’m caught and there’s nothing I can do about it. Seems like I might as well get things over with quick as I can and besides you seem like a straight shooter, I figure I’ve got to have a better chance being straight with you then I do trying to deny what happened,” he shrugged.
“Not a very good one, as I’m not partial to assassins and murderers,” I observed.
“If the choice is between slim and none, I’ll take slim every time,” the other man said seriously.
I pulled out my slate and started to read. “Nerium O. Shrub,” I said, speaking his full name out loud for the first time, “or the cover name of the day, I suppose, but we do need to call you something,” I nodded as if reading something interesting, even though I wasn’t really looking at the words on the screen at all and deliberately tossed the slate onto the table. “Look, we’ve got you dead to rights. We deep scanned you. That plus the audio evidence on that ship between you and the CPO is all we need to know what, if not who, you are,” I deliberately obfuscated. In truth, all I had right now was the CPO’s written report that I’d looked at right before coming into this room, the rest of it was a lie. Honestly I wasn’t even sure Mr. Shrub was an Agent.
Maybe he really was just a non-governmental, free-election-in-the-street, freelance data retrieval artist who just happened to join my fleet in order to shoot my men and penetrate Imperial security?
I shook my head. Yeah, I wasn’t buying my line either. He was up to no good, and now all that remained was squeezing him for whatever we could get out of him before giving him the long walk out.
“Look, I don’t know what you think you know but I’m just a smuggler with a bad tendency to-” Nerium Shrub started, but I could still see he was playing the hapless little murder-happy smuggler so I cut him off.
Admiral's Nemesis (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 11) Page 19