“I noticed that, too,” Danel said. “Actually, there are at least twenty smaller objects that would be within the cone of dispersion.”
“That makes my head hurt,” Jeph said, rubbing his temple with his fingers and frowning.
“Then my advice would be to not even try asking Chei what he’s working on.”
FleetCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Tamir bin Ariqat was the most recently seated chancellor on the Council. He somehow managed to win the election by his cartel members, despite having no experience in politics and a tendency to avoid pleasantries. Or even manners.
In someone else, Katryna would have found his directness refreshing, but he had a way of making it abrasive. This afternoon he seemed intent to add a layer of acidic corrosiveness to it as well.
“We have had a recent intrusion into our cartel’s main computer system,” he said. His dark eyes glared daggers from the screen.
“Excuse me?” she said. “That’s a huge breach of your security isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “We believe it is the result of actions taken by another cartel.”
“If so, that’s also a serious violation of the sovereignty clause of the Union Charter,” she said. “But why are you coming to me about it? You can’t possibly need our help investigating? Honestly you’d be better off taking this to Arun. DevCartel has the best computer scientists.”
“I think we already know who was behind it,” he said, his voice almost snarling.
“You do?” she asked more confused by his sudden change in tone. He’d gone from angry to belligerent and was sliding toward overtly threatening. “I’m still not tracking why you’re bringing this to me?”
“The woman who compromised our system was a data analyst in one of our internal divisions,” he said. “This was more than a breakdown of our information security. It was undeniably intercartel espionage.”
“That’s a serious accusation,” she said. “And you know who she was spying for?”
“We have a very strong suspicion,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “She was a former FleetCartel member.”
“What exactly are you saying here, Tamir?” she asked, freezing her face into intentional immobility and tapping an icon on her desk to record the conversation.
“I think the person was stealing information on one of our projects and feeding it to your cartel.”
“And I think you have been drinking,” she said. “I don’t need anything from your systems.”
“The woman in question was a former FleetCartel computer analyst,” he said.
“There are a lot of former Fleet members all over the system. In every cartel,” she said. “That doesn’t make them spies.”
“It does when they are stealing proprietary information,” he said, his snarl descending to a growl.
“So talk to this person,” she said, shaking her head. This was getting uglier with every word.
“She disappeared,” he said.
“You’re saying she got caught and ran off?” She shrugged. “That isn’t uncommon. When a kid steals candy, they run. It’s human nature.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But we will find her and when we do, she will name who she is working for.”
“Good luck with that,” she said.
“You sound confident that we will not find her,” he said, showing a trace of surprise through the vicious anger he was projecting.
“Not at all.” She grinned in spite of the gravity of his accusation. “I’m just confident that when you do find her, she won’t implicate my cartel.” She pushed back against the edge of her desk and thought about getting up and walking away. She was boiling and needed to end the conversation before she exploded on him.
Instead she drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Now if you’re done with your wild-assed accusations, I have work to do. I am not interested in feeding your delusions.”
“You have not heard the last from me,” he said.
“I’m sure I haven’t. I think you still have several years on your term so we’ll have plenty of time for your recurrent bouts of paranoia.” She slapped her palm down on the disconnect before he could respond.
“Damn. Somebody left the door open to the asylum,” she hissed between clenched teeth.
CHAPTER FOUR
DevCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Arun Markhas kept an office befitting an elder statesman, or perhaps the Dean of an ancient university, both of which were true in his case. As Chancellor of DevCartel, he was both a member of the Executive Council of the Human Union and the Director of the Advanced Educational and Research Institute of Galileo Station. Outfitted with luxuries few lesser public officials enjoyed, his office reflected his status and privilege.
His desk was an antique monstrosity the size of a small passenger liner, carved out of ancient African mahogany. It sat in front of a wall of real-books that spread across the entirety of a room so enormous a visitor could see the curve of the deck plating. Bronze and brass artifacts stood in niches to either side of the cavernous space, with framed sepia-tone maps mounted between them.
When Chancellor Roja appeared at his door, he was reclined comfortably on an eighteenth-century, French-style lounge-chair in the center of the room. His feet rested on another grotesque piece of opulence pretending to be a table. He greeted her with a flippant wave and a jovial smile. “Do come in Katryna,” he called, nodding toward one of the two chairs that faced him.
“Are you digging in SourceCartel systems?” she asked, skipping the pleasantries as she planted herself in the seat he indicated.
“I am not sure what you mean,” Arun said, his face drifting toward a bemused expression of confusion.
“Tamir bin Ariqat came at me with accusations of me having spies in his operations,” she said.
“If he caught you this easily, you must hire better people,” he said.
“I don’t have spies. I don’t need spies,” she said. “And if I had them, they’d be in the field and not in his computer networks.”
“Of course, you know there is value in having people keeping an eye on things closer to the top of the food chain.” He smiled as if he thought he was bestowing a gift of political wisdom.
His pontification shredded her patchwork calm and she clenched her teeth to bite back on a fast retort. “I understand that,” she said, “but if I had someone in that kind of position, they sure as hell wouldn’t be former employees and members of FleetCartel.”
“So the person he detected was a FleetCartel operative?” he asked, shaking his head. “That is seriously unfortunate.”
“Dammit, Arun, she was not FleetCartel. And she wasn’t my spy.”
“Then why would she be reporting to you, if you hadn’t been employing her?” he asked.
“Are you being intentionally obtuse?” she snarled. “She wasn’t mine. And she didn’t report to me.”
“Then why would she have said she did?”
“She hasn’t. She’s disappeared. Gone into hiding.”
“Then how does Ariqat know she was your spy?” he asked.
“He doesn’t.” She sat back and took a deep breath. Arun could be the most exasperating person she’d ever known. What bothered her was that no matter how often they talked, she always felt like he was playing with her. “He assumed she did, but he came out and accused me of it.”
“That is unfortunate,” he said.
“Damn straight it is,” she agreed. “But if she did infiltrate for someone, there’s no guarantee who she will, or won’t, implicate when she’s found.”
“Then perhaps it is best for you if she isn’t found,” he said.
“If she isn’t found, he’s got no reason to back off on his accusations. She’s my alibi.”
“Perhaps.” He nodded. “Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t even know her name. I checked with station security and the Investiga
tor General’s office, and nobody’s filed an MIA for anyone on Galileo.”
“Let us hope that when they find her, she is able to point her finger at the real culprit.
“He sounded angry enough to kill her,” she said. “His reaction actually made me wish she was my spy. Whatever she might have stolen in the way of information must have been something he’s nervous about having exposed.”
“Did he say anything that would give you a clue?”
She shook her head.
He sat there for several seconds visibly chewing a decision over. “Understand that what I say to you now is just between us.”
She nodded.
“I suspect I may know what he is hiding,” Arun said. “If I am right, it might be what ties Ariqat and Tomlinson together. It would be proof of their collusion.”
“Well that gets my attention,” she said. “So was she your spy?”
“No,” he said. “Of course, I won’t admit to having operatives in other cartels, but if I did, I’d certainly know if one had been discovered and gone into hiding.”
“Got it. Your spies in his operation would never be amateur enough to get caught.” She grinned.
“Very true,” he said, winking.
“What do you think it is?” He was falling into his usual pattern of slow rolling banter and although it might be amusing in a social situation, she needed to cut to the fastest trajectory out of the problem.
“I have heard some rumors and if they are true, someone we know might be building a fleet of unregistered ships,” he said.
“What?” she asked. “Are you talking about freelancers? Like pirates?”
“Oh no.” He shook his head. “I am talking something much bigger than that.”
She let out a long slow breath and studied his face. He was good at politics, but his eyes said he believed what he was saying. “Arun, you realize you sound as paranoid as Tamir?”
“Perhaps,” he said. He looked down at the table and smiled sadly. “But I fear that I am not sufficiently paranoid as to have fabricated this idea.”
“How could anyone be building a fleet?” she challenged. “There are tracking systems all over the economy. We’d know if someone was siphoning off resources on that scale. Tana and I were just discussing how expensive it is to build even a single ship. There’s no possibility anyone could steal the resources to build several of them.”
“I am not arguing that it is very expensive and very complex,” he said. “It takes massive amounts of labor across the spectrum. Ask yourself where in the system would it be possible for SourceCartel to trade low-skill labor, and deflect attention, so they might end up with an unregistered ship as a byproduct?”
“I’m not following you,” she said.
“There is a glaring opening in the materials supply chain,” he said.
“Frag, Arun, just tell me what you mean,” she said, her frustration boiling out again.
He shook his head, looking into her eyes. “It would be bad scientific method to give too much info to my control study. I need you to find the evidence to confirm this hypothesis independently.”
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.
“She worked in Materials Reprocessing Management,” he said.
“Who did?”
“The missing woman,” he said. “She wasn’t my spy, but she was known to someone … in my employ.”
“And that’s why you’re chasing this ghost fleet? It sounds delusional, you know.”
“Yes, I understand that,” he said, “but if I were truly delusional, I would not need to have my suspicions confirmed. I could twist even a lack of evidence to support my assumptions. I need you to prove that I am not paranoid. Please.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
The Jakob Waltz was a D-class keel. By no means was it as big as some larger vessels operated by FleetCartel, but it was gargantuan for the ten-person crew it carried. When Rocky suggested they should rule out the possibility of the NavCom sensor grid being the source of their problems, Danel and Chei both concurred. What neither of them realized was that because of the integrated design of the ship, their desire to be sure they weren’t chasing ghosts in the machinery meant the rest of the crew had a lot of hardware to chase down and visually verify.
The main sensor systems threaded through almost every piece of equipment on the ship. Connecting Dutch’s Artificially Aware quantum-core to the outside world, it effectively functioned like a nervous system. The High Definition Array served as eyes and worked with the external optics and inertial sensors to give the computer a sense of spatial awareness. Even the internal diagnostic system and the main broadstream communications routed through the NavCom grid.
Although the crew used the chute decks to move from floor to floor, it was not just open space. It was a shaft that ran from the bow, down through the structural spine of the Waltz and ended twenty-six decks later at the engine thrust plate and power distribution node. Through its center, a huge conduit carried the primary data trunk that acted as Dutch’s spinal cord.
The access tunnel for the main HDA extended through the top four decks and attached to the data trunk at the Main Control Interface, just above the hardware that was Dutch’s brain. Jeph hung against the railing onto the ConDeck watching nervously while Alyx Donegal crawled along the side of the tunnel assembly. She was their sensor specialist and took the most complex piece of hardware in the NavCom grid as her responsibility to inspect.
She and Shona were both ectomorphs and uniquely suited to working in the tight confines of the access tunnel. Although Seva worked well with them by providing mesomorph muscle when they needed it, she was much too large to get into the narrow tube. Instead, she unsnapped the latches and opened the panel to give her companions access to the inspection crawl space inside.
Normally the tube that housed the HDA was only accessible when they had extended the antenna assembly, but because both Shona and Alyx were thin even for ectos, they planned to squeeze into the shaft and check out the hardware from inside. It would save a lot of time since it didn’t require deploying and working in EVA suits outside.
Jeph didn’t like the idea, because other than him, none of the other crew members could get in to rescue them if they got stuck. Reluctantly he’d signed off on the plan, and now watching them he felt like an anxious father.
“Since neither of you think it’s the NavCom, what’s it be?” Seva asked, sticking her head into the narrow crawl space like she was checking for alien spiders. Because the system was so widely integrated everyone was working together and her voice carried over the internal com.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense no matter how you split it,” Shona said, pressing the stud on her exosuit and peeling it off her body. He’d ordered no further acceleration cycles for the time being, so they wouldn’t be running the engine. Her exosuit was just another layer of bulk to deal with in close quarters. The commander knew she hated wearing her PSE in freefall, so she took any excuse she had to strip down and feel air against her skin.
The navigator pulled herself into the tube and folded around so that her head stuck back out of the opening. Another benefit of having a light-world physiology, her joints had an unnatural flexibility. Without it, she’d never be able to maneuver herself into the space.
Seva shook her head. “Damn alien ecto.” She let the cover panel go and took the tool kit from Alyx, who was also skinning off her exosuit. She glanced over her shoulder and apparently realized that Jeph was there.
He waved.
“Sorry, boss. No offense.”
“Doesn’t it bother you not knowing?” Alyx asked, as she spun feet first up through the hatch, corkscrewing herself around the antenna mast and sticking an arm back out for the tools. Even though the clearance around the sensor assembly was barely more than thirty-five centimeters on either side, both women managed to squeeze themselves into the housing.
“Sure,” Shona said, sli
ding away from the hatch and disappearing down the center column. “But what good does it do to worry? If it’s a black hole, we’re fragged already.”
“I don’t think it’s a singularity,” Danel said over the com. He was working from the main galley table, but might as well have been beside them. “If it was there’d be a lot more than us and Payload Four being affected.”
“That’s supposed to make me all fuzzy?” Seva said. “Being the only thing out here to be eaten ain’t really a benefit as I see it. I don’t much like the idea of being eaten.”
“That explains a lot,” Alyx whispered.
“I heard that,” Seva said, popping her head into the shaft and wagging her finger at Alyx.
“Me too,” Danel said.
“As did I,” Rocky said from engineering.
“Here too,” Anju said with a snicker.
“Let’s all stay focused, before whatever it is, eats her in spite of her wishes,” Jeph said. “We’ve got a long way to go before we can rest.”
“Aye, Cap’n Slave Driver,” Seva said.
He pushed away from the railing and down the chute, partly to go check on how Rocky and Cori were doing, but mostly because he didn’t want to watch Shona and Alyx sliding further from where he could reach them, if they got into trouble.
Open spaces were fine with him, but tight confines sent his flesh crawling in ways that felt doubly terrifying inside his own PSE covered skin.
FleetCartel Officer’s Dining Hall: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
“I’m glad you could make time for me,” Chancellor Roja said as the autobot set lunch on their private table.
“Of course, Katy, anything for you,” Admiral Nakamiru said. He was the only person left alive who called her by the nickname her parents gave her. More than her most trusted advisor, in many ways he was her surrogate father. “It was fortunate that something delayed my return flight and I ended up with some space in my schedule. That seldom happens anymore.”
She nodded and they both picked up their chopsticks. She enjoyed the feeling of Zen she shared with him even if she knew it was just a transient illusion of the moment. As head of operations at Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center, he had as tight a schedule as she did.
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 4