Campbell pulled out another of his memory sticks, and loaded a new personnel record into the database. Phil Samples. Senior Chief Petty Officer. Mostly maintenance, a lot of it on ship. Transferring here from Meili. Came in on Jan Childers’ ship. Personnel transfers hadn’t had the priority on the earlier shuttle transfer to the Hannibal. Current assignment: awaiting assignment. Solid record. Mostly positive performance appraisals. Couple of black marks. Nothing serious. Couple years to go until his twenty-four-year full retirement, and he wanted to retire on Bliss.
He put Samples in queue for base housing, with a transfer down to the planet toward the end of Jan’s leave.
That done, Campbell re-entered his dataset, in the view he had saved, with his suspect pool in the middle of the data. He pondered it a while, letting his mind shift gears, acclimate to the environment. Then he started poking and pulling at connections. Checking connections within the suspect pool. Connections into the suspect pool. He had a couple other possible people, and he concluded some people in the suspect space were probably not involved, before he gave up for the evening.
He had supper in the Officers Mess and made an early night of it.
The next day, Monday, Campbell was up and breakfasted early. He had managed to wave off Acheson picking him up in the mornings, and Acheson wouldn’t expect him in until late morning, at best, anyway. He walked over to the Planetary Operations Headquarters and put in a request directly with Admiral Rao for a short meeting at her earliest convenience. He got a quick note back that she would meet him in fifteen minutes in the Class 1 secure conference room they had used earlier.
Campbell was in the conference room when Admiral Rao entered.
“Good morning, Ma’am,” Campbell said as he stood.
“Good morning, Captain. What’s going on?”
“A short status report, if I may, Ma’am.”
Rao sat down at the conference table across from Campbell.
“Proceed, Captain.”
Campbell sat down and jumped right into the deep end.
“First, there is in fact a spy ring operating on Bliss. It is being operated for the benefit of the Duval government, probably out of the Duval consulate. They have been reporting your operations status and plans to Duval, for which they have a contact in your office. They have control of Housekeeping, which gives them broad access to facilities across the base and the ability to compromise secure facilities. They also have control over Intelligence Division’s counter-intelligence department here, which has lulled Admiral Langford into complacency.
“Second, they have likely committed at least two murders already, to get their people promoted into positions of influence and authority.
“Third, I know who most of the players are, I think, but I don’t have any proof yet, just circumstantial evidence. I also haven’t nailed down who their consulate contact is. Those will be my next steps.”
“And you have a plan for proceeding, Captain?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m going to be doing some interviews this week and next, looking into some of the accidental deaths on base over the last couple of years. I’ll be trying to nail down exactly who the players are. Then I move on to putting them out of business.”
“I will tell you, Captain, I take a rather dim view of murder within my command area, so I want these people.”
“Yes, Ma’am. For the record, Admiral Birken and Admiral Durand in Intelligence Division share your sentiment. I won’t have specific orders from Sigurdsen for weeks yet, but I have standing orders that pertain to these circumstances. When specific orders come in, I expect them to be – what would you call it? – very specific.”
“Excellent, Captain. What do you need from me?”
“Well, Ma’am, Jan – Admiral Childers – is going to be down on planet leave in about a week. We will probably take some time off base, do a little sightseeing, some time on the beach, that sort of thing. I now have systems running that will monitor the situation, and we’ll see if I get any proof from that. When Jan goes back up to the Patrick Mazur, I will go with her, for the two weeks of exercises. And Senior Chief Petty Officer Phil Samples will transfer down to the planet before the Patrick Mazur breaks orbit.”
Rao’s expression tightened as memories flooded back and realization set in.
“Phil Samples rides again, eh?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good.”
“I’ll attach him to your office, Ma’am. He’ll be doing various chores around base, and, whenever questioned, will direct people to inquire of your office. Of your secretary, in particular. She’s clear so far, by the way.”
“Not a problem, Captain.”
“Good. Thank you, Ma’am. I just didn’t want you to think nothing was being done.”
“Oh, I think with Senior Chief Samples around, things are likely to get done to my satisfaction.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Rao stood up. “And, Captain – Bill – be careful.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Campbell walked over to the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters, arriving in the late morning.
“Good morning, Sir,” Acheson said.
“Good morning, Commander.”
“The first two of those interviews are this afternoon, Sir.”
“Excellent, Commander. Then I should probably go and grab some lunch.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Acheson drove him to the interviews. The guy had a car assigned to him, and he apparently wanted to use it.
The first interview was in Supply Division. It wasn’t with the planetary commander, but with a captain who oversaw the warehouse operations. The death Campbell was investigating occurred when one end of a load broke free of a crane in the receiving warehouse, and the container swung from the still suspended end and hit a chief petty officer supervising the unloading operation. He was killed instantly by blunt force trauma to the head and torso. He had been standing clear of the load, not under it, when it swung to hit him. A fellow spacer had called out to him, and he had tried to evade the container, but had not gotten clear in time.
Campbell asked a lot of questions, then got to his zinger. He asked it just as matter-of-factly as the others.
“Was any thought given to whether this might not have been an accident, but had been a purposeful action by someone?”
The captain responded with some heat. “Why the hell would anyone want to kill Smitty? Meaning no disrespect, Sir. He was the most popular guy in the division. The crane operator was out on disability for three months. He almost had a nervous breakdown, and he can’t bring himself to run a crane anymore. Afraid he’s gonna kill somebody, and it wasn’t even his fault. Cable snapped, and it wasn’t halfway through its replacement schedule. Not only did we lose Smitty, I lost the best crane operator I ever had.”
“No offense, Captain. It’s just a question on this list here. I have to ask.”
“Well, you can tell whoever wrote your list that it’s a damn fool question, Sir.”
“Very well, Captain. Thank you. That’s all I had.”
The second interview was in shuttle flight training. The department head was a captain who ran the program, turning out the dozens of shuttle pilots a planetary base with four squadrons of deployed warships needed to keep them operational. The death Campbell was investigating was of two spacers who were on staff with the program, a petty officer first class and a seaman second class. The shuttle pilot was nearing the end of training, and was practicing night operations under combat protocols, coming in hot and hard to a landing zone marked out with flares. He lost track of the flares in the wind and rain that night, seeing reflections of the flares on the side of a ground vehicle, and dropped the shuttle right on the vehicle and the two spacers who had set the flares.
Campbell again asked his questions matter-of-factly, including the last one.
“Was any thought given to whether this might not have been an a
ccident, but had been a purposeful action by someone?”
The captain snorted. “Unlikely, Sir. The pilot himself could have been killed, coming down that hard on a ground car. Those shuttles aren’t armored. If the ground car hadn’t been parked in a bit of a depression he probably would have been. And he didn’t get his advanced pilot rating. He’s restricted to freight shuttles and daytime ops.”
“Ah,” Campbell said. “Well, that’s all my questions, Captain. Thank you so much for your time.”
Acheson was driving Campbell back to Planetary Intelligence Headquarters.
“Did you get what you wanted, Sir? The answers to your questions?” Acheson asked.
“What? Oh. Yes, pretty much.”
“Did you get any push-back to that last question, about whether it might not have been an accident?”
“Yes, some. Sometimes staff work means asking uncomfortable questions. Somebody has to do it. It’s just my job.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Campbell left the office early, had supper in the Officers Mess, and then went back over to the Planetary Operations Center. There was still the open question of how they had managed to compromise secure facilities and not be caught by scanner teams.
Scanning for electronic devices in secure facilities was the province of the counter-intelligence group, and he suspected they were already compromised by the assistant group leader. But how do you fake the scanning? That wasn’t done by the group leaders, but by other people in the group. It was a boring job, so it was usually rotated among group members. Campbell had done his own time scanning facilities on Sigurdsen, which was one reason he was good at it. But that meant to compromise a facility required an awful lot of people to be involved, or, sooner or later, someone who wasn’t part of the spy ring would rotate into scanning and find the bugs.
He ran the name from the scanning log of the compromised Class 2 secure workspace in the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters through the personnel records. Ah, there they were. Assignment: Housekeeping.
Housekeeping? What’s with that? He went through the orders coming out of Commander Veronica Kinley, his suspect assistant head of counter-intelligence, searching on ‘scanning’ and found it. She had delegated ‘routine scanning’ to Housekeeping, across the whole base. Her group stood ready to assist if they found anything, but otherwise it was left to Housekeeping.
Campbell then went to orders coming out of Vilis Schenk, the head of Housekeeping. He found the order for scanning the various secure facilities on base. There was a schedule attached. He scanned down the schedule. No rotation. The same person scanned the same facilities every time. Well, that solved the rotation problem.
What about Operations? They had their own security group internally that took care of security throughout their facilities on the huge base. And the Military Police reported to Operations. Campbell wasn’t sure why that should be. If he were organizing CSF from scratch, that’s not how he would do it. But the MPs had always been part of Operations, on every CSF base. Probably a relic of some long-past decision, and it was now tradition, and unquestioned.
The security group within Operations had disagreed with the decision to delegate routine scanning to Housekeeping, and scanned their own secure facilities. Some rare good sense there. He looked at the orders, scanned down the schedule. These routine scannings were done by the Operations security people themselves, and were done on a rotation.
Campbell checked the name on the scanning log of the Class 2 secure workspace he was in. Assignment: Operations Division, Security Group. That checked.
He made an early night of it and headed to the townhouse and to bed.
More Interviews
Campbell was up early and spent most of the morning in the gym. Some of the people in the Enshin area had been there Sunday, so he didn’t have to prove himself before sparring with some experienced partners. He had several bouts with a one-knot black belt, winning the series 3-2, before having several bouts with a three-knot black belt, going down 1-4. He was out of practice. He should have been able to hold that to 2-3. Well, that’s why he was there.
Campbell had two more interviews on Tuesday afternoon. One concerned a traffic accident involving a couple of spacers who had been running across base in the rain. They ran out from behind a parked truck directly in front of a ground car, which had not been able to stop in time. One was killed and the other injured badly enough to get disability retirement.
In response to his question as to whether or not any thought was given to whether or not it might have been purposeful, the commander he was interviewing was brief.
“I know you’re in Intelligence Division, Sir, but sometimes an accident is just an accident.”
The other interview concerned two spacers in demolitions school who had neglected the safety rules. One had wired up the detonation wire to the firing switch while his partner finished up wiring the blasting cap. The firing switch end of the wires was always supposed to be disconnected, with a five-foot lightning gap, before wiring up a blasting cap. The deceased had not followed safety regulations, either. The wires being connected to the blasting cap were supposed to be shorted together until the connection was made, to dissipate any charges or currents. When he made the second connection to the blasting cap, it fired, with him sitting virtually on top of the explosive.
In response to Campbell’s question as to whether or not any thought was given to whether or not it might have been purposeful, the training instructor was philosophical.
“Some people are just not cut out for certain kinds of training, Sir. Demolitions School is probably more sensitive in that way than most. We try to recognize those students and weed them out, convince them they should probably not be in this course, but some want to push through anyway. Some of them pull it together and correct their approach. They are some of our best graduates. Others? Well, the field practice is set up so the students can’t hurt anyone but themselves, and every couple of years we have a team who just won’t learn blow themselves up. It happens.”
Tuesday evening Campbell was back in the Planetary Operations Headquarters. How had the spy ring managed to compromise his personal account and the terminal in the Class 2 secure workspace in the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters? He knew generally how it must have been done, with a module between the terminal driver and the security code, but the security code was supposed to check for that.
He logged into the intelligence headquarters system normally and went poking around, looking at the terminal drivers and account settings. Even at his permission level, the terminal drivers were blocked from view, which was not normal. He should be able to see them, though not write them. He invoked sysadmin privileges and looked again. He could see the terminal drivers now, but there was no intermediate code, just the terminal driver.
He logged into the operations headquarters system on another channel. There were the terminal drivers. He compared the terminal drivers. Same size. Same checksum. He did a byte-by-byte compare of the files. They weren’t the same. Now that was a cute trick.
Campbell went to full-immersive VR. He entered the saved view of his main dataset. He now lit up all the nodes of anyone with sysadmin privileges in the intelligence headquarters system. Nothing obvious. He touched the node of the head of Housekeeping, let the connection spread. There it was. This guy. Lieutenant Andon Kuang, a computer system administrator. Campbell touched his node, and got a bunch of connections back into his suspect space. Another guy with suspicious recent purchases. And his listed companion was born on Duval, and she had family there. Campbell marked him and saved the view.
Another early night.
Wednesday morning, Campbell went back to the gym. He hadn’t gotten too beaten up yesterday, and it was time to start sparring seriously every day in case he needed to be at his best. He found another three-knot black belt who taught him a couple of neat tricks, including one really nice move against one of Jan’s favorite attacks. He went down 1-4 again, but
a couple of those were close.
Wednesday afternoon, Campbell had an interview with the head of counter-intelligence, in the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters. What were the odds his office wasn’t bugged as well? Little to none. He would have to be careful. Dumb-bunny face. If it looked like there was more there, he would have to set up a follow-up meeting somewhere else.
He ran into a contradiction right away.
“Yeah, it was tragic,” Senior Captain Bjorn Laterza said. “Not his cup of tea, but going to consulate parties is part of the job when you’re in counter-intelligence. My wife and I had a prior engagement that night, so Mike went to that one. Poor bastard never made it back.”
“The police report says he was out bar-hopping,” Campbell said.
“Mike Chey? Bar-hopping?” Laterza snorted. “No, he wasn’t much of a drinker. Hated going to the parties, but he had to take his turn. He sure got into his cups that night, though. Needed to get some air, and took a walk around the block downtown. Normally a pretty safe area, but it wasn’t for him. Not that night.”
“Was any thought given to whether this might not have been a random incident, but had been a purposeful action by someone?”
“I thought about it, but I don’t see how you arrange that. How do you happen to have a consulate party the same night as my wife’s garden club event, get my substitute who isn’t much of a drinker to overdo it, then just happen to have some toughs waiting for him when he just happens to decide to go for a walk to get some air? Seemed to me an improbable setup.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Campbell said. “Whose consulate was it, anyway?”
“Duval.”
Campbell- The Problem With Bliss Page 7