“I’m no forensic computer tech, if that’s what you mean,” Wong agreed, leaning back in his chair and eyeing his visitors. “If the logs were deleted and properly hashed – and I doubt our spy would suddenly become less than thoroughly competent – I would have no more success with the fabricator’s computer than you.”
“Then why…”
“What I am, Corporal Kaczka,” the gaunt shaven-headed Chief Engineer cut her off, “is a paranoid son of a bitch with direct access to all of the hardware on this ship.”
Wong smiled coldly, his dark slanted eyes sending a chill down Stanford’s spine.
“I may hide down in engineering – especially when we’re pushing the drives like this – but I am not oblivious to the ship’s affairs. Those two gentlemen outside didn’t position themselves there without my suggestion, after all.
“What you have missed, Corporal, and what Vice Commodore Stanford was expecting me to have thought of, is the people involved here – not the software, not the hardware, the people.
“Auto-fabricators are the single most abusable and abused pieces of machinery on a warship. I’ve seen them used for everything from illegal weapons rings to assembling entire drug labs aboard ship.
“The people who abuse them are, sadly, almost always engineering personnel who know the systems inside and out. These are very intelligent men and women who are determined not to be found out. Fabricator logs get edited or go missing a lot, people,” he finished calmly.
“And?” Michael prompted.
“And after getting caught up in an investigation that went on way too long and ended way too inconclusively back in the dawn of time when I was a mere Lieutenant Commander, I realized I needed to find a way to make sure that didn’t happen again.
“So, since you ask so nicely,” Wong continued with a cold smile, “it happens there is a hard, uneditable, backup being run on every single auto-fabricator on this ship. A backup that is not on the books and not otherwise linked to the ship’s systems. Which fabricator did you say built that drone?”
Corporal Kaczka was actually looking at Wong. In the most of an hour since he’d met her, Michael hadn’t seen the augmented tech actually directly look at a human being, and he mirrored Wong’s smile.
“Auto-Fabricator Sixteen,” the MP finally admitted.
Wong closed his eyes for a second, and one wall of his cluttered office flashed, the screen activated and covering the wall with hundreds of lines of text.
“Even with modification allowed, the fabricator logs are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of data,” Wong warned. “The hard backup records every change, every step back to fix a typo, every edit as a separate item. Finding anything useful in here, well,” he shrugged. “You have to know what you’re looking for.”
“May I interface?” Kaczka asked, her gaze now on the computer screen. Wong gave her a go-ahead gesture, and she stepped up to the wallscreen. Staring hard at the lines, the woman froze, her physical body stiffening almost completely as she dove into the data.
The screen flickered, the forensic tech allowing her data search to feed the screen as she worked. Michael wasn’t going to pretend he could follow what she was doing, though. Sections of requests lit up, then data around them highlighted, de-highlighted, and then the screen jumped to another section of the code.
“The logs were deleted… three days ago,” the forensic tech told them all, her voice even more vague than usual. “Via… a remote root override. Effective, but brute force. This backup would have prevented even a more subtle approach, but a cleaner removal of data may have prevented us looking.”
“Why take the brute force approach then?” Michael asked.
“A subtler approach would have required physical access to the computer. Perhaps our agent either couldn’t reach the system or was otherwise occupied and went for the fastest method? Now, I need to find the drone. With this quantity of data and the potential pattern manipulations, this will take some time.”
The pattern of sections being highlighted, searched around, and discarded continued. It accelerated as Michael watched until each series of highlights was a blur concluded in under a second.
“There!” The screen froze, and Michael finally had a chance to see what was highlighted. It was a series of part numbers and command codes he certainly didn’t recognize, but Kaczka clearly knew.
“That’s the drone’s manufacture,” she concluded. “January tenth, oh four hundred twenty-six to oh five hundred thirty-eight. Middle of ship’s night, it seems unlikely anyone would have happened over our agent.
“That coincides with one of our looped sections of camera footage for about four hours on either side,” Kaczka admitted. “Given the area of the outage, potential candidates… exceed sixty.”
“Who was the user?” Wong demanded. “It should tell us that.”
The tech nodded, then froze mid-motion.
“That isn’t possible,” she said flatly.
“What isn’t?”
“I’m validating,” the Corporal said sharply. A moment later, she blinked and turned back to the officers in the room.
“Sirs, ma’am.” The Military Policewoman’s voice was very quiet. “The logged in user was Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin. A lock was placed on that section of the log under his direct authorization code.
“The deletion was carried out three days ago using the same authorization code, remote from the flag deck.”
Her eyes were less vague than they had been before, and Michael realized she looked utterly desperate. A junior MP did not want to say what that evidence pointed towards. Even Barsamian couldn’t take that train of thought to its final conclusion.
There was only one man aboard who had any authority to judge the Admiral.
“We need to wake the Captain.”
Chapter 37
Deep Space, en route to Barsoom System
07:30 January 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Flag Deck
There was something ominous to the even boot-treads of the four Military Police and two Marine bodyguards following Kyle down the corridor to the flag deck. Behind them, each of the heavy security hatches slammed shut and sealed as Kyle ordered Avalon to cut the flag deck off.
He’d already sealed the off-duty staff reporting to the Admiral in their quarters. Procedure for the thankfully rare occasions where it was necessary to arrest a flag officer was clear: the entirety of their staff would be restricted to quarters until they could be interrogated and cleared of involvement.
The only members of Tobin’s staff not so restricted at this point were the twenty-three people on the flag deck with Tobin. That included both his Chief of Staff and Intelligence Officer, and Kyle had to admit he was most concerned about Commander Sanchez.
Even if Tobin was everything they were afraid of, Sanchez’s dislike for Kyle was going to make this messy.
“Sir,” a voice sounded in his implant. As soon as they’d finished explaining the situation, he’d sent Senior Fleet Commander Wong and Corporal Kaczka to the Q-Com array. If Tobin was – somehow – the spy, he’d been the only one in control of Avalon’s communication for weeks.
“We can’t access the buffer stack yet,” Wong informed him. “What I can confirm is that the Admiral has been sending a lot more messages than I would have expected for us being black. Encrypted and encoded messages sealed from normal visibility – even if someone had access to the stack – under his personal code. Um,” the engineer paused and swallowed. “The outbound log was apparently secured against access. It just wiped and hashed itself.”
“That is secondary,” Kaczka interrupted. “Per your orders, I have accessed the inbound logs. Without an override, I am not able to view the contents of the messages, but there are multiple Alpha One priority messages in the buffer for you, Captain. He has archived them all.”
Kyle closed his eyes as they reached the corridor outside the flag deck. He was trying to make se
nse of Tobin being the spy – of the Admiral being the one who’d tried to kill him. It didn’t add up – but there was too much evidence. At this point, he had no choice but to leave it to the court-martial to sort out the truth.
Two Marines stood guard outside the nerve center of Tobin’s operations. They were in body armor, similar to that worn by the six men and women following Kyle, but were armed only with sidearms. His escort were carrying full-size battle carbines – with electron laser attachments, in the hope that they could get through today without actually killing anyone.
“Sir,” one Marine saluted. “What’s going on?”
“Stand down, soldier,” Kyle ordered. “Surrender your weapons to Marshal Barsamian. You’re not in trouble, but I can’t take chances today.”
Barsamian stepped forward from the back of the pack of soldiers following him, holding her hand out to the two guards. With a visible swallow, the speaker slowly drew his sidearm and passed it to her. A moment later, the other followed suit.
Kyle paused in front of the doors, steadying himself to do something that would, if his staff were wrong, end his career.
“With me, then,” he ordered softly and stepped forward.
For a few moments, no one reacted to the door opening or his entrance. Much like the warship’s main bridge, the flag deck consisted of seats and consoles but most of the work was done via the implant network. Most of the people in the room weren’t paying much attention to what was going on around them.
Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin and his two staff officers, however, stood next to the big holo-display in the middle of the flag deck – an item completely missing from the bridge, where any necessary data was fed to everyone’s implants – their heads together in discussion.
The MPs and Marines were in the room before anyone noticed, but by the time Kyle had crossed half the distance to the Admiral, the sudden presence of half a dozen armed soldiers had drawn attention. He watched the realization ripple around the room, techs and junior officers suddenly snapping into reality from their work and turning to look at him.
“Captain Roberts, what is the meaning of this?” Tobin turned and demanded. The big Admiral seemed surprised.
“Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin. Under the authority granted to me under Article Ninety-One of the Federation Articles of Military Justice, I am placing you under arrest for treason, conspiracy, and attempted murder.”
Even without looking, Kyle knew Barsamian’s people had taken up careful positions covering the entire crowd. They were outnumbered by the flag deck staff, but they were also the only armed people in the room.
“What, wait, why?” Tobin spluttered, staring at Kyle in complete shock.
“I told you he was having paranoid delusions,” Sanchez snapped, staring at the Captain with oddly calm eyes.
“Your command codes were used to manufacture the drone that attempted to murder me,” Kyle replied. “While I personally find it hard to believe you would betray the Federation after your years of service, I have no choice but to act to protect this ship. You are under arrest. Your staff will be placed in preventative custody until we can complete interrogations.”
A strange glaze seemed to settle over the Admiral’s eyes as he glared at Kyle.
“You can’t!” he snapped. “We need to complete the mission – we have to stop Triumphant!”
“That is apparently something I need to discuss with the Joint Chiefs,” Kyle pointed out. “Apparently they’ve been trying to get ahold of me.”
“No!” the Admiral bellowed. He turned abruptly in place. “Sanchez, do something!”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” the Chief of Staff said with a vicious thin little smile. “All hands,” she continued calmly, somehow completely overriding Kyle’s lockdown to transmit to the whole ship, “Bad Penny. I repeat, Bad Penny.”
A moment later, a tiny pistol appeared in her hand and she opened fire. Kyle dove for cover as his Marines returned fire.
Weapons appeared around him, crude-looking submachine guns yanked from beneath consoles as his people were distracted. He rolled behind a console, firing his sidearm wildly. One of Sanchez’s sensor operators went down – possibly his bullet, possibly one of the MPs.
He rose above the console, aiming towards Sanchez. She wasn’t there, and then a cold metal feeling sank into the back of his head.
“Unless you want the dear Captain to have a new breathing hole, I suggest you cease fire,” Sanchez snapped, and he realized there was a gun at the base of his skull.
“I suggest you drop the pistol, Captain,” she hissed in his ear. “I’d hate to… slip.”
07:40 January 20, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Flight Control
“Bad Penny. I repeat, Bad Penny.”
The words echoing across the shipwide speakers in Sanchez’s voice didn’t meant anything to Michael in and of themselves – but he could guess.
“Guinevere,” he sent on the special net they’d set up. “Guinevere, Guinevere, Guinevere – Sanchez is moving!”
He was grabbing for his sidearm when he found himself facing down the end of a crude-looking barrel. On the other end was Specialist Second Class John MacCarl – not a man he knew well, a fighter missile tech from Castle who’d been a new addition.
“Just stay still, CAG,” MacCarl told him, his voice nervous. “Orders from the Admiral – we’re taking control of the ship.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Michael demanded. “The Admiral doesn’t have the authority to order a Voids-cursed mutiny, MacCarl.”
“Bad Penny’s just a precaution, not a mutiny,” the Specialist told him. For all the man’s apparent nervousness, the gun he held – product of an auto-fabricator, Michael guessed – stayed steadily trained on the CAG. “Means the Admiral’s relieving Roberts. So we want to be sure no one does anything stupid.”
There had only been six people in Flight Control with Michael. Another had produced a weapon at the same time as MacCarl and was keeping the others covered.
“Sorry, boss, but the Commander figured you’d be most likely to be a problem.”
“Senior Commander Sanchez, I take it?” Michael asked, looking down the gun. “You do realize, MacCarl, that even if the Admiral has relieved Captain Roberts, what you’re doing is still mutiny. The Admiral can’t protect you from that. Even if everything you say is true, you’re still going to hang if you don’t stop this and hand me that Voids-cursed gun.”
There might have been a moment of hesitation, but then MacCarl steadied his grip and gestured towards the door with the gun.
“Following orders, sir,” he said bluntly. “Keep your hands where I can see them, we’re going to…”
The big man spasmed, the gun spraying a burst of bullets into the wall where MacCarl had gestured as a Navy electron laser stungun hit him in the back and submachine gun slipped from nerveless fingers. The other mutineer went down at the same time, the need to cover four people keeping his weapon from pointing directly at any of them.
“Finally,” Wing Commander Rokos grumbled as he stepped out from behind the door. “Took long enough for the idiot to point the gun somewhere else.”
Michael’s heart started beating again as he looked down at the collapsed, still slightly twitching, form of the Specialist.
“Cuff them,” he ordered the men who hadn’t joined the mutineers. Turning back to Rokos, he realized the other shooter had been Kalers.
“Have you heard anything?”
“Nothing,” Rokos replied. “Flight deck is secure,” he reported crisply. “Seven mutineers including this pair.” He paused, glancing at his fingernails as if pretending to be modest. “All taken alive, sir.”
“Well done, Commander Rokos,” Michael told him. “We have a team?”
“We have a team,” his subordinate replied. “What’s the plan, sir?”
Michael tried to reach Kyle for just that question. No response.
“The Captain appears to be jammed,” he said quietly.
“Isn’t just him,” Kalers told him grimly. “Sanchez’s announcement went out, then I got about half of yours and Commander Solace’s ‘Guinevere’ announcement and everything cut out. Jamming field in effect across the whole ship.”
“So we need to make sure everything’s intact in person,” Michael concluded aloud. “Rokos – keep half a dozen of our people, guard the flight deck. About the only thing someone could do with a starfighter right now is kill us all – but you know, I’m okay taking precautions against that.”
He turned to Kalers.
“Chief, take another half dozen of our people and head down to engineering,” he ordered. “Wong has a bunch of big guys and an actual Marine guard section but… let’s be certain.”
“Including us three, we’ve got twenty awake and present,” Kalers told him.
“Twenty-four, sir,” one of the Specialists who’d been manning Flight Control informed them. The others nodded as she spoke. “Not sure what the hell is going on, but we’re with you.”
“All right, you’re with me,” Michael told them and ordered the Flight Control arms locker to open. “We’re heading to Secondary Control – if the Captain is out of communication, I need to find Commander Solace.”
08:00 January 20, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Secondary Control
Michael’s approach to Secondary Control came to a halt when the sound of gunfire came echoing down the corridor. He gestured his collection of techs with guns to hold still as he crept forward, trying to get a feel for what was going on.
It wasn’t pretty. There had been a pair of Marines guarding the entrance. Both were now dead, but they hadn’t died alone. The mutineers had tried to rush the security door to take them out, and there were easily ten bodies scattered along the corridor.
Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) Page 27
