by Grant, Peter
“Aye aye, Sir! Commander Bullard told us about you when he called the main gate. Stand fast, please, while we secure them. I’ll have the guardhouse activate our perimeter hoversats to scan the area for any others.”
~ ~ ~
Lieutenant-Commander Bullard reached for the coffee Steve had brewed in the accommodation trailer’s galley. Despite it being only five-thirty in the morning, his eyes gleamed with alertness.
“That was good work, Lieutenant. Your eyewitness testimony, plus the sensor readings before they shut them down and the samples taken by those techs, will give us more than enough evidence to bring charges against them all.”
“Thank you, Sir. Do we know who they were, and who sent them?”
“We know some of it – enough to worry me. Commander Buchanan works for the Small Craft Directorate of the Bureau of Ships. It’s responsible for designing and testing all the Fleet’s small craft, including assault shuttles for the Marine Corps.” Steve’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“SCD was involved in the design of both the Mark XVIIA and the competing Mark XVIIB prototype from Orion Industries, but not their initial testing – the manufacturers handle that. SCD only comes into the picture after the initial problems have been ironed out, when pre-production models are being tested under service and operational conditions. They aren’t involved in our investigation in any way, so what the hell was Buchanan doing here? He hasn’t explained that yet. The three men with him, and the two others they found operating a hoversat outside the perimeter to keep watch on the guardhouse, are Service Corps technicians. They claim they were acting under his orders. BuSec will be asking them precisely what those orders were.”
“But, Sir, I don’t understand,” Steve protested. “We fall under BuShips too. Why would another BuShips department be interfering with our work like this?”
“That’s what worries me. I expect it’ll cause all sorts of bureaucratic inter-departmental fuss and bother.” The older man looked at him quizzically. “Given your junior rank, you’ve probably never been involved in a first-class turf war between Fleet departments, have you?”
“Only a small one, Sir, on Midrash, over a year ago. The Bureau of Intelligence roped me into an operation to identify and detain a group of criminals. During the operation, responsibility for security was divided between BuIntel, which handled the interior: a local police department, which dealt with the area immediately surrounding it; and BuSec, which was responsible for the outer perimeter. BuSec fumbled the ball, allowing the criminals to take a shot at me. Fortunately they missed, but there were lots of recriminations over that, with memos flying around like confetti.”
“Ha! I’m not surprised. BuIntel and BuSec are legendary for their turf wars. I suppose that’s inevitable, because their responsibilities overlap to some extent. If only their people spent as much time co-operating as they do arguing with each other, we’d have better intelligence and better security!”
“Yes, Sir. Actually, it was because of that incident that I landed up here. Commander Wu, OC of BuIntel in the Midrash Sector, offered me an assignment to BuIntel when I reach O-3 or higher grade. As an interim step, he arranged for me to come to AIU after my shipborne assignment ended. He said your investigations were as detailed and complex as those done by BuIntel, so I’d learn a lot here.”
His boss nodded thoughtfully. “He was right about that. You must have impressed him – BuIntel mostly fills its positions internally. They don’t offer many two-year assignments to general service officers, and they hand-pick those who fill them. Anyway, back to our little problem. Even if this Commander had no right to be here, I’m willing to bet his department will back him up on principle. He’s senior enough that he’s bound to have what sounds like a reasonable excuse for his actions. It may not stand up to scrutiny, but taking it further may prove complicated if he has friends in high places.” Bullard couldn’t help but notice the sour expression that appeared on Steve’s face. “What – you expected something different?”
“Sir, I come from Old Home Earth, where everything was run by bureaucrats and administrative departments. They were always fighting with each other. Getting anything done depended on who you knew, and how much influence you could bribe them to exert on your behalf, and whether the department and officials handling your case could pull enough strings to get you what you wanted. The ordinary man in the street was just someone to be used, then discarded. My primary reason for coming to the Commonwealth was to get away from that, to a place where the individual is emphasized above the group; but from what you just said, it looks like I’ve landed up in the same old mess I hated so much back on Earth.”
The older man sighed. “You’re relatively young, right?”
“I’m twenty-nine in Galactic Standard years, Sir.”
“That’s still young enough to be idealistic, I suppose, although I’d grown out of it by that age. Do yourself a favor. Read up about something called ‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy’. He articulated it early in the Space Age, and it’s been proven accurate time and time again. Briefly, it says that any organization has two sorts of people: those devoted to the purpose for which it was formed, and those dedicated to the organization itself. The second sort will always end up running it for their own benefit.”
“Then how has the Fleet avoided that for two centuries, Sir?”
Bullard chuckled. “They say ‘forewarned is forearmed’, so we’ve been fighting the ‘Iron Law’ ever since the Fleet was formed – with some success, I might add. We insist that combat officers rotate through senior appointments in every staff and administrative department, and many at lower level too, so that our support functions maintain an operational perspective rather than become too insular. They’re explicitly required to support the line as part of their mission statements. If the line complains too much about lack of support, things happen. Also, we try to rotate at least a tenth of our Service Corps to different departments every year, and try to make sure they don’t take a clique with them or have one waiting for them. That helps minimize the building of personal fiefdoms.”
“It must make a lot of them unhappy, though, Sir?”
His boss shrugged. “It does, and it sometimes costs us in terms of lower efficiency, but it works, so we’re not about to stop doing it! Anyway, what you ran into at Midrash was almost certainly the ‘Iron Law’ in operation – lower-level bureaucrats, more concerned with defending their departments’ turf and their own fiefdoms than they were about the overall mission. The incident would have been a wake-up call to the Sector authorities to do something to nip the problem in the bud – as I’m sure they did, right?”
Steve nodded. “I was too junior to know all that went on, Sir, but according to the grapevine it went all the way up to the Sector Admiral. Rumor had it that several field supervisors and department heads had letters of reprimand placed on their files, and I heard that one resigned his commission.”
“Probably one step ahead of being discharged for cause, eh? I daresay something similar may happen here. Things have gotten way out of hand when one department horns in on another’s turf like this, particularly when they ignore security restrictions to do so. As one counter to that, I’ve got BuSec making four copies of the security turret recordings, showing the team’s arrival and entry before they switched them off. One’s for BuSec, one’s for Captain Ratisbon, one’s for me, and the fourth copy’s for the Judge Advocate-General’s office.”
“Why so many copies, Sir?”
Bullard grimaced sourly. “Think how this situation could be manipulated by someone trying to get himself off the hook, or a senior officer trying to get his department out of trouble. Your actions could be ascribed to inexperience or over-reacting. You might be accused of being on restricted premises without due and proper authorization, because you didn’t get formal permission from anyone to sleep in the accommodation trailer in the warehouse. As far as I’m concerned you didn’t need permission at all, but we
may need to defend you against accusations like that. The sensor records and the contents of those technicians’ toolboxes will provide evidence to support your eyewitness testimony; but there have been cases where evidence mysteriously ‘disappeared’, or deteriorated while in custody until it became unusable, or something like that. With multiple copies of the sensor records in different locations, we’ll have at least some protection against that.
“Anyway, we can’t continue our accident investigation until BuSec has finished in here, which will probably take them all day. Come back to the office with me, to collect your own vehicle; then go back to your apartment, get some breakfast, take a stim-tab if you need one, change into regular uniform, and be back in the office by nine. I’ll find plenty for you to do!”
Steve grinned. “Aye aye, Sir. I’m sure you will.”
~ ~ ~
Four days later, Steve was hard at work helping a team of technicians dismantle a portion of the shuttle wreckage. He found it humbling that he knew so much less about this job than the techs he was supposed to be supervising. However, the technicians took it in good humor, explaining what they were doing each step of the way, and what they were looking for as they separated each component from the charred, crumpled mass.
“I’ve read news reports about crashes and their investigation, but until I came to AIU I never understood just how much hard work and attention to detail was involved,” he commented as he added his weight to a prybar. The piece of wreckage groaned and creaked, then with an audible snap! gave up the struggle as a stuck panel came loose.
“It’s like being a pathologist, only with hardware instead of bodies,” a tech agreed. “Each crash is a new – hey, heads up, Sir. Here comes Commander Bullard.”
“What’s he doing here?” Steve wondered aloud as he looked around. “He was supposed to be in meetings all day.” He straightened, turned to face his boss, and saluted. “Good morning, Sir.”
“Morning, Lieutenant.” Bullard’s salute was perfunctory, more of a wave than a formal recognition. “I need you to come back to town with me. Something’s come up.”
“Aye aye, Sir. I’ll just get my field pack from the office.”
“Be as quick as you can. I’ll wait for you in my car.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
Steve hurried to the warehouse office, grabbed his field pack, nodded a brusque farewell to the startled office staff, and ran towards the warehouse doors, where the Lieutenant-Commander was already getting into his vehicle. As soon as Steve had tossed his pack into the back and sat down in the passenger seat, even before he’d fastened his seat belt, Bullard accelerated away from the warehouse.
“What’s going on, Sir?” Steve asked as his seat belt buckle clicked into place.
“Let me give it to you one piece at a time. First, BuSec reports that the techs who accompanied Commander Buchanan the other night all claim that he ordered them to accompany him, to take samples from the wreckage of the Mark XVIIA. They say he told them the accident investigation was being manipulated to falsify its results, so they needed to independently test the samples to figure out what was going on. They volunteered for truth-tester examination to prove what they said, and sure enough, their tests came back clean. They were following orders, all right, but they didn’t know what was behind them.
“The Commander declined to undergo truth-tester examination, and wouldn’t say why he’d issued the orders. He tried to resign his commission, but his superiors refused. They ordered him to undergo truth-tester examination, whether he liked it or not. He appealed the order to the Judge Advocate-General’s department, but that got him nowhere, of course. JAG merely confirmed that the Fleet has the authority to order any of its personnel to undergo truth-tester interrogation concerning any service-related matter, provided that evidence thus obtained and not corroborated by other sources can’t be used against them.
“There’s another wrinkle to the situation. Commander Buchanan tried to bring charges against you for disobeying the orders of a superior officer.”
“What?” For a moment Steve was dumbfounded, then he began to seethe with fury. “The only orders he gave me were – in so many words – to stop interfering with his escape! He didn’t even have the right to issue them in the first place!”
“No need to snap at me, Lieutenant,” his boss said sternly. “I authorized you to take action, remember?”
Steve collected himself. “I – I’m sorry, Sir.”
Bullard nodded. “Apology accepted. I suppose I’d be upset, too, if I were in your shoes. I said as much to JAG yesterday when one of their investigators called me. He asked me to submit confirmation of my orders to you – which I did at once, of course – and assured me that, with that evidence on file, Commander Buchanan’s charges against you won’t go any further. However, he also told me some very interesting details that have begun to emerge from the investigation. Ever heard of a retired Admiral Napolitano?”
“No, Sir, I can’t say I have.” Steve tried to control his simmering anger.
“Not surprising – he retired from the Fleet about twenty years ago, long before you came to the Commonwealth. He’s a Vice-President of Commonwealth Defense Industries, and the man behind its purchase of Brisance. He oversees its operations as part of his job at CDI. What’s more, Commander Buchanan’s married to one of his granddaughters, to whom he’s reportedly very close.”
Steve’s mouth opened in a silent ‘O’ of astonishment, and Bullard glanced across at him. “I see you’re beginning to put two and two together. The connection came to light when a civilian lawyer from a firm patronized by CDI tried to represent the Commander in his appeal to JAG about the order to undergo truth-tester examination. He was disallowed, of course. It was a straightforward disciplinary matter, not a legal proceeding, and no charges have been filed – yet – against the Commander or anyone else, so no representation was necessary or permitted. Nevertheless, the lawyer claimed to have been hired by Admiral Napolitano to represent his grandson-in-law.”
Bullard stopped talking as he came to the security gate. He slowed to a halt, lowered his window, and showed his pass to the guard who came to his door. The guard glanced at it, nodded to him, and waved at the guardhouse. The barrier rose, and the Lieutenant-Commander accelerated out of the compound and onto the highway.
He resumed, “Commander Buchanan was informed of JAG’s ruling late yesterday afternoon. He finished work for the day, got into his car and headed for home – only to be T-boned by a heavy delivery vehicle halfway there. Witnesses said the driver of the truck jumped out, wearing a sealed hazmat suit, and got into a car following the truck. It made a U-turn and disappeared into the evening traffic. The cops found that the driver had activated an anti-DNA fogger device as he got out of the truck’s cab. It had coated every surface and soaked into the upholstery. All fingerprints had also been removed. The truck had been hired from a big rental company earlier that afternoon, but the renter’s details proved to have been falsified. No-one knows who he was.”
“Was the Commander badly hurt, Sir?”
“He’s in a coma in intensive care right now, with severe head and internal injuries and several broken bones. His chances of survival are poor, according to the doctors. He’s on life support.”
Steve’s lips pursed in a soundless whistle. “But that means…”
“Yes, it does. We still don’t know why he ordered those techs to obtain swabs and samples from the shuttle wreckage. If Buchanan dies, unless we can obtain evidence from another source, the investigation may run into a brick wall.”
“But, Sir, don’t all the other elements you mentioned imply that CDI may have had something to do with his accident – if it was an accident at all? And doesn’t it suggest they may have asked him to get the samples for them?”
Bullard sighed. “Lieutenant, I’ll let you get away with saying that to me privately, just this once. Never say it again – not to me, not to anyone! We daren’t make insinuations
about something like that. We’re dealing with a very senior retired officer, who’s a very senior executive in a company with a great deal of political influence. In the absence of hard evidence, speculation could backfire on us in a big way. The Commonwealth has stringent slander and defamation laws. If we find evidence, of course, that’ll be different. There are people working on that right now. However, that’s way above your pay grade, and mine too. Our job is to shut up and let the investigators do their thing.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
His boss added, “I’ll say this much; I doubt that CDI as an organization was behind this. They’re as aggressive in going after business as any other company their size – after all, they didn’t get to be that big without being predatory! – but I can’t see them getting into or condoning criminal activity as a matter of corporate policy, particularly directed against their biggest customer. I’d say it’s far more likely that a person or persons unknown, who may or may not have any connection with CDI, who may have a lot to lose and may feel threatened by current events, might have decided to try to cover their tracks and protect their ass. Don’t quote me on that.”
“I understand, Sir. Er… may I ask one more question, please?”
“Go ahead.”
“Is Commander Buchanan being guarded, Sir? If the ‘accident’ wasn’t an accident, might there be another attempt?”
“You and I are thinking along the same lines. I asked Captain Ratisbon the same question this morning, and got cut off at the knees for doing so. That investigation’s being handled by other departments. It’s not our business to ask awkward questions or interfere in any way. Get it?”
“Understood, Sir.”
“Good. The trouble is, word about the accident is already circulating among journalists. Initial reports were simple and factual, but as they learned more about the driver’s disappearance, the DNA scrubbing of the cab and so on, they began to ask a lot more questions. They’re bound to find out in due course about the Commander’s grandfather-in-law, and the lawyer he arranged to represent the Commander at JAG, and put two and two together. When they do, they’ll be speculating along the same lines that you were a short while ago – and you’re the prime witness to what Commander Buchanan and his techs were doing that night. They’re going to come after you for a statement.”
