Worrying that his random marching around the campus would eventually attract unwanted attention, he followed a group of cadets and his nose into a building that obviously was the open mess hall.
He was just about to sit at a table in the far corner when he turned to his left to avoid a rushing child and ran smack into Harold Hansen.
Chapter 40
“What you’re telling me is preposterous, Captain Haad,” Admiral Paine growled. “I’ve known Constance Berger for over thirty years!”
Haad crossed the room and braced himself in front of Paine. Mols took up a position at Haad’s three o’clock. “Think about it, just for one minute, sir. How in the hell could that Varson madman get detailed ship movements if it didn’t come from someone in this Admiralty?”
They were standing in one of the temporary offices on the Weyring Navy Base, a space hastily put together to accommodate Paine and his staff. Oren Standi was not able to make the trip to Bayliss.
“He’s right, sir. Didn’t you once tell me you wondered why she always seemed to be the slow mover on your staff? The one always questioning every move, trying to generate more time before decisions were made? Her stalling could have only had one purpose: to give her time to alert her Varson masters,” Niki Mols said.
“But, to what end? Why would a dedicated Fleet Officer of her standing risk her entire career to help our enemies? Without motive, nothing of what you say makes sense.”
Haad reached for the folded papers in his uniform pocket. “Take a look at this, sir. I pulled this list from Lieutenant Mols’s database. Her name is not far from the beginning of the list.”
Paine reached for the pages and almost snatched them from the captain’s hands. He grumbled for a few minutes as he began to read. “This is a duty-roster list from the Mobile Bay, captain. Why are you showing me this?”
Haad indicated one of the chairs behind him. “May I sit, sir? This might take a while.”
Admiral Paine looked up from the list and waved his hand.
Mols and Haad sat and waited. Finally, Paine said, “What am I looking for, captain. Niki, has he told you about any of this?”
“Yes, sir. Affirmative. I wondered myself until he made the connection for me.”
“You see, admiral, there is one thing that connects all of the players in this little game. The Mobile Bay.”
The admiral finished his cursory scan of the list and threw the papers on the desk behind him. “I guess I missed it, captain, I didn’t see anything there that would lead me to suspect that Coni Berger was leading a spy ring.”
“Let me connect the dots for you. First, over ten years ago, Davi Yorn is taken prisoner by the Varson. He blows the Mobile Bay before she can be turned against the Second Fleet, killing all hands aboard, some 350 sailors and marines. He’s taken to a POW camp in the Galena system. The aliens have also stolen the operational and construction plans for the Mobile Bay.”
Paine felt behind him and settled his behind on the edge of the desk. All heads in the room turned to the north as a muffled boom followed by rattling window frames shook the building. “We’ve got damaged ships returning from that skirmish out beyond the PA dock,” he said. Haad’s face fell for a second. Mols returned her attention back to her uncle.
“But that Mobile Bay thing is ancient history, Uriel. I still don’t see how that could possibly connect to any of this latest string of events on Elber and Bayliss,” Paine said, waving a dismissive arm around the room.
Haad plowed on. “So, when we launched the rescue raid on that POW camp, the soldier that had been guarding Yorn, the one that almost killed me, just happened to be the brother of the current Varson strongman. Bale Phatie. Our SWO men cut that soldier in half as we made our escape.”
“Still old news, captain.”
“Indulge me for just another minute, sir,” Haad countered and pushed out a hand.
“You need to hear this, Uncle Vinny,” Mols said, invoking a familial tone designed to get his rapt attention. Paine twirled his hands. Get on with it, his gesture said.
“So, as luck would have it, Yorn sails into the Loop with me as his captain, the two identifiable men that had been associated with the Mobile Bay disaster. Coni Berger was a new rear admiral, aware of all Fleet movements, crew statistics and so forth. When one of Inskaap’s spies approached her, reminded her of her personal loss, she fell into place, feeding them with ship movements, personnel strengths, blockade numbers and weapons information. When we got into trouble out in the Belt Loop and had to limp home, who was the one that suggested you move the blockade ships from the Fringes? The one that had stalled and stalled in just about every other aspect of Fleet operations now suddenly an advocate of removing most of the picket ships from around Varson space. That got me thinking.”
“And you believe this Varson spy? You don’t see this a just another self-serving, save-my-own-ass crock of bullshit?”
“My biometric scans tell me he’s telling the truth, sir,” Mols said.
“So, we get back to Elber, Gena Haslip is murdered. The witness overheard her arguing with a man, and the words ‘ship movements’ came up during that argument. Then the killer is killed. Yorn goes missing, presumed dead. Radio traffic is intercepted leaving Elber for unknown ears out in the void. Strange men following my Lieutenant Hansen and her son. A cab driver, who just happened to be the same one that ferried them from the spaceport to the BOQ winds up killing two men that later were found to be altered Varson natives.”
“I think you’re reaching for shit, here, captain. I still don’t see what any of that has to do with the Admiralty.”
“Before we left the compound for this meeting, word comes from the Fringes, by way of a dropped emergency beacon, that a ship masquerading as the Nautilus River but bearing markings for the Mobile Bay lured the Lake Tahoe into a Varson trap. Imagine, sir, the faked ship approaches, lulls the Navy ship into a false sense of camaraderie then while they try to analyze the conflicting IFF signals, Varson ships surround them.”
“I saw that dispatch this morning, Uri,” Paine said. He looked away at the window. Twilight was seeping into the office and he voiced up the lights.
“Couple that with the report from the Weyring PD about finding our mysterious cabbie from Elber dead in a hotel elevator yesterday, and I’d say the conspiracy has moved to Bayliss, sir,” Haad said. “And see if you can guess whose picture they sent us from the hotel’s security feeds? Commander Davi Yorn killed him. Snapped his neck like it was a number two pencil. Now that doppelganger is loose somewhere on Bayliss.”
“And now we’re officially at war with the Varson Empire again,” Mols added.
Suddenly, as if a lightbulb had just gone off in his head, Paine turned and snatched the pages from the desk. “Well, I’ll be damned. . .”
“Lieutenant (j.g.) Camille Berger. Killed in action, killed on the Mobile Bay, sir. Coni Berger’s daughter,” Haad said. “Cami Berger, twenty years of age, a communications specialist.”
The vice admiral stared at his niece. He could imagine the hatred for Haad and Yorn that Berger must have felt. Her only daughter sacrificed so that the Fleet might survive. Hatred festering for over ten years, not only for these two men, but for the entire Navy.
He walked to the comm stack behind his desk and hit the stud. He asked to be routed to the base Shore Patrol Headquarters. He was finally answered by a Chief Torres. “This is Rear Admiral Vincent Paine.” He rattled off a string of command codes. “Locate Admiral Constance Berger, send her a message on her VOX, do what you have to. She should be somewhere up at the War College meeting with Admiral Geoff. Report to me soonest once she is located. Oh, and chief, once she is found, hold her, under armed guards if you have to.”
“And the last part of this saga, sir,” Haad continued, “is that the doppelganger Yorn was spotted on a train heading up to the War College. He was spotted by that Hansen kid when the train stopped at the Hayes station. Chief Pace told me that the kid recogniz
ed him but knew he was a fake. Said he didn’t have that big scar on the back of his head like the real one should have had.”
Paine spoke to the SP chief again. “Chief Torres, send an armed detachment up to the Hayes Military School by flyer. There is a kid there named Hansen. Find him and make sure of his safety. He can identify a known killer masquerading as one of my officers. Standby for details from this end.”
He put Chief Torres on standby, got routing information from Mols and passed the police photograph information along. “If Berger protests, chief, or gives you any lip, you still carry out my orders pursuant to the EWPA. Are we clear?”
The SP chief acknowledged and broke the connection.
When Admiral Paine turned back to the room, Haad and Mols were at the window.
Haad was finally beginning to feel safe. Especially after just hearing the admiral invoke his Emergency War Powers Act determination.
Mols just stared at the billowing column of gray smoke coming from the direction of air operations.
This war she was old enough to participate in.
Chapter 41
The ICU scanner showed what looked to be a length of plastisteel I-bar protruding from Yorn’s back. The piece had been torched off by one of the F&R rescuers and they had assisted in gingerly moving him to the ambulance and ultimately to the Weyring Navy Base Hospital Intensive Care Unit. His tunic had been cut away and Doctor Jamison had checked him for other injuries. Other than a small knot on the top of his head, his other bumps and bruises were insignificant. But this piece of metal lodged in his back posed a serious threat.
He had been anesthetized as soon as they had him in the bus and by the time his scan in the ICU was finished, Milli Gertz looked to Jamison for reassurance.
“Geeze, lieutenant, that thing is so near his heart and one of the flanges is resting right against his aorta. If we pull it out, that sharp flange may cut it open. He’d bleed out before we could get in there to fix it.”
The young doctor stared at the screen. “It’s got to come out, Commander Gertz. We can’t keep him knocked out forever. I’m afraid if he moves, or even coughs when he wakes up, the motion could kill him.”
Gertz nodded and looked at the bio-readouts on the screen above the bed. Yorn was being fed a slow drip of succinylcholine chloride six percent solution to keep him immobile but just barely breathing. Soon a decision had to be made since the metal spar had punctured one of his lungs and he was bleeding into his air sacs.
“I’m going to go over to the thoracic surgery ward and see who I can round up, commander. I need an expert chest man for this,” Jamison said and grabbed a couple of static films on his way out. “If his BP slips below that red line there, stop the IV drip.”
She watched him go. Other casualties were starting to filter in from the action above the planet. A steady parade of lifeboats and shuttlecraft were lined up on final approach over at the air operations field. Milli stroked Yorn’s head with her left hand and wished there was something she could do for him. He’d been her favorite officer on the Christi, strictly speaking man and woman, and she thought he possessed all the qualities she would be looking for in a man to get serious with. But Yorn already had a mistress, she thought, and she was a jealous, overbearing bitch and her name was Colonial Navy.
She found herself working up into a real fugue so she stopped stroking his head and concentrated on his readouts. The focused brain energy caused her transparent limb to throb. Carefully stripping off her latex glove she flexed her fingers on the missing hand.
Then an idea formed. She looked at the image on the monitor and pushed her hand gently on his back near the waist. To her surprise, her fingers penetrated his skin but left no marks on his body. On the monitor the image showed the dense bony tips of her first two fingers. Then she moved her hand upwards toward his shoulder. Same thing. Fingers in, no apparent damage to the invaded tissues. This was frightening and wonderful!
After a minute of experimenting, she finally probed the area around the metal bar. Milli was very careful not to get a case of the shakes right then. With careful attention to the monitor, she eased the flat of her hand against the bar and slid her palm toward his heart. With only a tiny bit of pressure she was able to get a finger beneath the metal and using the backside of that finger to isolate the jagged edge from his aorta, she pulled on the bar with her free hand. It slid out a centimeter and stopped when she relaxed her grip. Not wanting to lose her initiative, she pulled it out a little more, being careful to use her inserted hand as a shield.
The twenty-centimeter metal beam hit the floor with a jarring ring. Lieutenant Jamison picked that moment to return to the ICU and Yorn’s bedside. When he saw Gertz pull a bloody transparent arm out of her patient’s back, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he stumbled back.
“Don’t just stand there, you wimp, help me get him turned over. You’ve got to get in there now and stop that bleeding, doctor!”
Jamison looked at her and shook his head. The sudden movement jolted him out of his disbelief. “How, how did —”
“Quit your yammering and get over here!” she screamed.
Together they flipped Yorn onto his stomach and the doctor started swabbing his back with a tincture of antiseptic.
He was going in.
* * *
Har jumped back and in doing so he dropped his tray and bumped the tray of a cadet right behind him. When the two trays hit the mess hall floor, the clanging echo lasted almost thirty seconds.
“Hey, you goon, watch where you’re going,” Har said without thinking. Then he looked up and quickly looked back to the floor. It was that tall officer from the Christi, that Commander Yorn! “Sorry, sir,” he said quickly, hoping the officer didn’t recognize him. He bent to his knees and started to clean up his mess. There were plenty of laughs coming from the curious cadets already seated around him. He looked at the boy behind him and whispered, “Hey stupid, get down here and help me. You shouldn’t have been following me so close.”
“Think nothing about it, son. Probably just as much my fault as yours,” Yorn said.
Har kept his head down. “No, sir, it was my fault and I’ll get this mess cleaned up right away.”
“Have it your own way, cadet,” Yorn said and moved to another table. When he sat with his back to Har the boy managed a peek at the officer. Un-huh, just as I figured, he thought. No scar on the back of his big head. That guy was a fake, probably one of those aliens they’ve been looking for. He quickly shot his eyes back to the floor. Then he said to the other boy, “What’s your name, mister clumsy?”
The other new cadet replied between swipes of spaghetti sauce, “Cory Chase. What’s it to you?”
“Well, see, I have to go get a mop or something. Here comes one of the kitchen guys now. We have to get this cleaned up before they lock us up in isolation or something.”
Cory was maybe six months older than Har but about the same size. He wasn’t buying any of Har’s bullcrap. “Now, you just hold on there, newbie, and help me scrape this shit up. It was your fault for stopping so quick.”
Exasperated, Har said, “Like I said, apple corey, I’ll be right back with a mop.”
And with that, he was up on his feet and gone. He stopped at the kitchen double doors and looked for the nearest exit sign. He had to get this news back to his mom. He had found Yorn.
Not really having a plan in mind, he bolted through the left-hand swinging door, the “out” door and brushed a guy walking away from the steam end of the clipper with three stacked racks of flatware in his arms. The kid danced around in a small circle trying to regain his center of gravity but it was too late. His foot hit an oily spot on the tiled floor and his leg shot into the air. Har watched all of this in that slow-motion wonderment of narrowed vision; he was about to see what happened when worlds collided. He scooted around the steam table, past some evil-doer of a kid who was busy peeling potatoes, past the ovens and toward the back door, which was
opened to a screen.
Just as the racks of forks, knives and spoons hit the deck, Har stopped and reversed his dash a few steps. He grabbed a couple of dinner rolls from a cooling pan and resumed his escape, stuffing one roll in his uniform pocket and the other one in his mouth.
PART SEVEN: The Price Of Command
Chapter 42
Chief Pace stopped the staff car in front of the command post and hopped out. Max opened her door and looked up. A few stars were just beginning to spark in the growing dusk. Turning her head eastward she instinctively looked toward the asterism of Monoceros. Somewhere in there, invisible to the naked eye was Sol and the Earth, over 800 light-years away. Tiny streaks of green fire arced across a section of the sky toward the south. Not meteorites. No, nothing natural, she thought. Laser fire. Before she returned her gaze to the staff car she saw a brilliant white super-nova of light from a detonating helio-spasm torpedo, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
“I’ll walk you in ma’am, and you can get direction to your unit from the chief on the desk.”
“That’ll be fine, Chief Pace. Lead the way,” she said.
The command post was a nightmare of bodies in uniform, sailors checking monitors for assignments, orders being waved in the air, a lot of pushing and shoving, and about a hundred people crowded around the hapless rating at the front desk. Bedlam was the right word to describe the scene.
Chief Pace shouldered his way to the desk and shouted a few questions to the befuddled SP sitting there. Pace cupped his hand around his ear and listened for a minute or two then bullied his way back to Max. He bent low to tell her something then pointed to a corridor to his right. She nodded and thanked him and he answered with a smart salute. Instead of returning his salute she reached out and shook his hand.
Pushing her way through the crowd, Max finally made it to a bank of elevators, waited for an available car, elbowed her way in.
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