“How did he get his hands on that comm unit?” Korbin asked.
Alexander shook his head. “I have no idea, but at the moment I’m more concerned about what he said than how he said it.”
Korbin nodded. “Right.”
Alexander regarded her with a frown. “Maybe we need to be interrogating Max, too.”
“Why Max?”
Alexander shrugged. “Maybe Williams had outside help. You said yourself that Max was hiding something.”
“He saved my life.”
“Exactly. Maybe he did that to put our suspicions to rest.”
Korbin appeared to consider that. “He’s been under quarantine since Wonderland. When would he have had a chance to visit the brig? He was confined to Blue Deck, with more than fifty decks between him and Williams.”
Alexander pressed his lips into a thin line. “Where is Max?” He looked around for the diplomat and found him only now emerging from his tank, already dressed and wearing a helmet. Quarantine protocols dictated that he had to take his pressure suit and helmet with him into the tank and put them on before he left. As a further measure of security, Max’s tank had been configured to flash cook the outside of his suit before he emerged from the tank. Alexander watched him being escorted away by Doctor Crespin and a pair of nurses.
“Looks like he’s going back into quarantine,” Korbin said.
The elevators came back down after taking the first half of the crew to their various stations. Alexander felt the press of the crowd shuffling toward the elevators and he crowded into one of them with the rest of his bridge crew. Someone selected the bridge deck from the control panel, and the doors slid shut to carry them up.
Alexander hated to admit it, but Max wasn’t a good fit for a Confederate spy. He didn’t like the man, but Max simply wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do anything without someone noticing that he’d broken quarantine.
“We’ll check the surveillance tapes,” Alexander said, more to himself than Korbin. “If Williams had outside help, we’ll catch that person visiting him, or possibly even planting the comm unit in his belongings before we entered the tanks.”
Korbin nodded. “That’s a good idea, sir.”
CHAPTER 33
It was anything but a good idea for Alexander to check the surveillance tapes, Korbin realized as she sat down beside him on the bridge, waiting for all hell to break loose. The ship’s surveillance tapes would reveal Max waking up from the tanks after everyone else had passed into a comatose state. Alexander would likely also see Max planting the hacked comm band in Williams’ things. And what about the data drives she’d stolen? Would Alexander follow Max’s every move and somehow uncover those, too? At that point she would be implicated as well. Only she could have recovered those drives from the hab complex before it got trashed and burned to a crisp.
Peripherally, Korbin noted Alexander scowling and taking angry stabs at the holographic keys projected from his control station.
“Something wrong, Captain?”
He shook his head. “The surveillance data is missing. The last recordings are all dated to before we entered the G-tanks for the first time. We don’t have a single recording since then—Stone!”
“Sir?” Stone asked, half turning from his station.
“Are you, or are you not in charge of security on this ship?”
“I am, sir…”
“Then can you please explain to me why we don’t have a single frame of surveillance for the past one hundred and fifty nine days?”
“That’s impossible. I checked and backed up the logs before we entered the tanks.”
“Well check again, because there’s nothing there.”
Silence reigned for a long, breathless moment while Lieutenant Stone double-checked things from his control station. “Shit, they’re gone,” he said. “Backups, too.”
“Then someone deleted them, and there’s no way that could have been Williams.”
“Only a few people have that kind of access,” Stone replied. “We’re talking about one of the bridge crew, or someone else with stolen access—though I don’t know when they would have ever had a chance to get down here, or even to CIC, without one of us noticing. It would have to be someone who’s authorized to be there and who wouldn’t have to explain what they’re doing in a restricted area.”
Alexander let out a growl. “All right, Davorian you are above suspicion, and I’ll be sure to explain why I think so when the time comes. As for the rest of us, I’m going to submit us all into custody, including myself, as soon as we come into docking range of the nearest Alliance vessel. I’m sure the interrogations won’t be pleasant, but we’re out of options at this point. We might be granted a measure of mercy if we go willingly. Hayes—get me Admiral Wilson on the comms. It’s time to reply to his accusations with what we know on our end.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ahh… hold up, Captain,” Davorian said from the helm.
“What is it?” Alexander snapped.
“The nav data appears to also have been erased.”
“What?” Alexander cursed viciously, and Korbin cringed. “What about the backups?”
“Also wiped.”
Another stream of curses blistered out.
Korbin didn’t know how Max had managed to break into all of those systems, but he’d definitely gone too far. If he had been more subtle about things they might have gotten away with pinning it all on Williams. Now the truth was bound to come out. With her history, having been captured by the Confederates, fleet investigators would zero in on her in no time. If Alexander had known about her brief imprisonment in Confederate territory, he probably would have turned her in himself. At this point, all that she would accomplish by waiting to confess was to buy time for herself, but if she turned herself in, fleet investigators would pick through her brain until they found memories and thoughts to incriminate Max, too, and in the end they’d execute her anyway. There was really only one way out. For the greater good.
Korbin unbuckled from her couch and stood up. The ship’s current state of zero-G cruising made it easy. Alexander regarded her with a furrowed brow. Then she pushed off the couch and drew the combat knife from her utility belt. No live-fire weapons were permitted on the bridge, but knives were necessary in case someone needed to cut their way out of their safety harness.
Alexander craned his neck to watch her float away. Then he appeared to notice the silvery glint of the blade in her hand. His eyes flew wide and he lunged against his restraints.
Korbin regarded him with a small, pitying smile before turning to address the rest of the crew. Raising her voice, she said, “Long live the Confederacy!” and then she plunged the knife under her sternum, straight into her heart. The searing heat took her breath away and sent her body into spasms. She was dimly aware of people screaming at each other. Then Alexander appeared floating beside her, his expression frozen somewhere between horror and fury.
“Why?” was all he asked.
Korbin struggled to move her lips. She was about to lose consciousness, and there would be no coming-to after that. “They’re n-ot the enemy,” she belched out with a painful gasp. “We are.”
“Sirena!” he screamed at her, but she was gazing up at the main holo display and the warped pattern of stars around the mouth of the wormhole. The black of space grew, snuffing out the stars and flowing toward her like a living thing until it was rapping with greedy knuckles on the shuttered, starlit windows in her eyes. With a final, shuddering sigh she let the darkness in, and out went the light.
PART THREE: THE LAST WAR
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
—Bertrand Russell
CHAPTER 34
They conducted clean-up under full gravity. Davorian gradually ramped up thrust to avoid splashing the floating globules and balls of Korbin’s blood. Even so, the ship’s cleaning bots took more than an hour to scrub the deck
clean, and Alexander could still see the faded stain of her passing. They’d bagged her body and sent it to the morgue without ceremony.
She was a spy, a traitor, so no tears would be seen to be shed, but that didn’t stop Alexander’s eyes from burning with the threat of them.
He couldn’t understand it. She’d been his right-hand for more than five years! How could she turn on him—on all of them—so easily? Her last words had been clear enough—They’re not the enemy. We are—but that sentiment still didn’t connect to reason in his brain. She had two children back on Earth! He’d met them! She’d betrayed them equally in all of this.
The shocks had kept coming after her act of hari-kiri. The logs weren’t the only thing missing from the Lincoln. While everyone was still reeling from her suicide, Doctor Crespin had reported that all the mission samples were missing from quarantine storage on Blue Deck. Either Korbin had stolen and hidden them, a tactic that was unlikely to yield lasting results—or she’d jettisoned them from the nearest airlock before everyone had entered the G-tanks.
Alexander had Stone and the ship’s master-at-arms investigating, but his gut told him that the samples were floating in vacuum somewhere on the Wonderland side of the Looking Glass. As for the rest of Korbin’s actions—the long-term consequences had yet to be fully measured or felt, but leaking the Lincoln’s mission data to the Confederates could easily precipitate another war once the Confederacy realized just how important Wonderland was.
The flesh around Alexander’s eyes tightened with simmering rage, and he saw the star field narrow to a paper-thin slit. The bridge was silent, everyone going about their tasks with a minimum of interaction and a maximum of introspection.
Hayes broke that silence with an update from the comms station. “Captain, I’ve updated Admiral Wilson with recent developments. We’re still a few light minutes apart, but he’s summoned you for a private meeting. Would you like to take it here, via your HUD, or in a more private setting?”
Alexander considered that. He could feel Korbin’s ghost haunting him from the empty couch beside his. It would be nice to have an excuse to get off the bridge for a while.
“I’ll take the meeting in my quarters, Lieutenant. Davorian, you have the conn. Don’t hesitate to interrupt me if there are any further developments.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Stone—”
“Captain?”
“That goes double for you. We need to know ASAP what else Korbin got up to.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Alexander unbuckled and crawled sideways out of his acceleration couch. A cleaning bot whirred by, still scrubbing at stubborn stains. He stepped over it with a grimace, and waved the elevator open as he approached. On his way up, he focused on taking slow, deep breaths to calm himself. The Confederates had gone too far this time.
As he reached his quarters and breezed through the door, the lights snapped on automatically, bringing the sitting room, wet bar, bed, bathroom, and the adjoining wall of his office into focus. A simulated viewport in the sitting room showed a warped view of stars. A hologram of him and Caty hovered above his nightstand. Alexander’s gaze lingered on Caty’s face as he passed from the living room to his office. He waved open the door and strode straight up to his chair, flopping into it with a sigh.
Half-raising his comm band to his lips, he said, “Call Lieutenant Hayes.”
The call went through and Hayes answered, “Ready captain?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
The holocam on Alexander’s desk came to life and a red recording light winked on. The lights in the room dimmed, and the holocam began recording his expression to grant Admiral Wilson a delayed visual response. Given the two-minute comm latency between the Lincoln and Wilson’s flagship, they would have to take turns speaking, so Alexander settled in to listen to a monologue that was almost sure to be a stern lecture on shipboard security.
Wilson appeared after just a few seconds, his white hair glowing blue in the light of a tactical map projected in the foreground.
“Captain de Leon, I’ve just finished reviewing your report. I’m glad the spy chose to reveal herself, because now you and your ship can join the defensive formation around the Looking Glass without suspicion of your loyalties. That said, I’m also deeply concerned. Your mission has been compromised so thoroughly that we may as well have conducted it jointly with the Confederacy. Had we known that, we could have allowed Confederate access to the wormhole from the start and avoided this entire war.
“Sirena Korbin will go down in history for having single-handedly taken all the significance out of that war. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people who effectively died for nothing. If she hadn’t killed herself, she would have gone through a very public trial and execution. But she must have known that, hence her decision to accelerate the process.
“I’m not sure how you missed noticing a spy in your midst, particularly you, Alexander. She was your executive officer. Then there’s the matter of Lieutenant Williams to discuss, but for now, all of that is the least of our concerns. If there was any negligence on your part or from your fellow officers, I’m sure fleet investigators will uncover it when all of this is over—assuming you don’t die in the fighting.
“The message that was leaked from your ship with Confederate encryption arrived six months ago. It was received and provoked an immediate response from the Confederacy. They went into round-the-clock production of a colony fleet capable of claiming Wonderland for their own. Needless to say, the Alliance has matched their efforts. We’re in a race for our lives right now—quite literally.
After reviewing the data you sent us, the problem has become abundantly clear to both sides. The David Davorian Radiation Belts, provide a tremendous advantage to whoever gets warships through the wormhole first. They’ll find easy picking when enemy ships come through after them with their reactors offline to prevent radiation damage to powered systems.
“Hopefully, given your firsthand experience, you’ll be able to give us some additional insight that will help us to overcome that problem. Over.”
Alexander blinked. He hadn’t thought about that. But if all it took was to get warships on the other end of the Looking Glass to prevent the other side from doing so, then why hadn’t the Alliance already sent theirs? That was the first thing he asked.
Wilson replied four minutes later. “The President has ordered us to hold position and defend the Looking Glass at all costs so that we can escort our colony fleet. The fleet will be going to Wonderland with the president and his ministers, as well as all of the Alliance’s best and brightest citizens. Thanks to those radiation belts, Wonderland is much more defensible than Earth. So much so, that the Alliance has decided to move its seat of government to Wonderland.
“By now you should understand why we’re holding our ground here. The Confederates are here, too, but right now we’re sitting just out of effective laser range with each other. Should they attempt to close the gap, we’ll open fire. Likewise, I’m sure they’ll fire on us if we try to get any closer.
“It’s a stand-off for the time being, and our Intel suggests the Reds are also waiting for their colony fleet to arrive before they make a move.
At the moment we outgun them, but that isn’t expected to last, which is why you’ll be joining our defensive screen immediately. If they try to wrest control of the wormhole from us, even one extra ship could make the difference. We have supply ships waiting to re-arm and re-fuel the Lincoln as soon as she arrives. Over.”
Alexander gaped at the hologram of Admiral Wilson and slowly shook his head. As a captain in the fleet, his brain should have been greedily absorbing tactical and strategic information, but it sounded like all of those decisions had already been made, so all that was left to consider were the personal ramifications.
Wilson had said that Korbin’s treachery meant hundreds of millions had died, and that meant that Caty was almost certainly dead.
Almost four minutes later, Wilson reacted to that request with a grim frown. “There are messages waiting, but not many. Channels of communication were cut soon after the fighting broke out on Earth, but I’ve anticipated your request and located all of the crew’s surviving family members. I’m not sure what will be better for morale at this point—the desire for revenge or, in a few cases, the comfort of knowing that there’s still something left to fight for. I’ll send what messages there are and let you share them at your discretion, Captain. Should any of you choose to correspond with living family members, you will be allowed to do so.
“Since you’ve chosen not to respond to our current tactical situation, I will assume that you have no further input to provide, which means that this conversation has reached its end. I’m sending an updated flight plan to your helmsman along with a tactical map of currently-known ship positions. I encourage you to consult that map with your crew and see what we’re up against.
“Something else—you’ll need to choose a new executive officer. Ordinarily I’d leave that to you, but you’re short-handed as it is with Williams riding in the brig, and there’s a ready candidate that you probably haven’t considered. As a favor to the president, he has requested that you promote Maximilian Carter to the position. Carter was once a Commander himself, so he is the perfect choice, and yes, before you ask, Baker is already here with the fleet, but keep that to yourself. Given our positions relative to the enemy it should be all but impossible for them to intercept this conversation, so they will remain safely unaware of Baker’s location until it’s too late. Were they to locate him now, they might realize we’re going to re-locate the seat of government away from Earth.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 26
