Campbell- The Problem With Bliss

by Richard F. Weyand

  That usually also put the base near the planetary capital, the early settlers having the same desire for moderate weather given a clean-slate choice. The reduced need for shelter from the weather, allowing more effort and energy to be spent on getting food production under way, made it a lot easier for a new colony to succeed.

  So it was on Bliss, with the Bliss Fleet HQ located several miles outside of Joy, the planetary capital.

  “Here we are, Sir.”

  Acheson pulled the car to the curb in front of an anonymous townhouse in a row of anonymous townhouses. The unit number was prominently displayed next to the door of each to assist telling them apart. They retrieved Campbell’s luggage from the trunk and walked up the short walk.

  “It should open to your swipe, Sir,” Acheson said.

  Campbell swiped his thumb on the door pad and the door unlocked.

  “So far so good,” Campbell said.

  They walked on into the townhouse, furnished in what Campbell called ‘CSF Modern.’

  “Yep. CSF-issue flag townhouse, one each,” Campbell said.

  “Is everything all right, Sir?”

  “This is fine, Commander. Is the house a Class 4 secure facility?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Acheson answered.

  “And my assigned office in Intelligence Division?”

  “That’s a Class 3 secure facility, Sir.”

  “I’ll need a Class 2 workspace, keyed to me only,” Campbell said.

  “I’ll see if I can get that set up, Sir.”

  “Excellent. Until tomorrow, then, Commander?”

  “Yes, Sir. The Officers Mess is just across the street. I’ll send you those appointment times, and I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  Acheson saluted and left.

  Acheson had left his luggage in the bedroom. Campbell thumb-swiped the lock of his equipment case, pulled out his electronic sniffer, and started scanning the townhouse. Every room, every single square inch. Walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, appliances. Everything.

  As a Class 4 secure facility, it should have been scanned before being reassigned. Which, with an active espionage ring on base, meant absolutely nothing.

  He found tiny audio pickups in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the living room, plastered into small holes in the wall with a thin coat of paint over them. There was a faint paint smell from the patches, indicating they had been placed recently, within the past week. He also found a video pickup, which was much harder to hide, worked into the decorative pattern on the base of a lamp in the living room and set at forty-five degrees off center, to cover the center of the room.

  He pretended not to notice them as he scanned, leaving them in place and continuing his scanning as if he missed them.

  Off the kitchen, there was a back exit, likely to meet fire codes more than anything else. He opened the door and checked the lock. It did not respond to his thumb-swipe, so he could not lock or unlock the back door from outside. He looked out the back door and, other than a small stoop, there was no sidewalk, just a small back yard with a board fence around it.

  Campbell put the electronic sniffer back in his equipment case and checked the time. Almost 19:00. It had taken three hours to scan the entire townhouse. He walked across the street to the Officers Mess for dinner.

  Dinner in the Officers Mess was a solitary affair. Unlike on ship, in which the mess was cramped enough to force camaraderie, the mess on planet was large and spacious, and he ate alone. Left with his thoughts, he considered the way forward.

  The people who had bugged the townhouse had done him the favor of giving him several places to start. That they weren’t smart enough to realize that the disadvantage of giving him so many avenues of investigation greatly outweighed the likely intelligence value of anything they would get from the pickups was a good sign. They were either not very good at this game, or they were seriously underestimating him. Perhaps they had had free rein here so long, they were simply over-confident.

  One obvious line of inquiry was who had sniffed his apartment, and when. Were they a volunteer, or assigned? When had the cleaning been done, and by whom? It should have been done before the sniffing. Was it? If not, who authorized the exception? When had the furniture been changed? Was that lamp new? Where was the furniture inventoried, and who was in charge? Who worked there?

  Where was the recorder for those limited-range pickups? Were other townhouses in Flag Row unoccupied at the moment? That was the obvious place to check. They would want to be out of the weather, because, like many tropical locations near the ocean, it rained for about a half-hour every morning here.

  On the broader question, who had known about the exercises far enough in advance for the incursion force to assemble and get here? Mail ran on fast courier ships, so it would likely be two weeks transit for the intelligence to get to the other end, another week to assemble a force, and a month’s sailing to Bliss from the most likely candidates. Who had known two months in advance of Admiral Rao’s plans for exercises?

  And espionage is expensive. Getting people to risk their skins for a foreign power required cash. Such rings were usually run out of a foreign consulate. Which consulates had been getting larger-than-usual funding? Which consulate’s naval attaché was most friendly with CSF people? Which consulate had the best and most frequent parties, a favorite way of making seemingly innocuous contact with non-consulate folks?

  In the meantime, he could try another little trick. See if he was the only person, as required by Class 4 secure facility rules, to have access to his townhouse.

  Returning to the townhouse, Campbell surveyed the living room. The couch was under the front windows, with two chairs facing it. He sat on the sofa, looking back into the apartment

  “Oh, my. This is kind of dreary. Maybe moving things around would help.”

  He moved the two chairs to the side walls, and swung the sofa, one end at a time, around to face the windows from the inside wall of the townhouse. He moved the side tables of the sofa from under the windows to the back wall to be on either side of the sofa again.

  He sat on the sofa, now facing the windows and the street outside through the opened drapes.

  “Well, that’s certainly better.”

  When moving the side tables and the lamps to either side of the now-rotated sofa, the lamps had been rotated 180 degrees as well. The video pickup now faced at forty-five degrees toward the side wall.

  And when moving them, Campbell had nicked the edge of the wood base on one of the lamps with his thumbnail. A tiny indention, but it meant he could now tell the two identical lamps apart.

  With the video pickup now facing the side wall, Campbell set his own video pickups and motion detectors in the townhouse, and synched them in pairs.

  Checking In

  Lieutenant Commander Acheson was waiting in the car in front of the townhouse at 07:00, per his mail of the evening before. Campbell’s meetings with Rear Admiral Sumit Langford and Admiral Mary Rao were at 08:00 and 10:00 respectively. Campbell had risen at 06:00, and had breakfast in the Officers Mess by the time Acheson arrived.

  “Good morning, Sir,” Acheson said as he held the rear door of the ground car for Campbell.

  “Good morning, Commander. Thank you.”

  Acheson resumed the driver’s seat and they were on their way.

  “I thought I would take you to your office first, Sir, if that’s all right with you. I’m still working on getting you a Class 2 Secure workspace.”

  “That’s fine, Commander.”

  They pulled up in front of the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters. Acheson handed the car off to a lieutenant acting as valet this morning and accompanied Campbell into the building. After signing in at the front desk – a requirement for his first trip to the building – they took the elevator to the top floor.

  Acheson showed him down the hall to an office on the executive floor.

  “This is it, Sir. This is a Class 3
secure office.”

  Intelligence division regulation office, one each. Yep.

  “This is fine, Commander.”

  “And I’m right next door, Sir, if you need anything. Admiral Langford’s office is down the hall, in that direction, and at 09:40 I’ll be here to take you to the meeting with Admiral Rao.”

  “Thank you, Commander. That will be fine.”

  Acheson let himself out and Campbell put his dispatch bag down on the desk. Sitting down at the desk, he thumb-swiped the terminal and got into his empty local account in the base intelligence system computers. So far, so good.

  He withdrew a memory chip from his pocket and inserted it into the terminal. The system ran checks on the software on the chip and pronounced it had passed, which it should, since it was issued by Intelligence Division on Sigurdsen. At the same time, this was a software package not everyone had, to put it mildly. Campbell loaded the software and set it to running, then placed a call to Admiral Rao’s secretary.

  “Admiral Rao’s office. Lieutenant Commander Allyn speaking.”

  “Commander, this is Captain Campbell. I have an appointment with Admiral Rao at 10:00.”

  “Yes, Captain. How may I help you?”

  “Do you think we could hold that meeting in a Class 1 secure conference room over there?”

  “Why, certainly, Captain, if you wish. I’ll arrange that for you.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  The problem was, Bill Campbell knew Mary Rao. Their paths had crossed at Sigurdsen when he was a young lieutenant in the Intelligence Division and she was a captain taking a turn as planetary tactical officer. His dumb-bunny act was going nowhere with her.

  At 08:00, Bill Campbell knocked on the office doorframe of the planetary intelligence chief, Rear Admiral Sumit Langford. His door was open.

  “Ah, Captain Campbell. Come in, come in. Have a seat.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Campbell walked over to Langford’s desk, they shook hands, and Campbell sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk.

  “Welcome to Bliss, Captain. Did you have a good transit?”

  “From Meili? Yes, Sir. Lots of free time. Now it’s back to work.” Campbell sighed, as if he much preferred the stir-crazy inactivity of a hyperspace transit to being on planet and getting to do his job.

  “Yes, though there won’t be much work here for you, I’m afraid. Bliss is pretty quiet. Always has been.”

  My God, does he really believe that? Campbell thought. Aloud he said, “Well, that’s good news, Sir. I heard some stuff about incursions and such, and I hoped it wasn’t going to be dangerous here.”

  Langford snorted. “Admiral Rao moved her forces out of position for some fool exercises, and guess what? Some Outer Colony decided to take advantage. They probably had a force sitting out there in hyperspace waiting for an opening, and when one of their freighters transitioned out they told them about it. Rao would have been in serious trouble if not for a destroyer captain who had a lot more guts than brains. As it is, she lost two ships.”

  “Wow. That’s quite a story.”

  “But that’s about it for excitement in Bliss. Admiral Rao is now keeping her ships where they can do the most good, and there hasn’t been an incursion since. So not much going on.”

  “Well, that’s good. And I don’t mind being lazy when I can.” Campbell stifled a yawn. “All this getting up early and running around all the time wears on you.”

  “But you’re here for two months, I understand.”

  “Well, that’s my transportation more than anything. I came into the system with Admiral Childers’ squadron, and I’ll leave the system with Admiral Childers’ squadron, so my schedule is of necessity tied to hers. I don’t have two months’ of work to do. Not even close.”

  “Ah, I see,” Langford said. “I thought this was going to be a major inspection, what with that two-month timeframe.”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s more of an accounting trip, actually. That’s my specialty. Accounting. The rest of the time I’ll probably spend on the beach.”

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you while you’re here, Captain, please let me know.”

  “Will do, Sir, but most of my work time will be spent on the computer. When I come into the office, that is.”

  Back in his office, Bill checked the progress of his software. It had completed its thorough scan of his terminal and account. And the results were pretty much what he figured.

  He thought back to the conversation with Langford. The theory the incursion force was waiting in hyperspace for an opportunity, and came in when a freighter told them Rao’s forces were out of position, didn’t stand scrutiny.

  Ships only carried so much reaction mass and supplies. Sitting in hyperspace was going to use lots of both, because you couldn’t sit there in zero-g all the time. It was too hard on the crews. So you had to be accelerating on a patrol pattern, usually a big circle, and that used reaction mass. The other option was to sit stationary, spinning the ship for apparent gravity, but that delayed your response time. And the crew is still going to have to eat. After a month’s transit to get here, and looking at a month’s transit to get back, there wasn’t much margin left on reaction mass and supplies even if you doubled up on the ship’s container racks.

  Of course, you could bring a freighter along for re-supply, but there had been no freighter hyperspace transition sighted out to the sensor limits, and Campbell had never heard of anyone doing resupply in hyperspace. Cargo shuttles didn’t have hyperspace generators, for one thing. Leave the envelope of the ship, and poof.

  No, he continued to think it was a counter-intelligence failure, and the bugs in his townhouse and the tampering with his terminal and local account confirmed it.

  Rear Admiral Langford’s chief of staff, Captain Vasia Haber, poked her head into her boss’s office.

  “Is he going to be any trouble?” she asked.

  “Who? Campbell? No, he’s a Sigurdsen poof.”

  “But he’s listed companions with Admiral Childers.”

  “So?”

  “She has the reputation of being really competent and smart.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Opposites attract. The guy’s an empty uniform.”

  At 09:40, Acheson came by to pick up Campbell for his 10:00 with Admiral Rao. They drove over to the Planetary Operations Headquarters in silence, Campbell lost in his thoughts.

  “Hello. I’m Captain Campbell. I’m here for my 10:00 appointment with Admiral Rao,” Campbell said to the lieutenant commander in the outer office.

  “Yes, Captain. Just a moment,” Rita Allyn said. She pushed the intercom button on her desk unit. “Ma’am, Captain Campbell is here.”

  The door to the inner office opened, and Admiral Rao came out into the outer office.

  “Admiral Rao. It’s good to meet you, Ma’am,” Campbell said immediately.

  Rao raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. “Rita, can you show us to that Class 1 secure conference room, please?”

  “Of course, Admiral. This way please.”

  Allyn led them to the elevators down into the basements. She showed them to a secure conference room, and then departed. Rao and Campbell both thumb-swiped and ran their CSF IDs through a scanner in front of the Marine guarding the door, who checked their faces against his display before he unlocked the door. Once inside, Campbell pulled a small camera from his pocket and photographed the scanning log on the wall before they were seated.

  “All right, Captain. You can drop the dummy disguise. I know better. What’s going on?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. To get right to it, Bliss has an active espionage ring operational here at headquarters. I don’t know who’s in it yet. About the only thing I can say for sure is you and I aren’t part of it.”

  “I wondered myself, after the incursion during my exercises. But it was more of a hunch. Admiral Langford thinks it was either Murphy’s Law or perhaps they were awaiti
ng an opportunity in hyperspace. How are you so sure it’s an espionage ring?”

  “Well, I wasn’t, initially, Ma’am. I mean, that’s the first thing I think when I see something like the timing of that incursion. Current Intelligence Division leadership doesn’t believe in coincidences, and I find myself inclined in the same direction. I also know enough about ship operations to know that ‘hiding in hyperspace’ thing isn’t as easy as some staff types might think. But they did me the favor of proving it by planting pickups in my supposedly Class 4 secure townhouse and tampering with my Class 3 secure office terminal and local computer account.”

  “Really. How can they even do that?” Rao asked. “I thought the procedures were designed to prevent that.”

  “By any single person, yes, Ma’am. By a group of people who control multiple parts of the process, it’s possible. It gets harder and harder as you move from Class 4 to Class 1, which is why I think this room might – might, that is – be secure. If not, it will give me a much smaller pool to investigate. It could also have become part of the way things work here. Some people may not even know they’re not following procedures. They’re simply doing what they’ve been told to do by higher. It depends on who is involved, and at what level.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “I need a Class 2 secure workspace, which is basically a Class 1 secure facility with a network connection. I am going to be doing a lot of the investigation by looking at message traffic and the like. I want a Class 2 workspace here, under your control, so I can have some confidence in it. I also asked for a Class 2 secure workspace over in intelligence, and they’re having some trouble coming up with one. I think they’re trying to figure out how to compromise it before they give it to me.”

  “OK, that I can do. What else?” Rao asked.

  “I need access to your mail log, so I can track the information on the exercises.”