Campbell- The Problem With Bliss

by Richard F. Weyand

“All right. Once you have your secure access and secure account, send me a mail from it and I’ll send you an access code. What else?”

  “Do you have a twenty-four-hour quick reaction force, either in the Marines or the MPs?” Campbell asked.

  “Yes, the MPs have one. We try to get our people out of town before the local police show up when there’s trouble during liberty. It’s usually spacer on spacer, and we’d rather handle that internally.”

  “Great. I need a call transponder for them. Full armed response to my location.”

  “That I can do, too. Anything else?” Rao asked.

  “There’s one more thing you can do for me, Ma’am. You and I have worked together before. You know my dummy act is a farce. But I need you to help me with it. I have no clue who all is involved in this. It could be Langford, or his deputy, or his chief of staff, or your secretary, or the nice lieutenant commander who’s been assigned to me, or some combination of the above. Or it could be none of them. But I need them to think I’m a moron for a while.”

  “Understood, Captain. I can help there. But once they find out who and what you really are, you’re going to be in more than a little danger.”

  “Then they’ll find out I’m more than I seem there as well.”

  Rao gave him a long appraisal.

  “Haven’t slowed down in the last ten years?” Rao asked.

  “No, Ma’am. Faster than ever.”

  “All right. But do be careful.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And, Captain. Bill. It’s good to see you again. I don’t know how I could be so lucky as to have you show up right now, but I’ll take it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. We’ll get it straightened away.”

  Rao returned to her office after her meeting with Campbell.

  “How did your meeting go, Ma’am?”

  “Rita, you know how I’ve said some Sigurdsen staffers are by nature lazy, stupid, and egocentric?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Well, Bill Campbell is exactly the sort I was talking about.”

  Rao went on into her inner office, shaking her head and muttering.

  Getting Started

  Admiral Rao didn’t run Campbell’s requests through her secretary, but contacted the head of the MPs and the IT department directly. When the planetary commander calls you personally with a request, it happens fast.

  The result was that, when Campbell got back from lunch at the Officers Mess, he had messages waiting to contact both the head of the Military Police and the head of Operation’s IT department. Rather than contact them on his compromised terminal, he walked back over to the Planetary Operations Headquarters where he had met with Rao.

  Captain Ramona Karim was in her office when he popped in on her.

  “Captain Campbell. Come in.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Here’s the screamer you requested.”

  Karim put a small device out on her desk for Campbell. He picked it up and looked at it. Standard homer/transmitter, about the size of his thumb. It had a cap over the activation button so it wouldn’t go off accidentally in your pocket.

  “And it’s keyed to me, so if I set this off, your team knows who it is?” Campbell asked.

  “Yes, absolutely. You said you wanted a full, armed response to your location?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What sort of situation are we likely to encounter, Captain?” Karim asked.

  “I and any members of my party may be under attack from multiple assailants, either civilian or military.”

  Karim’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Military? Members of CSF?” Karim asked.

  “Potentially, yes, although I would more expect private citizens. Hired ruffians, actually.”

  “Armed attack?”

  “Potentially. Not necessarily,” Campbell said.

  “All right. That helps us characterize the threat level.”

  “We also need to make sure your team doesn’t shoot me, as I’m likely to be armed as well.”

  “We’ll make sure our response teams all have seen your photo as the protectee. And the duration?” Karim asked.

  “I’ll be leaving the system in eight weeks.”

  “That should be all we need, Captain. Hopefully, you never need to use it.”

  Campbell next checked in with IT. Captain Varg Ikeda was also in his office.

  “Ah, Captain Campbell. Come with me, please.”

  Ikeda led him to the elevators and down into the secure basements of the Operations headquarters. A Marine stood guard over a short dead-end hallway with perhaps a dozen doors along it. Ikeda and Campbell both thumb-swiped and ran their CSF IDs through a scanner in front of the Marine, who checked their faces against his display.

  “Second door on the right, Sirs.”

  Ikeda and Campbell walked down to the second door on the right, at which point the Marine entered his key into his panel, and pushed the release for that door. The lock cycled, and Ikeda and Campbell went into the office. There was a desk and task chair with a single terminal, and two guest chairs.

  Campbell pulled out his small camera and photographed the scanner log on the wall.

  “You probably shouldn’t have a camera in here at all, Sir,” Ikeda said.

  “Under my clearance, it’s allowed.”

  Ikeda raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing more. Campbell surveyed the empty office.

  “This is fine, Captain. Thank you,” Campbell said.

  “And you need this for two months, is that right?”

  “Yes. I’m leaving the system in eight weeks.”

  “All right, then, Sir. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Ikeda left, and Campbell walked over to the desk and set his dispatch bag down on it. He sat down at the terminal and thumb-swiped it, then set his eye to the eyepiece for the retinal scan. The system logged him into a blank secure account for this room. He took a memory chip out of his pocket, loaded the scanner software into the terminal, and set it to scanning.

  He pulled out his electronic sniffer and scanned the entire room. It was clean.

  Campbell sat back down to the terminal. The scan had completed fast. There was nothing to find. The terminal and the secure account were clean.

  He pulled a second chip out of his pocket, loaded the software into the system, and set it to work. He set the timeframe for eight months, three months before the last incursion. This would take a while. The software would be building a map of all the message traffic in Bliss Fleet HQ. He couldn’t actually access the mail contents, – not with this software, anyway – but it would map all the message flows.

  A third memory chip from his pocket contained an org chart generator. He loaded the software, then logged into the Personnel Division subsystem using an override admin authority from Intelligence Division on Sigurdsen. He set the analyzer to building an org chart from the individual records in everyone’s personnel files. This had the advantage of allowing him to backtrack someone’s chain of command over time.

  He sent a message to Admiral Rao giving her the account number for the secure account. Five minutes later, he got a message from her with an access code to her mail log. He started another process in the mail analyzer to track her mails of the last eight months by message number. That would also take a while.

  With those processes running, he headed back over to the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters.

  Campbell was sitting in his office, pretending to work on the accounting records for the Intelligence Division, when Lieutenant Commander Acheson appeared at the door.

  “Sir? I have that Class 2 secure workspace for you.”

  “Excellent, Commander.” Campbell got up from his desk and grabbed his dispatch bag. “Lead on.”

  They went down the elevators to the secure basements of the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters, to a hallway similar to that in the Operations headquarters. They logged in with a Marine there, and were let into an off
ice similar to the one over at Operations.

  “Thank you, Commander. This will do nicely.”

  Acheson left, and Campbell proceeded as before. Setting his scan software running on the terminal, he scanned the entire room with his electronic sniffer. He found one audio bug planted in a wall, as in his townhome. The paint smell of the patch up close was strong. The limited range of the audio pickup meant the recorder was likely in the intelligence headquarters building.

  His scanner also found the secure terminal had been tampered with, and the secure account associated with it had been as well. Given the two-stage security of a thumb-swipe and retinal scan, that was pretty impressive, actually. Once this operation was over and everything cleaned up, Sigurdsen should send some IT geniuses out here to figure out how they did that.

  Campbell knocked off for the day at that point, leaving a little early. Acheson drove him back to the townhouse. It was only half a mile away, but Campbell wanted to keep Acheson engaged and where he could keep an eye on him.

  He thumb-swiped the door pad, and went in. He tossed his dispatch case down on the sofa and sat heavily, as if fatigued by the exertions of a day in the office. He looked over at the lamp on the side table, then over at the other one.

  The lamps had been swapped. The video pickup once more covered the center of the room.

  On Patrol

  The heavy cruisers of Jan’s squadron running picket duty on the northern and southern approaches to Bliss accelerated on a patrol pattern, a great circle. The kept under continuous acceleration to maintain apparent gravity in their crew spaces. That circle was partially outside the published system periphery, but most of it was inside the system periphery. At its closest approach to Bliss, though, that patrol pattern remained outside the inner system envelope, the place the CSF knew was the actual limit on hyperspace transitions into and out of the Bliss system. It took two days to space around that circle.

  The two ships, one on the northern approaches and one on the southern, were out of synch with each other by one day. In this way, at least one ship was always well inside the published system periphery and immune to surprise attack from hyperspace. Outside the inner system envelope, though, it was in position to make a surprise transition to hyperspace and warn the rest of the squadron, patrolling in hyperspace, of an attack on the system.

  Every two days, either ship ended up back outside the published system periphery. When it did, it transitioned into hyperspace and a different heavy cruiser made transition into the system and took picket. Only the flagships did not participate in the picket rotation.

  The end result was that mail to the squadron was possible by sending all mail addressed to the squadron to the picket coming up on rotation. It could only be transferred to the squadron in hyperspace once per day, but that was better than no mail at all.

  It was on the second day since Bill Campbell should have landed on Bliss that Jan Childers received her first mail from him.

  FROM: CAMPBELL

  TO: CHILDERS

  SUBJECT: ARRIVED SAFELY

  Hi, Hon:

  I arrived safely on Bliss. Everyone is really nice. Not going to have much to do here. When you come down for planet leave, we’ll have some fun. Go hit the beach or something.

  Love you.

  Bill

  Childers read the message again and sighed. That message was completely out of character, which meant Bill knew his local account had been compromised. Everything should therefore be read the opposite. Bliss is not safe, everyone is not nice, he was up to his armpits in work, planet leave would be no fun, and if he hit anything – or anybody – it certainly wouldn’t be the beach.

  Childers hoped he took care of himself. She didn’t know much about what he did, but she had caught whiffs of it over the years. She hoped he wasn’t in too deep on this one.

  Lines of Inquiry

  Wednesday, his second full day on Bliss, Campbell had Acheson drop him off at the Planetary Operations Headquarters, and told him he was done with him for the day. Campbell went down to his secure office in the basement. He checked in with the Marine as before.

  His software had completed running overnight, but, before checking on the results of that, he composed a list of his possible lines of inquiry.

  1) The spread of knowledge of Rao’s upcoming exercises, with particular emphasis on anything more than two months prior to the incursion, which would give time for the incursion to be mounted.

  2) The general interconnectedness of people on the base by mail messages, looking for unusual combinations.

  3) Consulate parties, consulate funding, consulate contacts from/to CSF personnel.

  4) The bugging of his Class 4 secure townhouse. When was it scanned? By whom? Any other logged access?

  5) The location of the recorders for the bugs in his townhouse. One of the other townhouses?

  6) The swapping of the lamps in his townhouse. When was that done? By whom?

  7) The tampering with his Class 3 secure terminal in his office, and his local account.

  8) The tampering with the Class 2 secure terminal in the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters.

  9) The bugging of the Class 2 secure workspace in the Planetary Intelligence Headquarters.

  10) The location of the recorder for the bug in the Class 2 secure workspace. Inside the intelligence building?

  It was a long list, but he didn’t have to hit on all of them, or even a majority. A single hit could lead him into the web of the group.

  At the same time, he had to be careful not to let them know he was doing anything that threatened them. Not until he was ready, anyway. The risk was that they would implement their bug-out strategy, whatever it was, and the ringleaders would escape the net. He might grab the small fry, but the ringleaders would get away.

  And he wanted the ringleaders.

  Campbell loaded the videos of his living room and bedroom during the day yesterday. It only went on with motion, so he didn’t have to wait long to see what happened. A maid came into the townhouse through the front door, carrying linens and a vacuum cleaner. She put the extra linens in the linen closet in the bedroom and looked for dirty linens in the hamper in the linen closet. She then vacuumed the bedroom.

  When she moved to vacuuming the living room, she tried to turn on the lights next to the sofa. She reached up under the shade of one lamp and couldn’t find the knob. She looked up under the shade and saw that the knob was on the opposite side from the sofa. She then checked the other lamp, and the knob was also on the other side from the sofa.

  She turned off the vacuum, unplugged the lamps, and swapped them. She plugged them in again, turned them on, and vacuumed the room. That done, she turned out the lights, collected her vacuum, and left.

  Damn, that was slick, Campbell thought. He still had no idea if the maid had been in on it, if a higher had given her instructions, or if it was pure dumb luck she had reset their video camera for them.

  He opened an empty page on the secure terminal, and started generating a suspect list.

  Lieutenant Commander Kyle Acheson. What better place to put an inside guy, if you had authority over assignments, than as aide to the Inspector?

  Commander Tristan Pascal, the too inquisitive officer aboard the Hannibal.

  The clueless Rear Admiral Sumit Langford, and any of his immediate staff.

  To be fair, Admiral Mary Rao’s staff, who certainly had access to the exercise information first.

  The maid, and her chain of command in housekeeping.

  Whoever assigned the furniture to his townhouse, and his chain of command in housekeeping.

  Whoever patches plaster in Flag Row townhouses, and his chain of command, because whoever buried the audio pickups had the exact matching paint.

  Whoever swept the townhouse, and his chain of command.

  Whoever swept the Class 2 secure workspace, and his chain of command.

  The IT guy who set up the terminal in his office, and his chain of co
mmand.

  The IT guy who set up the secure terminal in the Class 2 secure workspace, and his chain of command.

  Whoever patches plaster in the Intelligence headquarters, because whoever buried the audio pickup had the exact matching paint.

  Campbell turned to his org chart analyzer. It had built a complete org chart for the Bliss Fleet HQ, including direct reports, temporary assignments, and project assignments, and allowed those to be walked back in time. He marked each of his suspects on the chart, where he knew them, and guessed at the ones he didn’t know, marking them in a different color. He rotated the chart around, looking for convergences.

  On a hunch, he added registered companions to the chart, and its complexity deepened, with cross-connections between people all over the chart. No fraternization in the chain of command, so none of those connections were vertical, but they were potential connections between chains of command that were otherwise unrelated. He rotated the chart again, looking for convergences of multiple suspect branches into a single thread or node.

  He marked some promising connections for future study, then switched to the mail analysis. This diagram was a riot of connections, each marked with the number of mail messages across it. He asked the program to highlight unusual repeated connections. Many of these were in the form of stars, out and back from one person to many in different places in the organization.

  There were a number of approved organizations on base that sent out meeting announcements and the like. Duplicate bridge nights, poker games, an astronomy club, clubs for people from various Commonwealth planets – all the different ways people organized themselves in their personal time. He highlighted each such star in turn, and asked the program to tentatively identify each. The center of the star was usually the contact person listed for the group as the group contact or leader, so that wasn’t hard. He marked stars worthy of further investigation and moved on.