Campbell- The Problem With Bliss

by Richard F. Weyand

  All that had been pulled together, and the view had changed. Several conspirators had been added to the view. Also, a number of other suspects had been dropped from the view.

  Campbell looked at the correlation histogram. When running a correlation analysis, you got different values of probability for various relationships. The histogram was a chart of the number of relationships at each level of probability. There was usually a dip in this chart. Above this value you had high correlation, or high probability, and those connections were probably meaningful. Then there was a dip. If you set the threshold below the value of the dip, you pulled in all sorts of relationships with low enough probability that you were probably pulling people into the correlation that didn’t belong there.

  The histogram had a dip at eighty percent or so, but there were a lot of solid correlations running up into the nineties. The selection threshold right now was at eighty percent, as the system defaulted to the bottom of the dip. In Campbell’s experience, the bottom of the dip was too low. He moved the threshold up to eighty-five percent, about halfway up the slope out of the dip.

  He looked at the dataset now. Three more people in the Housekeeping department. Looking at them, they had come in to the department after the scaffolding accident that killed Jukai Clark. They were replacements for people who transferred out of the department when Vilis Schenk became head of Housekeeping. Two of these three were assigned to perform the security scans on Flag Row townhouses and Intelligence Division offices and secure workspaces. OK, that made sense. What about the third guy? He was the guy who did minor wall repairs, like spackling and touch-up painting and, apparently, planting audio pickups. That being part-time at best, he also took care of furniture in the furnished apartments.

  OK, so Clark dies, Schenk takes over, and some people don’t care for him. They leave, and he brings in his own people and assigns them the tasks of taking care of bugging interesting places and ignoring bugs they find when scanning. That explained a lot.

  Wait a minute. What’s this link? One of the guys who left Housekeeping, Lieutenant Christopher Sobol, had been through Comm School. He went over to the Communications Center and became the night guy there, because nobody ever wants third shift. That was one of Campbell’s suspects. So one of the guys who left Housekeeping was Schenk’s guy, and transferred to the Communications Center under cover of the others leaving. Pretty slick.

  What was this batch of links here? Oh, links to John Schmitt’s other assignments, under those three other names. But what would link to them?

  Schenk did, for one. He was previously posted to Sigurdsen when John Schmitt, under another alias, had been the naval attaché at the Duval embassy on Jablonka. They had thought Schmitt was involved in some incidents at Sigurdsen, and declared him persona non grata in the Commonwealth. And when John Schmitt showed up on Bliss, Schenk transferred here from Sigurdsen. Jukai Clark had been happy to pick up someone with Sigurdsen experience. Poor bastard. It had cost him his life.

  Another connection was a weird one. Who was this woman? Petty Officer First Class Susan Todaro. She had also been on the same planet at the same time as one of Schmitt’s prior assignments. She was born on Duval. What were these two links? She had been a prior listed companion with Mona Singh, and she had gone to high school on Duval with Veronica Kinley. They actually took the Exam on the same day and became Commonwealth citizens together. Kinley had gone to OCS, but Todaro had come up through the enlisted ranks. What was her current assignment? She was the assistant on third shift at the Communications Center, under Lieutenant Sobol. So Sobol didn’t have to wait for his underling to go the necessary or be out of the room when he wanted to do something for the conspiracy. They were both in on it.

  And this link? Susan Todaro was listed companions with Lieutenant Andon Kuang, the computer technician who installed the dummy drivers on the secure terminals in the Intelligence Division. He had seen her before, and her Duval origins, when he had found Kuang, but he hadn’t tracked back her prior listed companions. Probably a personal blindness there. Campbell had only had one listed companion, and, as far as he was concerned, he hoped it stayed that way. The correlator had looked, though, and found the connection.

  Another point there. Usually – not always, but usually – people with same-sex listed companions stuck with same-sex listed companions, and people with opposite-sex listed companions stuck with opposite-sex listed companions, across multiple relationships. People changed listed companions, but they usually stuck with the same sex across different relationships. The true bisexual, who can have a relationship deep enough to list as companions with either sex, was rare, in Campbell’s experience. Which suggested Todaro was a Duval plant all the way back to her taking the Exam, and her relationships were a means to an end.

  The last link to one of Schmitt’s prior assignments was a familiar one. Lieutenant Commander Kyle Acheson.

  So it was Schmitt, Schenk, and Todaro who headed up this whole thing. Any of the three could be the ring leader, but it didn’t matter.

  They were all going down. If he failed, Durand would send someone else. Or a bunch of someone elses.

  Campbell saved the current view in the secure account. He wrapped up the full dataset, including the correlation engine results, with all his interview notes, into a message directly to Vice Admiral Jake Durand, encrypted it, marked it Eyes Only, then re-encrypted it. Once again, the listed sender would be this secure terminal account, not his compromised local account, and any return message would come to this terminal only. He again included no indication in the message or its header that it came from him, but Durand would know.

  Campbell spent Sunday morning in the gym, then walked over to the Planetary Operations Headquarters. He opened up the view of the correlation engine results, and just drank it in. How could he take this group down to maximum effect?

  First thing, he wanted to nab everybody, and not let any of them get off planet. Schmitt had been a problem before, and would likely turn up again. The same for Schenk and Todaro, who looked like they were career agents for Duval. The other CSF personnel they had subverted were much smaller fish.

  A bonus, if he could get it, would be to feed false information into the pipeline. Which meant Schmitt had to be last. He would be the transferor of data to Duval, in the diplomatic pouch, which was actually an encrypted electronic transmission through the mail system. If Campbell could round up the CSF people first, without tipping off Schmitt, then he might be able to give false intelligence to Schmitt that would encourage Duval to do something rash.

  Then he would deal with Schmitt.

  Rounding up the CSF people on base wouldn’t be easy either. They were so interconnected, it almost had to be a simultaneous operation. And he had to get Schmitt’s contact before he could transmit to Schmitt that the jig was up. Which meant he had to know who Schmitt’s contact was.

  The communications taps he had put on the group’s communications should turn something up sooner or later, but they were being quiet right now. Maybe Campbell being around had them a little spooked. Enough to get quiet, but not enough to be communicating emergency messages.

  All that, and he would like to get Jan off base while she was on planet. He couldn’t be sure this wouldn’t all blow up while she was here, and he didn’t want to be distracted by that threat.

  Campbell started looking at resort spots on Bliss. I mean, you have a whole planet here. There should be some nice places for some vacation time, right?

  He also made an appointment to meet with Admiral Rao the next morning at 08:00, in the Class 1 secure conference room.

  Briefing

  “Ma’am, I have Captain Jessen for you.”

  “Excellent. Put him through here, would you, please?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Childers was in the admiral’s ready room next to the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser CSS Patryk Mazur, on the way to Bliss orbit. Jessen, by contrast, was in the small captain’s ready room on th
e destroyer CSS Whittier, heading out from Bliss for two weeks of exercises against the Red Navy commanded by Senior Captain Brian Dahl aboard the CSS Donal McNee. They would, for a time, be near each other as they passed in opposite directions, which would reduce time lags in their conversation.

  Jessen’s image appeared on the display in Childers’ ready room.

  “Good morning, Admiral.”

  “Good morning, Captain. I wanted to talk to you about the last incursion and your role in it. You managed to chase them off, and I thought I would hear directly from you how you did that.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jessen said. “First, I have to admit I’m something of a fan of yours. I’ve read through The Science Of Surprise several times. One of the points that struck me was the idea of exercising your command in maneuvers and strategies that were unexpected, so it would be easier to convince an enemy commander he was seeing something other than what he was actually seeing. One thing you pointed out as particularly useful was the ability to appear to be a ship of a different class.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “When I was given command of the second division of Captain Carruthers destroyer squadron, I began a program of planning and exercising certain unusual maneuvers, and one of them was pretending to be bigger than we were.”

  “That’s usually pretty easy for one class up or down, Captain,” Childers said, “but is much harder for two classes up or down, especially at anything other than extreme range.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. That’s why we practiced. We found we could make the destroyers look like heavy cruisers, even at medium range, if we were willing to take a few chances. For short periods of time, it wasn’t a problem, but extended over hours, it would have pretty good odds of destroying the power plant.”

  “That’s a pretty extreme maneuver.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jessen said. “We tucked it away in our bag of tricks and left it there. Then came the exercises. And I found myself with the entire destroyer squadron, because Captain Carruthers was on sick leave planetside.”

  “But first division had not practiced those maneuvers. Pretending to be heavy cruisers.”

  “No, Ma’am. So when the incursion came, I had to decide what do we do now. We have Commonwealth civilians and infrastructure to protect, but we have no chance against light cruisers. They have a two light-second reach on us with their beam weapons, and there was no way we could get inside our reach of them before being destroyed. We plotted it to be sure, but by the time we could reach the outer envelope and hyperspace transition, they would already be past us.”

  “An unenviable position to be in,” Childers said.

  “Yes, Ma’am. So I thought maybe we could do something unusual to convince the enemy commander he was seeing something other than eight destroyers. Second division pretended to be heavy cruisers pretending to be destroyers. First division acted as our normal destroyer complement. I delayed putting on the disguise as long as I could, to minimize the time we were endangering the power plants, but, in the end, we lost two destroyers anyway. We didn’t lose any spacers, thanks to some pretty heroic efforts in the engine room of the Elmhurst, but the ships themselves were junk.”

  “Why did using that disguise convince the enemy commander, Captain? Why did he fall for it?”

  “There were several reasons, I think, Ma’am,” Jessen said. “First is that we were coming out to meet him at all. We were obviously a hopelessly outclassed force, but we were not shying from the battle. Now, you know and I know that’s the CSF’s normal response to a threat to Commonwealth citizens and infrastructure. You fight the battle with what you have. You try to hurt the enemy as badly as you can. Depending on the hostile commander, he may or may not know that.

  “Second is that we held our acceleration to 1.4 gravities. We were coming out to meet him, but at heavy cruiser acceleration rates. There’s no need to do that with destroyers.

  “Third, there were four actual destroyers with us that he could see. Their emissions and ours were distinctly different, because we were pushing those power plants so hard. So we didn’t look like the destroyers he could see. He saw two different kinds of ship coming toward him.

  “Fourth is that, were those ships destroyers, we would be pushing our power plants so hard as to blow them up or turn them to scrap. Who practices that kind of maneuver such that they could pull it off in a real combat situation?

  “Finally, I was relying on the fact that we have more depth than they do. His orders likely included an admonition against taking chances. If he was doubtful about the outcome, go back home in one piece rather than roll the dice.”

  “Which do you think ruled the day, Captain?”

  “I think they all factored in, Ma’am, but I believe four was most important. Who would practice a maneuver sure to destroy his ships if it wasn’t done just right, or maybe even if it was? Who would take that risk?”

  “Easy answer, Captain,” Childers said. “A CSF commander with no choice who had the only force in a position to respond.”

  “CSS Zhanshu. Yes, Ma’am.”

  Childers raised an eyebrow and Jessen laughed.

  “I told you, I’m something of a fan of yours, Ma’am. ‘Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.’ ”

  “As it was, you almost did, Captain. Pay its price, that is.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Sun Tzu wasn’t kidding. We got lucky. Then again, Seneca wasn’t kidding either.”

  “ ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’ “

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Disclosure

  Campbell stopped through the office in the Planetary Intelligence Center early Monday morning. It was just after 07:00, but Acheson was there. Just arriving, apparently.

  “Good morning, Sir,” Acheson said.

  “Good morning, Commander. I just stopped in to tell you I’m taking several days off. My wife is coming down from her ship for planet leave, and we’re going to take some time for a trip into the mountains. Get a cabin for a few days. So I won’t be needing you until at least Thursday, more likely Friday. Thought I’d let you know.”

  “Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

  “No problem, Commander. See you later.”

  Campbell walked over to the Planetary Operations Center and went directly to the Class 1 secure conference room in the basement. He was a bit early. Admiral Rao walked in on time.

  “Good morning, Captain. More to report?” Rao asked.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Proceed, Captain.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Campbell gathered his thoughts. “I now know with more certainty who the players in this espionage ring are. I still have no evidence to support a conviction, but I hope to turn that up in a couple of weeks. I now know, I think, how the two murders were committed, and who the guilty parties are. Once again, I have no evidence to support a conviction, and, with regard to the murders, I probably never will. But the guilty parties will come up on other capital charges.”

  “Good,” Rao said with satisfaction.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I have three goals now. To secure evidence sufficient for a conviction under the CSF military code of justice, to round up all the players without the principals scurrying sway, and, if I can, to feed false information into the pipeline before we round them up.”

  “Get Duval to do something stupid.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Campbell said. “Teaching them a lesson would be good. Not what the diplomats like, perhaps, but CSF has its own priorities.”

  “As do I, Captain. I like it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Toward that end, you might start talking in your office about holding another set of exercises once the training team and Admiral Childer’s squadron have moved on. Make sure they’re truly up to snuff. That sort of thing. A repeat of before.”

  “A repeat, Captain? Leaving Bliss-6 essentially uncovered?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. After all, it worked out for us last time. And my
understanding is that, after the current training, you can cover Bliss-6 from this side of the system. It could be a nasty surprise.”

  “I’ll be talking to Admiral Childers about that sometime during the next two weeks. If so, then I like the plan.”

  Rear Admiral Jan Childers got off the shuttle to find that Bill Campbell was not there waiting. Instead, an Operations Division ground car sporting two-star fender flags waited for her.

  “Admiral Childers?” the driver, a lieutenant commander, asked.

  “Yes, I’m Childers.”

  “If you would come with me, Ma’am.”

  “Certainly, Commander. Where are we bound?”

  “To a meeting with Admiral Rao, Ma’am.”

  Jan got into the car for the drive to the Planetary Operations Building. Curiouser and curiouser.

  The lieutenant commander parked the car in a reserved spot at the front door, let Childers out of the car, and led her into the building.

  “This way, Ma’am.”

  He led her past the front desk to the elevators, and, once in a car, pushed the button for one of the basements. Childers raised an eyebrow, but made no comment. They walked down a corridor to a Class 1 secure conference room, where she logged in with the Marine on guard.

  “Thank you, Commander,” Childers said.

  “You’re welcome, Ma’am.”

  Rao and Campbell stood when Childers came into the room.

  “Admiral Childers reporting arrival, Ma’am,” Childers said to Rao and saluted. Rao returned her salute.

  “Welcome to Bliss Fleet HQ, Admiral Childers. I understand you have a briefing this morning with Captain Campbell here” – she said that with a wink – “otherwise, I’d like to get a briefing from you on the status of your training efforts once Captain Dahl has had a chance to run them around a bit over the next two weeks.”

  “Certainly, Ma’am.”

  “All right, then. Admiral, Captain, I’ll see you both later.”