“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes, Captain! I mean, no, Captain! If there were any other worms, we’d have found them. I’d bet my life on it.”
Desjani’s lips curled upward at the edges in a humorless smile. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. Make certain that worm is completely eliminated and keep looking for other threats in our systems. Notify me when you and the chief engineer feel comfortable with restarting the power core.”
“Yes, Captain. Estimated time is another fifteen minutes.”
She slumped back in her command seat, then looked around the bridge. “At ease, everyone. It’ll be another fifteen minutes. Be ready to hit the deck running when the power comes back on.”
Geary stared at the nearest bulkhead, lacking the welcome distractions of dealing with the immediate problems Desjani and her crew had to address. “We have to find the people responsible for this,” he finally muttered to Desjani out of frustration. “This time they’ve succeeded in destroying one of our ships.”
“But why
Lorica
?” Desjani asked in a very quiet voice. “Do you have any idea?”
“Yeah.” Commander Gaes,
Lorica
’s commanding officer, had been the one to warn him about the first worm in the fleet. She’d known something, and apparently that something had been too much for whoever was behind the worms.
Desjani nodded, watching Geary. “Gaes went with Falco, but since
Lorica
rejoined the fleet, she’s been a supporter of yours. Her contacts with dissident officers must have been useful to you.”
“They were. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to think so.”
“We’ll get the ones responsible for this, Captain Geary,” Desjani promised. “Someone will know who did it and they’ll surely talk now.”
He wasn’t so certain of that. Worms designed to directly destroy Alliance ships would have aroused protests if knowledge of them had been spread to more than a very few people, and those few people were now aware that exposing themselves would guarantee firing squads.
They waited silently after that. With everything except emergency systems down, the few working lights dim, the bridge began to feel claustrophobic. Geary wondered if the temperature was getting as warm as his imagination insisted, whether the air was becoming fouler. He knew emergency backups would power essential functions for much longer than it had been since the core crashed, though, so Geary made an effort to relax and look unconcerned.
“Power-core systems have been scrubbed,” the welcome report finally arrived. “The worm responsible for the shutdown is confirmed gone. Request permission for restart of power core.”
“Do it,” Desjani snapped. A few minutes later the lights on the bridge brightened, and the vent fans hummed a little stronger. Less than a minute after that, the displays reappeared floating in front of everyone. “Get us back where we belong,” she ordered the maneuvering watch. “We probably drifted a little out of position relative to the other ships. Take station on
Daring
and we’ll reassume guide duties for the fleet.”
The reappearance of his displays helped a lot. Geary had been fighting down an irrational worry that more ships had been lost, and he just hadn’t been told. Now he could confirm that only
Lorica
was gone. As if that was good news. Checking the reports from the ships closest to
Lorica
when she’d exploded, Geary grimaced. “No survivors.”
“If there had been survivors, they would have had to have ejected their escape pods prior to the core overload,” Desjani pointed out. “They wouldn’t have survived for long after that once the rest of the fleet realized what that implied.”
She was right, of course, but that didn’t help much. Taking a deep breath, Geary called up a communications window and broadcast to the fleet. “This is Captain Geary.
Dauntless
and everyone on her are safe. We’re investigating the cause of the core overload on
Lorica
and the core crash on
Dauntless
. Anyone with any information regarding either incident please forward it to me immediately.”
Investigating. A big word for something unlikely to produce any results. If the ones responsible for this worm were as diligent as they’d been with earlier worms, there’d be absolutely no identifiers that could be used to trace the worm back to its origin. Knowing that, Geary had to restrain himself from walking to the nearest bulkhead and punching it in aggravation.
Instead, he brought up his message queue, not expecting to see the answers he needed but still looking for distractions. Geary frowned as he noticed all of the high-priority messages already blinking in his queue. They must have all been put into the fleet net while
Dauntless
’s systems were down, meaning they wouldn’t be answers to his request for information. It would take forever to get through all of them, and most were probably just variations on “what happened” and “are you all right?”
Then he stopped and stared.
One of the messages was tagged as being from
Lorica
.
“Captain Desjani, can you confirm the time of
Lorica
’s destruction for me?” Geary asked.
She gave him a puzzled glance, clearly wondering why that information was important at the moment. “Our own power core did its emergency crash at 1412. According to system records we received from the rest of the fleet,
Lorica
blew up at . . . two point seven seconds past 1412.”
Geary checked the message again. “I have a message in my queue from
Lorica
with a transmission time of 1415.”
“Sir?” Desjani stepped over beside him, leaned over Geary’s shoulder to view his display, then tapped some controls next to his hand. “The fleet communications net sees the message as having been received for transmission after 1414. It was sent on the next full minute.” She straightened and glared at her communications watch. “How could the communications system see a message as having been received from
Lorica
well after that ship was destroyed?”
“It wouldn’t have, Captain. Even if it was delayed in delivery, the system would log when it was actually sent.” The watch-stander looked briefly baffled, then nodded as understanding came. “The message had to have been parked and hidden in the system. People aren’t supposed to do that, but there are several ways to manage it.
Lorica
, or somebody on
Lorica
, sent that message out at some earlier time into the comm-system net but had it concealed under a protocol that wouldn’t make it visible to the system until something happened, like a certain time arrived.”
Geary shook his head. “Why would
Lorica
have done that?” He could think of a number of reasons why someone who had screwed up would want a message time to be different from when it was actually sent, but couldn’t understand what might have prompted someone on
Lorica
to set that up. Calling up the message, Geary scanned it. It wasn’t actually a message, but a big dump of code. “Captain Desjani, who can tell me what this is?”
She eyed it, then tapped some more controls. “With your permission I’ll get an assessment from my systems-security officer before we send this anywhere else, sir. We don’t know what might be in it.”
He felt a momentary surge of fear and anger at himself. “This could be the worm that almost destroyed us?”
“Not sent that way,” Desjani replied with a shake of her head. “The filters and firewalls in this part of the comm system don’t let anything active through. Trying to send the worm this way would be like shooting a picture of a missile at us instead of the actual missile. If that’s what this is. My systems people should be able to tell.”
The response came fairly quickly, the face of Desjani’s systems-security officer appearing in small windows on both her and Geary’s displays. The lieutenant commander seemed stunned. “Sir, Captain, I mean, uh . . . that message from
Lorica
. It’s the coding for the first worm, the one that would’ve messed with every ships’ jump drives.”
“That worm came from
Lorica
?” Geary felt a deep sense of disappointment. He’d trusted Commander Gaes, given her a second chance, and yet—
“No, sir. The message is a copy of the first worm, with the system-tracking information and originating ship’s identity still on it. I have no idea how
Lorica
got a copy of that.”
Dauntless
’s systems-security officer swallowed nervously. “According to what’s in
Lorica
’s transmission, that worm originally came from
Inspire
, sir.”
GEARY felt a coldness spreading through him. “You’re certain? There’s no doubt?”
“Not if that message is real, sir. It could’ve been faked, of course, though it’d be very hard to construct a false system-tracking record that authentic-looking. But to me it looks like someone on
Lorica
discovered where that worm came from and had a message containing the information planted in the comm system under a dead man release, so if the cruiser registered as destroyed, the message was sent.”
So Commander Gaes had known who was responsible but had kept that information close for reasons that would never be known now. But she had also made certain that if she was silenced, then the truth would come out.
Desjani’s face was flushed with rage. “This is good enough cause to get Kila into an interrogation room and see what she really knows about it.”
“Yeah,” Geary agreed, thinking of the dead on
Lorica
and already mentally phrasing his orders to a firing squad for Captain Kila, but as he reached for his controls to order the Marines on
Inspire
to act, another hand came down on his, and Victoria Rione’s voice spoke intensely.
“Wait. You want to make certain you get her.”
Geary rounded on Rione, wondering when she’d arrived on the bridge and gotten close enough to overhear his and Desjani’s conversation. But before he could speak, Desjani did.
“If we want to be certain we get her, then we do it as fast as possible!” Desjani whispered vehemently. “That woman tried to destroy my ship!”
“I know what she tried to do!” Rione whispered back angrily. “Listen to me! Kila has done a magnificent job of covering her tracks. Her actions clearly include contingency plans for eliminating evidence and potential witnesses against her, as we saw in Lakota when the shuttle carrying those two officers was destroyed. If we don’t lay a careful trap, she might already have some plan in place for dealing with something like this.”
Geary fought down his own desire for instant vengeance, recognizing the truth in Rione’s advice. “What do you suggest? We can’t let her keep operating.”
“No.” Rione paused in thought. “One hour. That’s enough time to set up our own trap. Call a fleet conference in one hour. Kila will believe that means you still have no idea who’s responsible for what happened to
Lorica
and almost happened to
Dauntless
. She’ll be expecting another ineffective appeal for anyone who knows anything to come forward. If we can keep her in ignorance of this evidence until then, we can prepare a trap she won’t be able to avoid.”
Desjani glared at Rione, but Geary could see her thinking. Then Desjani nodded abruptly. “That’s good advice. I’d take it, sir.”
Rione glowered back at Desjani. “Thank you so much for the vote of confidence.”
“Both of you try to remember who the enemy is,” Geary ground out, trying to control his own emotions. The watch-standers on the bridge had already surely noticed something unusual going on between him, their captain, and Rione. He had to divert the gossip about that away from the message he had asked about earlier. “All right, Madam Co-President. Design your trap and tell me what you need. But first give another good long glare at Captain Desjani and stalk off the bridge as if you two had been arguing again.”
“We have been arguing. Even
you
should have noticed that.” Rione smiled coldly at Geary, then shifted her gaze to Desjani and stepped slightly away. “Pardon me for wanting to be involved in your decisions,” she stated in a low voice that could still surely be heard by the watch-standers. “I thought I should be aware of what caused the loss of power on this ship.”
Desjani smiled at Rione in a forcibly polite way. “When I find out more, I will ensure you are told. Thank you, Madam Co-President.”
Rione stalked off the bridge, and Geary stood up, not having to fake a renewed gust of frustration. He wanted Kila in a cell right now, he wanted Kila in front of a firing squad right now, but he couldn’t rush into it. Rione had been right about the need to plan an ambush. They had to make certain that Kila didn’t have any more opportunities to destroy potential evidence or kill potential witnesses against her. He spoke clearly for the benefit of the watch-standers who might be listening. “Captain Desjani, let me know the instant anyone finds out anything more about what caused the loss of
Lorica
and the problem on
Dauntless
.”
“My systems-security officer is working the issue, sir,” Desjani replied, her voice quivering with suppressed anger. That’s exactly how her crew would expect their captain to feel about an attempt to destroy their ship, though. And if they wondered what else might have her angry, the widely known bad blood between their captain and Victoria Rione would surely explain the rest of their captain’s ill humor at the moment.
Geary sent the message calling a fleet commanding officers conference in one hour, then left the bridge, noticing the watch-standers all doing their best to avoid attracting the attention of Captain Desjani where she sat scowling at her display. He paused for just a moment, recalling his own days as a junior officer, when reading the captain’s temper and steering as wide of that individual as necessary on bad days formed an important part of the standard routine no matter the ship or the captain.
In the days when Geary had been a junior officer, the idea of open dissent against a fleet commander would have been thought insubordinate. A fleet captain conspiring against that commander to the extent of destroying Alliance warships would have been simply unthinkable. So much had been altered in the last century, driven by the stresses of an apparently unending war. But steering clear of a captain in a foul mood hadn’t changed in the hundred years he’d been in survival sleep. It probably hadn’t changed in a thousand years or more. No matter how much was different from the past, some traditions and practices withstood the stresses of time and events.