Never In Vain (Lincoln's War Book 2) Read online

   Frowning, she said, “I can’t see either Brooks or Roberts going along with it. Which means only that whoever was working on this was able to hack through the systems. Which is something we already know PacFed did to this ship, so...”

   “No, no, it’s far more fundamental than that,” he said, pulling up a datapad. “All of the coding was changed when we arrived at Zemlya, and the software was updated by Lopez and her team. Besides, there are twelve names on the list of those with access. It’s not confined solely to the engineering staff.”

   “You’re suggesting that a senior officer has been suborned?” she asked. “Lieutenant, I think you realize that is quite an accusation to make, especially without evidence. I want an absolutely watertight case before we even consider taking that to the Captain.”

   “There might be a way,” Romano said. “This isn’t like the shuttle. It’s not something that could have been done on a time-delay. All the passcodes for the hyperdrive update when we make a jump. Heck, it’s one of the best-protected parts of the ship...”

   “With good reason,” Kirkland interrupted. “So any attempts to gain access must have been made in the last hour and a half.” She paused, then said, “Everyone involved will be on duty. Which means that they’ll have been subject to internal surveillance, their movements tracked. All we have to do is set the computer to run a search...” She looked at Romano, smiled, and said, “No, we’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. Someone could have messed with the image search algorithms, but not the actual sensor pickups. They’re read-only, and on a totally different system.”

   “Crazy to think there are forty years of files down in the bowels of the ship,” Romano replied, “but for our purposes, it’s everything we need.” He entered a series of commands, and images of the twelve officers holding the passcodes flickered into life on the wall. “I think we can rule out ourselves. I suggest we run them at ten times normal speed. That should be sufficient to tell if they were doing anything out of the ordinary.”

   “Nine should be enough,” she added. “Commander Singh’s been on the bridge the whole time. No way he could have got away long enough to break into the systems without being detected.” She paused, then said, “Let it ride, though. And magnify the image to concentrate on their hands. We don’t need to see everything they were doing, and I doubt any of them are agile enough to enter a complicated series of security passcodes with their toes.”

   Romano smiled, adjusting the images accordingly, then sat back and allowed them to run, the images flowing on the wall as Old Abe’s senior staff hurried about their routine, preparing the ship for battle.

   “I did a little checking on Chief Kramer’s record, just in case,” Kirkland said. “No obvious inconsistencies. If he was a saboteur, then he did an excellent job covering up his background.” She paused, and said, “Odd, though.”

   “What do you mean, ma’am?”

   “I’m surprised they’d be trying to destroy the ship. I’d have expected them to be a lot more interested in taking her intact. She’d be a valuable asset to the Guild, especially with the PacFed cruisers as well.” She looked up at the image of Commander Gonzales, smiling as she saw him playing with ration requisitions, and added, “Disabling the hyperdrive would help, of course, but they didn’t do that. We’re going to be able to jump on schedule when we arrive at our target, and it hasn’t hurt us much at all.”

   “Maybe they made a mistake,” Romano suggested. “Perhaps they didn’t realize just what Kramer was trying to do. I’ve looked over his calculations, and I couldn’t understand them at all.”

   “Nobody could,” she said. “Though I know Commander Brooks thinks that there’s a chance he was actually onto something. Captain Forrest ordered that kept very, very quiet. If the crew gets the idea that we’re sitting on a way for them to get home, even the smallest possible chance, I doubt we’d live through the day.”

   Glancing at her, Romano said, “It’s not worth it. While there’s life, there’s hope, and it isn’t as though we’re not needed here. Though I know a lot of the crew would think differently.” He frowned, then added, “I’m surprised they didn’t pick up Kramer in the psych screening. It felt pretty damn thorough while they were running me through it.”

   “Even the best testing isn’t infallible,” she replied. “I feel like a damn voyeur, watching all of this.” Turning to Romano, she continued, “Not exactly prime-time.”

   “No, ma’am.” he said. He paused, then said, “Commander...”

   “I know precisely what you are thinking, Lieutenant. You’re wondering just what you did to earn yourself a baby-sitting detail, and you’re perhaps a little surprised that I seem rather more on the ball than you were expecting.” Shaking her head, she said, “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

   “I wasn’t going to say that at all, ma’am.”

   Raising an eyebrow, she said, “Then you have permission to speak freely, Lieutenant.”

   “I came on this ship to help my career...”

   “You’re kidding,” she replied. “This ship is, was a backwater.” Looking over him, she said, “I’ve wondered how a junior officer with your service record ended up here.”

   “On a fleet carrier, I’d have been third or fourth in a department. Assuming I didn’t end up working as a glorified administrative assistant. Here I was Training Officer, now Communications, with a department of my own on what is still nominally a capital ship. This was a step up, as strange as it might sound.”

   “You had ambitions, then,” she said. “I remember those. You’re going to ask me why I signed onto this ship, presumably as a way of fishing around to see if you should be considering me a suspect. How am I doing?”

   Romano’s face reddened, and he replied, “Commander, I...”

   Raising a hand, she said, “You’re showing a rare level of tact, Lieutenant. Rare for this ship, in any case. It’s a reasonable enough question to ask given the circumstances, and I’ll freely admit that I was just as suspicious of you. I always get a little wary when someone seems a little too eager to stick their head over the parapet.”

   “Commander, it’s really none of my business, but...”

   She paused, looked at the rank insignia on her shoulder, and said, “I know what the crew says, Lieutenant. If I’d reported every incident of petty insubordination, we’d have the maintenance techs working overtime to expand the brig. I’m young for my rank, and I’ve had damn all time on a starship, and I know all that as well.” Looking up at the wall, she added, “Have you ever been in love, Lieutenant?”

   “I guess I thought so once.”

   She paused, sighed, then said, “Admiral Crawford and I were involved. I presume you know that much. His daughter found out, and gave him an ultimatum. Me or his grandchildren.” She smiled, then continued, “I didn’t let him make the choice. I just asked Personnel for the first shuttle out of town. I knew that was a battle I was never going to win, and I had strong enough feelings about him that I decided to let him go. The promotion was a punishment. His daughter’s work, I found out later.”

   “A punishment?” Romano asked.

   “I went from being a hot-shot Lieutenant Commander, an Admiral’s aide, who earned her position, damn it, the hard way, to being a full Commander, technically three months under minimum time in rank, on an assignment I had no real training or experience to manage, with everyone in the Fleet thinking that I slept around to get my promotion.” Looking at Romano, she added, “I loved that old bastard. And I think he loved me. And now he’s dead, his daughter’s dead, his grandchildren are dead, and none of it matters any more. Does that answer your question?”

   “I’m sorry, Commander.”

   “Yeah, so am I,” she replied, looking up at the screen, her eyes darting from figure to figure. “I’m not seeing anything up there, and we’re getting close to the incident. Kramer must have spe
nt quite a bit of time setting up his little experiment, though I suppose he might have been able to do some of it in advance.”

   Shaking his head, Romano replied, “The gravimetric measurements would have changed too much. He’d have had to recalculate everything for the space-time disruption.” Turning to her, he said, “I had a word with Commander Brooks. I’m not sure either of us quite understood the conversation, but...”

   “But he had to have done it just before entering the room. Got it.” She frowned, then asked, “What sort of load on the network would that have taken? Working out a hyperspatial trajectory is tough on the systems at the best of times, but if he was trying to take us back in time, then that’s got to have been hell. How did he sneak that load past the system monitors?”

   The two glanced at each other, and Romano said, “Someone in Computer Control.” He reached for a keyboard, ignoring the flowing images on the wall, and said, “There it is. Fifteen minutes before Kramer began his work, a massive systems spike. And it did set off the detectors, but someone just ignored it.”

   “Incompetence or sabotage?”

   Rising to his feet, he said, “Either way, I think we’ve got a start. The duty log shows that Specialist Bradley was riding that console at the time, right at the end of his shift.” He reached to the communicator, but Kirkland placed her hand to stop him.

   “No. Let’s go to his quarters, and let’s do it now. We’ve got to keep this quiet. If he’s set up some sort of monitor on the network, then there are a thousand places he could hide below decks. With a little bit of prior preparation, someone could camp out down there for weeks without being detected.” She walked over to a weapons locker, pulled out a pair of concealed holsters and tossed one to Romano, attaching the other underneath her jacket, patting it in place to ensure it couldn’t be seen. “You ready?”

   “As I’ll ever be, Commander,” Romano replied, and the two of them walked out into the corridor, passing a cluster of technicians working on a relay terminal as they stepped through the elevator doors, working the controls to send them down to the lower decks. She threw a questioning glance at him, and he replied, “I checked the work order. They’re meant to be there. The job was scheduled yesterday.”

   Shaking her head, she said, “I’m jumping at shadows now.”

   “Quite logical in the circumstances, Commander.”

   The elevator shuddered to a stop, and the two of them walked out into the corridor, the overhead lights flickering on and off at random, casting strange shadows on the walls. The two of them looked at each other, then walked along the deck towards Bradley’s quarters. With only a short time before battle stations, the deck was deserted, only a few crewmen taking the opportunity for a brief moment of relaxation before the battle began.

   Lincoln had been short-handed before becoming lost in time. Since then, casualties had only worsened the situation, and a room that would normally have been home to four crewmen was more typically housing only two. Somehow, Bradley had gone one better, his name the only one on the door. Romano glanced up and down the corridor, his hand close to his sidearm, ready to draw it at a second’s notice. Kirkland reached for the lock, entering her command override to open the door, her eyes widening as it slid free.

   A body hung in the middle of the room, swinging back and forth, eyes wracked with agony, hands clenched into cold fists. Romano stepped inside, looking over the body, quickly confirming his worst suspicions.

   “It’s Bradley,” he said. Touching the man’s neck, he said, “No pulse, but the flesh is soft. This didn’t happen long ago.” Looking around the room, he continued, “They’ve set this up to look like a suicide. I’d bet that we’ll find a note somewhere in his files, but...”

   “I don’t buy it either,” Kirkland said. “Though for the record, that’s exactly what we’re going to report. Someone went to a lot of trouble to tidy up the loose ends on this one. It would be a pity to waste all that work.” Taking a deep breath, she continued, “You’d better call Medical. I’ll seal the room and start the official notifications.” Looking on the wall, she saw a holoimage, positioned to be the last thing the dead man had seen.

   “His family, I guess,” Romano volunteered. “It’s probably on file somewhere.”

   “Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah.” She walked over to the still-swinging figure, and said, “Someone killed this man in cold blood, Lieutenant. One of our own. We’ve got to catch him. And quickly. Before he can do the same to the rest of us.”

  Chapter 7

   Forrest looked at the report, shaking her head at the preliminary postmortem, one for her eyes only. Most of the crew believed that Bradley’s death had been simple suicide. He hadn’t been the first; four of her people had decided to take the last, dreadful step in a bid to be reunited with their loved ones, and there had been a few more failed attempts, the crewmen involved safely under observation back on Zemlya.

   In reality, Kirkland’s suspicions had been right. Bradley had been murdered. There were traces of a hypnotic agent still in his blood, sufficient to render him powerless to prevent his murderer from forcing him to kill himself. Had the body not been discovered so quickly, no sign of the agent would have remained.

   She glanced up at the countdown clock, ticking away the final seconds before the task force emerged from hyperspace. Even now, she couldn’t quite suppress a faint hope that the same effect that brought them to this century might take them back again, just as quickly. All the experts on the ship had stated that it was impossible, even the late Kramer before his breakdown, but she knew that all across the carrier, the crew would be hoping for a miracle.

   At this point, Forrest would settle for the enemy blockade having already dispersed. It had been almost a week since Santos-Dumont had made the attempt to break through the Lemuria, and there was always a chance that the enemy force might have returned to base, or at least some elements of it. Somehow, though, she didn’t think that the fates would be kind. They were standing astride the best path to Lemuria, knowing that short of a new factor being introduced into the equation, they would be able to prevent the vitally needed petrochemicals from reaching the Lemurian orbital refineries. Hopefully, Lincoln would be that new factor.

   Singh looked across from the status display, and said, “All decks are cleared for action, Captain. Squadron is on thirty-second alert for launch, turret systems online.”

   “Very good, Commander. Helm, proceed on the assumption that the enemy force will be standing between us and the exit point for Lemuria. Make sure to keep us well clear of any potential attack. We’ve got a full fighter complement, and if we get this right, we shouldn’t come under fire at all.” Turning to Fox, she said, “Nevertheless, Lieutenant, I expect all damage control teams to be ready for anything.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” she replied. “They’ve been dispersed according to Schedule Three.”

   That made Forrest grimace. Most of the usual dispersal patterns were designed with enemy action in mind. Schedule Three was the only one that suggested the possibility that someone was working against them from within, a saboteur in their midst. A scenario that nobody liked to contemplate, but one that was terribly real.

   “Thirty seconds to emergence, Captain,” Merritt said, turning from the helm. “All systems are green. Evasive course programmed in, just in case we stumble into a surprise.”

   “This ship does not stumble, Mr. Merritt,” Forrest said. “She moves with agility and grace.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” the veteran helmsman replied with a smile.

   All eyes were on the viewscreen, waiting for the tactical updates to flicker into life, waiting for the battle to begin. The final seconds counted down, one after another, and Forrest’s mind flashed through concepts and ideas, trying to prepare for last-minute contingencies. They had been well-briefed, but their information was a week old. Almost anything could have happened in that time.

  �
�“Hey,” one of the communications technicians quietly asked, turning to the crewman next to him. “What’s this system called, anyway?”

   “It isn’t,” Clayton replied. “There’s a ten-digit number. Does it matter?”

   “It does if we’re fighting a major battle out here,” the crewman replied.

   “He’s got a point,” Merritt said. “Ten seconds, Captain.”

   “We’ll pick the name after we win,” Forrest replied. “Stand by, everyone.”

   With a blinding flash, the stars returned to the viewscreen, and Forrest had her first good look at the projected battlespace. Everything was just as advertised, a near-featureless sweep of space, a distant gas giant boiling in futile rage as purple and orange storms warred for supremacy in its atmosphere, a host of tiny moons endlessly orbiting around it, none close enough to have any immediate effect on the fighting that was to come.

   And four enemy ships, just where she’d expected them, hovering close to the Lemurian transit point. A pair of shuttles were flying between two of them, their engines lighting to maximum power as they detected the incoming fleet, racing towards the nearest warship, their errand now suddenly far less urgent. Lights danced across the viewscreen, Guilder scanners probing Lincoln and her defenses, trying to determine just what they were about to fight.

   “Lieutenant Fox, hail the Guild ships,” Forrest said. “Let’s see if there is at least a chance that they might be reasonable.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” she replied, tapping a control. “Channel open.”

   “This is Captain Catherine Forrest, commanding the United States Starship Abraham Lincoln.” She allowed the words to roll from the tongue, savoring each one. “Our government has elected to support the right of the Lemurian people to safe passage through free space. This system is claimed by no government, and you have no right to block transit. In the name of the United States of America, I call upon you to withdraw.”