Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (10 page)

Yang said he could stall Stanton, but not stop him altogether. The investigation would go ahead eventually, but Leigh planned to find the traitor before then. His squad didn’t deserve to have their privacy invaded by CI just because they had one rotten pilot in their rank. Of course, he’d only managed to add more work to his already full schedule, because he didn’t trust anyone else to run the checks. Not that he had much beyond the most basic skills to use when it came to this sort of thing. But he’d push through and hopefully find some clue as to who the mole, or moles, might be.

The coffee finished dripping and he reached out to wrap a hand around the hot mug, enjoying the sting of the burn for a moment before grabbing it by the handle and taking a quick sip. The dark, bitter brew hit the back of his throat and started waking him up, as if his body had decided to perk up now that a caffeine hit was imminent. He turned around and almost ran into Commander Yang.

“Another early start Alpha?” Yang reached by him to set his own mug under the coffee spout. Yang’s posture was tight, his expression tense. The guy was all but tapping his foot as the coffee started pouring out.

“Honestly? Couldn’t sleep. What about you?”

Yang snatched a quick glance around the near-deserted messdeck. “I’ve been down in the brig for the last hour. One of Stanton’s agents uncovered another CSS mole on board.”

A surge of shock mixed with anticipation rushed through him and shifted everything into hyperawareness like the caffeine hit he’d been looking for moments ago.

“Is it the guy who attacked Recruit Wolfe?”

Yang shook his head. “
He
is a
she
. Kerrin Hershel, one of the launch-deck maintenance crew.”

“God
damn
it.” Hearing a name was like taking a jab in the guts. He didn’t know Kerrin all that well, but he did know her, had worked alongside her on his jet a time or two. “I want to talk to her.”

Yang shook his head and reached down to take the coffee out of the machine.

“Sorry, Alpha, we’re trying to keep this contained for the time being. Something like this can cause a close-knit crew to turn on each other. With my command already under the microscope, the last thing we need is everyone on board this ship suspecting their friends and making unfounded accusations.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, sir, but I need to know if she can reveal the identity of the mole in my squadron.”

“Believe me, it’s on our list of questions, but so far, she’s not talking.” Yang rubbed the back of his neck, tension lines bracketing his eyes and mouth.

“Maybe you just need a new face in there. Someone she’s worked with. If Stanton is the one leading the questioning, you’re not going to get anywhere. The guy’s an uptight douche.”

Yang’s lips quirked in a small smile. “I can’t disagree with you.”

“So give me five minutes with her. If she’s not talking now, and still not talking when I leave, then you haven’t lost anything. But if I can get her to spill even some tiny detail—”

“All right.” Yang held up a hand to stop him. “Stanton is not going to be impressed about this.”

He sent the commander a grin. “All the more reason to do it.”

Yang sent him an unimpressed look, but he could see the amusement in the CO’s gaze. “Come on then.”

They left the messdeck and headed down two levels, and then to the far, narrow end of the
Knox
. The entire end of the ship had been designed to detach and reattach to other battleships for easy and foolproof transportation of high-risk prisoners, all without them ever needing to leave their cells.

Yang led him to one of the interview rooms, where Stanton stood outside, arms crossed and a seriously peeved expression on his face.

“You told Captain Alphin?” If Stanton could have knocked him down with a glare, he’d be flat on the deck by now.

“Yes, Stanton. He’s one of my most trusted officers, and considering you told us there’s probably a mole in the FP squadron, he has a right to know what’s going on here.”

“What’s going on is that the CSS will get their wish and we’ll end up destroying ourselves from the inside out if word gets out about Hershel.”

“Alpha knows the cost. He won’t tell anyone.”

Yang sent him a nod, so he stepped past Stanton and entered the interview room. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but shock cut through him at the sight of Kerrin slumped in a corner and chained to the wall, face bloodied and bruised. Even from here, he could tell she was unconscious. Had Stanton worked her over?
Sick bastard
. She might be the enemy, and she might have betrayed them, but no one deserved to be tortured.

He ducked his head back out of the hatchway. “Can I get a bottle of water and some cloths in here?”

“No.” Stanton replied shortly.

Yang shot the agent a glare and stepped forward. “Why—”

He looked into the room, fury tightening his expression as he rounded back toward Stanton. “What the hell is this? I wasn’t even gone for twenty minutes.”

Stanton stared at him, cold and emotionless. “We weren’t getting the answers we needed.”

Yang threw a hand out in the direction of the interview room. “And what, torturing her did?”

“Yes, actually. I got far more out of her in the last five minutes than I did in the entire hour before that.”

Yang took an angry step forward. “This is my ship, and I will not have people on board tortured, no matter who they are.”

Stanton’s expression took on an almost bored edge. “I might be on your ship, Yang, but I don’t answer to you. I answer to Command Intelligence. And they’ve instructed me to use any means necessary to find every single CS Soldier hiding in the UEF ranks. Orders that came to CI from your superior officers, I might add.”

“If we lower ourselves to their level, then what are we really fighting for?” Yang’s voice came out slightly uneven over the words.

“Your judgment in this matter is quite obviously compromised. Isn’t that why the UEF sent in Lieutenant Prescott?”

The anger already stewing over Stanton’s treatment of Kerrin snapped Leigh into fury at the agent’s taunt. He lunged, but Yang caught him and shoved him back.

He shrugged out of Yang’s grip and took a step away, clenching his fists over the tight urge to smash Stanton square in the face. “You disrespect the commander like that again, and next time you’ll be eating my gun.”

“Sure I will.” Stanton shot him a smile, as though the threat genuinely amused him. “No one else is to see the prisoner. A specialized CI shuttle will be here to take her for further questions in an hour.”

“Take her where?” Yang demanded.

Stanton’s grin widened. “That information is classified.”

Yang’s shoulders tightened, as if maybe he was thinking about laying the agent out himself. “We need to know if there are any other CSS on board this ship.”

Stanton examined his hand, and Leigh caught sight of some blood spatter on the man’s otherwise pristine sleeve. “Oh, you
need
to know, yet you disapprove of my methods.”

He clenched his jaw over calling the agent about a dozen different names, all beginning or ending with the word
ass
. “Just tell us, does she know who the mole in the FP squadron is?”

Stanton stared at them for a long moment, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“No,” he said at last. “She doesn’t know if there is a CS Soldier in your squadron. In fact, she doesn’t know a single other CSS mole. It seems they’ve been smart in the way they go about their infiltration, keeping all the traitors isolated and ignorant of one another. That way, if they get caught like Hershel has been, they’ve got nothing to tell.”

Leigh cursed, rubbing the tight muscles in the back of his neck. “Then we’re no closer to finding out the identity of the mole in the squadron, or the person who attacked Recruit Wolfe.”

Stanton looked past them, toward the interview room, expression smacking of anticipation. “We have ways of getting certain details out of people, things they don’t even know they’re telling us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The agent’s expression gave him the creeps.

Yang shook his head. “I don’t think we want to know.”

Stanton returned his gaze to Yang. “You’re right. You probably don’t want to know. How about you take care of your issues, and I’ll take care of mine?”

“That’s all well and good, but it’s when those issue run together we’ve got a problem.” Yang backed up a step and turned away from Stanton. “Come on, Alpha, we’re not going to get any more information here.”

He shot the CI one last glare before catching up with Yang. “Sir, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but—”

“I know.” Yang strode stiffly along the passageway, his expression furious. “But he’s right. I’ve got no power over what Stanton or CI do, even on board this ship. The best I can do is go up to my wardroom and make some calls. Even then, I’m not likely to get any answers before the CI shuttle arrives.”

“This is turning into a damn mess,” he muttered. If Leigh didn’t find the squadron mole, and soon, there was no telling what else Stanton might do. The way things were going, people would start turning on each other, and rampant suspicion would blow the ship apart.

Chapter Ten

M
ia tapped her fingers against the edge of the datapad while she waited for the routed connection to go through, which would give her access to the
Knox’s
main systems.

Most people would have said accessing the primary systems from a datapad would have been impossible. But most people didn’t want to be an aeronautical engineer. Most people wouldn’t have studied the specs of the UEF fleet’s battleships like she had. Of course, battleship specs weren’t available to just anyone, and when she’d been studying for an assignment and accidentally come across a pirated version online and downloaded it, she hadn’t exactly been on the right side of the law. And she may have taken her extra-credit classes on cybersecurity a little farther than was technically legal, because the challenge of getting in and out places had been the kind of thrill she couldn’t resist.

And she definitely wasn’t on the right side of the law right now. But she’d woken up in the small hours of the morning, and after replaying the attack in her mind, plus the conversation with Leigh, she needed to find out why the shooter had seemingly disappeared, maybe find some way to track him herself.

Because the idea that the person who’d tried to kill her was walking around the ship had settled like a low hum of noise in the background, keeping a constant shadow of apprehension lurking in the corners of her mind.

So she’d gone out into the hallway and lurked by the nurse’s station until she could snag a datapad. She felt a little sorry for whoever the device belonged to, because although she planned to wipe the evidence of her activities once she was done, she wasn’t an expert hacker and might leave a traceable footprint if someone went looking hard enough.

The datapad gave a low chime, indicating the connection had gone through. It’d been a while since she’d studied the specs for this class of battleship, so it took her a little longer than necessary to access the security logs for the surveillance on squad level. She watched the recording of the shooter running down the passageway, followed by Leigh a moment later. Her breath caught as Leigh narrowly avoided getting shot. She accessed the shooter’s transit route, then brought up the camera feed for the passageway where the assailant supposedly got out.

However, when the doors opened on the level below, the carriage was empty.

Frowning, she switched to the in-transit surveillance feed. It showed the shooter firing at Leigh before the doors slid closed. After that, the man kept his head angled down as he concealed the gun beneath his clothes. The pictured flickered and the man disappeared.
Gone
.

In one screen shot and then not in the next after the slight interference.

Since she didn’t believe in magic, the only explanation would be that someone had tampered with the footage. Leaning forward, she accessed all the transit-porter logs. The shooter’s transit hadn’t stopped and it was impossible to get off midtrip.

The challenge of solving this mystery had energized her, chasing the last of the aching fog from her mind. She cross-checked other things, like maintenance logs, and had been at it for about an hour when she found a clue. Someone had messed with the transit ID numbers. Halfway through the trip, someone had reset the system and the security feed had then tracked a different car.

All she had to do was work out what ID the shooter’s transit had changed to, and she’d find his actual destination.

With a low thrum of excitement buzzing through her, she set to work tracing IDs until she found the feed she needed. She watched footage of an empty transit, where the picture flickered and the shooter appeared, as if from thin air.

“Got you,” she muttered, leaning closer to the screen and willing the bastard to look up. Unfortunately, he kept his head down until the doors opened on one of the ship’s lowest utility levels. Once she’d watched the shooter disembark, she switched the feed to outside, in the passageway he would have stepped into, but all she found was static. Someone had killed the cameras.

“Damn it.” She slapped the edge of the table the datapad was on and then slouched back against the pillows. Just when she’d thought she was going to discover the shooter’s identity, or where he’d gone, she’d hit a wall. But at least she’d worked out how he’d eluded the MPs. Of course, this meant he’d had outside help, and whatever his reason for being in the ready room, there was obviously something much larger going on here.

Her mind dredged up rumors she’d heard before arriving on the
Valiant Knox
, rumors that the explosion on the Ilari base had been an inside job, that the CSS had infiltrated UEF ranks. She’d dismissed the chatter as exaggerated, or simple speculation, because the idea that the CSS could have so successfully gained access to the UEF was as ridiculous as it was terrifying. But what if the rumors hadn’t been simple gossip? What if there’d been some truth to it? What if something similar was happening on board the
Knox
?

No. Surely people would know if that was happening. She was letting her imagination run away with her. Getting a position on the
Knox
was hard enough even as a recruit or enlisted personnel of the UEF, let alone for someone with intentions of sabotage or betrayal. There were processes in place to make sure such a thing didn’t happen.

“Did someone else already bring you a new datapad?”

She glanced up at the familiar voice in the doorway, so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed Leigh walk into the room. “According to personnel records, a new one hadn’t been assigned to you yet.”

He walked over, another datapad in hand, probably the one that had been assigned for her use. She started to slide hers, with all its incriminating information displayed on it, toward herself, but Leigh got to her and closed a hand around it before she could shut the program.

“Where did you—” He tugged the datapad out of her hands, expression hardening as he looked at the screen. “What the hell is this?”

“I can explain.” She reached out for the device but he kept it out of her range.

“I don’t think there’s any possible sane reason you could give for accessing the ship’s main systems. Or why you even know how to do that.”

Her heart thrummed against the inside of her chest. “Please, before you do anything, just listen. I know how to do it because I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and studying ship specs was kind of a hobby. And as for the reason I did it, I was trying to find the shooter. I was accessing security footage and the transit-porter logs to see if I could track him.”

His tense expression hadn’t shifted, his impassive CAFF mask firmly in place as he stared at her. For the first time since she’d met him, she suddenly understood the reputation that preceded him.

“You were trying to find the shooter,” he repeated, sounding far from convinced. “A job you should be leaving up to the MPs.”

She lowered her gaze, the exact amount of trouble she was now in pressing down on her. “I know. I’m sorry. It was impulsive and stupid, but I thought I could get in and check without anyone ever knowing. I needed to know who he was.”

“Well I hope that reasoning is enough after you’ve left the
Knox
and the UEF, because there’s no way in hell you’ll ever serve again. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up in a military prison.”

He started to turn away and desperation clawed into her chest. “But I found him.”

Her words made him freeze, his gaze coming back around to clash with hers.

“You mean you can identify him?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. I worked out that the transit ID system had been scrambled and he actually went down to one of the lower utility levels. He had to have outside help to trick the system so flawlessly that no one would notice. I almost missed it myself.”

“How could you— Never mind.” He sighed, glancing down at the datapad before looking back up at her. “Show me everything.”

He walked over and handed the datapad back to her and sat on the edge of the mattress, his shoulder and hip brushing hers, since the gurney wasn’t exactly wide.

Her anxiety wound down a notch now that he didn’t seem ready to run off and report her to Command Yang right this second. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t, but maybe she could convince him not to reveal her security breach, and in return she would offer to quickly and quietly leave the
Knox
. The thought made her chest tighten, so she pushed it away and concentrated on the datapad, showing him how she’d found the transit IDs had been scrambled, confusing the security feed, and then playing the footage of the shooter leaving the transit on the utility level.

“And what about this footage?” Leigh asked as she showed him the static when she tried to access the images on that level. “Can you fix it or find some other camera?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. This is where I got up to when you came in.”

“Okay.” He crossed one arm over his middle and dragged the other hand over his jaw, expression tense with contemplation. “What else can you do with this thing?”

She cut him a wary sideways glance, not sure how far she should be implicating herself. But she’d already been caught; it probably couldn’t get any worse from here no matter what she admitted.

“Pretty much anything. Once you’re into the main systems, everything becomes available, from personnel rosters to the ship’s navigation controls.”

He shifted, spearing her with an intense look. This close, she could see the slightly darker rim around his gray-blue eyes. “That’s dangerous power to have. And anyone can do this from any datapad?”

“No, not just anyone.” She shook her head. “They’d have to either be a consummate hacker, or know the specs of the
Knox
down to the last detail.”

He tucked his other arm over his chest so both were crossed. “And which of these options best describes you?”

“I told you. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. I studied ship specs. Not just the
Knox
, but others, too.”

His brow lowered. “I can’t decide if I’m worried that your illegal activities started well before you arrived on the
Knox
, or impressed about how thorough you’ve been.”

“Consider yourself impressed, because I’m assuming from your reaction that no one else managed to work out how the shooter escaped.”

He didn’t reply. Instead he sent her a look that was almost exasperated. “Close the program and hand over the datapad.”

She gave a tight nod, anxiety wrenching through her once more. Her thoughts spun, trying to come up with a way to convince him not to report this major infraction, but knowing there was nothing she could say to save herself. He didn’t owe her anything and if he failed to report her activities and it was discovered later, he could also face losing his posting.

Once she’d exited the main systems and then wiped the evidence as best she could, she handed it over to him, shifting to the side a little so she could face him.

“I got it from the nurse’s station.”

One of his brows arched upward. “Are you kidding? I’m not putting this back. If anyone works out what you did and traces it back to this datapad, you’ll get some poor doctor or nurse in trouble, and they’ll probably still find you anyway.”

A small spark of hope flamed to life in her chest. “So you’re not going to report me?”

He set the new datapad on the table and then stood. “Right now? No. Tomorrow? I don’t know. This is serious, Mia. I need to decide how to handle it.”

“I could quit the FP program and leave, if it would make things easier. I’m injured anyway. I might as well call it. That way, it wouldn’t be your problem. You can pretend like you never knew about it.”

His jaw tightened. “I can’t do that, and you know it. And you are not leaving this ship, not with potentially dangerous knowledge of how to access the
Knox’s
main systems. If the enemy got their hands on you— Well, that’s a scenario I don’t even want to imagine.”

His words sent a mild shock jolting through her. He was right. If she got captured by the enemy and they worked out what she knew, it was the kind of information that could bring down the ship. A few years younger and a lot more naive, she hadn’t ever considered the larger implications of learning those ship specs; she’d just been feeding her thirst for knowledge and told herself she’d have an edge if she ever got the opportunity to apply for some kind of aeronautical engineering position.

“Okay, I won’t go anywhere.” Her voice came out a little uneven, and she swallowed down the tightness in her throat.

Leigh’s gaze softened just a touch as he stared at her. “I’m not trying to scare you, Mia, I was just stating a fact. And nothing has been decided about your position in the FP program. I haven’t talked to Bren or Seb yet. So there are several conversations that you and I need to have, but right now, I need to get to class.”

She nodded and then winced when the sudden movement caused her headache to return.

Leigh reached out and touched gentle fingers to the side of her face, making her freeze and her lungs stall. His gaze roamed over her as he traced what she assumed was the outer edge of the bruise. She hadn’t seen it herself, but the nurse who’d come to check on her earlier had said it was spectacular.

“You look like hell. Whoever that guy was, he sure did a number on you. Are you feeling any better?”

“Just a headache,” she managed to force out through the tightness in her chest, almost sounding like herself. If the words were a bit strangled, hopefully he’d assume it was her sore head.

“And your shoulder?” His hand dropped to the edge of her gown. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head, pulse picking up as he pushed the material to the side, revealing the pink scar from where the micro-laser had repaired the internal damage, as well as the layers of muscle and skin.

“It looks good, but you’ll want to be careful for a few weeks. When it happened to me, I would think it was fine and then something would make it pull and it’d ache for a day or two after.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Yeah, her voice definitely wasn’t sounding all that composed anymore.