The Iron Admiral: Deception (19 page)

“Your concern does you credit, Lieutenant. Return to your duties.”

Bristol’s lip curled. “You don’t care about her. She’s bruised and bleeding and all you can think about is how to get the last little bit out of her. All you care about is—”

He grabbed Bristol’s collar and dragged him forward so that they were nose to nose. So he thought he knew better, did he? This impertinent pup who fancied himself as a rival for her affections? “I will not tolerate insolence, Lieutenant Bristol.”

Easy enough to feel sympathy, easy enough to be soft. But sometimes sympathy wasn’t an option.

Sometimes a job had to be done. Sometimes choices evaporated. Bristol swallowed but Saahren saw defiance still there in the blue eyes.

“Grand Admiral Saahren, Sir.”

Allysha spoke carefully, those amazing green eyes fixed on his face. “I can see that Lieutenant Bristol must have done something to provoke you, but may I have him back, please, Sir? Just for a short while?

I need his help with this investigation.”

Jealousy writhed in his belly. He looked for more than just professional concern in her expression. There was no need, he knew that, he admonished himself silently. Bristol was the one who was obsessed, not Allysha. He held his grip for a moment longer, then let go.

“Insubordination is a chargeable offense, Lieutenant. But… given the circumstances I may choose to overlook your behavior on this occasion.”

For a moment he thought Bristol might be stupid enough to argue but the younger man’s shoulders dropped.

“Sir.” He turned and went back to the machine room. Allysha shot Bristol a look as he passed her.

“What was that about?” she asked Saahren.

“He didn’t seem to believe that your presence was required.” Her face was pale under the bruises and her eyes were too bright. “Are you sure it is?”

She’d been very tense, strained, but his answer must have reassured her.

“Trust me, my presence is required.” With a last quick glance at him, she went back to the machine room.

****

“I just told him you should be in medical,” mumbled Todd, staring at the keyboard.

“Oh, yes.” She fixed him with an icy stare. “I heard what you said to him. The wholelevel heard what you said to him!” But he hadn’t lost control, this wasn’t like Lake Sylmander—she’d feared that for a moment—more like what he’d told her when she first came onArcturus . Lieutenants don’t argue with grand admirals.

Todd flushed and looked away. “I… I just think they use you up.”

“I just spent the last ten minutes persuading him to let me stay and you say that to him. Look, see that?”

She pointed a tense finger at the remains of blood stains still on the floor. “That’s Tensan’s blood. It was Leeha’s seventh birthday yesterday and he wasn’t there. He’ll never be there again. He was killed here, his skull was caved in. I want to know why. I want to be able to tell Jingsu that there was a reason, I want to be certain that…”

She saw Tensan’s body again, lying on the floor face down in his own blood. Tears threatened. She’d brought him down here to his death. It couldn’t be for nothing; it couldn’t be. Todd and Anna stared at her.

“You have work to do. Get on with it.” Saahren, cool and calm, stood in the doorway. “Allysha, come here.”

He beckoned with one hand as they turned back to the consoles. She stepped toward him without even thinking, responding automatically to the authority in his voice.

“I’m okay.” She bit her lip. “Sorry,” she mumbled as he led her out of the room.

Saahren turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t blame yourself. It won’t do any good and it won’t change anything.”

She closed her eyes, stifling the sob.

“Allysha?” Saahren pushed the hair away from the right side of her cheek.

She wanted to fling herself into his arms, wanted to bury her head against his chest and cry. But she couldn’t.

“Yes, I know.” She took a deep breath. “I’m okay. I’ll let you know when I find something.”

He tilted her chin with his fingers so she had to look at him. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

His eyes were warm and compassionate. Allysha nodded.

He released her and she went back inside.

****

Someone found him a chair and somebody else brought him a cup of kaff, the horrible instant muck but he drank it anyway. He called Admiral Valperez to explain the situation and ask him to stand in for him at

the function he’d been scheduled to attend that evening. Then he called his adjutant, Senior Commander Butcher, to tell him where he was.

Butcher appeared shortly afterwards, carrying a data sheet and a chair he’d purloined from the outer office. If the grand admiral was going to be down here it might be a chance to work through some of the administrative matters he’d been avoiding. Saahren and Butcher worked through his in tray. The two men

sat heads together, conversing in soft voices, as Saahren approved promotions or transfers, recommended actions or simply updated his knowledge about particular situations. Butcher brought his clerk, too, and installed him in the outer office. After a time, he sent the man for kaff; good, properly brewed kaff, which Saahren accepted gratefully.

All the while Saahren kept one eye on the machine room where Allysha and her team worked.

Lieutenant Mustafa and Ensign Parandorn arrived, their leave interrupted. They entered the room carefully, evidently warned of Saahren’s presence, and gave model salutes as they passed him. Allysha allocated them machines and showed them what she required.

Allysha, Saahren noted, checked two of the machines while the other four checked one each. Even then, she moved between them, helping and encouraging. Occasionally, she looked up at where he and Butcher sat, against the warehouse bulkhead. Once or twice he stood and moved away but only for a short time and each time he was sure she missed him, by the way she caught his eye briefly when he returned. From time to time the four members of her team went out for short breaks or to fetch kaff.

Allysha herself never did.

“She’s overdoing it, isn’t she?” said Butcher, following Saahren’s eyes.

“Possibly,” he answered in the same low tone. “But I’m afraid to interrupt her train of thought. It’s how she works.” He wished he could just order her to the med center. But he couldn’t. Sometimes compassion wasn’t an option.

At last she pushed the chair back and sat, her broken arm across her stomach, the other supporting her chin as it rested on a fist.

He went in, suppressing any movement from the other four with a gesture. “Well?”

“There’s nothing. But there has to be. The machine went off line for a moment. I saw it. Something made that happen. If it was some mechanical failure or something—a bounce—there would be evidence.

There’s not. I’m missing something.”

“Where have you looked?” Saahren asked.

“Every machine.” She encompassed the whole room in a wave of her undamaged arm. “The comms network, the transmission data, the caches, the stacks, the overflows, the encryptors, the decryptors, the LTRs. Everything.”

“I’m just an admiral, Allysha,” Saahren said. “Most of those things mean nothing to me. What would Astin have sent or received?”

She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. A list of items? To pick up or deliver? A location? A name? I don’t know what to look for.”

“Either way, something he could understand, yes?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“So he might have written it down somewhere?”

“Sure, on a pad or…” She frowned and straightened up. “Would he have a comlink?”

“Possibly,” Saahren said. “Not everybody likes to use the implant. Should we check?”

“Please.”

Saahren summoned Butcher with a glance and sent him off to search. Allysha told her team to take a break and stretch their legs. They filed out past him, acknowledging him with a respectful nod as they did so. Bristol met his gaze for a moment, clearly embarrassed, but Saahren forestalled any conversation with

a flick of his head. Out. When he turned back to Allysha, she was staring at the right side of his chest.

“There’s a mark on your jacket.” She stretched out a hand to brush at a stain.

“Dirt and blood, I imagine.”

She caught her lip in her teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“It can be cleaned. Lean on me whenever you like.”

She smiled a little, rubbing the fingers of her right hand on her forehead. She winced. If anything, she was even paler. Still in shock.

Commander Butcher returned, carrying a standard comlink. “In his quarters, Sir. It was hidden in a secret compartment in a drawer.”

Allysha plugged the comlink into her own techpack and plunged into the device. It was only a moment before she hissed, “Yes!”

Saahren leaned over her. “What is it?”

“This is the function that does the work. See here?” She pointed at a piece of unintelligible gibberish.

“I’d say he had to… yes… plug this into the InfoDroid.”

She straightened. “We can test that… the InfoDroid is in that cabinet.”

He summoned the nearest person, who happened to be Lieutenant Mustafa, and sent him to fetch the InfoDroid.

“See?” Allysha said to Saahren as she fitted the comlink into place, “the comlink goes in here and…”

She fell silent as she concentrated, her fingers on the keyboard. Her body went tense. “There.”

“Yes? What?”

“This is where it sent the last message from this function,” she replied, her voice tight with excitement.

“That’s a location. Just a second while I map it… Damnation.” Allysha leaned back in the chair and pulled a face. “It’s just a transmitter. Now let’s see.”

Her voice became absent, running a commentary mainly for herself. “If the data’s on his own comlink he wouldn’t have seen that as a security risk. It’ll just be some work stuff.”

She looked up at Saahren again. “Have they checked all the addresses on here?”

“Yes,” replied Butcher from behind him. “Before I brought it to you.”

“Okay. Something else then…”

“‘Lysha, wouldn’t the transmitter keep copies of messages sent?” Mustafa said.

“Yes!” She swiveled back to face Saahren. “Can we get that? Now?” She grinned. “What I mean is, we can just take it and very likely nobody will notice, but the transmitter actually belongs to the planetary government here. Are we allowed?”

Saahren cocked an eyebrow. “You have my permission, Allysha. If anybody notices, I’ll deal with it.”

“Okay. We’ll need to go up to the tech offices. These machines can’t do that sort of task.” She stood.

Her features tightened as the casing on her right arm slipped against the edge of a chair. The pain killers were starting to wear off.

Saahren dismissed the others and went to the tech offices with Allysha alone. The fewer people knew all the details of what was happening, the better. She leaned against the wall of the transit car, head back, face drawn.

“Does it hurt a lot?” He rested a gentle hand on her undamaged shoulder. She didn’t shy away from him.

“Not too bad. A bit sore is all.”

A lot sore was probably more accurate. “Why wouldn’t they have removed the message from the transmitter?” He asked her as a distraction.

“It would probably have triggered an alert if a message was deleted. It could be done, but it wouldn’t be easy because you’d have to interact with whatever transmitter the message was sent to. Besides, it’s safe

enough, isn’t it? It’ll just be something innocuous; an address or some sort of coded message.”

Like the rest of the ship, the tech offices were virtually deserted. The few crew stood aside for him, while he allowed Allysha to lead him to one of the laboratories. Inside, she sat down at a console.

Without bothering to go through the pretense of a keyboard, she slipped directly into the machine through

a data port. In seconds, streams of data marched up the screen.

“Here.” She stopped the parade and displayed a coordinate on the console in front of her. “Looks like he received a message, a location on this planet I imagine.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s time stamped.” She pointed at the data. “This is what precipitated our actions. It might be somewhere else,” she said, looking up at him, “but I’d say the best chance is that it’s here, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Well done, Allysha. Show me the location.”

The map display appeared before him, showing a house in the capital city in what appeared to be a derelict part of town.

“Excellent. And now, my dear, it’s time you went and rested. The pain killers are already wearing off and you’ll be hurting.”

“No, sorry, Admiral.” She shook her head, lips curved in a small smile, her brilliant green eyes locked to his. “You’ll be going to find this place and wherever it is, I have to be there.”

He risked a hand to her cheek, to brush away a strand of hair. “Allysha, at some stage, your officers will have to perform without you. Now’s a good time, while you’re still there to help them if need be.”

“You don’t understand.” She shook her head again, emphatically this time. “This comlink has the function that the chief used to send the transmission. He plugged it into the InfoDroid, it did its job and there’s no trail inArcturus’s systems. Somebody programmed that; somebody who can do what I can do.”

“Even so,” said Saahren but his stomach knotted.

“Skilled as the team has become, in this situation they will do you as much good as an InfoDroid, Admiral. I have to be there. A few more pain killers won’t hurt.”

She wasn’t pleading, just stating facts. If she had been anyone else with the same injuries, he would have agreed without compunction. Her injuries were not life threatening and her skills were needed. It had to be done.