Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (24 page)

“The second more likely method is that a stealthed
Prowler
enters the star system from a ranged jump as Lieutenant Lake suggested earlier. They then deploy a shuttle from the outer edge of the star system. It then works its way in, sucking in information and then altering her IFF when she gets within sight range to become just another dot of traffic for traffic control to contend with.” Meanwhile, the mother ship waits outside the star system while her shuttle and probes perform the real mission. “They can drink in whisker lasers with their intel dumps at scheduled times. If they are ruthless enough, and we know that the pirates are, it is possible for the mother ship to abandon a shuttle crew if they are found out and chased. The data and therefore the mission is more important than individual lives.”

“It's cold but it fits their MO,” Yao agreed with a reluctant nod, referring to their Modus Operandi.

“The third option is a stealthed ship such as a destroyer or light cruiser as we are using deploying the assets,” Fletcher stated.

“We're shooting in the dark. We don't
know
for sure that they took either method, or a freighter. They could have been on the planet the entire time,” Lake said, giving up the argument for something more productive. She didn't want her people to become too paranoid. To look for something that wasn't there and overlook the obvious. Sometimes the simplest answer was the real answer. Intel people forgot that when they got too wrapped up trying to nail down an answer to every question from time to time.

“A long term insertion team?” Lieutenant Fletcher asked.

Lieutenant Lake nodded. “Or a homegrown terrorist group like that guy who wears the skeleton mask on Eternia island,” Lieutenant Lake said.

“They still haven't tied him to the Horathians, ma’am,” Fletcher reminded her.

“Three points have. That's enough for me,” the lieutenant replied. “You don't get three independent points saying that he was linked to the Horathians like that. And since we've found out all sorts of things about the cells they've set up from our intel people on Protodon, we know they've been most likely doing the same here since it is a prime target. Possibly elsewhere as well.”

“Pyrax had a few incidents,” the ensign agreed with her.

“Correct,” Lieutenant Lake stated with a nod his way.

“So, if we work on the assumption that they came in on one of the three methods, how do we go about finding them or disproving any?”

“First, I think we draw ops into this. They can go over the scan records and see if anything came up. Engineering can give us stats on shuttles. They would have used their fuel and atmo on the way in, so the shuttle might have been hidden or abandoned on the planet.”

“With that skeleton guy?”

“Or somewhere else. I think …,” the lieutenant frowned thoughtfully before she nodded, “going into a high traffic area without an IFF would be like waving a red flag.”

“We could be shooting in the dark here,” Fletcher reminded her. “There is no proof, and as you have pointed out, we've got scans going continuously. I've gone over them twice and haven't found anything.”

“Then we might be able to eliminate them as possibilities,” the ensign said reluctantly. Lieutenant Lake eyed him. “Sorry, ma’am, I
like
the idea.”

“Strange that you would since it is rather scary,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him.

“No, I meant the tech. I like things nice and neat too I admit,” Yao said with a shrug. “That fit with a movie or something. A nice sense of drama.”

“And nothing in the real world ever is perfect like that. Tied up in a nice neat pretty bow,” the lieutenant replied with a shake of her head. “We can't get it all right, but we can damn well try to get as much as possible before the next thing springs up and bites us in the ass I suppose,” Lieutenant Lake growled. The others nodded. “Fine then. I'll talk with NCIS. I'll see if they got anything from the bodies they managed to recover.”

“Forensics, ma’am?” Fletcher asked. “I can check for reports now.”

“I doubt they ran a thorough one. If I prod someone, maybe they'll dig into it.”

“Understood, ma’am. If the bodies haven't been disposed of,” Yao stated.

Lieutenant Lake winced. “You would remind me of that,” she said sourly.

“Sorry, ma’am. Realist.”

“Good. I'll still put the call in anyway. Perhaps they drew samples. Most likely they took DNA, images, and fingerprints. I can get someone to run what they've got past our files as well as the planetary authority's files.”

“That could take days, ma'am,” Fletcher stated.

“And you just volunteered to handle the search,” Lieutenant Lake said sweetly as she grinned. “Get it done.”

“Yes, ma’am. If I can find something, I'll let you know.”

“Let me know either way actually.” She frowned thoughtfully then nodded. “Put a copy of their information in the queue for courier dumps to other commands. Have them do the same if nothing turns up.”

“And I'll take a crack at immigration's database while I'm at it. Who knows, Lady Luck might be nice,” Fletcher stated.

“That's the spirit. Get cracking,” the lieutenant ordered.

---<>))))

The following morning Lieutenant Lake went to the squad room of the small but still growing NCIS major crimes division. The squad room as they called it was a warren of cubicles, really a cubical farm with the occasional open area for the teams to meet to discuss a case in front of a series of wall screens. She wondered briefly if there were sound and visual dampeners between the rows to keep classified data out of the wrong heads. Somehow she doubted it. She made a mental note to have NCIS's security checked over.

And to have someone go over their access lists.

“Ah Lieutenant, just the woman I was hoping to see,” the special investigator said, waving his upper arm her way. She nodded warily. “Oh?”

“Yes, ma’am. We were going to call you with an update of course, but since you are here, we can show you our findings before we brief JAG.”

“What are you …,” she paused as he used his implants to access the wall screen to put up an image of a dead body. She grimaced.

“I'm talking about the discrepancy in the death of captain of
Chico
of course,” the Veraxin stated. “A check of the captain's body has at the time ruled it a suicide by the marines and on-site team, but further examination by our Medical Examiner has turned up anomalies.”

“Anomalies?

“Yes. You humans are vulnerable to neck trauma,” he clacked.

“We're not the only species,” she said dryly, thinking hidden thoughts about what she'd like to do to a certain Veraxin neck.

“Yes, but your soft tissue allows you to be easily strangled. One wonders why you didn't replace it with a carapace like other species,” he said.

“One wonders,” the lieutenant said dryly. “Continue.”

“According to our doctor, he was strangled from behind with a cord of some sort before he had been hung up for display. According to our forensic pathologist, his blood alcohol level was .2. That is very high and meant he had been drunk as well, most likely passed out or near enough to not be able to put up a fight.”

The lieutenant wrinkled her nose. “So how can you tell the difference? Dead is dead, right?”

“Well,” he put a hand to his throat. “The marks are inconsistent according to our ME. He said a mark here is where you expect a hanging,” he used his fingers to frame his neck high up at the base of his chin. “Not down here crushing the windpipe,” he said, dropping his hand a few centimeters. “Also, the bruising was different sizes. The cord he used to hang him was thicker and braided. Rope actually, from a curtain sash. The cord used to strangle him didn't have a braid. It was plastic, most likely a piece of wire coated in plastic.

“So? Someone killed him? Are you saying one of our people?”

“No, our ME is pretty certain of the time line. He was dead before our people boarded. We're trying to get a better look at his cabin, but unfortunately, it was already cleared when we didn't designate it a crime scene. The ship has already been contaminated by our own people. And since the navy has turned the ship over to Yard Dog Inc. to refit, we've lost our window.”

Lake was uninterested at first, but then it began to tally with some holes in a few of the crew's story. Slowly she nodded as she realized someone was trying to fly under the radar. She wasn't sure who or why, but it was obviously someone from that ship. That narrowed down the crew list.

“So, you have a killer to find. Or we do actually. We're going to interview the crew once more and establish a time line of who was where.”

“Someone is flying under the radar,” the Neogorilla junior agent rumbled. “Our computer techs have found signs of tampering with their database too. No surprise, but what was surprising was it was limited to specific areas. Most of them in the personnel section.”

“So, someone wanted to hide. If they want to hide, they have something to hide. Something we undoubtedly would want. But they aren't willing to kill themselves to keep it out of our hands,” the special agent concluded.

“Still speculation. It could be an argument gone bad. Desperation,” Lake riposted, thinking fast.

“I admit some of it is based on supposition. The two incidents could be construed as separate events; however, they are tied together in that the target of the computer record alterations were around the captain of the ship.”

“Oh?” Lake frowned thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

“We can do a data search on the other ships, the pieces we picked up I suppose. See if we get a hit. Also look into the survivors, and check our database to see if there are any mentions that way.”

“I believe we have a copy of the Horathian war book, ma’am?” the gorilla silverback asked.

“We do, but it's outdated, and we're not sure how accurate it is,” the lieutenant replied.

“I see, ma’am.”

“But it is another database we can check. We can at least use it to discover if any of the survivors have been on the ship for a long period of time.”

“As you say so, ma’am.”

“Did you find anything out about the captain of the
Caravan
class
Rhianna?”
a soft voice asked. Lake turned to see a bonobo chimp sitting at the probation officer's desk. Unlike the other agents, she had a lot of computer monitors around her as well as a small holo emitter that rivaled the one built into the bull pen's floor.

“No, why?”

“I'm curious, ma’am. If we can figure out who was the crew of that ship, you could find out who was a member of the
Chico
, ma’am.”

“Why? One of them might have a motive. I'm starting to wonder if this is an intelligence issue again.”

“You can leave it in our hands, ma’am. We'll get to the bottom of it.”

“If we don't get pulled off of it since it's a cold case,” the gorilla muttered darkly. When the lieutenant looked his way, he looked away and snuffled.

“Ma'am, if you'll excuse us we're needed in M-TAC,” the bonobo said suddenly, coming to her feet.

“Who says proby?” the gorilla demanded. The bonobo simply pointed up. His brown eyes looked up to see the Veraxin had already started to climb the stairs to where their supervisor was standing. He pointed to the hardened steel door. “Ah. Okay then,” the gorilla said also rising. “See what I mean, ma’am? Too many cases, not enough warm bodies it seems,” he said shaking his head as he and his partner moved out.

She stepped hastily out of their way. For the gorilla it was way out of the way; he was a big, broad shouldered fellow. The bonobo smiled sympathetically her way and then followed her partner.

She frowned, turning the story they'd related to her over and over in her mind as she headed for the elevator door. Something was screwy there, and if the agents were anything like her, they liked things orderly. They didn't like half answers to questions nor speculation. They wanted hard facts.

And they were investigators. A murder mystery was meat and potatoes to them. They lived for that kind of shit she thought with a snort as she pushed the down button.

She checked her inbox and was surprised to see the majority of what they covered in a fresh email from the team. Most likely the bonobo she thought with a nod. Could she steal her? Doubtful she thought. She needed good people, needed them badly. Her frown deepened as her tired mind nagged something at her. It took her a moment to realize she'd been put off of looking for more intel on the breach in
Bismark's
security
.
.

She swore when she realized she'd forgotten what she'd come for in the first place. She checked the time and then sighed, deflating as the elevator door pinged and then began to open. “I'll put it in an email or vidmail,” she muttered, stalking off back to her office to pack up to go home. It was obviously the best way to get information to or from them. That way she wouldn't burn time coming down for another face-to-face meeting she thought.

---<>))))

The admiral wasn't surprised to run into April after the lecture and usual gaggle of eager staff and students. When he caught sight of her, she smiled coyly. It was enough of an incentive to groan. “Sorry folks,” he placed a hand on his tummy. “That's the dinner bell. I've got a date with a late dinner and a beautiful lady whose patience is reaching her limit,” he smiled at her as she pursed her lips in a mocking expression. He winked when all eyes turned to her. “If you'll excuse me,” he said. He nodded as people murmured thanks to him as he and his security detail departed.