Demon Star Read online

  “Hoon is very smart and very meticulous. He could have covered all of his tracks.”

  Cornelius held up her glass of Scotch-like drink and looked at it closely as if trying to find a defect. “If he’s so skilled, why cover his tracks in his own systems but leave evidence in Valiant’s?”

  “Presumably he’s not as familiar with Star Force cybernetics as his own. He screwed up.”

  She shook her head, and then drained her glass. “Mm. No, Captain. If you want my opinion, someone is trying to frame Hoon.”

  I let my chin sink to my chest in thought. “Unless Hoon is so clever that he’s running a double-bluff. He knew we’d eventually find traces of his meddling, so he deliberately made his efforts look clumsy and fake, hoping we’d discount them for that reason.”

  Cornelius shrugged and set her glass down near the bottle, a deliberate hint. I chuckled and poured her another. She sipped, and then said, “Of course, that is possible, but I do not believe it is in character for Hoon to risk himself and his research so far from home. If he were to make some attempt, I would expect it to be when he had a reasonable chance of getting away with it.”

  “Unless he’s starting to become mentally unstable,” I said.

  She merely shrugged, and I took her meaning. We could speculate all day. What I needed was evidence, and she had none.

  “Well, thanks, Chief. You’ve been a big help, if only to eliminate possibilities.” I stood and opened the door.

  Cornelius tossed back the rest of her glass and rose to her feet, throwing me a casual salute. “Always happy to share a drink with you, sir.”

  Once she’d gone, I called Adrienne to join me. When she’d arrived, I messaged Kalu to report to me. I wanted no chance of the sexy scientist arriving first.

  I didn’t offer Kalu a drink. Instead, I sat behind my desk, with Adrienne off to the side, and gestured to the chair in front of me. “Have a seat, Doctor, and tell us what you’ve found out, please.”

  Kalu took a data stick out of her lab coat pocket and slid it across my desk with a scowl. “This is my report. I composed it on a separate computer in the lab, so only you and I have a copy. Not even Valiant has access.”

  “Explosive?” I said it lightly, but my pulse had quickened with the hope that I would finally learn something solid.

  “Yes. But the problem is, with all the fakery and framing going on, I can’t be sure…”

  I interrupted her. “Assume you’ve found the truth. What about Hoon?”

  “I believe Professor Hoon is innocent of anything to do with the investigation.”

  Adrienne leaned forward. “Does that mean he’s guilty of something else?”

  Kalu squirmed in her seat, avoiding Adrienne’s eyes. “I wouldn’t say ‘guilty,’ but he is an alien, and he has his own agenda, rather like Marvin. It appears he routinely tries to hack Valiant’s systems. Sometimes he’s able to get in and view files, but I don’t think he’s ever been able to change anything.”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard anything about this?” I asked.

  Adrienne cleared her throat. “Sakura and I knew about it, Captain,” she said stiffly. “I reported it to Hansen long ago, and he told us to keep an eye out but not to bother you…that you had enough on your mind already.”

  I raised an eyebrow in amazement and irritation. “I’m the captain! I decide what’s relevant and what’s not. What else have people been keeping from me?”

  The two women exchanged glances, and for a moment, I felt as if I were on the outside looking in, as if despite their animosity they shared something I never could.

  “Dammit!” I said, standing up. “How the hell am I supposed to command this ship with everyone keeping secrets? Both of you need to come clean with whatever you know.”

  Adrienne held up a hand. “Cody, we don’t know anything…and it’s not even about ship operations. It’s social.”

  Kalu nodded with downcast eyes.

  “Given our situation,” I snapped, “everything is about operations. So what is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Adrienne insisted. “Just that Sakura and Hansen aren’t seeing each other anymore. Lover’s quarrel. Bound to happen sometime.”

  I relaxed. “Well, it’s good to know the basics, but you’re right. I don’t need that kind of detail. Now, about this data…?” I picked up the stick and looked at Kalu.

  Nervously, she answered, “I came at the problem in a different way, Captain. More rigorously and scientifically. Rather than simply looking for things that were out of place and chasing the evidence like a detective, I performed an analysis of each anomaly’s first occurrence and tried to cross-correlate everyone’s access logs and whereabouts. I thought that, no matter how clever someone is technically, the timeline should reveal the culprit.”

  Still standing, I placed my hands flat on my desk and leaned toward her. “Get to the point! Who is it?”

  Kalu licked her lips. “Sakura. She’s the only possible source for all the changes, hacks and fakes.”

  “But you don’t have real proof? No smoking gun?”

  She shook her head. “I know it seems thin and circumstantial, and you probably think I made it all up, but you can have anyone you like check my analytical methods. Marvin could validate it, or Valiant, or even her.” She jerked her head in Adrienne’s direction.

  Adrienne picked up the stick. “I’ll do it,” she said, glancing at me. “If there’s a flaw, I’ll find it. If not, we’ll know for sure. Until then, Captain, I suggest we take no action. There have been too many unsubstantiated allegations flung about already.”

  “Damn straight,” I said drily. “Getting everyone paranoid is one more way to undermine us all.” Then I slammed the flat of my palm on the desk, leaving a hand print that slowly filled back in as the smart metal did its job. “Did you take this information to Hansen first? Is that why he and Sakura broke up?”

  “Yes, and no,” Kalu said, lifting her head defiantly. “Hansen is more objective about me than either of you, Captain. I wanted to make sure proper procedures were followed, and that someone else of command rank knew what was going on.”

  I wanted to snarl and rage at her, but she was a civilian, and I hadn’t told her specifically to report her findings only to me, so technically she wasn’t out of line. Still, I thought it was a dirty move.

  Unexpectedly, Adrienne spoke up in support. “Hansen’s your XO, Captain, and he’s supposed to handle crew discipline at his level if he can.”

  “You’re lecturing me about procedures now?” I said, my voice rising. “Hansen can’t be objective if the evidence points to the woman he’s sleeping with! When did you tell him?”

  “This morning. You said you wanted a report by today, so I didn’t see the harm.”

  “And then Hansen broke up with Sakura?”

  “No, that happened yesterday,” Adrienne said.

  I shook my head in puzzlement. That timeline didn’t fit my preconceptions. “Okay, fine, forget the breakup then. What did Hansen say?”

  “He said thanks,” Kalu replied, “but indicated he’d sit on the information until you saw it.”

  That reassured me. Hansen and I had our differences, but it seemed like he was playing things by the book. “Okay. Doctor, you’re dismissed.”

  Once she’d gone, I turned to Adrienne and sighed. “I have a headache.”

  Adrienne walked around behind me to massage my tight neck muscles.

  “Steady on, old chap,” she said, mocking herself a little. “I’ll check Kalu’s conclusions. If Sakura really is guilty, we’ll force her to confess. But I still can’t understand why she’d do it.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “I simply can’t believe it. I just can’t. She’s our top engineer and she’s vital to our chances of getting back home. I can’t think of a worse situation if it proves true. I am just going to have to trust that whoever the assassin is, they will want to get back to Earth as muc
h as the rest of us do and will wait till that happens before they make another attempt, especially if they know we’re onto them. I sure as hell can’t be an effective captain if I am walking around paranoid all the time not knowing who to trust.”

  “Well, I know what helps me to clear my head.” She eased her way into the sleeping chamber and started up some soft music. The sounds floated out from behind the door that she hadn’t managed to quite shut.

  I looked at the door and wondered if the saboteur could be Adrienne? I mean, I’d accidentally gotten her sister killed after all, and…no, no, that was just crazy thinking. I had to stop or I would go insane.

  Adrienne’s head popped out from behind the door. I noticed that she wasn’t wearing her uniform.

  “Come on,” she said, “we don’t have all day.”

  I guess if Adrienne turned out to be the assassin, there was no better way to go. I had my uniform off before I even reached the door.

  After we’d enjoyed ourselves and dressed again, I got a call to the bridge. When I got there, Hansen gestured at the main screen instead of the holotank. On it was displayed a close-up of a golden slab.

  “A Golden Slab?” I asked. “Have we discovered something new that I should know about?”

  “Yeah, one showed up a few minutes ago, near the ring we came through.”

  “Damn, so it came through behind us?”

  “Not in the conventional way. It just appeared, as they tend to do.”

  I rubbed my neck, still a bit stiff. “And now?”

  Hansen glanced at a sub-screen and then held up a hand. “Three…two…one…pop.” The slab vanished. A moment later, the screen jumped and showed the golden agent of the Ancients again.

  I moved to the holotank and adjusted it to display the space around the ring and ran the record backward and forward until I got what I wanted. “The slab appeared its standard jump distance from the ring, waited a few minutes, and then jumped again. But where’s it going?” I said this last without expecting a genuine answer, as the plot extending in its direction of “travel” reached out into empty space.

  “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Look where it went next.”

  I fiddled with the holotank for a minute without finding it. The odd thing was, we were looking at the past. Since light travels at a steady speed, when something was at a great distance we could only see where it had been, not where it was now.

  With normal ships, this wasn’t such a problem. They were following a course, and you could predict where they might be an hour later by watching them. But when something big just popped from here to there—well, it was disturbing. The thing could be looming over us seconds from now, taking us totally by surprise.

  “It’s at the asteroid cluster where we mined materials,” Hansen said helpfully.

  “There it is… But why?”

  Hansen shrugged. “It did show up right on time. Nineteen days seven hours, more or less, as the Whales said. That’s why I had all the passive sensors aimed there, but nothing active. I didn’t want to attract undue attention.”

  “Good thinking.” I glanced back and forth between the holotank and the screen, chewing a lip.

  Abruptly, the slab vanished again. A couple minutes of searching couldn’t locate it. I said, “Well, whatever it was here for, I guess it didn’t find it.”

  Hansen shrugged again.

  -9-

  Greyhound rejoined us in the middle of the ship’s sleep cycle and took a position near Valiant. The damaged Demon corvette was grasped in the Nano-style tentacles Marvin had added to his small ship. I’d left instructions for Valiant’s brainbox to wake me because I wanted to talk to Marvin right away, full video.

  Closing the door to the bedroom where Adrienne lay sleeping, I activated the screen in front of my desk. When the two-way vid-link was established and the robot became visible, I jumped right into the details that had been bothering me for hours.

  “Marvin, about Hoon. We’re investigating him, but I don’t think he was the one that did it. The evidence must have been faked or planted.”

  “I agree.”

  “What! When last we talked, you told me the indications pointed to him.”

  “That’s correct, but you ended our conversation before I could explain that I didn’t believe the indications.”

  I tried to recall the details, but I couldn’t be sure Marvin was right. Had I cut him off and sought out Hoon to confront him? Maybe…

  “Ah…” I said aloud as my memory of the conversation returned. I’d squelched him mid-conversation, ignoring him and rushing off.

  “I remember now,” I said. “Damn.”

  I could’ve saved myself the trouble by simply staying calm and listening. I’d discarded one of the cardinal rules of leadership, which was to gather as much information as possible before making a decision.

  In other words, don’t jump to conclusions.

  “Is Hoon still alive, Captain Riggs.”

  “Yes, fortunately,” I said and sighed. “Okay, Marvin. I should have listened to everything. So, is there anything you need to report right now about the ship or anything else?”

  “Not at this time.”

  I rubbed my eyes, still groggy. “Fine. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  “It’s 0213 hours. Technically it is morning.”

  “Technically, you’re right,” I ground out through gritted teeth. “I’ll talk to you after I’ve technically had breakfast, Marvin.” I cut the link and went back to bed.

  After getting up and having a cup of bad factory coffee, I ordered Doctors Chang and Benson to suit up and take a look at the Demon corvette. Hoon requested the same privilege, and after a bit of thought, I allowed it. Probably it was best that they and Marvin were all there to monitor each other. Maybe someone would notice something out of place.

  Sakura wanted to come along and I almost said no, but realized that might tip her off that I was onto her. If in fact it was her. This could all be just another fiasco like the one with Hoon. This was seriously interfering with my command. I had to set it aside and focus. All intelligence that we could gather about the Demons was priority.

  Unfortunately, other than the strange layer of slippery stuff inside the hull, there was little to distinguish the Demons’ technology from our own other than style and emphasis. They had brainboxes, smart metal, fusion engines, repellers and other modern tech.

  That should have told me something, but at the time I had too much else on my mind. Only later would the significance become clear.

  * * *

  On the last day before we arrived at Trinity-9, we finally made real-time contact with the natives. I’d been expecting an in-person conversation with one of our two potential allies once the light speed transmission delay fell to less than ten seconds.

  My small fleet was decelerating but off-center. When we came into orbit, we were still well outside of weapons range of any other warships or planetary defenses. Idling the engines also allowed us to communicate more easily, without having to transmit through our fusion exhaust or repeller interference.

  I’d programmed my smart cloth uniform to Fleet dress mode, although I left off the one award I had—for Academy graduation. Better no ribbons at all than a pathetic single. I also made sure that the video pickups were focused solely on me as I sat in my seldom-used bridge chair. I had no other crew or consoles visible in order to give away as little as possible just in case either of these aliens ended up being hairless versions of the Pandas or sharks in whales’ clothing.

  When an answer finally came, it turned out to be the Elladans that contacted us first. I had expected the Whales to call as Trinity-9 was their home planet, but perhaps they were letting humans talk to humans.

  Or humanoids.

  “Greetings, lost children,” a regal man on the main screen said in a translated voice, which was totally out of synch with his lip movements. “We have awaited this
day for eons and welcome you to your ancestral home of Ellada!”

  Dressed in a single floor-length garment, he wore a silver medallion at his neck, which I assumed was a communications device. His salt-and-pepper hair was perfectly shaped on his head. That hair didn’t look quite real.

  I’d studied up a bit on alien cultures within the last few days, and so I knew I had to tread lightly. Anything might be misunderstood. What most impressed me so far was that they were translating our language rather than the other way around. That meant they were advanced linguistically, and perhaps had a computer as powerful as Marvin on their side of the fence. That was something to remember.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, giving him a steady smile. “I’m Captain Riggs of the Star Force ship, Valiant.”

  “I’m Senator Diogenos,” he replied. “I speak for the Elladan people. Please inform me as to your intentions here in our space.”

  I raised my chin, my hands resting on the arms of my chair like a throne. “Thanks for your welcome. I command the squadron of ships you see in orbit, but we come in peace. I look forward to meeting you in person as you appear to be our biological cousins. I have many questions that require answers.”

  “Excellent responses, Captain Riggs. I can see you’re a man of dignity and presence. We’ve studied your ships and crews. I’m impressed by the way you keep the lower orders in their places, as is proper.”

  “Uh…” I wasn’t quite certain who he was talking about when he said “lower orders.” Our alien allies the Raptors? Brainboxes? Or was he referring to other humans?

  Having no idea what he meant, I pressed on. There was no sense in getting upset over a possibly faulty translation.

  “I’m sure our cultures must have some similarities,” I said. “We look so much alike…but I’d rather discuss practicalities. These Demon creatures that are on their way here, for example. I presume they’re intent on conquest?”

  “Of course, Captain. They’re creations of the mad Ancients. Their sole purpose is to extend the force of their will over us and eventually over the rest of the universe.”