0900 hours CST, June 18th, 2673; flag bridge of TRFS Glasgow

Hey Anna,

I hope that you are doing well today. I’m still getting used to command here on the boat. I still feel a bit unsettled, moving from being too aggressive and uncaring to get too close to the crew. As you probably know we’re on our way out of the system. There was a pirate raid in a nearby system, and we’re going to investigate SD-4 to see if they went through there.

I don’t think we’ll find anything there though, it’s too close. But I’ll still act like we’re going into combat. This crew is still rough around the edges, which is surprising since most of them have been together for years. At least that’s what the records say. I’m not sure I trust the logs. The training exercises are all filled in correctly, a little too correctly if you know what I mean.

I’m not sure what I can do about that either. Either become the enemy they all hate, or the friend they all pull together for. I’ve had commanders of both types, but I’m one of the only two or three combat vets on board the boat. The other is the chief mechanic and the defensive fire co-ordinator. Their last commanding officer was at a desk during the war, same as the one before that.

Oh, and it seems that the gel skin suits have been declassified. The last I heard was that they were still top secret. Strange that they’re showing up on a movie set, but still six of my crew are wearing them now. The software in the sensor pack isn’t compatible with the ship’s software. The computer hardware on the boat hasn’t been upgraded since she was built, and even if we could upgrade the software I can’t risk it, not without some space worthy trials afterwards. We just don’t have the time for it.

By the way, do you know anyone called Beth Hastings? Apparently she was at the Academy with us, and in your class. I don’t remember her, but she’s certified with the new gel suits and is working at the movie studio.

I’m sure that a lot of this message will get censored by the admiral’s signals officer, so if there’s anything blacked out make sure you take her to task for it. I love you, Anna.

The message ended, and Anna could not help but smile at the last words. Of course the admiral’s signals officer would have to censor out all the classified materials, after she broke the personal encryption code Phil used. She had to make sure that the higher ranking officers in the fleet did not accidently pass anything on in their messages to their loved ones, and she had to do the same with the junior officers as well.

Being the admiral’s signals officer meant she had to censor the message herself, and she would definitely do so. She had to make sure that nothing in the message that was classified would get through to Lieutenant Murphy’s loved one. She did keep the original in her personal encoded files and passed the censored version on through official channels.

The message brought some questions to the forefront of Anna’s mind. What was Beth doing on Clearwater Prime? What was she doing with the military’s latest skin-suit technology? And why was she using it at a movie studio?

The fleet was due to leave the station in seventy hours. This did not leave her much time to find the answers to those questions. As a signals officer, it was not her responsibility to find out, but she was not a regular signals officer. Very few people knew that agents of the Central Ministry of Intelligence were stationed with the fleet. It was a secret she kept even from Phillip. Anna was an agent for the Signals Security Branch, and it was her task to make sure that the communications of the fleet were as secure as possible; at the same time, she searched for rogue or enemy signals and did her best to crack them.

The pirates in the area were too good at knowing which systems were best for ambushes, and which cargo runs to attack. A leak was suspected in either the Clearwater fleet or inside Clearwater Prime. Somehow the pirates knew when the fleet was patrolling the systems outward from Clearwater and always avoided those areas. Anna had been attached to the fleet to monitor the communications in and around the system to search for hidden communications and hopefully intercept them.

The fact that Beth was on Clearwater Prime was worrying. She was not surprised that Phil did not remember her from the Academy. He was very focused and intent while he was studying. Beth was her roommate at the Academy, and they had stayed together the entire time they were at the Academy together. They had even served their between-term cruises on the same boats and ships. That was not the worrying thing. What worried her was that Beth was the agent who had recruited her into the CMI. Anna knew she was part of the Operations Branch, the branch that handled the majority of the fieldwork.

Beth would not have broken cover like that, unless she needed something from Anna, and for her to trust that message to reach her through such an unreliable method meant something major was going on. What that was, Anna had no clue, but she would have to investigate. That meant she would have to get off the Glasgow somehow, and while it was still her watch.

Even the admiral did not know that she was an agent of the SSB, and she could not reveal her split allegiance just to get away long enough to find out what was going on, on the station. Especially not with the fleet leaving so soon.

* * *

10:30 a.m. CST, June 18th, 2673; Food Court, Shopping District, Clearwater Prime

Darline Hughes was just sitting down for a meal in one of the food courts of Clearwater Prime’s main shopping district. The station had a large district set aside for shopping, called the Grand Bazaar even though it was set up like a large strip mall rather than an open-air market. The district was also one of the first areas on the station to be opened after reconstruction began and the artificial gravity generators were activated.

She was wearing what would be called her incognito outfit: a loose, flowery blouse, loose pants, and an undone jacket. The outfit was simple, casual, and it concealed her figure well. Her hair was tied back in a bun, and she wore thick glasses that distorted the shape of her face and eyes. She hated wearing them because she had to wear contact lenses to compensate; the combination always gave her a headache.

“Is this seat taken?” someone asked as the person sat down without waiting for a response.

“Well, it is now.” Darli looked up at the woman sitting before her. The outfit Anna wore was as simple and as casual as her own. It also concealed her figure and was fairly generic.

“I’m Darli,” she said.

“Nice to meet you,” Anna said. She settled her food tray on the table before her, letting the front of her jacket open up to reveal a faintly glowing light from the inside pocket.

“But really, Beth,” Anna continued in a quiet voice. She was facing the blonde, her eyes scanning the other patrons. The table was surrounded by other empty tables. With it being just after the food sellers had finished serving breakfast and well before the lunchtime rush, the food course was deserted. “That was a bit risky, sending me a message that way. What’s going on?”

“It’s good that you’re here. What sort of equipment did SSB give you?”

“Signal mimic. If we keep our voices low, any microphone will pick up the conversation of two girls who just met.”

“Fancy. There are many things going on here, Anna. I can’t tell you everything, of course.”

“I know that. Maybe I should ask what do you need from me?”

“The fact that you’re here is good. One of the cases I’m working on here is because there might be a leak on Clearwater Prime that is giving the fleet movements to the pirates.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard anything about that.” Anna was proud that she kept her tone just right.

“Come on, Anna. Why else would you be assigned to the fleet unless your controllers at SSB needed someone out here to check for rogue signals? And you know you could never lie to me. We worked together too long.”

“Did you request help?”

“You bet I did,” Beth said, exasperation starting to creep into her voice. “Now, are you going to help out or not?”

“All right. Something must have you worried to want to contact me directly.”

“Let me give you the background then. About a year and a half ago, I came here to set up a studio. It’s Darli’s big break into producing. It’s also an open secret that Darli is getting her funding from some corporate source. Your beau probably told you about the gel suits, right?”

The signals officer could not keep the smile completely from her face, but she did hide it well. Only those who knew her well could tell that she was smiling. Even though she had not been in operations for a long time, the training was extensive and hard to forget.

“Yes he did. Of course I had to censor that part of the message to make sure it didn’t leak out,” Anna replied in an offhand method. “Is the manufacturer backing Darline?”

“Yes they are. Dalrun Chemicals out of Olivier.”

Anna could not keep the sigh from her voice. “Of course, though I’m not sure what that has to do with the leak.”

“Not much, probably nothing at all. It’s one of the cases I’m working on here. But it does connect with the leak by being bait. If more information about the suits gets out than what is in the films, we should be able to confirm the presence of the leak here on Clearwater Prime. Though that is a long-term play and doesn’t help us in the short term.”

“It sounds a little tenuous at best. I don’t think you could use it for anything of the sort.”

“Perhaps, but it’s just a minor angle. You could think of it as a way to test the waters. The real reason I’m working with the gel suits, at least as far as the manufacturer is concerned, is to provide a bit of astroturfing, to build up some sort of ground swell of acceptability for the gel suits so they’ll be more easily accepted by the navy. And if they are accepted, then the manufacturers will profit.”

“I didn’t think the CMI was working that closely for the corporations yet.”

“We aren’t. You should know that, Anna. That’s just Darli’s reason for being here; we’re working a long angle on that case too. That one is running smoothly right now, but you don’t need to know more about that. Of course Beth is here for another reason entirely. The gel suit case is just one mission that will hopefully lead into the other mission of finding that leak.” Beth’s face always took on a sardonic grin when she talked about herself in the third person.

“So what do you need from me then?”

“I assume you haven’t found anything yet either. The fleet is moving out soon, now that there’s been an attack in the next system over.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I know…With the fleet moving out soon, now is as good a time as any to be a bit more aggressive in the investigations. I don’t have a partner on this mission; OB thought it was best I work on Prime alone. Probably something to do with the budget more than anything else. I also don’t know if my mission has been compromised yet or not. I need a hidden card to play, and you’re it, Anna.”

“I hate to say this, Beth, but what’s in it for me? I have my own tasks and duties to accomplish, and I have to leave with the fleet when it departs. I just can’t be away for that long.”

* * *

12:15 p.m. CST, June 18th, 2673; Gamma Wheel of Clearwater Prime

Anna sighed at her gullibility. She had no idea how Beth was able to talk her into these sorts of things, but she did almost every time. She was able to get leave from her duties for a few days, as long as she checked in with the duty officer now and then and as long as she was always reachable; the standard rules still applied to her as to any other navy officer.

She and Beth had gone to one of the older rings of Clearwater Prime to continue their snooping around. The two had been lucky during their conversation at lunch. Some of Anna’s sensitive equipment had detected an unknown signal, and they were able to trace it to the fourth ring. Normally they would track down the easy leads, but there was not any low-hanging fruit that was falling into their laps on this case. No one had tried to investigate the gel suits yet; no consistent set of signals was detected—only the one signal that brought the two to the older ring during their investigations, and it was little more than a carrier wave.

The reconstruction of the first and lowest ring into a disk was still ongoing. The second wheel was scheduled to start in five or ten years. Before the installation of the gravity generators, the station’s six rings rotated to provide a reasonable simulation of gravity. Each pair of rings rotated around the spine in opposite directions, the torque cancelled out to keep the centre structure from moving. Each wheel was about four kilometres thick, with five kilometres between them. The ring themselves were about thirty kilometres in diameter.

One aspect of the change from simulated to artificial gravity was that the floors became the outer wall, and the walls had become ceilings. The two agents had to climb hastily made ladders to get to the doors and hatches. Office furniture in the abandoned and unsecured offices had fallen off the old floor and onto the walls that made the new floors.

Beth and Anna’s movements through the unreconstructed areas were often hindered by doors being blocked by the furniture that had fallen on top of them. The passageways were wide, and the only way to get to some of the doors was to climb ladders. There was often no way for them to gain entrance to some of the abandoned offices. It often turned out that they could not get into places they wanted to visit, even if they were as little as thirty metres away.

“Hey, isn’t that an open window over there?” Anna asked as she pointed. She walked along the wall of the building toward the windows that used to be on the floor above the door.

As they searched the sector where Anna’s equipment had detected the signal, they kept themselves to the old ground floor. Habits and conventions are hard for humans to break. A person often does not look up when he’s searching for something. This convention kept the two agent’s eyes firmly on what used to be the only accessible entrances to the buildings, the doors on the old ground floor. The entire fronts of some buildings were available for them to explore now.

Beth walked along the three floors to get to the open window and looked inside. The room itself was a mess; the office furniture lay haphazardly on the new floor, except for one portion where a desk and a couple of chairs had been righted.

Using a curtain that was firmly attached, the two climbed down to the room and worked their way over to the desk.

“Well, someone has been here, but that doesn’t mean he was our leak,” Anna said as she fished into a pocket to pull out one of her devices.

“No it doesn’t, but we could still get lucky.”

“We’re relying too much on luck,” Anna said. “There aren’t any power sources in the room. At least I can’t detect any flowing current.” She put the device back into her pocket.

“But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any booby traps,” Beth said in the same tone Anna used.

“No it doesn’t, and you’re the one with the boobs.”

“Part of the cover, dear.”

The two searched the desk and chairs for any trip wires, buttons, or any other means of setting a trap before they started to search the rest of the room. They found some trash but nothing of value in the desk or any of the other furniture of the room.

“Well, this is a bust, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is.”

“This sector is huge. We can’t search every building, and we can’t search every window to see if it would lead to an office like this. I think this is too weak of a lead to follow up on. We have to find another angle to work, Beth.”