CHAPTER 12 - CONVERGENCE

DATE POINT: MARCH 21ST, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL

LIEUTENANT PAUL KARST

“ALL RIGHT, WE'RE HERE. BUZZ US IN PLEASE. – KARST”

Paul stood in front of Henry’s door, tapping his foot. Jenkins stood behind him carrying his bag of tools. The light on biometric scanner display changed from red to green as the door slid open for them. Paul motioned Jenkins inside the room before the door shut behind them.

“Let’s start by checking out the bathroom, then we can move on to the rest of the room.” Paul said as he opened the bathroom door.

Glass covered the floor in large and small jagged shards. Curiously, the corners of the mirror were still attached to the wall. The epoxy clearly had held in place while something applied a either a pulling or a striking force to the center of the mirror. Jenkins whistled as he took in the sight from his position behind Paul.

“Jeez, glad we weren’t in here for that antimatter storm, huh? All that glass would have cut you to ribbons. We should probably clean all this up before we hit another one, huh?” Jenkins said, looking back at Paul for validation.

Paul rolled his eyes, ignored him, and took some pictures as Jenkins sulked over and grabbed a trash bag from a receptacle in the wall.

“Where would the broom be stored?” Jenkins asked.

“Forget it, that’ll take too long.” Paul said, activating a low-powered TK field and moving the field intersection point all around the room just above the floor to collect the pieces. Within seconds, Paul had a swirling ball of glass shards that he lifted up and dropped into the wide open trash bag in Jenkins’ hands.

“That is such an awesome trick, I still can’t believe you can do that!” Jenkins gushed; Paul fought back a sense of disgust at the boot-licking before he waved it off.

“If it wasn’t for my neural implant cooling and amplifying the effect, I would fry my brain trying to maintain even that basic level of control and power for long.” Paul said, waving it off.

“So back to the mirror, what do you think caused this?” Jenkins asked as he examined the four corners still attached to the wall.

“We only ever epoxied the corners on all of these, so that means something pulled hard at the center of the mirror to get it to shatter like that. My money would be on a TK field but that should be impossible, there are only two telekinetics onboard that we are aware of.”

“How sure are you that this was a telekinetic field? Couldn’t someone have simply pulled at it with a really strong suction cup or something? Hell, why not just assume someone hit it with a hammer?” Jenkins asked, still looking rather mystified by it all.

“There are only so many explanations for this, and each of them makes less sense than a TK field primarily because someone would have had to sneak into Henry's bathroom to get close enough. I have broken plenty of windows with my powers from a distance, I know what it looks like. Something pulled hard at the center of the glass, hard enough to rip it off that wall and they did so without leaving any trace of being in the room. The problem is, who and how did they get in here with the door locked? Also, there's no dent in that wall.” Paul was driving himself a little crazy trying to explain it any other way, even if he knew his explanation was also a huge stretch.

“What if it was a ghost or a poltergeist? Four people just died some pretty horrible deaths. Maybe they can’t move on because we are in FTL and are so far from Earth.” Jenkins said.

“Nonsense, ghosts don’t exist. We have a serial killer on board motivated by a cause trying to get us to turn around. One that probably has shared their delusions with others who are helping to sabotage and scare us. The mirror fits perfectly in that narrative, we just don’t know how they accomplished it.” Paul said with more confidence than he felt inside.

“If you say so, sir” Jenkins said with a slightly snarky tone. Paul, who at this point wanted nothing more than to move the topic along, simply walked over to open his bag of tools. He grabbed a wand, flipped a switch on the handle, and started searching for bugs.

“Grab a screwdriver, I want you to start removing outlet covers, get all of the light switch covers too while you are at it. When you are done, move onto the air vents and any other removable access panel you can find.” Paul said, figuring that task would keep him busy and hopefully silent.

“Fine, I’m on it. What am I looking for?” Jenkins asked.

“Any loose screws, panels that have scratches, evidence that some of the screws are a little chewed up from being screwed in and out a few too many times. See any of that? Take note of it, that’s a clue we need to scrutinize that section further. Anything that looks like a tiny drill hole or black dots on any electronic devices even charger bases can be hiding a small camera. This wand looks for the tiny magnetic fields within electronic devices, so I can test for bugs behind wall panels and inside furniture while you look in the more obvious places.”

“Whoa, awesome!” He said, sometimes Paul wondered what it would be like to be so easily impressed.

“Tech like this wand has been around since the cold war, dude. Miniaturized hidden cameras inside of otherwise innocuous items and similar creeper tech have been around since before first contact, none of this would be expensive to buy, nor would it be hard to squirrel away inside a bag for later use.”

“For what purpose?” Paul just stared at him in confusion.

“Seriously Jenkins, sometimes I wonder how you have survived this long being so naïve. The most obvious reason would be to be a perv, or we had someone who brought it along with the intent to spy and disrupt our mission. Could even be a sign that we have a mole from NavInt, or even a spy from one of the other surviving terrestrial intelligence agencies.”

Jenkins turned pale after that. “That’s a lot of possibilities, none of them are good.” he said.

“Unless we find something that can narrow things down a bit, we are scratching in the dark. All we have are possibilities, so keep searching.”

“Well, then wouldn’t they have heard this whole conversation?” Jenkins asked, suddenly looking around.

“They already know that we are in the room searching for bugs, there is no hiding our suspicion now. I haven’t given away any secrets, and you are too clueless to give anything away. Even if we were silent the whole time they would still know something was wrong the moment their bug lost signal.” Paul said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Oh, okay then. You know you really don’t have to be so abrasive all the time, right? I think people would like you better…”

“I hate everyone by default, Jenkins. Why in the world do you think I would give one single fuck about what they think of me, other than in a capacity of how useful they are to me?”

“I feel sorry for you then, bro. You must live a lonely existence. Do you want a hug?” Paul stared daggers at the man, who meekly went back to work. The minutes from there passed in blessed silence for Paul before Jenkins broke the spell.

“Hold on, here’s something!” In his hand was an electrical plug face plate that had a series of gadgets epoxied to the back with several wires spliced into the wiring in the wall connecting it with twist connectors.

“Jackpot! Good work, Jenkins, maybe you aren’t so useless after all. Rip that from its wiring and keep searching. I was about done wanding anyway.”

Paul carefully studied the small cluster of devices. There was a camera, a microphone, and a speaker that all looked like they had been scavenged from a phone along with some other electronics that Paul didn’t immediately recognize. The soldering work was exemplary, real care had been taken with the electrical connections. The epoxy work was minimalist and carefully done as well to prevent damage to the individual devices and to ensure they continued to work. A suspicion worked its way through Paul’s mind as he looked over the homemade device.

“We need to redouble our efforts now. Where there is one device there will generally always be a backup.”

Jenkins had removed every visible panel by now, so he pulled over a chair and began to work on the main air vent in the ceiling. Paul had just put away his wand when Jenkins spoke up again.

“Hey, check this out!” Jenkins said, “All these screws are stuck fast, can’t turn them to save my life.”

Paul scowled and dug in his toolbox for a prybar before he handed it up to Jenkins who accepted it with a grateful look. He then slid the prybar under the lip and with a mighty push, he popped the whole panel right off with apparent ease and a look of shock.

“What the fuck?” Paul asked as he picked the dented panel off the ground.

The screws that secured the panel had been cut clean off and epoxied carefully in place with magnets on the back. Another magnet had been epoxied to the reverse side on each corner in the vent itself. A metal ring had been attached to the back of the panel with a steel cable attached to it. Paul traced it up to a small pulley barely visible on the ceiling of the dark air vent above. A similar bug to the one on the electrical socket cover was on the back of the vent panel as well, this time wired to a battery pack. A latch on the inside had been broken off when he pried it off.

“Well, I think we just found our ghost.” Paul remarked dryly. “Those vents go through the whole ship and act like secondary maintenance passageways. A lot of the electrical work is run through those passages as well. Frankly they are a maze. If they bugged Henry’s room, they probably bugged mine as well.” Paul thought, rather annoyed at the invasion, in spite of his own line of work requiring him to plant bugs on a frequent basis.

The pair worked hard, searching everywhere they could think of over the next half hour, though they found nothing else by the end. Paul felt reasonably certain that they were in the clear. Using his implant, he messaged Henry.

FOUND SOMETHING, MEET US IN YOUR ROOM. – KARST

Within a few minutes, Henry walked in the door with Chantal.

“All right, tell me what you found.” Henry said simply. Paul dropped the wall plug faceplate into his hand. Paul waited for Henry to puzzle over it for a minute.

“Are these from a cell phone?” Henry asked, perceptive as ever.

“Yep, as you can see these are not professionally made devices, so I think we can rule out NavInt or other spy agencies. This reeks of someone with limited experience or pre-planning, but extensive technical skills.” Paul said, not wanting to lead Henry specifically, hoping to hear a new perspective. Jenkins then cleared his throat and pulled at the vent cover on the ceiling to show the modifications that allowed it to be easily and quickly replaced.

“Well, looks to me like we found our ghost.” Henry said, looking at Chantal, who nodded.

“That’s what he said.” Jenkins added to Paul’s amusement.

“If I remember right, they combined the air vents with the maintenance passageways in most of the ship. Most of them have multiple points where they can be accessed by anyone on the assigned maintenance crew. Those few access points are controlled by biometrics to prevent unauthorized access. It looks like our ghost is a Fireman.” Henry said, narrowing the list of suspects down further.

“That soldering work is top notch,” Chantal added. “Not just anyone would be able to pull this off. I think we need to assume that our prime suspect is an electrician’s mate.”

Henry looked at her like she had grown a second head. “You have been defending them this whole time to me, why change your tune now?” He asked her. She looked at him back like he had asked the world’s dumbest question. Paul wished he had some popcorn.

“We mustn’t ignore evidence right in front of our face now, dear,” she said somewhat icily. She then looked around at everyone. “I think we must now assume that these electrical issues we have been experiencing are the result of intentional sabotage.”

The mood in the room plummeted as what she said sank in. Henry flexed his hand in and out of a fist while a complex series of emotions played out on his face. Finally, he closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and reopened them. He looked pissed and he spoke slowly, picking his words carefully. "Are you positive you have all the bugs? Is this room clean?" Henry asked. Paul nodded. After a moment Henry continued.

“Paul, review the biometric access logs for the maintenance tunnels, see if you can find any patterns. Maybe a suspect will emerge if we can line the times up with some of these incidents we have been having. After that, I want you to sweep the rest of our rooms for bugs with Jenkins in a similar manner. I need to get back to the CIC to finish out C shift. We will reconvene as we rotate into A shift. I will put the word out that I want all of our maintenance and electrical staff to be there when I make the announcement of the change in our orders on the floor of the flight deck. I will play it off like I am going to give them a commendation for their hard work.- I want you and Ariana to be watching the crowd carefully when I make the announcement that we are going to be turning back early, but not as early as our provocateurs seem to want.”

Paul nodded along with the rest at Henry’s plan. It was sensible and sly in equal measures.

“We will be watching and there for backup as well in case this goes badly. You may want to have some MA’s on standby and a few extras out of sight as well.” Paul said. “The flight deck also has the advantage of having cameras everywhere so I can study the tape later for micro expression changes. Even the best actors in the world still have tells.”

Paul smiled conspiratorially with the rest of their group. The plan was essentially the same as it had been laid out earlier and was simple yet flexible enough that their odds of success were good even if things went sideways. With a deep breath, Paul packed his gear and grabbed his bag, ready to check the other officer cabins for similar bugs before he would begin digging into the biometric access logs. He felt a weight lift off his shoulders; it was time to go on the offensive at long last.

MEANWHILE…

DATE POINT: MARCH 21st, 7 A.U.

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL

FIREMAN APPRENTICE ANDREW REESE

What the fuck is taking him so long!?

Andrew paced furiously back and forth in the maintenance tunnel. Ed had never blown him off before, Andrew fought back horrible thoughts that he had been captured, that their network had finally been penetrated. The makeshift two-way radio clipped to his BDU’s clicked three times, snapping him back to reality. Andrew smiled and clicked it twice back in reply.

Fucking finally! Andrew thought as he finally stopped pacing and leaned against the wall with his arms folded. A minute later, Ed Greene turned the corner full of swagger and wearing a cocky smile.

“Sorry boss, I got held up. Those new sleep shift curfew enforcers are a bitch to give the slip to in my dormitory. A couple of dickhead marines that Alvarez set over us after those bodies started stacking. Anyway, what’s with the urgent call for a meeting?” Ed asked, clearly less than sorry. It was alright, Andrew knew there was truth enough to his words, the recent rule changes and precautions had made their operations exponentially harder. It had been getting more difficult to sneak around and to keep building his little insurgency lately, pitiful as it was, for those precise reasons.

“Karst found our bugs in the captain’s quarters.”

“Shit. That sets us back big time, we already knew they were getting suspicious…” Ed trailed off.

“Yeah, well what’s worse is that they are setting up a surprise assembly tomorrow for the firemen and non-coms under the guise of giving recognition for our hard work. Problem is, it’s a sting op, I heard them talking about it a couple of hours before they found the bugs. They also mentioned something about new orders from on high but they never actually said what those orders actually were, at least not out loud, so we have no idea if they are helpful or harmful for our cause.”

“Double shit. What made 'em go searching?”

“That’s the strange thing, I don’t know. I heard them talking about ghosts or some shit and then they left. Few minutes later, Karst comes in the room talking about a broken mirror and giving instructions to search for bugs.”

“Maybe it’s all the stiffs they got on ice that has ‘em spooked." Ed said, staring off into space as he spoke.

“Killing those people was a mistake, Ed.” Andrew said, finally challenging the impulsive shit about the topic. Ed’s eyes narrowed and he pulled his head back for a moment.

“Wait, you think I'm the murderer!?” Ed roared. “I got myself a dragon or three that I gotta keep chained and starved, I even killed a man that crossed me once, I'd do it again too, the rat bastard. But you listen to me, I didn’t kill those people, random murder like that ain’t my style! I might be a little fucked in the head, had a real shitty life, but I ain't no psychopath. I have standards.”

Andrew was dumbfounded.

“Hah, cat got your silver tongue at last did it? Shit. To be honest I was half convinced you did it, or at least ordered someone else to do it without telling me.” Ed started laughing. “Well, ain’t that just a pretty bit of bullshit?”

“Ironic that we would accuse each other like this, and both be so equally clueless. So… fuck, if it wasn’t either of us, then who is the killer?”

“I don’t know Andrew, and without those bugs in place we don’t have the inside view we did before. I don’t even think it matters in the end anyway. We should be talking instead about moving the plan up. You said this ceremony will have most of the ship's leadership in one place right? Why don't we just take them out? I know you've been against that idea, but its about the one thing that will definitely get this ship turned around. You said it yourself, we are all dead if we get hit by the antimatter, or if the FTL system fails us. Plus, you and I both know they're gonna be hot on our trail now that they found those bugs. We're dead meat already once they look into access logs. At least this way we can choose how we die, and save the rest in the process.”

"I don't know Ed, I planned on surviving this, that's why we chose sabotage in the first place." Andrew said, trying to fight the sinking feeling that Ed was right. "We might still make it through this if we keep to the plan. They mentioned there was new orders..."

"Face facts, Andrew, its over. Look... They have no suspects for these murders, no evidence. They're gonna pin them on us and you know it. When they do, we get spaced, end of story. Those murders have turn back written in blood, ain't nobody gonna believe it wasn't us. I'd rather choose the way I die, and if it means that we succeed and save the rest of the crew from annihilation, I think its worth the cost of a few dead officers."

"Don't do this... Ed, we can still argue our case, prove it wasn't us somehow. If they check the logs they'll have us for planting the bugs and suspicion of sabotage, that's it. The rest of the group can keep up the pressure!" Andrew argued.

"It's over Andrew, better for one of us to die for the cause on our own terms. We both know it can't be you. Our best hope is to fall back to the tunnels when its done with as many as you can. We have enough stockpiles to last a small group for quite a while. When they come for you, blame it on me, the murders, everything, they're clearly going to want a scapegoat anyway. At least this way we might still save the ship and the crew and have some leverage to help turn the situation around. I've had to do a lot of terrible shit to survive before I joined up, I've made a lot of bad choices in my life, Andrew. Let me at least make this last good one."

Andrew sat there silent and stumped, feeling like the walls were closing in around him. "Goddamnit, Ed. We'll do it your way.... I didn't want this. I wanted to save everyone."

"You can't, no matter how hard you try and you need to come to grips with that reality. The murderer took that from us, they'll be howling for our blood now, fair or not. Take my sacrifice and make it mean something. Leverage it to stop this suicidal trip before its too late, I believe in you, I believe in the mission." Ed replied before he turned and left.

Andrew slammed his fists into the bulkhead in misery. This isn't how it was supposed to go! Andrew took several deep breaths. There was a lot of work to do, and he had one sleepless night in which to do it.