Graham Paul: The battle of Devastation reef

“Lieutenant Helfort?” the man asked.

“Yes?”

“Chief Tarkasian, sir. Vice Admiral Prentice’s compliments. She appreciates that it’s late in the day but wonders if you might spare her ten minutes.”

What on earth? Michael wondered. “Vice Admiral Prentice? Yes, of course. Now?”

“I really think that might be best, sir,” Tarkasian said.

Michael nodded. “Lead on, chief.”

Tarkasian was right: Late in the day or not, junior officers were well advised to treat requests from senior officers, however politely phrased, as direct orders. He limped after the man, wondering what the Fleet’s director of intelligence wanted. It was something to do with Anna’s mysterious binary code message, of course, but what?

Five minutes later, they arrived at Prentice’s office. He was shown straight in. Prentice-a severe-looking woman with thick black hair pulled back tight from an austere, angular face, penetrating brown eyes, and a fearsome reputation as one of Fleet’s toughest and smartest officers, a woman for whom fools were to be stomped into the dirt-waved him into a seat in front of her desk. Almost immediately, a captain arrived, dropping into the seat alongside Michael’s.

“Lieutenant Helfort. Welcome. We’ve never met. I’m Admiral Prentice. This is my chief of staff, Captain Cissokho.”

“Sirs.”

“I know this is important to you, so I thought it best if we talked face-to-face. Besides,” Prentice said with a fleeting smile, “I wanted to meet the man who pulled the Federation’s ass out of the fire. Opera would have been a complete dud without you, so well done.” Her smile broadened. “Just don’t tell anybody I said so. I’m unpopular enough as it is.”

Surprised, Michael blinked. “Thank you, sir. That means a lot, more than you know.”

Prentice waved a hand. “It’s nothing less than you deserve. Now, to business. Bill?’

“Admiral,” Cissokho said. He turned to Michael. “We followed up your analysis of Lieutenant Cheung’s vidmail. You were right. She had encoded a binary message. Extremely clever of her, I must say, and equally clever of you to work it out. Anyway, it translated to 10505209. Of course, that begs the question. What does a string of eight numbers mean? It took one of my analysts a while, but I think she’s cracked it. Here, have a look.”

A map of the Hammer’s home planet, Commitment, appeared on the admiral’s wall-mounted holovid. Cissokho stabbed a marker at a point southeast of the capital, McNair. “10 degrees south, 50 degrees west is more or less where Camp J-5209 sits. That’s where the survivors from the Damishqui are. It’s the only place that fits the numbers 10505209. All the other options are either in the sea or have nothing that fits the last four numbers. It’s a new camp, so we’ve only seen it referenced in intercepts of low-grade administrative traffic. We don’t have recon vid of it, but now that we know where it is, we will. I’ll let you know when it’s been uploaded to the Fleet knowledge base.”

“I’ll be damned, sir,” Michael said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Wish it was something more exciting, but you never know. The information might come in handy one day. The Hammers never tell us where they keep our prisoners.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Happy to help,” the admiral said. “We’ll keep an eye on things. If we hear anything about Camp J-5209, provided we can release it, of course, we’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you both.”

Michael walked away from the admiral’s office feeling better than he had in a while, his body reenergized, and not just because he knew where the Hammers had imprisoned Anna. That was part of it, to be sure, but as important was the realization that despite the overt hostility expressed by the overwhelming majority of Fleet officers and the unremitting hammering he was getting from the trashpress, there were people-important people-both sympathetic and supportive.

Knowing he was not alone made a difference.

Warfare Division, Space Fleet headquarters

Foundation, Terranova

“Helfort?”

Michael glanced up from his work. It was his immediate boss. Of all the people in the Warfare Division, she was without doubt the most hostile; the woman was a festering mass of ill-concealed resentment.

“Yes, sir?

“The board of inquiry is about to release the unclassified summary of its report into Operation Opera. The director wants you to be there. Conference-5 at 10:00.”

Without waiting for a response, the woman turned and left. “Thank you, sir,” Michael said to her back. “Thank you so much.”

The woman spun around. “Don’t push your luck,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. “It’s time you got what’s coming to you, Helfort. Conference-5 at 10:00 and don’t be late.” She started to turn away but stopped, her mouth slashed into a malicious sneer. “Oh, yes. One more thing. You might be interested to know that the provost marshal has been told to be there, too. So I wouldn’t make any plans for tonight if I were you.”

“Fucking cow,” Michael mouthed at her retreating back, stifling an urge to rip his legbot off and hurl it at her head.

He sat unmoving, acid burning a path from his stomach up into his chest. Shit, he said to himself, finally.

The president of the board of inquiry waited patiently until the conference room, every seat taken, fell silent. Michael waited until the last minute before slipping in unseen, sitting as always at the back, well clear of the large contingent of Fleet brass that filled the front rows of the conference room, lines of black and gold flanked on both sides by holocam-wielding members of the press.

“Good morning, everyone,” Captain Shavetz said, “and thank you all for coming. I am about to release our report on Operation Opera, the successful operation to destroy the Hammers’ antimatter plant at Devastation Reef. The report is extremely detailed, so in deference to our friends in the press”-a subdued laugh greeted this remark; Fleet had few friends in the press, and everybody knew it-“we will present our finding of facts, a summary of what happened during Operation Opera, followed by the conclusions the board has drawn from the evidence presented to us. Our recommendations will follow this afternoon. To answer a question which I know will be asked, yes, every board member has agreed on the statement of facts, conclusions, and recommendations of this board. There is no dissenting minority report. However, one thing must be understood. We are still at war with the Hammer Worlds, so for reasons of operational security, we cannot release our report in its entirety. Some findings of fact and some of our conclusions and recommendations are classified. I’m-”

“Pantini, World News,” a voice barked from the media pack. Michael shook his head. Who else but Giorgio Pantini? Why did the man bother asking questions? His often stated commitment to factually based reporting was, as one commentator so memorably put it, “a shoddy cover over a stinking pot of lies.” After all Pantini had said about him, Michael had no problem endorsing that judgment.

“Yes?” Shavetz said, looking warily at Pantini.

“So, Captain Shavetz,” Pantini said, “you’re saying we can expect another Fleet cover-up.”

“Come, come, come, Mister Pantini,” Shavetz said with exaggerated deference, “that’s hardly a question. That’s a statement, and you know it. If you have a worthwhile question, please ask it, though I fail to see how you can have considering we haven’t actually said anything yet. Otherwise, please resume your seat. We have a lot to get through.”