Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

“Ouch,” Anderson said. The security officer looked rather perturbed. “Can’t they cut corners?”

“Not any more than they are already,” Colin admitted. He pulled his datapad from his bet and looked down at the report. “It isn’t going to be easy, whatever happens. Some of our ships really need shipyards.”

He scowled. “Five of them will have to be sent back to Camelot,” he added. “There’s nowhere closer we dare send them.”

There were nods. The worlds they’d overrun during the advance were vulnerable, should the Empire start putting together raiding squadrons. Camelot was relatively safe, although Colin knew that wouldn’t last. Given time, the Empire could mass the Imperial Navy and start rolling up the rebel worlds, one by one. And then they could start scouring the Beyond for the hidden shipyards and industrial nodes.

“However, the new weapons systems are here,” Colin added. “By then, we should have the ships outfitted and ready to take the offensive.”

And hope it’s enough to win the battle , he added to himself. Because, if it isn’t…

He pushed the thought to one side and looked around the table. “We took a hammering,” he admitted, softly. “But we will not allow it to get the better of us.”

“There is another problem that should be raised,” Anderson said. “During the fight, the enemy specifically targeted this ship. They were able to deduce the identity of our flagship.”

Colin nodded. He’d gone over the records carefully, trying to determine how the Imperial Navy had identified the ship, only to draw a blank. It shouldn’t have been possible to identify General Montgomery , let alone deduce that it was the command ship. Unless the enemy had something else up their sleeves… it looked like a wild coincidence, but Colin didn’t believe in them.

“My staff went through everything,” Anderson continued. “Even so, it took us nearly an hour before we found it. Someone on the ship deliberately identified us to the enemy.”

Colin blinked. “How?”

Anderson flushed, embarrassed. “There are some functions hardwired into the computer core,” he admitted. “One of them, it seems, allows someone with the right codes to upload a message directly into the communications system, which is then transmitted and wiped from the system. We wouldn’t have noticed it at all if the automated recording systems we added to the sensor suite hadn’t noted the message. Minutes after the message was sent, this ship was targeted by the enemy.”

He shook his head. “We’ve placed flags in the system to alert us if someone tries to use it again,” he added, “but we can’t actually remove it without destroying the entire computer core.”

Colin wasn’t entirely surprised. Imperial Intelligence and ONI had control over the monitoring systems within the Imperial Navy. Why wouldn’t they have secret programs buried within the computer cores? It would take years for the core programming to be examined, line by line, particularly anything that wasn’t directly connected to flight, weapons or life support. Even the ship’s Security Officer wouldn’t know about hidden backdoors, not when any spies or informers would be expected to keep an eye on him too. It was sheer luck that they’d stumbled across this one…

Daria put their feelings into words. “Someone is betraying us?”

“Yes,” Anderson said. He paused, just long enough for Colin to realise that it wasn’t likely to be good. “I think the spy is one of the newer crewmembers.”

“Oh,” Daria said, irked. She’d brought most of them with her from the Beyond. “And how do you figure that ?”

“Two points,” Anderson said. “One; we didn’t have a problem until after the Battle of Camelot, as far as we know. Two; someone definitely betrayed the location of Sanctuary Asteroid to the Imperial Navy. It’s possible that two different spies are involved, but it’s a bad habit to multiply suspects without good cause.”

Colin had to admit Anderson had a point. If they’d missed a covert informer during the first mutinies, they would probably have been betrayed well before the Battle of Morrison. Unless the informer had gone silent for months before making contact… he considered the possibilities briefly, then shook his head. It was unlikely that any informer would just let him cause havoc in Sector 117 when they could have betrayed him at any moment.

“If that is true,” he said carefully, “how many suspects do we have?”

“Seventy-nine,” Anderson said. “They were the ones who were both at Sanctuary and then came here after Camelot fell. If we include people who weren’t at the asteroid, the figure rises to one hundred and fifty-four. I’ve been trying to find ways to trim the figure down, but we don’t have the internal security precautions of an Imperial Navy crew. It’s simply not possible to remove anyone from consideration.”

And if the informer really did go silent after we mutinied , Colin thought, we won’t even look at the right person as a suspect .

“All right,” Daria said. “I’ll assume that you are correct about there being a spy. What do we do about it?”

“We might be able to use this,” Colin mused. “Maybe lure the enemy into a trap…”

“The problem,” Daria interrupted, “is that the crewmen on this ship are not imps. They will not stand for any form of… rigorous interrogation.”

Colin nodded. The Imperial Navy’s solution to the problem would be to interrogate all the possible suspects, using truth drugs and lie detectors — and direct brain access, if they had some reason to focus on a particular suspect. But Colin couldn’t afford to use such methods, not when it would start a mutiny. Hell, Colin knew just how bitterly such methods were resented by Imperial Navy crewmen. Why should the Beyonders be any different?

He looked over at Anderson. “Can’t you isolate which unit was used to send the message?”

“The message was wiped completely from the datanet,” Anderson admitted. “If the recorders we added hadn’t been independent from the datanet, they would have been wiped too and we wouldn’t have had a clue that we had a security problem.”

“Very well,” Colin said. “But you can detect it if another such message is sent?”

“Yes,” Anderson said. “Now we know what to look for, we can detect the hidden programming being accessed. And we can probably isolate the sender.”

Colin smiled. “Then we keep the whole thing as quiet as possible,” he said. “We will need at least three weeks before we can resume the offensive. That should give us long enough to figure out how to duplicate the spy’s messages and send a few of our own.”

“Perhaps,” Anderson said. “The message was enciphered. It may take months to crack the code.”

“Or it might have been nothing more than gibberish,” Daria pointed out. “All that mattered is that it came from this ship.”

“True,” Anderson agreed.

Colin tapped the table. “Right now, we need to focus on repairing our ships and resuming the offensive,” he said. “Vincent” — he looked over at Anderson — “keep the search quiet, but see if you can identify the spy. Once we’re ready to resume the offensive, we will reconsider our plans.”

He looked around the table. “This is a complication we didn’t expect,” he admitted. “But, in hindsight, we should have expected it. We knew Imperial Intelligence worked hard to riddle the Beyond with spies and informers. The bastards simply got lucky.”

Daria nodded. “And not all of them had files on Camelot,” she said.

Colin met her eyes in a moment of silent understanding. Imperial Intelligence had maintained files on Camelot, files which had identified a dozen spies within the Beyond who were primed to report back whenever the various underground movements managed to get organised. One of them had been the treasurer of a specific underground movement, who — thankfully — had not had a chance to report back before Camelot had fallen. Another had been a well-known bartender. Both of them had been trusted by the Beyonders.