Chapter 18: Coffee and a Bran Muffin

I met Major Mitchell at a café on the northwest side of town for coffee and debriefing. It was what we would do when we didn’t want anyone in the office to know what we were discussing. Despite our efforts to clean up the base, we still didn’t know whom we could completely trust outside of each other. She had arrived first, ordered me a large mud black coffee and had it on the table in front of her as she was reading a report on her palm computer. I spotted her before I even got through the door. She always took the table nearest the back exit and against the wall. At that moment we were not expecting anything bad to happen, but we both had become a little paranoid in this job.

The place was busy as usual with people from all walks of life filling most of the tables and milling around waiting for their orders to be called out. It was one of those cafes that still did everything by hand and that made it one of the more popular establishments for a caffeine fix. We liked it because the more crowded a place was the more anonymous you could be and if anyone was paying more attention to us than they should, they would be very easy to spot. Plus they had pretty good coffee.

As I took a seat, I picked up the cup, blew on the hot liquid twice and then took a sip, then a gulp as it wasn’t too hot. She pulled a small memory chip from her computer and handed it to me. I took it, pulled out my palm computer and inserted the chip. Transmitting the info wirelessly would have been faster, but much less secure.

I already had a pretty good idea of what I was going to see. She had told me the night before that my suspicions about the shuttle crash not being an accident was right on the money. The first thing that opened was a forensic report that had been revisited by our team on my request. They found a fuel line that failed and caused an explosion leading to the loss of control, and the crash was not due to a defect or metal fatigue as the original report concluded but was due to a focused beam of Si-Radiation with such precision the perpetrator could have predicted within minutes when it would have given way. Not only was it deliberate, but done by a skilled professional.

“Okay, now we know for certain it was sabotage,” I said looking at Mitchell and taking another drink of my coffee. “Please tell me we’ve turned up more than that.”

She nodded and put her computer down before she started. “We were able to determine that the shuttle we liberated from the Syndicate had originally been assigned to the T.S.S. Requin, which was lost in the Shrlonca system not too long before this incident.”

I thought about that for a moment, and Mitchell gave me the time to think as she could tell by my expression that the wheels were turning. “Every Alliance ship has standing orders to stop what they are doing and investigate the moment they pick up a transponder signal from any lost ship, particularly an escape pod or shuttle. If they had found the shuttle after the incident, they would have wanted to change it’s ID signal as quickly as they could.

“Right,” Mitchell said, having already come to the same conclusion. “And the shuttle they switched the serial numbers and transponder signal with, was a reserve shuttle from Starbase D-102.”

“Not a bad choice. Reserve shuttles on starbases are almost never used as they have to keep enough on hand for emergency evacuations. A good engineering staff will rotate them to keep the wear and tear consistent within the inventory, but more often than not, they don’t as it’s extra work.”

“That’s nearly verbatim what Captain Shelby said as I contacted him on Starbase D-102 to let him know where one of his shuttles had ended up. He had just taken over the command a few months ago and was not surprised at the failings of his predecessor.”

“So how did the shuttle end up on New Harmony?” I asked.

“Apparently they had an outbreak of flu that had mutated to a strain their facilities couldn’t treat. They decided to do a mass evacuation of all infected before it got critical. So around ten of their shuttles were used to bring the sick to the hospital ship. They couldn’t let the shuttles return to the starbase as they had been exposed to a virus as they weren’t entirely sure they could eradicate with a standard de-con. So all the shuttles were brought here and put in quarantine, and the fleet sent others to D-102 to replace them. After the shuttles were completely sanitized and cleared for duty, they were put back into service. Some were shipped out to a base that needed replacements, and a few stayed here.”

I scratched the spot on the back of my ear that always itches when things didn’t make sense. “Okay, so we have a good working theory to why they would switch the transponders, to cover up the fact that they acquired a shuttle from a lost battleship, but that doesn’t explain why they would want to down its counterpart.”

“I would assume to prevent its transponder from raising suspicion,” she said.

I shook my head, “No, that doesn’t mesh. Its transponder should have set off alarms the moment it was launched. Its own base would have identified it as the wrong ship the moment they had it in flight control. That means the switch was a short-term fix.” I took a moment to think about what I just said making sure it was making sense then added, “It would have been something they did to buy the time until they could get into the fleet database and make changes to both shuttles’ ID’s so neither would raise suspicion.”

“Huh?” Mitchell said. I knew her well enough to read her face and know that what she was thinking wasn’t a consideration of what I had just said, but something new that she had just thought of.

“What?” I asked.

“You remember when we took the shuttle off the Syndicate. We were able to spot them as imposters right away because they had their military uniforms all wrong. Even the guy pretending to be a general was clearly clueless to military protocol. So they clearly were not the ones who orchestrated the theft.”

“Agreed,” I said, “My guess would be that whatever they originally used it for was long over by the time we got our hands on it.”

She nodded and looked over at the bran muffin she ordered and stared at it for a long moment. I wondered if this would be the morning she finally ate it. Every time we met at a café’ or coffee house, she would look at the pastries with longing and then order herself a bran muffin as it was something that she allowed herself to have as it was not as full of empty calories. With as hard as she pushed herself in her personal fitness regimen I couldn’t believe that a donut or slice of banana bread would make a difference, but she insisted that she put on weight when she transferred to investigations. So, she would order the one thing that was okay and the one thing that she absolutely despised. It would sit on the table, dry out and get tossed. This day was not going to be any different.

The pause was killing me, so I reached over, grabbed the muffin, ripped the top off of it and stuck it in my mouth.

“Hey,” she said, half-heartedly reaching for it.

With a full mouth, I said, “You waste too much food.”

“Fine,” she said, “But the next time we have lunch, I’m taking your pickle.”

“I hate pickles,” I said as I swallowed my ill-gotten treat.

“I know. That’s why I always take them off your plate.” She then picked up her computer again and scrolled to a new screen. “Taking a shot in the dark that the shuttle wasn’t just happened upon in deep space, I did a little digging and found something very interesting.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,”

“Excuse me?” I asked, not following.

Out of habit she took a quick look to each side with her eyes to make sure no one was listening to our conversation. Not that we expected anyone would, but like I said we had both become a little paranoid in this job. She then leaned in a little and said, “Everything about its mothership, the T.S.S. Requin, was classified. It took getting Admiral Flanigan issuing a direct order just to get a heavily redacted file from the fleet command sent to us. The ship was apparently on a mission where it was testing a new weapon. What kind of weapon is anyone's guess as all the details about it and its testing were deleted from the file, but what I was able to learn was the ship was lost during one of its tests.”

“And that helps us how?” I asked.

“Of the survivors, seven officers and eight enlisted were transferred to Starbase D-102.”

My left eyebrow went up with that revelation. “Now that sounds like more than a coincidence.”

She smiled and nodded, “You want to go figure out how the pieces fit together?” I nodded and then she said, “Good, because we are on the next transport out of the system. The Ascension will pick us up at Station 97 and take us to Starbase 62.”

Not seeing the reason for the detour I asked, “Why there?”

“It was recently repurposed as a personnel transit center. We will then wait for the Tripoli which will be transporting new personnel to Station D-102. Open file L.T.O.B.01, Pass Code Bravo, 971 Delta.”

I looked down at my palm computer and called up the file. The device did a quick retinal scan of my left eye after I put the code in and then opened the documents. The first page of the mission file was my picture along with an entire undercover profile put together by Mitchell.

Once she saw I had it open she verbalized the highlights. “You will be Lt. Robert O’Brien and will report to the station’s Chief Engineer as his assistant. I will be Lt. Commander Jannet Pullet and will be stepping into the Executive Officer’s position. Captain Shelby is the only one who knows who I am and even though he knows I’m bringing someone else along, I didn’t share your bio with him.”

“Okay, when do we leave?” I asked.

“The autocab should be here to pick us up in about five minutes.” The look on my face must have shown irritation, because she could see I was about to argue with her. She spoke first, “It can’t be avoided. We need to be on the nine twenty shuttle to get to the freighter on time. You can pick up a complete kit from the quartermaster dispenser on the ship.”

“You know that’s not the problem,” I said.

She looked away for a moment. I’m not sure why. Then looked back at me and with her voice a little bit more reserved said, “You can call Kayla on the way and give her the basics, you have a mission and will be gone for a week or two.”

~~~

I tried to call Kayla from the cab, but she didn’t answer. It would have been the time she was getting ready for work and probably in the shower. I left her a video message explaining what little I could. Basically, I was going out of the system on an undercover assignment and would not be able to contact her until it was over, which could be one or two weeks. Not the best message to leave for someone whom you are trying to build a long-term relationship with. But it wasn’t the first undercover operation that I’d been on, and it wouldn’t be the last. I would still have to make it up to her. She had been trying to convince me to take her skiing at one of the mountain resorts. Flying down a mountain on a couple of waxed sticks never sounded like fun to me, and I doubt it would do my knee any good. I had been winning the argument with the point that a weekend at one of those resorts would cost a month's wages. She had been setting some money aside for a trip somewhere out of town. With this little disappearing act, I would probably have to give in to her wishes this time.

~~~

It took us the better part of four days to make the trip. Mitchell and I had our new identities memorized by the time we got to the transfer station. I made a point of getting to know some of the other engineers and support staff that were transferring to station D-102 for the six-month duty rotation. Any station with a number higher than 30 is considered a deep space assignment and most who are not in a command role do a six to nine-month rotation so that they can have time back on their homeworlds to maintain their personal lives. Command level officers usually serve one year rotations with an annual bonus if they opt to return for the next year after a minimum of a six-week leave. That fact stuck out as a red flag for Mitchell when she was reviewing the service records of the former crew members of the Requin that transferred to the station after the ship was lost. 11 of the original 15 of them were still there after 18 months. Why would all of them request to stay on a low visibility post that would do nothing to advance their careers?

Getting to know some of the replacement personnel did a few things for me. First, it helped me get established as one of them, so I didn’t stick out as much. Plus it helped me to be familiar with who was new and who had been there for a while. This was the same strategy I used whenever I started in at a new school when I was a kid. If I could make some allies on the bus ride into school on that first day, it made me less of a target and quicker to be just a random face in the crowd.

“Did you serve during the war?” Jess, the very young Ensign fresh out of the academy asked.

“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle. I was a little long in the tooth to have less than a couple of years under my belt and be a fleet engineer with first lieutenant bars. “I was on the Dallas for seven rotations. The Phoenix before that,” I said reciting a piece of my fictional undercover cover history.

“And now you're going to a space station. Did you piss someone off?” She asked assuming it was a step down from service on fleet battle carriers.

“No,” I said, not bothering to hide my amusement and her naive perspective. “They’ve decommissioned a lot of the older ships, and it’s going to be a few years before they build enough to replace them all, so a lot of us have to take other assignments for a while. But, truth be told, I’m looking forward to basic maintenance for a while. After the tenth time of welding patch plates over holes in the hull, while wearing a vacuum pressure suit with only magnetic boots preventing you from floating away into the black, it loses its appeal.”

Jess sat up straighter and with a grin said, “Well, I’m just glad I got a deep space assignment. My friend Dana got stuck on the Mars Shipyard, and Chris is doing six months as an Admin’s assistant at fleet headquarters. Boy was he pissed.”

I think my smile diminished on my face as I felt a wave of concern over her misplaced expectations. Her eyes locked with mine and her face drooped as if she had said something wrong and didn’t know what it was. Seeing that I had her full attention, I said, “It doesn’t take a war to make this the most dangerous occupation a person can have. It just takes one mistake. The wrong sequence in an airlock, a miscalculation on a fuel mix or an oversight on a safety check when putting on a pressure suit.” I held up my finger to underline the point. “One mistake because you stop thinking about the risks involved in this job and you are dead.” Her lips tightened as she tried to swallow in a throat that had gone dry. “And calories,” I added. “Too many people screw up because they don’t realize just how many more calories their burning being on their feet and on edge all day. Then they get light headed and fuck up. Don’t freak out about putting on weight. A few extra pounds is good for you when you’re out in the field. Caution and calories. That’s what will keep you alive. Got it?”

She was clearly a little unsettled, but she gave me a smile and nodded. “Maybe I should study the station spec-guide some more,” she said, mostly as an excuse to stop talking to me. I nodded without saying anything and went back to the book I was reading on my palm computer. Getting her to shut-up wasn’t my goal, well not my primary goal anyway. I had just lost too many of my own friends over the years. I felt that I couldn’t just not say anything. If my little bit of cold water in the face might prevent her from making any number of errors that could get herself or those around her hurt or killed, then it was worth bruising the budding friendship. It's the same lessons they try to drive home to everyone in basic training, but those are usually in one ear and out the other because most recruits don’t take the training anymore seriously than their high school gym classes. It’s just something they have to do to get to graduation. My hope at that moment was that maybe, hearing it first hand from someone who was living the job alongside her, might make it real enough to believe.

My palm computer buzzed and a text message appeared on the screen. ‘What’s for lunch?’ It was code from Mitchell letting me know that we needed to talk. Meeting privately or in a secluded location would tip our hand faster than meeting in public. I got up and made my way out of the seating compartment and to a mess that was full of people. Being a military ship, each room was built for utility and not comfort or style. A queue line was set up along the right wall, and when you got to the end, there was a selection of pre-packaged meals and food prep units on the walls that would hydrate and heat your selections. The rest of the space was made up of rows of tables with benches for seats attached to them. Designed to accommodate maybe twenty people at a time, the hall was full of twice that many as they had overloaded the aging ship. Apparently, the cost of fuel was more of a concern to the powers-that-be than the comfort of their troops. Funny how the military budget dries up faster than the ink on the peace accords.

I got in line and waited the twenty minutes for it to eventually reach the end where I could select my lunch. I wasn’t kidding when I told Jess that you needed to keep your calorie intake high when out in the field. Lately, Kayla had been giving me a hard time about my diet. With spending most of my days behind a desk I had been putting on a few pounds, so she had me cut out sugars, red meat and insisted on more fruits and vegetables as entire meals. I think our first real fight will be referred to in the future as the great steak and potatoes debate. So I was looking forward to picking up some of my old eating habits. I grabbed a container of beef stroganoff, a bag of mashed potatoes with gravy, three bread rolls and a bottle of hard cider. Then all I had to do was put it all on a tray and into the processor. 20 seconds later it was done, and I took the tray and turned to start my search for Mitchell, but she had already found me. Her tray collided with mine and both went flying.

“Oh, I’m so sorry Lieutenant,” she said acting like she didn’t know me. We both knelt down to pick up the mess. As we did, I felt her hip rub up against mine. Her palm computer that was in her pant’s pocket connected with mine and for a moment they activated a magnetic connection that pulled them together. Her device transmitted a message and files to my device, and then they disconnected. The entire exchange took less than a couple of seconds, and with our attention on picking up handfuls of pasta, meat, and mashed potatoes, no one was the wiser. We proceeded to take the food to the trash and clean up with paper napkins. The entire time Michell acted like she was flustered and embarrassed. The people in line were kind enough to let her back in the front to get new trays of food. Mitchell insisted on getting a tray for me, completing the illusion. I found a seat at one of the far tables against the wall and took out my palm computer to see what it was she had given me. She had received a data chip from one of her contacts at the Alliance Bureau of Investigation before we left the transition station. It had a large number of documents that were all classified, but not as heavily redacted as what she was able to get on her own. It also included a number of documents that appeared to be unrelated to the project or the loss of the Requin and were not classified, but her contact from the A.B.I. thought they might relate to our investigation. She had been pouring over them for the past few days, and there was one that she wanted me to go through. Probably because she didn’t understand the science within it. The document was a paper written by a scientist who worked on the weapon project that had been classified. The paper was from ten years earlier from when he was a civilian working at Sedona Tech. We had seen it before, but what we had was so cut up with redactions that we couldn’t make any sense of it. Her contact apparently found a copy that hadn’t been scrubbed. It was about that scientist’s theory of building a torpedo for space battles. Traditionally a torpedo was a missile that traveled through the water. Because it moved under the water a torpedo was often not seen by a ship until it was too late. He proposed developing a micro quantum speed generator and make it part of a missile. Now the reason that had never been done before was that the QSG requires a build-up of an energy field that had to be perfectly balanced before you can add thrust. Once that is done, the ship, or the object in this case, is then pushed into a tube that is outside normal space and time and can then appear at another point in space in a fraction of the time as it would take going sub-light speed. The build-up of that energy field is so high that it lights up sensors from hundreds of kilometers away. So the 18 seconds it would take for them to launch would make them significant targets to any enemy that was in visual range. Plus the tube that the QSG creates proceeds the object by several seconds giving the enemy advance notice. Yet this scientist, a Dr. Geraldo, was convinced that he could create a QSG field that would take less than four seconds to create the tube, and the exit point would not be detectable. If he was right, that would make his torpedo a very effective weapon against any enemy.

Mitchell walked up to where I was sitting with two trays, one held over the other. She put the bottom one on the table and said, “Again, I’m sorry for spoiling your lunch.” She then winked and walked away to another table with some other officers that she was getting to know. I looked down at the tray to see an apple, a cup of grape juice and a salad. “Well, she told me she would get me back for taking her muffin.”