Hellburner

On which they had evidence, except a member of a Fleet unit also had accesses he wasn’t supposed to have… that Fleet Command didn’t know about… which, if he confessed it now, was damning to him, to the Fleet, to Dekker’s crew at minimum, to the Fleet’s credibility and their support from the legislative committee, at worst.

While at least at some level the UDC and potentially the legislature knew about Pollard’s security clearance—and might possibly know he’d somehow retained system access— if Pollard himself weren’t under higher orders.

God, he should never have held his information source secret from Porey. Never.

“I suggest you use the channels you have to find out what’s going on, lieutenant. Somebody in your command with real authority had better get his ass into this station, find out where the leak is and get this program off the evening news. You’re public as hell, reporters are demanding to come over here in herds, we’ve got a very fragile coalition that worked hard to give you what you asked for, and let me tell you very bluntly, lieutenant, if anything goes wrong with this rumored upcoming test you’ve lost the farm. You cannot disavow another failure, your captains can’t pass the buck to junior officers. Do you understand that? Am I talking to anyone who remotely understands the political realities of this situation?”

“Yes, sir, I do understand.” No temper. “I am thirty-eight unapparent years of age, sir, and older than that as you count time. I was in command of this base during the last hearings, I was lately the director of personnel in this program, I am currently in charge of this facility and the testing program, and of the investigation, and we do have an answer, at least to what happened to Jamil Hasseini and his crew.” He reached in his pocket and held up a yellow plastic washer. “This caused the so-called accident.”

He had their attention. At least.

“How?”

“Operations records showed a hangup in an attitude control. This plastic washer turned up to block the free operation of the yoke. In a null-# facility, you may know, maintenance has to be extremely careful to log and list and check every part, down to the smallest screws and washers, mat they take into the facility. These are experienced null-g workers. We don’t know by those records how long this little part has been there—whether it was there from the time the pod was assembled and it by total accident floated over a course of years undetected into the absolutely most critical position it could take in the control system—or whether it was placed there recently.”

“Sabotage, in other words.”

“We view it as more than suspicious. Paul Dekker was assigned to that pod.”

“So we’ve heard.”

“How much have you heard?”

“Maybe you’d damn well better tell us what there is to hear. We hear Dekker was assigned there and pulled at the last minute. Again. Why? How?”

“By my order, as chief of personnel. I made a routine final check on the crew stats: they were coming out of a period of orientation and lab sims. I felt we might be rushing it, in terms of fatigue levels. A stand-down under those circumstances is routine. Routine—except mat this was the time his replacement crew was going into sims with him. Except that the same individuals we suspect of sabotage had access to that area. Civilian employees: Dekker’s given a positive ID on one of them as guilty of assault in the last so-called accident. We’re talking about deliberate sabotage and premeditated murder committed on Dekker—“

“With what motive?”

“I doubt it was personal. We’ve two employees of Lendler Corp under surveillance. We don’t know all their contacts, yet. But they had access on both occasions.”

Frowns. “Can you prove anything?”

“We’re developing a case. But you see the problem we’ve been working against.”

“Your security is supposed to be on top of things. People come and go where they like here, is that the way it works?”

“People with security clearances, yes, sir—in this case clearances granted by the UDC, interviewing people on Earth, where we have no screening apparatus. We’re reviewing the systems, and the clearances, but there are 11338 civilians on B Dock, hired by the UDC and overseen by various offices. We’re naturally giving Lendler Corp a higher priority in our review, but that doesn’t mean information can’t go out of here through another route.”

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