Prequel 1 - The Mole
“All operatives to the briefing room. Immediately.”
Kiri looked down at herself. Training clothes, still damp. She stank like an engine-room serf that hadn’t seen the control room in a lifetime. And she'd been just three minutes from the ablutional.
Sighing, she turned around and went to find the others.
Harcane's briefing room was cold, as it always was. The Seneschal stood at her right hand, correct as a parade ground, and said nothing while Harcane spoke. This was, Kiri had come to understand, his primary function in these moments: to be present and silent and to speak only when Harcane's precision required supplementing.
“The situation is this:” Harcane's voice was the same whether she was describing a tactical problem or ordering tea. Kiri had decided this was a deliberate cultivation. “Administrator Hidemitsu has received a message on a secure internal channel. One line. We know where you are.”
Beside Kiri, she heard Gen's stylus stop moving.
“This ship is run by myself and the Seneschal. And though we have complete confidence in our crew…” She grimaced. “This message could only have been sent internally.”
“Once I determined that it was not a … prank…” her lip curled in a sneer as she said the word, “I immediately ordered us translated out of the warp. I believe there is a mole on board. And I cannot suffer a traitor.” The grimace again, deeper this time. “The channel was restricted to four people: myself, the Seneschal, Tactical Analyst Vaughn, and Vox Officer Marin. I have spoken with all three. I have found nothing conclusive.”
She paused.
"Normally, I would not call on you for something like this. You are the newest members of this crew, and suspicion tends to fall on new arrivals." She leaned back and sighed. "However, the message was sent while you were all planetside. Which means you are the only people on this ship I can trust without reservation." She said it flatly, as a fact rather than a compliment. "You have full authority to question whoever you need. The run of the ship is yours."
"Parameters?" Seraya said.
"I would like the mole alive," Harcane said. "If possible."
Seraya nodded, as if this were a reasonable constraint she intended to respect to the letter and no further.
"My navigator says that there is an incoming warp-storm. You have forty-eight hours," Harcane said. She looked at all of them once. Then she left, which was how Harcane ended most conversations she considered finished.
The Seneschal looked at them with the expression of a man who had served for many years and had learned to wait.
Kiri looked at the others. "Hidemitsu first, I think." When nobody objected, she turned to the Seneschal. “I assume you’ve separated him from his cogitator?”
He nodded.
“Why don’t you two,” Kiri said as she turned to Gen and Glume, "go check out his cogitator. He seems fragile and I’m not sure we need him to see you right now.”
Gen's chin dipped in the precise acknowledgment she used when she intended to do exactly that and nothing else. Glume followed with the easy readiness of someone already thinking about something interesting.
“Let’s go,” Seraya said.
The Seneschal moved to escort them. Seraya held up a hand.
"He's a nervous man," she said. "He trusts us. He doesn't know you well enough to relax around you." She said it without apology, which was the only way Seraya said anything. "It might go better without you in the room."
The Seneschal's back came up slightly. He looked at Kiri.
"She's right," Kiri said. "If you could take Gen and Glume to the cogitator instead, that would be very helpful."
He held for a moment, then nodded, with the practiced grace of a man who had learned to absorb small indignities in the service of larger outcomes.
Hidemitsu opened the door already agitated.
"Terrible!" he announced, by way of greeting. "Just terrible! My life is once again in danger! You said I would be protected!"
Kiri had said no such thing, but this didn't seem like the moment to correct him. "We're here to take care of it," she said. "Tell us what we need to know."
He told them. The message, the cogitator, the secure channel, his absolute certainty that it had come from the villains at Hive Oberryl.
Good thing we didn't let Gen and Glume come, she thought.
Though when she pressed him on the evidence, he admitted there wasn't any exactly, it was just who else would… she tuned him out.
Why would someone want to mess with him? Who? House Varindal, certainly. But House Varindal was supposed to be behind them now. I wonder if he's made any enemies… "What have you been working on since you came aboard?" she asked.
"Administrative things," he said. "It is a well-run ship. I've simply been trying to optimize it. There's not even been too many discrepancies."
Seraya perked up. "Discrepancies? Tell me more."
He explained — black market goods, minor irregularities, the normal operating noise of a community of thousands. Kiri shrugged in her head. This was going nowhere. Her father’s guards were incredibly loyal, and they had a black market, had supplies go missing. It was just the nature of administration.
“Tell me about these discrepancies.” Seraya leaned forward.
Kiri sighed. A nature that seemed to clash with Seraya’s black and white sensibilities.
Hidemitsu stuttered. "It is nor-normal stuff. I wish it were not so, but it is inevitable."
Seraya bent down to his eye level. Her staff crackled softly — not a threat exactly, just a reminder of what she was carrying, and what she was capable of carrying further. "I need you to be very direct with me," she said, in the tone she used when she had already decided how the conversation was going to end. "We have been given authority to do whatever is necessary. I would prefer not to exercise all of it. But I will." She held his gaze. "What else have you found?"
Seraya’s been practicing that in the mirror, Kiri thought. She managed to avoid smiling. She knew she wouldn’t be smiling if Seraya had been putting the pressure on her.
Hidemitsu's composure evacuated entirely. He had found nothing specifically suspicious about any of the four named individuals. He would leave no stone unturned if he were running such an investigation. He thought perhaps the Seneschal might be worth a second look, not that he was suggesting anything, simply that high-level administrators could sometimes—
"A straight answer," Seraya said.
"I — yes. That is all I have. I truly do not know who could have done this to me."
"Thank you for being straight with us," Seraya said.
That's what he’s been saying this whole time. Kiri kept her face neutral. "We'll be back to check on you, Hidemitsu."
They moved him to a second room, changed the lock codes, and went to see what Gen had found.
Gen had turned up quite a lot.
The message had been sent from Vaughn's terminal in the Seneschal's tactical operations room. Twenty minutes before it was sent, someone had pulled Hidemitsu's location file — made to look routine, but not. The underlying credentials pointed to Marin.
Kiri found herself nodding, lower lip pushed out — the involuntary expression she made when something was better than she'd expected. “Good work, Gen.” She’d pulled all that from the cogitator in the time it had taken them to get nothing from Hidemitsu.
The conversation with Marin was barely worth mentioning.
He told them everything immediately. He had been reading other people's letters from home. He missed his family. He thought he'd been covering his tracks. He started crying.
Kiri looked at Gen. Gen gave the slight shake of her head. This guy knew nothing. He was weird, yeah. But also normal. He was homesick and he'd done something stupid. It happened.
"Anyone in those letters with ties to House Varindal?" Seraya asked. She was still crouched in front of him.
Marin shook his head. Nothing like that. Though — he hesitated — there was Vaughn. A leave of absence, eighteen months ago. Unexplained. If they were running a thorough investigation, he wouldn't want to be the one to point fingers, but—
"Thank you," Kiri said. "You can go."
He scurried.
Tactical Analyst Vaughn was a different proposition entirely.
Eleven years on the Seneschal's staff. Excellent record. She came in composed, sat down composed, and answered their questions with the easy precision of someone who had been doing this kind of work for a very long time.
Vaughn had a timestamp. The logs confirmed it. She'd been doing tactical analysis at precisely the time the message was sent.
Kiri let Vaughn talk. Watched her face while Gen pulled the records. And while Vaughn was breathing in between sentences, she jumped in.
"Where did you go last year?" Kiri asked.
Vaughn stiffened. Just slightly. Just once.
"That information was sealed."
"By whom?"
"It was a personal matter." Flat. Prepared. "A leave of absence."
Beside her, Seraya set her monofilament knife on the table and began to sharpen it. Slowly. Methodically. The sound it made was very quiet and very specific.
Vaughn watched it for about ten seconds.
Then she started talking. Her sister, she said. They'd found her two years ago. The debt, the leverage, the—
The alarm went off.