Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Three

The Investigation Begins

Commodore Charles Tucker III

I'm fighting the compulsion to take myself up to Sickbay, to ask questions and make a goddamn nuisance of myself wanting to know the best or the worst, but I know that what Jeremy's going to be attempting up there will take absolute concentration, and I'm not going to distract him by a single peep of sound he doesn't have to hear. Till I hear that ... till I get the news, I'm going to do my job. I'm going to do what has to be done, and I'm going to find out what the hell is going on here; and the first thing I'm going to do is find out whether that damned recording's genuine or it's fake.

With his expertise, it's always going to be Baird I call on. As it happens he's on duty, but if necessary I'd pull him out of bed myself, without a moment's hesitation. Still, it speeds things up some that he doesn't have to waste time getting dressed, but hurries down to meet me at the lab where he and I did all the tinkering with the spoofing program last year.

I've no intention of making it public what's happened to Malcolm, at least not yet, but I'm going to have to trust Paul with the tape from the PADD. He downloads the video quickly, and then gets to work with his various analyzing programs, his face absorbed and solemn as his fingers fly through the commands.

He works fast. It hardly seems like a couple of minutes have passed before he turns to me and says gravely, "You're right, sir. It's a fake."

I suppose commodores in general aren't supposed to swear in front of their junior staff, but right then I let fly with language that Mama would still snatch a knot in my tail for using.

"Any chance you could track the origins?" I demand, when I've finally run out of steam, at least for now.

"I can try, sir. It'll probably be locked down, but–"

"Belay that order!" Almost before he's started inputting the commands I realize what I'm doing. Whoever sent this thing, having a guy as powerless and vulnerable as Paul Baird find out their identity would be tantamount to a death sentence.

By the way his shoulders relax, I think he realizes that too. Damn if I'm not proud of him for the way he was just going to go ahead and do it, though; and almost in the same moment I'm humbled once again by the trust he shows in me – that he wouldn't think twice about doing something so dangerous just because I asked. If I ask him to do it, it must be worth the risk.

I find a spare PADD in the jumble on a shelf, and thrust it at him. "List the steps you'd use. Then get back to duty an' forget you were ever in here."

Quickly he taps in the commands, and hands me the PADD as soon as he's finished. He stands to leave, but as he reaches the door he stops and looks back at me uncertainly.

"Sir–."

"What is it, Lieutenant? Spit it out an' then git." A while back I quietly expressed my gratitude to the guy with a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade, retroactive to the approximate date when he was ordered to create the program for Em and Alpha, and with backpay for the difference between what he'd been getting as an ensign and what he should have been getting as a Lt. JG. I mean, the guy was ordered to put himself at great risk by Em and Alpha, but he more than doubled it himself by telling me what he'd been made to do, and I've always believed in rewarding good service.

"Sir, I – the program. I'd need a lot more time, and more sophisticated analyzing tools, to be absolutely sure, but I–" He hesitates again, wetting his lips, and then dives in. "I think it's ours."

I point him at the door, and he scoots.

=/\=

If I'm to have any hope of keeping what's happened under wraps for the time being, I need to get back to what I'm supposed to be doing. If I'd have been in the meeting with Malcolm, like I was supposed to be, I'd already be over-running my time – fortunately it was a planning meeting, and they always take longer than they're supposed to. That's not exactly unusual for me, even when it's not a planning meeting, but I can guess that any minute I'll have Eloise comming me reproachfully to remind me of my schedule.

She'll have heard me call the medical emergency, of course. With luck she'll imagine I'll have gotten it sorted and returned to what I was supposed to be doing. I'll have to invent some accident if she mentions it, maybe something happened to someone in the corridor outside the conference room and I called it through, but it's unlikely she'll say anything. She's far too professional to ask about things that are none of her business.

'Offense is the best form of defense', a certain English general I know is fond of declaring, even if he'd bitch about the way to spell it. So rather than having my PA catch me on the hop and make me feel like a naughty schoolboy caught skipping lessons, I call her instead. It takes me a moment or two to be sure I can talk in a voice that sounds like some minor irritation has come up that needs to be dealt with before it can become a major one.

"Eloise, General Reed an' I have somethin' we want to discuss with Colonel Burnell. Do me a favor an' reschedule my appointments for the next couple of hours, an' ask him to join us in the lab here."

"Could you be a little more precise about the 'next couple of hours' Commodore?" she asks politely, and you'd never guess she probably wants to claw my eyes out for yet again messing up all the diary arrangements she's made so beautifully.

"Naw. Be a bit creative, darlin', an' I'll bring you up a chocolate éclair from the Mess Hall when we're through here." I deliberately smile as I speak, knowing it will carry through the comm. on my voice. The Tucker charm is a natural gift, spending five minutes with my daddy or either of my brothers will prove that, but my time in the Imperial Fleet has taught me how to turn it on and off with calculated precision to make things go a little smoother for me, too.

"Commodore, you do know how to get around a girl." And she signs off, hopefully no longer quite so inclined to make a wax figurine of me and stick pins in it – though if she'd ever been inclined along those lines, I'd guess she'd have caused an Empire-wide shortage of pins by now.

I let the fake smile fall off my face, and wait for Burnell to arrive. Which he does, very quickly, and by the strain in his voice as he says 'Commodore, you asked to see me' I know what he's expecting me to tell him – though at a guess he's wondering why I've chosen to announce it here.

"There's no news yet," I tell him almost before he's dropped the salute. "But I've had the recordin' analyzed. You were right. It's a goddamn fake."

He seems to sigh. "That explains a great deal."

"Yeah. But unfortunately, it raises more questions than it answers." I look at him narrowly. Either what I'm going to tell him now will come as a surprise, or it won't. Some of me wishes I was a Vulcan, and then I'd have the tools to let me find out which it really is – whether he likes it or not.

"Turns out, it came from a starship. Unfortunately, whoever sent it managed to wipe out the piece of codin' that'd tell us which one. An' the initial investigations suggest it followed on immediately from a short, personal message to Lieutenant Cutler, an' that too had layers of encryption an' the identifier removed.

"The first thing people are gonna say, of course, if an' when this gets out, is that I made the recordin' myself." I hold his eyes. "That I engineered this to make Liz do my murderin' for me. Everyone knows Reed an' I once hated each other's guts, an' there's no godly reason why I couldn't have used our new cordial professional relationship to evade his trouble sensors and take him out once an' for all."

"For a long time, they'd have been right: I did hate the guy. But let's say time brings changes. An' whether or not those changes include my personal feelin's toward the man, his death is absolutely the last thing the Empire needs right now.."

He's silent for a moment. "But if you had arranged it, sir, you would hardly reveal to your Head of Security that it was a fake – unless, of course, your aim was to preempt his discovery of that fact and thereby suggest your own innocence, which – pardon me for saying this, sir – would be a little devious for you. And regardless of its actual point of origin, 'everyone' does not know how much effort you've put into bringing him into exactly where he is now – or rather, what he was before Lieutenant Cutler was manipulated into knifing him.

"I, on the other hand, have at least some idea of it. And therefore, Commodore, if you're asking whether I suspect you of at least complicity in this, then no, I do not."

We look at each other.

"What I do have, however, are certain suspicions. Until they can be proved or disproved, I think it wisest not to discuss them, but I assure you, I will keep you informed of whatever I can discover."

He's really not like Malcolm at all, but in that moment it could be Mal himself talking. And there's a note of contained fury in his voice that tells me anyone he gets ahold of will live to regret it.

But probably not for very long.

Obviously I want to know everything he knows, or even suspects, but there's an old saying that 'too many cooks spoil the broth', and whoever it was who cooked up this hell-brew, I fucking don't want their broth spoiled. I want to feed it to them boiling and watch them choke on it. So I nod dismissal. Austin snaps off another perfect salute and takes his leave.

Then, just like Baird, he pauses in the doorway.

"I'll include the details in my full report, sir, but I think you should know now that Lieutenant Cutler attempted to harm herself when we returned her to her cell after your interview. Absent any objects with which she could injure herself, she resorted to tearing out her hair, bashing her head on the floor, and eventually biting her arms hard enough to draw blood."

Austin Burnell has the best poker face I've ever seen, so when he winces in disgust, I have to wonder whether it was really that bad or whether he was doing it for my benefit because he knows my weakness. Whatever the case, I don't feel bad about swallowing hard when my stomach does a somersault at his dead-pan description.

"My men responded at the first sign of trouble, so she didn't get the chance to do too much damage. She's been sedated and had her wounds treated, and apart from the psychological issues they represent, she's going to be perfectly all right."

I nod and thank him for the warning. There's a good chance I'll see Liz again before he has the opportunity to prepare his report or I have the time to read it, so at least, this turn of events won't come as a surprise.

Once Austin is out the door, I quietly comm. Rostov and Hess. With what's probably about to kick off, they deserve to be warned in advance; could be they'll end up running the station between them while I wade ass-deep into what could turn into a civil war.

It takes them a few minutes to get here. Mike is working on fine-tuning the Axeblade's scanners, so it'll take him a little while to close out all the circuits and leave them on standby. Hess was in the design lab, not far from T'Pol as a matter of fact, and I'm not surprised she turns up first.

I don't say anything when she comes in, but she's known me long enough to read my face. She comes across to the table, sits down on the seat next to me and grabs my hands. "Boss?"

I still don't say anything. My mind is full of the look on Malcolm's face when the woman he'd fallen in love with – whether he'd admit it to himself I have no idea, but I'm sure he had – pushed a blade into his belly. He's had his share of betrayals, but I'm not sure anything ever hurt him worse, or ever could. The memory of his expression of anguished disbelief has put a lump in my throat the size of Jupiter.

But I have to tell her. I have to get it said somehow.

"It's Mal," I say thickly.

She releases one of my hands to thump her fist against the table, undoubtedly wishing it was Malcolm's head. "That treacherous little son-of-a-bitch–! I knew it. I just knew it! What's he gone and done?"

I shake my head, wishing I could shake the pictures out of it. "You don't understand. It's not Mal – it's Liz."

"Liz!" Anna peers at me incredulously. "If that little bastard's hurt her I'll kill him. I swear to God, I'll kill the little fucker with my bare hands. What's he done to her?"

The words don't make sense. They simply don't make sense. I listen to them coming out of my mouth and they belong in some bat-shit-crazy universe where none of the rules of reason apply. "Boot's on the other foot, Anna. She stuck a knife in him."

It's probably the first time ever that I've seen Anna Hess lost for words. She sits there gaping at me for a good half-minute, her mouth hanging open. "S-she what?" she finally stutters. "Boss, are you kiddin' me?"

"Wish I was."

Her eyes are as round as gobstoppers. As she eventually gets a grip on the fact that I'm really not joking, she reconnects with her legendary store of swear-words, and over the next ten minutes I'm pretty sure she uses all of them without repeating herself once, storming around the room because she's too damn furious to sit still.

On the tail end of this, Mike appears. He casts an incredulous look at Anna. "What have I missed, Boss?"

I give him the details. At least he doesn't burst into flames, which I think Hess would do if she got even the tiniest bit angrier.

"He's dead, yeah?" he asks slowly.

Futilely, I wish I had another glass of that tequila. "I don't know, Mike. He was still alive when they got him out of the conference room. I haven't heard anything since." I look down at my hands, and it still seems to me I can see them slick with red. "To be honest, I can't see how he could survive it. I think he must have lost half the blood in his body before Jeremy got here. Took them half an hour workin' on him before they dared move him, an' I think most of them weren't expectin' him to live to reach the turbo-lift."

"But why?" demands Anna, finally coming to a halt opposite me. "After all the shit she took from him back on Enterprise, nobody would have blamed her for makin' a shish kebab out of the little fucker back then. But why now?"

Heavy-hearted, I press the 'play' button on the PADD. "She'd heard this."

They both listen in silence. At the end, even Anna can't come up with curses foul enough to express her feelings, but I hold up a hand to stop her sputtering. "What she didn't know was that it was fake."

So now the both of them have gone over the same roller-coaster I have, except that the time frame was a whole lot more compressed for them. Now they're both sitting there gaping at me, trying to get a hold of what's going on here.

"So somebody deliberately set Liz up to murder General Reed," Mike says at last.

"Sure looks that way."

"Do we have any idea who?"

"Ideas, plenty. Evidence, no." I scowl. "Austin has some suspicions, he's goin' to follow them up. Truth is, Mal's accumulated enough enemies since he took power for him to have a queue from here to the Moon of people who'd pay to have someone assassinate him. Thing we have to look for is someone who'd benefit from his death – enough to risk makin' a move on him an' possibly failin'.

"The one thing we do know is that this message was sent from a starship. Whoever it was had access to sophisticated enough technology to erase the code that would identify which starship, an' I suppose if they had the know-how an' the boldness to try something like this that's not surprisin'. But there's one thing that really worries me about all this." I lean forward and lower my voice, even though I've disabled the surveillance cameras. "I haven't told Austin, but you two know that I hijacked the Triad's spoofin' program to keep control of the MACOs by pretendin' to be Reed myself till I could get someone in place to hold the fort for him. Turns out this is prob'ly the same damn program."

Their stares are horrified.

"So someone from this station is implicated in this," I finish, heavily, putting it into words. "The program could have been copied, or it could have been used in situ an' the recordin' taken away to be transmitted later. Guess there's no way to find out unless we can find out who had unauthorized access to it. An' believe you me, that thing was locked down pretty damn tight. Whoever got ahold of it knew what they were doin'."

"Can't Austin help out?" demands Anna. "He's Reed's SiC so by default he's now the damned Head of Imperial Security, he should be dealing with this!"

"Fact is, he doesn't know about the spoofin'," I admit. "He was one of the guys it was aimed at, an' as far as I know he never knew what had really happened to Mal. I couldn't risk anyone findin' out how sick he really was, how weak he was. The temptation to get in there an' finish the job might have been too much to resist."

"So he believes – what? That Reed was just injured in the explosion?"

"That's the story I put out. You know everythin' that went on in that facility was top secret. Most of the people who worked on The Project itself weren't even allowed to leave the area in case they talked; Liz was the exception, most likely because Em at least knew she was so desperate to be allowed to take care of Malcolm that she'd never put that in danger by breathin' a word to anyone. The only poor bastard who ever got out was MacEvoy, an' they never intended him to get the chance to tell anyone what he'd been workin' on.

"There are a few – just a few – now, who know the truth. But I've warned them as hard as I know how that the safest thing they can do is keep their mouths shut. The last thing Malcolm would have been able to handle was the story getting out."

"Chief – are you sayin' not even the Empress knew about The Project?" whispers Mike, his face ashen.

"No. She didn't."

I don't think I've ever heard Mike swear like this in all my life before, but he's obviously spent enough time around Anna to know how to do a good job of it.

But hell, in the circumstances, what choice did I have?

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