Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Eight

The Enemy Unmasked

Colonel Austin Burnell

It hasn't told me anything I didn't already know, but it confirms my suspicions that Lieutenant Cutler was indeed an innocent dupe. I can only hope for her sake that General Reed takes the same view, if and when he regains consciousness.

Were it not for this conviction of her being Hernandez's catspaw, I'd have urged Commodore Tucker already to have her sent for trial. The attempted assassination of the Head of Imperial Security is a grave crime, and we already have surveillance footage that establishes her guilt beyond any doubt. Even if a defence lawyer could be found willing to take her case on (unlikely, in the circumstances, and especially given the victim), no amount of provocation could excuse the attack, and the verdict is a foregone conclusion. Her only chance of survival is the hope that Reed survives and decides to pardon her, which I suppose isn't entirely unthinkable given the evidence I've seen lately that he feels real warmth towards her.

Enough to forgive her for trying to murder him? I'm glad I don't have to answer that question.

But the question I do have to answer – and very quickly – is that of 'What do we do about Admiral Erika Hernandez?'

I ponder it as I stride towards the turbo-lift en route to the commodore's morning meeting, which will presumably be going ahead until or unless events intervene. After all, if the news of Reed's attempted assassination is to be kept under wraps until its outcome emerges, the daily routine will have to be followed in the effort to suggest it's 'business as usual'.

Clearly, unless this really was merely a ham-handed attempt to warn a woman for whom she felt some warmth that she'd been deluded in her so-called lover's affection for her, she's decided to break cover as Reed's enemy. At a guess, she didn't expect him to survive the experience, but if he did then her interference would become known and presumably she thought it worth the risk. At the very least he would be annoyed by the disruption to his liaison, and even now he is not a man one crosses without excellent cause. It must therefore be inferred that she believed herself safe from his anger, even if he survived; there is absolutely no reason to suspect Admiral Erika Hernandez of being an altruist.

Her reasons for taking this seemingly reckless action, especially in this particular way, are something I wish I knew. Has she caught wind of some approach to the empress regarding sharing the throne? Is she simply afraid of that much power – previously spread across the Triad – being concentrated in one man? Is she wary of the general's newfound co-operation with Commodore Tucker, and afraid of his reaction if he finds out what happened between them? Has he made or connived at some move against her on his own account?

The latter seems unlikely. If the general's aim is stability, which it appears to have been up to now, then striking at Hernandez is counter-productive – unless he had reason to suspect she was up to something, and launched a pre-emptive attack.

Could she be trying to clear the way for her own ascension? If that's the case, what will she do if the general survives? Who else does she consider an obstacle, and what kind of support does she have that makes her think she can take the throne, let alone have a hope in bloody hell of holding it?

As Reed's SiC, am I a target as well?

She certainly doesn't seem the type to be taking such risks on another's behalf, but until proven otherwise, the possibility must be considered. So who could she be working for? There are a couple of cabinet ministers who could confer on her astonishing wealth, power, and property – rumour has it the Minister of Commerce gets extraction rights to the natural resources of the entire Axanar home world (including the triglobulin from the zymuth glands of any resident Axanar) as part of his compensation – but no one in the government has the military might to achieve a coup. If Admiral Hernandez can use her power to help a government minister rise to the throne, why wouldn't she do it for herself and then, with the ultimate power in hand, just take whatever property and wealth she wants?

Then again, what if it's not building up to a coup? What if we've been looking at this from completely the wrong angle, and the Empress has begun to perceive General Reed (and possibly Commodore Tucker as well) as a threat to her reign? When the Triad were alive she was probably little more than a figurehead, but since then she's had real power in her hands. Now, with Reed getting back up to speed and picking up all the power that had previously resided in all three of them, and Tucker's influence growing exponentially through the Fleet, it must be obvious that a price would be demanded for their continued allegiance. Could she have enlisted the admiral's assistance to halve that threat by eliminating one of them, and, when Hernandez failed to kill Tucker and lost her ready access to him in the attempt, did she turn her attention to Reed instead?

As I get into the lift car, it occurs to me that the recording will hold a lot of the answers if we can break into its secrets. Its encryption levels were extremely sophisticated, but I've got the cure for those. We need to find out who, how and when, which will go a long way toward answering why, but investigating that's going to require time I don't have.

Luckily for me, Jignesh is currently at Starfleet HQ. He's carrying out an investigation on my behalf there, but it seems to me that this is more important, and so I send him an order to drop what he's doing immediately and come back to the station; I have the authority to requisition a shuttle for him from the HQ pool to save any avoidable delay. Whoever has done this has to be unmasked and, if possible, dealt with, and I don't know anyone better suited to digging out the truth.

What we'll do when we find out who it is, of course, depends on the identity of the criminal and where he or she is now. If anyone associated with it is here on the station – and that's a long shot at best – then I'll eventually hand them over to Major Crawley as Head of Station Security. If the victim had been anybody other than General Reed or Commodore Tucker I'd hand the whole operation over to her, but Jignesh is a member of my staff and I want to have first access to his findings. Now that we know, or suspect, that Admiral Hernandez is involved, the operation has far greater significance than simple station security; we need accuracy, we need speed and above all we need secrecy.

If I didn't know better, I have to admit that I'd never realise from Commodore Tucker's demeanour during the morning meeting that anything's amiss. He's as cheerful and alert as he always is, decisive and effective. You'd never guess that the man's living on his nerves (and probably a lot of coffee and sugar – I've noticed he likes his coffee disgustingly sweet), waiting for news that may mean catastrophe.

But beneath my superficial involvement with what's going on – I may be there primarily as a courtesy, but I have to be able to react to any question that may be aimed at me, though there aren't usually many – there are dark thoughts moving.

So far, I'm behaving as if General Reed's survival is the ultimate aim. And from the point of view of the benefit to the Empire, that may well be the best outcome. But I am Pack, and the benefit to the Empire may not necessarily coincide with the best outcome for me.

Pack pursues power. I'm not just Reed's SiC, I'm his heir apparent. I stand to inherit both his position and his power, and while doing so without a fight which ends with him dying by my hand might initially reduce my status as alpha somewhat, it would also cost me less capital in terms of favours I'd have to call in and allies I'd have to reward in order to assure a victorious coup. I'd like to think that I've also learned a lot from both the general and Commodore Tucker, and that I'm at least as able to control an always volatile situation quite as well as either of them. Though I've taken care to emphasise in all communications to the New Pack that I represent the general and am loyal to him, they still know me better. Once he resumed his full duties, he took pains to get to know the best and brightest among them and began almost immediately to cultivate their loyalty by taking over the duties of bestowing awards and recognition, but they've known me longer and they know I was the one rewarding them before he came back from his extended 'bereavement' leave. Ultimately, why shouldn't it be me who ascends the throne beside Empress Sato? My sexuality won't be an issue; I'm quite sure that I'm capable of pleasuring a woman even if I don't find her physically attractive, and reproducing can be taken care of artificially.

From that position of power, I can protect Commodore Tucker quite as well as Reed could do – and as long as he continues to produce the goods in respect of our ships, there's no reason why that shouldn't continue. Unlike Admiral Hernandez, I believe in preserving efficient officers rather than half-killing them for fun. Given time and opportunity, I mean to see that that little misdemeanour of hers is rewarded appropriately; she endangered the optimum functioning of Jupiter Station, which is unforgivable. If she wants to play rough games, she should choose her playmates more carefully.

After that incident, I reviewed the surveillance recordings and felt sick with anger by the end. It wasn't the violence that horrified me – Pack sex can be extremely violent, especially once our savagery is aroused by a hunt, and in some circumstances it's almost expected for the subordinate party to die; it was the stupidity of it. Tucker was clearly willing and, up to a point, co-operative. When that point was passed, she should have had the sense to call a halt. I have no idea why she didn't, but it's a serious flaw in her otherwise excellent good sense – if you want to get your sexual kicks by playing cat with a mouse, you use a slave, not the man who keeps the Empire's fleet running. She damn near clawed him to death that night, and presumably thinks she got away with it.

If I have anything to do with it, she'll find out she didn't. But that day is yet to dawn, if it ever does; and in the meantime I have to carry on being the dutiful officer I am.

The meeting comes to an end, and the assembled officers disperse. I wait until the others have filed out. The commodore shows no surprise at my lingering, but looks at me darkly.

"Sir, I just wanted to update you on my investigation," I say as soon as we're alone. "I'm recalling a member of my staff who was on loan to the MACO HQ to assist me. He should be arriving on a MACO transport within the next hour or two."

"Anyone I should know?"

"You may have seen him about the station, sir. His name's Major Jignesh Vaja. He's the best man I know at information-gathering, and I have the greatest respect not only for his skills but for his discretion. If you allow him access to the material on that PADD, he'll find out the databank where this 'spoofing programme' originated and who accessed it and when. That will give us our spy."

Tucker ruminates, tapping a stylus against his own PADD. "Despite the fact that there'll undoubtedly be layers of encryption protectin' it, if it's still even on there?"

"Short of molecular dispersal, Commodore, nothing can be completely obliterated from computer records. Jignesh finds stuff, in computers or people, like a heat-seeking missile. He will find your information. If the databank itself still exists in physical form, Jignesh will get through it to what we need."

He tosses the PADD abruptly onto the empty chair beside him. "I can save him some of his trouble."

I'm so startled by this that I simply stare at him.

"I already knew that programme existed an' where it's stored," he continues bluntly. "It was created on the orders of Generals Hayes an' Gomez to keep control of Reed's MACOs while he was their prisoner."

"What?"

"They took him prisoner, and held him for over a year. I'm not gonna go into details an' I assure you that not even your guy will be able to find any, because most of the recordin's blew out when Sickbay went an' I had my people physically destroy the circuits that stored whatever was left. Believe me, there's nothin' anyone will ever find about that now – no matter how much of an expert they might be.

"After Sickbay went, I had Reed left on my hands. He was so sick by then after what they'd had done to him, it was touch an' go whether he'd survive. An' when he did survive, he was as mad an' mean as a ravin' pit-bull. I didn't dare let him go till he'd recovered an' till we'd talked him out of attackin' everyone he looked at.

"I'm sure you can believe, that took some doin'. The only hold I had over him that worked was a device I had implanted in his chest – one that I could use to stop his heart if he misbehaved. It was tuned into my biosign, so he couldn't even kill me an' get free that way. He had to behave, whether he liked it or not."

"Is it still in there?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"Nope." He shakes his head, grinning wryly. "Had it taken out just after he got back from his shakedown cruise with the Fortress."

"And – and he accepts that you did all this to him?"

"I won't say he wasn't madder than a mule with a mouthful of bumblebees at the time, but we came to an understandin' eventually. I might even say that in hindsight, he would agree it was necessary and even see it as a sign of respect that I still regarded him as the most dangerous man in the Empire."

I can only gape at him as I try to imagine all this happening. It has to be true, at least in part, because if it wasn't, the instant Reed got control of the Fortress he'd have turned her around and strafed Jupiter Station to smithereens. I just can't understand how all this could have been kept hidden for so long.

Then the penny drops.

"You used the spoofing programme!" I accuse.

"Didn't have any option." A shrug. "Reed couldn't have defended himself against a three-year-old with a pop-gun, an' if anyone had realized he was vulnerable it wouldn't have been long before someone tracked him down and took him out. Once he was gone, all hell would have let loose. The other two were dead, and the Empress was on her own. I didn't have anything like the power to hold the balance, an' you know the bastards are out there – there's not only Hernandez with her eye on the prize. There'd have been a civil war on before you could say 'Jupiter Station'."

My emotions are almost beyond description. I was undoubtedly duped just like all the rest of the MACOs, and I'm hardly best pleased about that, but realistically the commodore's perfectly right; he had no option but to use the programme. So he must have kept Reed hidden and powerless all the while, rebuilding his strength while coaxing him onside. Knowing the general as I do, I find it almost incredible that anyone could achieve this; even a human would resent and resist any attempt at persuasion by someone holding them prisoner, and we're talking about the Head of the Pack. Betrayed by the other members of the Triad (I still have to get my head around that, if it's true) and then imprisoned and coerced by a Human – and by a Human he'd been at war with all those years ago aboard Enterprise, at that – I can hardly imagine the ferocity of Reed's rage and loathing of his situation once it became clear to him.

Clearly, Commodore Tucker has no idea whatsoever that I would have been among those who would have tried to track down the general and destroy him when he was unable to defend himself. Not only would I have advanced myself to power if I'd succeeded, it would have seemed to me the only way to restore him to his lost dignity, and oddly enough I think he would have agreed with me. As I struggle to imagine what it must have been like for him, I can believe without any difficulty at all that there must have been times beyond count when a death in a struggle for Power - however one-sided it would have been - would have come as an utter relief.

To have succeeded, in those circumstances, in transforming him not merely into an ally but even a friend is an achievement I can hardly wrap my brain around. If it's true – if it's true, and the story has amply illuminated Tucker's talent for not only jaw-dropping imagination but outrageous cunning and stupendous powers of organisation (not to mention a certain amount of courage and probably an equal degree of foolhardiness, but there's nothing that says fools can't be brave, and in my experience, it's quite astonishing how hardy they are) – it increases exponentially my admiration for an officer whom I already enormously respect, even despite the treasonous conspiracy to redistribute military supplies and equipment I now know he has been heading up for years.

"If it's true, sir, you ought to be running the Empire!" I blurt out, so stunned by the unfolding ramifications of Tucker's actions that I don't realise until far too late that I've just committed High Treason.

He could have me arrested, but of course he won't. He merely grins, and joins me in it. "Of course I've thought about puttin' in a claim on my own account," he admits - presumably he's capable of doctoring the security recordings in here. "What man wouldn't?

"But thing is, a job like that takes skills I just don't have. I'm good with engines, not so much with people, at least not in the way you need to be to run an empire. I mean, I'm okay here on the station. We've only got a few thousand people and I'm pretty good with names and faces. It's easy to lead a group when you know your people well enough to congratulate this guy on his sister's wedding and express your condolences to that woman on her father's passing. But the nameless, faceless masses? I don't have what it takes to command their loyalty.

"Right up till today, I was hopin' I could give Malcolm enough support till he could step up. I think he's bought into the way we work here an' he's learned for himself that things run better when people are run better.

"Obviously, I wasn't countin' on Liz Cutler slippin' a blade into his guts. But with luck–" He taps his fingers against the wood of the table in front of us – "this attempt failed. But it goes to show that things are comin' to a head, an' we can't just sit back an' wait for the next try. Next time, whoever it is might get lucky."

I'm so completely unbalanced by the casual way he's just admitted to planning to put General Reed on the throne alongside Empress Sato that I show my hand earlier than I'd intended. "Lieutenant Cutler was talking very indiscreetly earlier on," I say reluctantly. "She claimed, and later repeated in the hearing of others, that it was Admiral Hernandez who sent her the recording."

Tucker goes very still. "Who else heard her?"

"Corporal Woods, who was on guard over her. Two MACOs, in the corridor outside the Brig. I'd vouch for all of them."

"Anyone else?"

"A medical orderly."

He looks at me sharply.

"I'll make sure he's dealt with, sir."

"Make sure he's 'dealt with' so he survives. There are plenty of posts out there where communication's limited an' I'll guess he already knows he's a target if he opens his mouth."

As it happens, this is superfluous advice. The orderly has already been confined, and I'll leave him to consider his position for another twenty-four hours and then Jignesh will interview him. Based on what Jignesh discovers – and there will be some weak point in his defences, I have no doubt of that – he'll be given various options, none of which will include revealing what he overheard and living to tell the tale.

"I have that under control, sir."

I get another look, but he doesn't question me.

"So," as he retrieves his PADD, "now you know about the spoofin' program. Get your guy in if you can trust him an' tell him as much as he needs to know about that. What we need him to find out is who accessed it without authorization, probably in the last month or so, maybe a bit before then. Because whoever it was is no friend of ours, an' we're up against it hard enough without havin' a spy in the camp."

Along with everything he's just revealed to me, that phrase, 'no friend of ours,' makes me feel as if I've finally been recognised as part of the team rather than just a useful outsider. I'm surprised at the feeling of warmth and camaraderie that comes over me. It won't be enough to stop me from acting in my own best interests when push comes to shove, but it's nice all the same. And it makes me wonder, if things carry on long enough, will he eventually include me in his stolen salvage redistribution conspiracy? Will he ever trust me that much?

If he does, I'm afraid it will be his last miscalculation. As remote as the chances of discovery are, if I've done it, conceivably so could someone else. At that point I'll have no choice but to uncover his criminality, because the alternative would be to either join it or become an accessory by ignoring it – either of which would be fatal if it were discovered, however much I might be inclined to make it legal, even standard procedure, after I've ascended to the throne.

I salute, and stride from the room, already getting on the comm. to notify Ops and the shuttle bay of the incoming MACO transport. At a guess, Jignesh has already closed up what he was doing up till now and is putting his stuff together ready to move.

I'm going to have to be very choosy about what I tell him of what's been going on, but it doesn't seem I have much choice. When you get to my rank in the Empire, it's practically inevitable that sooner or later, you're going to be involved in some very murky statecraft.

I just never dreamed it would be Commodore Charles Tucker III who dragged me into it.

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