Engineering Murder, page 4
“I think so, Captain. He can be pretty annoying sometimes, but he is very helpful. It was him who piloted the ship so I could take care of using the pods as a weapon.”
“Can you explain some more? He does not sound like any of the AI’s that we use today.”
I looked at the command team, they were all listening to me. “From what he has said, he was THE prototype. The first autonomous AI in the PPL. It was a test, to see if he and those like him could be used for warships. He says that his personality matrix is based on a 20th-century vid-star. He likes to tell strange jokes. He also says a lot of very unusual things like quotes or sayings. From studying the records that I could find with my access, his creators never made any more like him. They moved on to less autonomous, more Wilson says, boring AI’s. He’s unique, sir.”
Glancing at the security chief, the Captain asked, “Have any of your techs noticed him in the system?”
“We didn’t know to look. The security AI’s are supposed to alert us to intrusions like this. I will put some extra people on it.”
The Captain turned his gaze back to me. “Be advised, Lieutenant, I will be reporting this higher up the chain. You may have to deal with fleet HQ, again.”
“Yes, sir, I understand sir.”
“Now you can go back to your engine. Oh, and Lee? Just so you know. Those pirates were bounty hunters. The bounty on you is now over $100 million credits, watch your back please.”
As I left the room, I overheard the security chief speaking. “Captain? Why did you allow her to keep that AI?”
Pensive, the Captain looked at his head of security. “If that AI could pilot a shuttle, what about a cruiser? Or all our weapon systems? Environmental? Life support? She can keep him.”
White-faced, the security chief nodded
At least Wilson was given a reprieve, and his secret was out in the open. Two days after my meeting with the captain, new orders came in for me from Fleet HQ. It was too dangerous for me out here, my orders were changed, they were sending me to the Capital Planet.
Chapter 9
Fleet had sent a cruiser with an escort destroyer to pick me up.
For the record, they were ‘just passing through’ and were able to give me a ride. Secretly, they were here for me. Military Intelligence really wanted someone’s head on a plate for these attacks. Anyone who can arrange both an explosion on a Navy ship and two attacks by pirates is a person of great interest to them. Agents from MI planned to use me as bait to draw out the bad guys.
Reluctant as I was about the idea, I decided to go along, it was better than looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.
On board the EOH Wang Chung, I spend my time in discussion with engineers and intelligence. The engineers wanted to hear about my lost fifteen years and all about constructing the station, again.
Intelligence also tried to train me how to be more covert. It was a fun couple of weeks.
I even got to help work on the engines. Go, engineers!
Arriving in the America sector (sector 5) and the Capital planet, signaled that the party was over. Time to go back to work.
This was to be an attempt to draw my assailant out. The Navy wanted me to speak to Senate committees on piracy, prisoner of war rights, and naval forces integration. I was not the expert, just a witness to these meetings. I was asked to comment and give personal experiences. Basically, a dreary day filled with useless talk. I really hate politics.
The first attack came on the second day, and it was very very public. My security team and I had just sat down at a local cafe for lunch. There was an explosion in the kitchen. A bluish white mist began to fill the room. The diners that were closest to the kitchen began grabbing their throats and crying out in strangled pain. Blisters began being formed wherever the mist touched exposed skin. My escorts grabbed me and literally tossed me out into the street.
Someone used a form of weaponized chlorine gas on the cafe. Fatalities included the kitchen staff, twenty civilians, and one agent from my detail. Things just got real personal.
The attack proved one thing, we seemed to have a security leak. No one had our schedule, it was not written down. We had picked our dining location at random. NCIS was brought aboard the investigation. Their agents sprung into action, investigating everyone. Not one person was left to chance.
A break in the case came when checking government bank accounts. One of the security public surveillance monitors had received an unusually large amount of credits the day of the attack. Interrogation led to a PAC (Political Action Committee). Staffers had been instructed to be kept aware of my location 24/7. The orders had come from one of the owners. Finding the owners got kind of murky after that.
NCIS was still investigating when the second attack occurred.
My team and I had just entered the reception hall when shots rang out.
“Down, down” screamed my bodyguards.
“Shooter on your left, check right!” one of the other guards yelled, as we took cover behind a fallen table.
The other guests were scattered in all directions. Gunshots rang out as personal security teams and gunmen battled it out across the room. The security forces were not as professional as mine was. Random guests were getting shot!
My face was pressed flat to the floor. I had an agent covering me.
I didn’t see it when a trio of the gunmen, using human shields, rushed our position. I heard the screams as my team shot them down.
“Alive, we need them ALIVE!” my team had switched to stunner’s, but some of the contract security had opened fire, within seconds the gunmen were all killed. Unfortunately, so were the hostages.
The noise in the hall dropped as the cries of the wounded took over.
My team finally, allowed me to sit up. All that I could see was the piles of the wounded and of the dead. The charging gunman after being stunned had been shot numerous times. Paramedics were torn from saving the wounded guests. To try to save at least one of the gunman. In the end, none of the assailants survived.
Needless to say, I wasn’t invited to any more events.
NCIS saved the investigation.
Communications between the latest bounty hunters and a local law firm were revealed. Records, taken from the firm, linked it to the PAC group and ultimately the Buckley family.
The evidence was still circumstantial, however. The investigation ground to a halt.
Then it happened. Computer records from the NCIS investigation, somehow, were leaked to the press identifying the Buckley’s as persons-of-interest.
Because of all the innocent lives that had been lost, even the Buckley’s allies were screaming at them. The political tide had finally turned.
Right or wrong, it became a trial in the public eye.
NCIS and other government agencies were tearing into the Buckley families lives. Family skeletons and scandals were being exposed.
Something had to give.
We left for my new post on the regular shuttle, no task force this time.
The Navy published my interview with some of the local newsies where I emphasized that I trusted my fellow crew members in the Navy. The Navy hoped to guilt anyone who would take credits to help kill me.
Here I was, right in the middle of it all.
The Admiralty was at a loss for what to do with me now. After much discussion and turmoil, I was given two options.
Remarkably, they let me choose rather than ordering me.
Go to ground. Allow my family in Hong Kong to protect me was one option. Or I could travel to my next assignment and trust the Navy to keep me safe.
Both really hard decisions. My father was a high ranking planetary militia officer. His troops would help, but did I really want to put their lives in front of mine?
I chose to move on with my next assignment. The Navy was my life. I trusted the people that I work with. You have to trust someone to survive in space. I got lucky. The new assignment was my dream job. The New Madrid shipyard and repair facility.
Chapter 10
Naval intelligence sent two bodyguards with me. We left on the regular commuter shuttle.
It was funny, in a morbid way. When other crew members saw me standing in line, they postponed, or just flat-out refused to board the shuttle.
So much for trust. I almost had to pilot it myself.
Command had to ask for a volunteer pilot. I had heard that the bounty on me was over $150 million credits. It would almost make me want to kill myself, to collect the money!
Flight time was pretty short, less than a day.
No one died.
Never having been here before, it was a real treat.
The New Madrid shipyard was simply HUGE. It covered all of the orbitals surrounding a small moon-like asteroid. That chunk of rock was used for the shipyard’s raw material and was one the largest mining operations of its kind in the galaxy. This was an engineer’s dream.
The shuttle was approaching what looked like an asteroid.
One of my guards was like, “that’s not an asteroid, that’s a battle station.”
I had to punch him for that one, those old vids are still very popular. No storm troopers were waiting for us when we exited the shuttle.
New station equals a new job.
Old business came first though. On the trip, Wilson and I had prepared a short vid, more of a show and tell about Firefly station. It showed the hows and whys that went into this. Construction details, as well as my impressions and of course, my mistakes. We had left out the really embarrassing ones. No need to make myself look that bad. This made my introduction much easier. After a couple of showings, most everyone’s questions had been answered.
My new assignment was to work with developers of new space station features, predominantly hydroponics and life support areas. When I had built my station, those areas were vital in keeping me alive.
I knew a little about this subject. The overall project commander was Chief engineer Ronald Eversole. He had been a civilian designer of mining stations recruited by the Navy just for this project.
So far, the project had successfully developed stronger and more pressure resistant bulkhead doors and hatches.
A good hydroponic room can keep a station alive. It provides both food and air helping to reduce carbon dioxide in the air. Necessary space is at a premium on a station. Having enough room for your plants is always an issue. That was my job on this project, finding room. Most current designs went for a standard room or series of rooms interconnected for redundancy.
The idea that I had was a spiral of hydroponic pods circling around the station core. The heat from the exhaust ports would help heat the plants, putting less strain on the HVAC system. Access tubes and lifts would interconnect the pods for maintenance and harvesting. This design hopefully would reduce the power drain and aid life support for a station.
It took me several weeks to build the pods and interconnect the lift system on our mini-station. The Navy had built a scaled down version of Eversole’s design as a test bed. I rarely saw the man. He left orders in my project in-box if he needed something changed.
I was very busy. I seldom saw anyone other than techs. My security team had changed gears, two weeks into the project. They integrated with station security and were rarely here as a physical presence. The station as a whole was about a week from completion when a small accident happened.
Space is dangerous, and accidents do happen.
This one looked like a real accident. A power conduit was not aligned properly and when turned on it overloaded and blew. It destroyed part of the main security panel. Camera’s, sensors, and alarms were affected by the explosion. Repair crews began work immediately to repair things. Extra crews had to be brought in to check for hull integrity and look for possible cracks.
My section was unaffected by the overload. My whole concept was working, and it was working well. All of the plants were alive. Oxygen levels, at least in hydroponics, were up 25% compared to normal. The whole crew was excited about the upcoming demo for the Navy. Our designs might make a difference and help to save lives.
Working alone, on a malfunctioning pod high up near the exhaust ports, I never saw who struck me from behind.
At the last second, I heard what I thought was Wilson yelling at me in my ear. I awoke in one of the grow pods with a painful lump behind my ear. “Wilson, what’s going on?”
“Athena, you were attacked. I think they left you to die. The pod controls are sealed, and someone has initiated an overload in the fusion engines. There is a design flaw or something, and they can’t be shut down. They sound as if they are going to explode.”
Something was really wrong, those were the brand new Merlin engines that were the same ones on our front line ships. No way it was a design flaw.
“Wilson, can you access the emergency communications?”
“No, we are being jammed. Somewhere on this deck is a frequency jammer.”
My mind was working at what seemed like light speed. This station was built with the newest hatches and bulkheads. Were they strong enough to survive a fusion explosion?
When we lose power, no more life support. At my workstation, I had a portable power source and a large box of power system equipment.
I got to work. Praying to all the space gods, I used my portable power module to reroute the system routines, to power the backup life support equipment. This was a Navy station. Redundancy was the name of the game with us.
Nothing makes time crawl by, like waiting for a large explosion. When it finally happened the station jumped and bumped like it was a carnival ride at a cheap circus.
The core of the station blew out like a volcano. Bursting out of the top of the station. The armored bulkhead shielding and hatches held!
Life support was out everywhere, except in hydroponics. What little air I had was minimal, but it was life-sustaining.
Wilson, jabbering in my ear, said that he could now talk to security.
I contacted my team and told them I was still here and alive. It took several hours for them to cut the doors open. The explosion had welded them shut. My injuries were light, but I still ended up in the med-bay. Not really hurt I was sitting on the bed reading my tablet. It was here that Chief Eversole found me.
“Lieutenant, are you OK? I thought for SURE that you would have been killed.” Eversole looked away from me toward the main entrance.
“Chief, the bulkheads held. The Navy will be so excited! Plus, my hydroponic layout increased output by over 25%....”
“I’m sorry Athena, but just how DID you survive? Life support should have failed in the explosion. I don’t understand it!”
“Well, Chief” not really getting his point here, “the Navy always builds redundancy into everything that they use. I was able to power the backup life support system.”
Chief Eversole had a sad look on his face when he turned back to me. “I’m sorry about this Athena, but you were not meant to survive that explosion.” At that, he pulled out a short-barreled fragmentation gun. “It’s too late to make this an accident, sorry.”
I threw my tablet at him as I dove under the bed.
He bent down, trying to shoot me. I kicked him in the head.
Stunned, he fell backward, accidentally firing his gun. The sound of the gun going off was very loud, sparks flew as the medical equipment around us shorted out from the shot.
I yelled for help as I scrambled on all fours to get away from him. He rose to his knees and fired another shot at me, hitting another medical equipment station. I ducked behind the desk and tapped my link trying to contact my support team.
Eversole fired once more into the desk. I then heard shouts and loud sounds of a struggle. I peeked over the desk. A security officer was on the floor cuffing the now stunned chief engineer. Shakily I stood up. The officer reacted as if to a threat, gun coming up. When he saw my uniform, he relaxed.
“Are you OK, Lieutenant?” He asked me. “I’m fine, thank you, officer.” At that point, my ever late security protection team showed up and took over.
Chapter 11
“Why would Eversole risk his entire career and billions in construction contracts to kill me?” That was the question I asked Admiral Anders, the shipyard commander. “I just don’t understand that. His design was successful, he would have been set for life.”
“He’s not talking, but we dug into his background and uncovered a few things. His mother’s maiden name is Buckley. His direct uncle is the now former Governor Buckley. The majority of the stockholders in his engineering company was his mother’s family. He really didn’t have a choice in his actions. If he decides to talk, we will at least know for sure. One good thing out of all of this. Eversole was a perfectionist. He kept records of everything.”
At my look, the Admiral smiled. “Yes, even the recordings of his ‘family’ telling him to kill you and make it look like an accident. We finally have proof that we need. The former Governor is on a vid recording hiring a killer. An arrest warrant was issued a short while ago.”
“That’s great! Finally, I can relax.”
“Don’t let your guard down just yet Lieutenant. Wait until the bounty is dropped.”
When ESS and NCIS officers attempted to serve their warrants of arrest, they found the house empty. The leader of the family had left the planet on a hidden ship.
Still, on medical leave, I took a much-needed break.
The shipyard asteroid base had a very large civilian area.
I went to the mall. Window shopping was therapeutic. I ended the day by sitting in a casual bar. A pretty good house band was playing, and I enjoyed their music. A nice looking man sat down next to me. I looked closer at him and saw that he was the band’s main singer.
“Did you enjoy our music?” Telling him I did, he relaxed.
“What’s your band’s name? I came in too late to catch that part.”
“We call ourselves the Cavaliers.”
“Where are you from?”
Saying he was from Hong Kong, we sat and talked a bit. It was nice to talk to someone non-military about home and of regular things. His band mates came up from time to time to introduce themselves and get drinks.
“Can you explain some more? He does not sound like any of the AI’s that we use today.”
I looked at the command team, they were all listening to me. “From what he has said, he was THE prototype. The first autonomous AI in the PPL. It was a test, to see if he and those like him could be used for warships. He says that his personality matrix is based on a 20th-century vid-star. He likes to tell strange jokes. He also says a lot of very unusual things like quotes or sayings. From studying the records that I could find with my access, his creators never made any more like him. They moved on to less autonomous, more Wilson says, boring AI’s. He’s unique, sir.”
Glancing at the security chief, the Captain asked, “Have any of your techs noticed him in the system?”
“We didn’t know to look. The security AI’s are supposed to alert us to intrusions like this. I will put some extra people on it.”
The Captain turned his gaze back to me. “Be advised, Lieutenant, I will be reporting this higher up the chain. You may have to deal with fleet HQ, again.”
“Yes, sir, I understand sir.”
“Now you can go back to your engine. Oh, and Lee? Just so you know. Those pirates were bounty hunters. The bounty on you is now over $100 million credits, watch your back please.”
As I left the room, I overheard the security chief speaking. “Captain? Why did you allow her to keep that AI?”
Pensive, the Captain looked at his head of security. “If that AI could pilot a shuttle, what about a cruiser? Or all our weapon systems? Environmental? Life support? She can keep him.”
White-faced, the security chief nodded
At least Wilson was given a reprieve, and his secret was out in the open. Two days after my meeting with the captain, new orders came in for me from Fleet HQ. It was too dangerous for me out here, my orders were changed, they were sending me to the Capital Planet.
Chapter 9
Fleet had sent a cruiser with an escort destroyer to pick me up.
For the record, they were ‘just passing through’ and were able to give me a ride. Secretly, they were here for me. Military Intelligence really wanted someone’s head on a plate for these attacks. Anyone who can arrange both an explosion on a Navy ship and two attacks by pirates is a person of great interest to them. Agents from MI planned to use me as bait to draw out the bad guys.
Reluctant as I was about the idea, I decided to go along, it was better than looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.
On board the EOH Wang Chung, I spend my time in discussion with engineers and intelligence. The engineers wanted to hear about my lost fifteen years and all about constructing the station, again.
Intelligence also tried to train me how to be more covert. It was a fun couple of weeks.
I even got to help work on the engines. Go, engineers!
Arriving in the America sector (sector 5) and the Capital planet, signaled that the party was over. Time to go back to work.
This was to be an attempt to draw my assailant out. The Navy wanted me to speak to Senate committees on piracy, prisoner of war rights, and naval forces integration. I was not the expert, just a witness to these meetings. I was asked to comment and give personal experiences. Basically, a dreary day filled with useless talk. I really hate politics.
The first attack came on the second day, and it was very very public. My security team and I had just sat down at a local cafe for lunch. There was an explosion in the kitchen. A bluish white mist began to fill the room. The diners that were closest to the kitchen began grabbing their throats and crying out in strangled pain. Blisters began being formed wherever the mist touched exposed skin. My escorts grabbed me and literally tossed me out into the street.
Someone used a form of weaponized chlorine gas on the cafe. Fatalities included the kitchen staff, twenty civilians, and one agent from my detail. Things just got real personal.
The attack proved one thing, we seemed to have a security leak. No one had our schedule, it was not written down. We had picked our dining location at random. NCIS was brought aboard the investigation. Their agents sprung into action, investigating everyone. Not one person was left to chance.
A break in the case came when checking government bank accounts. One of the security public surveillance monitors had received an unusually large amount of credits the day of the attack. Interrogation led to a PAC (Political Action Committee). Staffers had been instructed to be kept aware of my location 24/7. The orders had come from one of the owners. Finding the owners got kind of murky after that.
NCIS was still investigating when the second attack occurred.
My team and I had just entered the reception hall when shots rang out.
“Down, down” screamed my bodyguards.
“Shooter on your left, check right!” one of the other guards yelled, as we took cover behind a fallen table.
The other guests were scattered in all directions. Gunshots rang out as personal security teams and gunmen battled it out across the room. The security forces were not as professional as mine was. Random guests were getting shot!
My face was pressed flat to the floor. I had an agent covering me.
I didn’t see it when a trio of the gunmen, using human shields, rushed our position. I heard the screams as my team shot them down.
“Alive, we need them ALIVE!” my team had switched to stunner’s, but some of the contract security had opened fire, within seconds the gunmen were all killed. Unfortunately, so were the hostages.
The noise in the hall dropped as the cries of the wounded took over.
My team finally, allowed me to sit up. All that I could see was the piles of the wounded and of the dead. The charging gunman after being stunned had been shot numerous times. Paramedics were torn from saving the wounded guests. To try to save at least one of the gunman. In the end, none of the assailants survived.
Needless to say, I wasn’t invited to any more events.
NCIS saved the investigation.
Communications between the latest bounty hunters and a local law firm were revealed. Records, taken from the firm, linked it to the PAC group and ultimately the Buckley family.
The evidence was still circumstantial, however. The investigation ground to a halt.
Then it happened. Computer records from the NCIS investigation, somehow, were leaked to the press identifying the Buckley’s as persons-of-interest.
Because of all the innocent lives that had been lost, even the Buckley’s allies were screaming at them. The political tide had finally turned.
Right or wrong, it became a trial in the public eye.
NCIS and other government agencies were tearing into the Buckley families lives. Family skeletons and scandals were being exposed.
Something had to give.
We left for my new post on the regular shuttle, no task force this time.
The Navy published my interview with some of the local newsies where I emphasized that I trusted my fellow crew members in the Navy. The Navy hoped to guilt anyone who would take credits to help kill me.
Here I was, right in the middle of it all.
The Admiralty was at a loss for what to do with me now. After much discussion and turmoil, I was given two options.
Remarkably, they let me choose rather than ordering me.
Go to ground. Allow my family in Hong Kong to protect me was one option. Or I could travel to my next assignment and trust the Navy to keep me safe.
Both really hard decisions. My father was a high ranking planetary militia officer. His troops would help, but did I really want to put their lives in front of mine?
I chose to move on with my next assignment. The Navy was my life. I trusted the people that I work with. You have to trust someone to survive in space. I got lucky. The new assignment was my dream job. The New Madrid shipyard and repair facility.
Chapter 10
Naval intelligence sent two bodyguards with me. We left on the regular commuter shuttle.
It was funny, in a morbid way. When other crew members saw me standing in line, they postponed, or just flat-out refused to board the shuttle.
So much for trust. I almost had to pilot it myself.
Command had to ask for a volunteer pilot. I had heard that the bounty on me was over $150 million credits. It would almost make me want to kill myself, to collect the money!
Flight time was pretty short, less than a day.
No one died.
Never having been here before, it was a real treat.
The New Madrid shipyard was simply HUGE. It covered all of the orbitals surrounding a small moon-like asteroid. That chunk of rock was used for the shipyard’s raw material and was one the largest mining operations of its kind in the galaxy. This was an engineer’s dream.
The shuttle was approaching what looked like an asteroid.
One of my guards was like, “that’s not an asteroid, that’s a battle station.”
I had to punch him for that one, those old vids are still very popular. No storm troopers were waiting for us when we exited the shuttle.
New station equals a new job.
Old business came first though. On the trip, Wilson and I had prepared a short vid, more of a show and tell about Firefly station. It showed the hows and whys that went into this. Construction details, as well as my impressions and of course, my mistakes. We had left out the really embarrassing ones. No need to make myself look that bad. This made my introduction much easier. After a couple of showings, most everyone’s questions had been answered.
My new assignment was to work with developers of new space station features, predominantly hydroponics and life support areas. When I had built my station, those areas were vital in keeping me alive.
I knew a little about this subject. The overall project commander was Chief engineer Ronald Eversole. He had been a civilian designer of mining stations recruited by the Navy just for this project.
So far, the project had successfully developed stronger and more pressure resistant bulkhead doors and hatches.
A good hydroponic room can keep a station alive. It provides both food and air helping to reduce carbon dioxide in the air. Necessary space is at a premium on a station. Having enough room for your plants is always an issue. That was my job on this project, finding room. Most current designs went for a standard room or series of rooms interconnected for redundancy.
The idea that I had was a spiral of hydroponic pods circling around the station core. The heat from the exhaust ports would help heat the plants, putting less strain on the HVAC system. Access tubes and lifts would interconnect the pods for maintenance and harvesting. This design hopefully would reduce the power drain and aid life support for a station.
It took me several weeks to build the pods and interconnect the lift system on our mini-station. The Navy had built a scaled down version of Eversole’s design as a test bed. I rarely saw the man. He left orders in my project in-box if he needed something changed.
I was very busy. I seldom saw anyone other than techs. My security team had changed gears, two weeks into the project. They integrated with station security and were rarely here as a physical presence. The station as a whole was about a week from completion when a small accident happened.
Space is dangerous, and accidents do happen.
This one looked like a real accident. A power conduit was not aligned properly and when turned on it overloaded and blew. It destroyed part of the main security panel. Camera’s, sensors, and alarms were affected by the explosion. Repair crews began work immediately to repair things. Extra crews had to be brought in to check for hull integrity and look for possible cracks.
My section was unaffected by the overload. My whole concept was working, and it was working well. All of the plants were alive. Oxygen levels, at least in hydroponics, were up 25% compared to normal. The whole crew was excited about the upcoming demo for the Navy. Our designs might make a difference and help to save lives.
Working alone, on a malfunctioning pod high up near the exhaust ports, I never saw who struck me from behind.
At the last second, I heard what I thought was Wilson yelling at me in my ear. I awoke in one of the grow pods with a painful lump behind my ear. “Wilson, what’s going on?”
“Athena, you were attacked. I think they left you to die. The pod controls are sealed, and someone has initiated an overload in the fusion engines. There is a design flaw or something, and they can’t be shut down. They sound as if they are going to explode.”
Something was really wrong, those were the brand new Merlin engines that were the same ones on our front line ships. No way it was a design flaw.
“Wilson, can you access the emergency communications?”
“No, we are being jammed. Somewhere on this deck is a frequency jammer.”
My mind was working at what seemed like light speed. This station was built with the newest hatches and bulkheads. Were they strong enough to survive a fusion explosion?
When we lose power, no more life support. At my workstation, I had a portable power source and a large box of power system equipment.
I got to work. Praying to all the space gods, I used my portable power module to reroute the system routines, to power the backup life support equipment. This was a Navy station. Redundancy was the name of the game with us.
Nothing makes time crawl by, like waiting for a large explosion. When it finally happened the station jumped and bumped like it was a carnival ride at a cheap circus.
The core of the station blew out like a volcano. Bursting out of the top of the station. The armored bulkhead shielding and hatches held!
Life support was out everywhere, except in hydroponics. What little air I had was minimal, but it was life-sustaining.
Wilson, jabbering in my ear, said that he could now talk to security.
I contacted my team and told them I was still here and alive. It took several hours for them to cut the doors open. The explosion had welded them shut. My injuries were light, but I still ended up in the med-bay. Not really hurt I was sitting on the bed reading my tablet. It was here that Chief Eversole found me.
“Lieutenant, are you OK? I thought for SURE that you would have been killed.” Eversole looked away from me toward the main entrance.
“Chief, the bulkheads held. The Navy will be so excited! Plus, my hydroponic layout increased output by over 25%....”
“I’m sorry Athena, but just how DID you survive? Life support should have failed in the explosion. I don’t understand it!”
“Well, Chief” not really getting his point here, “the Navy always builds redundancy into everything that they use. I was able to power the backup life support system.”
Chief Eversole had a sad look on his face when he turned back to me. “I’m sorry about this Athena, but you were not meant to survive that explosion.” At that, he pulled out a short-barreled fragmentation gun. “It’s too late to make this an accident, sorry.”
I threw my tablet at him as I dove under the bed.
He bent down, trying to shoot me. I kicked him in the head.
Stunned, he fell backward, accidentally firing his gun. The sound of the gun going off was very loud, sparks flew as the medical equipment around us shorted out from the shot.
I yelled for help as I scrambled on all fours to get away from him. He rose to his knees and fired another shot at me, hitting another medical equipment station. I ducked behind the desk and tapped my link trying to contact my support team.
Eversole fired once more into the desk. I then heard shouts and loud sounds of a struggle. I peeked over the desk. A security officer was on the floor cuffing the now stunned chief engineer. Shakily I stood up. The officer reacted as if to a threat, gun coming up. When he saw my uniform, he relaxed.
“Are you OK, Lieutenant?” He asked me. “I’m fine, thank you, officer.” At that point, my ever late security protection team showed up and took over.
Chapter 11
“Why would Eversole risk his entire career and billions in construction contracts to kill me?” That was the question I asked Admiral Anders, the shipyard commander. “I just don’t understand that. His design was successful, he would have been set for life.”
“He’s not talking, but we dug into his background and uncovered a few things. His mother’s maiden name is Buckley. His direct uncle is the now former Governor Buckley. The majority of the stockholders in his engineering company was his mother’s family. He really didn’t have a choice in his actions. If he decides to talk, we will at least know for sure. One good thing out of all of this. Eversole was a perfectionist. He kept records of everything.”
At my look, the Admiral smiled. “Yes, even the recordings of his ‘family’ telling him to kill you and make it look like an accident. We finally have proof that we need. The former Governor is on a vid recording hiring a killer. An arrest warrant was issued a short while ago.”
“That’s great! Finally, I can relax.”
“Don’t let your guard down just yet Lieutenant. Wait until the bounty is dropped.”
When ESS and NCIS officers attempted to serve their warrants of arrest, they found the house empty. The leader of the family had left the planet on a hidden ship.
Still, on medical leave, I took a much-needed break.
The shipyard asteroid base had a very large civilian area.
I went to the mall. Window shopping was therapeutic. I ended the day by sitting in a casual bar. A pretty good house band was playing, and I enjoyed their music. A nice looking man sat down next to me. I looked closer at him and saw that he was the band’s main singer.
“Did you enjoy our music?” Telling him I did, he relaxed.
“What’s your band’s name? I came in too late to catch that part.”
“We call ourselves the Cavaliers.”
“Where are you from?”
Saying he was from Hong Kong, we sat and talked a bit. It was nice to talk to someone non-military about home and of regular things. His band mates came up from time to time to introduce themselves and get drinks.
