Firebrand

The hallways of the hub had been cleared of everyone except Marines, the extra security patrolling with their PDW XMR variants. The atmosphere was tense, they probably hadn't been told much about what had happened. Speaking of which, where was Harry?

Moralez tapped at the touch screen on his wrist, Harry's voice coming through on his earpiece.

"Was wondering when I'd get a call from you, Chief."

"Harry," Moralez replied, "what's the sitrep on your end?"

"The Bug ambassador is in one piece, if a little shaken. We brought her back to the apartment on the torus, figured that would be safer than staying on the hub. We'll keep her out of trouble."

"Good thinking. The Admiral just got done chewing me out, I've got seventy-two hours to get to the bottom of this."

"That's bullshit, Chief," Harry muttered. "We don't even know what happened yet, let alone if it was preventable."

"Well, that's not the way Admiral Vos sees it," Moralez sighed. "Anyway, I just wanted to check up on you. I'll no doubt be coming down there at some point."

"Roger that, Chief. Best of luck."

Moralez continued on until he reached the door to the conference room, which was being guarded by two MPs with white helmets. One of them opened the door for him, and he stepped inside, finding that there were already two people disturbing the crime scene. These must be the two UNNI agents that the Admiral had mentioned. Naval Intelligence wasn't exactly the most popular branch of the service, they were generally treated with mistrust and suspicion, their real motives always hidden. It was their job to expose corruption, to go under deep cover in enemy territory, and to act as a kind of Inquisition that some in the Navy saw as a betrayal of their comrades. Moralez was none too thrilled to have two of them on his station, let alone shadowing him during his investigation.

"Why are you disturbing my crime scene?" Moralez demanded, the two figures turning to face him. It was the Polar in the boiler suit and the guy with the smart mouth who he had met in the hangar, the ones who had delivered the Bug ambassador. It made more sense now, Ninnies were the perfect choice for transporting controversial VIPs, keeping secrets was what they did best.

The man with the long, grey coat and the wrap-around visor grinned, his hands still buried in his pockets.

"The Sheriff is in town! How's your day been, Chief? Not great, from what I hear."

"The Admiral has appointed us to aid you in your investigation," the Polar explained, giving her partner a disapproving glance. "We didn't want to wait around for you to arrive."

"I'm Agent Boyd," the man continued, "and this is Agent Lorza. We're not disturbing your crime scene, we're running scans."

"Then fill me in," Moralez said, walking over to examine the charred hole in the carpet.

"Well, it's pretty obvious that some kind of hypervelocity projectile came through that wall," Boyd said, one of his hands leaving his pocket as he gestured to the entry hole. It was completely sealed with fire-retardant foam now, the substance had hardened into what looked like a lump of beige-colored chewing gum. "We did a scan of the structural integrity, and checked camera feeds from outside of the hub, and we've confirmed that the projectile wasn't fired from a nearby room. We know which direction it came from due to the spread of vaporized hull material. Whatever this was, it had enough energy that it punched through a dozen layers of hull without slowing down, shredding anything that it came into contact with at the molecular level. There was no shrapnel because the metal had pretty much been turned into plasma."

"Is there any footage of the projectile hitting the hub?" Moralez asked, Boyd shaking his head.

"Nope. The power shut off, and the cameras along with it."

"Have you contacted engineering about that?" Moralez added.

"Da, we did," Lorza replied as she planted her furry hands on her wide hips. She was just as voluptuous as Kaisha, her furry body barely contained by the jumpsuit. "Engineering reported that the station's main power grid experienced a sudden surge, and then shut itself down automatically, switching over to a backup. This resulted in the few seconds of power loss that you experienced."

Moralez walked over to the entry hole, skirting around the droplets of foam that had hardened on the carpet. The metal surrounding it looked slagged, as though a blowtorch had been run across it.

"They probably cut the power to cover their tracks," he muttered, reaching out and prodding at the foam. It was as hard as a rock. "They must have had a contact on the station who could cause a surge when the time was right. They shut off the power, everyone gets disoriented, and then the shooter fires. There's no footage left behind, no sensor data."

"This was pretty surgical," Boyd added, "whoever did this took measures to mitigate collateral damage."

"How so?" Moralez asked, turning to face him.

"If they had dialed down the power just a little, it wouldn't have vaporized the hull. Instead, it would have filled the room with superheated shrapnel, like firing off a giant shotgun. Everyone attending the conference would have been eviscerated. The shooter knew exactly how much grunt they needed, and they were interested in the Betelgeusian specifically. If they had been willing to kill all of the ambassadors, then they would no doubt have succeeded. They don't see the Coalition itself as their enemy."

"Alright," Moralez mused, scratching his stubbly chin with the rubbery pads on his polymer fingers as he often did when lost in thought. "It was fired from outside the station, and there's no way that even the largest man-portable railgun could have done this kind of damage. We need to enter this data into a computer and have it calculate an exact trajectory, find out from precisely what angle the projectile was fired relative to the station. Then, we can plot its course back to its point of origin, and have flight control check whether there were any ships in that area at the time of the attack."

"Something else bothers me," Lorza added, Moralez turning his attention to her. "There are no cameras in this room, no windows, and the shooter fired through the hull of the station. He could not possibly have seen what was going on inside. We can only conclude that someone attending the council meeting must have been feeding information to someone outside, predatel, a spy. How else would they have known exactly where the Betelgeusian ambassador was standing, and where to aim? As my colleague pointed out, this attack was precise."

"But there's no way to communicate with anyone outside of this room when a meeting is in session," Moralez insisted. "The ambassadors were searched for listening devices and electronics before being admitted to the hub."

"How thorough are the scans?" Boyd asked, "do they account for sub-dermal implants and RF shielded bugs?"

"Yeah, there's no way that anything slipped through. We even disabled the electronics in the suits of the Valbaran delegates. The only person in the room who had a functional computer at the time was me, and the only ones who didn't go through the usual scanning process were the Bug and her guards. They arrived here by shuttle. I sincerely doubt that she would try to vaporize herself with a railgun, and I assigned two people who I trust implicitly to protect her. Hell, Blackjack wouldn't have moved to protect her if he'd been in on it."

"So we have a list of suspects," Boyd said, returning his hands to his pockets. He seemed to be viewing something on his visor, though Moralez couldn't see what it was. "The Elysian, the Rask, the Araxie, the Valbarans, the Broker, the Krell, and your guards."

"My guys didn't have anything to do with it," Moralez replied, his brow furrowing. "I just told you that."

"You might think that," Boyd muttered, "but I don't know them. I don't know you, either, so I can't say if you're a good judge of character or not. Me, I know a liar when I see one."

There were two other suspects that fit the bill, too. Admiral Vos had not gone through the screening process before setting foot on the hub, not that Moralez knew of, and he had no idea how Murphy had arrived. He wasn't about to express his concerns to the two UNNI agents, however. They were working for Vos, and he had no idea how close their relationship was. If they were indeed reporting his every move to the Admiral, then he didn't want them to reveal his suspicions.

"Have you scanned the room for listening devices?" Moralez asked, changing the subject. "It's possible that someone planted a bug in the conference room prior to the delegates arriving on the hub."

"Yeah, that was the first thing we did," Boyd replied. "We couldn't find anything."

"Then there's nothing more that we can do here," Moralez muttered as he glanced around the empty conference room. "Did you lock down the station? I don't want any of the delegates leaving until this is resolved, and I don't want any ships docking or jumping out of the system."

"Naturally," the Polar replied, giving him the same look that Kaisha did when he asked her a stupid question.

"This isn't our first rodeo, Sheriff," Boyd added. Moralez resisted the urge to respond in kind, the man was really starting to grate on his nerves.

"Then we need to start interviewing the delegates," the Chief continued. "But before we can do that, we have to figure out exactly how this was carried out. We need the serial number of the ship that fired on the station, the names of its crew members, and we need to determine how they were contacted from within this room."

"Konechno, then the next stop is flight control," Lorza said. "After you, Chief."

***

The flight control room was situated on the central hub, and so it wasn't much of a walk. They soon arrived at the correct door, which opened for them automatically, the trio emerging into a large space that was packed with computer consoles. There were dozens of people sitting at desks, swiping at holographic readouts, and talking on headsets. Despite the fact that the room was deep within the interior of the hub, Moralez was shocked to see a field of stars. It was as though the hull of the station was transparent, giving the flight controllers a view out into space, the white hull of the station's torus standing out starkly against the black backdrop. There were ships milling about like bees around a hive, lazily drifting along, the sun reflecting off them like beacons. Upon closer inspection, the four walls were lined with monitors from the blue carpet to the ceiling, displaying an external view of the station to give the impression that the occupants were in a control tower at a spaceport.

"They spared no expense when they built this place," Boyd muttered, "I could do with a couple of these monitors for my rec room back home."

The trio were approached by a woman who was wearing a jacket and a knee-length skirt in Navy blue, her curly hair tied back in a neat bun. She was wearing a headset with a cup over one ear and a microphone that came down in front of her mouth, identifying her as one of the flight control operators.

"We meet at last, Security Chief," she said as she extended a hand in greeting. Moralez took it, and they shook. There was something familiar about her, he recognized her voice.

"You're flight control," he said, the woman putting a hand to her lips to suppress a chuckle.

"My name is Gomez, but yes, you'd know me as flight control."

"Sorry, Miss Gomez," he added sheepishly. "We've never been formally introduced."

"This way, please," she said as she led them over to one of the many desks. It was much like the one that Moralez had in his office, equipped with three holographic displays that wrapped around the user in a rough semi-circle.

"We received the data that you sent us," she began, reaching out to swipe at one of the orange-tinted holograms. "And we used the computer to plot a trajectory based on the damage to the hull."

She pulled up a computer simulation that depicted the station as a simple, textureless box surrounded by a ring, a bright green line drawing a trail through the hub. It projected out into space, skimming the torus itself.

"The green line is an estimate of the path that the projectile traveled. The ship that fired the shot must have been somewhere along this line," she added as she traced it with her finger.

"Can you give us a list of the ships that were in the right place at the right time?" Moralez asked as his two companions looked on.

"That's the problem, Security Chief," she said as she turned back to face him. "There are no ships that meet the criteria. We double and triple-checked, but the computer had no results for us. There are no flight paths that intersect with this trajectory."

"What about ships that had no recorded flight path?" Boyd asked.

"It's virtually impossible to approach the station undetected," Gomez replied. "I suppose it's possible that someone fired on the hub from extreme range, out at the edge of the system, perhaps."

"Not likely," Boyd replied, shaking his head. "Not with the precision that was involved."

"So if it was not fired from a ship, then how?" Lorza asked. "Miss Gomez, can you...zoom in on this picture? Where the line grazes the ring."

Gomez did as she asked, pinching her fingers and bringing the view closer. Moralez and Boyd leaned in to get a better look, hovering over her shoulders. The trajectory came incredibly close to the hull, but it was a little difficult to get a real idea of exactly how close using such simple geometry.

"How accurate is this simulation?" Boyd asked.

"Reasonably accurate," Gomez replied, looking back over her shoulder at him. "We're not a forensics lab, after all."

"I know what you two are thinking," Moralez said, turning to glance up at the Polar. "The trajectory comes close enough to the hull that someone could have fired the shot from the outside of the torus. It's ballsy, that's for sure. They'd only have a small window of opportunity to make that kind of shot, like threading a needle from a quarter mile away."

"Not an impossible shot," Boyd said with a shrug, his hands in his pockets again.

"Oh, and I suppose you think that you could pull it off?" Lorza scoffed.

"You've seen me shoot, furball, you know what I can do. But no, this isn't a question of marksmanship, the shooter wouldn't even have been able to see his target. This was all math, pure and simple. To make a shot like that, he must have run the numbers, calculated everything down to the millimeter. I know what I would have done if I'd been tasked with carrying out this kind of hit."

"Is that something you do often?" Moralez muttered, shooting him a sideways glance.

"I plead the fifth, officer," Boyd replied with a smirk. "Even if the shooter hadn't known what room the ambassador was going to be in, the distance between the hub and the torus means that he'd only need to make tiny adjustments. He could set up his rifle on a tripod and then just wait for the right moment. Whoever was feeding him information would have had to be precise, though. Telling him that his target was over by the wall, or standing by the table wouldn't have been enough. He'd need to know her exact position in a three-dimensional space. Remember, at these ranges, being off by a centimeter means missing your target by a clear foot."

"Nobody was whispering into a hidden microphone, then?" Moralez asked.

"Not likely. I don't think a camera feed would do it either."

"Some kind of spatial scanner?" Lorza suggested. "Radar, or maybe a laser outside of the visible spectrum?"

"He needed a three-dimensional representation of that room in real-time, I don't see how else that could be accomplished," Boyd replied with a nod of his head.

Sensors, cameras, scanners. Moralez couldn't help but picture the Broker ambassador in his mind's eye, those unsettling lenses shifting and zooming incessantly. That was another suspect who had not gone through the usual screening process before being admitted to the hub. Would it even have mattered? If the sensors were a component of its body or its suit, then what could they have done to remove them?

"We need to get out there and investigate," Moralez said, Boyd and Lorza glancing at each other before turning their eyes back to him. Or that least that was what he assumed. With that opaque visor, it was hard to tell what Boyd was looking at, like he was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.

"What do you mean?" Boyd asked. "You want to go out onto the hull?"

"The shooter might have left evidence behind, something that we can use to identify him, or what kind of weapon he used."

"You can't be serious," Boyd replied, his usual self-assuredness faltering a little. Lorza reached down and patted him on the head with her massive hand, the agent hunching over in irritation. They certainly seemed to have a close relationship, perhaps they served together often.

"There there, malish," she said with a mocking smile. Moralez didn't recognize the world, but it sounded Russian to his ears. "You can hold my hand if you get frightened."

"Thank you, Miss Gomez," Moralez said with a nod to the flight controller. She returned the gesture, then sat back down in her chair, resuming her work.

***

"What your Security Chief said was true," the Bug muttered, sitting on the couch with both pairs of arms crossed over her chest protectively. "This station is not a safe place for me to be."

She seemed to have been somewhat shaken by the assassination attempt, and Harry could certainly sympathize. If it hadn't been for Blackjack's lightning-fast reactions and his Krell protective instincts, the ambassador would have been obliterated. Seeing a Bug fear for its own life was something entirely alien to him, the Drones that he had fought in the field had never shown any inkling of self-preservation. They sometimes withdrew from battle, but that was a tactical move, not motivated by a fear of their own mortality.

"You'll be alright," Harry said, the Bug glancing up at him as he sat on the armrest across from her. "Me and BJ will keep you safe, that's our job. We've done pretty well so far, wouldn't you agree? You ain't dead yet."

"You will forgive me if I am not encouraged," she muttered, returning her gaze to the floor.

"Are you...afraid?" Harry asked.

"I am unsure," she replied. "I have felt apprehension before, I have worried about the outcome of my mission here. But what I feel now is...different."

"Fear is a pretty natural response to almost being killed."

"If I am killed, then I will not be able to fulfill my purpose, which would put the Jarilo colony in jeopardy. That is a reasonable source of anxiety. Yet...the idea of no longer existing fills me with a deeper sense of dread that I find...difficult to articulate."

"Almost sounds to me like you're feelin' guilty for worryin' about your own skin," Harry suggested, the Bug glancing up at him again.

"But if I am killed, I will be replaced," she replied as though it should be obvious. "My own survival is not necessary outside of accomplishing my task. Logically, I should be averse to death on that basis alone."

"Every living thing wants to stay alive," Harry said, sliding off the armrest and onto the couch cushion. "But I guess your kind considers the survival of the hive as being more important than the life of individual Bugs, right?"

"It could be described that way, yes."

"So you're worryin' about your own survival, and you think that makes you selfish?"

She nodded in response.