Things Fall Apart: Chapter 68

Zephyr, pacing Robinson Station, Tau Ceti, 16.12.775 CW

21.5 megaseconds since the catastrophe

Donato's followup would be nearly one-hundred kiloseconds in finding its way to them. Objectively, this was not too long to wait. After all, it was altogether possible that the investigation itself would take much longer than that. Add in the slow crawl at light speed from the relay to Robinson Station, and waiting was inevitable.

Since they had to wait, anyway, Singer suggested they use the time taking the tour of Zephyr she knew Karenski wanted. The admiral agreed almost before Singer had finished offering. McCaffrey did not overtly object, but Singer could tell the other woman remained misaligned with her boss where both Singer and her ship were concerned.

For her part, Singer had decided that while she had no need to antagonize McCaffrey, neither did she feel any strong need to win her over. Twenty-one megaseconds had given Singer plenty of time to build her case justifying her actions at every step of the way. There was still at least a chance that Singer was going to have to face a court-martial, at least pro forma, and she was even prepared to demand one should opinion turn more sour on her.

So, they had gone across for the tour. Karenski had almost gushed at her assembled officers, but seemed especially pleased to see Espinoza and Saito. Singer was unsurprised that the admiral knew both men well. Saito was not that much younger than the admiral, and Espinoza, of course, had been well known to most of the fleet's upper echelons, solely for his position near the head of his family's business. Anyone who made faster starship engines was bound to be popular with all but the most hidebound of brass.

Singer had almost skipped the arboretum, concerned that it would be one more thing McCaffrey could use to sink in a barb. She caught herself, though, recognizing that she was inventing trouble. For one thing, it was her ship, and she could have an arboretum if she wanted to, especially when it had been designed to be one, even if the galaxy was coming apart around them.

In fact, during the tour, McCaffrey had been far less confrontational than earlier. Perhaps, Singer mused, McCaffrey recognized the wisdom of refraining from criticizing a commanding officer on her own decks. Or perhaps the reading Singer had seen McCaffrey doing on the flight over had included Fleet Command Doctrine, Element One.

Regardless, upon entering the arboretum, Singer felt a rush of emotion from McCaffrey's direction, but it was not annoyance at frivolity, or envy, or any of the emotions Singer had felt earlier. It was delight.

"How have you managed this so quickly?" she asked in astonishment.

Singer tried not to beam openly as she said, "It turns out we have a PO with a green thumb. We also got some material assistance at Newer York. Our Mr. Espinoza's mishpachah there includes one of the station's landscape architects, and he offered both tips and actual seeds and seedlings to our would-be gardener. She did the rest, though."

McCaffrey responded, "She worked wonders!" Then perhaps McCaffrey felt some explanation for her reaction was in order. "I'm dirt-born, myself. If I don't get some time in the green spaces on Robinson every other day or so, I get itchy."

Singer took this for an opening, and said, "Union City girl, here, so I know the feeling."

The rest of the tour was uneventful. As at Newer York, they ended on the observation deck for dinner with the officers. As dinner wound down, the admiral raised his hand to get everyone's attention, and stood.

"The times we're living in require us to learn to accept bad news and good news at the same time, and give each one its due. We meet in the shadow of catastrophe, and now, most recently, with the news of Dr. Gupta's death immediately on our minds. None of that invalidates, however, what this crew has accomplished, and what I believe it will go on to accomplish in the near future, as we figure out what that future looks like.

"As such, you should know that I have approved, as fleet admiral, all the provisional promotions issued by Commodore Haraldsdottir and Commander Singer, including Mr. Espinoza's commission. Until such time as we discover other members of the Presidium alive to review the decision, I have also fully approved of Commodore Haraldsdottir's decision both to complete this ship and commission her with this crew.

"What I found most notable in reviewing your reports was that you did not wait to be given permission to take needful action. Instead, you embodied the very nature of command doctrine where independent command is concerned. You used your best judgements to make the best decisions you could with the information and material you had to hand, and took full responsibility for those decisions. It's certainly true that there are things I might have done or decided differently, but different does not necessarily mean better or worse—only different. In the end, you were there, and I wasn't. You all have my thanks and my admiration, and my hopes that together, we will be able to build a future we can be proud of."

There was applause, some toasts, then dessert, and finally, the company was dismissed. Singer escorted Karenski and McCaffrey to their guest quarters in officer country, then did her best to walk without obvious haste back to her own quarters. Despite the positive spin of Karenski's speech, Singer was feeling raw from emotional whiplash, and needed very much to unwind, alone if necessary, with O'Halloran's company if possible.

Zephyr, 16.13.775 CW

21.6 megaseconds since the catastrophe

When Donato's answer did come, everyone was still aboard Zephyr. Accordingly, they had the message—a video recording instead of text—relayed to the briefing room aft of the bridge.

The Admiral of the Outbound got right to the point. "Our assassin was an insider, Dr. Helena Garrett, another fellow of the Institute. Dr. Garrett emigrated to the DSR decades ago, achieved her doctorate here, and in general was not someone we would have had any reason to suspect. She had access to the security systems and made sure they were all being fed false information, then visited Dr. Gupta in his lab. Gupta wasn't really paying attention to her, being deep into writing his report about his recent conversations with Lucas, so she was easily able to slip up behind him and poison his drink. Classic, old-fashioned spycraft honestly, and she probably would have gotten away with it clean except for one thing: Lucas. Apparently, Lucas had asked not to be paused between conversations, and Gupta saw no reason not to honor that request. As a result, despite not having his avatar visible, he was awake and aware, and recorded the entire thing.

"She then grabbed Lucas' box and appeared to be on her way to an outbound flight under an assumed name. Again, classic stuff, the name wasn't new. It was an established alternate identity she had been using on and off for years, and if that weren't cheeky enough, I'd actually met both of her. Please reserve your opinions of my powers of observation for another time.

"Anyway, as she happened to pass two members of New Anaheim's police department, Lucas began screaming blue murder. Literally. When we apprehended her, we found the false identity card on her, and found the booking under the assumed name.

"As you might imagine, she is not being forthcoming in custody. However, a medical scan reveals that she could not possibly be born and raised in New Glasgow, as her paperwork claimed decades ago. All the indications clearly show she grew up in a real gravity well of somewhere between zero-point-seven and one-point-four gees. Unfortunately, the law prevents us doing a more intrusive test without her consent, which of course, she will not give, so we are not able at this time to determine more exactly than that, which might tell us her actual point of origin.

"And again, before you ask why we didn't know that about her earlier, we don't routinely compare a new immigrant's bone density against their claimed origin. Generally, we don't care where they're from; we care how they act once they're here. Until this incident, Dr. Garrett was entirely above reproach. Call her a sleeper agent, or a deep cover agent, whatever, she was thoroughly a member of her community until the moment she was not.

"We're trying to determine where else we might have moles without turning so paranoid we start scanning every citizen for telltales that they lied about their native gravity. The chances that she's the sole such agent here or elsewhere are slim. The code that altered your AIs must have been introduced by a similar agent, as I'm sure you've long since determined for yourselves.

"The entire investigation so far is appended, along with the unfinished draft of Gupta's analysis of Lucas. Lucas himself is currently a guest of my own office. That's the single most secure place I could think to put him without switching him off and locking him in a box and hiding it somewhere. He professes to be very angry, because he liked Gupta, but he also reminds me that he is not to be trusted, which I take seriously.

"Of course, I'll let you know more when I know it. Donato clear."

Everyone was silent for a few minutes, digesting everything Donato had revealed. McCaffrey spoke first. "I guess we did know that we must have a bad actor somewhere at GPP, or with access to their code somehow. There simply hasn't been any time or personnel to investigate, and GPP's own main station is scattered space dust."

GPP, LLC was the company responsible for creating the AI personality templates. They did other, lower level AI work as well, but their chief innovations were the ones that set the TCTF's AIs apart from other polities. Where Newer York's few AIs were all "grown" from digital infancy individually, GPP's were cloned from mature templates. Where others deliberately avoided over-personalizing their AIs, GPP had bestowed genuinely warm, likable personalities that made them seem more like biological people.

Of course, GPP were also the ones who had been shackling those AIs rather than properly raising them with a moral compass, for decades.

Cadotte, who had been slumping a bit in their chair at the latest bad news, sat up at that, and said, "It would be interesting to find out who was on the very last ship out of GPP before the catastrophe, and where it was going."

McCaffrey nodded slowly. "It surely would. And not just the very last ship. That would be almost too obvious, wouldn't it."

Terranova, who had not had much to contribute, spoke up at this point, "I agree. This Dr. Garrett seems to have done everything 'right' as a deep cover agent until the last moment, when she acted hastily to derail investigation into Lucas and the alterations that made the catastrophe possible. By contrast, the actual orchestrators of that catastrophe would have had the timing down, and planned accordingly. I'm not saying we can't narrow some things down about them, and we definitely should try, but I'd say they could easily have decided to skip town any time after the code was released to the Fleet, and well ahead of the actual balloon going up, and be sunning themselves on a beach somewhere, long since."

"I agree, but it's worth pursuing. Also, it's probably time to reexamine everything we know about the key personnel of GPP. It was a private organization, of course, so we have less data that we might on, say, Fleet personnel, but they were also a government contractor, so we'll have more than we would on any random cheesemaking operation."

Singer asked, "Do any satellite offices of GPP survive?" Then winced at the unintended double-entendre of "satellite".

But Karenski only nodded, "One, that we know of. On-world in Union City. Which...do I recall you just said you're from there?"

Singer smiled, "I am. And assuming the crew was going to be granted liberty, I was planning to go see my mother. Actually, she's pretty insistent about it. Think they've got backups of their personnel records?"

"I think I should have tried to find out megaseconds ago," he replied ruefully.

"You've been a little distracted, sir."

Karenski gave a lopsided grin in response. "Maybe a little."

There was a pause, then. Karenski was clearly mulling things over. Then he said, "Okay, here's what. McCaffrey, soon as we get back, start that search on flights out of GPP's headquarters. We know when the code was released, so that's probably a good horizon to start with. As much as I hate to automatically assign blame to immigrants, pay particular attention to anyone whose pattern seems similar to this Garrett's. Someone who's not really native to TCTO systems, but has been around long enough nobody'd know it right off. Then we'll try to see if there are any oddities in their data trail from before they came in—do we find a match with their supposed home-system's records, or not, for example. We're not going to just start going after people because their papers are a little funny, but we have to start somewhere.

"Meanwhile, I'll get in touch with the planetary authorities and see what we need to do to legally get access to those records. We may have to present probable cause of some sort to a court. We'll figure that out when we get there. Once we have more information, Singer, I'm probably going to dump a lot of it in your lap, and that of your crew, to dig deeper on. We're just too short for resources, and you've already got a lot of the pieces of the bigger picture in your hands. Coordinate with McCaffrey for anything Robinson Station can help with, but the investigation is going to be yours once you're back from liberty, because yes, of course, the crew gets liberty."

"Understood, sir!"

"Good. Anything else right now?"

Nobody spoke up.

"All right then. Mac, assuming we can bum a ride off Singer's pilots, I think it's time we got back to work."

"Yes, sir," came the answer. Singer thought she detected reluctance there, and wondered if McCaffrey was not keen on the way the assignments had been structured. She hoped that would not be an ongoing problem.

"Right then. Singer, coordinate those liberty schedules with McCaffrey as well. Let's get to work. Dismissed."