“I can prove it,” I said. “Do you have a video feed from the summit?”
“No,” the colonel said.
“Good,” I said, not believing him. High-level meetings like the summit were always recorded, and McAvoy was the man with the recording equipment at the Dry Docks. “Klyber and Huang will have gotten into a hot debate. Check out their brawl, then watch the feed of the maintenance team …and check out the short, bald guy.”
“I should have shot you while I had the chance,” the colonel said. “Suppose I just say you planted the cable …”
“Your own video record proves that I never went near Klyber’s ship,” I said. “Are you planning to doctor your records?”
“Get specked,” the colonel said.
“Look, Colonel, if you have access to the summit records, and we both know that you do, I suggest you view them. Once you’ve done that, send it to me, and I will try to help …”
“And you think I trust you?” the colonel asked.
“If you don’t want my help, that’s fine. The best of luck to you. You’re going to need it.”
“If you’re right and there’s something there, I’ll get you that feed. If you’re lying to me, Harris, I’ll have you hauled back to my station for an immediate court-martial,” the colonel said. “How do you like that deal, Liberator?” With this, he ended the transmission.
I did not like that deal. I sat in the cockpit of the Starliner, stared out into space, and stewed. As the fleet admiral’s security officer, I felt duty-bound to find Klyber’s killer. As a Liberator, I felt an almost pathological need for revenge. Beyond that, the evidence suggested that Admiral Huang murdered Klyber and just thinking about putting a bullet between his eyes made me feel happy.
Killing Huang …killing Huang. A simple bullet in the head would be too easy. A gun, a bomb, or maybe a knife so that he would know it was personal. Our eyes would meet in the last moment, and he would know who killed him and why.
McAvoy contacted me within an hour. He did not call or write a message. Instead, he sent a virtual delivery. A massive, encrypted file and the key with which to open it.
“Klyber’s death is all over the Link,” Freeman said on my mediaLink shades. Judging by the ugly furniture and plain room behind him, he was staying in a cheap hotel. “The Navy says it was a tragic accident.”
“If you call sabotage an accident,” I said. “Otherwise it was a tragic murder.” I was still out in space, still a few million miles from the Golan Dry Docks. I had spent the last four hours viewing the summit and had more to go.
“You think it was murder?” Freeman asked.
“Yes, and Huang was behind it,” I said.
“Can you prove it?”
“No.”
Freeman was sitting on a bed. The shape of the mattress turned from a square to a funnel under his weight. “What do you have?” he asked.
“I have a security tape showing the maintenance team that cleaned Klyber’s transport. There was an Adam Boyd with them.” I paused to see how Freeman would react.
He raised an eyebrow, and said, “That’s it?”
“Huang created those little speckers.”
“Was Thurston at the summit?” Freeman asked.
I remembered seeing him on the video feed and nodded.
“The only Boyd clones I’ve ever seen were assigned to one of Thurston’s ships. Maybe he did it.”
It was true. To the best of my knowledge, every last Adam Boyd clone had been transferred to the Kamehameha , the command ship of the Scutum-Crux Fleet—Robert Thurston’s purview. That tidbit did not fit in with my theory. I wanted Huang to be the killer. “Thurston is Huang’s man. He doesn’t have anything against Admiral Klyber.”
“You can’t prove Huang has anything against Klyber.” Freeman replied.
“Get specked,” I said, knowing that Freeman was right.
“The only thing you have is a picture of an Adam Boyd clone boarding Klyber’s ship. Is that right? You can’t even prove he did anything to sabotage it.”
I nodded. “He was carrying a toolbox,” I said. “And he was on the ship for eighteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.”
“Was he alone?”
“Some of the time. He got on first.”
“So you are saying he had the opportunity to open the broadcast engine and place the cable even though the rest of the maintenance crew was coming?”
“Must have,” I said. “How did you know about the cable?”
“That’s how you sabotage self-broadcasting ships.” Freeman said. “Do you have anything else?”
“I’ve got a security feed from the summit. You should have seen the sparks. Klyber and Huang really hated each other.”
“The way I see it, we can either drop this or go after the Boyd,” Freeman said. “That’s the best we can do until we can tie Huang to the clone.”
I knew the Adam Boyd clones were trained on Earth, on an island called Oahu. I stumbled into one of them while on R and R on that island. I knew that their base of operations was now the U.A. Kamehameha , a fighter carrier in the Scutum-Crux Arm. Of the two places, Hawaii sounded more hospitable.
“Guess I’m headed to Earth to have a look at their farm,” I said. “You coming?”
Freeman nodded. “The only time I’ve ever seen Boyd clones was after you got through with them. It’d be interesting to see one that is still breathing.”
PART II
THE INVESTIGATION
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
General Alexander Smith, secretary of the Air Force and ranking member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stands in front of an electronic display board holding a laser pointer. Like most of the members of the Joint Chiefs, Smith is in his sixties, a short man with a medium build and graying hair. His mustache covers the entire length of his upper lip.
The display board is an old-fashioned two-dimensional model, strictly low-tech. How he smuggled such an antique into the Dry Docks is beyond me, but there is no way this is Golan equipment. All of the big corporations gave up on 2-D displays long before this facility was built.
The summit takes place around a U-shaped table that is fifty feet long. Only generals and admirals sit at this table. Staffs members sit behind them in chairs set against the wall.
At the moment, General Smith’s 2-D display shows a diagram of the galaxy. Large red circles appear in several areas of the diagram. The general turns and points at them.
“As you know, we have engaged enemy troops in the following locations.” He points to the circles. “The Mogats seem to have set up power bases here …” He points at the lower flank of the outer Cygnus Arm. “Here …” He circles a parallel segment on the Perseus Arm. “And throughout these portions of Scutum-Crux.”
Smaller red splotches appear throughout the map. “The Mogats have free access throughout the galaxy. These are hotspots for spying and illegal activity. The only red zones in the Orion Arm are the planets New Columbia and Olympus Kri.”
Three of the galactic arms turn bright green. “The Cygnus, Perseus, and Scutum-Crux Arms have declared independence and formed the Organization of Confederate Arms. The Norma Arm has also declared independence. From what we can tell, this arm has ejected all Mogat colonists and is not a member of the OCS.
“Only the Orion and Sagittarius Arms have remained loyal; and in all candor, the U.A. government is funding an all-out covert war in Sagittarius that is costing us trillions of dollars. That’s the bad news.”
The colored areas vanish from the display, leaving a white and blue-black map of the stars. “The pink areas represent the territories in which our enemies currently enjoy military superiority.”
All of the men in the room laugh. There are no pink areas.