Mercer hated walking into rooms late.
Especially rooms full of Security Division personnel.
The corridor outside the duty room was already thinning out as teams split toward assignments across the ship. Boots echoed against polished deck plating while voices bounced through the passageways in overlapping conversations.
Mercer adjusted the strap on the small blue case tucked under his arm and tried not to limp.
Which of course only made the limp more obvious.
A pair of security crewmen passed him moving the opposite direction.
One glanced down at the case.
“Tribunal detail?”
Mercer nodded.
The older crewman gave him a look usually reserved for people cleaning plasma filters.
“Damn,” he muttered sympathetically.
The second one laughed.
“Rook probably pissed Kane off already.”
Mercer opened his mouth to defend himself.
The two men were already gone.
He stood there a second staring after them.
Then continued down the corridor.
The ship felt different this morning.
Not louder.
Quieter.
Like everybody aboard knew something important was happening but nobody quite understood what.
Crew members moved carefully. Conversations stopped when officers passed. Even the enlisted personnel seemed tighter than normal.
Tribunal.
Everybody knew that much.
Nobody seemed willing to say anything beyond that.
Mercer rounded another corridor and checked the assignment pad again.
Observation Deck Three.
Guard duty.
Outstanding.
He could practically hear Hale’s voice already.
Very special mission for you, kid.
Mercer sighed.
Then immediately straightened as two command officers passed nearby.
One barely acknowledged him.
The other looked directly at the blue case under Mercer’s arm.
“You’re late.”
“I’m actually seven minutes early, sir.”
The officer blinked.
Mercer instantly regretted speaking.
The officer stared at him another second before continuing down the corridor.
Mercer muttered under his breath.
“Fantastic start.”
—
Several decks away, Kane stood inside Security Operations staring at a wall display filled with transmission traffic.
The room smelled like burnt coffee and exhaustion.
Half the personnel inside had probably been awake all night.
Hale leaned against a console nearby flipping through signal logs while Rainer sat cross-legged on top of another station drinking something that absolutely was not regulation coffee.
A young communications specialist looked up nervously as Kane entered.
“Sergeant Major.”
Kane grunted.
The specialist pointed toward the display.
“We isolated the anomalies.”
“Did you now.”
“Yes, Sergeant Major.”
The screen shifted.
Several highlighted transmission bursts appeared scattered through normal ship communications.
Routine traffic.
Engineering.
Cargo operations.
Maintenance.
Then random interruptions.
Tiny.
Brief.
Wrong.
Hale tapped one section.
“There.”
The specialist replayed it.
Static crackled across the room.
Then a voice.
Not enough words to form a sentence.
Just fragments.
“…watching…”
Another burst.
“…not secure…”
Static.
Then silence.
Rainer took another sip from her mug.
“That’s unsettling.”
“Could be interference,” the specialist offered.
Kane looked at him.
The young man visibly reconsidered his life choices.
Hale folded his arms.
“Interference doesn’t reroute itself through internal maintenance channels.”
“Especially encrypted maintenance channels,” Rainer added.
The specialist swallowed.
“Well… no.”
Kane stepped closer to the display.
Years inside Security Division had taught him something important.
Problems rarely announced themselves loudly.
Most disasters started exactly like this.
Tiny inconsistencies.
Things people explained away.
Things people ignored because they were inconvenient.
He pointed toward another signal cluster.
“What’s that one.”
The specialist enlarged it.
Another broken transmission.
This one even shorter.
“…confirmed…”
Static.
“…moves tonight…”
The room went quiet.
Hale slowly looked over.
“Well that sounds healthy.”
Rainer tilted her head slightly.
“Could still be unrelated.”
Kane kept staring at the display.
“No.”
Nobody spoke.
Kane finally looked toward Hale.
“Who knows about this.”
“Us. Communications. Lieutenant Harris.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not officially.”
Kane nodded once.
That bothered him even more.
The ship was already tied in knots over the tribunal situation.
If somebody aboard was using the chaos as cover for something else…
That was bad.
Very bad.
Rainer hopped down off the console.
“You thinking espionage?”
“I’m thinking somebody aboard my ship is being careful.”
Hale glanced at the transmission logs.
“Could be external.”
Kane shook his head.
“No.”
He tapped the maintenance routing indicators.
“Internal relay bypasses.”
Hale’s expression darkened slightly.
“Inside job.”
“Maybe.”
Rainer crossed her arms.
“And if it is?”
Kane finally turned toward them.
The room seemed to lower temperature slightly when he did.
“Then somewhere aboard this ship there’s somebody who thinks everybody’s too distracted to notice what they’re doing.”
Silence.
Then Hale smirked faintly.
“Good thing we’re naturally suspicious assholes.”
Rainer nodded.
“Occupational requirement.”
Even the communications specialist laughed nervously.
Kane didn’t.
He looked back toward the display.
“Start with maintenance routing.”
Hale pushed off the console.
Rainer drained the rest of her coffee.
Kane’s eyes remained fixed on the broken transmission.
Moves tonight.
Yeah.
He had heard that kind of sentence before.
Usually right before somebody died.