Free Under Vanishing Skies by G.S. Fields Page A

have told this to. You are my friend and a man of honor. I know that you will help me do the right thing.”
    “ Whoa! What do you mean, ‘do the right thing’?”
    “ If he is involved with the pirates, then we are all in danger.”
    “ Yeah, well... unless you have a high-res glossy of him hugging a pirate you don’t have anything that proves he is guilty. Do you have a picture of him on the boat?”
    He shook his head.
    “ Then you have nothing.”
    “ I have the messages that they sent to each other.”
    “ How?’
    “ SIGINT,” he said.
    “ SIGINT?”
    “ Signal Intelligence. I was able to use some of the signal collection sensors on the satellite to intercept messages that were transmitted across the VHF channel. I triangulated the signals and isolated the location of where the messages were sent from. They were sent to and from the location of the mother ship.”
    “ Wait,” I said. My brain felt like it was about to explode again. “How’d you crack the IICN encryption?”
    There were only two ways he could have cracked the encryption that we put into place on the message server. Either he convinced Ahmed to give him his personal encryption key, and I don’t think that Ahmed would hand over something like that to Jin or anyone else. Or else he built a quantum computer to crack the code for him…and not even Jin could do that.
    Jin shook his head again. “I did not break the encryption. I simply stripped the user information from the header, which is not encrypted. I then mapped the ID to Ahmed’s account by searching the server logs.”
    I grabbed his shoulders. “Then that’s it! That’s proof that he was communicating with the pirates.”
    He shook his head. “Unfortunately, there was an anomaly."
    My hands dropped to my side.
    Jin continued, “I discovered Ahmed’s User ID was on messages that originated both from Male and from the location of the mother ship. Some of these messages were sent within minutes of each other, so—”
    “ So you don’t have anything.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to expose Ahmed with this information. I’m no lawyer, but even I know that this wouldn’t hold up in court. For all we know, Ahmed has been sending threats to the pirates. I doubt it, but it’s possible. Hell, maybe he gave them his User ID so they could communicate a ceasefire or something.”
    Jin looked like I’d just kicked him in the gut.
    “ I’m sorry, but I can’t do it... not without more proof,” I said.
    This wasn’t like Jin. He never acted rashly. And he knew better than to accuse Ahmed without hard evidence. Eight years ago, someone else had tried that. He accused Ahmed of stealing supplies and trading them for his own profit. The guy that accused him ended up dead. They said it was an accident, but I had a hard time believing that someone could accidently fall out of a helojumper.
    My data mat chirped in my back pocket. I pulled it out and read the message.
    “ Look, Jin...I’ve got to get back. They’re starting the meeting. Let me know if you find anything more conclusive.” I turned and started to walk away.
    “ Aron, wait!”
    I stopped and turned around.
    “ There may be a way to decrypt the messages. Can we meet later, so that I can explain?”
    Throwing my arms up in the air, I said, “Yeah, okay, sure. The Council should finish around five o’clock tonight. Meet me at the café, the one where you found me. But Jin, keep quiet about this. Okay?”
    He bowed, and I took off for the hotel.

Chapter 6

     
    I ran up the stairs, two at a time, and darted down the hallway. Out of breath, I pulled the oversized teak doors open and found Shannon standing in the middle of the room. Around the table, people rolled their eyes and ignored her. At the head of the table, Ahmed absently tapped his gavel in the palm of his hand while Shannon continued to talk.
    “ ...and so that brings us to how you behave after you drop