Free Dark Space by Stephen A. Fender Page A

Engineering?”
       She shook her head. “No.
One of the communications rooms.”
       This got his undivided
attention. “Oh, now that is a bit more peculiar than roses.”
       “To say the least.”
       Shawn knew that there were
a half-dozen such communications compartments on a carrier the size of the Duchess .
“Where?”
       “Deck Seven, aft.”
       Shawn nodded. The
auxiliary communications room. Small, sparsely manned, and far enough away to
not rouse any suspicion. In fact, the compartment was so small Shawn
doubted that Melissa and Jerry could have both been in the space without
noticing one another. However, Shawn also knew that every command
space—including all communications rooms—were specially coded, highly secured
spaces.
       “He didn’t have a problem
gaining access?” he asked.
       “Got in without so much as
a whisper,” she said. “Just swiped his ident card and walked right in.”
       “Only officers ranking lieutenant
commander or higher can have direct access to those compartments, and even
then—if you’re below a captain—you need to be escorted while inside.”
       Melissa nodded, pulling a
strand of auburn hair from the front of her face and pushing it behind her ear.
“It seems that Mister Santorum has gotten a hell of a promotion.”
       “Certainly not on approval
from me.” Shawn mulled over the possibilities in his mind for a moment, then
leaned back against the side of the lift. “What happened next?”
       “I set a personal scanner
outside, programmed it to trip as soon as anyone walked out of the compartment.
Then I hid myself and waited.”
       “Broom closet?” he asked
wryly.
       She remembered their first
conversation, when after asking for Shawn’s help in locating a missing person,
Shawn had gruffly asked her if she needed help finding the one who had dropped
a house on her witch sister. “Funny. No. It was a conduit cool room.”
       “Brr.” Shawn shivered,
remembering how he’d hidden in such a space during a prank on a fellow junior
officer long ago. “What then?”
       “I waited until the sensor
was tripped. Once Santorum left the communications compartment I went inside to
see what he’d accessed.”
       “Wait,” he said as he held
up a hand. “You have access to command and control spaces?”
       She looked at him as if
asking if his question was a serious one.
       “Oh, right,” he corrected.
“I keep forgetting … you’re a super-spy .”
       “Covert operative,
Commander. Stop calling me a spy. It’s so …”
       “Accurate?”
       “Demeaning,” she growled.
“Besides, as the ranking OSI officer on the ship, I’ve got unfettered access to
any compartment on this vessel. Anyway, after a bit of investigating—”
       “Spying.”
       She rolled her eyes. “I
found that he’d accessed both the backup long-range data transmitter array and
a series of folders hidden on the Duchess ’s tertiary computer core.”
       “Both seldom used … both
seldom monitored,” he agreed. “Who was he talking to?”
       She pursed her lips. “He
wasn’t talking, per se. He was transmitting data.”
       “Okay. So, to whom was he transmitting this data, and what was it?”
       “He tried encrypting the
coordinates, but I’m beginning to think your theory about him being a poorly
trained spy was more accurate than I initially believed.”
       A smile crept across
Shawn’s face. “You cracked it.”
       “I cracked it,” she said,
looking extremely pleased with herself.
       “And?”
       “Vega Sector.”
       “Vega sector?” Shawn
repeated in confusion.
       “The Torval system, to be
precise.”
       Shawn’s eyes went wide.
“Torval, as in—”
       She nodded. “Yes and no.
While the Torval system was once a safe haven of … space traders of less-than-virtuous
ethics—”
       “I agree: pirates,
cutthroats, and murderers can be defined as