Spruance Del Curtin had waited until he was almost finished with supper before texting Zack. The last thing Sprue needed right now was to look desperate for the information.
He’d been a little disappointed to be directed to one of the less desirable residential module lounges, but he had a good idea why Zack would pick this barren place. Given that they were going to be talking about sensitive subjects, they didn’t need a whole bunch of other people hanging around to listen in on what they were saying.
So here he was, waiting in an empty room, trying not to be too obvious about watching the module airlock, just in case someone were to emerge from their apartment and wonder why he was hanging out there. In any case, he had things he was really supposed to be doing, like going over the lesson plans for the class he was supposed to be teaching tomorrow.
He’d no more than begun to engage with the material when the inner hatch of the airlock slid open and out stepped Zack. “Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
“No problem at all.” Sprue closed his laptop and stuffed it back in his bag. “Just wanted to make good use of the time, considering how everyone’s always on us not to waste our time.”
“Yup.” Zack glanced around the chamber. “Let’s go back to my apartment. Roomie’s on the night shift, so he won’t be back until both of us are going to need to be in bed.”
They retreated down one of the branching corridors to a room not that much different from any other bachelor(ette) apartment around this place. When Shepardsport was originally founded, nobody had ever imagined it would be used as a place of exile for the unwelcome astronaut clones, so these apartments were supposed to be single-occupancy. With the sudden increase in population from the Expulsions, unmarried personnel had been required to double up “for the duration.”
The necessary retrofits had been minimalist at best. Add attachment points for rigging a second bed, then slip in a second set of furniture. It made the already cozy single-occupancy apartments downright crowded, but given the difficulties inherent in creating more residential-rated pressurized volume, the necessary expansion to alleviate the crowding would take time.
At least Zack did have two sling-back chairs that needed only be pulled out of their cubbyhole and unfolded, so they could sit and talk. A few pleasantries about each other’s jobs and studies, and then they got down to the nitty-gritty.
“So you’re looking for some information about how the Sharp Wars started.”
“Right. A friend of mine’s taking Constitution class right now, and a few days ago her teacher got into some of the philosophical stuff behind the Constitution, and was talking about various wars and crises, except he was kind of tiptoeing around the Sharp Wars.”
“Colonel Hearne’s teaching Constitution right now, if I remember correctly. He’s Air Force, and the stuff that really sparked everything involved the Navy. But Hearne’s been an astronaut since before the Energy Wars–“
Realizing this was wandering off into the weeds, Sprue interjected, “I don’t think it’s about interservice rivalries. From what she said, I think it’s something about not saying anything too critical of the Commander-in-Chief.”
“Ah, that.” Zack moistened his lips. “I was still young enough at the time that most of my information was coming from news media. But I’ve heard that Flannigan did not want Bradbury in charge of the Pacific Fleet, and there was some suspicion that he was trying to sabotage the man. Apparently the two of them had history that went back to the Energy Wars, maybe beyond. I do know that Flannigan was in the Marines, and he was injured at Second Nile.”
“Yeah, everybody knows that.”
“But what he tries to keep quiet is that it wasn’t a legitimate combat injury. He broke his leg falling down a ladder on the Ticondaroga, and rumor has it he was drunk on illegal hooch at the time.”
Sprue sucked in a sharp whistle. He knew that Conrad Bradbury had been commanding officer of the USS Nimitz during a good bit of the Energy Wars, including the Second Battle of the Nile. But even the captain of an admiral’s flagship had authority over only his own vessel, and even the air wing embarked had its own commanding officer.
But the flag captain was often quite close to the admiral — he wouldn’t stay flag captain long if they didn’t get along — so it would be possible that he’d accompanied the admiral for some kind of inspection on the Ticondaroga and had uncovered evidence of the truth about then-lieutenant Flannigan’s injury.
Except there was one big problem. “But if Flannigan was so adamantly against Bradbury, why did he put the assignment through? I thought the President had the final say as Commander-in-Chief.”
“In theory, but in practice there’s a lot of political consideration. From some things I’ve heard, Flannigan needed some legislation pushed through, and some Senator was an old wartime buddy of Bradbury’s and wanted him to get the Pacific Fleet command as his final post before retirement. There’s also the story that it was some kind of horse-trading within the Department of Defense, and Flannigan had to acquiesce to Bradbury’s assignment to get something he wanted more. In any case, he wasn’t overly happy about it, and wasn’t going to do any more than he had to on Bradbury’s behalf.”
“Which was stupid, especially considering that command would include forces that would be involved in any new Korean conflict. And with the Kim wackjobs getting wackier with every generation, that place was already a real powderkeg.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Flannigan’s got a vindictive streak as wide as his back, so it was just almost believable that he would’ve set things up so that Sandoval could get into a secure area, in spite of being known to have severe PTSD, and then make sure he just happened to be shot instead of captured alive after everything went off. All we know is that there were a lot of things going on in Pearl Harbor during the memorial service and transfer of command, and we’ll probably never learn the whole story.”
“But it’s probably nasty, and it’s likely that some version of it has been going around on the military grapevine ever since. So Colonel Hearne probably knows a lot more than he can say in any sort of official capacity, even if it’s just instructor for Constitution class.”
Zack leaned forward, spoke in a low voice. “If you want to take the risk, I’ve got a friend down in IT who could probably get you some interesting files off the darknet.”
Sprue had heard about the darknet, the system of servers that couldn’t be found by ordinary searches, but could be located by a person with a specialized browser and some specialized know-how. “I don’t think my friend wants to go that deep. Especially since she’s a minor and I don’t think her guardian would approve.”
Make that definite, considering her foster mother is head of Safety and Security, and was an FBI officer for years before that.
“OK. I hope what I could get you was helpful. Let me know if your friend still has any questions.”