Category: Narrative

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Narrative

Getting Pinged

All day long, Spruance Del Curtin kept thinking about what Dr. Doorne had said. Sprue was not entirely unfamiliar with growth curves, since they’d gone over them in stats, and they’d been touched upon in a biology class he’d taken a while back.

What he really wanted to know was the nature of the growth that was being measured. Especially with the wild rumors going around about the situation in Schirrasburg, Sprue wondered if Dr. Doorne had been discussing statistics on the spread of the diablovirus.

Except there was no good way to find out. He couldn’t ask because that would be admitting that he’d listened in on a conversation in which he had no part. And since he’d so little, and that quite vague, he had nothing to go on for making discreet inquiries around the settlement.

Face it, you’re out of options. Sprue didn’t like that conclusion. He was a Shep, and part of that geneset’s intense competitiveness was a ferocious determination.

But with nothing to go on, there was no real place to start. Unless he got a lucky break and happened upon something that pointed him in the right direction, he was out of the running.

Which meant he needed to get his mind on something more productive. He had more than enough work to do, between Dr. Doorne pushing him to do some of the most difficult statistical analysis with real data, as opposed to the standard teaching datasets the other students were getting, and his teaching responsibility becoming steadily heavier as his senior teacher pushed more and more onto him.

He was just starting on his latest lesson plan for that when his phone chimed incoming text. He pulled it up, discovered it was from Drew. Found anything yet?

Sprue considered how to answer that one. If it had been Ken Redmond asking, there would’ve been no question of admitting that he’d been listening in on Dr. Doorne’s telephone conversation. But Drew was a fellow Shep, and he’d take a more relaxed view of such things, especially when it might benefit him.

I’ve heard a few things around Science, but so far I haven’t been able to get any hard facts to back them with. But if you want some speculation, I’m thinking they’re looking at Schirrasburg as a test case in the limits of contagion in a closed population.

He paused for a moment before actually hitting the send button. It was just evasive enough about his sources that even if someone in authority were to go through his SMS logs, they wouldn’t be able to say that he’d been eavesdropping.

Drew must’ve needed to think about it too, because it was several minutes before he responded. Long enough for Sprue to decide it was time to dig back in on his work.

He was just getting back into that mindset when the text chime pulled him back out of his thoughts. Which indicates that they had something going around there, although not definite proof that it was the diablovirus.

But if it were just an ordinary bug, why would they be so hush-hush about it that we’ve got rumors all over the place? All they’d have to say is someone’s picked up a case of the flu and it’s spreading, so they’re taking some extra precautions to make sure it doesn’t spread in the middle of a crisis. Then everybody could stop worrying.

Once again Drew took a long time to reply, which left Sprue wondering if that last observation hadn’t been a wise move. Finally the writing message icon showed up, and then the text appeared. You underestimate the bureaucratic mind.

The whole knowledge is power thing?

More than just that. You never want to let information get out that makes you look bad if you can avoid it. That’s why so much embarrassing information gets classified as secret, even when there’s no national security reason.

And why people keep covering things up, never mind that it’s usually the coverup that gets them in trouble, not the actual thing they were covering up.

Exactly. Which is why I’m thinking that it was a diablovirus outbreak, and it was seriously bad.

I’d believe it. But I sure don’t know how to go about confirming it.

Keep thinking about it, but whatever you do, be careful about it.

Sprue promised he would, which seemed to satisfy Drew. Now to get some serious work done on that lesson plan. Maybe he’d get some ideas while his mind was off the problem.

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Narrative

Dirty Little Secrets

Brenda turned the USB stick over and over in her hand, trying to decide whether she wanted to go through with this. On one hand, Lou Corlin had put himself at significant risk to go poking around some of those places he was talking about. On the other, if his skills at checking and cleaning those files wasn’t as good as he thought they were, she could manage to corrupt her entire laptop, perhaps even any networks it might be connected with.

It would be so much simpler if she had a spare computer with no network connections at all. A computer she could take chances with, without risking all her data, or even other computers here in Shepardsport.

But she wasn’t in a position to have that kind of luxury. Things had been tight up here ever since the Expulsions, which meant there was no such thing as surplussed equipment. You kept things running until they wore out, and then you sent them back to IT to be used in repairing other computers.

On the other hand, Lou did know what he was doing, and he was meticulous about getting the job done right. And if he’d been prowling around the dark side of the ‘Net, he had taken a pretty serious risk on her behalf. To refuse to look at what he’d dug up would be to disrespect his effort.

However, it didn’t mean she needed to take stupid chances. Carefully sitting Lou’s USB stick where she wouldn’t lose track of it, she retrieved one of her own and made a backup of everything on her laptop.

Only when she knew that all her data was backed up and the backup USB stick safely back in her bag did she finally mount Lou’s USB stick on her desktop. As she began to look through the folders, all neatly organized, she realized just how far Lou had gone for her.

Someone, somewhere, had gotten into a bunch of Chicago Police Department databases and dumped it somewhere on the darknet. Some of this stuff was video straight from cop dash cams and body cams. There was no way in heck any law enforcement agency would ever allow it out in the wild uncut like this.

Not to mention the 911 audio files and transcripts. Some of them could easily have serious privacy issues, depending on exactly what was on them. However, she was pretty confident that she was looking at the facts behind the rumor Drew had heard about warlords in the sketchier parts of the south side of Chicago.

And that was just the first few folders she’d gone through. If she was right, at least some of it would relate to the situation over at Schirrasburg.

Which meant she now had the problem of figuring out how to get this material to Drew without raising questions for which there could be no acceptable answers. A direct handoff would be ideal — but could she figure out a way to pass a physical object to Drew, given the quarantine measures that separated pilots from their families even during so-called personal visits?

First she needed to contact him, and carefully drop the hints that she had some seriously hot information. Then they could work out the particulars.

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Narrative

Remembered Days

The Science Department conference room felt ridiculously enormous for just two men to meet. However, Ken Redmond appreciated the choice of venue. Not just the fact that it was more spacious than either his or Reggie’s office, but the fact that it was neutral ground, so it didn’t have the emotional weight of meeting in either of their offices.

On the whole Reggie was a pretty laid-back commanding officer, especially for a Shep. Ken had heard plenty of stories about Alan Shepard’s management style as Chief Astronaut, even if those days had been long before his time. But when you went up to Reggie’s office, even to deliver a report rather than to answer for some fault in your department, there was always a sense of unease, of being on the spot. And when he came to your office, you always felt like your entire department was under the microscope.

Of course the real reason for them meeting here was the sophisticated 3-D A/V equipment Science had here. Equipment he needed for making his presentation on the innovative technique that might be able to produce replacement low-temperature bearings for the various cryo-pumps the settlement used.

Sure, he could’ve used the computer and monitor on his desk, maybe even offered the boss a pair of spex, but it wasn’t quite the same as having the images floating there on the tabletop, so real you’d think you could reach out and touch them. And right now, when he was asking for the boss to OK a huge departure from normal procedure, one that would involve changes in normal flight-certification procedures, he wanted the most persuasive presentation he could manage. Because he was really, really asking the boss to stick his neck out here.

Reggie arrived just as Ken was finishing his final checks on the equipment, making sure everything would show without any glitches. “So what are we looking at that’s so important we need the holoprojector system up here?”

Ken explained about the bearings. “Ever since NASA terminated the contract with McHenery and switched to Salwell, they’ve been wearing out about three times as fast, and we’ve been having no end of trouble maintaining our supply of spares.”

“Salwell? Wasn’t that part of North American Aviation?”

“North American bought them out during the build-up to the Space Shuttle program, and it got spun off again after Boeing bought out North American.”

That got a nod from Reggie. “I remember that now. Probably because they had more of the corporate culture problems than the guys from Seattle wanted to beat out of a new acquisition.”

“North American always had corporate culture problems. It goes way back to Apollo, and I’ve got it on good authority that you could scare them straight for a while after a bad accident, but it never solved the root problem, so it was always a matter of time before they’d start getting lax about the technical stuff. I honestly don’t understand why NASA kept going back to them when you couldn’t rely on them.”

“Because NASA’s a government agency, and therefore beholden to the bidding process.” Reggie leaned back in his chair, looking so much like Alan Shepard that Ken could completely understand how Wally Schirra could take a double-take at encountering him. “So North American underbids everyone else, gets the contract, and then ends up going over budget because half their work’s substandard. But the bean-counters only look at the up-front numbers, so NASA’s pretty much stuck. Get a bad enough accident and you might be able to shake things loose for a while, but then bureaucratic systems reassert themselves.”

A memory came back to Ken. He’d gone over to his ur-brother’s place to return some equipment, and was surprised to discover that Admiral Chaffee had come down to visit with his old boss. It would’ve had to have been some time in ’97, because President Dole had already nominated him as NASA Administrator but it hadn’t been officially confirmed by the Senate. However, he was already digging into the moonbase disaster, because he had brought a briefcase of papers with him and had them scattered about the table for Gus to examine.

Ken still remembered the admiral holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and whacking at them with the other as he made a point about unreliable contractors and nothing ever changing. It had been an awkward moment for a much younger man to have stumbled into such serious business — and Ken had not wanted to say or do anything that would have implied a criticism of Betty Grissom for sending him back here. So he’d stood there, making himself one with the wall as best he could, and got a ringside seat on the sorry story of the failures behind the disaster.

But was it really his story to tell here and now? He still remembered cringing at that horrible tell-all biography that had come out right after the admiral’s death.

No, telling that story added nothing to what he had to say. And they really needed to concentrate on his presentation now. Best to slide the conversation that way so he could lower the light level in here and get those holoprojectors running.

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Narrative

An Awkward Discussion

Although Lou Corlin didn’t really feel comfortable about what he was doing, he felt a level of obligation toward Brenda Redmond which wouldn’t let him give up after the easy routes were exhausted. All the same, the USB stick in his pocket had a weight far beyond its mass.

He wasn’t sure if the walk to Brenda’s apartment would’ve been easier or harder if the corridors had been busy. On one hand, being alone made it easier to dwell on his uneasiness. On the other, he didn’t have to worry about his discomfort being so obvious to everyone else that they wondered what he was up to.

When he got through the airlock into Brenda’s module, she was sitting by the far wall, supervising her children while doing something on a laptop. Lou paused, taking the measure of the situation.

Finally Brenda looked up, met his gaze. Yes, she could spare the time to speak to him.

Why did he feel the need to tiptoe across the module lounge? By conscious will he forced himself to walk normally, the light, bouncy stride of someone accustomed to lunar gravity and comfortable with it.

Brenda kept her voice low. “This is a surprise.”

“Sorry, but some of this stuff is rather sensitive. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to talk about in a phone call or a text.”

Yes, Brenda understood. “Give me a minute to get the kids to bed.”

Lou took a seat while Brenda led her children back to their apartment. He’d been here long enough to remember when Brenda was very much the teenage daughter of the Chief Engineer, still not very sure about the idea of being whisked away from her high-school friends in Houston for life up here on the High Frontier.

But then we’ve all done a lot of fast growing up these past few years. If things had gone normally, we’d just be starting to assume adult roles by now. And even when you’re taking an engineering degree and doing ROTC, college isn’t quite the same as actually being out in the working world.

And then Brenda was back, taking a seat close enough they could keep their voices low enough that the ventilation fans would mask their voices, but not so close that anyone running the video tapes would think they were cooking up a fling — and in a public area, anyone with suitable authority could access them. “So what is it?”

“You know what I mean when I talk about darkboards?”

Definite recognition in her expression, mixed with a little alarm. “Aren’t they dangerous?”

“They can be, if you’re not careful. Some of them are a good way to pick up a nasty virus on your computer. But they can also be a good place to find information the government doesn’t want people knowing. And IT does have the tools to sequester data while you’re making sure that it’s clean.”

He was glad he’d taken the opportunity to get the USB stick out of his pocket while he was waiting. There was a trick to pulling out something innocuous at the same time, then palming what you didn’t want seen. Now he just had to pass it to Brenda without being obvious.

She must’ve had classmates who passed notes in class, because she handled it with the deftness of an expert. Lou had never pegged her as someone who’d get into that sort of thing. Given her dour father, he would’ve expected her to be the sort of straight-arrow everyone always thought his geneset was.

Now that the hand-off was done, he couldn’t very well take off right away. Better to carry on a little small talk, keeping their voices down as if it were just out of consideration for the hour. Once they’d made this meeting completely unremarkable, he could head off to his own quarters for the night.

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Narrative

The First Cracks

It was a good thing Ken Redmond was used to being able to concentrate in noisy environments, because his office here in Engineering was anything but quiet. Not surprising when it had been constructed of the lunar equivalent of wallboard, fastened to a frame of lunar aluminum.

In a city where pressurized volume was at a premium, noisy machinery was never far away. Not so close as to require hearing protection, but still an ever-changing background din, just enough to draw one’s attention, to disrupt one’s focus on the task at hand. And given that he was looking over specs for a new installation, he needed his attention on his work.

Which was why he did not appreciate having his phone pick that moment to start ringing. Glowering, he grabbed it and growled, “Engineering, Redmond speaking.”

“This is Carter Branning down at Flight Ops. One of my crews just pulled a cryo-pump on one of the landers, and we’ve got a major problem. You know those low-temperature bearings we’ve been having no end of trouble with? They’re going out on this one too, and NASA’s had our spares backordered since before this mess started.”

A chill brought gooseflesh to Ken’s skin, even in the ever-present heat of Engineering. Without working cryo-pumps to move cryogenic fuels and oxidizers, spacecraft couldn’t fly. Although it would be possible to pull a working cryo-pump from a lander with a different problem, you couldn’t do it indefinitely. Eventually you had to either have a new supply of spares or you were sidelining so many that your fleet was understrength.

“Have you asked over at Slayton Field or Coopersvile whether they have any extras?”

“First thing I tried, and they’re under minimum to be able to lend us any. Even called Edo Settlement, since JAXA uses a lot of our equipment, but that’s one item they didn’t adopt. Everyone knows those things are garbage, and it was a political decision to switch away from McHenery Aerospace to the bozos who made them.”

Ken had plenty of recriminations of his own, but they didn’t get equipment repaired. “I’ll talk to Zack, see if he knows of anything compatible we’re using for other applications. Otherwise, we’re going to have to fabricate something, and those low-temperature applications are the devil.”

“Tell me about it. We’ve got a complete machine shop down here at Flight Ops, but even it doesn’t have the equipment to work on low-temperature fittings for cryo-pumps. Things start acting weird when you’re talking single digits in Kelvin.”

Ken had too much to do right now to waste time grousing about the situation. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know what we’re going to be looking at.”

Now to get Zack on the horn and get that kid to work on the problem. Then Ken could finally get back to what he was supposed to be doing, that actually needed his authority.

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Narrative

Hints

Spruance Del Curtin had not intended to spy on Dr. Doorne’s communications. In fact, he was planning to just slip in and get some extra work done, and maybe get ahead of the game for a change.

But this batch of data was more boring than usual, and the longer he worked at it, the more his mind began to wander. Nearby voices became more interesting than the rows and columns on the screen in front of him.

Something about sigmoid functions and limits to growth. Dr. Doorne had talked about sigmoid functions in class a couple of sessions ago, and had used several examples, including one from biology, of a new species colonizing a new habitat its population and initially showing an exponential growth curve before hitting the limits of the environment and leveling off to a stable population.

Except that didn’t sound like what she was talking about now. For that matter, it didn’t exactly sound like she was talking to one of her students. No, that sounded more like she was talking to someone closer to her own level.

Even as he wondered just what she was talking about, he realized he was listening in on a conversation in which he had no part. A major breach of courtesy, although as long as he wasn’t obvious about it, calling attention to it would be an equally grave matter.

Which meant that if he wanted to find out what she was talking about, he would have to be extremely discreet about it. Which was not easy when he had only caught part of her conversation, and didn’t have a whole lot of context to work with.

In the meantime, he’d better get his mind back on the work that he was supposed to be doing. The last thing he needed right now was for her to walk in and find him clearly not paying attention to his work.

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Narrative

A Follow-Up

For the last several days Drew’s e-mails and texts had been brief to the point of curtness. Brenda had resolved not to take their shortness as a personal slight. Given the situation, he probably had a lot more stuff on his plate than she did, and right now she had a heck of a lot.

So she was surprised when her phone chimed incoming text, and not only was it from Drew, but it was also long enough that only the first two lines were displayed on the lock screen. Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about….

Which was just enough that she had to swipe to open, and everything else could just wait.

Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about what’s going on down at Schirrasburg. We’re getting a new round of rumors around here.

Brenda moistened her lip, considered whether to tell her husband about her and Lou’s abortive efforts. Might as well give him the gist, but leave out some of the awkward details. A friend and I took a look at Schirrasburg’s Internet activity. We were hoping we might be able to find out something, but everything’s encrypted super-tight. The only thing we do know is that the patterns of data transfer are atypical for them.

Not surprising. These days, most everything goes over encrypted connections, even if it’s not actually confidential material, just to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

We’ve talked about that at the station. Especially with the political situation, it’s completely plausible that someone would create a fake radio station and redirect traffic to them.

When Drew didn’t respond, she wondered if he was trying to decide how to respond without casting shade on the Commander-in-Chief. Maybe better shift the conversation away from the awkward area.

So what are you hearing over there? Or can you tell me?

Don’t spread it around, but we’re hearing that it was diablovirus, and it went through the whole settlement in spite of their going on strict lockdown. Everybody confined to quarters, everything delivered by robot, no interpersonal contact at all.

Brenda considered that information. Of course if it was just a rumor, it might not indicate anything at all. But if there were facts under it…

How well is the air filtered over there? If there are straight-line connections between rooms in the HVAC ducts, confining everyone to quarters wouldn’t make any difference, especially if the virus is airborne. The life-support systems would just blow it right from one room to another.

You’d have to ask Engineering, and right now communications are official channels only. But from the times I’ve visited there, they have the standard modularized design, so it’s not like they’ve got the air blowing through the whole settlement. But if there’s not filters at every room, I could see how a virus could blow from one apartment to another in a residential module. Which does not bode well if the rumor is true that nothing would stop it until it burned itself out.

Brenda shivered as if caught in a sudden breeze. It took a moment to get her hands to stop trembling so she could type.

No wonder they’re keeping such a firm lid on it. No way do you want to have that kind of thing circulating.

She started to write more, then thought better of it and backspaced, then started again. Maybe we’d better wind this conversation up.

Probably. I still have a report I need to write, and it’s not getting any earlier. Take care, and keep your eyes and ears open.

Will do. Brenda closed her messenger app, intending to get back to the work she was supposed to be doing. Five minutes later she realized she was still sitting and stewing.

By conscious effort of will she put away her phone and turned her attention back to her laptop.

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Narrative

Devastation

Ursula Doorne had just gotten her son tucked into bed and was getting ready to turn in for the night when the phone rang. Not wanting to have Rusty coming running out to see what was going on, she answered on the first ring, not even looking at the Caller ID.

As it turned out, it was Tanner. Beyond the initial ‘hi,” he didn’t even bother with opening pleasantries, just launched straight into what he had to say. “Ursey baby, I’ve got some stuff to tell you, but don’t go spreading it around.”

“Understood. Strict information embargo until you say otherwise.”

“Good, because I can get in a hell of a lot of trouble if this gets around and they think I’m spreading it. Things are finally turning around at Schirrasburg, and it’s not a good situation. Yes, the guy did have the diablovirus, and we were damned lucky they discovered it before anyone else left and spread it to the whole lunar population. As it was, it pretty much went through the entire settlement. Maybe a tenth of the population is naturally immune, and another tenth were able to throw it off with mild symptoms.”

Ursula wasn’t an epidemiologist, but numbers and statistical analysis were such an important part of modern astronomy that she had some familiarity with their use in a wide variety of fields. As her husband gave her percentages for various severe forms and complications, she realized this was way out of the ordinary, even for a virgin-field epidemic.

“Of course we have to consider that a lot of the dead may well have been saved if they’d been in a location with a larger medical facility. From what I’ve heard, a number of people died because certain medical resources simply ran out before they became ill.”

“Understood.” Ursula was aware of the protocols for dealing with such situations. Harsh as they might seem to people accustomed to large Earthside medical centers, they had been carefully developed to ensure that resources would be allocated responsibly and ethically. “So what did finally stop it?”

“Basically, it just ran out of susceptible people to infect. Although that’s a hell of a way to put a stop to a pandemic on a global scale.”

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Narrative

Not Looking Good

Alice Murcheson liked to give at least half an hour every day to going over ag reports from Earth. However, with the news becoming progressively more grim with every passing day, she was finding it more and more difficult to read them. After all, there were so many things she needed to deal with right here in Shepardsport, things that she actually had some control over.

She’d gotten back to the apartment for the evening when she realized it had been almost a week since she’d last gone through those reports. While it might be easier to let them get crowded out by various tasks up here, it was not a good habit to let herself slip into.

Which meant it was time to sit down, grit her teeth, and deal with the bad news. The longer she put it off, the more likely it became that she’d get blindsided by something she should’ve picked up if she’d been on top of things.

Not that there’s a whole lot we can do about stuff on Earth. On the other hand, at least we’ll have some warning of interruptions of critical supplies.

As she’d expected, the ag reports made grim reading. The more intervention any given crop required, the more likely production was going to be disrupted for this growing season. At least most grain crops that were already in the fields would probably turn out well enough, although the big question might end up being whether there would be sufficient workers available to harvest in a timely manner.

Alice recalled her own childhood on a grain farm near Duluth. They’d raised a mixture of winter wheat, short-season corn and soybeans, and there had been times when getting the corn out in time was tricky. She recalled at least two years when early snows had caught them with corn still in the fields, and they’d lost a lot of it. There were tricks to recovering some, like running the combine only in one direction to pick up the fallen stalks, but it still didn’t get as much as they would’ve gotten in a timely harvest.

She’d become so deep in this grim news that she didn’t even notice the door opening or her husband walking in until he rested his hand on her shoulder. “Alice?”

Startled, she had to quick squelch a flinch as soon as she recognized him. “Sorry, Bill, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

He pulled up a second chair beside her, set to working on the muscles of her neck with those big strong hands that were so deft with the controls of an airplane or a spacecraft. “You’ve got a lot of company right now, sweetheart. I just got an e-mail from Fred.”

An icy lump formed in Alice’s stomach. Her own parents had been pushed out of farming back in the 80’s, and all of her brothers and sisters had found employment in other fields. By contrast, Bill’s family had made the right choices to enable them to go big when the alternative was to get out, and now owned several dairy farms in addition to the old home place.

“How bad?”

“Not as bad as it could be. He hadn’t been writing because he didn’t want to worry me.”

Alice considered whether to remark upon that, decided to leave it alone. “So how bad is it?”

“So far they’re making do. But I know he’s said some of their neighbors aren’t, and I think he’s feeling really cut off because he can’t go anywhere. They haven’t had church in ages, restaurants are closed, and it sounds like the feed store is no place to hang out and chew the fat these days.”

“And isolation is almost harder on people than physical privation.” Although it had been years since she took that psychology course as part of her gen-ed requirements at U-Minn, she still remembered the studies on the effects of isolation on monkeys, the accounts of prisoners in Vietnam.

“It was one of the big things that either made or broke the early settlers, back the day.”

“True.” Alice closed one after another farm report. “And right now I really ought to write to my brothers and sisters. I’ve let myself get too busy with things up here.”

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Narrative

Reporting One’s Findings

Cindy Margrave was still fighting off weariness as she arrived at the station offices. She knew she shouldn’t have stayed up so late, but she’d been trying to finish a project for her teaching responsibility and she did not want to disappoint the senior instructor by arriving at class with it still incomplete.

At least the people from Food and Nutrition had come by with fresh coffee for the coffee urn. Ken Redmond always said that the Engineering department ran on coffee, and insisted that the coffee urns scattered around his domain be refilled on a regular basis, to the point of having IT rig sensors on each of them to detect when they were getting low.

Cindy retrieved her mug and poured herself a generous cup. Not quite up to the rim, since she needed to leave room for sugar and creamer, but she needed plenty this morning. As she mixed in the sugar and creamer, she thought about just when she’d started drinking coffee on a regular basis.

Back home on Earth, coffee was most definitely a grown-up thing, and even junior hi and high school kids were discouraged from having it. In fact, there’d been a bit of a to-do about the vending machines at the high school including a coffee machine, to the point it had been moved to the teachers’ lounge. As if it were any less healthy for you than the caffeinated pop that was right next to it.

On the other hand, back on Earth kids her age were still very definitely children, and not just in the sense of being legally minors. None of them were shouldering the sorts of responsibility she and other kids her age did on a daily basis, not just as teaching assistants, but also in jobs that helped keep essential parts of the settlement running. Sure, some of them worked at fast food places or big-box retailers, but they did it because they wanted the spending money or to save for college.

Coffee in hand, Cindy returned to the front office and settled in at the receptionist’s desk. Someone else had already turned on the boombox which set on top of the big filing cabinet. It was still Breakfast with the Beatles, although Brenda was playing some of their post-breakup solo work right now.

The programming director had left a few things for the morning receptionist to take care of, mostly verifying some files. Get them knocked out quickly and she might be able to get a little studying in if Autumn didn’t have anything for her to do.

She was just finishing the last item when the door opened and in walked Spruance Del Curtin, looking very satisfied with himself. What was he up to now?

Cindy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You’re sure here early.”

“Wanted to get to you when I have a little time to talk. One of the guys I used to work with in Engineering had some ideas about what might’ve riled up Colonel Hearne so badly.”

Cindy’s annoyance weakened. However, she wasn’t sure she wanted to let it show right now. “Oh? What does he think?”

“Apparently there was some serious back-room dealing to get Admiral Bradbury the top Pacific Fleet post back in ’09. Either someone had something on President Flannigan, or he owed someone a favor and they decided to call in their marker. It’s not exactly something that’s going to get into the official sources, but you know how scuttlebutt goes.”

“Don’t we all.” The words didn’t come out quite as cool as Cindy had wanted, but at least she came close enough to hitting the right note.

“Yeah. I’ve lost track of how many PSA’s they’ve had us run about not spreading rumors or unconfirmed information.” Those big buggy Shepard eyes did a truly theatrical eye-roll. “Anyhow, there’s a tradition that military officers aren’t supposed to criticize the Commander-in-Chief in the public forum. Tactical criticism through channels, yes, but not open condemnation. That’s why Captain Waite’s always used the ‘keep your oath’ exhortation in all his messages against the abuses of the Flannigan Administration.”

“I was thinking there was something like that going on. Thanks for taking so much time to dig into it, even if you did run into a dead end.”

“Hey, we’re family, and family’s gotta stick together. Especially in times like these.” Sprue held up his fist.

Cindy gave him a fist-bump. Then he was off to whatever he was supposed to be taking care of.