Chapter 5: Gaining an Assistant

The next morning, I was back in my office writing down some notes and trying to think of some ways I might get close to DECO without alerting anyone as to the nature of the investigation. I was concentrating on this when the AI spoke. "Sir, I have gathered some of the information on Ishtar which you desired."

I looked up as Sarah walked into the room. "What kind of information?" I asked.

"First, yesterday you asked about pickups where the group picked contained a name and there was no record of that person being picked up in their individual file. I have now identified one hundred people with such discrepancies in their records. The first pickups with this occur about fourteen days before the one containing James Rabb, the last occurs about twenty-four hours after his pickup," the AI said.

Sarah smiled as I nodded. "Well, that matches the number of one hundred colonists on Ishtar, so I think we have our list of colonists finally."

The AI continued. "Affirmative. The other item I discovered was a manifest for the Will-O-Wisp as it left the Earth system heading to Ishtar. It was filed with the Fleet Readiness department of N4 and appears to have been missed by the attempted purge. I have been able to match this manifest to the list of missing pickups. The name correlation is one hundred percent."

"Bingo!" Sarah said cheerfully. "Now the question would be, does Heidi's guess from yesterday match? Is there a possibility that the colonists were chosen because they were seen as un-trainable?"

There was a pause, during which Heidi joined Sarah and me in the room and whispered. "Mio and Mara are enjoying some time with the babies. They are so looking forward to children of their own that they will get to raise."

I turned to respond as the AI spoke again. "I have achieved approximately ninety percent correlation between the two CAP score patterns Heidi observed in the James Rabb pickup and the one hundred colonists believed to be on Ishtar."

"Huh? Explain," I replied.

"Looking at the CAP scores on the one hundred colonists and comparing them to the four that we first suspected were on Ishtar, there is a definite correlation. Fifty-seven of the one hundred show patterns similar to that of Ruth and Dennis. Another eighteen are very close to that of James and Yvette. The remaining twenty-three are similar to James and Yvette however in addition to the individualist thinking most show a much higher pacifism score on average," the AI reported.

"Why did you break down the groups like that?" Heidi asked.

"I was matching the scores with the location of the pods according to the ship's manifest which I discovered. The ship is like the smaller Aurora class ships in that it has a front and back cargo zone. James and Yvette were in the back, part of a group of twenty who I score as similar to them. The others in the back cargo area have scores that mostly match well with the scores of Ruth and Dennis who are also listed as being carried in the back part of the ship. In the front of the ship the division is twenty-seven to twenty-three. The difference in scores for the ones like Ruth is negligible, but the ones in the front who are like James do have a noticeably higher pacifism score."

I thought for a moment and then sighed. "That explains a comment I heard yesterday. General Montgomery said that he called James and was told that only a small fraction of the colony was still working on the mission they were sent to accomplish. I'd be willing to bet that if we did call we'd find that every one of the colonists working with James is part of the forty-three who match closely to him, and I'd be very unsurprised to find that the majority come from the back half of the ship."

"I wonder if he anticipated that," Sarah mused. "If Ruth and Dennis are as angry and hateful as Heidi thinks, and James anticipated that, it's possible he organized something while still in transit. I would have if I was in that position, although I'm not sure people would have listened to me."

Heidi laughed. "Who knows if James expected to be listened to? But we shouldn't be looking too deeply into that portion of the question. It's clear that the villain of the piece is back at DECO Headquarters, possibly thinking of the next group of candidates for his little experimental colonies."

"And if Ishtar succeeds he just might think he can get away with it again. He could claim credit and try to come out looking like a hero," I growled. "The fact that nearly four hundred people might die because of his actions means nothing."

"Three hundred fifty six," the AI interjected. "The records only show fifty children total."

Sarah looked confused as Heidi quickly counted on her fingers. "That's only six concubines more than the minimum? The CAP scores have to be mostly under seven," she said.

"Only Yvette Mimeux, Bertrand Russell and James Rabb have scores above a six point five. James has the highest score on the planet with his seven point two," the AI reported.

I nodded. "Easier to lose a low scoring citizen. Someone with a score of seven point five or more might show up on some personnel officer's list and they might ask what happened after the pickup. This way, there was much less chance of that. It definitely looks like it was a planned move."

Heidi was rubbing her forehead. "How many people do you think were involved?"

I shrugged. "Probably no more than three. I wouldn't really be surprised to find that only one person was involved in the move to create the colony. Any others are likely involved in the bartering with the training officers who wanted the undesirables kept away. Most likely they believed that the people they didn't end up with were just being sent to another post."

Sarah giggled. "Well, they were, only not one anyone knew about."

I was about to agree when the door chime rang. Mio shouted that she would answer it and as Sarah, Heidi and I looked at each other in confusion passed by the open doorway of my office. We could hear her greet someone at the door and a moment later she returned leading the young female lieutenant I had run into the day before in the halls of Borneo Headquarters.

The young lady looked at us and then threw me a sharp salute. "Lieutenant Jackson reporting, Sir!" She waited for me to return her salute, which required extracting my arm from Sarah's embrace, and then she walked up to me and handed a small sheet of paper to me.

I looked up at her, but she seemed equally confused and stood silently. Lacking an answer from her, I finally unfolded the paper and looked down at it. To my surprise it was handwritten and I read it aloud.

"Commander Nelson," it began. "Monty and I had a private meeting after your call. We are convinced that the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of training at Darling Downs was one of the instigators, and that he may have one or more sources within headquarters. I had one of my staffers check after you told me that James Rabb was listed as a marine volunteer. The rest of the pickup he was in all ended up in the most recent training command at Darling Downs, so we have reason to believe that our Colonel wanted his untrainables diverted. I should warn you that there is a high probability that the officer at DECO headquarters can expect to be stripped of all rank if he is caught. This will make the investigation rather hazardous and I apologize for sending you into such a dangerous situation. Like many of your other investigations, the criminals will be very jumpy if you appear openly. After some thought and a call placed by Monty to an old friend who works in Marine Logistics back on Earth, they have come up with a cover for you. You are going to be traveling to Earth to assist in the final training of Lieutenant Jackson as a new investigator for Internal Affairs. The story will be that Marine Logistics has created a training scenario involving several officers and non-coms who will pretend to be part of a ring that is falsifying procurement and shipment records to colonies in the Borneo district."

Lieutenant Jackson gasped. "Does this mean he just transferred me?"

I nodded briefly and then continued reading. "Please tell the lieutenant that this is not a punishment. We need more investigators and she has the scores for it. I believe only her youth prevented her from receiving the training during her initial deployment. Right now Borneo District is supposed to have received two new investigators from Earth, and I have reason to suspect that the little shell game with personnel that our DECO criminal played cost us at least one of the trained investigators we needed. Riflemen have always had higher priority, and one hundred troops lost without firing a shot leaves holes in the ranks of several battalions. We need to find out who managed to hide the one hundred colonists and create the faked orders that created Ishtar."

Lieutenant Jackson looked confused. "Wait! I know my brother's ship is being repaired at Ishtar. What does this mean?"

Heidi gave a motherly smile. "Norm was called in because Ishtar shouldn't be colonized. We don't know the whole story yet, but someone back at Earth managed to get one hundred newly picked up recruits put on a transport and taken to Ishtar, where they were dumped. At least that's what Norm believes right now."

I could feel the eyes of Heidi, Sarah and the lieutenant all turn to look at me. "It does appear that way. The pickup records have been tampered with and the personnel files for the one person we are sure is on Ishtar contain no information on him after his pickup. Even his pickup record is missing. Its like someone tried to make everyone on the planet vanish."

I could hear the whimper from the lieutenant. "Brian..."

"What's wrong?" Heidi said as she rushed over to catch the young lady as she slumped to the floor.

"Her brother is on a damaged corvette that showed up at Ishtar yesterday. She found out when the Admiral called the planet about the second report of a Sa'arm contact." I replied.

"Oh my," Heidi said as she gave the lieutenant a huge hug. "Do we know anything about how he is?"

I was shaking my head when the AI spoke. "I was able to insert a command into the DECO network to forward any reports the Ishtar AI made to Central Command. Four crewmen and two concubines were placed into medical pods shortly after the Nassau arrived. A Jackson is included in the four crewmen placed in the pods."

"There is no complete list of who was still alive?" I asked.

"Negative," the AI replied. "Some four hours later the captain of the Nassau, Commander O'Brien, was placed into a pod. His first officer Lieutenant Toms was already in a pod. It appears that no complete survivors list has been created."

Lieutenant Jackson sobbed. "Brian was the only Jackson on the Nassau. It must be him, but how bad is he?"

"I am unable to obtain that information," my AI said. "The Ishtar AI has not provided that information to DECO, and there has been no call to Borneo Headquarters with official news. The only word was that repairs had commenced and the crew was in treatment and would contact Admiral Himmel once they had time to prepare a detailed report."

Sarah giggled. "This is like some crazy international spy thriller. Worse it seems like the AI units are playing double agents. Who'd have thought I'd be part of this someday."

I sighed and shook my head, looking over at Linda who was smiling shyly. "I guess the news is good," she replied. "But what do I do now that I'm transferred?"

I returned her smile. "Well, we are investigating how Ishtar became a colony. It was not properly authorized. Worse, it appears that the officer who set this up planned on all the colonists dying before the colony was discovered. And as you have probably heard, the AI on Ishtar is quietly sending reports to Central Command without clearing them through the Borneo District Command first. My task right now is to discover who set up all of this and make sure he is brought to justice."

Linda nodded. "I can understand, but what do I do?"

I smiled. "Well, if the message we received was accurate, later today I should receive official word that I'm taking you to the Marine Command Ship Success orbiting Earth to conduct a training mission for you."

"A Marine ship?" Linda asked in surprise.

I nodded. "Yes. With how quickly everything has been moving and the fact that saving Earth does not look possible, the Marine and Naval commands set up a couple of Modified Presidential Class Carriers as mobile command posts. They stripped out the fighters and the support equipment and used the space to install offices for the various commands. It allows them to travel to other planets when necessary. Also it means they can jump from the Earth system when the Sa'arm finally arrive. Leaving any Confederacy technology behind for the Sa'arm to find is a major worry for High Command as its been proved that the Sa'arm are masters at converting captured technology to their own purposes. The Navy calls their ship Victory."