CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

shoving bodies out airlocks like they‟re some kind of trash. It‟s wrong, and he seems to be
the only one who doesn‟t see it. The pilots are starting to crack. First it was Richards, now
Cunningham... The next one could be in the middle of a dogfight and decide it‟s all too
much.”
Roderick nodded. “I already tried speaking to the Captain.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” she continued, her voice slipping in to a venomous, sardonic drawl. “He said
that it keeps us sharp, and helps maintain discipline.”
“That‟s bullshit, and he knows it.”
Roderick turned back to the bag to pull out more of her belongings and nodded. “I‟ll
speak to the Admiral. Hopefully he can talk some sense in to him.”
Roberts stopped, and cocked her head with a bemused smile. “You trying to cause a
mutiny now?”
Roderick‟s head snapped around to stare at Roberts icily. “Don‟t you start, too.”
“Absolutely not, Captain,” Roberts assuaged, her smile not disappearing.
Roderick turned back to her belongings but didn‟t reply. Roberts took this as a cue,
and changed the topic, looking at the piles of clothes from other bags that had been put back
on shelves. “Scuttlebutt says you‟re sticking around a while longer. „That right?”
Roderick stopped what she was doing and nodded. “A man like Ainsley doesn‟t just
show up unannounced and take command of a carrier group without explaining himself
unless things are bad, Jane,” she suggested, her voice betraying that there was more she
wouldn‟t, or couldn‟t say. “And it‟s probably for the best anyway. Richards is in no state to
take command. If I were to leave now, things would only get worse.”
Roberts raised an eyebrow. “Well that‟s about the most cryptic thing you‟ve said all
week.”
“If I knew more than that, I‟d tell you.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
They both stopped, looking at each other for a moment. Roberts studied the lines of
Roderick‟s face, and nodded slowly. “That bad, huh?”
~
The sequence displayed on the holographic monitor atop the desk was puzzling to
Admiral Ainsley. Four sets of numbers, seemingly without meaning that had been delivered
with the strangest of intentions and with a purpose he could not fathom.
030639/3536
090941/1219
150940/179
131121/010
He‟d been staring at the numbers for hours, and was no closer to understanding
them now than when he‟d started. Alpha-numeric substitution had yielded only gibberish, but
of course the NSIS had told him that much in their efforts to break it. Serial numbers
remained a possibility, but a search of UEO databases had revealed everything from
weapons identification numbers to the barcodes on canned soup. Had NSIS screwed up
their cipher? Certainly, the fact the code had originated from a UEO Signals encryption could
have lead to inaccuracy on Schrader‟s part, but it would likely be hours – if not days before
Admiral Hargreaves and the rest of the Office of Naval Intelligence would respond to his
query, if at all.
Unsurprisingly, Signals were notoriously protective of their ciphers, even from those
who were in the know and even ciphers that were no longer in use. To an intelligence body,
suspicion was something entirely different from a closed case.
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