"No, sir. Petty Officer Sharpe says the investigators would've been certain to have found any trace of a bomb. They didn't find pieces of anything that didn't belong in Forward Engineering."
"Then apparently he was working on that power whatsit."
"It wasn't broken, Suppo."
Sykes smiled sadly. "Ah, youth. It wasn't officially broken. But was it actually broken? There's a difference."
Paul let that thought sink in. "Maybe the power transfer junction had gone on the blink and nobody'd been told?"
"It happens, lad. Equipment casualty reports are regarded by some officers as signs of shame, or more often they hope to get the equipment repaired so quickly they feel no need to file the necessary reports. The result is the same. Officially, it's fine. In practice, it's not."
"But if there had been a problem with that piece of equipment, surely Chief Asher wouldn't be the only one who'd have known."
Sykes gave another sad smile. "That is certainly correct."
"Meaning some of the other engineers aren't talking. But why wouldn't they?"
"Group silence is usually a form of protection."
"Who'd they be protecting, Suppo?"
"Perhaps themselves. Perhaps the dead."
Paul stared at Sykes, mentally upbraiding himself. Of course. If Chief Asher had done all that stuff, he'd be guilty of criminal misconduct. I don't know if or how that'd affect Navy death benefits for him and his family, and I bet the rest of the engineers don't know either. "Thanks."
"One more thing, Paul." Sykes rubbed his chin, his brow furrowed in thought. "Something is missing."
"What's that?"
"If our Chief was repairing that equipment, where is the replacement part? And where did he get it? And, for that matter, how? My own departmental records would've shown if it'd been drawn from our stocks."
"And they don't?"
"Not to my imperfect knowledge." Sykes sat quiet for a while. "I would recommend, Mr. Sinclair, that you enlist the aid of Mike Bristol in this."
"Sir, Mike's a friend of mine, but he's not nearly as experienced as you are."
"That's precisely the point, Paul. I want Mike to gain such experience, and the only way to do so is to give him opportunities like this one. You can count on him to keep your investigation secret."
"Yes, sir. I'll do that. Thanks for the advice, sir."
"Not at all. Visit my figurative mountaintop whenever you are in need of wisdom."
Paul smiled and left. I'll find Mike Bristol and — Commander Garcia came down the passageway, his eyes on Paul, his ill-humor readily apparent. Oh, gawd. What'd I do or not do?
"Sinclair." Commander Garcia used one finger to almost pin Paul to the bulkhead. "What's this I hear about you asking questions about the fire, Sinclair?"
"Sir, I — "
"Drop it, Sinclair. It's over."
"Sir — "
"Look, I understand you feel like you've been screwed. We've all been there, Sinclair. I've been screwed by the Navy so many times I feel like a cheap hooker in a port town. Trying to stir up things isn't going to make it better. It's just going to keep attracting attention to you. Bad attention. That's no good for you and it sure as hell isn't good for me. Drop it."
Paul nodded to buy himself time to get a word in. "I understand, sir. Sir, I have orders."
"Yeah, and I gave 'em to you."
"No, sir. The captain."
Garcia's eyes narrowed. " He told you to keep looking into this."
"Yes, sir. He said you should talk to him, sir."
"What's up, Sinclair? What the hell are you doing?"
How do I answer that in a way that won't tell Garcia more than Hayes might want and also keep Garcia from ripping my throat out? "Following orders, sir."
Garcia's face reddened. Paul could almost see the internal struggle going on. On the one hand, Garcia didn't like having secrets kept from him by his subordinates, especially secrets that might cause him trouble. On the other, if Paul had been told by the captain not to discuss his orders, then any attempt by Garcia to browbeat Paul into talking anyway could get Garcia into big trouble with the captain.
Commander Garcia took a half-step back, his finger still pointed at Paul. "You'd better be telling the truth, Sinclair. Because I'm going to see the captain."
"Yes, sir." Another searching gaze, then Garcia shook his head with a grimace and stalked off in the direction of the captain's cabin. Paul watched him leave. I'll give Garcia credit. He really tried to give me the best advice he could. Paul started to move on, then stopped and frowned. Who told Garcia I was asking questions? It was probably Sam Yarrow up to his usual tricks, but what if it was somebody else?
Mike Bristol reacted to Paul's story with a dropped jaw. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah. How can you help me run down this question of whether or not that power transfer junction was busted?"
"Paul, if Commander Sykes finds out — "
"He's the one who sent me to you."
"Really?" Bristol chuckled. "That old schemer. I guess he wants me to learn the tools of the trade. As he practices it, anyway. Okay, the simplest thing to do is check our own supply records. We'll see if any parts for that equipment got pulled just before the accident." He faced his terminal and typed rapidly. "I can do all that from here." More typing, Paul catching sideways glimpses of data screens flashing by. "Oh. That's interesting."
"What?" Paul craned his head to see, but couldn't interpret the columns of codes.
"This here. That's labeled as a critical part for the power transfer junctions. But we don't carry it onboard usually because the failure rate's so low."
"That's crazy, Mike. What happens if it fails anyway while we're out in the middle of nowhere?"
"Ask the snipes. Is that the only power transfer gizmo on the ship?"
Paul thought for a moment. "No. There's one in After Engineering, too."
"That's probably it, then. The ship can probably operate on one of those things. If something's extra expensive or in extra-short supply we often don't carry it onboard as long as the safety margin's okay. That kind of decision is way above my paygrade, of course. Anyway, here's the interesting bit." Mike Bristol's finger pointed to one code element. "This says that Friday, the day before the accident, was the last time someone queried the system about the availability of that part."
"That is interesting."
"But, like I said, we don't carry it, so the system told them they'd have to requisition it from the station spare part stocks."
"Did they?"
"No."
Paul peered at the lines of supply system codes as if that would help him understand them. "Why not?"
"Let's see. Ah, estimated delivery date from the station would've been sometime the next week."
"We were due to get underway for drills on that Monday."
"We were, weren't we?"
"Yeah. Having Forward Engineering gutted by the fire made sure that didn't happen. But that means they wouldn't have gotten that part before we got underway, and I'm willing to bet that even though the Merry Mike can run on one power transfer junction that there's limits on what we can do. That means they would've had to have told someone the thing was broken. And until we had the part, we probably couldn't have gotten underway."
Mike Bristol looked alarmed. "That's very bad. People get really upset when that happens."
"That's putting it mildly. Could Chief Asher have been trying to repair the busted part?"
"Not according to these records. They say the part is a sealed black box. Fixing something broken inside is beyond anything this ship can do."
Paul leaned back and pressed his hands against his temples. "Then what was Chief Asher doing?"
"Well…"
"Tell me, Mike."
"Uh, well, you see, there's official requisitions, and then there's, uh, unofficial requisitions."