"I don't know exactly what that means."
"It means there's limits on what we can do." She took a good look at him. "You look awful."
"Thanks, Mom."
"Get some breakfast. I'll see what we can do. How urgent is this?"
"Life and death."
Her eyebrows shot up, then she nodded. "I should've realized that without asking. Oh-kay. Get something to eat. I'll call back as soon as I can."
Paul tried to clean himself up, then went to grab a quick meal. Kris Denaldo, obviously coming off the quarterdeck watch, spotted him. "Paul! Is…" Her voice ran down as she saw his face. "What can I do?"
"How are you at miracles?"
She made a helpless gesture. "Not much." Coming closer, Kris put a hand on Paul's arm. "You know whatever I can do, I will."
"I know, but there doesn't seem to be anything."
"Ahem!" Lieutenant Isakov squeezed by them, favoring Paul and Kris with an arch look that implied volumes.
Kris pulled her hand away and Paul glared after Isakov as she entered the wardroom. "You can keep her away from me."
"Like I told you, she's a bit of a psycho, Paul."
"I'd already figured that out. Didn't you guys warn Randy Diego about her already?"
Kris shrugged. "Randy's been a pain and he never wants to listen."
"No, he doesn't, but letting her run him around… geez."
"Okay, okay. I take it you've already talked to Randy?"
"Yeah. He didn't want to hear it."
"What a shock. If he's determined to be Isakov's lapdog, there's not much we can do about it, Paul."
"I know." Paul looked upward. "But it's something I can make a difference at. I hope. It's nice to know there's something I can still say that about."
"You'll make a difference with Jen. There's nothing happening today?"
"No. Final arguments happened yesterday. Today's a day off but also a day for the members of the court to make up their minds. The court-martial reconvenes Monday morning."
"Do you think they'll have a decision then?"
"I'm afraid they will."
She nodded helplessly and Paul went back to the his stateroom, staring every once in a while at the outside phone connection while he pretended he was working on administrative tasks.
The phone finally rang. "Hi, Paul. Care to meet us for lunch?"
"Does that mean you found something, Mom?"
His mother made a slight shushing motion. "How's that place we ate at yesterday sound?"
"Fine."
"We'll see you as soon as you can get there, then."
His mother was drinking coffee again when Paul got to the restaurant. His father winked and gave him a thumbs up.
"Did you find something?"
His mother sighed, lowering her coffee cup. "Now, Paul, I told you we probably couldn't help because of confidentiality agreements."
"I…"
"But I did find that other thing."
He looked at her blankly. "What other thing?"
"You know." She slid an actual piece of paper toward Paul's father, who glanced at it, nodded, then slid it over to Paul.
Paul examined the paper. Blank on one side, the other held a long web site address hand printed on it. "Do you think-"
"I don't know. But, if there's anything like that, it should be there if it's anywhere. Various… indicators… point that way. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into it. You probably can't, either. But good luck."
"Thanks. I hope you don't mind if I eat and run." Paul folded the paper carefully and went in search of Sheriff Sharpe.
Half an hour later, Sharpe eyed Paul dubiously. "Sir, what are you suggesting doing with that?"
"Try to break in."
"No, sir. No way. I'm an officer of the law."
"Meaning?"
"You know what it means, sir." Sharpe pointed at the address Paul held. "I only get to conduct searches with a warrant. If I search without a warrant, any evidence I find gets thrown out."
"Oh, yeah." Paul looked at the address bitterly. So close. Maybe. But I can't get into a web site myself. My skills don't run that way.
Sharpe seemed angry. "I can't believe you'd suggest that, Mr. Sinclair. I can't believe you'd come to me knowing that only Warrant Officer Bob Rose might be able to break into a site like that and I couldn't possibly provide any assistance or involvement in the matter. Don't even ask me!"
"Okay, Sheriff. Sorry-"
"Don't even ask me if Rose's contact information is in the ship's data base. I don't want to tell you."
"Uh, okay-"
"And even if Rose could maybe try to break into that site because part of his job involves testing government-related sites for security flaws, I wouldn't tell you, sir! Not a word. I am not involved, sir. Is that clear?"
"Yeah, Sheriff."
"So don't talk to me about it. Don't say anything else. I'm an officer of the law. Just because someone like you or Bob Rose isn't an officer of the law and anything you find without a warrant would be admissible in court doesn't mean I would in any way suggest or sanction such a thing in a way that would taint it in the eyes of any court!"
"Right, Sheriff." Paul put away the paper. "What was I thinking?"
"About what, sir?"
"Uh… nothing. Excuse me. I've got to make a phone call. After I look up some contact information."
Warrant Officer Rose couldn't get away to meet Paul until early evening. He heard Paul out, looked at the site address, and seemed to be thinking about it all. Paul tried to look as earnest and convincing as he possibly could. "Can you try this for me, Warrant?"
Rose squinched up his face a bit. "It's a little shaky. I mean, yes, I'm supposed to check sites for security effectiveness, but this site isn't really anything I have any reason to go poking around in."
"I just need to see what's there."
Rose sighed. "Okay. Just hold on. Sit over there somewhere and let me work. If I do get access we might have only a very brief chance to look, so don't wander off."
"Yes, Warrant. I owe you big time for this."
"I haven't done anything, yet. Did Sharpe tell you I could help you?"
"Uh, no. Petty Officer Sharpe is an officer of the law. He couldn't even suggest such a thing to me."
"Good. Wouldn't want to break any rules." Rose wriggled his fingers over the keyboard. "Now, let's see what kind of defenses this place has."
Paul had to sit a fair ways back, out of Rose's line of sight, so as not to distract him, but that also left Paul unable to see what Rose was doing. He just had to wait, hearing occasional words or sounds from the Warrant which he strained to interpret.
He was actually dozing in and out sometime later when Rose's voice brought him fully alert. "We're in! Hurry!"
Paul scrambled over, peering at the display. "What is it?"
"Some kind of memo."
Paul scanned, his eyes skipping rapidly across the surface of the document and picking out a word here and there. He raised his gaze to the top again to actually read the document when the screen blanked. "What happened?"
Rose shrugged. "They kicked us out. Real nice security on that site. Did you see anything?"
"Yes. Did you?"
"A couple of things."
"Wh- Wait." Paul thought for a moment. "Could you write down anything you saw? I'll do the same and see if we saw the same sort of things."
"Good idea."
Paul hastily wrote down the scattered words he'd picked out. "Here's my list. I saw a name on the memo header. McNamara."
Rose nodded and pointed to his own writing. "I saw something like that. Sounds right."
"I saw SEERS in the subject line."
"Concur."
"And I saw the words 'further testing required.'"
"I just thought I saw 'testing required.' That's close enough."
"And 'failure.'"
"Not just 'failure.' I know I saw 'catastrophic' in there."
It was Paul's turn to nod. "I did, too." There were several other fragmentary phrases and words which didn't match on their lists. "But those are enough. Is there any chance you can get back into that site?"