But they could have done a great deal of damage if they’d been caught earlier, he thought, crossly. He had never been one to care about what his crew did on their time off — he knew standards had slipped a great deal while Ark Royal had floated uselessly in the Naval Reserve — but this was different. This could have seriously damaged his ship’s reputation.
He considered his options, briefly. It was the Captain who would have the final responsibility for deciding their fate — or it would have been, if the two pilots hadn’t been mixed up in blackmail and espionage. Fitzwilliam could have punished them how he saw fit and the Admiralty would not have objected, not when they were reluctant to cast doubt on a Captain’s role as master of his ship. But with intelligence staffers mixed up in the whole affair… Ted knew they might be offered amnesty in exchange for cooperation. Or they might be put in front of a court martial board afterwards anyway, no matter what they did.
“Dismissed,” he said, quietly. “I expect you to inform me the moment they get in touch with you. And don’t fuck up.”
He watched them leave, then tapped his console and called both Fitzwilliam and Major Parnell to his office. The Marine had a nasty scar running down the side of his face that hadn’t been there before, Ted noted, but he didn’t ask any questions. Everyone, even the Marines, had been suffering badly from emotional whiplash since the return to Earth. They’d probably resorted to boxing matches to keep their skills up.
“We have a problem,” he said, bluntly. He recorded all conversations in his office, thankfully. “You need to listen to this.”
Captain Fitzwilliam said nothing until the recording came to an end, then swore. “Someone is trying to blackmail one of my crewmen?”
“Yes,” Ted said, shortly. It was a particularly nasty case, he had to admit. Schneider wasn’t the only one at risk. His family — and his lover — would also be imperilled if the recordings were released. “And they may have more complex motives than money.”
“It is a pity we don’t have the original recording,” Parnell observed. “It would be informative to have some idea of just where they were filmed.”
“That raises another set of questions,” Ted agreed. “What are we dealing with here?”
Parnell considered it slowly. “I think they’re right and its someone international,” he said. “A spy — probably more than one — is on the ship.”
“Wonderful,” Ted said. “We have three foreign ambassadors, thirty-two foreign support staff of various ranks and a handful of others.”
“But the spy might be a British crewman,” Parnell said. “Although in that case approaching Schneider and applying blackmail might be unnecessary.”
He shook his shaved head. “They will need something they believe Schneider can get for them,” he added. “Otherwise there would be no point in playing the blackmail card too soon.”
“Those stupid idiots,” Fitzwilliam said. “What the hell were they thinking?”
“That they didn’t have long to live,” Parnell said, quietly.
He looked down at the deck, thinking hard. “With your permission, Captain, I would like to bring a couple of other Marines into the loop and start working on ways to catch the spy,” he said. “He’ll have to make contact with Schneider at some point or the whole affair will be worse than useless. When he does, we’ll have an opportunity to catch him and cart him off for interrogation.”
“Which will open a whole new can of worms if the spy is on an ambassador’s staff,” Fitzwilliam pointed out. “They have diplomatic immunity.”
“Diplomatic immunity is not a licence to spy,” Parnell countered. “We might not be able to try the spy and throw him out the airlock, but we could put him in the brig until we returned to Earth.”
Ted nodded. “We need to know why they’re doing this,” he said, softly. “What do they have in mind?”
“Sabotage the ship?” Parnell suggested. “Or perhaps make it impossible to come to terms with the aliens?”
“They’d have to be out of their minds,” Fitzwilliam said. “The war is on the verge of being lost!”
“Some people rarely believe that disaster, even a lost war with an alien race, can touch them,” Parnell said. “That’s why the Barbary States sometimes send raiders over to Europe, even though they can expect massive retaliation from orbit. Their leaders are so secure in their own power they think nothing and no one can touch them.”
“…Idiots,” Fitzwilliam said. He smiled, suddenly. “Although I know a number of aristocrats who act like that, I suppose.”
He met Ted’s eyes. “What do we do with them?”
“I’d suggest offering a honourable discharge in exchange for cooperation,” Parnell said. He held up a hand before Fitzwilliam could say a word. “I know you will want to throw the book at them, Captain, but we don’t want to discourage others from coming forward.”
“I see,” Fitzwilliam said. “But if we’re not going to tell anyone about this… affair, Major, how will they know we were merciful?”
“Some details may be released later, once everyone is safety dispersed,” Parnell said. “And I would caution you against believing that something will remain secret indefinitely. This affair certainly did not.”
“True,” Ted said. He looked at Fitzwilliam. “A honourable discharge?”
Fitzwilliam nodded, once.
As a child — back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, according to Percy — Kurt had stolen some money from his mother. He’d had a good reason at the time, he’d thought, but guilt had overwhelmed him almost at once. Eventually, he’d returned the money and made a full confession. His mother had been furious and confined him to the house for the next month, but he’d felt better after admitting his guilt. He’d done something wrong and knew it, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise.
He felt much the same, now, as they made their way to the gallery. It was far from private, he knew, but it was rare for pilots to eat outside Pilot Country. He knew his life had been irreparably damaged, that he might have dragged down Rose and his children too, yet he felt better for having confessed. The die had been cast and now he could think clearly again. He led the way into the compartment, took a large cup of coffee from the dispenser and sat down at a table on the far side of the room. Rose sat, facing him, a second later.
“That was very brave,” she said.
Kurt snorted. Bravery was one of the defining traits of starfighter pilots, along with a reckless disregard for danger or official flying regulations. Most of them were written by desk jockeys and pasty-faced bureaucrats, none of whom had any real experience flying starfighters. Flying a starfighter into the teeth of alien fire took real nerve. But he’d never really done anything that risked his family before.
“I suppose,” he said, finally. He wanted to hug her, to tell her that it would be all right, but he knew he could do neither. “And I’m sorry.”
Rose pointed a finger at him, like the barrel of a gun. “Stop apologising for everything,” she said, tartly. “I made my own decisions.”
Kurt took a sip of his coffee, grimaced at the taste and then took another sip. “Yes, but I’m the one being blackmailed,” he said. “That makes it my fault.”
“I think you’re the most vulnerable,” Rose pointed out. “You have a family — and the higher rank. I could just have told them to piss off.”
She was right, Kurt knew. If she’d been willing to throw him under a bus, she could have claimed he’d pushed her into sex, promising promotion as a reward. It was quite likely it would have worked too. Senior officers were expected to handle themselves better than their juniors.