Admiral Stonefist shook his head as Kinnit ran off on her pointless quest.
He rubbed his eyes.
Madness, is what it was. Proof that the legendary Admiral Stonefist was losing his edge. It was self-evident that the Vylar were guilty, and no amount of digging through old records was going to change that. And yet he was letting her hare off and waste time on this nonsense.
When had he gotten so soft?
Heaving a heavy sigh, he activated his console. He tried to plow through some of his backlog of paperwork, but he couldn't focus. There was only one problem he could think about right now.
How to deal with Kinnit the Kobold?
She had a certain undeniable competence, in her own limited way. And competence was a powerful magnet for Grimthorn, especially in the Naval service where so many people were no more than boot-kissers and career bureaucrats.
But she was also an SS-- a Subject Species. Untrusted by the Imperium. She would never be able to do certain things, enter certain areas, hold certain positions, own certain classes of assets. The Subjects could not. And never would.
Of course, the Imperium always held forth the illusion that the SS could someday become one of the Common Species of the Imperium, full members. But without even looking at a history book, Grimthorn could count how often that had happened in the 300-year history of the Imperium.
Zero. It had happened zero times.
It was one of the many things the Imperium did that Grimthorn sharply disagreed with. It was wrong to give the SSes false hope. It was wrong to give them this halfway citizenship. In his view, the Imperium should either let them in or kick them out, not string them along.
And Kinnit, so perky and naive, so upbeat and earnest, probably had grand delusions about bringing Kobolds to the stars.
He scoffed.
The SSes should all just be kicked out, as far as he was concerned. They were either trusted or not, and if they could not be trusted, they could not be citizens. Simple. Throw them all out and make everyone's life easier. SSes included.
Diamond security clearance notwithstanding, she would never be able to do the job of Assistant fully. Even if he had his own full-time Cryptographer on board-- and no, he would never countenance one of those creepshows on his ship-- there were just too many things he'd still have to do himself. The Assistant was supposed to be the Admiral's right arm, his stand-in, his voice in absentia. And as an SS, she would simply not be allowed to. One glance at the collar, and all she'd be useful for would be to come fetch him.
And all that was before you even considered how thoroughly the toxic, vicious politics of the Navy would grind up her sweet little spirit and feast on the flinders.
He clenched his teeth. He'd have to think of some suitable way to thank Captain Hawkins for sending him this problem.
And it hurt him a little because she really did have potential. She was competent and curious, so chirpy and lively, and her smile lit up his whole office. Even in the short time she'd been here, he found himself dreading work less just because she was there.
He shook his head. The drift of his thoughts was becoming a little disturbing.
The only real solution of course-- and, really, the most merciful solution-- was to get her out. Out of the Imperial Navy, out of the Subject Species. Shut the Kobolds down and eject them. Stop the false hope, get her away from the danger of combat and politics, let her go back home and be with her people. Let her sing her haunting songs in the creche and raise children and be happy. Let her leave him alone.
Alone, after all, is what Admiral Grimthorn Stonefist did best.
And he hated the Imperium a little more.
----------------------------------------
Kinnit's chest swelled with pride for the Imperium.
In another age, there would already be open war with the Vylar. But the Imperium was willing to pursue the truth, and Admiral Stonefist trusted her to find it! She was going to clear the Vylar.
Her color was high as she sat at a small table in her quarters, shuffling through data late into the night, pausing only to refresh her coffee from time to time.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
As the night ground on, however, she slowed. All the data she sifted through and organized was not clearing the Vylar at all.
She just kept circling the same issues: the Vylar were lukewarm allies of the Imperium at best, but they were certainly not they kind of species to try to betray the Imperium. They clearly weren't making any money selling ships to the Oryndrax, but ships were definitely vanishing between Vylaxis and their ports of delivery. There was no evidence whatsoever of communication or collusion between the Vylar and the Insectoids.
Her scanner sounded six chimes, alerting her to the time. Her lower eyelids dragged at her eyes, dark and puffy. Her bottom lip trembled as she looked at the piles and stacks of slips before her. She had gone through so much data, and nothing new had emerged. In a fit of temper, she flung her handful of slips onto the floor and buried her face in her hands.
Fat tears plopped onto the slips that lay on her table. Stupid! Why had she even tried to take this on? What made her think she was smart enough to figure this out? She was just a stupid little Kobold with outlandish dreams who was in over her head. And the Vylar were going to pay the price for her hubris and incompetence.
She got up and fetched herself some more coffee. It was beyond being useful at this point; instead of giving her energy it was just making her more jittery and giving her a stomachache. But she had to keep trying. For the Vylar. For Admiral Stonefist. For herself.
She pushed aside the financial and logistics reports and pulled up their navigational records on her scanner. It was meaningless, just records of shipment departures and destinations, but she'd always liked navigational work. It was soothing to look at the fuel calculations, the jumphole diagrams, and the time estimates.
Bathed in exhaustion, she clicked through a few of the more common shipment routes, mentally running the time and fuel calculations for the jumpholes. She rubbed her head. She was obviously too tired to work any more, she couldn't even get the jumphole timing calculations right. She'd always prided herself on being able to manually calculate jumphole routes without depending on a console, but tonight-- this morning, actually-- she couldn't even do that.
Her brow creased as she ran the calculations again. Her fuel calculations matched up perfectly with the records, but the time calculations were still off.
She suddenly sat bolt upright. She realized what they'd all been missing.
----------------------------------------
Admiral Stonefist sat at his desk in the early morning, gloomily sifting through messages. He'd slept fitfully, waking repeatedly throughout the night.
He'd thought, yesterday, that it had been a hard decision to get rid of Kinnit. As it turned out, that was easy compared to deciding how to get rid of Kinnit.
There were any number of expedient mechanisms he could have used, of course. But he didn't want to crush her. The point was to be merciful, not to traumatize her.
The easiest route was probably going to be a "Kervorkian layoff"-- make the job so bad that she would just quit.
It seemed like a reasonably easy approach. After she finished failing at this whole Vylar thing, he could demote her, demean her, and put her strictly on menial work. On top of that he could step up a campaign of constant belittlement. He'd seen it done often enough.
And surely he could be strong enough to do it to Kinnit. For her sake.
She chose that moment to interrupt he thoughts as she burst in the door, a sheaf of slips in one hand.
"Sir! I've got news about the--"
"Ah, good timing. Fetch me some coffee, would you, Assistant?"
"Admiral, the Vylar aren't selling ships to the Oryndrax. They're being stolen."
Admiral Stonefist sat up straight.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at these jump routes. The shipments go out on automated carriers, right? But some of the jump times are off."
She highlighted a route.
"Look at this. Calculate these jumphole times. It should take fourteen minutes from the ingress jumphole to the egress, three point seven minutes in jumpspace, then another twelve minutes to the next jumphole. All told, this part of the route should take less than thirty minutes. But nearly every shipment that goes through this specific jump route takes nearly forty seven minutes."
Admiral Stonefist's face hardened as he ran the calculations.
"But why?" he asked.
"I'll bet that someone's hitting the automated transport with a low-intensity ion flash to slow it down. Then they're lifting two fighters from the shipment. The transport recovers and carries on, with no one the wiser!"
Admiral Stonefist nodded.
"That would explain a lot. But that kind of heist is too complex for bugs to do even once, much less steadily over time."
That's what we've been missing!" She said. "This isn't either the Vylar or the Oryndrax. Someone else is stealing Vylar fighters and selling them to the Insectoids!"
Grimthorn's nostrils flared as he looked at the shipping routes.
"Pirates."
"Sir?"
His face took on an ugly, dangerous cast.
"This has all the hallmarks of a pirate operation."
"I suppose that makes sense. Who else would steal ships only to sell them?"
Grimthorn stood and began pacing back and forth behind his desk. Rather than threats and thunderings, however, he was cloaked in ominous silence.
"Sir, if word hasn't gotten out much about our investigation, perhaps we can send out a shipment of fighters with trackers installed. Shielded trackers, to protect them from the ion flash. Then we could find the pirates that way!"
"Yes. We will find them," Grimthorn said in a low, strangled voice.
Something about his demeanor deeply concerned Kinnit.
"Sir? Are you... okay?"
"I will be, Assistant Kinnit. Because it is my purpose to kill every pirate in the three galaxies."
He gripped the back of his chair so hard that the plastic made distressed cracking sounds.
"Bugs are what they are. But pirates choose their profession. And the hate I hold for the bugs is like tender affection compared to how I feel about pirates."
He visibly regained control of himself.
"Kinnit, let's go find some pirates."