Chương 46: Episode 46 - The Silent Channel

Another day, and still no word from Station Security. He had been tracking the pattern since day seventy-nine. Three queries, then nothing. The inbox that had been pinging with formal requests from Aldric's office went quiet at the same time the inquiry's protected status kicked in. He had marked it as pressure removed. He wasn't so sure of that now. Harren called him in at 0900. Not the coaching block — her office, the one with the viewport overlooking the secondary docking ring.

"Administrative channels are closed to him," she said.

"The inquiry's protected status means any query he files goes to the inquiry officer for review before it reaches us. He knows that. He stopped because he knows that."

"What's he doing instead."

"Looking for a channel that isn't protected." She looked at the docking ring.

"The inquiry covers his conduct as Station Security Chief and his conduct as MOB Academy Liaison. It does not cover the academy's internal faculty review process." He saw it.

"He goes through the faculty review board."

"A conflict-of-interest complaint. Faculty member with a documented relationship to a cadet who is simultaneously the subject of a records investigation and the top-ranked squad in the academy. Coaching relationship as potential bias." She turned from the viewport.

"It is a legitimate procedural avenue. He has lawyers who know this."

"Has it been filed?"

"Not yet. I know it's coming because I have been watching the same administrative channels he has." A pause.

"I am telling you now because I want you to understand what it looks like before it arrives. It will look like an institutional process. It is also an attack." He sat with that.

"When it arrives," he said, "what do we do."

"You continue doing exactly what you've been doing. The sessions run. The formation holds. The record speaks for itself — and in this case the record is unusually comprehensive." She met his gaze.

"Your standing orders document, the session logs, the failure-mode analysis, the coaching block transcripts. Every piece of work you've done since day one is documented. A conflict-of-interest complaint requires evidence that my coaching has compromised the evaluation process. The evaluation record shows the opposite." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Our record is our defense."

"And that is exactly why you have been building that record." She sat down.

"When the complaint arrives — and it will arrive — the faculty review board will request an evidentiary response. I will file one. So will you. And then we wait." Cassian nodded and went back to his squad and B-7. Once there, he looked through the standing orders document. It was good work. Comprehensive.

He could now see it was becoming something more than he had ever anticipated * That night, once the squad had settled in, Cassian told them of his conversation with Harren and everything that had been going on there. He didn't specifically tell them about the complaint, rather about the channel that Aldric had found. He told them exactly as he told them everything: whole squad, no preamble. The shape of the threat. What it would look like for them and exactly how they would respond.

"About the standing orders document," Cirus immediately said when Cassian had finished telling them everything.

"Yes?"

"I will work to prepare a supplementary analysis. I will organize the session log data by coaching intervention and include outcome correlation. The work will be finished in three days."

"Perfect. Start fresh tomorrow and get some rest tonight."

"I already started. As soon as I recognized the significance, I began my work," Cirus said. Nyx'ara, already settled into her bunk, yawned before saying, "I wouldn't be too worried. There's no way he can touch Harren if the record shows that she has made us better."

"The record shows exactly that."

"Then we're fine," Nyx'ara responded dismissively.

"We're prepared," he said, a smile creeping into his voice.

"Those aren't the same thing. Prepared is better than fine."

"That is something I believe we can all agree upon," rumbled Korrath from his corner of B-7. Krell'va, from the door: "He is running out of channels."

"Yes."

"Running out of channels is when things get unpredictable." The room was quiet for a moment. They all knew it, Krell'va just gave voice to that anxiety.

"Yes," Cassian said.

"That's why we document everything and the formation stays clean. Give him nothing he can use." He had found a different channel. Running out of channels was when things got unpredictable. The formation stayed clean. That was the answer.