Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 32 - Food Chain

Sometimes you had to operate on a little faith. It wasn't something Brackenshaw liked or approved of, but sometimes you didn't have other options. Right now she was going with her gut, and she chose to believe Bryner.

The haggard, terrified technician was not responsible for the bombing. His alibi might've been halfway across the world, but she knew, deep in her gut, that someone else was responsible. It had been too easy, too clean to trace the shipments, and a low-level technician like Bryner made for an easy fall guy.

But where did that leave them?

With someone higher up the food chain. Someone who could both authorise the Mammoth cargo, and had the technical know-how to change the logs to point the finger at Bryner. That narrowed the list of suspects somewhat, but Brekka was a big place with an army to match. She had a lot of names to hunt through, and a lot of people to talk to.

Which is how she ended up crammed in an office with two disgruntled Scout Cadre soldiers that she trusted with her life, combing through files and interviewing anyone and everyone who'd been on that Mammoth.

"Everflowing bloody River," Corporal Locke groaned, leaning forward, letting her forehead rest against the table in front of her. "Ma'am, did you really ground us for paperwork?"

The screen shimmered judgementally,

"I don't like it any more than you do," Brackenshaw muttered. "But if we don't get to the bottom of this you're going to have more action than you know what to do with."

"What about this guy – Specialist Gaddon," Locke put in. "So he admitted that he was the one that was in charge of the cargo manifest that day. I mean, he told us it, straight up. Doesn't that make him your suspect?"

Brackenshaw shook her head. "Why would he admit it if he was guilty? He could just deny it and we'd have no way to prove otherwise. All the logs say it was Bryner."

"Yeah, well we've been over these bloody things a hundred times," Hynan grumbled, squinting at a screen of his own, alternating between a stack of physical files and the Brekkan network to make sure everything matched up. "They all say it was Byrner who cleared that crate through, not Gaddon. If you don't think it was him, that's good enough for me, but that's not what any of this'll tell you. What a drowning mess."

"By the Watching Lords, when did the two of you become such moaners?"

Locke straightened up, affronted. "Ma'am!"

"Keep looking." Brackenshaw eyed the other woman balefully. "The sooner you help me figure this out the sooner we can get back in our skiff and fly."

"I've got my own skiff," Hynan pointed out.

"Yes, you do sergeant," she shot back, "but you wouldn't want to disobey a superior officer now, would you?"

He pulled a face. "I liked you better as a sergeant."

"Yeah?" She snorted, turning back to her screen. "Me too."

Silence took over the office again, punctuated only by the incessant bleeping of computers and the clack of keys. They'd interviewed half the Mammoth's crew compliment from technicians, to scouts, to infantrymen, but beyond the admission of Specialist Gaddon all they had to show for it was a lot of confused, unhelpful faces and a lot of frustration.

It felt like the whole bloody lot of them were in on it.

Brackenshaw tried not to let that kind of thinking impinge on her, but no-one seemed to know anything concrete. Not a soul aboard the Mammoth remembered seeing the mystery package, or who cleared it onto the vehicle in the first place. Even Gaddon.