Chap. 364 The Briefing

Chap. 364 The Briefing

Most of the people still in the auditorium had removed their slickers after entering, never dreaming they’d get wet INSIDE.

“I’d planned on staying, one said, “but seeing as to how I’m wet, I may as well be wet at work. I’ll find out the whole thing later on.”

Lord Lytol looked at Lavella, who was obviously angry.

It’s time, he thought, to cut her loose. That, and I don’t want her to hear what we’re about to relate. Fleming’s on the run and the less she can warn him of, the easier it makes our task of catching him.

“Lavella, I suggest you head to your quarters and begin packing your things.”

She gasped, astonished. “What? I’ve lived here for several years!”

“No longer. Have you already forgotten what I said? You’re not staff and your husband is AWOL.”

“But he’ll come back. I’m sure of it.”

“No, he won’t,” Lytol said. He turned to his colleagues. “My lords, I propose that Fleming be terminated from employment at Landing. Do I hear a second?”

Lord Cecilia couldn’t say “I second” fast enough.

“All in favor, say aye,” he said.

Six voices said ‘aye’.

“All opposed, say nay.”

The council was silent.

“The ayes are unanimous. Chief Evvelin, would you please, process Fleming as terminated from employment starting, um, four days ago, at midnight. Lavella, you will get with Chief Evvelin’s division for final inspection and evacuation of your quarters.”

Lavella gasped like a fish out of water, unable to comprehend what just happened.

“Yes, sir. I’ll send two of my staff to outprocess her right now,” Evvelin said, grinning. Ah, who was it that said revenge is sweet?

“Granted. You may leave now, Lavella. Good day.”

“But…but..”

She looked at Evvelin, her expression pleading for the Admin Chief to argue for her to stay. “Evvie, please…” she gasped.

Evvelin smirked. Evvie, is it? So typical of you, what? One minute slandering me and the next begging for me to intercede? As if, you turd. She then pointed at two of her best clerks, and without needing a word, the two moved to bracket Lavella and escort her out. The woman, dismayed, cried, “But where will I go?”

“Away,” snapped Lord Cecilia. “You weren’t born here, so perhaps you can return to your birthplace. I suggest you start packing immediately. You have the whole day ahead of you. Good DAY.”

Lavella turned and stumbled blindly to the exit. One of the clerks turned her head back to flash a satisfied grin.

I may be an adult, Evvelin thought, relishing the unexpected victory, but I’m not too grown up to gloat.

And yet, in a way, I can sort of feel for her, despite her being such a pompous, entitled jerk. Being turned out is never easy.

A sigh went through the remainder of the crowd.

“Now, then,” T’balt began, “I’ve taken a few days to try and make sense of all this, and so, if you would all please have patience with me.

As most of you know, five? Six days ago? Our datalinks were overwhelmed with waves of nonsense messages. It was only controlled when Data finally put some heat behind their constant request to only use datalinks for official business, and even then, many people ignored it.”

Four nights ago, a technician couldn’t sleep, so she was working late. At midnight, the database shut down as scheduled in order to do updates and maintenance.”

Data put the report of their findings on the screen behind his head. T’balt looked over his shoulder to reassure himself that it matched what was on his datalink. He cleared his throat and resumed.

“At zero zero zero five minutes, she noticed that the database stopped its maintenance downtime and resumed live access. Within a few moments, a large chunk of data appeared on the screen. She noticed that it was incoming, but also, an equally large chunk of data was sent out. She wasn’t able to read them as they were encrypted, but she had the presence of mind to download them both to her terminal. At zero zero thirteen, the data finished loading. I ask for your understanding, I’m a dragonrider and honestly do not understand half the terms I’m using in regards to how the database works, but it is here in the report. At fifteen minutes on the clock, the data base shut down and resumed the scheduled downtime for maintenance.”

“Don’t forget, my lord, that once the maintenance resumed, the chunks of data disappeared from the database, just vanished, without any sign that they had actually appeared. And there was no name attributed to it,” someone from Data called out.

“Thank you, as I said, I’m not that up on how it works.”

“It’s not supposed to just vanish. There is always a trail, so to speak, who sent it, who shipped it, that sort of thing. And it’s never deleted, not without someone like my Chief allowing it. Whomever invaded the computer knew what he was doing, that what he was doing was illegal, and that he didn’t want it to be found. Or read, by anyone but the person he was sending it to. It was secret data, and, in my opinion, one detailing illegal activities.”

“Sir, I’m not wise to the database, but didn’t you say it was ‘encrypted?’ Meaning, it’s a cipher?” someone asked.

“Yes. But, ah, this is wonderful, one of us discovered the key, the words and numbers that unlocked the data, like a key to a lock.”

“Not only that, but it unlocked all the other chunks of data that had been sent in or out. Clear back to Turnover, when it first started,” Data said.

Good, K’ndar thought, he’s not going to point me out.

“Data has spent the last several days poring over and distributing the data in those chunks. They’ve learned that Fleming, and his mother, Yvanna, were responsible for those actions. Every single intrusion bore signs of Fleming’s handling, despite his efforts to cover his tracks. Data, I commend you on your excellent work at uncovering this,” Lord T’balt said.

“It’s what we do, my lord,” someone said, proudly.

“The data chunks tell of a vendetta that Fleming and Yvanna have planned against Lord Toric. Early last year, Yvanna had a falling out with her brother, Lord Toric. He banished her, in a way, by making her his liaison at Lemos Hold.

As you all probably know by now, Lord Toric, years ago, ran Southern Weyr out of his Hold and since then has forbidden any dragonrider to cross his boundaries.”

“And dragonriders everywhere have respected it, sir,” someone said.

“Yes. To include me and Lord D’nis and our Weyrs. To continue, Lemos Hold, about twenty years ago, took over production of minting stamps from Telgar’s Master Metalcrafting Hall. Lemos Hall already grows the markwood trees and creates blank marks, it just made sense, then and now, that they also create the stamps there. Since that time, Lemos Hall produces blank marks and the stamps for each hall, weyr, hold, whatever body, called a minter, that creates its own marks.

At Turnover, every minter must turn in the stamps from the past year, as well as as many old, worn out or broken marks as they can collect. Only then is the minter issued new, blank marks and the stamps that go with them. Everyone who gets stamps and blank marks has them picked up and delivered by dragonriders. It’s fast, and most of all, secure.”

He shook his head, wondering yet again at how stubborn a man could be, even at his own expense, as this case demonstrated.

“Except for Lord Toric. He still insists on getting everything, from a stamp to a button for his shirt, delivered by a human.

Which puts the carriers, couriers from Runner Station 15 at Lemos Hold, who are assigned to take valuable cargo to Southern Hold, in danger. In the past four months, two couriers, not together, mind you, two individual couriers arrived at Coastal Weyr’s port aboard the Sea Treader, their cargo on a pack horse, bound for Southern Hold.

“They’ve not been seen since. They never made it to Southern Hold, they never returned to the port, and they never returned to their station. It’s a pretty sure bet they are dead, murdered for their cargo.”

“Those poor lads,” someone moaned.

“By raiders?”

“By raiders. Since Lord Toric banished Southern Weyr from his Hold, the raiders have taken advantage of that by infesting the Stony Wastes. Coastal’s Weyrleader A’garn has only just started flying sweeps, as it’s taken him time to recruit enough dragonriders from all over Pern to support daily sweeps. They’ve brought a few raiders to justice, but that area of the Stony Wastes is riddled with caverns, and the raiders know every nook and cranny in which to avoid being seen from the air.

A week ago, a courier from Lemos Hold was dispatched horseback to Southern to deliver a cask of blank marks to Lord Toric.

She was attacked by raiders before she even got to Igen Sea Hold, but managed to escape them. Once she arrived at Coastal Weyr’s port, she found that four raiders were waiting for her.

She managed to escape them too, met up with a company of Lord Toric’s men at arms, and successfully delivered her cargo.”

“They sent a girl? What was Lemos Hold thinking?”

“Hey,” a female voice protested, “Female runners and couriers are just as efficient and capable of outwitting raiders as any male.”

“That’s not what I meant, I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have to worry about defending themselves. If I remember correctly, most runners don’t even carry a dagger. It slows them down.”

“That’s so,” Lord T’balt said, “and in this case, she was unarmed. But she had help, from our dragonriders, K’ndar and Francie. They helped her escape the raiders.”

The crowd cheered.

“My lord,” K’ndar started, wanting to set the record straight, but Lord D’nis raised a finger and a look that meant, ‘shhh’.

Corvuth’s rider, our weyrleader, said let it go. If you tell the whole story we will be here all day. And all of us dragons are itching to drill. Mondevuth wants to fly, he’s leader today Raventh said.

“Yay, K’ndar! Did you kick their arses? I’ve seen how Kahrain Weyr riders fight. They never had a chance, eh?”

K’ndar shook his head, trying desperately to avoid notoriety.

“Francie and K’ndar, also, began to intercept strange messages, ones that were encrypted and in some cases, had drawings. One of them was of the female courier. We know, now, through the data intrusions, that the messages were sent by Yvanna to Fleming.”

“Why is that, my lord?”

Data spoke up. “They used their datalinks daily to communicate, until we began applying the policy of official use only. That’s when that flood of nonsense messages began to fill everyone’s datalinks. There were hundreds of them, all of them created by Fleming to serve as a smoke screen for the real ones Fleming used to let Yvanna know when she could send and receive her data. Those data chunks were their main plans, with maps, drawings, timetables and names. They made a total of four data chunks, the latest one being the most recent.”

“And do we know why? What were they up to?”

“Now that Data can read, and has combed all the data chunks, we know why. Yvanna and Fleming were planning on overthrowing Lord Toric.”

The audience was shocked.

“You mean, overthrow? Like, overthrow?” someone gasped.

“Unbelievable,” another said, “Shades of Fax.”

Not that he doesn’t have it coming, several thought, but it wasn’t proper to criticize Holders or other nobles, even at as open minded a place as Landing.

“Yes. Lord Toric, soon before Turnover, told Yvanna via datalink that she needn’t bother joining the clan at Southern Hold for this last Turnover, as she and her son, Fleming, were disinherited,” Lord T’balt said. “Not so much as a mug of klah,” were his exact words.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving lout than Fleming. He was mean. And useless.”

“Aye, he was,” said someone else.

“Yvanna didn’t take kindly to that, so she and Fleming, well, let me backtrack a bit. Both had datalinks, Fleming’s his work one, and Yvanna, had one that was never registered here at Landing. We don’t know if she got it before Data began registering them. Fleming took great pains to teach her how to manipulate the database and to create large chunks of data.”

“Was she able to shut down the database?”

“No, thank the stars. Only Fleming had that capacity, so she had to wait for him to message her when he was going to disengage the data shut down. And remember, Lemos is six hours behind us, so for her, shutdown was at eighteen hundred hours. Right at dinner time, by the way.”

“So we know, now, what they discussed?”

“Yes. Their data dumps were full of discussions on how to overthrow Lord Toric, and maneuver Fleming to take his place, despite the fact that Fleming is a nephew, not a son, nor even a grandson. First they tried hiring an assassin, but there wasn’t a raider who had the bollocks-or stupidity, to try. Even those scum from the Imp, the most infamous raider ship on all Pern, declined to take on Lord Toric, no matter how much money Fleming offered them. That, by the way, was another of Fleming’s crimes. He provided a datalink to the captain of the Imp. They were on first name basis.”

“If they’re ever caught, my lords, hang every one of the bloody crew from the yardarms of the ship and burn it to the waterline,” someone snarled.

A murmur of assent ran through the crowd. Many of them had families who’d suffered the depredations of the piratical Imp.

Lord T’balt smiled. “That may happen, very soon. Fleming not only financed them. He fed them shipping information on Northern seaholds and Crafthalls, and in return, was rewarded with a cut, as they used to say, of the take. But, unbeknownst to the Imps, he also kept detailed records of their depredations and their travels. They don’t know Fleming’s fled, and if and when the Imp contacts Fleming, why, isn’t it interesting, we’ll intercept that dialogue on their datalink. We’ll talk to them just as easily as he did. Perhaps we’ll give them some information that allows us to finally get the whole lot.” He laughed, and was joined by the crowd.

“I’ll be glad to volunteer to be that decoy, my lord,” someone said.

“I don’t imagine there will be any trouble recruiting a wing of dragonriders to take them out. “

“Shaff, my lord, I’ll bloody well swim out to their ship with a dagger, if that’s what it takes.”

“Ah, and that’s where some of the money went,” said Evvelin, “That filthy thief.”

T’balt nodded. “But to continue, both Yvanna and Fleming were determined to remove Lord Toric. Yvanna researched poisonous plants, tried to learn how to infect him with firehead, even considered catching tunnel snakes and extracting their venom to inject Lord Toric.”

Several people began to snicker.

Lord T’balt grinned, but continued. “Yes, it’s ludicrous, but it’s not as if human history isn’t replete with such attempts. Finally they both realized they couldn’t bodily harm him.”

“Pardon me, sir, but this is connected to the murdered couriers?”

“Aye. They hired raiders to intercept the couriers bound for Southern Hold and steal their cargo.”

T’balt felt his focus beginning to waver. I wish I could just put it all out without having to answer these questions. I was going to say something and now I’ve been sidetracked. As soon as I can, I will close this up and then we can go flying.

Data interrupted. “We know this for a fact. Twice, Fleming messaged Yvanna, complaining that she’d sent him bad information regarding couriers supposedly carrying something valuable. He was angry that he ‘paid good money to bad men and got nothing but dead men.”

“What does this mean?” asked a voice.

“It means, I think, that in the case of the two dead couriers, their cargo was worthless to anyone but Lord Toric.”

“Oh, dear,” someone sighed.

“Didn’t Lemos Hold report to you, my lords, about their two couriers just vanishing?”

Councilman and former Lord Holder Deckman shook his head. “You probably won’t be surprised to learn that most Holders don’t ask their people for their opinions, or inform them of things like this. In fact, I can guarantee you that there are people on this planet who have never met their Lord Holder, know him only by his name, if that much. And there’s not a Holder who even considers what the average cotholder might think of his decisions. Only here at Landing have I ever experienced what we’re doing right this moment, this um briefing? to inform you all of what happened. Most Holders don’t like to admit to making mistakes, or having problems like this one.”

“Sir, you were Lord Holder?”

“For a short amount of time, Nabol Hold. My father, Deckter, insisted I take control as I was, as he said in private, the smartest of his kids. But I developed health issues that prevented me from devoting as much time to the Hold as I should have. So I handed the reins to my son, who is doing an admirable job of it.” And I won’t mention it, but I loathed the job. The agonizing headaches stopped the moment I abdicated, and I’m far happier doing something like this, he thought.

“Yesterday, an appointee from all of Pern’s Runner stations petitioned this Council requesting that, until further notice, they will not serve Lemos Hold, not until that Hold does something to keep their runners and couriers from being murdered. We granted it.”

A murmur of satisfaction ran through the crowd.

“To continue, Yvanna had taken up a partnership with Roliman, Lemos Hold’s Master Metalsmith. He was responsible for the creation of the stamps a minter uses to create new marks. He had a team of highly trained and dedicated engravers, people who were tasked to create the stamps. He died suddenly just before Turnover, under questionable circumstances. Yvanna assumed the responsibility of managing the stamp makers, despite admitting to Fleming via a data chunk that she had no training in it.”

“So she would know who was making Lord Toric’s stamps, she had access to when blank marks were shipped, and her son, Fleming,” someone said.

“Knew what ships were carrying cargo or couriers to Southern Hold,” Evvelin finished, “He was Shipping Chief, after all.”

“Yes. Between the two of them they had all the knowledge needed to know when blank marks and the stamps would be sent to Lord Toric.”

“I often wondered why Fleming would come in after quitting time,” someone else said, “and as Lavella claimed, he was always blaming Admin for ‘screwing things up and him having to ‘fix it.”

Admin folks growled. “We didn’t…”

Lord T’balt held up his hand. “We know.”

“My lord, you said the female courier was carrying blank marks bound for Southern Hold. Was she carrying stamps, as well?”

“No,” Lord D’nis said, smiling at K’ndar. No, please, sir, no, K’ndar thought.

“The fire lizard carrying them was killed by a raptor. K’ndar witnessed it and found the lizard was carrying Lord Toric’s new stamps. He brought them here. Along with the stamps was a key to the data intrusion. Jansen and Data’s Wulf applied it to the data chunks-until then there wasn’t a chance in the universe of breaking it-and now, everything Yvanna and Fleming said or did in the chunks is readable. Only because of that do we know anything about this whole sordid affair.”

The crowd cheered again.

“My lords, does Yvanna know this? Fleming, does he know you broke the ciphers?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “But that’s the reason I sent Lavella out. IF she knew anything of Fleming’s activities, and to be blunt, I don’t credit her with the intelligence of a crawler, she’d find a way to warn Fleming. As for Fleming, I believe he figured it out when Data and Admin, and us on the Council were all rousted out of our bunks in the middle of the night. Fleming had to have known it by the morning after the intrusion was discovered. But he may have had an inkling earlier that something in their plans had gone awry.

The day of the midnight data intrusion, she sent him a message saying her messenger was missing and to use ‘the backup strategy’. That night, he did his last database shut down and data transmission. And the following morning, he fled.”

“Is that why Data shut the links down?”

Data’s Chief spoke up. “My gut told me it was the wisest thing to do. When you see a horse running for the horizon, your first step is to shut the barn door before the rest get out.”

Several people laughed. Most of them were horsemen.

“We got lucky, my friends. After breaking the ciphers and reading Yvanna’s message to use the ‘backup strategy,” we shut down the datalinks. He apparently didn’t know of the shutdown, as Fleming then sent Yvanna several datalink messages, demanding what her orders were next. She went four days without responding, and his datalink messages began to be threatening ones. Finally, she responded saying she’d been injured and ‘He’s escaped. Hunt him down and kill him.” We have no idea what that meant.”

But there was the drawing, of a man, Jansen thought. She was about to raise her voice, when a male voice from in the back of the crowd overruled hers.

“Sir, I beg your pardon, but how do you know what all these messages said? Isn’t a datalink message private?”

There was a very pregnant silence, then Data’s Chief said, “No. Even unregistered, the moment a datalink awakens and pings the Yokohama, she sends me the location. Wherever you are, whenever you use it, whatever you type or say on a datalink is stored in the database until my people review it and delete it.”

There was a chorus of sharp intakes of breath, evoked by thoughts of “oh shit, I didn’t know that.”

Damn, T’balt thought, he’s let the tunnel snake out of the snare. Well, now we’ll see which ones bolt and which ones hunker down, hoping they’ve not been caught.

Data’s Chief looked smug. I won’t tell them we only just learned how to display every datalink transmission. They’re still so new to us all that we just didn’t know we could do that. Thanks to Fleming generating all those nonsense messages, we finally asked the database the right question. Now we can read EVERYTHING, although most of the stuff is utter drivel.

“Everything?” someone squeaked, “everything I sent via datalink, you can read?”

Data Chief laughed, having dreamed of this very moment. “Yes. How many times have I demanded that people only use datalinks for official business? You all thought I was just being stingy with data? Really, folks, some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

After several uncomfortable moments, T’balt continued.

“That morning, Fleming approached green dragonrider Francie and demanded transport to Coastal Weyr’s port. She related that she’d transported him before, always to that port, and always, returned him here.”

“And, my lord,” Francie piped up, “He was never very long. I asked him once why he took such little time at the port and he mumbled something about ‘checking the condition of the wharf.” I smelled through that first thing, but didn’t pry.”

“Thank you, ma’am. But, this time, Fleming was wearing a full backpack and carrying a heavy bag, something he’d never done before. From there, he took another dragon to Lemos Hold. And we’ve not heard from him since.”

“Cut and run, did he?” said someone, “That coward, leaving his wife to take the arse whipping.”

“Francie, what was in the bag? Do you know?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t ask what people are carrying, I just charge them for cargo. But my dragon said it was ‘heavy’.”

Acquisition spoke up. “My lords, when this building was first uncovered and opened, Orlon, our Maintenance Chief, notified me that it was ‘chuck full of crates’. I sent a team to help Orlon’s people to open them, take note of what was in them, register the items, send all that data to Data, then move the crates to another building, a secured one with an electronic lock, until I could figure out what to do with all that stuff. There’s a LOT of it, most we haven’t the faintest idea what it is.”

“Aye, my lords,” Orlon said, “There wasn’t a moment that there wasn’t at least three sets of eyes on each and every crate. Sir, I’m like you. I don’t have the electronic key, none of my people do, and quite honestly, I don’t WANT to have it.”

“I do, though,” Acquisition said. “It took the database til this morning to digest all that stuff Fleming did, and distribute it. This morning, we found that Fleming had done a very interesting search while his data was being sent to Yvanna. At about zero zero zero six of the night of the intrusion, while up and downloading, he also accessed the list of crate contents and zeroed in on Crate 513. Then he got the key code to the storage building, which is not possible for the average database user. In the middle of the night, while Data and me and everyone in Landing was poring over the data chunks, Fleming entered the storage building and opened crate 513. This morning, two of my people and one of Orlon’s checked it. It was empty.”

“Empty? What had been in it?”

“Datalinks, my lord, new, unused datalinks. Ten of them.”

There were several soft whistles.

Data’s people were fast. Within moments their Chief had the list up. “That’s true, my lord. ‘Crate number 513, Datalink, ten each’. I’m not a gambler, sir, but I bet my best boots the bag Fleming was carrying was full of those datalinks.”

T’balt chuckled. “I won’t take that bet, I think you’re right.”

“He must have been in cahoots with Shawn,” someone said, of a former staffer who turned thief.

“They’re people on Pern who’ll pay a lot of money for something like an unregistered datalink,” someone said, “and who knows where they’ll end up.”

I know who, K’ndar thought. Lord Toric. He’s been in the black market for artifacts as long as I’ve been a dragonrider. It would make sense that Fleming would take them, maybe to ingratiate himself back into Toric’s good graces?

“True,” said Data, ” but now, the moment one is awakened, we’ll know.”

“And, like me, until just a moment ago, I bet Fleming doesn’t know that,” said someone from the back.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh,” said the crowd.