was the
exclusive domain of the Prelains and anyone they considered worthy
of such knowledge and access. For Kalila to have obtained it, she
would have to have a spy very highly placed in the Polarian
Religious circle. Or else have had tremendous success finding a
highly established Polarian who was also susceptible to being
bribed or blackmailed—two things the Polarians were generally
considered immune to.
“ As you can see here, these
documents were acquired from ‘ an unnamed
source’ eight years ago,” she said. The
data before them appeared to be extraordinarily detailed schematics
of the Black Swan and other advanced Imperial ships. Calvin wasn’t
a ship-builder but as far as he could tell everything was here in
such cumbersome and complete detail that the information could be
used to build an exact replica of the Black Swan—so long as the
builder had the considerable resources to do so.
“ And after this was
acquired,” continued Kalila, “another anonymous party arranged for
construction of the ship to begin. The process was done in secret
at a shipyard in Eos Minor and took approximately seven years to
complete.”
“ How do we know you didn’t
fabricate these documents?” asked Summers.
Calvin thought that was a fair question,
though it did show a little bit of Summers’ inexperience working
with these kind of classified materials. Not only would it be
extremely difficult to fabricate Polarian documents with such
perfection, it would be nigh impossible to fabricate the Black
Swan’s design schematics. Even if the engineers at Kalila’s
disposal were clever and they used the Black Swan as a medium and
tried to infer its design schematics from studying the ship, it
would be a cumbersome and difficult process that would take
considerable time and inevitably result in a product that was not
exact. And the inevitable imperfections in the schematics they
fabricated and the actual schematics themselves, no matter how
tiny, would be pounced upon once Kalila released these documents to
the Assembly and the public in an effort to acquit herself. If
these schematics were not the genuine article, Kalila was only
putting a nail in her own coffin. Therefore Calvin believed they
were genuine. He also doubted Kalila had access to classified
military designs and if she’d made any effort to acquire the
schematics of her ship, certainly those efforts would have been
noted. So, all things considered, Calvin was convinced the most
plausible explanation was that Kalila had indeed acquired these
documents through her Polarian contact circle, which meant that
military secrets were being leaked to the Polarians and a replica
Black Swan—one of the fiercest ships in the galaxy—had been
constructed.
“ You can see these markings
here,” Kalila said. She went on to coach Summers through several of
the subtle indicators that demonstrated the documents were of
Polarian origin. The review gave Calvin flashbacks of his Intel
Wing training.
“ I see,” said Summers, still
sounding a bit skeptical once Kalila was finished.
“ There’s more,” said Kalila.
She guided Calvin to another set of documents, these were Imperial
documents and were certain to be more familiar to Summers. “Here
are all of my ship’s logs, including all of our destinations in the
past year. Here are the computer records, indicating every course
and heading input into the navigation system over the last year…
there is a lot of data there but if you run a cross-check on all of
these coordinates you’ll find that the ship hasn’t been anywhere
near Renora in recent memory. The last time it was even within a
light-year of that system was nine standard months ago. See,” she
brought up one of the data points. Calvin took her word for it for
now, as far as he could tell she was speaking the truth, but he
would have the Nighthawk’s computer crunch the numbers for him when
he got the chance—just to be sure.
“ And as for the time of
exclusive domain of the Prelains and anyone they considered worthy
of such knowledge and access. For Kalila to have obtained it, she
would have to have a spy very highly placed in the Polarian
Religious circle. Or else have had tremendous success finding a
highly established Polarian who was also susceptible to being
bribed or blackmailed—two things the Polarians were generally
considered immune to.
“ As you can see here, these
documents were acquired from ‘ an unnamed
source’ eight years ago,” she said. The
data before them appeared to be extraordinarily detailed schematics
of the Black Swan and other advanced Imperial ships. Calvin wasn’t
a ship-builder but as far as he could tell everything was here in
such cumbersome and complete detail that the information could be
used to build an exact replica of the Black Swan—so long as the
builder had the considerable resources to do so.
“ And after this was
acquired,” continued Kalila, “another anonymous party arranged for
construction of the ship to begin. The process was done in secret
at a shipyard in Eos Minor and took approximately seven years to
complete.”
“ How do we know you didn’t
fabricate these documents?” asked Summers.
Calvin thought that was a fair question,
though it did show a little bit of Summers’ inexperience working
with these kind of classified materials. Not only would it be
extremely difficult to fabricate Polarian documents with such
perfection, it would be nigh impossible to fabricate the Black
Swan’s design schematics. Even if the engineers at Kalila’s
disposal were clever and they used the Black Swan as a medium and
tried to infer its design schematics from studying the ship, it
would be a cumbersome and difficult process that would take
considerable time and inevitably result in a product that was not
exact. And the inevitable imperfections in the schematics they
fabricated and the actual schematics themselves, no matter how
tiny, would be pounced upon once Kalila released these documents to
the Assembly and the public in an effort to acquit herself. If
these schematics were not the genuine article, Kalila was only
putting a nail in her own coffin. Therefore Calvin believed they
were genuine. He also doubted Kalila had access to classified
military designs and if she’d made any effort to acquire the
schematics of her ship, certainly those efforts would have been
noted. So, all things considered, Calvin was convinced the most
plausible explanation was that Kalila had indeed acquired these
documents through her Polarian contact circle, which meant that
military secrets were being leaked to the Polarians and a replica
Black Swan—one of the fiercest ships in the galaxy—had been
constructed.
“ You can see these markings
here,” Kalila said. She went on to coach Summers through several of
the subtle indicators that demonstrated the documents were of
Polarian origin. The review gave Calvin flashbacks of his Intel
Wing training.
“ I see,” said Summers, still
sounding a bit skeptical once Kalila was finished.
“ There’s more,” said Kalila.
She guided Calvin to another set of documents, these were Imperial
documents and were certain to be more familiar to Summers. “Here
are all of my ship’s logs, including all of our destinations in the
past year. Here are the computer records, indicating every course
and heading input into the navigation system over the last year…
there is a lot of data there but if you run a cross-check on all of
these coordinates you’ll find that the ship hasn’t been anywhere
near Renora in recent memory. The last time it was even within a
light-year of that system was nine standard months ago. See,” she
brought up one of the data points. Calvin took her word for it for
now, as far as he could tell she was speaking the truth, but he
would have the Nighthawk’s computer crunch the numbers for him when
he got the chance—just to be sure.
“ And as for the time of
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