Trial by Fire - eARC Read Online Free Page B

been?”
    “Pretty lean, because Caine has a serious flaw when it comes to working for the government.”
    “Which is?”
    “Well, he has this real bad habit of telling the truth.”
    “Ah.”
    “Yeah. So he had an irregular career because he was always willing to wonder out loud about the so-called experts’—and his own—methods of analysis, and about the conclusions derived from them.”
    “So he got in trouble for doing his job properly?”
    “Yep, particularly when his observations ran afoul of Ancient Agency Traditions. One time, he pointed out that age stratification in the intelligence organizations was crippling their counterintelligence analysis. Specifically, the generation gap had senior experts unaware that contemporary ciphers were incorporating pop-culture memes and semiology—which the under-thirty junior analysts could have recognized and decoded in their sleep. Caine wound up getting two supreme recognitions for that discovery.”
    “Which were?”
    “Well, first he got a huge consultancy bonus.”
    “And the second?”
    “They let him go. Never hired him back. Buried the files and findings.”
    “So he was the proverbial prophet, unwelcome in his own land.”
    “Well, there’s that—but frankly, he’s also not your typical beltway type.”
    “How so?”
    “Admiral, have you ever worked with a polymath? A real polymath?”
    Perduro smiled. “I served under Nolan Corcoran—remember?”
    “Touché. But Dad—well, he liked managing people. Not Caine.”
    “Strange. He doesn’t seem antisocial.”
    “He’s not, Admiral, but, well, you know how artists don’t work best in groups?”
    “Sure.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s kind of how Caine works, too. He’s a team player, but he often does his best work independently. Probably because he doesn’t think like most of the team.”
    Perduro picked up a hardcopy report printed on the light blue letterhead of the Med-Psych section. “‘Subject Riordan evinces unusual balance between right and left lobe thought; demonstrates real-time syncretic problem-solving. Does not alternate between data intake and revision of situational contexts, but engages in both processes simultaneously.’”
    Trevor raised an eyebrow. “Ma’am, if you had all that psych-eval data on Caine already, why ask me for my extremely inexpert assessment?”
    “For the reason I indicated before, Captain: to get a human perspective that isn’t all numbers and graphs and psychobabble. Thankfully, what you just shared confirms most of what the so-called experts have observed.”
    Trevor shrugged, turned to check the real-time rail system diagram for the progress of the private maglev car that was carrying Caine—and jerked forward to scrutinize the screen. “Admiral—” he started.
    “I see it, Captain. Where the hell did that other car come from? Where’s its transponder code? And what in blazes is it doing on the same track?”
    And then the screen went dead. A moment later the security monitor feed blacked out also—followed by every light in the room.
    Perduro punched the button to call the Duty Officer just as he came through the door and the red emergency lighting began to glow. “Admiral, we’ve got a widespread blackout on all—”
    The power came back up, the lights flickering sharply before their luminance stabilized.
    Perduro rounded on the hapless D.O. “Mr. Canetti, what the hell is happening on my base?”
    “Ma’am, I don’t know.”
    “Admiral,” murmured Trevor. As Perduro turned toward him, he pointed to the security monitors and the maglev tracking screen. They, alone of all the electronic devices, were still dark.
    “Son of a bitch,” Perduro breathed.
    “Came in to tell you about those systems in particular,” Ensign Canetti blurted into the silence after her profanity. “Those systems went down first. And they went down hard.”
    “Okay, so get the techs on it. What went wrong, and where?”
    “That’s just it, Admiral. We