Her Commanders - M.K. Eidem Page 0,71

That means my quarters are Coalition."

"No, it doesn't," he told her quietly.

Oke lost even more color. "I… I didn't realize…"

Jamis nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders, "That doesn't matter. Now tell me what happened and if you leave anything out, and I mean anything, or lie to me, I will personally make sure the Supreme Chairman knows."

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Jamis walked out of the interrogation room with a sick feeling in his stomach. How could something like this have happened on his Star Base? He prided himself on the protocols he and Taarig had set up after taking over the Star Base. To find out it only took the distraction of a female to override them was infuriating. Beings would be ended.

"I'll have the arsenal guard brought in," Taarig told him.

"Good and verify Khatun Tarka's location at the time of the explosion."

"She's not Coalition," Taarig reminded him. "She doesn't have a thread implanted."

"Check the visual records around the area of The Brink. Ja didn't design her remote for any great distance."

"You think Tarka's more involved than she's admitting?"

"I think she did more than just seduce a guard. Find me proof while I'm in with Masala."

"You don't want to wait until I have it?" Taarig asked even as he handed him a tablet.

"No!! I'm tired of this female causing havoc on my Star Base. It stops now." With that, Jamis entered the third interrogation room.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

"You have no right to keep me here!" were the first words out of Vaine's mouth when Jamis entered the room. "My tad will destroy you!"

"Your tad will be lucky if he isn't ejected into the black once they discover you used his clearance code," Jamis growled back.

"What?" while Vaine maintained eye contact with Jamis, her voice wavered. "You're cracked if you think he ever gave me his code!"

"I never said he gave it to you. I said you used it. That might afford him some leniency from the Coalition Council, but I wouldn't count on it. The Council takes extreme pride in the security of their clearance codes."

"You can't prove that." Vaine's chin jutted out defiantly.

"I can," Jamis told her quietly.

Vaine's hand instinctively stopped the tablet the Commander slid across the table to her. Looking down, she saw the lens feed from outside the Star Base's arsenal and the guard stationed at the door. As she watched, Oke entered the room, and after several minutes of talking and rubbing suggestively against the guard, the guard and Oke both left. Mere moments later, Vaine entered and went directly to the security panel. She entered a code and the door silently opened. It wasn't long before her image reappeared with one hand stuffed in one of her pant pockets as she quickly exited the room.

"That doesn't prove anything!" Vaine continued to deny. "So, I entered the rukking room. So what? You can't prove I took anything."

Reaching over, Jamis tapped another button showing the inside of the arsenal and Vaine rummaging through boxes. Finally, she found what she wanted and reached inside, removing a small box that she stuffed into the pocket. As she stepped away, the exterior of the crate she'd opened read 'actinic.'

"So?" Vaine continued to try and bluff. "It's not like I know how to build an actinic bomb."

"You didn't have to. Engineer Le confirmed her replicas are fully functional when the explosive is added. All you needed to do was pour in the actinic and press the button on the remote."

"And yet I was nowhere near The Brink when the bomb went off," Vaine smiled, knowing she had him there.

"Prove it," Jamis demanded.

"I don't have to. Check my location thread."

"You have one?" Jamis found that unusual. Vaine wasn't a member of the Coalition.

"Yes. My tad insisted on it because of all the kidnapping threats family members of powerful generals receive."

"Arm," Jamis demanded as he lifted the tablet. Entering a code, he scanned her arm, and, as she said, she had a location thread. Downloading the data stored in it revealed everywhere she'd been since arriving on the Star Base, including inside the arsenal. But she was sitting in Dae’s End on the other side of the Star Base from The Brink when the explosion occurred.

"As you can see, I couldn't have detonated that bomb," Vaine smirked at him and began to rise. "Now, I'm leaving."

Before Jamis could respond, a notification came across the screen, alerting him that Taarig had found something. Tapping the message, it opened a recording from the concourse of