down. It was an asshole alpha move, but it made him feel marginally better to know he still had the power to intimidate with a single look.
“Shut the door,” Orion ordered as they entered his private office. The panorama window across the room provided a matchless view of the pale lavender moons orbiting the planet in the distance. “Take a seat.”
Terror made sure the door had closed before choosing one of the chairs in front of Orion’s large desk. The tidy surface had been freshly cleaned. There wasn’t even a hint of a fingerprint on the clear surface. He glanced at his filthy uniform and bloody hands. “I think I’ll stand.”
Orion seemed to have forgotten the mess Terror had made. He gestured to a door on the left side of his office. “You can use my private washroom.”
With a nod, Terror crossed the office and entered the bathroom. The lights didn’t automatically turn on as they should have. “You need to send maintenance up here for the lights.”
“They’ve been by twice. They can’t figure out the problem.”
“Of course not,” he grumbled and made quick work of washing up at the sink.
Never one to leave a problem that could be easily fixed, he reached out and tapped the light switch pad on the wall. The lights flickered briefly before going dark again. Irritated, he stepped onto the toilet lid and then onto the sink. With a little pressure, he popped free a ceiling tile next to the recessed light fixture and slid the tile to the side. He pulled a small flashlight from his tactical belt, switched it on and clamped it between his teeth. Rising on his toes, he braced himself on of the exposed ceiling beams and peered through the hole. There, attached to the light fixture, was a transmitter.
“What the hell are you doing?” Orion asked from the doorway. “Are you trying to fix my lights?”
“No,” he said around the flashlight clamped between his teeth. He trailed the wires on the transmitter until he found the one attached to the power supply. He yanked it free and removed the device. With the transmitter in hand, he hopped down from the sink and pocketed his flashlight. “Here.”
Orion caught the transmitter he had tossed and examined it. Anger colored the admiral’s voice as he asked, “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes.” Terror took the device from Orion and showed him the ports on the side. “There are least four other cameras in your office. And, no,” he said roughly, “before you ask, I wasn’t the one who put these here.”
“I know that,” Orion replied, seemingly surprised. “You’re a lot of things, but you’re not a pervert who gets off watching me take a piss.” He studied the transmitter. “This looks old, Terror.”
“It is. I trained on these in the Academy. It’s junk. It’s so obsolete that it’s not included in any of our scanning software.” Terror turned the device over in his hand and pointed out the stamp over the serial number. “See? It was decommissioned eleven years ago. None of our security sweeps would have picked this up.”
“How does it work?”
“It collects the data—the audio and video footage from surveillance pods within fifty feet—and holds it until it receives a signal to transmit. It wipes the memory every twelve hours.” He glanced at the ceiling. “The lazy bastard that rigged this up piggybacked off the light as a power source. That’s why your lights are on the fritz.”
“You think Savage had it installed?” Orion asked the question Terror had been wondering.
“Maybe.” He grimaced as he admitted, “But I don’t think this is his style. He’s by-the-book. He would have gone through the proper channels to get a warrant and then used the latest technology.”
“The mole?”
Terror nodded. “These are probably easy to come by on the black market. We must have decommissioned thousands of them. Anyone on the cleaning crews or maintenance could have accessed your office to plant this transmitter and the bugs. It was probably done on the night shift.”
Orion seemed lost in thought as Terror offered his scenario. Finally, the admiral said, “It was me.”
Terror frowned. “What was?”
Orion rubbed his face between both hands and looked as if he might be sick. With a heavy sigh, he explained, “Vicious and I were counseling Zephyr. He had failed his flying assessment. One of the best pilots we’ve ever graduated from flight school, and he couldn’t even get behind the stick because of his guilt over what happened