Frankenstein's Weapon Part 2

Posted on Tue Jan 20th, 2026 @ 10:59pm by Commodore Stephen MacCaffery

1,750 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: The Tavrik Accord: Orchestrated Chaos
Location: Provisional Science Annex, Island Chain Seven, Tavrik III

“Left side is the Island Internal Log,” Steerforth narrated. “Right side is the Valley Forge Raw Feed.”

On the left, the video of the reception pavilion played. It was perfect. The delegates mingled. The waiters circulated. The timestamp in the corner ticked smoothly: 09:00:00…09:00:15…09:00:30…

“Watch the orbital feed,” Van Ness’s voice crackled over the speakers.

On the right, the image was a storm of static. Lightning flashes. Rain clutter. And then—

Snap.

The image jumped. It was a hard cut. Jarring. Violent. The timestamp on the orbital feed lurched.

09:00:00…09:04:00.

Stephen leaned in. His hands gripped the edge of the table. “Pause,” he ordered.

The images froze.

“There,” Steerforth pointed. “A four-minute discrepancy. The Valley Forge went blind for four minutes because of the jamming. But the Island Log…”

“…shows a continuous record,” Stephen finished. “It shows nothing happening.”

“It’s a loop,” Steerforth said. “A classic miner’s trick. You loop the camera feed on the ore processor so you can use unauthorized explosives without tripping the safety alarms. Someone inserted a simulation loop into the local buffer. For four minutes, the security grid was watching a recording of an empty room while the killer walked in and poisoned the glass.”

The realization hit the room like a physical blow. The objective record was a lie. The sensors had said green. The reality was red.

“It wasn’t a stealth suit,” Khorev whispered. “It was an edit.”

“And that,” Stephen said, his voice cold, “is the problem. You can’t insert a loop like that from the outside. You can’t do it with a tricorder.”

He looked at Khorev. “What clearance level?”

Khorev’s face was stone. “To overwrite a live security feed on this grid? To mask the edit so perfectly that the checksums didn’t catch it?”

He looked around the room. He looked at Eriksson. He looked at Steerforth. He looked at Mackenzie.

“Level 4 Command Codes,” Khorev said. “Minimum.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Suffocating.

Level 4. That was Stephen’s clearance. That was Khorev’s. That was Eriksson’s. That was the inner circle.

“The killer is in the house,” Stephen said softly. “Or they have the keys.”

He looked at the faces around the table. People he trusted. People he needed. Suddenly, they all looked like strangers. The perfect climate control felt freezing.

Trust, but verify. The old Russian proverb echoed in his head. Sidra, you were right to worry.

Khorev’s personal PADD chimed. A sharp, dissonant note in the quiet room. He looked at it. His frown deepened.

“Sir,” Khorev said. “I ran a biometric audit on the server node during the four-minute gap. I have a hit.”

“Who?”

“Ensign Maria Patel,” Khorev said. “Steward. Part of the delegation support team.”

Stephen frowned. “The girl who poured the water?”

“Her ID badge pinged the access reader outside the Maintenance Node at 09:01,” Khorev said. “Right in the middle of the loop.”

“That’s…” Stephen paused. “That’s convenient.”

“It’s damning,” Khorev said. “She was there. She had access.”

“She’s a steward, Pavel,” Stephen said. “Does she have the technical skill to write a miner’s loop into a security grid? Does she have Level 4 codes?”

“She could be a mule,” Khorev said. “Or a plant.”

“Circumstantial,” Mackenzie cut in. She didn’t look up from her PADD. “If you arrest a junior officer without a direct link to the weapon, Veln will claim she’s a scapegoat. The Council will crucify you for incompetence. You need more than a badge ping.”

Stephen nodded. “It fits the timeline, but it doesn’t fit the profile. It feels…arranged.”

“Detain her?” Khorev asked. His hand was already on his comm.

“No,” Stephen said. “If we arrest her, the real killer knows we’re onto them. Bring her in. Softly. Use a health check as a pretext. I want to talk to her, not interrogate her. She might be a witness, not a suspect.”

He turned back to the holo-table. To the ugly molecule spinning in the air.

“We have the ‘How’—the loop,” Stephen said. “We have a ‘Who’—maybe. But we still don’t have the ‘Where.’ Where does a Vethari assassin get 20-year-old Romulan poison?”

Eriksson cleared her throat. It was a slight sound. It drew every eye in the room.

She was staring at the display. Not at the molecule. At the metadata scrolling beneath it. Specifically, at the spectrographic analysis of the glass shards found in the wound.

“The glass,” she said. Her voice was thin. “The silica composition. It’s…distinct. High-impact polymer weave. Shielded.”

Stephen stepped closer to her. “Sabine?”

She looked up at him. Her face was gray. The defensive anger from earlier was gone. A hollow, sick realization replaced it.

“I signed for it,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The shipping manifest,” she said. “Three days ago. A Vethari freighter docked at the secondary supply pylons. They were delivering ‘Agricultural Catalysts’—soil revitalizers for the southern continent. I signed the import authorization.”

She pointed a trembling finger at the data.

“The crate ID matches the chemical signature of those shards. They weren’t wine glasses, Stephen. They were vials. Industrial transport vials. I authorized the entry of the murder weapon.”

Stephen felt a chill go down his spine. “You didn’t know.”

“I didn’t check,” she said bitterly. “It was routine. Vethari aid packages. We wave them through because we need the soil fixers. They used our own desperation to smuggle it in.”

Stephen turned away. He paced the length of the room. The pieces were slamming together. Locking into a picture he didn’t want to see.

“It’s not a lone gunman,” Stephen said. He spoke to the air. His mind raced. “It’s a network. A supply chain.”

He turned back to the table. His hands moved in the air, drawing lines between the invisible actors.

“The Vethari Combine supplied the logistics,” he said. “They used the aid shipment as a Trojan Horse. The Romulan Extremists provided the tech—vintage poison, untraceable to a modern government. The Borg nanites…that’s the force multiplier.”

“And the Insider?” Steerforth asked.

“The Insider opened the door,” Stephen said. “Someone with codes. Someone who knew the schedule. Someone who could loop the sensors and frame a steward.”

“This is a joint venture,” Stephen said. The weight of it settled on him. “The Vethari are the bank. The Romulans are the armory. And someone on this island is the hand.”

Suddenly, the room flooded with light.

It was blindingly bright. White. Harsh. Unfiltered. Stephen squinted, throwing a hand up to shield his eyes.

The storm had broken.

Outside the transparent walls, the clouds had torn apart. The sun of Tavrik III, usually filtered by smog, was blazing through a gap in the weather system. The jungle steamed. Brilliant green and gold.

The holograms of T’Lana and Van Ness washed out in the glare. They turned into ghosts.

“Sir,” Khorev’s voice was sharp. He was looking at his wrist display. “The storm is gone. The atmospheric shear is down to 12%.”

“That’s good,” Stephen said. “We can get a clean transport lock.”

“It is not good,” Khorev said. “Ashmark Landing just went active. I’m reading fusion thrusters. Three shuttles. Heavy lift.”

Stephen moved to the window. He looked out at the clearing sky. He could see the distant smudge of the mainland across the water.

“Veln,” Stephen said.

“He’s launching,” Khorev said. “Now that the weather holds, he’s calling your bluff on the blockade. He knows we won’t shoot down a diplomatic transport in clear skies.”

Stephen felt the adrenaline spike. The investigation had bought them an hour of clarity. The political reality was crashing back in.

“Mackenzie,” Stephen barked.

“On it,” she said. She was already typing. “I’m transmitting the Preservation Order to the Valley Forge and to Veln’s pilot. I’m citing the bio-hazard risk. If they launch, they are breaking planetary quarantine. That gives McKinney the legal authority to tractor them without it being an act of war.”

“Do it,” Stephen said. “Hold the line.”

He turned to the rest of them.

“Steerforth,” he said. “Dig into that loop. I want to know whose codes were used. Don’t look for a name; look for a mistake. Look for a hesitation in the keystrokes.”

“I’ll peel the logs apart,” Steerforth promised.

“Eriksson,” Stephen said. “Secure the supply manifests. Lock down the physical warehouse where that shipment is stored. If there are more vials, I want them found before they end up in another drink.”

“I’m going myself,” Eriksson said. She moved to the door.

“Khorev,” Stephen said. “With me.”

He checked the charge on the Type-2 phaser at his hip. It hummed. Full. Ready.

“Where are we going?” Khorev asked.

“To find Ensign Patel,” Stephen said. “Because if she didn’t do this, then she’s the only loose end the killer has left. And now that the storm is gone, they won’t wait for darkness to cut it.”

Stephen walked out of the Science Annex. He stepped from the cool, recycled air into the humid, blinding heat of the morning.

The jungle waited, silent and watchful.

The investigation had ended. Now came the hunt.

End Log

Commodore Stephen James MacCaffery
Federation Special Envoy
Tavrik III

 

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