We dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of the Toldan system and I switched off my game to take a glance at the system scan. "Set a course to the orbital gateway, and contact the Kirrin mining cooperation to tell them we will be ready to start loading their equipment in five hours," I ordered before I switched back to my game.
A hour from docking there honestly was not that much for me to do but pass the time and wait for the latest set of messages to catch up to us.
There was a couple of moments before Jack spoke up. "Frack," he said before he sighed and took of his headset as he spun his chair around to face my pillar. "Captain, I just talked with the Kirrin representative. Apparently a different corporation picked up the job yesterday."
I tightened my hold around the pillar and turned my head to stare at him as I closed down my game. No. That was not possible.
"Which ship?" I then asked after a moment. It could have been a coincident.
He sighed and shook his head. "They didn't say, but I checked the traffic log. The Flying Brick from the Thail Cooperation was in system at the time."
The Thail stole our cargo again.
But as we are the only large cargoship in the fleet, the only ones that had access to this list was my crew and the people at the home office.
I slowly blinked as I just realized that I never told anyone but the home office about the change in how the list are spread out. Everyone was of the ship at the time and I forgot to mention it later.
Unless our computer system, our com system or the system at the home office is bugged...somebody in my crew was sending the information out.
No. Not possible.
I finally nodded and sighed. "Very well. Miss Tel'te, get us docked. I'm going to my quarters and get on the com to try to locate a new cargo." I said before I slowly climbed off my pillar to head to my quarters.
No, I trusted my crew, I could not believe that any of them would have betrayed us. I would go through the entire system first and hire a communication security company to do the same at the home office.
But since the change in lists, there had not been a single report of lost cargo from the other ships.
I pressed the button to open my door to my quarters. My ship was the leak.
XXXXXXXXXX
I managed to find a load of furniture to haul to the Selik system and we were soon on our way once more.
I ruffled my feathers in annoyance for what seemed the hundredth time that day. I had gone through the computer core, com system and I had even inspected the physical equipment. There was no bug.
At least not on this end. I would need to wait for the report from the security company going through the equipment at the home office to be completely sure, but as we were the only one that had lost a cargo since the change...
But I couldn't believe any member of my crew would do something like that or what their motivation could be. I paid them fair salaries, they even had paid vacations when we were in port.
I finally shook my head and pressed a couple of buttons on my pillar to access their personnel files to see if anything special would stand out.
Nemar the cook did stand out, he used to be addicted to glitterstim. I didn't have much personal contact with him. But he didn't have direct access to the list either...while it was stored in the computer, it was behind a password.
Tel'te, Mekak, Swan, Icri, Mara, Melton, and I were the ones with access to the list normally. Not that that meant much, it's security level was not very high. Pretty much anyone with access to the computer could have sliced in with any kind of slicing ability.
I sighed unhappily and then shook my head. Only one real way to get to the bottom of this. I trusted all of them, none of them have ever given my any reason do distrust them. They all did their jobs well and never caused any problems.
But that applied to my entire crew.
But it looked like it might be one of them.
Ruffling my feathers unhappily I started to modify a simple program to compare who access the list with who make transmissions and when. I wouldn't listen in to their communications, but the program will be able to generate a list.
The com logs showed nothing special, but that don't mean anything, they are easy to delete if you know what you are doing. Which is why I need the snooping program in the first place.
Only if it get a definite suspect I would watch it's recording.
I tilted my head and thought about discussing the matter with Swan first. She was my second in command. Without her I might have failed in the first year or even made major mistakes in picking members for my crew.
No. I did not think she was the leak...but It's better to keep her out of this for now.
I disliked spying on the crew, but operational security was operational security...and I had to find out who was feeding them the information. Every time we went somewhere and found our cargo taken...at best we lost time finding a new one, at worse I lost a good amount of money in fuel going there and then somewhere else with no cargo.
This could not be allowed to stand.
I might have traitor on board.
I took a slow, deep breath, working to keep my temper under control as I slowly climbed down from my pillar.
Emotion, yet peace.