Chapter 16: The Interested Party
Dunn traced the inquiry in forty-eight hours.
She dropped the results on my workstation without ceremony — a printout of the communication chain, annotated in her tight handwriting, mapping the path from Galactica's CIC to our cargo office in five steps.
"Lieutenant Anastasia Dualla. Communications officer, Galactica CIC. She's compiling a fleet-wide efficiency report for the Admiral's office — standard quarterly review, except nothing is standard anymore and the Admiral probably doesn't care about quarterly reviews. What he cares about is knowing which ships are functioning and which are falling apart."
I picked up the printout. Dualla. Dee. In the show, she'd been Lee Adama's wife — quiet, competent, tragically overlooked until the weight of everything crushed her. But right now she was a communications officer running data analysis, and she'd noticed the Cybele.
"What specifically caught her attention?"
"Our logistics efficiency numbers. Supply distribution error rate: three percent, fleet average: fourteen. Water recycling performance: ninety-four percent, fleet average: seventy-one. Housing allocation turnaround: eighteen hours, fleet average: six days." Dunn paused. "We're an outlier, Cole. A big one."
Because we have a system-enhanced logistics officer running an invisible organization. The numbers look too good because they are too good.
"Can we explain the anomaly?"
"Easily. The efficiency proposal Vasquez signed — which is, on paper, her initiative — accounts for most of the improvement. The rest can be attributed to personnel quality. Nobody's going to question good numbers in a fleet that's drowning in bad ones."
"But they might question how those numbers got that good."
"Which is why Dualla's asking. She's not suspicious — she's curious. There's a difference, and it matters."
The difference mattered enormously. Suspicion closed doors. Curiosity opened them.
"What's Dualla's chain of command?"
"She reports to Colonel Tigh for CIC operations and handles direct communications for Admiral Adama. Her efficiency report goes on Adama's desk." Dunn set down her coffee. "If we respond to her inquiry, our work gets Admiral-level visibility. If we ignore it, we look uncooperative and she digs anyway."
Controlled emergence. Show enough to impress, hide enough to survive.
"Draft a response. Sanitized methodology reports — the rotation optimization framework, the housing allocation protocol, the water recycler maintenance program. Real work, real results, attributed to Vasquez's fleet efficiency initiative. No mention of our trade network, our intelligence chain, or our organizational structure."
"Just the results?"
"Results and methodology. Enough for Dualla to see competence. Not enough for anyone to see an organization."
Dunn nodded. Already composing in her head — I could see it in the way her eyes unfocused, pulling together data points and presentation frameworks from twelve years of supply chain documentation.
"Timeline?"
"Twenty-four hours. Make it thorough enough to impress, brief enough to suggest we're too busy being competent to write long reports."
She left. I sat with the printout and read Dualla's name again.
Anastasia Dualla. Communications officer. The woman who connects the Admiral to the fleet. And now she's connecting herself to us.
The system offered a note:
[STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT: DUALLA CONTACT]
[RISK: LOW — INQUIRY IS PROFESSIONAL, NOT INVESTIGATIVE]
[OPPORTUNITY: HIGH — DIRECT PATH TO ADMIRAL'S AWARENESS]
[RECOMMENDATION: ENGAGE WITH CALIBRATED TRANSPARENCY]
For once, the system and I agreed without argument.
[Cybele Cargo Office — Day 35, 1400]
Dualla's response arrived three days after Dunn sent the methodology reports.
The message was professional, concise, and carried the unmistakable cadence of someone who processed hundreds of communications daily and knew how to separate wheat from chaff. I read it standing at the workstation, coffee forgotten in my hand.
LIEUTENANT COLE — METHODOLOGY REPORTS RECEIVED AND REVIEWED. EXCELLENT WORK. SUPPLY CHAIN OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK IS BEING INCORPORATED INTO FLEET-WIDE RECOMMENDATIONS. ADMIRAL'S OFFICE NOTES YOUR TEAM'S CONTRIBUTION.
FOLLOW-UP: ADMIRAL ADAMA HAS APPROVED A PILOT LOGISTICS COORDINATION PROGRAM — CIVILIAN-MILITARY INTERFACE FOR SUPPLY MANAGEMENT. YOUR INPUT REQUESTED. DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
— LT. DUALLA, GALACTICA COMMS
I read it three times. My hands were steady — a minor miracle, given that the message represented the first tangible connection between a cargo bay on the Cybele and the command structure of humanity's last warship.
Admiral Adama has approved. Not suggested, not considered — approved. A logistics coordination program. Civilian-military interface.
That's an invitation.
Dunn appeared in the doorway. She'd been monitoring the comm channel.
"You're smiling."
"Am I?"
"It's unsettling. Stop it." She crossed to the workstation and read the message over my shoulder. "Pilot program. That means small scale, experimental, and probably underfunded. But it's a foot in the door."
"More than a foot. It's a legitimate reason for regular contact with Galactica's operations team. Supply coordination meetings, data exchanges, standardization discussions. Every one of those is a chance to observe, to network, to build reputation."
"And to scan," Dunn added. Quiet. The word hung between us.
She knew about the system. Not the details — not the blue text, the attribute scores, the compatibility ratings. But she knew I had capabilities beyond normal logistics analysis. She'd accepted the partial truth during the water crisis recruitment and never pushed past the boundary I'd drawn. But she wasn't blind.
"And to observe," I corrected. Gently.
"Observe. Right." She picked up her coffee. "I'll draft our acceptance. Formal, professional, eager but not desperate. Vasquez's name on the letterhead?"
"Naturally."
"You're building an empire on someone else's signature."
"I'm building a network. Empires are what happen when networks get too successful."
Dunn's mouth twitched — the closest thing to approval her face would permit — and she left to draft the acceptance.
I sat alone in the cargo office and allowed myself thirty seconds of something that felt dangerously close to hope. One month ago, I'd been choking on blood in a medic's bay, wearing a dead man's skin, with a broken system flickering errors in my skull. Now I had seven people, six ships, a trade network, a political contact chain, and an invitation to Galactica.
Don't celebrate. Don't relax. The moment you think you're safe is the moment the Cylons find the fleet.
I opened my planning notes and added: Logistics Coordination Program — Phase 1. Objective: Establish regular Galactica presence. Identify contacts. Map power structure. Find Gaeta.
The coffee was cold. I drank it anyway. It tasted like progress.
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