Quite Possibly Heroes (Freeman Universe Book 3), page 31
“Snap to it, Mr. Gant. This lady feels rather naked without her sidearm.”
63
They found Singh in his cabin. He’d been stripped naked and cemented to a chair, a sock stuffed into his mouth. It looked like a fast-set two-part epoxy, with good coverage. It wouldn’t hurt as bad as being buried in fast patch until it came time to pry him loose. There were a couple solvents Macer could think of that might work to soften the bond, but Singh wouldn’t like the looks of the applicator. Somebody knew what they were doing, and not from watching recorded dramas. It was spindle work, fast and dirty, and on the cheap.
It was like a fingerprint from a golden hand.
Macer tugged on the sock. It hadn’t been cemented in. “Where’s Seamus?”
“Macer? Is that you?”
“Hang on.” He’d forgotten that his suit’s annunciator also made him sound odd. And with the visor down, Singh couldn’t see who was inside. He popped the helmet seal and dangled the helmet from the lanyard, not with the smooth, practiced motion of Lady Tabatha Aster but like a guy who hated hardsuits and only used one when not using one wasn’t an option.
“Where’s Seamus?”
“Can you get me out of this chair?”
“I can. Where’s Seamus?”
“Over here,” Lady Aster’s hardsuit said.
“Wait here,” Macer said, before he realized just how stupid that probably sounded to Singh.
Lady Aster stood beside an open hatch across the corridor. She likely didn’t notice that she’d monopolized all the good cover. He couldn’t put the hatch coaming between him and whoever or whatever was in the compartment without crossing in front of the hatch.
She ducked inside the compartment.
He followed her in.
Seamus sat at a bulkhead-mounted workstation. He had his hardsuit helmet off. He wasn’t moving.
Lady Aster crossed the compartment.
“Don’t touch him. See if there’s a wire or cable running from somewhere below the base of his neck.”
“There is.”
“What’s it plugged into on the other end?”
“A socket installed beneath the workstation surface.”
“How many more people are there on board?”
“Just the pilot and first officer.”
“Let’s go see how they are.”
“Is he an addict?”
“Like a wirehead? Is that a real thing?”
“Very much so.”
“He’s not anything like that. Let’s go find these pilots.”
“And leave him like this?”
“There’s no telling how long he’ll be in there.”
Macer glanced around the compartment. “This isn’t Seamus’s cabin.” There was too much stuff in it to be Seamus’s.
“It’s Hector’s.”
“And Hector Poole has one of those jacks installed on his workstation?”
“Apparently. Unless James installed it.”
“He would have installed it in his own cabin, if he knew how.” Seamus was defenseless as a kitten when jacked in, and he wouldn’t have liked the idea of someone walking in on him.
Lady Tabatha glanced into the corridor. “One of us should stay with him.”
That wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t know her and he wasn’t about to leave an armed stranger alone with Seamus. And he wasn’t about to send an armed stranger to the cockpit, where they could murder the crew, or more likely, return with reinforcements to overpower him. He’d like to trust her, but he’d trusted Singh, and that was beginning to look like a mistake.
“Oh man.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was beating Seamus up earlier about how he always trusts a pretty girl.”
“And?”
“And engineers like Singh are my pretty girl. I have the same character flaw as Seamus.”
“I don’t see how that knowledge helps us.”
“It doesn’t, but Seamus will hate it when I tell him. He likes to think he’s uniquely flawed.”
Macer stepped into the corridor and looked both ways.
“Let’s go talk to Singh.”
“And leave James like this?”
“Is the cable loose or tight?”
“Tight.”
“Leave him.” He’d disconnect when he was done, or when he fell out of the chair.
64
Macer took the opportunity to examine Singh’s cabin while Singh pleaded his case with Lady Aster. Macer had tuned his old boss out when he grew repetitive, so Singh had switched his attention to Lady Tabatha, who listened politely while examining her handgun. It had to have occurred to her that if Singh had architected the removal of Hector Poole, Seamus, and her daughter from the vessel, that he’d known he was putting her daughter in danger.
Singh had indeed installed a microfab where a workstation would normally reside, and it appeared he’d been busy cranking out rider detectors. Or maybe something else that just looked like a rider detector. He wouldn’t be able to tell without a detailed inspection. On the surface there wasn’t anything Macer could see that would make Seamus suspect Singh needed a firm cementing to a chair, but then Seamus knew Singh from this vessel, and from the station, and all Macer knew about Singh was what he’d learned while working with him on Four-Squared.
There were similarities between their experiences, though.
Macer glanced at Singh. “I hear the internal comms are out.”
Singh nodded. “Completely and utterly broken.”
“How’d that happen?”
“I’d think that was obvious. I broke them.”
“Like on Four-Squared.”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“So people couldn’t use them.”
“Because?”
“Because I didn’t want people using the comms.”
“And creating records.”
“Of course.”
“Military sensors have big buffers.”
“That’s why planning ahead pays off.”
“On Four-Squared the buffers were broken for days before things turned bloody.” So they weren’t broken to hide what I’d thought they were meant to hide.
“It’s a big ship. Most of the crew is in cold sleep most of the time. And the bridge crew is only on duty when they need to be. When they’re not on duty, and often when they are, they’re practicing footie, or talking about footie, or thinking about footie, or sleeping and dreaming about footie. You were the only exception, and so long as I kept you in engineering and toying with the big machines, everything was fine.”
“What changed to make you run?”
“Nothing. I didn’t run. I’d finished the job and it was time to move on.”
“What job?”
“There used to be a dead-drop location on Trinity Station. It was a bunch of old containers welded to the ring, and you could leave stuff there and have people pick it up later. It was an open secret, and lots of people used it. It worked fine until someone decided they needed an exclusive on the location, and in the process of shutting it down, their out-of-town contractors decided to rob their neighbors. That ended that location, but it didn’t end the need for a location like that. After a lot of head scratching it was determined that a private, mobile drop would be best, and after a little more thinking we settled on Four-Squared. The beauty was that there’s already a lot of uncatalogued junk out by the Boneyard and for many of Four-Squared’s return trips everyone was in cold storage for a couple of days. Except for me.”
“And none of the rest of the crew knew.”
“That Ares Adonis monstrosity found out. And at first I thought that was a problem, but when I talked to my customer, he said it wasn’t a problem but an opportunity. So for years I’ve been exploiting that opportunity. And then the job was done and it was time to move on.”
“The job being manning a clandestine cargo transfer location.”
“Right. I had a side gig modifying cargo to meet local specifications but that came later.”
“You work for some League intelligence operation.”
“I work for myself. But I’ve been employed by Aster’s Army and by Charlie Newton both.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Lady Aster cleared her throat. “It means this despicable worm has been funded by both internal and external League intelligence agencies. While also being paid by those acting against our interests.”
“And while also being paid by Truxton for engineering work on Four-Squared.”
“Every little bit helps. Now come on, Macer, and get me out of this.”
“That all makes sense. But I still don’t get why you had parts but didn’t do maintenance on the Templeman drive.”
“That’s because there’s stuff I know that you don’t. And I’ll tell you after you get me out of this chair.”
Macer ran his gaze over Singh. He decided that the biggest recurring mistake he’d made since graduating from the Academy was assuming that he knew anything about the people he lived and worked with. Growing up on an island, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and not just their public business, but their private business, he’d accepted as fact that he could look at someone and know their life story.
He knew absolutely nothing about Singh even while staring at him stripped naked and chemical-welded to a chair. That Singh had the neck to try bargaining with him just proved the point.
“Listen to me.” Macer looked Singh in the eye. “Lashed up to the airlock is a longboat I stole from a pair of murdering thieves. And on that longboat is a box, and in that box is a brand-new power drill and some fast-acting muscle relaxant. I bought those tools for a job, and I didn’t get to use them. Now you don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do, but we did work side by side for six months, and I want to ask you something. Have you ever known me to bring a tool I didn’t intend to use?”
Singh licked his lips. “I sold the parts.”
“I’m disappointed to hear that. Because a fair number of those parts are unique to that drive.”
“Unique to that drive class.”
“Truxton owns all the surviving Squared-class hulls.”
“He bought all the scrapped hulls. There were a lot more hulls than that made.”
“You’re saying you sold those parts to someone with a Squared-class Templeman drive.”
“He had a hull without a drive. Charlie Newton had a drive without a hull. One they kept for research purposes and that had never been fired up or fitted. He managed to acquire the drive. I acquired the parts to complete and fit it. And I kept him supplied with consumables.”
“So there’s an unregistered Squared-class hull running around out there.”
“I didn’t say that. There’s an unregistered drive out there, but the hull is in the Registry. It’s just more capable than anyone imagines.”
“I would have seen another fleet tug billet in the Registry. I am looking for work, you recall.”
“You’re not listening. It’s not a Squared-class hull.”
“I don’t know what sort of hull it could be that could fit it, short of a League warship.”
“An Ojin warship,” Lady Aster said. “Or Huangxu. Or Alexandrian.”
“I’m not a traitor, no matter what you think. And the drive containment sphere is large, but it’s all the outboard kit that makes Four-Squared’s drive assembly seem so enormous. That tech’s ancient, and four to ten times bigger than it needs to be nowadays.”
“It still wouldn’t fit in a family ship.”
“Could you at least drape a blanket over me? It’s freezing in here.”
“I could, but I’m not going to. Later I might, but I’m going to go get my box of tools now. Because I think you’re lying.”
“I could chemically interrogate him,” Lady Aster said.
“That won’t do it for me. There’s Four-Squared’s doctor murdered that needs balancing. Unless you tell me chemical interrogation feels like hot steel cutting into bone, it’s not enough.”
Singh’s eyes had gone wide, but he’d stopped looking at Macer and started staring toward the compartment hatch.
“It doesn’t feel like that,” Seamus said. “And he isn’t lying. Nearly everything he’s said is true.”
Seamus leaned against the hatch coaming, the fingers of his golden hand splayed across his forehead and nearly swallowing the scar of his head wound. He had a broken look about him, more so than normal, shattered, Macer would say, like those emergency stairwell windows in public structures, where the glass had been fractured to shards yet maintained its purpose and shape entirely through the agency of a hidden core. One tough, and flexible, and invisible until called upon.
“His customer is Commodore Kirill Olek. And the vessel is Sudden Fall of Darkness.”
Macer eyeballed Singh. “That’s bad.”
“It gets worse.”
65
Macer caught Seamus as he fell. He lifted him like a sack of gears and plopped him down on Singh’s bunk. Lady Tabatha crossed the compartment and sat on the bunk next to him, running some sort of instrument across his forehead and then holding it up in front of his face. It looked like a medical device and probably was. Seamus didn’t look any better when she was done, but he did sit up straighter so he could see Singh and Macer.
“I don’t remember who knows what, so I’ll explain it all.”
“Before you do, I’d like to go check on the pilots.”
“No need. They’re dead.”
“Then who is piloting?”
“Whoever is piloting Tractor Four-Squared. We’re synced to remain stationary relative to them.”
“Oh. That doesn’t feel safe.”
“It isn’t. We should get someone pilot-rated over to at least monitor the displays.”
“Maybe we should have this chat on the bridge.”
“I’m not dragging that chair up to the flight deck, Macer. Feel free if you want to.”
“How long is this going to take?”
Seamus stared at him.
“Sorry.” It was a stupid question, and he’d only asked it because he wanted to be doing something. When Seamus gave one of his reports, it was as long as it needed to be and no longer.
“Go on, James,” Lady Aster said.
Seamus winced, pretty obviously, and Macer wondered if Lady Aster called him James because she thought it was his name, or because she enjoyed winding him up.
She glanced at Macer and winked.
So, winding him up. Macer liked the idea that she cared enough about Seamus to tweak him. It was a very Freeman thing to do. Even though it irritated Seamus, it would also make him pay attention to her. Seamus had a bad habit of forgetting that other people were in the compartment with him.
“At the end of the second epoch, the League sent out survey vessels,” Seamus said. “One of these vessels was christened Sudden Fall of Darkness and another Impossibly Alien. These vessels were under the supervision of synthetic intelligences charged with preventing any alien life forms from tracking the vessels home to the League. They were fitted with superluminal drive systems unlike our present-day systems. These drive systems were also configured as doomsday weapons capable of collapsing stars. The existence and nature of these weapons was, until recently, entirely speculative. None of these vessels returned and were thought lost with all hands.
“Several years ago the vessel Impossibly Alien was recovered intact. Excavated from beneath a glacier by Aoife nic Cartaí and a crew of salvagers, the vessel was subsequently registered under the name Quite Possibly Alien. Nic Cartaí operates the vessel as a Freeman merchant trader.
“Nearly a year elapsed between the discovery of Impossibly Alien and its eventual salvage, and during that time conflicting legal claims arose. A rival to nic Cartaí’s claim came forward, the Leagueman Kirill Olek. It subsequently came to light that Olek was in possession of the survey vessel Sudden Fall of Darkness. This vessel had been reported discovered as a stripped hulk in the Alexandrine, and bought at auction by Olek, a noted collector of second-epoch artifacts.
“These reports regarding Sudden Fall of Darkness’s discovery were questioned and League intelligence operatives sent to investigate. Dr. Anastasia Blum, from external intelligence, found nothing to report, and was later reassigned. Major Hector Poole, from internal intelligence, discovered that contrary to being found as a hulk, Sudden Fall of Darkness had been recovered intact, less its drive unit, and the vessel’s synthetic intelligence extracted and used in medical experiments by the Alexandrian Eng. Poole discovered additional inconsistencies in Olek’s story, inconsistencies with foreign-relations implications. He was subsequently tasked with infiltrating Olek’s organization to lay any concerns to rest.
“What he discovered went far beyond a conspiracy between rival polities. And what he concluded would make him appear a madman if he were to bring it forward to his superiors without proof. He continued to gather evidence in secret. He continued to remain silent.”
Seamus glanced from face to face.
Lady Aster frowned. “You hacked Hector’s work files?”
“Eventually. The problem required a broad-ranging investigation, and ultimately all threads led there.”
She seemed surprised. “But how?”
“He’s quite good for someone who came to the work, um…” He glanced at her. “Later in life.”
“I see.”
“I doubt I would have been able to succeed without having lived amongst you for a while.”
“Was that your plan all along? To befriend us so that you could spy on us?”
“Rather the other way around. I came to like you, despite our differences. The price of my work seemed a secondary concern.”
“You mean your health.”
“I mean your good regard.”
