by Robin Triggs
“Hello?” I called. There was no reply. I peered round the frame of the door.
There was no fire – at least nothing I could see. The room seemed normal save that various papers had been torn up and strewn around. The duvet lay twisted and tangled on the floor.
There was smoke in the air, but it was thin and white and was lazily spiraling up to the extractor in the ceiling. I caught a breath of it and recognized the distinctive taste. I exhaled in relief, sending eddies into the cloud. The panic I’d been feeling began to fade.
“Is anybody here?”
A small sob and a sudden gust of smoke came as a reply, on the floor on the far side of the bed, but sounds of feet haring down the corridor made me draw back. I held up a hand to stop Weng and Abidene – and Keegan too, and Max. They crammed into the outer doorway.
“It’s okay,” I said to them quietly.
“Doctor Fischer,” Max gasped, “is she…”
I looked back into the room and saw movement behind the bed, a head wrapped in a turban-like wound-pad rising—
I blinked, thought for a moment that the fumes had affected me. It was Fischer – yes, it was Fischer, but her cheeks were red from crying, her eyes bloodshot and vacant. I’d never seen her look worse, not even in the horror of her distress. Like some weeping Hindu sculpture.
I took a breath, coughing briefly as the smoke reached out to me. I felt light-headed. “She’s there,” I said. “She – I think she’s okay. But I thought she was still in the—”
“She discharged herself last night.” I saw Max sniff the air, and understanding came to her eyes. “Let me talk to her,” she said.
I nodded and let her and Weng pass into Fischer’s room. Max rounded the bed and crouched down next to the doctor. I stayed in the doorway, and Abidene and Keegan came to stand behind me.
“Stupid bloody woman,” Keegan muttered to himself.
Max was speaking to the doctor, soft words that meant very little. “It’s okay, Julia, shh, it’s okay…”
I turned back to the others and gestured for them to back off. “Go and tell the others it’s a false alarm,” I said to them.
They left, Abidene in silence and Keegan swearing under his breath. I went to follow them, then glanced back. Max was helping Fischer onto the bed, taking the joint from her unresisting hand. The janitor glanced at me in silent communication. Nothing you can do here now. Leave it to me. We’ll talk later. I nodded and made my way out into the corridor.
* * *
Fergie had been chosen as chief of operations. We met in the dining room: it was warm and – at the moment – private.
I was glad it was Fergie. He’d made it clear that he’d pushed for the job so that he could watch me, and I was fine with that. Now he could see that I had nothing to hide and was doing the best I could.
“So,” Fergie said once we were seated, “what are we here to discuss?”
“How are things going in the mine?” I asked.
“Fine. Nothin’ to report.”
“Do you know if de Villiers had any plans to change anything? Or to expand?”
Fergie shrugged. “He was always talking about chasing strata or setting up a new extraction point. I know he was planning to develop the iron mine. Whether he had any actual strategy or if it was just a long-term ambition – that I don’t know.”
“We’ll need to go through his files.”
“Aye. Best if we do that together.” He gave me a heavy look.
“Look, Fergie—”
“That’s Mr. Ferguson to you, lad.”
I stopped and drew a deep breath. “Mr. Ferguson, then. Look, I know you don’t trust me, but I need you to run the industrial side of the complex.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“Just keep the mine running. Make sure all the factories are working as they should—”
“You don’t have to spell it out for me, Nordvelt. I’m not an idiot, and I know a lot more about this than you.”
“Okay.”
“So you’re still proposing to investigate the commander’s death?” Fergie said.
I nodded. “It’s my job.”
“I can’t stop you. But I want you to share all your findings with us, got that? Maybe we should work together, or with—”
“I work best alone.”
His mouth creased into a humorless smile. “Oh, the lone wolf detective, is that right? That what you are?”
“I just work best alone.”
“I bet you do.”
Silence fell between us.
“Is there anything else?” Fergie asked at length.
“I need to know where the drugs are coming from.”
“Wha – what drugs?”
I was hardly taken in by that clumsy attempt at surprise. I glared at him.
“What are you talking about, Nordvelt?”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I know what cannabis smells like. I should’ve realized earlier. They weren’t just cigarettes you were smoking up at the barbecue, were they? They were joints. God, de Villiers must have thought I was an idiot. Where’d they come from, Mr. Ferguson?”
His face ran through a variety of expressions: anger, disgust, stubbornness, anger again. Finally he seemed to realize that he’d already waited too long to reply and settled for a sullen silence.
“I need to know, Mr. Ferguson.”
“No. No, you don’t.”
“You don’t think, as head of security, that it’s my business?”
“I don’t give a damn,” he snapped. “This’s nothing to do with the commander’s death. It’s irrelevant.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “How on earth do you know what’s relevant and what isn’t? Unless you know the name of the killer as well.”
“How do you know there’s a killer?” he shot back. “Could’ve been an accident, that’s what you were sayin’, right? Maybe it was a suit malfunction. Maybe the commander tripped and fell. Ain’t that possible? Or are you the damn killer and all these questions are just for show?”
“There is—”
“There is what?”
I didn’t want to tell him I’d examined de Villiers’s datapad. Didn’t want to tell anyone until I’d had more time to think about it myself. We sat in silence for a moment, staring at each other across the table. My face was like stone.
I cleared my throat, broke eye contact. “Did you decide anything about a…about a gathering for the commander?” I asked, as if the last few moments had never happened.
Fergie shifted uncomfortably in his seat and grunted. “Dmitri, Keegan and Abidene will sort something out. Not for a day or two, though. Let things calm down a little first.”
“I still need to get an autopsy done.”
Fergie’s mouth fell open. “You – you’d ask Julia to do that? Now? God, Nordvelt, that’s just…just cold.”
“As soon as she’s capable. We need – we need – that information. If de Villiers was murdered, then we need to know.”
He stared down at the table. Eventually he nodded.
“Okay. That’s good. Let’s get to work, then.”
* * *
We went together to de Villiers’s rooms. With Fergie looking over my shoulder, I accessed his compscreen, my biometrics providing limited access. I didn’t tell Fergie I’d already looked round. I didn’t mention the datapad.
On de Villiers’s desktop we found plans of the local geology, with mineral deposits marked and heavily annotated in de Villiers’s own hand. Fergie took those. He forwarded to himself all the notes that the commander had made on the mining operations, and told me he’d go through them with Weng.
The block de Villiers had placed on my computer access remained and I was unable to look into his private files. I didn’t even try. I didn’t w
ant Fergie to see how little the commander had trusted me.
There was a record of a disciplinary meeting he’d had with Greigor; simply an aide-memoir for de Villiers to add something to the official record. I asked Fergie about this but he just shrugged and shook his head.
“Look at this, though,” he said, showing me a paper copy of a message de Villiers had sent.
I took it. A monthly update from Tierra. All figures and lists. “What’s—”
“Look at the projections. There – look – see how much coal he’s being asked to pull out?”
“And that’s…?”
Fergie shook his head at my ignorance. “That’s a third more than we got out last month. In order to meet those targets, we’d have to push right to the wire.”
“Why’d they demand something that extreme?”
“Dunno. We’d have to go through all his comms to see what’d been said before – this is just a snapshot, right? Maybe they were expecting him to fail. Maybe some politician’s makin’ promises we have to keep. I just know this is a massive ask.”
It might also explain why de Villiers had been relatively unfazed by the destruction of the comms building. No chance to report failure, no more impossible demands. And a little breathing space to work to this new target.
For form’s sake we went into the commander’s bedroom. I couldn’t help but stare at the place where de Villiers’s datapad had lain upon his bed. We spent a silent minute in a pretence of a search, then left.
Fergie and I parted after that. He went to see Weng. I went to see Max.
* * *
“You were right.”
I’d found the janitor at her workbench, examining the circuitry within de Villiers’s warmsuit. Another of her android statues was watching over her, heavy, angular and lumpen: sheet metal and pistons. Its torso seemed to be wrapped with vehicle tracks.
Max beckoned me over. “Look…here,” she said.
The damage was obvious, even to me. Between the two skins of the suit, a section of the electronics had been burned out.
“This wasn’t just a part of the heating mechanism,” she said. “It was a control node. The suit would’ve gone cold in an instant.”
“So de Villiers had gone outside without a working suit,” I said, matching her detached tone.
But Max shook her head. “No. Couldn’t have. If it had been damaged when he left the barracks, he’d have known immediately that something was wrong. He’d have gone back and changed into another.”
“So what…?”
“It must have blown when he was already outside. Too far away for him to get back in time.”
I nodded grimly. It made sense. “Any chance that it was an accident – a malfunction?”
“Look here.” She pulled the inner lining back across the burned circuits. “See the stitching there? It looks like someone slit the lining open and then roughly stitched it closed again.”
“Mm. Can you tell how it blew?”
“I reckon that the killer inserted a small charge – a minute amount of explosives would have done it. Or maybe something as simple as a battery. Anything that would have overloaded the electronics. The suit simply shut down,” she said.
“Whatever did the damage, how would it have been triggered?”
She shrugged. “It could have been set on a timer. Or a remote detonator. It wouldn’t have been hard.”
I sighed and felt my legs sag. I leaned against the bench and breathed deeply. I’d known it was no accident – felt it in my bones. But to have solid evidence at last – it was still a wrench. At least that meant I wouldn’t have to ask the doctor to perform an autopsy. “Who could have done something like that?”
“If you’re asking me to point the finger, I’ve no idea. If you’re asking who had the technical skill – well, it’s really simple. I could. All the engineering staff – Dmitri, Fergie, Mikhail and Theo – we all could. But it really is so simple. There are plenty of technical manuals on the Australis database. Anyone could have done it.”
“So we can’t narrow down the suspects.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault.” I felt frustrated, angry. I desperately wanted to do something, to be able to act. “Anything else?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned back against the workbench. She shook her head, looking down at the floor. I felt the sudden urge to take her in my arms, to keep her safe, but the android statue was looming over her, its expression suddenly seeming to me to be heavy, possessive and jealous. “Murder,” she said to herself.
I shivered. I half reached out to her, unsure myself what I was trying to do. But I dropped my hand as I saw the look in her eye, the readiness to recoil.
We stood uncertain for a few seconds before she cleared her throat and stood straighter. I did the same and the moment was gone.
“What now?” she asked.
I took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. “Get on with your duties, your regular duties. I’ll think more about this and get back to you.” I turned to leave. I had just about reached the inside door when she called to me again.
“Anders.”
“Max?”
“I – I don’t trust you. You know that, right?”
“Are you telling me or yourself?” My face felt frozen; the words sounded like they belonged to someone else.
“I can’t. How can I? I mean, look at the evidence—”
“There’s no damn evidence.”
She said nothing.
“There’s no damn evidence – just that this happened after I arrived. Might as well say that the killer was waiting for the night shift to begin.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “But I know the rest of the crew.”
I couldn’t think of any way to respond. I opened and closed my mouth, leaving a thin trail of breath in the chill air. Then I shook my head and left.
* * *
In the corridor I paused for another deep breath. I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling. It shouldn’t bother me, what she’d just said – it was hardly news. But it did. Because – because I liked her. Maybe she’d said that because she liked me. And maybe that was just self-delusion. I’d never been good at reading emotions, at least not in my personal life.
I wanted to be angry, wanted to be hurt. I wanted to be able to rail against the injustice – but I couldn’t. I marched onwards. Max was doing the right thing – making sure things were clear between us. It didn’t change a thing.
I bit my lip, a small penance for my sins. A small act of self-loathing.
Work. The only way I had of coping. And it was time for a proper chat with Weng.
As I stalked down the corridors to her room, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed.
* * *
Weng stared at me fiercely as I sat in front of her desk. The chair was still warm; I guessed that Fergie couldn’t be long gone. In front of her I saw the plans that we’d found in de Villiers’s office. I nodded at them. “Anything interesting?” I asked.
She made me wait before answering. “They are all plans I prepared myself. De Villiers had annotated them.”
“To what end?”
“He was planning to add new mineshafts. To reach richer mineral deposits.”
I nodded. It was as I’d expected. I looked back into her eyes again, met her gaze evenly.
“I have work to do,” Weng said. Her tone was neutral, under strict control. But it was clear she didn’t want me here.
“Why did you hate de Villiers, Weng?”
She shuddered. It was only momentary, the slightest of reactions. She had fastened her eyes back on mine in an instant, her expression unchanged. Again she took a long time to answer. “That’s none of your concern.”
“Weng, when we first met you asked me
if I had come to Australis because of you. Then you said it was a pity that I’d not killed de Villiers. It’s clear to everyone here that you hated the man. Tell me why I shouldn’t suspect you of the murder?”
“Why should I not suspect you? Maybe I was wrong, maybe you did injure the doctor deliberately,” she snapped back. “Maybe that’s what I should tell the rest of the crew.”
I sighed, ran my hand through my hair. My eyes fell on the chess set she kept on one end of her desk. The pieces had moved since my last visit. “You play a lot?” I asked with a nod to the set.
She hesitated. “I…used to.”
“Not now?”
“The destruction of the comms building robbed me of opponents.”
“You played over the net?”
She nodded.
“You have no opponents here?”
“No one is good enough. They prefer poker.” She sniffed. “Only…”
“Yes?”
“De Villiers. I played him. Before…”
I could see the indecision in her eyes, anger battling restraint in the way she grimaced, half opening her mouth to speak then closing tight again. I knew I’d have to be careful, to give the gentlest of pushes. Too much and the shutters would come down hard. “I’d be glad to play you,” I said. “But I’m afraid I’ll be no competition.”
She looked at me. Then she reached over to move the board between us, memstored the position and set up a new game. She gave me white.
“I remember the day I arrived,” I said as I moved a pawn. “In the rec room. De Villiers came—”
“I remember,” she said as she answered my move, and the next few, without hesitation.
“He tried to humiliate you.” I took one of her pawns with a knight.
Her scowl deepened. She castled, fingers nimble and precise.
“He did that for my benefit, didn’t he? To prove to me that he was in charge, that he was the boss here. Don’t you think?”
“Yes.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Her hair almost kissed the table as she looked down at the game.