Synthesis

by Rexx Deane

  ‘I’m done. We’re good to go.’

  ‘Our ETA is thirty seconds. Warm her up! Alvarez out.’

  Great! Time to get out of this mud hole. He started collecting up the tools and a metallic squeal came from the direction of the cargomech; its arms were still slowly rising, and perilously close to slipping out from under the ship. ‘Computer— Jesus Christ, what are you doing?’

  The mech’s speaker gave an unintelligible electronic crackle in response, yet it continued to move.

  ‘Oh hell!’ He abandoned the tools and started scrabbling backwards as fast as he could. But it wasn’t quick enough.

  With a final, grating screech of metal on metal, the mech’s arms flicked up, releasing the burden of the shuttle.

  Aryx was still partly under the ship when its bulk fell. Pain exploded from every nerve in his body. The last thing he remembered through the blinding agony was the shouts of the evac team arriving.

  It was some days later that he’d regained consciousness, to a voice that pierced the impenetrable darkness, asking what he recalled of events on Cinder IV. The sensation of lying motionless under a heavy, wet blanket was pleasant and strangely comforting – so comforting he couldn’t be bothered to open his eyes to find out who was speaking, but answered anyway, recounting his experience.

  ‘And that’s all I remember,’ he said.

  ‘It’s better than we’d hoped,’ the voice said. ‘Your prognosis wasn’t good. We thought there would be severe brain damage after the coma. Can you open your eyes?’

  As unwilling as he was, Aryx tried to shrug off the drug-induced leaden feeling and forced his eyes open. He blinked slowly and found himself in a sterile white hospital room with gleaming walls and a solitary window that exposed a patch of featureless powder-blue sky. A doctor sat next to him with an expression of analytical concern. Beside him stood Nick Alvarez, a bronze-skinned hulk of a man. With one muscular arm folded across his body, he rubbed his wire brush chinstrap with the other hand.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘Like I’ve been hit by a shuttle.’ Aryx laughed, and his ribs replied with a sharp stab. ‘What’s my prognosis?’

  ‘We managed to repair most of the damage and stem the internal bleeding with nanobots,’ the doctor said. ‘We put you in a coma while you healed as there were complications with infections in your wounds. The most severe damage was irreparable, and we had to operate.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  The doctor hesitated before pulling back the covers.

  The world began to sway, and Aryx fought back a wave of nausea that threatened to overcome him. ‘What am I going to do? I won’t be able to work in the marines anymore!’

  Alvarez shook his head. ‘They’ve given you an honourable discharge, and you’re gonna be awarded the Orion medal for valour. Your actions saved the team and surviving colonists.’

  It was cold comfort. There was no way he could go back to the military, and he certainly couldn’t run his dad’s farm. ‘How am I going to live? I’ve got to work or I’ll go insane!’

  ‘One of the guys suggested a little day centre down the road where they put lipstick kisses on knickers.’ Alvarez laughed and held out an infoslate, close enough for Aryx to read. ‘Or, if you want to try something you’ll actually be good at, there’s this …’

  Looking for a career in space? Exciting opportunities for engineers of all abilities await on Tenebrae station.

  From that day onward, Aryx wore his disability as both a badge of shame and pride. Shame, because he’d made the mistake of putting his life in the hands of a computer, and that he would regret for the rest of his life, and pride because he’d made the most of his predicament and regained part of his old life. The only thing that held him back until now had been his inability to use prosthetics and, as his condition had worsened, his seniors’ attitudes towards his safety.

  When constrained field devices were first released, he’d immediately seen thousands of potential uses for the technology despite its limitations: the fields had no mass, could not fold back sharply enough to form edges suitable for cutting, and had to form a complete envelope away from the generator. The most personal and practical application he could see under the circumstances was to use them as prosthetic limbs. The exposed parts wouldn’t malfunction if they got wet or dirty and would theoretically never require repair. More importantly, they wouldn’t put pressure on the weakened bones in his legs.

  Sebastian’s shouts from the hangar snapped him from his reverie. ‘I’m amazed the bulkheads held against the explosion!’

  He wheeled out of the ship to meet him. ‘What caused it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ll have to get the computer to analyse the readings. The scanner said there were two people in the lab when it went up.’

  ‘Any idea who?’

  ‘Not until we run the analysis. What have you been doing?’

  ‘This and that. I poked around the ship a bit. It doesn’t have any weapons, but it’s got a kind of railgun that can be used to launch probe spheres. At the far end of the cabin there’s an escape pod, hidden behind a plain panel, which explains why the upper deck is shorter.’ He folded his arms. ‘And there’s a cargomech.’

  ‘Where? I didn’t see one.’

  ‘It’s disassembled, under the floor panels in the hold. I can’t see why you’d need one, but it’s useful to have, even though I hate them.’

  ‘Ah … Cinder IV,’ Sebastian said, walking up into the ship. ‘Your accident.’

  Aryx followed up the ramp. ‘So, was there anything else interesting in the lab?’

  ‘I’ve got the forensics recovery team collecting the evidence. They’ll deliver it here when they’re done. They shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘What sort of evidence?’

  ‘The place was such a mess that most things were unrecognisable, but there was a frame with wires and a melted object that was connected to it.’

  ‘I guess you’ll want me to take a look at it?’

  ‘Please. You might be a bit better at working out what damaged equipment is supposed to do.’

  Aryx raised an eyebrow. Was Sebastian referring to him or his experience with machinery? ‘I think I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  A voice called from the hangar, ‘Excuse me, Agent Thorsson?’

  Sebastian left the ship and returned carrying a plastic crate sealed with tape and a docket. He put it on the floor in the cargo bay, checked the docket, and unsealed it. Aryx took the items out one by one and set them on the floor while Sebastian studied the scans on his infoslate and pointed out where each item should be in relation to one another.

  ‘Has the ballistic analysis finished?’ Aryx asked.

  ‘Almost, it has about five minutes left.’

  He put the last item on the floor and leaned back to examine his handiwork. ‘So, what have we got?’

  ‘These items along here …’ Sebastian said, walking along a line of objects, ‘are from one of the workbenches in the lab.’ He approached the far end. ‘This was closest to the exploded canister. I’m not convinced it was the primary ignition point.’

  ‘Why not?’ If there was another cause for the explosion, it wasn’t obvious from the items laid out.

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling.’ Sebastian turned to the other row of items. ‘These are from the opposite side. There wasn’t much, except for what looked like a hospital bed. That was where the second DNA trace was.’

  Aryx rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t see anything very interesting, except that frame with the wires. Shame the thing connected to it’s so badly melted. That’ll take a while to analyse, I bet.’

  ‘That’s what I’d like you to focus on. It looked like it might have been the subject of whatever research was going on. Either that, or it was logging information.’

  Aryx wheeled over to the broken glass. ‘What about these? They look like chemical containers, and those tools look surgical. This one,’ he sai
d, picking up a slender implement, ‘looks like it’s probably a scalpel. These others might be ordinary screwdrivers.’

  Sebastian’s wristcom bleeped.

  ‘What is it?’ Aryx asked.

  ‘The DNA results are back. The blast analysis of the scans I took has finished, too.’

  ‘Good. I’ll take a look at this while you read the reports.’ Aryx picked up the melted plastic lump with trailing wires and made his way to the cockpit, leaving Sebastian to collect the other items.

  He set the charred lump on the workbench and took several tools from the mobipack’s storage compartment. The plastic on the outside of the lump was crusty and brittle, so he tentatively scraped at it.

  Sebastian sat down at the console next to him and began studying the reports.

  Aryx didn’t make much headway; the charred plastic was difficult to work with and, as he pried the flakes off, it seemed the object consisted of a solid mass of plastic with metal threads interspersed.

  ‘This has electronics inside.’

  ‘Really?’ Sebastian said. ‘With all the wires coming out of it, I never would have known.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. It could have been a power supply, you ass.’

  ‘I know. I’m only pulling your leg.’ He broke out laughing, ‘Sorry! I didn’t think.’

  Aryx set his jaw, then started to laugh, too. ‘I guess we both need to chill out. I’ll run some scans and do a gas spectrometry test.’ He pressed a control on the console and a small slot appeared, into which he dropped the scrapings. The gas spectrometer readings and scans came back a few moments later. ‘The computer says it’s an organic plastic. The body has screw-threaded posts, as though this was mounted in a casing at some point. I wonder if it’s a storage device.’

  ‘Could be,’ Sebastian said. ‘Can you figure out a way of wiring it up? See if we can get something off it.’

  ‘The organoplastic is probably part of the circuitry, which might make it difficult, but I’ll give it a go.’

  Sebastian didn’t reply.

  Aryx looked at the display. ‘You got identities for the DNA?’

  ‘Yes. Two individuals, both male. I’m retrieving records now.’ The first identity profile appeared on the screen. ‘John Kerl, age 47, a research scientist with cybernetics and neurobiology qualifications. Because of the high-level privacy laws, the station logs don’t show whose name the lab was rented under, so I don’t know if it was actually his.’ Sebastian tapped away at the keyboard.

  Aryx turned his attention back to the melted lump. The wires that remained attached were not discrete cables, but a fine filigree of copper and gold that had almost completely disintegrated, leaving blobby clumps of metal – they wouldn’t be of any use connecting the unit to a computer. More parts were required.

  ‘Bingo!’ Sebastian shouted. ‘Oh, damn.’

  Aryx tutted. ‘What now? I’m trying to concentrate!’

  ‘I have clearance to see the ownership of the lab but the records have mysteriously been deleted. This is becoming a common trend.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘When I analysed the message you received the other night, it turned out the transit logs had been deleted. Then when I asked the lab computer about its own use, its response should have covered regular operation of the door, but it didn’t. Someone has either hacked the system or let a virus loose that allows them to delete secure files. I don’t like it one bit.’

  ‘It does seem a bit … coincidental.’

  ‘There are no coincidences. We live in a deterministic universe where every outcome has a logical cause, and I’d bet the hacking has something to do with the terrorists.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ Aryx sighed. ‘You don’t yet know that it was terrorists that blew the lab up. Anyway, sending us empty messages isn’t exactly a terrorist activity.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. I’m just leaning towards a theory.’

  He made his way out of the ship and rooted through the tool chest in the hangar, searching for parts. There was no point listening to Sebastian’s paranoid theories while there was still practical work to be done. He returned to the ship and shaved as much of the damaged exterior off the lump as he could, exposing connection points for the wires he’d found, and set about soldering them systematically.

  ‘We have results on the second DNA profile,’ Sebastian said.

  Aryx grumbled and stopped working, again. He looked up at the screen and his mouth hung open. ‘Nick Alvarez …’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I knew him. He was in my platoon when I was in the marines.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I haven’t— hadn’t spoken to him for ages.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Straightforward, but into all kinds of weird stuff. Occult, superstitions – that sort of thing. I don’t know if it was because his family was religious, but this was a bit more than the usual Latino superstition.’

  ‘Why did you lose touch?’

  ‘I lost contact with a lot of friends when I went into rehab, but I heard from Alvarez not long after I started work here. He said he’d left the marines and got a job working with some researcher.’ Aryx stared at the ceiling, trying to remember. ‘I don’t think he said what sort of research it was … He never seemed happy as a marine. I think he’d seen too much death and it had affected him a bit. He seemed keen on the new job, even though he was a bit cagey about it.’

  ‘Well, I think we know who he was working with, and where his career ended. It does seem strange though, a marine with an interest in the occult working with a cybernetics and neurobiology expert.’

  ‘Not as odd as a semi-religious programmer working with a guy with no legs, on an investigation on the second day of a job he didn’t even get interviewed for. Face it, the universe is just too odd for you to comprehend. Get over it.’

  Sebastian sighed. ‘This gets weirder and weirder, and we have no motive yet.’

  ‘Then move on to the next thing. What does the blast analysis say?’

  Sebastian read another report and brought up the reconstruction based on the scans. The simulation played, showing burn damage prior to the explosion of the canister. A non-localised heat source had appeared in the centre of the room, where no ignition points or accelerants had been found, and caused most of the initial melting of equipment. After the first rapid burn, the canister had exploded, instantly blowing out the pressure seal in the ceiling and causing the atmosphere to be evacuated, putting out the flames.

  Sebastian’s mouth hung open as he viewed the playback; he looked intrigued, amazed, and confused, all at the same time, as though he was about to burst a blood vessel in his brain.

  Aryx turned his attention back to the simulation. The evacuation of the room had probably sucked most of the material out into space along with the atmosphere, hence the lack of bodies – but what had caused the initial burn?

  ‘I … don’t … get it,’ Sebastian said. ‘Explosions always leave traces of the explosive around the scene, even tiny amounts. The blast analysis doesn’t show that the central ignition caused any ballistic damage. It’s as though the entire room and everything in it spontaneously set on fire and the canister went up after.’

  ‘Is there any other trace evidence?’

  ‘Some, outside the lab, but none of it seems to relate to the scene. Whoever was in the video was probably wearing gloves. All other DNA from the corridor either headed all the way past the lab in both directions and nowhere near the door, or it was Kerl’s.’

  ‘None of Alvarez’s DNA was in the corridor?’

  ‘No.’

  Aryx scratched his head. ‘How is that possible? Are they both on the video? It should show them coming and going, surely?’

  ‘Let’s have a look. Computer, search the entire video, from the time of the explosion back to six months previous, for any identity matches to John Kerl or Nick Alvarez and report a summary of their movements.’

 
The computer replied several seconds later. ‘John Kerl has accessed the lab on a daily basis. Nick Alvarez also accessed the lab daily.’

  ‘And, on the video, when was the most recent activity for both?’

  ‘John Kerl passed the camera outside the lab this morning at 06.00, and the last recorded instance of Nick Alvarez passing the camera was 2264-07-08 at 05.54.’

  ‘That was nearly two months ago,’ Aryx said.

  ‘Yes, and it’s worrying, given there was a hospital bed in the lab. If he was inside when it went up, he hadn’t left the lab for a long time.’

  ‘Do you think he was already dead?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Sebastian said, studying the screen, ‘but the analysis shows little evidence of primary necrosis on the material from the benches. Hold on.’ He scrolled farther down the page. ‘There was some DNA on the bed, but it shows more degradation than the DNA on the bench. That’s unusual.’

  ‘Perhaps it was from skin cells or something. Any other trace?’

  ‘Some mineral the handheld scanner couldn’t identify. Only a tiny amount, which could be why … A fine powdering of it on the floor outside the door, and a small patch on the door itself. I didn’t see it when I examined the scene. I’ll have to go back and get a swab!’ Sebastian nearly threw himself down the ladder in the rush to get out.

  ‘See you, then!’ Aryx turned back to the wiring problem. At least now he could concentrate.

  Sebastian came back twenty minutes later, carrying a sealed vial with a swab inside. He sat by Aryx, activated the spectrometer, and inserted the swab into the slot. ‘I hope I managed to collect some. The scanner detected particles, but I couldn’t see them. I swabbed it just to be certain.’

  The console bleeped a few moments later. Sebastian leaned forwards as he read the report and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘The very paragon of usefulness, the computer says “unidentified mineral”.’

  Aryx took a deep breath. ‘Is that all it says?’

  ‘No, there are other readings, but not like anything I’ve seen before. The particle masses are very low for their size.’

  ‘It’s not a gas?’

  ‘The analysis doesn’t indicate that it is.’