by Marko Kloos
“They weren’t suited up,” Bosca muttered. “Shit way to die.”
He turned his head to pan the sensors and his helmet light around the pod deck. This was the place where the crew from the top half of the ship would have gone to get into the escape pods. The circular access hatches of the pod chutes ringed the deck, four to each side of the octagonal inner hull. Thirty-two pods holding six people each, enough to evacuate the entire crew even if the other pod deck, seven decks down and below the secondary crew quarters, was somehow inaccessible or out of commission. Bosca and his team moved around the deck and checked pod hatches. It seemed to take an agonizingly long time to Dunstan.
“Six launched,” Sergeant Bosca finally reported. “Or they got blown out of the hull in the explosion. The rest are still here, but they’re all empty.”
“Gods-damn it,” Dunstan muttered. Even if those six pods had been full to the last seat, Danae had lost at least two-thirds of her crew instantly.
“I’m not picking up any pod transponders at all, sir,” Lieutenant Mayler said from the tactical station. “Neither are the drones.”
Dunstan shook his head slowly.
“Sergeant Bosca, check the command deck for survivors, then go through the rest of the hull as far as you can access it safely. Then gather your team and return to the ship.”
“Aye, sir,” Bosca replied in a clipped voice. The marine sergeant was the most experienced person on the ship aside from Dunstan. He’d seen the war from start to finish in the front lines of battle. Dunstan knew that he and Bosca had come to the same conclusion. But six of the pods had launched, and if there was even the faintest chance that someone had survived, they would scour the area until they found the pod or exceeded the maximum time of the crew’s likely survival because that was what Danae’s crew would have done for them.
“XO, send an update to command. Boyer, lay in a patrol course, standard expanding ladder search pattern. Mayler, run the drones out as far as they will reach and still give us telemetry. We’re doing a maximum power sensor sweep as we go. Warm up the point defense as soon as the marines get back to the airlock. I don’t want us to get caught with our overalls down like Danae. Let’s find our people if they’re out there.”
“Yes, sir,” the AIC crew replied, even the ones he hadn’t addressed directly. Dunstan leaned back in his chair, and the sudden weight on his chest felt like they had already lit the drive and pushed it to the gravmag compensator’s limit. They would look for the pods from Danae, but he was certain they wouldn’t find any. The new breed of pirate that had cropped up in the last year had taken to destroying escape pods to eliminate witnesses. He doubted that whoever had the means and the motive to destroy a cruiser with all hands would show its pods more mercy. He knew that Danae was dead, and so was her crew. Whatever ship had ambushed her was still out there, and if they could do this to a light cruiser, there were few ships in the fleet that were safe. And that did not include old workhorse frigates that had been a bit long in the tooth a decade ago already.
“And XO? Increase pod drills,” he added. “One per watch cycle.”
Nobody in the AIC voiced dissent.
CHAPTER 7
IDINA
The Gretian police headquarters looked exactly like the impersonal technocratic monument to efficiency Idina had expected it to be when she was first assigned to the JSP. It was all glass and polished stainless steel, white walls and floors. Even the workstations were white, all the furniture seemingly from the same manufacturing line. There wasn’t a mismatched chair in the building.
“Maybe I shouldn’t come into the room with you,” Idina said to Dahl, who was striding down the hallway with her. They were both in their regular bodysuits now—dark-blue JSP color for Idina, green-and-silver Gretian police for Dahl—and it felt good to spend the rest of the day out of armor. The atmosphere in this place had changed over the last few years. At first, the Gretian officers had resented the supervision of the JSP troopers. Then they had settled into a long détente of grudging cooperation. But since the indiscriminate bombing three months ago that had claimed the lives of Gretians and Alliance troops alike, Idina noticed no more frowns or scowls when she walked these hallways. Now she even got acknowledging nods and occasional smiles from the Gretians.
“Why would you not?” Dahl asked.
“I’m a foreign occupier. He’ll just get all worked up again.”
“And that is exactly why you should be in the room,” Dahl said. “It will make him angry. And emotion sometimes overrides the part of our brains that acts as a safety catch for our mouths. You know how young men are.”
An incoming message made Idina’s comtab chirp, and she flicked a projection into her field of view to check the contents.
“JSP tracked the inventory chip and the serial number of the gun,” she said to Dahl.
“Does it give us any clue how he got his hands on it?”
Idina read the brief database entry attached to the message, then swiped the projection away to close it.
“It was issued to a brigade corporal who died in battle. On Pallas, at the start of the Gretian invasion.”
“Huh,” Dahl said. “Pallas. So how did it get all the way to Gretia and into the hands of a local juvenile, after all this time?”
Idina thought about it, and there was only one likely conclusion that fit the data. If the brigade had recovered the weapon with the body of its owner, they would have reissued it to someone else, or taken it out of the inventory if it had been damaged beyond repair. Either way, there would be a database entry attached to the asset tag to document the transfer. But its service history ended with that of its last sanctioned user.
“Some Gretian Blackguard took it home,” she said to Dahl. “As a war trophy. Or to sell it on the black market.”
“That would be in violation of military regulations,” Dahl said.
“And Gretian soldiers would never violate regulations, right?”
Dahl shrugged with a little smile.
“Young men and emotions.”
The young man sitting on the other side of the interrogation room was wearing a detention suit. It was rather less fashionable than the blue-and-white outfit he’d worn when they had arrested him the day before, but his body language was every bit as cocky and defiant as it had been during his transport and processing. He sat as spread legged as the built-in movement limiters of his suit would allow, arms crossed in front of his chest, and he looked at Dahl and Idina with contempt when they entered the room.
“Good day,” Dahl said to him. He returned the greeting with a scowl. Idina thought about saying the same greeting in her halting Gretian to rile him up and get the interrogation started on the lively side, then decided against it. Dahl was the expert here, and she’d let the other woman determine the steps of the dance.
They sat down at the other side of the Alon barrier that split the room in two and separated detainees and questioners. Dahl had explained to Idina that the barrier wasn’t really necessary because the detention suits would immobilize the suspects if they became violent, but that it was in place to rule out even the possibility of physical contact.
“I have to inform you that this room is monitored by four different AI systems. One for the state prosecutor, one for your defense, one for public record, and one for the police. Whatever you say will be entered into all of them.”
The kid shrugged.
“It does not matter. This is all a sham anyway. You are not even in charge here. They are.” He nodded at Idina, then glared at Dahl again. “You should be ashamed, doing their dirty work for them. Arresting your own people. Taking orders from the occupiers. No serfdom,” he added. Idina knew the slogan well enough by now that she didn’t have to rely on the AI translator to figure it out.
“That is a catchy phrase,” Dahl said. “I have heard it often lately. But let me assure you that I am in charge here. I was in charge here before you were born. And I will still be in charge here l
ong after the Palladians and the Rhodians have gone home again. I do my work in the same way, with or without them. Their presence makes no difference to me.”
“That is a load of excrement,” the kid said. Idina was positive that the AI’s translation of the word in her ear was overly formal because she knew that expletive in the original by now as well.
Dahl nodded. Her expression was almost sad, a mother having to deal with a misbehaving favorite child whose punishment she dreaded.
She took an ID pass out of her pocket and held it up to read from it.
“Haimo Keller. Twenty years old. You work at the spaceport, as a traffic-controller apprentice.”
He looked at her without a change in expression, as if even acknowledging what she already knew about him would constitute recognition of her authority.
“What were you going to do with a loaded military weapon in a sports arena?” she asked.
“I was not going to do anything. I have the gun for protection. When I saw the scanners, I turned and walked away. What is wrong with going armed? Their kind walk around with weapons all the time. And this is our planet, not theirs.”
Dahl sighed.
“Let me explain to you the depth of the pool of excrement in which you are currently trying to hold your head above the surface, Haimo Keller,” Dahl said. “Based on the evidence, the court has already convicted you of the crime of possessing and carrying a restricted weapon without authorization. The conviction means your security clearance at the spaceport has been revoked automatically. I am sorry to inform you that your apprenticeship will be terminated.”
Haimo tried to maintain his self-control, but Idina could see that Dahl’s words were rapidly deflating his composure. He looked around the room, then back at Dahl.
“I get my certificate next week,” he said in disbelief. “My three-year certificate. I worked for it. I earned it. I passed all the exams. And the final test.”
Dahl shook her head.
“I am sorry, but that will not be happening, Haimo. A weapons offense makes you ineligible for that profession.”
“There must be something I can do.” He glanced at Idina, then back at Dahl. “I was just carrying that gun. I did not shoot anyone. I did not even enter the stadium. Why would you come to ask me questions if I am already convicted? Are you not supposed to offer me something so I will cooperate? What is the point?”
He almost shouted the last word. Now there was fear in his eyes again—not the wide-eyed panic from yesterday when they had aimed their guns at him, but something just as raw. Dahl had yanked the floor out from underneath his feet, and now he was in a tumble that he had not expected.
“The point is this,” Dahl said. “Your conviction already means a mandatory detention term. That is something you will not be able to avoid. You made that choice when you tried to carry an unauthorized weapon of war into a public gathering.”
Idina almost felt sorry for the kid, who was visibly recoiling at Dahl’s calm and certain declaration. He’d had a night in detention to work up a tough and defiant exterior for what was to come, his turn at standing up to the oppressor, and she had torn it down in just a few moments without even raising her voice.
“But your level of cooperation will determine where you serve that term,” Dahl continued.
She nodded at Idina.
“This Palladian soldier here has so far declined to have you charged with pointing a weapon at her. The weapon you were carrying was taken from one of her comrades. She would like to find out where you got it, and how. Right now, you are only looking at one to three years of rehabilitative detention in the Sandvik Center of Justice.”
Haimo looked at Idina. She was pleased to see that he made a conscious effort to keep his expression as far away from hostility as he could manage.
“But if this soldier here is not happy with your degree of contrition, she will have that charge added after all. And then it becomes an Alliance matter. The judge may decide that the severity of the offense merits a term on Landfall.”
From the desperation that flashed up in his expression, Idina could tell that Haimo was familiar with Landfall Island. It was a penal facility off the coast of the mostly uninhabitable northern continent of Gretia. It had no walls or electric security fields because it didn’t need them to keep people in. There was a thousand-kilometer exclusion zone around it, and anyone who escaped would have to try to make it home across a frigid, mountainous wasteland with no life of any kind on it.
“Think about it,” Dahl continued. “One to three years at Sandvik. Family visits. You can even earn curated Mnemosyne access. Or three to five years on Landfall. That is a long time to spend on a frozen rock in the middle of nowhere.”
Haimo covered his face with his hands and blew a long, ragged breath into his palms. He slowly rubbed his eyes. When his hands came down again, all of his defiance had leaked out of him, and he seemed ten centimeters shorter than before.
“I will tell you about the gun,” he said.
“You are making a wise decision, Haimo,” Dahl said gently.
He nodded at her and sat up straight.
“But before you start, let me just tell you that I have been doing this for a very long time,” she said in the same soft and caring tone. “When you say things like ‘occupiers,’ or ‘no serfdom,’ I know I am not hearing you. I am hearing the person who put those phrases into your head. When you tell me the details about the gun, make sure I only hear you. Because I will know the difference.”
Haimo looked at the floor between his feet and nodded again.
“I bought it from someone I met, someone from work,” he said. “One of the technicians from the maintenance line.”
“What is his name?” Dahl asked.
“Vigi. His name is Vigi Fuldas. He is into all this military stuff. Collects it at his place. He has a workshop where he tinkers with it. The gun was not supposed to be able to fire, but he reprogrammed it so it could. I gave him a thousand ags for it.”
“How did you get to know Vigi? You were training to be a flight controller. You do not have any business at the maintenance line.”
“At one of the rallies,” Haimo said. “The Loyalists. We found out later that we both worked at the same place. If you go see him, please do not tell him I told you about the gun,” he said.
“That is not going to be up to me alone, Haimo. Now tell me everything you know about Vigi, please. Leave out no detail, even if it does not seem important to you.”
“You made that look easy,” Idina said when they had finished the interrogation and Haimo had returned to his detainment suite. “The kid is lucky he got you for an interrogator. The Pallas way would have been to bang his head against that Alon screen until information started falling out of his mouth.”
“It was easy,” Dahl said. “And I find that a little worrying.”
“You don’t think he was telling the truth?”
They were walking through the main atrium of the police headquarters. Almost every officer who passed Dahl gave her a respectful nod or spoke a greeting. In the middle of the atrium, a reflection pool showed a perfect image of the ceiling above, the surface of the water smooth as a mirror.
“I do not think he was lying to us,” Dahl replied. “But he was not telling us the facts from the right angle. He told us what he knew, but in the way he guessed we wanted to hear it.”
Idina knew that both the Gretian police and the Alliance intelligence service were already seeking out everything there was to know about both Haimo and his work friend Vigi Fuldas. If the story had holes, they would shine a light through them soon enough, and Haimo wasn’t going anywhere for a while. But Dahl’s sliver of worry had now transferred to Idina as well. Everything in the interrogation room had gone right as far as she could gauge, but Dahl had done this sort of thing a thousand times, and if she thought something was a little off, Idina had no cause to disagree.
They paused next to the pool and looked at their own
reflections, which were almost perfect negatives of each other: Dahl’s white hair and light skin to Idina’s black hair and dark skin.
“Do you ever tire of it?” Dahl asked.
“Tire of what?”
“Being here. In a place that is not your home. Spending your days and your energy keeping the peace among strangers. Enduring the seasons.”
Idina considered the question.
“I get tired,” she said. “It’s strange, when I think about it. How much harder it is to keep your finger off the trigger than to pull it. I’ve been training to pull triggers all my life.”
“The Pallas way,” Dahl said, and Idina smiled.
“It would have worked on Haimo, beating the information out of him. And it would have been faster,” Dahl said. “This way is harder. But I am not sure I would want to be a police officer in a place where being a police officer is easy.”
The reflecting pool performed its function almost too well, like most things designed by Gretians. Idina could see all the lines in her face that hadn’t been there just a year ago, the furrows on her forehead and the deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She stuck a finger into her reflection and made the water ripple a little, but it returned to perfect stillness just a few moments later.
“You could have shot him, back in that shop,” Dahl said. “He had a weapon in his hand, a loaded weapon. He was not obeying our commands. We still would have gotten a gun off the streets. We would have been in the right, legally. But we wouldn’t know about the technician who sold it to him. The one who has the tools and the knowledge to bypass the biometric lock on a military sidearm.”