by Matt Thomas
The camera view spun around, again facing out into space and the Mako staring down the Guppy. At the bottom of the frame a long object slid into view, brown and reinforced. Lind deduced it was the box containing the Comb, but wondered what the pirate would do with such a large item when all he had was such a small ship. By the time the figure of the man reappeared into view, he had his answer. A small thruster, the kind affixed to cargo containers in zero gravity, pushed the Comb forward. The trajectory didn't take it towards the ship. The other man pointed the Comb backwards, towards the gas giant, and fired the booster.
Lind watched as a crucial bit of evidence began its flight towards its inevitable rendezvous with the crushing atmosphere of Saturn. Vasily watched as his last hope boarded the Mako and disappeared from sight.
The playback ended when the tablet's battery died. Lind skipped back through the video, finding two frames. The first started as a man in a space suit looking up at the Guppy's bridge. Lind zoomed in on the image, enhancing it as much as possible. Fortunately, the absence of light in the Guppy and the internal illumination of the spacesuit exposed the pirate's countenance. Lind captured the image and fed it into his facial recognition database. While it searched through billions of known computations, Lind fast-forwarded to another spot, when Vasily stared directly at the lens. He saved that image as well, although not for any investigative purpose.
He tried to imagine the moment when the crewman gave up hope. Was it after the tablet died? Was it hours later when he fumbled with an oxygen mask only to watch his last usable finger break off? Maybe, drifting off in hypoxia, he never truly gave up until his death. He must have wondered why he was about to die. Could it really have been over a piece of cargo?
Lind took the bit of metal he had extracted from the bulkhead. He could analyze it in his lab, but he knew what it was. While depleted uranium shells were rare, he knew what one looked like after hit had sliced through inches of hull. The only ships designed with such weapons were in the hands of other Thirty-Twos. The Contract prohibited the arming of any other vessels. Many had tried to jury-rig weapons on their ships, but nearly all attempts catastrophically failed. The few pirates and criminals in the system preferred to use guile to board their prey. Lind had fired his own Mako's cannon once in all his years of service, and only to destroy an abandoned ship to keep it from becoming entangled in the web of station traffic. Someone, somewhere, not only had a weapon, but was proficient enough with it to stop a cruising Guppy dead in its tracks.
Lind's computer announced it matched the image to a known face. Lind double-checked the data. The source of the match couldn't be accurate. None of the computers scanning faces coming through the Hub or any of a dozen more major waypoints throughout the system registered the face. Somehow, the pirate evaded detection at every bottleneck in the system, every necessity, every hotel and restaurant. The face appeared nowhere in their tightly controlled system. Nothing came up for over seven years. Instead, the computer dug even further back, sorting through records from all over Earth. Only one image came back. The matching face had been scanned by security at L2H at their headquarters in London. The computer associated the image with a job application without further details.
More important than the source of the identification was the identification itself. The man who killed Rykov, who killed Vasily and his crew, had a name. Dark black letters against the bright screen provided it:
JOHN VANNIN
*****
John Vannin, simply, did not exist. Lind concluded as such after six hours of research through omniscient databases and reports accumulated from around the system. Curiosity overrode the initial instinct to get some much-needed sleep. After all, after so many years, he couldn't remember any other time when he took more than an hour to identify someone. This time, however, the trail of crumbs leading him to whatever object and missing container sparked the killing spree grew thin. As the question of "Why?" moved to the back burner, the question of "Who?" simmered in front of him.
No database he searched, no passenger manifest or station census, admitted that John Vannin lived anywhere other than Earth. That coupled nicely with the fact that the Mako didn't exist, either.
John Vannin barely existed even on Earth. The photograph that generated the name was the only photograph or report Lind could find. Once upon a time, the state of Wyoming had granted Vannin a driver's license. He was arrested once Twin Falls, Idaho, for a bar fight, although he was never prosecuted for it. A notation on an application for a commercial inter-system pilot's license in the United Kingdom listed him as a veteran with no detail of his service. Otherwise, Vannin was a ghost in the public records.
A common denominator ran through all the sources for these scraps of information. Each system offering those points of personal history had deep flaws that kept them off all major national, international, and interstellar networks. Lind could only find information cut off from the major, centralized personnel tracking databases used throughout the system. In fact, Lind uncovered none of the records he expected to find for a living, breathing individual. Vannin had no Social Security Number, or birth certificate, or bank accounts. Someone had erased any record centrally stored or regularly accessed.
"But how did he get out here?" Lind asked Kay before he remembered the seat next to him was empty.
"What was that?" The Hitchhiker called out from Kay's room. He must have woken up.
"Nothing . . . just talking to myself." Lind answered.
His guest came forward anyway. "What've you got?"
"A name. John Vannin."
If Lind paid attention to anything other than the screen in front of him, if he looked up into the viewport and saw the Hitchhiker's wide eyes or held breath, perhaps he would have asked questions. Instead, he let the impossibility of the existence of a man he had never seen distract him from the man less than a foot away.
"It's like this guy doesn't exist." He said. "I find rumors of this guy, but there's nothing, anywhere, that says he made it off of Earth. He never made it through the Hub. There's no ID card on file. He's never been tracked anywhere."
"That's supposed to be impossible, isn't it?" The other voice shook without Lind's notice.
"Yep."
"So, how are you going to find him?"
"I'm not." Lind conceded. "If the system can't find him, I don't have a fucking chance." Lind collapsed back in his chair.
"What are you going to do?"
"Well, he tracked down Rykov's Marlin and that Guppy. I'm guessing it was him who tried to blow me up back on Titan."
The Hitchhiker remained silent even though it had been the first time Lind had mentioned the incident on the station.
"He'll catch up with me, eventually."
"That sounds like a pretty bad plan." The Hitchhiker replied, shifting his weight away from Lind.
"Unless I can figure out what was in that box and where he's taking it and beat him there."
"Good luck with that." The sarcasm in the Hitchhiker's voice easily mirrored his late partner's typical responses, so Lind took no note of it. "Just drop me off some place before he kills you."
Standing up, his eyes still not focused on the other's face, Lind brushed passed the Hitchhiker with a yawn. He had burned himself out, and he knew he couldn't handle another few hours of dozing in the pilot's chair. Thoughts about what he didn't know he didn't know kept pounding through his head. In his brain fog, he could barely make out any coherent train of thought. He needed to go to bed. Exhaustion overrode his lack of trust.
"Watch the controls for me for a few minutes, would you?"
Not waiting for a response, he forced himself towards his room, where he collapsed on his bed to think of death and impossibilities.
CHAPTER TEN
Six days, while not such a long time in the grand scheme of things, ate away at the fragile superstructure upon which Lind had built the illusion of his stability. After waking up from an unsuccessful rest following their exper
ience on the Guppy, he lashed out at the Hitchhiker for doing as instructed. Truthfully, Lind, in his drowsy state, forgot about his visitor. Every word the Hitchhiker said, every time he appeared within Lind's peripheral vision, he offended Lind simply because Kay was dead. Even though his partner's death happened days before Lind touched down on Iapetus, he could not divorce the presence of the stranger with the absence of his friend.
The situation deteriorated until each man refrained from leaving his room, apprehensive about running into the other. The inevitable happened, usually once a day, when Lind sat in the cockpit reviewing data pulls from the Marlin, the Sadko Flounder that found it, and the ghost-ship Guppy, or researching the John Vannin enigma.
When Jupiter's swirling atmosphere dominated their view on the last day of their trip, or, to be fair, about twenty-four hours from their arrival at Io, Lind found himself trapped. The Hitchhiker stood behind him, staring at the planet.
"What happens if you don't catch Vannin?" It was the first question about the case in several days.
"I imagine he kills more people." Lind answered.
"Why?"
"Because he killed all those people and got away with it."
"So he's a serial killer?"
Lind shrugged, a challenge given the irritated tightness in his shoulders. "Sure. He killed a bunch of people in different places and different times. That's a serial killer."
"But don't serial killers usually not have a reason to kill?"
"They would say they do."
"You know what I mean. Don't serial killers kill people for bullshit reasons? It seems like Vannin killed all these people for a reason. A tangible reason, I mean, not because a dog told him to."
The Hitchhiker's point had crossed Lind's mind. In fact, he obsessed on the topic. Vannin followed an agenda, the purpose of which proved clear. He wanted to get rid of all evidence of what broke the Comb on Iapetus.
Lind never discussed the missing box with his guest. He barely discussed the evidence at all, but the man knew they were looking for a Comb on the Guppy. Any fool could figure that out. The connection between the Marlin and the Guppy was just as evident.
"What's your point?"
"My point is that this guy, Vannin, he's trying to accomplish something. He's got a goal, and he's killing people for the goal. So, if you don't catch him, and he achieves the goal, what makes you think he would keep killing people?"
"You think I should just let this guy go and hope he stops?" Lind asked, incredulous.
"No, not exactly."
Lind sat back in his chair, arms crossed tightly against his chest. He should have looked defiantly at his guest, but he didn't. "Look, there was this guy, about ten years ago, his name was Krepin. He kept stealing parts of ships. Not just a few screws and bolts, but major components like entire avionics suites or engine systems. He hit about half a dozen stations between Earth and the Ceres. Turns out, Krepin had his own ship, not one owned by any of the companies. A real rarity. He was really proud of being one of the only independent guys out here. So, we find out that his ship got smashed. I mean, totally and utterly damaged when he flew through an electrical storm back on Titan. Fried everything. So, he was stranded and unemployable. We figured the same thing. He's stealing components because he needs them for his ship. A couple of months go by, all of a sudden, the thefts stop. Then, Krepin is found flying his rebuilt ship. We talked about catching him and making him pay for all the parts he stole, on some kind of payment plan, and let him fly away. Well, before we grab him, he starts stealing ships. Entire ships. We'd find either the ships or parts of the ships with some of the smaller companies off the books. Krepin figured out how to be a pirate to meet his own needs, found out he was good at it, and turned to that for his main source of income. So, the moral of the story is, don't expect some dude to stop just because he's met his goal. Goal oriented people set new goals for themselves, and I think we can all agree that a guy who can stop a Guppy cold in its tracks and slaughter a crew is not someone we want to be setting new goals."
The Hitchhiker stewed in silence for a few moments. "I just wanted to know what the contingency plan was." He muttered.
"The plan, contingency or no, is to drop you off at Io and go on my way." Lind couldn't bear the irritation any longer. Lind having made no effort to hide his feelings, the Hitchhiker decided he was no longer welcome and retreated into Kay's room.
The unnecessary anger made Lind's muscles twitch. No matter how he adjusted himself in his seat, he couldn't get comfortable. He found himself standing, pacing back and forth in the confines of the cockpit. He couldn't concentrate, even though he didn't have much to concentrate on. His unreasonable response to the Hitchhiker crawled underneath Lind's skin until he couldn't take it any more.
Downstairs, he opened the fitness locker, extending the treadmill from its place in the wall, and ran. One of the few things on his list, he missed running out in the open, in the fresh air. Pounding the moving platform, he half-closed his eyes and transported himself back to the path behind the house that he and his wife once shared before she took it. The dirt path weaving through undulating hills flanked by long grass, the smell of dry dirt in the summer and the pending snow in the winter, never failed to eat away at his tension. There, he calmed himself down after long, heated battles with his wife or worked through important decisions. It gave him peace.
The treadmill did none of those things, a cheap fix for a more burning desire, but it helped some. On the trail, he ran until he couldn't any more. On the treadmill for the last years, he ran until the program told him to stop. After the machine beeped and told him to cool down, he worked out with rubber strengthening bands until he hit muscle failure. The regimen didn't improve his fitness, but it kept him from putting his fist into a bulkhead. Sweat rolling down the small of his back with stains forming on his shirt, he shuffled his stiff limbs towards the head. The shower, barely worthy of the name, told him how little water it would make available to him. Timed based on their water supplies and filtering system, he got three minutes. He rinsed himself once, took his foot off the pedal to stop the flow, scrubbed, and then spent his remaining one hundred seconds rinsing the soap off. When he used up his allotment, the shower display blinked a caution while it the system did its best to make the water usable again, if not potable.
He ate next although he didn't enjoy it. Only flavored and shaped protein powder, nothing stocked in the galley came fresh. Belatedly, he realized he should have stocked up on some hydroponically grown vegetable or engineered meat while he was on Io. Kay had always provisioned them. Instead, he drank a mixture purporting to taste like beef stew certain to give him horrible gas. Warmed, it was palatable, but just barely. He took the remaining half of a cup back to his cabin, stretched out on the bed, and searched the computer until he found a movie he had only watched a dozen times. Finally distracted enough, nearly relaxed, he drifted off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ephemeris Station, orbiting the innermost of the Galilean moons, comprised an amalgamated complex clumped together far from Io, distant from the traffic congestion leading towards the active, pimpled surface. Unlike transfer stations like Titan Orbital Station, no web of docking facilities spread in every direction. Huge cubes fused together as the nursery of Ephemeris Engineering's products. Raw materials, gathered throughout the Solar System and forged into components, entered one side of the facility to be spat out of the hopper as completed technological marvels. Giant collectors caught energy, generated by massive facilities on the moon's surface, gathered it, and focused it into lasers emitters shot towards the station. A school of Guppies, also Ephemeris creations, swam around the station ready to fill their holds with equipment destined for distant settlements. At the extreme end of the complex, lurking in the dark, the skeleton of a generation ship once aiming for a spot far outside the solar system hung in its cradle, forgotten after the tragedy of the Gemini.
From their angle of approach, the layers of th
e planetary system displayed themselves, as Jupiter served as a backdrop for the moon, the moon serving as a backdrop for the shipping lanes, the shipping lanes serving as a backdrop for the station.
The complexity of the operation was lost on Lind. Not lost, exactly, but fell victim to his overexposure to Ephemeris and his state of mind. The mental exhaustion from attempting to control his emotions reduced the facility into just another waypoint where, hopefully, he could answer some of his questions. More importantly, he could drop off the Hitchhiker who, at the moment, appeared dangerously close to touching the Mako's controls. From Ephemeris, the traveler could catch a Guppy further in system or a shuttle down to the surface for a wider range of transportation options. He would be gone shortly, in any event.
Lind followed the traffic controller's instructions without comment, which took him to the small set of structures jutting out from the corner of the facility like the petals of a sunflower, home of the corporate offices. Still on final approach, nearly thirty minutes out, his communications panel alerted him to an incoming message. He recognized the code as belonging to another Thirty-Two, but not the attached name itself.
"Agent Michaels, this is Agent Donovan." A deep yet feminine voice called over the radio. "I'm glad I caught you, I didn't want to ambush you as soon as you landed."
Lind gestured for the Hitchhiker to step out of the cockpit for the conversation although it took several stabs at the air with his thumb and a stern look before the other got the point. He couldn't see how far back the man went, but he didn't hear the door to Kay's quarters open and close. "Ambush me about what?" It probably wasn't the nicest greeting, particularly for another professional, but Lind already felt ambushed. "What can I for you, Agent Donovan?"