Something DT3 Wren said snapped Mattoso back to the present, and she asked him to repeat it.
“I said that the NetBug tracer is a cyclical task, but Theo must have wanted to get it out of the way since it wasn’t due for a quarter-cycle or so.”
“Hold on a minute,” responded Mattoso, reading her notes on her lens. She scrolled to what she’d noted the first time she and Konami talked to DTM Lopez. “You said it’s every cycle?”
“Yeah,” yawned Wren. “It’s a pain in the ass — needs a deep trawl of the net, and it can be disruptive to users while it’s in progress.” Mattoso located the line in her notes — DTM notes that Muahe’s tracer task was every thirty days. She shook her head to herself. Thirty days ain’t the three hundred-day cycle, Master Tech!
Wren sniffed. “But Theo, he was special…” The young tech cleared his throat. “He had a great work ethic, is what I’m saying. He would always help you, no matter what, and always wanted to stay ahead of things.” Mattoso hesitated, and added a note that DT3 Wren seemed to have some very fond feelings for the deceased. She double-checked the security settings for her notes to make sure they were private.
“Master Tech?” Mattoso called out gently, repeating herself until Lopez turned around from the monitor he and another tech were hunched over.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” grunted the scowling man.
“What’s the periodicity to run a NetBug tracer?”
Lopez’s mouth hung open for a fraction of a second. “Why, every cycle, of course. It’s a very demanding task.”
“Are you sure? After the incident, you said it was every thirty days.”
“I don’t think so, Lieutenant. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t make that mistake.”
She wanted to respond, but couldn’t come up with anything before he spoke again.
“If you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant, we’ve been a bit short-handed since the tragic death of one of my best men, so I need to get back to work.” The master tech turned and proceeded to a terminal at the other end of Data Central.
“Whoa, that’s cold,” said DT3 Wren.
Could my memory be off? As Wren brought her to another task, she reviewed the notes for a third time. No. No fucking way I hear “cyclical” and enter “every thirty days.”
If she wasn’t wrong, then she wasn’t sure what that actually meant.
CHAPTER 15
Despite his complaining, Konami could tell that Agro-Engineer Fitzkelly loved his job. His enjoyment was so infectious that he actually felt a bit jealous.
“No one wants to see the Sausage Factory,” said the mousy engineer. “Three quarters of the calories consumed onboard are produced here, but all anyone wants to see around here is the Garden.”
“Why do you call it the Sausage Factory?” asked Madani. She and Konami had spent most of their non-duty hours of the past few days together. “‘Cause of the vat-meat?”
Konami was pleased that he already knew the answer — Engineer Fitzkelly was one of the handful of other Aoteans onboard that used Earth idioms.
The wiry man shook his head vigorously. “No, no, it’s not just vat-meat. That’s just a fraction of what we do.” He led them to a massive tank, with clear tubes pulling off a greenish liquid. “Cyanobacteria — that’s the real staple onboard. Everything you eat — well, everything but a salad, fresh from the garden, I suppose — has cybac in it. They don’t have much taste, but in protein and carbs they make up most of our calories.”
Konami wrinkled his nose and a few Agro techs chuckled at Fitzkelly’s complaints.
The engineer sighed. “But I suppose I can show you the meat tubes, if vat-meat is your thing. Right this way—”
“I think that’s enough manufactured calories for now,” said Konami with a slight grimace. “Ilsa?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes, of course. Thanks so much, Engineer. To the Garden?”
Konami agreed.
Fitzkelly scowled and stomped away, and Konami and Madani made their way, hand-in-hand, a few compartments over to Aeroponics, also known as the Garden. Between rows and layers of fruits and vegetables and even a few decorative flowers, they walked. The walkways were so narrow that they were nearly joined at the hip, and Konami felt like a teenager again, walking with a date between the skyscrapers of Singapore.
At an alley they stopped and kissed. Since Beast’s Eve they had spent most of their free time together; Konami found he had far more of this precious resource than his girlfriend. Girlfriend… doesn’t seem so strange, all of a sudden. The glimmer of happiness and optimism, that was strange. He let himself be lost in the moment, focusing on the softness of Madani’s lips.
“Oh, I’m sorry…”
Konami looked up abruptly. His eyes widened for a moment when he realized who it was — the SNH Bigwig, Hamad Maltin.
“It’s Professor Maltin. So sorry to interrupt.”
“No problem at all,” said Madani, grinning at Konami. “The Garden is yours, right?”
Maltin smiled — the effect was somewhat remarkable: with the smile, his coarse, leathery features softened into a warm grandfather’s face. “Yes. I designed the Aeroponics compartment, years ago. Decades, ago, in fact — even before construction started.”
Madani said that it was beautiful.
“Yes, beautiful. And functional, too.” The pride was clear in Maltin’s voice. “It requires barely any power to distribute the water and nutrients into the air. Even with no power, the passive misting will keep everything alive for weeks, or more.”
“Very impressive,” said Konami, trying to involve himself once he figured out that Madani was interested. “Will this be how we grow food on Samwise?”
“To start with, yes — probably from Aotea itself, in orbit. Along with the cybac reactors and such. But hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to grow food on the surface of Samwise — without harming the native life, of course.”
“But how?” asked Madani. “We can’t know how the native vegetation will react.”
“Of course. But we’ll spend many years studying the properties and genetics of the native life forms, and before we do anything on a large scale we’ll perform quarantined experiments and tests.” He smiled. “I know many Aoteans look forward to landfall, assuming that we’ll have a bounty of fruits and vegetables… but unfortunately it will be many years before we’re eating anything different from what we eat now. The green rationing will be in effect long past the first day of settlement.”
Konami’s attention wandered while Madani and the Bigwig discussed the future of Aoteans’ agriculture in more detail, but it got him thinking. When he first arrived onboard, he had thought that everyone’s focus would be on their destination: the lush moon Samwise, which revolved around the gas giant planet called Abhoth, a dozen light years from Earth. But Samwise almost seemed to be an afterthought, at least in many conversations he’d had. He recalled one Aotean responding to his question on Samwise with “Right now we’re on Aotea. In many cycles we’ll be on Samwise. But it doesn’t matter where we are — we’re already the New Humanity. Our new society travels with us.” SNH dogma, one of the many things that kept Konami from feeling like an Aotean, seemed to consider distance from Earth, both physical and philosophical, as far more important than one’s actual location. Considering his status as one of the SNH Bigwigs, Konami would have thought Maltin would be the last person onboard to be so interested in Samwise.
He wasn’t sure why this struck him as so odd.
“So what else on this tub should we see?” asked Madani with a smirk, leaning back in the booth of one of the cafes that dotted the surface of Aotea.
Konami asked what else there was.
“The Theatre,” she answered. “And the Repro Lab. And Engineering and Nav/Ops, of course, but we’ll need special permission.”
“I don’t know, zero-g makes me queasy.”
“It’s not quite zero — we’re still accelerating, so you’ll have a little weight. A few grams
, maybe.”
“Oh joy,” laughed Konami.
A server brought their coffee, foaming the top of Madani’s order with a flourish.
“That’s quite a coffee mug,” said Konami, impressed at the bowl-like mug she drank from.
“The infirmary goes through three cups per day, per person,” replied Madani. “That’s the most of any department onboard. I checked. Supply’s threatened to cut our ration.”
Konami looked at his own cup — indistinguishable from all the other cups in the café, and all the others he recalled ever seeing onboard. “Where’d you get it? Did you design it yourself at the Fab shop?”
“Oh, it was cycles ago. I was going to, but they told me at the shop that there were tons of designs in the archives that no one ever used, and it was true — there were hundreds of dishes and mugs, and it was much easier just to pick one.”
“Interesting,” said Konami, before something fizzed in his brain. “Wait, did you say there are unused designs in the Fab archives?”
“Oh yeah. I had to scroll past hundreds, and look at dozens of designs.”
He stood up in a hurry and grabbed Madani’s hand, apologizing for having to leave in a hurry and promising to call.
He made the call to Mattoso as he was leaving, asking her to meet him at Fabrication.
“So you want to see filters, but not in the catalogue? Whatever for?” asked Engineer Zubiri. Konami couldn’t recall ever seeing him outside of the Fabrication shops, and he wondered if he ever left.
Mattoso asked if they could search by physical dimensions. Konami had filled her in on his coffee mug revelation as they arrived.
“We can search by any parameter you can think of.”
“But down to the nanometer?”
Zubiri smiled. “We can go to the picometer, my dear.”
Konami read off the dimensions from his projection, and the Fab tech on watch punched it into his console.
Something tingled in Konami’s head during the seconds it took for the terminal to report back its findings. Out of billions of product designs, there was a single match.
Zubiri bended to look more closely at the screen. “That’s funny… why would there be design for a defective breathing filter?”
Konami ignored the question, his head throbbing. It had been years since he felt this way. “The scanners wouldn’t pick this up, would they, Engineer?”
“No, it fits the design perfectly, so it would pass,” answered the Fabrication department head. His eyes went wide. “Chief Inspector, does this mean that poor Mr. Muahe—”
“When was this item ordered and produced?” interrupted Mattoso.
The Fab tech read the date off the screen. “It was done in person, here, so no names were recorded.”
Konami shared a look with Mattoso. “Just a few days before Muahe died,” she said softly.
Konami beckoned her to the passageway, taking off at a fast walk.
“So we go to the XO?” asked Mattoso, almost jogging to keep up with Konami’s long strides.
“Screw the XO,” said Konami. “We’re going straight to the captain.”
“Shouldn’t we test the filter first, just to make sure?” she asked.
He paused in his tracks. “Yes, that’s a good idea. We should have all the data to share. Can you take care of that? I’ll go straight to the captain and the mayor, but while I’m waiting—” His wearable buzzed. He almost ignored it, but recognized the characteristic trill of a call from Emer. He answered it.
CHAPTER 16
Goddamn it goddamn it goddamn it… Sulemon Nicolescu’s guts tossed and roiled so much that he groaned. It was supposed to be smooth, easy. Painless. But DT1 Muahe’s death didn’t sound painless. What was the right thing to do?
“It’s bigger than us, bigger than anyone,” the coordinator had said, after word got out about Muahe. “We all knew these times would come — they’re just coming a bit sooner than we expected.”
A bit sooner? More like fucking Earth-years sooner. Decades, even. Dozens of cycles more onboard… He knew in his gut things weren’t going to get smoother, and easier. They never did. His thumb hovered over the “send” command on his wearable’s projection. One message could end it all. Or would it just make things worse?
He didn’t hit send. Instead, he reached for a bottle of medication next to his bunk. Thanks to his duties at the Chem Lab, Senior Chemist Nicolescu never had trouble acquiring the meds he needed.
It shouldn’t have been this way. He didn’t sign up for violence – even impersonal violence. Quite the opposite, in fact.
His quarters’ front door chimed. “Go away,” he whispered. He didn’t have another watch until the following day. He didn’t need to decide today. He could still think about it, maybe even talk to the Solacer.
It chimed again. After a third chime, he finally roused himself and stumbled over to the door.
He thumbed it open, sighing when he saw who was there. “Didn’t we already finish—”
The needle jabbed his neck before he could see it. A cry of surprise came out as a croak, and his legs turned to jelly. As he hit the floor he reached for his wearable, but everything was numb.
CHAPTER 17
“An injection wound was found on Chemist Nicolescu’s neck,” explained Konami, gesturing to the wide projection in the conference room. Captain Horovitz and Mayor Akunle had called an emergency department head meeting after Konami reported the senior chemist’s death and the breakthrough in DT1 Muahe’s case. “Preliminary analysis suggests that Nicolescu’s body reacted the same way that it would to certain types of neurotoxic venom, produced by some Earth animals.”
The shocked reactions – gasps, hands clapped over mouths, even department heads abruptly getting to their feet – in the room when the Chem Tech’s murder was revealed had almost brought a smile to Konami’s lips, even while he felt a bit guilty about the impulse. Finally, they’ll see what people are actually capable of. Even in this little fantasy world they’ve created. But he had to admit to himself that it wasn’t just a fantasy, at least not entirely. Aoteans were an agreeable folk, on the whole, and the rational part of his brain knew that he ought to be both pleased and honored to be a part of them. Even when the other part of his brain insisted on mockery and derision.
“Venom?” asked one of the Bigwigs, Wilson Paramis. “There are no snakes onboard Aotea.” The heavily built demographer chuckled openly, defying the tense atmosphere of the meeting.
“No snakes,” said Madani. “But I don’t think we’d have much trouble mixing up a synthetic venom.”
Another Bigwig, geneticist Mara Ngayabo, agreed.
Konami added that they hadn’t found a syringe.
After a pause, Captain Horovitz spoke up. “Director-Superintendent Akunle and I are treating Nicolescu’s death as a murder.”
Konami fought to hide the urge to snort after a clichéd round of gasps from the department heads, briefly waking up the cat Halifax from his slumber on the table next to the commanding officer. He collected himself, mentioning that this was not the first murder.
The captain agreed, and he took an incline of her head as license to speak. Konami had noticed no more reaction than the barest purse of her lips when he first explained the breakthrough in Muahe’s death to her and the mayor. On the other hand, Harry Akunle did nothing to hide his surprise.
Konami went through his findings from Fabrication, displaying the recordings and data for everyone to see. He made sure to make note of the contributions of Lieutenant Mattoso, who was undoubtedly fuming in the passageway for being kept out of the meeting. He explained, in detail, the proof that the anomalous filter was fabricated as defective on purpose.
The navigator, Commander Rusk, asked when the filter was ordered.
“It’s been only ordered a single time on record,” answered Konami, displaying the Fab order. “Days before Muahe’s murder.” Too late he realized Criswell might see this as baiting him, but the XO seemed
to be as interested and attentive as everyone else present. Another asked who ordered it, and Konami explained that they were still trying to find out.
That prompted the captain to order that, going forward, there would be no more anonymous fabrication orders onboard.
A glance from the captain silenced a budding side conversation. “Taking all this into account,” said Konami. “We can conclude that the death was not accidental.”
“But the filter wasn’t replaced properly,” interjected Commander Argosi, the head of the Habitability Department. “Second Gustafson confessed, right?”
Konami was prepared for this, and displayed the signed statement of the Second-Class Maintenance and Repair technician. “It wasn’t a confession,” said Konami. “He just stated that he couldn’t remember if he followed procedure, and that it was possible that he failed to do so. But his record is otherwise exemplary, with no disciplinary actions at all. In my professional opinion, Second Gustafson was succumbing to a mixture of guilt and sadness over a colleague’s death, along with external pressure.”
“And it turns out to be immaterial in any case,” added the captain. “The filter that killed First Muahe was not the filter that Second Gustafson may or may not have replaced.” She turned to Commander Criswell and directed him to return Second Gustafson to duty. “A lesson from this,” she continued. “There will be no more rushing to judgment about junior crewpersons. Any disciplinary action going forward will go through the mayor and I. This ship and our mission will not survive without good morale for the crew, and morale will not survive if the crew believes the leadership is not on their side.” She met the eyes of every department head in turn. “Careers have been ruined, and lives have been lost, all because leaders no longer had the confidence of their team. That must not happen onboard. Is that clear?”
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