“Yes, captain,” came the unified response.
There were a few more questions about details of the case, but Konami was surprised to see that no one, including the XO, appeared skeptical of his conclusions.
“We are all agreed,” said the mayor, his characteristic smile absent. “We will be investigating two murders onboard. Correct?” He looked around the room, but no one dissented. “The chief inspector will continue his investigation, of course, which the captain and I agree is our highest priority, aside from continuing safe operations of Aotea. But there’s a larger question here. A murder requires a murderer. A killer among us. Perhaps even killers. Word will get out, if it hasn’t already, and people will be afraid.”
“Cameras,” suggested Lieutenant Commander Olin, the Comms/Signals officer. “For surveillance. We can put a nanocam above every door, at every junction—”
Chief Engineer Papka interjected, citing the charter and arguing that excessive invasion of privacy was one of the reasons for Aotea’s journey.
The meeting descended into a jumble of arguments until Captain Horovitz brought her palm down hard on the table. “Enough bickering.”
Konami jumped at the opening and read off his projection. “Section 5.13.2.b of the Charter: In response to shipwide emergencies, restrictions from subsection b.1 may be waived if both the Civil Executive and Operational Commanding Officer agree and declare Martial Alert.” Department heads scrambled to follow along on their own. Konami continued: “To continue Martial Alert beyond any thirty-day period, a majority vote of confidence from the Department heads is required for both the CE and the CO, and every thirty days thereafter, with the threshold to continue increasing by an additional single-vote supermajority each thirty day period.” He scrolled down, slightly confused by the arithmetic. “The restriction on unmanned cameras is one of the restrictions from subsection b.1. So according to the Charter, Captain and Mayor, if both of you agree, you may invoke this waiver.” For thirty days, at least.
The captain and mayor huddled together briefly, whispering. The three Bigwigs did the same. Hamad Maltin approached the captain and mayor, and after another minute, Captain Horovitz spoke, asking for more options.
Konami suggested more roving watches.
“The Constabulary won’t be enough,” cut in the XO. “Not even for a single Can. To cover both Cans, much less Ops and Engineering, we’ll need more deputies.”
Konami was surprised by Commander Criswell’s suggestion. A few department heads immediately offered their own personnel — they could go on three or four-section rotation for their own watch stations and would have several personnel left over to deputize.
“And they could carry cameras,” said Lieutenant Commander Olin. “No, seriously—” she added after Commander Papka groaned. “The Charter only bans unmanned or hidden cameras. It doesn’t say a thing about manned, visible cameras.”
“That’s true,” Konami agreed. “We can put a camera on every rover, and even every stationary watchstander. No special votes or waivers required, per the Charter.”
The captain and mayor huddled together again. This time the Bigwigs stayed away. “Very well,” announced Mayor Akunle. “Commander Chulanont, Fabrication will work with the Constabulary on the necessary camera specs. And the following departments will provide approximately one sixth of their fully qualified manning to the Constabulary to deputize: Propulsion and Power, Navigation/Operations, and Repair. Every other department will provide a list of personnel they can spare in case more are needed.”
Konami was dumbfounded — that would more than double his strength, if not triple. Maybe even more.
“Other business?” asked the mayor.
Konami’s mind wandered to the challenge of covering the entire ship with roving watches while the mundane business of Aotea was discussed. He had no stomach for “other business” when there was a double-murderer, or two murderers, onboard.
CHAPTER 18
HUMANS GO HOME!
Comms Techs have detected alien signals.
Two Aoteans dead.
Coincidence? Or a sign that we should never have left?
Maybe we should take the hint! We were never meant to leave.
Maybe the universe sees humanity for what we are,
and will never let us settle anywhere else!
Mattoso’s concern grew as she saw this and similar sentiments posted anonymously in the comment forums and discussions, sometimes even in topics totally unrelated to the deaths. She ended the projection when she reached the Constabulary.
“How are the assignments and deputizations going?” she asked, taking the offered seat across from the chief inspector’s desk.
“Ugh... this is what I get for requesting more people,” Konami shook his head. “This tub’s layout is damn complicated. Even with the two hundred and something deputies I’m about to have, it’s going to be hard to cover it all.”
Mattoso nodded agreement. “I have a thought on that, and it’s tied to what I’m here for.”
“What you’re here for?”
“It didn’t seem so important at the time, but now that we know we have two murders…” Mattoso explained the scheduling discrepancy between her notes and what Master Tech Lopez told her a few days prior. “I wouldn’t have written down ‘thirty’ if he had said ‘every cycle’ or ‘every three hundred days.’ I’m sure of it.”
Konami leaned back and scratched his head. “So he got it wrong… maybe just a brain fart?”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But he wouldn’t admit it at the time. He said I must be mistaken.”
“Big ego?”
“Perhaps.” Mattoso leaned forward, lowering her voice. “But I think it’s something else. I remember some old ‘Investigator’s Handbook’ — it was really old… a scan in Ceres’ educational archives, not even searchable until I ran it through the text-identifier! But it talked about instinct, and gut feel — an investigator would inevitably have to rely on her gut. And I think this was that, Cy. It didn’t feel right when Lopez said it. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.”
Konami looked straight at her for a long time. “So you said you had a thought.” A blood vessel in his jaw pulsed.
She took a deep breath. “We need our own data tech.”
He nodded very slowly.
She wasn’t sure if he understood. “We need someone we can, uh, trust, just in case—”
“I understand,” he cut her off. “We need to get into Muahe’s logs, personal and otherwise.”
“And not just his logs. With our own data tech, we can get into, well, any concerns we have about—”
He cut her off again. “Right. Don’t say it. But who? And how?”
She had no answer.
Theo Muahe’s best friend, Mechanical Technician Second Class Trung Olivier, looked worried just answering the door.
Konami nodded to her, and she asked about friends of Muahe in the Data department.
Olivier frowned. “I thought I told you before. He didn’t really get along with any of the other data techs.”
“Are you absolutely sure? He never talked about any of them in a, well, nice way?” she asked.
The mechanical tech shook his head but stopped abruptly. “Well, he was mentoring one. I guess he kind of liked her — him. I think he liked him okay.”
Mattoso ignored the misgendering, unsure whether it was deliberate bigotry or just carelessness.
The tech continued. “DT3 Wren. I met him once — strange kid, kind of a sarcastic prick, I thought. Didn’t have any friends at all. But Theo said he was a natural data miner, and programmer, and a hard worker. That’s the highest praise he ever had for any of the DTs. I guess that’s as close as it got to a friend in Data.”
“So, Third Wren,” said Konami, after they returned to his office. “Know anything about him?”
She checked her notes to her memory. “Yeah, he showed me around the DT spaces and their routine. I got the real impre
ssion he was fond of Muahe — maybe very fond of him.”
Konami pulled up Wren’s bio on his monitor. “Huh,” said the chief inspector, looking at Wren’s boyish countenance on the screen. “I remember him at the funeral. He took it hard. Very hard.”
“So is this our guy?” she asked. “Our ally?”
“I don’t know,” responded Konami. “But this has got to be gentle. Soft, even. Careful. Jesus.” Konami shook his head, his brow furrowed. “‘Allies’ implies ‘enemies.’ And we’re years — cycles, that is — away from Earth.”
“Or Axis,” she added.
“Axis?”
“Sorry. Just one of the few snips I remember about Earth history. Axis versus Allies. The bad guys and the good. Genocide and all that… you know, what we’re trying to get away from.” Her cheeks bloomed and she felt foolish.
He looked at her oddly. “Anway, I was saying we need to be careful with this.” He fiddled for a minute, then projected on the bulkhead. “DT3 Wren was on watch in Data Central when the defective filter was fabbed and picked up, and on an Under Instruction watch in Navigation for ship’s quals when Nicolescu was killed.”
“So we can rule him out?” she asked.
“I don’t know if we can rule out anyone this early. But if we have to trust someone, I think this is as good as we’re going to find right now.” He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t think we should go together to recruit him. Too intimidating, for a young Third, I think.”
She nodded in agreement. “I’ll do it. I’ve already spent the better part of a day with him.”
“Use that gut feel. Your instincts. This is still a risk.”
She nodded and turned to go.
“Wait,” he said. “You said this would help with my deputies?”
“Oh yeah. A mapping algorithm. Engineering has the 3D layouts — it should be a snap to put together roving routes that cover everything. I could probably spend a half-day reading up and do it myself, but I bet a DT could do it in five minutes.”
Konami slapped his forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
She grinned and left.
CHAPTER 19
“When can I see you?” he asked Madani.
“Oh, you just want to see me, do you?” she responded through her wearable. Konami imagined her eyelashes batting. “What do you want to see me for?”
“I want—” Damn, but the way she flirted turned him on, even while it made him blush and lower his voice. “I want you to show me around the Repro lab.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
He coughed as some saliva went down his air passageway. A text alert came up. Konami caught his breath. “I gotta go, Ilsa. I want to see — I want you.” Weak.
“You’ll have me, Cy. Soon.” She ended the call and Konami stepped into the passageway.
Mattoso stood at the junction of the passageway, leaning against the bulkhead. “So he’s in?” Konami asked her, his voice low.
“Oh I’m in,” answered Wren, stepping out from around the corner. “Nothing better to do. And besides, someone killed Theo. I wanna help you find that hijo de puta.”
Mattoso chuckled. Wren’s exuberance reminded Konami of the youth of Lagos, and gave him a distinct feeling of nostalgia — which didn’t make much sense at all, since the data technician was born and raised Aotean. He was probably one of the oldest ‘natives,’ as those youngsters born on Aotea called themselves, onboard. It was possible he had never stood in natural gravity — Konami recalled someone telling him that, before departure, Aoteans were strongly encouraged not to leave the ship. Like most that were born onboard the colony ship, this meant his parents probably went through the genebank lottery — they would have been selected randomly from the Aotean couples who were interested in a child, and his genes would similarly have been selected randomly from the hundreds of thousands gene samples provided by applicants who just barely missed the final cut of crew selection for Aotea.
“So how do I help?”
Konami started to explain his problem with the roving watches.
Wren snorted. “You kidding?”
“It’s not an easy problem, I think you’ll find. With the number of temporary constable deputies assigned, about 50 rovers at a time should work. But the lower levels of the Cans are like a maze — every passageway needs to have coverage about once every hour or two, and that includes lockout spaces, trunks, and—” Konami went on for a full minute about the logistical difficulties.
“Done,” said Wren, grinning.
“What?”
“It’s done. Well, it will be in a few minutes. DustBots already do this — it’s built into their programming.” He projected onto the bulkhead. “They work together to cover the whole ship, for cleaning. I just modified a DustBot roving plan — changed the roving speed to 5 kph, the coverage parameter to ‘entire ship’, the sweep-size to line-of-sight, and the number of rovers to fifty.”
“But we don’t know how fast—”
“Oh don’t worry. I’m already running simulations — a tough cleaning spot for a bot might be like something interesting a rover sees and wants to look more closely at — we’ll see what areas don’t get enough coverage. I’ll have a few million sims done in a half-hour or so.”
“Huh,” grunted Konami. Just like in Lagos, the youths onboard Aotea could apparently still leave him confused and speechless. He’d have to praise Mattoso for her instincts later. “Thanks, Third.”
“So how do we find the killer?” asked the young data technician.
Konami led them from the passageway into his office. “Bea?”
She told them that they wanted to know more about the NetBut Tracer run by Muahe.
“I’d guess he was just trying to get ahead,” said Wren. “I mean, it wasn’t due for more than a quarter-cycle, I think. That’s early, but maybe he was bored. He was weird that way.”
“We don’t want to guess,” added Mattoso. “We want to know the real reason.”
Wren snorted. “Well how should I know? Maybe he made a note in his personal logs or something, but private logs are restricted—” The young Third’s eyes went wide for a moment. “Wait. The logs… you guys want me to…”
Konami waited, but he didn’t finish his sentence. “Yes, we want to see those logs.”
The data technician furrowed his brow, somehow looking even younger. “We’re going to need to schedule that with the master tech, then. Maybe the director, too. It’ll take a lot of bandwidth to get in.”
Konami was confused. “Bandwidth? Can’t you just guess the password?”
Wren’s laughter was high pitched and girlish. “Are you kidding? Theo’s a DT. Not just a DT, but the best DT onboard. You think he has a password that a person could just guess?”
Mattoso stroked her chin and nodded. “So the bandwidth is for a brute-force hack,” she added.
“Right. Guess the password, with a gigawhale of guesses per second,” he said, recognizing Konami’s confusion. “Uses up a ton of bandwidth. That’s the only way. Private logs are supposed to stay private. No back door and no data-net trawling. Hell, you can’t even delete private logs without logging in — they go straight to the solid-state drives!” He began tutting his fingers in the air. “So do you want me to send in a request—”
“No!” Konami almost shouted, worried at the speed at which Wren operated his wearables. “No request. This needs to be…”
“…discreet,” finished Mattoso. Konami nodded his thanks.
“Right, discreet,” said Konami. “If we’re not discreet, and the wrong person knows, then those logs could disappear forever — wiped from the drives before we take a look. That’s why we came to you personally, Third, and not to Master Tech Lopez, or anyone else.”
Wren scratched his head and played with his hands for a half-minute. When he spoke, his voice was softer, and pitched higher. “So that means, you think — well, you’re worried that the Master Te
ch might be... the killer.”
“We have no idea who the killer is,” Konami replied. “We’re pretty sure it’s not me, and it’s not Lieutenant Mattoso, and it’s not you. We need you to think, Third. How can we look at Muahe’s logs? Discreetly?”
“It’s the bandwidth that’s the problem,” responded the Third, his voice a little stronger than before. “If we can get thirty percent spared, we could get into the logs in less than a day, I bet. Maybe hours. But there’s no way we could get a spike that big, or even close to that big, without someone noticing. The data tech on watch will probably notice anything bigger than zero point one percent or so, especially if it’s ongoing. At point one percent, it could take weeks to get in. Maybe more.”
Shit. Konami only half-way followed as Wren expounded on the details.
“Could there be some way to mask it?” asked Mattoso. “Some way to make it look like it was just maintenance?”
The data technician shook his head vigorously, then stopped. “We can’t mask it, but maybe we could time it right.” His fingers danced again. “DT2 Kunayak. He’s lazy as shit. And he’s a big gamer. We could boost it up for his watch — it’ll be about once, for six hours, every day or two. I bet we could get away with one percent or so. Maybe a couple decimals more. If he notices, I think he’ll call me first — it’ll come from my account, and I’ll just tell him to shut up about it ’cause I’m gaming. I don’t think he’ll rat me out… he’ll want me to do him the same favor. Man, with a whole percent of bandwidth, we could game smooth…”
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