He raised his eyebrows and nodded, but mentioned that that still left several thousand Aoteans.
“I’m not done — if we assume it wasn’t a child, then that rules out near another thousand. I thought I was stuck then with about three thousand names, but I looked back at the Fab catalog entry — this filter hadn’t been around for very long; it was input into the system just a few weeks before. I added that time, again assuming they weren’t on watch, as a third variable to cut another thousand.”
“So what’s that, two thousand names?”
“Approximately. Take a look at the file I just sent you.”
He scanned through the file. “That’s too many. Who else can we rule out?”
She was at a loss.
He snapped his fingers repetitively. “Come on... we can think of something. We did it all the time back on Earth. Like if the footprints in the mud were very deep, then we cross out anyone under a hundred kilos.”
“What about qualification?” she offered.
He nodded and grinned. “Yeah, that’s good. Voice: remove all individuals without ship’s qualifications.” His expression changed and he shook his head. “That just gets rid of a few dozen. Outside of the kids, most of us are qualified.”
“How about technical qualifications?” The thought came to her a bit guiltily — Mattoso had full Ship’s Qualifications, the general rating that all Aoteans eventually achieved, which taught the basics of most of the ship’s systems aside from propulsion and power. And along with various Nav/Ops-specific watch station quals, she had gained full Operations Qualifications, also called “Forward Quals,” as part of her department. But she had been working on her “Aft Quals,” for Engineering, Propulsion, and Power, for more than two years now, and the thought of how far behind her goals she was brought a twinge to her stomach. “I know Ship’s and Forward Quals didn’t teach me those details about Fabrication, or how to rig a hatch malfunction in Sewage, and Aft Quals go into the technical details of nearly every system on the ship.”
“Not bad... couldn’t hurt to check.” He squeezed a sip of what looked like tea from a pouch, straining his lips around to suck up the loose globules, directing his wearables to remove those without advanced qualifications. He smiled at the results. “Now we’re talkin’. One hundred and four names.” His eyes scanned down the list, eyebrows raising at one point.
“One of the names stand out to you?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Nothing to worry about. Everyone on here might be a suspect.”
“Can you send it?”
Konami didn’t answer, so she repeated the question.
“Sorry. Here it is.”
She looked down at the list on her lens. There were a few department heads she recognized — they typically stood fewer watches, and were more likely to have advanced quals, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. And the Bigwigs, of course — it would have been quite a coincidence if any of them had happened to stand one of their monthly watches at the times in question. She didn’t know that they all had technical qualifications, but she supposed it made sense — all three had supposedly been intimately involved with Aotea’s construction. But none of the other names stood out.
She scanned through the list again, wondering what name could have caught Konami’s eye. This time she focused on the “Department” column, and she thought she found it. Kiro Gregorian, Constabulary.
Was it normal for a constable to have Aft Quals?
“This was good work, Bea,” said Konami. “We may have narrowed it down considerably.” She thanked him, and he looked at her but didn’t say anything. She got the distinct impression that it was time to go, saying that she’d start going through the names on the list.
“Yeah, of course. I’ll take the first half, you take the second half. Let me know what you find.”
She nodded. Konami stopped her on her way out, reiterating the importance of keeping the list secret.
In the passageway, she looked again at the list, and couldn’t help noting that Constable Gregorian was in the half that Konami took for himself.
CHAPTER 31
Why does Kiro have Aft Quals? Konami almost called up his best friend, but his cop instincts stayed his hand. No way he’s involved in this. Aoteans often worked toward qualifications other than their primary duties — before all the recent chaos, anyway, few crewmembers had more than about a half-day’s work, most of the time. But Engineering, Propulsion, and Power Qualifications were by far the most challenging to achieve. Konami assumed he would have known if Gregorian had been spending the time necessary to pass the Aft Qual boards.
He pulled up Gregorian’s personnel record. He hadn’t looked at it since he first reported onboard, but he thought a detail like Aft Quals would have stuck in his memory.
From the record, Gregorian had earned his Aft Quals just a matter of months after Konami reported onboard. No wonder he hadn’t noticed, as busy as he was adjusting to his new duties, as well as getting his own qualifications. And from Gregorian’s educational background, perhaps it wasn’t even too surprising — one of his specialties on Mars had been forensic engineering; he may have wanted a challenge onboard, especially with the lack of crimes on the colony ship.
Somehow, he had to narrow down these hundred and four names. If one of them had left the Arena abruptly, or had started fiddling with their wearable once Singh stood up, then there’d be a prime suspect for the shooter, or the shooter’s superior.
He knew it was a longshot, but he pulled up the constabulary video archive — the repository for the recordings made by each constable and roving watch since they were issued vidcams. He specified the time period during the gathering in the Arena, and started to watch.
Hours later Konami had barely made a dent in the footage. There had been more than two dozen rovers and constables on watch in and around the Arena, along with more than a hundred off watch but still recording, and even when he narrowed it down to time between Singh standing up and being shot, there was still hundreds of hours of footage to go through.
“Fuck it,” he said aloud to no one, and walked out of his office.
“Wren, you there?” repeated Konami into the Third Class Data Technician’s door-com.
Finally, the door opened, and a bleary-eyed Wren grunted a greeting, hair mussed and shirt on backwards. He put up a finger to ask Konami to wait, and left the door open a crack. Through the door Konami heard Wren talk softly to someone, and a minute later he emerged in uniform, and Konami asked him if there was any news on Muahe’s logs.
The young Data tech grimaced. “I told you, it’ll be done when it’s done, and I’ll tell you first. You and Mattoso.”
Konami took a moment to search for the right words to explain his next request.
Wren didn’t try to hide his impatience. “Well? Anything else?”
“Follow me.” Wordlessly, Konami led Wren to the auxiliary Constabulary in the aft Can. After nodding to the duty constable, they hunched over a display in the lone closet-sized office next to a holding cell that had never been used, and Konami shut the door. He called up the video stream for the footage from the Arena.
“You saw the announcement, right? At some point before the shooting, someone in the Arena saw Singh — the dead guy — stand up, and either left in a hurry to get a gun, or sent a message to order someone else to do so. Adding up all the vidcams recording at the time, we’ve got hundreds of hours of footage. Is there some way we can narrow it down without watching it all?”
Wren thought about it then nodded. “Facial recog software can separate each individual. But it works better the other way — you know, ask where Second Bumble-Futz was at a certain time, and voila, it tells you he was in the Cafeteria, as long as someone recording passed by.” The young Tech snapped his fingers. “Sports stats software. Ironball games are recorded and transmitted live, and the auto stats trackers record every score, every take-down, every deflection.” He nudged Konami out of the wa
y and his fingers danced over the console. “It knows how to follow movement already, even in a crowded field. I bet I can at least get it to spit out anyone who got up during the big meeting, though ‘working on a wearable’ might be a tougher movement for the program to identify. But I’ll find a way.”
“This is top secret, Third. Work on this in private, and tell no one.”
Wren gave a low whistle. “Hush-hush, you got it.” The young Data technician frowned.
“What is it?” asked Konami.
“Bandwidth, again. Not nearly as bad as for the hack into Muahe’s logs, but it might take a bit of time to keep it running out of sight.”
An idea came to the chief inspector that made him sweat, but it was too intriguing to ignore. “The facial recog software — you say it can find individuals?”
“Of course. That’s what it’s designed for.”
“Can it track them, in real time?”
“Track them? Like as they move?”
“Yeah. As the rover’s video comes into your servers, can the program note locations and movement of anyone they see, and save the data?”
For the first time since meeting him, Wren was speechless.
Konami waited for him to gather his thoughts.
“You mean… isn’t that against the Charter?”
“No, as it turns out, as long as the cams aren’t hidden, and aren’t unmanned.”
Wren was silent.
“You don’t have to feel good about this, Wren. I don’t plan to use it unless we identify the killer.”
“But, the bandwidth…”
“Fit it in, however you can. If you have to lower the frame rate, that’s fine — we’re already allocated a chunk of bandwidth for the video feeds, so I bet you can work with that to fit this in.”
Wren was silent again.
“That’s an order, Third. This is absolutely vital to finding the killer. Muahe’s killer.”
The Data Tech gave a nod.
Konami dismissed him, and went to find a ginger soda to calm the queasiness in his belly.
CHAPTER 32
“You awake?”
Despite her constant exhaustion, the sleep Mattoso was able to get was far from recharging.
Pat squeezed her in response. Mattoso reached uner the covers to their hips, and pulling the two of them into a spoon, asking Pat how the kids at school were handling the recent upheavals.
“They’re loving it, actually. We spend most of the day in the aft classrooms, but we’ve been going to the forward Can for play periods. They can’t get enough of the freefall!”
“What about the murders? Aren’t they scared?”
“Yeah, when they stop to think about it. But kids are so easily distracted. The MOMbots are tuned to signs of negative emotions, and rush over to play at the first sign of fear.”
“Lucky them…”
Pat turned to Mattoso and kissed her. “I’m sorry about the puppy.”
“It’s okay. Just a delay, until things are back to normal. I’m too tired to take care of something else right now, anyway.”
As Pat entwined their fingers together and kissed down her neck, Mattoso’s wearable buzzed.
“Sorry,” she said as she pulled away. “Mattoso.”
“It’s Wren. I’ve got Muahe’s logs open.”
“He divided his log entries into ‘Personal’ and ‘Work,’” explained Wren, pointing at the projection on the bulkhead. “Not too many Personal entries, as you can see. Which do you want to see first?”
They decided on a week before the bad filter specs were uploaded into the system.
Wren pulled up a log entry. Konami spoke as he ran a finger down the log. “GravTran watch… Bot repair… Maintenance logs scrub… Wren, any of this out of the ordinary for a Data tech’s duties?”
The young technician scanned through the log. “No, everything’s routine.”
“Okay, next log.” Wren pulled it up. There was nothing but routine work, according to the Data Tech.
They got through a handful of log entries before they found something.
“Wait.” Wren stopped Konami as he was going through an entry from a few days before the unusual Fab spec was ordered. “Data sponge. Remember the NetBug tracer?”
Konami said nothing, so Mattoso cut in. “Yeah, that was the last thing Muahe did, right?” She turned to Konami. “Remember what I said about the Master Tech, Cy?” Mattoso scrolled to her log entry and showed it to the chief inspector. DTM notes that Muahe’s tracer task was every thirty days, it said. “Third, that’s a cyclical task normally, right? Not every thirty days?”
“Right,” answered Wren. “Normally a cyclical task. But he might also run a Tracer to track down a data sponge.”
“What’s a data sponge?” Mattoso was glad Konami asked.
“Accumulation of unknown data somewhere unexpected.” Wren scratched his smooth chin. “Like finding a locked box somewhere, heavy like it’s full, and wondering what’s inside.”
“Should we just run another NetBug tracer?” asked Mattoso.
“No,” said Konami. “They might have seen that. That might be what doomed Muahe.”
“They?”
“You know, ‘they.’ The bad guys. They.”
“Then what do we do? How do we look into this data sponge without another tracer?” she asked.
“We don’t run a tracer, we find the tracer,” offered Wren.
“Find a tracer? What does that even mean?”
“Not ‘a’ tracer, ‘the’ tracer. Muahe’s tracer. I seriously doubt he wiped it without logging something.”
Mattoso and Konami must have still appeared confused. “Look, I’ll show you,” said Wren. His fingers glided through the air, bringing up unfamiliar menus and windows that were gone before Mattoso could tell what their purpose was. “Here’s a lists of all the dormant Tracers.”
The projection just looked like a jumble of random characters.
“How many?”
“A few dozen. I’m gonna have to remind my fellow Data techs about good data hygiene practices…”
“How do we narrow it down?” Konami inquired.
“Last activity,” said Mattoso. “Right, Wren? Can we sort them by last activity?”
“Sure. Just a sec… here we go.”
The jumbled characters rearranged next to a date column. She scanned down the column. “There! Cycle four, day 28. That’s the day Muahe was killed.”
They were all silent. Mattoso shuddered. “This tracer… it’s almost like a witness. So what was the last thing it did?”
“It sent out a message. To Muahe. This message.”
Konami read the screen out loud. “S-S-N-D-2-7-1-W storage full. What does that mean?”
“Solid-state-nanodrive 271W, a data storage drive, is full. Let me pull up that drive’s logs—”
“No!” cried Konami. “Remember, they killed Muahe for this. This might have been the last straw — finding the drive full, and starting to look into it.”
Wren sighed and threw his hands up. “So how the hell do we figure out what they were trying to protect?”
“Solid-state.” Mattoso knew that was just a type of data storage drive, old-fashioned but very robust, but it made her think of something. “It’s a physical drive. What if we just pull the module?”
Wren snorted. “If they notice a log req, they’ll definitely notice a drive pull.”
“So—”
“Wait,” interrupted the young Data tech. “I have an idea.”
Mattoso was the lookout. In the midst of the coolant piping, signal repeaters, and other gear of the data-level passageway, she felt like a little kid watching out for teachers while her classmates hid a stinkbomb.
“Still clear?” came Konami’s voice in her wearable.
“Nothing but the DustBots.”
Wren’s idea was a good one, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were breaking the rules. These solid-state data storage drives, acco
rding to Wren, had a physical back-door connection port. By faking a routine software update, this section of the network would be offline for a matter of minutes, and Wren could copy the contents of the drive to a portable storage unit without anyone noticing.
The idea of having to physically locate computer memory struck Mattoso as hopelessly quaint. “How much more time?” she asked nervously.
“Just a minute after we find the right fucking drive!” The more agitated Wren became, the higher his voice pitched. Mattoso had peered her head in the data maintenance crawlway and could sympathize — there must have been dozens of the little fist-size drives protruding from the overhead. Older tech – the newest drives were nearly microscopic, with massive storage capabilities – but rock solid in terms of reliability and longevity.
“Why couldn’t this damn space be forward?” complained Konami. Mattoso imagined that dragging oneself along on one’s back, searching for a single drive, was a lot easier in zero-gravity.
“Found it!”
A quarter-hour later they were back in the aft Constabulary. As Wren connected the portable storage unit to his wearable, after disconnecting from the network, she realized she was holding her breath. More throwback tech…She couldn’t recall if she’d ever had to physically plug one device into another.
“Huh.” Wren’s brow was furrowed as he looked at the projection. Mattoso couldn’t make out anything on the screen — just a jumble of characters and symbols.
Konami snorted. “Well?”
Wren shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Mattoso asked what it was, and he repeated that he didn’t know.
“You don’t know what the data is?”
“There’s no index. Nothing to tell us what kind of program or whatever. It could be anything.” The Data tech scratched his forehead. “I’m gonna have to go through and run it against every type of reader and executer I have.”
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