Anxiety bubbled up inside her. If they could beat the blood test, then who could she trust? Who could anyone trust?
CHAPTER 71
Freefall made recovery much easier than it would be otherwise. Madani frowned but didn’t object when, the day after surgery for his wounds, Konami insisted on attending the department head meeting. In a whisper, Mattoso filled him in on what he missed – the shutdown worked, so there was trickle power to vital systems, while the engineering hatches were heavily welded shut. There had been three scouting teams sent out, and all three were forced to flee under fire, with one death.
Konami shook his head. We have a traitor. It was the only explanation for so much being thwarted so quickly and substantially. They shut up when the crowded conference room’s hatch slid open. But it wasn’t the captain and mayor — it was an agitated trio of Aoteans. He tried to put names to faces at the same time that the CO addressed them.
“Make it quick.”
They were struck dumb for a moment. Captain seems to have that effect.
“We’re all, uh, parents — the three of us. And more. We’ve gotten —we’ve been talking to the other parents, and most of us agree that we should have the option to take Bigwig —the traitor, Ngayabo, up on her offer. We don’t want to risk the lives of our children for anything, and if that means they have to go back home to Earth, that’s okay with us.”
The speaker, Lind, seemed to be relieved to be finished with his speech.
“That could be a death sentence,” said Konami.
“What?” Lind balled his hands into fists. “Is that a threat?”
“No, not a threat.”
“He’s right,” added Madani. “We don’t know if those are ships or mockups. Even if they’re real ships we don’t know if they can make the journey to Earth. We already know they killed several Aoteans, and they were poisoning every one of us.”
“It wasn’t poison on its own.”
“Does that really make you feel better, knowing that they were giving your children drugs without you knowing? We’re dealing with fanatics, and fanatics will justify anything, if they think it helps their goals. Even murdering children.”
The three parents were silent.
“I understand your concerns,” said Mayor Akunle, suddenly next to Lind. The mayor put his arm on the man’s shoulder. “We’re all worried about the children. But what’s most important is a united front. Our enemies are killers — they’ve already proven that. They’ll strike at any division or gap we give them.”
“But what about our children?”
This time it was the captain who answered. “Your children are safest here. In addition to the murdered crew, the fact that the killers spiked the water system indiscriminately shows that they care little for our lives, and even our children’s lives. The only way we can guarantee their safety is to regain control of the ship.”
After a moment, the interlopers departed silently.
One of the Bigwigs, Wilson Paramis, chimed in. “They’re going to keep talking. Perhaps it would best—”
“It would be best to move onto actual urgent matters,” interrupted the captain.
The side conversations stopped — no one had ever seen a Bigwig interrupted, apparently.
The captain continued smoothly, ignoring the mouths agape. “Chief Inspector, I’m glad to see you’ve recovered. Well done in Engineering. Recommendations?”
Konami met her eyes intensely, saying nothing more than they were still working out a plan. Take the hint, Captain, don’t dig!
She returned his glare and, after a moment, nodded. “Very well.” He felt relieved. In a very hurried meeting before Konami and his team assaulted Engineering, he had met with the captain, mayor, and the two Bigwigs, Paramis and Maltin. The search for whoever leaked the plan to Papka would start with them. But with the captain’s apparent understanding of his desire to keep his plans under wraps, his suspicion leaned toward the other three.
Which shouldn’t make him feel better, he realized. Even if it wasn’t the captain, then one of the other three most senior personnel still “loyal” to Aotea was a traitor. He started to thumb an encrypted message to Mattoso.
The mayor gave Konami his characteristic toothy smile and ushered him into his tiny office.
The chief inspector tried to get comfortable, leaning against what would, in normal ship’s gravity, be the ceiling. “Back on Earth, you were army, right?”
Akunle laughed, a booming, musical sound, pointing out that that was 40 years ago.
Konami and Harry had bonded shortly after the chief inspector’s arrival onboard, over their shared experiences in West Africa.
Akunle’s smile was gone, and he was uncharacteristically terse. He had risen to Major in the West African Guard.
Konami thought he knew why the mayor was reticent to discuss it – military experience wasn’t exactly a plus for the Society. He didn’t like prodding, but he continued. “Did you see any action?”
Akunle stared back. “Religious extremists. Accra and Abidjan. This was a long, long time ago.”
The chief inspector showed him his projection. “I want to try something. We need some forward visibility — eyes and ears outside of the Fortress.” He leaned forward. “I wanna take the Rings, starting with Central.”
Akunle’s eyes went wide.
“They’re natural choke points. Should be easy to hold. The only ways between the Cans, and aft and forward. And they have a good vantage point for the surface.”
“Why me, Cy?”
“We’ve been looking into the traitors’ backgrounds, the ones we’ve identified so far. Very few from Earth, as we all know. But that means almost zero military experience. Problem is, we don’t have much military experience either — law enforcement is a lot different than war fighting. It turns out that your ten years is just about the best we’ve got.”
Meeting Konami’s eyes, Akunle nodded.
Konami asked about the best approach to minimize casualties. After a moment, Harry deftly manipulated a projection on his wall, pulling up a line diagram of the route to the Central Ring. As he talked battle tactics like it had been months rather than decades since his last battle, Konami frowned a little, realizing the consequences of his deception. One in three chance…he realized. Checking the tapes with Wren after the department head meeting, Konami and Mattoso had learned that the only persons present during their strategy discussions for each one of the recent botched scouting missions were the captain, mayor, and the two remaining Bigwigs. There was a one in three chance he might be confronting Akunle tomorrow.
Confronting… he couldn’t help but think of Gregorian. In his head, the word sounded a lot less ominous than it should.
CHAPTER 72
At Mattoso’s greeting, Wilson Paramis looked up from his alcove — since the move to the Fortress, there was no room for anyone aside from the captain and mayor to have a private work space. The Bigwig smiled and greeted her warmly.
Mattoso sidled in close, nervous. She didn’t have to fake the nerves, she realized — they came entirely naturally. Konami had called his plan “the Tyrion Lannister gambit,” but she had no idea what that meant. Probably another Earth joke. “I’m worried,” she said to Paramis, her voice low. “The Chief Inspector has been so secretive lately. Even more so than normal.”
He nodded sagely.
“He won’t let anyone in on his plans, except for the next step. I mean, later today he’s hitting Forward Supply 4 with a big team. But why? He won’t tell us what he’s after… I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the mission, but the only people he told about it were me and the captain. What could he be after?”
Paramis’s eyes narrowed. “And why are you telling me this, Lieutenant?”
Mattoso looked him dead in the eyes. “When I was made acting chief inspector, you told me that there might come a time when Aoteans would have to choose the right thing to do. And you told me that you trusted me. Well now I thin
k it might be that time. And I’m trusting you.” She hoped it didn’t sound as ridiculous as she felt.
He broke out in a sudden grin. “Well you’ve made the right choice, and I can see that we have too. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Beatriz, but I can tell you that with you on the right side, our chances of success are much higher.”
Does he know? How could he? Mattoso thought she shouldn’t put anything beyond the traitors — they couldn’t be more than five or ten percent of the crew, and yet they were already so many steps ahead.
This better work, Cy… If it blew up in their faces, there might be no option left but to take Ngayabo up on her questionable ride back to Earth.
CHAPTER 73
The Bigwig Hamad Maltin was huddled, almost hovering, over a desk in the corner of one of the Fortress workspaces. Is he asleep?
Konami pulled his way to the Bigwig’s corner, realizing that he was listening to music, tapped him on his shoulder. This close, he heard orchestral Earth music — barock, is it? Barack?
“Yes?” said Maltin, pausing the music. Baroque! That’s it.
Konami huddled close, aware that the other Aoteans in the workspace were giving them surreptitious glances. “It’s about food,” he said in a low voice. “I’m concerned about our stocks.”
“Don’t we have enough dry rations for years?”
Konami looked around him slyly, lowering his voice further. “We might have evidence of tampering with ration seals.”
Maltin’s eyebrows arched. “Surely not!”
Konami shook his head. “We don’t know yet — it might just be a bad batch. As quiet as we can, we’re testing them. But we need a backup plan.”
“What do you suggest?”
“The Sausage Factory.”
“But that could be contaminated as well.”
“Possibly. But our scouts tell us that at least some of the traitors are using it, so we don’t think so. Further, the chemists tell me that cybac can be scrubbed — any contaminants can be filtered out, unlike the dry rations.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Me neither.” Konami hoped like hell that it was at least plausible — nothing in Maltin’s bio had indicated specific expertise in food chemistry, but he assumed that his agricultural engineering background lent him more knowledge on the subject than Konami. “So we’re planning to hit Food Production, soon — a fast hit.”
“But what’s the point? You could only carry a few days’ worth of cybac.”
“Weeks, they tell me, with the collapsible smart-sacks. If it turns out we need it, we’ll be glad we did. It’ll give us time to come up with a long-term solution.”
Maltin still looked skeptical. “So how can I help?” Konami explained they needed more information about the layout, especially near the adjoining Garden. He projected the blueprints, and they started to plan a mission that would never be executed.
CHAPTER 74
Mattoso halted the advance with a hand signal. Constables Lo and Shofstahl stopped on a dime in the passageway behind her. The fourth member of the squad, MedTech Taki, bumped into the two constables. Captain Horovitz had trusted Konami’s cryptic insistence on three four-person squads for the unexplained mission, but she had ordered that a MedTech join for each team, and Mattoso had the bad luck of leading the squad that drew the clumsy Second, Taki.
She looked back down at the projection on her hand. According to the specs, Forward Supply 4 was just beyond the next junction, before a dead end. With no other way to approach, she inched forward, pulling hand-over-hand along the bulkhead. No guards at the junction…
They could turn back now — the goal was only reconnaissance, to see if Ngayabo’s forces had any active defense in the Supply space, and they’d pull back once this was confirmed. At the same time, Konami and Loesser would each be leading their own reconnaissance teams. One of them would find resistance, the chief inspector was positive.
No, best to make sure, she decided. She whispered into her wearable that they’d have to enter the huge storage space. She brushed aside worries about a bomb, primarily because the presence of a bomb would confirm the real reason for this mission. She assigned to Constables, Shofstahl and Lo, to stay back with covering fire, and held back Taki, ordering that they would withdraw at any sign of resistance.
She pulled across the bulkhead to the wide, double cargo hatch, trying not to move as nervously as she felt. Automatic hatch operators had been secured ever since the machinery virus, so she opened the maintenance access next to the hatch to get to the manual wheel operator.
Involuntarily cringing as she started to spin the wheel operator, she braced herself for an explosion. But it didn’t come. The wheel spun on, and the double hatches slowly pulled away from each other, revealing nothing but darkness in the storage space beyond.
A whisper in her earpiece – Taki heard a noise from a side passage.
She turned the wheel faster. Goddamn it, why’s it gotta be so slow? In freefall it was awfully hard to get the leverage necessary to spin the wheel as fast as she wanted to.
“Someone’s coming.”
Shit. Leave now, and they wouldn’t be able to confirm whether or not this space was being guarded. “Pull back to the Fortress Observation Point. I’ll be joining shortly.”
She set her feet against the “ceiling,” spinning the heavy wheel for all she was worth. A noise distracted her — a far-off gunshot.
“Report,” she whispered. “Report!”
More gunshots. “Oh my god!” It was Taki, not whispering. “They’re dead. They’re dead!”
“Calm down, Second. What happened?”
“Oh my god, oh my — okay, calm down. They cut us off, down the other way too. I’m pulling back and shooting. I don’t see anyone. Shofstahl and Lo are dead.”
“You’re coming back to me?”
“Yeah — there’s no other way! Oh my god, I see them!” More shots rang out. “I’m returning fire!”
Shit shit shit... where to go? Only one way. She got back to the wheel, setting her shoulders and spinning as fast as she could.
She peeked around the maintenance access hatch — Taki fairly hurtled around the corner, bumping into bulkheads and pushing off with her feet. The double-doors, separating, looked just wide enough at this point to admit Mattoso and Taki’s slim bodies.
“Come on!” she shouted, and the Second turned with a relieved glance. Just as she reached the maintenance hatch, a pair of attackers revealed themselves, shooting with mean-looking carbines.
Oh shit, where’d they get those? “Quickly!” she urged Taki, using the open maintenance hatch as a shield. “Wait, give us covering fire, for just a minute.”
While Taki fired blindly around the temporary shield, Mattoso fished out a leverbar from the maintenance access tool-pocket. On the advice of Acting Engineer Zafy, she had brought a mini-cutter. She had thought it would be much too small to cut through the heavy cargo doors, and she was right. But here it would have a use. She briefly thought of cutting off the hatch operator wheel, but that would take too long. So she threaded the leverbar through the wheel, at an angle, wedging it against the walls of the little access opening. Lowering the setting of the cutter, she carefully turned it on and edged the contact points between the bar and the wheel — effectively welding them together, preventing the wheel from turning.
After testing her handiwork, she peeked around the access-hatch-slash-temporary-shield: there were two attackers at the junction, peeking around the corner and firing in between Taki’s response shots. The way they were shouting, more were coming.
“It’s ready,” she ordered Taki. “You go first!”
The slim Second, probably less than fifty kilos, easily slipped through the gap. Mattoso kept firing, reloading at a pause.
“Taki,” she whispered. “You still hear me?”
“Yeah!” came the response in her earpiece.
“Open the interior maintenance hatch and
stand by the operator wheel. Soon as I’m through, wing it shut!” She was almost certain that wedging the outer wheel shouldn’t affect the operation of the inner wheel. And if I’m wrong, we’re proper fucked.
“Got it!”
Mattoso emptied one more clip, fingering her pocket at the same time — only three more clips left. Then she dove for the gap. The fit was much closer than for Taki — it pinched her chest uncomfortably, and she had to rotate her hips and shimmy through, but she made it. And she was relieved to see it closing behind her — though much more slowly than she would have liked.
The shouting of their attackers got closer, and Mattoso quickly reloaded her gun, backing into the shadows of the dark supply space.
An arm thrust through and she fired without thinking — there was a cry of pain, and it pulled back. “Faster, Taki!”
“I’m trying!”
Seconds felt like minutes, but finally the double-doors came together. In total darkness, Mattoso set her wearable setting to make some light. Taki started to join her in among the stacks of supplies, but Mattoso stopped her. “Stay by the operator wheel — if it starts to open, shut it! I’m gonna look for a way out.”
Exploring a dark room in freefall was a lot tougher than she thought — with one hand holding her wearable out for light, she only had one to move with — and half the things she grabbed for purchase turned out to be poorly secured, and came free as soon as she grasped them.
“I hear something — through the door!” shouted Taki.
“What is it? Does it sound like weld cutting?”
“I don’t know, maybe? It’s getting louder!”
Shit! She looked down at a projection, querying the blueprints. Exits for Forward Supply Space 4 only turned up the one. Think damn it! Sweat dripped and floated onto the wearable, distorting the projection. Damn trickle power... most ventilation fans were turned off.
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