Deep Space Dragnet (Rich Weed Book 2)

by Berg,Alex P.

  Tarja and Ducic glanced at each other. While I couldn’t read the Tak, I could tell I’d struck a nerve with the former.

  “Okay, Rich,” said Tarja. “I’m interested, but if you’re right, this is going to be extremely hard to prove. And we can’t trust anyone on the inside.” She glanced at Ducic, but I didn’t think he picked up on the insinuation. “So what do you propose?”

  “Most importantly, we need to gather more evidence.” I smiled. “Thankfully, the place to do that is right next door.”

  19

  The airlock door blinked open, revealing Uche Jones standing with his hands on his hips at the intersection of the Samus Aran and the Agapetes. He frowned.

  “You don’t have to look quite so happy to see us,” I said. “What will your superiors think?”

  “Spare me the wit,” he said. “I’ve been up for almost twenty-five standard galactic hours, and I’m not in the mood for it.”

  Now that he mentioned it, the skin under his eyes did seem baggy. “That busy, huh?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m voluntarily taking part in a study that aims to test how sleep deprivation affects the mood of people who have to deal with aggravating twits.”

  “Sorry,” I said, holding my hands up for peace. “Just trying to do our jobs. You received our request?”

  He stifled a yawn. “Remind me.”

  Tarja stepped forward. “The droid and I need to check your engine compartment. Talk to one of your engineers—Watkins or that woman with the short hair—and get the logs to check for any anomalies in the various ship’s systems.”

  “And I was hoping to talk to the rest of the crew,” I said. “Ducic will accompany me. He understands physics better than I do, so he can ask the questions I’m too ignorant to.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” said Uche. “Ms. Olli, come with me. You remember how to get to the break room, right Mr. Weed? Wait there with Ducic and I’ll send over who I can. But don’t expect their dispositions to be any sunnier than mine. We’re all busting ass to get this ship off the ground on schedule.” He waved for Tarja and Carl to follow him.

  I called out to him as he walked away. “I still need those security logs, you know.”

  “It’s out of my hands,” he said without turning back. “Captain Rhees knows you need them. She’ll send them your way if and when she gets to it.”

  If and when. Rhees must’ve been the ringleader. She was the ship’s captain after all, but she’d have the knowledge, wherewithal, and ability to change the security logs to her pleasing. I wasn’t hopeful for getting anything of use out of those after she was done with them, but I had to try.

  Ducic followed me as I headed in the direction of the break room. “So, Rich, seeing as we have not yet discussed it, what is our plan of assault in regards to questioning of the Agapetes’ crew?”

  We’re not going to question the crew, I sent him via Brain. At least, that’s not our primary goal.

  “It’s not?” he said.

  Brain communication only from now on, I said. Private channel. Encrypted. We don’t want prying ears to hear.

  Why not? asked Ducic.

  Come on, Ducic. Stick with me, I said. We can’t trust any of them. Anything they tell us is liable to be lies. We’re here for evidence of the pirates’ presence.

  Such as?

  I passed the door to the break room and kept right on going, heading in the direction of the crew quarters, as based on the schematics I’d received.

  Anything, really, I said. We saw the items in the evidence locker aboard the Snowbell. Pulse pistols, clothing or scraps thereof, multitools, cutting flares, that sort of thing. Plus anything that indicates there were large numbers of people on the ship for an extended period of time. Don’t ask me what that could be. Portable carbon dioxide scrubbers or bedrolls for all I know.

  We hooked a right down a long hallway and passed an open maintenance hatch that spewed lukewarm air—probably a conduit to the engine compartment and the ship’s compact fusion reactor, which produced a little more heat than needed when parked. Ducic’s hooves echoed off the corridor floor, cutting through the omnipresent hum of the ship’s electronics and life support systems.

  We arrived at the first shared bedroom. Luckily, the door opened at my approach. I was worried they were programmed only to act for authorized crew members.

  Ducic paused as I stepped through the portal. Rich. I am conflicted about propriety of this action. We assured first mate Jones we would wait in the break room.

  I took a look around the cozy quarters. A pair of bunks took up half the far wall, neighbored by a set of thin doors I assumed contained the occupants’ garments. Another bed was built into the near wall and flanked by a desk. At my left, two plush chairs sat under a holoprojector, tilted slightly toward one another to provide an illusion of intimacy.

  Ducic, come on, I said. You agreed we needed to look into the theory I presented aboard the Samus. How are we supposed to find evidence of the pirates’ presence without a little snooping?

  I understand, said Ducic, refusing to enter the room. But we are aboard an InterSTELLA vessel and acting against the wishes of, if not necessarily express command of, a ship’s captain. I forgive you for your ignorance, but in space, a captain’s mandate is akin to rule of law.

  I was about to point out we weren’t in space, at least not technically, when Paige butted in on my private channel. Before you go saying anything you regret, Rich, remember we need Ducic. You remember Vijay’s statements about his clearance? He’s the only contact we have who can provide insider InterSTELLA information—unless you plan on relying on Vijay, that is.

  Paige knew I didn’t. Though I was mostly certain of Ducic’s ignorance and innocence, at this point, I didn’t trust Vijay further than I could throw him—on Cetie, not in outer space.

  Fine, I told Ducic. I won’t ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Just keep an eye out, will you?

  You are capable of such a feat? asked Ducic. It sounds painful.

  Just watch the hall, will you?

  I opened the nearest wardrobe door and took a peek inside. Nothing but petite-sized blue engineer’s uniforms, perhaps belonging to the woman with the pixie cut. A few different pairs of shoes, all designed for function rather than form, populated the bottom. Of parti-colored scarf burka do-rag thingamajigs, however, there were none. I popped open the adjacent wardrobe door, but it, too, held nothing more than uniforms and shoes.

  I soldiered on to the drawers beneath, where besides socks and undergarments—which I declined to touch—I found a number of personal items: snack bars, individually-wrapped chocolates and flavor crèmes, tubes of hand lotion guaranteed to prevent cracking from dry, reoxygenated air, cosmetics, a handheld floating Blaster Dodger™ sphere the likes of which I hadn’t seen in about forty years, and a vintage leather-bound digital reader. Apparently, one of the crew preferred to cozy up with a real screen rather than read their books via Brain. It’s what I didn’t find that disappointed me. No remnants of the pirate gang, so far as I could tell.

  I stood and tapped my chin with my index and middle finger. As I did so, I heard the distinctive trill of a Brain call.

  Who’s that? I asked Paige.

  Captain Rhees. I swear I heard a hint of guilt in her voice.

  Ignore her.

  The trill continued. That may not be such a good idea, Rich.

  I moved to the far bunk. The trill stopped only for the speakers in the ceiling to come alive with the Captain’s stern voice. “Weed. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh, hey, Captain.” I lifted the pillow from the bunk and looked underneath. Nothing. “Sorry. I was looking for the bathroom and got lost.”

  “And you thought you might find it under ensign Kass’s pillow?”

  “I’ve relieved myself in worse places,” I said.

  “Cut the shit. Did you think I wouldn’t notice you bumbling around my
ship like a Dirax caught in a solar flare? First mate Jones instructed you to go to the break room and wait there for the access to my crew that you requested.”

  I took a last quick look around the room. Could there be anything incriminating in the desk drawers? “Yes, I know. Again, apologies. If you could just point me toward the restroom…”

  Ducic bleated through the open doorway, but to his credit he didn’t enter. “Captain Rhees! This deception was not born of my free will. It is of Rich’s doing. He chose to infiltrate your ship’s underbelly in search of clues. Please do not report this indiscretion in logs for my performance review.”

  I rolled my eyes. What a pal…

  The door to the room closed shut with a puff, trapping me inside.

  Captain Rhees’ voice came back through the speakers. “Alright, Weed, I don’t know what you’re up to, and I don’t care. I told you I don’t tolerate nonsense of any sort on my ship, and I meant it. You and your team’s permissions to be on board the Agapetes have been summarily revoked. I’m sending Urrupain down there to escort you back to your craft. He’s not typically good-natured, but I’ve told him to be gentle, so if he shoots you for insubordination, that’s on you.”

  “What?” I said. “Come on. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wandered off, but I got bored. What happened to obeying your superiors? I thought you’d been ordered to assist us in our investigation.”

  “Why do you think you’re being escorted to your ship and not to our brig?”

  I took a deep breath and sighed. So much for my investigative efforts. I eyed the desk and its drawers. I was locked in the room, after all…

  Restraint won over as I sat down in one of the plush chairs. Rhees still had time to change her mind, after all.

  20

  To Captain Rhees’ credit, she might not have been quite as heartless and conniving as I’d envisioned her as I sat there in the Agapetes’ crew quarters. She’d come through with the security access logs, including door access, and she’d provided us with the records of all the ship’s internal measurements and readings, not just Alcubierre drive function and energy draws.

  That made me suspicious of my own theory, but just because she’d provided the information didn’t mean she hadn’t tampered with it first.

  I sat on the central bench seats of the Samus Aran’s main cabin, strapped in to avoid floating off during our intermittent periods of zero gravity. Ducic had retreated to his room to go over the various technical reports concerning the Agapetes’ engine and warp drive while Carl and I had concerned ourselves with the security logs. Tarja, wanting no part of either of those tasks, had confined herself to the cockpit, where she was in the process of navigating us hither and thither around the asteroid belt, scanning the empty space between floating hunks of rock for warp exit signatures. Apparently, she still liked her theory of pirates dropping out of warp among the planetoids to avoid detection—which wasn’t a bad idea, but it assumed the pirates had advanced tech at their disposal, and I’d made my position on that clear. Not that I’d found evidence to support my claim. Yet.

  I scrolled through the access logs via Brain, but I wasn’t sure how much I got out of them. Despite my prior stint as a Brain app designer—a very short stint, I might add—I was never good with code. It all seemed like gibberish. Ones and zeros. Hexadecimals. Double less than signs and close brackets. Backslashes and colons. Abbreviations. Lots and lots of abbreviations. And so many numbers. Over and over. Scrolling by, endlessly. Scrolling endlessly. Scrolling…

  “Rich?”

  I startled and blinked. My chin felt wet, as did a patch of my collar.

  Carl tilted his head. “Were you napping?”

  “What? Me?” I wiped away the drool with my forearm. “No way. Too focused on the task at hand. So…find anything?”

  Carl gave me a dubious look, but he was too polite to say anything. If anything, he probably wanted me to nap, but I’d mostly stopped partaking in those eighty years ago.

  “Yes and no,” said Carl. “I’ve found the snippets within the logs that track the opening of the cargo bay doors, as well as the airlock doors. The problem is, there are no anomalies. As far as I can tell, the Agapetes’ security wasn’t hacked.”

  “Which supports my theory that the crew opened the doors voluntarily,” I said.

  Carl shook his head. “That’s the rub, though. The logs show the doors opening, but they don’t have a trail showing where those commands originated. If the commands came via Brain, there should be a trail, and there isn’t.”

  “And that supports my theory that someone tampered with these logs before delivering them to us.” I snapped my fingers. “Dang, I’m good.”

  Carl pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Rich. That’s a careless solution. Heck, providing us with these logs alone is a poor idea for someone who might be trying to hide their involvement.”

  “So you don’t think anyone tampered with the access logs?”

  Carl shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. If I were doing it, I would’ve done it differently, assuming I wasn’t rushed. The way it’s presented, the logs make it seem as if the doors just…opened.”

  “By the hand of God?” I said.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. There’s precious little about this case that makes any real sense.”

  Rich?

  Yes, Paige? I thought.

  I got back another of our queries from the Cetie servenets.

  I sat up. On Tarja?

  No, the more recent one you had me send. To gather whatever information we could on the pirate attacks.

  Oh. I slouched back into the seat. It feels as if I just instructed you to send that one.

  You did, more or less, said Paige. The search took almost no time at all. If not for transit lag, we would’ve had the results instantly.

  That sounds ominous.

  You’re not as dumb as you look, Paige said. The query brought up nothing. No mention of recent InterSTELLA pirate attacks. Certainly nothing public.

  I looked at Carl.

  He’d been following along. “This isn’t surprising. Vijay said the matter had been retained internally. If you hope to find anything, you’ll need to access InterSTELLA’s private servenets.”

  And you know who we need for that, said Paige.

  The door at the far side of the room puffed open, and Ducic trotted out.

  “Speak of the devil,” I muttered under my breath. Then, in a louder voice, “Ducic! You’re looking chipper. Feeling any better?”

  He waved with his stunted arm and came over. “Marginally. Perhaps this loss and gain of apparent gravity due to our intermittent acceleration and deceleration is causing my body to undergo a ‘jury by incineration,’ as you would say. I no longer feel at brink of death. My demise is merely at arm’s length.”

  Given the length of his arms, I wasn’t sure how much of an endorsement that was. “Well, I…guess that’s good. The improvement, anyway.”

  “Hopefully your improved disposition has made it easier for you to focus on your work,” said Carl.

  Ducic nodded. “You are curious about my delving into the engine and drive reports. I am pleased to admit I have made progress, though not as much as I would under conditions of constant gravitation.” His ears flattened slightly. “You may, however, be displeased with my results.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you weren’t able to find any anomalous readings.”

  “On the contrary,” said Ducic. “I detected said anomalies, but I am unable to provide a confirmation of your theories.”

  “Go on.”

  “I isolated energy flux parameters for Alcubierre drive function during the pirate attack and found significant fluctuations in engine’s power draw. Severe spikes and dips in consumption. Said fluctuations could be caused by a number of factors. One could be disposal of cargo into warp bubble, as you theorized. Similar readings would be caused by atomization of ma
ss on exterior of bubble, but probability of this occurring is statistically nil, especially in well-travelled Sol-Tau Ceti corridor. However—I cannot rule out what sort of fluctuations would be caused to Alcubierre drive’s energy draw if external bubble were to interact, or merge, with the Agapetes’ bubble.”

  “I’m not sure what the problem is,” I said. “It sounds like you’re saying my theory has legs.”

  “I am not remarking on the ambulatory nature of your theory,” said Ducic. “I am merely stating what you proposed may be feasible, although nothing about data would specifically support your assumption. Another negative point I can convey is related to overall energy draw of drive throughout warp thrust. As I can tell, the draw is in line with traditional parameters that would be expected from a vessel of this size. Perhaps a little high—though this may be due to an inefficiency in drive itself or a fault in my calculations. I am, after all, an expert in pseudogravitation. But data indicates warp bubble was not expanded sufficiently to accommodate for storage of cargo external to ship.”

  “So perhaps the pirates didn’t steal the cargo for the cargo’s sake,” I said. “I’ve already accounted for that possibility.”

  And that possibility, even more so than the other one, paints InterSTELLA in a light that’s shady as all get out, said Paige to me. By the way, don’t forget to ask Ducic about running a search on InterSTELLA’s internal servenets.

  I’ll get there.

  The ship lurched and whatever sense of gravity we’d had abandoned us. Even with the practice I’d received, I felt my heart rise into my throat. Ducic gripped the table for support, and his eyes widened.

  I gave my partner a nod. “Carl, can you head to the cockpit to see how long Tarja plans on keeping this up?”

  “You’re sending me into the lion’s den?”