by Amy Spahn
* * *
Viktor watched in horror as the other ship exploded, its contents bursting and destroying the outer hull. He could do nothing but stare helplessly through the port as the ship foundered and dragged its helpless victims to an untimely death. He shuddered with the knowledge that this was murder—his own ship had been the cause of their …
“What are you reading?”
Why did people only intrude upon the good parts of this book? So much of it was completely interruptible. Why did nobody ever want to talk to him during those sections? This time Viktor didn’t bother to hide his annoyance as he looked up and saw not Areva, but Okoro. “Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues.”
“Haven’t read it. I just wanted to let you know we’re approaching the number twelve Saturn station. Your captain thought you might want to be on the bridge for that.”
Viktor set the tablet down on his bookshelf and stood. “You spoke to him? It seemed you avoided the entire crew during this trip.”
“Not on purpose,” Okoro said—an obvious lie. “I didn’t want to get in the way while they repaired that panel that blew out yesterday. Plus, I was working. I had to get the warrant to search the station and dismantle their communication relay to look for wiretaps, so I was glued to my computer for the whole trip. It took a while to come through. Short-staffed, you know.”
“For all the complaining you do about the UELE’s lack of resources, you are surprisingly reluctant to use those at your disposal,” Viktor said.
Okoro’s eyes narrowed. “They’re legitimate complaints. It seems like every year they make up new rules that limit what we can do. You know how frustrating it is to try to track an organization as decentralized as the Uprising with all these hoops we have to jump through? And then they keep cutting our budgets, eliminating the people we have available, shrinking the size of the space fleet. What are we supposed to do if a bigger threat comes along, huh?”
Okoro’s voice rose in pitch as he spoke, and Viktor suspected he’d touched a nerve. Since he didn’t want to debate the merits and drawbacks of limited police power, he tried to redirect the conversation back to his point. “If that is how you feel, you should utilize the Endurance and its crew, not ignore us.”
“I am utilizing you. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“And yet you were annoyed when I consulted with the rest of the crew about the old case files, you resisted taking the ship on this mission, and you have not given any of the crew members, besides myself, a task to help further your goals.”
Okoro tried to laugh it off. “Ivanokoff, come on. It’s just the Endurance.”
“They will surprise you if you give them the opportunity.”
“Why do you keep defending them?”
“I am not defending them.”
“Sure you are.” Okoro paused as another member of the crew walked by. He waited for the other man to round the corner before continuing. “Look, if you don’t want the transfer, you can just say so.”
“I did not say that.”
“Good. If you did, I’d think you were crazy. No offense.” Okoro clapped Viktor on the shoulder. “I’ll think about what you’ve said if you think about what I’ve said. Now come on. We need to get up to the bridge. I asked your captain to avoid sending any messages to the station before we talk to the scientists there. If they’re involved in this, I don’t want them getting their stories together before we question them.”
* * *
Viktor stood to one side of the command chair as the research station grew larger in the ship’s ports. It took a few seconds for one of the scientists to answer their page. “Hello?” a nervous voice asked over the ship’s speakers.
“This is Lieutenant Okoro from United Earth Law Enforcement,” said Okoro. “We’d like to dock at your station for a little while so we can ask you some questions.”
“About what?”
“Nothing about your research. We have reason to believe that the Uprising may have tampered with some of your equipment.”
“Tampering?” The man’s voice went up an octave. “How could they do that? When could they do that? Is it dangerous?”
“We don’t think there’s any danger,” Okoro assured him, “but it could interfere with your work. And it’s very important to our current investigation that we have a chance to look around. Will you let us dock?”
The scientist apparently covered his speaker, because muffled sounds of conversation came from the background. A moment later, he took his hand away and said, “Yes, that’s fine. There’s only one docking port, and our supply ship is making a run to Earth, so it’s free. You can use it. I’ll send you our network access code so you can sync up with it and guide your ship in automatically.”
“Thank you.”
The communication channel closed. Captain Withers turned to Chris, who manned the scanners station. “Mr. Fish, transmit the last five minutes of audio to Dispatch. It’ll take a few hours to get there, but I’d like them to know we had a warm welcome.”
“I wouldn’t call that warm,” Chris muttered. Nobody answered.
“Here’s the plan,” Okoro said. “Ivanokoff and I will speak to the scientists individually while the tech team inspects the communications relay. Captain Withers …” Okoro glanced at Viktor before continuing. “… I’d like you to have a team search the entire station. Hopefully one of us will find something to show why Cassius sent his message here and what the message said.”
Withers looked as surprised as Viktor felt that he was being included in the investigation. “Sure,” he said, “we can do that. Lieutenant Praphasat …”
Areva popped out from under one of the bridge’s work stations. “Yes, sir?”
“Assign some people to the job.”
“Yes, sir.”
Areva darted through the hatch into the corridor. Okoro and Viktor followed, then headed to the airlock so they would be ready to board the station once they docked. Viktor wondered if Okoro had taken his advice to heart, or if he was just short-staffed enough that he had to utilize the Endurance people. Whatever the case, the crew would enjoy doing something useful. Already Viktor could feel the energy level increasing on the bridge. Hopefully that meant things would turn out well.
* * *
The head scientist for the Breakthrough Technologies team did not look at all happy about having his station turned upside-down by law enforcement, particularly after they explained the Uprising connection to him. “Look, we’ve only been here for a week or so,” he said. His hands fluttered as he spoke, punctuating every syllable in the air. “Even if you find something, it was probably here before that. We just rent the space from the Lunar University; they do all the maintenance. We’re only supposed to be here for another week, anyway.” He settled into a chair on the other side of the coffee table from the two UELE officers. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Not right now, thank you, Mr. Mehra,” said Okoro.
“Doctor, if you please. I did earn the title.”
“Sorry. Dr. Mehra, has anything unusual happened since your team came aboard the station?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
Viktor and Okoro shared a look. Neither expected to stumble upon a promising answer so quickly. Near the opposite wall of the office, Areva and the big guy from O&I—both here on bodyguard duty—shifted position. Maybe this wouldn’t take as long as they thought. “What was it?” Okoro asked.
“One of the sinks in the bathroom doesn’t work. There are only three of us here, so it’s not a huge problem, but it is a minor annoyance.”
Viktor shook his head. “That is not what we meant. Have there been any unexplained signals, unexpected visitors, ships that passed too closely?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Suspicious behavior by anyone on the station?”
“Are you suggesting a member of my team is involved with the Uprising? That’s preposterous.”
“Why?”
“I’v
e worked with these two other doctors for over ten years. No, if it was one of them, I would know.”
“We understand that,” Okoro said. “Just for the sake of argument, though, could one of them relay a message without your knowledge? Do you monitor your communications?”
“Of course. We tied our computer systems directly into the station’s relay network. Any time a communication is received, someone checks it immediately.”
“Were there any messages you weren’t expecting, either incoming or outgoing?”
“Besides yours?” The scientist laughed. “No, I don’t think so. All of our communications have been official business from the company, random marketing spam, or personal messages for members of the team.”
“Do you monitor the personal messages?”
“You mean spy on my coworkers? No.” Dr. Mehra waved a hand and rolled his eyes. “That’s for you people to do.”
“We don’t do that, sir,” said Okoro. “And even if we did, it would only be for your own safety.”
“Of course it would,” said Mehra. He shook his head. “But no, I don’t check on their personal messages. Breakthrough Technologies does, though. Everything we receive here is automatically copied to them. We send out a mass report twice a day. So you see, even if something suspicious was sent or received by a member of my team, our company would know about it shortly afterward. They would report it, and you’d know about it already. Check with the company if you don’t believe me.” Satisfied with his answer, Dr. Mehra leaned back in his chair.
Viktor sat up straighter. “These copies, they are sent automatically?”
Mehra looked confused. “Yes.”
“Is it possible that a second copy was sent elsewhere?”
“You mean at the same time?” The scientist considered the question. “I suppose that’s possible. We wouldn’t detect an additional transmission if it was simultaneous. But someone would have had to access our computer system to program the additional destination. How could they do that without breaking into the station?”
“They could have done it before you left Earth,” said Okoro.
“We’re from Mars.”
“Sorry, before you left Mars. With so many people involved in a research project like this, I’m sure there were ample opportunities for someone to sneak in and rewrite the program.”
“We will have to wait for the tech team to confirm it,” said Viktor, “but it is likely someone has been using your computers as a relay station for Uprising communications since you arrived.”
“But, but I already told you that the company receives copies of every communication! How would they not notice this?”
Okoro glanced at Viktor and waited for him to respond. Viktor gestured to Dr. Mehra’s computer, sitting on his desk a few feet away. “You mentioned marketing spam?”
* * *
The Endurance senior officers stood around the desk in Captain Withers’s office, watching the end of a five-minute “documentary” about some get-rich-quick scheme involving a totally legitimate terraforming project on Pluto. Viktor observed their reactions, having screened the video himself several times already. Okoro was still on the research station with the tech team, which left Viktor to fill the rest of the crew in on the plan.
The video image panned across a digital rendering of the supposed final result of the project as the narrator said, “Contact us today about sending in your investment! Transform both your finances, and our solar system!” Contact information popped up on the screen, the image faded out, and the film ended.
Matthias looked at Viktor. “Why are you showing us this? Ivanokoff, did you get scammed?”
Maureen cocked her head. “It’s a scam?”
“Clearly!” Chris said. “People will believe anything these days. There’s no good reason to try terraforming Pluto. It’s a dead hunk of ice. For crying out loud, the Martian project isn’t even finished yet, and the Venus one is only in its planning stages!” He pointed at the screen, then at Viktor. “If you believed this, sir, you’re a lot dumber than I thought.”
Viktor sighed. “No one believed the film.”
“I did,” Maureen said in a small voice.
“No one on the investigation team,” Viktor amended. “This was received by the Saturn station’s communication relay the day after Adwin Soun’s murder, at the exact time we expected to see Cassius’s message arrive from Earth.” When no one reacted, he said, “It appears to be junk mail.”
“It IS junk mail,” said Chris. “It’s about a project too far away to visit, from a company you’ve never heard of, doing something with results you wouldn’t see for centuries, which isn’t even possible in the first place.”
“And they want your money,” Matthias said.
“Yeah, and that.”
“Incorrect.” Viktor tapped the computer screen to reset the video to an earlier point. “Watch closely.”
He hit play, and a quick stream of images flashed by, none lasting more than half a second: trees, rivers, mountains, and so on. The narrator gleefully announced, “The results are positive!”
Viktor stopped the video again. “Do you see?”
“Bad editing?” asked Matthias.
“I liked the duck,” said Maureen.
“I thought I saw the illumasonburg symbol,” said Chris.
Captain Withers, who had been silent until now, said, “Someone edited a quick shot of something into the video. Couldn’t catch what it was, though.”
Viktor nodded. “It was this.” He pulled up the time code of 3:14 and froze the playback.
The image showed a list of names on a sheet of paper. The names themselves were gibberish, but the first one was crossed off. “It is only on the screen for a tenth of a second, but that is enough time to make the point.”
“‘The results are positive.’ The hit was successful,” Withers said.
“Yes. The message is short, but they used the rest of the video to mask it from the scientists on the station, as well as their company. Okoro and I questioned each of the scientists, and none of them appear to be involved. They did not even know they were being used.”
“I agree,” said Withers. “None of our teams found anything suspicious elsewhere on the station.”
“Then who sent the message from here to the Uprising?” Chris asked.
“More importantly, where did they send it?” Withers said.
Okoro appeared in the hatch between the bridge and Captain Withers’s office. “I think I can answer that.” He stepped into the room. “By the way, I bumped into your janitor on the middle deck. I think he needs a new vacuum.”
Captain Withers shook his head. “You’re welcome to try telling him so.”
Chris snickered. “I’d love to see that.” He nudged the captain. “I wish I’d thought to record it when you tried …” The captain flashed him a disapproving look. He stopped talking.
Okoro waited for a moment, but nobody explained the conversation to him. “Anyway,” he said, “I just finished speaking with the tech team. The communications relay itself was fine, but the program that automatically copied everything to their home office was …”
“Ooh! I bet I know!” Matthias stuck his hand in the air. “It was rewritten to send an additional copy to the Uprising!”
“Yes.” Okoro looked a bit miffed at having his thunder stolen, but surprisingly he didn’t call Matthias out on it. “The modifications happened over three weeks ago, before the scientists had even left Mars. I let Dispatch know, but I doubt we can catch whoever did it after so much time.”
“Fortunately, we do not need to catch them,” Viktor said, “as long as we can trace where they sent the copy of the message.”
Okoro smiled and held up a data drive. “And fortunately, we can.” He stuck the drive into Captain Withers’s computer and pulled up a transmission log. “Enceladus.”
Everyone around the desk leaned in. “Saturn’s fourteenth moon?” asked Chris.
; “Does anyone actually live there?” asked Maureen.
“Yes, and yes,” Okoro said. “Enceladus has a small population, all living in underground domes. About 100,000 people during the last census.”
“I tend to forget about everybody on the smaller moons except during election years,” Chris said. “It takes forever for their votes to come in.”
“The point is,” said Withers, “we probably traced the transmission to a particular area of the moon. So we have a much smaller search grid than before.”
“Correct.” Okoro nodded. “We can’t determine exactly where the receiver is located, but we’ve narrowed it down to an outer region of one of the domed cities. There’s a good chance the Uprising has a post there, where Killian Yang waited to receive Cassius’s message. With a population this small, it’s hard to hide your activities, so someone must have seen him in the area. We’ll need to canvass door to door. I’ve also requested all records of spaceflights leaving the moon, so we’ll know if Yang has gone elsewhere.”
Viktor stared down at the image of Enceladus rotating on the screen. “I doubt he would leave. I think he is waiting for us to find him.”
Everyone in the room looked at him. “What do you mean?” Okoro asked.
“We followed a clear trail of breadcrumbs—the list, the false name, the pocket computer, and now the ability to trace the message from its origin all the way to its destination. We may have been lured here.”
“What for?”
“You and I are both on the list. The next two names, to be exact. Perhaps Mr. Yang wanted to take his revenge more personally.”
“That …” Okoro looked around the room. “That’s ridiculous. How could he know Dispatch would assign us to the case?”
“You still work in the organized crime division, and you are on the list. It is obvious that Dispatch would include you in the investigation, if only for your knowledge of previous Uprising cases. And the Endurance’s presence at Earth has been on every news source for the past month. It would make sense for you to ask me to consult, since I was in the area and also on the list.”