by Jason LaPier
They worked together for about thirty more minutes getting the computations right. When they were done, they had a narrow, wire-frame cone sticking out of the side of the planet Barnard-4, projecting outward into space. Any ship that passed through the cone had a possible line of sight to the receiver at Gretel, block 23-D. After that, they imported the space-object positional data from the ModPol traffic logs and after another twenty minutes they had little dots of varying sizes all over their model version of the Barnard System.
“You’re in luck,” Halsey said. “Looks like only three vessels fit into the cone, given the rotation of the planet and the logged positions just before the time of the incident.”
Runstom was scribbling notes furiously, knowing he would need all this information as evidence if he were going to convince his superiors that something fishy was going on with this case. “Okay. What are the three ships?”
Halsey punched up the cross-references of the positions and the ship data. “Let’s see. We’ve got a mail drone. An asteroid mining vessel. And … a cruise ship.”
“Okay, we’re looking for someone with a beam-based transmitter,” Runstom said, thinking out loud. “It’d have to be mounted to the outside of a ship, unless there were another place it could be stored, where it might have a way to send a transmission out of a port or something.”
“Stan, you ever think about what it’s like on one of those cruise ships? Now that’s some serious slacking.”
“George, come on.”
“Okay, sheesh.” Halsey leaned back to stare at the ceiling and scratch through the curls of his hair. “The mail drone seems a little far-fetched. Those things are too small to mount anything on, and they have zero cargo space. Unless you yank out the mail memory modules.”
“Yeah, well – that’d give you about half a meter square,” Runstom said. “And even then, there’s no passenger room in a mail drone. They just aren’t outfitted for people. No life support or anything. So it’d have to be all pre-programmed.”
“Or controlled remotely. But then, what would be the point?”
“Not to mention, the delivery companies keep track of those drones pretty closely.”
“Yeah, okay. So no room on the mail drone, unless it’s tampered with, which is highly unlikely, and then it’s questionable if you would even have enough room for a transmitter.” Halsey made a mark on the report. “So the mining vessel. According to the data, it’s a standard Galacaroid Maximiner. Crew of eight. Four front-mounted mining lasers, one front-mounted explosives launcher, and one small top-mounted defense turret with an EMP gun in it. Plenty of cargo space, of course, but inaccessible to the crew when in space. A handful of pusherbots do all the heavy lifting in the cargo bay during mining operations.”
“Hmm. Which one is that in the model?” Runstom asked.
“This one here. Farthest out.”
“So it’d need a pretty strong transmitter.”
“Yep.” Halsey punched up some quick calculations. “About 78 megasparks to send a signal that distance and maintain integrity. Plus, this one was only in the cone for a couple of hours, about five days before the incident.”
“So it’s possible,” Runstom said, pausing thoughtfully. “Someone would have to either mount a large transmitter in the cargo bay or yank out the mining lasers and make room for it on the front. Do we have log data of that ship in the system for any time after that?”
“Of course.” Halsey fiddled around for a few minutes, importing some of the traffic log data into the model. “Okay, here we go,” he said eventually and slapped a button on his console.
The model began to scroll forward in time. The little dot representing the mining vessel bounced around the asteroid field for a few minutes. Halsey yawned. Suddenly the dot zipped away from the asteroid ring and over to one of the outer planets.
“Where’d it go?” Runstom said.
“Uh. Let’s see. It went to one of the moons around Barnard-5. There’s some kind of refinery based there.”
“So it mined asteroids for a couple of hours and then went to a refinery,” Runstom said.
Halsey turned around and faced him. “Seems like a perfectly natural thing for a mining vessel to do, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” was Runstom’s answer. He wanted to say that just because someone was acting naturally, that didn’t mean they were innocent, but he kept that thought to himself. “Let’s move on to the last one.”
“Sure. Royal Starways Interplanetary Cruise Delight Superliner #5. Crew of 348. Not just ship operations personnel, of course, but including wait staff, maids, pool cleaners, porters, baggage handlers, masseurs, personal trainers, personal entertainers, day care—”
“Right, right, what else?”
“Mmmmmm. I’ll skip the weapons detail. Basically, this thing has a slow route that starts at Barnard-3, moves in close to Barnard-1, where it orbits for a short time. Then it goes to Barnard-2, orbits there for a bit. Then on to B-4, where it docks at the sub-orbital platform for a very short amount of time before continuing on. After that it orbits B-5, then orbits B-7, then comes back to orbit B-6, then spends some time near the asteroid belt, then it makes a slow cruise back down to B-3.”
“Those things take a couple years to do their whole route, don’t they?”
“Yep.” Halsey punched up some other data. “About nine years in total. A slow tour of the whole system, hanging about in orbit around the uninhabitable planets, stopping at a moon here and there. The full planetary experience for folks with too much money and even more free time. Of course, some people only go part way. It’s only the richest B-threers that can afford the full cruise.”
Runstom huffed. “Anyway – there are only like eight or nine or ten of these superliners, right? Just doing their slow loops of the system?”
“Yeah, something like that. So you can catch one at least once a year. Ours is number five of the pack.” Halsey went back to the holo-screen. “She’s this big dot here, in between the orbits lines of B-3 and B-4. I’ll load up her path data. I’ll start a couple weeks back in the log since she’s so slow.”
The dot jumped back a few inches on screen, which was probably a few million kilometers in real space. Halsey hit a few buttons, and it started to crawl forward. The cruise ship was traveling much slower that the miner had been, so he tweaked the speed of the model to get it moving. Barnard-4 has a long rotational period, taking about two Earth weeks to make a full spin. The model was moving at higher speed now, and the cone of contact sticking out of the planet swept around with the slow rotation. Eventually, the cruise ship got close enough to intersect with the cone as it crawled through space. A couple of days’ worth of real time ticked by as they watched the ship stay within the cone. The date of the incident came and went before the vessel’s path took it outside the cone’s coverage and it abruptly stopped.
“Two days ago – that’s the end of the logs I got. After this, she’ll be lining up to parallel B-3’s orbit and in a couple months’ time, she’ll match up to B-3 and hold position while shuttles unload and reload from the planet.” Halsey turned away from the model and stared blankly into the darkness. “Well shit,” he muttered after a moment of thought. “The cruise ship definitely sits in the cone for a few days.”
Runstom closed his eyes. “Okay. Assuming that someone hit the LifSup receiver at sub-dome Gretel, block 23-D with a signal from space. What we now know is that the only eligible spacecraft for the job are a mining vessel and a cruise ship.”
“Right. But if spaceships could be suspects, both of these have pretty good alibis.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Runstom started writing in his notebook. “If it’s the mining craft, they’ve deliberately run a route that would appear normal. Covering their tracks. They would have planted the malicious code five days before it was triggered to take effect.”
“So five days it lay dormant in memory somewhere,” Halsey said. “Risking detection or possibly being wiped
out with a system reset.”
Runstom nodded, and went on, keeping his momentum. “They were pretty far out, so they would have to have a large transmitter. Even if it weren’t mounted on the front, it would be obvious sitting there in the cargo bay. In fact, they might have to have the pusherbots move it into position. All eight of the crew members on board would have to be in on the whole plan.”
“Right. Otherwise, they’d know something was up, because you couldn’t just start mining rocks and throwing them into the cargo bay with your big ol’ transmitter in there. And someone would notice when they got home and didn’t get paid for a full load of ore.”
“Now if it’s the cruise ship,” Runstom said, flipping a page over in his notebook. “Then you don’t have to have any ship operators even in on the act. The cruise ship passes through the cone of contact for a couple of days. Including the day of the incident, making it possible to deliver the code and have it execute immediately on arrival.”
“And it’s closer,” Halsey said, pointing back at the model. He tapped at the console. “Close enough that you’d only need … three and a half megasparks to power the transmission. If you had a clean shot. And those superliners have plenty of wide-open deck space where the only thing between you and space is clear splexiglass.”
“Right, and a sat-transmitter will go right through that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Halsey flipped off the holo-screen and then stood up to stretch. “Honestly, Stan. I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” Runstom didn’t look at Halsey, but stared off into nothingness, trying to envision a scene where someone was lugging a large device around the deck of a cruise ship.
“Don’t know if it’s worth it.” Now Runstom turned to look at the other officer. Halsey continued, “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Playing around with traffic logs has been a lot more fun than sitting around watching the crap that passes for vid on this shitty planet.”
“But you saw the console logs,” Runstom said. “You saw what Jackson was talking about.”
“Yeah, but Stan, come on.” Halsey spread his arms out. “It’s a great story, but how can you trust that guy? I mean, he’s a suspect.”
“I know he’s a goddamn suspect,” Runstom muttered.
“He could be making the whole thing up.”
“He’s not.” Runstom still wasn’t exactly sure of it, but he had a tendency to irrationally take a stand when challenged.
“Oh.” Halsey scratched his head, ruffling his short curls of hair. “But how do you know?”
“Okay, maybe I don’t know.” Runstom stood up to face the other officer. “You’re right. He could be making it all up. But you know this whole thing doesn’t add up. George, I talked to that guy in there. He’s not a murderer.”
“And what, you’re psychic?”
“No, I’m not psychic. But you watched me talk to him. You talked to him. He’s just an operator. He’s not crazy. And he’s not a criminal.”
Halsey sighed heavily. “Look, Stan, I get it. I know what this is about. Okay? I know you, man. We’ve been working together for a long time. As soon as the dicks wanted to close this thing, you wanted to open it wider.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Runstom began to raise his voice, but something held him back.
“You’ve been getting the shit end of the stick for years, Stan. You should be a detective by now but they keep finding reasons to hold you back. Reasons to say you’re not there yet. To say you’re not good enough.”
Runstom pursed his lips together and narrowed his eyes at Halsey. “I am good enough.”
“Yeah, you are fucking good enough,” Halsey said, pointing a finger at Runstom’s chest. “That’s what I’m saying. You should be a goddamn detective. But you’re not. Are you?”
“No.”
“So you got something to prove. You’re always looking for a chance to prove that you should be a dick.”
Runstom frowned. “So what? So what if I have something to prove. The dicks got this one wrong, George. Brutus and Porter aren’t even trying. We’re officers of Modern Policing and it’s our duty to make sure every angle of this thing is looked at.”
“Oh spare me,” Halsey said, rolling his eyes. “Shit like that comes out of your mouth so much, sometimes I think you actually believe it.”
Runstom crossed his arms. “George, you know something’s not right with this case. I know you know.”
“Stan, seriously.” Halsey took a step back. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re not making detective. Okay? It’s not your ability or your dedication. You’ve got plenty of both. It’s your skin. It’s your—”
“Don’t even fucking go there, you sonova—”
“Stan, listen to me.” Halsey took another half-step back. “All I’m saying is you know there are people in ModPol that have a problem with your mother. They’re gonna hold you back as much as they can. And some of them are just looking for an excuse to bust you down even farther into the shit. If you go trying to play detective on something big like this, and you’re wrong, it’s over, man.”
“People don’t know shit about my mother.”
“I know, Stan. Believe me, I know. They don’t know shit. But they think they do. And those people that think they know something are always watching you. Always looking for a way to make you the fall guy.”
Runstom swallowed and looked down at nothing. He clenched his jaw and swallowed a few more times before speaking. “Okay, George. You’re right.” He spoke so quietly that the other officer had to step forward to hear him. “But there’s a limit to how much longer I can do this, you understand? I don’t have something like – like becoming a dispatcher to look forward to. If I don’t make detective – I mean, there’s a limit to the number of times I can be passed over for promotion before I can’t …” He trailed off, unable to find the words.
Halsey put a hand on his shoulder. “I know, man. I know. All I’m asking is that we just think this shit over before you go doing something rash. We should have a couple more days before the transport gets here. We’ll talk to Jackson some more and see what else we can come up with. Let’s just not go crazy, okay? We gotta play by the rules just enough to try to minimize the amount of trouble we get in.” He shook Runstom’s shoulder lightly. “Okay, Stan?”
“Yeah.” Runstom met the other officer’s eyes. “Okay.”
CHAPTER 8
The next morning it became apparent to Jax that the prisoner barge had arrived when a new set of guards began filtering into the cells and escorting prisoners out. He counted sixteen pairs of cuffs going out before it was his turn, and then he was secured into a wall restraint in his new cell on board the transport. He couldn’t move his head after that. In the cell corridor, the guards loudly read off case numbers as they brought in each defendant, and he counted twenty-one of those.
Thirty-eight defendants in all (including himself) for the week, which to Jax seemed relatively low considering the population size of Blue Haven and its sub-domes. Of course, B-foureans were in general a peaceful people, mostly thanks to a well-established culture of passive good will, which was reinforced by holo-vision public service announcements and audio/visual media broadcast all around the domes. In parks, in mag-trains, in elevators – it was hard to get away from the stuff.
Some off-worlders called it brainwashing, but Jax wouldn’t go that far. They still had free will. A person could choose to drown out the barrage of messages. They could choose to read books – particularly, off-world books – instead of watching holo-vision. But most people didn’t have the motivation to, and Jax couldn’t fault them too much. Life in the domes might have been mundane, but it was easy. That was more than you could say for a lot of other places in the known galaxy.
Those who knew Jax always wanted to know why he wasn’t living up to his potential. He had good skills with math and science, and with his father’s connections, he could have sailed throu
gh engineering school. Forgoing that, he could have at least earned himself a promotion or two in the Life Support operations world. Jax didn’t hold some kind of personal grudge against his supervisor – the now deceased Brandon Milton – nor vice versa. Milton didn’t like Jax for the same reason most people didn’t. Jax just tended to rub some people the wrong way.
Life on B-4 was easy-peasy, and so the crime rate was low. And because of the low crime rate, the governments of the planet did not dedicate a lot of resources to law enforcement. It was easier for them to subscribe to the services of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping, as it was for many of the governments of the inhabited planets and moons of the known galaxy. ModPol was like an organization of security guards and mercenaries, packaged up along with prosecutors, lawyers, judges, and juries. If you wanted to buy ModPol’s protection, you bought ModPol’s version of the law as well.
The ModPol grunts – including the detectives that first questioned Jax, and the officers who came later – probably didn’t know the crime rate was so low on B-4. They’d seen crimes of passion that were unimaginable to the mind of a B-fourean, but commonplace elsewhere. But a crime like this – over thirty people killed by one person – was unimaginable anywhere. It was as if the only way they could deal with facing such a slaughter was to put a face to the criminal as fast as possible. Jax could imagine them telling each other, Let’s get the sick sonova bitch that did this and make him hang. And Jax happened to be the sonova bitch in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Which is probably why they jumped at a chance for a revenge angle. Angry ex-boyfriend and disgruntled employee. Jax actually never took it personally when his company passed him over for promotion, time and time again. That part the ModPol detectives could not be more wrong about. He really just did not care. He only kept the LifSup job to pay the bills.