by Unknown
Oh, the number…it certainly got her attention. 5 million credits. Yes, it was a very big number, 50 times her normal fee.
With that number, she certainly could finally retire. Get away from it all, and work on forgetting that it had ever been happening. She could visit far away systems and planets she never went to, spend time meditating and drawing her mind out, with the help of her carbon pencils.
Yes, that would be her last job. And then she would be out.
Then I will be done. She decided and felt a wave of relief and positive energy emerge.
She poured himself another glass, but the taste of spilled blood, screams and death still lingered in her mouth.
For that kind of money, who do I have to kill? She thought as she return to stare through her window.
Chapter 5 The Investigation
The room wasn’t dark although all the window blinds were still completely close and no daylight was coming through. Timor stared from the back at Val and his fingers which every few seconds would fly over his communication pod and set a new image of debris or a file of some kind in the air, illuminating the air around. Timor counted at least 50 of different screens hanging all around the room, thinking how can anyone make any sense of it all.
“Have you stayed up all night working?” He asked as Val paid no attention to his ‘Good morning’ greeting a few seconds ago.
“I rested for a while, so, no…”
“What have you found out?”
“I can tell you what I haven’t found out. All scans still do not show any sign of human presence. It’s almost like somebody transferred them somewhere else and then cleaned the ship so well that we cannot find any trace of them.”
“Or burned it down. That would also do the trick.”
“Yes, or burned it all out.”
“Maybe that is why so many parts seem burned.”
“Yeah, but not all of them got torched. So what does that mean? Anyway, there is another thing that I haven’t found out.”
“What?”
“I mean, scans are only 70 percent complete. It seems the Capitan XIXo made them work all throughout the night, but they haven’t completed it all yet. So, it may still show up…but…”
“What?” Timor wasn’t sure if Val wasn’t enjoying torturing him with the suspension.
“There are only 20 rescue pods among the wreckage.”
“How many should there be?”
“45 to be exact, according to the engineering specs of the ship…” Val said pointing to one of the aired screen with the ships schematics on it.
“See, this is one of them,” He said as a new screen popped up, “It has enough places to host 40 people, food and water supply for 100 days, and it is capable of navigation”
“Like a mini ship itself.”
“Well, it doesn’t have a propulsion system capable of clicking.”
“So, the best it could do is travel around the space in sub-light speeds?”
“Yes-”
“They would not even make it to the next click station in 100 days.”
“Yes, it would take them years to get there with their engines.”
“Why didn’t they install better propulsion on them?”
“Well, that kind of propulsion system is not only expensive but is massive. So, I don’t think they actually could.”
“But what they did install, as you can see here, is a tracking beam. So their pods can be tracked and picked up by rescue ships.”
“So where are they right now? It would be great to talk to survivors. Everything would be known then.”
“The problem is their tracking beams seem not to be working.”
“Why is that? How can that be?”
“I do not know.”
“If it was just one that didn’t work, okay I can understand that. Maybe it has some kind of a problem. But all of them?”
“Yes, what are the odds of that? It just does not make any sense. And the rescue ships that were sent over there to pick up the wreckage did not see any of them flying around or else they would notify us right away.”
“But if you were on those rescue pods, wouldn’t you just sit tight and wait for rescue teams to come rather than to fly out to who knows what part of dark space?”
“Exactly…None of that is making any sense.”
“But, we have to think that there is a logical explanation for all of this. For one, maybe there is a malfunction in the control center in Zalirus space station…Maybe that is why we are not getting any signal from them.”
“Maybe, maybe that is why we lost that communication links last night. I mean, that control center, isn’t it a central station through which all communications to the other planets have to go through?”
“Yes, all live feeds go through it. Those that need to be magnified. The ones that you want to reach the Capital in weeks, you can always send unmagnified from ground stations.”
“So some type of malfunction there could explain a lot of things.”
“Exactly! So what I want you to do, is go ever there and see if anything is wrong. You can of course, first eat and shower…Please...Shower,” Val begged.
“You won’t go there alone, of course…” Val continued after seeing a very doubtful expression not leaving Timor’s face. “I contracted one of the top communication engineers here, certain Kikirun Tol. He worked on installing this system here, so he should know if something is wrong. He is to meet you in an hour in the lobby downstairs.”
“Okay, I can do that. I can hold his hand.”
“Yes, maybe you learn something.”
“Yes, I bet I’ll learn a lot.”
“Anyway, how is your analysis of the passengers coming along?”
“Hey, I thought you only gave me that job to shut me up…And I thought when you said, go to sleep last night, you actually meant it…But, I still have looked into it, and…”
But before he could give further explanation, all screens temporarily shut down as Val’s communication pod started to ring and blink bright yellow color.
“So, it seems that the home office is calling. They haven’t forgotten about us after all. Let’s see what they want.”
Val knew that his supervisor did not like when people wasted communication credits on trivial stuff. This far out, each second must be costing the department quite a bit, so he made sure to be very much ready for his scheduled reporting meeting.
“What do you have to report?” his supervisor asked as soon as his face appeared in Val’s communication pod.
“The information you filed so far is much less than I expected.” He continued as Val wasted a second to start talking. “It certainly is very inconclusive.”
Val started to feel his hand hair rise at the tone of his commander voice. And that made him angry.
I don’t deserve this, he thought, not after all these years.
“I can only say what evidence is pointing at. I’ve clearly stated what a mess system investigators did of all the evidence, and-“
“Yes, yes, I saw all of that, but don’t-“
“The evidence points out…” Val purposely interrupted his supervisor, his patience with his commissioner hitting an all time low,”…that there must have been explosions from the inside of the vessel.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. No object we know off from the outside could cause that kind of damage,” Val continued as he saw how suddenly pleased his captain was at his answer.
“Good,“ Captain interrupted him before he could say anything else,” That goes well with what we found out. I am going to allow you to access our files we gathered here.”
“Why was I kept out of them in the first place, didn’t even know about them?” Val didn’t keep his thoughts to himself, “I am leading this investigation, not anybody else.”
“We need the time to verify this information-“
Still…
“Our team here found out about recent propulsion fail
ure that one of transporter experienced. It seems that it was luckily detected just before it left the port and prevented on time. Engineers in W2505 Industries believe that such a defect can occur and can result in the situation that happened on the flight of TK-120X…Something about valves with 98 percent purity when they should be 99.9 percent.
“It seems that, if some oscillators were not working right, then the ship could not automatically evade the collision with any objects like comets or space garbage. Emperor almighty knows we have a lot of those. The explosions would be then internal and external.
“I'll have engineers forward all of this info to you. Look that over as soon as you can. I think we are close of filing that as an official statement.”
“You can’t file that as an official statement without my approval. So it is not about, we are filing it, but I am, Commissioner.”
But the commissioner seemed not to hear that remark at all, “Hope you can clean up everything over there really fast, and head home soon. We have a lot of work here for you, plus I have a ticket for the Capital vs. EIgton game waiting for you when come back. You did good this time…May emperor bless you.”
“May emperor bless us all,” answered Val in return, still shocked at what he heard.
The next second his communication pod was already dark.
“What do you think?” Val asked his young apprentice after a short silence.
“I…I don’t know. Captain seems certainly to be pleased with your answer. He seemed very upset at the start of the meeting to tell you the truth. I didn’t think he would be so pleased by the end.”
“Yes, obviously I said something he liked to hear. But listen..You need to know this…Something is wrong here, very wrong…Commissioner’s behavior is completely off the charts. For one, he never wastes communication credits. He is so proud of always staying within his limits. I think it ever earned him a medal one year. He is so proud of that medal, goes nowhere without it. So, he certainly wasted a lot of time trying to persuade me of one idea of what happened there…And then wasted more time to sweet talk to me?! He never does that. He and I always fight. He never gave me nothing, doesn’t even give me stuff I deserve. There is something seriously wrong here.”
“Well, the commissioner can’t order you to finish this investigation, Timor tried to encourage him, he is not even allowed to mingle with the investigation but only help you.”
“Yes, that is what it says in textbooks. But he can do a lot of stuff to make my life miserable….very miserable. And not just mine, yours too.”
“Is that what happened last time?” Timor suddenly asked trying to make Val talk about things he said he never will.
“But why would he mingle with this investigation?” Timor asked after Val seemed unready to collaborate.
“‘Something about ‘valves with 98 percent purity when they should be 99.9 percent,’” Val repeated Capitan’s words out loud, “You know, what the problem is here, right? They already have someone to blame. If we do not solve what really caused the transporter to be blown to million pieces, they will probably send some engineer or maintenance guy on a very long vacation to Pluk System. And you know, nobody ever comes back alive from there.”
“But where do we start to prove him wrong?”
“More questions huh… aren’t you supposed to be the smartest kid in your class? How about giving me some answers. Well, I’ll look at those propulsion files that the captain seems so eager to sell them to us…And try to get me to talk to some engineers that actually knows how these things work, preferably ones that haven’t been contacted by authorities so far.”
“Chief, I’m still here in the communication station…” Val got a call later in a day. Timor looked rather pale and worn out, his eyes tired, staring at him without blinking. It seemed that he has not at all recuperated from the trip.
“So what’s the news?”
“Well, whatever talk you had with the main boss here seemed to have worked great…they’ve been very forthcoming and pleasant to work with since you talked to them to tell you the truth, very friendly indeed.”
“It must have been your personality. I can’t take credit for that…” Val answered with half a smile on his face.
“Well, Kikirun Tol is still working here. He’s got a crew of 6 to help him around. Nice fella, but-”
“But what?”
“He says that to make a complete scan of the system will take him another 4 days at least. He said if he finds any problem he will let us know immediately.”
“Well, I doubt he will find any. I mean, if this was just happening to us, if it is type of the problem that hasn’t been reported earlier?”
“No, they say here that they had no problems with the communications. It seems we were the first one to complain in the last 5 days.”
“And before then?”
“Well, I took a full log of complains, and if you want to, I can forward it to you.”
“Sounds good. Timor, you look very tired. Why don’t you come back here and we’ll go over all that stuff later.”
“In reality, there was only so much I could do here. So I used free time to go over most of the 900 people on the list.”
“We’ll talk about it when you come here…not now.” Only then did Timor understand that the chief didn’t want to talk over the air with him.
And in 20 minutes that took him to get to the hotel, he understood why.
“If it is not a technical malfunction in the communication, it is possible that someone is manipulating with it, so we have to be careful what we say when we talk through their networks. I’ve already configured my communication pod for using special encryption. We have to do the same with yours.”
“You think that will work.”
“It should…”
“So you think this might be some kind of conspiracy?”
“Well, it is possible, but not very probably. But the bottom line is that we do not know. So it is best to be very cautious. Space knows that I’ve seen a lot of cases of a conspiracy before to think that they do not happen. I do not buy it was just some sporadic, unpredictable electrical glitch of some kind that stopped our communication. Those things just do not just happen.”
“Yes, you are right. I do not believe it either. But what can we do?”
“I know. How about passengers? If this was not an accident, and it is increasingly looking it is not, then it might be wise to check who was on this ship in much more detail. Looking through them we might find something interesting, something out of place, something that might point us to the right place …if it is true that this was not an accident…which we still can’t say for sure.”
“Well, you said that wanted me to look into Senator Sulivaro particularly.”
“I know, his assistant in the capital said he only had one meeting scheduled, and that is with the trade commissioner of Zalirus. That alone doesn’t make any sense. Could you find anything else?”
“Yes, he had some prior communication with this doctor Zav Larik. Maybe he was also scheduled to meet with him.”
“Okay, we’ll check. How about others?”
“The emperor’s sister was on the ship.” Val’s silence meant he knew nothing of that. “She traveled under the assumed name of C.JJ. Tirinu.”
“I ran all the scans of everyone on board, even the staff. I used a security key you gave me, and she was the only one whose DNA didn’t match her name and code. So I looked further into who she was. I had to use your clearance again, but that allowed me to get to her.”
“Could you find anything why she was there?”
“No.”
“And why would she go incognito? And they wanted to stop the investigation? Does anyone on the Emperor’s court know about this?”
“I doubt it…If you stop to think about it, you would have been informed of this before we left. Even now…Why would they hide it from you? That wouldn’t make any sense. Unless…Unless they tried to get rid of her for some
reason unknown to us.”
“No, that makes even sense. She had no claim to the thorn. Even if the emperor died, she was like not even in top 10 people to succeed him. Plus, I really think, the assassination hypothesis just doesn’t make sense. If you were going to kill someone, why go through all the trouble of destroying the entire transporter? Getting enough explosive, and obviously of unknown kind, smuggling it onboard, destroying over 900 lives,,, all of that seems like an awful lot of trouble for killing one person.”
“Well, obviously she wanted to visit the planet without anybody knowing it was her. Why would she do that? Maybe a lover she wanted to visit, a lover she wanted nobody to know off?”
“No, that doesn’t sound right. And you are sure that nobody else was traveling under assumed identity?”
“Yes. I checked everyone. Are we to contact her family and see what they know about it? Maybe there is a logical explanation and then we can cross that off the list of problems to solve.”
‘Actually, messing with Emperor’s family is a very delicate subject and I would rather stay off it if we can. We do not know really what this is all about and better be very cautious until we find out more.”
“There was another irregularity with the passenger list.”
“What is it?”
“It says that there were 983 passengers including staff on board, but only 982 got through security controls.”
“I am assuming you know who didn’t?”
“He is a real estate mogul called Cililikiti Vira, made his fortunes in Targhirian System, and owns about 10 percent of the planet there. He is the owner of the Twilight Millennium Tower and number of other properties in the Capital.”
“Well, that is something we can look into without much problem. Find everything you can about him.”
Hour after hour, Val spent talking to different teams of engineers, talking about possible causes of the transporter’s demise. When he could not get nothing concrete, nothing that made sense, he threw his pod against the wall and lifted his hands in the air.