"I don't. Or we might have had two corpses down in the equipment bay. That guy was a pro. That particular poison isn't something amateurs can get ahold of.
"Anyway, it looks like you're the only witness who can identify him. Sometime soon I want you to come into my office, try again to identify this guy."
"Of course." She shuddered again, her appetite gone.
"If you want me to put some security on you, just to be safe"
"No, I don't think it's necessary, is it? Nobody else knows about this, do they?"
"Nope, this is strictly need-to-know stuff. Ultraclassified, though I'm not quite sure I know why." Garibaldi gave an interested look at her tray. "Say, by the way, the captain says you're doing a little investigating of your own?"
"Just running down some data through the computer. I was wondering where the raiders are getting their information. Now I know."
"And?"
"Marsport. Someone in a shipping office in Marsport is selling transport routing data."
Now he was the one to raise his eyebrows. "That was easy."
"Easy? I was up half the night!" She shook her head. "No, you're right. Once you look at the figures the right way, it's obvious. And the station's computer doesn't even have all the data available. Someone on Earth or Mars should have spotted this months ago. Maybe even as much as a year ago. Someone, for whatever reason, hasn't been doing their job.
"Anyway, I'm putting a report together to send on to Earth Central later today."
Garibaldi prodded a piece of fruit with his fork. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean stirring around in someone else's anthill.
Suggesting that people in other departments might be negligentor worse."
She stared at him in indignant disbelief. "Garibaldi! I don't believe you! Raiders are hitting ships out there, crews are being killed!"
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Just be careful, all right? I've seen these things turn ugly. It could be you'll be stepping on some toes a lot higher up than yours." He took another look at her tray. "Say, aren't you going to finish that?"
He was starting to reach toward the tray when his link sounded. "Garibaldi here."
"This is Captain Sheridan, Mr. Garibaldi. Something's come up. Could you meet me in the briefing room?"
"I'm on my way." He looked up to see Ivanova carrying her half-finished breakfast tray away and sighed in regret.
Garibaldi came briskly into the briefing room. Sheridan looked up at him. "Mr. Garibaldi, I've been reading your latest report on the Ortega case. Good work. I have to say, you've been very thorough in investigating this. So I don't want you to think that this is because I have any reservations with the way you're handling the job."
What is? Garibaldi wondered silently, thinking that this didn't sound good at all.
"But I have to order you to terminate your investigation."
"What? Close the case? A murder investigation?" He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Sir?"
Sheridan looked slightly uncomfortable. "Like I say, this doesn't reflect on you. And it wasn't my decision. I have orders directly from Earth Central. They're sending a special team of investigators to take over the case. Apparently, with the connection to the Free Mars movement, they consider it too sensitive for the regular Babylon 5 security staff to handle."
Garibaldi started to open his mouth to say something which probably would have sounded like "Horse-hockey," but he closed it in time.
Sheridan went on, "So, as of now, you're ordered to pull all your staff off the case, seal all your files and records, and be ready to hand them over to the special investigators when they arrive on the station."
"Which will be when?"
"They're already in transit onboard the Asimov." "They didn't lose any time, did they?" Sheridan looked up at him, started to say something, then decided against it. "If you have no more questions, that will be all. Thank you, Mr. Garibaldi."
CHAPTER 7
"Oh-oh," Garibaldi said to himself. He was checking the monitors from Security Central as the passengers from the Asimov started toward customs, and he was getting his first glance at the special investigation team from Earth Central. "Bad news."
It was impossible to mistake themstiff and ultramilitary in their Earthforce blues. Three officers, two men and a woman, but they all had flinty, hard eyes that said, We know you 're guilty of something, and we'll find out what it is, no matter how long it takes. One look, and the security guard at the customs gate jumped to attention like she'd just touched a hot wire. Even through the monitor, Garibaldi could almost see her sweat as she followed the prescribed routine: take the identicard, check the face on the card against the holder, run it through the scanner, confirm the data, welcome the passenger to Babylon 5 if and only if the check is positive.
Once past the checkpoint, the three of them passed out of sight of the monitor, heading for the lift tubes. Heading, Garibaldi realized, for him.
So he was ready when they came into the security office like a three-man assault teamone on point, one securing the door at the rear, and the main force, flashing the insignia of a commander's rank, heading straight for the primary objective: the computer console.
Garibaldi moved to put himself in the way. "This office is a restricted area," he announced firmly. "Do you have authorization?"
The Earthforce commander, a wiry man of around forty with short-cropped blond hair and sharp, thin features, took another step forward, with a scowl built on order to intimidate. "Are you Garibaldi?"
"I'm Michael Garibaldi, Babylon 5 Chief of Security."
"You're required to turn over all your records and files on the Ortega case. I'll need your passwords," he snapped, a lot like a short-haired terrier or one of those other kinds of small dogs that bite.
Garibaldi stood his ground, which happened to rest on Earthforce regulations. "I have to see your ID and authorization first."
The commander's lips thinned to a straight line, but he produced the documents, slapped them into Garibaldi's hand. Garibaldi scanned through them, nodded. Identicard in the name of Commander Ian Wallace. The authorization, of course, was all in order, security clearance up to ultraviolet and maybe beyond. "Commander," he acknowledged crisply, handing them back, but also adding, "I'll need their ID, too."
"You've seen my orders, Mister Garibaldi. You know I have full authority here."
"Not quite, Commander," Garibaldi insisted firmly. "You have full authority over the Ortega case, but this is the Babylon 5 security office, and my files hold references to other classified matters that aren't related to that case in any way, so I have to make sure anyone who's going to have access has got the proper clearance."
Angrily, Wallace gestured for his aides to come forward, and they handed their ID cards to Garibaldi, who noted that they were Lieutenants Miyoshi and Khatib. Miyoshi was a full-bodied woman who looked like she was wearing a stiff corset under her uniform. To Garibaldi she seemed rather old for her rank. KhatibKhatib was one of the coldest-looking men he had ever seen. Black eyes, a sharply beaked nose, a lipless mouth like a snake's. Garibaldi almost expected to see a forked tongue flicker out. Very bad news.
But his ID was in order, and his security clearance. Garibaldi took a step back from the computer terminal. "Clearances are all in order. I'll get you the passwords." As he handed them to Wallace, he grinned insincerely. "Welcome to Babylon 5, Commander. I hope you enjoy your stay."
"Damn, I hate those stupid games," Garibaldi said, jamming his hands into his pants pockets.
"What games?" Ivanova asked, with half her attention on the command console.
"Power games, status games. Like a couple of dockyard dogs snarling at each other over a bone."
Ivanova was dubious. "But you were right. Fallowing procedure. Are you sure you're not just talking about one of those male things? Chest-thumping, testosterone?"
Garibaldi shook his head. "No, it's more t
han just that. I know this kind of bastard. First time you meet him, it's got to be a test. I know I was right. That's the whole point. He doesn't like me now, but I tell you, if I'd given in, it would have been worse."
He paused to look out through the Observation Dome at the bright, distant flare of the jump gate as a ship passed through into the vortex. Ivanova's attention was still on her console. "Anyway," he continued, "I'm off this case. But you're still an important witness. You're probably going to have to talk to these guys sometime soon. Be careful, all right? These guys are serious trouble."
"Garibaldi, you worry too much. Remember, I've survived ten years in the military. I know the type you're talking about. I don't think I'll have too much trouble with them."
"Well, sometimes there's reason to worry. All I know is, someone up in the brass-hat department is really interested in this case."
Now she turned away from the screen to face him. "That's what really bothers me, if you want to know the truth. We have raiders out here, we have ships being attacked, crews killed, and what do they do about it? They cut our budget. They won't send out more patrols. They ignore reports of corruption and inefficiency in the bureaucracy.
"But push the right buttons, when they hear words like 'terrorism'when it threatens them politically then they send up a team of investigators on the next ship, don't spare the trouble, to hell with the expense."
"Ah, I take it you haven't heard back about your report on the leak of the transport routes to the raiders?"
She shook her head, then turned back to the console. "Of course, I only sent it out the day before yesterday. These things take time."
"Well, just be careful, that's all. If you do get into trouble I don't know how much I'll be able to help you. These guys are setting up their own little private kingdom on the station, outside Security Central. Wallace says he doesn't want interruptions or interference. I've got to assign a team of security agents to himthey follow his orders, nobody else's. He's got his own command center in briefing room B, he's brought in his own computer systemours isn't secure enough for him and he's even setting up his own lockup facilities." Garibaldi scowled. "I don't like it."
Ivanova had seen that look before. "So what are you going to do?"
"Do? Nothing. Those are orders."
"Well, you be careful, too," Ivanova said. She knew Garibaldi.
There was a part of Babylon 5 that they called Down Below, down in Brown Sector, although officially there was no such place, but officially didn't much matter in Down Below. It was a place where you had to crawl through maintenance hatches to get where you were going, where power and water came from illicit taps on the station's lines, where people slept in empty cargo drums and lived in corners behind a screen made out of rags.
With a population the size of Babylon 5's, there were always people who would slip through the cracks, who existed in the marginal habitat along the edge of legality. Some slipped over that margin, and they were Garibaldi's business. The rest of themit was a case of live and let live.
You could buy almost anything in Down Below; the commerce covered the spectrum from off-white to black. People sold their bodiesthat was a given. There were regular business establishments and there were furtive characters in the hallways with hidden pockets in their coats. Information, like any other commodity, was for sale here, too, which was one reason Garibaldi tolerated the place. This was his ear on the black market, on the coming and going of persons and goods who might not belong on the station.
But all the business, no matter how technically legal, tended to pause when Garibaldi entered the area. Goods were quickly put away, people found that they had business elsewhere, urgent transactions were no longer so urgent. The station's chief of security was not a popular customer in Down Below.
Wherever Garibaldi looked, people acted even more furtive than usual. His usual informers had evaporated.
But there was more than one way to hunt for information. Garibaldi decided to capitalize on the effect of his presence. He wandered. He lingered. He examined, one by one, the counterfeit jewels on the tray of a very reluctant vendor. He asked to see the entertainment licenses of a trio of corridor musicians and the customs certificates of a rack of imported skink-skin boots which the proprietor of a makeshift shop had tried to hide under an equally dubious rug. He was very bad for business, and he showed no inclination to leave.
Finally a sallow-faced figure came up to where he sat at his ease, sipping mineral water at a table in the Happy Daze Bar, an establishment not licensed to sell intoxicating beverages, where he was presently the only customer. "What you wants, Garibaldi?"
It was Mort the Ear, purveyor of information, finder of things, and current owner of the bar.
"Want? Oh, I don't want anything in particular, Mort. I just thought I'd do a little shopping, see the sights, visit a few old friends."
"How comes you gots lot time on you hands now, Garibaldi? Two, three day ago, big investigating, big case. Now ..." Mort paused, grinned crookedly.
Garibaldi wondered how long it would take the news about Wallace and his investigative team to get out. If it wasn't already all over the station. Wallace hadn't exactly been an inconspicuous arrival on Babylon 5. He grinned back with a show of teeth. "Well, I just thought I'd take some time off to come down here and look up an old friend of mine. Louie. Yeah, Louie's an old buddy, haven't seen him in years. He moved to Mars a few years ago, worked around here and there. Now, what do I hear but my old friend Louie's right here on Babylon 5!
"So I say to myself: Mike, you've got to go look up your old friend Louie, you used to be so thick together. So I go to look him up, andguess what? The station registry doesn't have any record of Louie coming onto the station! None of the checkpoints recorded old Louie coming through! Now, isn't that crazy?
"Because, you know, it's real nice when people come in customs the right way and we put their identicard through the scanner and their name in the registry. See, then we know who's on the station. We know where to find them when we're looking for them. So I say to myself, Mike, why don't you just go hang around the station for a while, look around, and maybe you'll run into old Louie. We can have a few laughs, talk about old times, and then maybe I can find out what happened with his ID when he came onto the station, so it won't happen again. Then I can look up old Louie anytime I feel like it, and I won't have to come down here, looking for him."
"You not makes sense, Garibaldi."
"Then let me make it more clear, Mort. Somebody's been coming onto this station through the back door. Maybe with fake ID. I don't like that. I want to know what kind of a counterfeit identicard can fake out our scanners. I want to see it for myself."
"You wants fake ID?"
"You got it, Mort."
"I gots lot fake ID, you want it." He started to reach into a pocket somewhere in the interior of the layers of clothing that didn't conceal his scrawny frame, but Garibaldi stopped him.
"Huh-uh, Mort. Not that junk you peddle to the tourists. The real thing."
Sullenly, "Maybe I asks around."
"That's good to hear. And maybe I might come down here and do some more shopping in a day or two. After all, I have all this time on my hands now, like you say."
He strolled off. It was a fishing expedition, but something might come of it, you never knew.
He hesitated before taking the next step, because it was treading awfully close to Wallace's investigation, but, dammit, people sneaking onto Babylon 5 cut right to the heart of station security. And if there were forged identicards floating around, he needed to find them.
Up in a more respectable section of brown deck, a woman named Hardesty ran an establishment called the Wet Rock, a place where station workers came after their shifts to have a beer or two or three. The beer was as cheap as beer can be on a space station off in the middle of nowhere, and the food she served with it was a little bit heavy on the starch and the grease. Garibaldi liked it.
"Harde
sty, how you doing?"
"Doing all right," she said, in a tone that meant: Is this call business or pleasure, Garibaldi?
"You haven't seen Meyers around lately?"
"Think he left the station. Went out on an ice hauler a couple, few days ago. Maybe."
"How about Nick?"
"Nick Patinos?"
"The one."
"Think he works the swing shift now. Awfully hard to get hold of him."
"He still come in here sometimes?"
"After work, yeah. Mostly he's at that stupid game parlor, though. Or the gym."
Garibaldi knew where the game parlor was. Nick was one of about a dozen participants seated at tables where immaterial ground cars raced each other around a virtual track and ghostly holographic figures sparred in gladiatorial contests. Garibaldi joined the spectators for a while until one of the figures fell to its knees and expired, after which a new challenger sat down to contend with the winner.
"You're getting better with that broadsword, Nick," Garibaldi remarked.
The man looked up from a beer. He was a dockworker with dark eyes and hair turning gray on the edges. "Hey, Mike. Yeah, I can go ten minutes sometimes with Cass these days."
"Maybe we can play a round sometime. Or go over to the gym, spar a round or two in the lo-grav. Like we used to, on Mars."
"Yeah, maybe." He paused, gave Garibaldi a look. "But you didn't come down here today to play holo games, did you, Mike?"
His silence admitted it.
"What I heard was, you're looking into things." Nick looked back down into his beer. "Maybe the kind of thing that's going to cause a lot of trouble."
Good news sure spreads fast, Garibaldi thought sourly. "You heard that, did you?"
Nick made an offhand gesture. "Here and there."
"Well, there was a fugitive alert a couple days ago. A suspected terrorist"
But Nick slammed his beer down angrily on the table. "Terrorists! You know what, ever since the uprising last year, you Earthforce types have got nothing on your brains but goddamn terrorists! I'm sick of it! You show your ID card, and every time it's 'Oh, you're from Mars, we've got to check your stuff, check you out just in case you've got explosives in with your dirty socks.' I'm tired of it, Mike!"
Babylon 5 02 - Accusations (Tilton, Lois) Page 5