by M H Questus
There was not.
“Okay, you two slide her leg up on this,” Morcos touched the metal piece gingerly, “and I’ll cut as close to the floor as I can. Then I’ll cut the top piece, and we’ll pull her free.”
The two constables nodded. One stood, straddling over Smith’s foot, the other over her torso.
“Krissy, this is going to sting for just a second,” Morcos shouted, but Smith’s eyes continued to flutter open and closed, her mouth still gaping wide. She nodded to the constables.
They lifted her leg, and Morcos couldn’t tell if the sound of bone scraping against the metal was worse than the ragged howl of pain that Smith made or not. She placed the pistol against the deck and watched as the blood-slick shard of metal came into view.
She pulled the trigger, the bolt slicing through the metal beam effortlessly.
Morcos scrambled to her knees and quickly blasted through the beam over Smith’s leg. Smith was free with a thirty centimeter piece of metal still embedded in her thigh.
“We’ll take it from here, marshal!” she heard a new voice, deep and confident, by her ear. Four medics clapped Morcos and the constables on the shoulders, their white-and-red armour streaked with smoke and oil.
Morcos sat down and watched as they expertly bundled Smith onto a stretcher, one of them injecting her with needle after needle, another attaching meters and sensors to the marshal.
Smith went slack as the four medics rushed her out of the ruins of the Judicator.
Chapter 8: Aftermath
Morcos took her helmet off with a grunt and tossed it at the laundry hamper. Not having had the time to remove her uniform before donning her armour made her suspect that no automated cleaning facility would ever get it clean again. Her skin was clammy and sticky, coated in layers of sweat.
She was sitting in the armoury, alone for the first time since the Judicator’s explosion. Morcos had stayed behind to oversee the firefighting efforts for a few moments, but the crews knew their jobs better than she did and she deferred to their expertise quickly. The Judicator was a lost cause, now worth exactly the sum total of the metal in her remaining intact sections.
Morcos removed the last article of armour, her heavy boots, and tossed them into the hamper with the rest of her suit. Her uniform quickly followed, Morcos grimacing as she peeled the sweat-soaked clothing off.
When that was done, she sat, wearing only her undergarments, on the long bench in front of the six lockers. She leaned back until her head came to rest on her locker and breathed long and slowly, in through her nose and out gently through her mouth. She closed her eyes and watched the Judicator explode again in slow motion in her mind. Two deputies dead, and her rival and closest friend in very questionable condition mere minutes into her first command.
There was a soft cough, and Morcos opened one eye to see Kobayashi intently studying a set of rivets on the ceiling of the armoury. He had already changed out of his dress uniform and into more practical fatigues some time before, probably as she was still struggling to reach Smith. She half-smiled at the deep blush on her deputy’s face.
“Never seen a woman in her underwear before, deputy?”
“Not one that could get me fired, no.” Kobayashi paused for a moment, head still turned towards the ceiling. “Nor one I’ve been so certain could kick my ass if she wanted.”
“Fair enough. Toss me a towel.” Morcos gestured to the pile of soft white towels stacked near the two showers on the port side of the room. Kobayashi nodded, grateful for something else to pay attention to, and lobbed her a towel with a firm underhand toss.
Morcos draped the towel over herself, still leaning against her locker. “Better?”
“Much. Thank you, Marshal.” Kobayashi nodded, the blush in his cheeks slowly fading. “Sorry to disturb you, but the Vice-Senior Marshal is requesting permission to come aboard. He insisted on waiting for you to be ready.”
“Take him to the briefing room and thank him for his patience.” Morcos sighed. She just wanted to crawl into her bunk and sleep for a few weeks. “Ask his indulgence for another ten minutes for me to grab a shower and some fresh clothes.”
“Yes sir.” Kobayashi saluted and left, the heavy door hissing open and shut behind him.
Morcos rushed through her shower and into her working clothes: comfortable and tear-resistant cargo pants, a loose blue long sleeved shirt, and a black vest. She retrieved her cap and reverently affixed her Interplanetary Marshal badge to the vest over her heart. Lastly, she slung her sidearm to her right hip, a little lower than was strictly regulation, but Morcos always found the slightly lower position to be easier to draw from.
She checked herself in the mirror quickly. Her hair was still a mess and damp, and there were dark shadows under her eyes, but she was as ready as she was going to be in the time she had available.
It was a quick walk down a few of the ship’s corridors to reach the briefing room. St. Clair was tapping slowly on his datapad, but stood and saluted Morcos as the door hissed open.
Morcos stepped inside and saluted back. The room, designed for briefings to her crew, was dominated by a central circular table with six chairs surrounding it, all fixed to the floor. The table had a smooth black surface with a glassy finish. Morcos winced slightly when she noticed that the chairs had the same uncomfortable cushions as adorned her captain’s chair, but there was nothing to be done about it now. She sat at the head of the table, with St. Clair already seated to her immediate right.
The two marshals sat in silence for a moment.
“A dark day for our service, Morcos.”
“Yes, sir.” She nodded.
St. Clair sighed. “Two causalities. Barely kids, trying to save the universe, and dead before they left port.”
Morcos noted the lines of worry and sadness deeply etched into St. Clair’s face. Lines she didn’t recall seeing even a few hours earlier. “They knew the risks, sir.”
“Did they?” St. Clair looked up, his eyes full of regret. “Do you?”
“Sir, we signed up to serve. To make the universe a safer place. The Marshal Service has always had risks. We’re the first line of justice in the wilderness. Some people will always be opposed to that.”
St. Clair nodded. He took a deep breath and seemed to inflate slightly, his shoulders less stooped and his head held a little higher. “You’re right, of course.”
“Don’t worry sir, I’ll catch them.”
St. Clair blinked. “You? There is an entire lawless sector out there. This bombing occurred in about the only place with a standing police force. I know Smith is your friend, but we can handle this.”
“With all due respect…”
St. Clair held up a hand. “I didn’t drag you all the way out here to stay grounded! We have people who desperately need help!”
“What kind of message does it send if the moment something happens to one marshal I turn and run?” Morcos bristled, but kept her voice level.
“Nobody would—”
“They absolutely would think that. Hell, if I don’t get to the bottom of this, I’d think that. I am not going to abandon my friend without finding whoever is responsible.”
St. Clair’s jaw tensed. “I could just order you into space.”
Morcos narrowed her eyes. “Yes sir. But I believe that we took some damage due to that explosion. Too close to the epicenter of the blast, you know. I’d have to insist on a full inspection of the ship by qualified safety personnel.”
St. Clair chuckled, and Morcos relaxed slightly. “That would take weeks. Well played.”
“The investigation won’t take that long, sir.”
“It better not. There are going to be political factors at play here.”
“Sir?”
St. Clair waved one hand in the air. “Forget I said it. No point worrying about things that may not happen when we have actual sabotage to deal with.”
“Sabotage.” Morcos had suspected, obviously, but it was still good to
hear it aloud.
“Unquestionably. There are remnants of an antimatter explosive that was placed directly under the fusion drive’s fuel cell.” St. Clair actually smiled as he said it. Morcos scoffed aloud. “Exactly. So very likely whoever placed the explosive doesn’t understand how a fusion drive works…”
Morcos’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Or somebody didn’t want to instantly vapourize the entire ship. The water in the fuel cells would absorb a significant amount of the blast’s energy and heat. Good thing to do if you want to scuttle the ship but not kill everyone.”
St. Clair nodded. “I had the same thought. But it gets more complicated than that. If they had placed the device under the fusion drive, the explosion could’ve blown a hole in Scorpii station itself. As it is, the only reason that both airlock doors to the drydock weren’t knocked clear off their hinges is a combination of good luck and poor bomb placement. That could’ve killed dozens more, hundreds if the automated interlocks were slow.”
Morcos bit her lower lip and interlaced her fingers on the tabletop. It was smooth and cool to the touch. “So, it’s possible that the Judicator wasn’t the ultimate target, but that seems somewhat unlikely. If somebody wanted to kill a person in the drydock itself, it would’ve been much easier to set an explosive there, rather than sneak it onto a government ship still under construction.”
St. Clair nodded again. “So we have to run with the assumption that the bomb was on the ship for a reason. Either to destroy the Judicator itself, or to kill the marshal and deputies.” He leaned back slightly. “I have some news about Deputy Haley, coincidentally.”
“Oh?”
“Looks like she’ll make a full recovery. Physically, at least, Some scaring from where she hit the bulkhead, and it’ll take a few more hours for her hearing to recover. The nanobots did solid work, though, and other than some soreness, she seems okay.”
“That’s good to hear.” Morcos wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Unless she planted the bomb.”
St. Clair leaned back in his chair and gestured for Caitlyn to continue.
“Well, if I were going to sabotage a ship and not want to die in the process, I would probably head to the airlock before the explosion,” Morcos rationalized aloud. “One of the furthest points from the explosion, thicker bulkheads for protection, and almost certainly the first place to be reached by emergency personnel.”
Again, St. Clair nodded. “I had similar thoughts. But these are just suspicions.”
“Sir.” Morcos paused to consider if she really wanted to ask what she was thinking.
She did.
“I would like to request the transfer of Deputy Haley to the Courageous.”
St. Clair blinked a few times before answering. “Really? The woman we just both concluded may be the potential saboteur?”
“Yes, sir.” Morcos leaned forward, gesturing with her hands as she talked. “If it’s occurred to both of us, I’m sure it’s occurred to others on Scorpii, or it will, at the very least. She’s going to have a tough time regardless. If she is the saboteur, I’d rather keep her someplace I can keep an eye on her, maybe get her to give something up about why she did it or who she did it for. And if she’s not, I can probably give her a fairer shake than anyone else will.”
St. Clair furrowed his brow as he thought. “Getting her away from Scorpii for a while may be wise. Well, as long as you think it’s a good idea.”
“I do. Thank you, sir.”
St. Clair waved his hand as if to shoo away nearby flies. “Don’t thank me for giving you a potential assassin. Just find out if she had anything to do with this disaster.”
“Yes sir.”
St. Clair flicked Haley’s file over to Morcos’s datapad. “Right. I’m also giving you all the preliminary findings from the wreckage of the Judicator. It’s going to take a few days, at least, to fix the drydock’s airlock, and to give our explosives teams time to go over the Courageous to make sure there isn’t a similar surprise waiting for you onboard. I’ve requested a unit of station constables that I trust to keep round the clock surveillance on your ship regardless. I won’t tell you how to do your job, but I would recommend that you don’t wander around the station without at least a couple of your deputies with you. And I’ve made recommendations to your staff to stay onboard the Courageous for the time being. You were all supposed to be in deep space right now, so I don’t expect any complaints.”
Morcos nodded. “Noted, and thank you for your concern, sir. I’d also like to request any information we have on notable criminal activity on Scorpii station itself. Who are the movers and shakers, who has the most to gain by killing a marshal, anything you have.”
St. Clair nodded, his face grim. “That’s an extensive file, marshal. You already know the sorts of people we’re up against.”
“I’ll limit my work to the most immediately benefited and those actually on the station for now, but I’d rather cast a wide net than risk letting the perpetrators escape because I wasn’t looking in the right places.” Morcos dragged Haley’s file into her staff folder on her datapad.
“You got it, marshal. I’ll leave you to your work.” St. Clair stood and clasped Morcos’s hand.
“Sir, before you go…”
“It’s too early to say, Morcos.” St. Clair shook his head. “Marshal Smith may yet pull through, she may not. I have the best nanooperators on the station watching over her, keeping her stable, but at this stage, it’s all up to Smith. If she wants to pull through, and if she fights hard enough, she may yet open her eyes again.” St. Clair once again looked like a very tired old man. But just as quickly he stood up straighter, set his chin, and the fire returned to his eyes. “You just concentrate on catching these bastards.”
“Yes sir. I will, sir.”
Chapter 9: The Hunt Begins
Morcos headed back to her quarters, skimming through the extensive files on the criminals and organized crime that was based on or near Scorpii station. Most of it was pretty typical stuff: small protection rackets, smugglers of artwork or artifacts, tiny gangs running illegal gambling establishments, a few organized prostitution rings. The kind of opportunistic work that tended to crop up right at the edge of civilization, where profit and legality ran smack into each other.
She sat down with groan, placing the datapad on her desk and rubbing her eyes with both palms. It was almost impossible to focus on anything, and everything hurt. She was pretty sure that her body had turned into a single massive bruise sometime between the briefing room and her quarters. She blinked and memories of Smith, bleeding and pale, rose in her mind. Morcos grit her teeth and shook her head, focusing on the room to distract herself from the image.
On a starship as old as the Courageous, interior space was always at a premium. The ship was built solidly, certainly, and it was something of a comfort to have the thick armour plating and triple redundancies in most of the systems. At the same time, Morcos was the only member of the crew to have her own quarters and even those were spartan. Her room had a desk with another extremely uncomfortable chair, a chest of drawers, a footlocker, and a bed that was actually quite comfortable albeit not spacious. Everything was bolted to the floor, and the light in the room came from a pair of wall-mounted tubes recessed behind armoured glass. Morcos had adjusted the brightness down to reduce the harsh white light, but even so there was a certain clinical coldness to the room.
She transitioned from the stiff chair to the bed, propped her back up with a pillow, and squinted intently at the files on her datapad. If she put all her attention on it, she found she could almost forget about the wreckage of the Judicator long enough to focus on her reading.
There was a knock on her door shortly after.
“Enter.” Morcos said without looking up, engrossed in a report on a group of Alpha-sector gangsters that operated out of the lower dock warehouses.
“I brought you some food, sir.”
Morcos blinked a few times at the tray of food tha
t was carried by the dark-skinned Chatterji. The deputy carefully placed the tray on the footlocker by the foot of the bed.
“Thank you, deputy, but it’s a little early for lunch.”
“Sir, this is breakfast.”
Morcos blinked a few times. “Wait. What?”
“It’s 0710, sir. You’ve been in here for at least 13 hours.” Chatterji half-smiled. “I’ll be honest, I only volunteered to bring you breakfast so I could find out if you slept at any point overnight. We have a bet.”
Morcos looked at the clock displayed at the top of her datapad. Sure enough, it read just after 7am. The explosion of the Judicator had occurred at around 8am… she knew it had been awhile, but the realization of how long she had been hunched over her datapad was still something of a shock.
Suddenly, Morcos felt very, very tired. “Which side of the bet did you take?”
“No sleep, sir.”
“And we have a winner.” Morcos rubbed her face. “Coffee?”
“Well, I don’t know if I would call it that.” Chatterji lifted an aluminium mug from the tray and passed it towards the marshal. “None of us know how to operate the coffee machine in the mess, and Kobayashi drew the short stick. It’s black. And hot. And tastes like jet fuel.”
Morcos took a hesitant sip. She shuddered slightly as the hot liquid wormed its way down her throat.
She looked at Chatterji, the deputy’s smile a little too forced. Morcos swallowed, realizing that she didn’t know how the destruction of the Judicator was affecting her crew, but did know that she was in charge. It was her job to lead them, to maintain morale.
She took another sip. The coffee didn’t get any better.
“Ugh. Wow. That’s… that’s… that’s just awful. Is this his way of making sure he never has to make coffee again? Because, I have to be honest, it may work.”
Chatterji chuckled. “I wouldn’t put it past him. But, honestly, after the fifth pot, it mostly just tastes… no, it’s still awful. But I certainly don’t want to read that machine’s manual, so there ya go.”