by M H Questus
“Duly noted.” Morcos set aside her datapad. “Thank you for breakfast and this…” she held up the coffee mug, “… well, whatever this is. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, sir. Any other orders?”
“Chatterji… actually, what’s your first name, if I may ask.”
“Aurina, sir.”
“Aurina, please, sit,” Morcos motioned to the desk chair and waited until the deputy sat down.
There was a moment of silence as Morcos collected her thoughts.
“Is everything okay, sir?”
Morcos rubbed her eyes again. “It’s been quite the day, Aurina. For the next few minutes, please call me Caitlyn.”
Aurina nodded as a muscle in her neck twitched from her clenching her jaw.
Morcos wasn’t surprised. Formality ran deep in the Interplanetary Marshal Service. “How are you doing, Aurina? Did you know any of the fatalities?”
“A little, sir. I mean, Caitlyn.” Chatterji flinched ever so slightly as she said Morcos’s name. “Most of us knew each other, but didn’t really hang out. You know how it is.”
Morcos nodded. “Yeah, it was much the same with my squad when I was a deputy. But I only spent a year on the line before being transferred up.”
Chatterji let out a low whistle. “That fast?! I mean, I knew you were young, but…”
Morcos shrugged. “I got a couple lucky breaks in some big name cases, plus I had a great marshal to work with.” She saw the question forming on Chatterji’s lips and cut it off at the pass. “How about the rest of the team? Everyone doing okay?”
“As well as can be expected, I think. Some frayed nerves, and Di Mercurio has leaned into black humour to cope, but overall I would say we’re doing okay.” Chatterji glanced at the tray of breakfast. “Some of us are a bit concerned that our commanding officer isn’t taking care of herself, though.”
“Point made.” Morcos looked hesitantly at the tray as she picked up her coffee again. “So, out of vain curiosity, did Deputy Kobayashi…”
Chatterji laughed, her smile infectious. “No, no. The food comes prepackaged and just reheats. It’s pretty good, actually. The toast is a little fruity for my tastes, but the eggs may have actual chicken DNA somewhere in their history.”
“Thank you, Aurina. Right, please let the rest of the crew know that we’re expecting another member to join us. Deputy Haley from the Judicator. She should be here later tomor… that is, later today. Also, I’m going to hold a briefing for the entire crew as soon as she’s on board.”
“You got it, Caitlyn. Enjoy your breakfast.” Chatterji saluted quickly and left, closing the heavy door to Morcos’s room shut behind her with a clang.
Now that she was alone again, the exhaustion settled on Morcos’s shoulders like a lead blanket. But it was too late to go to sleep now, so she brought the tray of food over to her desk and hesitantly tried it. The scrambled eggs were good, if a little salty, and she found the toast to actually be quite pleasant with bits of dried fruit baked into it and a little of what she hoped was butter melted on top. She chewed and continued to flick through her datapad.
She decided against returning to bed, now that the realization of how tired she was had set in, and elected to stay seated at her desk. The coffee, despite tasting like something that could be used to lubricate war-walker joints, did have the desired effect of making her feel more alert, and the completely uncomfortable nature of her chair helped keep her from nodding off where she sat.
Another hour and a half passed in this manner before her datapad beeped a few times in quick succession. Three quick text alerts, the first from Deputy Haley announcing her arrival on the ship, the second from Deputy Kobayashi announcing Deputy Haley’s arrival on the ship, and the third from Senior Marshal St. Clair, asking if Haley had made it to the ship.
Morcos quickly fired off responses to all three, welcoming Haley to the ship and informing everyone of the briefing. She thanked St. Clair for the speedy transfer and promised to keep him up to date on the status of the investigation.
Morcos arrived last, the briefing room silent aside from a few taps on the datapads of the assembled deputies. Haley stood and saluted to Morcos.
Morcos saluted back, noticing the freshly healed scar tissue that ran over much of Haley’s face on the left side, where it had impacted on the hull of the Judicator in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
“Welcome aboard, Haley.” Morcos extended her hand, which Haley looked at for a split second before grasping and shaking it a bit too energetically. “Glad to have you with us.”
“Thank you, sir.” Haley responded, her voice strained but somehow melodic. She was visibly making an effort not to appear as shaken as she was, Morcos noted, standing a bit too straight despite flashes of pain that sat behind her eyes.
Morcos nodded and walked to the head of the table, all eyes in the room firmly planted on her. She tried to smile in what she hoped was a relaxed way, but she could feel the exhaustion piling up behind her eyes, held at bay only by force of will and horrendous coffee.
“Hell of a first day,” Morcos said. “I know this isn’t the start to our tour any of us wanted, but I’d like everyone to know we’re going to deal with this together.”
There were murmurs of agreement and looks cast between the deputies that Morcos couldn’t quite parse. Excitement, tinged with either trepidation or nervousness.
“I’ve been spending my time compiling a list of suspects based only on the available information in the Scorpii database. For now the research is too preliminary to be of much use, so let’s focus on the facts and footage available.” Morcos paused and looked around the room at each of the deputies. “No explosives were discovered on the Courageous, despite an extensive search, which implies that the target of the attack was either specifically a member of the Judicator’s crew, or a message aimed at the general Marshal Service indiscriminately.”
Morcos flicked a few files from her datapad onto the table, where the mirrored black surface accepted and enlarged them for the ease of viewing by everyone. “Let’s go through the basics. At 0813 Station Time, the Judicator signaled to Dock Command that they were ready to depart. At 0824, an antimatter device planted on the Judicator here,” the image switched to a schematic diagram of the Judicator, with an arrow indicating a region under the fuel cells for the fusion reactor, “detonated. The explosion ruptured the fuel cells, dumping water over the explosion as it expanded, which limited the force.”
Morcos tapped her datapad a few times, and an external camera mounted inside the airlock showed the massive, flowing lines of the Judicator with its fusion drives pulsing blue-green as it waited for the doors behind it to close. The explosion ripped out the side of the Judicator and a split second later the shockwave hit the camera, destroying it and the video.
“Why wasn’t there a search for explosives before this happened?” asked Kobayashi.
“This is the first time in the Service’s history that we’ve been on the receiving end of a pre-launch bombing.” Chatterji sighed and shrugged. “So yay for getting into the history books, I guess? From now on they’ll check, but it hasn’t been necessary before. Even this attack took a considerable amount of planning and money. Those antimatter explosives are expensive.”
“How expensive?” Morcos leaned forward.
“You ever try to purchase a missile on the open market?” Chatterji leaned back as best she could in her stiff chair. “As well as the staggering cost of the explosive itself, there’s also the cost of hiding what you’re doing. Normally only planetary militias, the Interplanetary Government military, and a few very select mercenary or security firms have the rights to buy such heavy ordinance.”
Morcos nodded, and selected a different camera from the drydock. She played it forward very slowly. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Haley, who had paled considerably from when the meeting had started.
“Here, we see the location of the explosion,” the gout of mul
ticoloured fire erupted out the side of the starship again, “and here we see the fusion chamber being breached, either by a second explosive or, more likely, the impact of something from the first explosive.”
The rear of the Judicator, the elegant, sweptback fins surrounding the central main drive, bulged outwards as superheated plasma melted and vaporized material as it burst out of the chamber. Within moments the back of the ship was a mangled mess and another explosion ripped out from the engines as something else internally exploded. There was one small explosion at the top of the Judicator before this second camera died.
“That top explosion is one of the plasma emitters detonating,” Haley stated matter-of-factly, a little colour returning to her cheeks. “The ammunition exploding probably did more damage than the initial bomb. Sure, the bomb managed to ding the fusion drive which resulted in the ship being scuttled, but all the secondary explosions that actually wrecked the ship were ammunition.”
“Why wasn’t the ammunition secured?” Kobayashi asked, watching the slow-motion video again.
“Oh, it was.” Chatterji responded. “Remember, this was an attack initiated from within the ship. All the armour plating and shielding are designed to protect from external attacks. There’s very little to protect the ammunition from an explosion from within the ship itself. Even safely stored, that initial explosion would be enough to cause at least one magazine to catch. The question isn’t why, but whether the secondary ammunition explosions were intentional.”
“Plus, these newer models of ship don’t use nearly as much armour as the old Mustangs like this one.” Morcos added, leaning back, flinching a little at the stiff cushion refusing to yield. “The shielding is better, but as a result there’s been a drop in the armour plating throughout. Safer and better protected overall, but against something like this? Basically useless.”
Di Mercurio twirled a strand of her purple hair between her fingers, her eyes narrowed in thought. “So, was the Judicator targeted because it was more vulnerable? Or because it was leaving first? Or was it an attack specifically aimed at Marshal Smith?” She scowled angrily. “Too many variables, damnit!”
Morcos shook her head. “We can eliminate a few of those. It wasn’t targeted due to it leaving first, since I fully expected us to get off the station before the Judicator, as you’re all aware. For now, we’re running on the assumption that this was a targeted attack on the Interplanetary Marshal Service as a whole, and not specific to anyone onboard the Judicator. If somebody wanted specifically to kill Marshal Smith, the bomb would have been in the bridge, after all.”
Haley coughed, wincing as she did so. She raised her hand, which made Morcos smile. “We’re all equals here, Haley. Please, speak your mind.”
“Thank you, marshal.” Haley nodded hesitantly, cringing again as she did so. “Sorry, the nanobots are still working and it’s making my nerves hellishly sensitive. Anyway, I was going to say that about fifteen minutes before we all boarded the Judicator, Marshal Smith had a visitor at HQ.”
“Oh?” Morcos leaned forward.
“Yes. I only know because I happened to come across the marshal on the turbolift to the drydock. She was pretty obviously upset, scowling and such. When I asked her what had upset her, she mentioned a visit that had soured her somewhat. I didn’t think more of it at the time, but it may be connected.”
“Good call, Haley.” Morcos nodded. “Okay, Kobayashi, check the Marshal Headquarters’ cameras to see if they caught whoever went to see Smith. They should be pretty easy to track down afterwards, assuming they gave their actual name.”
“You got it.” Kobayashi nodded, already tapping on his datapad to request access to the video footage.
“Haley, you and Chatterji go over the footage of the ship construction. See who boarded the Judicator at any point before it departed, and when, and why. See if anything sticks out.”
Both deputies nodded, scribbling notes into their datapads.
“Di Mercurio, you find out if anyone of note happened to be in the drydock itself, or in the surrounding sections of the starbase. Just because we’re pretty sure that this attack was targeted at the Marshal Service doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore any other possibility.”
“Sure, boss.” The short woman nodded with a smile.
“Great. I expect reports in four hours. I’m going to catch some shuteye until then. Dismissed.”
After the last of her crew had filed out, Morcos allowed her shoulders to slump. Too many options, too many variables, too many players and parties that would all benefit from the death of a marshal and the destruction of her ship. All she could do is hope that she cast a wide enough net that something would stick, and lead them in the right direction.
She rubbed her eyes a few times, headed back to her quarters, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
Chapter 10: A Short Trip
Morcos nodded her thanks to Kobayashi as he handed her the steaming cup of black liquid. She was seated at her desk, leaning back slightly in the remarkably uncomfortable chair. She fought down the urge to wince as she drank the foul approximation of coffee. “So, what have we got?”
“It took a bit of digging, but I found the visitor for Marshal Smith.” Kobayashi turned his datapad towards Morcos. “This woman here.” He pointed at a tall, long haired woman wearing a short black skirt, low-cut top that shifted colours from red to purple, and a wide-brimmed black hat with a red feather. She was standing beside the security desk of the Marshal Headquarters, leaning across the desk in a casual manner while she talked with the front desk officer and giving him an eyeful of her lacy black bra as she did so. “She managed to talk her way past security with the name Felicia Wang, and you will note the wide-brimmed hat which conveniently keeps her face hidden.”
“A fake name, I assume?” Morcos said, leaning closer to Kobayashi’s datapad. The woman in the video laughed at something the officer said, her chest heaving in a way that could only be intentionally exaggerated. “I think I can guess how she avoided them doing a security check on her.”
Kobayashi blushed a little as he nodded. “I contacted the desk sergeant himself, and he seems quite embarrassed about the whole ordeal. He meant to run it through the database, but completely forgot. She claimed to be a friend of Marshal Smith’s. Implied rather heavily that they were more than friends, actually. The officer didn’t want to cause Marshal Smith problems, and so told the woman where to find her and sent her through.”
“Well, nothing we can do about that now. Do send a word to HQ to have a talk with the desk staff, though.”
“Already done, sir,” Kobayashi smiled.
“I assume you found out her name anyway?”
“Yes sir. Lucky break on the elevator camera.” Kobayashi flicked the file over to Morcos’s datapad, and she watched the woman get into the elevator and turn around.
“Ah. Reflective doors.” Morcos could see the unknown woman’s face in the shutting doors. She had Asian features, with almond shaped eyes and fair skin.
Kobayashi nodded again. “A few runs through the facial recognition software and we got a hit.”
Morcos looked at the file. “Stacy Zousizhe. Ha!” Her face broke out into a smile. “Another fake name?”
“Not that I can tell. It’s what she registered when she arrived at the station, and it checks out in the database. Why?”
“It’s not a name, it’s an advertisement. ‘Zousi Zhe’ is Mandarin for ‘smuggler’.”
“Ah.” Kobayashi nodded. “Well, she went to the floor where Marshal Smith was filing paperwork for the departure of the Judicator.”
The footage showed Zousizhe arrive on the 3rd floor and leave the elevator.
“And, ten minutes later, we see her leaving.”
Kobayashi forwarded the footage quickly, until the smuggler again appeared on the screen. The wide brim of the hat still masked most of her face, but she was obviously scowling as the elevator returned her to the ground floor and t
he set of her shoulders was far more tense. Kobayashi switched back to the front entrance camera, where Morcos watched the woman storm straight out of the building.
“Do we have an address for Ms. Smuggler?”
“We do indeed. It’s in a rough area, Marshal. I can send a couple constables to pick her up and bring her here or to Headquarters.”
“Nonsense.” Morcos stretched. “Time I got a chance to see a bit more of the station. Meet me at the lower airlock in 5 minutes.”
Kobayashi saluted and left her room.
Morcos quickly fired off messages through her datapad to the other members of the team, letting them know she was leaving the ship for an hour and to have their reports ready by the time she returned. They all acknowledged almost instantly, giving solid evidence that each was still furiously working at their assigned tasks.
Morcos grabbed her favourite dark trench coat from her closet, checked the charge on her stunner, and headed for the airlock.
Kobayashi was waiting for her. He was dressed similar to her, with dark cargo pants and a loose pale green shirt under a leather jacket. She nodded to the deputy, who cycled the airlock open and they left the ship.
“Tell me about where we’re going,” Morcos said as they left the drydock and signalled for a taxi.
“Lower warehouses, Marshal.” Kobayashi entered the taxi a moment after Morcos. “Mostly storage for the stardocks, goods going inwards, outwards, or downwards.”
“Hmm?”
“That is, inwards towards the inner systems, outwards towards the wilds, or downwards to the planet.”
“Nothing upwards?”
“No, sir.” Kobayashi shook his head. “The planet itself is mostly just vacation grounds and a few small cities for administration and the like. No heavy industries, no mining, nothing like that. Too expensive without a space elevator. Scorpii III is basically one big park. Very limited agriculture, so foodstuffs are constantly imported and shipped down.”
“Huh.” Morcos watched the view out of the dark windows of the hover blurring past.