Beyond Varallan

by neetha Napew

  “How did you discover these facts, Senior Healer?” Hado asked.

  “I have proof, but for now I’ll save that, too. Let’s talk about motive.” I turned to the Captain. “Xonea, you aren’t going to win any awards for self-control. And when Reever accessed my subconscious, I saw you as the killer.”

  “I have wronged you in the past,” he said, the words forced and stiff. “Yet the only injuries I have inflicted have been upon you.”

  “I know,” I acknowledged. “But that wasn’t your fault. Someone removed the jaspkerry stores from the prep units in both our quarters and the galley, and replaced it with pure jaspforran.”

  “What?” He clenched his fists and struggled for control. “By the Mother, that explains the ungovernable rage I have been enduring.”

  “From the way that stuff affects the Jorenian central nervous system, I’m surprised you haven’t punched a hole through the hull,” I said. “I also found micro-encapsulated artificial enzymes had been added to my Terran tea and all the Terran stores in the galley. They stimulated my sympa-thoadrenal response and made me, shall we say, slightly more aggressive than usual? The few times I had Xonea’s tea only made it worse.”

  “Who has done this?” Xonea wanted to know.

  “I’m getting to that.” I turned to the senior nurse. “Adaola, you were on duty when Roelm and Yetlo died in Medical. Off duty when Ndo was murdered. Plus you were in the launch bay when the mercenary was killed. You had access to all the victims.”

  Adaola paled, but said nothing.

  “I could see you killing Ndo because he might threaten Xonea’s succession in some way. Or Yetlo, because you disagreed with my decision to stop him from committing suicide. But why Roelm? Why the mercenary? They presented no threat or connection to Xonea. And why would you poison your own ClanBrother if you were trying to protect him?”

  Adaola shuddered. “I could never do such things.”

  I gave her a smile. “I know it wasn’t you, Adaola. A killer doesn’t spend double shifts watching a sick kid if she wanted her dead, or smash a desk because she believes she may have accidentally killed a patient. Nor does she try to destroy the mind of a much-loved sibling.”

  “I can imagine why I am here,” Hado said. “I was a patient in Medical when Roelm’s path was diverted, and like Adaola, present when the mercenary was killed.”

  “Whoever did this had an unusual mark over their heart-something you certainly have, Hado.” I watched him press one hand to the location of the surgical scars on his chest. “Plus you discovered Ndo’s body. You could have taken his data pad and planted it in my quarters.” I shook my head. “The problem is you were still recovering from cardiac surgery when Fasala and the educators were attacked.”

  Xonea turned toward Reever. “And the ship’s linguist?”

  “I don’t know where he was during the other murders, but he was there when the mercenary died,” I said. “It’s also true Reever’s never been happy about you Choosing me, Xonea, or me going along with it. I might have suspected him, had I not been linked with him when the killer tried to alter my brain wave patterns.” I decided not to bring up the time when I’d offered myself to Reever, and he’d turned me down. “It wasn’t him.”

  Reever’s and Xonea’s eyes met mine, then Adaola’s, then Hado’s. We all turned to the only person in the room who had not touched her tea.

  “That leaves me,” Ktarka said. She was very calm.

  “Yes.” So was I. “It does.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Game Over

  I have heard no evidence that would indicate my involvement.”

  It was interesting, the way Ktarka said that. If someone accused me of murder, I’d be screaming my head off. Protesting my innocence. Telling everyone to stop wasting time and go after the real killer. I might even throw things. I didn’t see myself being really concerned with the evidence.

  “After Fasala was injured, you came up to me in the galley and introduced yourself. Why?”

  “I merely wished to acknowledge your work with our children,” Ktarka said.

  “Or was it that you’d just tested your weapon and nearly killed two of your colleagues? Did you decide then you needed someone to take the blame? Who would be ideal? A Terran outsider who had already killed one Torin, maybe?”

  She took a sip of tea. “Your theory proves nothing.”

  “Later, while you were in Medical gloating over Fasala’s injuries-or trying to make another attempt on her life, I don’t know which-you must have overheard Roelm making a fuss about the engines. After he questioned the little girl, you followed him. Did you kill him to protect your secret?”

  “Another groundless speculation.”

  She sure was hung up on validation. I guess that was the usual mind-set of a murderer. How can I kill and get away with it? Make sure there’s no damn proof.

  “After Roelm died, I had a dream. A dream that began as part of a very calculated campaign to set me up for the murders. But you got a little sidetracked, didn’t you?”

  Hado made an ugly sound. Xonea’s fists bulged. I motioned for both of them to stay calm.

  “The next victim was Leo, the League mercenary. You killed him for obvious reasons-he nearly beat you to death.” I looked at my Jorenian nurse. “Adaola, did you see Leo abduct Ktarka from Medical that day?”

  “No,” the nurse said. “I noticed his berth was empty and went out into the corridor. From there I followed the marks of blood on the deck.”

  “Didn’t you find any blood in the isolation room?”

  “No,” Adaola said.

  I turned to the educator. “You offered to help him, didn’t you? That’s why you released him and smuggled him out of Medical. But Leo waited until you got out in the corridor before he turned on you. Why did you let him go? Did you want to watch him rape me, or help him do it?”

  The Educator made a curt gesture.

  “Reever? Would you mind getting the two items I left on Darea’s sleeping platform for me?” Reever disappeared, then re-emerged carrying two wrapped objects: one large and bulky, one small and flat. “Put them on the table for me, will you?” I picked up the small one first and unfolded it. “Do you remember this, Educator?”

  She gazed at the pendant, then at the place on my vocol-lar where it used to be attached. “Yes.”

  “What a gift it was, too. I found out ten minutes before you five got here that this isn’t a mere bauble. A scanner picked up some very tiny, very interesting tech imbedded in the stone.” I held it up for everyone to see. “The stone itself is a genuine Jorenian antique. Centuries ago, it was used to signify a Choice had been made.”

  My nurse frowned, bewildered. “Jorenians do not Choose members of the same gender. They cannot produce offspring together.”

  “Someone who could never bond because she’d botched her first Choice wouldn’t be worried about having kids.” I leaned forward and wrapped the pendant again. “In my second dream, the killer told me we shared our aloneness. When I resisted the sexual overtures, I was beaten.” I placed the pendant back on the table. “Then Xonea Chose me. How did it feel, Ktarka, finding out you’d screwed up again?”

  “I did not Choose you,” she said. Her voice was low and furious. “I am Chosen; you are female. I cannot Choose you.”

  “No, you couldn’t. Xonea already had. You decided to play more games. You’d already poisoned everything I ate or drank with enough artificial enzymes to keep me hostile. So you switched the jaspkerry tea stores and assured Xonea would be in a near-constant state of rage, too. You killed Yetlo after I’d given him a reason to live. I didn’t understand why Ndo had to die, at first. Until I found out where on Joren the resonant harmonicutters are used to fit buffers to space-going vessels.”

  “The Talot province shipyards,” Xonea murmured.

  “I checked the com logs. Just before he died, Ndo signaled you. He’d discovered you once worked in your HouseClan’s main business. Outfitting
ships for deep-space exploration. You and your immediate family are expert engineers. Highly skilled in the use of harmonicutters.”

  Ktarka’s hand knotted in her lap. “That has nothing to do with these path diversions!”

  “When you were burned, you clutched your tunic over your breasts. When I signaled you today, you covered your upper torso. Why?”

  “I have no-“

  “I checked your medical records, Ktarka. Stabbing yourself in the chest leaves a big, ugly scar. But you don’t think of your botched suicide attempt as a failure, do you? It was the day you were reborn. That’s why it looked like a birthmark to me when you pretended to be Xonea in my dream.”

  “Stop this!” Ktarka’s beautiful face contorted with rage.

  “You planted Ndo’s data pad to frame me, and used a beacon to signal the mercenaries. If Pnor was still alive, he would tell me it was you who suggested I was the killer to him-several times. You also reported to him when Xonea had stormed the Medical Bay while Reever and I were linking.” I glanced at Reever. “Roelm tried to tell us the killer was ‘one who is not one of us.’ The only thing that sets Ktarka apart from everyone else is the fact she was born to HouseClan Zamlon.”

  Xonea rose to his feet. “Why harm Fasala? Why attack Salo?”

  “It’s simple.” I stared at the seething Educator. “Salo is Konal’s ClanBrother. His only ClanSibling.”

  Ktarka’s entire body tensed. Time for the big finale.

  “That’s why you joined the crew,” I said to her. “You needed the Sunlace. Time to design and build the weapon. Long before your little infatuation with me, you knew exactly who you were going to kill. Salo and his family. Your revenge against Konal.”

  “No!” she shouted, tearing at her tunic, baring her breast and the twisted scar bisecting it. “Not revenge! Justice! Konal shamed me! Took my family from me!” Ktarka flung her hand out toward Xonea, Hado, and Adaola. “Cursed be HouseClan Torin!”

  Someone had to say something. Might as well be me.

  “Game over,” I said. “You lost. Where’s Darea and Fasala?”

  She drew back. “You dare question me?”

  “I’m going to dare to do a lot more,” I said, and got to my feet, “unless you tell me what you did with Sale’s family. Right now.”

  “You will never find them.” Ktarka reached up and took her pendant in her hand. “Nor will you escape my revenge!”

  Behind my back, I gave Reever a thumb’s up. He turned and nodded slightly toward Fasala’s bedroom.

  “End this, Ktarka,” Adaola said.

  “No.” The educator’s fist tightened around her pendant. I felt the air beginning to change within the living area. At the same time, Dhreen silently appeared behind the Educator. “I will show you the true inner path.”

  “Everybody down!” I yelled, jumped across the table, and slammed into Ktarka. The combination of the Jorenian woman’s weight and my momentum knocked us to the deck. I rolled, snatching the pendant from her loosened grasp and snapping it from her vocollar. It glowed red-hot against my skin.

  “Dhreen!” I tossed it to him, and he raced out of the quarters into the corridor.

  “No!” Ktarka tried to get up and follow the Oenrallian. I jumped on top of her, but she thrust me aside with one hand. I landed against Sale’s display case, shattering the protective plass panels. My arms covered my head as I huddled, protecting myself from the sharp shards raining over me.

  When I eased my arms down, I saw Xonea had Ktarka by the throat. She hung suspended a good foot above the deck.

  He was shouting and shaking her. “Where are they?”

  “Xonea!” I got up, and the plass shards rained from my tunic to the deck. “Don’t kill her!”

  He released her, and Ktarka dropped to the deck on her knees. I went to her, took her by the shoulders.

  “Ktarka, it is over. Where are Darea and Fasala?”

  “I wanted you,” she said, sobbing. She lifted her hand to touch my face. “So small, so perfect. So like me within.” Her hand fell to the floor, then came up again. Before I realized what she was doing, a jagged piece of plass slashed across my face.

  Hado yanked me back, shielding me with his body. Blood spurted from the gash under my right eye through the fingers I pressed against it. Ktarka crawled backward until she hit a wall panel.

  “You will never find them. This I vow.”

  She rose unsteadily, and before anyone could stop her, plunged the knife-shaped shard into her heart.

  An hour later, Adaola finished temporarily repairing the damage to my face. Ktarka’s body had been removed from Sale’s quarters, and I sent a grey-faced Hado to Medical, to have a complete exam. Xonea and Reever remained, quietly discussing options.

  “Cherijo,” Xonea said at last. “How did you discover Ktarka was the one responsible?”

  “I got lucky.” I winced as Adaola sprayed skinseal over the deep gash. “Ouch.”

  “It requires sutures, Senior Healer. You must return to Medical,” the nurse said, then gazed at the bloodstained deck where Ktarka had fallen. “I can hardly believe it myself. She seemed so gentle a person.”

  “Hardly,” I said. “Never got to make my big finish, did I?” I waved at Reever. “Let Duncan show you.”

  He reached over and pulled the covering from the bulky item still sitting on the table between us. The sentient crystal from Garnot had shaped itself again. This time, it portrayed two figures during a terrifying assault. Darea on her knees, arms flung out as a decidedly ungentle Ktarka struck her from behind.

  “That’s one very smart crystal,” I said. “Maybe we can make it a member of the crew.” Dhreen walked in, looking satisfied. “Well?” I demanded.

  “I deactivated it, Doc. It’s over.”

  Xonea turned to me. “We must find Darea and Fasala.”

  “I shook my head. As crazy as Ktarka had been, I held little hope of finding them alive. “Could she have ejected them through one of the pressure locks?”

  Xonea made a swift gesture. “We would have picked up the ejections on our perimeter scanners.”

  “Are there any gyrlifts that have been sealed off?” Dhreen asked.

  Reever rose to his feet. “Perhaps we should search her quarters.”

  Xonea went with us. While he and I searched through Ktarka’s sparse belongings, Reever went to work on her personal console. Evidently he gained access to her personal files, and I noticed him scrolling through screen after screen of what looked like engineering schematics.

  I went to stand behind him. “Find anything?”

  “Ktarka was a brilliant woman. Her designs will revolutionize Jorenian ship-building techniques.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t applaud her genius.” I peered at the complex diagrams. “There must be a thousand places on this ship to hide someone.” Something I saw made me grab his shoulder. “Wait. Go back two screens.” He did, and I pointed to a pair of long, capsule-shaped objects. “What are those?”

  “According to her notes, they are receptacles made of sonic alloy.”

  “Receptacles for what?” I checked the dimensions listed. They were too small to hold any of the stardrive equipment. “Probes?”

  “They are approximately the same size as the ceremonial receptacles the Jorenians use for their dead,” Reever said.

  “But why make them out of sonic alloy?”

  Xonea joined us, and I filled him in. He studied the pods. “Ktarka could have used these to conceal the bodies of Darea and Fasala.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Why put them in sonic alloy capsules? If they’re dead, why bother?”

  Reever glanced up at me. “Perhaps they are not dead yet.”

  “Okay. We know she knocked Darea out. Then she puts Darea in the capsule, and takes her somewhere on the ship where she won’t be found. Maybe the same place Fasala is.” I thought about what Ktarka had said. You will not find them. Suddenly it all came together. “There’s only one pl
ace on the ship we wouldn’t search.”

  Xonea went still. “The power core.”

  A few minutes later, I finished making the same proposal to the Senior Engineer. He stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “It is inconceivable, Senior Healer. No life-form could survive more than a few minutes inside the core.”

  “Let’s take a look anyway.”

  “You cannot simply’take a look’ at the core!” one of the engineers protested. My pal Barrea, however, was busily exercising some brain cells.

  “Inspection portals,” he said. The Senior Engineer now stared at him. “We access them to examine the structural constitution before we flood the core.”

  “Don’t be foolish!” Barrea’s boss made a blustering gesture. “No one could enter a fully flooded core!”

  I ignored him and turned to Barrea. “What if I was wearing a full envirosuit?”

  Barrea nodded. “That should provide protection, for a few minutes.”

  The Senior Engineer threw up his graceful hands. “After which you would receive a fatal dose of radiation!”

  “I’ll hurry up,” I told him. To Barrea, I said, “Will you back me up on audio?”

  “Even if Darea and Fasala are still alive in the core,” Xonea said, “how can you get them out?”

  “Ktarka got them in, right? She must have accessed one of the larger transductor junctions and shoved them through it.”

  “No, not through the transductors. There are access domes in the inspection portal. They are very much like gyrlifts,” Barrea said. “If she put them in one of them, and dropped them into the core...”

  “The domes are not designed for use in a fully flooded core. They would dissolve in minutes.” The Senior Engineer was emphatic. “This is a useless exercise. If they were placed in the core, they are both dead.” He stomped off in rigid indignation.

  I turned to Barrea. “Well?”