Children of a Dead Earth Book One

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “Does the scan hurt?”

  “N… no.”

  True.

  “Darn. Let’s start with the little stuff, shall we? Did you give Edmond Laraby the Monet Haystacks painting from your collection?”

  “No,” Feng said unequivocally.

  Benson glanced back up to the brain floating behind him. Even to his untrained eye, the patterns of activity changed noticeably. It was less than a second before multiples of the word “false” appeared in crimson, slowly orbiting the display like scarlet letter satellites.

  “Really? You sure about that?”

  “OK,” Feng panted. “I gave him the painting as a gift.”

  “True” appeared in green a moment later. Damn, Benson thought to himself, no wonder they banned this tech. This is too easy. I wouldn’t be surprised if cops fought the hardest to get rid of it. Who would need them?

  “And did you arrange to get Edmond assigned to that palace he was living in when he died?”

  “Yes.”

  True.

  “Why?”

  “That’s too broad a question, detective,” Mahama injected. “The results get less reliable the more nuance the subject can introduce. Narrow it down to simpler yes or no questions.”

  Benson nodded. “Did you alter Edmond’s personal files before they reached my desk?”

  “Yes.”

  True.

  Benson’s smile nearly reached around his head to shake hands with itself.

  “Did you murder Edmond Laraby?”

  “No!”

  True.

  Benson’s smile shrank.

  “Did you conspire to murder Edmond Laraby?”

  “No, I did not.”

  True.

  Benson leaned further into the alcove and closer to Feng’s face. “Did you hire someone to kill Edmond Larby?”

  “That’s the same question,” Feng protested. “And the answer is still no.”

  True.

  “Did you send someone to attack me the night I returned with Edmond’s body?”

  “No.”

  True.

  Benson’s frustration threatened to boil over. “I think your machine needs recalibrating, captain.”

  Mahama shook her head. “It’s within parameters. You’re just not getting the answers you expected.”

  He looked back to Feng. “Did you alter the security video logs of the locks to mask whoever killed Laraby?”

  “No! No one killed Edmond. He committed suicide.”

  True.

  “He threw himself out of an airlock, then erased the video from the outside? That’s a neat trick. How did he do that, commander?”

  “Well, I…”

  A chime sounded from the display behind him. Benson turned around to see an error alert flashing in orange.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly.” Mahama dug through the menu, sifting through conflicting data and system messages. “He’s experiencing cognitive dissonance. You’re confusing him.”

  “That makes two of us.” Benson turned back to Feng. “You really believed Laraby killed himself?”

  “Of course. I called you in, remember? I wanted you to find him more than anything.”

  True.

  “Then why did you alter his files before you gave them to me?”

  Feng didn’t answer.

  “I know something was hiding in his files. Was he blackmailing you?”

  “No.”

  True.

  “Then why are your skin cells under his fingernails?”

  That got Mahama’s attention. The room went very quiet as they both waited to hear Feng’s response.

  “Well? Answer his question, commander.”

  Benson got back in his face. “Why the lavish presents? Why the huge apartment? He was hiding something for you, but the price got too high, didn’t it? You confronted him and got into a fight. Things got out of hand, didn’t they?”

  “No! For the last time, no!”

  True.

  “Then how do you explain your skin under his fingernails?”

  “Because we were lovers!”

  Benson stopped cold. You could hear a pin drop, if indeed a pin could drop. Benson looked back over his shoulder at the BILD display.

  True.

  Feng’s face twisted up in pain and shame. “Are you happy now, you bastard?”

  “You’re gay?” Benson asked, utterly confused.

  “That would follow, wouldn’t it?” Feng snapped sarcastically.

  “But, you’re married…”

  Feng just shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” Benson said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. No one cares if you’re gay. Hell, one of my teammates taught me how to dance at La Cage. The only people left who give a shit is that ultra-orthodox Shia sect, and there can’t be more than a couple dozen of them on the entire ship.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Feng sobbed. “Oh, sure, you all congratulate yourselves on being so fucking enlightened, but if any of us want a family, the door gets slammed in our face.”

  “That’s not true. You can get married just like everyone else. That’s been true from the beginning.”

  “And then what?” Feng demanded. “When was the last time a homosexual couple was given a child license? Never, that’s when. They always go to married, biological parents. And with every woman on birth control, there are no unwanted children. There are no adoptions, there are no orphans. So either we let our lines die to live openly, or we stay in the closet. I chose to have a future.”

  True.

  Captain Mahama pushed off and floated to Feng’s alcove. “Commander, why didn’t you say something before now?”

  “You think we haven’t tried? Read the old court cases, it was brought up a half dozen times over decades. We always lost. The civilian court always sides with biological parents. It’s not like back on Earth. After a century of that, we just gave up and did what we had to.”

  Benson listened intently. It made a sad sort of sense. Any child that went to a gay couple would be a license that didn’t go to a “normal” couple. It was easy to support someone else’s rights when it didn’t mean giving up anything in return.

  “That’s why you altered his personal files. You erased any mentions of your relationship to keep it secret after he died.”

  Feng nodded sadly.

  True.

  “Does your wife know?” Mahama asked.

  “No, it would kill her inside. I love my wife, and our son. I just… needed more. Edmond was always pushing me to force changes, but I always told him to be patient, that it wouldn’t matter once we reached Tau Ceti. ‘Keep your head down,’ I said. But he was braver than I was. I thought he finally gave in to the pressure. I’ve been blaming myself for days without even being able to grieve, with you breathing down my neck the whole time accusing me of killing him! Do you have any idea how hard it’s been?”

  “How hard it’s been?” Benson tried to contain his temper, but it was difficult. “You’ve been interfering with my investigation from the start! Now I’ve wasted three days chasing you down. If you’d just told me the truth in the first place I’d be three days closer to catching the real killer.”

  “I tried to get you to look somewhere else, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Benson’s eyes rolled. “Jesus man, I’m a cop, not a crewmember. If you tell me not to look in the box, I look in the box to see what you’re hiding. Now Edmond’s killer has had three days to cover their tracks. They might even get away with it now, doesn’t that matter to you?”

  “Of course it matters!”

  True. Feng tried to continue, but emotion overwhelmed him as tears erupted from his eyes.

  Mahama put himself between Benson and his first officer. “All right, you have your answer, detective. This debriefing is over.”

  “But he admitted to obstruction of justice.”

&nb
sp; “And he will answer for that, later. But right now, he’s staying put at his post. I can’t afford a major shakeup in the chain of command just days before we Flip. We’ll deal with his punishments administratively once we’re safely inserted into Tau Ceti G orbit. Not before. Now, you’re going to turn around and get back to work. This is a dead end.”

  “Someone with command level network permissions either killed Laraby, or helped,” Benson said gravely. “Your BILD system can find them by the end of the day.”

  Captain Mahama was incensed. “Are you quite mad?”

  “Well, how else do you explain the altered security logs?”

  “That’s not the point!” Captain Mahama physically shoved Benson out of the alcove and into the middle of the room. “Ten minutes ago you were lecturing me that it was illegal. Now you expect me to run my crew through it looking for a needle in a haystack! I only agreed to use it now because you came with a warrant. I’m not about to run innocent people through that monstrosity without some sort of due process, and frankly I’m deeply concerned that you would even suggest it!”

  Benson bumped up against the ceiling next to the door. The captain’s words hit home. He could hardly believe how quickly the switch had flipped in his brain. It scared him.

  “Of course you’re right, captain. But if I can dig up enough evidence for another warrant?”

  “I’ll think about it. You’re dismissed.”

  Benson saluted, and the lights went out.

  Total darkness enveloped the conference room for several agonizing seconds, until amber emergency lights sprang into action, outlining the exit. Alarms screamed from the walls all around them.

  Benson, Captain Mahama, and even Commander Feng stared at each other blankly for a long moment amid the pulsing yellow emergency lights and blaring alarms.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Main power’s down,” Mahama said.

  “Down everywhere, or just this room? Wait… My plant’s lost connection.”

  “Mine too,” the captain said. Feng also nodded.

  Benson’s internal warning bells went off. The whole thing smelled of an ambush. Behind him, the manual handle of the door span ominously. Benson pushed off from the ceiling, trying to put a little distance between him and whatever was trying to come through. Was it an attack? Did they already get through Korolev?

  “Stay behind me, sirs.” He pulled out his stun-stick and leveled it at the hatch.

  “Does that still work if the network is down?”

  Benson shook his head. “No idea.”

  The three of them watched in mute horror as the handle squeaked and span before finally coming to rest. The door swung open ponderously and clanged against the bulkhead. Benson tensed as a darkened figure emerged, but the next flash of amber emergency lights revealed Korolev’s chiseled features. His eyes quickly locked onto Benson’s stun-stick as he reflexively threw up his hands.

  “It’s only me, chief!”

  Benson’s tension eased. “Dammit, man, announce yourself. You scared us half to death.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Benson tried to peek around the young constable and saw that the bridge beyond was just as dark as the conference room. The power outage had hit the whole module, maybe more.

  “Status, constable?” Mahama asked politely.

  “Main power’s out, looks like it’s shipwide. They’re asking for you on the bridge, sir.”

  The captain nodded and pushed off from the wall. Feng followed like a scolded puppy a moment later.

  “You let him go?” Korolev asked once they were alone.

  “He’s not our man.”

  “Are you sure? I thought you had him dead to rights.”

  “Trust me, I’m sure. C’mon, we’d better go see what’s happening.”

  Benson followed Korolev out, then span the hatch shut. The dozens of holographic displays that had filled the air were gone, replaced by dim backup lighting and the rushed, confused conversations of the bridge crew. Captain Mahama had returned to her place in the eye of the storm.

  “I need an engineering status report,” Mahama said testily.

  Like everyone else on the bridge, he was used to getting a constant stream of data on the ship’s operation through his plant. But with the network down, everyone was busy digging through screens and trying to remember how to navigate the user interfaces. Everything was taking ages longer than it should.

  The shaky answer came from an ensign who could do little to conceal the nervousness in her voice. “We’ve restored emergency power to secondary systems, but both main cores are down, sir.”

  “Both?” Mahama nearly shouted the question. “Get Director Hekekia on the line.”

  “Yes, sir.” The ensign dug through the menus on her screen, trying to remember how to connect the call. It took a few moments as Hekekia had to be tracked down and brought to an intercom panel.

  “Go ahead for Hekekia,” he said, through the bridge’s hidden speakers. The connection was audio only.

  “Hekekia, it’s Mahama. I just heard a nasty rumor that both our reactors are down.”

  “It’s no rumor, captain. We’re flat-lined.”

  “They’re independent systems, that’s not supposed to be possible.”

  “Tell it to the reactors. They’ve lost magnetic containment.”

  In the not-too-distant past, “lost containment” and “reactors” appearing together in the same sentence would have caused an immediate panic, followed several days later by a whole pile of people sick and dying from radiation poisoning.

  Happily, the Ark used third-generation fusion reactors. Fortuitously enough, they’d been perfected in the decade before Nibiru showed up and started eating the Oort cloud. Without containment, the hundred million degree cloud of Helium-3 plasma simply cooled off and ceased to do anything dangerous.

  * * *

  “How long until we can restart?” Mahama asked.

  “No idea. I need to figure out what the problem is first.”

  Mahama rubbed her eyes. “How’s our capacitor charge?”

  “Thirteen percent, sir.”

  “What?” Mahama’s voice boomed across the bridge, sending shocks through the assembled crew. “Eighty percent is the safety limit. How are we below a quarter charge?”

  “We discovered a cascading short in the recharging system this morning. It had been causing the capacitors to discharge. We just got done patching it up less than an hour ago.”

  How convenient, Benson thought, but he kept quiet. A shared glance with Korolev confirmed that the same thought had occurred to the younger man.

  “How much time can we get out of what capacitor charge we do have?” Mahama asked.

  “Well, none, sir.”

  “What do you mean, ‘none’?”

  “We need whatever’s left to restart the reactors once they’re fixed.”

  Mahama slapped herself on the face. The reactors needed a huge jolt of energy to get their magnetic constriction bottles squeezing down hard enough to convince the Helium-3 to fuse and start making power. On the few occasions they’d had to be shut down for maintenance, only one was taken offline at a time, leaving the other available to jumpstart its twin.

  For the whole time the Ark had been in space, not one second had passed when one of them wasn’t running. Until a few minutes ago.

  “Options?” Mahama asked. The question was met with embarrassed silence as everyone came up empty of ideas. “C’mon people, give me something to work with. A stupid idea is better than no idea.”

  “What about the habitats?” a nervous ensign ventured.

  “Explain,” Mahama said.

  “Well, they’re spinning awfully fast to maintain artificial grav. There’s a lot of energy locked up in their angular momentum.”

  “And? Keep going.”

  “Why don’t we use it? Reverse the habitat’s drive motors from spinning them to recharging the c
apacitors?”

  Mahama’s face brightened with the possibility. “Hekekia, can you do that?”

  “Stand by.” The entire bridge held its breath while he went through the calculations.

  “Yes, but it’ll require an EVA and four hours to make the conversion. I could do it in less, but we’re still down the EVA pod that idiot broke.”

  Benson hoped no one remembered who “that idiot” had been. He was not so fortunate.

  “Another victim of our detective’s crusade,” Commander Feng mumbled just loud enough for it to carry through the entire sphere. Accusing eyes glared back at him.

  “Well, I didn’t see any of you clamoring to do it,” Benson shot back at them.

  “Is Benson on the bridge with you?” Hekekia barked. “Don’t let him touch a bloody thing!”

  Mahama looked down, (or up, or over, depending on one’s perspective) as if he had only just noticed Benson’s presence.

  “Detective, what are you still doing here?”

  “Trying to figure out what’s going on, same as you. And before you grind the habitats to a halt, ask yourselves if you really want fifty thousand people floating around like panicking parade balloons.”

  “They’ll have warning, chief, and if everyone has followed the preparation schedule, most everything in the habitats should be tied down by now anyway.”

  Benson thought about his own apartment, where the only things that were properly secured had been bolted down by the builders. Some quick exchanges between crewmembers showed he wasn’t alone.

  “I think you’ll find a significant percentage of the population has procrastinated on that particular preparation, sir.”

  “Then that’s on them!” Mahama fumed. “We’re running on batteries up here, chief. Our superconducting magnets are down around command and engineering. We’re all getting extra rads of cosmic background radiation as we speak. But more importantly, we don’t have power for our Vasimir thrusters or navigational lasers. We’re deep inside Tau Ceti’s Oort Cloud doing fifteen thousand KPS, and if any rock or splinter of comet much bigger than a pebble hits us in the next four hours, it’ll go right through our ablative shield and straight through half the ship. Bigger than a peapod and we could lose her entirely. Facts I would have assumed your recent experiences would have made you more sensitive to.”