by M. D. Cooper
“That’s lucky,” said Pippa. “Plain and simple is all we’ve got. Oh, and…the funeral for Jacob is about to go ahead.”
“Okay. Lead the way.”
Erin followed Pippa through the Euphemia to one of its vast, echoing interior holds, where what remained of Jacob Cimorelli lay enclosed in a body bag outside of an ore discharger. The device was normally used to launch ore out of the hold toward receiving nets at the refineries.
The discharger seemed like overkill to send the deceased out to his final resting place, but Erin could see the sense in the choice. They couldn’t simply push the body out of an airlock, because a frozen corpse floating around the system would be a navigation hazard. The discharger would set Jacob Cimorelli on a trajectory that would eventually take him to Canaan Prime. There, he would be reduced to atoms that would ultimately wander the galaxy for eternity. Erin hadn’t often considered the prospect of her own death, but she decided that if it came to it, Jacob’s final fate wasn’t a bad way to go.
The hold was full of pilots, surface miners, and ship’s crew paying their respects. As she drew closer to the body bag, Erin saw that it was covered in notes that had been printed out and stuck to it. They were messages from Jacob’s co-workers and friends aboard the ship. The man had clearly been popular.
Anwen was already present, but Max didn’t seem to be anywhere in the crowd, from what Erin could tell. The place was somber and silent except for the shuffling of feet.
“Are you going to say something?” Erin whispered to Pippa, wondering if she should take on the role as the person with the highest seniority.
“No,” Pippa replied. “The pilots asked if they could conduct the ceremony. We didn’t object. They knew Jacob better than us.”
When no one else had arrived for a few minutes, one of the pilots stepped forward and began to speak. She told the crowd about Jacob’s life, how he was a Marsian who had applied to join the Intrepid in its earliest days, and about how he’d been dedicated to his work and well-liked.
“We do a hard job,” said the pilot, “one that’s more dangerous than most, though it’s rare that one of us ends up like poor Jacob.” She looked down and shook her head. “It isn’t right that he died. We came here for a better life. A long, happy, and fruitful life. Let’s hope that whatever went wrong, it never happens again.”
The allusion to her investigation didn’t go unnoticed by Erin. But if the pilots thought she might not take it as seriously as she should, they were wrong.
The woman continued. “Goodbye, Jacob, from all of us. We won’t forget you.” She stepped backward, and four more pilots moved forward.
“Oh, wait a moment,” said Anwen. “I have something for him.” She took a small, portable media player from a pocket, sniffed, and said, “I heard Jacob liked to listen to this.” She turned the player on, and music filled the space. It was an opera. Anwen gave the device to one of the pilots.
The man bent down to the bag, pulled down a short length of the zipper, and slipped the device inside. He closed the bag, muffling the music. The pilots carried the remains into the discharger. When they’d placed the bag down on the metal floor and returned to the hold, the discharger’s doors ground heavily together.
A few moments later, after a roar and a shudder, Jacob Cimorelli began his final journey.
The pilots, miners, and crew began to file out of the hold. As they left, Erin was already going over the fresh readings that the clean-up teams had gathered. She couldn’t shake her impression that something wasn’t right.
Pippa’s explanation that undetected uranium-235 added to the explosion that fractured undetected fault lines seemed to be the only plausible one, but that would have required the survey teams to have made two significant mistakes, and from what she could see, they’d been very thorough.
After her encounter with Hart trying to steal the picotech last year—combined with the trouble that had plagued projects back on Victoria—her encounter with Max was causing Erin to consider sabotage. It wouldn’t greatly surprise her if the supervisor had done something like this to try to discredit Pippa and Anwen. Had he thought that when they were removed from their positions, he would be the obvious choice to take over for them?
If she was right, Max was a danger to anyone he worked with. Still, she couldn’t do anything based on simple suspicion. She needed proof.
Erin began to check the survey data again. Whatever had happened, she would get to the bottom of it. Jacob Cimorelli deserved justice.
REPORTING IN
STELLAR DATE: 03.11.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Parliamentary Buildings, Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, New Canaan System
Tanis rose from her desk as Erin appeared at the entrance to her office, a tired smile on her lips.
“Erin, you didn’t have to stop by in person. I’ve taken up enough of your time with this—hopefully your vacation partners are still available.”
“Well, I came down the elevator,” Erin replied with a shrug as she entered. “It’s only a few klicks from here, and I thought it would be easier to give you the update in person.”
Having met with Tanis in her offices many times before, Erin moved to the couches near the tall windows and sat heavily. Tanis followed, and sat across from her.
“I get the feeling you’re not satisfied with your findings,” she said.
“You’d be right,” Erin heaved a sigh and leant forward to pour herself a glass of water. “There’s something there that I’ve not been able to put my finger on. The twins—Pippa and Anwen—did everything right, the survey teams didn’t make any mistake that Walter and I can discern, and the detonations were dialed in correctly.”
“Are you sure of that?” Tanis asked. “I can’t imagine that there’s anything left of the actual explosives.”
Erin’s shoulders heaved as she gave a rueful laugh. “Well, you’re right about that. When you have several successive nuclear blasts go off, it tends to mess with the evidence. On top of that, the rotation supervisor, a real…well…touchy guy named Max, had the clean-up crews push a lot of the ejecta right back onto the asteroid, burying the location of the initial explosions.”
“I can imagine that makes it hard to piece together what went on.” Tanis gave an understanding nod, feeling that it had been unfair to saddle Erin with such a mystery after the woman had worked nonstop for years to get the Gamma Sites—not to mention important parts of Carthage’s infrastructure—up and running.
“More than a little,” Erin replied. “They were hauling so much uraninite around, the whole area was suffused with radioactive isotopes—which played havoc with all the local ships’ scan. If I had solid readings on the alpha, beta, and gamma particles that came off the explosions, I’d have a much clearer picture.”
The fact that it seemed almost impossible for Erin to know exactly what had gone on—in part because of the method used to clean up the site—got Tanis wondering if there was something suspicious at play. She saw the same concern in Erin’s eyes.
“You suspect this Max, don’t you?” Tanis asked.
Erin nodded slowly. “I do, but I feel a bit guilty about it. The guy’s an ass, and he seems to have always been. Either this is his magnum opus, or I’m just feeling inclined to pin it on him because of how big of a…well, you get the picture.”
Tanis couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I think I do.” She rose and walked to the window, gazing out over the ever-growing city of Landfall.
“You know, Erin…when we offered colony slots to any Noctus who wanted to come along back at The Kap, I thought we’d get mostly people who really wanted to be a part of this colony. I thought the types who resented us would stay behind, but we seem to have brought a fair number of them along.”
“Oh?” Erin asked. “Is Max not atypical?”
“Well…to be fair, he still is, but given the fact that here at New Canaan everyone is on an equal footing, you’d think that the
y’d have no reason to complain—but complain they do.”
Tanis knew what Angela meant—and could see that knowledge mirrored on Erin’s face. Not only had Kapteyn’s Streamer pushed them forward in time nearly five thousand years, but those five thousand years had been some of the most war-torn in humanity’s history.
Everyone felt some amount of guilt, knowing that the colony they’d built at Kapteyn’s Star was gone, destroyed by the Sirians.
What was even harder to deal with was the loss of Earth and Mars; fully one quarter of the people in the colony had grown up on those planets. The knowledge that the Jovians had razed those worlds was not easy to deal with.
Tanis often wondered if that was why colonists like Erin threw themselves into their work, to give all their focus to building this new home and making it as safe as possible so that what had happened back in the Sol System and then at Kapteyn’s Star could never be repeated in New Canaan.
“So what’s next?” Tanis asked. “With the investigation—not malcontents. That’s more my issue to deal with.”
Erin took a sip of her water before setting her glass down and walking toward the windows.
“Well, I have the folks managing the heliopause sensors running through their data to see if they picked up anything from the blast, but so far nothing. They look outward a lot more than inward. In a week or so, they’ll have pulled all the debris back off Irridia and they can take radiological samples from the body of the asteroid, not the ejecta that suffered subsequent blasts. That should give a much clearer picture of what the original explosion looked like.”
Tanis placed a hand on Erin’s shoulder. “So what you’re telling me is that you don’t need to be anywhere in particular until then.”
Erin gave her a sidelong glance. “You giving me permission to relax, Tanis?”
“Would it work if it was an order?”
“And what about you?” Erin asked, looking into Tanis’s eyes. “I’m surprised you’ve not grown to your chair in here. I hope you manage to get away, too.”
Tanis ran a hand along her hair and tightened her ponytail. “Yeah, I’ve established a rule for the weekends that is essentially ‘Unless a planet is about to crash into Canaan Prime, it can wait till next week’.”
“I know what you mean,” Erin said. “Some people have trouble gauging the immediacy of the crisis.”
“Well, next week we move out to the ranch.” Tanis gave a heartfelt sigh. “That should give me a bit of a buffer when I’m out there.”
“Oh wow!” Erin exclaimed. “A ranch? As in with horses?”
“That’s just the type,” Tanis replied. “I used to ride when I was younger. I want to teach Cary. You know, once we get settled, I’ll have a little get-together. You’re on the invite list, of course. You can bring Martin and Isa, too.”
Erin’s eyes grew wide. “Are you keeping tabs on me, Tanis?”
Tanis shrugged. “Half the time I reach out to you while you’re on Carthage, your location is with Isa or Martin. And the other day, you were with both of them out on the coast. Doesn’t take Earnest Redding to figure out that you’re finally settling down.”
“What are you, my mom?” Erin asked with a laugh.
Tanis tilted her head as she regarded the engineer. “Maybe. Do you need one? I could give you ‘the talk’ before you head back to the beach.”
“Tanis!” Erin exclaimed. “Is this how you’re going to make me take some time off? By embarrassing me out of your office?”
“Will it work?” Tanis asked with a chuckle.
Erin gave the governor a steady look. “Thanks, Tanis.”
“For?”
“Helping me keep perspective.”
Tanis gave Erin a knowing look. “Earnest always says that entropy hits perspective the hardest.”
“OK, Tanis,” Erin held out her hand. “I’ll get you the official report and then head back to the coast.”
Tanis shook Erin’s hand and then put a hand on the engineer’s shoulder and turned her about. “You’ll do no such thing. I have a car waiting outside to take you to the coast. Get me the report after you have all the facts.”
“You sure?” Erin asked.
“Yeah. You have fun, and I’ll live vicariously through you. Right now, I need to prepare for a meeting with the leader of the opposition, who is pushing back on my plans to bolster the military further. Don’t you just love the parliamentary system?”
“Didn’t you advocate for that form of government?” Erin asked as she paused at the door.
“Off with you!” Tanis said, making a shooing motion. “I have Angela, I don’t need you reminding me of my mistakes as well.”
ATHENS BOUND
STELLAR DATE: 03.13.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: High Carthage Station
REGION: Carthage, New Canaan System
Isa stood between Erin and Martin as they waited to board the shuttle that would take them to the Odyssey. At long last, the three of them would be able to spend some quality time together. And what better place to spend it than Athens?
Nursing a slender hope that she might see the friend she’d made on her last visit, Isa stood on her tiptoes and peered down the line and around the air and spaceport, but Usef’s hulking figure was nowhere in evidence. She guessed it would have been quite a coincidence if they’d ended up taking the same flight again.
“Are you looking for something?” Martin asked.
“Not something—someone,” Isa replied. “The last time I took this trip, I met a really nice guy. He showed me the ropes and helped me have a good time. He’s great fun to be around, a real party animal. He told me he goes to Athens whenever he has a chance, so I was hoping I might see him again. But it doesn’t look like he’s here.”
“He might already be on Athens,” said Erin.
“Yeah, he might. If he is, I’ll be able to introduce you. I booked us into the hotel where he always stays. I stayed there too, last time. I think you’ll love it. It’s really quaint, with real wooden furniture and drapes and all kinds of old-fashioned stuff. I was in one of the regular rooms for my last visit, but this time I booked a ‘full traditional’ suite for us.”
“Full traditional?” Martin asked. “What does that mean?”
“Hmm… I know you can’t use the Link to control anything in the room. It’s all manual,” Isa replied, “but apart from that I’m not exactly sure. The description said it was a step back in time.”
“I’m intrigued,” Erin remarked. “I have to say, you’ve really got my hopes up for this vacation, Isa. You always make Athens sound great.”
“It’s unforgettable,” said Isa. “You’ll see.” She put an arm around Erin’s shoulders. “You have to promise not to brood about your investigation, though. I know it’s bothering you, but you deserve some relaxation time.”
“Okay,” Erin replied, smiling. “I’ll try.”
“Yeah,” said Martin. “If I can manage to forget about work for a week, so can you. I’m looking forward to spending time with the two most important people in my life. I don’t even mind being away from the seeding site.”
“You really don’t?” Isa teased.
“Well, only a little bit. I asked a colleague, Cameron, to stay there for a few days while we’re away. He owes me a favor, and I trust him to keep an eye on everything.”
“Hey, we’re boarding,” said Erin.
The line had begun to move. They followed the other passengers onto the shuttle and found their seats, stowing their minimal baggage. Isa had told the other two they wouldn�
��t need to bring much more than swimwear for the trip.
The cabin filled quickly and, before long, neared full capacity. Athens was certainly a popular destination for Carthaginians.
Isa strapped in for the short flight up to the Odyssey. A last few stragglers appeared and took their seats. It was nearly departure time, and the shuttle was about to shut its doors, when another figure rushed aboard.
“Usef,” Isa exclaimed.
She tried to stand, but her safety straps held her down. She unsnapped them and jumped up.
Usef grinned and strode down the aisle toward her, gasping for breath. He’d clearly run to the gate.
“Isa,” he exclaimed. “Great to see you.”
They met with a hug, Isa’s arms failing to make it even halfway around her friend’s muscled chest.
“I’d hoped we might meet up again,” Isa said.
“Yeah, me too,” Usef replied.
Suddenly, he stiffened and drew away from her.
“I-I better go to my seat,” he mumbled.
“Uh, okay,” Isa replied, looking up into Usef’s face.
He was staring, shocked, at something behind her. Isa followed his gaze and was surprised to find he was looking at Erin.
“Major?” said Erin, returning Usef’s stare.
“Ma’am,” he replied, looking uncomfortable. Picking up his bag from where he’d dropped it to hug Isa, he said, “I’ll see you….” The rest of his sentence dried up. Without another word, he walked down the aisle to his seat.
Isa watched, mystified, as Usef stowed his luggage and sat down without looking at her. His friendly expression had transformed to troubled confusion.
Isa was also confused. She took her seat again as the shuttle door closed.
Erin leaned across Martin to whisper, “That’s the friend you were telling us about? Major Usef?”
“Yes. He told me he was a Marine. I didn’t know he was an officer.”
“He’s an officer all right, and a pretty well-respected one, at that. He helped me with some tricky work last year. But I don’t understand…. Weren’t you saying he’s a party animal? Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”