by Kali Wallace
I went with Grieg and his team to Mid-AR’s overly warm observation room. The exterior lights were on but did little to penetrate the crushing darkness. I took a seat with my PD, prepared to pretend I was learning a great deal from Vanguard’s continuing reticence, and ignored the boastful chatter of the Europa team all around me.
Grieg’s ugly submersible swam into sight first. It was a big, boxy thing, with a round propulsion system that resembled the toothy anus-like mouth of a lamprey; it had two mismatched and awkward lobster-like claws that Grieg claimed were for collecting samples from the underside of Europa’s ice crust. I had asked him—big mistake on my part, instigating a conversation—what sorts of samples the claws were meant to collect, and he had launched into a half-hour lecture on the importance of proper sterilization in sample collection, which had nothing to do with what I was asking and made the assumption that my own scientific experience was approximately on level with a six-year-old starting her first bug collection. I hated to look at his machine, hated how inelegant it was, and hated most of all that it worked. Maybe it could only perform a handful of tasks, but it performed them well.
But it was not jealousy I felt when I watched the bot swimming in neat circles outside the station. It was doubt. Doubt that we had chosen the correct path. Doubt that Vanguard was clever enough to solve the problems I put before it. Doubt that I was smart enough to guide it to those solutions.
Vanguard swam into view a few moments later. It had adopted an eel-like shape for swimming, one of its favorite forms in underwater environments. It rippled elegantly around Grieg’s machine. It was so beautiful and agile, with the smooth metal scales catching and reflecting the station spotlights, giving it the look of a shimmering flame dancing in the darkness.
When it began to curl into a ball, as it had done on every previous test swim, Grieg’s knowing snicker grated my nerves.
“It’s such a cute little pill bug,” he said.
I regretted very much my prior restraint in not stabbing him with a fork. I stared down at my PD, pretending to make notes, until a gasp from one of Grieg’s grad students drew my attention back to the window.
Vanguard was changing shape again. From a tight ball it spread out, first evenly in every direction, then forming sharp angles and straight lines. It swam alongside Grieg’s machine, mimicking its motions—and its shape, I realized, after a few seconds. It was reshaping itself to look exactly like Grieg’s boxy machine, complete with the lobster claws and the lamprey-mouth propulsion system. It was a marvelous facsimile, but it didn’t last, because Vanguard kept changing. It flattened and spread, forming wings like those of a manta ray, but stayed close to the other bot, swimming over it like a rippling cloak. Grieg’s machine clearly had no idea how to react; it tried snatching with its claws, dodging out of the way, turning and rolling, but Vanguard never fell behind. The difference in agility between the two bots had never been more apparent.
Grieg was completely silent until Vanguard began to wrap itself around his bot.
“What the hell is it doing?” he demanded, his voice high and scared.
I didn’t try to answer. I had no idea. Vanguard was now curling around Grieg’s machine like a blanket gently swaddling a child.
“What is it doing?” Grieg said again. “What’s going on?”
Almost as quickly as it had wrapped itself around the other bot, Vanguard released it. It spread its wings again—taking on the shape of a diving bird now, or an arrowhead—and swam away. Grieg’s machine turned a few degrees, disoriented and sputtering.
Then it aimed its nose downward and swam directly into the ocean floor.
Grieg’s team all began talking at once. The bot kicked up silt and gravel when it struck the seafloor, creating a brightly illuminated and nearly opaque cloud outside the window. Through the murk, I could just see the newly angular shape of Vanguard racing away. Toward the mid-ocean ridge and the colony of creatures there. Finally, after days of failed tests, it was swimming off to do its job, and it was going to do it alone.
“What did you do?” Grieg demanded. He leaned down to get in my face, blocking my view. I leaned away from the coffee smell of his breath and angry spray of his words. “What did you make it do?”
I didn’t bother answering. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. I had not taught Vanguard to do that. I had not trained it in any task that involved identifying competition and eliminating it. I had not told it that it needed to disable Grieg’s machine in order to perform its own exploratory tests.
All I had done was tell it to make me proud.
“Marley.”
Adisa’s voice broke into my reminiscing. My breath caught, and I blinked rapidly, hoped it was not obvious how distant I had been, how lost in the past and close to tears. I missed Vanguard so much it ached, but most days I was able to ignore the ache, the same way I ignored the imbalance in my limbs, the glitches in my eye. Mary Ping had found that ache and pressed on it as though it was a fresh bruise.
“Sorry,” I said, my voice rough. “I was just thinking.”
I considered, for a moment, telling Adisa about David’s message. I knew that admitting I had been in contact with the victim meant I could not be on this investigation. I knew that concealing such evidence would endanger my job. But the pressure of carrying David’s message around in my mind, trying so desperately to tie it to everything we learned, looking for secrets beneath secrets without any help, was growing harder the longer we were here.
“We’ll talk to Neeta Hunter next, yeah?” Adisa said.
The impulse passed. It’s a good job, he had said, about working here on Nimue, under Parthenope’s watchful eye and controlling thumb. He was not going to help me. Nobody in Parthenope’s employ would help me, because it would mean endangering themselves.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get her in here.”
TEN
I had never seen eyes like Neeta Hunter’s before. She hadn’t been close enough for me to notice in the airlock earlier, but I could see them clearly now. They were big and bright, an unnatural electric blue, with thick lashes and overflowing tear ducts.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Hunter said. She wiped at her tears and took a shaky breath. Her accent was upper-class Yuèliàng, even crisper than Hugo van Arendonk’s. “Nobody knows anything. What happened in the optical array? Did David do something? What does the surveillance show?”
“We’re still trying to work that out,” Adisa said. “We need to ask you some questions about David.”
“Oh, god. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
I wondered if the cosmetic surgery had damaged her tear ducts or if the excessive moisture was part of the alteration, something she had requested to make her look bright-eyed and dewy, perhaps, even younger than her twenty-one years. To make those startling blue eyes shine. To let her turn on the waterworks on command.
If so, she had certainly got her money’s worth—and it had been a great deal of money. Both her eyes and her shiny silver hair cost far more than a Parthenope asteroid miner could afford. But Neeta Hunter didn’t need to worry about money. According to her personnel file, she was a Hunter of Hunter-Fremont, one of the largest and most powerful family-run corporations in the system, with a near monopoly on industrial shipping in the inner system. Her mother was Leonora Hunter, one of Yuèliàng’s genetically engineered heirs; her grandfather had just been elected for a third term as Imbrium’s vice chancellor. Neeta Hunter’s inheritance was probably worth more than several small orbitals and colonies combined. Her family might not be able to buy Nimue outright, but they would at least be able to bring Parthenope to the table.
I did a quick check on Parthenope’s public reports: Hunter-Fremont was among Nimue’s many powerful investors; they had a heavy stake in the shipyard on Badenia. No doubt they were hoping to expand their shipping empire into the asteroid belt and beyond.
Neeta Hunter’s background explained her ability to purchase absurdly expensive cosmetic enhancements. It didn’t explain what an heiress to one of the system’s wealthiest families was doing repairing bots on Nimue.
“Take your time. What was David like?” asked Adisa.
“I liked him. We came here at the same time, so we’ve always kinda been a team. He was fun to talk to. He knew a little bit about everything.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, everything. Mostly work. He was brilliant with robots, just brilliant. We talked about music and media too—he knew a lot more about late lunar surrealism than most people. We were going to try to get to the Tandy Tschovek show on Vesta next year. It was fun to get him going on about indie artists versus corporate acts and all of that.” Hunter laughed, a bit self-consciously. “We argued, but it was always for fun, you know? It all seems so silly now. I know none of this helps you.”
“You were close, yeah?” Adisa said.
“I guess.” Hunter took in a quick, wet breath and rubbed at her nose, a gesture that made her look about fourteen years old. “Not like that. I mean, yes. We were friends. But I wasn’t shagging him or anything. I don’t know if he was interested in people like that.”
He had been, before. Female, male, nonbinary, as long as they were beautiful and clever and laughing, he had loved them all, and they had loved him right back in whirlwind romances that ended as soon as they began, but rarely with bitterness. I felt a sudden, overwhelming pang of homesickness, to remember how easy it had once been to laugh and flirt and laugh some more, to come into work after a weekend knowing David would be there with a story and a challenge to provide a wilder one. The Symposium disaster had taken that from me. I hadn’t considered before that it might have taken it from David as well.
“Did he have a problem with anybody on the crew? Anybody have a problem with him?”
Hunter shook her head firmly. “No way. No. Everybody likes him.”
Adisa pressed, “No disagreements or fights? Even if they didn’t seem like a big deal?”
“No. Nothing like that. I’ve been trying and trying, and I can’t think of any reason anybody would want to hurt David.”
So why, I wondered, and not for the first time, had Sigrah tried to convince us his death was personal before we even started? I had assumed she had somebody in mind before, but now I was less certain. Her insistence made little sense without others in the crew telling stories about personal strife or conflict.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, aye?” Adisa spoke in a low, kind voice, leaning toward her, his expression a mask of sympathy. It was quite effective in putting the girl at ease, and it was a stark contrast to the studied disinterest with which he had spoken to Mary Ping. “What did you talk about when you talked about work?”
“Oh, everything. I mean, we’re all stuck here, right? David helped me a lot. He was so brilliant with the bots. This is my first contract, and there’s so much I don’t know.” Hunter took in a breath and sat up straighter. She rested her hands on the table, then immediately lifted them to wipe her tears again. That gesture, small and innocent, made me angry, then it made me sad. She was too young to be this far from whatever home on Yuèliàng she’d left behind. “I owe him a lot. He helped me when I first came here. I got hassled, you know? Because of my family. Because everybody assumes there’s no way I know what I’m doing, or I must have, I don’t know, bribed my way into this job.” She let out a sharp little laugh. “God. As if this is the job I would buy my way into, if that’s what I wanted.”
“People in the belt aren’t shy about sharing their opinions, yeah?”
“Yeah. I don’t mind, really. I know you want to ask, so I guess I can just tell you. I’m here because I didn’t want the life my family wants for me. That’s all. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
I very much doubted that was true.
“When did you last speak to David?” Adisa asked.
“The evening before he—the evening before. At dinner. He didn’t have much to say.”
“No? Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter said. “I could tell something was bothering him, but I didn’t ask.” Then, more plaintively, her voice falling to near a whisper, “I should have asked. I was just going on about stupid things. I have this bootleg copy of the HalfLiquid immersion show on Asteria and I thought he might want to watch it with me. That’s so sad, isn’t it? I can’t believe that was the last thing I talked to him about, some stupid concert, instead of asking him what was wrong. I could have . . . I don’t know. I didn’t even try.”
“Did you ever hear or see anything that made you think David was involved with something he shouldn’t have been?”
Hunter worried her lower lip. I felt a shiver of excitement.
“You can’t get him into any trouble now, aye?” Adisa said gently. “We only need to know what he was doing.”
“I don’t know. I would tell you if I knew. I swear.”
But she wasn’t looking at us. She was staring at the table, tracing an old stain with the tip of her finger, every line of her body tense and uncomfortable.
“Anybody else on the crew? We know a bit of black market dealing isn’t uncommon on a station like this.”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
Adisa waited a moment, giving her a chance to go on. When she didn’t, he changed tactics. “How did he work with Mary Ping? Bit strange, having two sysadmins on a crew this size, yeah?”
She was relieved to leave the topic of criminal activity behind. “I don’t know. I don’t think David liked her much, but it was no big deal. He said the Overseer didn’t like her either.” Hunter gave a quick, self-conscious smile. “I mean . . . you know what I mean. He knew Overseers don’t like or dislike anything. It was just a way of talking about it.”
“So they didn’t work well together?” I said.
“He said he spent half his time fixing problems she’d created or doing things she should have done already.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Hunter only shook her head. “It’s all beyond me. I’m good with the bots, but not the Overseer stuff. He said she let things slip through the cracks, things that she ought to have trained the Overseer to catch. I don’t think David was overwhelmed with work or anything. Sometimes he seemed kinda bored, to be honest. He’d go around helping other people. He helped me a lot.” A quick shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Did David ever talk to you about the Aeolia incident?” I asked.
Hunter frowned. “I don’t think so. No more than, you know, the way anybody talks about it, when it comes up.”
“Did it ever come up?”
“I don’t think so? Everybody kinda tries not to mention it. It’s so dark.”
As casually as I could, I asked, “What about Symposium? Did David ever talk to you about that?”
She wiped away a tear. “Not about the . . . you know, the attack itself. He never wanted to talk about that, even when other people tried to ask him about the trials or whatever. But sometimes he would talk about the research he was doing on the Titan project. I always wanted to hear it, you know? He was a brilliant roboticist. I learned so much from him. But it was more than that. It was . . .” She tugged on the ends of her sleeves; the gesture made her look even younger. “We’re all just trying to make our way out here, you know? Work our contracts and do our jobs and maybe think about finding a better position next time.”
It was surreal to hear an heiress from one of the wealthiest families in the system talk about living the life of corporate drudgery in the outer system. I couldn’t tell if it rang false to me because I knew her family history or because there was something insincere in her delivery. I didn’t like that I couldn’t tell. I let her keep talking.
“But David belie
ved in more than that,” Hunter said. “Not in, I don’t know, a spiritual sense. Nothing like that. But I know he thought that he’d lost something really special and important after Symposium. He would talk about . . . sometimes, he would talk about how he’d had a chance to explore and discover, but it was gone now. I asked him a few times if he was going to try to get back to it, but he always said it was too late.” She sniffled and looked at me with watery eyes. “That’s a terrible thing for a person to believe, isn’t it? Nobody should ever feel like it’s too late.”
It took my breath away, to think about how lonely David must have been, stuck on this isolated rock, with nobody but this child to confide in. She was so young. She could never understand.
We asked her about the night David had died, about where she had been and who she had seen, about her programming knowledge, about the surveillance system, but none of it led anywhere useful. She had been asleep, in bed. She hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone. She didn’t know much about the surveillance system. She didn’t know much about the Overseer. Her job was to build and repair maintenance bots. She just wanted to do her job. She couldn’t believe David was dead. She kept crying throughout the interview. It was hard to imagine this young woman, with her designer eyes and shimmery hair and endless stream of tears, beating a man to death in a rage. It was hard to imagine her feeling rage about anything. She seemed too delicate for such an emotion.
Next we spoke to Miguel Vera, the fuel tech and friend of David’s. He was from Earth and pinpointed my nomadic middle-of-the-Atlantic accent right away. He was going back, he said, when he finally saved up enough to get home. He spoke with the jittery sort of nervousness of somebody who took too many stimulants and got too little sleep.
“This is insane. I can’t fucking believe one of them did this. Nobody kills people out here. What’s the point? We’re all so fucking close to dying anyway.”