The first order of business was to form a posse, Old West style. After Mahama publicly confirmed the reactor damage had been sabotage, the crew declared a state of emergency and took immediate steps to curtail movement between modules and ramp up security. Benson and Bahadur were put in charge of the response in the habitats. Benson had no shortage of volunteers for his response.
Just under seven hundred people showed up outside of Lift Spoke Number One within twenty minutes of Benson putting out the call. He deputized the lot of them in a mass ceremony. Theresa had misgivings about using civilians in the search, but they needed lots of eyeballs to search an area as large as the basement levels. Even with this, keeping Mao’s people from slipping through the net and doubling back was going to be difficult.
More than anything, Benson was hoping to rile them, throw them off balance enough that they made a mistake. Maybe he’d get really lucky and one of them would crack under pressure and turn state’s evidence. Although he wasn’t at all sure what kind of deal the prosecutors would be willing to cut on fifty thousand counts of attempted murder.
The plan they patched together was simple enough: divide into four groups and line up on each deck from one bulkhead to the other, then walk around the entire circumference of the habitat in unison, a four-story wall of searchers.
Based on what he’d learned of the Unbound over in Shangri-La, Benson ignored the first two levels. He arranged the search groups so that the larger, younger people would search levels five and six, while the smaller and older volunteers stuck to three and four. If Mao’s group followed Kimura’s pattern, they could be expected to retreat to the lower levels once they saw the search party coming, right down into the path of his strongest people.
As plans went, it had about as many holes as a lemon zester, but it was the best he could do on short notice. He’d assigned three constables to play shepherd over each group, and everyone was plant-linked back to the central computer grid where their visual feeds could be assembled into a single landscaped image of the entire search in real time. Any sightings would be passed out to all four groups instantly, along with a replay of the encounter and location information through their plant interface.
Theresa was back in the stationhouse where she could stay on top of the mountain of data streaming in and do her best to keep the four teams coordinated. She wasn’t particularly happy about that, either.
Benson keyed up his plant and opened a call to the entire party. <OK, can everyone hear me?>
A tidal wave of yes, yeah, yup, sure, uh-huh, mmm, and a half dozen other affirmatives in hundreds of individual voices crashed into his consciousness so hard he actually took a step back as if he’d been struck. He wasn’t alone; quite a few people in the crowd covered their ears against the noise.
<Really should have seen that coming. I’ll talk. The rest of you lot stick with nodding for the moment, OK?>
The crowd chuckled back and nodded understanding.
<Excellent. Here’s the deal, folks. The people we’re after are dangerous in a way none of us have seen before. They are armed, not afraid of attacking police, unaffected by our stun-sticks, and they have home field advantage. If you see one of them, you are not to chase or engage them, I can’t stress that enough. Your plants have already been programmed to identify, record, and report automatically. You’re just cameras, but cameras we can’t afford to lose. If we spot one of these suspects, we will coordinate and isolate them. If they refuse to surrender or put up resistance, the constables in your team will deal with them. Nod if you understand.>
They did.
<Good. I’m cutting this call now, but you’re all still going to be linked up to the people on either side of you in line to keep the chain connected. If one of your buddies runs into trouble, help them, but only in self-defense and only as a last resort. Now let’s roll.>
The first people in line headed for the far bulkhead. Once they were ten meters out, the next deputy followed, and so on until two kilometers and almost half an hour later the lead man reached the other side of the module. With the lines fixed in place, everybody faced spinward and marched ahead. Benson keyed a command that turned on all the lights. As far apart and dim as the bulbs were, it wasn’t much, but it beat the hell out of total darkness.
Benson led the party on the sixth and last level, and it was cold. He thought the command module was cold, but he’d never seen his breath up there. The volunteers down here were almost exclusively men, several of whom had been on the Mustangs in years past and were only too eager to help their old captain. Korolev was there too, several hundred meters further down the line. He was shaping up to be a very good constable, but still needed supervision.
The scenery this far down was sparse, to say the least. Stretching out in every direction was an uninterrupted grid of catwalks set on top of a honeycomb matrix of insulation cells. Each was a meter wide, two deep, and made of aerogel, so light and translucent that it looked like frozen smoke.
It was also the best insulation mankind had ever devised. While the air down here was only a few degrees above zero, only two meters of aerogel and a thin composite/aluminum weave outer hull separated him from a degree above absolute zero, so named because the temperature had nowhere else to go. The habitat’s aerogel blankets here and in the level above were so efficient, they needed no heaters. The rate of heat lost to space was actually less than the heat given off by the fifty thousand human bodies and waste heat from the machines that kept them alive.
Unlike the levels above, no tangle of pipes cluttered the space down here, no conduits, no fiber optic bundles, and no air ducts. The air was dry and stale, yet had a sharp, metallic edge to it like ozone. The mold and decay Benson had seen visiting the Unbound in their lair on level three was totally absent. This far down, only a single layer of radiation-reflecting meta-materials lay between them and the torrent of high energy cosmic ray particles assaulting the ship from all directions. They very effectively sterilized any mold spores or bacterial colonies that wandered down here and tried to take root.
A bright light flashed in Benson’s right eye as one of these particles crashed headlong into one of the cone cells at the back of his retina at the speed of light, reminding him that spores weren’t the only things they would sterilize given enough time. It’s what made the lowest levels the perfect hiding place; no one wanted to be here in the first place.
Still, the utter lack of scenery had one benefit. Benson’s people could see hundreds of meters fore or aft without any obstructions, and the only thing blocking their views to spinward or anti-spinward was the upward curvature of the floor and ceiling, which would also prevent their quarry from spotting them until it was too late.
They had six point three kilometers to walk. Benson maintained a brisk pace; indeed, he found it difficult not to break into a jog. Still, the other three teams had far more cluttered spaces to navigate. Theresa had to tell him to slow down and keep his team in line every few minutes. After the first two kilometers, the inflection and cadence of her reminders sounded suspiciously consistent.
<Theresa?>
<Yes, dear?>
<Did you record that warning to slow down and put it on a timer?>
<I can recognize a pattern when I see one, sweetie. Now, Mommy’s busy.> She cut the call.
Good old Esa. Never afraid to knock him down a peg. It was probably for his own good, in the long run. She ordered stops several times while volunteers on other levels either had a false-positive sighting, or came across remnants of temporary camps and supply stashes, but Mao’s group was thorough. The most interesting thing the searchers found was a fifty liter bucket with DRINK ME painted on it in blocky letters. Upon closer inspection, it was filled with piss and shit.
This is pointless, Benson thought. They saw us coming, how couldn’t they? Seven hundred people don’t exactly move around as quiet as church mice. But then where did they go to?
<Esa, has there been any activity on the locks between Avalon and Shangri-La? Anything at all?>
<No, they’re locked down tight, just like you asked.>
Benson growled loud enough for the man to his right to hear him.
“Everything all right, sir?”
“Fine, fine… Just keep your eyes open.”
“OK, but another thousand insulation cells and I’m going to go cross-eyed permanently.”
Benson snorted. The endless pattern of hexagons really was starting to strain his eyes. He had no point of reference for them to get a fix on the distance, like getting lost in floor tiles.
“I know what you mean.”
Someone had tipped Mao off, probably whichever floater had been helping him all along. Feng was the only one he could safely cross off the list, which left hundreds of possible…
A thought jumped out at Benson. He’d given up on Laraby’s files because Feng had altered them. But Feng had altered them to conceal their relationship, not to cover up whatever had actually caused someone to shove Edmond out of the lock. Those clues might still be in there, waiting to be read. Benson had given up on his best possible lead for entirely the wrong reason.
He opened his plant and tried to retrieve the files. Maybe he could run a few more searches while they completed the sweep. But his exhilaration hit a wall when the query for the files came back with an error message.
[File Not Found]
Bullshit. He tried again, but the files were completely missing from his plant memory. Benson pulled up his download history and backtracked the file address and network transfer paths to a single holographic data node. He tried again from the source.
[File Not Found]
Benson queried the node’s network ID and tried to open its entire directory. He’d go through the files one at a time if necessary. But the effort was cut short by the next error message.
[Data Node Inaccessible.]
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Benson opened a call to command. <Hey, I’m trying to access a data file, but the system is telling me the node can’t be accessed. I just sent you the address. I have clearance, so what’s the hold up?>
<Please hold.> The line went silent while the tech at the other end ran through their diagnostics. <I’m sorry, detective, but we’ve lost that node.>
Benson blinked several times before he answered.
<You lost it?>
<Yes. I’m very sorry.>
<Where was the last place you remember seeing it?>
<No, detective, you don’t understand. We haven’t lost it, per se–>
<It was a joke, crewman. You do have jokes in the command module, yes?>
<Oh, yes, of course. Good one, detective.>
Benson pinched the bridge of his nose. Just once, he wished his stun-stick didn’t require a line of sight to work.
<What’s wrong with the node?> he asked patiently.
<Burned out. Probably a power surge from the blackout or when power was restored.>
<Were any other nodes affected?>
<No. We were lucky and only lost that one.>
Benson savored the man’s naiveté, a trait apparently shared by the entire crew. A single data node blows out that just happens to contain files critical to the only murder case in the last decade, and nobody smells anything suspicious about it.
<Can any of the data be recovered?>
<We won’t know until someone physically pulls the node, but it doesn’t look good. The holographic matrix looks like it’s been completely flash-burned.>
<Naturally. Thank you, command.>
The gears kept on turning as Benson cut the call. Someone really didn’t want Laraby’s files read, and now they’d succeeded. But the million dollar question remained. Had they simply taken advantage of the power outage to wipe the node, or had the entire blackout been a window to delete the files once and for all?
And what were the odds the plan ended there?
A new call rang through Benson’s mind. It was Jeanine. He accepted the call.
<Hello, doctor. What can I do for you?>
<Is this line secure?>
<They’re all secure, Jeanine.>
<Oh, well, why would I know that?>
<You’ve been watching spy movies, haven’t you?>
<…maybe. But you’re sure no one’s listening?>
<No more than usual. What’s up?>
<I think you should come and hear this for yourself, Bryan.>
<That bad?>
<Let’s just say that interesting. I’m in exam room two. See you shortly.>
The connection dropped. Benson looked down the line of volunteers as the futility of their task set in. He phoned Theresa.
<Call it off, lieutenant.>
<What?>
<Shut down the search and recall the volunteers. We’re not going to find anything down here.>
<You do remember we’re looking for terrorists, yes?>
<They’re not here.> He looked around the empty level and its endless honeycomb. <Nothing’s here. Besides, something’s come up.>
<What, you got a hot date?>
<No.> Benson sighed. <A cold one.>
Benson shivered away the last clinging remnants of cold. He was glad to be out of the sub-basement, with its pervasive chill and subversive radiation. A short, invigorating walk later and he passed through Sickbay’s doors. An orderly directed him to exam room two. Inside, he found Jeanine standing over Edmond Laraby’s body. He’d had some work done since the last time Benson had seen him in the form of a large “Y” incision down his chest. It was still open.
Benson looked up at her, confused. “You’ve done the autopsy already?”
Jeanine nodded grimly.
“But I thought you said he had to thaw for another day at least.”
“That was just an estimate I found in the database. Turns out the cadaver thaw tables were from mid-twenty-first century America. The average person was rather substantially larger and ah… better insulated than our man here.”
“I don’t doubt it. What have you got?”
“Bad news first?”
“He’s dead,” Benson said. “I don’t think the news gets much worse than that.”
“You may change your mind. Mr Laraby was alive when he was pushed out of the airlock, and probably conscious.”
He had to admit that was worse.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. This is my first murder investigation. I’m learning as I go. But the bruising on his forearms and wrists are definitely consistent with defensive wounds.”
“Could they be from… ah, rough sexual activity?”
She went silent for a moment to consider the question, or perhaps consider how to answer it tactfully. Was that a small streak of red flushing her cheeks?
“I don’t think so, unless this ‘activity’ was happening inside the lock just before the outer door was opened. The bruises are nascent, less than a half hour old at time of death.”
Benson had to look away from the corpse. Thrown into the black, arms pinwheeling through the vacuum, trying to swim back to the lock while the air was ripped from your lungs and your eyes bulged out of your head, spending your last few moments of life gasping for oxygen that wasn’t there.
The thought of it made Benson sick. Killing him was bad enough, but this? By all accounts, he’d been a good kid, well-liked and a hard worker. What could he have done, what could he have known, to justify this death?
“That’s… unsettling. But it doesn’t actually help identify the killer.”
She looked confused. “Don’t we already know that? I mean, the fingernail results–”
“Wasn’t him.” Benson shook his head. “We were wrong.”
“Oh,” she said. Followed by “ooohh,” as the relevance of the sex question hit home. “Well, that explains the claw marks on his back.”
“You got it. But that’s privileged information. We’re not to share it with anyone.”
“I understand.”
“Believe me, I wish it wasn’t true. We’re back to square one.”
“Not exactly.” Jeanine handed him a tablet with several files already open on the desktop. “This might help us.”
Benson tried to skim through them, but they were, to all intents and purposes, indecipherable. “I’m sorry, but what am I looking at?”
“Mr Laraby’s toxicology report.”
“He was drunk?”
“No.” Jeanine shook her head. “He was drugged.”
That got his attention. Every pill and injectable drug synthesized onboard, legally at least, had nanotube tags that acted as serial numbers.
“With what? Did you find the tags? Who prescribed it?”
Jeanine waved her hands in a “slowdown” motion. “It wasn’t a prescription, or anything manufactured, so there’re no tags to find. It’s a biological poison, as it turns out, but I have no idea where anyone could have gotten it from.”
“What kind of poison, then?”
“Well, it was at least partially metabolized, and the freeze/thaw cycle didn’t do the protein strains any favors, still I’m ninety percent sure it’s TTX. It’s a neurotoxin that attacks the nervous system’s sodium channels.”
“Dumb it down for me, doc.”
Jeanine huffed, but continued. “It’s a paralytic. It kills when the patient ingests enough to actually stop the diaphragm. That didn’t happen here.”
“But he was incapacitated?”
“Oh, surely. His muscle control would have been very weak and uncoordinated. He probably had spasms too.”
“So, wait, you mean somebody poisoned him just enough that he couldn’t fight back, but not enough to knock him unconscious so he could be alive when they threw him into the black? That’s horrible.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe they meant for him to die, but he didn’t ingest enough. Maybe they got the dosing wrong. There’s no way to know that.”
Benson nodded. It would make more sense if the suspect had tried to kill him with poison. They’d be able to get rid of the body at their leisure, then. But if it didn’t work and Edmond had felt the symptoms and went looking for help, they would have to improvise quickly. That would explain the ensuing fight, even the airlock. That was one thing about plans; you could always count on them to go wrong.
“OK, it fits. You said this TXX–”
“TTX.”
“TTX, thank you, was biological?”
Jeanine nodded and pulled up another file on the tablet. “It was found in a family of fish on Earth called Tetraodontidae, the most common example being–”
It was Benson’s turn to interrupt her. “Pufferfish.”
Jeanine didn’t bother hiding her surprise. “How did you know that?”
“I watch a lot of nature documentaries.”
“I didn’t take you for the get-back-to-nature sort. Anyway, what I can’t figure out is where they got the poison in the first place. Pufferfish went extinct with the Earth. And even if someone snuck onboard with a vial, the poison would have broken down within a few years, even refrigerated. It shouldn’t exist.”
Benson handed the tablet back to her and turned for the exit. “Send over everything you’ve found, and make extra offline copies just like you did for the fingernail results. OK?”
“Sure, but… where are you going?”
Benson looked back over his shoulder as he walked out the door.
“I’m suddenly in the mood for sushi.”