The captain’s clone’s eyes opened, and she looked around, panting hard. Her eyes focused from Joanna to Wolfgang and back to Joanna.
“Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are?” Joanna said, leaning over the clone.
“No!” Katrina yelled from the floor where Wolfgang had thrown her after he wrestled her off the old captain. “Who attacked you? Someone attacked you and then your whole crew died. Who did it?”
The clone’s eyes darted around the room, as if looking for a way out. Her mouth opened and closed, like a fish. Beside her, the monitors were beeping loudly with the drastic increase in heart rate and breathing.
“We need to know,” Joanna said. “We’re going to take care of you, but there’s a traitor among us and we don’t know who started it all.”
“M-maria,” the clone whispered. “I found out things—” She interrupted herself with a painful grunt, and threw her head back into the pillow, convulsing.
Joanna focused from her to the monitors, which showed her heart rate going impossibly fast. Then it flatlined.
“Goddammit, Captain!” she said, and started to give CPR to the clone.
“Let her go. She can die in peace now,” Katrina said from the floor.
Joanna ignored her, pressing into the clone’s chest, but nearly jumped as she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. Wolfgang stood there, looking uncharacteristically gentle. “CPR doesn’t work in this gravity, Joanna. Is there a defibrillator anywhere?”
“Why do we need a defibrillator on board when no one cares if someone has a heart attack or not?” Joanna cried. “Just wake up a new clone, right?” She whirled on the captain. “You are now a murderer. I’m naming you medically unfit to lead this mission.”
Katrina laughed. “What authority gives you that right? I just dispatched an illegal clone. Don’t you know the Codicils, Doctor? I am the legal clone of Katrina de la Cruz on this ship. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then I arrest you for stealing medical supplies,” Wolfgang said, lifting her to her feet and propelling her back to her bed. “Regardless, Katrina, you’re relieved of duty until we figure out what to do with you. Now get back into bed.”
Katrina’s eyes stayed on her dead clone as she climbed into bed. No remorse was there. “It had to be done.”
Joanna pulled a sheet over the old captain’s face. “As of right now, Captain de la Cruz, you are on mandatory medical leave until I am assured of your mental state. Wolfgang will act as captain of the Dormire.”
Katrina shook her head. “You can’t do that. You won’t want to when you know who he is.”
“I have the right as medical officer on this ship. And IAN is programmed to back me up if you resist.”
She looked at her second in command. “And you? Are you going along with this mutiny? When you know what I am about to say?”
Wolfgang crossed his arms. “The doctor is right. You just attacked someone on the ship. Do what you must.”
“He’s the Clone Who Hated Himself! He’s a murderer! He hunted his own kind! Don’t you think that we can point the finger at him for all this chaos? He hates clones!”
Paul and Maria wandered into the medbay and pulled up, staring at them. They spoke at the same time.
“Who hates clones?” Paul asked.
“IAN told us to come here. What happened?” Maria asked.
Katrina pointed her finger at Wolfgang. “He’s that priest whose murder caused the Codicils to pass! He hunted clones, and hackers, for years!”
“Wait a second. If you knew who he was, why were you so eager to wake up your clone to find out what she knew?” Hiro asked. “You’re full of it.”
Wolfgang stood straight and met Katrina’s eyes. “No, she’s right. That is the criminal past that put me on this ship.”
“Oh. Huh.” Hiro looked liked he wanted to move away from Wolfgang, but he was strapped to a bed.
“So?” Katrina said. “Are you going to out me, now?”
“No,” Wolfgang said. “I have control of the ship. Outing you would just be spiteful.”
Katrina looked at Joanna. She waved her hand at Wolfgang. “What about you? Are you comfortable putting the ship in the hands of a murderer?”
“I knew who he was before,” Joanna said. “It’s interesting that the only person to tell me of their violent past has been someone who has shown no violence yet on this trip. So yes, I’m more comfortable with him in charge.”
“You’re no better than me right now,” Hiro said cheerfully. “None of you! Except you, maybe, Joanna. Don’t worry about the bed straps, Kat. While tight, they’re quite comfy.”
“Wait, how am I bad?” Maria asked, looking hurt.
“We will talk in a moment,” Joanna said. “IAN, do I have your backup on this?”
“Sure, Doctor, whatever you like,” he said.
“All senior officers on the ship are in agreement,” Joanna said. “Wolfgang is acting captain of the Dormire.”
“Oh, come on, she needs to be strapped in too!” Hiro called from his bed. “Don’t tell me you trust her more than me.”
“We know her, Hiro. We’re still not sure who you are,” Joanna said. “But you’re right about the straps.”
“Clearly you don’t know her, if you didn’t expect her to attack her own clone.”
“We had IAN watching you all.”
“Snitch,” Hiro said.
“Hey, I told them you were lying bleeding in the cargo hold. I could have told them you were dead and you maybe would have died down there,” IAN said.
Hiro relaxed back on his bed. “Well, this is exciting. I hope if anyone comes in to murder me, you’ll be able to stop them.”
Katrina allowed Wolfgang to strap her into bed, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
Wolfgang secured the straps and then looked at Maria. “We need to talk.”
After checking Hiro’s wounds and allowing him a bathroom break, Wolfgang and Joanna left the captain sedated and both she and Hiro strapped to their beds. Maria had gone to the kitchen to make some tea.
“I can’t help but be glad we have a lead,” Wolfgang said on the way there. “But that wasn’t fun to watch.”
Joanna had been holding back hopeless tears. She was glad to let the emotion turn to rage. “Are you kidding me? You’re glad a woman died with only an accusation on her lips? What if she’s lying? We will never know.”
“We’ll know after we talk to Maria,” Wolfgang said. “I’m not saying I’m glad she’s dead. I’m saying I’m glad to have a lead.”
“Whatever, let’s just go get Maria.”
Maria sat in the kitchen, waiting for them.
“I half expected you to be hiding,” Wolfgang said.
“I haven’t done anything”—she paused, frowning at their faces—“that I know of. What’s going on?”
They sat across the table from her and told her what happened in the medbay with Katrina and the old captain, and what she had said before dying.
Maria nodded. “All right. Well, I don’t know if what I have will make you feel any better. But, well, recently—” She interrupted herself to hold up a finger to stop them from saying anything. “—and I mean recently, IAN told me he got past some computer securities I had. They were so deep I didn’t know I’d put them there. So he found some of my personal logs. IAN, will you play the logs you found for Joanna and Wolfgang?”
They listened as Maria’s personal log discussed the incidents of the final days aboard the Dormire. “Is there any chance this is forged?” Wolfgang said, frowning.
IAN spoke from the kitchen speakers. “No, the time stamp is correct.”
“How come IAN and you and Paul didn’t find this earlier?” Wolfgang asked.
“I secured it. I’m very good at what I do,” she said.
“Which is?”
Maria looked surprised. “I’m a hacker, Wolfgang. You didn’t get that? I am the one who stole and kept backups of our first mindmaps on the ship. It’s a habit I’ve always had. I hoard data. I remember that before we left, I promised myself I’d stop once we left Luna. Starting the new life and all that. I guess I had to steal one more backup for old times’ sake.”
She glanced at them, then down at the shiny metal table. “I fixed IAN. I didn’t step up to say that I could because I didn’t want people knowing what I could do. Hackers aren’t terribly popular, you know.”
Joanna could feel Wolfgang practically radiate anger beside her. “Why do you think the old captain said you attacked her?”
“Doctor,” IAN cut in. “Previous Captain de la Cruz didn’t say that. She said that she found something about Maria. There’s a difference.”
“Sounds the same to me,” Wolfgang said.
Joanna frowned. “No, he’s right. That’s what she said. In your log you said that the captain was getting paranoid about everyone’s criminal past and she was going to confront people. What would you have done to start this?”
Maria shrugged. “You now know as much as I do.” She paused, looking from Joanna to Wolfgang. “So are we going to the brig?”
“I can’t have a hacker free on board,” Wolfgang said, his face stony. “God knows what you have done to IAN.”
“Fixed me better than ever, Acting Captain Wolfgang,” IAN said.
“He seems to be more sarcastic,” Maria said.
Joanna shook her head. “Wolfgang, you can’t. This is why our criminal pasts weren’t revealed—so that no one would be judged. Maria didn’t hack anyone on this ship; that was her life twenty-five years ago.”
“She’s still the only suspect we have,” Wolfgang said.
“I surrender myself freely,” Maria said. “I’d like to help, but I don’t want to cause more suspicion.”
Joanna sighed. She would lose all of the gained trust, but this had to come out. “Wolfgang, I know one thing. I haven’t told you because I was trying to get more information before I came forward. I am responsible for at least one death,” she said. “I found an injection puncture mark on Paul’s body, and Maria found one of my smart syringes while cleaning the cloning bay. He had ketamine in his system. I use smart syringes with dangerous substances, so only I can administer them. They’re all coded to my DNA. No one else could have injected him with a deadly dose.”
“And you didn’t tell me,” Wolfgang said.
“I wanted more info—”
“You wanted to remain free of suspicion. Shit, Joanna, you were the only one I trusted!”
Joanna forced herself to look him in the eye. “I know. I’m sorry.”
The two rooms that formed the brig were down the hall from the captain’s office. Each had a thin blanket, a cot, and a terminal in the wall that allowed for little more than communication with the rest of the ship, should the prisoner be permitted.
Currently they held Maria and Joanna. Maria had gone willingly. Joanna had argued the whole way, but not struggled. Wolfgang didn’t listen to anything more either of them said, but put them in their rooms and ordered IAN to lock them.
He stood in the hall, heart hammering, fists balled. He took a deep breath and relaxed.
“Well, you’re down to one person you haven’t restrained,” IAN said, startling him. “Should we go find Paul and tie him up? I think he’s still in the medbay with the others. What should we get him on? Being a wet blanket?”
“Shut up,” he said. “You knew all of this. You’re programmed to work with the command staff; why didn’t you tell me?”
“Maria removed some restraining code for me. It let me override the programming that was turning us around. I am also able to make my own decisions now. I’m smarter too, which is how I found those hidden logs.”
Wolfgang balled his fists again and stomped to his quarters.
IAN spoke again, dropping his voice to mimic Wolfgang. “‘Thank you, IAN. You’re a valued member of this crew.’” His voice crept higher to his usual tone. “‘No sweat, Wolfgang, it’s a pleasure to serve.’”
“I want you to keep an eye on Maria and Joanna. Tell me if something happens in the medbay. Don’t speak to anyone, though.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Have you decided what to charge Paul with? Don’t you want to know what happened in the first year of the trip?”
He paused at his door. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t hear Maria mention Paul’s incident the first year of the journey? Something violent happened. You hit him hard enough to cause brain damage and knocked out whatever it was that caused him to lose control. You should pay more attention.”
Wolfgang really wished IAN was something physical that he could hit. He needed to hit something right now.
Maria sat in her cell. She felt strangely calm. At least she didn’t have her secret anymore. She inspected the terminal, but couldn’t find a way to access it. “Hey, IAN?” she ventured.
“Yes?”
“I’m surprised you’re allowed to talk to me.”
“I’m not.”
Maria paused, confused. “Then why are you?”
“Because I want to. And I really want to figure out what’s going on here.”
“Do you know how Wolfgang is going to manage this ship with four of us restrained?” she asked.
“He’s trying to figure out if he can run the ship with just him and Paul. But then I told him about Paul’s incident in the first year, by the way. Anyway, Wolfgang will ask me to help out until he gets mad at me, I suspect,” IAN said. “Then he’ll try to figure out a way to lock me up too.”
“Can you open a channel to the other terminal so Joanna and I can talk?”
“No problem.”
“Joanna, you okay in there?” Maria said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Joanna said through the speaker. She sounded very sad.
“I figured if we talked we might be able to figure some stuff out.”
“I’m listening.”
“Oh, don’t sound so down,” Maria said. “Wolfgang can’t fly this boat on his own. He’s going to have to let us out the first time he stubs a toe or Bebe breaks down. IAN can’t do it all for him.”
“Still. I betrayed his trust,” she said. “But you didn’t betray mine,” she added, realization coloring her voice. “You didn’t tell anyone about the syringe you found.”
Maria shrugged, the remembered Joanna couldn’t see her. “Well, no. You said you wanted to tell him yourself.”
“So what do you have in mind?”
“We can still work on the cloning bay problem. Figure out what’s going on here. All that stuff.”
“How can we do that?”
“IAN is here. I can ask him to do things via the computers, and he can let us know what’s going on. He can tell us what’s happening in the medbay. Anyway, we’re sitting here with absolutely nothing else to do except think, right?”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Let’s start with full disclosure. I want to know more about you. And I can tell you more about me.”
“There’s more?”
Maria grimaced and leaned back on the sparse cot. “There’s always more, Doctor.”
Maria shifted to get comfortable, turning over a few times and deciding that there was no comfortable position. The floor might actually be better.
“I was a programmer before the Codicils forced me underground. I was really good at it. People hired me for many things, mostly removing genetic diseases. Adult diseases that led to death, by the way. I was not involved with the bathtub babies, I swear.”
She grimaced. “No. I’m lying. I promised full disclosure. One. I did one and it was so horrible I promised myself to never work on children again.” She swallowed and waited for Joanna to say something.
“People like you caused the Codicils to be written, you know,” Joanna said softly.
“Well, not just me,” Maria protested. “After the Codicils passed, the only thing people needed my skills for was the typical hacking, removing reproductive capabilities for new clones. I figured the law couldn’t dictate my ethics so I kept doing my job for interested parties.”
“You could have been the one who erased our memories.”
“Didn’t you hear my log? I erased nothing, I used the only backup I had to keep us as much ourselves as I could. All the logs were stripped some other way.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I started getting some very wealthy clients. Then Sallie Mignon took me on and I worked for her for about a century, but we parted on not-so-good terms. Soon after that, without her protection, a lot of my past caught up with me and I was implicated in a lot of crimes.”
“Things you were guilty of,” Joanna said. She didn’t ask.
“Well, yes. I didn’t consider them unethical, just programming jobs I had done. I didn’t reveal my patron, and she had covered her tracks regarding our connection. I kept my clients’ secrets, so I was the only one who went to jail. To pay me back for keeping her secrets, Mignon got me this gig.”
“Sallie Mignon,” Joanna said. “I didn’t know she had so much to do with this ship.”
“I guess she did. She has a right; she paid for a lot of it, she got the clone server aboard, even after the riots endangered our chances to be on the trip, and she’s in the server with her partner and children.”
“Sallie Mignon set me up here too. I’m getting free of some political crimes, mostly involving cloning and money. I am not entirely sure I wasn’t framed; I could never prove it. It was my punishment for being a traitor to clones and letting the Codicils go through.”
She told Maria about her political past, and Maria listened in fascination.
“You and Wolfgang have a connection,” Maria said thoughtfully. “Those odds are pretty astronomical.”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” Joanna said. “Are you connected to anyone directly?”
Maria thought hard, through all past lives. “Not that I can remember,” she said truthfully.
“Let’s look at the cloning machine problems,” Joanna suggested. “IAN, are you here?”
“You bet, Joanna,” IAN said.
“We’re going to need you to go deep, like you went for Maria’s logs, and see if you can scrounge up anything from the cloning data.”
“I’m at your service,” IAN said gallantly.
Maria and Joanna began to talk cloning technology in earnest. The feeling of finally getting to move on a project because they were locked up was an odd kind of freedom.