chapter eleven
Providence Station
Transverse, non-congruent
“The former commissioner of Arete Division?” Susan said incredulously once Shigeki left. Her words were encrypted into a Themis Division security chat only Isaac possessed the key to understand.
“I know,” Isaac replied, also using security chat. He sat back, weighing the information in his mind. “It seems far-fetched at first glance, and we can add Shigeki’s hesitance on top of that. That said, we don’t have enough information yet to simply dismiss it out of hand. We’ll just have to see where the case leads us and go from there.”
“And if it takes us to Peng?”
“Then that’s where we dig, as much as I don’t want to. But there’s one other thing Shigeki said that caught my interest, and that’s his suspicion regarding Peng’s plan. Notice, not Peng himself. He never accused Peng of doing anything wrong, only that he suspected the former commissioner’s plan was being used for nefarious purposes. Peng may have authored the contingency, but there’s no way he was the only person with access to it.”
“Who do you think could get their hands on it, then?”
“Hard to say without inquiring further. The other commissioners and their staffs, at least.”
“So . . . if there’s a conspiracy, you’re saying it could involve just about anyone in SysPol’s upper hierarchy?”
“Yep.” Isaac sighed. “Again, let’s not jump to conclusions. We still need to talk to Agent Noxon and see what Gilbert can glean from the evidence.” He looked over at Susan. “By the way, did you ever come across talk of these contingency plans before being selected for the exchange program?”
“No. First I’ve heard of this, which isn’t surprising. I spent most of my time working in Suppression, and something of this nature would fall under Espionage.”
“Does hearing about it bother you?”
“Nah. I’m not going to fault SysGov for being prepared. We were doing some of the same things. In fact, I was even involved with . . . ”
She trailed off and clapped her jaw shut.
“Involved in what?” Isaac asked, his interest piqued.
“I guess you could call them . . . war games, maybe?”
“What sort of war games?”
“The kind where we try to, um, steal a TTV?” She winced a little, as if expecting some form of reprimand, but her expression mellowed when none came. “I thought you’d have a stronger reaction.”
“Why would I? This was about a year ago?”
“That’s right.”
“Which is when everyone on both sides was nervous about their new neighbors.”
“Very nervous,” Susan agreed.
“Seems reasonable to me that both sides would have worked on some form of worst-case scenario planning. Now, granted, I’m glad they never sent you to steal one of our ships.”
“Me, too.” She gave him a bashful smile. “A lot of those simulations didn’t end well.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Everyone was trying to get a feel for the other side back then.”
“We still are, in a lot of ways. Trying to feel each other out, I mean.”
“Too true.”
The door to the chronoport’s conference room chimed.
“Yes?” Isaac said.
“Agent Noxon, reporting for my interview.”
“Come in, Agent.” Isaac and Susan rose to greet the new arrival.
The malmetal door split open before the intimidating silhouette of a STAND combat frame. Noxon stepped in, and Isaac struggled to suppress his grimace at the war machine’s arsenal.
“Please pardon my appearance.” Noxon detached his rail-rifle and incinerator, leaned the heavy weapons against the wall, then took a seat at the table, which creaked under his weight. His shoulder-mounted grenade launcher was pointed straight up, in perhaps a small acknowledgment of how awkward the situation was.
“No apology necessary.” Isaac returned to his seat. “We understand your general-purpose body isn’t in a presentable state right now.”
“Actually, I’d have shown up like this even if it was. Muntero has ordered about half our STANDs, myself included, to switch into our combat frames until further notice.”
“Does that include me as well?” Susan asked.
“No. You’re still in Themis Division’s chain of command.”
Susan let out a brief sigh of relief. She and Isaac had engaged in more than a few “discussions” regarding the excessive firepower of her combat frame, most of which had ended in a respectful agree-to-disagree stalemate. Isaac hadn’t so much warmed to its presence as grown to tolerate it, though the fact that Susan had saved his life more than once had certainly softened his views on the matter.
“By the way,” Noxon said, “it’s good to see you again, Investigator.”
“You as well, Agent,” Isaac replied. “I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Quite.” Isaac opened his case notes, such as they were, in a virtual window and shifted it to the side. “Normally, given the attack and your recent body swap, I would ask for a record of transfer to confirm your identity.”
“Don’t think I have one of those.”
“Of course not. As a substitute, may my LENS inspect the ID on your connectome case?”
“It may.”
Noxon leaned forward, and hexagonal plates along his back shifted to form an opening along the spine. The LENS floated behind him and took a picture of the cartridge holding Noxon’s mind, which then appeared in Isaac’s notes.
“Everything appears to be in order,” Cephalie said, the LENS floating back to the head of the table.
Noxon sat up, and his back armor clanked shut.
“Let’s start with the bombing itself,” Isaac began. “Please describe the incident in your own words.”
“I was escorting Director Shigeki from Operations to the Admin hangars, where Hammerhead-Prime was being prepped for departure. When the bomb went off, I did what I could to place myself between the blast and the Director. I believe I was able to shoot my right arm out just enough to absorb some of the blast. My case lost its connection to my body shortly after that, and my mind was placed into a loading abstraction. I was in that state until I was transferred to this body.”
“You were able to respond to the explosion that quickly?”
“Not exactly. The explosion triggered one of that body’s preprogrammed responses, which I typically enable while on escort duty. In this case, the sudden attack triggered an automatic reaction to shield the Director from harm. Unfortunately”—Noxon lowered his expressionless, robotic head—“it wasn’t enough.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. It’s my understanding the connectome extraction was a near thing. You shooting out your arm could have been the difference between life and death for him.”
“Perhaps.”
“Moving on, did you notice anything unusual leading up to the attack?”
“No, nothing. The blast took me completely by surprise.”
“Are you aware of any threats against Director Shigeki?”
“Quite a few.”
“From people who could potentially access that corridor?”
“No. None of the ones we’re aware of would fit.”
“Do you keep documentation on credible threats to the Director’s safety?”
“Of course.”
“May I have a copy of those reports?”
“Certainly, Investigator.” Noxon placed a hand on the table, and a transfer request appeared between them.
“Thank you.” Isaac copied the files to the case folder. “What about threats to yourself? Have you received any of those recently?”
“To myself? You think I may have been the target?”
“It’s something we need to consider. It’s also possible that neither of you were intentional targets, that you simply had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I suppose that could be the case.” Noxon bowed his head once more. “Besides general animosity toward Admin Peacekeepers, no, I’m not aware of any threats. Certainly nothing directed toward me personally. That said, I had assumed the bomb was meant for the Director, but now that I think about it, I’m not so sure. Very few people knew he was heading for the hangar.”
“Who knew?”
“Doctor Hinnerkopf. She was present when the Director made his plans to leave the station. And Captain Okunnu, who was on board Hammerhead-Prime at the time. I spoke with the captain shortly before the incident. The chronoport’s crew would also have been informed; they were in the process of prepping the ship for its unscheduled departure.”
“What was the purpose of the trip?”
“We were looking for ways to support Gordian Division’s search for a new child universe. We thought we could repurpose two of our prototype chronoports to aid the search.”
“Did consuls Peng or Muntero know about the trip?”
“They did not.”
“What’s your opinion of Consul Peng?”
Noxon paused before answering. “What do you mean?”
“Just that. What do you think of the man?”
“Do you suspect him of something?”
“Please answer the question, Agent.”
Noxon hesitated again. “I think he’s an undisciplined loudmouth.”
“And?”
“And . . . that’s it.”
“I see. Moving on . . . ”
* * *
Isaac and Susan finished the interview then headed back up the station’s central tower. They stopped one floor below CHRONO operations and joined Specialist Gilbert in the executive medical suite, finding him in an unfinished room near the back. He stood close to the entrance, cocooned within a shell of abstract screens. His six forensics drones hovered over evidence containers, their prog-steel pseudopods probing through the broken pieces of two men, seemingly random debris, and cutouts from the corridor.
“How goes it?” Isaac asked.
“It goes.” Gilbert dimmed his screens until they were only a ghostly afterthought. “I could crack a joke about not knowing the cause of death, but I suppose that would be in bad taste. I assume you’re here for an update?”
“An update would be nice.”
“I need more time to sift through all the blood, guts, and synthoid parts, but I’m further along with the bomb. Gordian performed a stellar job with evidence recovery, and their analysis has given me a strong head start. In fact, Kikazaru here”—he bobbed his head toward the stone monkey floating over his shoulder—“has already made some progress on the bomb’s virtual reconstruction.”
“Then let’s start there.”
“All right.” Gilbert extended his open palm, and a disk-shaped device materialized over it. “I don’t have a lot of experience with Admin tech, mind you, but what we have here reeks of SysGov. Metamaterial shrouding on one side. Fish-eye camera and infosystem for the trigger, both inexpensive SysGov patterns. Explosive was Cocytus-brand. A small, shaped charge sandwiched between the fragmentation layer and the infosystem. Pattern TS2. It’s on the smaller side of their product spectrum.”
“Cocytus is a SysGov company, I take it?” Susan asked.
“They are,” Isaac said. “Cocytus patterns are often utilized in asteroid mining. They’re one of the bigger suppliers in that industry. However, I’m more interested in the fragmentation layer. That doesn’t sound standard.”
“It’s not. That part looks like a custom addition, though a fairly simple one. Just a layer of metal meant to fly apart.”
“Would you say that addition makes the bomb better against an organic target?”
“Can we really make that distinction, though?” Susan asked. “The blast hit Noxon pretty hard.”
“But not hard enough to take out his case,” Isaac countered. “All it really did was disable him, whereas Shigeki was a much closer call.”
“Ah. Good point,” Susan conceded.
“The bomb does strike me as a bit on the small side for a synthoid killer,” Gilbert said. “And the fragmentation layer does seem to lend itself toward an organic target. Hard to say anything for certain, though. Bombs are pretty good mess-making generalists.”
“Can you tell us anything about the trigger?”
“It was vision-based. That much is evident from the camera alone. As far as what parameters were used to detonate it, I can’t say. There wasn’t enough of the infosystem left to retrieve any programming.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Isaac crossed his arms in thought.
“Something on your mind?” Susan asked.
“The fragmentation layer. I’m wondering if it sheds some light on who planted the bomb and why. The criminal could have gone with a stock Cocytus pattern and achieved similar results. Why go through the trouble of adding another layer, even if it was rather basic? Given its presence, I suspect that Shigeki was a deliberate target and not simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“And Noxon?”
“Collateral damage. Otherwise, the bomb would’ve packed a stronger punch.” He looked over at Gilbert. “Good work on the bomb. Anything else?”
“I was able to pull a record of the explosion from Shigeki’s PIN.” Gilbert flashed a quick smile. “Well, in truth, I asked the admin specialist at the desk—Melissa Gillespie—to pull it for me, otherwise I’m pretty sure I would’ve been fighting those implants all day. The quality isn’t the best, but it should be enough for you to cross-check the eyewitness accounts.”
Isaac accepted the file. “We’ll look it over for anything unusual, though I’m not expecting any surprises. Anything else?”
“Just going to finish up with these bodies. After that, Kikazaru and I will start working through the station infostructure, trying to piece together how the bomb was delivered and who might’ve dropped it off.”
“There’s another angle we need to look at,” Isaac said, “and that’s how the bomb got onto the station in the first place. The way I see it, it was either smuggled on board or printed nearby. If it’s the latter, then there’s a chance you’ll find evidence of printer tampering, either on the station or aboard one of the surrounding ships.”
“I’ll add that to my to-do list, then.”
“Also, I’d like you to start with the civilian vessels.”
“Sure can, but why? Shouldn’t I start with the station printers?”
“You can, but I’m guessing the criminal would have an easier time infiltrating one of the industrial ships. There’s also Reality Flux to consider. We already have one case of an unknown party targeting a civilian ship, and while we can’t say anything for certain, it’s possible the destruction of that ship will somehow tie into what’s happening on the station.”
“Okay, got it. I’ll prioritize the civilian ships.”
“Thank you.” Isaac nodded to the specialist. “Then, if there’s nothing else, we’ll leave you to it.”
“Nope. I’ll be in touch if I find anything.”
Isaac and Susan left the medical suite and headed for the station’s central grav tube, the LENS hovering behind them.
“Where’re we off to next?” Susan asked.
“To chase down the only lead we have at the moment,” Isaac replied with a frown. “Time for us to have a chat with Consul Peng.”