Chapter Twenty-Six
Isaac blinked his watery eyes open.
“Wha…” he croaked. “Where?”
“Hey, Isaac,” Cephalie said, sitting on the side of his pillow. “You with us again?”
“What?” He licked his dry lips. “What happened?”
“Quite a bit, actually. How do you feel?”
“Like something crawled down my throat and died.”
He sat up to find himself atop a medical casket in a sterile white room, covered with nothing more than a blanket. The hum of distant, powerful machinery filled his ears. Was he on a ship? He looked around for someone besides Cephalie, but the room was vacant except for his LENS, a row of glass-topped medical caskets, and, for some strange reason, Susan’s combat frame.
“Not surprised.” Cephalie floated up to his shoulder. “You breathed in a few whiffs of Titan’s atmosphere, so we slathered your lungs with medibots. You should feel fine in an hour or so.”
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely. He looked around again. “Where are we?”
“Onboard the Kleio. Kaminski picked us up after the crash.”
“The crash.” Isaac rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. I remember that. Something hit us, right? Where’s Susan?”
“Over here.” The combat frame waved at him with its only arm, a milky white shell around the shoulder.
“Susan?” Isaac blinked the blurs away.
“Yes?”
“What’s that on your shoulder?”
“A microbot cast from the Kleio. It’s repairing the joint. This way I have at least one good arm.”
“And why are you in your combat frame in the first place?”
“Because my other body’s all shot up.”
“It’s what?” Isaac’s exclaimed. “What did I miss?”
“Oh, you should have seen it!” Cephalie pointed to Susan-the-Combat-Frame with her cane. “Your deputy here held back a swarm of weaponized construction drones all by herself! Bought enough time for the Kleio to reach us, and after that it was all over! Those drones were a danger to us, but against a TTV, they were flinging spitballs.”
“Wait a second,” Isaac said. “Hold up. A swarm of construction drones?”
“Like fifty plus. Not itty-bitty ones, either, and with plenty of guns and explosives mixed in.”
“All by herself?”
“Yep.”
“With just her pistol?” Isaac asked, confused.
“Well, initially.” Cephalie pushed her glasses up her nose, and the lenses gleamed. “But then she grabbed the v-wing’s nose cannon and started using that monster!”
Isaac’s mouth flopped open.
“It’s lighter than it looks,” Susan said.
“You should have seen her mow them down!” Cephalie grinned. “Actually, you can see her. I took video.”
“Please!” Susan shooed the suggestion away. “You’re embarrassing me!”
Isaac had never expected to see a bashful Admin death machine, but there she was.
“Come on,” Cephalie pressed. “Don’t be shy. I put together a highlight reel while Isaac was out.”
“You might think a firefight is something special, but to us Peacekeepers, that’s just another day ending in y.”
“You’re exaggerating.” Isaac massaged his temples in an effort to clear his head.
“Maybe, but I feel like I earned that one.”
“Now, what do you say, Isaac?”
“Huh?”
Cephalie poked his cheek with her cane.
“Ouch!”
“What do you say, Isaac?”
“Thank you for saving my life, Susan!” He rubbed his cheek. “I was about to!”
“Glad to be of help,” Susan said.
“You did a lot more than that.” Isaac glanced down at his blanket. “Is my uniform still in one piece?”
“Got it right here.” Susan grabbed the folded uniform off the next casket and set it in his lap.
“Thanks. We should talk to Kaminski. Get our bearings. Does anyone know where we’re headed? Feels like we’re in flight.”
“Still on track for the Kraken Mare,” Cephalie said. “And it’s not just us, anymore. Argo Division sent a pair of corvettes down from orbit, and SSP is getting in on the fun, too. They’ve dispatched six heavy v-wings from Promise City, all loaded down with state troopers. If Stade’s at the facility, we’re about to seriously ruin his day.”
“Serves him right.” Isaac pinched the blanket between two fingers and lifted it a hair. “Would you two mind?”
“Oh. Right.” Susan stepped outside the medical bay.
* * *
The time machine’s bridge was a circular room built around a command table with abstract charts glowing over its surface. Kaminski’s big blond synthoid and Andover-Chen’s smaller model both turned when Isaac and Susan entered.
“Detective!” Kaminski grinned at him. “Good to see you up and about. You gave us quite the scare when we picked up your SOS.”
“Good to be up.” Isaac joined them at the table. “I understand I owe you thanks as well for our survival.”
“Not as much as you owe your partner, I think.” Raibert grimaced. “Which brings me to an important piece of business, now that you’re here to witness it.”
“Witness what?” Isaac asked.
“Oh, wow. Here it comes.” Andover-Chen grinned. “You two have no idea how difficult this is for him.”
Raibert made an annoyed shooing gesture, then cleared his throat and faced Susan.
“Agent Cantrell?”
“Yes?”
“Look, I’m going to level with you. I’m not the biggest fan of the Admin.”
“Understatement of the century,” Andover-Chen quipped.
“Would you please let me do this? It’s hard enough as it is.” Raibert fumed over his shoulder. He sighed and turned back to Susan. “Truth is, the Admin and I got off on a bad foot. A really bad foot, so I approach anyone from your government with a healthy dose of paranoia salted with pessimism and a bad attitude.”
“That’s…understandable, given what I know of your history.”
“But!” He held up a finger. “That doesn’t mean I’m blind to reality, and what I saw when we came over the horizon was a genuine fight-to-the-last-round, fight-to-the-last-breath moment, with you holding the line to protect Detective Cho here.”
“He’s my partner. Of course, I’d do that for him.”
“Exactly!” Raibert smiled at her. “And that’s part of what I’m beginning to understand about you people from the Admin, and from the DTI in particular.”
“What’s that?”
“One thing I’ve seen over the course of my…”—he swirled a hand vaguely—“various interactions with the DTI is when you guys get pointed at a problem, it tends not to last very long. Being the problem you’re trying to solve is not pleasant, believe me! I speak from experience there!
“But being on the same side as you guys?” He smiled again, and with genuine warmth. “That’s…a pretty all right place to be.”
“Which is high praise coming from him,” Andover-Chen said.
“Hey! I’m not finished yet!”
“Whoops. Sorry.” Andover-Chen didn’t sound sorry at all.
“Geez!” Raibert sighed. “Anyway, Agent Can…Susan. The big thing I want to tell you is you did good out there—real good. You’re all right in my book, and that means you’re welcome on board the Kleio any time you like.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me, though I couldn’t have done it without your help.”
“Don’t mention it. I’m just glad we were able to reach you in time. Both of you. Now, to our other business.” Kaminski pointed to a tactical map of the terrain with icons for the factory and various SysPol and SSP craft. “Here, take a look. Argo Division’s been keeping an eye on the factory from orbit. Nothing’s departed since they started watching, but that’s a small comfort. The reassembled impeller, or whatever they’re working on, could be long gone by now.”
“Perhaps, but the attack on our v-wing suggests otherwise,” Isaac said. “The evidence trail Agent Cantrell and I have followed tells us this crime was carefully planned, but those drones she fought…” He shook his head. “That feels like the hasty, desperate act of a cornered criminal. They weren’t even all armed, which tells me they’re protecting this facility because the impeller is still there.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Kaminski said.
“Doctor,” Isaac said. “We’re proceeding on the theory the criminal—an individual using the alias of Thomas Stade—means to reassemble the impeller fragments, and he’s doing so at this facility. Your thoughts?”
“Putting those pieces back together is a tall order,” Andover-Chen said. “The dismantling process Negation used is designed to prevent such an act. You’d really need know what you’re doing.”
“Delacroix’s involvement seems to satisfy that requirement.”
“Yes, it would.” Andover-Chen let out a heavy sigh. “Hard to believe he was wrapped up in this.”
“Believe it. We have evidence Delacroix and Stade were in contact.”
“But that know-how isn’t enough on its own. You need support equipment to rejoin the segments. High-precision atomic printers, for one.”
“Which the Kraken Mare plant has.”
“Or a different facility with the same equipment,” Kaminski countered.
“The Trinh Syndicate only has two exotic matter facilities,” Isaac said. “Kraken Mare and New Frontier. I think it’s safe to assume those are the only two facilities Stade has access to, and of them, only Kraken Mare is free from regular audits.”
“It fits.” Andover-Chen crossed his arms. “If Stade is trying to put the impeller back together, his new ride is stuck at Kraken Mare until it’s done.”
“And he’s just about out of time.” Kaminski expanded the view from an external camera and zoomed in on a red rectangular block built along the coast of a deep, blackish lake. Rain lashed at its broad flanks, and huge pipes lined one side of the structure, ready to drink deeply of the lake’s liquid methane.
The ellipsoid of a SysPol corvette dropped beneath the haze layer and angled toward the facility, while a second one sped across the lake from the opposite direction.
“Looks like we barely got here first,” Kaminski said.
“We should surveil the interior remotely,” Isaac said. “Does this ship have reconnaissance remotes?”
“Sure does. Once we’re alongside, I’ll—”
Three separate charts over the command table began flashing red.
“Uh oh,” Kaminski breathed.
“Raibert!” Philo’s Viking avatar materialized on the other side of the table. “There’s an active impeller in the facility! It’s about to phase into the past!”
“Not good!” Kaminski seethed through clenched teeth. “Are we in weapons range?”
“I can’t see it! It’s in the middle of a factory! Which part do you want me to shoot up?”
“Fine then! Lock onto that signature! Wherever it goes, we go!”
“Got it.” Philo vanished. “Bringing the impeller online. All systems ready for phase-out.”
“Agent?” Isaac stepped up next to Kaminski. “What’s going on?”
“Looks like Stade finished his work. He’s getting ready to leave the True Present, but don’t worry. When he does, we’ll be hot on his tail. He won’t get far. No DIY time machine is going to outrun this ship!”
Isaac blinked. “We’re about to enter the past?”
“Sure are.” Kaminski grinned broadly at him. “Bet you didn’t think this was in the cards when you woke up today.”
“No,” Isaac replied dryly. “No, I didn’t.”
“Phase-out detected,” Philo said. “Engaging impeller…now!”
Exotic matter in the TTV’s impeller morphed to block chronotons flowing up the timestream while allowing those traveling in the opposite direction to pass through freely. Temporal pressure built along the mechanism, the craft’s phase state began to shift, and the TTV slipped into the past.
Isaac blinked again. Everything in the room was as it had been moments before. The past felt exactly like the present.
That seemed strange to him for some reason.
He glanced over the command table and took note of a pair of clocks, one displaying absolute time in the True Present, which still ticked forward at one second per second, while the other counted backwards rapidly, denoting their relative position in the timeline.
“Stade’s time machine has a slight head start, but we’re closing,” Philo reported. “Distance is negative three days to target and dropping. Phase-lock in less than a minute, absolute.”
“Phase-lock?” Isaac asked.
“Our term for matching temporal course and speed,” Kaminski explained. “Think of it like two ships in space coming alongside each other. After that, Stade better play nice, or I’ll send him straight to hell.”
“Try to take him alive, if you can,” Isaac stressed.
“I will, but only if he lets me.”
The ship noise changed, lessened slightly, and Kaminski leaned forward and his brow furrowed.
“Philo, why did we stop all of a sudden?”
“I lost him.”
“What?” Kaminski snapped. “What do you mean you lost him?”
“Just that. One second, our scope had a clear read on his impeller, and the next it was gone. I thought I saw a phase-out at negative two months behind the True Present, but…”
“There’s no time machine at negative two months!”
“Yeah. I noticed that.”
“We lost him?” Isaac asked.
“Temporarily,” Kaminski clarified.
“Of course.” Isaac glanced over the command table. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Look, Detective.” Kaminski took him by the shoulder and guided him away from the command table. “I appreciate the offer. I really do, but honestly, the hard part’s over. You already took care of that for us by discovering the crime and bringing us here. We’ll handle the rest.”
“I’m sorry, Agent. I meant no offense. You’re the experts when it comes to time travel, obviously. I only asked in the off chance you needed assistance.”
“You know which TTV you’re on, right?”
“The Kleio?”
“The frickin’ Kleio!” Kaminski slapped him on the shoulder with surprising force. “The ship that cut the Gordian Knot and saved fifteen universes. Fifteen! The ship that made first contact with the Admin, survived two imploding universes, and helped end the Dynasty Crisis.”
“That’s quite the résumé,” Isaac said.
“It is! Philo and I were there for every part of it, and the doctor’s a regular addition to our team.”
“Technically, you and I were on the command ship during the Crisis,” Andover-Chen clarified.
“Details, details,” Kaminski dismissed. “What I’m driving at, Detective, is you have nothing to worry about. So, sit down. Relax. Take a load off. Between the three of us—”
The ship’s feminine voice cleared her nonexistent throat.
“—four of us,” Kaminski corrected, “the situation is in good hands. So, pardon me if I scoff at the idea some asscave’s do-it-yourself time machine is going to give us the slip!”
* * *
An hour later, Isaac couldn’t help but notice how unhappy Kaminski looked as he leaned over the command table, glowering at the array of charts. The big man let out a long, frustrated exhale then glanced up.
“You have any idea where it went?” Kaminski asked Andover-Chen from across the table.
“Nope,” he replied with frayed patience. “I didn’t the last time you asked, and I still don’t.”
“He gave us the slip, didn’t he?”
“So it would seem.”
“But he can’t have gone far! We would have seen him!”
“I agree.”
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Arrhhh!” Kaminski ran harsh fingers through his hair.
A prog-steel chair formed out of the wall, and Isaac dropped into it with a tired sigh. He rested his forearms on his thighs and stared at the floor.
“You and me both.” Susan’s combat frame leaned against the wall beside him.
“It’s a strange concept to grasp.”
“What is?”
“That I’m in the past.”
“Yeah?” She shrugged. “So?”
“But I’m in the past.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“No, I haven’t,” Isaac said, but then he paused and considered his words more carefully. “Okay, granted, yes I have. But not like this. Not out of sequence.”
“We’re only two months back. Where I work, this barely counts.”
“Well, this is a new experience for me. Is what we’re doing dangerous? Could we branch the timeline by being here?”
“No way,” Susan assured him. “Sure, the Kleio’s in the past, but it’s flying in a non-congruent state.”
“Meaning?”
“We’re out of phase with the rest of reality. Yes, we’re two months in the past, but we’re not interacting with it. Not yet, at least.”
“And if we have to?”
“The Kleio’s equipped with a metamaterial shroud for sneaking around, which reconfigures into laser-refracting meta-armor in a combat situation. This close to the True Present, we’ll need to be cautious around a population center, but we shouldn’t have any issues in open space.”
“You seem to know a lot about this ship.”
“I—” The combat frame looked away. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“I seem to recall you mentioning DTI smash-and-grab missions into the past.”
“Yeah. We’re more careful nowadays.”
“But did any of them branch the timeline?”
“Not as far as we’ve seen.”
“Then we should be safe to swoop in and nab Stade,” Isaac said. “Assuming we can find him.”
“Yeah. A little, piddly interaction like that is a nonissue. We’d only be grabbing another foreign element. Risk is as close to zero as it gets with time travel.”
“Good to know. I suppose I’ll wrap my head around this eventually. How about you?” He knocked on the combat frame’s hip joint. “You doing okay in there?”
“I’ve been stuck in combat frames for days at a time, so this is nothing.” Susan flexed her arm. “Would be nice to have all my limbs, though.”
“I’d ask Kaminski, but…”
“Yeah. He seems busy.”
“Very.”
“We should leave him be.”
“Let’s.”
“You realize I can hear you two!” Kaminski grumbled with his back turned.
“Sorry,” Isaac said, then spoke softly to Susan. “Glad to hear you’re doing well. It’s hard to tell how you feel in there, since your face doesn’t emote.”
“What do you mean? It can emote.”
Isaac glanced up at the combat frame’s blank, featureless face armor and raised a doubtful eyebrow.
“Sure, I can. Here. Watch.”
The variskin on the combat frame’s head formed two bright white dots, and then an arc lit up underneath.
“See?” Susan said. “This is happy.”
“You drew a smiley face on your frame’s dynamic camouflage?”
“Why not? And here’s sad.”
The arch under the two dots inverted.
“Very convincing.” He grinned wryly. “I can feel the emotion radiating off you.”
“I do what I can.”
“Aha!” Kaminski exclaimed with glee. “There he is!”
“Find him?” Isaac stood up and joined them at the command table.
“More or less.” Andover-Chen brought up a map of the Saturn State and highlighted a point between Saturn and Titan. “I’m still not sure how he eluded us at the outset, but his ship really did phase out at negative two months. He’s been moving away from us in a non-congruent state ever since.”
“He almost got away with it, too.” Kaminski wagged a finger. “If not for his second-rate impeller.”
“It must be compromised in some manner,” Andover-Chen continued. “Every so often, it’s creating an unusual chronometric ripple. Subtle, but detectable to our scope. Now that we know what to look for, we can plot the earlier occurrences…” The doctor spread his hands, and a series of dots formed a rough arc leaving Titan.
“He’s well on his way back to Saturn,” Isaac observed.
“We’ll catch him,” Kaminski said. “Based on his progress, he’s pushing three gees. We can hit five when we mean business, which’ll see us to Saturn’s atmosphere a little after him. Your meat sack will need to sit out the flight in a compensation bunk, though.”
“I’m fine with that,” Isaac said. Long flights at high gees were a standard part of training for organic SysPol officers. “Where are the bunks?”
“Along the bridge wall.” Kaminski pointed, and a panel slid aside to reveal five upright glass caskets.
“Right.” Isaac sidestepped into one, and it closed and began to fill with a milky microbot soup that would fortify his body against the high acceleration.
“Philo, take us into orbit once the detective is situated. Maximum thrust.”
“You got it.”
Kaminski turned to Susan and scowled at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Why are you frowning at me?”
“Oh, sorry.” Her face armor reverted to Peacekeeper blue.
* * *
The Kleio descended through thick, billowing clouds in a storm band two hundred kilometers north of Janus-Epimetheus. Winds gusted at three hundred kilometers per hour, and the deck rocked under their feet. Isaac steadied himself with a hand on a railing built into the rim of the command table.
Visual feeds showed a brief glint of metal in the ragging storm of reddish ammonium hydrosulfide, and tactical displays rendered the rogue time machine in a vivid schematic. The ship bore a striking resemblance to the Kleio, with an elliptical main body attached to the long spike of an impeller.
“Try again, if you don’t mind,” Isaac said.
“This is TTV Kleio of the Gordian Division to the unauthorized time machine,” Kaminski said stiffly over the direct laser link. “There’s no point running, and even less point ignoring us. We’re faster than you, both temporally and in realspace, and our main gun is locked on your hull. You are hereby ordered to surrender and prepare to be boarded. Respond.”
He muted the comm window.
Isaac gave the other ship a full minute to reply, then shook his head.
“I hate being ignored,” Kaminski grunted.
“He must really want to do this the hard way,” Susan said. The Kleio’s microbots had finished repairing her combat frame on the flight over, though her general purpose synthoid remained a work in progress within the Kleio’s printers.
“Fine by me.” Kaminski cracked his knuckles.
“Any indication his craft is armed?” Isaac asked.
“No, but I’ve noticed something else.” Andover-Chen tapped the other ship’s schematic where the spike met the hull. “The impeller is equipped with devices similar to Admin-style stealth baffles.”
“Figured it had to be something like that,” Kaminski growled. “How else could he have given us the slip?”
“Wait a second,” Susan put her hands on her hips. “How does Admin tech end up on a SysGov time machine?”
Andover-Chen and Kaminski exchanged guarded looks.
“Gentlemen?” she pressed.
“I suppose there’s no harm in telling her,” Andover-Chen said.
“Tell me what?”
“Fine.” Kaminski waved for Andover-Chen to continue. “Be my guest.”
“It’s nothing unexpected,” the doctor began. “Admin impellers are superior to ours in many respects, and we’ve been researching ways to close the performance gap. Delacroix was heading an initiative to replicate Admin stealth technology.” He passed a hand underneath the schematic. “This looks like a crude first attempt to apply some of our new theories.”
“It may be crude,” Kaminski said, “but it still fooled us.”
“Only once the time machine stopped at negative two months. We could clearly see it in normal flight.”
“Yet another sign of how deeply Delacroix was involved,” Isaac said.
“We’re going to have to rescreen all of his associates when this is over.” Kaminski leaned over the table and eyeballed the other time machine. “Want me to try calling Stade again, or shall we move in and grab him the hard way?”
“We’ve given him ample time to turn himself in peacefully,” Isaac said. “Move in.”
“Philo?”
“Yes?” The Viking avatar appeared across the table.
“Get us close enough to send over a few remotes and the detective’s LENS, but keep that ship in your sights.” Kaminski opened a comm window. “TTV Kleio to the unauthorized time machine, since you have declined to respond, we’re coming to you. Any hostile action on your part will be met with lethal force. Hold position and prepare to be boarded.”
He closed the window then nodded to Philo.
“Taking us down,” the Viking said.
The Kleio descended through the lashing winds at a diagonal and came to rest directly behind the criminal vessel. They eased forward until their bow almost touched the tip of Stade’s impeller.
“This should be close enough. Sending the remotes over now.”
Prog-steel along the Kleio’s bow blossomed open, and a cluster of six spherical remotes and a heavy conveyor left the bow hangar. They flew across the other ship’s impeller, struggling to fly straight in the fierce crosswinds.
“I’ll need to make an opening,” Philo said. “If it’s laid out like our ship, the bow hangar’s the easiest place.”
“Do it,” Kaminski said.
The conveyor reached the bow. It latched onto the hull with one arm and stabbed a slender spike deep into the prog-steel.
“Virus is taking hold,” Philo said. “There. We have partial local control.”
The bow prog-steel opened at the conveyor’s command, and the remotes zipped into the dark interior. They switched on their tiny lights, and video feeds opened on the command table.
“The hangar was already equalized with Saturn’s atmosphere at this depth,” Isaac observed.
“Wonder why,” Susan said.
“Layout looks familiar,” Kaminski said.
“It’s a design Delacroix would have easy access to,” Andover-Chen noted.
“Yeah.” Kaminski exhaled the word more than spoke it.
The remotes left the barren, three-story hangar through a ground-level airlock at the rear. They cycled past it and spread throughout the rogue time machine, mapping it in quick order. The craft was mostly empty rooms and corridors, with only a few critical systems installed.
“Reactor output is normal for a TTV,” Andover-Chen observed. “Stade could park here for a century or two and still have power to spare.”
“Bridge doesn’t look finished,” Kaminski noted. “There’s a command table, but not much in the way of a supporting infostructure. No attendant program on board that we’ve seen so far. Stade must have flown it manually.”
“Not many people could do that.” Andover-Chen turned to Isaac. “Who did you say Stade was again?”
“I didn’t. We still don’t know his true identity.”
“Lot of empty space in the floor plan,” Kaminski said. “This bird was pushed out of the nest early, if you ask me.”
“Mmhmm,” Isaac murmured, watching the feeds.
“Where’s Stade hiding?” Susan asked.
One of the remotes entered the rear hold, where six towering printers formed a row underneath a high, rounded ceiling.
“Stop remote number four,” Isaac said. “Back it up and pan left.”
The remote retreated and spun to face one of the printer’s output ports with a chair positioned next to it. Folds of slick, pale material lay in a haphazard pile in front of the chair, along with a few small metallic cylinders.
“What is that?” Susan asked.
“Not sure.” Isaac took direct control of the remote and brought it close to the pile. The material was coated in clear gel on one side and colored like pinkish flesh on the other. One patch of the surface was coated in brown fur.
No, not fur. Hair.
Synthoid hair.
“Oh dear,” Isaac breathed. “Stade replaced his synthoid’s epidermis.”
“Why would he do that?” Kaminski asked. “Doesn’t matter what he looks like. There’s hardly anywhere left on the ship for him to hide.”
“Because he’s not on the ship,” Isaac said coldly. “That’s why the pressure was equalized in the hangar. Stade isn’t here!”
“He must have brought a v-wing with him,” Susan said. “Do you think he’s heading for Janus?”
“Probably. It’s the closest settlement.”
“But why abandon the time machine and head there?” Kaminski asked.
“To continue what he’s been doing this whole time,” Isaac said, “which is blending in. He’s changed his identity, and now he’s heading to Janus to disappear. For good, this time.”
“We need to stop him!” Susan said urgently.
“I agree, but how?” Isaac asked. “You see those metallic disks next to the skin? I’m guessing he changed the dimensions of his limbs, too. He’s a totally different person now. Which of the billion people on Janus is he pretending to be? We need to figure that out or we don’t have a prayer of finding him. Cephalie, send the LENS over. I need you to tear that printer’s infostructure apart. Find anything we can use.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Philosophus, keep sweeping the ship with the remotes. Look for anything unusual. Any clues Stade might have left behind in haste. We’re up against the clock here.”
“Will do.”
“Umm. Isaac?” Susan leaned toward the video feed of the skin pile.
“Agent Kaminski,” Isaac continued, his mind laser focused on mobilizing everyone as quickly as possible. “We’ll need to move fast if we’re to catch up with Stade. Once we’ve grabbed everything we can, can you get us onto Janus without being noticed?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard. This isn’t the first time we’ve been sneaky with the Kleio, and no one over there is looking for a shrouded TTV.”
“Good to hear.”
“Isaac?” Susan repeated more forcefully.
“Yes, Susan?”
“The chair.”
“What chair?”
“That chair.” She pointed at the image of the chair next to the skin pile. “Look at the armrest.”
Isaac did so, then frowned. “You mean how the foam on the armrest is torn up?”
“Yeah. We saw Delacroix do that a few times.”
“It’s true,” Andover-Chen said. “Quite the annoying habit. Those foam crumbs go everywhere.”
“Okay, granted,” Isaac said patiently, “but I’m not following where you’re taking this. We know Delacroix helped with the time machine, and all this tells us is he claimed another armrest casualty before Stade killed him.”
“But he was never on Titan.” Susan tilted her blank face. “Was he?”
“He, umm…” Isaac scratched his chin. “Yeah, you’re right. We never came across a record of Delacroix traveling to Titan. And furthermore, he’s been dead for days.”
“Those crumbs look fresh,” Susan pointed out.
“That they do. Even a simple housekeeping remote should have cleared them out by now. That implies they were ripped free recently. Perhaps as recently as the flight over from Saturn.”
“Then who tore the foam off the armrest?” Susan asked.
“Can’t be Delacroix, so I suppose it must be—”
Realization struck him like lightning, and his eyes widened. He finally understood what was going on.
“Isaac?”
“I know where Stade is headed.”