Void

by Matt Thomas

  Paper functioned, and, in a stroke of luck rare to the investigator, an identification card, secured in a flimsy plastic sheath secured within the right breast pocket of his shirt provided him a name. Piotr Rykov. The rest of the ship proved strangely sterile, not that its cramped design left room for any personalization. The same design characteristic meant Lind needed more room to continue along his path.

  The outer door opened to the airlock, and Lind pulled the dripping body towards his own ship and a horrified Russian. "There's a body bag in that compartment by your foot, can you get it for me, please?" Trying to evict any amusement from his voice while making the request proved difficult. The other captain, reluctantly but with relief took his eyes off of the corpse to devote his attention to the task at hand. The black bag came out, and with the assistance of weightlessness, Lind stuffed Piotr Rykov into it. Compressing all three bodies between the two heavy doors, and sinking under the increasing weight generated by the plates on his own ship, Lind watched the Russian captain sweat. The perverse joy, no doubt, stemmed from listening to so much excitement over an expensive piece of transportation hardware.

  His feet firmly on the deck, the cold, heavy plastic containing the body pressing against him, Lind discarded thoughts of trying to move another lifeless body only days before. This time, the facial remnants were unknown to him and available help stood so close he felt the rough movement of the man's breath. "Give me a hand with him, would ya?"

  The Russian stumbled back into the lab as the hatch opened, weakly holding the edge of the bag, uncertain. Lind pushed past him, dragging the dead pilot towards the small morgue into which he could never place Kay. "Well, it wasn't a suicide. This dude got popped in the back of the head."

  "Popped?" The Russian asked, still giving only perfunctory assistance.

  Lind made a gun gesture with a hand freed by letting the other arm bear the body's weight. "You know, shot."

  "Who could shoot him on a Marlin? There's no room for a passenger."

  A good question. Lind began to obsess over the same thing the moment he saw the burst eyeball. "When you showed up," he asked, fighting with the latch to the refrigerated slab. "The ship was right where it is now?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Of course." Lind repeated to himself, breaking the metal drawer free from whatever kept it in place. It scraped along its slides with a shriek. "Do you have all the sensor data?"

  "Again, of course," the other repeated, watching as Lind braced himself to lift the bag and its contents.

  "And he was dead? He wasn't adrift, and you decided to finish him off and take the salvage?"

  At this, his guest held up his hands. "No sir! You can check our ship's logs!"

  "I will. Thanks." He struggled with the body for another moment. "Grab the feet, would you?" With himself supporting the torso and what remained of the head, and his visitor grabbing the feet, they lifted the carcass up to waist level and rolled it over the edge of the drawer onto the slab without the slightest hint of dignity or respect. "Could you have someone send them to me please?"

  "Send what?"

  "The logs."

  "Yes. Sure." The Russian gasped. Lind deduced the man did not take physical care of himself if such little exertion made him fight for air.

  "Well?"

  For a few seconds, the Russian did not understand Lind's prompt. He realized, with a start, the investigator's direction and called back to his own ship, giving brusque instructions in Russian Lind's rudimentary understanding of the language barely let him follow. The process lasted only long enough for him to store Piotr Rykov in the freezer and take a moment for himself. A speaker dinged in the cockpit, the Russian nodded, and Lind knew he had the information required. Guiding the other captain down the stairs towards the lower airlock subtlety, holding a hand just inches away from the man's elbow, he spoke with a false calmness designed to underwhelm and dismiss.

  "Unfortunately, I have bad news for you." He began, allowing the other to go before him down the steep metal stairs. "You are not going to be able to fly the Marlin back. Its electronics are fried, and, frankly, the place is a mess." The other turned to inquire further as Lind herded him towards the Sadko freighter. "We appreciate your bringing this to our attention and helping me with, well everything. Things would have been hard for me if it was just, you know, me."

  They paused at the bridge to the ship docked below. The captain's eyes alternated between wide and narrow, tensing to Lind's presence. "But . . ."

  "I have your information, and I will certainly pass that on in my report to Sadko." Lind, without physicality, threw him out the door back to his own ship. Satisfied that the door secured, he returned to the cockpit.

  Forcing work and basic human interaction through the melancholy of his hangover had distracted him, but the distraction abandoned him the moment he dropped into the pilot's chair. Again, he rubbed his temples and, again, he closed his eyes hoping that everything would go away. Operating on autopilot, he had to admit, the familiarity of his job kept him functional. He hardly missed Kay, who, had he been alive, would have stayed behind to "supervise" while Lind searched the Marlin.

  His eyes opened when the freighter attached to the Mako's belly released itself, long enough after the captain's departure for Lind to guess the heated conversation occurring on the other bridge before it resumed its route. He watched the flat form accelerate and, listing to the left, disappear from his field of vision.

  Two messages disappeared into space shortly thereafter. The first, a message to headquarters providing an update and declaring his intent to tow the ship to a repair yard for further examination. The second went to Sadko, asking for everything they had on Piotr Rykov and the courier mission that ended with him circling Iapetus. Lind also included the reason they should not expect this Marlin home any time soon, but, lacking either the memory or the desire to check his records, omitted any identification of the Flounder captain.

  Still wearing the over garment that kept his contamination out of the crime scene, Lind faced more work aboard the Marlin. Returning meant more struggles with his throbbing head and acidic stomach. Returning also meant more focus on something other than the empty and damaged chair next to him. Pushing himself up took effort he nearly regretted expending. Leaving the ship unattended gave him pause, much more than he would have imagined. Sure, the freighter pilot had remained in the airlock, but at least another living soul occupied the several hundred million square miles around the murder scene. Hesitating before stepping through, Lind rationalized that there would be many more times where, without a partner, his home and workspace would have to be left unattended.

  He carried the burdensome mass of forensic equipment his second time through the red mist still hanging in the Marlin's cabin. He'd carved a three-dimensional canyon through the blood when he pulled the body back through. Droplets of blood covered his suit, and now his equipment. But, a dead ship told no tales. Lind believed he could give it a second life. Shoving two pieces of equipment into the console started the process. One recorded every input he made. The second stole every byte of information in the ship's computer. Or, at least, it tried to. The machine gave out a warning tone Lind had heard before but long forgotten its meaning. The underside of the console, smooth save the few ports now occupied by his forensic tools, popped off with the flip of a latch. Wires criss-crossing themselves in a Gordian knot nearly alien to Lind. He directed his attention to a large, empty slot, accented by indentations and scratches recently left by departing screws. The ship lost its hard drive. The ship lost every piece of data, every electrical impulse that made such a sexy, impressive vehicle more than a collection of metal surfaces.

  Lind pursed his lips. "Well, fuck." The killer had removed the hard drive on his or her way out. The central repository for the ship's information set him back, to be sure, but he could find cracks and crevices amongst the ships systems where data may have hid. Reaching into his tool kit, he found a device and plugged i
t in to the empty port. It took a few moments, too few, making Lind pessimistic, for the device to squeeze the last drops of data. Hovering in the weightlessness a few inches off of the deck, Lind replaced the compartment cover for reasons he barely understood. It was not like there was anything inside worth protecting. One hand holding himself in place with the other pressing the metal case flush with the console, he focused on the task so completely he nearly missed his flashlight reflecting off of a red-yellow surface. The flash occurred so far on the edge of his peripheral vision he could easily have dismissed it. Turning his head to the left, he found the remnants of the bullet floating a hand span away from his nose.

  From the pocket of his suit came a small clear plastic bag, which scooped up the fragment. In better light under the console, Lind deduced several facts. First, the round was ten millimeters in caliber. Ten millimeters reduced the number of weapons that could have produced the projectile. The vast majority of weapons permitted off-Earth had less power for fear of Newton's Third Law in micro gravity. Second, the destruction of most of the round told him the shooter maintained a certain level of safety. So-called "vacuum rounds" held the distinguishing feature of disintegrating nearly completely once they contacted anything harder than the human skull so as not to puncture a hull. Unlike the caliber, they made up the vast majority of ammunition in Lind's world. To find a spent round with any measure of fidelity to its original shape was a small miracle. Piotr Rykov's brain must have absorbed enough of the energy to keep the bullet from destroying itself when it glanced off of a metal surface. Finally, the bullet's presence meant that the shooter believed it lost. The killer covered his or her tracks extremely well, but missed this one fragment. Lind possessed information the perpetrator did not believe existed, which gave him some modicum of hope he might find some other neglected detail.

  The lack of hard drive left Lind with little else to do on the Marlin. It would take hours at least for the Mako to sift through the bits of trace data evidence he had scraped together. He started the process, then arranged to have the Marlin towed by drone to Titan Orbital Station. It wasn't as close as he would like, but the facility would have the repair facilities to perform a thorough inspection (and cleaning) of the ship in his absence. Lind sealed the Marlin's external door with a magnetic lock, citing Article 32 of The Contract and prepared to transmit a broadband alert call should anyone claim the tempting derelict.

  Excited at the stimulus of a murder case, Lind set aside the general malaise still plaguing him and placed the bullet fragment on a tray and let his lab computer do its work. Scanning the round, sending the data back to Earth, and checking all available databases took nearly an hour and ran automatically while he went about other work.

  A message waited for him, a reply from Sadko on his inquiry:

  Special Agent Michaels,

  Thank you for your prompt investigation into this tragedy. We are happy to assist you in any way we can. The ship Marlin Eleven, piloted by Piotr Rykov, departed Iapetus Station yesterday destined for the Ephemeris manufacturing plant on Io on a contract arranged by Ephemeris three days ago.

  We understand you are busy dealing with the terrible death of Piotr Rykov, but if you could please contact us at your convenience to discuss the disposition of Marlin Eleven . . .

  Lind cut off the message without concern for Sadko's loss of equipment. The ship was now evidence, no matter the cost to the company. He daydreamed about a Sadko freighter attempting to retrieve Marlin Eleven and the levying of huge fines.

  At least one Sadko employee cooperated, albeit because of Lind's manipulation. The data provided by the Founder captain included everything. It looked like he had dumped twenty-four hours' worth of sensor recordings and logs into Lind's computer. Lind appreciated the gesture.

  Reading such volumes of data, displayed in a myriad of graphics and raw numbers, required obsession in the face of tedium. Each investigator used a different approach, most of which proved valid and tailored to both the reader and the context. Engine logs, power use curves, and crew status reports held little interest from Lind. Someone better would have gone through those files, piece by piece, knowing they contained little of value, in the interest of a complete and thorough report. Lind cut those corners, picking out sensor data and communications registers from the hundreds of files now on his computer. Hours of tagging seemingly random numbers or lines of code painted a picture of the discovery of Marlin Eleven.

  Almost as soon as it began its approach to the two-toned moon, the Flounder received a Request for Assistance, or RFA, a transmission generated, transmitted, and replied to automatically that detailed a problem short of an emergency.

  RFA VAIL REPORT

  VESSEL DESIGNATION: MARLIN 11

  ASSISTANCE REQUESTED: MECHANICAL REPAIR

  INCIDENT: FAILURE OF COOLANT PUMP NO 3 ENGINE

  LOCATION: SATURN/IAPETUS/HIGH ORBIT

  Three minutes later, the Flounder received a confirmation from Marlin Eleven.

  RFA CONFIRMATION

  MARLIN 11 CONFIRMS RECEIPT OF ASSISTANCE

  The logs did not register who replied to Marlin Eleven's call for help, only noted that the Sadko Flounder undertook no further action and continued on course.

  Fourteen more minutes passed before the freighter identified Marlin Eleven, less than seventy-five thousand miles out. The data explained why the Marlin only became visible that close. Rykov's ship, orbiting on the northern hemisphere, emanated no power. It appeared to have held its orbit then, which begged the question why the freighter only involved itself on its second pass. The information flowed past Lind's screen, point after aleatory point, noise unfiltered by software. Lind's eyes teased out information too small to be caught by any computer's filter, finding truth in the numbers that no ship's navigator would notice.

  Another ship flew away from Rykov's. A trail of heat, barely above the ambient temperature near absolute zero, faded between the ship and the other side of the moon. The cooling speed, in the few seconds the freighter detected it, told its own story, streaks of rubber on pavement whose measurements feed into another calculus. Lind plugged the information into an equation and determined the unique combination of mass and speed. He ran the data twice to confirm. Only another Mako could have left such a wake.

  The pool of suspects shrank. Only Thirty-Twos and Sadko operated Mako's, and only twenty-five of the manned engines shot special missions pilots from one side of the system to the other. The ships not used for investigation became luxury VIP transports. Pausing the flow of information, Lind sent a message to Sadko, requesting the location of each of its Makos. Then, he returned to the tedious process of data review, although with the benefit of knowing what to look for.

  Sure enough, the signs pulled out of the scrolling numbers. Vectors, the microscopic particles left behind by an over-stressed engine, and the marking of two perfectly matched docking told the narrative of another ship responding to the distress call, one matching the rough capabilities and signatures of another interstellar speed demon. The foreign Mako docked long enough to paint a barely recognizable pattern at the stern of the disabled vessel before accelerating out of sight before the Russian ship could properly respond.

  As he stared into the monitor, deciding that only another Mako could have caught up to the adrift Marlin and disappeared so quickly, the light on his dashboard flashed. He had a response.

  Sadko, to its credit, had responded promptly to his inquiry. The only Mako in the system of moons revolving around Jupiter had been receiving fuel at a station on the other side of the planet until an hour ago. All other ships had similar alibis. He eliminated the impossible, leaving him only with the improbable: somehow, there was more than an off-the-books firearm, someone flew an off-the-books ship.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lind turned his attention down towards the barren surface of the moon. He couldn't follow a suspect in a phantom ship, so he followed the motive. The ship's last port of call, a small research st
ation, might provide some clue what cargo Rykov's killer thought he carried. He made a leap to assume theft was the motive. Nothing remained in the Marlin's cargo hold by the time Lind arrived, and, while waiting for Norse Station's repair yard to extract a detailed manifest from the courier's fried computer circuits, Lind had to start somewhere. Despite common myth, particularly planetside, there were no space pirates randomly attacking freighters out in space. Every single spaceship or cargo theft Lind ever investigated involved someone on the inside. Sure, some cargo got stolen at the docks, but stopping a ship mid-transit to rob and murder just didn't happen.

  No, Rykov had not been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone targeted him. Or, more likely, targeted Marlin Eleven.

  The approach, skimming along the impossibly pronounced ridgeline, followed the equator from the sunny-side of the moon to its shadow. Crossing the terminus, the striped ball of Saturn shined, filling most of the wrap-around cockpit window. Defined rings cut across the planet into the black space above. Below, the dark surface of the moon gave way to the nearly white counter-side. Even shaded by the direct light of the sun, the screen darkened in the glare from both planet and ice-moon. Craters dipped beneath his craft as Lind straightened out for the final landing cycle.

  Lights blinked atop large tanks in the distance. Storage for gas and liquid dwarfed the facility itself. A few small, single-story buildings clung to the permafrost a few kilometers from one of the terrain-defining craters. Towers thousands of feet high jutted from the surface towards orbit where they could connect to the large tankers topping off on water and chemicals from orbit. Floodlights kicked on as Lind slowed his craft, illuminating hanger doors that swung up from the ground to let his ship into the confined space below.