A corridor on the far side of the hold led to the morgue, which was farther down, past a cluster of medical arrays and a water purification module. The interior lighting was dim there, too, but the relay responded by increasing brightness as they passed. Lopez and Clarke grew quiet as they came to their destination, which required another round of security access codes to unseal the quarantine status and gain entry.
“Here we are,” Clarke said, motioning beyond a pair of opening doors. “Everyone’s favorite spot in a relay.”
The morgue was a trio of rooms—a small entry and security vestibule that opened to a slightly larger medical office, which led to the mortuary. The inner room had rounded walls lined with a dozen vaults for the dead. The wall that held the vaults—six on one side of an examining table and six on the other—was an outer, space-forward bulkhead.
Lopez pushed herself to land at the vault to the left of the examining table. She engaged the access pad, which read her DNA and accepted her identification codes. From behind the wall came a hissing sound as the vault repressurized. Its hatch cracked open and slid upward, making way for the cylindrical casket that held the body. A dim blue light shone overhead, and illuminated the corpse, which was wrapped in a thin metallic fabric that showed only Tanglao’s head.
McClellan looked down at his brother priest. Raphael Tanglao had been thirty years old but looked little more than a boy. His face was seared badly along his left jaw. The remaining flesh was warped from being frozen and thawed and frozen again. And yet he seemed to be smiling.
“Can you open the body bag, please?” McClellan said, reaching into his thigh pocket.
“As you wish,” Lopez said. “Although I don’t know what any of your beads and prayers will do.”
“You’d be surprised,” McClellan said. He removed his hand from his pocket and held up a pair of examination gloves. “But at the moment I just want to examine the body. Could you please open the seal?”
The chilled body touched the room’s air. A sweet and putrid scent rose around them. McClellan knew enough to expect a smell, but it still startled him. Even in the cold vacuum of space, the human body found ways to decay.
As Lopez busied herself with supply draws and equipment, McClellan gloved his hands and made the sign of the cross. He removed the body bag, exposing the naked, partly mutilated corpse.
Father Raphael Tanglao was a small, thin man, with black hair and skin that had once been warm-hued. He had a small mouth and nose, but from the pictures McClellan had found in the case records, he knew that Tanglao gave wide, childlike smiles whenever he or someone else took his picture. Most of the available images were from his formation in the Dominican Order; a few were with his older brother and three sisters on the beaches of Manila. In the last available image, Tanglao was not smiling. He was alone, carrying a tablet on the works of St. Augustine and looking out onto the sparkling waters of the Mindoro Strait, which was awash with a sweeping and fiery sunset.
Clarke had remained at the entrance beside the two robbers. He was frantically typing with his eyes on a forearm display. “Everything looks good,” he said unexpectedly. “We’re private, so feel free to talk without restrictions.” His words did not match his angry, intent expression. After more typing, he raised his hand. “Okay, I just lied—sorry, McClellan. We’re being monitored.”
“Block the signal,” Lopez said.
“Already done,” Clarke said. “Or else I wouldn’t have just told you.”
“Off-station?” Lopez asked.
“No. Definitely not.” Clarke looked behind him at conduits that traveled along the inner walls, then returned to study his display. “This is not physical probing. This is spatial tunneling for sure—localized at that. I’m sure I can track it.” Clarke was working quickly with his eyes, and with his fingers on a second device. “Whoever it is, they’re doing a good job trying to get past my interference. Okay. I’m going to let them reconnect in ten seconds.” He looked up at Lopez and McClellan. “You two keep talking, go about your business. That should keep our listener busy while I track the bastard down.”
“Need help?” Lopez asked.
“No. You two have work to do. And the longer you’re at it, the more time I’ll have.”
“Very good,” Lopez said. “Then go.”
“Already on my way,” Clarke said, propelling himself past the robbers to the exit, and out into the empty corridors of Red Delta.
Twenty minutes later, as McClellan was inspecting Tanglao’s hands, a red notification box activated on Lopez’s arm display. She read its message and typed a response. Then she spoke into her collar mic. “Commissioner Zhèng. Lopez here. Did you receive that message from Clarke?”
There was a pause. Then Zhèng’s voice came low and distorted. “Roger that. Coordinating with Clarke now. Stand by.”
“Understood. Lopez out.” She looked over at McClellan. “Clarke found our spy. It’s the crew member who found Tanglao in the air lock. Tucker. Clarke has him in custody.”
“Did he question him?”
“Not yet. He’s waiting for Zhèng. We’d better hurry if we want to take part.”
“Agreed,” McClellan said. “Because if I’m right about something . . .”
Lopez pushed herself to the empty casket to restart the interment cycle. “Right about what?”
“I’ve been thinking about your scans of the brain.”
“What about them?”
“There are some interesting signatures on the synthetics.”
Lopez looked sideways at the data on his tablet. “Silicones, lutetium, a few others. Those are all standard for communications implants.”
“But the scan found traces of niobium.”
“So? Comm implants use niobium.”
“Not all of them.”
“Many do.”
“The good ones,” McClellan said. “The ones used by engineers. But basic comm implants—such as a builder would use—don’t get that sophisticated.”
“And?” Lopez said.
“Seems odd that Tanglao would have a comm implant similar to those used by engineers.”
“We haven’t established that he did,” Lopez said.
“I suppose that’s my point.”
Lopez studied McClellan’s eyes, then the scars on his temple. She looked down at the chem scans on her tablet. “If you’re going where I think you are—”
“I think I am,” McClellan said. “Look at his hands. These marks are typical for vacuum exposure, and yet the lines seem regular, as if they’re scarring on top of existing dermal stress.”
Lopez gave an irritated look, more about the possibility that she might have missed something. “Yes, that could be right,” she said. “The scanners did flag those patterns, but the marks matched the perforations in Tanglao’s inner gloves.” She picked up her tablet and retrieved a report. “Here. These are the simulation results. And here’s the conclusion: a ‘high probability’ that the hand burns are from a defensive move. Probably when the printer came at him.”
McClellan shook his head. “These marks are not defensive. And I’ve never heard of printers coming after people.”
Lopez looked back at the waiting robbers and then back to McClellan. “Look, if you have something, I want to hear it. But I want proof to back it up. And this will be our only chance. Once we leave the quarantine of the morgue, anything we find on the body will be considered contaminated evidence. Any decent lawyer will have it thrown out—as well as any related questions.”
“Then we better find what we’re looking for.”
“All right,” Lopez said, typing an update in the mission log. “I’ll buy us a few more minutes. But only a few.”
McClellan’s heart raced. “This shouldn’t take long. Let’s start with a chem scan of the hands. Your original examination used a single grab sample. I know that’s standard for builder autopsies, but how about a transect analysis on both palms, across here and here.”
McCle
llan took Tanglao’s left hand and held the fingers back. Lopez, cursing under her breath, positioned the scanner. It hummed and made angry sounds as it dug into lifeless flesh, extracting microsamples for immediate analysis. They repeated the procedure on the right hand, and the data appeared on Lopez’s tablet.
“Silicones, lutetium . . . niobium,” she said.
McClellan looked over at her display. “And with a consistent signature and decay pattern. Do those results look familiar?”
Lopez nodded intently. She picked up another scanner, adjusted it, and ran it over Tanglao’s forehead. “I’ll be damned. These are neural links, not comm implants. And there’s not much left of them. From the looks of the decay, they were processing sizable amounts of energy just before the time of death.”
McClellan nodded. “How long before death?”
“Minutes. Hard to say beyond that. But not more than eight, ten minutes.” Lopez looked up at McClellan. “There’s something else. You brought up a good point about the builders and their comm implants. The same goes for neural links. Even if a builder does need them for neural connectivity, they use something more durable—usually something with an external sheathing. These implants,” she said, pointing to Tanglao, “don’t last long under extended physical stresses—as in doing real work with your hands.”
McClellan nodded. “Good to know. So let me ask you this: have you ever examined a body with links like these?”
Lopez nodded. “Three. All killed on Earth by Sal operatives. With conventional weapons.”
“They have anything else in common?”
Lopez paused. “Two were engineers overseeing Earth assistance. The other was security, and former military, like you. None of them had these burns . . . and all three were programmers.”
“And if I’m right,” McClellan said, “Father Tanglao makes your fourth.”
Their radios hissed. Clarke asked for their status. Lopez radioed back that they’d be on their way in five minutes. She turned back to McClellan.
“So let’s be clear,” she said. “You’re saying that those hand markings are from printer contact. If so, that changes everything.”
“Then everything’s changed,” McClellan said. “I’m certain that Tanglao was a programmer—that he had been in contact with the printer that killed him.”
Lopez called over to activate the two waiting robbers. “We need to move. But I have one last question. If you’re right, where are Tanglao’s key and coupler? We found nothing like them in our sweeps. Where would he hide them?”
“Good questions,” McClellan said. “I’m hoping that the builder can tell us. And I’m hoping he knows something else: what Tanglao was programming that printer to build.”
ARCHBISHOP BAUER HANDED HIS overnight bag to his driver. He looked along the street, then walked quickly to the old sedan waiting below his office. The worst of the nor’easter had moved offshore. There were already breaks of blue in the west and south, and while the air was breezy, it was warm enough to wear comfortable street clothes—jeans and a Windbreaker—which would rouse little recognition, and subsequent requests to talk, on this first Friday in Lent. Bauer needed to leave as soon as possible if he was going to arrive at his brother’s house in time for the meeting he’d arranged. He’d been troubled since his conversation with Cardinal Kwalia that morning, and he wanted to speak with the one man who had the connections he needed.
The driver, Father Corrales of his clerical staff, also wore street clothes. Corrales stowed the archbishop’s bag, disconnected the sedan’s charger, and positioned himself at the steering console. He made a fast turn onto West Dedham Street and then drove along the local roads because of Boston Harbor’s rising waters, which made the outer highways impass-able after a big storm.
The newly rebuilt Charles River Bridge brought them to Cambridge and Somerville—an area locals still called the war zone, because of Sal incursions into Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Soon they were heading south along mostly deserted highways and side roads, passing through either lively suburbs or overgrown ones, through forest or the remains of smaller cities. Then they came to the coast.
The sun shone freely as they sped over the Jamestown Bridge. Winds from the retreating storm swept over it, pushing at the sedan, and under it, kicking up whitecaps. Bauer opened his window and inhaled, feeling the cool, salty air in his lungs.
The town of Jamestown took up the entirety of Conanicut Island, which stretched south to north in the mouth of Narragansett Bay. Its historic farms, once largely decorative, had been tilled and planted once the famines came, their acreage expanded by the clearing of adjacent forests. With the bounty the farms provided came the need for militias to patrol the shores and bridges to keep hungry mainlanders away.
Bauer had heard many dark confessions from the people of Jamestown. And he had preached on many stories of their heroism during the famines. As his driver took him through the town center, he was comforted by signs of renewal. They were simple, but they were there. It was the way people came and went and smiled on this sunny Friday afternoon. Or when others waved to a passing car while working in small yards that held pens for chickens and cows, and vegetable gardens waiting to be replanted once the spring weather settled in for good.
The most consoling sign of normalcy for Bauer had always been the weathered house where family waited to greet him.
His youngest brother, Michael, had inherited their parents’ home and the lot around it, which he had converted into a small farm. Michael’s work as an oceanographer with the reopened University of Rhode Island often kept him out on some expedition. This month he was on the waters of the North Atlantic, assessing how they had soured with the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that poisoned so much of its life.
Alfred Bauer loved his brother Michael, but he cherished Michael’s wife, Helen, the island’s sole pediatrician. Her family had been on the island for generations, and her towering intellect and standing in the community made her a leader in those early days when the world around the island went dark.
She and Michael had three boys of their own. Their uncle said that they were what boys should be—adventurous and competitive, and loyal. In their care, too, were the other children—two boys and six girls—whose families on the mainland had taken the government option. Bringing the children to the island caused some dissent, but Helen Bauer had helped rebuild the farms, and she paid the protests no heed.
Bauer offered warm but hurried greetings, and then drove himself across the new, higher causeway to the old lighthouse on Beavertail Point. He parked a little removed from the few other vehicles that had brought locals to watch the big waves. He zippered his Windbreaker, pulled up his blue jeans, and crossed the park’s small perimeter road, which was still wet from the storm.
He looked along the folds and layers of rock that tumbled into restless waters. There, just to his right on a ledge, looking over a small tidal pool, stood his friend and fellow Marine Corps chaplain Monsignor Thomas Harper.
“My God, he looks bad today,” Bauer said aloud.
Bauer negotiated the terrain, waving his hand until his friend spotted him. Harper had grown frail in the past month—blood cancer was taking its toll—but his posture was confident, as it had been since his days as a college baseball champ and military chaplain. Like Bauer, Harper was dressed in street clothes—dark exercise pants and an old hooded sweatshirt. At his feet were his fishing pole and a worn green backpack.
“Catch anything?” Bauer asked, reaching out his hand.
“I’m done fishing,” Harper said. “Just enjoying the ocean.”
Harper’s grip was weaker than it had been only weeks ago. His skin, once dark and smooth, was thin and pale, especially around his neck and wherever it showed beneath his short, graying hair.
“The kids down there seem to be doing okay,” Harper said, nodding farther along to three teenagers on wave-drenched rocks, their laughter ri
sing over the wind and the surf.
Harper had retired three years ago from active military service, and then last spring from the Diocese of Providence. He’d used his connections to land a job teaching history at the Naval War College, a few miles north across Narragansett Bay. Bauer made a point of visiting Harper as often as he could, meeting him for dinner, and a beer or two too many.
For this visit Bauer had asked for someplace private—but not suspicious.
Harper looked hard at his friend. “So I guess sending your boy upside is ruffling some feathers,” he said.
“McClellan’s always been good at that,” Bauer said.
“Good. It’s about time the engineers learn that the world doesn’t always operate as planned, eh? First they had to admit that they need a security presence—when was the Security Guild formed, ten, fifteen years ago? Now they find a dead priest up there, and it looks like murder, and now we’ve got McClellan there legally, and they’re building churches for us. God does have a sense of humor.”
Bauer gave no signs of amusement.
“But you didn’t come down to throw stones at the engineers,” Harper said. “What’s the matter, Freddy?”
The teenagers farther along were laughing wildly. A wave had hit hard and thudded up, its spray surrounding them. Bauer listened for a moment, then he got to the point. “It’s about the Sals,” he said finally. “Solorzano in particular.”
Bauer waited for some reaction.
“Go on,” Harper said. “I never believed the bastard was dead.”
“Well, it seems you were right. And apparently he’s written to Pope Clement about McClellan. He said he was offering to prove his love for the Church, or something like that, by sending undercover soldiers to protect McClellan from the godless engineers and whoever killed Father Tanglao.”
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