A Printer's Choice

by W. L. Patenaude

  “How noble,” Harper said.

  “Yes. But then he tells the pope that it would be ‘unfortunate’ if events from McClellan’s past were to be publicized and used against him. He said he would not want to see a priest humiliated.”

  “Typical Solorzano,” Harper said. “With one voice he both offers help and threatens.”

  “Brings back memories,” Bauer said.

  Harper’s face became serious. “When you called to meet, I had a feeling it might be about this. In fact, I was about to get word to you. From what I’m hearing, the Sals are making the same threats and offers to anyone in Rome who will listen.”

  “I figured you’d know—”

  “I said I heard. That’s not the same as knowing. But it doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Nor me,” Bauer said. “The Sals have been quiet. They’re overdue to make a mess of things.”

  Harper rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, kneading his thin muscles. “Are you sure about this letter to the pope?”

  “Absolutely,” Bauer said. “Cardinal Kwalia told me himself.”

  “Guess that makes it legit—and I’d trust him to know better. He wrote the book on the Sals, and he dealt with them in Kenya.”

  Harper looked around the ledge. The teenagers had moved farther down the shore, their laughter lost in the wind.

  “So what’s Solorzano’s game plan?” he said, more to himself than to Bauer.

  “I have a few ideas,” Bauer said. “But I’d like to hear yours.”

  “Okay,” Harper said. “Let’s start with what we know—with McClellan’s parents getting swept up in legalized genocide. He grows up with a busy uncle and aunt, and then—still a kid—he moves back home on his own. That couldn’t have been easy.”

  “No, but the farms in Michigan needed experienced hands. And McClellan’s not one to say no.”

  “Then right out of high school he signs up for the Marines. Turns out he’s a natural at programming the printers, even if he’s a candidate for sniper school—”

  “And he would have made it,” Bauer said. “But the Corps wanted programmers more than snipers.”

  “Then at the height of the wars, as we’re making progress against the Sals, when we really need good programmers, and he’s about as good as we’ve got, the Corps pulls him from programming and sends him to the Military Police.”

  “Yes,” Bauer said. “And I supported that. You know the story. He was—is—an expert in printed weapons. In a day, maybe two, he could track the kind of printer that made a single bullet or a bomb casing and he would work backward and find where the weapons came from—and who authorized the printing. He helped the MPs get rid of lots of bad guys, and I was glad for it.”

  The wind gusted and roared, prompting the complaints of nearby gulls.

  “I know that story,” Harper said. “And I know it’s not the whole story. I know about the trouble at Raleigh. I know the kid was put in a bad situation, and that some say he screwed up. And I know that the Corps wasn’t sure what to do with him, but thanks to you they hid him in some low-level analyst assignment—which he turned out to be very good at.”

  Bauer looked off to the horizon. He remembered first meeting McClellan in the infirmary at Camp Lejeune, just a few days after Raleigh. He remembered the days that followed when the young, wounded Marine grilled then Father Bauer about his faith.

  “Tell me, Freddy, did McClellan ever learn that what he did was one of the reasons the GU engineers pulled military programming?”

  “No,” Bauer said. “But if anyone can add two and two, it’s Johnny McClellan.”

  Harper plunged his hands into his sweatshirt’s pockets. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “I don’t think this has much to do with revenge against McClellan or giving the Church a black eye—although Solorzano would enjoy both. I think the Sals are worried about McClellan getting back inside the printers. We know they want to be up there—hell, everyone knows that, assuming they’re not there already. Either way, they see an opportunity, and I think that Solorzano is spooked about McClellan being up there first.”

  “Makes sense. McClellan knows the Sals. That was one of the reasons the Security Guild wanted him.”

  “I don’t think it’s just that. If the Sals do have some plan for the printers, I bet Solorzano is worried about McClellan getting in the way.”

  Bauer moved closer to the cliff’s rocky edge. A small crab was righting itself in the tidal pool below, then tumbled again in the force of an incoming wave.

  “There’s something else,” Bauer said, turning back to Harper. “Johnny McClellan is a natural investigator. You’re right that he helped the MPs put away some big names. Even if it’s not the Sals who killed Tanglao, I’d imagine anyone involved in his death wouldn’t want him up there.”

  “I’m sure we’re not the first to think of that,” Harper said.

  “True,” Bauer said. “Kwalia told me that the Security Guild is keeping a close watch on him. And the officer in charge, their commissioner—Joseph Zhèng, if I remember—seems like a decent man. But they’re amateurs.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. A lot of them are former military. And besides, whatever we can do from down here, we’ll do. Don’t worry, Freddy. I’m on it. I’m digging for any intel that can help.”

  “I don’t have to tell you that that is very much appreciated.”

  “No, you don’t have to tell me anything. But you do have to promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If Solorzano and his people are trying to get to McClellan, they may be keeping watch on things down here, too. You should be careful.”

  Bauer nodded. “Always.”

  “And it may not be a bad idea to keep an eye on your brother’s family. If Solorzano thinks for a moment you’re helping McClellan, he wouldn’t think twice about using them to make a point.”

  “I know,” Bauer said after an extended breath. “I’m going to talk to my sister-in-law when I get back, but I already got word to the Jamestown Police and Militia. They’ll keep an eye on things.”

  “Good,” Harper said. “As will I.”

  Bauer kicked at the rocky ground and said nothing. Harper shifted the conversation. “So . . . where is he now?”

  Bauer tilted his head upward, looking southwest to where the crescent moon followed the sun. He focused as if he might see into the orbital traffic upside.

  “From what I gather,” he said, “he should have boarded the relay station where they found Tanglao. Up there, in orbit around the moon. Can you imagine? The moon. But I’m not entirely sure of timing. The engineers don’t allow many updates, and I spoke to McClellan only briefly this morning, when he had settled into his quarters.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He sounded good. Hell, he sounded great. All he could talk about was his chapel. Did I tell you about that?”

  “No. I hope the engineers didn’t botch—”

  “No, they did not. Wait till I tell you. It’s a replica of the Pauline Chapel—yes, the one in Rome. McClellan sounded like a kid when he was telling me—yes, that’s what he said. Full-scale . . .”

  Harper did not believe that a reproduction of the Pauline Chapel had been printed in New Athens, but Bauer insisted, and after some bickering between close friends, Harper finally laughed louder than the surf.

  LOPEZ, MCCLELLAN, AND THE two robbers with Tanglao’s casket met Okayo about halfway between the morgue and the main docking platforms. From there Lopez accompanied the body back to the transport. Okayo and McClellan made their way to Clarke and the detained communications officer.

  The forward corridors turned and stretched into wider ones with occasional transparent hull sections. Through them McClellan could see Earth drifting in the distance, beautiful in its crescent form and restful. New England was approaching evening, and Michigan was covered in clouds, but to the west he spotted Iowa, still in warm sunlight.

  They c
ame to the revolving entrance of the habitat, which wheeled slowly beneath a field of solar arrays and communication dishes. After passing into the entrance spine, McClellan felt the growing tug of weight as he and Okayo navigated the handholds leading to Red Delta’s residential decks. He was about halfway to the floor when his mind began protesting the concepts of up and down, against which it had worked these past hours to ignore. But the handholds were becoming more like a ladder, and his direction seemed more like downward rather than simply away. And he reminded himself that, if he were not cautious, he would fall.

  On the floor he spotted Zhèng and Molly Rose farther down a gray corridor of doors. The superintendent was cautioning the commissioner against detaining a crew member without giving her the opportunity to be part of the questioning. Zhèng replied that her crewman had used illegal communications technologies to probe a Security Guild investigation. In all likelihood, he said, this crew member would be returning with him to New Athens for detainment and formal questioning. As Zhèng spoke he motioned quickly to McClellan and Okayo to follow him to rendezvous with Clarke, who stood at an open door to an auxiliary communications room, keeping watch over the suspect inside.

  Seething, Molly Rose followed. Then, facing the commissioner, she said that she would appeal any further delays.

  “Ms. Rose,” Zhèng said, marching ahead, “let me be clear. My agent has your comm officer, Maximillian Tucker, detained in your auxiliary communications control center. We agreed that your two crew members would be isolated during our boarding until summoned, had we not? You should be grateful that I’m not questioning you as well.”

  “Wait a minute,” Molly Rose said. “No one is supposed to be out of their quarters. I ordered them. Commissioner, I don’t want any problems.”

  “Mr. Tucker seems to have different priorities. And now, depending on what we learn, I may have no other option than to extend the security hold on this station.”

  “Extend the hold?” she said, making no attempt at decorum. She stepped in front of Zhèng, her face full of fury and pleading. “You have no right to delay my commissioning. No right at all. And no reason. We need to work.”

  “I have both the right and the reason. Perhaps you should have thought about your mission when you were assembling your crew.” Zhèng turned to Clarke. “Has Tucker been read his rights?”

  Clarke affirmed that he had. Zhèng ordered his agent to join Okayo in a search of Tucker’s quarters. He took a step toward the communications control room when McClellan came forward.

  “Mind if I take this?” McClellan said.

  Zhèng gave a questioning look. McClellan said that there might be a new development in this investigation, and that Zhèng could radio Lopez for her opinion of what they found in the morgue.

  “It may be best if I follow up with Tucker,” McClellan said.

  Zhèng looked at the open doorway, then back to McClellan. “All right. He’s all yours.”

  Safety protocols required backup communications modules while the crew remained in the habitation ring. This made the room functional but cramped. It held three compact communication consoles, each with a small fitted chair. Its walls were racks of comm components and its ceiling gave off a brilliant light that spilled into the corridor. Two of the room’s consoles had open compartments. Connection cables ran from their innards to a pair of hacking tablets, which were activated and awash with holographic data floating over their surfaces. Their owner stiffened in his chair when McClellan entered.

  According to the relay’s personnel records, Maximillian Tucker was twenty-four years old, and new to the orbits. He sat in the console chair farthest inside, his hands clasped tightly between his knees. He wore the standard orange jumpsuit of a relay crew member, and polished black boots. He was shorter than McClellan, but had a powerful build that stretched the material of his jumpsuit at his arms and legs. Perspiration glistened on his dark skin and in his black hair. His eyes were wide and scared even as he tried to appear otherwise. When McClellan stepped closer, he shifted his weight back into his chair.

  “I’ve told you all everything,” Tucker said, not looking at McClellan. “I’ve been questioned five, six times about Nicky.”

  “I know that,” McClellan said. “Right now my questions are about you listening to confidential discussions. From what I hear, and from what I can see, you’re pretty good at comms. So help me understand what all this is.”

  “I was just testing a few things. I didn’t mean any harm. Please don’t get me thrown off this job.”

  “We’re a little beyond that, Mr. Tucker,” McClellan said. “Mind if I call you Max? I bet that’s what everyone calls you.”

  “Sure,” Tucker said, now looking up at his questioner. “That’s what they call me.”

  McClellan studied Tucker’s eyes. He had seen that look often—that uncertain stare that seeks not just mercy, but also understanding.

  McClellan was open to both, more than Tucker might have guessed. But he also had to get to the truth.

  “Well, Max, looks like we have a few issues to discuss. And I don’t mean murder. Let’s start with an introduction. My name is John. John McClellan. I’m on special assignment on this case because the man you call Nicky is a colleague of mine. More like a brother. And I’m here to find out how he died, and who was behind his death. Do you understand that?”

  Tucker nodded.

  “Good,” McClellan said. “So tell me why you were listening to my visit to the morgue.”

  Tucker swallowed and breathed out. “I didn’t mean harm, sir. Just that I knew you came to take away Nicky, and I wanted to know where. He was good to me. Always treated me with respect, not like most people treat the new guys up here.”

  “First time working upside?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mine, too.” McClellan pulled over one of the other console chairs and sat in front of Tucker. “So, Max, where you from?”

  Tucker sat back, eyeing McClellan with suspicion. “You mean on Earth?”

  “Yes. Where’d you grow up?”

  “Detroit.”

  “Yeah? Wolverine, here, too.”

  “You’re from Michigan?”

  “Union City,” McClellan said. “Southeast of Kalamazoo.”

  “I know Union City. I had cousins nearby, in Coldwater. They worked in reconstruction and had a few jobs out by Union City. Always talked about how the girls around there were something.”

  McClellan heard Zhèng step into the room. Tucker recoiled, folding his arms.

  “Max, that’s Commissioner Joseph Zhèng,” McClellan said, giving a nod behind him but keeping his eyes on Tucker. “I know you met him during his earlier boardings. He’s impatient because we have some orbital issues, and we need to undock with Red Delta soon. At least we’d like to. So let’s hold off talking about home. First, tell me again what all this is about,” he said, waving to the consoles and the hackers’ tablets.

  “Like I said, I was just trying to find out what you were gonna do with Nicky. That’s all.”

  McClellan counted four times that Tucker’s eyes shifted their gaze.

  “Well, no, Max, I’m guessing there’s more. Something you’re not telling me.”

  Tucker said nothing.

  McClellan reached for the tablet in his thigh pocket. He scrolled though the crew roster and came to the name Maximillian Tucker. “Says here you’re a grade two relay communications operator.”

  “That’s right. Just passed my test last month. Passed the first time, and got the highest score.”

  “Well, that might make sense, seeing you’re using pretty simple tools here to access some high-level algorithms—the kind that can hijack the Red Delta’s main communications antenna to tunnel into our conversation earlier, no?”

  “No, sir. I just—”

  “You just hacked into a Security Guild comm channel with triple-redundant encryption—sloppily, because you got caught, but you did do it. You targeted our position
and used the main antenna to tunnel into listening range, which is not only illegal for about a dozen reasons, it’s also way outside of what the Builders Guild allows for a grade two comm operator.”

  Tucker looked at his hack tablets as if they were about to speak.

  McClellan leaned forward, forearms on his knees, hands clasped like Max’s. “Okay, Max, let me ask you one more question. And I’d appreciate the truth—sooner rather than later. I’m pretty good at spotting liars.”

  Max nodded.

  “Those tablets you used for hacking, did Nicky have anything like them? Before you answer, let’s go over what we know—what I know—and then you think about how you’re going to answer. You and Nicky Pratt were friends. He treated you with respect and he helped you adjust to the new world. He was a comm officer, like you.

  “Then, five weeks ago, the two of you were both working at the aft end of the relay for precommissioning upgrades when Nicky had his accident with the printer. You found him dead, Max. You did. And since the internal comms were down at the time, all we have is your word about what you found. The story goes that you weren’t near Nick when he had his accident, because you were at a communications control center overseeing the software upgrade, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I just learned that you know some pretty sophisticated hack maneuvers, so you could have easily accessed the dock controls where Nicky was working, no?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t do anything like that. I couldn’t, even if I tried. There was that high-def working outside the dock. It was jamming local control—”

  “And how do you know it was jamming control?”

  Tucker was angry now, but scared, too—a helpful combination during interrogations.

  “The printers always take local control during fixes like that—even if you’re testing manual operations. Then you need a person or a robber—that’s what Nicky was doing there, working with a printer on a preprogrammed repair. But in a job like that, it’s always the printer that has primary control. So even if I could hack into Docking 9, I couldn’t have accessed the door controls.”

  McClellan kept his gaze on Tucker’s wild eyes. His expression was not that of someone lying. It was the look of a terrified young man who couldn’t understand why no one would believe him.