by M B Panichi
She walked up to Del and Lukas and waited for a break in their conversation.
After a few moments, Del looked up. “Something we can do for you?” she asked.
Morgan met her slightly challenging gaze and shook her head. “Actually, I wondered if there was anything I could help with.”
Lukas shot her a grin before he ducked his head to type another query into the console.
Del cocked her head. “Depends on what you can do.”
Morgan said, “Well, dancing is out of the question.”
Lukas snorted and Del shot him a dark look.
Morgan sighed. “Look, I’m not sure what you’re doing, but I’ve got a brain, so maybe there’s something I can help with.”
Del shrugged. “Okay. Lukas, send a few of those background checks to that terminal.” She pointed to the one on Lukas’s other side. “We’re going through background checks again, to see if we missed anything. Read through it. If anything seems odd, flag it. Run some net searches, see if anything comes back. The standard search queries are in a dropdown in the query app. You can modify them if you want.”
Morgan nodded. “Okay.” She moved past Del to the seat next to Lukas and settled in front of the monitor. With a quick swipe of her finger on the screen, she enlarged the first of the background reports and settled in to read.
After a silent half hour, Lukas said, “Hey, I might have something here.”
Del looked over from her screen.
He said, “This guy, Mathew McKillan. He’s part of that last group that came up. This is his first out system construction job as a full guild member. He finished training on one of the mining sites before he applied to this posting.”
“Nothing odd about that,” Del commented, “other than the fact I’m surprised they brought in a newbie for this kind of project.”
“That’s what I thought. So I went out to the net and ran some queries on his name, checking the social sites, the kind of stuff that wouldn’t come up in a job quals lookup. And this comes up.” He tapped at his screen, and sent the information to their screens as well. “The guy has ties to the Unified Martian Temple of God.”
Del said, “I’m sure a lot of people do. They’re not exactly a small organization.”
“Yeah, but his brother is one of their Elders—living here in the Temple’s biodome. I ran a search on our com logs, to see if he was talking to anyone. Nothing comes up with his ID, and that just seems odd. Almost everyone here has at least one or two calls in and out to somebody.”
“You’re not impressing me here, Lukas.”
“I just have a feeling. Let’s flag this guy.”
Del shrugged. “Consider him flagged.” She grabbed the stylus and added the name to their running list.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The aging construction worker leaned back in his chair and watched Shaine and Josef. His eyes had deep crinkles around them. His skin had a ruddy, lined texture, as though he’d spent time outdoors rather than doing construction in a vac suit in space. Perhaps, earlier in his life, he’d worked on Earth. Shaine got the sense that Mischan Dorovitch had been around a long time, seen of lot of life, and was smart enough to learn from what he’d experienced.
Josef said, “I’m gonna be up front with you. The crane’s winch cable was sawed three-quarters of the way through. That’s why it snapped. You’re not a suspect, Mischan. But we want to know where you were and who you were with Thursday night, around twenty-three fifty hours.”
Mischan nodded thoughtfully. “Well, guess I’m surprised it took this long,” he drawled. “Knew this was going to be an interesting ride. Lots of people don’t want Mann-Maru getting another stronghold on the market.” He shrugged. “Figured something was going to go down at some point.”
Shaine leaned back. Mischan was the kind of guy you didn’t push. He’d tell what he knew, but he wasn’t going to be hurried. He understood the politics and he understood his place in the scheme of things.
He said, “I was down in the mess hall, grabbing a sandwich. I just got off shift. I was working on wiring the underground shelter. Zulu and Piper were in the mess hall too, havin’ coffee or something. From there, I went back to the barracks and got ready for sleepin’.”
Shaine asked, “Do you remember who was in the barracks at the time?”
Mischan pondered that, then slowly rattled off a list of names. It seemed to Shaine he was thinking his way around the room, picturing it in his head and naming the people he saw. When he finished, he paused for a moment, then added, “I fell asleep pretty soon after that, so if there were people coming and going, I wasn’t paying them any attention. Got up my usual time. Didn’t notice anyone missing who I would have expected to see.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mischan. If you think of anything else, let either me or Shaine know, okay?”
“Sure.”
Shaine said, “Thanks for your time.”
Mischan nodded, pushed to his feet, and ducked out the door. Josef cast a glance at Shaine, who was stretching her back and reaching her arms over her head with a heavy sigh. She asked, “How many more?”
“About a dozen.”
“Let’s see if we can get through them all tonight. I have a feeling we’re going to see something once we start analyzing the information.”
He nodded. “Me too.” He tapped on the screen of his comp pad, looked at the list and then tapped the com. “Hey, Jordan, bring Nels Wilson up here.”
“Got it, boss.”
* * *
Morgan walked back to their quarters, more exhausted than she expected to be after a few hours of poring through data. But at least she wasn’t cold anymore. She palmed the lock and the door squeaked open. A wave of disappointment washed over her as she entered the darkened room. Shaine wasn’t home yet. “Lights,” she said into the quiet. “Dim.”
She wondered how the interviews were going, and hoped they were learning more than she and Lukas and Del had. There were no smoking guns in the background checks or in anything else they managed to dig up. Del was frustrated as hell and ready to start banging heads indiscriminately. Lukas didn’t show it as much. Morgan thought that she should have felt more frustrated with not finding out who had killed Alec, but she just didn’t seem to be able to drag up the emotion or the energy.
Tired, she thought. I’m just tired. I should have crashed a long time ago. The slight concussion and the cold were taking their toll. She sat down on the bed and pulled off her boots, undressed and used the bathroom. She found a warm pajama top, pulled up the extra quilt and snuggled under the covers. As the blankets warmed to her body, she felt the tension relax out of her muscles.
She yawned and closed her eyes but her brain refused to settle. Sadness and anger pulled at her heart over Alec’s death. He was a great guy. What was it about good people dying before their time? Just another reminder of how transient and unfair life could be. She wondered how many more friends and loved ones she would lose to violent death.
Old, familiar questions plagued her brain. Why was her life spared when Alec’s was not? Part of her was glad to be alive. Another part of her was glad Alec wasn’t a close friend like Digger had been, and then she felt bad about that, too.
She felt guilty that she’d scared the crap out of Shaine, but was also incredibly thankful that she had Shaine in her life to love her and take care of her. She could hardly fathom being alone. It had only been a few months that they’d known each other, and yet it seemed so much longer. She missed Shaine even now, though it seemed silly. But she wanted Shaine with her, wanted to feel Shaine’s warmth against her skin and the strength of Shaine’s arms wrapped around her.
She snuggled further into the blankets and imagined Shaine was holding her. She smiled at the imagined warmth and let out a long sigh as she closed her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Shaine didn’t bother with pleasantries as she strode into the conference room the next morning. Her security team was assembled aro
und the table. “Okay, talk to me, people.”
Josef rubbed a big, meaty hand over the reddish-brown stubble of his crew cut. “We think we have him.” He tossed Shaine a small data chip, which she caught and popped into her comp pad.
“Thanks. What’ve you got?”
Josef gestured to Del, who picked up the narrative. “We went through the interviews and mapped out where everyone was and when, and who was potentially unaccounted for when that camera was down. Only two people haven’t been placed. One of those is Joe Hailey, and I think we can pretty safely eliminate him as a suspect. He’s got his own quarters and he said he was sleeping at that time. He has no motive and no criminal background. The other is Mathew McKillan. His background check is on that data chip. He’s got family ties to the Unified Martian Temple of God. His brother, Isaiah Abraham, is the spiritual Elder of the group. It’s basically Abraham’s church. That in itself doesn’t mean McKillan’s the saboteur, but it is a possible motive. The Temple folks do not want us here, and they’ve been pretty vocal about it.”
Shaine nodded, picturing the guy in her head. She remembered him being quiet and unassuming—the kind of guy that didn’t get noticed in a crowd. “The interview with him is on the chip?”
Del nodded. “It is. We watched it again. He’s good, I’ll tell you that. I don’t think I would have suspected him in a million years based on the interview.”
Whippet added, “You don’t suspect him until you really look at the bio-scans I was taking. Then you can see the inconsistencies. He was working hard to keep his cool.”
“Let’s bring him in again,” Shaine said. “Up the ante a little bit, see if we can get him to break.”
* * *
He didn’t break. He seemed completely amazed that they thought he was capable of something so awful. He was just a working guy, he minded his own business. He had no reason to do something like that.
Shaine drilled him about his brother, the Elder in the Unified Martian Church. Mathew repeatedly insisted he wasn’t close to his brother, who was fifteen years older. He said he didn’t know much about the Temple, nor did he particularly care. He didn’t believe in God, and he didn’t follow any organized religion.
Shaine thought he was too cool about it, but they had no choice but to let him go, at least until they could analyze the bio-scans that Whippet was taking as they talked. But even if there were suspicious changes, bio-scan evidence wasn’t enough to hold him or charge him. Shaine assigned Ben and Allim to keep an eye on McKillan. They tracked him via remote security cameras and watched the net and the com logs for any messages he might have coming or going.
Shaine lifted the lockdown order and crews were allowed on the construction-site to work again. Morgan took her turn at the security console, scrolling through the internal and external camera feeds. She was flipping through cameras in the living quarters when she saw Mathew McKillan looking generally pissed off as he entered the barracks.
She reached over to grab her pad and punched in a preset calling code. “Hey, Ben.”
“What’cha got, Morgan?”
“Just saw McKillan go into barracks. He looked pretty pissed.”
“We’ve got him on the private feed. Thanks, Morgan.”
“No problem.” She signed off and set the pad aside. Living and personal quarters were monitored, but on a closed, private system that only the primary security team could access. She continued watching the screens as they switched randomly through the cameras.
She could hear Amaar’s deep tones as he spoke on the com to somebody, but other than that, the ops center was quiet. Morgan didn’t mind it, but she would much rather be in the warehouse with Joe or on the construction-site doing something physical.
Shaine and Josef strode into ops. Morgan could feel Shaine’s frustration as soon as she walked in. She was practically bristling with it. Shaine dropped gracelessly into the chair beside Morgan. Josef leaned on the edge of the desk, arms crossed over his chest.
Morgan raised a questioning brow. “I take it the interview didn’t go the way you wanted it to?”
Josef said, “Not exactly.”
“There has to be a way to get him to crack,” Shaine muttered. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.” She reached for a keyboard and logged into the system. “What about this guy’s brother? What do we know about him? McKillan says they aren’t close. There’s got to be something on the net that we can find on the brother’s side to prove whether he’s lying to us.”
Morgan watched as Shaine started a couple of ’bots to query the net on Isaiah Abraham. Morgan and Lukas hadn’t found much personal data on McKillan when they’d done a similar search. McKillan didn’t even have a registered avatar. Of course, it didn’t mean that he didn’t have one under a different name. They’d searched through Abraham’s information too, looking for any references to McKillan, but other than a couple general references to family, they hadn’t found anything there, either.
“Do you think the Temple people know he’s here?” Morgan asked.
Josef shrugged. “Does it make a difference?”
Shaine cocked her head. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Just wondering if that was something you could use as a game piece. If they know he’s here, maybe it’s because they planted him here. What if we contacted the colony and asked them about him?”
Shaine cocked her head. “It depends on if he’s closer to his brother and the Temple than he’s leading us to believe.”
Josef muttered, “I feel like we’re missing something. Are we jumping to conclusions?”
Shaine shrugged. “The others are still digging. Let’s see if these ’bots come up with anything. In the meantime, I think I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Get dressed. You’re going for a little ride.”
Shaine tossed a pair of work pants and a shirt on top of Mathew McKillan’s sleeping form. He blinked. For an instant she thought she saw a hint of something other than sleepy curiosity in his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured, sitting up. He looked around the barracks room. All but two or three of the beds were empty. Of those who remained, two were sound asleep and snoring. From across the room, Mischan Dorovitch looked on silently for a few moments before he rolled over and closed his eyes again.
Shaine said shortly, “Get dressed. I’ll be waiting in the hallway.” She stalked from the room and joined Del and Josef in the corridor. “Well, this will be interesting,” she said.
Del smiled dangerously. “I want to see the little shit squirm.”
A couple minutes later, McKillan stepped into the hallway, still disheveled from sleep and surprised to see the security team waiting for him. Shaine gestured for him to start down the corridor. He frowned. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I told you. We’re going for a ride.”
McKillan stopped, dark eyes flashing at Shaine. “Is this is some kind of a threat?” he demanded.
Shaine’s smile was predatory. “Threat? No. Just a little visit to see your family. No threat.”
He stiffened. “I don’t understand,” he said.
Del smirked. “Sure you do, Matty. You’re not that stupid. We thought we’d zip out to visit your big brother, Isaiah, see how he’s doing. Thought that might be nice, like old home week, you know?”
“I have nothing to say to my brother,” he said shortly. He turned away, as though to head back to the barracks room. Shaine caught him by the arm, her grip like iron, stopping him midmotion.
“Let’s go.” She pushed him in front of her and he didn’t fight it, but the glare he gave her was just shy of murderous.
Del grinned at Shaine. Josef’s lips tightened into a line. The three of them escorted McKillan to the warehouse and across to the hangar connected at the far side. They stepped into the airlock and Del sealed it behind them. It only took a minute for the opposite door into the hangar to release since the h
angar was at full atmosphere. They guided McKillan toward a small surface transport. Josef keyed the ramp down and strode aboard. Shaine gestured McKillan to follow, and she and Del jogged up behind him.
The ramp led into a small seating area in the center of the transport. There were four padded bench seats facing forward. Each bench had four headrests and four sets of four-point restraints. A row of wall lockers lined the back of the compartment. The cockpit could be sealed off, but stood open for the moment.
Shaine and Del ducked into the cockpit. Josef remained in the seating area with McKillan. He smiled at the younger man. “Take a seat,” he instructed tersely, and leaned against the fuselage beside the cockpit hatch with his arms folded across his oversized chest.
McKillan sat stiffly on the front bench in the seat farthest from Josef.
“Better strap in, McKillan. It’s gonna be a rough ride.”
Dark eyes flashed his way. “What about you?”
Josef’s grin was taunting. “If you strap in, I don’t have to worry about a rough ride,” he said. “You need any help with that?”
“No.”
McKillan grabbed the restraints and clipped them around his body. The engines revved and settled into a vibrating hum. Shaine’s clipped tones echoed against the metal hull. “Runner One to ops. Gohste, open the exterior hangar bay door.”
Even through the thick hull, they could hear the warning claxons sounding in the hanger. The lights beyond the cockpit window shifted to red. The warning gave anyone in the hangar three minutes to vacate before the main doors opened to the thin Martian atmosphere.
“Ops to Runner One. Interior bay hatch is now sealed and locked. Opening main hangar door.”
“Thanks. We’ll check in to let you know what’s going on.”
“Ops standing by. Good luck.”
Shaine signed off the com. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She took the throttles and eased the surface transport from the hanger. Once out and away from the construction-site, she kicked in the turbos and sent them shooting across the sand basin to the west.
