‘Think of the bigger picture,’ Nathan suggested. ‘We’re looking at Reed as the killer here and Ricard as the victim, but what if we’ve got the whole thing the wrong way round?’
‘How’d you figure that?’ Allen asked.
‘Money,’ Nathan explained. ‘They pay somebody to make the confrontation with the intention of killing Reed.’
Allen frowned. ‘But if you’re saying that Ricard was involved in some kind of conspiracy to kill then why not just let him take the shot? The third person wouldn’t have to be there.’
‘That’s the sleight of hand I think is at work here,’ Nathan said as they reached the infirmary doors. ‘The whole thing is designed to work backwards. The case against Reed is based on Reed’s actions, but I don’t think that the real killer wanted Reed dead at all. I think that the target was Ricard.’
Vasquez stared blankly at Nathan. ‘Okay, now you’ve lost me. Why bring Reed into it at all unless..,’ Allen’s eyes suddenly lit up, ‘unless you want him as the shooter to take him out of the picture too.’
‘The person we’re really after targets Ricard because he has money issues, probably promises him enough cash to clear all his debts if he’ll shoot Reed,’ Nathan said. ‘Then our mystery guy kills Ricard while he’s about to commit the act of homicide, betraying Ricard and neatly setting Reed up as the killer in the process.’
Allen rubbed his brows with forefinger and thumb for a moment.
‘Sounds too convoluted,’ he said. ‘If our guy exists and he’s so smart he could do the killing himself and never be found. Reed’s a loose end they wouldn’t need.’
‘But then the police would know they’re looking for somebody else, and would keep looking,’ Nathan pointed out. ‘In this case Reed makes some wild claim about a third person that nobody can find any evidence of and it’s tossed out by a jury as fabrication. Nobody ever goes looking for that third person and they’re in the wind.’
Allen shook his head. ‘Too much could go wrong. Your mystery guy would need some real good reason to set Reed up to take the fall for the shooting and end up in here…’
Allen fell silent as Nathan’s train of thought slammed to a halt.
‘End up in here,’ he echoed Allen’s words.
‘If they wanted Reed inside for some reason,’ Allen went on, ‘they would end up with Ricard off the picture and Reed where they wanted him.’ Allen considered this for a moment and then a twinkle of admiration appeared in his eye as he looked appraisingly at Nathan. ‘Not bad for an old timer.’
Nathan grinned. ‘All we’ve got to do is go looking for our mysterious third shooter, and I’ve got just the way to do it.’
A voice replied from behind Nathan in a low rumble. ‘I take it that your meeting with Reed went well?’
Nathan turned to see Warden Arkon Stone looming over him, his beard sparkling as though aflame.
‘He’s not talking,’ Nathan said on impulse. ‘Whoever beat him, he’s refusing to snitch.’
The warden’s eyes narrowed. ‘You came here to question him about that?’
Allen shouldered his way alongside Nathan as he replied.
‘We got word of managerial inconsistencies here in Tethys,’ he snapped. ‘Word is that you opened the cell doors last night so that the block crews could get their hands on Reed. That right, warden?’
Stone seemed barely to respond, merely raised one glittering red eyebrow.
‘I’ve heard no such thing, detective. Reed was attacked after his cell door malfunctioned.’
‘That’s not what Reed says,’ Nathan pointed out.
The warden drew himself up to his full height as he glared down at Nathan.
‘You’d take the word of a convicted felon over mine?’
‘Yes, if I thought that the warden might take pleasure in allowing a supposed cop killer to be beaten to death. Maybe you have a sadistic bully inside of you that gets off on controlling the inmates in Tethys.’
Allen stared at Nathan in surprise as the warden glowered down at them both.
‘Supposed cop–killer?’
Nathan cursed himself for the slip up but rallied quickly.
‘Xavier Reed was once a highly decorated officer and there are some question marks over his fall from grace. If any harm were to come to him in this prison, and it turned out that he was indeed innocent of any crime, then I would hate to be on the receiving end of the investigation that would tear through every inch of this entire facility, warden.’
Stone seemed to almost tremble with suppressed rage as he folded his hands behind his back, his voice cracking like broken ice.
‘If there’s anything else, detectives?’
‘Oh, there will be,’ Nathan said as he turned his back on Stone and marched out of the infirmary.
Allen almost tripped as he pivoted on his heel to keep pace with Nathan as they strode down the corridor outside.
‘You just shoved a stick up the warden’s ass, Ironside. We could do with him on our side.’
‘The warden is as likely as corrupt as half the criminals within these walls,’ Nathan shot back. ‘If we’d left without firing a shot across his bows he might have had Reed killed while he’s still lying in the infirmary.’
‘You’re accusing him of attempted homicide now?’
‘I’m accusing him of a lack of due care and attention to the inmates here,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Right now we need to inform Foxx of what we’ve learned and get somebody to take a fresh look at how the evidence was collated at the scene of Ricard’s murder, find out if they missed anything else in their haste to convict him. We also need to look more closely at Ricard and his financials before he died, figure out if Reed’s right about these money woes.’
Allen nodded but frowned.
‘It won’t be enough to clear Reed but might get him out of Tethys and somewhere a little safer. You know, if you’re right about all of this we still don’t know why Ricard was killed instead of Reed, why he was betrayed. Maybe he was onto something that somebody else didn’t want to come out?’
Nathan reached the landing bay and thought for a moment.
‘Call Foxx, see if she can find out what cases Ricard last worked, what prisoners he was supposed to be assigned to here in Tethys. If he was onto something, it might pop up in his notes.’
***
XVI
CSS Titan
The warship’s sick bay was state of the art, as was the Holosap working feverishly to maintain a stable atmosphere inside the three capsules as they were plugged into Titan’s power system.
‘Remember,’ Schmidt said, ‘these capsules don’t work the same way as ours do. We stabilize first, then we reanimate, understood?’
The four cybernetic assistants with Schmidt in the laboratory nodded eagerly, their artificial intelligence systems more than capable of conducting their work with human–like understanding combined with the speed of thought of an optical computer. All of them were vaguely human–shaped machines built onto fixed pads bolted to the deck, and were equipped with four arms each and optical sensors far more advanced even than Schmidt’s: X–Ray, Ultraviolet, MRI and Kirlian imagery systems allowed them to operate with extraordinary efficiency and repair injuries that even fifty years before would have been fatal.
Alongside them were four transparent lozenge–shaped tanks no larger than a human fist, and within each one was a silvery soup that looked like liquid mercury but was in fact a pool of nanites, tiny machines the size of human cells that were called upon to conduct internal surgeries without the need for invasive tools. Into each tank was inserted an electrically conducting probe, and at an order from Schmidt commands could be sent to the nanites and a small number of them injected into the human body through the skin itself with specific instructions to repair damaged tissues, destroy attacking viral cells or even regenerate limbs.
Schmidt allowed a small number of nanites into the Ayleean capsules of the first warrior in the line. Ayleeans were fundament
ally human, divergent only in their own lust for mechanical advantage and the rigors of survival on their harsh jungle homeworld, Ayleea. Thus the nanites knew their way around well enough for the internal organs of the Ayleeans were essentially identical to those of humans, their path scaled up slightly to match the taller, more robust Ayleean physique.
‘No life signs,’ reported one of the machines. ‘If they survived whatever attacked their ship, then their capsules must have malfunctioned.’
‘Keep trying,’ Schmidt said as he surveyed an optical hologram of the capsules and sought some sign of life. ‘They got this far, they might get a little luckier still.’
As Schmidt watched the display, so he noticed something. On one of the warrior’s vital signs displays, a tiny patch of heat was visible beneath the frigid surface of the capsule.
‘Heat source,’ said one of the machines before Schmidt could speak, ‘growing in intensity, likely the result of internal metabolic processes.’
Schmidt knew that human beings had survived for many hours while encased within ice as the result of accidents, the decay of body tissues dramatically slowed by the low temperatures. Nathan Ironside, Schmidt’s last long–term patient to have endured a cryogenic process, had been perfectly preserved for almost four hundred years, although Schmidt had often questioned whether the former detective’s sanity had been protected as well as his physical body.
‘Direct the nanites to assist in warming their core temperature,’ Schmidt ordered, the machines programmed not to act without the direction of a human being or Holosap. ‘Let’s see if we can bring him back to us.’
Schmidt watched as the machines worked, guiding the nanites via signals emitted by computers that the tiny machines could detect passing through human tissue to reach their sensors. All of the nanites were constructed from biodegradable alloys and could only operate within the human body for a limited time before they decayed and were passed naturally by the patient. If the surgery took longer than the two hour legal limit on nanite existence, then fresh nanites were introduced to continue the work. The reason for the limits had evolved after experiments some two hundred years before when such restrictions had been harder to enforce. A few unfortunate souls had been over–implanted with nanites, which had swarmed together in sufficient numbers to result in self–awareness, rather in the same way that a single neuron was not self–aware but an entire brain was. The oft–feared result of nanites replicating out of control had almost become a reality before somebody had realized the danger and been forced to vaporize the patient before they had become ground–zero in an entirely new apocalyptic infection driven not by biology, but by machines. For the same reason all robotic creations, no matter how intelligent or benign, were bolted to the floor and had no means of independent locomotion unless specifically required for safety purposes such as in the case of emergency vehicles and bomb–disposal machines.
Machines, Schmidt smiled ruefully to himself, could become clever very quickly.
‘It’s warming,’ one of the robotic surgeons reported. ‘No tissue damage detected, no sign of cellular disruption. Hybernation will be reversed in approximately ten minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ Schmidt replied as he focused internally on his own location.
The sick bay shimmered out of existence and for a brief moment Schmidt was within a digital realm as he transported himself, or rather his projection, from the sick bay to the bridge.
It was hard for him to describe the sensation that he felt when he was to all intents and purposes no longer human but the digital “memory” of a man who had once lived. The movement of his projection took only milliseconds, and yet if he wanted it to he could take a year over it for time seemed not to flow in this strange and mysterious netherworld of existence and non–existence. Reduced to a burst of flowing electrons, Schmidt had no sense of a body and yet he was fully aware. He felt neither trapped nor free, alive nor dead, excited nor dismayed by the knowledge and awareness of his ephemeral form. He was surrounded by a comforting light, a perfect temperature although it of course had no actual temperature that he could detect and thus was irrelevant: his presence was both infinitesimally small and as large as the universe, and he could “travel” anywhere for his digital perception of his surroundings were as real as the world he inhabited. Schmidt had voyaged across the cosmos, orbited the most massive of black holes, seen the past and imagined the future in the ultimate virtual world.
For now though, duty compelled him to appear on Titan’s bridge right alongside the admiral.
‘Boo.’
Marshall flinched, still unaccustomed to Schmidt’s peculiar sense of humor.
‘You do that again, I swear I’ll switch you off. What’s the situation with our new passengers?’
‘One appears to be alive and recovering,’ Schmidt reported, ‘the other two are touch and go.’
Marshall nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘How long before it regains consciousness?’
‘It is a he,’ Schmidt scolded, ‘and he will be conscious within ten minutes or so.’
Marshall turned from the command platform and glanced at the XO, Olsen.
‘You have the bridge,’ he said. ‘I want to be there when it wakes up.’
Schmidt scowled in disappointment. ‘They are as human as we are.’
‘You’re not human,’ Marshall reminded Schmidt without looking back as he walked toward the bridge exit.
‘Fear and prejudice are the currency of mankind, to lash out far easier than to reach out,’ Schmidt droned as Marshall continued to walk away.
‘Meet me in the sick bay.’
*
Admiral Marshall strode onto the sick bay two minutes later and watched as the surgeons monitored the capsule as the Ayleean within was gradually warmed, Schmidt fussing over them and generally worrying about the whole process. The doctor’s duty of equal care for all life was undoubted and unquestioned, but for Marshall willingly saving the life of an Ayleean had been a hard decision to make and one that he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t later regret.
The bay was mostly filled with gravity beds that were empty, few sick crew members present as Schmidt approached the admiral.
‘He’s almost hypothermically viable,’ the doctor reported, ‘and we’ve extracted him from the capsule but placed him in full manacles.’
‘Good,’ Marshall replied, noting the eight armed Marines posted around the sick bay, all of them watching the Ayleean lying now on the gravity bed before them.
The Aleeyan was eight feet tall and bore only a superficial resemblance to a human being. A powerful musculature was visible beneath a hard, leathery skin that was mostly dark brown but flecked with patches of lighter color, almost gold. Dressed in metallic armor that covered approximately half of the Aleeyan’s body, the rest was naked but for the thin, skin–like nano–carbon fiber shielding that the species traditionally wore. Its head was a tangled mess of thick black hair surrounding a heavy jaw and hunched shoulders. One eye was covered by a device that seemed to be some kind of laser sight, a thin red beam flickering as it caught on dust motes in the air. The Aleeyan had small, sharp teeth that had been ritualistically filed, its lips thin and regressed as though the creature was showing a permanent snarl.
Marshall recoiled inwardly from the sight of the creature, something so human and yet so utterly removed from anything that he was capable of considering human that he had to physically resist the urge to draw his service pistol and vaporize the horrendous creature where it lay on the bed.
‘How long?’ he asked.
Schmidt glanced at the surgeons and one of them replied without turning its mechanical head toward the admiral.
‘Sixty seconds.’
Marshall turned to the handful of other patients all watching the exchange fearfully. ‘Clear the bay.’
The Marines complied quickly, but not as quickly as the patients who filed in silence out of the bay and were gone within seconds. Moments later, Marshall heard a low
and guttural growl.
The Ayleean shifted on the bed, its muscular limbs twitching sporadically as it slowly regained consciousness. Marshall remained in position, his hands behind his back as he fought the urge to take a pace back from the Ayleean as its fearsome yellow eye suddenly flickered open. The manacles around its wrists clinked as it lifted its arms, and that hunter’s eye swivelled around to glare at Marshall.
The Ayleean let out a horrendous shriek of outrage and the Marines dashed in, plasma rifles pulled into their shoulders and aimed directly at the warrior as it glared left and right and then down at the restraints pinning it in place.
Marshall stepped a pace closer, detected the primal scents of leathery flesh and bad breath, metal and musky skin.
‘You’re safe,’ he said, knowing that the Ayleeans still understood human language, their own vocabulary a sort of Pigdin English.
The Ayleean snarled at the admiral. ‘Set me free, coward! Where am I?!’
‘CSS Titan,’ Marshall replied. ‘You’re in the care of our doctors and…’
‘You attacked my ship!’ the Ayleean roared, the metal restrains clanging as they were pulled taut. ‘I’m not safe!’
‘We didn’t attack your ship,’ Marshall insisted. ‘We detected an emergency distress signal and we responded. We found what was left of your vessel, yourself and two others encased in survival capsules. What happened to you?’
The Ayleean peered at them suspiciously. ‘We were attacked, I don’t know by whom. We were overwhelmed.’
Marshall stepped closer to the Ayleean, concern flickering like a dim beacon in an immense darkness. ‘Overwhelmed by what?’
The Ayleean stared at him for a moment longer, and perhaps he recognized something in the admiral’s eyes that convinced him that the humans were not responsible for whatever had destroyed their vessel. To Marshall’s amazement, the Ayleean stopped straining against his bonds and spoke with an urgency, a fear even, the like of which Marshall had never encountered from the species.
Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Page 12
