The Falls [05 Diving Universe] 2016

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Bristol felt a momentary surge of irritation. Wèi did not have charge over her. She was the head of her department, in charge of things that would frighten the crap out of Wèi if he understood them.

  “Was Glida Kimura trustworthy?” Fitzwilliam asked. “The base clearly thought she was.”

  As if the base were a person. As if the base was trustworthy.

  “But you didn’t?” Bristol pressed.

  He frowned at her. “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s right,” she snapped. “You didn’t say anything at all. You told me something I already knew. I was asking your opinion.”

  Bristol’s team exchanged looks, all except for Rajivk. Sheldenhelm lowered his head, but not before Bristol saw a tiny smile on his face.

  Apparently, they recognized her tone as something they had encountered in the past.

  Fitzwilliam’s eyes had grown wide.

  “Did you trust Glida Kimura?” Bristol asked, making her question even clearer.

  Fitzwilliam bit his lower lip, then licked the spot as if he had hurt himself. He tilted his head, first to the left, and then to the right. Not quite a shake, meaning no, but close enough.

  “Did you?” Bristol pressed, not caring how uncomfortable she made him.

  “I didn’t like working with her,” he said after a moment.

  “Why not?” This time Wèi picked up the questioning. He had finally caught where Bristol was going.

  This time, Fitzwilliam did shake his head. “She was…odd.”

  Everyone knew that. From her clothing to her insistence on getting her own way in public, Glida Kimura got attention. Bristol hadn’t even known her, but she had seen her around Sandoveil, and she recognized that the woman was one of the stranger residents.

  She just hadn’t realized that Kimura worked in this building.

  “Odd how?” Bristol asked.

  Fitzwilliam shrugged again. “Her…responses…just weren’t what I would expect,” he said, more to Wèi than to Bristol. “And she was really easy to anger. I avoided her as much as I could.”

  “Do you think that’s why she was moved? The anger?” Bristol asked.

  Wèi looked at her in surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t thought of that.

  “It’s possible.” Fitzwilliam didn’t glance at everyone else in the storage room, but he might as well have. It was clear he didn’t want to be overheard. “I asked that I not be partnered with her, if it could be at all avoided.”

  Wèi’s gaze met Bristol’s, and he nodded just a little, as if acknowledging that she had asked the right questions.

  Bristol didn’t say any more, at least on this. She’d worked at this base all her life. She knew that sometimes those in charge took the easy way out: Rather than confront a difficult employee, the people in charge sometimes moved the person laterally and restricted that person’s access, just to keep the peace.

  “Do you think she’s the type of person to steal?” Bristol asked.

  “Clearly,” Fitzwilliam said, a little too fast.

  Bristol held up a hand. “I mean, thinking about what you knew about her before today’s incident. Was she the kind of person who would steal?”

  “I don’t know,” Fitzwilliam said, and the exasperation in his tone told Bristol he wasn’t really considering his response. He wanted to stop being the focus of the conversation. “I tried not to think about her, unless I had to work with her.”

  “She was that unpleasant?” Wèi asked.

  “She was that unpleasant,” Fitzwilliam said.

  “But not in any way you could document,” Wèi said, as if he understood. Or was he coaching Fitzwilliam? And why would Wèi be coaching Fitzwilliam?

  “Not in any way I could document, right,” Fitzwilliam said. “Not that I would have. I didn’t see how she could jeopardize anyone or threaten the base.”

  Bristol snorted, in spite of herself. She looked at the blast doors. “Until now, that is.”

  “Until now,” Fitzwilliam agreed. His tone was no different than it had been with Wèi. It sounded like Fitzwilliam was simply a man of few words, and needed prodding to get them out.

  Bristol didn’t like the idea of anyone being difficult—unpleasantly difficult—at the base. She didn’t like working around others, but she figured they were all people she could trust in one way or another.

  When this night was over, she was going to have to reassess everything she had thought about this place.

  Bristol looked at her team. They were scattered around the storage room. Some were taking samples from the walls. Others were using handhelds to take readings.

  Rajivk kept glancing at that hologram of Glida Kimura, as if it bothered him personally.

  Pereyra was standing where the runabout had been, taking measurements, and speaking softly to Sheldenhelm.

  These were good people: Bristol had to think that they were good people. She had never had any problems with them, they had done their work well, and they had always done more than she asked of them.

  She hated to think that they too harbored secrets, but she supposed they did. Everyone, it seemed, harbored secrets except for her.

  That holographic woman looked tiny and ineffectual. Her black clothing probably made her seem thinner than she was, and that pose—in the middle of a movement—made her seem furtive.

  How could one person cause so much mayhem?

  And why was Bristol worrying about it? She had to worry about what had happened in this storage room, not about who had done it.

  The loss of the runabout was serious, but even more serious was the loss—or the triggering or the explosion or whatever happened to that anacapa drive.

  The room was repairing itself, but from what? And would the runabout come back? Sometimes they did.

  “Jasmine,” she said to Pereyra. “Don’t stand there.”

  Pereyra raised her head, as if surprised that Bristol had spoken to her.

  “If the runabout returns…” Bristol said, not wanting to finish that sentence.

  Pereyra moved so fast to the side of the storage room that it seemed like she had jumped there. The rest of Bristol’s team moved away from the area where the runabout had been as well.

  Tranh still stood there, but when she saw the others move, she walked closer to Bristol and Wèi.

  “You don’t think the runabout was destroyed?” Wèi asked.

  It was Bristol’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. It might have been. But anything else could have happened. That Glida woman might have climbed on board somehow and then touched the wrong panel. The anacapa in FS-Prime runabouts is always left low-level active, and as a result, the runabout could have simply taken off on its own, to some preprogrammed place. It might have been a rebound maneuver.”

  “A what?” Wèi asked.

  “Um…it…um…” She didn’t know the military term. She never thought about it because she worked on anacapas here in the base, not in space. “It’s the maneuver that the Fleet uses the anacapa for most often.”

  Wèi and his team were frowning at her. They clearly hadn’t served in space either.

  “It’s—um—that military maneuver where they hop into foldspace for a few minutes foldspace time, and reappear hours later in the same place.”

  Wèi glanced into the center of the room as if the runabout would arrive right now. He cursed.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “Do you know what the standard setting is?”

  “No,” Bristol said. “The standard settings vary from ship to ship. Some ships have them, and others don’t. We’d have to ask the crew of the Ijo what they do with the runabouts.”

  Then she let out a breath. The Ijo. Had anyone spoken to the Ijo?

  “What?” Wèi asked.

  Apparently, her dismay had shown on her face. “Have you contacted Captain Virji of the Ijo?”

  “No,” Wèi said. “Why would I?”

  “Her runabout is missing, maybe destroyed,” Bristol said. S
he couldn’t help herself. She just used that tone again, that tone which said—You blithering idiot; can’t you do your job?

  Rajivk’s gaze met hers from the other side of the room, and then slid away. He didn’t seem to be focusing on his work, and she needed him to focus. Maybe he would get the tone shortly.

  “I thought you were the one who is supposed to contact her.” Wèi matched Bristol’s tone. Apparently she didn’t intimidate him.

  “Only if one of my people harmed the runabout or if there were problems we couldn’t resolve,” Bristol said, even though that wasn’t entirely accurate. If there were problems, she spoke to the Ijo’s engineering staff first to see if they had done anything or needed anything.

  Then, if the problem couldn’t be resolved, she spoke to the captain or the captain’s designated representative.

  “Yeah,” Wèi said. “You’re supposed to contact her.”

  “This Glida Kimura isn’t one of my people,” Bristol said quietly.

  Wèi turned pale. “I don’t deal with captains. That’s not part of my job description.”

  “Well, someone has to,” Bristol said. “Because her runabout is not here.”

  “Can’t we just wait until we know what happened?” Tranh asked. She had moved closer to the group.

  “And what if the runabout is programmed in a particular way? Something we might need to know?” Bristol asked.

  “If you need to know it, then contact her,” Wèi said.

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” Fitzwilliam snapped. “Stop worrying about your jobs and start worrying about the base.”

  Bristol looked at him. Wasn’t he a subordinate? Should he even be allowed to talk to anyone like that?

  Wèi closed his eyes for a moment. He looked vaguely ill. That surprised Bristol. She had thought him stronger than anyone else she had met this evening.

  He shook his head slightly, then took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “I’ll contact her. I have to. We have to. The runabout was in the custody of the sector base, and now it’s not. It was stolen. By one of ours.”

  Bristol suddenly understood his reluctance. Not just one of the employees of the sector base, but one of the employees in security. This had gone very wrong, very fast.

  She sighed, suddenly calmer, and in that moment, understood why her own subordinates disliked her.

  She hadn’t needed Wèi to contact Captain Virji. Not really. She just wanted Wèi to admit that the loss of the runabout wasn’t the fault of Bristol or her staff. And he had just done that.

  “I’ll contact her,” Bristol said.

  “You just said I needed to,” Wèi said.

  “Yes, I did,” Bristol said, keeping her voice calm. “But I was wrong. I just realized I needed to ask her if the runabouts had special settings, especially for the anacapa drives. I could have you ask, but you wouldn’t be able to convey the answer to me in any way that would be useful.”

  Wèi flushed, and his eyes narrowed. There it was, that look she got from others when she was being particularly difficult.

  She felt a tiny bit of triumph.

  Yup, pure bitch.

  Not that it mattered. Because they did have to resolve this, together somehow. And before Bristol could get to the parts she loved, she had to do one last thing.

  She had to make one last contact. And she had to use diplomacy, which, as this little interaction reminded her quite clearly, was not her strong suit.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE WORST THING about being awakened to go to a death scene was being awakened at the beginning of the sleep cycle, not in the middle of it. Mushtaq Hranek had just fallen asleep when the security office had contacted him. He had gone to bed early because he had just returned from vacation, and all that travel had left him exhausted.

  He was still exhausted as he arrived at the small office on a side street, just off Main. A security officer he didn’t recognize stood at the intersection on Main, as if he were keeping riffraff away.

  They were the only two people on the street. The rest of Sandoveil was either in bed or at home or doing something interesting with their evening.

  He wished he was too.

  Hranek nodded at the officer, then walked down the side street to the address that he had been given. Hranek was carrying his small kit, just in case he had to do some investigation on-site. In fact, he preferred doing just a bit of investigation on-site. Not only did it save time, it often provided the one piece of information that usually resolved a case.

  The side street was dark. A blocked window, a malfunctioning overhead light—already this small stretch of city block was making him feel uncomfortable.

  Bassima Beck met him at the door.

  Hranek had always found Bassima Beck to be the most attractive of all the security officers he had ever worked with. She was tall and statuesque, her high cheekbones and large eyes as dramatic as her body.

  He tried to keep his gaze averted from her because he didn’t want his attraction to her to show. The city of Sandoveil had strict rules about employee interactions, and they had a zero-tolerance policy about some kinds of violations.

  He’d only learned of these things after Sandoveil had hired him. And then he had learned that Sandoveil’s main industry wasn’t tourism as he had understood it, but a large, rather secretive base that had been sponsored by an organization known as the Fleet—something he had found mysterious in his first few cases, and now found simply annoying.

  The Fleet was military, but in its own way, a way he understood as clearly as he could for his job only. Mostly, when something ended up having to do with the Fleet, he was able to pass the death—and the problem—off to the base’s security operation.

  Early in his career here, he had done that with reluctance. Now, he did so simply because following two (and sometimes three) sets of rules gave him too many headaches.

  He was the chief death investigator for the region. Each community in the Sandoveil Valley had its own death investigator, all of whom answered to him. He also had two assistants here. It sounded impressive, but it really wasn’t.

  A lot of people died before their time in the Sandoveil Valley, mostly because of all the natural wonders. The waterfall enticed too many young people to act foolishly, the mud flats could suck in the unwary—and if the unwary happened to be drunk, then the unwary could die. The ocean had its own trials, mostly from swimmers who believed themselves strong enough to buck a serious riptide, and the mountains entranced hikers and climbers to try things beyond their abilities.

  Tourists did a variety of stupid things. And there were dangers inside the base as well, which he mostly did not have to respond to, because—he’d been told—he usually did not have the kind of security clearance to deal with them.

  He got unexplained deaths very rarely, and he preferred it that way. Unexplained deaths, particularly in small, tight-knit communities, usually caused rifts. Sometimes those rifts fell into his purview as well. He’d had to handle feuding family members, violent friends, and sobbing victims of the various deceased.

  Over the years, he had become the kind of man who preferred things quiet and simple. Unexplained death was never quiet and simple.

  He had known this unexplained death would be a problem the moment it woke him out of that much-needed sleep.

  And now here he was, just off Main, which felt like a metaphor in and of itself. He hoped this unexplained death wouldn’t be a highly visible one, but he doubted that as well.

  From the expression on Beck’s stunning features, she doubted it too.

  Beck was half a head taller than he was. He had to look up to meet her gaze, something else that he found uncomfortable. He felt grimy from his exhaustion, as if the sleep he’d been rousted from still gathered around his eyes.

  “Wow,” Beck said. “Amy called you.”

  As if that had been some kind of procedural mistake, as if he didn’t belong here at all. But Amy Loraas never made procedural mistakes. She was aware that
her job as Chief Security Officer for Sandoveil Valley was partly political, and could be taken from her at a moment’s notice. She was the most cautious person that Hranek had ever met.

  “I thought you had a dead body,” he said, and wondered if he sounded defensive. He felt a little defensive, as if the fact that someone—the office, dispatch, Amy Loraas, someone—had called him in was his fault and his alone.

  “No, I don’t have a dead body, that’s the thing.” Beck sounded slightly annoyed. And she wasn’t the one rousted from a nice warm bed. “I have a lot of blood and some suspicious circumstances.”

  Hranek suppressed a sigh. She was right, then. He shouldn’t have been called until they knew there had been a death or until someone found a body. He supposed he would have to file a complaint, although, if he were being fair, he had no idea what Loraas should have done.

  He couldn’t ever remember dealing with something like this—blood, but no body. At least not in Sandoveil. In Ynchi City, where he had gotten his training. But not in a place as beautiful and pristine as this.

  Ynchi City had had a completely different governmental structure, with a variety of death investigative services. Not only was there an actual police force, run by the government itself, but there were dozens of detectives, an on-site analysis unit, lots of investigative technology issued to everyone from the lowest police officer on the street to everyone in the Office of the Death Investigator.

  Sandoveil only had a death investigator because tourists whose family members had died in the Sandoveil Valley had professed shock when one hadn’t existed. That history was before his time, but not that much before his time.

  He was only the fifth death investigator the city had ever hired.

  “So you don’t think I need to be at this scene?” he asked Beck, wondering what he would do if she said that she believed he didn’t. He had been called in, after all. He did have a job to do.

  “I didn’t say that,” Beck said. “Everything is suspicious around here right now.”

  And then she launched into the strangest summation he had ever heard from a security officer. First she mentioned something about a dead body in a pool near Fiskett Falls, information that irritated him the moment he heard it.