Babylon 5 02 - Accusations (Tilton, Lois)

by Accusations (Tilton, Lois)

  Garibaldi was staring at him as if he'd grown scales and a tail, but Sheridan looked disturbed. "You have these charges in your report?"

  "They aren't charges, Captain. Not yet, at least. But, yes, all our findings to date are in our report. Read it, Captain. Ignore your previous ties to the commander and read it with an objective mind."

  Garibaldi burst out, "Captain, you can't let him" But Sheridan cut him off. "That'll do, Mr. Garibaldi. And you, too, Commander. I'll give the matter my consideration and let you know what I decide. That will be all."

  Sheridan was alone. Alone with Wallace's report on his desk.

  A lot of hard things he'd had to do in the course of his career. Writing those letters to the families of the men killed under his commandthat was the worst, hands down. But this wasn't much far behind.

  He'd read the report. Read it, as Wallace intended him to, the way Earth Central would certainly read it when it showed up on their desks. It twisted the facts. Twisted them until they bent backward in both directions, sometimes. Butthe facts were there. Indisputable. Ivanova wascompromised.

  His link chimed softly. "Captain? This is Ivanova. You wanted to see me?"

  Sheridan forced himself to meet her eyes when she came into the command office. The anxious look on her faceshe knew what this was about.

  "Sit down, Commander. I won't keep you hanging. I'm not happy about it, but Commander Wallace's report really leaves me no choice. Until further notice, you're suspended from all duties as a member of the command staff of Babylon 5."

  It hurt her. He could see it. Her face went white and she remained on her feet, eyes front, almost at attention. No matter how much she thought she was prepared, it hit her hard.

  "Do you have anything you want to say?"

  "Only ..." She swallowed. "Do you believe the charges, Captain?"

  He shook his head. Emphatic. "No. I don't. But what I believe isn't the point. Commander Wallace's position is ... probable. The way he puts it. And, unfortunately, he's rightit's just your word that things didn't happen the way he insinuates."

  "My word ... as an Earthforce officer ..."

  "Is enough for me. Absolutely," Sheridan said firmly. "But the position of executive officer, in a command like this one, has got to be above all suspicion. Andyou are compromised. Until we find evidence to the contrary. I'm sorry, Susan," he added gently.

  But Ivanova stiffened to full attention. "If the Captain would excuse me now?"

  "Of course."

  "Damn," he said aloud once she'd gone. Why did a thing like this have to happen to an officer like Ivanova? He knew her kind. All these years with a perfect record. The military was her life. Her career was everything to her. She'd been on the track to flag rankup until now.

  Nowface it. No matter whether Wallace filed formal charges or not, the suspension was on her record. The suspicion. Every promotion board that looked at it from now on would see it, would pass her by. She would never have a command of her own.

  Her career was effectively over.

  What a damn shame.

  CHAPTER 10

  Garibaldi stood in the corridor outside the closed door. "Ivanova. C'mon, I know you're in there. It's me, it's Mike Garibaldi. Let me in, all right?"

  Silence. He cursed under his breath. "Look, Ivanova, this isn't going to help."

  No response.

  "I'm not going to go away, you know. I'll just wait out here and clutter up the corridor"

  From inside came a muffled, "All right! Come in, if you're not going to go away."

  The door slid open. Garibaldi stepped cautiously inside. Ivanova's quarters were dimly lit. She stood up from the couch to face him. She was wearing, he could see, a plain collarless shirt, rather rumpled, and nondescript civilian pants. Her shoulders were slumped, and Garibaldi could just make out the redness in her eyes.

  "So," she said dully, "now you're inside, cluttering up my quarters. Is it an improvement?"

  "Look, Ivanova, you can't just sit in here in the dark like this. Come on. You have to face this thing. You can't let it lick/you."

  "I'm already done for, Garibaldi. I've been suspended. My security clearance has been revoked. I'm compromised. It's on my record. No matter what happens now, it'll stay on my record. Every time I have to go through a security clearance, they'll see the red flag there. Did you know that, up to now, I had a perfect record?"

  She turned away. "I just don't see how the captain could go along with it. I mean, he knows me. I served under him on Io, he knows what kind of officer I am. If it were some other commander"

  "Listen to me," Garibaldi intervened in Sheridan's defense. "I was there. In the Command Office. I heard what Wallace said. He wanted you put under arrest at first. Confined to quarters. He would have gone to Earth Central on this, I'll just bet on it. Him and his authorization. Is that what you would have wanted? Sheridan was trying to protect you from that. What else was he going to do?"

  She shrugged. "He says he believes me, of course. He says he trusts my word." She looked awayup at the ceiling, over at the corner. "I hear that I'm going to be assigned to some other dutysomething 'less sensitive.' Not as part of the command staff. I could be a shuttle pilot, maybe. Or sit a tech post in C&C. I'm qualified for that, anyway. I guess when they ship me back to Earth, I can find some kind of job . . ."

  "Now, come on! I can't believe this! Are you going to let the bastards get away with this? Let Wallace beat you without fighting back?"

  Suddenly the pent-up emotion flooded into her voice. "But why? That's what I want to know. Why are they doing this to me? Do they really believe these crazy charges? Do you know what they're saying? It doesn't even make sense! One minute they say I've been conspiring with Ortega; the next minute they decide I'm the one who killed him. What's going on, Garibaldi? Why . . ."

  But at that point she choked up, and Garibaldi found himself holding her, feeling her body shake as she fought down the sobs. After a moment, he was disturbingly conscious of her body heat, the softness of a female form pressed against his own. Out of uniform, with her hair down ... he found himself wanting to stroke her hair to comfort her.

  But thatno, that would be the wrongvery, very wrong thing to do. Not Ivanova. No.

  Awkwardly, he made himself pat her shoulder. She pulled back, straightened, wiped her eyes. "Sorry."

  He let her take the time to pull herself back together, wondering why it was somehow all right for women to cryor maybe why men had to find it so hard. There'd been enough times in the last few years when he'd wanted to cry, when he'd even almost wished there was someone to hold him like that while he did it. And maybe that was the worst partthere wasn't, and he was starting to think maybe there wouldn't ever be anyone like that in his life again.

  But that was another train of thought he didn't want to get onto right now.

  They both sat down. Garibaldi gathered his words. "Look, Ivanova, I know what it's like to be framed, all right? I've seen it done. Thislooks like a frame job."

  "But why?"

  "Well, I hate to say it, but if they were looking for a suspect, you're the obvious one. I mean, who else are they going to pick? No one else on this station seems to have any connection to Ortega. So say they're trying to cover up for someone. Say they don't want it getting out who really killed Ortega. Best way is to pin it on someone else. You're available, they can make the evidence fit. So the case is closed.

  "Now, I know you might not want to hear this, but if you could prove you were telling the truth"

  "No." She stood, agitated. "No, we've been through this before. I won't submit myself to that. Someone probing around in my mind. Even if Psi Corps was allowed to scan defendants in these kinds of investigations, and they're not."

  He sighed. He knew all about Ivanova's aversion to the Psi Corps, which she held responsible for her mother's death. She often had to make an effort even to be polite to a telepath. "All right. Then there's just the other alternative."

  "You mea
nfind out who really killed Ortega?"

  He nodded. "Which of course shouldn't be a problem. That's my job, after all. Only now ..."

  "You've been ordered off the case."

  "Not just off it. I'm not supposed to go anywhere near it. Sheridan handed me a direct order. Stay away from Wallace's investigation. Don't interfere. Did you know the bastard had locked up half the station's security files? Not just Ortega's. The records on just about everyone who ever worked on Mars were restricted. They really don't want anyone to know what's going on with this case. Damn! I wish I could get into those files!"

  "I thought they were restored."

  "All but Ortega's. That one's still restricted. Anyway, I'll bet if I so much as sneeze in the direction of that file, it'll set off alarms so loud they'd hear them at Earth Central. And I'll bet Wallace is just sitting there waiting for me to try it, the bastard."

  She sat beside him. "Do you think they were trying to frame Ortega, too? I still do have trouble believing he could be involved in something like terrorism."

  He shrugged. "Who knows? Unless we can find out why he was here in the first place."

  Ivanova went thoughtful. "You know, Miyoshi said . . ."

  "Said what?" Garibaldi asked.

  "She said they had reason to believe Ortega had smuggled information onto the station. And passed it on to someone."

  "Such as you."

  "That's what she seems to think." Ivanova was starting to look worried. "You know, Garibaldi, I think I can almost make sense of it. Listen: Ortega sends me a message. I meet him at 20:00 hours, as arranged. He gives me the information. As soon as I have it, I kill him, drag his body into the head, wait two hours, querying the computer about the time, to make it look like he never showed up"

  "And then run straight to me and report him missing, to establish an alibi ..."

  "Whose side are you on, anyway, Garibaldi?"

  He was glad to see she was recovered enough to joke about it. "No, but really. You needed those two hours. To search him, to strip off his clothes"

  "For what? If I already had the information?"

  "All right. So maybe you didn't. Maybe he refused to give it to you, and that's why you killed him. Then you searched him, found the information, dragged the body off to hide it"

  "Did I have time to do that? In the two hours?"

  "I think you did. According to Doc Franklin, the body was moved into that locker when it was still fairly recently dead. Afterward, you were with me, you didn't have time."

  She shivered. "This is starting to scare me. Do you think they really believe this? Do they think I have that information, whatever it is, and they're trying to force it out of me?"

  He patted her shoulder again, a safe, brotherly gesture. "Don't know. I do wish ..."

  "What?"

  "I wish you could figure out what Ortega meant in that note. 'Hardwir.' He must have thought it would mean something to you."

  "Maybe he never finished what he was going to write. Maybe he didn't have time? He was worried. I've been over it again and again in my mind. He was worried. Someone was after him. Suppose he thought they knew about the meeting place. He couldn't contact me, but he wanted to be sure I got the information. So he came early, started to write the note, to leave it where I'd find it. But whoever killed him got there first, before he could finish writing it."

  "And didn't see the note?"

  "I didn't. Nobody else did, 'til your security team swept the room. It was on the floor, crumpled up. He knew it was too late and he didn't want them to find it."

  "Could be," said Garibaldi glumly. "But so far, whatever happened, that note seems to be the key to this whole mess. If you could just remember"

  She pressed her hands to the sides of her head. "I just can't! Don't you think I've tried?"

  "Well, I'm going to find out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean getting to the bottom of the whole thing. From the beginning."

  "But you can't do that!"

  "Why not?"

  "Sheridan gave you a direct order."

  He snorted. "Hell, do you think I'm going to let something like a stupid order stand in my way, when it's your career at stake? Maybe even more?"

  Maybe even more. The words stopped her automatic protest. But . . . "What about your career?"

  "Hey, let me worry about that."

  "No! Garibaldi, I can't let you"

  "Look, I'm already involved in this thing. Wallace has got me on his hate list. So the only way to make sure both of our careers are safe is to find out what's going on."

  "I suppose," she said dubiously.

  "I know," Garibaldi insisted.

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "Ask around. Wallace may have the records, but I have something he doesn'tcontacts. Although," he added, "it's not going to be easy getting anything out of them. People are worried. Scared."

  "Of what?"

  "If I knew that . . ."

  "And what do I do?"

  "Think. Try to remember. Everything about Ortega you can. Write it all down for me. And listen. Don't trust the computer. Not even your own personal log. I don't know what kind of access level Wallace has, but he has all my passwords and maybe some we don't even know about.

  "The bastard," he added.

  CHAPTER 11

  First you set out the bait. Then you go around and check your trapline, see what picked it up.

  Garibaldi liked the trapper image, which he'd picked up from an old book. There were times in the security business when you had a lot of time on your hands to sit and read. Not, however, since he'd come to Babylon 5.

  The station was like the old Earth frontier, though, when he thought about it. Out on the edge of the new. Full of risks and hazards, yes, and some of them unknown. But that was how he preferred it. Without too much time on his hands to sit and brood about the past.

  And so, thinking of traps and bait and what he might catch, he strolled down into the Down Below section, to see what had been stirred up by his recent conversation with Mort the Ear. At first he didn't notice anything much out of the ordinary, just the usual sullen and hostile looks directed at him by the usual sullen and hostile denizens, upset at having their business interrupted by the intrusion of station law. But after a while he began to noticethings weren't quite the same today. He looked around at the sign that advertised the Happy Daze bar. Someone had finally fixed the flickering D.

  Frowning, he slipped inside the hatch and made his way through the smoke and haze that passed for an atmosphere in the place, up to the bar. Instead of Mort, there was a new bartender, one of the Drazi who seemed to be opening up a lot of new businesses in this section. "Say, friend, have you seen my buddy MortMort the Ear? Owns this place? I was hoping to run into him down here today."

  "Mort gone."

  Garibaldi frowned. "What you meangone? Gone where?"

  The Drazi made a sweeping gesture. "Gone. From station. Took transport yesterday. Sold business. Took big loss," he announced with a smug expression.

  "What?"

  The Drazi made a gesture of confirmation-of-improbable-circumstance. "Mort say, too much trouble here now. Sell bar. Move to Euphrates Sector for peace and quiet."

  Garibaldi swore. This was one thing he hadn't expectedto find his trap empty. Things must be worse than he'd thought. Maybe a lot worse.

  But just as he was wondering how, a call came in through his link. "Mr. Garibaldi."

  "Garibaldi here."

  The call was direct from Security Central. Immediately he was alert. "What is it?"

  "We may have had another murder."

  "I'll be right there."

  There were no cemeteries on Babylon 5. But people did die, and when they did, their mortal remains had to be disposed of in various ways, according to the customs and beliefs of several dozen races, with more than a hundred major religions among them. Sometimes their bodies were shipped home for the proper rites, sometimes they w
ere shot into the heart of the nearby sun. In certain rare cases, they were ritually consumed by the friends and relations of the deceased, a practice tolerated by the station authorities, tolerance being policy on Babylon 5.

  But it was a general rule that the remains of sentient beings were never dispatched to the inevitable destination of all other organic waste on the station: the recycling system.

  And yetGaribaldi, the recycling tech, her supervisor, and the two security agents who'd first responded to the report had all examined the object. All concurred in their judgment: it was a humanoid foot, cleanly severed at the ankle joint. Best bet, a human foot.

  "Got the evidence pouch?" Garibaldi asked.

  "Here, Chief." One security agent held it out. Garibaldi, using a set of tongs provided for the purpose by the recycling supervisor, inserted the evidence into the container, sealed it. "Get that to Medlab, give it to Doc Franklin for analysis. He's already expecting it."

  The agent hurried away with obvious relief to be out of the noxious atmosphere. Garibaldi looked at the recycling supervisor, a man about his own age, named Ryerson. "Is that it?"

  "As far as we can tell."

  "Then maybe we can get out of this place?"

  They went back across the catwalk above a huge vat, Ryerson leading the way, then the remaining security officer, the petite young ensign named Torres. Garibaldi followed them down a narrow flight of stairs, crossing the network of color-coded pipes, each greater in diameter than a man's body, that led to it. It was a place as impressive in its own way as the fusion power plant. And larger, in order to serve a population of a quarter-million in a closed environment.

  "Does this kind of thing happen often?" Garibaldi asked, taking a breath of the cool air on the other side of the door. It certainly hadn't happened here on Babylon 5 before now.