Buried Deep

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “The port’s jammed?” Flint asked.

  “The Disty are trying to get out,” Scott-Olson said, “but no one’s working space traffic. It’s a mess.”

  “Trying to go where?” he asked.

  “I assume they’re going to their home world.” Scott-Olson shrugged again. “But I haven’t been in a position to ask.”

  “Contact with a contaminated Disty creates other contaminated Disty, is that right?” Flint asked.

  “Technically, as far as the Disty are concerned, any contamination can be passed on. Apparently, breathing the air of this Dome is enough. Any human from here could contaminate any Disty. It’s ugly.”

  “And humans to humans as well?” Flint asked.

  Her gaze met his. She was obviously quite sharp. “Only if the Disty know about it. One should always make sure they can’t.”

  That was a warning to him. As far as the Disty were concerned, anyone who had contact with Costard was contaminated.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I should say the same to you.”

  She smiled, and this smile was sad. “It’s too late for that.”

  “Unless we can find some survivors,” Flint said.

  “And maybe even then.” She nodded to him before he could say anything else. “Thank you, Mr. Flint. We’ll be in touch.”

  And then her image winked out.

  He captured the entire conversation, encrypted it, and stored it in a special file. Then he cleared the links and leaned back, unmuting the wall screen.

  A dozen voices filled his office, all with a tone of urgency, all sounding vaguely confused. A few of the reporters mentioned the mess above the ports, but he already knew more about the events on Mars than the media did.

  They were probably trying to get through in the exact same way he initially had. And were, of course, having no luck.

  He wondered if anyone had notified the Port of Armstrong about the possible Disty contamination problem. He doubted it. And then he realized that the panicked Disty wouldn’t just come here. They might go to any available port in the solar system. Armstrong’s was just one of the largest and the closest.

  It was like a contagion. If the Disty arrived here, they would contaminate Armstrong’s Disty, who would then try to flee. It would be the same kind of chaos that was occurring on Mars.

  If he contacted the Port, they’d want to know what the reasoning was behind his argument, and he wouldn’t be able to tell them. They might even ask for proof, and he couldn’t give them that at all.

  But he could contact DeRicci. She would trust him, at least enough to investigate.

  And she was in a position to deal with the crisis firsthand.

  Thirty-six

  Noelle DeRicci sat cross-legged on top of her desk, staring at her bank of wall screens. The crisis unfolding on Mars had a familiar aspect to it; she had toured the Moon discussing Dome evacuations two years before.

  Each Dome on the Moon had its own evacuation procedures, but it would be her department’s responsibility—if she ever got her orders together and the Moon’s overall government actually gave her enforcement powers—to order an overall Moon-wide evacuation. She hadn’t really understood the vastness of the problem until now.

  Popova sent a message through her links: DeRicci had a visitor. Detective Nyquist.

  DeRicci got down off the desk and turned her back on the wall screens. It would be nice to think about something else for a few minutes. She had Popova send him in.

  Nyquist looked rumpled and tired. He moved with a rangy grace that seemed almost out of place on a man of his size. DeRicci wondered if anyone had told him he walked like someone taller.

  Probably not.

  She held out her hand and he took it. Neither of them shook. They just stared at each other for a moment.

  Her cheeks warmed, and she let go first. “It’s good to see you, Detective.”

  He nodded toward the wall screens. “Watching their crisis, huh?”

  “Trying to learn from it,” she said. “You have news on the vengeance killing?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She moved a chair closer to her desk and indicated that Nyquist sit down. She started to go around to her large chair behind the desk and changed her mind. She didn’t want that clear expanse between them.

  Instead, she grabbed another chair and pulled it near his. Facing his, though, not beside it.

  She still felt obvious.

  “So what’s happening with the case?” she asked, trying to focus her thoughts in another direction.

  “I met your old partner,” Nyquist said. “Miles Flint?”

  DeRicci leaned back, feeling slightly lightheaded. Flint. What was he doing around a Disty vengeance killing at a Disappearance Service?

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “He has a connection.”

  “Costard met with him several times,” Nyquist said. “I think she hired him, although Flint wouldn’t confirm. He says that she’d have no reason to go to a Disappearance Service if she had hired him.”

  If he had been any other Retrieval Artist, DeRicci would have had to agree. But Flint was an unusual man. He had helped countless people remain Disappeared a few years ago by bringing a reputable Disappearance Service into a police matter.

  Still, she said nothing. She wanted to hear about the encounter before she formed an opinion. Besides, she wasn’t sure if she could completely trust Nyquist, no matter how attracted she was to him.

  “He’s a strange man,” Nyquist said, studying her. He was probably trying to see how she really felt about Flint. “I couldn’t get a read on him.”

  “That’s one of his skills,” DeRicci said.

  “He hadn’t known about Costard’s death. When he found out it was a vengeance killing, he seemed surprised. At least that was how I read it.”

  “You told him it was sloppy?” DeRicci asked.

  Nyquist nodded. “And that was when he gave me a suggestion. He told me to look hard into Costard’s reasons for coming to Armstrong. He said I might find something there.”

  DeRicci’s stomach flipped. Flint was involved. And for some reason, he gave Nyquist more than he’d ever given her on his Retrieval Artist cases.

  “Did you?” she asked, trying to keep the emotion off her face.

  “Oh, yeah,” Nyquist said. “That’s why I’m here, actually. I found out that Costard was wanted by the Disty—”

  “We knew that,” DeRicci said.

  “—but not in the way we expected. They felt she was contaminated because she handled the skeleton of a dead woman. Apparently, she was trying to find that woman’s family so that some sort of ceremony could be performed, which would decontaminate not only Costard, but the others who had been near the corpse.”

  “Contaminated?” DeRicci asked, not liking the sound of that word. “Didn’t she go through the decon chamber in customs?”

  “Not that kind,” Nyquist said. “We wouldn’t even notice. It’s a religious thing or some other kind of nonsense for the Disty. I don’t completely understand it. But it means that Disty can’t get near her for fear of being contaminated themselves.”

  “Then how did they kill her?” DeRicci asked.

  Nyquist’s eyes narrowed, and then he nodded. “See? I think that was the question your old partner wanted me to ask. And the answer is pretty simple. The Disty didn’t get near her. They hired some humans to kill her. I tracked them down. I have records of the meeting and of the hire. I even know where the killers are.”

  “But?” DeRicci looked past him at the reports on Mars. They were running silently behind him, showing tiny explosions as someone recorded ships hitting each other from a distance.

  “But,” Nyquist said, “I have a dilemma.”

  That caught her attention. Her gaze met his, and she thought she saw disappointment in his eyes. Because her attention had wandered for a moment?

  It had wandered because she was moving beyond her old positio
n. She wasn’t a detective any more, no matter how much she missed it. She was the Moon’s security chief, and something about this Mars stuff bothered her. On a deeper level than simple planning.

  Something—

  “Do you care?” he asked.

  That snapped her back to him. “I’m sorry. I do.”

  “I thought I could talk about this with you,” he said. “I don’t want to bring it up in the department until I understand everything. If I’m disturbing you—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m sorry. This Mars stuff is distracting me.”

  “You and everyone else,” he said.

  “Your dilemma,” she prompted, wondering if she had hurt the fledgling feelings between them. That wouldn’t be the first time she had screwed up something delicate in the early days of a relationship.

  “My dilemma is this,” he said. “If the humans are hired to carry out a legitimate Disty vengeance killing, a killing in which the Disty are physically unable to touch or even go near the object of the killing, have the humans broken the law?”

  That did catch her attention. “I don’t know.”

  The words bounced out of her before she could consider them. But she didn’t know.

  “See, I’m not sure if it’s a murder for hire, since the humans have no cultural imperative to kill, or if it’s just an executioner carrying out a ritual for a particular government,” Nyquist said.

  DeRicci let out a breath and stood. She hated these kinds of questions. The cross-cultural implications were always difficult. “Is the killing justified?”

  “I can’t reach the Disty to get their files,” Nyquist said. “But I got someone at the Disappearance Service to tell me, off the record, that Costard had been in their offices a day or so before she died. She hadn’t signed up, but that’s not unusual. Apparently, people come back two and three times before they choose to dump everything they know and run.”

  “I thought that was dangerous,” DeRicci said.

  “The whole thing’s dangerous.” Nyquist folded his hands across his flat stomach. He was in good shape for a man who seemed to avoid enhancements.

  DeRicci turned her back on the wall screens. She didn’t want to think about the Mars crisis at the moment. Instead, she looked out her window at the crater left by last year’s bomb.

  “Let’s say it is a legitimate vengeance killing,” she said. “Then you have a real problem. I’m not sure this has ever been adjudicated. Have you talked to a lawyer? The city attorney might be able to advise you.”

  “Have you ever talked to those people?”

  She had worked with them, and mentally cursed them the entire time. One of the last alien negotiations she had done, the city attorneys had nearly ruined everything. DeRicci had known more about the law than they had.

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said, and faced him. He was watching her, those sharp eyes taking in every movement. “I forgot what idiots the city attorneys can be.”

  He smiled. She liked his smile. It was gentle. It softened his features, made him seem a little less intense.

  “You’re right, though,” he said after a moment. “I should talk to them.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  She returned to her chair and sat down, leaning forward as she spoke to him.

  “This is what I would do,” she said. “Since you can’t reach the Disty for somewhat obvious reasons—”

  And she indicated the wall screens. Nyquist nodded without looking at them.

  “—then you’ve got to act on the assumption that the Disty had the right to do the killing.”

  He frowned. Hadn’t he thought of that? Probably not. DeRicci had learned long ago that her cop’s brain worked differently than every other cop’s brain.

  “And if they had the right to do the killing, then it stands to reason that they had the right to carry out that killing, no matter how they did it.”

  “But that’s my point,” Nyquist said. “We don’t know that—”

  “Exactly.” DeRicci spoke softly but with force. She didn’t want this discussion to go on too long. “Right now, you know where the actual killers are, right?”

  “More or less,” Nyquist said. “I could have them arrested in the next hour.”

  “Then that’s what you do. Let the lawyers worry about the law. You make sure you have a solid case against them. Count it as murder, make sure you have them in custody, and if you’re wrong, who’s going to blame you?”

  “Gee,” he said with a lot of sarcasm. “I don’t know. The chief, maybe?”

  That was how DeRicci got into trouble. But sometimes her take-charge attitude worked. And ultimately, she did get this goofy promotion because of her unusual way of thinking.

  “No, she won’t,” DeRicci said. “Not if you write it up right. If you ignore the cross-cultural implications, claim that only the Disty have the right to carry out a vengeance killing, and state Armstrong law, which is pretty clear. Humans do not have the right to take another human life, no matter what the reason.”

  “Self-defense,” he said.

  “Even that’s an iffy proposition,” DeRicci said. “It’s up to the lawyers to prove that an instantaneous cry for help along all of the victim’s links wouldn’t bring anyone in time to prevent serious harm.”

  He shook his head. “I hate that law.”

  “Me, too,” DeRicci said. “But it’s the law, and it’s one you know. So act on it. Clearly, if this Costard was attacked by more than one person, then the group wasn’t acting in self-defense. If anything, Costard had the right to hurt them, not the other way around.”

  Nyquist let out a pained sigh.

  “So you hold these killers and let the lawyers battle it out. You put that in your report. Claim that you couldn’t risk letting killers go free—where would Armstrong be if we were filled with killers for hire, even if they have a legitimate right to do their job?—and plead communities’ rights. The way that everyone’s been feeling since the bombing, you’ll definitely get away with it. And no one will think less of you for it.”

  He had leaned away from her as she spoke, and his expression was closed off. “You’d really do that?”

  She nodded.

  “Amazing,” he said. “No wonder they gave you the cases that weren’t straightforward.”

  “You don’t approve.” She tried to say that lightly.

  He started to answer but her links flashed red. She held up a hand, stood, and turned away from him.

  What? She sent, not sure she could go to full vocal.

  “Noelle, it’s Miles.” Flint’s voice sounded self-assured. “Something important’s come up.”

  “And it can’t wait?” DeRicci figured she could ask that question aloud. That way, Nyquist would know she wasn’t pretending a link communication to shut off the discussion.

  “No,” Flint said. “In fact, we may have already waited too long. You watching this Mars thing?”

  “Of course.” DeRicci glanced over her shoulder at Nyquist. He had his head bowed. He was staring at his folded hands as if they were the most fascinating things he had ever seen.

  “I just got done talking to the Medical Examiner in Sahara Dome,” Flint said. “She told me some of what’s happening there, and it’s scary, Noelle.”

  “I could figure that out on my own. And how did you get ahold of Sahara Dome? People have been trying to do it from here for more than an hour.”

  “I was too, but I stopped going through official channels. I had some back-contact information and I used it. That’s not important…”

  Nyquist stood. He touched DeRicci’s arm, making her lose her train of thought.

  “Thanks,” he mouthed. “I’ll talk to you later. You clearly need to work on this.”

  She found that she didn’t want him to leave. “If you don’t mind waiting—”

  “I’ve got some thinking to do. I have a hunch you’re right. But I want to go over this.” He smiled at her. �
�Thanks for taking the time.”

  He sounded formal. Formal was always a bad sign. She had offended him. Or maybe he was one of those shallow people who always thought of their career before they thought about what was best for the case and best for the Dome.

  “…Noelle? Have I got you at a bad time?”

  She realized Flint had been talking while she was saying good-bye to Nyquist. He was heading out the door and he didn’t turn back, so that she could catch his eye.

  “Sorry,” DeRicci said. “I had someone in my office. He’s gone now.”

  The door clicked shut, and she sighed as inaudibly as possible.

  “I missed that last,” she said. “You were saying you talked to the medical examiner in Sahara Dome? Why in God’s Full Universe would you do that?”

  “Some questions I can’t answer, Noelle,” Flint said.

  It was a case then. Something to do with Costard?

  “But the examiner told me that they had discovered a mass grave in the Dome, which frightened the Disty. Somehow the presence of that grave made the Disty feel contaminated—”

  There it was again, that word. Twice in the last half an hour. DeRicci didn’t like the coincidence.

  “—and that’s why they’re fleeing. You’ve been watching this, right?”

  “Yes.” Hadn’t she already answered that? She felt off balance, first because of Nyquist and then because Flint had gotten into the middle of everything, like he seemed to have a talent for doing.

  “Then you’ve seen the accidents in the space over the ports.”

  “So?” DeRicci asked.

  “Have you thought about where the Disty will go if they get out of Martian space?”

  She hadn’t thought about it. She’d been thinking of everything but that. She’d been thinking about how she would handle such a crisis, but she hadn’t realized that the closest non-Martian port which could handle vessels of all types was hers.

  She swore. “You think they’re coming here?”

  “I think they’re going anywhere and everywhere. What isn’t in the coverage is that this contamination thing makes the Disty act insane. A bunch have already died in Sahara Dome just trying to escape, and the medical examiner thinks there are going to be more.”