Yesterday's Legacy

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  There was a single civil guard patrolling the string, keeping everyone on this side.

  Jonah swore and ducked under it and started to run.

  “Hey!” the guard shouted. “You can’t go in there!”

  Jonah kept running. The guard’s priority was to keep people out. If he chased after Jonah, as soon as he turned his back, everyone would do what Jonah had just done. He would have to stay where he was.

  Jonah looked around for Marlow. She would be somewhere in the middle of this, he just knew it. If she didn’t know who had been murdered yet, she would be worried that it was him. All he wanted to do was let her see him and know he was fine. It wouldn’t be smart to talk to her, as much as he wanted to. It would be even less smart to hold her and be glad she was in his arms.

  He spotted her black uniform and slowed down to a walk. She was talking to the midshipman…Cantrell, if he remembered correctly. She looked stressed, he realized. More than that. She looked shocked. Badly shocked, the sort that made a person sink to the ground, their legs useless.

  She was holding herself upright. Her gaze moved around the terrace in a frantic way. She wasn’t observing, Jonah knew. She was looking for a way out.

  Then she saw him. He knew she had, because her gaze grew steady. Her eyes were enormous in her white face.

  His heart stopped. What was happening?

  * * * * *

  Cantrell scrubbed at his short hair with one hand, then squared his shoulders. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Where were you last night?”

  She flinched. “That’s when they died?”

  Cantrell grimaced. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist you just answer the question, sir. Where were you last night, at eleven twenty-three?”

  Marlow licked her lips. “I … uh…was in my apartment.”

  “Can anyone affirm you were there?”

  “The security feeds outside my apartment can. I went—” She halted, horror spilling through her. The security feeds would show her and Jonah arriving and Jonah not leaving until the next morning. She swallowed.

  For the first time, she wondered if this was about her at all. For long minutes now she had been scrambling to encompass that it was Taniel who was dead and to figure out why someone would kill him. All she had been able to come up with was the idea that it was somehow connected to her.

  Of course Cantrell had to question her. He had Roscoe on the line because Roscoe had the power to suspend her if necessary. Marlow had been Taniel’s parenting partner and while she had not told anyone about Taniel leaving before Erron’s Emergence, the news would have passed around the district in short order and stretched beyond there a few days later.

  She now wondered if Taniel had been murdered because of her at all.

  Had she and Jonah been seen by the wrong people?

  She swallowed and looked at Jonah again. He wasn’t approaching her. He was just standing by. Suddenly, she just wanted to be in his arms, held against his big chest and protected.

  Except that protecting people was her job.

  Marlow looked at Cantrell. “I was home all night. Check for yourself. The feeds will confirm it. So will my son.”

  Cantrell scratched at his head again. “Erron would lie for you,” he said flatly.

  “The cameras won’t.”

  He nodded. “Commander?” he added.

  “I think that it might be best if you step down for a while, Fitzgerald,” Roscoe said, her voice an airy whisper in Marlow’s ear. “We don’t want anyone to say the investigation was tainted because of your personal biases in this matter.”

  Cantrell closed his eyes and sighed.

  Marlow nodded. This fit the pattern. She might not be the target but she was a secondary obstruction they had conveniently taken off the board with the one attack. “Very well,” she told Roscoe stiffly. “I’m handing over field control to Ekkebert Cantrell.”

  Cantrell looked as though he was in pain.

  Marlow pulled out her communications link and held it out to him. “It’s all right. You are doing your job as you were taught.”

  He yanked his own link out and gripped it inside his fist. “This is wrong…something is wrong with all of it,” he said quickly and urgently, his voice low. “You’re not a killer. No one I know is a killer. Yet it’s pointing at you, Marlow.”

  “Not just me,” she said and squeezed his hand. “Keep doing your job, Ekkebert. Stay above suspicion.”

  He sucked in a shocked breath. “What’s happening? What is it you’re not telling me?” he demanded.

  “Not now.” She shook his fist one more time. “Talk to the Commander. Do exactly what she says and be eager about it.”

  “Marlow!” Cantrell called as she walked away.

  “Be safe!” she called back.

  With each step, she felt freer and lighter. She walked over to Jonah and he actually backed away from her as she came closer. “You mustn’t talk to me,” he said quickly.

  “It’s too late, Jonah. They know.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Hold me. Please.”

  He was trembling. “I’ll be the ruin of you,” he whispered. His hands were on her arms, as if he intended to pull her away from him.

  She lifted her head and looked at him. “Too late, Jonah. Someone else has already seen to it.”

  His head twisted slowly upward, to look at the apartment. “It was Taniel they killed….” He sounded winded.

  “Hannah Lucia, too. I guess she would have been able to say who killed Taniel and she would say it wasn’t me, so she had to go.”

  Jonah looked back at her. “Control is evaporating,” he breathed. “It’s coming.”

  “I think so, yes,” Marlow said. She pressed her hand against his warm cheek, feeling the healing scratches beneath it. “I love you, Jonah.”

  His arms came around her and he held her, just as she had wanted. After all, they had nothing to lose now, except the ship itself.

  * * * * *

  They used the train to get back to Marlow’s house. Sitting on the train together was surreal. Marlow kept looking at Jonah and smiling to herself.

  There were few passengers at this time of day because everyone was either at work, at home glued to a screen, or in the Capitol trying to learn about the murder first hand. The few who were standing, holding onto the travel straps, kept looking at Jonah and Marlow in furtive glances. After a while, she realized it was because of her uniform and because of Jonah’s face, which was still bruised and cut up.

  “You’d better put your arm around me, to explain why you’re with me,” she said at last, leaning toward him.

  “That’s a new excuse,” he said. His arm settled about her, warm and solid.

  After that, the glances were not as puzzled. She even saw some speculation and humor in the faces turned toward them.

  Marlow was still glad to get home, though. She unlocked the apartment and strode in. “Erron? Erron!”

  Erron emerged from his room almost running. “I saw! Stars above, I saw it all. Mom….” He flung himself into her arms and she could feel him trembling.

  She held him tightly. “You know who it was,” she said, her heart falling. She had hoped to spare Erron this. She had wanted to tell him herself, except that after a child turned sixteen, many processes were moved to their control, including the right to speak for themselves, with the opposite responsibility of dealing with authorities directly. “Someone called you.”

  He nodded. “It was Ekkebert Cantrell, Mom. He said he wanted to be the one to tell me, because he knew me and he knew Dad a bit and they wanted to release the name publically so he volunteered.”

  Marlow nodded. Cantrell was watching her back. She imagined it was Roscoe who had put the pressure on Cantrell to release the names of the victims so that a lot of worry and speculation would be eliminated.

  Erron stepped away from her and dashed the back of his hand across his eyes. He nodded at Jonah.

  “Sorry about this, Err
on,” Jonah said gently. “Your father didn’t deserve this.”

  Erron shook his head. “No one does,” he said. “Who would be so sick they could take another person’s life like that? I don’t understand.”

  Marlow sat at the table and pushed the other chair out. “Have a seat, Erron. We have some things to tell you. You, too, Jonah.”

  Jonah sat next to her and raised his brow in silent query.

  “Yes, all of it,” Marlow said firmly. “Erron’s Emergence is in less than a month. This murder is dragging Erron into the middle of the mess. He needs to know, so he can protect himself.”

  Erron’s eyes got larger. “Mom?”

  Marlow sighed. “This is going to take a while to tell,” she warned.

  * * * * *

  It ended up being Jonah who did most of the talking. Marlow added facts she knew that Jonah did not and the parts of the story that were hers alone, including the full conversation with Cantrell on the terrace a short while ago.

  “You’re suspended?” Erron said. His jaw rippled. “That’s just stupid.”

  “It’s a precaution,” Jonah told him. “Public scrutiny will be intense. People will be examining everything the civil division does to resolve the murders. They can’t afford to make any mistakes at all. Keeping your mother on the job would be a mistake. It would look as if they were playing favorites and refusing to consider her properly as a suspect.”

  “But she isn’t, is she?”

  “Yes, I am a suspect, for now,” Marlow said. “I had reasons that people might think were some justification for murder.”

  “But…it’s murder!” Erron said. “No reason makes sense.”

  “The real killer will have lots of reasons why they did it and all of them will make sense to him,” Jonah told him.

  “Even if they make no sense to anyone else?” Erron asked, looking highly confused.

  “There is no reason in existence that justifies murder,” Jonah replied. “So the killer’s reasons will make no sense, I guarantee it.”

  The small screen Marlow had formed to pull up the feeds on the Forum chirped for her attention. It was Cantrell.

  She put the screen on the tabletop, so that Erron could not read it from the other side.

  Roscoe just assigned Nicolo Hayim as lead for the investigation.

  Marlow drew in a deep breath, then let it out with a sigh, considering the implications. “Hayim is in charge of the civil division, now. He’s running the investigation,” she told Jonah.

  He nodded. “That makes sense, if the murders were designed to cut you off. The patricians are trying to control the Bridge through Hayim and Roscoe…and they needed the civil division to do it.”

  Marlow’s belly clamped. “How do I fight shadows?” she asked Jonah. “How can I defeat an enemy who won’t show himself?”

  “There’s only one way,” Jonah told her. “You have to gather more power and influence than they have.”

  Erron was watching them carefully, while he chewed on his bottom lip. Marlow squeezed Erron’s wrist. “It’ll be fine,” she told him as gently as she could.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it will be fine at all. Not unless you do something about it, Mom.”

  “Me?”

  “You and Jonah. They’re afraid of you. Both of you. That’s why they’re doing this. Cutting you off, as you said.”

  Jonah smiled. “Smart like his mother,” he murmured.

  Erron blushed. “It’s obvious,” he said and shrugged.

  Jonah got to his feet. “I have a meeting,” he said.

  Marlow looked up at him, startled. “With whom?”

  “The heads of the six major institutes on the ship.”

  “Engineering, coding, biology….” Erron frowned.

  Jonah shook his head. “Mechanical engineering, digital engineering, organic coding, inorganic coding, accouchement, sociology.”

  Erron’s eyes widened. “What about the Bridge? Mom trained there. That’s an institution, too. A major one.”

  “Just not one that would be interested in listening to me, right now,” Jonah replied.

  “You pulled the meeting together very fast,” Marlow observed.

  “I might have suggested the longevity of their institutions were at risk if they didn’t meet with me,” Jonah replied.

  “It’s not a lie,” Marlow pointed out.

  “It all depends on what they do once I’ve laid it out.” He glanced at the screen still lying on the table. “If they even bother turning up, now. The normal day has ceased to exist, because of this.”

  “Be safe,” Marlow said and made herself shut up. Warnings and cautions were useless. Jonah knew how to take care of himself.

  What if he loses his temper? The tiny voice in her mind was clear and cool.

  He would be just fine, she repeated to herself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The meeting started off badly and descended from there.

  To begin, the six chiefs had insisted he meet them in the Aventine, which was home territory for them, yet unknown and uncomfortable for Jonah. He knew the big marketplaces well, as they were public areas and the tankball arena sat off to one side of the middle one. Beyond the public spaces, though, among the wide, gleaming corridors and hushed residences, he was wary. He didn’t know his way around here. There were no familiar living modules anywhere because the Aventine had eschewed modules and had purpose-built collections of apartments and business suites, with tall ceilings and airy spaces. The floors were not the industrial steel of the Capitol, or the hard-wearing carbon matting that the Esquiline preferred. The carpet felt lush and thick under his feet.

  Jonah reasoned they had picked this location because it would unsettle him and closed his mind against the uneasiness. The room they were in was dimly lit and looked as if it was rarely used. The desk was in hibernation mode. There was no chair and the shelves against the wall were empty.

  No room sat empty in the Capitol. It just wasn’t possible. Most spaces had two or three functions and there was always someone in them.

  The six chiefs ranged around him in a loose circle about the desk. He had ended up standing in front of the desk—the supplicant position—and that was another small irritant that put him on edge right from the beginning.

  Jonah had expected he would have to spend most of his time winning Vannie Seaver over. Seaver was the Chief of the Organic Coders Institute and therefore the highest in rank of the six in the room. Seaver was very short, barely above five feet high. He made up for his lack of height by talking very loudly. He was abrasive, which would make sure everyone remembered who he was despite his miniscule stature. Jonah realized all this within five minutes of the meeting starting, because despite trying to lay out the current political situation on the ship and the historical reasons for it, Seaver interrupted him a dozen times, to ask questions or re-interpret what he had just said.

  But finally, Jonah got it all out.

  The six stirred, glancing at each other.

  “Yeah, as if we didn’t know all this stuff already,” Seaver said. “What’s that got to do with us? You said the institutes were in danger. So far as I can see, it’s just the tankball fans who are too stupid to stay out of politics who are in any sort of danger.”

  “You’re in danger because the whole ship is in danger,” Jonah replied, tamping down his irritation. Seaver wasn’t stupid. He ran the premier institute on the ship. He was trying to provoke Jonah. It was the only possible reason for his aggression.

  “That is the reason for this meeting, Mr. Solomon?” The question came from the other short person in the room. Kanina Ola, though, did not try to compensate for her height, which was a handful of inches higher than Seaver’s. She was a graceful woman in her sixties, with a sharp look in her eyes and a small smile that made it look as though she was amused. “I do hope you haven’t dragged us here to bewail food rations and cramped quarters.”

  Jonah shook his head. �
�When I say the ship is in danger, I mean it,” he said flatly. “From where you’re sitting, it might look as though a few over-enthusiastic fans acting out at tankball games yet it’s just a symptom. These murders, this morning, are all part of it.”

  The other four chiefs reacted, shifting uneasily on their feet. Seaver just rolled his eyes. “You’re being melodramatic,” he said.

  “About murder?” Jonah asked, astonished.

  “He’s right, Vannie,” Kanina Ola told Seaver. “We can’t dismiss the circumstances that allow murder to happen. However, Mr. Solomon, I’m afraid your interpretation of the causes is faulty. I still fail to see why you are bringing this to us.”

  “You have a cadre of professionals at your beck and call,” Jonah said. “You, all of you in this room, can work together and wield more influence over the future of the ship than any other single faction out there, including the patricians. Think of it,” he coaxed. “You could have direct control of the Captain and all policies emerging from the Bridge.”

  Seaver snorted. “Listen to him,” he growled. “Delusions of grandeur.”

  “What makes you think I do not already have the ear of the Captain, Mr. Solomon?” Kanina Ola asked him, her voice smooth and rich with delight.

  Jonah hesitated for the first time, grappling for a response. It was true the institute chiefs did have varying degrees of influence on the Bridge. “I’m speaking of all of you. All the institutes, with maximal control of what happens on the ship.”

  “Aren’t you with the Spanners?” Seaver said shortly. “Why are you bothering us with this garbage?”

  Jonah drew in a breath and held it for a few heartbeats. “You would prefer to remain irrelevant?” he shot back.

  Seaver laughed. “I think you underestimate the influence we already have.”

  Jonah shook his head. “No, I haven’t. I also know that if the patricians or the plebeians emerge the leaders, then you’ll have even less say in ship affairs. They won’t give you the time of day.”

  “While the Bridge,” Kanina interjected, “has favored us?”

  “Emmaline Victore made you!” Jonah shot back.

  Kanina’s face hardened. “She made the circumstances that created this chaos,” she said flatly.