by Troy Denning
Blood smears along the floor and bottom of the walls indicated that most of the casualties had been drawn out into space when the wardroom decompressed, but before the vessel’s artificial gravity failed. Veta did not bother to count the number of separate smears—that would have taken time to do accurately, and she suspected the IRI team had already cataloged the blood and tissue types for the entire scene.
“The boarding party headed straight for the bridge.” Veta made this observation as she floated after Osman onto the access ramp. “They knew the Donoma’s layout.”
“That wouldn’t have been hard to figure out,” Osman said. “UNSC passenger schooners are based on a civilian yacht design, Rhea Station’s Hyades class.”
“But it confirms detailed planning.” Veta reached the bridge and was surprised to note that the security hatch hung open, completely intact. “This was a very organized attack. The perpetrators didn’t even need to blow the hatch.”
“That puzzled us too.”
This remark came from inside the bridge, where a lieutenant commander with an IRI badge on his chest floated next to the captain’s chair. Three meters in front of him, Mark and Olivia had strapped themselves into crew seats and were clattering away at control-station keyboards. A pair of junior lieutenants with IRI badges hovered above the two Ferrets, peering over their shoulders at readouts rolling past on the displays.
“Bridge access is by voiceprint or retina scan only.” As the lieutenant commander spoke, his thrusters hissed, and he drifted toward the hatchway. “The only possibility we see is that they forced a crewmember to open it for them.”
Veta followed Osman onto the bridge. “Did you find any evidence of that?”
“We didn’t.” The lieutenant commander stopped in front of Osman and saluted, then returned his attention to Veta. “But three crewmembers did access the bridge during the course of the battle.”
“Over how long a period?”
“Thirty-two seconds.” He extended his hand. A lanky man going gray at the temples, he had a slender face with eyes so pale they were almost white. “I’m Clovis Petriv, by the way.”
“A pleasure, Commander.” Veta took his hand, but did not offer her own name . . . real or otherwise. It was obvious by the lack of patches or insignia on her utilities that she was ONI, and naval officers knew better than to expect most ONI operatives to introduce themselves. “So the crew was retreating, and the last access could have been under duress.”
“That’s our guess,” Petriv said. “But that’s all it is—a guess.”
Veta nodded and glanced around the cabin. The magnalum walls exhibited only a few lines of bullet strikes and a handful of spatter patterns, but blood had pooled on the traction-coated deck in eight places. Above one of those spots, the upper section of wall was dented in creases rather than dimples, and the spatter pattern looked like a lopsided starfish. During her time as a homicide inspector, she had investigated enough rage-murders to know the aftermath of a hacking assault when she saw it. She tapped her thruster-control glove and started toward the site.
“Is this where the captain died? Against the wall here?”
“No, ma’am.” Petriv pointed back toward the middle of the bridge, where a dark stain lay on the floor adjacent to the captain’s chair. “We found Captain Laru at his station. He died fighting.”
Veta looked toward the hatchway. The opening was surrounded by a halo of blood spray and bullet dents. “It looks like he put up a hell of a fight.”
“His people too.” Petriv indicated a large stain to the left of the doorway. “They dropped a Jiralhanae there, and trace analysis indicates they wounded another one.”
“Commander Petriv thinks the wounded Brute might be a chieftain,” Osman said. “He might be injured too bad for a long slipspace jump. That would explain why their flotilla is holding at Nereus X.”
“That’s still speculation, Admiral.” There was a note of annoyance in Petriv’s voice—probably because he had been attempting to make the same point to Osman even before Veta arrived. “We don’t have any evidence—”
“I said might,” Osman said, waving him off. “And being in a fury might suggest why the Banished killed the admiral the way they did.”
Admiral. That certainly explained why Osman was taking the attack personally—perhaps the hacked-up victim had even been a friend. Rather than risk Osman’s wrath by reinforcing Petriv’s warning against leaping to conclusions, Veta crossed to the death site and began a closer inspection.
The pattern extended from the height of Veta’s chest to the ceiling, so she had to crane her neck to study the upper arms of the “starfish.” The spatter marks were closer to splash marks, the stains so heavy and dark it looked as though someone had flung the blood onto the wall. And there was a V-shaped smear where the victim had started to slide downward, then been shoved back up against the wall and attacked again. Beneath Veta’s feet, the dark areas on the deck suggested the blood pool had covered nearly two square meters. That was a lot of blood, which meant that the victim’s heart had continued to pump for at least a minute. The admiral’s death had not been merciful.
Veta turned to Osman. “This wasn’t done in anger,” she said. “It was methodical. As if torture were the objective.”
“An assassination?” Petriv asked.
“More like vengeance,” Veta said. “How many pieces was the body in? Six?”
Petriv’s expression grew uneasy. “That’s right,” he said. “Arms, legs, head, and torso.”
“Which indicates ritual,” Veta said. “The killer wanted to destroy what the admiral meant to him. That’s why he cut his body into pieces.”
“Her body,” Osman corrected. “The admiral was Graselyn Tuwa.”
Veta’s stomach knotted. There had been an Admiral Tuwa involved in the trouble back on Gao. In fact, Tuwa had commanded the task force that had delivered the UNSC research battalion to the planet. But it had to be coincidence. The Banished hadn’t been involved in that conflict.
The Keepers of the One Freedom were another matter, however. A post-Covenant religious cult that still worshipped the Forerunners as gods and hoped to follow them into a transcendent afterlife, the Keepers differed from the Covenant primarily in their theology’s willingness to accept humans into the fold—provided those humans swore opposition to the UNSC. Like the Banished, the Keepers counted a lot of Jiralhanae warriors in their number. But unlike the Banished, the Keepers had played a major role in the trouble on Gao, trying to recover the same Forerunner AI that the UNSC had been pursuing. And, indirectly, it had been Admiral Tuwa’s leadership that had allowed Blue Team to escape with the prize.
But that was all a pretty thin connection—and one that was not nearly as strong as the proximity of the Banished flotilla.
Veta continued to face Osman. “What kind of history did Admiral Tuwa have with the Banished? Anything that dishonored or shamed them?”
“Not that I know of,” Osman said. “She may have interrupted a few raids, but I don’t think she ever caught them in time for an actual engagement. Certainly nothing to warrant something like this.”
Veta grimaced. “Anyone else who might feel she had disgraced or humiliated them?”
“Hundreds of pirates and smugglers, I’m sure,” Petriv said. “She commanded the Isbanola-sector patrol fleet, after all.”
“But how many pirates are Jiralhanae?” Osman craned her neck to study the star-shaped splash pattern above them, then glanced sideways at Veta. “You’re thinking this was a Keeper attack, aren’t you?”
“They’re in the suspect pool,” Veta said. “They’re led by Jiralhanae. And they have a grudge against Admiral Tuwa.”
“It’s still a stretch,” Osman said. “The Keepers of the One Freedom haven’t left the Isbanola sector since their defeat on Gao.”
“That we know of,” Petriv said. “Just because they’re raiding in Isbanola doesn’t mean they never leave. The Keepers are a sophisticated group
, and this attack fits their MO much better than it fits the Banished’s MO. They’ve been funding their recovery by doing a lot of piracy and kidnapping. They take cargo ships almost weekly and hold the crews for ransom. And in the last four months, they’ve seized five executive yachts that we know of.”
Osman frowned. “You’re telling me you think this is their work?”
“It’s as likely to be them as the Banished, Admiral,” Petriv said. “We know they’re in the market for nukes, and that won’t be cheap. Maybe they think this is a way to bring in a truly large ransom.”
Osman’s expression darkened. “That’s not helping, Commander. I need to know whether I’m calling for a contain-and-destroy operation at Nereus—or sending Blue Team on a civilian-rescue mission.”
“Be patient, Admiral,” Veta said. “We’re getting closer.”
She tapped a thruster pad and started toward the instrument consoles. Mark and Olivia remained strapped into the seats they had taken earlier, the IRI lieutenants still hovering above them. Beyond the viewport at the front of the bridge, the IRI frigate Swift Justice hung silhouetted against the star-flecked void, a long, blocky, dark shape, with a bifurcated bow and a squat command dome atop its back.
Veta stopped between the two Ferrets, then touched Mark’s shoulder. “What do you have?”
“Nothing IRI didn’t have already.” Mark nodded at the lieutenant hovering above his shoulder, then said, “The missile bays are full, and the coilgun wasn’t fired up. The Donoma didn’t even know she was under attack until the wardroom was breached.”
“How does that happen?” Veta asked. “Some kind of stealth vessel?”
“That’s one possibility,” Osman said. She turned to Petriv. “Are the Keepers using anything like that?”
“Not that we know of,” Petriv said. “But there’s a lot about the Keepers we don’t know. We can’t even be sure their operational base is in the Isbanola sector.”
Osman’s eyes narrowed. “You call that an answer, Commander?”
“It wasn’t a stealth craft, Admiral,” Olivia said, sparing Petriv the necessity of a reply. “The Donoma’s AI tried to sound general quarters, but the command was overridden.”
“By whom?” Osman demanded.
“Lieutenant Thurlo has been trying to figure that out for two days.” Olivia shot a sympathetic glance at the IRI officer floating above her shoulder, then added, “But she doesn’t have the clearance to access the dynamic memory matrix.”
Osman waited only a heartbeat before saying, “Are you going to tell me who overrode the general-quarters command or not, Petty Officer?”
“I can’t say, ma’am,” Olivia said. “Someone overwrote the master command log.”
A storm began to gather in Osman’s eyes, but when she spoke, it was in a voice so calm it sent a chill down Veta’s spine. “And who could have done that?”
Olivia hesitated. “It would need to be the captain or executive officer. They’re the only ones with override authority.”
“That hardly seems likely,” Petriv said. “They both died defending the ship. We recovered their bodies here on the bridge.”
Veta saw Osman tighten her lips and look away, and she knew the admiral was close to ordering a rescue attempt out of sheer desperation.
“Did you confirm their identities?” Veta asked. “Maybe those two bodies aren’t who you thought.”
“I made a visual ID of Captain Laru,” Petriv said. “I recognized him from a senior leadership course we attended on Neos Atlantis. His executive officer was with him for two years. There’s no mention in the log of a replacement.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to run a DNA match,” Veta said.
“On the entire crew,” Osman added. “And upgrade all background checks to Ultra, authority code Sierra-Oscar-niner-niner-niner.”
“What about the civilians?” Veta asked. She knew what Osman was thinking—that there had been an infiltrator aboard with some very special training. “You don’t have to be military to crack a processing code. And who’s to say the three missing civilians were taken against their will?”
Petriv and Osman exchanged uneasy looks; then the admiral said, “The civilians had nothing to do with this.”
“You sound pretty sure of that,” Veta said.
“I am,” Osman said. “Come with me.”
Osman turned toward the back of the bridge and floated through an open security hatch onto the VIP deck. Several stateroom doors showed dents and lock damage from having been forced, but the access corridor was free of spatter patterns and bullet strikes. Veta peered into a couple of open staterooms and saw open closets and floating furniture, but no sign of bloodshed.
“The boarding party was searching for something—or someone,” Veta said. “The civilians?”
“That’s right,” Osman said. “Admiral Tuwa was the sister of Prudence Tuwa, the Nephis premier.”
“Nephis?” Veta asked. “That’s a Tisiphone-system moon, right?”
“And the name of an extraction concern,” Petriv said. “The Nephis Coalition pulls zenostium plasma out of the Hephestes-Nephis flux tube.”
Veta’s Ferret training had included just enough basic astrophysics for her to know that flux tubes were cylindrical regions of space that contained a magnetic field. They were most frequently associated with stars, but sometimes occurred when the magnetospheres of a gas giant and a moon interacted to create a torus of superconducting plasma. In the case of Hephestes and Nephis, apparently one of those plasmas was zenostium—a critical component in the manufacture of antigravity plates.
“Ah . . . so this has big security implications.” Veta paused to adjust the scale of her thinking and expand the suspect pool. “Has there been any civil unrest? Or commercial rivalry?”
“Nothing that seems likely to have turned violent,” Osman said. “But as soon as the IRI realized Admiral Tuwa’s family was missing, Commander Petriv dispatched a team to notify the premier of her sister’s death.”
“That was two days ago,” Petriv said. “The lieutenant in charge also had instructions to interview the premier and her staff. According to his report, the premier appeared devastated by the news, but neither she nor her staff could think of any likely connections to her position. And of course she’s requested that we keep her informed of the fate of the missing passengers.”
Veta’s stomach sank. “Because the passengers are relatives, too?”
“That’s right.” Osman reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the Donoma’s Grand Cabin. “Admiral Tuwa was traveling with her husband and two children. They were on their way to a Threshold Ceremony for the premier’s daughter.”
Veta floated past the admiral into the Grand Cabin’s lounge area. At first, it appeared to be in a condition similar to that of the other staterooms she had passed, with an undamaged couch floating in the center of the room and one of the bedroom doors forced open. But when she turned back toward the entrance, she saw a ring of spatter patterns around the doorway, none higher than a tall human.
“So it wasn’t just about killing the admiral,” Veta said. “They came for the family—and it was important to take them alive.”
“Because the boarding party didn’t return fire,” Petriv said. “We reached the same conclusion. It certainly suggests ransom.”
“But there’s been no demand made yet?” Veta asked.
“Not yet,” Petriv confirmed. “But if it’s the Keepers, they have a history of holding high-value captives for a week or so before making a ransom demand. It keeps the victim’s family off-balance and desperate to cooperate.”
“So they’re good at this,” Veta said.
“They’re smart,” Petriv said. “And ruthless. If an operation starts to smell bad, they don’t hesitate to dump the bodies and disappear. Word has gotten around. A lot of the time, IRI doesn’t even hear about a Keeper abduction until it’s resolved.”
“Does the premier know that?” Osman sounde
d worried. “If she thinks working with us will get her sister’s family killed, she might hold something back.”
Petriv shook his head. “She knows what Admiral Tuwa would have wanted, and she’s putting her trust in the UNSC. The premier is allowing my lieutenant to monitor her communications as long as we need to.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “But we have to remember that this is the family of a UNSC admiral. Anyone who’s smart enough to take them is smart enough to know that the UNSC will be searching for them hard. I don’t see them being foolish enough to hold the victims for long. If the kidnappers don’t make a ransom demand soon, they’re not going to.”
“Good point.” Osman’s eyes clouded with worry, and she turned to Veta. “Could taking the admiral’s family be part of the destruction ritual you mentioned? Some way of claiming power over Tuwa after she’s dead?”
“That’s not a bad thought.”
Veta’s reply was a little distracted, because she was looking around the lounge area, trying to picture what had happened after the boarding party forced the door. Someone in Admiral Tuwa’s family had opened fire as the intruders entered. The blood spray suggested at least three human-size intruders were hit, and the bullet dimples in the wall were grouped in three tight circles, rather than sweeping back and forth. So there had been three shooters.
And the circles were tight, so they were trained shooters.
“How old are the admiral’s children?” Veta asked. “And is her husband military?”
“Catalin is twenty-two, and her brother, Yuso, is twenty.” Osman’s reply came quickly—it was obvious she knew the family well. “The whole family is military. Catalin just graduated from the Luna OCS, and Yuso is still enrolled there. Kerbasi is retired Navy, but he was the medical officer at the Barugi Preparatory Academy.”
“Barugi Preparatory Academy?” Veta asked. “Where’s that?”
“It was on the Tisiphone system’s fourth planet,” Petriv volunteered. “It’s been shut down for quite a few years now.”
