Dead Space

by Kali Wallace

  I frowned, thinking through the possibilities. Water. Fuel. Rare metals. All valuable, sure, but I couldn’t imagine a scheme in which stealing any of those would net anybody much of a profit. Transport was too expensive in deep space. Data was so much more lucrative.

  “This seems like a pretty difficult place to run black market trade,” I said. “I assumed because of the transmitter that he was only interested in data, but maybe he stumbled across somebody else stealing fuel or materials? Is that even possible? Do people steal from mines like this?”

  “Aye, sometimes. Not often. They usually target stations with ports and shipyards for equipment, ship parts, if they’re going for something solid. Or hospitals, for the drugs. But if something’s not bolted down, somebody will try to take it. And Prussenko died in a cargo warehouse.”

  “Yes. He did.” I looked at the list of David’s recent activities again. “What I don’t understand is why the Overseer didn’t flag any of these discrepancies that David found. The errors in cargo manifests and fuel volume, that sort of thing. That sort of boring detail is exactly what steward AIs are good at. Unless it has an exceptionally large margin of acceptable error? Which might be exactly how somebody could get away with stealing, I suppose. I’ve never looked into how Overseers learn their error margins.”

  We came to the end of a row of cargo containers, and a wide space opened before us. There was cargo-moving machinery parked around the edges, as well as a few huge pallets of what looked like raw materials—iron or some other metal, but whether it was newly arrived or due to be shipped away, I had no idea. Overhead was the transport crane, unmoving for now. In the tall, dark wall ahead of us was the broad opening to the transport tunnels that carried cargo to the rest of the facility. Beneath the tunnel opening was the large-format waste disposal unit, with a recycler on one side and incinerator on the other. All of it was dwarfed by the scale of the warehouse, the ceiling so high above, and I felt a strange sense of vertigo, to go from the claustrophobic canyons of the cargo rows to this dizzyingly open space, where the lights were muted and weak, like the sun straining on an overcast day.

  It was easier to keep my eyes on the floor. To pretend the gravity was strong enough to matter. To remember up and down and never allow the darkness to confuse me.

  “Why are you working security?” Adisa asked, as we started toward the incinerator.

  The question caught me off guard. “What?”

  “You’re an AI expert. Why are you working security?”

  There was nothing more than mild curiosity in his tone, but it still rankled. He hadn’t asked when I’d made my request to join the investigation, even though he must have known who I was. I couldn’t imagine why he was asking now. He had no reason to care. I was doing my job. More thoroughly than most Parthenope OSD officers ever managed, since we were here actually having to investigate something, rather than just watching surveillance and locking somebody up. Maybe it was my first murder that wasn’t one drunken asshole smashing another over the head with a pipe wrench, and maybe I had missed a few things and overlooked a few obvious tasks until he pointed them out, but I was doing the work I needed to do.

  “It was the least shit of all the shit options they gave me,” I said shortly.

  The Parthenope representative who had come to “discuss your opportunities” while I was still in the hospital had not had very much to offer. She had stood beside my bed—didn’t take a chair, had no intention of lingering longer than she had to—and never once looked at my face or my newly acquired prosthetics. She hadn’t even looked up from her PD as she read off the positions Parthenope had available for somebody in my situation. She listed salaries, contract lengths, expected duties, her voice as flat as that of an AI with a bad natural language algorithm. I was on the fading edge of that morning’s pain medications, and beneath the throbbing ache of the surgical wounds was something more subtle, more insidious: an incessant itch in my left foot, the foot that no longer existed and could never be scratched. The doctors assured me it would fade with time, as the nerve treatment continued and my neurons learned to speak directly to the prosthetic. And it had, eventually, but on that day, when the leg had been newly fitted, all I could feel was that itch, an itch so great I wanted to kick the blankets away—kick the company woman and her list of demeaning jobs—kick and kick and kick until I couldn’t feel anything but screaming pain anymore.

  I might have made a noise. I might have moved. Whatever I did, it drew the woman’s attention, and she met my eyes for the first time.

  “What are your thoughts?” she said.

  She didn’t care to hear my thoughts, which were that every single job she offered was so far beneath me it was barely worth considering. She didn’t want to hear me spew my qualifications and degrees like so much bile over her clean white blazer. Parthenope could afford all the experts it wanted and more, and I had spent the last decade of my life focused with laser intensity on a project that had earned no profit for anybody and therefore had no demonstrable value within the rubric of Parthenope’s assessment.

  “I can make some suggestions, if you like,” said the woman. “Have you considered working as a data analyst with the Operational Security Department? You could do important work in identifying potential dangers before anybody gets hurt.”

  Later, when I was less medicated and more alert, I realized that she had not been making suggestions at all. She had been feeding me what Parthenope’s hiring algorithm wanted her to feed me. The manager AI that organized all of the company’s personnel had looked at my skills, looked at my qualifications, looked at my debt, looked at the medical bills that would only continue to grow. It had looked at how I had gotten into that mess in the first place and how likely I was to leave at the first opportunity. It had made a calculation designed to maximize how long the company could keep me under its thumb for the least amount of pay. It had known from my educational and research background that I would be too proud to accept a low-level systems maintenance job. It had also known from the circumstances of the Symposium disaster that the representative could drop a few key words into our largely one-sided conversation to sink their hooks into my guilt and anger. Preventable tragedy. Better mission screening. Crew protection. She didn’t have to mention Kristin Herd or all I’d lost. She didn’t have to ask me if I had ever suspected we were in danger. All she had to do was offer the right job.

  All of that was standard practice for corporate hiring. I knew that. I had always known that. It made no difference. Knowing an ugly truth and having the power to fight it are two very different things.

  After I’d agreed to the security job and signed away five years of my life, the woman had smiled for the first time since coming into the room. It was no more sincere than her voice and had as much warmth as the frozen talus that made up the surface of Hygiea.

  What she hadn’t known was that not everybody had missed the danger aboard Symposium. Vanguard hadn’t. It had known Kristin was trouble from the start. We had just been too arrogant to listen.

  He said she let things slip through the cracks, Hunter had said, about the way David and Mary Ping worked together. I didn’t know how much I could trust anything Hunter said. Things that she ought to have trained the Overseer to catch.

  I powered on the incinerator in Nimue’s cargo warehouse. My thoughts were scattered, tumbling over one another, but I still had this one small, insignificant task to perform. The unit didn’t require any sort of crew ID or access code. Its logs showed that it had been used the night of David’s death. During the surveillance blackout.

  A small burn. Very brief. Only a few kilos of material.

  I leaned my forehead against the smooth, cool control panel while the machine pulled up the automated content assessment.

  Polymers. Metals. Both of varieties common in radiation-proof vacuum suits.

  Trace amounts of organics. Amino acids, lipid
s, proteins, water. Enough to trigger the sensors, not enough to require a biohazard alert.

  “Hey.” I didn’t speak loudly, but my voice echoed through the vast warehouse. “I found it.”

  Adisa came over to look at the screen then tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned one shoulder against the front of the incinerator. “So Prussenko arranged to meet somebody out here. Maybe an accomplice. Maybe not. Either he learned something about what they were up to or they learned something about what he was up to. Something that required them to go outside.”

  I called up the station maps on my PD to take another look at what was accessible through the airlock. “There’s the power structure and lots of other machinery for the cargo transport system. A big crane complex. Oh—and one of the radio antennae. It’s about thirty meters from the door.”

  “Any sign Prussenko was using the radio array? Could he be hijacking that antenna too?”

  “I didn’t see evidence of that, but I also didn’t look as closely because the radio array hasn’t had any ongoing problems,” I said. “It would be far from ideal for transferring any large amount of data, but he might have used it for encrypted messages. Okay, so David and the killer were supposed to head outside. But they disagree about something. They fight.”

  Adisa tilted his head slightly. “Do they? Why did the killer bring the weapon into the airlock?”

  “Oh. Right. Well, then, maybe they fight. Or maybe the killer attacks without warning. And afterward cleans up by getting rid of the vac suits.”

  “We should try to identify where those suits came from. And narrow down what it is out there we need to look for before we go look for it.” He pushed away from the wall. “I want to talk to the man who’s been in and out that door and never mentioned it. After that, we’re going to have to take a look for ourselves.”

  Of course. Of course we would have to go outside. Actually outside this time, not just near it. We had to see what David had been planning to see. The prospect made me cold and queasy.

  “Are we going out . . . tonight?” I said.

  Adisa looked at the time on his PD. “That seems unwise. We’ve all been on duty too long to make a safe exterior walk, and if any more of my junior officers get hurt on duty, people might start asking questions. We’ll get a few hours’ rest first, aye? I’m going to talk to Ned Delicata again.” He took a few steps backward, then added, “Grab the data from this unit, yeah? We’ll need it for the report.”

  I did as he said before starting back toward the warehouse entrance. The lights followed me, rising and falling in the gaps between the shipping containers. I was thinking about how else I could search the Overseer’s data. About what I would say to Ryu when I checked on them again that wouldn’t give away how worried I was. About how impossible it would be for me to sleep while knowing I had to go outside the station soon. About what the hell David had been trying to tell me. I wasn’t paying much attention to what was around me, so when the next bank of lights came on and illuminated a figure standing before me, I was so startled I flinched and dropped my PD.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Mary Ping. She was smiling, that enigma of a smile that made my skin crawl. “I only want to talk.”

  THIRTEEN

  Mary Ping approached with a graceful stride, moving from the edge of our shared spotlight to the center. She stopped about two meters away. A bank of lights switched off behind me. The darkness in the warehouse grew deeper.

  “You needn’t look so worried. I’m no threat to you,” she said.

  She was empty-handed, dressed only in her jumpsuit, without even a PD or a radio. I had both, although I had no weapon. I wasn’t approved to use an OSD-issued nonlethal electroshock weapon. For that, I would need Adisa or Ryu. I would have to call for help—and I could, if I needed to.

  Knowing that did nothing to ease my nerves. I didn’t like that Mary Ping was here. I didn’t like that Sigrah refused to let us restrict the crew movement because it would negatively impact productivity. I didn’t like that Ping had waited until Adisa was gone to approach me. The rest of the station suddenly felt very far away.

  I bent down to pick up my PD. “What do you want?” I asked. There was an angry snap in my voice, one I would normally try to quash, but now I didn’t bother.

  “I wonder why the company would assign you to this investigation,” Mary Ping said. “The rostering algorithm usually avoids putting acquaintances of victims on investigation teams.”

  “I asked to be included.” I gestured impatiently toward the exit. “I have work to do, so either tell me what you want or don’t, but do it quickly.”

  “Why did you ask? David told me he wasn’t in contact with any of the Symposium survivors. You weren’t friends anymore.”

  It stung, to hear her say it, to know that David might have said it as well. “Why does it matter? You weren’t friends with him either.”

  “Was he speaking the truth? Your friendship was so easily sundered?” Ping said.

  She took a step forward. It was all I could do not to step back in response.

  “It’s not relevant now.” I made myself move forward instead, to walk purposefully toward her, to play at harried and dismissive—however unconvincing—in every motion. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  She grabbed my arm as I tried to pass. Left arm, metal arm, and I felt it in the twist on my shoulder, the slight pressure on my joint, more than in the touch of her fingers, of which there was only a hint, like the brush of a feather. Lifelike sensory capabilities for prosthetic parts cost more. I was used to it by now, the lack of feeling, but I was not at all used to being grabbed unexpectedly.

  I froze a beat before pulling away, and in that moment of hesitation Ping leaned close and murmured in my ear, “I know he asked you for help.”

  I twisted out of her grasp and stepped back. Stepped back again and bumped into the side of a shipping container. I had suspected before. Now I was certain: she knew about David’s message to me. What I did not know was whether she knew exactly what he had said. She could have found evidence of it somewhere in the comms system or in David’s personal devices. She could have overheard him or spoken to him or simply made a very logical guess. I wasn’t about to admit anything to her.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  Instead of answering, Ping said, “You’re still looking for the reason, aren’t you? All of the questions you’re asking, it’s because you have no idea why anybody would want him dead.”

  “Of course we want to know why,” I said, with an exaggerated roll of my eyes, feigning impatience. “That’s why we’re asking all the questions. Do you know something you haven’t told us yet?”

  “I know you’re asking the wrong questions. You have to understand—”

  She stopped abruptly and turned her head; her straight black hair swung along her jawline. She peered intently into the darkness for several seconds. My skin prickled as I followed her gaze. I couldn’t see anything.

  “Understand what?” I said. “By all means, if you want to tell me how to do my job, go ahead.”

  “You must hate this work so much.”

  “What?”

  “Someone with your background, working in a job like this. It’s so far beneath you. You must hate it.”

  For fuck’s sake, having a conversation with her was like chasing a narcissistic butterfly through a shit-filled meadow. I had no idea if she was doing it to keep me off-balance or if she just didn’t know how to follow one thought with another.

  “It’s not my first choice, but it could be worse,” I said. “You haven’t told me what you want.”

  “I understand. I really do. It’s frustrating to look at all this—” She swept her arms out to encompass the warehouse, the stations, the shadows. “All of this has been built in service of what? Nothing more than profit?”

  �
�And? What’s your point? David was killed because of money? That’s your fucking revelation?”

  “Doesn’t it bother you? All of this for no purpose except chewing up what’s around us and making a few wealthy people even more wealthy. All the people working here for their wages when they could be doing something amazing for humanity. All of these resources. All of this innovation.”

  “You’re wasting my time.”

  “You don’t really believe that. You know what I’m talking about. You created something beautiful and powerful. You created it not to serve a corporate master, but to explore and discover. You created something knowing that it would grow to become more—knowing that it would help us become more. You know we can be so much better, if we let them show us the way. You’ve already taken that step yourself.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. She was so serious, her eyes so wide, her words so intense, there was nothing I could do but laugh. She was the same as the cyberneticist who’d designed my prosthetics, swanning about the hospital corridors with a duckling line of followers behind him, claiming to everybody who would listen that he was redefining humanity in a way that no god could ever comprehend, that every patient who went under his knife would emerge as something wholly new and different. She was the same as the boy with the bleeding eyes back on Hygiea, reaching for my boots because he saw something in my prosthetic limbs that his drug-addled and surgery-muddled mind believed he should crave, and he had to believe it was time, it was time, now was time for the AI revolution humanity had been awaiting for centuries. She was the same as the reporter from Ceres who contacted me every couple of months because he was convinced, absolutely convinced, that the woman Hester Marley had died aboard Symposium and the AI Vanguard had survived instead, hidden away in the electronics of my prosthetic parts, learning to be human amid the wreckage of my old life.

  Then my laughter was gone and in that moment I hated Mary Ping so much I was breathless. I was here for the man who had once been my friend, for the memories and the loss we had shared, and because it was the last thing he had asked of me before he died. I was here for my own foolish, selfish, fallibly human reasons. I was not here to fuel the mad light in Mary Ping’s eyes, to feed the hunger she felt when she looked at me and saw only gleaming metal, never pain. She didn’t know anything. She believed she understood something nobody else was smart enough to grasp, but all she could see was her own desires, distorted and reflected back to her, in everyone she met. David was dead. Ryu was hurt. I had no answers. I was sick with anger for how pathetic and grasping she was.