Wandering Star

by Steven Anderson

  A patrol of five soldiers in full kit passed us going the other direction, all of them younger than me and all of them looking miserable in the tropical heat and humidity.

  “I can’t. We have to figure out what really happened.” We reached Platoon HQ where Alice was sitting on the steps, long legs stretched out into the sun, her eyes closed. “Besides, what would I tell her father?” I held out my hand to help her up and we all went inside.

  I heard Marcus mutter, “I always suspected that stupidity was a requirement for joining RuComm.”

  The two Lieutenants were sitting together talking quietly, heads almost touching. When I entered they both stood.

  “Mr. Holloman, let me introduce you to Lieutenant Britt Recano with the OP Defense Force.” I took her hand and it felt cold in mine. Looking into her eyes I could see that she was more than tense or concerned. She was scared. Jeffers didn’t look any better. Only Sergeant McKellar working at a desk in the corner seemed relaxed.

  “Mr. Holloman, I want to assure you that the person responsible for this attack is not part of my command and that we’ll cooperate in a full investigation in any way possible,” Lieutenant Recano told me.

  “Does her uniform look familiar, Holloman? It’s the same as the person’s that you crushed into the mud last night,” Sergeant McKellar commented.

  “That will be enough, McKellar.” Lieutenant Jeffers ordered, his voice a little higher than it should have been.

  The Lieutenants were looking at me expectantly. As the personification of the Reunification Commission, they were assuming I was in charge, at least until senior officers said otherwise. Deep breath, Ted, prioritize.

  “Fiona Monroe is the key to this. We need to know who she is, how she got here, where she got the survey charges and whose orders she’s following.”

  “Too bad she’s unconscious or you could question her,” McKellar interrupted.

  “There may be enough indirect evidence that we don’t need to. You have her clothes and the charges she didn’t have time to set off?” I asked looking at Alice.

  “Yes, but there are no instruments to do any forensic analysis.” She gestured with her hands. “Boom.”

  “What exactly are you trying to prove, Mr. Holloman?” Lieutenant Recano asked.

  Marcus answered for me. “If we can’t prove that she acted without, what shall we call it, official sanction? Be prepared for the shooting to start. I plan to be off this island by then, but you two Lieutenants might care.”

  “We need weeks to do this right, collect soil samples from all over both camps and a full lab to do the work.” I turned to Lieutenant Jeffers. “I don’t suppose replacement instruments will be forthcoming.” He shook his head. “It could be done at the University in Palma Sola or onboard Wandering Star but it would take too long.”

  “What about my lab?” Lieutenant Recano asked.

  “Holloman! I have your boss calling again. Are you going to take it this time?” McKellar detached his display and turned it toward me so I could see Angela’s unhappy face. “She’s got your boss with her too, Marcus.”

  I took the display from McKellar and muted it. “Is there someplace we can go that’s a little more private?”

  “Down the hall, last door on the right.”

  Marcus followed me down the hall. “Was he smirking?” I asked.

  “Hard to tell with his face.”

  The office we entered had a large window looking into the infirmary. Fiona Monroe was lying there restrained and unconscious with tubes and wires attached to her, a display showed her current condition and a close up image of her face. I found myself looking at her, momentarily frozen. She had brown hair and freckles on her nose dark against pale skin.

  “That McKellar is a thoroughgoing bastard,” Marcus observed. I sat the display on the desk and unmuted Angela.

  “Theodore, you’re looking better than I expected. We’re working on getting you out of there, but you’re about to be in the middle of a very big storm.”

  “It’s tense here but I don’t think anything drastic will happen right away.”

  Angela gave me a small smile. “You think I’m being metaphorical. There’s a major hurricane less than two hundred kilometers northwest of you. Air and sea transportation is shut down till it passes sometime in the next two to three days. Theodore, why are you looking at me like that’s good news?”

  I told her what evidence we had gathered and what we hoped to be able to prove.

  Angela was not impressed. “I’ve been involved in forensic investigations. You need weeks, not two days in the middle of a hurricane.”

  “And Marcus,” his boss added, “tell me that you are not thinking about just handing over to the OP all of the evidence in a crime they almost certainly committed.”

  I looked at Marcus to see how he would explain this. “Yes, Trevor, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  While they argued I was looking at Fiona Monroe’s face in the monitor and hearing her voice in my head saying you’re dead over and over again. After Marcus had threatened to quit for the third time his boss acquiesced, I think mostly because he expected Marcus to be dead soon anyway.

  “Angela,” I asked, “what’s the mood there in Palma Sola?”

  “Confused, scared and angry, trending more toward angry as time passes.”

  “Can RuComm do anything to slow that down? We need time.”

  Angela shook her head. “I don’t know. I can talk to General Barrows.”

  “Um, Angela, he may not be the one you want to talk to if I’m right about this.”

  Angela closed her eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe. Anything else?”

  “I think I need Hannah. I just realized something. Marcus, the way Lieutenant Recano talks, it sounds sort of like southern Louisiana, Gulf Coast to me, if we were on Earth. Is her accent typical OP?”

  “I suppose.”

  “When Monroe talked to me she sounded like everyone I’ve met in Palma Sola.”

  “How much did she say?” Angela asked.

  “Just two words but she said them twice.”

  “Very thin.”

  “I know, but it fits. I need Hannah to talk to her when she wakes up. It might help us figure this out.”

  “No travel, remote only,” Angela sighed.

  “Thanks.” We disconnected and I turned to look at Fiona Monroe again.

  “You act like you’re feeling sorry for what you did,” Marcus said.

  “I’ve never hurt anyone like this before. I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

  “Why? Because she’s a young, pretty girl? You need to get over it or next time you might hesitate and get yourself or one of your friends killed. Someone like me.” I nodded. “Her life is over anyway.”

  “I imagine she’ll be behind bars for a very long time,” I sighed

  Marcus looked at me. “No, a very short time. She’ll have a very quick trial and a quicker execution. It won’t matter which side she was working for. The real kindness would have been for you to have killed her there in the mud.”

  I was feeling very far from home as we left the office to rejoin the others.

  CHAPTER 4

  MARGO ISLANDS MUD

  WHEN WE CAME BACK INTO the office only the Lieutenants were still there.

  “Where’s Alice?”

  “She and McKellar are at the chow hall,” Lieutenant Jeffers answered. “I ordered her to make herself available for any personnel that want to talk to her. It’s her duty as our chaplain.”

  “Have you reached an agreement on using Lieutenant Recano’s lab? I’d like to get started on the analysis of Monroe’s boots and clothing while we have others collecting soil samples. I understand there’s a storm coming and we’ll need to collect as much as we can before the weather shuts us down.”

>   Jeffers looked away from me toward Lieutenant Recano while he answered. “I’m waiting for approval to turn the uniform over to you for analysis.”

  “OK, we can start on soil samples then. Lieutenant Recano, did your survey team do any analysis around the camp areas or will we be doing this from scratch?”

  Recano looked at Jeffers while she answered. “I am not at liberty to share survey data with personnel outside the Oceanus Protectorate until authorized by the proper authorities.” Her stress level seemed to be even higher now and her accent was more pronounced, the vowels stretching out and the ends of the words being clipped. I wished Hannah was there with me to hear it.

  “And your survey team?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “All OP personnel are required to stay on our side of the hill until further notice.”

  “Lieutenant Jeffers?”

  “Lieutenant Recano and I each received similar orders ten minutes ago.”

  “Do your orders mention RuComm personnel?”

  “Not explicitly, but I would encourage you to stay close.”

  I looked at Marcus. “So, no access to the uniform, no access to the instruments we need to analyze the uniform, no one to collect new soil samples, no access to OP’s existing samples and all of your local PFS samples destroyed. Who would have backups of the PFS data?”

  He smiled sardonically. “Professor Vandermeer at the University. Do you have a game on Earth called dominoes? Little tiles that you set up and then one falls and hits the next one that hits the next one until they all fall down?”

  “All it takes to break the chain is to remove one of the tiles before it falls,” I answered.

  “Very optimistic when the last tile is on the way down.”

  “I need to talk to Alice.” Marcus opened the front door for me and we stepped out onto the porch.

  “Lieutenant Recano, are you headed back over the hill now?” Marcus asked, holding the door open for her.

  “Not just yet,” she answered, still looking at Jeffers. Marcus let the door slam behind us.

  “That wasn’t very nice.”

  Marcus shook his head, smiling. “Star crossed lovers. I have to have some fun in the few hours of life I have left.”

  “I thought there was someone over there that you were friends with too.”

  “There is,” he answered as his smile disappeared. “Several.”

  Alice was sitting at a table off to one side of the chow hall eating lunch with four soldiers. Another three or four stood by listening to her talk.

  “Huh, looks like Alice has doubled her congregation since last Sunday,” Marcus commented.

  “She’s not popular with the soldiers?”

  “Um, no. We have a hundred young men and women on this island who do what you would expect young men and women to do. When they see our chaplain they feel guilty about what they’ve been doing. So they avoid her and keep doing what they’ve been doing and don’t feel quite so guilty about it. That and, well, it’s Alice.”

  We walked over to her table. “Chaplain, may Marcus and I speak with you privately for a few minutes?”

  “Of course, Mr. Holloman.” She squeezed the hand of the young man sitting next to her. “If you will all please excuse me for a moment.”

  We stepped out onto the porch. The air was hot, heavy and still.

  “Hurricane weather,” Alice commented. “It’s always like this before the big storms move in, so I’ve heard. It should buy you a couple of extra days at least. Almost an answer to prayer, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re taking credit for the weather now?” Marcus challenged.

  “I only ask, God provides.”

  I interrupted before Marcus could reply and told Alice how we had been outmaneuvered. “Alice, can you get the soil data from your father, assuming they exist?”

  Alice looked out across the camp for several long seconds before answering. “You made a plan, Ted, and General Barrows has destroyed it. Stop focusing on the plan. Trying to put the pieces back together is a waste of time. Go back to what you were trying to prove in the first place and come up with a new plan using the resources still left to you.”

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Marcus replied. “So with no resources I predict we’ll have no results.”

  I ignored him. “Our goal is to convince enough people that Monroe’s attack was a false flag, an inside job by rogue elements inside the Palma Federated States. We might be able to do that by showing she was supplied by the PFS and is not from the OP.”

  “Or we can get her to confess.” There was a hard look in Marcus’ eyes as he said it.

  “What lines of evidence do we control?” Alice asked.

  “Control? None. Those we might have access to?” I ticked them off on my fingers. “One, soil on her uniform. It should all be from the PFS camp, not anything from over the hill. Two, chemical composition of the survey charges should not match existing stock of OP charges, if we can get a sample of theirs to compare. It might match the stock here or be something else. Three, if her uniform was printed by the PFS it shouldn’t match OP standard issue. And four, I think she’s faking her OP accent. I have a friend who might be able to verify that if Monroe wakes up and if we can get a recording to her.” I turned toward Alice. “Without a mass spectrometer about all I can do is try to prove her accent is fake and that won’t convince anyone.”

  “Or we can get her to confess,” Marcus added again.

  Alice sighed, her eyes closed searching her memory. “I think there’s a polarizing microscope in the infirmary. It might give us good enough data to at least make everyone pause.”

  “Maybe. If Lieutenant Jeffers will let us use it.”

  “I suspect that the Lieutenant will be otherwise occupied so don’t ask, just go back there and take it.”

  “OK,” I said doubtfully, thinking and if he tries to stop us?

  “Marcus,” she continued, leaning in close to him, “please don’t open the door to Lieutenant Jeffers’ private office, no matter what you hear.”

  “Huh,” Marcus laughed. “All right. That’s not something I want to see anyway.”

  “Go, and be quick about it. Sergeant McKellar is still at lunch and I’ll keep him here as long as possible.”

  “McKellar?” I asked.

  Alice looked at me with the same look of sympathy my friend Kaelyn used when I was being especially dense. “Ted, who do you think has been relaying your every move to General Barrows?” She put her hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes. “Who do you think was on duty last night in the armory where the survey charges are stored?”

  “Oh.”

  “Take the samples you need, but leave the uniform and bag of explosives in the Platoon HQ or they’ll be missed. I doubt anyone will miss the microscope with everything else going on. I’ll meet you at Marcus’ cabin when my duties here are completed.”

  “We could use your help,” I pleaded, but Alice had already turned to reenter the chow hall.

  “What good will it do for you to save their souls if they lose their lives?” Marcus called after her.

  “Backwards as usual, Marcus,” she answered as the door closed behind her.

  We stepped back down into the street. “Why do I feel like we should be running?” I asked.

  “Because we should be if it wouldn’t attract too much attention. Walk fast.” Marcus looked over his shoulder at the chow hall. “You know, I get why we need Alice right now, but I will never like working with that woman. She is just—”

  “Unique?” I offered.

  “—weird,” Marcus finished.

  We walked softly up onto the porch and slowly opened the door. No one was in sight but there were definite sounds of life coming from the small private office; low voices and a small moan. Marcus walked over, seemingly about to p
ut his ear to the door.

  “Marcus!” I whispered tapping my watch.

  He shrugged and followed me down the hall. “On the edge of war, hurricane approaching, and this is how they spend their time.”

  We opened closets and lockers till we found what we were looking for. Marcus pulled out a pocket knife and cut three samples from the pants leg of Monroe’s uniform and placed them in a small bag. He was about to scrape mud from the boot when I stopped him.

  “Wait. Did you see any tape, the heavy duty kind, like fifty millimeters wide?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He reached back into the closet and tossed the roll to me. “What for?”

  I pulled a meter or more off the roll and stretched it across the floor, sticky side up. “Scrape the mud off slowly as you move the boot over the tape in one direction. We should be doing a core sample to get the individual layers but this will have to do.” Marcus scraped and the particles stuck to the tape I was holding. “Now put another piece of tape over the top, sticky side down to hold it all in place.” I rolled the tape up and put it in my pack along with the uniform samples.

  “Won’t the glue on the tape contaminate your sample? Marcus asked.

  “Probably.”

  We both stood looking at the bag of survey charges. “I’m not too keen about opening one of those up to get a sample,” Marcus remarked.

  “The tampering would be obvious anyway.” I reached in and took one of the three remaining tubes and added it to my pack. “Let’s just hope no one notices it’s gone.”

  “Or the holes in the uniform.”

  “Right.” I walked to the end of the hall and reached to open the door into the infirmary. Marcus placed his hand on the door, keeping it closed.

  “Wait. Let’s check first.” He opened the door into the office we had used before with the window looking into the infirmary.

  Fiona Monroe was awake but looking groggy as she talked to the medical AI.

  “That complicates things a little,” I said.