In low Earth orbit, near the burned-out hulk of the EUROPA Station
38
‘’What a tragedy! A tragedy that could have been avoided completely if standard safety rules had been followed aboard the EUROPA Station.’ said Tina, shaking her head as she finished reading the latest report from her rescue teams and medical personnel. One picture in particular in that report, along with the data accompanying it, both distressed her and made her most angry: it showed a burned-up passenger lounge on the EUROPA Station but the truly horrible thing about that picture was the more than 300 charred bodies literally covering a good half of its deck, each dead body partly lying on top of other bodies, like dominos having fallen over each other. Tina had once seen a picture somewhat similar to this: it was a historical picture from the year 1944, taken during World War 2 and showing a passageway in an American aircraft carrier that had been hit by a Japanese suicide aircraft. That hit had ignited the already damaged gasoline fuel pipes of the ship, creating a firestorm which had swept the inside of that carrier. The picture taken later of that passageway showed its deck literally carpeted with the blackened bodies of dozens of American aviators who had been caught by that firestorm while rushing out of their squadron ready room. Now, nearly 400 years later, she had to look at an even more horrible picture, this time of dead innocent civilians instead of military men, and this because a bunch of maintenance cost-cutting irresponsible imbeciles had decided to cut corners and to ignore the most basic safety rules in force in the Spacers League. She finally managed to take her eyes off that picture and looked at her second-in-command, Dana Durning, who was standing next to her near Tina’s command chair.
‘’At least 592 confirmed dead by now, plus 227 wounded persons, many of them gravely burned, and possibly dozens more people still missing on that station, all that because the pumps and pipes between the hydrocarbons downloading docking stations and the hydrocarbons storage tanks had not been inspected or maintained properly for years. I could kill those responsible for this.’
‘’And that casualty count would have been even higher if not for the quick reaction and dedication of our rescue teams, Tina. However, what really pisses me off is the fact that most of the crew of that station, starting with its central control room technicians, simply fled the station, leaving their passengers and transiting ship crews to fend for themselves in that inferno. Only one of those technicians stayed at her post and would have died if not for the actions of one of our combat paramedics. I hope that those fleeing cowards will pay for abandoning their posts like this.’
39
‘’They will, Dana, they will, that I am sure of. This disaster is already raising outrage all around Earth and around the Spacers League and heads will roll for this.
Those arrogant assholes of the European High Council better not try to do a coverup about this: that would only worsen their case.’
‘’they may not be the only ones responsible for this, Tina. I was told that the EUROPA Station had a maintenance contract with the Pallas Mining Industries, which regularly brought in loads of hydrocarbons, for the pumping and piping systems used on the station to offload and store liquid hydrocarbons.’
That brought fresh anger on Tina’s face as she stared with disbelief at Dana.
‘’People from the Spacers League would ignore like this the most elementary rules about preventative maintenance in Space?’
‘’Hey, as they often say: everything to make an extra credit.’
Tina shook her head angrily before she could manage to calm down a bit.
‘’Alright, let’s manage something we can control ourselves. How is our medical center doing with all these wounded people from the Europa station? And did we suffer any casualties among our own rescue teams?’
‘’Thankfully, all of our people...and android paramedics, came out of this intact, if you except the psychological shock of seeing so many burn casualties in one place.
While our medical center is now at its maximum capacity, the help of our security androids, who all have at least basic first aid skills, is making a huge difference, allowing our doctors and nurses to concentrate on the more serious cases. As for the intact survivors we picked up from their lifeboats, they have been lodged temporarily in our emergency quarters on Level 535, pending their transfer to Earth’s surface.’
‘’Then I think that I will go pay a visit to those poor souls in our medical center and in our emergency quarters. Alert me if any accident investigation team shows up from Earth to inspect what is left of the EUROPA Station.’
‘’Will do, Tina.’
Her head still filled with horrible pictures and numbers, Tina climbed down the stairs from the upper command platform of the bridge sphere and went to the next lower level, where she used a lift cabin to go down to the ship’s medical center, situated like the bridge sphere in the centerline core section. Once on that level, she walked to the nursing station monitoring the 46 primary patients’ rooms, where she found Chief-Nurse
40
Wei Ling discussing a case with another nurse. Both women cut their conversation short on seeing their captain approach them, with Wei Ling nodding her head to Tina.
‘’Are you here to visit our patients, Captain?’
‘’I am, as long as they are well enough to speak. If not, I will simply look at them in passing.’
‘’I am afraid that many of the 227 wounded we received have been horribly burned or had their lungs damaged by smoke and are under heavy anesthesia or getting oxygen...or both. Your visit may well be limited to passing by their beds.’
Tina digested that info before asking Ling another question.
‘’And what have we done with the bodies of the victims we took from the station?’
‘’Unfortunately, our morgue was way too small for so many bodies, so Doctor Perez decided to use the ice surface of the hockey rink in the sports complex to line up the body bags, until they could be repatriated by their relatives.’
‘’By the stars! And have we been able to identify all of those victims?’
The chief-nurse sadly shook her head at that question.
‘’Very few of those poor souls have been identified to date, Captain. The flames which killed them were so intense that they burned or melted any identity piece they could have carried. It will take a long process of genetic and forensic work to identify them all.’
Tina lowered her head at those words, struck hard by the horror of the situation. She had seen battle casualties on warships before, many times, but this was a preventable accident which had killed hundreds of innocent civilians.
‘’Very well! Could you accompany me as I tour our patients?’
‘’Of course, Captain. Follow me!’
The next forty minutes or so were most painful to Tina as she passed by dozens of medical beds in which a man, woman or child lay, often unconscious from doses of painkillers and nearly all covered with bandages. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t help sob quietly when she looked at a small baby covered with bandages and crying inside a medical crib.
‘’That...that baby: do we know if its parents survived?’
‘’We are not sure about that, Captain. However, our rescue teams found the baby under the burned-up body of a young woman who was probably its mother. That
41
woman is part of those still anonymous bodies lined up on our ice rink. As for its father or even possible siblings, the piles of bodies surrounding the dead woman comprised many men, women and children of varied ages. The probabilities are that this baby is now an orphan.’
Renewed tears came to Tina’s eyes and she had to turn away, taking the time to regain a bit of self-control before looking again at the chief-nurse.
‘’I will not take more of your precious time, Chief-Nurse. I will now go visit the dead lined up on our ice rink.’
‘’Be advised that we enrolled the students of our class in forensic science to start the work of identifying those bodies, Captain. We had to, since our lone forensic expert would have been overwhelmed by so much work.’
‘’That was the correct decision to take in the circumstances, Chief-Nurse Ling. I will try to get some extra medical help from Earth to assist your staff as quickly as possible.’
On that, Tina walked away, heading back to the central rotunda of the Core Spine, where she took a lift to go up to the level of the ship’s sport complex, then went to the Hockey rink, with its rows of bleachers surrounding its oval ice surface. She involuntary posed on seeing the nearly 600 black plastic body bags lined up on the ice and nearly covering the whole surface of the rink. One mature man and a dozen teenagers or young adults wearing white lab suits, rubber gloves and masks were slowly going around the body bags, opening one bag at a time and then doing some examination of the body inside while taking notes on electronic pads and taking pictures of the remains.
Tina started crying again when she saw that over one third of the bags contained small bodies which could only be those of children, toddlers or even infants.
It took Tina long minutes to at least partly recover from her sadness and shock.
Taking a last look at the long lines of black body bags, she then decided on her next move and headed again towards the Core Section’s central rotunda. However, instead of using a lift, she used a stairwell to go up by one level, ending in one of the decks used as emergency quarters for large numbers of refugees or short trip travelers. Today, some 183 survivors from the EUROPA Station occupied a section of the quarters on this deck, which could accommodate up to 7,500 persons in tight but more than acceptable facilities. Consulting on her electronic notepad the reports from her rescue teams on the EUROPA station disaster, plus a listing of the survivors now occupying the emergency
42
quarters, Tina followed in succession two corridors before arriving at the door of one of the five meter by five-meter partitioned cubicles making up the emergency quarters.
Each of those cubicles were in turn designated as ‘family unit’ and could house up to six occupants provided with three double bunk beds, a small bathroom with a shower, toilet and sink, and a tiny lounge cum storage room. There were also other types of cubicles dedicated to eating and food preparation for the occupants of the quarters, who could also use the buffet restaurants in the Habitat Ring and central core section if their numbers permitted to do so. Mindful of respecting the intimacy of the occupants of this cubicle, Tina rang the buzzard next to the sliding door and waited. A woman’s voice answered her through the door’s intercom after about ten seconds.
‘’Yes, who is it?’
‘’I am Captain Tina Forster, owner and commander of this ship. I came to speak with a Miss Emma Blunt.’
‘’That’s me!’ replied the female voice before the door was opened from the inside, showing to Tina a woman in her mid-thirties. She was of average height, was a bit overweight and sported medium-length brown hair and had brown eyes. While fair-looking, she was not what you would call a true beauty. Taking one step forward, Tina smiled to the woman and shook hands with her.
‘’I am honored to meet you, Miss Blunt: you were one of the true heroes of today’s tragedy.’
‘’But I only did my duty, Captain Forster.’ protested meekly Emma Blunt, attracting a dismissive gesture from Tina.
‘’Doing your duty under stress and threat of death is one way which defines a hero, miss. Could we discuss together in private?’
‘’Sure! Please come in!’
The woman chuckled briefly after saying those three last words.
‘’It feels a bit weird to inviting in the owner of the place you are in.’
‘’Aah, but privacy always should be respected, for everyone.’
‘’True! Let’s sit at the table in the lounge.’
Since the lounge was the first room beyond the entrance door, Tina only needed to take three steps before sitting at a rectangular table which could sit six persons, with Emma Blunt sitting opposite her. The latter then spoke first.
‘’So, what would you discuss about, Captain?’
‘’The whole incident on the EUROPA Station. But first, how are you doing?’
43
Emma lowered her head at that question, being still clearly emotional about that subject.
‘’Physically, I am fine. However, the horrors I saw and lived through earlier this morning will probably cause me nightmares for a long time to come.’
‘’I completely understand that, Miss Blunt. You would not be truly human if you felt nothing about witnessing such awful things. If you ever need psychological help about this, don’t hesitate to come and see one of our mental health specialists.’
‘’I know and am thankful for that, Captain. So, what else do you want to discuss about?’
Tina measured carefully her words before answering Emma.
‘’Miss, you were the only worker at the station’s central control room who stayed at your post during the whole incident, until you were saved by one of my paramedics. I know that you already were interviewed by one of my security specialists about the incident but I would like to precise with you the events at the start of the incident and following it, up to the time when your coworkers abandoned their posts.’
‘’My coworkers...’ said in disdainful tone Emma Blunt. ‘’While they were reasonably competent, their main goal was to make the station function at the least cost possible, since higher profits from the station’s operations meant extra premiums for them. While I would accept raises, I never let money affect my professional judgment about how I did my work and reported various equipment or systems failures or shortcomings. That in turn put me in the black book of the head manager of the station, Sergei Vlassov, who characterized me as a troublemaker and froze my advancement in order to punish me for my so-called ‘attitude’.’
‘’And that Vlassov, when did he leave the station and how?’
‘’He was the first to leave, using our duty shuttle, right after the initial first series of explosions and fires. The other controllers on duty with me then hurried to follow him and leave in that shuttle with him. I implored them to stay and help me to try controlling the situation but none of them listened to me.’
‘’Did they leave before or after the first lifeboats loaded with station occupants and passengers were launched into Space?’
‘’Before.’ answered Emma, shocking and angering Tina.
‘’But that is clearly abandonment of post and neglectful endangerment of passengers, according to the laws of the Spacers League. I know that you worked under the authority of the European Union but, by all accounts, those controllers should face heavy prison sentences.’
44
‘’And I still hope that they will face such sentences, Captain. Unfortunately, the European Union doesn’t work the way the Spacers League does. I was left alone to direct and initiate the evacuation of the station’s occupants, calling by public address speakers for the passengers and staff to go at once to the lifeboat stations and be ready for evacuation. Unfortunately for too many of those passengers, things went downhill much faster than even I anticipated.’
‘’Uh, what do you mean exactly by ‘faster than even anticipated’, miss? Did you have reasons to forecast trouble on the station?’
‘’I had plenty of reasons to forecast trouble, Captain.’ replied in a bitter tone the British woman. ‘’I had repeatedly informed Vlassov and my direct supervisor, Anthony Verdi, the man in charge of the station’s maintenance, that cracks had formed on a number of pipes used to transport liquid methane between the pumps at the docking stations used to pump out the hydrocarbons arriving by spaceships and our storage tanks. I also signaled to them that a number of valves had experienced fleeting signs of failures and that they should be replaced, or at the least repaired. The answer I got from both of them was that there was no money available to do such repairs at this time. I then insisted that not repairing those pipes and valves could lead to some catastrophic failures which could cause grave fires on the station. However, they ignored me and did nothing about it.’
‘’Did you put your warnings in written reports as well as in your verbal reports, miss?’
‘’Yes, I did, many times, Captain. However, I later discovered that my electronic reports were either modified or were outright erased from our maintenance logs.’
Now seriously pissed on hearing all this, Tina made a note on her electronic notepad, then looked back up at Emma Blunt.
‘’Going to the moment when the whole incident started, tell me what exactly happened then, miss.’
‘’It unfortunately happened the way I had warned Vlassov and Verdi that it could happen. One of the electronically-actuated valves along a pipe used to transfer liquid methane between our various hydrocarbons storage tanks failed while some liquid methane was being pumped around. In turn, that caused an instant overpressure in one pipe, which then burst open, letting out thousands of liters of liquid methane into our pumping room. That liquid methane quickly evaporated due to the high ambient temperature in that room, with the methane vapors then entering our ventilation systems
45
and quickly spreading through our station. At one point, some source of heat or a spark ignited that methane-oxygen gaseous mix, causing a titanic fuel-air explosives detonation and a firestorm which spread at once through over a quarter of the station’s internal volume. Most of the people on the station never had a chance to evacuate before being incinerated by the firestorms circulating via our ventilation shafts. That was when Vlassov and the other workers in the control room decided to flee, leaving me alone in the control room.’
Tina, who had been recording Emma’s answers on her electronic notepad, nodded her head in understanding: her claimed sequence of events all made good, solid sense in technical terms and easily explained why so many people had died so quickly. What was less than easy to understand and accept was the level of carelessness and incompetence her story painted about her coworkers.
‘’I was told that there was some kind of maintenance contract signed between your station and the Pallas Mining Industries, contract which involved your pumping and piping systems for hydrocarbons. Is there any truth about that?’
‘’I can’t say much about that, as I was not privy to the details about our maintenance work contracts. I however can tell you that, on at least two occasions during the last twelve month, a technical team from the Pallas Mining Industries did pay a visit to our station and inspected our pumping systems. What they found, reported or worked on then is unknown to me.’
Tina made another note on her pad, then asked Emma a last question.
‘’Do you have anything else which you would like to tell me now, or would you have any request to make to me, miss?’
‘’I do!’ answered at once the woman. ‘’I have reasons to believe that the owners of the station and Sergei Vlassov will try to retaliate against me for testifying about the events at the station. I have no confidence about the honesty in the European Union officials in charge of our Space program and this disaster made me ashamed of being an E.U. citizen. I thus request asylum protection from the Spacers League and would like to become a citizen of the New Haven Corporation. I am done working for incompetent or corrupt bosses.’
Tina nodded once, then spoke out loud, but not towards Blunt.
‘’SPIRIT, be ready to record Miss Emma Blunt as a new citizen of New Haven and as a new crewmember aboard the NOSTROMO.’
A female voice coming out of Tina’s notepad then was clearly heard by Emma.
46
‘’Miss Emma Blunt, this is SPIRIT, the central artificial intelligence computer of this ship. Do you wish formally to become a citizen of the New Haven Corporation and of the Spacers League and to become a crewmember of the NOSTROMO?’
‘’I do!’ answered Emma, her heart suddenly accelerating.
‘’Then, as of now, you are so, with the full rights and protections enjoyed by a citizen of the Spacers League. The European Union would now need to ask for your extradition if it ever tries to get at you. Be assured that you will then benefit from our full protection, both legal and physical. Congratulations, Miss Blunt.’
Emma felt her head swim and she had sweat suddenly appear on her forehead as she realized the extent of what had just happened to her.
‘’My God! I never expected that my request would be accepted and processed this quickly, Captain.’
‘’You fully deserved this, Miss Blunt.’ replied a smiling Tina. ‘’Let me guide you now down to our administrative center, where all this will be formalized on paper and electronically and where we will provide you with an apartment and a joining premium, so that you could go buy for yourself a new wardrobe.’
14:30 (Universal Time)
Saturday, March 13, 2337
Craft circulation deck of the small craft hangar complex A.M.S. NOSTROMO, in low Earth orbit near the EUROPA Station Tina, backed by her ship’s head hostess, Natalia Vasilyeva, and by Eve Silisca, SPIRIT’s android daughter and the ship’s assistant hostess, was waiting near the central spine column when the small European Union shuttle landed smoothly on the steel tarmac of the small craft hangar complex. Standing some distance away but fully armed and ready to react to anything were two security androids in ship’s interior uniforms. A total of two women and nine men soon got out of the shuttle through its aft access ramp, then walked towards Tina, Natalia and Eve. One of the two women of the newcomers, who was in the lead, stopped one step in front of Tina, who offered her hand for a shake.
‘’Welcome aboard the A.M.S. NOSTROMO, miss. I am Tina Forster, captain and owner of this ship.’
‘’And my name is Antonia Carlotti, Chairwoman of the European Union Parliament’s Space Affairs Committee, here to investigate the disaster which struck the
47
EUROPA Station. My technical assistant, Engineer Gerhardt Grundig, is on my right, while my judicial assistant, Chief Inspector Marco Santos, is on my left. Also with me are eight specialists and criminal forensic experts who will help us do our investigation. I must say from the start that your ship is a mightily impressive one, Captain Forster.’
‘’And I am mightily proud of it, Chairwoman Carlotti. If you will follow me, I will now lead you to your quarters in these waiting electric carts. My crewmembers will take care of transporting your luggage and equipment to those quarters.’
With a cargo handling team quickly loading the visitors’ luggage on two anti-gravity luggage carts, Tina sat at the controls of one of the five waiting carts and started to roll towards the core spine rotunda of the complex, with Carlotti at her side.
‘’You may be interested to know that my crew has already conducted a non-intrusive visual inspection of the EUROPA Station, both to look for any missing person in it and to start investigating the causes of the fires which consumed the station. We also have for you the list of the persons who were saved from the station, along with their medical status. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the 592 bodies we found inside the station were so badly burned up that we were not able to identify them. It will take extensive DNA testing, cross-checked with the DNA of living relatives, to eventually identify all those poor souls.’
Carlotti, along with her assistants, seemed suitably touched by Tina’s information, something that was the minimum Tina had expected of them as a reaction. In truth, she had no great illusions about how serious or honest this E.U. delegation would be about its investigation. She fully expected that politics was going to play a large role in it and that it would at least try to reject the responsibility of this disaster on someone else than the E.U. itself. Tina thus decided to test at once Carlotti’s honesty as the five carts entered a cargo lift cabin.
‘’By the way, a shuttle from the station, which departed EUROPA shortly after the first series of internal explosions, was tracked by us as it flew down towards Western Europe and then landed in a suburb of Brussels. That shuttle was transporting the personnel of the station’s control center which was on duty at the time of the incident, leaving a lone junior controller in charge of managing the ongoing disaster. Were the occupants of that shuttle questioned on arrival in Brussels, Chairwoman Carlotti?’
Tina didn’t miss the fact that Carlotti then reacted in a much different way than Grundig and Santos did to her words. While Grundig and Santos both snapped their heads
48
towards Tina, clear surprise on their faces, Carlotti seemed to have anticipated that question and answered it in a dismissive tone.
‘’I am not aware of anything concerning such a shuttle, Captain Forster. Your information must be erroneous.’
‘You lying fucking bitch!’ thought Tina while keeping a straight face.
‘’Then, maybe this would be something that you would like to investigate about, Chairwoman Carlotti.’
‘’Maybe.’ simply said the Italian woman, cementing the low opinion Tina was now forming about her. The trip upwards to the level of the Forest Habitats was mostly spent in silence, with Tina only explaining to her visitors where they were going. Once up on the Level 580, they left the lift and rolled through the ship’s administrative center, then entered the Western Gallery leading to the Habitat Ring Complex, which was flanked on the left by the Tropical Forest Habitat and on the right by the Temperate Rain Forest Habitat. What Tina didn’t say as her stunned visitors stared at the Giant Sequoia trees and Coastal Douglas Fir trees of the Temperate Rain Forest Habitat, which could attain a height of ninety meters, was that she had selected for her guests cabins giving a view of the Temperate Rain Forest Habitat, in order to impress and humble them a bit. If the Europeans were ready to lie and play dirty politics about the EUROPA Station tragedy, then she didn’t see a problem in herself using some psychological tricks on them.
Getting to the Habitat Ring Complex, Tina turned her cart to the right and on the Main Promenade, dominated along its sides by the outer aquarium ring on the left and by the habitat complex on the right. Using a large lift cabin to get up to Level 506 of the residential complex, she then rolled a further 200 meters and finally stopped in front of a sliding door set in a wall which included many other similar doors and a number of windows giving a view towards the aquarium ring and its holographic background surface.
‘’Here you are, Chairwoman Carlotti. This passenger cabin, along with the two adjacent cabins, will be yours for the next four days.’
‘’Why only four days, Captain Forster? Our investigation will certainly take much longer than that.’
‘’That’s because I will have to leave for the XO-1 System, some 536 light years away, in five days, in order to transport over 110,000 ASEAN citizens and four million
49
tons of cargo and supplies to that system, which is in the process of being colonized in the name of the ASEAN. Surely, you must have heard about that colonization project, Chairwoman Carlotti?’
‘’Er, yes, I did.’
‘’Then, I am sure that your government will be able to arrange some alternate orbital lodging for your team by then. In the meantime, you are welcome to have your meals at one of our cafeterias for free or, if you prefer, try some of our restaurants, where you will however have to pay for your meals. If your team will need any data we collected from the EUROPA Station, or any extra equipment, don’t be afraid to ask. The one thing I will insist on is that you advise me or my staff if you wish to interview someone aboard my ship, including the people rescued from the station, as I want to ensure that no one will face harassment or abuse of any kind.’
Carlotti stiffened at once, offended by Tina’s choice of words.
‘’Those people are mostly European Union citizens: we have the right to conduct interviews of them in order to advance our investigation, Captain Forster.’
In return, she got a no-nonsense stare from Tina, who replied in a rather cold tone of voice.
‘’Chairwoman Carlotti, those poor people just lived through Hell, literally, and are still under medical treatment or supervision. I will not allow them to be further traumatized. May I remind you that there are a lot of nebulous and suspicious circumstances concerning the disaster which happened on your orbital station, including indications that its maintenance was botched in order to save money. So, please excuse me if I look at the motives of your commission of inquiry with some skepticism.
Again, if you need anything during your stay on my ship, just ask. Miss Silisca, my assistant head hostess, will now show you your cabins, so that you can install yourselves. Have a good day, Chairwoman Carlotti.’
Before Carlotti could protest further, Tina walked away, leaving the Italian woman and her team with a smiling Eve Silisca, who pointed at the nearest cabin door.
‘’The three cabins allotted to your team are all four-bedroom models and are part of our V.I.P. section. This cabin will be yours and will also lodge three members of your choice from your team. If you will now follow me.’
Containing her anger, Carlotti signaled to Gerhardt Grundig and Marco Santos to follow her inside the designated cabin, where Eve Silisca quickly made them tour it.
50
‘’The two other cabins assigned to your team are similar to this one, Chairwoman. Two of its four bedrooms have a direct view on our Temperate Rain Forest Habitat, while the two other bedrooms face the Aquarium Ring and the Main Promenade. Each bedroom has its own private bathroom, plus there is a small washroom next to the entrance. Our passenger cabins don’t have a kitchen or dining room proper, as our passengers normally go eat in our cafeterias and restaurants, but there is a small kitchenette with a refrigerator, a microwave oven and a coffee machine, which will allow you to prepare yourselves snacks and hot beverages. You can also bring some takeout food to your cabin, to be eaten as snacks or light meals, and store it in this refrigerator. The living room measures six meters by four meters and has a table that can sit six persons, where you will be able to hold meetings and discussions. Each of the bedrooms also have a work desk and computer which will allow you to work in privacy. Finally, there is a small airlock over there which will give you access to the balcony of your cabin.’
‘’Why have an airlock there, miss?’ asked Marco Santos.
‘’All of our cabins and apartments facing our forest habitats have airlocks to access their balconies, in order to prevent an explosive decompression within the forest habitat, either from battle damage or catastrophic collision, from also affecting our accommodation units. Considering the thickness and depth of our bow shield, any such decompression inside our forest habitats is highly unlikely to happen but it is always better to play it safe when in Space.’
‘’And what would it take to penetrate your bow shield, miss?’ asked in turn Gerhardt Grundig.
‘’No less than a direct hit by a nuclear device, or a direct collision with a sizeable asteroid travelling at high speed, mister. Our bow shield was able to sustain repeated hits from Space Predators’ ships heavy laser batteries during past battles.’
Grundig nodded his head, suitably impressed.
‘’I must say that your ship has quite a fierce reputation as a combat ship, miss.’
‘’Thank you, sir. If you have no more questions, I will leave you, so that you can install yourselves.’
Eve then walked out of the cabin, leaving Carlotti alone in the living room with Grundig and Santos. The chairwoman exploded with indignation as soon as the door closed behind Eve.
51
‘’The arrogance of those Spacers! The EUROPA Station belonged to us, not to them, and we have every right to investigate this disaster the way we deem fit.’
Grundig looked at her with clear misgiving.
‘’Excuse me, Chairwoman: the station may have been ours but the extent and circumstances in which it was ravaged by this sudden disaster, along with the horrific number of casualties which ensued, give those Spacers some legitimate reasons to suspect that irregularities or even outright neglect were involved in the making of this tragedy. Furthermore, you may have denied knowledge about this shuttle Captain Forster alluded to earlier but I fail to understand why she would have invented that detail, especially if she has the radar tracking recordings to prove her words.’
‘’Gerhardt has a point here, Chairwoman.’ jumped in Marco Santos. ‘’I personally reviewed the list of the survivors from this accident before leaving Brussels and noticed that seven of the operators and managers of the station’s control room were listed as survivors on the list compiled by your committee, but did not appear on the list sent from the NOSTROMO. That discrepancy would tend in my opinion to support Captain Forster’s claim that those managers fled the station aboard a shuttle after the first explosions and fires, then landed in Brussels. Now, if you were ready to ignore or deny that detail, know that I am not. Over a thousand of our citizens either died or were wounded in this catastrophe and I fully intend to get to the bottom of things in this affair.’
‘’Remember who is in charge of this investigation team, Chief-Inspector Santos.’
replied at once Carlotti, bringing a cold expression on the police officer’s face.
‘’Should I infer from this threat from you that you are trying to hide or sweep under the rug pertinent evidence or facts about this disaster, Chairwoman Carlotti? If so, then I will be obliged to investigate your own links with the EUROPA Station. And don’t threaten to have me fired, for that would only blow up any scandal about this disaster, which is already at the top of the reports on Euro News. Minister of Justice Lecomte has full confidence in me and you can be assured that she would raise a stink if you tried to remove me from this investigation team. So, what is the deal here?’
Carlotti, realizing that Santos was not bluffing, contained her rage as best she could and took a deep breath before answering him.
‘’Fine! You may look at whatever evidence you may wish to pursue, but know that President Dieudonné has my back.’
Santos nearly scoffed at that, while Grundig looked crossly at the chairwoman: President Dieudonné was far from popular these days in the eyes of the European public and
52
many rumors already circulated about him being implicated in a number of affairs of corruption. Carlotti’s latest statement could only confirm in the eyes of the two investigators that something fishy was going on with this disaster. Santos’ next move was to go to one of the bedrooms, where he told his aides to bring in his suitcases and equipment bags. As they did so, Santos took out his personal laptop, which was equipped with an encryption device. Plugging it to the ship’s communications network, he then sent a quick but succinct report addressed to Justice Minister Suzanne Lecomte, asking her to have the claimed arrival of a shuttle from the EUROPA Station investigated and have its occupants questioned. What he couldn’t know or even suspect as he closed down his laptop computer after sending his report was that SPIRIT had already managed to break the encryption code he had used. While SPIRIT was normally not allowed to spy on electronic transmissions to and from passengers of the NOSTROMO, this was no normal case and it had received the tacit approval of Tina Forster for this.
08:44 (Universal Time)
Sunday, March 14, 2337
Chairwoman Carlotti’s cabin (Cabin 506-322)
Level 506, Northwest quadrant of the Habitat Ring Complex A.M.S. NOSTROMO, in low Earth orbit near the EUROPA Station Antonia Carlotti’s smile of satisfaction at seeing Emma Blunt entering her cabin with Eve Silisca was quickly erased when she saw that Blunt was wearing the standard interior coverall worn by the crewmembers of the NOSTROMO. Her displeasure grew when she saw that Eve Silisca stayed, instead of leaving Blunt alone with Antonia and with Marco Santos and Gerhardt Grundig.
‘’Why are you staying, Miss Silisca?’ asked in a caustic tone the chairwoman, attracting a polite but firm answer from Eve.
‘’Orders from Captain Forster, Chairwoman Carlotti: crewmembers of our ship are to be accompanied by me when interviewed by you or by members of your investigative team.’
‘’Her, a crewmember of your ship? What are you talking about? She’s a European citizen and is under our judicial authority.’
‘’Not anymore, Madam Chairwoman.’ said Emma Blunt. ‘’What I saw on the EUROPA Station disgusted me and convinced me to become a registered New Haven
53
and Spacers League citizen. I have now been part of the crew of this ship for nearly two days now.’
While Carlotti choked up on that answer, Gerhardt Grundig hurried to ask Emma a question in a neutral tone.
‘’Could you tell us what you saw on the EUROPA Station which prompted you to take such a drastic decision, Miss Blunt?’
‘’I can and I will, mister.’
Carlotti tried to interject at this point but was silenced at once by a warning look from Chief-Inspector Santos, allowing Emma to continue.
‘’Basically, during the past year, I warned my direct supervisor, Engineer Anthony Verdi, who was responsible for general maintenance aboard the station, that a number of pipes and valves in our hydrocarbons transfer system were either defective or showed cracks. I then counseled him to either have those repaired or replaced with new parts but he ignored my advice. When I complained to the station manager, Sergei Vlassov, about this, he told me to shut up and mind my own business. Since I was just a junior technician and was way outranked in the station, I continued to monitor those systems as best I could. Then, in the early morning of Friday, at around two forty, a huge explosion immediately followed by a firestorm which propagated around via our ventilation ducts, shook the whole station. That explosion came from the hydrocarbons pumping systems room, where I had earlier signaled faulty valves and cracked pipes.
The firestorm travelling through our ventilation ducts killed nearly at once most of our passengers, who were in a boarding lounge some 200 meters away from the pumping room in question. We were unable to suppress the fires then or to contain the toxic smoke generated by the flames. That was when Manager Vlassov, Engineer Verdi and six other control room employees fled in panic and flew out of the station aboard our duty shuttle, leaving me alone in the control room. I did my best then to direct our people towards the lifeboat stations and to call for help but it was already too late for most of the occupants of the station, who either burned alive or were asphyxiated by the toxic smoke. I was ready to die myself when a paramedic from the NOSTROMO was able to get to me with a rescue capsule and saved me. I was then carried to their shuttle, in which over a hundred other survivors had already been led to by other rescue paramedics. Later, I was interviewed by Captain Forster, who then granted me at my request New Haven citizenship and offered me a position as part of her crew.’
54
‘’Are you saying all this in order to return the favor from her of offering you a new job, Miss Blunt?’ asked Antonia Carlotti, her tone severe. Emma Blunt returned her cold look as he replied to her in an indignant tone.
‘’No, I am not! I am simply telling the truth. The fact that my supervisors on the station fled aboard a shuttle right after the start of the disaster should be proof enough of what I just said.’
‘’That story about your superiors fleeing in a shuttle is unproven, miss, and...’
‘’It has been proven, Chairwoman.’ interjected Marco Santos, making Carlotti look at him in shock and anger. Santos then continued on, staring hard into Carlotti’s eyes. ‘’Yesterday, I asked my criminal department to investigate this claim about a shuttle having arrived in Brussels from the EUROPA Station. My department found out that such a shuttle had indeed landed earlier, then rounded up its occupants and questioned them. You will be interested to know that those occupants were all engineers or managers who were supposed to be on duty in the station’s central control room at the time of the initial explosion. Their interrogation, along with a quick investigation of their financial dealings, revealed that they had been engaged in a corrupt scheme in which they took substantial bribes from the Pallas Mining Industries in exchange for ignoring the lack of proper maintenance done under contract by the Pallas Mining Industries. That lack of maintenance allowed that company to save tens of thousands of credits in work and parts. Those fleeing engineers and managers have subsequently been placed under arrest on charges of corruption, professional neglect causing death and abandonment of post during a declared emergency. My criminal department is now deepening its investigation in this matter, in order to find who at Pallas Mining Industries was involved with this corruption scheme, this with the assistance of the Spacers League Justice Department. The fact that you, Chairwoman Carlotti, tried to deny this business of a fleeing shuttle makes you in my mind a suspect in this affair. Know that Minister Lecomte is due to talk with Prime Minister Honnig about your possible involvement in all this. Don’t be surprised if you are recalled to Brussels in the next hours or days.’
Ignoring Carlotti, who was frozen speechless, from then on, Santos then smiled to Emma Blunt.
‘’Would you be ready to write and sign a deposition about all this, Miss Blunt?’
‘’With pleasure, sir.’ happily replied Emma.
55
Less than six hours after that ‘interview’, Tina was able to watch the E.U. shuttle fly out of her ship, with Antonia Carlotti aboard and under arrest, being escorted back to Brussels by two E.U. police detectives.
‘’Well, that was fast. That’s a nice change from the past, when the governments of Earth took weeks and months to take any decisive action about anything.’
‘’Like they say,’ added Janet Robeson, who was sitting in the observer’s chair on the top command platform of the bridge sphere, ‘’Karma’s a bitch!’
20:12 (Universal Time)
Wednesday, March 31, 2337