CHAPTER 18
HUMANS GO HOME!
Comms Techs have detected alien signals.
Two Aoteans dead.
Coincidence? Or a sign that we should never have left?
Maybe we should take the hint! We were never meant to leave.
Maybe the universe sees humanity for what we are,
and will never let us settle anywhere else!
Mattoso’s concern grew as she saw this and similar sentiments posted anonymously in the comment forums and discussions, sometimes even in topics totally unrelated to the deaths. She ended the projection when she reached the Constabulary.
“How are the assignments and deputizations going?” she asked, taking the offered seat across from the chief inspector’s desk.
“Ugh... this is what I get for requesting more people,” Konami shook his head. “This tub’s layout is damn complicated. Even with the two hundred and something deputies I’m about to have, it’s going to be hard to cover it all.”
Mattoso nodded agreement. “I have a thought on that, and it’s tied to what I’m here for.”
“What you’re here for?”
“It didn’t seem so important at the time, but now that we know we have two murders…” Mattoso explained the scheduling discrepancy between her notes and what Master Tech Lopez told her a few days prior. “I wouldn’t have written down ‘thirty’ if he had said ‘every cycle’ or ‘every three hundred days.’ I’m sure of it.”
Konami leaned back and scratched his head. “So he got it wrong… maybe just a brain fart?”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But he wouldn’t admit it at the time. He said I must be mistaken.”
“Big ego?”
“Perhaps.” Mattoso leaned forward, lowering her voice. “But I think it’s something else. I remember some old ‘Investigator’s Handbook’ — it was really old… a scan in Ceres’ educational archives, not even searchable until I ran it through the text-identifier! But it talked about instinct, and gut feel — an investigator would inevitably have to rely on her gut. And I think this was that, Cy. It didn’t feel right when Lopez said it. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.”
Konami looked straight at her for a long time. “So you said you had a thought.” A blood vessel in his jaw pulsed.
She took a deep breath. “We need our own data tech.”
He nodded very slowly.
She wasn’t sure if he understood. “We need someone we can, uh, trust, just in case—”
“I understand,” he cut her off. “We need to get into Muahe’s logs, personal and otherwise.”
“And not just his logs. With our own data tech, we can get into, well, any concerns we have about—”
He cut her off again. “Right. Don’t say it. But who? And how?”
She had no answer.
Theo Muahe’s best friend, Mechanical Technician Second Class Trung Olivier, looked worried just answering the door.
Konami nodded to her, and she asked about friends of Muahe in the Data department.
Olivier frowned. “I thought I told you before. He didn’t really get along with any of the other data techs.”
“Are you absolutely sure? He never talked about any of them in a, well, nice way?” she asked.
The mechanical tech shook his head but stopped abruptly. “Well, he was mentoring one. I guess he kind of liked her — him. I think he liked him okay.”
Mattoso ignored the misgendering, unsure whether it was deliberate bigotry or just carelessness.
The tech continued. “DT3 Wren. I met him once — strange kid, kind of a sarcastic prick, I thought. Didn’t have any friends at all. But Theo said he was a natural data miner, and programmer, and a hard worker. That’s the highest praise he ever had for any of the DTs. I guess that’s as close as it got to a friend in Data.”
“So, Third Wren,” said Konami, after they returned to his office. “Know anything about him?”
She checked her notes to her memory. “Yeah, he showed me around the DT spaces and their routine. I got the real impression he was fond of Muahe — maybe very fond of him.”
Konami pulled up Wren’s bio on his monitor. “Huh,” said the chief inspector, looking at Wren’s boyish countenance on the screen. “I remember him at the funeral. He took it hard. Very hard.”
“So is this our guy?” she asked. “Our ally?”
“I don’t know,” responded Konami. “But this has got to be gentle. Soft, even. Careful. Jesus.” Konami shook his head, his brow furrowed. “‘Allies’ implies ‘enemies.’ And we’re years — cycles, that is — away from Earth.”
“Or Axis,” she added.
“Axis?”
“Sorry. Just one of the few snips I remember about Earth history. Axis versus Allies. The bad guys and the good. Genocide and all that… you know, what we’re trying to get away from.” Her cheeks bloomed and she felt foolish.
He looked at her oddly. “Anway, I was saying we need to be careful with this.” He fiddled for a minute, then projected on the bulkhead. “DT3 Wren was on watch in Data Central when the defective filter was fabbed and picked up, and on an Under Instruction watch in Navigation for ship’s quals when Nicolescu was killed.”
“So we can rule him out?” she asked.
“I don’t know if we can rule out anyone this early. But if we have to trust someone, I think this is as good as we’re going to find right now.” He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t think we should go together to recruit him. Too intimidating, for a young Third, I think.”
She nodded in agreement. “I’ll do it. I’ve already spent the better part of a day with him.”
“Use that gut feel. Your instincts. This is still a risk.”
She nodded and turned to go.
“Wait,” he said. “You said this would help with my deputies?”
“Oh yeah. A mapping algorithm. Engineering has the 3D layouts — it should be a snap to put together roving routes that cover everything. I could probably spend a half-day reading up and do it myself, but I bet a DT could do it in five minutes.”
Konami slapped his forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
She grinned and left.