He Without Sin (33 page)

“Well, you can quit looking for him. I found him. If you can, get my video feed on your screen and get Doc in there with you. It’s bad news.”

David summons Gleshert as I pull up Mark’s video feed. I can’t quite figure out what we’re looking at as Doc joins us. They are now both looking over my shoulder at the shaky video from Mark down on the surface at base camp. There is an overlay on an adjacent screen showing the guys’ beacons on top of a terrain map. We can see they are not in the camp proper but just outside in the rugged surrounding area.

“What are we looking at Mark? Can you hold her steady?” The image zooms out, steadies, and then we see. “Mark, is that what I think it is? What happened?” The image now resolves into the far away figure of a man. Or what used to be a man.

“Guys, I’m here with Craig…”

“Hold on, we’re getting another emergency signal here!” I interrupt.

“That’s Porter. We tried to reach him before he left the ship to come back down. He’s probably just getting my frantic messages right now.”

“Mark, what are we… Is that Wesley we see?”

“I’m afraid so.” The image zooms out again and Mark does a pan over to Craig, showing that they are in fact not in camp, but in the mountains. On one side is a steep, nearly featureless rock wall, on the other a precipitous drop-off. He slowly lowers the view and we see that it’s a long way down indeed. “He must’ve fallen.”

“Mark, steady the cam and zoom in as tight as you can. I need to see the damage right now. Is the solo flyer still operational?” asks Doc.

David shakes his head no while still looking at the screen.

“No, it’s just been dismantled; some parts recycled already. Would take a while to re-build.”

“Steady.” Doc looks at the screen. He catches David’s eye, then mine, shakes his head, and says, “Mark, a little above and to the left. See that dark area?”

“Yes, I do. We saw that earlier. Looks like he had a bad fall and there is no soft spot anywhere on the way down.”

“What do we need to do?”

“David, look at it. There’s nothing
to
do. We can fix a lot of things, but I can’t put that right. Too much damage. Too much time. Getting there; getting him out. Mark, is there any way down there?”

“Absolutely not. Not without equipment and a way to air lift him up. It’s sheer.”

“Air lift? Rope, winch, cables, a stretcher basket. Come on, man!”

“Hold on David. To what purpose? Risk more lives? For what? I’m telling you, even from just the video feed, there is nothing to be done.”

Doc looks at David and holds his gaze while saying, “Mark, save any images you can get. Also get the surroundings and any other clues to what happened. We’re going to need them.”

David got depressed again, and I don’t blame him. He commented that all officers were supposed to
be on board by then, but Mark and I both replied at
the same time that we couldn’t control Brachus; no
one could—he did what he wanted to do. And
that’s when David walked out.

As much as I didn’t care for him, it’s a shame to
lose Brachus; it’s a shame to lose anyone. He’s the
only casualty for the entire mission, aside from
what happened to Dylan. Now more than ever we
have our fingers crossed for Dylan’s survival and
recovery.

The last load has been uplifted. All persons are
accounted for except the one. The decision was
made to use an incendiary device for a makeshift
cremation. There was no choice. We couldn’t leave
him like that; we couldn’t get down to him. It had
to be done. Carol didn’t watch.

Carol hasn’t said much about the loss of Master
Brachus. We agree it’s a shame, but it’s safe to say
that we both think he brought it on himself. After all, what was he doing out in the mountains instead of up here safe aboard ship? I do have my
suspicions, based on the few clues Mark dropped
over the years, but have kept them to myself.

Should I have gone to help him when he asked? Maybe. I’ll have to live with that, I guess. I notice
that no one else was out there helping him with his
‘keepsakes’ either.

Discovery

“Do we know what happened?”

“I was…” Craig says, “I finished the final sweep and was prepping another load for Porter when I see I got a call from Wesley to come help him. I told him hold on, I’ll come, but in a few.”

“Yes, go on.”

“I knew which way he went. I’d been that way before but never very high. I went up but then I figured maybe I’d missed him. I tried to raise him, but there was no response. I thought of going back—it’s not really a path up there, it’s a narrow ledge with gravel and…”

“We see the graphics,” David says as he shuffles through the images Mark recorded and are now being shown on the screen.

“I kept going and found the bundle that I told you about.”

“Is there a picture of that?”

“Maybe, but never mind. Here it is right here,” says Mark as he puts the wrapped package on the meeting room table.

“Craig?”

“Well. That’s when I saw him. When I leaned down to picked that up,” indicating the bundle. “I called Mark, told him, and hit the e-button.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“Alright you guys, what was he doing up there?” says Mr. Means.

There is some silence as Mark and Craig look at each other. “Getting that bundle would be my guess,” I venture, to break the silence.

“Wait, there’s more,” says Mark. “David, click through those images. Here, give me that thing.” David does, and Mark searches quickly and says, “There. See it? Let me zoom. There.”

We see a dented and beat up case, scuffed, broken and dirty, laying way down on top of rubble at some distance from the body. David sees it.

“There’s one of our cases,” adds Mark. “I made a bunch of them for general use. He must have been up there getting it too. Or maybe he was going to put that in it,” indicating the item on the table. David draws the bundle close and unwraps it.

“Yes, I agree. That would make sense. I saw him with something similar not too long ago. He said there were ‘keepsakes’ in it,” I add. David spreads the wrapper, opens the pouch inside and dumps the contents onto the wrapper.

My hunch all along has been correct. I know right away that we are looking at raw and valuable gems. They are not cut or polished, but that’s what they are all right. I see the same look of recognition around the table.

“Mark?” David says more as a statement than a question and turns to look at Mark steadily.

Mark doesn’t answer at once, but I can ‘see’ his mind working. He finally says, “David, Wes would bring in special shipments from the various resource sites, have me process them in between my regular work. He would come by later and pick up the output. I would venture to say that we are now looking at the output.”

It’s David’s silence now that indicates to me it’s his turn to process what he’s just heard. “I see,” he says and stands. “Grigor, wrap this back up and jettison it with the waste.”

He leaves the room. We sit for a few minutes, silent. I for one am trying to decide if the meeting’s over or not. My thoughts wander and I imagine the gems as they enter the atmosphere and wonder if they will vaporize before impact or if they will survive the fall.

______

“There’s going to be an inquest. You know there will. We should’ve kept that bundle of gems,” Carol says later.

“Maybe he thinks the images will be enough,” suggests Mark.

“It’s wrong mate, it’s plain wrong, one wrong thing after another,” adds Grigor. “Markus, what were you thinking? Your cut?”

“My cut? Get lost. My cut. Just make sure you don’t take
your
cut before ejecting them.”

“All right, all right you guys, cut it out. I don’t blame Mark. Remember Brachus was basically running the show down there for a long while.”

Both gentlemen hold their tongues until Grigor says, to no one and everyone, “What
is
wrong, though, is tossing out valuables. Those should have been kept and added to our coffers. Wouldn’t hurt to show some return on this trip.”

______

When we are alone, Carol asks, “Do you think David’s trying to cover it up?”

“What? No. There is no covering it up. We are coming home one headcount short. One so far anyway,” I check Carol’s face to see if she takes my meaning, “and there’s no getting around that, period.” After a moment, I realize I may have misunderstood. “Oh, you mean by tossing the loot? I don’t know what he’s thinking there. My first guess would be that it was just a knee-jerk reaction, with no plan at all.”

“You’re probably right about that. He’s that way.”

“I do think that Mark is worried, though.”

“But he was acting under orders from Wes. He had no choice.”

“But not official orders. I will bet you any amount that Brachus left no trail of this business. None. He went to a lot of trouble to hide the stuff too. No doubt he didn’t even trust his own people enough to let them in on it.”

“I still can’t believe he’s gone. If he’d asked for help…”

“Carol, he did ask me for help. He asked Mark first but Mark refused; he told me so. He’d had enough I guess. Then Brachus came to me. I know he didn’t want to; he never liked me from day one.”

“So…”

“So I didn’t actually tell him to go jump off a cliff…” I say without thinking of the reality of the situation, but it hits me as soon as I hear my own words. “I mean, I didn’t outright refuse. But I held off answering long enough for him to go away. And he asked Craig and Porter too I think, as we all heard at the meeting...”

Carol just looks at me—no change in expression, no comment.

“I guess I should’ve helped. He just rubbed me the wrong way and I didn’t feel like doing him any favors. I didn’t think it would end like this.”

“Of course not.”

The general mood is changing from somber to
homesick as we near departure. At least that’s how
I judge the crew. My duties now, by comparison to
the wide open and exciting environment below,
seem dull and routine. The varied and complex
links to base camp, and other sites; the connections
to remote cams; the surface and atmospheric
monitors—almost all gone. The more or less
constant accumulation, transfer, and storage of
data has now slowed tremendously. The one
planetary atmosphere monitor remains active and
will for a long, long time, but it’s not sending to us,
it’s sending home.

I keep busy, but for the most part I am in an
unusual state of mental transition. All of us have
our physical boundaries well defined now, as well
as our duties. Our horizon, instead of including vast
vistas of mountains, seas, clouds, and open land, instead of being painted with practically every color of the rainbow in the sky, rocks, and leaves, is
now limited to the next partition and, aside from
vivid instrumentation lights, to a shrunken palette
of muted hues.

I find myself bugging Carol now and then for a hires view of the surface. That view, however, like my
memories, is a faded substitute for the real thing,
dimmed and obscured by the intervening
atmosphere.

We are all scheduled to see Doc for pre-launch
checkups and the beginning of treatment for the
flight home. Dylan is already fully under for the
return trip. Gleshert says it is for the best and will
give the restorative cure time to work and ensure
the highest chance of a positive outcome.

Carol read up on the history of the Hobbe itself and
on its namesake, Lillian. She, Lillian that is, created
a big stink back home a long time ago on her very
first mission as commander. The one document she
read says Lillian dealt with a rebellion near the end
of a planetary stay. A group of her people, both
male and female, defied her orders and prepared
to stay behind, essentially forming their own seed
population on an otherwise uninhabited world
(uninhabited by humans, that is). Unfortunately,
during an altercation three members of the
rebellion were killed by the commander. The rest of
the rebels abandoned their dream and reluctantly
joined the returning mission.

The revolt jeopardized the successful completion of
the mission since they were now short three critical
crew members and the attitudes among the
remainder varied from hostile to loyal, from angry
to indifferent. Well, they did make it back in one
piece. But, as a result of the mission review
hearing, an official inquest was scheduled to
determine the guilt or innocence of the commander
relative to the lost crew members. After the
inquest, it seemed certain that further action would
be taken against her—action which could easily
have ruined her career and reputation. Long story
short, Ms. Hobbe defied protocol and went public
in her own defense. The overwhelming popular
support she received engendered a response from
government officials who pulled the appropriate
strings to make the whole matter go away. Her
popularity due to her image as a strong leader able
to make tough decisions remained high for the
duration of her career and life.