Kill Station (16 page)

Evan looked at him with an expression somewhere between incredible embarrassment and complete shock. "Uh. Joss O'Bannion—Mell Fontenay."

"Pleased, ma'am," Joss said, "and thank you for coming so late in your shift. I saw you starting up last night, but I didn't want to bother you. Have you found anything interesting?"

The lady looked up at Joss with cool green eyes and said, "I found the reason for at least one of your vectored thrusters giving you trouble. Under the circumstances, I didn't want to leave without checking the other systems as well."

"Oh?" Joss said. And then added, "Evan, your tea's going to get cold."

Evan made a suggestion as to what could be done with

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his tea. Joss chuckled; Evan was waking up nicely. "Let's see," he said.

Mell got up off her dolly, walked over to one of her toolboxes, and picked up something from it. She handed it to Joss. It was a little package of something solid, wrapped in paper on the inside and plastic outside, with wires stuck in it, and a chip of some kind taped onto the front.

"Good God," Joss said softly, handing it to Evan to examine.

"I cut the wires as soon as I saw it," she said. "It was slipped inside one of your thruster gas vents. The explosive I recognize; it's one of the plastiques used for mining around here. The chip I haven't seen before. I would suppose it was pressure sensitive, or something like that."

Joss looked at Evan with interest. "So now," he said. "This is all very interesting. Ms. Fontenay," he said,

"did you find anything else that worried you?"

"Not so far," she said, "but considering that thing, there are a few other checks I want to make before I'm done. Besides," and she smiled at Joss, "there aren't many ships like this one out here. I can't say I'm not having a good time rummaging around inside."

"Enjoy yourself, then," Joss said, and patted Evan on the shoulder. "Partner, can we talk for a moment?"

Evan nodded and headed back into the ship, still looking stunned. Joss nodded politely to Mell and followed him.

Evan headed straight to the galley and got his tea. Joss followed more slowly, making sure first that the airlock was shut.

"I'm impressed," he said. "She's quite a looker."

Evan glanced at him over the teacup. "She's got a mean right cross, too. I'd stay on her good side, if I were you."

"I'll leave that to you, thanks," Joss said. Evan blushed again.
This is too easy,
Joss thought: /
really
have to stop doing it to him.
"I'm just not sure I'm entirely happy she's
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crawling around in the innards of my ship, considering the circumstances."

"Our
ship," Evan said, but his heart wasn't m it.

Joss smiled slightly. "I mean, it would have been just as easy for her to have put the thing in there herself—"

"The timing," Evan said, with some irritation, "is all wrong."

"No it's not. She's a mechanic, she has access to this part of the station."

"So does everybody else who lives here, as far as I know!" Evan glared at him. "Your paranoia is showing."

"When someone is shoving little package bombs into my ship," Joss said, "damn right it is." He took the little plastic-wrapped packet away from Evan and pulled off the chip.

"Let's see about this," he said, and took it over to the data reading console. He put the chip on the pad, contact side first, and brought up the pad's electronics-reading program. "Here, now," he said, and let it rip.

The pad paused for a moment, then started drawing a graphic of the chip's circuitry, layer by layer. Joss looked at it with interest. "Not just a timer," he said. "The thing 'listens' for iondrive emissions, as far as I can tell. The next time we went out—like this morning, to start the digging—boom!" He chuckled.

"Engine failure, it would probably look like. New ship, not run in properly . . . very sad. And no one would ever find out differently, because the pieces of the hull that would prove an explosive device had been in use would be all over the Belts within a day, and the ship itself would be salvaged within minutes, so the SP couldn't get its hands on it. Bets?"

Evan just looked at him.

"It could have been anybody," he said.

Joss sighed. "You're right, of course. But now I'm going to have to arrange some gimmickry for the ship to make sure no one will tamper with it. It's going to take time that we can't really spare at the moment.

And no one is going to tamper with the ship now, anyway, because

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they know we'll be expecting it." He shook his head in resignation. "I guess I'd better get on with it. It's just annoying.

Somebody out there is very quick on the trigger. And this technology," he said, pointing at the chip lying on the pad,

"is a little too shiny and new for my taste. There's money involved in this. Too much of it, much too much for this part of space."

Evan nodded, but he was looking at the airlock door. Joss grinned at him a bit. "From the looks of her," he said, "I think you'd better eat your eggs. You want to keep up your strength, after all."

Evan threw the teacup at him. Joss caught it in midair, looked into it with satisfaction. "I must be getting better at making the tea," he said. "Go get your eggs and I'll give you another cup."

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, THEY WENT ALONG TO

Noel's office. He had actually managed to clear the paperwork away a little, and produce a couple of extra chairs. When they got there, Mell Fontenay was in one of them. Evan nodded to her, and casually sat down in the chair farthest from her.

Another chair contained a big man in his mid-thirties, another two-meter job, brown-eyed, brown-skinned, with a mop of brown hair; a man with a face like a friendly puppy's, and a likeable air. "Officer Glyndower, Officer O'Bannion," Noel said, "this is my deputy, George Klos-ters. George helps me out when there are physical surveys and claim investigations to be done. He'll give you a hand with your digging today, and act as liaison between you and the freelancers who'll be helping with the dig."

"Pleased," Evan said, and shook the man's hand after Joss did. It was a considerable grip George had, the kind of grip a man uses when he's not nervous about needing to prove anything. But the look he gave Evan was cool and
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a touch cautious.
It's the uniform, I guess,
Evan thought. It was a reaction he had grown used to over time.

"Noel has been telling me something about your find," George said. "It sounds as if you're going to need a lot of delicate work with laser drills and so forth, rather than blasting."

"Definitely no blasting," Joss said. "We want the craft as intact as possible. It's going to be difficult, because of all the fused material around the ship. Its surface is likely to contain evidence of exactly what happened, but only if we can keep it from being scarred or burnt too badly."

"It sounds to me," Mell said to Noel, "as if this is going to be the kind of work that needs slow, careful people. Joe Siegler could do it, I think, and Vanya Rostro-povich."

Noel nodded. "Sounds about right, George?"

George nodded. "Besides them," he said, "I'd suggest Lara Vidcic. She's got some pretty good laser equipment. She and her dad were doing some gemstone work a few years back, and they kept the fine-tuned stuff around in case they needed it again."

"All right," Noel said. "How soon do you think we can get everybody together?"

"Shouldn't take much longer than two or three hours," George said in his big, gruff voice. "I'll go make the calls shortly."

"Fine," Noel looked at Joss. "I hear you found a little present in your ship this morning," he said.

"That we did," Joss said, and described the bomb, for George's benefit. "Noel, the level of technology of the thing is surprising. It's very memory-dense, very smart— the palladium-arsenide detector in it is more miniaturized than I've ever heard of—but most of all, the thing is
expensive.
I'm pretty surprised to see it out in this part of the world at all. I'd love to find out where it came from. The station keeps some import and export records, doesn't it?"

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Noel nodded. "They should be in central data processing. Feel free."

"Thanks," Joss said, "I will. I doubt I'll find anything straightforward, though. I think this thing was most likely smuggled in, and I want to see if I can figure out how. That'll be my morning, at least till the digging is ready to start.

But somebody has been very quick about seeing how many different ways our work here can be stopped." He looked over at Mell and said, "In your opinion, is my ship clean now?"

"I can't vouch for the crew compartments," Mell said. "I don't do windows. But the engine is as your ship's computer claims it should be. The iondriver's pulse generator was slightly out of true, but I corrected that." She smiled. "It's a nice craft; some of the factory seals hadn't even been broken yet. I'm not used to engines that don't have chewing gum and sticky tape all over them. It was a pleasant change."

"Glad you liked it," Joss said. "Do you suppose I could get you to come have a look at it in the morning? Just for good luck, and to make sure no one's tampering?"

"No problem at all," Mell said. "My schedule won't be too bad for a while; my busy time starts with the next wave of arrivals, about two weeks from now. Routine scheduled repairs for people coming in from long runs."

"Fine," Joss said. "Thank you. Evan, what's your schedule?"

"I'd like to talk to anyone who saw Hek just before she left on her last run," Evan said. The thought that she might have given someone some sort of hint about what was going on had been preying on his mind for a day or so.

"Friends, or any family."

"I can give you some names and addresses," Noel said, "but a lot of those people are out themselves right now. In fact, the Drury crowd, they're some kind of cousins of hers, headed out as you were coming in. I think you saw them."

"Yes," Evan said, thinking of the young man who had

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so expressively spat at him on the way out. "They're not due back any time soon, I take it?"

"I don't believe they filed a flight plan and schedule, if that's what you mean," Noel said. "Most people here don't bother."

Evan sighed. This was something he was used to from his time on Highlight. "Right," he said. "I'll see what the people here can tell me."

"Good enough," Noel said. "If there's nothing else, let's get on it.''

All of them got up and started to go about their business. Evan noticed George patting Mell's shoulder in a friendly goodbye as he headed out. "Friend of yours?" he said to her, after George had gone out.

Mell turned and looked at him, those green eyes glinting. "I should think so," she said. "That's my ex."

"Your ex-husband?"

"Right. See you later?" Mell said, and headed out the door.

Evan stood quite still for a moment, suddenly understanding that cool look from George. Oh dear, he thought, and blushed again.

Joss was standing behind him, saying nothing, and saying it with a slight smile. Evan didn't bother responding to this, but went over to Noel to get the list of names he was scribbling. "Most of these people are over in our old town," Noel said, "the more antiquated part of the station. It's the only part that's tunnelled very much. You'll get lost; everybody does. Don't let it bother you: anybody you meet will give you directions." He handed Evan the list. There were only four or five names on it. "This lady," Noel said, pointing to the first name, "and this gent," pointing to the second, "are probably your best bet: they were Hek's drinking buddies. You should be able to find them—this is their waking shift, the last I heard."

"Right," Evan said. "Thanks much, Noel. Joss—" He waved at his partner and headed out, before he started blushing again. This situation was acquiring aspects he

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hadn't been expecting, and didn't really care for. But there was nothing to do but get on with things as if everything was normal. But he kept seeing sea-green eyes looking at him.

"CECILE," JOSS SAID, "HOW'S THAT?"

"I can hear you fine," she said. "This is interesting: we've never had a scrambled circuit before. Never needed one."

"First time for everything," Joss said. The first thing he had done on getting back to the ship was to start writing some new communications software for the station's data processing department to use. He had been shocked to see what they were using, a barely functional sort of block-by-block cyclic redundancy checker, with one computer shouting instructions at another between gaps in data. But the proprietary software was expensive, too expensive for a little place like this. No one would know, though, if Joss cloned off his ship's own programs— the simpler ones — and adapted them to the station's needs. Now he could be sure that material he borrowed from Willans' data banks came to him uncorrupted, and as a by-product, his ship-to-shore communications would be secure. He desperately hoped that someone out there would be very frustrated by the whole thing. "While I'm thinking of it," he said, "no news of any discarded suits lying around, huh?"

"No," she said, "no such luck. None of the medics saw anybody with a leg burn, either."

"Oh, well, can't win 'em all. At least not today," Joss said. "Cecile, I'm going to pull that list of trading manifests. Is this the one?" He used his data pad to bring up a menu of files in the Willans computers, and had the pad point at a particular one.

"That's it," Cecile said.

"Right," Joss said, and told the machine to fetch it

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down into his ship's computers. It did, and while it was doing so, Joss said to Cecile, "Tell me something, Gramma: if you were going to try to mislead somebody about where you were going, how would you do it?"