088: RIFT

I watch the footage several times, as if that will somehow make it make more sense. It doesn’t. There’s no reason for Heli not to be involved, I guess, I just… why? She’d been awake for less than a week at this point! Renn hadn’t even made his position clear on Lyson projects yet, so what was the motive? Personal beef with her psychologist? And why involve another person to wield the knife instead of just poisoning them to death? A patsy, maybe; make them look guilty and skip the blame herself? No, that couldn’t work; they’d turn her in anyway if they got caught, surely. So why…?

Unless framing someone was the point. Maybe the whole point was to kill them in a way that made it look like someone else had done it. Heli and Tinera didn’t like each other at all; how long had that gone on? Since the beginning? As soon as we’d got to the murder scene, Heli couldn’t wait to accuse Tinera. Maybe she’d been planning to frame Tinera, and gotten one of the others on her side (probably Adin, if they were dating), and then Tinera had punched her and gotten locked up and so she’d had to wait until Captain Sands unlocked the doors for Tinera and had her ally poison and kill the nearest convenient victims to…

No, that doesn’t make any sense. Adin wouldn’t frame Tinera like that, and even if my initial judgements about him had been wrong and he was capable of killing, he certainly wouldn’t do so for that reason. None of them would, I can at least be certain of that. I don’t know Heli that well, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t, either; it’d be really stupid and risky, for one thing. If she was the kind of person to kill people just to frame someone she didn’t like, she’d have caused a lot more problems in the crew by now.

I find Captain Sands, and show him the footage. He also watches it several times, a pensive look on his face.

“Hmm,” he says. “I have absolutely no idea what to make of this.”

“We should interrogate Heli,” I say. “Get her side of the story and find out – ”

“No. No, Aspen, we should keep this to ourselves for now. We can use this to positively identify our guilty convict if they slip up and reveal they know any of this.”

“They’re not going to do anything that stupid or they would’ve done it already. Interrogating Heli would tell us a lot more, a lot faster.”

“No, not yet. We need more information.”

“This is how we get more information!”

“And how do you intend to explain to Heli, or to anyone else, how you came by this information?”

I stare, dumbfounded. “Are you serious? We’re dealing with a double homicide and you don’t want the crew at large to find out about the little spycam you forgot to take down?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Aspen, but crew harmony and trust is not high right now. Sowing doubt and chaos is hardly a good idea while tensions are high.”

“Tensions are high because there’s at least one murderer on the crew. I think dealing with that is a little more important than keeping your paranoid spying secret so you don’t have to deal with  – ”

“I didn’t spy on that operation, Aspen. You did.”

“Under your orders!”

“And you went through the footage to find this, spying on basically everyone who’s been in that medbay recently. They won’t just be angry at me, Aspen. Are you ready to explain this to them?”

“Sure. Let’s do it.”

“Oh, sure, that’s a great idea. The third-in-command is dead, so let’s critically undermine the crew’s trust in the first and second in command at once. That won’t create any problems.”

I shrug. “What’s the worst that could happen? Mutiny? Who cares? I’d rather be deserving of their trust and not have it than be undeserving and lie to keep it. Normally I don’t go out of my way to create drama over your paranoid little side projects, but you’re talking about concealing evidence of a murder so it doesn’t make you look bad.”

“This murder will be solved. You and I have seen this; it’s known information now. Not advertising it might make things take a bit longer, but…”

“A bit longer, huh? More time where half the crew is rooming with a knife murderer and the other half with a poisoner? Sounds very safe.”

“There’s no reason to think that anyone else is in danger. Why are you so intent on stirring up trouble?”

“How is trying to solve a murder stirring up – ?”

“I hear that you were insinuating to Sunset earlier that she shouldn’t trust her crewmates.”

“I wasn’t insinuating anything. I just pointed out the obvious fact that there’s no reason some of the new crew couldn’t be involved in this. And oh, look.” I indicate the screen. “I was right.”

“Yes, information that you just so happened to find at the most chaotic possible time and through the most disruptive possible avenue. Speaking of crew in Habitation Ring 2 possibly being guilty, I’m sure everyone’s noticed that you’re the one with the strongest ties to all of our killer suspects, and the one who found the bodies and had time at the crime scene before anyone else saw it, and the one who found this video.”

I ball my hand into a fist, remembering the sensation of rubbing a knife handle clean of fingerprints. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Perhaps I am. When it comes to the Habitation Ring 2 crew, you’re by far the most suspicious.”

“Alright. Should I move my stuff to the other ring then, so you can lock me up?”

“You’re not even going to defend yourself?”

“What’s the point? Your bumbling investigation is bound to find the culprit eventually, and it’s not me so I have nothing to worry about. In the meantime, I’d rather be there than here.”

“You’re better than this, Aspen!”

“That the fuck does that mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I? Because it sounds to me like you mean I’m better than them.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Really? I can’t think of anything else you could’ve been saying. But I guess it can’t be what you were saying, because it’s fucking stupid. I’m not better than them just because my crimes weren’t put on record and because I wrote some books that you like.”

He narrows his eyes and goes to respond, but just then we hear the airlock. Celi walks into view, catches sight of us, and steps back. “Um. I can come back later?”

“We’re not doing anything time-critical,” the captain says. “What do you need?”

“I just wanted to inform you that we’ve completed the stocktake of that broken cabinet, and found a noticeable amount of neurostims missing. However, the antidrenamate is all still accounted for.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. The antidrenamate was taken from somewhere else. I can go through the other stores to find out where specifically, but it’ll take a while. I thought you’d want to know this right away.”

“Is this slowing down your other work?”

“Oh, no. The Friend is stable and I’ve got Heli and Sam processing the rest of the suspect health data. I just wanted to do the stocktake myself, because, well.” Ke shrugs.

“In case one of them is the thief,” the captain says. “Although with this information…”

“Yeah. Unless we’ve got a lockpicker on staff, our poisoner suspects are down to me, Lina, and our surviving Friend.”

Lina, then. The Friend obviously had no idea, and Celi wouldn’t dob kemself in like that. It could in theory be some kind of double bluff, but no; it’d be far easier to just pretend the antidrenamate had been stolen from the broken cabinet.

“How sophisticated are the locks?” Captain Sands asks. “Would they be hard to pick?”

Celi shrugs. “They’re old pin and tumbler locks. I don’t know anything about lockpicking, but I don’t think they’ve got any special security or anything.”

“Right. Thank you, Celi.”

Celi leaves, and Captain Sands turns back to me. “So then.”

“I guess Heli was just stealing medicine for her boyfriend. That’s way less sinister, and suggests that Adin is probably also innoce – ”

“Heli and Adin are dating?”

“I think so? I mean, I’ve seen them together. I didn’t interrogate them on the details.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this before?”

“It didn’t seem relevant.”

“It didn’t seem relevant that one of our main murder suspects had a close personal relationship with a crew member with an alibi for the actual killing?” He bites his lip and glances at the terminal screen. “I suppose it doesn’t matter too much now, if she’s not the vector for the anaesthetic, but we should still clear this little thing up. Come on; we need to talk to Adin.”

Adin isn’t any happier to talk to us the second time around. He sits on the bed in our makeshift interrogation room, arms crossed, and glares up at us.

“Heli’s been getting you neurostimulators, hasn’t she?” Captain Sands asks.

Adin frowns. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“What it has to do with anything, Mr Klees, is that you are primarily a suspect in this case due to your suspicious location shortly before the murder and the fact that you had illegal access to strength-enhancing drugs and possibly highly incriminating antiadrenamate, so the source of your neurostimulators is indeed quite important. I would’ve thought you’d be only too happy to confirm a source of neurostimulators that doesn’t also give you access to the antiadrenamate. If you’re worried about getting your girlfriend in trouble – ”

“Fuck off,” Adin growls, jumping to his feet. He’s significantly smaller than the captain and there’s simply no way that he still has enhanced strength, but the captain nevertheless backs away, startled fear flashing across his face momentarily, and runs right into the desk in the small bedroom. Captain Sands regains his composure immediately, but not in time to stop Adin from storming out of the room and slamming the door, rattling the flimsy plastic walls.

“Should we… go after him?” I ask.

Captain Sands straightens his uniform. “No point. He’s unlikely to be helpful and might become violent if we push him.”

“Adin’s not violent.”

“A couple of days ago, I would have agreed with you. But a couple of days ago, I hadn’t yet seen him in this bad a mood. Have you ever seen him like this?”

“Well, no. But with everything going on, it’s – ”

“Understandable, certainly. But it makes him unpredictable. Is he likely to be violent like this? I’d rather not find out. Anyway, I think I need to have a talk with Ms Graf.”

“Heli? Uh, okay. Just let me get – ”

“I’ll do this one alone, Aspen. Given the rather short timeline between her waking up and this theft, and Mr Klees’ reaction there, I expect the conversation to be exceptionally sensitive and will very likely involve disciplinary action. Although this probably explains the conflict with Ms Li Null.”

“It…does?” Rapidly developing relationship, Tinera punching Heli, Adin’s reaction… a bad breakup, probably, and Tinera thought that Adin deserved some revenge? But why would that need disciplinary action?

Captain Sands shoots me a look that I can’t decipher. “Keep this to yourself,” he says. “Mr Klees has gone to great lengths not to let it be known, and Ms Li Null made a significant personal sacrifice in refusing to explain her actions when she punched Ms Graf, to protect his wishes in the matter. If you’re his friend, I hope you’ll protect his wishes here, too.” Then he leaves, leaving me alone and completely, utterly confused.

I head out of the room into habitation Ring 2 and am almost immediately waylaid by Lina.

“What did you do to Adin?” she demands without preamble.

“Nothing! The captain said something that upset him, but I didn’t – ”

She curses loudly. “I’ve had about enough of that man.”

I don’t say anything. On the balance of evidence, I’m pretty sure that Lina is our main suspect at the moment. I search her face, like I’ll be able to tell on sight whether she has the capacity for murder.

“What?” she asks, and I realise that I’m quite obviously staring.

“Nothing.” I look away. “I, um.” I’m about to say that I need to get going, that I have work to do. But I don’t. The way that Adin’s been looking at me, like I’m some outsider who means him harm, has been getting to me, and as glance towards the airlock out of the ring I see Denish catch sight of me and turn around, avoiding me.

I miss my crew. My old crew. I wish that Captain Sands had been serious in his earlier accusations and had decided to lock me up with them.

“How have you been holding up?” I ask Lina. “Can I get you guys anything from the rest of the ship?”

“Oh, no, we’re fine. Sunset came by earlier to make sure we had everything we need. I think Tal’s getting antsy since Sands cut off access to the computer system for this ring, but otherwise we’re good. Beating Sam at Lunari checkers cheered kem up a lot.”

So other crew members were hanging out and looking after my old crew, it’s just me who hadn’t bothered. “Is Adin going to be okay?”

“I assume so. Did Keldin hurt him?”

“Hurt him? The captain wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

Lina shrugs. “I would’ve said that no one in here would kill crewmates, either, and yet here we are.”

Hmm. I can’t help but notice that while everyone else seems to be avoiding me, our main suspect is here making friendly conversation. Attempting to deflect blame to others, maybe? No, no; I have no proof that Lina did anything yet. If I want to stay friends with these people, I can’t just treat them all as guilty. I can’t be Captain Sands.

Still, I ask, “Any thoughts on that?”

“I probably know less than you do already. Tinera has killed before and despised Renn and the Friend’s position on Lyson projects, but I don’t think she’d murder two people over bad politics. Adin’s been absolutely furious since his last therapy session with Renn, as you’ve seen, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I have to assume I’m your main suspect at this point, but I had no qualms with either of them beyond their bad politics, and Denish and Tal were planning something together but I don’t know if – ”

“Wait. Adin was angry at Renn? Before this whole murder thing?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why?”

Lina shrugs. “It was about a therapy session. I didn’t ask for details. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask, Aspen…”

“Yeah?”

“How are you holding up?”

“Me? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She cocks her head. “Are you busy? Do you want to come and play a round of cards?”

I nod, blinking back unexpected tears. Suddenly, there’s nothing I want to do more than come and play a round of cards.