Martinez sipped his own coffee and considered this. “Illustriouswas the only ship that wasn’t able to participate in the battle,” he said. “Was that what Kosinic was obsessing about?”
“Yes. He took it personally that his load of antiproton bottles were duds, and of course he was wounded when he went back for more, so that made it even more personal.”
“The antiproton bottles were stored in a dedicated storage area?”
“Yes.”
A ship in dock was usually assigned a secure storage area where supplies, replacement parts, and other items were stockpiled—it was easier to stow them there, where they could be worked with, rather than have the riggers find space for them in the holds, where they wouldn’t be as accessible when needed. Those ships equipped with antiproton weapons generally stored their antiproton bottles there, in a secure locked facility, as antiprotons were trickier to handle than the more stable antihydrogen used for engine and missile fuel. An antiproton bottle was something you didn’t want a clumsy crouchback dropping on his foot.
“The Naxids had to have gained the codes for both the storage area and the secure antiproton storage,” Chandra said. “I don’t see how we’ll ever find out how they did it, and I don’t see why it matters at this point. But Javier thought itdid matter, and if anyone disagreed with him, he’d just turn red and shout and make a scene.” Sadness softened the long lines of her eyes. “It was hard to watch. He’d been so bright and interesting, but after he was wounded, he turned into a shouter. People didn’t want to be around him. But fortunately, he didn’t like people much either, so he spent most of his time in his quarters or in Auxiliary Control.”
“He sounds a bit delusional,” Martinez said. “But suppose, when he was digging around, he found a genuine plot? Not to help the Naxids, but something else.”
Chandra seemed surprised. “But any plot would have to be something Thuc was involved in, because it was Thuc who killed him, yes?”
“Yes.”
“But Thuc was anengineer. Javier was a staff officer. Where would they ever overlap?”
Martinez had no answer.
Suddenly, Chandra leaned forward in her seat, her eyes brilliant with excitement. “Wait!” she said. “I remember something Mersenne once told me! Mersenne was somewhere on the lower decks, and he saw an access hatch open, with Javier just coming out from the underdeck. He asked Javier what he was doing there, and Javier said that he was running an errand for the squadcom. But I can’t imagine why Lady Michi would ever have someone digging around in the guts of the ship.”
“That doesn’t seem to be one of her interests,” Martinez murmured. “I wonder if Kosinic left a record of what he was looking for.” He looked at her. “He had a civilian-model datapad I didn’t have the passwords for. I don’t suppose you know his passwords?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” Her face grew thoughtful. “But he didn’t carry that datapad around with him all the time. He spent hours in Auxiliary Control at his duty station, so if there were records of what he was looking at, it’s probably still in his logs, and you can—”
His mind, leaping ahead of her, had him chanting her conclusion along with her.
“—access that with a captain’s key!”
A quiet excitement began to hum in Martinez’s nerves. He opened his collar and took out his key on its elastic. He inserted the narrow plastic key into the slot on his desk and called up the display. Chandra politely turned away as he entered his password. He called up Javier Kosinic’s account and scanned the long list of files.
“May I use the wall display?” Chandra asked. “I could help you look.”
The wall display was called up and the two began a combined search, each examining different files. They worked together in a silence interrupted by Martinez’s call to Alikhan for more coffee.
Frustration built as Martinez examined file after file, finding only routine paperwork, squadron maneuvers that Kosinic had planned as tactical officer, and a half-finished letter to his father, dated the day before his death but filled only with mundane detail and containing none of the rage and monomania Chandra had described.
“He’s hiding it from us!” he finally exploded.
His right hand clenched in a fist. The captain had hid his nature as well, but he’d finally cracked the captain’s secret.
Kosinic would crack too, he swore.
“Let me check the daily logs,” Chandra said. “If we look at his activity, we might be able to see some patterns.”
The logs flashed on the wall screen, the automatic record of every call that Kosinic had ever made on the computer resources of the ship.
Tens of thousands of them. Martinez’s gaze blurred as he looked at the long columns of data.
“Look at this,” Chandra said. She moved a cursor to highlight one of Kosinic’s commands. “He saved a piece of data to a file called ‘Rebel Data.’ Do you remember seeing that file?”
“No,” Martinez said.
“It’s not very large. It’s supposed to be in his account, in another file called ‘Personal.’” Chandra’s cursor jittered over the display. “Here’s another save to the same file,” she said. “And another.”
Though he already knew it wasn’t there, Martinez looked again at Kosinic’s personal file and found nothing. “It must have been erased.”
“Or moved somewhere,” Chandra said. “Let me do a search.”
The search through the ship’s vast data store took about twelve seconds.
“If the file was moved,” Chandra concluded, “it was given a new name.”
Martinez had already called up the log files. “Let’s find the last time anyone gave a command regarding that file.”
Another five seconds sped by. Martinez stared in shock at the result. “The file was erased.”
“Who by?” Chandra said. When he didn’t answer, she craned her neck to read his display upside down, then gave a soft cry of surprise.
“Captain Gomberg Fletcher,” she breathed.
They stared at one another for a moment.
“You can’t suppose,” Chandra began, “that Fletcher was somehow part of the Naxid plot, and that Javier found out about it, and Fletcher had him killed?”
Martinez considered this, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anything the Naxids could offer Fletcher to make him betray his ship.”
Chandra gave a little laugh. “Maybe they offered to give him a painting he really wanted.”
Martinez shook his head. “No, I think Kosinic must have discovered the Narayanist cult. Or he discovered something else that got him killed, and Fletcher suppressed the information in order to protect the Narayanists.” He looked at the data glowing in the depths of his desk, and his heart gave a surge as he saw the date.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “Fletcher erased the file the same day he died.” He looked more carefully at the date. “In fact, he seems to have erased the file around the time he was killed.”
Chandra surged out of her hair and partway across his desk to confirm this. Her perfume, some kind of deep rosewood flavor with lemony highlights, floated into his senses. Glowing columns of data reflected in her eyes as she scanned for information. “The erase command came from this desk,” she pointed out. “Whoever killed him sat in your chair, with the body leaking on the floor next to him, and cleaned up the evidence.”
Martinez scanned along the log file. “Fletcher logged in three hours earlier, and never logged out. So he was probably looking at Kosinic’s file when the killer arrived.”
“Whatother files was he looking at?” Chandra slid off the desk and onto her own chair. She gave a series of rapid orders to the wall display. “That night he made entries in a file called ‘Gambling.’”