Empire of Light

Perez looked up from Olivarri's pulped features. 'Look, this is pure speculation, but is it possible all this – the sabotage, the systems failures – was intended just to cover this up?'

The three men exchanged looks. 'The same thought did cross my mind,' said Corso. 'We've already got most of the primary systems back online. At first we thought we were looking at a catastrophic system failure, but in the end it proved to be not much more than an inconvenience.'

'A distraction, in other words?' said Martinez.

Corso stared down again at the dead man and felt a flash of resentment, as if this new crisis were somehow the victim's fault. It was hard to connect this crumpled ruin with the living, breathing human being Olivarri had been.

Martinez sighed and turned to Perez. 'Any sign of the weapon?'

'Not that I could find,' Perez replied. 'But I'd say it was a wrench or something similar. There are diagnostic programs we can run to figure out how it was done, within a fairly narrow margin of error. Same thing goes for any DNA or other chemical traces left behind – assuming we find them.'

'We're going to have to search everyone's quarters,' decided Martinez. 'These labs, the bridge, and anywhere any of us have spent much time.'

'Surely whoever did this wouldn't have been stupid enough to leave a murder weapon lying around their own quarters?' Corso protested.

'We don't know, do we?' said Martinez. 'Any idea who was the last of us to see him before he was killed?'

'He was outside doing hull repairs with Nancy and Nathan,' said Perez. 'But that was several hours before the outage.'

Corso recalled that Olivarri had spent a lot of time visiting remote parts of the ship, checking up on various life-support and maintenance systems in areas where the surveillance coverage was often less than adequate. There might have been any number of opportunities for someone to track him down and kill him.

Martinez glanced over at Perez. 'Dan, would you mind giving me and Lucas a minute alone?'

Perez looked warily at the two of them, then walked out into a passageway adjoining the bay. Martinez turned to Corso, his expression grim.

'I was still in the med-bay when that Shoal-member came on board,' he said, sounding heated. 'And since then I've listened to all your arguments about why he's here, but I don't get the sense you're anywhere near as much in control as you seem to think you are. Merrick didn't show herself until we were already on board, even though we needed her around well in advance of the launch. The way it seems to me, she doesn't give a damn what anyone else on this ship says or thinks, and now we're one man down, which means we've got a killer somewhere on board. Let's just say you're not inspiring my confidence in your leadership skills.'

Corso felt his jaw muscles tighten. 'I told you already why things are the way they are.'

'And yet I keep asking myself the same question again and again: who's in charge of this expedition? You or Dakota?' Martinez raised his eyebrows a fraction. 'Or maybe Trader's the one who's really running things?'

'You're saying you could have done things better?'

Martinez sighed. 'Once word about this gets around, everyone's going to be wondering if they'll be next. What you need to do now is make them feel like you're in control of things, because you're the reason we're all here. And if you thought your job was hard before, it's about to get an awful lot harder. I mean, you do realize Dakota's going to be top of everyone's shit list when they start looking for someone to blame for his death? Assuming,' he added, 'that she didn't do it herself

Corso let his shoulders sag. 'All right,' he conceded, 'what do you suggest?'

'Talk to Dakota – Lamoureaux as well. See if their stories add up, and if they do we can get on with finding out who actually did do this.'

'Fine. I'll talk to Dakota first.'

'We'll both talk to her.'

'No,' Corso shook his head fiercely, 'I'll talk to her alone. The rest we can interview together.'

Martinez fixed him with a look that made Corso wonder if he was asking for too much this time.

'All right.' Martinez nodded at Olivarri's corpse. 'We'll play it your way for now, but just for now. Just show me you've got a handle on things.'

'Thank you, Eduard. Right now she needs to work with Ted to get the rest of the data-space back online, but I'll talk to her as soon as they're finished.'

'No.' Martinez shook his head slowly. 'Don't try to thank me. Just figure out what the hell's going on before anyone else ends up like this.' 'Are you serious?' Dakota looked offended. 'You think I had something to do with Olivarri's death?'

Corso leaned against a bulkhead and closed his eyes for a moment. They were back in the debriefing room located on the centrifuge. Dakota slumped back in her chair, her eyes puffy and red from too much stress and too little sleep. They had all been working long and hard at getting the last of the systems online.

Tension had hung heavy in the air since Olivarri had been found dead less than twelve hours before, and large parts of the frigate had been declared off-limits. People got on with their jobs, or talked over food in one of the canteens, but it was impossible to miss how they all kept glancing over their shoulders, or the careful way they looked at each other. Corso could feel it too: the sense that nowhere was safe.

'You know that I have to ask, because no one but you and Ted has the kind of high-level access needed to pull something like this off

She gave him a withering look. 'Nice to know you've got my back, Lucas.'

'Jesus and Buddha, Dakota, I only just managed to convince Martinez to let me talk to you on my own.'

'Why? What is it you don't want him to hear?'

'For a start, he's better off not knowing about some of the things that happened at Nova Arctis. It's a matter of public record that the Uchidans mind-controlled you at Port Gabriel, but if he knew how Trader did it to you a second time, he'd lock you up or throw you out the nearest airlock, and to hell with me or the Mos Hadroch.'

'And that's what you think is happening to me?'

Corso felt his face grow hot. 'I'd be an idiot if I ruled it out.'

She stood up and leaned against the table, facing him obliquely, her arms folded defensively over her chest. 'Then I'm ruling it out for you. And, in answer to your next question, I've barely even spoken to Olivarri, except for the one time we were out on the hull working on some repairs along with Dan.'

'There's no possible way Trader could have got to you somehow, without your being aware of it?'

'Look, what Trader did to me back then was a kind of rape. But he had to get physically close before he could do it. I'd know if he tried anything like that again, and he knows that I'd know.'

'And yet you said you met him in person, the time he gave you control over the Meridian weapons.'

'That's true,' she nodded, 'but there still wasn't any direct or even indirect contact of any kind. Certainly nothing physically passed from him to me in any way.'

'But it doesn't always have to be physical, does it?'

'No, but this time I'd have known it. If I'd been affected in any way, the Magi ship would have told me.'

'Except that your Magi ship isn't around any more.'

'Yes, but…' She hesitated. 'Look, I see where you're going. But if I was compromised, Ted would know.'

'All right.' Corso moved away from the wall and came closer to her. 'Can you think of a reason why anyone might want to kill Olivarri? Even Trader?'

'Hell if I know,' she replied. 'Have you talked to Trader?'

'I did. He says he knows nothing about it. But even if he's lying, what can we do?'