'You've got to admit,' said Corso, 'it'd be kind of ironic if that did turn out to be the case.'
'Ironic how?'
'He's at least partly responsible for what happened at Port Gabriel, so it'd be a kind of karmic justice, don't you think?'
'Maybe.' The corner of Lamoureaux's mouth twitched slightly. 'I'll have to admit I hadn't thought of that.'
Corso nodded in the direction they'd been heading. 'We should get back to the bridge now,' he said, pushing away from the bulkhead they had paused to rest against.
'Lucas, wait. I didn't just want to talk to you about Whitecloud.'
Corso grabbed a rung, before he could drift too far ahead. 'What then?'
'I mean Olivarri. Your aides asked me some questions about him when we were back at Ocean's Deep.'
'What kind of questions?'
'About who I might have seen him talking to.'
Corso frowned. 'Ray Willis was Olivarri's boss. He'd have told me if something was wrong.'
'I had the impression they were just feeling something out, like there was just the merest suggestion of irregularities. That's what Nisha said to me.'
'Why are you telling me this now?'
'It's not too late to send a signal back to Ocean's Deep. I don't know what's happened to Nisha or Yugo since the Legislate took over, but maybe one of them might still be in a position to help us run a deeper background check on him.'
'I don't know,' said Corso. 'It's going to use a lot of power to boost a signal that far.'
'Sure,' Lamoureaux agreed. 'But on the other hand we might find out why someone wanted him dead.'
Chapter Twenty-six
Over the next few days, Ty was surprised at how quickly normal routines reasserted themselves. When Nancy made an unexpected visit to the lab on the evening after the discovery of Olivarri's body, he had asked her questions even as he undressed her, until finally she pressed a finger against his mouth to forestall any further interrogation.
By the following evening, the last of the disrupted systems were back to normal, and Ty found himself scheduled to take part in the first of a series of hull-maintenance shifts, in the company of Martinez and Perez. As soon as they were outside, Ty made an excuse to head off in the direction of the stern, and a failing drive-spine, accompanied by a half-dozen spider-mechs.
He set the hull-clamps to retract, and waited until they had unlocked from around the spine, before setting the spiders to work in lifting it out of its socket. He then left them to it, making his way quickly to an emergency airlock close by.
Ty clambered inside and yanked the hatch shut after him, pulling his helmet off as soon as the air had finished cycling. Then he activated the airlock's inbuilt comms terminal.
This, he knew, was where he ran the greatest risk of being caught. Although he had been careful to pick out an airlock equipped with an imager-enabled terminal, the unscheduled tach-net link he was about to open might drain enough power to trigger an alert on the bridge, one that could in turn be traced back to his current whereabouts. But it was still a risk he was prepared to take.
He pulled off his right glove and reached out to the terminal screen, then paused. He could stop now, go back outside, and get on with his scheduled task. He could simply forget about his encounter with Olivarri.
No. He took a deep breath, shook his head as if to dispel his fears, and pressed his palm flat against the screen – making sure the ring given to him by the avatar came into full contact with it.
The panel flashed twice, to show it had recognized the ring as imager-compatible. Ty waited as the terminal pulled a data package out of the ring and dumped it into its own localized memory. The panel flashed again, letting him know it was working at opening up a line of communication.
Whoever was behind the avatar hadn't lied when boasting about the level of encryption involved. Ty had uploaded the same data packages into the lab's own stacks, but hadn't been able to crack them, despite several days of effort. But that didn't matter nearly so much as finding out what was really going on.
He fidgeted there in the coffin-like space for several minutes, while he waited for the terminal to establish a link. He briefly opened up his spacesuit's comms to check in on Martinez and Perez, but they were busy talking sports, so he turned it off again and waited.
The terminal chimed eventually, and a confirmation request appeared. Ty tapped the screen, and a moment later the same avatar he had encountered in Unity appeared before him.
'Mr Whitecloud,' acknowledged the voice behind the avatar.
'There was another Consortium agent on the Mjollnir, and now he's dead,' Ty yelled, without any preamble. 'What the hell is going on? Just how many of you people are on this ship? And… how the hell do I even know you're really a Consortium agent? In fact, what proof did I ever get?'
The avatar gazed back, silent and calm and so clearly artificial, while whoever was behind it tried to put together a response.
'We're aware of your encounter with Leo Olivarri,' the synthesized voice finally responded. 'Olivarri was in reality an agent for the Freehold Senate – not for the Consortium.'
Ty stared at the screen, befuddled. How could they have found out about Olivarri's death already? How-?
'No.' Ty shook his head several times, slowly at first, then more violently. 'No, that's bullshit. I talked to him! He told me he was a Consortium agent, and I asked him why he'd approached me, when you had already contacted me. He didn't know what the hell I was talking about. So I know he was telling me the truth. He had no idea who you were – and now he's dead!'
There was another long pause, and Ty imagined whatever shadowy figure lurked behind the avatar trying to come up with a plausible response.
'It's possible,' the avatar said eventually, 'that whoever killed him might target you next.'
'None of what you're saying makes any sense!' Ty shouted at the tiny screen. 'If he was really working for the Freehold, then who killed him? Yet another Consortium agent?'
He pounded the hard plastic of the screen with one fist, feeling pain like hot needles being rammed into his knuckles. He was breathing hard, hyperventilating, fast using up the airlock's limited supply of air. He sobbed with frustration, and felt hot salt tears trickle down his cheeks.
'Listen to me,' he spat, both hands now gripping the sides of the screen, as if framing the face of the avatar. 'Show yourself. Do you hear me? Show yourself. And tell me who the hell killed Olivarri… and if it had anything to do with your talking to me!'
'Nathan?'
It was Martinez, his voice sounding tinny from within Ty's discarded suit helmet. He grabbed up the helmet and opened a channel.
'Where are you?' asked Martinez. 'We can see your spiders, but we can't see you. You need to stay in sight at all times, Nathan.'
'I'm fine. Sorry,' Ty replied, a little too hurriedly. He swallowed and forced himself to sound calm, or they would suspect something was wrong. 'I'm… I thought some of the stern drive-spines might have got more damaged than we thought. So I figured it might be better to check them out, just in case. I'll be right back.'
'Well, okay,' said Martinez, doubt evident in his voice. 'We're heading up to one of the middle hull sections. Mr Corso's currently picking up some fail signatures from up that way, and we're off to take a look. We'll see you there in… make it five hundred seconds from now. Got that?'