Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 13 / Chapter 15 –>

His first day on New Holyoke, he sleeps. Exhausted, insensate, dreamless, with Nomar curled up at his feet and blankets soft as silk wadded around him like burial shrouds. He sleeps until the despair is gone, the aches are dulled, the horror dissipates, and when he wakes, he is empty, like an urn that has been hung upside down, its contents spilled across the ground, full of nothing but darkness and echoes and air.

Ray immediately considers this to be an improvement.

Golden light slants through the cottage windows in a way that suggests afternoon and autumn, the scent of dried leaves and dust. He lays still for a time, letting the sunlight bake against his hands and arms, staring at the ceiling as though he can’t remember where he is, who he is, what he’s supposed to be doing or thinking.

But it comes back, all of it. Too soon, in fact, and he feels himself adrift.

The house doesn’t help, this place the Whistons call their guest cottage, tucked down a white pebbled path, inside the walled fortification of the family estate on the outskirts of Blackheath Grange. He only saw glimpses of it last night on the interminable ride through the city in sleek, dark family vehicles like limousines with windows tinted so darkly the streetlights were little more than opaque smudges. They slewed from street to street with him unable to get his bearings, unable to recognize landmarks, even only vaguely aware when they crossed over the river. It wasn’t even like being in a strange city–it was being in a strange city that he knew nothing about, an imaginary place about which there was no record.

Then there had been the bustle of their arrival through the security gates, a dozen domestics to meet them at the door. Some to shuffle sleepy-eyed children off to their new beds and strange surroundings; others taking Emma by the arm and leading her off to see her mother; still more reporting changes, updates, essential household information to Amah and relating that they’d heard from the family physician already about Frederick’s admission to the medical facility. Ray had assimilated all of this information with something less than optimum clarity. He was too busy being introduced to a sullen faced gentlemen who seemed prone to speak about as often as Nomar, held himself stiffly and marched them along the path sprinkled with low, dim cones of illumination around the house, through a tangle of wilderness and around to the cottage.

They called it a cottage, these nutty Whistons, but to Ray’s cramped-ship and tent city sensibilities, it was immense–easily as large as the tumbledown farmhouse in which he’d grown up with mother and father and three brothers and an endless succession of friends, neighbors, the stray uncle and cousin or three.

Ray listens to the silence, the lack of thrust rumble, the absence of feet pounding the deckplate outside his door. If he strains, there is sound: the rustle of wind through fat leaves, the tick of tree branches against the outside wall, the slide and rustle of his own skin against the sheets. The silence is thunderous, ominous.

He wonders what time it is, and thinks about the possibility of being hungry.

After awhile, he rouses himself, wincing through the reintroduction to a cascade of bruises and scrapes, aches and bullet furrows. He examines each of these injuries in turn, comes to the assessment that none of them are very serious at all, then gathers his trousers from the untidy pile on the carpet next to bed and slides them on. Next the shirt, socks, boots. He digs through the tall wardrobe cabinet against one wall. There are drawers on one side and a locking cabinet on the other where he could hang suit jackets if he had any, but since he doesn’t, he instead tosses in the tac harness he’s worn since leaving Paraclete and pockets the key. An actual key, interestingly enough, with teeth. Fascinating as an antique curiosity, but not exactly secure. But it’s the best he can do.

Ray makes a brief circuit around the room, acquainting himself. There’s a narrow door off to one side that opens on a small restroom. Sink, toilet, shower and a linen closet with fresh towels and guest toiletries. More tables and bureaus and cabinets that contain either nothing at all or interesting little banalities like pens and writing tablets. All of these items are old, finely crafted and meticulously maintained–the sort of things Ray used to find in his grandmother’s house when he was still young enough that he was supposed to look without touching.

He traces the baseboards along the half-paneled walls, looks behind innocuous landscape paintings and mirrors, moves a couple of wing-backed leather chairs, scuffing the carpet in the process. He does not find the one thing that he’s looking for, that being a data terminal. Neither terminal nor ports, not even ancient hub jacks.

Ray steps back toward the center of the room considering this, blinking at the oddity. It feels as though he’s just lost access to half his brain.

There’s a knock at the door.

Not a ping, not a buzz, not a greeting daimon. A knock. Knuckles on wood.

The door opens a moment later, which is probably for the best, since Ray wasn’t exactly sure at first what to do about this whole knocking business.

A young man, dark-skinned, with plaited hair ducks his head inside. He sees Ray standing there, tilts his head casually, like a nod, and swings the door wide.

“Commander Marlowe?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I heard you moving around. I’m Jagiri Oh-Kar.”

“Okay.”

“I work for the family. Amah asked me to keep an eye out for you, since you’re new to the colony. Acquaint you with things, you understand. See to any needs you might have.”

Ray rubs his hand across his face, still trying to sort things out. “That’s good. I seem to be a little bewildered at the moment.” He takes one last look around the room. “Is there a data terminal I can access? Something linked to the global net?”

Jagiri gives him a big smile, all teeth. “Amah said you might ask for such things. There’s a communication center at the manor house that you can use, but I suspect you’ll be disappointed with the facilities. We don’t have much of a global net here.”

“Don’t have?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about New Holyoke, Commander, but we’re probably somewhat rustic compared to what you’re used to. We have a pretty modern communication infrastructure between the Port Authority ring and the ground, and the mining operation has a pretty broad net, too, but other than that, we’re strictly backwater out here. Most of our information outside the colony comes in as dispatches from starships or leaks from the EED installation, which is pretty wired from what I understand.”

Ray grapples with this concept for several seconds, but it’s slippery and seems to defy his best efforts to get his mind around it.

“We have newspapers,” Jagiri offers hopefully, “if you’re just wanting to catch up on local events. I just finished thumbing through today’s edition. I can bring it up to you. You might be interested to know that your arrival last night made the front page.”

“Um, no.”

“You’re quite the hero around here, if I might say so, sir. Saving the entire family from the starship, I mean.”

Ray waves him off. “Really, that’s enough. You’re creeping me out looking at me like that.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Like that. That whole wide-eyed thing and calling me ‘sir’. Let’s move on to something else. I’ll find my own way to access the network grid.”

The young man shrugs, still too entirely pleased with himself or with Ray or their encounter in general. “I have some messages for you.”

“Fine.”

“A Colonel Ritchie from EED has flared you about a dozen times today. He says he would really like to speak with you as soon as possible.” Jagiri hesitates momentarily, then grins again. “He seems to be becoming increasingly impatient with the delay.”

Which makes sense, Ray figures, given the fact that he more or less blew off the security escort that attempted to intercept him at the airfield last night. “What else?”

“Four tabloid reporters would like interviews. Two vid companies, too. They’re outside the gates now in big trundles, waiting for you or one of the Whistons to emerge.”

“Screw them. Is that it?”

“Miss Whiston has asked that you come to dinner this evening at the manor. She said you would want to know that the invitation is not a personal one, but a formal one, and that she understands completely if you wish to decline.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Jagiri gives him a slight, conspiratorial wink. “It means that this isn’t a family dinner, but an event. A few strenuously selected members of the press will attend. Friends, of course, but still media. They’ll want to meet you. She’s giving you fair warning.”

“But declining the invitation would be bad form, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

Rats.

Continuing, Jagiri says, “Miss Whiston anticipated that you’d see it that way. She asked me to run out and pick up a few items for you this morning–appropriate clothing, I mean. I estimated your sizes from the clothes you arrived in.”

“Great.” If it was possible to sound less enthusiastic, Ray would have found it. “What time is now…in Terran standard if you know it.”

“Just after six o’clock ante meridian.”

“Local time?”

“Thirteenth Hour. We run a twenty-eight hour day. That makes it about the middle of the afternoon by your reckoning.”

Ray chews his lip. “And dinner?”

“Twentieth hour. So if you’d like to discharge your responsibilities with Colonel Ritchie beforehand, I can arrange a discreet vehicle and we can be back in time for you to change. If nothing else, having the dinner party to attend will give you an excuse to leave.”

“I don’t think the EED really gives a rat about the Whiston social calendar.”

The grin, the teeth. “You might be surprised, sir.”

“You’re right. I probably would be.”

Which for some reason, doesn’t please him at all. But he has things to do, not the least of which is finding out what, if any, progress has been made on the rescue efforts. Ray whistles for Nomar, who pops his head above the bed’s footboard at once and hops over to him in anticipation.

“Let’s get this over with.”

***

Jagiri’s idea of a discreet vehicle is a heavily armored mobile that bears strong resemblance to a military surplus Prowler. The tires are wide, knobby and well worn. The chassis sits high above the ground, so he has to climb up into the passenger seat. It’s coated in thick ocher dust from hood to tailgate, like it’s just been hauled back from hard duty in a mining canyon. He would, however, be more impressed if they’d thought to leave intact the fifty caliber machine gun and its swiveling turret. Instead, there’s a second row of bench seats and a long cargo bed.

Parked in neat rows around the Prowler are the limousines from last night, a pair of sporty late model Manchiti Spiders, three passenger trundles with the words Whiston Charitable Trust stenciled on the side and rows of uninteresting, assembly line touring vehicles. Behind him, tucked inside the steel frame garage structure were motorcycles, ore tugs, off-road rec scampers, construction equipment.

It begins to occur to him that the Whistons are, in fact, bloody rich

Ray cranes his neck and peers out the open passenger window for at time. The sky is a pale, wintry blue, puffy with pinkish cumulous clouds. Vaguely Terran, but just a shade off, as though it’s been scoured of deeper hues by the rough caress of the solar winds. The whole world seems bleached, shallow, lacking a dimension he can’t properly identify. The wild grass that surrounds the paved area of the motor pool appears tough, but scraggly in a way that reminds him the heath on English moors. There are a few stunted trees and meandering bushes nearby, their colors predominantly brown, wasted, like they’ve been subjected to a particularly noxious pesticide.

Or maybe it’s just the air itself, he thinks, a curious and pungent scent that is both dusty and oily, like diesel fumes. He wonders if that’s New Holyoke or the proximity of the mining operation.

He rolls his head around, away from the grassy waste and toward the manor house, where Emma’s tower is all that peeks above the aesthetic berm that separates the manor house from the garage complex.

It was, indeed, a tower, just as she had said.

As they pulled up the long drive last night and she told him of things Whiston and New Holyokan, pointing out sights, she did not neglect the existence of her tower (or her previous insistence upon it) as part of her spitfire, hand-clutching introduction to her home.

Blackheath Grange was originally the name of the Whiston house on New Holyoke, a sprawling English Farmstead Revival structure built over a period of a decade from the native hard, gray stone that resembled (and may have been, for all Ray knew) slate, taken in whole slabs which had been carved from the bluffs which surrounded the town. Not a true Revival building, of course, due to the addition of the Faery Turret that stabbed skyward from its central courtyard–an obelisk of glowing white marble quarried from the same Arkansas hills that had supplied the raw materials to the Washington monument and cut to precise specifications by some of Terra’s most renowned stonemasons. Beneath the summer sun, she had assured him, it achieved a warm, burnished hue that lent the impression that it had caught fire.

Small windows, dark porticoes, heavy ledges between floors, the Grange itself conjured images of rain and chilly winters flattened by an uncomfortable amount of snowfall. It reminded Ray of some feckless young woman’s idealized version of a bunker, except that there were fluted Roman columns where there should have been machine gun nests and elegantly landscaped shrubberies where he would have placed sandbags.

The original structure appeared to have been a rough square, hollowed in the middle by the piazza, with a porticoed entrance and mountains of roof gables sprouting off in all directions like broken bottles atop a perimeter wall. Now there were wings slabbed along the eastern and western sides, ugly block-style dormitories for children of the Trust and the administrative facilities an enterprise like the Trust required.

When Fram Whiston, Emma’s great-grandfather, was building the Grange and solidifying Whiston control of New Holyoke, there had been just the house and a cluster of pre-fab pressurized Quonsets for the workers he paid to come with him, later the miners and engineers with the latest in sonar subterranean mapping tech and portable laser quik-drill rigs who ran the Whiston-Holyoke Elements and Materials Corporation (WHELEMAT). For years, the house served as mining company headquarters, satellite comm hub and government statehouse. By the time the population had begun to explode and the settlers to arrive, the old folks were used to just calling the area in general after the name Fram had given his manor house. Most people were quick enough to realize that the house never had been part of the city anyway, but the city itself only a sort of organic growth attached to the house.

These days, when the scattered settler and mining habs came to town for supplies or to resolve assorted legal disputes or to entice the latest shipment of newbies out to their corner of frontier Bumfuck, the city was Blackheath Grange, and the house simply the Grange, and nobody who knew anything about polite conversation confused the two, though the Grange had long ago passed out of the public and administrative uses Fram may or may not have originally intended for it.

To hear Emma tell it, the history of the Grange was long, winding and romantic, possibly even an epic chapter in the Whiston tradition, inextricably linked with the raw and thrilling past of the New Holyoke colony itself. House as metaphor for some as-yet-unrealized and prosperous future, or maybe not even a metaphor, but an oracle, a promise of things to come.

The story, radically paraphrased, went something like this: dead old Fram, patriarch of the New H Whiston clan endures the ego-shattering vote of no-confidence foisted upon him by a combination of hostile shareholders in the Whiston Corp, hostile Whiston elements (cousins and in-laws and mixed breed stormcrows more properly referred to as either sub-Whistons or pseudo-Whistons) and the corporate board of directors, resulting in the removal of just about every one of his actual company-guiding authorities. Relegated to the role of symbolic monarch, an economic prisoner in a labyrinth of his own family’s design, he seeks out and procures a solitary dispensation from Forum cronies to have a mining go at the newly discovered New Holyoke mineral bonanza. This comes in the form of a colonial charter.

Largely in secret, Fram assembles forces loyal to himself (excluding all pseudo-Whistons, of course) and founds Whelemat on the sly as a sub-sub-sub-Whiston Corp tax shelter and flings them all aboard a fast moving starship into frontier exile. This is like five hundred men and their families and assorted possessions, all bankrolled by a black bag account the actual Whiston Corp probably is still not aware exists. Old, dead Fram’s only opposition in this particular plan comes from his blushing, young bride of less than a year, who strongly resists being dumped into the far reaches of the galaxy. But because she is loyal and strong and shares the mental and emotional ouster-scarring visited upon her husband, she agrees to go along in the end.

Fram is determined to reward her steadfastness and to make her as reasonably happy on New H as she was back home, so as soon as the Quonsets go up, Fram produces the plans for the Grange, divides his laborers into miners and construction personnel and sets to work on the twin enterprises. Dashingly romantic, this gesture is. Makes half the female population of the colony swoon, it is so romantic, and immediately fixes in the minds of the new colonists what a noble, caring and reliable man old, dead Fram Whiston truly is.

On this wave of popular support and devotion, Fram names himself the first official governor of New Holyoke, the first financial officer, recruiting agent, chief executive officer, etc., etc., and through his deep pockets and political connections almost single handedly ensures the early survival of the colony. Not that this is a Plymouth Rock sort of scenario by any stretch of the imagination. Interstellar shipping and commerce with the frontier is a well established routine, largely risk neutral, and anyone with Fram’s deep pockets is bound to get anything he might want or need if he can pay the bill of lading.

In the following years, there is much excitement, much risk, everything going wrong at times except marauding bands of hostile indians, but in the end, there’s the thriving city and settler habs springing up all over the planet and open migration that brings in something on the order of forty thousand fresh-faced colonists a year. New H is poised for the boom that Fram foresaw when he created Whelemat and built the Grange as a symbol of his determination to eke out a permanent settlement that would rival Strat and Orduvai and maybe even Mars, one day.

A grand, rough and tumble frontier tale about the values of brow-sweat and good companions and work ethic.

Blah, blah.

Because as Ray looked at the house, then down the slight rill into a city that, for all he could tell, was still trying to catch up to the Grange’s implied opulence and solidity, he couldn’t help but imagine the scene a different way. The great starship shedding low-orbital shuttles like gnats, the first footsteps on alien ground, the obligatory flag stabbed into the soil along the river’s bank. Then here comes nutty, eccentric, insanely wealthy Fram Whiston, still psychically wincing from having his family bitch slap his business vision, and he assembles all of his well-purchased compatriots and their wives and their kids into a circle and says something like: Okay, folks, I really want to tell you how pleased I am that you’ve decided to come along and have a go at this me. I can’t tell you how much you mean to me, and hey, can we have a nice, old school ‘rah, rah, rah’ for our new business venture! Well, yes, but before we get to that part, and immediately after we set up your stuffy little pressure huts where we’re going to stack you eight or ten deep, what I want to show you is the nifty plans I’ve drawn up for my personal palace! Gotta have it, you understand, because me and the little missus are not classless animals like you, and when we want to fuck, we want genteel surroundings to do our fucking in. So, long and the short of it is that you’re going to spend the next ten years making sure I’m as happy and comfortable here as I was back on Terra! And maybe if you’re lucky, and you work really hard to make me even more mindlessly wealthy than I already am, your kids or grandkids or more likely, your great-grandkids can one day have a house as nice as mine to fuck in, too!

And as he imagines the manor house rising up like a rotten tooth from the gums of this hilltop above the valley’s alluvial plain and the incongruity between it and the slowly rusting huts, he thinks dead old Fram was probably shunted out of Whiston Corp power for a whole host of good reasons.

He was obviously quite the dumbass.

More than likely, the first New H colonists built him his house and jump started his rival mining corporation because it was their dream to do so, their dreams that brought them out across vast space, out of overcrowded Terran space and into the cosmic wastes. Fram gets the credit only because he was stupid enough to guarantee them goods and salaries and a risk-free stab at making themselves masters of a new world.

Looking at Emma’s Faery Turret and wondering what she’s doing right now, at this moment, Ray realizes that she probably doesn’t see it happening the way he imagines it. Probably wouldn’t appreciate his insight if he offered it.

So he looks away and rolls his window up.

Jagiri emerges from the garage, where he’s been wrangling with the fleet clerk and assorted onlooking mechanics for the keys, and hoists himself up into cab. He snaps the assorted fission toggles, checks his gauges and engages the power train. The Prowler sets off away from the manor house along a graveled drive that wends back through the compound.

“Back gate,” he explains, before Ray can even ask. “We use it primarily for deliveries, so it gets pretty regular traffic from heavy vehicles like the Prowler. And we’ve got the industrial camouflage going on, from the dust, I mean. You duck down a bit when we pull onto the access road just in case there’s an enterprising reporter hanging about, though.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before. Do the Whistons have to sneak out of the house regularly?”

“Not like every day, no. But often enough.” Jagiri purses his lips, like it’s an old aggravation. “It’s not so bad as it used to be, so they tell me. When the colony was younger and the family more involved in the mining operation and the government, it was constant. Whiston on the front page every day, media always wanting comments on this and that. Since the Old Man passed, the attention has gotten less and less. Part of that had to do with Frederick and Miss Whiston being just children, so the local Board took over their roles for the most part. After that, there were just more people, new ones every month looking to mine or settle. It’s not their every move that gets tracked anymore, just the big ones.”

“Yikes.”

“In some ways, I think it’s worse now, despite what people say. Back then, people wanted to know what the Whistons had to say about policy, about trade and business. It was colony affairs, and everybody had a stake, or was looking for a little comfort when times got lean. But now it’s private lives, a different sort of celebrity. They want to know what Mr. Whiston is reading, what he’s spending his money on, which girl he’s taking around. They ask when Miss Whiston is going to marry and where she shops and what she thinks about the latest batch of Terran vids. It’s nastier, if you know what I mean. There’s no boundaries, just snooping, digging through the trash for things that are nobody’s business.”

“I guess celebrity has it’s price.”

“You’ll find out, Commander Marlowe.”

“Please stop calling me that. My name is Ray.”

They approach the barred rear gate and Jagiri rolls them to a halt. He jumps out, opens the gate, then idles them through, leaps out again and closes the gate behind them. Ray slumps obediently in his seat while this is going on, though there doesn’t appear to be anyone around to care about their exit.

When Jagiri starts them moving again, he straightens up and says, “You know, they make devices that will do that for you.”

“You mean open the gates?”

“Yes.”

The young man smiles like Ray has told a joke. They turn left toward the ocean onto a tarmac road lined on one side by the high compound wall and on the other with pine trees. A few kilometers on, they bounce onto a rutted track that begins a steep ascent up one arm of the escarpment that hems in Blackheath Grange.

“Let me explain something, Ray. New Holyoke is not Terra, okay? It’s not starships and global networks and nanomech technology. Do you know why Amah asked me to show you around?”

Ray shakes his head.

“Because I was born off-world. I’m a Trust baby, grew up on Orduvai until I was about fourteen Terran years. My folks were Whiston Corp hardware designers, nav systems for starships. You know about Orduvai?”

“I know it’s the headquarters for Goliath class ship manufacture. Because of the low grav.”

“Exactly. And because of the low grav, it is an extremely tech advanced social system. I mean, you’re not going to lure the top engineers and designers no matter what kind of compensation package you offer them, if part of the deal is that after two or three years on an Orduvai project, they suddenly find that they don’t have the biological capability of going back home. So you’ve got to have sim grav to compensate, and that’s no small undertaking, to build a whole dry dock installation that imitates Terran systems. So you’ve got all that tech infrastructure, and on top of that you’ve got bright folk who have to be entertained, stimulated, provided with research facilities, educational opportunities. Orduvai is like a gigantic think tank with all the technological gimcracks and jerry-candles to go along with it. That was the world that I knew before my parents passed away. It’s the world you know, too.”

At least, it’s the world they think he knows. Ray doesn’t correct him. “Go on.”

“New Holyoke is a different space, both physically and intellectually. People migrate here because it’s frontier. It’s raw and basic and human in a way that Terra isn’t anymore. Most people here still do most of their work with their own hands. Certainly, there’ve been automations and new technologies introduced into the mining end of things. We have weather satellites and the Port Authority and contact with the rest of human space, but the people who deal with those things are a highly segmented portion of the population, and even they would tell you that they amount to a sort of necessary evil, at least in the short term. Until, you know, the colony is able to be more self-sufficient.

“That frontier mindset effects the way people think, Ray. We’re different out here. In the things we expect, the things we do, the way we approach problems and issues and one another. People who come to New Holyoke and stay have chosen this lifestyle. They’ve turned their backs on a society driven by technology and machines and augmentation. They learn what it is to celebrate being rather than progressing. Around here, people call it being authentically human. You’ll hear that tossed around from time to time, and eventually you’ll get a handle on what it means. But it requires some adjustment, and I can help you with that. We’ve got similar past perspectives.”

“We’re all human,” Ray says. “Technology has nothing to do with it.”

Jagiri offers him the enigmatic grin. “You’ll feel differently about that in a few weeks. Just wait and see.”

They’ve topped the towering cliffs, and Ray can see the whole of the city beneath them, spread out like a jumble of tinsel, glimmering in the sun all the way down to the sea. Nearer is the Whiston estate, a broad wilderness space of open fields and clustered forests around which everything else crowds as though the city is a horde of barbarians attempting to breach the perimeter walls. There are ships in the harbor. Ships with canvas sails standing white and tall, taut in the breeze, and wakes that have nothing to do with fission driven propellers.

It occurs to Ray that he should probably invest some time wondering why Jagiri is expending so much effort to feed him a line of bull.

Except, of course, that he already knows. The absence of data jacks in the guest cottage explains it. Someone doesn’t want him to have access to outside information, to keep him in an environment where he doesn’t know what’s going on, at least until he can be quantified into value that can be accurately measured.

Or is it actually something that Jagiri believes? Is authentic humanity part of his Trust education, inculcated as an explanation for whisking him away from the world he has known and into a foreign galaxy and a lifetime of indentured servitude to the Whiston family and the New Holyoke colony?

He says, “You know, fission powered vehicles are not very authentically human.”

But Jagiri just laughs, throws his head back and slaps his knee. “Man, I didn’t say it’s about shunning technology. I’m a big fan of technology, of earth moving machines, of automobiles. My formal education is in geological engineering, friend. But there’s a difference between technology and devices as tools, and adopting tech in such a way that it pushes us into a post-human philosophical experience. It’s all about the body, Ray.”

“You lost me.”

“I’m talking about the song and the spark of the universe. The post-human experience is one in which we no longer know that basic truth.”

Ray suspects, based on that criteria, that he was born post-human.

In his defense, he’s tempted to bring up things like New H’s bioengineered forestry program and agricultural advances. But he doesn’t. He digs around for his mental list of polite responses, and when he can’t find it, just nods. You don’t slam another man’s religious convictions just because they’re nonsensical.

And he doesn’t have time to get into it. They’ve made the full circuit of the highlands above the city along the rutted track Jagiri insisted was a road, and now they pull onto the weathered stretch of tarmac that leads to the airfield. Jagiri talks them through the gatehouse security checkpoint, mostly by jabbing his thumb in Ray’s direction and urging the squint-eyed guard to call ahead to EED for verification.

Eventually, the gate opens and they roll past the odd collection of hangars and solar planes, Port Authority shuttles and light combustion aircraft. They proceed past the terminal building and the tower, then beyond the Whiston hangar where the podship still sits, empty and forlorn, on a barren patch of concrete. Ray watches a weather observation plane skid down one of the long glideways and taxi toward the far end of the field.

They roll to a stop outside a whitewashed stone building, square and physically undistinguished. Three stories tall, with lots of windows and a simple pitched roof with green shingles. There’s a decent perimeter area, all concrete and potential firing lanes and surrounded by a four meter tall chain link fence topped with razor wire. Off to the side, there’s another building, an adolescent version of the first, with wide, yawning windows trimmed in military green. A complex sequence of yellow lines and painted arrows on the ground function as roadway delineations. Through the space between the buildings, Ray can see the ass end of a pair of personnel carriers parked in the motor pool. Beside the front gate is a small sign that identifies the enclosed space as the New Holyoke EED installation followed by a string of arcane identification digits that Ray supposes represent something meaningful to people who know about such things.

Jagiri gooses the Prowler off to the side so they’re not blocking the entrance, then shuts the engine down. Ray shoves at the door and steps out, slamming the door behind him before Nomar can skitter after him, and before he is bound by social convention to see if the young Jagiri Oh-Kar wants to follow him inside.

“Watch him,” he says to Jagiri through the window. “He’s a very expensive piece of government property. And he’s annoying.”

The authentically human Jagiri glances suspiciously at the rat. Nomar, who has been more than likely following their conversation with some degree of attention, looks back at the young man with roughly the same degree of pleasure. Ray walks away.

He gives his name to the guard at the gate, a brusque private in olive drab, with a baseball-style hat and a holstered sidearm. The guy must have been told to expect him, because he doesn’t ask questions or request Ray’s id tags for verification, just snaps off a salute that is completely unnecessary since Ray is out of uniform and points out the exact location of the front door, which is all of about twenty meters from where they’re standing.

God, how he loves the EED.

After the sun’s white glare off so much naked concrete, he’s blinded inside and stumbles his way through a succession of receptionists and secretaries before being led by a dowdy civvy matron in a dark skirt and floral print blouse through a series of narrow corridors, up two flights of stairs and into a corner office. It’s a nice office, he thinks, once his eyes adjust. Big wooden desk, low bookshelves, plaques on the wall for various service awards, potted plants standing in the corners. Very neat, proper, squared away in a sort of lived in fashion rather than just spartan and workplace-like.

After a few minutes, the door opens and Colonel Ritchie enters. He’s medium height, a little shorter than Ray, fortyish, sun-browned, with an iron gray buzzcut that makes him look grizzled. The Colonel is wearing his standard olive jacket with all the service bars and the dreaded golden birds shining on his collar. He brushes past without a word and crosses the room, all the time leafing through loose papers in a manila file folder.

He stops behind his desk, at the chair, but doesn’t sit. Colonel Ritchie flops the folder down so that some of the loose papers fan out. Ray remembers to salute, judging from his reception that they like that kind of thing around here. That’s the problem with frontier military outposts. You can never tell if they’re going to be strict discipline sites in order to interdict the effects of distance and loose chain of command, or casual, seat-of-the pants affairs where a strictly observed salute is about as endearing as a slap.

Ritchie ignores his gesture, fixes him with hard, blue eyes. “You called me a pigfucker, son.”

“With all due respect, sir: you were acting like pigfucker.” Ray drops his salute. It occurs to him that Lieutenant Kato must be non-Terran, because Colonel Ritchie is most definitely not Scottish.

Still glaring, Ritchie nods at the file he has just discarded. “Says there that you grew up in rural Indiana. What, about twenty miles outside Bloomington?”

“Hoo-ah, sir. Go Hoosiers.”

That does it. The Colonel looks away, puts a hand to his mouth to cover his grin. “I guess you never do lose the accent.”

“No you don’t, but the outworld girls love it.”

“They do, don’t they?” He points Ray toward one of the chairs opposite his desk and they both sit. “Of course, I came by mine dishonestly. I grew up in Ohio, but did my undergrad and graduate work at Indiana.”

“I’m sure the state has been more than happy to adopt you as one of its own.”

“It’s coming on autumn here, and sometimes I get that feeling still, you know? I can hear the sound of ball on the court, remember the way the cords rip coming off that perfect arch from behind the three point line, getting nothing but net. The echo of an empty gymnasium around you. The odor of floor wax and old sweat.” Ritchie shakes his head sadly. “I’ve got five hundred men under my command here, and not one of them can set a decent pick. And you don’t even want to see their jumpshots. Ugly stuff. A travesty. I get depressed just watching them.”

Ray lets him go on, this strange, understandable nostalgia. He wonders how long the Colonel has been away, but doesn’t ask.

“What is it about Indiana kids, Marlowe?”

“It’s just skill. Genetics, maybe.”

“Not that. We’re everywhere, have you noticed? You can’t go anywhere in human space without running into someone from Indiana. Soldiers, tourists, businessmen. You ask anybody at random where they’re from, and half the time, they’ll be from Indiana. It’s like we run away in droves…but when you start talking, the one thing you hear is always that deep, pressing need to go home again. Everybody just waiting for some signal that it’s time to get back.”

“If we ever did all go back, sir, we’d probably have to annex Illinois and half of Kentucky just to hold us all,” Ray says. “Well, maybe not Kentucky.”

That gets a laugh. Ritchie can’t help himself.

Then, “You have an interesting service record for someone your age, Commander Marlowe.”

“Yes.”

“What branch are you affiliated with currently?”

This means that Ritchie has the official file, not the Jack Holcomb seal-of-approval one. Once upon a time, this would have meant something important to Ray, but he can’t muster the energy to care about it. He doesn’t feel like playing the game.

“I’m Criminal Investigations.”

Ritchie rubs his hand across his mouth, considering. “That clears some things up. You were tracking down possible Lilaiken infiltrations on Paraclete.”

“That was my assignment. As you can see, I wasn’t exactly successful.”

“And now?”

Ray shrugs. He has just given Ritchie a perfect opening through which to explore the details of the Paraclete disaster without having to get heavy handed later, when he might be prone to suspecting that Ray has chosen to be less than forthcoming with him, but the Colonel has ignored it. “I was given orders to disembark at New Holyoke and pursue another line of inquiry prior to the Paraclete disaster.”

“The content of those orders being?”

“Classified,” Ray says simply.

Ritchie nods, neither sullen nor angry. Not even properly surprised. “I suspected as much. I spoke with a Lieutenant Jack Holcomb a few days ago regarding your imminent arrival. He did not specify that it would involve so much fanfare, but he did stress that your mission was critical. In fact, I was informed in rather terse language that I shouldn’t ask what you were up to because it was none of my business. I’m just supposed to offer my assistance to the extent to which I am able. He was a very annoying ether presence.”

“I imagine he was, sir.” And he also imagines that even a fringe space outpost colonel was not used to being treated as an inferior by a junior officer. “He can be rather abrasive when he wants to be.”

“I realize you haven’t been on the surface but a couple of days, Commander, so it may be a bit premature, but I’m bound to ask how you’re setting up so far given the circumstances.”

“I’ve taken a strategic resources hit, but that’s about all. There’s no reason I can’t proceed from here, assuming I can count on your cooperation on this end.”

“’A strategic resources hit.’” Ritchie murmurs. “That’s very chilly way of putting it.”

“I’m giving you facts and a mission status statement, Colonel. You would probably not want to know my actual psychological status at this point in time.”

Ritchie frowns, his tone softens a bit. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m coping, sir. Numb. But I believe I’m processing with sufficient clarity to carry out my assigned instructions.”

Now Ray understands why Ritchie skipped the obvious talking point he was offered. He’s more interested in Ray’s emotional status, cognizant of loss, than in investigation at this moment. There are two possible explanations for this: either the Colonel is a gooey, hands-on, holistic well-being sort of CO, or he has realized that it’s in the best interests of the investigation for him gauge Ray’s emotional biases and potential damage before taking what he might say at face value.

It is more than likely the latter.

Ray says, “I was only aboard Paraclete for six months, and largely independent during that time.” And when he wasn’t independent, he was mostly lying to people about his job, identity, and purpose anyway. Not exactly conducive to the formation of long-term friendships. But this isn’t the sort of thing he wants to share with Colonel Ritchie. No purpose is served by planting seeds of doubt about his veracity so soon. “I lost more men that I was close to in New Mes, sir, to be completely honest. Most of my current reaction is a response to the blunt force scale of this trauma rather than actual emotional involvement.”

Ritchie leans back in his chair, steeples his fingers together. “That’s a very self-aware deconstruction of your mental state.”

“Marines are nothing if not self-aware, Colonel.”

Another laugh, this one merely polite. “You’ve obviously known different Marines than the ones I have.” But he doesn’t dwell on it. Whatever he’s seen or heard from Ray seems to have satisfied him. “I’m as willing as the next rank inflated blow hard to recognize when my operational stake has been trumped by a competing agency. You keep the confidential bits of your mission to yourself if you like. But what happened to Paraclete is not a topic that I’m going to allow you to include beneath that umbrella. That happened in my space, on my watch and impacts my reputation. Those are my soldiers scouring the wreckage.”

“I understand.”

“Then set it up for me, Commander Marlowe. To the best of your knowledge, at least. We’ll compare endgame hypotheses later.”

Ray takes a moment to phrase his response, to cut it down to debriefing form, meaning just an exhaustive list of the facts rather than his own speculations, a thing he’s been doing for years. But it’s more complicated this time. He’s not just obfuscating the little things, the irrelevant details that can only harm good men who had momentary lapses in judgment or performance. What he has to do here is create an outright fiction, an interpretation of events that bears no practical resemblance to what really occurred.

Because he can’t include just the facts this time. There are things in his narrative that Ritchie certainly does not know, does not really want to know, and wouldn’t want to have heard them even if he comes around to the place where he can believe them. Ray has to tell the story without involving the shed. They are a useless complication to a situation that is already out of control, or will be very shortly, when Ray instructs him that a big chunk of his ever evolving primary mission focus on New Holyoke will be the arrest and conviction of Frederick Whiston–and that he fully expects Colonel Ritchie’s cooperation in that task.

Ray clears his throat, considers, begins. “I was forwarded to Paraclete on Stratiskaya Daransk via the EED tug Catamaran in late February (Terran Calendar) with instructions to present myself as a drone network hardware technician. This operation was carried out with the full knowledge and cooperation of Commander Sorensen and Security Chief Becker. They had just completed the Alamai Plantation run and disembarked three-quarters of their passenger complement and were understandably concerned about taking on so many new fares who had only been certified as threat neutral by the Strat outpost rather than EED Terminal Control, with whom they usually work. Commander Sorensen was aware of the ambiguous nature of the recent Goliath disasters and seemed more than happy to have me along.”

“Perhaps because he didn’t trust a fringe outpost to have the discernment to rule out terrorists,” Ritchie interjects, somewhat bitterly.

“It’s my belief that he was more concerned about Strat’s access to current and reliable intelligence data.”

Ritchie smiles humorlessly. “A very diplomatic escape, Mr. Marlowe. Please continue.”

“My mission was to reconfigure the drone network to seek out and obtain positive id matches against the passenger and crew manifests and run those results against the latest crim suspect databases for possible Lilaiken infiltrators. I also provided additional reactor security and emissions analysis based on disaster reconstruction hypotheses from the other disasters. It was a daunting task.”

“Apparently more daunting than the resources at your disposal were able to grapple with.”

It is not a statement of accusation, but Ray feels the sting of it nonetheless. “Yes, sir. I would tend to agree with that assessment given the circumstances. At the time, it was my belief that I had completed the mission I was assigned and was confident that I had both established id confirmations for everyone aboard as well as cleared them against the standard Lilaiken watch lists. Paraclete seemed to have avoided infiltration. Commander Sorensen and Chief Becker were satisfied with my findings. Of course, I was forced to conclude in light of recent events that we were mistaken in our confidence.”

“Indeed. But not before you caused the Lilaiken agents on board some distress apparently. Is that how you’re reading this situation, Marlowe?”

Ray knows what he means, the dissonance between the previous incidents and Paraclete. In each occurrence, the ship had first docked, unloaded essential resources, and been destroyed only upon departure. Paraclete was a significant exception.

He chooses his words carefully. “After I had concluded my examination of the passengers, I was requested by Chief Becker to assist in the investigation of a shipboard murder.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Because he believed the situation was one that would require some delicacy. He did not want Security involved overtly if it could be avoided, because of possible political ramifications. He felt that my anonymity was a reasonable solution to the unique characteristics presented by this case.”

Ritchie arches an eyebrow. “Your anonymity?”

“The victim was one of the children of the Whiston Charitable Trust. A boy named Micah Uytedehaage.”

The Colonel leans back in his chair, rolls his tongue around his mouth, but says nothing.

“And the murderer was Frederick Whiston.”

Ritchie looks like a man who has just awakened from a nightmare. Then, almost at once, he snaps back, frowns. “You have evidence to document your conclusions, I assume.”

Ray imagines the ship’s data core floating frozen in space. “Not immediately at hand, no.”

“Not–” Ritchie stops, his mouth open, brows pinched. “Ah, the evidence was being held in the ship’s encrypted data core.”

“Yes.”

“And I suppose you want me to do something about this killing?”

“Actually, I want you to charge Frederick Whiston with the mass murder of the crew and passengers of the EED Goliath class starship Paraclete.”

“Excuse me?” The colonel stiffens, like a man thunderstruck.

“Paraclete was sabotaged within a few hours of our determination to detain him for further questioning. It is my conclusion that Frederick Whiston, aware that his arrest was imminent, chose to act at that time, either to carry out his assigned mission prior to arrest or to avoid the legal consequences of his actions. Perhaps both.”

“You’re telling me you believe that Frederick Whiston was operating as a Lilaiken agent?” Ritchie does not seem to have an expression to attach to this statement. He rifles through a half dozen as he speaks, from surprise to suspicion, dread to imbecility.

And Ray understands perfectly, because he’s left out the convincing parts. Without the shed, there is no logical significance to the theft of the Solomonic ring from the Iraqi National Museum. Without the knowledge that the Lilaikens had claimed responsibility for that theft and the subsequent admission that they had detonated the hauler Fortitude which had transported the ring to New Holyoke, there was no connection between the terrorists and the murder of Micah Uytedehaage. Without the ring, there was no link between the details and ritual of the murder and the conclusion that the will of the Lilaikens was being carried out by a Whiston. Without the shed, it was all a house of cards.

“I’m telling you that I was able to establish that Frederick Whiston murdered that child, and that given the manner and timing with which Paraclete was destroyed, it is reasonable to assume that he has some attachment to the Lilaiken extremist movement.”

Ritchie shakes his head sharply, a twitch like a spasm. “No. That is an unwarranted assumption.”

“It is quite the opposite.”

“Perhaps to you, but to me, it sounds like a rationalization for your own failures to prevent this tragedy. Frankly, Marlowe, for anyone who has met Frederick Whiston, the argument that he could be trusted as a covert Lilaiken agent is ludicrous. And that is completely beside the fact that you can’t even provide evidence that he’s guilty of one murder, let alone thousands. What am I supposed to do with that? What could I possibly do that would not jeopardize the credibility of my office and my outpost, for God’s sake?”

And he’s completely correct in his assessment. In the absence of a compelling argument, a compelling link between Frederick Whiston and the Lilaikens, there is nothing he should do. It is up to Ray to give him a connection he can believe. There’s no way around it.

He tightens his jaw, grinds his teeth. He hates himself for what he’s about to do. What he has to do, because he can’t endure without the support of Colonel Ritchie and the EED, without their intelligence and communications. Without them, he’s lost, impotent, useless. Without them, he has no avenue to justice for all the lives that have been lost.

Ray clears his throat, tasting bile and something bitter, sour, like the flavor of betrayal. He folds himself away, disengages the part of his brain that is human, that can feel the depths of his ugliness and stand back in horror at what he has become.

With a voice full of groaning, he says, “In the process of the murder investigation and my intensive surveillance of Frederick Whiston, I was able to identify certain individuals with whom he had significant contact–individuals sufficiently removed from his regular social circles that they attracted a scrutiny they would not have otherwise warranted. Individuals who could be placed at the crime scene where Frederick Whiston committed the murder of the Trust child. I made the determination that given the uncertainty of their status, they would bear closer watching than my normal surveillance techniques allowed. Because of their proximity to the crime scene, I was able to reasonably recruit them to assist in my investigation, thus deflecting any suspicions they might have that I was aware of them, and at the same time allowing me the latitude to observe them more closely. It became my belief that they could be possible Lilaiken extremists who did not match any of the known identities in our suspect database. Those men were Marine Tactical Sergeant Benjamin Kilgore and Marine Corporal James Rodriguez.”

Ritchie inhales sharply, a sound like a gasp, but Ray ignores him. He forces himself to continue, to get all of it out in the open. He is afraid that if he allows himself to pause even for a moment, he’ll take everything back, admit to any number of lies rather than let this one stand.

“I believed I had time, given the method the Lilaikens have developed against other EED ships in this sector of frontier space, and I believed also that the human and material resources intended for delivery to New Holyoke would put off any move they might make at least until after docking. So I waited and I built my case, and I hoped for a break that would be something more compelling than circumstances and patterns of behavior.

“It is clear now that I underestimated either how close I was getting, or I overestimated how convincingly I had sold myself to Kilgore and Rodriguez. Despite my best efforts to hide my progress from them, they must have begun to figure things out on their own. I can only conclude that they acted early in order to protect the Lilaiken connection to the Whiston financial empire which would not, I suspect, survive the prosecution of Frederick Whiston on charges of murder.”

Colonel Ritchie leans back, uses both hands to rub his forehead. He struggles to maintain his composure, his professional calm, but Ray can see what he’s thinking. It’s like chewing on razor blades. Part of the damned crew.

“Marines,” Ritchie says slowly, as though it is beyond belief.

“They were screened as rigorously as the rest of the crew,” Ray tells him. “I assume they were turned at some point subsequent to their assignment with Paraclete. More than likely, the Lilaikens enlisted them as sleeper agents and held them out for emergency use. That’s the only way they could have evaded detection for so long.”

“But you were able to find them out.”

“I was presented with a unique crisis that brought relationships to light that would have otherwise remained murky. I also had the luxury of time, access to CIU proprietary information not available to most FSA organs and a sample set much smaller than the ones most of our security screeners are subjected to. Those are significant advantages.”

“Yet you didn’t arrest them, even when you were fairly certain,” Ritchie says, and this time there is a rasp of accusation in his tone.

Ray gives him a hard look. “My agency doesn’t arrest suspects, Colonel. For that reason, we require a higher standard of proof than a fair certainty.”

“Then why didn’t you share your findings with Security Chief Becker? He could have acted.”

“I convinced Chief Becker to give me more time than was warranted to finalize my case construction.”

At the very least, it makes him look stubborn, glorymongering, determined to take unconscionable risks to keep the resolution of the situation within the purview of the CIU. It wouldn’t be the first time the agency had fielded such an accusation.

Ritchie takes a deep breath to steady himself. “You couldn’t have been any more wrong.”

“No, sir.”

“And I suppose you have no evidence at hand to support this conclusion, either.”

“No.”

“I’m just supposed to take your word for it, to believe you in the name of inter-agency cooperation.”

“Yes.”

“I do not pretend to agree with the way the CIU conducts business, Commander. Your agency has shown an alarming historic tendency to flout both military tradition and Forum law. Your record of sharing critical intelligence data with other FSA departments is less than confidence inspiring, and your preference for relying on single agents augmented by technological superiority rather than full integration with EED field resources has, in my opinion, created more problems than it has solved.” Ritchie peers at him for a time, his eyes hard as fletched stone. “I am not a fan of maverick investigations. I am not a fan of field agent independence. Whatever your relationship with the captain of Paraclete may have been, and whatever involvement he may have demanded in your operation, it is clear to me that you were provided a perilous and ultimately fatal amount of latitude. If we’re going to get along here, the first thing you are required to understand is that I am not Commander Sorensen. I will not blunder around in the dark while you give me vaguely hopeful progress reports. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear, Colonel.” Ray doesn’t experience the urge to even protest anymore. He’s heard this speech or variations of it a dozen times. “I understand that this operation places you in a difficult position.”

Ritchie waves him off wearily, like he has also heard similar speeches. “It places me, Commander, in an untenable and impossible position. Especially since I have zero confidence in your veracity at this point in time, and I will continue to doubt you until you satisfy me on several additional irregularities.

“For instance, given that this disaster came as a complete surprise to you, to everyone in fact, how is it that you managed to escape, while the saboteurs themselves did not? The Lilaikens have shown themselves to be many strains of zealot, but none of those strains have indicated any symptoms of suicidal ideation.”

Ray meets his gaze blandly, eyes and thoughts empty. “Just because I have allowed them through my own failures to accomplish their mission does not mean I’m going to surrender my mission as lost.”

“Kilgore and Rodriguez did not escape?”

“No.”

Ritchie rubs his chin. “So you discovered that they had managed to critically damage the ship. You hunted them down and you killed them. Then you proceeded to make your escape. Not only yours, I would point out, but that of the entire Whiston contingent. Given your recounting of the facts, that’s an impressive–one might almost say improbable–accomplishment.”

“I was notified by Security Chief Becker as soon as he became aware that there had been a critical ship’s incident. Intercepting Kilgore and Rodriguez was not difficult.”

“And while you were off killing the bad guys, what was Becker doing?”

“He was coordinating the efforts to repair the damage to the Van Nuys reactors.”

Nodding, Ritchie says, “The containment protocols must have failed catastrophically, and quite suddenly. There were so few survivors. Significantly fewer than a hundred all together. Out of twelve or fourteen thousand, only a handful escaped. An interesting fact, Marlowe, one I’ve picked up in my interviews with the others–they all report that they were stunned, stunned, by the crew’s failure to notify the passengers that there was anything amiss until almost the last minute. Without fail, each of my other survivors was, at the time of the announcement, immediately proximate to a pod. Their lives were saved completely by chance.”

“Lucky them.”

“Lucky them, yes. But you had time to track down your Lilaiken infiltrators, dispatch them, make your way the reactor maintenance level all the way amidships, then against the outer hull to Iota-D, rouse the household and then make your escape. You must be very quick.”

Ray sees where Ritchie is leading him, and there’s no way around it. “Security Chief Becker advised me prior to the general evacuation to get to a podship.”

Rich had given his life, sacrificed himself, trying to save Paraclete. He deserved so much better than posthumous judgment.

“Did he advise you specifically to seek out the Whiston podship? Or to take the Whistons with you?”

“That was done completely on my own initiative.”

The Colonel bores into him with searching eyes, pupils that rattle back and forth like pebbles in a cup. “When he advised you to escape, would you say that Chief Becker gave you the impression that it was already too late to save the ship?”

“My understanding was that the situation was critical, and that this advance warning constituted a professional courtesy between agencies. He also knew that I was the only person beside himself who had direct knowledge of Frederick Whiston’s culpability.”

Ritchie growls. “But he warned you before alerting the passengers. How long before?”

“He was preparing to activate the shipwide disaster warnings. Maybe five minutes.”

Ray could read Ritchie’s mind at this moment if he wanted to. He could sense the EED officer counting, adding, multiplying. How many lives could have been saved with five additional minutes of notice?

“There was no evacuation notice,” Ritchie says after a time.

“It malfunctioned. Rich couldn’t have predicted that. He did the best he could given a situation that was spiraling beyond his control.”

“You, of course, assume it was sabotaged.”

“Kilgore and Rodriguez would have had the expertise between them to do it. If you can learn how to fatally crack a Van Nuys reactor, dismantling an automated warning system is not such a giant leap of cognition.”

“Your duty should have been to stay with the ship and assist in the alert and evacuation of the passengers.”

“No, sir. My duty was to identify and neutralize Lilaiken agents. I failed, and then I rectified that situation to the best of my ability. After that, my duty was to recognize that I was still a CIU asset with a mission to complete on New Holyoke, and that part of my evolving mission parameters had just become the detainment and prosecution of Frederick Whiston and the identification of Frederick Whiston’s possible Lilaiken allies in this attack. Which is why I agreed to answer your most cordial invitation to attend today. I thought you would be able to help me.”

That elicits a deep frown from Colonel Ritchie. “I still can’t say I like the way CIU prioritizes. But I also can’t argue with your decision to rescue the Whistons, regardless of what motivations you might have had. You certainly won’t hear the colony complaining.”

Ritchie’s relenting is like a boulder rolling off Ray’s chest. He takes a deep breath. “Their gratitude will only last until I have him arrested and convicted–and preferably executed.”

“It’s not going to be as simple as that.”

Ray shrugs. “I’ll get the evidence that’s required. I gathered it once; I can find it again.”

“I don’t think you do understand, Marlowe. You can’t understand until you’ve been here for a few months, maybe even a few years. If you choose to pursue this course, you are completely on your own. No one on this planet is going to help you destroy Frederick Whiston.”

“Even if he’s guilty?”

“What do they care? The settlers, the habs, the miners, they didn’t know this kid. What they do know is the price of ore, the cost of aluminum shipped from Terra, the need for engineers and geologists and well-paid, well-educated professionals who can find the next vein, the next lode that will keep Whelemat afloat. Those things are jobs, quality of life, basic human stuff. Those things are all provided by Whiston funds, subsidies or recruitment. Even as reclusive as the family has become in recent years, they are essential to the success of New Holyoke as a viable colony. They’re the founding fathers, the heart, the guiding vision. Certainly, the colony has its own government structure, and the Whistons have wisely distanced themselves from the political side of things, but the folks supposedly in charge would be stupid to do anything contrary to the Whiston will. Because the fact is, if the Whistons ever lose interest in the colony, if they ever decide to withdraw from the exile they’ve forced upon themselves, the colony dies. Everyone knows it.”

“Which is to say that you’re not going to do a freaking thing about what I’ve told you.”

“Not until you can prove it, no.”

For several moments, they sit in silence, Commander and Colonel, EED and CIU. Finally, Ritchie slumps in his chair, releases his tension with a heavy sigh that seems to deflate him into a smaller version of himself.

“Look, Marlowe, I understand that this is frustrating for you. I understand that you’ve just come through a terrible and tragic experience. But you’re not offering me anything that I can legally act upon. Your testimony carries no weight without documentation to back up your hypothesis. I want to believe you. I really do, but the reality you describe, the assumptions you’ve made–especially those regarding the Whiston family–do not conform to the experience of anyone who knows New Holyoke. I’m sorry.”

“They don’t conform how?”

“To make your charges stick in any way that’s going to bring justice to Frederick Whiston, you’ve got to be able to show that he didn’t just kill some kid, but that he killed Paraclete. I don’t mean the ship itself, but the ship as resource, as entertainment, as new settlers. You’ve got to prove that Frederick Whiston colluded with Lilaikens to conspire against the very lifeblood of this colony in such a way that the harm he intended outweighs the good his family has done. Your thesis all hangs on the assumption that he is bound up with the Lilaikens, and that their pattern of violence is detrimental to colony life. The problem you’ve got is that you have to establish that Frederick Whiston would have sufficient contact with the radical movement that he would be willing to do something as extreme as destroying as starship. And that would be hard, since there is no Lilaiken presence on New Holyoke. None that we’ve been able to verify, at least. Certainly, there are those who are sympathetic to the Lilaiken rhetoric, but even that lukewarm support has chilled in recent months with the escalating violence. The scenario you describe makes no sense, even if it did not involve Frederick Whiston. He may very well have murdered that boy as you claim, but the lines between the murder and the destruction of Paraclete appear nothing more than coincidental.”

In other words, there’s nothing EED is willing to do for him until he’s already proven that Freddy is guilty beyond doubt. All that he has accomplished is to have spared Frederick Whiston and destroyed Kilgore and Rodriguez. Again.

“You’re advising me to just drop that avenue of investigation,” Ray answers.

Ritchie gives him a pained look. “I’m perfectly content to accept your explanation as to the chain of events on Paraclete and the involvement of these Marines with stipulations for now, pending recovery of the ship’s data core or other evidence to the contrary. We’ll do what we can to assist you in firming up the evidence so that a formal report can be filed.”

“And the murder of the Trust kid, of Micah Uytedehaage.” Ray wonders bleakly if the outcome would have been any different if he would have told Ritchie the truth about the shed.

“We’re also more than willing to provide any logistical support you might need in pursuing this murder investigation, though that’s essentially the extent of the help I can offer in that regard. It is technically outside our jurisdiction, though I can put you in touch with my counterpart in Grange Security if you’d like.”

We’re more than willing to wash our hands of this whole mess.

Ray doesn’t even wave him off, just scowls. “Thanks, no. I’ll handle it on my own.”

“With proper and appropriate respect for legal convention, I assume?” Ritchie asks with a touch of humor that is so dry, it might not be humor at all. “I’ll remind you that while the prosecution of civilian crimes does not fall under my purview, the murder of a civilian by an FSA officer does, regardless of what agency he might happen to be affiliated with.”

Ritchie smiles at him, sly and menacing. “And in the meantime, what else can we do to extend the hand of hospitality to a visiting colleague?”

So he leaves it there, unresolved, content to wait for now. It isn’t like Frederick can go anywhere, like he can escape beyond Ray’s reach.

He says, “I’d like a status report on the rescue operation.”

“Slow. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a frontier outpost here. As I told you, I’ve got five hundred men under my command. Most of those rotate duty shifts between the Port Authority station and the rescue and interdiction vessels we’ve been assigned. Our ‘fleet’ is three docking tugs, two Corsair class destroyers, a handful of short-range fighter craft and a dozen shuttles and other assorted small freight vehicles. A ship the size of Paraclete is a staggering drain on our functional capacity, and we’ve been at it for almost three days now. My crews are exhausted, my hardware is insufficient for anything but the slowest scans. Add to that the fact that they haven’t found any survivors yet to maintain their adrenaline edge and…well, it’s fair to say that the operation is more accurately described as salvage rather than rescue.”

That’s disappointing, but not unexpected. Ritchie still seems to feel the need to apologize. “I wish I could offer you more, but we simply don’t have the resources out here to provide much hope. I had to beg the city for the facilities on the ground that we do have. We don’t even have housing. When my guys rotate down from the station, they’ve got to find their own lodgings among the general pop.

“My contingent is shuttle pilots, comm liaisons for EED freighters, general techs and sailors. We don’t have much currency with local government beyond providing a few security advisors. Unlike the department’s role on many fledgling colonies, we’re strictly independent support. New Holyoke provides its own Port Authority staffing, its own policing force. If they had their way, they’d probably provide their own high-orbital security. With the general planet pop leaning toward a million individuals at the latest count, and half of them here in Blackheath Grange alone, we’re stretched thin. We are, in fact, a non-presence beyond twenty kilometers of the city.”

“Yet you’re certain that the colonists aren’t sympathetic the Lilaiken rhetoric.”

Ritchie shrugs off the point as though it is irrelevant. “New Holyoke has nothing to gain from independence. The economy is too small to generate a significant impact on goods exchange, which means that they’d have a tough time attracting reasonable trade. Shipping is expensive, and would prohibitively so if not for the Whiston hauling subsidies. And I’d like to think that we’ve been careful to avoid developing an antagonistic relationship with the colony the way you’ve seen in places like Olduvai and Alamai Plantation. We’ve tried to become an organic member of this community.”

“Which diminishes your authority as an apparatus of the FSA and the Forum,” Ray points out. “You open yourself up to undue influence and unnecessary compromises with local political factions.”

“Do you have any idea how far we are from Terran space? Sometimes you have to compromise just to survive. You have to make allowances for local customs, regional flavor. Marlowe, this isn’t Earth. These people are not Earthlings. Not anymore.”

“The same thing could be said about your relationship with EED.”

Ray expects Ritchie to bristle, but instead he laughs. “All that can legitimately be said about my interpretation of the EED’s role on New Holyoke is that we’re invisible much of the time. We provide essential services and support Forum rule of law in a non-aggressive, non-totalitarian fashion. New Holyoke is a different world than any we have ever experienced. It has its own ways, its own traditions, its own rhythm. Anything beyond invisibility is antagonistic to our mission statement because it alienates us from the population at large. A population, I might add, drawn from a small, increasingly homogeneous population pool, with similar modes of employment, similar domestic experiences, and all of them heavily invested in frontier fringe philosophies that seem alien to us. Which they should, by the way, because they are alien. Or perhaps I should say that we are the aliens observing what is distinctly and organically Holyokan. From that perspective, it only makes sense that the average folks are not very interested in passing secrets about their neighbors on to suspiciously military looking, suspiciously alien strangers. You want definitive proof that there are no Lilaiken extremists on New Holyoke? I don’t have it and I can’t get it for you. We can’t extract the types of secrets we’d be most interested in without being perceived as Terran imperialistic thugs–which would be exactly what the Lilaikens want us to do.”

Ritchie shrugs casually, as though further explanation is redundant. “You’ve definitely got your work cut out for you. There are no active cells, but everyone here is a potential Lilaiken sympathizer. They’re just waiting for the inevitable population explosion to give them economic clout.”

Ray wrinkles his brow thoughtfully. The problem with new starfields, giggly new colonies and strange or distant lands was that they always turned out to be so terribly complicated. “You don’t sound very concerned about it.”

“I don’t see any way to change it, not without EED radically enlarging its presence here and tightening political controls, which both EED and the FSA at large have been hesitant to do at this point, present tragedies notwithstanding. Why? Because to do that, we need a Forum mandate. To get a Forum mandate, we need to be able to combat the Whiston lobby, which is no small presence. Half of the Forum delegates are financed by the Whiston Corp, and just because the family root has been exiled to deep space does not mean that their allies don’t wield any power back home. Now, that’s not to say that the Holyokan Whistons have anything to do with the Terran branch, only that the Terrans are politically savvy enough to recognize that it’s in their best interest to protect the agreements the Forum has made with them or their affiliates in the past. The Terran branch would view any action against the New Holyokan mandate as a slippery slope. The Forum can’t go back on the agreements they’ve made with the Whistons in the form of Whelemat and proprietary interest without embarrassing themselves number one, and number two, looking like they’re taking aim at the Whiston Corp power base.”

Which means ultimately that Colonel Ritchie and the EED are more concerned about appeasing the Whistons than about rooting out the Lilaiken presence. They’ve scratched the surface, and having found no mineable ore, have given up the planet as unprofitable.

It also means once again that despite Ritchie’s offers of assistance, Ray is essentially alone here. It wouldn’t be the first time. And when alone, the first impulse is always to reach out, orient yourself, gather data.

“What’s your comm situation?” he asks.

“Standard hyper-accelerated wave relay to the satellite net, then beacon jumpers along the shipping lanes and assorted booster stations. I can supply ten-twenty-eight key encryption on synchronized, flux bands.”

“Are you network enabled with the Port Authority station?”

“And with general EED data trans stations. We get remote file refresh data chunks nightly.”

Ray nods. It’s a creaky system, prone to error and corrupted bitstreams, but it’s probably the best they can manage. It will have to do. “I’m not going to be able to make regular trips out here to access your data hub, Colonel. I need you to provide me with a as robust a terminal as you can spare, network authorization and a comm-sat receiver remote patch array.” He thinks, thinks. Nomar. “And I need a blank diagnostic hardware box with petaflop crystal storage blocks, interchangeable data grids, SNE input/output port enabling…”

Ritchie holds up his hand to stop him, looking aghast. “The equipment I can manage, though it will eat into our backups. And when I say backups, I mean one. One backup. If I give you that one and a critical system goes down, I’m screwed. But the comm-sat remote array is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“What part of under-resourced don’t you understand?” Ritchie flushes, clearly frustrated. “If I plug another remote hub into our system, it’s going to degrade data transmission capabilities to intolerable levels.”

“Bullshit.”

“Did you bring signal boost relays with you in your luggage, Mr. Marlowe? Because I haven’t got any more. I’m pushing my streams to the limit as it is without purchasing additional bitstreams from local interests.”

“I’m not asking you to give me all your bandwidth, Colonel. Just let me borrow it for a few days.”

“A few days.” Ritchie doesn’t sound convinced.

“Maybe weeks. Who knows?”

Firm shake of the head. “Can’t do it.”

“Let me put it this way, then. If you don’t give it to me, I’ll be forced to manufacture my own hardware–which I’m more than capable of doing–and from there I will hack your digital network with a parasite data pipe and take the data I need anyway. The problem with a parasite pipe, of course, is that it bleeds signal over distance, which means it sucks much more bandwidth than is strictly necessary to compensate. That would be slow, arduous and annoying for both of us, but I would most certainly do it, and I would give your data integrity techs fits in the process.”

Ritchie scrubs fiercely at his face, then looks up. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you at least promise me that you’ll try to limit your remote access to overnight hours?”

“I can do that.” Mostly, anyway. Ray grins at him.

Ritchie looks away. “You must have been one hell of a soldier to have gotten this far up the ranks, Marlowe, because I’ve got to tell you, as an officer attempting to follow protocol, you suck. You’re almost as bad as Jack Holcomb.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Ray responds with a wink. “You give new depth of meaning to the concept of inter-agency cooperation.”

Ritchie just scowls. “I’ll have one of my comm techs assemble the items you’ve requested if you leave a list at the front desk. But you’re going to come pick it up, by God. I’ll be damned if I make any of my guys ferry it out to you just to make your life easier.”

Muttered, almost inaudible. “Inter-agency cooperation, my ass.”

<– Chapter 13 / Chapter 15 –>