Chapter 12 #2
Cannibal shifts his weight behind the bench. “Say what you’re saying, brother.”
“I’m saying I don’t believe it was an accident.”
“Scar.” Heavy leans forward, elbows on his knees. “He was ninety-one rotations on a dark stair he had no business being on. That’s not a murder, that’s a Tuesday.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you? Because it sounds like…” Heavy stops himself.
“I know it sounds like a male who sees a conspiracy in every shadow has found another one.” I say it for him, flatly, so he doesn’t have to. “Say it. I’ve thought it about myself all day.”
Nobody says anything.
“So convince us,” Ines says. “You’ve been at this longer than any of us. Lay out why it isn’t a Tuesday.”
“Because of when it happened.” I put my hands on my knees and I make myself go slowly, because this is the part that either lands or doesn’t.
“Three nights ago I pulled the maintenance archive for the first time in eight years and found his name marked twice. Two nights ago I sent word to him asking to meet. Last night — that night, the very next one — a male who has wandered those levels three or four diurnals a week for forty-nine rotations finally misses a step.” I look around the room.
“And this morning I turn up at his door with food in my hands and a list of questions in my head. Four beings knew his name.” I hold up my hand and count them.
“Myself. Ines. Roxy and Leah. I said it out loud in one sealed room, to family, and nowhere else. I never spoke it in front of the humans. Not once — I was careful, and I remember being careful, because Andrew Wilson was standing in my office at the time.”
Claws sits up straighter. “Then how — “
“That’s the question, isn’t it.” I let it sit. “That’s the question that’s been eating me since the corridor this morning.”
“Maybe nobody had to know his name,” Ines says slowly.
Every head turns.
“Think about it. Scar, when you pulled that archive, what exactly did you pull?”
“The Minecorp facilities records. The full maintenance schedule going back forty rotations.”
“Minecorp records. Not yours. Not something private you keep on your own system.” Her eyes narrow.
“Company records. Which means the access is logged, and which means anybody else with legitimate credentials in that same system could see that somebody suddenly went digging through rotations of old facilities schedules for the first time in living memory. They wouldn’t need Ordek’s name, they’d only need to know the investigation had moved to the old maintenance records.
Anybody who knew what actually happened eight years ago — anybody who arranged it — would know exactly which old male was down there both times.
They’d have known his name for eight years.
All they needed was to learn somebody was finally looking. ”
“And who,” Chief says quietly, “has been sitting inside those exact systems every diurnal recently, with legitimate credentials, doing an audit?”
“You, Mara and Andrew Wilson,” Rook says.
“I trust Mara implicitly,” I announce.
“All right,” Chief says. “Then somebody tell me why the being who could’ve led to Ordek’s death was that male.
He ate at this table. He’s a grid tech from New Earth with a nice laugh and no reason in the Four Sectors to care about a dead facilities male on a planet he’d never heard of a moon cycle ago. ”
“He has a reason,” Roxy says. “Ines found it.”
“Then let’s hear it.”
Ines tells them the whole story of the fraud during Andrew’s prior jobs and his gambling addiction and debts.
“Why,” Trunk says. “Why does a male steal from three employers in a row?”
“Because he owes money.” Ines says it flatly. “He’s a gambler who’s been in debt for the better part of a decade and it isn’t small and it isn’t to a bank.”
“And then I believe he attached himself to his sister,” I say.
“Mara doesn’t know about any of her brother’s nefarious background.
She only sees what he wants her to see because he wants to remain in good standing with a female with security clearances and access to restricted systems in every sector he’d care to reach.
And from that diurnal forward he’s been a model employee. ”
“Gods,” Heavy says.
“He’s been in my office.” Rook’s voice has gone strange. “Scar. He’s been in your office. Standing at your screens.”
“Yes.”
“He was at this table.” Jana has both hands pressed flat against her apron. “In our home.”
“Yes.”
Claws stands up.
“Sit down,” Chief says, without heat.
“He was in our house,” Claws snarls.
“Sit down, brother.”
Claws sits. Barely.
“So he’s a thief with a habit,” Cannibal says.
“Fine. I’ve known a hundred. That gets you a male who lifts equipment and lies about it.
It doesn’t get you a male who kills a ninety-one-rotation-old facilities tech on an Illibrium mine at the edge of the Four Sectors.
” He folds his massive arms. “What’s a broke New Earth gambler doing here? ”
“There’s something none of you have put together yet,” Hallie says. She hasn’t spoken until now. “The debts,” she says. “That’s not a detail. That’s the method.”
Ines’s head comes up sharply.
“That’s how the Houses do it. I watched it for two years on Chronos.
They don’t recruit loyalists — loyalists are expensive and they can change their minds.
They buy problems. They find a male with a debt he cannot possibly climb out of, some poor bastard three moons from having his hands broken, and they make that debt disappear.
And that’s it, that’s the whole transaction.
He’s theirs from that moment until he dies, because he knows exactly who fixed it and exactly what happens if he stops being useful.
There was a records clerk in the Vaszneth archive,” she continues.
“Nice male. Terrible at cards. He was into a Chronos lending house for more than he’d earn in a lifetime, and one diurnal it was simply gone, and after that he did whatever they asked and told himself he was lucky.
” Her mouth twists. “They own a dozen beings like him. Probably a hundred. It’s not even a secret over there, it’s a strategy.
Debt is how a House buys a being who’d normally never sell himself for currency. ”
Hallie looks at me. “Three Vaszneth operatives walked onto this planet two moons ago and put a hole in my mate’s chest, and the grid died at the exact moment they needed it to.
And then, weeks later, a human male with unpayable debts and legitimate systems access arrives on Timbur on his sister’s contract.
” She spreads her hands. “You want to know who bought Andrew Wilson? Look at who needed a door into this mine and had the money to buy one.”
“House Vaszneth,” Trunk says.
“House Vaszneth,” Hallie agrees.
Nobody argues.
“We can’t prove any of it,” Ines says. “I want that on the record, because it matters. Every piece of this is inference. The debts are real and the pattern is real, but there is not one document in the Four Sectors that connects Andrew Wilson to House Vaszneth, and until there is, we have a story and not a case.”
“Then we get one,” Chief says.
“Yes.” Ines nods. “We get one.”
Then the argument starts, the way it always does in this family, all at once and at volume.
Cannibal wants to take him tonight. Just take him because he’s on Timbur, within reach, and there are eight of us. Claws is already agreeing.
Chief shuts it down. “And when we take him? He denies everything. He’s a grid tech with a gambling problem and no charges on his record anywhere in the Four Sectors, and we’re the family with the grudge and the reputation.
Vaszneth cuts him loose inside a diurnal, replaces him with someone we don’t know, and we’ve burned the only thread we have and told them we’re coming.
” He looks around. “We move when we can prove it. Not before. We don’t tell anyone, yet, not even Mara. ”
“I want to remind everyone that this is very dangerous,” Roxy inserts.
“Yes, we have to wait on taking down Andrew and I understand why. But Ordek is dead. And meanwhile we’re all sitting here being very calm about the fact that Mara Wilson is walking around that mine with the male who might have done it, and she has no idea, and we’ve decided not to tell her. ”
“Roxy…”
“No.” She turns on me, and her hands are shaking and her voice isn’t. “I’d like somebody in this room to explain to me why Mara Wilson doesn’t get to be told that she isn’t safe.”