Dava was born into a tribe living in the wasteland. She had to admit that the part about being rescued was true to a certain degree – had she spent many more years there, she would certainly have been stricken with cancer due to exposure to solar radiation. But that’s where the rescued part ended.
Her arm buzzed once more, pulling her out of the wasteland and back into the underworld of the B-4 domes.
The message was a brief order from 2-Bit that Dava should finish the job while he tracked down Eyeball. At least Johnny had 2-Bit to babysit him. That seemed to be the only thing Captain 2-Bit was good for. She supposed that was the perk of being one of the oldest surviving members of Space Waste: no more heavy lifting, no more dirty work. Most young recruits worshiped 2-Bit like he was a war hero, but she didn’t see it. He wasn’t particularly smart, or fast, or anything, except apparently lucky. It was good though; the troops needed someone to look up to, and, right or wrong, 2-Bit called the shots and they obeyed. Most of the time.
She turned her eyes back on the card-houses across the way. There was perfection above in neat little packages, but it seemed that no matter how perfect things were, it was impossible for the human race to avoid stepping in shit eventually. She watched the sad souls that sought refuge from the transcendence of dome life looking over their shoulders, skittering from vice to vice.
She felt empathy for all of them and sympathy for none.
Three-Hairs Benson came back out of the Grand Star Resort within less than a minute of entering the converted storage unit. He looked desperately from side to side. No doubt the sight of the lobotomized dealer-bot tipped the gangbanger off to the fact that his boss had sent someone looking for him.
Dava frowned as she watched the man start to head one direction, then turn around and head the other. Benson was good and paranoid, as he should have been, but he was not very bright. He was getting older and drugs, alcohol, and age had permanently dulled his senses as well as his wits. Space Waste was full of murderers and thieves, so no one was going to look down on Benson for his gambling habits. But the gangbanger had collected on a delivery and failed to bring the cash back home. Worse than that: he’d obviously lost some – possibly all – of the money.
If you crossed Moses Down, Space Waste’s boss, the usual procedure was for someone to liquidate your accounts and for someone else to liquidate your innards. Benson was most likely cleaned out financially, and so the gang would only be performing the latter ritual. It was unfortunate. Dava was one of a handful of people who knew that when a Space Waster was retired and their personal assets were collected by Down, the proceeds got donated to orphanages. Particularly, orphanages that housed children who’d found themselves separated from their parents at some point in their journey from Earth to one of the domed planets.
Not only did Benson fail while he was alive, his death was going to be just as useless. He seemed to be heading for one of the cargo elevators that went back to the surface. Dava sighed softly to herself. The least Benson could do at this point was face up to what he’d done and take his punishment with dignity. But no, the damned fool had to try to run.
She flitted from shadow to shadow until he approached a small drainage passageway. She appeared behind the older man and poked her blade lightly into his back. He froze for a moment, then his head sagged in defeat. She directed him to take the side passage and he did.
Dava and Three-Hairs Benson both disappeared into the darkness of the drainage passageway. A moment later, Dava emerged alone.
CHAPTER 7
“You are just cruisin’ for a bruisin’, you know that, Stanley?”
Runstom huffed. “It’s Stanford.” He knew Halsey picked up the damned nickname from the other officers and only used it when he wanted to get under Runstom’s skin.
“Yeah, right. Officer Stanford Runstom,” Halsey shot back. “Off … i … cer.”
Runstom sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing his eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb. “Look, George. I know this is stupid, to go against the dicks like this, but you have to admit – there’s something not right with this case. That operator in there didn’t murder thirty-one people.”
Halsey looked up from the holo-screen. “Thirty-two.” Runstom opened his eyes to look at the other man, who continued, “I heard earlier today. One of the other victims died in the hospital. Internal injuries.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes in the dimly lit workroom that they brought the traffic logs to because it was the only place in the precinct that had a computer with a 3D spacial modeling application on it.
“Shit,” Halsey breathed. He scratched at the tightly cropped yellow curls on his head as he stared at the printed-out logs on the desk in front of him. He pulled over a directional lamp that was meant to aid in reading without interfering with the holo-image, which required mostly darkness for proper viewing. “Dammit, I thought this would at least be something to keep busy with, but it’s more of a pain in the ass than I thought. And yes, it is stupid to go against the dicks. Especially on the word of an accused murderer.”
“George,” Runstom said, leaning in close. “Don’t you ever want to be more than an officer?”
Halsey narrowed his eyes. “That’s none of your business.”
“Can’t you just humor me and entertain the possibility that there is something more to this case?”
Halsey sighed as he panned around the image. “Yeah, yeah, more to this case. How about you focus and help me figure out the cone of contact from the sub-dome? We get this done and I can give it all to you and wash my hands of it. You can tell them I helped after you get the whole case solved and they award you some kind of medal of honor.”
Runstom frowned into the darkness. As much as Halsey drove him up a wall, he had to admit he was very thankful for the help. “How do you even know how to do this?” he asked as he watched Halsey tap away at the keys.
“What do you mean?” Halsey answered without looking up.
“This core of contact—”
“Cone. Cone of contact.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Runstom started at the holo-screen as it panned across a minimal representation of the Barnard system: translucent spheres sitting on thin, oval-shaped lines. “Where did you learn this stuff?”
Halsey tapped a few more keys and the view zoomed a little closer to one of the planets. He looked over his shoulder at Runstom. “I took a few terms of astrophysics at Alpha. Part of dispatch training.”
“But you’re not a dispatcher.”
“Not yet, but someday I will be,” Halsey said, turning back to the holo-screen. “Just got a couple more months of training.”
“No offense, Halsey, but you don’t seem like the studying type. I mean, you never seem to want to do anything.” Runstom started to feel a little guilty for always assuming the other officers he worked with were completely unambitious.
“Yeah, but if I become a dispatcher, I can do even less,” Halsey said with a mischievous smile. “And you should be thankful, because the only reason I’m helping you now is that it’s good practice. Hand me that planetary rotation reference sheet.” Runstom did, and Halsey took it and added, “Those cats are total slackers. Nothin’ to do but watch the stars go by.”
They worked together for about thirty more minutes getting the computations right. When they were done, they had a narrow, wire-frame cone sticking out of the side of the planet Barnard-4, projecting outward into space. Any ship that passed through the cone had a possible line of sight to the receiver at Gretel, block 23-D. After that, they imported the space-object positional data from the ModPol traffic logs and after another twenty minutes they had little dots of varying sizes all over their model version of the Barnard System.