In the shadow of deimos, p.15
In the Shadow of Deimos, page 15
part #1 of Terraforming Mars Series
“She was furious and accused me of stalking her and spying on her. I tried to tell her I’d been worried, but that only made her swear at me. When she ran out of rude words in English, she swore at me in Norwegian. That’s when I caught a glimpse of the equipment she had with her inside the rover. I only saw it briefly before she climbed out and closed the hatch, but it was definitely some sort of drilling and lighting equipment – the sort you might need if you were working outside in the dark. She tried to explain away the dust, the equipment, and the fact that it was the middle of the night by claiming the rover got stuck in a pothole and she had to manually dig herself out of it. But I didn’t believe her. And, by the look on her face, she knew I could see through her lies.”
Gianni looked directly into the camera, so Luka felt he was looking across the passage of time. “So, what do I do now? Tell someone? Who do I tell? She’s my boss! And tell them what? That she’s been behaving suspiciously? They’d say I’m reading something into nothing. They’d say I was upset with her because our relationship isn’t what it was. They might even be right – about that last bit, at least.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just open that bottle of Barbera del Monferraato Superiore on my own and get drunk and forget about tonight. Maybe, in the morning, I will have the courage to say I don’t want to see her anymore.”
Gianni seemed to hold onto that last thought, as if it was the first time it had occurred to him.
Luka paused the image so he could study Gianni’s face closer. He looked so sad. Like a man who had realized a great love affair was over. Even so, subsequent diary entries revealed that he never had the courage to break up with Anita. Perhaps, deep down, he didn’t want to. Perhaps, deep down, he still loved her.
But one thing was certain: in the message that Gianni had recorded a week before he died, he didn’t appear paranoid. He was angry, hurt and frustrated, but apparently completely sane. Which meant that Anita really had been up to something secret that night in the rover. Something that, when Gianni found out about it, caused her to be furious with him. So furious that after Gianni had spoken about it in his diary, he made sure to hide away those recordings for someone else to find, nel caso in cui.
Which Luka had translated from the Italian and discovered meant “just in case.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Julie looked up from her computer screen as Kareem walked into her office. He was carrying a full-sized Tab, which was the shape of an old-fashioned book, with the back resting on his forearm and the bottom sitting on the line of his waist. Like he had been in the middle of doing something else when he wandered through her door.
“You wanted to see me?” he said.
“I did?” Julie tried to think back over everything that was going on in her life. “Oh yes, I did! Shut the door and sit down, could you?”
“Sounds serious.” He did as he was asked and placed his Tab on the desk between them.
Julie closed down what she was looking at on her screen and gave him her full attention. “I want you to look at our greenhouse gas emissions.”
“I look at them every day,” said Kareem.
“I mean, for the Terraforming Committee. The annual funding review is coming up and I’ve been so caught up with this asteroid thing that I haven’t been able to give it my proper attention.”
“I’m sure you don’t need to worry.”
“But I do worry. I need to report on our progress so far and draft proposals for how we plan to continue. I know that UNMI is supposed to have privileged status when it comes to giving out the Universal Tax MegaCredits, but they’re not going to give it to us if we hand in our homework late. On the other hand, if I stop work on the asteroid thing to concentrate on the review, it will annoy Rufus and we won’t get approval for what we need to do.”
“I’ll work on it,” said Kareem. “Not everything has to weigh on your shoulders, Julie.”
“Thanks, Kareem. That would be a real help.”
Her WristTab bleeped a reminder at her. “I have to go,” she said, getting up from her chair. “CrediCor have finally agreed I can formally interview their asteroid controller. Not as if I imagine she’ll confess to taking a bribe. I don’t suppose you had a chance to trace back those large payments into her account?”
“As much as I could. I’ve been meaning to write it up and send it over,” said Kareem.
“And?”
“The short version is, I got about as far as you did – I traced the money back to Earth, but the actual account number is a dead end. It doesn’t exist and appears never to have existed. I imagine someone used specialist software to disguise where it really came from.”
“Whoever made those payments seems to have known what they were doing,” said Julie. “Sounds like a sophisticated operation.”
“Not necessarily. That software is freely available on the black market – for the right price.”
“Yet another example of human skullduggery making its way to Mars,” Julie reflected, heading for the door. “Hopefully, I can get some more information out of Mah Chynna.”
Kareem followed her. “There’s something else you’ll probably want to know before you go.”
Julie looked at her WristTab and knew she had little time to dawdle. “Can you tell me the short version?”
“I finally had back the analysis from the two asteroid samples.”
“And?”
“They are almost certainly from different pieces of space rock.”
“So there were two asteroids?”
“Looks like it. I’ll send you over the data.” Kareem touched the controls on his WristTab.
Julie ignored the bleep of an incoming message. She didn’t need to read past the headline to know what it meant. “That suggests that all the scans and everything CrediCor provided were correct, but they were for the main asteroid. It crashed exactly when and where it was supposed to without fracturing.”
Kareem nodded. “It was quite large, so it could easily have masked a second, smaller asteroid being brought down on the same trajectory. Until, at some point during the descent, it received instructions to change course and crash into Noctis Labyrinthus – right on top of the ThorGate research station.”
“Which means the research station was deliberately destroyed.”
“But, to everyone watching, it would seem like a tragic accident. Like the asteroid splintered in the atmosphere and a rogue fragment veered off the flight path.”
“Mah Chynna must have been the one who sent the course corrections.”
“The question is,” said Kareem, “who paid her to do it?”
Julie turned to open the door. “That,” she said. “Is what I’m hoping to find out.”
•••
Julie sat across the desk from Mah Chynna in the same boss’s office she had taken them to when they first met.
The woman she remembered as bright, talkative and – on the whole – cooperative, sat with her head bowed. She stared into her lap where she clasped her hands together so tightly that the knuckles of her interlocked fingers were white. Her long, black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail to reveal the almost-hollow cheeks of her gaunt face. If Julie hadn’t known better, she would have thought she was a completely different person.
Sitting next to Chynna was an overweight man with a receding hairline. He stared at Julie with self-important authority and introduced himself as a CrediCor appointed lawyer subcontracted from the Teractor corporation. He was there to ensure protocol was followed and to represent the interests of both CrediCor and Mah Chynna. Behind both of them, the office window was not showing a live view of Mars out towards Olympus Mons, as it had on her first visit, but an animated form of the CrediCor logo which continued to play on a loop. The purple background fluttered like a flag in the breeze while a white graphic similar to the symbol for gold darted in from the bottom left like a flying asteroid as a MegaCredits emblem faded up in the middle.
If the intention was to make Julie feel intimidated, then it didn’t work. The lawyer’s very presence meant the corporation was scared of what she was going to say. Which only meant Julie held the balance of power in the room, not anyone employed by CrediCor.
“I hope you don’t mind if I record these proceedings,” said Julie, reaching for the controls on her WristTab.
“And I hope you don’t mind if I do the same,” said the lawyer, whose name was Peterson. He had also given his first name, but Julie had instantly forgotten it.
A few strands of her hair came loose from Chynna’s ponytail and hung down by her cheek. She tucked them back behind her ear, but they weren’t quite long enough to stay put and fell forward again.
“I hope you don’t mind me using your window to display some crucial documents which are relevant to your client?” said Julie. She phrased it as a question, but gave the lawyer no opportunity to respond before she connected her WristTab and caused the CrediCor logo to vanish. It was replaced with a series of documents which implied Chynna’s guilt.
The lawyer turned to look at Chynna’s financial history, the course corrections recovered from the guidance system at the crash site, and Kareem’s data showing the two asteroids which came down that day were not from the same rock.
The lawyer scoffed. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to be prove!”
Julie looked across the desk at Chynna who didn’t so much as lift her gaze from her lap. “This points to you as the one who deliberately sent the asteroid on a collision course with the ThorGate research station.”
“I’ve advised my client she does not have to say anything to you,” said Peterson.
Julie ignored him. “If you have anything to say to defend yourself, Chynna, now would be the time.”
Chynna tugged at the loose strand of her hair and forced it back behind her ear again. It rebelled and returned to hang at her cheek.
“If you tell me the truth,” said Julie, “I might be able to help you. But if you stay silent, the evidence will have to speak for itself.”
When Chynna finally looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “No one was supposed to die!” she whispered.
“You’re talking about Gianni Lupo?”
The color drained from the lawyer’s face. “I think my client has said quite enough!”
“I think your client can speak for herself.” Julie glared at him. “Chynna?”
“I took the money, it’s true,” she said, through her tears. “But it wasn’t all for me! I had to pay someone out on the belt to find the second asteroid and attach the guidance system. They made sure it would come down on the same trajectory so everyone thought it was the same asteroid. Then, once it entered the atmosphere, I fed through the course corrections so it would divert into the canyon and destroy the ThorGate research station. But the man wasn’t supposed to be there!”
Her confession trailed out into sobs. Like everything she had been bottling up for weeks was spilling out of her. Much to the annoyance of the lawyer hired to keep her quiet.
“Who paid you, Chynna?” Julie pressed.
“There wasn’t supposed to be an investigation,” she said through continued sobs. “Not a proper one. I mean, we haven’t even got a real police force on Mars.”
Chynna didn’t have a hanky, so she lifted her arm and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“Chynna, who paid you?” Julie repeated.
“I don’t know,” she sniffed.
“You don’t know? Or you won’t say?”
“I swear, I don’t know. I tried to find out when they stopped returning my messages, but it was a fake name hiding behind a fake corporation. Then they closed the account and my messages bounced.”
“Could it have been the Reds? Another corporation?”
“I don’t know,” Chynna sobbed. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”
The door to the office was thrown open from outside. All three of them jumped in their seats as the handle slammed hard against the wall.
Standing in the doorway, filling it with his tall, wide presence was Bard Hunter. The multibillionaire founder and CEO of CrediCor was unmistakable in his trademark white cap which, as always, covered his bald head.
“You!” he pointed at Chynna. “You’ve just been fired.”
Bard pointed at the lawyer. “You! You’re paid by CrediCor to keep everything confidential, am I right?”
“Well…” The lawyer blinked several times as if his brain was working overtime to catch up. “There’s a standard confidentiality clause…”
“Good. I expect you to honor it. If anything that was said in this room gets back to Teractor, I will have you struck off. Are we clear?”
The man nodded his head profusely. “Absolutely.”
Bard smiled as he turned to Julie and his whole demeanor switched from officiousness to reverence. “And you must be Julie Outerbridge, the head of the United Nations Mars Initiative.” He stepped forward and clasped one of her hands between his two large palms like a precious object. “My name is Bard Hunter.”
“Yes,” said Julie, too stunned to snatch her hand back. “I know who you are. I’ve seen you on the news.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bard dismissed Chynna and the lawyer, but insisted Julie stay. She watched him with a wary eye, expecting him to make demands for her to back off on her investigation. But Bard, it seemed, was a more subtle operator than that. He invited Julie to sit on one of the more comfortable armchairs in the room, while he walked up to the window where the evidence against Chynna was still displayed.
“I was horrified – horrified – when I heard what happened with the asteroid,” he said.
“As were we all,” said Julie, injecting a warning tone into her voice. “So I hope you’re not here to get in the way of my investigation.”
“Get in the way?” he exclaimed, as if the very idea was blasphemy. “Precisely the opposite. As soon as I heard you were in the CrediCor offices, I came to find you to assure you that I will do everything in my power to discover what went wrong and what caused this horrific disaster. I am completely appalled at the possibility that one of my own employees allowed themselves to be bribed by a nefarious outside organization, and I am determined to discover who that was.”
“I’m pleased to hear it.” Julie couldn’t work out if he was being truthful or was putting on an earnest display for her benefit. Either way, she wasn’t going to be taken in by his infamous cunning.
“In fact,” said Bard, “I was hoping you could tell me who bribed my employee.”
“That’s something I’m working on,” said Julie. “It could have been anyone with a motive for damaging ThorGate’s operations on Mars.”
Bard took off his distinctive white cap, scratched his bald head and replaced it again. “That’s every other corporation on the planet, not to mention half of the political parties.”
“Including CrediCor itself.”
Bard’s face furrowed in anger as he tapped at Chynna’s financial records with his index finger. “CrediCor had nothing to do with this.”
“Chynna was your employee,” said Julie. “And she confessed she had people out in the asteroid belt helping her. All of which are also your employees.”
Bard came back over and sat down in the armchair opposite. “I want to explain something to you, Julie Outerbridge. I like terraforming, especially when it involves hurling asteroids at Mars. I have a hunch it’s going to pay off and not only warm the planet, but put CrediCor in a position to be a major player. I wouldn’t jeopardize that for some vendetta against one of ThorGate’s little projects, even if I believed the contract should have gone to another corporation.”
“Then I welcome your help in unearthing who paid Mah Chynna and who else at CrediCor might have played a part.”
“I sincerely doubt anyone else at CrediCor played a significant role. It stands to reason that this was a rogue element within the corporation which I – as much as you – want to ensure is stamped out. I am only embarrassed to say that I was completely unaware of it until now.”
“Are you sure you were unaware?”
“I hope you’re not accusing me.”
“I’m not accusing anyone – yet,” said Julie, pointedly reserving the right to do so in the future. “Just asking the question.”
He leant back in his chair in an attempt, Julie felt, to appear undisturbed by her veiled suggestion. “I’m only frustrated I couldn’t be here to personally take charge of the situation much earlier,” he said.
“I would have liked to have spoken to you, but I was told you were unavailable on a yoga retreat on Earth.”
“Ah.” Bard grinned. “That was a little ruse to explain my absence during the journey here. I didn’t want anyone questioning where I was and discovering I was locked in a spaceship halfway to Mars.”
“Would it have made any difference?” asked Julie.
“Of course!” Bard stood up and paced up and down the small room like he had energy he needed to release. “My arrival was to have been a great surprise and I was to step onto Mars in a blaze of publicity. I was to use it to announce my new, grand scheme which I will personally supervise. But then this whole ‘life on Mars’ thing happened and completely stole my thunder.”
