Katherine looked down at the body on the ground. It was a young Tita – a species that resembled the amphibians of earth, with smooth greenish skin and large eyes. This one was dry, which meant she had likely been out of the water for a while.
The knife in her back was the likely cause of her death. It was a long, curved blade, buried almost up to the hilt. Without a further medical examination, she couldn’t tell what amount of damage it had done, but that would be for later. There wasn’t that much blood – but what was there made a small yellow ring around the blade. None, it seemed, had made it onto the floor.
“Who was she?” she asked.
Governor Fitz consulted his tablet. He was a human about her age, and usually she would have indulged herself with the thought that he was particularly handsome. His silver hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but a few strands had broken free and hung down on either side of his face. Though that was likely intentional. The only thing that spoiled his handsomeness was the open socket where his left eye had once been. Even though it had been nearly thirty years since he lost it, he still refused a prosthetic replacement. Katherine could understand why.
“This is Calira,” he said. “She’s a civilian worker contracted as an inspector of food shipments. She was reported missing this morning.”
“And why is she here?” Katherine asked. She looked around. This room had once been a server room based on the brackets that had once held installations, but the thick layer of dust was a clear sign that no-one had been here in some time.
“I don’t know,” said Fitz. “This room was sealed; there’s no way she should have had access. The only reason she was even found was that a technician noticed that a control panel had been accessed.”
“Meaning?”
“Look.” Fitz turned around his tablet and showed her the display. It was a map of the hallways they were currently on, on one of the middle floors of the first segment. He pointed to the room they were in, which was marked in red. “This room is still marked as sealed,” he said. “In order to fool this system, someone accessed a control panel and rewired the security system, without affecting anywhere other than this room and without raising any alarms.”
“Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” said Katherine.
“Not just knew what they were doing,” Fitz said. “This should have been impossible, Katherine.”
She cleared her throat and nodded to the door, where Tamworth and Luna were waiting and trying to pretend they weren’t staring at Calira’s body.
“My apologies, General,” Fitz corrected. “As I said, this should have been impossible unless…” He trailed off, leaving the implication clear.
Katherine turned. “Shut the door,” she said. Tamworth nodded and pressed the button, and the door slid closed, cutting the four of them off from the outside.
“Private Tamworth, Private Luna,” Katherine said, walking over to her new soldiers so that they were directly in front of her. “If either of you share any details of the things you have heard in this room without my express permission, then I’ll make sure that the rest of your career is spent as far from the Empiridium capital as it’s possible to be. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes General,” they both said.
Tamworth frowned. “I don’t understand, though. What is it that’s so important that we have to keep it a secret?”
“Someone allowed this to happen,” Luna guessed. “It’s impossible to override security like was done here, unless you have someone in a place of control making sure that no alarms go off.” She looked at Katherine. “Am I right, General?”
“You are,” she said.
Fitz whistled. “That’s a smart one you have there, General.”
“This is Private Luna,” said Katherine, turning back to the governor. “My other bodyguard is Private Tamworth. Both of you, this is Governor Ares Fitz, civilian leader of the first segment.”
Tamworth’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t be the same Ares Fitz who they used to call the Moon Lion, would you sir?”
Fitz chuckled. “A very long time ago, Private Tamworth.”
Katherine was a little impressed. There were few who remembered the name of the Moon Lion. She could see that Tamworth wanted to interrogate Fitz about his past, so she cleared her throat.
“Both of you were trained in investigation, I assume?” she asked. She pointed Calira. “Both of you, tell me what you think.”
Tamworth took a few steps forwards and knelt by the body. “Clearly, she was killed with this knife. The dust on the ground around her hasn’t been disturbed, so it doesn’t seem like she was killed here.”
“But then how did she get here at all?” Luna asked. “If she was carried here there should have been footsteps in the dust, no?” She too squatted next to Calira to be able to see her better. “If she’s all dried up, then she must have been here for a while. It takes a Tita about six hours to dry up after they die, so it must have been longer than that.”
“How do you know that?” Tamworth asked.
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Luna twirled her forefingers around one another. “I had a friend,” she said, and she sounded like she didn’t want to go any further into it.
“You’ve both done well,” Katherine said. She moved around the body and knelt down to be at their level. “You did miss something important, though.” She reached out and touched Calira’s back just next to the knife. It came away yellow from the blood. “This hasn’t dried yet.”
“But that’s not possible,” said Luna. “If the blood is still wet, then she would have died just a few hours ago at most.”
“Unless she dried out before she died,” said Katherine. “Private Luna, how long does it take for a Tita to dry out when they’re still alive?”
Luna’s mouth dropped open. “General, I wouldn’t even know the answer. I’ve never heard of any Tita going so long without moisture that their skin dries out completely – their bodies are just too well evolved.”
“The answer is a week,” said Katherine. “That’s a week in which the Tita in question received no water at all, not even a cup of water. On a Ring like this she would have had access to refreshments, but even that wouldn’t help forever if she wasn’t able to get access to a rehydration tank.” She stroked her chin. “Assuming that she wasn’t using a tank for all that time, she could have gone a month before she was dry. But that would have been like torture. Why would she do something like that?”
She turned to Fitz. “You said she was reported missing this morning?”
“Yes, General.”
“I want to speak to the person that ordered her missing,” Katherine said, standing up and brushing the dust from herself. “And the technician who discovered her. I’d also like to have a look at her quarters.”
Fitz nodded. “I’ll see that they make themselves available to you, General.”
“Private Tamworth,” she said. “I want you to look into the rehydration tanks. I want to know the last time that Calira visited one. Check every tank on the Ring if you have to.”
Tamworth saluted. “I’m on it, General.”
“Private Luna, you’re on cameras,” Katherine continued. “I want you to retrace Calira’s movements, as far back as you can give me. I want notes on her demeanour, and any places she went to that seemed unusual.”
Luna nodded. “Yes, General.”
“Off you go, both of you.”
Tamworth hesitated. “General, aren’t we assigned to be your bodyguards for the day?”
“I’ll be fine,” Katherine insisted. “It was mostly just for tradition. Both of you go, and be discrete. If anyone asks, say you’re working on a report for me.”
They both saluted again. Tamworth hit the door controls, and the stillness of the room was broken by the whooshing sound of the door opening. Katherine pressed the controls again, shutting her in the room with Fitz.
“Katherine…” he said, as soon as they were alone. “Are you sure you should be solving this? The Ring has its own investigative branch, you know.”
“This woman was slowly drying out for a standard month,” said Katherine. “Someone on my Ring, under my protection, was going through that for all that time. She was being tortured, Ares, that’s the only explanation that makes sense. And no-one knew. Whatever I’ve been doing, it wasn’t enough to stop this woman from being tortured and murdered. I owe it to her to see this investigation through.”
Ares sighed. “You haven’t changed,” he said. “You still take things far too personally.”
She glared at him. The fact that he was right didn’t make her any less pissed off.
“What about those two?” He nodded at the door to refer to Tamworth and Luna.
Katherine sighed and leant against the wall. She tilted her head back so that the back of her scalp touched the wall and looked up at the featureless metal ceiling. She felt like groaning, but she wasn’t alone.
“They were here,” she said. “And I want to keep this quiet. Besides, in this I can trust them more than I can others.”
Fitz frowned. “How so?”
“If someone with power on this ship allowed this to happen, it means that at least one person who I thought I could trust has been compromised,” Katherine said. “Those two only arrived on the Ring a few days ago. They haven’t been here long enough to have been involved in what happened to Calira, and they wouldn’t have the authority to override a system alert. They’re about the only people who I can be sure aren’t involved.”
“And me, of course,” Fitz said.
Katherine glared at him. “If you were behind this the blood would have had time to dry before anyone found it.”
“And what about Robert?”
Katherine took a deep breath before replying. “Commander Copper is a highly decorated soldier, but no-one is above suspicion.”
“It’s just that I haven’t spoken to you in a while. Not about personal matters, at least. The two of you…”
“I’m sorry,” Katherine said sharply. “I must have forgotten to send you the invitations to the party I held when we separated. What are you getting at, Ares?”
“No-one knows the military personnel on this Ring better than Robert does,” Fitz reminded her. “If you trust him, you should talk to him about this. Find out if anyone has been acting strangely in the last month.”
Katherine nodded slowly. He had a point.
“I’ll talk to him,” she promised. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell him?” She tried to make it as obvious as possible that this was not a real question with the tone of her voice.
Fitz either didn’t pick up on it or deliberately ignored the implication. “Please tell him that he’s welcome to come over for dinner any time,” he said. “As are you, and the children. Dena and I would be happy to see all of you.”
“I’ll make sure to pass that along,” Katherine said. She pushed away from the wall, and her leg spasmed. She grunted in pain and bent down to rub it. Fitz watched her, concern on his face.
“The same or worse?” he asked.
“The same,” she said. “It always gets worse on days when the Ring is in operation. The gravity manipulation does things to it.”
“You need some help?” he asked.
“That’s what I have a cane for,” Katherine said, waving it in his direction. “And if you don’t stop asking about my personal life, then I’ll show you what it feels like to get hit by it.”
Fitz chuckled. “I’ll bear that in mind.” He looked down at Calira. “What are you going to do with her?”
“I’ll get Seraphina to take a look at her,” Katherine said. Seraphina was the Ring’s senior medical officer, and one of the most accomplished doctors that Katherine knew about. She was also one of the people Katherine trusted more than anyone else – more than Fitz, certainly. “I need to know that I’m right about my suspicions, and she’ll confirm them. Let me know anything that I might have missed.”
“That makes sense,” said Fitz. “I’ll call someone to take the body to her. And I assume you want to keep this quiet.”
Katherine pinched the bridge of her nose. She was so tired. “We can’t hide that she’s dead. I’ll speak to any family that she has, but for now we’re keeping it quiet that this was a murder. I don’t want people worrying that there’s a murderer at large. I’ll have Seraphina come up with a plausible cause of death that we can tell people.”
Fitz nodded. “Sometimes I forget how good you are in a crisis like this, and then you show me all over again.”
“Stop being kind,” she ordered. “If you discover anything at all, make sure it comes straight to me. No-one else.”
“Yes, General. What are you going to do now?”
Katherine hesitated. She needed to wait on Luna and Tamworth, and Seraphina’s medical exam. She should talk to the technician, and the person who had discovered Calira, and she still had other meetings with a dozen people across the Ring to deal with. However, looking at Calira’s body, seeing how young she looked, there was only one thing that she could think of doing.
“I’m going to go and hug my children,” she said.
