OK, it didn’t disappear all at once. The loss of the last navigational signal from the central computer of the Nha Kharma was preceded by a series of major events, which all residents of the Known Universe had witnessed. These major events were subsequently transferred by Group 43 over the last eight months into twenty-nine investigative proceedings.
“Twenty-seven,” Yova corrected his thoughts. He still didn’t know what to make of his AI officer’s latest assumptions and the two additional proceedings it had proposed. He no longer had the energy to contemplate the implications of Bsaheoh’s suspicions. He returned to bed and remained there in a half-sleep for another hour.
The captain’s cabin was on the third deck, so Yova had a good walk from his den tucked between decks eight and nine. He didn’t encounter any of his subordinates along the way, so he assumed the entire department was at the after-party loudly announced by the first officer. Due to the circumstances, Yova didn’t feel invited—even though his colleagues from the Group had worked hard to convince him to show up.
He reported to the watchman, and the door held him in suspense for a moment before letting him in.
“Captain?”
“Yova, please come in. Give me a minute.”
He sat at his station like a low-level employee, completely absorbed in reading one of the dozen or so reports that must have accumulated in the last day before their jump exit. These were just technicalities, pleasant and predictable details about their small fleet and its readiness to leave the quiet and cozy bubble in higher dimensions.
Yova sat at the captain’s desk, observing his old acquaintance. It had been a long time since they had served on the same ship, and their careers had soared in completely different directions right after their main service in the navy.
Thyne was an amusing mix of captain archetypes. Broad-shouldered, jovial yet focused, and often a quiet man who spent a great deal of his life far from any planets. To complete the picture, he probably only lacked a thick beard, but in Mhamharians—the race of nomads he belonged to—body hair had almost completely disappeared except for the back of the head. His dry and rough skin, so repulsive to many native humans, sometimes merged into lumpy thickenings, which gave the captain’s face an even more menacing character, emphasized all the more by the dark olive color of his eyes—perhaps the most certain biosignature of this race.
Yova knew full well that the captain was preparing for the barrage of information and orders that would descend on them as soon as they left the blessed void. Here, in hyperspace, nothing could reach them, no signal, no message—but as soon as they returned to the three spatial dimensions, a cavalcade of events would begin; they would be hit in one second by eight months of world history. And Yova, as they flew into the tensored higher spaces, couldn’t shake the impression that the dynamics of history seemed to be accelerating.
Thyne finally closed the last report on the monitor.
“Thanks for coming before the briefing.”
“I understood it was an order from my commander…”
“Don’t be a clown. You know you’re next to me, not under me,” he waved his hand in resignation and leaned back in his chair. “This is the most comical situation I’ve ever encountered. It’s not the first time a federal ship has flown a mission that’s this strange mixture of CSAR, reconnaissance, a hearse for the dead, and an investigation—but I’ve never heard of the command structure being so messed up.”
“Thyne, don’t exaggerate. The fact that I have twenty investigators under me…”
“Don’t piss me off! You, a separate police investigation directorate, a separate military prosecution directorate, a separate military intelligence reconnaissance corps—everyone is a law unto themselves… They even fucking welded the scientists to the command structure. What kind of a monstrosity is a ‘Captain’s Council’ anyway?”
“By definition, an advisory body…”
“Nonsense! I’m in command of the entire operation, and some happy-go-lucky command theorist at HQ came up with an unworkable piece of idiocy in the form of some fucking expedition parliament to review me! We could debate during the jump, but when we get out there, when push comes to shove, I’m the only one who’s going to have to take responsibility for people’s lives. It’s exquisite.”
“They had to do something after the Nha Kharma, they had to react somehow. Did you call me here to complain about the command model imposed on us? I agree with you, the degree of freedom for each of these directorates is probably too great. I can only promise you that I won’t be a jerk and won’t misuse my capabilities against you…”
The captain got up and went to a cabinet, pulling out glasses and a bottle of ghynne, a courtesy drink of the fleet, which could only taste good to desperadoes confined to narrow decks, billions of kilometers from the nearest sun. Undoubtedly one of the reasons Yova left the navy.
“Stop it, you know that’s not what this is about.”
He poured a glass, handed it to Yova, sat down, and took a drink. He waved his hand carelessly and projected the system onto the wall next to him, the one they would be leaving the multidimensional silence for in just a few hours. Yova took a sip of the ghynne, since custom now demanded it. He hated the thick liquid, its tart, spicy taste followed by an almost choking bitterness. Years ago, Thyne had tried to teach him about their flavors, but it was one of the few things that clearly divided the friends. As was their assessment of what had separated them twenty years ago.
“The Ghonoris system, it rings a bell,” Yova noted maliciously. “What about it?”
“Fucking hilarious. The briefing is in two hours, don’t worry, there’s no dress rehearsal now,” and here the captain paused longer. He watched Yova for a moment with a scrutinizing look.
“What do you think? Just you, personally; don’t give me your captain talk now.”
“We’ve been on the same deck for long months, and except for a few formalities and congratulating me on being assigned the investigation, you haven’t even mentioned the whole matter, and now you’re asking me what I think about it personally?”
“You preferred my navigator’s company for most of that time. Was I supposed to bother you in your cabin?”
“I also had meals. I was also at what you called the expedition parliament…”
“I’m serious. If it bothers you so much, I can only assure you that I’ve been having these private conversations with all the senior officers over the last few days. I want to know what you think, what your intuitions are, after these months of working on the evidence.”
Yova put down his unfinished glass and looked at the system, all possible simulations of which he had been watching non-stop since he was assigned to the case. He looked at Thyne, who was holding his ghynne so that he could constantly absorb its disgusting aroma. He hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with his old friend as the expedition commander. If he had known that Thyne would be in command, he probably wouldn’t have agreed. At least, he pretended to himself that he could have refused the official assignment.
“I have no intuition.”
“What? How… That’s pretty bad, isn’t it, for our inspector not to have a clue about a case of this magnitude?” Thyne leaned over the desk and moved closer to Yova. “Don’t you have… I don’t know, fears? Anxieties?”
“Anxieties?”
“Aren’t you afraid? That it’s an ambush, for example? Or some new kind of danger?”
“Are you serious?”
“Those were the very serious answers from several of my senior officers. It’s unfortunately natural in situations like these; we have a lot of strange facts in the Nha Kharma case. And long jumps themselves are conducive to the imagination processing even a small amount of facts. But here! Yova, that’s how religions were born, let alone some minor anxiety attacks in a crewman.”
“I don’t,” the investigator sighed. “I don’t have intuitions or anxieties related to our operation. We have several dozen open investigations, and I have a few working hypotheses based on what we know, but part of my job is not to give in to impressions. So I’m keeping them to myself for now.”
“I see we’re not going to talk.”
“Thyne, what do you really want? Exit the jump, give me the first telemetries, give me the reports from the autonomes, wait until I’ve digested them. My team will look at it. I’ll give you some suggestions then, we’ll collide it all with the projections, with what we know so far. But now? We don’t even know where they are. Did they land, according to the reports—despite the disaster in the docks? Or did they remain in orbit so as not to stress the hull? What happened to the wounded? What state is the ship in? We could find four hundred bodies there in a little over a day. Or a colony of newly converted children of some pan-world mystical order, because those situations have also happened.”
“I need to know what you’re looking for. I need to know what’s coming out of the collective mind of all the specialists gathered here. I’ve talked a lot with the planetologists; they have some truly incredible speculations about life on this planet, especially Doctor Smiersh. A brilliant, versatile mind. I also need you to…”
“You need to speculate. You just like it. You’ll pour some ghynne and ponder what could have happened. You’ll chat with someone with broad horizons. You’ll get lost in the clouds together. But that doesn’t lead us anywhere. First facts, then conclusions—it never works the other way around.”
The captain sighed, put down his glass. He stared into space for a few moments, clearly fighting with himself.
“Mute the core. I know you’re in constant coupling with that Bsaheoh of yours.”
“He’s still been re-sequenced; there’s no link with him now.”
Thyne nodded and with a movement of his left hand, unlocked access to a data file, which he projected onto the system display.
“We don’t have to leave the jump for me to give you something.”
He got up from the desk and walked over to the photon screen, as if he wanted to look out a window. A theatrical gesture without effect, since the screen was muted to spare human eyes the irregular light around them in the hyperspace bubble.
“So?” Yova didn’t quite understand the circumstances.
“This message does not leave this room.”
“That could be difficult, unless you intend to kill a federal inspector.”
“Stop clowning around. You don’t know this, and certainly not from me.”
“Okay.”
“Saisse Bsalish was not the last member of the expedition who didn’t make it to Ghonoris. They had one more dead body on board before they exited tracing in the high dimensions.”
It was officially known that there had been four deaths among the expedition members during the jump. Group 43 was conducting investigations into three of them, where two cases were unequivocally classified as murders, and the third death was still an unexplained circumstance in which the involvement of third parties could not yet be ruled out. However, the fourth death on board, due to irrefutable and detailed medical documentation, was not of interest to Yova’s investigators. Saisse Bsalish—a professor of biology, a man of versatile interests, and also known for his esoteric and quasi-magical practices—had unfortunately developed a specific form of colon cancer during the jump that could not be eliminated with the well-equipped med-labs of the Nha Kharma’s onboard hospital. He died three weeks before exiting hyperspace and reaching the system. According to his last wish, he was to be buried on the planet’s surface. As Yova remembered from the reports, his body was planned to be transported later and was not on the two anti-grav units at the time of the accident. Many things were said about the professor during his lifetime. Not only about his academic talents, but also about his somewhat eccentric lifestyle. Bsalish’s personal assistants, six of whom he took with him on the expedition—all of them planetary biologists with undeniable scientific achievements—were said to have formed a harmless kind of sect that was in the habit of living together in rather direct relationships, including sexual ones. They were surrounded by an aura of esoteric inclusivity and were a rather unapproachable group of quiet, antisocial people. The death of their guru undoubtedly introduced an intriguing psychological aspect to the whole puzzle, which was already the subject of analysis by Group 43. All the more so because one of the members of this sect was a suspect in the murder of his former lab tech, Ythien Jesellin, the fifth murder after exiting the jump.
“Oh, now that’s interesting,” Yova admitted after a moment, his voice not betraying the irritation that was seizing him. “How is it that my investigative group knows nothing about this at all?”
“They covered it with a military clause. Protocol F, so it’s outside my authority to lift it.”
“Ah… So we’re dealing with Miss Essen’s little secret, how wonderful. Why are you even showing me this? And so suddenly, just before the exit?”
Thyne finally turned away from the wall that would only be a window back in three dimensions.
“Because I talked to the military directorate. That woman from prosecution is like a bloodhound. She’s looking for the guilty, and she’s looking for them in the Nha Kharma crew. She’s… I don’t know, she lacks a broader perspective in my opinion. I know you won’t lack it.”
“Still, why now?”
“We’re leaving in a moment, we’ll be back in the communication loop. And now, they can’t do a damn thing to me. I don’t have the authority to lift the clause. So this is more of an unofficial channel for you,” he hesitated for a moment. “I don’t like this. It’s unthinkable to me that the two main investigators have some secrets and personal squabbles between them. That’s exactly the kind of shit I need the least in these circumstances.”
“Tell me more about that death then. Since we’ve suspended Protocol F for a moment.”
“A military man. A sailor. An ionic engine section technician. They caught him in some strange and ambiguous situation; he was resisting.”
“Do I understand correctly? You’re saying they eliminated one of their own sailors? How could something so important have been excluded from my investigators’ knowledge?! What does that even mean—in a strange situation?”
“Apparently, he was trying to damage the engines. Then they were supposed to have found traces of collaboration with Natharen intelligence, so everything was immediately covered with a military counterintelligence clause. I don’t know the details; I only got that scrap of information myself—military intelligence and counterintelligence are handling everything, end of story, disperse.”
Yova was silent for a moment, trying to fit the new information into the connection grids they had built so far, reviewing the data provided by the captain. The sailor himself, Toihe Maha’R Shmier, a snake from the central systems, however, gave no reason for any sensible associations in the system. The case seemed independent of the other incidents. But such a brutal intelligence war on the Kharma created completely new spaces in which the behavior of at least a few people could be interpreted somewhat differently. Yova was clearly lacking coupling with their core.
“Alright. What’s the deal for you here, and why are you telling me all this? All of a sudden, you’re as effusive as a drunk sailor sitting in a bar after a long jump, caught by intelligence on his needs and milked by an experienced officer…”
“Shahta, don’t piss me off.”
He sat down at his desk. He had suddenly become nervous, and visibly so. He leaned toward Yova as if he wanted to say something confidential again.
“I have no idea what we’ll find there. I’m considering all scenarios. But we’ve been given a really large military escort; I have a small armada at my disposal—such flotillas are designated for minor border conflicts, not rescue missions. The Besaoth alone has firepower that would be enough to eliminate separatists in a small system! But at the same time, they’re playing with me as if I were a pawn, a tool in some much larger game—and it pisses me off that I don’t know everything.”
He paused for a moment, as if he needed to silence his anger. And move on to business, which, as the inspector predicted, happened right after.
“And you’re vigilant. And sharp, even if you haven’t necessarily managed to use that in your life.”
“Oh, thank you. I appreciate the ambivalence in that compliment.”
“…and that’s why,” the captain completely ignored him, “I want you to get the maximum available info. And repay me in kind, through the same informal channel.”
“You want me to spy on your own crew for you?”
“What are you saying! I have my own security officer for that.”
“Yes, Glohmar is a champion that our counterintelligence is lacking…”
“The situation may be a little beyond him, but he’ll manage. He’s tough. I don’t want a spy. I want a man who will come to me and tell me what he thinks about all this shit even if it’s officially classified.”
“You know how much I value the formality of service.”
The captain smiled.
“Wonderful, I’m glad we understand each other. Here’s a little something for dessert.”
He tossed the inspector a data package.
“But this is no secret, everything will be at the official captain’s briefing. You still have two hours, so you can snoop around on this early. I have the authority here, so I’ve decided to lift the clause.”
Yova reviewed the data again. Information from the long-range reconnaissance of one of the autonomous probes that had been sent to the system even before the Nha Kharma flew in. The telemetry data indicated directly that there was another spacecraft with an unknown signature in the system. Far away, in an orbit identical to Gh-A I—the system’s largest gas giant. The probe was only able to identify the trajectory at the moment the ionic engines were fired. The telemetry indicated a small ship of the gunboat or corvette class. The last observed firing of the ionic engines, interpreted by the probe’s computer as a deorbiting maneuver in the direction of Ghonoris, had occurred after the loss of navigational signals from the Nha Kharma.
So our missing crew had company.