Ariadne Read online

  “The professor likes to keep his dirty secrets… secret. Turns out, Chandrasekhar was the only survivor of the team that created you. Which is suspicious in itself. It was difficult to piece together information about the man as the professor is intensely private. He has no friends or lovers… just his pets.”

  “Whatever is programmed into my genes doesn’t stretch to caring about my past,” I spit. “I’m a man of little emotion. Other than self-pity. The bastard was a part of my creation, just as he was a part of Ariadne—both are flawed and very dangerous designs.”

  “Ain’t they just!”

  I decide to cut through Xev’s bullshit. “How did you get aboard exactly? Did Chandrasekhar invite you?”

  “Him? Hell no. He has no idea who I am or that I even exist… which is what I was hoping to change tonight. He had a lot of power in the Company. I pulled in the last of my favours. Tonight was make or break.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” I reply, a malicious grin on my lips. “I wondered what a washed-up loser was doing at tonight’s VIP event…”

  The drunken smile that has been plastered on Xev’s face since we started this conversation suddenly disappears, replaced with the familiar sneer I’ve seen countless times before, even if it is hidden behind the many folds of his juvo-mangled face.

  “You’re sure enjoying my fall from grace, aren’t you?”

  “If that’s what it is.”

  “Hell, I wish I was here as part of some clever plan.” Xev sighs, the breath leaving his body like a deflating balloon. “But I’m not lying, and you know it.”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. And I always get the guy.”

  “You were always a cocky fucker. You and that partner of yours, Esta. You were my most effective operatives.”

  “Don’t you dare mention her name!” I shout at him, aware of everyone looking at me.

  “Well that sure touched a nerve.”

  “Shut up and get out of my sight!”

  “Now why would I do that? Haven’t you figured it out yet? Sometimes you Skilled miss the bleeding obvious.”

  “Figured what out?” I snap back at him, wishing I hadn’t let the man talk to me. He brings back far too many painful memories.

  “Isn’t it obvious to your brilliant, analytical mind? …I’m the only guy aboard this hell ship who you can fully trust.” He makes a grab for the brandy flask and I’m too shocked to stop him taking it off me.

  He’s right. Xev hasn’t been replaced, that’s for sure. He is who he says he is. His confidence with me comes from our association during the war. If he was lying, I’d spot that in him a mile off, empathy or not. I pull a grim smile… “Shit!”

  “Looks like the old team is back together.” Xev takes a large swig of brandy, winks, and goes back to walk with Velez, just as Pirella screams.

  I TURN to see Pirella holding her hand to her mouth, while she and Rooba are staring down a darkly-lit side corridor.

  I stride over to her. “What’s the girl screaming about?” I say, looking at the Jen for explanation.

  “She saw something.”

  “Saw what?”

  Pirella tries to speak through her sobs, but her words are incomprehensible.

  I clench my fist. “Do you want another sucker punch to the gut?”

  Pirella shakes her head, wiping her tears away. “It was a boy,” she says, regaining her composure. “A boy with the face of an old man and silvery hair watching me with hateful eyes.”

  I share a glance with Xev. “Ain’t that what you saw, silvery hair?”

  Xev takes a swig from his flask and nods.

  “Did anyone else see or hear anything?”

  The reply is a series of shaking heads.

  “Those eyes…” Pirella says, tears forming in her own red-rimmed blue eyes.

  “What about them?”

  “They were evil, staring… full of loathing.”

  “A boy you say? Are you sure?”

  “He was in the shadows.”

  I walk past Pirella and into the darkened corridor. Nothing. But I believe the girl. With her and Xev seeing the same thing, I have to conclude that there is someone or something out there watching us. Unless she’s trying to play me for a sap.

  “What was he wearing?”

  “I only saw his face,” Pirella replies. “He ran away as soon as I screamed.”

  “Ran away?”

  Pirella ignores me, her eyes still staring down the corridor.

  I hold up my wafer, its light illuminating the girl’s face. “From now on, everybody keep an eye out for anything suspicious. For anybody watching or following us… stay vigilant.”

  “Great,” Drex spits. “And what are we supposed to do if there is someone out there who has it in for us? Wave them away? You took our guns, remember?”

  Drex has a point. But I’m a lot happier, knowing the twitchy kid doesn’t have his hands on a rifle.

  We continue to the centre of the ship. After Pirella’s screaming, everyone is on edge. I decide against using the elevator and we head down the stairwell past a few floors to the lower decks. The light here is more subdued, emphasising that this area is not regularly visited. I’m impressed to see the ship design has not been diluted. It is beautiful from top to bottom, despite Ariadne lurking behind its manicured facade. She is still pushing at my mind, trying to find a way in. I can resist her, but not for long. Luckily, I only have an hour and a half left to solve this thing, any longer and Ariadne might break through my defences.

  After crossing a few more intersections, Drex leads us to a small pentagonal chamber with a high ceiling at the end of a cramped corridor.

  Service panels line the segmented walls. A control monitor blinks and crackles, its screen cracked. Various readouts now unintelligible. Something heavy must have hit it to smash the almost unbreakable glass. High above, further than anyone could reach without assistance, is an open panel stained with the pink froth Boyd mentioned earlier. A ventilation shaft of some kind.

  I take out my wafer and check the ship schematics. “A service area,” I announce. “And well out of the way. Luckily, you were ordered to search the ship, otherwise it would’ve never been found… Whoever put the body up there didn’t expect it to be discovered any time soon. But the big question is… how?”

  I turn to Hewlis. “What kind of lifting equipment does the ship have?”

  The engineer begins to hunch his shoulders.

  “And if you shrug at me one more time, I’ll break your damn neck!”

  Hewlis stops in mid-movement, his shoulders carefully dropping. “I would imagine the grav would be turned off in these areas when inspection was needed,” he says.

  “Which means anyone could’ve dumped the body. Get over here. I’m gonna need a bunk-up.”

  Hewlis lumbers over and links his hands. I put my foot in them and he hoists me up to the ventilation shaft. A quick look tells me the inspection panel has been wrenched open. The lock twisted and broken… There’s no marks or scratches to indicate a tool had been used and, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the cover panel was ripped away by powerful hands. According to Drex and Boyd, the hatchway to Hydroponics was ‘broken’ from the inside. I think back to the apparition Pirella and Xev saw. Could there be a monster loose on the ship? If so, what the hell did it have to do with the body-blank? I admit it, I’m a little freaked by this development. For now, though, all that concerns me is evidence. Speculation will get me nowhere.

  “What do you see?” Drex asks from below.

  I ignore him, pulling myself upwards to clamber into the tight ventilation shaft. Apart from a whole load of sticky goo, the shaft is empty. I’m about to drop back down when I spot something poking out of a joint between the piping that runs the length of the shaft. I pull it free and recognise it immediately. It’s part of a rectangular temporary keycard issued to those new aboard ship, used before their cabin’s information can be programmed to their bio-ident. I
t’s made of clear crystal imprinted with the same relief I saw in the cargo bay—a giant stylised spider sitting within its web, although it’s snapped in two. Half of the card is missing. I wipe it clean on my skinsuit and reveal a code.

  At last… a damn clue.

  I drop back down and re-examine the card fragment in the light of the inspection room.

  “What’s that?” Klund asks, keen to see.

  I hold it up so that everyone can look. “It’s a pass key.” I give it to Klund, who almost snatches it off me.

  The guy is becoming a real pain, but I have other concerns. I access the ship schematic, enter the code and find the room in question. It’s located on the first habitation deck—where the Strategist and her superior officers would’ve been quartered. The keycard belongs to an important ship-board person. But who? My theory that one of the survivors was the imposter is suddenly put into doubt. None of them would be quartered in such an important area, or not at all—as in the case of Xev, Rooba and Pirella the waitress, who were temporary guests at the party.

  There are only two explanations… the keycard doesn’t belong with the body-blank or someone else was replaced. Someone who we’ve not yet found. I’m perplexed. This investigation is throwing up more damn questions than solutions. I decide to do what I always do in these situations. To concentrate on my inquiry. To gather as many clues as I can before the time runs out.

  The others also examine the card, except Velez, Pirella and Rooba, who seem disinterested in my discovery. Either due to guilt or something else. Without my empathy, I’m as blind as I was back in the Zeta-Karst Laboratories. I’m thinking that I should force them all to look, but that idea is cut short.

  Xev looks me straight in the eye. “This comes from the same cabin where I stole the brandy from,” he says, his badly-aligned eyebrows struggling to rise on the tight skin of his forehead. “It belongs to that jumped-up bitch, Mandibald Glaxtinian.”

  “YOU WHAT?” Boyd says, squaring up to Xev.

  My old boss gives the blonde kid a confused look. “I’m just saying that I know who owns this keycard. A Company grandee I’ve heard of before. A real piece of work. What’s that to you?”

  A shocked look crosses the blond kid’s face, like he can’t believe what Xev has just told him. “You mean that thing we found here, that blob, was… was her?”

  I shake my head. “No, I don’t think so. Unless the replacement-tek used to create the body-blank has advanced significantly since the end of the war, Glaxtinian couldn’t have been replaced. I already found her body up by the bridge. Murdered by a buzz-gun to the gut. If she’d been the imposter, her corpse would’ve reverted to its original form or showed signs of nano-degeneration. The nanites get their energy directly from living cells. It’s not Glaxtinian.”

  “She was murdered?” Boyd whispers.

  “That’s why I was brought aboard, to solve this murder and to stop this ship. Or haven’t you been listening? I thought that between you and Drex, you were the one with the brains. Don’t start proving me wrong.”

  Boyd’s chin drops to his chest. What’s wrong with the kid?

  “What I don’t understand,” Hewlis says, his booming voice filling the small chamber, “is why Glaxtinian had a cabin at all. She was a party guest, not a member of the crew.”

  “That’s irrelevant!” Klund replies, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. “If you are sure the body-blank isn’t Glaxtinian, then we’re no closer to finding out who it is, are we?”

  I ignore the whining scientist. “I’ve no idea why Glaxtinian’s keycard was found with the body-blank. Unless it was put there deliberately to throw us off the investigation. I doubt that. The body was hidden clumsily—it would’ve been found sooner or later. But whoever hid it didn’t expect it to be discovered so quickly. I’m sure of that. And they didn’t reckon on having a Skilled aboard either.” I smile. “I’m quite the spanner in the works. Hewlis is right. I assumed Glaxtinian was just another guest aboard the Ariadne, on board for the party and nothing more. The keycard tells another story—she was here to stay.”

  I turn my attention to Xev. “How did you know Glaxtinian had a cabin?”

  My old boss smiles. “The same transport brought us both from the planet, including all her luggage. She was too high-ranking to chat to me, of course, made a point of ignoring my polite attempts at conversation. I wasn’t surprised, she has quite the reputation for being an arrogant bitch. When we disembarked, the ship’s bursar gave her a keycard and arranged for her things to be picked up and taken to what I assumed was her cabin. I noticed a few likely-looking cases being unloaded in the cargo bay and, as I’m one to not miss an opportunity…”

  “You broke in to a ship’s cabin?” says Klund, who’s nerd gene is finding the information harder to swallow than murder. “The doors are impassable once locked.”

  “Obviously not,” Xev says, producing his brandy flask and toasting everyone before taking a swig. “Glaxtinian brought some top-class booze aboard. And why shouldn’t I steal off the bitch? She was never gonna help me get anywhere.”

  “Answer Klund’s question,” Hewlis says with a hint of aggression. “How did you get into her cabin without a key?”

  Xev smiles. “There isn’t any door I can’t crack, isn’t that right, Vatic? Ariadne might be impressive, but the tek controlling the doors is the same as every other shit-hole ship in the Company.”

  “That is a serious offence!” Klund continues, his eyebrows furrowing like warring caterpillars.

  Xev gives him a showman’s bow. “I haven’t lost my touch… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, never under-estimate Xev Tranth.”

  My old boss came from poor beginnings on some forgotten backwater planet. A place where he survived on his quick wits and his equally quick fingers—a story he often recited to me—as if I ever gave a shit. But that was Xev all over, a loud-mouthed braggart.

  “Hand it over,” I say and Xev passes the card to me. “And that’s not all—give me the flask.”

  “What?” he replies like a wounded dog. “Why?”

  “Because I need you sober.” I give him an expression that tells him I’m not to be disobeyed and the man reluctantly passes me the brandy.

  My next move is a calculated one. I pull out the decorated buzz-gun I took off Eric Klund and offer it to Xev.

  My old boss stares back at me with a confused expression on his face.

  “Take it.”

  “How come he gets a gun?” Drex says angrily. “The man’s a goddamn drunk.”

  “You’re right, of course,” I reply to him, wondering when this kid’s mouth will ever stop running away with itself. “But I know Xev. I’ve worked with him before. Sure, he’s half-cut and a full-time prick, but he’s not been replaced that’s for sure. All my instincts tell me he’s the only one of you losers that I can trust. So he gets the buzz-gun. And besides, there could be something out there. With two of us armed, our odds are improved by one-hundred percent should it turn out to be dangerous.”

  Xev takes the gun and examines it, seemingly impressed with its decoration of etched lines.

  The last thing I wanted to do was to make this bastard feel good about himself. His juvo-mangled, gone-to-seed act might just be that, an act, but Xev is a survivor. He knows his best chance to get out of this mess is to stick with me. And if he’s somehow involved? Giving him a gun might be the best way to find out.

  “Drex is right. Why does he get the gun?” Klund says coming up to me. “He is a frigging thief and a drunk.”

  “If it comes to that,” Hewlis growls, his large frame filling my vision, “I also know my way around a gun. You point and pull the trigger, right? You think I can’t be trusted to do that?”

  “I agree,” Velez says. “He’s not up to the job. Give the gun to me.” Her eyes show the flash of mania, the twitch in her neck thrumming like the string on a guitar.

  I push the chef away with the flat of my hand. She
shouts out like I’ve punched her in the face. An over-reaction. Hewlis and Klund crowd me, followed by a vocal Rooba who seems to have lost her normal, implacable cool.

  I get what’s happening. Even though Hewlis and the rest can’t sense Ariadne’s empathic mind, it is still affecting them. Pushing them to the edge. The survivors are showing the symptoms of being close to such a strong and negative empathy field. It’s only a matter of time before they all go mad. Luckily, time is what we don’t have. I don’t need no wafer countdown to tell me that.

  I raise my gun and fire at the ceiling. It makes a reverberating boom in the small chamber. Velez drops to the floor with Klund, while Hewlis raises his hands.

  “Calm down,” I growl at them. “Bickering with me will get you nowhere. I’m making Xev my deputy, and that’s final. No one else. And if you have a problem with that, know this: he’s a murderer. A good one. And he enjoys it.” I turn to Xev. “If any one of them steps out of line, shoot-to-kill. Understand?”

  Velez is incensed. “The man is just an aide and well past it!”

  “This ain’t a democracy,” I say. “Or have you forgotten I’m in charge? Now can it.”

  There are more noises of protest, but I’m not in the mood to listen.

  “Where the hell is Boyd?” Drex says from somewhere behind me. “He’s gone!”

  I PUSH everyone angrily away. Drex is right. Boyd has disappeared. I stare back down the corridor leading to this chamber. There are many turn-offs, other exits and no sign of the kid.

  “What are you waiting for?” Hewlis says aggressively. “Aren’t you going after him?”

  I shake my head. “He’s gone and you idiots gave him the opportunity to escape.”

  The engineer’s face is still reddened and full of irrational anger. “You mean he could be the goddamn imposter?”

  “No way!” Drex shouts. “It’s not Boyd. I know him better than anybody. He’s upset, that’s all.”