Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 93
“This is a travesty,” Zoya said. “No survivors?”
“Not one. It’s possible your carrier never bothered to pack the goods. Also possible some scavenger got out here before I did and nicked it.” What she did not say was that the possibility of a true scavenger getting to the case before her or the gardai was slim. If someone took something from the case before either arrived, it was someone waiting for this shuttle to fall. Someone who knew it was coming down.
“I want you to look into who took down that transport," Zoya said.
Abijah sighed and closed the case. "I don't do espionage. I’ll give you the case and a recording of the scene –“
"You do murder. This was a murder."
"It’s off-world murder. Better for the gardai to take it.”
"I’m asking you to perform an informal inquiry. Doesn’t need to be good enough to get to a court. Only enough to be definitive in your trained eyes."
"Dangerous precedent."
"I hire you for your expertise."
"If I found out who or how this shuttle went down and you put a hit on someone –"
"I would never do something so garish. I barter in information, Abijah. Your services help me obtain that. Someone wanted me mortally wounded. They killed those boys to achieve it.”
“You think maybe not everything was about you? Maybe there was a malfunction. Maybe some kid had an affair with a politician and she scuttled the nav. Lots of variables.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“You must find life needlessly exhausting, then.”
“The cargo that boy carried belonged to me. Find the cargo, and find out who did this to me.”
“Who are your enemies, ambassador?”
“Too many to name. But the ones who would do this? This is personal fuckery. This is close. Family, perhaps. A former lover.”
“What exactly was the boy carrying for you?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“It would give me an idea of what I’m looking for.”
“It was… highly prized protein.”
Abijah turned that over. It wasn't the most bizarre thing a founding family member had said to her, but it was up there. “Protein?”
“Cattle, to be precise.”
“Cattle? Like… cows, bison?”
“Prized steak. Red meat. Nearly two kilos.”
“Beef? You think this whole shuttle of boys was blown up for a couple of… steaks?
“Highly prized! This was key to a dinner I was to host for Feast of Saint Liya-Mahrem. This is a personal attack –“
“You couldn’t… serve a salad?”
“Salad is for poor people.”
Abijah stopped recording the scene and took a long breath. Stared at the sky. Her job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking clients.
“Ambassador,” Abijah said, “I admit I don’t give two shits about your steak. But I do consider boys human. I’ll agree to look into it, for that.”
“Good, good. You have no idea how much I will lose face for this. For –“
“For failing to be a successful capitalist? Throw some vat protein in a stew and call it steak. They won’t know the difference.”
“I assure you, they will. This attack was meant to ruin me, inspector. Find out who did this.”
Abijah tapped her wrist. “Sure… ambassador.”
She made to close the call, but Zoya said, “You think me petty, inspector. But consider this: who else on this planet would even care if a bunch of not-people burned up over some barren field? I’m doing them all a great service.”
#
It was four days until the feast of Saint Liya-Mahrem, which also coincided with the darkest day of the year this far south on the island. It meant Abijah stepped off the trolley at the corner well past dark; smoked lanterns lit the street, their ghostly light playing across the cobbled stones like querulous wraiths. The pub below Abijah’s apartment emitted a steady stream of patrons. When it got dark, a certain set of the city drank, fucked, and slept, not necessarily in that order – until Breakup early in the new year.
Abijah mounted the rickety steps along the side of the row house. Below, a couple moaned, and the distinct sound of someone vomiting enough liquor to fill a small pool echoed in the narrow alley. She pushed gratefully into her apartment, only to see Pats lounging on the divan, one leg hooked over the armrest, munching on a pincered grab of crisps. The ring and pinkie fingers on her left hand both ended cleanly at the knuckle. She was taller than Abijah, no longer fit, but still thin and ropey, mainly due to her recreational use of amphetamines she should have given up after the war office stopped prescribing them.
“You drunk?” Abijah asked, pulling off her coat and hanging it next to the warm stone oven-stove that connected her apartment to the pub below, heating both.
“Not yet,” Pats said. “You?” She was riveted by a game show streaming on the primary viewing screen.
“Still hungover.” Abijah flopped onto the divan next to Pats. “You get the data I sent you on the case? About that communicator fob? Wondering what we can get off it.”
“Yeah, I don’t do alien tech.” Pats laughed at some quip on the screen, then tilted her head at Abijah. “You didn’t say one of the kids was here.”
“Sorry, bit of a surprise to me too. She just showed up yesterday. Put her in the spare room. She here?”
“Went out for fucking and drinking. Thought your exes had all the kids? All those big schools on the continent.”
“Oldest is of age, can come and go when she wants.”
“Fuck, time keeps on ticking. How the fuck old is she?”
“She passed exams. Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that.” Abijah rubbed her eyes.
“What’s this one called?” Pats said. “I get them all confused. You have like a billion of them.”
“I have four kids, Pats.”
“A billion.”
The door rattled, and a tall, lanky young woman walked in, shrouded in a stylish long coat with an asymmetrical cut that was apparently all the rage on the continent. Abijah had gotten an earful about the coat already, when she made a passing comment about the fashion of colonizers.
“This is Marjani, Pats,” Abijah said. “You remember Pats, Maj?”
“No one calls me Maj anymore.” Marjani shrugged out of her coat. Her hair, too, was cut in an asymmetric style that made her head look like a pencil.
“Right,” Abijah said. She got up and went to the cold box to get a vodka soda.
“And yes,” Marjani said, crossing the living area to the spare bedroom, “I remember your drunk, dishonorably discharged, war criminal friend Pats.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Pats said. “You mother Savida must have added the war criminal part. Maurille, the other one, she always liked me. How drunk are you?”
“I only drink tea.”
“Sure.”
Marjani shut the door to the spare bedroom behind her, with a great thump.
Abijah cracked open her vodka soda and took a long drink, chugging half of it before coming up for air. What a fucking day. “Hey, Pats. If you can’t help with the tech –“
“Yeah, yeah,” Pats said, pushing up from the divan. “You have anything else for me?”
“Maybe later. Gonna try Popsy for the tech.”
“Don’t you owe her money?”
“Probably.”
Pats stuffed the rest of the crisps into her coat pocket and clomped to the door, spilling caked mud across the floor with each step. “Good to see you, Majori,” Pats yelled.
Marjani opened the door a slit. “Marjani,” Marjani said.
“Marjani, Petti, Luk, Dalani, you’re all the same, you continent girls.” Pats rolled her eyes and hummed a little tune – the game show theme song – as she made her way down the outer stairway. Abijah closed and locked the door behind her. Checked the locking mechanism for the hundredth time. How Pats was still able to get in no matter how many times Abijah changed the locking type was one of Pats's many hidden talents.
Marjani peered out from the bedroom and frowned. “I thought you weren’t working with Pats anymore? Didn’t she steal from you? Run your cycle into the river one time?”
“She’s an independent contractor, not a partner. You have fun out there?”
“What do you care?”
“Did you eat anything?
“Did you?”
“Goodnight, then,” Abijah said, crossing back to the divan and finishing the vodka soda. The nattering heads of game show on the main projection screen made her head hurt. Or maybe that was just her daughter.
“You are bad at everything," Marjani said.
Abijah accessed the house interface and blinked to change the projection to a soothing white mountain scape. “I’m visiting the medical examiner tomorrow,” Abijah said, “to go over a case. Anything you need from the shops?”
“I have my own ration card and allowance now,” Marjani said.
“Want to watch a program? Whatever you want? Want a vodka soda?”
“I only drink tea!” Marjani slammed the door again.
Abijah sank gratefully into the divan. She would never understand children. Especially not her own. At fifteen, she had already been through twelve weeks of military training. At fifteen, she had already killed at least forty people. Looking back, it would have been a lot nicer to be fifteen and drinking tea in a nice coat. Even if it was as a student of the fucking enemy.
She closed her eyes.
#
Pats met her outside the medical examiner’s office the next day; it was still dark, and would be until nearly midday. She carried a small box of pastries. Her hair hung loose and greasy; Abijah wondered when she’d last washed it.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” Abijah said, pulling a fist-sized croissant from the box.
“You’re predictable.”
They entered the dingy foyer together. Signed in with their biometric data at the front desk.
“Scene doesn't add up for me," Abijah said as they made their way down the echoing hall. "No accident, for sure, but it wasn’t an on board bomb. I’ve seen those enough. This was an airstrike, I bet.”
“From down here?” Pats said. She whistled, low. "Boys with access to bombs is my idea of a good time, but not everybody's."
“I suppose one of their ships could have fired on it, but we’d have registered discharge from up there. Those shuttles are all monitored. This client wants me to dig into a lot of dirty planetside business that I don’t think I want in on."
“So, say no? Why don’t you ever say no?”
“I gotta eat.”
“You have a pension. That’s enough to eat. And maybe get laid.”
“I have four kids, Pats.”
“Billions!”
Abijah opened the door into the morgue and grimaced at the smell of death, and the yeasty stink of the bacterial compounds meant to irradiate that smell. Two stone slabs bore lumps of flesh that had been arranged like a series of puzzle pieces, each nearly approximating about half of a whole body. Abijah found boys disconcerting at the best of times; bodies like corpses soaked in brine, moist and bloodless. Their ears and noses seemed comically large, and while the youngest could pass for girls of some other phenotype, as they aged they hardly grew – up or out. Their voices all sounded wrong. And they did not last many years planetside. The work, the gravity, the radiation – who knew? But they were not particularly hardy. Perhaps that was why their people kept sending them planetside. They were too useless up in the colony ships. Expendable. These sad remains were made sadder still, knowing the flesh would likely be ground up and turned into fish food, making them marginally more useful in death than they had been in life.
The medical examiner turned from where she stood at the great stone sink, and Abijah caught her breath. “Bataya?”
Wiry little Bataya made her way to the table, her fringe swept back away from her face, slender fingers neatly manicured, as if picking up an electric scalpel all day were the sort of bloodless work performed by an office mail carrier.
Abijah removed her hat and clutched it with both hands, instinctually.
“Pastry?” Pats said, extending the box to Bataya.
Bataya surveyed the contents, and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“I… wasn’t expecting you,” Abijah said. “Where's Jules?”
“We heard you got marrrrriiiiiiiiied,” Pats said. “Years ago, right Abijah? Two years ago.” She leaned toward Bataya. “Not that Abijah has been counting.”
“I called it off,” Bataya said, not meeting either of their looks. “I’ve been practicing on the continent.”
“Ah, the continent,” Abijah said. “Of course.” The fucking continent.
“Jules was kind enough to step in.” Bataya rested both hands on the stone slab. “I see you are paying for the public query on this incident, Abijah. That seems unusually kind, so I assume it is for a client.”
“It is,” Abijah said.
Pats sat down in a chair near the door, resting the box of pastries on her crossed knee. “This old soldier here was real kind once,” she said, jabbing her three left fingers at Abijah. “This time we were cut off from our squad, up in those mountains in the northern continent, six continental units all ringing us in, and Jeezmo here gives me her last can of accelerant, so I didn’t have to eat cold snake. Real team player.”
“Why don’t you meet me back in the pub?” Abijah said. “I’m seeing Popsy next. Put a drink on my tab.”
“Say no more,” Pats said, and left them, licking her fingers each in turn and giving Abijah a wink as the door closed.
“So, what do you need to know?” Bataya said.
“You ever get that certificate in combat yoga?”
Bataya’s narrow mouth turned up at the corners, just a hint, but enough. “I did. And advanced reiki.”
“Congratulations,” Abijah said. She nodded to the body pieces. “I’d like your professional opinion, based on the evidence, about whether this shuttle was blown up by an on-board bomb or an air strike.”
Bataya knit her brows and frowned over the corpses. “Well, I can make inferences, but nothing that would hold up if you were to pursue criminal –“
“You know I won’t. Nobody will, for aliens. Boys at that.”
“Then, based on the way these bodies have been impacted… I’d have to say it was most likely a force acting on them from outside.”
“No bad re-entry?”
“Not enough char for that. There would have been even less to examine here.”
“And on-board bomb…?”
“Similar issue. You would see overpressure damage to the lungs, ears, the gut, and fragmentation injuries – shrapnel, and other flying debris that penetrates the body and causes damage. And again: many thermal injuries to skin, lungs, and the like. But a burst, an external projectile…” She nodded to a slab piled with bits of wreckage. “That creates unique capture marks on wreckage, and pieces embedded in the wreckage. I’m not a forensic tech anthropologist, but you could conduct a trace analysis on the physical wreckage that will show residues related to whatever impacted the shuttle.”
“So, I need to hire a forensic tech anthropologist?”
“If you – your client - had the funds, or the desire to know for certain. But I pulled wreckage out of these bodies. I’ve seen the marks. If you asked my certainty on an external projectile, I’d say, eighty percent probability. To you, but not under oath.”
“Understood. Thanks, Bataya.” Abijah pulled her hat back on and turned to go, hesitated. “I know maybe I’ve –“
“Don’t,” Bataya said. “Some other time. Not… now.”
“All right.” Abijah left her in the morgue, her own palms still sweaty, and put in a call to Zoya to catch her up on the latest.
“It was most likely a strike from the ground,” Abijah said. Zoya’s face filled her left eye; Zoya sat beside a small pond that rippled softly. Occasionally, the great gaping maws of fish as long as Abijah’s arm appeared in the mop of plant matter that rippled on the surface like an antique rug. A yellow bloom from a frond in the water seemed to be emitting a steady stream of mayflies, their wings shimmering in the low light. “I did find a communicator nearby,” Abijah continued. “I’m having a contact look at it. Maybe we can figure out who he was contacting down here, and get more information from them.”
“Good, inspector, thank you,” Zoya said, and Abijah prepared herself, because whenever a founding family member thanked her for some job she’d gone above and beyond on, they asked another impossible task of her. “These boys were bound for one of my factories.”
Abijah grimaced. Of course they were. “That would have been good to know.”
“I didn’t think it was relevant. But if this truly was a strike, as you can see, it was, again, most certainly against me and my interests.”
“Which factory?”
Zoya gave her the address.
“Let me see what I can do,” Abijah said. “I want to follow up on this tech lead first.”
“Inspector?”
Fuck, what now? Abijah thought, but merely waited, brows raised.
“My factory manufactures chemical bursts, you understand? Projectiles meant to keep us safe. From aliens in space.”
“Of course it does,” Abijah said, and ended the call.
#
Abijah had lunch at a nearby café catering to the afternoon drink crowd coming out from the adjacent government buildings. She never could keep regular meal hours; it was a wonder she ate once a day, let alone the four or five that seemed to clutter up everyone else’s social calendar. From the cold metal seat under an awning that kept off a spate of hail, she spotted two continental peace officers strolling languidly down the opposite side of the street, their long coats touching the heels of their stout boots, their uniform shaved heads and shoulder pads giving them all the appearance of one body, many faces. She had shot, punched in, or cracked open many a face like theirs during the war. To see them on the streets now still turned her stomach.
“Not one. It’s possible your carrier never bothered to pack the goods. Also possible some scavenger got out here before I did and nicked it.” What she did not say was that the possibility of a true scavenger getting to the case before her or the gardai was slim. If someone took something from the case before either arrived, it was someone waiting for this shuttle to fall. Someone who knew it was coming down.
“I want you to look into who took down that transport," Zoya said.
Abijah sighed and closed the case. "I don't do espionage. I’ll give you the case and a recording of the scene –“
"You do murder. This was a murder."
"It’s off-world murder. Better for the gardai to take it.”
"I’m asking you to perform an informal inquiry. Doesn’t need to be good enough to get to a court. Only enough to be definitive in your trained eyes."
"Dangerous precedent."
"I hire you for your expertise."
"If I found out who or how this shuttle went down and you put a hit on someone –"
"I would never do something so garish. I barter in information, Abijah. Your services help me obtain that. Someone wanted me mortally wounded. They killed those boys to achieve it.”
“You think maybe not everything was about you? Maybe there was a malfunction. Maybe some kid had an affair with a politician and she scuttled the nav. Lots of variables.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“You must find life needlessly exhausting, then.”
“The cargo that boy carried belonged to me. Find the cargo, and find out who did this to me.”
“Who are your enemies, ambassador?”
“Too many to name. But the ones who would do this? This is personal fuckery. This is close. Family, perhaps. A former lover.”
“What exactly was the boy carrying for you?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“It would give me an idea of what I’m looking for.”
“It was… highly prized protein.”
Abijah turned that over. It wasn't the most bizarre thing a founding family member had said to her, but it was up there. “Protein?”
“Cattle, to be precise.”
“Cattle? Like… cows, bison?”
“Prized steak. Red meat. Nearly two kilos.”
“Beef? You think this whole shuttle of boys was blown up for a couple of… steaks?
“Highly prized! This was key to a dinner I was to host for Feast of Saint Liya-Mahrem. This is a personal attack –“
“You couldn’t… serve a salad?”
“Salad is for poor people.”
Abijah stopped recording the scene and took a long breath. Stared at the sky. Her job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking clients.
“Ambassador,” Abijah said, “I admit I don’t give two shits about your steak. But I do consider boys human. I’ll agree to look into it, for that.”
“Good, good. You have no idea how much I will lose face for this. For –“
“For failing to be a successful capitalist? Throw some vat protein in a stew and call it steak. They won’t know the difference.”
“I assure you, they will. This attack was meant to ruin me, inspector. Find out who did this.”
Abijah tapped her wrist. “Sure… ambassador.”
She made to close the call, but Zoya said, “You think me petty, inspector. But consider this: who else on this planet would even care if a bunch of not-people burned up over some barren field? I’m doing them all a great service.”
#
It was four days until the feast of Saint Liya-Mahrem, which also coincided with the darkest day of the year this far south on the island. It meant Abijah stepped off the trolley at the corner well past dark; smoked lanterns lit the street, their ghostly light playing across the cobbled stones like querulous wraiths. The pub below Abijah’s apartment emitted a steady stream of patrons. When it got dark, a certain set of the city drank, fucked, and slept, not necessarily in that order – until Breakup early in the new year.
Abijah mounted the rickety steps along the side of the row house. Below, a couple moaned, and the distinct sound of someone vomiting enough liquor to fill a small pool echoed in the narrow alley. She pushed gratefully into her apartment, only to see Pats lounging on the divan, one leg hooked over the armrest, munching on a pincered grab of crisps. The ring and pinkie fingers on her left hand both ended cleanly at the knuckle. She was taller than Abijah, no longer fit, but still thin and ropey, mainly due to her recreational use of amphetamines she should have given up after the war office stopped prescribing them.
“You drunk?” Abijah asked, pulling off her coat and hanging it next to the warm stone oven-stove that connected her apartment to the pub below, heating both.
“Not yet,” Pats said. “You?” She was riveted by a game show streaming on the primary viewing screen.
“Still hungover.” Abijah flopped onto the divan next to Pats. “You get the data I sent you on the case? About that communicator fob? Wondering what we can get off it.”
“Yeah, I don’t do alien tech.” Pats laughed at some quip on the screen, then tilted her head at Abijah. “You didn’t say one of the kids was here.”
“Sorry, bit of a surprise to me too. She just showed up yesterday. Put her in the spare room. She here?”
“Went out for fucking and drinking. Thought your exes had all the kids? All those big schools on the continent.”
“Oldest is of age, can come and go when she wants.”
“Fuck, time keeps on ticking. How the fuck old is she?”
“She passed exams. Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that.” Abijah rubbed her eyes.
“What’s this one called?” Pats said. “I get them all confused. You have like a billion of them.”
“I have four kids, Pats.”
“A billion.”
The door rattled, and a tall, lanky young woman walked in, shrouded in a stylish long coat with an asymmetrical cut that was apparently all the rage on the continent. Abijah had gotten an earful about the coat already, when she made a passing comment about the fashion of colonizers.
“This is Marjani, Pats,” Abijah said. “You remember Pats, Maj?”
“No one calls me Maj anymore.” Marjani shrugged out of her coat. Her hair, too, was cut in an asymmetric style that made her head look like a pencil.
“Right,” Abijah said. She got up and went to the cold box to get a vodka soda.
“And yes,” Marjani said, crossing the living area to the spare bedroom, “I remember your drunk, dishonorably discharged, war criminal friend Pats.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Pats said. “You mother Savida must have added the war criminal part. Maurille, the other one, she always liked me. How drunk are you?”
“I only drink tea.”
“Sure.”
Marjani shut the door to the spare bedroom behind her, with a great thump.
Abijah cracked open her vodka soda and took a long drink, chugging half of it before coming up for air. What a fucking day. “Hey, Pats. If you can’t help with the tech –“
“Yeah, yeah,” Pats said, pushing up from the divan. “You have anything else for me?”
“Maybe later. Gonna try Popsy for the tech.”
“Don’t you owe her money?”
“Probably.”
Pats stuffed the rest of the crisps into her coat pocket and clomped to the door, spilling caked mud across the floor with each step. “Good to see you, Majori,” Pats yelled.
Marjani opened the door a slit. “Marjani,” Marjani said.
“Marjani, Petti, Luk, Dalani, you’re all the same, you continent girls.” Pats rolled her eyes and hummed a little tune – the game show theme song – as she made her way down the outer stairway. Abijah closed and locked the door behind her. Checked the locking mechanism for the hundredth time. How Pats was still able to get in no matter how many times Abijah changed the locking type was one of Pats's many hidden talents.
Marjani peered out from the bedroom and frowned. “I thought you weren’t working with Pats anymore? Didn’t she steal from you? Run your cycle into the river one time?”
“She’s an independent contractor, not a partner. You have fun out there?”
“What do you care?”
“Did you eat anything?
“Did you?”
“Goodnight, then,” Abijah said, crossing back to the divan and finishing the vodka soda. The nattering heads of game show on the main projection screen made her head hurt. Or maybe that was just her daughter.
“You are bad at everything," Marjani said.
Abijah accessed the house interface and blinked to change the projection to a soothing white mountain scape. “I’m visiting the medical examiner tomorrow,” Abijah said, “to go over a case. Anything you need from the shops?”
“I have my own ration card and allowance now,” Marjani said.
“Want to watch a program? Whatever you want? Want a vodka soda?”
“I only drink tea!” Marjani slammed the door again.
Abijah sank gratefully into the divan. She would never understand children. Especially not her own. At fifteen, she had already been through twelve weeks of military training. At fifteen, she had already killed at least forty people. Looking back, it would have been a lot nicer to be fifteen and drinking tea in a nice coat. Even if it was as a student of the fucking enemy.
She closed her eyes.
#
Pats met her outside the medical examiner’s office the next day; it was still dark, and would be until nearly midday. She carried a small box of pastries. Her hair hung loose and greasy; Abijah wondered when she’d last washed it.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” Abijah said, pulling a fist-sized croissant from the box.
“You’re predictable.”
They entered the dingy foyer together. Signed in with their biometric data at the front desk.
“Scene doesn't add up for me," Abijah said as they made their way down the echoing hall. "No accident, for sure, but it wasn’t an on board bomb. I’ve seen those enough. This was an airstrike, I bet.”
“From down here?” Pats said. She whistled, low. "Boys with access to bombs is my idea of a good time, but not everybody's."
“I suppose one of their ships could have fired on it, but we’d have registered discharge from up there. Those shuttles are all monitored. This client wants me to dig into a lot of dirty planetside business that I don’t think I want in on."
“So, say no? Why don’t you ever say no?”
“I gotta eat.”
“You have a pension. That’s enough to eat. And maybe get laid.”
“I have four kids, Pats.”
“Billions!”
Abijah opened the door into the morgue and grimaced at the smell of death, and the yeasty stink of the bacterial compounds meant to irradiate that smell. Two stone slabs bore lumps of flesh that had been arranged like a series of puzzle pieces, each nearly approximating about half of a whole body. Abijah found boys disconcerting at the best of times; bodies like corpses soaked in brine, moist and bloodless. Their ears and noses seemed comically large, and while the youngest could pass for girls of some other phenotype, as they aged they hardly grew – up or out. Their voices all sounded wrong. And they did not last many years planetside. The work, the gravity, the radiation – who knew? But they were not particularly hardy. Perhaps that was why their people kept sending them planetside. They were too useless up in the colony ships. Expendable. These sad remains were made sadder still, knowing the flesh would likely be ground up and turned into fish food, making them marginally more useful in death than they had been in life.
The medical examiner turned from where she stood at the great stone sink, and Abijah caught her breath. “Bataya?”
Wiry little Bataya made her way to the table, her fringe swept back away from her face, slender fingers neatly manicured, as if picking up an electric scalpel all day were the sort of bloodless work performed by an office mail carrier.
Abijah removed her hat and clutched it with both hands, instinctually.
“Pastry?” Pats said, extending the box to Bataya.
Bataya surveyed the contents, and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“I… wasn’t expecting you,” Abijah said. “Where's Jules?”
“We heard you got marrrrriiiiiiiiied,” Pats said. “Years ago, right Abijah? Two years ago.” She leaned toward Bataya. “Not that Abijah has been counting.”
“I called it off,” Bataya said, not meeting either of their looks. “I’ve been practicing on the continent.”
“Ah, the continent,” Abijah said. “Of course.” The fucking continent.
“Jules was kind enough to step in.” Bataya rested both hands on the stone slab. “I see you are paying for the public query on this incident, Abijah. That seems unusually kind, so I assume it is for a client.”
“It is,” Abijah said.
Pats sat down in a chair near the door, resting the box of pastries on her crossed knee. “This old soldier here was real kind once,” she said, jabbing her three left fingers at Abijah. “This time we were cut off from our squad, up in those mountains in the northern continent, six continental units all ringing us in, and Jeezmo here gives me her last can of accelerant, so I didn’t have to eat cold snake. Real team player.”
“Why don’t you meet me back in the pub?” Abijah said. “I’m seeing Popsy next. Put a drink on my tab.”
“Say no more,” Pats said, and left them, licking her fingers each in turn and giving Abijah a wink as the door closed.
“So, what do you need to know?” Bataya said.
“You ever get that certificate in combat yoga?”
Bataya’s narrow mouth turned up at the corners, just a hint, but enough. “I did. And advanced reiki.”
“Congratulations,” Abijah said. She nodded to the body pieces. “I’d like your professional opinion, based on the evidence, about whether this shuttle was blown up by an on-board bomb or an air strike.”
Bataya knit her brows and frowned over the corpses. “Well, I can make inferences, but nothing that would hold up if you were to pursue criminal –“
“You know I won’t. Nobody will, for aliens. Boys at that.”
“Then, based on the way these bodies have been impacted… I’d have to say it was most likely a force acting on them from outside.”
“No bad re-entry?”
“Not enough char for that. There would have been even less to examine here.”
“And on-board bomb…?”
“Similar issue. You would see overpressure damage to the lungs, ears, the gut, and fragmentation injuries – shrapnel, and other flying debris that penetrates the body and causes damage. And again: many thermal injuries to skin, lungs, and the like. But a burst, an external projectile…” She nodded to a slab piled with bits of wreckage. “That creates unique capture marks on wreckage, and pieces embedded in the wreckage. I’m not a forensic tech anthropologist, but you could conduct a trace analysis on the physical wreckage that will show residues related to whatever impacted the shuttle.”
“So, I need to hire a forensic tech anthropologist?”
“If you – your client - had the funds, or the desire to know for certain. But I pulled wreckage out of these bodies. I’ve seen the marks. If you asked my certainty on an external projectile, I’d say, eighty percent probability. To you, but not under oath.”
“Understood. Thanks, Bataya.” Abijah pulled her hat back on and turned to go, hesitated. “I know maybe I’ve –“
“Don’t,” Bataya said. “Some other time. Not… now.”
“All right.” Abijah left her in the morgue, her own palms still sweaty, and put in a call to Zoya to catch her up on the latest.
“It was most likely a strike from the ground,” Abijah said. Zoya’s face filled her left eye; Zoya sat beside a small pond that rippled softly. Occasionally, the great gaping maws of fish as long as Abijah’s arm appeared in the mop of plant matter that rippled on the surface like an antique rug. A yellow bloom from a frond in the water seemed to be emitting a steady stream of mayflies, their wings shimmering in the low light. “I did find a communicator nearby,” Abijah continued. “I’m having a contact look at it. Maybe we can figure out who he was contacting down here, and get more information from them.”
“Good, inspector, thank you,” Zoya said, and Abijah prepared herself, because whenever a founding family member thanked her for some job she’d gone above and beyond on, they asked another impossible task of her. “These boys were bound for one of my factories.”
Abijah grimaced. Of course they were. “That would have been good to know.”
“I didn’t think it was relevant. But if this truly was a strike, as you can see, it was, again, most certainly against me and my interests.”
“Which factory?”
Zoya gave her the address.
“Let me see what I can do,” Abijah said. “I want to follow up on this tech lead first.”
“Inspector?”
Fuck, what now? Abijah thought, but merely waited, brows raised.
“My factory manufactures chemical bursts, you understand? Projectiles meant to keep us safe. From aliens in space.”
“Of course it does,” Abijah said, and ended the call.
#
Abijah had lunch at a nearby café catering to the afternoon drink crowd coming out from the adjacent government buildings. She never could keep regular meal hours; it was a wonder she ate once a day, let alone the four or five that seemed to clutter up everyone else’s social calendar. From the cold metal seat under an awning that kept off a spate of hail, she spotted two continental peace officers strolling languidly down the opposite side of the street, their long coats touching the heels of their stout boots, their uniform shaved heads and shoulder pads giving them all the appearance of one body, many faces. She had shot, punched in, or cracked open many a face like theirs during the war. To see them on the streets now still turned her stomach.
