Permutation, page 2
As a doctor Gaby was probably more hardened to it. When things went wrong in space, people died. Quite a lot of people sometimes.
“Check all your gear,” Gaby said. “If they died of an infection, then we want to stay clear.”
Yes, he understood that. Drops of sweat trickled down his back.
Gaby opened the door carefully. The light from her torch lit motes of dust that floated in the air.
Jonathan didn’t like dust. Dust in a space station was not good.
He checked his air quality meter. It was not good either. Carbon dioxide was high, and so was sulphur dioxide.
Both produced by dead bodies.
“Jonathan, look at this.”
Gaby had walked a little further into the auditorium, directing her light into the rows of seating.
An audience of zombies looked back at them.
Most of them were sitting in rows of tiered seats, as if they were still watching a movie.
There were men and women, people in uniforms and people without. They were even a number of children.
Some had slumped over, and some had fallen off their seats, although it was hard to tell whether that had happened before or after they died.
"Holy crap," Jonathan said.
"You can say that again. I think everyone in the station is here.”
She might well be right about that.
“How long do you think they've been dead?"
Most of the corpses had sunken cheeks, and fluid running from the eyes and mouth and nose. Some of them had bloated limbs or distended torsos.
He was glad for the mask, because the stench would be terrible.
Someone lay on the ground at the lectern, where a computer still stood open, its screen dark. A woman, he thought.
"You've got ten minutes," Kenzie said in Jonathan’s helmet. Her voice sounded distant.
”Kenzie…” He had to clear his throat. Even the thought of the stench made him feel ill. “We've discovered where the inhabitants are. They’re all dead. It's quite horrific, we're going to have to get a team together and come back here.”
He wasn’t sure. What even was the protocol for a situation like this? There was the Civil Order Unit of the Space Corps, which investigated accidents and crime, but where was their nearest base? It would be too long before they could have people at the station. Someone needed to record and preserve the scene so that investigators arriving in a few weeks’ time would have something to investigate.
The captain of the Renae Stellaris wouldn’t know the protocol. Besides, he was interested in his travel schedule, already put out about this delay.
If his experience was anything to go by, this scene would be cleaned up quickly and by the time an investigation team got here, vital details would have been altered.
It was important that they record as much of the scene now.
Jonathan made sure that he photographed all the benches in the auditorium using a grid method that would allow him to piece all the images together and render a 3D representation. He found even more people on the ground between the seats. Some were lying on the stairs, as if they had been trying to get out of the room, but hadn’t made it.
Gaby was taking notes on individual victims, turning them over only when Jonathan had taken pictures, photographing their faces and exposed skin.
They worked so hard that Jonathan almost forgot that they were dealing with people, until he bumped into Gaby when they both walked backwards in one of the seating rows.
Gaby let out a sigh.
“What do you think has happened?” Jonathan asked.
“I don’t know. It’s almost like someone’s released poison gas in the air ducts. Could this be a total catastrophic malfunction of the recycling or air purification plant?"
“I have no idea.”
But he also felt that if it had happened before, he would know about it, because after all, life support systems were his job. There were lots of ways recycling plants could malfunction, even start emitting poisonous compounds, but he had never heard of anything as catastrophic as this, that happened at the time that all the station’s inhabitants were in the same room.
He felt powerless, defeated.
He let out a breath. “There is always the possibility of foul play.”
“In that case, there should be survivors.”
“Murder suicide?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. Gaby had an interest in mental health of space inhabitants.
"We are going to have to do a post mortem," she continued. "But we don't have enough time to select and prepare the bodies now. We have to go back to the ship to replace our tanks and come back with a larger crew and more measuring equipment. And trolleys and body bags.”
“You have five minutes," Kenzie said in his helmet.
Jonathan said to her, “Yes, we’re coming soon. How are you going for photos?" The latter to Gaby.
"I think I'm just about done."
"Good. Then let's go back."
They made sure that the door to the auditorium was closed, and sped through the corridors of the station back to the dock.
Chapter Four
It was a relief to be able to take off the helmet, yet when Jonathan did, while Kenzie was preparing to fly back to the ship, he could taste death everywhere.
When he helped Gaby take off her gear, her face was pale and sweaty.
“There were children in that room,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Do you think all of the station’s inhabitants were in the audience?”
“It certainly looks like it.”
“Why would they all be in the same room?” Kenzie asked. “Protocol says to never leave the control centre unmanned and always have at least one person at the comms and another at the main entry. Well, I guess that’s for the ship, but I can’t believe that it would be any different for a station.”
She was right about that.
“We don’t yet know if all the people were in the room,” Gaby said. “We need to count and check them against the personnel files.”
“Yes, but you also didn’t find anyone in those vital areas that should never have been left unmanned,” Kenzie said. “I find that strange.”
It was strange, and Jonathan agreed with her.
“Maybe they were called away,” Gaby said.
Or were hiding from some threat. That was the question. Was there anyone still alive in the station?
He and Gaby had made enough noise, but what if the people were incapacitated in one of the rooms they hadn’t checked, like the hospital or the private rooms, or what if they didn’t want to be found?
The flight to the ship was only short. Even just after they’d left the station, when the shuttle turned around, the ship already loomed large on the viewscreens.
Its proximity was testimony to the incredible flying skill of pilots operating vessels in the asteroid belt. As one had explained Jonathan, if one adhered to Space Corps protocol about object proximity to ships, half the belt was out of bounds. These people had exquisite experience in how to navigate crowded, space rock infested areas without hitting anything.
And even if she was young, Kenzie also proved herself highly capable at doing this.
Meanwhile, Jonathan had to report to the captain what they had found. The captain said he’d have to consult with company headquarters on what should be done.
They flew past the massive hull of the Renae Stellaris, weathered grey with the symbol of Prosperity Mining emblazoned on the side.
After the shuttle had docked, and Jonathan and Gaby were met by five people, two women and three men. All of them were crew of the ship but one, who was also a passenger but an employee of Prosperity Mining.
"This is your Incident Mitigation Team," said a man Jonathan had seen a few times in the ship. He wore a name tag that said Ron, and this marked him as ship crew, but Jonathan had never spoken to him. He was one of the grey ghosts in the crew who moved in the background and never seemed to have anything to do with the passengers.
Jonathan looked sideways at Gaby. Incident Mitigation Team?
"This is protocol for people who have witnessed a distressing incident," Ron continued at Jonathan’s look. "We want to make sure that we don't put any of our passengers under undue stress."
"We volunteered to go into the ship because we have appropriate training,” Jonathan said.
“You’re still passengers. It's company policy that you be debriefed."
They took Jonathan and Gaby into a small room, where one of the women held a general talk about witnessing distressing incidents, and another gave them some forms to fill out. Most of the questions were about understanding their rights, and limiting liabilities for the company. The usual bullshit.
Jonathan and Gaby filled out all the forms, and Jonathan assumed that the formalities were now dealt with and they could get on with working out what had happened, but Ron said to them, “You will work together with our liaison officer for the duration of this incident. We’ve been informed by headquarters to leave the station in a state so that investigators can continue to work with the situation once they get here.”
"We don’t have much time. We need to bring some of the victims into this ship and do a post mortem," Gaby said. “That really can’t wait until people from the Civilian Unit get here. Some of the conditions can only be determined when the bodies are fresh, and the scene of death is still intact."
"I understand. We will put your request to our executive."
"But a decision must be made quickly, and as far as I understand, I am the only Doctor experienced at doing post-mortems. I offer my assistance to you."
"I do understand. The captain wants to move on, now that it’s clear there are no survivors. Many of our passengers have places to be. They’re not happy.”
And passengers clearly went before a scene of death.
Jonathan said, “I’m not yet convinced that there are no survivors. Not until we’ve done a thorough search.”
“Of course.”
They were distant but polite, but Jonathan had the feeling they were more interested in putting the affair behind them as soon as possible.
Besides it was time to go to lunch.
Their new Liaison Officer, who had said nothing during the meeting, went with them.
The man was named Lance Murphy, and he was a giant of a man with a plain, clean-shaven face.
Jonathan had seen him in the dining room before, congregating with a group of equally burly men in their thirties and forties. He looked like one of those tragic people who lived on long-distance space vessels because they could never settle anywhere.
While they went into the ship’s canteen and collected their lunch packets, they made some chit chat.
It was clear from Lance’s responses that he disliked the Space Corps, because Outside people meddle. They have no idea what life is like in the Belt.
Jonathan pointed out that he and Gaby had come here to help. But that didn’t seem to impress him. Lance seemed a very morose person.
Jonathan hoped that Lance wasn’t going to bother them all afternoon.
But he was out of luck.
Gaby said she was going to find out if the ship had facilities that could be used for post-mortems, and Lance didn’t appear to like talking about dead people, so he sat with Jonathan, who had been given access to one of the junior crew computer terminals in a low-ceilinged room with six work stations, so that he could process some data.
It was a noisy place. A woman sat at a screen calling through her orders for ship supplies, and other crew members came in to chat or to remind her of items they needed to order.
A man who appeared to be running some engine diagnostic program kept making lame jokes, at which Lance burst out into too-loud laughter.
It was all very annoying and a bit disturbing, since over three hundred people had just died, and these people acted like teenagers who couldn’t care less.
Jonathan first started with the video material he had collected from the hub. Security camera footage showed the people at work, and then walking through the corridors to gather in the auditorium. Colleagues walked together, the school teacher took a group of children. The recording that showed the outside of the door of the room was very uneventful and boring for days after the people had gone in. Eventually, the camera had run out of storage space and had stopped. Jonathan counted himself lucky that it hadn’t looped back to record over the top of old material.
He searched the hub’s written data to check what the meeting had been about, but didn't find any conclusive answers.
"Station directors sometimes call these meetings," Lance said while looking over his shoulder. “Everyone has to come, and it will be some pep talk about how good everyone is, or some other company rubbish.”
“Even children have to go to that?” Jonathan asked.
“Children like hearing how good they are. And usually they give away sweets.”
Ah, there was the camera footage from inside the auditorium.
It showed everyone filing in and taking their seats. A man who Jonathan assumed to be the station director started a talk. He was using the computer that still sat on the lectern, the screen now dark.
"That was why it was so dark in the room, " Jonathan said. “He was showing a projection, and the lights were off. Then something happened, the charge ran out and no one was alive to turn the light back on."
The rest of the recording showed nothing useful. It was too dark in the auditorium to see what people had been doing, and the low light reduced the quality to a grainy mess. The angle of the camera was wrong to be able to read what was on the screen. It seemed there was a bit of movement in one part of the recording, when it looked like someone got up. The speaker walked out of view of the camera and never came back.
“Do you know that man?” he asked Lance.
Lance shrugged. “The station director. I don’t know his name. There are so many of these little stations out here.”
Jonathan replayed the recording and noticed something before the man walked away.
“Look, there is a slight wobble," he said. "It looks like there might have been a disruption in the power supply."
“Probably random. These cameras are not exactly very good quality."
Or it could be some sort of explosion. But Jonathan didn’t say that out loud.
The next few days, when they could collect more samples and look at the victims, would be more telling than any speculation.
Next, Jonathan looked at all the photos he and Gaby had taken.
He made his giant collation of all the pictures he had taken of the audience, and then counted them.
Sometimes the photo showed the worker’s ID badge, but in many cases it did not. Some people were slumped over and their face invisible. So those people couldn’t be identified.
He counted three hundred and twenty-seven victims.
Personnel records said three hundred and twenty-eight people lived on the station.
“Who is missing?” he asked.
Gaby had returned to the room. She said, “I know of one person. A member of the station’s crew was on medical leave. I found that in the logs. He name is Rachel Sinclair.”
“Where is she now?” Jonathan asked.
“Around here, if you’re sick, you go to the hospital at Ceres Station,” Lance said. “They have quite a good hospital with all the facilities and specialists you need.”
It sounded like he had experience with it.
Gaby said, “Does this patient know what has happened at her home? Does she have any family on the station? Can we speak to her?”
Lance gave her a bamboozled look. “Uhm. I can ask. What do you want to know?”
“Those questions I just asked,” Gaby said.
“Oh.” He thought for a while, and then he said, “I’ll ask.”
He left the room.
Gaby gave Jonathan a dark look, but he couldn’t ask her about the meaning because the other crew members were still in the room.
Gaby said she was going to get changed into something that didn’t smell like death, and Jonathan expected to be able to put some names to the faces and ID tags of the victims.
But Lance came back very quickly.
“The hospital at Ceres Station tells me that she is under treatment and they don’t want to disturb her because that might stop her getting better.”
“Did they say what’s wrong with her?”
“I didn’t ask. They wouldn’t tell me anyway. That’s personal information.”
Dumb Mr Bartell. “When did she go to Ceres Station?”
“I didn’t ask, but you can check that in the passenger logs.”
And those were publicly available, so Jonathan checked them, and found that Rachel Sinclair had been at Ceres for about two weeks, which meant she had left well before the disaster.
Before dinner, Jonathan met Gaby in her cabin.
“That Lance guy gets on my nerves,” Jonathan said. “I can’t make up my mind if he’s thick or just acts thick.”
“He’s a minder,” Gaby said. “Just to make sure we don’t blunder into areas they don’t want us to go.”
“What makes you think that?”
“They don’t want us to talk to Rachel Sinclair. I happened to come across her medical file, and it turns out she was diagnosed with severe anxiety and requested to be placed off the station."
“He said she was sick.”
“She was taken to the hospital at her own request.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Most patients of that type will fight any suggestion that they need help. You know, mental help. The vast majority of people will resist going to a mental ward. She actually requested it.”
“What could that mean?”
“That’s a good question. I want to talk to her.”
Chapter Five
During the next day, Jonathan and Gaby made preparations to go back into the station and deal with the dead bodies.
It was quite amazing to see all the things that needed to be done and measures taken as a precaution to prevent contamination of the scene and tampering with evidence. Gaby had been sent a long list overnight.
