The Freezer Read online

  I raised a hand and cleared my throat. “All right, that’s enough,” I muttered into the now-silent dome. “I am trying to figure out who attacked me today. Has anyone seen that suit here before? It’s a simple question.”

  Nothing. They simply exchanged looks, then turned back to me.

  “Why would there be such a vacsuit on this moon?” I asked.

  Sato stepped forward. “May I?” I gestured and he picked it up. He turned it in his hands, examining it closely. “It’s well engineered to withstand the cold. And it’s lightweight and probably easy to move in.” He turned it over and examined the life-support pack. “I’ve never seen one like this. It actually looks—”

  “As though it were custom made for this environment,” I finished for him.

  His eyebrows lifted. “Yes. Like a military suit, camouflaged for the ice.”

  I considered that. Military. That had crossed my mind earlier. This was a military facility, despite the fact that it was a science outpost. Most of the people here—with the exception of Marius and Sato—were members of the CCF. Could the CCF have provided the suit to one of them without the others knowing?

  Janice Snow turned to me. “Could it have been a smaller person who attacked you?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No way. He was large and very strong.”

  The others glanced at each other. They were in a tenuous situation here. One of them a killer, probably unbalanced, killing for reasons that the others most likely did not understand. A person who kept his motives to himself.

  A person with secrets.

  I studied Robert Cray. He had kept his relationship with Aoki from everyone, and only confessed when I made the discovery in his cabin.

  Janice Snow. She too had had a sexual relationship with Aoki, and she had also kept it a secret. She had also refused to tell me about the primates under the clinic module. I still didn’t understand why.

  Francis Lefave. He had known about the dissident activity at Europa, and even though he was a Council rep, had kept it hidden from the authorities.

  Simon Marius and Marina Dinova. Refused to tell me why they had left Europa in the first place. They were dissidents. More secrets.

  Aoki Tali had kept secrets as well. Two lovers, one of whom had not known about the other. And there was also something else that she’d wanted to tell me.

  Lenn Dyson. He had...

  I frowned inwardly. Nothing. He just hated officers and did not exactly like The Freezer. Or was it all a ruse?

  I snorted. I had discovered much so far, but I still had a ways to go. I still didn’t have the most important thing in any investigation: motive.

  Why had someone killed Marek Bojdl? And Aoki Tali?

  Suddenly a feeling of extreme nausea overcame me. I sank to a knee and my sight grew blurry as my eyes watered.

  Dinova’s and Marius’s faces exploded with fear.

  The bomb.

  Had it finally gone off? Early?

  And then I vomited on the deck. Violently.

  I sank further and eventually ended up on my elbows. I could barely speak. I had broken out in a sweat and was trembling all over.

  I couldn’t control my limbs.

  “My God, Tanner!” Lefave yelled. “What’s wrong?”

  A flash of understanding crossed Dinova’s face. “Oh no. Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Sato yelled. But it sounded distant and muffled, as if I was underwater. “Tanner!” He turned me so that I lay on my side on the cold deck. It felt good on my cheek. It was slippery from my sweat.

  A cacophony of voices now all around. And through it all, I recognized one word:

  “Radiation!”

  * * *

  I had been outside for over eight hours under Jupiter’s emissions. Marius had said that a human would experience 550 rem a day outside. Lethal after two. Medicine could counteract the amount I’d absorbed, but I should have taken it upon returning to The Freezer. I hadn’t, and now I was paying the price.

  The lights were dim and the sounds muted. The ventilation sounded lower in the clinic than it had before. I was on a procedures table with a thin blanket around me. My uniform and sweater were gone, and I was back to being cold. I wasn’t sure if I had ever warmed up from my experience outside.

  I was always shivering in this damn place.

  Sato sat next to me. He was reviewing something on his reader and didn’t immediately notice that my eyes were open. I felt remarkably better. My stomach wasn’t doing flips anymore and I didn’t have the same dizziness. I definitely wasn’t sweating, either.

  And then another crack sounded. It echoed through the module, low and sustained. It didn’t really even sound like ice cracking, I thought. It was more like a—

  “They’re not as loud here,” Sato mumbled.

  “What?”

  “The cracks. They’re quieter here.”

  “Really.” I frowned. I hadn’t noticed that.

  “They’re louder in Module A.”

  The workspaces. Interesting. I’d have to look into that. Perhaps that dome was on the verge of collapsing into a crevasse or something. I recalled that he’d said something about the sound being louder in that module earlier as well.

  Sato was staring at me. I tried to shrug. “I forgot about the radiation. Too much happened out there on the ice.”

  “Dr. Marius gave you some meds for it. Said you’d be feeling better very quickly.”

  Across the lab, the two doctors from Ceres were sitting at a table discussing something heatedly. Sato said, “They’re working on your problem.” His eyes flicked to my chest. He tried to speak again, but faltered.

  “Go ahead. It’s okay.”

  “Does it feel...do you feel...” He avoided my eyes when he said it.

  “Sometimes there’s an itch there that I can’t scratch. I think it’s just my imagination though.”

  He sighed. “I have been designing and making those things for the CCF for years.”

  “What are they for?”

  He finally met my eyes. “To kill, Tanner. Assassinate. Those two—” he gestured at Dinova and Marius, “—have been right about everything they’ve said. I’ve helped kill people who didn’t deserve to die. I’ve worked for the Council and haven’t really thought about what I’ve been doing. For me the computing challenges of micro-bombs have been just that—challenges to overcome. I haven’t given thought to the pain they can cause.”

  I frowned. “But now someone you know...”

  “Yes. Someone I know—and like—has one in him.”

  Silence descended and I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead I said, “Tell me what your weapons usually do.”

  “Sometimes they’re bombs like this. They’re actually more effective in the brain though.” He tapped his head. “This is harder to penetrate though. Better protection. I have made some that caused near-instant brain death. Once I made some that came in pairs, one for each eye.”

  “So that the person would...would go blind?”

  He nodded. “Right in the middle of a firefight, your enemy suddenly can’t see. It’s effective.”

  I was in the CCF and had no idea such development was going on. “Who are these things used on? There are no wars in the Confederacy.” But as I said it, I knew.

  Dissidents.

  There was no war in the Terran Confederacy because we stamped out objectors before they could cause any real trouble. The strategy worked, from the Council’s point of view. They’d been in power for two hundred years, and there’d been no civil war, nothing. No alien species in the galaxy to worry about.

  Just us.

  Just humans.

  Creating new ways to kill.

  Technology was wonderful. Gravtrav, hyperspac
e drive, nanos, jumpships and outposts on Jupiter’s moons. But it was also deadly. There had been scientists in Earth’s past who had warned about technology getting out of hand. Shaheen had told me about them. A man named Oppenheimer was one, though I couldn’t remember what it was he had invented. I did remember something he had been quoted as saying once though: “I am become death...I destroy worlds” or something along those lines.

  “Do you have regrets now?” I asked Sato.

  He exhaled. “When I see your face, with the knowledge that you might die in two days, and the doctors’ attempts to save you...” He nodded, and his expression was sad for a change. “Yes. I regret it.”

  “You didn’t create this bomb. This isn’t you.”

  “I helped create the technology. I work to program the devices. My work is available to other CCF engineers.”

  I frowned. “You mean that the device in me is partially because of your work.”

  “I see my efforts there, yes.”

  “Which means the designer was—was a CCF engineer?”

  He blinked. “Maybe. At least someone with access to CCF files.”

  I considered that as I shifted on the table. I’d have to get up in a few minutes. It was 2230 hours and I still had a lot of investigating to do. No time to waste just because I felt a little ill.

  Something occurred to me. “Hey—they didn’t inject me with nanos to repair the radiation damage—”

  “No, no. Don’t worry. They’re not dumb.”

  “Good.” I sighed. So the killer—if the person who had planted the bomb in me, Shaheen and Bojdl was the same person who had attacked on the ice—was probably an officer or NOM in the CCF. Which eliminated Simon Marius.

  Cray and Dyson.

  I had already searched Cray’s cabin. Time for the other.

  I pushed myself up and Sato tried to hold me down. “Hey! No, no, no. Don’t get up. You need to rest. You can continue after a good night’s—”

  “I need to work. I can sleep later.” I grunted. “I can sleep after Saturday.”

  * * *

  Dyson’s cabin was bland and military. Nothing stood out whatsoever, and there were no places in which he could hide anything. Just metal bulkheads and deck plates. Bare lights in the ceiling and some drawers with a few changes of clothing. Boring really. Perhaps it was harsh to say, but I couldn’t think of a reason why Aoki would be with him. He had nothing to offer her.

  Sato was with me, and we took the opportunity to search some other cabins as well. The rest of the Europan personnel were in the recreation module, where they had agreed to stay until I was feeling better. Marina and Marius were in the clinic.

  I still felt nauseated, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as earlier. I had a job to do, and a little pain and suffering couldn’t stop me from finding a killer.

  Lefave’s cabin was the largest there. Luxurious by military standards. He had books on his shelves—mostly historical adventures like Moby Dick, and antiques at that—thick blankets and even a bar with alcohol.

  That made me pause. The Council prohibited CCF personnel from drinking, gambling, or conducting any other immoral activities. Drugs like brainstim, for instance. The penalties for those crimes were immense. Demotions, prison, or execution.

  So even though he had created a strict environment at The Freezer, he was in fact drinking in his cabin.

  I had to make a decision about that too, now that I knew.

  After Saturday though.

  There were a number of books on his desk. They were antiques as well, but I found their subject matter interesting, even if they were outdated. Topics such as the central nervous system, A-delta nerve fibers, myelin sheathing and hereditary sensory illnesses. One or two books, however, were recent.

  Interesting but unimportant here on Europa.

  I moved on.

  * * *

  Janice Snow’s cabin was similar to Dyson’s. She, however, had some holopictures up, and many featured her and Aoki Tali in passionate embraces. Otherwise there was nothing there of note.

  Prominent in every cabin I’d searched were CCF regulation handbooks and of course the Council’s doctrine on life in the Terran Confederacy.

  The people at The Freezer were not dissidents. Of that I had no doubt.

  It was now 2300 hours. The others were waiting for me to recover and give more orders. They had no idea I was searching through cabins and feeling much better.

  I sealed the hatch behind me and looked at Sato. “There’s one more thing I want to do before we call it a day.”

  His eyes were questioning.

  “We investigate those animals beneath the clinic.”

  “Why? I thought it was normal—”

  “Nothing about this place is normal. And I want to know why they’re here.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The trip to the clinic was somber. The atmosphere at this place was utilitarian and sterile, as in most military outposts, but the events lay like an oppressive blanket over us. Our breath misted in the travel tubes, where it was beyond cold. You could freeze water in them.

  This place would be horrible to live at. No wonder the three doctors who left had hated it.

  As we clanged through the tube, I glanced down at my booted feet. Something tickled the back of my mind, some piece of evidence I’d come across but hadn’t made sense of yet. But my unconscious had noted it. I just had to connect it with some other clue that I’d gathered already.

  I would figure it out. Hopefully before Saturday.

  Each footfall rang in the confined steel tube.

  Something about my feet as they stepped on the deck.

  Sato was growing miserable, I could tell. Not only from his escalating doubt about the work he did for the CCF, but also because of the situation. His expression had previously been calm, relaxed and even happy, but now he was downcast.

  Finally we arrived at the clinic. I pointed to the hatch in the floor and Sato’s face erupted in surprise. “I never even noticed it there.”

  That was the point, I wanted to say. The Europans had been trying to hide it, despite what Lefave had claimed. They had even piled equipment and boxes on it!

  Marius and Dinova were still there. Working on my problem, I hoped. They saw what we were interested in, however, and looked instantly nervous.

  “Why didn’t you mention this?” I asked them.

  Dinova shrugged. “Didn’t Lefave explain it already? There’s nothing odd about animal testing.”

  “But there isn’t life on this moon.”

  “Not that we know of, yet. But that is the whole point of the facility.”

  I snorted. “I find it odd that you hid it from me.”

  Marius appeared surprised. “I haven’t tried to keep anything from you, Lieutenant. It just never crossed my mind to tell you. They have been here for years, they’re essentially part of the facility. This is a research outpost, after all.”

  “Looking for life on an alien moon. With chimpanzees here.”

  The looks on their faces seemed genuine. An honest mistake?

  Or a planned deception.

  I toggled the hatch and the smell exploded outward. It was overpowering and Sato took two steps back and threw an arm across his nose and mouth. “Holy shit,” he moaned. “I can’t believe they’ve got animals here...”

  A short but steep ladder led into the chamber.

  I climbed down.

  * * *

  Sato followed. He had pulled his sweater up to cover the lower part of his face. The chamber was bare metal and rectangular. Two rows of six cages along the bulkheads.

  And it was cold in there.

  “They keep the animals in this kind of environment?” I muttered.

  “It
’s inhumane.”

  Then again, the chimps seemed all right. They weren’t screaming or pounding their chests. They weren’t throwing themselves against the mesh of the cage doors. Weren’t smashing themselves around inside the cages and making a racket.

  They seemed calm and sedate.

  No, not sedate. Sedated, maybe?

  “Look at each, Sato. See if there’s anything odd about them.”

  I moved to the cabinet at the far end of the animal pen. Signs labeled each door. Food, medicine, medical equipment and so on.

  I turned to the animals. They were lying in their cells, watching me, studying me, but there wasn’t much intelligence behind those eyes, which was common to primates. They didn’t seem to be thinking. Just living.

  They all had thick coats of fur and blankets to lie on, which would help to keep them comfortable, I realized. They didn’t need excessively warm temperatures.

  Still, as Sato had said, keeping the area so cold did seem somewhat cruel.

  “Why can’t they warm their pen a bit?” I mumbled, but I already knew the answer. If they did that, it would sink down into the ice and cause structural damage to Module C. However, why not double layer and insulate the hull? Unless they thought it too much work just for the comfort of these creatures.

  “They seem really calm,” Sato whispered.

  “Notice anything odd?”

  “No. They just act a little too...beaten, I guess.”

  Marek Bojdl crossed my mind just then. Beaten. Exactly how he had seemed in that last holovideo I’d viewed. Just before he took his final few steps and stumbled to the deck.

  Before his blood gushed into his chest cavity, and he blacked out and died.

  Depressed and beaten.

  There was that feeling again. Something about Bojdl connected him to whatever was going on here. He’d known that someone was after him, was going to kill him. I figured his depression was the result of that worry, but what if it was due to another issue entirely?

  “Here’s something,” Sato said.

  I marched to the cage he’d indicated. He was pointing at the beast inside. It simply stared back at me, weary and confused. There were a series of long vertical scars on this animal’s left leg. Someone had shaved the fur around them, and it hadn’t yet grown back.