CHAPTER 11 - OBFUSCATION

DATE POINT: MARCH 20th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL

CAPTAIN HENRY O'TOOLE

CONTINUE THE MISSION UNTIL YOU REACH THE OORT CLOUD, RESTOCK YOUR WATER SUPPLIES, AND THEN YOU MAY RETURN TO S33 ON AN INBOUND NULL MATTER CURRENT. FIND OUT WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KILLINGS AND RESTORE ORDER OR YOU WILL BE RELIEVED OF YOUR COMMAND UPON RETURN.

Henry stared at the line from the new orders again with a groan. "Fucking bastards! Looks like the new orders came in after all. Read it for yourself, I can't even right now.” Henry said, trying to grapple with his indignation.

“What?! That’s hardly fair of them, they didn’t exactly give you the tools to succeed here. I mean, four murders in three days is really extreme, but still. They only gave us ONE basic forensic kit, and that is already out of pretty much all its supplies already.” Chantal protested.

“I can tell you right now, that kit was an afterthought. Nobody predicted there would be murders, the Masters-at-arms requested a kit just to have one, now I am thinking we should have packed extra consumables for it too. Not like they left us any clues behind anyway…” Paul complained.

“It’s like they were killed by a ghost, or a demon or something.” Jenkins said. Henry rolled his eyes.

“Don't be stupid. This isn’t one of your tabletop games or one of your crappy horror movies, Preston.” Ariana snapped. Paul shot her a look, to which she replied in kind, staring back at him completely unfazed.

“Let’s go over this one more time. None of our victims knew one another, the motive genuinely seems political, not personal, and we have no physical evidence that we can trace to any suspects.” Chantal said, glumly.

“Right, the hair and nail scrapings we found at Sarah’s crime scene were her own, strangely. That's the oddest part to me. Why would she be scratching at her own arms like that?” Paul asked.

“No idea, each of the victims had been seeing Dr. Amani fairly frequently, complaining of extreme emotional distress and anxiety, a lack of quality sleep and intense nightmares plus sleep paralysis. We already have video in three of the four cases showing that the doctor was working during the window of opportunities to have committed each murder, so it’s clearly not him. Maybe he is feeding information to whoever the killer is?” Henry added in.

“You all ask too nicely,” Ariana said, “Give me thirty minutes in a room with him and I'll get him to talk.” She said, smiling in a truly disconcerting manner.

“No, but let’s keep him under more intense scrutiny for now.” Henry said, as the lights flickered out, bathing them in emergency lights for nearly a whole minute this time.

“Fucking electrical!” Henry slammed his fists down on the table. Chantal grabbed his forearm.

“Honey, getting mad at them isn’t going to help. The electrician’s mates are just as stressed and overworked as we are right now, cut them some slack.”

“Bullshit, I'm with Henry, this is ridiculous. They've had months to sort this out now and it's only getting worse!” Paul said, arms crossed and scowling.

“One problem at a time people!” Ariana shouted. “Paul still has no leads on these murders, and all I can seem to get out of people is a bunch of superstitious nonsense. You know people are calling this voyage cursed now? We don't know who's been spreading those rumors but its not helping in the slightest.”

“This is insane! Grown-ass adults talking about ghosts and curses.” Paul said, arms folded staring at Jenkins.

“It’s because rocket arm over here failed to break the bottle on the bow. Combine that with everything that is going wrong? That’s what started all that talk. If everything had gone to plan nobody would be talking about a curse, but here we are.” Henry said, staring daggers at Paul. Paul glared right back at him.

“So what are we going to do about these orders?” Chantal asked, looking concerned.

“I think we should go on the offensive; we can use them to help flush out our murderer.” Paul said.

“What’s your plan then?” Henry asked, eyes narrowed.

“We suspect that our murderer is one of the firemen, as all of the victims were also firemen. Further supporting this fact is that two victims were found in areas that no other rates would have easy access to. Our unsub is likely male and over six feet tall due to angles of wounds and blood splatter, their ability to overpower their victims, and some other clues. We also know that each murder took place in a camera dead zone, and they all had some variation of Turn Back written in blood on scene. I say we arrange for a meeting on the parade deck during A shift tomorrow to make the announcement. We have a list of a few dozen possible suspects that we can require to attend under the guise of recognizing hard work and achievement. Maybe we can even goad them into speaking up or incriminating themselves.” Paul said.

“I see, but wouldn’t they get suspicious at the invite?” Henry asked.

“Glad you asked! That’s the beauty of the plan, if we fail to invite our murderer, they will likely use the opportunity to strike again while most of the ship’s security and leadership is all in one room. If they do, we can knock dozens of names off the suspect list at once. If we are right and one of the invitees is our murderer, the chances that they will keep a straight face are slim. There will be some kind of micro-expression at the very least that we can later review the footage to look for that will hopefully narrow the list down even further.”

“That is a hell of a lot of maybes, Paul.” Henry growled.

“Do you have a better idea? One that can narrow this list faster or have greater odds of catching something suspicious?” Paul fired back. Henry simply shook his head before replying.

“No, I don’t. Alright, I approve of this plan. I'll prepare a speech; you can organize and invite everyone from your list and our command staff for a ceremony recognizing their hard work. Also, make sure you invite more than just your suspect list, including a healthy amount of those actually worthy of recognition, and make sure to invite some of our female firemen. We cannot afford to make our target more suspicious or cautious than they already are.” Henry said.

“I can do that, sounds sensible. I wish we had more to go off of than a simple profile, but at this stage I am stumped as to how to proceed without narrowing the list down some more.” Paul replied.

“Look, it feels like we have been at this for hours now. We already have the announcement scheduled for the beginning of A shift, we should all try and get some sleep if we can.” Chantal said, trying to defuse the tension.

“Very well, I'll take the helm.” Paul said, “I already slept for a bit after the funeral earlier today.”

“We will reconvene at the start of A shift then. A good night’s sleep will do us some good, hopefully in the meantime someone thinks of an angle we haven’t explored already.” Henry said, dismissing everyone from his quarters. Chantal stayed behind, as she had every sleep shift since the fire.

“We need to change the dynamic here, get them to react to us instead of us constantly being one step behind. Whomever they are, they might very well be radicalizing more people as we speak. What a mess.” Henry said, rubbing his temples.

Chantal simply pulled him by the hand away from his workstation and into bed, planting kisses and trying to distract him any way she could. Henry found that he could not resist for long, not that he particularly wanted to as they shed their clothes. The sound of breaking glass killed the mood. Instantly. Henry jumped from the bed to investigate the bathroom.

What the fuck? His mirror had fallen off the wall and glass covered his bathroom floor.

Harry stared dumbfounded at what happened, fear tickling at the base of his perception. He felt a hand on his back, causing his head to snap and look only to find Chantal looking confused and scared.

“How the hell did that happen? You know what, don’t answer that. Come on, we can clean that in the morning, let’s just go to bed.” Chantal said shakily, her eyes imploring him to agree.

“Okay, that’s fine.” He hugged her close, his jaw set tight. Henry never liked leaving a mess behind for later, but something in her tone of voice stopped him from arguing. They stood there for a moment longer before closing the door and returning to bed. Any thoughts of passion replaced by uneasy silence. Eventually, they both drifted off into a fitful sleep. Henry awoke bleary and tired, feeling extremely uneasy. He could see the alarm clock read 3:05. He had set it for oh five hundred, and should have been exhausted enough to sleep through the night, why was he awake?

He shivered for a minute, feeling cold as he scanned the room, the fuzzy blackness playing tricks on his eyes. In spite of his rationality, he felt like there was something just at the edge of his vision in the dark corner. He struggled to move, feeling like he was flattened under an oppressive weight. He could swear that he could see his breath forming in front of his face as a tingling sensation ran up his spine.

“Henry… turn the ship… around! Time... draws short... danger is near.” A voice spoke just at the edge of his hearing in a gasping, hollow tone. The fuzzy blackness in the corner shifted, Henry still couldn’t move as he struggled with himself.

After a moment that stretched on forever, the oppressive feeling evaporated along with the cold. Finally able to move, he swept a light from his phone around the room. Nothing. Everything was normal. Slowly he brought his breathing back under control, though he remained unnerved in spite of his best attempts to relax. He finally laid back down, playing it off as being all in his head until he rolled over to see Chantal wide eyed and with tears streaming down her face.

“Henry, did you hear that?” All of the hair on his arms again stood on end as Henry sat silent, unable to process the impossibility of what was happened.

“You mean the creepy ghost voice telling me to turn the ship around?” Henry asked. Chantal only nodded, sniffing.

Silence reigned for an eternity before Chantal spoke up in a squeaky voice barely above a whisper.

“When I was a little girl, we lived in an old house that was haunted, I know that feeling of being watched early in the morning. I am a woman of science, and that demands that I pay attention to evidence when it is there before me, even if it doesn’t seem to fit existing models. Especially when it doesn’t fit, a lot of my greatest discoveries started off that way. Usually, It just means you are missing context, or you have a bigger puzzle with more pieces than you initially realized.” Her voice dropped to a very low whisper, and she leaned in close to his ear.

“I also think it wise we check for speakers or bugs that were installed by parties other than Paul, just in case. Someone might be trying to scare us, taking advantage of the ghost talk going around the ship right now.” She then put her finger to her lips and Henry nodded. Once more, Henry found himself eternally grateful for her brilliant mind. He nodded ever so slightly and then continued the out loud conversation, understanding her plan well enough to continue it.

“I had a friend who told me stories like that when I was a teenager, but they had long since moved so I couldn't ever stay over and see for myself. I have never experienced anything like that personally. Always left it as sort of an open question though, like it was something we just didn’t have the science to explain just yet.”

Chantal smiled, extremely pleased that Henry had caught on.

“Let’s go for a walk.” She said as she zipped back into her BDU’s. As soon as they left the room, they both looked at each other and said “We gotta find Paul.”

“Jinx!” She shouted. Henry ceded the point with a good-humored scowl as they made their way to the quick lift en route to the CIC. They grabbed a loop and rode down one level to find Paul and Jenkins standing over the system map in an animated discussion. Paul looked at Henry and did a double take.

“What the fuck are you doing here awake?” Paul said, stepping on a landmine in classic fashion.

“Mind your tone Paul. Honestly, sometimes I swear you forget that I'm your Captain.” Henry stared him down.

“Fine. What the fuck are you doing here awake, Sir?” Paul doubled down with an infuriatingly smug smile.

“Whatever, cut the crap, spook. Are there any new speakers or bugs installed in my room?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “No, at least none that I am aware of.” He shared a look with Jenkins. “Why do you look like you have seen a ghost? I mean you have always been pale, bud, but this is a new extreme.”

“Someone tried pranking us with a ghost voice that we both heard telling Henry to turn the ship around.” Chantal said, cutting Paul off and giving him a look.

Paul stared dumbfounded for a second before his own mind went to work.

“Okay, I will personally sweep your room for bugs and check in every last nook and cranny. C’mon Jenkins, let’s go get my kit. Henry, you have the CIC?”

Henry nodded. “Paul, there's something else. Our mirror fell out of the wall right before this happened. Wouldn’t want you to cut yourself in there, so, fair warning.”

“Those are epoxied onto the wall under the corners, the force to rip that down would be astronomical. Fucking weird. Thanks for the heads up, I'll look at that too, see what I think." Paul said over his shoulder.

“Hey, Paul, thanks.” Henry said, as much as he hated him at times, he was as loyal to the mission as he was brilliant in his own right. That made him, somehow, just all the more annoying. Amber lights bathed the CIC and Henry dropped to a lower center of gravity as his magnetic boots activated and the ship pitched hard to starboard and once more to port in quick succession. He again found himself thankful for the overlapped TK fields under their feet that acted both as inertial dampeners and artificial gravity in the critical sections of the ship.

In places such as engineering or the ship’s on-board hospital, having constant a constant feeling of gravity was a matter of life and death. The CIC was placed just above them on the second deck so it could also benefit from a sense of increased calm as the fields actively worked to counteract inertial changes. Everyone in the higher decks and farther from the fields simply had to make do with acceleration couches and mag boots.

“When it rains, it pours….” Henry mused, watching as the collision hazard report came in from the Fist of the Argonauts out ahead of them in the stream. This was a big one, the third large antimatter storm this week. He watched a real time report of the ship’s multi-spectral laser arrays that formed its point defense system working overtime to deflect smaller antimatter masses away from potential collision courses. Henry gripped tightly to the rail around the map screen as they dodged hard again.

“Fleetwide directive; All crew, stow equipment and prepare for aggressive maneuvers. We’ve hit another antimatter patch, looks like we should be clear of it in about five minutes. You all know the drill.” Henry resigned himself to yet another long night with little to no sleep. This trip had been threatening to kill them from the start, he would be damned if he would allow it.