“You left it in a state of anger, having been cheated out of a lucrative deal.”
“I was sorry that the family did not choose to close negotiations. But that doesn’t mean I planned to kill them all.”
“It wasn’t an accident, Dravidian. No one’s going to buy that.”
“I never said it was. It was a deliberate act of murder against an innocent habitat. But I had no hand in it.” With sudden intensity, he added: “Nor did my crew.”
“Either it happened or it didn’t.”
“Someone made it happen, Prefect. Someone infiltrated the Accompaniment of Shadows and used her against the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. We were a weapon, not the murderer.”
“You mean someone got aboard the ship and worked out how to turn the engines on and off at just the right moment to kill the Bubble?”
“Yes,” Dravidian said resignedly, as if all his hopes of being believed had just evaporated.
“Exactly that.”
“I wish I could take you at your word.”
“Prefect, ask yourself this: what could I possibly stand to gain from lying now? My crew has been slaughtered, burnt alive aboard their own ship. They let me hear their screams, their pleas for mercy. My vessel has been ripped apart like a rabid animal tossed to the wolves. I have been tortured and welded to the hull. Very shortly I am going to die.”
“I still—” Dreyfus began.
“I don’t know why anyone wanted this to happen, Prefect. It’s not my job to answer that question, it’s yours. But I swear no crime was committed by my crew.”
“We need to start thinking about getting off this thing,” Sparver said quietly.
Dreyfus held up a silencing hand. To Dravidian he said: “But surely someone in your crew had to have been responsible.”
“No one that I trusted. No one that I really considered crew. But someone else… maybe.”
“Who?”
“We took on new recruits after we arrived around Yellowstone. Some crew left to join other ships; others came aboard. It’s possible that one of those recruits…”
“Captain?”
Dravidian’s tone changed, as if something new had just occurred to him.
“Something odd happened. Our shuttle developed a fault. That was why we had to move the entire ship close to Ruskin-Sartorious, rather than just shuttle over to it from the Swarm. There wasn’t time to worry about the cause of the fault, not when we had a deal to close. But now that I look back on it… now that I don’t have any other distractions… the more I’m convinced that the shuttle’s malfunction could only have been sabotage.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone put the shuttle out of action, Prefect. Someone wanted an excuse to bring the Accompaniment of Shadows within kill-range of the Bubble. Until now I’ve been thinking that whatever happened, whatever was done in our name, was done in anger, because of the way that deal collapsed. That maybe someone on the ship thought Ruskin-Sartorious needed to be punished for that. Now I’m not so sure.” He fell silent, the face behind the glass completely still. Just when Dreyfus was starting to think that the captain had died or lost consciousness, his lips moved again: “Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t premeditated.”
“Not just murder, but murder in cold blood?”
“I can only tell you what happened.”
“These recruits… can you tell me anything about them?”
“Six or seven of them. The usual mix. Hardcore types who’ve already crewed on other ships. Green-behind- the-ears newcomers who don’t know one end of a hull from the other. I didn’t meet any of them in person, just delivered the usual blood-and-thunder speech when they came aboard.”
“No names, nothing?”
“I’m sorry, Prefect. If I had more to give you, you’d be hearing it.”
Dreyfus nodded. There was no earthly reason for Dravidian to withhold evidence now, if he truly believed in his own innocence.
“What I don’t understand is why anyone would want to destroy the Bubble, if it wasn’t revenge for a deal that went sour?”
“You’re the investigator, Prefect. You tell me.”
“You’re going to die,” Dreyfus said softly.
“Nothing I say or do can change that now.”
“But you believe I may be telling the truth.”
“I believe that the investigation has yet to run its course. If the facts confirm your innocence, I’ll make sure that they’re heard.”
“I hope you’re good at your job.”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“Whoever did this was prepared to kill nearly a thousand people. More now that my crew have paid with their lives. They won’t take kindly to a prefect snooping around trying to undermine their good work.”
“They don’t pay us to be popular.”
“You strike me as a decent man, Prefect Dreyfus. I can hear it in your voice. We Ultras aren’t such bad judges of character. My crew were decent people, too. Even if you can’t exonerate me, I beg of you this much: do what you can to lift this shame from their heads. They didn’t deserve to die like this. The Accompaniment was a good ship, right to the end. She didn’t deserve to die like this either.” He hesitated, then added: “How are those nukes coming along?”
Dreyfus glanced at Sparver. Sparver tapped his sleeve, as if there was a wrist-watch there.
“Twenty minutes, Boss.”
Dreyfus looked along the prow, in the direction of the dead ship’s flight. He was also looking straight at Yellowstone and the Glitter Band. The planet was still lit up on its dayside. It was not his imagination that the arc of the Band appeared wider than when he had last seen it. He felt as if he could make out the twinkling granularity of individual habitats. With time and patience, and his ingrained knowledge of their orbits, he was sure he could even have begun to pick out the largest structures by eye. There, for instance: wasn’t that silvery glint near the planet’s westward limb Carousel New Venice, moving in the congested real estate of the central orbits? And a little to the right: wasn’t that string of ruby-red sparks the signature of the eight habitats of the Remortal Concatenation? If so, then that blue-tinged glint to the east had to be House Sammartini, or perhaps the Sylveste Institute for Shrouder Studies.
“I think I’m about done here, Captain.”
“Just one thing, Prefect. Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe it’ll help you. You’ll have to decide for yourself.”
“Go on.”
“Our negotiations with Ruskin-Sartorious were conducted with the usual degree of secrecy. It’s how we do things. Yet someone from outside the Bubble was still able to contact Delphine and promise her a better offer than the one already on the table. That means someone knew what was going on.”
“Could have been a lucky break. They saw your ship parked near the Bubble; they knew Delphine’s art was on the market, put two and two together.”
“And outbid us by a calculatedly effective margin? I don’t think so, Prefect. Someone had already gone to great lengths to position the Accompaniment as a murder weapon. All they needed then was to make it look as if we struck back in anger. For that they needed a plausible motive.”
“So what you’re saying is… the whole thing about the deal collapsing was just a ruse, to provide a justification for you hitting back?”
“Exactly so.”
In his head Dreyfus felt the ominous sliding of mental chess pieces moving into a new and threatening configuration.
“Then there must have been another reason why someone wanted to destroy the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble.”
“Now all you have to do is find out why,” Dravidian answered.
