“Isotope ratios,” Tyson said as the woman’s words sunk in. “You’re using a spectrograph to pin down the isotope ratios of the minerals in her birth environment to tell us where she was originally from.”
“Very good, Mr. Abington. Got it in one.”
“How sensitive is it? I mean, can you narrow it down to a particular system, or planet?”
“Honey, we have enough profiles in the databank to narrow it down to a particular country or colony city in most cases. But then I’m going to do you one better. Do the same with a bone cross section and I can tell you where she’s been over the last seven to ten years. A lock of hair and I can tell you where she’s been and what she’s been eating, drinking, or snorting for the last eighteen months. Is that worth something to you, Mr. Abington?”
“How long will the results take?”
“Twelve hours, tomorrow for sure.”
“I assume you don’t need assistance collecting the bone cross section?”
The coroner laughed. “No, tough guy, I’ll spare you that sight.”
“Send the results to my office under encryption as soon as they’re ready. Do not include them in her police file.”
“That’s a pretty big breach of protocol.”
“I am the protocol in this city,” Tyson said firmly.
“Hey, you’re paying for the tests. I’ll send the bill along, too.”
“Do that.” Tyson pulled the blue gloves off his hands and dumped them into the wastebasket with his sake, then headed for the door to meet up with Officer Berg, relieved to be leaving the morbid sights, sounds, and smells behind him. Once he was back to ground level, he connected with Paris.
“Sir, where were you? I lost contact for almost an hour.”
“In Hell, Paris. Thankfully, I was just visiting.”
“I’m grateful for that.”
“You should be receiving an encrypted file from the coroner at Xanadu Hospital sometime tomorrow. I want to know the moment you have it.”
“Of course.”
“And Paris, make a note to double the coroner’s office budget.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And make a donation to the hospital of a half-million nudollars in the name of the Castalia Family.”
“Okay…”
“And Paris?”
“Yes, Tyson?”
“Tell the hospital to enforce its no-vaping policy in the basement levels as well.”
THIRTEEN
“Captain, you’re needed in the CIC,” OoD Esposito said through the com in the officers’ mess.
Susan looked down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich hovering dangerously close to her open mouth and sighed. She was famished, and the sandwich represented the first shot of carbs and protein she’d had in twelve hours. This late, the kitchen was closed. Third-shift cooks were busy working, of course, but they were tied up cleaning sinks, ovens, dishes, and doing prep for the six meals they’d be serving over the next eighteen hours. PB&J was the only option at 0330.
“Can it wait five minutes?” she asked, even as she knew the question was rhetorical.
“Don’t think so, mum.”
“Fine, I’m on my way. Make sure to drag Mr. Nesbit out of bed, too.”
“I called him first, mum. You know how long he takes to powder his nose.”
“Play nice, Esposito.” She slammed the mug of square dog sitting on the table in front of her, nearly scalding her palate in the process, then topped it off with a long pour from the pot. Susan kept the sandwich and scarfed it down on the hoof.
“Captain on deck!” the marine guard shouted less than a minute later.
“Yeah, yeah. At ease,” Susan said as she took her seat. “Okay, OoD, hit me.”
Esposito looked back from the plot, smiling like the Cheshire cat. “You’re not going to believe this, mum.”
“The last time someone said that to me, my sister got a divorce three months later. This had better knock that memory out of position or you’re in trouble.”
“We’ve just heard from Grendel’s astronomy department, mum. They’ve found it.”
“Found what?” Susan’s sleep and nutrient-deficient brain asked before the answer floated to the surface. There was only one thing they could’ve found that would put such a ridiculous grin on the OoD’s face.
The Xre’s fleet oiler.
“Oh,” Susan said. “Ooooh! Where is it?”
“We’re calculating drift now, mum. They’ve only had intermittent contact, but it’s in a parking orbit, not under power. Should know in a minute or so.”
Susan looked up at the main plot hologram with invigorated eyes. Three tentative sightings had been pinned in the volume with yellow pyramids flanked by bearing and velocity data. The variables narrowed with each sighting until the cone of space the oiler could possibly occupy shrank to a tunnel in space.
“Where’s Miguel?” Susan shook alertness into her head. The caffeine had yet to catch her up. “I mean, where’s the XO?”
“In his rack, I hope. I only relieved him two hours ago.”
“Okay, let him sleep for now. How sure are they this bogey is the oiler?”
“Greater than ninety-five percent, mum.”
“That seems awfully confident.”
“There’s actually good reason for that.” Esposito zoomed the plot in to the space immediately surrounding the projected path of the bogey. A small constellation of Kuiper-belt objects shadowed its course. “Apparently, this cluster of asteroids sits on a damned elliptical orbit and makes a deep dive for the inner system every hundred and twenty local years or so. They were catalogued a couple decades ago by the first survey crew to come through here, both because they posed a potential impact threat to the inner planets, and because their spectrographics were interesting enough to warrant a closer look for a future mining claim. This cluster is well-known by the locals as a result.”
“And all of a sudden, there was an extra asteroid,” Susan finished the thought.
“Exactly.”
“What are the odds the cluster just happened to capture
