B5 Shard Market (Patreon)

Whew! This was a BIG scene for Executioner's Gambit, and it had to be rewritten for three reasons: 1. plot changes have been cascading, 2. my editor wanted it drawn out a bit, and 3. he was concerned about how the audience views the police.

Yeah, that's an interesting one, and I gotta hand it to him. I suspect that much of my audience has a fear and general antipathy for the police, and Tori is working for what would be that ship's police force. Although it can be fun in action movies to have good cops pound the bad guys (or threaten to, in this case), I don't want to paint them as the readers imagine our police to be. So, I definitely needed to tread carefully and watch how Sese was portrayed.

———

In the morning, Tori met Sese at the security station to ask her a favor. “No, absolutely, I insist!” said the big officer as she reached for a nightstick from the station’s rack.

Tori winced, thinking back on what Captain Gutassi had said about the batons cracking a geroo’s skull. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll need that!” she said.

Sese hesitated. “No?”

Tori shook her head and led to the upwells. Sese followed but with ears splayed in confusion. “Level 12? Honestly, Tori, this is a very safe level. I figured you needed to go to the bottom of the ship,” she said. “Levels 20 and up are safe decks. Well … it might be unwise to wander Level 20 during third shift, but it should be safe during the day.”

Tori opened her eyes wide. Back home, on the Harvest Reaper III, there was definitely more crime on the lower decks than the upper ones, but she had never felt unsafe anywhere she went. Once in a rare while, someone got mugged for their strand, but most of the lower-deck crime was drug and black-market trade. “Hang on, how lawless is this ship?”

“It’s not lawless, per se,” sighed Sese, “but I worry about you. I wouldn’t want you ending up on the shard market.”

“The… The what?” Tori stopped and turned to study Sese’s face.

“The shard market. Cuz, it looks like you’ve…”—the officer gestured wordlessly at Tori, from the tops of her ruined ears down to the end of her tail—“y’know, had a lot of surgery.”

Tori cocked her head. “I have had a lot of surgery,” she said. “So?”

Sese’s ears looked pained for a moment, then she turned and headed off down the corridor, forcing the rusty red geroo to follow. “You know what titanium is, right?”

“Uh, no?” Tori said. “A chemical? I was never good at chemistry.”

“It’s a type of metal,” Sese explained, “super-rare on gateships. They use it as fuel in the reactor.”

“So, it’s dangerous? Radioactive?”

Sese shook her head. “No, but since we need it to power the ship, you can’t exactly go buy a bar of the stuff. Almost every scrap of titanium on board belongs to the company.”

“Almost every scrap,” Tori repeated back. “So, I take it that there’s some held illegally.”

“Well, there is one other legitimate reason to own some titanium,” explained Sese. “You see, titanium is light, super hard, and it’s really good at bonding to bone.”

“Bone?” Tori gasped in surprise.

“Yeah, it bonds to bones.” Sese walked in silence a moment. “My grandfather got an infection in his hip, and the bone was just wearing away. He was in a lot of pain with each step. When painkillers weren’t enough, the doctors went in and fixed his hip joint. He was much more comfortable after the surgery.”

“They fixed it … with titanium?”

“Yeah, they did. The doctors filled in the decaying bone with half a gram of the stuff. Filled it in, polished it up,”—she rubbed a fist against her palm as if it were a hip joint—“and when it healed, the joint moved smoothly again. He could walk without relying on painkillers.”

“I’m envious,” Tori sighed. “Half a gram, huh?”

“Yeah, I saw a photo of the bone after the surgery.”

“Creepy.”

“I thought it was pretty neat,” said Sese, unflustered, “plain white bone and then this shiny metallic area filling in a sort of … irregular crater. And the doctors had stenciled zero-point-four-nine-two on it to record how much titanium they’d used.”

“I take it that’s worth a lot on the black market,” said Tori.

“Prices vary.” Sese grinned. “He was pretty tight-muzzled about it, but after the surgery, I heard him joke about walking around with ten thousand credits in his leg.”

“Wow, that is a big stash,” agreed Tori. True, Aziz had given her many times that much to bribe her way onto the surgery table, but her mate, Druka, was the only other geroo aboard who knew it. “So, what would a criminal do with a half gram of titanium?”

“They don’t do anything with it. They just use titanium shards as untraceable currency,” explained Officer Sese. “In a criminal investigation, we can follow credits between bank accounts and strands. If some guy has a half-million credits in his strand, we can trace where that money is coming from and going to. If he’s a drug dealer, we can track who is buying and who’s selling. But twenty-five grams of titanium shards hidden in a closet? That’s completely anonymous.”

Tori swallowed quietly but stared straight ahead. She had a lot more than a half-million on her strand. Would anyone presume she was a drug dealer? “You keep calling them ‘shards’. Why that term?”

“Yeah, well,” Sese sighed, “this part is a little unsettling…”

“Says the gal who liked a photo of exposed bone.” Tori grinned.

“Like I said, you can’t just go out and buy a bar of titanium. Almost all of it is inside the reactor, powering the ship,” said Sese. “Some geroo—like my grandpa—have some titanium inside their bodies, but eventually they die, and their bodies get recycled. The recycler breaks the bonds between atoms and then pipes the different elements—”

“To the recombiner,” said Tori. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

“Then, the titanium gets piped back to the reactor where it’s needed.”

“And so, a shard?” Tori repeated.

“On rare occasions,”—Sese lowered her voice—“patients with titanium implants have been known to arrange a quick post-mortem surgery before their body enters the recycler. Someone—we call them ‘bone collectors’—chisels out the titanium and splits the take with the deceased’s widow or widower.”

Tori’s ears laid flat. “Ew. Really?”

Sese nodded. “Once out of the body, the bone collector cleans off all the … mess and grinds the bone down so it’s not all that much larger than just the titanium.”

“They keep it attached to the bone?” gasped Tori.

“Oh, yeah,” said Sese. “Shards are bone shards.”

Tori laughed a yarp. “This sounds far too much like a ghost story that cubs share during sleepovers.”

“I agree, but it’s true,” said the tan geroo. “We find them from time to time after a big bust—little glass tubes with a shard of bone and metal inside—each clearly labeled with how much titanium is present.”

“I guess possession of a shard is a crime.”

“If we caught someone with one, we’d confiscate it for sure,” said Sese, “and dig into their lives with a magnifying glass to look for a crime, but possession isn’t one, no. It’s possible some geroo hold them because they don’t trust electronic money.”

Tori walked in silence, trying to resist the chill threatening to run down her spine. “So, what’s that got to do with me?” she asked. “The sulfur burned me. My joints are still in decent shape.”

“Yeah, well, you know that, and I know that,” said Sese, “but someone down on the lower decks might not. I’d be awful sad if someone smashed you over the head and dragged you off to a bone collector to go ‘digging for treasure’.”

Tori frowned. She wished she had known that before exploring the ship on V-Day with Druka the night before. Fortunately, she hadn’t run into any trouble.

“So, if you’re not afraid of the neighborhood, then why did you want an escort?” asked Sese.

“It’s not so much the neighborhood as it is the guy I want to interview.”

“A tough customer?” Officer Sese asked with a grin. “Tori! You didn’t strike me as the sort who’d want a suspect ‘roughed up’.”

“I didn’t!” Tori protested. “I mean, I don’t. I just feel a little vulnerable sometimes, and I worry that certain suspects might think it’s easier to get rid of me rather than answer my questions. I get the impression that nobody aboard really wants to help me.”

“I’m helping!” insisted the big geroo.

“I know you are,” Tori replied. “And I really appreciate it.”

“So…  You want me to intimidate this guy?”

“Not even that, really,” said Tori. “I just want him to know that I didn’t come here alone.”

“Okay, I’m here. I’m visible,” said Sese. With a smile, she added, “Hard for me to be anything but.”

“Thanks.”

Tori shifted her cane to her left paw so she could operate her strand with her right. “Any idea which judges might be on duty today?”

“Try Judge Nuasai,” said the officer. “He’s been off for the last couple days, so should be back on duty now.”

“Got it.” Tori tapped the judge’s name in the ship’s directory and added it to her contact list. Then, she stopped and took a moment to lean against the corridor’s wall.

“Are you okay? Need a break?”

“I’m fine,” said the rusty red geroo. “Besides, we’re here.” She knocked on the door across the corridor from Foja and Lu’e’s apartment, and Runo’oa answered only moments later.

With stern, intimidating ears, Officer Sese looked the middle-aged male over from ears to tail. She chuckled once and stood straight, towering over Tori.

“Can I help … you?” Runo’oa said after taking a moment to swallow.

Tori nodded. “We spoke after your boss got murdered. I had a neat idea this morning, and I’ve got some engineering questions. I just know you could help me with a little of your technical expertise.”

“Um, of course.” His eyes met Tori’s a couple of times, but he seemed very distracted by the larger officer standing behind her.

“Great. You mind if I sit down? Back on my old ship, I’d know exactly who to ask, but I haven’t learned my way around here yet.”

“Of course. Come right in.”

Runo’oa headed off to the kitchen, and Tori started after him but paused when Officer Sese followed. With a gentle touch, she turned the muscular officer around. Then, making no effort to close the door, Tori asked, “Could you make sure that we’re not disturbed?”

“Sure thing, Investigator Tori,” said Sese. She crossed her arms and stood in the doorway, completely blocking the only way out.

At the table, Runo’oa tried to smile, but his ears kept folding whenever he glanced toward the door. “So … what can I do for you,”—he swallowed again—“Investigator?”

“Well, I wanted to ask you a feasibility question,” said Tori. “Like I told you, back before I started tracking serial killers, I used to work in a repair shop, soldering circuit boards. From time to time, we had to assemble AP-110 data modems.” She gestured with her paws to indicate something the size of a sandwich. “Are you familiar with those?”

“Uh, sure,” he said. “Those are the access points for the strand network. Every voice or data packet your strand sends and receives goes to or from one of them. They’re all wired into the ship’s central CPU.”

“That’s what I thought!” Then, Tori sighed. “Soldering is easy. I’ve been doing that for years, but they never really taught us what things do or how they work.

Runo’oa smiled for a moment before glancing toward Sese once more.

“I was curious,” explained Tori, “whether these access points could gauge which strands were close and which were far away from them.”

“Sure, in addition to sending and receiving, they measure something called ‘signal strength’ to judge which access point would make the best connection to your strand. By using only the closest AP-110, the ship’s computer can divvy up the traffic, so you get a good connection and that no single access point is overloaded, trying to handle everyone’s traffic.” He smiled for a moment before his ears fell. “Why would you want to know that?”

Tori pulled her strand from her shoulder. “To track down the serial killer, of course.”

He frowned. He started to open his muzzle then shut it once more.

“Problem, Runo’oa?”

The engineer fidgeted in his seat. “I think that maybe you should leave,” he said quietly.

“No,” said Tori, “I still need your help solving this case.”

“I… I’m not sure I really…”

“You don’t want to help me?” She stared right into his eyes. “And why is that?”

“Well, it’s just…” he said, lowering his voice. “You see… This ship has a lot of … Boots—if you know what I mean?”

Tori nodded but said nothing.

“And quite frankly, I’m kinda glad someone’s finally taking out the trash.”

“Ah!” said Tori. She nodded her understanding while she tapped on the contact list in her strand.

Runo’oa looked worried but said nothing as the strand connected on the third ring. “Yes?” asked the older male with a greying muzzle.

“Judge Nuasai!” sang Tori, taking the conversation in speaker mode rather than holding the strand to her ear as was her usual. “Hi there. I’m Investigator Tori, working on finding our serial killer. Do you have a moment for a quick hypothetical?”

Runo’oa’s ears laid flat against his head.

“Uh, sure,” said the judge, “so long as it’s a quick one.”

“You bet,” said Tori. “Suppose for a moment that an innocent bystander realized that our killer had poisoned someone, but that the victim might not have ingested a fatal dose.”

Runo’oa gulped, and the judge gasped, “Oh, how horrible!”

“Yes, it would be terrifying, certainly,” agreed Tori. She met the engineer’s eyes with a serious look and nodded. “And obviously, this innocent bystander might not want to get involved, might even be afraid of being implicated…”

“I can understand that,” said the judge sadly, “but as a community, we all have a responsibility to care for our fellow geroo.”

“Of course, we do,” said Tori. Holding the strand at arm’s length, she turned it slightly so that both her and the middle-aged male’s face were in the shot. Runo’oa’s ears looked tragic, like he’d do anything to escape the conversation, but still, he nodded in agreement.

Judge Nuasai waved a finger while he spoke, as if accustomed to scolding the geroo he spoke to. “But if you’re asking whether they are legally obliged to help, that’s a murkier question,” he admitted. “By not helping someone in need, they’d be putting themself in legal jeopardy. The prosecutor could conceivably make a case against them.”

The older male drew a breath and released it before concluding with, “It’s a smarter, safer, and kinder path to get involved.”

“Gotcha,” said Tori. “But what if they did get involved and instead of helping the victim, they hindered them.”

The judge’s eyes popped open wide, and Runo’oa’s ears turned twice as tragic. The engineer glanced about at Tori, the video of the judge, and at Sese standing in the doorway. With no place to run, he excused himself with a whispered, “I’ll get us some drinks.” He stepped to the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of soda. He handed one to Tori but didn’t retake his seat, didn’t position himself inside the camera’s view.

“Hindered?” hissed the judge. “You mean kept the victim from getting help?”

“Sure,” Tori said casually. “Just for the sake of argument, what if they interfered, perhaps kept the victim from dialing 000 or going to the med bay?” Though not a sadistic person by nature, she secretly enjoyed how her host squirmed. He had helped do something truly awful and should be worried about what might happen to him.

“That…! That…! That’s not murky at all!” shouted Nuasai. “Do you mean like blocking their way? Not allowing them to go—”

“I was thinking more like holding someone down.” Tori looked up at Runo’oa. He was holding his soda can in praying paws, his lips silently mouthing, “Please stop. Please.”

The judge choked on his words, sputtering, “Holding someone… Tori, that’s outrageous!”

But she was undeterred. “What if they kept the victim from trying to vomit the poison back up, held him down, gave it time to work?”

“Held them…!” Judge Nuasai’s expression glared from the small video screen, strand held close so his face filled the entire frame. “Tori, you’re talking about aiding and abetting an attempted murder.”

“Oh, that does sound bad,” she said, her ears raised in mock alarm. “And if the victim did … die?”

“Well, that would be aiding and abetting murder!”

“Ooh.”

She thought the older male might faint dead away, but the questions had only made him angrier. “Yes, ooh. That’s a felony!” he growled.

Tori’s brown eyes looked back and forth between the angry judge and Runo’oa. The insides of his ears had turned white as the blood drained from them. She begged with the judge, “Surely, you must be exaggerating, right? I mean, it’s not like this hypothetical crewman poisoned his boss’s tea or something.”

“No, I’m absolutely serious! This is a really major crime,” huffed Nuasai. “You’re talking about someone who intentionally got another crewman killed. Even if they didn’t set the events in motion initially, they still contributed with the intention of making it happen.”

She looked up at her host. He seemed terrified, destroyed. He sank slowly into a chair, but this time one opposite from Tori this time, so she couldn’t pull him back into the video conference. “I see, yeah,” she sighed. “That does sound bad when you put it that way. And if such a case came to your courtroom…”

Beyond Runo’oa’s view, the angry judge glared at her. With a note of warning in his voice, he said, “Investigator Tori, this hasn’t actually happened—”

“No. No. No. This is purely hypothetical. I’m just passing along a question from a friend. Right?” she lied. With her free paw, she reached across the table and patted the back of the engineer’s paw, but he didn’t seem comforted by the gesture. All ten of his claws flexed, trying to dig into the table’s aluminum surface. “And if you had to rule on such a case…”

Judge Nuasai shook himself and pulled back away from the camera, looking more official. “Well, it’s difficult to predict sentencing without knowing all the facts. Extenuating circumstances and aggravating factors can drive the sentence up or down—”

“Of course, sir, but could you bracket it?” she interrupted, not wanting to ease off on the pressure she was applying to Runo’oa. “Just give me the sort of range you might expect.”

“I suppose… I’d say the very best the defendant could hope for would be ten years.”

The engineer’s eyes opened ever wider. “Ten years? Are you serious? You’d take away ten of the defendant’s sixty years?” whispered Tori. “Even if you can’t prove that their actions actually contributed to the victim’s death?”

“Absolutely! And that’s best case,” coughed the judge, “the very best the defendant could hope for.”

She nodded slowly, letting the moment drag. “And worse case?”

“Straight to the recycler,” declared the judge as if that were the sentence she should truly expect. “The defense would really be hoping for dodgy evidence or an unreliable witness to add some doubt and reduce the sentence. Otherwise, as an accessory to murder, the defendant should expect to forfeit a number of years exceeding their remainder.”

“Wow, that’s really harsh.” She pulled her paw back and tapped a claw on the table in thought before brightening with, “But what if there were multiple defendants? Multiple crew that got involved and held the victim down? Wouldn’t that help? Couldn’t they all take a smaller share of the blame?”

Not that Runo’oa could see, but the judge shook his head. “No, blame isn’t something you can split up like the check at a restaurant, Investigator,” he explained. “In practice, we’d try each defendant separately and judge them based on their actions. Under the krakun legal system, defendants can’t dodge responsibility for his or her actions just because everyone is doing it. The court will punish each individual as if they had acted alone.”

Tori nodded. “Very well. Thank you for your time, sir.”

Through the video, the judge stared at her, his gaze demanding the truth. “Not a problem … but you’re certain that this question is hypothetical, right?”

Tori looked up into Runo’oa’s eyes and waited. He was shaking hard, but still she waited until at last, he finally nodded. She looked back, rejoining her conversation with the judge. “Oh, I’m sure, sir. Surely, no one would really do such a thing, no matter what they thought of the victim,” she said before thanking him once again and severing the connection.

She set her strand face down on the table and stared into the engineer’s eyes until at last he coughed and found a whisper of his voice, “You were asking about signal strength?”

Tori smiled slowly. “Would it be possible to keep a log of these ‘signal strengths’ throughout the day? So, if you knew when and where a crime took place, you could make a good guess of who was near the crime scene and who was far away?”

His paws were shaking, so he hid them beneath the table.

“Runo’oa?” she asked again.

Sese turned from her post in the doorway. With one ear perked, she asked, “You okay, Tori?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” Tori said. “My friend Runo’oa here was just about to show me how helpful he can be.”

Sese nodded and turned back around, but her ears continued to face back toward the kitchen table.

“That would be possible, I suppose,” he whispered. “Each data modem is a small computer. You could change the code on them, but it would be a terrible invasion of privacy, tracking where everyone was at all times.”

Tori nodded, but respecting everyone’s privacy would have to wait. Keeping them from dying in a purge was what really mattered.

“And I couldn’t do it.”

“No?” she asked, tilting her head.

“No, you’d need a team of people, probably—programmers, not engineers. You’d need access to the existing code, need to modify it without breaking it, sufficient access to deploy it. As helpful as I’d like to be, I’m the wrong guy for a task like that.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tkjmMcgdTbLmqBT8Fz_M9m6Qr2bxmt4r1I_GFkNEu-k/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?