Jorz

Interrogation
~

“Discontinue video.”

The plasscreen faded to black, though the sight of the man’s mutilated corpse stayed in Toni’s mind’s eye. As did the sloppy gore from the scene of the murder. She turned her attention to the forward viewer, at the dozens of olive-drab craft which filled the horizon.

“Kory, open a link to the base commander.”

Toni leaned back in her seat. The ship’s calm persona reported a completed connection with a Colonel Ortice.

“Colonel. Toni Tegaris. Earth Union Security. Marshal’s Office.”

“Welcome to Camp Tango 43, Marshal. Glad you were in our beautiful little region of space.”

Beautiful? His welcome continued. All she needed. Twenty crimes to investigate in this system alone and she got a chatty Marine. Socializing with the brass has a way of distorting first impressions. She didn’t need an amateur suggesting what happened. She chose not to engage him. She glared back at the face on the com. His smile faded.

“I would be happy to come—”

“I’ll interview you in due time if necessary,” she interrupted. “What I need, as I communicated earlier, is the victim’s company to fall in on the tarmac immediately.”

His eyes narrowed. Lips pressed together. “Aye, Marshal. Is that all for now?”

“That’s all.” Toni disconnected before he could.

She walked to the bridge armaments cabinet, donned her blue EU vest and a web belt with a projectile sidearm. After checking its load, she headed for the forward hatch.

“Chewie.” She waited while the com addressed her first officer.

“Aye, Toni.”

“Hold the fort. Back in a few.”

“Want company?”

“You’re not getting out of that research. Besides, you’d probably enjoy the heat on this freaking moon too much. Can’t have you loafing.”

He chuckled, what passes as such for his species, which sounds more like a rat scrabbling through garbage. That comparison always makes her smile.

She stepped over a slow janibot that followed her for a moment, as though she was debris it should atomize. Or like a puppy looking for attention.

“Go away,” she snapped. It turned and floated down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Low deck, the hatch separated as she approached. She squinted at the glare streaming in, pulled out the old, scratched up shades Shante gave her years ago.

Need to replace these someday.

She walked down the ramp, realizing the sunglasses weren’t going to be enough for comfort. The heat was a bitch too. She needed to identify the murderer or murderers fast.

The company was being lifted to an adjacent tarmac. Toni stopped in her tracks and activated her com. “Connect Colonel Ortice.”

“Aye, Toni,” Kory acknowledged.

“Don’t screw with me,” she shouted when the commander connected.

“I have no—”

“Have ’em fall in, in front of me, now, or so help me I’ll shut down this whole base for a freaking week. Do you hear me, commander?”

Maybe I’m being a bit more cross than usual. No, just being me. But first impressions are so important.

Toni heard a very-Marine-like response as the connection broke. Within seconds the troop carrier lifted off the far tarmac and approached. Setting down, the back gate dropped and jarheads double-timed it down the stinking-short ramp. As they fell in, Toni studied the strapping Marine in charge. A sergeant major. Called to her to bring them in a tight formation. The Marine saluted and barked a sharp command. The men and women side stepped until they were shoulder to shoulder.

Time to collect physical evidence.

With the sergeant major on her heel, Toni hurried down the ranks, drone just above her shoulder collecting initial DNA trace, wishing she had one of the dark shields they wore against the system’s too-near star. They weren’t going to like it if she ordered those with mingled trace to remove their air-cooled helmets.

Toni’s computer clicked to show its analysis was complete. She walked back through the command pointing at each Marine that could fall out.

Few in the slain Marine’s platoon were eliminated. Most in the other three were. The first pass culled 132. The sergeant major again had the company move in. Sweat dripped onto Toni’s glasses as she reviewed her data. She was swimming inside her protective vest.

Hell with this.

The Kory Mae’s main hold was practically empty anyway. “Bring them,” she told the sergeant major.

Toni headed for Kory Mae. The main hatch lowered as she approached. Walking through the environmental shield felt delightful, like entering a meat locker. Unfortunately, the hold temperature rose as the remaining thirty-six Marines crossed the EM threshold.

“Listen up! Front and center when you hear your name.”

She called the names of the four who held the most cross contamination. Toni walked in front of them slowly, allowing the drone’s sensors to pick up detail readings. The next hour was going to be a pain. At least it was cooler.

Toni returned her attention to the first Marine. “PFC, was Tarcine a good friend?” Toni looked into the dark green of the visor for an instant, but quickly looked down at her computer to review the analysis of her infomedics. People aren’t her thing—data is.

“We were together since boot,” she answered.

Toni stepped back and shouted. “We’re going to be here a long freaking time if I don’t get direct answers. Am I making myself understood?”

The loud, “hooyeah,” echoed in the cavernous hold.

She stepped back in front of the PFC. “Again.”

“Like a brother,” she said.

“A brother you make love to, or just drink beer with?”

The questions, designed to elicit an emotional response, continued in similar fashion. Toni’s mind wandered as she watched the computer’s analysis.

She reached the jarhead with the most recent trace. He found the body. His answers registered inconclusive. Toni broke her routine and ordered him to take off the dark visor.

“Take a knee.”

He appeared to be taken aback by her order, dashed a glance at his sergeant major. The woman must have given him a nod. A second later he was eye-to-eye with Toni. Being short as a toad is often as convenient as not.

For a PFC, he had been in a lot of shipboard firefights, considering the tell-tale scars from the splatter of laser-melted hull. Spacers have a saying. “Better scarred than scattered.” She didn’t know why that came to mind.

“Why are you still a PFC?” she asked him. The computer registered his response as consistent.

“Who do you think killed him?”

His heart rate increased twelve percent. Temperature rose two degrees. He held an opinion at least, but he wouldn’t tell her if she rammed bamboo slivers under his fingernails.

“Give me an answer in the next ten seconds or you’ll see a courts-martial.”

He didn’t blink. His heart rate actually slowed. That kind of threat was going to get her nowhere with this guy. She didn’t bother to give his record more than a scan. He’d been busted often enough to consider it routine. There was no other reason he was still an E2 after all the action he’d seen.

“Sergeant Major, please explain to the private he must answer.”

The woman grabbed him by the front of his shirt and raised him to his feet, pressed her nose nearly against his. “You want to wash latrines until your service is honored, Private?”

“No, Sergeant Major.”

Yeah. That helped. The next ten minutes were just as productive as the last. Minutes she’d never get back. He might know something valuable, but he was a cagey butthead.

And a moron.

She stepped before her next candidate, on to the next, and the next after her.

An hour later Toni stood in front of a smallish Marine, not to say she was as short as Toni, but she was under 180 centimeters, and had shoulders the sergeant major, clearly from a heavy-gravity planet, could have snapped like a wishbone without effort.

The trace was left on the corporal’s fatigues within twenty minutes of Tarcine’s death. Older DNA, a lot of it, remained on her skin from weeks earlier. Either she shared the same bar of soap, or she rolled in the sack with him. Toni looked up under her visor.

Stick to data, or take a shot at reading her the old fashion way?

“Remove your helmet,” Toni said softly. It was time for a gentler touch. Being a bitch hadn’t gotten her far in two hours.

The corporal’s face didn’t hold a single scar. She looked as though she could still be in secondary school. Toni read the woman’s summarized record. She had been in the service three years. No firefights. Bizarre. She was being taken care of. Tarcine, an E5, was in a position to do that. The woman’s pulse rose steadily, even though Toni hadn’t asked her a single question.

“You shower with Tarcine recently?” she asked the woman at a near whisper.

The corporal’s eyes got a little larger. Sensor readings rose across the board.

Most assuredly something sexual there.

“Ma’am, not that I recall.”

“How long have you been planet-based?”

“Ma’am, we just arrived for weekend RNR.”

“She was a replacement eight months earlier for a jarhead who got himself liquefied by a particle charge,” the sergeant major explained. Yeah. That had jumped out at Toni—eight months and no firefights—in this area of space.

Her computer registered the corporal’s stomach muscles tightened, but her general stress leveled off. Interesting. Not that it meant diddly.

Toni wanted to sit. She looked down the line. Three more Marines to interrogate. They stood at ease, like pillars of granite, or machines, hidden behind their alloy fatigues, helmets, and darker-green, mirrored visors.

Toni shifted her shoulders to help her refocus, hurried through the last of the Marines, turned and held out her computer to the sergeant major. “Want these three with me, the rest you can release.” Toni suggested she could take a break too.

Toni didn’t offer the three seats when she led them to the galley. She walked across the room and pointed to a spot near the end of her team’s conference table, and eyed the PFC. He marched forward and stood at attention on the spot. She separated the other two across the room in similar fashion and walked out without a word.

Could they be stupid enough to say something incriminating while they stand there?

She entered the forward hold where Tarcine’s body was set out. I hate fricking dead bodies. But it’s gotta be done.

The heat on the moon had accelerated its decomposition. It reeked, even though Kory quickly lowered the temperature in the hold to two degrees when the body was delivered.

He was no delight before he lost part of his face. Half of the man’s chest was also missing. His right leg had been cleanly separated from his trunk. He really pissed someone off.

Given a few hours, Toni could match the weapon to the wounds, but lasers in an armory, which a whole brigade had access to, added little credence in a court proceeding. Even if she found it, trace would be less than helpful. It’s a hell of a lot easier to pull together psychological evidence when you’re a gazillion miles from a real forensics team.

“Kory, have you finished your analysis?”

“Aye, Captain. Would you—”

“A summary if it isn’t inconvenient.”

Toni watched as the slide on her computer showed the progress of the download. Behind her, the door of the lift opened. She looked over her shoulder expecting either Chewie or the other marshal on board who was recuperating from a nasty ambush.

“I did not release you, Marine.”

How’d he know to find me here? The man lifted a laser at her. It was a civilian version of an M2. Small enough to hide inside a shirt, not the most powerful, took about a second and a half to recharge between shots, but still deadly if the handler’s aim was good.

“How in the hell did you pick the three of us out of the company?” he mumbled. “Your questions were bullshit.”

“Did I say they were relevant?”

He twisted his face as though Toni spoke an alien language.

“Did Tarcine find out you raped her, or were you just getting rid of the competition?”

“Who says—”

“Oh, please. I’m freaking short, not stupid. The PFC, Scarface, cleaned up after you. But you notice he isn’t behind you now? Not going to clean up after you this time.”

Toni prepared to ask him how he thought he was going to get away with shooting her, considering a hundred sensors focused on him, when he fired. Heat radiated across her vest.

I love these vests.

A Marine who can’t shoot worth crap—what luck.

Toni pulled her sidearm and fired. His fatigues would absorb most of her rounds, but they would hurt, and keep him from getting off a better shot. She leveled her weapon as high on his trunk as she dared, hoping to catch a break and get him in his unprotected throat. She wasn’t such a great shot to aim for his head. It was more important to keep the projectiles soaking into his chest, and him busy.

After his first shot, alarms would be going off in the decks above. She just had to stay alive until Chewie reached her.

She stepped forward doing her best to empty her magazine. His body lurched, arms swayed. He fired again. The blast sailed wide. She had another free second and a half. She tried to count her shots. About eight. Another thirteen to go. The burned propellant, scorched vest, smelled harsh against the ship’s purified air.

Within twenty feet of him.

Fatigues would fail in a couple more steps. A round caught his raised wrist and blood and tissue exploded. Somehow he held onto the laser. His face turned purple from the pain, the pounding he was taking. He struggled to aim the laser. Fired. The ion burst crossed within two centimeters of Toni’s cheek.

She felt blood running down her face, a burning furrow. Another free second and a half. Maybe seven rounds left. He jerked hard as her rounds met the fatigue’s tolerance.

She had one last round, maybe. Somehow with his ruined hand and wrist, he leveled the laser again.

Enough!

She aimed for his face, close enough even she couldn’t miss. Pulled the trigger. His head snapped backward, a pink puff exiting the back of his skull, body teetered as his laser clattered onto the deck, he fell stiffly in slow motion, with a two-tone plonk, thud, and a final bouncing clunk.

Toni screamed. It was anger. Frustration. Maybe a little release. She dropped her arms to her side, took a deep breath.

“Damn!”

She sucked in air and looked down at her shoulder.

“Another freaking scar.”

Blood dripped from her jaw, oozed down the right edge of her vest, through the hole melted in it. Glad it wasn’t an M4. Bastard was hard to kill.

The lift door opened. Toni didn’t have the energy to ready her sidearm again. Pretty sure it was empty anyway. Chewie sprinted down the catwalk. He held one of the gargantuan laser rifles she couldn’t lift.

“About time!” she screamed.

“Ever occur to you to check if your guests are armed?”

“Crap. Must’ve cut class the day they discussed that.” Gotta add that to the biometric scan.

~