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  She understood criminals. They were normally people who made poor life choices because they simply didn't have the intelligence to see a better path. They were short-sighted murderers, normally the stupidest of all. A lot of the time they were mesh-heads, with so much of their thinking devoted to the connected world that they lost their sense of reality. The majority were DDs, those who had sold their braincells to designer drugs. But the doctor wasn't either of those things. He was clever. He had the brains to make good decisions. And he had made good decisions.

  He’d earned his PhD by the age of twenty-five, indicating that he knew to keep his head down and work when others were partying. And that he wouldn't risk damaging his brain with either drugs or implants. The man was no mesh-head or DD like ninety-percent of the people she dealt with. He’d purchased his ship at twenty-six after a couple of expeditions to make sure he knew the work. An eight million credit loan paid off in a mere six years, largely because he worked all the hours there were. Another few years had been spent making profits and investing in the business. Everything about the man said hard working and dedicated. Brilliant too. He was committed to his life and his place in the Commonwealth - invested, even. There was nothing about him which signalled rebel.

  There’d been nothing in him that had spoken of dishonesty. She had seen and spoken with him. She’d almost believed him. He had been injured and in pain; pale from blood loss, he’d been sweating and shaking too. His drives were obviously malfunctioning, but he’d been very clear about what had happened. Utterly certain. More than that, he had appeared to be in shock and grieving for a friend. That made no sense. Not when according to the bot he'd shot the woman.

  She understood his desperation of course. Cornered criminals ran. It was what they did. So that part of it made sense. But everything else was illogical.

  Why would anyone attack a hydroponics reserve? And why of all people this man? He wasn't political and he had no affiliations and no motive as far as she could tell. There was no connection to the reserve and none with any of the people who worked there either. In fact, he had very few close connections with anyone. His family all lived a long way away. Ironically enough his primary relationship appeared to be with his receptionist and her family.

  “Thirteen, show me the doctor's work records.”

  She asked because she suspected they would show something else wrong with the picture. And when Thirteen flashed up the information for her, it confirmed everything she'd suspected.

  “Shards! He's a deep spacer!”

  The moment she realised that Annalisse knew there was a problem with her theory of the crime. There were spacers and deep spacers, and though they were similar the two weren't the same. Spacers did routine runs between established jump-points; their ships had crews and they stopped over in ports. Deep spacers were a breed apart even within the Spacers Guild. They went completely off the jump-points, repeatedly doing so blindly. They went alone, staying away for weeks or months.

  He could have been a regular spacer. He could have surveyed systems that others had first visited. But he wasn't. And that mattered.

  Deep spacers regarded themselves as different. They were the most exclusive of societies. They used terms like dirtside and grounders to describe the worlds they no longer felt a part of. They frequented only a very few bars and restaurants and used only a few space-ports on very few worlds. And whenever they got together they tended to get drunk and make fools of themselves. They simply didn't care if others noticed. One of their mottos was that deep spacers danced. Whenever they got together in a bar, they turned the music up and danced like dark side fools. What bothered her was that as a deep spacer he spent the majority of his time in deep space, completely out of contact with the Commonwealth. So when did he have time to become a dissident? And even if he’d wanted to, when did he contact his co-conspirators? He wasn't on Aquaria often enough. And who could they be anyway? Deep spacers kept to their own.

  Most worrying though – what was his motive? The Doctor spent over half his days off-world, hunting for mineral deposits that were easily accessible. When he found them he lodged a claim and brought back the details to the Commonwealth for others to buy. He was a success story on Aquaria. He had no reason to be a political malcontent.

  Merely the fact that he was a spacer of any sort was a problem. He’d had any number of psychological tests just to get his Master’s certificate. No one would put a troubled man in charge of a starship, least of all one carrying thermo-kinetic charges. And yet every test had come back showing a normal, well-adjusted man. No hint of mental instability, or that he was either a dissident or sociopath. He wasn’t the sort of man to blow up fifty-three people.

  Shards – he wasn't even on the world that much. In fact he was there so rarely he kept missing elections and forgetting to cast advance votes. But if he couldn't be bothered making the effort to vote, what could motivate him to become a political terrorist? What other motive could there be for blowing up a hydroponics reserve other than politics?

  Not that that was much of a motive. Even if he had been political, it was still a hydroponics reserve. There was no point in attacking it. Reserves weren't connected to any sort of political power base, and there was certainly no ideological agenda behind them. The only thing a reserve did was produce food for the colony’s inhabitants – if it was destroyed people went hungry.

  And why this one? There were plenty of other reserves in Aquaria: there was one in every major city. Even if more attacks were planned and all the reserves were destroyed the only result would be that everyone would starve and ultimately Aquaria might have to be abandoned. There would be no winners.

  Aquaria had been discovered over nine hundred years before, and while terraforming had been carried out since people had started calling it home, it was still only half finished. It would be another nine hundred years before it would be stable and they could do away with the reserves and the soil reclaimers, the weather controllers and the gene labs. It was a beautiful world, but there was still a lot of alien stuff remaining, most of which had to be removed.

  Annalisse also couldn’t understand why the Doctor had denied the crime. She could understand him refuting the murder had the doctor intended to defend himself in a court. It would have been pointless. A policebot had witnessed the entire event and its report was now in the record. Its recording abilities had been damaged in the fire fight, but its recall abilities were still perfect. The machines couldn't lie and they were seldom wrong. So why deny it when the evidence was so overwhelming? Still she understood that some would try.

  But he had always been intending to space himself. After all, he was lost now exactly as he'd known he would be. He would never return. And he had known that would be the case before he had jumped. So why not just confess? Why paint this elaborate and bizarre picture of a pair of officer’s intent on murder when absolutely no one would believe it and there was no point?

  For that matter, why deny the bombing? He'd been caught planting it on the reserve's surveillance system. It was him. She'd seen the recording. There could be no doubt about what he'd done.

  And finally, why put the whole thing out on the mesh so that trillions of people across the entire Commonwealth could see it? If he'd been planning on staying and putting up a legal defence then it made sense. Not otherwise.

  Of course there might be one reason he’d lie, a tiny glimmer of hope he might have that he would one day return and then have his day in court. She turned to the bot beside her.

  “You're absolutely sure he jumped wild and without translation coordinates locked in? He couldn't possibly be coming back?” she asked

  “Yes. The Nightingale has a standard mark fourteen astro-navigation unit. To establish translation coordinates exactly takes two hours eight minutes and four seconds under optimal conditions. To do so from the ground inside an atmosphere with an inexact ability to plot the positions of the stars would take much longer. The ship
jumped six minutes forty one seconds after he boarded it,” the bot answered.

  The detective had never been the greatest fan of bots, because they possessed no instincts when it came to judging people nor any real understanding– just voice stress analysers to tell if someone was lying to them. Plus they were big and clunky unlike their android counterparts. Bots weren't that smart either. And they certainly weren't creative or original – there was a reason the term botbrain was an insult. But she trusted their judgement when it came to matters of fact and logic.

  “Alright then Thirteen, let's examine the scene.” It seemed a waste of time to her, as the facts of the matter weren't in dispute, not when they had the evidence of the policebot. But she had to be thorough. The courts would demand it if any of this ever came to a trial. So would her bosses.

  Besides, they already had evidence that the policebot had not followed its programming perfectly. Giving chase to a fugitive was normal enough. But leaping through a fourth storey wall was not. And then running and firing at a suspect with a heavy duty police laser in a crowded area was absolutely not procedure. XC 173 had obviously had a problem. People had panicked and run screaming and there was no shortage of complaints about near misses and the fires it had caused. Though the complaints were probably exaggerated it seemed that the doctor wasn't the only one lucky to be alive.

  “Let's start with a fire analysis. Put up a holo of the two victims as they were found in their final resting positions.”

  Thirteen obliged and immediately Annalisse was treated to images of the receptionist and the police officer as they had been found. Medbots recorded everything they did. Immediately she groaned: there was a problem, as anyone with the slightest understanding of crime scenes would have known.

  The receptionist Bree Chambers had been shot while seated at her desk which was situated on one side of the reception area, opposite some expensive looking couches and a coffee table where guests waiting to see the doctor would wait. The main entrance was on the receptionist's right and the door to the doctor's private office on her left. But she’d obviously been shot from the front and at a downward angle before collapsing backwards onto the floor to die. That meant that she hadn't been shot from Doctor Simon's office as the bot's report had claimed.

  “Shards!” The bot was wrong! It shouldn't be but it was. The killer had been in the waiting area, or perhaps standing almost directly in front of the receptionist's desk. That didn’t fit with what the bot had reported.

  According to the policebot, it and Officer Harlon had entered the premises, the secretary had announced their arrival, and the doctor had immediately started shooting blindly through the wall of his office. He had killed the receptionist and badly wounded the officer, not to mention damaging the bot. But if Doctor Simons had fired from his office, there would have been missed shots and there would have been scorch marks on the front wall between the office and the outside foyer. Also, the scorch marks on the partition wall between his office and the reception would have been on the doctor's side of the wall. There should have been few or no scorch marks on the wall behind the receptionist and they would have been elongated from the angle of firing.

  But Annalisse was staring at the exact opposite of that. There were scorch marks on the reception side of the partition leading to the office indicating that someone had fired from reception into his office and not the other way around. There were also scorch marks on the far wall of the Doctor's private office, indicating the same thing. But there were no marks on the front wall of reception as there should have been if the doctor had fired a weapon. Laser beams didn’t stop simply because there was no target in the way. Worst of all there were big, perfectly round burns in the side wall behind the receptionist's desk.

  The evidence pointed to the fact that the doctor had been in the reception at the time of the shooting. He hadn't fired through a wall at all. He'd deliberately taken aim and gunned down the receptionist and the officers at close range. Close enough that the weapon's discharge had burnt the receptionist's entire front to cinders before going on to incinerate the back of her chair and the wall behind. That was a heavy duty weapon the doctor had used. The police officer, still fighting for his life in hospital, hadn't done much better even though he'd been wearing body armour. Even the bot had taken serious damage. And then, the doctor must have turned his weapon on his own office. Had he been trying to cover up the crime?

  “Record those positions and angles of weapons fire at the two victims, and perform a firing vector analysis.”

  Thirteen immediately did as ordered, and within a matter of seconds it was showing her exactly what she had surmised. Which could only mean that the policebot had been malfunctioning – probably from having been shot by the doctor.

  Annalisse sighed. Their one hundred percent reliable witness had just become unreliable. In fact if it couldn't accurately report the difference between the assailant being in the next room firing through a wall or being with them in the room, it was useless. They had no evidence. Worse, now they had a reason to accept that all those complaints about the bot running across the space-port firing blindly were true. The snippets of video all over the mesh were real. This was going to be a bad day for the Aquaria Law Enforcement Bureau. She could already imagine the lawsuits flying in. And it would be worse when the media found out, because they would find out. Most of all it would be terrible when she had to tell her mute of a boss.

  Out of the corner of her eye Annalisse spotted the copper plaque through the missing door. It was still hovering above its stand, and the instant she saw it something the doctor had said jumped out at her. More so when she saw the marks of laser fire on it. He'd said that the plaque had saved his life. She hadn't understood, but suddenly it was obvious. He meant that it had taken the brunt of the attack, positioned as it was on a stand directly between the door and his desk by the far wall. It was a big thing, solid copper and about a centimetre thick, and it had taken two heavy blasts which looked to have come from the reception area. More contradictory evidence.

  Could he have been telling the truth? Could he have been sitting in his office, with the killer blasting through the wall at him? Could she have been hunting an innocent man? A man so terrified that he'd rather risk death and the certainty of being spaced in a wild jump than give himself up?

  The thought chilled her. But even though the idea was not a good one it had to be considered. Because the doctor's final words were out there for everyone to hear. When this hit the mesh the media would be everywhere.

  To be sure she quickly had Thirteen put the broken door back in what remained of its frame and realised it confirmed everything the doctor had said. It had laser holes in it that lined up perfectly with the copper plaque and the doctor's desk beyond, and the blackest marks on it were on the side facing the reception area. Someone had fired blindly through the door at where they assumed the doctor was and had hit the plaque. Presumably the same person who’d also shot the receptionist, Officer Harlon and the bot. Again when she had the bot do the analysis of the crime scene and gunfire vectors, it showed exactly what she’d feared.

  Something was wrong here. If the doctor had been in his office as he'd claimed, then it was very wrong indeed. There was only one possible explanation. Someone else had been in the room – someone who’d killed the receptionist, shot the officer and the bot, and who had then fired on the doctor. After that the killer had fled, while the bot, acting on some sort of corrupted program and a badly damaged processor, had burst through the wall, stabbed the doctor with a piece of reinforcing metal, thrown him out the window, and then given chase across the space-port all the way to his ship.

  That explained at least how the doctor had ended up on his ship, badly wounded and frightened beyond reason. It also explained his testimony. If he hadn't seen the other man, only the bot and his receptionist's body, he would have assumed the police had done the shooting. Between that and his obvious injuries, what had followed w
as almost inevitable. A panicking man fearing for his life had run for the only safety he knew – his ship. He had been suffering from shock and blood loss, and with the police surrounding him and the Navy closing in quickly the doctor had decided that he’d only one possible route of escape and he’d taken it.

  She sighed. This was not going to play well on the channels. And the mesh would be even more unforgiving.

  “Alright Thirteen, we need a full forensics team in here. Every atom, every molecule gets swept. We have a new gunman to find.”

  And, she thought, they should have been there from the beginning. Instead they'd accepted the evidence of a policebot, a supposedly one hundred percent reliable witness whose evidence would be taken as fact in court. It was an open and shut case. And they'd had a fugitive who could never be brought to justice. There had seemed little need to do more than the most basic of investigations,

  Until now.

  “I want to know everyone who was in this room at the time of the shooting. I want weapons trace analyses done on all the fire residues. The policebot needs to be taken down to technical and analysed in minute detail to see if we can recover some accurate recordings of what happened. And a watch needs to be put on Officer Harlon. He is now our only eyewitness and whoever was in here with them must also know that.”

  Even as she gave her orders, she couldn't help but wonder if that was all that she was going to find wrong. Could it be that the other part of the doctor's crime wave was also a fabrication? She still didn't know why the doctor might have bombed a reserve. Plus he claimed he'd been in quarantine/decontamination. Could he be completely innocent, even though she'd seen the recordings? Could they have driven an innocent man to leap into the unknown with no hope of returning? And by the stars if he wasn't the bomber then who was?