“But anyone could have done it. Katrina has been alienating everyone the past few days, long interrogations, accusations, demands that we all reveal our secrets. I’ve been angry, of course. She doesn’t trust anyone, and I think Wolfgang is going to talk to Joanna about relieving her of duty.
“Of course, she’s been relieved now. And we don’t know who did it.
“Dinner was quiet. Joanna was in the medbay with the captain. Wolfgang, Hiro, Paul, and I just sat there, picking at leftovers—God, I’ve had a lot of leftovers recently, I hate wasting them even in the recycler. Hiro’s pale and won’t meet anyone’s eyes, but he’s been like that for weeks, ever since we woke up his last clone. Paul is sullen, but again, what’s new? Poor bastard has never fit in, not before his episode and not after, and we’ve got a long way to go.
“Wolfgang announced he would start interrogations tomorrow. I left the table.
“I don’t care if that incriminates me. I need to figure this out. I’m going to go over the files again tonight. I’m locking my log files under another layer of security, Aunt Lucia–style.”
“Hang on,” Maria said, and the recording paused. “Are those files also within these locked logs?”
“No, just your ‘dear diary’ moments,” IAN said. “There’s one more. Want to hear it?”
Maria chewed her lip and tried to make sense of it. “Go ahead.”
“July twenty-fifth.” Maria’s voice was breathless and panicked. She sounded in pain, or ill. “It’s the fucking end. IAN’s been hacked, we’ve lost a ton of data, including our own mindmaps. He’s losing data faster than I can fix. We’re going off course. Grav drive is off, we’ll be weightless soon. We’re scrambling to fix things, but I think someone put something in my breakfast. Feel like shit.” A pause, a few shuffling steps. Then vomiting. Her voice, strained and tired, returned. “I think it’s poison. I’d ask IAN but he’s not here. I don’t have lo—”
The recording skipped and immediately picked back up, her voice strained and frightened. Screams sounded in the background. “Hiro’s fucking hanged himself. I am definitely poisoned. We’re not the only ones who need a wake-up. One last log, oh, please don’t lose this. Remember where you squirrel things away, next me. I copied the first mindmap backups we made when we got on board. Old habits and everything. I think I can get”—she paused a moment to gasp for breath—“to the resurrection button to wake us up before I’m gone. We’ll be confused, but at least we’ll wake up. If you’re hearing this, I guess I succeeded.”
The recording ended. Maria sat, listening to the chug of her steamer beside her, making her think of her own gasping breath as hemlock shut her body down.
She blinked, bringing herself back to the present. “So after that I guess I ran down here, hit the switch, threw up, and someone finished killing me.”
“That sounds about right, based on what you’ve told me,” IAN said. “Isn’t this great?”
“Isn’t what great?” she asked numbly.
“You’re not the murderer! And neither is Hiro, if he was dead before the slaughter began. Congratulations!”
“Yay,” she muttered. She wondered if she should put the restraining code back into the AI.
So Many More than Five
Wolfgang woke up when Joanna slid his bed away from the two captains and Hiro.
“What are you doing?” he asked, voice thick with exhaustion.
“Giving you each space. Go back to sleep.”
He groaned slightly. “I’d rather vomit.”
Joanna had been prepared with a metal basin at his feet, and she handed it to him and continued pushing. He grasped it tightly but wasn’t sick. His upper lip beaded with sweat.
“You should sleep. Don’t talk, or think, or move. Brain injuries are nothing to sneeze at. Especially in our current state.” She got him situated against the far wall and then put a small table beside him with a cup of water.
He put his basin beside the water and leaned back and closed his eyes. “I’m doing better, I think.” He was lying. His jaw ached, and his head hurt. “How am I not supposed to think? We’re trying to solve a murder and figure out what went wrong with Hiro.”
“We know what went wrong with Hiro. He has implanted personalities that are fighting for dominance. It’s not proof that he was behind the slaughter, despite what Paul thinks.”
“Paul and myself. It’s very possible for Hiro to have killed us and then hanged himself.”
“A lot of things are possible. Get some rest.”
“No, we need to talk. Now’s as good a time as any,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the cot.
“Now is the worst time,” Joanna said, collapsing onto a stool.
“Don’t we still have to get rid of those bodies?” Wolfgang asked.
Joanna groaned. She had forgotten the biohazard nightmare they’d left in the side hallway when Hiro had attacked Maria.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The bodies were where they had dropped them earlier just inside the large recycler door. Had it only been a few hours? Even in body bags, the bodies had already begun fill the hall with a fetid odor.
As per the matter-of-fact practice of hundreds of years, she and Wolfgang carried each naked body into the lock, dumped it without ceremony, and returned for the next one. They didn’t include the body bags; no reason to waste them.
Wolfgang winced a bit at the smell. “If I could go back in time and slap whoever thought this ship didn’t need a proper morgue…” He left the threat hanging there as they dropped Hiro’s body, the last one, beside the rest.
They left the lock, shut the interior door, and opened the chute to the recycler. The floor dropped away and the bodies tumbled down a chute to the outermost ring.
Joanna turned and started to walk toward the medbay.
Wolfgang stayed behind, looking through the window in the door, which now showed an empty lock, complete with floor. His lips were moving.
“Wolfgang? You all right?” Joanna asked.
“Fine,” he said, walking to catch up to her.
“You looked like you were praying,” she said.
He flushed, extremely obvious on his pale skin, and said, “They’re the first clone deaths that I mourn. They’re strangers to us all. It’s an odd feeling.”
Wolfgang, mourn? “What do you mean?” she asked.
“It feels like a real death. And it seems disrespectful to dump them in the recycler.”
Joanna frowned. He was right about it feeling like death. “We’re a closed system, Wolfgang. We can’t afford to lose resources for sentimentality.”
“Yes, and sentimentality brought on by stress, probably,” he said, picking up the remaining body bags. “We’re going to have to clean these out.”
“Dump them in the cloning bay and we’ll just add that to Maria’s cleaning list. Along with an apology.”
“It is her job,” he reminded her.
“I really doubt biohazard cleanup was part of the job description.”
“I think Katrina was intending cleanup to be a punishment,” Wolfgang said, catching up with her. “But she got tired of waiting for someone to make her angry.”
“Haven’t we all fallen under that category at some point or other in the past couple of days?” Joanna asked. “Except maybe me.”