The Twelve Stones (59 page)

“Not that he mentioned. He only told me he discovered a programming error, which I took to mean the subroutine.”

“That was enough to scare him off the station?” Rincon asked, as he stared at Sinjakama's unmoving corpse.

“The man knew what he saw. Wouldn't that be enough for you?” Vicktoria looked up at Omar who was approaching them quickly. “He'll be here at any minute.”

Lazarus smirked at Omar was was only a few hundred feet above them now. “I suppose we will have to move up our timetable.” Lazarus replied softly.

Vicktoria and Rincon turned to the Tunway that would lead them back to Rincon's bar in Downtown. “Will there be enough time?” She asked, the worry evident in her voice.

Rincon turned, and looked over at Omar who was detaching himself from the rappelling cable.

“If there isn't, we die.”

Lazarus and
Vicktoria
both ducked into the shadows moving quickly towards the entrance to the tunway before getting into a Rampet and quickly accelerating up and away from The Pit and back to Downtown.

Omar disconnected the climbing wire, and ran to the prostate body of Sinjakama. He shined a light over at the Tunway entrance looking for any sign of Sinjakama's killers. Cursing the dark, he typed quickly on his Armbar, and a tall thin man appeared in holographic form projected out of Omar's Armbar.

“What's happened?" The man's speech was clipped with a slight Russian accent. His eyes narrowed. Koschei was a handsome man, high cheekbones, a thin jutting jaw, and a high sloped forehead. A chinstrap beard rounded out the rest of his face, on which, his anger was clearly evident.

“Sinjakama's dead. Someone got to him before I could.”

The figure stood silent on his arm for a moment, considering the implications.

“Any indication as to why he was abandoning his post?”

“Not that I can tell, I haven't had a chance to examine the body yet.”

“Search him, thoroughly. Take a scan of his ArmBar and bring his body back to the Med-bay for proper examination. Any data cores or infodrives you find, bring directly to me.”

“He shit himself.” Omar said in disgust, looking at the prostrate scientist.

“No one said examining a dead body was pleasant.” Koschei replied in an amused voice.

Omar leaned down and wirelessly connected his ArmBar to Sinjakama's. As it copied the information off the engineer's ArmBar, Omar began searching through Sinjakama's pockets. In the right front pocket, he discovered a infodrive the size of his thumb. He grabbed it and displayed it to the holographic Koschei projected out of Omar's ArmBar.

“He had this in his pocket.”

“Transfer the data to me.” Koschei ordered.

Omar opened the cap to the data core and inserted it into his ArmBar. Scrambled data began to show on the readout of Koschei's screen as he turned to examine the workstation at his desk.

“It's encoded with a rotating 256 sigma key encryption. Even with every Quantum processor we had running in parallel for...” Omar quickly did the math in his head, “five years, we wouldn't crack ten percent of the data on that disk.” Omar said disgusted. “Whatever Sinjakama was up to, the secret died with the man.”

Koschei stared at his workstation screen for a moment looking over the encoded data and considered his options.

Sinjakama was a careful man, and likely left a pass code to the information somewhere, Koschei thought to himself. He would not allow something that scared him enough to abandon
Rosetta to be lost forever. The fact it was so heavily encoded meant it was incredibly important to Dr. Sinjakama, and therefore, important to Koschei.

“His son won’t let us sweep his death under the rug.” Omar continued, looking at his boss with his cruel gray eyes. “That Sinjakama of yours was a good way to assuage the Elder's concerns, but his death won't go uninvestigated. The Consortium WILL have to ask questions.”

Koschei sighed.

“You’re right of course.” Koschei considered it for a moment longer. “I don’t suppose just air locking his body would do it…”

“And have him marked as a disappearance instead? That would only create more problems than it solves.” Omar shook his head, “Personally, I like the idea of pushing him off the top of the Pit better. We might be able to make a convincing case for suicide.”

Koschei shook his head. “Not with Sinjakama I’m afraid....”

He closed his eyes, thinking of every option until a slow smile began spreading across his face.

“Take Sinjakama's body to the Med-bay. Once they've gone over his body with a fine tooth comb, take it to the top of the Pit and drop him off the side. We'll make his death look like an accident which ought to satisfy any problems with the Consortium.”

“What about his son?” Rodriguez asked impatiently, “if he comes to Rosetta and stirs up trouble, and the investors hear about it," Rodriguez paused to emphasize the point, "That would mean the end of your administration here.”

“If…” Koschei paused, mentally correcting himself knowing the Consortium Government as he did, “
when
Atel Sinjakama comes asking questions, we will assist his investigation in every way possible.”

“Sir!” Omar began to protest. When he saw his bosses’ face on the viewscreen, Koschei's expression kept him from protesting any more. "That man has enough influence to get The Consortium to take over your operations, he may be young but..."

“Do it Mr. Rodriguez.”

Omar stared at the man and not for the first time, felt a shiver of fear go through his spine. Omar was a man who wasn't afraid of much, but Koschei was the exception to that rule.

“Sir!” Omar said stiffly, “If we don’t handle this right everything we've…err…you’ve built will be destroyed. And then what? All this for nothing!”

Koschei looked at Omar through his viewscreen and smiled. “Mr. Rodriguez, a chess game is quite often won or lost in the first move. Someone has decided to make the first move on me and has begun the game for us. Whatever happens next, is inevitable.”

With that, the 3D projection of Koschei winked out and Omar stood alone with only three dead bodies for company.