Orbital

Sixty-Three Inside Man

Tamara’s voice calls out over the station intercom announcing the departure of the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Attwell enters his secure lab, shuts the door behind him and straps himself into his workbench — totally unaware that I have him under surveillance.

He pulls up the station camera feed showing the SSV as it does its thruster burns dropping into a lower orbit and gradually dropping away from the Sagan.

I had three suspects and only time to try to catch one. This required me to make a guess. Getting it wrong could mean erasing the best chance at getting Silverback — it could also mean people dying.

Attwell reaches up to a metal cabinet over his head and removes a bulky electronic meter used to measure magnetic force.

He pulls out an antenna, not a standard feature on the device, and a green button lights up.

On his screen a running timer counts the mission time for the SSV. He checks his watch then dials something into the device and presses the button.

There’s no giant explosion on the monitor. There won’t be until thirty minutes later when the craft hits its maximum reentry velocity. That’s when the tiny device built into the hard-drive is designed to go off, having been set by transmitter in his hands.

Attwell pushes the antenna back into the meter and returns it to the cabinet.

While I suspected I’d see something like this, what happens next is what I’m not so sure about and will tell me what kind of man Attwell is.

His back slumps and he places his face in his hands. It’s not a natural position in zero-gravity. It’s the body language of someone very unhappy with who they have become.

Attwell sits there for a few moments, clearly anguished by the fact that he just went through the actions of killing two people.

His spine stiffens and he snaps out of it, clearly having convinced himself that it was the only choice and that he has to carry on.

He reaches into his drawer and removes a scientific calculator, the kind with a solar panel that will work off ambient light from now until forever. After tapping away a long sequence, he places it back in the drawer.

I was anticipating something like this and placed a small camera directly over his workstation — hopefully it caught enough to make sense of what he said to Silverback. The device looks too small to talk directly to Earth. Which means it probably has a repeater somewhere on the station — possibly a transmitter designed to send out signals in random bursts under other station communications.

Attwell, having sent the signal to destroy the ship containing any evidence that would implicate him, and having communicated to his controller that the mission was fait accompli, reaches down to unfasten himself from his strap holding him to the work station — except it won’t unhook.

I put industrial glue in the mechanism so it won’t come undone.

Confused, his engineer brain stares at the buckle trying to understand why the simple mechanism isn’t working properly. That’s when I strike.

It’s only at the last moment, when it’s too late for him to do anything, that he notices the reflection in his monitor of the spacesuit heading towards him with the syringe.

Terrified at how the inanimate object that had stayed dormant on the wall for all this time could suddenly come to life, the needle is in his neck before he can even register what just happened.

I pump him full of muscle relaxant and his flailing arms hang in the air as he loses all control.

I slide open the visor so his frightened eyes can see who did this to him. “I fell for this trick once myself.”

“You’re supposed to be on the ship…” The words are slow and drawn out.

“I was supposed to be a lot of things.”

I take a pair of scissors from my thigh pouch and cut him loose.

I’m not at full strength, but I can easily move him around in zero-gravity. I drag him towards the chamber where Ling was killed, and push him inside.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to ask you questions. You’re going to give me answers.”

“I don’t know anything.” Somewhere his brain realizes that he hasn’t done anything that overtly implicates himself.

“Okay. We can play that game. But I have a different one.”

I take the hard-drive from my pouch and hold it in front of his nose. His eyes go wide at the realization of what it is.

“Yeah, you recognize this.” I slide it into his breast pocket then give his body a shove so that he drifts to the far end of the chamber.

I shut the door, sealing him inside.

“You can’t…” he says.

“Can’t what? We’ve got what, nineteen minutes until that blows? I estimate that it’ll take you out — and the back wall of your chamber, but I’ll be fine.”

“Fuck you.”

He’s past the point of pretending he’s innocent. The muscles in his neck contort as he tries to get a look at the pouch. There’s a tiny amount of movement in his arms as every ounce of his will power is focused on getting to the hard-drive. Unfortunately for him, the relaxant is too strong.

“First you’re going to tell me about the person you get orders from. Then maybe, if I like your answers, we’ll talk about defusing the bomb on your chest.”

“Fuck you,” he says again. “You’re bluffing.”

“Do you want to take that chance?”

He says nothing, which tells me he’s extremely afraid of Silverback.

“I get it,” I say. “You’d rather take the chance I’m not serious than deal with the repercussions of your boss. Guess what, you’re a dead man either way. If you don’t talk to me, he’s going to know something is up when the SSV doesn’t explode.”

“You have no idea how powerful he is.”

“Illuminate me.”

Attwell just fixes me with a determined gaze, convinced that being stubborn is his best option.

“Okay. We need to do something for the next seventeen minutes. I have an idea.”

I turn on the power to the plasma airlock.

Attwell’s eyes narrow as he realizes what I’m about to do.