Chapter 18

Watching through a shuttlepod window, Brown saw Dan Keenan make his way through the crowd and across the Hangar floor. Everyone was eager to leave the planet after a two-day lockdown, but Brown had instructed his security staff to let Keenan past and direct him to this 'pod.

Reena Bird's former assistant entered the small craft and took a seat in the rear compartment, tucking his case between his legs.

Brown had been facing away from him in the pilot's chair, but now turned to face the younger man. "You're in an awful hurry to leave, Mr. Keenan." Maybe North was right: He did have a flair for the dramatic.

Keenan was shocked to see him. "Commander! Um, yes, I… need to get back to Earth as soon as possible. Report in to Mr. Abramson."

"Transport for Earth doesn't arrive until later," Brown said, feigning confusion.

"Yes, uh, I thought it best to get underway as soon as possible though."

Brown nodded, accepting that flimsy answer. "I suppose you heard we caught Ms. Bird's killer."

"Yes, the Suliban woman. That's good."

"Bizarre turn of events though. But then, everything in this case has been a little bizarre, hasn't it?"

"Uh, I suppose so."

"Like Ms. Bird wanting to see all those devices - the anti-grav lifter, the levitation boots, the multi-spectrum goggles - but not wanting to talk to the inventors behind them."

Keenan shrugged. "I guess she just didn't get the chance."

"The laser pistol too. Especially weird, considering that Abramson Industries is strictly against weapons manufacturing, eh?"

"Um, maybe Ms. Bird thought it could be put to other uses."

Brown grunted and remained staring intently at Keenan. "Lot of unanswered questions. For example: Our security checks show that an alert went off in your quarters the night of the murder…"

Keenan turned pale. "An alert?"

"Yes. It was the alarm that tells us that a window pane has been ejected. You know, for evacuation or whatever. It's a silent alarm, only sends a signal to the security console in Ops. This went off for about a second before cancelling."

"A glitch?" Keenan offered.

"That's what my staff thought on the night, and I can't really blame them. So much goes wrong around here." He chuckled but Keenan did not join in. "However, when it came up in our investigation, it got me wondering.

"So we examined the window pane in your quarters. There was some tape placed over the sensor, to make it think the pane was still in place."

Keenan gulped. "I… I don't know anything about that."

Brown smiled threateningly. "Of course you don't, Mr. Keenan. After all, how could you eject the pane and then replace it by yourself?

"Unless you could find some way to hold onto the pane, so it didn't fall to the ground…"

The two men stared at each other silently a moment. The din in the Hangar seemed to get further away.

Brown continued. "That got me thinking about that seemingly random assortment of devices again. About how the anti-grav could be used to effortlessly hold the pane in place, turning it like a revolving door, while you placed tape over the sensor.

"About how the levitation boots could be used to walk across thin air.

"And how those goggles could be used to see in infrared. See through a tinted window. See the gap in the heat signature of a person where their artificial heart would be.

"How a laser beam on a low setting would transmit through even tinted glass without damaging it - it is just light, after all - but still carry enough EM radiation to overload such an artificial heart."

As he said the words, Brown could picture it in his mind's eye: Keenan walking across the air to Bird's window like a tightrope walker on an invisible wire, 59 floors high, unseen by anyone. Hovering outside Bird's room, hidden by the tinted glass, watching her red-and-yellow silhouette through his goggles. Aiming his calibrated laser pistol at the black target in the middle of her chest where her heart once was.

Firing…

Keenan's expression had grown more dispassionate as he went on, dropping the nervous young intern act altogether.

He suddenly made for the shuttlepod door…

And was met by a phase-pistol-wielding Colonel Kostopoulos.

"Sit back down, Mr. Keenan," she said, firmly. He did so, and Kostopoulos kept her weapon trained on him.

"We had some DNA from your quarters analysed," Brown carried on with his account. "Perra isn't the only one pretending to be someone she's not.

"You're Tandaran, 'Mr. Keenan.' And you've had some surgery done." He tapped between his eyes, where Tandarans usually had a small, V-shaped ridge.

"I did a little more digging," said Brown. "You joined Abramson Industries' internship program just a few days before Ms. Bird's regular assistant mysteriously fell ill from food poisoning. You had impeccable credentials, with experience in dealing with alien cultures, so it was a foregone conclusion that you'd be picked as first alternate for this assignment. Funnily enough, Ms. Bird's assistant's food poisoning cleared up soon after. It's an intern's job to bring staff their meals, right?"

Keenan - yet another false name - sat up straight on the bench in the 'pod's rear section, but said nothing.

Brown kept going. "Funny how this is all happening at a time when the Tandaran Militia is holding several innocent Humans hostage, and has been dragging negotiations. It's almost as if your government is stalling for time.

"Here's what I reckon: Your people have been tracking Perra, and other ex-Cabal members, for years. You get word that she'll be here for the tech expo, but you can't just openly grab her in Earth territory. We have those pesky laws and such.

"Now, I don't know who you really are, but I imagine that you probably specialise in unorthodox, covert operations. All totalitarian societies have people like you. So you concocted an elaborate plan to frame Perra for murder.

"You got yourself close to Bird because you knew she'd be seeing Perra. Once you were here, you took advantage of the… unusual tools on offer to carry out your complex plan. Genius, by the way, but unnecessarily complicated. I guess it helps to make the truth more outlandish than the lie though.

"If we had actually charged Perra, I'm sure your government would suddenly become very open to discussing the release of their Human hostages. Perhaps a prisoner exchange even? People would be suspicious of the convenient timing, but it'd eventually be forgotten, right? After all, your people are well known for hunting Suliban, the quick change of tune wouldn't be too surprising. The whole situation might even harm support for Earth's Suliban aid efforts.

"So much work went into it. I'm almost disappointed that you didn't get away with it."

After a moment, Keenan spoke. "I am Tandaran," he said calmly, "but everything else you've said is pure speculation. You have no evidence."

"You're right," said Brown with a grin. "I have no evidence of you actually carrying out the crime. Wish I did; that must have been quite a sight! You obviously don't suffer from vertigo. While your deception is certainly suspect, there's nothing to charge you with."

Keenan was clearly dubious of Brown's positive tone, but made to stand. "Well then…"

"Except," Brown cut him off, "for tampering with evidence."

Leaning back onto the bench, Keenan frowned. "What?"

"This morning, when I told you that we had a suspect in custody - T'Ves, not Perra - and that there was a deadline to solve this before the lockdown was lifted, you panicked. You started to worry that we might arrest someone other than Perra; that you'd covered your tracks too well.

"So you got desperate. Stupid. Sometime before we confined you to quarters, you wiped Bird's computer, just in case there was anything nice about Perra in there, and fabricated a report that made her look bad. You just didn't count on our crew being good enough to crack the encryption first, and so we knew that report wasn't there before."

Keenan was shaken by this, but quickly regained his composure. "That still doesn't sound like evidence."

Brown nodded. "Yeah, you were careful. Avoided being seen going into the science lab on any cameras, expertly picked the lock on the storage locker, then replaced it when you were done. You even used some sort of steriliser to remove any DNA evidence - which, I presume, you used on the laser pistol too.

"But there's something you forgot. Something so often overlooked in this day and age, with our fancy sensors and scanners. The oldest forensic trick in the book.

"Fingerprints."

Keenan's face dropped.

"Steriliser won't get rid of marks on a surface." Brown pointed at him. "And I'm willing to bet that if we check your fingerprints, they'll match those we took off of the laptop and locker. Looks bloody suspicious that you added a file that incriminates Perra, doesn't it?"

He stood up from his chair. "That's enough for me to arrest you and let Perra go."

Keenan looked up at him, his features screwed up with anger. "You'd imprison me and let that terrorist go free?!"

Brown swiftly stepped closer to the disguised Tandaran, prompting Kostopoulos to tense up.

"That woman," Brown corrected Keenan, "didn't kill an innocent person as part of some bigoted political game!" He spat the words out like fire. "She at least had the courage to break free from her people's indoctrination. Can't say the same about you."

He nodded to Kostopoulos. "Get him out of here."

"Gladly," said the colonel. She gestured with her pistol for Keenan to follow her.

Once alone again in the shuttlepod, Brown sat back in the pilot's chair and sighed. He realised that he wasn't at all disappointed now that the chase was over, nor prideful in his success. Justice had been done, and that was all that mattered.

Reena Bird could rest easy.

And so could he.