Элизабет Мун - Into the Fire

“About twenty by twenty-five centimeters, then? Not quite as thick as that briefcase? Looks like a part of something mechanical?”

“I guess. It’s a box, basically.”

“So it would look out of place in an office, unless it was inside a safe or something like that. And the safe here was drilled out—and the one in the residence, too, right?”

“Right.”

“So I think we should look in places where something like that would fit in.”

“Machine shop?”

“And every other place here that has boxes about that size.”

“And where things aren’t inventoried on a regular basis,” Ky said, thinking of various stores units she’d seen. “Maybe where flight recorder spares are, or things waiting repairs…”

They set off through the Academy. Despite her desire to find the flight recorder, Ky paused to look into one classroom after another—not to search, but to show herself present and interested. Finally they reached the labs where cadets learned to maintain and repair those machines they would use later—a large lab for each branch—and the shops where skilled technicians maintained all the military equipment and machines the Academy used, from firearms to robots. They prowled through one after another, almost as if they were an IG team.

Palnuss called attention to several surveillance modules that were not working properly in a passage that connected two storage rooms in the Land Forces lab and suggested to Ky that a complete inventory of that stockroom might be a good idea. The tech 2 behind the counter of the first started sweating. Ky nodded. “Best call in your team, perhaps.”

When they passed on to the actual shops, they found most moderately busy, tools in use, technicians willing to describe what they were doing, seemingly quite at ease. Ky entered each one, glanced around, asked a few questions. The technicians opened cabinets and closets happily, showing off how neatly arranged they were. As they neared the end of the row, Ky said, “I’m wondering about something that was on an inventory list in Commandant Kvannis’s office—but it’s not there. Do you have any idea where I’d look for number 238–665–9817?”

“What size, Commandant?”

Ky outlined the box with her hands. An assistant looked up sharply. “I remember—it was an orange-striped thing, kind of like a flight recorder?”

“The list didn’t give a description.”

“I’m sure of it. It’ll be down in room one-twelve-C. That’s the Air Safety Investigation and Research Unit, and they have a pile of those things. Their staff isn’t there right now—they’ve been off investigating a crash since yesterday—but I can let you in.”

Indeed, the shelves along one side were stacked with flight recorders. Their guide rattled on. “They said some of these are really old—sixty years or more—from all kinds of aircraft. They do some kind of testing—lots of kinds, I guess. But they’re not here all the time, like today.”

“How long has this unit been here?” Ky asked. “It wasn’t here when I was a cadet.”

“Oh—not that long. I think it came in sometime last spring.” He stepped to the door. “Hey, Louie—Commandant wants to know when this unit came in!”

“Before or after the shuttle crash?” Ky asked, without waiting for an answer.

“Oh, just after, I guess.”

Ky looked at Palnuss and he looked back. “Well,” he said. “The Commandant may want to look around some more. I don’t think either of us has ever seen this many flight recorders in one place. You can return to your work.”

Ky added a nod to that, and the guide wandered out. Palnuss shut the door behind him. “Now what? We look at every one?”

“If we have to,” Ky said. “But just let me prowl for a minute or two. If he’s hidden it in here, it’ll be where someone who finds it will be marked in some way. So where is something especially dirty, or balanced where dusty or dirty ones will fall, something like that?”

“Not just behind a stack?”

“The shelves aren’t that deep. They’re not hung on the wall; they’re freestanding racks. I think they were moved from wherever this unit was before, and were purpose-sized to the more modern recorders. If I’m reading his thought processes right, he’ll assume a searcher will expect it to be at the back, or under something… hidden.” She turned around, eyeing all the shelves.

Major Palnuss, following her gaze, looked along each shelf in turn. “I don’t see—”

“There,” Ky said. She went toward the door, to the narrower rack beside it, with a clipboard hanging from a string and a battered pencil thrust into the clip.

“Why that?”

“Because every shop I’ve ever seen had the formal, official list of what was there—on some kind of tablet or computer—and then it had the real list, usually on actual paper. A clipboard or a spiral notebook, kept where it is handy to the techs but could pass for a sign-in/sign-out sheet if the brass comes by.”

“You think it will be listed?”

“Yes. Even if Kvannis told them not to put it in the official catalog for some reason, they’ll have it here.” She took the clipboard down; Palnuss craned his neck to see the top page. SIGN IN/SIGN OUT.

“I’ll be—is there something like this in the other shops?”

“Yes—I noticed them when we were there. Just like other stores and shops I’ve been in, civilian, merc, military alike.”

She flipped up the pages until she came to something different. “Aha. This is their personal stack map. With initials, how handy. D for drop-offs, CI for currently investigating, R for removals. Item’s accession number. And a column for who dropped it off or picked it up, conveniently labeled WHO. And date. And this at the end is where it is.”

“And you can figure out that code?”

“I think so. The most recent item dropped off was six days ago, by RG, whoever that is. If L2-T means top of the stack on the second shelf of the left-hand set of shelves… now, is that coming in, or going out?” She was facing the back of the room. “I’ll take the one on my left, you take the one over there.”

“What’s the accession number?”

“For this entry? XRM-VTOL-2914M8.” Ky looked at the second shelf on her side without success. Three stacks and the top item in all three had the wrong number.

“Three stacks on this shelf,” Palnuss reported. “Aha!”

“So they mapped facing the door,” Ky said. “Now, how long would it have taken for that item to get here, after I turned it in?” She worked backward through the scribbled notes until she saw IK in the WHO column. Two days after she’d handed the flight recorder in, Kvannis had turned it in here. “Accession number correct, Kvannis’s initials correct, but—no map code. Wait. They put it in and he must have made them erase it.”

“That I can fix,” Palnuss said. “We’re good at forgeries, invisible inks, and the impressions left by pencils. Let me see it.” He dusted it with powder, blew softly, and said, “B. Back, that should be. L… lower or left. Three T. Let’s try the third shelf near the left end, on top. Or, if Kvannis made them move it, somewhere nearby.”

“If he annoyed them enough, they probably put it back where they wanted it,” Ky said. Ky recognized the right flight recorder as soon as she was close enough, on top of the end stack on the third shelf. It had snagged a thread in the pocket of her survival suit, and the short length of orange thread was still there. She checked the number anyway.

“Where do you want it now?” Palnuss asked. “The safes won’t lock.”

“Do you have one in your office that will?”

“Yes, but all my personnel have the combination.”