Spin State - Chris Moriarty [89]
Daahl raised his eyebrows. “Then you’ve obviously forgotten even more than that chop shop doc said you would.”
Li pushed her beer around the table, turning it in precise right angles, leaving a square of condensation on the cracked tabletop. “So basically,” she said, “you’re just asking me to do my job. An open investigation on Sharifi’s death. And these accident reports. Which are public information anyway, right?”
“Yes. As far as the deaths go.”
“Ah. What else do you want?”
Daahl bit his lower lip, glanced toward the window again. “We want Sharifi’s dataset.”
Li choked on her beer and slammed it back onto the table, spilling it. “She was doing defense R&D, Daahl. That’s covered by the Espionage and Sedition Act. People get shot for breaking that law. And getting shot isn’t on my to-do list this year.”
“Some things are worth breaking the law for, Katie.”
“To you, maybe.”
“It’s not only miners AMC’s killing. There’s something happening in the mine. In all the mines. Look at the production records. Look at the ratio of man-hours to live condensate pulled out. We’re striking less and less live crystal down there. The bootleggers have been saying it for years. Now even some of the company miners are saying it. And Sharifi said it, before she died. She looked me in the face and said it straight out. The Anaconda’s dying. All the condensate on Compson’s World is dying.”
“Oh, come on, Daahl. The Security Council—”
“They know,” Daahl said, and gave her a moment to digest that fact. “Why do you think they’re spending so much in synthetic crystal R&D? And look at the multiplanetaries, stripping out crystal just as fast as they can before the end hits. We’ve been saying it for years, pushing them to do something. But we can’t prove it. Sharifi proved it—proved it to herself anyway—and her dataset could give us the traction we need to turn this around.”
“That’s crazy,” Li said. “Condensates don’t die. They break. How can a whole planetful of them be breaking at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” Daahl said. “But Sharifi did.”
None of them said anything for a minute.
“I’ll bring the accident reports up to date,” Li said. “That’s only fair. It’s my job. But the other thing . . .”
“The accident reports will be enough for now,” Daahl said. “Just think about the rest.”
“All right,” Li said. “Where do we go from here, then?”
Daahl reached into the depths of one of the piles on the table and pulled out a battered fiche. “Read this.”
The fiche held two dozen separate documents, and it took Li a good ten minutes to be sure she understood them. As she read, she realized she was looking at AMC corporate records: weigh-station logs, pay chits, production records from the on-station processing plant. Slowly a pattern emerged.
“Someone’s cooking the books,” she said. “Someone’s giving one set of numbers to the miners and another set to AMC headquarters. And they’re skimming communications-grade crystal somewhere in between.” She looked up at Daahl. “Who?”
“You tell me.”
Li frowned and tabbed through the records again. “It could be almost anyone,” she said at last. “The pit boss. Someone in the breakerhouse. Or at the mass drivers. Someone in the on-station processor or loading bays. All they’d need is a few people willing to look the other way at the right moment. That and a few friends at key points along the line.”
“Those kinds of friends have to be paid,” Daahl pointed out.
“You saying you know who the bagman is?”
“Look at the pithead logs.”
She looked. And saw one name popping up again and again. Daahl’s name. All the fiddled shipments had gone out when he was the on-shift pit boss. And he had signed off on every one of them.
“Why are you showing me this?” she asked.
“Because Sharifi died over it. Two days before the fire I heard her and Voyt talking. Fighting. She told Voyt she was onto him, threatened to go to Haas. And over Haas’s head to the Service brass if necessary. She was throwing big names around. Five-star names.”
“General Nguyen?”
Daahl nodded.
“And what did Voyt say?”
“Not much. I think she took him