Spin State - Chris Moriarty [92]
“Mmm. Sheer brute computing force. That and the fact that I’m eight times cleverer than anyone this charming has a right to be.”
Li smirked.
He stuck his tongue out at her, slipped his shoes off, and sank gracefully onto her bunk. “So. Where were we?”
She grabbed her desk chair and turned it around to sit backwards on it. She summarized her meeting with Daahl and Ramirez, telling Cohen about the exchange of information and the lockdown, but leaving out the personal talk.
“And this Daahl person just picked you out of thin air?” Cohen asked when she’d finished. “He thought you looked like a nice friendly person? You’ll forgive me if I confess to having suspicious thoughts about him.”
Li shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “It didn’t come up.”
Cohen had sprawled across her bed while she was talking—he had to be doing this on purpose, didn’t he?—and now he stretched, sighing luxuriously, sending Chiara’s glossy curls cascading across Li’s pillow. He opened his eyes, gazed at her in wide-eyed and utterly insincere innocence, and said, “Sure it didn’t. Well, we’ll revisit that question later. Have you found the accident reports he wants?”
“I tried. Didn’t have time to really look.”
“Time is my middle name,” Cohen said with a grandly munificent gesture that Li was sure Chiara had never used in her life. “What’s your password?”
Li gave it to him, and he logged in and produced the missing accident reports within less than a minute.
“Where were they?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “In Voyt’s files. Until a few days ago. Someone deleted them ten hours before you hit station.”
“Who?”
“Hush. I’m working on it. Go do something useful.”
Li scanned the reports, stopping here and there when a name or a word caught her eye:
02/01/47. Stokes, William. Age 32. ID No. 103479920. Subject fatally injured when he returned to Wilkes-Barre North 4 to check a missed shot. No autopsy. Cause of death: burns.
04/12/47. Pinzer, G. F. Age 26. ID No. 457347423. Subject discovered in lower gallery Wilkes-Barre South 14, crushed by roof fall. Rescuers unable to extract body because of gas seepage. Subject identified from personal effects, pit bottom logs. Cause of death: trauma.
04/19/47. Mafouz, Christina. Age 13. ID No. 764378534. Subject’s coal cart experienced brake failure in gangway west of Wilkes-Barre East 17. Subject suffered multiple compound fractures and dislocations with associated soft tissue trauma. Left leg amputated below knee, St. Johns hosp.
These entries were no news at all to Li. They recorded death and maiming by fire, explosives, roof falls, equipment failure. All the routine dangers of the miners’ world.
But scattered among the typical accident reports were other ones:
17/20/47. Carrig, Kevin. Age 37. ID No. 355607534. Subject found unconscious in Trinidad South 2. Pit inspector hypothesizes subject opened gas pocket, but rescuers found no gas at work site and autopsy revealed no signs of gas inhalation. Cause of death: unknown.
20/2/48. Cho, Kristyn. Age 34. ID No. 486739463. Subject collapsed during survey of Trinidad South 7. Witnesses describe complaints of head pain, bright lights, convulsions, loss of consciousness. Autopsy indicated extensive, nonlocalized damage to frontal lobe. Cause of death: brain seizure.
The troublesome reports had started about four months ago. Deaths attributed to electrical shock where repair crews had been unable to find stripped wires or standing water. Deaths attributed to gas where other miners working in the same vein had been mysteriously spared. Healthy miners dying of heart attacks, strokes, brain seizures. And two miners hadn’t died—were still lying in the Shantytown hospital in the grip of comas that no doctor could explain.
There had been a spate of these inexplicable accidents when the Trinidad opened. Then things had leveled off. Then there had been another significant bump three months ago: fourteen unexplained deaths in a single week.
Li didn’t have to cross-reference dates or check her files to know what had happened three months