We were finally able to question our informant to shed light on the dark secrets of the killer satellite.
Twitch had kept her word. She had freed the prisoners from the deactivated cryo capsules and provided them with medical care. Also our informant from Shubin Interstellar. It had taken a while for him to recover from the effects of the interrogation by the microTech Bureau of Organized Crime (MBOC) and the cryosleep. In the meantime, his condition was stable enough to allow him to be questioned. Brubacker and I had made our way to ArcCorp. We were able to pick up the informant at the medical facility at the Orbital Station Bajini Point.
It smelled like disinfectant. Nurses in blue scrubs walked busily through the infirmary. Medical equipment was everywhere. It seemed a bit chaotic but still orderly. I didn’t like hospitals, they were too sterile, too clean for me.
“Move aside! Emergency!” someone shouted.
I could just make room or I would have been run over by the hospital bed that orderlies hurriedly pushed past me. A maintenance man with burns was lying on it. Goose bumps ran down my body.
A short time later, Brubacker and I pushed a stretcher to the Cutlass Red I had gotten from Twitch. Our man was still delirious. We laid him on one of the Cutlass’s medical beds and set course for Grim Hex. When I went into the cockpit, Brubacker was kneeling beside the bed. A groan could be heard.
The Quantum flight took forever. There was plenty of time to ponder. Would the informant still remember everything? Did he have the information that would help us solve the killer satellite case? A voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
“He was awake for a moment and asked where he was. Now he’s asleep again. Are we there yet?” Brubacker’s voice sounded concerned.
“We’ll be there soon. I’m going to land on the old landing pad next to the entrance to the clinic. The GrimHex doctors should stabilize him.”
Once on GrimHex, we took our man directly to the clinic. While the doctor gave him a stimulant, I looked around. Hospitals were too sterile and too clean for me, I thought at the infirmary on Bajini Point. A little more cleanliness would do the clinic on GrimHex good. It was the same filthy mess as the whole station. It was dark and run down. But one could be treated here without questions being asked.
Brubacker was responsible for the questions to our informant. He was the experienced journalist. I stayed in the background. It turned out that our informant’s name was Arthur and he was an executive assistant at Shubin Interstellar. And he confirmed our suspicions. Shubin Interstellar was working with Hurston Dynamics to build secret satellites to wipe out sentient life on planets. The killer satellites were to be sent into deep space, disguised as communications satellites. All to circumvent the Fair Chance Act and prepare planets for terraforming. The satellite we found was a prototype that did not yet have a bioweapon on board. Who supplied the bioweapon and the MTX-1 chips Arthur did not know. At least we had slowed down the development with our actions. No satellite had yet been deployed.
“Do you have proof, too? And you have to make yourself available as a witness”, Brubacker pressed Arthur rather roughly.
“Evidence you will find in a bunker on Hurston. There are the blueprints and all the interview transcripts. I’m getting out and leaving the Stanton system.”
After the conversation, we met Kjeld and a few of his people. Kjeld promised that he would make sure that the informant could leave the Stanton system safely. Lost in thought, I swayed my beer bottle back and forth. So far we had no solid evidence, only the word of Arthur and circumstantial evidence. Hopefully we would find the evidence in the underground bunker on Hurston. Hopefully Brubacker would then make it all public and I wouldn’t have to go underground again. With a blur, I looked out through the panoramic window at the asteroid belt of the moon Yela. I hated to fight. I wanted to go back into the depths of space and leave all this behind. But before I could leave for the stars again I had to survive one more battle. Hopefully the last fight would really be the last and everything would come to a good end.
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