"Your bomb people should be able to figure out whether the bomb was set off on a timer or command-det. But I'd guess it was set off by command."
"We have a team checking the area."
Sten got down off the ladder and reexamined the striations. They occupied almost a full 360 degrees. But not quite. Sten hummed to himself and ran an eyeball azimuth from that area toward the wall.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Sten went toward the airlock and exited. Outside, he stripped off his suit and walked well away from the bustling techs around the bubble.
Haines removed her suit and joined him. "Are you through playing detective, Captain?"
"I'll explain, Lieutenant Haines. I got stuck with this drakh job and I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
That sends me into orbit, Lieutenant. Now what lit your stupid fuse?"
Haines glowered at him. "Item: I'm in the same mess you're in. I'm a cop. A very good cop. So I come down here and see what I've got to work with.
"And then I get some—some—"
"Clot?" Sten offered, half smiling. He was starting to like the woman.
"Thank you. Clot, who comes down here, says one thing, and then is going to go back to the palace and get his medal. Let me tell you, Captain, I do not need any of this!"
"You through?"
"For the moment."
"Fine. Let's get some lunch, then, and I'll bring you up to speed."
The restaurant sat very close to Landing Area 17AFO. Except for clear blast shields between the field and the patio area, it was open-air. The place was about half-full of longshoremen, docking clerks, and ship crew. The combination of one man in Imperial livery and one woman who was obviously the heat guaranteed Sten and Haines privacy.
Dining was cafeteria-style. The two took plates of food, paid, and went to the far edge of the dining area. Both of them saw the other reflexively checking for parabolic mike locations, and, for the first time, smiled.
"Before you get started, Captain," Haines said through a mouthful of kimchi and pork, "do you want to talk about that booth?"
Sten chewed, nodded, and pretended innocence.
"Thank you. I'd already spotted that the bomb was directional. Actually, semidirectional. It was intended to garbage the whole joint—except for one booth."
"Good call, Lieutenant."
"First question—the one booth that wasn't destroyed was rigged with every antibugging device I've ever heard of. Is there any explanation, from let us say 'top-level' sources? What was a security setup like that doing in a sleazo bar?"
Sten told her, omitting only Craigwel's identity and position as the Emperor's personal troubleshooter. He also didn't feel that the lieutenant needed to know that Alain was planning a meeting with the Emperor himself. Any meeting with any Imperial official was enough for her to work on, he felt. Sten finished, and changed the subject, eyeing a forkful of kimchi cautiously. "By the way—what is this, anyway?"
"Very dead Earth cabbage, garlic, and herbs. It helps if you don't smell it before you eat it."
"Since you know about bombs," Sten asked, "did you figure out why no shrapnel?"
Haines puzzled.
Sten dug into his pocket and set a somewhat flattened ball bearing on the table. "The bomb's explosive was semidirectional. To make sure the bomb took care of anyone in the bar, the bomber also taped these on top of the explosive. Except the area facing that booth.
"Prog, Lieutenant?"
Haines knew enough military slang to understand the question. She pushed her plate aside, put her fingers together, and began theorizing.
"The bomber wanted everybody in that bar dead—except whoever was in that booth."
"If Alain and your man had been in that booth when the bomb went off, they would have been... concussed, possibly, or suffering blast breakage at the worst, right, Captain?"
"Correct."
"The bomber knew about that booth... and had to have known Alain would be in that booth on that particular night."
Haines whistled tunelessly and drained her beer. "So for sure we have a political murder, don't we, Captain? Clot!"
Sten nodded glumly, went to the counter, and brought back two more beers.
"Not just a political murder, but one done by someone who knew exactly what Alain's movements were supposed to be, correct?"
"You're right—but you aren't exactly making my day.
"Drakh!" Lisa swore. "Clottin' stinkin' politics! Why couldn't I get stuck with a nice series of mass sex murders."
Sten wasn't listening. He'd just taken the reasoning one step further. Impolitely, he grabbed the plate-projector from under Haines' arm and began flipping through it.
"Assassination," Lisa continued, getting more depressed by the minute. "That'll mean a pro killer, and whoever hired it done will be untouchable. And I'll be running a precinct at one of the poles."
"Maybe not," Sten said. "Look. Remember the bomb? It was just supposed to knock Alain cross-eyed, yes? Then what was supposed to happen?"
"Who can tell? It never did."
"Question, Lieutenant. Why did an ambulance not called by this tac sergeant show up within minutes of the blast? Don't you think that maybe—"
Haines had already completed the thought. Beer unfinished, she was heading for Sten's combat car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Port Soward Hospital bore a strange resemblance to its oddly shaped cnidarian receiving clerk. It just grew from an emergency hospital intended to handle incoming ship disasters, industrial accidents, and whatever other catastrophe would come up within a ten-kilometer circle around Soward itself. But disasters and accidents have a way of growing wildly, so Soward Hospital sprawled a lot, adding ship-capable landing platforms here, radiation wards there, and nonhuman sections in still a third place.
All of that made Admissions even more a nightmare than in most hospitals. In spite of high-speed computers, personal ID cards, and other improvements, the hospital's central area went far toward defining chaos.
Sten and Haines waited beside a large central "desk," the outer ring of which was for files and such. The second ring contained a computer whose memory circuits rivaled an Imperial military computer. In the center swam the clerk(s), a colony of intelligent polyps-cnidarians, beings which began life as individuals and then, for protection, grew together—literally, like coral. But most cnidarians did not get along. The one in front of Sten—he mentally labeled it A—burbled in fury, snatched a moisture-resistant file from Polyp B, tossed it across the ring to Polyp R, Sten estimated, brushed Polyp C's tentacles off A's own terminal, and finally turned to the two people waiting. Its "voice" was just shrill enough to add to the surrounding madness as white-clad hospital types steered lift gurneys past, patients leaned, lay, or stood against the walls, and relatives wailed or wept.
"You see what it's like? You see?" The polyp's feeder tentacles were bicycling wildly against the bottom of the tank.
"Police," Lisa said dryly, holding out a card with one hand. She touched the card with an index finger, and the "badge" glowed briefly.
"Another cop. This has been one of those days. Some wiper comes in, bleeding like—like a stuck human. Drunk, of course. He doesn't tell me that he's union, and so I send him to the Tombs. How was I know to he was union? Job-related and all that, and now I've got all this data. He'll probably die before I get the paperwork through. Now what do you want?"