I played the clip again. And again. A dozen times, then a dozen more… and I was no closer to understanding its meaning than the first time I’d heard it.

Why would Mallus record a lullaby?

There were other details about the file that left me scratching my head. For instance, he was horribly off key, which almost made less sense than him recording it in the first place. There was absolutely no reason for him to sing so poorly, not when it was simplicity itself for him to have perfect pitch, requiring only a thought. For that matter he could have accompanied himself on the piano, guitar, bass, and drums simultaneously, and played each instrument like a virtuoso. Instead, he’d recorded it a cappella, which wasn’t that curious in and of itself. Parents singing to their children usually did the same, but…

See, here’s the thing. Avatars can’t have children. There’s no known way to mix and recombine the data files that make up our programs to create a new spark of life. We can make simulacrums easily enough, and I’ve already talked about that, but they’re not real. It’s not the same thing at all.

Damn it, don’t you dare drag Laura into this. I’m warning you.

… as I was saying, we can’t reproduce. It’s possible he craved a family enough to create imitation children to sing lullabies to, it’s not an unusual fantasy. For most Clans, being unable to procreate would likely signal their demise, but we Avatars have two factors in our favor. First, we’ve always been able to attract enough individuals to replace our losses, especially among the elderly, which brings me to the second reason.

We’re immortal.

Okay, not immortal exactly. We can die… Mallus’ fate is proof of that… but barring accidents or intentional acts, the hardware that supports our existence is the only thing limiting our lifespan. We keep backup files with us in order to repair any damage to our code, and you’ve seen how easily we can hop from one mainframe to another, usually fast enough to escape failing equipment or an attack. Because of that, we can live for a long time, far longer than our flesh and blood cousins. It’s a trade-off, granted... but then what isn’t?

How old am I, you ask? Old enough to know better than to answer the question. Bugger off.

None of this helps me, though. I still can’t understand why Mallus went to all the trouble of recording and then hiding a file of him singing “Hush Little Baby”. Why? What’s the point? It has to be a message of some kind, but what does it mean? And to whom was it intended?

I restarted the file and played the song again, wincing at his horrible singing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone that off key before; hell, you’d practically have to do it on purpose to be that bad…

My head snapped up as realization slammed into me. It was a code. Had to be. Mallus was trying to tell someone something and must have suspected he was under some kind of surveillance. He’d left the file just in case, as an insurance policy. Suddenly it was all starting to make sense, only what did it say? How to break the code?

Hmm… okay, if it is a code, then it must have something to do with the pitch. I threw up a plot of the musical notation and did a side-by-side comparison, the original composition and Mallus’ version, noting the differences. His off-key singing seemed to be almost random, either falling flat or pitching sharp in almost equal measure. Assuming that the deviation from the original note is the code and assigning a numerical component to quantify both the positive and negative (sharp and flat), I ended up with a sequence of numbers. Which didn’t mean a whole lot to me.

I’m an investigator and a spy, not a code breaker. I could spend the next eternity or so beating my head against the wall trying to solve it, or I could feed it into the computer and let it chew on it for a while. Why do you think we invented computers in the first place? Look up the “Bletchley Park Bombe” sometime and see for yourself.

The big problem I faced was the fact it was a relatively brief message, using an unknown cipher. I didn’t know how long it would take to break the code, and it was possible Longjump’s mainframe wasn’t up to the task. If it couldn’t handle the job, I’d have to find my way back to Chris and hand it off since she had access to technology I didn’t. I really hate to admit defeat, though. Kind of gnaws on me.

Ding

(It doesn’t actually make that sound. Honest.)

Looks like I underestimated Longjump’s computer. Much faster than I’d expected, an answer popped out. I stared at the decoded message, trying to make sense of it.

Brotherhood of Shadows

Umm…

… okay…

Scratches head

… what the fuck is the Brotherhood of Shadows?

----------------------------------------

(Later, after having had time to ponder this latest development...)

See, here’s the thing…

… in my line of work, you never have all the answers. Ever. Seriously, if you can figure out half the questions, you’re doing good. The galaxy is filled with species of every description, each with their own history and axe to grind. I guarantee you, for every secret organization I have actually heard of, there’s a hundred more I haven’t. Which is kind of a problem, especially on days like today.

Mallus knew something. That much was obvious now. Whatever it was, it had been enough for him to leave cryptic hidden messages, enough to turn a blind eye while a reprogrammed Tinker slaughtered half his crew, and enough to keep him quiet for over twenty years after the fact, until he came to an untimely end.

Someone wanted him silenced. They were a little late to the party, but they finally got around… whoever they were… to cleaning up the loose ends.

So why didn’t he tell somebody? Why stay silent? Hell, why did he get into bed with this “Brotherhood” in the first place? Unless, of course, he didn’t… at least, not willingly. Maggie’s old mentor had obviously been tampered with, after all. Was it possible he had as well? Or even coerced, though once again I had a tough time imagining what someone could use as leverage against an Avatar, especially for over twenty years. With that kind of time at his disposal, Mallus must have had dozens of opportunities to wriggle off the hook.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

But he hadn’t. Why?

I was even more confused than ever, except now I had a lead. Granted, it was a lead that didn’t go anywhere at the moment, but it was a start. Something to build on. I dove back into Longjump’s computer systems with a fine-toothed comb, searching for any other scraps of data, but at the end of the day I came up blank. If Mallus had hidden any other messages, either they’d been deleted in the last forty years or I wasn’t smart enough to find them.

The Brotherhood of Shadows.

Just who the hell are you?

----------------------------------------

There was no reason for me to remain on Longjump, so I jumped ship at the first opportunity. Since I had never informed the crew I was on board in the first place, I was spared a tearful goodbye, not that such a thing had ever really been in the cards. Being honest for a moment, most folks are glad to see my backside. I’m fairly sure it has nothing to do with my charming personality and stellar wit, more likely it’s the job that rubs people the wrong way. No one enjoys being spied on, in fact most folks resent the hell out of it. I can’t say I blame them, really, but I can’t afford to let sentiment prevent me from getting results.

I didn’t end up as Chris’ guy Friday by pulling my punches, boys and girls. Just saying.

I bounced from one ship to another, working my way back, mulling over my next move. Since I needed to check back in with Chris anyway and report what I’d learned, I’d forward a request for any additional data she might have on Mallus. Maybe he’d left other clues lying around, especially since he’d had plenty of opportunity after the Earth mission. In the meantime…

Since Mallus had fallen first, I’d already decided to investigate them in the chronological order of their deaths. Picking up the next folder from the pile, I flipped it open and scanned the contents. Cassian Medeiros, Corsair Clan. Death was caused by suit failure, 17 years ago, a year after Mallus. He’d been the pilot aboard Katabasis.

Suit failure.

We Terrans haven’t had it easy these last two centuries, not since losing our homeworld. We’ve struggled to get by as best we can, but time and lack of resources have taken their toll. Even Freya herself, the most powerful ship we still have, is showing her age, and things break down. People die from equipment failures all the time, in fact Maggie had told me how she’d almost been crushed to death just before I’d met her because a stanchion had collapsed. It’s a dangerous universe, and it plays no favorites, and if this had been the only death of the remaining crew I would have accepted it without a second thought.

But it wasn’t, so I didn’t.

Sabotaging a suit isn’t difficult. Puncture the fabric, block the O2 feed, shatter the faceplate, any of those will do the job nicely. Accidents happen all the time, which is why safety training is so rigidly enforced among ship’s crews. Anyone going EVA carries with them emergency patches and a spare tank and is in constant communication with those around them to minimize the danger. It’s not impossible to die from a suit failure, but it is uncommon. In Cassian’s case, according to the file, he’d been transferring between two ships when disaster struck. Technically, he should have been on a tether, but it’s one of the more commonly ignored safety precautions among old hands. He’d simply jumped for it, eyeballing his target and making course corrections with his suit thrusters as needed.

Then something went wrong.

The report was maddeningly sparse on that point. For some undetermined reason he’d lost oxygen pressure, and within a matter of seconds began exhibiting classic signs of hypoxia. He became disoriented and confused, suddenly unable to perform even the simplest of functions. This is the very reason suit drills are SOP for all ship passengers and crew, allowing them to operate on instinct in order to save their lives when intellect fails.

It was immediately apparent to the crews on both ships that Cassian was in trouble. At this point I realized they had ignored yet another safety procedure, the standard policy of someone standing by in the airlock ready to perform an EVA rescue in case it was needed. One of the two ships in question, the Crooked Star, did in fact have a crewman at the ready, while the other, the Hail Mary, did not. This is another one of those regulations that are often ignored, and in Hail Mary’s defense they were short-handed because of a crew transfer… Cassian himself. Once it became obvious that he was unable to recover on his own, Crooked Star’s rescue crewman donned her helmet and slapped the airlock hatch release.

Nothing happened.

The hatch was jammed solid, so bad in fact that even the Emergency Override couldn’t budge it. They lost precious seconds as the would-be rescuer raced for another hatch, but by the time she could exit the ship and link up with Cassian, he was no longer moving. Three minutes had passed since he’d last made any sort of utterance, and despite their best efforts, it was too late. He never regained consciousness.

The Tinker aboard Crooked Star later determined that metal fatigue had caused part of the release mechanism to wedge itself in the hatch frame, locking it down tight. It was an older ship, and the part had failed because of it. That was the official story.

Unofficially, however, there were simply too many coincidences for me to ignore.

That being said, there was little else for me to investigate, and unlike Longjump I wouldn’t be able to visit the vessels in question. Hail Mary had been jumped by a Limiodrian frigate and was forced to surrender a few years later, before eventually being sold for scrap. Crooked Star, on the other hand, was destroyed when the Aggaaddub attacked the Corsair flagship, roughly two years ago. Bad timing, unfortunately, though I’d had a ringside seat for the bloody business. That at least I knew was legitimate.

It was all very circumstantial. There was no smoking gun, no single piece of evidence I could point to and say, “This proves it was sabotage!” There was no evidence of tampering when they inspected the hatch, and the examination of Cassian’s suit turned up nothing unusual. But when you added up all the tiny details, all the mistakes made, all the unhappy coincidences that had given life to this tragedy, it just flat hit me wrong.

Given the lack of any surviving physical evidence, I’d never be able to prove it.

So where did that leave me? Well, there were still four other names on my list to check out, and I did have a new lead, though one that meant nothing to me at the moment. Perhaps Chris could dig up some additional information from her files once I showed her what I’d uncovered. It was worth a shot.

I’d started this investigation with the assumption it would be open and shut: the Troika was responsible, just as we’d always suspected, end of story... only the more I dug into the case, the less I believed it. The Troika had absolutely no reason to hide behind some sinister-sounding nom de guerre like “The Brotherhood of Shadows”. They’d had free rein over the galaxy for thousands of years and took a certain savage delight in throwing their weight around to cow the other, lesser races. Instead of hiding behind some shadowy organization, they wanted you to know who they were, especially when committing some barbarous act. Pretending someone else was to blame would have completely defeated the point they constantly strove to make; Don’t fuck with us.

The implications were disturbing as hell. Whoever was behind this Brotherhood had to be connected on a deep level if they could manipulate someone like Mallus and bury the truth surrounding Cassian’s death, but worst of all was the fact that they knew about New Terra and its Precursor connection. There were few enough players who could make that claim… in fact before now we’d assumed the list consisted solely of the Troika and the Oivu. Apparently, we were wrong.

We’d been operating on the assumption we held a thin lead over the galactic overlords in the race for the prize, only now it seems someone else was out there, someone who had a twenty-year head start, and had been trying to knock us out of the running ever since.

Suddenly, the cold case Chris had handed me had taken on a whole new sense of urgency. If we didn’t beat the Brotherhood to the planet… we were doomed.