Thirty-two days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.
Mining facility, Bellos III, 20:54, 3423 AA.
Tarnhold slinked out of the meeting room before anyone had a chance to offer to go with him to the crash site. The other three would head there straight away while Eliseal was stalling the leader – somehow.
An hour. An hour! Tarnhold stalked furiously through the corridor. Durahein’s orders gave him little to no time to speak with the guard. Durahein was the leader, however. He had the right. “Never question the leader,” Tarnhold muttered. He gritted his teeth recalling one of the unwritten rules of the Val Tairi.
"To the void with him," he said through gritted teeth, then banished the thought and reminded himself for the umpteenth time to do something about his temper.
On the other side of the large windows that ran along the right wall, banks of clouds loomed in the midday sky, mottled with dark grey and blue, and pale grey where scant shafts of sunlight broke through at times, slanting toward the barren ground. A large hole of at least a hundred metres across stood below, ringed by metal railings and elevator shafts that pulled up ore from its depths. The earth around the drill shaft rose in wide steps, flat-topped as if they had been cut by a blade. Their jagged rocky faces sloped upwards at sharp angles, all in dark greys and with scarce veins of a washed out crimson where a different ore lay buried.
Tarnhold glanced down at the men working by one of the drill shafts. Normally, he would have praised their diligence, except their relaxed demenour told him how little they cared about what had happened. They just roll their damn rocks. He loathed them for their indifference. More so because he envied their carefree life, knowing he would never have that.
He might have, once, if the Kingdom hadn’t taken what was precious to him.
Tarnhold took his eyes off the miners. It was ironic how that indifference he scorned now helped keep his activities from Durahein. Hopefully, that would last until he was off this world.
The watchtower he was looking for was up a narrow stairwell at the end of the corridor. He had checked the guard’s watch schedule multiple times to make certain he would find the man. There could be no mistakes. Eliseal couldn’t keep Durahein occupied for too long.
There was no sound coming from the top of the watchtower. The uncertainty rattled Tarnhold. If the officers had removed the guard he was looking for from watch duty, he would have wasted the trip and lost his, perhaps, only opportunity to slip under Durahein’s eye and learn what he needed.
Climbing up the stairs to the top of the tower, he sped up, skipping two steps at a time. It was virtually unheard of for one of the Val Tairi to go to someone rather than summon that person for questioning, but he hoped it would go unnoticed, buried in other rumours or unspoken due to the fear.
As his head was about to peek out of the square hole to the watchtower platform, Tarnhold considered putting on his mask. He was not questioning a suspect, but it would provide a better measure of fear and likely keep the man’s mouth shut.
For that, however, he needed a reason. His eyes darted from side to side as he reviewed the facts in his mind and began stringing a story: The guard had been declared drunk at the time of the incident and his testimony of a bright light was obstructing a proper continuation of the investigation. Such a thing could not stand, of course, and required Tarnhold to treat the man as a potential accomplice.
He nodded. It would do for now. He put on his mask, the crimson veil fluttering as he climbed the last step.
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On the watchtower platform, a lone man stood by the edge, resting his arms on the wooden plank that ran atop the railing, and gazed down at the miners. The man jumped at the sound of boots thudding on metal, then turned around quickly, as if he had expected an assailant to appear behind him. The tell-tale sign of a guilty mind.
A fringe of lank, dark hair hung over his eyes. “I swear I be keeping watch diligent like. I ain’t be drunk again—” The man’s eyes opened wide at the sight of Tarnhold, or rather the mask Tarnhold was wearing. “M-m-mercy!” The man’s arms shot up in surrender. “I ain’t doing nothing against the law; done nothing against the law neither. I swear on me mother.”
“Your name, guard, and tell me of the night of the destruction of Razan station,” Tarnhold said. “Speak.” He knew the guard’s name, but he found it better to weave in questions he had answers to. It had become a habit. The suspects tended to slip up when they worried about how much the other person already knew.
“G-Grum Kalad, my lord. I-I put it all in the report, my lord. All as I remember, no a word made up. I swear, I swear. Please have mercy on me, lord. There, up in the black sky a bright flash just came and went, fast as rock spray from them drills, I saw. Came and went. No more. Then the station came crashing down in a fireball. Oh, please, my lord, spare me.”
“Enough of your drivel,” Tarnhold snapped. “Speak only of what I ask. How did you know the flash didn’t come from the station?”
“T-the station flickers in the sky, lord, we know its location always. Like the back of me hand it is, no different. No much else to look at on long nights. That flash of white didn’t come from the station that time. I-I’m sure of that.”
“Did anything else happen afterwards, anything at all?”
“Not that I think, m-my lord,” the guard said. “Nothing at all. Just a flash in the sky and gone. F-forgive me, I truly don’t know no more than this. Just the flash.”
It had to have been an explosion, but nothing had been there to cause it. A missile would have been detected – even with these sensors – and a ship certainly would have been. Tarnhold had expected little information, but he had hoped there would be more than in the report – something that the guard had forgotten back then. As it stood, he was wasting time. He had to be down at the crash site before Durahein got there.
“When?” Tarnhold asked.
“P-pardon, my lord—”
“Void take you, man, when!”
“I-I don’t know, I don’t.” The man flinched from Tarnhold’s fierce glare. “A-around three I think, y-yes, around three,” he said, nodding fervently. Tarnhold wasn’t sure if the man truly believed his own words or simply needed to believe in something and sound convincing enough, but the time did match his own estimate. Close enough, at least.
Ten minutes. Something that would have happened ten minutes prior to the destruction of the station. Tarnhold glanced at his clock. I don’t have any more time. “I hope for your sake that you were speaking the truth, Mr Kalad. Or I will be seeing you again soon.” The guard’s taut face turned pale as a ghost. That will do to keep this fool’s mouth shut.
Tarnhold kept repeating the guard’s words in his head as he descended the stairwell. The explosion had not caused heat; that would have been detected. It couldn’t have been some sort of signal calling for help, either, not with how fast it vanished. He recalled the guard’s words again. The web in Tarnhold’s mind trembled. There was something in those words that eluded him.
Frustration reared its head. There were some clues, but he didn’t have the time to get to them. He was forced to go at someone else’s pace and blindly follow them. All because they didn’t believe him. There were also no more suspects and finding anything in the wreckage of Razan station was close to impossible. Miracles didn’t happen.
He slammed his fist against the wall. He needed more time.
For the briefest instant, the thought of warping to the crash site came to mind. He would get fifteen minutes at least, maybe try talking with the guard again or the manager or another miner. Reality dispelled his thoughts. If not for the rumours about him, the idea might have passed. The rest of the team would think he was doing his own thing and going against orders – and they wouldn’t exactly be wrong either. They would grumble, but the leader would take him off the team.
As the clock kept ticking, Tarnhold hastened his steps.
He flinched mid-stride. Doubt flickered through him, tangling the strings connecting in his mind; however, the doubt faded, and an idea stood crystal clear: a warp.
Something had been warped away from the station during the attack, something that had been about to explode. For a few seconds, he entertained the notion that it could have been a bomb – it was the simplest, after all – then he shook his head; the rest of the evidence didn’t support such a case. Continuing on his way, he resolved to think of it more tomorrow.