Omega

A recent post over at Leg Iron’s got me digging around in my archives. This one’s been sitting on an old hard drive for about fifteen years, I think.

***

A cut throat is usually fatal. And eight pints of blood can go a long way.

My introduction to a murder inquiry was as sudden as it was unexpected. I was roused from a deep slumber, by the intercom at the head of my bed buzzing persistently. “Okay, okay,” I grumbled, reaching for my alarm. The tendrils of a dream slithered across my subconscious. As I fumbled for the alarm switch I grasped at a fading image of a desert dawn.

It wasn’t the alarm. Frowning, I pressed the intercom, all thoughts of the dream slipped into oblivion.

“Lieutenant Commander?”

“Yeah, what is it?” I asked, glancing at the luminous digits on the clock. 02:00, good grief.

“We’ve a stiff in number two airlock. Er…”

I sensed a hesitation in the ensign’s voice. “Go on, Mister,” I said.

“Well, it looks like murder,” Ensign Havers said.

Ensign Havers, I decided, had the gift of understatement down to a fine art. We watched in silence as two orderlies laid the body onto the deck. Blood was splattered over the airlock and most of the man’s pressure suit.

Like myself, Havers wore lightweight fatigues designed for station wear. Black double-breasted shirts, close-fitting trousers and high boots. In my left boot, I carried the optional scabbard containing a service knife. We wore our berets pulled down over the right ear with the anchor badge over the left eye. Despite the Fleet’s retention of the insignia and ranks of the Navy, the anchor on my cap badge and the one thin, and two thick gold stripes on my epaulets were but a tenuous link with a distant past. The Fleet hadn’t a surface ship in commission in over two hundred years. Unlike me, Havers carried about him an air of fresh-faced youthfulness. At 02:30, too, it was positively obscene. That’s the trouble with bloody youngsters; they’re too damn young.

“Do we know who he is?” I asked.

“Yessir, ” Havers replied.

“Well?” I prompted tetchily, an even temper not being one of my strong points in the early hours. Being faced with a blood-soaked body wasn’t helping matters.

Havers was busying himself leafing through the dead man’s papers. “He’s a Commander Hienrich Georgenson, from the colony on the planet.”

“Uh, huh,” I replied, casting my eyes about the confined space of the airlock. “And what do we make of this?”

“Sorry, sir. Don’t know.”

Neither did I. The large omega, daubed in blood on the airlock door had the overtones of Gothic melodrama. I sighed, I was a station security chief, not a murder investigator. I watched as the orderlies waited for the official pronouncement from Doctor Landers. When she gave it, they promptly zipped him into a body bag. So endeth life, I mused. This is what it comes down to – a brief pronouncement and a body bag. Shrugging off my melancholy, I quizzed Landers.

“Well,” she said. “He has a cut trachea, probably from left to right.”

“Mm,” I replied. “A right-handed killer then?”

She shrugged. “Possibly. I’ll tell you more after the post-mortem.”

“When will that be?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

I was happy enough with that. I pointed to the symbol on the door. “Mean anything to you?”

“Omega?” She shrugged once more. “Last letter of the Greek alphabet?”

“That much, I knew,” I responded flatly.

“Sorry, can’t help then,” she smiled, before sealing her bag and following the two orderlies to the sick bay. I watched her depart and sighed heavily. This, I decided, I could do without.

***

“I’ve got a job for you,” Rear Admiral Clarke leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes as he studied me across the desk. “Just the job for a man of your capabilities.”

“Deep space?”

“Mm, know anything about Andromeda?”

I searched my memory. “A mining colony, isn’t it?”

“Iridium.”

“Uh, huh. So what am I supposed to know about mining iridium?”

“Nothing.”

He turned to face the picture window overlooking the gardens of what was once a stately home. In the old days of the monarchy, that is. The Republic soon found a use for the old ancestral piles. Admiral Clarke now enjoyed the privileges once appreciated only by the toffs of old. Nothing changes, except the names.

“I want you to head the security team,” he said, swinging round to face me once more. “I think you may be needed there.” He pushed a folder across to me. “The orbiting space station, Pericles, currently carrying four hundred personnel. They’re all yours as of the end of this month. Good luck.”

He turned back to the garden with its fancy hedges, peacocks and rose beds. The interview was over. He hadn’t said why I would be needed.

***

Now I was beginning to understand.

***

The dream changed. The whinnying of horses carried on the still air. Early morning mist gently lifted its shroud from the waking earth and the armies faced each other across the battlefield. Blue and red. Still. Waiting. I watch as they wait.

Wait for what?

The order.

Who’s order?

***

Jennifer Landers finished scrubbing up and turned off the tap. Commander Georgenson lay naked and dissected on the sick bay slab. The odour of death mixed with the sterile disinfectant the orderly was rinsing along the deck.

“Well?” I opened, attempting to avoid looking too closely at the cadaver. I had seen enough death to desire more.

“Well,” Jennifer said, drying her hands. “I’d say he was killed with a long bladed knife, or similar instrument. Something with a straight blade.”

I reached down to the scabbard built into my left boot and withdrew my service knife. About twelve inches long, it had a double-edged blade, narrowing to a wicked point. Despite the development of modern weapons, there is much to be said for the silent killing ability of a hand over the mouth and a knife blade between the ribs. And, they don’t need recharging. This one had seen me through a few scrapes.

“Like this?” I ventured.

She took it and turned it over in her hands. “Mm, exactly, I’d say.” She turned to the body. “My initial findings were correct. A right-handed person from behind. And, you’re looking for someone at least five feet six. See, the angle of the cut is from the low left to the right in an upward stroke. The killer was taller than his victim by several inches.”

“What is the official cause of death?”

She handed the knife back to me and I sheathed it. “Well, there was a lot of blood because the jugular was ruptured. That alone would have killed him fairly quickly, but the actual cause of death was asphyxiation from a sliced thyroid cartilage. In fact, he was all but decapitated.”

“So we’re looking for someone of considerable strength.”

“Yes.”

“Still no ideas about omega?”

She shook her head. “No, you?”

“I’ll cross reference it with the computer later on. I just thought it was worth one more try.”

Thanking her and leaving her with her gruesome companion, I returned to my quarters.

“Computer, any messages?”

“Good afternoon Lieutenant Commander. Ensign Havers requests you meet him urgently at the docking bay.”

“Did he give any indication as to why?”

“There is a delegation from the planet’s surface.”

“So why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“You didn’t ask.”

That was all I needed. A smart arse computer.

Ensign Havers snapped to attention and saluted. Returning his salute, I regarded the delegation from the planet. Two were obviously miners, the toil and stone dust ingrained into their coarse features gave their occupation away. The other was a young woman bearing Warrant Officer flashes on her pressure suit. She too saluted.

“Sir,” she said.

“Stand easy. What’s the problem?”

“I think you should come down to the planet’s surface, sir,” she answered.

“Why? Warrant Officer . . .” I paused, reading the name printed on the left breast of her suit.

“Maxwell, sir. Naomh Maxwell.”

“Why Warrant Officer Maxwell?”

Havers shifted awkwardly. I turned my attention to him. “Yes Ensign?”

“They’ve found two more bodies, sir.”

***

The bodies were exactly as they had been discovered. While Warrant Officer Maxwell took us to the base camp, the other two headed towards the mine, two miles or so outside at the foot of the low mountain range to the south and east of the settlement.

“Where are they off to?” I asked.

“The pit head,” Maxwell replied.

“Uh huh.”

“They want to be sure no one disturbs the evidence.”

“If they haven’t already,” I said flatly.

“No.”

Captain Hewlett stared across his small apartment at the imitation picture window. His jaw sagged, resting on the ornamental sword pinning him by his throat to the wall. I asked Naomh Maxwell if the omega drawn in blood on the wall meant anything to her. She shook her head and filled me in on the victim’s details. “Captain John Hewlett, retired. Ex fleet, sir.”

“Yes,” I said tiredly. “I figured that.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be. Go on.”

“Er, yes. Well Captain Hewlett has been on Andromeda for three months in a consultative capacity.”

“Consultative?” My hackles prickled. There was something here I didn’t know about. “What was he consulted about?”

“Defence,” she said.

“Isn’t that your job?” I asked.

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m merely security.”

“Okay, so what were you expecting to defend yourself from?”

Havers interrupted. “You haven’t heard, sir?”

“If I had,” I replied irritably, “I wouldn’t be asking, would I, Ensign?”

“No, sir.”

“So,” I said, exhaling slowly. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Rebels,” Naomh said.

“I see. Why wasn’t I told?”

Ensign Havers opened his mouth to speak but I held up my hand, interrupting him. “I didn’t ask, right?”

“Right.” He shuffled awkwardly. “Sorry sir.”

I decided not to pursue the matter and see the other victim.

***

Naomh Maxwell led us across the quadrangle surrounded by the featureless billets that formed the base camp. Somewhere, out in the grey landscape, there were rebels. Why had this intelligence been withheld? I didn’t entirely believe that Havers had merely not mentioned it because the matter hadn’t been raised. When it had been, his embarrassment was acute. Maxwell clambered aboard a four-seater buggy and leaned across the passenger seat to let Havers and myself in.

The buggy, developed from the early moon vehicles had changed little in the intervening two centuries. Quite simply, the design worked. Huge tyres cushioned the rest of the vehicle from the rigours of the planet’s surface littered with scree and plugs of prehistoric larva. Outside, the wind howled, throwing grey white dust into the thin atmosphere. Why, I wondered dryly, anyone should want to set up a base here, was a mystery to me.

“Tell me, Ensign, who appointed Hewlett?”

“Er,”

“The Admiral,” Maxwell shouted above the roar of the wind and the whine of the engine.

“I see,” I said. “And these rebels, where exactly are they hiding out?”

“In the foothills somewhere.”

I stared into the grey white dust storm. Rebels be damned.

Eventually Naomh Maxwell brought the vehicle to a halt outside a mine head. Like the rest of the buildings I encountered on the planet, this was squat and featureless. She led us inside where we were greeted by the two miners who had accompanied us from the station.

We descended into the shaft, leaving the weak light behind. Claustrophobia welled like a bad taste in my throat. Swallowing, I concealed it from my subordinates.

The mine workings were brightly lit by artificial lights and the claustrophobia faded. Our guides led us along several passages until we reached our second body.

“This area is no longer worked,” one of the miners said. “He could’ve been here months if we hadn’t been looking for some missing equipment.”

“Missing equipment?” I asked sharply.

“We found it. Not here, though. Just him.”

Our killer had a penchant for blades, it seemed. The victim had been stabbed in the  back. Not much blood, but enough for someone to scrawl an omega. No weapon either.

“Colonel Matthew Riley,” Maxwell said.

“Not fleet, then?” I murmured.

“No, ground forces,” She spat disgustedly.

I smiled. If she hadn’t said it, I probably would have. “I want these two bodies shipped to the station for doctor Landers to carry out post-mortems,” I said. Looking for clues in the shifting dust of the mines would be a nightmare, but we made the effort. The miners expected it. Presumably they also expected someone who knew what they were doing. They were about to be disappointed.

As Maxwell drove us back across the grey desert, I quizzed her about the two victims.

“I hardly knew them, sir. Riley was based at the mine and Hewlett spent most of his time in the bar at the base camp. Not much of a defence expert in my opinion. If you want my opinion, sir,” she added.

“I do, Warrant Officer.”

“The stiff on the station was going up to see about getting a ship back to Earth, his commission was coming to an end and he was thinking of retiring.”

I turned to Ensign Havers who had been listening, mute, in the back seat. “What have all three got in common, ensign?”

He thought about this. “All service personnel, er, all about sixty. All were killed with a knife or sword and all had something to do with something called omega.”

“Maxwell?”

“That’s about it, sir.”

“And no one has any idea about this omega?”

They both shook their heads. I too was baffled. “Then I guess we’ll just have to resort to asking the computer.”

Having dismissed the other two, I returned to my apartment. “Computer,”

“Good evening Lieutenant Commander.”

“Computer, tell me about omega.”

“Omega: the last letter of the Greek alphabet… ”

“I knew that.”

“Well ask your questions more accurately.”

“One of these days…” I stopped. I was doing it again, I was arguing with a bloody machine.

“Computer,” I said, steadying my temper. “Tell me about omega.”

“Omega: the last letter of the Greek alphabet. Used as a symbol to represent ohms. These are measurements of electrical resistance, derived by dividing voltage by current. Do you wish me to cite ohms’ law in full?”

“No.”

“Very good,” the computer replied tartly. “Omega: the Omega workshops were formed by Roger Fry in 1913 to explore the application of neo-impressionism…”

“I don’t think so,” I interrupted.

“Very well,” the machine resumed its superior tone. “Omega Centuari. The third planet of the Omega Centauri system was colonised in 2099. The discovery of high-grade minerals made it a prime planet for development. Due to the expansion of the population on Earth there were thousands of potential colonists. By 2170 the planet was densely populated and sought to break political ties with Earth. Edward Holbrich, The colonists’ leader…”

“Stop.”

The computer stopped. Holbrich, the name echoed with horror through my mind. “The same Edward Holbrich responsible for the genocide of the alien immigrants in 2195?”

“If you had waited,” the machine replied haughtily, “you would have been informed.”

I grinned to myself. I had wound it up. Sometimes artificial intelligence has its little perks. “Go on,” I said.

“Edward Holbrich declared independence from Earth in 2175. The subsequent years are little recorded as the Planet’s government operated in secrecy. Thousands of Alien immigrants died in the mines and Holbrich was rumoured to have operated a police state.”

“Never proved,” I said.

“In 2199, an invasion force from the Rigel sector seized the planet and liberated the slaves working in the mines. Holbrich and his henchmen had disappeared, believed escaped back to Earth or dead. Three have subsequently resurfaced.”

“Who were they?” I asked. I knew the answer before I was told. Earth needed such men too much to worry about their dubious past. Besides, why let a little thing like genocide get in the way of expediency?

“Captain John Hewlett, Fleet, Commander Hienrich Georgenson, Fleet, and Colonel Matthew Riley, Ground Forces.”

Even the computer spat out the last phrase with apparent distaste. I smiled and sat back. Someone who knew these men’s past had come visiting, it seemed. My field of suspects was narrowing. Time for a drink. I stood to walk across to the mini bar when the intercom buzzed.

“Yeah?”

“Warrant Officer Maxwell, here, sir. I’m in the Sim room. There’s someone here you should meet. We know who the killer is.”

I grinned. “Looks like you pipped me at the post. I was almost there myself.”

The sim room was a small box of a room used to show interactive films. The audience stood, or sat inside the film, experiencing the sounds, taste and feel of the events happening about them.

Maxwell was waiting with Rear Admiral Clarke.

“Sir?” I said, puzzled.

“Lieutenant Commander. You already know Warrant Officer Maxwell. I expect you’ve discovered the connection between the three victims.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “The government on Earth has flexible ethics when it suits it. We, however, do not.”

“We?”

He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he reached into a pocket in his fatigues. He withdrew a clear plastic packet.

“Take a look at this.”

I took the packet from Clarke’s outstretched hand. Holding it up to the light, I studied the tiny triangle of metal. “What is it?”

“Doctor Landers found it embedded in Georgenson’s spine.”

“She never told me.”

“I asked her to do a second autopsy – take a closer look.”

“I see. I thought I was doing this investigation.”

He ignored my protest and continued. “What do you think it’s from?”

“The murder weapon, I presume. Folk don’t normally walk around with lumps of metal in their spines.”

I struck a nerve – Clarke tensed angrily and Maxwell stiffened.

“What’s all this about?” I asked.

“Take your service knife out.” Maxwell said.

“Sir,” I replied irritably.

“Sir,” she said softly. “Please.”

Wondering where they were leading, but not liking the look of it, I pulled my knife from the scabbard.

“Check the tip,” Clarke instructed.

Lifting the knife up to the light, I matched the sliver of metal found in Georgenson’s neck with the end of my blade. The match was perfect. “I don’t understand…”

“And this?” Clarke reached into a bag I had barely noticed that he was carrying. He pulled out a bundle and tossed it across to me. As I caught the bundle it opened, revealing bloodstained overalls.

“Look on the breast pocket.”

I didn’t need to, somehow I expected to see my name sewn onto the pocket.

“I…”

“You don’t remember?” Maxwell said.

“Don’t talk rubbish, I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it. This is a setup.”

“Of course,” Clarke said. He nodded to Maxwell who reached out to the sensor panel on the wall behind her and passed her hand across it. The lights dimmed and the room grew dark. So dark it felt as if the bulkheads disappeared and we were floating in the void outside. The floor fell from beneath my feet and the floating sensation became absolute. My interrogators dissolved into formless shadows somewhere behind me, in front of me – all around, filling the void with their presence.

“It’s not supposed to do this.”

“We, er, modified it,” Maxwell’s voice floated as if from a great distance.

Then, slowly, there was a shift in the blackness. Light. Gradually as the light took form, I could see. We were surrounded by a desert.

***

Reds and oranges preceded the rising sun as it drenched the waking Earth. Horses shuffled and snickered quietly in the cool of the morning. The eastern sky turned from red to pink to crystal blue as the shadows from the mountains retreated into the foothills. On the valley floor, tents stood in a higgledy piggledy array of colour. The horses stood next to them tied to temporary rails. Muffled voices and early morning curses carried on the air as the camp came to life.

***

“Know where we are?” Clarke asked.

“The Gobi Desert,” I replied automatically. I knew – how did I know? I was here before. What had they done? Numbly I allowed the dream sleep of waking memory to wash over me.

***

Slowly, the village came to life and men mounted their stocky horses, waiting for their leader. Their leader. I knew who he was. Cupping my head in my hands I knew and I despaired.

***

“When?”

“1205,” I replied.

“You remember?”

Dumbly, I nodded, empty inside. How, after centuries of forgotten lives could I not recall those sweeping raids across Asia. Men respected me then, followed me to their deaths – or glory.

The picture changed: Two armies, in red and blue, gathered for their final confrontation.

“1815,” I said.

“Mm,” Clarke replied. “I was there as well. We won.”

The humiliation of defeat reached out across the aeons. Long forgotten dust, stirred once more. I had power then. Again I looked once more into the face of my enemy. Maxwell all but disappeared in the animosity that stifled the atmosphere between us.

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

For an answer, the picture changed.

Thousands of people stood in simultaneous salute. “Seig Hiel! Sieg Hiel!”

“NO!”

Even as the strangled cry escaped from my lips, I knew it was true – just as the others were true. I remembered. How had they made me remember? Why? How could I live with the memory of what I once was?

“You didn’t learn, did you?” Clarke said softly.

“How could I?”

I couldn’t know who I had been before. Emotions crowded in on me. Choking my existence. Guilt, horror and anguish.

The picture had changed once more.

Gunfire rattled above. All about were the dusty dark hollows of the inside of a raped planet. We were in the caverns of Omega 3.

“NO! It’s not true.”

“Yes.” The voice of reason.

“Who are you?”

“We are your nemesis. We have been with you from the beginning of time. For every evil there must be justice. We’ve been hunting you for eternity. You gave us the slip so many times. But the opportunity to set a trap finally came. Patience is, after all, a virtue.”

“You killed Georgenson, Hewlett and Riley?” I asked.

“No,” Maxwell replied. “You did.”

“No. I would have remembered.”

“Your mind shut it out. They were a threat to you. Even though you are a different man, you couldn’t take the risk, so you killed them as we knew you would.”

“And Omega? I did that?”

Maxwell smiled, shaking her head. “No. That was my little touch. Dramatic, I thought.”

“Why?”

“Your memory needed a jolt.”

“So now? How can I live with what I was?”

Maxwell lifted her pistol. “You can’t.”

“No, that can’t be true.”

“It can, until you die for every death you caused.”

Then she pulled the trigger.

***

I was dreaming. The eastern sky shifted from purple to pink to azure and the sun blazed down on the tented village. I could hear the horses shuffling restlessly…

The alarm broke into my sleep. I reached out and switched it off. Still the buzzing continued. It wasn’t the alarm. Swearing I pressed the intercom.

“Sorry to wake you sir,”

“What is it Shattock?”

“We’ve got a stiff on level three.”