Part of Kiem’s hindbrain noted that Gairad was on one side of him and Audel on the other. He stretched out his legs in his chair, smiling, because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. “Internal Security never dropped their investigation into you,” he said. “I was just having a chat with Gairad about it.

Informally.”

Audel stepped forward, closing her wrist-screen briskly. The door shut behind her. “Can I convince you that Gairad wasn’t involved?”

“Not really,” Kiem said apologetically. “I’d just convinced myself that you weren’t involved, actually. Did either of you kill Taam?”

“No!” Gairad said, with an indignation that rang true to Kiem’s ears. “What do you take us for, murderers? We’ve been trying to find out who killed him!”

“Gairad has a regrettable tendency to the dramatic,” Professor Audel said.

“But she’s correct. I’m afraid we can’t help you with Taam. However—would you mind…” She pointed to her wrist.

Kiem looked down at his wristband. He hesitated for a moment, but Bel was in the shuttleport on her way to Sefala, and Jainan could use the station comm system if he really needed to get hold of Kiem. He turned it off. “I wasn’t recording.”

“Oh, I hope not, but I am admitting to criminal access of information,” Audel said, “so forgive me my quirks. How did you find out?”

“Internal Security has been after you for days now,” Kiem said. “Since you called us at Hvaren Base. They brought us in to help.”

“Tch,” Audel said. “They really haven’t dropped it, then? That makes the next step harder.”

“What are you trying to find?” Kiem asked.

“The truth,” Gairad said, failing to disprove Professor Audel’s character assessment.

Professor Audel didn’t answer immediately. She tapped the screen on the wall, where the young Thean smiled in his graduation photo. “Rossan was one of my student researchers. My first one after I left the army, as a matter of fact.

When I came back to the Imperial College, I decided to carry on working on regoliths, because I thought it could be done so much better than the military was doing it. Rossan was on one of their mining probes as our first embedded civilian observer in Operation Kingfisher. We fought tooth and nail to get him there. His death was a catastrophe.”

“I’m sorry,” Kiem said. It sounded completely inadequate.

“It was also very convenient for Kingfisher’s officers,” Audel said. “But why go that far just to throw off some academic researchers? We weren’t a threat to them. That was when I started wondering what else Kingfisher was doing. I wanted to replicate their methods and improve them—of course I did, I’m an engineer. But I also wanted to know why they needed so many non-engineering soldiers on a mining operation.”

“Taam was using it as a personal credit source,” Kiem said. “He was selling off equipment. Jainan found the money trail.”

“Wait, that doesn’t fit,” Gairad said, with a quick look at Audel. “Stuff’s been coming in these past few weeks.”