The Human Division #9: The Observers Read online

  “Someone in this room is a killer!” Wilson said.

  “Please don’t say that when they actually show up,” Lowen said.

  “That’s why I’m saying it now,” Wilson said.

  Wilson, Lowen and Stone were in the medical bay, awaiting Abumwe, Meyer, Bourkou and Coloma. Coloma was on her way from the bridge; the others were coming from the shuttle that had just docked.

  “They’re on their way,” Lowen said, glancing at her PDA. “Franz tells me they wrapped up the negotiations today, too. Abumwe apparently got an excellent deal for the scanners.”

  “Good,” Wilson said, and patted the scanner he had been using. “Maybe that will mean I can keep mine. This thing is sweet.”

  Coloma arrived; Abumwe, Meyer and Bourkou followed a minute after.

  “Now that we’re all here, let’s get started,” Wilson said. “If you’ll check your PDAs, you’ll see some images I sent to you.” Everyone in the room aside from Wilson, Stone and Lowen reached for their PDAs. “What you’re seeing there is a sample of Liu Cong’s blood. In it you’ll see red and white blood cells, platelets and also something else. That something else looks like SmartBlood nanobots. For those of you from Earth, SmartBlood is the non-organic substance that replaces blood in Colonial Defense Forces soldiers. It has superior oxygen-handling properties and other benefits.”

  “How did that get into his blood?” Meyer asked.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Wilson said. “Almost as interesting as the other question I have, which is when did it get into his blood.”

  “If this is a Colonial Union product, then it would seem that it would have gotten into his system out here,” Bourkou said.

  “I would have thought so, too,” Wilson said. “But then I got a closer look at the nanobots. Go ahead and look at the second image I sent you.”

  They turned to look at the second picture, which showed two similar-looking objects, one next to the other.

  “The first object is a close-up of what we found in Liu’s blood,” Wilson said. “The second is a close-up of an actual SmartBlood nanobot, which was taken from me, a couple of hours ago.” He held up his thumb to show the pinprick there.

  “They look the same to me,” Meyer said.

  “Yes, and I suspect they’re supposed to,” Wilson said. “It’s not until you look inside of them, in substantial detail, that you notice particular differences. If all we had was the Clarke’s equipment, we wouldn’t have been able to see the differences. Even with the Colonial Union’s top-of-the-line equipment, it would have taken some time. Fortunately, we have some new toys. So go ahead and flip to the next image.”

  Everyone forwarded to the third image.

  “I don’t expect any of you to know what you’re looking at here, but those with some technical experience with SmartBlood will note two major differences with the internal structure,” Wilson said. “The first has to do with how the nanobots handle oxygen sequestration. The second has to do with the radio receiver in the ’bot.”

  “What do these differences mean?” Abumwe asked.

  “With regard to oxygen sequestration, it means the ’bots are able to hold on to substantially more oxygen molecules,” Wilson says. “It doesn’t do anything with them, though. SmartBlood is designed to facilitate oxygen transfer to body tissue. What’s in Liu’s blood, however, doesn’t do that. It just holds on to the oxygen. It goes, grabs the oxygen in the lungs, and doesn’t let go. There’s less oxygen for the actual red blood cells to carry, and less for the body tissues to take in.”

  “This stuff suffocated Cong,” Lowen said.

  “Right,” Wilson said. “As for the receiver, well, SmartBlood takes direction from its owner’s BrainPal via an encrypted channel and reverts by default to its primary role, which is oxygen transport.” He pointed to Abumwe’s PDA. “This stuff also communicates by encrypted signal. Its default state is off, however. It’s only on the job when it’s receiving a signal. Its signal doesn’t come from a BrainPal, however.”

  “Where does it come from?” Meyer asked.

  Lowen held up an object. It was Meyer’s white noise generator.

  “It can’t be,” Meyer said.

  “It can be,” Wilson said. “And it is, because we checked it. How do you think we can describe what this stuff does? This is why I said the interesting question is when this stuff got into Liu’s blood. Because this”—Wilson pointed to the white noise generator, which Lowen now set on the table—“strongly suggests that it happened before you folks left Earth.”

  “How did you find it?” Abumwe asked.

  “We walked through Liu’s death,” Stone said. “We knew when he died, and we knew that these ’bots needed a transmitter, and Mr. Bourkou said that he had been running the white noise generator to drown out Liu’s snoring.”

  “You can’t think I did it,” Bourkou said.

  “You set this thing off in the same room,” Wilson said.

  “It’s not even mine,” Bourkou said. “Franz let me borrow it. It’s his.”

  “That’s true,” Wilson said, turning to Meyer.

  Meyer looked shocked. “I didn’t kill Cong! And this doesn’t make logical sense in any event. Cong was supposed to have a berth to himself. This thing wasn’t supposed to have been in the same room.”

  “A very good point,” Wilson said. “Which is why I checked the effective transmitting radius of the generator’s ’bot transmitter. It’s about twenty meters. Your berth is right next door, and the berths are narrow enough that Liu’s bunk is well within the radius, even accounting for signal attenuation through the common bulkhead.”

  “We’ve been traveling for a more than a week before we arrived here,” Meyer said. “Before this we had individual staterooms, but we were still close enough for this thing to work. I used it every night. Nothing happened to Cong.”

  “Interestingly, there are two transmitters in the white noise generator,” Wilson said. “One of them affects the ’bots. The second affects the first transmitter. It turns it on or off.”

  “So it wouldn’t have done anything until you got here,” Lowen said.

  “This is crazy,” Meyer said. “I don’t have a remote control for this thing! Go to my berth! Check for yourself!”

  Wilson looked over at Captain Coloma. “I’ll have crew go through his berth,” she said.

  “Have you dumped trash recently?” Wilson said.

  “No,” Coloma said. “We usually don’t dump until we return to Phoenix Station, and when we do, we don’t do it in other people’s systems. That’s rude.”

  “Then I would suggest we look through the trash,” Wilson said. “I can give you the transmitting frequency if it helps.” Coloma nodded.

  “Why did you do it?” Bourkou asked Meyer.

  “I didn’t do it!” Meyer yelled. “You are just as likely to have done it as I am, Thierry. You had the generator in your possession. You’re the one who convinced Cong to give up his berth for me. I didn’t ask him.”

  “You complained about claustrophia,” Bourkou said.

  “I joked about claustrophobia, you ass,” Meyer said.

  “And I wasn’t the one who suggested it to him,” Bourkou said. “It was Luiza. So don’t pin it on me.”

  A strange expression crossed Meyer’s face. Wilson caught it. So did Abumwe. “What is it?” she asked Meyer.

  Meyer looked around at the group, as if debating whether to say something, then sighed. “I’ve been sleeping with Luiza Carvalho for the last three months,” he said. “During the selection process for this mission and then since. It’s not a relationship, it’s more taking advantage of a mutual opportunity. I didn’t think it would matter since neither of us was in a position to select the other for the mission.”

  “All right,” Abumwe said. “So?”

  “So Luiza always complained about me sleeping badly,” Meyer said, and pointed at the white noise generator. “Two weeks ago, after we knew who was on the mi
ssion, she bought me that. Said it would help me sleep.”

  “Luiza was the one who suggested to Meyer that he let me borrow the generator,” Bourkou said. “To counteract Cong’s snoring.”

  “Where is Ms. Carvalho?” Stone asked.

  “She said she was going to her berth,” Abumwe said. “Lieutenant Wilson didn’t ask for her to be here, so I didn’t ask her to come.”

  “We should probably have someone get her,” Wilson said, but Coloma was already on her PDA, ordering someone to get her.

  Coloma’s PDA pinged almost immediately thereafter; it was Neva Balla. Coloma put her executive officer on the speaker so everyone in the room could hear. “We have a problem,” Balla said. “There’s someone in the portside maintenance airlock. It looks like one of the Earth people.”

  “Send me the image,” Coloma said. When she got it, she bounced it to the PDAs of everyone else in the room.

  It was Luiza Carvalho.

  “What is she doing?” Lowen asked.

  “Lock out the airlock,” Coloma said.

  “It’s too late,” Balla said. “She’s already started the purge cycle.”

  “She must have been listening in somehow,” Abumwe said.

  “How the hell did she get in there?” Coloma asked, angry.

  “The same way she got Meyer and Bourkou to help her kill Liu,” Wilson said.

  “But why did she do it?” Meyer said. “Who is she working with? Who is she working for?”

  “We’re not going to get an answer to that,” Wilson said.

  “Well, we know one thing, at least,” Lowen said.

  “What’s that?” Wilson asked.

  “Whoever’s been sabotaging you up here, it looks like they’re on the job down there on Earth,” Lowen said.

  “Almost got away with it, too,” Wilson said. “If we didn’t have that scanner, it would have looked like the Colonial Union killed him. By the time it was cleared up, it would have been too late to fix it.”

  No one said anything to that.

  In the video feed, Carvalho looked up to where the camera was, as if looking at the group in the medical bay.

  She waved.

  The air purged out of the airlock. Carvalho exhaled and kept exhaling long enough to stay conscious until the hull lock opened.

  She let herself out.

  “Dani,” Wilson said.

  “Yeah, Harry,” Lowen said.

  “You still have the Laphroaig?” Wilson asked.

  “I do,” Lowen said.

  “Good,” Wilson said. “Because right now, I think we all need a drink.”

  Also by John Scalzi

  Old Man’s War

  The Ghost Brigades

  The Android’s Dream

  The Last Colony

  Zoe’s Tale

  Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

  Fuzzy Nation

  Redshirts

  Edited by John Scalzi

  Metatropolis

  About the Author

  JOHN SCALZI is the author of several SF novels including the bestselling Old Man’s War and its sequels, and the New York Times bestsellers Fuzzy Nation and Redshirts. He is a winner of science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and he won the Hugo Award for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of essays from his wildly popular blog Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com). He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  HUMAN DIVISION #9: THE OBSERVERS

  Copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by John Harris

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  e-ISBN: 978-1-4668-3058-5

  The Human Division

  John Scalzi’s stirring new novel in the universe of his bestselling Old Man’s War

  New e-episodes will appear every Tuesday from January 15 to April 9, 2013, on all your favorite e-book sites. Don’t miss a single one:

  January 15: The Human Division #1: The B-Team

  January 22: The Human Division #2: Walk the Plank

  January 29: The Human Division #3: We Only Need the Heads

  February 5: The Human Division #4: A Voice in the Wilderness

  February 12: The Human Division #5: Tales from the Clarke

  February 19: The Human Division #6: The Back Channel

  February 26: The Human Division #7: The Dog King

  March 5: The Human Division #8: The Sound of Rebellion

  March 12: The Human Division #9: The Observers

  March 19: The Human Division #10: This Must Be the Place

  March 26: The Human Division #11: A Problem of Proportion

  April 2: The Human Division #12: The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads

  April 9: The Human Division #13: Earth Below, Sky Above

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Also by John Scalzi

  About the Author

  Copyright