The Diamond Ring
25 Sep 2021Andrew Linton
The Diamond RingChapter 1: Pain
It was pain like no other, with an intensity the closest a man can come to experiencing the agonies of protracted childbirth. When a doctor asks you where it hurts, they pay particular attention to how you use your hand; a circling movement of the palm tells them that the pain is spread broadly across the area you indicate; a finger, pointing to one small region tells them that the source of the pain is localised and small. In my case, I would need to use a pointer as thin as the scalpel blade that penetrated my lower abdomen, creating the wound from which I am now recuperating.
The pain I feel is exquisite—and the stupid thing is, it’s entirely self-inflicted. I didn’t have to opt for elective surgery; I could have lived the rest of my time with the minor inconvenience of an inguinal hernia. There was no pain then, only a small lump where the rupture in the inguinal canal had allowed some tissue to poke through. For whatever reason, I went ahead with the procedure to insert a mesh over the hernia, and now I’m in the recovery suite of the medical centre on Colonia Dream.
A few hours after the surgical anaesthetic had worn off, the surgeon visited to check my progress. When I told her about my suffering, she prescribed a stronger painkiller and left me with the stricture not to repeat my folly of trying to lift heavy weights while on the surface of a 2g planet—the likely cause of the hernia.
The new analgesic works magic and I’m drifting into delirium when a face wearing an urgent expression appears above my head. It’s a grizzled old-timer with skin that’s dry and shrivelled from the effects of a hundred thousand suns. He looks around, nervous as a Jotun Mookah.
“Got to tell someone,” his gruff voice whispers in my ear, “Not sure I’m long for this life, what with this canker spreadin’ over me and worse ’n that, bad people trackin’ me.”
I can’t comment on his medical condition, but I’m interested in the people pursuing him and keen to know what they want.
“What bad people?” I ask, forcing myself to concentrate before the drug renders me unconscious.
“They wasn’t always bad; fact is they were good company for many a year. We used to wing up for expeditions—lookin’ after each other in the black and sharin’ discoveries.”
There’s sadness in his voice, full of regret and yearning for the way things were but there is weariness and anxiety too and he keeps looking to the door as he speaks.
“So, I got to tell you this,” he continues. “Everythin’ was fine until our last meetin’ at the Anchorage.”
“Explorer’s Anchorage, out by Sag. A*? What happened?” I ask, trying to raise myself to a sitting position, but wincing and dropping back as the pain defeats the drugs.
“The rest of us—me, Archer, and Hunter—had already arrived and had a round of drinks in when Kit Ausland turned up lookin’ cagey as hell. He didn’t tell us where he’d been, which was odd, ’cause we always shared our stories. We knew he’d found somethin’ big but couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell us.”
“That makes me wonder why he joined you in the first place, if he had something to hide.”
“Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I guess he just wanted to tell us to our faces that he was leavin’ the team. He walked out on us which was not like him and that really got us talkin’. What could it be that he’d give up years of friendship?”
“And did you find an answer?”
“Not straight away but a couple months later I was surveyin’ neutrons in the Far 3 Kiloparsec Arm when I received a pan-pan from Kit; he wanted me to come help with repairs. I can tell you I was in no mood to go, not after the way he left us, but it didn’t seem right to turn my back on an explorer in trouble; he said he’d mangled a leg and couldn’t do the repairs himself.”
“So, you went to him?”
“Sure thing. He’d crashed on a high-g planet and his ship was in a bad way; the hull was damaged and the canopy cracked. Life support was offline and he was living in an SRV. I asked why he didn’t use an AFMU to repair everythin’ and he said he didn’t have one. Now, that’s not like the Kit I knew; he’d always be set up for long-term, self-reliant exploration, you know—maximum redundancy.”
“But not this time? What was different?”
“He was in a Cutter and I scanned his loadout. It was a full-on minin’ rig, bristlin’ with sensors and tools for prospectin’, and collectin’ from surface and core hardpoints. He had the lowest rated shield possible, so no surprise the hull was bent. Didn’t even have a Guardian FSD Booster, but I get that; in the core regions, serious explorers use eco-jumpin’ anyway. The rest of the space in the Cutter was given over to cargo racks.”
I’m struggling to stay awake, fighting the painkiller to hear more of the story.
“We set about fixin’ his ship the old-fashioned way, with hammers, welding sets, and screwdrivers. And that’s how I found out what he was doin’ out there, what his big secret was.”
The mounting stress and urgency in the man’s voice manifest themselves as a coughing fit and I must wait until he’s recovered.
“I went to the material store to get some sheets of titanium and had to go through the cargo bays. One of the canisters had burst open in the crash and spilled its contents. There were diamonds everywhere; not just your average fifty-carat engagement ring, no, these were as big as your fist, a few were the size of a Remlok helmet. I was standin’ there, gawpin’, when Kit hobbled in, and he had to tell me what he’d found.”
Another bout of coughing and I start to wonder if he’s going to make it to the end of his tale.
“He’d discovered a white dwarf system that must’ve had a complex history: a few binaries—white dwarfs accreting from their companions; Type II supernova remnants; a neutron and a black hole. And there, amongst them all, a high-metal planet with a ring made almost entirely of diamond boulders.”
My knowledge of astrophysics is highly sketchy and I usually call on an expert to give me the simplified version of what’s happening out there. I’m lost for an explanation of the origins of such a ring.
“Diamond? How can that be?”
“He didn’t know and I can’t say I’m best placed to explain it. It’s reckoned for sure that carbon can crystallise as diamond inside of a white dwarf—like V886 Centauri, for instance. Maybe collision with another star could have smashed the dwarf apart—Kit said it was a very busy system; then over time, the planet captured the diamond fragments into a ring.”
I can’t begin to calculate what the ring might be worth—there may be thousands, or even millions, of cubic kilometres of diamond.
“Where is this system?” is of course my first question, and the old man attempts a wry smile, looking once more towards the door.
“There are two camps,” he says. “There are those desperate for the riches the system contains—sounds to me like you’re joinin’ that camp; then there are them that want the very existence of the system to be suppressed. They are the minin’ consortia and the diamond traders who’ve been controllin’ the diamond supply—to keep prices high. They want the diamond ring to be only a myth, a dream, not a reality.”
I start to think like the detective I am and, even through the fog of the painkillers, I conjure my first set of questions.
“Universal Cartographics…” I suggest, thinking out loud.
“He told me he never sold the data,” the man says in a tone that suggests he’s been through this train of thought himself.
“Flight logs, then.”
“He’s deleted them, includin’ back-ups before you ask, from a month before we met at the Anchorage through to the present date. Nobody can see where he’s been or what he found. His last known position was Sag A*, which is surrounded, as you know, by billions of stars.”
“So, you don’t even know where he went after you helped patch up his ship?”
“Nope, though I’m guessin’ he either went to Explorer’s Anchorage for full repair, or limped into one of those new DSSA fleet carriers,” he says derisively. Not everyone likes how safe the galaxy has become with the introduction of the Deep Space Support Array. “Someone said he’d gone to the bubble and bought himself a fleet carrier. He’s pretty much a recluse now, they say, apart from the occasional expedition. He was seen on the Apollo 15 anniversary celebration, but went quiet after that.”
“So, what’s worrying you? Who are the ‘bad people’ you mentioned?”
“Again, two camps; Hunter and Archer, the other wing members, are convinced I know more than I’m tellin’. Of course, I told them what had happened and I showed them the sample.”
“What sample was that?”
“Kit gave me a diamond, bigger’n that bag o’ saline drippin’ into your arm. Said it was payment to keep quiet.”
“But you showed it to your wing-mates.”
“Because that’s what wing-mates do—they share. But I knew it was a mistake, soon as I showed ’em. You could see the avarice growin’ in their eyes, especially Archer’s; they wanted my diamond and they wanted more and, like I said, they think I know where the system is. Things got riled up and I had to leave the meet at gunpoint and I been in hiding ever since.”
“You said there are two camps after you. Who’s in the second?”
The old man looked even more weary and close to the end of his endurance. I think I can understand how it might feel to have your life and lifestyle unravel.
“The minin’ consortia don’t want the bottom fallin’ out of the diamond market; they hired assassins to eliminate anyone knowin’ anythin’ about the diamond ring; they want it to disappear, and that’s what I plan doin’ if the treatment in here works out; I been dodgin’ ’em for months now.”
“And now you’ve told me,” I point out. “Doesn’t that paint a target on my back, too?”
“I had to tell someone so if anything happens to me, you’ll know why. Also, Kit should be warned that his life is in danger.”
By now my eyes are really drooping and the drugs finally take over. My mind conjures a strange dream where I’m running down a slope away from a massive sphere of pure diamond that’s rolling after me and it’s getting closer and closer. At the bottom of the slope a group of assassins wait for my arrival.
When I wake, there’s a different face looking down at me. It takes me a moment to focus.
“Detective Larsen?” I say, surprised. “Didn’t think the Colonia Police Department would be so interested in my state of health.”
Larsen was the officer in charge of the recent case when I was framed for murdering the newlyweds on my wedding barge. She played a huge part in establishing my innocence and together we had brought the real perps to justice. We were on and off drinking buddies for a while after that and I feel I know her well. Her serious face tells me she’s not here to wish me a speedy recovery and I can tell it’s something formal because she addresses me by my surname.
“Linton, did you see or hear anything unusual overnight?”
“No,” I say, still struggling to think clearly. “I was out of it. They gave me a heavy sedative with my pain medication.”
She looks disappointed.
“And did you ever meet Azimal Fish?”
“Who? I don’t think so.”
“He was in the room next to yours; he was murdered between three and four hours ago. The medical staff found him duct-taped to a chair; there were wounds to his face and we found a surgical bandage rammed into his airway. Looks like he was tortured before being suffocated.”
“Oh him,” I start to say, then pause, wondering how much to reveal. An official report saying a man was killed for information regarding a planetary ring made of diamond might only lead to more death. “Yeah, he was in here last evening. Said he thought some hitman was after him on account of a valuable diamond ring.”
To her question: “What was it, some kind of family heirloom?”, I merely shrug.
There, I hadn’t lied to my friend, but I hadn’t told her the whole truth either. At this point I wasn’t on the witness stand, no oath had been sworn and, in a way, I was protecting her and who knows how many others.
I start to form my own theory about the killer. I reason that Fish’s ex-wing-mates wouldn’t have killed him—not unless they were absolutely certain he didn’t know the co-ordinates of Kit Ausland’s discovery—but even then, would they kill an erstwhile friend? Well, for his big diamond of course they would.
“What time was that, when you saw him?”
I shake my head as I try to think.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know. My operation was scheduled for noon yesterday; I must have had the medication at about 1900, so it was between then and when the sedative knocked me out. I guess you’re going to tell me I was the last person to see him alive, but believe me, that was his killer, not me.”
“It’s okay, Linton, you’re not a suspect,” she smiles reassuringly and then playfully adds, “Yet.”
“So, I can carry on recuperating?”
“Of course—and I really do hope you recover quickly. One thing, though, please don’t leave the system in case we need to talk to you again.”
Larsen is about to leave when a young detective I don’t know enters the room carrying a screen. He ignores me and shows Larsen a recording.
“This is the medical centre’s CCTV coverage of a door at the back of the facility,” he says.
Larsen watches the recording then hands the screen to me. “Looks like you’re definitely off the hook for this one.”
I see a slim, dark-clad, helmeted figure enter the building. It could be male or female, it’s difficult to say. The young detective has thoughtfully edited the recording so the next thing I see, with a timestamp twenty minutes later, is the same figure leaving by the same door and walking calmly away.
“It looks professional to me,” I say, “that is, if you want my opinion.”
“Let me see it again,” she says, taking back the screen. “I thought so—the unsub has a very slight limp, barely perceptible.”
“So, a professional with a limp.”
“I’m keeping an open mind at the moment,” Larsen says. “CSI will arrive shortly and we’ll do the post-mortem in the mortuary here.”
“Just tell them to keep the noise down,” I say, rolling on to my side and gasping at the pain; time for another dose of happy pills, I think.
TO CONTINUE READING THIS STORY VISIT Linton Chronicles and select The Diamond Ring