A crack in the case

Yesterday, after Bonnie recovered from grieving the loss of the Onsira children or her "babies" as she referred to them, she decided she wanted to revisit the final question that Rei asked her at the end of The Ark Lords. Rei certainly did remember asking her the question. And he certainly remembered her answer which prompted him to send Bonnie away with all the rest of the Darwin people. But here she is, bringing it up again:

     “I expected you to say no,” Rei said with an edge to his voice. “At least I was hoping you would. You couldn’t do it though. That’s why I sent you away and that’s why Virga has you on a leash.”
     “I’ve thought about that ever since that day,” Bonnie said quietly. “And I can tell you now that I did not agree with killing everyone. What I wanted more than anything was a place to live, a place to raise children on a world without planet-sized storms, without overcrowding, without unending terrorism. First Deucado and now this world, Helome, is all of that and more. My heart is with the future so my allegiance to Darwin is over.”
     “That’s great,” Rei said, standing up. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.” He pulled out the creased set of papers from his pocket. “The reason we’re here is because there are still two Darwin members running around on Deucado. They tried to kill us by blowing up our house.”
     “Oh my god!” Bonnie said. “Was anybody hurt?”
     Rei made the horse lips sound. “Yeah but we’re over it.” Rei handed the papers to Bonnie. “Captain Keller identified one of the two as Dan Steele. That’s a complete list of all the members of Darwin. Can you tell me who else is on that list but never got brought here to Helome?”
     “I’ll do my best,” Bonnie said. She read down the list and stopped when she got to the bottom. “David Troutman,” she said. “He never made it to Helome so I guess that means he’s your other missing person. He’s a chemical engineer and munitions expert. If anybody could build a bomb, he could.” She flipped the papers over to the second page, just to be sure. She flipped the pages back and tapped the top sheet with her finger. “He’s definitely your man. And Steele, he’s just…” Bonnie shivered then took on a quizzical look. “You know, it’s kind of funny, now that I think about it.”
     “What is?” Rei asked.
     “When Sussen was here, she asked me how an Erklirte came to be in charge of the children. I told her how you and Rome got wind of Project Darwin and how you sent us into exile here.”
     “Did she say anything else?” Rome asked her.
     “No,” Bonnie replied. “She did ask me if there were any more Darwin people left on Deucado. At the time, I wasn’t sure. She dropped the subject after that.”
     Rome looked at Rei who nodded.

So there you have it. We now know the names of the two would-be killers: Troutman and Steele. The next step would be to go back to Deucado and track them down. But where to start? Maybe Bonnie has an idea. Let's see about that, tomorrow.