On Impact, page 7
I picked up the pace.
A sheen of sweat formed on my forehead, neck, back, and chest, and my thighs and shoulders burned. It was more climbing than hiking, and I was grateful for the stair work I’d incorporated into my exercise routine since settling down on Andaress-4.
Five hundred meters farther, I spotted the suspect nearing the section of the mountain where the pitch changed from steep to vertical. His build was more muscular than his booking holo had led me to believe. He still wore the beige jumpsuit they’d assigned him in jail. It was unzipped and the shirt sleeves were tied around his waist to keep them from flapping in the stiff breeze. The white undershirt popped against the green-and-brown landscape. Otherwise, I might not have seen him.
I paused in a semi-clear section and waved to the drone, pointing toward the suspect. Then I opened an audio comm. “Leahy, I have eyes on the target. One hundred and fifty meters ahead of me, heading northeast.”
“Confirmed,” she replied. “Landing now. We’re at the base of the mountain. Try not to have all the fun before we reach you.”
“Then you better hurry your asses up.”
“Unpacking the switches as we speak, but you know how stubborn these two mules can be.”
“Tell the guys drinks are on me if you catch up before I apprehend the suspect on my own.”
“Wait for us. I can buy my own void-damned drink.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I said, ending the comm before she gave me an official order to wait. I’d already ignored at least one command today and didn’t know if I could get away with two.
Another ten minutes of hard scrambling, and I’d made a little ground on the suspect. He was now only one hundred meters ahead of me near the section of mountain where the steep incline at the base transitioned into the near-vertical pillar.
Ahead, his white shirt disappeared into a cut in the rock face. Despite my earlier cheekiness with DeAjamae, I had no intention of walking into the situation blind. I opened my Intell’s interface, located the drone’s signal, and took control. Normally, I would need an access code, but my Intell was designed for hacking and espionage. Doctor Lourde likely never envisioned it being used by legitimate law enforcement.
My stomach clenched when a viewscreen opened in my mind’s eye, showing me the mountain from the drone’s point of view. I grabbed onto a rocky outcropping for support and waited for the nausea to pass.
It took a few seconds to find myself from the drone’s viewpoint. Like the suspect’s beige jumpsuit, my forest-green DECA jacket blended in with the surroundings. Scrolling to the navigation controls, I sent the drone around the blind corner while I continued climbing.
The image that came back was of a black scar cut straight into the pillar. I flew the drone closer until the screen turned dark. Switching to a higher aperture setting brought the inside of the fissure into view. The suspect clung to the side of a near-vertical cliff wall like a spider. He reached up with his left bionic arm, dug his fingers into a groove, and flung his body upward by at least a meter. With the same hand, he caught a small outcropping where he dangled loose while he searched for his next handhold. Then he pumped his legs once and flung himself upward again.
Where was he going? The top of the pillar was just … the top. There was nowhere to go after he reached it.
I moved the drone higher, scanning for a hidden stash of supplies or something of value. About a quarter of the way up, a glint of light caught my eye.
Shit. I closed out the window and opened my comm to the entire team. “He’s got a ship stashed on the mountain.”
“Are you sure?” Wright asked.
I linked them in to the drone feed. “Positive.”
“That looks like a pacer,” Ravi said. “Single occupancy, fast, and capable of interstellar travel. If he reaches it, we’ll have a rough time catching up in LAVs.”
“Leahy,” Wright said. “Get a comm through to Ritru-6’s Central Command. Have them launch ships and be ready to intercept.”
There was a pause, then a colorful string of curses that lasted until her breath ran out. “No can do, sir. The mountains must be interfering with my cuff’s signal. I have to return to the city and send it from there.”
“Go. Singh, go down with her. I’ll keep heading up to give Sinclair support. If the suspect takes flight, try to coordinate with Central Command to get an interstellar ship after him.”
“Yes, sir,” Ravi said, and I could hear the jolts in his voice from running hard. They must not be too far up the mountain if the terrain was still clear enough for him to run.
I redoubled my efforts, using roots and the small branches to help pull myself up. My thighs and biceps burned from the unaccustomed movement and increased gravity, but within another five minutes I reached the crack the suspect had gone into. Cautiously, I rounded the corner and stared up at the cliff face while catching my breath. It wasn’t as sheer as it looked from a distance, but it was still pretty damned steep.
The cut was deep and narrow, running at least one hundred meters into the heart of the mountain. It looked like a giant had removed a slice of the pillar like a piece of cake.
I guesstimated the width to be nine meters wide. A single-occupancy LAV might fit inside, but the ones we’d borrowed from the local precinct seated four. Even if DeAjamae squeezed it in without scraping the wings to pieces, she’d have no room to maneuver.
It looked like I’d be going up.
I removed my DECA jacket and tossed it on the ground, trading its protection against the sharp rocks for freedom of motion. Then I removed everything from my duty belt except my blaster to lighten my weight. I’d rock climbed a few times before, but only for fun and never for speed.
A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my neck. I took my last opportunity to dry my hands and face with the hem of my shirt and noticed a dark smear. My fingers swiped across the bottom of my nose, and they came back speckled red with blood. I’d pushed my Intell too far.
Nothing to be done about it now.
I spared a few seconds to map out a route, then grabbed onto my first handhold and hoisted myself up. A niche for my right foot. The lip of a ledge for my hand. Big stretch to the sturdy root of a bush. Next, my left foot.
“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast,” I murmured to myself as I pushed off a chunk of rock with the toe of my boot. “And don’t look down.”
Of course, I looked down. Dizziness washed over me. I clung on and shut my eyes until it passed.
Keep moving.
My belly scraped against the stone.
Don’t forget to breathe.
Push, stretch, pull. Push, stretch, pull. I fell into a steady rhythm.
Something rustled above me. Loose pebbles tumbled and bounced off the surrounding rock—the only warning I had to duck before they pelted the top of my head. When they stopped, I looked up.
Above, the suspect paused and stared down at me, as if noticing me for the first time. I was close enough to make out a tattoo of a brown-and-gold snake coiled around his biceps.
He was almost to the ledge, and I was still too far away to stop him.
I drew my blaster and leveled it at him. “Halt! You’re under arrest for the murder of Representative Damaris Delligatti.”
The assassin laughed.
My hand shook, making the muzzle of my blaster wobble. Panic gripped my chest. Not now. I focused on steadying my blaster, but the more I concentrated, the more difficult it became. A spasm shot through my hand. My fingers jerked open of their own accord.
As if in slow motion, my blaster slipped from my grasp and fell. I didn’t need to look down to know there was no hope of retrieving it.
With a giant swing, the suspect threw himself up onto the ledge. One impossibly fast pull-up, and he’d made it to his ship.
I clenched my traitorous hand, gritted my teeth, and continued climbing. There was still a chance. All I needed to do was stall him until Wright caught up to us. If my Intell was good for anything, it was hacking into and interfering with electronics, but I needed to get closer to his ship to get within range.
Push, stretch, pull. My entire left arm spasmed, the movement threatening to fling me off the mountain. I plastered my body into the cliff until the cramping eased. Precious seconds ticked by.
Again. Push, stretch, pull.
The suspect walked to the edge, knocking several pebbles free to fall around me. He held a large stone above his head and hurled it at me. It slammed into the rock face above me, sending strong vibrations through the cliff before bouncing off to my side.
I blew out a breath. He missed.
Then another chunk of rock broke free from where it had hit and tumbled down. Then another and another. Rocks rained down on me. He’d thrown the boulder with such force that he’d started a rockslide.
Pain zinged through my arm and back. One hit me hard in the shoulder, pushing me from the wall. My hands, already shaky, couldn’t hold on. The next one tore me free.
I scrambled for something to grab onto, but there was nothing.
Everything happened fast after that. Air rushed by, all but drowning out the roar of the ship’s engine firing up. The cliff face was a blur of browns and mossy greens until my back slammed into something pokey and springy, slowing my fall but sending me spinning. Pain lanced through the back of my left shoulder blade.
I flung my arms out and hooked one around a scraggly branch of a bush. My shoulders screamed in protest, but I held tight.
Overhead, the suspect’s ship blasted off. Hot exhaust laden with the sharp chemical scent of sinnafuel flowed down the mountain to assault my lungs. I coughed and tried not to breathe it in. The ship shot up in a near-vertical takeoff toward the safety of outer space.
Feet dangling, I looked down. Because I was an idiot.
I’d fallen about half the distance I’d climbed, and the ground looked very, very far away. A lone figure stood near the base of the fissure.
My Intell alerted me to an incoming comm. This was one of the rare instances I was happy to have the neural impulse implant. Instead of needing to double-tap my pinkie to my thumb, I only had to approximate the movement.
I shifted most of my weight to my left hand, twitched my fingers, and opened my comm in audio only. Wright didn’t need to see how close I’d come to becoming mycoprotein paste.
“Sinclair, report. Are you okay?” His voice was calm, but I heard the tight strain of worry leaking through.
“Oh, you know, just hanging out.” Grunting, I worked my hands toward the thicker end of the branch and found a spot to wedge my foot. Relief flowed through my shoulders as some of the pressure eased.
“Hold on. I’ll have Leahy break off pursuit and circle back.”
“Don’t.” My other foot scraped along the rock until it bumped against a firm, exposed root—one that was probably attached to this same bush that had saved my life. “The passage is too narrow for the LAV, anyway. I can make it down on my own. Have her stay with the assassin.”
If we lost him now, it would be my fault. I’d had him in my sights. If my hands hadn’t been too shaky to shoot, we’d be slapping the augmented restraints on him right now. A heaviness formed in my chest—a black hole that threatened to suck everything into it.
Chapter 8
Thirty minutes later, I eased my butt into the rear seat of the LAV. I winced when the movement jarred my shoulder. DeAjamae handed the med kit back to Wright. He dug around in it and pulled out tweezers, a bottle of antiseptic, a sterile pad of gauze, a tube of regenerative salve, and a medium-sized GraftPatch.
As it turned out, DeAjamae and Ravi had gotten back to the ship and into the air too late, anyway. She’d followed the assassin as high as the LAV could fly, but he’d reached the lower atmosphere before she could catch up. LAVs were called low altitude vehicles for a reason. They weren’t built to fly that high. She was lucky the engine hadn’t snubbed out on her at eight kilometers.
The Lapidea DECA office hadn’t scrambled cruisers fast enough to follow the ship into space, either. So that was that. Our best lead in months was gone, a confirmed bionic weapon was loose in the galaxy, and Ritru-6 was in turmoil over the assassination of one of its representatives—all because I couldn’t take a straight shot.
Wright had me turn so my back was to him. My shirt was ruined. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that.
“Just cut it away.”
He used a pocketknife to slice at a section of the material and teased the frayed fabric from my skin. Then he picked out any pebbles and bits of thread with the tweezers and rinsed the abraded skin with the antiseptic.
I jerked and hissed when the stinging liquid hit the raw wound.
“Almost done.” He patted the area dry with the sterile pad.
DeAjamae glanced back. Her face turned a little green. Eww, she mouthed to me.
“How bad is it?” I asked, twisting around to assess the damage for myself.
Wright pushed my head back with a finger to my temple. “Hold still.” He squirted regenerative salve over the whole thing, then pressed on the GraftPatch to hold the skin together and keep the salve from rubbing off. “It doesn’t look too deep, but you’re going to need stitches. You’re lucky this is all you got. You could have broken your neck in that fall. I want you to report to the precinct’s infirmary and have a doctor check it out.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I said.
DeAjamae’s nose scrunched up, and she nodded emphatically. “It’s that bad.”
Wright repacked the med kit. The two tiny clasps snapped shut with a sharp snick.
“What are our next steps?” I asked.
“We’re dropping you off at the infirmary. While you’re there, we’ll meet with Chief Abara for a debriefing.”
“I should go—”
Wright held up a hand. “Nonnegotiable. We’ll fill you in after you get the all clear.”
A hearty knock sounded on the door to my minuscule patient’s room.
“Come in,” I said and adjusted the hospital gown to make sure none of my bits and pieces showed.
A tall woman entered. She wore a blue doctor’s coat and had a high-end, gold cuff strapped around her forearm. Her dark brown hair was threaded with light-blue highlights, micro-braided, and pulled into a thick braid. A golden-furred service dog padded in beside her. It sat near the wall console, and I had to restrain myself from petting it. It was on duty.
“Officer Reliance Sinclair?”
“That’s me.”
She smiled and extended her hand. “Hello, I’m Doctor Whalen.” Her handshake was firm. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I was going over your medical file. You’ve had a lot of tests in the last six months. I find the neural impulse chip quite fascinating from a medical standpoint.”
Her and every other doctor I’d seen. I gave her a weak smile. “I don’t know much about it—from a medical standpoint.”
“They haven’t figured out how to remove it?”
“Not without killing me. Something about it grafting to my brain stem or central nervous system or something.”
“Fascinating.”
“Sure is.” I retucked my hospital gown under my thighs. My feet were freezing. Would it kill them to set the climate controls a little warmer?
Doctor Whalen sat on the short stool in front of the console and waved her hand to wake up the device. After a quick scan of her cuff’s credentials, the DECA logo on the lock screen disappeared. She pulled up my file. “Your diagnostic results are good. No broken bones or early signs of infection. How are you feeling?”
Her accent had a softness to it and a lyrical tone that made me think she was from one of the Fleur-de-lis systems. Avignon perhaps, although I’d only visited there a few times.
“Great. Ready to get back to work. If you could sign off on that form.”
Her lips grew into a thin, pink line. “The note from your supervisor describes a pretty nasty fall. Even without your injury, you’re entitled to two weeks’ medical leave for mental health after a traumatic event like that.”
Medical leave was the last thing I wanted. “Not necessary.”
“Hmm.” She sounded unconvinced. “How is that shoulder feeling now?”
I rolled my left arm. The dissolving stitches the nurse had put in tugged at my skin. “A little stiff, but nothing that’ll stop me from performing my duties.”
“Let’s take a peek, shall we?” She moved behind me, unfastened the snap at the neck of the gown, and pulled it to the side. “Can you raise your arm?”
I did so, keeping my facial expression neutral even when pain zinged through my upper back.
“And what about this?” she asked, brushing the tip of her finger against the pink scar at the nape of my neck. “Did you hit your head at all? Any complications with the chip?”
I turned to face Doctor Whalen, using it as an excuse to duck away from her probing touch. “I didn’t, and the chip is performing the same.”
“Is there anything that would make you unfit for duty? Physical, mental, or emotional?”
My throat tightened. “Nope.”
She sat back down on the stool and aerial scribed some notes into my file. “All right, I don’t see any reason you can’t return to work as long as you take it easy with that arm. Please follow up with your primary care doctor on Andaress-4 in two weeks to make sure everything is healing well. You can get dressed now. The nurse will come back with your medical clearance codes.”
“Thank you.” I fiddled with the hem of the hospital gown to avoid looking her in the eye. Wright needed the codes to approve my time. Once I had them, I could get back out in the field.
Doctor Whalen walked to the door. Her service dog stood with a shake and padded beside her.
Once they were out of the room, I changed back into my uniform pants, long-sleeved shirt, and green DECA jacket. The nurse knocked as I finished tying my boots and gave me the codes.
