The Dyson File, page 19
“Can you show us a visual of the bin?”
“Sure. I can move an idle crane over to it.”
Marrow took manual control of a crane that wasn’t in the middle of processing any orders. He brought up the visual feed from its onboard cameras, drove the crane into desired position, then raised the hoist until it was near the roof of the logistics center.
“Is that it?” Isaac asked once the view had settled.
“Yeah?” Marrow replied, sounding unsure of himself.
“That bin’s not empty,” Susan observed.
“What’s that in the bin?” Isaac asked.
“Looks to be an unmarked shipping container.” Marrow tapped one of his screens. “But that shouldn’t be there. The system says its empty.”
“How often do you visually inspect the bins?”
“Almost never. No need unless there’s a problem, like damage to the bin.”
“Then this container could have been here for a while and you’d never know it.”
“Yeah, I suppose it could have been.”
“We need to get out there and take a look inside,” Susan said.
“Agreed. How about it, Marrow? Can you get us inside that container?”
“I can do you one better.” Marrow entered a manual command. Arms extended from the crane, latched onto the container, and pulled it out of the bin. Clamps locked the container in place, and Marrow recalled the crane. “Okay, bin’s on its way back to the maintenance access platform. That’s right down the hall. Can’t miss it. The crane will drop it off, and you can check it out from there.”
“Thank you.” Isaac turned to Susan. “Let’s see what we find.”
* * *
The maintenance access area was a small, open platform that extended into the crane transit trench like a metal peninsula surrounded by virtual warning signs on three sides. According to the sign text, nearby cranes would shut down if anyone tried to climb off the platform.
Susan watched the crane with their mystery container speed toward them, the hoist descending with the container attached. It looked like it would crash into them, but then multiple axes braked at the same time, and the container came to rest in front of them with feathery lightness. Virtual warning signs shifted outward, permitting access to the short side of the docked container.
Noise filled the chamber: the whine of cranes and hoists, the squeal of brakes, and the clank of clamping mechanisms. But her synthoid hearing could parse out overlapping sounds, separating them for her mind to process, and that’s why she heard a strange noise from within the container.
“What are you doing?” a voice hissed from inside the container, barely loud enough for even her hearing to pick up, followed by the ultrasonic whine of a capacitor charging.
“Get down!” She launched herself toward Isaac, responding to the danger automatically. She grabbed the top of his head and shoved him down, even as her body passed in front of his.
Gunshots punched through the container wall, leaving holes in the metal large enough to stick her thumb through. The first mag dart sailed over their heads and left a divot in the far wall, but the next two struck Susan in the back. Would have hit Isaac if she hadn’t leaped in front of him. Her uniform’s smart fabric stiffened, distributing the force over a larger area, but the darts still possessed enough kinetic kick to pierce through, even after perforating the container wall.
Her weight drove Isaac to the ground, and she landed on top of him.
“Oof!” Isaac gasped, sandwiched between the ground and Susan’s body.
The LENS dropped down next to them and expanded its outer shell to either side, forming a prog-steel barrier between the two detectives and the container. Sustained fire rang out, and more shots blasted chunks of plastic off the back wall. Some of the chunks pattered off Susan’s back.
“You all right?” she asked, her face a hair’s breadth away from Isaac’s.
“Fine,” he wheezed. “You?”
“Umm.” She ran a quick self-check. “I’m okay. My shoulder blade stopped the bullets.”
Another burst of fire rang out from the container, punching more holes in the outer surface. A few shots thwacked into the LENS’ impromptu barrier.
Isaac flinched from a loud ricochet.
“Two assailants inside,” Cephalie reported. “Both organic and armed.”
“Stay down.” Susan patted her partner on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Be careful,” he rasped.
“Always.” She drew her Popular Arsenals PA5 “Neutralizer” anti-synthoid hand cannon, which was the most devastating sidearm available to Themis Division detectives. “Cephalie, keep him covered.”
“You’ve got it.”
The shooting stopped, and Susan listened for some indication of what the assailants planned next.
“You think we got them?” came a gruff voice from within the container.
“How the fuck should I know?” The second voice sounded scared.
“Go out there and check.”
“Why do I have to check? You do it!”
“You want me to report you to the boss?”
“Fuck you, man! I’m not going out there!”
Someone grumbled what might have been an obscenity. Footsteps approached the container door. A latch clanked aside, and the door slid open.
Susan sprang from cover, pistol aimed over the LENS barrier.
“Freeze! Police!”
A stocky man stood in the container’s threshold, burst pistol held loosely in one hand. His head was shaved except for two thin strips of hair dyed electric blue that ran back along his scalp like a crest. He wore a black vest over a bright blue T-shirt and pair of baggy blue-and-black checkered pants. His nose, the bottom of his lip, and both ears were pierced, some of them with blue stones that might have been synthetic sapphires.
He sneered as he swung his pistol toward her, but his organic reflexes couldn’t match a militarized synthoid.
Susan fired a single, precise shot. The mag dart punched through the frame of his weapon and whipped it out of his hands so hard the force dislocated two of his fingers. He cried out, hand recoiling, and Susan leaped over the barrier. She grabbed him by the shirt with her free hand and drove him to the ground.
“Stop right there!” she shouted, leveling her pistol at the second man, still in the container, which looked more like the inside of someone’s apartment than a box used to transport freight. She spotted a pair of bunks, a food printer, and dense racks of infosystem nodes that nearly covered one of the long walls.
The thin stick of a man stood with his back pressed against the nodes. He possessed long, oily hair dyed blue and a blue vest open to reveal the thin fuzz of his chest hairs and a few pornographic tattoos.
“Shit!” The second assailant turned and ran. He grabbed hold of the rungs of a ladder that led to a hatch on top of the container and began to climb.
“Cephalie, secure this one!” Susan didn’t wait for the AC’s response. She holstered her pistol and sprinted forward, clearing the space between her and the lanky man in an instant. She ripped the pistol from his fingers and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Fuck!” he cried as she pulled him off the ladder. He landed on his back, and she turned him over and pinned him in place, arm twisted into the small of his back. She secured his wrists with a prog-steel cuff from her belt, then checked back on the first assailant to find the LENS hovering over him, his limbs secured by the drone’s pseudopods.
Isaac climbed back to his feet and dusted himself off. He took a long, slow breath to compose himself, then walked up to the edge of the container and poked a finger through one of the bullet holes. He frowned at the hole, perhaps realizing one or more of those could have been through him, then gave the stocky assailant a disapproving scowl.
“Got anything to say for yourself?”
“You fucking broke my fingers!” The attacker tried to raise his injured hand but only managed to wiggle it thanks to the LENS holding him down. Two of his fingers flopped over, hanging perpendicular to the rest of his hand. His eyes began to tear up, and he bit into his lower lip.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Isaac replied dryly. “Perhaps if you would refrain from committing crimes—shooting at the police, for instance—we could have avoided this.”
“Aren’t you a fucking comedian?”
Isaac dropped to one knee next to the prisoner and picked up the broken barrel of a pistol.
“You have a permit for this weapon? Or should I add illegal replication to the growing list of charges? We’ve already got some real winners with two counts of attempted murder of a police officer on top of trespassing and whatever all that is for.” Isaac indicated the infosystems in the container with a wave of the barrel.
The prisoner turned his head away.
“How about this, then?” Isaac continued. “Mind explaining what you two were doing hiding out in a container that shouldn’t exist?”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“Not the first time I’ve been told that. Fine. Suit yourself. Let’s see if your mood changes after you’ve stewed in a cell overnight.” Isaac tossed the barrel aside and stood up. He opened a comm window. “Dispatch.”
“Themis Dispatch here. Are you all right, Detective? Your LENS sent out several automated alerts.”
“We’re fine. I need SSP at my location. Two unidentified ‘guests’ for pickup.” He glanced at the first assailant’s dangling fingers. “And I suppose you should call a medical team, too.”
* * *
A pair of medical technicians arrived first, parking their white-and-red quadcopter beside the detectives’ rental, where the LENS had brought the two bound prisoners.
The LENS stayed close, signaling all nearby infostructure to ignore the prisoners’ wetware, effectively placing them in a crude form of data isolation.
The medics treated the stocky prisoner’s broken fingers first, setting the digits and injecting the site with medibots. They then applied a medibot wrap around the base of the two fingers, both to secure the injury site and to introduce a steady stream of tiny medical robots to accelerate the healing process.
The two medics then turned their attention to Susan. She opened a seam in her uniform’s smart fabric down along her spine, revealing two small holes in her cosmetic layer along with abstract artwork that covered most of her back. A skull-headed woman in billowing robes floated on her back, crowned in a silver circlet with a long scroll of parchment held in one bony hand. The parchment was blank because she’d disabled the text. Normally it read: “If you can see this, you’re in big trouble.”
One technician removed the two mag darts from underneath her cosmetic skin. Both had flattened against her shoulder blade. The second technician applied a general-purpose sealant to the holes, configured to blend in with her skin tone. Her self-diagnostics told her it wasn’t exactly good as new—that would have required printing out a replacement skin patch and grafting it in place—but she asked for Isaac’s opinion, just in case.
“Looks fine,” he reported after inspecting her back. “I can hardly tell you’ve been shot.”
“Good enough for me,” she replied.
The techs closed the seam in her uniform, and she stood up and joined Isaac by the car.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, speaking in security chat since the prisoners were close enough to listen.
“No problems to report. You?”
“Feeling like I could go for a stiff drink. That was . . . closer than I’m used to. I think we’ll call it a day after this. It’s getting late anyway.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The medical team packed up and took off. The two detectives stood in silence, watching the city’s aerial traffic fly past them.
“Thanks, by the way,” Isaac said to her after a while.
“For what?” Susan asked.
“For taking those hits for me.”
“Oh, that was nothing.”
“No, I mean it. Cephalie would have tried to protect me with the LENS, but I’m not sure she would have been fast enough.”
“Yeah, about that.” Cephalie appeared on his shoulder. “I’d say you’d have at least one extra hole in you if it weren’t for Susan.” She gave his earlobe a virtual thwack from her cane. “So be grateful, you hear me?”
“I am grateful. Don’t you hear me thanking her?”
“With feeling, Isaac. With feeling.”
He rolled his eyes.
Susan did her best to hide her chuckle. She didn’t think Isaac noticed.
An SSP quadcopter dipped away from the aerial traffic and slowed as it approached the parking lot. It turned so its side faced the two detectives, then settled down near them.
Susan’s eyebrows perked up when she saw the precinct and copter numbers.
“Are we still in the one-oh-third precinct all the way out here?”
“No,” Isaac said. “Dispatch must have called them over since they’re already involved in the case.”
“Well, well, well!” Chatelain chortled as he stepped out of the copter. “You two just couldn’t get enough of us, could you?”
“Something like that.” Isaac gestured over to the prisoners. “We found these two in a shipping container of all places. Take them back to the station and run them through the system. My guess is you’ll get some prior hits.”
“Will do. Parks?”
“On it, Sarge.” Parks appeared next to the prisoners and summoned the conveyor drone docked to the copter’s roof. The drone grabbed hold of each prisoner’s bonds and hauled them into the copter.
Once the assailants were secured, Chatelain turned back to Isaac.
“You found these losers in a shipping container?”
“Right before they opened fire on us,” Isaac said, then nodded to Parks. “Trooper, the more we work this case, the more on point your hunch is turning out. You were right to call us in.”
Parks smiled at the compliment.
“That’s high praise coming from him,” Susan tossed in conversationally.
Parks’ smile vanished, and his demeanor turned frigid and businesslike. Susan wanted to kick herself for opening her mouth.
“You think these two are tied to Velasco’s suicide?” Chatelain asked. “How?”
“Not sure yet,” Isaac said. “We’ll give your precinct some time to process them, then we’ll check back first thing in the morning. Perhaps we’ll have enough to put the pieces together by then. Either way, I appreciate your partner’s initiative. We’re uncovering something here. That much I’m certain of.”
“Don’t encourage him. His head’s getting big enough as it is.”
“Just voicing my honest opinion.”
“Need anything else from us?” Chatelain pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Or are we free to haul this human refuse back to the station?”
“That’ll be all for now, thank you.”
Chatelain bobbed his head back to the copter. “Let’s go, Rainy.”
Chatelain climbed into the copter, and Parks guided the conveyor into its cradle near the back of the vehicle.
“Rainy?” Susan asked in another attempt to break the ice. “As in Rainy Parks? Is there a good story behind the nickname?”
Parks blinked, his lips curling into an uncomfortable frown.
“Trooper?” Isaac said. “I believe my partner asked you a question.”
“It’s just a silly name the other troopers use. No need to make a big deal about it. I was raised by storm clouds, so I guess someone thinks the name is clever. Parks, and storms, and rain.”
“Parks?” Chatelain urged from inside the copter.
“Coming, Sarge.”
Chatelain sealed up the quadcopter, and Parks’ avatar vanished. The four rotors spun up, and the copter lifted off.
Isaac and Susan watched it fly away, both silent for a while.
“Did he just tell us he was raised by storm clouds?” she asked.
“That’s what I heard.”
“Is being raised by storm clouds a thing here in SysGov?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Any idea what he meant by it?”
“Not a clue.”
“Raviv’s calling,” Cephalie said, the LENS floating over to join them. “He wants a status update.”
“Is that really what he told you?” Isaac asked.
“More like ‘What’s taking those two so long?’ But you know the drill by now.”
“Put him through, then.”
A comm window opened in front of Isaac, and Raviv appeared with Damphart in the background.
“Hello, boss,” Isaac said. “What can I do for you?”
“Isaac, you two still on that suicide case?”
“We are. This case is turning out to be more complex than it first appeared.”
“Then I take it you’re not free to join us in the Second Engine Block anytime soon?”
“Not unless you want us to drop this case.”
“No, see it through. What sort of stuff are you running into?”
“Well, for one, we were shot at today by two punks hiding out in a logistics center.”
“Oh, damn.” Raviv’s eyes widened with concern. “You two okay?”
“Susan was hit twice in the back. She’s fine.”
“And you?”
“My nerves are a little on the frayed side, but that’s it. I’ll live.”
“Don’t get yourselves hurt or killed over this. It’s not worth it.”
“We’ll do our best.”
“You’d better.” Raviv let out a long exhale. “All right. Stick to your current case, but if you free up, let me know immediately.”
“Sure thing, though I’m surprised to hear you’re with Damphart already. What changed?”
“Politics. What else? Heppleman made a big stink in a press conference today about the lack of ‘seriousness’ on the part of SysPol.”
“Who’s Heppleman?” Susan asked.
“The SSP colonel,” Isaac said. “Highest rank in the Saturn State.”
“And a pain in my ass,” Raviv growled. “I’m performing damage control over here while Damphart works the case. Arete and Argo divisions are both making moves to bulk up their presence here, and I was hoping we could do the same, if for no other reason than the favorable optics.”
