Exodus, page 55
In truth, Medusa had been half expecting the rendezvous coordinates to be some weird distraction, or at least a loyalty test to see if she would actually do as asked, but the message from Sahdiah had been explicit; he wanted to discuss Marcellu’s murder. So she’d followed instructions and hired the Arcadia’s Moon to fly so far out from Anoosha they were practically in interstellar space, where only frozen comets and the Mara Yama lived.
Until now. Seven minutes ago, the ship’s optical sensors had detected the very faint profile of an asteroid. Studying it in the bridge’s projector, Medusa wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The strange, bulging surface was coated in some kind of astrofungus, but she’d never heard of a variety that could survive this far from a star. It was cold out here.
“Oh, it’s definitely in a different orbit,” Andino agreed. Her cymech arms whirred softly as she gestured at the projection. “Last time we rendezvoused with it, we were in the Malakbel system.”
“Huh?” Medusa didn’t understand what the captain was saying. Andino was rumored to have a massive dilated age, but…“You mean it drifted here after the Formation War?”
“I don’t know what dumb gossip you’ve latched onto, but even I haven’t been around that long. No, this arrived in system very recently. It either flew here from Malakbel at about ten percent lightspeed, or it traveled through the Gate of Heaven pathway.”
“But it’s an asteroid.”
“Uuumm, not sure it is, actually. It just wants people to think that.”
“It wants?”
“Its captain. I’m considering it might be a flip-ship.”
Medusa tried to gauge if Andino was mocking her. “That’s just a Traveler myth. There’s no such thing.”
“You sure about that? We’re talking top-end Celestial technology, maybe even Elohim level.”
“Yeah, but a ship that can transubstantiate at a molecular level? Come on!”
“Who knows what they’ve actually got? Especially their archons.”
“Asteria’s ass,” Medusa muttered, and gave the asteroid a mistrustful look.
“Okay, the bad news is we can’t dock with it when it’s in this configuration. But you can put on an AEGIS suit and get inside the good old-fashioned way. Marcellu said the airlock system can get a little sticky, mind.”
* * *
—
Medusa cursed Andino’s disingenuous comment as she negotiated the thick treacle-like membranes. There were seven of the viscous sheets to claw and wiggle her way through before she made it into the asteroid’s big central cavern. She stared around at the lumpy surface with its hundreds of cavities all sealed over with more of the amber membranes. Everything she was seeing was biotech, so there was no way it could transubstantiate. Right?
She told the suit manager to open a general channel. “Okay, so now what?”
“Medusa, so good of you to come. Thank you.”
The signal registered as omnidirectional, and there was no figure in sight, humanoid or otherwise. “Are you Sahdiah?”
“Indeed I am.”
“Figured. The messages that kept coming after Marcellu was taken out had the same authentication code.” She scanned the AEGIS suit’s passive sensors around the cavern, unsettled by the movements visible beneath all the membranes. Even then she held back from switching to active scan; no telling how the archon would interpret that.
“My senior representative in this system reports that you have performed well,” Sahdiah said.
“Plenty of practice. I was running Marcellu’s network while he was away at Terrik Papuan.”
“I would like you to continue that operation.”
“I dunno. It’s a big job. I have been getting other offers. Maybe I should move on, before people start thinking I’ve grown stale.”
“If you require a higher level of financial recompense, please say so. We are not in an Old Earth street market haggling over the price of an apple.”
“Okay, I want a big pay bump.”
“Of course.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Great.”
“Your new position comes with additional responsibilities.”
“Here we go. Such as?”
“Marcellu’s murder was an extraordinary act. It cannot go unpunished.”
“Right, I get that. But really? Extraordinary? He was your spymaster for Anoosha. He knew the risk.”
“That, Medusa, is not part of the game archons play. We engage via proxies; we do not go head-to-head. I would not consider removing Olomo’s agents unless the situation was spiraling completely out of control. I am at a loss to explain why he ordered Marcellu’s execution. Nothing is occurring in the Kelowan system that warrants such an action.”
“Er, hello, Dolod incoming? A fucking iron exotic? It’s like the most major deal humans have ever known. If the Imperial Celestials start harvesting iron rain, it’s going to kick the shit out of Anoosha’s entire economy.”
“Yes: the human economy. I will be honest with you, the empress and her sister queens do not care about that. They only wish to bolster the outcome in favor of the Celestials. The closest they will come to intervention is minimizing the infighting between their Grand Families to benefit from Dolod once it starts to heat up.”
“So why do you think Olomo had Marcellu killed?”
“I don’t know. I cannot even be certain it was Olomo; there is a remote possibility it was the Mara Yama, or even Makaio-Faraji going rogue—which admittedly is even more unlikely. And this uncertainty bothers me. For all that Marcellu was my agent, there are others. My intelligence-gathering operations across this system have redundancies built in. Every archon does that; it is basic tradecraft. Which makes this action even stranger. Nothing else has been disrupted. You, for instance, were not eliminated. I continue to receive excellent information on the activities of the Traveler Dynasties and Anoosha’s political movements, as well as the idiosyncratic Regal Democrat movement Josias Aponi has founded for reasons that elude me. There was no point to removing Marcellu, not in isolation. Even if every one of my operatives had been killed, each network broken, I would simply rebuild them. I need to know who ordered Marcellu’s death. Once I know that, we can start to understand the reason.”
“I’ll do what I can. But Asteria knows I made a hell of an effort when it happened, and that was four years ago. Why are you interested now?”
“Because I am here now. It took several years for the news of Marcellu to reach me. I came to Kelowan as soon as practical.”
“Yeah, Andino said this…asteroid was in the Malakbel system.”
“Somewhere like that, indeed. Now, Marcellu’s murder—”
“The only possible clue we have is that forensic thinks he might have been decapitated by a Cherenkov blade. Apart from that, nothing. This is one very cold case now.”
“From your perspective. That is why I will authorize more overt methods of inquiry. Someone knows something. And thanks to the informers you and Marcellu recruited, we know the identity of the gangs and mercenaries capable of carrying out this act. Start to bring in the key personnel—quietly, mind—and interrogate them properly.”
“How properly do you want me to be?”
“Absolute. I will provide you with the necessary medical facilities to ensure their total cooperation. Start by finding out who possessed a Cherenkov blade.”
“No shit? I wish I’d thought of that.”
“I find sarcasm to be a less than endearing human trait. Please don’t use it again.”
“Right.”
“And, Medusa, whoever did this will not want to be caught, so I’d advise you take care.”
“Oh, that you can count on.”
* * *
—
It wasn’t just down to luck. Two of Terence’s informers had tipped him off about the hit, betraying their fellow gang members in the process. The target was a man called Bopbe, a known member of the D’jarfou gang on Anoosha. For some reason he’d immigrated to the calmer environment of Santa Rosa four months ago, and was settling into a life of pettiness on the edge of the city’s underworld. Now it turned out he’d been followed to Gondiar by Varmor. Terence didn’t have any details on her, but she certainly seemed familiar with the D-hazers, a gang operating along the eastern edge of Santa Rosa. She contracted them to help her snatch Bopbe. Prewarned by the informants, Terence even managed to infiltrate a trio of sensor insects into the bar the D-hazers used and record the operation’s briefing.
A squad from the Santa Rosa Armed Tactical Division was in position two blocks away from Dearag Avenue when Bopbe arrived. Varmor’s commercial van pulled up behind him. Thankfully it was late at night, and there were few pedestrians or globecabs about, because that’s when all hell broke loose.
Terence and Lućia were wearing light armor when they arrived, panting, at the scene. Their field center vehicle was parked two hundred meters away from the Oberstul block where Bopbe had an apartment, and they’d run the whole distance. Local fire-andys were already on scene, nozzles swishing retardant powder over the flames; first medic andys were attending the wounded. Three of the ATD squad had removed sections of armor to receive treatment. Terence gave the wounds a guilty grimace as he hurried past.
Dearag Avenue was illuminated by the fluctuating strobes of police cars that had just arrived. Officers were spilling out, pointing weapons around in a way that made Terence frown. Does everyone forget their training when they’re under stress? Awakened Alsatians prowled about.
“Sweet Asteria,” Lućia muttered as they took in the damage. “Did they have a kiloton EMP or something?”
“Something similar, definitely,” Terence conceded. He eyed the motionless andys and globecabs that had stalled mid-operation; his CI couldn’t lnc to anything along the broad street. Sergeant Yelice from the ATS was heading toward them. He’d dumped his armor and held a fat-barreled kinetic carbine in his left hand.
“What happened?” Terence asked him.
“Varmor’s people made their move on Bopbe as he reached the Oberstul’s entrance. That’s when we joined the party. After that—” He shrugged angrily. “We blackcrashed. Comms, sensors, suit actuators, weapons…all of it started glitching. I don’t know what the hell they used, but it was scary powerful.”
“Your suits glitched?” Terence asked.
“Yeah.”
“That shouldn’t happen. They’re hardened systems.”
“Yet here we are.” Yelice shrugged.
“Has to be a k-EMP,” Lućia said decisively.
“Who was shooting at you?” Terence asked.
“Varmor’s people, I think. It happened fast. We were taking a lot of impacts and returned fire. Then Bopbe started shooting. Next thing, the snatch squad is dead and half the street’s getting pummeled.”
Terence looked around at the smoldering holes in the livestone blocks along the road. A pair of legs were sticking out from under a pile of rubble, with a puddle of blood spreading slowly around them. Whoever it was, they weren’t wearing armor, so not police. It was a relief. Then he immediately felt guilty about thinking that. “Where’s Varmor?”
Yelice pointed his carbine at the wreckage of the commercial van. “She was making a run for it.” The cab was a twisted nest of metal, surrounded by three medium-size fire-andys, who were still jetting blue-tinged suppressant foam across it. The rear cargo section had rolled ninety degrees to lie on its side, the back doors hanging loose.
Terence and Lućia drew their pistols and approached it cautiously. The inside was dark. “Amplify sight,” Terence told the suit manager. A green and gray overlay image spread over his visor. There were no strong heat sources inside the cargo section, and certainly nothing big enough to be a human. But there was a pallet loaded with what looked like a paramedic gurney and a stack of medical equipment.
“What the hell…?” Yelice asked.
“No idea,” Terence admitted. Keeping the pistol high and ready, he moved cautiously into the back of the vehicle. A couple of steps in he saw the restraints on the gurney. “It wasn’t a hit.”
“What?” Lućia asked.
“They weren’t killing Bopbe, they were trying to capture him. Shit—” He hurried back out onto the road and raised his voice. “Has anyone seen Bopbe?”
The question was met by blank looks. His CI was throwing up status graphics in his eyes, showing him that the officers arriving all had functioning comms through the secure police network. “I want a search pattern launched now,” he said. “Coordinate your pattern with Lieutenant Myolin in the field center. Spread out from here, check for broken doors and windows on all blocks; he may be hiding inside. Traffic to halt all vehicles within a five-block radius; shut everything down. This is our target.” He told the CI to distribute images of Bopbe to everyone in the search. “If you observe the target, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to apprehend them. Alert me, and we will deploy a properly equipped team.”
Terence took a long breath and started jogging back toward the field center. On the way he ordered the CI to run its own search routines for any kind of digital footprint Bopbe might have left in Santa Rosa’s network. By the time he got back to the gray, egg-shaped vehicle housing their field center, he was breathing heavily and wiping sweat from his forehead. The hatch at the back slid up. Inside, Lieutenant Myolin was sitting in the operation coordination chair, almost invisible inside a bright sphere of holographic data.
“Any trace?” Terence asked. He knew there wasn’t but—personal touch.
Myolin didn’t even look round. “No, sir.”
“And there isn’t going to be, is there?” Lućia said quietly.
“No,” Terence admitted. “How far does the network burn-out extend?” he asked Myolin.
“Two blocks out from the Oberstul, sir.”
“Right, establish a cordon three blocks out from there. Once we’ve confirmed Bopbe isn’t on the street, I want every building within that cordon quarantined. Nobody in, nobody out. Call in all the officers we need and launch a search of every block inside the cordon. I’ll clear it with headquarters.”
“Yes, chief.”
The pair of them stepped back from the vehicle, and the hatch slid down.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?” Lućia asked, trying to suppress her excitement. “There’s another archon’s network active here.”
“Starting to look that way.” Terence couldn’t help a smile. And the irony’s a killer. A decade and a half quietly building up informer networks and running endless pattern analysis looking for the most subtle clue, then this. “Whatever weapons Bopbe used here, they’re a level above anything the gangs have. There’s nothing left of Varmor’s people.”
“He could’ve done the same to Yelice’s team, too.”
“Yeah, I know. But he didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“One thing Makaio-Faraji doesn’t want from us is an incident. The emphasis has always been on quietly building up information. I guess the same applies to whoever was running Bopbe. The archons all operate in the shadows. It gives them deniability. I mean, to anyone else this looks like a gang fight using Remnant Era weapons. Lots of outrage, especially about the casualties, but not too unusual.”
“And the gear in the back of Varmor’s van?”
“Someone urgently wanted to talk to Bopbe. Very urgently, is my guess. It was a damn sight more than a simple kidnapping. The medical gear was designed to keep Bopbe alive and incapacitated; Varmor was going to deliver him to someone. And that someone wasn’t us.” He gave Lućia a significant look. “A third archon.”
“Yes! What a breakthrough. So we have to bring in Bopbe.”
“We do. You know what that means?”
“I’m on.”
“Yeah. I’ll have the next AT squad issued with some convincing firepower, but when we find him, you’ll need to take point.”
She grinned hungrily. “Are you not going to join the fun?”
“Firstly, it’s not fun. You need to be seriously careful when you engage him. Secondly…no, I’m getting past that kind of thing.”
“Never!”
“You can stop the flattery. I’m management, not frontline, not anymore. Besides, I have kids.”
“You missed your vocation, boss. You should be running risk assessment for insurance companies.”
“Don’t be nasty. But I am wondering what Bopbe has done to warrant someone coming after him from Anoosha. We’re not doing our job properly.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Whatever Bopbe did, it was important enough to launch an interplanetary abduction mission. That’s not nothing. Yet none of our informers picked up on anything unusual.”
“Only one way to find out,” Lućia said cheerfully.
“Yeah, ask Bopbe. But he’s a wanted man. He knows the Santa Rosa police now are balls-out after him, as well as whoever sent Varmor. There’s only one thing he can do.”
“Get offworld.”
“Right. I’ll bet that right now he’s heading for a reprofiling clinic to get himself a whole new body shape for a trip up the tower. That’s where we start searching. We’ve got informers in most clinics. Wake ’em up and shake ’em up. I want to know who’s undergoing any kind of morph.”
“I’m on it.”
* * *
—
Terence tried not to feel too smug twenty hours later when Lućia and her tactical team intercepted Brando Pequita in Santa Rosa’s tower station. The reprofiling clinic had done a good job. Bopbe was eight kilos heavier thanks to a band of abdominal fat that’d been inserted, as well as smaller infusions to bloat the face. His hair was thinner and a different color, his skin was lighter, and fingerprints and retina patterns didn’t match the ones filed when he came down the tower.
