Chiral Justice: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (The Biogenesis War Book 3)

by L. L. Richman

  The guard remained implacable.

  Micah threw his hands in the air. “Okay, fine. Then you put everything back the way it was.”

  He stalked off toward the mechanics’ pit.

  The crew chief who had given him the tour of the starglider the day before shot him a sympathetic look as he came to a stop in front of them.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” he said in a low tone with a look back toward the agent. “Rumor has it they found something in the tent overnight. They’ve been a bit jumpy ever since.”

  Does he mean Snotface, or something more? Micah adopted a sardonic tone to hide his trepidation. “Not my fault they didn’t do their jobs. Don’t see why he had to take it out on me.”

  The mechanic grabbed a flathead screwdriver, and began picking grease from beneath his fingernails. Tilting his head thoughtfully, he mused, “I might not be Alliance Navy, but I’ve been around plenty of bosses in my time.” He chuckled darkly. “Someone screws up by the numbers? After they get done being chewed out, they always find someone else to take it out on. Know what I mean?”

  The truth of the man’s statement startled a rueful laugh from Micah.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “Been there.”

  The mechanic motioned toward the back of the tent. “Leastwise, sounds like your protest about getting things cleaned up got through to them. They’re checking the systems out like good little soldiers.”

  That last prompted Micah to glance at the sim units. He forced a chuckle at the mechanic’s words while inwardly cursing.

  He suspected that they were doing a bit more than just putting the equipment back where it belonged. He had a feeling he’d better get out of here before they found something he’d really rather they not—like DNA sampling nano.

  “Well,” he gave the mechanic a casual wave, “guess my work here for the day is done. Be seeing you.”

  He angled for the entrance to the tent, breathing a little easier after exiting into the bright sunlight. The minute the combat net snapped back into place, he contacted Gabe to update him on the situation.

  Dammit. Not only did he fail to retrieve the DNA, but he was certain he’d been made. Where did that leave their next move?

  KATIE’S WAR

  Bezier Foothills

  outside Founder’s Cup Fairgrounds

  Ceriba

  While Micah exchanged heated words with the agents at the back of the tent, Katie Hyer sidled closer she could hear.

  She kept her head down, pulling at the bill of her cap until it rode low on her forehead, hiding her eyes. She bent over the instrument in her hands, faking an intense interest in it.

  When she caught onto the pissing contest the security agents were waging with Micah, she shook her head and muttered, “Asswipes.”

  Behind her, she heard a choked laugh, and pivoted to see the chief mechanic standing with a grin on his face.

  He hocked and spat, wiping his grizzled chin with the dirty rag in his hands. From behind his hand, he murmured, “Girl, you’ve got that right.”

  Her lips twitched.

  He motioned her to follow him back to the pit, jutting his chin toward Micah and Garza’s goons. “The way they’re posturing reeks of make-work to me. I mean, look around you.” The mechanic twisted, gesturing around the Douglass-Washburn tent. “There’s just not a whole lot inside here that would threaten the likes of Garza, so I figure they gotta make shit up. Makes them look like they’re doing their jobs.”

  Katie just nodded.

  Under normal circumstances, she’d agree, but she knew it was likely there were enemy agents in the tent with them, right now.

  Of course, I can’t exactly come out and tell the guy that….

  The mechanic beside her snorted, and teased, “You ain’t got that thing cleared yet?”

  She looked up in confusion, and then down at the object in her hands. The pitot-static tube was a simple flow-measurement device that read atmospheric speed and pressure changes. It had been built into the starglider’s fuselage as a mechanical backup to more sophisticated systems.

  Seeing as the thing was probably the simplest piece of equipment on the entire starglider, it certainly hadn’t warranted the amount of attention Katie was giving it, and the man knew it. The amusement in his tone informed her that he was well aware of the fact that she’d been eavesdropping, but wasn’t going to give her away.

  She smiled a silent thanks that morphed into a mischievous half grin. “You never know,” she drawled. “Some bird might’ve decided to take a crap in it.”

  The man hooted a laugh, slapping the table with his grease-stained rag. “While it was in your hands? Bold bird. Microscopic one, too.”

  Still chuckling, the man turned to walk away just as Micah passed the pit.

  Katie made fleeting eye contact with the captain as he stopped to chat with the chief mechanic for a bit. She caught his slight headshake, confirming her concerns.

  He’d been unable to retrieve the DNA sample from Garza’s gloves.

  I’ll have to risk it myself.

  She chanced another look at the back of the tent, where the agents had finished setting the equipment down and were in the process of shutting off the simulators. One of the men had a glove in his hand, and turned to shoot a suspicious look Micah’s way.

  Uh-oh. Maybe there won’t be anything for me to retrieve, after all.

  Had Katie’s eyes not been on that agent at that exact moment, she would have missed the signal the man passed to his counterparts at the front of the tent.

  Ducking her head once more, she peered up from underneath the bill of her cap to see a pair of agents duck out of the tent and turn to follow Micah’s departing figure.

  Dammit. Now what do I do?

  The encrypted network set up inside the tent meant that she didn’t dare try to contact anyone.

  On impulse, she grabbed an empty bucket and turned to the grizzled man beside her. “You know, I just realized we’re getting low on cleaner. You have extra stored in the crates stashed against the back of the tent, right?”

  The mechanic nodded absently, his gaze once more on the spar he’d been working on.

  Katie wiped her hands on her coveralls and stepped away from the table. “Cool. Be right back.” She pivoted and jogged toward the tent’s entrance.

  Deciding that the best way to hide was in plain sight, she turned halfway to the opening. Voice raised, she asked the mechanic, “Want anything else while I’m gone? A beer, or maybe one of those roasted turkey leg things they sell at the vendor carts?”

  The mechanic pulled off his hat, wiped his brow, and cast his eyes overhead in thought. Settling his hat back in place, he called out, “Funnel cake.”

  “Oh yeah.” Katie gave him a thumbs-up. “Now you’re talking.”

  Exiting the tent, she turned the opposite direction Micah had left to get to the back of the tent where the spare parts were stored. She’d planned on ditching the bucket there, too, but as she moved to set it down, an open bin filled with small, metallic parts and ball bearings caught her eye.

  Dipping her hand into the container, her hands connected with the small, round spheres, and impulse had her scooping them into her bucket, along with a few small bits of unfinished metal with jagged edges.

  Better to be armed with something unconventional than not to be armed at all.

  At the front of the tent once more, Katie spied Micah up ahead. She was relieved to see that the man and woman following him seemed content to do just that. Still, she set out after them, keeping a generous space between herself and the agents.

  Then a man stepped out from between two tents, his eyes on Micah.

  Something about the intensity of his stare got Katie’s hackles up. From this distance, she couldn’t tell who the man was, just that he was in uniform.

  He reached out a hand, tagging Micah on the elbow, and they exchanged a few words, the man gesturing off to one side.

  By the way the his attention
kept wandering to the two agents following him, Katie suspected the reason he’d intercepted Micah was to maneuver the pilot away from the crowd.

  She scanned their surroundings. The tents were lined up back to back, in long rows broken by narrow alleys every third or fourth tent, where vendors stored their overstock. She spied one of those alleys just ahead.

  Gripping her bucket more firmly in her hands, she darted down it, skip-jogging her way around a stack of boxes labeled with the event’s logo. Exiting into the next row over, she raced ahead, weaving her way through evening event-goers as she looked for an alleyway that would put her past the spot where the stranger had waylaid Micah.

  As she went, she pushed a mental alert to Gabe.

  {Boss!} she hollered. {They’re going after Micah!}

  Annoyed shouts followed in her wake as Katie wove her way recklessly through the crowd. She ignored them, her focus split between her connection with Gabe, and that elusive alleyway between the tents she needed to find in order to get on the other side of Micah’s stalkers.

  {Where?} Gabe demanded, and Katie dropped a pin on her best estimation of where Micah now was.

  {Don’t let him out of your sight,} Gabe ordered. {ETA two minutes.}

  {Copy that.}

  Katie exhaled when she spied the alley, leaping over a tent peg as she careened around the corner and into the darkened passage between the tents. She poked her head out the other side, and saw she’d guessed right.

  The agents were converging, but slowly, as if unwilling to draw undue attention. The stranger in the uniform was still trying to engage Micah in conversation.

  Dammit. I’m not sure he has two minutes….

  Katie looked around for additional makeshift weapons. Since she was supposed to be a pit crew mechanic, she was unarmed, except for her bucket of scrap and ball bearings. That didn’t deter her.

  Gabriel Alvarez’s lesson on improvising once more flashed through her head as she glanced around, seeing the fairgrounds through the lens the former NCIC agent had taught her to use.

  A guy-wire anchoring a tent nearby looked promising. She grabbed one of the sharp metal bits and sawed at the end of the thin cable until it came free. Sending up a silent apology to the tent’s owner, she coiled the wire that had once helped anchor the structure, she laid it across the alley’s opening, covering it with a bit of dirt. The remainder, she tucked behind a portable recycle bin.

  As an afterthought, she jiggled the tent peg and then pulled, surprised to find the thing was nearly a meter in length when it came free of the ground. She hefted the solid bar in her hand, and then tucked it under one arm.

  A quick dash to a nearby tent garnered Katie a ‘Temporarily Closed’ signboard from a vendor who had briefly stepped away. Setting it across the buried wire blocked the alley, keeping casual sightseers from wandering into what she feared might soon become a war zone.

  Her gaze next caught on a crate labeled ‘lanyards’ and the thick band holding the crate closed that looked like it was made of a rubber-like material.

  She pulled it off and tested it, anchoring each end of the band to the metal tent peg.

  That’ll make a decent slingshot.

  Battlefield laid, Katie tucked the bit of metal she’d used to slice the cable inside her coveralls pocket. Dipping her hand once more into the bucket, she ran her fingers through the ball bearings, smiling in smug satisfaction at the memory of the last time she’d used the spheres.

  Setting the bucket where she could easily grab it, she crept back down the alleyway to peer around the corner—just in time to see one of the agents slap something against the back of Micah’s neck.

  She pinged Gabe in alarm.

  {They just ziptied him!}

  SOS

  GNS Invictus

  Geminate Alliance

  At the exact moment the Akkadian mole inside Protective Services got the drop on Micah with the suppression nanopackage, his mirror twin, Jonathan was standing beside Colonel Valenti in the CIC just off Invictus’s bridge.

  A shaft of alarm zinged through Jonathan like an arrow, the emotion not his own. He stiffened, then whipped his head blindly around.

  Valenti stopped midsentence, sensing something was amiss. “Captain?”

  “It’s our… agent embedded with the Founder’s Cup team.” Jonathan picked his words carefully, as if treading through a minefield, conscious of the presence of personnel not read into the situation. “He’s been compromised.”

  Immediately, Valenti pushed away from the CIC’s holotank. Turning to the captain, she said, “Apologies, but this is a matter of some urgency.”

  The captain’s lips firmed, but he nodded his understanding.

  “Case, you’re with me.” With those words, Valenti turned and stalked from the CIC.

  Jonathan fell into step beside her, and an encrypted combat net snapped into place.

  {Report,} the colonel snapped.

  {They just got him with an Akkadian ziptie.} Jonathan’s words were terse. {All I got before he lost consciousness was that he was out in the fairgrounds somewhere. Someone in uniform waylaid him, and then two agents hit him from behind.}

  Valenti widened the net with a thought, bringing Thad and Ell in on the conversation.

  {Contact Toland. Tell her Micah’s been compromised. He’s under Akkadian control.}

  * * *

  A specialist from the team’s headquarters element met Sam at Humbolt’s security checkpoint, approving her entry into Task Force Blue territory.

  “Admiral Toland’s in the bullpen, waiting for you, Doc,” the woman said with a smile.

  Sam matched it with one of her own, though hers was a bit forced. NCIC had just completed their investigation into the attack on the CID transport, and the admiral had asked her here to review their findings.

  She followed the specialist through the warren of corridors and lifts until the woman drew to a stop outside the bullpen. “Wait here; I’ll get her.”

  Sam nodded, but when the door slid open, she heard a voice call out, “Admiral! Urgent message from Mirage.”

  She pushed her way through, ignoring the specialist’s protests.

  Tala Valenti’s face resolved on the main holotank, the colonel standing inside Mirage’s cockpit. Beside her, Sam could see Jonathan, seated in his pilot’s cradle. His forehead was pinched together, his eyes dark with concern.

  Valenti recapped the situation in crisp, staccato-like sentences, and then turned the comm over to Jonathan, who gave them Micah’s last known location before his consciousness faded.

  Sam clenched her hands, silently cursing the fact they were out of real-time range. Her mind raced to find a way—any way—to trace Micah before it was too late.

  An idea occurred to her, and she pivoted. “Admiral,” she said urgently, causing the other woman to pause Jonathan’s message mid-word. “I know Jonathan doesn’t think he can reach Micah, now that he’s unconscious, but I think he can… though it might get a bit tricky.”

  “In what way?” asked Toland.

  “Micah’s not truly unconscious,” she explained. “A ziptie—I guess Akkadians call their version a ‘shackle’— doesn’t just interfere with motor control. It also hijacks executive function.”

  “Executive function?” The admiral’s brows drew together in a frown.

  “It’s what allows you to control and coordinate cognitive abilities. Attention, memory, the ability to form words. Discipline and willpower. It’s a finite thing, and can be depleted. That’s what’s happened to Micah.”

  She paused, grasping for a way to explain how a ziptie affected the prefrontal cortex.

  “Being subjected to an Akkadian shackle is like… like he has the security token to fly Mirage, but the ship’s fusion reactor’s offline, and its hydrogen tanks have been emptied. Until he’s able to get fuel to them, he’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’m not following, Doctor. It sounds like you’re saying there’s no way Jonathan can reach him
while he’s under the influence.”

  Sam held up a finger. “Under normal circumstances, you’d be right. They can’t connect if one of them is unconscious, but they can still sense one another.”

  Her hand dropped, and her voice sped up, excitement coloring it. “What’s more, in the past, when they both merged with that 3-D sim run by the ship’s SI….” Her voice faded as she sought the name.

  “It’s actually the nav system’s situational awareness app,” Harper supplied, stepping forward. “It’s called SyntheticVision.”

  Sam pointed at Harper. “Yes! That.” She turned back to the admiral. “When they merged with Wraith’s SyntheticVision system, this strange synergy happened.”

  She began to pace as she ticked off the traits she’d seen the two men exhibit.

  “Their synapses fired faster, their response times were off the charts, higher than any augmented human—both physical reaction time and mental processing speed. It’s possible that if he tries to connect with Micah while merged with the ship, he could trigger that gestalt.”

  “You’re suggesting he try this now?” The admiral sounded skeptical. “They’re inside Invictus’s boat bay. They can’t fire up the Nadir’s drives right now.”

  “They won’t have to,” Harper assured her, her voice confident. “Just engaging the SI should do it, don’t you think, Doc?”

  Sam nodded her agreement, turning back to Toland. “With the SI added to the merge, Jonathan just might be able to punch through the rate-limiting aspect of the shackles—lend Micah some of his own resources, if you will. Or at least get him to share his location.”

  Toland nodded. “It’s worth a try. We can’t allow Micah to fall into the hands of the Akkadians.”

  She turned to the communications agent, who’d been standing off to one side, waiting for instructions.