Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  He had me there. His look and tone told me that he wasn’t bluffing, and I couldn’t afford to have him go to Javier again. After our last meeting, I knew that the CEO would pull me off the project with the slightest nudge from legal. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To work.”

  A few minutes later we were seated in my office, looking at each other across my elegant but not-too-fancy corporate-issued desk.

  “What do you see as your role in this process?” I asked.

  “For starters, protect the company from liability.”

  “Speaking of that, I may need a lawyer. The police questioned me about Gylika’s death.”

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer. And you’re changing the subject,” he said.

  “You asked what would help. I could probably use some legal advice, though I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Sorry.”

  I sighed. Fine, I’d try another tack. “How can I help you do your job?”

  “I need to know the plan. What are you going to do next? Where are we going?”

  “I told you, I usually don’t know until I get there.”

  “I can’t work with that. I have to give my boss something. Can we at least draft some potential courses of action?” he asked.

  I started to snap back at him, but held it for a moment. I was acting too defensive, and that would make him dig in rather than back off. At the same time, I couldn’t tell him my real plan, because that involved hacking into the CEO’s account, and I had to believe legal would frown on that. So instead I made up some bullshit. “Look, I visualize things from different directions than other people. It’s not better or worse, it’s just how I operate. Sometimes, if I’m being overanalyzed by my boss, he might not see the big picture from the fragments. I might not have put it together yet myself.”

  He appeared to be receptive, so I continued. “You and I want two different things. We both want what’s right for the company, but you want to brief your boss, and I want to control the information so that I don’t get questions from higher until I have some answers. I don’t want to make them nervous. We have to get past that fundamental difference.”

  “Why can’t we do both? What’s wrong with a few questions, if you’re doing the right thing?” he asked.

  I almost laughed at that naivete. How did this guy become a corporate lawyer with that attitude? “Because if I’m trying to answer questions from the boss, I’m busy chasing things that might not help me get the real answers. I like to keep things controlled until I have something worthwhile to share, then present a complete picture.”

  He thought about it for a moment, without dropping his gaze. “Okay. I get it. Maybe we can work out a system where you share what you get, but you let me know what I can pass on and what I should keep to myself. But you’ve got to work with me. You have to give me something to feed the beast.”

  That sounded totally reasonable, to the point where I started to wonder if maybe I should have been less of an asshole from the start. I could never rule that out. “I can work with that.”

  “As for the legal advice, I’d recommend that you don’t talk to the police again without a lawyer present. That’s pretty much true in any situation.”

  “Thanks. I guess I’ll need to find somebody.”

  “I can get you some good recommendations,” he said.

  The white room smelled of antiseptic, and the mechanical beeps of a dozen machines provided a soundtrack. I pulled at my arms, but straps held them to a narrow bed, one of eight identical ones in the room. I was alone, but had the uncomfortable feeling that someone would join me soon. I jerked my right hand back and forth, finally loosening whatever fastener held me in place. I freed my other arm and swung my bare feet over onto the cold tile. I glanced at the door, expecting someone to come through at any minute, then dashed across the room to a control board.

  The panel didn’t fit the rest of the scene. This was a medical facility, but the controls looked like something that belonged on a ship. A targeting computer. I pushed the thought aside and let my fingers fly over the keys the way they had so many times before. Muscle memory. I had to destroy the base. We had plenty of firepower in orbit to do it.

  I paused.

  I was on the base. The planet. If I finished the firing solution, I’d be signing my own death warrant. The scene blurred, changed as I tried to work through the problem. I searched my brain for an answer, but the harder I tried to find it, the more it slipped away. I punched in the coordinates and authenticated the command. A timer came onto the screen, counting down. It didn’t belong. No system in the military had a timer like that. It looked more like something from a poorly written holo-vid.

  Beep. Beep. Beep . . .

  I sat dead up in bed, gasping for air, the clothes that I’d passed out in soaked through with sweat. It took me a moment to get my bearings in the room, dark from the blackout curtains. I took a deep breath and then another, trying to slow my pounding heart. I sank back down into my pillow and closed my eyes. I needed to sleep, but it eluded me for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Eight

  Since I couldn’t rest, I did what I always do in that situation. I went to the gym. While I worked out, I recorded all the things that came to mind. Once I made a physical list, it got easier to deal with, became less overwhelming. By the time I’d showered and had coffee, I had some semblance of a plan, and that always relaxed me. Taking charge and moving forward always beat sitting still and waiting for others to act. When others acted, I had to react, which immediately put me behind.

  I couldn’t control when Ganos would get back to me with the information from Javier’s account so I pressed on to other tasks. With the investigation stalled, I focused in on the rest of my life. I had to deal with my paranoia about somebody following me. I couldn’t rule it out, and I knew myself well enough to know that if I didn’t find a way to empirically prove my suspicion wrong, I’d keep thinking about it. That would lead to me seated back in the psychiatrist’s office, talking about things I thought I saw. I spent enough time with her without adding weeks of a new topic to discuss.

  I headed out to do some shopping. The wind blew with a bite, and the sparse early-morning crowd on a weekend meant fewer places to hide in the throng, but also fewer eyes to avoid. I took three transfers to get to the west side of town. The streets grew progressively narrower, the signs on shops less elaborate. I wouldn’t visit this part of the city alone at night, and even during the day it made me a bit more uptight than usual. I walked about three blocks from the transportation stop and found the store I wanted. The digital sign had some pixels out, making it barely readable, and the thick plexiglass windows obscured the view of the inside, but I’d visited before and knew I had the right place.

  A thin, light-skinned woman stood behind the counter, alone. She wore her black hair long on one side, shaved on the other, and she had three studs through her bottom lip on one side. She looked me over with a glance that said I didn’t belong here, though she inclined her head slightly, acknowledging me. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for some surveillance equipment.”

  “You’re not from the west side. You came all the way over here for that? You looking for something to take pictures at a distance?”

  “What I’m looking for isn’t available everywhere,” I said.

  She assessed me more thoroughly, now. “What do you need?”

  “Programmable drone,” I said.

  “It’s illegal to fly a drone in the city.”

  “I have a place out in the country.” I smiled.

  She snorted. “Right. So this . . . country place. I assume you want something that won’t be easily seen?”

  “Right,” I said. “You know . . . so it doesn’t scare away the animals.”

  “I’ve got just the thing. Animals won’t know it’s there. Flies at about fifty meters up, quiet enough that it
won’t be heard five meters away.”

  “Streaming link?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Downloadable only. That’s the only way to keep it as small as you want. And to minimize the electronic signature.” She paused. “You know. In case the animals have electronic detection.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah. Smart animals. How does it work?”

  “Passive sensors. You put the sensor on the . . . animal you want it to look at, the drone’s camera stays on it. After a set time, it returns to a preprogrammed base.”

  “How big is it?” I asked.

  She showed me something about the size of half a walnut.

  “Sounds like exactly what I need.”

  “It’s not cheap,” she said. “Cash only.”

  “I’ve got cash.”

  “Hope you have a lot.”

  I spent the rest of the morning flipping through news on my terminal, looking for everything and anything I could find on Gylika’s death. Something like that couldn’t stay quiet for long, even if the police wanted to keep it that way. The man probably had a family—people who loved him. Somebody had to be talking about it, because even in a city of 15 million people, a murder made the news.

  Except it didn’t.

  Not exactly. The stock article that all the sources carried said that he’d been “found dead” in the parking structure beneath Omicron headquarters, but nowhere did it mention foul play or a cause of death. Nobody published pictures, save for a photo provided by the family for the obituary. Omicron had published an official statement mourning the loss of one of their own and sending condolences to the family. The family themselves had said nothing; at least nothing that reporters captured. I wondered briefly how much the family knew, but I couldn’t contact them to ask. It would be incredibly tasteless, not to mention it might make the police wonder about me more than they already did.

  So I did the next best thing. I ignored the legal advice Dernier gave me the day before and called Lieutenant Mallory. I wanted to find out what she knew, but she wouldn’t offer it for free, so I decided to play a little game and pretend that I might have something of value in order to see what I could get from her.

  “I hope it’s okay that I called you on a weekend,” I said, after I’d identified myself.

  “It’s no problem. I’m working anyway. You have something for me?”

  “I’m wondering about the status of the case,” I said. “Did you find out what happened?”

  “Why are you so interested?” she asked.

  I’d expected the question. “I’m not allowed to leave the planet until you clear me. I have plans off world.”

  “What kind of plans?” she asked.

  “Meeting an old business associate about work matters.”

  She grunted. “The case is still open.”

  “No leads?”

  “Look,” she said. “I’m a busy woman. Do you have anything for me or not?”

  “I might,” I said.

  “Mr. Butler, I suggest very strongly that you don’t fuck with me. You won’t like the result. Now tell me what you’ve got, or I’m hanging up.”

  “I’d like to come in and talk,” I said.

  “So come in.”

  “That’s the thing. I think someone’s been following me. I don’t want to go outside.” A partial truth, but close enough.

  “I’ll send a car. Fifteen minutes.” She hung up.

  The hover-car arrived as promised, on time, white with the gold symbol of the police on the sides and roof, and it dropped me at the station a few minutes later. A tall woman met me at the front entrance and led me back to a windowless room with a single door. An interrogation room. I sat in a plain, hard-backed chair and waited until Mallory came in a few minutes later and shut the door.

  I gestured to the bare room. “Is this really necessary?”

  “I figured we wanted privacy. I don’t have an office, just a desk in the pit.”

  “Where’s your bad cop? Burke.”

  “He’s out. Let’s cut the shit, Butler. What do you have?”

  “Other than somebody following me?”

  She met my eyes without blinking, but didn’t speak.

  “I first noticed it the same day I was supposed to meet Gylika. The day he died.”

  She hesitated for a couple seconds. “Why didn’t you tell us about it when we came to your apartment?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe I was in a bit of shock to find out that the man who I was supposed to meet was dead.”

  She didn’t call me on it, but her look said “bullshit.” She was good at this, and I had to be careful. “This person who was following you. What did he look like?”

  “Tan jacket,” I said. “I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman.”

  “So you didn’t get a very good look.”

  “No.”

  “So how do you know the person was following you?”

  “Instinct,” I said.

  “Instinct,” she repeated, with only a hint of sarcasm.

  “I’ve learned to trust it.”

  “Mr. Butler, you know I can’t do anything with that.”

  “I’m sure enough that I considered calling my old contact at the military security office,” I said. “A couple years ago I had a team assigned to me. There were some threats on my life back then.”

  “Why didn’t you call them?”

  “Thought I’d give you first shot at it,” I said.

  She paused, looking more thoughtful now. “Threats on your life. Have there been any recently?”

  “None that I’ve received,” I answered. “You’d have to check with the security office to see if they’ve had any that I don’t know about.”

  “That’s not really helpful,” she said, but she tapped a short note into her device.

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’m trying to help.” She had me on my back foot, which kept me from pressing her for information.

  “You’re here, I’ll give you that.” She stared me down for a few seconds. “Why are you here?”

  “Because nothing in the news says what happened to the guy. I knew him, if only briefly, and I want to know.”

  “Mr. Butler, do you know how many people confess to crimes they don’t commit in this city?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “More than a few. So if we publicize how a death happened, all of a sudden we’ve got half a dozen false leads. We don’t need that. Usually we can’t control it. This time, Omicron security had it contained by the time we arrived, and the company and the family agreed to keep it quiet. Military family, you know. Good people.”

  I finally got my opening. Mallory had already confirmed that Omicron had contained the situation. Time to get what I came for. “So how did it happen?”

  She looked at me like a teacher looks at a particularly difficult student. “Really?”

  “Are you sure he was murdered?”

  “Officially? We’re not sure of anything.”

  “But . . .” I offered, hoping for a consolation prize.

  “We’re sure, yes.”

  “So he died in the Omicron building. Are you considering the potential that somebody from the company did him in?”

  “Did him in?” she asked. “Is this a bad detective holo-vid?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “We’ve considered everything. Now if you don’t have anything else to offer, I have crimes to solve.”

  “Sure. I can see myself out.”

  “You need a ride home?” she asked.

  “I’m good.”

  “So the person who was following you . . .”

  “That’s real,” I said. “I might have exaggerated about how scared I was.”

  She gave me a flat look. “You’re taking a car.”

  Chapter Nine

  I spent the rest of the weekend fiddling with my drone and sending it out on surveillance of the surrounding area. I didn’t find anything, but I had a lot of
fun playing with it and learned how to get it to do what I wanted it to do without crashing into buildings. Most of the time.

  The next morning Dernier met me at my office about fifteen minutes after I arrived, which I appreciated as it allowed me to get coffee before diving back into the dead ends of my investigation. “I found something that I thought you might want to see.”

  I flipped off my screen so it wouldn’t distract me and I could give him my full attention. “What’ve you got?”

  “I’m not sure it’s anything, but you mentioned that you sometimes don’t know where your leads will come from, so you like lots of information. I almost just posted it to the page, but I’m not sure how far you’ve gotten on that—”

  “Dernier,” I said, keeping my voice pleasant as I interrupted, “tell me what you’ve got.”

  “I thought about Mr. Gylika this weekend, and what happened to him. And I started to think about how we got his name in the first place.”

  It interested me that he’d been thinking about Gylika, because I subconsciously still wondered if he had an inadvertent hand in his death, but I pushed that thought aside. I needed to trust him. He had nothing to gain from subterfuge . . . and I had nothing better to go on. “What about him?”

  “It was from that article you sent me. The Phoenix Project,” he said. “I started doing some digging on that. It’s all very hush-hush in corporate releases and the news, even in the business journals. But I kept at it, and I stumbled across an obscure reference. I found an unpublished research paper by some young doctor at a medical school on Ferra Three.”

  “How’d you find it?” I asked.

  “Brute force. Word search across the entire net, then an AI program to help sort through the entries until I found ones that fit enough of my criteria to search them manually.”

  “That had to have returned a lot of results.”

  “After the AI was done? Two thousand two hundred and forty-seven.” He said it casually, but he meant it to impress. And it did. It certainly beat my contribution of flying a drone around.