by John Appel
I guess Kumar isn’t going to dump me in the organic recycling just yet.
She finished her coffee as she coded up smart agents to parse the available information about the killing. She plumbed both the Commonwealth reports on the consulate systems and the public feeds, hunting for correlations and outlying bits of evidence. Kumar had provided surprisingly wide-ranging clearance to her files and Meiko spent another leisurely half-hour browsing for potentially useful items. High-resolution maps of the planet and station went straight to her djinn’s storage, along with dossiers on the new governor and head of police, and the station’s other leaders. She was about to close out her session when a backdoor into the planetary geophysical satellite network caught her eye. On a whim, she grabbed that too; junctions between her public and secret lives didn’t come along often. After that, though, she shut down her workspace, leaned back, and stretched.
She wasn’t going to crack this case sitting in quarters. Time for some legwork.
She had just finished dressing for her sortie when her djinn pinged with an incoming call from Kumar.
“You’re still here?” the intel chief asked.
“I am about to go out, actually.” Meiko assessed her clothing: loose black trousers, a yellow blouse over a black T-shirt, and a programmable jacket. “Is there an update?” She considered her limited footwear options; pathfinder boots were too conspicuous, so she settled on a pair of well-worn dock shoes with concealed steel undertips, with adaptive soles suitable for everything from streetgrass to steel grates.
“Nothing that’s not the consulate files.”
Meiko glanced in the mirror to check her hair. No time to fab a wig; she ought to have started one last night. Missed chance. Have to hit one of the body shops. She made a last check of her pockets—makeup wand, headscarf, a pack of breath mints, stylus. “I’ll be going dark once I’m clear of the neighborhood, so the minions needed to be set up first.” She flicked a command for her djinn to open the door and stepped out into the corridor.
“Do you have a check-in protocol logged?” she asked.
“Every six hours,” Meiko said. “Authentication keys verified. Panic button verified, too.”
“Good. Any estimate for how long you’ll be out?”
Meiko paused in the corridor, considering. “I’m not sure. It depends on how much pressure the Ileris are putting on the Fingers. Making contact might take some time if they’re laying low because of police attention. Getting to someone in their organization with both the authority to talk to me about the killings, and the willingness to do so, will take more.”
“Very well. Good hunting.” Kumar closed the link.
Meiko followed AR tags to the side entrance. The plain-clothes attendant inside let her out without comment, but the baby-faced troopers in uniform standing guard outside advised caution. “I don’t advise going out alone, ma’am,” one said. “Off-worlders have been targeted via their social profiles and singled out. A few beaten pretty badly. You should really have someone to watch your six.”
“I could call one of the off-duty team to escort you,” her partner offered.
“That won’t be necessary. I’ve been to the station before.” Meiko adjusted her jacket and looked both ways, up and down the side street linking the main pedestrian thoroughfare in front of the consulate and the service alley behind. An intermittent stream of tiny electric vehicles and a substantial number of autopallets zipped along the alley in both directions. “How are the attackers getting away with it? Don’t the Constabulary track their djinns?”
The troopers looked grim. “The yellowjackets find them, all right,” the short one said. “Not before the beatings, though.”
“Hm. Good point. Well, I’ll be careful.” She thanked them, turned, and walked towards the front of the Consulate.
She could do something about her social profile, the basic identity information broadcast by her djinn, once she reached Eko, the south ring’s primary market, and shook any physical tail the Ileris might put on her. One of the many negative outcomes of her last mission had been the blowing of her public cover to the Ileri authorities, though they hadn’t outed her. The lack of a minder waiting for her in the Consulate lobby was curious; they had to know she was here to investigate the assassination. Were they were stretched too thin to assign someone full-time to shadow a partially-blown covert Commonwealth operative? Did they consider her an ally already, ahead of the imminent referendum? Or would they follow her discreetly?
She never had issues mixing with crowds here, at least visually. The station’s populace wasn’t as cosmopolitan a blend as one would find on, say, Singapore Baru, but it was diverse enough that Meiko blended in without notice. Some of her ancestors had fled up the Macapá elevator off the coast of Brazil; further back along that branch of her family tree lay the Japanese farmers who’d emigrated to South America in the early 20th century, before the Great Looting and the Melt, or so family legend said. Those already blended genes were further intermixed with East African and Malay blood, along with a dash of Vietnamese, in the two hundred and fifty years since Novo Brasilia’s settlement. She didn’t know which of her ancestors to thank for the thick, straight hair, still dark brown and currently trimmed to a pixie cut. Her skin was more golden-toned than usual here, but not noticeably so, and enough of Ileri’s people had East Asian ancestry that her cheekbones didn’t stand out either. Someone might notice that she moved like a spacer, but that, too, was pretty common on-station.
She reached the street and smoothly made her way into the passing throng before a disturbance cut her musing short. A knot of bodies coalesced before her eyes, as first three people, then six, then a dozen, then twenty or more, converged from several directions at the intersection between Meiko and her quickest route to the market. Then with a snapping noise and the smell of cheap fabber plastic, one of them pulled a banner from a backpack, and they began unrolling it, blocking the street in the process.
NO COMMONWEALTH — NO WAR — ONE WORLD, it read.
Oh, great leaping Mother, a protest perfectly timed to screw up her evasion plan.
Someone bumped her from behind and she glanced back to discover another line of protestors was gathering at the intersection closest to her. This new rank of activists deployed their own banner and cut off that end of the block. Those passers-by caught in between the lines, perhaps fifty or sixty people, began shouting at the activists. The impromptu blockaders, for their part, donned the flat caps that prompted the nickname ‘buttonheads’ and broadcast public AR signs proclaiming their allegiance to the One World party, along with anti-Commonwealth slogans.
The young man who’d stumbled into her apologized profusely. She nodded at him and turned to push her way through the crowd. A few people began taunting the One Worlders with shouts of “Buttonheads!” and “Dustbrain!” as the protestors answered with insults of their own.
Voices rose, heated and sharp. A quartet of women in hijabs began shoving some of the One Worlders, trying to push their way through the line. Suddenly both factions were exchanging shoves. A man in rigger’s coveralls, two meters tall and built like a blast door, snarled as a One Worlder accosted him, jabbing a finger towards his face like an autopick. Meiko missed whatever the buttonhead said that finally put the rigger over his limit as she tried to slither between the knots of conflict starting to crystallize. But she, and everyone else, heard the howl of pain as the rigger’s enormous hands wrapped around the buttonhead’s arm at wrist and elbow and pushed. She wasn’t sure how many recognized the sound that followed as the smaller man’s arm breaking, but she’d heard it enough to know.
No slow fuse here; the One Worlders dropped their banners and went at the rigger and the others pushing against them with fists and feet. The crowd responded in kind, and just like that, the situation cycled from ‘disturbance’ to ‘riot’.
A One Worlder made the mistake of taking a swing at Meiko. She swayed to avoid the blow, then twisted back upright an
d snapped a kick into his knee. A little bump of the shoulder was all it took to send him to the floor, right into the path of someone trying to rush forward to reinforce one faction or the other. As that person tumbled into the streetgrass, she stepped on their back and sprang into the momentarily clear spot they’d vacated. Hands grasped for her and she twisted free from clutching fingers. She drove the heel of her right hand into the handsy bastard’s chin, felt the jolt of contact along her arm. Her would-be assailant reeled back into another combatant and she flowed into the gap.
There was no rhythm to this fracas, no dance to groove to. Meiko elbowed ribs, swept ankles, and tried to flow through the crowd. A woman wearing a One Worlder flat cap tried to grab her hair, but Meiko caught her by the wrist, spun, twisted, and ignored the woman’s howl as she ruthlessly flipped her into another protestor, sending both face first into the ground.
That created the last opening she needed. Meiko found herself on the fringes of the crowd, among people who were trying to get away rather than to join in. She spotted a pack of buttonhead reinforcements closing in, though, and the whining turbines of Constabulary bots filled the air above. She pushed her way through the crowd, joining a group headed down a side street away from the fracas.
At least, she reflected as she touched the tiny spot on her jacket’s collar, changing its color from orange to dark green, any physical tail Ileri intelligence might have assigned to her would have their hands full tracking her through that mess. She set out at a brisk pace for Eko Market.
Toiwa
Constabulary Headquarters, Ileri Station,
Forward Ring
Something on the main display caught Toiwa’s attention as Detective Sergeant Imoke finished up his in-person report. “Nidal!” she snapped to the watch commander. She pointed at the screen. “Where is that happening?”
One of the analysts was already expanding the image to fill a full third of the video wall. On-screen, dozens of people brawled in the middle of a broad street. Toiwa stalked across the room to stand next to the watch commander, with Imoke and Valverdes in her wake.
“South ring, ma’am,” the watch commander said as her deputy ordered the rapid response team dispatched from the hub. “Damn, it’s the Commonwealth Consulate. Flashmob protest.”
“That’s not a protest, that’s a riot in the making,” Toiwa retorted. “What do we have on scene?”
“The usual courtesy patrol, two officers, and two aerial bots,” an analyst called out. “More bots en route, you’ll have a dozen in sixty seconds.”
Toiwa called the south ring’s watch commander. “Inspector Karungi. You’re aware of the developing situation, I trust?” She raised her left hand, flicking her fingers open to send the audio to the overhead speakers.
Karungi was an old hand, pushing forty years’ service, much like Sergeant Imoke. Given his rank, he had likely played ball with Toiwa’s corrupt predecessor, though he’d been cagey enough to avoid being nailed in Toiwa’s first anti-corruption sweep. “Yes, Commissioner,” he said in his thin, reedy voice. “I’m assessing my response.”
That was not the answer she expected to hear. She blinked, mouth working but not forming words for a few seconds. Her words came out sharp as razors. “Assessing. Your. Response.” Her jaw tightened. “Inspector. That is the Commonwealth Consulate. There are at least”—she glanced up to read the still-climbing number on the screen—“sixty people involved in a developing riot. What do you intend to do?”
Karungi responded with a chutney of bureaucratic weasel-words. That annoyed her, but as soon as the word “deliberation” escaped his lips, she made her decision. Inspector Karungi would be the next notch in ‘Toiwa’s Axe’.
“Inspector Karungi, you are relieved of duty.” The blustering man sputtered to a halt. “Is your second-in-command present?”
“I’ve got her on-line, ma’am,” Nidal answered from her right.
“Patch them through.” Dammit, who is Karungi’s second?
“Deputy Inspector Tábara. Effective immediately, you are the first shift watch commander for South Ring. You have a rapidly developing riot outside a diplomatic facility of a friendly foreign government. Rapid response is en route from the hub. You are incident commander. How are you going to handle this?”
In a sober alto voice, Tábara assured Toiwa she was dispatching her entire on-duty force not required elsewhere, along with every available bot. She requested permission to summon her second shift team as reinforcements, which Toiwa granted immediately, as her overtime budget for the next reporting period sailed out of sight. Karungi raged in the background until one of the analysts cut him out of the circuit. Toiwa scarcely finished approving these measures when Valverdes signaled an urgent message coming in.
The governor. Not unexpected, but Ruhindi could have waited a few more minutes, surely. “The Head’s calling,” Toiwa told Nidal, who nodded and carried on assisting Tábara with managing the response teams. Toiwa shifted away from the command dais and popped open the call window, but didn’t engage the privacy field. When shit like this went down, you wanted things on the record. And witnesses. “Governor. I assume you’re calling about the situation in the south ring?”
If Ruhindi had looked frustrated this morning, she was positively dyspeptic now, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed, seeming to lean forward into the pickup as if getting right into Toiwa’s face. “This is unacceptable, Nnenna,” she snapped. “I told you this morning we can’t afford open clashes like this. How did it happen?”
Toiwa frowned. Really, this is her question? “We’re focusing on response rather than root-cause analysis just this moment, Governor, but initial indications are it was a flash mob. I’m sure you know those are virtually impossible to prevent.” At least without turning ourselves into a lockstep police state like the Saljuans. The rule of law was one thing; domination by law was something else entirely.
“Dammit. All right, do you at least have it contained?”
Toiwa glanced over at the display wall. Perilously thin lines of uniformed constables had formed on each of the streets leading to the fracas. A full two-dozen aerial bots reinforced the officers in the street. Someone clever had brought Transit into the loop and halted all traffic to the affected area except for the response units. The count of the crowd seemed stable, hovering around a hundred and twenty people. The Commonwealth guard detachment at the consulate entrance had grown from two to eight, she noted, but they seemed to confine their response to keeping the area around the doors clear with stun sticks. “Almost, Governor. No one new is joining the fray, at least. The Consulate remains secure. We should be ready to move in and secure the instigators within ten minutes or so, I think, as soon as the response force arrives from the hub.”
“You’ve identified the instigators?” Ruhindi demanded. Toiwa could see the tendons standing out in her neck.
“One Worlders started the protest, but it appears a heckler initiated the violence,” a low voice murmured from her left. Toiwa glanced over and saw Imoke standing nearby. Several AR windows replaying the first stages of the riot hovered around him. He flipped one around so she could clearly see a large man gripping the arm of a smaller person in a One World T-shirt. “There may have been incitement.” That last word was key, legally speaking. Ileri law recognized incitement to violence as unprotected speech—a lesson, Toiwa knew from her legal studies, of one of the many missteps during the Great Looting back on Earth. If the One Worlders were found to have engaged in agitation with intent to draw a violent response, they bore ultimate responsibility for what followed.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Toiwa said. She turned back to face the governor. “Tentatively, it looks like we can lay this at the door of the One World party, ma’am, but there’s some uncertainty.”
Ruhindi sucked in a breath and grimaced. “Those dust-brained
idiots,” she said. “I don’t doubt they brought this on themselves. Singling their faction out risks escalating the partisan feelings, though. That’s only going to lead to further trouble.”
“If One Worlders are the ones poking the anthill, Governor, surely we need to shut that line of action down.” She made a sweeping gesture, as if to take in the whole station. “Just this morning, in fact, you were impressing on me the need to cut any violence off as quickly as possible.”
The governor seemed to rock back and forth slightly. “Yes, yes, all that’s true.” Ruhindi shook her head, frowning deeply. “But sentiments are much more delicately balanced than I’d realized. As evidenced by this affair.”
Toiwa could feel the tension in her own neck ratcheting up and frowned. “What are you suggesting?” she said in a clipped tone. “That I not apprehend the perpetrators?”
Ruhindi raised her hands in a placating gesture. “No, no, not at all,” she said hurriedly. “But the government can’t be seen to be favoring one side or the other.”
“The Constabulary is not the government,” Toiwa said.
She got a snort in response. “You don’t seriously believe that, Commissioner, do you?” the governor said. “Not part of the elected government, certainly, but you can’t be arguing that the planetary police force is not an arm of the state.”
Imoke cleared his throat. “If I might offer a suggestion, Commissioner.” He waved another AR window into existence, displaying a flight of large bots speeding through the air. “The heavy crowd-control bots will be in position within a minute,” he said. “Carrying a full load of tangler rounds.”
Toiwa’s left eyebrow arched. “And you have a suggestion regarding their employment, Sergeant?”
Imoke nodded. “Clean sweep,” he said. “At the very least, it defers the question of assigning culpability until a suitable determination can be made.”