Assassin's Orbit

by John Appel

  “Preposterous. The video I’ve seen clearly shows my people were victims of the first assault, and simply acted to defend themselves.” Miguna leaned forward into his pickup, as if to intrude into Toiwa’s space. “I’m certain that as a senior officer of the Constabulary, you don’t condone such vindictive personal violence.”

  Do these cartoonish intimidation tactics really work for him? As a fresh young constable, Toiwa had faced off against drunken riggers down the cable for bone leave, angry football fans half again her mass, and on one memorable occasion, a five-hundred-kilo haexcat that had wandered in from the bush. One puffed-up demagogue thirty-six thousand kilometers away didn’t worry her, at least where physical confrontation was concerned.

  Political confrontation, on the other hand...

  “I’ll be sure to instruct the investigating officers to be especially diligent, Minister,” she said, and did her best to inject a note of ‘Just between us, wink wink, nod nod’ as she ostentatiously made notes in her personal window. That the notes read ‘Make certain case is airtight before sending to magistrates’ and ‘Send recording to the High Commissioner’ was her little secret.

  Whether this genuinely satisfied Miguna or not, she wasn’t sure, but he smiled and relaxed. “Thank you, Commissioner. That’s all I ask.” He flashed her a toothy grin. “I’m sure your people are terribly busy, after last night’s horrible events.”

  “The last few shifts have been eventful, yes.”

  “You must have developed some promising leads by now.”

  Toiwa smiled faintly, saying nothing.

  Whatever his skills and virtues were, patience appeared to be absent from Miguna’s kit. Or perhaps two decades of questioning subjects gave Toiwa superior ability at waiting for other people to open their mouths to fill the silence. The minister didn’t make it to a full ten seconds before blurting, “Surely you’ve made headway apprehending the suspects?”

  “It would be most improper for me to discuss an ongoing investigation of such sensitivity,” Toiwa said primly.

  “Of course, of course,” he said, waving his hands as if to dismiss the faintest whiff of impropriety from the air. “Such a horrible act, an attack on a sitting minister.”

  “And the Commonwealth Consul, and seven other people, all shot dead,” Toiwa said, and this time she couldn’t keep a note of irritation out of her voice. “My people pursue justice for all the victims.”

  “That’s all well and the proper way of things, Commissioner, and I’m glad your people all feel that way.” Miguna folded his arms across his chest. “I am simply pointing out such a brazen attack on poor Ita, combined with today’s violence, well, things must be very chaotic on the station.”

  Is that a dig, or maybe an attempt to goad me? She was considering her response when the icon signifying an urgent message from Zheng gave Toiwa release from his baited hook. She flicked her thumb, opening the message, eyes widening slightly as she skimmed it.

  She focused back on Miguna. “My apologies, Minister, but there’s been a development I must attend to right away.”

  “I’m sure it must be absolutely crucial,” Miguna said. “I’ll ask the High Commissioner for an update, then.” The call snapped shut from his end.

  “Be my guest, Minister,” she said aloud to the open air. She wondered whether he’d actually make good on the implied threat, rather suspecting Miguna lacked the moral fiber to confront the HC, a seasoned veteran of the capital who’d outlasted a half-dozen changes in government. She felt a sudden urge to wash her hands, as if Miguna’s oily personality had left some physical residue even over the virtual link. Shaking her head, she popped open her window to Valverdes. “Send Zheng and M. Okafor in please, Kala,” she said, and stood up to greet her visitors.

  Okafor

  Josephine Okafor heard the constable with the slightly husky voice call her name even as her djinn picked up the officer’s approach. “M. Okafor? Commissioner Toiwa is ready for you.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” She stood up, snapping her cane to its full extension. The lidar and radar beads in her clothing mapped the room and fed their data to her djinn, which in turn transmitted it to her elbow-length sensory-haptic gloves. These turned the information into tactile sensations she’d learned to read over many years’ practice, aided by the array of detectors she’d had embedded in her forearms as soon as she’d been old enough to request them. But she’d used the cane almost from the time she’d learned to walk, and nobody knew better than she that electronics could be fooled.

  “If you’ll follow me?” Zheng said. Okafor followed, leaving enough room to sweep her cane before her, tap-tap-tap as the plastic tip met the floor. She slowed almost to a halt as Zheng opened the door for her, then passed into the Commissioner’s office.

  She marched confidently up to stand next to one of the chairs in front of Toiwa’s desk, switched her cane to her left hand and extended her right one. “Josephine Okafor, Commissioner. The High Commissioner sent me up with the forensic team on the morning shuttle.”

  The pattern of tingles on her arms told her Toiwa leaned forward to shake hands. The Commissioner’s hands were warm, smooth, and strong, with the faintest hints of callouses at the base of her fingers. She lifted weights, then, or perhaps played tennis. “Thank you for coming, please, sit down,” Toiwa said, taking her own seat as Okafor did the same. She heard Lieutenant Zheng take the other chair. “We’re grateful for all the assistance from planetside. You said you came with the forensic team. Does that mean you’re not part of it?”

  She collapsed her cane and tucked it into its holster, then placed her right hand on the edge of Toiwa’s desk while the left remained in her lap. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m an infonet security specialist on the High Commissioner’s staff. I’ve been investigating anomalies in the station’s infonet.”

  “What sort of anomalies?” Toiwa asked. Okafor didn’t need the biometric data her sensors were pulling in to detect the puzzlement in Toiwa’s voice.

  “It might be easier to show you,” she said, raising both hands to chest level, palms up. “If I might use your projector?”

  “Of course.” Her djinn caught the authorization packet Toiwa sent, and her fingers began an intricate dance. The haptic sensors in her glove turned her motions into commands in concert with those sent by her neural implant, and she conjured her model into being.

  “This is a real-time view of Ileri Station’s infonet,” Okafor said. She couldn’t see the 3D mesh of light hanging in the air, but she’d traced each of those lines by hand over the past five months, adding colors to aid the sighted. She moved two fingers and the colors dimmed, leaving behind a faded gray tracery depicting the whole network. Three faint constellations remained, each spread throughout the visual filigree. To her, they consisted of thicker threads than the rest of the network, with jagged textures. “These are collections of compromised nodes within the station infonet. We became aware of this first network”—a slight flexing of one finger caused the smallest web to flash bright red—“about two months ago. It saw a major spike in activity yesterday evening, several hours prior to the attack, and then again in the immediate aftermath.”

  “Wait a moment.” Toiwa sounded perplexed. “You’re telling me there are three different sets of illegal subnetworks here in my infonet? And I’m just finding out now?”

  “Yes,” Okafor said, imperturbable. “The HC felt you should be notified in person, given the nature of the threat.” She cocked her head at Toiwa, her hands rock-steady. “May I continue?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Thank you. I was about to say, this network seems very recent, active only for the last few months. It expanded rapidly and aggressively, and the techniques and tools aren’t consistent with domestic infonet criminals.”

  “Implying off-worlders?” Toiwa interjected.

  “Indeed. I’d guess one of the major powers: the Commonwealth or the Saljuans, maybe the Triumvirate, but I would
n’t entirely rule out another player yet. They’ve been very canny, despite their loud and fast tactics.”

  “And the other two?”

  Another finger twitch suppressed the red network and a much more extensive yellow web shone among the tangle. “We believe this network belongs to the branch of the Fingers operating on the station,” Okafor said. “It looks to be long-established and has a high correlation with the tools and techniques we see employed in Fingers infonet operations planetside. I’d been mapping this network for several months when the apparently foreign network appeared.” Her fingers flexed again, and the yellow network was replaced by an orange lacework even larger and more complex than the putative Fingers network, but fuzzy in places. “Before the foreign attackers showed up, however, I discovered this other unauthorized network. Its origin is a mystery. It’s highly interlaced polymorphic code, quite unlike anything we see used anywhere else. It’s been in place for a long time.”

  “How long?” Toiwa asked. “Since the war?”

  Okafor’s lips twitched. “Much older than that, Commissioner. The Fingers network is at least a century old. I’d estimate this one being nearly the same age as the station.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the significance,” Toiwa said. “I understood that the Exiles built the station and the elevator at the same time as they settled the surface. Wouldn’t they have used some of the protocols they brought with them?”

  “Yes,” Okafor said, “I’m afraid so. This is the same kind of code used on some Earth networks before Exile.”

  Across the room, Zheng cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. “You mentioned highly interlaced polymorphic code. I’m not an infonet specialist like yourself, but I’ve had some intrusion training, and there’s only one example of that I’m aware of.”

  “You’re correct. I’m afraid this isn’t innocent code,” Okafor said. “It’s not for running life-support systems, or the space elevator, or the station’s mass-management system. It’s a network designed to regulate and process communications between a massive number of distributed nodes, using protocols designed for biomechanical nanoware.”

  The horror in Toiwa’s voice was unmistakable. “You mean…”

  “Yes. The kind that, in the brain, can control human behavior, putting people under the control of puppet-masters. This is the kind of code that powered the Unity Plague.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Meiko

  Eko Market, Ileri Station,

  South Ring

  Meiko exited the market’s service passage just behind an older man who carried a small thermal bag that she guessed was his lunch. He held the door open for her with a polite nod. She nodded, her temporary and newly acquired tresses bobbing, and smiled back, then turned and set off for the closest transit station at a casual walk. She settled her weight back onto her hips and shortened her stride, dropping her shoulders. Her all-too-brief visit to a body shop on the market’s third level had provided with her darkened skin, longer and lighter hair, and a fresh makeup job that would give most facial-recognition systems fits. It wouldn’t trick a smart agent looking at her gross biometrics, but it would fool Ileri’s routine crowd-scanning system, and any casual human analysts too, at least for a little while. Her djinn now identified her as Meriel Suzuki, native-born to Ileri—one of several seriously illegal modifications to her djinn—which ought to further obscure her trail. She hoped. She affected a confident air and sauntered down the ramp into the transit station to purchase a one-way ride to the station’s hub.

  No constables, or worse, intelligence operatives, accosted her when the bubble-car’s doors opened into the riot of color, noise, and zero-gravity motion that was Maseko Circus, deep in the heart of the asteroid that anchored the space elevator and formed the station’s core. She flowed into the crowd, grabbing hold of one of the towlines hauling people to the retail arcade. Meiko’s decades as a spacer meant she could have joined the zero-g adepts who sailed along independently, but it seemed most people on Ileri weren’t so skilled; better to stick with the masses and hold her capabilities in reserve. She reached the arcade, detached herself from the towline, and picked a cafe with a cluster of empty serving cubbies. She slipped her feet into the restraining loop and ordered a platter of spiced newt skewers. She watched the crowd while waiting for the bot to deliver her order. Nothing seemed out of place, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to her, so she finished her snack and placed a call.

  Her call yielded a transit system routing code that resulted in a ten-minute, roundabout ride through the hub’s tube network. No one else got off at her stop, a nondescript stretch of station corridor, unoccupied but for the ubiquitous maintenance and janitorial bots. Meiko had to give the Ileris credit; if there was a dingy spot on-station, she’d never found it. No public tow lines graced this sector but plenty of grip bars lined the walls, so it was a simple matter to shoot herself down the corridor to her destination, a blank ceramic-coated hatch that opened after she waved her djinn at the pickup. Showing off a little, she swung her body in through the hatchway with a half-twist to land lightly on the deck, hooking her feet beneath one of the ubiquitous grip bars and straightening in one graceful, flowing motion.

  Her contact floated just beyond the antechamber, his meaty arms crossed and with one foot hooked under a grip bar, perpendicular to both Meiko and the hatch, proclaiming he was someone who wasn’t about to cater to those unaccustomed to zero-g. His round face seemed caught between expressions of curiosity and wariness, settling on the latter as he took in her appearance. “Meriel?” he asked. “It has been a long time.”

  She smiled. “It’s me under the new look, Kaki,” she said. “Do you still take your tea with lemon?”

  Kaki relaxed slightly. “Just so. Are you inviting me to tea, then? Or are you here to place an order?” Behind Kaki she could see into the room beyond the antechamber, racks upon racks of fabricators busy turning out goods not sanctioned by the planetary government, or just outside the normal channels of tracking.

  Meiko chuckled. “If time and circumstances permit, I’d be happy to treat you to tea, at least. I don’t have long to chat at the moment, but I was wondering if you could help me make a connection. I’m involved with some inquiries.”

  “What kind of inquiries?” Kaki asked, his tone shading back towards caution.

  She took a deep breath in through her nose and let it out slowly, focusing her full attention on him. “Matters related to the killings last night.”

  One doesn’t recoil in zero gravity, but Kaki seemed to pull away from her just the same. “Those are very serious matters. And nothing I have any involvement with.”

  She nodded. “I understand, not your line of business at all.” But even though he dealt in black market goods, he definitely knew players; he’d been the one to help arrange for her Meriel ID more than twenty years before, back during the Three-Planet War between Shenzen and Goa, a time when Ileri Station had been the intelligence hotspot in this part of the Cluster. “But I thought perhaps you might have heard something or know someone who might have.”

  “It’s a runaway fire, that mess,” he said. “I’m steering clear of it, but it’s making a right shambles of things. Worse than that demon Toiwa coming up the cable.” His frown deepened to full-on scowl. “Constables and spooks tramping round places they oughtn’t, deliveries interrupted, key people yanked in for questioning.”

  She nodded in sympathy. “I’m sure it’s quite disruptive. But do you know anyone who might be willing to talk to me?”

  “Not likely,” he said flatly. “I mean, I’d tell you if I thought anyone would. But everyone’s locking down like a pressure barrier during a breach.” He paused, one hand coming up to stroke his chin. “I can tell you this, though. It wasn’t us. No one in our business is stupid enough to muck around with a political killing.” He paused again, seeming to wrestle with a decision, then continued. “Another thing I’ll share. Things have been a little strange f
or the last month or so.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “A lot of strong-arm action lately,” he answered. “Some rough operators started leaning on people. Unsanctioned disappearances, people yanked out of the corridors, held for a few days and dumped somewhere afterwards, with memories blanked but signs they’d been interrogated. Some of ours, some civs, some station admin people. And that’s on top of the One Worlders losing their shit over the referendum.”

  Meiko wanted to lean forward, but zero-g prevented her. “Any idea who is behind that?” Kumar, you didn’t give me anything on this. Did the station chief know about the disappearances, leaving Meiko to discover it—or not—as a test? Or had her people truly missed them? Or is someone covering it up?

  Kaki’s hands waved twice, making the spacer hand-sign for don’t know. “No one has a clue, or if they do, they’re not telling. Bounties offered, but no claims. Some new player, and that’s got the heads worried.”

  Meiko tapped her lips. “I might be able to help your people with that, if they’re willing to share what they know.” And if I can shake loose some intel from Kumar. “Maybe we can work a trade? Could you at least pass my offer on?”

  “Help in tracing who’s behind the snatching in return for what we know about last night?” She held her left hand out flat at chest level and tapped her right fist up against it twice, spacer handsign for yes. Kaki shrugged. “I’ll pass it on, but can’t promise the heads will bite.”