A Path in the Darkness

by M. D. Cooper

  “You’re not going to like what happened while you were playing with bondage boy,” Rogers said as they walked out of the hotel room.

  “What’s that?”

  “We think Myrrdan left High Terra. Every lead we’ve been following for the last day has been a red herring.”

  Jessica swore. “Where did he go?”

  “We’re not sure; there are a number of possible transports he could have left on. Maybe Cruithne, maybe Mars.”

  “What’s our next move?” Jessica ran a hand through her hair, feeling like the night had gone from good to bad to really bad.

  “Section chief has you on the next transport to Cruithne.”

  Her expression brightened. “Really? I hear they’ve got some amazing clubs there.”

  Rogers sighed. “You didn’t get laid first tonight, did you?”

  CRUITHNE AGAIN?

  STELLAR DATE: 3227238 / 10.12.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: Cruithne Station

  REGION: InnerSol, Sol Space Federation

  Cruithne used a tether docking system. It made for a much smoother transfer of vector and gravity between the ship and the station. Larger ships could not be easily tethered, but smaller vessels like the Ardent Dawn were designed with the system in mind.

  Jessica had only a minimal appreciation for the system as she arched her head back and screamed in ecstasy. Moments later the man below her shook in the throes of his own orgasm and clawed at her shoulders.

  He probably wanted to breathe. She loosened her grip on his neck and he spent a minute gasping for air.

  Looking down at his puffing cheeks she realized that she didn’t even know his name—looked it up—Steve, apparently. Not bad for a Steve.

  “We’re docked. Get to your cabin, I need to clean up.”

  He started to say something, which she ignored, sliding off him with smooth precision. The quarters were small and two steps put her in the san unit where she slid the door shut to his entreaties.

  Three weeks on this tub—she had nearly run out of men. The crew was off limits after the captain had to step in on an incident, apparently playing the male crewmembers against one another was verboten.

  Captain was a bitch anyway.

  Out of the san, she was glad to see that Steve was gone. She stood for a moment, trying to decide between uniform or armor.

  Cruithne was the dark underside of InnerSol—well, the best-known dark underside at least. If it was smuggled, stolen, pirated, or just plain illegal, it passed through Cruithne. She was certain it was some sort of unwritten underworld rule.

  Though the asteroid-turned-station was part of InnerSol and fell under Terran jurisdiction, the law’s reach here was limited. A very old family owned Cruithne and had ties with all the right people. Those ties let them get away with pretty much anything they wanted.

  Jessica chose the armor—slipped into it after a trip back to the san for a full purge—and gathered up her belongings and dumped them onto a follower. The bot lifted off the ground and prepared to trundle after her.

  With nothing onboard other than what was already on the bot, she was able to take the no-cargo umbilical. A quick pause at customs and she was into the main departure area of the Terra wing of Cruithne.

  Across the space was a member of the Cruithne Police Force, one Captain Clyde according to Jessica’s HUD. However, the TBI liaison agent that her dossier listed was nowhere to be seen, not particularly surprising from what she knew of the local office’s track record.

  Jessica established a connection to the local TBI dock and was cordially informed by the administrative NSAI that her liaison would be an AI by the name of Angharad, who was currently unavailable.

  If an unavailable AI wasn’t the strongest, most non-violent way to say, “You’re not welcome,” Jessica didn’t know what was. She filed it away in her mental ‘people to mess with later’ category.

  She approached the CPF officer and extended her hand.

  “Special Agent Keller.”

  “Captain Clyde.” The response contained not a drop of emotion. The woman could have been reading a serial number off a firearm.

  “I assume that you have been briefed on my reason for being here.” Jessica had no problem driving the conversation forward.

  “I have. I will be your liaison with the CPF, the local TBI office will not be taking an active role in this investigation.”

  Jessica got the impression that they didn’t take an active role in much of anything, unless looking the other way was considered an action.

  “We’ll need to stop at our main station. You will need to turn in your weapons and armor there.” The CPF captain’s tone still contained no tone, not even a hint of challenge. If Jessica didn’t know better she would suspect that the woman was an automaton.

  “You’re aware that Cruithne is in Terran space?” Jessica asked.

  The officer’s face finally flickered with annoyance, her first sign of emotion.

  “I am.”

  “Good.” Jessica smiled. “Then I’m certain you just had a mental lapse when you suggested that I disarm.”

  The CPF captain didn’t respond for a moment and Jessica widened her stance, subtly shifting into a more threatening posture.

  She knew Cruithne largely operated without Terran oversight, but this was ridiculous. If this cop thought she was going to walk unarmored in the most dangerous station in InnerSol she had another thing coming—and it would be a very, very unpleasant thing.

  “We’ll still need to register your weapons, then.”

  Jessica gestured broadly. “Lead the way.”

  The captain turned with a not-so-subtle roll of the eyes—Jessica was going to get on famously with this cop.

  Cruithne was everything the vids said. It was both fantastic and decrepit. Certain systems and visible portions of the station were plainly archaic, but a glossy sheen of new construction and technology had been laid overtop. It made her wonder how solid the aging station really was.

  They were passing rows of shops, eating establishments and the more upscale lodgings, all catering to the Terran clientele, posh and polished. The people were all fairly vanilla, slightly more interesting than the streets and corridors of Raleigh, but only marginally so. Here and there a fairly serious mod-job would hover or roll by, but for the most part it was people using their own legs for locomotion.

  Jessica was behind Captain Clyde by a pace or two and took the time to examine the woman’s gait for evidence of modification. The woman wore the standard CPF uniform, a close-fitting mesh of ballistic impact material with ablative panels over crucial areas. She didn’t have a helmet with her. Either the captain hadn’t pissed anyone off lately, or she was paid up with all the protection rackets. Or she was a major player and no one would mess with her.

  Jessica had originally been more bothered by the lack of a TBI liaison and she hadn’t dwelled on the significance of a captain meeting her at the docks. In the CPF there was only one rank above captain. This made Clyde a senior officer.

  Normally such an assignment meant that they took the threat from Myrrdin seriously—in this case Jessica suspected the CPF was more concerned with her than another murderer running around on their station. As long as he didn’t kill the wrong people he could probably play here as much as he wanted.

  Jessica reined in her wandering thoughts and resumed her examination of Clyde. There it was, the telltale twist in the hips and shoulders that indicated extra-muscular strength enhancements and most likely skeletal alterations as well. Clyde would be a tough cookie and probably had internal armor as well.

  Jessica would too if she were a cop in a place like Cruithne.

  Angharad’s communication came in over the Link Jessica had established with the TBI offices.

 

  came the reply. Jessica couldn’t
tell if the AI was just being non-emotive, as many of them were prone to be, or if she was being hostile.

  Probably hostile.

 

  “You’d be incorrect.” The AI’s voice sounded from behind Jessica—she hadn’t heard any motion back there other than the general bustle of the crowd. Clyde turned—again displaying a small amount emotion—this time smug pleasure.

  Jessica turned and the three formed a loose circle in the corridor, unconcerned with the obstruction to traffic they were forming, not that anyone looked like they planned on taking umbrage.

  Angharad, though an AI, apparently chose to take her female gender choice seriously. Her white and blue frame was artistically designed, all curves and flares, the effect a combination of sensuality and menace. She wore no clothes, her body’s skin being her only outer layer. It was perfectly smooth without a seam or crease, but Jessica picked up the signatures of several weapon systems.

  Between the three of them they could probably reduce the whole corridor to a smoking ruin.

  “Glad you could take the time to make an appearance.” Jessica didn’t bother with pleasantries—why waste them on an AI anyway?

  “I was otherwise indisposed,” Angharad replied.

  “I can’t imagine how,” Jessica chuckled. Several amusing possibilities presented themselves to her.

  “No, you probably couldn’t.” The AI’s eyes seemed to flash.

  “If we may be on our way?” Clyde asked. “I do have other things to do today.”

  “As do I, I need to catch a serial killer before he slips off your station.”

  “You aren’t concerned that this Myrrdan will kill anyone on Cruithne?”

  Jessica shrugged as they began moving again. “Either he kills the right people, in which case you won’t care, or he kills the wrong people, in which case I’ll probably applaud him and then you’ll care about catching him.”

  “That’s a dangerous sort of attitude to have on Cruithne,” Angharad commented.

  Jessica simply shrugged. She wasn’t going to get in a pissing match with an AI.

  The CPF station was standard fare. Jessica registered the magnetic signatures of her beam weapons and failed to disclose her ballistic sidearm holstered within a hidden compartment on her armor. They probably knew she had it, but no one brought it up. From there she requested access to the records of all incoming vessels from Terra and settled into her standard research pattern.

  Both Captain Clyde and Angharad disappeared at that point. Jessica didn’t know where they went and didn’t really care. Just so long as they weren’t standing over her as she worked. A desk in a corner of the detective’s work area had been set aside and she had half a dozen holos up, all privacy locked making them only visible to her retina. It was likely that a large portion of the police here were on someone’s pay—someone who would love to know exactly where the TBI agent from Terra was digging.

  Three ships’ arrival times fit within the timeframe required and two provided her with verified biometrics on each passenger. Not that such information was impossible to falsify, but the third ship wouldn’t give her the time of day, making it the best place to start.

  And best to start there in person. A TBI request over the Link was far less threatening than an armored agent at your airlock demanding answers—something that was her specialty.

  An attempt to slip out of the station unnoticed failed and Captain Clyde appeared at her side as she walked past the front desk.

  “Going somewhere, Agent Keller?”

  “Just going to pay a visit to a ship in the docks,” Jessica replied.

  “Did you take the time to get a warrant?”

  “I didn’t realize a warrant was required to talk to people.”

  Clyde didn’t respond for a few moments. “Just be careful what questions you ask.”

  Jessica didn’t know exactly what to make of the statement and nodded before leaving. The CPF captain didn’t follow her, something that actually made Jessica more nervous. If the captain didn’t want to be present chances were that she wanted some sort of deniability.

  While looking over the inbound ship records, Jessica had done some digging on Captain Clyde as well. She suspected that Myrrdan had paid Clyde off, but nothing turned up. As far as the official record was concerned, Clyde was the model officer—something that Jessica was sure was patently impossible on Cruithne. Clyde may as well have hung a sign above her head that said ‘Corrupt Cop’.

  The ship was berthed roughly seven kilometers from the station and Jessica looked up the fastest route on the station’s net. She was surprised to see that there was no maglev on Cruithne. It looked like walking or station taxis were the only ways to get around. Several of the taxis had driven past on her walk with Clyde and Angharad. She decided not to chance it.

  Jessica had to admit to herself that, while she thought she had ‘seen it all’ on High Terra, Cruithne had a whole new level of twisted and weird. She found herself alternating between horror, arousal, and morbid curiosity as she passed by the station’s denizens.

  She knew that she wasn’t exactly stock either, but she highlighted her humanity. Obscuring it entirely or defacing it was not something she would ever consider.

  Not for the first time, Jessica found herself wondering if this is what happened to people when they were too far removed from nature. Having grown up on Earth, Jessica was in the vast minority in the Sol system. Even with over a dozen worlds being fully terraformed in the system, most humans lived on rings and stations. A study she had recently read claimed that over ninety percent of humans in the Sol system had never even set foot on a world.

  At least on High Terra there was an approximation of nature with hills, lakes and rivers, on places like Cruithne there wasn’t even a single park.

  It had to have an effect on people—make them not-people.

  Jessica had tried to explain these ideas to her coworkers more than once, but none of them could take her seriously with her being the most modded in her team.

  She knew it was incongruous. There were definitely two Jessicas. Even though her parents and friends back in Athabasca barely recognized her, she still related to them and appreciated their way of life. She also wanted to taste the high-octane life and see what was beyond regular humanity.

  If it was represented by what was displayed around her then perhaps the final destination was not a place she wanted to see.

  Then again there must be the promise of transcendence, of humanity becoming something more.

  Wasn’t that the promise that all this technology was supposed to bring?

  Her musings were interrupted by her internal nav informing her that she had arrived at the ship’s berth.

  Cruithne berths were archaic to say the least. In newer stations and rings, ships passed through ES shielding and essentially landed on the station. Here they still docked a cargo hatch to the station and grapples held the ship in place.

  There was even a line on the station’s deck plate denoting where the ship’s domain began.

  The ship she was looking for was named the Arimanthe and its domain was guarded by a thing that was decidedly more mech than human. Jessica couldn’t even determine its gender.

  “Jessica Keller, I’m with the TBI and I need to speak to your captain,” she addressed the hulk with authority, though she didn’t expect to get anywhere.

  “Captain doesn’t want to talk to you,” came the impassive response.

  “We’re not going to reach an agreement are we?” Jessica asked.

  “Not unless you agree to go away,” the hulk smirked—at least Jessica thought it was a smirk.

  She checked the status of the warrant she had applied for, something she had decided to hide from Captain Clyde, and found that it had been signed by a district AI judge moments before.

  “I have a warrant to view your manifests and logs, I will be entering your vessel now.”<
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  “You and what army?” The hulk asked.

  “This army.”

  Jessica turned, surprised to see Angharad approaching with two security drones.

  “I didn’t think you wanted to get involved with this,” Jessica said.

  Angharad’s steely visage showed no emotion. “I don’t, but orders are orders. I guess someone cares enough about getting this Myrrdan guy to risk ruffling a few feathers over here.”

  The hulk gave the AI and security drones a long, considering look before acquiescing and calling the bridge.

  “Captain’ll see you.”

  The ship turned out to be a lot larger than Jessica expected, the two-hundred meter walk to the bridge took the pair of TBI agents past hold after hold of cargo, most of it likely black market.

  The ship itself was in decent shape. The captain appeared to care for his ship and made sure the crew did too. Jessica assembled a mental map of the ship and where possible escape routes would be should the encounter turn ugly.

  The hulk led them to the captain’s office, just aft of the bridge, before returning to his post at the dock.

  The portal slid open and Jessica entered, noting that Angharad entered behind her and remained there. Her attention was quickly consumed by the captain. The man was massive. Jessica estimated him at over two-hundred kilograms.

  A walk-in clinic could solve his weight issue in a day, which meant he actually wanted to be as large as he was. Jessica couldn’t figure out what that said about him, but it certainly was well outside of normal.

  “Hello, I’m agent Keller and this is Agent Angharad,” Jessica offered both introductions and her hand.

  The man leaned back and folded his arms behind his head.

  “What can I do for the TBI today?”

  Jessica smiled, the man wanted to do the information dance. She was more than happy to oblige him. In her experience suspects gave away more than they held back when they tried to be evasive.

  “We just thought perhaps you were lonely and wanted some company. Cruithne is sometimes an unwelcoming station,” she replied.

  “Lonely on Cruithne?” The captain laughed and Jessica had to force herself not to stare at how his flesh rippled. “There is more company here than anywhere in Sol. I don’t think I’d need to stoop to the TBI for that.”