Gallego followed the direction of her gaze, which was directed at the nightstand between their beds. On one side, next to the lamp, was an inset terminal. As she was already standing, Cheboi marched over to it and depressed the key that was blinking. The chiming stopped.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Who is this?” Cheboi demanded.
There was a sigh, followed by what sounded like an admission. “It’s me, Inspector Najafi. I’m sorry to call you so late, but it me this long to get away from the Constabulary. Are you free to talk?”
Gallego looked at Cheboi, who looked exactly as she felt - concerned and attentive.
“Yes, of course,” Gallego replied. She chuckled when she realized the coincidental nature of his call. “We were planning on contacting you first thing in the morning. There were some things we found that we wanted to go over. What’s the problem?”
They heard Najafi slowly suck in a breath and expel it. His next words were uttered slowly and hesitantly.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before... some details about this case that I wasn’t quite able to share. I’d like to rectify that. Can we meet?”
“Of course. We were hoping to meet up at Aljiran plaza. Doesn’t that work?”
“Absolutely not. Too public. What I have in mind requires privacy.”
“All right,” Gallego replied, attempting to sound placating. Najafi’s tone was getting increasingly strained the longer they talked. Giving him options that didn’t work wasn’t helping either. “Where can we meet you?”
Another pause as Najafi chewed on their options. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll call you tomorrow once I’ve arrange the details. Do you have a comlink I can reach you at?”
“Certainly,” said Gallego, first looking to Cheboi for confirmation. Her bodyguard shot her an uncertain look but nodded all the same. Gallego then listed off the alpha-numeric code to her personal link.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?”
“Not now,” Najafi insisted. “Just expect my call at about ten-hundred hours. I’ll pick a meeting spot and have it all ready for you.”
Gallego paused. “You’ll have what ready?”
“Not now!” Najafi barked. “Just get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
The call ended.
Gallego shook her head. There was no indication from Gallego’s bio monitors, but she felt like she was out of breath. She took one look at her pillow and scoffed.
“What is it?” asked Cheboi.
“Doesn’t he really think we’ll be getting any sleep after that?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
[TARGETS HAVE BEEN ACQUIRED.]
The words brought Saana out of her trance-like state. They had been holding position outside of the hotel for hours, maintaining a watch over the investigator and her bodyguard. Given their position within an overhanging structure atop another building, they had been able to disengage their cloaking fields and get some rest. A rotating watch provided a constant vigil on the hotel while the others were able enter a state of self-induced repose.
It was Konsou’s shift. He was the one to spot them as they emerged from the hotel’s front entrance. Saana and the others were roused and began bringing themselves to full alertness and their suits to full power.
[Begin tracking,] Saana ordered Konsou, her next order to the rest of her squad. [Engage cloaking fields and be ready to move.]
Her team obliged, disappearing from sight. Saana joined them and began moving towards Konsou’s position at the edge of the building. Through her helmet, she saw her comrade’s outline standing on the parapet, looking down into the street. Saana alerted Konsou to her presence and asked to see what she saw. [Send me the feed.]
Saana was rewarded with the image of the Cythereans walking down the promenade, making their way towards the plaza’s main thoroughfare. As soon as they had put a few dozen meters between themselves and Saana’s team, she ordered them to move.
It was like walking on air, moving with the kind of grace that was assured by extensive augmentation, powered armor, and Ganymede’s low gravity. From one rooftop to the next, her team ran, jumped, and floated through the air. Their movements were muffled with the help of dampening fields. Their footfalls never made a noise.
Near the end of the street, the next building reached several stories taller. A powered jump and lower gravity alone wouldn’t suffice to help them reach the top. No orders needed to be given. Like a flock of birds carrying out a single coordinated maneuver, all five of them deployed adhesive pads to their hands and boots. When they came into contact with the building in front of them, these pads bonded to the surface, forming connections at the atomic level. Hand over hand, foot over foot, her team scaled the sidewall and reached the top within seconds.
From the next rooftop, they looked down on the main boulevard. The investigator and her bodyguard turned left and began moving at a plodding pace to their destination. It didn’t take long for Saana and her crew to realize exactly where they were headed. As soon as they reached the thick throng that surrounded the bazaar, they slowed and began looking at the storefronts.
Still playing the role of lookout, Konsou was the one to summarize it for the rest of them. [Looks like our quarry is after some breakfast.]
Saana smiled. From a hunter’s standpoint, the metaphor couldn’t be more perfect. Prey was never more vulnerable than when they stopped to rest or feed. And while they couldn’t hope to engage them - there were far too many people about for that to happen - they were in a perfect position to gain some valuable information on their plans.
[Okran, acquire an identity and prep a Snoop,] she ordered. [Let’s see what the Cythereans’ next move is.]
A WAFT OF HOT, MOIST air greeted them the moment they stepped into the bazaar. About a hundred different smells reached their noses at once, sending their olfactory senses into a tailspin. Gallego did her best to the identify them. With a little help from her neural loom and its vast troves of memory data, she would be able to pick out any she had encounter before. But where was the fun in that? Relying on sense memory alone, she was able to pick out sesame, cilantro, fermented soy, some leafy greens, turmeric, cumin, pepper, oregano, and anise.
This was just from the food vendors and grocers that were nearest to the entrance. Beyond that, she could also pick up notes of patchouli, citronella, sandalwood, and a dozen other types of incense. Such vendors were a common feature in the Outer Worlds, where people lived in sealed tenements and the atmospheres were self-contained and endlessly recycled. Moderation was key, but the locals were nothing if not accustomed to moderation. Living on a world where everything was limited, including the air, had a way of doing that to people.
In any case, the smells brought back a lot of memories for Gallego, in a way that felt more satisfying than accessing them on her loom. It was also less reliable, but no less pleasing for that. One thing she remembered very clearly: the Jovian street vendors could do wonders with vegetable- and insect-based proteins. Between the sense memory and the rich smells, she was feeling the first pang of hunger.
“Any preferences?” she said to Cheboi.
“Just tea for now.”
“Oh, you’ll never get through the morning with nothing but tea in your stomach. I recommend we get some noodles and cubed chicken.”
Cheboi noted the hole in her suggestion and immediately pointed it out. “Last I checked, there was no chicken around here. Not unless it was canned and shipped.”
Gallego smiled. “It’s all about the spices and flavorings. Done properly, it tastes almost as real as the simulated stuff we grew up on.”
Cheboi nodded and smiled assent. As a fellow Cytherean, Cheboi understood what Gallego was referring to. For people who had weaned on artificially-fabricated meat, assembled at the cellular level, there was nothing terribly odd about eating vegetable-based proteins designed to taste like meat. In fact, Cheboi sounded downright enthusiastic with her
reply. “They do teriyaki or satay style? I’m getting a craving.”
“For breakfast?” Gallego replied, feigning disgust.
Having agreed on a quaint noodle vendor and secured themselves a table in the common area, Gallego and Cheboi sat down with a pair of steaming bowls and some hot coffee. Much to Gallego’s disgust, Cheboi had chosen to go with something that approximated beef and egg noodles, combined with actual broccoli and ginger in a rich brown sauce. Gallego kept it light, opting for unflavored protein cubes with a dusting of sesame seeds and a soy dressing over vermicelli noodles.
The coffee itself was also genuine. The beans were the product of the same hydroponics operations that grew their vegetables, and the heaping cups were sweetened with a touch of coconut cream. All in all, not a bad spread for a quaint Jovian bazar.
After a few bites and sips, Cheboi decided to broach the subject. “Any thoughts?”
“On what?” said Gallego. Cheboi paused for a moment as a pedestrian stumbled closely to their table. The woman politely excused herself in Jovian pidgin. When she had moved on, Cheboi explained.
“On what it’s that the Constabulary is holding back. Do you really think they could be sitting on some evidence, something that might exonerate those suspects?”
Gallego considered that possibility. Messier had been rather clear about the public mood and the Jovian Alliance’s desire to see justice served. But he and Najafi had also been rather clear on the damning nature of the evidence. Would they be willing to suppress something that didn’t fit the narrative?
“Maybe so,” replied Gallego. “But I can’t imagine it would be anything really solid. I mean, if they had something that proved they were looking in the wrong direction, why withhold it?”
Cheboi measured her counter-point and retorted, “Maybe because there’s no one else to blame? Or because they know that nothing short of finding the actual killers will do?”
Gallego chewed the piece of protein in her mouth and nodded thoughtfully. “You think the people that did this, they’ll have to be flushed out and found?”
Cheboi stopped eating and was looking to be on high alert again. Ever since they had begun to discuss the subject, Gallego noticed that she had simply been pushing her food around with her pair of chop sticks. It wasn’t so much for the sake of being polite, as being uncomfortable. Her next words revealed why.
“I don’t think flushing them out will be the challenge. I think catching them will be.”
Gallego was sipping at her coffee. She stopped, placed the cup down. She had seen signs of it before, but now it was painfully clear. Cheboi deeply suspected that whoever was behind the murder of the Constables would try to take a crack at them while they were here as well. Gallego knew that there were risks going in. Elenko clearly feared as much too, given the way she had assigned Cheboi to oversee her protection. For the moment, only Cheboi appeared to be convinced of that, though.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Gallego said.
Cheboi smiled. “Oh, but it will. Chances are, before we leave here, they’ll make themselves known to us.”
Cheboi began scanning the throng of people that were passing through the bazaar. Gallego followed the direction of her gaze and tried to see what she saw. All the bodies decked out in their strange and assorted clothing. Compared to Cytherean norm, they were thin and lanky, and their complexions were comparably varied too. Most went about their business privately. But on occasion, one of them would look at the women with a measure of suspicion.
Gallego suddenly felt a bit nauseous. Any one of them, she knew, could be the attackers. Given the level of technology they were likely to have at their disposal, she wouldn’t know them until they chose to reveal themselves. Gallego knew this, because she and Cheboi had similar technology at their disposal. If they so wanted, they could deploy their Xolotl suits, deploy their stealth fields, or alter their outward appearances to resemble the people that surrounded them. Deploying their suits would also be the only way they could spot anyone else that was hiding in plain sight. For now, that wasn’t really an option.
“Are you really that worried?” Gallego asked Cheboi.
“No,” she replied. “Once they make themselves known to us, we’ll make ourselves known to them. They’ll find we’re not as easy to kill as some unsuspecting officers.”
Gallego wasn’t sure how to reply. On one hand, she didn’t much care for Cheboi’s fatalistic appraisal of their situation. On the other, she liked her optimistic appraisal of their odds. Luckily, she didn’t need to reply, as her comlink began notifying her of an incoming message. It was also notifying her that the caller was Najafi.
“Inspector.” She consulted the chrono in the corner of her overlay. “You’re early. We weren’t expecting you for another hour.”
“I was able to get things together ahead of schedule. Can you meet?”
“Yes, of course. Where and when?”
Cheboi leaned in across from her. Getting closer wouldn’t allow her to hear what was being said on the other end, but apparently, she still felt the need to be closer to the conversation.
“Trafalgar plaza. One hour. Be prepared for a bit of a ride.”
“A ride?” Gallego asked. Najafi had already hung up. She looked to Cheboi, who had helpfully pulled up an overlay and was accessing the data she had on Selket. A quick search yielded an explanation.
“That plaza is where the transit line runs beneath the surface to Kur.”
“The casino complex?” said Gallego.
Cheboi collapsed her overlay and shrugged. “Can’t get more private than an ocean liner.”
FROM THE EDGE OF THEIR table, a small film of nanopaste lurked right where Okran had placed it. As soon as she had planted the Snoop, it began broadcasting sound and telemetry data back to Saana and her team. What was transmitted at first was of little interest, sensor echoes indicating the position of their targets, and the movements of dozens of passersby. This was followed by boring conversation, and even a thinly-veiled mention of Saana and her team. While the boisterous remarks of the bodyguard were amusing, they were of little concern to them now.
But their patience was eventually rewarded. Saana smiled when she heard them announce their destination.
[Kur. The undersea transit line,] Saana said, addressing her team. It sounded almost too perfect to be true. [They’ll never be able to escape once they’re mobile. That is where we’ll take them. Prepare to move.]
TWENTY-EIGHT
THEY FOUND NAJAFI STANDING out in front of the terminal, looking anxious and impatient. While Gallego and Cheboi had arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, it was plain to see that the Inspector had been waiting for them for some time. He wasn’t in his uniform, but Gallego recognized his face easily enough. That, and his movements as he paced across the terminal’s front steps, gave him away.
If inconspicuous is what he’s going for, he’s doing a piss-poor job, she thought. To anyone who was likely to care, the fact that he was an officer of the law was written all over him.
The moment he saw them, he abruptly turned and walked into the terminal. His gait had a certain haste to it that let Gallego and Cheboi know he wanted them to follow him, and at a brisk pace. He also paused for a second as he stepped through the doors, looking back over his shoulder to make sure they had taken his cue.
“This has to be good,” Gallego whispered to Cheboi.
Proceeding up the steps, they passed through a set of sliding doors and into the terminal’s main lobby. Like most transit hubs, the area was a mix of kiosks, public seating areas, columns, displays, and the occasional cafe. Not a lot of people were present just enough to qualify the place as being “busy”.
From the looks of those she could see, Gallego discerned that quite a few of the patrons were from the Inner Worlds. Unlike the bazaar or the spaceport, many of the people who were milling about them had all the indications of being Extro. They interfaced with displays only they could see, conv
ersed with people only they could hear (without the use of a visible device), or were in the process of voking - as indicated by a faraway look, but no hand gestures.
For a local seeing it for the first time, it might look strange. But for someone accustomed to it, it was as familiar as could be.
Najafi was no longer visible. Gallego scanned the pillars, the kiosks, and any other place he could have ducked behind. Unfortunately, there were too many dark spaces he could have slipped into. Having insisted on being conspicuous when they first arrived, he was now employing the opposite tactic. Given that he had no registered implants to go by, she couldn’t simply call up and overlay and locate his position.
Gallego was about to complain when the call came in.
“You’re here. Can you see me?”
Gallego double-checked on that. She confirmed that he was still missing. “No.”
“Good,” he replied. “Go to the nearest kiosk. Book two tickets to Kur, passenger class.”
“Najafi, could you just -”
“Do it now.”
The call cut out. Gallego looked over her left shoulder to Cheboi, who was naturally watching all the patrons and scanning the foyer for any hidden dangers. She looked to Gallego to get a status update. Gallego motioned to the nearest kiosk. “He’s taking the shuttle. We need to as well.”
Booking tickets took no time at all. Given their appearances, youthful and Extropian-like, none of the booking agents were in a hurry to turn Cheboi and Gallego away. Things slowed down a bit when they had to pass through a rudimentary security check point. From the looks of it, it had been established haphazardly and quite recently, no doubt in response to the recent terror attack. The security guards operating it weren’t too insistent or forceful with their procedures. Obviously, they didn’t want their customers to feel impinged upon. One pass through a body scanner, and Cheboi and Gallego were off to make the next liner.
This consisted of making their way to another foyer, where a series of elevators were situated. The handful of passengers there waited for cars to arrive and then boarded them. Cheboi led Gallego into one with half a dozen other passengers. Things were a bit tight inside, but she clearly wanted a throng around them to ensure they were protected... just in case.
The Jovian Manifesto (The Formist Series Book 2) Page 19