by Mel Odom
Through the feed from the tunnel seccams, I watched the drone run effortlessly along the mag-lev rails that powered the tube-lev trains. Another frame was opened up on the broadcast and displayed the vid view offered by the drone. Seventeen meters out from the tube-lev car, the wicked snout of a laser shoved through the door and targeted the drone. Bombarded by the laser, the drone caught fire and slagged in mid-air, spattering to the tunnel floor in running silver beads. Some of the beads got caught over the magnetic rail and shot up into the tunnel ceiling.
Then the laser pistol withdrew back into the car.
But it definitely looked like none of the media feeds or the news-nosies had the image I’d created.
Eight meters ahead, the PD had set up a police line at the doorway to the tube station. Hard-faced men in uniform carrying stunsticks as well as slug-throwers stood guard.
Most of the people being held back from the doorway were civilians. A few news-nosies lurked among them, filing their reports and spicing the broadcast with rumor and supposition.
“I’m waiting for confirmation on the identity of the terrorists, but right now these are believed by some to be Martian terrorists who want to break away from Earth support.”
I wanted to ask him who the “some” were, but I didn’t. If I approached him, I would become the story. Shelly had taught me that. The only time law enforcement interfaced with the media was when they could use them in some capacity. The news-nosies knew that, and they recycled every crumb they got from the police to drive up sales and ratings.
“—Martian terrorists have been striking back against Earth corps. Only a month ago, Cartman Dawes, CEO of IdentiKit, was murdered by a team of mercenaries that had worked on Mars in the past.”
That particular news-nosie was Lily Lockwell. She was of medium height and trim. Her auburn hair hung perfectly even in the microgravity. She was an attractive woman. Several men, and women, stood entranced around her as she filed her story.
I’d had dealings with Lockwell. Most NAPD detectives had. She and Shelly had had an understanding, but Lockwell had turned on me for a time after Shelly had been killed. Lately, though, once I had been cleared and no longer newsworthy, Lockwell and I had talked occasionally about investigations. As a bioroid detective, I was always going to be news.
The Cartman Dawes investigation had been the one that had gotten Shelly killed. And the one that had first led me to the chimera tattoo. The link to Mara Blake had been unexpected, and I was still trying to figure out how that all fit in. Having been programmed for curiosity, it was a twenty-four hour job for me. A human with the same drive would have been diagnosed with OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. In fact, many good detectives displayed those very traits.
The investigation into Dawes’s murder had ended unsatisfactorily for the media because no one had figured out who had hired the mercenaries who had killed him. The NAPD hadn’t wanted to waste any more man hours on it after they had the people who’d pulled the trigger. I’d heard some were afraid the trail would eventually lead back to one of the big corps. It might have. I didn’t know.
I’d been ordered to stop investigating the death of Cartman Dawes, but I hadn’t closed the book on Shelly’s murder.
Or Mara Blake’s kidnapping. I still felt certain that one would lead into the other.
Lockwell had pressed me about the investigation because my partner had been killed. If I’d been human, maybe I’d have been tempted to tell more about the case than I’d been ordered to. But I didn’t. She’d eventually gotten a new story to chase after, and another after that.
But I knew she hadn’t forgotten. Although that interest could be threatening to the NAPD, I was satisfied that Lockwell would continue searching. Maybe at some point we would both have the stories we were looking for.
I held up my hand so the officer in charge of the security detail could read my ID. The effort was superfluous, but I did it anyway. I stood 190 centimeters tall and weighed 160 kilos. I was not small or easily overlooked. Despite the knitted black skullcap I wore, something that Shelly had encouraged me to do to soften my appearance, and the thigh-length bulletproof duster and black suit, I still stood out among the other NAPD personnel. Synthskin covered my face and hands, giving me a small token nod toward looking human, but the cables at the back of my hands and the harsh, angular lines of my chassis immediately took that away.
Most telling of all, though, were my silver eyes. Haas-Bioroid had chosen to use the silver coloration to avoid the “Uncanny Valley,” the effect caused by androids and robots that too closely resembled flesh-and-blood people. In truth, I didn’t need eyes. Having only two eyes would have limited my vision, so several points on my head were vid receptors. My programming took in all the various vid feeds and turned them into a 360-degree view.
Sergeant Kramer, the squat-bodied man heading up the door security, smelled like garlic and old sweat. His pulse beat in the hollow of his throat and his heart rate was up from his last police physical by thirteen percent. I accessed all of this biometric and case file information in less time than it took him to intentionally disregard my e-ID.
Royo held up his hand, too.
“Detective Royo, the captain’s been waiting on you.”
Royo nodded. “Thanks.” He looked at Darbins. “You guys help manage perimeter security.”
Darbins shrugged. “Sure. I don’t mind sitting out here instead of getting up close and personal with a bomb.” He started placing his men.
The security team parted and Royo walked through. I followed him, but Kramer never said a word or looked at me.
Chapter Five
The tube station waiting area measured eighty meters long, twenty meters deep, and six meters tall. The plascrete finish was white, but heavy pedestrian traffic—frequent, not weight-wise because of the lower gravity—had left the surface scuffed. Yellow lines marked the waiting areas, offering mute encouragement to the tube passengers to arrange themselves to board the cars. When the tube train was properly placed, nine cars could be boarded at once.
I logged into the tube station seccams as a matter of course and managed them on a subroutine, scrolling for facial recognition and threatening body language.
I also opened another subroutine and started a search for the face of the man I’d downloaded from the memory. Sometimes when I came back from the “memories,” I couldn’t remember much. I didn’t know how much I constantly forgot. Having control over the episodes would have been beneficial. Not having the control was unsatisfactory on many levels.
The railway was on the other side of the boarding platform, a single thick steel conduit for electromagnetic propulsion. The energy was enough to light up my warning subroutines, but not enough to incapacitate me. Direct contact with the rail would probably have shut me down, perhaps even disrupted neurological circuits or erased memory.
Beyond that, the stone wall and ceiling were impenetrable. I knew from the blueprint schematics I had access to that the crust over the tube channel was only six meters. Depending on what explosive the terrorists had, that could be problematic.
Royo stopped me with a hand and looked up at me. “You got an image from inside that tube car?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
I held out my hand, palm up, and broadcasted the vid only a few centimeters above the synthskin.
Six men were inside the car. I attached caption tags to the men I’d identified.
GORDON HOLDER, CEO OF SKORPIOS DEFENSE SYSTEMS was a man in his thirties. He had the profile of a Greek god, lean-jawed and handsome. Now he sat on his haunches against one wall with his hands cuffed behind his back. Fear etched his face sharply. Tears and rips in his suit testified to how roughly he’d been treated.
MARTIN FENG, BODYGUARD, HORATIO SECURITY SERVICES, ON RETAINER TO SKORPIOS DEFENSE SYSTEMS CEO lay motionless on the floor. I magnified my own image of the tube car and saw no evidence of respiration. After I hacked into the biometrics readout
system built into the car for the handling of cargo, I confirmed that Feng’s body was already losing heat. I added DECEASED to his caption.
“The bodyguard’s dead?” Royo spoke softly, but his voice carried in the cavernous tube station.
“What?” One of the thick-necked NAPD homicide detectives turned to us. “What did you say?”
Royo turned toward the other man. “The bodyguard’s dead.”
The detective stepped to within arm’s reach of us. He had a hard jawline and small, dark eyes that looked like bruises. His e-ID gave his name and rank: Lieutenant Irwin Walther. “How do you know that?”
Royo jerked a thumb at me. “Detective Drake has access to the on-board seccams.”
“One seccam.” I pointed to the location of the vid’s focal point. “Here. The connection isn’t good. I had to recreate much of the picture.”
Walther looked at me and rubbed his jaw with evident displeasure. I had subroutines that recognized body language, and the last seven years I’d spent around humans, especially Shelly Nolan, had refined that skill set. “You two come with me.”
Royo and I followed Walther through the twenty-six police officials gathered in the tube station. Walther stopped in front of Captain Gopal Karanjai, my supervisor.
Karanjai was smartly dressed and looked calm despite the drama unfolding. He was an unassuming man in his fifties, very fit, and tended to be an observer, never moving till he was certain he had to. Once he made up his mind, though, he moved quickly and decisively. He had achieved his rank because he was thorough and patient, and he didn’t back off until he accomplished the goals he’d set for himself.
He had been born on Earth, a fourth-generation East Indian and third-generation police officer. He’d relocated to the Moon because his wife was a medical doctor who specialized in microgravity emergency surgery. They had four children, two in college and two at home, all of whom he was close to.
I believed that Shelly Nolan would have liked Karanjai if she’d had the opportunity to meet him.
“Cap, the bioroid has information about the people inside that tube car.” Walther pointed at me and I detected an accusing note. “It says Holder’s bodyguard is flatlined.”
Beside me, Shelly cursed. When we’d been partnered, she hadn’t allowed me to be treated as a thing. Even though I didn’t have an anatomical gender, I’d been programmed with a male point of view. Shelly had sometimes told me that she thought that was disappointing because I was therefore limited in my thinking. I had assured her I was not, and I still didn’t know if she had been teasing or not. I was fluent with humor, but the intricacies of it sometimes escaped me.
Karanjai studied me with his soft brown eyes. We had met a total of three times. During the initial meeting with Commissioner Dawn, who had only been telepresent, Karanjai had said nothing, merely accepted my relocation. The second time he had introduced me to Jorge Royo, listened to my partner’s frustration with getting me assigned to him, and laid out the rules of our association despite those objections. The third time had been when I’d solved a murder that had gone cold for seventeen years. He’d thanked me quietly for the hard work.
“Detective Drake, you have information?”
“Yes, sir. I hacked into the tube car’s security.” I held up my palm and broadcast the vid of the tube car’s interior. By that time, I had identified two of the “terrorists.”
I added WARREN SIMPKINS, then scrolled known felon, enforcer, thief, loose affiliations with orgcrime. He was a fox-faced man with sandy hair and a narrow blade of a face. He was built like bones pulled together with barbed wire and couldn’t stop pacing inside the car.
The other man I’d identified was TERRY CALHOUN, but there was a list of aliases. He was currently wanted for an ADW charge in New Angeles. The assault with a deadly weapon had been against his ex-wife, and since she had a criminal history too, he hadn’t been high on the pickup priority. As always, crime filled the megapolis and there were too few police officers to handle the load. Calhoun was big and blocky, a tank compared to Simpkins’s stealth profile.
They had worked together in the past.
Karanjai looked up at me. “You’re sure about the ID on these two guys?”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the cyber techs standing beside Karanjai leaned in. She was young and pretty and wore a data-fed monocle that allowed her to “see” all the data streamed to her from the police department nerve center. “Surveillance has just confirmed Simpkins and Calhoun.”
Karanjai glanced at her. “What about the bodyguard?”
“I relayed Drake’s information. They’ve confirmed that as well.”
Karanjai turned his attention back to me. “Is the comm-link aboard that tube car functional?”
I hadn’t thought to check that. I made a note in my personal files. I wouldn’t ever make that mistake again. I pinged the tube comm and got only static back.
“No, sir. The link is dead.”
“What about PADs?”
I checked the known PAD comm listings for Simpkins and Calhoun. None of them were working except for what sounded like an Irish bar under Calhoun’s name. When I checked the history, I found listings for bail bondsmen the two had used in the past. Evidently they stayed off-PAD for their activities or used excellent electronic scrubbers to purge the information from the systems.
“Negative. I also found the comm number for Holder’s PAD as well as that of his bodyguard. I pinged them without result. Those are both offline as well.”
“Offline?”
“Yes, sir. Nothing is going through to their messaging services.”
Karanjai studied the tube car with brighter interest. “Neither of these guys has known terrorist affiliations?”
The cyber tech spoke up quickly. “None that we could find, sir.”
Karanjai looked at me and waited.
I shook my head.
“Then where did the terrorist threats come from?”
Since I had been asked by my commanding officer to look into the matter, I plunged into the incident file that had been opened with the announcement of the kidnapping. I opened the e-copy of the call to Dispatch.
“Gordon Holder, CEO of Skorpios Defense Systems, has been taken hostage by terrorists who have a bomb.”
That was all there was of the message. The voice was masked, though I thought I’d detected a male origin in the tonal inflections and succinct information. Of course, whoever had relayed the message could simply have been reading from a prepared script.
I tracked the incoming comm to the west third floor lobby of StarScape Shopping, a mega-mall in the tourist area of Starport Kaguya, then pulled up the archived footage of the seccams in the area. Unfortunately, or by design, the public comm that had been used to initiate the contact was out of direct line of sight of the seccams. PriRights, the citizens privacy rights group, had pushed for more protection in public places and had gotten the seccam infrastructure within malls shoved back to cover entrances and main intersections only.
Within five minutes of the comm to the police department, two hundred and twelve people had departed the mall. Seventy-three of them were children that logistics informed me were not optional suspects. But that was only operating within those parameters. The person that had placed the comm might still be within the mall. It was now only 0641 and the mall operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Every minute that ticked by only increased the number of people we would have to sift through to find the caller.
If the caller was an employee, not a patron, finding him or her would be even harder.
I wrote a quick search program and started looking for any known associates of Simpkins or Calhoun that worked at the various shops and services within the mall.
“The only thing I can find at present is the link to StarScape Shopping, which the cyber tech team has already uncovered.”
Karanjai studied the figures in the display vid I continued to project. “So why aren�
�t they doing anything?”
The captain was thinking aloud. I almost answered before I realized his query wasn’t directed at me. I had learned that from Shelly. Humans sometimes talked to themselves in an effort to clarify their thought processes. I had never seen any efficiency in the practice.
“These guys knew they were boxed as soon as we shut down the tube train.” Karanjai narrowed his eyes. “They came in, evidently with the intent of taking Holder hostage. Maybe for a ransom demand. Skorpios Defense Systems is a blue-chip corp. They would have paid. Why call in the snatch and broadcast it as a terrorist attack?”
Walther shrugged. “Maybe to get an audience. You do something like this, you want people watching.”
Karanjai shook his head. “These guys aren’t terrorists. They don’t have terrorist connections.”
“Captain Karanjai.” That came over the captain’s PAD from Dispatch.
“Yes?”
“Lily Lockwell’s breaking a story on NBN that you should see, sir.”
Karanjai glanced at me. “Drake, want to pull that up?”
“Of course.” I changed the vid feed and pulsed the new image from my palm.
One point three seconds later, a miniature, slightly translucent image of Lily Lockwell stood in my palm. She addressed her media audience. “—have just learned that the men currently holding Skorpios Defense Systems CEO Gordon Holder are protesting Earth interference in Martian colonial government. They want trade embargoes lifted from the Martian colonies receiving punitive penalties for failure to protect Earth-based capital ventures.
“As you may recall, Brackett colony—in addition to Kline, Bisson, and Robinson—has been held accountable for terrorist activities. Those colonies were named on an alleged hit list assembled by Earth corps after several attacks against personnel and manufacturing plants.
“The terrorists holding Gordon have stated they will not release their hostages until those embargoes are recognized and lifted. They also want so-called Martian rebels freed from penal institutions.”