by S F Chapman
“If the sea ice isn't too bad, I'm going to take the grappler tug out on the bay tomorrow and clear out some driftwood. Did you want to come along?”
Seamus dabbed his chin with a tattered old hand towel before answering, “The weather's supposed to be windy and below freezing in the morning, I think my old joints will be too stiff to venture outside. Perhaps the cat and I will sleep off this debauchery.”
Luis retrieved the cards and began to shuffle, “Suit yourself.”
• • •
True to his word, Tariq returned an hour later dangling the canteen by the strap.
Mixion had instructed Jasper to feign taking a nap in the off-road vehicle. She would shout if the Desert Serf presented any problems. Lev sat in the shade of a palm fifteen meters away slowly reading through the old edition of the Nairobi Times. He too was at the ready should difficulties arise.
Tariq held the canteen temptingly in front of her. He likely had handled it sufficiently to pick up plenty of the toxin that covered the surface. If he'd filled it by immersing the container in the well, as was the custom in the desert, the water source would spread the pathogen to anyone who used it for centuries to come. Hundreds of future users of the water source would be unknowing agents in the effort to kill clones of Daniel Kufuzu.
She smiled at the apparent success that the unwitting man had likely provided for them.
The woman gave him the three heat-softened chocolate bars, “Here you go. I believe we have both received a tremendous bargain.”
Tariq nodded and produced a handful of figs.
The petite spy and the rugged desert dweller enjoyed each other's company for about two hours as they shared the food and water near the tumbled-down Fort of Djaba.
At 3 PM they parted ways, both quite certain that they'd gotten the better of the other.
• • •
On the day after Tariq had his brief and seemingly innocent liaison with the beguiling black woman from Free City, Daniel Kufuzu fell ill.
At first the Warlord complained of a sore throat. By noon the man was racked with a hoarse cough and delirious with a high fever.
Tariq and his workmates struggled to make the man comfortable.
At sunset Kufuzu lapsed into a coma.
Qadir trotted off towards Séguedine in search of a doctor.
Sometime around midnight Daniel Kufuzu, the recently recloned and highly Exalted Warlord of EurAfrica succumbed to the custom-made version of the y-pathogen that Tariq had unwittingly carried into the secret cave in the Saharan Desert.
At midday, they wrapped his body in a white shroud and buried him in a hastily dug pit in the desert.
32. Fret
Luis stared doggedly ahead through the blowing snow as the grappler tug plodded between the chunks of sea ice that blocked much of Cumberland East Bay. A half-kilometer ahead were the docks of New Grytviken and beyond that up on the bluff was his little white cottage.
He had managed to clear much of the driftwood that had been pushed into the harbor by the relentless wind and the advancing sea ice. Several immense logs were bobbing along behind the tug, lashed together with steel cable chokers and a few stout chains. Most of the smaller debris was piled amid ship on the deck. In a day or two when the weather let up, he'd drag the driftwood onshore with a winch and add it to the huge heap that was slowly rotting just south of the docks.
Seamus had been right, Luis realized, the weather was far too cold and stormy to be out on the bay in a small craft.
He eased the tug towards the dock. A good five meters of floating ice stood between the little ship and the ancient wooden piles of the dock. This would be a problem; if he couldn't secure the tug firmly to the stout dock bollards then the small craft would be battered against the ice by the waves and wind. The hull would surely be pierced and the invaluable tug would be lost.
Luis put the motor into neutral and stepped out onto the deck to examine the problem.
He stared at the thick, puzzle-pieced blocks of ice for many minutes.
Perhaps he could use the long articulating arm of the deck-mounted knuckle crane to force the ice sideways and away from the dock. It would be difficult and time-consuming but he realized there was no other way that he could accomplish his task.
Luis activated the auxiliary steering controls at the console next to the crane and set to work nudging the huge chunks of ice away from the dock.
• • •
“What is it?” Jana tilted her head in concern.
Her date with Ryo wasn't going well.
He fidgeted sullenly as they sat together awaiting their food at the posh La Planche à Laver bistro.
She'd had a rare break in her normally swamped schedule at the University and decided to spend some time with him.
Now she was rather regretting the decision.
“I'm sorry,” he smiled halfheartedly. “Some of the particulars of this investigation have caused me to question whether I should have returned to police work.”
Jana frowned, “Is it serious?”
Ryo restlessly straightened the knife and spoon on the napkin before answering, “That's the problem, I'm just not sure.”
He stared moodily at her for several seconds. “On the night of the grenade blast in New Rome, when I first came upon the thugs who eventually caused all of the death and destruction, one of the fellows rattled off a long string of personal details about me.”
“What sort of details?”
“Most of it was standard stuff, age and rank, that type of thing. But he also knew my home address and apartment number. The Inquisitor's Office goes to great lengths to protect that information.”
“Well; he is dead now,” Jana tried to assure him, “so it shouldn't be a problem.”
Ryo shook his head, “He was part of a gang and there is still one punk left.”
She slipped her hand over his putting an end to his fidgeting, “I've seen you in action, you're a pretty tough guy.”
“You're right, I suppose. But that's not the problem.” His shoulders slumped, “I'm worried about Dilma.”
• • •
After hours of exhausting effort Luis had finally managed to tie up the grappler tug. The huge driftwood logs that trailed out behind the vessel clattered unsettlingly against the dock pilings.
It was numbingly cold as he struggled stiffly up the creaky, frost-covered dock ladder.
He stopped halfway up as the wind and a wave surge caused the battered rocket booster to groan restlessly against its moorings fifteen meters further down the dock.
The overhead lights flickered briefly high up on the standards.
It all seemed to be a sinister omen.
Luis shivered as he clung to the ladder.
The wind subsided and the rocket booster settled back into the water with a protracted rasp of metal against wood.
He resumed his ascent.
When Luis finally made it to the dock a harsh gust of freezing wind threw him off balance and he tumbled awkwardly.
A hollow snapping sound in his left ankle preceded the intense pain that shot up his leg.
Luis writhed on the slick wooden planks. The throbbing was excruciating. His toes were already numb; constricted by his tight-fitting boot, the rapid swelling had cut off the blood supply.
He sprawled in agony on the frozen dock for many minutes. Somehow he had to get back to the cottage. Surely Seamus would nurse him back to health.
Finally Luis crawled to the nearest of the derelict buildings clustered around the boat dock.
Ironically, he realized as he dragged himself through the door, this was where he'd kept Nate Briggs' corpse after he'd freed the man's remains from the rocket booster.
It was nearly six hours later when Luis hobbled up the front porch stairs of the darkened cottage using a pair of crutches that he'd improvised from some scrap water pipes wrapped with several rags for padding.
He pushed open the door and called for his housemate.
Luis struggled about until he found the old man.
Seamus was slumped unnaturally over one side of the table that they'd used the night before for the poker game.
His eyes were open and glassy. The old man's skin was bluish-gray and already cold to the touch.
Somehow, Seamus had died.
As his eyes teared-up at the terrible loss, Luis realized that he was once again alone on South Georgia Island.
• • •
In the dingy Records Room at the Inquisitor’s Office, Ryo groaned a bit as he decided that this latest stack of documents had led him to another dead end.
In the many days since he had discovered that Commander Frédéric Rameau had been responsible for directing the Goons in their criminal activities, the old Investigator had still not uncovered a firm motive for the crime wave.
The use of the unique particle beam weapons by the Goons and the equally unique wounds on the corpses of their many victims certainly tied the gang to the mass murders. But what had been the rationale for the slaughter?
It all seemed to circle back to Commander Frédéric Rameau and, by extension, the unendingly troublesome EurAfrican Imperial Military.
Ryo was certain that Nate Briggs and the crew of the Billikin had been murdered for reason, but as of yet, that reason had eluded him.
Perhaps Lieutenant Zmuda could deduce why the dead Commander would have wanted to kill off an obscure Space Debris Retrieval Specialist in Low Earth Orbit.
Ryo produced his communications device and connected to his boss's office ten floors above him.
“What is it, Inspector Trop?” Helga glanced tersely at the screen as she read through some documents.
“I'd like to head over to the CRAMP headquarters and meet with Zmuda,” he started.
“Don't bother;” she scowled, “he's in the Forensic Signal Processing Lab right now.
The screen abruptly went blank.
Ryo smiled a bit; finally some good luck.
Ten minutes later he pushed open the Lab door. The facility was utilitarian in the extreme, with dozens of mismatched racks of both antiquated and state-of-the-art gadgetry most of which were interconnected with chaotic tangles of black and gray cables.
He stepped over a small open crate that blocked the only obvious pathway through the maze of equipment.
Ryo ventured cautiously past a cluttered workbench with several odd and unidentifiable devices sporting blinking blue and yellow lights. Two of the machines seemed to flash back and forth to each other while they were apparently solving some sort of enigmatic matter.
Near the back of the overstuffed workroom, Ryo found the Lieutenant with Forensic Technician Second Class Nicola Jenks.
Zmuda beamed at Ryo's arrival, “Inspector, you're definitely going to like what Ms. Jenks has unearthed.”
She smiled pleasantly at Ryo and tapped at a large wall-mounted display screen, “We extracted the radar information from the Salvage Ship Billikin.”
A fuzzy black and white image of wavy lines and indistinct shapes appeared.
Nicola pointed to a ghostly outline of a small runabout class spacecraft, “This is Mr. Nate Briggs in the Dreg's Scamp on the day of his death.” Her finger slid down the screen to a large cylinder, “Based on the radio chatter at the time, I'm nearly certain that this is the rocket booster that was recovered in New Grytviken along with the decedent's body.”
“Play the video for Inspector Trop,” Zmuda prompted.
She set the image into motion.
A large net of some sort wafted away from the runabout and drifted towards the booster. An ethereal likeness of a man could be seen on the deck of the small craft.
“Now watch in the left hand corner,” she said.
A small and nearly invisible vessel glided to within a hundred meters of Nate Briggs and stopped.
“What...?” Ryo wondered.
“Wait;” Zmuda held up his hand to stop him, “keep watching.”
A very thin gray beam flashed from the stealthy vehicle and struck Nate Briggs just below his helmet. The net caught the booster. The apparently now debilitated junkman drifted limply away from the deck, attached only by a long lifeline. The ensnared rocket lurched downward pulling the runabout and Nate Briggs off the bottom of the screen.
The phantom craft that had set the whole catastrophe into motion sped away.
Nicola froze the picture with the mysterious vessel in the upper right corner.
“This footage has been greatly enhanced,” she pointed to the still image, “in the unprocessed file the intruder is not visible at all. Certainly Captain Takahashi wouldn't have spotted it from the Billikin.”
“I had a hunch about this when I first saw it,” the Lieutenant said as he stared at the craft. “I came across a tidbit sometime ago from an operative at the Imperial Spaceport in Madagascar noting that the EurAfrican Military had launched a tiny stealth interceptor barely larger than a man.”
He produced a blurry photograph and held it up to the screen, “We believe that this is that vessel.”
Nicola nodded in agreement.
Ryo spent several minutes comparing the photo and the image on the screen. “So someone apparently snuck up on poor Mr. Briggs while he was tending to his job and shot at him with some sort of weapon. In short order he was pulled to his fiery demise. Weeks later, Harbor Master Luis Hernandez towed the badly singed rocket booster to the docks at New Grytviken and discovered Nate's remains.”
“So it seems.”
“I believe I know the answer already,” the old Inspector turned to the others, “can you tell from the radar images what type of weapon was used in this attack?”
“Ah;” Nicola ran the video backwards to the point where the beam emanated from the tiny intruder, “this weapon's spectral discharge is unique. I was unable to discover any similar radiation patterns until the Lieutenant arrived about an hour and a half ago with some new data.”
Zmuda grinned and produced the small particle beam weapon that he had recovered earlier in New Rome. “Either this particular weapon or one of the two identical others was used in the attack on Nate Briggs.”
Ryo studied the odd side arm, “How did you conclude that?”
The Lieutenant set the strange gun on to a cluttered workbench, “I have been testing this gruesome device for days. I did a routine spectrum analysis on Tuesday. Yesterday the spy that killed Commander Rameau in Tunis joined me in the Lab and he added several invaluable insights as to the internal workings of the weapon. Additionally the fellow indicated that he had personally seen records about the gunsmith who had produced the three copies of the unique weapon. Apparently Rameau had him killed to insure that there would be no further production of the guns.”
“A small and very deadly weapon that no one else has,” Ryo stroked his chin in thought.
Zmuda nodded, “It emits a very narrow stream of ultra high-speed neutrons. The amount of highly focused energy is quite extraordinary. In the thick atmosphere of Earth, say in a bar in New Rome, the effective range is maybe 5 meters. In space, without the encumbrance of atmospheric gases, the range is almost infinite.”
Ryo frowned as he considered the complicated train of logic presented by the evidence. “There is an unlikely chance that one or more of the weapons was stolen but everything else points to Commander Frédéric Rameau procuring the three unique weapons and engaging the services of the Goons to kill Nate Briggs and, very likely, the crew members of the Billikin. Additionally, Mr. Schleim broke into Seamus Nelson's apartment and assaulted him with the intent of intimidation. Schleim was accidentally killed during the incident. Fellow gang members Fritzi Wolfe and Norman Rollo unintentionally murdered Liaison Agent Hugo Mackillroy during an ill-fated meeting at a nightclub in New Rome.”
Nicola was aghast at Ryo's recounting of the brutality.
“The body count has been horrendous during thi
s crime wave,” Zmuda winced as he recalled the gruesome deaths at The Hissing Serpent.
“It's not over yet,” Ryo ruminated, “there's one gun and one Goon left.”
33. News Item: Unsettling times are afoot
Dateline: 3rd of October, 2446; Nairobi, EurAfrica, Earth
Times are changing and that is not a good thing for those of us with a fondness for the ways of the past.
Even the most apathetic citizens of EurAfrica are no doubt aware of the swift and lamentable developments that have befallen our once great Fiefdom. As a testament to this regrettable deterioration, this reporter has amassed three recent items from several different sources.
First; a young female exchange student from Free City was recently arrested in the Piazza District of New Rome on the misdemeanor charge of misappropriation of property. Neighbors reported that the woman had been hiding an especially tattered looking man in her room at a low-end boardinghouse. The rather naive woman claimed that the fellow was her lover. When Police intervened at the request of the landlord, they discovered that the bum was an escaped slave from Sienna.
As has been the custom of EurAfrican law enforcement for centuries, the arresting officers summarily executed the escaped slave in the street as a reminder to other drudges of the consequences of disobedience. The arresting officers were then set upon by thugs and rabble-rousers. A three daylong riot ensued in the District with dozens injured and five killed. Scores of local establishments were vandalized by roving mobs of malcontents, many of whom claimed that the slave should have been set free. An uneasy peace was restored only after a battalion of heavily armed soldiers was brought in from Tunis.
Secondly; much further to the south, Serfs affiliated with the Construction Trade Guild in the town of Windhoek in Southwest Africa engaged in the unheard-of and reprehensible act of striking for better working conditions and payment of past-due wages.
Windhoek is currently experiencing an unprecedented influx of new residents, many of whom were displaced last year with the destruction of Arusha. The demand for suitable housing has soared and the Association of Landlords has commissioned dozens of new apartment buildings. All of this has led to months of ceaseless work for the lowly Serfs of the Construction Trade Guild. Because of cash flow issues centering on a banking scandal in Southwest Africa, the funding for the new apartments has been anemic. The Association of Landlords has threatened to bring in replacement workers to break the strike but most doubt it could be done successfully.