by C.S. Stinton
* *
‘What’s the range on the trackers?’ Ramirez asked.
‘For the fifth time: ten miles.’ Tycho looked up from the console in the rear of the HCPD van. ‘I’d rather stay within half that distance because we‘re going to get a lot of interference in the city. The number of signals going back and forth is immense.’
‘Then we’ll follow with both vans.’ Navarro twisted around from his seat at the front of the heavy cruiser. ‘Even in Hardveur traffic we should be able to stay within five miles.’
They were parked by the spaceport and when leaning over Tycho’s shoulder Ramirez could see the map of the city, the screen zoomed into their location. In the centre was the blinking dot that was the tracker. Or, hopefully, the case of 2288 Machenrys the tracker sat in, which would soon be collected from Jovak by Bart Vincente and Ragnarok and taken to... wherever.
‘We could just jump Vincente at the spaceport,’ said Harrigan, sat at a blank console at the back.
‘No guarantee Vincente’s as big a fish as Jovak made him out to be. And even if it works, it blows Jovak as a resource, they’ll know he’s compromised. This way we have options.’
Tycho glanced at Ramirez and dropped her voice. ‘And this way we might lose a case of military-grade armaments.’
Ramirez scowled. ‘Shut up,’ she growled, not without self-awareness. ‘You‘re meant to be on my side.’
Harrigan laughed from the corner. He’d heard them.
‘Heads up.’ Tycho pushed her chair to the next console as its screen caught her eye. ‘Looks like we‘ve got movement in the docking bay.’
At Ramirez’s insistence there were no HCPD officers in the docking bay or on the Fair Prospect. Although a team was on standby in the spaceport to pick Jovak up, and there was no way his freighter was taking off, the risk of being spotted and the entire plan collapsing was too high to trust the HCPD’s grasp of subtlety.
This was one use of the HCPD upon which Ramirez and Tycho agreed entirely, the latter hiding cameras on the Prospect’s hull and in and around the docking port. And best of all Navarro had flashed his badge at spaceport security and tapped into the internal camera system. Ramirez had hesitated on the last when the risk of corruption in the case was so high, but she had to grudgingly accept this was likely not the only illegal business going on here tonight. Nobody would know which particular iniquity the HCPD was investigating.
Ramirez squinted at the screens as they showed what they’d showed for the last half-hour: Nothing out of the ordinary in the docking bay. ‘What?’
‘Not those. Security feed.’ Tycho tapped a screen displaying the corridor outside. ‘Look at that cleaning unit.’
Ramirez scowled. She hated it when Tycho played games when it came to tech, and could see nothing out of the ordinary about the small box that was working its way along the floor, polishing and cleaning and collecting refuse as it went. ‘You’ll have to help me out.’
‘One of those came around no more than ten minutes ago. Took the exact same route - though I guess that’s programmed - point is, I‘ve been in Hardveur spaceport, I‘m surprised a cleaning unit goes around once a day let alone twice in ten minutes.’ Tycho began to tap commands into the console’s controls. ‘Someone’s looping the feed.’
Harrigan stood. ‘Keen of them. Spaceport security’s awful on privately rented docking bays anyway. And I‘ve been told internal feed’s no easy nut to crack - just ain’t considered worth hacking, not enough people are watching the other end anyway.’
‘You‘re right, though.’ Ramirez looked at feed from one of Tycho’s cameras in the docking bay as the huge metal door slid open and three figures stepped in. ‘Unless these three turned invisible.’
‘They‘re not on the security feed. Let’s take a look.’ Tycho reached for the control of the speakers built into the console and turned the volume up. Navarro clambered back to join them.
The first noise was the rattling of metal, and Tycho looked confused before Harrigan said, ‘Spaceport trolley. That’ll be Jovak unloading the crate.’
Sure enough, one of the cameras with a view of the Prospect showed the smuggler descending the ramp, pushing a crate on a low, cheap, wheeled trolley. Repulsorlifts were more efficient and most operations which made any money bought them, but Jovak apparently had none of his own and Hardveur spaceport wouldn’t supply those without a hefty rental fee.
Although the security feed was still showing nothing in the docking bay, Tycho’s cameras had a much better view. The first two figures looked, to Ramirez, like the kind of muscle she expected to see in this kind of operation. There for heavy lifting and protection, though she saw no guns. The HCPD van parked next to theirs had a fully-armed tactical team, but a man happy to walk around in public with a military-grade rifle would be cause for concern. If they were armed, their weapons were out of sight.
The third of them was shorter, though this wasn’t saying much. Although recruitment posters might have liked to suggest otherwise, Ramirez knew all too well that a soldier didn’t need to be a hulking brute to be dangerous. Records had given her a mugshot of Bartholomew Vincente, and this man matched: A plain face, plain dark hair, plain clothes. The perfect blandness to be missed in all of Ragnarok’s theatrics and violence.
‘Mister Jovak.’ Vincente’s voice - low, but smooth - rolled across the docking bay to come in a tinny feed through the console’s speakers. ‘Always a pleasure.’
‘I hate crooks who run around being polite like that,’ muttered Tycho. ‘”Mister” this and “Mister” that. Like they think it’s creepy that they’ll be nice before you they break your kneecaps.’
‘Right on time.’ Jovak’s voice was gruff, the lanky smuggler pushing his load out into the docking bay. ‘You got the pay?’
‘We’ll take a look at the goods first,’ Vincente said. He tromped across the screen to the trolley, and Ramirez found herself holding her breath as he opened up the four-foot by two-foot metal case.
‘He won’t see it,’ Tycho said.
Sure enough, whatever Vincente saw in there - some equipment and four 2288 Machenry rifles, the metal plating bearing the serial number removed and replaced with a blank, last time she’d checked - satisfied him and he straightened. He pulled something from a pocket, too small to be caught on camera. ‘As agreed, then.’
Jovak fumbled as he caught what she guessed was a credit chit. Ramirez winced at the obvious display of nerves, but if Vincente noticed, he didn’t seem to care. ‘Right. Good. I won’t be on Thor for a while now.’
Vincente went very still. ‘Other work, Mister Jovak?’
‘Sirius,’ he said, and Ramirez’s grimace remained. ‘Agricultural shipping. Merchant marine... you know how it is. Any ship. Now they‘re paying.’
‘Sounds a bit honest for you.’
‘A man’s got to make ends meet, Vincente.’
Silence rang out across the docking bay, coming over the speakers as the dull, high-pitched sound of nothing. Ramirez held her breath. With these cameras, small and hard to find, she couldn’t make out much of Vincente’s face, could see nothing of his body language other than tension. She had told Jovak to imply he wouldn’t be around for a while after this delivery, on the off-chance she could hide that he’d been arrested from Ragnarok for as long as possible. Now she was regretting it.
Vincente drew a deep breath. ‘That he does.’ He nodded at the muscle flanking him. ‘We’ll be on our way.’ And Ramirez sighed with relief.
The heavy booted footsteps rang out across the audio bugs as the three men collected the heavy case and left. The moment the door slid shut behind them, Jovak’s legs gave out from under him and he sat on the abandoned trolley hard, shaking.
‘And the security feed’s back to normal,’ said Tycho after two more minutes.
‘They‘re gone?’ asked Navarro.
‘On the move.’ She tapped the screen showing their tracker as it moved towards the rear parking of the spaceport. �
�And none the wiser.’
‘So far. Take Jovak back in,’ Ramirez said. Navarro nodded and lifted a hand to his earpiece, muttering instructions. The officers who’d been on standby would move now Vincente was gone, locking down the Fair Prospect again and returning Jovak to the Central Precinct and a cell that would, for now, go unlisted.
‘And, there they go. Patching the tracker feed to the nav,’ said Tycho, raising her voice to address the driver, and as her fingers flew over the console Ramirez could see the screen on the driver’s dashboard light up with the new data.
‘Stay out of sight, we can follow from a distance,’ said Navarro as he headed for the front and retook his seat. ‘Even unmarked, two big black vans like these will get attention, and I don’t want them slipping away.’
Tycho grinned at Ramirez as the van lurched to life. ‘A successful op, I’d say, Chief.’
‘It’s not over yet.’
‘No, but we‘ve tricked them. Hard part done. Anything else will have to be something a tactical squad can’t deal with.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Harrigan growled from the back.
Ramirez looked at him. ‘Feeling pessimistic?’
‘I’ll cheer when it’s done.’ He shrugged. ‘You agree with me.’
She did. She didn’t say as such. When Navarro reported the spaceport team had Jovak back in their custody, she merely nodded, and focused on the dot moving across and down the cityscape on Tycho’s screen.
It wasn’t surprising that Vincente and his men, who’d piled into a vehicle, were moving towards the more run-down industrial part of Hardveur. It was the logical area for a group like Ragnarok to operate from if they wanted to stash munitions, and Ramirez suspected they would need space to train together if they wanted to present a viable threat to local law enforcement. As industries shut down from heavy taxation, limited luxuries, and the reallocation of resources and funds to the war effort, a portion of Hardveur’s industrial district was a ghost town.
Soon enough they passed through the night-clad traffic lanes, going lower and lower, until they wound between the huge metal blocks of the warehouses. Stacked on top of each other, they were square, brown, dingy. The walkways between them were large to allow for industrial loaders to pass from building to building, making a narrow network of traffic lanes for their heavy cruisers to weave through in peace.
Nobody in the back spoke as they followed the signal, the only voice that of Navarro as he coordinated with the other HCPD teams in the field that night. Only after some time, as even the lights inside the cruiser seemed dimmed by the gloom of the industrial district, did Ramirez clear her throat.
‘Lieutenant Navarro?’
‘Ma‘am?’
‘Does Commissioner Beyer know you and a tactical team are out here tonight?’
‘He won’t be able to argue with results, ma‘am. Like the first serious Ragnarok arrest.’
It wasn’t illegal for him to act without Beyer’s blessing, because as a Confederate Marshal she could enlist his help. But if Beyer learnt of tonight and nothing came of it, she was going to have one hell of a time getting him to cooperate on anything ever again, and he’d be watching her like a hawk.
‘It’s stopped,’ said Tycho and tapped the screen. ‘Two levels down, three streets over. We‘re almost there.’
‘What are the odds,’ said Harrigan as they felt the dip of the van descending further, ‘that Ragnarok have got their own private army in the underbelly of Hardveur?’
‘No reports have placed more than a dozen of them at an attack,’ said Ramirez, trying to slow the thudding of her heart. ‘I have to act based on what I know and what there’s evidence for, not what I‘m afraid of.’
‘There are a lot of disgruntled military types looking for work.’
‘We‘re not just dealing with disgruntled military types. We‘re dealing with idealists who genuinely believe they‘re removing a rot at the centre of the Confederacy. And that kind of dedication you can’t buy.’
‘True,’ said Harrigan. ‘But that kind of dedication’s a pain in the ass to fight.’
Ramirez didn’t answer. They were almost on top of the tracker’s dot. She moved to the front and looked over Navarro’s shoulder. A big, dark, shapeless mass of a warehouse building rose up in front of her, brown and indistinct from any of the other structures in this gloomy district. Smog was thick this far down, but she could see no windows, and the only entrance in sight was a pair of huge double sliding doors.
‘That looks like a great place to get trapped in and die.’
‘Cheerful, Chief!’ called Tycho from behind.
‘But it’s where the signal ends.’ Navarro bit his lip, looking suddenly very young in the smoggy light. ‘Vincente’s in there.’
‘Correction,’ said Ramirez. ‘The tracking bug’s in there. It’s likely but not certain that even the crate of Machenrys, let alone Vincente or Ragnarok members, are also inside.’
Navarro shifted. ‘I can’t send a raid into there, not blind.’
‘You want to stop Ragnarok?’ asked Harrigan.
‘I want to do that by keeping my job, and also by not getting men killed.’
Ramirez looked over her shoulder at Tycho, who caught her eye. They’d worked together a long time. She knew Tycho’s looks. This one said, “that’s what you get for working with a young officer. You can lead them by the nose, but if you get them too deep, they panic.” Or, rather, Tycho’s look said, “I’m thinking what you‘re thinking,” and that was what Ramirez was thinking.
Then Ramirez thought something else, and Tycho’s look changed to say, “Don’t”.
‘We’ll go in,’ Ramirez heard herself saying.
‘What?’ said Navarro and Harrigan at the same time. Tycho just sighed and pulled her headset off.
‘You‘re right,’ Ramirez told Navarro, ‘you can’t send a team in without recon -’
‘Which the team will have people to handle,’ said Harrigan.
‘- and I’d like Commissioner Beyer to keep cooperating with me, which he won’t do if this goes wrong.’
‘Because his cooperation is so useful right now.’
Ramirez frowned, but didn’t say the rest of what she was thinking. That the HCPD was underfunded and poorly-trained, which Ragnarok appeared to not be. She needed their resources but not their incompetence, and if the situation got sticky inside she didn’t trust them to not bungle it. She was in no place and had no desire to stage a one-woman assault on the warehouse, but if HCPD handled the initial recon they’d probably miss a back door. Again.
Tycho didn’t say anything, just drew her sidearm, and Harrigan sighed and stood. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Fine. Let’s go stick our noses in and get them blown off.’
Ramirez lifted a hand. ‘Just me and Tycho.’
‘Like hell -’
‘You’re not a Marshal, Harrigan, you’re a criminal, and I‘m not arming you, much less sending you into a dangerous situation like that.’
‘Beats a cell.’ His chin jerked up half an inch. ‘Fine. No gun. That makes me an extra target to take the heat off you.’
‘Are you mad? This isn’t up for debate. You stay here.’ She looked at Navarro, ignoring the smoldering mass of Harrigan. ‘Lieutenant -’
‘I’ll have the tactical team on standby,’ Navarro agreed, colour returning to his cheeks. ‘If Lieutenant Tycho can patch your earpieces into the van, I’ll be able to monitor your chatter and your comms and if something goes wrong or you say the word, we can head on in.’
‘I hope you don’t need to until we know exactly what we‘re facing.’ Ramirez looked over at Tycho as both women buttoned their uniforms up to the neck. This was not for mere appearances; the Confederate Fleet duty uniform was lined with an armour mesh which would provide some protection at least against low-calibre rounds. ‘You ready, Tych?’
‘For more dramatic stupidity, Chief?’ Tycho gave a sunny smile and slammed a clip into her Hauer. ‘Always.’
10
Checking her gun for the third time didn’t make Ramirez feel much better. She’d had brighter ideas.
And she’d been in brighter places. She and Tycho had slipped out of the van and taken a circuitous route to the side of the warehouse. The elevated walkway they’d landed on was huge, stretching across a traffic lane to allow loaders to lug cargo from warehouse to warehouse, but in this age of industrial despair, at this time of night, it was just a gigantic, empty, metal platform between them and their destination.
And it echoed.
Not, Ramirez suspected, as loudly as it felt. They were trained and neither one of them very heavy; they’d moved to the shadow of the building and looped around, making for the wall as quickly and discreetly as possible. The twin heavy rolling doors at the front were an unsubtle bottleneck; they’d have to hope for something else.
Tycho had her pad in one hand. Where Ramirez went for her gun, Tycho went for the tech. As they reached the warehouse wall and paused for breath and to take stock, her partner spoke.
‘I got good news and bad news, Chief.’
‘Start with the good,’ breathed Ramirez. ‘I could use a little optimism.’
‘Good news is there’s a derelict network in the area. I‘ve patched in and its security was nothing. I got us a map of the inside and plugged it into the tracking to know exactly where our crate is.’
Ramirez reflected that she, too, could have done this. In ten minutes, concentrating, sat at a console like the one in the back of the van. Tycho had done it in ten seconds, with one hand, on a pad no bigger than the palm of her hand. While sneaking. ‘And the bad?’
‘No internal security cameras. At least, none left - this place is totally abandoned, Chief. And - it’s one big room inside. A storage bay. Offices are on upper levels, but our bug isn’t there, and there’s no access except on this level.’
‘So we can’t scramble up to the offices and look down on them? We’ll just have to find an entrance point into… one big open room.’ Ramirez bit her lip. ‘Let’s hope there’s junk or at least not direct line of sight from a door. Any other ways in?’
‘At the back. Keep going.’ They padded around the side of the building, the metal walls filthy and rusty and devoid of windows. This wasn’t a place where people wanted to gaze at the world, when all they’d see was the next bland building over. Work down here was left as automated as possible, the people coming to haul goods in and out and spend little time here otherwise.
‘What do you reckon Ragnarok are here for?’ Tycho’s voice was barely above a whisper. Here, the gap between the wall and the edge of the walkway running around the building was only two metres, the long, cold drop to Hardveur’s surface closer than Ramirez liked. ‘Training, meeting, storage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Only, I‘m not picking up any of their security. If this is a permanent Ragnarok hidey-hole, either they‘re sitting in there blind or they‘re too good for me to spot.’
Ramirez doubted the latter. They might have been too good for Tycho to break into here and now, but she’d spot a local security system. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. And let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding when they rounded the corner to see a clunky, solid, single metal door. ‘Now we‘re talking.’
Tycho slipped past her without a word, tapping her pad. ‘Locked up,’ she said. ‘But it’s from the old relic of a security system, shouldn’t take me two minutes to -’
Clunk.
Though the sound was no louder than their footsteps, the noise of the bolt sliding out of the lock made Ramirez’s heart leap into her throat. ‘Hell, Tych...’
‘I did what you want, don’t complain just because you know this is stupid.’ Tycho drew her Hauer, keeping her pad in her hand. ‘Let’s take a look.’ She reached for the handle and only opened the door a crack. To Ramirez’s eternal relief it didn’t creak, and Tycho hunkered down to slide her pad through the gap.
A few quick pictures later and they found themselves looking at the rear of the warehouse, and luck was back on their side. Abandoned industrial equipment and packing cases scattered around the floor blocked their view of any sign of rifles or Ragnarok, but it would provide cover.
All they needed was confirmation on numbers and the cavalry could be called.
Tycho flicked her pad’s screen back to the building schematic, zooming in on their entrance. She tapped on the blip inside that was the bugged case, maybe twenty metres in, and Ramirez nodded. If Ragnarok would be anywhere, that was it. Barely daring to breathe, she put her shoulder to the wall and nudged the door open enough to slip inside.
The warehouse floor was huge, metal, dark, dusty - but filled with abandoned equipment it would have been more expensive for the original owners to dispose of than abandon. Ramirez slid from the door across the gloomy gap to put her back to a haulage loader and Tycho was a heartbeat behind her, both women quick, silent.
She could hear footsteps. A rhythmic shuffle, the patter of a bored patrol, coming from further in. Ramirez gave Tycho a nod and moved to the next stack of crates, though this blocked their exit from sight.
They needed confirmation and numbers. This was all too easy, which made it even easier to envision sending in an HCPD tactical team through the front and rear doors only to have them staggering into the fire of a dozen Ragnarok ex-military guns wielding military-grade rifles.
The footsteps weren’t far off now. Ramirez darted to the next patch of cover and peered around the side of the crate. And saw what she needed.
The van they’d followed was parked in the open expanse in the centre of the warehouse, engine dead, lights out. Two men were next to it, the space between them and the big front doors clear. It was their bored, casual pacing that she’d heard. And, sat on the crate he’d collected from Darren Jovak, chewing gum, was Bart Vincente, hands folded in his lap.
They were waiting for something. She considered the options - a meeting with another buyer to make funds off the rifles, a pickup from a Ragnarok cell to distribute them. And then her instincts, honed by years on the beat, jangled and screamed even though there was no evidence but the hairs on the back of her neck, shouting the final option at her over and over.
Trap. Trap. Trap.
From the walkway above, the one she’d checked but had seen nothing but darkness across, someone spoke. ‘Either one of you move and I’ll blow your heads off.’
Trap.
‘Aw, hell,’ Tycho breathed next to her. ‘This is going to be like the Krensler case, isn’t it?’
They’d not been caught like rats in a barrel in the Krensler case years ago, so Ramirez had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t matter. A figure in black military surplus gear appeared at the edge of the walkway, hefting one of the vaunted Machenry rifles and pointing it at them. ‘Hands up where I can see them.’
From around the corner of the crate she heard Vincente’s voice, calm and level. ‘And step out so I can see you.’
Ramirez clenched her jaw and told herself that Navarro would be able to pick this up off their earpieces. She lifted her hands, letting her Hauer hang by the trigger-guard off her thumb, and stepped into the middle of the warehouse, Tycho behind her.
Vincente’s two companions had their rifles trained on them, Vincente himself standing. He waved a hand upwards, beckoning the gunman who’d spotted them - been waiting for them - down. ‘Marshals. This is a new one, at least.’
There’s no way he doesn’t kill us here. All we need is time for the HCPD to - Ramirez blinked. How does he know we were coming and not worry about the tactical team outside?
The bottom of her stomach dropped out.
Vincente nodded to them. ‘Throw your guns down.’
‘We do that, you kill us,’ said Ramirez, as if they weren’t dead anyway, as if stalling for time would do anything, praying she was wrong.
‘If you don’t, I kill you right now. This way you have options.’ The gunm
an from up top had disappeared from view, but they could hear him walking on the gantry.
‘All right,’ said Tycho, and loosened her grip on her gun. ‘I‘m putting it down. Slowly.’
Ramirez watched the men as Tycho bent, looking for an opening, a chance, anything. There was none. If she let go of her gun, she was dead. If she held onto her gun, she was dead.
‘You too,’ Vincente said to her, and, bile in her mouth, she complied. He nodded. ‘Good. Now, what do we do with you?’
‘Let us go, and then it’s your turn to chase us?’ said Tycho, eyes following the gunman who was getting a ladder down.
‘Witty.’ Vincente sounded bored. ‘You should be glad I’m indebted to you for bringing me this.’ He turned to the crate, kicked it open, and bent down. ‘Some of this I couldn’t do without.’
‘We thought that you only had so many rifles and would like the full set,’ said Ramirez, heart pounding in her chest so loud she could barely hear herself. If she had, her voice wouldn’t have sounded like her own anyway, whimsical in the face of death.
‘That’s very thoughtful, but while I can always use more guns, this package was a bit more special.’ Vincente straightened, holding two component boxes, both of which he slid into his pocket. Ramirez squinted, trying to place where in the inventory of equipment they’d come from, but couldn’t.
‘I could kill you here,’ he continued, ‘but then you’re just dead in the middle of nowhere, and nobody hears about it and nobody cares. I’m sure I could get more out of killing a pair of Confederate Marshals.’
‘You could have us ripped apart by dogs,’ said Ramirez, and mentally cursed herself. Horrific suggestions were a terrible way to stall for time. ‘Or wolves. I hear you do that.’
‘People I work for believe in the power of the message. But they’re not here right now and I believe in the power of the gun. Comm the vans outside and tell them there’s nothing here, to go home, and I won’t have to use it.’
‘Until you get a camera and some dogs and plaster our brutal deaths all over the ultranet to prove Ragnarok took down the Marshals?’
‘Perhaps. But that won’t happen immediately. So you’re going to go with that choice, because if I shoot you now you have no options.’
‘I dunno, Chief. Being ripped apart by dogs.’ Tycho looked over Vincente’s shoulder at the last gunman coming to join them. ‘I don’t like that. I’m more of a cat person.’
Vincente frowned at her. ‘And put the pad down.’
‘What, this?’ She blinked innocently. ‘It’s my pad. I‘m not going to hurt you with it.’
‘Put it down.’
‘See - funny story,’ said Tycho, not moving. ‘I lied. I am going to hurt you with it.’ Her thumb shifted, and all of a sudden Ramirez remembered what had happened in the Krensler case.
Then the crate next to the van, the one holding the 2288 Machenry rifles, the one that Tycho had said she’d only put a tracking device in, exploded.