by C.S. Stinton
* *
The café’s network had synchronised with her pad the moment they’d walked through the door, so when they sat down at a table in the corner she only had to pull it out of her pocket to read the menu.
‘You should let me have a pad,’ said Harrigan.
‘I‘m not buying you a pad on the expense account.’
‘You don’t have to. Tycho has lots spare.’
‘And she’d kill me if I let anyone touch her tech,’ said Ramirez, sliding the pad over. ‘Good news. All-day breakfast.’
It was past noon. She’d slept a solid eight hours and he’d been back by dawn, but they both had bags under their eyes, both ached from the business of the night before. The café was just off the square outside their block, the sounds of the market filtering in and bringing warmth to its stark metal tables, chairs, floor. But it would do. And then they could work.
‘The question is,’ Harrigan mused, reading the menu off the pad, ‘if this will clog up my arteries enough to kill me instantly. Since if it don’t, I ain’t interested.’
She rolled her eyes but by the time a needlessly chirpy waitress had arrived to take their order, he’d decided. As she sauntered off and the buzz of the café at lunchtime had settled to a dull, unobtrusive drone, Ramirez looked at him. ‘I had a question you might answer.’
‘What, I don’t get coffee first?’ Harrigan’s brow furrowed as her gaze remained pointed. ‘What is it?’
‘There was equipment other than the rifles in the case. Tycho took an inventory of it. I didn’t think much of it beforehand, I’m not a munitions expert. But Vincente specifically took two pieces of kit out of the crate last night, saying they were what he needed. I’m trying to figure out what they were.’ She slid her pad over to him, list on display.
‘Two pieces. How big?’
She held her palms some eight inches apart. ‘The first was so-big, the second, more pocket-sized.’
‘And it wasn’t an ammo clip?’
‘I might not be a Marine but I know a rifle clip when I see one.’
‘Just checking.’ He scrolled to the bottom. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘What?’
‘Assuming it’s not low-light goggles, which you’d recognise, or an ammo clip, and there were two of different sizes - well, there wasn’t much in the crate. Which means my bet is it was these.’ Harrigan turned the pad around and tapped the bottom two entries on the list.
‘A targeting module and beacon, 2288 Machenry model,’ Ramirez read. ‘I follow the words, but…’
‘It’s pretty new technology. The module is a targeting aid for the rifle, zeroes your aim in on pre-programmed coordinates. Allows for tremendous accuracy across a huge distance. Miles of crowded space, so long as there’s a clear trajectory. It takes knowing the precise location of what you’re shooting, but you can program that in, or…’
‘Or the beacon comes into play.’
‘The module sounds like the bigger part. The beacon? Pocket-sized. Attach it to whatever you want shot. That’s for maximum accuracy. The bullet should strike within three inches of that location, depending on the calibre and your rifle.’
‘So they wanted equipment for sharp-shooting.’
‘That sounds like assassination to me.’
‘Except that we have absolutely no idea why, of whom, or when. So for now this information is only of so much use.’ She looked up. ‘What did you find on the streets last night?’
‘Some. Not a lot on Navarro. He’s pretty new.’
‘Where were you asking?’
‘Around.’ He shrugged. ‘Surface-level. The places so scummy Ragnarok don’t care to take them over. Problem is, Navarro’s a desk-boy. He did his time on the beat, and yeah, it was in the industrial district so he earned his stripes. But then it was, you know. Fast-track.’ He swept his hand like a glider taking off.
The coffee arrived, and they paused as Ramirez left hers black and unattended while Harrigan poured sugar in his, and when he made a face at the taste she found perfectly normal she had to wonder if Tycho had been right about her peppered taste-buds.
‘Bad news,’ he continued once they were alone, ‘is that he’s got a rep for being fair and driven. We weren’t the only one to not see him being on Ragnarok’s pay-roll.’
‘I have a theory on that. Did you know that the crime rate in Hardveur is actually down since Ragnarok started?’
‘I did,’ said Harrigan to her surprise, but he lifted a hand. ‘That is - it don’t surprise me. Ragnarok have been squeezing down on so many folks that even if they‘re not owned by them, they don’t want to so much as breathe without their permission.’
‘Though it’s not like anyone’s noticed with Ragnarok front of every news feed. Which explains Locke and Beyer.’
Harrigan blinked. ‘You lost me there.’
‘I didn’t understand why Locke would warn me about Beyer. Either Beyer’s an ally of Ragnarok, in which case, why would Locke set me against him? Or he’s an enemy, in which case Locke risked driving us together. But if anyone’s being blamed for Ragnarok running amok, it’s Beyer.’
‘Which is maybe what they want,’ said Harrigan. ‘And Locke was hoping you’d help get rid of him.’
‘Which didn’t make sense to me at first. But if Navarro’s waiting in the wings to take his job -’
‘Then Ragnarok get their own person in charge of the HCPD.’ He grinned. ‘And that’s what’s in it for Navarro.’
‘He’s young, but that’s not such an obstacle in this era.’ Ramirez fell silent as the waitress bustled over to bring their food. Hers was nothing more than a bun she knew would prove unhealthy, while there was barely room on Harrigan’s plate for the mound of sizzling food he’d ordered.
‘That’s going to kill you,’ she said with an arched eyebrow as the waitress left.
‘That’s the plan.’ He smirked. ‘You seen prison food? I want to enjoy myself while I‘m out, and shorten my lifespan when I‘m in.’
‘You can’t shorten it now?’ she said wryly, and sighed. ‘All we have on Navarro is conjecture. We need hard facts. We‘re still pretty blind.’
‘We should arrest him,’ said Harrigan, skewering a sausage. ‘You can do that, right?’
‘I can. But what do we do then? We’d need him in a cell, we’d need him guarded. And we can’t leave him with the HCPD, because if they could let Jovak go so brazenly, they can certainly let their own guy go. We can’t lock him in our bathroom and take shifts watching him.’
‘So we need resources. Manpower.’
‘I‘ve been looking through departmental records, looking for officers who had family or close co-workers injured or killed in Ragnarok attacks. If we ever want to call on the HCPD again, we need to find people we can trust.’
‘How many have you found?’
‘None,’ Ramirez admitted, voice taut. ‘But I‘ve only been at it half an hour.’
Harrigan mopped up grease and egg yolk with a thick slice of fried bread. ‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘you can’t trust them to not be some sort of son of a bitch or another who’d have sold out friends and family in the first place.’
‘I know. But do you have a better idea?’ Irritation stirred in her.
‘Yep.’ He wiped his mouth, the pause likely for effect, certainly to annoy. ‘You know what makes them untrustworthy? Money. You have the expense account?’
‘Are you suggesting we bribe officers to do their jobs properly?’
‘No. I‘m suggesting we hire our own muscle.’
She stared at him. ‘To do what, exactly?’
‘Arrest and detain Navarro so we can question him.’
Another pause. ‘And did you have people in mind for this?’
‘I do.’
‘Do they have criminal records - wait, stupid question. How long are their criminal records?’
He made a see-sawing motion with one hand, drinking coffee with the other. ‘They ain’t saints, no. They‘
re some enforcers for a fence I used to know. Out of a job since Ragnarok ran him off-world.’
Ramirez drew a deep breath. ‘I’m a Marshal,’ she said, ‘but the HCPD might not care about my authority if I try to arrest their golden boy with the backup of a group of wanted felons.’
‘I wasn’t thinking marching into the HCPD lobby with them, I admit.’
‘This is sounding a lot less like an arrest and an awful lot more like a kidnapping.’
‘I thought if a Marshal did it, it’s legal?’
Ramirez scowled into her coffee. ‘I take exception to that sort of justification. Just because a Marshal can do something doesn’t mean they should do something.’
‘Do you have any better ideas?’
‘That’s not good justification either. Action which will make a situation worse is not better than inaction which won’t change anything.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘Besides. I do have a better idea. It’ll take time for me to check files and see about the HCPD officers, but I will find the honest men in the department.’ Tycho could have cooked up a program to find her the viable files within two hours, she reflected - and tried to not think about it.
Harrigan scowled. ‘You think we have time for this? What do we do while your search program runs?’
‘Get back to the streets. Someone has to know more about Vincente, about Navarro. About Ragnarok’s stomping grounds, where they train, where they keep their damn equipment.’
He looked unconvinced, but nodded. ‘And what‘re you going to do?’
‘Wait for the results to come in. Talk to some cops.’ Ramirez rubbed her temples. ‘And go see Tycho.’