The Blunt End of Oblivion (The Blunt End Series, Book 2)

by L. J. Simpson

  Phoenix was the Atlas system’s most valuable asset and together with the space elevator it guaranteed a constant flow of trade, personnel and materiel which in turn guaranteed Atlas’s position as mankind’s primary colony, second in importance only to Earth itself.

  Such an asset demanded protection, which was provided by an enlarged company of marines and a frigate on permanent attachment. The force was stationed in a facility located on the underside of Phoenix and served by a docking arm reserved specifically for military vessels. It was from this docking arm that Burns and Larson followed Brice through a series of checkpoints until they arrived at a plain, metal door with a key pad and retina scanner set to one side.

  “I must remind you once again that you are not to discuss – with anyone – anything you see beyond this point. Is that clear?” he said curtly.

  “It is,” said Burns.

  “Very well.” Brice fed his code into the keypad and positioned his eye in front of the scanner. With a muffled click the locks disengaged and the commander pulled open the door, motioning for Burns and Larson to enter. At the end of a short corridor the process was repeated and they finally reached their destination. The room they found themselves in might not have been made of ferroconcrete but it was dark, windowless, low ceilinged and though fairly spacious it still managed to feel faintly claustrophobic. The epithet of the ‘bunker’ was perfectly apt, thought Burns. Inside, three men sat in facing a number of high definition screens.

  “At ease,” said Brice as the senior of the three immediately stood.

  “This is Sergeant Clancy, the duty NCO,” said Brice. “And these are specialists Todd and Boyes. They’ve been briefed on the situation and will provide you with the necessary assistance. If you need me I’ll be up in HQ. Any questions?”

  There was a general shaking of heads after which Commander Brice withdrew.

  “You must be important,” said Clancy once they were alone. “They don’t normally allow civilians in here.”

  “I know. We heard,” said Burns.

  “Actually, they don’t normally allow anyone in here. Except us of course.”

  “Mind you, after eight hours of staring at these screens you’ll be praying for them to let you out again,” said Specialist Boyes.

  “The job can be tiresome,” agreed Clancy. “But I suppose any job can be if you do it for long enough. What line of work are you in, anyway?” he asked Burns.

  “You haven’t been told?”

  “All we were told was that we would be having two guests who, as Commander Brice said, we were to give our full assistance. It comes under the banner of ‘need to know’.”

  “Well, it’s no great secret,” said Burns. “My name is Burns, Detective Chief Inspector Burns, and this is Mr. Larson, who is helping us with our enquiries.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Clancy knowingly. “Helping the police with their enquiries. What did they get you for, then?”

  “Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now I’m here.”

  “And if I understand correctly you’re looking for a ship.”

  “That’s right,” said Larson.

  “In that case,” said Clancy, “This time you’re definitely in the right place. Whether it’s the right time or not we’ll have to wait and see. What’s the info on the target?”

  “It’s an armed merchantman,” said Larson. “Going by the name of the Reaper, or possibly the Kingfisher.”

  “Last known location?”

  “Probably Earth, though that was about seven or eight days ago,” said Burns.

  “You’re not giving us an awful lot to go on,” said Clancy.

  “This will help,” said Larson, handing over a data stick. “There’s a homing device aboard the Reaper. It transmits in the Z band using a time based frequency hopper, which means that unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, the transmissions will be lost in background noise. This stick contains all the data you’ll need to pick up the signal.”

  “That’s better. Now we have something to work with,” said Clancy, passing the data stick over to Specialist Boyes. “Upload the frequency codes and run a search.”

  “I’m on it,” said Boyes.

  “How much do you know about TacNet?” Clancy asked Larson.

  “Only what’s in the public domain. I gather you can track vessels even when they’re travelling in super-space.”

  “Something like that, but of course it’s not quite that simple,” said Clancy. “TacNet is a passive sensor network. It’s not like radar – we don’t send out active pulses and search for a return signal or anything like that. We just listen – we search for emissions given off by ships either intentionally or otherwise. Transponder signals are the simplest way to track vessels but as you might expect, the ships we are most interested in tend to switch off their transponders. Then we fall back on warp core emissions and well, stuff I can’t really talk about.

  “The sensor net is constantly being upgraded and augmented but the further you travel from the core worlds the less coverage we have. We just don’t have enough sensor arrays out there. The other limiting factor is the laws of physics. The good news is that the arrays communicate with stations like ours using sub-space frequencies, meaning the data transfer is almost instantaneous. It’s essentially real time.

  “The bad news is that emissions arriving at the sensors are limited to the speed of light, which means that the data can be hours, days or even weeks old by the time it arrives. Again, it all depends on the location. There are dozens of sensor arrays in various positions here in the Atlas system so coverage is excellent. By contrast, out here, say… in the Douglas system,” he said, pointing to a star at the edge of one of the screens, “we have precisely one array, positioned in orbit over the colony on Douglas 4. And that’s as far as TacNet reaches. Go any further out we have nothing. Zilch.”

  “I’ve got something,” said Boyes. “Your target was here in the Atlas system twice during the recent past. As far as I can tell she visited Atlas, leaving the system two weeks ago and then returning five days later – to Koss of all places.”

  “Koss?” asked Burns.

  “One of the moons of Dionysus, a gas giant in the outer system. Koss is a barren rock about a quarter the size of Earth’s moon.”

  “What would the Reaper be doing there?” wondered Burns out loud. “Any way you can check for other traffic at the same location?”

  “You thinking of a rendezvous?” asked Clancy.

  “Makes sense,” said Boyes. “According to the data she was in and out of the system within a couple of hours.

  “Todd,” said Clancy. “Go over the logs and see what was around there at the time.”

  “OK, boss,” said Todd.

  “Back to the Reaper,” said Burns. “Where did she go after leaving Atlas the second time, and more importantly, where is she now?”

  “She made a beeline straight for the fringe worlds,” said Boyes. “She skirted the Fomm system and then disappeared off the net. She reappeared a few days later, stopping off at Grenedal where she remained for forty eight hours, disappearing again just yesterday.”

  “Amazing,” said Burns. “And you can tell all that just from here?”

  “Yes,” said Clancy, “I can tell you where she was, but as I said before, given the limitations of light speed it’s far more difficult to say exactly where she is right now.”

  “So all we can do now is wait for her to show up again and hope we have assets close enough to engage.”

  “That’s about it,” said Clancy.

  “Sarge,” said Specialist Todd. “I’ve pulled the data from an array orbiting Dionysus. There was definitely a ship in the vicinity of Koss for a couple of days before the Reaper arrived.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Not exactly sure. There’s no transponder but according to the data, it was fairly small. But the strange thing is that as far as I can tell, the ship is still there.”

&nb
sp; “How very interesting,” said Burns. He folded his arms across his chest and gazed at the screen in front of Specialist Boyes. It was covered in all manner of icons large and small, a digital representation of the space traffic presently traversing the Atlas system. Burns has not the vaguest idea what the jumble of symbols really meant, but was quite sure that the icon representing the small craft at Koss was – for him at least – the most significant of them all.

  “Well gentlemen,” he said. “I must thank you for your time. It’s been most enlightening. If the Reaper shows up again be sure to let us know as soon as possible. Mr. Larson here will be staying on at Phoenix as liaison. And as for myself, I think I’ll see if I can get someone to run over to Koss.”

  * * *

  The Cascades Club, Atlas Central

  Who watches the watchmen?

  Money and power corrupt. It’s what they do best. They prey on the weak, seed temptation and test the integrity of even the most righteous, god-fearing individuals. And once snared, there can be no escape, Ambition, greed and avarice take over; they dominate and pervert all reason and judgment until corruption is absolute.

  If temptation is the affliction, the antidote lies in vigilance, transparency and accountability, for people on the take rarely wish to get caught with their fingers in the till.

  Inside the Cascades Club, money was both god and devil. Whenever Alice dealt the cards, she and her customers were watched – constantly. They were watched by the floorwalkers who patrolled their small fiefdoms within the casino; a few blackjack tables here, a roulette table there. The floorwalkers were watched by the pit managers who in turn were monitored by Dan Buckler, the floor manager. Dan came under the gaze of Mr. Jewkes, the casino manager who was, finally, watched by Augustus St.Clair himself. And even he came under the examination of his peers, who constantly monitored his worth as a leader. Not as an adversary, perhaps, but at least as a rival, as an opponent vying for position in an ultra competitive universe.

  Meanwhile, in the halls of the military establishment, power was the game. The lowly private came under the scrutiny of his corporal, who was watched by his sergeant, and then on through the ranks of the senior NCOs, the junior and middle grade officers, on past the flag officers and into the realms of the elected officials and then to the president, who cast a measured eye upon all. And even he came under scrutiny – perhaps the greatest scrutiny of all – that of the electorate.

  The same checks and balances were employed by the Delph, where both money and power came into play. And in a profession where absolute loyalty was demanded of its employees, the price of betrayal was also absolute. While a dishonest croupier might face dismissal and a crooked soldier a dishonorable discharge, betrayal of the Delph carried a much sterner penalty; it was a capital offence – there were no exceptions to the rule. Foot-soldiers such as Chumly, lieutenants like Sam and captains like Jack Hobbs were all governed by the same creed. At a whim they could abuse individuals, society as a whole and they could even abuse the law, but they could never, ever abuse their position within the Delph. Skimming profits, engaging in freelance work and making forays into the few taboo areas were things you absolutely did not do if you wished to have any kind of future. Most adhered to the unwritten code through pride, honor and sense of duty, and still others through fear.

  Most… but not all.

  In a small ante-room adjacent to St.Clair’s office, a young, hawkish man sat at a desk, slowly working through reams of electronic registers, spreadsheets and ledgers. To the uneducated, they were a jumble of bank transfers, credit payments, deposits, withdrawals, investments and dividends. Unfathomable and incomprehensible.

  To the man behind the desk, the figures took on a life of their own; they rose from the spreadsheets before him and arranged themselves in perfect order somewhere within the parietal lobe of his brain. The vision before him was a thing of beauty; there was an elegance to the structure – almost fluid in nature – which enabled the channeling of capital along a myriad of ever more complex financial paths. By the time the final destination was reached the funds would be as untraceable as if they had originated in an alternate universe.

  The man behind the desk gave a nod of admiration. He was the auditor and it was his task to validate the money laundering process. A trusted advisor and also a personal retainer of Augustus St.Clair, he had two main objectives; firstly, to check the efficacy of the mechanism, and secondly, to search for inconsistencies or irregularities.

  He had no qualms about the former. The procedures were sound and it would take far more resources than the authorities presently had at their disposal to unravel them. As for irregularities, the numbers added up as expected. There was some leakage, as there always was. Percentages had to be paid and commissions allowed for. Nothing out of the ordinary, except… his attention was drawn to a name on the screen – one that seemed familiar. It was a small financial house called Tristar Holdings. The auditor went back through his files and found that Tristar had handled dozens of transactions during the previous year. The company held a rating of ‘most trusted’. It would explain why its services had been used so frequently, but on more than one occasion, the same block of assets had looped through Tristar not just once, but twice. It didn’t necessarily point to any kind of irregularity, but was enough to pique the auditor’s interest. He’d run a few checks on Tristar Holdings… just to satisfy his curiosity.

  * * *

  Atlas Central Police HQ

  “Look, it’s not my fault,” said the duty sergeant from behind his desk in the lobby of Atlas Central police HQ. “There’s been a glitch with the computers and the data’s been lost.”

  “Well there must be a back up somewhere, mustn’t there?” said Officer Lucas.

  “There should have been, but IT tells me the whole lot has gone west. The long and short of it is that the records for your firearms qualification tests have been lost.”

  “But I just re-qualified two months back,” said Lucas.

  “Well you’re going to have to re-qualify again, aren’t you? Same goes for Baines and Sergeant Gomez here. Look on the bright side – you won’t have to qualify for another year after this, will you?”

  “Whatever,” grumbled Lucas.

  “Yes, whatever,” said the duty sergeant. “Now stop whining and fill out these forms. And then report to the range at eleven this morning.”

  As Lucas, Baines and Gomez began to filling out their forms, DCI Burns marched smartly up to the desk and addressed the duty sergeant. “Do me a favor,” he said in a voice loud enough for the three officers to hear. “Send a squad car over to the Cascades Club and pick up our old friend Chumly.”

  “What’s he done this time?” asked the sergeant.

  “Murder One. And this time we’ve got him dead to rights,” said Burns with a note of triumph.

  “Murder One? Good for you, but I’d recommend sending more than one unit. Some back up won’t go amiss.”

  “No arguments there. Stick him in Interview Room 1 and double the security. Let me know when he arrives.”

  “Will do,” said the sergeant.

  “Thanks,” said Burns, who turned and headed off towards the stairs without a backwards glace.

  Once back in his office he gave Mullins a nod. “The bait’s in the water,” he said. “All we can do now is wait and see if we get a bite.”

  “I’m hooked into the camera feed in the main lobby if you’re interested,” said Mullins. “There’s the main desk, and by the looks of things our three suspects are still complaining. Especially Officer Lucas.”

  “Any audio?”

  “Only muffled,” said Mullins as he listened in to one side of a pair of earphones. “Lucas is saying something very uncomplimentary about the guys in IT.”

  Still remonstrating with the duty sergeant, Lucas waved an accusing finger in the general direction of the IT department. The duty sergeant just shrugged and gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Perh
aps Lucas isn’t a very good shot,” said Burns. “You’d be surprised how many of them aren’t, you know.”

  They watched Lucas slap his completed form on the desk and then turn to Sgt. Gomez, who appeared to nod sympathetically. As Gomez passed his own form to the duty sergeant, Burns realized that Officer Baines was no longer in the shot.

  “Now where did he slip off to?”

  Mullins began to pan the camera around but a moment later Baines came back into view, leaning on the desk to fill out the last few items on his form. He gave the form a last look over, handed it over to the duty sergeant and made his way towards the main doors, Lucas and Gomez following behind.

  Just a few minutes later Burns’ data pad began to buzz. He fished the pad from his jacket pocket and looked down at the message on the screen.

  “Well, would you believe it…” he said with faint surprise. “Mullins, I think we might just have our man. IT has just intercepted a call made from Officer Baines’ data pad. Any guesses where to?”

  “The Cascades Club?”

  “Got it in one. The message was encrypted but I’ll bet my pension it was to give Chumly the head’s up.”

  “He certainly didn’t waste any time, did he?”

  “No… but it won’t do either of them good. Where is Chumly now, by the way?”

  “He was picked up at home an hour ago. As per your instructions, the police wagon bringing him in took a wrong turning onto Route 17 and then got stuck in the morning rush hour. Don’t expect him here for at least another hour or so.”

  “Good. It gives me just enough time for breakfast and then get a warrant to search Baines’ home.”

  * * *

  Artemis, Atlas Kuiper Belt

  “We are closing on our first target,” said James. “Object GR-850Z. The database classifies it as an iron/nickel asteroid, an elongated spheroid with a mean diameter of a little over three hundred metres. Val has the target’s course and speed logged and is ready for interception.”

  “Very good,” said Lt. Commander Savage. “Match course and speed and bring us to a position three kilometres off the object’s beam.”