Innocence Lost

by O. J. Lowe

  “Nobody.”

  “Who did I kill outside the dorms?”

  “He’s not dead. Just a simulant frame that doubles as a living target. Uses a half endroid program to follow basic instructions…” Paddington said before shutting up. “He was modelled on Cadet Jameson, I believe.”

  “No wonder it was satisfying.” Pete managed to find a grin from somewhere. He saw Konda tap something down on his pad, his brow furrowed in dismay. How complimentary would that be, he wondered. “How did I not realise it wasn’t real? Everything felt so…”

  “That’d be subterfuge on my part,” Konda said, more than a little sheepish, judging by his expression. “Did you enjoy the tea, Cadet Jacobs?”

  “Remind me never to accept a drink from you again,” Pete said, not entirely joking. Konda only laughed. “So how did I do?”

  “We’ll get back to you on that,” Paddington said. “Everything looks good. You did everything that could reasonably be expected from you. You fought when you had to, you didn’t crack under pressure…”

  “You made plans,” Konda added. “You went for the security centre, a defendable position where you’d be able to gather intelligence. When that didn’t work, you made a backup plan and went for the armoury.”

  “I didn’t win though,” Pete said. “I mean, if this had been real…” He threw out a hand, gestured towards the endroids or whatever they were. “I’d have been dead.”

  “Cadet Jacobs,” Paddington said. “Do you want me to tell you what the point of the exercise was, or do you want to hazard a guess at why it ended like it did?”

  He didn’t know, or at least he didn’t think he did. He wanted to shrug, instead shook his head in defeat. “I assume there is some purpose to your madness.”

  Konda and Paddington looked at each other, then at him. “If we both came to attack you now, Cadet Jacobs, what do you think would happen?” Konda asked. “Keep in mind your training isn’t complete and we both have many years of combat experience on you.”

  “I’d fight,” Pete said, making sure the defiance laced his voice.

  “Yes, you would,” Paddington said. “The odds are that you would lose. We could come and beat the shit out of you every day for the rest of your time here and chances are that you wouldn’t be able to stop us.”

  The more he thought about it, the more he realised that it was probably true.

  “I mean, you’d try to defend yourself and you’d probably still come out badly. Remember, we teach you everything you know but not necessarily everything we know,” Paddington said with a smile. “Always there are those things that you can’t deal with. But you know what?”

  Pete didn’t. He felt more and more stupid by the second, an uncomfortable feeling. Maybe that tea was still messing with his mind, now the adrenaline had stopped pumping, his head felt woolly. Like a bad hangover, his brain rough around the edges.

  “We give you the best chance we can. We can’t prepare for everything. There’s always going to be things outside of your control. No matter what you do, the little things will seek to screw you over. You know what the harshest truth about this job is, Cadet Jacobs?” Paddington smiled at him, not a pleasant smile. He’d seen sharks that looked friendlier. “You can’t always win, no matter how hard you train. And the price for defeat is always high. All we can do is even up your odds the best we can.”

  That smile faded from his face, might as well have been scrubbed off. “Dismissed, Cadet. Return to your dorm. We’ll be in touch with your full assessment.”

  Chapter Fifteen. Running Blind.

  “We have certain items that we all require to be kept free from hands that might misuse them. If anyone is going to misuse them, it will be us. Therefore, they need to be hidden securely. One of you will be placed in charge of keeping them secure, will report only to me as to their location. The rest of you will never know. I name Lord Tarene as the Keeper of Curiosities. Anything we cannot use, is to go to him for safekeeping. He is our gatherer, our collector, our weaponeer. His is the finger on the trigger of the blaster we hold to our enemies’ heads.”

  Vezikalrus, Dark King of the Cavanda making a proclamation to the princes and the lords of the collective.

  “Well, we certainly suspected,” Perrit said, looking up at them. They’d projected a holographic image of her into their speeder, both eager to hear what she had to say. The credit sniffer grinned at them, stifled a yawn. The image wasn’t the greatest quality, picking out the finest details was harder than it sounded, but she looked tired.

  Two days since they’d forwarded the information from Lola Myers to her and she’d come up a winner. He couldn’t say he was surprised. Credits made the kingdoms run smoothly, Unisco’s financial division was the one that made sure those credits didn’t arrange bumps in the road. Too many were swayed by the possibilities of easy credits, they saw them, and it distorted their priorities, made people re-think what they were meant to do. Perrit had been investigating the Coppingers, mainly through Reims and other companies linked to them, for months now.

  “Suspected?” Pree asked. “What did you get, Bev?”

  “A lot of the credits Harvey Rocastle was paid came from a subdivision of Reims that since was closed down when Reims was seized by the Senate under the Reclamation Act. The credits stopped coming to him via that source, redirected to his sister via his instructions. There’s all that information in here, a requisition of transfer, an approval of transfer and one of receiving.”

  “So, despite her saying she didn’t want it, she was happy to take it,” Wade said. He didn’t know what to make of Lola Myers, he’d believed her when she said she didn’t like her brother. Rocastle seemed like the sort of man that it’d be hard to enjoy a family dinner with.

  Pree shrugged. “Can’t say. Sometimes people say one thing and do another. Whatever helps them sleep at night, right?”

  He couldn’t disagree with that. Principle might sound like a fine thing at first. Turning down credits because you didn’t like where they came from was a noble thing to do. Enough time passed, enough desperation came, a perspective might change. That was just people being people. Couldn’t blame them, couldn’t condone them.

  “She didn’t spend them though,” Perrit offered. “Just kept them all stockpiled in a drawer. Wealthiest cabin in the Burykian forests by the looks of it. She could have bought the damn forest for everything here. Over a million credits.”

  Wade and Pree looked at each other. They hadn’t expected that much. More than that, Wade found himself starting to wonder about Lola Myers’ mental state. That many credits could have kept her mother alive and comfortable a lot longer than her current circumstances dictated. A conscience was nice, but family was family.

  “That’s a lot of credits,” Pree said. “All from Rocastle?”

  The small image of Perrit nodded. “Yep. Seven-fifty from Reims, two-fifty in the last six months from a different feeder company.” Her face broke into a grin, she did a quick little two-step where she was. It made Wade smile. “One that we didn’t know about. Constauri Holdings. They paid the credits directly to Ms Myers, there’s one of their buildings just a few miles away from where you are. Closest building to her.”

  “That makes no sense,” Pree said. “If this is the closest building to her, he knows where she’s picking up her credits, why hasn’t he come to find her? Since she was so worried about it in the first place, that’s why she hid out in the Yulionian forest.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t care,” Wade offered. “Maybe he’s not really looking for her and she’s just running paranoid.”

  “Maybe. It’s a big area this. Not densely populated,” Pree said. “But definitely a lot of effort to search every individual place. Maybe he hasn’t devoted his time to it yet. Maybe Coppinger won’t let him. I don’t think we should be too worried about Ms Myers. She seemed more than capable of handling herself, my read of her.”

  Wade shrugged. “I don’t think she’d accept our help ev
en if we offered it. Think we should?”

  Pree shook her head. “I think when her mother dies, she’ll be gone. Nobody’s ever going to hear from her again. She’ll hit the wind, probably burn the cabin and change her name. It’s what I’d do.”

  “She’s not you though,” Wade said. Down below them, Perrit cleared her throat, let out a little cough that caught both their attention.

  “Regardless, Constauri Holdings has quite a reputation. It’s owned by Coppinger, very distantly removed, we had to dig for hours before we found that out. She’s not the sole owner as well, the other’s a man named Allison. We haven’t found much out about him, just that he doesn’t seem to have a life beyond a legal existence. No evidence that he and Coppinger ever met. We’ve got an address, near his place of work but nothing much more to go on. Listed as his place of residence but he barely seems to be there according to one of the neighbours.”

  “You got in touch with one of his neighbours?” Pree asked. It wasn’t uncommon, she just couldn’t picture Perrit doing it. The other woman shrugged, let out a snort.

  “Of course not. That’s what we have assistants for.”

  That. That was what Pree had come to expect from her. The financial division thought that they were a cut above, in her experience. Because they could spot a credit on the ground from the top floor of a high-rise building, they thought they were the hottest shit going. Divines forbid Perrit should make her own damn contact with useful leads.

  “Not seen him for months. Either he travels a lot or he’s dead. It’d be one hells of a cover for Coppinger to hide behind a dead partner. Someone associated with Constauri is funnelling credits out to fund the Coppinger war effort. When Reims was captured, all the assets were stripped. It was a big useless carcass of a company by the time we got our hands on it.” The hologram of her shrugged. “Many piranhas can have the same effect as a shark. Small companies if they’re run right and you have a collection of them can be just as effective. More so.”

  “Spare us financial conspiracy one-oh-one,” Wade said. “We know this theory, we read your book?”

  “You did?” Perrit looked surprised, a hint of colour flushing into her cheeks. “I mean, thank you. How was it?”

  Wade said nothing, glanced towards Pree who smirked at him. You got yourself in this, you can get out of it. It had gone around Unisco in recent weeks that Perrit had released a book, plenty of agents who knew her had read it to see if they were mentioned in it. She’d told Pree it was a thriller set in the world of high finance, the story of a loan shark seeking to acquire flagging companies through shady deals and legitimise himself. Pree hadn’t glanced at it. Wasn’t her thing.

  “I, uh, I enjoyed it,” Wade said. “I enjoyed the character assassination of Mallinson in it. I assume that was who the…”

  “Yes!” she said, almost yelling. Pree rolled her eyes. The joy there was something she didn’t want to deal with right now. Or ever, for that matter. She didn’t care about Beverly Perrit wanting to be an international bestseller, she cared about her doing her damn job.

  “A little tasteless,” she offered. “I mean, Mallinson… Couldn’t you have found someone marginally less dead to insult?”

  “Hey, he wasn’t dead when I started writing!” She’d touched a nerve there, she saw, hid the smile. Somehow, she got the feeling that she wasn’t the first one who’d said this to Perrit. Rumour had it, Brendan King hadn’t been impressed.

  “Bev, send us everything that you have on Constauri,” Wade said. “Send us the file on this Allison fellow as well, there might be something we can use. Forewarned is forearmed.” He rubbed his chin. “Good luck with the second book.”

  He tipped her the wink, a little shamelessly, Pree thought. As the hologram faded, Wade let out a huge sigh and sagged, letting his head rest against the leather.

  “Did you really read her book?” Pree asked, her curiosity finally getting the better of her. She’d known he was lying all the way through the conversation, he’d done it skilfully though. It was doubtful Perrit had picked up on it.

  “Nope,” Wade said. He gave her an uneasy grin, the sort of smile that had gotten Perrit’s attention, Pree noted. Doubtful he was trying to ingratiate himself to her, she didn’t go for that. Wade wasn’t her type. Perrit might fall for it, but they lived in different words. In her world, Perrit would be dead in minutes.

  “Knew it.”

  “Just parroted what I heard someone else say about it,” he said. He didn’t sound proud of it, just a statement of fact. “I’m glad she interrupted me over it when she did, I was running out of compliments.”

  You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Wade, she thought with a smile. And in that regard, nobody at Unisco did it better than her. Her training in that regard had started long before she’d walked through the academy doors at Iaku.

  They’d studied the files of one Robert Allison, found nothing of use in there. The image wasn’t flattering, a gaunt-looking man with thick dark hair and the sort of smile that made children run screaming for their mothers. Something about him looked familiar, she couldn’t place it despite the unease gnawing at the back of her mind.

  Pree didn’t like that feeling, the uncertainty gnawing at her. The Unisco academy taught them that there would always be things out of your control that you couldn’t affect. Her other life had told her that was complete horseshit. If things slip away from you, tighten your grip and bring them closer to you.

  Two conflicting views with her between them. Two sets of rules, she’d tried to live her life between the two of them, neither one nor the other. It would have driven anyone else insane. Keeping everything bottled up inside her, hidden from sight. That was the true challenge.

  Maybe she’d seen Allison somewhere before. Across a room, on a viewing screen. What was it?

  “Something up?” Wade asked, cutting into her thoughts. She shook her head. Couldn’t shake that feeling about Allison.

  “No,” she said. “Just thinking.” She didn’t elaborate into what. It wasn’t any of his business, he likely wouldn’t understand anyway.

  Constauri then. She’d considered the possible angles, decided it was the more likely option. Wade would too, eventually. Couldn’t chase a man who was little more than a ghost. Allison was in the wind, ergo his company was the best place to start. Besides, co-owning a company with Claudia Coppinger was no indication of complicity. It was possible to be duped by her. She’d fooled a lot of people for a long time.

  She studied her partner, could see the gears twisting in his head as he considered all the angles, working them out gradually. He’d get there.

  The company sounded interesting, a no-mark place in a no-mark city. There wasn’t even much around it to arouse suspicion. She read some more, smiled. That made perfect sense, if you wanted to funnel thousands of credits around without suspicion falling on you.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” she said. “You’d have thought Perrit would have mentioned it.”

  Wade shrugged. “I don’t even want to consider what sort of security a place like that is going to have. I don’t think that you’re high on the priority list to know about them. I don’t think you could afford their fees for a start.”

  She would have snapped back, retorted in anger, had she realised it wasn’t worth it. He was right. As satisfying it might be for him to hear her say that, she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. They moved in different circles. Perrit might have been able to tell them more about Constauri Holdings but she wasn’t here. Getting in touch with her had been hard enough in the first place, doing it a second time was unlikely. Everyone had their own places to be, their time was always more valuable than other peoples. They’d have to work this one out for themselves.

  They could do that, Pree reasoned. They were both smart enough, she figured, both well-trained. It wasn’t beyond them. Although maybe if Wade hadn’t been too busy flirting with Perrit, they might have gotten the story from her.

  “Robe
rt Allison’s pride and joy,” Wade read aloud. “Constauri was established twenty-five years post-Unification with the aid of numerous silent investors who wished for an establishment to do business with that they could rely on. Originally pitched as a superior bank, Constauri soon evolved into investment, property development and even security, with several private vaults on site within which many of their clients have stored property since their inception. Their clientele contains the names of some of the most wealthy and influential people in the five kingdoms…” He paused, cleared his throat. “Document is a little out of date.”

  She’d noticed that, chose not to comment, instead gestured impatiently for him to continue.

  “… Which is suspected where Claudia Coppinger comes into play. She inherited the family business early, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that going into a partnership with Allison might have been one of the first things she did. It is supposition though. What has long been suspected and unable to be proven one way or the other…” He shrugged, rolled his eyes. “There’s a reason Perrit hasn’t made it on the bestseller list with writing like that.”

  “I’ll come over there and read it myself,” Pree said, finding it her own turn to roll her eyes. She didn’t need to listen to Wade do little asides he thought were funny. She wanted to hear the facts and the theories, not him trying to do his best impression of Brennan bloody Frewster.

  “What has long been suspected is that Constauri has been involved in offences of a criminal nature, credit laundering, transference of credits for illegitimate activities… Huh, says that they were the ones tasked with handling Lucas Hobb’s finances, at least until he was taken off the board.” He must have seen the look on her face, shrugged at her scowl. “I’ll tell you the story sometime. It’s a good one. Nick got drunk and told me one time.”

  “Heard the name, don’t know why it’s relevant. Hobb died a long time ago.” She curled her lip in disgust. Traitorous Unisco agents disgusted her. Lucas Hobb, the Wandering Man. Gone, but not entirely forgotten.