QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted

by Steve Rzasa

  “Sounds like you know the drill.”

  “Not my first xeno,” Tower said, a little bitterly. “You know what they say, embassy is just another way to spell invasion beachhead.”

  “Sounds frustrating.” Hildy commented, looking slightly mollified. She wasn’t the only one feeling disappointed. Sooner than he’d wanted or expected, he would have to fish or cut bait. It felt too soon to ask her out on a genuine date, and yet, Tower knew that if he didn’t do it before the case came to a complete close, he would probably never find the courage.

  The creaky old building in which the Morchardese embassy was installed came within sight. Tower slowed and began angling the car down toward the ground. The traffic parted, as before, and he eased the var onto the ground gracefully enough to merit a nod from Hildy. The vehicle had barely stopped before he and the detector were leaping out of cockpit and rushing toward the group of people, mostly Morchardese judging by their military stances, openly displayed weaponry, and similar attire, standing around the scene of the near-crime. He didn’t see any sign of Prince Janos or the queen; if they’d been the targets, no doubt they’d already been hustled back inside to a secure location.

  Paramedics were working on one man who was sitting up, looking rather dazed, amidst a pile of shattered glass and placrete that appeared to have come from the gaping hole in the building above them. That would have been the disruptor shot, Tower observed as he realized the man, whose arm was being bound, had been struck by the debris and was likely no more than an unlucky passerby. The dead Valatestan was about sixty meters away, to his right, lying in a sprawled heap on his side, the body warded by a pair of skittering quarpods who beeped and whirred and meaningfully focused their camera eyes on anyone who stepped too close to them. There was a scorch mark on the building behind the dead man about 150 centimeters off the ground, as well as two tell-tale bore holes of a charged particle beam.

  “That was some nice shooting,” Tower mused aloud as he mentally calculated the distance between the body and the entrance to the embassy building.

  “What’s that?” Hildy had been mumbling to herself, or rather, to Victor.

  “Seven shots fired, six by the good guys, right? The assassin has just enough time to get one shot off and it didn’t come within 30 meters of anyone in the Morchardese party. They fire six shots back, from at least fifty meters away, and get three hits. That’s not bad.”

  “Two hits, Tower. The third shot explains why the Valatestan only fired once. He couldn’t shoot again. Look at the disruptor.”

  His right contact zoomed abruptly and focused on the area between the trigger guard and the charge pack. The disruptor, which he now saw was a Mosin-Nyarla Upsilon 32, a mid-tech military model known more for its rugged construction and heavy power suck than its accuracy, was ruined. It was very nearly blown in two. A section of the chunky, oversized bullpup design was simply missing, as if the designer had made a strange decision to narrow the section between the guard and the action on an otherwise solid weapon.

  Laser or PPG?

  “PPG. The edges are smooth, but they’re cut, not melted.”

  Two Morchardese guards were approaching, one of them was Prime Captain Kotant, his orange eyes concealed by a pair of tactical lenses. His uniform jacket was open and he was wearing a GHK strapped under his left arm. Tower couldn’t tell the model, but he was willing to bet it was a 707. The 707 was essentially an upteched version of the 405 slug-thrower that Hildy was packing, but in the place of solid projectiles it fired charged particle beams similar to his Sphinx CPB-18. It wasn’t a military grade weapon; its 12 charges packed about half the max punch as each of the Sphinx’s eighteen, but it was a reliable and accurate beamer with an augmented targeting system that was nearly as accurate as the Sphinx system. It was a sensible choice for an embassy’s security team and the augmented targeting explained the multiple hits of a moving target at distance.

  “Mr. Tower, Detector Hildreth,” Kotant was cool but civil. “Thank you for arriving so promptly.”

  “Who was the target?” Tower asked him. Hopefully the giant xeno wouldn’t be so hell-bent on stonewalling them this time.

  “It appears to have been Prince Janos. He left the building in the company of me and three other members of his security team at 18.68 when our augments’ scanners picked up on a probable weapon combined with aggressive movement on the part of an individual on the other side of the street. As per protocol, two of the guards protected the prince with their bodies while myself and Mr. Cillessen, who was the third member of the royal security detail, opened fire. The attacker was hit, but managed to get off a single shot, the results of which you can see, before being struck a second time.”

  “That was a pretty risky action to take on a public street in sub-optimal light,” Hildy commented.

  “Not as risky as permitting a lunatic to fire a disruptor unmolested. It could have been a lot worse.” The bleeding civilian receiving treatment was eloquent testimony to that effect. The big Morchardese man unholstered his weapon and offered it to Tower, as did his subordinate. “I presume you will be requiring these, Mr. Tower.”

  One was the suspected 707, the other was a Fujitsu Ruby High-Precision 5G-30MHz laser. Tower didn’t move to take them. He didn’t like the man, but if this wasn’t a justifiable shooting, then Tower had never seen one before. Besides, this might not be the last hitter the Valatestan would send, and the Valatestans weren’t necessarily the only game in town. Like the guy or not, it was inarguably in the public interest for the Prime Captain to be armed, and preferably armed with a weapon that suited him. Kotant had certainly proved that he could be trusted with it; he’d fired only four shots and gotten essentially two hits whereas the average TPPD officer would have probably emptied his 405 while missing the assassin clean.

  “Keep them, gentlemen. That was some impressive shooting, Prime Captain.”

  The captain nodded as he slipped the GHK back into his holster and slid his hand up the center of his jacket, sealing the magcro shut over it. The other guard did the same with the laser.

  “Decent of you, Mr. Tower.” The big Morchardese extended his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Tower took it.

  “Think you might be able to avoid losing all the data this time?” he said, looking pointedly into the mirrored lenses of the man’s tactical glasses.

  Kotant grinned, entirely unrepentant. “Seeing as how the incident took place outside the Realm, we don’t appear to have a choice in the matter, Mr. Tower. I will make whatever we have available to the relevant authorities upon request. Including MCID.”

  “On it, Boss,” Baby assured him.

  “MICD appreciates your cooperation, Prime Captain. Is there any chance we can speak with Prince Janos tonight?”

  “No. He is upset, as you can imagine, and will not be available for questioning until further notice.”

  “That’s not acceptable!” Hildy stepped forward and jabbed her finger upward in the direction of the Morchardese embassy. “How do you expect us to find those responsible for your prince’s murder if your people refuse to even talk to us? Will he talk if I haul him in and lock him up as a material witness?”

  Tower reached out and gently pulled her back. She let him at first, then angrily shrugged her arm out of his grasp. But she backed off. Tower didn’t blame her for her outburst, but he knew there was no point in pressing Kotant. He could tell when a military man was simply reciting orders.

  “Why don’t you inform Mr. Jagaelleon that Detector Hildreth would appreciate being informed in the event that further notice arrives, Prime Captain. I know you have much to attend to, in light of recent events, so I have just one more question for you. If you don’t mind. Is there anything you, personally, can tell me about the spook?”

  The Prime Captain’s grin vanished. He shook his head, slowly. “I don’t mind, Mr. Tower. That’s what’s bothering me about this one. As far as I know, he wasn’t a spook at all.”

  “W
hat do you think he meant by that?” Hildy asked him as they stared down at the body of the dead Valatestan. There were two wounds, one from a laser that had burned its way through the assassin’s left shoulder, the second, the lethal one, a beam from the Prime Captain’s 707 that had obliterated the man’s heart. Death must have been near-instantaneous.

  “By what?” He frowned. There were two wounds. He would have thought there would have been a third, considering where the Mosin-Nyarla had been hit. Something near the face, or maybe the upper part of the right shoulder. Or even the hand. But there was nothing. The man’s white face was unmarred. His clothing was untorn.

  “About this guy not being a spook.”

  “I would say it means the Morchardese keep an up-to-date catalog of known enemy agents and this guy wasn’t on it.” He confirmed with Baby. “And he wasn’t on ours either. Doesn’t necessarily prove he wasn’t one, but it is an anomaly. An embassy guard isn’t a conventional choice for deep cover.”

  “All right. So tell me this. Why are you suddenly playing good cop, Tower?”

  “Who’s playing? I am a good cop,” he answered disingenuously.

  “You know what I mean! Last time we were here, you walked off in a huff because the orange-eyed giant wouldn’t hop when you called frog, and now you’re letting him lock up the target where we can’t get at him?”

  Tower chuckled, inspiring her to glare at him in a manner that could only be described as murderous.

  “Stand down, Detector!” He shook his head and pointed toward the building entrance. “Look, Hildy, what did the prince see? He walked outside. Maybe he’s feeling cautious, so he looked both ways, up and down the street. Then, with no warning, his guards tackle him and pile on top of him. He hears the shots, maybe hears some people scream. Then he’s being rushed inside, with next to no idea what happened, who was out there, or who did what. I’ll bet he couldn’t even tell you which of his guards was lying right on top of him and which of them discharged their weapons!”

  “Oh,” Hildy said, visibly calmer. Then she flushed a little red. “Well, I didn’t think about that.”

  “Or more importantly, about the fact that we don’t need any of it.” He made circles with each hand and placed them over his eyes. “The Prime Captain recorded the whole thing on his tac-glasses. Baby already pulled it; we can review it later tonight.”

  She stared at him, her mouth open. “How did you know that? He didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Because he was on the lookout for something like this. I doubt he expected an actual attempt, but he knew whoever is gunning for his princes was probably keeping an eye on them. I suspect he was taking Janos out for a walk just to see if he could trigger whatever recording devices were planted outside the embassy and ID them. Chances are he found ours already. Probably the last thing he expected was the killer to show up and take a pop; I’ll bet he bloody well wet himself when that went down.”

  “That’s crazy!” Hildy protested.

  “No, it’s tactics. You counterattack after the enemy takes his shot, while he’s catching his breath and preparing for the next one. Konant knows he can’t keep his asset locked up safe inside forever, and he knows the embassy is under surveillance, so he figures it’s never going to get any safer than tonight. So, he sets up a pair of snipers on overwatch, fires up every available cam, armors up his prince and takes him for a little walkabout. Maybe he gets lucky and spots a drone or IDs a spook that tells him who the enemy is. Maybe the enemy sees the asset exposed, gets excited, and moves before he’s really ready.”

  She was quiet for a moment, studying the body, then looking across the broad avenue toward the base of the skytower.

  “Or maybe he steps right into a trap that is already set and gets lucky. This is all a lot more complicated than the sort of thing we usually see in Homicide.”

  “That’s because in Homicide, you deal with stupid killers. It’s a lot harder to catch the smart ones. Especially when the hand pulling the trigger doesn’t belong to the brain of the killer. So, do you want to talk to the real killer and tell him that his target just blew off his hand?”

  “You don’t mean the Valatestan ambassador?”

  He grinned at her. “See, you’re catching on already.”

  “Shouldn’t we watch the attempted murder first?”

  “We should. And we should eat something too. I’m starving.”

  “Me too.” She looked down at the dead man again, then shrugged. “Hey, any reason we can’t do both at the same time?”

  The street was clear of vehicular traffic. Eight pedestrians were in the field of vision, six walking north, two walking south. Three yellow icons indicated recording devices; all three had already been identified. A guard moved past him on his left, then he was moving forward himself. He glanced back once and saw the Morchardese prince, looking tense and rotund in the ablative armor he was wearing, standing in front of two more guards, one of whom held a reassuring hand on the prince’s left shoulder.

  Back to the street. He was just beginning to turn when motion to the north, his right, caught his attention. A man emerged from the door of a retail establishment. He was moving rapidly and was carrying something about a meter long and cylindrical—

  His vision exploded with colors and data. Three red flashes burst on the perimeter even as articulated cross hairs appeared on the man, along with distance and wind data. The number twelve appeared on the bottom of the screen as well as a green icon indicating maximum charge and another green icon indicating the safety of his live-linked weapon was active. As the distance decreased from 68 to 62 meters, the green safety icon turned red and his vision abruptly dropped more than half a meter.

  The man turned to face him and the cylindrical object began to rise. The crosshairs flashed green twice, the number dropped to eleven, then ten, in rapid succession. The disruptor vomited forth a purplish, smokelike substance, and then the targeted man seemed to crumple in on himself. The weapon had fallen from his hands and was just striking the ground when it flashed near the middle of the object, and then both the man and the disruptor were lying motionless on the ground. The number had decremented to nine. The red safety icon turned to green, the targeting reticule disappeared, and his vision abruptly lurched upward, then whirled around to show the prince being pulled to his feet by the two guards.

  His vision followed the three men as the prince was hustled back inside the building; once safely inside, it turned around again, revealing a Morchardese guard standing with a laser in his hand, then began to draw nearer to the man they had just killed.

  “Want to watch it again, this time with the sound on?” Tower asked Hildy, whose mouth was too full to respond right away. They were cruising in the slow lane toward her apartment with the autodrive engaged and the cockpit screen was displaying the visual stream from Prime Captain Kotant’s tactical glasses. This was the second time they’d watched it, after watching one building recording and two of the other guard’s recordings. One of those had been less than helpful; Hildy was still giggling over the visual stream that amounted to little more than an extended close-up of Prince Janos’s hip, lower belly, and groin.

  Regrettably, she’d declined his invitation to travel to Rhysalan with him tomorrow to meet with Vittorio Malavasi, the Valatestan ambassador, because her jurisdiction was limited to the Trans Paradis city limits. But she’d come up with the idea of picking up an order of Valatestan food, a seafood-heavy variant on classic Italian cuisine, and watching the visual streams in the var. Baby muttered about the way the fried mollusks would stink up the var, but they both cheerfully ignored her complaints.

  It was the best evening Tower had had in years. She wasn’t just pretty, she was smart and funny too. And perhaps the pleasure of her company was why it wasn’t until he’d dropped her off at the Riverwatch Towers that he realized the number of the shots recorded by the visual stream didn’t precisely match with the number of hits he’d observed at the scene.


  CHAPTER EIGHT

  605D-PAD-3408 (SL1): Recommend Disciplinary Action for an Agent

  Standards: Verify if claimed act occurred, determine if conduct was a violation, prepare and submit recommendation to your superior officer.

  —from “The Military Officer Training Guide, Vol. 2”

  The sun was already well up when he woke; Baby had thoughtfully blackened all the glass to prevent him from being awakened at sunrise. After dropping Hildy off at her home, he’d gone home for a shower and changed into some casual clothes, brushed his teeth, then eased the seat back and slept in the var as it sped across the 6,920.1792 kilometers from Trans Paradis to Rhysalan overnight. Baby filed all the necessary reports and requests as he slept; a military grade intelligence might be an occasional pain in his fourth point of contact, but her ability to reduce his paperwork responsibilities to essentially nothing made it all worthwhile.

  “Good morning, Tower,” she greeted him cheerfully. “The weather outside is 296.5, rising to 301 later in the day. High Lord Malavasi will be in residence today, and I have already arranged for an appointment with him in 6.3 kilosecs, at 10:50. Since you are inappropriately attired for the occasion, I have taken the liberty of arranging a brief stop at a traveler’s port where you can change into your uniform, move your bowels, and, if you will take my advice, do something about your hair.”

  Tower groaned. But she was right. His hair was a bit on the unruly side.

  A few kilosecs later, with his uniform and hair suitably arranged, and his internal systems sufficiently emptied, Tower found himself soaring past a series of skytowers that made those of Trans Paradis look outmoded and stubby. As he came within sight of the Valatestan embassy, Tower’s first impression was that this was a planetary government that had considerably more money to spend on its digs than the Morchardese kingdom-in-exile.