by Steve Rzasa
Baby was uncharacteristically quiet too. Then she spoke.
“Something strange about that var, boss.”
“Yeah?”
“I scanned the debris as we flew by. The results are inconclusive, but it appears there may be an anomaly. I detected no organic matter.”
“What?”
“Tower, I think that var might have been empty!”
Tower let Baby drive to base, albeit at a considerably less alarming rate of speed. By the time they were passed through the aerial defenses and permitted to land, both of them were convinced that the vehicle was a dummy, meant to focus the attention of the responders away from the killer’s real line of retreat. At first, Tower assumed Baby must have made a mistake, and that the shots had been fired from somewhere else than inside the hovering vehicle. But when he watched her visual record of the incident, patched together from police cams, nearby building security cams, and Tower’s own built-in contact cam, it was plain to see that the beams had definitely been fired from the open driver-side window.
Even zoomed in to a factor of 20, at over 600 meters the details of the red var were little more than blurry blobs. But Baby’s interpolation algorithms were clever enough to show the barrel of a large-caliber particle gun protruding from the window as well as the bright green beam that emanated from it. Unfortunately, none of the cam angles before, during, or after the shooting showed the driver’s face; prior to the vehicle stopping and taking up its position overlooking the police platform, its windows and windshield had been opaqued.
Upon landing, Tower went directly to the colonel’s office. Unsurprisingly, Major Zeuthen was already there; the two officers were at their ease and Tower detected the distinct smell of alcohol in the coffee they were ostensibly drinking.
“Congratulations, Mr. Tower!” the colonel raised his steaming tube. “I’m told there were no ground casualties and only one window was broken, apparently by the engine block. I’m sure the Morchardese embassy will appreciate the way in which you not only avenged their security officer, but kept their expenses down.”
Tower nodded. He didn’t really care. One of the reasons MCID was so famously indifferent to collateral damage was that under the Sanctuary contract, all costs incurred by their investigations, including compensation for any incidental loss of life and limb, was billed to any governments or governments-in-exile deemed related to the case.
“I’m not so sure of that, Colonel.”
The colonel frowned. He was a very small man, with sharp features and a crew cut, who looked like an older version in miniature of an Army poster boy. His face was lined and deeply tanned by the suns of at least a dozen different worlds, and his hawkish eyes were piercing as he glared at Tower.
“How many?”
“Sir?”
“Really, Tower, you just had to rain our happy little parade here, didn’t you. So, how many did you kill? I can tell you right now that the compensation amounts to more than 10 million, the Morchardese are going to raise a stink and you know how I feel about stinks.”
“I didn’t kill anybody, sir. Anybody at all. There wasn’t anyone in the var when I blew it up.”
“That’s impossible,” the major snapped dismissively. “That var wasn’t equipped with an ejector and at the speeds he was moving, there was no way he was going to open a window and jump out. And more to the point, no one was seen exiting the vehicle in between the shooting and the take-down.”
“I know, but I spotted something when I was watching the sequence on the way over.” He glanced at the colonel and pointed to desk. “With your permission, Colonel.”
“If you must, Tower.” The colonel took a healthy slug of his coffee. “It figures. We get a nice clean kill for once, and there has to be complications. It’s always something.”
On the holoscreen was displayed the image of the red var, taken from some distance below, presumably from the police building. The var hung in the air, the window open, with a green flare indicating a shot was being fired. The flare faded, the black projector barrel was withdrawn, and the var suddenly leaped forward. But instead of simply driving away, it turned on its side, looped up and around, then leveled out and zoomed off in the opposite direction from the way it had been facing.
“Anything strike either of you as strange about that?”
“Looks like preemptive evasive action to me,” the major said.
The colonel was silent. Then he threw back the rest of his spiked coffee and made a face. “You’re thinking cloaksuit, aren’t you.”
Tower pointed and Baby reversed the scene, paused it when the var was on its side, and zoomed in. The interpolation effects seemed to be particularly strong in the area immediately below the var, in precisely the same vertical plane as the window. At Tower’s command, Baby highlighted the heavily interpolated area in yellow. Tower pointed to it.
“Now, this looks innocent enough. After all, it’s natural for there to be such an effect where there is high contrast between image elements and the algorithm has to compensate for the difference. What isn’t so natural, however, is for that effect to move in a path commensurate with gravity.”
“That’s some sizable words there, Mr. Tower,” drawled the colonel. “I have to say, I’m impressed.”
“Just quoting my augment, sir,” Tower said, embarrassed. “Anyhow, if someone did exit the vehicle when it was in that position, where would he go?”
“Straight down,” the major answered. “What with gravity and all.”
“Of course,” Tower agreed as he started the visual again, but this time in slow motion. “So, my thought is that it is a little suspicious that the algorithmic interpolation effect just so happens to go straight down as well, especially considering that there is no longer any color contrast to generate the effect.”
On the holoscreen, the yellow shape could be seen dropping, and then as it plunged, beginning to thin out and expand, even as the var began to loop upward. Then it disappeared off the bottom of the screen as the cams followed the upward path of the var. Baby replayed it three times, and each time, the highlighted shape seemed to become more and more apparent, more obviously that of a man rolling out of an open window, then stretching out his arms and legs as if he was wearing a skysuit.
His two superiors looked at each other. Then the major shrugged and proffered the coffee pot. “Well, if you won’t have a celebratory drink, how does a consolation one strike you?”
“Don’t mind if I do, sir,” Tower said. He was glad they’d fortified it. After being played for a sucker like that, he decided he could do with a bit of fortification himself.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose complex mechanisms produce the interlocking mesh in which individuals are caught up. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the chance of the relevant actions being observed.”
—from “The Poetry of the Panopticon” by Pendulus Bentham
Tower sat in his office, flipping methodically from building cam to building cam, gradually crossing off city blocks as he proceeded. Baby was in the process of doing the same thing, much faster and on an immensely grander scale, but it made him feel more involved than if he simply sat there and watched the highlights from last night’s gravball matches. And the exercise was more than busywork, as he watched each visual segment, looking for an anomaly indicating where the sniper might have flown past or landed, his mind was actively turning over the known unknowns in an attempt to figure out what unknown unknown he was missing.
Then a thought struck him. This wasn’t the first anomaly they had seen. He pulled up the file containing the second assassination attempt, the unsuccessful one, and replayed the exchange of fire between the Valatestan and the Morchardese guards. Once more, he counted one too many shots. But this time, he had Baby rotate through the various cams slowly, scanning
for the cloaksuit effect. It took nearly twelve hectasecs, but at last she spotted it.
“There it is,” she said, highlighting the barely noticeable ripple as the now-deceased Prime Captain’s gaze rotated backward at the prince. It was off to the right of the screen, in an alcove with a protruding ledge that would be perfect for resting a tripod or even just stabilizing an elbow. The alcove disappeared as the security chief looked at the prince, then was revealed again as his lenses swept past it a second time. Baby zoomed in. The artifact was clearly there, only this time it was motionless. “That is no coincidence, boss.”
“Can we find a cam pointing at that spot at some other time?” It wouldn’t definitely prove that the anomaly was what he suspected it was, but if it showed up on a different cam in different light conditions, that would indicate it was probably something other than a cloaked assassin waiting to take a shot… at another assassin?
There was something truly strange going on here. Why would an assassin secretly put himself in a position to take out a target, only to shoot at another assassin instead?
If he was there to take out the patsy. Only in this case, the patsy hadn’t needed any taking out. And the cloaked assassin hadn’t made any move on the prince or Prime Captain Kotant either, despite going to considerable trouble to take a shot at the queen only two days later. Or so Tower assumed; for simplicity’s sake he assumed that the possible cloaksuit here was hiding the same individual who had fired on the Morchardese party at the police department.
He groaned. There were so many questions! How did the assassin know the Queen was at the police building downtown? How did he know Prince Janos would be outside that day? And what in the name of the third planet from the Sun was he doing shooting at the Valatestan?
“Got it,” Baby announced with satisfaction. “Look, there’s nothing there!”
Tower looked. She was right. There was a clear shot of the alcove, taken from across the street by the uniform cam of a policeman making an arrest of an unlicensed street vendor not fifteen meters from where Milazzo died. He saw from the datestamp that it was shot yesterday. And, without a doubt, there was no ripple, or when zoomed-in, interpolation effect, to be seen in the alcove.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Tower said, although as far as he was concerned, it did just that. Baby snorted.
“This isn’t a court, Tower. Trust your gut.”
Another thought struck him. The alcove was far enough away from the building entrance that the angles of fire would be distinct. “Baby, can you trace the angles of the various shots from that position and tell me what it hit?”
It might give him an idea as to motive. If the invisible man shot Milazzo, he might be silencing a patsy. If he shot the wall, he was trying to do the same, only ineffectively. Tower very much doubted that was the case. And if it was the shot that struck the Mosin-Nyarla, well, that would be the most potentially useful of the three alternatives.
“It was the shot that hit the disruptor,” she concluded.
“Bang!” Tower shouted, clapping his hands. “And let me guess, where it hit is right where the wireless attachment goes. That wasn’t a missed shot aimed at the Valatestan, that was a precision shot fired by the same guy who was sniping at 600 meters earlier today! He wanted to destroy the receiver! Baby, run the attack again, but zoom in on the disruptor, just in front of the trigger guard.”
She did as he’d ordered. Sure enough, there it was. She froze the image so that he could read the label. It was a ZyLinc W6 Remote Adapter, which could be plugged into any weapon with a RFB slot and transform it into a remote fire device. The device was tiny, barely larger than a human fingernail so it was no surprise that no one had noticed it, especially when the weapon had been openly wielded by the dead Valatestan.
A troubling thought occurred to him. If the unknown sniper had managed to hit such a small and moving target at what Baby informed him was 74 meters, then what were the chances Captain Kotant had not been the target? A 600 meter headshot, especially with a rifle equipped with an augment-corrected sighting system, was a shot he could make himself. But Kotant made no sense as the primary target, and he reminded himself that the three other shots fired this morning hadn’t hit anyone. Obviously the queen was the target of the third attempt; Kotant must have been an incidental victim.
“Can you get in touch with Victor on the sly?”
“I can patch you right through to Hildy’s interface if you want,” Baby said, sounding vaguely offended.
“No, I imagine she would find that a little creepy.” Tower shook his head. Sometimes, augments simply didn’t get it. “But put me through to her in a way that won’t alert TPPD.”
“You got it.” A moment later, Hildy’s voice replaced Baby’s on the office speakers.
“I understand this is a personal call from my close personal friend who just happens to be calling from a military base?”
“Why, hello, friend Hildy.” Tower felt stupid, but maintained the pretense. “This is your good buddy Graven. I just thought you might like to know that the attempt on Prince Janos may have been staged.”
“Staged? Really?” There was a thoughtful silence. “That would make him a suspect.”
“There’s more. The shooter at your place jumped out of the var before I, ah, caught up to it.”
Hildy laughed. “Caught up to it? That’s putting it in a way I haven’t heard before, you trigger-happy lunatic.”
“Hey, I had authorization!” He ignored her skeptical laughter. “Anyhow, it turns out the var shooter was also on the scene at the embassy attack. Cloaked, which ties all four attacks together. My thought is Prince Janos could be the one behind it. He has his brother taken out, fakes an attack on himself, and then either goes gunning for Mommy or decides the Prime Captain knows too much. Hard to say there, but I’m thinking Mommy issues of one sort or another.”
“What about Tanabera?”
Right. Tower had forgotten about the pretty young woman. He thought quickly and came up with an answer he liked.
“She was pregnant, right? So maybe he knows, and decides to eliminate his brother’s rightful heir.”
“Arpad didn’t marry her, though. You sure the child would have counted, being illegitimate.”
“No idea.” Tower shrugged. “But it works as an operative theory. Anyhow, between this and what you got out of Dunn, we can narrow it down. Who was at Syranecus, was either a designated marksman or a sniper, and had powered wingsuit training. There can’t be too many men like that.”
“That sounds like it’s more up Baby’s alley than mine. You got anything, Baby?”
“Based on the parameters you have set, I have identified fifteen men and one woman.”
“A woman?” both Hildy and Tower said at the same time.
“She doesn’t strictly qualify, but Mrs. Erica Seres was an Ascendancy nurse who was a competitive biathlete and later married to a professional Rhysalani aerobaticist. She is wingsuit-qualified. However, she also has four children and according to her medical records, is 14 kilos overweight.”
“I think we can safely rule Mrs. Seres out,” Hildy declared.
“Of the fifteen men, precisely three are showing as current planetary residents,” Baby continued. “Or to be more precise, system residents. Weapons Sergeant Montel Peng is imprisoned in the Holunsky Labor-Correctional Institution on Asteroid 66391-2075-LC2. Five years ago, he was convicted on six counts of murder, first-class and sentenced to surgical modification and permanent space labor. He is unlikely to be a candidate, as today’s labor roster shows that he was occupied with repairing a drilling machine on 66391 at the time of the var shooting this morning. Warrant Officer T.G. Somerset is even less likely, as he presently occupies plot 600-6497 at the Ringelheim Memorial Cemetery; he died of complications related to his wounds two years after being evacuated from Syranecus.”
“Next time, you might want to specify living residents,” Hildy observed.
“The third individual i
s the best candidate. Nostro St. James served in the Ascendancy’s Space Ranger Corps for ten years. His military occupational specialty was intelligence and he was due for a planetside transfer to the Ranger training grounds on Burreth just prior to the war’s outbreak.”
Baby ran the information down the holoscreen. Reams and reams of stuff, listing all the commendations and campaigns. “His military career advanced in a considerably upward trajectory once fighting broke out. Among his many accolades, he was awarded the Ascendancy’s Core Star for valor. After Syranecus, he was promoted to major, at which rank he retired when the war ended. He ended up on Rhysalan when he married a young Rhysalani girl he’d met after Ascendancy forces broke the siege of the capital.”
Tower whistled. “The guy was a real warrior.”
“He was also a killer, Tower.” Hildy had obviously set Victor to work after hearing St. James’s name. “Check this out. Three years ago, RCPD responded to a building alert at the St. James residence in the Epsil Five Tower. St. James’s wife was found dead with a broken neck. There were no indications of a break-in, St. James was there, and he didn’t deny responsibility. And, oh my God, will you look at this!”
Tower winced as an image of a dead woman was flashed up on the screen. “Hildy, what the—”
He started to protest, then stopped when he realized that he recognized the position of the body. It was lying in much the same pose as Mara Tanabera’s. The odds against that being a coincidence had to be astronomical.
“So why isn’t he keeping surgically-modified company with Sergeant Peng on the penal asteroid?”
“He was acquitted by reason of insanity and ordered into a maximum-security psychiatric ward on the second moon. However, he was reported dead in a shuttle accident while transiting to orbit for remanding into therapeutic care.”
Tower rubbed his face with the heel of his hand and realized he’d forgotten to shave again this morning. He remembered the facility the inhabitants called L4L, which was the abbreviated way of saying Luna for Loonies. He’d spent three months there himself after returning from Basattria, although not in any of the security wards. He’d only been considered a danger to himself, not others.