by MJ Blehart
“I find it increasingly odd,” Kara began as they walked along the street, “that a business executive in a position such as Palmer Cadoret’s was without friends.”
“Perhaps he was a workaholic,” Onima commented, but then glanced back at the condominium complex. “Yet I’d expect such a person would not purchase so large and impressive a space to call home if they didn’t show it off from time to time.”
“Agreed,” Kara said. “Someone over-committed to work would have a much more utilitarian space. That building is exquisite.”
“When we did look in on his unit, it had an impressive view of the city, as well as more than adequate space,” Onima said.
Jace had nothing to add to the conversation. As a clone, he had lived outdoors, in tents, in broken-down machinery, and in a discarded troop transport. Still, he recalled Cadoret’s condo from their last visit.
“I would think,” Jace said, “and mind you, I have no good frame of reference myself—but someone who only worked, even trying to make an impression for advancement, would not have so many rooms, nor a penthouse of that size, and leave no impression. But Mr. Cadoret seems to have.”
Kara chuckled. “Where do you live, Jace?”
“On an abandoned troop transport,” Jace replied.
“If you are making this observation,” Kara continued, “there is definitely something odd about this. One does not rise to a deputy directorship of one of the largest companies in the galaxy without connections.”
“That’s what I would think,” Onima agreed.
Jace wondered if Kara was starting to draw the same conclusions about Gray and Chuang and their unwillingness to be cooperative that he and Onima had.
They soon reached the local law enforcement agency office, which was labeled as the Centaurus City Central District Gendarme. The trio entered, but Jace noticed dirty looks and heard multiple disparaging comments from everyone they passed as they moved through the building.
There was a wall of plasma-bolt-proof transparent aluminum, and three windows at the center. Each was occupied by a law enforcement officer. Two were in conversation with citizens, but the man in the center was free.
As the trio approached him, the man in the center pointed at Jace.
“Your kind doesn’t belong here, clone,” he said. “Get out now, before we don’t let you out.”
Onima flashed her digital warrant card at him. “I am Marshal Onima Gwok, CBI,” she informed him coldly. Gesturing, she added, “Deputy Marshal Kara Martinez and Special Consultant Jace Rojas.”
“This piece of filth is working for the CBI?” the man said.
Onima ignored him. “I need to speak to the local captain.”
“Listen, lady,” the man on the other side of the glass began.
Onima interrupted him. “I am an agent of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation on official business. Keep your clone prejudices to yourself and get me your local captain right now. Before I decide to call in backup and start a full investigation of local police neglect and abuse.”
Jace knew Onima was not entirely bluffing. The officer swallowed, said nothing further, and activated a comm.
“Captain Toff?” he requested. “There are agents of the CBI here to see you.”
Jace could not hear the response, but the officer nodded, then turned back to Onima. “Second door to your left. I will buzz you and your...companions...in. Once inside, Captain Toff is the second office to the left.”
“Thank you,” Onima practically spat out.
She led the way, and Jace found himself between her and Kara.
Before reaching the door, Kara whispered, “Jace? Give me your gun.”
Jace made sure nobody was looking before removing his pistol and passing it back to Kara. A second later, as they reached the door, it buzzed and slid up into the ceiling.
As Onima passed through, there was a loud buzzing sound. The same did not occur for Jace, but repeated as Kara passed through.
Onima and Kara both held out their digital warrant cards. The gendarme officers they passed all had their hands near their own pistols.
“Good call,” Jace said to Kara.
The captain was awaiting them at his office door. Onima and Kara both flashed their digital warrant cards as Onima introduced her team. Toff look at Jace with unbridled disgust.
“What can I do for you, Marshal?” Toff asked. He neither offered them a seat, nor took his own.
“I am leading the Bureau investigation into the murder of Palmer Cadoret,” Onima informed him.
“Is that so?” Toff said.
“I just went to take another look at Mr. Cadoret’s condo,” Onima began, “and learned it had been sold and was now occupied by a new resident. The building manager informed us that you have closed the case?”
“Yes,” Toff replied without hesitation.
“It is still ongoing,” Onima remarked. “The Bureau has not closed it.”
“That’s on you,” Toff said, moving toward his desk. “As far as this agency is concerned, with the matter being out of our hands, the case is closed.”
“You cannot close a case the Bureau is still working on,” Onima pressed. “With the condo reoccupied, any information it may have offered is now tainted.”
“If you found nothing when you initially looked at it, then that’s on you, Marshal.” Toff sat down.
As Onima continued her verbal sparring with Gendarme Captain Toff, Jace looked around. There were several officers out there half-listening to the discussion. The office door had not been closed, and Onima’s volume was rising as her ire with the local law enforcement official increased.
Then Jace noticed a trio near the doorway of the room across the hall.
They were wearing armored shells. Even though they were a lighter shade of blue with gray helmets, Jace had seen them before. Different color, but the same armored shells as were used by Gray and Chuang security.
“The case is closed, Marshal Gwok,” Toff said again as Jace returned his attention to the conversation. “I have the authority to do that.”
“Local authority does not trump AECC authority,” Onima said. “Bureau authority is certainly greater than yours, and you cannot just declare a case closed when it is ongoing.”
“Don’t think you can lecture me in my house, Marshal Gwok,” Toff stated firmly. “Under the auspices of AECC law, governance of New Terra is independent, which means my authority is exactly equal to yours. Thus, by Confederation law, I am in my rights to close any case as I see fit.”
“That’s not how the law works in the least,” Onima said.
“Marshal Gwok,” Jace said loudly, commanding her attention. “A word?”
Onima glared at Toff a moment before stepping close to Jace. Kara joined them.
“What?” Onima nearly spat.
“We need to go,” Jace said. “Don’t push this now. Let’s go.”
“I have the authority here,” Onima said in an angry whisper.
“Yes,” Jace agreed, “but trust me. We need to go. Now.”
Onima looked to Kara for backup, but she said nothing. Nodding curtly at Jace, she turned back to Toff.
“I do not agree with your claim, Captain Toff, but I cannot undo the actions you have taken,” Onima informed him.
“Feel free to lodge a protest with the general,” Toff said.
“Don’t think that I won’t,” Onima replied. “Good day. Mr. Rojas, Ms. Martinez, let’s go.”
Onima led them back out. Every one of the law enforcement officers had their hands too close to their weapons for Jace’s liking. Still, nobody impeded them as they left.
Once outside and on the street, Onima turned on Jace.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Jace Rojas?” Onima demanded.
“Look,” Jace began, “while you were arguing with the captain, I took a look around. Everyone was a little too nervous, and all of them kept a gun hand ready to draw. But more than that, I saw several in armo
red shells.”
“So what?” Onima demanded, clearly still too angry about the situation to rationalize Jace’s words.
He spoke cautiously, checking to make certain nobody but Kara was within earshot. “They were not just any armored shells. Save their color, they were precisely identical to what we’ve seen employed by Gray and Chuang.”
That got Onima’s attention. “How identical?”
“Exactly,” Jace replied. “A different color, probably that of the local law enforcement agency, but definitely the same ones. The suits were padded out the same way, and the helmets were all too familiar.”
“State-of-the-art, top-of-the-line armored shells,” Kara breathed. “That’s rich for local law enforcement blood, don’t you think, Onima?”
Onima let out an angry breath, then took another deep breath before saying, “Yes. That is a questionable point.”
“Think about it,” Jace continued. He considered if he should make the next statement in front of Kara, but decided he didn’t really have a choice. “It’s not much of a leap to presume local law enforcement is in the pocket of the company. Given everything we know, it’s the most logical explanation, right?”
Onima sighed. “You’re right. The disinterest in the case and our dismissal are becoming damned irksome. You made the right call: we couldn’t do more there. Thank you, Jace.”
“Oh,” Kara said, looking around and then passing the pistol back to Jace. “You might need this.”
“Thanks,” Jace said.
“Good call, Kara,” Onima stated.
Before anyone could say anything further, Onima’s comm beeped at her. She glanced at it, and a curious look crossed her face. “Unlisted comm,” she remarked.
Checking around to make sure nobody was paying them any mind, Onima activated her comm. “Marshal Gwok.”
“Marshal, I understand you are in Centaurus City,” a woman’s voice said. “Can we meet somewhere private?”
Jace recognized the voice. It was the executive, Jun Varma, that he and Onima had met on both of their previous visits to New Terra.
9
After contacting Yael to let her know that new business had cropped up, Onima, Jace, and Kara went to the nearest hyperloop station to cross town.
On the way to the station, Onima again noticed that Jace got a lot of ugly, unpleasant looks from people. She had, prior to knowing Jace, been indifferent toward clones. But the outright hostility they received was beyond logic.
Still, Onima and Kara agreed it would be good to have Jace along and came up with an idea. Prior to getting onto the hyperloop, they acquired a hooded shirt and cap for Jace to wear.
If someone looked into his face, they would see the embedded tattoo, but from the sides, he had some camouflage.
“Why haven’t you or other clones looked into this sort of thing before?” Kara had asked as they boarded the hyperloop.
Jace chuckled. “Because it is an excellent way to get arrested, beaten, or killed. Attempting to hide being a clone tends to be met with a presumption of guilt and wrongdoing.”
He touched the tattoo below his eye. “The engineers who created us did something to this marking that makes it impossible to cover. Anything you use—makeup, prosthetic, even a mask—either gets dissolved, or it glows through it. And covering it with your hand is obvious to everyone. We are marked in more ways and for more reasons than one.”
“Discrimination toward clones seems to know no bounds,” Kara remarked.
“Sometimes,” Jace agreed. “The only time I have known anything different is working with all of you.”
The car departed the station for the short trek across town.
Onima thought back on their visit so far. She had been willing to push at Captain Toff and the local law enforcement, but Jace was correct. They were, in all probability, at least allied with Gray and Chuang, if not outright owned by them.
Though she still was uncertain about Kara Martinez, Onima could not deny her value as a CBI agent. The deputy marshal had been correct about revisiting New Terra and taking a deeper look into the life of the late Palmer Cadoret.
The most infuriating thing about it, however, was that it had only raised more questions.
They arrived in the appropriate neighborhood, and Onima immediately understood Ms. Varma’s thinking. It was crowded and busy.
Onima took stock of the area. It appeared to be a mix of commercial and residential. Small shops, restaurants, pubs, coffeehouses, and the like lined the streets. Above the ground-level businesses were signs for service businesses on the second and third floors. No building in this neighborhood was greater than six stories tall, with the uppermost floors being residential.
The pub where Ms. Varma had requested they meet was in the middle of the avenue, and people were everywhere. Relatively speaking, it would be easy to disappear into a crowd.
Onima led Jace and Kara into the pub and spotted Ms. Varma seated at a table along the far wall, inset into an alcove. It offered a good view of the door, and Ms. Varma saw Onima and company immediately.
The trio made their way to her and sat casually around her.
“Still got your clone, I see,” Ms. Varma commented.
“Jace has been quite helpful on this investigation,” Onima remarked. She nodded toward Kara. “This is Deputy Marshal Kara Martinez.”
“Backup?” Ms. Varma let out a short laugh.
“No,” Kara said. “Just a new member of Marshal Gwok’s team.”
A waiter arrived, and they each ordered a drink, even Jace. After they were delivered, Ms. Varma placed a device on the table.
“Scrambler,” she said. “Any listening devices in the area won’t get more than white noise.”
“And we cannot record anything,” Kara added.
“No,” Ms. Varma agreed. “Look, let me be completely clear, because nothing I am about to tell you is on any official record. After this, we will never meet again. I will be leaving here and disappearing.”
“Disappearing?” Onima asked.
Ms. Varma shook her head. “You don’t understand, Marshal Gwok, so I am going to fill in some blanks. Palmer was not just my coworker. I was his biggest confidant. But we kept that to ourselves because making alliances public makes them exploitable in the company culture.”
Onima nodded.
“I know everything Palmer knew,” Ms. Varma said without preamble. “The virus attacking clones? Yes, Gray and Chuang, using certain outside affiliates, created it. The reason is surprisingly simple. Certain company directors were closely tied to the leadership of both the NECC and NEEA before and during the war. The AECC and its leadership are not as good for profit on many different levels, and the structure of the Confederation leadership is considered weak and wanting. What’s more, they’re not so corruptible and can’t be bought off.”
She paused a moment. “So, certain directors of the company agreed that the best way to deal with the AECC would be to topple them and install some former NEEA and NECC leaders to their benefit.”
“And they want to use clones to do that,” Jace supplied.
“Yes,” Ms. Varma said. “Though nobody has bothered to take a proper accounting of just how many clones still live, it’s in the tens of thousands—probably more than a hundred thousand. The virus would activate the clones, which would then be used to draw out the AECC military to respond to them.”
Onima nodded again. “Right. And the AECC military isn’t even close to the pre-clone militaries of any of the three former governments, despite handling a much broader swath of space.”
“That’s half of it,” Ms. Varma agreed. “But what’s more, the AECC’s only military ally, the canutus, are gone. I’m sure none of you need the history lesson, but that’s how the IHCF infiltrated and took out both governments. Without the aliens and their support, the AECC would crumble dealing with all the clones on the attack.”
“But the virus is killing clones instead,” Jace remarked.
Ms. Varma tittered humorlessly. “Yes, because the virus is largely a dud. It has failed in most of the tests to activate the embedded coding in the control input sector. Thus, it has either gone inert or killed the infected clones by attacking the central nervous system. There has been speculation that the reason for this is because of the clones’ age.”
Ms. Varma paused to take a drink. “Despite the cloning process, cells evolve uniquely in individual people in different environments. Accounting for that, and for twenty-six different physiologies, plus a myriad of worlds and their environments, and then creating a targeted virus to attack them all...even the best AI system or supercomputer isn’t up to that challenge.”