by MJ Blehart
The only sounds Onima heard were a few conversations, birds, buzzing insects, and ocean waves lapping the shore. Right away, she was struck by the lack of technological sounds. “That’s almost eerie,” she said.
“When you live in one of the largest cities in the galaxy, having a home without the omnipresent background noise of tech is worthwhile to people,” Kara said. “And when they come here, some of them bring their clone servants.”
“Please tell me you mean clones employed by non-clone businesspeople, and not actually servants,” Jace said.
Onima saw Kara shrug. “Probably. But given the kind of work many clones can find—when they find work at all—it shouldn’t be too surprising some work simply for food and board.”
Jace sighed, but said, “Living is living.”
Of course, Onima knew that all clones had certain inhibitions when it came to ambition. Former infantry clones like Jace took almost any work they could for very little ESCA. Still, she wondered how it made him feel that some of his kind might virtually be in a form of slavery.
But then again, if clones were being kept as slaves, no law enforcement agency would actually care, and that included the Bureau. Clones were discarded and forgotten by most. Few paid any mind to how they survived.
The trio continued through the quaint town. Onima glanced around, getting a feel for the small shops intermingled among the residences.
She checked on her datacard and noted that they were just a couple of blocks from Ms. Hansen’s home.
Near the buildings were spaces where benches, raised flower beds, and sometimes chairs and tables were set up. Farther out were broad sidewalks and a road offering two lanes for nothing wider than tricycles and rickshaws.
“Alright,” Onima said. They paused by a café with some seats just off the sidewalk, acting as though they might take a seat. “We each take a pass by the house and get a feel for her block. Then we keep an eye on the house. We maintain comms the whole time and coordinate to keep her in sight.”
“Fairly standard tail and observe,” Kara said. She looked at Jace. “You ever do this sort of thing in the infantry?”
“No,” Jace said, “but I have read the whole of the CBI handbook on stakeouts, observation, tail and observe, and the rest of the standard procedures. And I am familiar with moving and remaining unseen, since I had to do that as a sniper more than once during the war.”
“Right,” Kara said. “No offense, Jace. I just wanted to be clear.”
“None taken,” Jace said. Onima was fairly certain that he meant that, too.
“I do recommend one change to this plan, though,” Kara said. “No clone would be seen on the streets without their employer more than a few feet away.”
Onima sighed. “Okay, that’s fair. Jace, stay with Kara.”
“Will do,” Jace said.
They reached the block next to where Ms. Hansen’s home was. Kara and Jace went down the block to the next intersection, while Onima started toward the house.
As she reached the block, Onima paused and began to fiddle with her datacard, turning it toward anyone passing near, but acting like someone trying to read some data or other - but who didn’t have any implants or wearables on.
Meanwhile, Kara and Jace began to walk toward Onima from the other side of the street.
Onima glanced toward the house. It stood quietly, like all the rest of the residences on the block. There was about ten feet of space to either side of the home, and most of the houses had a wall between them separating the back yard from the front.
When Kara and Jace were about three meters away, Onima crossed the street to the other side, walking in the direction they had come from.
No casual observer would draw any sort of connection between Onima and the duo.
As Onima walked past the house, she saw no movement. But it was still early in the morning.
At the far end of the street there was a small corner store. Onima paused before it and, using her datacard, called up and paid for a local newsfeed.
“Gwok, holding,” Onima said sotto voce. The comm, when set to be constantly on, would pick up and transmit everything.
“Martinez, holding,” Kara replied. Which meant she and Jace had chosen a spot to remain where they could observe the house.
There were all sorts of things that could go wrong when staking someone out and setting up to tail them. Despite Feroz’s assurances, it was possible that Ms. Hansen had left her home unobserved. Based on the pass from one end of the block to the next, Onima knew the cameras were on the corners of the block.
Then, once the person of interest was being followed, there was always the risk of being noticed and the problems that could ensue from that. It was not uncommon for a less experienced agent to be noticed by the person of interest and subsequently waylaid by local law enforcement.
Onima had a great deal of experience with this. Kara, based on her record, did as well. And Jace, though he stood out more as a clone, had proven himself capable with all the other tasks he had done while working with Onima.
Somewhere between half an hour and forty minutes after setting up surveillance, Ms. Hansen left her home.
“POI spotted,” Kara reported.
A second later, Onima spotted Ms. Hansen walking down the sidewalk.
“POI spotted,” Onima responded under her breath. “Heading my way.”
Ms. Hansen walked past Onima without so much as glancing in her direction. She crossed the street and began to head toward the shops and cafés Onima, Kara, and Jace had passed earlier.
“On point,” Onima said, noting how Ms. Hansen looked, her height, and what she was wearing. Staying well back, Onima began to follow her.
Ms. Hansen proceeded down the street at a nice, stately pace, clearly in no hurry. She turned down an avenue parallel to her own and started heading in Kara and Jace’s direction.
“POI sighted,” Kara said.
Onima took her time. As she reached the street, she saw that Ms. Hansen had crossed and was stopping at a café.
A few minutes later, Ms. Hansen left with a beverage in a travel container in hand and continued along the street. She crossed to another road. Kara and Jace now were nearer to her than Onima was.
For the next hour, the trio tracked the person of interest. Eslem Hansen seemed to be out for a casual walk. She made stops here and there, but apart from the stop at the café for the beverage, she didn’t make any further purchases.
Onima was certain Ms. Hansen had no idea they were tailing her. Still, she saw nothing that indicated that she was meeting anyone in particular, nor doing anything aside from taking a walk through her quaint seaside town.
“I think,” Onima said softly, “we may want to get closer.”
“Agreed,” Kara said. “One-half?”
“Yes,” Onima concurred. That meant that they would close to within one or two people of the woman they were tailing.
Onima was presently slightly farther away than Jace and Kara. As she crossed the road to get to the same side as Ms. Hansen, a cyclist shot past her, almost hitting her.
The cyclist was not pedaling, but instead was relying on a low-power battery to propel their bike. As they continued down the road, they showed clear disregard for everyone.
It was only a matter of time before the reckless rider caused a problem.
And then they knocked someone over.
It was, of course, Ms. Hansen.
None of the trio were near enough to assist her, and Onima breathed a sigh of relief when a nearby person helped Ms. Hansen up.
“...bat out of hell,” the person was saying to Ms. Hansen as she brushed herself off. “No regard for anyone. Almost hit a dozen other people. You sure you’re okay, miss?”
“Yes, yes,” Ms. Hansen said. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“My pleasure,” the helpful person said, then walked away.
Ms. Hansen continued on her excursion. Onima was now just a few feet away, w
hile Kara and Jace were across the street.
“That was disconcerting,” Kara remarked sotto voce.
Onima agreed, but felt she was a tad too close to respond.
Ms. Hansen paused near a shop entrance, but she seemed to waiver. Something was off about the woman’s stance.
Ms. Hansen collapsed onto the sidewalk.
Onima was not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination. But she did have some limited field aid training.
Not as much, however, as Jace, who raced across the street.
“Let me check on her!” Jace called out. He knelt beside Ms. Hansen as another woman approached.
“I’m a physician,” she said, shooting daggers at Jace.
He arose as she knelt beside the old woman. “Of course,” Jace said.
Kara was at Jace’s side. Onima hung back, setting the distance at which the other bystanders would remain to observe the scene.
Jace was maintaining just enough distance to watch everything the “physician” was doing. Given everything that had happened during the investigation, nothing was coincidental.
“I got no pulse,” Jace said under his breath into the comm.
The physician checked Ms. Hansen’s pulse at her wrist, then her throat. She dropped to put an ear to the unconscious woman’s chest. Then the physician took out a datacard and scanned Ms. Hansen. “She’s dead.”
“Can’t you do something to resuscitate her?” someone among the onlookers said.
The physician shook her head regretfully. “No. I think she was dead before she even hit the ground. No brain, lung, or heart function at all.”
“I’ve called the paramedics,” a man said.
People nearby hung their heads, and the crowd dispersed sadly.
Onima crossed the street, made her way toward a café just down the block, and took a seat outside. A moment later, both Kara and Jace joined her.
“That was too perfectly timed to be a coincidence,” Jace said.
“How do you figure?” asked Kara.
“We’re here,” Jace began. “We start to follow Ms. Hansen, gather some intelligence, and before we can learn a damned thing, she drops dead? I don’t believe at all that that was random happenstance.”
“Agreed,” Onima said. “We’ll need to reach out to Dr. Patel and see if there is some sort of drug that can kill by stopping the heart, lungs, and brain all at once. I have no doubt there is.”
“But how?” asked Kara.
“Probably the cyclist,” Onima said.
“Or the bystander who helped her up,” Jace said.
“Or both, I guess.” Kara took a breath, looking around. “Now what?”
“What else can we do?” Onima asked. “We pause here for five more minutes, take beverages to go, and pay her home a visit.”
“Seems like a plan to me,” Kara said.
Onima ordered an espresso, and Kara and Jace ordered coffee. Once they were served, they waited a few more minutes before standing and beginning the walk back to Ms. Hansen’s home.
Onima, Jace, and Kara walked down the street together. Since they were no longer tailing their person of interest, there was no reason not to keep together.
They took a different way back to Ms. Hansen’s street than they had come. The quiet residential street remained largely devoid of movement.
The trio walked toward the front door. Once there, Onima took out her datacard and used her CBI code credentials to bypass the lock.
The door clicked, and Kara pushed it open to a small vestibule.
Onima went straight, while Kara went left and Jace right. None of them withdrew their sidearms.
The kitchen was wide and airy. Over the sink and countertop were broad windows looking out over a well-manicured yard.
It was clean. Very clean, in fact.
Kara joined Onima. “Not a lot in the living room. A couple of chairs, a large media viewer. Not much else.”
Jace joined them. “Nothing to speak of in the dining room. Table, chairs, curio cabinets with a few trinkets—but not what I would expect someone who called this place home to have. I’m no expert, but there’s nothing that seems overly personal here.”
“Does anyone else feel like something is just...off about this place?” Onima asked.
“Yes,” Jace agreed.
“Not exactly,” Kara said. “But I do feel like these spaces were all for show.”
Onima kept looking around. No dishes in the sink. None on the drying rack beside it, either. It was as if the room had been cleansed like a clean room.
Onima withdrew her datacard and did a scan. She didn’t like what it showed her.
“Jace,” she said. “Remember when we paid the first visit to Mr. Cadoret’s condo in Centaurus City?”
“Yes,” Jace said. Onima could hear the discomfort in his voice. “It was also far too clean. Like it had been swept clear.”
Kara gasped. She turned to Onima and Jace, her eyes wide. “We need to get out of here. Right now.”
Something in Kara’s tone struck a nerve. Without hesitation, Onima headed for the door, Kara and Jace right behind her.
They were walking down the path to the sidewalk when they were thrown to the ground. Half a second later, an all-encompassing roar reached Onima’s ears, followed by an intense wave of heat that dissipated along with the roar.
Onima rolled over and sat up—and saw the flaming wreckage of Eslem Hansen’s home.
Jace helped Kara to her feet. “You okay?” he asked Onima, offering her a hand next.
Onima took it and got to her feet, gratified to see that none of the neighbors were out and about.
Without a word, Onima headed back to the sidewalk. Unquestioning, Jace and Kara joined her. The trio stood there a moment, looking to all intents and purposes like bystanders, watching the house burn.
“I saw a gas dispersal bladder,” Kara informed her softly. “It was just beside the glass door to the backyard. I could tell it had been activated.”
Onima nodded. “And perfectly timed to explode when nobody in the neighborhood was home.”
Jace and Kara looked around the empty block too.
“That’s eerie,” Jace said.
Onima shook her head, a mix of sadness and anger. “No, not eerie. Well-coordinated. Someone wanted to make damned sure we not only didn’t get to talk to Ms. Hansen, but that we couldn’t search her place for information, either. They knew we were coming.”
“Who?” asked Kara.
“Gray and Chuang,” Onima said, and immediately regretted it. Kara was not as aware of that part of the investigation. But she had said it now, and there was no taking it back.
“This is concerning,” Jace said. “What if our next investigation meets with similar coincidences and interruptions before we can converse with Mr. Bettani?”
“I’m less concerned about that,” Onima said, “because he’s a much bigger player in this affair. Ms. Hansen, if she had any involvement or knowledge, was naught but a liability to those pulling the strings.”
“This investigation is seriously multi-layered,” Kara remarked.
“It is.” Onima started walking, and her team members joined her.
As they reached the end of the street, sirens wailed behind them. Drones arrived with fire-extinguishing equipment, and a rare motor-vehicle—a fire truck—glided around the corner to reach Ms. Hansen’s burning house.
“I am sure this will be chalked up as an accident,” Onima said. “Probably a gas leak, given the gas bladder you mentioned, Kara.”
“Somebody did not want Ms. Hansen to talk about anything,” Jace said.
“The question is, how did they know?” asked Kara.
Onima had suspicions, and she didn’t like the answers. She knew she could trust Jace, Yael, and Feroz—but Kara remained a mystery. Onima would need to ask Jace later if he’d observed Kara doing anything suspicious. Which was why she’d had Jace stay with Kara during the stakeout.
But now they had more immediate concerns.
“We’ll worry about that later,” Onima said. “Let’s get back to the shuttle and rest. We need to reach our next person of interest first thing in the morning.”
14
Jacobastad followed a pattern Jace was beginning to recognize in cities. It was bordered on the north by the ocean and on the south by hills leading into mountains. East and west stretched out into sparse suburbs, then farmlands.