by J. N. Chaney
It took a lot for Burner to trust somebody. His experience in Union Intelligence had taught him that people, in general, were not trustworthy. Union people in particular. Everyone had their own motivations, their own secret goals. And not everyone was obvious about it, breaking the rules in ways that couldn’t be detected and tracked back to the source. It was those who knew how to bend the rules without breaking them, those who could make the law work in their favor, that were truly dangerous.
Constables like Sara operated with a lot of discretion. Even when Burner’s investigations had revealed Constables breaking all manner of laws, they were shielded by the phrase ‘conducted in the course of duty.’ There was very little they couldn’t get away with as long as they could claim it was done as an essential part of their mission. They were masters of coming up with excuses for their actions.
And yet Burner found himself trusting Sara. He felt she was a different breed of Constable. It was hard to put his finger on just why that was. Part of it was probably just because she was attractive, sure. But there was something more to it than that. Something that tingled that instinct that was so essential to his survival.
Not that she wasn’t dangerous. If she didn’t trust him in return, or if they came to a crossroads where her duty interfered with what he needed to do, she would make a fierce opponent. But for now, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
For the rest of the building, Burner took a couple of cautious laps to do reconnaissance. Unsurprisingly, the gun shop was covered by more street-facing cameras than he had first observed. Installed by professionals, too, since Burner was hard pressed to find a blind spot. The building had three possible entrances. The main entrance in the front led right into the street. A side door closer to the back was next to an open space just large enough for a vehicle to land for those placing large enough orders that they needed to be directly loaded. In the far back was the service entrance used by the employees which doubled as a receiving dock for shipments.
Burner figured his kidnappers would have eyes on all three entrances. After all, they knew enough about him that they wouldn’t rule out him sneaking in through the service entrance. But he and Sara were on the only vantage he could spot that had a view of all three entrances. That meant one of two things: either they were separately watching each of the entrances, which would be a large investment in manpower, or they had access to the camera feeds. He would put his money on the latter.
Two could play at that game. The terrorists had to have gone in through one of those entrances at least once to make sure that the weapon he was to pick up was available. And as he had already determined, the cameras didn’t have a blind spot.
He pulled out the handheld scanning device he had purchased before leaving Zanpus. During his downtime on the flight he had fiddled with a few of the finer settings of its firmware, allowing it to pick up signals that would normally be hidden from devices. It was a simple trick from his days as an operative, one that wouldn’t hold up against more modern security measures. Fortunately, while the cameras were expertly placed, they were of an older model, without the kinds of protections to their wireless signals that would have required a more direct connection to hack.
Once he had located the signal of the network that the cameras were on, he set his cracking tool to work. After that, it was the simple matter of convincing the network that his handheld was a secondary storage device and he could start downloading the data in their memory.
The bank of videos was extensive. It looked like they hadn’t been cleared in at least a year, something that worked in his favor. Burner decided that the most recent three weeks’ worth of information would be sufficient.
Sara watched him quietly, peeking over his shoulder as he worked. When he finally had the data, she spoke. “Breaking into the secure network of a private business without a permit. Theft of private data. And I’m pretty sure that scanner has been modified beyond regulations.” Her voice was teasing. “Is that how they do things in Union Intelligence?”
He shrugged. “I’m retired.”
“Ah, so it’s not a regulatory crime, it’s a crime crime.”
Gesturing to the handheld, he said, “You have a problem with how I get results?”
She held up her hands in a mockingly defensive way. “None whatsoever. Not really my responsibility how my consultants go about their business.”
He pocketed his handheld. “Consultant?”
“Sure. How else would you describe our partnership?”
His smile was vicious. “I was thinking of you as my sidekick.”
She acted like she was offended and stormed off. In truth, they had both realized that they had spent too much time on the rooftop and they should get off it before a curious employee decided to check why the roof door was unlocked. They’d need to find a more private place to review the video.
They did a little canvasing to find a hotel not too far away that suited their needs. Their “needs” being a place that was off the main road and didn’t get much traffic. The kind of place that wouldn’t check IDs because their clients preferred anonymity. A place where the locals knew the rooms were billed by the hour.
The appropriately named Jump and Dump fit the bill well. It was far enough from the main road that they could come and go without being spotted. The owners didn’t require identification (Burner noted that much of the guest ledger ahead of him was composed of innuendo names such as Amanda Mount and Harry P. Ness), and all the rooms were lined up on a single hall that they could monitor for suspicious activity. Well, more suspicious activity than what would commonly be expected in a seedy place like this.
They requested the room furthest in the back. As the greasy-haired clerk handed them their keycard, he asked Sara what her rate was. Burner thought she’d be offended, but she just smiled and said, “You couldn’t afford it,” before putting an arm around Burner and pulling him in close. He couldn’t say he minded being that close to her. They walked arm in arm like that until they reached their room.
Once they had ensured the room was secure, Burner used his scanner to make sure the perverts who ran this place didn’t have any hidden cameras around. It was something he had encountered before in similar locations. Then he pulled out his handheld and opened up the hacked camera data.
“Got three weeks of camera footage to sift through,” he said to Sara, who was already making herself comfortable on the bed. “I guess the question is: where should we get started?”
9
Undisclosed Location
“He ain’t picked up the weapon yet,” Eggie said for the tenth time in roughly as many minutes. His voice was rough from years of smoking just about everything that could be smoked.
Killington sighed, no doubt regretting assigning the grunt to the task of monitoring the surveillance cameras in front of the gun store. “Thank you, Eggie.” Eggie was loyal, and reliable in matters of violence, but the elevator didn’t go all the way to the top with him.
Cypher watched from his spot above. He was painfully aware that Burner was behind schedule, putting the entire timetable of their mission at risk. It had all been going according to plan until a few hours ago. Burner had caught the exact flight they had expected him to, and then he had been spotted on the streets heading in the direction of the gun store.
Then he met up with some woman, and suddenly he seemed to lose interest in the weapon store. The woman’s identity was still a mystery, though they were currently working on that. Whoever she was, she was in the way. They were last seen entering a seedy hotel together. Best case scenario, she was some floozy that Burner had picked up to have some fun with before the mission. But Cypher had the uncomfortable feeling she was going to be bigger trouble than that.
At the console next to him, their tech expert, Cade Grundy, was tapping away furiously, sifting through dozens of windows so fast that Cypher couldn’t make out what was on any of them before they were replaced by another set of windows. He caught glimpse
s of faces, of official looking Union documents, of lists of monetary figures. He wasn’t sure how Cade got anything useful out of those small glances, but the techy nodded along to the stream of data like he was listening to music.
He didn’t look like much. A shock of messy blond hair framed a good-humored face that seemed physically incapable of frowning, and glassy green eyes that belied the intelligence underneath. But he had a way with technology that put the top Union engineers to shame. That was why Cypher tolerated his eccentricities. Eccentricities like showing up every day in flowery vacation shirts and shorts.
Cypher adjusted his glasses and moved to stand behind Cade. “You learn about the woman yet?”
Cade did not stop his tapping as he spoke. “Yeah. Her name is Christina Rivers.”
The name was unfamiliar. “And who is Christina—”
“Also Rebecca Chalmers. And Adriana Kelso. And probably a dozen more. It is going to take me a while to sort through all of them.” He made it sound like the task was something he was looking forward to.
Cypher scowled at the revelation. So much for the hope that she was a random floozy. “Are these aliases well established?”
“I’d say so.” He tapped the screen a couple of times then brought his fingers apart in a stretching motion. A window enlarged showing the face of the woman cameras had picked up walking with Burner, as well as a stream of information about her: birth records, employment history, credit report, even her school grades. “Whoever set up these identities was very thorough. If my customized facial recognition algorithm hadn’t picked up multiple identifications on its first pass, I don’t think I would have ever realized it was fake.”
Cypher tapped at the edge of Cade’s chair, trying to contain his annoyance. “Who is she, really? A Deadlands rogue? Some of them might have the connections to make something like that possible. Union? I can’t imagine anyone from the Union wanting to work alongside Burner these days, but maybe she doesn’t know who he is?”
Cade just shrugged. “Like I said, still a lot to sift through. I’ll let you know when I figure something out.”
From down below, Stack decided to chime in. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
Before Cypher could order Stack to shut his mouth if he didn’t have something to contribute, Cade laughed. “Oh, really? Does the traitor suddenly have all the answers to the mystery?”
Stack bristled, as he usually did when Cade tried to antagonize him. “For the last time, I’m not a traitor, I’m simply using my talents for a better cause these days. Hell, half the people who work with us are ex-Union. Why do you insist on giving me a hard time?”
Cade tapped through the windows. “At least they had the courtesy to leave the Union before changing sides. Someone who will sell out his own people while still working for them doesn’t strike me as someone particularly trustworthy. If you’re willing to feed us info on them, what’s to stop you from turning around and giving info on us to them?”
Cypher cut in. “Because he knows I’d kill him if he did that.”
That silenced both sides, for now. Cypher knew that it was a temporary quiet. Cade had a moral issue with the mole and wasn’t afraid to voice it. As a matter of fact, he seemed pathologically incapable of not voicing it.
Unlike the others in Cypher’s organization that had previous loyalties to the Union, Stack still had an active posting, one that gave him access to classified records. That made him incredibly useful from an information gathering perspective. It was his access that had given them the files on Burner and his colorful time with Intelligence. It wasn’t a stretch to say much of their current mission hinged around the information Stack was able to procure.
Killington brought the conversation back around. “What was so obvious, Stack?”
Stack turned around in his seat. Like the others on the lower level, he had taken a console as far from Eggie as possible in an attempt to escape the smell. “She’s clearly one of Burner’s contacts from his operative days. He never intended to go along with our demands, he was only playing us for time.”
“Knew we oughta gone with someone with a family,” Eggie muttered, shaking his head. “We coulda been puttin’ the squeeze on ’em right now and they’d be running to get the weapon. Burner ain’t going to care if we threaten him.”
“No one loves their families anymore,” Killington said with a shrug. “Least of all these Union folks.”
Eggie scratched his head. “Then how’d we get ’em to do anythin’, then?”
There were some murmurs of agreement. Eggie, in his simple way, had stumbled on something that many of the men had been concerned with. They had no traditional leverage on Burner, at least on the surface. No blackmail material, no loved ones to threaten, not even a beloved pet. Their plans hinged on a psychological analysis of Burner that suggested his pride and curiosity would force him to play along for a while, trying to use the opportunity to identify his foes. They just needed to lure him to the point of no return.
But if he failed to show up for even step one, then they had a problem. Cypher felt his rage boiling and gripped the back of Cade’s seat so tightly his knuckles turned white. If this plan failed, someone needed to be punished for it. He looked around the room, trying to decide who the fault lay with and what he would do with them.
“I think it’s too early to be so defeatist.” One of the youngest members of their organization, Reginald, spoke up.
All eyes turned to the young man with frizzy hair and the nervous mannerisms of a rat in a cat’s cage. His gaze darted around the room before settling on Cypher. “I’m just sayin’, boss, that it doesn’t really matter who the lady is, right? There’s no way she can lead him to us, yeah? So he’ll still need to collect the gun if he wants to hear from us again. It just might take a little longer.”
It was a good point, one that quickly quieted down all doubters. Cypher would have to remember to reward the kid later for his faith.
Though his patience wasn’t at the level of Reginald’s. They had a timetable and were already behind. Action needed to be taken.
“We’re going to call Burner,” Cypher decided out loud. “Cade, we’ll deal with the rest later. I need you to set up an untraceable connection right away.”
Cade waved his hand in front of the screen, clearing it. “You got it.”
Cypher leaned over the console, steepling his hands in front of him. “If Burner needs some more motivation, we are going to give it to him.”
10
Jump and Dump Hotel, Hell’s Reach, Dobulla, UX8, Union Space
A week of video reviewed, and so far they had only come across one guy who was remotely suspicious. About five days ago he had come into the gun store carrying a large bag over his shoulder, one that Burner noted would be large enough to house a sniper rifle. What caught their attention was how he seemed to move in a way that kept his face from the feeds. He wore a hat with a long visor, and when it wasn’t possible to keep his back to the camera, he would tip his head forward enough for the visor to obscure the view of his face. This was true no matter which camera Burner switched between. When the cameras caught the man leaving the store, he was no longer carrying the bag.
The man’s brief appearances in the videos unfortunately did not shed much light on his identity. He walked with a notable limp, left foot dragging behind the right, but his bearing was upright and proper. Military, possibly. But not someone with enough rank that going to a weapon shop in the middle of the day was going to ring any alarm bells.
It was unlikely that the terrorists would send someone important to do the dirty work, especially if that someone was going to be carrying a weapon that would soon be connected to a high-profile crime. One of their goons, then, someone expendable enough that the mission wouldn’t be endangered if they were caught but loyal enough to keep their mouths shut.
Assuming this man was even an associate of the kidnappers to begin with. Gun shops in Union space were breeding grounds for
all manner of shady dealings, and it’s possible whatever this suspicious fellow was up to was completely unrelated to Burner’s current predicament. There was no way to tell at this time, and nothing further to go on.
They could keep digging further back. Burner had two more weeks’ worth of video downloaded. He had a suspicion that they were going to be just as uninformative, but it was the attempt. Plus, the kidnappers were probably sweating by now, wondering when he was going to pick up the weapon. The longer he waited, the more nervous he would make them, and nervous people have a habit of making mistakes.
He tapped through the handheld’s memory banks to find the next relevant file. In addition to the video footage from the cameras, the broad-spectrum scanners had also automatically copied data from a host of nearby coms and wireless networks. He would have to clear all that data off the memory later, but for now he simply ignored it and selected the appropriate file.
They reviewed the videos for several hours, watching four feeds at a time in a grid formation at high speed, only slowing the videos if they thought they caught a glimpse of something unusual. When Burner got tired of tapping through the files, he handed the job over to Sara, another demonstration of the trust he instinctively felt she deserved.
As evening rolled in, hunger and exhaustion began to take their toll. They decided to take a break to order in some food.
Sara sprawled out on the room’s single bed, letting out a contented sigh as she stretched her arms and worked out the kinks in her muscles from being hunched over her pad for so long. “So what are you in the mood for? I think the local delicacy is something called criblack, which is… well, it’s some kind of meat and some kind of vegetable. I’m not sure what they are, but it’s pretty tasty, kind of spicy and sweet at the same time. Or, if you’re not feeling adventurous, we could always play it safe and get a pizza or something. What do you think?” A pause. “Burner?”