Rath's Deception (The Janus Group Book 1)

by Piers Platt

  “Why did you swallow it?” Rath asked, stalling.

  “I dunno, I just thought … maybe you had a gun, and then you couldn’t shoot me, ‘cause you might damage it.” The man coughed again, blood spattering the dirty cement and Rath’s pants. Rath grimaced and tightened his grip on the knife. For a second, he closed his eyes, but the assignment required visual confirmation of the kill. Rath looked the mercenary in the eyes and sliced hard.

  Rath saw shock and pain in the man’s eyes, then mounting desperation. The mercenary groaned, arterial blood splashing out onto the cement in dark, rhythmic pulses. Rath felt the bile rising in his throat, but suppressed the urge to vomit. He kept watching, holding the man up when he started to sag, seeing the blue eyes go flat and dull as the life slipped out of him. Rath cranked up his ear sensitivity, listening for anyone entering the alley, and also to the man’s weakening heartbeat. When his pulse stopped, Rath laid him flat on his back, taking a few seconds to check his other pockets before slicing the mercenary’s shirt open.

  What did the avatar say in Training? ‘For some missions, you’ll have no choice but to get up close and personal’ …? He shook his head. Jesus Christ.

  Again he hesitated, dreading the butcher’s task ahead of him. Then, starting at the man’s throat, he began cutting, searching for the data drive.

  * * *

  When he finished, Rath was covered in blood up to his elbows, and his shirt and pants were liberally stained as well. He took a deep breath, willing the nausea to subside, and moved a ways down the alley from the remains of the body, dropping his Forge on the ground between two dumpsters. He had a spare set of clothes in the pack, which he changed into, stashing his soiled set in a plastic bag that went back into the pack. He found a half-empty bottle of soda in one of the dumpsters and used it to rinse his boots, and made a mental note to bring cleaning supplies on his next assignment. Last, he shifted his hair from dark brown to a platinum white, and slipped his facial structure into a different mold, enlarging his chin and eyebrows, and lightening his skin tone. Rath glanced back at the body one last time – with his enhanced senses, he could still smell it from yards away – and then stepped out of the alleyway, striding quickly. He had gone ten feet before he realized he should have hidden the body in one of the dumpsters, and that he had forgotten the standard break contact drill when leaving the crime scene. He swore quietly, but decided he had wasted too much time already to go back. When he was six blocks away and reasonably sure no one had followed him or raised an alarm, he took out his holophone, and placed a call to the number in his assignment brief.

  They gave him an address on another island several miles away, so Rath ordered an air taxi on his phone, and sank gratefully into the back seat when it arrived, his pulse still racing with the stress of the mission, his stomach churning. The address turned out to be an upscale apartment complex. Rath stood in the middle of the lobby for a minute, wondering which apartment he needed to find, before a man reading a datascroll on a couch saw him and stood up, beckoning.

  “I think you might have something that belongs to my employer,” the man said, as Rath approached.

  “Possibly,” Rath told him, waiting for the correct codeword.

  “Well, it’s late – it was supposed to be here by six twenty-one.”

  621, my Contractor ID number. “Yeah, sorry about that, it was a little tricky to find.” He handed over the data drive.

  “Better late than never,” the man grunted, and plugged the drive into the datascroll. Rath waited.

  “Okay, we’re good to go,” the man told him. “Have a good one.”

  Rath caught another air cab straight to the spaceport, a short ride away on a massive launch platform out in the ocean. The sick feeling in his stomach would not pass, and when a pair of police cars flew past, sirens wailing, Rath was sure they were coming for him. But they disappeared in the distance ahead, and all Rath earned was a curious look from the cab driver. At the spaceport, he bought himself a ticket on the next trip to Volpes, where the Group had set him up with an apartment, and then headed for the restroom.

  Bathrooms: the one place in the galaxy where there aren’t any cameras, thank god.

  He ducked into the farthest stall from the door, set the Forge on the floor, and vomited for several minutes. When he was finished, he sat on the toilet, opened the Forge on his lap, and placed the knife in the output tray, setting the machine to Atomize. He watched as the nanobots tore the knife apart, molecule by molecule, then started the laborious process of destroying his bloody clothing. For good measure, he changed his face and hair color one more time before leaving the bathroom stall.

  He half expected to find the police waiting for him at spaceport security, but the security personnel just waved him through, and he caught the next shuttle up to the deep-space transfer station without incident. He had to wait several hours for the vessel departing to Volpes, but at last he was on board. Minutes later, they had undocked and started their faster-than-light journey. In his suite’s bathroom, Rath threw up again half-heartedly, then washed his mouth out, and chased the sour taste away with a small bottle of vodka from the suite’s refrigerator. Exhausted, he collapsed into his bunk.

  * * *

  “621 is offline – in transit back to staging planet.” The control room tech announced, pushing his swivel chair back from his viewing station.

  The supervisor on duty walked over. “First assignment, right? How did he do?”

  “Pretty bad, even for a first mission,” the tech answered. “I was kind of expecting the Alberon police to pick him up at the spaceport. He got lucky.”

  “What’s he weak on?”

  “Well, mistakes throughout, especially clean-up and exiting the scene, but the biggest thing is he’s hesitant. Here, look at this footage – see the pause, there? He’s in the middle of a murder, and he pauses to talk to the target. Twenty bucks says he doesn’t make it to double digits.”

  The supervisor snorted. “Sucker’s bet. Only a third of them make it to ten kills anyway. Anyone else coming online soon?”

  The tech checked a readout. “Nope. One in transit, but he doesn’t come out of faster-than-light drive for another … four hours.”

  “Okay, you might as well head home – next shift will cover that one.”

  The tech tidied up the station, before pushing the chair back in place. “Hey, how’s number 339?”

  “You didn’t hear?” the supervisor asked. “She completed her thirty-ninth yesterday.”

  “I was on shift last year when she finished twenty,” the tech recalled. “I called it back then: she’s going to make it to fifty. Watching her was … uncanny. And a little unsettling – she is just brutally efficient.”

  The supervisor nodded. “Did you see the highlight reel going around last month? Top Twenty-Five Kills of All Time, something like that? 339 had four of the top ten.”

  * * *

  Rath’s dreams were jumbled at first. They started in his old apartment, where Vonn wordlessly laid out playing cards in a grid, just like the drone in Selection Phase. When Rath tried to flip them over and match cards, he flipped the wrong card each time, and Vonn wagged his finger at him, still smiling. Then the dreamed shifted, and Rath was back in the alley from earlier that evening. His picture perfect memory recreated each moment of the kill in excruciating detail, and Rath moaned in his sleep as he relived the experience. The dream diverged from reality when Rath did not find the data drive in the man’s stomach. Rath watched as his dream-self systematically hacked the rest of the mercenary open, still searching. Rath woke up sweating and gasping. He realized he was not going to fall back asleep, so he drank another miniature bottle of liquor, and then pulled on his full-body simulation suit and goggles.

  The travel suit the Group had issued him was similar to the one he had used in training, but without the massive isolation pod the suit could not replicate any environment, and was constrained by the dimensions and characteristics of t
he room he was in. Still, the simulation program could change the appearance of his drab spaceliner cabin. Rath accessed the luxury apartment setting, and it materialized around him, a satin-covered bed replacing his cramped bunk, and a hot tub appearing where his desk and chair had been. Behind the bed, floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto a night-time cityscape, air cars following traffic patterns through the sleek skyscrapers.

  “Yoo-hoo ….”

  Rath turned – Rebecca was lounging in the hot tub, her breasts floating at the water line. He smiled and walked over to her, leaning over for a kiss.

  “Want a drink?” she asked.

  “No, thanks,” he told her. He slipped his hand under the water, and the simulator suit conveyed the sensations of heat and moisture to his arm.

  “Well, I guess I know what you do want,” she told him, arching an eyebrow at him. She lay back and closed her eyes, letting him explore for a minute.

  “You seem quiet, honey – everything okay?” Rebecca asked.

  Rath frowned. “I had trouble sleeping.”

  “I’ll tire you out,” she told him, giving him a knowing wink. She knelt by the edge of the tub in front of Rath and began unbuckling his pants.

  “It wasn’t like I expected,” he told her.

  “Your first assignment?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” Rath said.

  * * *

  The shuttle took Rath down through Volpes’ usual heavy cloud cover. He watched from his window seat as the jagged, snowy peaks appeared below him. It was snowing gently when they landed. Rath ordered an air cab to take him back to the apartment – he still found it hard to consider it home, having spent less than a month there before his first assignment arrived.

  He dropped his gear in the front hall, and was surprised to find a package waiting for him by the mail slot. It contained no note, just a small, black velvet box with a hinge. He opened the lid, and took out a silver-grey bracelet with a small lens in the center. The metal was dull rather than shiny, but it gave Rath an overall impression of fine craftsmanship. Rath slid the bracelet on, and noticed there was a small button on the rim of the bracelet next to the lens. He pressed it. A shining golden 50 hologram appeared above the bracelet, spinning slowly. As Rath watched, the number changed to 49, and then continued to cycle all the way down to 1, where it stopped, spinning slowly again before winking out.

  Only forty-nine more, Rath thought as he made his way to the bed.

  Rath’s internal clock was almost exactly opposite the local time zone on Volpes, so although it was morning, he slept for some hours, waking again close to sunset. He showered and then changed into one of the tailored wool suits with which the Group had stocked his apartment. He had never owned a suit, and though he liked the way it made him look, he wasn’t sure if suits were fashionable for affluent eighteen year olds like him, and he still needed the simulator to remind him how to tie a tie, so he left those hanging in the closet.

  He picked a restaurant from a list labeled What’s Hot on his phone, and directed his air taxi driver to that location, but when he confessed he had no reservation, the maître d’ threw him a look of scorn, and Rath left, chagrined. His suit was too thin to offer much warmth in Volpes’ high mountain air, so he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked a few blocks, past several other bustling restaurants and clubs, until he finally found a restaurant that had open room at the bar. He was relieved to see other patrons wearing suits, too, though he looked to be the youngest person in the bar.

  Note to self: use an older-looking cover identity next time you go out.

  Rath picked a drink at random and ordered it, then scanned the dinner menu, discreetly accessing his heads-up display’s translation program to figure out what certain items were.

  “I’ll have the foy grass terrine,” he told the bartender, when he brought the drink over.

  “I’m sorry? Oh, foie gras, very good sir.”

  Rath winced, hoping the other diners had not noticed his misstep.

  “… and for your entree?”

  Rath fumbled – he had thought that was a main course. “What do you recommend?”

  “The mahi mahi special is excellent,” the bartender replied.

  “Sure,” Rath agreed, wondering what a “mahi mahi” was.

  The man to Rath’s left was talking on his holophone, and the stool to his right was empty, so he sat in silence, idly flipping through local news stories on his phone’s holographic display. Soon after the bartender cleared his appetizer away – Rath had not liked the foie gras at all – a dark-skinned woman in her mid-thirties with long, jet-black hair took the empty stool next to him. She smiled briefly at him before ordering a cocktail, ignoring the dinner menu.

  “Hi, I’m Rob,” Rath told her, holding his hand out.

  She gave his outstretched hand a funny look, but shook it. “Hi Rob, I’m Sataya.”

  “Hi,” Rath said, again. “Are you, uh, from around here?”

  “What, Volpes? No, but it’s home for now. And you?”

  “No, new here,” Rath admitted. “I’m from Tarkis.” He wondered if he should have lied about that, but his training hadn’t gone into cover stories when off duty.

  “So what do you do, Rob from Tarkis?”

  He had a cover story ready for that question, at least: “I’m a 3D printer salesman. Travel around, demo the unit for clients, that kind of thing.”

  “Interesting,” she lied. “We had an early model at home growing up, but my father never remembered to refill the canisters.”

  Rath smiled. Sataya seemed to be waiting for him to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. Rath shifted nervously in his seat. “What, um, what do you do? For work?”

  “I’m in textiles procurement for a fashion designer. I scout new fabrics for the next line.”

  Rath wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he was sure that asking would reveal his ignorance. “I don’t know much about fashion,” he admitted instead.

  She smiled at him and took a sip from her drink. “Look, you’re cute but awkward, and really young, and I’m not usually into the whole May-December thing. I’m going to talk to some other folks, okay? No hard feelings?”

  “No, go ahead,” Rath told her, smiling to hide his embarrassment.

  “Mahi mahi” turned out to be a kind of fish, though the meal took up just a tiny portion of the plate. Rath finished eating in silence and paid quickly. He had the cab driver stop by a drive-through on the way back to his apartment. Rath ate his burger alone in his spacious kitchen.

  13

  The last time Beauceron had seen so much blood was an investigation into an industrial accident at a slaughterhouse years before. The police drone was still taking pictures of the body, while the crime scene tech waited some feet away.

  “I heard it was messy,” Beauceron said, just to make conversation.

  “That it is,” the tech agreed, leaning up against the wall of the alley. “Haven’t had a chance to examine up close yet, the damn drone’s taking his sweet time.”

  Without warning, the drone let out an electronic warble, and then rose straight into the air, rocketing out of the alley and disappearing over the rooftops. The tech snorted.

  “They can’t even program the fucking things to say ‘goodbye’ when they’re done,” he complained. He checked his datascroll to confirm that the drone had sent him its report, then pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and dropped his gear bag next to the body. “Give me about ten minutes, then we can talk.”

  “Sure,” Beauceron said. He stood and moved away from the body, letting the tech get to work. He followed a set of bloody footprints to a dumpster halfway down the alley, where they stopped. For good measure, he walked all the way to the far end of the alley, as well.

  “You’ll inventory the dumpster?” Beauceron asked, walking back.

  The tech sighed. “Yeah.”

  No c
ameras in alley, Beauceron noted on his pad of paper, before moving back over to the pool of blood surrounding the body. Spray of blood against side of building, waist high. Stomach / leg wound? He glanced over at the body, but the man’s pants appeared intact. Beauceron drew a line through that note, and then crouched with his back to the wall. Neck wound, he wrote. He was facing a door: a fire exit, by the look of it. At his feet, there were footprints and drag marks in the pooled blood at the base of the wall, leading from the wall to the body. A knife lay in the pool of blood, close to the wall.

  Beauceron stood again and pulled out his own datascroll to read the drone’s report. It suggested a few interesting hypotheses, but he had learned to wait for the crime scene tech – drones worked efficiently, but they still lacked the intuition that came with human experience. The preliminary identification was usually reliable, however. Surif al-Diwan, age twenty-seven, served in a military unit in the Territories, current employment: security contractor.

  Beauceron had found that murders nearly always boiled down to one of three motives: money, love, or substance-induced bad judgment. Occam’s razor, Beauceron thought. The simplest explanation is the most likely. But something here is … off. He took a closer look at the knife, which had a flip-out blade with a matte-black handle. Military types like to be armed at all times, just to be safe, he thought. Still, carrying it could indicate he knew a threat was imminent. A trained soldier, possibly expecting attack, armed with a knife … not an easy man to kill. Beauceron shifted a few feet to his right, to get a different angle on the knife. And the blade is clean. He fought back, but didn’t draw blood. Beauceron scribbled in his notebook: Assailant: trained in hand-to-hand combat. Possibly a colleague / other security contractor?

  “All set here,” the tech reported, standing and stepping back from the body.