Rath's Deception (The Janus Group Book 1)

by Piers Platt

  Still, she could be on a ledge along one of the walls. There’s no guarantee the grenades got her.

  He unclipped a third grenade and armed it for remote detonation, then lobbed it out over the water. As the grenade reached the height of its arc, Rath triggered it, and a cloud of nerve gas spread through the spillway. To be safe, Rath jogged back up the tunnel and waited for the gas to dissipate, turning up the sensitivity on his audio sensors so that he might hear coughing or other signs that 339 was still in the tunnel. He heard nothing but the rush of water. After five minutes, he made his way back to the end of the tunnel, crawling on his belly for the final few feet, and carefully scanning the spillway as more of it came into view on either side of his access tunnel. He dialed up his olfactory sensor as well, hoping to catch her scent. He smelled nothing but water and cement. Rath held his rifle at arm’s length, panning the sight’s camera along both sides of the spillway, and even the ceiling above him. To his right, about thirty feet upstream, the spillway ended at a cement wall with three wide, steel pipes, all of which were pouring water out to create the swift river at his feet. To his left, Rath saw the spillway opening that he had seen in the feed from his micro-drone. Through the mouth of the spillway, Rath saw some kind of bird gliding lazily on the air currents. In the distance, the setting sun glinted off one of the lakes at the far end of the valley.

  She’s gone.

  There was another access tunnel on the far side of the spillway, offset from Rath’s position by ten or fifteen feet, closer to the mouth of the spillway, but far enough downstream that he could only see partway inside the tunnel. Rath kept his rifle trained on the far tunnel, and cranked up the magnification on his visuals. Wet footprints trailed along the cement floor. He stood and threw his last grenade into the far tunnel, and heard a muffled THUD as it detonated. His neural interface showed another message from Headquarters almost immediately afterwards.

  Let me guess. I’m going swimming.

  That was, indeed, what they had in mind. Rath told his Forge to build a climbing harness, rope, hammer, and rock anchors, and minutes later he was lowering himself slowly into the rushing torrent, roped securely to anchors in the floor of the access tunnel. The water was so powerful that he was swept several feet closer toward the mouth of the spillway before he could gain a solid footing. Though the water barely came to his waist, when he tried to stand, the current threatened to pull him off his feet, and only a tight grip on the rope in his left hand kept him in place and upright. He kept the auto-rifle in his right hand, doing his best to cover the far tunnel. Rath shook his head ruefully, heart pounding, and paused for a minute to ensure that his backup rope was firmly attached to his harness. He had just started to shuffle across the spillway when something slammed into the back of his knees, knocking him onto his back. The rushing water sucked him under.

  * * *

  “Shit, he slipped,” a tech noted. For a second, 621’s visual feed on the main screen at the front of the control room was a jumbled mix of bubbles and water, but then it went dark.

  “Woah, we lost the feed?” the tech asked. He checked his own screen for several seconds. “That was an EMP grenade, sir.”

  The supervisor rubbed his temple, grimacing.

  “His feed should be back online in a couple minutes,” the tech reassured him.

  “No,” the supervisor sighed. “621’s dead, we’re not going to see his feed again. Can we take control of his remaining two drones, the ones at the surface?” he asked.

  “Negative. They’re programmed to respond to 621’s last command, which was to orbit the dam facility perimeter, in order to follow 339 if she escapes. We can’t override.”

  “Well, at least they’ll reacquire 339 when she exits – I’d bet we’ll see her come out that spillway on the hoverbike in a minute or so. Let’s start updating the mission brief for the other contractors.”

  24

  “Your final assessment, please, Supervisor.”

  The supervisor shifted in his chair, hoping his unease was not too apparent to the director. “If it was any other contractor, I would say she was dead for sure.”

  “… but in this case?”

  “In this case,” he sighed, undecided. “She’s probably dead. The hoverbike we recovered did have a mechanical issue. The footage we received when 621’s feed came back online indicates she was severely wounded, likely fatally, assuming she no longer had hemobot capabilities … and then she fell several hundred feet off the edge of the dam.”

  “But you’re not convinced.”

  “… no, ma’am. Until I see her body, I can’t be certain.”

  The director pursed her lips. “Thank you, Supervisor. You may return to your duties.”

  “Very well, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Rath’s stitches itched, particularly the ones on his leg, for some reason. He was sitting in a secure teleconferencing suite at Lakeworld’s spaceport, at a long table surrounded by viewscreens. The receptionist had offered him a bottle of water, so he sipped at it as he waited.

  “Secure connection established,” a robotic female voice announced.

  “Identify yourself,” another voice said. The voice was garbled, electronically distorted to hide the speaker’s identity.

  “Contractor 621,” Rath replied.

  “621, this board has been convened to review your actions on your most recent assignment, and pass judgment as to your final disposition. Do you recall the terms of your contract with the company, specifically as they relate to missions with a less-than-favorable outcome?”

  “I do,” Rath frowned. “The penalty for mission failure is death. But my mission was a success, 339 is dead.”

  The voice ignored that claim. “Your feed was interrupted by an electro-magnetic pulse grenade just before you made contact with 339. Describe what occurred during that loss-of-signal period.”

  Rath took a deep breath. “339 was upstream of me, lying in wait under the water, on her own anchored rope. She slipped downstream and used her momentum to knock me over, and must have triggered an EMP grenade at the same time. I fell over and went underwater. I lost hold of my auto-rifle – I was only holding it with one hand.”

  “And then …?”

  “And then it took me a few moments to get back on my feet: the flow of the water was incredibly strong. When I stood up again, 339 was already on her feet, moving back toward me. I tried to draw my pistol, but she knocked it away. We grappled for a time, and we both drew our knives. We wounded each other a few times, I managed to stab her in the stomach and cut her arm. Then one of us slipped, and we both fell over, and got separated underwater. When I stood up again, I saw her safety rope near me, so I cut it. Without her anchor line, she was swept out the mouth of the spillway.”

  “What did she say to you during your encounter?”

  “Nothing,” Rath said.

  “She didn’t try to communicate with you at all?”

  “No,” Rath repeated, fingering the counter bracelet on his wrist. “It was very loud in the spillway.”

  “Why did you decide to enter the spillway in the first place?”

  “I was ordered to,” Rath said. “Headquarters thought 339 had moved down the far tunnel, and she had – that’s where I later located her hoverbike. But she back-tracked.”

  “Why did you cut her rope? Why not close the distance and finish her off with your knife?”

  “I was thinking fast, in the heat of the moment – it seemed like the best way to ensure I completed the mission. And … I wasn’t sure I could beat her in a stand-up fight. She was wounded, but so was I, and she was … faster. Better.”

  The line was silent for a while.

  “Why were you unable to recover her body?”

  “I don’t know,” Rath admitted. “By the time I treated my wounds, investigated the far tunnel, and rappelled down to the valley floor, it was several hours later. There’s a pool at the base of the dam, it empties out into multiple sma
ll rivers – the body could easily have been swept down one of those rivers. On orders from Headquarters, I spent two days searching the pool and tracking up and down the banks of the rivers, but I never found the body.”

  Which was a ton of fun with my fresh wounds – thanks for that.

  More silence. Rath sensed that his answers were not what the Group board would have liked to hear, but though his life was in the balance, some instinct told him that defending himself more aggressively would be unwise. He waited. He finished his water bottle after ten minutes, and wondered idly if they were watching the conference room’s video feed of him, trying to judge him by his body language as well as his words. He decided they probably were. The minutes stretched to an hour, and then two, and Rath sat stone-faced, trying not to fidget. He nearly jumped when the audio line came back to life.

  “Contractor 621. This board has determined that you made a good faith effort to complete your last assignment, and no penalty shall be assessed.”

  Rath exhaled, hoping his relief was not too apparent.

  “… however, without convincing evidence to verify completion of the assignment, you will not be credited any kills for this assignment. Your kill count remains at thirty-two.”

  “Secure connection lost,” the robotic female voice announced.

  Thirty-two.

  Rath swore. He glanced down at the counter bracelet on his wrist, finger tracing the activation button, but he left it unpressed. A knowing smile flickered across his face. Then he stood up and walked out of the conference room.

  25

  The day was crisp and clear, and Beauceron was enjoying the fall weather at a biergarten, sipping a hefeweizen at a wooden picnic table underneath a large tree. He thought about ordering a third stein and staying for an early Sunday dinner when an article on his datascroll’s offworld news feed caught his eye.

  Domestic Horror: Acclaimed Journalist Slays Family, Self

  Beauceron’s stomach dropped.

  Mehta.

  He opened the article and read through it, then set the datascroll down and sat, thinking.

  You’re probably being paranoid again. You barely knew the man, so you don’t know if he was capable of doing this or not.

  Finally, Beauceron turned the datascroll back on, using it to pay his tab, and send a summons to his air car. He walked through the biergarten’s bar out to the loading platform, and waited as a taxi unloaded three young women. Mid-air storefronts at higher levels of the city always made Beauceron uneasy, but when his car pulled up, hovering next to the platform, he stepped across the yawning gap without hesitation.

  “The station,” he ordered, strapping himself in.

  Traffic was light, and he was through security and up to the Homicide floor in less than ten minutes. He took his jacket off, hanging it on a hook on his cubicle wall, and sat down at his desk. On his computer, he pulled up the crime database, and entered Ashish Mehta Juntland, in the search box. There was just a single record, which he clicked on to access. He started with the investigating detective’s report.

  “… in conclusion,” the report finished, “though Mr. Mehta gave no typical warning signs of mental instability, the most likely explanation is that he suffered a psychotic break, which drove him to murder his wife and son, and then take his own life. The team conferred with several psychiatrists, who confirmed that such a break is possible, even for individuals that appear emotionally healthy. Several pieces of evidence leave room for some doubt, most notably (a) his decision to install a new security system in the recent past, (b) the actions he took to fully erase his computer’s memory on the night of the incident, (c) his decision to take his life in his air car (rather than in his home), and (d) the unexplained note written in his own blood inside the air car. It is this detective’s opinion that those irrational / unexplained actions support the theory that he was under a form of paranoid delusion.”

  His conclusions are reasonable. I probably would have said the same. But what is this unexplained note written in blood?

  Beauceron closed the report and opened the crime scene photos, selecting the folder for the air car. He scanned and quickly found a bunch of pictures of the dashboard – Mehta had clumsily painted something on it with his finger, using the blood dripping from his slit wrists. Beauceron clicked on a photo and enlarged it – and his heart skipped a beat. Mehta had written: MB8210.

  ‘MB8210.’ MB – my initials. This was meant for me, he’s trying to tell me something.

  Beauceron panicked for a second, and ran a general query for his own name in the case file, but nothing came up. He breathed a quick sigh of relief.

  Perhaps it’s not a message for me? He shook his head. No, it has to be. But what does ‘8210’ mean?

  Beauceron flipped through several attached files. He skimmed the neighbor and acquaintance interviews, then opened the timeline. Taking out his notebook and pencil, he wrote:

  Bank trip that evening?

  He noted the name of the bank and opened the evidence log. The police on Juntland had inventoried nearly everything in Mehta’s home, it seemed. Beauceron flipped through it for a minute, and then closed the list. Finally, he pulled up the crime scene tech’s report, including all of the photos taken at the scene and videos from the home’s security system.

  Beauceron saved the video for last – his years in uniform had inured him to most violence, but watching a child die was never easy. When he had finished with all of the other files, Beauceron clicked Play on the video footage. The file was queued up to start when Mehta returned from the bank, and Beauceron watched as he entered from the garage, worked on his computer for a short while, then returned to the kitchen and drank, apparently struggling to compose a suicide note. Then Beauceron stopped the video and backed it up more than an hour, skimming through as Mehta ate dinner with his family, helped his wife put his son to bed, then sat and talked with her in the living room. He paused the video during that conversation, noting a manila envelope on the table between them.

  She looks mad. But Mehta is acting apologetic, conciliatory. And both of them are focused on the envelope.

  Then he remembered the envelope that Mehta had brought to their meeting at the diner. Beauceron jotted down a note:

  Conversation with wife: discussing the death threat from Guild? Debating what to do about it?

  Beauceron cursed Mehta’s decision not to install microphones in his home as part of the security system. He let the tape run at normal speed for a while, and watched as Mehta’s wife went upstairs and disappeared into the bathroom, while Mehta himself went back to his study. Beauceron jotted another note down:

  Copies something from computer onto thumb drive, drops drive in envelope, takes envelope to garage.

  And that was where the footage of Mehta stopped. There was more footage of his wife getting into bed while Mehta was out at the bank, but Beauceron stopped the tape again and reopened the evidence log.

  “Search for manila envelope in location: air car,” he told the computer.

  “No records found,” the computer replied.

  “Expand location to garage,” Beauceron tried.

  “No records found,” the computer repeated.

  Beauceron fast-forwarded the tape to Mehta’s reentrance into the home.

  He’s not carrying the envelope.

  He looked back over his notes and found the name of Mehta’s bank, then entered it into his computer’s search engine, hitting the dialer button when the bank’s number appeared.

  “Juntland Savings and Loan,” a woman said.

  “This is Detective Beauceron, Interstellar Police,” Beauceron said. “I’m investigating a homicide and wondered if you could help me by tracking down what a customer of yours did during a recent trip he made to the bank.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Can you give me your badge number, for authorization purposes?”

  “Yes,” Beauceron said. He read it out.

  “Please wait,” she said
. “Okay, sir. What customer are you looking for?”

  “The name is Ashish Mehta. A-S-H-I-S-H, M-E-H-T-A. I can give you his ID number if necessary.”

  “No, it looks like we only have one Ashish Mehta on record. I show he visited the bank four nights ago, and opened a safe-deposit box with us.”

  That’s where he stored the envelope – and whatever is on that disk.

  Beauceron chewed on his pencil. “Sir? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I am – sorry. Did my colleagues pick that box up already, by any chance?” Beauceron asked.

  “No, sir. We still have it.”

  “Do you have an inventory for the box?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. But we can absolutely turn the box over to you with a warrant,” she told him. “Just be sure that the warrant lists the right box number, not just the customer’s name.”

  “Of course,” Beauceron said, grimacing. Then something clicked in his mind. He pulled up the picture of the air car’s dashboard, and Mehta’s scrawled message. “Box number eight two one zero?”

  “Yes, sir: that’s the one.”

  “Great, I’ll work on that warrant. Thanks for your help.”

  Beauceron hung up. The elation of solving Mehta’s cryptic message was already wearing off. Ignoring the fact that it wasn’t his case, the crime hadn’t even happened on his duty planet – getting a warrant to open that safe-deposit box was out of the question.

  Still, I could contact Homicide on Juntland and tell them about the box. They might go get it.

  He drummed his fingers on the desk for a while, frowning.

  No, they won’t. They’ll be angry that some crackpot offworld detective is trying to reopen one of their closed cases. And then they’ll want to know why Mehta wrote my initials on the dashboard, and what we talked about months ago in the diner. But perhaps if I had evidence that Mehta didn’t kill his family …?

  Beauceron switched back to the video files and restarted the feed, watching as Mehta walked from the garage to his office, where he plugged a data drive into the computer and fiddled for several minutes.