“I want a full inventory of all munitions to be conducted starting immediately,” Dooley said. “I don’t want to find out we’ve lost another device. The detective is going to think we can’t keep our house in order.”
Silver contacted Arty and asked about Razor’s readiness.
“Razor will be back to full fitness in the hour.” Arty reported.
“Let me know if anything else is missing won’t you, Commander,” Silver said.
“You can count on it, detective.”
“The inventory said they were there,” the quartermaster went on in a bemused muttering.
“But they are missing,” Silver said. “One nearly killed me. Where, I wonder, are the other two?”
CHAPTER 7
Silver sat in her chair on the flight deck of Razor. The engineering crews had completed their work. Silver had tasked Arty with preflight checks before powering up the flight systems.
She was leaving the Defender with an intact ship, knowledge that two more devices were out there, and a name. Commander Dooley had searched all files regarding the MYAC devices. One name kept popping up, Jas Porter, a midlevel civil servant based in Gov central on Pepper.
“He has been cataloguing our munitions with Gov central and requested device testing on the MYAC devices three times. Each time a device was removed. We have records of tests being conducted but I have checked system wide data and there is no residual detonation echo, except one set that correlates perfectly with the detonation you initiated on the device hidden on your ship.”
Commander Dooley’s hologram flickered on the holostage as ship systems were powered up.
“I hope you can recover them, Commander.”
“We have our own investigation underway already,” Dooley said confidently.
Silver had only known Dooley for a short time but already she could read the man, even over a flickering hologram. She noticed him hesitate, as if he was eager to get something off his chest. “Is there something else, Commander?”
“The civil servant, Porter. Our AI has studied his movements over the last few months. It seems he has had several meetings with Jay Coris, several times on Pepper and once during a ship to ship docking in interplanetary space.”
Silver sent a course instruction from her neural processor to Razor, a course for Gov central on Pepper. “Thank you, Commander,” she said sitting back in her chair.
“If you find Porter he might have an idea where Coris could be.”
Silver nodded and checked with Razor that they were flight ready. The craft informed her that all systems were ready. Silver sent a request to the Defender’s flight control for permission to leave.
“If you find Coris before I do keep hold of him for me,” Silver said to Dooley as she activated Razor’s gravity distortion field.
“Same to you if you find the explosives,” Dooley said.
And the flight control gave permission for Silver to depart. The Defender’s strip powered up to assist Razor’s take off. In a moment they were off the strip and into space, on route to Gov central on planet Pepper and a meeting with Jas Porter.
THE SPACE around Pepper was the busiest in the entire system. It was the most heavily populated planet and the site of most major head offices. Every church, university, think tank, art school, and research program had its offices here. It was the first planet to be settled when colonists arrived from Earth and most had stayed. Pepper was also the most popular because it had the best climate. It was warm and dry in the day, pleasantly cool in the evening. It was comfortable even for a population that could achieve comfort at the flick of a switch. There was something about the natural comfort of a warm temperate world.
Gov central was situated at the mid latitudes in the southern hemisphere, on the green fields just inland of the white sandy beaches on the fringe of the Shoal, the vast shallow sea that covered most of the southern hemisphere. An early governor had chosen the site for its warm days tempered by a pleasant sea breeze. It was a paradise that anyone in the system could enjoy through VR but the bureaucrats could enjoy for real.
Silver had Arty send a flight plan to the planetary flight control center while she instructed Razor to adopt a high geostationary orbit above Gov central.
“Incoming message from Chief Sauer,” Arty said.
Silver climbed out of her chair and walked toward her cabin. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”
“Do you want me to tell him why?”
Silver grabbed her suit off her bunk and pulled it on. Her right foot slid in through the material. She stepped in with her left and then pulled it up over her shoulders. The suit slid around her arms before it joined at the front. Lastly Silver fastened the suit around her neck. If she was going to talk to the boss she should appear properly dressed.
“The Chief insists on talking to you now. He said he doesn’t care if you are eating or sleeping or bathing.”
“Put him on the holostage,” Silver said and stepped back onto the flight deck.
“Detective Silver, I have had a conversation with a rather cross defense minister. Care to explain why you have been crawling over the Defender?”
Chief Sauer sat in a large leather chair behind a wooden desk. A transparent wall behind him showed a view to the rounded verdant hills that surrounded police HQ.
“My investigation into the SV server explosion led me there, Chief.”
“You know the military doesn’t like us just popping by whenever we like, Detective. It is usual to have HQ send a notice to the Defender before we visit any of their facilities.” Chief Sauer leaned forward onto his desk. “And you just show up at their central command and flagship.”
“Yes sir. But I’ve been keeping my presence as low key as I can, for the good of the investigation.”
“I’ll tell you what’s good for the investigation, detective. Keeping all other agencies well disposed toward us and our activities, that would be good for the investigation. Do you agree?”
Silver checked with a light touch from her fingertips that her collar was fastened tight. “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”
Sauer sat back in his chair. “Were you going to inform my office that you were back on Pepper? Any danger we can expect a report, or an update.”
“I’m pursuing the terrorist, sir.”
“And is he here on Pepper? Do you think you ought to tell me something like that? The most dangerous man in the system here on Pepper. Is that worth reporting?”
“I don’t think he’s here, sir. I’m just following leads. I’ll have Arty,” Silver paused, “I’ll have my AI send you my latest update.”
“The defense secretary told me your craft had to be repaired.”
“Yes sir. They did a admirable job. Razor is in great shape.”
A flight approval came in from Flight Central. A landing pad was clear at Gov Central for Silver to land immediately.
“I want you to come in to police HQ now, Detective. I want our engineers to check the military’s work on our cruiser.”
Silver informed Razor to begin flight to the landing pad at Gov central.
“Are we not proceeding to PHQ?” Arty asked. “Do you want me to file additional flight plans?”
“No.” Silver checked her suit’s equipment. Her gravity field generator was fully operational. Her blazer was present, sitting on her hip. Her visor reported full functionality. And, in the small of her back sat the two kinetic pistols she’d taken from Darklin’s men. “I want to check out this civil servant first. He might know I’m coming for him already. If I go to PHQ first it just gives him more time to prepare for me. I don’t want him prepared. Take us to Gov central.”
CHAPTER 8
The warm breeze blowing off the Shoal and over the hot landing pad felt strange to Silver. A salt smell and the warmth of the sun was a heady mix. She could see why people enjoyed Pepper so much, why so many chose to make it their home. She was used to the void of interplanetary space and the artificial heat of Razor’
s cramped confines. And if she wasn’t there she was hopping on and off the outer worlds, the moons of Titan or asteroid settlements. All contained within modular settlements filled with artificial heat, processed air and VR zombies enjoying adventures on Pepper or Earth or one of the hundreds of invented worlds.
The landing pad was empty. Silver had half expected to be greeted by some civil servant. Instead she received a message to her neural processor. She should present herself to reception, a map and directions were attached.
Gov central was vast. It covered an area the size of a small town and towered dozens of stories high and dozens of stories deep into the crust. The single large orbital tether rose from a site just a few miles away from Gov central, a tether that sent and received thousands of files every second of every day as the nerve center of the system kept tabs on everything from food supplies on the moons of Titan to VR software updates on the asteroid settlements, from water purification works on civilian space craft to military hardware construction and deployment. Every moment of every life was recorded and sent here, stored and sorted. Data was vital for future planning. Data was necessary to maintain the population’s comfort. Data was knowledge. Knowledge was power.
Silver entered the building at the end of the landing strip. She followed the directions that appeared on the gleaming floor. She looked around the pristine white structure of Gov central. Even this minor entrance on a distant landing pad was perfect. She didn’t see a single drone but she guessed an army of them were busy throughout the building, keeping out of sight and maintaining the building to a standard of perfection.
Silver wound her way along one long clean corridor to an information terminal. Silver put her request into the terminal. She was here on her authority as a detective to speak with Jas Porter. A hologram appeared on the small holostage. An administrator told Silver the meeting was arranged. A fresh set of directions were received by Silver’s neural processor. The shining white floor lit up with directions to a transport that would take her to Porter.
THE DOOR to Porter’s apartment was shut. Silver pressed the doorbell. Silence from within. Silver knocked, the sound of her knuckles on the white composite door echoed along the empty corridor. Still Porter did not answer. She sent a repeat request to the local AI for the whereabouts of Porter. The reply came that he was in his apartment and that he had been there all day.
Silver activated a bloodhound. The drone detected the presence of Porter behind the door but the drone reported he was not showing any signs of respiration.
Silver pulled her blazer off her hip. She aimed the weapon at the door hinges. The pulse blast disintegrated the door and frame. The door fell away. Silver raised the weapon and stepped inside.
The civil servant Jas Porter sat in a large armchair, a large charred hole in the center of his chest. Silver recognized the wound. It was caused by a single pulse from a full power blazer. This was murder. It was brutal and ugly. This could have been done more cleanly. Who ever had done this did not want or need to hide the fact it was murder.
Silver instructed the drone to sample the charred wound for blaze residue. The blazer would leave a telltale signal that could link it to an individual weapon. Next Silver had the drone check for any forensic evidence left around the apartment, footprints, fingerprints, DNA samples from a stray drop of sweat. A hair, a flake of skin, a clothing fiber. No one could walk through a complex as neat and clean as Gov Central and not leave a trace of their passing.
She checked out the rest of Porter’s apartment. It was neat and tidy except for an unmade bed. Satisfied that the apartment was empty, apart for Porter’s corpse, she put away her blazer, holding it against her hip and letting her suit take hold of it.
There were several rooms in the apartment. Each one was neat and tidy. Whoever had been here had been careful not to leave any evidence.
Although the system was practically devoid of crime, it did occur. Theft was unnecessary, anyone could have almost anything they desired, either virtually in VR or in real life. Property crime, financial crime, any crime where a person could profit by taking property from another was absent. Only violent crime remained. Assault was thankfully rare, people could take out their frustrations in the safety of VR. Murder was the anomaly. Murder stood apart from all other crime. Murder was seldom the result of greed, and in a system with enough room and resources for everyone, murder over personal property was unnecessary and practically absent. But murder due to rage or passion remained. It was almost impossible to predict, and due to the sudden nature of the violent outbursts that led to this distressing crime, it was almost impossible to prevent. Not even with all system AI and almost total SV coverage working to protect every individual, murder still existed. It was a sad fact of human existence that could not be avoided.
It was not the first murdered body Silver had seen. It was the first that had no obvious suspect. Usually it took just a few minutes to discover who were the people closest to the deceased and it was invariably one of those who had committed the crime. And of those, there was usually one who had been recorded arguing with the deceased shortly before their death and then acting strangely shortly afterward. These cases were solved quickly, usually within hours. Murder cases, for all their horror and sadness, were easy to solve.
Silver requested all SV from the corridor outside Porter’s apartment. She ran it through her neural processor. No visitors had approached the door in the last 24 hours. Silver requested more SV. No visitors for the last 48 hours. Another detective might have stopped there but Silver did not. She scanned the last week and recorded all comings and goings. Porter had received over a dozen visits. Three individuals accounted for most of the visits. A quick cross-reference showed that they were civil servants that worked closely with Porter. These were social calls.
Silver requested the SV again to run a double check. The crucial evidence was subtle and could have been missed if Silver’s attention had been distracted by the corpse or the blackened mess that had been made of his chest cavity. The SV was time-stamped from the same start point as her first check. Watching it closely a second time, she noticed a flicker in the recording. The murderer must have entered at that time, unobserved.
She sent a request to her drone. She requested an assessment of Porter’s time of death. The report came back quickly. Porter had been dead for only a few minutes.
Silver hadn’t seen anyone else in the pristine corridor outside the apartment. She realized there was a high probability that the murderer was still here. Silver drew her weapon.
A swarm of bloodhounds released from Silver’s suit scanned the apartment in moments. Human life signs were coming from a closet in the bedroom. Silver activated her suit’s blaze deflection shielding and stepped cautiously toward the bedroom. She identified the closet door that the murderer was hiding behind, making sure to keep under cover. The weapon that had killed Porter could disintegrate that closet door and knock her on her ass if it was a direct blast. She didn’t want to give the crim a chance to escape. It was no coincidence that Porter, her only link to Coris was dead. The killer could have information that could lead her to Coris.
“Open the closet door,” Silver called out. “Toss the weapon and then come out with your hands up.”
Silence.
“If I take you by force you will be in danger of sustaining injury. You will be responsible for any injury sustained if you do not surrender yourself now.”
Nothing.
Silver dashed inside the bedroom and dived for cover behind the unmade bed. The closet was now only 4 meters away. “I will fire if you do not surrender.”
From the corridor behind her, Silver heard the sound of a footstep on the broken fragments of the apartment door. Could it be Gov central security come to investigate the disturbance? Silver called out. “Detective Silver Cane. I’m here on a police investigation. Who is that entering my crime scene?”
Silver risked a look back into the large sitting room of the apartment.
Standing in the doorway were two civil servants. Their white robes of office hung loosely over their bodies. Silver noticed their eyes first. Keen and bright, quick and darting. They took in the crime scene, but didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Then Silver noticed their slow movement as they entered the apartment. Not the faltering steps of a civil servant discovering a murder scene. These were the cautious and deliberate steps of a predator. Then Silver, alerted to the true nature of these new visitors to the scene, spotted the concealed weapons. Both carried blazers.
“Come out, detective,” one of them said.
Then the closet door opened.
The crim in the closet opened fire. The bed sheets vaporized in part, the remaining fragments blown into the air, fluttering like snowflakes on a strong wind. Silver was rolling away from her position behind the bed with the first movement of the closet door. She rolled across the opening between bedroom and living room, the two newcomers opening fire on her as she darted past their view.
Silver, clear of cover, took aim midroll and blasted the crim in the closet. The man was slammed back into the closet, his weapon flying from his grip. Silver came up onto her feet and let loose another blast aimed at the crim’s head. The force of the blast slammed the head through the back wall of the closet. Silver’s neural processor received data from her bloodhounds that the man was dead.
The two visitors flung their civil servant robes away. They had come here in disguise but now they needed to be dressed for action. One moved to the left, the other to the right. Blaze pulses slamming into the floor next to Silver as they laid down a volley designed to keep her pinned.
The pulse grenade rolled in through the opening, tinkling as it came, frequency increasing as it neared detonation. Silver instructed her gravity field to give her protection and movement. She ran up the wall separating her and her two attackers. Standing on the ceiling she fired a blast at the head of one attacker. The head jerked sideways but Silver noticed the flicker of energy over a gravity distortion field protecting her attacker. Only the police and military had this tech available. She now knew she was up against professionals. Any thoughts of protecting civilians from harm left her.
Pursuit (Silver Cane Book 1) Page 4