“Take the risk,” Patty said. “Unless you’d like to bring her to the station for the day?”
“I think that would bring bad memories back to her,” Glen admitted. “She’s told me a few things, but I’ve been reluctant to press her too far.”
“Then leave her at your apartment,” Patty ordered. “I’m sending Isabel to pick you up, so I’ll expect the both of you here in sixty minutes.”
The connection broke. Glen swore to himself, then climbed out of bed and hastily jumped into the shower. The cold water snapped him awake, but he still felt too tired for comfort as he returned to his room and dressed, then pulled his pistol and terminal onto his belt. He’d made enough notes from what Helen had said over the last couple of days to help push the investigation forward, if he had time. He had a feeling that Patty wouldn't have called him back into work, risking the wrath of the Civil Guard, if she hadn't thought she needed him. It didn't bode well.
As soon as he was ready, he tapped on Helen’s door and waited for her to call out. He opened the door and smiled at her, noting that she was wearing the new nightgown he’d purchased her. She looked adorable and terrifyingly young, far too young for the outfits she'd been offered at the shop. The surge of protectiveness he felt at the thought was terrifyingly strong. He'd only known Helen for a couple of days and he was already prepared to walk through fire for her.
“I have to go into work,” he said, when she was awake. “Stay in the apartment, ok? Don’t try to leave.”
Helen nodded, wordlessly. Glen gave her a reassuring smile, then walked out of her room. Helen wouldn't be bored – she had flicks and games and even the educational programs – but he knew how tempted he would have been to explore the apartment block on his own, once his parents had gone out for the day. He hoped she wouldn't try the door, no matter what else she did. She might not respond well to being locked in like a prisoner.
Which she is, a voice at the back of his head reminded him. To all intents and purposes, she is a prisoner. And you have no idea what will happen to her in the future.
His wristcom buzzed. Pushing the disturbing thought aside, he stepped through the door, checked the lock, then took the elevator down to the garage. Isabel had already parked the cruiser near the elevator doors, blatantly ignoring the signs ordering guests not to park anywhere near the spaces reserved for the wealthiest residents. Glen doubted anyone would complain, not when they saw the cruiser. The Marshals might be a shadow of the force they’d been in the glory days of the Empire, but they could still cause trouble for anyone who got in their way.
“I hear you’ve become a dad,” Isabel said, as he clambered into the cruiser and closed the door. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Glen said, sourly. “What progress has been made on the investigation?”
“We spoke to the families of the dead terrorists,” Isabel said, as she guided the cruiser back onto the exit ramp. “None of them knew a thing, of course. They’re shocked and outraged that anyone could believe their little darlings capable of such a shitty act. It won’t be long before they start calling for an independent investigation.”
Glen nodded, ruefully. It was unlikely the families would get anywhere, but there were always ambitious populist politicians who might take their grief and turn it into a weapon for their campaigns. He couldn't blame the families for wanting to think the best of the dead, yet it was hard to give anyone the benefit of the doubt when he’d seen the aftermath of too many Nihilist attacks.
“They all fit the standard patterns,” Isabel added. “Had poor grades and big debts – a couple actually had debts to loan sharks as well as the standard loan companies. I’ve had teams going through their possessions, but unless we get very lucky we won’t find any leads there. The data-crunching might turn up a more promising angle of attack.”
“True,” Glen agreed. The electronic trails of the dead terrorists would converge, he was sure, if they’d been fool enough to leave a trail. And where they’d been together, they might well have been planning their operations. “What else did they have in common?”
“They took a number of classes,” Isabel said. “The only one they had in common was Ethical Treatment of Minority Communities.”
Glen snorted in amused disbelief. He had never been opposed to allowing people to find their own ways to live, no matter how crazy they sounded to his ears, but he had never believed that such independent communities were exempt from the law. If a religion happened to demand something from its believers that was against Imperial Law, that religion couldn't be used as a shield for the believers to hide behind. It wasn’t an attitude that was shared by idealistic students, who thought that minorities were picked on simply for being minorities. They never seemed to realise that some minorities included a number of very unpleasant human beings.
“That class is probably worth investigating,” he said, instead. “Do we have anything on the staff?”
“A few minor citations for being public nuisances,” Isabel said. She turned the cruiser, then headed into the underground garage below the station. “One of them was arrested at a demonstration twenty years ago and managed to parley it into a successful academic career. I think she was actually accused of plagiarising at some point, but it was settled in-house, with no need for police involvement.”
“Lucky for us,” Glen muttered. The various law enforcement agencies had quite enough problems without trying to tackle academic plagiarism as well. “What’s got the boss so steamed up?”
“There have been attacks,” Isabel said, as she parked the cruiser. “But you’ll hear about them at the briefing.”
The station didn't seem any less busy, Glen discovered, although it was the early hours of the morning. Crime never slept, he had been told when he joined the service, and the Marshals couldn't really sleep either. He yawned openly as he followed Isabel into the briefing room, then poured himself a mug of black coffee and took a seat at the front of the rows. Behind him, a number of other Marshals and Civil Guard personnel filled the remaining seats. Glen drank his coffee and waited, impatiently, for Patty to appear. It was nearly ten minutes before she hurried in and took her place in front of the podium.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” she said. “I had an urgent call from the Governor’s Office and it turned out to be someone complaining about the paperclip allocation. Again.”
Glen joined in the polite chuckles, although he knew it might not have been a joke. It wouldn't be the first time someone with more power than sense had demanded answers on an utterly pointless topic. Did it really matter, he asked himself, just how many paperclips had been used over the past couple of weeks? The world wouldn't come to an end if each paperclip wasn't accounted for, would it?
“At least they’re not asking about arrest statistics,” Marshal Brant called, from the back row. “That would be awkward.”
“How true,” Patty agreed. “And that’s enough of that, you lot.”
Definitely, Glen thought. Arrest statistics might seem a good idea for monitoring how well the law enforcement agencies were performing, but they didn't tell the complete story. How many crimes were prevented through aggressive patrolling? There was no way to know, so some of the departments had been arresting more people in the hopes of boosting their ratings. It had worked, to some extent, but it hadn't been particularly just.
“Right,” Patty said, slapping the podium for attention. “Those of you who have been sleeping the sleep of the terminally lazy won’t have heard that there were a series of minor attacks on planetary infrastructure last night. We assume” – she nodded towards Glen – “that the weapons and explosives in the captured warehouse were intended to make the attacks more unpleasant than they actually were. As it was, we’ve lost a handful of power transfer nodes and a couple of datanet routers, but the other attacks did minimal damage.”
Marshal Cho lifted her hand. “These attacks were coordinated?”
“It would seem so,” Patty said. “
However, the attacks were also largely ineffective.”
Glen felt his eyes narrowing in suspicion. The best time to disrupt a terrorist attack was before it had actually begun, but once the terrorists were committed. It made securing evidence and convictions a great deal easier. However, there hadn't been any warning before the targets had come under attack – and the attacks had largely been useless. The handful of destroyed targets hardly made up for revealing the existence of a terrorist network capable of carrying out attacks on such a scale.
Isabel put his thoughts into words. “They seem to have screwed up beyond the bounds of probability, boss,” she said. “And yet it seems too big an attack to be a diversion.”
“It does,” Patty agreed. “They might have been intending to use those attacks to divert us from other possible targets, but nothing else has materialised.”
“They might have thought the warehouse terrorists were also going to go into the fray,” Glen offered. “The rest of their cells might not have picked up a stand-down order.”
“It’s possible,” Patty agreed. She took a breath. “I should note that we didn't manage to take any survivors from the attacks. That’s par for the course, I know, but it’s still a problem. We have to track down the command network before they do something more dangerous.”
Glen nodded. He wasn't the only one.
“The Civil Guard has secured the targeted sites,” Patty told them. “I’m dividing you between the various targets; I want you to investigate, find out what happened and see if you can locate anything that leads back to their base. It is of the upmost importance that we shut this band of terrorists down before they manage to get their act together and do something worse.”
She glared around the room, threateningly. “So far, the general public hasn't realised how close we came to disaster last night,” she added. “The Governor wants it to stay that way, so anyone who leaks will be skinned alive and then fed to the pigs. And I am not joking.”
There was a long pause. “Glen, remain behind,” she added. “The rest of you, collect your assignments from the desk and get on with them. And good luck.”
Glen waited until the room was empty – he knew from experience that Isabel would wait for him – and then stood up.
“Patty?”
“I need you to continue looking into the warehouse,” Patty said. “I’ve been ordered – ordered – to redirect all available manpower to the latest terrorist attacks, but I’m not expecting to find much. The attacks were somewhat amateurish, quite pathetic compared to the usual bloody slaughters. They may have been expending useless assets to try to force us to abandon the warehouse investigation.”
Glen looked down at the scruffy floor. “Just me?”
“You’ll be the prime investigator,” Patty confirmed. “You can call on the support staff, as usual, but I need every available Marshal out on the streets. Try not to fuck up.”
“I’ll do my best,” Glen said. He shook his head in disbelief. An entire investigation in one pair of hands! He hadn't heard of anything like it outside bad fiction and worse flicks. “And what about Helen?”
“Keep her under your wing, for now,” Patty said. She reached out and touched his shoulder. “I know it won’t be easy, Glen, but I have upmost confidence in you.”
Glen nodded, knowing there was no point in protesting. Patty literally couldn't give him any support. But even with the clues he’d gleaned from Helen, handling everything on his own would be an absolute nightmare.
“You can tell the bureaucrats that I have her when they start whining about purchasing too much food,” he said, instead. “Do you know what’s going to happen to her?”
“It depends,” Patty said. She shook her head. “Once we have the full story, Glen, we can start making some proper decisions.”
She frowned, then smiled at him. “Are you starting to like her?”
“Yes,” Glen admitted.
“It's always easier to like kids who aren't actually yours,” Patty said. “But remember, she may not be a suspect, yet she is definitely involved.”
Glen had always supposed it was the other way round, but he kept that thought to himself.
“Good luck,” Patty added. “And bring me something I can show the Governor when he comes knocking – again.”
Glen saluted, then walked out of the briefing room. Isabel was waiting outside, as he’d expected, reading her terminal with an expression of disbelief. She gave him a sharp look as he closed the door, then motioned for him to walk with her towards the garage.
“She wants me to go to the Southside Power Distribution Centre,” she said, dryly. “And I’m not the only one going out alone.”
“Call for support if you need it,” Glen urged. “But I’m stuck here until I turn up a lead.”
He filled her in, quickly. “Sounds tough,” she said, when he’d finished. “But the best of luck to you.”
Glen sighed, then bade her farewell and walked back to his cubicle. His computer was already online, just waiting for his access codes. He poured himself a new cup of coffee, then sat down and started inputting the data from Helen into the growing matrix. Added to the legwork Isabel and the support crews had already done, it painted a worrying picture. The warehouse had been hired by a local shipping firm, which had largely taken over a chunk of the spaceport after gaining approval for purchasing shares in the installation. Reading between the lines, Glen suspected that someone had been paid a considerable bribe to make it happen. But it had also allowed the weapons crates to be unloaded and shipped to the warehouse without an inspection.
The Humming Bee was Helen’s ship, he mused. It had entered orbit a week before the warehouse had been raided, then left orbit two days later, after transhipping a considerable amount of cargo to the surface. There was no mention of Helen or her parents – a quick check revealed that Helen hadn’t passed through immigration, either on the orbital tower or any of the spaceports. Glen rather suspected that she’d been sedated, then loaded into one of the crates and transported down without passing through any security screening. Even now, there was still so much cargo being transhipped that it would be difficult to inspect it all.
He scowled down at the display, then rose to his feet. The shipping firm needed to be investigated, at the very least. They’d cleared the consignment, after all, which meant they were either dupes or actively involved with the terrorists. He suspected the former, if only because crashing shuttles could have done real damage and the Nihilists, so far, hadn't shown any signs of possessing shuttles.
As soon as he’d donned his coat, he knocked on Patty’s door.
“I’m going to visit the shipping firm,” he said, and outlined his reasoning. “If I don’t check in within the hour, feel free to send the SWAT team.”
“Don’t even joke about it,” Patty said. “Right now, the SWAT team is on the other side of the city, watching a gang clash that might turn into outright warfare. They can’t be called out for anything other than a major disaster.”
Glen nodded. “We should just squash the gangs,” he said. “Why don’t we kick the shit out of them and send the survivors to a penal world?”
“They have connections,” Patty said. She looked down at the table, then up at Glen. The frustration in her voice was almost palatable. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn't have to deal with corrupt officials all the time?”
“Yes,” Glen agreed, “it would. But what can we do about it? Even if we took the bastards into custody, they'd be out within hours.”
“True,” Patty said. She sighed, then returned her attention to her paperwork. “Good luck with the shipping firm. Don’t fuck up.”
Chapter Eleven
And then there are the lawyers. As the old saying has it ... there are two sides to every problem, until the lawyers become involved. At that point, there will become a thousand sides – and all of them will appear to be correct.
- Professor Leo Caesius. The Decline of Law and Order and
the Rise of Anarchy.
Belinda did as she was expected to do as soon as she returned to the hotel and ordered room service, then tipped the steward and urged him out of the door. The steak tasted surprisingly good, although the meat was definitely vat-grown rather than natural. Belinda munched her way through the steak and chips, then had another shower and lay down on the bed. To watching eyes, she appeared to be sleeping. Instead, she was using the access codes she’d stolen to slip into the governmental network.
It was, as she’d expected, a multitier system. One general set of briefing notes and alerts for everyone with access codes, then various subsections that would require specific access permissions to enter. It was typical, she noted, as she immersed herself in the tidal waves of data spreading through the network. The civil servants worked hard to ensure they knew more than the common citizens, even to the point of ensuring that emergency warnings went to them first. If the shit really did hit the fan, she noted, the civil servants would be well-placed to grab their families and flee the cities before the general exodus began.
If they can get through the barricades, she thought, sardonically. It wasn't obvious to the untrained eye, but one glance at the police and military deployments had shown her that they were intended to keep much of the population firmly in place. She’d seen similar deployments on worlds hit by disasters, yet she doubted that the Governor had enough strength to keep the lid on indefinitely. Panicking civilians could be dangerous, if they formed a mob, and pose a threat even to armoured soldiers.
The first set of alerts referred to attacks that had taken place over the night, while she’d been seducing Julius and stealing his access codes. None of the attacks had been reported publically, she discovered, although it might be just a matter of the Governor’s staff trying to decide what spin to put on the attacks before they told the world. But she took a long look at the targeted locations and felt her blood run cold. None of the attacks had been dramatically successful, nothing like some of the more dangerous terrorist assaults on Earth or the other Core Worlds, but collectively they added up to a dangerous picture. The terrorists had been targeting the infrastructure that kept the planet’s cities alive.
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