Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Jones? Wake up, Jones!”

  “Tycho… you asshole…”

  “I need your help!”

  “Well, sure… anything… for my asshole friend Tycho…”

  “Get Young on the line. Tell him to take my call. Now!!”

  “You fucking prick…”

  There was a pause, and I thought Jones had simply passed out again. Then, “Young. I… love you too, buddy. Listen. It’s Tycho… he wants you to take his call… No security clearance? Well, fuck it, Young… We’ll call it that favor you owe me…”

  Jones passed out, and I slipped into the next street to stay clear of the Eleven. A few seconds later, Young’s voice came over my dataspike. “You don’t have the security clearance for Section 9 communications. Why would I talk to you?”

  “Forget that, Young, these things are still in the system!”

  “Things?” His voice was dismissive, like I was being irrational or superstitious.

  “The Eleven. The last eleven Nightwatch. Come on, Young! They’re still in the system. They’ve got a birds-eye view of the whole battlefield.”

  He made a sound like “ah!” but said nothing else for several seconds. I heard one of the Things nearby, approaching with measured steps. It must have heard my voice.

  Finally, Young came back. “Yes, I see. It’s a classic persistence mechanism; they’re hiding in normal traffic. Well, let’s get them out of there.”

  He cut the conversation off, and I decided it was time to get moving. When I stepped out in the open, I saw one of the Eleven staring up at the daylights like it didn’t understand what was going on. I leveled my rifle and fired my grenade directly at its chest. It stumbled back and fell over when the grenade went off, then lay there stunned and smoldering on the street. I ran over before it could move and jumped on top of it. I tore its nanosuit mask off, then drew my knife.

  The Thing’s last words, staring straight up at me?

  “You haven’t killed me.”

  I stabbed it in the face and kept on stabbing until it wasn’t a face anymore. August Marcenn was dead, but as far as I was concerned, he couldn’t be dead enough. When I came back to myself, my face was soaked in its blood and my knife hand ached.

  I stared at the knife for a moment then dropped it on the street and stood. I wiped my face off on my arm, fought the urge to vomit for several seconds, then leaned back on the wall of a building and closed my eyes.

  This mission had gotten to me, no doubt about it. I needed some time with a Psych Officer, and maybe some trauma surgery to blunt the edge of some of these memories. But first I had to get out of here alive, and to do that I needed to know the state of the battle.

  I checked my scanner. Capanelli had already killed two of the Eleven, and I had just killed one myself. That left eight still alive, but could they still see through the surveillance cameras?

  A light blinked out, meaning a member of the Eleven had just been killed. Another light blinked out. Section 9 was back on the offensive!

  “Thanks, Young.”

  “You don’t have clearance to be on this line.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  I walked back to Jones—not because the battle was over, but because I was hoping he was still alive and I wanted to sit with him if he was dying. When I got there, I found him glaring up at me.

  “Now I can’t… go back to sleep.”

  “If you go to sleep right now,” I pointed out, “you’ll probably die.”

  “That would almost be… a relief. Try to get… some of this shit off me…”

  No more quips about my training, so that was good at least. I started shifting the rubble, throwing pieces aside one by one. That’s how Capanelli found me, making steady progress but struggling with the larger slabs as the fatigue of the last twenty-odd hours began to catch up with me.

  “There you are! Here, let me help you.”

  Bray was right behind her. He muscled in past both of us, shouldering me roughly aside in his haste to free Jones from the rubble pile. “Get out of the way. Not a job for little people.”

  Raven’s voice came in. “I’m with Veraldi. He’s lost a lot of blood, but I think he’ll make it.”

  “We’re on our way to you,” said Andrea. “Bray, you’ve got this?”

  “Of course, I got this. Get going.”

  “Come on, Barrett. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  I walked beside her, marveling at the fact that we all seemed to have made it. “Is that it, then?”

  She nodded. “That seems to be it, which means the paperwork hell is just about to begin.”

  I laughed, but before I could say anything else, she put a hand on my arm. “Listen, Tycho. That thing with the surveillance cams.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You saved us all there. That was sharp. You’ve been an asset.”

  I’d eventually learn that from Andrea Capanelli, this was the best and most sincere compliment I could possibly hope to receive.

  “Thanks, Andrea.”

  “I’m serious, Tycho. I’m going to mention you to the people I work for. I think you’d be good at what we do.”

  I didn’t answer her, not knowing if I had any interest in doing what they did. It was an ugly kind of life, even if they had saved a lot of people, eventually.

  She squeezed my arm, then took her hand back. “Young’s androids did the job downstairs. They’ve dealt with all the surviving Nightwatch officers and secured the lower levels.”

  “Did they take anyone alive?”

  “Would you?” She was looking at my face, which was still splattered with blood beneath the visor of my helmet.

  I shuddered. “No. I’d kill them all and burn the bodies. Even so—”

  “It would be better to have one alive for questioning? I agree. But I think we’re in luck there. Look at your scanner. It looks like one of the Eleven is still alive and not moving at all.”

  We crossed the level and reached a small park, where Veraldi lay unconscious while Raven Sommer worked on him to staunch the bleeding stabilize him. A few feet away, a Nightwatch officer lay sprawled out unconscious. The Nightwatch had been destroyed, but this man was still alive.

  Raven glanced back at us. “You’re not going to believe this, but Sleeping Beauty here was choked out by our own Vincenzo Veraldi. He got himself mauled in the process, but he bagged us a live one.”

  Andrea sighed. “He just had to do it, didn’t he? He had to prove he could do it.”

  Raven nodded. “We’ll never hear the end of it. With my bare hands! My bare hands!”

  They were making fun of Veraldi, but what the man had done was simply incredible. With those nanosuits, the Eleven had been all but invulnerable. Drop a building on their heads, and they would still get up for one more round. But Veraldi had met one and defeated it on his own in hand-to-hand combat.

  Well, there was no sense in letting all that effort go to waste. I reached for my utility belt and pulled out a pair of manacles for the first time since they dropped us over Venus. I leaned over the last surviving member of the Tower 7 Nightwatch and cuffed his hands.

  “August Marcenn, you’re under arrest.”

  Andrea’s head turned. She must have noticed my phrasing, that I was no longer denying what I knew to be true.

  The man’s eyelids fluttered open, and he looked back at me with Marcenn’s eyes. Eyes that were suddenly a lot less inhuman, and a lot more terrified.

  “Please don’t kill me.”

  21

  “They’re ready for you now.”

  I heard the voice, but it didn’t register at first. I’d been lost in my thoughts, something that was happening more and more often lately. Unlike so many other people, I had somehow made it off Tower 7. Hadn’t I? It felt like a part of me would always be there, creeping silently through dark offices and empty restaurants while the Nightwatch hunted for me.

  “Sir? They’re ready for you.”

  I looked up, startled to re
alize the voice was directed at me. I saw a woman with brown hair looking down at me, her face vaguely nervous and vaguely disapproving at the same time. In theory, the Sol Federation Arbiter Force understands the effects of combat trauma and extends its sympathies. In reality, no one who hasn’t been there could ever understand.

  “Thank you. I’m coming.”

  I stood up, smoothing down the wrinkles in my dark blue suit. When you get called up in front of Arbitration Command, you dress to impress. The woman with brown hair looked me over, decided I was worth a little bit of sympathy, and adjusted my shirt collar. “You’ll be alright. Just tell them exactly what happened.”

  “Of course.”

  Except I couldn’t do that. It didn’t sit well with me, but Capanelli had explained it all in detail. There were no non-disclosure forms to sign and nothing about federal secrets because, officially speaking, there is no such thing as Section 9.

  “That doesn’t mean you can talk about it,” Andrea had said. “I mean, not a word. If you die tomorrow and find yourself standing in front of the pearly gates, you leave Section 9 out of it.”

  “Arbitration Command is going to debrief me.”

  “So you lie. You tell them a plausible story. You stonewall them if you have to.”

  “But there’s a lot of evidence…”

  “There isn’t. Take my word on this, Tycho. By the time you leave, there won’t be any proof we were ever here. There won’t be anything at all to show what really happened. The electronic systems will be wiped. Records forged. You’ll tell them the story we want told, and there won’t be anyone who can prove you wrong.”

  The casual disregard for truth had bothered me, just as much as Capanelli’s attitude to the rule of law. To hear her tell it, Section 9 was beyond and above the law. Beyond and above the system itself.

  But if I ever talked about it, even to my superior officers in Arbitration Command, I would never even know I had been tried and found guilty. I wouldn’t see my executioner or feel the bullet that ended my life. I would just be erased. And none of this would be a crime; legally speaking it would be considered justice. Section 9 is secret, and the powers that oversee the solar system intend to keep it that way.

  It had happened again. My mind had wandered, and I was now standing in front of a stained oak door while the woman with brown hair looked at me like she didn’t know what to say to bring me back to Earth.

  I shook my head. “So, this is it?”

  She pointed at the plaque beside the door. Arbitration Command: Hearing Room 1.

  “Yes. You can go right in. You’re expected, Mr. Barrett.”

  She touched my arm, as if to communicate that she understood and sympathized. She didn’t understand, but I appreciated the gesture anyway. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and walked in.

  Across the room from me, sitting at the other side of a long table, were the four highest-ranking officers in Arbitration Command: the Director of Arbitration, a career man named Singh with a white mustache and the immaculate turban of a Sikh; the Deputy Director, a woman named Park who was currently paging through my written statement with one eyebrow raised skeptically; the Internal Affairs chief, a man named Brown, whose job was to make sure I hadn’t committed any crimes they couldn’t cover up; the Public Relations officer, a woman named Austin, whose job was to make sure the story we told was one we could sell.

  I walked up to them and sat down, taking the desk across from the big table. The woman with brown hair put coffee in front of me, then faded into the background. I took a sip.

  “Tycho Barrett. Thank you for joining us,” said Deputy Park, in a voice that suggested I had done it poorly somehow.

  “We’ve read your report,” said Director Singh, gesturing with his hand to the screen in front of him. “It makes for interesting reading.”

  The Internal Affairs officer scoffed. “I have to say, there are aspects of this that don’t really add up. Unanswered questions. It’s unfortunate that all the surveillance data that might shed light on this incident was somehow lost…”

  I looked him straight in the eyes. “August Marcenn made sure of that. He used a bouncing betty.”

  It was Young who’d explained this to me, while Section 9 was coaching me on the lies they wanted me to tell. A Bouncing Betty is a type of landmine, but it doesn’t blow up when you step on it—it explodes when you step off, so trying to get away from it is what kills you.

  Brown didn’t know the term and didn’t look happy about it. “A bouncing betty?”

  “It’s named after the landmine. A bouncing betty program wipes a system clean as soon as you boot up again after a security breach. You think you’re done, that you’ve got the infection cleaned out, and then your system basically kills itself. It wipes anything that might help you trace the original hack back to its source. In this case it was targeted. It didn’t destroy any core systems, just the short-term memory banks.”

  Austin decided to get in on the action. “And it didn’t occur to you to check for this… bouncing betty program before you rebooted?”

  “We’re not trained for that.” I was channeling Jones here. “I had my skeleton key, but I didn’t know anything about a bouncing betty. I just followed my training and was surprised to see all the files disappear. I found out about the bouncing betty attack when I was trying to research what had happened.”

  Brown gestured at the report with a skeptical grimace. “So, all we have is your word for the sequence of events you describe here?”

  Singh bristled. “The word of an Arbiter!”

  Deputy Park looked at him sideways, like he was hopelessly naïve or intentionally complicit. I didn’t know which one it was, but I was happy to take either if it got me out of this room with my career intact.

  Park looked me in the eyes. “So, Mr. Barrett, to summarize: the android proxies were directed by August Marcenn to kill everyone in Tower 7 shortly after initiating the infection protocol lockdown, and the majority of Nightwatch officers attempted to protect civilians and fight back but stood no chance. A handful of disaffected Nightwatch officers assisted Marcenn in committing his crimes.”

  “Yes, that’s accurate.”

  There was a long moment of tense silence, in which everyone at the table across from me decided whether they wanted to officially question my story or not. I didn’t know the details, but I assumed Section 9 had some indirect way of exerting pressure on Arbitration Command to not look too closely into what had really happened on Tower 7. The question for me was whether it would work, or whether someone would get irritated with the pressure and make an issue out of it.

  Singh and Park glanced down at the other two. Brown threw his hands up, an admission of defeat. Austin nodded silently. She would sell the story, even if it led to some inconvenient conspiracy theories we’d be denying for years.

  Park seemed satisfied. “Tycho Barrett, I want to express my disappointment at the staggering loss of life in this case…”

  If I could have saved everyone on Tower 7, I would have. I knew why she wasn’t happy about the way things had turned out, but I wanted to scream at her anyway. Singh must have seen it, because he stepped in before I could say anything in response.

  “The loss of life is certainly tragic, but we are satisfied with the containment and speed of resolution. You did your duty, and the Arbiter Force thanks you for it.”

  Weirdly enough, that bothered me too. I didn’t like being criticized for what had happened, but I didn’t want to be praised for it either. “I don’t need any thanks. Gabriel Anderson is the one who deserves them. He gave his life.”

  Singh stiffened up. “And he will be remembered for it. A fallen hero of the Arbiter Force.”

  Austin seemed uncomfortable. “I’m not sure we should focus on one man’s heroism when so many died. It might not play well.”

  My voice was cold. “Excuse me?”

  Park held a hand up. “Gabriel Anderson died in the line of duty. No one
here would deny that or dishonor it.”

  I didn’t say anything. The fury I felt right then was too much for words.

  When she saw that I wasn’t going to reply, she went on. “As a loyal Arbiter, Anderson knew that the mission came first. Correct?”

  She had left me no choice but to say something, so I said, “Of course.”

  “The mission of the Arbiter Force is to keep the peace and build unity between the colonies. To uphold that mission, we sometimes have to position ourselves in a certain way. We have to consider the views of the public. Head off likely criticisms.”

  I didn’t answer her. She was right about Gabriel; he cared about the mission more than anything else. Still, the man was dead. Isn’t there a point where you deserve more than platitudes?

  Park must have seen that I wasn’t wavering. She sat up straight and fixed her eyes on me with a dismissive look. Who was Tycho Barrett, anyway? Just an Arbiter, just one of many. What gave him the right to criticize her, the Deputy Director of Arbitration Command?

  When she spoke again, her voice left no room for any reply.

  “Sol Federation Arbiter Tycho Barrett, the Arbiter Force thanks you for your service on Venus and finds that your actions were in accordance with your duty. We also thank you for your attendance at this hearing, but your participation is no longer required. You are free to go.”

  When a mission is over, most Arbiters go out and get crazy drunk. Some guys will get drunk with their mission partner, but some are sick of each other by that point, so they’ll go out with some old friends from the Academy or maybe from back home. Either way, the standard procedure is to tie one on and then sleep it off before you report for another mission. As I walked out the door, my original plan was to do just that. I’d have a drink for Gabe, wash Tower 7 out of my system, then go back to work with a clear mind.

  It didn’t turn out to be quite that simple. I walked out into the lobby, and the woman with brown hair looked up and saw me. She took one look at my face, shook her head, and said, “Are you okay?”