Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Wow.” Andrew shook his head. “This is one of the single greatest feats in the history of Section 9, and you two are taking it completely for granted.”

  “If you ask me, what she’s done here is simply amazing,” said Raven. “Andrea went out on her own and brought back someone we had all agreed was the most dangerous person in the system. I’m with Andrew.”

  “Ridiculous.” Thomas was looking at his fingernails, as if he found us all too embarrassing to look at directly.

  “How did you find her?” I asked.

  Andrea opened her eyes. “Hmm? Is someone asking me a question, instead of arguing about my skills right in front of me?”

  “I asked how you found her.”

  “The crew report submitted by a shipping vessel from Ganymede just after the crash mentioned bringing aboard a woman fitting Katerina’s description. It made a stop when it crossed into The Belt, and she boarded a commercial flight.”

  “She had to know she’d get pinged with facial recognition once she did that, didn’t she?” Given everything I’d heard about Katerina Capanelli, I found that slightly disappointing.

  “She did.” Andrea waved her hand as if to dismiss the thought. “She altered her appearance so much that I had to lower the filter threshold to twenty percent before I spotted her. I must have gone through hundreds of possible matches, but I know her face better than any AI ever could. The hard part came after I finally caught up with her on Venus.”

  “Hard seems like an understatement,” said Veraldi.

  Andrea shrugged, as much as she could.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “Manacled in the secure car park, while the androids process her. I want to make sure she doesn’t have anything before we bring her into the facility.”

  “It makes me a little nervous to think that she’s still alive.” Andrew scratched his head, staring down at his feet. “After all, she’s known the location of this place the entire time.”

  “That’s an important point,” Vincenzo added. “We’ll need to discuss that.”

  “Yes, but first we need to get her secured. A safehouse would not be enough. She needs the highest level of security we can leverage.” Andrea was talking with her eyes closed, and occasionally gritting her teeth.

  “I’ll get it taken care of.” Veraldi left the room.

  “Do you need anything?” asked Raven.

  Andrea shook her head. “Let’s go out and watch the proxies bring Katerina in. That way I’ll know the job was done, and done right.” I was faintly impressed by the idea of a person so dangerous you couldn’t trust machines to bring them in even if they were already restrained.

  “I’ll help you up.” Raven offered Andrea her hand, and Andrea pulled herself up to stand. None of the rest of us stepped forward. We waited patiently as she made her way out of the room before quietly falling in line behind her.

  She was limping but still held her head high and her back straight. It almost looked like she still had something to prove, and allowing herself to appear as weak as she must have felt would only undo what she’d accomplished so far.

  We took the elevator down to the car park, where a few technicians and several android proxies stood guard around a black sedan. A proxy approached Andrea as we neared.

  “We have confirmed the subject does not possess explosives,” it said. “We have confirmed the subject does not possess transmission devices.”

  Andrea eyed the sedan. “Augments?”

  “The subject is not augmented.”

  “Form a semicircle around the door,” Andrea ordered. “Be ready for anything, and maintain a two meter distance at all times.”

  The technician by the car door asked, “Are you ready, ma’am?”

  She nodded. “Open it.”

  The door swung open, and the blonde woman from the Havisham stared right at me. Her mouth was gagged with a strip of cloth wrapped like a bandage around the lower half of her face and down to the nape of her neck. Her arms were restrained behind her back with a slip-tie above her elbows, another at her wrists, and a third binding her thumbs together. Her legs were restrained in a similar fashion. Despite all of this, she sat with her legs folded under her looking as relaxed and beatific as a statue of Maitreya.

  If Katerina was surprised to see that I was still alive, she didn’t show it. Her eyes narrowed in what I somehow knew was a smile beneath the gag.

  Andrea looked her up and down. “Take her away,” she ordered, and the proxies moved in. As they unstrapped one arm and secured it with a pair of handcuffs, Andrea drew her gun and aimed it at her mother’s head. This seemed to delight Katerina, who offered no resistance at all. The proxies cuffed her other hand, then carefully undid the restraints on her feet.

  As they stood her up, Katerina’s eyes sparkled as if she found the whole scene unbearably amusing. She’d been hunted down and dragged back to the unit she once commanded. Whatever plans she may have had were now dead in the void. And yet, there was that smile. A kind of arrogance that survived any situation she could ever find herself in.

  The proxies pushed her forward, and Katerina let them lead her away. It made me think of my own story—once an Arbiter, then hunted down by other Arbiters. If they’d caught me, I would have been interrogated in my own headquarters just as she was about to be.

  “You’re looking thoughtful.” Andrew’s voice was quiet, and oddly sincere.

  “I fought that woman on the Havisham. She’s a frightening person. Fearless. Practically a demon in combat, but it still seems sad.”

  “Trust me, Tycho, she made her own choices every step of the way.”

  “What was she like, before...” I gestured towards the elevator. “Everything.”

  “Extremely capable. Reckless, but so good at everything that it didn’t matter. High expectations no one could ever seem to meet. Ultimately, she’s just a narcissist. We all respected her skill, but she was a slave to her own ego.”

  Andrea turned and looked at us. “I’m not sure that’s true. There were moments on Venus when she could have killed me. There were moments when I’m sure she was trying to. She’s mercurial, but there’s also a kind of logic to her actions. I’m surprised she didn’t produce a hidden gun and come out of that car shooting.”

  “She’s good,” said Veraldi. “But no one’s that good.”

  Raven shrugged. “I don’t know. Remember that time in Ghent?”

  There were a few wry chuckles. I didn’t get the joke.

  Andrea straightened up and brushed her hair out of her face with her right hand. “Has Dr. Markov left yet?” Veraldi glanced in her direction as if he was trying to figure something out. “She’s still here,” he said. “She’s scheduled to leave in the morning.”

  “Let her know she’ll be needed for a few more days,” she said. I couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  Veraldi nodded. “I’ll take care of it, chief.”

  He left to talk to Samara, and I realized that Andrea was going to ask her mother to give her a new arm. To replace the arm her other mother had ripped off. It was an understandably awkward situation.

  When Andrea turned back to the rest of us, I noticed a clear fluid seeping down from the bare socket where her left arm had been. Neurorelay fluid, the same stuff that now flowed through all four of my limbs. There must have been a wound in her side as well. Blood was starting to seep through her shirt. The fist-sized stain was almost black against the drab blue uniform shirt. She was hardly standing, but her demeanor was one of total self-control.

  “No one is to contact the prisoner for any reason. Full quarantine.”

  Andrew nodded. “Of course, chief.”

  “The way she talks…” Raven shuddered suddenly.

  “I know,” said Andrea. “She’ll get inside your head. I want everyone to understand: no communication, not even security audio. Not even visual data.”

  “Your word is good enough for me.” Andrew’s jokey and sarcastic
attitude was suddenly gone. He seemed completely sincere. “I’ll keep my distance. But…”

  “Yes?” She stared at him blankly, and he shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze.

  “Who’s doing the interrogation? Are you sure you’re—”

  “I’m conducting the interrogation in the morning.” Her voice was flat. Andrew almost said something, then he seemed to think better of it. He just smiled and nodded. Andrea looked to each of us expectantly. No one said a word. She turned and made her way to the elevators, a trail of blood and neurorelay fluid marking her path.

  15

  I spent the rest of the day shooting targets and running AR exercises with Raven. She wouldn’t tell me my scores in any of the scenarios, she just kept having me repeat the drills over and over. She seemed obscurely pleased, although she wouldn’t say why. We had a late dinner in the briefing room and traded war stories. The hours fell away until fatigue finally caught up to me around two in the morning. I went back to my room and drifted off, and I slept through the night for the first time in what felt like years.

  The next morning I went downstairs to the holding area to meet Andrea for the interrogation. I was the first to arrive, so I leaned against the wall outside of the entrance to the cells and waited for the others. Out of curiosity, I pulled up the intake report on Katerina on my dataspike.

  The android’s response to Andrea’s question the other day seemed odd to me. I had a hard time believing that Katerina could do the things I’d seen her do without augments of some kind. I scanned through the report, pausing at the medical evaluation. It noted minor injuries likely sustained during her capture, some scar tissue and calcification consistent with a history of repeated combat stress, but no mention of augments.

  Was Katerina really that fast and that strong, or was there something special about her nanosuit? She wasn’t wearing it when Andrea brought her in. Had that been the crucial difference?

  I waved away the report and checked the time. Something must have come up, and for whatever reason I was out of the loop. I was on the verge of messaging someone when Raven came in. Her hair was wet.

  “Sorry I’m late, I slept through my alarm. Where are the others?”

  “I have no idea. Weren’t we supposed to meet Andrea here at nine?”

  “That’s definitely what I remember being told. Ah well, it’s for the best. Now Andrea won’t even know I slept in.”

  “Good point. Still, aren’t you a little bit concerned?”

  “Not really. Did you see the way she looked when she gave us our orders? She probably made it as far as the infirmary and then passed out. I’m sure everyone will turn up before too long.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Listen, I wanted to thank you for helping me train yesterday.”

  She shrugged. “Of course. I’m the unit’s sharpshooter, so it only makes sense for me to help. Not that you need much anyway. You’re on your way.”

  “I wasn’t sure. You wouldn’t tell me any of my scores yesterday.”

  “The scores weren’t what you needed to be thinking about. It’s more about breathing, letting your body settle, clearing your thoughts—”

  I chuckled. “The Zen of marksmanship?”

  “That’s the cliche, but there’s no nirvana at the end of this path. Shooting people is shooting people, after all.” She fell silent for a little while.

  It was kind of strange for me. I had started my professional life as an engineer and had only joined the Arbiter Force because of my wife’s death. Had none of that had happened, I would have lived my entire life without ever killing anyone. Now I was up to my neck in other people’s blood, just like Raven and Andrew and all the rest of us.

  Raven turned to me. “You know, I’m starting to think we did get the wrong time or something. Do you think we should check?”

  “I’ll call Andrew.”

  I placed the call on my dataspike, but he didn’t answer, so I sent him a message instead.

  With Raven at holding. Did we get the wrong time?

  “He isn’t there?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. “He’s not picking up, anyway. Should I try Veraldi?”

  She frowned and walked down to the end of the hall to see if anyone was approaching. When she came back, she had a slightly worried look on her face. “If we don’t hear back in a few minutes, I say we should go look for them.”

  “You look anxious.”

  “I guess I am. I’m sure Katerina’s in her cell, but still,” she trailed off.

  “You really seem spooked by her.”

  “She’s not a normal person. When she was the field commander, there was—” She shook her head, like she was trying to get rid of an unwanted thought.

  “There was what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how to explain it. You fought her on that ship. Did she talk to you then?”

  “She did, but she was more arrogant than anything else. She did offer to let me get away.”

  “She offered to let you get away? Even though you were the one arresting her?”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but yeah. She offered me the chance to escape. That’s when I threw the grenade at her, actually.”

  She started laughing too. “You may have been the first person to ever take Katerina Capanelli by surprise.”

  “She acted like it was a convenient opportunity to escape, but I’d like to think so.”

  “That’s definitely how she would handle it. She always had to make you believe she was the one in control of everything.”

  “I guess so, yeah. She had already beaten both of us by that point, anyway. She could have killed us if she wanted to. She told me she didn’t like to kill Section 9 agents.”

  “Huh. I’d like to think that’s loyalty, but I know her too well to really believe that. Since we’re waiting, do you want to hear a story?”

  “Sure.” I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.

  “Back when Katerina was field commander,” she went on. “We had intel that a Sol Federation fleet admiral was planning a coup.”

  “Holy shit.” I opened my eyes again. “That actually happened?”

  “Not many people outside of Section 9 know about it, so don’t tell anyone.”

  “I don’t know anyone who isn’t in Section 9.”

  “It should be easy then.” She smiled and gave me a disarming wink. “So one of our informants passed along the info and we had to decide how to deal with it. It’s not an easy problem to solve. If we had the admiral arrested, it made the Sol Federation look unstable. If we just shoot him, it’s big news for months with dozens of nation-states as potential suspects. Both scenarios were bad for the Federation, and our entire purpose is to prevent things that are bad for the Federation from happening in the first place. So what do we do?”

  I thought about it for a minute, but there only seemed to be one answer that made any sense. “Make it look like an accident?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I would have thought too. But Katerina called that an unimaginative solution. It was the only thing any of us could think of, but she wouldn’t do it because it bored her. Can you believe that?”

  “So what did you end up doing?”

  “We targeted one of the other conspirators, a fleet captain who was meant to seize control of the capital. We hacked his car and drove it into a wall so fast there wasn’t much of a body to recover. Then Katerina met the admiral in person and got him to ask her out. They met for dinner and she mentioned the accident, then she asked if he had considered retirement.”

  “That’s kind of disturbing, honestly.”

  She nodded. “She meant it to be. He submitted for retirement the following day and was relieved of command by the week’s end. A stupid move on his part.”

  “Why?”

  Her answer was simply, “Without a fleet, his potential to make headlines was reduced.” She curled her fingers around an imaginary sidearm
and squeezed the trigger. The thought that Section 9 might have assassinated a retired SpaceFleet admiral had serious implications.

  “It sounds like this was a different unit under her.”

  “I don’t know.” Raven shrugged. “Our job is still the same. Protect the Sol Federation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. She just chose to do it with an approach that you could either call sadistic or pragmatic.”

  My dataspike beeped at me, indicating an incoming call.

  “This is Tycho,” I said.

  “Hey, Tycho, Andrew. Sorry about the delay, but Andrea’s just getting out of surgery now. She’s up here in medical.”

  “Okay, Andrew. We’re on our way,” I said and closed the call.

  “What’s up?” asked Raven.

  “Surgery took longer than anticipated. We’re supposed to go up to Medical.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief. I worried Katerina had already killed everyone.”

  We went back out into the corridor and headed for the elevator. “There don’t seem to be any checks and balances,” I pointed out. “We don’t answer to anyone, and we have endless resources. I could see us going to prison for some of the things we do if it ever got out.

  “Oh, they’d kill us well before that.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, and she started laughing, one hand over her mouth.

  “Okay, you’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely right.”

  We took the elevator two levels down and entered medical. As we walked through the antechamber door, we could hear raised voices. Through the glass doors ahead, I could see that no one else was in the room except Andrea and her mother. It dawned on me that Andrew hadn’t actually asked us to come down to medical.

  “It’s not safe, Yulia.” Dr. Markov sounded agitated, though it was clear she was still doing her best to project the calm bedside manner that had made such an impression on me.

  Andrea’s voice had a venom I’d never heard before. “That is not my name, Samara.”

  Dr. Markov tried to placate her. “I’m sorry, Andrea. I’m just trying to tell you that it isn’t safe. If you apply too much pressure before the nanites can fuse the bone, the pinning could unseat and your arm—”