Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Katerina knows who Kote is working for,” Andrea went on. “I’m sure of that much. We’re going to capture her again, we’re going to shackle her this time, and we’re going to do everything to make her talk.”

  I didn’t want to ask Andrea what she meant by that. In my experience, Section 9 did not use torture as a means of information gathering, but I couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t make an exception. Maybe Katerina’s assault on Andrea’s birth mother had changed the equation. I’d known Andrea for a while now, but I never felt like I had less insight into her inner thoughts than I did when we were dealing with her family.

  Andrea turned in my direction. “Tycho, you are cleared for field duty, but you won’t be joining us on the hunt for Katerina.”

  I tried to mask my incredulity. “Why’s that?”

  “It’s nothing bad,” she went on. “I have another task, but I can’t spare more than one body for it. It’s less urgent, but it could turn out to be more important than we realize. You work well alone, so I’ve picked you for this.”

  “We all get these solo missions,” Andrew pointed out. “We’ve all had them. Andrea’s had them. I’ve had them. Raven has had, like, a hundred of them—”

  “One hundred forty-six,” she corrected.

  He was right, but that didn’t change how I felt about being sent off on my own just then. There was nothing I could do about it, though. An order is an order, and even if Andrea was my friend in some sense of the word, she was also my commanding officer.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to react that way. I’ll do it, of course. What are the details?”

  “Good man,” said Andrea. “Thomas, maybe you’d better fill Tycho in on the background for this assignment.”

  “Of course. Using the circuitry map of the Warwick node, I have recovered imagery from the device just as I did with Huxley.”

  “Imagery?” asked Raven. “You mean you can see people’s memories?”

  Thomas nodded. “Yes. That’s one reason this data is so difficult to recover. Human memories are incredibly information-rich. I can capture a seemingly huge amount of data and it turns out to be nothing more than a memory of walking through a park and feeding the ducks.”

  “Is that what we have here?” asked Vincenzo, grinning slightly. “An afternoon stroll?”

  “Hardly. The data is primarily fragmented sensory experience, but there is indeed an image of a man’s face reflected in water. The face was relatively clear, but as you might imagine, a face reflected in a fluid is not a clear image for identification purposes.”

  Unless Thomas could boast about all the obstacles he had overcome, you couldn’t get him to tell you anything at all. Not that it wasn’t impressive, of course.

  “Were you able to get the face ID’d anyway?” asked Vincenzo. He was only feeding Thomas the reply he needed, but without that we might have been there all night.

  “Of course I was. I ran the image through my own analysis algorithm and then fed the result through a variety of sampling filters to make it as clear as possible. When I fed it into our database to search for a match, the image did return a known individual.”

  We all just stared at him for a minute, but then Andrew picked up the task of getting him to keep talking. “What was the confidence rating?”

  “A shade above eighty percent likelihood that the image is of Ivan Solovyov.”

  “Ivan Solovyov?” I asked. “You mean the Arbiter of Shaanxi?”

  This was a respectful epithet, not an indication that Solovyov had ever been a member of the Arbiter Force. He was far too important to have ever had such a role, having held many positions in both the public and private sector over his long and influential career.

  “Yes, the very same.” Thomas nodded.

  “So you want me to track him down,” I asked Andrea. “To question him about the Warwick node?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “But it has to be discreet, both for his safety and the sake of the investigation. The last thing we want is for the Eleven to know who we’ve spoken with and about what. They could anticipate our next move and cut the lead out from under us.”

  “I will endeavor to do my best. Where do I find this guy?”

  “His home is on Callisto,” replied Thomas. “In Valhalla.”

  “That seems a bit too significant, don’t you think?” asked Raven. “I mean, considering that we were attacked by Jovian special forces. And that we found the Warwick node on Llyr Station.” I could see her point. A lot of little connections to Jupiter. It didn’t amount to evidence, though—just a vague possibility.

  “I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Andrea cautioned. “We’re still far better off tracking down Katerina. Are you suggesting Solovyov is one of the Eleven?”

  Raven shrugged. “I mean, he fits. He’s wealthy and powerful, has all kinds of influence. What do we know about his childhood? His younger days?”

  “Not much,” admitted Thomas. “His family origins are fairly obscure, and all I could find of his childhood was a list of private boarding schools he’d attended.”

  “They might have been obscure, but they certainly weren’t poor,” I commented.

  “See what I’m saying?” said Raven. “He fits the profile. Does he have any connection to David Kote?”

  “Other than appearing in the memory banks of a Warwick node connected to David Kote?” countered Thomas.

  “Well, any connection other than that.”

  “No. They don’t really move in the same circles,” Thomas admitted.

  “I think Ivan Solovyov is our best candidate yet for a member of the Eleven,” Raven insisted. “And I think we should focus more resources on him.”

  Veraldi held a hand up as if to stop her. “Hold on there. If you ask me, Solovyov doesn’t really fit the profile as well as you think he does.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s too much of a public figure.”

  I had to agree. “I’ve been hearing about that guy my whole life. He’s not just a public figure, but one of the most respected diplomats in the history of the solar system. He’s renowned as a peacemaker because of what happened in Shaanxi, and he’s been heavily involved in both the Jovian and Sol Federation governments at different points in his life. I think he’s retired now, or semi-retired, but his public profile is just too wide for him to be one of the Eleven.”

  Veraldi agreed. “That’s what I’m saying. If you ask me, the Eleven would keep out of the public eye as much as possible. They’d operate from behind the scenes, not right out in plain view.”

  “I don’t know.” Raven shook her head. “I just have the feeling we’re sending Tycho into the lion’s mouth here.”

  “Tycho’s not green anymore,” said Andrea. “Do you think you can handle this, Tycho?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I wasn’t really as sure as all that, but I didn’t want to be seen as a novice anymore either.

  “What do we know about the Eleven anyway?” asked Andrew. “I mean, what do we really know? We’ve been chasing this thread for a while now, and it always seems to recede into the distance.”

  “That’s exactly it,” replied Veraldi. “The power of these individuals comes from operating in secrecy. No small group, no matter how extensive their resources, can stand against the rest of humanity in an open fight.”

  “I agree with Vincenzo,” said Andrea firmly. “Ivan Solovyov’s image was in the Warwick node, so he is connected somehow, but for all we know he was just given a demonstration of the technology on a visit to Llyr Station. We don’t have any real evidence that he’s one of the Eleven, and even if he is, we have to remember that he’s an old man. I’m confident that Tycho can handle Solovyov’s private security. Once he asks the right questions, we’ll know more.”

  “Any thought on how we’re going to find Katerina?” asked Andrew.

  Thomas replied, “Her biometrics have been given to the security agency of every Aperture in the solar system through our Section
3 cover. Someone will see her at some point, probably sooner rather than later. I told them not to try to pick her up—she would just kill whoever tries to stop her and escape again—but once she’s spotted, we can close in and track her down.”

  “One question about Solovyov just occurred to me,” I added. “This guy was high up in the state. Does he know about Section 9?”

  “No.” Andrea shook her head. “Not many people do know about Section 9, even at the highest levels of government. The heads of Sol Federation Intelligence know, and a handful of others. But someone like Solovyov, involved in diplomacy? No.”

  “He would know if Katerina told him,” Raven pointed out.

  Andrea shrugged. “I suppose that’s true. She could have told any number of people though. We can’t do much about it.”

  An android opened the door then and glanced around the room. It approached Andrea. “Agent Capanelli, we have a priority one message from Section 3 for you.”

  “Show me.”

  The android turned up a palm and projected a hologram. It was a stationary view of a crowd at a spaceport terminal. A woman walking through the crowd wearing a shawl and glasses was outlined with a green rectangle. A line of text below the image read:

  The individual was seen boarding a passenger vessel bound for Mars through the Timaeus Aperture. 85% confidence it is Katerina Capanelli.

  “What do you think, Andrea?” asked Vincenzo. “The way she’s dressed seems like a disguise. I can’t honestly tell whether that’s her or not.”

  “How old is this,” Andrea asked the android.

  “Four hours.”

  Andrea leaned in, eyeing the holo closely. The room was quiet while she stared at the image. The expression on her face was too intense to interpret.

  “It’s her,” she said, waving away the android. “We’re heading to Mars, and we’re not coming back without her.”

  Andrea’s expression was no longer so ambiguous. Now she just looked fierce, almost excited. As everyone stood to leave, she added, “I need all of you to understand something.” She brushed the hair out of her eyes and looked around the room. “Katerina knows how to hurt us. She’s done it once, and she will not hesitate to use that knowledge again. If you have any reason to believe she presents an active threat at any time, you are authorized to use every means available to subdue her. Let me be clear: I want any resistance she presents to be met with maximal force. As long as the tissue is viable, I don’t care if all we bring back is a brain. Understood?”

  I was silent as the chorus of voices answered.

  22

  The city of Valhalla was essentially an inverted tower plunging into the surface of Callisto. Rather than being composed of isolated floors like the vertical cities of Venus, Valhalla was an organic mix of arbitrary landings and hanging buildings connected by a network of layered skyways like strands of spider’s silk. This structure presented the first problem I faced in getting near Ivan Solovyov. A skyway is highly defensible, with a single point of entry and no meaningful cover. Unless I wanted to storm his home by frontal assault, I would need to be clever.

  I took a maglev from the spaceport to Solovyov’s neighborhood and had a look around. Not surprisingly, it was the kind of neighborhood I’d associate with old money. Every building was set back from the neighborhood’s central hub, the skyway entrances framed by real trees and hanging vines.

  I found that Solovyov himself didn’t live in a freestanding home, but in the bottom penthouse of a hanging tower overlooking the entire subdivision. I wondered if that said anything about the man. I stared up at the opaque glass windows high overhead and imagined him looking back down at me. Even here, among some of the wealthiest Jovians, he’d chosen to physically isolate himself as much as possible.

  But the fact that the building wasn’t his alone meant I could gain access to it without force. The first issue I needed to resolve was making sure I didn’t look out of place. I took another train into one of the shopping districts and made a walking tour of all the retail shops, while watching everyone around me closely to figure out the local tastes. Once I had a sense of it, I bought myself several sets of clothing, a haircut from an expensive salon, a top of the line dataspike, and real leather shoes.

  I used my new dataspike to find a real estate agent who could help me buy an apartment in Solovyov’s building. In less than five minutes, I was scheduled for an appointment the next day. With nothing else I could do until then, I went out for dinner in Solovyov’s neighborhood to learn the area, hoping I might be lucky enough to catch sight of him out in the open.

  I had no such luck, but the steak was excellent. Not many people could afford to eat real meat on an outer world. A passing observer would find at least that much evidence I was the man of means I pretended to be. I slept that night in a lavish hotel and went to meet my real estate agent the following morning, dressed in my expensive natural-fiber suit.

  The realtor was a short man with drooping jowls and a lisp. He spoke at length about all the luxurious amenities the property had to offer.

  “You’ll never lack for anything in Windsor on Highfall, sir, I assure you of that. From the on-site fitness center to the unit’s private theater, everything is top of the line by even terran standards. Beyond top of the line. To everyone who meets you, your choice of living space will speak of your good taste.”

  I tuned him out, responding with the occasional sound of vague agreement. He talked the entire way over from his office to the property, pausing only to greet the young receptionist in the Windsor’s lobby. I caught her eye and gave her a smile.

  Downstairs, the realtor took me through the apartment he wanted to sell, explaining every last nuance of what made the place so special and unique. I heard all about the storage solutions, the integrated media system, and even about the architect who designed the building. He touched on the local politics in Valhalla, and which organizations wanted to do what about the real estate industry.

  I told him I was certainly interested and that I would give it some thought. He walked me out, and we took the elevator back up to the ground floor. As we walked out of the building and down the skyway, he reiterated his selling points with minor variations of what was clearly a practiced script. I thanked him for his time at the train station and wished him a good day.

  “It was a pleasure talking with you, Mr. Bartlett,” he insisted. “I mean that.”

  He clasped my hand with both of his own, desperately trying to convince me of his sincerity. I smiled warmly and assured him that the pleasure was all mine, and that it was a rare treat to speak with an agent so knowledgeable about not only the property but the area as well. That seemed to do the trick, and the man finally let go of my hand.

  He boarded a maglev, and I waved to him through the window as it departed. Once it was out of sight, I left the station and walked back up the skyway. I returned to the Windsor on Highfall and approached the front desk where the pretty receptionist looked up and smiled.

  “You’re back.”

  “I am.” I grinned, leaning close and mirroring her body language. “And I have a small problem—ah sorry, I know my agent said it, but I didn’t catch your name.”

  “It’s Lera.”

  “Lera, I’m Tim.”

  “What can I help you with, Tim?”

  “Well, my agent offered to show me the gym, and I turned him down. Now that I think about it, I’ve changed my mind, but he’s already heading back to his office and it’d be embarrassing to have to call him back. I’d really like to get a look at that gym before I make my decision on the property. Could I—”

  She nodded helpfully. “Oh yeah, of course. It’s just down the hall there. I’ll key you in.”

  “Thank you, love, I appreciate it.” I gave her a wink and passed through the security door, then I turned toward the elevators as soon as I was out of sight.

  I called the elevator and selected the penthouse level, reaching for my skeleton key in anticipation
of an access code. Surprisingly, the selection flashed green and the elevator began its descent. The lack of a passive security layer told me there was going to be an active security layer when I arrived. I doubted it would be automated. A proxy security force in a semi-private space like an apartment complex was a legal quagmire waiting to happen, and the Arbiter of Shaanxi was no fool, so I prepared myself to encounter human security. By the time the car came to a stop, I had a reasonable cover story to explain why I was there.

  The doors opened on a long, white hallway. A purple carpet split the passage down the center and ended at a tall, ornate door where a pair of identically dressed men in black suits kept guard. One leaned against the wall, swiping through something on his dataspike. The other eyed me suspiciously as I exited the elevator.

  As I got closer, I could see that one of the men was much older than the other. Deep wrinkles lined his features and his black hair had a hint of gray at the root. The man stepped forward to meet me. “Can I help you, sir,” he said with a combination of deference and muted aggression.

  “I’m here for a meeting with Ivan Solovyov.”

  “Mr. Solovyov is not expecting anyone.”

  “Is that right? I wonder if there was some mistake. My assistant said—”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Tim Bartlett. Of Bartlett Industries?”

  “Wait right there, please.”

  He turned away and gestured in the air to make a dataspike call. That was my opportunity.

  I took two steps forward and hooked a punch into his ribcage. His flesh gave way around my fist like water as the bones splintered. A hoarse gasp escaped his lips and his legs gave out. I caught him by the collar and stepped around his body, placing my other hand in the small of his back to take his dead weight across my shoulders.

  The younger guard had reacted by then and was reaching for his weapon. I pivoted and threw the older man at him. Maybe it was Callisto’s gravity, my unfamiliarity with the physical limits of my prosthetics, or a combination of the two, but his body went farther and faster than I’d intended. He hit the younger man, knocked him off his feet, and drove the both of them into the wall beside the door.