Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  The bouncer noticed us as soon as we walked in. He was broad-shouldered, the buttons of his white shirt straining with every breath he took. I could see the curling serifs of tattooed lettering peeking out from below his collar. His posture told me he was armed and likely left-handed. I moved to the right to get clear of Andrea’s line of fire, disguising the movement by shaking the rain from my coat.

  He raised a hand to stop us in the entryway. “You have reservation?” His accent was heavy.

  Andrea held up her badge. “NAS Inspector General.” The bouncer looked intently at it then was still for a few seconds, no doubt running the badge fiducial through the official registration with his dataspike.

  “You go,” he replied at last and stepped aside to let the three of us pass.

  At tables scattered throughout the restaurant, small groups were chatting quietly. Men and women conducted business meetings, tried to interest potential lovers, or simply shared an after-work drink or two with co-workers. At the bar in the back of the room, Lyndon Pierce sat with the four other targets. Lyndon was a skinny blond man, not physically imposing in any way, but he was clearly the leader of this particular group. Reclined comfortably in his seat, he spoke with exaggerated, sweeping gestures as the others hung onto every word he said.

  I checked to make sure we had the whole group as we crossed the room. There was Karl Jensen to Lyndon’s right, with Nisha Coulter beside him. The two were close and had had an on and off relationship. Securing one would almost guarantee taking the other. Next to Nisha was Arnold Klepp, a possible flight risk. Beside Arnold was Jeff Bloom, who was laughing along with Lyndon’s anecdote. He would likely follow Arnold’s lead, whether that meant complying or putting up a fight.

  Lyndon was so caught up in what he was saying that he didn’t notice us until we were almost on top of him. When he finally did, his mouth hung open in mid sentence and his eyes froze on the three of us.

  “His brain’s rebooting,” Andrew said, stifling a laugh.

  I kept my eyes on the group’s hands. I didn’t expect any of them to produce a weapon, but seeing Andrea swap her sidearm to condition 1 in the car had put me on edge.

  Lyndon closed his mouth and blinked. He visibly collected himself and consciously returned to the relaxed, open stance he’d had before, then he leaned against the bar and addressed Andrew.

  “What the fuck is this about?” he asked, his voice more than a little tinged with contempt.

  “We’re NAS Inspectors General,” replied Andrea. “But you already knew that. What you’re really asking is how much we know, isn’t that right?” She looked at each of them in turn.

  “There must be some mistake,” offered Nisha in a feeble voice.

  Andrea walked closer to her as she replied. “Are you Nisha Coulter?”

  “Yes. What—”

  “On June 5th you received payment from a Levantine terrorist group through an offworld account under the name Natalie Hart. You received another payment on July 9th, then again on July 23rd, August 8th, and August 21st, for a cumulative sum of 415.6 million credits.”

  No one spoke.

  “We know everything,” Andrea said. “You are all under arrest for treason against the North Atlantic States.”

  Network credentials for NAS classified systems rotated on a bi-weekly basis. What these people had done was sell fresh network credentials at the start of each of these periods to foreign buyers. White-collar crime, but potentially devastating geopolitically. Done right, it was hard to trace.

  Unfortunately for these people, Lyndon was neither as intelligent as he wanted people to think nor as skilled as he believed himself to be.

  When he finally decided to run, he jumped to his feet so quickly that his chair tipped to the floor with a loud clatter. He probably thought he could make for the rear exit and disappear into the crowd on the street before we caught up to him. Again, he’d overestimated his intelligence and skill.

  A smarter man would have considered that the arrest team was more than just the three people immediately in front of him. A smarter man might have noticed the odd number of patrons sitting near him that hadn’t ordered anything. And, of course, a smarter man wouldn’t have tried to sell state secrets in the first place. As Lyndon came running by, one of our plain-clothes MetSec tackled him to the floor. He landed face-first, stunned too senseless to resist as he was cuffed.

  Arnold Klepp kept repeating “what” over and over, like he just couldn’t wrap his mind around whatever strange thing was happening. Jeff Bloom shook his head. “I should never have listened to that guy. I knew this was stupid.”

  Tears welled in Nisha Coulter’s eyes, and her voice was strained. “It was his idea. It was all his idea, the whole thing!”

  “Shut up,” snapped Karl Jensen. “They don't have anything. This is a bluff.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Andrea smiled at him, like this was all nothing more than a friendly conversation. “Besides the bank records, we have your dataspike activity, location services records, and office network logons.”

  “That miserable asshole,” Jeff Bloom muttered.

  “I’ll testify,” offered the openly weeping Nisha. “I’ll testify for immunity!”

  “You unbelievable bitch…” Karl Jensen started, but Andrew raised a finger.

  “Take your own advice, Jensen. Keep your mouth shut.”

  Karl sunk down into his seat did as he was advised. I tapped Arnold Klepp on the shoulder. “Time to get up, Arnold.”

  He was visibly trembling as he stood up from the chair. He didn’t resist as I cuffed his wrists behind his back. Andrew Jones did the same with Nisha Coulter, who didn’t stop pleading for us to let her testify. Jeff Bloom kept muttering obscenities to himself while he waited for his turn, but Karl Jensen turned out to be the troublemaker.

  As I pulled Jeff to his feet, Karl suddenly stood and swung a pint glass at Andrea’s head. My first instinct was to reach for my weapon, but Andrea had already caught his arm before I could draw.

  We might have had similar prosthetics, but Andrea’s speed was still leagues ahead of mine. She fluidly cradled the back of Karl’s head with her free hand and slammed his face into the bar in less than a second. She then twisted his arm back and dragged him to the floor.

  Andrea had her heel on his back a moment later. “That stunt cost you the bridge of your nose. Would you like a broken arm too?”

  I shook my head and helped Jeff Bloom take a seat. He seemed as shocked by Karl’s attempt as I was. For his part, Karl wasn’t resisting anymore. He just exhaled foamy blood through a crooked nose as I cuffed his wrists together.

  Another voice came in over my dataspike. “The transport’s out front. We’re ready to receive the prisoners.”

  “We’re bringing them out now,” Andrea replied.

  Lyndon Pierce was on his feet, looking more angry than anything else. Considering that the whole scheme was his idea in the first place, I would have thought his friends had more of a right to be angry with him.

  “Bag their heads?” asked the officer who’d cuffed Lyndon.

  Andrea nodded. “I’m sure they don’t want their faces on the news streams.”

  This wasn’t much of a consideration, honestly. The media wouldn’t have any problem finding pictures of these people once their names were released. To say nothing of the video the patrons no doubt recorded. I understood the fascination; it isn’t every day you see feds arresting people.

  We escorted them out to the waiting van past dozens of staring eyes. The rain had picked up and was quickly becoming a shower. Once all of our targets were in MetSec custody, we quickly went through the inter-agency formalities, then hurried back to our car on the other side of the street.

  Andrew set our destination and its self-driving AI pulled us out into traffic to start the ride back to the Inspector General’s Office. After a few minutes, Andrea turned to me. “So. A welcome return to police work?”

  “Mostly. I don�
��t love it when they cry,” I replied. “That’s the nature of the work, though.”

  “Our pretend work, anyway.”

  “It might be cover, but that arrest was certainly real.”

  “Granted,” she acknowledged. “That crew deserved it. Nisha Coulter can cry all she wants, but she was a traitor. She can face the consequences.”

  “She’s willing to testify. That would probably earn her a reduced sentence.”

  Andrea didn’t seem convinced. “As the Romans said, no wise man ever thought that a traitor should be trusted.”

  2

  We were given a few days off by the Regional Commandant after the arrest of Lyndon Pierce and his crew in recognition of our “exemplary investigatory performance.” The case hadn’t been difficult in the slightest, but perception is relative by definition. I accepted with gracious thanks and went back to my condo in the city center with vague instructions to relax.

  That was when I realized I didn’t know how. I was restless, anxious, always expecting word of some emergency or imminent threat. Every notification from my dataspike made my chest tighten and my blood run cold. It wasn’t a sense of fear, it was something deeper, something primal I didn’t have a name for. It was like sitting alone by a fire in the wilderness at night. I was warm and physically comfortable, but I kept staring at the shadows in the dark, trying to spot the wolf before it was too late.

  From an abandoned city choked with radiation to labyrinthine Martian streets, I’d spent most of my time in places where I was risking my life. I didn’t even know how many days I’d spent simply doing nothing since I joined Section 9, but it was few enough that I couldn’t quite remember the last one.

  I was aware that my thoughts were racing. Since I didn’t have anything I needed to think about, my mind just went around in circles. Orbiting topics I wanted to avoid.

  Gabriel and Sophie.

  Daphne.

  Jonathan Bray.

  I tried to go to bed, but sleep never came. Night faded into dawn as I stared at the ceiling to avoid the ghosts in my periphery.

  It didn’t work, so I got dressed and headed out for a while.

  When I stepped outside into the streets of the city, I realized I didn’t know the first thing about the neighborhood I lived in. I’d never spent any time here, and even the view across the street from my condo didn’t look all that familiar.

  I wandered into a smoke shop—not that I smoked anything—and glanced around at the products they offered. They seemed to specialize in long-stemmed pipes made of colored glass. There were entire rows of shelves filled with them.

  After a few minutes, I decided I’d move on. On my way out of the store, I noticed a young man with Asian features watching me from across the street. He was standing as if on a dataspike call, gesturing absently as he presumably subvocalized a message, but I could see through the subterfuge. It was an act, feigned when he noticed me noticing him. I stopped where I was and waited to see what he would do. He gestured in the air as if closing a call, then stretched and entered a convenience store a few meters down the block.

  I was certain of what I’d seen, but I’d also been awake for some time. It was possible fatigue was setting in. Combined with the anxiousness I was feeling, it could have just been nothing. Another shadow in the dark.

  I went into the store that sold Martian imports and bought a spiced red dumpling. I half-expected to see a tail when I came out again, but I found nothing and walked through the neighborhood as I ate.

  I saw the man again about ten minutes later when I was on my way out the door of an antique bookstore. He was walking down the street a short distance behind me, occasionally stopping to look in a store window. Was he only exploring the neighborhood like me, or was he actually following me?

  As far as anyone in this hemisphere knew, I wasn’t former Arbiter Tycho Barrett, I was Inspector General Jean-Paul Baudri. Who would be tailing an internal affairs officer other than someone from inside the organization? Was he hired by someone with a connection to Lyndon Pierce’s ring?

  When you suspect a tail, there are ways to confirm it. I decided to try them, reasoning that the man might turn out to be nothing more than a curious civilian wandering around the neighborhood.

  I stopped and looked in a window for a long time, hoping to leave him in the awkward position of having to do the same. He walked past me instead, which made me doubt my instincts about him for a moment, but I still had to know.

  I walked up the block to an intersection and then suddenly turned, weaving left and right through several streets. And then I saw him again in the reflection of a window in a shop a few doors down.

  There was no longer any doubt about it. The only lingering question was why.

  I took off, walking rapidly toward the nearest maglev stop. He matched my pace, no longer being all that discreet. When I reached the station, I paid for my ride and got on a departing train, unsure of whether I’d left him behind or not. I took the train for two stops, got off at another station, then took a train going back in the other direction for one stop.

  When I left the station this time, I headed into a Russo-Sino restaurant for lunch. I could call Andrea with a full stomach and a clear head.

  I sat down at a table in a booth at the back of the restaurant, where I wasn’t likely to be noticed by anyone. The holo on the table had a sizable menu, and I ordered some fried pierogies. Then the door to the restaurant swung open as the holo confirmed my request, and the young man with Asian features walked in.

  He was dogged, I’d give him that, but now it seemed like he was making the choice to confront me directly. I slowly dropped one hand below the table and wrapped my fingers around the sidearm beneath my coat.

  The adjacent tables were empty, so with tight grouping there wouldn’t be a significant risk of civilian casualties. Two rear exits, both without ground-level visibility to one another, meant he’d have to make a blind choice if I decided to run. This was as ideal as the situation could get.

  The man spoke briefly with the hostess, pointing in my direction. Then he walked over to me at a relaxed pace, keeping his hands where I could see them.

  “Jean-Paul Baudri?” he asked, his voice quiet and polite.

  “You skipped a line,” I replied. “I have no idea who you are.”

  “Then why have you been dodging me all morning? Your escape and evasion skills are pretty well developed for an IG.”

  “Not developed enough, considering that you caught up with me. Why don’t you sit down.”

  He took a seat across from me. “My name is Edward Yeun. I have been following you, but it probably isn’t what you think it is.”

  “I don’t think anything yet. Not enough information.”

  “Let me be clear, then. I’m not recruiting you. That isn’t my area in the first place, and I don’t have any training in it.”

  “You’re an agent of some kind?”

  “I’m not really an agent. I work for Section 5 of Sol Federation Intelligence. I’m an analyst.”

  That was interesting. If this man could be believed, we worked for different departments of the same intelligence service. Did he know that, or did he really believe me to be a North Atlantic States Inspector General?

  “Section 5 has a lot of intelligence analysts, right?”

  He nodded. “Other sections collect the data, and we look for patterns. My job is to correlate bits of information gathered here and there and draw connections between the different pieces to find the bigger picture.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite, Mr. Yeun. The NAS is officially a member state of the Sol Federation, but we both know that’s largely fictional. In fact, most people seem to think a war is coming. Approaching me at all is a shaky move, one that could easily get both of us in a lot of trouble. So why would you do it?”

  “Believe me, I wouldn’t unless I had a damn good reason. The question I’m asking myself right now is whether you are who I think you are. Whether I can trust you
to do what needs to be done.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “An honorable agent, someone who believes in the law. Someone who wants to help preserve the peace.”

  An android came with my pierogies, and I waited until it was gone before I replied.

  “I’m not at all sure how you might have formed that opinion,” I said and speared a pierogi with my fork. “It sounds like a bunch of vague ideals to me, if you want the truth.”

  “It was your involvement in the Scott Morris case.”

  “Go on,” I told him, taking a bite from my pierogi.

  “From what I know of the NAS, a lot of the Inspectors General won’t willingly arrest one of their own.”

  That was sometimes true, but of course I wasn’t really an Inspector General. I had no loyalty to their code of silence, and especially not toward a corrupt agent. I never thought twice about arresting Morris.

  “It was just my job,” I told him.

  “Be that as it may, when I saw how you handled the case, I decided I had found my man.”

  “Your man for what? You still haven’t told me.”

  “I still haven’t decided whether I ought to tell you.”

  I smiled a little. “So, you actually haven’t decided if I’m your man or not.”

  “No, no I guess not.” He drummed his fingers on the table, and I could see his mind working though it, trying to decide whether to trust me or just stand up and walk out the door. He was already past that point, though.

  “To be clear, I’m required to report any contact from outside agencies. If you don’t give me a good reason not to, a very good reason, I have no choice but to report what happened today. That could end up being a problem for you. The fact of the matter is that you decided to tell me as soon as you walked in the door.”

  He gave me a shrewd look. “You think more like an intelligence agent than a law enforcement officer.”

  That was a sharp guess, if that’s all it was. “We do counterintelligence work too.”