Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “The townhouse to the left is clear,” she announced. “Looks like student housing.”

  I was nearly done with my food but still felt hungry. Andrea took a bite of a pakora absentmindedly, while keeping an eye out the window.

  “Second to the left looks clear too,” Raven told us. “Looks like an elderly couple. Third down is vacant.”

  I finished my lunch and sipped my water. I noticed my hand shaking as I lifted the glass. Andrea did as well.

  “Did you take your pentamine today,” she asked.

  I put the glass down. “It slipped my mind this morning, but I will when we get back.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket and slid a tab of the medication across the table to me. “Prosthetics are a lifetime commitment,” she said. “You don’t want to learn the hard way what happens when you fall off schedule.”

  She was right, as ever. I nodded and took the pills with my water.

  “I’ve got something on the fourth floor,” Raven continued. “Most of the townhouse is clear, but it looks suspicious.”

  “Suspicious how?” asked Andrea.

  “It’s hard to be sure with backscatter imaging, but there are a bunch of men there. Some of them are younger than others, but none of them fit the area. Could be spies.”

  When I was an Arbiter, I’d run into spies occasionally. Mysterious men and women with no obvious background or links to the community, pursuing some agenda I didn’t understand and often getting people killed in the process. Knowing what I know now, I’d say some of those people might have been Section 9. Some of them were probably with other agencies, from any of the several competing major governments operating in the solar system. A few were probably corporate spies.

  “They’re armed,” commented Raven. “Long guns.”

  Andrea tapped on the table to bring up the holo. “That probably means we’re in the right place.” She swiped through the self-service menu and paid for our meal.

  Raven was shaking her head. “For people who want to pull off a landmark assassination, they’re not all that professional.”

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Andrea said. “Or one of them might unprofessionally put a bullet right through you. How many of them do you think there are in there?”

  “Lots of overlapping shapes, but I counted six heads.”

  “So we’ll be outnumbered, and they’re armed and loaded. We’ll have to go in hard. Shock and awe, and if you get any resistance at all, just shoot the asshole. We only need one for questions.”

  We left the restaurant and circled around the plaza. Chances were slim that anyone in the townhouse was watching us, and even slimmer that they would think we were anything more than ordinary people, but no one ever died from being too cautious. When we reached the embankment, Andrea checked over her shoulder, then jumped to the top six meters above in a single, smooth leap. She looked around before turning back to face us and finally extending her hand.

  Let’s be quick, she messaged.

  I interlaced my fingers, bent slightly at the knees, and held my hands palm-up at waist level. Raven held my shoulders for balance and placed a foot into my grip.

  “On two,” I said.

  “One,” she counted.

  “Two,” I finished, and lifted. She pushed off and easily cleared the height. Andrea caught Raven’s wrist at the apex of her jump and pulled her over the edge. I followed moments later, and we walked along the rise behind the row of townhouses to the target building at the end.

  Andrea drew her weapon and extended the stock. I knew she prefered rifles, but it was nearly impossible to requisition anything more than a sidearm as an Inspector General. Her fully automatic pistol was the next best thing. Raven seemed nonplussed about using her sidearm, smiling to herself as she chambered a round.

  Like on the other townhouses along the row, there was only a single, ground level window on this side of the building. That’s what made this route of approach so appealing, but it also meant we had a limited view inside until we entered. I kept an eye on it for signs of movement as Andrea approached the door at the rear.

  I drew my weapon while she listened at the door for a few seconds. It was a habit that had saved both our lives many times over. She then glanced up and made a face.

  “Shit,” was all she said.

  I followed her eyeline and saw the camera, small and easy to miss just above the door frame.

  Andrea dove to the right just as a burst of gunfire cut through the door. I returned fire and strafed left to get a clearer line of sight into the window. Raven took six deliberate shots through the hole in the door, while Andrea raked automatic fire across the adjacent wall.

  Through the window, I could make out shapes moving behind the curtain. I fired eight rounds into the glass, then dove through. There was a time when I would have considered a move like that suicidal, but those first shots at Andrea had decided it for me. Our only advantage had been surprise. Without that, we were outmatched, and every passing second tipped the odds further out of our favor. Taking the fight into close quarters meant we could level the field against their rifles and bring our prosthetics into play.

  I hit the floor inside and rolled over my shoulders into a crouch. I snapped my head up and took in the scene around me: a wounded man lying on the floor to my left, two armed men standing to my right, and one man in the hallway behind them firing at the rear door.

  I rushed at the men to my right first. The nearest tried to level his rifle at me, but he’d been facing the hallway. The fractions of a second that turning in place cost him were more than I needed. I batted his rifle with my left hand as hard as I could manage, which was apparently enough to dislocate his shoulder. His arm hung limp, and he staggered.

  As expected, the man behind him was already moving to the right to get a clear shot at me. If he’d had the foresight to notice I was right handed and went left instead, it could have been a real fight. As it was, he crossed directly into my line of fire, and I shot him twice in the throat. He twisted and tripped over himself, then he fell through a glass coffee table before going still on the floor.

  The man with the dislocated arm was a fighter. He’d kept a grip on his weapon, for all the good it would do. I pressed my sidearm under his chin and fired twice more. My aim was more shallow than it should have been, and the man’s head burst open in front of me. Blood and bits of his innermost thoughts splattered across my face.

  I closed my left eye and trusted my right to adapt. As the dead body slumped out of the way, I could see the man in the hallway was down on one knee. I took aim, but at that moment a long burst of automatic fire swept up his body and he fell backward onto the floor. He struggled to turn himself over, but three careful shots peppered his prone form and he finally went limp. Raven appeared moments later.

  “Well, that was harrowing,” she commented blandly.

  “That was all of them?” I asked.

  “That’s six by my count.”

  I walked into the hallway and saw two more bodies on the floor. The door slapped against one as Andrea entered.

  “We only have minutes,” Andrea told us. “Since there’s no one to question, we’ll take their dataspikes. Everything else we can request from MetSec evidence later.”

  She turned and searched the two bodies by the door. Raven was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t place.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’ve got something on your face,” she said.

  * * *

  “Okay, everyone,” Thomas announced, “who wants to hear what I found on the dataspikes?”

  It was late, and the fatigue of the night before seemed to be affecting everyone except Thomas. Andrew had already left for the safehouse hours ago, ostensibly because Edward had been alone for too long in his view, but practically because it was the best excuse to leave and get some rest.

  “I’m all ears, Thomas,” Andrea replied in a weary tone. “This has been a long day. I hope what
ever you found was worth the trouble.”

  “I should think it will be,” he said eagerly.

  I checked the lock on the conference room door and tapped the glass opaque.

  “The material they had in storage can be categorized as follows: video of Maria Valeryevna engaged in sex acts with each of the ministers involved in the conspiracy, records of text and voice communications, and bank transfer records.”

  “Wait, she was sleeping with all of them?” Raven asked, genuinely confused.

  “She was doing a fair bit more than sleeping with them,” Thomas replied. “Some of these acts are quite bizarre. Minister Lindelt for example seems to have a predilection for—”

  “So if they were all being blackmailed,” I interrupted, hoping to prevent him from giving us any details, “does that mean the plot isn’t their idea in the first place?”

  Thomas nodded. “That’s precisely what I would conclude from the material. The plot is being organized remotely and only executed by proxy through the ministers.”

  “Organized from where?” asked Andrea.

  “Network traffic suggests the orchestrators are in Xi’an.”

  9

  The news that our suspects were in Xi’an was not exactly welcome. In many ways, it was easier for Section 9 to operate on a Jovian moon or in the streets of Mars than in the Russo-Sino Territories.

  “Well, this is a bit of an awkward situation,” Raven muttered.

  “That’s one way to put it,” replied Veraldi.

  Even as a black ops unit, we were risking more than our lives by entering the region. The Russo-Sino territories were a loose affiliation of city-states bound by treaty rather than central government. None of those states were members of the Sol Federation. Our blackmailers weren’t even in the Russian north, but the Chinese south. If there was one place on Earth where we would stand out, it was the city of Xi’an.

  Andrea shook it off, sitting up straight. “We’ll need to drop in. We can reach out to Section 3.”

  Veraldi nodded. “That’s a better choice than commercial travel. No secret police on our trail.”

  “We don’t know it was the secret police that got them,” she reminded him. An oblique reference to the Federation agents that had gone missing in the past.

  “I’d agree if it had only been one or two agents. Under the circumstances, I think we’re safe in assuming deliberate action by the RST.”

  She only shrugged in reply, refusing to speculate. It was possible those agents could have been killed by any of the Bratva or Triad groups operating in the area, but in the end I had to agree with Veraldi. It seemed far more likely that the local government had been involved, given the totality of the disappearance. Gangsters would have leveraged for ransom.

  “So we drop into Xi’an,” I added. “Presumably a tight drop with a specific address, right, Thomas?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I have a specific location for you.”

  “Alright,” Andrea continued. “So we drop in and collect items and persons of interest. What’s our exit strategy?”

  Veraldi crossed his arms. “I’d hate to take the overland route.”

  “We can utilize a Fulton-style surface-to-air recovery system,” Thomas suggested. “The transport aircraft can circle at high altitude until we call it down for extraction.”

  Raven gave him a look. “That’s a bold plan. Do you really want to be jerked into the air like a marionette?”

  “I wasn’t aware my presence was required in the first place.”

  “Your presence is definitely required,” Andrea assured him. “We need someone to stay here with our witness, and the skill set requirement for this mission means it has to be Jones. If he’s back here in London, that means you’re the only one who can resolve any technical problems we might run into.”

  “Surely I can do that just as well remotely.”

  She shook her head. “Not a chance. I want you there on the ground.”

  “That verges on superstition, Andrea. But it’s not like I mind. I wouldn’t suggest a method of extraction I wasn’t comfortable with myself.”

  I believed him when he said it. Thomas was such an intellectual powerhouse that it was sometimes easy to forget he was anything else, despite the fact that I’d seen him in action multiple times. He could hold his own in the field when he had to.

  “Good to hear,” Andrea replied. “It will probably take some time to get Section 3 on board. They have their own operational and budgeting priorities, but I want all of you to go home and get your gear together. Assume we’ll be wheels up in six hours. I’m authorizing tier 1 ordnance and equipment for this.”

  That last part caught my attention. We hadn’t used anything more than tier 3 since we came to London. We didn’t need to. Clearing us for the heaviest weaponry we could bring to bear meant Andrea was taking no chances. That was reasonable, considering where we’d be going, but using our best gear was also the kind of operational signature a clever adversary could recognize.

  Andrea continued. “Tycho, I want you to stop by the safehouse and brief Andrew before you get your gear. We’ll all rendezvous here when everything’s ready. Any questions?”

  No one said a word.

  “Good. I’ll see everyone back here in a few hours.”

  I stood and unlocked the conference room. The glass depolarized automatically, and I could see out into an empty office. To an outside observer, it might have seemed odd that our group so frequently met behind closed doors, but we’d also closed multiple cases and were responsible for several major arrests. That success carried a bit of weight, and I had to think it excused any potentially odd habits. Still, we were flying a little too close to the sun for my tastes.

  “Jean-Paul,” Raven called out to me as I walked out. “Do you need a ride?”

  “Sure. I’d been planning to take the train, but I won’t turn down a free ride.”

  She grinned. “Who said anything about free?”

  We walked out to the parking lot behind Vincenzo. He nodded goodnight to us for now and climbed into his black Paracesis. Unlike Raven’s car, his was compact and engineered for performance. It disappeared into the night before we had even pulled into the street.

  As the dense building cover of the city center gave way to the open air along the M84 to Chelsea, I watched the countryside roll by through the car’s street view. The light of the full moon cast the countryside in pale gray, and I could see the faint silhouette of androids moving in the dark to tend to the fields.

  “It’s funny,” Raven began. “I always feel better when we’re about to go on a mission.”

  I turned to her, curious. “Even a mission like this?”

  “I like the challenge. I thrive in a high-pressure environment.”

  “I think a place where we’d either be killed and dissolved in acid or sent to a labor camp for the next five decades is more than a high-pressure environment.”

  Raven laughed softly. “Come on, Tycho. Who are you kidding? You love it too, or you would never have joined Section 9 in the first place.”

  It wasn’t the means I enjoyed, it was the end. The difference I’d made. It was sometimes hard to see with all the terrible things we’ve done, but I believed in why we did them. I had to.

  “We literally get shot at for a living. What kind of person does well in that kind of job?”

  She shrugged. “Not a normal person, maybe. But I can only be who I am, and at least I’m lucky enough to know a few people who are a bit like me.”

  She put her hand on my leg briefly as she said it, and I forgot what I was going to say.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “It’s not shooting people that does it for me. That’s a skill I’ve mastered, but what I really love here is problem-solving and knowing that those problems will affect the lives of billions. I don’t always know if what we’re doing is right, but at least we’re not doing nothing, you know?”

  So Raven felt the same as I did after all. “Yeah. It mat
ters to me too, knowing that our missions will have an impact on people. I just wish I did know that what we were doing was always right.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s right to stop a multinational, interplanetary war.”

  She had me there. Some of our actions were downright questionable, but this time at least we did seem to be on the side of the angels. The death of the Sol Federation’s Secretary-General could plunge the solar system into war, costing billions of people their lives. It was worth it to do whatever we had to do to prevent that.

  “Fair point,” I replied. Three lanes of the highway were closed off ahead of us, and the car merged into the far lane. We passed a pair of towering civil engineering androids pouring fresh plasticrete onto the road.

  “Have you noticed that Andrea’s been assigning us to all the muscle work?” I asked. “I can’t remember the last time I was tasked with any problem-solving.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure she’s got her own reasons,” she said, smiling cryptically. I wasn’t sure what she’d meant by that.

  Minutes later, the car took the slip into Chelsea, and we pulled up to the safehouse.

  “You set it to stop in front?” I teased.

  “I’ll make you walk next time.”

  “You spoil me.” I smiled and tapped the door release.

  “Uh-huh. I’ll see you back at the office later.”

  I climbed out and raised my hand in goodbye. The door closed and the car sped off. I looked up and down the street before going into the building, a combination of training and paranoia. There was no one out in the pristinely manicured neighborhood. The only movement was the wind through the decorative trees lining the streets.

  I entered the safehouse and found Andrew in the living room with Edward. Both men were hunched over a game of Go.