Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1)

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Pig-headed, you mean.’

  ‘Adamant. I’ve arranged security, and the transport is one of our fast-courier ships, quick, private, and armed.’

  ‘I’m going, Fox,’ Terri said, her tone quite firm. ‘People died to keep this secret and to make it work. I’m not going to let them die in vain. The best thing you can do is to sort out your problems here. You have some big problems to sort out.’

  Fox’s scowl just got deeper. ‘Of this I am quite aware.’

  ~~~

  Fox stepped out of the autocab that had brought her down to the area Sandoval had said to meet her from the NW-line which ran along the old New Jersey Turnpike at that point. The coordinates Sandoval had given were within an old, apparently disused, industrial park, which probably meant the place was being used by sprawlers. Sandoval had said to keep things quiet and discreet, no sirens, no flashing lights. No backup if things went wrong, at least not a rapid response. Fox remote checked her pistol and set off into the dark park.

  Sprawlers fell into two categories. Fox did not like putting them in categories, because it tended to make you overlook details, but she had to admit that there were two basic behaviour modes for those who lived in the Sprawl: predators and fungi. The fungi were content to live at the bottom, in the dark amid the shit. They kept themselves to themselves, worked when they could for extra cash or to pay off debts in the majority of cases, and got on with being society’s forgotten minority. The only time anyone cared about them was when they were searching for untapped sources of citizen votes. The predators did not always want out, but they wanted better, and they did not care who they had to eat to get it. Predators were a danger to people wandering blindly into the Sprawl, unaware of how easily a wealthy arcology resident could become a homicide case. Fox watched the people in the shadows around her with an eye to which type she was seeing.

  Not that the predators were that much of a danger to her. Predators the world over, human or animal, knew that there was always easier prey to be had than another predator. Some animals would challenge one of their own kind over mating rights or territory, that was true. Human predators were generally more inclined to stupidity in that regard, but Fox represented neither a threat to anyone’s mates nor to their territory. She saw more than one man sizing her up as she moved through the streets to the building Sandoval had indicated. They saw the way she moved and the way she looked back at them, and none of them followed her.

  The building was, according to the schematic plan Kit had located, an office structure designed to handle deliveries and dispatches. The ground floor was open, a warehouse level with a loading dock. Above it were two floors of offices, but the entire thing had been declared unsafe for use twenty years earlier and had been abandoned for thirty. Even now, looking over the outside of the structure, it was difficult to believe anyone was occupying it. Maybe on the ground floor? There was some chance there was enough solid structure above to keep the rain out, but there were better places to hide yourself in the area.

  Well, Sandoval had said this was where he would meet her and that this was where his contact had indicated the terrorist cell might be located. Maybe they liked the view: the building was near the shore of Arthur Kill, and across that was the walled-off Staten Media Complex in what had once been the correctional facility. Islamic terrorists might like the irony of being right in the line of sight of the filthy imperialist media.

  Sandoval had said to meet her there, but there was no sign of him. There was a low-bandwidth wireless network available, probably from a nearby municipal hub. There was nothing with enough power showing to suggest the park still had a functioning network. She sent out a ping message and waited a couple of minutes, but there was no reply. Okay, so it looked like he had gone in ahead of her and… What? The terrorists had got him and disabled his comms? Well, it was a workable story and she needed to find out what was going on so she would work with it. She found the unlocked fire exit, pulled her pistol from behind her back, and slipped into the building, wondering when the trap would be sprung.

  Because the truth was that Detective Sandoval was troubling her, and that was even without what Kit and Jackson had found in her wine from the night before. No, someone had told the UA cell that she was after Bucksbridge. It could, technically, have been any number of people, all of them cops, but Occam was rearing his head again and tiny things were starting to add up. Like the little fact, easily missed or rationalised away, that Sandoval had known Adamshi was a singer before being told. Sandoval had killed Bucksbridge, supposedly after the little weasel had shot Dillan using a chemical that might have killed her but was sure to wipe her memory of exactly what had happened. That was… convenient.

  The open lower floor gave little in the way of cover, but it was dark. Fox pulled an infrared visor from her pocket and slipped it on. A second later she was seeing shapes, none of them hot enough to be human. The concrete platform the upper floors were on was a grey mass in the darkness, too thick to let heat pass through it, but the ground floor was empty: Sandoval was not here. Tactical assessment: this area was too open. Yes, Fox was exposed, but anyone else down here would be just as easy a target and they knew she was ex-military. The building was not helping: the heavy concrete structure was doing a good job of blocking any and all radio signals from outside. Knowing she should back out and get help, and also knowing she would not be doing that, Fox pressed on to the back of the room where the only interior door suggested that was the way up.

  The structure on the upper floors was lighter: a metal framework held up lighter concrete rafts and plasterboard walls. From the stairwell, Fox could make out two heat signatures. The one on the second floor was large, easily a match for Sandoval. If it was him, he was seated, arms behind his back. The posture was meant to make him look as though he was tied down and, given that she had suspicions but no definite proof, maybe he was. But the other body was on the top floor and seemed a little too small to have taken down the muscled detective. There was likely some attenuation from the concrete, but even so, the other person in the building seemed almost like a child. Of course, she had to assume that they knew she was there…

  If Sandoval had been captured but was on his own, then he was in no immediate danger. If he was working with the bad guys, then they were expecting her to go rescue him, so the best course of action was not to. Either way, going up and hitting the smaller figure was the best tactical plan. She darted up the next flight of stairs, watching her target as she did so. There was no movement and the image cleared a little as Fox climbed. The shape was feminine, still quite small but large enough to be an adult. Hash Remen, the cell’s technical specialist and infiltration expert. She was the one who had wormed her way through the conduits into Clayton Tower’s security hub. She had built and deployed the boxes which had diverted the video feeds. Why would they have her here? For that matter, where were the others?

  Not the current issue. Fox moved in, slipping through the door and finding herself in an open-plan office area. There were closed-off rooms along the far wall, but Remen was not in one of those. She was set up in a cubicle about ten metres away across the open floor, obscured by partitions. Fox noticed the problem with the situation almost immediately as a pair of infrared sighting beams narrowed in on her position. Without the visor, she would not have noticed at all. With it, she had a second to take in one of the turrets mounted on poles midway down the room before she had to dive for cover.

  Bullets ploughed through the partitions and thudded into lightweight desks which had seen better days, and Fox scampered as fast as she could ahead of the hail of ammunition. It sounded like the turrets were mounted with Gatling carbines, nasty weapons with high fire rates and big magazines, but they fired low-calibre bullets and it was fairly clear that Remen was not a skilled user. Five seconds of flying wood splinters and frantic scrambling, and then there was just the whirring of electric motors as the magazines were exhausted.

  ‘Out of ammo, Remen,’ F
ox shouted as she skirted the desks and narrowed in on her prey. ‘Give up and we’ll call it quits. I’ll just lock you up for a few decades and decide not to take this personally.’

  ‘Oh, but this is personal, Lensman bitch.’ A pair of objects, trailing vapour, sailed over the partition walls in Fox’s direction and she pulled in a breath of air and held it. ‘We’re going to see you dead for what you did in Dallas.’

  Fox could see the UA girl circling back, keeping her distance until the gas did its job. She would be wearing a mask now which would restrict her vision a little. Fox moved in, making it look good, and Remen backed away. The way her arms were positioned suggested a rifle or shotgun of some sort, but then Fox had no intention of letting her use that. Deciding that thirty seconds of cat-and-mouse was enough, Fox started for the door, let herself get ten metres from it, and then dropped.

  Remen was cautious, but not too cautious. She left it another fifteen seconds, then moved in slowly. Fox would have shot the prone form as soon as she had line of sight, but this was someone who was there for personal reasons. She wanted this to be personal, or maybe she wanted Fox alive for the rest of the group. Either way, Remen made her last mistake as she walked over to Fox and turned her over with a booted foot.

  Fox raised the pistol which had been lying under her torso, sighted through the in-vision camera display, and fired. Thin metal needles zipped from the muzzle of the little machine pistol, six of them punching through the tactical vest the terrorist was using before the rest peppered the ceiling. A look of shock passed over the face behind the filter mask and then Fox had to roll out of the way as Remen collapsed forward. She was still breathing and she had a pulse; Fox pulled her mask off and headed for the stairwell. Hopefully the gas was non-lethal…

  She drew in another breath at the bottom of the stairs before going through the door onto the middle floor. The gas had probably not got down there, but she was pleased to note that nothing seemed to be affecting her. And this floor was more enclosed: corridors and properly partitioned offices. Sandoval’s heat signature was just past midway down the middle of three corridors. Fox closed on the location wondering whether she was being paranoid… Then again, if she was right, was Sandoval going to try the same trick again?

  Only one way to find out. She stopped outside the office with the heat signature in it. He was sitting some way from the door, which was a bad sign. Fox took her visor off; if she was right about Sandoval, then the visor was about to become a liability. Checking her position with her pistol’s sight, she aimed her foot at the door, kicked it hard, and then threw herself backwards. There was a bright flare of light and a sharp bang, and all Fox’s in-vision displays vanished as her implanted computer crashed.

  ‘Damn clever of you, Fox.’ Sandoval’s voice came through the open door. ‘Figured it out, didn’t you?’

  Fox shuffled around into a crouch, aiming her pistol at the doorway and praying that she would see him in the near-darkness if he came through. ‘Most of it. Remen was involved in the Dallas op. She’s doing this for revenge, but she can’t be the only one, and you were never with UA.’

  ‘No. No way. How did you get past her gas?’

  ‘Damn, you guys need to do better research. Standard Army biomods–’

  ‘Shit! Enhanced muscles, boosted reflexes, and enhanced blood.’

  ‘Uh-huh. They re-engineer our bone marrow to produce more effective immune system cells and blood that’s more efficient at carrying and storing oxygen. Hurts like fuck when they introduce the viral agents, but now I can hold my breath for ten minutes, even in combat. Oh, and the only people who know those details are military, or NIX.’ She heard something, one careful step. He was moving. Would he be stupid enough to speak again and give his position away? ‘There’s that crap you put in my wine last night too. Jackson wasn’t able to identify if, but it’s a lot like a date-rape drug the sprawlers call “Cupie.”’

  ‘The lab boys have a fancy name for it. Increases the libido and suppresses inhibitions, critical thinking, and memory uptake. Makes it way easier to get someone in bed. I wanted you sympathetic, obviously, but mostly I just wanted to fuck you.’

  Fox leaned to her right, bringing her gun around the doorframe. ‘Hope you enjoyed it.’ She pulled the trigger, not sure exactly where he was, but spreading her fire across an arc which covered the near part of the room. Without waiting to see whether she had hit him, she moved on past the door, hitting the magazine eject on her pistol as she went.

  She heard him round the corner into the corridor as she continued down, pulling a fresh magazine from her pocket. Three loud bangs slammed into her ears as he fired into the dark space randomly, and she barely heard his voice for the ringing. ‘Clever, but you’re out, right?’ A pencil beam of light stabbed out into the darkness. ‘You’re out and I’ve–’

  Fox pushed back against the door behind her, almost falling into the room and then rolling sideways. Three more rounds blasted out in the direction of the sound. Plaster exploded and rained down. Fox slammed the magazine into her gun and watched as an ammo counter appeared in-vision, followed by a sighting camera: her implant was back up. Sandoval stepped into the doorway, his torch beam scanning rapidly to locate her. Fox raised her gun and fired. She had time to watch the blood splattering the wall behind him, a spray of heat in the infrared display from her sight. The torch and then the pistol fell from his hands, clattering to the floor, followed by the thud of his body.

  She checked: there was no pulse, but if the EMTs managed to get to the place fast enough… Frowning, she headed for the stairs. If she got to a network and managed to connect, and could get a message through with an urgent tag, and the response was first rate… Chances were the bastard would still be dead, or alive and severely brain-damaged. Canard was going to throw a fit, and she had very limited evidence to prove that Sandoval had been after her. There was the drugged wine, but chain-of-evidence was gone on that. Canard might argue the drug was ‘just’ sexual, which would be just the kind of thing to muddy the waters. This was going to get nasty.

  And then she got a connection to the network and things just got worse. Kit’s image was not animated due to the low bandwidth, but her voice certainly was. ‘Fox. I am glad you are back online. Miss Martins’ vertol transport to the spaceport fell off the flight control radar five minutes ago and is not responding to communications.’

  Fox closed her eyes and took in one, long breath. When she let it out, she used it to express her exact feelings on the current situation. ‘Fuck!’

  Part Seven: Striking Out

  New York Metro, 2nd February 2060.

  ‘You left a UA terrorist alive and a good cop dead.’ The words stung, even if they were being spoken by Canard and were balls. They had been at it for hours, him accusing Fox of murdering Sandoval and colluding with United Anarchy, and Fox repeating the same story over and over again.

  ‘She was wearing body armour or she’d be dead too, and he wasn’t a good cop. He may have been a good agent, but he wasn’t a good cop. He was probably a traitor and definitely a rapist.’

  ‘So you say.’

  Fox looked across the interview room table at him, anger rising. ‘Yes. I do say that. I’ve been saying that for several hours while a friend of mine is in the hands of UA kidnappers. You’ve got the video from my pistol. You know he was hunting me. You’ve got the rather convenient coincidence of EMP bombs being used in this and the Bucksbridge killing. Which, by the way, you reviewed and agreed with Sandoval after a thirty-minute interview.’

  Canard’s eyes narrowed. ‘How did you–’

  ‘When I found out Sandoval was drugging my drink, I had Kit run over all the records NAPA holds on him. That included the investigation into his shooting of Bucksbridge, which I had access to because it was on one of my cases. By the way, Bucksbridge’s fingerprints weren’t found on the gun and there was no evidence of propellant residue on him, and you ignored that too.’

  ‘I’m not the on
e who shot a cop.’

  ‘No, you’re the one who investigated the cop I shot. Do you want me to specifically go on record and say I find your investigation suspect?’

  Canard’s mouth opened and Fox watched emotions flicker over his face. He knew he had screwed up, and he knew the accusation was there now, on the interview recording, even if she had not made it official. If she did, how would the investigation go? What would the review team find? How would the simple accusation affect his voting delegations? She almost smiled: there was every probability that the last question was the one which was causing him the most grief.

  ‘Interview suspended, zero-nine-two-three. Stop recording.’ He gave it a beat before adding, ‘Go home and get some rest. You’re off both cases until this is resolved. I suggest you consider exactly where your loyalties, and future, lie, Inspector.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fox replied, getting up from her chair and heading for the door. ‘I’m going to do that.’

  ~~~

  ‘Mister Martins has left several messages for you,’ Kit said as Fox stumbled around the kitchen pouring herself coffee.

  ‘Yeah, I’d imagine he has. Send him a message, please. I just got out of interview. I’ve been suspended while Canard is investigating Sandoval’s death. And I need some sleep or I’ll be no use to anyone.’

  ‘Message dispatched. Fox, what are we going to do? If you’re suspended, you can’t investigate either case. How will we find Miss Martins?’

  Fox managed a smile. ‘I’m glad you’re invested in this too. Right now, we can’t. And I really do need some sleep.’

  ‘Then, perhaps, the coffee was not a good idea.’

  Fox put the mug of coffee down on the nearest surface and headed for the bedroom. ‘For someone who’s only a few months old, you’re a surprisingly wise girl.’

  Kit smirked at Fox’s retreating back. Age was something of a relative consideration for an AI, and it was also rather nice that Fox was treating her as a person rather than a thing… And then, because she was an AI and not a human, she became aware of some data records in her internal memory which she had not placed there. The existence of those records, which appeared to be data from video sources, troubled Kit considerably and she decided to run a full internal diagnostic before talking to Fox about them. Besides, Fox needed to sleep, and if the metadata on those records was correct, she was going to need all the sleep she could get.