by Terry Mixon
His voice sounded totally badass. Like one of the villains from the latest thrillers from Earth.
“Please,” the man said. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Then start talking. We know about your contact at Janus and we know he told you to let the man into the room. Who is your boss and where has he taken our associate?”
Adam could almost see the lies racing through the man’s head. He leaned close and whispered. “We’ve caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. Don’t lie or I’ll hurt you.”
“Okay! They paid me to let the guy in. I don’t know what he did with the woman. He had me clear the staff from that area of the building, so I think he kidnapped her. I swear I don’t know where she is.”
“Tell us about the man,” Rachel said once she’d taken the voice distortion device back from Adam. “Who is he and who does he work for?”
“I don’t know who he is. He never uses a name. And neither does the person that hired me. It’s all done by mail.”
“Has this man ever worked with you before? The one that kidnapped the woman?”
“Yes.” Aslanov licked his lips. “He did the same thing with a man a few months ago. Just exactly the same. He searched his room one day and kidnapped him that night.”
“You’re certain that he took the man from the hotel?”
Aslanov nodded jerkily. “Yes. He had me purge the records from the system, but the guest was in the room.
“That was a pain in the ass. Security came around asking questions. I had to tell them the guest never checked in, but I don’t think they believed me. They kept coming around.”
“Where did the kidnapper take your guest? Why did he want him?”
“I don’t know!”
Adam took the voice device and put his hand on the man’s quaking shoulder. “You’re not being very helpful. I wonder if your story will change after I whack your knee.”
He slapped the man’s knee with no warning. His hand wasn’t a rolling pin, but the shock of the unexpected impact made the man think it was for a moment. Aslanov yelped and then started shivering even more strongly.
Rachel shook her head and retrieved the device. “Now, now. I’m sure Mister Aslanov can make it up to us. He must know something about the Janus mail address. People don’t just get involved in a criminal enterprise without a very good reason.”
“I never met the person,” Aslanov said. “They contacted me via mail and offered me a lot of money to assist their man. I didn’t know it was going to involve a kidnapping. Once I helped them, I had no choice but to keep doing it. They said they’d make me disappear if I didn’t.”
Adam pulled Rachel a little bit away. “I don’t think he knows anything.”
“Sadly, I’m afraid you’re right.”
She stepped over to Aslanov. “You’re in luck today, Vasily. I believe you. We’re going to finish searching your apartment and then we’ll leave.
“You have a choice to make. You can either keep your mouth shut and no one will be the wiser, or you can tell the Janus contact and they’ll think you’re a liability. Unless you want to go wherever our associate went, I recommend you think long and hard about talking.”
* * * * *
Rachel finished tossing the man’s apartment but came up empty. Other than his eclectic porn collection, she found nothing untoward.
She erased his security logs and cut him mostly loose. By the time he freed himself, she and Hale would be long gone.
They made their way clear of the residential block at an easy pace, just two people in the crowd. No one would remember them.
“What now?” Hale asked. “We’re back to square one.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “We know that your brother got into the port and then back out some way that didn’t show up on their scanners. He didn’t vanish there.”
“Do you think Aslanov will keep his mouth shut?”
She shrugged. “He will, if he’s smart. They’ll kill him if he becomes a loose end. Hell, they might come and have a chat with him themselves. I left some bugs in case they do.”
He gave her a look that said he wasn’t happy. “You’d let them kill him?”
“I have no sympathy for him. He helped someone try to kill me. Odds are he did the same for your brother.”
Hale digested that in silence for a while. “What will you do now? They’ll be looking for you.”
“I’ll have to find a place to lay low. That won’t be hard. This station has all kinds of spots that no one visits very often. I stole the ex-RIS agent’s van, disabled the tracking units, and the disguised ID. In a pinch, that’ll do.”
“That’s not really what I meant, though it’s a good point. I mean in your investigation?”
They walked into a commercial area near the residential block. She kept them off the main passages as they headed back in the general direction of Hale’s shop.
Security might still be able to find them in the cameras if someone thought it necessary to look for her here. She couldn’t help that.
“I have the program you put into Janus’s comp system. I’ll try to find out where that address goes. Once I have a name, I can follow the trail to the person calling the shots. It’ll be the guy I mentioned earlier, though. Randy Evans. The VP in charge of the FTL program.”
Hale nodded slowly. “Right. Why would someone from Janus be hiring ex-RIS spies to kidnap and kill people?”
She smiled. “Because he has a secret. Something worth killing over. And something connected to your mission on Mars.”
“That makes no sense. How could that be related?”
“Damned if I know. Once we figure it out, we’ll be a long way toward finding your brother.”
They walked a few blocks in silence. Hale finally spoke. “Do you think he’s still alive?”
“No. They were going to kill me and burn my body, so I’m afraid that’s where Zane ended up. This isn’t a rescue mission anymore. Now it’s payback.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if I care enough to want revenge. Not about Zane. Maybe over what they did on Mars.”
Rachel stopped and pulled him up short. “You’re being an ass. Your brother came here with all that information about what happened on Mars. He cared enough about you to risk his life. And to lose it. That deserves your full attention.”
“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ve hated him for ten years. That doesn’t just go away. I need to think about this.”
“Then I suggest you do. I’ll call once I have anything, so go back to your place. If anyone comes around, you never saw me after breakfast. Just keep your head down and focus on what security is doing with the sabotage.
“Someone obviously wants to silence you, too. Just not as openly. I’ll solve my mystery, you solve yours. When one of us catches a break, we’ll get back together.”
“I suppose,” he said. “I can call the number you used this morning?”
She nodded. “It’s a throwaway. No one will be able to trace me. I’ll see that you get a new com tomorrow. We’ll keep changing them to keep the bad guys in the dark.
“Look, I know you don’t like Zane, but he was a good person. He didn’t betray you. He gave everything for you. The least you can do is respect him in the end.”
Without waiting for Hale’s response, she ducked into the crowd and headed off. She’d make a trip down to the maintenance levels. They were always good for little hidey-holes.
She hoped Hale came around. His help might make the difference between success and failure. Or even death.
If she could reevaluate him, he owed the same to his brother. She should’ve said that. Ah, well. Sometimes the perfect words came after the moment had already passed. She’d save them for later.
For now, she needed to find a secure place to work and eventually get some sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Adam had barely gotten to the new ship his construction team was working on when K
ira Houston called him back to the station. Security was looking for him.
Jason hadn’t been out this morning, so he’d assumed the security techs had him at the launch bay. Maybe they’d found something else.
Detective Quinn was waiting for him when he stepped off the shuttle from the construction slip. “Mister Hale. Sorry for calling you back, but I need to ask you a few follow-up questions.”
“Sure. Here or at the bay?”
“Here’s fine, but we’ll be heading for the bay before I let you go. Have you seen Rachel Price since we spoke yesterday?”
He decided he wouldn’t mention last night. That would open all kinds of problematic lines of inquiry. “I did meet her at a diner shortly after we spoke. Why?”
“She’s vanished,” the detective said bluntly. “I went to see her at her hotel, and they told me she checked out abruptly yesterday. Did you tell her you’d spoken to us?”
He nodded. “I did, but she didn’t seem concerned. She said she’d found out something at the port. Apparently, my brother had put in an appearance there before he disappeared. Not the public part. The secure storage area.”
Quinn nodded. “So I heard. How did she find out?”
“She asked nicely at the administrative offices. All above board.”
“Why would that cause her to disappear?”
“I’m not the detective. You tell me.”
The woman smiled without much humor. “I get that a lot. The ID she boarded the station with is a fake, though it’s a very good one. She’s not who she claims to be.”
“Then who is she?”
The detective shrugged. “I don’t know yet. If she contacts you, call us.”
“Sure. Any idea why my brother was sneaking into port storage?”
This time the woman’s shrug was more elaborate. “Port security is in charge of that, and they don’t feel like sharing. If I find out anything about your brother, I’ll pass it on. The fact he was able to slip in there is kind of scary, though.
“What did your brother do for a living? All they’d tell me is that he worked for the government in a sensitive position.”
Adam mimicked her shrug. “He never told me much. I figure it had a security clearance of some kind.”
“I figured as much,” Quinn said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. Come on. I’ll walk you to the launch bay.”
“Did your people find anything?” Adam asked.
“The short answer is yes, but I can’t give you the long answer. It’s technical. I’ll let the techs and your guy tell you in detail. Boiled down, somebody messed with your flight controls, too. Something subtle and not altogether successful, I gather.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You really upset someone. Are you sure one of your diver friends doesn’t want you dead?”
“Someone obviously does. I just hope your guys can narrow down the list of people.”
They took an elevator down to the docks and walked into his shop. There were several security techs looking over the dive ship’s controls with Jason answering questions.
One of the techs looked up as they entered. “Mister Hale, I’m Lieutenant Vitter from the security lab. I’ve been examining your ship, and I think we’ve found something. I’d tell you to look at it, but I’m not sure you’d know what you were seeing.”
Hale shook the man’s hand. “I’ll settle for a layman’s explanation, thanks.”
The man gestured at the partially disassembled gear. “Someone reprogrammed the firmware to lock the controls if you hit a certain pressure threshold. You’d have dropped like a stone.”
That sent a chill up Adam’s spine. “What depth?”
“Ten bars.”
He hadn’t gone that low this time, but it had been close. If he’d been doing anything other than looking for lightning, he would’ve exceeded that limit.
“Any clue who might have done it?” he asked.
“Whoever it was, they had to plug into the port here,” the man said. “We’re checking for DNA and other evidence now. One thing I can say for sure, whoever did this knew the code in the hardware backwards and forwards.”
“When was the last time the firmware was updated?” Quinn asked Jason.
The Asian man shrugged. “Not since we bought the ship. There’s been no need to update it and risk any bugs. Adam’s gone below ten bars before so this has to be a relatively new addition.”
“I have something,” the other tech said. “Some skin cells on a rough edge near the port. Even a little blood. The hacker must’ve scraped his arm. Since this hatch is normally closed and Mister Chang said they haven’t needed to upgrade the firmware, I’m pretty sure it has to have come from the intruder.”
The tech gathered a sample and put it into a portable device. A few moments later, it beeped. “I have a sequence,” he said. “Running it through our database. I have a hit.”
He looked up at them and frowned. “It’s Mister Chang.”
“That’s impossible,” Jason said. “I told you, I haven’t been in there.”
“That does make this awkward,” Quinn said. “Mister Chang, I need you to come back to the station and answer a few more questions.”
Adam put out a hand. “This is bull. He’s my friend. He didn’t do this.”
The detective shrugged. “I go where the evidence leads me, Mister Hale. Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation. If so, we’ll find it.”
“And if there isn’t?”
She smiled grimly. “Then I’ll arrest Mister Chang for attempted murder.”
* * * * *
Rachel had found a deserted inspection station and crashed there that night. She woke with a crick in her neck. The dilapidated chair was a lot less comfortable than her hotel bed, but it beat a furnace.
She’d set her data mining bots to searching the Janus network carefully for any information on the mail address linked to the hotel and for access to the various protected subsystems. They’d keep poking around until they either found a way in or believed they’d been detected. In the latter case, they’d go dormant.
She’d also checked to see why her alert program at the hotel hadn’t warned her about the impending attack. The answer was simple enough. The man who’d tried to kill her had sent his message from a different address and hadn’t used her room number.
It was probably the account used by the dead man. She’d set up an alert for the new address, though she doubted the assassin had shared it with anyone.
The substation had minimal bathroom facilities, but they were more than she’d had in some field situations. She took care of business and opened a self-heating breakfast pack from the supplies she’d picked up last night.
It was crap, but better than what she’d eaten at the diner with Hale.
She brought up her comp as she ate and checked on the status of the bots. They’d located the address inside Janus that had sent all of the instructions to Vasily Aslanov. Whoever had used it had left nothing to recover.
There might be something in the system backups, but she didn’t have access to those. At least not yet.
She tagged the address with a watcher to let her know the next time someone accessed it and to record what they did.
The bot looking at the personnel files had managed to penetrate the security firewalls. No surprise. It was the best the RIS could devise, constantly updated to meet an ever evolving game of protection versus penetration.
Rachel brought up the data she had on the newly deceased ex-RIS agent and did a facial recognition search for him using his ID image. It wasn’t the easiest way to identify someone, but she knew he hadn’t changed his appearance. There was no guarantee he hadn’t used a false name, though. She would have.
To be thorough, she started one for the last remaining living agent as well.
It took a while, but she finally got a hit. He’d been using the name Ulysses Abrams. Shock of shocks, he worked in the FTL department. He was a special assistant to Senior Vi
ce President Randy Evans.
She narrowed the search for the second man and tagged him almost immediately. He was living as Everett Gaston, also a special assistant to the almost certainly dirty Evans.
Finally, a break. She knew who to look for. Evans would be inaccessible behind his security, but the second spy would be leading the search for her. She could return the favor and maybe take him alive. The questions he could answer might make everything clear.
The first thing she needed to do was alert the Inspector General’s office at RIS headquarters. Now that she had reasonable suspicion that Alice Evans was dirty, she needed to get the ball rolling.
That’s when she ran into the first real sign that Janus was searching hard for her. The transmission was under an assumed name, but it didn’t complete. It went into some kind of holding status.
The bland notice assured her that the communications techs were aware of the issue and working diligently to correct it.
Uh huh.
Since they hadn’t targeted the name she’d used specifically, it had to be some kind of scanning program. If the message was from a known business or person and seemed innocuous, they’d probably let it through. Eventually. Anything hinky would never leave the station.
Since she’d encrypted her message, it would stay in this state until they found out her cover name hadn’t sent it. At that point, they’d work on tracing it back to her.
By the time they did, she’d have moved on, but they’d still know for sure that she was alive before much longer. As if they weren’t operating under that assumption already.
An attempt to delete the message was unsuccessful, also no surprise. If she could get access, she might be able to hack the com systems and see what she could do from there.
Well, she’d best pack up and go looking for a new hole to hide in. She’d picked up clothes and makeup to disguise herself last night when she’d gotten her supplies. It was time to use them. The bad guys would almost certainly tap into security cameras and try to locate her that way.