Ballistic

by Marko Kloos

  “I’ll be on the flight back to Pallas at the end of the week. But many of these kids will die. Yours and mine. Our side and theirs. Let me do this one thing before I leave. We can try to put a stop to it.”

  “You know how I feel about the Pallas way,” Dahl said.

  “I am asking you to trust me.”

  Dahl looked from her to Haimo and back. Idina was happy to see the first tiny flicker of doubt crossing Haimo’s expression when the Gretian police captain looked at him with something like pity, as if he was already dead.

  “I do believe I need some coffee this morning,” Dahl finally said. “I did not get enough sleep last night. Too much time spent digging through debris for dead colleagues, you see.”

  She turned and left the room. The door closed behind her with a soft click that seemed very loud in the silence that followed in her wake.

  Haimo looked at Idina again, and the contempt returned to his face. He pursed his cheeks and spat onto the floor next to his chair. Then he sat back as far as his tether allowed and smirked.

  Idina had lost any sort of sympathy she had once felt for him due to his age. He’d been shown the road map to the sort of ruin that was waiting for him at the end of the path he had chosen to tread, and he had not taken the chance to step off. Instead, he had quickened his pace. Dumb kid or not, twenty people had died last night, and his deception had been instrumental to their deaths. If he wanted annihilation and ruin, she would give him a taste of it.

  She pulled her kukri from its sheath. The blade made a faint ringing sound as she drew it free and stepped in front of the interrogation table. She raised her arm and brought the kukri down on the table with all the force her anger would let her muster. The monomolecular edge bit through the steel surface with an almost melodic pitch as her blow cut the tabletop apart before Haimo could finish blinking in surprise. He recoiled with a yell. She kicked the halves of the tabletop aside. They were still attached to the floor with bolts, so she had to give each half a few kicks to bend them out of her way, but it felt good to stomp something with her boots until it broke. Haimo tried to retreat backward, toppling his chair over in the process, but the tether would only let him get a step or two before it pulled taut and yanked him down on his ass.

  Idina swung her kukri in a short arc in front of Haimo. This time, he let out a frightened scream. The blade came down between his legs and chopped through the steel tether and the eye hook that anchored it to the floor. The tether snapped, and the sudden release of tension sent Haimo sprawling on his back. She stepped in front of him. He raised his shackled hands in front of him in an instinctive gesture of defense. She knew that if she aimed her swing well, she could sever both of his arms in one stroke without much effort. All she felt right now was pure, cold, silvery rage.

  She pointed the kukri at the earbud Haimo had thrown against the wall.

  “Pick it up now.”

  He didn’t seem to have any trouble comprehending the meaning of the Palladian words even without the assist of a translator AI. He scrambled to a sitting position, then scooted back until he was up against the wall. When he had made it as far away from Idina as he could, he got to his feet, his face rigid with fear.

  She nodded in the direction of the earbud, her kukri still pointed toward it. Haimo made his way around her, as far along the wall as he could, and walked over to the earbud. Then he picked it up and moved to put it into his ear. Once it was seated, Idina nodded with grim satisfaction.

  “If that leaves your ear without permission, I will pound it back into your skull so hard that it will remain a permanent part of your head forever,” she said. “Now pick up the chair and sit down on it. Don’t open your mouth unless you are answering a direct question, or your tongue will be the next thing on that floor. Understand?”

  He nodded without looking at her, still all but paralyzed with fear. It took him a few moments to pick up the chair with his shackled hands and put it upright to sit down on it. Once he was seated, she took a step forward to close the distance and crouched down in front of him to bring their eyes to the same level. He flinched when she held up her kukri between them.

  “This is what will happen now,” she said with certainty. “The Gretian police captain will come back into this room in a few moments. When she does, you will tell her everything you know about the people who did this. You will answer every question without lying or evading. If I think that you are not telling the truth—or gods forbid, if you start talking tough again—I will claim Alliance jurisdiction over you. Then I will haul you off to the brig on Sandvik Base, where I will leave you alone in a locked room with the comrades of the troopers that died last night. The ones whose pieces they had to pick out of the rubble.”

  She turned the kukri between them. The overhead light in the room glinted off the edge as she moved the blade slowly.

  “And every one of the people in the room with you will have one of these.”

  His gaze went from the blade to her. She could almost smell the fear that was radiating from him in waves.

  “Do you understand that?” she asked.

  It took him a few moments to work up the spit to speak.

  “I am not afraid of dying,” he finally said, in a strained voice that contradicted the statement.

  She smiled without humor.

  “But you should be,” she said. “You should be terrified. Because they wouldn’t just hack you into tiny bits. They would peel your layers from you first. From head to toe. See how long they can keep you alive while they carve every scrap of skin from your body for what you helped do to their friends. And if you think I am just trying to scare you, look into my eyes and tell me what you see there. Tell me that I am lying.”

  He didn’t take her up on the challenge. Instead, he swallowed hard and stared past her.

  “If you dare to test my patience again, you will find that I have none remaining,” she continued. “The only reason you’re not already in bloody chunks on the floor is because I wouldn’t want to deny my comrades the pleasure of dealing with you. They have no outlet for their grief right now. I am hoping you are dumb enough to volunteer yourself for that purpose. It would give me the only true and pure joy I’ve ever had on this planet.”

  She sheathed her kukri slowly and deliberately, not so much for psychological effect but out of necessary respect for the weapon. The sheath kept the blade sharpened and in harmless stasis by suspending the cutting edge in a magnetic field, and careless sheathing wasn’t wise when that edge could shear through laminated battle armor. When the kukri had locked into the sheath properly, she raised herself out of her crouching stance and walked back across the floor to the spot near the door where she had been standing before, kicking a bent table leg out of her way, demonstratively unconcerned about having her back turned to the now untethered Haimo. He couldn’t release her weapons even if he overpowered her, and she knew she’d stomp him into the floor if he tried. But he was cowed now, doubtlessly asking himself if his willingness to die for the cause included getting skinned bit by bit by a platoon of pissed-off Palladians with extremely sharp knives beforehand.

  The door opened a silent minute later, and Dahl walked back into the room. The Gretian policewoman looked at the remnants of the interrogation table in front of Haimo. She turned her gaze toward Idina and raised an eyebrow.

  “It fell over,” Idina explained.

  “It fell over,” Dahl repeated wryly. “Of that I have no doubt. But I am sure something interesting happened before it did.”

  “Just working to remove some linguistic barriers, that’s all.”

  “I see.” Dahl looked over at Haimo, who still looked like he was a food animal trying to avoid the attention of a nearby predator, intently studying the same spot on the wall without moving any part of his body.

  “Well,” Dahl said. “Where were we before I felt a sudden need for coffee?”

  “We were about to ask Haimo here a few questions,” Idina replied. “I do
believe we have resolved our earlier technical difficulties in your absence.”

  “I am very glad to hear it. So, what is it that you think we may want to talk about, Haimo?” Dahl asked in an agreeable voice.

  “You want to know about the bombing last night,” Haimo replied after a brief, nervous glance at Idina, who returned it stone-faced.

  “That is correct. I will not waste my time and yours by playing a game of pretend where you say that you do not know anything about it. We want to know who was behind it. And we will stay in this room until we find out. I may have to go for coffee every now and then.”

  He looked up at them, the fear and inner conflict evident in his face. After a few seconds, he lowered his eyes, and the tension dropped from his shoulders.

  “They are called Odin’s Wolves,” he said, saying the name of the group in a tone of voice that made him sound like a schoolboy telling his classmates something he feared they would ridicule.

  “Odin’s Wolves,” Dahl repeated. “That is the first time I have heard of them. Who are they?”

  Haimo shrugged.

  “They are the resistance,” he said. “They will rid us of the occupiers. Save us from serfdom to the rest of the system.”

  “I see. Are you a part of Odin’s Wolves, Haimo?”

  He shook his head.

  “I wish. But they do not take people like me. I was not in the military. I do not know all that much about guns and fighting. But they said there is always a way in if I prove myself.”

  “And they told you to lead us to Vigi Fuldas,” Dahl said.

  Haimo nodded.

  “They told me that if I got arrested, I should tell the police where I bought the gun if things turned too hot for me.”

  “Fuldas was with them?”

  He nodded again.

  “He was not in the military either. But he was good with guns. Fixing them, I mean. Removing biometric locks, that sort of thing. They can always use someone like him.”

  “Who is they?” Dahl asked. “Who set you up with Fuldas and told you to name him if you got busted with that gun? Not the group. I know that name now. Tell me about the people.”

  The pained look of inner conflict returned to Haimo’s face as he considered the question.

  “If I tell you and you arrest her, they will know.”

  “You know what’s waiting for you if you don’t tell us,” Idina reminded him.

  He squirmed for a few more seconds, then shook his head and sighed.

  “She is someone my father knew in the army,” he said. “Someone from his unit. We talked about guns one day, and she told me where I could find one to buy. Her name is Elin.”

  “Does Elin have a last name?” Dahl probed.

  “Elin Sorenson. Corporal Elin Sorenson. But we have not talked in weeks. I do not even know where she lives. I just ran into her one day on the Artery ride home from the spaceport. We met a few times after that, but always out in the city, after work.”

  “You know what happened the last time you gave us a name and we went looking,” Idina said. “You can’t be dumb enough to believe we’ll fall for the same trick again.”

  “I did not know,” Haimo said. “You said to be honest. I am being honest, I swear it. You know I support what they do. I am not sorry those invaders are dead. But I had no idea what the Wolves were planning.”

  I don’t doubt that, Idina thought. If these people are military veterans, they know better than to let some expendable kid in on their operational plans.

  She exchanged a glance with Dahl, which told her that the other woman had roughly the same assessment of that answer.

  “So Corporal Elin Sorenson said she knew your father. And she told you about Odin’s Wolves,” Dahl continued. “Go on.”

  “We got to talking after that thing on Principal Square a few months back,” Haimo said. “The bombing. Everyone at work said it was the Alliance because most of the dead were loyalists. She did not tell me anything about the Wolves at first. I was telling her that I wished I knew how to fight back while we still can. Before we become just a Rhodian labor colony with Palladian guards.”

  He glanced at Idina again.

  “She set me up with Vigi. She gave me a loan, too. For the gun. A thousand ags. I told her I would pay her back over time. She said I could make payments whenever I had anything to spare, no hurry.”

  “Did you sleep with her?” Dahl asked.

  From the way his face reddened and his eyes darted around the room before settling on a spot half a meter in front of his feet, Idina knew the answer.

  “She is young. Much younger than my father,” he said in a slightly defensive tone.

  “So you are together. But you have not seen her in a few weeks.”

  Haimo shrugged.

  “She is taking a trip south to Skalanes. To stay with family for a bit. And we are not together. We are just bed friends sometimes. You know how it works. I do not have time to be with anyone.”

  “I am sure that is exactly what she told you,” Dahl said. She looked at Idina and sighed. “Young people can be such simpletons. Soak a juvenile brain in hormones, and it turns into modeling putty.”

  “It would have been better if you had told us the full story two days ago,” Idina said to Haimo. “You must realize by now that they used you to get us to go after Fuldas.”

  Haimo shrugged again.

  “If that is true, then I have done my share for the Wolves. Once they win, they will open the detention facilities. And people like me will get to leave first. The political prisoners.”

  Idina suppressed a snort.

  “Political prisoners,” she said.

  “That is what I am.”

  “What you are,” she said, “is a single-use tool. And they just used and discarded you.”

  She could tell he wanted to contradict her, maybe mouth off with something clever, but her warning from earlier still seemed to be fresh in his mind because he bit off his response.

  “Fuldas was far more useful to them than you are,” she continued. “And they killed him without a second thought when they sprung that trap. Just to tie up a loose end before it could get off the planet and out of their reach. What do you think they would do with you if you weren’t in here?”

  She shook her head. The rage from earlier had dissipated, leaving only disgust behind in its wake.

  “Think about that sometime. In between your fantasies about Elin giving you a hero’s welcome.”

  “Do you believe him?” Dahl asked when they left the interrogation room half an hour later, satisfied they’d squeezed every drop of useful information out of Haimo’s brain.

  “I believe that he believed everything he told us,” Idina replied. “Whoever recruited him knew exactly what they had in him, and how to use him best. And we fell for it.”

  “They must have known he would give us the rest,” Dahl said. “That is why he only knew one contact other than Fuldas. That way you know exactly who talked when the police come calling. And one person cannot compromise more than one other person in the group.”

  “So Elin probably knows by now she’s been burned.”

  Dahl nodded.

  “If there even is an Elin. They have groomed him for this. They know how to operate in covert cell structures. I very much doubt they would make a mistake and give up one of their own by accident like that. I think that when we go looking for that name, we will find that she died in the war. Or that she never existed.”

  “There was somebody,” Idina said. “Whatever her name is, she recruited this kid. Slept with him, groomed him. Put thoughts of glorious nonsense in his head. Spent time with him in the city. They rode the Artery together. You dig deep enough, you’ll discover a face to go with the name. Just look at wherever he popped up in the last three months, and sooner or later you’ll find her, too.”

  Dahl smiled and shook her head lightly.

  “Listen to you, giving me investigative pointers. Maybe you have come
to like this line of work more than you admit.”

  “No, thank you. Not enough interrogation tables in the building for that. I’d be bad for the operating budget.”

  “It was a fair trade, I think. An old table for the truth. What little truth he knew.”

  “Do you think they made up Odin’s Wolves for him, too?” Idina asked. “It sounds exactly like the kind of romantic martial tale you’d spin to rope in young idealists like him.”

  “There is someone out there behind all of this,” Dahl said. “We know they are very organized. They operate in cells. They have money, and access to military equipment. They know how to set sophisticated bombs and execute infantry ambushes. Whether they call themselves ‘Odin’s Wolves’ or not, we have to call them something.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments.

  “Whatever you do once I’m gone, you need to take your steps with care,” Idina said. “This is no longer police business, if it ever was. This is well beyond the JSP. It’s a full-blown military insurgency. These people know how we operate. And right now they are a step and a half ahead of us everywhere we turn.”

  “Five years after the war,” Dahl said. “Why now? And to what end? They cannot hope to defeat the Alliance on the ground. Not if you gave all the Gretian combat veterans a gun and sent them off to fight in the streets.”

  “I don’t think it’s about winning a war. I think it’s about starting one. Whoever is behind this wants to turn the clock back about nine years. For whatever insane reason.”

  They stepped out into the atrium and walked toward the reflecting pool. Outside, the summer was giving one last valiant effort, offering up blue skies and sunshine on a twenty-five-degree day. The third of Gretia’s planetary seasons was about to take over and bring with it cool nights and the first frosts.

  This place is teetering on the edge of a kukri right now, Idina thought. If it topples the wrong way, the whole system is going to catch fire again, from Hades all the way out to Pallas. And I have to leave at the worst possible time.

  “Odin’s Wolves,” Dahl said next to her in a tired voice. “Gods and predators. At what point in all our histories has anything good happened whenever some fool put those on a single banner to march under?”