Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  “Those could be planted.”

  “We have you on video with it in your hand,” said Burke.

  Video. Right. There had been a drone, along with whatever video surveillance covered the street normally. “People fake video all the time.”

  “Let’s put the gun aside for a moment,” said Mallory. “It’s a minor charge. Nothing we’re really interested in for now. You tell us what happened, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Sure. Burke mentioned finding my pistol, then Mallory dismissed it to build goodwill, hoping I’d feel grateful and tell her something. “A woman was watching my house. I went out to confront her, she ran, and I chased her.” They’d have seen that much on camera, so I didn’t lose anything by sharing it.

  “Is that when you shot at her?” Mallory asked.

  “Nice try,” I said. If they’d checked my weapon—and they absolutely had—they’d know that it hadn’t been fired. I never got off a shot. “I didn’t shoot at anybody.”

  “So who did?” she asked.

  “You’re the ones with the camera footage,” I said. “Did the drones pick anything up?”

  “I have to say, you’re pretty calm for a man who’s been shot.”

  “What can I say? Not my first time.” I noticed that she didn’t answer my question. Not that I had expected her to. I hadn’t answered hers, either.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  I decided to push the issue. “If I had something to look at, maybe it would jog my memory. Video, or something.”

  She considered it. “We got some video of people fleeing the scene, but nothing very useful. Bad angles and not enough light. We’re checking other cameras in the area, but we’re not optimistic. It’s like they knew where the video equipment was.” Mallory surprised me with her honesty, or at least partial honesty.

  “Interesting,” I said, more because I felt like she wanted me to speak than because I actually believed it. I had a few cards I could play. I could talk about the Cappan hybrids, or the fact that Ganos had a clean picture of one of them. I definitely didn’t want to bring her name up, but I could work out some sort of transfer of information if it would help my cause with the police. But I couldn’t see any profit in giving away my leverage. I only wanted to share information if I thought I could get something in return, and so far Mallory hadn’t offered anything of value.

  “Your turn,” she said, as if reading the intent in my silence. “Since we’re in a sharing mood, how about you share something with us?”

  “I chased the woman when she ran, like I said. She was faster than me, but I kept up. I came around the corner and there she was, with a partner. I stopped, and before we could do much else, the shooting started.”

  “Did you shoot first?” she asked.

  “You know I didn’t,” I said. She was repeating the same question, trying to trip me up. Even though it was a standard technique, it pissed me off.

  “How would we know that?”

  Nice try. She wanted me to mention my pistol not being fired so they could pin the pistol on me cleanly. “You have video.”

  “It’s not clear who fired when,” she said.

  “Like I told you, I didn’t fire a weapon.”

  She frowned. I might have frustrated her. I have that effect on people. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be. Let me be blunt. Either you start talking, or we have you transferred to a confinement room until you’re well enough for jail.”

  I thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out how little I could tell them while still maintaining my freedom. I could have called for a lawyer as Dernier had suggested, but I still held out hope that they’d give me some information if I played along. I needed that more than I needed to stay out of jail, at least for the moment. Besides, I read her for a bluff. They weren’t going to take an injured veteran into custody.

  “There were two groups of people. The woman I chased and her partner were in the street, in front of me. They didn’t have weapons out initially, and I didn’t see when they drew them, but I think I heard them fire. I couldn’t swear to it, as I’d lost sight of them by that point. Another group—one I didn’t see—started shooting. I don’t know if they fired at me or at the other two, because they opened up from behind me, but I’m pretty sure they fired from an elevated position. It sounded like pistols, and since they were firing from what might have been thirty-five meters away, that might explain why they missed the first shot. It happened fast. One minute the woman was talking, the next minute everything exploded—including my leg. You see I’m wounded, right? I can’t believe you don’t have any clues.” She had tried to goad me, so I returned the favor.

  “Nothing except the body,” said Mallory.

  I didn’t flinch. My dig at her had struck home, and she wanted to rattle me, so my natural reaction was to not let her. It did pique my curiosity, though. “You found a body?”

  “That seems to happen a lot with you,” said Burke.

  I didn’t acknowledge him, keeping my eyes on Mallory. Burke had gotten to me the first time we met, but this time I was prepared for it. “I can describe the two people who I saw, if that helps identify the corpse.”

  “We think it was from the second group,” said Mallory. “It appeared to have fallen from a height, which would coincide with your information that they fired from above. The two people you confronted fled, though one of them may have been injured.”

  “You saw them on video?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about them? The way they moved?”

  Mallory paused, flicking a quick glance toward her partner, then back to me. “There may have been some anomalies.”

  I chuckled. “Anomalies. That’s a good way to put it.”

  “You saw something?” she asked.

  “I may have noticed some anomalies,” I said.

  Burke interrupted before his partner could continue. “Right. You’re in the middle of a gunfight and you notice some anomalies. Bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?” I turned slowly to face him, partially making a show of it and a little bit because it’s difficult to move with one dead leg. I kept a flat expression on my face.

  “Bullets flying all around, you diving for cover, and you expect me to believe you were tracking other people and their movements? Why are you lying to us?”

  “What the fuck is your problem, Burke?”

  He took a couple steps toward my bed, fists clenched.

  I didn’t back down. “Come on, take a swing at me. Hit the guy who’s already in a hospital bed.”

  Mallory put herself between us before things went any further. “Okay, let’s calm down. Both of you.”

  “I’m just lying here,” I said, in a passive-aggressive tone designed to piss Burke off. Part of me wanted him to hit me. It would suck, but it would give me some leverage. Mallory was okay, though, so I addressed my comments to her. “Look. I’m not your typical witness, okay? Bullets start flying and most people lock up. It happens all the time, I know, I’ve seen it. But once you’ve been there a few times, things start to slow down. Your body reacts, and your brain doesn’t shut down quite as much. So yes. I saw the two people retreat, and they moved really, really fast.”

  “Care to tell us what you think about that?” asked Mallory.

  “About what?”

  “The people. How they moved. Do you have thoughts?”

  “That depends,” I said. “Are you going to clear me of all charges, including whatever you’re pretending to have about Gylika, so I can leave the planet if I want to? I’m starting to feel like it might not be very safe around here.”

  “This isn’t a negotiation,” she said.

  I smiled. “Of course it is.”

  “We could leave,” said Burke. “The shooting has been in the news, and you’re a celebrity, so by now people know you’re here. Maybe we don’t leave a security team.”

  “Your partner
isn’t going to leave me here to get murdered, asshole. Besides, I’ll have military security here in thirty minutes.” I was bluffing. At least partly. If I called in favors and said I was in danger, they might send someone.

  “Will you two fucking stop it?” Mallory glared at Burke, then at me. “This is complicated enough without you two pissing on everything to mark your territory.”

  I pretended to be chastised because that’s what she wanted to see. I didn’t care, though. If they weren’t going to clear me of Gylika’s death, I didn’t owe them anything. Giving them more information wouldn’t help. If I told them that there were Cappan-human hybrids running around the city, at best they’d take a note. More likely they’d lock me up in a psych ward. “All I can tell you is that they moved unusually fast. One of them leaped exceptionally high.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “That’s all I’ve got while I’m still restricted to this planet. Yes.”

  “Mr. Butler, you’re making this hard on yourself,” she said.

  “Probably,” I agreed. “That would certainly be consistent with my nature.”

  She almost smiled, but shook her head. “I’m afraid you’re too close to things for us to release you at this time, especially in light of this new situation and the pending gun charge. Consider yourself restricted to this room until further notice. We’ll leave a protection team here.”

  “I really can get the military,” I said.

  “Do what you want,” she said, “but you’re not free to go.”

  “You get anything from the body you found?” I asked. She had no reason to tell me, but I had nothing to lose by asking.

  “Not much. Ex-military, we think, based on the body art.”

  “I could look at the art, see if I recognize anything.”

  “No thanks. You’ve helped enough.” She pushed herself up off the stool, kicked it back under the low desk, and headed for the door. “Call us if you remember anything actually useful. Oh, and we’re keeping your pistol.”

  Shit. I played it back in my head after they left. I could have done it better. Perhaps I should have come clean with what I knew about the Cappan hybrids. Cappan hybrids went insane without treatment. The two who I’d confronted hadn’t seemed irrational, but then neither did Mallot at first. Karakov had, though. They could be dangerous, not just to me, but to others.

  Nothing about the Cappan hybrids explained the other shooters, though. Ex-military, Mallory had said. That didn’t help much. You couldn’t enter an elevator in this city without an ex-soldier being there. The area attracted them. Attracted us. Former soldiers served not only in the industrial-military complex, but as police, private security, and pretty much any other job that had people carrying weapons. Apparently, some served as an extra-judicial hit squad.

  They hadn’t wanted to kill me, or they botched the job badly if they did. I still didn’t know which side shot me, and I didn’t know if they’d done it intentionally. It had been a narrow alley, and bullets ricocheted. Replaying the sequence in my mind, I’d definitely dived to my left, putting my right side toward the hybrids and my left side toward the other guys, but I’d turned around after that. The bullet hit my right leg, which would have been toward the non-hybrids, but that wasn’t enough to say for sure. There was a chance that the ambush team missed on purpose, but I couldn’t figure why they would.

  The only thing I could say with absolute certainty was that I’d completely failed in my efforts to clear myself of Gylika’s murder, and I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. If anything, I’d made it harder. Mallory knew I had nothing to do with that, but she wouldn’t let it go because it kept her leverage over me. And now she had the gun charge. She’d hang on to that to get me to tell her what I knew about other things. She probably suspected I was hiding something, which was fair, since I was. I could still talk, but I knew her type. If I told her something now, she’d still keep her hooks in tight to get me to share more. It didn’t help her to let me go, so she wouldn’t, no matter what I gave her.

  I’d have to come up with a way to reverse that and turn her into an asset.

  Chapter Fifteen

  One of the worst things about being in the hospital is that everybody knows where to find you. Sometimes they feel obligated to stop by even when they’d rather not. I got a pretty good night of sleep, thanks to the drugs they gave me after the block wore off, and the next morning found myself in an awkward conversation with Javier Sanchez. He stood just inside the doorway wearing a tailored gray suit, as if coming in further might expose him to something. I almost told him that bullets through the leg weren’t contagious.

  “Did the police give you any kind of information on why this might have happened?” he asked.

  “They weren’t very forthcoming. I think they might have arrested me.”

  “What? Wait . . . how would you not know that for sure?”

  “They told me not to leave my room,” I said. “They have people outside. But nobody actually said I was arrested.”

  “Is there a specific charge?”

  “I had a pistol.”

  Javier frowned for half a second, then schooled his face back to neutral. “Why did you have a gun?”

  I shrugged. “Old soldier habit. And a lot of people have wished me ill over the last couple years. It makes me feel safer.”

  “I’ll get legal on it.” His face said he had more questions, but he held them in.

  “I appreciate it, but it’s not a big deal. I’m sure it will all work itself out.” I wasn’t sure of that at all, but I didn’t want VPC’s legal team poking into what actually happened. I’d probably get out of my trouble with the police. VPC, on the other hand, might fire me if they knew the full truth. They had to protect the bottom line, and I had no illusions what would happen to me if I became a liability. If I hadn’t already crossed that line.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t leaving my room, anyway.” I needed to move him in a different direction. “There’s a police team here, but I think they’re for my protection, not to incarcerate me.”

  “Do they think you’re still in danger?”

  “I’m not sure I ever was in danger. I might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  He considered it for a moment, but I don’t think he believed me. He wasn’t stupid. “You don’t . . . you don’t think it has anything to do with work, do you?” he asked.

  I almost laughed but managed to hide it. Nothing like wanting to cover the company’s ass to bring out the best in the boss. I could work with that. “I don’t see how it could, do you?”

  “No, no. Of course not. I want you to know, if there’s anything we can do for you while you’re in here, all you have to do is say the word. At VPC we look out for our people.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “I should only be here a couple of days. It was a pretty clean wound.” An uncomfortable silence set in for a few seconds before I couldn’t take it. “You look like you’ve got something else on your mind, boss.”

  “It’s . . . no, never mind. Everything is good.”

  “Javier. I’m fine. I’ve been shot before. I’ll survive. What is it?”

  “I think . . .” he paused. “Maybe we should reconsider what you’re doing for the company.”

  “Like move to a different department?”

  “No, not like that,” he said. “It might be time to let this specific mission go, that’s all.”

  “So you do think there’s a connection,” I couldn’t fault him for thinking that, since I thought it myself.

  “I’m not sure. You’ve been through a lot, obviously. Anyway, we don’t have to decide now. Come see me when you get back to work, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  An orderly slunk inside the door and looked around, as if to see if anyone noticed. The blue of her hair was only a shade off of the scrubs she wore, though a bit brighter. “Ga
nos, why are you dressed like an orderly?” I asked.

  “People are watching this place,” she said. “I figured it was best if they didn’t know I was coming to see you.”

  I did my best not to react, which was hard, given how amusingly deranged she sounded. “It’s the police watching.”

  “Sure, that we know of.” I didn’t point out that her blue hair wasn’t inconspicuous, and anyone watching would have seen me with her before. She reached into a canvas tote bag she’d brought in with her and pulled out a tablet. “I brought you something to pass the time.”

  “Thanks. But they gave me back my own device.”

  “Don’t use that. You don’t know what people did to it while you were out. They could be tracking it. If you give it to me, I’ll run a scan. Meanwhile, I loaded up all kinds of entertainment on this one. Plus it isn’t registered. You can look stuff up and, at least for a while, people won’t know it’s you.”

  “Ganos . . . what do you think is going on here?”

  She glanced behind her to make sure nobody was near, then came closer to my bed, lowering her voice. “What am I supposed to think? It’s all related, right? One day we discover that an ex-Special Ops person has been following you, and the next day you get shot. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”

  “It could be random,” I said.

  The sarcasm conveyed in her look was so impressive I wondered if she practiced in a mirror.

  “It could have been,” I repeated.

  “But it wasn’t, was it? Was it her? The Special Ops lady?”

  “She was there,” I admitted.

  “She the one who did this?” She gestured to my leg.

  “I really don’t know. Bullets started flying, and I went down.”

  “I’m going to track her down,” said Ganos.

  “How?”

  “I’ve got her picture. There are like a million cameras in this city, and they all run off of computers. I’ll find her.”

  Part of me wanted to hug her, but the smarter part of me wanted to smack her. I had no doubt that she’d do it. She didn’t see the danger, wrapped as she was in the imaginary, invincible armor of youth. But I didn’t want her putting herself into that kind of situation on my behalf. These people had guns. And I didn’t. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be much good stuck in a hospital room. Besides, even if Ganos located her, we couldn’t do much other than turn the information over to the police, which would lead to some awkward questions about how we got it. It might do me more harm than good with the authorities. “Promise me you won’t do that,” I said.