by John Appel
She got herself moving forward, albeit much more slowly than she wished. Pain shot through her left arm with every reach for a grip bar, with every pull to send her body ever-faster down the passage, and the imbalance between her good and bad arms began to affect her course. She grunted as she wrestled herself back onto a straight path. She had no time to think or feel anything but the play of muscle, the bump of impact as she hit the grip bars.
The big man stopped screaming.
Kumar chose that moment to call. “Mother of the fucking Leap!” Meiko blurted out. A flick of thought opened the connection, audio only. But she gave Kumar access to her sensory inputs, letting the spymaster see what Meiko saw, hear what she heard.
“What the hell are you up to?” Kumar snapped as the link opened. “A restricted area? The locals are shitting themselves.”
“Got made.” She caught the next grip bar and flung herself forward. Slowly, she built up speed.
Something crashed into her back and she slammed into the wall, skidding down the passage. A hard object smacked her in the back and then pain ripped through her abdomen, every muscle spasming.
Fortunately for Kumar, the sensorium feed included neither tactile sensation nor pain replicators, but the spymaster drew the correct conclusion from the way the tunnel suddenly whirled. “Are you under attack?”
Meiko tried to say ‘Yes’, but only managed a pained hiss.
“What’s that?” asked a strange voice, as strong fingers slipped inside the waistband of her pants, yanking her to a stop.
Kumar’s voice went flat as she went into crisis-management mode. “Hold on. Security is scrambling. How many hostiles?”
Meiko struggled to remember how many chased her, to find the breath to vocalize. She was about to twitch out a text message when hands grasped her left arm and slammed it backwards against the grip bar. She screamed as her elbow gave way.
The motion spun her around and she forced her eyes open so Kumar could see her attackers. The woman who’d chased her down didn’t look like a typical bruiser, but then again, neither did Meiko. But her captor was wearing a shock palm, and that explained how she’d incapacitated Meiko with one hit. A man who she thought was the first one she’d spotted came flying up the passageway towards them. She heard shouting from the hatchway and saw two more people sail through it.
The woman grabbed Meiko by the collar with her left hand, and raised her right, palm open. The charging indicator on the shock palm flipped from red to green, the woman slammed her hand into Meiko’s solar plexus, and the world went away for a time.
Noo
Maintenance Accessway 4976H,
Hub Zone, Ileri Station
Noo and Fari came through together, stunners drawn, searching for targets. “Stun everything and let the constables sort them out afterwards,” she growled.
They found themselves in a service passage and automatically rotated, one facing each way to cover both directions.
This brought Noo practically face to face with a heavily built man hanging curled in a ball like an infant, his hands tucked protectively against his stomach. Her djinn mapped a targeting reticle as soon as she’d drawn her weapon, and now it swung across him as she lined it up with her target. Noo’s finger slipped over the trigger, squeezed once, and was rewarded with the sight of the man’s body rippling as the charge took him. Finding no more targets she called out, “One down, clear this way.” Her voice was steady and dispassionate as if she were describing the color of the wall. She pulled herself clear of her flailing quarry and turned in time to see her partner shoot the woman they’d chased inside.
“One down, three targets,” Fari said, her own voice steady. “Twenty meters.”
“Understood.” Too long a shot for a hand stunner; they weren’t terribly accurate past ten meters or so. But they won’t have guns, and we do.
Or do they? An image of bloody corpses not even a full day dead flashed in her mind.
From ahead she heard the distinctive SNAP of a shock palm discharging, and Noo decided they probably still had the advantage. These people were out in public. Security would have caught unlicensed weapons. She hoped that was true.
“Correction, two targets.” Fari said, and pushed off hard to glide down the passageway, weapon trained on their quarry. “Stand down!” she shouted. “You’re in a restricted area! Disarm yourselves and move away from the woman.” Not that they really had authority here, but most people didn’t realize anyone besides the Constabulary and the station Army garrison were authorized to carry weapons; barely two dozen, in fact, and half of them worked for Noo and Fathya.
Noo trained her own weapon on the pair and pushed off to follow her partner.
The man launched himself at Fari when she was perhaps ten meters away. Both Noo and Fari fired at the same time but he twisted and their shots both missed. He crashed into the younger woman and they bounced against the wall. Fari’s stunner went flying as the pair grappled, and the fourth attacker sprang for it, hands outstretched.
Noo worked her way around the passage, away from where Fari and her opponent spun, and tracked the flying woman as she snatched the errant weapon, keeping her own stunner fixed squarely on target. The woman spun around to hit the passage wall with her feet, collapsing perfectly to absorb the shock of her landing. She pointed Fari’s stunner at Noo and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. A look of puzzlement came across her face as she tried to fire again.
“Biometric lock,” Noo said, and fired twice herself. Both shots hit and the woman spasmed like a snapped rubber band.
Noo spun in place to see how Fari was doing. Her opponent out-massed her slightly, but Fari trained regularly in zero-g combat. Both her legs wrapped around his, pinning them, which freed both her hands. The man clawed for her face, but she jerked her head back and jabbed a sword-strike into his left armpit with one hand while her other grasped his collar. Their spin brought her feet into contact with one of the grip bars and she hooked a foot under it, opening her legs to let the man swing free. His exultant cry was cut short as she clamped her free hand on his belt, spun him around, and slammed him head first into the passage wall once, twice, then a third time, before releasing him to float free.
Noo shot him anyway, just to be sure.
Fari, breathing just a little heavily, pulled a set of restraints from her jacket pocket and looped them around the man’s arms and ankles without any visible consideration for his comfort. “You are hereby apprehended under the Covenants of the Ileri Republic,” she intoned, yanking the ankle band tight. “In other words, you’re clipped, son.”
Noo swapped magazines before holstering her own weapon and tossing her own restraints to Fari, who went to work on the other attackers. She pushed over to the shock-palm victim who still floated where the goons had left her. She checked the image. “Meiko Ogawa,” she said as her djinn grabbed the woman’s ID and social profile. “Who was Meriel Suzuki just a few minutes ago, if this picture our mutual friend provided is any indicator.” She could tell the pictures of Meiko and Meriel were of the same woman, but she had to look closely, beyond the differences in skin and hair color.
Ogawa/Suzuki’s eyes fluttered, but she made no other response.
Noo examined her from head to toe, taking in the bloody shoulder, the left arm hanging limply and wrong. “Got in over your head,” Noo murmured, as a pair of constables sailed through the hatchway from the main corridor, followed closely by a team of Infrastructure Services people in softsuits, and things became official.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Toiwa
Constabulary Headquarters, Ileri Station,
Forward Ring
Toiwa watched the meeting clock in her personal AR field roll into its second hour and stood abruptly, bringing the acrimonious debate between her second deputy and the representative from the Ministry of Defense to a halt even before she flung up one well-manicured hand. The unexpected break in that spirited argument caused some of the other sidebar
conversations around the room to fall off as well. Toiwa pointed first at her deputy, then at the Ministry woman. “Sit. Down.” Her staffer plopped into his chair with admirable speed. The Ministry rep hesitated for a moment but wilted under Toiwa’s impassive glare and crumpled into her own seat. Around the table, the others participants—a mix of her own staff, representatives from the Intelligence Directorate, three other civilian agencies, a contingent from Defense, and a handful of Commonwealth officials—all turned to look at her. The lesser subordinates and ancillary attendees who formed the outer ring lining the wall adopted their most attentive poses.
Well, not Fathya Shariff, who sat straight as a sword, as she had this whole time. Shariff noticed Toiwa’s glance and inclined her head slightly. Toiwa gave the barest of nods in return; Shariff, at least, wasn’t on Toiwa’s shit list. Yet. Toiwa wondered just how Shariff’s operatives happened to be on top of the scene when the Commonwealth woman was assaulted; her police brain didn’t believe in convenient coincidences. At least Shariff’s motivations in the assassination case were clear, and considerably more righteous than the shifty weasels from the Directorate, just to name one example. Plus, and Toiwa hated to admit it, Shariff’s people’s competence was unquestioned. Unlike that of most of the parties represented.
Toiwa let her hand fall to the table and leaned forward. “If everyone’s done marking their territory and performing their dominance displays, or making excuses why something that’s happened in the last”—her eyes flicked to another timer, this one tracking elapsed time since the killing—“fourteen hours is not the fault of themselves or their organizations, I should very much like to focus on getting my constables back onto the matter of solving this most heinous crime. I exempt our honored guests, of course, from that criticism,” she said with a nod towards the Commonwealth deputy consul and his colleague. She wondered again why the diplomat had brought his science attaché. A mystery for later, but she made note of the incongruity, knowing that Valverdes was probably also digging into the woman’s files, and would probably have a ten-screen dossier ready by the time the meeting ended.
It was a little dicey, calling out the other government reps in front of the Commonwealth people, but the off-worlders had possessed front-row seats to this whole clusterfuck of a meeting. If the governor or anyone else gave her grief about it, she could simply replay recorded excerpts from the last hour and let the idiocy speak for itself.
The deputy consul cleared his throat and she nodded at him, inviting him to speak. “Thank you, Commissioner. We certainly want the Consul’s murderer brought to justice. But there have been at least two other attacks against our citizens in the meantime, aside from the riot and the assault on M. Ogawa.” Toiwa’s face remained impassive; she’d expected him to bring this up. “We appreciate that the perpetrators have been so quickly apprehended. But the ambassador has expressed concerns, which I share, that we might be on the cusp of a period of truly serious disorder, and further assaults might be inflicted upon Commonwealth citizens here on the station, or planetside. It also calls into question the viability of the referendum. And with our vessel, Amazonas, due soon to observe the referendum, we’re concerned about sentiments being further inflamed.”
Her response came easily. “As you say, M. Wang, the assailants were immediately apprehended and are all in custody.” Not in Constabulary custody, unfortunately. She longed to get the Directorate nullwits alone, preferably in the secure interrogation room, to find out what the dust they were about. Holding her suspects? People over whom the Directorate had absolutely no jurisdiction? It burned her but would have to wait; she had to douse the first fire before lighting another.
“The Constabulary is on heightened alert, with additional personnel on duty in the areas most frequented by visitors, to help forestall any incidents. We have additional rapid-response teams standing by to deploy should anything occur, and a full complement of crowd control and other response bots are deployed across the station.” Which meant her overtime budget for this period was irretrievably shot, with its own reckoning to come later. “I’ve requested additional resources from planetside, and I’m told teams are already preparing to come up.” A first detachment would be on the morning shuttle, the HC had promised, in addition to the constables already on their way up the space elevator. While the new people wouldn’t know the station, at least she’d have bodies to throw at any problem that tactic could solve, and that would let her people stay focused on the main investigations and on the ramped-up surveillance. “And I’m assigning one of my staff”—she pointed at the sacrificial aide, a holdover from her predecessor but a solid, dependable administrator nonetheless—“as a full-time liaison with your Consulate. I hope these measures ease your mind somewhat?” She raised her hands from the table, holding them out to encompass the whole room. “And I’m sure I speak for my fellow Ileris when I tell you we shall all do our utmost to ensure the referendum takes place without undue issues.”
“Those sound like prudent measures,” he said. “In the meantime, I’d like to ask that one of our security team be embedded with the incident command team overseeing the assassination investigation.”
Her fingers drummed on the tabletop as she considered. “That seems quite reasonable,” she said. She glanced down at Valverdes, seated to Toiwa’s right, who was busily manipulating windows with zer sole hand. “See to it.” Toiwa turned back to the the diplomat with a tight-lipped smile. “Is there anything else?” He shook his head and she straightened, sweeping the whole room with her gaze. “Very well, then. While I appreciate the cooperation and contributions of the other interested departments in this investigation”—like a damned yeast infection—“I believe our best course at the moment is to let the investigators follow their current leads. Teams will continue work through all shifts.” She summed up the schedule of updates, status meetings, and public briefings planned for the next twelve hours. “If there is no new information, or further business, I suggest we adjourn.” Her staff, well-trained, immediately rose from their seats and headed for the exits, prompting the other attendees to do the same. She pitched her voice to carry across the rising babble as side conversations blossomed around the room again, and pointed at one of the intelligence liaisons. “Captain Teng, a word, if you please.”
She’d have taken the tall officer for a military man by his bearing, even dressed as he was in an orange civilian tunic and trousers. For a spy, he didn’t look very covert, she thought; entirely too good-looking, too fit. Perhaps he blended in somewhere, but she couldn’t conceive of what milieu that might be. She waited until the room had emptied except for herself, Teng, Imoke, and Valverdes. The man had the good grace not to stare at the stump at the end of Valverdes’ left arm, which didn’t take him up any notches, but perhaps set a higher floor for her expectations about him.
She noticed one last person hovering nearby, just outside the circle. “Yes, M. Shariff?”
“I wanted to thank you, Commissioner, for expediting the release of my grandson’s remains.” Shariff held herself erect, but she’d been awake as long as Toiwa, and it showed in her voice.
Toiwa nodded. Even without Governor Ruhindi’s admonitions about Shariff’s connections, pushing the release through was the sort of simple kindness she liked to make happen when she could. Shariff and her family, whatever else they were, were victims in this. “I’m glad we were able to. There was no cause to hold his remains any longer once the medical examiner completed the necessary work. I recall you’re a person of faith, and that holding the service within a day is important to you.”
“It is. The funeral will come after the Isha prayers. You are welcome to attend, of course, if your duties permit.”
So much for home, a shower, and bed. She turned to Valverdes. “Kala, would you check my schedule and c
lear it if possible? And see that M. Shariff has whatever she needs?” Valverdes nodded and hustled off to escort Shariff out.
Toiwa would have preferred to have another witness present while she had it out with the spy, but a little show of respect to Shariff through the personal attention of Toiwa’s principal aide couldn’t hurt. Imoke could serve as her reliable witness here; she trusted him that far, at any rate. And he’d proved quite clever dealing with the riot—sweet Mother, that was just this morning.
Once the two women left, she stabbed a finger into the room’s virtual controls with enough force to have put out an eye. The privacy field kicked into place and she dropped the facade of civility. “What in God’s name are you dung-eaters doing, sweeping up all the perpetrators that attacked that Commonwealth woman? And who the hell is she?” She leaned forward into Captain Teng’s personal space and jabbed her finger at him, driving each word home like a nail. “What. The. Hell. Are. You. People. Playing. At?” She kept him fixed in a glare that threatened to scorch the walls.
Teng stood unperturbed. “M. Ogawa is a consulting specialist,” he said, ignoring her first question. “I am not at liberty to discuss her areas of expertise with uncleared personnel.”
“Don’t pull that ‘matter of planetary security’ nonsense with me,” she snarled.
“It’s the truth.” Teng shrugged. “There are a number of collaborative efforts underway with the Commonwealth even before the referendum. They’re a friendly power, after all. She is part of one such effort, and uniquely positioned to assist with certain aspects of this situation.”
“And what aspects are those?” Imoke asked.
Teng sighed, and she ground her teeth. “Aspects involving planetary security,” he said.
Dust take him, enough of this. “I want her off my station,” Toiwa snapped, and the captain stiffened. “I’m serious,” she rolled on, before he could object. “She dropped out of surveillance for several hours after the riot in front of the Consulate, evading both your people and mine. Then she attracted an attack by unknown assailants. That investigation is taking up resources I desperately need focused on keeping the good order here while a mass murderer roams my corridors, pro- and anti-Commonwealth sympathizers are knocking each other’s heads in, and we have a major vote in less than two weeks.” Not to mention that I’m still cleaning up the mess of three decades’ worth of corruption on the part of my predecessor and his pack of thieves in constables’ clothing.
