Year of the Child

by R L Dean

  "We'll need to work with other CI units," he said. "Bratton will know what Divisions have been tasked with piracy cases. We'll form an investigative network and pool our information."

  Falk's eyes narrowed and his mouth turned down. "An investigative network ... in out-system? You mean, with the drop-off stations? It'll never work ... the time, the distance ..."

  "It will work, and it's not your concern. Baldwin and I will handle the piracy cases, and you'll work what I assign you."

  Falk frowned, and rubbed the top of his head with one hand, but remained silent.

  "Alright, then," Tetsuya said. "That's it. Continue to work what you have now, until I can sort out the new assignments. Log your findings and update the case files as necessary."

  Tetsuya pushed off the desk and went around to his chair. As soon as he sat George leaned forward, put his hand-gripper away and stood.

  "Well I'm going to get back to the terminal," the sergeant announced.

  "Sit down, George," Tetsuya told him. "You're not doing anything there that you can't do here."

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Baldwin shake her head. She didn't say anything, so he didn't either.

  The rest of the morning he dived into the case files. He was less than an hour in and it became clear that Baldwin wasn't a slouch at her job, she was just overwhelmed. It was easy to see why the piracy cases went to the bottom of her pile. There was enough going on right here, on Butte, without adding whatever was happening millions of kilometers away out in the big black to the mix. She had categorized and prioritized the case files, and assigned them out to the team ... she herself taking more than her fair share of them. In normal circumstances her role would be that of support for the lead investigators, or handling case overflow. And the overflow had turned into a flood.

  Baldwin hated Tetsuya, but she was a good cop.

  He adjusted the priority on a few of the cases, noted his reasons why, and then set about moving Baldwin's own case load to others of the team. It wasn't going to make him any friends, but he hadn't expected any, and Bratton wanted results on the piracy cases. That meant Baldwin had to be freed up to help work them.

  Falk left to meet the legal rep sponsoring the victim of one of his cases. Baldwin took a call, ended it quickly and checked her gun, then said she was meeting UNSEC on the terminal level. Seems they spotted the guy that killed the hauler yesterday morning. Tetsuya was tempted to go with her, he could feel it in his legs, but she knew her business and there would be soldiers to back her up.

  George called a UNSEC technician and worked with him to find some specific video feeds he wanted access to. Tetsuya supposed he had given the sergeant the impression that he wasn't allowed to leave the office at all. He didn't attempt to correct that perception. And Schindler made some calls, disappeared a couple of times, returning shortly to make more calls and look at stuff on his desk.

  By noon Falk and George were the only two in the office with him. He asked Falk how Baldwin handled lunch, and he said they would go to a cafe or kiosk when time permitted. He told them to be back in an hour and ended up eating alone in the office. Baldwin came in briefly to get a folder from her desk, then left again.

  Tetsuya finished organizing the cases by 1400. Everyone was in the office now. Baldwin, the last to come in, immediately started her paperwork for the arrest she made earlier that morning. The others, in various states of busy, reviewed files and made calls. He took a break and left the office, thinking that he should go up to Control and talk with the techs, but it was habit, not something necessary in his current role. So he ended up getting a coffee and people watching from his seat at a plastic table in front of a string of food kiosks.

  As the haze of case data begin to subside and his head clear Bratton and their conversation the day prior came to the forefront of his mind. He had determined to simply do his job, regardless of what the Chief Superintendent may be up to; whether he was using him in some way to snub Bhargava, or some other maneuvering that Tetsuya couldn't see. But, there was a nagging sensation that he had hidden under the layers of necessary work that morning, and now it rose to the surface. It was like a sixth sense, telling him that something wasn't right ... a feeling of someone staring at the back of his neck.

  There was some irony in the fact that through the lines at the kiosks and pedestrians passing by he saw Long. Maybe someone had been staring at the back of his neck.

  Bratton's assistant weaved his way through the crowds, his face resting between anger and distaste. He had established his dislike for Tetsuya the day he reported for duty. Tetsuya couldn't say hate, because Long didn't think enough of other people to develop that sort of emotion attachment.

  A small part of Tetsuya— a weak, spiteful part of him— wanted to watch Long, follow him. Investigate him. What did he do when he wasn't in the office? But, he knew there would be nothing to find. Lieutenant Everett Long was a distasteful eel, but he was a by-the-book-cop. The detective in him recognized that.

  He downed the rest of his coffee and watched Long as he made his way across the concourse and disappeared into the stream of people. When he returned to the office his mind had regained focus and he was ready to open the first piracy case Baldwin had sent to his queue.

  * * *

  Case number 2236-B07-0049. The shot-up remains of an independent mining vessel was found sinking in Saturn's atmosphere. Tetsuya watched the camera footage from a UNSEC patrol cruiser as it pulled the wreck from the gas giant's dirty clouds. A light played across a shredded thruster assembly and scorched hull plating. The name Pendleton was stenciled on the forward section above a two meter hole that showed the inside of the Flight deck.

  A search of the wreck produced the frozen corpses of Captain Roger Pendleton, his wife Sarai Pendleton, their son Martin Pendleton, engineering crewmen Daniel Greene, and deck crewman Greyson Weller.

  Captain Pendleton and his wife had both been executed, a single gunshot to the head at close range. Their son and the two crewmen appeared to have been shot while defending themselves. Crewman Greene was holding a small caliber pistol in one frost covered hand.

  The ship was missing the canisters that you would expect to find attached to its hull, and according to the initial investigation the ship's black box recorder was targeted by exterior high-impact fire. What remained of the ship had been towed to a UNSEC anchorage in the Belt where it was impounded, and the black box was with Forensics now, they were attempting to reconstruct the device's stored data.

  Tetsuya flipped through the case file to the crew manifest, a partial reconstruction that Forensics had thus far been able to glean from the black box data. It wouldn't give him much.

  The Pendletons were official residents of the Moon— Harmony dome, in fact, before it was destroyed when the Apex plant blew. And while Tetsuya didn't come from a family of miners he understood that what he was reading was a common enough scenario. The ship served as the family home most of the year, and every now and again they would make their way back down the gravity well to their apartment in Harmony.

  Daniel Greene, a graduate of the Swiss Institute of Technology, signed on the Pendleton about five years ago. Greyson Weller's name was flagged with a familiar code, he had a prior record. He tapped the code and a summary opened, revealing a string of petty thefts when Weller was fourteen years old. He spent three months in a juvenile detention center in Portsmouth, England. At age twenty-two he broke into a liquor store, resulting in a six month stay at County. But, for the last seven years he was clean, or at least hadn't got caught. He joined the crew about three years ago. It was rare for an upstanding captain like Roger Pendleton to accept a convicted thief as part of his crew. That said something about the man's character.

  Finally, there was Misaki Iriyama. Another native of Harmony dome, she joined the crew around the same time as Weller as an engineering apprentice. She had a few semesters of mechanical engineering under her belt, from a Martian university, so the apprenticeship made
sense to Tetsuya.

  Iriyama's body had not been found aboard the Pendleton.

  He found that fact mildly curious, but settled on the assumption that the body was jettisoned ... probably floating around out there somewhere, or sucked down into Saturn's atmosphere.

  Then, looking at her picture in the manifest he realized she was pretty ... quite so. Her eyes were almond shaped and her hair was a rich black, pulled back into a ponytail. She was attempting to smile, the corners of her mouth pulled slightly upwards. He couldn't decide if it made her look sad, or arrogant.

  So like Kaori. For all his years as a detective— and a father— he had never been able to read his own daughter. What if she left because of him, and not because of her anger toward Itsumi? What if there was something she needed, but couldn't tell him ... and he hadn't been able to see it? Tetsuya took a silent, deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them he stared at Iriyama's face.

  His mind suddenly went to a dark place. Maybe the pirates hadn't killed her ... maybe she was still alive, taken by them.

  9 - Alexandria

  "Greg, are we going to make it in time?" Alexandria asked from the backseat of the car. It was Jason's first game of the season, she couldn't be late. It was also a rare opportunity for both she and Adam to be at the same game at the same time. Normally her schedule wouldn't allow for such synchronicity.

  "In plenty of time," Greg replied, easing into the passing lane. Lower Manhattan's office buildings began to speed past the windows.

  She felt herself frown, in spite of Greg's assurance. Turning her attention back to her handcomm she tapped it. "Alright Edgar, go ahead."

  On the small screen the old man's face turned from sour apple to prune. He and Martha were in a conference room back at the office.

  "I said, we're finally starting to see some turn around at Ganymede." He said, speaking louder as though Alexandria couldn't hear him. Then, motioning to Martha he said, "Send her the report."

  Alexandria opened the financial report, wondering about its accuracy before she even glanced at the abstract. Skimming through it what she saw looked good. But, anything that Martha touched was subject to purposeful error and misdirection. The numbers could be far better than what she was seeing.

  Still flipping through the report she asked, "What are the updated projections for the Deimos plant?"

  She heard Edgar taken an exasperated breath. He was irritated because she wasn't there in the conference room with them. Finally he said, "Another month for the landscaping to be done. We'll increase labor when the concrete dries. After that we'll review again."

  "Hire from Mars," she said.

  Edgar slammed something down on the table, she couldn't see because the report was taking up her screen. He cussed, then yelled, "Hire from Mars? We've already got Martian grunts there now! Have you seen the kind of work they do?"

  She sighed and closed the report, looking at Edgar's screwed-up face on the screen. "Edgar, I don't care as long as the plant passes the safety inspections. This will help build lasting relations with Mars."

  "Modi and Saddler are looking for ways to draw this out," he said, still loud. "They will find violations. You did good with the Ganymede thing, I'll grant you that, but you're wrong here. The Martians just don't have the experience we need for this. We need to hire from here, or Archimedes would be better."

  Alexandria leveled her eyes on his. "I understand. I don't care. Diplomacy is more important right now. Modi and Saddler can slow things down, but they can't stop it."

  She wasn't doing this for Martian relations or for the sake of diplomacy, no matter what she told Edgar. She was doing it for the Martian economy. Mars was a step in her plans, and they were going to need a strong economy. Hiring from their pool of available skilled workers was merely a necessary step in making that happen. Modi had done so much damage to the colony's economy that when she had given this part of her plan thought she hadn't been sure if Mars was a viable avenue for her goals. Then Shultz had been elected Governor, and he consistently proved that he was not a UN puppet. When Greg's snooping verified that Shultz had ties to the FMN it was so much the better. Shultz wanted to free Mars from the UN stranglehold, and so did she.

  Edgar, of course, wouldn't understand nor care about what she was doing. So, she applied the perfectly justifiable excuse of maintaining positive relations as her motive for hiring Martians to build the plant.

  Edgar snorted. "You're going to do what you want."

  "Thank you," she said. "Now, since you mentioned Archimedes. Were you able to find out when the first ships will be ready?"

  He rolled his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. "Yes," he said, drawing it out with a breath at the end. "They are projecting early next month."

  "How many?"

  "Three."

  Alexandria sat back in the seat and thought for a moment.

  "It's a drop in the bucket," Edgar continued. "Not enough to make a difference to our haulers."

  He was referring to their haulers at Ganymede. They were afraid of Shultz's privateers, and when the stockyards at the base were full, or they ran out of empty containers, it was going to be difficult to convince them to start their hauling run to Autolycus without UNSEC cruisers patrolling the routes from out-system back to the Moon. It was going to turn into a significant financial problem, not just for the company but for her as well. She had hoped that once the construction for the plant on Deimos was underway Shultz would rein-in his people, but that had not happened. And while she wasn't privy to his thoughts, and had only exchanged courtesy messages with him related to business, she could guess his reasons for continuing to let the privateers hunt for hapless haulers and miners. It was simple math. The plant wouldn't be ready for months, and he still needed ore and gases coming in, until the embargo was formally lifted and the plant was processing what he could buy.

  But, all of that had been peripheral to her consideration when asking Edgar to find out when the shipyards at Archimedes were going to roll out new patrols ships.

  She blinked and sucked in air through her nose. There were too many considerations.

  No, she told herself. It's not too hard ... not for a better future. A future without the gluttonous UN Council and men like Modi and Saddler.

  "Are we done here?" Edgar asked.

  The car turned and she glanced out the window, they were pulling into the baseball field parking lot.

  "Have you been in contact with Saddler?" She asked.

  He waved it off, frowning. "He called, just to say hello. We talked about fishing. I don't know what he really wanted."

  "Be careful, Edgar," she said, then glanced for a moment at Martha and closed the connection.

  The old man was a terrible liar, but, about what she didn't know. Way back when, before her father passed and she inherited the company shares, Edgar was chummy with Saddler. How that relationship would affect her plans she didn't know. If she was fortunate Edgar was doing nothing more than giving Saddler projections on company market shares— the selling of confidential information— or maybe telling him her business itinerary. None of which would interfere with what she was doing. If she wasn't so fortunate, Edgar might be selling the kingdom.

  She slipped off her heels and pulled a pair of tennis shoes on. When Greg found a spot to park and eased the car to a stop, she didn't wait for him to get out and open her door. Slipping on a pair of sunglasses from her purse she stepped out onto the gravel parking lot. It was packed with cars, and the commentators' voices were already blaring through loud speakers. Across the lot the sun was glaring on the aluminum bleachers. She headed toward them, motioning for Greg to follow.

  Taking her handcomm from her purse she called Adam.

  "You make it?" Her husband asked as soon as his face appeared on the screen.

  "I'm here," she said, smiling. "Where are you at?"

  "Ahh ... section A, first row. Just come up the side."

  "Got it."

 
; She closed the connection and glanced to Greg. "You've been upset about the dome for weeks now. Do you want to talk about it?"

  He frowned, but didn't say anything.

  She stopped, looking at him. After a couple of steps he stopped and turned to her.

  Taking her sunglasses off she said, "Greg, it was an accident. The plant was five kilometers away from the dome."

  He didn't respond, but his eyes slide to the side and he tilted back his head. So, harder she said, "Two years ago we had a conversation ... I laid it all out. You knew what I was planning and you said you were behind me, all the way. Is that still true?"

  After a moment he took a deep breath, then licked his lips and nodded slowly.

  "Good," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Remember, we're masters of our time."

  She gave him a tight smile and put her sunglasses back on.

  They walked past the last row of cars and onto the ramp that led up the side of the bleachers. He stopped at the corner, where the ramp ended— his usual spot— and when she turned the corner she saw Adam on the bottom row. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the field as the players came out. On the bleachers next to him was a floppy hat and a breezy shirt. When he noticed her he smiled.

  "I made it in time," she laughed and made her way around the railing. He gave her the hat and shirt as she sat down.

  She hugged him, then watched as Jason— the number eight on his uniform— trotted out to right field.

  Rachael would have liked this. The thought just came to her, as they sometimes did. She liked watching her brother's games. Alexandria forced herself to smile, then stood and cupped her hands to her mouth and cheered Jason's name.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Greg standing at the railing at the corner of the bleachers. He had been her loyal hound for a long time, and she had asked a lot of him over the years. And he had faithfully performed his duties without fail. It would be impossible to reach her goals without him. Martha and Edgar could be dealt with, UN law could be circumvented, money could be found. But Greg's support— him— he was irreplaceable.