by Mel Odom
Karanjai frowned. “Cut the comm-link, Drake.”
I blanked the feed.
“Walther.”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Go see if you can find out where Lockwell is getting her information.”
Walther nodded and walked back to the entrance.
Karanjai lifted his voice. “Hondo?”
One of the Special Weapons and Tactics officers approached us. He was in his middle years, fit and trim, and had military tattoos of an electric blue panther on the backs of both hands. His combat gear supported a number of weapons and munitions over the reinforced and augmented body armor he wore, giving him a slightly insectoid appearance that was enhanced by the multi-purpose goggles that covered his face.
I ran his e-ID. Lieutenant Carl Hondo had served with the United States Army Special Forces. His military record was sealed, but his last eight years with the NAPD was shot full of commendations.
“Yes, sir.”
“We need a link set up with that tube car. Can you and Drake make that happen?”
“Yes, sir.” He slid his rifle from his shoulder and walked toward the railway tunnel.
Chapter Six
I shadowed Lieutenant Hondo as he approached the boarding platform. He glanced over his shoulder and saw me behind him, but he said nothing. Royo grimaced at me and started to join Hondo and me, but Karanjai told him to stay where he was.
In addition to Karanjai’s suggestion that I help Hondo, I found myself motivated to follow by my curiosity. I wanted to see what he was doing and how he went about it. I had not had much opportunity to work with SWAT personnel. Also, the subroutine to protect humans that underscored all my actions put me at his heels. Hondo was potentially at risk. I knew there was nothing I could have done to save my partner, but I knew that had things been different—had I been in a better position—I could possibly have saved her.
Hondo stood next to the wall at the edge of the platform. He looked at me. “You have access to the tunnel seccams, right?”
“Yes.”
“Keep an eye out.”
“I will.”
Hondo opened his rifle’s bolt-action breach, caught the round that spun out, and pocketed it. Then he took a special “commbot” round from a pouch on his combat harness. He chambered the round and readied himself. “We still clear?”
“Yes.”
Fluidly, Hondo leaned around the corner as he brought the rifle to his shoulder. He squeezed the trigger smoothly and launched the commbot round.
With my acute vision, I tracked the mass of the bullet. The round was underpowered, subsonic, which—Shelly had told me on more than one occasion—was ironic. Commbot rounds were designed to be broadcast devices. The round’s payload was packed with nanobots saved in stasis. Once exposed to air, they worked quickly to arrange themselves into a sending and receiving apparatus with a pre-set communication frequency.
The round wobbled in flight, but struck the transplas window of the rear of the tube car. A bright orange smear marked the contact point. Inside the car, the four men ducked and raised their weapons, obviously taken unawares.
Since I had already taken note of the serial number on the commbot round, I patched into the frequency and picked up the conversation taking place inside the car. I linked Hondo’s comm and Karanjai’s before they could call for the signal.
“Somebody shot at us.”
“It’s nothing.”
The first speaker’s voice gained a note of hysteria. “It’s not nothing. This whole op has flipped. We should have already been gone. This car shouldn’t have stopped. We should have just killed this guy and been on our way out of here.”
In the car, Gordon Holder drew more quietly into himself and stared at the men in stark terror.
Hondo held his position and slid a live round into the rifle’s breach. This one would penetrate the transplas of the windows.
Aboard the tube car, one of the unidentified men had discovered the commbot array. “Hey. What’s this?” He scratched at the orange patch of nanobots on the window. Since they were on the outside of the transplas, he couldn’t touch them.
Simpkins crossed the car and studied the commbot construction. He cursed and stepped back, raising his pistol. “It’s a spy device. Get away from it.”
Karanjai spoke calmly, but I knew his respiration had picked up eight percent. “Warren Simpkins, this is Captain Karanjai of the New Angeles Police Department. I’d like a chance to defuse the situation before things get any worse.”
“Any worse?” Simpkins sounded angry and scared. “I’m looking at life imprisonment for kidnapping and murder. How can things get any worse?”
“I’d like to see everybody come out of this alive.”
Simpkins cursed some more.
One of the other men shook his head. “I’m not going back to prison. No way. They’ll have to kill me first.”
“Shut up, Burge. Let me think.” Simpkins paced the tube car. He faced the comm construct and spoke to Karanjai. “Can you see us?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know one guy is already dead.”
“I do.”
“Holder is still alive. We still have him.”
“I know that as well. I want you and your men to get out of this alive, Simpkins. It’s a better ending for all of us.”
“No! Getting out of this your way means prison for us.” Simpkins ran his free hand through his hair and glared at the comm array like it was watching him. He waved his pistol at Holder. “That’s not how this is going to go down. You’re going to let me and my buddies go free. You’re going to get Skorpios to pay us ten million on an untraceable direct-cache. And you’re going to arrange for us to have passage to the Docklands so we can take the next transport ship out of here.”
The Docklands were a no man’s land on the Moon, a haven for black marketers and smugglers. The spaceport lay outside the megapolis and remained entrenched there because getting rid of the businesses would have been dangerous and problematic. The danger came from the cutthroats that did their business in the crater where the main ports were, and from the corps that carried on enterprises outside of the truly legal realm. The NAPD considered it a win by keeping most of the black trade contained to the Docklands.
Karanjai kept talking calmly, still seeking to reason with the kidnappers. “A transport ship to where? Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“To Mars.”
“You’ll be arrested as soon as you try to debark on Mars.”
Simpkins laughed, but it was a bitter and harsh barking noise. “Contrary to popular opinion, the Earth governments don’t control everybody and everything. There are lots of Martian colonies that would put us up.”
On face value, that was probably true. The unrest between the colonies and Earth-based government and economics was ticking up again. Political analysts were predicting another Martian uprising unless something could be done.
“You’re kidnappers and murderers.”
“We’ll be kidnappers and murderers with ten million. That will buy a lot of forgiveness. Ask any corp exec. No, that’s how this is going to be. Or the NAPD will have lost a hostage.” Simpkins drew a ragged breath. “So do you want to take me up on this offer? Or do you want to take Holder back in pieces?”
Farther back on the platform, Karanjai turned to address four men in business suits that closed on him like a flock of ravens. They had brushed by the posted guards. Curious, I eavesdropped.
Beside me, Hondo turned and watched the proceedings.
The leader of the group was tall and impressive-looking by human standards. Laser surgery had turned his face into a work of art. His hair was perfectly coiffed, a too-blond wave that was brushed straight back to reveal his high forehead. Cerulean blue eyes gleamed with an inner light I suspected was created by G-mod luminescence.
“Captain Karanjai, I am Austin Kirkland, attorney for Skorpios Defense Systems.”
Karanjai remain
ed polite, but I could tell from his body language that it was forced. “What are you doing here, Mr. Kirkland?”
“I came to get Mr. Holder out of this mess you people have created.”
“Mr. Kirkland, the NAPD did not create this situation. We’ve been trying to bring it to a safe resolution for everyone.”
“That’s the difference between us. Where you try, I will succeed.”
Karanjai took a moment to assemble his thoughts. “Mr. Kirkland, I don’t see what your presence here is going to provide…”
“Do you have ten million credits to give to those kidnappers?” Kirkland’s tone was sharp and insulting.
“No.”
“Well, I do. And I’m prepared to pay for a peaceful resolution to this standoff.” Kirkland gestured to one of the young execs standing beside him. The exec stood in front of Kirkland, looking very much like a clone of the other man, and opened a briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist.
I zoomed in on the contents of the briefcase and spotted small bags of diamonds that sparkled in the tube platform lighting.
Karanjai shook his head. “I can’t allow you to contact those men. That would be dangerous.”
Kirkland lifted his PAD and opened the vid function. An e-doc formed in the air above it. “I’ve got a court order, Captain, and it’s approved by the district attorney. This document allows me the opportunity to negotiate in good faith with the kidnappers for the safe return of Gordon Holder and the cargo aboard that car.”
Eyes narrowed, Karanjai ignored the document and focused on the attorney. “Nobody has told us what that cargo is.”
Kirkland killed the vid and sheathed his PAD in his thigh pouch. “That’s not the issue here.”
“I’m going to check out your court order.”
“You’re wasting time.” Blood suffused the lawyer’s face, turning it dark and red.
“Maybe the kidnappers will surrender while I’m going through channels.”
Simpkins got more nervous inside the tube car. He approached the commbot array and raised his voice. “What’s going on out there? Karanjai?”
Karanjai kept his voice level. “Yes, Mr. Simpkins?” He stepped away from Kirkland, who tried to follow him only to have Royo step in the way and block the pursuit.
“What are you people doing?” Simpkins peered through the darkness back along the tunnel. I had two views of him, from the tunnel seccam and from the car seccam’s flickering images I pieced together.
“Waiting on you to release the hostage.”
“I told you, that’s not going to happen—”
Whatever Simpkins had been about to say was forever lost in the explosion that erupted in the tunnel and briefly filled the space with thunder and flames and flying debris. Almost as soon as the explosion raced down the tunnel, it was sucked back through the five meter crater that opened up in the roof. The sudden suction created by the vacuum present on the lunar surface reversed the flames, pulling them backward and up through the ceiling. The flames spread thin and winked out as air evacuated from the tunnel. Some of the heavier debris couldn’t break free of even the microgravity and remained buffeted by the wind.
Alarm klaxons rang throughout the tunnel and on the tube platform. Kirkland and his associates were shoved back toward the door as the vacuum pulled at them. The sound out in the tunnel became sporadic because it needed atmosphere to conduct it so it could be heard.
At the same time, the tube shut down as sensors along the tunnel detected the size and scope of the breach. A transplas wall dropped down from the ceiling and locked into the docking groove at the front of the platform.
I patched into the tunnel’s integrity programs and watched as other air-tight walls dropped into place ahead and behind the area where the tube car had blown up. The vacuum bled the flames away and only the twisted wreckage and the burned and dismembered bodies remained.
Four bombproof cargo cubes two meters to a side remained as well. Scorched and scarred, they lay haphazardly in the debris. One of them had a manifest showing and I was able to partially scan it. The address was somewhere in the mining district.
That was odd. All of Skorpios’s business was located in the manufacturing sector. They had several factories that turned out military-grade weapons.
All of that flashed through my thoughts at the same time I was pulling Hondo to safety. He’d gotten caught in the vacuum and would have been in the way of the descending emergency wall if I hadn’t moved him.
As the wall locked into place, Hondo nodded at me gratefully. “Thanks.” His voice was weak in the thin air his lungs were striving to suck in.
“Just part of the service.” That was something Shelly had always said when she was trying to make light of a tense situation. I released him, satisfied that the makeup air vents were bringing the oxygen levels to acceptable parameters.
Now that the immediate danger was past, Karanjai, Royo, and the other police detectives ran over to the transplas wall and tried to peer down the tunnel.
Karanjai turned to me. “Drake, can you access the seccams in the tunnel?”
“Yes, sir.” I held up my palm and pulsed the vid. The NAPD detectives gathered around me.
The evacuation of air from the tunnel completed as we watched. The debris pulled into the air that proved too heavy to float through the crater dropped back to the ground.
“Did anyone survive that?” Grim-faced, Karanjai studied the vid.
“I can’t tell, sir.” I was trying to find out because my First Directive was nudging me into motion. If there was a chance Holder, Simpkins, or any of the others had survived, I needed to be out there helping them. But the logic of the situation said that no one could have survived that blast.
“What have you people done?” Kirkland shoved through the police officers, who grudgingly gave way to him.
Karanjai wheeled on the lawyer. “We didn’t do anything. They blew themselves up.”
“No.” Kirkland threw a finger in the captain’s face. “You killed Gordon Holder. You’re going to answer to that. Not me.”
Karanjai stepped into the lawyer’s pointing finger. Kirkland gave ground, avoiding making any physical contact with the captain, who growled an order. “Royo, clear these citizens out of my crime scene.”
“Yes, sir.” Royo stepped in front of Kirkland and his associates and started them moving back toward the door. I joined him and noticed that they shrank back even faster from me.
I was still watching the seccam feeds at the same time, and I noticed a slight movement along the crater rim. By the time I focused on it and drew it out of the shadows, a space helmet thrust through the opening upside down and peered at the wreckage.
Chapter Seven
Someone’s out there!”
I matched the voiceprint to NAPD Homicide Detective Robert Naylor. He was one of the men closest to the transplas wall. I’d had no dealings with him, but his record indicated that he was diligent and good at his job.
Karanjai crossed over to the transplas wall and peered out into the darkness. Only dimming orange glows from the super-heated metal frame of the tube car carried any light out in the tunnel. Even that illumination grew steadily weaker as the lunar cold filled the area.
Six spacesuit-clad figures descended from the hole in the roof. I magnified my vision and scanned for markings on the suits, but saw none. The face screens were heavily polarized and I couldn’t see through them to identify any features.
They were equipped with airbelts that allowed them to maneuver quickly in the microgravity and used compressed thrusts to land on the wreckage. They carried crowbars and employed them to leverage debris from the cargo crates.
“Who are those people?” Karanjai trotted along the wall to the airlock built into the side of the platform. It had been constructed for emergency crews to enter the tube in the event of pressure leaks. I verified the last ten years of usage through a quick data search and found only two such occurrences had happened in th
at time. Neither of those had been as serious as the one we now faced. A quick scan of the subroutines indicated that this one was in good working order.
No one had an answer to the captain’s question.
View of the wreckage was blocked by my proximity to the wall and airlock, but I watched the men in spacesuits over the seccams. They worked quickly and efficiently, moving the debris almost effortlessly in the microgravity.
Karanjai opened his channel to Dispatch. “Where are the tube security guys?”
“They’re on their way, Captain. We pulled them back on your orders to allow you to negotiate with the kidnappers.”
“Get them here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I tracked the news feeds as well, knowing that the media would be on top of the breaking story. The NAPD would have to do damage control. Since I was involved, I wanted to be up to date. Monitoring the updates only required a simple cognitive routine that didn’t slow me at all. Shelly had often pointed out how much more I could process at one time than she could. She sometimes said that it wouldn’t be long before bioroids made flesh-and-blood detectives obsolete.
Except that I didn’t have the intrinsic understanding of the human culture that she did, or the facility to understand motivation. Also, the resistance against bioroids was a growing concern on many levels of labor and culture.
“—just in. The alleged Martian terrorists have just blown up the tube car they had commandeered with Skorpios Defense Systems CEO Gordon Holder. There appear to be no survivors. The NAPD was forced to helplessly watch.”
Vid of the explosion cycled through the broadcast and I knew that someone in the police department had leaked the footage or the nosies had hacked into the seccam feeds.
I alerted Dispatch and sent an investigative ping through the seccam systems, seeking out whatever patch the nosies had used. I found it almost immediately and sent the link on to the cyber department as well.
“—confirmed that alleged kidnapper Warren Simpkins had definite ties to Martian terrorists. Seen here in this image, Simpkins has been identified with three known terrorists involved with the Hostins Genegineering bombing last year.”
