Android: Mimic (The Identity Trilogy)

by Mel Odom

  “Was Gordon Holder selling illegal munitions?”

  “Yes, and maybe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “It’s a fact that Gordon Holder was moving illegal guns, but I don’t know if he was doing it on his own.”

  “He had a partner?”

  Westlake shrugged. “Possibly. I’ve heard that Magnus Swan might have been involved.”

  I interrupted. “That doesn’t seem logical. Magnus Swan and Argus, Inc. are making huge profits every year. Why would he risk that for whatever he was making from moving illegal weapons?”

  Westlake chuckled. “‘Logical,’ eh? You haven’t asked the most important question yet, Detective Drake.”

  I thought about that only for a moment, returning to the reason we had come to him in the first place. “Who were the weapons being sold to?”

  As if warming to the subject, Westlake smiled even more broadly, which made him look even more toad-like. He shifted his attention back to Rachel. “Who’s paying for this?”

  “The cred is coming through me. That’s all you need to know.”

  “The information is going to cost you an obscene amount. Not many people know about Gordon Holder’s side business. And even fewer know where to find the man that business was funneling through.”

  Rachel appeared unmoved. “People are going to find out. Every second that ticks by, that information is worth less and less because nosies like Lily Lockwell are closing in on the story.”

  “Possibly.”

  Rachel shook her head and gave Westlake a cold grin. “Uh-uh. This story is going to come out. That’s why the tube car got blown up. Whoever killed Gordon Holder could have taken him out of the arrangement a lot more quietly. An accident that wasn’t. Poison that’s almost impossible to trace. A multitude of ways. This was supposed to come out.” She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe the revelation is taking even longer than those people wanted it to. Maybe that’s why you’re talking to me now.”

  Westlake laughed. “You’re a clever girl. You always were. And maybe a bit paranoid. But you also know I don’t play games to other people’s tunes.”

  “You’re not part of this?”

  “I give you my word.”

  Rachel seemed satisfied. “All right.”

  “The question now becomes, do you and your friends want to stay ahead of the curve and find out before everyone else does?”

  “How much does that cost?”

  Westlake named a price. Rachel haggled with him for a little while, but didn’t get the man to budge much. They settled on a price. I wondered if Karanjai had known she was going to spend so exorbitantly.

  “The man Gordon Holder was selling to is Quentin Bradbury.”

  “The colonial anarchist?” Rachel’s eyebrows raised a little, but not much. Her body language suggested she wasn’t terribly surprised.

  “The very same.”

  I recognized the name. Quentin Bradbury and his family had taken the name from their home colony. He was a ghost in the politics involving Earth/Mars relations. At one time he had been an Earth ambassador, sent to the colonies to manage Earth interests and keep the peace. During his thirty years there, he had “gone native,” becoming more interested in the colonies’ welfare than Earth corp interests.

  His family, a wife and three daughters, had been killed in Earth action to strike back against colonial freedom fighters. No one knew for certain who had killed Bradbury’s family, but Bradbury had chosen to hold Earth accountable. He had changed allegiances before his family had been buried.

  I shifted slightly, drawing Westlake’s attention. “Bradbury has only been an arbiter for the colonies’ right to self-government. He’s never been one to foment violence.”

  “I know.” Westlake folded his arms over his broad chest. “But the violence out there in the colonies is expanding. The Earth corps are grinding down harder and harder, making it more difficult for those families to survive. The Earth corps don’t want the colonies to break away because they want the markets and the natural resources.” He shook his head. “The colonies are stretched too thin to protect everything they have, but they can raise the cost of doing business.”

  “How long has Gordon Holder been doing business with the colonies?”

  Westlake grinned. “Since that extra-curricular business of his opened up, I would expect. I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know who Holder did business with before Quentin Bradbury, but I can tell you that for the last few months dissidents throughout the colonies have been buying and shipping everything Holder produced.”

  “You never mentioned this to anyone?”

  “Nope. I got the information from a woman who had no business telling it to me. She got killed within three hours of visiting me for some…upgrades to her personal security. Some hardcases—ex-military, if I had to guess—came by this shop and asked me if the woman had talked to me about anything. I convinced them that she hadn’t. And I kept my mouth shut.” Westlake paused. “Till now. And I’m only saying something now because—like Rachel said—this is all coming out.” He shrugged. “I can still make a little cred off the information. You people get first look at what’s coming. I think that’s fair enough.”

  I asked him who the woman had been, but he wouldn’t budge on that information. Evidently he didn’t want to get tied too closely to the source.

  Rachel offered a credaccount stick and paid Westlake. She only had one more question. “Where can we find Quentin Bradbury?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Making additions to existing structures on the Moon was difficult. A constant atmosphere had to be maintained, so nearly every square meter of a district was known. However, there were ways around that.

  All a building owner had to do was build a substructure designed for warehousing equipment and supplies, contract for that, then add on the cost of a private airlock through a black market connection to keep everything quiet. None of the additions were on file with megapolis management. Atmosphere usage was still monitored, so carbon dioxide scrubbing had to be accounted for. If extra space was added on the sly, that showed up in atmosphere usage. Unless designers built in vac spaces as well.

  Building a sub-substructure was possible to do without telling anyone. It was the Moon. Security just couldn’t be kept tightly anywhere, and there were a lot more security issues on the Moon than on Earth where lives depended on protecting vulnerable points. Transporting rock out from a dig was simple. Then a wily proprietor would put in some airtight doors, close off the first substructure, and vent the air over to the secret room or rooms.

  In the vernacular, they were called warrens. These secret rooms were used to hide black market goods or people wanted by the NAPD, corp sec teams, or private individuals. The rooms paid for themselves quickly because there were so few places to hide within the megapolis.

  Quentin Bradbury was holed up under an apartment unit not far from Westlake’s repair shop. Since the warren was illegal and the owner of the apartment unit was conducting criminal activity, Royo and I didn’t need a warrant to get inside the building.

  We buzzed the apartment super and met him on the first floor. Royo took point because he was a cop and he was human. Rachel and I covered his back.

  The super was a slim man with a long nose and droopy eyes. He wore a blue coverall with a toolbelt over one shoulder. He stank of soy sauce and sweat.

  Royo didn’t mince any words. “NAPD.” He flashed his badge with his PAD. “We’re here for your guest.”

  With a shrug of his narrow shoulders, the super shook his head. “Ain’t got no guests. Got renters. Which one you want?”

  “We want the guy in the warren.”

  The super flinched like he’d been electrocuted, tried to cover, then saw that Royo wasn’t buying the act. The super tried to back away and reach for his PAD at the same time. I squelched the PAD and accessed the seccams, instantly gaining vid from all nine floors. PriRights would have foug
ht the seccams if they’d known about them, but the super or his employer had installed the system illegally. That didn’t keep me from using them. I didn’t need anything that would stand up in court. I was just looking for information that would keep Rachel and Royo alive.

  Royo doubled up a fist in the super’s coverall and drove the smaller man back against the wall. The hallway was narrow and stairs were to our left. The impact was noticeable. Two doors in the hallway popped open and an older woman on the stairwell froze.

  Rachel took command of the situation at once with a loud, authoritative tone. “NAPD business. Back inside your homes, citizens, or you’re going to become part of this.”

  The doors closed and the woman went back up the stairs.

  Fisting the super’s coverall again, Royo banged him against the wall once more. This time the back of the man’s head hit and his eyelids fluttered. Full panic tightened his face.

  Royo leaned into the man, placing his face in his prisoner’s. “Take us there now or this is going to turn ugly.”

  “I don’t know—”

  Slamming a forearm into his captive’s chest, Royo drove the man into the wall again. “Tell me or I’ll beat it out of you. Beating it out might take a little longer, but I’ll get some satisfaction out of it.”

  I almost intervened, but I reminded myself that Royo wouldn’t permanently hurt the man. Furthermore, if we didn’t get to the bottom of the arms deal, a lot of people might end up dead. I forced myself to wait and listened to the man’s heart rate and blood pressure ratcheting up.

  “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to hurt me.”

  Royo turned the man around and gripped the collar of his coverall. He took his sidearm out where the super could plainly see it. “Get moving, but if you try to run, you’re going to limp for the rest of your life.”

  The super took us to one of the rooms, this one marked STORAGE, and opened the door. An airlock confronted us. The super swallowed hard. “The room’s through there. Through the airlock. If I cycle the atmosphere to put air in this room, that guy’s gonna know. And you can’t walk through there without a spacesuit.”

  Royo pulled the man back and looked at me. “You can.”

  I nodded and stepped into the airlock. I cycled through without exchanging atmosphere for vacuum, then crossed the storage room, which was tightly packed with crates of what had to be non-perishables that wouldn’t suffer from the harsh environment. It took me only a moment with thermographic vision to detect the warmer room on the other side of the wall and to find the false door.

  I removed the plascrete section from the form-fitting door that would lock airtight once atmosphere was reintroduced to the room. Although I checked for electronic warning systems, I didn’t find any. The hallway in front of me had more stairs that led five meters down and another fifteen meters forward.

  Royo contacted me through my on-board PAD to check on me. Unable to speak back to him due to the vacuum, I texted him that I was proceeding to the hidden room. I walked through the darkness and left the light behind.

  At the next airlock, I stepped inside and paused, then drew my Synap and punched the airlock activation sequence. The door closed behind me, air rushed into the narrow chamber, and I waited for the entrance to open.

  As soon as the airlock door slid away, two bullets thudded into my chest and the sharp cracks of the detonations split the air. Neither of the rounds penetrated my chassis. Both of them caught in the bulletproof vest I wore to keep projectiles from ricocheting into innocent bystanders.

  I lifted my Synap and fired at the man holding the pistol. He shivered and shook as the charge caught him, then dropped into a loose sprawl.

  The second man had a laser. I ducked beneath the beam, but it bore a hole in the airlock. The escaping air whistled through the perforation.

  At the cyber center on the right side of the room, Quentin Bradbury sat in front of various holos displaying media channels and newsrag feeds. He looked exactly as his file had showed him: a human man in his sixties, in good shape, and handsome. His brown hair hung down over his high brow and he looked startled. I wasn’t sure if he was more surprised to see me or if he was worried about the air leaking from the room.

  I spun and raised my weapon as the second man fired again. This time the laser beam scorched the plascrete wall and penetrated several centimeters into the stone wall behind the manufactured surface. Smoke wafted up, but by then I had the man in my sights. I squeezed the trigger and dropped him.

  Standing, I turned my full attention to Quentin Bradbury, who had not moved from the cyber center. “Mr. Bradbury, I am Detective Drake 3GI2RC of the NAPD. You’re under arrest for conspiring against the city of Heinlein by willfully inhabiting an illegal structure. Please stand up and turn around.” I read him his rights and took a pair of handcuffs from my pocket.

  “Please. You can’t take me in. There are people out there waiting to kill me.” On shaking legs, Bradbury stood and shot me a desperate look. I could tell from his behavior that he had been agitated before I had arrived. He was more scared of these other people than he was of me.

  I pocketed the Synap and gripped Bradbury’s shoulder in my hand, turning him around with force. The escaping air continued to whistle sharply around us. “Who is trying to kill you, Mr. Bradbury?”

  “I don’t know.” Bradbury shook his head. “The same people that killed Gordon Holder. We were doing business together—”

  “Mr. Bradbury, I have advised you of your rights. I would prefer you to wait until an investigator was with you to take down your—”

  “If they find me, I’m a dead man. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.” I snapped the cuffs into place. “Don’t worry, Mr. Bradbury. Everything is going to be fine.” I turned my attention to the hole in the door. After a quick look around, I peeled a piece of the plastic upholstering from the chair and placed it over the hole. The vacuum held it in place. I estimated the time left and judged it enough to return for the two unconscious men.

  “Look. You found me.” Handcuffed now, Bradbury turned to face me full on. “If you can find me, so can—”

  The back wall erupted. Flying chunks of stone and plascrete struck us and drove us backward. The cascade of noise that filled the room was almost immediately suctioned away by the encroaching vacuum. The smaller debris that had filled the room followed, shooting through the two meter gap.

  I struggled to get up from a seated position against the wall where I’d fallen. Bradbury lay atop me and I knew from the biometric contact through my fingers that he wasn’t alive any more. The back of his head was a bloody pool of pulped bone and brain.

  Whatever he had known about Gordon Holder and the arms deal had died with him.

  I levered the body off of me and turned my attention to the two unconscious men. Before I could reach the nearest of them, a man in a spacesuit stepped through the hole in the wall with a shotgun in his arms. I shifted toward him, then caught the first burst of double-ought buckshot in my chest, stumbling backward.

  Evidently he didn’t get a good look at me and thought I was down, because he turned his sights on the two men. The buckshot didn’t penetrate my chassis, barely left marks behind. I righted myself just as the man shot them both in the head, one after the other, at almost point-blank range. Neither survived. Then he shot me again, three times, blowing me backward, all of this done without sound because we were in vacuum now. The additional blasts only knocked me from my feet but didn’t do any real damage.

  The man turned back toward the hole and sprinted through, taking long strides in the microgravity. He tossed a spherical object behind him and I watched it bounce across the floor before I recognized what it was.

  Then the antipersonnel grenade went off, filling the small room with shrapnel that embedded in my clothing and body armor and ripped the cyber center to shreds. The soundless blast knocked me from my feet and gouged a few holes in my chassis that the nanobots would sort out soon enough,
but I got up and pursued the running man, texting Royo a message to let him know what had happened. The sound of the gunfire and the explosion had probably transmitted through the solid strata of the tunnel, but I knew it didn’t pass through the vacuum.

  I ran after the man, gaining on him quickly because I was faster than he was even without the restrictions made on him by the spacesuit. The hole connected to another substructure room, this one an actual basement used for storage by a furniture store, but also without atmosphere. The assassin scrambled through the boxes and yanked them over behind him to impede me. I pushed through them and crawled over them, losing ground for a moment.

  I thought I would have him at the airlock leading into the furniture store proper. I should have realized by the strength of the vacuum that he hadn’t come from there. Instead, he vanished through a hole in the wall that led to a utility tunnel filled with power cables and water and sewage pipes. Workers sectioned off the utility tunnels, pumped them full of air, and worked in the atmosphere when they needed to.

  I rushed through the opening and turned to the left, following the man as he raced along the tunnel. The space between the wall and the cables and pipes was narrow, providing little room to work, and even less to run. I banged off of the wall and the utility cables and lost a step or two now and again. I thought I was steadily—slowly—gaining on my quarry, but I couldn’t tell even with my enhanced vision.

  I mapped my progress with my GPS and overlaid it onto a street map of the area, then sent it to Royo, hoping that he would find a way to get ahead of the man I pursued.

  “Stay with him, Drake! Rachel and I are coming!”

  The utility tunnel took a sharp left turn and I followed it. Ahead of me, light suddenly speared down into the darkness as a ladder dropped into the tunnel. The assassin caught hold of the ladder and scrambled up.