“I don’t think so, sir,” said Arabella firmly. “I think they already know, and they’re not telling. You said it yourself: Commodore Cook wants Kez and Marx captured before they break into the locker. Half of Time Corp and half the WAOF have been deployed just to stop the theft, not to mention the Grid Guard: there’s no way it hasn’t occurred to them that they could frighten off Kez and Marx. The box must be something pretty important to risk that. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re the only ones tasked with actually capturing them.”
There was silence. Arabella looked up and found Mikkel gazing at her in delighted wonder, his mouth curving at the corners.
“Is anyone watching?”
“Sir?”
“I very much want to kiss you again.”
“There are Grid Guards across the dock!” Arabella said hastily, her cheeks reddening. “Besides, we’re meant to be stopping a theft and catching the Time Corp’s most wanted.”
“Not that I want to discourage such enthusiasm, ensign, but I had the impression that you’re distinctly opposed to capturing either Marx or Kez.”
“I seem to remember a certain languor to your last encounter with Kez and Marx,” said Arabella. “In fact, I seem to remember doing most of the fighting. And correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t your file have something in it about refusing to obey an order to blow up their craft? Sir.”
Mikkel opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. At last, he said: “Access all systems is a privilege not often given on Eighth World. Suppose we do a little investigating before we try to stop this theft?”
*
Darkness. And into the darkness, a small, wet, repetitive splashing grew until it assumed mammoth-like proportions. Someone growled low in despair.
“Marx, I gotta pee!”
“Don’t blame me, kid. I told you to go before we left the ship.”
“I did go! An’ then you picked a flamin’ damp cupboard to hide us in! I coulda shifted us!”
A pained silence.
“Kez–”
“Orright, orright, I remember!” grumbled Kez. Her voice bitterly recited, as if from memory: “The Grid ‘as a specialised system wot makes cross-sections over any– any– eegress to the Other Zone and cuts anyone who goes through t’ribbons. Flamin’ boring, it is.”
“Better bored than cut into little pieces. Anyway, we already had our excitement. It’s plugged in and all we have to do now is wait.”
“Well, I gotta pee.”
*
They visited the locker first. Arabella, pacing down corridors of lockers that all looked alike, found the whole experience prosaic and somewhat boring. Grid guards were posted at every junction, and when they finally reached The Locker it was flanked by two more guards, who resisted, with rock-like impassivity, all requests to open it.
“I suppose access all systems only goes so far,” she said ruefully.
“Sorry, marm,” said the guard on the right. “Orders are that no-one opens the locker. Not even the Commodore.”
Mikkel grinned. “I wonder if the Commodore knows? Never mind, ensign; I think we can do better. Which way to your Interface room, lads?”
“Criminal or Corporate, sir?”
“I think we’ll take a stab at Criminal,” said Mikkel affably.
“You’ll want the South Quadrant, then, sir. Sector B, co-ordinates 34-5.”
“Thank you,” said Mikkel, returning the guard’s salute. “Come along, ensign; we’ve got work to do.”
Arabella followed meekly, without trying to catch up. Mikkel was striding out ahead, every inch the Big Man, and she had a feeling that they would need all of his aplomb to get them through to the Criminal Interface, despite the access they had been granted. Guards checked and saluted as they swept from the high security area, and Arabella felt more comfortable when she began to see Time Corp blue again. They were no less watchful than the Guards had been, but it seemed more possible to pass without question among them.
The Criminal Interface room was smaller than Arabella expected, and significantly better guarded. A stab of dismay turned her stomach cold as they approached it and her eyes took in the stark, impenetrable door and the no-nonsense array of deadly weaponry spaced evenly on the belts of both guards. Mikkel, seemingly unperturbed by either guards or the obviously reinforced door, didn’t either blink or slow down. Instead, to Arabella’s barely contained delight, he simply sent their All Access pass directly to the guards’ personal messengers and made them scramble to open the door. They managed it, just barely; and as Arabella strode into the room in Mikkel’s wake, she caught the relieved looks they exchanged before the door swung ponderously closed.
“Well, this is certainly cheerful,” said Mikkel, looking around critically.
Arabella shivered slightly, tasting cold and metal in the air. “A bit old-fashioned, isn’t it?”
“Only the door, I think. Old engineering trumps new tech every time. There’s no way a hacker would get through that with any kind of interface.”
“I don’t think you’d get through it with two tons of dense explosive.”
“Hm. You could be right about that.” Mikkel brought up the clear controller with a swipe across the console. “How are you with interfacing, ensign?”
“It’s not a high point in my skill set, sir.”
She glanced up and found that Mikkel was grinning.
“I’m relieved, ensign,” he said. “I thought there wasn’t a skill of which you weren’t master. I’m glad to discover that you’re human after all.”
“Very extremely human, sir,” Arabella said. “Particularly when it comes to phasing in and out of virtual worlds.”
“You’re not a fainter, are you? I’d be happy to catch you.”
“No, sir,” said Arabella. “I tend to projectile vomit. You’re welcome to try and catch that, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Hm. Perhaps I’d better do the interface, then.”
“I think that might be for the best, sir.”
“All right, but if I faint, I expect you to catch me.”
Arabella, unable to quite repress her snort of laughter, grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Mikkel seated himself in the sleek white chair, casting a cursory look at the view screen, and began to input commands with a speed and accuracy that suggested he was a gamer of long standing.
“Pads should be in one of the drawers,” he said, which made Arabella remember with a start that she was assisting her commanding officer and not sneaking around in a forbidden area for the sheer enjoyment of it. She attached two neuro-pads to his temples, another two to the top of his neck below the ears, and the last two to his chest beneath his shirt. Mikkel didn’t say anything, but he gave her a slow, curling smile that spoke volumes when she inadvertently caught his eye.
I knew that kiss was a bad idea, thought Arabella, refusing to acknowledge by so much as a twitch that her cheeks had gone slightly pink. Should’ve found another distraction.
“Start her up,” said Mikkel. He had closed his eyes, but she could still see the smile curving his lips.
Arabella pursed her lips, then pinched her fingers over the control pad, slightly adjusting one of the settings. She lightly touched the starter command once, and heard the soft whisper of computerized life springing into action.
Beside her, Mikkel hissed between his teeth.
“Sorry about that, sir,” said Arabella. “I must have hit the filters while I was pressing the starter command. Let me adjust that for you.”
Mikkel’s hand shot out and grasped hers before she could touch the control pad. “No thank-you, ensign,” he said, unerringly returning the filters to normal with the other hand. “I think you’ve adjusted quite enough for the time being. I may never hear with my right ear again.”
“No need to fear, sir,” Arabella said cheerfully; “The sound wasn’t really sound, you know–”
“I’ve got a reasonably good understanding of virtual real
ity, thank-you, ensign.” Mikkel’s voice was distinctly sour, and Arabella grinned, feeling a bit better about everything in general.
“What’s in the file, sir?”
“The usual,” said Mikkel, flicking a finger over the control pad. The viewscreen on the opposite wall populated with an array of colour-coded data. “See for yourself. Reports, lists of suspects, audio interview files, lists of evidence collected, lists of items stolen…”
“Everything that should be there, in fact.”
“Exactly.”
“Ooooh.”
“Ooooh what?”
“Go back, go back!” said Arabella. She clutched Mikkel’s shoulder in her enthusiasm and the viewscreen clouded briefly, responding to his distraction.
“Go back to what? The files? The lists?”
“The lists, the lists,” Arabella said impatiently, her fingers tightening. “Look at the list of items stolen during the home invasion. Then look at the list of evidence collected– I mean, look at what’s not there.”
There was silence in the interface room for a bare moment. Then Mikkel said: “Oh, that’s just clumsy.”
“It’s not even part of the investigation. It wasn’t stolen, or recovered, or entered as evidence. Someone put it in the locker to hide it.”
“It’s a shoddy sort of a cover-up,” said Mikkel. “Why would anyone try to hide something important in an evidence locker without adding it to the evidence lists?”
“Maybe they thought it’d be safer if it wasn’t on any lists. Besides, it’s a solved case: who’s going to be looking?”
“I find it mildly insulting,” Mikkel said. “Also, we’re back to square one. If it has nothing to do with the home invasion, we won’t be able to discover much by digging around on this case.”
“How annoying! And I thought it was such a good idea!”
“I don’t know,” said Mikkel slowly, his fingers drumming on the console with an irregular beat. “It might still be a good idea. I spent some time in the evidence deck when I was moving up the ranks, and evidence was always being swapped from box to box by accident. When unmarked evidence ends up in the wrong box, the first thing we’re taught to do is look up all the other cases that were being handled at the same time.”
“You think it might actually be evidence, then?”
“More than likely. If I pull up the cases that were closed that same day, something might pop out at us.”
“Cross-reference by evidence sergeant and closing officers as well,” suggested Arabella. “It’ll give us a bit more of a chance of striking lucky.”
“That’s the spirit, ensign. Pull up a chair; this may take a few minutes.”
In fact, it took about twenty minutes.
“Closing officers Roman Turk and Mike Opper,” said Mikkel. His closed eyes contrasted confusingly with the swift passage of data across the viewscreen. “Four other cases were closed that day at the same precinct, and the evidence sergeant who processed it all is Marcus Solomon. Ow!”
“Sorry,” Arabella said hastily. She snatched up the secondary control slate that she’d knocked to the ground by way of Mikkel’s shin. It was heavier than she expected it to be, and from the way Mikkel was massaging his shin, it was heavier than he’d expected, too. “What were the four other cases?”
“Two murders, aggravated robbery, and a fatal stabbing. Who’s Marcus Solomon?”
Arabella’s eyes flicked to Mikkel’s face. His eyes were still closed, which encouraged her to brazen it out.
“You tell me. You’ve got access to the records. You said he’s an evidence sergeant?”
“Wrong answer, ensign,” said Mikkel, a touch of steel in his voice. His eyes opened, ghosting with a steady stream of intelligence, and fixed rather unnervingly on Arabella. “Who is Marcus Solomon?”
“No idea, sir,” said Arabella. It was more or less truthful: she’d never met the man, after all. Her employers, however, seemed to know him quite well. When it came to Marcus Solomon, her employers had given her only one instruction. Run.
“Still the wrong answer,” Mikkel said coldly, rising from the interface chair to tower over her. He was crowding her, and Arabella realised with some amusement that he was trying to intimidate her.
“Sir, you do remember that I hold the Time Corp record for mixed martial arts, don’t you?”
Mikkel barked a laugh, banishing the steel from his eyes. “Yes, and I haven’t forgotten that you’re capable of breaking every bone in my body, ensign. I’ll play nice. I take it that Marcus Solomon has something to do with your mysterious employers?”
“They’ve mentioned his name,” said Arabella cautiously. “What else do you have on record for him?”
“He was on the payroll as evidence sergeant for one day. Hmm. He appears in quite a lot of records for one single day. As a matter of fact, the only place he seems to have stayed for longer than a few days is the Holstrom Institute.”
“What’s the Holstrom Institute?”
“Some sort of asylum for disturbed people,” said Mikkel, populating the viewscreen with documents. “It looks like one of the Core monkeys has started collating information on the Institute and Solomon, but hasn’t finished the thread. Unusual, that.”
Arabella frowned over the documents. “He immerses himself in a place, stays a day or two, then goes. Why pose as an evidence sergeant? Did he want access to particular evidence, or was it just to hide the box?”
Documents flashed up on the viewscreen and vanished just as speedily, dismissed too quickly for Arabella’s dazed eyes to read them. Mikkel’s fingers darted across the control pad and a new flurry of information appeared.
Slowly, he said: “Maybe it was both. Look at the evidence report for the stabbing that day.”
“The box isn’t listed.”
“That’s right. Now look at the Render.”
The viewscreen showed a flat copy of the original 3-dimensional Render, and Mikkel’s fingers, busily moving across the slate, enhanced one section of it.
“It could be a box, but it could be a piece of rubbish.”
“Mm. The interesting thing about it, ensign, is that this was one of the first Sweeper crime scenes: the tech was new, but sound. Everything within the render would have been Swept and dumped in Evidence for sorting. So even if it wasn’t the box–”
“It should still be listed with the evidence, which it’s not. All right. Assume it’s the box. Assume Marcus Solomon was the one who took it and hid it, and that he’d arranged to be there that day just to do that. How does that help us?”
Mikkel sighed. “I don’t think it does. It just goes to show that Kez and Marx aren’t the only ones popping in and out of the timeline at will and rearranging things to suit themselves.”
“And it suggests a connection between Marcus Solomon and Kez and Marx,” said Arabella, her eyes suddenly bright. “He had it, and they want it. Whatever the box is, it’s brought them all out into the open for a little while. I don’t know about Solomon, but Marx usually keeps his head down: he prefers to hide and snipe rather than attack outright, unless whatever’s going down has something to do with–”
“Kez,” nodded Mikkel. His eyes had brightened, too. “The only time he ever really tried to kill me was when I threatened her. The rest of the time it’s been stun guns and cranial trauma.”
“Then we can probably assume the box holds tech that has to do with time or space.”
“Or both. Most likely both.”
“Does that help us catch them, though?”
Mikkel regarded her with information-laced eyes that managed to laugh despite the phantom stream of data. “Which brings us back to the question of whether or not you want to catch them. I’d really rather avoid another cosh to the back of the head.”
“I wouldn’t cosh you,” said Arabella, a mere statement of fact. Mikkel evidently chose to take it otherwise, because a smile swept across his face, warm and amused.
“I knew you’d come to like m
e, ensign.”
“I’d use a forearm choke hold. It’s quieter, and it means I can control the fall of the body.”
“I don’t like the way you say ‘the body’,” said Mikkel, dismissing the information on the viewscreen. He began to peel the neuro-pads from his skin, but his eyes didn’t leave her face. “Would you assist me if it came to a capture?”
Arabella struggled for a brief moment, biting her lip. Then she said: “No, sir. You haven’t given me away to Time Corp, and I’m grateful, but if it came to capture I’m afraid I’d have to knock you out.”
“If I reported you to Time Corp you’d only vanish,” Mikkel said carelessly. He was tossing the neuro-pads into the tiny receptacle below the console, and she couldn’t see his face. “I’d rather have you where I can see you.”
Arabella carefully let go the breath she held, astonished to find that she had been very decidedly anxious for a moment. “If it makes you feel better, sir, I wouldn’t let them hurt you either.”
This time Mikkel’s smile was both brilliant and provocative. “I know, ensign. It’s one of the reasons I keep you around.”
“If we aren’t going to capture them, what are we going to do?”
“Oh, I’ve got some ideas. Don’t look so wary, ensign: it’s not what you’re thinking. No, I’ve been on the receiving end of too many thumbed noses from those two. I’d like to catch ’em in the act.”
“I think we can manage that,” said Arabella mildly. “Besides, I’ve got some ideas of my own.
*
The sound of conversation wafted down the hall and filtered to Kez and Marx through the door of their cupboard.
“Flamin’ heck!” said Kez. “Now there’s more of ’em! I coulda gone to the loo if you’d let me out after the last lot!”
“They hadn’t turned the corner. Cross your legs.”
“I am crossin’ me legs! ’Ow much longer is this gonna take?”
Marx looked at her briefly and went back to the crack of light he’d been squinting through. “As long as it needs. It’s not a quick patch job we’re trying to do here.”
“Well, I’m gonna pee in the corner if you– ’ang on! Get out me way, I can hear Bells!”
A Time-Traveller's Best Friend: Volume One Page 9
