Firing an invisible maser beam that also carried an electrical charge, stunners were quite useful against unarmored targets. They could knock big, angry people right out for an hour or two, yet otherwise leave them unharmed. Trained technicians in backroom workshops, or even just home tinkerers with an aggressive streak, could modify the circuitry and power supply of even a cheapo one-shot stunner, to create a very lethal weapon indeed. Granted, the range was limited, and active use often burned out components (or over-loaded them, causing fires and burst batteries), but they could be both effective, and hard to trace.
Gang members, random criminals, and people with grudges had all been known to use ramp-ups.
As did professional killers, sometimes.
SEEMS SO. GO STRAIGHT HOME. CHECK WITH YOUR ACCOUNTANT IN THE MORNING.
"Understood. And...thanks."
Weirdly, I was able to sleep well for the first time in days, even weeks. Intellectually, I knew that the would-be killer was still out there. For now, though, for this one night, I felt safe. The attacker was likely to go to ground for a while, after failing and being chased by Branden. That seemed like a pleasant thought, and I indulged in it until my eyes slowly closed. I didn't even hear Barney come in, and was happy for the wake-up flash of my retinals early first-shift, because I surely would have slept through any audible alarms. I was feeling refreshed, alive; far less heavy and bleak than of late.
It lasted while I showered and dressed.
It lasted while I took the tram over to the coffee kiosk. I grabbed a black jazz tea -- which was a popular genmod with lots of caffeine -- and a cheese knish. Knishes were a common snack food in Jarden, back home. This one was very different to those, but good, too. My mood held.
It lasted while I took the tram over to the accounting place with the nook nearby. There was a coffee sitting there, empty. I fished out a small plastic optic sheet, and unrolled it right there. My retinals could pick out an infrared overlay on the display, which would have been invisible to the naked eye. Since SpecSign had access to my official records, Branden would know that. On the sheet, was a description of what the Seven had learned overnight.
The shooter's identity was still unknown. The second roller had been unexpected, and Brand took responsibility for the oversight. Team apparently knew about a disturbance that had occurred, but not any details. They were investigating, though, so it might not be long before they somehow ID'd me. I should be prepared. Security sensors in the area had been put out of action prior to the incident, just like they had with the mugging. And that was it. The final line on the sheet instructed me to make sure to recycle it, which I did at the first trash mulcher I came to on the street corner.
I still felt good. The information that the killer had technical skills enough to modify a stunner and disconnect a localized sensor grid, as well as the possibility of him having allies aboard, completely failed to dampen my mood.
It lasted right up until I got to work.
Probably double the number of Team security characters were in there now -- walking around, standing around, checking people's bags and datapads. They stopped me, and inspected my knish and tea suspiciously...but no more suspiciously than they did everyone and everything else.
Ghazza and several of the military types on the Weaponry Sub-D were already in our makeshift office in the back corner.
Seven Nuellan was with her. They both offered greetings; the Seven's was clipped and distracted. She looked very anxious, actually, in stark contrast to the icy composure she'd displayed in that weird interview.
"I...I have to go," she said after a moment. "Excuse me."
She moved off quickly with fast little steps.
"What's going on around here?" I asked Ghaz, after Floyeen was out of earshot.
"Looks like there was a data breach," my supervisor said quietly. "It happened over with the Starjump team. Some restricted files were copied, maybe from inside, maybe from outside. That's all they're saying right now, but Team will be doing a full soup-to-nuts audit of each Sub-Department. Floyeen is really upset about it. I thought she was going to have a stroke! Looks like design and construction duties are still on hold until the investigation is over."
The Team engineers/officers in our group stood around the table. I'd been introduced to them over the course of the previous week, and couldn't remember a single name. They all looked resigned and unemotional in that distinctively military way, when something big, pressing, and unavoidable was going down that was sure to be a royal pain for everyone involved.
"This is ridiculous," I stated at last. Ghazza started to respond, emotion written plainly on her face. "No! You know I'm right, Ghaz. I've been in R&D for weeks now. I have yet to see any work being done. The freejump technology is amazing, and its potential is nearly unlimited -- but this project, right here, is a joke!"
"It's just bad timing, Ejoq. We'll get back up to speed soon. Today, even! Look at this..." and she waved at the Tri-D. It popped up a schematic hologram that floated off to one side, and she had to physically turn the half-broken unit so the image was over the table. It was a circuit plan.
"Is this for the interface?" I asked. The others just nodded and studied it closely.
"I put it together yesterday. And last night. It's for the particle cannon response feedback. I've already simmed it with three standard miltech cannons of a middling size, which we have on record, and it works: it returns realtime status data in QW format, which can be read by any Gyvern-style display and analysis unit."
"Okay," I replied, actually impressed, "that's a nice start. Gyverns are standard in the entire Az'atla line of Civilian Class gunnery suites...some of the Somersets, too."
"We have access to Gyvern-enabled AI's," she stated. "For testing, of course. I've already put in an order for one, and it should be here by next week. See? Things are happening, Ejoq. We could really use you. You don't want to break your contract over some minor delays, do you?"
"My contract was with the previous incarnation of this department, Ghazza. HR wants me to sign a new one, but they've been swamped, and haven't been able to get me in. If I don't sign, I'm off the project, so I think I'm off. Don't get me wrong -- this is a very nice interface schematic you've put together, but if the Starjump group, followed by the entire R&D division, is under investigation, while Hull Design and GenDis are made up of entirely new clubs of people, we're not going to be able to get any inter-Sub-D exchanges going for weeks...maybe months. Then they may well dictate interface specs that invalidate all the work you just did. Your design sims well with three cannon interfaces we have access to? Great! What about the thousands of others they could decide to use instead? We haven't been allowed any input on the project's requirements, so we have no idea what direction they'll go in. I doubt even they do yet! I'm not willing to put in countless hours of what amounts to busy work, waiting on other people to get themselves together, only to see it all get flushed out the airlock when they finally do. There shouldn't even be a Weaponry Sub-Department until those other clowns deliver some work."
The Team officers, as a group, looked at me darkly. One of them muttered something to the effect that I should shut-up and start doing my job. I just waved them all away, and walked off.
Ghazza started to follow; I could hear her quick steps behind, but they stopped after only a moment, while I kept going.
Seven Nuellan was just coming out of the freshers when I stalked by.
"Hey, where are you going?" she asked brightly. The woman's tone hooked me, and I turned. She was grinning now, and much more composed.
"Someone got good news," I replied with surprise. "Care to share?"
"I just decided not to let the day get ahead of me."
I grunted, and waved at R&D General as a whole.
"There won't be enough to this day to make it worth the effort."
I signed out at the entrance to the Department, caught a tram, and went to buy a coffee I had no intention of drinking. If I was quitt
ing R&D, that information needed to be passed along.
When I set the empty cup down in its dark little nook, a dozen Team soldiers, all armored, huge, and brandishing weapons, dashed at me from every direction -- shouting, screaming, ordering me to show my hands, to hit the deck, to lie down, now!
Those all sounded like very good ideas, and I complied, smiling the whole time, because it was finally over.
OOOOOOOOOO
They were at the tail end of a formal treaty review. The big holo display over the table showed a large version of it, and I saw they were reading from The Javelina Reduction Agreement. One side or the other occasionally interrupted to clarify various details of the document in standard layman's terms.
The general slant of the conversation seemed to be about understanding how said details might be interpreted and acted upon in the field, by career military or administrative types without any legal or diplomatic training. It was important to know if an alleged violation was due to one person's mistake, or to the standard procedure of an entire organization. This was some pretty dry stuff, but they took it very seriously.
As soon as the review was concluded, a few minutes later, the holographic document floating before us was replaced by an animated graphic, depicting a flag that spun slowly about on a central axis. This flag bore the national symbols of both the Alliance of Interstellar Nations, and the Montaro TransStellar Commercial Federation -- one on one side, one on the other. It seemed to imply a warm, cozy relationship between the two neighbors.
An aide at the table stepped out.
No one spoke to me, though both sides chatted quietly among themselves. There were glasses and carafes of water on the table. I poured myself some; my mouth was very dry.
A couple more minutes went by like this, that fear singing inside the whole time.
The double doors opened eventually, and that aide returned, followed closely by a short, stocky woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties or so. She had close-cropped silver hair and tired lines across her face. At least, that's what I thought the lines were, until she sat down and I could see her in better light. They were actually facial scars. She had seen some deep action at some point -- probably at many points, and she'd never had cosmetic work done. Fleet indulged in a certain romanticism about battle scars, I knew. Their recruitment ads invariably showed at least one or two soldiers sporting the scarred look. Usually far less than this, though.
Admiral Dusane brought up her own Tri-D image. Now that I was actually paying attention, and unlike the big image hovering over the center of the table, her display revealed itself to be polarized to her point-of-view only. Looking around the table, I couldn't make out what anyone was seeing. I'd never heard of such a thing for Tri-D displays. Though hardly likely to change the galaxy, it was certainly clever.
Fleet was good at clever.
The seated officers muttered among themselves for a bit, then the admiral peered around the room for the first time, eyes finally settling on me.
"Is this him?" she asked one of the captains, who confirmed that I was. "Mr. Dosantos, you're an AIN citizen, are you not?"
"Yes, ma'am. Born and raised in Jarden System."
"Yet, you are, um, Chief of Investigations for Montaro Administration Security?" She read this off her display questioningly, like it was as bizarre to her as it was to me.
"That is correct."
She looked me over with what seemed like passive, confused eyes. That was misleading, since no one in her position would be either of those things. It gave a boost to the fear that I only fought down with a conscious will.
"Could you explain to me how you came to hold a senior position in a foreign nation's intelligence service? Our guests from over the border seem to be confused on this point as well, even though it's been confirmed to them by their superiors on Interstar."
"You have my testimony, ma'am," I replied as easily as I could, but it sounded dismissive to my ears as soon as it came out, so I hastily added, "but the title is something of a misnomer."
"How so?"
"Well, I'm the only person in the Department."
"Yes, I saw that," she commented, gesturing at the blurry hologram. "The question still stands. Or let me put it this way: why are you so very trustworthy to the Montaro Corporation's Board of Directors? You seem to have been elevated into a singular position -- one that, at least ostensibly, outranks my esteemed friends here, who are actually citizens of Corporatespace."
"I helped safeguard some Montaro assets and IP," I said. "That buys a little trust."
"Not with everyone," she rejoined darkly, through the distorted information hovering before her.
OOOOOOOOOO
twenty
* * *
I expected nerve packs and psych-drugs; the one-two punch of extreme pain coupled with mind-altering chemicals generally proved quite effective in extracting information.
When that didn't happen, I expected molecular mind-charting, so they could make a digital copy of my brain, and attempt to get it to talk (this was more art than science, really, and largely disallowed as courtroom evidence, though the technique had its advocates).
That didn't happen either.
In fact, nothing happened for what seemed like a long time. I sat, waiting, in a gray-walled isolation cell -- brightly lighted and warm, but utterly soundproofed and cut off. I saw no one.
At third shift, a small audible bell sounded, and the ambient lights dimmed, though didn't go fully out. At first shift, the bell sounded once more, and they came up again.
Food arrived with a different bell, from a slot on the wall: simple frozen meals in trays. If the previous tray and utensils weren't dropped into the discard slot, no new food would be ejected. I knew this without being told, because prison dramas on the vid were a bonafied genre.
After being arrested, I had been tapecuffed, and then stunned for the sake of easy handling. I woke up in a medical bay, with a technician in a Team uniform hovering nearby. I knew instantly that I was now on a ship of some kind -- artificial gravity having a distinctive feel from that of the centripetal force of spinning space stations; spacers could tell the difference, anyway. The tech pronounced me fit for walking, and several Team guards led me off to a changing room.
The commring was confiscated, of course, while my retinals and the implanted bonecon speaker/mics in my jaw were powered down and locked off by a handheld unit that overrode my own commands. They made me strip down, shower, and dress in gray pants and matching shirt from a shelf. I was given gray softshoes. Then they led me to a wall that opened up when one of them touched a glowing plate, and I was ordered inside. I asked nothing and commented on nothing, and they did the same.
Some people went crazy with this kind of isolation. That usually just happened to long-term prisoners. Such convicts were fairly rare these days, genre fiction notwithstanding, and virtually unknown outside of a gravity well. You did hear stories, though, of unhappy souls languishing in hidden facilities, victims of strange laws, and complex circumstances. Those were just tall tales -- but even if they weren't, I couldn't have warranted that kind of care.
The usual response to criminal behavior (and industrial espionage was right up there with violent crime over here in Corporate Territory), was mental restructuring. Rather than punish a person for what they did wrong, most modern governments found it far cheaper, more effective, and efficient to alter the criminal brain so as to make the offense or offenses unlikely (even impossible) to be repeated.
New cognitive patterns, carefully chosen to counter the negative behaviors that caused the crime to be committed in the first place, were overlaid onto the offender. Anti-social tendencies could be wiped out, compulsions could be quashed, negative or dangerously-repetitive thought processes could be positively redirected. After this, it was standard practice for the prisoner to undergo a course of genetic remodeling that matched the newly-tailored mental conditioning. This way, any destructive life patterns that had a genetic
source, and which might, therefore, be passed along to future offspring, could be avoided.
I should have gotten a trial. Maybe even ambassadorial attention from AIN reps over here. But that was under normal circumstances.
Almost eight shifts went by -- roughly two-and-a-half days -- before the seamless door reappeared in the wall, and four Team guards came in. I was sitting on the toilet at the time.
"You need to come with us, sir."
"In a couple minutes, okay? Last night's frozen cutlet really didn't like me."
They really didn't like that, but had little choice in the matter. Three of them stepped back outside, while one waited there for me to finish (he must have been loving his job).
When we finally got moving, I was tapecuffed, and marched through companionways much like my cell in both color and character. The only sound was our footsteps. We went through several hatches that opened at their touch, and then to a glassed-in guard booth. One of my escorts had to verify me with an IDent and check off something on a screen in the wall before the final hatch opened.
This led to a series of more companionways, far less industrial in color and lighting. Doors with name plates lined both sides. People in uniform came and went, but no one paid any heed to the prisoner, except to let us all pass.
At a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM 08, one of the soldiers knocked, and then opened it with a button press. No one was there. Inside was a round table with eight chairs. I was told to sit, and I did. The guards stood to one side, and we waited -- though not for long.
Within just a few minutes, the door opened again, and several Team officers walked in, as well as Branden Ursga. He wore prisoner garb, like me, but was not cuffed.
In fact, when he saw them on me, he said, "We don't need those."
A woman with more bars on her sleeve than anyone else in the room nodded to my guards, and one of them cut the tape with a cuff tool. Then they left when she waved them off.
Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script) Page 27
