“Aria,” I said. “I have to take care of something. Do your dad a favor and wait up here until I get back.”
“You’re not going to watch?”
“I’ll be back before it’s over. Just going to pick us up something to eat. You don’t move from here, okay?”
She nodded, unable to avert her gaze from the ship.
“Good girl,” I said. I rustled my hand through her soft auburn hair. “Remember. Stay put.”
I shoved my pistol in my holster and made my way over to the roof’s emergency access latch so I could quickly descend through the building. There was work to be done.
—
My eyelids sprang open. My ears were ringing, but as I came to my senses I felt something squirming against my chest. I peeled my body away and found the little girl I’d seen standing in front of the Molten Crater staring up at me. She was breathing as heavily as I was, but she was alive. Maybe for a younger version of myself it wouldn’t have been so close, but I was still spry enough to save her.
Her lips trembled too much for her to speak, but she didn’t have to. All I had to do was gaze into her bulging eyes as we lay there to know she was grateful. Apparently her parents either didn’t share the sentiment or didn’t see what happened, because when they arrived they ripped me off her. I handed her over without a fuss, but we didn’t break eye contact until they ran her around a corner.
She really did look just like Aria had at her age. I never thought about that day on the rooftop much, but it was one of the first on the lengthy list of mistakes that drove her away from me. I had left her alone there for hours, until it was dark. Her cheeks were wet with tears when I returned after a job well done, but she’d listened and stayed put. She always was a good girl.
I shook my head and buried the memory down in the depths of my mind. I turned my attention to the spires of black smoke swirling up from the New London maglev rail station. There was nothing like the potential for work to keep me focused on the present. Whatever had happened had the city in an uproar. Red lights were flashing from countless security hover-cars racing between buildings, and sirens wailed so loudly that they drowned out the screams of the terrified populace.
“So much for vacation,” I said with a sigh. I picked my pistol up and headed in that direction.
Chapter 4
When I reached the site of the explosion there was still a large ring of crackling flame wrapping around the blast’s origin point. Security hover-cars were soaking it with fire repellent, but a lot of work remained to be done.
The blast itself had turned a small portion of the rail station’s northern platform and the adjacent plaza into a cinder, but the radius was small, likely from an improvised device. The corpses unfortunate enough to be in the center of the fiery circle were charred black, their clothing still smoking. More citizens right outside were grasping at severed limbs and terrible wounds, screaming for help. That was the worst of the physical damage from the bomb, but it’d also caused the frightened populace of New London to descend into chaos.
I scanned the sullen faces of the USF soldiers attempting to establish order as I got closer. They’d formed tight lines around the area and were using shields and shock-batons to try to hold back swells of drunken people. They were struggling mightily, though that wasn’t a surprise. The USF military rarely strayed from the larger cities on Earth, leaving the policing throughout Sol to private security forces. There was supposed to be nowhere on the planet more secure than New London.
“You can’t be here!” a USF security commander shouted at me as I approached. I flashed my Pervenio badge and the man instantly fell into salute. “Sorry, sir,” he said sheepishly.
“What happened?” I asked. It wasn’t my job to help with security, but collectors from influential corporations like mine pretty much had free rein when it came to ordering around USF security teams. For good reason, too. By the looks of it most of them had never seen a dead body, let alone managed a minor riot. I even noticed one vomiting into an exhaust vent in an alley after trying to help someone with a missing arm while I approached.
I, on the other hand, was used to carnage. Over my thirty years as a collector I’d been dispatched to solve problems everywhere imaginable. From the slum regions of Earth, where it wasn’t uncommon to find bodies out on the streets half buried under snow, to the farthest colonies sprouting up in Sol. Those always had a healthy amount of violence. To me, cleaning up messes had become as easy as hauling cargo. I didn’t find any joy in doing it, but I didn’t get the sick feeling in my stomach that I knew the average person should get, either. Sometimes I wondered if a part of my human programming was faulty, allowing me to have grown so numb to bloodshed, but I was never away from the job for long enough to dwell on it.
“Not sure,” the commander answered. “I’ve never seen anything like this in New London.” He was clearly as nervous as his men. While he talked he couldn’t keep his gaze from wandering toward the rapidly swelling mob.
“I’ve seen much worse,” I said. The affairs on Undina came to mind. I decided to change the subject before I wound up upsetting myself by thinking about it. “We’re lucky barely a soul is using the rail station on M-day. Thirty meters right or left and the bomb, no matter how small, could’ve killed thousands.” At first glance I didn’t count more than a few dozen who were unquestionably dead.
“Maybe so, but with all these civilians hollering we’ll have a mess here for days.” The commander turned toward a line of men and yelled: “Keep them back!”
Just then a frantic citizen busted through the line, throwing one of the security officers to the ground and ripping the shock-baton from his hand. He screamed, “That’s my wife,” over and over as he crossed the crime scene. Another officer attempted to restrain him but only got himself smashed across the face by the baton.
I groaned. They were way out of their element. I slipped my pistol out of its holster, took aim, and shot the citizen right through the forearm. The weapon flew out of his hand as the man crumpled to the ground.
“Sir!” the startled commander yelled to me.
I ignored him. I raised my gun into the air and rushed toward the mob. Now I had their full attention. Even the security officers were gawking at me.
“Next one that breaks the line will find themselves rotting in a cell on Pervenio station!” I roared.
The commander grabbed my arm and yanked me around. “Sir, you can’t do that!” he protested, more fearful than stern. “This isn’t your jurisdiction!”
I lowered my weapon and leaned in so close to him that our noses were almost touching. “Take control of your city, Commander, or we’ll have to. Remember that it was Mr. Pervenio’s Departure that’s been spoiled by all this.” Truthfully, I couldn’t have cared less about the Departure, but I knew that a bomber loose in New London meant potential work. I was planning on taking advantage of any opportunity to avoid my appointed vacation.
“Yes…yes sir,” he stammered.
I patted him on the shoulder and forced a grin. Then I swept my gaze across the gruesome scene once more to get a clearer picture. There really were few better places for the attack to have happened as far as avoiding casualties went. The New London Pervenio Hospital was directly across the street with lower-level access, excluding the fact that it was through a sea of unruly people.
“Focus all your trucks and hover-cars on clearing a path to the Pervenio hospital,” I ordered. “Attend the injured. It isn’t your job to figure out who’s behind this, so leave that to me.”
The commander saluted again, then got to work. My stunt was keeping the mob at bay for the moment, but it wouldn’t last long if he and his men didn’t show some mettle. I could only hope I’d inspired them enough to know how far a little muscle could go in such situations.
Once I was alone I took out my hand-terminal. The screen was flickering. The device seemed to be having a hard time locating a signal in the wake of the explosion. I distanced myse
lf from the center of it to try to find service and leaned against the side of a ground transport vehicle. A group of USF medics were struggling to lift a woman with a bloody stump left for a leg into it. She was writhing and shrieking in agony. My terminal was still struggling, and it was a pain to watch, so I gave them a hand. After she was loaded up I walked a little farther until the screen of the device returned to normal.
I scrolled through my contacts and selected Director Sodervall. My call was relayed to a satellite orbiting Earth and then started bouncing among the countless communications arrays spread throughout the solar system that made up the network otherwise known as Solnet. I won’t pretend to understand how it all works, but since he was all the way in the Ring it took about five frustrating minutes to get through. The grainy image of his creased face popped up on the screen.
“Sir, can you hear me?” I asked him. The response was incomprehensible. His voice was filled with static. I held it up to my ear and continued moving away from the blast until I was right on the edge of the mob, which was growing raucous again. “Sir?” I repeated.
“Graves, you’re coming in clear now,” Director Sodervall replied. It wasn’t the best-quality connection I’d ever experienced, but it would do. He was posted on Pervenio station orbiting Saturn, after all. It was a miracle we could even talk.
“Good. The blast must be messing with reception.”
“You’re there already?” He sounded shocked. Like I said, it wasn’t usually a collector’s job to keep the peace.
“I was in the area. I’ve been getting tired of vacation anyway.”
“Malcolm, you…” the director began before exhaling. I’m guessing he was hoping that after Undina any collector besides me would’ve wound up right where he needed them. “How is it down there?”
“It could’ve been worse, but these federation men clearly haven’t seen anything like this before.”
“They’ll have to make do,” he groused, a hint of bitterness bleeding into his tone. “We can’t be expected to clean up all of their messes, after all.”
“Fine by me,” I said, having to speak louder than I’d expected just to hear myself. The mob was as boisterous as when I’d first arrived again. I grabbed one of the nearby officers, pointed to his holstered pulse-rifle, and motioned for him to fire up into the air. He immediately took my advice and things quieted back down.
“So you have any leads on who’s behind this, or are you planning to leave me off it?” I asked the director.
“I was thinking about it,” he replied, wearing a smug grin. Of all the directors I’d ever dealt with, Sodervall and I actually got along best. He had the dry, cynical sense of humor that appealed to me. “Lucky for you, you’re the most experienced operative we have stationed on Earth. M-day is a big day for crimes offworld.”
“Lucky me.”
“Indeed. Unfortunately we have no leads yet, but every major corporation with collectors near New London is already looking into this. They’re desperate to prove our ineptitude, so you’ll understand when I say that we need you to work quickly.”
“I’ll keep them far behind me,” I said as a medic rushed by, nearly knocking into me. He knelt down by a citizen with skin so charred that he barely looked human any longer.
“I hope you’re rested then.” Director Sodervall paused for a brief moment and stared away from the screen. “Job’s yours,” he finally conceded. “Only you won’t be doing it alone.”
“Sir?”
“Mr. Pervenio has requested that whoever is assigned to this take on one of our promising young recruits straight out of the Cogent Initiative. I’m guessing you’re familiar with the program?”
I’d heard a little. It was a program backed personally by Luxarn that was dedicated to providing Pervenio Corp with the most skilled and efficient agents in Sol. I won’t say I wasn’t flattered to be working with one of their prized, experimental trainees, but I’d always preferred working alone. Dragging Aria along with me everywhere I went when she was still around was the closest thing I ever had to having a real partner. A failed attempt at training her to be a collector had left a sour taste in my mouth, and me hesitant to ever consider taking on a new one.
“Sir, you know I work better alone,” I said coolly.
“Sorry, Graves, but the orders come from above me. I haven’t met the man, but if it makes you feel any better he has the highest scores of anybody in the initiative.”
It didn’t. I tried to keep calm, but nothing irritated me more than when company politics got in the way of my assignments. “Well, you tell Mr. Pervenio that this isn’t the time for on-the-job training. Just let me do what I do best, and I’ll take care of this.”
“Like you did on Undina?” the director snapped. “Or did you forget that half the sector went dark because you were too slow.”
I chewed out the words bubbling in my throat before I said something I would regret. I was still sore about what happened there and now I couldn’t help but think about it. I blamed Pervenio for bad intel, but in my heart I couldn’t ignore the idea that maybe I was slipping. I’d made do with plenty less information over the years and gotten the job done cleanly. I couldn’t let the director know any of that, however. My livelihood depended on it.
“But I got him, didn’t I, sir?” I said through clenched teeth.
“I don’t have time to argue right now, Graves!” the director bellowed. “If you’re not willing to play nice then I’ll have to find someone who will, and you can continue enjoying your time off until I get you an assignment arresting some lowly thief somewhere cold. We old men need the rest, after all.”
I pulled the hand-terminal away from my ear and cursed under my breath. After such a long time working together, he knew exactly how to get to me. Neither of us wanted him to go searching for a freelance collector. Acting quickly was paramount. Only the collector who found the one responsible for the bombing would get paid. I intended for that to be me. Enduring the vacation he’d forced upon me until my credit account was drained was a fate I couldn’t stomach.
“Fine, dammit,” I grumbled. “But if he gets in my way I swear I’ll leave him behind. We old men need the credits, too. So what’ll it be?”
Director Sodervall let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad that’s settled, then. Mr. Pervenio would prefer to have whoever ruined his Departure alive. One hundred thousand credits for you if you can retrieve him that way. Half that if you can’t.”
“Split between me and this partner, you mean?”
“No. The Cogent’s compensation is none of your concern.”
“Tell Mr. Pervenio he’ll have him alive,” I promised without hesitation. The price had my pulse accelerating. It was the most I’d been offered for a target in more years than I could remember. Enough to curl up in a bottle for the rest of my life if I wanted to. “Afterward we’ll discuss this partner thing,” I added.
“I’m sure we will. You’re to meet him at the USF security headquarters and proceed from there. Good luck and try not to let anybody else get killed this time.” The call cut out before I could respond, but I decided it was in my best interest to ignore his last remark regardless.
A renewed sense of purpose stole over me and fueled my tired muscles. Even more than I cared about getting paid, I had no desire to become the aging collector quietly assigned to the least hazardous missions in Sol until the directors decided it was time for me to retire. I’d seen a few men go down that road, and I planned on going out under my own terms. After what had happened on Undina I needed to catch the bomber. I needed to prove that I was still as valuable as any hungry young collector.
I set off for the security headquarters immediately, and as I walked I tried to reassure myself that having a partner might not be the worst thing. Ever since Aria left, flying alone through space from one end of settled Sol to the other, from job to job, had left me with a habit of spending most of my time stuck inside my own head.
Chapter 5
The USF security headquarters was buzzing by the time I arrived. Drunk, incarcerated civilians packed every waiting room from end to end, so many that it smelled like vomit once I was completely inside. Most of them had bloodied faces, and their lavish outfits were torn. It was hard to make out what anyone was saying with reporters on view-screens hanging from the ceilings chattering about the bombing…tireless talking heads debating what it meant for New London. I was wondering the same.
A lengthy line extended from the reception desk, which had an armed officer standing on either side to keep the peace. Beyond the glass divider keeping the rabble out of the headquarters’ bullpen I could see that calls from all over the Euro-String were coming in at an alarming rate, likely from people worried about their missing family members. Every desk was staffed by an officer or secretary, and there were at least a hundred of them arranged within the seemingly endless open room. I’d been in the headquarters plenty, but I’d never seen it so frantic. You knew it was bad when a room filled with drunks seemed to be the calm one.
At least it was at first. I was halfway toward the receptionist when a commotion broke out a few meters away.
“Would you stop staring at me with that thing?” a civilian barked. Given how much he was slurring his words, he was obviously still intoxicated. “I said stop!”
I edged toward the voice and saw the drunken civilian swing at a man in black. He missed badly and was thrown backward. He would’ve bowled me over if I hadn’t been paying enough attention to slide out of the way.
“You fuckin’ offworlders!” he snarled. He charged forward, but this time the man in black deftly spun him around and put him in an arm-bar.
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