by Jaxon Reed
Wilcox reached out mentally and scrambled the circuits. Then she scraped it off the underside of the desk with a fingernail and into the palm of her other hand. She stood up and showed it to Fonteneaux.
Fonteneaux raised a questioning eyebrow at her and Wilcox resumed her search.
A minute later she said, “I don’t sense anything else. The big window wall over there worries me. There are ways to eavesdrop through glass.”
“From what I understand,” Fonteneaux said, “the AOJ was aware of that when they built this headquarters, and anti-listening measures were put in place. The glass is one way for visual privacy, too.”
Wilcox shrugged and said, “Okay. We should be good, then.”
“Any idea where this was transmitting to?”
“Not really. It went to an anonymous link on the neural net that fed into a secured node inside one of the gaming worlds. Games are lightly regulated, you know. We used them during the war to establish contact with the Resistance.”
“Really? No, I didn’t know. I’ll take your word for it. Someday we’ve got to find time to sit down and you can tell me all about your adventures with pirates.”
Wilcox smiled but did not commit to anything. Much of the information she had about pirates could affect her mother, if someone wished to pursue things from a purely legal standing.
And it was not that she distrusted her superior. It was just the entire crew of the Ultima Mule Company had become very dear to Wilcox, and she did not want to do or say anything that might threaten them should the political tides shift against Lute and the Alliance.
Right now, the Republic remained on friendly terms with the Alliance. But who knew what might transpire in the future? Nobody on Lute expected the bonhomie to last forever.
“Alright,” Fonteneaux said. “I’m promoting you to Assistant Director. You can retain the ‘detective’ designation if you want. It might help you open some doors.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
“Take the office next to mine. For all intents and purposes, you’re my number two. It’ll probably ruffle some feathers, and there’s always office politics involved in things like this, but we’ll deal with it as it comes.”
“I’m used to being hated. I was a Marine Sergeant. Nobody likes the Sergeant.”
“First order of business, I want to know who is corrupt at the upper levels. AOJ has a reputation, well deserved I might add, of being a dirty organization. You and I are going to clean house as fast as we can. We need to move quickly. If Severs loses the election, we’ll both be out of a job.”
Wilcox nodded, but she actually did not need a job. One of the secrets she did not share with Fonteneaux was that her shares from privateering during the war were nothing short of phenomenal.
She was not as rich as her mother, who served as an officer aboard the Ultima Mule, the most lucrative ship in the war. But there was so much gold at the end that everybody in the company, including Gina who had helped secure some of it, received an enormous payout.
Part of that had to do with stealing the entire gold reserves of Euripides before the Diego Fleet arrived.
Euripides had fallen into societal chaos with the loss of their money supply. At that point, Tetrarch Thrall sued for peace.
Technically speaking, stealing their gold reserves was a legal maneuver in which the Ultima Mule’s crew had engaged. Depriving the enemy of assets was perfectly acceptable in wartime.
However, it still was a giant series of bank robberies, and bank robberies were generally frowned upon by law enforcement during wartime or peace.
So, prudence definitely being the better part of valor in this situation, Gina kept her mouth shut. But, if she were fired due to a changing political environment on Diego, she could handle the transition far easier than Fonteneaux could.
Out loud Wilcox said, “So who’s at the top I should be worried about?”
“We’ve only got two ADs left, other than you. Montoya and Applegate. They are lifers, they’ve been with the agency their entire careers. So there’s some loyalty there, but also with that much tenure, there’s greater opportunity for corruption. Check them out using your skills and good old fashioned police work. Then let me know if they can be trusted or not.”
Wilcox nodded. That assignment seemed simple enough.
“After that,” Fonteneaux said, “we’ll go down to the 9th floor and root out corruption there. Presuming Severs wins the election, of course.”
“He seems like a good candidate.”
“The Progressive Party is coming on strong. Don’t hold your breath until all the votes are counted. It’s going to be close, either way.”
-+-
The chemistry was complex, the anonymous man sitting downstairs near the coffee shop thought.
He wore a pinstriped business suit and a fedora with a wide brim.
In a fashionable throwback, he also wore reading glasses, which were unnecessary in this day and age of molecular corrections. But they were nonetheless chic. They also obscured his irises from scanners.
His appointment with a low level agent gained him entrance to the AOJ building, but somehow that particular agent was called away before meeting him, leaving the man sitting alone in the lobby.
This was by design. The agent was supposed to be called away. The anonymous man had been assured this would happen, so things were proceeding according to plan as far as he was concerned.
Now, his part in this grand scheme was about to begin. He opened his briefcase and extracted a thin sheet measuring five centimeters by 15. He laid it carefully on top of another thin sheet of different material.
He was uncertain of what the sheets were comprised. He thought perhaps one of them might be metallic chloride. It was not important, he thought. It was only important they worked as desired.
The sheets did not set off explosives detectors when he walked into the lobby, because separately the compounds were harmless. Together . . .
He attached a small patch switch detonator to the sheets, then connected to it with a neural transmitter. He closed the briefcase, leaving it on the table. It was now a fully armed bomb.
He stood and walked toward the exit.
Before leaving the lobby, he turned to watch while he activated the switch over his implant.
Thoom!
The briefcase fireballed, taking out the table and chairs and instantly killing four people sitting nearby.
Lights flashed red and fire retardant rained down from the ceiling.
Agents yelled and chaos erupted as everyone moved at once.
Smiling at the mayhem he had caused, the anonymous man walked out of the lobby and into the reception room, then out the building’s front door and onto the street.
Out on the street, with a practiced hand, he took a razor and cut out his implant. He stopped and fished in a recycling receptacle on the next corner and retrieved a combustion box he had placed there earlier.
He placed the implant inside and pressed the plunger, incinerating it.
Pocketing the small box, he whistled a cheerful tune as he crossed the street, confident he could not be tracked with electronics.
14
In the aftermath of the bombing, Fonteneaux herself came down and inspected the damage.
She checked on survivors and looked at the bodies of the four victims before they were carried off to the municipal morgue.
Many long hours later, well after five o’clock, she finally headed wearily back up to her new office.
Montoya, Applegate and Wilcox waited for her out in the reception area.
Molly sat behind her desk, too. As an android assigned to this area, she would always be there, day and night.
As soon as the elevator door dinged open Fonteneaux said, “Do we have anything?”
Applegate said, “I’ve collected security holos from PLAIR, Director. This is our suspect.”
He pointed at an image of the man in the fedora.
“How did he sneak
a bomb in? What’s he doing with his briefcase?”
“He’s assembling a bomb,” Wilcox said. “He didn’t set off any alarms when he came inside. My guess is he carried individual components past the scanner that appear relatively harmless by themselves.”
“That’s just a theory,” Applegate said, in a cautioning tone.
They watched as the man walked toward the exit, leaving the briefcase on his table. He turned at the door and stared.
Wilcox froze the image and opened a holosheet showing a list of figures.
“These are all the neural connections in the lobby at that particular moment. Note the sequence here.”
She pointed to a number string that read, “01101111 01101110.”
Applegate shrugged. He said, “So?”
“That’s binary code for the letters O and N. In other words, the word, ‘on.’ This guy is setting off the bomb via a neural switch.”
Applegate’s face fell. He did not have any retorts for this statement.
Fonteneaux said, “So if it’s a neural switch, we should have a record of that, right? For everyone who was in that room, including our suspect, we should have a record of their implant.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, ma’am,” Montoya said, speaking up for the first time. “It turns out he was using one of the Quenton implants.”
“Fill me in,” Fonteneaux said. “What are the Quenton implants?”
Montoya said, “During the war, a batch of implants were stolen from the factory here in Diego. They were modified somehow, and sold on the black market. Essentially, a user can remain anonymous while walking around wearing them.”
“A guy named Quenton stole them, thus the name,” Applegate added. “We caught him but by then he had already sold a bunch on the black market.”
“So we use other methods. Iris scan?”
“The glasses he wore obscured the irises,” Applegate said.
Fonteneaux sighed.
She said, “Well, this is frustrating. Get me some leads, people. I want to find this guy and bring him in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As the other two ADs turned, Fonteneaux tilted her head toward her office. Wilcox followed her in through the double doors.
Both women sat down on a leather couch while the door closed behind them.
“The other question, of course, is why this happened,” Fonteneaux said.
“Oh, I think we both know the answer to that one, Boss.”
She pointed at the holo in the corner, showing the evening news.
The artificial anchor said, “We are going live to MP Dermot Kruger, the leading opposition candidate for the Progressive Party. Mr. Kruger, do you have any comments on the apparent bombing at AOJ Headquarters this afternoon?”
An older man with gray hair and a matching goatee looked right at the camera and gave his best politician’s smile.
“I can you tell you one thing, the government is in a mess right now. Chancellor Cole and Admiral Severs did a good job running the war. But running the Planetary Republic is another thing altogether. When I am elected Chancellor, I promise to right the ship! And this lawlessness will stop under my administration.”
Fonteneaux made a twirling motion with her finger, and the volume muted.
She looked at Wilcox and said, “You don’t think that was a politically motivated strike, do you? I mean, that’s conspiracy theory stuff.”
Gina shrugged. She said, “It’s a viable possibility. I know a strong undercurrent has been working for years to knock Cole’s party out of power. Sowing discontent and lawlessness might be a way to accomplish that, especially in an election year.”
Fonteneaux sighed and seemed to deflate into the couch.
She said, “Alright. On top of my first directive to you about rooting out corruption from within, see if you can get to the bottom of this and find our bomber. I wish you could have picked him up beforehand. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
“I looked at the logs. I came in after he did and I must have walked right past him in the lobby. Yeah, I never saw or felt anything.”
-+-
That evening, the bomber walked into a political fundraiser, his black market implant long gone. There were no signs of the razor blade cut used to extract it, thanks to an injection of medical nanobots which quickly repaired the damage.
For this black tie event held in the Ashton Conference Center in Octavia Park, he wore a synthetic nose, cheek inserts, and a fake beard. Also, he donned a different pair of iris obscuring glasses. He wore tight white gloves, just in case he left any prints at the AOJ Building, although he was pretty sure he did not.
The gloves were a little out of place. But people dressed to the nines at these political dinners, and no one said anything. With his tuxedo, he actually looked kind of like a waiter.
Security was light for this event. The Chancellor would not be here. An up and coming member of the Conservative Party, Neal Humphries, was scheduled to speak to his supporters. The Conservatives were part of the current ruling coalition, but they were not considered powerful. But they traditionally always aligned with the Libertarians.
The large room held 80 round tables, tastefully decorated with white linen cloths and peach-scented candles. Silverware and drinks were already in place, and when the bomber walked into the ballroom, android waiters were busily distributing covered dishes to patrons seated around the tables.
He did not head for one of the available chairs, though. Staying to the side of the room, he walked to a corner where trays were erected as stations to hold dirty dishes for when the tables would be cleared later. Also, here water pitchers were placed for the android servers to refill glasses as needed.
He picked up one of these pitchers and surreptitiously dropped a packet of powder into the water.
Nanobots laced with thallium, he thought. Delightfully deadly.
He turned and mounted the steps on the raised dais where a long table stretched, filled with notable party bigwigs and their spouses. In the center, a podium stood ready for the big after-dinner speech.
The bomber, soon to be poisoner, walked straight for Humphries, a dark skinned handsome man in his mid-30s. His water glass was almost empty.
“Here you are, sir.”
He filled the glass from the poisoned pitcher.
Humphries hardly noticed, he was so busy talking to the person beside him.
The bomber turned back for the steps.
Humphries’s wife, an attractive brunette, grabbed his elbow and said, “Oh, will you fill up mine too?”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
By the time the poisoner walked out the front door of the hotel a few minutes later, both Mr. and Mrs. Humphries lay on the floor dead, foaming at the mouth and surrounded by stunned friends and supporters.
Several people called 911, but the ambulances arrived too late.
15
The next morning, the mood on AOJ’s tenth floor was somber.
“It’s the same guy,” Wilcox said, watching security footage of the man walking into the Ashton Conference Center ballroom and heading straight for the water pitchers in the corner.
“We don’t know that,” Applegate said.
He stood with Montoya and Molly, staring at footage on the holo from the hotel reception room.
The political assassination created a firestorm, with calls for action from all quarters. Parliament was in an uproar.
Fonteneaux assigned a hundred agents to the case. Everyone devoted some measure of effort to it, on top of the recent bombing and any other cases to which they might be assigned.
“Would the same guy strike twice in one day?” Montoya said.
“Sure. Why not?” Wilcox said.
“It’s risky, for one thing.”
“This guy thrives on risk.”
Applegate said, “Again, that’s assuming it’s the same guy.”
“Look at him,” Wilcox said. “Same height. He’s
also wearing glasses which happen to interfere with iris scans.”
“Different facial structure, and a beard,” Applegate said.
“Fakes. Also, notice how he’s wearing gloves. He doesn’t want to leave prints on the pitcher or anywhere else. Our bomber did not wear gloves, but he burned up everything he touched when the bomb went off.”
“I don’t think it’s the same guy,” Applegate said. “You want to take that angle, go right ahead.”
He turned away, heading back to his office.
Wilcox locked eyes with Montoya.
The older woman shrugged and said, “Why don’t you talk to Menzinni? He’s our main forensics guy.”
-+-
The sign on the door read, “Forensic Sciences.” It swished open for Wilcox as she approached.
Several individuals looked up from their desks. No one recognized her.
A man much younger than Wilcox expected to see came out of an office wearing a white lab coat. He had thick curly brown hair, with a cowlick above his forehead that threatened to fall out of place. It bounced on his head as he walked.
He said, “Who are you?”
“Gina Wilcox, I’m the new AD. Are you Ben Menzinni?”
“Yeah. I guess you want to know what we got off the Humphries case?”
She smiled and nodded.
He said, “Come on, I’ll show you some things and let you run with it.”
Wilcox followed him into his office.
Three holos displayed microscopic images, enlarged to show them in granular detail. The first was a nanobot. The second a spore, and the third a single strand of hair. Each had labels displayed, so Wilcox knew what she was looking at.
“So, when Mrs. Humphries grabbed our guy’s arm, she pulled off some stuff. Not much, mind you, but . . . are you familiar with microspores?”
“Sure. Plant based material. Microscopic.”
“Right. Well, everywhere you go, your body attracts microspores along with all the other stuff that’s floating around out there. But, here’s the convenient fact for us. Certain areas only produce certain types of microspores. We can pinpoint where a person has been by what their body carries around with them.”
