by Jaxon Reed
She felt depressed because of so much needless death. Blood was still splattered across floors and furniture. Forensics had swept the area and investigators were allowed inside, but an outside cordon kept everyone else away.
She felt angry at the senseless murders. Somebody was going to pay for this, she thought. One way or the other she would find them, and take them down.
She saw a crowd pressed against the police line, manned currently by bots and a handful of uniformed muni officers.
Like others at AOJ, she had watched the security holo. The lookalike Admiral Severs seemed to single out sailors, especially after learning a group were in the club on shore leave.
She could not help but share a sense of pride at the petty officer’s actions, even though it resulted in his death.
Since he actually laid a hand on the gunman, forensics had spent quite a bit of time with the sailor’s corpse before releasing it from the crime scene.
She turned left outside the door, heading away from the crowd and back to where her car was parked alongside several other vehicles.
Someone left the crowd and followed her outside the police line. She felt the implant moving, a neural connection streaming somewhere back on the net.
Some distance from the door, and the crowd, she heard steps. Here, only a few scattered police bots stood guard. They were enough to keep anyone from crossing the line, though.
“Ma’am? Ma’am!”
She sighed and turned. A tall young fellow faced her wearing an old fashioned fedora. He was so tall, he actually topped her by a couple centimeters.
“Javon Del Rio, Diego Zeitung. May I have a word?”
Wilcox stopped and racked her brain, trying to remember what she knew about the Zeitung.
Unlike the League where government strictly controlled media, the Republic allowed anybody to start up a news organization, leaving it to the market to decide which companies succeeded and which ones failed.
Thus, a wide variety of companies duked it out for money and attention. Some were small, pushing their own agendas. Some were large and made at least token efforts at evenhanded reporting.
The Zeitung, as she recalled, was a widely watched channel with broad appeal. They prided themselves on presenting both sides of an issue, but they tilted right on the political spectrum, especially with their opinion shows and articles.
A rightwards tilt was not uncommon these days in the Republic, and the ruling coalitions of the last few decades were typically comprised of the Libertarian Party and some other combination of conservatives or limited government interests.
Many immigrants who made it out to the stars to a Republican planet were not interested in being told what to do. Often, especially on frontier planets, people survived just fine without a central authority and heavy handed regulations.
One of the ways the Libertarians held onto power for so long was via their slogan, “Leave us alone.” It summed up the attitudes of many citizens in the Republic, and enough of them voted that way in elections to keep the status quo.
Gina stopped and decided to approach the barrier. It would not hurt to at least speak with the fellow, she thought. She kind of liked the Zeitung. It was one of the few media outlets she paid attention to.
And it did not hurt that the reporter looked remarkably handsome. He was younger than she was, but not by much.
She said, “I can’t share anything yet. There will be a formal press conference in the morning.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I understand. I just wanted to get some background info. Can I ask you a few questions?”
She regarded Del Rio carefully now that she could see him even better. He had a dark and swarthy appearance. He looked to be in his early 30s. Tan face, dark hair and eyes. Trimmed beard with thick black whiskers.
He gave her a blatantly obvious expression of innocence on his face, imploring her silently to answer his questions.
At the look on his face, as if a teenager was desperately trying to convince an officer of his innocence despite an exploded paint bomb nearby, she smiled.
“Sure. Off the record, no recordings.”
She monitored his implant. So far, he had not activated “record mode” for what he was seeing and hearing.
Del Rio said, “Deal. So, who are you? What really went on in there? Can you give me a unique angle for our audience?”
“I’m Gina Wilcox, the new Assistant Director of AOJ under Director Fonteneaux. It’s my opinion, we don’t have solid facts yet, that someone is trying to disrupt the election by having gunmen disguised as political figures shoot up public places.”
He scribbled things down in a notebook, old school style. The sheet was paper thin, and the transcription immediately digitized, but it was by hand, not a recording. It was not transmitted elsewhere, she noted.
So far, so good she thought. He was keeping his word.
Gina said, “And if you want a unique angle for your audience, you should focus on the heroic actions of a sailor inside the club who tackled the gunman and stopped the assault. He jumped the guy unarmed, and paid for it with his life. That sailor is a hero. The gunman is a coward. He ran away after getting tackled.”
The reporter scribbled furiously, taking down more notes.
He looked up at her and said, “Thank you, Ms. Wilcox. I really appreciate this.”
Del Rio made a motion in the air with his thumb and forefinger and a holocard appeared.
“If there’s anything else you can share with me, especially in regards to this case or one of the others, here’s my card.”
She nodded and plucked it out of the air. It disappeared, the information storing itself in her implant’s contacts list.
He said, “And if you reach out to me first, before any other reporters from other news organizations, I’d appreciate that too.”
She smiled and said, “Let’s see how your story goes in the morning. If I like what you’ve written, I’ll look you up later.”
Wilcox turned and headed toward her car. She followed the reporter’s implant in her mind as he walked back to the throng of people in front of the nightclub door.
She climbed in and asked the car to take her back to AOJ HQ.
She thought, these shootings are going to have stop. Nobody is going to trust seeing Cole and Severs in public again. And those two literally won the war!
A short while later, the car floated into the employee garage and parked itself.
She walked to the elevator where a pod waited. Few people were around this time of night. Nobody else was in the garage. She entered and the door shut.
When the pod opened she walked out onto a dimly lit third floor. The forensics door had a bright line of light under it, so she walked over and knocked.
A moment later it swished open and Menzinni stood there, looking the same as before. He wore a white lab coat and had a cowlick of thick curly hair bouncing above his forehead.
Menzinni said, “I know why you’re here. The answer is yes. The same microspores were found on Petty Officer Park’s hand as in the Humphries assassination. Here’s the evidence.”
He pointed to two holos in the room, each showing spores blown up thousands of times larger and slowly rotating in the air.
Wilcox nodded. Even to her untrained eye, the spores looked similar.
She said, “So, they came from the same place? But this is not the same guy, right?”
“The spores on both came from the same general area, in Eastside. I don’t have enough evidence to indicate whether or not they’re the same perp. No DNA, for one thing. All I can say is they were in the same general area before committing their acts.”
He pointed to another holo, highlighting on a map the part of the city featuring those spores. Underneath it read, “Eastside.”
“Alright. Thanks, Manzinni.”
He yawned and stretched.
“Sure thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cot in my office calling my name.”
She wandered back to the elevators and took a pod up to the top floor, wondering if her couch in the new office was comfortable to sleep on or not.
I’m going to have to pay a visit to Eastside, she thought.
19
“Octavia is reeling this morning after another night of extreme bloodshed. We have video from inside the Montplair nightclub called Isaac Newton’s, where a gunman disguised as Admiral Frederick Severs entered and shot up the place, killing 12 and injuring 20 more. We must warn our viewers, these are very disturbing images.
“We are being told that Petty Officer Jerome Park died a hero, sacrificing himself and saving his shipmates from the Andrew Johnson and others inside the nightclub by jumping on the gunman when he turned his back on the table Park and other sailors shared . . .”
Fonteneaux muted the volume when Wilcox knocked on her door. She waved and the wooden doors opened, letting the AD in.
“You look like death warmed over,” she said, glancing at Wilcox’s disheveled appearance.
“Thanks, Boss. I slept here last night after dropping by Forensics.”
“You can use my private shower to freshen up. Bring some spare clothes from home and keep them in your office for the next time you have to sleep over.”
Wilcox smiled and noticed the discreet doorway in the wall beside the leather sofa.
As she approached it, Fonteneaux turned the holo back up.
She said, “It’s the Zeitung. They seem a little more sane than most of the other outlets. Some anonymous official evidently told them about Park’s actions. We haven’t released a statement yet. I’ve got a presser at ten A.M.”
“You don’t need me there, do you? I’d like to take a look at the Eastside area where all the microspores are coming from. Forensics said the same ones were on Petty Officer Park that were on Mrs. Humphries.”
“Do what you need to. I’ve got every available agent on this case. But take whoever you need and deliver me some results.”
Wilcox nodded and walked into the bathroom. It was spacious and well lit with a large mirror, a Jacuzzi tub and a walk-in shower.
“Rank hath its privileges,” she said, heading for the shower.
-+-
In Wilcox’s mind, heading out to Eastside was the obvious choice for a next step in the investigation.
The Forensics data was clear, and the area was worth some shoe leather even if the second crime scene had not shown identical microspores. But since it did, Eastside could not be a more obvious starting point in her opinion.
But when she inquired, she discovered nobody had bothered to check with Forensics. Or if they had, they were not acting on the lead yet.
The second thing she noticed when she went downstairs to figure out how to round up some agents to go with her, was that everybody was already assigned to other tasks. There were precious few available personnel she could scoop up to take with her.
Finally she made her way back to Molly, who sat behind the receptionist’s desk on the tenth floor smiling politely.
“Molly, link up with the downstairs receptionist, or whatever other databases you need to, and find me some available agents who can assist me today.”
The droid’s eyes flickered as she accessed the data.
Molly smiled at her and said, “All agents are assigned to other tasks, Detective Wilcox. However, two new agents are coming in this morning for their first day at work, Agent Boggs and Agent Collier.”
“Morton Boggs? Great, make sure he doesn’t get assigned to anything else. I’ll take Collier, too.”
Wilcox had used Collier as a pseudonym when infiltrating Sporades during the war with Julia Thrall before the Diego Fleet attacked. She took the fact that somebody had the same last name as a good omen.
Molly’s eyes flickered again and she said, “Agents Collier and Boggs are on the second floor waiting for you. I have reserved their entire schedule for today. Would you like them the rest of the week, too?”
“Yes, go ahead and reserve them to me indefinitely, thank you.”
-+-
The elevator dinged and Wilcox walked out onto the second floor. Here, a vast network of cubicles were scattered about with small walled offices punctuating the space.
The bulk of AOJ’s agents probably worked here, she decided. Especially those starting out and not assigned to a specialty branch on another floor, like Forensics.
Standing near the elevators, each holding a box of personal effects, Boggs and a woman stood listening to an older man who appeared to be a supervisor of some sort.
As Wilcox approached, she picked up on their conversation.
“Look, I don’t have any place for you two. No spare cubicles. I don’t even have a desk you can share.”
“There’s some empty ones over there,” Boggs said, nodding his head toward a cluster of vacant workspaces.
“Those are reserved. I’m telling you, I’ve got nothing.”
“What are we supposed to do?” the young woman said, sounding irritated.
She had light brown hair, cut shoulder length. Like Boggs, she was in her early 20s and looked fit, trim, and tan.
“I don’t know,” the older man said. “Maybe hang out in the lobby? I’m sure you’ll be called upstairs if you’re needed.”
Both their faces fell.
The way he said, “needed” put the cherry on top. The message could not have been clearer, Wilcox thought.
At this moment, she walked up and joined them.
“I’ve got these two reserved for the moment. They’ll be coming with me. You’re Collier, I presume?”
The young woman nodded, her face brightening.
Boggs said, “Sarge! Great to see you.”
The older man said, “And who are you?”
“Assistant Director Wilcox. Have these two been assigned weapons yet?”
“Why, uh, no . . .”
His face told the story. He actually looked disappointed. He started to stammer something.
Wilcox brushed him off and said to the others, “Come on.”
She pulled both of them back toward the elevators.
A door dinged opened and they stepped into a pod.
When it closed, Wilcox said, “Either of you two know where to go for weapons?”
“The basement,” Boggs said. “They gave us a tour during training.”
20
“Speaking of the Academy,” Wilcox said as the pod dropped downward, “I thought you said you had a little more ways to go.”
“They sped things up, Sarge,” Boggs said. “With all the stuff that’s going on, if we could pass the test they sent us here. But Collier and me got stuck in some kind of a loop, evidently. Once we got here, there was nothing to do.”
He nodded to the young woman.
She said, “Hi, I’m Ethie Collier.”
She stuck out one hand, holding the box with the other.
Wilcox shook it and said, “Ethie?”
“It’s short for Ethel. I hate that name. My parents were different. Salt of the earth types. Traditionalists. I grew up on a farm on Pearl. Mom and Dad had four kids, including me. We all got old and out of style names. My sisters are Bertha and Petunia. My brother’s name is Orwell.”
“Hm.”
“I know. Please don’t judge, my parents are great people. I didn’t realize how outside the mainstream our names are until I started going to school. And then everybody let me know it. Repeatedly.”
Wilcox shrugged. “Nothing wrong with old fashioned names. Gina is nothing special, either.”
The elevator dinged, as if in sympathetic self-deprecation, and the basement hallway stretched out before them. They followed the signs to Weaponry.
“I suppose I should pick up an official firearm, too,” Wilcox said as the door opened automatically before them.
A small older man, standing about five foot three or 160 centimeters, lo
oked out from his office nook tucked in the corner.
He looked about 60 years old. He sported an odd hairstyle with tufts of black hair sprouting out over his ears. Wilcox decided he had more hair on the side of his head than on top.
He walked out of his office into the main room and said, “I gotta see the badges. Regulations.”
Each of them made the proper motions and their holo badges appeared in the air beside their faces.
He nodded and said, “The name’s Menger Bertison. Just call me Bertie like everybody else. Now, what can I do for you?”
“We’re all new,” Wilcox said. “We need guns.”
“Alright, alright. I can set you up. Follow me.”
He tromped off deeper into the large space assigned to him, and the others followed walking past tables with weapons in various states of disrepair. Pistols were torn apart, powerpacks stacked neatly beside them.
Along the far wall, he pressed his hand on a palm panel and the surface rolled outward, unlocking. Then it split and parted down the middle.
Inside, a rack featuring hundreds of identical black handguns opened for display.
Wilcox, expecting something on par with the armories for the pirates she fought alongside, or the Marines’ shipboard weapons, bit back her disappointment.
She said, “This is it? Is this all you’ve got?”
Bertie said, “AOJ standard issue sidearm, the Metzinger LE-42. ‘LE’ stands for Law Enforcement. It’s light and portable. You can carry this all day and not get tired. Let me get the serial numbers. They’ll be attached to your badges until you turn these back in.”
He made a few motions in the air, then picked out three guns and handed one to each of them.
“Firing range is next door. I have a test range in here, though. Give it one shot each. Make sure they work before you leave.”
He pointed at the far end of the room.
They walked over to look at it. Wilcox noted it was a standard 30 meter indoor range, with one lane.
Bertie activated the target system, and a man-sized holo stood at the far end of the dark tunnel.
