by John Bowers
She picked up a pungent whiff of tobacco smoke and noted the cigarette pinched between two fingers of his left hand. Senses on high alert, she continued on past him.
“Hey, lady…”
He spoke in a low voice, which impacted her nerves harder than if he’d shouted. She was already past him, but he was no more than ten feet away. She kept moving as she glanced over her shoulder.
“…got a light?”
She stopped and turned to face him. She stared at him for a couple of seconds, her pulse racing.
“Your cigarette is already lit. What do you need a light for?”
He pushed away from the railing and stood up straight, dropped the cigarette, and stepped on it. He took a step toward her, head still slightly lowered, his face now in shadow. He took another step.
“What’s in the satchel?”
If she had any doubts, they vanished in that instant. Now he was only six feet away, and her peripheral awareness told her that no one else was within fifty yards. Fear coursed through her, but not debilitating fear; she had been trained not to panic, but to use fear to her advantage. She knelt and set the satchel down, then the laptop. She stood erect again.
“Is this a robbery?” she asked in a barely controlled voice, “or a rape?”
“Could be either one. I guess that’s up to you.”
“Then I recommend robbery. That will only get you twenty years. Rape will get you fifty.”
He laughed, which came out as a snort.
“What are you, some kind of cop?” She could see his teeth gleaming in the reflected light.
“No, I’m not a cop. I’m a lot more dangerous than that.”
“Really! You’re dangerous? I guess I’ll just have to risk it.”
His right hand slipped into a pocket, then withdrew again.
Snick!
She heard the knife before she saw it—a switchblade—and now things were truly serious. She took a step back and evaluated her situation. She was wearing a tight skirt, but still had the advantage—the skirt was short and didn’t completely compromise her movement. Her hands were free and unencumbered, and her assailant had no idea what she was capable of. He saw her as a helpless woman and probably expected her to burst into tears.
Okay, then.
She took another step back.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
“Like I said, that’s up to you. What’s in the satchel?”
“Five hundred thousand terros in small, unmarked bills.”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“What?”
“You asked what was inside. I just told you.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Why would I do that? You’re the one with the knife.”
He stared at her in indecision, then glanced at the satchel again.
“It’s all yours,” she told him. “Just take it and go.”
He grinned again.
“Oh, I will. And you’re coming with me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you better think again.” He held up the switchblade. “Like you said, I got the knife.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t going very far.”
“What makes you say that?”
“That cop behind you.”
He truly was an amateur. His face registered surprise and he spun around to look behind him.
Before he had time to realize that she was bluffing, Victoria hit him with a flashing array of arms and legs. The nails of her left hand raked his eyes, her left knee smashed into his groin, and she slammed the knuckles of her right hand into his throat, cutting off his scream of pain. He went down hard, one hand clamped over his bleeding eyes, the other clutching at his throat. He lost the knife, which skittered away, and rolled over face down, choking and gasping.
Victoria picked up the knife and stood over him, her rage tempered by grim satisfaction. Until now, she had never once had to defend herself, but it was gratifying to know that she had learned her lessons well. Ten years after boot camp, she still had it!
Trembling slightly with adrenaline, she pulled out her pocket phone and punched in the Emergency Services number. The call was answered immediately.
“Five-five-five, what is your emergency?”
She replied in a tight, terse tone.
“This is Assistant U.F. Attorney Victoria Cross. I’ve just disabled a mugger who tried to assault me. I’m on west end of the Peterson Pedestrian Bridge and I need a police officer. Right now!”
“Are you all right, Ma’am?”
“I’m fine, but you’d better send an ambulance. I think my attacker needs a doctor.”
*
The arresting officer was frankly astonished. His name tag said BENEDICT. He was around forty and wore the weary look of a man who has seen more of the human condition than he ever wanted to.
“We’ve been looking for this guy for weeks,” he told her.
“Who is he?”
Victoria watched as an EMT crew loaded the suspect into a hover ambulance. They had him on oxygen and IVs. He was conscious, but still struggling to breathe.
“Name’s Jerry Whistler. He started young, when he was about fourteen. He got a lot of wrist slaps, but when he was seventeen he got three years in juvenile detention for burglary. Apparently he didn’t learn his lesson. As soon as he got out, he started mugging people. We have seven reports in the last three weeks, and there may be more.”
“Just robbery? Or rape?”
Benedict glanced at her sharply. “Did he try that with you?”
“He suggested it. Said he was going to take me with him.”
“As far as we know, he hasn’t tried to rape anybody, but a couple of his victims said the same thing you just did, that he talked about it.”
“Didn’t have the nerve, maybe.”
“No, but if it was on his mind, he would have tried it eventually. You did the city a favor by taking him down.”
Benedict put his notebook away and gazed down at her with a curious smile.
“Where did you learn to fight like that? Self-defense classes?”
Victoria graced him with a crooked grin.
“Star Marines.”
“No shit!” Benedict was impressed.
“Years ago,” she said. “I keep in shape, but I’ve never needed my personal combat training until tonight.”
“And now you’re a Federation prosecutor?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’s too bad this puke won’t be tried in Federation court. I’d love to see his face when you walked in and pointed the finger at him.”
Victoria laughed.
“If he were in Federation court, they would never let me near it. Conflict of interest.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’d still like to see it.”
Benedict took a step back.
“You’re okay? Don’t need to get checked out?”
“I’m fine. Thanks for your concern. If you need me for anything, you have my card.”
“Right.”
He held it up, then slipped in into his notebook. He tipped his cap.
“Have a nice evening, Miss Cross.”
Centauri Arms – Lucaston, Alpha Centauri 2
Victoria reached her tenth-floor apartment without further incident and unloaded her baggage on the coffee table. Next, she changed into her workout garb and took the lift down to the basement, where she spent thirty minutes in the gym. Sweating, but barely breathing hard, she returned to the apartment and showered, then made some tea and heated up a casserole she had prepared the night before. After dinner, she settled down on her couch with another cup of tea and opened the Frie file.
She began reading.
*
Wallace Frie was a Centauri native, born in Twin Harbors fifty-eight years earlier. His flat photo showed an aging black man with slightly bushy hair that was starting to grey, rugged African features with plenty of age lines, and a sour expression th
at suggested he was either perplexed at the charges against him or just angry at getting caught.
Prior to his first arrest in 0432 (Colonial Calendar), Frie had worked for fifteen years as a long-distance cargo pilot, pushing a heavy hoversled all over North Continent and occasionally into South Continent as well, though South Continent was only sparsely settled in those years. He worked for a company called North Continent Freight and had never been arrested prior to 0432.
But the company he worked for had fallen under suspicion in 0429 when illegal weapons began turning up on the Trimmer Plain a few hundred miles west of Lucaston. The Alpha Centauri Bureau of Investigation (ACBI) had detected a pattern in the weapons traffic, which was that NCF’s cargo haulers always seemed to be seen near the locations where illegal arms were confiscated. A deeper investigation revealed that NCF’s cargo manifests appeared, in many cases, to be fraudulent. Items listed as “household goods” were actually contraband weapons from off-planet.
And…it seemed the only cargo pilot making the deliveries was Wallace Frie.
On a cold, snowy night in the winter of 0432, two ACBI agents, working with the Colonial Transit Police, flagged down Frie’s cargo sled just north of Three Rivers, a medium-sized town several hundred miles southwest of Lucaston. Frie’s load was inspected and found to contain, along with legitimate cargo, several hundred heavy weapons of a military nature.
Frie denied any knowledge of the cargo’s contents. He told agents that he never actually touched the shipments, but hooked his rig up to the sleds and delivered them. Aside from what was listed on the shipping manifest, he had no idea what was inside.
That story might have worked except for two things: first, his employers produced performance reports that suggested Frie was a malcontent, constantly fighting with his employers and making threats against other cargo pilots; second, a number of his runs were delivered to the Trimmer Springs area. The latter was especially damning, because the Rebel Coalition was just forming and was fomenting revolution. Just weeks after Frie’s arrest, the Coalition launched its rebellion in a war that would sweep across North Continent and hamstring the entire planet for the next four years.
The arresting official, an ACBI agent named Lloyd Randal, reported that at the time of his arrest, Frie resisted and had to be physically restrained. He also said that Frie was carrying a concealed pistol, which was entered into evidence. Randal’s partner, ACBI agent David Jones, could not confirm the physical struggle nor that Frie had a weapon, but admitted that he was covering the passenger side of the rig in case Frie had a partner. By the time he saw Frie, the arrest had already been made and Frie was in E-cuffs.
The weapon, a .357 Magnum, proved to be unregistered, what agents referred to as a “throwaway weapon”.
Anderson Gabel, the official U.F. Attorney for Alpha 2 at that time, had tried the case himself. In addition to the contraband cargo, the handgun, and the resisting arrest charge, the evidence was overwhelming. Frie’s personnel file from NCF was entered into evidence, along with testimony from two of his superiors that Frie was a difficult employee.
“If he was so hard to manage,” Gabel asked one of the witnesses on the stand, “why didn’t you fire him?”
“He was good at his job. In spite of everything, he liked taking those long runs and he always delivered the cargoes on time. Most of our pilots shied away from the longer hauls.”
Another witness, an inmate at the Lucaston Department of Corrections, testified that Frie, while awaiting trial, had threatened to kill Lloyd Randal “if I ever get out”.
Frie’s court-appointed attorney, Monte Simpson, never put Frie on the stand to speak for himself. Nor were the CTP officers who assisted in the arrest called to testify.
The trial lasted four days and ended in a conviction. Wallace Frie was sentenced to fifteen years for smuggling and conspiracy to commit fraud. He was transported to Syracuse Island, the only Federation prison on the planet, to serve his sentence.
Victoria set her laptop down and returned to the kitchen for a fresh cup of tea, a wrinkle across her brow. She returned to her couch and resumed reading.
Just four months ago, in October of 0443, Frie was paroled after serving eleven of his fifteen years. His family had deserted him while he was locked up, so he was paroled to a halfway house in Lucaston. His hoverpilot license had been revoked and he could no longer work at his old trade, but he found work as a garbage collection assistant, where he worked until his second arrest just four days earlier.
The second arrest was for the murder of Lloyd Randal, the ACBI agent who arrested him in 0432. Randal’s home was on Frie’s garbage route, which may or may not have been a coincidence. Randal had been killed sometime during the night of January 24, a Sunday. His wife told investigators that Randal worked late that day and she had gone to bed early. When she woke, he hadn’t come home, but minutes later she discovered his body in the driveway between his parked hovercar and the front door. He’d been shot four times in the back, apparently from ambush.
Lucaston police found four empty 9mm cartridge casings in the driveway, which meant the murder weapon was probably an automatic pistol. Close examination revealed fingerprints on two of the casings which were run through the criminal database and came back matched to Wallace Frie.
This led investigators, with a search warrant, to the halfway house where Frie lived. In his room, secreted under the bed, they located a Sharps 9mm handgun, an automatic. Ballistics tests confirmed that both the shell casings and the slugs recovered from Randal’s body had been fired by the recovered weapon.
There was more, but Victoria closed the file and sat staring into space for several minutes. For some reason she felt unsettled. After a moment’s reflection, she realized why.
She picked up a legal pad and scribbled notes for several minutes. Certain things about the Wallace Frie case left her with questions that needed answers. If convicted, Frie was eligible for the death penalty, but before she argued to send a man to the vacuum chamber, those questions would have to be answered.
After a few more minutes, she put her notes away and headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
***
It was the wedding she had always dreamed of.
Victoria Cross looked stunning in a long white wedding dress with a train that trailed six feet behind her. Her shoulders were bare. The dress dipped in back, showing off her shoulder blades in sharp relief. Her leanness was due to daily workouts in a gymnasium, a habit she had picked up after boot camp. The result was a body most women would kill for.
It was a gorgeous summer day. Twin overhead suns beamed down like spotlights onto a stage. She gripped a bouquet of red roses, mixed with calla lilies, in both hands, her face radiant with joy. Butterflies flitted around her—Monarchs, Swallowtails, Metalmarks, Blues—a swirling vortex of color, like a multi-hued tornado. She and her intended stood on the stage before the minister under an arch of rainbows, the air scented with roses and incense.
Standing on her right was Nick Walker, the love of her life. It had been a long time coming, a torturous, difficult road, but they were finally here, ready to make the final commitment. Nick looked rugged and handsome in his combat fatigues and helmet, his rifle slung over his right shoulder. He gazed at her with a twinkle in his eyes, a little smile on his lips. She smiled back and felt a flutter in her chest. She couldn’t wait to kiss him, but the ceremony was about to begin.
“Dearly beloved…” The minister seemed to speak over their heads, his words directed at the empty chairs behind them. “We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in hellish acrimony.”
Victoria closed her eyes for a moment in pure bliss. Then she opened them and looked at Nick again. He looked resplendent in his western shirt and jeans, his cowboy hat tilted forward in a rakish manner, his twin .44 Magnums riding low on his gunbelt. He smiled again and winked, then returned his attention to the minister.
“Do you, Nick Walker, take this wom
an to be your awfully bedded wife? To hold in bondage, in wickedness and wealth, from this day forward, so long as you both shall lift?”
Nick nodded. “I do.”
“Do you, Victoria Cross, take this man as your awfully dreaded husband, to bitch and moan, and make his life miserable, from this day forward, so long as you both shall sniff?”
“I do.”
“By the power vested in me by the State of Mass Confusion, I now pronounce you hitched in strife.” He nodded at Nick. “You may now kill the bride.”
Victoria smiled in ecstasy and tilted her head back to receive the kiss. Nick placed both gloved hands on her shoulders and gripped to hold her steady. He leaned forward, but the faceplate of his space helmet was in the way. His heavy pressure suit pressed against her as he laughed and opened the faceplate so his lips could reach hers.
But the kiss never came. Instead, his eyes glittered, he bared his teeth, and his smile was replaced by a mask of rage. He snarled.
“What do you want from me, Cross? What the fuck do you want from me?”
His mouth opened wide and morphed into a shark’s mouth, replete with hundreds of bloody, jagged teeth. He struck like a snake, trying to bite off her head, but she leaned back just in time.
Victoria screamed—
And jerked upright in bed. Her heart pounded, her breath came in gasps. For a moment she sat in the darkness, heaving for air, and then the tears came. She lowered her head and tried to fight them back.
It had been years since she’d had that dream. Why now, all of a sudden?
Chapter 4
Monday, February 1, 0444 (CC)
Lucaston Department of Corrections, Lucaston – Alpha Centauri 2
On Monday morning, Victoria packed a tote bag with her laptop and a stack of case files. She took the anti-grav lift up to the parking lot on the roof of the Federation Building. She didn’t own a car yet—so far she had never needed one—but the Federation Motor Pool provided cars that government employees could check out. She had reserved one for the occasion and in short order lifted off from the roof. Her destination was only five miles away, but it was across the Syracuse River on the south end of town.
