Places in the Darkness

by Chris Brookmyre

  Everything appears to be locked up extra tight today.

  As she nears the end of the shaft she can see a Seguridad officer watching her approach through a Plexiglass window above the ingress hatch. He has had plenty of time to lens her so he knows who she is and why she’s visiting.

  The suits love that shit. The lens ID database means that they don’t have to talk to the little people even to state their name and business. It underlines their importance, and the fact that they don’t need to speak to you reinforces the understanding that you don’t have any reason to bother them. They can set their own ID parameters so that their name won’t even be displayed to anyone of insufficient status, only their clearance level. Far as Nikki’s concerned, that’s just fucking rude. What’s it gonna cost you to say hi?

  Nikki always finds it’s useful to talk to people, even for a moment. You never know what little nuggets you’re gonna pick up just shooting the shit.

  “Howdy, Officer Lopez,” she greets him.

  “Detective Freeman. They’re expecting you.”

  Detective isn’t a recognised rank in the Seguridad. It’s a courtesy title reflecting the status she attained back on Earth, in the LAPD. Here in Seedee’s private police force, there is only officer, sergeant (Nikki’s actual rank) and captain. Beyond that it’s all corporate bullshit: vice president in charge of whatever. They got a dozen of them. And then at the top is Boutsikari, who is chief executive officer, as opposed to chief of police. Like all the other suits, he was never a cop, and the prick is open about how he regards that as an asset in carrying out his job. Seguridad is a business, not an authority, not a service, and it sure as shit isn’t a force.

  But maybe Boutsikari’s right. Nikki doesn’t like to think of how much worse it might be if the man in charge didn’t know how to piss with the Quadriga, and to do that, you need to speak their language and understand their rules.

  “Heard we caught a body,” Nikki says, fishing to find out as much as she can before she finds herself on the spot. She’s still feeling shaken up by what happened earlier, and was hoping to spend some time today getting to the bottom of it. Instead she gets despatched to the Axle, and is wary of having no idea why she in particular got the call.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Lopez replies.

  “They ruled out foul play yet?”

  The officer gives her an odd look. Dumb question.

  There’s never been murder on Seedee. They love boasting about that. The only city with a flatline zero homicide rate. Course, it’s bullshit, but it’s an official matter of record, and when did the truth figure when it comes to corporate image? Never a murder, and a one hundred per cent record of suspicious deaths being ruled as the result of accidents.

  Negligence invariably proves to have been a factor when the official report gets filed; trespass too. Every effort is made to ensure that workers’ safety is assured, and CdC’s record surpasses that of any major industrial facility on Earth, but space is still a dangerous environment to work in, especially if people don’t observe protocols, blah blah blah.

  Course, that doesn’t mean they don’t investigate. There’s been a few assholes riding a jump seat straight to a private prison owned by the same firm as the Seguridad, where they serve a life sentence for offences that can never officially be disclosed.

  Bottom line is it’s never ruled foul play. That’s the joke, even if Lopez didn’t get it. Maybe he’s new.

  Nikki pushes off against the wall and glides at an easy pace so that she can stop without a thump when she reaches the first six-way conduit up ahead. The Axle looks like a giant tube from the outside, but inside it’s a nightmarishly complex 3D maze. The conduits are bad enough but what she particularly hates are all the spherical and cylindrical chambers. Unless you remember to take note of the code above the hatch or aperture you entered through, if you spend any time inside you can become disoriented and forget which is the way out. Given how many of the link passages look identical, you can get lost real fast, even with an overlay map on your lens. The problem is like any map: you’re screwed if you don’t know which way up you’re looking at it.

  Nikki knows she’s in the right place as she approaches the third six-way, because she can see police tape blocking one of the exits. It’s an overlay on her lens, a universal one so that anybody happening by will see the area is out of bounds. There is no actual tape. Don’t want to be messing around trying to unroll shit like that around here. She doubts Inventory would even have it. When is there ever a genuine bona fide crime scene in this place?

  She grabs a handle at the six-way and very gently tugs herself through the non-existent barrier.

  The first thing she notices is that Boutsikari is here, floating in the passage alongside two of his corporate underlings. Nikki allows herself a smile at the unintentional symbolism in front of her. Useless assholes literally hovering around doing nothing. She should get a picture, hang it in that art gallery on W2.

  Boutsikari is talking to Captain Jaganathan, the only cop of any rank that she’s seen here so far. The precincts are divided into wheel quadrants, and until now she never knew who technically had jurisdiction over the Axle. She should have sussed it would be Jag. He’s captain of the precinct on W2 containing Central Plaza and all those Quadriga HQs, which is why he’s the officer tightest with Boutsikari. Seeing him in charge of the scene, she is even less clear on why she has been summoned here. This is way off her turf.

  She has considerably less confusion over why Boutsikari is here. His number one priority will be to ensure that whatever this is, it stays quiet. Since it became apparent that the off-planet site constructing the Arca Estrella was growing into a sizeable human settlement, the Federation of National Governments has always been—warily—accepting of a private security force keeping the peace. This is partly because it gets around the thorny issue of which government would have the right to enforce the law on an off-planet facility, and more problematically of which nation’s law they would be enforcing.

  The Quadriga understandably prefers not to have a governmental authority exercising that kind of power aboard its facility, and therefore has always—warily—accepted the FNG holding supervisory powers over its private security force instead. It is one of those messily pragmatic arrangements whereby both sides understand that isn’t a problem until it’s a problem. Hence the need to maintain the impression that Seedee is a harmonious model society offering few challenges to an anyway highly professional police service.

  The idea of the Seguridad investigating a homicide triggers all of the political implications everybody has been trying to avoid for decades. Boutsikari will be under pressure from the Quadriga higher-ups to maintain the status quo, conscious that a murder could be just the excuse the FNG needs to insist on bringing in its own people: the thin end of a highly undesirable wedge.

  Given what went down today, Boutsikari and his politicos taking over a scene like this would ordinarily please Nikki. The sooner they officially ruled “nothing to see here,” the sooner she could get back to cleaning up her own mess. But what’s got her alarms ringing is the possibility that this scene might be her mess.

  She thinks back to the special-forces-looking psychos who had complete control of Dock Nine, people who had the look of high-level private security. That gave the whole thing a strong scent of Quadriga. And yet Brock Lind, that admin douche on Dock Eleven, told her he had rerouted their delivery after being paid off by Omega, which means Julio’s people. Somebody is making a move, but she’s not sure who and that means she doesn’t know where the next threat is coming from.

  Jag notices her approach and signals to Boutsikari by means of a tap on the shoulder. The Seguridad chief gives her a beckoning wave, which makes her all the more uneasy. For one thing, it is utterly redundant, but more significantly he looks keen to speak to her.

  As he drifts slightly away from his entourage, Boutsikari reveals another member of the group who had been shielded fro
m Nikki’s view: a girl, maybe early twenties, though she is getting worse and worse at gauging anybody under forty. It’s a result both of aging and of living here, where you don’t exactly see a lot of teens and adolescents.

  Too young to be one of the suits anyway. Probably some corporate VP’s daughter on the fast track, getting an exec-level ride-along and a chance to see the workers tend the field. She’s slappably fresh-faced and eager. Never worked for a living, Nikki is sure: certainly not as a cop or even a security guard, but in about a year’s time she’ll be getting paid five times Nikki’s salary to tell her how to do her job.

  Nikki’s not close enough yet to get a lens ID. Either that or it’s confirmation that she’s a corporate blueblood and her details are not accessible at Nikki’s paygrade, unless she commits a crime. But then a moment later, there it is: Jessica Cho. She’s on a temporary Seguridad corporate clearance. Looks half Chinese, half something else, but Nikki couldn’t guess what. The name Jessica sure isn’t giving much away.

  Boutsikari drifts into Nikki’s path, his dressy suit and shoes indicating that he wasn’t anticipating a trip to the Axle when he put them on today.

  “Thought you would be at the Gonçalves lecture,” Nikki says.

  “I was,” he replies darkly. “Supposed to still be drinking champagne and eating canapés, but somebody had other ideas.”

  Nikki decides to come straight to the point.

  “The fuck am I doing down here in the vomit zone, Boots?”

  She sees Jaganathan wince at this gratuitous display of disrespect in hailing the CEO. Jag doesn’t get it, though. Nikki isn’t doing it to piss Boutsikari off. She calls him Boots because she knows he responds well to it. He thinks it indicates that he is accepted by the cops on street level, or at least by a cop on street level. But mainly she’s doing it to piss Jaganathan off. She’s sure that from the moment he saw her arrive, he’s been worried she’ll do something he’ll have to apologise for. The captain is very career-conscious. He’s got his eye on a corporate gig, probably with Seguridad up here initially, then ultimately something sweet down below.

  “Nice to see you too, Detective,” the CEO replies drily. “You worked murder cases back in LA, didn’t you?”

  “About a thousand years ago. Why? You ain’t telling me you’re thinking of ruling this a homicide?”

  “Up here, you’re the officer with the most experience of this sort of thing, so why don’t you make that call. Take a look for yourself. We’re all keen for you to give us the benefit of your judgement.”

  She looks at him with an incredulity she can’t disguise. He’s being weird. Something is definitely off here, and it smells like a set-up.

  She’s worried she’s about to be presented with the corpse of somebody connected to her, so they can watch her carefully, see if she cracks under the pressure of worrying about how much they already know. Back in her Homicide days, that’s how she would have played it.

  “We want your first-hand impression. Given your expertise, you may see things we didn’t.”

  Jag hands her a paper suit and gloves as Boutsikari directs her towards the hatch at the end of the passage.

  “You can’t go in there without wearing these,” Jag says. “Risk of contamination.”

  “Me or the scene?” she asks.

  Jag doesn’t answer.

  Nikki grips an overhead spar and tugs herself gently forward. The officer in front of the hatch shifts aside. He gives her an anxious look, as if to say “rather you than me,” which doesn’t augur well for what is awaiting her.

  The bladed aperture opens like a puckered asshole and looks just as welcoming under the circumstances.

  “Take it slow,” Jag says. “You don’t want to touch anything.”

  Nikki drifts inside in a cautious, controlled motion, finding herself in one of those cylindrical chambers where it’s easy to forget which way she came in. The asshole swishes closed behind her, Nikki looking back to make sure her trailing leg is clear. She never trusts those things. Then she looks ahead, into the chamber.

  Heard we caught a body.

  That’s one way of putting it.

  She understands now. What she is looking at is human remains, but this is not a body. This is a human being broken down into its constituent parts, floating independently, a collection of objects that it seems impossible to believe once constituted a living whole.

  It takes her a moment to realise she isn’t breathing. For a microsecond she entertains the paranoid idea that she has been shut in here and the air turned off. It hasn’t, though. She just forgot to inhale.

  The part of her that remembers being a real cop kicks in and helps her get it together. Seen worse in Venice Beach, she thinks. And at least this doesn’t smell so bad, yet.

  An on-site ID isn’t going to be likely. On the upside, that means the game can’t be to confront her with someone she knows. At this point she can’t even determine the gender.

  Darkly fascinated by what is drifting in the chamber in front of her, she is nonetheless aware of what isn’t. There is hardly any blood, and there is no skin.

  She nudges herself clockwise away from the hatch, concerned that a lung is drifting in her direction. The movement is enough for her to notice an object that was previously obscured by a bulkhead three metres above. It is a vacuum-packed bag that she recognises as a standard container for an emergency survival suit. These are the indoor equivalent of an EVA suit, designed for use in conjunction with a rebreather in the case of a major failure of the environment systems. Like life-jackets on an airplane, everybody knows where they’re stashed and has seen them demonstrated, but very few people have ever had cause to wear one.

  In a chamber such as this, the suits are stored behind wall panels. This one is floating free.

  Nikki very carefully manoeuvres herself around the chamber and up, timing her movements to avoid collision. The body parts are gliding slowly enough for this to be just about possible, but as they occasionally collide with each other and change course, she does get brushed a few times.

  There is a smell like fresh offal, nothing worse than at the meat counter as long as you don’t think about what kind of meat it is. They’ve turned down the heat, she notices, the standard twenty-two degrees not being ideal for preserving the scene. Leastways, she assumes it’s the cops who have turned it down. It could have been the perp.

  She snags the vacuum pack by the instruction label and pulls it clear of the bulkhead where it had become trapped, handling it carefully. It is the standard opaque white plastic, but it isn’t pulled tight against the contents like it ought to be. The seal has been broken. It’s been opened and resealed with the zipper. Probably nothing, but it’s against protocols. If you use one, it has to be safety checked and certified before being vacuum-packed again with a fresh sealing label detailing the date of previous use.

  Nikki pulls the zipper open and has a look inside.

  Fucking comedian.

  There’s an environment suit in there, of sorts. It’s human skin.

  At least this means she can state that the victim is white. Back in the LAPD, time was that was the first thing they wanted to know. Beyond that the ethnicity is anybody’s guess. It’s hard to tell when she can’t even be sure whether she’s looking at the inside or the outside.

  Nikki is in the process of zipping the bag closed again when it hits her that there may well be a face in there. She’s not sure how easy it would be to identify without it being stretched over a skull, but it’s worth a shot. When she comes out of this chamber, she wants to be ahead of this in any way she can. She needs to know at least one thing they don’t.

  She pulls the zip open further and tugs back the flap, reaching her fingers reluctantly inside to pull at the folds contained therein. She has seldom been so grateful for gloves. A section comes loose and drifts away. She couldn’t even say what it used to cover. She is about to retrieve it when her eye is drawn to what has been revealed inside the bag.<
br />
  It’s better than a face. It’s a tattoo, of a Greek symbol. She’d recognise this piece of shit in any condition.

  Omega.

  THE HUMAN SHIELD

  Boutsikari is waiting expectantly for Nikki outside the chamber. If he’s wanting a full report, he’s out of luck. She’ll give him her overview, but she’s keeping the name of the victim to herself, for now.

  “This come with assembly instructions?” she asks.

  “The two lab geeks who discovered it are in hospital, on meds for shock,” Boutsikari replies.

  And to keep them from talking, Nikki surmises. Even the Seguridad can’t rule this one an accident.

  “Who else knows about this? FNG aware yet?”

  Boutsikari nods. He glances briefly towards the entourage. Nikki can’t work out who specifically he’s looking at, but one of them must be a fed.

  “They’re aware, but they’re giving us a shot at dealing with it ourselves.”

  Boutsikari hits her with a look, making sure she understands the stakes. On the surface it sounds like a chance for Seguridad to demonstrate its fitness for purpose. But if it isn’t dealt with to the FNG’s satisfaction, it’s the beginning of the end.

  This case is a live grenade.

  “I’m putting you in charge of the investigation,” Boutsikari states.

  Nikki looks towards Jaganathan. She can’t help it, it’s pure reflex. His expression is implacable, giving nothing away.

  “Me?” she asks, as neutrally as she can manage. She doesn’t want to make out she thinks he’s nuts, but she doesn’t want to give the impression that she’s delighted either.

  “I pulled your file. I pulled everybody’s file. You know how to run a homicide investigation. You’ve a proven track record. None of the captains come close. I need a result on this, and you’re my best shot.”