QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted

by Steve Rzasa

  That caught his attention, Tower saw. Dunn held himself motionless for a moment, then yielded to the temptation. He nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk. But I want it in writing first.”

  Hildy had been prepared. She spun her tablet around and pointed to it. “It’s all there. We both print it and it’s time-stamped and sealed in the official record.”

  Dunn took a moment to peruse the document, his lips moving as he read. Then he nodded and pressed his thumb to the bottom of the screen. Hildy followed suit.

  Hildy cleared her throat. “Thank you, Mr. Dunn. It’s a deal. Now, let’s talk. Speaking of your implants, where did you get them modified? That was very impressive.”

  “About two months ago. I got contacted for a job. She said it would be easy and it was a really good deal. I can tell you who, but I don’t think you’re gonna like who it was.”

  “The implants were part of the deal?”

  Dunn nodded. “Yeah, I needed protection in case someone tried to steal the disintegrators. I don’t know how to use those things and they’re too bulky to carry around with you. She suggested the borg mods.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You’re not going to like this,” Dunn shook his head. “And I’m not crazy either.”

  “Try me.”

  “It was Anhyu.”

  “Anhyu?”

  “Yeah, Anhyu Kankoku.”

  “The pop star,” Hildy said, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Mr. Dunn, she’s not even of legal age to vote or sell sexual services. And she is also extremely famous throughout the subsector. I find it very, very difficult to believe that she is secretly engaged in the interplanetary trafficking of illegal high-tech arms.”

  Dunn shrugged helplessly. “I said you wouldn’t like it.”

  Yeah, the guy was insane, Tower concluded. That explained a lot. Not everything, but a lot.

  “Did you ever actually meet with Miss Anhyu in person?” Hildy asked, looking like she was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

  “No, she just talked to me in my dreams.”

  Oh, this was just getting better. Tower burst out laughing. Hildy looked up at the cam with a desperate look in her eyes. She had no idea where to go with that one.

  “Tower, both Mr. Dunn’s augmented eye and arm were equipped with wireless interface communications,” Baby said. “And based on the make and model, they came standard with them. This was prior to the weaponized modifications.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So it seems probable that Mr. Dunn was communicating with someone’s avatar, which took the form of Miss Anhyu.”

  “Why her?”

  “Why not? Her images are all over the nets. It would be easy to manufacture a credible avatar from them.”

  Tower thought about it. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was considerably less insane than any other alternative he could imagine. “Tell Victor, maybe Hildy can make sense of it.”

  She started, then glanced up at the cam and nodded. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was much better than the pop star as arms dealer theory and marginally superior to the idea that Dunn had gone completely off the deep end. Not that the guy was a portrait in mental stability, but none of his past records, civilian or military, showed any signs of delusion or significant mental abnormalities. And Tower knew better than most that even the most realistic post-trauma hallucinations seldom seemed real after the fact.

  “Let’s move on from Miss Anhyu for the time being,” Hildy suggested as she brought up a set of data on a holoscreen between them. “Here is the shipment of disruptors intercepted at Station Beta. Tech Level 18 Mosin-Nyarlas, with an estimated street value of 90,000 apiece.”

  “Ninety thousand apiece?” Dunn looked stricken. “I thought they was worth five!”

  “The container in which they arrived in-system was scanned by a certain asset clerk.” More information slid down the holoscreen, including a picture of one of the ugliest aliens Tower had ever seen. It was a four-armed, four-legged critter that looked like a giant crab covered in chitinous green-blue armor. It had large red compound eyes that shimmered, and a motley collection of slimy pincers roughly where a human’s mouth would be. “This handsome xeno is Asset Clerk Third Class Ch’Tk’Mu’Lak’Ch’Tell. Or something to that effect. The folks up on Station Beta call him Chatty, most likely because they can’t pronounce his name. The consensus opinion is that he is the most efficient sorting clerk in the entire orbital station.”

  Hildy indicated the holographic image of the alien. “Now, here is the problem, Mr. Dunn. It appears this Chatty decided to take a walk out an airlock this afternoon about 6 decasecs after news of the disruptor seizures hit Station Beta. Sans EVA suit.”

  Dunn’s eyes went wide. Or rather, his remaining eye did. “Is he dead?”

  “He is,” Hildy confirmed. “Though whether he did it of his own volition or if he was propelled out the airlock by someone else is unknown to us at this juncture.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because we are attempting to trace the chain of events. Look, Mr. Dunn, you said you’d cooperate. So cooperate. Is this the individual with whom you were dealing?”

  Dunn looked from side to side. He was sweating profusely.

  “Mr. Dunn, it’s very important that you tell us. After all, if this Chatty didn’t suicide, then someone suicided him. And if you were the middleman, my guess is that you’re next on the list.”

  “What do I care? I’m never getting out of here!”

  “That may be.” Hildy shook her head regretfully. “But Mr. Dunn, keep in mind that anyone who deals in this sort of expensive weaponry will almost certainly have the necessary contacts to arrange for a prison hit.”

  “All right, all right,” Dunn put up his one hand, and winced. “That thing was the supplier. But that ain’t the problem. Knowing who he was wouldn’t help you none, even if he wasn’t dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t know who the buyer was. I can’t tell you nothing, man! She set everything up, she contacted me, she arranged everything with Chatty, she even bought me my shuttle ticket. All I had to do was show up and bring the crate back like it was personal effects.”

  “And the one disruptor?”

  “That was part of the deal. If I brought them down to the ground and delivered the one, I got to keep the rest. That was how I got paid. It was smart, you know, no data trail that way.”

  “Sure,” Hildy agreed. “But you still had to deliver the disruptor.”

  “That was easy. I got an address, I went there and left the case on the ground behind a tree. Then I walked away.”

  “You didn’t see who picked it up?”

  “I told you I walked away. Just like she told me to.”

  “She being Miss Anhyu?”

  Dunn nodded, his lips tightly compressed.

  “You are saying Miss Anhyu gave you the address and the delivery instructions.” She stared intently at him. “And she did this in a dream.”

  “Yeah,” Dunn confirmed. His speech was beginning to slur as his temporary drug shunts increased the pain medication. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.”

  Hildy glanced up at the cam and gestured with both her hands, as if asking if Tower had any questions for the prisoner.

  “Dunn isn’t in any shape for more of this. Baby, tell her to go ahead and send him back to the infirmary. And tell her to come up here. I have an idea I want to bounce off her.”

  “An idea,” Baby said dubiously. “All right, she says she’ll be up in 30 decasecs.”

  It was more like forty-five, but Tower readily forgave her when she finally entered the observation room because she was carrying a plate of four glazed toroidal pastries in one hand and was bearing an insulated mug in the other. And based on the smell, it was proper coffee, not the drive coolant substitute that the department kept on hand.

  “Would you consider it to be hara
ssment if I mentioned how closely you are presently approximating the woman of my dreams, Detector?”

  Hildy snorted. “Forget it, Tower. I may come bearing food and drink, but I wear too many clothes and too few weapons for a sociopath like you. Seriously, where did the Marines teach you how to make an arrest, a butcher shop? That was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen on a drone cam, and I used to work Vice!”

  She offered him the plate and he took a torus. It was the light and fluffy variety rather than the firm cake he preferred, but it wasn’t bad. “Did you come in for much heat from your major?”

  “Not so much.” Tower poured himself fresh joe. “He takes an active interest in our after-action reports.”

  “By which you mean he took out all references to that business at the end?”

  “The neutralization of Dunn’s optical laser? Not exactly.”

  “It’s like you guys speak a different language,” she marveled. “So, what happened, according to the after-action report.”

  “Well, it seems Sergeant Quinn shot Mr. Dunn in the eye. That’s going to do some damage, right, shooting a man in the eye. I suppose he’s lucky to be alive.”

  “Yes, lucky,” Hildy said sourly. “Well, it does avoid a lot of questions. It also explains something I’d always wondered about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How MCID’s body count is longer than its list of outstanding police brutality complaints.”

  “I think the colonel’s policy is that it’s hard to complain when you’re dead.”

  Hildy shook her head, though whether it was in admiration or disgust, Tower couldn’t tell.

  “The others are okay?”

  “They’re fine. His charge in the arm had run down. Casillon has gotten worse burns from the sun, and Unger only needed a new helmet. Quinn will probably get a medal.”

  “I’m glad they’re all right.” She pointed toward the floor. “So, any thoughts about our amateur arms trader and his dreams? What’s this idea Victor said you had?”

  “It’s more of a question, actually.” Tower was relieved to get past the awkward subject of his arrest techniques. “Why Dunn? I mean, why choose him to get the weapons from Beta to Trans Paradis? Weaponizing those implants wasn’t cheap and they obviously could have cared less about the additional disruptors. So we’re dealing with someone who has enough money to throw it away, for whom the ability to cut himself out was worth more than fourteen disruptors that go for 90,000 civars apiece plus the cost of modifying the implants.”

  “That narrows it down,” Hildy agreed. “It’s got to be political. Who else has that kind of money?”

  “That’s not the only thing. Let’s assume the avatar theory is the correct explanation. How did whoever was behind the avatar know that Dunn had implants in the first place? Whoever contacted him had to know he was accessible without direct contact.”

  “Well, that could be anyone who ran into him.”

  “No, you’re thinking like a street cop,” Tower corrected her. “Who has that kind of money and goes anywhere that Dunn did. Nobody. And where would you find out about his implants if you didn’t have any direct contact with him?”

  “His military records!” Hildy said as if she was in a classroom. “Because his civilian records would only show that he was disabled and borged, they wouldn’t spell out the make and model.”

  “Right,” Tower said. “Now, here’s where things start to get interesting and potentially useful. Baby?”

  “I have detected familiar anomalies in Hardwig Dunn’s military records, Detector Hildreth.” Baby’s voice came out of the room’s loudspeaker. “According to his records, Private First Class Dunn never saw combat, nor was even stationed in any combat zones, and yet he was seriously injured on 3396.064 and given a medical discharge with full honors seven rotations later. This could indicate that he met with an accident while on duty, however, there is reason to believe that this is not the case.”

  “What reason is that?” Hildy said.

  “First, my own record features similar anomalies.” Tower reached out for a second torus. “And second, that date happens to correspond with a particular event concerning which the Duke’s military advisors have been less than entirely forthcoming.”

  “There is a very good chance Mr. Dunn received his injuries on Syranecus,” Baby explained.

  “Were you there too?” Hildy frowned. “I didn’t know we were involved in that.”

  “I was with the relief force” Tower confirmed. “Officially, we didn’t have anyone stationed there, but the Duke was trying to cement an alliance with one of the Ascendancy Houses and sent some troops in support of their effort there. The army had a small presence at an Ascendancy base about 500 kilometers away from the capital. No one knew about it. The base was hit hard by the Syranecusans and it took something like 85 percent casualties before we could get to them and evacuate them.”

  “And you think Dunn was there?”

  “Better than that,” Tower smiled. “I think whoever chose Dunn to be his mule was there.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It is glorious that the workers of Morchard have finally assumed their share of control over the means of production, and that rival classes have joined together to throw off the surplus, value-stealing, parasite monarchy that has been profiting for centuries from the hard labor of the workers. We should now be diligent in working with our corporate partners to enable the transition from pure planetary serfdom to what can only be seen as a middle stage of mutually beneficial partnership between natural and corporate persons. At the present time, it is not in the people’s interests to interfere with the profits that are the lifeblood of every corporation, but rather, to help our corporate partners transform captured royalist profits into new jobs for our world.

  —From “Reflections on a New Paradigm of Revolution” by Willem Daendels

  Tower left Hildy at TPPD. She was going to wait for Dunn to recover sufficiently for a second round of interrogation aimed at learning if Tower’s suspicions concerning his military service were correct. In the meantime, Tower decided it was time to finally get around to visiting the offices of the most obvious suspects in Prince Jagaelleon’s murder. If he was right, and Dunn confirmed that he’d lost his arm and his eye on Syranecus, it would only be a matter of time before they’d be able to sort out the connection between Dunn and the new Morchardese regime.

  It wasn’t a direct connection. Dunn’s complete ignorance concerning the existence of the planet proved that. But if Tower could get anything useful out of the Morchardese republicans, that would give them two points of contact with the probable triggerman; one more after that and they’d be able to triangulate the killer.

  This was the part of an investigation he enjoyed most. The moment when the plot was beginning to come together, but everything wasn’t yet entirely clear. He toyed briefly with the idea of taking the intercity suborbital pod to Rhysalan City, but instead decided to take a nap in the var and let Baby fly him there. With the seat fully reclined and the blanket and pillow he kept with the weaponry in the trunk, he slept almost as comfortably as he would in a hotel. The pod would be faster, but he preferred to have not only his own transportation, but his own heavy weaponry on hand.

  “Brief me on the new government, Baby,” he said as the aerovar climbed to the heights reserved for intercity travel. The twin engines throbbed in harmony as the var accelerated to its top cruising speed. “And make an appointment with them, but not so early this time.”

  “On it, boss,” she said. “The new regime calls itself the Corporate Republic of Morchard. It’s a corporatist oligopoly in which shares in the government are owned by various parties, including various Unity governments, but fifty-one percent of the shares are reserved for private citizens. As you might expect, it’s very business-friendly and considerable exoplanetary investment has been made since the revolution. The royal family has been abolished and sentenced to death-in-absentia
, which means they clearly have sufficient motive to be responsible for the attacks.”

  “Valatesta has a corporatist government. Are they one of the investors in the new government?”

  “No, nor are any of the members of the board of directors, although Gruppo ENIL-EX, which is one of the larger Valatestan-registered corporations, holds 185,472,000 shares, or one point one two percent of the shares outstanding. Two of the government board members also sit on Gruppo ENIL-EX’s board.”

  “The CRO, by any chance?”

  “No, in fact, both are members of a rival family.”

  Probably nothing there, Tower concluded. “All right, tell me more about the Morchardese?”

  “Morcharders,” Baby corrected him. “The new regime has adopted a new calendar, a new monetary system, new tax reforms, and now insist on being referred to as Morcharders rather than Morchardese. There is considerable ill-feeling towards the government-in-exile, as it is estimated that the royal family managed to transfer approximately 64 percent of the government’s exoplanetary holdings to private accounts beyond the reach of the new regime.”

  “So they’re hard up.”

  “Very much so, and they will be until the new wave of alien investment begins to have an economic effect. It will take decades to replace the assets the previous government now holds.”

  “It was a lot of money then. Enough to finance a counter-revolution? Their digs weren’t bad, but it didn’t look to me as if they were living anywhere nearly as large as they could.”

  “There is no question that the Morchardese royal family could afford to finance a successful invasion if they could be assured that the Unity would stay out of it. Notice that the current government’s representation here is a small office suit in a technology park. In my opinion, the corporatist fears of the Morchardese royals are not misplaced, as their continued survival is primarily dependent upon Unity goodwill.”

  “Which explains why they are bending over backward to give the Unity every concession and trade monopoly that might appeal to it.” Tower snorted. “Well, if they’re really depending upon Unity goodwill, the poor bastards are obviously doomed!”