QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted

by Steve Rzasa

  “Ah, one of those.” Hildy grinned. “Yeah, that sort doesn’t usually hide what they’ve done. Easiest conviction I ever got was an environmental revolutionary who insisted on reading his justification for murdering a transport company’s VP in court. It took him two kilosecs to get through the whole thing, and afterwards, the prosecutor didn’t call a single witness. The funny thing is that the guy was genuinely shocked when the panel of judges convicted him.”

  Tower laughed. “I don’t think this guy is quite that clueless, but yeah, he’s the type. Also, he gave us the names he gave to the crown prince, so my thought is that we ought to see what the prince did about them, if anything.”

  Three pictures appeared on the wall screen, each with their most recent appearances in the Trans Paradis omni-security web marked on a city map. All three were very close to the Morchardese embassy.

  “Looks like nothing,” Hildy said. “Oldest cam hit is yesterday morning.”

  “Can we tie any of them to Valatesta or Mr. Milazzo?”

  “I can’t find anything,” Baby said. “I’ll keep looking, but I don’t see any signs.”

  Hildy frowned. “That second name… why does that look familiar?”

  They both looked at each other. “The girl, the prince’s private assistant!” Tower exclaimed.

  “Annaliese van de Boer,” Baby helpfully reminded them. “It appears she is a competent actress.”

  “The question is: do we let the Prime Captain Kotant know? It might be wise to take her into protective custody first, otherwise TPPD might have a third murder to investigate if he figures it out. He had no reason to be digging into his staff before, but you can be certain he’s been doing so ever since Prince Arpad was killed. And if he makes the connection to Tanabera…”

  “Good point,” Hildy admitted. “What if we do this? You call Kotant and tell him you’ve got information on the new regime. Set up a meeting here. While he’s here, I’ll visit the embassy and take Miss van de Boer into custody as a material witness.”

  “That should work,” Tower said. “Baby, set it up, will you?”

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Hildy cleared her throat uncomfortably and pointedly looked away from him. Her face and neck were flushed red.

  “Look, ah, Tower, I’m sorry about this morning. I guess I should have told you I was, you know, seeing someone.”

  “No, why?” Tower protested, feeling as awkward as Hildy looked. “Your personal life isn’t my business.”

  “Well, I sort of had the idea that you were, maybe, interested, you know?”

  Tower looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, picturing how the storm troopers of Bio Resources would be bursting in on them in about three decasecs. “Look, Hildy, you’re a good cop. I like you and I think we make a good team. But I’m a beat-up old soldier and I’ve got scars that run deeper than you can probably imagine.”

  Hildy snorted. “I don’t know, Tower, after yesterday’s performance, you might be surprised what I can imagine. I’ve never had nightmares about an arrest before.”

  “So you’re dreaming about me now?” They both laughed. “The point is, I don’t have any illusions about you, or me, or this case. What I might like, or what might have been if I was younger and less messed up, that doesn’t matter. Life don’t care what you want.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “You’re not that old, Tower. What are you, thirty? You’re too young to talk like a broken old man. You may be scarred and you may be a little scary sometimes, but you know, that’s just the sort of thing that girls find intriguing.”

  Tower raised a skeptical eyebrow. She laughed and withdrew her hand.

  “Hey, scarred and scary beats boring any day!”

  “We may have a problem,” Baby announced abruptly. “Neither Kotant nor van de Boer are in residence at the Embassy. Van de Boer didn’t turn up for work and Kotant left the premises in an aerovar twelve hectasecs ago. I did a little digging into their communications system and I found this message he sent to Lieutenant van Node, the Security second.”

  She displayed it on the screen. The message was as succinct as it was worrisome.

  Have a line on probable corporatist infiltrator. Pull all data linked to ID F0384 for processing. Will discuss this afternoon.

  “He’s going after her!” Hildy said. “Dammit, if we don't find her first, we won't find her alive.”

  Tower rose from his desk and checked to be sure he had his Sphinx on his belt. “It’s a good thing we’ve got better tools than he does. Baby, Victor, get to it and find both of them please. Baby, what do you have on Kotant? I assume he’s competent, how dangerous is he?”

  “Do you think we need backup?” Hildy asked, a little nervously.

  “Probably not. He doesn’t want trouble with the local authorities, but he’s going to want to drain her dry. There should be room to negotiate even if he finds her first, unless he figures she doesn’t know anything useful and kills her out of hand.”

  “The prime captain was a special forces officer for seven years, after which he was appointed as a bodyguard, first for the queen, then for the various crown princes. He did three tours of duty in combat zones, on Altain, Soal-Frost, and Gantry Thirty-Two.”

  Tower winced. If the man survived the storming of Soal-Frost, he was salty.

  “He also fought in the revolution, which was even bloodier than the wars. Morchardese special forces units suffered forty percent fatality rates during the six years that preceded the royal exile, mostly as a result of rebel forces striking at homes and private residences—”

  Even better. The man might not be as pitiless by nature as Daendels the revolutionary, but civil wars had been stripping men of their humanity since before Man first left Terra. After six years of no-quarter combat, the prime captain would probably fit right in at MCID.

  “I’ve got the Morchardese woman’s location,” Baby said. “She’s at the Tearmann Memorial Libratech. I have her number too. Do you want me to contact her?”

  “What’s she doing at a libratech?” Hildy wondered.

  “Could be a drop,” Tower suggested. “Baby, put me through to her, please.”

  To his surprise, he didn’t just get her voice; the young woman’s pretty face appeared on the screen. Then he recalled that there were plenty of screens at the libratech.

  “Mr. Tower?”

  “Miss van de Boer.” He nodded to her. “I have to warn you, Miss van de Boer, that there is reason to believe you may be in imminent danger.”

  Her wide-eyed look of shock was perfectly convincing. If Tower hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I’m in danger, me?” Her hand fluttered to her mouth. “But why?”

  “Don’t bother with the act, Miss van de Boer. There is no time for it. We know you’re a Morcharder, an agent for the corporate republic.”

  Tower almost laughed as the young woman dropped the pretense of innocence. Suddenly, in the place of a wide-eyed, fresh-faced beauty was a hard-faced and calculating agent. The speed of the switch was breathtaking.

  “Are the exiles onto me? Did they penetrate my cover?”

  “Yes. Last night or early this morning.”

  “And how do you know about it? How can I trust you?”

  Tower grinned, amused by her suspicion. “I don’t give a damn if you trust me or not. Prime Captain Kotant is out looking for you right now. If you like, I can just close this contact and let Detector Hildreth know who will be the prime suspect in your murder.”

  “Okay, all right, you’re right. Where is that big brute? I don’t have a security tag… but he can probably track my embassy credit chip. Mr. Tower, I’m not armed, is there anything you can do for me? Please?”

  Her wide blue eyes were sweetly imploring. They even might have moved him if he didn’t know how false she was.

  “Knock it off, Blondie. I’m not going to keep Kotant from killing you because of your broken win
g routine. I’m going to stop him because it’s my job and because the Duke really doesn’t like it when you off-planet types have the discourtesy to shit all over his hospitality. Now leave your credit chip where you are and Detector Hildreth will give you directions on where to run.”

  “Miss van de Boer, do you know where the city archives are? The history building, I mean? It’s not far from the Tearmann.” While he was talking Hildy had been working out the young woman’s route to safety.

  “Yeah, I know it.” The young woman was surprisingly calm for someone with a target on her head. But then, she would have been trained for these situations.

  “Exit the Tearmann and go left. There’s a skytube station about 200 meters. Take that to the archives. Once you’re there, tell the receptionist to take you to the police department’s safe room. The code word is… hold on… ‘excavate’. Remember that. Excavate. Now get moving, we’ll be there in about a kilosec.”

  “Oh, thank you, Detector. Please hurry!” She disappeared from the screen, already in motion, and Tower cut the contact.

  “All right, let’s roll.” He strode from his office and snagged his tac-jacket off the hook on the run. Then he reassured himself that his Sphinx was still in place before beckoning Hildy to follow him to the parking garage. “You secure her. I’ll hunt down Kotant. If she can make it to the tube, she should be all right. He’ll be in a var and won’t have access even if he’s got a tracker on her.”

  “We’ll see. Be careful, Tower,” Hildy said as they rode down the grav lift after Tower punched in an override to be sure they would not be stopped on intervening floors. “That Kotant is dangerous. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Tower bared his teeth and snorted contemptuously. “So do I, Hildy. So do I.”

  Six hectaseconds later, Tower was hovering in his aerovar in the bright sun high above the landing platform that was closest to the Tearmann Memorial Libratech. It was one of the ugliest buildings in the city, which Tower found ironic given the beauty of the artwork it contained. The Libratech took up the top fifty stories of a wide tower done in plascrete and tri-steel. But some architectural genius had decided to add a facade constructed of imitation granite, complete with faux gargoyles, onto the modern materials. It was the sort of mashup that must have required multiple committees to conceive and construct.

  According to the city schedule, Van de Boer would still be on the tube, but she was safe now. Baby had locked onto Kotant’s diplomatic tags almost as soon as they’d gotten in the air and the Morchardese captain had fallen for the bait. That was a relief; the thought that the Morchardese might have a bio tag implanted in the girl without her knowledge had occurred to him right after Hildy peeled off and headed for the archives. The last thing he wanted was to put the young Detector in between the combat-experienced Prime Captain and his prey.

  No, he corrected himself, the last thing he wanted was to think about listening to Hildy talk to her boyfriend. And yet, that was the one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “How close is he?”

  “Two kilometers and closing fast. You can take it down about 80 meters. He’s coming in at an altitude of 902 meters, velocity 150 kph. It’s a black var with an orange insignia on the door panels.”

  “Armed?”

  “Not officially.”

  “In other words, yes.” Most embassies of sufficient size had at least one armed var even though they were prohibited by various laws, treaties, and contracts from arming their vehicles without permission from MCID and the planetary administration. “So, let’s wait until he gets out of the vehicle to say hello.”

  “I have him on visual, Tower. Three clock eight!”

  Tower rotated the var and looked down and to his right. He saw the blue reticle indicating the aerovar on the display before he saw the var itself, a sleek, expensive four-door Fraisier. He zoomed in on it, and saw a pair of suspicious meter-long slats on the roof before confirming that it was Kotant behind the wheel. He’d bet a year’s salary that they hid a pair of small air-to-air launchers underneath.

  “Don’t target him, Baby,” Tower warned the augment. “Passive only. We don’t want to spook him.”

  But if Kotant’s sensors picked up the fact that his vehicle was being scanned, he didn’t show any signs of it. He slowed, angled the var on a parking path, and brought it smoothly down at a speed that indicated he had done so on manual. As the Morchardese approached the platform, which fortunately appeared to be sparsely populated at the moment, Tower took the var out of hover and sent it arcing downward, following much the same path as the Fraisier.

  “Here we go!” He began to break heavily about 100 meters out as soon as he saw Kotant leap out of the black vehicle and leveled out the var about 30 meters over the platform. The Morchardese man was strapped with his 707, but wore no body armor and he didn’t appear to be otherwise armed. Tower shifted back into hover about 20 meters behind Kotant’s vehicle, then triggered the full sound-and-light extravaganza. At the sound of the siren, Kotant abruptly stopped and jerked upright as if some mighty puppeteer had pulled on an invisible string on his back.

  “Prime Captain Bram Kotant, put your hands in the air and turn around slowly!” Baby broadcast his voice over the var’s loudspeakers. An older married couple, who had just gotten out of their car to the left of the Morchardese officer, hastened to comply. To emphasize his point, Tower activated the targeting system, knowing that the frightening servo-mechanical noise made by the twin mini-cannons in the var’s nose as they were auto-aimed at the laser now positioned in the center of Kotant’s back would be perfectly audible below. “This is Graven Tower of the Military Crimes Investigative Division. Turn around slowly, then unbuckle your belt and let it fall to the ground. Then take three steps back. Please be advised that if you do not comply, I have authorization to fire at will.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. On the other hand, no sane man with a pair of Degroet Tactical M165-20 cannons, each capable of firing 150 20-millimeter rounds per second, pointing at him was likely to try standing on his legal rights. And Tower knew that no MCID officer had ever been convicted of police abuse, mostly because convictions were hard to come by when there were no survivors and all the recording equipment within range had mysteriously ceased to operate. That impeccable record made bluffs of this sort extremely convincing.

  It was enough to convince Kotant, anyhow. The Morchardese officer complied with Tower’s orders, and turned around very slowly, holding his arms out and up as if to make the bottom of a square. If his eyes widened a little at the sight of the armored var flashing its lights and hovering just a few meters over his head, he remained otherwise calm, and he did not take his eyes off the twin cannons pointing at his chest as he unbuckled his belt, kicked his holstered GHK away from him, and slowly stepped three steps back from the weapon.

  Tower glanced around the platform. The older couple was still standing frozen with their hands in the air, and there were three other people who were also trapped in the lot, afraid to move.

  “There is no need for alarm, everyone. This is a police matter and everything is under control. Please leave the platform and go into the building in an orderly manner; if you were planning on leaving with your vehicle, you will have to wait a little while. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

  No one appeared inclined to complain, and if they walked a little hastily toward the Tearmann entrance, Tower couldn’t blame them. He let Baby land the var and checked to make sure he had a pair of autobinders in the usual pocket of his tactical jacket. When the door popped, he stepped out of it in a leisurely fashion and blinked his contacts dark against the bright sunlight. In dealing with veterans, hard men, and other human predators, he’d found it was always important to maintain an air of calm, unhurried collection.

  Only the weak and the desperate rushed things. Prey. Power could afford to be patient.

  “What brings you here, Prime Captain Kotant?” he said, leaving his Sphinx holstered a
nd ignoring the GHK on the ground nearby. “I didn’t realize you harbored such an interest in art and ancient manuscripts.”

  Kotant’s eyes were darkened too, making them hard to read. But he smiled faintly, as if the fact that Tower was observably standing clear of the twin mini-cannons’ line of fire amused rather than concerned him. “Is this really necessary, Mr. Tower? I believe you are making a mistake. I have broken no laws and I believe that as a legal resident of Trans Paradis I have the right to visit the libratech for any reason that happens to please me.”

  “Does he have a permit for that GHK 707, Baby? Tell me so the Prime Captain can hear you.”

  “Affirmative, Tower.”

  “Right.” Tower folded his arms and smiled at the Morchardese officer. “And does he have a permit for the modifications made to his vehicle as well?”

  “Negative, Tower. Neither Prime Captain Bram Kotant nor the Royal Embassy of Morchard is on record with permits for the pair of Mectron-Denel V4A air-to-air missile launchers built into the vehicle registered to the embassy, or for the four V4A S-Darter missiles that are presently in the vehicle.”

  “No laws, Prime Captain? I’d say the possession of an entire air-to-air system is one heck of a weapons violation. Not exactly a busted taillight, is it. Four more missiles and you’d be liable to face illegal arms trading charges too. Now, as a fellow veteran and security officer, I’m going to do you the professional courtesy of asking you one more time before I arrest you, why are you here?”

  “I’m trying to solve the crown prince’s murder and bring an end to the assassination attempts on the royal family,” Kotant snapped. “Beginning with the interrogation of Annaliese van de Boer. She’s a regime spy.”

  “Yeah, we know. Hold on a moment.” Tower ignored Kotant’s astonished expression and addressed Baby. “Is Miss van de Boer secured yet?”

  “Affirmative, Tower. The woman has been taken into protective custody as a material witness and is being transported to a secure location now.”