“The crime families are working together?” Odgerel hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
“I think we have our answer in this next security footage that I will show you,” Brown said. “It automatically updated at the first sign of trouble, and kept transmitting until the on-the-ground system was destroyed.”
He waved his hand over another section of the table. The images were larger. Small ground-to-orbit vehicles had landed in the center of what appeared to be a large industrial complex. A pilot waited in each. Groups ran toward the vehicles. The groups appeared to be armed adults and several people holding very young children.
Brown moved the imagery forward until the ships—which had come and gone more than once—were surrounded by angry young people. He enlarged their faces.
“We believe these young people, and the children, are clones,” he said. “We did a recognition search and discovered that by face, at least, they match images of several members of the named crime families on a ninety-nine point nine percent point system. We obviously don’t have the DNA, but we don’t really need it, since the area attacked held one of the Alliance’s major clone factories.”
Odgerel rubbed her eyes. They ached with tiredness. “They are clones. For decades, the Hétique factory has worked alongside part of the Security Department to infiltrate these families. Apparently, the families are not happy with what we have done, and are showing their displeasure.”
“Then why steal the clones?” asked Eu-fùnh Pirizoni. She was one of Odgerel’s most insightful division heads.
“We don’t know,” Brown said. “The theft looks haphazard. If I let the security footage play out, you’ll see a lot of the young people get left behind, only to die a few minutes later as the attacks continue on the factory.”
“It looks like a rescue,” Odgerel said, more to herself than to the team.
“It does,” Brown said. “But the ships used here are affiliated with Luc Deshin, perhaps the biggest crime boss on Earth’s Moon.”
“The Moon.” Odgerel looked at Brown. He seemed as tired as she felt. “This is our link to the Moon?”
“The only link,” Brown said. “The attack is different, the methodology seems different, the goal of the attack seems different. The reports we are getting now say that much of the city was not harmed, only the areas nearest the factory. The attack happened at night, when there were fewer employees, and we now know that the younger children, at least, were removed from the factory before it was destroyed.”
“Should we even be calling them children?” asked Sadbhuj Barbier.
Odgerel looked at him in surprise. She didn’t think he had such a hard heart. “What else would we call them?”
“They’re clones,” Barbier said. “They’re not human.”
“Then what are they, exactly?” she asked.
His lips thinned and he leaned back in his chair. He clearly realized she disliked his response. Either that, or he really didn’t have an answer for her.
“Continue,” she said to Brown.
He turned slightly so that he faced Odgerel directly.
“We don’t know if this attack on a clone factory, done with the cooperation of at least three crime lords, is coincidental to the attacks on the Moon or if they’re related. We did intercept some communications about a meeting at one of Deshin’s properties recently, but we couldn’t tell if the meeting was going to be held or if it had already been held.”
Odgerel folded her hands together. Brown’s eyes tracked downward. He clearly noted the move, but he didn’t slow down because of it.
“We’ve had word through various departments that Deshin had been looking for designer criminal clones, which was not something he’d pursued in the past. Some of the rumors concerned the Anniversary Day bombing clones. We do know that many criminal organizations are trying to track the bombing clones’ origins so that they can purchase the same kinds of clones.”
“Lovely,” Odgerel muttered because she had to respond to that. She had known about the search by other criminals for the maker of the Frémont clones. A successful attack of that level often served as advertising for a new weapon, and the Anniversary Day attacks were no exception.
“Deshin is known for his killings, but only as a strategy for dealing with rivals, generally those who have crossed him. He prefers shady business deals to assassination and weapons sales. His involvement in all of this is a surprise,” said Brown.
“I seem to recall that we lost an operative on the Moon years ago,” Odgerel said, “when Deshin fired one of the embedded clones. The operative vanished, and it was believed that Deshin had taken him, tortured him, and killed him once he had the information. Or am I misremembering that?”
“You aren’t,” Pirizoni said. “When Mitchell found the connection to Deshin and clones, I searched, and found that was the last mention tying Deshin directly to clones. The clone that was destroyed was the last one embedded in his organization, at least close to his family. He became quite vigilant after that.”
Odgerel frowned. “So we know that Deshin was looking for the maker of the Anniversary Day clones. We know that he probably had a meeting of crime lords at one of his compounds, and the next thing we know is that the clone factory that made the clones we embedded into criminal organizations was destroyed.”
We also know that there is an Alliance connection to some of these attacks, Brown sent her through her links, although I haven’t briefed everyone in this room on that.
Noted, she sent back.
“We also know that Deshin is patriotic,” said Jadallah Reinbrecht. He had a gift for understanding a lot of information in a short period of time—and remembering it weeks or months later, without an assist from his networks.
“Patriotic?” Odgerel asked. “To the Alliance?”
“To the Moon,” Reinbrecht said. “He has steadfastly refused to leave the City of Armstrong, although he would quadruple his profits if he moved to the edges of the Alliance.”
“And what do you make of that information?” Odgerel asked Reinbrecht.
“Personally? I think Deshin was going to exact his own revenge on whoever attacked the Moon. Deshin nearly died on Anniversary Day, and he lost some of his team. He’s loyal to them. I think he didn’t find what he was looking for, but he found something else.”
“The clones we’ve been embedding into the criminal organizations,” Odgerel said.
“So why save their lives?” Pirizoni asked.
“He didn’t save all of the clones,” Brown said. “The reports I’m getting list the clone casualties, not as deaths per se, but as property loss. It looks like adult clones still on site were not saved.”
“Just the children,” Odgerel muttered. She blinked, trying to reconcile the idea of a criminal organization led by a man who would save children. “Do you think he wants to use the children for his own criminal activities?”
“I don’t know,” Brown said. “We have already lost track of the rescue ships, if that’s what you want to call them.”
“We can identify those clones,” Barbier said. “I think we put a watch for them once they become adults.”
Odgerel nodded. “I’ll assign that,” she said, although she wouldn’t assign it at this moment. She did not want Barbier handling that, even though he had come up with the idea.
“So we are now certain that the attackers of Hétique City are not the Anniversary Day attackers?” she asked.
“We’re not certain of anything yet,” Brown said.
“It is possible that the crime lords did attack the Moon,” Barbier said. “After all, all of the four we have just named have shell corporations that could be used in the Moon’s rebuilding.”
“Then why the second attack a few weeks ago?” Odgerel asked.
Barbier shrugged.
“I am still of the opinion that crime lords do not have the long-term vision to handle something this large over so many decades,” Brown said.
“I
tend to agree. Still, we have to look at all possibilities.” Odgerel turned to Pirizoni. “Eu-fùnh, please, investigate the connection between these crime lords and see if one or all of them could have worked together for the attacks on the Moon.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“I do, however, think that this attack is related to the Anniversary Day attacks,” Odgerel said. “But I am guessing that Jadallah’s assumption is correct: that Deshin discovered our clone factory’s purpose while searching for the Anniversary Day clones, and that his connection to the bombings is as victim, not as perpetrator. We should, of course, try to find him and the property he has stolen from us, but our main focus needs to remain finding the perpetrators of the Moon attacks.”
She looked at the group, feeling more energy that she had felt since she woke up.
“Proceed with the Hétique City attack as if it were an isolated event. Investigate it as if it had happened before Anniversary Day and is a crime, not a terrorist act. It’s not necessary to put a lot of resources into this crime if, indeed, we would be taking resources from our primary purpose, which is finding the terrorists who are attacking the Moon. But we shouldn’t lose sight of this investigation either.”
“Waiting will slow us down on catching these crime lords,” Barbier said.
Odgerel smiled at him. “We have been unable to ‘catch them’ in the legal sense for years now. I’m certain that a few months will make little difference. My orders stand.”
He glared at her.
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“No, sir,” Brown said, clearly speaking for the group.
She nodded. “I appreciate the good and swift information. Please keep me apprised on all of the related investigative fronts.”
Then she bowed her head slightly, and left the room.
She was relieved that this Hétique City attack was not the expected third attack. She did not want the crisis to spread beyond Earth’s solar system.
But she knew that there would be another attack, and her intuition told her it would be soon.
She needed to keep her staff focused, and with any organization this large, maintaining focus was difficult.
She would guide them as best she could until the crisis ended.
If it ended at all.
FORTY-FIVE
THE SIDE ROOM that Popova had pulled Berhane and Kaspian into seemed claustrophobic and small, particularly with all the floating heads around them. Images of dozens of long-dead Moon citizens, all of whose DNA had been found in the last few months in the ruins from the Anniversary Day bombings.
Popova had turned gray, and she had tucked her hair behind her ears. She looked terrified.
Berhane understood that. Seeing this Lawrence Ostaka person had spiked her heart rate, and it hadn’t slowed down. She never thought of herself as courageous, even though she had fended off a few scummy people inside the ruins while she worked.
She certainly wasn’t sure what to do now.
Except that she needed to give Popova information as quickly as possible.
Kaspian had started to explain how they found the DNA, and Berhane had cut him off. Popova didn’t need that, not right now. Maybe later. What she had needed were the faces of the originals for the DNA that Berhane’s volunteers had found—and now as those faces floated around the room, Popova looked like her world was collapsing.
Popova pointed to another face, not Ostaka’s face.
“I know him,” she said. “He works with the city engineers.”
Her voice was shaking. Berhane felt like she was floating, as if something had shifted in her entire world.
Popova said, “Half of these people are on staff here in Armstrong. How is that possible?”
And then she shook her head.
Berhane had had a bit more time with this, although she hated the idea that these people—these clones—were in the city. She was going to have to be the voice of reason here, at least for the moment.
She remembered how she had been the day her mother died, the way she had become calmer in the crisis rather than panicked, how she had organized everyone on that train.
She found that space in herself again.
“Look,” she said to Popova, “these people have been here for years. We can take another minute or two to confirm what our eyes are telling us. Do you have samples of this Earth Alliance Investigator’s DNA?”
Popova looked at Berhane as if she were speaking Disty. “We don’t have any time at all,” Popova said. “He’s with the chief.”
“And he has no idea that we know who he is,” Berhane said. “Let’s just make sure of this. I mean, some faces look alike.”
“Not to me,” Kaspian said. “That resemblance is enough to indict, as far as I’m concerned.”
Berhane glared at him. She didn’t have to send him a “shut up” message on the links this time. He gave her a sideways glance that she took as an apology.
Berhane asked Popova, “Can you get some of this man’s DNA? If we can just run a simple clone check—”
“He won’t have a clone number,” Popova said.
“Yeah, I know, but there’s a way to check some DNA markers,” Berhane said. “We won’t know if he’s actually from the original that we think he is, but we’ll be able to see if he was cloned.”
Popova visibly squared her shoulders. She seemed stronger, as if having a plan bolstered her.
“We can do that,” she said. “I know where we can get some DNA right now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Berhane said.
Popova shook her head. “For all we know, he’s monitoring his stuff. He’ll wonder what you’re doing there, but he will think I have something to do for my job.”
Berhane bit her lower lip. She didn’t want Popova to face this man alone. “If he’s in that space, then come back here.”
“If he’s in that space,” Popova said, “I’ll be contacting you via links and we’ll go see the chief.”
“You should let the chief know what’s going on,” Kaspian said.
Berhane looked at him in surprise. The man who hated authority wanted an authority figure involved?
He shrugged, then said to Berhane, “You know I’m right.”
“I think we’re going to wait until we have proof,” Popova said. “We have so much happening here that the last thing we want to do is accuse someone who is innocent of doing something wrong.”
“He’s not innocent,” Kaspian muttered.
“But he might not know he was manufactured for something,” Berhane said.
Kaspian gave her a pitying look. “Then he’ll be like those Peyti clones, activated when the time is right.”
“Like they had a timer inside of them?” Berhane looked at Popova. “They didn’t, did they?”
“No,” Popova said, hand on the door. “They knew their whole lives what day they were supposed to die and how. They could have told us at any point.”
Then she made a face as if she had swallowed something bad, and let herself out of the room.
Berhane twisted her fingers together. The Peyti clones had known? For decades? And they’d made friends here?
She had been with one of Peyti clones on the Armstrong Express the day her mother had died. They had talked to each other. She had helped him, with his broken little arm.
He had taken her help. He had worked to survive.
How could anyone be so normal all the time, knowing they were part of something monstrous? How?
She’d love to think that only Peyti could be so venal, but she knew better.
She looked up at the faces floating around the room. All of those faces were human.
Still, she wanted to be wrong.
She wanted to be wrong more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.
FORTY-SIX
THOSE MINUTES INSIDE the small control room seemed to take forever. Ó Brádaigh watched each part of the system reset itself. He didn’t tou
ch any of it until the entire process was complete. Then he checked and double-checked.
Then he asked the system to check for him. He asked the system to make sure the usual settings were in place. He figured if the system responded that the usual settings had been tampered with, then Petteway had taken his sabotage to a new level—to the level Ó Brádaigh would have done.
Ó Brádaigh would have changed the default settings too. He would have made the system reset itself after the settings were changed, and he would have made the default settings the new settings, not the usual ones.
But Ó Brádaigh had asked that question, and the system told him that he had just reset the system properly.
He was feeling so paranoid that he worried that Petteway had set the system to lie to him.
But that would have required Petteway to believe that someone would catch him, and Ó Brádaigh doubted Petteway had planned for that. Particularly with the fact that Petteway had made the settings change himself, and the settings change would only last a few hours.
As Ó Brádaigh finished his check, another realization hit. It was a realization he had had earlier, but it was one that hadn’t really sunk in.
Only a few hours.
The attack was coming soon.
He said to the system, “Did Petteway alter anything besides the dome sections settings?”
He worried after he spoke that the question was too complex.
“He did not touch any other setting,” the system answered Ó Brádaigh.
“What about things that were not settings?” Ó Brádaigh took a deep breath, and rephrased. “Did Petteway alter anything that was not a setting?”
“Petteway only touched the settings.”
“Today.” Ó Brádaigh said. “He only touched them today, is that correct?”
“That is correct,” the system said.
“What about in the last week? Did Petteway change anything in the last week?”
“No,” the system said.
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