Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Did he alter anything in the past month?”

  “No,” the system said.

  Ó Brádaigh could actually feel time passing. Normally, he would take the system through the questions week by week, but he didn’t have time.

  “What about in the past year?” Ó Brádaigh asked.

  “I will show you what Petteway has done in this room in the past year,” the system said.

  The system showed Ó Brádaigh only a few things. Petteway entered and exited the control room at least once a month, but didn’t do anything while inside. In the last few months, he entered once or twice a week, and always opened the dome sectioning commands.

  It was almost as if he were trying to build up his nerve so that he could change the settings.

  Ó Brádaigh shuddered. Bastard.

  Ó Brádaigh focused on the clock he always had running in his left eye. He had used a lot of time checking on Petteway, and Ó Brádaigh still didn’t have any help.

  At some point, Ó Brádaigh would have to trust he had found everything Petteway had done.

  Ó Brádaigh stepped out of the control room and closed the door. He pinged the security office again. He was told he had moved farther up in the queue.

  He cursed silently.

  He was going to have to use the Armstrong Police, even though he didn’t want to.

  He debated showing up at headquarters for just a moment, then visualized himself standing in line there while mayhem happened in his city.

  So he sent an urgent message along the emergency line reserved for city engineers. He hoped to hell that Petteway wasn’t monitoring the line.

  Or one of Petteway’s cohorts.

  A police avatar appeared in front of Ó Brádaigh, life-size, wearing an official uniform from ten years before.

  “State the nature of your emergency,” the avatar said.

  Ó Brádaigh used his identification code, then stated his position with the city. “I have found evidence of mass tampering with the dome. I need help—a lot of help. We only have a few hours before something could go terribly wrong.”

  The avatar winked out, and a woman he didn’t recognize appeared. She introduced herself, and added, “I am a dispatch officer and I am speaking to you live. Please, state the nature of your emergency again.”

  So Ó Brádaigh did. Then he added, “Look, I’m in the substructure, and what I’ve found scares the living hell out of me. I can’t get through the United Domes of the Moon Security Office, so I came to you guys. I’m afraid this is going on in every single dome on the Moon.”

  “Can you come to us?” the woman asked.

  “No,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I need to check the dome’s structure, but it’s too big to do it alone. I need help, and I’m not sure who I can trust.”

  Except Noelle DeRicci.

  “I will send someone to you,” the woman said.

  “No,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I need to reach the Security Office, and I need to reach it now.”

  “I will patch you into their emergency line, but I’ll warn you, they don’t have the proper setup. What can we do in the meantime?”

  He was afraid of scaring half the city. He was afraid of tipping off Petteway’s equivalents in the other domes.

  But there was one thing the police could do, at least until he had a real plan.

  “I need dome inspectors,” he said. “That falls into your jurisdiction, right? I need inspectors outside and inside the dome, checking every centimeter of it, looking for explosives—small and large. The way this attack was set up, a tiny hole in the dome would have been catastrophic. So even a small charge, something the size of a fingernail, should be cause for concern and should be removed. Can you set that up?”

  “With approval,” she said.

  “Get it,” he said. “I’m willing to talk to whomever you need. And please, get me to the Security Office right now.”

  “Absolutely,” the dispatch said. She looked scared. He hated seeing someone whose job it was to remain calm look terrified. “I’m going to get everyone here in dispatch to work on getting you through as fast as we possibly can.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and hoped it would be fast enough.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FLINT WAS WORKING six different systems at the same time. He had become so restless, he was walking around his small office, checking each piece of information as it arose.

  He was tracking the money that Ike Jarvis had used for his last illegal operation. The money that had come from the Currency Department.

  Flint didn’t have the right kind of clearance to compare other Currency transfers within the Alliance, and he didn’t want to tip his hand—not yet. He hoped Wilma Goudkins could find out more for him, or in the very least, find out more about Pearl Brooks.

  What few things Flint had found were fascinating. Jarvis had spent millions on several different operatives with the same mission designation as Iniko Zagrando. The mission had come about after Anniversary Day, and it seemed cobbled together.

  Whenever Flint looked for something else in the files that was as sloppy as what he had seen on this final mission, he found nothing.

  He suspected—although he didn’t know—that something had frightened Jarvis, and made him worry that his own cover was blown.

  Hey, Flint, you see what’s going on in Hétique City? The message came from the private link he had with Nyquist.

  Flint hadn’t been paying attention to anything outside of his research. No. What should I know?

  Take a look. Realize that the Alliance and some folks here think it’s the third attack.

  Flint froze. He glanced at his systems, information pouring through them like water. The third attack, somewhere other than Earth’s Moon?

  The attack had to be devastating.

  He made himself focus on Nyquist’s words. But you don’t?

  You won’t either after we talk. Just look first.

  So Flint did. He opened yet another screen, saw the media coverage, saw a destroyed city without a dome, saw images of an attack that had come from orbit, and saw a crawl on one side with the names of the dead. That aspect was ghoulish. He hoped someone had done proper familial notification before putting up the names.

  He watched for a moment, while downloading the latest information along the public network, his stomach clenched.

  He knew what those people in Hétique City were going through—the confusion, the terror, the change that happened in a single moment. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and calmed himself.

  Then he opened his eyes, turning his back on the images of destruction. He contacted Nyquist again. They sound convinced it’s the third attack.

  Settle in, Nyquist sent. I’d come visit you, but I have some personal matters to attend to here.

  What do you mean, settle in? Flint asked.

  I mean, I got a story to tell you.

  Flint stuck his hands in his back pockets and resumed pacing. Okay, I’m ready.

  So, you send me after a guy named Ike Jarvis and a very old case involving clones and our mutual friend Noelle.

  DeRicci? Flint was startled.

  She was the initial detective on the case. Seems a woman got herself killed and stuffed in a composter, only it wasn’t a woman.

  Flint tried to follow. What was it?

  A clone, Nyquist sent. And not just any clone. A clone made from the Mycenae family, and embedded into Luc Deshin’s family as a nanny. Deshin fires the nanny one morning and in hours she turns up dead. Noelle investigates until the department realizes it’s a clone, and moves the case to Property.

  Flint felt a piece of information just fall into place. DeRicci had never liked Deshin. Obviously, they had run into each other in this case, and she had formed her opinions then.

  Deshin hadn’t remembered her—or if he had, he had never told Flint.

  Then the case had been taken out of DeRicci’s capable hands and sent to the black hole of the Armstrong
PD, the Property Division.

  I suppose they never followed up, Flint sent, feeling discouraged.

  Surprise, surprise, they did. They go to the clone’s handler’s place to arrest the bastard because they—and Noelle—believe he’s been murdering clones. Noelle calls him a serial, although Gumiela got into the file and calls him a serial in the making, because we all know that a serial killer isn’t a serial killer until he kills an actual human.

  Flint winced. He was so glad that Talia hadn’t heard that.

  Anyway, this handler, Cade Faulke, does a disappearing act—only he wasn’t a Disappeared. Witnesses say a group of people took him out of the building after disabling his android guard. He wasn’t seen again.

  Do you know what happened to him? Flint asked.

  Found some information, buried deep in Property’s files, that a man named Otto Koos led the team that took Faulke away from his lair. Recognize that name?

  No, Flint sent.

  Head of security for Deshin Enterprises until that very year. Until that very week, in fact. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. There was a rescue of clones in Hétique City a few hours before the bombings started. The clones were children, and some of them resembled Deshin’s kid Paavo.

  Flint frowned, trying to follow. Deshin was very protective of Paavo. It was one of the few things that Flint liked about the man. Paavo wasn’t a clone, was he?

  Flint didn’t say any of this. He decided to wait until Nyquist was done.

  Nyquist hadn’t stopped sending. And, the ship that was in orbit when those kids were stolen from the clone factory? That ship was purchased at the very fringes of the Alliance by one Otto Koos.

  Flint tilted his head. Clone factory? No one had mentioned a clone factory. That suddenly made sense. Paavo wasn’t a clone. The boy’s DNA had been stolen.

  What clone factory? Flint asked, deciding now was the time for questions.

  Oh, did I forget that? Nyquist sent. The raid today on Hétique wasn’t aimed at the city. The city was collateral damage. The clone factory got destroyed. It’s an Alliance clone factory and guess what gets made there?

  Flint knew better than to sarcastically ask Clones? but he was tempted.

  What? he asked.

  Designer clones, made by the Alliance to embed into criminal organizations. What I’m seeing, which isn’t in the media, is that a few of those ships can be traced back to other crime families. This factory was the target because of the clones being embedded in the organizations, not because of the Moon.

  Flint thought about that for a moment. It made sense.

  You want to ask your friend Deshin about that? Nyquist added.

  Flint almost said that Deshin had left the Moon to track the Anniversary Day bombers, but didn’t. Deshin had gotten some of the information that Flint needed, and then had made it clear that he wasn’t participating any longer.

  Right about the time the planning for an attack of this scale would have happened.

  Flint cursed out loud, glad the conversation with Nyquist wasn’t audible.

  Deshin’s fingerprints were all over this. He had brought in the other organizations, then saw that there were children who were related to Paavo. Of course, Deshin couldn’t kill them.

  Even if he didn’t think they were human, he wouldn’t have been able to view footage and see children dying, children who looked like his son.

  I don’t want to talk to Deshin right now, Flint sent. He didn’t like the idea of the attack at all, even if some of the clones had been saved.

  Well, here’s the thing, Nyquist sent. Jarvis was hip-deep in clone making. The original Frémont clones were made at that facility—

  The ones that led to the Moon bombing? Flint asked.

  No, experimental ones from something before Frémont died. All Alliance stuff, which I don’t pretend to understand and can’t access in depth, but I know you have sources on it. Here’s what I know, though. This Jarvis? Besides the clones, he was active on the Moon for years. He knew how important the Moon is, and how to infiltrate systems.

  Flint thought about that for a moment. Ike Jarvis. No wonder Zagrando had risked his life to come here.

  You’re thinking that Jarvis helped mastermind the attacks on the Moon? Flint sent.

  Naw, Nyquist sent, surprising Flint. He’s not old enough.

  Flint blinked, realized that while he was putting some of the pieces together well, he wasn’t assembling others at all. Of course Jarvis hadn’t been old enough. Some of the planning started before Jarvis had been born.

  I do think he helped facilitate it, Nyquist sent. And I think he used some of it to do some of his own dirty work—and to turn a blind eye to bad stuff his operatives were doing. Like Faulke, killing clones as a hobby.

  Flint shuddered again. He wondered how often that happened all over the Alliance, and then decided he didn’t want to know.

  Do you have information as to who Jarvis is tied to? he sent.

  That kind of crap is your job, Nyquist said. I found Jarvis, Koos, and an operation here, thanks to your little case number. What I find fascinating is that the case ties Jarvis, the Alliance, clones, and killers with one neat little bow. You got your connection, Flint.

  Flint frowned. He wasn’t sure why this was “his” connection and not “their” connection.

  What can you be working on that’s more important than this? Flint sent.

  I got to deal with some dirty cops, and it’s not fun on top of everything else. I hope I can wrap it up in the next twenty-four hours or something, Nyquist sent. But for the moment, I’m the go-to-honest-cop on this assignment. I guess being a lonely asshole is perfect for this kind of work.

  And then he signed off without waiting for Flint’s response. Flint had never heard Nyquist be quite that bitter before, and he wondered what Nyquist had run into.

  Flint thought of contacting him again to simply say thank you, but he knew that Nyquist would hate that. Besides, every minute counted here.

  Flint moved to one of the screens running the Jarvis information, and started isolating the names of everyone that Jarvis had worked with in his long career. Flint was going to cross-reference those with names he’d run into in his investigation.

  He glanced over at the screen showing the destruction of Hétique City, then shut it off. If Deshin were involved…

  Then he shook his head. Of course, Deshin had been involved. The man might’ve cared about his family, and he might’ve cared about others, but he had just been part of a small army killing innocents.

  Flint understood DeRicci’s antipathy. He’d let Deshin’s charm disarm some of his caution.

  Of course, Flint and Deshin had been using each other. Deshin had gotten Flint enough information to move forward on this investigation. And, apparently, some of the information Deshin had received had benefitted him as well.

  Flint swallowed back some bile and returned to his work, forcing himself to concentrate. He needed complete focus here. He needed—

  Suddenly, alerts went off on every screen and in his emergency links. His heart rate spiked. He only had a few alerts set, and most of them concerned Talia.

  The alerts informed him of a systems breach—a major systems breach, a devastating systems breach.

  Flint shook his head slightly, shut down the warning bells and the bright blinking visuals and opened the alerts, reminding himself that if Talia were in trouble, the information wouldn’t come to him as a systems’ breach. This had to be old, from some system he had set up years ago—or from his system here.

  He opened the alert, realized it wasn’t an old system or his system in his office, but something he had forgotten he had done.

  He had set backdoor alerts inside the Security Office. He had boosted their systems when the building was built, and after DeRicci got hired, and then again, after Anniversary Day.

  This was the old alert. It shouldn’t have been triggered first. The new alert was state-of-the-art. The old alert
—

  —had gotten missed by the person or persons who breached the system. They had shut down the other alerts.

  Flint went through the alert, using the back door he had set up then, and hit a wall. At the same time, he tried to contact DeRicci through his links and got a notification that he was not authorized to contact her.

  He had his own system search for a way into the Security Office, and he was told, repeatedly, no matter what contact he tried, that he was in a queue and it would take time to reach someone.

  His palms were sweating. He tried to reach Popova directly, and was once again told he wasn’t authorized. He tried both DeRicci and Popova through private emergency links, and got nothing at all.

  He contacted Nyquist, Something’s going wrong at the Security Office. I just got an alert that their systems were breached. Notify someone at Armstrong PD. Send officers to the Security Office. I’m heading there now.

  Got it, Nyquist sent back.

  Flint glanced at all his systems, thought again about the work he’d lose if he’d shut it all down, then realized he needed to take this particular hack as a sign of what could happen even in his well-protected office.

  The Security Office had the best system security in the city, and someone had still gotten in.

  Now Flint was going to have to figure out how to get into the building as well—and then figure out what to do.

  He went into his back room and got two laser pistols. He put the small one in his ankle holster, which he hadn’t used since he left the force, and attached the holster to his right leg. Then he put the other pistol in another holster, which he attached to his hip.

  His racing heart had slowed down. Somehow, he had reconnected with the man he had been when he worked for the Armstrong Police Department. He knew that working methodically was his best choice.

  He let his own links continue to ping the Security Office, hoping someone else got there and solved this quickly. Then he shut down all the systems in his office and let himself out.

  Once he had locked everything down, he ran to his car.

  He needed to get to the Security Office—and he needed to do it fast.