Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

DeRicci had to mentally switch gears. Ostaka was trying to hold her hostage? Really?

  He was out of shape, and the hand holding the laser pistol trembled. His arm, pulling her tight against him, was trembling as well.

  It was all DeRicci could do to keep from shaking her head in disgust.

  She elbowed him in the gut while raising her other hand to grab his gun wrist. She pulled him forward, over her shoulder, slamming him against the floor.

  He let out a cry of pain as the breath left his body. Somehow he managed to hold onto the pistol.

  She put a foot on his wrist.

  “Get me some cuffs,” she said to Popova.

  Popova hadn’t moved.

  “Rudra,” DeRicci said. “Get me some cuffs.”

  “Where? I….”

  DeRicci would have sent the location across her links, but Popova had been right: the links weren’t working. “Weapons cabinet near the east window.”

  She hadn’t opened that cabinet in months, maybe years, so she hoped there were cuffs in it. Popova glanced at the cabinet as if it were miles from her.

  Ostaka moaned. He rolled over and tried to grab DeRicci’s ankle. She bent over and smacked him in the face so hard that his nose gushed blood, ruining her only pair of shoes that hadn’t fallen apart in this crisis.

  “Rudra,” DeRicci said. “Hurry.”

  Popova looked at Ostaka as if he were coming after her. She sidled to the cabinet, pulled it open, and grabbed cuffs.

  Then she scurried toward DeRicci, handing them to her.

  Ostaka wasn’t fighting any more. He was choking on his own blood and whimpering.

  DeRicci slammed her heel on his wrist, breaking it. His hand opened involuntarily, and she kicked the gun away.

  “Take the pistol,” she said to Popova.

  Popova looked horrified.

  “For godssake, Rudra, you’re all I’ve got here. Take the damn pistol.” DeRicci didn’t watch to see if Popova followed her command.

  DeRicci bent over and grabbed Ostaka by his broken wrist. He screamed. DeRicci pulled him upright, then yanked his arm behind his back. He screamed again. She flicked on the cuffs and attached one above his broken wrist.

  Then she pulled his other arm back, and attached the other cuff to his wrist, making him lean sideways. His nose still dripped blood, and he was sobbing.

  DeRicci cursed him.

  She looked up at Popova, who was holding the laser pistol properly—thank heavens DeRicci had insisted on weapons training for the entire staff—pointing it at Ostaka.

  “You stay there,” she said to Popova, and then went to the weapons cabinet herself.

  DeRicci pushed the door aside, leaving a bloody handprint on the fake wood. She grabbed more cuffs and two laser pistols. Then she considered before pulling two more out of the cabinet.

  Popova would be her weapons’ bearer until DeRicci figured out exactly what was going on.

  DeRicci returned to Ostaka, cuffed him at the ankles as well, and pulled him against the mound of trash.

  “All right, you bastard,” DeRicci said to him. “Tell me who you really are and what the hell you’ve been doing.”

  He looked up at her, his swollen nose beginning to bruise. He spit out some blood.

  He was probably in shock. DeRicci wasn’t even sure he had understood her.

  So she leaned toward him.

  “Talk now, asshole,” she said. “Or I’m going to make sure you learn what pain really is.”

  He blinked at her and let out a frightened sob.

  And then he started to speak.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  ANDRE HAD LOCKED everyone out of her office as she tried to find whoever it was who had found Mavis Zorn. Andre had to be careful with her searches. She didn’t want to seem interested, particularly since the person searching Mavis Zorn’s name had already attached it to Andre’s.

  Andre’s office was the largest in this building, maybe even the largest in this part of the division. She had a couch and three chairs, all Earth antiques—built for humans back when humans thought they owned the galaxy. She had imported her desk at great cost from an antique dealer on Earth, and had had to struggle to find the matching chair.

  The chair, unfortunately, was uncomfortable, and the desk was so old it couldn’t be networked without destroying its value, so Andre did much of her work standing up, working off a virtual screen.

  This time, however, she had hauled out an actual computer, one that she had brought into this section herself, and she was researching on a network normally assigned only to undercover operatives. That way, no one would question the searches she ran. Undercovers did all kinds of crazy things all the time.

  She was deep in the system, tracing the pings, following the signatures, when a red light flashed across her eyes.

  She felt a surge of irritation. If this was Stott again, she would cut him off. She had no idea how she was going to do it, but she would. She would absolutely destroy him.

  She didn’t want to see who had sent the alert—hell, she didn’t even want to see what the alert was. She had already calmed Stott, and even if it wasn’t him, it was probably some other idiot panicking at the wrong time.

  The alert brightened, taking over her vision, and she cursed. If she didn’t do something with the damn alert, it would probably start making siren noises or activating one of the nerves in her face.

  So she opened the alert, and frowned.

  She didn’t recognize the name of the sender, Lawrence Ostaka, but she recognized his face. He was one of the hundreds of clones who was taking part in the third attack. She had chosen the originals for that third attack herself, and she knew the names of each of the one-hundred originals in the procedure.

  Ostaka’s name came with an Earth Alliance Security clearance, as an investigator, and she opened a separate screen and accessed his information. He was originally off-Moon, but had managed to get himself assigned to the Moon right after Anniversary Day. It had taken some finagling on his part, but he had ended up in the office of security for the United Domes of the Moon.

  Andre let out a hunh of appreciation. The man had ended up in the very office that had given Andre fits for the past six months. The only people with brains on the Moon, she had privately called them.

  They had thwarted parts of the first attack, and nearly aborted all of the second. They wouldn’t be able to stop the third—it was too massive—but if they knew what was ahead—

  She made herself focus on his message. It was panicked, sent from the Office of Security for the United Domes of the Moon. Found me. Can’t finish lock-out. They have the names of Andre, Starbase Human—

  And that was where it ended, as if he were interrupted mid-send. She frowned at it, heart pounding, knowing the message for what it was—a get-out warning. She had made certain the upper-level team managers knew how to warn most of the important staff in the group when it was time to get out.

  She had been warned.

  She played the message again, saw his terrified features, saw him reach into his shirt, saw him glance over his shoulder before the message stopped.

  Then she deleted the message, scrubbing it off her system.

  She almost walked away, but she paused for one moment. He wasn’t supposed to send messages to her. The only reason this one came through was because it was on the alert network.

  But she had access to everything her people did—at least in theory. So she went back to the system she’d been using, and looked to see if there were more messages from Ostaka.

  There were dozens, going all the way back to his posting in the Moon’s security office. The most recent came shortly before the alert.

  I’ve altered everything in the system here, he had sent to his handler. Andre assumed that “here” meant the security office. I’m activating the protection protocols now. It should be impossible for anything to get in or out of their system. I’ll keep my connection to you open, just in case, but I’m not anticip
ating problems. In fact, DeRicci just invited me to her office, so everything just got easier.

  And then, apparently, it broke down.

  Andre shut down his message and scrubbed it, as well. She had seen that name—DeRicci—so many times since the first attack that she wanted to meet the woman. One of the brains on the Moon. Either that, or one of the luckiest people in the history of the human race.

  Too bad Andre hadn’t met DeRicci before the Moon attacks. A person like that would have been valuable. Andre wondered if DeRicci were corruptible—or had been. She certainly wouldn’t be now.

  Andre closed the computer, then packed it in a carry-all. She had to clear her office. She had an escape plan, and it looked like she would need it.

  She supposed she could bluff it out here, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  After all, there wasn’t anything this DeRicci could do, even if she caught half the clones on the Moon. In a few hours, the last attack on the Moon would devastate all the domes, and take everyone’s attention away from the so-called masterminds, and place it on rebuilding, recovery, or perhaps, on deciding whether or not the Alliance was even necessary.

  Andre had time to escape. If she did it right, no one would ever find her.

  The only way to do it right was to remain calm.

  Sure, they had captured a clone named Ostaka. He was a mid-level manager of the attacks, but he didn’t know everything. He knew some things that would set the so-called good guys on her trail, but even that might not have been enough.

  And it sounded like he had done the important work.

  Andre had believed for months now that if the Security Office on the Moon were neutralized, the attack would work.

  She simply hadn’t believed it possible to completely neutralize that office.

  It seemed like this clone had managed the impossible.

  Her luck was holding.

  But luck, as she had learned, favored the prepared.

  The final mission was underway.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  GOMEZ HAD FINALLY won the trust of poor Pippa Landau. The woman sat at the edge of her chair, looking terrified and out of place, even in her own body. She had confessed that she had cut her hair and wore different makeup than she had on Earth, and that she wasn’t wearing her usual clothing.

  But she hadn’t completely recovered the persona she had lost when she Disappeared decades ago. She was rubbing her hands on her knees, and when she reached up to adjust the hair that no longer fell to her chin, the sweat stains from her palms dotted the fabric of her pants.

  Gomez felt for her. Landau—or Takara Hamasaki, as she had once been known—was doing something she had vowed she never would, something that could possibly get her killed even now.

  Gomez respected the amount of courage it had taken Landau/Hamasaki to leave her comfortable home on Earth and travel to the Moon, simply to impart information that might or might not help in the investigation of Anniversary Day.

  Gomez still hadn’t gotten enough information from Landau to know if that decades-old experience would provide anything valuable or not.

  Then the door to the room banged open. A tiny woman with close-cropped black hair burst inside.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The links aren’t working. Rudra Popova sent me for Marshal Gomez. She says that the chief is in trouble in her office and needs your help right away.”

  Landau gasped audibly, but Gomez didn’t have time for her. Gomez stood, reaching for her laser pistol at the same time. Her hand closed on air. She had forgotten that she had left the pistol on the Green Dragon, figuring it would be easier to get into the security office without it.

  “Stay here,” she said to Landau. “Someone will come for you.”

  Gomez had no idea if that was true. As she followed the tiny woman out the door, she said to the woman, “Get some guards up here. We’re going to need to protect the people on this floor. Make sure one of those guards is in front of this door.”

  “I don’t work here,” the woman said plaintively, “and I haven’t seen any guards since I arrived.”

  Gomez cursed and pushed past her, Landau nearly forgotten. Gomez ran to DeRicci’s office, pulled back the door—

  And saw no one.

  She stepped deeper inside, moving stealthily, and then DeRicci popped up from behind that mound of trash.

  DeRicci’s blouse and pants were soaked in blood, and some of it had sprayed across her face. She grinned at Gomez, eyes glittering happily.

  “Hey, Marshal,” she said. “Welcome to the party.”

  Gomez stepped around one of the desks and saw a man splayed on the floor. He had been in the conference room earlier, although he looked nothing like the rumpled but comfortable person who had been behind that desk.

  Gomez recognized him by his thinning hair and, of all things, his government-issue shoes.

  Dried blood covered his mouth and chin. His nose was swollen and his eyes were turning black-and-blue. Someone—DeRicci, probably—had broken his nose.

  DeRicci had two laser pistols on her hip. A movement toward the back of the room revealed Popova, looking like a lost child. She was clutching two more laser pistols as if they might bite her, and there was a third on a desk near her. One of her hands clutched at least four laser cuffs.

  “What did I miss?” Gomez asked. She felt a brush of air touch her back and turned just enough to see the woman who had fetched her.

  “This idiot just pulled a laser pistol on me,” DeRicci said. “He seemed to think he could hold me in place. Either he forgot that I was a cop or he thought I was too out of practice to take him. He learned.”

  Gomez grinned. She stepped deeper into the office, saw an open cabinet near one of the windows, with more weapons inside.

  She turned to the woman who had fetched her. “I think we’re going to need some privacy here.”

  “No, you’re not,” the woman said tightly. “You need me. You all need me and my partner. This guy is just one of the your problems. There are hundreds of others.”

  “What’s she talking about?” DeRicci asked Popova.

  “Clones,” Popova said. “More clones. My guess is this guy just initiated the third attack, and we don’t even know what it is.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  IT ONLY TOOK the dispatch a moment to patch in the chief inspector for Armstrong’s dome. Ó Brádaigh had always hated Gary Lombrozo. The man had made Ó Brádaigh’s life a living hell on more than one occasion. Lombrozo was fussy, precise, and unimaginative. He hated change of all kinds.

  Ó Brádaigh wiped his sweating palms together, then glanced at the officers assigned to guard him. The female officer was looking around the substructure as if she had never been here before, studying the sturdy beams and the lighting. The male officer watched Ó Brádaigh as if still expecting him to do something wrong.

  “What do you want?” Lombrozo said, his nasal voice echoing. It almost sounded as if he were standing inside the substructure, instead of his life-sized face floating at eye-level.

  “I have credible evidence that someone is going to tamper with the dome,” Ó Brádaigh said. “We’re going to need to an emergency surface sweep, and then your people are going to have to inspect the entire dome. Someone tampered with the sectioning, so that it wouldn’t come down even if there’s a breach, and—”

  “You don’t give my department orders, Ó Brádaigh,” Lombrozo said.

  This was why someone else needed to be in control of what was going on. Ó Brádaigh wasn’t good with people, he really wasn’t. And his relationship with Lombrozo was terrible at best.

  “Look,” Ó Brádaigh said. “It was Armstrong PD that contacted you, right? They know how important this is—”

  “Based on your lousy word? Ó Brádaigh, you’re the worst engineer in the city, and I have no idea why they keep you on, but whatever you think is an emergency, isn’t.”

  The female officer now stared at the floating image of the chief i
nspector. She stepped closer, so that she was in his line of vision.

  “Forgive me, sir,” she said to him. “I’m Armstrong Police Officer Karen Kobani. The Armstrong Police Department believes we have a credible threat here, and that all action must be taken immediately.”

  Ó Brádaigh could have kissed her. The male officer beside her nodded.

  Lombrozo turned his head slightly as he looked at the scene in that substructure. “Men like Ó Brádaigh can’t tell me how to do my job, Officer. Just because he says we need an emergency surface sweep doesn’t mean we do. Do you know what’ll happen in the city if we do something like that unscheduled?”

  “Sir,” Officer Kobani said, “do you know what’ll happen to the city if you fail to do a sweep, and something blows through the dome?”

  Lombrozo’s lips thinned. “Ó Brádaigh, you send me all the information you have, and I’ll consider your request.”

  Then he signed off.

  “Son of a bitch,” Ó Brádaigh said. He had no idea what to do. He needed that sweep.

  “Is he always that big an asshole?” the male officer asked.

  “We’re on opposite sides,” Ó Brádaigh said. “He’s an inspector. I’m the one who does the work. He likes the power his position gives him.”

  “Can you initiate an emergency surface whatever?” Kobani asked.

  “Yeah, but he’s right,” Ó Brádaigh said. “The dome programs will shut off. The entire interior will go dark. The city will know something’s up.”

  Kobani shrugged. “I say you just do it.”

  “And then what?” Ó Brádaigh asked. “Inspectors need to be monitoring the surface, to see what’s going on. If there’s a hairline fracture or something, I might miss it.”

  “We need to get the department on this,” the male officer said to Kobani.

  “I wish we could reach the Security Office,” Ó Brádaigh said. He ran a hand over his face. “I’ll do the emergency sweep, but it’d be better if the inspectors ordered it.”

  “Who’s his boss?” the male officer asked.