Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “In most cities, androids are only allowed as guards in prisons,” he said.

  Gomez nodded. “All right, then. I say release the names. If we get false arrests, and lose a few lives, it’s better than losing millions of lives.”

  “Or a dome,” Flint said.

  “Do we give everyone who commits murder today a pardon as well?” Nyquist asked.

  His words echoed around the room. For some reason, most of the chatter had ended just before he spoke.

  Flint shuddered. He was approving something he didn’t believe in. He hoped to hell no one pointed out that the murder of clones wasn’t considered murder in a single city on the Moon—not unless those clones had had a status change, like Talia.

  “No,” Flint said. “We tell people to isolate these folks, but we don’t tell them that we’re having them search for clones. That’ll cut down on some of the violence.”

  “You have a lot more faith in humanity than I do,” Nyquist said. “Particularly panicked humanity.”

  Flint knew Nyquist had a point, but they couldn’t control everything. “We’re going to have to tell them that if they kill these people, they’ll harm the investigation into whatever’s going to happen in the domes. Tell them they’ll be destroying information.”

  Nyquist shook his head. “Who is going to make this lovely announcement?”

  “Me.” DeRicci had turned toward them. “You folks didn’t make it easy to talk to the heads of the domed cities. You were awfully loud. Anyone hear of link communications?”

  “Sorry,” Flint said.

  “Don’t be,” DeRicci said. “The heads of the domes are all panicked, and it’s all they can do to check the dome equipment and get their sections down. I’d already decided that I would send the information about the clones, and you two have just helped me with the wording. We’re going to tell everyone on the Moon that we know who the next attackers are, and they’ve been living among us, just like the Peyti clones did. Smart people will realize they’re dealing with clones. Everyone else will simply act.”

  “Do you want to do this by dome?” Flint asked.

  “Meaning what?” DeRicci asked.

  “I’ve got names and images. It would take nothing to isolate where they live, and when Officer Kaz Issassi gets here, we should be able to find where these people actually are.”

  “You can do that quickly?” DeRicci asked.

  “I can do part of it quickly,” Flint said.

  “Then do it,” she said. “We need to move now.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  THE ENTIRE BUILDING shook, and dozens of lawyers looked at each other, clearly startled. Salehi grabbed a nearby desk, only to feel it scoot away from him.

  He had forgotten: he was on the Moon, and nothing here was bolted down.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked Melcia Seng. She had run S3 in the days since Zhu’s murder.

  She shook her head. Her dark eyes were wide, her back stiff. “I have no idea.”

  “It’s the dome sectioning,” said one of the private security guards who stood near the door. He was a beefy man with a jowly face. Salehi had taken one look at the guards he had hired after Zhu’s death and had decided to find a different firm. Half of these guards were out of shape, and the others seemed too small to be effective.

  “Dome sectioning,” Salehi repeated.

  “The domes section when there’s a potential threat,” said Uzvuyiten. “Haven’t you lived in a domed community, Rafael?”

  When Uzvuyiten used his most sarcastic tone, he seemed even more condescending than usual.

  “No,” Salehi said. “I haven’t.”

  He had lived a lot of places, mostly on space stations or starbases. He’d also lived on Earth for several glorious years. But never in a domed community.

  “The dome sectioned on Anniversary Day,” said one of the lawyers that Seng had brought with her or that Zhu had hired. One of the lawyers who was already in the S3 offices when Salehi had arrived half an hour ago.

  After he and his staff had their initial dust-up in the Port of Armstrong, they made their way through the city with little incident. Cars Seng had hired for them brought them directly to S3’s offices, as Salehi had instructed.

  Once they arrived, he wondered if they should have gone to the apartments that Seng had rented for them first, giving everyone a chance to freshen up. He had noticed a thread of tension running through the entire group, probably from the port encounter, and he wanted to ease it.

  He had been about to announce a break until the next day when the building had shaken.

  “Shouldn’t we get some kind of announcement when the dome sections?” he asked.

  The security guard shrugged. “There’s warning bells and stuff for people near the sections, sometimes, if there’s time.”

  “Anyone monitoring the media?” Salehi asked. “Do we know why the domes have sectioned?”

  “There’s just been an announcement about some kind of dome check,” one of the staffers said.

  The guard glanced at another guard, seemingly uneasy.

  “What does that mean?” Salehi asked.

  But before the guard answered, images flooded Salehi’s eyes. The images came through his emergency links.

  If you are near these people, blared an androgynous voice, detain them. They plan to attack the Moon in the next few hours. Make sure they have no weapons or explosives and no access to their links. Notify authorities once the prisoners are secure. Time is of the essence here.

  Then the message repeated itself, and strangely, it did not warn the people who received it to take care of themselves.

  The images continued scrolling, and one of them lit up as his links registered a match.

  The guard who had told him about the sectioning.

  The guard looked alarmed. He glanced at everyone, then bolted out the door. Half a dozen associates followed, along with Salehi, who was closest.

  He sprinted, reached the guard, and tackled him, sprawling across the tile floor, feeling the skin scrape off his elbow.

  Others landed on top of him. The guard grunted with each landing, and Salehi actually empathized. He was amazed he could still breathe.

  “Get up, get up, get up.” Uzvuyiten’s voice acted like a command.

  The people on top of Salehi peeled off. He couldn’t move quite as easily.

  “You,” Uzvuyiten said to someone Salehi couldn’t see, “do as the instructions we all received say. And add a link blocker for good measure. And you, see if we have any other miscreants lurking in our building.”

  He stopped beside Salehi, whose weight still held down the guard.

  You really didn’t think that through, did you? Uzvuyiten sent through their links.

  Salehi noted dozens of other feet around them, realized that even if the guard tried to run, he wouldn’t be able to.

  So Salehi slowly stood, hearing his beleaguered back crack. Think what through?

  Tackling this creature, Uzvuyiten sent.

  I hadn’t done that since college, Salehi sent. He had played a variation on an ancient Earth sport when he’d lived in California, and he had learned the art of the tackle then.

  I’m not speaking of your barbaric take-down of this creature, Uzvuyiten said. I am referring to our future.

  Future? Salehi sent. He wiped off his pants and looked at his elbow. Scraped raw. It ached, although that would fade soon. The nanohealers he had were already repairing the damaged skin.

  We are probably going to end up representing this creature.

  What? Salehi sent.

  He’s a clone, Uzvuyiten sent.

  A clone. Of course he was. Salehi had seen the images and acted, but Uzvuyiten was right. The images were of clones.

  The irony reached him, and he shook his head. Then he stepped aside. He could bet that Uzvuyiten was the only person on the entire Moon who was thinking about the upcoming legal cases.

  But Salehi took Uzvuyiten’s point. S
alehi nodded at one of the associates he had just met.

  “Do what we were instructed. Find a way to detain this man, and notify the authorities.”

  And then, because he couldn’t help himself, Salehi looked at the security guard.

  “What were you supposed to do? Kill a bunch of lawyers?”

  Rafael! Uzvuyiten sent. Salehi didn’t have to see Uzvuyiten’s to know he was turning blue with anger.

  “I already did my job,” the guard said. Then he grinned. “Wait a few hours. You’ll see. They can’t get to all of us.”

  Salehi felt a chill.

  He hoped he was seeing bravado and nothing more.

  He hoped that this damn security guard was wrong.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  GOUDKINS HAD GOTTEN lost in her own investigation. She was following the trail of public information on Pearl Brooks, which turned out to have more information than Goudkins had ever expected.

  Brooks had a public record, starting with the death of her father. He had run afoul of the Disty over a business dealing that he and his wife, Brooks’s mother, had participated in. Brooks and her mother escaped, but her father had died in a Disty Vengeance Killing.

  Brooks’s mother died the same way a few years later, putting Brooks in public care. She was smart enough, and a good enough student, to get the Alliance to fund a high-end education, as long as she worked off her debt.

  Once in public service, she never left it.

  Goudkins had sat at her computer as she got lost in Brooks’s life. The girl had been old enough to understand what happened, but young enough to believe that a Disty Vengeance Killing wasn’t justice. She hadn’t learned the difference between Alliance law and true justice, and she had been on record before her education claiming that Alliance law was wrong.

  Then she got her scholarships and shut up.

  Goudkins thought there had to be more to the story, and she would find it. But at the moment, she had also used her in-network system to search for an affiliation between Andre’s department and Brooks’s. The only thing Goudkins had found so far was an occasional transfer of funds from Brooks’s Currency desk to Ike Jarvis, which was suspect enough.

  Goudkins doubted the transfers would hold up if an Alliance regulator saw them.

  Then an automated announcement from the port came across her links.

  The dome in the City of Armstrong has just sectioned. If you have business in Armstrong, you must delay it until the sections rise again. All ships will remain grounded unless they receive special clearance or if the situation worsens. The port has its own section, constantly activated, so you are protected here.

  Goudkins’ breath caught. She was about to send a message to DeRicci when another message broke through the protections Goudkins had placed on her ship.

  The message had come from the United Domes of the Moon Security Office, and it blared across the walls of her ship. It hadn’t broken through the protections she had placed on her own emergency links though. It didn’t have to.

  It had her attention.

  Faces after faces scrolled before her, along with a warning to find these people and detain them until the authorities could arrive. Since Goudkins was alone, she nearly deleted the messages, until a face caught her attention.

  A younger, thinner version of Ostaka’s face.

  She ran the images back and isolated that face. It belonged to a man who lived in Gagarin Dome. He worked in their police department, which made Goudkins wonder how anyone could detain him.

  She let out a breath, though, and then had her system compare that Gagarin Dome police officer’s face with Lawrence Ostaka’s face.

  The system told her the faces matched.

  She was shaking. She asked the system to see if there were other, similar faces.

  She found a dozen more of all ages, from twenty-five to one-hundred-and-twenty-five, in a dozen different domes around the Moon.

  And, according to her system—her excellent system, with top-notch facial recognition—those faces belonged to the same person.

  She replayed the warning message from the Security Office. There was no mention of clones. Had the security office gotten the names from somewhere else? Did DeRicci know she was dealing with similar faces, similar people, or had she just sent the entire mess out as quickly as possible?

  The message had said something about an urgency.

  Goudkins sent a message across her links to DeRicci, and flagged it high priority and top secret.

  Chief, these faces you sent, do you realize that fourteen match Lawrence Ostaka’s face? We might be dealing with clones here. And if he’s involved with the masterminds, that would explain all of his behavior.

  Goudkins stood as she sent that message. She had to get back to the Security Office. If Ostaka was doing something, she could stop him. And if he needed to be arrested, she could detain him in her ship. She had the authority to deal with him.

  No one else did.

  We know, DeRicci sent back. He’s in custody, and he’s been neutralized. And yes, we’re dealing with clones.

  I’m at the port, Goudkins sent. I’m not sure I can come to you, but I’m going to try.

  Stay where you are, DeRicci sent. We’re overrun with help here. But see if you can track down Jhena Andre in real time. We’re going to need to find her before she gets away.

  Done, Goudkins sent.

  She hoped. She was shaking. That bastard, Ostaka. Everything he had said, everything he had done, made sense now. He wasn’t just an asshole; he had actively worked to destroy the Alliance.

  And she had probably helped him.

  She ran a hand over her face and realized that, with the depth of her anger, it was probably good she wasn’t anywhere near the man. She couldn’t be trusted to keep him in good physical condition after his arrest.

  She sat back down and called on all of her training to get back to her investigation.

  She wasn’t going to simply find Jhena Andre in real time. She would find Brooks, too.

  Once Goudkins found them, she would send that information to the Alliance.

  And then she stopped. She wasn’t sure who to trust.

  She needed to figure out if Huỳnh had worked with Ostaka, if Huỳnh was one of the bad guys too. Because if she wasn’t, she might know where to take the information.

  And then Goudkins stopped. She couldn’t trust Huỳnh. Huỳnh didn’t have the power to arrest Andre or Brooks. They both outranked her.

  Goudkins would have to go to the top, the very top, when she had the information. She would have to go to the Director of the Earth Alliance Security Division Human Coordination Department—if there was no link between her and Andre.

  Goudkins had to do fast research—and some of that included work on the woman everyone knew as Odgerel. The stories about Odgerel were legion: she was difficult to work with, and she hated leaving Earth.

  Her antipathy to aliens put her in Andre’s and Brooks’s camp. But Odgerel’s reputation for integrity negated some of Goudkins’ suspicion.

  She hated this. She hated not knowing who to trust.

  She hated the betrayal and the traitors in their midst.

  She would ferret them out, no matter what it took. And she would find someone to capture Andre, if it was the last thing she ever did.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  TALIA HAD GOTTEN two messages—the first from the port, mentioning the sectioning, and then the second with the faces, and she had hurried to the door of Detective Zagrando’s hospital room, peering out. In the hallway, people were running and yelling. Mostly, she was hearing Stop! Grab him! Don’t let him get away! but she couldn’t see who they were stopping and grabbing.

  She didn’t recognize any of the names that were supposed to be in Armstrong, and she felt like it didn’t concern her, since she was in the port’s hospital wing.

  But clearly, some of those people were here.

  She clutched her hands together. She could give it all up, and s
ink back into that depression she’d been in after the Peyti Crisis, or she could take action, but she wasn’t sure what kind of action to take.

  The last time she had run toward something, she had watched someone die.

  So, she stood in front of the door, and watched as people in scrubs ran one direction and then another. She realized after a moment, they were chasing a doctor, but it wasn’t a doctor who had worked on Detective Zagrando, thank heavens.

  She didn’t see any of the space traffic or security officers. She had to assume they were trying to catch those people as well.

  Talia let out a small breath, then realized the message had come from the Security Office. Which meant that they were finding stuff, without her.

  Dad, she sent along her links. Did you see those faces? Should we be going to help the chief?

  Her father answered immediately. I’m already here, Talia. We have it under control.

  Should I come there? she sent.

  Are you still in the hospital wing of the port? he sent.

  Yes, and before you ask, Detective Zagrando is still unconscious. They’re keeping him here for another twenty-four hours, I think. But they just grabbed a doctor outside of my room, and it’s a little weird. So I’m not sure exactly what’s going on.

  There was a half-second of silence before her father sent, Did you know that doctor?

  No, Talia sent. I’d never seen him. Why?

  Just checking, her father sent too quickly. He had clearly been worried that the doctor would see her or maybe Detective Zagrando.

  Am I the detective’s protective detail? She sent. She didn’t feel like a protector. She wasn’t really up for it. She had no idea how to fight anyone.

  No, her father sent. I think he’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t reveal who he is.

  And then he added, with emphasis:

  Talia, if things get worse, if you hear an evacuation order or anything, you go to our ship, and get in it. Leave the Moon if you have to. Do not wait for me.

  Right now, they’re saying ships can’t leave, she sent.