From the Ashes (Conquest Book 1)

by Jeff Taylor

  The ship responded to her hurried commands, pivoting a hundred-eighty degree to face the outer doors. On the cockpit’s viewport Eve saw both the docking bay and hangar doors. The first to open was not the one she’d hoped for.

  The door from the office buckled and flew off its hinges. Sanyie emerged, followed by a pair of staggering, yet stable-enough-to-walk guards. Sanyie raised the pistol Eve knew she’d kept in her boot and brought it to bear on the Hermes’ main engine. A twisted snarl warped the deputy’s face as her finger slowly squeezed the trigger.

  CONQUEST

  BOOK ONE

  FROM THE ASHES

  A Novel

  by

  JEFF TAYLOR

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events described do not represent any persons living or dead. Any similarity to such is coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright: Jeff Taylor, 2013

  ISBN-13: 978-1492141259

  ISBN-10: 1492141259

  Cover Design by Jeff Taylor

  Cover Image by Bradley Taylor

  Revised edition 2017

  To my girls,

  for putting up with this obsession all these years.

  When we look to the future,

  We often see the past.

  CHAPTER 1

  CLUB

  People live on the moon.

  Scientists mostly, from what he understood, all living, breathing, and working in ways no one ever thought possible. No one knew what they did there, exactly, the Carsus Corporation made sure of that, protecting their trade secrets and such, but the fact that they survived beneath the lunar surface inspired most of the planet. He wasn’t most people. Life was busy enough without daydreaming about whatever some “super-geniuses” were doing millions of miles away. The urge to join them, to feel the soil of another world between his fingers and see the Earth rise over the horizon like a giant blue marble of life was a fantasy he never shared.

  He sighed at the great glowing orb shining through the skylight, partially hidden by the wisps of cloud drifting over the city. What were they thinking right then, those people up there, he wondered. Did events on the motherworld even matter to them anymore? Did they care what the weather was like, what the price of fuel was, or who was in office making decisions that seemed so critical to everyone else? Likely not, though one thing might, that being the man running the company sustaining them now lay dead at his feet.

  The black band around his wrist displayed the early hour.

  1:37 AM

  “Unbelievable,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Twenty-five minutes, that was all he had needed. Fifteen hundred more precious ticks of the clock and he would have missed the call. But instead of being on the road home after his shift, he was there, standing over the body of the richest man in the Western Hemisphere.

  The old man was on his back, his vacant eyes locked on the spotlights illuminating him on the club’s checkered floor. The harsh white light swallowed the aged body and its pressed dark suit with custard yellow dress shirt. Daeman Strinnger had only been a homicide detective with the San Francisco PD for a month, but already he had seen enough bodies to be numb to the sight. The emotion was out of the experience now. All he saw now was a corpse. It was easier not to think about those who would grieve the wealthy businessman, or to imagine him dancing and flirting with the swarming crowd of effervescent young women, gravitating to his wallet only an hour before.

  “I don’t need this right now,” he mumbled, cupping his hand over the small bulge in his jacket pocket. There was enough stress in his life without having to field a high-profile death, but that wouldn’t stop him from doing it the best he could.

  His eyes drifted up at the dozens of scantily-clad socialites huddled in the side booths giving statements to the two other officers working the scene. Their sequined party dresses and finely tailored suits made his stomach turn. Rich people were the worst interviews. Too entitled and self-important to realize that what they say wasn’t that helpful and shouldn’t be quoted in every newspaper in the country.

  He listened as one panicked twenty-something girl that looked like she hadn’t eaten in twelve years recounted the events as she saw them. For the most part, they matched what the other patrons of the city’s hottest nightclub, The Diana Club, had all said; the old man was dancing with a large group of beautiful young women when he suddenly went limp and crumpled to the ground like a lead weight. No one saw or heard anything other than the piercing screams of his scantily-clad entourage. Most of the witnesses assumed it was a heart attack or some other age-related condition that caused his fall. No one saw him attacked or suspected foul play. If that were all true, the horde of reporters clamoring for answers outside would be a lot easier to manage. If not … Strinnger didn’t want to think about it.

  Detective Strinnger circled around the body. The tailored suit and pristine black dress shoes most likely cost more than Strinnger would make that year. The unforgiving glare of the house lights shimmered as if the slick black hair were coated in lacquer and cast a brilliant sheen on the gold wristwatch and matching chain lying between the collar of the open shirt.

  A bald crime scene technician in the blue jumpsuit knelt over the body. Strinnger squatted next to him, hoping for a quick, clear-cut diagnosis.

  “What’s the verdict, Bill?”

  The forensic examiner, Bill Straif, whom Strinnger had met roughly a year before at a poker game, was finishing up his examination.

  “Well, I hate to tell you this, Detective,” Bill answered, with a heavy, mocking emphasis on Strinnger’s title, “but, he’s dead.”

  Strinnger respected the follicle-challenged Bill and his abilities on the forensic team, but didn’t really care for his personality. Bill was a likeable enough guy, but his sense of humor was a little off for Strinnger. He always insisted on sharing stories of the goriest customers coming into the morgue at their weekly card games. Sometimes it was to distract his opponents from their cards, but other times Strinnger believed it was because that was all he could think to say. Either way, Bill usually won the hand.

  “Wow, all that training and experience is finally paying off,” Strinnger replied, absent any joviality. “What from?”

  Bill retrieved the translucent datapad from the ground next to him and handed it up to Strinnger. “Stress on the heart and glands as well a complete obstruction of the airways. The inside of his throat swelled up like a balloon and cut off any airflow.” He leaned in. “You know who this is right?” he whispered as if the man’s identity were an international secret. “It’s Hanel Schulaz. This is the second richest man in the country. I got to tell you, this is the first corpse I’ve worked on that was worth more than most countries.”

  Strinnger took the letter-sized, paper-thin datapad and scrolled through the information as if Schulaz’ name meant nothing to him. “Except for the swelling, this looks like an Endoxin overdose,” he commented without taking his eyes off the report.

  “That was my guess,” Bill responded as he snapped the latex gloves from his hands. He rose to his feet and slid his finger down the datapad’s screen. “There are traces of it in his system, here, but nothing in the levels we’ve seen with other overdose victims. At first, I thought it had triggered a cardiac arrest, but after finding the problem with the throat, I would almost have to say he suffered from some kind of severe allergic reaction. A timely shot of epinephrine might have saved his life.”

  Endoxin was the latest recreational drug on the market. It was first introduced in the poorer urban areas of Philadelphia, but within a few months it had spread across the country like an all-consuming plague, reach
ing San Francisco within only a few months. In Strinnger’s eight years on the narcotics team he had never seen anything so potent or so fast-acting. No one knew for sure who first produced it, but the composition was complicated enough that only certain individuals could make more. Eventually it became so costly that most suppliers turned to dealing only with the wealthy, club-going crowd to get a better payout. There were no practical uses or applications for the concoction, it was purely recreational, stimulating endorphin production and raising serotonin levels to create a euphoric state of pleasure with only a few grams of use. The resultant reaction was highly addictive. Most users said the sensation was immediate, like a tidal wave of pleasure sweeping them away, eviscerating any trace of sadness or stress. As part of his narcotics training last summer, Strinnger had ingested a very small dose of the drug so he could identify it at a crime scene. He immediately felt the appeal. The minimal dosage had elated him beyond anything he had ever felt.

  “Did you find an entry point?” he asked.

  “Not yet, but if you help me roll him over . . .” Bill said, lowering himself near the body while snapping his gloves on once more.

  Together they heaved the body onto its side. Bill held his datapad a few inches above the man’s neck and head while he pressed several icons on the screen. On the display Strinnger saw the muscle fibers and neural networks of the body recreated in brilliant detail. The man’s internal anatomy shifted on the screen as Bill rotated and examined the images produced by the scan. Finally, Bill stopped and returned the pad to the ground. He then sifted through the thick, graying hair on the back of the neck.

  “Got it,” he said in triumph.

  A small pinprick was barely visible just to the left side of the spine above the hairline.

  “That would explain the throat swelling,” Bill commented. “The drug spread from this point into the neck where it must have reacted almost immediately to his body chemistry. Poor guy asphyxiated.”

  Strinnger held the body in position while Bill scanned a photo of the injection point onto his pad. The detective fixed his gaze on the crowd of party-goers waiting to give their statements. The injection had been in an unusual place. Most addicts he’d known shot up in the arm. He had never seen anyone “needle up,” as the kids said, in the neck. He examined carefully the faces of each of the witnesses. “Any of them test positive for the stuff?” He asked Bill without taking his eyes away from the collection of trust fund beneficiaries.

  “I’d wager your new salary that two-thirds of them are on something,” Bill said as he continued documenting the wound. “This is where you, ‘Leave all your cares behind’ remember?” Bill sang, mocking the club’s marketing catchphrase.

  “Hey guys,” a swarthy uniformed officer greeted them from behind. Ferdinand Drake, a medium height, yet stout young man with a dark leather jacket over his patrolman’s uniform approached to their left. Drake was Strinnger’s former partner, and as far as the detective was concerned, the best patrolman in the SFPD. Strinnger looked up to see his friend holding a plastic evidence bag with a syringe in it.

  “We found this in the women’s restroom,” Drake said as he offered the bag to the detective.

  “DNA and fingerprints?” Strinnger asked, examining the contents of the bag carefully.

  Drake nodded. “A clean print of the old man’s left thumb was on top of the plunger and a few latent prints were on the side where he gripped. The latents are consistent with his left index and middle fingers. DNA matched his records on file with the city.”

  “That’s weird,” Bill commented. “How would it have gotten in the ladies’ room if he died out here?”

  Strinnger shook his head. He’d thought the same thing. “Who knows why rich people do anything? Maybe somebody gave it to him and they were trying to protect themselves by stashing it away from his body. Did you find any other prints on this?” he asked Drake. His friend shook his head.

  As a detective, Strinnger had always been taught never to make assumptions, to wait and see what the evidence shows rather than paint a picture and fit the evidence into it. But on more than one occasion, his gut told him something was more important than it initially appeared. Looking at the syringe, he felt that same inkling telling him to examine it more closely. He handed the bag to Bill then looked at Drake.

  “Let me ask you something. How many Endoxin cases did we handle before I moved to homicide?”

  Drake shrugged. “Maybe a hundred.”

  “And of those hundred, did we ever see one where someone died from an allergic reaction to the stuff?”

  Drake’s brow furrowed while he thought. “Not that I can remember.”

  “Me neither,” Strinnger said. He thought a moment longer then asked, “Did you scan the syringe into the database?”

  Again, Drake nodded. Strinnger then asked Bill, “Can you reconstruct the position of his hand based on the location of the prints?”

  “Sure,” Bill said then searched on his pad for the right file. Within seconds, a three-dimensional image of a hand holding the syringe appeared. Bill held his pad steady as the image projected upward off it and rotated in the air. The hand held the syringe with the tip pointing down at a thirty-degree angle, the thumb firmly placed against the plunger at the opposite end.

  “Good,” Strinnger said. “Now, is that angle consistent with the entry path in the back of the old guy’s neck?”

  Bill’s fingers moved swiftly over the pad. The image of Schulaz’ hand was soon replaced with a cross-section of his neck.

  “Wow,” Bill whispered. “No. It’s not. The slight coagulation shows that the path was at an angle of about ten degrees, practically straight in.” He looked at Strinnger, his eyes alight with awe. “How did you know that?”

  Strinnger shrugged. “Just a hunch.” He then handed the evidence bag back to Drake. “This is a plant. Someone wants us to believe it was an accidental overdose. Bill, take the body back to headquarters and do a thorough examination. Let me know if you find anything else.”

  Bill eagerly nodded then called a pair of other forensic techs to help him bag and remove the body.

  The detective looked around the room. “Someone would have had to be really close to inject him like that. We need to find out exactly who was around him tonight.”

  “I think I may have already found her,” Drake said. He handed his pad back to the detective and pressed the “play” icon in the lower left corner of the transparent screen. Immediately, the image of a large, compacted crowd moving about on the dance floor emerged, Schulaz and his harem apparent at the center. Strinnger watched closely, playing then replaying the video several times, focusing on a different angle each time. There was nothing out of the ordinary, at least not that he could see. Several bejeweled fingers wove up and down Schulaz’ body as the girls danced around him, but nothing larger than a fingernail got near the back of his head.

  “Have you located all of these women yet?”

  “All but one,” came the quick reply. Drake reached across the detective’s body and pressed another node that brought up the pictures of seven women. All of them were in their mid-twenties. “We haven’t been able to find this dark-haired one yet,” Drake said, pointing to the grainy video capture in the left corner. A stunning young woman with short, layered black hair and sharp, prominent cheekbones appeared on the screen. Her thin eyebrows and penetrating blue eyes mesmerized Strinnger.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “The owner only knows her as Donna. She’s the hostess assigned to keep the wealthy customers happy. Schulaz was one of her best clients.”

  Strinnger restarted the video, highlighting Donna as she glided across the dance floor, her hands and body making constant contact with her aged client.

  “Are hostesses usually this friendly?” he asked.

  He let the video play out, trying to catch where Donna went after the man collapsed. He looked hard, pausing and magnifying several times, but after Schulaz
fell, she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where did she go?” Strinnger asked, finally handing the pad back to Drake. The younger officer collapsed the pad back to its original palm-size and returned it to his pocket.

  “No clue. No one saw her leave and she hasn’t been around since.”

  Strinnger was not convinced. “You said that she was the regular hostess. How often did Schulaz come here?”

  He asked the question even though he already had a good guess at the answer. It was no secret to anyone who’d seen a tabloid in the last year that the man loved to party, even if it meant frequenting the shadier parts of town.

  “This was the third time this week.”

  Before he could ask about the other two visits, Strinnger suddenly became distracted by something on the body. Bill and his staff lifted it into the rubbery body bag when Strinnger stopped them. “Hold on,” he called sharply.

  The startled forensic techs halted in place, nearly dropping the body on the black and purple floor. Strinnger snatched a latex glove from Bill’s open bag and hurriedly put it on. Crouching down next to the body, he folded back the lapel of the custard sateen shirt and exposed a three-inch wide red and orange thread arranged in a tight spiral.

  “Okay, really? How did you see that?” Drake asked. These occasional seemingly-impossible observations of Strinnger’s had always agitated Drake and he made no effort to conceal his annoyance at the latest find.

  The thread was soft and easily manipulated, shimmering like refined copper on a bright sunny day. It was sticky on one side and clung to Strinnger’s glove as he rolled it between his fingers. He raised it up to the light then looked over to Bill.

  “Can you analyze this?” he asked, handing the flame-colored spiral to the forensics expert.

  Bill immediately seized it from him and placed it atop his datapad. A flash of amber light was followed by a series of technical readouts scrolling down before their eyes. “Interesting,” Bill commented as he reviewed the results.