Gomez raised her eyebrows. “You’re usually not one to give up.”
“I don’t fight wars,” Simiaar said. “I capture criminals.”
“You think this is a war?” Gomez asked.
“You don’t?” Simiaar said.
Gomez threaded her fingers together. The attacks were seen as an act of terrorism, but often when historians revisited the events leading up to a major war, the initial act of terrorism became the first volley in a protracted conflict.
She needed to think. She stood.
“Get me all the information you can from this stuff,” Gomez said.
“And then what?” Simiaar asked.
Gomez looked at her. Simiaar was frightened. Gomez wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her friend this terrified.
“Then we’ll take the Stanley in for its maintenance,” Gomez said.
“And nothing else?” Simiaar asked.
“And nothing else,” Gomez lied.
FORTY-SEVEN
MADDIX MANAGED TO get them away from the battle cruisers without hitting anything. Fujita had no idea how; the Alus 15 didn’t have the best remote guidance system at its top speeds. But she’d managed, and he blessed her for it.
They hadn’t followed a pre-plotted course either. Fujita had never done that before, just hit some buttons that basically mean Get The Hell Out Of Here!, but he was relieved to know it worked.
At least it had worked kinda. The Alus 15 did have escape modes programmed in, and theoretically, those modes plotted random courses that were harder to follow and track.
He would find out if the theory now actually worked in practice.
The problem was that the Alus 15 was now light years away from the course it had planned to take.
He wasn’t even sure he could go to the Irr Sector now. What did the people on those battle cruisers know? How had they found him? Were they searching for Trey or was this about something else?
The image of those gigantic ships menacing the Alus 15 still hovered in the point of the triangle. Star maps that Fujita didn’t recognize floated on flat holoscreens above it all. The one star map he did recognize had to keep readjusting itself as the Alus 15 flew farther from its desired path.
Behind him, Stone swore.
“What?” Fujita asked.
“You should thank me, Rafik,” Stone said.
“Thank you,” Fujita snapped. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
“If we’d fired on those things, we would have become enemies of the Alliance.”
Fujita craned his head sideways and looked at Stone. Stone had gone gray. “What the hell?”
“I told you before, those were old Alliance battle cruisers. But I figured they were so old they’d been decommissioned.”
That chill that Fujita had been fighting got worse. “They weren’t?”
“No,” Stone said. “According to what I’ve got from their names and registration numbers, they’re still active. They’re used to patrol the far reaches of Alliance territory.”
“We were attacked by the Alliance?” Maddix’s voice shivered. “But we’re an Alliance vessel.”
With all the documentation, all the notifications and warnings and everything that Alliance vessels were required to carry. The Alus 15 broadcast all of that stuff to nearby Alliance ships all the time. That information essentially said, We’re on the same side; leave us alone.
“Did the prison somehow shut off our notifications?” Fujita asked Stone.
“No,” Stone said. “It was the first thing I checked.”
Fujita’s hands were shaking. If those were Alliance vessels, then they knew what his mission was. They knew who he had on board.
“Any word that these ships were rogue?” he asked, hoping against hope that some captains had taken it on themselves to get rid of someone with the Anniversary Day assassins’ DNA.
“Not from a cursory search,” Stone said. “And you’d think if someone stole battle cruisers or was misusing them or something, there’d be notifications.”
There would be.
Fujita felt like an idiot. He’d never taken political jobs before, and somehow Zhu had convinced him this one wasn’t political. Zhu hadn’t thought so, and Fujita really hadn’t either. After all, Trey just shared DNA with the assassins. He wasn’t one of them.
“What do we do now?” Maddix asked.
Good question. Because they were screwed. If they left the Alliance, then it would actually be easier to attack them and kill them. They could be considered hostile and not be subject to Alliance law.
But if they remained here, they’d be easy to find.
“I need you to shut down all our identifiers,” Fujita said to Maddix. “All of them.”
“But then we can’t—”
“We’re being targeted by the damn Alliance,” he said. “We’re constantly sending our identification throughout the Alliance.”
She swore. Usually Fujita liked her long creative curses, but right now, she was just being annoying.
“I’ve shut down the identifiers,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “Get us out of here, fast, like you did before.”
“But—”
“Stop arguing with me!” he snapped. “Get us out of here.”
She nodded, slammed her hands on the controls, and the ship lurched. For one brief moment, Fujita worried that they’d been disabled. Then the systems engaged and the ship moved quickly.
“How bad’s the damage?” he asked Stone.
“Worse than I thought,” Stone said. “And I was just monitoring our former position. You got us out just in time. Two more battle cruisers were on the way.”
“Not the ones that found us earlier?”
“No,” Stone said.
Fujita felt his heart sink. That meant they were truly being targeted.
He turned toward Maddix. “I want you to have the ship chart some random courses. In between, you chart something, in case this is a program and it’s not as random as we thought. I want to zigzag all over the sector for the next few hours.”
She nodded, subdued after he had yelled at her.
“And for the next ten minutes, you guys are not to talk unless I ask you to. You got that?”
Stone frowned at him, and didn’t say anything. Maddix didn’t raise her head, but she nodded.
Fujita activated a private encoded link, and hoped to hell that no one from the Alliance was monitoring it.
A tiny holographic image of Rafael Salehi appeared in front of Fujita’s right eye.
“Rafik?” Salehi asked, his voice sounding tinny through the faint connection. “You’re not supposed to use this except in an emergency.”
“Yeah,” Fujita said aloud. He didn’t care if the team heard him. “I think it’s an emergency when Alliance battle cruisers are trying to destroy my ship, don’t you?”
“What?” Salehi asked.
“You heard me,” Fujita said. “You call them off, now. I don’t care what you threaten, but do something. Because I can’t. Even if I kill this passenger you saddled us with or turn him over, the Alliance is going to target my ship for years.”
Maddix looked up, startled. Stone ran a hand over his mouth.
“What passenger?” Salehi asked.
“The clone that Zhu set free,” Fujita said. “Do something. Or I swear every member of my family will come gunning for you. Because I will make sure that they know the person responsible for my death is you.”
He severed the connection, then fell into the command chair.
“Is that true?” Maddix asked. “We’re going to be targeted?”
“That’s true,” Fujita said.
“Then get me off this thing. No job’s worth this.”
“I’d love to kick you free,” Fujita said. “I’d love to return this clone to the Alliance. But we can’t stop anywhere without being blown up. And our life pods are all stamped with information from the Alus 15. We’re stuck.”
“Wh
at are we going to do?” Maddix asked.
“Hope to hell that S-three has the kinds of connections they say they do,” Fujita said. “Because if they don’t, we’re not getting out of this one alive.”
FORTY-EIGHT
GOMEZ COULDN’T SLEEP.
She sat in the office in her suite on the Stanley, going over everything. She watched the Anniversary Day explosions again, the footage of the clones in Armstrong’s port, the images she had of the clones she’d discovered on Eaufasse, and the destruction of that faraway base.
She made a list of all the contradictions: the clones buried in the penal system; the incorrect maps; the ship that went from the Alliance to Epriccom; the use of PierLuigi Frémont’s DNA in the first place.
Then she got up and paced. Conspiracies were easy to believe. The evidence built on itself, provided the investigator took a paranoid view. Rather than believing in coincidences, the investigator always linked pieces that shouldn’t have been linked.
And yet, pieces nagged at her.
Simiaar’s fear nagged at her.
Gomez had asked a lot of her team. She didn’t dare ask them to investigate a trail that could lead into the Alliance.
She sat at the computer where she had stored most of the information that her team had collated. She searched through her discussions with TwoZero. She knew he hadn’t mentioned the ship, but had he mentioned the people running the enclave?
She didn’t remember it. And no matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find it.
Maybe if she talked with him one more time, then she would be able to put this all to rest.
She ran a hand through her hair, and started the process that would take her back to Clone Hell. She would ask just a few questions, and then she would leave.
She was figuring out the travel schedule when her links got pinged.
She looked up at the screen, startled. Why had someone from the prison system pinged her links when she was working through the net?
With her right hand, she touched a chip on the back of her hand. A small holoimage rose. A standard avatar—genderless, but human-looking—stared forward with an expression that someone considered emotionally neutral.
We are sorry to inform you that the party you seek is no longer incarcerated in the Earth Alliance Prison System. The prisoner you seek is deceased. If you feel that you are entitled to an explanation of the death and/or entitled to benefits that might accrue to you under the Alliance Familial Leave and Benefits Act, then please use Release Form 3241025. We will respond to your request within the next six weeks.
The avatar vanished.
Gomez stared at the spot on the back of her hand where the avatar had stood. Deceased? But she had just seen TwoZero. Granted, he wasn’t in the best of health, but…
Then she took a deep breath. She decided to be the paranoid investigator.
She looked for information on the other clone. She got no response. She started to look for news when her links pinged.
She swallowed hard. That same avatar appeared, and gave the same speech.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. Had she done this? Had her inquiries brought the Epriccom clones to the attention of the Alliance? Or to the attention of those inside the Alliance who were trying to bring down the Alliance?
That couldn’t be possible. Could it?
She opened the files that Apaza had given her, and scanned them. She found the prisoner numbers for the other PierLuigi Frémont clones and she inputted them one by one.
Fifteen minutes after each input, the avatar appeared, reciting the death of the clones.
The only one that came back differently was Thirds.
When she inputted his prisoner number, she was told that particular number did not exist.
She stood. Maybe it was her system. Maybe she had done something wrong.
She sent a message to Apaza. Do me a favor. See if you can set up a new appointment with TwoZero for two days from now.
His response seemed a bit puzzled in tone. Oooo-kay.
She knew it was an invitation to explain, but she didn’t take the bait. She checked her network, but found nothing wrong.
She was about to send a message to the warden of Clone Hell when Apaza got back to her.
He used a holographic image rather than an audio message. His image was just a floating head, which looked odd in her small office.
I just got the weirdest message, he sent. I was told that TwoZero is dead.
Gomez nodded. I got that message too. That’s why I wanted you to try it. Can you see if it’s legit?
I already did, Apaza said. And I compared against other clones of PierLuigi Frémont. They’re all dead.
Even Thirds? She sent.
Apaza shook his head. They say he doesn’t exist.
She sighed. Then she thanked Apaza, and signed off.
She didn’t want to talk about this with him. She didn’t want to talk to Simiaar either.
Sometimes it was hard to ignore evidence, even when it was faint. The clones were dead. The maps lied. The ship had come from the Alliance.
Maybe she was paranoid.
But what if she wasn’t? What if there was a conspiracy?
What if a group was trying to dismantle the Alliance from within?
What could she do?
She had no idea. But she knew she had to do something.
FORTY-NINE
RAFAEL SALEHI PUT his hands over his face and closed his eyes for just a moment. His stomach twisted.
He had broken the link with Rafik Fujita, then checked the case log from Torkild Zhu. The bastard had defended a clone—of PierLuigi Frémont. But a clone that had been incarcerated during the Anniversary Day attacks.
Zhu had asked for the best transport captain, and Salehi had given him Fujita. Salehi and Fujita went back decades. Salehi had had an idea that this trip would be difficult, but not this difficult.
Had he known that, he would have—what? Sent an army? He had no idea.
He sent a message through his links to Torkild Zhu. Get your ass to my office. Now.
Then Salehi mentally sorted through his contacts at the Alliance. He knew council presidents and heads of departments. But he didn’t know anyone who could call off battle cruisers.
He sent another message, this one to one of the named partners in S3, Debra Shishani.
We have an emergency situation. You in the building? If so, my office, please.
He only added “please” because if he didn’t, Shishani wouldn’t show up.
My office, Shishani sent back.
No, Salehi sent. I have others already here.
Or other, anyway. If Zhu arrived before Shishani, which Salehi hoped he would. Because right now, Salehi didn’t need a pissing contest. He needed to do something fast.
Salehi reset his entire office, getting rid of the desert sequence. He set up panels everywhere, mostly showing space, but also with one star map of Fujita’s proposed trip, the trip that S3 had hired him for. Obviously, that trip wasn’t happening, but Salehi found illustrations so much better than any attempted explanation.
He also cooled the room down, so that it didn’t feel like a desert any longer. He wasn’t dressed for standard temperatures, but at the moment, he didn’t care if he got a chill. Shishani would complain about how hot it was, and that was the last thing he wanted.
He needed her to focus.
Then he opened the door to his office and made his desk disappear into the floor. He also had the chairs slide under the floor as well, so that no one could be comfortable.
“Hey.” Zhu leaned in, as if he were afraid to enter. He looked thinner than Salehi remembered, or maybe he was just noticing for the first time. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Salehi snapped. “Who did you tell about your Anniversary Day clone?’
“He’s not an Anniversary Day clone,” Zhu said. “He was in prison—”
“Who did you tell?” Salehi aske
d again.
“Why?”
Salehi wasn’t in the mood for legal games. “You told me and who else?”
Zhu blinked, clearly beginning to understand that he wasn’t going to hold the upper hand in this conversation. “Um, I told you and my clerk, and I’m sure the warden knew, and so did the judge….”
His voice trailed off, as his face flushed. He knew something.
“What about the judge?” Salehi asked.
“It’s not important right now,” Zhu said. “I’ll tell you—”
“Now,” Salehi said. “You’ll tell me now.”
Zhu looked down. “She would only free Trey if I promised to recommend her for a position in this law firm.”
Salehi stomped to one side as anger filled him. He’d championed this idiot. “And you’re only telling me now?”
“I—figured—you know, it wasn’t important. We—”
“You think she knew when this clone was being released?”
Zhu shrugged. “What’s going on?”
“Did you tell the people who were going to rehabilitate this clone who they were about to take in?”
“No,” Zhu said. “I told them exactly what you told me. That they’d be getting a former prisoner, and that his room and board would be paid for six months, nonrefundable, and—”
“Nonrefundable,’ Salehi muttered. “Marvelous.”
Someone knocked on the door. Salehi looked up. Debra Shishani walked inside, looking at the screens. She was taller than both men, angular and busty at the same time, her brown hair piled on top of her head.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said with that sarcasm that had once attracted Salehi, when he’d been a lot younger and a lot stupider.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said to her. “I just heard from Rafik Fujita. He’s under attack from, of all things, Alliance battle cruisers. He—”
“Battle cruisers?” she asked. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not kidding,” Salehi said. “He’s transporting a clone that Torkild here managed to get released. This clone’s been illegally held for fifteen years. But—and here’s the kicker—he’s a clone of PierLuigi Frémont.”
A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel Page 31
