by RJ Johnson
Omar quickly secured a portion of climbing wire to his belt and to the safety railing. He jumped over the railing and began rappelling quickly down the pit's walls. Omar was no idiot, and he would not be taken off-guard by Sinjakama as easily as Rincon's security had been.
Sinjakama quickly turned the gravity in the Pit off again and pushed himself down towards the bottom. Reaching the ground, Sinjakama considered kissing it, but he didn't have that kind of time. With a quick swipe of his finger, he re-engaged the Pit’s gravity and stood, moving quickly towards the life-pod he had installed into the Mass Driver's launcher moments before. Uncovering the hatch, he opened it and began to quickly activate the life pod's systems for the long trip home as he had been shown and practiced so many times in drills.
“You’re too late Dr. Sinjakama.” A voice called from the shadows. Even now, when Sinjakama thought it couldn't get any hotter in the pit, there was was a chill in the air.
Sinjakama screwed his eyes shut. Not him, anyone but him.
“Did you hear me Dr. Sinjakama?” The man emerged from the shadows holding a Rattler, a powerful small arms weapon favored by those in Downtown. Weapons not held by Koschei's security forces were considered illegal, but that did not stop a few enterprising individuals in Downtown from re-purposing the hand held laser coders they used to tag the ORI with into rather effective, if not crude, weapons.
Sinjakama swiped at his Armbar and frantically pushed the send message button several more times, but received no confirmation in return.
“That’s no use to you I’m afraid, as we've already shut down off-site communications when we suspected you might know of our...” the man’s face smiled a bit, “plans for Rosetta here.”
“You won't get away with this you know.” Even as Sinjakama said the words, he knew they rang as hollow as this asteroid had become. He slid the thumb drive into his pocket, and turned to face the man who would bring his death. If he was to die. He would do it on his feet and staring at the man who would be his doom.
The man smiled and glanced up at Omar Rodriguez who was still descending quickly into the Pit. He had just enough time.
“Perhaps not, but I think my chances are much greater than your own at this point.” Lazarus Rincon said as he lifted the heavy weapon in his hands firing it. Sinjakama felt the bolt of energy go through him, and then, he felt nothing at all.
Vicktoria followed Rincon out of the shadows. “Pity. I could have made so much more off that man.”
“Did he have any proof?” Rincon asked Vicktoria as she nudged the prostrate scientist on the ground.
“Not that he mentioned. He only told me he discovered a programming error, which I took to mean the subroutine.”
“That was enough to scare him off the station?” Rincon asked, as he stared at Sinjakama's unmoving corpse.
“The man knew what he saw. Wouldn't that be enough for you?” Vicktoria looked up at Omar who was approaching them quickly. “He'll be here at any minute.”
Lazarus smirked at Omar was was only a few hundred feet above them now. “I suppose we will have to move up our timetable.” Lazarus replied softly.
Vicktoria and Rincon turned to the Tunway that would lead them back to Rincon's bar in Downtown. “Will there be enough time?” She asked, the worry evident in her voice.
Rincon turned, and looked over at Omar who was detaching himself from the rappelling cable.
“If there isn't, we die.”
Lazarus and Vicktoria both ducked into the shadows moving quickly towards the entrance to the tunway before getting into a Rampet and quickly accelerating up and away from The Pit and back to Downtown.
Omar disconnected the climbing wire, and ran to the prostate body of Sinjakama. He shined a light over at the Tunway entrance looking for any sign of Sinjakama's killers. Cursing the dark, he typed quickly on his Armbar, and a tall thin man appeared in holographic form projected out of Omar's Armbar.
“What's happened?" The man's speech was clipped with a slight Russian accent. His eyes narrowed. Koschei was a handsome man, high cheekbones, a thin jutting jaw, and a high sloped forehead. A chinstrap beard rounded out the rest of his face, on which, his anger was clearly evident.
“Sinjakama's dead. Someone got to him before I could.”
The figure stood silent on his arm for a moment, considering the implications.
“Any indication as to why he was abandoning his post?”
“Not that I can tell, I haven't had a chance to examine the body yet.”
“Search him, thoroughly. Take a scan of his ArmBar and bring his body back to the Med-bay for proper examination. Any data cores or infodrives you find, bring directly to me.”
“He shit himself.” Omar said in disgust, looking at the prostrate scientist.
“No one said examining a dead body was pleasant.” Koschei replied in an amused voice.
Omar leaned down and wirelessly connected his ArmBar to Sinjakama's. As it copied the information off the engineer's ArmBar, Omar began searching through Sinjakama's pockets. In the right front pocket, he discovered a infodrive the size of his thumb. He grabbed it and displayed it to the holographic Koschei projected out of Omar's ArmBar.
“He had this in his pocket.”
“Transfer the data to me.” Koschei ordered.
Omar opened the cap to the data core and inserted it into his ArmBar. Scrambled data began to show on the readout of Koschei's screen as he turned to examine the workstation at his desk.
“It's encoded with a rotating 256 sigma key encryption. Even with every Quantum processor we had running in parallel for...” Omar quickly did the math in his head, “five years, we wouldn't crack ten percent of the data on that disk.” Omar said disgusted. “Whatever Sinjakama was up to, the secret died with the man.”
Koschei stared at his workstation screen for a moment looking over the encoded data and considered his options.
Sinjakama was a careful man, and likely left a pass code to the information somewhere, Koschei thought to himself. He would not allow something that scared him enough to abandon Rosetta to be lost forever. The fact it was so heavily encoded meant it was incredibly important to Dr. Sinjakama, and therefore, important to Koschei.
“His son won’t let us sweep his death under the rug.” Omar continued, looking at his boss with his cruel gray eyes. “That Sinjakama of yours was a good way to assuage the Elder's concerns, but his death won't go uninvestigated. The Consortium WILL have to ask questions.”
Koschei sighed.
“You’re right of course.” Koschei considered it for a moment longer. “I don’t suppose just air locking his body would do it…”
“And have him marked as a disappearance instead? That would only create more problems than it solves.” Omar shook his head, “Personally, I like the idea of pushing him off the top of the Pit better. We might be able to make a convincing case for suicide.”
Koschei shook his head. “Not with Sinjakama I’m afraid....”
He closed his eyes, thinking of every option until a slow smile began spreading across his face.
“Take Sinjakama's body to the Med-bay. Once they've gone over his body with a fine tooth comb, take it to the top of the Pit and drop him off the side. We'll make his death look like an accident which ought to satisfy any problems with the Consortium.”
“What about his son?” Rodriguez asked impatiently, “if he comes to Rosetta and stirs up trouble, and the investors hear about it," Rodriguez paused to emphasize the point, "That would mean the end of your administration here.”
“If…” Koschei paused, mentally correcting himself knowing the Consortium Government as he did, “when Atel Sinjakama comes asking questions, we will assist his investigation in every way possible.”
“Sir!” Omar began to protest. When he saw his bosses’ face on the viewscreen, Koschei's expression kept him from protesting any more. "That man has enough influence to get The Consortium to take over your operations, he may be young bu
t..."
“Do it Mr. Rodriguez.”
Omar stared at the man and not for the first time, felt a shiver of fear go through his spine. Omar was a man who wasn't afraid of much, but Koschei was the exception to that rule.
“Sir!” Omar said stiffly, “If we don’t handle this right everything we've…err…you’ve built will be destroyed. And then what? All this for nothing!”
Koschei looked at Omar through his viewscreen and smiled. “Mr. Rodriguez, a chess game is quite often won or lost in the first move. Someone has decided to make the first move on me and has begun the game for us. Whatever happens next, is inevitable.”
With that, the 3D projection of Koschei winked out and Omar stood alone with only three dead bodies for company.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
