City of Broken Lights

by K. C. Sivils

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The word from the local Clinic was Father Nathan would make it. The assistant pastor Vick had assured me the local health clinic was far better equipped and experienced with violent trauma from a gunshot wound that any hospital in New Paris. The doctor I talked to said it was hardly the first time my friend had been shot by the looks of the scars on his body. He was sedated for now, and the doctor wanted to keep him for observation for a few hours.

  I was okay with that. A few hours were all the time I would need to extract some answers from the two prisoners Sarah and I had taken. The doctor wasn't too happy when I dragged the jerk I'd shot out of the clinic and stuffed him in the rental car where Sarah was waiting with the perp she'd beaten nearly senseless sat in back with his hands cuffed.

  Ignoring the ranting of the doctor, I shoved the wounded perp into the front passenger seat, not taking the time to place my hand on top of his head to make sure he didn't hit it while getting in the hovercar. Oops, I suppose.

  I drove in silence until I found what I was looking for, an abandoned factory with it's ground floor windows mostly intact. I waited while Sarah scouted the place, ignoring the groans of the two prisoners. The door near where I was parked opened and Sarah stuck her head out. She pointed in the opposite direction of the door and vanished back inside, closing the door behind her.

  A quick look was all I needed to get my partner's message. There was a roll-up freight entrance. I eased the hovercar over to the door. It creaked and groaned as Sarah operated the door, raising it up to allow me to pull the hovercar into the ample open space that had been the shipping and receiving department when the factory had still been operating. Even louder groans came from the door as it protested being closed.

  I drove deeper into the abandoned structure, noting all the cobwebs and dirt. The floor was covered with the typical sort of litter one would find in an abandoned factory, empty boxes, old data chips, and empty food cartons left by vagrants who'd use the building as a place to get out of the elements for a night or two.

  Sarah motioned for me to follow her. I watched her form as she walked briskly towards the back of the receiving area and towards an opening wide enough for the hovercar to pass through. She stopped and pointed at a spot just inside what was once the factory’s assembly floor, the machinery and robots removed long ago when the plant had been shuttered.

  While I parked the rental, I could hear another door groan as it was closed. I got out of the car and noticed the open door to what was once the plant manager’s office. I walked around to the other side of the car and pulled my prisoner out, yanking him to his feet. Sarah wasn’t much gentler with her prisoner either.

  Sarah kept an eye on the pair while I scared up some chairs. It only took a few minutes for me to lash our prisoners to the chairs with industrial ties I’d found in a box.

  “You can’t do this,” Sarah’s prisoner protested.

  I leaned over, bringing my face inches from his and laughed.

  “There’s nobody here to stop me.”

  “ONE MOMENT, PLEASE, Chancellor.”

  Ambassador Marshall stepped out of the meeting room and read the message on his comm a second time. He thought for a moment and pocketed the device.

  There was no reason to involve Saundra. If things worked out, he would get in touch with her immediately. If not, there would be things to be handled to make certain the Chancellor was protected.

  Making his way down the corridor, Marshall stopped in front of a seldom-used door and passed through it, shutting it behind him. He pulled the interior sliding door shut, exposing the controls of the small, hidden elevator in the process. In seconds Marshall was plummeting towards the hidden garage beneath the complex that made up the working home that was the Chancellor's residence.

  Unforeseen problems were Marshall’s forte, the means by which he’d been able to draw close to Saundra and serve the woman he loved. Together the pair had risen high in the power structure of not just Athens II but the Alliance regional government.

  Marshall selected a car from the fleet available and climbed in. He enjoyed driving the overpowered, armored hovercars that made up the Chancellor’s private fleet of vehicles. In less than a minute the powerful turbine propelled him onto the main thoroughfare in front of the residence.

  Today was the day. Marshall promised himself if he could resolve this crisis things would change. Without him Saundra was weak. No matter what she told herself, she had to know her resolve and determination as the Iron Chancellor meant nothing without his skill as a backroom operator and dealmaker. She would truly owe him this time.

  His price for further loyalty was simple. Public acknowledgment of their very private relationship.

  If Marshall failed, then he would end the relationship and resign. It would be the right thing to do. From a distance, he would protect the Chancellor, do what had to be done to manage the fallout, and then quietly fade from public life.

  Success would mean more power than Saundra had imagined. Marshall tamped his anxiety and fear down into his deep, dark hiding place. The place his emotions had to go when it was necessary to tear another piece of his soul away, to darken another bit of his heart in order to serve the woman he’d loved for so many years.

  "Perhaps this fool Sullivan is a blessing in disguise," Marshall muttered. The man's penchant for killing could eliminate many of the problems Marshall had to deal with in the next twenty-four hours. Mentally he went down his checklist of who needed to be dealt with. Some could be bought, and others required to vanish permanently.

  His plan to recover Katrina and allow Saundra to leave Athens II with high approval ratings only for her successor to fail, further enhancing Saundra’s political reputation was in the wind. The money set aside to purchase Katrina’s freedom was now available for bribes to silence the small fish until they could be dealt with, leaving him with plenty of money for his off-world accounts. Money he would lavishly spend on Saundra.

  Marshall hated flying by the seat of his pants. Careful planning was required to manipulate events of a sensitive political nature, and the current fiasco was no different.

  Pulling onto a long straight stretch of hoverway Marshall accelerated. Habit made him tell the car’s A.I. to turn on the music system. His thoughts a mad jumble of possibilities, Marshall wished aloud the solution he found himself hoping for.

  “Sullivan, do your worst.”

  "GOOD AFTERNOON, CHANCELLOR Vanzetti," the Economics Minister crooned, his false smile emblazoned on his face. Saundra shook the vile man's hand and returned an equally well practiced and fake smile and did not respond to his verbal pleasantry. As the minister left the room the automatic doors closed behind him, leaving Saundra alone.

  Concerned by the unannounced departure of Marshall, Saundra fished her comm out of her coat pocket and sent a link. When the Ambassador failed to respond, she canceled the link and returned the device to its hiding place.

  Marshall stepping out of advisory meetings to take a call was a common enough occurrence. Between his duties as Ambassador and his real job as her political fixer Marshall often took mysteries links on his comm. Leaving without telling her was a different matter.

  Saundra sat down at the Chancellor’s seat at the head of the long conference table to think. There could be only one real explanation. She needed political cover for whatever situation Marshall had departed to attend to. His not informing her about the matter provided plausible deniability, the professional politician’s get-out-of-trouble-for-free pass.

  The only matter pressing that would require political cover was Katrina's kidnapping and Marshall's plan to deal with the matter. Something must have gone seriously wrong. It took but a second for Saundra to realize what that something was.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Warning beeps coming from the bed of a gunshot victim is never a good sign. The lone duty nurse left her meager cup of lukewarm soup and hurried down the aisle of cots towards th
e curtains drawn around the lone patient. Pulling back the curtain, the nurse didn't know whether to feel a sense of relief or irritation.

  "Father, you can't do that," she informed the priest. Caught red-handed, Father Nathan grimaced and let go of the last of the sensors still on his chest.

  “I need to go,” he protested. “My companions need me. I have vital information that must be shared with them.”

  "You're not going anywhere, Father," the nurse ordered in her best she who must be obeyed voice. "If you're referring to that tall Inspector with the strange blue eyes and facial scar and his assistant, they were the ones who brought you here. Whatever information you have for them can wait."

  Father Nathan looked at the name tag on the nurse's uniform. "Ah, Nurse White, I know the identity of who it is they are searching for. It is a matter of life and death I tell them."

  Nurse White observed her patient, considering what to do. Reaching a decision, she pushed Father Nathan back onto the cot and began reattaching the sensors to his chest. As fast as she could attach one sensor, Father Nathan pulled one off.

  “Stop it, Father! You’ve been shot!” Nurse White paused, placed her hands on her hips for good measure and continued her lecture. “You needed a transfusion! The doctor says you’re lucky the Inspector knew first aid and got you here so quick!”

  Taken aback by the forcefulness of Nurse White’s rebuke, Father Nathan relaxed and took his hand off the sensor.

  “You military types are all the same," the nurse continued, back away from the cot towards the monitors. Without taking her eyes of her patient, White fumbled with the drawers beneath the assorted monitors, opened the second drawer from the top, and removed another strip of sensors.

  "Hold still," she ordered. In less than a minute the monitor was happily silent, and all of Father Nathan's vitals were approaching normal again. Satisfied with the result of her handiwork, Nurse White turned her back to make one final adjustment on the monitoring equipment. A soft hissing sound preceded her collapse into her patient's arms by milliseconds.

  “Sorry about that,” whispered the priest. It required all of his strength to gently lay the nurse on his cot. Tossing the hypospray into the medical waste receptacle as he pulled the curtain back around to conceal the sleeping nurse, Father Nathan paused to catch his breath. Pain shot down his left arm and numbness in his back made balancing to walk difficult.

  “Clothes,” he muttered. “Find the comm, find my comm. Find it.”

  Nearly ten minutes passed while Father Nathan alternated between searching for his bloody cleric’s outfit and resting long enough to avoid passing out. His brain still cloudy from the effects of painkillers and anesthesia, Father Nathan finally realized his clothes were probably in the refuse containers in the small surgical suite. Another five minutes and he triumphantly held up his comm.

  “You are in big trouble, Father.”

  Still smiling, Father Nathan didn't bother to turn and look at Nurse White. Sitting in the middle of bloodstained clothes, bandages, and medical waste, he hurriedly typed in a message into his comm and hit send.

  “It wasn’t personal, Nurse White.”

  The apology didn’t stop the nurse from jamming the hypospray into the priest’s neck as hard as she could.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know how else I should have taken it.”

  White stepped out of the way as her patient slumped over and fell from his sitting position onto the now empty medical waste receptacle, striking his head. Blood spurted from the fresh laceration on Father Nathan’s scalp.

  “That’s just great,” she complained, kicking the unconscious priest. White bent over, picked up the comm, and examined it. Disgusted, White tossed the comm back into the waste bin. After sending the link, Father Nathan had cleared the account number the message had been sent to.

  Groggy still from the effects of her own trip to la-la land, it took White a moment to remember the setting on her personal comm.

  “Yeah, White here. I need to warn you.”

  She listened for a moment, nodding at the instructions.

  “The priest sent a message to someone. I have no idea what the message was or who it was sent to.”

  White listened respectfully to her last instructions.

  “I can make it look like he succumbed from his wounds. The surgeon is gone until tomorrow evening.”

  Her eyes grew wide at the instructions from the voice on the comm.

  “Very well. I’ll wait until I receive further instructions from you.”

  Disgusted, White pocketed her comm.

  “Father, it would seem you have friends in strange places.”

  PEOPLE HAVE STRANGE ideas about how cops sweat perps. It’s not a bunch of screaming, physical abuse, or other forms of torture, though I will admit it does happen. The mere threat of resorting to those sorts of tactics often produces positive results, especially if the perp has been denied food, water, and sleep.

  The trick is to get the perp to talk. Talk about anything. It's okay if they lie to you as well. In fact, if you know the perp lying and can prove it, that's a great start. You just keep asking the same questions with small variations until the perp makes a mistake. It's hard to keep lies straight, especially the more lies you tell and the more complicated the web of deceit becomes.

  Once you catch the perp in a lie, you can slowly begin to extract the truth. It takes time and skill to interrogate a perp and break them.

  I didn’t have time to separate the two perps sitting in the office with me. Sleep deprivation was out, not enough time for that either. That left violence and one of my other favorite tactics.

  I had time for either approach.

  So, I just sat there in silence, leaning back in my chair with my feet up on the small table I’d set between myself and the two perps. Sarah stood behind them, fading in and out of sight. She looked bored, standing with her arms folded across her chest as she leaned against the wall. Sarah knew what I was doing. She’d stay quiet as long as she could before the walls would start to close in on her. Then my partner would leave and wander around the factory, looking for anything she could find that would provide us with information.

  Sarah solidified and walked to a different corner and leaned against the wall again. My comm vibrated. As I picked it up off the table and read the message, I could feel the muscles in my forehead as I scowled. I nodded to Sarah, and she grunted in disgust for the benefit of the two prisoners and left, slamming the door behind her.

  It had been forty-five minutes since we'd entered the office. After a few verbal exchanges, neither Sarah nor I had spoken.

  Perps hate silence, especially if they have to sit and watch their tormentor sit across from them, waiting patiently. Once they've reached their limit, the stress will loosen their tongues.

  "What was that," the first prisoner asked. I focused my gaze on him and said nothing. He was sweating profusely from stress. His hair was plastered to his scalp, and his shirt had large dark stains under his arms and in splotches across his chest. I could easily imagine the large, circular stain that had to be present on the back of his shirt.

  “I’d say none of your business, but,” I paused and grinned, not a pleasant grin, but one that implied malice and the threat of impending pain. “It involves you and Greg here.”

  The perp’s eyes opened wide at the mention of his partner’s name.

  “Yeah, Greg here, well, he and I go way back, don’t we, Greg?”

  The former S.P. who’d served in my unit back when I was in the Alliance Marine Corps as an M.P. in the Shore Patrol just stared at me, his eyes burning with hatred. There was something there, something in those I eyes I needed to discern as Father Nathan likes to say.

  I’d always had good relations with Greg during our days together in the service.

  “It would seem the first question I needed to ask the two of you has already been answered.”

  “What question,” the perp blurted out.

&n
bsp; “Shut up you idiot,” Greg shouted. “He’s just fishing.”

  “Oh, hardly,” I laughed. “You know how this works, Greg. You know I’m going to get what I want.”

  I stood up and began clinching my fists as if I were cracking my knuckles. Knuckles that should not make a cracking sound. But then again, I had the best cybernetic replacement hands made. No detail was too small for the manufacturer and its best customer for replacement hands, the Alliance military. Sound effects came as an extra.

  Greg swallowed nervously, and his face turned white. Like his partner, Greg began to sweat. "This isn't like you, Sully."

  “No? People change, Greg. I would never have pictured you mixed up with a lot like this.”

  “Sully, be reasonable,” Greg asked, the hate in his eyes gone.

  “I am being reasonable. Time is growing short. I need answers. So, I’m going to beat them out of the two of you.”

  I wasn't lying, and the two perps knew it.

  “This is about my daughter.” I took a step closer to Greg’s partner. “I know who the two of you work for. Now I want to know why. Then you’re going to tell me where to find your boss.”

  Draped across the back of the chair I’d been sitting in was my jacket. I pulled out a pair of black leather gloves from a pocket inside the jacket. Real leather, not the fake stuff. I adjusted my shoulder holster to get comfortable and then pulled the gloves on, one finger at a time, making a show of it.

  “You’re going to talk,” I informed the pair. “The only question is when you talk.”

  His eyes glued in disbelief on the black gloves, Greg shook as he spoke. “Sully, please, be reasonable.”

  “I told you, Greg, this is about my daughter.” I matched his earlier hateful look with one of my own. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t enjoy this like I’m going to.”