It was an assumption Paul was relying on. “Thanks for your time, Officers.” He waved toward the hallway. “I’ll see myself out.”
He left the building, crossed the street and stepped into a waiting passenger mover he’d requisitioned that morning.
“Un-mute Senator Nathaniel,” he subvocalized.
“… so get back in there and tell them you’re going to take over the case, dammit!” an angry voice insisted.
“Senator,” Paul replied, firmly but politely, “I don’t tell you how to do your job; don’t tell me how to do mine. When have I ever let your family down?” He neglected to point out that he’d only heard the last few seconds of Senator Nathaniel’s angry demands.
“But we have to get him…”
“Out?” Paul cut him off. “Julius is in a holding complex, surrounded by hardcore killers. The second our enemies think we’re going to get our hands on him, they’ll arrange for a ‘gate-glitch’ or ‘administrative prisoner movement error’ and Julius will find himself in the same cell with some very unfriendly roommates.”
“You’re convinced this is a setup?”
“Absolutely. There’s no way he’d be involved with courtesans and certainly not a guild from TC-465.” Paul waited, wanting to see how much Hadrian Nathaniel knew about his son’s service on TC-465.
“Why not them, in particular?” Nathaniel asked. “He spent five years there when he commanded 488 MEF. He would have heard about them…”
“He heard about them before he brought his troops down from orbit,” Paul agreed. “You know that’s how we met – he came in to ask for a BPS threat briefing.”
The BPS or biological/physical/societal threat briefing was maintained by the military police on each frontier world in the Empire. It was a meticulous description of all the possible sources of danger to the Imperial Marines assigned to garrison duty on the frontier, but it was rarely accessed by incoming forces.
Julian could have relied on the overwhelming strength of his Marine Expeditionary Force to get through his five-year hitch but that almost always resulted in the loss of a few troops due to sickness, wild animals or social mistakes.
Paul had been a military policeman on TC-465 when Julius arrived and he’d been the one to give the young colonel his briefing. Paul had realized he was taking the threat to his troops seriously, that Julius was one of the few nobles who understood the concept of reciprocal duty.
“I warned him about the risk from the ‘Happy Ending’ virus. He got his troops tested before he let them off the ship and he was the first to hand over a blood sample.” Paul took a final glance at the station house.
“Random course,” he ordered his vehicle.
“You noticed,” he asked the senator, “there was no evidence Julius was conscious while he was with the two courtesans?”
“I did.”
“So someone grabbed him, drugged him and had those two courtesans infect him.” Paul let that sink in for a few seconds. “He’s an operational objective, but you’re probably the strategic target in all this.”
The Nathaniels often treated crime and intrigue as open combat. Every member of the family spent their obligatory term of service in the family unit. The 488 Marine Expeditionary Force descended from a unit raised by Constantine Nathaniel. He’d presented it to the Emperor’s service five centuries ago using private funds. The Nathaniels had supported the unit ever since.
Paul’s military service had been as a policeman, but he’d quickly learned to apply a military template to the endless machinations of the ruling class. “You don’t commit to an attack on an operational objective unless it supports the timing for a strategic move. They’ve done this to discredit you, but what’s going on right now that involves your office?”
There was a short pause. “There’s been talk,” Hadrian Nathaniel replied cryptically. “The imperial court might need to appoint a new regent soon.”
Paul shivered. Nobody really expected the Childe Roland to reach the age of majority but he was only nine years old; there was no rush to bump him off. The position of regent was far more dangerous because, for all intents and purposes, it was the same as being the emperor. Many moths had died from flying too close to that particular flame.
Was Hadrian Nathaniel in the running?
“Is there anything else, Senator?”
“There’s been talk of sending the 488 to Irricana to pacify some secessionist activity,” Hadrian told him, “but it’s hardly a coveted assignment. Few senators want to be shoved back into uniform for a low-intensity operation out on the Rim.”
“I’m going to follow the evidence,” Paul informed him, “and see where it leads us.” He could hear a soft chime over the link.
“I need to go.” Hadrian sighed. “I have a Defense Committee meeting, but keep me informed.”
Paul killed the link and brought up the copy he’d made of the evidence. Few ICI inspectors had the kind of military hardware that resided in Paul’s sinuses but most of them had never served, either.
If you have a senator obtaining your early release from the Marines, you can easily leave the service with your implants intact.
When Julius’ five-year term came to an end, Hadrian had arranged for Paul to be released from his own ten-year contract. The lower orders tended to serve for longer terms, but Paul had made himself useful to Julius on several occasions and the Nathaniels’ sense of reciprocal duty had compelled them to patronize his career.
It wasn’t entirely altruistic, of course. By engineering a knighthood for Paul and getting him into the ICI, they’d created a potent asset within the law enforcement community.
And his implants gave him a distinct edge. He’d managed to download the entire case-file and now he closed his eyes to take a look at the holo of Julius and the courtesans.
The decor was licensed to an hourly-rate hotel chain and the artwork scrolling across the side wall was from a video-pool contractor. The particular imagery was tailored by planet and this mix seemed to indicate the hotel was local.
He looked back at Julius. Not even a flutter of an eyelash. If he needed any further indication his friend was out like a light, he needed look no farther than the window.
Even if Julius was the type to engage courtesans, he would have closed the blinds. Paul frowned at a soft glow outside. “Frame advance,” he subvocalized. The next image in the holo recording came up, and the soft glow was gone.
“Play holo,” he commanded and the shadow of one of the courtesans began moving up and down against the wall by the window. “Stop.”
Paul grinned. There, outside the window, was the bright neon glow of ‘Raised Eire’. He did a quick title search for address proximity, pairing the hotel and bar names. Not only were they on this world, but he was only twenty minutes away.
He resisted the urge to go there. His presence would only serve as a warning to their enemies that he was still pursuing the matter. He connected to the hotel’s financial portal but, instead of invoking ICI protocol to access their records, he used his quantum processor to hack their security by brute force.
He didn’t want to alarm his prey.
The room had been paid for by one of the courtesans in the video. It made sense. Whoever had arranged the scene wouldn’t want to pay for it from their own account — they’d simply turn themselves into a loose end in the process.
Paul used her identity to locate an address and tasked his vehicle to go there at best possible speed. The two women would be worth talking to.
Of course, that also meant they’d be worth eliminating and he forced himself to consider his next step in the event they were already dead.
He tried to open the courtesan’s financial records, hoping to find the money trail, but he was unsurprised to find they’d been burned down using a warrant from a local city cop. He brought up the cop’s dossier — unremarkable, under the radar. He was the cleanup-man.
Paul opened the tasking menu and saw the cop was on his wa
y to a public disturbance call. He very much doubted the officer would survive the assignment.
He opened his contacts and selected the 488 MEF folder. “Major Anthony Nathaniel,” he ordered, opening the connection.
“Paul, tell me you have something,” Julius’ younger brother demanded eagerly.
“Following some leads, Tony, but they have a habit of going cold. One of them is a city cop, badge alpha-245-golf-566-echo-4567. He’s probably on his way to catch a bullet right now so I need him collected in the next ten minutes.”
A disembodied voice intruded, announcing the launch of a tactical aircraft.
“I’ve a team on the way,” Anthony advised him. “I’ll meet you at the echo site.”
Dead End
Paul’s vehicle slowed to a halt and slid sideways into an opening on his right. He stepped out of the ground car and crossed the small platform to a bank of transit shafts. Each shaft had a magnetic monorail at the back for the ubiquitous transit-capsules that sped throughout the city. The capsules tended to travel individually in remote areas but when entering a dense neighborhood like this one, they joined into long trains.
Just like the boarding platforms for horizontal tracks, this vertical station had no doors or guard rails. The only difference here was the three-kilometer drop for those who failed to exercise caution.
A short train arrived, the capsules separating to slide into the adjacent boarding shafts. Eighteen capsule doors slid open and Paul stepped into the nearest one, ignoring the curious glances of the three young women and two men inside. The conversation between two of the women had died as he stepped inside and announced his destination to the vehicle.
He didn’t belong down here, so far from fresh air. His clothing, his bearing, both proclaimed him as someone who possessed wealth and influence. He wasn’t the kind of person who entered the rezzas without a good reason and, whatever that reason was, it probably didn’t bode well for the locals.
The rezzas were large, high-density neighborhoods, usually located near the labor-intensive industries. They typically occupied a cubic kilometer and had little or no access for independently controlled vehicles.
Not that the denizens of a rezza could afford to use one anyway. Transit capsules like this one were the only way in without climbing the stairs and nobody with any sense used the stairs.
There were no security cameras in the stairs.
The car slid to a halt and Paul walked out through the gate, turning right to head down an endless hallway. Every five steps brought another door, another argument or blast of music, another smell of rotting garbage or a backed-up toilet.
He came to the address and, seeing the open door, drew his sidearm. The scanner on the outside was missing three screws, looking like it had been hacked and quickly put back in place.
He took a deep, calming breath and glided quietly through the open portal. The small apartment had no windows — few did down here — and there was no place to hide.
Not that the occupants were concerned about hiding. Both of the young courtesans had been decapitated, posed on the sleeping platform with their heads cradled in their hands.
He knew the business with the heads was just an attempt to cover tracks, to obscure the true motive behind their deaths. The local cops would write it off as just another cult or lone maniac, if they even heard of this. He started heading back toward the transit gate.
He was halfway there when he noticed the two people headed his way. A man and a woman. Both had been on the transit capsule with him but they’d stayed on when he exited.
The only way they could’ve gotten back down here so quickly was if they’d exited on the next level and run down the stairs.
He’d been a cop his entire adult life and he’d already noticed the bulges under their light jackets. They each had a small-caliber weapon dangling under their left shoulders. Paul could clearly see the rhythmic movement of their clothing as the weapons collided with the fabric.
When he was still five doors away, the young woman pulled the man around and shoved him up against the wall, planting a deep kiss on him.
It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. There’s a natural urge to look away and that’s the moment you catch a bullet in the head.
This would come down to resolve. Paul was certain they’d been planted on the transit system to watch for anyone coming to look for the courtesans. There would be others, seeing as there was more than one transit line leading to this neighborhood.
Considering how thoroughly they were cleaning up the loose threads, Paul had to assume they’d be inclined to kill anyone looking into it. What other reason for them to come into this hallway?
He also didn’t want it known that he was investigating. If the conspirators got spooked, they might decide to liquidate Julius.
They’d want to wait until he was past them, looking the other way.
Now came the struggle. Instinct is like a half-tamed animal, caged in the cellar. You hear it screaming, warning you of danger, but the standard reaction is to turn up the stereo and ignore it. That’s why people venture out of their bedchamber, armed with a lamp to investigate a noise in the middle of the night.
If you were sure there was danger, you would have stayed put and called the police.
Paul fought the urge to downplay the risks. He was going to be shot in the next five seconds unless he listened to his instinct.
He watched their faces, sure he could see the tiniest sliver of eyeball. The man was watching him, so he was unlikely to draw his pistol until Paul was past, but her right hand was obscured by their bodies.
Paul faked a cough, bringing his right hand up toward his mouth but he diverted it at the last second, reaching under his jacket to draw a compact 5mm pistol. He swung the weapon up as his left foot hit the floor behind them and fired a three-round burst into the back of her head.
The rounds passed through both heads and buried themselves in the aluminum-foam panel of the wall behind them. Both bodies slumped to the floor and he noticed a small handgun in her right hand.
Despite his certainty, he was still relieved to see proof that he hadn’t just murdered a young couple whose only crime had been bad timing.
He kept walking, sliding his pistol into his right hand jacket pocket and keeping his finger alongside the trigger guard.
A shadow began to bounce its way down the wall across from a stairwell twenty meters beyond the transit gate. Paul broke into a run, slapping his palm on the car-call button as he reached the first gate.
A man emerged from the stairs at a trot, one hand inside his jacket and, seeing Paul, pulled out a pistol. Paul snapped off a three-round burst, horribly inaccurate at twenty meters, and jumped across the vertical transit shaft, barely managing to get a grip on the framework at the back of the confined space.
He scrabbled with his feet until he managed to wedge them above a cross-brace and swung his weapon back to cover the opening. The approaching footfalls slowed and he held his sights to the left side of the boarding portal.
The growing hum told him a new capsule-train was approaching from beneath, but he didn’t dare risk looking down. A face popped around the corner and darted back. Paul held his fire, wanting his newest opponent to get cocky.
The man shoved his pistol around the corner and Paul fired a burst at the arm before he could aim. There was a grunt of pain and the arm withdrew.
The capsule was getting very near now and Paul was anxious to finish the engagement before he left. He took a quick glance around, seeing the usual collection of junk thrown in here by the locals. He saw a broken holo-camera sitting atop a transverse beam, only inches from his left hand and he reached across his body to shove it loose using the pistol in his right hand.
“Shit!” he exclaimed in mock anger as the camera tumbled down the shaft, doing its best to imitate a falling pistol.
The grinning assailant stepped around the corner, limp right arm hanging at his side and a pistol in his left
hand. His grin turned to shock as he realized his opponent was still armed.
Three rounds took him in the center of mass and he went down. The small rounds were designed to tumble inside their target and his internal organs would be irreparable.
Within hours, the three bodies would be scavenged by the locals and dumped down a biomass chute. He finally looked down to see the capsule slowing in response to the button he’d pressed earlier. He fervently hoped he was at the right end of the platform. If he got it wrong, he’d find himself crushed between two capsules as they left the station.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw cars appear from beneath the top capsule, shifting to the left as they headed for their assigned gate. The top car kept coming straight for him, slowing as it approached the gate. He hopped onto the roof of the car, hearing the startled shouts of surprise from its occupants at the dead body on the hallway floor.
He leaned down to knock his pistol against the capsule roof. “Six twenty three, please.”
A Fireside Chat
Paul stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds, knowing he was being watched. He wanted to give the operators from Tony’s grab-team enough time to recognize him before he began walking toward the door of the abandoned production facility.
He pretended to be looking up at the open space. Industrial areas were typically located deep within the cities of the Empire but they usually had several civic layers of open space above them. It allowed the high-density aerial traffic needed to keep raw materials and finished goods flowing at peak efficiency.
There was always some churn as businesses came and went, and this particular factory had been producing servo motors until the Nathaniels had bought it and shut it down.
Now it served as one of several safe locations, ready on a moment’s notice for use by those who counted the Nathaniels as their patrons.
Paul moved across to the door and entered the code. He stepped inside, and his pupils dilated as he struggled to adjust to the lower light levels. He noticed a black-clad Marine on his right and nodded a greeting, accepting the offered respirator.
Rebels and Patriots (Imperium Cicernus Book 3) Page 2
