Galactic Empires (3 page)

“And the Dynasties control the finance houses,” Paula observed.

“Along with Earth’s Grand Families,” Nelson said in a defensive tone. “They haven’t been targeted, please note. Not yet, anyway.”

“So the startup costs go back to you, along with interest payments.”

“That’s the way the universe works, Investigator.”

“I can see the emotive force behind targeting the young Dynasty members. We’ve all seen their antics, or accessed Unisphere reports on it. There’s not a lot of sympathy out there for them.”

“The rich never have any sympathy,” Nelson said. “I can live with that. But it doesn’t mean you can go around slaughtering them—us!—to advance your political goal. In any case, there were only five Dynasty members on that plane, out of a hundred and thirty people.”

“I wasn’t agreeing with them,” Paula said. “I’m just trying to understand the motivation.”

“I’d have said it was justification, not motivation,” Aidan said. They all turned to look at him. He shrugged. “Everyone knows they’re not going to win, right? Government does not negotiate with terrorists. That’s been public policy number one since before people ever left Earth. It’s not going to change now. So this is just an excuse to give your psychosis full head. Serial killing taken to the next level.”

“Could be,” Paula said cautiously. Something about the case was bothering her. As Aidan said, the motivation wasn’t quite right. But as to the result of Free Merioneth’s actions, there was no mistake. Their criminality was her primary concern. Her motivation. Which was unbreakable. Her mind-set was aligned through psychoneural profiling, a genetic science comprehensively banned throughout the Commonwealth. The resolution of justice was built into her genes, along with a few other little traits like obsessive-compulsive behavior, which people were extremely uncomfortable with. Paula wasn’t. She’d always been perfectly content with what she was. She also quite enjoyed the irony of being a senior Commonwealth law enforcement officer, while technically being illegal on every planet except one—her birthworld, Huxley’s Haven, or as the rest of the Commonwealth called it: the Hive.

“Found something,” Nalcol called. He was kneeling beside a tough-looking wizened bush cactus, touching the ground with peripheral sensors on his array. Three of the bots were stationary next to the plant’s stem, probing its leathery skin. “Could be a urine patch,” he said as they gathered around. “Someone from the missile team probably relieved themselves.” He pushed a long transparent probe deeper, collecting samples in its spoon-shaped tip.

“Are you certain?” Paula couldn’t see any hint of moisture in the crumbly ocher soil.
But then, why send a human out here when a bot is perfectly capable of firing a missile
?

“This goddamned sun,” Nalcol complained. “It’s evaporating the fluid rapidly, which is how we detected it. The effervescence cloud is distinct to our sensors. But it doesn’t leave much to work with.” Various graphic displays danced across the array’s little screen. “Yep, here we go. Viable DNA. I can get you a positive fingerprint from this.”

“Thanks,” Christabel said. “What about the missile exhaust?”

“Definite. It’s an oxidized carbon trace, with aluminum and several other accelerant compounds.”

“What type?”

“All I can tell you is: very crude. No one reported seeing a chemical exhaust, not at altitude, so I’m guessing it incorporated a basic hyperram: an intake nozzle that compresses air, which is then heated with electron injection or high-frequency induction before squirting that hot air out the back like a rocket exhaust. But you need a booster to get it up to operational speed to start with. Solid chemicals are a primitive but effective method of initial acceleration. Nobody builds that kind of thing anymore. At least, not the commercial armament companies.“

“You mean it was homemade?” Nelson asked.

“Probably. Most of the components you’d need are widely available. It just needs a bit of skill to put them together.”

“That would take some organization.”

“Fanatics do that well,” Paula said. “But surely a beam weapon would be more effective, and completely untraceable? Every planet in the Commonwealth produces them.”

Nalcol stared up into the hot sky. “Not for this range. That kind of power rating is more specialist. Easier to trace.”

“What did the earlier attacks use?” Aidan asked.

“The first two were booby-trapped cars, with standard augmented explosives,” Nelson said. “The third was arson in a block of flats in Leithpool, with the fire escapes sabotaged. That killed twenty-three—and only three were Dynasty.”

“Two of whom were Halgarths,” Christabel said. “The Merioneth team have moved up a level with this.”

“This wasn’t a team,” Paula said. She was looking downslope to the small waves washing ashore. “You only need one person to launch a missile like this. That gives minimum exposure to the rest of the organization. It’s also easier for one person to get out. Aidan, how far are we from Ridgeview by sea?”

He gestured at a distant headland. “About seven miles to the docks. There are some marinas closer, though.”

“The terrain between here and the ring road is bad,” Paula said. “Even if you were on a dirt bike it would take too long, and there’s too much that could go wrong. Fall off, puncture, whatever. Let’s pull up the satellite imagery and check for a boat.”

*

The helicopters took them back to the police situation van. Paula sent Nalcol on to Ridgeview. “If we find a boat, I want samples from it,” she told him.

Christabel sat down in front of a spare desktop array as soon as they were back inside the van and started to call up the satellite images. Paula stood at the back, watching her.

“She’s good at this,” she told Nelson as she pulled her hat off and dabbed at the sweat on her brow. Her hair was hanging limp against her brow and cheeks. Nelson handed her a cup of water from the cooler tower. They both sipped eagerly as Christabel began flicking through images, muttering instructions to the Directorate’s RI. “Thank you for shutting down the station,” Paula said quietly.

“The least we could do.”

“I do require the suspect to stand trial. That means no Unfortunate accidents. I will not permit that.”

Nelson was watching one of the screens showing two medics leaning over a bloody chunk of gore, inserting surgical tools. “The Sheldon Dynasty has every confidence in you, Paula. That’s official. But the perpetrators must be removed from society. The Dynasty will not have its members picked off in this fashion; ideologues must be made to understand that.”

“It will happen. However, I will only be going after the team responsible for the actual attacks. Unless we discover complicity or a funding link with their political wing, the rest of the movement will remain untouched by the Directorate. They have a right to free speech no matter how unpleasant their views.”

“I am aware of article one in the constitution, thank you. Nigel helped draft it. Leave the politicians to us.”

“I still don’t understand the point of it,” Paula said. “Merioneth is barely self-sufficient. They need continuing investment. They must know that.”

“Ideologues aren’t rational people.”

“A convenient label for us. But-”

“Got a boat!” Christabel shouted out. Everyone in the van craned for a look at her screens. The satellite image wasn’t good. It showed the coast next to the launch site, land and sea dividing the screen in half. A small clump of gray pixels formed a blob in the center. “Time code checks,” Christabel said. “This is fifteen minutes prior to the crash.” The image changed as the satellite slid along its orbit, showing the coastline further to the east. There was little overlap; the boat was right on the edge of the screen.

“We’re going to lose it,” Nelson said. “This satellite is moving too quickly. It won’t be overhead after the launch. When’s the next pass?”

Christable consulted a display. “There’s another satellite coming up in forty-two minutes. So we’ve got no coverage during the launch. I guess they worked that out, too.”

“I don’t need to see them fire the missile,” Paula said. “I just needed confirmation it was a boat. Aidan, get me access to every camera in every marina in Ridgeview. I want the image files from fifteen minutes before the launch to now. Find me a boat coming in. If they took a direct route it’ll be about twenty minutes after the attack. Christabel, start there.”

Aidan slipped into the seat next to Christabel and used his police authorization to establish links into the city’s marinas.

“How many trains left between then and now?” Paula asked Nelson.

“Seven.”

“Get the station camera records ready for access.”

“Way ahead of you,” he grinned. “I’m pulling up passenger carriage camera files as well.”

It took Christabel another eight minutes to find a boat mooring at the Larsie marina. A man in a yellow shirt stepped off. “Here we go,” she said with a trill of excitement as the camera observed him walk along the wooden quay used by Danney’s Boat Hire. She froze an image as he was just short of the camera, revealing the round face of a man in his late forties, with flesh starting to build up under his cheeks and around his chin. Dark skin, with stubble. Thinning gray-brown hair dangled out of his blue cap. His yellow shirt was open at the neck, revealing a dark necklace cord.

“Nalcol, get over to the Larsie marina,” Paula said. “We’ve found the boat. Captain, call up the hire company office; tell them it’s impounded. It must not be cleaned.”

“You got it,” Aidan said.

“Nelson, transfer the station files to our RI. It’ll run visual recognition on that face. Christabel, get into the hire company’s records. Who paid for the boat?”

“Yes, boss.”

The Directorate RI took ninety seconds to review every camera record from the station, running each face through a recognition program to identify the man on the marina.

“There he is,” Paula exclaimed contentedly as the largest screen in the situation van showed their suspect strolling down the main platform to a waiting train, still wearing his yellow shirt. The timeline was thirty-seven minutes after the attack. They watched the RI follow him through the cameras until he was sitting in a carriage on an express train heading for Earth. The train moved out of the station.

“Let’s go,” Paula said.

*

The three of them took Nelson’s helicopter back to the station. There was a train already waiting to leave, packed full of passengers angry at the delay. Paula, Christabel, and Nelson hurried into the first-class cabin and it left immediately, trundling along the track to the big wormhole generator half a mile beyond the marshaling yard. Once it was through, it made an unscheduled stop at a small service platform in EdenBurg’s vast terminal. They transferred over to an express heading for Earth.

Nalcol called as they reached the platform. “DNA match confirmed,” he told Paula. “The man on the boat was the one who took a leak at the launch site.”

“Send the file back to Paris,” she told him. “Find his profile.”

“He bought his train ticket with a onetime account,” Nelson told them. “Untraceable. But we’ve followed him through LA galactic. He caught a trans-Earth loop and got off at Sydney an hour ago. Caught a taxi.”

“Leave that to us,” Paula said. “The Directorate can track him.”

They sat back as the express accelerated out of EdenBurg. Five minutes later it was pulling into LA galactic.

“Basker just called,” Christabel said. “We’ve got a positive identification; visual corresponding to DNA. Dimitros Fiech. Address in Sydney. Works for Colliac Fak, a software development company. He’s a sales rep, so he travels around a lot. Oh, get this, Colliac’s Leisure Division supplies software to the travel industry, including the resort at Fire Plain.”

They left the express and started to run through the vast terminal to the platforms serving the trans-Earth loop. “Mine his background,” Paula told Christabel, then put a call in to the Directorate’s Sydney office. “I want a tactical team armored up and ready when we arrive. Have a helicopter pick us up at the station.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the duty officer replied. “The suspect’s taxi dropped him at the Wilkinson Tower off Penfold. We have two officers there now. As far as we know, he’s still inside.”

“Good work. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I’d like to observe, please,” Nelson said.

“Yes,” Paula said. “But that’s all.”

“I know.”

*

The loop train took them to Mexico City, followed by Rio, down to Buenos Aires, and then over the ocean to Sydney. A Directorate helicopter was sitting on the station security division pad, rotors spinning idly.

Paula and Christabel started putting on their armor as it lifted into the dark sky cloaking the city. Nelson watched enviously.

“If you do need back up-” he said.

“Then the city police will be happy to provide it,” Paula said.

He sighed and gave up.

The ancient harbor bridge was illuminated in orange and blue holographic outlines as they flew in parallel to it. A wall of skyscrapers punctured the cityscape behind Circular Quay, their surface illuminations throwing cold monochrome light down onto the deserted nighttime streets below. They landed on the roof of the fifty-story Wilkinson Tower. Five of the Directorate’s tactical team were waiting for them.

“Stay here,” Paula ordered Nelson as she hopped down onto the roof.

Dimitros Fiech’s apartment was on the thirteenth floor, looking inland. The Directorate team was evacuating the residents above and below.

“Fiech is a legend,” Christabel said as the elevator opened on the thirteenth floor. Three tactical team members were waiting for them, dressed in black armor and holding big ion pistols.

“Basker validates an eighteen-month employment record with Colliac Fak. Fiech’s CV and general background are false. It’ll withstand a standard employment agency search, but our RI burned right through it. Records were inserted, referees are false. He’s a genuine undercover agent for someone, all right.”

“Thanks,” Paula said. Her red virtual finger touched a communication icon, opening a secure link to the tactical team. “Be aware, we confirm target is hostile. He has access to weapons and does not hesitate to open fire. Civilians are not safe. Squad sergeant?”