“Tell me they didn’t have the whole building,” Toiwa said as Valverdes and the rest of her entourage, including the infonet specialist Okafor, approached the six-story building. It was surrounded by constables, small teams of Army troopers in half-armor, and bots belonging to both services. AR warning signs promised dire consequences for anyone who breached the perimeter. The mid-shift crowd of onlookers and passers-by gave the warning signs all due respect, but the presence of soldiers bearing shock guns and goober launchers probably had a lot to do with that. Even the media bots kept a respectable distance away.
“Just the top floor, and an office suite on the ground level,” Valverdes reassured her. “Sergeant Imoke says they were posing as a consulting firm advising groups headed for the New Arm colonies, but we’ve found no record of any actual clients.”
“Not so far, at any rate,” Okafor chimed in. She swept a white cane in front of her as she walked, the ferrule making scritching sounds on the turf as they walked across the street. She held her left arm across her chest, her gloved, open hand over her sternum. Her fingers moved continuously in slow, arrhythmic dance, her version of a sighted person interacting with a private AR field. An autopallet whisked along behind her, stacked with expensive-looking technical gear. The ever-present Constable Chijindu, head swiveling back and forth, led their little parade.
They passed through Imoke’s cordon and into the building’s foyer, now crowded with crime-scene technicians, Constabulary infonet specialists, and an idle pair of medics. It took Toiwa a moment to twig to what was wrong with the scene before she recognized it. The building’s own bots were stilled, locked down, robbing the tableau of the ubiquitous background movement of the station’s robotic population. Floor polishers, wall-climbing dusters, and a couple of courier bots all sat on the floor of the foyer or the central hallway leading to the ground-level office suites. The sound of Okafor’s cane switched to a sharp tick-tick-tick as they left the pedgrass street behind for the tiled interior. Valverdes directed them past the lifts, also locked down for the duration of the op, to a stairwell guarded by a uniformed constable in tactical gear and a pair of Colonel Carmagio’s troopers, these in full unpowered armor. After detailing the constables to pick up Okafor’s gear from the autopallet and carry it wherever she told them to, they trudged up the stairs.
Upstairs they found the doors of all the apartments, neatly blown out by cutting charges, leaning against the hallway walls. A ‘Follow Me’ arrow provided by Sergeant Imoke led them to the living room of one of the apartments. Imoke himself stood in the middle of a crowded, partially furnished room nearly half the size of Toiwa’s entire apartment, directing the assorted uniformed constables, plain-clothes detectives, forensic technicians, and the military breaching team he’d borrowed for the occasion. A pair of individuals—Toiwa couldn’t make out anything other than that there were two people—slumped against the wall, surrounded by constables.
Imoke wrapped up his conversation with a Constabulary bot-wrangler and gave Toiwa a jaunty salute. “Fourth time was the charm, Commissioner.” He twirled his index finger in a circle. “The first three locations the signals team located for us were quite small. But as soon as we realized they had the whole floor plus the office downstairs, I thought we might strike water. I’m pleased to say we did.”
“You’ve secured their hardware?” Okafor asked.
“Indeed we have. Corporal?” Imoke flagged down one of the uniformed constables and sent Okafor and her temporary pack mules off to plunder the digital spoils.
“Have you identified them?” Toiwa asked.
He flashed the station sign for ‘No’. “Just the high-quality fake IDs they used to rent this property. But the medics took assays. We’ll have DNA traces and initial microbiome flora analysis in twenty-four hours. But if you’ll come this way, Commissioner, you’ll see why I asked you to come personally.” He led them down a hallway past the bathroom to a still-closed door, guarded by one of the uniforms. “We spotted her with the microbots before we executed the breach. She’s got a biomed feed into her djinn the medics were able to tap once they used the emergency overrides, so they determined she was just sedated. I had them pull her off the drugs. She woke up while you were en route.” He tapped the door twice, then pushed it open.
Councilor Walla, dressed for a normal day in a green sari with teal trim, sat on the narrow bed set against the far wall with a standard-issue emergency blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The room was small, perhaps three and a half meters in each direction, painted a cheerful yellow. An emergency services medic in her high-vis orange jumpsuit hovered nearby, surrounded by a dizzying array of biomonitor feeds. Walla switched from scowling at the medic to scowling at Toiwa. “Nnena! Why am I being held here? And why won’t they give me my djinn?” She shook her naked wrist in the medic’s face.
Toiwa slipped in to stand in the tiny room, leaving Imoke, Kala, and Chijindu in the hallway, and leaned down over the councilor. “We just need to make sure you’re all right after your ordeal,” she said in her best ‘soothing ruffled feathers’ tone. “As for your djinn, I imagine it’s evidence, and being scanned as part of the investigation. I’m sure it will be returned once the technicians have ensured it isn’t compromised.” And, no doubt, captured a gestalt for evidentiary purposes, but no need to trouble Walla with that little fact yet...
Walla pushed herself upright and stood, if not face to face with Toiwa, at least face to chin. Her anger was palpable. “You have no right to treat my djinn like that! I’m an elected councilor—”
“My people have every right to do so, this is a damned crime scene, madam,” Toiwa said, shifting immediately to ice-queen mode. “These people are under arrest for cracking the station’s infonet and your djinn likely was compromised. They kidnapped you so smoothly my people didn’t know they had you until Imoke’s team prepared to breach the door. We’re not taking chances.” She leaned in towards the politician and spoke softly but clearly. “And before you go off about sensitive political matters, I don’t give a damn about what you’ve got in your storage unless there’s evidence of a crime.”
Walla’s eyes blazed with a ‘We’re not finished yet’ glare Toiwa found refreshing in a politician. Why can’t I have more adversaries who just clearly hate my guts, instead of ones that act like they’re my friends while angling the knife?
Toiwa glanced at the medic. “Is she fit to travel?” After affirming the councilor was, indeed, fit to travel, but that the biomonitor sensors on her forearms should remain in place for another hour, the medic began packing up her gear. Toiwa stepped aside and pointed at the doorway. “Why don’t we get you to more comfortable surroundings, Célestine, where we can take your statement?”
“Already told them what I remember,” Walla grumbled as she shouldered past Toiwa and out into the hall, letting the emergency blanket slip from her shoulders for Kala to snatch up. The little party reversed their earlier journey, Chijindu in the lead this time as they trekked back into the living room, followed by Kala and Imoke, with Walla and Toiwa bringing up the rear.
Once Walla entered the living room, though,
her behavior turned bizarre. Her head jerked down towards the prisoners, now laid out on the floor and in restraints, still dazed from the breach team’s stunners. She stopped in her tracks abruptly. Toiwa turned to face the politician. “It’s all right, Councilor, they’re secure. They can’t hurt you again,” she said. Walla remained still, her jaw working furiously. Toiwa reached out one tentative hand, tapping the other woman on the shoulder. “Councilor?”
Walla suddenly twisted at the waist and smacked Toiwa’s hand away. Toiwa was about to apologize but the woman continued twisting and drove her fist with the full force of her body into Toiwa’s stomach.
Toiwa had taken her share of knocks as a uniform, and during training since, but no one had ever sucker-punched her like that. She folded over like an umbrella and staggered backwards, falling on her ass.
Walla spun around and kicked Valverdes precisely in the back of zer left knee, sending zer sprawling to the floor. Toiwa tried to right herself as Walla lunged towards one of the uniformed constables. She jerked his sidearm free from its holster and moved to straddle one of the prisoners. She aimed down at the supine figure’s head as her finger slipped over the trigger—
Chijindu hit Walla like a runaway lorry. One meaty hand clamped down over her right wrist and wrenched the weapon up and off target even as his body slammed into her. The force drove the politician into the wall with a resounding thud. The big man kept her pinned against the wall with his left hip while he planted one enormous hand on her right elbow. She squirmed and tried to wriggle free as he stripped the weapon from her. He tossed it to a surprised Sergeant Imoke who just managed to catch the weapon. Chijindu proceeded to put Walla into a submission hold, rumbling, “Now now, settle down, ma’am.” He arched, pulling her off her feet, and leaned his head back as the older woman tried to claw at his face. Failing to reach her target, she pounded ineffectually at his forearms.
The whole action was over in less than twenty seconds. Imoke blinked at the pistol in his hands, loaded with frangible anti-personnel rounds—the breaching team had expected armed resistance—before handing it to the clearly embarrassed constable who’d lost it. The sergeant helped Valverdes up before hurrying to assist Toiwa, an expression of concern on his face. “Are you all right, Commissioner?”
Toiwa flashed the ‘OK’ sign before taking his hand to pull herself upright. Well, mostly upright. She waved him off as she stood, or rather, hunched. “What the dust are you about, Célestine?” she wheezed at Walla, whose struggles grew more feeble by the second.
The councilor ignored Toiwa and instead did her utmost to elbow Chijindu in the ribs, but her arms moved like noodles left too long in the pot, loose and floppy. Her eyes opened wide and her face suddenly drew into a rictus of pure animus and she hissed loudly as she tried to pry his hands loose, but he resolutely maintained his vise-like grip.
“Enough,” Toiwa said, a little less wheezily this time. “Where’s that medic?”
Chijindu tightened his arm and Walla passed out before the medic arrived. At Toiwa’s insistence they tranquilized her anyway, and loaded the councilor onto a gurney for transport to the north ring’s trauma center.
“I didn’t know she had close combat training,”
Imoke said with a shake of his head.
“She doesn’t,” Valverdes said. Ze’d suffered nothing worse than a bruised cheek and a bit of lost pride from zer trip to the floor. “I pulled her file when Sergeant Imoke told us she was here. Nothing like that at all in her history.”
Imoke and Chijindu exchanged glances. “She moved like someone with expertise and experience,” Chijindu said. “Just like...”
Toiwa cut him off with a raised hand. “I agree.” She nodded at her aide. “I don’t doubt your command of the official records. But the way she took us both down was too smooth for someone who’d never practiced. We need to know for sure.”
With a glance around the crowded room, Valverdes opened a secure channel among the four of them. <There’s something very wrong here. I recommend we bring the military medical people in on this.>
<What are you concerned about?>
<I’d like to await more evidence.>
<See to it, then.> With her breath back, Toiwa felt as good as she was going to without some analgesics, so she moved out into the hall. Okafor and her little troupe of porters joined them bearing armloads of EM-shielded bags. “Any problems, M. Okafor?”
“None, Commissioner. Your Constabulary specialists did an admirable job locking down the server during the operation. Data loss should be minimal.”
“That’s good to hear. How long until you have a preliminary analysis?”
“Impossible to say for certain until we get a good look. But we should have the scope of things mapped by sometime this evening.”
“Very well. Let Inspector Valverdes, Sergeant Imoke, or myself know if you need anything.”
The alert for an incoming call from the governor flashed in her optics. “Shit,” Toiwa said, and opened the call, even as she tried to figure out how to tell Ruhindi that her main political supporter on the station was now a person of interest in the biggest investigation on Ileri Station since the war.