ONE

 

 

DETECTIVE INIKO ZAGRANDO hurried through the port in Valhalla Basin. He had his right hand up to show the bright gold badge on his palm. The badge blared Police business! Move out of the way! in that official genderless voice that seemed ubiquitous on Callisto. He dodged chairs outside of restaurants, passengers pausing to read menus, and the occasional alien, looking lost. A clump of passengers huddled near the ever-changing Departures sign—a sight unusual anywhere else, but common here. New non-sanctioned arrivals on Callisto often had their links automatically severed. Not only did it keep them in the dark, it made them feel helpless.

Aleyd Corporation, which ran and owned Valhalla Basin—all of Callisto, really—liked making people feel helpless.

Zagrando ran to the Earth Alliance departure wing, his breath coming harder than he expected. He was out of shape, despite the mandatory exercise requirements of the Valhalla Police Department. Apparently the damn requirements weren’t as stringent as the idiots in charge of VPD seemed to think.

He wasn’t dressed for this kind of run, either. He was wearing a suit coat, which had the benefit of hiding his laser pistol but was otherwise too hot and constricting, and brand-new shoes whose little nanoparticles had actually attached to his links and warned him to slow down or else the shoes would be ruined by incorrect use.

If he could shut off the shoe cacophony, he would. His links were giving him enough trouble without that.

Instructions had come from all sides: Emergency at the port. Requesting street patrol backup and Detective Iniko Zagrando. In all his years at the VPD—and that was more than he wanted to contemplate—he had never received a call like this, and certainly not at the port itself.

He was a detective. He investigated after the crime, not during the crime. And he certainly didn’t get his hands dirty with an in-process emergency unless he happened to stumble on the scene.

Two security guards came out of nowhere to flank him and push away other passengers. The passengers emerging from the various departure wings stopped when they saw him, blinking in surprise and a bit of panic.

Welcome to Valhalla Basin, he thought. It only goes downhill from here.

But of course he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, he was breathing so damn hard. How had he let himself go like this? Of course, he knew the answer—misery caused a lot of problems. And because he didn’t want to think about that, and because things would only go downhill from here for him as well, he commanded his VPD bio link to send him a surge of extra energy, something Aleyd happily provided all its public servants—in limited quantities, of course. No sense in having them overuse the energy and collapse in a heap that required massive hospitalization and weeks of recovery.

He had never used his before. Suddenly he felt like he could fly. He left the security guards in the dust.

Oh, man, would he pay for this.

Then he didn’t think about it. He hit the Earth Alliance departure wing, and some port staff members used their arms to point the way as two more security guards found him.

With the staff members there, he realized that someone should have uploaded an illuminated map straight to his links. He should have seen his path outlined in red (for emergency, of course) over his vision, and he should have been able to follow it blindly. And he did mean blindly. He should have been able to close his eyes and follow the backup voice instructions telling him how many steps to take and how far he had to go before turning a corner.

He didn’t have an automated map and the port employees knew it. That was why they had shown up. Something was going very wrong.

Although he didn’t know what that something could be. Emergency services links were always the last to shut down. Especially on Valhalla Basin, where Aleyd controlled everything and hated relinquishing that control.

Two more security guards joined him, faster guards, who managed to move passengers aside so that he didn’t have to weave around them. He didn’t have to weave around most of them now anyway.

Either the word had gotten out that he was running through the Earth Alliance wing or that there was some crisis here or maybe, just maybe, someone had actually augmented his emergency beacon so that the obnoxious genderless voice his badge was producing was blaring all over this part of the port.

Police business! Move out of the way!

Why the hell did the crisis have to happen in the middle of the biggest wing of the port, farthest from parking and the main entrance? Why the hell wasn’t this thing built for easy access behind the scenes, where it was important?

He’d been in the back areas of this port, and it was a twisted maze of passages, tunnels, and viewing rooms that allowed him to spy on arrivals. It just didn’t allow him—or anyone in port security—to get to those arrivals quickly.

Finally, he reached the part of the wing that his private message had directed him to. The arrivals area for Earth. This part of the port was festive, with blues, greens, and whites just like the Mother Planet herself. No sense surprising new arrivals from Earth with Callisto’s odd coloring, courtesy of Jupiter, which loomed large over this—the second largest of her moons. No matter how much Valhalla Basin itself tried to look like an Earth city, it didn’t even come close. It was too brown, too red, too uniform. No Earth city had a gigantic red ball looming over it.

Plus, the dome itself—with all its regulated light periods and dark periods—was too uniform, too predictable. Earth had winds and storms and blazing hot sunshine. Earth was about beauty and discomfort.

Valhalla Basin was about sameness.

Except today.

Just a few meters to go. Two more turns, if he remembered this section right, and he’d be in the holding area for suspect arrivals. He whipped around the first corner, and someone grabbed him around the waist.

He twisted, but someone else caught his right hand and pulled it down, pinning it to the arm holding him. Then a third someone put a hand over his mouth.

All three of the someones pulled him into a room he hadn’t even known existed and slammed the door shut.

Then they let go of him.

“What the hell?!” he said as he turned around.

And stopped.

Three men stood behind him. He recognized only one of them, but that was the important one: Ike Jarvis, Zagrando’s handler for the Earth Alliance Intelligence Service. Zagrando had been undercover with the Valhalla Basin Police for more than a decade.

“What’s going on?” he asked, more calmly than he had a moment ago.

Jarvis took a step forward. He was smaller than the other two men he had brought with him, but not by much. They were brawny guys, probably enhanced for strength and muscle, but they were naturally tall.

Zagrando had been a good street fighter once upon a time, but he suspected those skills were as dormant as his running skills. No wonder these guys had taken him so easily.

“We have to get you out of here,” Jarvis said. His gravelly voice had no hint of urgency, unlike his words.

“Am I blown?” Zagrando had no idea how it could have happened. He’d told very few people about his work with Earth Alliance Intelligence, and none recently.

The last person he had told had been a lawyer from Armstrong, on Earth’s Moon. She represented a young girl whose mother had been kidnapped and who died as a result. The girl—Talia Shindo—had impressed Zagrando so much with her smarts and ability to operate under pressure that he had almost blown his cover with VPD to help her.

But he hadn’t. Her mother’s kidnappers had provided the best lead in his investigation of Aleyd. As he had told the attorney, his work came first.

Still, this moment caught him by surprise.

“No,” Jarvis said.

“If I’m not blown, then what’s going on?” he asked.

“We need you elsewhere,” Jarvis said.

Zagrando shook his head. “I’m finally making progress after a decade in this sterile place, and you want to yank me out?”

“Your progress is why we’re yanking you out. We can’t do any more here—you can’t do any more here—without letting Aleyd know that we’re onto them.” Jarvis had a little half-smile, almost a sneer, that he used when he was trying to smooth over something.

“Listen,” Zagrando said, letting the urgency into his voice. “If I leave here for good, Aleyd will know that I was the one investigating them. People don’t leave Valhalla Basin permanently without Aleyd’s permission.”

Jarvis’s weird half-smile faded. He nodded his head, just once, in acknowledgement. “Believe it or not, I have always read your reports. I know how Aleyd works.”

“Then you know that I can’t leave,” Zagrando said.

“You’ll leave.” Jarvis turned toward the back wall. One of the two men who had come with him touched the side wall, and a panel appeared. Zagrando had seen those before. They were tied to the security personnel at the port.

The man touched the panel and the back wall became grayish, but clear. The port’s version of one-way glass. Whoever was in the next room couldn’t see anyone in this room, but Zagrando, Jarvis, and the other two could see what was going on next to them.

And what was going on was a hell of a fight. A vicious fight, with lasers and knives of all things, and nearly a dozen people, many of them Black Fleet from their appearance.

In the middle of it all was Zagrando himself.

Zagrando’s breath caught. The clothing was slightly off, and so was the body. It was a younger version of him, without the added weight and the gone-to-seed muscles. The other Zagrando fought like a demon, but he was outnumbered and alone.

Zagrando had no idea who these people were. Jarvis’s assistant touched the panel again, and the side wall turned gray. Outside it, several street police officers mixed with security guards from the port and a couple of panicked administrators. They were all trying to get into that room, but something blocked them.

“They don’t know we’re here?” he asked Jarvis.

“They don’t even know the room is here,” Jarvis said. “Earth Alliance ports have extra rooms just for top secret Earth Alliance business. Without the rooms, the Earth Alliance doesn’t sanction the port.”

“Even with Aleyd?” Zagrando asked. He’d been around that corporation too long. Like everyone else on Valhalla Basin, he thought of Aleyd as unconquerable.

“Aleyd started as a small company in the Earth Alliance. They were nothing when they built this port. The rooms have been here twice as long as anyone has been on Callisto, and there is no record of them outside of the Alliance hierarchy. They don’t know about us,” Jarvis said. He hadn’t taken his gaze off the fight.

“So those people are ours?” Zagrando asked, nodding toward the fight. He wasn’t quite looking at it. It felt odd to watch that younger version of him somehow managing to stay on his feet, despite the cuts, slashes, and burns.

“Oh, no.” Jarvis crossed his arms. “The only one in there who is ours is that fast-grow clone of yours.”

Bile rose in Zagrando’s throat. He had forgotten about all the DNA he had donated when he signed on with the Intelligence service. They were allowed to use it to heal him or to fast-grow a clone to get him out of a tight spot.

He swallowed hard, more shaken than he expected to be. “You’re going to let him die.”

“Yes.” Jarvis watched as if he were seeing a flat vid and not an actual fight.

“Good God,” Zagrando said, moving toward the window, actually looking at his clone. Strong, still surviving, fighting as hard as he could to live another few minutes. He was outnumbered, and his only weapon—a laser pistol that was a twin to Zagrando’s—was on the floor by the door.

Outside the other door, the police and guards still struggled to get in. Zagrando knew they wouldn’t, that the men in this room controlled that doorway, controlled that fight.

“We can’t let this continue,” Zagrando said.

Jarvis gave him a sideways look. “This is what he was designed for. Let him fulfill his mission.”

“He has the brain of a three-year-old,” Zagrando said. “He doesn’t understand mission.”

“He doesn’t understand anything except fighting,” Jarvis said. “That’s what he was grown for, that’s what he does. If you don’t die today, then Aleyd will look for you forever.”

“Let them look.” Zagrando hurried the door, then stopped, and doubled back to the control panel. He peered at it. “How do I get in that room?”

“You don’t,” Jarvis said.

Zagrando shoved the assistant aside and hit the controls on the panel. Nothing happened. He used both his VPD clearance and his Earth Alliance clearance and still nothing happened.

“You can’t do this,” Zagrando said. “This is murder.”

“I know how hard it is to see a replica of yourself go through this,” Jarvis said in a tone that implied he didn’t know, “but I have to beg to differ on the murder charge. Fast-grow clones are not human under the law, and if they are designed to die in an experiment or a mission, then their death is sanctioned. We filed all the necessary documents. His death is legal.”

“Son of a bitch,” Zagrando said, and launched himself at the door. But he couldn’t get out. He tugged, pressed his identification against the door, gave the door some instructions through his links, and still he couldn’t get out. Then he went to the window and pounded, thinking maybe he could get the attention of the police officers or the guards. But he couldn’t. They continued their battle against their own door.

He realized at that moment that his links to the outside world were down. He hadn’t heard any emergency notices nor could he send a message to them via his links. Plus the constant noise that Valhalla’s government called “necessary maintenance” was gone.

“You can stop now,” Jarvis said. “It no longer matters.”

Zagrando whirled. His clone was in a fetal position on the floor, blood pooling around him. There was arterial spray on the far wall and on several of the fighters.

“You didn’t give him any way to heal himself,” Zagrando said.

“On the contrary,” Jarvis said. “He has all the links you have except for the Earth Alliance identification and security clearances. He just doesn’t know how to use them.”

“Didn’t know,” the assistant said in a conversational tone.

Zagrando slammed the assistant against the control panel. “This is not something you should be discussing so easily.”

The assistant didn’t fight him. He let Zagrando hold him against the wall. Zagrando put his arms down and backed away. He had wanted that fight; they had known he had wanted that fight, and they hadn’t given it to him.

“We have to leave now, Iniko,” Jarvis said, his use of Zagrando’s first name his only acknowledgement of Zagrando’s distress. “We have to get out before they close down this part of the port.”

“Oh, you don’t have a secret room for that?” Zagrando snapped.

“Actually, we do have our own way out,” Jarvis said. “And you’re coming with us.”

“And if I don’t?” Zagrando asked.

Jarvis turned toward him, his expression flat. “You’re already dead, Iniko. Which body those people out there find is your choice.”

“I thought we worked together,” Zagrando said.

“So did I,” Jarvis said with that weird half-smile. “So did I.”