“She wasn’t lying,” Janet said, reading her smart. “About the Mackintoshes. All purchased at public auction in the last decade. Anonymous bidder in every case, as you might expect.”
I nodded, saying nothing and watching the cartoon playing out on the tunnel wall beyond the pipe carriage window. The Yin-side pipe network had hand-drawn animation cells every ten yards so that as the carriage streaked by the passengers were treated to a comic vignette or two. This one was vaguely recognisable, a recreation of some ancient 2D in which a cat and a mouse were locked in endless slapstick conflict, some of it insanely violent. Is that how he sees us? I wondered as the cat took yet another mallet to the head. Me chasing around after him forever. The cunning mouse always out-thinking the dumb but relentless cat.
“She wasn’t entirely honest though,” Janet went on. “About the amicable divorce, I mean.”
“Hubby turned up dead after all?”
“No, but court records show he contested the pre-nup, on grounds of mental cruelty inflicted by his wife’s continual and flagrant adultery. Seems Oksana wasn’t shy about pursuing her recreational activities. Rich people get bored, I guess. Weird thing is, hubby drops his suit only two days after filing it and quickly finds himself a job down the well.”
“Big bro looking out for little sis. I doubt she asked him to.”
“For a psychopathic personality he seems to have a bit of a sentimental streak.”
“Yeah, and I once arrested a multiple rapist who was very nice to his pet parakeet. Sentimentality doesn’t mean shit.”
My smart buzzed out the urgent chirp of a Department call, Leyla’s ID flashing on the screen. “Yeah?” I said, ignoring Janet’s grin.
“Struck lucky with the goon hunt, boss,” Leyla said. “Found Ignacio Fuentes holed up in a laundry on Yang Six. The owner snitched him out, think he’s tired of the pizza boxes piling up.”
“Good. I’ll have a covert surveillance team there in an hour. Get Timor to put it out, his snitch network’s better than mine. Besides, if it comes from me Mr Mac will know it’s a set-up.”
“OK. One other thing. The Rybak case, that phrase you wanted me to research.”
“You got something?”
“No firm point of origin but it did flag up on a Downside homicide this AM. Mass shooting on one of those aquatic habs. Looks pretty nasty, over a dozen killed. The local Demons took the perp down. I’m linking to a vid that captured the whole thing. He’s shouting the same thing Rybak said just before Corvin did his wolfman act.”
From light we are born to light we return.
“I’m thinking some kind of murder cult,” Leyla was saying. “Buncha loons get together on the net and plan the ultimate killing spree. If so, we’ll see more of these.”
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “Leave it with me. Concentrate on Fuentes.”
“Sure. But promise me I’ll be lead when we work this other thing.”
I heard Janet suppress a giggle and said, “Not in the promises game, Inspector. Get to work.”
I placed a Pol-net contact request to the lead investigator on the Downside killing spree and glanced up to see Janet’s reflection in the carriage window, still giggling.
Riviera had named her the Aguila, a title that didn’t quite match her appearance. She was a converted military surplus Samson Class freighter, bulked out with enlarged plasma nacelles and an expanded cargo bay that did little to enhance her brutally functional looks. Riviera had cashed in his entire savings portfolio to buy her, even then he only managed to meet the asking price thanks to a loan from yours truly. It wasn’t an entirely altruistic gesture; I had a favour to ask at the time.
“Still can’t get used to it,” Lucy said, greeting me at the cargo bay ramp with a warm hug before drawing back, frowning as she scanned my face. “Admit it, you were way hotter as a scumbag.”
“This is Janet,” I said, stepping back. “Janet, meet Lucy, pilot and first mate of the Aguila.”
“So I finally get to meet the missus, huh?” Lucy ignored Janet’s hand to give her a hug of her own.
“Not quite,” Janet told her, offering a sympathetic smile as Lucy released her. “Sorry for your loss. Ceres must have been a terrible experience for all involved.”
“It’s OK,” I told Lucy as she frowned, unsure of how to respond. She had been left in absolutely no doubt about the consequences of ever speaking about Ceres. “She does that.” I nodded at the open cargo bay. “He in?”
“’Course.” She turned and started up the ramp, gesturing for us to follow. “He hardly ever leaves the ship when we’re in dock.”
“It’s all over.” Riviera had taken on a few additional mods since Janet last met him, sturdier prosthetics to cope with life outside the forgiving micro-grav of the Axis and a miniature lidar array grafted onto his sonar eye-implants so he could see in vacuum. It was all second-hand tech, a couple of years behind the state-of-the-art, making him resemble a human personification of his ship; a patched up old warhorse refusing to retire. He sat at the flight-engineer’s station in the Aguila’s cramped bridge, miniature soldering iron in hand and one of his legs in his lap as he tinkered with a servo on the knee joint.
“Over and done, years ago,” he went on, barely glancing up. “What good will raking it up do?”
“History is the greatest teacher,” Janet replied. “If people truly understand what happened perhaps they can avoid the same mistakes. Future generations…”
“Future generations will wonder why a bunch of primativas went to war over a collection of floating scrap iron. People are already forgetting. Ask her.” He jerked his head at Lucy. “Doesn’t know shit about the war and doesn’t want to.”
“I know enough,” Lucy muttered, turning back to the hatchway. “Gonna check the plasma relays.”
“I did that this morning,” Riviera snapped.
“Then I really do need to check them.” She swung herself onto the ladder and climbed out of view.
“Colonel,” Janet said. “You have a unique perspective on the major events of the war. Some accounts credit you with ensuring a CAOS victory…”
“Victory?” He rasped out a laugh, smoke rising from a small patch of solder. “That what it was?”
Janet started to speak again, falling silent as I touched her shoulder with a slight shake of the head. “Lucy working out OK?” I asked him, drawing a suspicious scowl.
“Well enough.”
“Bullshit. She’s the best pilot on the Slab and you know it, earning less than half the salary she could be if she had any idea how valuable her skill-set is. How is business, anyway? Whilst I’m here I should really get a detailed report on my investment.”
He stared up at me, the lidar on his sonar array blinking on and off, presumably as the targeting system responded to an increased adrenaline level. Securing Lucy a berth had been part of the reason for my loan, the other was knowing how much being in my debt would piss him off.
After a few seconds his lidar stopped blinking and he turned to Janet, growling his assent.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said, making for the hatch.
“She is.”
I watched Lucy tap a code into a readout on the main plasma reservoir, issuing a soft tut of disapproval at the results. “He still thinks point 92 efficiency is good enough,” she said. “Wouldn’t last long in the Belt with an attitude like that.”
“How’s school?” I asked. She’d been taking online courses recently, trying to get a General Education Certificate, the precursor to obtaining a full pilot’s license rather than the provisional one she held just now. The immunity deal I’d negotiated for her included a proviso that she remain on the grid and free of any criminal activity.
“Boring as shit, for the most part.” She moved on to the CO2 tank that powered the secondary thrusters. “Like the sciencey and engineering stuff though. Got an A on my last physics exam. Guess there’s something to be said for growing up around fusion reactors.”
“That’s good. Once you get your GEC you can start looking for a proper job.”
“I like it here. He’s a mean old doofus, but he lets me get on with piloting this tub around. Plus I haven’t killed anyone in well over a year.”
“I met Othin Vargold yesterday, case I’m working on. Says they’ve finally got a name for the big kahuna.”
“Yeah?” She looked up from the CO2 readout, eyes suddenly bright with interest. Like many in her line of work she had a keen interest in Astravista’s grand design.
“The Jason Alpha. It’s from Greek myth.”
She snorted. “That’s all kinds of dull.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
“You buddy buddies with Vargold now?”
“Hardly.”
“So no chance of wangling me a job with Astravista?”
“Thought you liked it here.”
“For now. But a girl’s gotta think of her future.”
“Get your GEC and I’ll see what I can do.”
Lucy pouted and turned back to the readout. “She’ll be on her way to Proxima Centauri by then.”
“At relativistic speeds. We’ll all be dead and gone by the time she gets back.”
“No offence, Alex, but it’s a price worth paying. First ship to travel to another star. I mean, come on.”
“It’s just a star. No Earth-like planets in orbit. No second eden.”
“Who needs Earth? We’re a space-faring species now. As long as there’s a load of asteroids to bust up into habs and fuel, we can live anywhere.”
My smart buzzed with a Pol-net ID and I climbed back down to the cargo bay to answer it. “DCI McLeod, right?” the female voice on the other end asked.
“That’s me.”
“Phaedra Diallo, Salacia Security.” Salacia was the aquatic hab where the mass killing went down.
“Thanks for the call,” I said. “I guess you must be pretty busy right now.”
“Forensic just started. We don’t have our own team so they had to be airlifted in from Bermuda. You got something for me?”
“Possibly. It may seem tenuous but there could be a link between your perp and one we took down yesterday.”
“He a mass-shooting maniac like our guy?” The words might be flippant but I could hear the tension in her voice, an octave or two short of outright shock. Massacres have a tendency to do that to people.
“No, he was a splice, a shifter actually.”
“Thought they were a myth.”
“This Jed was all too real. We lost five of our people taking him down. He was wanted for the murder of Craig Rybak. That mean anything to you?”
“Sounds familiar. Some Upside rich guy, right?”
“He was the co-founder of Astravista.”
“No shit. Can’t see any immediate link here. I mean our guy wasn’t a splice. We’re still working up a full ID. He was a recent arrival, so we don’t have a complete picture yet, but it’s clear he’s no one special. Just a loon who got up this morning and decided to wander around the main Salacia concourse killing people with a speargun.”
“Your SWAT take him down?”
“We don’t have SWAT. We have me and three other full time officers. I took him down.”
First kill, I deduced, noting the shrill note she did well to moderate before it transformed into a sob. “He was shouting something on the vid I saw,” I said. “‘From light we are born…’”
“‘To light we return.’ Yeah. What about it?”
“Rybak said exactly the same thing just before he was killed.”
A short pause. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Do you have any idea what it means?”
“Right now, I’m not sure I could remember my own smart ID.”
She’s no Demon, I decided. Just an unlucky rent-a-cop. “I’m sending you our case file. I’d be grateful if you could look it over when you get the chance, cross ref with whatever your forensic team comes up with.”
“Will do. Guess you expect me to reciprocate, huh?”
“As long as it doesn’t conflict with local law. I know the aquatic habs have some pretty strict disclosure statutes.”
“Screw that. You can have it all. It’ll take a few hours though.” She paused, a heavy sigh coming over the smart. “Two separate murders linked by the same phrase. Some sort of Pol-net alert seems appropriate.”
“I’ll take care of it. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
“Appreciated. And if you wanna come down here and run this thing, you’re more than welcome.”
“Been down the well only once in my entire life. It was more than enough.”