Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files)

  * *

  Hardveur Central Hospital was a cool, sterile building, the emergency waiting room cast in whites and faded blues which Ramirez supposed were meant to be soothing.

  She felt many things then. Her shoulders were cold, her head was aching, her hands were burning from wrapping themselves around the cup of coffee Harrigan had pushed into her grip. Furious. Terrified. Confused.

  ‘Soothed’ wasn’t anywhere on the list.

  Harrigan sank onto the bench next to her with a grunt. ‘Flat-foots just showed up to take the van back.’

  ‘Navarro with them?’

  ‘Course not. Bastard ain’t gonna show his face round here.’ His rural accent was broader now. ‘Knows I’d kick his ass again.’

  ‘And get thrown in jail.’

  ‘It’d be worth it.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘They did talk, though. Ragnarok scattered from the warehouse and got away, of course. And Jovak broke out of custody when they were dragging him back to the cruiser.’

  That broke through the haze. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘It’s pretty easy to break out of police custody,’ said Harrigan, voice pointedly calm. ‘Especially when they loosen your cuffs and look the other way.’

  Ramirez scowled. ‘I hope it hurt when they faked their injuries on one another.’ She went to rise, but Harrigan planted a heavy hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Easy, now.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me to -’

  ‘I didn’t, the Doc did. Just ‘cos you weren’t in the immediate blast don’t mean an explosion like that didn’t rattle you. You were walking around like you were drunk.’

  ‘I‘ve been patched up and discharged.’

  ‘And told to rest.’

  Ramirez’s eyes flashed. ‘Maggie’s in there, in surgery. Navarro sold us out to Ragnarok, and not only are they still at large, so is Jovak. This is no time to rest.’ She fought to keep her voice down. At 0200 hours, the hospital’s waiting room was quiet but not empty. She had no desire to draw attention from the night staff, or the occasional late-night reveller whose evening had come to an accidental halt, or from the other unlucky souls stuck down here at this time.

  ‘And what‘re you going to do?’

  ‘Hunt them -’

  ‘Right here, right now. What‘re you going to do?’

  Ramirez’s eyes landed on the double doors leading into the belly of the building. The last two hours had been a mess. She’d done her best to staunch Tycho’s bleeding, but she’d seen enough gunshot wounds to know that was only the start of the trouble. She’d been hit in the lower back, close enough to the spine to make her really worry, and she’d felt no guilt in using the police van’s comms to message ahead to the hospital.

  Nobody had asked questions when she’d stumbled out of the back, covered in blood, and flashed her OCMS ID. The paramedics had taken one look at Tycho before swarming over her, and Ramirez hadn’t got more than a few words of explanation out before Harrigan had called for more staff to see to her. She’d protested long enough to see Tycho strapped to a gurney and whisked through those double doors before succumbing to medical care.

  They’d helped. But she’d had worse. So now she sat and waited, hands given a perfunctory wash but with her partner’s blood still encrusted in her fingernails and soaked into her uniform jacket and trousers. All they’d been told was that Tycho was being rushed into emergency surgery.

  And wasn’t out yet.

  She drew a slow, laboured breath. ‘I’m going to wait,’ she said, and put down the coffee to scrub her face with her hands. She hadn’t lowered them when a thought struck her, and she added, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ He sounded more confused than guarded.

  ‘Going in there like you did. Not sure we’d have held out until the tactical team got their act together. And I couldn’t have carried Tycho on my own. Not after that.’ Running in a straight line had been difficult. She didn’t think her wild gunfire into the smoky ranks of Ragnarok had done anything but kept heads down.

  Another pause greeted her words, then he said, ‘I didn’t have much of a choice. Navarro was going to kill me.’

  She wasn’t sure if she should object - insist there had been a choice, or accept that he was the mercenary bastard he was trying to play. She wasn’t sure if she got too angry or too grateful that she wouldn’t burst into tears, and nobody needed that right now.

  Though it would almost be worth it for the look on his face.

  Then the double doors swung open for one of Tycho’s doctors to step through, out of scrubs. He looked exhausted, but Ramirez couldn’t read anything else - hope, cheer, despair, loss. It was too easy to imprint her own fear on his face.

  So she just stood.

  ‘Commander Ramirez?’

  Harrigan rose to his feet also, but she waved a hand at him. If Tycho was dead she didn’t want him standing next to her when she found out. ‘Marshals business,’ she said, not fighting the curt tone of her voice, and crossed the waiting room.

  ‘What do you have for me, Doctor?’ He had a name-badge, the part of her brain that was still alive and still a cop registered. Doctor Anwar. But to the rest of her body this could not have been more irrelevant.

  ‘Lieutenant Tycho’s going to live,’ he said, and suddenly his name was a pertinent detail as colour she hadn’t realised had faded from her vision rushed back into the world. ‘It was only a partial spinal cord injury and we’ve removed the bullet and stopped the internal bleeding. She’s resting now.’

  Ramirez’s shoulders sagged. She planted a hand on the reception desk to stop her legs from collapsing under her as the tension she’d been fuelled by for the last two hours began to shatter. ‘Oh, thank God -’

  ‘You should know that full recovery of motor functions is in question,’ continued Anwar. ‘There’s been compression of the spinal cord and we needed to remove bone fragments from the spinal canal in surgery. It’s too early to tell anything for sure, though. She won’t be moved for a week, at least, and we should know more by the time she’s ready for transfer.’ He had the kind of mellow voice she’d always thought doctors should have. Even if this calm came from obvious physical exhaustion.

  ‘Forseti Base military hospital,’ said Ramirez. ‘That’s where she’ll have to be sent.’ Once she was done here on Thor, she’d be damned if she didn’t have Tycho nearby where she could keep an eye on her. The question of recovery hung overhead, a new dark cloud in stormy skies. She tried to ignore it. That, at least, was something she could do nothing about - not now, not ever. It was out of her hands. She didn’t know if the lack of responsibility was comforting or if the helplessness made it worse.

  ‘Does she have any next of kin? We can deal with informing -’

  ‘She does. I’ll deal with it.’ Ramirez spoke curtly. Although the idea of telling Tycho’s mother what had happened did not appeal, it was her responsibility. Tycho was her partner. And she wanted to make absolutely sure the family stayed on Riyam, tens of light-years away from Ragnarok. ‘You‘re to keep me updated with any changes, Doctor, you understand?’

  ‘We’ll do our best to keep you appraised -’

  ‘And nobody is allowed to visit her without my permission. My explicit permission, given to you by me, in person,’ she continued, voice going flat as her mind began to move, now she had something to make decisions about.

  Doctor Anwar’s brow furrowed. ‘It’s not policy to allow just anyone in anyway -’

  ‘Even if someone comes in claiming they‘re family. Even if the Governor himself comes in. I don’t care if President Okoye wanders through that front door and asks to see Lieutenant Tycho, if I‘m not next to him giving the go-ahead, you don’t let him in. You understand?’

  ‘I understand, but -’

  ‘That’s an instruction given with all the authority of the Orion Confederacy Marshals Service, which means in this case my word has the full backing of the Confederate Senate. To violate this instruction i
s, in itself, a crime comparable to obstructing the course of justice or, in extreme cases, treason in a time of war.’ Her voice was a dull monotone of fury clamping around mundane power for reassurance.

  Anwar’s frown turned irritated. ‘Commander, I think you should go home and rest.’

  ‘I think you -’

  He planted a hand on her shoulder, grip firm at first but softening after a moment. Ramirez flinched and managed to not react further. ‘I understand your concern. I understand the situation here is tense. And I understand both your instructions and hospital policy. Absolutely no further harm is going to come to Lieutenant Tycho. Now, do you understand me?’

  His gaze flickered over her shoulder before she could argue, and Ramirez half-turned to see Harrigan behind her. How long he’d been lurking she couldn’t say, but he was distressingly quiet for such a big man at times.

  ‘Is there anything more we‘re going to learn tonight?’ asked Harrigan. ‘Or anything more we can do?’

  Doctor Anwar shook his head. ‘We’ll know more in the morning. Later. Much later. You should get some sleep - and you, Commander, should get some rest. You‘ve not had an easy evening and you need to look to yourself.’

  Harrigan stepped beside her and she squared her shoulders, ready to pull away if he tried to so much as lay a hand on her. ‘Come on,’ he said instead. ‘You heard the man. Let’s go home. Rest. Doctor’s orders.’

  Doctor Anwar nodded, eyes kind. ‘It’s the best thing you can do right now.’

  No, the best thing I can do right now is march into HCPD headquarters and blow Luis Navarro away. Ramirez sighed. But this will have to do.

  11

  The apartment looked murkier and more brown than ever before. Harrigan turned the lights on once they were through the door, but this just made the brown a miserable, soul-wrenching beige. ‘You should get some sleep.’

  ‘I have to report in,’ said Ramirez, pushing past him to head to the array of screens on the coffee table, and tried to not think about how this had been Tycho’s setup. The past tense clung to her thoughts, an unwelcome parasite draining energy and hope. ‘Director Tau needs to know.’

  ‘It’s 0300 hours, Ramirez. Sleep.’

  ‘It’s 1100 in Glitnir. Tau will be up. If we‘re going to get reinforcements, we’ll need to send word as soon as possible.’

  ‘And Tycho’s family?’

  Ramirez hesitated. ‘In the morning.’

  ‘Are you sure -’

  ‘Their daughter’s a military officer! This is what happens!’ she snapped, the frayed ends of nerves raw. ‘They can wait, they can be told properly when I‘m in a fit state to do it and not still coated in her blood, and when I can make sure they don’t try to come here to see her!’

  ‘Why would that be -’

  ‘I have enough to keep track of,’ said Ramirez, sitting before the screens and control pads, ‘without trying to look after Tycho’s family. It’s going to be hard enough making sure she’s safe.’

  ‘You‘re trusting hospital security?’

  ‘It’s either that or camp out in the waiting room. And I can help her more by fixing this. Now get me some coffee.’

  Harrigan balked - then took one look at her face and slunk to the kitchen. She ignored him and keyed her OCMS code into the interplanetary communication network to give her priority. COMSAT’s logo spun on the screen as she waited, and soon enough the smell of coffee filled her nostrils.

  Proper coffee. Tycho’s coffee, the coffee she’d told Ramirez she had no taste for after spending too much time on board ships.

  Too much time with their partnership dissolved...

  There were many ways to describe Commodore Abena Tau’s face. ‘Weathered‘ was one. ‘Severe‘ another. ‘Comforting‘ was normally a way down the list, but as the Director of the Confederate Marshals appeared on Ramirez’s screen, she didn’t think there were many people she’d rather see.

  ‘Tau here,’ she said in her clipped voice. ‘Talk to me, Commander.’

  Ramirez drew a deep breath. ‘Lieutenant Tycho’s in hospital. Shot in a raid on a Ragnarok team. Good intelligence was bungled by a leak in local law enforcement. Ragnarok elements are still at large, a known smuggler shipping munitions to them was let go by HCPD, an identified HCPD traitor’s still at large and I don’t know how deep into the department this goes. I have a name of one fence who’s been passing on the munitions, and I highly suspect Graham Locke is leading or at least involved in local Ragnarok elements and tried to have me killed.’

  A pause. Then Tau said, ‘Possible unreliability in the local police was suspected, Commander; using them -’

  ‘I used an officer I thought I could trust. I was wrong.’ Ramirez stiffened. ‘But begging your pardon, sir, I might have all the authority in the cosmos but my resources were myself, one Marshal, one con, and an apartment. And I‘m down one of those now. I can’t gun down Ragnarok with the power of the Senate, I can’t lock people up with my ID card. Thor is a hot mess of police and political corruption. I need backup, and fast.’

  Tau’s expression tensed in the way Ramirez knew meant she was steeling herself to say something she didn’t like. ‘Backup is going to be no less than a week away, Commander. Delta Team are still wrapped up in the Orion Shipyards case. Alpha and Cobalt are still in Alpha Centauri and Bravo’s in Sirius. Unless Delta get a break-through they’ll be days away and even if one of the others finishes their work tomorrow they’ll be a while getting to you. I‘m afraid you‘re on your own.’

  Harrigan put the coffee down next to her, out of sight of the screen. Ramirez reached for it without looking at him. ‘Sir, this city is in more need of a whole company of MPs than any I‘ve come across.’

  ‘You and I both know martial law’s nothing more than an idea so long as we don’t have the soldiers to enforce it. The orbital garrison might - might - be able to sling you some help but don’t hold your breath. Resources and manpower are stretched thin across the Confederacy. But you‘re a Marshal. One of the best. Do your job.’

  ‘I don’t need to be reminded of my duty, sir.’

  ‘Then get to work. If you need to pull out until Delta can have backup -’

  Ramirez tensed. ‘I’ll do the job. Sir.’

  Tau paused, the older woman’s gaze flickering across her, piercing even through the screen and interplanetary communication. ‘I know you will, Commander. What’s Lieutenant Tycho’s status?’

  ‘Stable. Long-term prospects are – uncertain.’

  ‘I see.’ Tau nodded, and reached off-screen. ‘I’m piping more credits through to Echo Team’s expense account; you won’t find funding to be an obstacle, but that’s all I can do for you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t do more. Good luck. Tau out.’

  The screen went dead and Ramirez sagged, pressing her palm against her forehead, eyes shut. For a long moment there was nothing but silence, the tension behind her eyes, the warmth of the coffee mug in her hand.

  So when Harrigan spoke she jumped, having forgotten he was there. ‘What’s our next move?’

  ‘What?’ She lowered her hand, blinking owlishly at him.

  He was stood by the kitchen counter, a burly shape silhouetted in dim lighting against beige. ‘If we‘re stuck here with what we got. What happens next?’

  ‘Next...’ Ramirez let out a deep breath and had a gulp of the piping hot coffee like it would help. It didn’t. ‘We need reinforcements.’

  ‘But not from the Marshals.’

  ‘I will walk into the central plaza, blow Graham Locke’s head off and call it a lawful execution before I accept help off Major Durand and Delta Team.’ Her expression twisted. ‘And we don’t have the time anyway.’

  Harrigan quirked an eyebrow but didn’t comment on her anger. ‘We can’t trust the HCPD.’

  ‘Some. Not all. There must be people we can rely on.’

  ‘Who? And how were you planning on going finding them???
? He tensed as Ramirez sipped her coffee and gave no answers. ‘I can go places. Like the Flarestar. Ask around, ask who knows anything about Navarro.’

  Ramirez stood, slamming the mug down as Harrigan moved for the door. ‘You‘re not going anywhere.’

  Harrigan didn’t break stride. ‘We‘re outgunned, outnumbered, and I don’t want to be walking around blind!’

  Then her Hauer was in her hand, loaded and raised and levelled right at him. She’d barely thought about it, barely realised what she was doing before she acted, but then she had him in her sights and her aim didn’t waver despite the shake in her bones. ‘You will stop,’ she said, voice low, ‘right there.’

  Harrigan turned, incredulous. ‘What the hell are you -’

  ‘You are still a prisoner under my authority,’ said Ramirez. ‘And if you think I‘m letting you out of my sight after what happened tonight, you‘ve got another think coming.’

  ‘A prisoner -’ He scowled. ‘I ran into that explosion. That gunfire. I got you out of there. You and Tycho. I didn’t have to.’

  ‘No, you could have run. And you know you’d have kissed any chance of being a free man in the next ten years goodbye.’

  ‘I’d be breathin‘ free air right now,’ Harrigan said, voice tight, angry, and he took a step towards her. ‘Your own boss said it herself. Martial law’s a gesture, no more. Entire galaxy’s stretched thin. There’s a lot of places for a man to go on the run where he won’t get caught.’

  ‘Except you were caught before. And this matter is not up for debate.’

  His gaze flickered from hers to the barrel of the gun. ‘Are you really going to shoot me?’

  ‘For trying to escape my custody? Absolutely.’

  There was a long moment where the tension hung between them and the only sounds Ramirez could hear were her own breathing and the noise of traffic rattling through the air out the window. Then Harrigan slumped. ‘Fine. Whatever. All right. I won’t go nowhere.’

  Ramirez exhaled in relief. ‘Good,’ she said, and lowered her gun.

  Then he pounced.

  She was tired. Strained. Still recovering from being near enough to the explosion to be rattled around. And she’d wanted to believe, more than she’d admit to herself, that he’d be cooperative. So when he lunged he was too close, too fast for her to react.

  It didn’t take long. He grabbed her wrist, twisted the gun out of her grip, and just as she tried to yank her hand back his palm cracked into her solar plexus.

  The blow was enough to knock her crashing to the ground and she lay there, gasping for breath that her lungs wouldn’t hold. She heard the skitter of metal as he kicked her gun across the room, then her vision wasn’t filled with the dull lights and brown ceiling but his silhouetted shape standing over her.

  He crouched and his bright eyes locked onto hers. ‘I could walk out the door right now,’ said Harrigan, voice gentle. ‘And you couldn’t stop me, and I could go anywhere. Be off this planet by dawn.’ Then he reached out to help her sit up, his hand rubbing her back as breathing became possible again. ‘You need an exercise in trust, Ramirez. I‘m a smuggler. I‘m a deserter. I admit it. But I was a soldier. I swore to uphold the Confederate Charter, I fought the Null, I watched my friends die around me. I was chewed up and spat out and made useless, so I ran, yeah. But here? Here I can do something.’ His gaze hardened. ‘Ragnarok are murdering sons of bitches. Navarro and Locke are treacherous scum. I ran out on the Fleet. It don’t mean I don’t care. I ain’t still here because of that seriously terrible deal you offered me. I‘m still here ‘cos, frankly? You need me. And if this is the last thing of use I do for anyone before I‘m locked up, so be it.’

  Air still burned in her lungs by the time she could convince her breathing to let her speak. ‘...punching me’s a funny way of making me trust you.’ But the croaked words were wry, or as wry as she could make them, and she gave a firm nod. ‘All right. I guess I don’t have much of a choice.’

  ‘Not really,’ Harrigan said. ‘I‘m all you got.’

  She snorted and tried to steady her breathing. ‘Then I‘m screwed.’

  He laughed and helped her onto the sofa, then his expression sobered. ‘I‘m sorry about Tycho.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ramirez sagged. ‘But she’ll live. That’s what’s important.’

  ‘You should get some sleep.’

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘If you let me.’

  She looked up at him, still short of breath, and found nothing but quiet sincerity in his words and expression. Not that she wasn’t already figuring out he could be a Class A liar.

  And then she found herself nodding. ‘Go,’ she croaked. ‘Find out who the street thinks Navarro is. And in the morning I want to take the bastard down.’