*
The Directorate forensics team arrived in time to join them on the helicopter. Aidan Winkal also elected to come with them. As the coast slipped into view through the cabin window he shook his head in bemusement. ‘I just got word from the station,’ he called above the rotor noise. ‘CST has suspended the train service to EdenBurg. Your Directorate has a lot of clout.’
‘Three of the holiday party were Sheldon Dynasty members,’ Paula said. ‘That’ll speed things up a little.’
Aidan nodded in understanding.
Christabel leaned in close to Paula. ‘I give it ten minutes before someone’s here to help.’
Paula gazed down at the coastline. ‘You think it will be that long?’
‘I’ve already had two calls from the Halgarth security office. Any assistance we need . . .’
They circled the zone Paula had identified, seeing nothing but shingle and rock. A scan from the helicopter’s radar didn’t add anything. Paula’s optical inserts were giving her an infra-red picture. Every surface was radiant with heat as it basked in the fierce sunlight. ‘Anything?’ she asked Nalcol, the forensics officer who was with them. He was sitting next to the open side door, aiming a specialist array at the ground.
‘A spectral of an unusual airborne carbon residual. Could be the launch booster. Don’t know for sure. But we’ll need to land clear. I don’t want the downwash to screw up evidence.’
The pilot put them down three hundred yards away.
Paula, Christabel, and Aidan followed Nalcol and his assistant towards the area where the carbon residue had spread. The forensics people were sweeping their arrays at everything as they went. A little pack of bots crawled along beside them, like foot-long caterpillars with thin antenna strands stroking the ground as they went.
‘No sign of any vehicle tracks,’ Christabel said.
‘Tough to see on this terrain,’ Paula said. Her toe nudged some of the flat shingle. ‘If Nalcol confirms this as the launch point, we’ll seal it off and bring in the rest of the team.’
‘This is going to be a tough one,’ Christabel said, shielding her eyes as she scanned the grey-blue sea. The land sloped down towards it like a giant beach. ‘They didn’t leave much for us.’
‘Actually, this isolation helps us a great deal,’ Paula said. ‘When we get back to Paris I want you to put together a team to track down who knew the Dynasty members had booked their holiday here. Get a profile on everyone from the Fire Plain resort staff through the tour company they use, and most importantly the entourage. I want to know if any of them have left recently. Then there’s the girlfriends, one-night stands, other friends – their families, connections. It’ll be a big list, but finite. Cross-reference for any connection to Merioneth.’
Christabel let out a soft whistle. ‘I’ll assign Basker to lead it. He’s good at data analysis.’
‘Fine.’ A sound made Paula look up, pushing back her wide hat. ‘Oh, hello.’
A small black helicopter was approaching the launch zone, flying low and fast.
‘That’s not one of ours,’ Aidan said in annoyance. ‘How did it get flight clearance? This is a designated restricted zone.’
Paula held back on her smile. The poor police captain sounded quite indignant. ‘A word of advice, Captain,’ she said as the new helicopter landed beside theirs. ‘This is where you get to play with the big boys. If you haven’t done this before, don’t try and claim jurisdiction on any aspect of this investigation. You really do have to work with them.’
‘Uh huh.’ Aidan spat onto the stones. ‘And if I don’t?’
‘Your career is over. It’s not blatant, but it is effective. If you really annoy them then you won’t have much of a life after your next few rejuvenations either.’
‘And you just let them walk all over your investigations, do you?’
‘No,’ Paula said. ‘There are boundaries, and with me they know where they stand. But I’ve spent decades building that political coverage. You haven’t.’
A man climbed down out of the helicopter as the blades slowed. He was dressed in a robe similar to the one Aidan wore, except he was like the captain’s younger, smarter, richer brother.
‘Nelson Sheldon,’ Christabel muttered. ‘Impressive. Third generation down from Nigel himself.’
Paula nodded appreciatively. Nelson was one of the five deputy managers of the Sheldon Dynasty security service, heading up the external threat division. She’d met him on three Directorate cases when their respective interests overlapped; each time he’d been the total professional, and very diplomatic. Rumour had it that he’d be chief within fifty years.
‘Captain,’ Nelson said politely, and offered his hand to Aidan. ‘I apologize for the interruption, but as you can imagine my family is deeply distressed by this appalling attack on our members. I’m here to offer whatever support you need, practical or political.’
There was a moment of hesitation. Then Aidan shook the proffered hand. ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘All of it.’
‘Ah,’ Nelson smiled. ‘The ladies have been telling tales about me. Christabel, nice to see you again. Paula, you look amazing. You’ll have to tell me which clinic you use to rejuve in.’
‘Sorry about your people,’ Paula said.
‘Thank you.’ Nelson’s expression hardened. ‘They’ll be re-lifed, of course. Everyone on the plane will be, no matter what their insurance status. We owe them that much.’
‘We’d appreciate a complete list of passengers,’ Aidan said. ‘I need to know the full make-up of the entourage to help recovery.’
‘You’ve got it. I’ll liaise with the other Dynasties for you.’
The four of them stood together, watching the methodical movements of the forensics duo and the pack of specialist bots.
‘So what’s the story with your three?’ Paula asked. ‘Anyone special?’
‘Hell no,’ Nelson said. ‘They’re fifth and sixth generation. Standard-issue brats who were busy pissing away their trust funds. Never done a day’s work in their life. Honestly, the new generations are a real disaster area. As far as I know it was the same for the Brandt boy and the Mandela. There was nothing important about them other than they’re Dynasty and goddamn easy targets.’
‘They were important in terms of propaganda for Free Merioneth,’ Christabel said.
‘Yeah. All this crap about their taxes paying for little tits like our useless descendants is hitting a nerve. You know how financially integrated the Commonwealth planets are. It costs a frigging fortune just to begin settlement these days, and as to building up a decent technoindustrial infrastructure, well . . . Any planet starting up today is looking to be paying off those costs for the next two and a half centuries – minimum.’
‘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 start-up 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 mindset 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 behaviour, 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, whilst technically being illegal on every planet except one – her birth-world, 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 round. ‘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 ochre 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 aluminium 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 hyper-ram. 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 any more. 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 down slope 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 grey pixels formed a blob in the centre. ‘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?’
Christabel 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 round his chin. Dark skin, with stubble. Thinning grey-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 marshalling 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 one-time 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.’