Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories

  “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 seems nice.”

  “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.”

  Chapter 10

  I left Janet with Riviera. They’d been talking for nearly three hours without pause and the interview showed no signs of ending soon. I couldn’t remember him speaking so much at one time, but it seemed once she’d tapped the vein of his experience he couldn’t shut up. I took the pipe to Yang Six, spending the time putting together a Pol-net alert about the two potentially linked homicides and warning of possible copy-cats. I knew it would probably earn a sharp rebuke from Sherry once it flashed on her terminal, I was stepping pretty heavily on the toes of CAOS Defence after all, but my Demon instinct told me this case was far from ove
r. Amongst many flaws, an inability to tolerate unfinished business had always been my biggest.

  Leyla and Timor were holed up in the upstairs store room of a defunct Immersion arcade. The recently launched MEC Immersion headband had, after some unfortunate initial publicity, finally made affordable, wearable immersion gear a reality, meaning all the hardcore gamers and porn-addicts could now safely waste their lives in the privacy of their own homes. A growing number of boarded up arcades was the most visible consequence, along with increased rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyle-related illnesses.

  “All quiet, Boss,” Timor said as I peered at his camera screen, the lens trained on the laundry opposite. It was titled the Santa Isabella Cleaning Emporium, Vintage Clothing a Speciality. Modern fabrics don’t need a great deal of cleaning, but a lot of the splice groups tended to favour more archaic garments. Vampirism in particular had seen an upsurge in the lace and leather trade.

  “Word went out just over four hours ago,” Timor went on.

  “How many informants?” I asked.

  “Just one. My best, and most discreet.”

  “Wonder who he’ll send,” Leyla said, sitting with her back to the wall as she checked her carbine.

  Would’ve been Nina Laredo in the old days, I knew. If he really wanted to make sure. But Nina was dead thanks to me, and if she was still around I doubted even Janet could have gotten anything out of her. I just had to hope her replacement was of a more flexible mindset.

  “Got anything to eat?” I asked.

  I sat in the corner eating boil-in-the-box noodles and going through the responses to my Pol-net alert, which consisted of the usual ads from private security firms and a lengthy message from a sheriff’s deputy in Idaho Territory insisting the two attacks were the work of ‘The International Jew-Nazi Cabal.’ Nice to know some things don’t change. Phaedra Diallo had also sent through the preliminary forensic report on the massacre along with a list of victims. The perp had been named as one Randall Schiffler, age twenty-two. No registered employment but initial checks showed a healthy balance in his financial accounts. He’d arrived on Salacia Hab only three days before, let out a mid-range apartment at what I would have considered an exorbitant rent and purchased a top of the range Nike speargun from a sporting goods store. The speargun had an innovative magnetically driven firing mechanism and a magazine capacity of twenty darts. Schiffler had managed to kill thirteen people before Phaedra put a bullet through his forehead from fifty yards. For a first kill made under extreme pressure it was an impressive shot. Preliminary research showed no link between Schiffler and any of the victims and he had no criminal record. The only tangible link to Rybak’s murder was the phrase.

  Lacking other leads I mentally reviewed Janet’s story and began a search for ex-employees of Haunai Genetics, coming up empty which was weird. Also, the company’s registration details appeared to have been purged of personnel data. A quick open source check was similarly fruitless, which was even weirder. I thought for a moment before uttering a soft curse, pulling Vargold’s smart from my pocket and calling the only number in the ID file. He answered within ten seconds.

  “Inspector. Good to hear from you.”

  “Your offer still good?”

  “Of course.”

  “Haunai Genetics, registered in Korea over three decades ago. I need to find any former employees, particularly the research staff. All my checks are negative. I thought, given your links to the Downside corporate sector…”

  “Leave it with me. You’ll have details on every employee within twenty-four hours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I suppose asking how this links to Craig is pointless.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure it does, yet anyway. There was something else, a mass shooting on Salacia Hab this morning. Maybe you saw it on the feeds.”

  “I did. You think there may be a connection?”

  “I think what happened to your friend could be part of something way bigger. Or we’re looking at the mother of all coincidences.”

  I noticed Timor shift, eyes snapping to the camera screen and head cocked as he listened to something in his ear-piece.

  “Gotta go, Mr Vargold,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

  I shut down the smart and moved to Timor’s side. “Surveillance team has someone approaching the premises,” he said, then grunted a disappointed sigh. “Pizza guy, again.”

  I called up the feed from the surveillance team’s main camera, seeing a skinny figure slouching along the neighbouring street with two pizza boxes. “Same guy as the last time,” Timor said. “Bet it’s the same toppings too. Fuentes really needs to reconsider his life choices.”

  “He showed up twice in less than seven hours?” I asked.

  “Laundry owner says Fuentes is kind’ve a compulsive eater, ‘specially when he’s nervous.”

  “Gold One to Gold Three,” I said, addressing the surveillance team leader. “Intercept. Check those boxes. Extreme caution advised.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  I watched as the pizza guy came to a startled halt on the smart screen, eyes widening in shock at the sudden appearance of four Demons with weapons drawn. He dropped to his knees in response to a barked command and set the boxes down. One of the surveillance team moved closer and ran a pheromone sensor over the boxes. “No traces,” came the report, quickly supplemented by, “Anchovies and salami. Yum yum.”

  “X-ray,” I ordered. “And shit-can the humour.”

  The same Demon carefully set both boxes side by side then scanned them with a pen-sized x-ray unit. “Negative. No mechanicals or metals.”

  “Let him through,” I said. “All he has to do is make the delivery. Five hundred in green if keeps his nerve. Don’t want Fuentes getting antsy.”

  “Roger that.”

  There was a short delay before the pizza guy appeared, making for the laundry at a faster pace than I’d have liked, though his slouch was still in place. He rang the buzzer and managed not to fidget during the thirty seconds it took a somewhat agitated older man to answer the door. “That’s the owner,” Leyla told me. “Wanted to bolt, but we threatened to get the commerce board to pull his shop-licence for harbouring a known criminal.”

  The door closed and the pizza guy began to slouch away. I was about to return to my corner for more research when I noticed the pizza guy’s step was even faster than it had been on approaching the door. I reached for the camera, zooming in on a pale and sweaty face, eyes wide and plainly terrified.

  “Shit!”

  I ran for the door, barking orders at Leyla. “Call the laundry! Tell the owner he has to vacate now! And tell Surveillance to grab that pizza fucker!”

  I dragged the arcade door open and sprinted outside. I was twenty yards short of the laundry door when the windows blew out. The blast picked me up and threw me against the boards on the arcade windows, glass shredding the sleeve of my raincoat as I instinctively shielded face and eyes. I felt blood coursing down my arm as I sagged onto the pavement, looking up to see the laundry in flames, the roof gone and smoke billowing in the rain as the level’s fire suppressant system came online. One glance at the shambles visible through the laundry’s glassless windows told me it was way too late for Fuentes and the owner.

  Promise me he’ll make it to trial, Janet had said and I’d promised. So I knew I’d shortly have another reason to hate Mr Mac, because when this was done he’d have made me into a liar as well as a murderer.

  Chapter 11

  “Exploding pizza,” Ricci said, ample cheeks bulging with delighted fascination on my terminal screen. “This is a new one.”

  I swallowed another painkiller and washed it down with lukewarm coffee. The damage to my arm had been easily mended, two hours in the speed-healer and a thick slathering with derma-gel to take care of the scars. The ache of it lingered though, deep and fierce. “Glad my near-death experience made your day,” I said. “How about some evidence?”

  “G
ot plenty. Not sure how much it’ll help.” He tapped a button on his own terminal, calling up a line graph. “Spectrograph analysis of what’s left of Fuentes. Mostly a breakdown of the chemical compounds that make up the human body, except for this group.” The number of lines reduced as Ricci highlighted various points on the graph. “Nitric acid, glycerol and a relatively new synthetic explosive called demetrol. It’s used by the mining corporations to break up bigger asteroids. Favoured because of its safety features; inert, non-toxic to human skin, odourless and tasteless. You can play squash with a ball of this stuff and it won’t go boom, needs an accelerator for that. Hence the nitric acid and glycerol.”

  Thanks to the war, I knew enough bathtub chemistry to follow his reasoning. “Put them together and you get nitroglycerin.”

  “Yeah. But they weren’t mixed in the pizza until Fuentes bit into it and started chewing, which is why the pheromone scanner missed it. A decent sized mouthful would’ve been enough to set off the demetrol. I’m guessing the accelerant was in the crust and the demetrol was in the base.” He gave an appreciative chuckle. “Whoever came up with this one really deserves a hitter of the year award. I just booked myself a place at the Global Forensic Symposium thanks to this.”

  “I assume demetrol is a controlled substance.”

  “Sure. But it’s also widely used. Tracking where a relatively small amount like this came from will be a nightmare. There are chemical markers in every batch, though, so at least we’ll have a shot.”

  No, I knew, rubbing my temples. He’d have thought of it and made sure there’s nothing to trace back to him. “Send the details through to Joe,” I said, deciding thoroughness cost nothing. “He’ll get one of the analysts on it.”

  I closed the connection and looked up to see Leyla loitering at the door. “What?”

  “We finished grilling the pizza kid,” she said. “Seems he came home to find a Jed in a mask holding a gun to his mother’s head. There were two pizza boxes on the table. He was told to take them to the laundry when the next order came in.”

  “Jed in a mask, huh?”

  “Yeah. Flags as a big fat lie on the voice analyser, but he’s sticking with it. Kid’s scared shitless, boss.”