“And Carl Brighton was your expert on this ‘subject pool,’ wasn’t he?”
Troy nodded. “That’s why his death was so unfortunate. Here is a man whose career has been built on studying and cataloguing crime in the Zone. His research was thorough, and his files vast.”
Gresham weighed options in his mind, debating if he should play his only real card. “What happened to those files?”
“Once Brighton died, Cray slapped a Level One security clearance on his entire database. All of Brighton’s information is locked up.”
“And not just outstanding cases, but everything Brighton worked on for the past two years,” Lara continued. “All of Brighton’s files, locked up so only Cray can access them.”
“Why do you ask?” Troy said through a mouthful of spaghetti.
“Well, when I was looking into what little Vance left behind, I went to pick the brain of a smart ET I trust and he suggested I look into a particular Balgoshan named Lugrash.”
“Never heard of him,” Troy said. “Do you have any more information?”
“No, that’s why I wanted to see if Brighton’s files had anything relevant in them. I know SIS profiles all ET’s upon immigration at every spaceport even if they’re just visiting. Lugrash was my only real lead, but I’ve never set foot in the ETZ, so I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Lara considered what Gresham was suggesting. “Look, Vance was a friend of mine too. I respected him as a professional and I’d like to see this through. We’re off the case; Cray has his ‘best men’ handling it. But we don’t know if anything is getting done, because neither of us has Level Two clearance. We can’t even see the electronic invoice filed before the theft. MID’s files are restricted…”
“…and worthless,” Gresham said quickly. “Cray yanked everything Vance had been working on and put it under wraps at SIS. We’re more in the dark than you are.”
“Exactly my point. We’ll never get anywhere this way.”
Troy raised his hand to regain their attention. “We know the guy who killed Evans and nearly killed Vance was Balgoshan, so we may as well follow the lead. If Lugrash turns out to be nobody of importance, we can at least say we tried.”
Lara nodded. “Troy and I will go, then. We’ll give you a ride to the train station so you can get back to Defense.”
“Like hell you will. I’m coming.”
“You’re not a field agent, you’ll get yourself killed,” Troy started. “All we need is some idiot analyst running around in the ETZ with a gun. You know that there are races in there that eat humans, right?”
Gresham shrugged. “Occupational hazard. Besides, the moment I get back to Santa Monica I plan on filing a lengthy report about how I was kidnapped by two SIS agents. That’s the last thing you need.”
Lara and Troy looked at each other. “We could just kill him,” Troy suggested with a knowing smirk.
“Oh, stop it Sam,” Lara said and got up. “I’ll get changed. We can be in the ETZ in forty-five minutes if we hurry. It’s already getting dark out.”
She left the room after stamping out her cigarette and Gresham sat staring idly at Troy, who never once acknowledged him as he wolfed down the rest of his spaghetti.
Finally Gresham ventured, “You think I can get a shirt, maybe?”
#
As Gresham had suspected, Lara lived in Marble Heights – Beveridge’s hunch had been proven right yet again. She drove a small black two-seater HUVR parked conveniently in the community courtyard shared by the old-fashioned brick townhouses on her cul-de-sac. Beyond the gates to the courtyard was a long, narrow street populated by similar brick communal living establishments.
Troy’s HUVR could seat four and, as promised, he had a plain navy blue shirt for Gresham to pull on.
“We’ll get on the A9 and be there in forty-five minutes or so,” Troy said as they pulled out of Lara’s courtyard and started heading down the street. Lights were already coming on as darkness descended upon the middle-class suburb.
“I pulled your file, Gresham. I see you live in the Palisades up in Topanga. That’s a nice neighborhood,” Lara commented as they reached the Marble Heights on-ramp onto the A9, which headed southeast towards the ETZ.
“Well it’s in the mountains, maybe a bit remote. I’d rather live closer to the actual city.”
Troy chuckled. “I live on the outskirts of San Diego, so don’t complain.”
High hills rolled by as the HUVR whizzed along the A9. The lights of increasingly lower-class suburbs twinkled as they drove further and further from Los Angeles proper, out into the southern Mojave Desert.
They rode in silence until they reached the Moreno Valley exit, where Troy abruptly pulled off, coming to a halt in the parking lot of a small restaurant specifically catering to the few stopping for a meal before braving the stretch of the A9 through the adjacent ETZ. A large sign announced the neighborhood of Moreno Valley as “The Friendliest Place on Terra!”
“Moreno Valley is a place for humans to stay when they come to enjoy the vices of the ETZ,” Troy explained. “From here to Temecula and out to San Jacinto, however, is the biggest festering swamp of vermin the galaxy ever produced. The ETZ fills twenty square miles in the middle of this valley. You get lost in there, you never get back out.”
“Don’t scare him,” Lara snapped as they got out of the car. “We know the owner here; we’ll leave the car outside the ETZ.”
“How far is the walk?” Gresham asked.
“Less than a mile.” Lara indicated dim lights in the distance. “That’s the northern end of the Zone. In the past, you had to show identification and go through security to get in there. Now the California government is so corrupt and bloated it could care less what goes in or out.” She glanced at Gresham. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Positive.”
“Okay. I’ll go ask the owner if he knows anything about Lugrash. He makes half his profit in bribes from people heading into the Zone.”
She disappeared into the diner and Troy motioned for Gresham to come to the back of his HUVR. He pulled out a gun from the trunk.
“We took this from you when we stunned you at Vance’s apartment. You might need that once you’re in there.”
“What happens if we get split up?”
Troy paused ominously. “Make sure that we don’t, but in case we do, there are markers telling you how far you are from a security checkpoint. Los Angeles police usually rotates guards on six-to-eight hour shifts. They airlift them to the deepest checkpoints in shuttles or drive them in and out with armored convoys.”
“And we’re going in there on foot?”
“Hey man, you asked to come.”
Gresham shook his head in near disbelief before floating a question that he had been tempted to ask since he first met Troy. “So you and Lara…?”
“No. Not in the least. I’m married with two kids.”
Gresham nodded. “Good for you. I got divorced a few years back, and that was not a good experience. Stick with the one you’ve got as long as you can, and make sure she’s not a psycho.”
Troy laughed. “No, Christine is definitely not a psycho. How bad was yours?”
“The devil incarnate. Probably because she wasn’t too hot on moving to Terra from Solaris. I wasn’t either, to be honest.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Major.”
There was a silence as they continued to wait for Lara. “Well, if you and Lara aren’t…”
“Don’t even think about it. She’ll snap your dick off.” Troy scratched at his neck and smiled slightly. “She’s consumed by her work. No time for men.”
As if on cue, Lara emerged from the diner and approached them. “Lugrash operates a warehouse just inside the Zone. It’s about a thirty minute walk if we move quickly.”
They descended a hill from the diner down to a wide road below, and in the distance Gresham could make out the blurry lights of tall tenement towers. A flashing sign warned
“LEAVING MORENO VALLEY – PROCEED WITH CAUTION.” He shuddered as he walked past it, a cold breeze biting at the back of his neck.
The Southern California Extraterrestrial Zone was conceived and designed by government planners who assumed the North American continent would remain perpetually livable. Since its construction over a century prior, Terra’s climate had rapidly altered, drowning many cities with rising seas and turning the interiors of its continents into arid deserts, and the race to secure habitable land near most major metropolises was chaotic. What was originally planned as a place to keep ETs in check temporarily to prevent illegal immigration soon became a dumping ground for aliens who needed to relocate to make room for humans. The Zone’s footprint was expanded, and over twenty years the population increased tenfold.
In time, the ETZ immediately outside of Los Angeles was the planet’s largest, and only one of two remaining on the continent. Because extraterrestrial labor was so important, the decrepit inhabitants of the Zone were kept close to the city, but it also caused a rapid increase in crime across the Los Angeles area, from San Ysidro in the south to Obispo in the north, and even as far east as the outskirt suburb of Barstow. The worst of the crime, of course, was inside the Zone itself, where murderous gangs ruled and some derelicts even resorted to cross-species cannibalism.
An armored transport carrying police officers zoomed past them at a high speed, disappearing into the darkness ahead. Gresham could make out the remnants of a crumbling wall as they crossed an open, barren patch of earth between the human community and the sparkling lights ahead.
“We really should come back when it’s light out,” Troy said to Lara.
“This might be our only chance to nab Lugrash. I don’t want to mess this up,” Lara replied. “The ETZ doesn’t become any less dangerous during the day. Besides, it’s barely nine-thirty. All the aliens in there will be out for the nightlife before it gets really nasty.”
They reached the colorful, graffiti-sprayed wall. Beyond, poorly constructed and identical tenement buildings towered over the narrow, potholed pavement. The throbbing sounds of a city of its own coming alive at night echoed from the distance.
“Still want to come?” Lara asked Gresham as she paused at the very edge of the wall. “Not too late to turn back.”
“Stop asking me that,” Gresham replied and pushed his way past her. “I’m not changing my mind, so let’s get this over with.”
He glanced briefly at a massive sign that read “NOW ENTERING SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EXTRATERRESTRIAL ZONE,” and then continued forwards.
#
Deep Space, Sol System
Elijah Perry’s shuttle entered the orbit of Terra. In less than twenty minutes he would land at the Malibu Spaceport, but right now he stared out of his window, watching the day-night line on the vast Pacific Ocean.
He had flown this route so many times in his career, stared out of the window of a luxury shuttle on uncountable occasions as Terra stretched beneath him. But no matter how many times he had seen this view from this angle, it never ceased to amaze him.
His father, may he rest in peace, would likely never have wanted his youngest child to have flown this way. His father was an old-fashioned, conservative Martian Catholic and one of the proudest labor activists Perry had ever known. The old man had been raised in the tough streets of eastern Pioneer City, growing up in public housing projects and defending his two younger brothers from a variety of enemies, both human and not. While his parents and siblings had drifted away from the church, Ted Perry had found strength in his faith and committed it to every aspect of his life.
His son, however, had placed his faith not in religion but in the power of negotiation. Unlike his elder brothers, as committed to the cause of organized labor as their father, Eli Perry had realized at a relatively young age that the real money lay in the white collar world. He had worked his way through college and business school, and the cutthroat mentality he had developed growing up in the same projects as his father translated surprisingly well to the banking world.
Perry blew his nose and leaned back in his chair, thinking back to a lunch he had enjoyed with Colin Hess a few months earlier.
“I need your help,” Hess had said with clear desperation in his voice.
“Yes, I know, Colin,” Perry replied. “I’ll assume that that’s why you called me.”
“These allegations against my company… well, the Commission has ordered a full investigation. There’s a lot of evidence. Sworn statements by employees, bank receipts, the works… I think we may have overplayed our hand.”
Perry nodded slowly. They were seated in a luxurious rotating restaurant at the top of Pioneer City’s tallest skyscraper, soaking in the breathtaking view of the city below. “What’s a good arms salesman to do these days?”
“We need to pull the plug on the krokator now, Perry. Sooner or later the board of directors will find out what we’ve been up to.”
“That’s exactly what you don’t do, Colin. I know you value the opinion of your friend Bernie Rumsen, but he has no imagination. And he won’t get his hands dirty.” Perry leaned across the table. “And you and I are going to need to get our hands dirty, Colin, if we’re going to beat the Commission.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember my friends I told you about?”
“The Raptors? I thought you were kidding about that. Aren’t Raptors just a spacer myth?”
Perry scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Colin, of course I was being serious. I never joke about business partners. Anyways, my friends are getting ready to make a move, and we want to make sure we have chairs when the music stops. And to do so, we get our hands dirty. We beat the Commission, we beat the indictments, and we come out on the other side of this thing on top. Where we belong.”
Hess swirled the wine in his glass and glanced around the restaurant apprehensively. “What do you think we should do?”
Perry reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and a pen. He quickly jotted something down and slid it across the table. Hess adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to see what it said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now beginning orbital reentry of Terra. Please fasten your safety harnesses, as the reentry process is usually bumpy,” a smooth, AI voice cooed over the shuttle.
Perry complied along with the other twenty passengers on the luxury shuttle. Even though he always flew in class, the seventeen-hour journey between Mars and Terra was still a long one. He always brought his own potent sleeping pills, feeling the more consumer-friendly doses offered by the Mars Shuttle Line were too weak to do him any good.
“This express flight with Mars Shuttle Lines has lasted sixteen hours and thirty-two minutes. We will be arriving in Los Angeles forty-six minutes ahead of schedule,” the AI announced proudly.
Outside the window, the cold vastness of space disappeared as red streaks of plasma flashed past the window. Perry heard a distinct popping sound as the engines flared in the atmosphere, and the passengers were pressed back against their seats.
The descent continued until the shuttle slowed to a comfortable purr over the massive, glowing expanse of Los Angeles, which stretched for miles in each direction along the Pacific coast. The heart of humanity looked truly magnificent at night, with its lights glimmering, pulsating with life. The city’s importance could be felt from the air.
The Malibu Spaceport, a gargantuan floating island of landing decks and tarmac platforms, stood out against the black water. The shuttle slowed, circling the spaceport in its descent, and the high towers of the distant city became more defined.
There was a thud and the shuttle touched down against the landing pad. The engines hummed as they cooled down, and the AI cheerfully welcomed the passengers to Los Angeles while thanking them for riding with Mars Shuttle Lines.
Perry unbuckled his safety harness and rose. He had arrived, and now he had business to attend to.
Chapter Thirteen: Our Grea
test Enemy
Krokandir, Planet Rukkur, Kroka System
“It was a shame that Rurekk died,” High Prod Nikkwill said slowly, “but if he was willing to kill himself, he would not have provided much information.”
Zurra paused and regarded the other figures in the debriefing room in the Imperial Palace. Viceroy Aratrokk sat idly in a corner, while the newly crowned Emperor Urkus Orkann sat cross-legged on a seat, watching Zurra intently. Four aruntuk were waiting outside.
“I should not have shot him. That was a mistake.”
“And you are forgiven,” Emperor Orkann said in his flat voice. “You executed your mission without hesitance. Getting out of that tavern alive speaks volumes of your proficiency as a soldier.”
“The Emperor gives me praise I am not due. I am humble before you,” Zurra replied, bowing his head reverently.
“What is the next course of action?” Aratrokk demanded in his squeaky voice. “Rurekk is dead and our leads on Dakkal and Hudda Kugrall are gone. We have had no success in similar investigations here in the Krokandir. It is as if the assassins have disappeared into thin air with no trace left behind.”
“Dakkal is the priority and Rurekk confirmed that he was a major player in the Hudda Kugrall. But where do we look?”
“Our greatest friend, among our greatest enemy,” Nikkwill mused. “Can we imply that Rurekk’s greatest friend is the Hudda Kugrall?”
“Then who is his greatest enemy? Dakkal is hardly amongst us,” Aratrokk retorted.
“Perhaps he meant something broader: the greatest enemy of the krokator,” Zurra suggested. “We know the Hudda Kugrall has friends in foreign states. Is that not what the mission to Piskka suggested?”
There was a moment of silence until the Emperor spoke. “I leave this in your capable hands, High Prod Nikkwill. Dakkal has never been a surefire lead, but following the events in Ankina yesterday, and based on investigations by the sukuda into Rurekk’s affairs, it has become apparent that there is a connection there to the Hudda Kugrall, and by proxy to the death of my father. I have other matters to attend to. Good day to you both.”
Orkann rose and signaled for both Zurra and Nikkwill to leave. They bowed their heads reverently, praised him as was custom and were soon walking out of the Manganese Palace in silence.