Originator Read online

  It had been a man, only now the head was missing, and plastered largely over a wall and benches. Three very-large-caliber holes in one wall showed cause. Sandy scanned them, the feed going straight to tacnet, which immediately analysed the nature and direction of the holes and began figuring trajectories and origins.

  “They had a good fix to make that shot,” Vanessa observed from somewhere above. There were no windows in the kitchen offering a view from outside, she meant. “If Cai was with him, it couldn’t have been a net-fix. Maybe they had him bugged?”

  Stranger and stranger. Tacnet’s add-on functions were identifying the body on the ground as Subject A, ninety-three percent probability. He’d been sitting with Cai (they presumed it was Cai) in the football stadium; Cai hacked the eyes of everyone watching to sneak them out and get them here . . . where he was killed by League GIs? That made sense, League wanted nothing less than their splinter group leaders to spill everything to anyone who wasn’t League. Cai even less . . . though given the League undoubtedly knew more about the Talee than Federation did, it was unlikely the Talee could learn as much from Subject A as the Federation could. Or could they?

  League-versus-Talee games that the Federation had only seen vaguely hinted at? What if the likes of Cai had played this game before with League operatives? And that wave was only now hitting Federation shores?

  “Ten bucks says FedInt fired that shot,” said Ari, from . . . wherever Ari was now. Chasing leads even Sandy had no access to, no doubt. “Let’s keep the options open.”

  Stormclouds, Amirah said. Dammit. She hated three-sided contests, and this one was fast turning into four sides.

  “Sandy,” said Hong from upstairs. His feed showed a woman on the ground, a GI to judge by the lack of blood from the recent hole in the back of her head. She lay on the ground beside a bed. A camera pan showed the window broken, glass on the carpet and bed covers—an entry then. No further signs of fight. League GIs would put up more of a fight . . . but the shot was to the back of the head.

  “Cai was here,” Sandy confirmed. “Or someone of similar capabilities. That GI was netlocked, then tapped in the head. They came in after him.”

  “Or tried to sweep up the mess FedInt left,” Ari corrected. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  Either way, it looked like a Talee-made GI had killed a League GI. Talee had killed League military personnel before, in full view of millions. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. But for one to do it here . . .

  Figure Cai was under orders to eliminate threats as necessary. Obviously that included League GIs. What about Federation GIs? Or Federation-anyone? This was why the Talee had been so worried about intervention in human affairs in the first place—the unavoidable autonomy granted its agents, and the unpredictable nature of events, meant mission creep was inevitable, especially with this much on the line. Probably Cai had now gone further than most Talee had wanted . . . but without violating the conditions of his deployment. It happened. Had happened to her quite recently on Pantala. So now that the precedents were falling, how far would a Talee-made and loyal GI be prepared to go?

  “Okay,” she announced on tacnet, with careful pronunciation to be sure everyone heard, “from this point Cai, or whoever he is, will be considered a neutral hostile. I repeat, that’s a neutral hostile.” Approach with caution, that meant, and apprehend with force if necessary . . . but no deadly force unless left with absolutely no other choice. How the hell you used deadly force against someone who could hack your uplinks to disappear before your eyes was another question.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ari brought the cruiser down on the roadside transition zone amidst the wall-to-wall bright lights and holographics of Sushil Square. The midnight crowds did not notice one more cruiser in the seething sky, spilling on the pavements in their crazy fashions and were far too preoccupied to glance up. A sea of humanity that would not fade until four in the morning, then picked back up at five with the early risers.

  “Oh look,” said Rhian from the rear seat, “Persian Princess is on!” Sure enough, the holographics a block down were showing highlights from yet another song-and-dance number, projected across the entire street, five to twenty storeys up. “I must take the girls.”

  “I resent the implication that only you girls would like that . . . all singing, all dancing, all fancy gowns and frilly knickers period bullshit,” said Ari.

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s exactly Sandy’s thing,” Rhian admitted, as they descended past streetlights. Either ignoring or completely failing to detect Ari’s sarcasm—with Rhian one was never entirely sure. “But you know Sandy, she loves a spectacle. And the music’s great, I’ve been hearing it everywhere and Vanessa loves a rhythm.”

  They touched in the VIP spot beside the Grand Tanushan Hotel, and almost immediately there was a big bruiser in a tuxedo rapping on the window. Ari popped the door.

  “Hey buddy!” shouted the bruiser above the din of street noise, “I don’t know how you hacked the fucking TZ, but this is hotel VIPs only! You think just anyone can land here?”

  “Hey buddy,” said the woman appearing at his side, “take it elsewhere.” Shoving her police badge under his nose and climbing in.

  “Nice try, pork chop,” Ari told the bruiser, sealing the door after Raylee and powering the engines. “Sorry to bust your dinner, babe. Got a job for the TPD.”

  “I’m not the Tanushan Police Department,” his girlfriend retorted, belting in with a glance over her shoulder. “Hi, Rhi, shouldn’t you be home with the kids?”

  “After midnight,” said Rhian, tapping her temple with a meaningful glance at Ari. “Clever time to have a crisis. Nice work, Ari. Kids all asleep.”

  “Husband asleep too,” said Ari. “That’s the best bit.”

  Rhian grinned. She’d been home on rotation, spending all her R&R with the family, in their house, something she complained she never got to do enough. Even Cresta’s destruction hadn’t revoked R&R privileges yet. “You got food?”

  Raylee Sinta opened the bag on her lap as they gained altitude amidst the dancing, flashing towers and produced several boxes of Chinese takeaway. “Rhi, sweet and sour pork, wasn’t it?” Handing her the box.

  “Oh, I like this girlfriend, Ari,” Rhian said approvingly. “She remembers.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Raylee deposited Ari’s food on his lap, “dinner was a bust anyway, but the food was excellent, stupid to let it go to waste.”

  Ari let the cruiser accelerate toward the departure lane on auto to attend to his meal. “Dinner was no good?” Raylee shook her head. “Two dozen potbellied cops giving drunken speeches in a Chinese restaurant? How can’t that be fun?”

  “Hey buddy, if I get a potbelly any time soon, we’ll have an issue.” Ari’s mouth was too conveniently full of noodles to reply. She looked amazing, as always, leather jacket and hair in a bun at the back. Even after a year, she still favoured the right arm slightly, if you knew what to look for. “Just usual interdepartmental bullshit politics. Too boring to go into. Where are we going, and will I need extra guns?”

  Ari blinked. “Babe, no, look . . . just because I ask you somewhere in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean you’re going to be shot at.”

  “And the fact that you guys are chasing someone to do with whoever blew up that moon in the League’s got nothing to do with it?” Her half-lidded South Asian eyes were so nice when she looked at him like that. Ari hadn’t yet seen an expression he didn’t like. Well . . . maybe that one time . . . “And that you went out of your way to grab poor Rhian out of her bed?”

  “I wasn’t actually in bed,” Rhian volunteered. “More like the bath.” Raylee gave him the Indian-head-waggle-of-accusation, with the glare of it’s-all-your-fault.

  “Well, I find that GIs are like handkerchiefs,” said Ari. “It’s always useful to have one in your pocket if you need one.” Rhian whacked him on the back of the head. “Ow.”

  “You’re right, Ray,” Rhia
n said around a mouthful, “this is delicious.”

  It broke Raylee’s facade, and she giggled. “You asshole,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” said Ari, eating with one hand, rubbing the back of his skull with the other. “Rhi? Spare guns are under your seat.”

  They came in at rooftop level across a bend of river, the water ablaze with reflected light from the surrounding towers.

  “This one?” asked Rhian, highlighting the penthouse on their modified tacnet.

  “Yeah,” said Ari, handing his half-empty noodles for Rhian to stow. “I guess if you’re going to have a safehouse, have it somewhere nice.”

  “What if he’s home?” asked Raylee.

  “It’s a safehouse, babe, he’s not home.”

  “This might be exactly the time a top FedInt spy would use his safe-house,” she persisted.

  “It’s not.”

  Raylee looked at him as Ari brought them in to a landing pattern on the roof. “If you’re so sure where he is, why do you need to hit his safehouse?”

  “’Cause I’m not looking for him, I’m looking for whoever he’s looking for. FedInt’s been tailing someone for weeks now, it’s super classified, so I’m not even sure how many people it is. But something’s out there, and FedInt wants it.”

  “Someone other than this . . . Cai person?” Raylee was up to speed on some very classified things now and had uplink security and augments to match. Ari had told her to put her money where her mouth was, stop complaining about how FSA/CSA got paid more than cops, and make the leap. But Detective Raylee Sinta was a homicide investigator, her dream job since childhood, and wasn’t about to give that up for money. And it wasn’t a bad thing—cops were better at a lot of things, Ari was discovering, and new interoperability protocols made it possible for good cops to be borrowed by FSA at need.

  “Looks like . . . Rhi, you got this?”

  “Sure,” said Rhian, and Ari popped the door. He paused the cruiser on its descent just above the penthouse balcony. Ten meters up, Rhian jumped out.

  “Shit,” said Raylee, peering out the window to look down, just in time to see Rhian land with nonchalant precision on the balcony, punch a hole in the glass, and enter. “Wow. I’m still not used to that. She’s such a normal girl, then she goes and does that.”

  “Sandy’s not a normal girl?” Ari abandoned the landing, bringing them into a slow orbit about the riverside towers. “You’ve seen her do crazy stuff too.”

  “It’s less surprising when Sandy does it. She’s . . . well, she’s a bit scary.”

  “She’s not scary.”

  “You know what I mean.” Ari shrugged. He did. “Wait . . . you haven’t disabled the security system? Rhi will be seen.”

  “Can’t be helped,” said Ari. He was watching scans as they circled, half expecting something to attack them. Not that he thought FedInt and FSA were about to start shooting at each other just yet. “FedInt don’t share with us, we’ll take instead.”

  “How does Shin get away with this? FedInt’s supposed to be a department of the FSA, instead they’re acting like an independent authority. A hostile independent authority.”

  “Not hostile,” Ari disagreed. “Just independent. Everything just gets so damn big in the Federation . . . the problem with democracies is everyone gets power from local power bases, and that’s all fine when those bases are in the one spot, everyone still agrees their common loyalty is to the nation, the state, the world, whatever. Spread those power bases over a few hundred light-years, and you start to lose that. And FedInt outdate the FSA; they were the tentacles of the squid under the old FIA, then the FIA died and was replaced by the FSA . . . but we’re just the head of the squid, the squid’s body is much bigger and retains all this institutional memory. We can tell it what to do—whether it listens is a whole other deal.”

  “Sounds like us and Special Investigations Bureau.”

  “Oh hell, everyone hates SIB. Here’s Rhian. That was quick.” Ari popped the door once more and manoeuvred out from the tower face, giving Rhian a forty-five-degree ascent. Raylee watched with amazement as Rhian climbed on the railing, gave a simple spring . . . and hit the open cruiser doorway eight meters above. She swung inside as Ari closed the door and powered them into a climbing turn.

  “It’s in,” said Rhian.

  “What’s in?” Raylee asked.

  “Our FedInt buddy is running his tacnet through that safehouse,” Ari explained. “Easier to break in physically.”

  “But he’ll see that now?” said Raylee, puzzled.

  “Sure. So he has to stop using that tacnet setup if he doesn’t want us seeing everything he does.”

  “Forcing him onto the main network, where we can monitor him anyway,” Raylee concluded as she got it. “So where is he?”

  A rough trace on the FedInt agent’s location led them to a wedding. Like any good Tanushan wedding, festivities were beginning to spill from the upper podium floors of the Madison Hotel and onto the street below. Kotam District midtown showed no sign of quieting after two in the morning, firecrackers bursting over bustling streets, food kiosks parked by the pavement with nav lights flashing, small crowds of revellers, hotel guests and passersby clustering for a late-night dosa.

  “So when’s the TPD finally going to stop the fireworks?” Ari wondered, as crackers burst amidst passing cars. The automated traffic never flinched.

  “It’s harmless,” said Raylee, walking beside him through the crowds. “This chemlab stuff packs no punch, you ban it and people just make their own.”

  “So varying degrees of illegality are now acceptable in Tanusha? And who makes that judgement?”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Raylee, tired of this argument but smiling. “Rhian? Is she there, I can’t fix . . .”

  “He’s in the podium, top tier,” said Rhian, from wherever Rhian was. They were off tacnet; Raylee couldn’t integrate it well, and with FedInt watching, tacnet wasn’t always secure. “Mind the horse.”

  “You get that?” Ari asked Raylee.

  “Yeah.” She looked disconcerted though. Raylee didn’t just have a new right arm; she had new uplinks and sensory augments, right up to FSA standard. A year later she was still, in layman’s terms, a noob. “It’s like I’m getting a visual vibration when she talks. Is that normal?”

  “No, you’re going insane.” Raylee scowled. “Where’s the horse, Rhi?” Amidst a cluster of instrument playing, dancing people ahead, a white horse emerged from behind a parked van. The groom had long departed inside, and now the horse handler was struggling to control the unhappy animal, which tossed its head and stamped. “Oh, there’s the horse.”

  “They have a permit for that, you think?” Raylee wondered.

  “That’s what I like about you cops, all the earth-shaking questions.”

  He led her up hotel steps past the dancing crowds, the photographers, the garland givers and Namastes—some hotel security thought about checking them but thought better of it. Raylee nearly walked into the glass door; Ari had to haul her around the edge by her arm.

  “What the hell are you . . . ?”

  “Asma Cohen!” Raylee announced, dazed and a little triumphant. “That’s who’s getting married, I was checking the cop database for wedding permits. . . .”

  “Ah, nice Jewish wedding, then.” Walking through the sea of saris and turbans in the main lobby.

  “She runs a catering business, she’s marrying Aditya Gaur, real estate broker. Two weddings, the Jewish one’s next weekend.”

  Ari overrode an elevator and they got on, Raylee flashing her badge to stop several others joining them. It got some odd looks.

  “Nice do for a catering business and a real estate broker,” Ari suggested as the car took them up.

  Raylee checked further, eyes unfocused. “Her turnover was a hundred mil last year, and his last sale was the Bradbury Tower.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s not going to
work, though.”

  Ari glanced sideways. “Uplinks tell you that, too?”

  “You know, Jews and Indians. Couldn’t work.” Flashing him a return sideways look.

  “Of course it works,” said Ari. “Judaism’s just another weird little Hindu sect, your uncle said so.” Raylee sighed. “You’ll just absorb and assimilate Callayan Judaism into cultural annihilation like you have every other group, and soon we’ll all be happy little Indians together.”

  “If my family were like those Indians, how do you think I got a name like Raylee?”

  “It’s a plot,” said Ari. Raylee laughed. “It’s all a plot.”

  The elevator let them out on the upper podium, beneath the main hotel towers. Here were swimming pools, gardens and multiple DJs, entertaining what looked like a thousand guests, all flashing lights, dancing, fancy clothes, food and drink.

  “Just so you know,” said Ari, as they walked into it, “I can’t afford this.”

  “Legally you can’t afford this,” said Raylee.

  “Don’t start.” Even here, people looked at Raylee, men and women both. Even in practical clothes she stood out. “You’d be useless under cover.”

  “Don’t start.” Raylee Sinta had heard it all before. “Where is he?”

  “This way.” There were ceremonies going on in different places, some with priests and priestesses, others with garlanded statues of various gods, different gatherings for different family members, even a cool area for kids older than six who in the Tanushan way of things would not be in bed if the party was big enough.

  Some tent awnings between palm trees made a new ambiance. Ari pushed in and indicated a man in a white vest and turban, conversing with several guests.

  “That’s him,” said Ari. “You do it. They freak when it’s me.”

  Raylee walked to him and pulled her badge. “Excuse me, Kamal Moily? Detective Sinta, TPD. Can I take a moment?”