A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (27 page)

“If the Alliance knew what it had,” Trey said, “do you think it would have let the attacks happen? Do you seriously believe it would have let clones of PierLuigi Frémont live?”

It was a very good point, and one that Zhu was unprepared to answer. He had half-expected to leave this place empty-handed. Now, he had to consider what he wanted.

“If you are what I think you are,” Zhu said, “you’re never getting out of here.”

“Admitting defeat before even stepping onto the battlefield? Really, Torkild Zhu. Is that how they train defense lawyers these days? I thought you all wanted to get a hearing before one of the Multicultural Tribunals.”

That would have worked a few months ago, but Trey misplayed his hand. Zhu didn’t want that right now, nor did he want to save a possible mass murderer.

He did want to know what had happened on Anniversary Day, and this man had no idea.

“Think about this,” Trey said. “I am the Third of the Second. That means there’s a Third of the First out there. In fact, that means there’s a First, period, and maybe several others. No one has that information—or at least, has thought through what information they have. There were at least one hundred clones my age in that dome.”

“Where are they now?” Zhu asked.

“Dead,” Trey said. “All of them except six of us. Or maybe less. I don’t know. Six survived the day the marshals arrived. After that, I wasn’t allowed to know. I got shuttled into the system, and ended up here.”

There was a lot more to that story; Zhu could sense it. There was a lot more to Trey.

“I’ll consider it,” Zhu said.

“I’d like to sign on as your client now,” Trey said.

And Zhu felt the pull of that. In that moment, he realized this man had inherited another side of PierLuigi Frémont. Trey had charisma.

Which made him dangerous.

“I said I’ll consider it,” Zhu said.

“What can I do to convince you?” Trey asked.

Zhu studied him, heart pounding. Zhu wasn’t sure he was a match to this man, no matter how the law saw him.

“Nothing,” Zhu said. “You can’t do anything at all.”

THIRTY

IT TOOK LONGER than Gomez expected to get the rest of the crew off the
EAFS Stanley
. She had to contact the FSS for approval for the extended time off, even though her crew was the hardest working crew in the system. Except for the few days she had just given them, several crew members had not had time off in more than a year—except the regulated downtime that any spacefaring large ship had.

Part of that was because the
Stanley
traveled constantly inside the Frontier. In order to take time away from work, the
Stanley
and ships like her had to be in Alliance space, and sometimes the
Stanley
didn’t approach Alliance space for years. Gomez herself hadn’t had more than a week’s vacation in more than ten years.

Gomez tried not to get testy as she waited for some bureaucrat in the FSS to approve her crew’s leave. She had to fill out more forms than she wanted, and she had to attest that the
Stanley
would receive a full overhaul before going back to standard duty.

She actually didn’t mind attesting to that, since the
Stanley
would probably need an overhaul after she and her small team were through. If nothing else, she wanted to scrub some evidence of her private mission off the ship’s records.

The ship would record several things whether she liked it or not, but she knew that after the trip, she could get rid of the record. She could easily shut down other parts of the ship’s tracking capabilities before the team left on its new mission.

She shut down some external links, including all of the devices that actually pinged the Alliance with the
Stanley
’s location. She didn’t tell any of the team she had done this. The by-the-book members of the crew—Nuuyoma and Verstraete—would probably argue with her about the wisdom of doing that. Apaza had already questioned the wisdom of taking the
Stanley
—and in some ways, he was right. It would have been easier to rent a ship or to buy one, since she had a long-stored-up salary that she never spent.

However, Gomez needed the
Stanley
for this trip. The
Stanley
was a fully-equipped law enforcement vehicle that had everything from a small restraining area to a full level with cells. And, most importantly, it had a science lab so extensive that Simiaar could work her magic, even in the far reaches of the known universe.

Gomez needed Simiaar, and she knew she needed Simiaar’s equipment.

Which meant she had to keep the
Stanley
.

They moved out of Alliance space almost immediately, and found a stationary point behind an uninhabited moon. From there, the team split up into their various areas of research.

Gomez had brought back hours of interviews with TwoZero, as well as all of his prison records, including his biological data. She had taken fluids and skin cells from him, with his permission, so that Simiaar could confirm if the prison’s biological materials and data actually belonged to TwoZero.

Gomez still felt extremely paranoid, and she was beginning to think that a good thing.

She put Verstraete to work building a map and a timeline. She wanted to know where TwoZero had been, where the other surviving clones went, and why Thirds had gone to a medium security prison while the others had gone to maximum security. She also had Verstraete compile a list of the various known places that provided Designer Criminal Clones.

She gave Nuuyoma the files provided fifteen years ago by the Eaufasse. A history of the colony as seen through the surveillance that the Eaufasse set up. She wanted him to watch for anything that made the founders of that colony identifiable and she also wanted to know if there were other clone murders.

And she asked him to take a look at what was going on in that colony while she had been on Epriccom. At the time, two of her deputies were supposed to keep an eye on that enclave—and they had. But she had them looking for different things, because she had an active investigation.

Now, she wanted to know if anything had been hidden near there, if anyone else had escaped, or if the Eaufasse had approached the enclave as well.

Scanning that footage, even with the help of the excellent programs the
Stanley
had for such things, would take quite a bit of time.

Still, Nuuyoma had the patience and the eye for detail that she needed. Plus, he hadn’t been involved in the earlier mission, so he wouldn’t have the same prejudices Gomez or Simiaar had.

She had initially thought of putting Apaza on the footage. He could go through a lot of information quickly. But, she decided, he would be more useful doing other things.

She brought him her notes, and walked him through the things that TwoZero had told her about his childhood. She assigned Apaza to search for similar clone clusters and domed communities outside the Alliance—even if those clusters were not related to PierLuigi Frémont or were non-human clones.

Gomez figured they would be drowning in information, and she was all right with that. She figured the more information they had, the better they would be.

She was the one who investigated all of the information provided by the Eaufasse. She would not be able to hide the fact she looked at these records, and she wanted it all by the book.

The Eaufasse had joined the Alliance and were subject to Alliance laws. If she were to investigate current events happening with the Eaufasse, she would need their permission to see records not available to the public.

Fortunately for her, the information predated the Eaufasse’s entrance into the Alliance by a decade. Plus, she was the one who had helped the Eaufasse through the crisis with the clones. As one of the many Alliance first-contact providers who had facilitated the Eaufasse’s entrance into the Alliance, she had a lot of leeway in accessing records, particularly records she was a part of.

She decided to do something she hadn’t done when she was dealing with the Eaufasse and the clones. She was going to dig into the records of the history of that human colony.

Since she had to do this part by the book, she did her work on the screens in one of the most comfortable parts of the ship, a space that Simiaar had named the reference library. There were no paper books—Gomez hadn’t seen a paper book outside of Alliance space, and even then they were collector’s items, owned by people who could afford to spend money on silly things—but there were workstations that allowed easy access to various networks. Most of those networks provided entertainment of different kinds, uploaded or easily accessed through the FSS system and Alliance-approved.

The rest of the networks did provide a research library into all of the information that the Alliance had recorded during its existence. The problem was that there was too much information to access easily, and some of it wasn’t even available outside of Alliance space. So, she had to download specific things before they left—or approve it for download.

She could then transfer that information into her office, but she didn’t want to hang onto it. Besides, if someone did trace her research—and if someone were keeping track of PierLuigi Frémont clones, they might—then she wanted her search to look as cursory as possible.

Cursory happened in the research library. Not in the senior officer’s cabin.

She loved the room. It got used a lot on long trips, particularly when the crew had nowhere to stop for weeks. Usually it was full, even though conversation was frowned on.

Now, with only a skeleton piloting crew—a few old timers who no longer had homes to go to and who weren’t that fond of being away from the
Stanley
—and her four teammates, she could walk through corridor after corridor and fail to see a soul.

This room hadn’t seen any activity since before the crew left for its initial leave.

Still, she took a screen behind the door, so whoever passed in the hall couldn’t see what she was working on. Then she muted the sound, touching the command for non-aural presentations. Otherwise, she’d have to hook up a link so that she could hear privately, and she didn’t even want that traced.

She downloaded the entire Epriccom file from that year, then logged off the network. It would take some research for someone to figure out what information she was actually looking for.

She would be honest about part of this if she were ever confronted: she would say that the images of the Anniversary Day assassins upset her and she wanted to make sure they had no connection to that incident on Epriccom.

Perfectly logical, and something a person in her position would do. She suspected that Simiaar had done some of that long before she ever contacted Gomez about Anniversary Day.

Gomez bent over the screen and started into the information, separating the files by timeline. She wanted to know what kind of communications the Eaufasse had with that domed community both before the principals arrived and afterward. She had received that information during the investigation—no one had thought it pertinent.

And if the entire incident were investigated by the Alliance later, which it was supposed to have been, then all of the information needed to be at the Alliance’s fingertips.

Gomez knew she would have at least as much work as the others on the team. The Alliance always collected thousands of times more information than it actually needed on any matter. The key was extracting the tiny bit that related to the case.

Or cases, as in this instance.

Gomez separated everything according to the timelines she needed, then set to work. She had people dealing with the enclave’s history and the things that happened after the enclave destroyed itself.

But so far, she was the only one who could work on its origins.

Sometimes, in the beginnings of things, she found clarity.

She hoped this was one of those times.

THIRTY-ONE

ZHU HAD TO use the prison’s records system to look up information on Trey. The closed S
3
system he had brought on the space yacht didn’t include prison records, clone crime records, or alien crime records, and he didn’t want to use any public system to investigate Trey’s background.

Fortunately Zhu could access the prison system through his room in the habitat. The best hotel on the habitat, billed as a luxury hotel, was hardly good enough to be called a hotel. The rooms were sparsely furnished, and none were suites. The place lacked conference areas, and it barely had functional workspaces.

He was beginning to understand that the usual suspects who dealt with legal cases throughout the Alliance—lawyers, judges, politicians—rarely frequented prisons associated with clones. And of course, there was no family. Friends probably abandoned the relationship if the clone got arrested as well—and certainly would if the clone were imprisoned.