The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (8 page)

Elvin held up the small black disk of a memory crystal, which she took from him.

“This is the last time,” she said. “Nothing else changes. I don’t care what you want, or how much you pay, understood? This is the end of this deal. If you want anything else, it has to wait until next time. Got that?”

“Sure.”

Paula sat back in the thin aging cushioning of the van’s seat. On the screen, Adam Elvin had stood up to leave. The booth’s e-seal flickered to let him out.

“That was wrong,” she said.

Maggie frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that was nothing to do with additions to the list. Whatever’s really in that memory crystal, it won’t be an inventory.”

“What then?”

“Some kind of instructions.”

“How do you know? I thought it fitted what happened.”

“You saw his reaction to the message at breakfast. The camera caught his expression spot on. It shocked the hell out of him. First rule on a deal like this is you don’t change things this late in the game. It makes people very nervous. Rachel Lancier’s reaction is a perfect example. And it’s not a good thing to make arms dealers nervous. A deal this size, everybody is quite edgy enough already. Elvin knows that.”

“So? He was shocked his bosses wanted to change things.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Nothing we can do. Keep watching. Keep waiting. But I think he’s on to us.”

The news about Dyson Alpha’s enclosure broke midmorning two days later. It dominated all the news streams and current events shows. A surprisingly large number of Velaines citizens had opinions on the revelation, and what should be done about it.

Maggie kept half her attention on the pundits, both the serious and the mad, who appeared on the news streams while she was sitting around the underground operations center. Time and again, the shows kept repeating the moment when the star disappeared from view. Diagrams sprang up simplifying what had happened for the general public.

“Do you think Elvin was rattled by that?” Maggie asked. “After all, the Guardians of Selfhood are supposed to be protecting us from aliens.”

Paula glanced at the portal where Dudley Bose was being interviewed. The old astronomer simply couldn’t stop smiling. “No. I checked. The message was sent half a day before Bose confirmed the event. In any case, I don’t see how the Dyson enclosure concerns the Guardians. Their primary concern is the Starflyer alien and how it manipulates the government.”

“Yeah, I get their propaganda. Damnit, I fall for the message authorship every time.”

“Think yourself lucky you’re not the author. I pick up the pieces on those scams as well.”

“You know a lot about them, don’t you?”

“Just about everything you can without actually signing on.”

“So how does someone like Adam Elvin wind up working for a terrorist faction?”

“You must understand that Bradley Johansson is basically a charismatic lunatic. The whole Guardians of Selfhood movement is simply his private personality cult. It calls itself a political cause, but that’s just part of the deception. The sad thing is, he’s lured hundreds of people into it, and not just on Far Away.”

“Including Adam Elvin,” Maggie muttered.

“Yes, including Elvin.”

“From what I’ve seen of Elvin, he’s smart. And according to his file he is a genuine committed radical Socialist. Surely he’s not gullible enough to believe Johansson’s propaganda?”

“I can only assume he’s humoring Johansson. Elvin needs the kind of protection which Johansson provides, and his beloved Party does benefit to some small degree from the association. Then again, maybe he’s just trying to revive past glories. Don’t forget he’s a psychotic; his terrorist activities have already killed hundreds, and every one of these arms shipments introduces the potential for more death. Don’t expect his motivation to be based in logic.”

The observation carried on for a further eleven days. Whatever additional items Adam Elvin had requested, they appeared to be difficult for Rachel Lancier to acquire. Various nefarious contacts arrived for quick private meetings with her in the back office. Despite their best attempts, the Tokat metropolitan police technical support team was unable to place any kind of infiltration device inside. Lancier’s office was too effectively screened. Not even the spindleflies could penetrate the combat-rated force field that surrounded it. Her warehouses, too, were well shielded. Although the team had managed to confirm the two where the weapons were being held. Several modified insects had gotten through to take a quick look around before succumbing to either janglepulse emitters or electron webs.

Secondary observation teams followed the suppliers as they left, watching them assemble their cache of weapons and equipment before delivering it to the dealership. A whole underground network of Valences’s iniquitous black-market arms traders was carefully recorded and filed, ready for the bust that would end the whole operation.

On the eleventh day, the observers logged a call that Adam Elvin made to a warehouse in town, authorizing them to forward an assignment of agricultural machinery to Lancier’s dealership.

“This is it,” Tarlo declared. “They’re getting them ready for shipment.”

“Could be,” Paula admitted.

On the other side of the operations office, Mares just sighed. But she did ask for the arrest teams to be put on standby.

Maggie was in one of the cars parked close to the dealership. When the eight trucks arrived, stacked high with crates of agricultural machinery, she relayed the pictures to the operations center. Wide gates in the fence surrounding the dealership compound were hurriedly opened to let them through. There was a brief holdup as yet another of Lancier’s cars went out on a test run. The lawful business had been doing well for the whole duration of the observation, with up to a dozen cars a day taken out by legitimate customers. Sales were brisk.

All eight trucks drove into the largest of Lancier’s warehouses. The doors rolled down as soon as the last one parked inside. Sensors that the observation team had ringing the site reported screening systems coming on immediately.

“Where’s Elvin now?” Paula asked.

Tarlo showed her the images of their prime target finishing his lunch in a downtown restaurant. Paula settled down at the side of the console to follow him, using the sensors carried by the observation teams.

After lunch, Elvin walked around one of the shopping streets, using his usual tactics to try to spot any tails. When he got back to the hotel he started packing his suitcase. Late that afternoon he went down to the bar and ordered a beer. He drank it while watching the portal at the end of the counter, which was showing Alessandra Baron interviewing Dudley Bose. In the early evening, just as the sun was falling below the horizon, his suitcase followed him downstairs, and he checked out.

“All right,” Paula announced to the teams. “It looks like this is it. Everybody: stage one positions please.”

Don Mares was in one of the four cars assigned to follow Elvin. He waited a hundred meters from the hotel, seeing the big man emerge from the lobby. A taxi drew up at the request of Elvin’s PL. His suitcase trundled up onto the rear luggage platform as he climbed in.

“Stand by, Don,” Paula said. “We’re placing a scrutineer in the taxi drive array. Ah, here we go, he’s told it to take him to Thirty-second Street.”

“That’s nowhere near the dealership,” Don Mares protested as their car took off in pursuit.

“I know. Just wait.” Paula turned to the visual and data feeds coming from the dealership. Rachael Lancier and ten of her people were now inside the sealed-up warehouse with the trucks. The rest of the work force had been sent home as usual at the end of the day.

On the console in front of Paula, data displays began flashing urgent warnings at her. “Hello, this is interesting. Elvin is loading some infiltration software into the taxi’s drive array.” She watched as the police scrutineer program wiped itself before the new interloper could establish itself and run an inventory on the operating system.

“He’s changing direction,” Don Mares reported. There was an excited note in his voice.

“Just stay calm and stay with him,” Paula said. “But don’t get too close, we’ve got him covered.” Out of the six images of the taxi that the console’s big portal offered her, only one was coming from a pursuit car. The others were all feeds from the civic security cameras that covered every street and avenue of the city. They showed the taxi sliding smoothly through the rush-hour traffic.

Elvin must have ordered it to accelerate. It began to speed up.

“Don’t be obvious,” Paula muttered to the observation team as the taxi took a sharp right. It was a good hundred fifty meters ahead of the first pursuit car now. Their standard boxing tactic had put the lead vehicle out of the picture. She watched the grid map with its bright dots, seeing how they rearranged themselves to surround the taxi.

Elvin turned right again, then quickly left, taking off down a small alleyway. “Don’t follow,” she instructed. “It’s only got one exit.”

Pursuit car three hurried to reach the street where the alleyway finished. The taxi emerged smoothly, and took a left. It was heading in the opposite direction to car three. They passed within a couple of meters.

Don Mares’s car resumed its tag position. The taxi began to speed up again. Screens along Paula’s console showed the blurred lines of car lights on either side of it, stretching away through the tall buildings of the city center. The taxi turned onto Twelfth Street, one of the broadest in the city, with six lanes of traffic and all of them full. It began to switch lanes at random. Then it slowed. An overhead camera followed it as it passed under one of the hulking bridges that carried the rail tracks into the CST planetary station.

“Damnit, where did he go?” Paula demanded. “Don, can you see him?”

“I think so. Second lane.”

Two cameras were focused on the other side of the bridge, covering every lane. A constant flow of vehicles zipped past. Then the cameras were zooming in on the taxi. It had changed to the outside lane again.

“All right,” Paula said. “All cars, reduce separation distance. Stay within eighty meters. We can’t risk loss of visual contact again. Car three, get under the bridge, check it out. See if he dropped something off.”

The taxi carried on with its evasive maneuvers for another kilometer, then abruptly turned onto Forty-fifth Street and stayed in one lane. Its speed wound back to a steady seventy kilometers per hour.

“He’s heading right for us,” Maggie said.

“Looks that way,” Paula agreed. “Okay, all pursuit cars, back off again.”

Eight minutes later the taxi pulled up outside Rachael Lancier’s car dealership. The gates opened and it went in, driving right through the open door of a warehouse. It stopped beside an empty repair bay.

Paula squinted at the portal image. The warehouse door had been left open, allowing the team’s sensors and cameras a perfect view. Nothing moved.

“What’s happening?” Tarlo asked.

“I’m not sure,” Paula said. “Rachael is still in the warehouse with the trucks. No wait …”

Simon Kavanagh was walking across the brightly lit concrete of the open warehouse floor. His bank tattoo paid the taxi charge. The rear luggage platform opened, and Elvin’s suitcase rolled out. It started to follow the slim bodyguard as he walked away. The taxi drove out of the warehouse.

“Oh, hell,” Paula grunted. “All teams, you have a go code for stage three. I repeat, we are at stage three. Interdict and arrest. Don, stop that taxi.” The city traffic routing array fired an emergency halt order into the taxi’s drive array. All four pursuit cars surged forward, forming a physical blockade around the vehicle.

Maggie was already moving as the taxi emerged from the warehouse. The sun had finally sunk from the sky ten minutes earlier, leaving a gloomy twilight in its wake. Behind her, the towers of the city center cut sharp gleaming lines into the shady sky. Ahead, there were only a few murky polyphoto strips fixed on the warehouse eaves to cast a weak yellow glow across the dealership with its rows and rows of parked cars. On the far side of the compound, an elevated rail line blocked the horizon, a thick black concrete barrier separating the city roofline from the darkening ginger sky. A single cargo train hissed and clanked its way along, a badly adjusted power wheel intermittently throwing up a fantail of sparks that marked out its progress as it slid deeper into the city.

Her fellow officers were advancing beside her, scuttling between the silent, stationary cars as they closed on the locked and screened warehouse. She activated her armor. The system, which looked like a chrome-blue skeleton worn outside her uniform, started to buzz softly. Its force field expanded, thickening the air around her. She prayed the power rating was good enough. Heaven only knew what caliber weapons they’d be facing.

Cars skidded behind her with tires squealing like wounded animals. Up ahead, the point members of the police tactical assault squad had reached the warehouse door. They barely stopped to fire an ion bolt at the bonded composite paneling. A dazzling flash threw the compound into monochrome relief, accompanied by a thunderbolt
crack
. Splinters of smoldering composite hurtled through the air, revealing two large holes in the building. Squad members raced through.

“FREEZE, POLICE.”

“DO NOT EVEN THINK OF MOVING, MOTHERFUCKER.”

“YOU, HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM. NOW.”

Adrenaline was singing in Maggie’s veins as she rushed through the gap. She cleared the little layer of smoke on the other side, her ion pistol held ready, retinal inserts on full resolution. Surprise at the scene before her almost made her stumble.

Rachael Lancier was standing casually at the front of a truck. The ten employees who had stayed behind were clustered around her. Heavyliftbots had removed several crates from the truck, stacking them neatly on the floor. A bottle and ten glasses were standing on top of one, clearly waiting for a toast to be drunk.