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People have to consider the consequences of their actions—but
it’s impossible to consider all of the consequences.
Four Years Ago
Bartholomew Nyquist parked his aircar in one of the hoverlots at the end of the neighborhood. The Dome was dark this morning, even though someone should have started the Dome Daylight program. Maybe they had, deciding that Armstrong was in for a “cloudy” day—terminology he never entirely understood, given that the Moon had no clouds and most people who lived here had been born on the Moon and had never seen a cloud in their entire lives.
He grabbed his laser pistol from the passenger seat, where he always kept it when he was traveling. He tucked the gun into his shoulder holster, hidden under his already rumpled suit coat, and got out of the car.
The neighborhood looked even darker than it should have, sprawled below him like something out of those Christmas Dickens plays his ex-wife loved so much. All it needed was some sooty smoke coming out of chimneys above each house to be authentically dreary.
Oh, his mood was bad. And for that, he could probably only blame himself. He should “buck up”—wasn’t that what Chief of the First Detective Unit, Andrea Gumiela, had told him yesterday? Buck up, Bartholomew. Everyone gets divorced. And yours was two years ago. The attitude was understandable last year. This year, it’s becoming a problem.
That, after she made him watch the entire complaint vid that his now-former partner had filed. He knew the complaints already, having heard them from previous partners and in his divorce proceeding: surly, impossible to work with, superior. Conversations filled with biting sarcasm—and that was on a good day. On a bad day, he didn’t communicate at all.
And on this day, he didn’t have to. Still on the force, still a homicide detective, and newly without a partner. The brass would conduct partner try-outs for him all week. The brass wanted to keep Nyquist. He had the best closing rate on the force. The problem was that regulations stated he needed a partner. He stated that he didn’t. He worked better alone.
Gumiela knew that, but she followed the rules. Which was why she was his boss instead of the other way around.
Nyquist took the stairs to the sidewalk. He hated these cases in the outer districts of Armstrong. The row houses here rented for less than apartments downtown, but apartments were nicer. A lot of these houses had landlords who only owned one or two properties and couldn’t afford the upkeep. It showed in dingy walls that hadn’t been upgraded in decades. Moon dust stains still clung to some of the siding, even though Moon dust had been cleared out of this area since the Dome improvements two decades ago.
Not every part of the city was Moon dust free, particularly Old Armstrong, which had stupid historic regulations that prevented certain kinds of upkeep. But Nyquist knew this neighborhood didn’t have that kind of regulation, and so the lack of upkeep was either a financial or a business decision.
Not that he cared about the upkeep of houses as it pertained to regulations. He cared about it as it pertained to the kind of people living inside—people on the edge of hopelessness, people whose economic future wasn’t quite bleak but could be with just one disaster, one horrible thing gone wrong.
When he reached the street, he peered around the corner, saw two squads, white-and-blue lights turning, crime scene lasers already up. He should’ve parked down here, but he needed the walk. Besides, on days like this, he didn’t want to be part of the squad. He liked being on his own, and parking his car away from the scene let him keep his autonomy.
He knew he would need it.
He sighed. He was supposed to contact Dispatch the moment he arrived in the neighborhood, and he’d been putting it off. He knew what they would say. A try-out partner would be waiting for him at the scene. Gumiela had already done this to him once. A try-out partner on scene showed the brass whether Nyquist and the newbie worked well together.
It also prevented Nyquist from rejecting the new partner outright, based on clothes, appearance, or general lack of verbal defensive ability.
The question was which of those people loitering outside the crime scene was the one he’d be stuck with all day long.
Couldn’t put it off any longer. He sent a ping to Dispatch through his links, hoping they’d only look at his location and not try to contact him.
Instead, a tiny image of this morning’s dispatch—a woman with dark hair and matching dark circles under her eyes—appeared in the lower left corner of his vision. God, he hated that most of all. Couldn’t they just use audio like everyone else on the Force?
“Detective Nyquist,” she said, and it looked like she was speaking aloud as well as sending through the links. For the record? Probably. No one wanted to get in trouble when he got in trouble. “You’ll be meeting your new partner at the scene. Her name is Ursula Palmette—”
Newly minted detective. I got it, he sent, deliberately not speaking out loud for any record.
“No, detective, not that newly minted at all. She has worked as a detective for five months.”
What happened to her training partner? he sent. He stopped only a few meters from the house that seemed to be the center of attention. He didn’t want to go any further while having this conversation.
“Early retirement,” the dispatch said.
For some bad conduct? Nyquist sent.
“No, sir. Family troubles. His wife is dying and he didn’t want to spend the year of her life working.”
That surprised him. He felt color touch his cheeks, something that didn’t happen to him often. He was glad it happened before he met Palmette. He didn’t want to step in it at the very beginning of their relationship.
All right, he sent, not acknowledging his discomfort or the slight reprimand the dispatch had given him. Anything else I need to know?
“Just that the officers on site say that they’re ready for you, sir.”
He was beginning to seriously dislike this dispatch. Who was she to subtly reprimand him like that?
Instead of challenging her, he just severed the link and walked the remaining few meters to the crime scene. Police-line lasers gave the fake grass a reddish tint. An ambulance was parked sideways behind one of the squad cars, lights off.
He found that a curious detail. Either the ambulance wasn’t needed and it could go off elsewhere, or it was needed and it had to stay, in which case its warning lights would be on low.
Two officers stood in front of the crime- scene lasers. A tiny woman with a cap of brown hair leaned against one of the squads, holding a steaming cup of something—probably coffee—in her right hand.
As Nyquist approached, she stood.
“Detective Nyquist,” she said. “I’m—”
“Ursula Palmette,” he said, resisting the urge to add “newly minted detective.” “I suppose you have documentation for me?”
She extended her hand. He hated chip-to-chip information transfer, but it was department policy these days. He grabbed her hand in a relatively loose grip and felt the chip in the center of his palm warm, which was a signal that the information exchange was not only complete but accepted.
In the past, he’d go through a speech—I’m the lead on this case. You shouldn’t question my authority. I’ll do all the talking—but she already had had a training officer and she should know this crap. Besides, he’d been told by his previous two partners that his little opening speech was off-putting. He decided not to put Detective Ursula Palmette off. He simply did not have the energy for it.
“What do we know?” he asked.
“Well, sir,” she said, then paused. “It is sir, right? Or do you prefer Detective? Or Bartholomew?”
“I prefer to know why the hell I’m here.” He hated all the protocol with names. He certainly wasn’t going to let her call him Bartholomew, which seemed to be what she was angling for. He didn’t like casual relationships between partners. He preferred formality. She’d figure it out.
She nodded. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, with that fresh-faced, straight-out-of-the-academy look. He preferred his partners to have worked their way to the detective squad, not get fast-tracked through so-called police education.
He didn’t say that, which he would have had he met her in the precinct. Instead, he watched her peel the lid off her drink, which made it steam all the more, sending a smell of cinnamon and milk into the air, turning his stomach. She took a sip before saying anything else, as if the drink fortified her somehow.
“Um,” she said, pressing the lid back on the cup. “We have a body—”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course they had a body. They were homicide detectives. Someone had to die for the street cops to call him in.
“—in the front room of the house. The woman inside called it in. The responding officers say something is a little off in the entire thing.”
“A little off?” Nyquist said.
Palmette shrugged. “Their words. You can talk to them. I was instructed not to do any investigating until you arrived.”
Because he had the high closure rate, and one of his complaints about partners was that they made his job harder, not easier. They asked the wrong questions, contaminated crime scenes all by their little lonesome, and compromised witnesses.
“And yet you know about the body, and the scene being a little off,” he said.
“Because Officer Saxe”—and she nodded at a young cop with curly red hair and copper skin standing near one of the squads—“told me the minute I arrived. I told him we had to wait for you, and so he stopped. You want to talk to him now, sir?”
So she was going to stick with “sir.” Fine.
“No,” Nyquist said. “I want to see the interior. Got a suit?”
By that, he meant protective covering for her skin and clothes. Most rookie detectives had to make do with the full-body suits that the cops gave to civilians at crime scenes, but she tapped her arm.
“Already on, sir,” she said.
That was when he noticed that her clothes were just a bit shiny. He took one of his protective suits out of the pocket of his coat. The suit was the size of his thumbnail, until he attached it to the button on his sleeve and tapped it.
Then the damn thing enveloped him. He hated that moment—it felt like walking into a gigantic spider web, which he had done once as a kid on vacation with his parents on Earth—and then the feeling went away.
“Okay,” he said as he blocked the crime- scene laser with his palm. Another chip on his palm made sure that none of the warning sirens went off. He stepped onto the fake grass and waited for Palmette to join him. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Now
Fifth political fundraiser of the week and it was only Wednesday. Armstrong Mayor Arek Soseki was beginning to hate election season, something he never thought he’d admit to anyone, particularly himself. He used to love running for office, the glad-handing, talking to the voters. Hell, he even liked manipulating the media while they manipulated him right back.
But he’d been mayor for six years now, and it looked like the job was his for life if he wanted it, thanks to the political machine he’d installed throughout Armstrong. That meant elections weren’t that much of a challenge anymore. Even the fundraisers had become pro forma—the mayor shows up, the mayor asks for money, people donate money, the mayor passes the money to the proper candidate, and the proper candidate wins. End of story.
He used to love the challenge of politics, but politics would not be a challenge again unless he ran for Governor-General of the Moon—and that particular title held less actual power than his position did. He could have more of an impact as Mayor of Armstrong, on everything from Moon politics to Earth Alliance regulations, because he controlled the largest port on the Moon, not to mention the largest city here, the most cosmopolitan city outside of Earth.
Eventually, everyone came through Armstrong—usually on their way somewhere else, but they came through. And stopped. And spent money. And got a little taste of the city.
His city.
And the first thing they saw when they left the arrival terminal in the port? A floating sign with his image, saying that Mayor Arek Soseki welcomed them.
People remembered that.
They remembered him.
He stood in front of the podium in the backroom of O’Malley’s Diner. O’Malley’s wasn’t a diner, and its owner was not named O’Malley. O’Malley’s Diner was one of the more upscale restaurants near the port, and its location, rather than its food, had made it a place for politicians to hold quick and dirty fundraisers. Easy access, not to mention some rather hidden back routes from the port itself, kept some of the fundraisers secret—or at least, some of the attendees.
Soseki had lost count of how many times he’d given a speech here. He almost felt like he should carve his initials into the real wood podium. The entire backroom was paneled in real wood—of a type he wasn’t familiar with. Not that the Mayor of Armstrong needed to be familiar with wood. Wood was one of those things the rich indulged in that Soseki didn’t understand.
He scanned the crowd. Two hundred super donors. Of the two hundred men and women in front of him, only about twenty represented their own interests. The rest belonged to some corporation or another, here for the express purpose of dumping funds into Armstrong’s city council elections through legal means.
He was helping corporations buy his councilors, and he didn’t care so long as those same corporations dumped money into the city. Not as much money as some of the cities on the moons of Jupiter—cities owned outright by Aleyd or Fortion or other corporations—but enough to keep Armstrong in the black for a decade or two.
As long as he was mayor, he wanted Armstrong to remain one of the greatest cities in the solar system. Hell, if he had his way, it would become the greatest city. Maybe it didn’t have the history of Paris, Dubai, or New York, but history wasn’t everything.
Commerce was.
And that was the theme of this speech.
The theme of every speech this week, really. Every speech this year. He was getting so damn tired of these speeches he had to play mind games just to keep the smile on his face and the enthusiasm in his voice.
He really didn’t remember half the things he said here, but the crowd was clapping, people were buttonholing him, and he was posing for vids and pictures, glad-handing, like he had done since he ran for head of his neighborhood association at the ripe old age of sixteen.
And finally, it was done. His invaluable assistant, the dapper Hans Londran, put his small frame between Soseki and the last of his admirers, saying some nonsense about the mayor being tired.
Soseki wasn’t tired, at least not physically. He was just tired of the constant talk about nothing.
He let Londran and the security guards flank him as they headed out of the back room into the restaurant proper. This was on Soseki’s orders. Most politicians snuck in and out of venues like common criminals. Soseki went through, grinned at the patrons, shook a hand or two, and then waved as he headed out the front to the limo, paid for by the city and always at his disposal.
He ran a finger over his palms, making sure his chips were protected and the SkinSoft covering he wore wasn’t bunched up. People wanted to think they were shaking his actual hand, not touching some kind of pseudoskin covering that protected him from everything from germs to rapid-acting, touch-sensitive poison.
The door opened, he smiled, and patrons at white-cloth-covered tables started shouting his name.
This part of his job never got old. He shook hands, grinned, greeted a handful of people he knew, and bustled out the door in a blaze of lights. The limo had touched down on the sidewalk—the only non-emergency vehicle in Armstrong that could—and one of his guards opened the door for him.
He was almost there when a hand brushed his sleeve.
“Mr. Mayor?”
He turned but didn’t see anyone except Londran and the guards, all frowning at him.
“Mr. Mayor?”
That wasn’t a stranger’s voice. That was Londran’s, and he looked concerned. Why would anyone look concerned, especially after the meeting had gone well, the money donated was within expectations?
“Mr. Mayor?”
Then he realized what was going on. He hadn’t moved from the entrance to the restaurant even though he thought he was walking across the sidewalk. He should have been to the limo by now. He should have slid inside. He should be careening through Armstrong’s streets, heading to the next meeting, working on the next crisis.
But he wasn’t.
And he wasn’t even sure if Londran was repeating himself or if the phrase had been caught in a loop in his own mind. He should have answered by now. He should have asked, “What?”
He usually asked “What?” when Londran used that tone. But he couldn’t move his mouth or his legs. And his arm ached.
No. It didn’t ache. It was cold. He was cold. Chilled like he hadn’t been since that conference of Earth Alliance mayors held in, of all places, Alaska in the winter.
The chill was moving from his arm, down his chest, reaching for his heart. And, for the first time that day, for the first time in weeks—no, years—he actually felt afraid.
That chill didn’t dare reach his heart.
Because when it did, his heart would shatter. He would shatter.
And everything would stop.
Four Years Ago
The front door was open, just like it was supposed to be, with one more officer stationed outside. He nodded at Nyquist as Nyquist went inside.
The interior was very dark, even though the lights were on. They didn’t seem to have enough power to penetrate the house’s gloom. The place smelled funky too—not just the smell of death, which while Nyquist wasn’t used to it, was at least something he expected at a crime scene.
No, this place smelled of greasy cooked food, coffee, and garbage. The front room was square and somewhat useless, standard in a row house like this one, where it seemed like the architect couldn’t decide whether this room was an entry or a living area, so he decided to turn it into both.
Usually tenants turned the front room into one or the other. As Nyquist’s eyes adjusted, he realized that the people who lived here had gone with the original architect’s vision and kept it as both. Two faux leather chairs leaned against the wall separating this room from the next (probably a kitchen). A table covered with dirty dishes, clothes, and some decorative rocks squeezed between the two chairs.
On the left side of the door was a mat for shoes, which were scattered haphazardly. Some kind of plastic runner made a trail between the door and the kitchen, leading him to a supposition.
Whoever lived here had lived on Earth. Or somewhere Earthlike, somewhere with weather that changed daily, got on the shoes, and had to be accommodated when a person came inside.
Soft voices murmured farther into the house. Palmette brushed up against him. He could feel her impatience. She wanted to get inside and look at the body.
She didn’t realize that the body was the king of the chessboard—the reason for the investigation, but not the center of the investigation. Everything else was much more important, and if Nyquist didn’t look at the details now, he would run the risk of missing even more in the future.
The walls were unadorned except for a series of coat hooks above the shoes, and a public access terminal on the wall beside the chairs. The terminal’s screen was dark and covered with some kind of slime—probably that grease he was smelling—indicating that it hadn’t been used in years.
Which meant that the people who lived in this house had their own way of connecting to the nets. They were probably linked, and unless there was a public viewing screen in another room, they seemed to prefer to entertain themselves rather than share entertainment.
Palmette stepped beside him, apparently trying to go in, but he blocked her with his arm.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“Working,” he said. If she couldn’t figure it out, that was her problem. Hopefully, it wouldn’t become his.
The body lay in a little nook beside the door, on the opposite side of the room from the shoes, and just in front of the chairs. That small section of wall had a window, which Nyquist knew from being outside, but the window wasn’t just blocked off. It was covered with some kind of blackout material, so that no one could see in or out. So that it seemed like a part of the wall, instead of something that looked out upon the street.
Strange. He wondered if the other windows were blocked off. It would explain the smell. The house had its own air circulation system—all houses in Armstrong did—but they were enhanced by the circulation system in the Dome. Open windows allowed an air exchange that kept everything fresher. Besides, the Dome had stronger filters, so the air coming in was cleaner than the air going out.
He went a little farther in, staying on the runner. “Stand beside me,” he said to Palmette. “Don’t get on the carpet yet.”
“Did we put this mat down?” she asked, revealing just how new she was.
“No,” he said and crouched.
The body belonged to a man, folded in a near-fetal position. Blood pooled beneath the torso, and the face—aside from spatter—was undamaged. Hands and arms cradled around the abdomen. Impossible to tell how tall he was, but Nyquist got a sense of athletic solidity. The muscles in the legs, visible through the tailored pants, seemed pronounced. The hands had a muscularity to them as well, one that extended up the wrist. That, combined with broad shoulders, made Nyquist think that this man was probably tall as well.
Nyquist couldn’t tell if the athletic ability was real or enhanced, and it probably didn’t matter. What mattered was that this man appeared strong and somehow someone had brought him down.
The man’s hair was short with tight black curls against his well-shaped skull. His eyes were open, his mouth as well. He looked to be mid-thirties.
The corpse had a smell all its own. Loosened muscles usually meant loose bowels, but this stench was greater than that. Nyquist extended a hand, silently warning Palmette to stay back, then he stood and took two steps forward.
The carpet squished beneath his feet. More blood lost than what was obvious. Nyquist nodded to himself.
He went a little farther and crouched again. Hands clasped around the belly, not to cover a single laser wound, but to keep the insides from escaping. Something had gutted him—some kind of blade, probably—and had pierced his intestines in more than one place.
That explained the smell.
The man’s hands were covered in black fluids. If this was his only wound, it had taken him some time to die. And he had been in agony.
Nyquist stood.
“Can I see now?” Palmette asked.
“If you want,” he said, and squelched across the carpet to the front door. He scraped the lower part of his protective gear off, handed it to the officer to bag for a crime scene tech, and got out another suit for a second lower layer of protective gear.
Then he went back inside, ignoring Palmette, who crouched near the body, her feet exactly where his had been. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. At least she followed some rules. If she followed most, she might actually be possible for a long-term partner.
He forgot all about her, though, as he stepped into the next room. It was a kitchen. The walls were legitimately grease stained, like he expected from the smell. He had no idea how much work—or grease—it took to cover walls like that. Someone had to shut off the walls’ self-cleaning feature or completely overwhelm it.
At the moment, he voted for overwhelm. Dishes stacked everywhere and all of them filthy. He had no idea how anyone could even live here, let alone cook here.
No one stood in the kitchen, not that there was a lot of room. It was more of a galley kitchen than a full kitchen. Someone—long ago—had changed this row house’s standard design and cut the kitchen in half, an odd choice, he thought.
He stepped through the next door and found out why. A full formal dining room stood there and surprisingly, this room was clean. Stairs curved up the side of the room and disappeared into bedrooms above.
A woman sat at the head of the table, her eyes wide as she looked at him. He got a sense of nervous containment, as if she would jump toward him at any moment. Another woman—this one an officer—sat in a close chair, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug that was still full.
Smart woman. She hadn’t had anything to drink from the mug, even though it had clearly been offered to her.
“I’m Bartholomew Nyquist,” he said softly. “I’m the detective they sent over to talk to you.”
Normally, he would have introduced himself as the detective in charge of the scene or the crime or the death, but he had a sense that would be the wrong thing to say here.
The woman, whose skin had an odd blotchiness, bit her lower lip.
“This is Alvina Ingelow,” the officer said. “She lives here.”
“Thank you, Officer,” he said in his most gentle tone, not for her sake, but for the woman’s. “Give us a few minutes alone, if you don’t mind.”
She nodded and stood. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t.
Instead, he added, “If you don’t mind waiting outside. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”
Meaning he would talk to her, not Palmette. He hoped the officer understood that. He didn’t want her to talk to anyone other than him. She probably had some early arrival information that he couldn’t get any other way, and he wanted to be the first to hear it.
He touched a chip on each hand, recording the conversation. But he didn’t tell Alvina Ingelow he was doing that. He didn’t want to scare her. He’d let her know in a while. He’d used this technique before, and while it was dicey legally, the information he got from these interviews usually remained part of the court case.
“I know you told the officer what happened,” he said, and the woman nodded—a bit too eagerly, he thought. “But I want you to tell me. Take your time. I know this is hard.”
She shot him a grateful look. The sympathy was calming her. Good, because he thought she was wrapped just a bit too tightly, even for someone who had just discovered a body in her home.
“I was coming home,” she said. “I opened the door, and there he was.”
Nyquist nodded but didn’t say anything. He had promised her time, so he wasn’t going to derail her with questions. Not yet.
“I sent for help through the links, and then your people came. And the ambulance. They sent an ambulance.” As if she were surprised by that. He would have to listen to the link contact. He wondered if she had said the man was injured.
Nyquist waited for a good minute, his gaze steady on hers. Her eyes were as odd as she was. The pupils seemed to vibrate ever so slightly. He wondered if that was a trick of the light, an enhancement of some kind that he wasn’t familiar with, an effect of a link, or some kind of drug interaction.
But he didn’t ask that either. He’d learned long ago to take investigations slowly, to absorb the information as it came to him, to study the people surrounding the deceased and to make suppositions, but not to assume they were facts.
When she didn’t say anything more, he realized that was her story. Remarkable in its brevity and lack of emotion.
So he would have to ask questions after all. The trick now was to ask the right questions to draw out her story, not to direct it.
“You said you were coming home.” He was careful to repeat her language. “From where?”
“Work,” she said, folding her hands in front of him. The movement caught his eye. “I got the night shift.”
Her hands were remarkably clean. They were probably the cleanest thing in this entire house, except for her dress, which was also clean, if a bit rumpled.
“Where do you work, exactly?” he asked.
She waved one of those very clean hands. “Near the port. I’m a cocktail waitress.”
No business near the port employed actual cocktail waitresses. All of the bars there used robotic servers, especially late at night. Some places did employ women under the job description cocktail waitress, but they didn’t wait on anyone and they certainly didn’t serve cocktails.
She was either a stripper or a sex worker. Neither profession was illegal, but neither was that socially acceptable either. He wanted to lean back and look at her body, but he didn’t. He hadn’t gotten the sense that she was enhanced the way strippers usually were. If she was a professional sex worker, her enhancements might not be visible.
He tried not to shudder in distaste.
“When does your shift end?” He didn’t ask where she was employed. He would circle back to that in a moment. He wanted her to focus on what happened here, not on her discomfort at her own job.
“Six,” she whispered.
The whisper caught him by surprise. She said it almost as if it were forbidden information.
“And you came right home?”
She bit her lower lip again.
“Did you walk?” That was the only way to explain the time discrepancy. He had been told that uniforms arrived at eight. If she’d found the body and called, it couldn’t have been any longer than six-thirty if she had come directly home.
She shook her head once. “Car,” she said, almost as softly as that whisper.
He nodded. Something else to circle back to. “And when you came in, he was here.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And who is he?”
“He thinks he’s my boyfriend,” she said with so much venom that Nyquist resisted the urge to lean back. “But he’s not.”
Nyquist let out a small breath. So many directions to take here, and given her emotion, only one was a good direction.
He tried not to look at those really clean hands. He wanted her to stand, so that he could see the rest of her, but this wasn’t the moment to ask.
Or was it?
“Did you make some fresh coffee for the officer?” he asked. “Because I would love a cup.”
She smiled at him. The smile warmed her face, made her seem young—almost childlike—as if his request pleased her somehow.
“Sure,” she said, and stood up.
She was taller than he expected. She smoothed her dress—which was more of a long shirt—over her legs. They were covered in black tights. She wore heels so high that she tottered as she went into that galley kitchen.
He didn’t stand, but he did turn slightly in his chair so that his back wasn’t to her. He slid the chair silently sideways so that he could see her move in the kitchen.
Her figure wasn’t spectacular, the way a stripper’s would be. So she was most likely a sex worker. He would have to ask, or have Palmette do it, very delicately. This woman was on an edge, one he didn’t like.
I opened the door and there he was.
He thinks he’s my boyfriend. But he’s not.
Dishes rattled in the kitchen. Nyquist could see her moving plates around to find a mug. He allowed himself a shudder this time and hoped she wouldn’t take it as an insult when he didn’t actually drink the coffee he had asked for.
As he waited, he sent a silent message through his links to Dispatch: Need to hear the emergency call for this residence ASAP. Through private links only, please. And need a timestamp.
He got an automated acknowledgement. This kind of request was routine, although something that usually happened while on the scene. Usually the detective got the auxiliary information back at the precinct.
“Here you go.” She came back, carrying two mugs by the handle. They steamed. She set his mug down in front of him, then put one in front of her place. She smiled at him again, which struck him as really strange, considering that there was still a dead man in her front room, a dead man she claimed she knew.
“Thank you,” Nyquist said, and smiled back.
As she sat down, he looked at her shoes. Clean. He hadn’t expected that. He had expected some dried blood on the bottom. Anyone who had gone near that corpse would have blood on their shoes.
“What’s the name of the gentleman in the front room?” Nyquist asked.
“He’s not a gentleman,” she snapped.
Again the mood shift was sudden, the vehemence almost tangible.
“My mistake,” Nyquist said calmly. “What’s the name of the man you called us about?”
“Callum,” she said as if she didn’t want the word to pass through her lips.
“Callum what?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Why? He’d never been asked that before at this stage of an investigation. “Just so that we can put the right name on the files.”
“Sheel,” she said as if it were top secret.
“And he’s been bothering you,” Nyquist said.
“You have no idea,” she said.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asked.
“Boy, do I ever,” she said, and began to talk.
Now
“He’s what?” Noelle DeRicci, Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon, sank into the chair behind her desk. The chair, designed to accommodate her form no matter how she was sitting, shifted slightly and she wanted to growl at it.
She wanted to growl at everything.
Even her beautifully designed office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, its comfortable chairs, its green plants at strategic places, failed to calm her. It wasn’t working.
Or maybe she expected too much, particularly when her assistant, Rudra Popova, stood next to the desk, threading her fingers together as if she could pull them out of their sockets.
“Mayor Soseki’s dead, sir.” Popova swallowed hard. Her normally impassive features were drawn. Her long black hair, usually as smooth as water, was mussed, and her eyes were red.
She’d known Arek Soseki. They both had.
DeRicci had known him better. She had countless meetings with him since, as mayor, he was the head of Armstrong Dome. He often butted heads with the governor-general of the United Domes. He believed the mayors should have more power regulating DeRicci, even though she worked for the United Domes.
She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the words “dead” combined with “Soseki.” Arek was a dynamic man, not the kind who keeled over in early middle age.
“What happened?” she asked softly. She’d had her external links off, leaving only the emergency links and the contact information for people who worked with her directly.
Popova wiped the bottom of her left eye. A tear. Even the great Popova—the calmest woman on the Moon—had emotions.
DeRicci felt faintly surprised at that.
“They don’t know,” Popova said. “He seemed fine, and then he froze and collapsed. His last physical came out fine. He had no health problems, nothing that would have caused this. They’re wondering if it was murder.”
“Wondering,” DeRicci repeated. “It would be nice to know.”
Because if it was murder, she had an entire set of protocols she had to follow. If it was just a death (just a death; what a thought), she had another.
She had to be able to function right now. She didn’t have the luxury of tears.
“I’ll get on it, sir,” Popova said, wiping at the other eye as if it annoyed her.
DeRicci wondered why Popova was so broken up about the mayor. She’d been through other high-profile deaths before.
“Who is investigating this thing?” DeRicci asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” Popova said.
“I want some answers, Rudra, right now. I want the place where he died blocked off immediately—the wider the perimeter the better. I want one of our investigators down there—the best one we have—and I want someone from the police department, someone good, there as well.”
“Detective Nyquist?” Popova asked.
DeRicci stiffened. Everyone knew she and Nyquist were involved, but she tried to keep that part of her life personal.
“I don’t tell the police department how to run their business,” she said. “Except for this. They’d better have the best investigator in charge of this thing, and by best, I mean someone who can close cases and someone considered incorruptible. If this is murder, then we have to plan not just for an arrest, but for a conviction.”
“And if it’s not murder?” Popova asked softly.
“That’s not a concern at the moment,” DeRicci said, knowing she sounded cold. “We’re going to proceed as if it is. Get some medical examiner down there too. We need answers as fast as we can.”
“Already done, sir,” Popova said.
DeRicci didn’t doubt that. Popova had a great ability to multitask. She’d probably been sending messages through her links as DeRicci spoke. Back when DeRicci first got this job, and she discovered that Popova was going to be her assistant, it irritated her that Popova could do more than one thing at a time. DeRicci didn’t entirely believe it; she felt like people who multitasked the way Popova did were less competent.
But Popova was more competent because of her work method, and DeRicci now relied on it, even if she didn’t understand it.
“I assume there’s some kind of audio or visual footage,” DeRicci said. “I want that immediately. I want eyes and ears on this case right now.”
Popova nodded, then hovered. Popova never hovered. That was odd too.
“Thank you, Rudra,” DeRicci said. “Now give me a minute.”
“Yes, sir,” Popova said, and walked out of the room. Just from her tone, DeRicci could tell Popova thought DeRicci was going to take a private moment to mourn.
But she wasn’t. As shocked as she was, she was also calm. She hadn’t really liked Soseki, although she worked with him. She never felt like she knew the man, just the politician.
She sighed, got up, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Armstrong, and, curving in the distance, the Dome. From this vantage, nothing looked different. But on the ground, she knew, everything was about to change.
She knew how things changed in an instant. She’d been through it more than once. The worst time was four years ago, when an unknown suicide bomber tried to destroy the Dome. The resulting blast ruined an entire section of the Dome and demolished a whole neighborhood.
She had been the chief investigator on that bombing. She had learned most of what happened—what kind of bomb it was, why it did the kind of damage it had, what it had destroyed. What she hadn’t learned—no one had—was who the bomber was, and why that person had tried to destroy the Dome.
Usually this view reminded her that not everything had an answer—and even without answers, the city went on. The people continued, life moved forward, and everyone could recover from catastrophic events.
She had no idea if Soseki’s death was a catastrophic event.
She would find out—and if it was, she would minimize the damage, just like she was paid to do.
* * *
Four Years Ago
The woman—Alvina—had only been talking for ten minutes but it felt like two hours. Nyquist had wrapped his hands around the coffee mug and tried not to think about its slimy exterior. She had been going through a list of grievances against this Callum Sheel, and at this point, Nyquist wasn’t sure if they were real grievances or imagined ones.
At this point, he wasn’t sure it mattered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Palmette move into the kitchen. He cursed silently, then sent her a message through his links.
Back off. She’s talking.
I’ll just listen and record from in here, Palmette sent back.
No, you won’t, he sent. Back off. That’s an order.
The woman stopped talking. He wasn’t sure if that was because she heard Palmette in the kitchen or if his expression had changed, letting his irritation at Palmette show.
“You don’t believe me,” the woman said.
“Oh, I do,” Nyquist said. “He stalked you.”
“Yes! That’s the word.” Then she peered at the kitchen. “You hear that?”
Get out, he sent to Palmette, but she hadn’t moved. Dammit.
“That,” the woman said in the calmest voice. Then she stood. “He’s in the kitchen.”
Crap. It was exactly what Nyquist thought. She was delusional.
She moved quicker than he expected, cross the distance between her chair and the kitchen door in five seconds, maybe less. He stood, but not fast enough. She had already gone inside, her hand finding a knife as big as her forearm, and it looked like it was covered with something.
She wielded it like a pro, and Palmette, surprised, didn’t grab her weapon. Instead she raised her hands like a victim.
Nyquist grabbed his, but kept the muzzle pointed downward. He didn’t want the woman to see it if he could at all avoid it. He wanted to keep what little trust he had built up.
“Alvina,” he said softly.
“I told you he’d be back,” she said. “I told you. He’s right there, and he’s going to call for help. House! Off!”
And suddenly everything went dark. She had a smart house, despite the state of that public wall link. A smart house set to make sure she had the advantage, not anyone else.
Get out of the damn kitchen, he sent to Palmette. Now!
“Alvina,” he said out loud. “I need just a little light here so that I can see him. I’ll help you with him.”
Faint light rose above Nyquist and the woman. The rest of the kitchen was in darkness, although even from this distance, he could see Palmette’s shadowy form.
Alvina moved forward, slashing. He heard a crash and a grunt. It didn’t come from Alvina.
We need the ambulance team in here now, he sent, relationship with the crazy woman no longer a concern. Right now.
Door’s closed and sealed, someone sent back to him.
Great, he thought. Then he sent, Do what you must to get in here. I can’t open it at the moment.
She had moved farther forward. He couldn’t tell if the form he saw belonged to Alvina or to Palmette. He couldn’t use the laser pistol. He stepped into the kitchen, his foot hitting fallen dishes, clattering them.
Someone—Alvina?—whirled. He raised his pistol—
And something banged.
But bang was too small a word for that sound. Something happened—a collision, an explosion—something so loud that he felt the concussion as if it had actually hit him.
He staggered sideways, and then staggered again, keeping a grip on his pistol. Someone screamed, and this time, the lights—all of the lights—went out.
He sent, What the hell was that? but no one answered.
Palmette? He sent.
Still no answer. His head felt different. It took a moment to realize that all of his links had been severed.
Had Alvina done that somehow? Was that the concussive feeling he’d had? If so, how the hell had she managed it? Only the highest-end security systems had the ability to sever all links, including emergency links installed into emergency service personnel, like him.
“Alvina,” he said, and then the building rocked again. Thudding or pounding or something so intense that he staggered into the counter, and the pistol fell from his hand.
He grabbed the edge of the counter—more slime and it interfered with his grip, making him lose his balance.
He slipped in the fallen cups and plates, feet sliding out from underneath him, landing on shards of pottery and something else. It kept shifting beneath him, and then something fell on him, and more somethings fell and more, and a loud, booming crack resounded throughout the building, and that was when he realized it was all coming down on top of them.
Something had destabilized the building and it was collapsing. No matter how crazy Alvina was, she had nothing to do with that.
He crawled away from the kitchen and headed toward the table, keeping his head down, hoping nothing more would fall on him.
It was a vain hope. Bits of the ceiling had landed on him, pieces of wallboard. His hand gripped a chair leg and he let out a small sigh of relief. He found the table, and miraculously, there was nothing beneath it but carpet.
He crouched under there, listening to things fall. A wail had started from the direction of the kitchen, and beneath that, a voice. He thought maybe it was saying his name, but he couldn’t tell.
His ears ached and everything rocked, and he wondered how long it would be before he died.
Now
Detective Savita Romey crouched next to Mayor Soseki’s corpse. How anyone could have mistaken this death for a natural one was beyond her. She knew that his aides didn’t want to cause a panic, but their caution had already slowed down an important part of the investigation.
The man was gray. Steel metal gray, the kind you could see in the Museum of the City of Armstrong on the old ships originally flown to the Moon hundreds of years ago. Uneven gray—darker on his left side, and getting lighter across his face, until there was no gray at all on his right side.
None.
She had no idea what this was, but she’d bet her entire career that it was intentional.
“I need vids,” she said to one of the on-scene officers. “And we need to canvas. I want to interview everyone who was in the area when this happened.”
“Everyone?” the officer said, with some surprise.
She looked up at him. Young, so innocent that he didn’t even have frown lines around his mouth. He probably hadn’t been on the job longer than a year.
“Everyone,” she said.
“What do you consider to be the vicinity?” he asked. Which was a really good question. She had no idea. One block? Five? Ten? It didn’t entirely matter. She had taken so long to get here—the system had taken so long to contact her—that if anyone wanted to get away from the crime scene they could.
“Five-block radius,” she said, just because it sounded good. “Up and down. See if anyone saw anything from windows and aircars too.”
He nodded crisply. She had a hunch he’d get this done efficiently, which would make her life easier.
She should have gotten his name, and by the time she had that realization, he was already gone, doing what she needed.
The mayor’s aides were fluttering around her, trying not to ask her questions, looking nervous. She should feel nervous as well, but she didn’t. Even though this was the biggest case of her career.
The mistakes had already been made. One hour from death to a detective on site. That was the biggest error and it wasn’t hers. She’d make note of it in her report as a cover-her-ass moment. Not that she needed it.
This investigation would be gone over, detail by detail, by law enforcement branch, by the press, and by the hundreds of conspiracy theorists that seemed to live in the Moon dust.
She couldn’t think about them. She needed to think about doing this properly.
She had full control of this investigation. The chief of police had hand-picked her due to her closing record and her ability to handle high-profile cases. He gave her carte blanche. She could pick her team, and she could conduct the investigation as she saw fit.
She saw a lot of fit. Crime-scene lasers in the wrong place, too many people close to the corpse, too many ways into and out of the scene, from the door to the restaurant to the open limo door to the sidewalk, up and around.
She sent a message to Dispatch on her links. I needed crime scene techs an hour ago. And how come there’s no coroner yet?
Ethan Brodeur wanted to make sure his lab was in order before he brought in such an important corpse, the dispatch sent. She didn’t just send audio but added an icon, a sketch of herself rolling her eyes, which was more of a commentary than Romey had ever seen from anyone on Dispatch.
Not that anyone liked Brodeur. He was marginally competent at best, and he’d screwed up more cases than he had resolved. She had a hunch he was a political appointee—or he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he used that knowledge to keep his job.
Send that new coroner—the one with the stupid name—?
Jacobs? The Dispatch sent.
Yeah, her. What’s her first name?
Marigold, Dispatch sent.
This time it was Romey’s turn to roll her eyes. How could she forget a name like that? But she had.
Send her, Romey sent, and get Bartholomew Nyquist here ASAP. I need someone competent, and right now, I’m surrounded by politicos and street cops.
Anyone else? Dispatch sent.
Not at the moment, Romey sent, even though she should have reminded Dispatch that she was supposed to have a supervisor/advisor of sorts from Moon Security.
That was the only part of this case that really bothered her. She didn’t have a true buffer between her investigation and the United Domes of the Moon. When she knew anything, she was supposed to contact Security Chief DeRicci.
Romey supposed she should contact her now. But she was going to wait a few minutes. She half-thought she’d let Nyquist do it, but that wouldn’t work. The stupid man had some kind of relationship with DeRicci, and that alone might complicate the case.
It certainly explained why Romey had lead here, and not Nyquist. Since he got back from sick leave more than a year ago, he went back to his old ways, closing more cases than anyone, and alienating partners.
He’d asked her to partner with him twice, and she’d said no, not because they’d be a bad team—they wouldn’t—but because they’d be a damn good one.
He was the first man she’d met in years who intrigued her. Who more than intrigued her.
Who fascinated her.
And that didn’t make for a good working relationship.
Except when she needed him.
Like right now.
Four Years Ago
The shaking stopped, the building stabilized, but the keening continued. Something fell onto the mess beside him, but it was a solitary fall, like a water droplet in the shower, waiting for the last possible moment to let go of the showerhead and plummet to the ground.
Dust rose around him, making him cough. The air smelled foul, worse than it had when he got in here, and his eyes watered. Something was burning, and he couldn’t tell if it was in here or outside.
He reached into his pocket, removed a small face mask to cover his mouth and nose, wishing he had thought of it earlier. It wouldn’t keep out the stench, but it would keep out the particles. Then he reached into his other pocket and found the emergency light he’d bought years ago and transferred every time he changed suits. He’d never needed it before. Indeed, one of his partners (he couldn’t remember which one) always teased him for having so many supplies on his person.
But he never knew when he was going to need them. So he carried them.
And now he needed this one.
He clicked it on. Dust, dirt, and shards of broken mugs had slid under the table. He moved the small light to look out from under the table. Chairs had fallen, and bits of the ceiling or the wall (he couldn’t tell) had fallen on them. Some areas were mounded. Others weren’t.
Dust rose everywhere, filling the air with particles, which told him that the circulation system had either collapsed or shut down. Or both.
The moaning continued, along with some rustling as someone tried to move.
He reached for his pistol, but he had lost it in the chaos. He tried his links again. The silence that greeted him was disconcerting. It made him think of childhood, when he was alone in his head, before they had installed links, before he went to school. He could have a thought and even try to force it out of his brain as a send, but it felt as if the thought bounced off the interior of his skull, trapping it inside.
He pulled himself out. The whimpering got louder and, it seemed to him, had a tinge of fear.
He wasn’t sure who he should call for. Palmette or Alvina? Palmette was his partner, but Alvina was dangerously unstable.
“Hey,” he said, deciding to call on neither of them. “Anyone’s links working?”
The rustling got louder, then something toppled, falling in a tinkle of glass.
His hands were covered in grit. He looked at them, saw shards of glass embedded in the protective covering he wore for the crime scene. He was probably covered in glass and who knew what else. If he crawled, he’d get even more on him. Eventually the sharp things would break the protective layer, and he would get injured.
Still, he couldn’t exactly stand on the pile of debris, not with it shifting underneath him.
He moved some debris and found the floor. It looked uneven to him, but he wasn’t sure if that was his own perception. He stood, and used the light.
It hadn’t been his perception. The floor was canted. One of the walls had collapsed toward him, resting on the table and other bits of furniture. The ceiling had fallen there as well, revealing part of the next floor. That’s what some of this debris was—stuff from the second floor.
He turned his light forward, and his breath caught.
Alvina was moving, and she had the knife clutched in her fist like she was about to bring it down.
She was close to Palmette’s last position.
And the whimpering had stopped.
“Alvina!” he shouted. “I need you! Callum is over here!”
She turned, her eyes wild, her hair, face, everything, covered in dust.
“Where?” she asked, the edge in her voice terrifying all by itself.
“Here!” he said, keeping the light in her eyes so that she couldn’t see anything. “Behind me.”
She staggered toward him, tripping on the debris, extending her hands to catch herself. For a moment, he thought—prayed, really—that she had dropped the knife, but she hadn’t.
She waded through the debris as if it were knee-deep water, lifting her legs, moving forward with an intense momentum.
He didn’t have the gun, and he was no match for that knife, but he had his cuffs. He pulled them out of his belt and held them loosely in his left hand.
“Where?” she asked, so close to him now that he could smell her, the sharp odor of sweat combined with the rusty scent of blood.
“He just dove under the table,” Nyquist said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll get him,” she said as if they were conspirators. “You stay here.”
She bent down, and he shoved her forward, half wishing she would impale herself on that damn knife. Instead, she squealed and turned slightly, up toward him, still clutching that stupid knife.
But he was too quick for her. Years of practice subduing everyone from the wiriest to the biggest attacker. He shoved his knee into the middle of her back, then put all his weight on her, not caring if he broke something.
He grabbed her knife hand first. She tried to wrench it away from him—and she was strong, one of the strongest he’d ever fought. The crazy ones always were. His training partner had told him that, and damn if the man hadn’t been right.
She kept struggling, using her other hand to try to get purchase on that canted floor, so that she could turn around and use the knife.
He slammed her knife hand against the ground over and over again. Just when he thought she would never let go, he heard something snap. Finger, knuckle, he didn’t care. The knife clattered, and he yanked her arm backward, grabbing for the other at the same time.
He got them both and shoved them into the cuffs, setting them on high. He didn’t care if they shut off her circulation. He didn’t care if they ended up cutting off her hands and killing her—not that they could. There were failsafes for that, failsafes he didn’t know how to override.
She started kicking as the cuffs tightened, and then she started bucking. He almost fell off her. He reached for his other set of cuffs, but they were gone.
This woman was going to be the death of him. Or of Palmette.
He grabbed something out of the debris pile. He wasn’t sure what it was because he had dropped his light as he fought with the woman, but whatever he grabbed was jagged and big and filled his hand. He brought the thing down on the top of her head with such force that her head bounced against the floor, not once, but twice.
And she stopped moving.
He didn’t see if the blow had killed her. He didn’t care. He tossed the jagged thing far from the table. If she was badly injured or dead, he would come back here and find something jagged that sort of fit, press it against the wound, and then drop it near her.
No one would notice.
No one would care.
Not after what she did to Palmette.
Or what he thought she did to Palmette.
He wasn’t sure.
All he knew was that Palmette was terrifyingly quiet.
And that wasn’t good.
Now
DeRicci had put the visual with Savita Romey on the big screen in her office. The screen was in the middle of her office floor, and it rose up like a live thing, covering the floor-to-ceiling windows and extending from her favorite comfy chair to some green plant-thing whose name she always forgot.
She wished she hadn’t made the screen so big when Popova let her know that Romey wanted a visual link. DeRicci thought it would be nice to cover the windows, so she wouldn’t be focusing on the city itself. But the oversized visual hadn’t blocked the city from her mind.
Instead, it had made her concern worse.
Romey was talking to her from the crime scene itself, and it was a crime scene, no doubt about that. Soseki’s corpse didn’t even look human. DeRicci had seen a few aliens that color, but never a human being, and not in those gradations. Human skin wasn’t the same color all over, but it was usually within some kind of range unless the person purposely changed the colors.
She knew Arek Soseki. He would not want people to see him in shades of gray.
She winced at the mental pun, then wondered if that was intentional. It couldn’t have been, could it?
She wondered if she should mention it to Romey, then decided against it, at least on a link everyone on the Moon could watch.
“I’ve already asked for a different coroner,” Romey was saying.
“Let me guess. You had Brodeur first.”
Romey nodded. “And I’ve asked the crime scene techs to double-time it here. But we lost an hour to some dithering about the cause of death—”
Meaning that the aides’ unwillingness to call it a murder had put the detectives behind.
“—and I think we’ve lost maybe half a dozen witnesses, maybe permanently—”
Meaning the suspects had probably escaped.
“—so we’re already behind in this investigation—”
Meaning if the killer never got caught, it wasn’t Romey’s fault.
“—I also wanted to let you know I’ve requested Detective Nyquist. I think he’s one of the best investigators on the force.”
“I agree,” DeRicci said.
“Your people haven’t shown up yet, by the way,” Romey said. “What do you want from them?”
And that was when DeRicci realized Savita Romey was ever so much better at diplomacy than DeRicci had ever been, particularly when DeRicci had been with the force.
Romey had just requested that Nyquist be the liaison between Moon Security and the Armstrong Police Department.
DeRicci was going to let her own reputation for a lack of subtlety speak for her. She pretended to misunderstand.
“Just keep them informed,” she said. “They’re not trained in homicide, so they’re not going to be active in that part of the investigation. But they have clearance on issues that never make it to the local level and that might be important.”
Meaning this case might be bigger than Armstrong, although DeRicci sincerely hoped not.
“And keep me apprised too, Detective,” DeRicci said. “Unlike the members of my team, I do have experience in homicide, so I might see a few things that echo from my new job into my old one. I’ll have my assistant send you a list of banned substances that might cause the skin tone gradations, and I’ll send a few other things.”
Things that she couldn’t mention on a public link, like groups that specialized in such substances, groups that were not allowed in Armstrong, or in the Earth Alliance itself, for that matter.
“Anything else, Detective?” DeRicci asked.
“Not at the moment, Chief,” Romey said. “Thank you.”
DeRicci nodded as she severed the connection, wondering what the heck Romey had to thank her for. DeRicci used to hate it when the brass or another department got involved in her investigations. She suspected Romey did as well.
The screen pinged her links, asking if she had further use of it. She didn’t like it when inanimate objects talked to her, and she used to refuse to answer. But now she just sent a simple no, and let the screen slowly and majestically descend into its little cage or cubby or whatever the hell it was stored in.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She wasn’t going to do the next part by visual link. That would simply be too irritating. Because now she had to inform the governor-general they had a situation, and then the governor-general would probably tell her to inform some other group, and DeRicci would spend the rest of her day talking about ways to “handle the crisis” instead of handling the crisis herself.
She’d already handled a bit of it, by having Popova inform the governor-general’s assistant that DeRicci was well aware of the death and was investigating to see if it was a United Domes matter.
Now that she knew it was, she was going to have to go into full crisis-management mode.
Sir? Popova sent via the office internal link. We have another situation.
What? DeRicci sent.
“Better to show you.” Popova had opened the door. Apparently she had been walking toward it as she contacted DeRicci—or the news had been so severe that she had leaped out of her chair and sprinted to the door.
She didn’t even wait for DeRicci to tell her to go ahead. Instead, she raised that damn screen back up and it was already running.
Eight different 2D images ran along the edges. A small holoimage dominated the middle.
They all showed Keir Julian, Mayor of Moscow Dome, being hustled inside a building by his security people. He was stumbling and looked wild, but DeRicci couldn’t tell, through the cacophony of voices, what actually happened.
So she muted everything except the holoimage in the middle.
The redheaded reporter looked like she was floating above the floor. She also was so tiny that it seemed like DeRicci could pick her up and throw her through a window as easily as she could throw a coffee cup.
“. . . attempt on his life,” the reporter was saying. “Moscovitius University Hospital reports that his condition is stable at this time . . .”
Hospitals were always supposed to say that about heads of state.
DeRicci muted the redhead, too, although the image continued to float as the redhead pointed to various images behind her desk. Images within images within images. If DeRicci wasn’t careful, they would give her a headache. (As if that, and not the day itself, would cause the headache.)
“What have we got?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Popova said, her voice a little shaky. She still hadn’t recovered from the Soseki announcement. “No one from Moscow Dome has contacted us.”
“Get them to,” DeRicci said.
“Sir, Moscow Dome is as far from here as you can get—”
“I know,” DeRicci growled. She was familiar with the Moon’s geography. And she understood the implications. “Get busy, Rudra. We need investigators there too. Send one now, maybe with an advisor from Armstrong PD.”
“Any suggestions, sir?”
DeRicci was tempted to recommend Nyquist just to get him out of her hair. But she didn’t. She wanted him here.
“No,” she said. “That’s not my job. Someone good. Now get busy.”
“Yes, sir,” Popova said and left the room, with one hand pressed against the side of her face as if she could talk through the chips on her palm.
DeRicci might have to replace Popova for the day. The woman was too shaken to do a good job, and she usually took on the job of half a dozen people without a blink.
But DeRicci didn’t have the time to think about that at the moment. She issued an emergency warning to all heads of state here on the Moon, informing them of the dual attack and cautioning that they might be in danger. Then she wiped the screen in front of her clean and requested a visual conference with the governor-general.
Some low-level assistant appeared in a cramped low-level office.
“I need the governor-general, now,” DeRicci said.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” the assistant said. He looked like he was about twelve. “I can’t get her for you, sir.”
“You will, or you will find me someone who can,” DeRicci snapped.
“I’m sorry, sir, it’s not that I won’t. It’s that I can’t. She’s just been taken to Deep Craters Hospital, and I’m not sure she’s going to survive.”
Four Years Ago
Nyquist found Palmette. She was half buried in debris, her eyes closed. He touched her shoulder and his hand came away wet with blood.
He cursed. He’d picked up his light after knocking Alvina unconscious, and he used it now to see if he could figure out what was going on with Palmette.
What was going on was that she was losing a lot of blood. More than he wanted to think about.
He felt in his pockets for some kind of emergency kit, something to help, but he couldn’t find anything at all. He would have to make do in this mess somehow. He needed to see the wounds, see which was bleeding the worst and figure out how to stop it.
For good measure, he tried to send for help on his emergency links, but got no response. Maybe he could send, but he couldn’t get any message in return. He had no idea, after all, and no way of knowing, so he set the emergency link on automatic, having it ping the system every thirty seconds, requesting an ambulance, backup, and help for the crew outside.
Then he went cold.
How long had he been in here since the crisis started? Five minutes? Ten? Thirty?
The exact time didn’t really matter. What mattered was that none of the group outside had tried to come in.
The thought made his pulse race. Something was seriously wrong, something that was beyond this house or even this set of row houses. His people should have broken in by now.
He made himself take a deep breath to calm down, then immediately regretted it because the air tasted of dust. He shone his light around, saw piles of junk and no cloth.
But there was a tablecloth in the other room and if he remembered correctly, it was relatively clean.
He picked his way back in there, as quickly and as carefully as he could, shining the light on Alvina first to make sure she hadn’t moved. Then he grabbed the cloth, which was still on the table. Some of the cloth wouldn’t come—it was trapped under the fallen bit of ceiling. But he tugged as hard as he could and the cloth ripped free.
Then he carried it back into the kitchen.
He shone the light on Palmette. Her hands were on top of the debris and they were covered in defensive wounds. Blood oozed from those. A bad slash on the top of her arm, but it avoided the arteries on the underside, at least so far as he could tell.
The bulk of the wounds, though, were on her torso, and he wasn’t sure how to stop them from bleeding.
He could tie off her arms, but he couldn’t tie off her chest.
He wished for the damn links. Somewhere on there, someone or some stupid FAQ file could tell him what to do to tie off wounds, help him be creative with what he had.
But he was on his own here.
He put the light between his teeth and slung the cloth over his shoulder. Then he dug the debris away from her. Her stomach had been slashed, and another slash ran along her thigh.
The thigh wound was bleeding the most. Solution to that one was obvious. He had to tie it off. He ripped some of the cloth and tied it around her leg (thank God she was thin), pulling as tight as he could.
He wished he could research her to see if she had signed up for an emergency healing service, something that would close up small wounds with a simple command. She probably didn’t or she would have ordered it the moment the wound happened.
Still, she might not have been thinking clearly—most people didn’t when attacked—or she might have passed out too soon.
Although he doubted she had. She had been the one who was moaning.
He tied off her arms, too, and then peered at that stomach wound. It was bad. She’d bleed out, just like that poor man in the living room had.
Nyquist needed supplies, and he wasn’t going to get them in here.
He pressed the remaining cloth against her stomach, put something flat, heavy, and unidentifiable over it to hold it in place, hoping that would at least staunch some of this.
Then he wiped his hands on his pants. “I’m going to get help—”
He was going to say her first name to comfort her—people liked hearing their names in moments of crisis—but he couldn’t remember it. He didn’t think calling her Palmette was right.
“I’m going to get help,” he repeated softly. Then he shone his light on that opening into the front room. Part of the ceiling had come down there as well, blocking the door. But nothing had fallen on the body, oddly enough, and that window seemed remarkably untouched.
So if whatever had blacked out the window wasn’t made of an unbreakable material, he might be able to smash his way out of here.
He had to try.
Be sure to read
the exciting conclusion
in our July/August issue,
on sale now.
Copyright © 2011 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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