Chapter 13

The ping of an approved administrative request woke Vincent Gatska from his light doze. The warm light of morning coming through his window hurt his eyes as she shifted up in his chair. He glanced at his watch. Christ alive. He’d been on the clock for twenty-nine hours, and apparently sleeping for the last thirty minutes. He was on his way out of the office when the call about the gun fight at a corporate residence tower came through, and the other detectives all had already clocked out or were still out working a case. Never one to fail his duty, Gatska had downed the last of his coffee, un-gathered his things for departure and replaced them in their places in his office, and made the appropriate requisitions for a field call.

He’d requisitioned six urgent activation field officers to accompany him and had prepared search warrants to stream back to the office with only the addresses and apartment numbers left to fill in. He’d ensured that each of his officers had the correct load-out for an urban residential mission and had requested his AI companion to create quick briefs for each officer to learn on their way to the scene. All of this he did with the lightning precision and second-hand nature of a weight lifter curling a warm-up set. Gatska was good at his job. He’d been doing it for twenty five years now and considered himself one of the best. Gatska wasn’t a hardass and he wasn’t gruff or rough around the edges. He was militarily precise, didn’t cut corners, and took care of his people. As a result, he was one of the few who could hold the balance between the upper echelons of law enforcement and the trenches of beat cops; his bosses trended toward positive reviews and his subordinates respected and admired his concern for their well being.

When his team had arrived to the scene, Gatska was sickened by what the corporate officer told him. They’d gone in guns blazing, thought that maybe there were three suspects, and were less than forthright with what they were doing in the first place. The story that Gatska finally extraced had checked out. Kind of. The woman, Amaya Queenie, had been wanted for questioning by corporate security because her brother had apparently conducted some kind of corporate espionage while doing time at a detention facility on Cirrus Prime, Gatska had confirmed that portion of the story through some interviews with Queenie’s superiors and the head of Terra Harvest security, Adrian Morehouse. What bothered Gatska, though, was that a subpoena for questioning was hardly a reason to blow her door down. You take people like that in peacefully, you don’t assassinate them.

No, something wasn’t quite right here. Gatska could smell corporate bullshit a mile away, and this case had an exceptionally strong odor. Gatska knew that the coalition played hard a loose with the rules and that corporate squabbles often progressed to bodies falling from the tops of towers. This was different, though. Why had they opened fire into an apartment with three civilians? Adding to the complication, of course, was the fact that Queenie had apparently returned fire and killed one of the corporate security officers. Queenie may have been in some shit with her employer, but now she was also in some shit with the jurisdiction. She’d violated the firearms prohibition, killed an officer acting in the interest of a coalition member, and had fled the scene. Regardless of how Gatska felt about her, she had to be apprehended. She was considered armed and dangerous and had killed to stay out of custody. Plus, she’d disabled her tracking permissions and was trying to stay off the grid. Innocent folk didn’t do that, they just didn’t.

But why had they opened fire on the apartment first, why not go knock and take her peacefully? If they’d expected her to be armed, they were obligated to consult the jurisdiction. Gatska had reviewed the video footage of the hallway to time the event himself, and the reckless nature of how the officers fired immediately into the doorway after stepping out out of the elevator bothered him. It carried the ruthless attempt at efficiency of a syndicate hit, but the syndicate had been mostly calm for over a year now, apparently coming together in some grand All for One and One for All moment. No, this wasn’t syndicate, but this was something bigger than an attempt to bring someone in for questioning. They’d tried to kill Queenie, there’s no question.

Terra Harvest had pitched a fit and demanded tracking permissions, so Gatska had done it primarily to shut them up. The approval had come through and Gatska contorted his face into a frown as he read the words “tracking in progress.” Queenie had taken additional steps to repress her permissions so they would not be able to track her without some sustained effort by the geo department. Queenie was resourceful, had to give her that. Gatska chuckled to himself as he thought of the bumbling fools at Terra Harvest failing to apprehend the girl and even losing a man in the process. Gatskawas positive that he needed to bring her in. The question lurking in his mind was how much to involve Terra Harvest. This newest development in Queenie’s efforts at escape muddied the issue even further. It was like trying to grab a rock at the bottom of an opaque aquarium occupied by fish that are equally like to both bite you or flee from you.

He was tired and frustrated at the lack of clarity on this one, but he couldn’t leave, not yet. Gatska needed to make progress before he could close up shop for the day. His captain approved all the overtime he needed for this one, so he would be here until he found something to chew on while he was at home. As it was, all he had was more questions. He stood from his dark oaken desk and took a thermos from a drawer to the coffee maker across the room. The air was stale and Gatska could smell his need for a shower. While his coffee brewed he opened up the dresser he kept next to his desk and inspected himself quickly in the mirror. His shoulder length gray hair was disheveled as if he’d just awakened and his tie was loose well below the third button of his shirt. A coffee stain from the night before shone dully on his torso. Gatskatightened his tie, combed his hair neatly, and pulled on his blazer to tighten up his appearance. Smelling himself again, he quickly unbuttoned his jacket and shirt to apply a spritz of antiperspirant and downed a scent pill to dull the smell of his body odor.

He was ready. Gatska owed his captain an update on the case and had been requested to present a report at oh-nine-hundred that morning. The ping of the tracking request had awoken him ten minutes before he was due to his captain. “Here we go again, old chum,” he said to himself as he closed the wardrobe and crossed his office. He stepped out of his office and pulled the door softly behind him until he heard the tick of the latch closing. The precinct was already busy with Saturday morning bullshit. Several drunk and dis-orderlies, a couple of domestics, and what appeared to be some kind of smuggling gang all sat in holding cells off of the main bullpen. The arresting officers sat at their desks completing paperwork or consulting other officers about the nature of the various cases.

Captain Eliel’s office was only two doors to the left of Gatska’s. Moving in and out of the buzz of the bullpen, Gatskawalked briskly to his captain’s door and knocked. “Come in,” Eliel’s voice sounded back, cutting through the chaos of the bullpen.

“Captain Eliel,” Gatska said, entering the office. He walked to the side of Eliel’s desk and saluted.

“At ease, detective.” Gatska relaxed his salute, but kept his feet shoulder width apart and placed his hands together behind his back. It was a fluid motion, an obvious relaxation without complete withdrawal from respect for chain of command.

“Please, detective, have a seat,” Eliel motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Gatska left his sentry spot by the desk and stepped to one of the chairs and sat down. He unbuttoned his blazer, careful to keep the coffee stain concealed.

“So what have you got for me, Vinny?”

“To be honest, sir, I’m not quite sure. Something’s off here, but I couldn’t tell you what at the present time.” Gatskanoticed a frown beginning to form on Eliel’s face. His eyes darkened and the lines in his aging face deepened.

“Let me correct that for you, detective. Nothing is off here, we have an obligation to a coalition member to detain a fugitive, strike that, three fugitives, who are wanted for murder,” his voice growled and the veins in his necked pulsed with the last word. Eliel pressed a button on his desk terminal and the glass overlooking the bullpen fogged, no one looking in or out. “You haven’t the slightest feeling that anything is weird here. I want you to repeat that back to me, detective. Go on, please say it.”

“Captain Eliel, I don’t think I understand.”

“No, you certainly do not. This particular issue is above jurisdictional authority and is potentially an issue of international security. We have orders from the Chairman of the Coalition to handle this as efficiently and quietly as possible because if those involved learn that we’re hunting them, they may accelerate their plans. And we don’t know what those plans are or how violent they might be. Apparently we can all expect some potential corporate pension offers upon our retirement if we handle this nicely for them.”

“Captain, they shot at her first. They blew her door down as soon as they stepped out of the elevator. That wasn’t an attempt at questioning, that was attempted murder.”

“She was armed and dangerous, what did you expect them to do?”

“They didn’t know she was armed!” Gatska yelled. He hadn’t wanted to get angry, but Eliel’s insolence and willing ignorance to a larger issue caused his frustration to bubble up unexpectedly.

“DETECTIVE GATSKA,” Eliel said with equal volume as he rose from his desk, “I have not yet heard the words that I ordered you to repeat back to me. Either tell me you know how to handle this, or tell me that you are refusing to work this case.” He sat back at his desk and his demeanor calmed. “You’ve been an excellent detective for us. You reports are stellar, your squads always love you, but detectives are easily replaceable. You’re, what, five years from being able to claim a retirement fund from your service here? Don’t be a fool. You know what you need to do. Bring the girl in and let justice take its course here.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.” Gatska rose from his chair to salute his captain.

“Please do not make me regret this soft-handed discussion of the matter, detective. If we have to talk about this again, you will not like the outcome. Detain the girl and her friends, and do it quick. Dismissed.”

Gatska swiveled on his feet to leave the office. “Oh, and detective?” Eliel said after him. Gatska turned.

“Yes, captain?”

“Right or wrong, they’ll make us suffer if we fight them. You know that, right? Just make it easy.” Eliel looked sad and sunken, like a defeated general overlooking his casualties from the final battle of a lost war. Gatska couldn’t comprehend what he had heard. Bow down to the coalition? But we’re the only thing standing between total corporate dominion over the whole damn planet!

Gatska pondered his captain briefly. This was the moment of his career, where he should say something insightful to turn the tides against corruption, but he was tired and the correct words dissipated from his tongue before he could speak them. Instead, he turned and left the captain to sulk in his office and returned to his own desk to conduct some additional queries. He was in a waiting pattern until the geo team was able to ping Queenie’s location, so he figured he would follow up on some additional interviews. He hadn’t yet placed a call to Queenie’s neighbor, Alicia Mosely. That’s where he would dig in next.

He pulled the office door closed behind him as he entered and strode to the coffee maker. The office smelled better now, at least, a dull aroma of hazelnut had taken occupation of the space while his coffee brewed and the air had refreshed a little in his absence. As he poured himself a cup he began to visualize the next steps he would take to try and find a lead.

First and foremost, he needed to see a larger picture of the hallway that Queenie lived in. The building had only provided a snapshot of the video footage long enough to show the five minutes before up to the jurisdiction team arriving to assume control of the scene. Gatska needed to understand what had happened all of that day. When did Queenie leave for work, who stopped by while she was out, if anyone, and who all was with Queenie when we went back home? In the confusion of how strict a role to take with a coalition member, Gatska had failed to complete a total casing of the residence hallway. He’d left the scene with a basic understanding of the story from TerraHarvest and some basic intelligence gathering done in Queenie’s apartment, but failed to paint the larger picture for himself that his success rate relied on. He typed an email to request the twenty-four hour periods surrounding the shootout and fired it into the network. The residence tower should be able to get back to him soon enough with that video.

Next up, he needed to re-establish the players. TerraHarvest was obviously in the center, with their chief of security, Morehouse taking the lead in their involvement at the tower. Morehouse claimed to have seen two suspects in addition to Queenie, so there were two, as of yet, unidentified individuals that would need to be questioned. Gatska pulled up a notation application on his terminal and drew up a more complete case file. Under a suspects column, he wrote Amaya Queenie, Unknown, and Unknown. The terminal pinged and Gatska raised his eyes to the message corner of the display. The residence tower had already responded with a promise to return the video footage within the hour. Good, pieces starting to come together.

Video footage was only one way that Gatska would find out who else was traveling with Queenie, though. He prepared another message, this one addressed to the forensics team that had quickly swept the apartment after his team secured the scene. They had found a fingerprints and other latent DNA that would help to nail down some identities. Roman, the head analyst working the case, should have emailed him some data by now. Gatska prepared a diplomatically worded request for Roman to move his ass a little faster and tapped the send button on his display.

Next, he needed to build out a larger profile for Queenie by interviewing her work associates and friends. Gatska knew that her only living family perished under Cirrus Prime, but she had to have a boss, people she interacted with at work, and her friend, Mosely. He had a small working file that he had assembled via his hand terminal at the scene, but had not uploaded it to his terminal yet. He tapped the sequence to begin the data transfer the the case file presented itself on his terminal’s display. He clicked into the profile for Queenie and began to assemble a list of associates and connections. Her supervisor, Blaithe Walters, had cooperated with the Terra Harvest inquiry, but Gatska noticed that Walters was the first link where Queenie went missing. He made a mental note to get to Walters sooner rather than later.

From what Gatska could tell, Queenie was on an island when it came to her work. She worked in operations management for the marketing team at Terra Harvest on Skyreach, but was the only listed personnel for that team. She had a supervisor, but his official title was as a Director of Holo Marketing, or some this, that or the other. Sighing, Gatskapaused his work and took a sip of lukewarm coffee. Piecing Queenie’s life together would take more work than he thought. The pieces would not present themselves as easily as he hoped. He would have to work outward once he interviewed Walters. Time to be a detective, Vinny.

Preparing to leave his office, the ping of an incoming call made Gatska spill his coffee onto his shirt.