Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) (25 page)

‘Had to. After MarTech cut their contracts to go internal, a lot of the other companies out in the protectorates either cut back on Wayden contracts or on non-metro-based sites. More people in the protectorates are using their option to supplement NAPA policing with their own, but a lot of them do that with local people, not contracted security. I’m well out of it anyway. I could see the way the tide was turning after… Well, you know.’

‘Yeah. Dallas changed a lot of things for a lot of people.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, I still have friends who might be able to get me leads around here. They’re developing a pretty good intelligence network in the northern metro regions.’

‘That’s great. I pretty much blew my bridges to scrap when I quit the UniFeds. They don’t like talking to me much. This is just about ready. There’s a bottle of wine cooling. Want to pour a couple of glasses?’

He got to his feet and started for the cooler. ‘Are you sure that’s safe? Weren’t you at a club when Avery was hit?’

‘Uh-huh, but I don’t think they’ll move again
quite
this fast. Besides, I have SoberUp in the medicine cabinet.’

‘Hate that stuff. Always makes me feel like I’ve wasted good alcohol.’

‘Better than trying to work a crime scene while drunk, or never drinking.’

‘Well, yeah… there is that.’

1
^st
February.

Fox opened her eyes and looked at the empty space in the bed beside her. The heat had crawled up from between her legs almost before she had finished eating. The scent of sex which hung about her still caused it to reignite and she let out a groan as the desire to have him fill her again reached up and tried to assert itself. Pushing it aside, she went to the shower, programmed it for cold, and stood under it for as long as she could before shutting it off.

Her head was more or less in the game when she stepped out into the lounge wearing a light wrap. The sight of him made her inner muscles ripple, but she controlled herself. ‘You’re up early,’ she said.

He looked up and smiled. ‘I wanted to clear the dishes away before you got up. I’d have done it last night, but you didn’t give me time.’

She smiled back and poured herself a mug of coffee. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me. Your ever-efficient agent was out taking care of it with the house robot while we were… in bed.’

Kit was nowhere to be seen, which was a little odd, but the AI had been keeping herself out of things while Fox indulged her hormones. ‘Anything planned for today?’

‘I got a message through from one of my contacts. I need to meet with him.’

‘Want me to tag along?’ As she said it, she noticed her VA flagging up a meeting with Jackson Martins which Kit had to have arranged for her. That was in less than an hour. She was about to say something, but Sandoval beat her to it.

‘Better I meet him alone. He’s touchy. If he’s got anything useful, I’ll contact you.’

‘Okay. That sounds like a plan. Uh… even if you don’t get anything, drop me a message or call. We could… do a club or something.’ The gnawing want between her legs was overriding her better judgement, and she knew it, but she had other reasons for wanting him close too. It was not
just
the sex…

‘Sure.’ His lips curled. ‘I know a couple of places with private rooms…’

Fox turned and headed for the bedroom. ‘Sounds perfect.’

~~~

‘I am
not
liking this, Terri,’ Fox said, her brow deeply furrowed as she glared at her friend. ‘Under the circumstances, I am not liking this
at all
.’

‘I know, but someone has to go up to Luna and Poppa’s busy.’

Fox flicked a glance at Jackson, noting the colour in his cheeks. ‘You mean your father gets sick in microgravity and hates spaceflight.’

‘Also that. There’s no need for him to make the trip, but someone has to. We have serious issues to take care of at Jenner, and I’m qualified to handle it. End of story.’

Fox turned to Jackson. ‘Can’t this be handled remotely? Jackson, someone is after your nanotech research, again. I’d rather your daughter was
not
in a position to be used as a bargaining chip. Again.’

‘I concur,’ Jackson replied, ‘but it can’t be handled by telepresence due to the lag, and messaging will not cut it. I’d prefer to go myself, but Teresa is being adamant.’

‘Pig-headed, you mean.’

‘Adamant. I’ve arranged security, and the transport is one of our fast-courier ships, quick, private, and armed.’

‘I’m going, Fox,’ Terri said, her tone quite firm. ‘People
died
to keep this secret and to make it work. I’m not going to let them die in vain. The best thing
you
can do is to sort out your problems here. You have some
big
problems to sort out.’

Fox’s scowl just got deeper. ‘Of this I am quite aware.’

~~~

Fox stepped out of the autocab that had brought her down to the area Sandoval had said to meet her from the NW-line which ran along the old New Jersey Turnpike at that point. The coordinates Sandoval had given were within an old, apparently disused, industrial park, which probably meant the place was being used by sprawlers. Sandoval had said to keep things quiet and discreet, no sirens, no flashing lights. No backup if things went wrong, at least not a rapid response. Fox remote checked her pistol and set off into the dark park.

Sprawlers fell into two categories. Fox did not like putting them in categories, because it tended to make you overlook details, but she had to admit that there were two basic behaviour modes for those who lived in the Sprawl: predators and fungi. The fungi were content to live at the bottom, in the dark amid the shit. They kept themselves to themselves, worked when they could for extra cash or to pay off debts in the majority of cases, and got on with being society’s forgotten minority. The only time anyone cared about them was when they were searching for untapped sources of citizen votes. The predators did not always want out, but they wanted better, and they did not care who they had to eat to get it. Predators were a danger to people wandering blindly into the Sprawl, unaware of how easily a wealthy arcology resident could become a homicide case. Fox watched the people in the shadows around her with an eye to which type she was seeing.

Not that the predators were that much of a danger to her. Predators the world over, human or animal, knew that there was always easier prey to be had than another predator. Some animals would challenge one of their own kind over mating rights or territory, that was true. Human predators were generally more inclined to stupidity in that regard, but Fox represented neither a threat to anyone’s mates nor to their territory. She saw more than one man sizing her up as she moved through the streets to the building Sandoval had indicated. They saw the way she moved and the way she looked back at them, and none of them followed her.

The building was, according to the schematic plan Kit had located, an office structure designed to handle deliveries and dispatches. The ground floor was open, a warehouse level with a loading dock. Above it were two floors of offices, but the entire thing had been declared unsafe for use twenty years earlier and had been abandoned for thirty. Even now, looking over the outside of the structure, it was difficult to believe anyone was occupying it. Maybe on the ground floor? There was some chance there was enough solid structure above to keep the rain out, but there were better places to hide yourself in the area.

Well, Sandoval had said this was where he would meet her and that this was where his contact had indicated the terrorist cell might be located. Maybe they liked the view: the building was near the shore of Arthur Kill, and across that was the walled-off Staten Media Complex in what had once been the correctional facility. Islamic terrorists might like the irony of being right in the line of sight of the filthy imperialist media.

Sandoval had said to meet her there, but there was no sign of him. There was a low-bandwidth wireless network available, probably from a nearby municipal hub. There was nothing with enough power showing to suggest the park still had a functioning network. She sent out a ping message and waited a couple of minutes, but there was no reply. Okay, so it looked like he had gone in ahead of her and… What? The terrorists had got him and disabled his comms? Well, it was a workable story and she needed to find out what was going on so she would work with it. She found the unlocked fire exit, pulled her pistol from behind her back, and slipped into the building, wondering when the trap would be sprung.

Because the truth was that Detective Sandoval was troubling her, and that was even without what Kit and Jackson had found in her wine from the night before. No, someone had told the UA cell that she was after Bucksbridge. It could, technically, have been any number of people, all of them cops, but Occam was rearing his head again and tiny things were starting to add up. Like the little fact, easily missed or rationalised away, that Sandoval had known Adamshi was a singer before being told. Sandoval had killed Bucksbridge, supposedly after the little weasel had shot Dillan using a chemical that might have killed her but was sure to wipe her memory of exactly what had happened. That was… convenient.

The open lower floor gave little in the way of cover, but it was dark. Fox pulled an infrared visor from her pocket and slipped it on. A second later she was seeing shapes, none of them hot enough to be human. The concrete platform the upper floors were on was a grey mass in the darkness, too thick to let heat pass through it, but the ground floor was empty: Sandoval was not here. Tactical assessment: this area was too open. Yes, Fox was exposed, but anyone else down here would be just as easy a target and they knew she was ex-military. The building was not helping: the heavy concrete structure was doing a good job of blocking any and all radio signals from outside. Knowing she should back out and get help, and also knowing she would not be doing that, Fox pressed on to the back of the room where the only interior door suggested that was the way up.

The structure on the upper floors was lighter: a metal framework held up lighter concrete rafts and plasterboard walls. From the stairwell, Fox could make out two heat signatures. The one on the second floor was large, easily a match for Sandoval. If it was him, he was seated, arms behind his back. The posture was meant to make him look as though he was tied down and, given that she had suspicions but no definite proof, maybe he was. But the other body was on the top floor and seemed a little too small to have taken down the muscled detective. There was likely some attenuation from the concrete, but even so, the other person in the building seemed almost like a child. Of course, she had to assume that they knew she was there…

If Sandoval had been captured but was on his own, then he was in no immediate danger. If he was working with the bad guys, then they were expecting her to go rescue him, so the best course of action was not to. Either way, going up and hitting the smaller figure was the best tactical plan. She darted up the next flight of stairs, watching her target as she did so. There was no movement and the image cleared a little as Fox climbed. The shape was feminine, still quite small but large enough to be an adult. Hash Remen, the cell’s technical specialist and infiltration expert. She was the one who had wormed her way through the conduits into Clayton Tower’s security hub. She had built and deployed the boxes which had diverted the video feeds. Why would they have her here? For that matter, where were the others?

Not the current issue. Fox moved in, slipping through the door and finding herself in an open-plan office area. There were closed-off rooms along the far wall, but Remen was not in one of those. She was set up in a cubicle about ten metres away across the open floor, obscured by partitions. Fox noticed the problem with the situation almost immediately as a pair of infrared sighting beams narrowed in on her position. Without the visor, she would not have noticed at all. With it, she had a second to take in one of the turrets mounted on poles midway down the room before she had to dive for cover.

Bullets ploughed through the partitions and thudded into lightweight desks which had seen better days, and Fox scampered as fast as she could ahead of the hail of ammunition. It sounded like the turrets were mounted with Gatling carbines, nasty weapons with high fire rates and big magazines, but they fired low-calibre bullets and it was fairly clear that Remen was not a skilled user. Five seconds of flying wood splinters and frantic scrambling, and then there was just the whirring of electric motors as the magazines were exhausted.

‘Out of ammo, Remen,’ Fox shouted as she skirted the desks and narrowed in on her prey. ‘Give up and we’ll call it quits. I’ll just lock you up for a few decades and decide not to take this personally.’

‘Oh, but this
is
personal, Lensman bitch.’ A pair of objects, trailing vapour, sailed over the partition walls in Fox’s direction and she pulled in a breath of air and held it. ‘We’re going to see you dead for what you did in Dallas.’

Fox could see the UA girl circling back, keeping her distance until the gas did its job. She would be wearing a mask now which would restrict her vision a little. Fox moved in, making it look good, and Remen backed away. The way her arms were positioned suggested a rifle or shotgun of some sort, but then Fox had no intention of letting her use that. Deciding that thirty seconds of cat-and-mouse was enough, Fox started for the door, let herself get ten metres from it, and then dropped.

Remen was cautious, but not too cautious. She left it another fifteen seconds, then moved in slowly. Fox would have shot the prone form as soon as she had line of sight, but this was someone who was there for personal reasons. She wanted this to be personal, or maybe she wanted Fox alive for the rest of the group. Either way, Remen made her last mistake as she walked over to Fox and turned her over with a booted foot.

Fox raised the pistol which had been lying under her torso, sighted through the in-vision camera display, and fired. Thin metal needles zipped from the muzzle of the little machine pistol, six of them punching through the tactical vest the terrorist was using before the rest peppered the ceiling. A look of shock passed over the face behind the filter mask and then Fox had to roll out of the way as Remen collapsed forward. She was still breathing and she had a pulse; Fox pulled her mask off and headed for the stairwell. Hopefully the gas was non-lethal…