Chapter 2
June 15, Year 214 NPrE
Almonzeia, the capital of the MT Corporation's colonies on Almonzis
"Pablo Luis Rafael Aguilar Serrano de Montoya," Ax read gloomily and took a sip of coffee. His mood had been lousy since morning, and pondering why an elite express needed a being as a pastry chef didn't improve it. More specifically, why would a being with sniper training want to become a pastry chef?!
Aguilar de Montoya's life path was as straight and simple as a railway tie: graduating from training by age twenty, he was sent to some godforsaken Viller, where he sat without leaving for the next seventeen years. Then, as the dossier stated, "as a result of an accident at the base," Aguilar received a severe injury (interesting that it didn't specify what kind), and his contract was terminated early.
The former sniper, wasting no time, enrolled in the Gilles Barber Higher Culinary School, graduating a year later with one of the best scores in the institution's history. After that, he spent eight years diligently baking cheesecakes and cakes in elite restaurants, until he caught the eye of the chief of "Altair," who recommended him to Anna Dmitrievna.
"But why?!" thought Ax. Why would a sniper become a pastry chef? Was all he dreamed of, sitting for seventeen years at a military base in the middle of nowhere, really just spending the rest of his life in a kitchen whipping cream and soufflés?! If Aguilar were a human, Fontaine might assume he was just a lousy soldier — but a being couldn't be a bad sniper.
Fontaine located Viller on the galactic map and snorted — he was right about the middle of nowhere. It made even less sense why Aguilar, being a sniper, had obediently stayed there for seventeen years when he could have requested a transfer. Was the nature there so beautiful, the air so healthy, that no one wanted to voluntarily leave this paradise?
Axel found the base's contacts (fortunately, nothing secret was there, and they were publicly available) and quickly drafted a letter requesting data on sniper Aguilar. Then Fontaine repeated the procedure with the Higher Culinary School, the two restaurants where Aguilar had worked, and the military academy in Santa Ana that had graduated this strange being into the world. Then he requested all documents and certificates ever issued in Aguilar's name from the General Registry. Now he just had to wait for replies, and in the meantime, he could ruin his mood even further by checking out Theodore Edward Ross.
The pup turned out to be the offspring of Bernard Ross — a steel magnate with an obscene number of billions in his accounts. Surprisingly, daddy didn't seem to mind his son wasting his time at a magazine that claimed to actively expose society's vices.
Ross himself, however, seemed to have no vices — or the specialists hired by his parent diligently erased any minor misdeeds, like orgies with actresses and models, drinking binges, fights, and drunk driving. The only thing Ax managed to dig up in a quick search was a three-way relationship with a male and female lover. But who was surprised by that these days...
Fontaine loaded his passport into the personal data database and, while it worked on verifying the documents' authenticity, looked up Ross's articles. To Ax's surprise, the pup wrote pretty well — unless some unknown poor soul was typing for him for a modest fee. The topics were all hot-button social issues, and Ross's fiercest attacks were aimed at the "three articles of the Convention" — the first three articles of the foundational law for all civilized countries — and at the Tadić Directive. Though Marco Tadić had nothing to do with it — the document was named in honor of humanity's greatest mind, timed to coincide with his centenary. As Ax understood it, the astrophysicist Tadić probably knew nothing about genetics, but the old man was probably pleased.
Sending a request to the bank to verify the account from which the ticket payment came, Ax started on a letter to the editorial office of The Liberty Standard, but his creative process was interrupted by a video call from Phan. The major looked tired but pleased.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked instead of a greeting, presenting the fruit of her labor. The portrait showed a tall, broad-shouldered man in a white suit with light gray pinstripes. On his head was a dark hat, in his breast pocket a blue boutonniere, a silver watch chain crossed his vest, and his right hand held a white silk scarf that covered his entire face down to a pair of massive black glasses.
"Excellent," Ax admitted. "Too bad the face is still hidden, but otherwise — magnificent."
"Thanks," Phan replied sourly. "But it's better than nothing."
"A cautious son of a bitch," Fontaine muttered, studying the portrait. "Looks no different from any ordinary rich idler, there are thousands of them here... I wonder if he knows about the capabilities of mental interrogation?"
"That an epsilon can piece together witnesses' memories? I'm sure he does. By the way, that's not all. Look, I've compiled every second he was in the witnesses' line of sight."
The recording Phan had made lasted eleven seconds: the man in the white suit followed something with his gaze, turning his head, and at the end even leaned forward slightly. In the background, the muffled sounds of the accident could be heard.
"I've sent the portrait to my team; they're already analyzing it piece by piece. They'll shake down everyone — from suit shops to watchmakers. Today I'll be reviewing footage from cameras on neighboring streets. Shall we meet at the police station at, say, ten in the morning?"
"No can do," Fontaine sighed. "Mountain of work. Pre-voyage passenger checks, plus that bastard in white has saddled us with the pastry chef search."
"Oh, damn, I keep forgetting..." Phan clicked some buttons. A letter immediately dropped into his inbox. "I had a word with the brass, explained who you are, and they grudgingly authorized something. You can take a look in your free time — it's a list of the cars our thieves used."
Ax opened the file and scanned all seventeen entries. Someone had invested heavily in stealing a one-kilogram container, considering how hard it was to get even one car without a tracker. The vehicles were all different — from an SUV to the sports car that had hit Ferenc — but at the very end of the list, there was something strange.
"A 'Paona Delma,' " said Fontaine. "That's a police racer. And a 210 model, too. Too new to have been written off."
"Exactly. Now do you see why I'm not counting too much on our valiant police?"
"Well, don't exaggerate. Almonzeia has seven and a half million inhabitants, and while that's not that many, imagine how many police officers there are per capita?"
"And Morel and Lidmann will cover for every single one of them tooth and nail. They're their own, while we're not only from the Corporation, but beings on top of that."
"Maybe they'll do the opposite. Why would they want such a stain on the local police's reputation? It's not exactly stellar anyway — this is a resort city for the rich; someone with money can basically get away with anything here, as long as they don't strangle prostitutes completely without cause. Lidmann was scared enough when you said you'd be interrogating his officers."
"In any case, I don't have enough people to interrogate every police employee, and if I even mention expanding the team, the brass's screams will be heard in another galaxy," Phan grumbled.
"I don't get what your superiors are so afraid of," Ax shook his head and stuffed a cookie into his mouth — one Ferenc had baked yesterday morning... ah! The poor guy was still in a coma, but the report Frina had sent was encouraging.
"Are you serious? This is a theft from one of the most secure factories, on a planet owned by MT! The scandal will be huge, especially in light of the new defense contracts. Can MT ensure adequate security, and so on. I didn't tell you that," she added quickly.
"Alright, I get it, figured it out myself. Well," Ax scrolled through the car list from end to beginning. "We'll have to do this the old-fashioned way, manually. I'll finish the passenger requests and then get to work on your list."
"Really?" the major perked up. "I mean, I don't mind, but I wouldn't want to interfere with your work..."
"It's fine, I have time while waiting for replies to my requests. We need to figure out when and where each car disappeared from the radar. Cutters who can remove a tracker quietly aren't that common, and once we find one..."
"But what if the cars were brought in without trackers? Maybe they were gutted on another planet."
"Seventeen cars, Phan — that's a hell of a lot," Ax said good-naturedly. "Your thieves had to screw up somewhere, at least once. Smuggling a car without a tracker isn't like moving a brick of drugs in a bag lining. Oh, damn!"
"What is it?"
"Nothing, work-related. The General Registry froze again, and I'm waiting for document uploads. That bastard in white..."
"At the station, they've started calling him Mr. X," Phan said with a smile.
"I prefer 'bastard in white.' Because of him, we're frantically looking for a pastry chef, and guess who the first candidate is? A being with sniper training!"
"Even your pastry chefs are sniper-beings?" Phan exclaimed, and Ax was slightly comforted by the admiration in her voice. "Now that's security!"
"Maybe it's for the best," Fontaine grumbled. "This one, at least, might be able to dodge if someone tries to hit him with a car."
***
Yesterday, Ax had called all his subordinates back from leave and dumped the remaining five passenger checks on them. There were thirteen days left until the train's departure — and still eight free spaces in the passenger cars, plus nineteen cargo slots of various sizes.
"Will they be bold enough to buy a ticket now?" Axel mused, studying the car list. "Or have they already bought one?"
Judging by the car models, the thieves had no money problems. One ticket and one cargo slot would be easily affordable. But there was no time left to re-check all passengers and all cargo. If Phan's people found the container during the search, great — but what if they didn't?
"Strange," Fontaine dunked a cookie in his cooling coffee. "Why would thieves run down a crew member? It's obvious what would follow..."
Maybe they really had hit Ferenc by accident, but then why had the bastard in white watched so intently? Ax was sure the man had snuck there deliberately, but he couldn't figure out why they'd want to hit a pastry chef. They couldn't be stupid enough to seriously think their substitute pastry chef could replace Ferenc.
"Or maybe they are," Fontaine snorted. Over the years of service, he'd seen it all, and anti-Convention, anti-globalist, anti-corporate terrorists could come up with anything. About ten years ago, Axel had cleared out a camp of one radical group after its members decided the best way to fight the Convention and the Corporation was to blow up a perinatal center holding over two thousand patients, their children, doctors, and staff.
So, the cars. During assembly, each vehicle had a tracker and a memory card installed at the factory, recording all information — from mileage to accidents. Removing both without triggering alarms in the manufacturers' databases was extremely difficult. Craftsmen known in certain circles as cutters were worth their weight in gold.
"Well, let's start from the beginning," Ax decided and began drafting a letter to send to all the manufacturers on the list. There was always hope that at least in one case out of seventeen, removing the tracker hadn't gone smoothly.
Of the seventeen cars, Phan had managed to locate fifteen, so Ax had their IDs — numbers impossible to erase, stamped on every part of the vehicle. The thieves still had the "Miro Florian" sports car and the "Paona Delma" police racer. They'd probably ditched the sports car somewhere, no surprise after it had been splashed all over the news. Hitting a person, almost killing them! And this in the era of autopilots ready to snatch control from incompetent driver's hands (hands that Axel would gladly break himself).
When he finished sending the emails, he took a short break to call the kitchen and ask for lunch to be brought to his compartment. Just then, the General Registry returned from its coma and spat out the data for two of his requests into Ax's inbox.
"Two hours," Fontaine noted. "A new record."
The General Registry was an international program, developed by programmers from various government structures, and as such, it regularly crashed and struggled to recover. On the other hand, Ax could barely imagine the astronomical amounts of data it contained. Every document ever issued to a human or a being, living or dead, was stored as an electronic copy in the General Registry. You could even find scans of paper passports and certificates issued long before the Nova Prima Era began.
Fontaine opened T. E. Ross's file first. Nothing unexpected there — a blue passport, as befitted a human, insurance, education documents, driver's license, a bunch of fines for minor violations. Finding nothing suspicious, Ax snorted in disappointment and opened Aguilar's file. And that's where he saw something that made him think.
Aguilar had licenses for various types of weapons, private security, and investigative activities. That wasn't strange — they were automatically issued to all military-designation beings upon discharge. But why a pastry chef would regularly renew these licenses was a very interesting question... It required passing qualification exams, and Aguilar had last done so six months ago.
"A mysterious creature," Fontaine thought, looking at the sequence of Aguilar's photos. As the years passed, his mustache and sideburns grew thicker, his hair curlier, and his face broader and more good-natured. Why would a pastry chef need a sniper rifle license? To take out competitors? Or was it just nostalgia for the seventeen years in the middle of nowhere, in Viller?
Axel pondered this question during lunch. It was brought to his compartment by István himself, who asked several questions about Ferenc. Fontaine assured István that no one was going to let this slide, and while Ferenc was recovering, the SS would do everything to find the driver in whom the great racer had never died.
While Fontaine worked his way through the lamb stew, the first replies to his letters began arriving. Gilles Barber had apparently penned his enthusiastic response personally. Wading through a mountain of typos, Ax gathered that at least regarding the Higher Culinary School, Aguilar wasn't lying — Barber had examined him and recommended him to the first restaurant the newly-minted pastry chef had joined. The school's secretary had thoughtfully attached Aguilar's personal file, complete with all orders, grade sheets, and other documents.
Fontaine received another reply from Viller, but the military base limited itself to a short letter repeating what Ax already knew. He could spot these lazy autoresponder types from the first lines. Finding the base commander's personal address, he sent another letter, explained the situation, and attached copies of documents confirming Fontaine's authority to request information.
His work phone rang while Ax was still studying the reply from Viller, pondering whether it was genuinely suspicious or if his professional paranoia was just acting up. Axel picked up and heard the voice of the Express's chief engineer, Shen Wei:
"Good afternoon, Mr. Fontaine. I apologize for interrupting your work, but could you please come to the command car as soon as possible, if it's not too much trouble?"
Al-Haiyan, the capital of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal's colonies on Tar-Mariat
No one answered the first three rings, but Murad was patient and kept pressing the buzzer until he heard stumbling footsteps and muffled cursing. The door cracked open, revealing in the narrow gap a tall, scrawny guy bearing the marks of a night spent in various activities on his face.
"The hell do you want?" he rasped. "Hey!"
Murad pushed the door and barged in. With practiced ease, he threw a paralytic net over the guy, clamped a hand over his mouth, and dragged him inside. The guy moaned desperately until the Yakzan gagged him with a t-shirt he found among the rumpled bedding, then deposited the witness in the chair in front of the desk and looked around.
It was a typical student den in the campus dormitory of the College of Information Technology, where Dawud Kamal had studied. Two windows, two beds, two nightstands, four narrow closets — for clothes and belongings — and a couple of desks with chairs, a narrow hallway with a door to the bathroom.
Chaos of astonishing proportions reigned everywhere. The floor and every horizontal surface were covered in a layer of leftovers, bottles, wrappers, takeout containers, snack packaging, candy wrappers, medicine packets, wires, tools, and microchip components. Clothes, shoes, and underwear were strewn about. A cactus on the windowsill was withering, serving as an ashtray, and to its left stretched a battery of beer cans. By one of the beds, Murad spotted a syringe.
"This is going to take a while," the Yakzan sighed and asked:
"Which is Dawud Kamal's spot?"
The guy rolled his eyes towards the bed on the right and gave a weak wheeze. But Murad decided it might be useful to let him stew a bit before the interrogation and turned his attention to Dawud's computer. The decryptor cracked the password in seconds; the Yakzan connected a disk, initiated the data transfer, and began rifling through the drawers of the nightstand.
He'd already retrieved Dawud's wallet and phone from the locker where center employees stored personal belongings before entering their work areas. Murad had requested the call logs from the operator and studied the phone's contents over breakfast. He had no doubt that Dawud was smart enough not to call his terrorist contacts from a personal phone. As expected — nothing suspicious in either the phone or the wallet.
"So it's all here somewhere."
The nightstand held nothing extraordinary either, aside from an incredible number of condoms, packs of aphrodisiacs, and bottles of lubricant. Murad stripped the stale bedding off the bed, meticulously examined the pillow, blanket, cover, sheet, felt the mattress, then lifted it and propped it against the wall.
On the underside of the mattress, a crudely sealed seam was visible. The Yakzan drew a knife (the guy in the chair let out a despairing moan) and carefully slit the casing around the seam. Inside, where two springs had been removed, lay a small bundle. Murad sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped his find.
Inside were a cheap old phone, the kind usually bought for children or the elderly, a bank card in the name of Khadir ibn-Shamim al-Tajir, a blue fake passport card, and a mini-disk.
"Well, he tried," Murad snorted. You couldn't expect much ingenuity or professional spycraft from a twenty-year-old kid who'd just stepped onto the slippery slope of fighting for humanity's good. On the other hand, the center's SS vetting hadn't suspected him, which meant either Dawud had been smart and cautious enough, or his older comrades had given him clear instructions. Or maybe he'd gotten into terrorism after getting the job.
"But why did he decide to poison us, that's the question? Panic? Following orders from his cell leader? Hmm, panic seems more likely. Maybe he was afraid he wouldn't hold up under interrogation."
A more experienced terrorist would have tried to act as inconspicuously as possible, leaving the center quietly after work without raising suspicion, and only then disappearing. Like Fialkovskaya.
"Right, now we can talk," Murad decided, pulling an injector from his pocket and stepping towards the guy in the chair. Seeing the injector, the poor soul went pale and whimpered pleadingly through the gag.
"Don't worry, it's just a mild truth serum," said the Yakzan. The guy's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he stared at Murad so intently that he didn't even notice the prick.
"Things would be easier for everyone," Murad thought with annoyance, "if the Sultan would let me install a proper voice modulator."
And things would be even easier if Irfan's father would finally allow the reconstructive surgeries. But he would never permit that.
"Now," said the Yakzan, "I'm going to remove the gag, and you're not going to scream; you're going to answer my questions. Understood?"
The guy, unable to nod due to the paralytic net, blinked furiously. Murad pulled out the t-shirt and...
"Help-mmmm!"
The Yakzan clamped his hand back over the guy's mouth and said sternly:
"I asked you not to scream. I'll have to take measures if you won't cooperate."
"Mfff-pppffff..."
Al-Fayyaz removed his palm, and the guy rasped:
"Who are you? How did you get in? You're not police!"
"No, so your stash of weed and drugs doesn't interest me."
The guy breathed a sigh of obvious relief. Murad sat on the edge of the bed and asked:
"How long have you been sharing a room with Dawud Kamal?"
"Uh, a year... maybe a bit longer."
"Are you in the same faculty?"
"No. He's in med-tech, I'm in banking automation."
The Yakzan surveyed the surrounding chaos and destruction, the scattered bottles, and the disorderly rows of cans. Well, okay, maybe, though the future of medical technology and banking automation seemed rather dubious with developers like these.
"When did Kamal get the part-time job at the perinatal center?"
"How should I know?" the guy snapped. "Dude, we're roommates, not a married couple. I don't give a shit what he does as long as he doesn't rat to campus admin, got it?"
"More precisely, please. Did Kamal mention when he started at the center?"
"Uh, well... maybe three months ago. Before exams, yeah, definitely."
"Why was he working on food vending machines instead of medical equipment?"
The guy snorted nervously:
"Dude, you're kidding! Who'd let him near multi-billion credit medical gear? He just finished his second year! But he said it was part of his plan. Start in food service, then after dippo, worm his way into med-tech."
"After what?"
"After his diploma."
"Who gave Kamal his recommendations?"
"Hell if I know. He said, like, some relative."
Murad tensed. Kamal had no relatives at the center; such a fact would definitely have been noted by both the SS and HR.
"Or not his relative," the guy furrowed his brow. "I think, a relative of his dad's buddy. Kamal's one of those. Got the job through connections; he didn't give a damn about the food service gig anyway."
"That was probably Dawud Kamal's value to the terrorists," thought the Yakzan. "People with recommendations are more readily considered as potential employees."
"Had Kamal been acting strangely lately?"
"Pff... I dunno. Maybe more nervous, but what's surprising about that when you're slaving away at some lousy joint instead of doing something more interesting?"
Murad picked up the syringe from the floor. The guy paled a little.
"Did Kamal have any political views?"
"What?!"
"Did he attend any political groups, read political publications? Talk about politics?"
The guy's face reflected painful mental effort.
"Uh... well... like... we didn't talk about that. I mean, he said some stuff a couple of times. About the Corporation, about all governments selling out to it, about slaves or something... just bullshit, basically, I didn't listen, who's even interested in that?"
"The perfect roommate!" Murad admired. You could probably grow a whole Gaishan plantation under his nose, and he wouldn't bat an eyelid. Though, no, that would probably excite him.
"Did Dawud have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?"
"Had a few," the roommate giggled. "Like twenty or thirty. He liked to fuck, like a rabbit. If he was hanging out anywhere in his free time, it was at erotic clubs and brothels. They probably gave him a regular's discount by now."
"An excellent way to meet your contacts. You can always say you spent the night hopping from one brothel to another. And brothels aren't a bad place for a meeting either."
"Thank you for your cooperation," the Yakzan rose and produced a second injector, this one with a sedative. The guy let out a weak howl. "You're going to take a nap for a few hours now. Don't worry, it's perfectly safe."
When the witness slumped, Murad surveyed the room with a pained expression. Such a disregard for order offended him to the core. But, nothing for it — he had to finish the search, and then visit Kamal's parents.
***
By lunchtime, Gemma had admitted to herself that she preferred the temporary reign of the religious prince to the leadership of her ex-bosses. AlNilam fired off a whole list of orders and commands at her, but otherwise didn't interfere with her work, didn't issue petty or contradictory instructions, and was, for a prince, generally very polite.
"You couldn't get a 'good morning, miss' out of Lee Min-ho for love nor money," thought Gemma, knocking and entering what used to be Shufrir's office.
"You called for me, Effendi?"
"Yes," AlNilam, comfortably settled among the cushions on the sofa, set aside his laptop. "You organized the interrogations excellently yesterday and today, and I appreciate how you handle the paperwork and arrange the transfer of all necessary information."
"Thank you, Effendi," Nightbird murmured, embarrassed. He seemed to like her well enough, and she felt a little ashamed of the words she'd used to describe this "plague in curtains" to Eric yesterday.
"Would you like to come with me to inspect Fialkovskaya's apartment?" the Wad-Prince suddenly suggested.
"Oh!" Gemma exhaled. Of course she wanted to! No matter how content she was with her office career, sometimes she longed, just for one day, to take part in a real investigation!
"Excellent!" His Highness jumped up from the sofa. "Intimidate everyone else into staying quiet until we return, and meet me in the parking lot. You may bring your personal phone," he added kindly, and Gemma blushed. It was as if he could see right through her.
As they sat in His Highness's car, driven by the autopilot, AlNilam remarked:
"How lucky our terrorists are! Fialkovskaya has no spouse or lover, Anger is divorced, and Shufrir's wife and children moved away long ago and live in another colony. No one, apart from work colleagues, would raise the alarm if all three disappeared. When did you notice the center's leadership was missing?"
"Around eight in the morning, Effendi, when Lee Min-ho tried to contact them after discovering the embryo theft."
"That gave the terrorists at least five or six hours' head start. Enough time to catch a stream-train, reach another planet, and disappear for good."
"Do you think they're still alive?" asked Nightbird. Not that she was particularly worried about Shufrir or Fialkovskaya, but Philippe Anger, whom she had spoken with a few times, seemed a decent sort, even if extremely distant from anything not related to genetic engineering.
"Hard to say," the Wad-Prince murmured. "On one hand, they could demand a substantial ransom for them. On the other, considering the theft of non-recombined embryos... what do the terrorists intend to do with them? Keep them as souvenirs? Why would they even want embryos?"
"To preserve the embryos, they would only need to kidnap any specialist from the genetics lab," Gemma objected. "They wouldn't need the center's director or the head of 'Bioronica'. Sorry, Effendi," she added quickly.
"You don't need to apologize for your opinion, and you don't have to agree with me just because I'm the Wad-Prince," said AlNilam. "Go on, think it through. Imagine you're an officer of the Inquiry Service."
"Well... maybe the terrorists didn't just want the most valuable hostages. The center's leadership has information on MT's patented technologies. If they interrogate them..." Nightbird fell silent, thinking. It was true, wasn't it?
MT meticulously ensured that no technology developed by its specialists fell into other hands. The Continental Senate regularly raised the issue of making Marco Tadić's inventions or other Corporation technologies the property of all humanity — but it never got beyond proposals. The methods for creating Arches for entering and exiting stream-tunnels, the development of the solar drive, DNA recombination technologies, the production of brands for beings, terraforming methods (imperfect as they were) — all this and much more had remained the property of MT for over two centuries.
"MT's technologies are a very valuable prize, and terrorists are always in need of money for their struggle for the common good," said His Highness. "They could sell everything they learn from Anger, Fialkovskaya, and Shufrir for a very high price. And the people themselves, too."
"But that would shake the Corporation's monopoly," Gemma frowned. "So why is some random prince investigating this, and not our own Inquiry Service?"
She sensed, however, that this question shouldn't be asked, even to a good-natured AlNilam — simply because he wouldn't answer it. So instead she asked:
"But how did the terrorists manage to kidnap three people from different homes in a single night?"
"That's what we're going to find out today."