Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (13 page)

He wanted to confirm that through Pietres.

If anyone knew, Pietres would.

And this was something Deshin couldn’t discuss on any link. Traveling here was a risk, but he didn’t dare send anyone in his stead, not to ask these questions.

This was the kind of discussion that one old friend had with another, usually in private. Although Deshin couldn’t be entirely private: he had brought Keith Jakande with him.

Deshin didn’t trust any other members of his security team to accompany him on something this delicate. Jakande had picked a few team members to guard the shuttle, but that was it.

Jakande had been with Deshin long enough to know just how shady Deshin’s former business partners were. No one else on the current security team had any idea of the depths Deshin had sunk to—figuratively and literally—as he built his business.

Deshin had brought two weapons with him, not counting whatever Jakande carried. But more important than that, Deshin wore a skintight suit underneath his clothing, which covered all of him except his hands and his face.

He knew that keeping those parts of him uncovered was a risk, but he needed to take that. He doubted anyone, particularly an old business associate like Pietres, would prick him with something laced with zoodeh during a handshake. Zoodeh—even in small amounts—was unstable. Releasing it with a handshake could backfire and kill the perpetrator as easily as it killed the intended victim.

As Deshin got deeper into the lowest level of Crater de Gerlache, he regretted not wearing a full environmental suit with mask.

The air down here had an unclean tang, probably because the environmental systems funneled the freshest air upward. The highest levels of the city housed the major infrastructure, the hotels and restaurants, and the middle class.

The rich—at least those who made their living by honest means and weren’t afraid to flaunt their wealth—lived in Sverdrup, one short bullet train ride away.

Deshin hadn’t been down here in years. It was as dank and dark as ever. The walls of the lower buildings had moisture beading on them. On some, mold grew, finally telling Deshin what that tang was. It was anti-mold sprays for buildings too old or too cheap to use nanoprotectors. He wished he had brought a mask with him.

His eyes stung, and he sneezed more than once.

We can’t stay here long without some kind of facial protection
, Jakande sent, always vigilant.

There are decontamination chambers on the upper levels
, Deshin sent.

Oh, that’ll be fun,
Jakande sent, and then the men grinned at each other.

Neither of them wanted to go through a decontamination chamber. But it was the best alternative. Deshin wanted to seem comfortable down here, a task that got harder and harder with each passing step.

They were heading to a small little shop in one of the oldest parts of the lowest level. Deshin knew the shop was still in business; some of his partners still had contact with the shop’s owner, Ernest Pietres. Deshin hadn’t told Pietres that he was coming; Pietres wasn’t the kind of man you ever gave any warning to.

Besides, Deshin had no idea how Pietres felt about him after all these years.

The sidewalks down here were uneven, cracked, and in a few places so broken they were impossible to walk on. Deshin and Jakande had to walk around the broken sections.

Deshin saw no vehicles. The signs that had appeared as Deshin and Jakande descended to this level informed them that flying vehicles were prohibited at this depth. Only vehicles already approved for use on this level would be allowed here.

He also saw very few open and intact businesses. Some of the buildings had disintegrated enough so that he could see the gloom inside. The smell of mold wafted out of a few of them, combining with the chemical stench that seemed to define this level.

At some point, they’re going to have to abandon this place
, Jakande sent.

Deshin didn’t acknowledge that point, primarily because he disagreed. As long as there were intact buildings, someone would do business down here.

The storefront he was heading to was unmarked. He recognized the old-fashioned blue doorknob, and knew better than to touch it. Instead, he splayed his hand over the dirty window, hoping Pietres used the same system he had used in the past.

Deshin still had an ancient chip Pietres had given him, hidden in his lifeline. The chip carried a record of their business dealings and a passcode that, in theory, Pietres’ businesses would always recognize.

For a moment, Deshin thought that “always” had ended. Then the door beeped, clicked, and slid open.

He stepped into darkness so absolute his stomach clenched. He couldn’t see anything, not even with the light from the street filtering inside.

Stop,
Jakande sent.
You’re being stupid
.

He grabbed Deshin’s arm to pull him out when the lights came up, revealing a slender, red-headed girl standing behind one of the tables. Her skin was an odd butterscotch color—not the kind of pale that some people were, but not as dark as most people either. Her eyes were the color of tap water, so faintly gray as to be almost clear.

She was one of the strangest looking people he had ever seen.

“How do you know this place?” she asked.

“I’m an old friend of Ernest Pietres,” Deshin said. “I need to speak to him.”

She glanced sideways, apparently at a screen only she could see. “Your code is twenty-five years old,” she said, “and I see no record of use after you received it.”

“I don’t know you,” Deshin said. “I need to talk to Ernest. He’ll know who I am.”

“I know who you are too, Mr. Deshin,” the girl said. “I just don’t know what you’re doing here.”

I don’t like this
, Jakande sent.

Deshin ignored him.

“Well, I don’t know who you are,” Deshin said to the girl, “so I don’t plan to tell you anything. I need to speak to Ernest. Now.”

She let out a small laugh and shook her head. “Good luck with that.”

“This isn’t his business any longer?” Deshin asked.

“You could say that,” she said.

“Tell me where to find him then, and I’ll leave you alone,” Deshin said.

He could feel Jakande a half step too close to him. At least the man wasn’t sending him messages at the moment.

“You can’t find him,” the girl said. “He’s dead.”

Deshin had opened his mouth to argue with her claim that he couldn’t find Pietres, when he realized what else she had said.

“I’m sorry,” Deshin said. “I didn’t know. Anniversary Day?”

It seemed logical, with so many dead, that Pietres would have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She shook her head, casting those strange eyes downward. “The week before.”

Deshin’s stomach clenched. He heard Jakande release a breath beside him.

“What did he die of?” Deshin asked.

“He didn’t ‘die of’ anything, Mr. Deshin. That implies some kind of disease or natural cause.” The girl glared at him. “No. He was murdered.”

Murdered. A week before Anniversary Day. “Murdered by whom?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said.

“Try me,” Deshin said. “These days, I’m in the mood to believe anything.”

FIFTEEN

THE OFFICES OF City of Armstrong Search & Rescue were in one of the giant warehouses just outside the city’s dome. The thinking wasn’t that S&R needed to be outside the dome for safety’s sake; rather S&R put its base out there for the cheap rent and because it needed a lot of space for its equipment.

Moon-based hazards included all kinds of incidents—from dome fires to collapsed mines. Berhane had heard about accidents in the Growing Pits that made her skin crawl, and problems on various spacefaring vessels in orbit around the Moon, which fell into Armstrong’s jurisdiction.

All of the search and rescue operations on the Moon were not Alliance based or even through the United Domes of the Moon, which was still such a new government that half the organizations hadn’t been set up yet.

Instead, S&R got handled by the community—or not, depending on the community’s size and its attitude toward government. Some of the outlying communities like Sverdrup Crater opposed strong government, and now had no real way of handling the crisis caused by the explosion inside their dome.

Because Armstrong hadn’t been hit this time, its S&R became the coordinating organization for search and rescue in the various cities. From what Berhane could tell from the media coverage, many Alliance cultures would be sending their own S&R units to the Moon—but they were taking their own sweet time getting here.

She had taken her own sweet time as well. It wasn’t until this morning’s encounter with her father’s executives that she realized she couldn’t just sit around the house and wait for something else to happen. She had to take action, and she wasn’t sure what that action would be.

She knew what it wouldn’t be. She wasn’t suited to help hospitalized victims or victims who had lost homes and relatives. She had empathy, in theory, but in practice she had little patience for people who did not know how to help themselves.

After she left that meeting, she sat in her father’s kitchen and used his networks to do research on the organizations that were actually doing something outside of Armstrong. She had given money to a number of them, but her conversation with the executives had made her realize that she no longer wanted to just give funds.

She wanted to work.

Check that. She
needed
to work.

Once her research was complete, she put on a pair of old gray pants, a thick work shirt, and some hiking boots from the days when she had believed she could do urban stair climbs to stay in shape. She tied her hair back, pocketed her standard identification and one credit slip, and drove herself to the edge of the dome.

From there, she took public transportation to the warehouses of Armstrong S&R. She had to sign a waiver before getting on the train, because she wasn’t wearing or carrying an environmental suit. She’d never taken public transportation outside of the dome before. She had always ridden in an existing protective bubble—one of her dad’s vehicles, or some other organization’s shuttle.

She hadn’t realized that just to go from inside to outside was an adventure in and of itself.

She didn’t like to admit how much she hated riding trains. Ever since her mother died, Berhane had done what she could to avoid trains. They made her nervous.

Ironically, when she was forced to take the train, she never thought of her mother. She always thought of that Peyti with the broken arm. He had turned out to be a lawyer named Uzvaan, on his way to give a guest lecture to an Aliens and Alliance law class.

She had tried to stay in touch, but he hadn’t wanted her to.

I do not wish to offend
, he had said to her at one of the mandatory police interviews with the victims of the bombing,
but I do not wish to socialize with anyone with whom I share tragic memories.

She had understood the sentiment, but at the same time, she had hoped to find someone who felt as she did about that day. And to her, that meant someone who had gone through the same event.

She hadn’t really spoken to anyone else in that train car except the large man, whom she never saw again, so she didn’t quite feel the bond of shared experience with the other people she had met at the interviews.

Eventually, she chalked up her interaction with Uzvaan to cultural differences. All he had done, without realizing it of course, was reinforce the negative stereotypes she had about all the different alien species.

Stereotypes she had learned from her father, who had had his problems dealing with aliens throughout the Alliance.

She needed to revise her opinions now, especially the ones she had formed through her father and Torkild. Neither man was an upstanding citizen, and they both had prejudices that she had shared for solidarity’s sake, not necessarily because she agreed with them.

It was time that she did things the way she wanted to, not the way her father wanted or her mother had hoped, and not the way Torkild expected. Bertram had moved to the Frontier to get away from the family’s influence, but Berhane wasn’t going to run.

She loved the Moon, and someone had attacked it. She couldn’t find the attacker, but she could help it heal in her own small way.

The train’s journey was a strange one. It originated in a station just inside the dome. Even if Berhane had been traveling on another train, she would have had to disembark and go through the station before boarding this one. Inside the station, she had to sign all that documentation filled with warnings. She also had the opportunity to rent an environmental suit (that didn’t look exactly clean), just in case the train derailed or someone broke the external seal by trying to exit too soon.

Unlike the bullet trains that crisscrossed the Moon, these old trains to local sites just outside the dome, like the Growing Pits or S&R, did not have android guards or even external safety equipment. The journey was too short and too quick to warrant that kind of expenditure.

Every passenger, then, was on her own. And Berhane was informed that she would be responsible for herself once she left Armstrong’s jurisdiction. Only the warehouses themselves were part of Armstrong, but not the land between the dome and the warehouses.

Legally, these areas were unincorporated. Some of them were owned by various entities, but not through the closest city. Squatters’ rights still applied to unsettled areas of the Moon.

Berhane’s father had filed numerous lawsuits to claim land between the domes. And the farther that land was from bullet train tracks, the easier it was for her father to register his ownership through various means.

She hadn’t followed all of it—or really any of it—and she didn’t entirely understand it.

After this morning, she decided that maybe she should learn exactly what her father had been doing and why. She had a hunch that she would not approve.