The Lazarus Particle (2 page)

Something had to be done about that.

Scanning back and forth from one end of the bar to the other, Fenton spotted it: an old—check that,
very
old—16-gauge shotgun. Not that old necessarily meant bad; far from it in this case. He palmed the stock, grinning darkly. All he had to do was pump and shoot.

A sudden lull in the shooting told him that Xenecia and Quint must be reloading. It was now or never. He pumped the shotgun’s forestock, the familiar
chik-chik
sound like music to his ears.

Just like in the holos
, he thought.

Springing up from behind the bar, the last thing he saw before everything went dark was the butt of Xenecia’s mare’s leg coming full-speed square at his face.

02 • THE ADVOCATE

Between the soothing hum of the shuttle’s ultralight ceramic engines and the shifting panoply of starlight expanding beyond the viewport, Roon had allowed herself to be lulled into a kind of thoughtful trance. Thinking, thinking, and more thinking…

“Miss McNamara?”

She blinked, giving her head a clearing shake. “I’m sorry, hmm?”

“We’ll be docking with Orbital Station
Tau
in a matter of minutes, ma’am. You asked me to notify you?” the decorated ensign at the helm prompted helpfully.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, Ensign Cassel.”

“Ma’am.” Ensign Cassel returned her attention to the brightly lit console before her.

Tugging at the hem of her jacket, Roon straightened herself in her seat as best she could. She hated the five-point harnesses required of shuttle travel. They always played hell with her choice of garment. As a civilian employee of Morgenthau-Hale’s nonprofit wing, her manner of dress was not restricted to the high-collared hunter-green uniform of her pilot counterpart. Not that that was an altogether enviable position. She did so little actual traveling as part of her job that once again she had forgotten not to wear her ‘advocate’s best’ while in transit. Her jacket was rumpled, the blouse beneath visibly worried and wrinkled. Meanwhile, the heavy-duty construction of Ensign Cassel’s uniform remained crisp and confident even through the tight hug of her five-point harness.

For a fleeting moment, she hated the woman for it.

Only for a moment, though. Just as quickly, her mind snapped back to more important matters. Namely her newest… client? She still wasn’t sure how to think of the man. She hadn’t been hired to represent him so much as ordered, so perhaps client wasn’t the right word. Her charge, then? Her ward? Somehow neither of those seemed quite fitting, either.

In a way, that absence of certainty was a reflection of how underutilized she was in her position. Morgenthau-Hale retained her services as an advocate, yet so rarely was she actually called upon to act in that capacity that even the verbiage of the position remained vague, a thing understood but largely undefined. To date, her job description mostly entailed honing her solitaire game to perfection and collecting a paycheck.

At least it had until Fenton Wilkes’ file dropped into her inbox. A tersely worded note from her supervisor informed her it was her new top priority.

Roon lowered her eyes to the flexpad sitting atop her lap. Once again she found herself skimming Fenton’s file. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. Still, she kept returning to it, almost compulsively. It didn’t help that it was conspicuously slim on details. She had read through it half a dozen times in the last hour alone. It was that short. Just the photo from Fenton’s security imprint and a cursory outline of his career and eventual falling out with Morgenthau-Hale.

Roon couldn’t decide what was more compelling, the photo or the remarkable lack of specificity. According to the file, Fenton James Wilkes had received advanced training in biomechanical engineering through an indentured scholarship with the corporation, not all that uncommon given the staggering amount of cash required to obtain such an education privately. It was what some referred to as a 20/20 contract, owing to its terms. In exchange for the training, the recipient was expected (read: obligated) to provide the corporation with no less than twenty years of service at a garnished wage of twenty-percent annually. (Depending on who you asked, it was also a backhanded reference to the timeworn adage that hindsight is 20/20.)

After completing training and receiving his accreditation, Fenton went to work immediately in the Applied Sciences Division of Morgenthau-Hale’s Biotech Development Initiative. By all accounts he was exceptionally gifted, rising quickly through the organizational structure to head up his own research team. Together, he and his team were assigned a number of mid to high-priority projects, all of which were developed to the satisfaction of his superiors—to say nothing of being delivered on time and under budget. Those successes led to his team being cherry-picked for a project with a classification level so high she wasn’t even aware it existed before coming across the designation in the file. What that project was, no one could—or would—say. What they would say is that unlike his team’s previous projects, this latest one was marred by costly delays and mistakes. Fenton refused to be deterred, repeatedly assuring his superiors they would come through with just a little more time.

That is, until one day some six months previous when he disappeared—“absconded,” in the parlance of the file—with a “cache of proprietary corporate information.” What exactly that information was the file left wholly to the imagination. She wasn’t even sure what it was the Biotech Development Initiative actually did—well, other than give her a case of the heebie-jeebies as creepily and vaguely defined as the initiative’s name.

Whatever it was, it had to be something exceptionally valuable, at least as far as M-H security was concerned. How else to justify the substantial life premium to be paid out in the event of his live capture?

Roon sighed. She felt as if she was trying to put together a puzzle with only the framing pieces. Sure, she knew where the picture began and ended, but what it contained was anybody’s guess, including her own.

Perhaps that was why her eyes kept drifting to the top of the file, toward the security photo accompanying it. Somehow she felt there was more to glean from it than the scant information she had been given. She tried to remind herself she dealt in cold, hard facts, not the abstract. And yet, without access to the former, could she afford to ignore anything that might give her some measure of insight into the man and his motives? (Or, in Fenton’s case, the lack thereof?)

In his face she saw none of the hallmarks of the typical corporate criminal. There was none of the studied heartlessness of the hired hit man; none of the shifty-eyed chicanery of a corporate spy on the take; not even the blind rage of the aggrieved employee striking back at the system. So, if not any of that, then what? What could have driven him to risk drawing the wrath of one of the most resource-rich conglomerates in the Sovereign Corporate Systems?

Protection, she realized with an almost blinding flash of clarity. Fenton was protecting something. But what? What could be worth everything it had cost him? His career, his life… everything.

A sudden burst of chatter between Ensign Cassel and Orbital Station
Tau’s
flight deck shook her out of her speculative funk.

“Approaching vessel, this is M-H Orbital Station
Tau
requesting identification and authorization. Please acknowledge receipt of transmission, over.”

“Receiving loud and clear,
Tau
. This is Ensign Ohana Cassel transporting Advocate Roon McNamara, authorization Delta-Delta-Cassel-Five-Six-One-Six-One-Zero-One-Beta-Gamma. Requesting permission to dock and discharge cargo, over.”

Discharge cargo
, Roon thought.
How charming.

“Roger that, Ensign Cassel. Authorization Delta-Delta-Cassel-Five-Six-One-Six-One-Zero-One-Beta-Gamma confirmed. Proceed according to indicated course, over.”

“Roger, over.”

“Roger,
Tau
out.”

Ensign Cassel laid into the course indicated on her helm. Moments later they were being drawn into
Tau’s
executive landing bay. At Ensign Cassel’s okay, Roon gratefully let slip the five-point harness pinning her to the seat. Smoothing her hands down the wrinkled front of her outfit as she stood, she frowned at the result of her efforts. Hopefully her frumpish look wouldn’t cause Fenton to think anything less of his appointed advocate.

Then again, it’s not like he had much of a say in the matter either way.

They were met on the executive landing bay by OS
Tau’s
executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Harlan Garrity. For a man who wielded authority in disproportionate quantities to his size—at five-foot-four he had to incline his head to meet Roon’s gaze—Garrity seemed surprisingly tolerant of her presence aboard what he considered to be his station.
 

“Advocate McNamara,” he greeted her with a nod of his balding, egg-shaped head. She couldn’t help but give the man credit for being either so utterly self-confident or so lacking in self-awareness that he made no attempt to hide the rapid recession of his hairline. “Welcome aboard Orbital Station
Tau
. Commander Orth would have been here to greet you personally had not other pressing matters demanded his attention.”

“Of course. The job of a commander is never done, I suppose.”

“Indeed. How was your flight?”

“Uneventful,” she responded, “and I say that with the utmost praise for Ensign Cassel.” Beside her, Ensign Cassel stood rigidly at attention. “I do hope someone will make a note of that in her dossier.”

“I shall see to it myself,” Lieutenant Commander Garrity confirmed. He nodded in Ensign Cassel’s direction. “At ease, Ensign.”

Cassel relaxed visibly, though not entirely. “Thank you, sir.”

“Now, Miss McNamara, if you’ll just follow me, I shall show you to your quarters—”

Roon balked as politely as she could. “Actually, Lieutenant Commander, I feel it’s in my client’s best interests if I’m given access to him immediately. I’d like to start planning his defense as soon as possible.”

For a moment she thought she detected a scowl boiling beneath Lieutenant Commander Garrity’s lukewarm features. Just as quickly he flashed a flimsy smile and nodded. “As you will. This way, please.”

After bidding farewell to Ensign Cassel, Roon followed Lieutenant Commander Garrity to the bay’s lift. From there he led her wordlessly through a branching series of corridors that took them deeper and deeper within the station, the antiseptic smell of treated and recycled air ever-present in her nostrils. At length he stopped before an unmarked door guarded by a hulking sergeant. Despite Garrity’s diminutive stature, the sergeant snapped to attention in the presence of his superior and saluted crisply. The unspoken exchange demonstrated the volume of respect Harlan Garrity commanded as executive officer of the station.

“Has the subject regained consciousness?” he asked.

“
Regained
consciousness?” Roon echoed in surprise.

The sergeant didn’t so much as acknowledge her. It was as though she wasn’t even there. “No, sir.”

Lieutenant Commander Garrity nodded. He gestured for Roon to follow as he walked to a second, unguarded door just a few feet away and pressed his thumb to the biometric reader set into the bulkhead. A light at the top of the reader flashed green and the door whooshed open automatically. Inside, a wall-sized monitor displayed the image of a lone figure slumped awkwardly atop a steel chair affixed to the floor. Other than a combination toilet-sink unit in the corner behind him, the room was empty.

Just like a prison cell
, she thought. Which is of course exactly what it was. In the sanitized corporate-speak of her superiors, it was a holding area or—even more inanely—a ‘cooling off’ room. But she knew better.

A gasp caught in Roon’s throat as her eyes focused upon the prisoner. Her client, she reminded herself. Fenton Wilkes. His head had lolled forward at an angle that prevented her from seeing his entire face, but what little of it she could make out was covered in blood. Whatever had happened, his capture clearly had not been free of incident.

Briefly it occurred to her she need no longer worry about the wrinkled state of her clothing. Fenton would be lucky to see anything through that much blood, let alone her rumpled blouse and jacket. Then she was right back in advocate mode, the obvious question springing to her lips. “
Why
is he unconscious?” she asked sharply. “
Why
does he look like that?”

Lieutenant Commander Garrity narrowed his eyes, regarding her as if to remind her who was in charge here. Instead, he said simply, “The subject attempted to resist capture. Given that he was in possession of a firearm, I’d say the huntrex pursuing him exercised considerable restraint.”

Roon’s mouth set in a hard line. Save the arguing for the hearing, she reminded herself.

“So, as you can plainly see,” Garrity continued, turning to address her directly, “Mr. Wilkes is in no condition to be interviewed at the moment. Now, if you would like to get settled in, I can have you sent for when he begins to—”

Roon held up a hand, cutting him off midstream.

On the monitor, Fenton was beginning to stir.

03 • THE HUNTREX

Xenecia prowled the confines of her quarters, a caged lioness ready to strike.

She was hungry.

Her blood was up.

She wanted—no, she
needed
more.

Of course, she was not truly caged. Not like that pathetic specimen locked several decks below. For all intents and purposes, though, she was a restless, starving beast. The hunt had come to fruition too soon. She was a predator without her prey.

It always felt this way after a hunt, no matter how satisfying the resolution.

She had first picked up Fenton’s scent, as it were, some three weeks earlier. He’d been careful to that point. Surprisingly so, for an amateur runner with no criminal history. Going off the grid was no mean feat, yet somehow Fenton Wilkes had accomplished it. He hadn’t accessed his biowire account in months. He hadn’t once succumbed to the temptation of the system’s many sanctioned brothels—the only kind not regularly raided by corporate enforcers. He had not even contacted any family or old acquaintances, easily the most predictably stupid of all the amateur mistakes in the book.