Torn From On High: Free City Book 2 (The Free City Series) (4 page)

Tariq
relaxed a bit. He was well aware that the recently resurrected EurAfrican
Warlord was prone to tirades. It had been long rumored that he had once
personally beheaded a hapless Palace slave who had mistakenly delivered the
wrong colored grapes to the ruler's breakfast table.

“Tell
me,” the Warlord began, “how I met my most beloved third wife, Sophia.”

“Inspector
Trop,” the petite young woman smiled as she stared up at him from behind the
desk in the little office, “it is so nice to see you again.”

Ryo
frowned briefly as struggled to recall when he had last interacted with the
ebony beauty. “Ah; Mixion?”

“Right,”
she twanged with a faint and nearly unidentifiable accent.

“I'm
looking for Zmuda.”

She
grinned pleasantly, “And he is certainly looking for you.” She produced a
communication device, “Jasper, dear; I have a package for the boss.”

“On my
way,” the device replied.

“Which
one of his personas is the busiest right now?” Ryo idly asked, “Professor
Malcolm Evans of the School of Biology or Lieutenant Zmuda, Master Spy?”

“Definitely
Zmuda,” Mixion ruminated, “particularly with the current wickedness that is
afoot.”

After
several seconds of muffled thumps and thuds, the door to what appeared to be a
coat closet behind the desk swung open to reveal a husky redheaded man. The
garments hung on the closet rod behind him swayed back and forth.

“It's
such a remarkably simple way to conceal the entrance to the CRAMP Situation
Room,” Ryo noted.

The
big man loped to the side of the desk.

“We
had to enlarge everything last year,” Mixion reported, “Jasper was a wee bit
too stout to fit through the old passageway.”

The
redheaded roustabout winced at the ribbing.

Mixion
slid open a side drawer of the desk, “Zmuda is in the CRAMP's Bio Lab which is
hidden downstairs in the basement of the University's Biology building.”

She
produced a tattered laminated nametag with a smudged but recognizable image of
Ryo and an archaic clipboard with a dozen or so dog-eared documents. “You will
need a plausible disguise that will allow you to poke about down there without
arousing suspicions.”

Ryo
studied the badge.
Ned Reed, Vermin Abatement Officer, Free City Health
Department
was embossed across the very official looking document.

The
old Inspector fumbled for several seconds as he attached the nametag to his
shirt.

Jasper
handed him the clipboard, “Shall we go downstairs for a look-see, Ned?”

Mixion
rolled her eyes at the minor league deception.

• • •

For
twenty minutes Jasper and Ryo kept up the ruse of the stern Heath Inspector and
the reluctant University underling scrutinizing the shadowy reaches of the
cavernous basement.

When
Jasper was satisfied that no one else was lurking about in the sub-level, he
casually directed Ryo to a tall and gray electrical panel.

Danger!
High Voltage -- Keep Out
was boldly painted in bright red letters across the hefty,
man-sized cabinet door.

Jasper
glanced around before producing a large brass key. With a metallic clank, he
unlocked the door and opened it to reveal a second inner panel bestrewn with
half a dozen thick black circuit breakers.

The
big man deftly toggled several switches.

The
inner panel swung open.

Ryo
followed him into a dim tunnel and the double doors slowly closed behind them.

After
several paces, they stood at a particularly robust metal hatch. A small
viewport briefly opened before the massive portal unlatched.

“Ryo
Trop! Damn good to see you!” boomed the portly middle-aged gent who greeted
them.

“Lieutenant,”
Ryo bowed slightly to his old cloak-and-dagger friend.

“Welcome
to the laboratory.”

High
up on the back wall in the cheery and well-lit workroom, behind several
workbenches cluttered with a bewildering collection of weird metal and glass
apparatuses was a carefully lettered sign that proclaimed
Saving humanity:
The CRAMP is
C
ombat
R
eady
A
dvanced
M
ission
P
ersonnel
.

Ryo
studied the complex machinery and profuse lab ware; “I must say that you have
quite a propensity for setting up large, secret workshops.

Zmuda
grinned at the compliment.

“What
exactly do you do in here?”

“Mostly
hide out from my pesky coworkers,” the Lieutenant quipped.

Jasper
stifled a laugh at the comment.

The
spymaster led his guests to several huge shiny metal capsules that stretched
from floor to ceiling, all wrapped haphazardly with tangles of tubes and wires.

“This,”
Zmuda rapped his knuckles against one of the vessels, “is where Jasper was
produced.”

“Ah;
cloning tanks,” Ryo nodded. “I myself started out as a baby in a much smaller
version of one of these at the EurAfrican Sequential Cloning Facility in
Dublin.”

The
Lieutenant snorted, “You and many thousands of others.”

“I
think the Dublin facility produced about forty-two hundred infant clones in
2390,” Ryo shrugged, “Fortunately only one of me.”

“As
you may recall, a few years ago I discovered an ancient genetics database from
2060. It of course contained all of the genetic information needed to produce
clones, but it also included the memory files of the original adult subjects.
Since then I've produced adult clones with all of their memories intact. As far
as I can tell, no one else can do anything like this now.”

Ryo
studied the intricate metal chamber, “It seems that we are still just bumpkins
compared to our ancestors in the twenty-first century.”

“In
many ways, we are. It took months to properly recreate the old process.” He
pointed proudly at Jasper, “This big lug was the first success.”

The
Aussie grinned.

“Both
Jasper and Mixion recall participating in a secret research project but I've
been unable to glean any other information about the effort from the available
historical records. It's that old problem that so much information from the
past was destroyed during the madness of the Second Amero-Asian War.”

Ryo
considered the efforts of his friend for several seconds.

Jasper
produced a plain, beige photo album and thumbed through several pages, “There
are twelve of us now from the distant past, four in Free City and the rest
scattered about on Earth and beyond.”

Zmuda
nodded as the men studied the pictures of the newfangled spies, “We've even got
someone on Titan to assure that the recent coup that disposed of the Warlord of
the Outer Reaches stays on track.”

“Impressive,”
Ryo commented.

The
men lingered for several minutes.

“How
is Dilma?” Zmuda finally asked with the look of concern that one might expect
from a godparent.

“Well
enough, I suppose,” Ryo dithered as he set the album aside.

“I'm
sure that Jana told you that I attended Dilma's recital the other evening as
Professor Malcolm Evans. Both Jasper and Mixion were there as well.”

Ryo
tipped his head and studied the wistful expression on the man's face, “You miss
her, don't you?”

Zmuda
nodded. “The three of us
did
rescue her from what would likely have been
a horrible life in the sex trade.”

Jasper
had a faraway look as he spoke, “She's such a wonderful young lady. I can't
imagine her being abused as an erotic plaything by some brute in the Outer
Reaches.”

Ryo
considered that Dilma had spent months with the three adults during the long
return to Earth aboard the tiny interceptor. Certainly the foursome had formed
a family of sorts: Zmuda as the wise old patriarch, Mixion and Jasper as the
adoring young aunt and uncle, and Dilma as the beloved ragamuffin.

“Just
as she was instructed to do,” Ryo reported, “Dilma has kept the details of her
former life and any reference to you and the CRAMP secret. No one but me knows
of her past. But she
does
miss you and sometimes when I'm telling her
bedtime stories she will stop me and share a tale about you three.”

“She's
a great kid,” Zmuda beamed.

“And I
suspect you're a good dad as well,” Jasper added.

“Well;”
Ryo's eyebrows arched up, “parenting is
so
much harder than
investigative work, especially for an elderly novice like me. I have doubts
that the fine people at the Connaught School and I can make up for Dilma's
frightening lack of social skills and street-smarts.”

He
sighed as he thought about his cherished young charge, “I'm afraid that she
really needs a mother of some sort, or failing that, perhaps a surrogate older
sister.”

“That
has certainly occurred to me as well,” Zmuda replied with a catlike grin.

“I
would like to return to some occasional investigative work at the Inquisitor's
Office.” Ryo studied his old friend with the intuitive eye of a detective,
something involving Dilma was lurking about just below the surface, “I'd love
to have Jana Fesai take on my little buttercup, but things between us haven't
progressed to anywhere near the level that Jana would be comfortable with
having someone else's kid calling her mommy.”

“Perhaps,”
Zmuda confessed, “I have a solution for you.”

“I
thought that you might,” Ryo chuckled.

“For a
week or so, I've had a new and very stealthy CRAMP agent trail a female student
at Free City University that I believe would likely make a good nanny for
Dilma.”

“Interesting.”

Zmuda
produced a photo of a rumpled Rubenesque young woman, obviously snapped without
her knowledge, “She's scrappy and streetwise but also has a particularly
predominant empathy for the downtrodden,” he cackled a bit, “and she needs the
money.”

Ryo
studied the image, “She has the long braided hair and the rather revealing
clothing of an Enlightenment Crusader.”

“Would
that be a problem?” Zmuda frowned.

“No;
after working with Jana's son last year to track down the missing antimatter,
I've grown to greatly admire the efforts of the Crusaders.”

“Excellent;
we will make the arrangements.” Zmuda pointed to Jasper; the big man nodded and
silently hurried off.

Ryo
watched the burly Australian depart, “I have a feeling that you sought me out
for something more than a tour of your secret lab and a sentimental chat about
a twelve-year-old.”

“Yes;”
Zmuda confessed, “those have been amusing little distractions, but not the
reason that I need your help.”

• • •

Hours
later the spymaster concluded his long presentation to the semi-retired cop.

“I
don't know how it all fits together yet,” Zmuda scowled, “but there is
something
very
big and sinister going on somewhere out in the vastness
of the North African desert.”

“This
is spy work,” Ryo tapped at the topmost image on the thick stack. “What is my
part in all of this?”

“Well;”
Zmuda grinned, “about three weeks ago, the Prime Minister signed a secret
directive known as Edict 343 which effectively commands all Free City Law
Enforcement personal to cooperate unconditionally with the CRAMP in our efforts
to destabilize the Warlords, end the repressive feudal system beyond the city
limits and bring basic human rights to the masses spread across the Solar
System.”

Ryo
laughed, “Ending servitude, covert insurrection and giving back to the poor? I
suppose that makes you something like Abraham Lincoln, Spartacus and Robin Hood
in one portly middle-aged package.”

“Mmm;
don't tell that to Jasper and Mixion, I'll never hear the end of it.”

Zmuda
continued, “When in doubt while in the company of your colleagues in law
enforcement; just smile and say '343.' The effect on those in the know is
amazing.”

“I'm
sure it is.” Ryo's eyebrows arched up, “So what is my part in this?”

Zmuda's
grin faded, “It's deadly serious, I'm afraid. Chief Inspector Helga Bennet of
the Free City Inquisitor's Office will call you back into service later today.
A brutal crime wave has broken out in low Earth orbit and beyond that, so far,
we've been able to keep secret. My source in Tunis is convinced that it ties
together somehow with the North African desert quandary.”

“As a
cop from Free City, I can't just go parading around the Sahara for no good
reason,” Ryo pointed out. “I would have to be invited in by the EurAfrican
authorities or the Warlord Syndicate, neither of which seems likely.”

“That's
OK, my friend,” the spy master insisted, “we have a plan for the desert in the
works right now.” He pointed skyward and smiled, “The Inquisitor's Office
does
have free jurisdiction in space.”

Ryo's
shoulders slumped, “Please don't make me leave Dilma.”

“She'll
be in good hands.”