Red Shift: The Odds (Censored version) Page 5

  Chapter 4

  Blake awoke to the sound of rustling on the other side of the bed. Although the sound only just registered in his mind, he had to ease his finger off the trigger of his gun behind his pillow. He wasn’t used to Holly staying over, in fact, she never had. He wiped his eyes and looked over, just in time to see her bending over to pull up her skin tight pants.

  “Sorry Blake, I didn’t mean to stay, I must have dozed off.”

  “Hey, no problem. I don’t get charged overtime do I?” He looked at her with an almost childish grin.

  “No sweetie, I actually liked seeing you in the morning. Pity it’s just business.” Her comment faded as she realised what she was saying.

  They looked at each other for a moment, the anxiety clear in her eyes. Blake began to speak. “Look, we’ve known each other for a long time. We like spending time together. You know, you could, well if you wanted … leave this all behind you.”

  Holly wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question. “What, you mean stop seeing you?”

  “No, I mean stop working. Be with me. Be part of my life.”

  “I don’t know Blake, I’m not exactly the ideal partner for a top cop, you know.”

  Blake stopped her putting her jewellery on and turned her slowly towards him. “You’re right. You’re not anything like a woman that the force would want beside their top detective.”

  He let go of her hand, and she slowly, reluctantly started to turn away, dipping her head ever so slightly. He grabbed her hand again, forcefully, and pulled her face to his with his other hand, giving her a passionate kiss. He let go and looked her straight in the eyes. “But there is no one else I want beside me.”

  After a long pause Holly slowly came around. “I’ll see what Jen says Blake, no promises.”

  With that she picked up her towel and walked to the door, looking over her shoulder with a wink as she left the room.

  Blake fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking, arguing, his mind almost tearing itself apart with the emotions of a 15-year-old school boy. But all that aside, he knew he had to shake it off. Today was game day. “Get you head in it boyo,” he said as he bolted out of the bed and headed to the shower.

  As he turned the light on, a blur appeared from his right. Before he recognised the shape, his hand was grabbing the cat by the throat mid-flight for the window. “For God’s sake Rocky, stop crapping in my bathroom sink.” He gave it a pat and a kiss on the head before putting him on the window sill and proceeding with his morning ritual of gearing up.

  Blake never had breakfast, not sure why, it just didn’t form part of the ritual. He was watching the morning news as he went through his two hundred sit-up morning routine. An article caught his eye, so he turned up the volume. It was a breaking story on an incident at the interchange on the city outskirts. There were images of vehicles flung across the freeway, and a few body parts across the road. He wondered why he didn’t get the call-up, and then he remembered, he turned off his pager while he was with Holly, and then fell asleep. “Oh hell!” he said aloud as he scrambled around to find it in the mess on the floor.

  He quickly opened his comm. “Ah captain …”

  “Blake, what the hell have you been doing, and why the hell is your pager off?”

  “Ahh, sorry boss, I was off duty and …”

  “Don’t play cute with me, you’re the senior detective, you’re never off duty. Seen the news?”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

  “Well get down here now, tell your hooker you might be out all night too.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Worst kept secret in the department detective.” The Captain hung up.

  Blake sat there for a second. Had he been making a storm in a teacup about this relationship, was it a relationship? I mean, if everyone already knows, does it matter anymore? Focus man, focus.

  As Blake entered the street, he looked around for a second and let his eyes adjust. His apartment was downtown, only ten blocks from the department. He’d normally catch the overhead rail, but decided to run. This time of the morning the rail could be problematic. Although the mag-lev was pretty standard tech these days, it still had a tendency to play up. As he looked up at a stalled carriage twenty metres above him with helpless commuters looking nonchalant about the experience, he figured the captain was out of excuses for the day.

  He was jogging down the street, looking at the morning procession of drones stuck in their cars in the mundane crawl to the beginning of another day leading them nowhere. He sometimes got frustrated with the general malaise of a majority of the public, totally unaware of the world around them, so intent on being ‘average’. Not Blake, he was going somewhere.

  His thoughts were broken by a message on his pager. He was being redirected from his head-up meeting at the office. There was no detail of where he was being taken, but was told to go back to his home address and wait to be collected. This wasn’t the strangest thing to appear on his pager, but it wasn’t normal either. What was more important for a department senior detective than being present to what looked like a major gang fight on the freeway?

  Blake walked back to his apartment, no longer focussed on the people around him. They seemed to be less present than before, in his peripheral vision. What could it be, did someone take offence to him being with a working girl? Surely no one knew they had a regular arrangement, they were always careful not to contact in public. This couldn’t be the end of his career. Could it?

  He arrived back at the apartment just as Holly was walking out the door. “Blake, what are you doing back? Meeting your other bit on the side?” She grinned, but it soon went when she saw to look on his face. “What’s wrong, hun?”

  “I don’t know. I got stopped half way and told to come back here to get picked up.”

  “You don’t think it’s because of me do you?” She spoke with genuine concern, and had a look to go with it.

  “No. I don’t think so. I hope not. Hell, I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  As he finished speaking a white class 3 military escort vehicle stopped outside. It had no reg plates, but did have a label on the side. It was the insignia of the United Territorial Force. It could have been from any of a dozen agencies or government sourcing companies, but as the passenger got out and showed Blake his ID, he nearly fell over. What the hell does the Secretary of Defence want with me?

  “Blake Corten. We need you to come with us please.”

  “Ah, yeah, sure.” He looked over to Holly. “I’ll talk to you later.” He then turned and got into the back of the vehicle. The vehicle departed immediately.

  He was briefed en-route; the incident on the freeway was serious enough for the Secretary of Defence to get involved due to some information that was being handled at the time by one of the assailants. They weren’t at liberty to give the details, but needless to say, it was sensitive.

  They pulled up outside a small shop about twenty minutes from Blake’s apartment. He didn’t know exactly where, as there were no windows in the vehicle, and to be honest, he was too overwhelmed by the situation to remember the turns and times. He was disappointed with himself for not being focussed on this, it was agent training 101.

  Blake entered the shop in front of his two escorts. As he passed through the door, he felt the cool chill of air conditioning. It was set to ‘Antarctic’ by the feel of it. He later found out that it was actually a screening agent, designed to detect if he was carrying any bio-trackers.

  They passed a reception desk with a man in a security guard uniform sitting behind. He gave a half nod as they passed. They arrived at the end of the corridor, and one of the men from the vehicle placed his hand on a gel pad. It glowed red for a second, then a soft female voice acknowledged: “DNA, palm print, and retina scan clear. Thank you, Agent Dux.” The door clicked open and they walked in.

  The room wa
s a modest size, but relatively unfurnished, other than a board table with a dozen chairs around it. There was a man sitting at the far end in a clean-cut suit that was so black that Blake couldn’t make out if he was wearing something or it was a shadow. The man had warm features, and was sitting with a straight posture but a relaxed look.

  “Take a seat Blake, we need to talk.”

  “OK, so who am I talking to?”

  “My name is Juan Ripley. You don’t need to know who I work for, except that I report directly to the Secretary of Defence. Daily.”

  “So what’s this all about? Is it Holly? Seems a bit of overkill for a non-sanctioned relationship.”

  “I have no idea who Holly is, Blake, nor do I care. This is about the incident this morning, the one you were on your way to.”

  “Why am I not there now?”

  “Because you’re with me, I thought that was obvious. But I assume that’s not what you’re meaning. Before we drop you there, I need to fill you in on a few things, and need you to get some information.”

  “OK, what’s this all about?”

  “The incident was not your average shambles. It was by an Autohacking group called Wing’Tan.”

  “I’ve heard of them.”

  “Right, well what you probably haven’t heard is that Autohacking is just a front for them. It’s making them a nice bit of credit I’m sure, but they have their fingers in a lot of unsavoury pies. Local politics, law enforcement, industrial power-houses, they’re weaving their way into all of them. We’re assuming that the Autohackers are a front, and they’re going for political power.”

  “So what’s today got to do with it?”

  “We were intercepting a runner who had plans for a device developed on a new platform called Biotronics.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “All current and historic devices and systems have been developed based on electronics. Ever since electricity was developed, it’s formed the basis of everything we now rely on.”

  “Sure, we don’t even think about electricity now.”

  “Well Biotronics is the evolution of this. We had a scientist developing a system that used DNA and RNA to power systems that are made using neural connections.”

  “Holy crap. And they’re stealing this?”

  “No, we think they stole the scientist that developed it. Well, either stole him or offered him a crap load of credit. Either way, we only had part of the system developed. Our technicians are still working on it, but at quarter of the speed of this guy who calls himself Ping.”

  “And this runner was going to take you to him?”

  “Whether he wanted to or not. The idea was to ambush him, interrogate him, then slip a bunch of trackers on him without him knowing, and send him on his way.”

  “Wouldn’t they just cut him loose? Or kill him?”

  “Possibly, but they would have wanted the information first. We believe it is a missing code he needs to make the system completely autonomous.”

  “So, working for the Secretary of Defence, you think they’re using this to develop weapons?”

  “Why not? We are. This technology is immune to EMP bursts, the RNA and DNA strains used have been bio-engineered to replicate before they lose function, and strains can be customised to resist disease, radiation and any number of environmental circumstances, including lack of gravity.”

  “So that’s it. Space based systems.”

  “Makes sense doesn’t it? Every time there is a solar storm, flare or increase in energy, we either lose Sats and ships, or have to repair a pile of systems. Even the LEO elevators being developed are still susceptible to radiation bursts.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Go to the site and find what he was carrying. Recover it and any evidence of what it is.”

  “Right, then I’m done?”

  “For now. The boys will take you to the site now. And Blake, don’t mention anything we have discussed to anyone, ever.”

  “Yes, sir.” With that, Blake stood up to leave. Looking at Juan, he saw his body flicker. Whoa, he’s a holo, damn good one too. As Blake turned to leave he heard a click and looking back, Juan was gone. As he left the room his two escorts accompanied him back to the car.

  “Blake, we’re going to drop you about a kilometre from the site. We don’t want anyone knowing you were with us, and don’t want you telling them where you were. Say you slept in, got sick, jerked off, we don’t care. Just don’t mention the Secretary or the UTF.”

  “Yeah I got it, I never met you.”

  As they drove to the freeway entrance, Blake watched the cars on the B4 lanes flicking past at over three hundred kilometres per hour. He knew their vehicle wouldn’t be hooking up as they had to get off at the next exit. It got him thinking. If the runner was heading presumably to the hills, why wasn’t he on a B4 link? It’s faster than regular routes, restricted to one vehicle per three second phase, and almost tamper-proof. Unless of course, he was never intending to take the freeway. Perhaps something had thrown him off his focus. Or perhaps he wasn’t heading for the hills at all. It made sense he was going there, most high-value trades were made through Alphas. They had the best tech verification methods and the most links to legit and underground tech links.

  But what if it was all Wing’Tan. Maybe they always intended on taking the runner out. Seems a big risk though, if this tech really is what they say, having a big crash would put the information in jeopardy. He had heard about the Wing’Tan though. Although organised, they were effectively gangsters, their true motives may take some time to uncover.