CHAPTER TWO
Detective Isaac Cho sat at his desk on Kronos Station, in orbit around Saturn.
Or, more accurately, he slumped in the chair with his neck arched back across the headrest. His arms dangled over the sides, and his legs were extended under the desk.
He stared up at the ceiling, mouth open as his eyes flitted from one light fixture to another.
He wore the dark blue of the Consolidated System Police over his slender frame, and the golden eye and magnifying glass of Themis Division glinted on his shoulder. He wasn’t short or scrawny, but he doubted there was a single soul in the whole wide solar system who’d call him physically imposing.
He used his foot to kick off the floor, sending his chair spinning in a circle. The lights blurred overhead, forming luminous arches across his vision. The only person who saw him do this was Susan, who sat in the desk opposite his, and she was otherwise engrossed in abstract documentation she’d been reading for the past hour. The spacious office contained more than enough desks for the department’s hundred or so detectives and specialists, but most of them were empty, their occupants out in the field.
Which is where we belong, Isaac thought morosely.
He felt an urge to check the time once more but resisted. Checking it over and over again wouldn’t make the day go by any faster. In fact, it seemed to have had the opposite effect so far.
“Hey, Isaac?” Susan asked.
“Hmm?” He stopped his spin and sat up.
Susan shifted her virtual document aside. She wore the slightly lighter blue of a Peacekeeper special agent, with a silver shield over her left breast and a peaked cap on her head. She was the only person on Kronos—indeed, the only person anywhere near Saturn—clad in such a uniform, because this uniform didn’t belong to SysPol or any of its divisions.
That was because Susan was the first member of the officer exchange program between the System Cooperative Administration (more commonly referred to as the Admin) and Isaac’s own Consolidated System Government (or SysGov for short).
The two governments shared at least a few things in common. If you squinted hard enough. Both were based on Earth, for example. But even that similarity came with an asterisk because they were centered around different versions of Earth. The Admin came to be in a timeline split off from SysGov history circa 1940 with the assassination of Adolph Hitler, and the differences compounded from there all the way up to modern day 2980.
And that, by extension, meant Susan came from another universe, as strange as the concept was for Isaac to wrap his head around.
He still had no idea why she’d been assigned to him—a thirty-year-old detective who’d only just finished his five-year probationary period—to serve as his deputy. The Admin had a reputation for militarism, xenophobia, and oppressive laws against anything that sniffed of artificial intelligence, so it would have made sense for his superiors to assign her to someone with more experience or, at the very least, someone who knew the first thing about transdimensional politics.
But they’d selected Isaac Cho. For reasons that continued to elude him.
“Got a question for you,” Susan said.
“Shoot.”
“I’ve been pondering my vanguard build. You know, plotting out perks and spells I want for each level, and I was wondering if I could pick your brain a bit.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Well, I can pick out a second spell at level two, and I’ve narrowed it down to two candidates. Which do you think would be better: Gravity Spike or Solar Flare?”
“Gravity Spike,” he answered without hesitation.
“You sure? Solar Flare does more damage.”
“True. But Gravity Spike can debuff or even disable enemies outright, giving you a crowd control option. It’s more versatile and synergizes well with your character’s role as the party tank.”
“Good point!” Susan pulled her screen back over and underlined one of the entries.
“Shouldn’t you two be working?” Grace asked from the next row over. The senior detective didn’t bother to look up from her own virtual screens.
“Yes, absolutely,” Isaac replied. “If Raviv would give us another case.” He craned his neck back over the headrest. It made it seem like Grace’s desk was stuck to the ceiling. “Got anything we could help you with?”
“Nope.” Grace blew a breath out the side of her mouth. “Just slogging through these missing persons reports before I head down to Janus. The case has been stalled for over a week, and Raviv is sending me in to take charge.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not so much interesting as weird. The first few disappearances were all kids from the Second Engine Block, so my gut reaction would normally be human trafficking. But the most recent reports are adults with very different backgrounds, and I cannot for the life of me find the pattern.” She scratched her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll come to me on the flight down.”
“Want help sifting through those reports?”
Grace glanced up from her screens. “Are you really that bored?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Like Raviv needs to assign you your own case.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
It wasn’t that Isaac disagreed with the decision to put him and Susan on desk duty after their first case together. Not on principle, anyway. Both of them had almost died, and it made sense to give personnel who’d been through that sort of trauma some downtime.
But Isaac had been unconscious for the worst of the episode. All he remembered was alarms going off in their aircraft, and then his head cracking against the wall. After that, he woke up in a ship’s medical bay with the worst sore throat of his life, courtesy of a short whiff of Titan’s freezing atmosphere.
Susan had gone through far worse than him, but she seemed utterly unfazed by the ordeal, taking the damage to her synthetic body in stride. She still held that she got “shot at less over here,” even though their aircraft had been downed by a missile and she’d received what Nina had charitably referred to as a “bullet massage” while defending the crash site.
That was one of the things he’d learned early on about Susan. There wasn’t much that could faze her. Granted, she’d transitioned from organic to synthetic at the tender age of twenty-three. That was nine years ago, so pain was a distant memory to her. Her current body wasn’t just any old synthoid either, but a top-of-the-line military-grade model from the Admin’s Department of Temporal Investigation.
And if that wasn’t enough, she could transfer her connectome—the neural map of her mind—into an even deadlier combat frame. Isaac had been horrified when she’d first shown him the humanoid war machine bristling with weapons, but he had to—begrudgingly—admit it had come in handy on the Gordian murder case.
“So how about it?” Isaac asked Grace.
“How about what?”
“You let me look over those missing persons reports?”
“No thanks, Isaac. I’ve got this.”
“What if I say, ‘Pretty please’?”
“What if I say, ‘Get your own case. Raviv will give you one when he’s good and ready’?”
“Fair enough.” He sighed and sat up in his chair.
“This isn’t so bad,” Susan said. “Look on the bright side. We’ve gone a whole week without being shot at.”
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Isaac replied carefully, “but your perception of a typical workweek might be a little skewed.”
“You could be right.” She gave him an indifferent shrug and returned to her character planning.
“Any other questions?” Isaac rocked back in his chair. “Gaming or otherwise?”
“Actually—”
The avatar of a miniature woman appeared on Isaac’s shoulder, roughly as tall as his head. For today, she’d chosen a long indigo coat and matching hat with a lavender flower stuck in the side. Her eyes were obscured by a pair of opaque circular glasses, and she flourished a wooden cane in one hand before smacking it against his earlobe.
Her name was Cephalie—short for Encephalon—and she’d been Isaac’s integrated companion for the last five years. The blow to his ear was as virtual as her avatar, but Isaac’s wetware conveyed the strike’s physical sensation to his brain. He turned his head to the side with a mildly annoyed expression.
“What did I do this time?” he asked dully.
“Nothing.” Cephalie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “This time.”
“Then why hit me?”
“Because I thought you should know.”
“Know what?”
“That Raviv is on his way,” she said, then vanished.
Isaac bolted upright and scooched his chair up to his desk. He sat up with ramrod posture, set his forearms on the desk, and knitted his fingers. Susan closed her gaming literature and assumed a similar—if slightly less rigid—pose.
Chief Inspector Omar Raviv paced into the Themis Division office less than a minute later. He held a SysPol blue mug in one hand with the words CRIMINAL TEARS written on the side in golden letters and held an abstract document above his free palm. He seemed engrossed in the document as his legs guided him forward at a brisk clip, navigating the rest of his body through the wide grid of desks as if on a form of autopilot.
The legs brought him to a halt next to Grace’s desk.
“Chief?” she asked, gazing up at him over her missing persons reports.
“Typical,” he grunted, closed whatever document he’d been reading, then took a sip from his mug. “What do you think?”
“About the Second Engine Block disappearances?”
“You have a chance to look over the case log?”
“Most of it. It’s a weird one.”
“Facemire keeps saying the same thing.”
“Given what I’ve seen so far, I have to agree with his assessment. There’s no discernable pattern. Not when we include the most recent incidents.”
“Maybe, but he’s in over his head. He’s floundering, and we need to get this case back on track.” Raviv raised an eyebrow. “Unless you feel I’m being too harsh on him.”
“Well . . . ”
“Be honest with me, Grace.”
“No, I think you’ve made a fair assessment. I’ve already got a list of three leads Facemire hasn’t checked into that seem obvious to me, and I’m not even through all the reports.”
“You ready to go down there and bail him out?”
“I am, but are you sure this is wise? You can still leave him in charge.”
“Officially, it’ll remain his case. Whatever his shortcomings may be, I’m not going to throw him to the wolves just because he missed a few leads. But on the other hand, we have a responsibility to find those people and find them soon. So, the story is I’m sending you down as support only. But make no mistake, you’re the lead on this one. Clear?”
“Clear, Chief.”
“If Facemire gives you any bruised ego bullshit, you send him straight to me. Got it?”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“I wish we didn’t have to play these games, but this case has dragged on too long. I can already see the political shitstorm on the horizon. The state police have been making noise about our ‘incompetence,’ so we might as well be ready for it to get worse.”
“At least this one isn’t all over the news like the Apple Cypher.”
“Yet,” he pointed out. “How soon do you head down to Janus?”
“Within the hour.”
“What about forensics backup?”
“I’ve already lined up a dedicated team and briefed them. They’ll meet me in the hangar.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He gave her a thin but genuine smile. “Good luck down there.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
Raviv stepped over to Isaac’s and Susan’s face-to-face desks. Isaac somehow found a way to sit up even straighter.
“Sir?” he asked in a tone he hoped didn’t sound too eager.
“Hey, you two,” Raviv said with a sad, almost pitying expression, his voice quieter than before. “How’ve you been? You both feeling all right?”
“Never better,” Isaac said.
“Same here, sir,” Susan added. “Ready to get back to it.”
“Isaac, how’s the throat?”
“Just fine. I can’t even tell the medibots operated on it.”
“Good.” Raviv nodded, though he didn’t seem convinced. “Good. And you, Susan? Are you happy with the repairs to your synthoid? Any problems with the Admin parts we had to print out?”
“No issues to report.” She flashed a quick smile. “Both my general-purpose body and combat frame are ready for action.”
“Good, but let’s not be too hasty. You both have been through a lot.”
“I’ve had worse,” Susan said.
“Still, I insist. And since I’m the boss, I can insist pretty hard.”
“Then why not send us out there as support for another detective?” Isaac suggested. “Something like a . . . Oh, I don’t know, a missing persons case?”
“You mean the Second Engine Block disappearances?”
Isaac nodded, perhaps too eagerly.
“No. Trust me, you don’t want that one.”
“Sounds like Grace could use the extra pairs of eyes down there.”
“Maybe, but that one’s a hair’s breadth from going political in a nasty way. I give it fifty-fifty odds I’ll be heading down after Grace sometime tomorrow to run interference for her. It’s best if both of you”—he gave Susan a meaningful glance—“stay clear of this one. Don’t want either of you getting tarnished by association.”
“He does have a point there,” Susan said to Isaac. “Especially with me.”
“Yeah,” Isaac sighed, sitting back.
“You two sure you’re up for another case so soon?” Raviv asked.
“Absolutely,” Isaac said.
“Ready and willing, sir,” Susan added.
“Okay then. I’ll see what comes up. I don’t have any easy ones right now, but I’ll get with you if any come in from the super. How’s that sound?”
“That—” Isaac was going to complain about being given “easy” leftovers, but he thought better of it. An easy case was better than the nothing he had right now. “That’d be great.”
“All right. We’ll see what comes in. Take care of yourselves.”
“Will do,” Isaac replied.
“Thank you for your concern, sir,” Susan said.
Raviv nodded to both of them, clearly satisfied he’d done his bossly duty, then headed out of the office.
As soon as he left, Isaac blew out a breath and slouched in his chair. Susan let out a little sigh and opened her character sheet once more.
“Hey, Isaac.” Grace walked up beside him. “Since I’m going to be neck-deep in a case, you two can go ahead and schedule the next session with Nina. I’ll catch up later.”
“You sure? I thought you were really invested in this season.”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about me.” She patted Isaac on the shoulder. “Might as well enjoy the short hours while they last.”
“Thanks,” Isaac groused.
* * *
Later that day, Isaac took the station’s network of counter-grav tubes out from the Themis offices, located near the middle of the station’s upper half, and down to Becky’s Quiet Corner, which earned its name from both its atmosphere and location.
Kronos Station may have been dwarfed by megastructures such as Janus-Epimetheus, but the space station still housed and supported a standing force of over one million federal police officers, with a slight majority of those being physical citizens. Its dark blue hull took the form of an octahedron, as if two unusually tall pyramids had been sandwiched together base to base, and Themis Division took up dozens of levels around the middle of the upper pyramid.
The station was a city in its own right, and while its core activities revolved around law enforcement, the station was also home to a plethora of civilian businesses, with the most common taking the form of food and entertainment venues.
Becky’s Quiet Corner was one such establishment, a modest café nestled in the hard edge of one of the station’s corners, one level above the central hangars. The square “equator” where the two pyramids met formed a solid wall over ten levels tall and housed the majority of the station’s hangars for corvettes and other craft of similar sizes, while larger vessels docked externally. Patrons at Becky’s watched the comings and goings through two of the cafe’s inward-slanted walls.
Isaac stood at the threshold for a moment, his eyes taking in the room. The café was packed for the midday rush, but the seating was arranged so that it didn’t feel crowded. Its hardwood floors and cloth drapes pulled back from the windows gave the establishment an old-fashioned, earthy ambiance. He spotted Nina at a small table by the window, walked over, and sat down across from her.
“Any luck?” Nina asked, her cheek resting on a fist as she stared out the window, her tall, perspiring glass of cherry cola fizzing beside her. Outside, the massive sphere of a Sentinel-class cruiser slid past on its way to a nearby docking arm.
“I don’t know. Raviv still hasn’t assigned us a new case.”
“Give it time. It’s only been two weeks.”
“Two weeks I could have been doing some good out there rather than warming my office chair.”
“Yeah, but look at it from his perspective. He almost lost two people under his command.”
“It’s not the first close call—or worse—the department has had. Not by a long shot.”
“No, but it is the first one since he took over.”
“I suppose you have a point there,” he conceded.
A waitress in a brown summer dress served him his iced mocha before he ordered it. He and Nina followed a predictable routine when they met at the café, and the employees at Becky’s knew their patterns well. He picked up the drink, nodded to the waitress, and transferred a generous Esteem tip to her account. She gave him a quick smile in recognition of the gratuity, then headed to her next table.
“Plus,” Nina said, “I bet he has a soft spot for you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why not? You mentored under him for how many years?”
“Three.”
“And you think that isn’t a factor?” She leaned toward him and spoke softer for emphasis. “Come on. Raviv may have taken lessons from porcupines on how to make friends, but we both know he’s got a good heart. He’d stick his neck out there for any one of us, and I bet that goes double for you.”
“You think he’s coddling me, then?”
“No, I wouldn’t call it that. But maybe—just maybe—he needs to get over your near death, too.”
“I almost wish I needed to get over it. I was unconscious for the whole thing! Cephalie had to show me videos of what Susan went through.”
“What about her? Is she really okay with what happened?”
“Honestly, I think so. I know I found some of her DTI stories a little hard to accept when she first shared them, but looking at her now, it’s clear that wasn’t the first time she’s had limbs shot off.”
“Good thing you had someone like her watching your back.”
“Yeah. No kidding.” Isaac took a sip. “How about you? How’s your day been?”
“Richeny keeps trying to drop spoilers from the new season. It’s getting annoying.”
“Richeny . . . ” Isaac thought for a moment. “Isn’t he the one who’s been hitting on you?”
“Yeah.” Nina paused, then frowned. “Well, one of them. Anyway, the sooner I get off this station the better. And I was this close, too!” She held up her thumb and forefinger.
“What’s keeping you here?”
“Lack of seniority. You hear about all those people disappearing in the Second Engine Block?”
“I’ve heard.”
“I wanted to be on Grace’s forensics support. Was even on the list to fly down before I got booted off. I’m not sure who it was, but someone decided to restrict the job to senior specialists only.”
“That might have been Raviv. He made it sound like SSP was about to stir up trouble over our lack of progress.”
“Well, of course they are. It’s their favorite pastime. Next you’ll tell me space is black and Saturn is tan.”
“Point taken,” he agreed, shaking his head. “By the way, Grace said we can go ahead without her.”
“Really? She sure about that?”
“I asked, and she said she’d catch up later.”
“Well then.” Nina shrugged. “In that case, what about a session right after work?”
“Hold on.” He opened an abstract window. “Let me check my calendar. I may have an opening.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nina laughed, knuckling him in the arm.