The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (28 page)

“You want to argue that all of the clones were illegally transported?” Salehi asked.

“Yes,” Uzvuyiten said. “Their owners are unknown. No one filed documents about the clones. No one has taken responsibility for them
in decades
. Think about it this way. If someone sent actual bombs into the Port of Armstrong, without documentation and without any follow-up, those bombs would have been deactivated and set aside. They also would have been investigated.”

“There’s no way to claim these clones were the equivalent of bombs,” Salehi said.

“No, they were more like ingredients for bombs. They were harmful material that could act on its own. The port already has a quarantine area for harmful material. The clones should have been set aside until their owners found, and their purpose established.”

“I don’t like this,” Salehi said. “Every single free-traveling clone will be subject to increased searches throughout the Alliance if we win this.”

“We might not need it,” Uzvuyiten said. “Let’s hope that we do not. However, we still should file an unclaimed property case in the Space court that handles Armstrong’s cases to cover our asses.”

Salehi knew Uzvuyiten was right. Salehi knew that they should cover every single angle. It was common for attorneys to use every single argument possible in initial filings to make certain that the contingents were covered if a judge tossed out the important stuff.

“You can do no good for clones in general if you do not have these cases,” Uzvuyiten said.

Salehi studied him. That sort of insight was part of what made Uzvuyiten such a good attorney. He knew how to get others to do what he wanted.

Uzvuyiten did not care about clones or clone law. He wanted to prevent the Peyti from becoming permanent second-class citizens.

Salehi had to remember that.

He also had to remember that he had to make a preliminary argument to set up his future argument.

He could twist this unclaimed property argument to his advantage later. No port had the facilities to imprison free-traveling clones until their owners were established. It would take more money and labor than any port had.

Ports already had issues dealing with illegal immigration from a whole variety of planets and cultures. Generally the ports turned those groups away—because they arrived in groups. There were systems to prevent individuals from getting on transports and in other vehicles that traveled to the ports.

There were absolutely no systems in place to prevent clone travel. If he won this argument (if
they
won this argument), then Alliance ports would be filled with untethered clones.

Win an argument, create havoc, state that the havoc was unintended—or maybe even after winning, worry about the havoc.

He had been right after all: this case—these cases—could change everything.

He just wasn’t sure the cases would change everything the way he wanted them to.

THIRTY-THREE

TORKILD ZHU HADN’T been this busy since his hellish first years as a lawyer. He’d worked 120-hour weeks then, sometimes more, and always felt as if he were behind.

He felt that way now as the only truly official representative of S
3
here on the Moon. Sometimes he found himself cursing his law firm’s short sightedness. It had branch offices all over the Alliance, but none deep in its heart. Most of the branches were located near the Alliance District Courts and the various Multicultural Tribunals. Most of the branches concentrated on appeals or big cases, or gave the attorneys a home away from home.

Like this place was supposed to be.

He now had access to S
3
’s virtually unlimited accounts, so that he could establish that base, order furniture, and hire staff from lawyers to security. S
3
On The Moon, as he was calling the offices, would need a lot of security, if the response he was getting from potential employees was any indication.

The very idea that they would be working with the Peyti clones made most people stomp out of here in anger.

Zhu had stopped mentioning it after the third potential hire, but he knew that he couldn’t hide it from everyone. They would need to know. He didn’t want people stomping out
after
they’d filled out their documentation.

He stood in the middle of the office space he’d rented. It was on the middle floor of a fairly nondescript building near the edge of Old Armstrong. He didn’t have a budget, which was good, because the rents in this city for large amounts of office space were astronomical. Even so, he couldn’t find much that suited the firm’s needs.

Salehi had been clear: he wanted a base of operations for now, one that would last a few months at most. By then, he expected that the firm’s real estate broker would arrive from wherever the hell she was and she would pick out (or build) the perfect offices.

Until that moment, Zhu hadn’t known that S
3
had someone in charge of real estate, although it made sense. Just like it made sense that the firm had various investment brokers to handle not just the firm’s money, but the multitudinous client estates and accounts that the firm handled.

He rarely thought of the size of S
3,
but now he was deep in the middle of it, and it truly overwhelmed him.

The space he’d rented took the entire floor. It had a lot of offices, blocked off from the others, and they all had windows, but the views were of the scratchy old parts of the Dome. It looked like someone had taken knives to the interior of the dome, then coated it with yellow paint, and then tried to scrape it all off.

The rental agent who had brokered the office transaction had spent most of her time impressing on Zhu that the environmental system was up to handling the Moon dust, which freaked him out. Moon dust belonged
outside
the Dome, not inside. As she nattered on, he’d actually looked up the Moon dust problem on his links, and saw that it was endemic to certain parts of Armstrong.

The only places he could find to rent immediately were all in or near those parts.

The rest of the places needed repair, many of them because they were the site—just a week ago—of incidents that composed the Peyti Crisis. A lot of businesses had closed or were opting to move out of those locations.

If Salehi had waited a month, then there would have been surfeit of rentals on the market. But Salehi wanted a base of operations by the time he arrived, and that was about three days from now.

Zhu intended to have the place furnished, staffed, spit-and-polished, and as perfect as he could get it.

All while he was handling questions about the injunctions.

He spent half his days on his links with the heads of various police departments, asking him (off the record of course) if he truly intended to prosecute anyone who violated the injunctions.

Of course we do
, he would tell them, frowning for emphasis. He knew he didn’t look that tough, but he had to try. He needed the injunctions to hold until Salehi got here.

Zhu had held more meetings than he ever wanted to. He’d talked to port officials, alliance officials, and representatives of various law enforcement communities in Armstrong. He hadn’t talked with the Chief of Moon Security, but only because he had pleaded flunkiness.

I’m the lawyer S
3
hired to set up its base here,
he’d told the Chief’s assistant truthfully.
My boss will be here in just a few days. I suggest you hold your questions for him, since I’d just have to work through him anyway
.

She had agreed. He’d only seen her once, a striking woman with long black hair and intelligent dark eyes. There was an air of sadness to her that he found appealing, although he wasn’t entirely sure why.

She had given him the sense that the Security office was so busy that waiting a few days meant absolutely nothing, and might even be a relief. He was happy to see someone busier than himself—although he wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible.

The furniture had arrived about an hour ago, and right now, the offices were filled with androids, bots, and burly humans lugging gigantic desks and chairs up the service elevator.

The biggest items, like the conference tables, grew in place using some kind of nano-something or other. He hadn’t entirely understood how that worked, never having bought furniture on this scale before, and he didn’t really care.

All he knew was that the furniture people needed to keep an employee on hand for the next 36 hours to supervise the various growing tables and chairs.

He didn’t mind. There was no proprietary information in any of the offices where the furniture needed to grow, and at the moment, there were no other lawyers with whom he was sharing information. The furniture guy couldn’t hack into their systems even if he wanted to, because at the moment, there was nothing to hack.

Salehi probably wouldn’t approve. Hell, an office manager probably wouldn’t approve.

But Zhu was here alone, and he had no back-up. He had three different office managers coming back for a second interview later in the afternoon. He’d investigated their backgrounds and got rid of half the good applicants right there. Maybe once one of them was on board, his life would get easier.

Even though he doubted it.

He spun around the lobby—or what would be the lobby—as the furniture people and their androids slid the groupings into place. He had just completed an agreement with a janitorial service, and they would start the following morning.

That service he’d had to vet, and vet heavily (using company resources) because the bots and cleaners would have access to everything.

The minute it became clear to the entire Moon that S
3
represented the clones, this place would be under constant attack.

The elevator door opened. He headed toward it, feeling more anticipation than he should have. In fifteen minutes, a group of newly minted lawyers sent up from a headhunter on Earth were scheduled to arrive.

Zhu had been looking forward to seeing them. They didn’t have the concerns Moon-based lawyers did, nor did they have the experiences of both the Peyti Crisis and Anniversary Day. In just a few short days, he was beginning to realize how very important that was.

Not to mention the fact that lawyers were at a premium now. Every law firm on the Moon was interviewing new lawyers, because they had lost several—not just the Peyti lawyers, but the lawyers who had accompanied them on whatever case was underway when the Peyti environment kicked in.

Zhu was competing with reputable firms, firms that weren’t asking the lawyers to represent the Peyti clones, and so far he was losing out.

This new group was his best chance of hiring qualified attorneys in the past two days.

But only one person stood in front of the elevator, back to him. He paused, confused, not certain what he was seeing. Small and slight, with black hair so short that only the elegant curve of the neck told him he was looking at a woman.

She turned, and his breath caught.

Berhane.

THIRTY-FOUR

NYQUIST CLUTCHED THE bag of burgers to his chest like a wounded child as he exited the elevator in the United Domes of the Moon Security office. He half-wished he hadn’t brought the food now. He’d never had a bag of food searched so thoroughly before.

He hoped to hell whoever had been handling his burger had clean hands.

It had seemed like such a good idea, bringing food to DeRicci and Popova, since they were stuck at work again. He was feeling at loose ends since the injunctions got confirmed. He had other cases, but they faded in importance to interrogating the Peyti Crisis clones. Even though he’d been worried about his fellow detectives using the wrong interrogation methods, he wasn’t happy that the interrogations had been cut off.

Even though he had called that a gift when he spoke to Gumiela, he wasn’t sure he had meant it. Every day they failed to get information was a day that they fell farther and farther behind.

He pasted a smile on his face as he stepped in front of Popova’s desk. She had her long hair pulled back into some kind of bun, held in place with long pointed black sticks—stylish, yes, but dangerous. He wondered if those sticks had been searched when Popova had come to work in the morning.

“Rudra,” he said, setting the bag on her desk. “I bring dinner.”

He almost told her that the guards downstairs had run dinner through several scanners after pawing the buns and patties. Then Nyquist changed his mind. If he told her, she might not eat it, and both Popova and DeRicci needed food more than they needed something else to worry about.

Popova smiled at him. “Smells good, Bartholomew,” she said. “I don’t know when I last had hot food.”

“Bartholomew sees it as his duty to feed me.” DeRicci spoke from behind him.

He turned.

She looked even more tired than she had the night before. Her features were drawn, her eyes disappearing into their sockets. Last night, when she arrived at his apartment, he’d given her the leftovers from his unusually healthy dinner, and then sent her to bed—without him.