Torn From On High: Free City Book 2 (The Free City Series) (5 page)

8. News Item:
Preliminary census data released

Dateline: 5th of August, 2446;
Free City, Earth

The
Free City Bureau of Statistics released a tentative tally of humankind late
yesterday. The Bureau has struggled mightily for nearly ten years to fulfill
the many requests for census information from both the Free City Prime
Minister's Office and the Warlord Syndicate.

No
accurate or concise accounting of our lowly species has been produced since the
Human Census of 2140, which produced the staggering count of 15,258,195,387
just before the protracted slaughter of the Second Amero-Asian War.

The
current estimate outlined in the Bureau of Statistics Daily Postings is just
short of one billion at 992,231,613.

Bureau
statisticians took great pains to note that the destruction last year of the
crowded EurAfrican capital city of Arusha with an estimated population of
8,924,115 would have pushed the tally just over the one billion mark.

Human
populations were last at this level in 1804, more than 640 years ago.

History
Professor Swarna Jabuki at Free City University believes that human population
numbers ebbed at a paltry 45 million several decades after the War. Jabuki
suggests that the current brisk growth is mainly due to concerted efforts to
produce clones mainly in EurAfrica, AmerAsia and Free City.

To the
surprise of very few, our fair city is now ranked as the second most populous
burg at 1,276,322. The number breaks down to 863,571 natural born, 373,545
sequential clones and 39,206 non-sequential and “other” clones. There are, of
course, no serfs or slaves in Free City since the city charter deemed all such
unfortunates to be free citizens in 2246.

Humankind's
reigning metropolis for crowds is currently Tunis in EurAfrica at 1,513,783.
The breakdown is as such: 1,098,751 serfs, 401,956 slaves, 9,036 Feudal or
Slave Masters and 4,040 free “others.” EurAfrica does not keep statistics that
detail natural births and clonings.

Chief
Inspector Helga Bennet glanced up as Ryo strolled into her office.

“Mr.
Trop,” an uncommon smile darted across her craggy face, “apparently our mutual
friend, Lieutenant Zmuda has convinced you of the atrociousness of recent
developments.”

“Yes,”
Ryo nodded glumly, “the African desert enigma is nearly unbelievable and would
certainly be a tremendous step backwards for humanity, I'm afraid.”

She
frowned for several seconds, “Fortunately that nettlesome matter is in the
hands of the CRAMP and not the Inquisitor's Office.”

Helga
produced three glossy color photos and spread them out amongst the clutter on
her ancient desk.

Ryo
winced at the bloody images.

“There
has been a series of unsolved murders involving Space Debris Salvage
operators.” She tapped on one especially gruesome photo, “This unfortunate trio
was dismembered and scattered around the midget grappler tug
Lady Luck
in orbit around the Moon.”

Helga
fingered a second image; “These gentlemen succumbed to blunt force trauma as
the result of an ambush outside of a bar at Mariner's Station on Mars.”

Ryo
studied the photos, “Why haven't I heard about these misdoings in the News?”

“We've
managed to keep this crime wave secret,” she gathered up the pictures and
slipped them back into her desk, “the Prime Minister himself clamped a gag
order on the investigations at the urging of Zmuda.”

“Mmm,
that
is
big.”

The
steely old woman nodded, “There seems to be some tenuous evidence that this is
somehow connected to what is transpiring in the Sahara.”

Ryo
sighed, “And all of this led to the Prime Minister issuing Edict 343?”

She
stared unnervingly at him for several seconds, “That is correct.”

His
shoulders slumped under the weight of the recent revelations, “Alright; I'm
back in.”

“I
assumed that you would be,” Helga tapped out a line or two on her desktop
interface. “You will meet a talented young friend and a prickly old Celtic
gentleman tomorrow morning at 6 AM sharp in the Law Enforcement hanger at the
Ballyshannon Space Port. You will likely be away from Free City for two or
three days, plan accordingly.”

Ryo
grimaced at the assignment.

“Edict
343 is in full effect for this investigation,” she forewarned him, “you may use
whatever means necessary, legal or otherwise, lethal or benign, ethical or not
to clear up this unfortunate matter. I assured the Prime Minister just this
morning that I would trust no one but you for this unprecedented and risky
assignment.”

He
ruminated for a time on her dictate, “Will Dilma be in any danger?”

Helga
twitched slightly at his question, “The CRAMP will apparently be looking after
her.”

• • •

When
he heard Commander Frédéric Rameau returning from the staff meeting down the
hallway the mute slave abruptly stopped mopping the floor in the little office
and withdrew with his cleaning supplies.

The
slave warily glanced sideways as he left the room, Commander Rameau sneered
back in contempt at the minor impertinence.

The
tall, thin twenty-five year-old drudge lugged the mop and bucket to the
janitor's closet and washed up. With the likely approval of the Building 17
Slave Master, he'd be done for the day.

Forty-five
minutes later the slave trudged back into his tiny room in Domestic Servitude
Housing Block 43. He busied himself for ten minutes or so tiding up his
solitary quarters until he was certain that no one else was prowling about in
the sparsely occupied building.

Great
effort had been expended by many others to secretly place him into the position
as the General Facilities slave for Rameau's office.

He
pushed open the rickety wooden shutters. Just outside in the wide and
dust-blown courtyard, hung on a long wire rope, were his recently hand-washed
clothes.

The
laundry belonging to several other slaves fluttered about on similar lines much
further down the side of the wide building, but none possessed a clothesline
that was quite like his.

As
nearly everyone did in the dilapidated slave quarters, the man climbed through
his window and stood in the courtyard to survey his desiccated garments. The
baggy and ill-fitting pants and the tattered shirts were merely a disguise for
the true purpose of his unusual clothesline.

Intentionally
fastened upside-down at the very end where the line attached to the building at
a fat ceramic insulator was a particularly ragged pair of pants. He slipped his
thin fingers into the front left pocket and switched off the tiny device that
had been painstakingly woven into the apparently worthless garment.

The
clothesline strung across the courtyard in the Domestic Servitude Housing Block
was in reality a secret and deceptively simple radio transmission antenna.

The
slave reached up and unfastened the four clips that held his pants in place on
the line. He stuffed the one clip that contained the thin transmission wire
down into the leg of the pants before he removed the stiff, dry garb from the
line. He gathered up his other items and returned to his room.

The
man glanced down the hallway of the slave quarters before he sat on his cot
with his “clean” clothes. He wasn't a slave and he certainly wasn't from this
era, the man mused as he carefully reprogrammed the very simple transmitter in
the pants pocket.

He'd
been a Materials Engineering Doctoral Candidate at the University of Arizona in
the fall of 2058, nearly four hundred years ago, when this strange turn of
events had begun.

The
“slave” methodically reset the transmitter and carefully tapped out the new
twelve-character message in the long-forgotten cipher of the Southern New
Mexico Regional variant of American Morse Code.

His
grandmother had taught him the ancient telegraph code as a child one summer
when he had complained of boredom during the long respite from school. It had
been an idle curiosity then, now it might well be instrumental in the salvation
of humanity.

In
college an unusually insistent Genetics researcher had tracked him down and
offered him a great deal of money to participate in a secret cloning
experiment. He had reluctantly agreed and was sedated for the scanning process.
He awoke 388 years later and 8,500 kilometers away with a new body in a
clandestine lab at Free City University.

Now he
was a spy.

The
brownish tone of his skin and his profuse wavy black hair made him appear to be
of Arabic descent when in reality he was Hispanic, a racial designation that no
longer existed with the virtual extinction of humans in North America.

Lieutenant
Zmuda had decided that his unusual speech patterns from the twenty-first
century American Southwest would arouse the attention of the perpetually
suspicious EurAfrican Military personnel. A long-acting paralyzing drug was
injected into his vocal cords to render him speechless.

He'd
then been “sold” several times by cooperative and well-bribed Slavers in
Mogadishu to muddle his origins. Being from the twenty-first century meant that
his DNA was untraceable which further clouded his past.

The
mute slave wadded up the recently dried garments and plunged them into the
cloudy water of his washtub. He then climbed through the window and rehung the
damp clothes on the line. Just before he finished the task, he slipped his
fingers again into the tattered pants pocket and restarted the transmitter.

The
twelve-character message would take hours to send using the especially narrow
bandwidth allowed by the unusually low radio frequency employed by the tiny
transmitter.

If
someone casually dialed a receiver to the rarely used band, the message would
most likely be mistaken for naturally occurring interference.

He
would let the transmitter loop the message continuously for three days; its
receipt was absolutely vital.

Hopefully
his counterpart across the Mediterranean narrows in Sicily would pick up the
transmission and promptly forward the message to Zmuda.

Tomorrow
as the “mute slave” he'd again snoop through Commander Rameau's office for more
information.

• • •

She
had a job!

Sabra
MacFarland smiled as she bumped along in the city transport as she headed back
to the dingy little apartment that she shared with her sister and three others.

Sabra
hadn't particularly wanted the distraction of gainful employment, but the money
and the opportunity had proven to be irresistible.

Her
new employer had authorized an advance of five hundred Units for what seemed
like a ridiculously easy job that she probably would have done for free.

As she
stared out of the transport windows at the drizzly early evening city, Sabra
fidgeted with the thick stack of credentials that her boss had given to her to
authorize her employment.

Suddenly
she had money and some real standing!

10. News Item:
Final Bicentennial parade scheduled

Dateline: 6th of August, 2446;
Free City, Earth

The
Free City Bicentennial Committee announced that Sunday, the 26th of August,
would be the date of the final parade through our fair city. Mayor Lily Borja
encouraged all citizens to participate in the event either as participants or
as spectators.

As
with the mammoth opening day pageant, the parade will begin at 1 PM at the City
Hall Plaza and meander down several streets past the University towards
Roscommon Park. The event will culminate at the War Atrocities Monument with
speeches and a fireworks show at 9 PM.

Anticipating
a massive turnout for the historic event, the Prime Minister has declared the
26th of August to be an official holiday for all but the most vital workers.

Both
the Free City University Student Union and the Enlightenment Crusade have urged
their members to wear elaborate costumes. Several downtown businesses indicated
that they would award prizes to marchers for creative or thought-provoking
attire.

The
Bicentennial Committee is projecting that the event will be the single largest
gathering in city history.

Ryo
stared out of the curved cockpit window of the Low Earth Orbit Class Patrol
ship.

The
trio had been dispatched from the Law Enforcement hanger at Free City's
Ballyshannon Space Port about three hours ago and since then had been chasing
down the immense salvage vessel.

But
the hoped-for rendezvous with the apparently abandoned ship was considerably
behind schedule.

“I
don't see it yet,” twenty-seven year-old Fiefdom Liaison Agent and recently
certified Attack Craft Pilot Keira Norton scowled as she glanced between the
wide sweep radar screen and the window.

Their
timeworn passenger chortled at the young pilot's difficulties, “The
Billikin
is such a huge heap of rubbish that it will be hard to miss her, my dear.

Ryo
smiled at the crusty ninety-seven year-old codger who sat behind them in the passenger's
seat.

“Tell
me Seamus, how many years were you the Engineer on the
Billikin
?”

“Oh, I
don't know,” the rickety old man stroked his white whiskers in thought, “I
reckon at least a half-century beginning way back in 2370. A few years after
the ship's owners made Takahashi Captain, they finally released me from my
servitude. Mmm; that was in 2422, so over fifty years.”

“That's
quite a feat of endurance,” Keira commented. “Are you proud of the time that
you spent on the
Billikin
?”

“Heaven's
no, child!” the old man snorted.

“That
ship is an infernal piece of dog crap held together mainly by scrap wire and
substandard welds. The miserly owners and the greedy captain never spent a
quarter Unit more than they had to on that floating junk pile.”

The straitlaced
young woman blushed at the declaration by the salty spaceman.

• • •

Just
as Seamus had said, Ryo wryly noted, the
Billikin
was indeed an immense
floating scrap heap.

There
were dozens of house-sized cast-offs from humanity's nearly five hundred year
presence in Low Earth orbit fastened willy-nilly to the huge vessel. More than
a few presumably dysfunctional satellites had been stuffed under a giant loose
fitting net that stretched across one side of the
Billikin.
Scores of
crushed and crumpled propellant tanks were lashed together with steel cables
near the stern of the ship. Colossal doodads and gizmos were moored everywhere.

That
amount of scrap material piled together anywhere on Earth would have been
impressive; in the difficult environment of space, it was quite remarkable.

A
warning buzzer interrupted Ryo's thoughts.

Keira
frowned, “Well; this is a problem.”

She
adjusted several settings on the patrol craft's instrument panel.

“The
Billikin's
automated docking interface has apparently malfunctioned.”

Ryo
grinned, “After the trials and tribulations of our little expedition to the
Asteroid Belt last year, manually docking with a salvage ship in Low Earth
Orbit should be easy for you.”

“I
guess so,” she replied reluctantly.

“See
that?” Seamus's bony finger pointed towards the vessel, “Somebody has meddled
with the docking ring hatch doors.”

“How
are we going to get on board?”

“Not
to worry, child,” the old passenger answered. “I know of a rarely used
auxiliary hatch that enters into the engine room.”

After
skirting around the ship, they came upon the small hatch. Keira eased the
patrol craft into place with no small bit of advice from Seamus.

The
threesome pried open the door.

Ryo
stopped his cohorts just inside the silent engine room.

“We
have no idea what's been lurking about on the
Billikin
; so don't take
any chances.”

Seamus
frowned and Keira slowly nodded.

“You
two check over the engine room. I'm going up to the bridge.”

• • •

He
certainly was dead, Ryo noted as he studied the Captain's body.

Takahashi
had been beaten and staked-out like a most unfortunate specimen in a deranged
bug collection.

The
old Inspector called down the alleyway to his companions.

Keira
floated warily into the Captain's sleeping compartment.

“OH! That's
terrible!” she cringed as she stared at the disturbing crime scene.

Ryo
poked halfheartedly at the body that was splayed out like a wide 'X' against
the thin sheet metal partition wall. Stout wire encircled both ankles and one
wrist, which held the body in what would have been an excruciating position,
had the victim been alive.

A long
and very slender dagger had been driven through Takahashi's left palm and well
into the thin wall behind him to complete the 'X' arrangement of the limbs.

“How
did he die?” Keira whispered.

Ryo
studied the corpse for several seconds. “The autopsy will tell for sure.”

He
tapped tentatively at the side of the dead man's neck just below his left ear.
“I suspect that this has something to do with it.”

A
small black hole, no larger than a good-sized mole, was centered on what
appeared to be an odd reddish-gray bulge that stretched from the ear lobe to
the shoulder.

“This
is some sort of entrance wound.”

Ryo
pried the rigor mortis stiffened carcass forward and peered at the back of the
neck.

“DON'T
LOOK,” he cautioned his cohort.

“There's
a gaping hole at the base of his skull.”

Keira
winced.

“There
isn't any splatter behind him, so it didn't happen in here.”

He let
loose the body and it floated back against the wall.

“I
suspect that he was incapacitated elsewhere and then brought in here to be put
on display for some reason.”

Seamus
nudged his way past Keira.

“It's
a sign,” the old man solemnly intoned as he studied the remains.

“Of
what?” Ryo asked.

“The
dagger through the palm; I guess the bastard had it coming.”

Keira
stared at the razor-sharp blade, “What does it mean, Seamus?”

“Hoodlums
and gangsters have used it for years,” the old man shook his head. “It means
'stop stealing my stuff,' or some such nonsense.”

“Intimidation
and perhaps retribution,” Ryo frowned, “but I suspect that this ghastly tableau
was meant as a warning to someone else.”

Keira
shuddered, “He was murdered to teach others a lesson?”

“So it
seems,” Seamus nodded.

“Well;”
Ryo sighed, “to catch the thugs who are responsible, I'm afraid that we are
going to have to play along with this barbaric game until they reveal their
hand.”

• • •

The
trio carefully searched the vessel for hours and located the many corpses of
the crewmembers of the
Billikin.

All
had been gruesomely murdered but none of the nine others were displayed like
the Captain.

With
Seamus's help, Keira sorted through the ship's manifest and cross-referenced
the names with the bodies scattered around the vessel.

“Someone
is missing,” she tapped at the display screen.

Ryo
and Seamus studied the log.

“A
Retrieval Specialist named Nathan Briggs.”

“Yeah;
I remember Nate,” Seamus nodded. “He was a Serf from EurAfrica just like me.
The poor dog was stuck taking a beat up old runabout out to wrangle promising
debris. It's the toughest job on the
Billikin.
Maybe he just snapped and
went on a killing spree.”

“I
wonder,” Ryo frowned, “where is Mr. Briggs now?”

Seamus
turned to the Inspector, “I did notice that the retrieval runabout is missing.”

After
nearly a minute of careful thought, Ryo finally spoke, “I think for now we have
to assume that Nate Briggs is a prime suspect in these murders.”

• • •

An
hour later at Ryo's request, Keira sent out an All-Points Bulletin that requested
any available information about Nate Briggs while the men busied themselves
elsewhere.

When
her task was completed, she took one long last look at the Captain's body
before she sought out her cohorts.

Keira
shivered as she floated down the eerie passageway of the derelict vessel.

The
young woman was certain that she would always remember the
Billikin
as
the 'death ship.'

• • •

During
the prolonged interval as they waited for the Free City Coroner to arrive at
the
Billikin
and take over the crime scene, Ryo held a hushed
conversation with Seamus amongst the clutter of the aft cargo bay.

When
Keira had come upon the two men, the old Inspector had tersely and
uncharacteristically warned her off. It would be best for everyone if she knew
nothing of the impending trickery.

After
she had reluctantly left them, Ryo continued.

He
pointed at the text on the screen of his communication device, “You're OK with
this?”

Seamus
nodded, “I'm a worn-out old man; I don't really have anything to lose.”

“Alright
then, let the deception begin.” Ryo pressed the 'send' button and the deed was
done.

The
two men brooded in silence for several seconds.

The
pleasant chirp of Ryo's communication device broke the unwelcome reflection on
the day's horrifying events.

It was
Chief Inspector Helga Bennet.

She
began without formalities, “We received word about ten minutes ago that Nate
Briggs, or at least what's left of him, has been located. I'm sending you the
location information. Tend to this right away.”

The
screen changed to flashing red text.

Ryo
frowned at the coordinates, “This is an odd place for a Space Debris Retrieval
Specialist.”