Assassin's Orbit Read online

  ASSASSIN'S

  ORBIT

  John Appel

  First published 2021 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-435-1

  Copyright © 2021 John Appel,

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eBook production

  by Oxford eBooks Ltd.

  www.oxford-ebooks.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For my grandmother, the late Ruth Ronald, whose spirit lives on in the women in these pages.

  And for Michelle, Alexa, and Ben, whose love makes everything not only possible, but worthwhile.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Noo

  Second Landing Social Club,

  Ileri Station, North Ring

  “This isn’t a crime scene, Daniel, it’s a slaughterhouse.”

  Forty years as a private investigator on Ileri Station hadn’t prepared Noo Okereke for the carnage around her. She’d attended to killings before, if rarely, but tonight marked her first mass murder.

  She was glad to see it only through virtual reality.

  Her translucent telepresent figure knelt by one of the bodies: a young man she’d known for his entire life. Inside the blood-spattered room, the hovering bot serving as her proxy dropped to the level of her virtual head. She forced herself to examine the holes punched through the young man’s torso—from the front, the detached investigator within her noted. His head lay facing towards her, eyes still open, face slack. Next to his right hand lay his stunner; he’d managed to draw, at least, before being cut down.

  Other Constabulary bots ranged about the luxuriously appointed room, cataloging the plentiful evidence.

  The bots were the only things moving. The people inside—what was left of them—would never move again on their own.

  Another hoverbot slid into position nearby and Detective Daniel Imoke’s lean shape winked into being beside her own virtual body. “It’s Saed?” he asked. For formality’s sake, she guessed, and the official record; Imoke knew—had known—Saed practically since birth. Only a little less time than she had, really.

  Noo gave a reluctant nod, caught herself, then vocalized for the record. “I confirm the victim’s identity as Saed Tahir, employed by Shariff Security.” Her business partner’s grandson, and practically a brother to her own children. Her virtual form rose as she surveyed the room. Eight other bodies lay across the floor or slumped in their seats. All the victims she could see had been shot in the upper chest. Two had been shot in the head as well. The killer was trained—wanting to be sure of their kills?

  Blood was everywhere: splattered across the top of the game table, the walls, the carpet, the bodies of the other victims. The great aching emptiness in her chest warred with the urge to vomit.

  Pull it together. She took a deep breath, sent a silent prayer to the Huntress. Guide my eyes and make swift my steps, that I may find the killers.

  Steadier now, she looked around the lounge-turned-charnel house. “He was on assignment. Bodyguard to the Minister for External Trade, Ita.” She peered at each of the victims seated at the card table in turn. She knew Ita’s face from the media feeds but didn’t see him among the dead—no, wait. She looked more closely at one of the seated victims, spotting the New Horizon party emblem embroidered on the left breast of their yellow kaftan. She pointed. “This is Ita, I think.”

  Imoke’s own face stayed impassive. “Unofficially, it is,” he said.

  Noo stood and traced the path between Saed’s body and Ita’s, trying to estimate where the shooter or shooters had stood. Saed’s form lay squarely in the path between Ita’s body and where she judged the assassin’s position had been. Quick steps brought her to the spot from where death had reached out to encompass everyone within the parlor. Sure enough, Saed had managed to get between his charge and the killer.

  You did your job until the very end, my boy. Cold comfort for us.

  “Why can’t you identify them officially? Why did you need me to come down and ID Saed in person?” she asked.

  Before he could answer, the room faded around her abruptly, replaced by the dark, equipment-packed interior of one of the Constabulary’s little electric vans. Noo blinked in her seat, adjusting, the transition from posh club parlor to utilitarian service vehicle catching her by surprise. A young woman in crime scene team coveralls swept the closed-network VR trodes from Noo’s temples, then turned to do the same for Imoke, her twist-outs swinging as her head bobbed. “Commissioner’s here, boss,” the tech said, as she hurriedly stuffed the trodes into a storage cubby.

  Imoke grimaced. “That was quick.” He stood up slowly, head ducked to avoid cracking it on the van’s roof. “They keep making these things smaller.” He twisted sideways and hunched down to scoot past the bot rack.“This crate’s nearly as old as you are, Sergeant,” the tech quipped as she called up an augmented reality window that shimmered between herself and Noo, studied it briefly, then waved it away. The younger woman flicked her fingers, red-painted fingernails shining for a moment in the glow of the VR system lights. The rear door clicked as the lock disengaged. Imoke pushed it open, flooding the van with light, and stepped out. He turned and offered Noo his arm to steady herself as she stepped forth. Nodding her thanks, she wrapped her right hand around it as she clambered out of the van, feeling the firm, wiry muscles inside his tunic sleeve. He was still a fit man for all that he was her age, sixty-four standard, with the lean build of the football goalie he’d been in their youth. His shoulders were broad and muscular without being thick. A close-cropped fuzz of hair perhaps a quarter centimeter long—graying now—topped his long, narrow face with its slightly-crooked nose, broken decades ago.

  “You’ve handed me a real flaming bucket of shit, Daniel,” Noo said in a low voice.
She glanced around, hunting for signs of the Commissioner, and released Imoke’s arm. Wouldn’t want Toiwa thinking Daniel and I are banging again. Maybe she could slip away before Commissioner Toiwa spotted her... She’d have to call Fathya, her business partner—Saed’s grandmother—right away.

  The van was parked crosswise in the normally pedestrian-only street outside the Second Landing Social Club, part of a row of modest five-level buildings sitting in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Ileri Station’s north ring. Not that any of the neighborhoods on the station were bad, really. But the movers and players, the heads of the more successful family concerns, government officials of a certain rank, media-feed stars; they all tended to cluster in neighborhoods like this one. The district lay a scant block from Idibia Park with its lake, and water, as ever, drew humans to live near it.

  The structures on either side of the club were the usual blend of offices, shops, and residences. A normally busy cafe—now cleared of patrons and most staff—sat across the street from the club. Two blocks spinward lay the nearest transit-system station. More little vans packed the vehicular alleyway behind the club; every ambulance in the north ring but one, Imoke had told her.

  Noo’s eyes tracked along the eternally up-sloping street, taking in the crowd of onlookers, and then up to the ring’s ceiling. North ring kept daylight during third shift so the louvers covering the inner surface of the ring were open, and light reflected by the giant external mirror shone through. She spotted a cluster of people up-ring, near the Goan consulate; she zoomed on one of the augmented reality sigils hovering around the mob. One Worlders. Idiots.

  She shook her head in disgust. “A political assassination and the first mass murder on the station in decades, and the brain-bit buttonheads are protesting the Goans? Goa’s not even part of the Commonwealth. How does picketing their consulate affect the vote?”

  “Seventeen years since the last mass killing,” Daniel said. “And the first with a projectile weapon in twenty-eight. I had to look it up.” His gaze flicked up towards the distant protest before returning to her. “Where the One Worlders are concerned, I just assume they’re against all off-worlders, Commonwealth or no.” He touched her arm. “I’m terribly sorry to have pulled you out here at this hour. Once I realized it was Saed, though, I thought it best to call you for the identification.”

  So that I can tell Fathya her grandson is dead, instead of you. She’d had her own children late, and her kids had grown up with Saed and Fari, his sister. Shit, I have to call the kids once I tell Fathya.

  Noo took a deep breath and pushed that task off a little longer. “You were right to call,” she said, looking up at his long, dark face. “Still, a bucket of flaming shit,” she repeated.

  Imoke turned, his attention drawn by a uniformed constable making emphatic if confusing hand gestures. “It’s worse than you know,” he said as he took her elbow and turned, trying to steer her towards the front of the van. She shook his hand off and stepped off to match pace with him. “Besides Ita, there’s another political victim.”

  She ground her teeth at being herded as well as with his indirectness. This is why we only sleep together for three months a year. “Out with it, man,” she said in a clipped tone as they rounded the corner of the van—only to run headlong into Commissioner Toiwa and her entourage.

  Noo and Toiwa locked eyes as Toiwa’s aide plowed into Imoke, who caught the young woman, saving her from an ignominious face-planting on the van’s windshield. A uniformed constable lieutenant veered left at the last second, just missing Noo. She ignored the minions, focusing instead on the Commissioner. The stare-down between private investigator and the top police officer on the station might have continued indefinitely had Imoke, veteran witness of a previous clash between the two, not intervened.

  “Commissioner, thank you for responding so quickly during third shift. I hope—” His mouth clamped shut as Toiwa’s right hand snapped up, palm outward.

  It might have been third shift and the middle of Toiwa’s sleep period, but she was dressed as if for a meeting with the Prime Minister and the entire cabinet. Just forty-five, nearly two decades younger than Noo or Imoke, Nnenna Toiwa looked like she was about to step into a media studio, smartly turned out in a charcoal-grey jacket-and-slacks combo with a steel-gray blouse. She had sharp, imperious features, long hair relaxed and bound back, and cheekbones Noo would have killed for three decades earlier. Toiwa certainly didn’t look like she’d risen from her bed about the same time Noo responded to Imoke’s call. She wore low heels, in spite of which she could still look down her nose at Noo as if examining a particularly unpleasant specimen presented by an underling.

  Noo’s own appearance didn’t normally bother her; at sixty-four her body had seen its share of living, and she’d birthed two children, leaving her roundly plump. But something about the taller, younger woman, with her gym-toned body and perfect hair, made Noo feel dumpy.

  “What is M. Okereke doing at your crime scene, inside the perimeter, Detective Sergeant?” Toiwa asked, her media-feed-quality voice carrying clearly despite the background chatter, if pitched low. Her left hand gestured towards the line of uniformed constables and augmented-reality tags marking the off-limits zone. She eyed Noo from waist to head. “There’s no call for a civilian to be here on the scene.”

  To his credit, Daniel Imoke didn’t wilt in front of his boss’ boss. “I asked her to confirm the identity of one of the victims,” he said.

  “You couldn’t obtain that from the victim’s djinn?” the Commissioner asked, one eyebrow arched. Noo’s ears perked up; Toiwa’s arrival had kept Daniel from answering when she’d asked the same thing.

  Imoke shook his head. “Localized electromagnetic pulse. The attacker fried everyone’s electronics, and the electronics inside the parlor,” he said. Noo kept her expression still with an effort but took note. That’s just as bad as the fact they used a gun. Using an EMP device inside a station was the mark of someone who possibly didn’t care if they also fried essential systems, like fire alarms and vacuum breach sensors. Grounders, Noo thought, before kicking herself about making assumptions. It was true all spacers and most station-siders respected the machines that kept them all alive, but that wasn’t evidence.

  Only a slight widening of her eyes betrayed Toiwa’s surprise at hearing this. The Commissioner turned, giving Imoke her full attention. She twisted her left hand in a circle, counterclockwise, and the air around the three of them assumed the quality of stillness that spoke of a privacy field snapping into place. “You’re sure?” she asked, voice low even inside the field.

  Daniel nodded. “The first medics on scene discovered the problem when they couldn’t pull the victim’s emergency data from their djinns. Crime-scene techs confirmed the EMP. I thought I recognized one of the victims, which is why I called M. Okereke to confirm my belief.”

  Toiwa turned now to Noo, her mouth still tight. “You knew the minister? Or his guests?”

  Noo shook her head, snorting. “Hardly that. His bodyguard. Saed Tahir.”

  “Who?”

  A fourth person shoved past a protesting underling and bulled her way into the privacy field. “My grandson.”

  Oh shit. Should have known Fathya would have her own source to tip her off.

  “M. Shariff.” Toiwa faltered for a second, seemingly torn between courses of response, before settling on diplomacy for now. “Assuming his identity is confirmed, my deepest condolences.”

  If Imoke was a goalie, Fathya Shariff was a forward, barely middling height and spare of build. Her bald brown head gleamed in the light here in the broad station corridor. Fists clenched, she ignored the Commissioner, to Toiwa’s obvious displeasure, and Noo, to her temporary relief, and confronted Imoke. “Who killed my grandson, Daniel?”

  Imoke spread his hands, face downcast. “We don’t know yet, Fathya. But on my honor, we’ll find who did this.”

  Toiwa stepped in between the two, pushing her subordinate against th
e van’s front and driving Fathya Shariff back by presence alone. “I can assure you, every available resource will be devoted to this case,” she told them, taking Fathya and Noo each by the elbow and drawing them with her towards the perimeter, and away from the Second Landing Social Club, scene of horrors. “Thank you, M. Okereke, for your assistance in confirming M. Tahir’s identity, but your aid is no longer required.” She dropped the privacy field, released their elbows, and waved Imoke forward. “The Detective Sergeant will see you off,” she said, her tone brooking no dissent. “And perhaps have a word with whomever is in charge of the perimeter about what constitutes a secure crime scene.”

  Shariff started to protest but Noo shot her a private signal, djinn to djinn.

  Her partner and friend converted her stillborn outburst into an exasperated grunt. “Very well. I will expect a full accounting, Commissioner,” she said. She glanced at Imoke. “We can see ourselves off. I’m sure the Detective Sergeant has his hands quite full managing such an exceptional crime scene.”

  “Thank you, I do,” Imoke said, reaching forward to take both of Fathya’s hands in his own. “Fathya, my deepest sorrow. Please know, and tell Fari too, that I will do everything in my power to bring Saed’s killer to justice.” Releasing her hands, Imoke inclined his head, then turned to take Noo’s. “Thank you for coming and helping, M. Okereke,” he said. The bleep of an incoming data packet via near-field channel from his djinn to hers, invisible to everyone but themselves, surprised her not at all. She murmured her thanks and they parted.

  She waited until they’d passed beyond the security perimeter and were sliding through the thin crowd of bystanders before she accessed the data packet Imoke had slipped her. “Oh, fuck me, the Mother wept,” she cursed beneath her breath.

  Fathya Shariff had known her for forty years, but she still bristled at Noo’s blasphemy, even if they professed different faiths. Noo shushed her, grabbed an elbow and sped her around the corner. Fathya glared but consented to the handling. “What’s the fuss?”