“Oh? Since when are you a diplomat?”
“I’m not a diplomat, I’m an analyst, and in my field of specialization is the krokator military, amongst other subjects. You said yourself that you read my published report.” He turned his attention back to Zurra. “Ask me anything you need to know to be at ease. I’m not trying to hide anything from you.”
“Alright. What were you doing in French’s office?”
“I was interrogating him.”
“Successfully, it appeared,” Zurra grunted with a sharp snort.
Lara laughed. “I like this one, he’s got an edge.”
“We’ve been looking into a weapons theft recently. It’s not really my field, to be honest, but we turned up a lot more than we expected.”
Lara stepped in. “We found a very intricate network of cash payments and gun smuggling out of the ETZ – it’s a community for aliens on the outskirts of the city.”
“It’s a slum for the undesirables,” Gresham corrected, “and you would be appalled at the conditions in there. But I digress. We found a massive weapons cache in the Zone and a series of bank accounts spread out across Los Angeles, the Alliance and even the galaxy. All of these accounts have one thing in common – they’re all connected somehow to a parent company called Pacific Capital, a bank that’s been under a lot of international scrutiny lately. You and your government may be familiar with that name – they owned LMS Holdings on Piskka.”
“So our assumption, based on the nature of these accounts and the firm they’re held with, is that these gun smugglers had the backing of a very powerful organization,” Lara said. “Likely Hessian Engineering. And Colin Hess, the head of Hessian, is very close with Jack French, who it turns out is the same man who authorized the weapons theft in the first place.”
“The pieces fall together pretty neatly when you think about it that way,” Gresham said, “except we have no evidence to tie anything back to Hess, besides his company’s stake in Pacific Capital, and we have no way to explain the okka needles or MV5.”
Zurra’s eyes lit up with concern. “Okka needles?”
“Yes. We found a dead body full of okka needles. His eyes and tongue were ripped out too, just for good measure.”
“Gurumoken.”
“What was that?”
Zurra cleared his throat. “Gurumoken. It is a style of killing common to the krokator underworld in which one desecrates the corpse after it is killed. The idea is to embarrass the victim both in this world and the next, and to send a message to any friends who have survived him. It is forbidden by law to commit gurumoken, as it is a cruel and barbaric practice.”
“So I guess that settles it. Lugrash wasn’t acting alone. Unless Balgoshans started performing krokator ritual killings.”
“I doubt it,” Zurra said. “Gurumoken is a phenomenon whose motivations and execution are very unique to my culture.”
Something piqued Lara’s attention. “Wait, you said that it’s a krokator mob practice?”
“I do not know what you mean by mob, but yes.”
Lara smiled. “Lugrash had a friend we found through the bank records – Kalenn Jurkken. He was some kind of escaped criminal from the Empire who apparently turned in a bunch of his associates for political asylum. He’s in the Zone now.”
“Yes, our contact mentioned him,” Zurra said before realizing his mistake.
“Your contact?” Lara demanded. “So the sukuda has an informer here in Los Angeles? Who?”
“I cannot divulge his identity.”
“You sure as hell can, or I’m turning your ass in the second I leave.”
Gresham threw his hands up. “Quiet, both of you! Jesus. Zurra is trying to help us, Lara. Let’s be a little more polite.”
Zurra glared at Lara for a moment before looking back at Gresham. “I think I would be more comfortable, cooker of foods, if she were not here.”
Lara rolled her eyes. “Great. Fine. I’ll leave.”
“Lara, please....”
“No, really, it’s fine.”
She stormed out into the hall and Gresham motioned to Zurra to give him a moment to sort things out before following Lara out the door. “What’s wrong, Lara? Be a little flexible.”
“John, you’re asking me to look the other way when you’ve assaulted a Commissioner and started harboring a sukuda spy in your home. And now you’re taking his side when you know that Allied law requires that informers for foreign spies be uncovered.”
“Lara, imagine what Zurra can do for us. He has information from his own investigation that might go along nicely with our own. He wound up at Jack French’s office too somehow, and we need to find out how that happened. Turning anyone in until we’re done doesn’t help anyone, least of all ourselves.”
“You’re asking too much of me, John.”
Gresham sighed and gently grabbed her wrist. “Lara, where’s that tough-talking, door-kicking field agent who threatened to shoot me in the face? Did our meeting with Cray really shake you up that much?”
“No, but…”
“Okay. Then trust me. I think I know what I’m doing.”
“This is serious shit, Major. You don’t just learn how to play the bureaucracy as you go. And the President will only protect you for so long.”
“I know. That’s why I need to keep working Zurra so we can figure out where to go from here. If he knows something – anything – that might help us, we can’t let it slip away.”
Lara was silent for a long time, staring down at the floor. “Okay. I guess you’re right. Call me tomorrow and we’ll talk about what you find out.”
“Will do.”
“What do you plan on doing with Zurra once you’re done? He could very well have been sent by Jurkken and the krokator gangs to assassinate French. Or to find out what we know.”
“I doubt it. He was fascinated that my apartment can talk, after all. I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth and that he’s never set foot in the Alliance before.”
“Don’t be wrong.”
Gresham watched Lara walk down the hallway and disappear around the corner before reentering the apartment. Zurra was watching his TV program again.
“Okay, Sharm Zurra. Tell me how you wound up in French’s office, and start from the beginning. I need to know everything if you and I are going to work together.”
Zurra sighed, nodded reluctantly and began his story.
#
The transport circled once again over the bog and all seven soldiers jumped out. Six were aruntuk, and the seventh was Zurra. They landed in the swamp, knee-high in brackish water, and the quiet was broken only by the whine of the transport’s engines.
“Hold position,” Zurra ordered. The aruntuk were obedient, following the orders of a mere karp who was not of their order. There was an eerie silence after the transport floated away and blew the mist out of the eyes of the soldiers crouching in the marsh.
Up ahead, the black silhouettes of craggy mountain peaks were visible through the low-hanging clouds. The moon they had landed on was covered in marshes and wetlands with only the occasional rocky outcrops breaking up the humid desolation. Zurra raised his okka rifle to eye height and turned on the infrared scope, scanning the swamp ahead of him. The infrared could detect no life forms within a thousand yards. Satisfied, Zurra motioned for three of the aruntuk to move forward.
There was a buzz from the communicator in his ear and Zurra pressed down on it. “Team Two in place,” a voice said on the other end of the line. “Taking position at five hundred yards from target.”
There was another buzz. “Team One on the move,” a gruffer voice announced. “One hundred yards from holding point.”
Zurra raised his wrist-mounted communicator to his mouth. “Team Three a thousand yards from holding point. No contacts.”
The seven-krokator team, one of three such squads, moved forward. Ten minutes later, they reached a twisted tree trunk sticking at an awkward angle out of the marsh a
nd took up a position behind an adjacent boulder.
“Team Three in place,” Zurra announced. “Holding position at five hundred yards from target.”
“Confirmed. Team One at holding position.”
There was a long silence before a new voice echoed over the channel. “This is Orbit One. Commencing surgical orbital strike. Thirty seconds to bombardment. Stand fast.”
“This is Aerial One. Gas torpedo launch in ninety seconds.”
“Aerial Two. Gas torpedo ready, ninety seconds to fire.”
Zurra detached the gas mask from his belt and pulled it over his face. The other aruntuk did likewise, hearing a telltale screech in the distance.
The dark hills before them suddenly exploded as orbital missiles hammered the mountains, spewing black clouds of dirt into the air. The sound of the blasts rumbled and the water in the bog shook along with the earth.
Zurra motioned forward and the aruntuk surged over the boulder and sprinted through the shallow pools of water towards the billowing clouds of soot and debris, clutching their okka rifles close to their chests.
“Aerial One, thirty seconds to gas torpedo delivery.”
“Aerial Two, thirty seconds to delivery confirmed.”
Zurra barreled through a thicket of foliage, charging into the floating cloud of debris.
“Torpedoes away.”
Eight small missiles detonated in the heart of the settling dust cloud, spraying gas down into the now-exposed entrances of the subterranean heretic base. Zurra and the aruntuk had nearly reached the closest tunnel down into the mountain by the time the heavy gas had fallen down into the gaping hole.
“Team Three, fifty yards from target,” Zurra announced through his gas mask. “Engaging contacts now.”
The coughing sentries sent out to investigate the explosions were quickly taken out with okka needles and the other two aruntuk teams converged on the secondary entrances to the base.
Zurra vaulted over the fallen corpse of a heretic and ran into the tunnel, rifle raised and ready. He knew what awaited him on the other side of the tunnel: Grakko would be down there.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Businessman
Los Angeles, Planet Terra, Sol System
Gresham yawned and stretched, cracking his neck. It was almost nine and the sun was streaming directly into his eyes. He rolled off the couch and turned on his screen.
“Good morning Los Angeles! It is currently 8:55 AM on another beautiful July day here in Southern California. Highs for today are expected to be about 112 degrees Fahrenheit and we will experience a night-time low for this month all the way down at a cool evening 55.”
He heard stirring from the bedroom and walked down the hall to see Zurra climbing out of his bed. Gresham had decided to lend Zurra the use of his room for the time being and had slept on the couch the night before after they had finished discussing the many mutual leads their investigations shared.
“How’d you sleep?” Gresham asked, tossing Zurra a towel. “That’s yours if you want to shower, I have plenty of other ones.”
Zurra grimaced and rubbed his eyes. “Do you ever dream of moments from your past? Vividly?”
“More than you know,” Gresham replied. “I dream about the Dhruiz War all the time. Pretty regularly as of recently actually.”
“You fought the dhzirs?” Zurra asked, genuinely impressed.
Gresham chuckled. “Yeah, I was a little bit younger back then but I slogged through the shit back in the day. Here, check this out.” He pivoted his leg to reveal a scar on his left thigh. “Got that in hand-to-hand action on Puckshot. They overran our trench and our whole unit almost got wiped out.”
Zurra bent down to inspect the scar. “That is impressive.” He rose up and pulled up his own loose-fitting shirt to show a similarly nasty scar on his back. “I received that in the Academy during field exercises. Spent a day in the medic ward and then competed in the same exercise the following afternoon. I would not be the soldier I am today without it.”
Gresham nodded, equally impressed. “Good work. That’s a real deep one. So I was doing some thinking, and I decided that our best bet right now is to see what we can dig up on Jurkken.”
“Agreed.”
“And if we’re lucky, Jurkken knows something about Kamaan Dakkal. We’re kind of crossing our fingers here that he does though… Dakkal could, of course, be anywhere.”
“I know he is here.”
“I have a friend who knows the Zone backwards and forwards, so I’m gonna go visit him today. I’ll have Lara look up a few leads if we need. You gonna be okay here?”
“I want to come with you.”
“No, no that’s a bad idea. I’m already in deep shit after yesterday, and you’ll be in even bigger trouble. Stay here and lie low, I’ll try to work something out with the right people. Let me handle it, I know which wheels to grease.”
Zurra shrugged. “I will trust you and stay here.”
“Thanks. You can go for a jog if you have to or walk around if you start getting cabin fever, but don’t leave the community. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Gresham ordered Tiff to make them both breakfast before hopping in the shower. I’m doing the right thing here, right?
Once he was out of the shower he let Zurra take a turn, and as always the massive krokator was fascinated by the device and took a lengthy shower.
Gresham started collecting his things before heading out, and in his hurry knocked his wallet off the table, spilling its contents.
“Ah, shit,” he swore and stooped down to pick up his various cards. His attention fell on a business card lying to the side of all the others on the floor, and he picked it up to study it closer.
Elijah J. Perry, Executive Director of Acquisitions, Pacific Capital. It was the business card French had given him a few days prior.
Gresham immediately turned his screen on and typed the name Elijah Perry into the query bar. Multiple results appeared.
Elijah J. Perry
Honorary Associate Director, Pioneer Federation of Labor
Mr. Elijah Perry’s family has a long history with the strongest labor union in the Martian capital and this friendship was recognized last year with an honorary seat on the union’s board of directors. Mr. Perry has spent the better part of nine years working to improve relations between all Mars’ labor unions and the management of the planet’s largest corporations.
Mr. Perry’s own relationship with the PFL largely stems from his efforts to avert a major labor strike using his influence with the union and Hessian Engineering. Mr. Perry recently left a lucrative senior position with Pacific Capital to become Vice-Chairman of the PFL-associated Pioneer Labor Advocates, for which he has in the past served as a paid consultant and been a generous supporter of and donor to.
Another news story:
6/28/42
Allied News Service
LOS ANGELES (ANS): Mr. George Baumann, Chairman of the PFL, announced that the PFL would be donating over ten million credits from its union fund to the general campaign fund of Commissioner Jackson French, who is expected to run for the Allied Socialist Party nomination in next fall’s Presidential election. The move comes shortly after Mr. Elijah Perry, a longtime French ally, left Martian financial firm Pacific Capital to become Vice-Chairman of the PFL’s political arm.
Gresham clicked on another link, his curiosity piqued.
Elijah J. Perry
Executive Director of Acquisitions (resigned 3/13/42)
Pacific Capital: Pioneer City, Mars
Mr. Perry has, for six years, served as Executive Director of Acquisitions and as a voting member of the Pacific Capital Board of Directors, and resigned from both positions on 3/13/42 to pursue a new opportunity. Mr. Perry, aged 40, is best known at PacCap for having negotiated Pacific Capital’s assumption of responsibility as the banker and insurer of the Pioneer Federation of Labor’s assets. Perry also helped negotiate Hessian’s purchase of a fifth of Pacific Capital?
??s shares during a turbulent period for the bank and the friendship of Pacific Capital with Hessian has paid dividends for both parties.
Mr. Perry has also been named an honorary non-voting board member of the PFL itself, where he currently serves as the vice-chairman of its political advocacy affiliate, and briefly served in an informal consultancy role for Hessian Engineering. Mr. Perry is currently also a paid consultant for Commissioner Jackson French’s (ASP-Mars 03) Presidential Exploratory Committee and served as Mr. French’s Assistant Fundraising Director during last year’s midterm elections.
Gresham ran his fingers along his jaw, contemplating the new information. Here was a man who had a relationship with Hessian Engineering, Pacific Capital, and Jack French all at once. He stared at the picture provided by Pacific Capital. Perry was a tall, handsome man with dark hair, focused eyes and a professional, white-toothed smile. His attire looked exorbitantly expensive, almost repulsively so.
It took a moment for Gresham to figure it out, but he realized that this was the man he had seen leaving French’s office the day before.
Zurra emerged from the bathroom. “You are still here?”
“I was just leaving,” Gresham said. “I let Tiff know that you are a guest and that your fingerprint will unlock the door. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Very well, cooker of foods.”
Ten minutes later, Gresham was steering his car out onto the A10 between Malibu and Los Angeles, programming in his destination and leaning back as the HUVR merged onto the freeway.
He dialed Lara’s number and plugged in his vox. Lara’s voice echoed through the HUVR’s interior.
“Morning, John. How’d last night go?”
“Good, and I have a lead. I need you to see what files SIS might have on a one Elijah J. Perry,” Gresham said. “I found his business card in my wallet; French gave it to me a few days ago. Get this – Perry has served on the board of Pacific Capital, has worked as a consultant for Hessian Engineering and French’s campaigns, and he helped negotiate labor deals for the Pioneer Federation of Labor.”
Lara clicked her tongue. “The PFL is the second-biggest union on Mars.”
“Right. You see the connection here, don’t you? Perry knows French, Hess, and the power players at Pacific Capital. He’s on Terra now too, I swear I saw him at French’s office yesterday.”