Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3) Read online

  ‘Chance Macy,’ he said.

  The colorless gel seemed to move slightly, as though shuffling its various pieces into place and then with a start Nathan saw color begin to appear within it.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Schmidt said, ‘the creature appears to use crystals as prisms to bend the light spectrum to any frequency it desires. It uses the light passing through it to create its own color.’

  As Nathan watched the creature took on the perfect form and appearance of Chance Macy. It looked back at him and blinked, but said nothing. Foxx moved closer to the hard light cubicle and peered at Macy.

  ‘It’s not perfect,’ she said as she observed the strange being. ‘It looks just like Macy but it doesn’t have the arrogant stance that he had. It can’t imitate character, only appearance.’

  Nathan glanced at Schmidt.

  ‘It must be able to imitate only what it sees.’

  ‘Presumably,’ Schmidt concurred. ‘The entity manifests itself from countless millions of smaller entities, rather in the same way that living things are built from individual cells. Uncontained, these creatures could literally move anywhere on the planet and we would never know they were there.’

  ‘You’re telling us that these things are here all over the planet already?’ Vasquez asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It is quite likely that they were here when Titan was attacked and remained in small numbers afterward. I studied this species after we recovered a specimen and was able to confirm that it is biological, but only partly.’

  ‘Partly?’ Allen echoed.

  ‘Yes, it appears to consist mostly of quasi biological components. Spectroscopy reveals them to consist mostly of titanium and certain alloys. In effect this is neither a creature nor a machine, but something of both.’

  ‘A cyborg?’ Nathan suggested.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Schmidt nodded. ‘But it is constructed on a nanometer scale. Titan’s encounter was the first known discovery of a genuine extra terrestrial artificial superintelligence. What we were also later able to deduce was that it wasn’t the main force.’

  ‘The main force?’ Vasquez asked.

  Foxx replied, her voice soft.

  ‘The CSS determined from Doctor Schmidt’s studies that in all likelihood the stuff this infiltrator is made of was a sort of infantry, a first in attack force that created havoc before a controlling species then came in to reap the rewards.’

  ‘A hunter force,’ Vasquez said, recalling his own service in the CSS Marines.

  ‘If that’s the advance force,’ Foxx said, ‘I don’t want to meet their leaders.’

  ‘They’re probably close behind I’m afraid,’ Schmidt said, ‘and are likely some form of biomechanical species themselves.’

  ‘You really think that’s likely?’ Allen asked.

  ‘It’s already happening to us,’ Schmidt pointed out. ‘Intelligent implants beneath our skins and in our skulls, bio enhancement, brain impulse therapy, and human beings have been using prosthetic limbs to replace those lost due to injury or illness for hundreds of years. That natural progression from enhancements to permanent improvement, projected well into the future, will inevitably create a race of humans more machine than people, and the constant miniaturization of that technology will inevitably make that race ever smaller and more efficient. Look at me, for instance – as a holosap I’m really just an entire dead person inside a quantum chip.’

  ‘Or just dead inside,’ Nathan murmured.

  Schmidt smiled but did not rise to the bait.

  ‘I suspect that either the controlling species will be more powerful, or this species will be reliant in some way upon its dominant ally. They could possibly be in a sort of symbiotic relationship.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ Vasquez uttered.

  ‘That’s useful,’ Foxx countered. ‘Divide and conquer.’

  ‘True,’ Schmidt said, ‘but like any evolutionary species it will have developed defense mechanisms for just such an eventuality. If you recall, when we first encountered this species it was cocooned around an alien vessel and feeding off the metals and power circuits inside. It requires sustenance, energy, which it treats effectively as food. But it cannot travel alone as it has no means of propulsion sufficient to carry it between the stars.’

  ‘Hence the relationship,’ Nathan said, ‘it’s helped by a species that it can treat as a sort of galactic taxi.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Schmidt said, and then frowned. ‘Which does somewhat beg the question of how they managed to get here.’

  Nathan thought for a moment about the shooting stars he’d been seeing.

  ‘You say they’re real small. Do you think they’d have the ability to withstand re–entry into the atmosphere of a planet?’

  ‘No,’ Schmidt said, ‘at least not at the velocities we’re used to.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But if they were extremely small in mass their entry velocity might be low enough that some of them could survive, enough to get onto the surface of a planet and seek out suitable energy sources, from which they could begin to proliferate themselves.’

  Schmidt appeared surprised at his own insight and looked again at Chance Macy’s silent form inside the cubicle.

  ‘However, if they were protected by a cocoon of some kind, launched with intent…’

  ‘Something that might cause a shooting star in the atmosphere on burn up,’ Nathan suggested.

  ‘Why do you keep mentioning shooting stars?’ Foxx asked.

  ‘I’ve seen more shooting stars in the last two days than I’ve seen in a month beforehand,’ Nathan said. ‘Is there anyone tracking objects that drop out of orbit?’

  ‘Sure,’ Vasquez said, ‘CSS tracks everything bigger than a grapefruit that hits the atmosphere, but that’s hundreds of objects a day.’

  Nathan felt something in his bones, a certainty that he recalled from his days as a detective in Denver all those centuries ago. Sometimes, when a breakthrough in a case was just around the next corner he could feel it as though a sixth sense was pulling him toward the perpetrator.

  ‘Humor me,’ he said to Vasquez. ‘Could you get CSS to check the trajectories of all of these objects that have landed in the past week.’

  ‘You serious?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Very,’ Nathan replied. ‘If we get a connection in locations between these objects arriving in our atmosphere and the murders we’ve witnessed, we’ll know.’

  ‘We’ll know what?’ Vasquez asked. ‘It could be down to nothing more than coincidence. There’s hundreds of these objects landing on earth every week, nobody’s going to pin this freaking thing down to it.’

  ‘No,’ Schmidt said, ‘but Detective Ironside has a point. This species appears in many respects to have evolved as a parasite. We can assume that it is many thousands of years more advanced than us and may have developed the means, either independently or in concert with its host species, to travel through space and infect planets. Cocoons of sorts appear favorable to them, either entire vessels or perhaps smaller cocoons that they may well build themselves. If those cocoons are strong enough to allow them to survive re–entry, then we might have been invaded a long time ago.’

  ‘So what’s it doing here?’ Vasquez asked. ‘Why bother with us? Why go to all this trouble of mimicking human forms and killing others off?’

  ‘We are unlikely ever to understand,’ Schmidt said simply. ‘Who could possibly understand what motivations a species like this might possess? We can’t even understand what it’s thinking, or whether it actually thinks at all.’

  Vasquez looked to one side as a message came through on his ocular implant.

  ‘Okay I got something here,’ he said, ‘sending it to the display screen over there.’

  Nathan hurried over and they all watched as data from CSS spilled onto the screen.

  ‘Four thousand, nine hundred and fourteen objects were tracked as hitting the earth’s atmosphere in the last week,’ Allen said and whistled softly. ‘Wow, th
at’s a lot of suspects to work through Nate.’

  Nathan thought fast, driven by the sense that time was somehow running out.

  ‘Okay, wipe off anything that didn’t hit the surface.’

  The screen changed.

  ‘Okay, you’re down to three hundred nineteen objects,’ Vasquez said.

  Nathan clenched his fists by his side, his brain running overtime as he spoke.

  ‘Right, now access every law enforcement database planet side and call up any homicide victims anywhere that had injuries matching those of the bodies we found in New Washington and San Diego.’

  ‘You think there could be more of them?’ Foxx asked.

  Nathan said nothing, waiting as the law enforcement databases of every police force on planet earth were scrutinized by banks of super computers. It took a painstakingly long seventeen seconds for the information to appear before them.

  ‘Damn, twenty four cases,’ Allen said with a start. ‘Desiccated remains, crystal structures in the skin, look at these things, they’re everywhere!’

  Nathan saw the data before him as clear as daylight.

  ‘India, Australia, Africa, the Americas,’ Foxx murmured as she read down the list. ‘We’ve got hits in every continent except Antarctica.’

  Nathan stared at the screen for a long moment. ‘Now match any of the atmospheric objects remaining to the cities or locations where the bodies were found.’

  The data bank altered instantly and everyone saw it at once.

  ‘Twenty four matches,’ Vasquez uttered in horror. ‘Every city where they hit, they had homicides that match our MO.’

  Nathan stood up and ran a hand through his hair.

  ‘It’s an advance force,’ he said. ‘They’re infiltrating us from within.’

  ‘But if there’s only twenty four of them we don’t have much to worry about yet,’ Allen said, ‘we’ve got the jump on them, right?’

  Nathan could hear the hope in his tones just as he could detect the sense that they all knew he was wrong.

  ‘The twenty four are the killings we know about,’ Vasquez answered. ‘Bodies found before they could be disposed of, homicides interrupted or whatever.’

  Nathan nodded. ‘There could be thousands of others we don’t know about yet.’

  *

  Tamarin Solly stood on the corner of a sidewalk opposite the precinct, a hard light umbrella shielding her from the incessant drizzle on the awful orbiting station. On her ocular implant flashed the occasional message from police communicators, her illegal black market scanner allowing her to listen in on police frequencies.

  Crowds hurried by, the throng of conversation competing with the hum of vehicles travelling past overhead. Solly frowned, tucking in closer beneath the umbrella as she tried to ignore the noise. Grounded by birth, she was used to the near silence of Sacramento’s suburbs or the quiet hills of Los Angeles, not the rush and chaos of New Washington. But Solly had caught word of what had happened down on North Four, rumors of a police pursuit of something that ran like a bio–enhanced criminal and yet was somehow not. Rumors were sometimes just that, and sometimes they were not.

  Finally, she spotted the man she was looking for as he walked out of the precinct building and across the street. Tamarin checked her hair and make up before she struck out and intercepted the young officer.

  ‘Hi!’

  She offered the young guy her brightest smile. Although she was nearing her seventies, a healthy dose of cosmetic surgery every once in a while had maintained Tamarin’s youthful glow, her hair long and wavy, her eyes clear and bright. She couldn’t draw a crowd like she had in her forties, but a young pup like this shouldn’t prove too difficult.

  ‘Hi?’ the younger man replied with a slightly confused smile.

  ‘I’m Tammy,’ she said and extended her hand, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘Muammar,’ came the reply. ‘Is there something that I can do for you?’

  The polite reply and cultivated accent suggested money, a rarity on the orbital platforms, and Tamarin quickly changed her tone from cheerful floozie to articulate professional, but she maintained the suggestive pose that she knew all men would respond to.

  ‘I believe that we may have a common interest,’ she suggested. ‘I was wondering whether you would like to discuss it?’ Tamarin allowed a healthy portion of thigh to appear beneath her raincoat, which was open because of the heat emanating up from the deck beneath them, her blouse opened enough to draw the kid’s eyes down.

  ‘What interest?’ he asked, his voice suddenly slightly dry as he coughed a little.

  ‘Detective Nathan Ironside,’ she said. ‘I believe that he ordered a signal sweep of some kind a short while ago?’

  The kid frowned again, suspicious. Tamarin moved closer to him, one hand on his arm and her breasts brushing close against him.

  ‘I’m sure I can make it worth your while,’ she whispered to him, her eyes wide and as honest as she could make them. ‘For both of us.’

  She ran her free hand lazily across Muammar’s crotch and saw his skin flush with color. The kid looked left and right as though he was being watched.

  ‘I can’t speak about police matters, I’m only a clerk and…’

  ‘Then we can speak about it privately,’ she cut him off. ‘I have a hotel room in the black hole, where nobody at the precinct can hear us. I’m sure that I can encourage you to recall the events of the day…’

  She offered him a suggestive smile, her body pressed against his as she gently pulled him with her, and to her delight his resistance collapsed and he allowed himself to be led away from the precinct building toward one of several hotels standing near the gigantic North Four arm.

  ***

  XIX

  ‘You’re going, all of you.’

  Captain Forrester loomed like a gigantic obsidian boulder, supporting his broad shoulders with balled fists as he stood and leaned forward on his desk.

  ‘We need to keep this quiet,’ Foxx said as she stood before him in the office. ‘Nathan’s found a solid match between the projected impact points of these objects and the homicides but we can’t be sure of anything yet, and if Global Wire picks this up everything’s going to hell. You send us to CSS, they’re going to know something’s up.’

  Captain Forrester shook his head.

  ‘This is too damned important,’ he replied. ‘Even if nothing came of it it would be foolhardy in the extreme not to have you notify CSS of what you’ve learned. I’m sending you down to CSS right now, but that thing in there stays here. I don’t want to risk moving it until we find out what the big wigs at Polaris Station decide what they want done with it.’

  Nathan beamed quietly as Forrester opened up a communications channel with the CSS Headquarters in New York City. Foxx remained cautiously silent as an attache appeared holographically in the room, a smartly dressed young man who worked as a liaison between the Governor’s office and CSS HQ.

  ‘I need a direct line to the Director General, CSS,’ Forrester announced.

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, captain,’ the attache replied. ‘Director General Coburn is at Polaris Station on essential business and…’

  ‘You connect me to the director general in the next sixty seconds,’ Forrester growled as he pointed one thick finger at the younger man, ‘or I’ll come down there and plug an aerial into your ass myself. What we have to tell Arianna Coburn could be instrumental in the defense of our planet. But if you have something more important to be getting’ on with, do let us know.’

  The attache blushed in shock and the connection flickered out.

  ‘A touch less cordial than he was used to,’ Foxx suggested.

  ‘Goddamn CSS stooges,’ Forrester rumbled. ‘I got no time for their airs and graces.’

  Nathan smiled. In a world that was in so many ways so different from the one he had left behind, so many things still remained the same: the divide between rich and poor, the war between criminals an
d the law, the bureaucratic lethargy of politics and governorships and the yawning chasm between the “grounded” and the working man. Even after four hundred years, the working man was still able to get more done in a day than a politician could achieve in a year, with much less fuss and far less ceremony.

  The communications channel flickered back into life again, but this time it was not the attache who appeared in the room but a Rear Admiral of the CSS Fleet.

  ‘Captain Forrester, 4th Precinct, New Washington,’ Forrester announced himself.

  ‘Rear Admiral Vincent O’Hara, CSS Fleet Command,’ came the reply. ‘What’s this about? We have a major situation up here and I’m getting priority feed through calls from your department.’

  Forrester remained as immoveable as ever.

  ‘We have potential evidence of an attempt by extra terrestrial entities to infiltrate the Sol System.’

  Nathan noted that Forrester’s bold statement got the admiral’s attention.

  ‘How so?’ O’Hara asked, his tone entirely more agreeable.

  ‘As many as twenty four homicides,’ Foxx replied as the captain gestured for her to speak. ‘The victim’s bodies were consumed from the inside out and only crystals left in their desiccated remains.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The killer then assumed the identity of the victims,’ Foxx went on. ‘We captured one this morning here in New Washington. It’s capable of shape shifting, of assuming different forms in the same manner as an entity we encountered aboard CSS Titan a few months ago.’

  Now, O’Hara was all ears. ‘You were aboard Titan?’

  ‘We get on well with her captain, Admiral Marshall,’ Nathan added as helpfully as he could. ‘The ship’s physician, Doctor Schmidt, is also in the loop and has been helping us identify what’s going on.’

  O’Hara seemed to dwell on this for a moment.

  ‘I want your detectives up here at Polaris Station as soon as they can get here.’

  Nathan raised an eyebrow as Captain Forrester leaned forward again on his desk. ‘Why would you want them all the way out there near Saturn, when the murders all occurred down here on..?’