Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3) Read online

  The Statue of Liberty stood guard over the city’s harbor as it had done for hundreds of years, before the plague even, now coated with a nanotech film that ensured she was always pristine in appearance. Beyond Arianna could see a coastline and a few scattered dwellings of the super elite set against the vast forests that now covered what had once been New Jersey.

  The island of Manhattan loomed into view and Arianna marvelled at the sprawling expanse of museums, mansions and the CSS Headquarters complex in the center, dwarfing the Freedom Tower that had also stood for so many centuries. Central Park’s angular block of greenery housed the wildlife sanctuary, where exotic beasts were allowed to roam in large enclosures for limited times before being returned to their native habitats, allowing the children of the elite access to them for short periods to understand the nature of the planet that had given birth to the human race. Among the natural animals such as lions and elephants there roamed holographic representations of dinosaurs so vivid that it had apparently become a rite of passage for teenage boys to stand firm as a Tyrannosaur stalked toward them. Few passed the challenge.

  The shuttle touched down, and as Arianna’s restraints automatically retracted she saw a line of dignitaries hurrying toward the shuttle, hard light umbrellas up against the squalls of fine rain gusting across the pad. The air that filled her lungs as she stepped out of the interior of the shuttle was tinged with the sweet scent of recent rain, of distant forests and of the ocean nearby that swirled in a heady aroma as she stepped onto the landing pad.

  ‘Director General,’ an aide said breathlessly, ‘you must come, quickly.’

  Before she could respond a hard light arch formed over them to block out the rain as they hurried at a brisk pace toward the main buildings. Arianna could see that there were no media present, no sign of military escorts or other unusual activity. CSS was keeping events well under wraps and preventing anybody outside the organization from sensing that something, anything, was amiss.

  Arianna walked into the main hall of the building and was immediately greeted by Commodore Adam Hawker. A tall, thin British officer who stood so erect it seemed as though he was permanently on the verge of toppling over backward, his cold gray eyes focused on hers like a bird of prey.

  ‘Arianna,’ he said warmly as he shook her hand. There was no light of joy in his eyes and she could feel the tension in his grip. ‘The Joint Chiefs of Staff are waiting.’

  Commodore Hawker commanded the British fleet contingent, which fielded a small but formidable arsenal of frigates, fast corvettes and one capital ship, Illustrious, a carrier with a formidable combat reputation.

  Arianna gestured for Hawker to lead the way as she walked with O’Hara to a briefing room located close to the Senate Hall, CSS guards now flanking them protectively as they strode inside the briefing room and a set of hard light doors shimmered closed behind them, turning opaque to protect the security of those inside.

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff all stood as she walked in, but she waved them down.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said simply.

  Admiral Franklyn Marshall, the commander of the CSS flagship Titan, stood at the far end of the table.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he greeted her, his stony features taut, his back straight and his arms rigid by his sides. ‘Approximately three hours and forty seven minutes ago, all contact was lost with the CSS station at Proxima Centauri. All attempts to re establish communications have failed. All transmissions have ceased and we have no information at all coming out of the sector.’

  Arianna stared at Marshall for a long moment, her body motionless as though frozen in time. She blinked as she realized that she had stopped breathing and that the Joint Chiefs were all staring at her expectantly.

  Arianna sought something to say, anything. She opened her mouth to speak but her voice rasped and she coughed briefly, her eyes watering. She cleared her throat again, acutely aware of the men watching her.

  ‘What forces do we have in the sector?’

  ‘Two corvettes of the British Fleet,’ Marshall replied promptly, ‘plus assorted Russian cruisers but they’re on training manoeuvres near the Rim Colonies.’ The Admiral hesitated. ‘I contacted New Moscow and also the Russian contingent on Polaris Station, and they confirmed that contact had been lost with their own vessels at approximately the same time as we lost contact with Proxima Centauri.’

  Finally, Arianna’s strength gave way and she slowly sank into the seat before her.

  ‘Tactical assessment?’ she asked, her voice a ghostly whisper.

  Marshall’s voice echoed around the room as Arianna once again tried to accept the words that she had never wanted to hear in her lifetime.

  ‘At first glance it would appear that the Sol System is being encircled,’ he said, ‘an enemy having first cut off our ability to communicate with our only potential allies, the Ayleeans. Isolating an enemy position effectively creates a siege mentality and helps to eliminate possible escape routes and sources of reinforcement.’

  Arianna nodded, understanding perfectly but somehow unable to process the enormity of what the admiral was saying.

  ‘First steps?’ she whispered.

  ‘First steps,’ Marshall agreed. ‘The enemy will complete its encircling of the system before preparing to attack.’

  Again, she could only nod in response until she recovered her voice.

  ‘Do we have any idea of the form of any first strike against us?’

  Marshall sucked in a lungful of air as he considered his reply.

  ‘In this instance we can’t know for sure as we cannot be certain of the nature of our enemy, only that they do indeed represent an enemy that is intent on hostile action. Any chance of a benign approach can now be considered extremely slim due to the absence of direct communication. My best guess as to their next move is that they’ll either strike from long range to avoid casualties on their side or they’ll send in their infantry or whatever equivalent they may have, massed fleets perhaps or fighters, something expendable to engage and assess our initial defenses before bringing in heavier and more valuable weapons.’

  Arianna nodded. Her own schooling at the academy had detailed the likely shape any kind of invasion by an alien species might take, based on how mankind had fought wars throughout history, but such schooling was purely speculative and academic. In truth, nobody had any idea what they might face when…

  ‘Endeavour, and Defiance?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Have we heard from them?’

  ‘No ma’am,’ Marshall replied. ‘They bypassed Proxima Centauri on the way out to Ayleea due to the urgent nature of their mission, and will have arrived in the Ayleean system within the last hour.’

  Arianna closed her eyes as she realized what that meant. ‘If Proxima Centauri has been forcefully occupied, they’re cut off.’

  Commodore Hawker stepped in to the conversation, his clipped tones reaching out to her like talons.

  ‘We can’t let ourselves worry about them right now, madam. I’m requesting that the Senate and Council hand full control of our response to the military. Unless we’re very much mistaken, and I certainly hope that we are, we’re facing a likely invasion from an unknown species and they’re already surrounding us.’

  ‘That’s a big step to make in one day,’ Admiral O’Hara cautioned the British commander. ‘The Senate has not relinquished responsibility for civilian protection within the system for hundreds of years.’

  ‘We haven’t been invaded before, either,’ Hawker pointed out with a stern gleam in his eye. ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures and we cannot be seen to falter.’

  ‘Nobody else knows about this but for us and the crews of our frigates at Ayleea,’ Marshall pointed out. ‘We’re not under a microscope yet.’

  ‘But we will be,’ Hawker pressed. ‘What do you think will happen when Global Wire and others start noticing fleet movements and closed door meetings like this one? It won’t take long for word to spread and when it does, if we’re se
en to have waited too long to mobilize our forces in earnest…’

  Hawker let the suggestion hang in the air and it felt like an iron weight around Arianna Coburn’s neck. She sighed softly, and then she opened her eyes and looked up at Marshall.

  ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Assemble the fleet and I will inform the senate of everything that has happened, and ask for their support. Via standard protocols I hereby consent and surrender command of all initial military defenses to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and will ensure that all support from the civilian population shall be directed into any war effort that is placed upon us by outside forces beyond our control. Provided the senate endorses my decision, the fleet will take full control of defenses from that moment on.’

  A silent vacuum filled the briefing room as Arianna hesitated before speaking her final line.

  ‘Gentlemen, until further notice or until providence delivers us otherwise, we are now at war.’

  ***

  XII

  San Diego

  California

  The ride out of San Diego spaceport was swift but uncomfortable as Nathan sat wedged alongside Foxx in the rear seats of the police department cruiser. Never the type of craft that had a great deal of space, the cruiser’s rear seats were also caged in and designed to hold convicts rather than badged detectives.

  ‘What can you tell us about the victim?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘Victims,’ came the reply from the uniform up front, a sergeant who looked weary enough to have been working for the force for at least half a century, ‘if you count the pair from Nevada found a few hours ago. The San Diego victim’s name is Samuel Freck, college freshman. Barely old enough to own a license to fly let alone get his life started.’

  ‘Any priors?’ Foxx asked, her thigh squashed against Nathan’s with some force although he tried to pretend that he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Nothing,’ the sergeant said. ‘The friends he hung with are real clean, probably consider drinkin’ alcohol to be a major crime. Most of them come from grounded families.’

  Nathan frowned as he heard the term, uttered with something approaching contempt by the sergeant. Being called grounded was both a derogatory and uplifting term; derogatory because it referred to the wealthy elite who mostly lived planet side, and uplifting because most folks on the orbital stations would very much like to live lives that allowed them be insulted in such a way. The grounded of the 25th Century were much like the elite of the 21st; admired, mocked and envied all at once.

  The cruiser had cleared the city limits and was travelling at high speed just a few inches off the I94 navigation strips, its EM Drive growling somewhere behind them.

  ‘We’re a ways out of town,’ Nathan observed, ‘what was the victim doing out here?’

  ‘Foolin’ around most likely,’ the sergeant explained. ‘Most of these kids have fast rides, the trappings of the good life. They come out here to drink, drive fast, generally act like idiots. Every now and again we pick what’s left of one of them up after a collision or similar. Serves ‘em right, I say.’

  Nathan said nothing, although he and Foxx exchanged a glance. The sergeant may have been serving the San Diego PD but his attitude and accent reeked of orbital. Every now and again postings planet side came up for those serving the force in the orbital stations. Competition was fierce for the postings because it allowed the officer and their family to move planet side for the duration of the tour, which might be up to five years.

  The cruiser slowed, and in the dawn light Nathan could see a flickering array of hard light cordons surrounding a lonely spot on the nav’ lane, nestled in a long, low valley. The sergeant parked the cruiser and the gull wing doors opened. Nathan and Foxx virtually popped out of their seats and stretched their legs, Nathan revelling in the desert air that hit his senses, fresh and clean after months on New Washington.

  ‘Detectives?’

  Nathan and Foxx turned to see a woman with blonde locks and an impossibly bright smile hurrying toward them, a hovering camera drone following her every move with a flashing Global Wire logo emblazoned above it.

  ‘Tamarin Solly, GW Today News,’ she gasped breathlessly. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘People, dead,’ the police sergeant snapped impatiently at her. ‘I told you to get out of here. Somebody’s child is lying dead on the lane out here.’

  ‘That’s no vehicle accident with all this attention going on,’ Solly retorted. ‘What’s really happening here, detectives?’

  ‘We’ll tell you when we know something,’ Foxx said. ‘We only just got here, case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘And why are New Washington detectives flying all the way down here in the first place?’ Solly went on.

  Foxx turned away and Nathan followed, not rising to Solly’s bait.

  ‘This way,’ the sergeant said as he gestured to the cordon.

  Nathan decided not to mention that it wasn’t like they needed directions, the crime scene the only activity of any kind within about twenty miles.

  ‘Were there any witnesses?’ Foxx asked as they walked.

  ‘Not to the crime itself,’ the sergeant replied, ‘but the kid wasn’t alone just before he died. Turned out he had some kind of argument with his friends and they say he insisted on walking home. They left him, but the driver had a mysterious attack of loyalty and turned back. He found him just here.’

  Nathan saw the body lying on the nav’ lane, dressed in casual clothes that were draped across fragile bones visible through pale skin. The low sunlight and chill in the air made it seem as though the victim might have been frozen where he lay, his arms rigid and at awkward angles. The kid’s shock of red hair was stark against the pale skin of his skull like features, his eyes empty black sockets and his jaw hanging open and slack. The skin sparkled as though it were embedded with tiny jewels that glistened in the sunlight.

  ‘Jeez,’ Foxx said as she looked at the remains, ‘that’s the same MO all right.’

  Nathan glanced to one side where two officers were comforting a muscular teenager who was leaning against a flame red Vampire hot rod with two young girls, both of whom looked as though they’d been crying.

  ‘I see what you mean about the wheels,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Wheels?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Never mind.’

  Nathan was about to walk across to the teenager when he hesitated and then looked at the nav’ lane. On impulse, he stepped back and began retracing his steps out of the cordon.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Foxx asked.

  Nathan looked around at the desert and gestured out into the empty wastes. ‘Hundreds of miles of nothing. If something killed this kid, how did it get here?’

  Foxx understood immediately and moved to join him.

  ‘Could have been someone in a vehicle,’ she offered.

  ‘Which would mean a landing would be required,’ Nathan agreed. ‘Or it could have been somebody on foot.’

  ‘Out here?’

  ‘It’s only twenty miles to the city limits,’ Nathan said. ‘A fair way but not impossible if somebody was determined enough to kill Freck.’

  ‘Who didn’t have any real enemies that we know of,’ Foxx reminded him.

  ‘Jealousy?’ Nathan suggested. ‘According to the local authority’s databank Freck got into college off the back of an inheritance from insurance policies. Maybe he jumped the queue and somebody got upset about that? Maybe he took somebody else’s slot, one of the grounded who felt they were more deserving?’

  Foxx considered this for a moment as she looked at Freck’s data sheets in her ocular implant.

  ‘Freck lost his parents in an accident. You’d have to be pretty cold hearted to come down on him for that.’

  ‘You’d have to be pretty cold hearted to suck the kid’s innards out and leave what’s left out here in the desert, too.’

  Nathan looked about him and then he spotted something that he hadn’t noticed before. He walked across to the wes
tern edge of the cordon, no more than fifteen meters from Freck’s body, and there on the desert dust he saw what he was looking for.

  ‘Bingo.’

  Nathan knelt down as Foxx moved alongside him. ‘What you got?’

  The desert sand was clearly marked with the impression of a pair of boots, quite large and both of them pointing toward the spot where Freck had died. Foxx wasted no time as she turned and called to one of the uniforms guarding the scene.

  ‘Get the driver over here, and the forensics team.’

  Foxx turned back as Nathan studied the prints. ‘Someone was waiting here,’ he said as he turned and saw a couple of fainter markings denoting where the killer had walked onto the scene of the crime. ‘Then they advanced and attacked Freck on the road.’

  Foxx assumed the role of devil’s advocate. ‘Could have been an innocent bystander or even someone hitch hiking their way across the state. Maybe it’s Chance’s boots from when he returned to find Freck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Nathan said thoughtfully. ‘But he’d have driven back from the west and got out on the other side of the nav’ lane, the driver’s side, right?’

  ‘I guess,’ Foxx said, ‘and I like the way you’re thinking this through, but there’s no way to date an impression like that. These kids were using black market shields to hide their activities out here so we can’t use their ID chips to put them on the scene at the time of the murder.’

  Nathan looked up at the valley around them. ‘I bet the wind whistles through here as the sun comes up and heats the land, drawing in the sea breeze as the hot air rises. Prints like this in soft dust wouldn’t last all that long.’

  Foxx raised an admiring eyebrow. ‘Okay, but that’s not enough to get this to stick to anyone, if we even had a suspect.’

  ‘Who says we don’t?’ Nathan asked as he saw new information coming through on his optical implant.

  Two uniforms joined them with the driver between them. ‘This is Chance Macy. He was the driver and the last person to see Freck alive, along with his two friends over there.’