Rath's Deception (The Janus Group Book 1) Read online

  “What was in here?” he asked the woman.

  “A woman’s body, if you believe the chefs,” she replied. “They found it, and the security guys took it upstairs.”

  “A woman?” Beauceron frowned. “The report I heard only mentioned male victims.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, no clue what this body was doing here, or where it went after they took it upstairs. Your colleagues are up on the third floor trying to sort it all out from security footage.”

  Beauceron rode the freight elevator upstairs, but as he stepped into the hall, he heard someone say his name. The voices were coming from around the corner, and on impulse, Beauceron stopped to listen.

  “Fucking Beauceron’s coming? Why? We got this.”

  “Who’s Beauceron?”

  “Short guy, brown hair with a bald patch, looks more like a professor than a cop. You haven’t met him yet?”

  “No.”

  “He’s homicide, like us. The resident conspiracy theorist and Guild nut, which is probably why they sent him here.”

  “You think this is a Guild kill, then?”

  “I don’t fucking know. I’m sure Beauceron will believe it is – he sees guildsmen everywhere. Anyway, he’s on his way.”

  “Who’s his partner?”

  Beauceron heard a short, sharp laugh. “He works alone – no one wants to partner with him.”

  “Why, what’s his deal?”

  “You know that strange uncle that no one talks about, who always shows up to family reunions uninvited? That’s him.”

  “He’s just a weird guy, so no one likes him?”

  “No, not just weird – he’s tainted.” Beauceron heard the two men move deeper into the room, but he remained where he was. “I’ll explain. But first, rookie, let’s see if they’re still teaching history back at the Academy. What is the longest-running criminal organization in the history of the Interstellar Police?”

  “The Guild.”

  “Correct. And why is the Guild our oldest and most dangerous enemy?”

  “Because we’ve never been able to penetrate their organization.”

  “True … we’ve never successfully recruited an informant, or placed an undercover cop in the program, though not for lack of trying. Why else?”

  “The guildsmen we catch always kill themselves before we can interrogate them … and we haven’t caught many of them, anyways.”

  “Fourteen, son. We’ve caught fourteen, while the Guild has been operating for a couple hundred years, best we can tell. But he caught one of those fourteen.”

  “Who?”

  “Detective Beauceron, that short little bastard.” The detective snorted. “Right here on Alberon. The guildsman got sloppy, left enough of a surveillance trail, and Beauceron tracked him, and intercepted him at the spaceport. This was … oh, ten years ago? Twelve?”

  Beauceron looked down at the notebook in his hands. A long time ago.

  “Hard to believe, but he was a hero … for about an hour. Only his man didn’t kill himself when they took him into custody. His man escaped. Beauceron left the door to the interrogation room unlocked, and the guildsman killed five cops on his way out the door.”

  “He left the door unlocked?”

  “That’s what the investigation found.”

  “Jesus … and five cops died. They should have thrown him in jail, too.”

  “They were going to. Some officer saved his ass, I heard. Begged the board to keep him.”

  “Why?”

  “Search me. Who knows why officers do what they do? So we’ve been stuck with him ever since. The brass keeps passing him over for promotion, hoping he’ll quit, but it hasn’t worked so far. So anyway, that’s why no one likes the guy. Hard to forget that he got five good men killed.”

  “It was six,” Beauceron said quietly, appearing suddenly in the entrance to the room. The two men looked up at him in alarm. “Hoskins, Vieques, Murakami, Abbott, Steffens, and Siebel.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the older detective said, his face reddening. “I forgot about Abbott.”

  “I had not forgotten him,” Beauceron said, staring at the floor. “Abbott and I were in the same class at the Academy. It was his first day back from paternity leave.” And his son was failing fifth grade until I started tutoring him last semester. Beauceron cleared his throat as if to say more, but he just gestured at the broken security camera mounted in a corner of the room.

  “So, does the security footage show what happened to our missing female corpse?”

  7

  As the sun rose the following morning, Rath completed a set of shambling sprints from the waterline to the edge of the forest, collapsing onto the sand as his legs gave out from under him.

  “Candidate 621, for your next test, you will swim to the opposite side of the lagoon. As always, you must retain control of your backpack throughout the test.”

  “I can’t …,” Rath gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “I can’t swim,” he managed, shaking his head.

  The water lapped gently at the shore, a dark, impenetrable grey over the blood-red sand of the beach. The drone watched him impassively.

  “I’m not kidding,” he told the drone again.

  “Continue your movement, 621.”

  Rath spat in the sand, and shrugged out of his pack.

  “I’m not dying for your damn test,” he told the drone. But after a minute of hesitation, he picked up the pack and waded into the water. It was bitterly cold. As he moved deeper into the lagoon, Rath took a moment to seal the pack’s access flaps more tightly, and found that the pack did not fully submerge, despite its weight – it retained enough air to be positively buoyant. His first thought was that he could then push it ahead of him, but on testing it, he found that it would hold him up, too – by wrapping his arms around it, he could use it as a kind of raft. He took a deep breath and pushed out into the lagoon, kicking hard.

  The pack threatened to tip over several times, causing Rath to panic briefly each time, but with practice, he managed to keep it upright. As he approached the far shore, Rath saw several large structures in the sand that looked like the empty frames of buildings. He was trying to figure out their purpose when his leg cramped brutally, the knotted muscle gripping his left calf in agony. With a cry of pain and a last gasp of air, Rath slid off the pack and under the water.

  He panicked immediately, and flailed with his arms, attempting to grab hold of the pack again, but his clothes weighed him down, and he dimly perceived the pack disappearing from sight as he descended deeper into the water. He sank, still struggling, but abruptly felt his feet come into contact with something solid.

  Sand. The bottom.

  Rath fought the urge to breathe, and stood on his right leg. He stretched his cramped left leg straight, a whimper of bubbles escaping his lips, until he had both feet on the sand. He guessed that he was still facing the beach, so he shuffled, painfully, in that direction, willing himself forward through the water. Rath made it nine steps before the searing pain in his lungs was too much to ignore, and he bent his knees and launched himself upwards toward the surface, praying his momentum would carry him far enough.

  Rath’s head broke the surface, and he had just enough time to grab a sip of air before he felt himself sink to the bottom again. He pushed off again, back to the surface for another gulp of air. When he reached the bottom again, he managed to walk far enough that he could see the surface above him. It took him three more trips to the surface, but finally he stood in neck-deep water, sucking in breaths. The drone descended a few feet in front of him.

  “Recover your pack, Candidate 621.”

  Rath was momentarily dumbstruck. He turned and saw the pack bobbing at the surface where he had left it, thirty paces behind him in the lagoon.

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Rath asked.

  “This planet has no potable water or edible organisms. That pack has your rations and water, Candidate. You will not survive Selection Phase w
ithout them.”

  Rath eyed the distance to the pack, and a shiver of cold and fear wracked his body. He could not imagine willingly going back under the water again, fighting his way to the surface for air, risking drowning at each step.

  “I’m not going back out there,” Rath told the drone. It watched him impassively.

  * * *

  “Happy?” Rath dropped the pack onto sand and promptly retched, expelling the lagoon water he had inadvertently swallowed during the ordeal. The drone ignored his sarcasm and waited until he was done.

  “Candidate 621, for your next test, you will consider the following scenario: you have established a concealed observation post overwatching your target’s house at a distance of one thousand meters. You are armed with a suppressed auto-rifle, whose noise signature when firing is similar to a human cough. Your target is not yet in sight, but your position is suddenly compromised when a pregnant woman walks within ten feet of you. What do you do?”

  Rath took his uniform shirt off and wrung the water out of it, shivering hard in the weak sunlight.

  “Can I capture her?”

  “Yes. But doing so will certainly reveal you and your intentions to the target’s security force. She is now running toward the target’s house. Do you fire or abandon the mission?”

  Rath pulled his shirt back on and hugged his arms to his chest, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. “Neither. I go and get her.”

  “Why?” The drone queried.

  “I’m probably supposed to shoot her,” Rath told the drone. “But I don’t know how much longer I’m going to need to wait for the target to show up. What if it’s hours or days? A dead body’s going to give away my position, too. That’s irrelevant, though – I just don’t want her death on my conscience. So I can give up and try again some other time … or I can take her hostage, and she might give me some useful information about the target, or I can use her as a bargaining chip to get the target where I want him. If she’s not valuable to him, then I can let her go, and I’m back to trying again some other time, no harm done.”

  The drone appeared to think for a minute. “Candidate 621, for your next test, you will negotiate the obstacle course behind me.”

  Rath followed the drone up the beach.

  After two back-breaking hours of pulling himself along ropes and over wooden structures, Rath’s hands were raw and bleeding, and every muscle in his body ached. He had twisted his ankle falling from a particularly difficult section of the course, and it throbbed painfully, keeping time with his heartbeat. About the only good news was that the exertion had warmed his body enough to put a stop to the uncontrollable shivering, though his clothes were still wet and caked in sand. Rath dropped gingerly from the course’s final balance beam and fell over onto the sand, his chest heaving.

  “Candidate 621, for your next test, you will navigate to the highest point on the island.”

  Rath rolled onto his side and eyed the central mountain range appraisingly.

  “Sure,” he panted. “Probably a nice view from up there. Mind if I eat something first? I haven’t eaten since the shuttle.”

  “Continue your movement, 621.”

  Rath ignored the drone and pulled a ration pack out of the backpack, tearing it open and pulling out a meal pouch. Then he shouldered his backpack and hobbled off along the beach, eating as he went.

  When he reached the summit several hours later, the planet’s sun was just dipping below the horizon, far out over the ocean. In the gathering dark, the drone projected an image of playing cards arranged face-down in a grid, and instructed him to find the matching cards by flipping them over, two at a time. Instead of flipping cards over at random, Rath systematically flipped each set of cards over in order, working his way methodically through the grid. When he had seen every card and memorized its location, he began flipping sets over, easily pairing cards without error. On the tenth pair, though, the second card was not a match for the first. Rath frowned, and shook his head to clear the exhaustion from his mind. He paused for a second to call up the memory of the face-up cards in his mind, then touched a different pair of cards – again, the second card was not a match, when he was sure it should have been. Rath grew angry.

  “You’re cheating,” Rath told the drone.

  “Continue the test, 621.”

  “No, it’s a bullshit test – you’re moving the cards.” Rath insisted, shivering as a chill wind buffeted the bare rocks around him.

  The drone watched him for a second, then spoke again. “Explain yourself.”

  “I don’t know how to explain it, I just know. The last two pairs I flipped should have matched, but you changed the cards.”

  The drone hovered in silence, then abruptly shut off its projector. “Candidate 621, your rest cycle begins now.”

  “How long do I get to rest?”

  The drone refused to answer. Rath found a crevice between the rocks that was somewhat protected from the wind, and settled in as comfortably as he could, using the pack for a pillow. His clothes were still damp, and the air was cold enough that he had trouble finding sleep, despite his exhaustion. For a time, he gazed at the stars in the night sky above, amazed at their clarity and brightness – he had never seen stars back on his homeworld, with its bright city lights and multiple levels blotting out the sky. Then, still shivering, he fell asleep.

  The drone woke him no more than an hour later. It was time for another test.

  * * *

  “Wake up, Candidate 621.”

  Rath groaned. He judged he had slept for about three hours this time, which meant the drone was feeling generous today. But it was still well before dawn. He stood up, disturbing the mound of beach sand he had insulated himself under for the rest cycle. It cascaded off his body. His stomach gurgled audibly, but there was nothing he could do about that. His initial rations had run out eleven days ago, and the drone had only taken him to three resupply caches since then, each containing just a single meal pack. He had learned to ration those meals out, but there was only so far one could stretch a single meal across three or four days. Rath sipped some water instead, and attempted to close the rip in his pants’ leg again by tying the ragged ends together.

  “Where to, Skippy?”

  The drone gave no acknowledgment of Rath’s pet name for it, as always. “Candidate 621, for your next test, you will answer a single question.”

  “Hit me,” Rath said, sitting back down to conserve energy.

  “Why are you determined to be in this program?”

  Rath was taken aback – usually the questions were riddles, mind games, or ethical dilemmas. “Same reason everyone is,” he said. “Money.”

  “That may be why you initially volunteered,” the drone corrected. “But why are you still here?”

  “Money,” Rath persisted. “The chance to get out of the dump I was living in and have a good life.”

  “No,” the drone said. The drone fired a small dart that punched through Rath’s uniform coat and attached itself to the skin of his chest. Rath’s cry of angry protest turned to a scream of pain as a wave of agony jolted through his body for several seconds.

  “Why are you still here, Candidate 621?” the drone asked again, its voice calmly indifferent.

  Rath gasped in pain for several more seconds. “What the hell? I answered your question!”

  “I don’t believe you,” the drone told him.

  “Well, fuck you, then.”

  The pain surged through his body again, forcing all of his aching muscles to contract. The session lasted much longer, though Rath lost track of time. When it ended, he rolled over onto his side and dry-heaved, his empty stomach forcing only phlegm and water out onto the sand.

  When he had recovered, he tried a different tack: “At first I wanted the money, but then I just wanted to prove to myself that I could finish Selection. I wanted to beat you and your damn tests.”

  “Better,” the drone allowed, “But your thermal signature and
biometrics indicate that you are still withholding information. Last time the shock lasted for thirty seconds. This is what two minutes feels like.”

  The drone watched him writhe. Rath found himself on his stomach when it ended, his face in the sand. He spat sand out of his mouth, and with a shaking hand, tried to wipe it from his eyes and nose.

  “… no more,” Rath moaned.

  “Answer the question, Candidate 621.”

  “My brother,” he admitted, sobbing.

  “What about your brother?”

  Rath pushed himself to his knees. When the pain had receded to a dull ache, he told the drone about Vonn.

  “Follow me,” the drone ordered Rath, when he had finished.

  Rath felt the dart’s barbs disengage from his skin, and it dropped harmlessly off his chest into the sand. He sighed with relief and stood up, brushing the sand off his tattered uniform. As the drone moved off, Rath pulled the pack’s straps tight – with all the weight he had lost over the past weeks, the pack tended to rub open the sores on his back if he didn’t cinch it as tight as possible. The stars were still out, so as Rath jogged silently through the forest, he checked their bearing periodically against the constellations he had made up. They were headed south, toward the middle of the island – the bunker complex. In the long weeks he had spent on the island, he had never once followed the drone, nor had his tests taken him near the bunker complex. He realized, with a shock, that the drone also had not used his candidate number in addressing him.

  They reached the bunker complex and Rath found a door open, waiting for him. He followed the drone inside the empty room, and the door closed behind him.

  “You have finished Selection Phase, but I regret to inform you that you will not be continuing in the program. You failed to meet standards on a number of tests. Please place your clothes and equipment on the floor,” the drone directed.