Location, Nupolis, Deyga

Date: 55PE

The alley was a good place for a murder, Lin Park thought. Nestled between a noodle shop and a broker – both shuttered and vacant this late at night. Warehouses lined the street opposite, their windows dark. The entrance was obscured by bulky recyclers bolted onto the side of the noodleshop. The only lights came from the bright neon-coloured signs advertising great deals on noodles and quick-bit payments, or the streetlights, half of which were broken. The hue of orange, pink and electric blue failed to penetrate the gloomy space between the two buildings.

No one passing by, not that any cared to look, would have seen anything through the darkness.

“No witnesses then,” Lin muttered to herself, tying up her shoulder-length blonde hair, streaked through with auburn. Autumnal, was how the guardians in the Redcar creche had described her looks. Lin was unsure what that meant, and she cared even less. In this job, she thought, her look was the least of her concerns, so she dressed practically and unobtrusively.

“In the Neaifu district?” Joshua Santos, her partner, asked sceptically, as they sidestepped the green rectangles into the alley proper where balls of light – headtorches from the investigators threw pools of light across the ground as they searched for clues.

Santos was a handsome man, with a casual boyish look. He was dressed simply in an old jacket and beat up black combats. Lin knew the truth though, the dark stubble on his face was trimmed neatly, not a stray hair out of place. The man’s short crew-cut hair saw the clippers every single morning allowing him not to appear to care too deeply about his look, while devoting more time to the mirror than Lin herself did.

“How many calls do we get for this place?” He gestured at the buildings around them, half crumbling masonry hastily repaired with steel and aluminium panels which themselves had begun to succumb to rust.

“Not often we catch a murder though,” Lin replied gesturing at the main event.

The figure was slumped against the wall behind the recycler. He wore a loose-fitting collarless shirt and black trousers. Smart-casual, Lin noted, or rather it would have been if not for the brown blood stains which soaked the lower half of his sleeves and spotted across his chest. Another horror stain ran across the man’s kneecaps, like he had badly skinned his knees though the man’s calves were splayed at an odd angle, indicating a severe break.

Lin continued her assessment and noted that the whole right side of the man’s head had been staved in with brutal force, leading another rusty graze on the man’s shirt below his ear and jaw. The face, those parts that had not been obscured by the flakes of drying blood, was deformed, and pulled around the site of impact giving the victim a strange gormless look.

“Christ,” Santos said when he saw the body. “Why not just throw him in the recycler?”

“Because,” a short bald man wearing a thick, plastic lab tunic appeared at Santos’s elbow. The detective stiffened with surprise. “The cyclers notify the police if they detect human biologicals. Usually it’s just turds though.”

“Thanks Ward,” Santos replied sarcastically. “Pretty brazen to leave him meat-pied out here though.”

“How did he die?” Lin asked, wondering why someone would pick the perfect spot but then not try and cover up the body. There were a lot more disappearances in Neaifu district than there were murders.

“Died in his sleep,” Lin shot the pathologist a look and Ward rolled his eyes. “I mean, he was obviously tortured, before the final blow to the head. Other than that, I’ll know more when I get him to my chopshop, but it’s clear he wasn’t killed here.” Lin saw he was right, as the alley was relatively free from blood.

“Any chance at an ID?” Santos asked, looking at the area around the body.

“What did I just say?” Ward replied incredulously. Lin and Santos ignored him, and Ward sighed with exaggerated condescension. “From his age, which I estimate at about eighty, he’s a Terran off the colony ships, but we haven’t found a hand terminal so I’ll have to ID him the old fashioned way.” A large black van hummed to a rest at the entrance to the alleyway. “If you’ll excuse us, that’s our ride,” the cantankerous pathologist announced.

Lin watched as Ward and a few of the investigators loaded the body onto a gurney and into the van, which sped off into the night leaving Lin, Santos, and a few uniforms at the scene.

“Imagine,” Santos began, “surviving the stasis and the trip to Deyga just to die like this.”

“Strictly speaking,” Lin said, “I came down on Redcar.”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same,” Santos shot back. “You weren’t there. My grandfather was on the Polly, though he didn’t like to talk about it.”

“Plenty of other ships with other embryos didn’t make it down,” Lin replied, making a final sweep of the scene. “I think I’m gonna head-“

“Detective Park!” A girlish voice called out harshly. Without even turning, she recognised the faux sincerity in the tone.

“Fuck,” she hissed. Santos, smiling slightly, shrugged.

“Detective Park!” The voice called again, and Linn turned around to see a short, thin woman. Her straight black hair was tied up in a bun, which a streak of colour ran through turning from purple to pink to yellow. Everything about her screamed bold, from the blocky colours of her coat to the bright blue of her tights. “Over here!”

“Nadezhka Pushkov,” Lin said, trying to keep her tone polite. Still, the sarcasm dripped out. “What a surprise.”

“Hey, Nadzh I thought they got you on that libel case,” Santos said warmly.

“That was NeaWatch Feed who got sued,” Nadzh’s smile dropped only a few degrees. “I’m with Valyon Moon Press now!”

“Valya doesn’t have a moon,” Lin pointed out flatly.

“Makes it harder to track us,” Nadzh said dismissively. “It means I can write more freely about the comings and goings here in Neaifu without… intimidation.” Santos scowled but Nadzh ignored it, turning once again to Lin. “Looks like there was a big going here,” Nadzh noticed the pool of blood.

“No comment, Ms Pushkov,” Lin said moving past the journo. “You’ll have to speak with our Relations department.”

The Neaifu District Precinct occupied the top floor of what had once been one of the colony support ships. Strictly speaking, Lin had never been to space, except as a small ball of cells in a deep freeze on a colony ship like this one. She found the hulking, inelegant boxy shapes of the ships, which dotted the city like brutalist pillars holding up the sky, a welcome break from the hexagonal towers of glass and steel that dominated much of the Nupolis skyline.

The former crew quarters at the top of Malabo House had, at one point, been completely gutted. Heavy steel bulkheads and anti-spalling surfaces had been removed for open plan partitions and glass offices. The vandalism against the Malabo had been completed by some interior designer who had tiled the walls in terracotta beige as part of a movement to use natural materials of the planet.

Dumping her bag in the chair by her dull steel desk the next morning, Lin saw to her messages. The brutal murder of an old man in Neaifu had not made the news, despite Pushkov’s attempt. Still, most feeds would never cover such an event here and the Nupolis Authority never even sent drones to this part of the city. What would be the point? The drones would be sold for parts and the streets would still look like shit anyway.

Her desk terminal pinged with a message from the Investigators at the scene. She was just about to open it when Santos sauntered into the office.

“Late night?” Lin joked as he placed his bag under the desk, clutching his morning coffee.

“Some of us have been at work for an hour already,” he shot back. Lin threw him a quizzical look. “Ward’s ID’d our victim and I thought I would head down there and spare you the trouble of talking to him.”

“Aww, thanks,” Lin adopted a faux-cute accent.

“Plus, MullBlend’s on the way,” Santos waved his flask around, demonstrating the real reason he had taken the detour into Centrum.

“What did his lordship have to say for himself?”

“Our victim,” Santos placed the coffee down, “was Professor Roland Estis, a behavioural scientist with the Council of Sciences.” Santos consulted his hand terminal. “The guy did research on mammalian behavior for the Deygan Terraforming Project,” Santos shrugged, “And before that he worked on a mitogonadial disease-“

“Mitochondrial,” Lin corrected.

“Whatever.” Santos continued. “But, Ward wanted me to say, before that there’s no record of the guy until shortly after his first research job. The guy published five projects and Ward said you don’t become a professor on that.”

“Okay,” Lin said processing the new information. “We should investigate where he worked. With five outputs, maybe there is a co-worker who felt Estis’s position was undeserved.”

“That’s not all,” Santos said, catching Lin’s attention again. “Estis was also suffering from a brain tumour.”

“Hm,” Lin grunted quizzically. “Seeking treatment?”

“Nope,” Santos took a tentative sip from his flask. “Ward tells me it was… Oncoid…” Santos paused. “It was untreatable and he didn’t have long left. We’re talking weeks.”

“Why kill him then?” Lin mused, thinking about Estis’s injuries. “And why go to the trouble of killing him in such a way?”

A harsh buzz on her desk drew Lin’s attention. A second came, as demanding as the first. Someone was actually calling her, which was unusual.

“Detective Park,” Lin said, taken aback.

“Detective,” A woman’s voice greeted her. “It’s Leueve, from evidence. We’ve been trying to message you all morning.”

“Sorry,” Lin said. “I was just briefing with my team.” Santos laughed and rolled his eyes.

“We have something you’re gonna want to take a look at.”

The evidence lock-up was one floor below. A central room dominated by rows of tables was partitioned from the storage lock-up by thick steel doors. It was the only part of the precinct that still looked like a spaceship, Lin thought.

Leueve, a short middle-aged woman with her hair in a tight bob, was waiting by one of the tables. On the table, all splayed out with its casing removed sat a drone. It was about half a meter tall, with tank-like treads upon which sat a boxy white fuselage. Attached to the front were two sweeping arms, extending another half meter or so in front.

“My apartment’s not that bad,” Santos complained when he saw the cleaning drone.

“I wouldn’t know, Joshua,” the clerk shot back.

“It is that bad,” Lin informed her.

“You wouldn’t know,” Santos shot back.

“Anyway,” Leueve continued, turning towards the drone. “About half an hour after you left, this drone ambled through our crime scene and tried to clean it.”

“Shit,” Lin cursed. “How is the scene?”

“Completely contaminated,” Leueve said matter of fact. “We can pull DNA from the bot and cross reference with our scene but it’ll take time. But this wasn’t an accident,” Leueve picked up her datapad and flicked files over to Lin.

“Are you sure?” Lin asked. “This sort of thing can happen from time to time, either on our end or Nupolis.”

“Come on,” Santos said incredulous. “I haven’t seen a drone in Neaifu for ten years, if that.”

“He’s right,” Leueve said. “But that’s not the only reason how I can tell.” Lin opened the report on her hand terminal. “The Authority don’t recognise it as one of theirs,” Leueve pointed to the livery on the side that said Nupolis Sanitation Authority. “Plus the bot wasn’t networked.”

“That’s unusual,” Lin commented. The relay network was how these things found their way through the city.

“It is,” Leueve confirmed. “I think it was programmed to cross our scene.”

“Our guy couldn’t fit in that box,” Santos said.

“It could have been sent to contaminate or cover up something,” Lin said, thinking it through. “And Ward did mention that Estis’s bones had some strange breaks and dislocations. That would help him fit.” Still, the evidence was thin, Lin felt. “Was there anything in the drone’s memory, on the datacore?”

“It was wiped,” Leueve reported. “But it was wiped in a hurry. Whoever did it, did a sloppy job and we were able to retrieve meta data.”

“Really?” That got Lin’s attention.

“Hmm,” Leueve agreed. “There’s a relaycode attached to the logs and forensics have it narrowed down to the Neaifu district.”

“That’s still millions of possibilities,” Lin observed, the excitement dying in her chest.

“Yeah,” Santos agreed. “But there’s a tech shop just two streets away from our scene. Might be a good place to start?”

The tech-shop was a crumbling three storey building. The lower levels were an old steel box onto which a third level of orange brick had been bult. The brick was blackened and worn in spaces while the cheap steel used in the early habitats had begun to rust. The windows were small, round portholes and a painted wooden sign bolted above the door announced Takeshi’s Tech-ology; Mods, Repairs, Wares Lowest Price.

“You think this could be the place?” Lin asked Santos as their moto pulled up on the street. Much like the shop, and the rest of the district, it had seen better days. Tiles had been pulled up from the road, revealing the grey iron underlay, and the sidewalks were cracked with small Terran and Deygan weeds growing side by side. The few people milling through the street eyed the shiny black moto suspiciously. Lin noticed. “I think we should have taken the transit.”

“I think it’s worth a look,” Santos replied. He grinned and to her other comment replied. “You’re not in Redcar now, but our girl can take care of herself for half an hour.”

“I want you to get back to the precinct,” Lin said and Santos’s grin faded. “And follow up on any of Estis’s contacts, who he worked with, what he did-“

“Yeah I know, not my first investigation,” Santos replied, moodily.

“Don’t worry,” Lin said, stepping out of the cabin and onto the street. “If I book this guy, I’ll give you first run.”

“Fine,” Santos replied, leaving Lin on the street, which formed foothills of steel and stone against a backdrop of the basalt-column like towers of Centrum, which loomed over the outer districts. Poking between two of the glass towers in the distance Lin could make out the tall blocky figure of the Deygan Administration building, formerly the colony ship for which the whole planet was named.

In Redcar, this kind of job would be left to canvasing units and it was a major breach of protocol to leave an officer alone. In Neaifu it was a practical reality of extended budgets. The district was the poorest in the city, and so required more policing, which the district could not afford meaning inadequate policing, which grew the need for more police putting even more strain on the budget.

On the inside, the Techshop looked exactly like all the others Lin had ever found herself in. Washed out lighting illuminated the various bits of junk scattered across every locked-glass surface, with a few choice pieces, from rec-drones to hand terminals in various states of repair, hanging on the walls.

A large man with thick black hair tied up sat behind a counter at the far end, staring at something on his hand terminal.

“Are you Takeshi?” Lin yelled. The man shot Lin an annoyed look and hauled himself to his feet.

“Takeshi’s been dead for ten years,” The man said with a laugh. “You’re not a local, I take it.”

“I’m with the Neaifu Precinct,” Lin held up her badge. “I’ve got a few questions for the owner.” The man’s immediate reaction told her she had who she was looking for. The owner’s expression took on a horrified look and his pale brown skin greyed. Even in the pallid light, Lin could see the sweat. “I’ll start by asking your name.”

“Erm, name’s Li,” he replied, his eyes darting about the shop. “Chen Li.”

“Well, Mr Li, I’m Detective Park and I need to ask you a few questions. A man was murdered in an alley two streets over, know anything about him?”

“The doc,” Li seemed to relax and Lin’s brow furrowed. To her detriment, she had never had a face for cards. “Yeah, was real tragic, alder. He’d come in time to time, but rarely bought much. Data cores usually.” Li picked his hand terminal off the counter. “Sorry I can’t be much help.”

“We found a drone nearby-“ Li’s eyes widened and his pores began their profuse sweating again.

“Yabai,” Li cursed, looking around his shop. Lin knew there was nowhere for him to go. From the shaking he would not get very far.

“Tell me about the drone,” Lin said, her voice reassuring but firm. Santos would have had Li crying for his lawyer the instant he walked in. Sometimes a softer approach was required.

“Some junker kid said he found it going up on Thaddeus last night, just up and down the street.” Li looked away. “So he bagged it, obviously” Li shrugged. “we don’t get too many in Neaifu.”

“This junker have a name?” Lin asked, sceptically. Most likely Li had acquired the drone for its intended purpose and was was trying to muddy the water.

“No,” Li shrugged again. “And I didn’t ask. Local though, seen him out and about.”

“And then you set the drone to clean up your own crime scene?” Lin asked nonchalantly.

“What?” Li gasped. “No, I released-“

“So you admit you released the drone?”

“No!” Li stammered. “I mean yes, I released it, but-“

“You better start telling the truth, Li, or I’ll be taking you in for murder!” Lin put an edge to her voice.

“Fine, I swear, yabai. I found the drone,” Li admitted. “It was going up and down Thaddeus all day. It was clearly broken, so I took it back here.”

“And then what?”

“I was gonna scrap it, maybe try and sell the relay key,” Li stopped, having admitted his intention to a serious crime. Lin nodded for him to continue. She wasn’t interested in that. “But I saw it had no network, only a programmed subroutine to clean Thaddeus Avenue and then clean an alleyway.” Li held up his palms shaking his head. “It seemed dodgy as fuck, so I wiped any trace of myself and let the drone go free.”

“When was this?”

“Early, about sixth hour, I think.” Li sighed. “It’s probably date stamped somewhere. I knew I should have wiped the meta.”

Having heard the techie’s story, it rang true for Lin. There was probably enough to take him regardless, and Prosecutions might want him for the drone eventually but Lin thought Li might prove more cooperative in his shop rather than in the tank.

“I’m giving you a stay-in-place order,” Lin told him. “This means that you remain a person of interest in this investigation and as such you are prohibited from travelling outside of Nupolis. Any attempt to do so constitutes a crime under the Lawful Detainment and Powers Statute and may be punishable as an attempt to interfere with an investigation, which, dependent upon the nature of the offense in question, may result in life in prison.” Lin droned off the words as mandated. “Please confirm you understand.”

“But I’m moving to Valya in a month!” Li whined.

“Please, sir, confirm you understand,” Lin repeated. She couldn’t leave until the suspect had done so. “Or I will haul you in,” she added.

Li confirmed and Lin wished him a pleasant day and began typing a message to the Judiciary Section as she left the shop. No sooner had the message been sent and provisionally confirmed when her terminal began to buzz.

“Two calls in one day, Leueve?”

“Detective Park,” The custodian’s voice sounded haggard. “You need to get back here now.”

The station was bustle of activity. Leueve was an aggressively efficient custodian of evidence, and her tone had been troubling. The first inkling of trouble was the haphazardly parked olive green military motos outside of the precinct building.

“You know, these truck constitute a parking violation,” Lin said to the two soldiers on the door.

“Move along, Ma’am,” one of the soldiers replied. They were in fatigues rather than combat gear, Lin was relieved to see but the sight of their rifles was anything but at ease.

“I work here,” Lin replied, flashing her ID on her terminal. The soldier stood aside and gestured for her to enter.

“What’s the meaning of this?” She said, as she strode into the evidence rooms, where more soldiers were standing around. “Will someone tell the tin men that Director Gryzik’s dead and we have laws now!”

“We’re well aware of the demise of the late Director, Ms Park,” A soft spoken voice came from on of the soldiers. Lin judged him young to be in command of so many soldiers, looking about thirty with short vacuum-black hair and porcelain skin. His eyes reminded her of a shark she had once seen on school trip. Years of training had honed her threat assessment skills and this average-sized albeit well built man was setting off all the alarms in her head.

“Detective,” her skin crawled at the thought of this lizard knowing her name.

“My apologies, Detective,” the officer whispered. “My name is Major Qaitu, and I am here to take possession of this drone. Your clerk has been very obstructive.” Other officers had gathered to watch the exchange. Many of the older ones could remember a time when Director Gryzik had used the military in lieu of police. The bad blood between the organisations persisted somewhat.

“That drone is a key piece of evidence in a murder investigation-“

“Yes,” the major held up his hand. “I heard it the first time.” Qaitu held out his terminal for Lin to examine. “As you can see here, I have an order from the Nupolis Authority Judiciary allowing me to take possession of this drone.” Lin flicked through the authorisations on the document. It was genuine.

“Any efforts to obstruct me will result in contempt proceedings,” Qaitu smiled thinly. The expression was incapable of reaching those dead eyes. “And I will take the drone, regardless.”

“Give it to him,” Lin mumbled at Leueve, looking at the floor with fury coursing through her veins. “He has jurisdiction.”

Leueve tutted and held out a datapad. Qaitu nodded at one of his subordinates who signed it while a group of other soldiers pushed past and began to heave the drone away. The major approached Lin, his movements precise.

“Detective,” his voice was a dangerous whisper. “I admire your tenacity, but in times gone by some cases were known to be… unsolvable.” That dead smile again. “I am telling you, no matter what evidence you think you might have, this is one of those cases.”

Lin tried to repress her shudder as the major walked out, nodding to the assembled officers, but she failed.

“Chief,” he greeted the Superintendent as she walked through the door with Santos scowling at the departing soldiers following behind. Qaitu never even paused on his way out.

“What the devil was that?” Superintendent Tor demanded of the room. “Why was the last to know of soldiers in my precinct?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Leueve spoke up. “They came and demanded the drone. It was Park’s case so I know she had the authority.” The custodian sounded like she was in physical pain at the ordeal.

“They took it anyway, sir,” Park reported. Tor’s eyes shot wide open with anger. “They had the authorisations.”

“No!” Tor yelled. “I will not abide that 20’s shit in my precinct. I’m going to make a call,” Tor announced. “But if any of those boots come back here again, I want to be informed, immediately!” The Superintendent stomped from the room, and the crowd of officers began to dissipate.

Lin’s heart was pounding, out of fear or anger, she could not say.

“Hey,” Santos said, approaching catiously. “I got some information.”

“What’s the point, Josh?” Lin complained. “The army just came and fucked our case.” She thought back to Li’s assessment. Dodgy as fuck.

“A crime was still committed, and a man was still murdered,” Santos reminded her. “They can’t stop a lawful investigation.” Santos looked over at the door. “And besides, don’t you want to know why they would want to?” Lin looked up at her partner’s grizzled face with hope. “Oh, I don’t know why.”

“What’s your information?”

“Well, I did as you asked,” Santos began. “Turns out, Estis didn’t really work at SI but he held an honorary position and would drop by from time to time.” Santos consulted his notes, flicking through his terminal. “On the day he died, an admin I spoke to told me he used their relay system to send a message.”

“Why not use his own?” Lin asked.

“According to the logs, it was a huge file – most relay access plans won’t even let you send that much data in a message, but the institute-“

“Sends huge files so they have a special deal,” Lin finished.

“Plus, it’s a more secure line to the relay,” Santos added.

“Do we know what it said?” Lin asked, hopeful.

“Nope,” Santos replied evenly. “The comm’s data core was missing. The admins told me that Estis himself must have taken it.”

“Why is this case made of shadows?” Lin vented.

“But we do know it was a lot of video and documents and,” Santos raised an eyebrow. “We know he sent it to the Valyon Institute of Terraforming.”

“So, Estis used the Institute’s commbeam to contact another scientist on Valya, he ends up murdered while a drone was used to disrupt the scene. That drone is now property of the Council Military,” Lin summarised, thinking of their next steps. “We need to reach out to the institute,” Lin thought about Major Qaitu’s dead eyes. “But we have a more immediate concern.”

Tor, incensed as he was, had been against the idea and had wanted to focus on getting the drone back from the military. In the end, after running through her thinking, Lin had been able to persuade the Superintendent, as Santos had persuaded her, that the best way to get back at the military was to investigate the case and try bring them to justice.

The upshot of that victory resulted in Lin, sitting in an old, obsolete unmarked moto on a cold Nupolian night listening to the constant hammering of rain on hollow metal. She was hidden in the back seat under some blankets, watching the entrance to Takeshi’s tech shop through a camera hidden on the underside of the moto.

So far, the shop had gone from pale light in the windows to darkness. The heavy steel door had been locked and shutters came down over the front. The deluge had begun, night had fallen and the sparse human traffic had melted away, leaving Lin sat in her armoured vest, watching the vacant entrance through a screen.

Estis had sent a huge data transfer to Valya but they had yet to uncover a link between Estis and the planet. The institute had recently had a problem with Whales and sabotage, Lin knew from newsfeeds but Estis was in a completely different line of work. They had run potential contacts through the police database and had yet found nothing. Estis had no outputs in common with the institutes staff, nor was there any overlap between known associates.

In fact, the only known associate they had of Estis was presumably sitting in a rundown Tech shop in a rundown part of town.

A moto pulled up. Lin heard it before the black fuselage hummed to a halt between the camera and the front door of the shop. Instinctively she buried herself further into the seat, though her camera was exposed. She could see the dart-like frame of the vehicle’s front, with the tall back ending abruptly in a rectangle.

The gull-wing doors opened and a woman in black, form hugging clothes stepped out, while another figure exited from the driver’s side. The woman’s face was obscured by a black visored helmet that enclosed her whole head. The two figures met at the rear of the moto, pulled a large toolbag and rifles from the back and made their way towards the shop.

Nerve cell quick, Lin flicked away from the camera and pushed the panic alert on her terminal. She holstered it and threw off the blanket, keeping the armoured door of her moto between the attackers and herself. As her hand rested on her gunholster while thinking about the hardware facing her now, Lin wished she had something more reassuring than the single-action revolver at her hip.

Lin unfastened the holster, drew her peashooter and cocked the handle as she kept low across the empty street.

The lock on the door to the tech shop had been melted away with something, and she could hear the frightened voice of Li, frantic from within.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear,” Li screeched, talking fast and frantically.

“We can make this quick, or slow.” It was a woman’s voice, but somehow flat. “And by the end we will have the core. We know that Professor Estis came here yesterday, so tell us where it is, and we can go quick.”

Lin peeked around the corner. Li was stood behind his counter, hands in the air. The woman was opposite, pointing an assault rifle at his head. The man was off to her side, toolbag over one shoulder, casually searching through the junk on the tables around them. Now that she had a better look, Lin could see that both assailants were tall, like the kids born on Valya were supposed to be but had none of the willoweyness that came from a low-gravity planet. Both seemed to be as though sculpted from nanocarbon, and Lin feared her bullets might simply ricochet off them.

“We have company,” the man said, just as Lin was swallowing her fear. He was looking up and away, towards the back door of the shop just as Lin realised there was no time to even accept the fear coursing through her.

With the roar of a VTOL suddenly rattling the shop, Lin emerged from behind the wall.

She shot off her first round, and in one quick movement cocked the hammer and took cover behind one of the cabinets, feeling horribly exposed. There was a grunt from the woman as Li screamed, the sound merging horribly with another gunshot.

Lin poked her head from behind the cabinet, gun pointed to the ceiling, ready to cover any movement. The woman was lying on the ground, gasping while the man had taken cover behind a counter.

“Stop!” Lin yelled at the man, as movement on the ground caught her eye as the woman began to rise. “Stay on the ground!” Lin levelled her gun again at the woman. The man was running towards the door and Lin fired, the shot going wide.

Suddenly the back door burst open with a dull bang and the man found himself stood face to face with Santos, his own revolver cocked. Lin thought she could see an almost imperceptible tensing of the man’s muscles and for a millisecond thought that he might try and fight his way past the detective.

As more of the assault team poured through the front door behind Lin, and the rest of the squad appeared behind Santos, the man’s arms went slowly to his head.

“Takeshi Li,” Lin gasped. “There’s a civilian behind the counter,” she called out as a gloved hand reached out to help her up. Lin’s legs shook and threatened to buckle as she steadied herself against the glass cabinet. “And we, we have one down,” she added looking at the woman on the floor.