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Paul Chang was different. He was a dreamer, a big-picture guy. He never cared much about the daily grind of police work or about the individual victims we saw. To him, such things were just pieces of a pattern, cogs in a system that he needed to understand. Paul was all visions and designs. I was all nuts and bolts. But for some reason, when the two of us were partnered together, we were electric, instant best friends.

  Our big break came when we caught a hot tip from Chow Lin—an opium dealer who we’d flipped a few months earlier. We pinched him for pushing, which carried a minimum seven. We held the evidence and told him he could serve the seven in prison or serve seven working for us. He made the easy choice and kept pushing while he passed us information on the side.

  He put us onto an offworlder named Mai Nguyen who had just come down to the surface from the Orbital. He told us she was a big offworld buyer who smuggled O up to the Orbital and sold it to the freighter crews that passed through the Lagartan System. He heard she was on the surface, shopping for new suppliers.

  It took Paul and me a full day to pick up her scent. We bribed hotel clerks all over the city, finally scoring a hit at the Nirvana Palace. We staked out the place for an hour before spotting her leaving from the back entrance. Like all offworlders, Mai Nguyen was easy to pick out. She was physically perfect. She had a doll’s face, an athlete’s legs, and cleavage up to her chin. She strutted down the grassy steps accompanied by two heavies who came out into the steamy heat wearing thick jackets, gloves, and long pants. Nobody dressed like that on Lagarto. It could mean only one thing—the suits were covering some serious technological voodoo. Retractable finger blades? Recessed lasers? Mechanical limbs stronger than a crane? Who the fuck knew? You never could tell with offworlders.

  They turned and walked onto the street. Crowds gave them a wide berth, making them easy to tail. They strolled into the Old Town Square, a busy thoroughfare crammed with souvenir shops and sidewalk stands. Hawkers flocked around them, peddling chess sets with lizard-shaped pieces and old bricks with jungle scenes painted on.

  Mai Nguyen stopped at a small stand and bought a cloth that she used to mop her brow and cleavage. Her goons stayed on her heels with their perspiration-soaked jackets buttoned all the way up. She weaved from booth to booth trying on sandals. She finally found a pair to her liking and talked the old woman into a trade: Nguyen’s shoes for the sandals. The old woman gladly stuffed paper into the toes of Nguyen’s shoes then slipped them on.

  They stopped for dinner at an Asian place on the square. Paul and I sat on a park bench and watched them through the restaurant window. “Some drug dealers,” I said.

  Paul looked at his discount store watch and chuckled uncomfortably. “Tell me about it. So far, it looks like a nice family on vacation.”

  Paul was knotted with frustrated ambition. He came onto vice after only two years as a beat cop compared to my three. He became fast friends with our lieutenant, passed all the tests with high marks, and got reports done on time but was still passed over when promotions were handed out. I told him it was because he was young, but we both knew the real reason. You had to earn your stripes with a big bust, simple as that. He wanted to nail Nguyen. An arrest of an offworld trafficker would put our pictures all over the news and land him a lieutenancy, maybe even get him his own squad.

  Nguyen and her keepers finished their dinner and ambled back to the hotel, stopping once so that one of the thugs could buy a shellacked monitor head mounted on a slab of wood with its jaws spread wide enough to bite off a limb.

  I wasn’t worried about promotions for myself. Since I’d never graduated from school, I would never rise above sergeant anyway. I just liked the idea of bringing down an offworlder. Lagartans have always held a grudge against offworlders, and I was no exception. I hated the way they’d act like they were superior coming down here showing off their far-out tech and their bottomless bank accounts.

  Nguyen was from the Orbital, or Lagarto Orbital-1 as it was officially known. The Lagartan government came up with that name. They numbered it like someday there’d be an LO-2 and an LO-3. They’d originally built it as a trading post for brandy exports, but it had ceased being a trade route hot spot long ago and therefore its successors had never been constructed. However, in recent years, the Orbital had been returning to prominence thanks to the flourishing mining operations in the asteroid belts. Freighters were coming through regularly now, which meant big opportunities for drug traffickers like Nguyen.

  Two days of tailing her finally paid dividends when she and her goons came down the hotel’s back stairs in the middle of the night with three large cases. They flagged a cab and counted off enough offworld bucks to convince the driver to rent out the car. The driver danced to the sidewalk counting his good fortune.

  Paul and I waited for them to pull out then ran for the street. We flashed badges and weapons at the first cab we saw. We took the car, leaving the driver and a pair of bar floozies on the curb.

  I drove with the lights off while Paul hung out the window trying to pick up their trail. We caught up to them just as they turned east, heading for the river. I stayed back as far as I could, while they drove into an old industrial area. We passed broken-windowed bottling plants and caved-in lumber mills. As we got closer to the river, more and more of the road was enveloped by dense green weeds that slapped and scraped at the car’s underside.

  Nguyen and her thugs drove up a concrete ramp into the cargo bay of a dilapidated brick building. I pulled around to the backside of the building and parked out of sight.

  Paul and I high-stepped through the deep weeds to an old fire escape that barely clung to the side of the building. We climbed slowly. The rusted metal squeaked and swayed as we made our way up to the third story and through a window. Paul flicked on a flashlight. Dozens of lizards dashed for cover. One held her ground, guarding a nest of eggs and hissing. We worked our way to the front side of the building, ducking our heads to avoid the face-tickling moss that drooped from the ceiling. We stopped at a door that opened onto a catwalk over the cargo bay.

  The door was half open. We could hear mumbled voices right below us. We would have to get what we could from here. There was no way we could go out onto that catwalk without being detected.

  Paul took the flycam out of its case. We’d stolen it. There was no other way for us to get our hands on good tech. Lagartans couldn’t buy any of it with our worthless currency. We couldn’t even purchase the cheapest offworld products because of the steep shipping charges. The closest planet is five long years away. The only tech Lagartans could enjoy was vids, net access, and communications equipment—all provided by the Orbital. The communications equipment was useful. The whole planet had phone coverage—as long as you could pay the charges. The vids and net access were a curse. All they’d do was advertise a bunch of shit we couldn’t afford.

  This flycam was an unbelievable catch. Nobody manufactured cameras on Lagarto—too sophisticated for us. Paul and I had scammed our way into the top-notch equipment a couple months earlier. An offworld dignitary had come planetside for some conference, and we arrested one of her bodyguards on trumped-up charges. We impounded everything in the bodyguard’s hotel room. Upon his release, we informed him that somehow all his surveillance equipment had gotten “lost” on the way to the evidence room.

  Paul set the flycam, which was no bigger than a coin, down in a bare patch on the floor. He used the control mechanism to lift and guide it silently into the cargo bay. We huddled on the floor, studying the display.

  Vines hung down from the catwalks. Green grasses sprouted from old loading equipment. The cargo bay held two cars, positioned to illuminate the area with their headlights. One of Nguyen’s heavies kept lookout at the door, while Nguyen and the other heavy showed the cases to a balding man, definitely a local. Surgery and genetic manipulation protected offworlders from suffering from such a hideous deformity.

  Nguyen popped open the cases, revealing stacks upon stacks of pesos. Paul and I e
xchanged big-eyed glances. The camera gave us a bird’s-eye view as the local emptied the cases into a mail sack then hung the sack from the hook of a butcher’s scale. When there was too much money to count, just weigh it and call it good.

  From above, Nguyen was all cleavage; couldn’t even see her feet. “All there?”

  The local did some math with a stick in the dirt. “Yeah. It looks good.”

  “And the opium?”

  “Start loading,” the local said to a holographic accomplice. The real accomplice was surely located at the spaceport. To Nguyen he said, “You should be able to confirm that loading has begun.”

  One of the heavies’ faces went lobotomy-blank as he mouthed words to the offworld communications implants in his head. After a moment, his face returned to human, and he nodded affirmative to Nguyen.

  Nguyen made a show of mopping her perspiration, starting with her brow and moving to her neck and arms, a little show for the native. Her sexed-up looks were downright cartoonish. It was hard to believe that she was a real woman. She said, “Excellent, now we wait until loading is completed.”

  She sauntered over to the thug guarding the door, leaned in, and whispered something—couldn’t hear what she said. She walked back and sat on the hood of one of the cars.

  Her thug started acting strange. He had this ultradumb expression on his face. His mouth was open; his eyes were closed, and his fingers were twitching. Then he looked right into our camera. My breath caught in my throat. OH SHIT! He saw the camera. Then he turned to look back out the door. Paul exhaled, thinking the same thing I was—calm down, you’re just paranoid. He couldn’t have spotted that camera—too small, too dark. He just happened to look that way.

  We watched and waited. It felt like forever.

  The local’s holographic accomplice spoke up. “They’re done. The cargo’s onboard.”

  One of the thugs confirmed with a gloved thumbs-up.

  Mai Nguyen said, “Pleasure doing business with you, sir. The money is all yours.”

  They all made quick business of packing up and leaving. Paul recalled the camera. It came slowly out of the shadows and landed in his palm—offworld magic.

  I whispered, “We got it?”

  “Yeah. We got it.” He grinned large.

  “Let’s go.”

  Paul hightailed to the fire escape. I was just a step behind. We did it!

  The rest of the plan was easy—rush back to HQ, show the vid to the lieutenant, and hit the hotel with a whole squad to make the arrest. We knew better than try to arrest them ourselves. Two cops with antique lase-pistols didn’t stand a chance against three offworlders.

  We jumped down from the fire escape and bolted for the car, tearing through the weeds at full bore. We came upon our car…HOW? SHIT! SHIT! Nguyen was sitting on the hood. The goons came up behind us and pinned our arms behind our backs. FUCK, that hurts!

  Nguyen took out her already dripping cloth and drew it across her face and chest. She wrung the sweat out into a small puddle. She vamped over and frisked us, tossed our weapons out into the weeds.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you boys. I feel like we already know each other, we’ve been spending so much time together for the past couple days.” She turned to me. “You’ll forgive my being blunt, but who the fuck are you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  The thug yanked my left arm backward.

  PAIN, unbelievable PAIN! I heard a crack. PANIC! “Juno! Juno!”

  “What’s that? Did you say Juno?”

  The thug loosened up—just a touch.

  I had tears in my eyes. I couldn’t catch my breath. “J-Juno, Juno Mozambe.”

  “And who do you work for, Juno Mozambe?”

  “We don’t work for anybody.” My arm was yanked farther. I felt bones scraping. “COPS! We’re cops.”

  Nguyen started to laugh. “Cops? And I thought this might be something serious. Let them go.”

  The thug let me go. I fell to my knees and vomited, feeling ashamed that I broke.

  “Which one of you has the camera?” Paul pulled it from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “And who are you?”

  “Paul Chang.”

  “Well, Paul Chang, at least you have the good sense to answer me without forcing me to resort to this…unpleasantness. You are unusually civilized for a Lagartan. You people really are just dirty little animals. Take your little monkey of a partner for instance…”

  BITCH! I charged, my right hand going for her throat, thugs too slow to react. My hand closed in on her throat. SQUEEZE HARD! Crush it before they grab me. My palm made contact. I could feel her damp skin. WHITE FLASH—PAIN, oh god pain!

  I fell to the ground convulsing, my nerves on fire.

  Nguyen’s voice mocked. “As I was saying, take your little monkey of a partner for instance. He sure tries hard. You might be able to teach him a few tricks, but he’s just too dumb to think for himself.” She patted my head.

  I couldn’t move. The air reeked of burned flesh and my own shit.

  She straightened up. “We must be going, Paul Chang. I trust we won’t be hearing from the two of you again.”

  “…s’okay Juno, you’re gonna be okay. I’ll get you to a doc….”

  “…might hurt. I just have to pull you up into the car. On three, okay? One…two…three…”

  “…almost there, Juno. Stay with me, okay? You have to…”

  “…palm is burned pretty badly. We’ll have to graft some skin….”

  “Hey, Juno. You awake?”

  Everything was blurred, white walls, white sheets. Paul’s smile came into focus. “Paul?”

  “Yeah, Juno. It’s me. Doctors say you’re going to be fine. How do you feel?”

  “How long?”

  “Three days.”

  “Nguyen?”

  “Gone, she’s gone…best I can tell, the shipment of O is gone, too. We have nothing on her except maybe assaulting an officer. No evidence, though. It’s just our word. A cop’s word is normally good enough, but not with her money. There’s no way we could make it stick. She’s offplanet now anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember going for that bitch’s throat.”

  “Shit, that temper of yours is going to get you killed one of these days. She was rigged, micro wires under her skin. She electrocuted you when you touched her.”

  “Wires under her skin?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “You have the scars to prove it.”

  “What can we do against these people?”

  “I think we’ve been going about this the wrong way.” His trademark smile was gone.

  nine

  MARCH 19, 2762

  “THE doctors clear you yet?”

  I flexed my right hand. “They say I can start in two days.”

  Paul beamed. His smile was infectious. “That’s great, Juno! It’s been tough working alone.”

  “It’s only been two weeks.”

  We sat at the counter of a fish bar near the pier. I was careful to sit on the edge of the stool. They’d grafted a piece of skin from my thigh to my hand. I’d already opened the thigh wound once when I’d sat too hard, and I didn’t want to bloody another pair of pants. I forked through the bowl of fish and noodles. Chopsticks were too hard to control—left arm in a cast, right hand too stiff from the skin grafts.

  Paul finished his bowl. “Are you ready for me to fill you in yet?”

  “Sure.”

  “I IDed the local that sold the O to Nguyen. His name’s Pavel Yashin.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “I thought the guy looked at least forty. I figured that if he’s dealing at age forty, he must have a record. Nobody goes that long without getting picked up for something, right? I pulled the records on all offenders aged over thirty-five.”

  “You looked at mugs?”
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  “Yeah, but most of the mugs were too old. I didn’t think I could pick him out of a lineup when he was twenty years younger, so I called up to the Orbital and had them pull all their current phone records and beam down their holos. I didn’t have to go through more than a few dozen before I recognized him.”

  “What do you have on him so far?”

  “Nothing. I’ve been waiting for you to get better.”

  I hurried the last few bites. “Let’s go.”

  “I thought you had to wait two more days.”

  “I won’t do anything strenuous. Let’s go.”

  Pavel Yashin lived in an upscale neighborhood, in a house that was large by Lagartan standards, two stories with an attached garage. We hid in a nearby alley and waited for him to show himself. Mosquitoes sucked our blood for a full hour before the garage door opened and a car pulled out. We leaned back into the foliage as the car passed, our balding local at the wheel.

  Paul went over the outer wall. With me unable to give him a boost, he had to climb my body like a ladder to get to the top. I kept lookout while Paul put six of our stolen cameras in place. These weren’t as sophisticated as the flycam we’d lost to Mai Nguyen. These were stationary but next to impossible to detect. All you had to do was stick one to a window, like a piece of rubber cement. It dried clear so you could only see it if you knew to look for it. As long as Pavel Yashin didn’t have the same tech as Nguyen and her heavies, we’d be able to spy in as long as we wanted. More offworld magic, thanks to our offworld bodyguard friend.

  Six cameras: living room, kitchen, dining room, office, and two upstairs bedrooms. The cameras had a limited broadcast range, so we found somebody in Yashin’s neighborhood to rent us a room with a private entrance. The cameras’ audio feed was excellent, even the kitchen’s drippy faucet came through, but the 2-D image was seriously low quality. No depth to the picture and no ability to rotate your viewing perspective around the room. Wouldn’t matter, the important thing was stealth, not quality. The monitor had buttons labeled A through F, that you could use to cycle through the six cameras.