Mark awoke with a start. He opened his eyes and saw Luciana above him shaking him. He was too tired to process the image correctly and jump to his feet as a quick shot of adrenaline hit his veins.
“Jesus, you scared me,” Mark said, putting his hand over his rapidly beating heart. He started slow breaths to calm his heart down
“All of the stress getting to you?” Luciana asked, concern etched in her voice.
“Yeah, I think so. What did you wake me up for?”
“Paparazzi is swarming outside the ship. They want an update on the investigation.”
Mark rubbed his eyes and stretched. “I imagine so. It’s a good thing. We need to keep everyone calm. Tell the people outside that I’ll be holding a conference in the auditorium area of this ship in one hour.”
She smirked at him. “And I’m your secretary now?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm.
Mark shrugged. “Rank brings privileges. It would be really silly of me to go outside just to tell everyone that they’ll see me again in one hour. Besides, the cameras would much rather look at you than me,” he said with a wink.
“Are you trying to use flattery to get me to do what you want?”
“Would you believe me if I said ‘no’?”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Fine, but only because I get to do the cool missions while you’re stuck playing babysitter to this deadbeat planet.”
He watched her as she walked away, then set about doing his tasks. Personal hygiene, a status update from the med bay, and a quick review of what the chemists had found. He decided to wear his officer’s uniform again as military clothing had one huge advantage over civilian clothes. There was only one right way to wear a military uniform. Every ribbon, medal, and cord belonged in an exact and specific place. As a dual commissioned officer, he could have chosen to go with the IIO uniform instead, but he had more awards as a commissioned Navy officer than as a IIO officer. Vanity won the day.
The Marines and police scanned each reporter and moved them into the auditorium. Instead of the traditional cameras that Mark was used to from his time period, the reporters used miniature flying devices that moved around the room. The feed was sent to each broadcasting station at the same time, and the editors could choose what to show while commentators discussed what was happening.
After all the reporters were gathered together, Mark called for quiet and started his speech. Most politicians used smart contacts that allowed someone else to send them notes in real-time, but Mark had EVE for that. Some politicians that wanted to look quick on their feet would make a big show of showing they didn’t have a contact in, but it was such a huge disadvantage that only showboats or populists who just liked making up nonsense did it.
“As you are aware, a little over 30 standard hours ago, there was an attack on this planet against me, my crew, innocent bystanders, and the incoming administration. Right now, 42 deaths have been confirmed and over 200 people are injured. We’re going to revive anyone who has made a backup copy of themselves as well as anyone who still has an intact brain at no cost to them. Legal and medical teams are going through the records to see if any of them have a DNR, Do Not Resurrect, clause in their will.
The investigation is still early and ongoing, but we can say at this time that we have recovered most of the explosive device. A team of highly trained chemists are analyzing the chemical residues left over, which will tell us where the device originated, and then to who manufactured the device.
As of right now, Col. Rosa suffered concussive brain damage and busted eardrums. As such, I will remain the interim prime minister of the planet. There’s not a lot to go on at the moment, but we’ll keep you updated as new developments occur. At this time, I’ll begin taking questions.”
All of the reporters shot their hands up, Mark randomly pointed at one, a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair peppered with a few grey streaks.
“If they can’t be resurrected,” she began, “when will you be moving onto the appointment for the positions of Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Auditor, Public Service Commissioner, and Secretary of Treasure?”
“Excellent question,” Mark replied, “Col. Rosa was going to begin implementing some reforms and this was top of the list. The governor has far too much power in terms of his appointment capabilities, which leads to corruption. If they can’t be resurrected, there will be a vote for who should lead the system.”
Hands shot up again. This time he selected a young looking man with a receding hairline.
“Is there a conflict of interest in having you as the lead investigator of this case? How do we know you’re not a suspect?”
Mark wanted to rattle off a snarky response, but kept himself in check. Getting on the bad side of the press was not a move he wanted to make. When he’d been a cop, a suspect alleged that he’d destroyed his home as a claim of harassment by the police force. Unfortunately for that home owner, the scene technicians had taken photographs of everything that happened along the way, and showed those to the reporters covering the story. It never aired.
He remembered a quote from his criminal justice studies, “The camera never lies, but a camera in the hands of a liar is a dangerous instrument.” By maintaining a professional relationship with the press, he’d managed to avoid any controversy in his cases.
“Well first of all,” Mark said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, “I could have had this post if I really wanted it. However, my primary task was finding out the location of the fugitive governor and other officials. Now, it’s solving this case, though if it appears it’s unconnected, I may ask for another investigator to take over it.”
They were in the ass end of the galaxy, the odds that his request would be granted were slim to none. Still, it sounded like a good argument.
“Second, I wouldn’t be implementing measures to limit my own power if I were trying to take over the government here. Third, I can account for all of my movements with corroborating evidence from staff and witnesses. It would be a huge conspiracy to fake so much evidence.”
Mark looked for another reporter to call upon when the man followed up. “How do you account for your ability to jump out of the way right as the bomb went off?”
“Luck, genetics, and training,” Mark said. “Our Navy staff cross-trains with the Marines in several field combat simulations. This includes all officer staff as well. With luck, I happened to notice the vehicle backdoor opening up with the explosives, which with training, I recognized as an improvised explosive device. My genetics are the final factor, I’m in the top 1% of pilots thanks to my incredible reflex speed.”
He waited for the man to have any follow-up questions, but he didn’t have any.
The rest of the questions he answered were more routine. How long was it going to take to rebuild the initial blast area, could people return to work, did he think that there would be more terrorist attacks in the future, and so forth. He answered them as best he could given the limited information he had on hand.
“Thank you for your questions, if you have any further questions, there’ll be a designated holographic address that you can send them to.”
Holographic addresses were a replacement for emails that required a two-way verification and encryption of both the receiver and the sender. That meant spam was essentially reduced to zero, though email still existed despite 200 years of trying to get rid of it.
As the reporters shuffled out, Mark walked to the chemical analysis unit. This was normally used for breaking down material into different components then remaking it via the replicator miniature facility, but now it was being used for chemical analysis.
He found the chief chemist in the lab, working alongside her junior staff members. One of the perks of having EVE in his brain was that he could memorize ship crews at a glance, which worked out great since he normally had a difficult time remembering names.
The chief chemist was a red-haired, middle-aged lady named Tina O’Farrell. She’d best be described as “mousy”, but her voice was firm when talking about her areas of expertise. As he approached, he could see that she had all of the evidence they’d picked up reconstructing into three separate devices.
“Hello Dr. Farrell,” Mark greeted her, “What do we have so far?”
She gestured at the table. “This was a there-step sequence bomb. It used an electrical detonator, a cast booster, and the blasting agent. The residue vacuumed up from the scene appears to show that the primary explosive for the blasting agent was cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.
It’s very stable stuff, resistant to heat and damage, as you’d expect from a military grade explosive. So a booster is needed to get the kinetic energy up high enough to fully detonate. It looks like it’s a combination of pentaerythritol tetranitrate and trinitrotoluene.”
EVE translated that for Mark. The explosive used RDX, an explosive similar to C4, and a combination of PETN and TNT to make a bomb.
“How complex is it to make this?” Mark asked.
“Incredibly,” Tina replied, “All of those components are tightly controlled and regulated. But there’s something interesting to go with that All explosives are required to be marked with dimethyl 1-1,3-dinitrobutane, or DMNB. Plastic explosives are untraceable, so this allows scanners to detect it on incoming ships. Every legal source of these chemicals tags and traces their supply.”
Mark nodded. “So we’re looking for a company producing off-market supplies for a black market. What’s the legal use of this stuff?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Tina shrugged. “That’s probably a better question for the engineers on the ship."
EVE chimed in his head. “It’s used for asteroid mining.” Of course EVE would know, but he worried about becoming over reliant on her abilities. What would happen if an EMP went off? Would he lose all his memories and be stuck drooling on himself?
“No,” EVE said, “I’ve been filtering your new skills and memories to you slowly so your brain has time to adjust to them. So long as you don’t attempt to level up in a new skill path, you will function the same as you did without me. Average.”
She was too smug for his taste, but nothing new there. He subvocalized to her. “Go through all of the security footage and logs. Look for any unusual activity. See if any of the footage shows undeclared cargo or a mismatch between declared cargo weight and what that same type of cargo normally weighs.” The worst case scenario was that this material had been on the planet for several months, which would drag the investigation on. He didn’t think that was correct though since something like illegally manufactured asteroid mining explosives isn’t the sort of thing someone would just keep around for fun times.
He decided that he needed a fresh look at this. Despite having a low general opinion of the local police force, he did know there was at least one cop who wasn’t an idiot. He went into his room and placed a call to Sergeant Scott Fabisch.
The Sergeant’s face appeared in the display. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“Quick question,” Mark replied, “Usually, people like to stick to patterns. Have you had any bombing related incidents like what happened at the change of command ceremony?”
“Like that?” Scott replied, “No, we never had anything like that. It’s not that hard to dump a body out here. There’s a huge amount of forest, low visibility, and lots of places to bury a body. An explosion is loud and messy, you only do something like that when you want to send a message. Hold on a second, let me check something out.”
Mark watched as Scott’s 3d projection furiously searched and looked on his holopad. “Yeah,” he said as he flipped through whatever documents he had on his pad, “so this was before my time, but I heard some of the old timers talk about it when I first joined up. There used to be a big bang up between the various shipping factions on here. You had lots of high profile attacks, assassinations, beheadings, and car bombings. Not as big as what went down yesterday, but a few high profile ones.”
“What stopped it?”
“When the old governor was elected, all of that pretty much ended.”
“So the old governor either managed to lock down the problem or he made a deal with one of the companies and got rid of the others. Given his corruption, I’m guessing it was the latter. Get some people and get all of those old files to us.”
“Uh, what?” he heard the Sergeant say. That was stupid of him. On real Earth, even with all the digital improvements, police still typed up reports and left a paper trail for everything. In the game, everything was done via smart contracts that kept a permanent ledger of the files, so any amendments or discrepancies could be checked against other records.
“I mean the physical evidence,” Mark said, recovering quickly. “You keep that in a warehouse or evidence locker or some other place right? Case file, access logs, all that jazz?”
“Oh. Umm… maybe? I’ll have to check.”
Mark felt a mild headache between his sinuses. Amongst other reforms, evidence handling was going to be on the list.
“We call that ‘spoliation of evidence’ on Earth and on any of the major systems. Okay, look… just send me over the files that you have and if there is any physical evidence, collect it and send it over to us. Make sure it’s tagged with where it came from, what case it’s from, and who handled it at every point.”
“Yeah, you got it.”
Mark hung up. Christ almighty. He wanted to pound a few shots of liquor to keep from going crazy, but that wouldn’t be the best thing for someone in his position of authority to do.
He heard a knock on his door. “Come in,” he barked. Luciana walked in.
“Things aren’t going good I take it?” she asked, noticing that he was pinching his sinuses.
“Did I ever tell you about any of my cases when I was an investigator?” he asked.
“Nope, never came up. From our time together, I didn’t actually think you were any good at it.”
Mark scowled at her. She laughed. “Oh, I knew you were a hotshot on Earth, but in my time serving with you, it seemed like you just wanted to clear as many cases as possible, which meant taking as many easy cases as possible.”
“That’s fair enough, I guess,” he grudgingly admitted. Everyone was a critic. “Well back during my Earth days, one of my first homicide cases was a man murdered behind a dumpster by an old school ballistic gun. The reason they don’t use them anymore is because they’re a mess, which is why pirates tend to love them. The cops on the scene can’t see behind the dumpster, and don’t want to go behind a dumpster anyway, because it doesn’t smell great and there’s garbage that’ll get all over your clothes.
So they get in their vehicle and put it up to the dumpster. Except when they did that, they ran over a bloody footprint. So that gets destroyed. Then these two idiots start grabbing up bags of trash, not their job, and stuff it into the back of their car and take it back to the station. They drop it off and head home, since they didn’t want to stay at the scene to quarantine the area.
I get called out there and I’ve got a footprint I can’t use, a bunch of evidence missing that I didn’t know about, and no access log of who went into the area and who was kept out, no crime scene tape, absolutely nothing. By the time I figured out that several key pieces of evidence had been moved, it was too late. Most of the evidence that patrol collected had been destroyed, and since the rest hadn’t been tagged or assigned a chain of custody, none of it was usable.
Still, we found a guy who was a good fit for the murder. The victim owed him money, the two had been seen arguing, and he had no alibi for the time window of the murder. I get on the stand to testify and the guy’s defense lawyer crucified me. He went over in painstaking detail to the jury all of the violations of protocol and all the screwups. Of course, the perp walked. That was the first and last time I have ever been so embarrassed in court. Well, that’s what I’m dealing with here today.”
She went behind him and started massaging his shoulders. “Well easy there,” she said, “You can’t be blamed for other people’s screwups. You’re going to give yourself a stroke at this rate.”
Another knock sounded on his door. Luciana jumped back at the sound.
“Jesus Christ, you’d think we were making out and your parents came home.” He joked. She laughed. “Come on in.”
Chon Seo-Hee came in. Mark had more or less forgotten about her. “Hey Chon, what’s up?” Mark said.
“I have something to show you,” she said. She pulled up a bunch of what looked like financial statements. Having a fat zero in all areas of accounting, finance, and any other related skill, Mark had no idea what he was actually looking at.
“Chon, what am I looking at? This is practically hieroglyphics to me.” Mark asked.
“Well,” she said. “Umm… here’s a question. How much does a space dock cost?”
Mark shrugged. “I really expect you to know that answer better than me.”
“I do. It’s about half a billion to a billion credits. So, what’s the government income for this area?”
“It’s a little over two million credits a year.”
“Right,” she snapped her fingers. “So, how do they have a space dock?”
“Initial seed investment?”
“Which you’d expect to be documented. But there’s no documentation. Normally you break this out into three roles. One person who processes any payments, one person who receives any payments, and another person who reconciles the deposits with withdrawals. That’s standard at pretty much any business or government of any complexity. But here, none of that is going on.”
“If you are telling us that the government doesn’t function correctly, you’re preaching to the choir,” Luciana said.
“Okay, here’s where it gets interesting. One of the big problems in money laundering is getting the money into the banking system. But, if you have a government in your pocket, that isn’t a problem. So long as no one investigates that planet, you can funnel as much money as you want. That’s called ‘placement’ and it’s one of the big hurdles that every criminal organization runs into. If you aren’t a trusted source, then any large transactions get immediately flagged and inspected.”
“Okay,” Mark said, following along. “So we have a notoriously corrupt government here ripe for the laundering.”
“So then the next thing you need to do is layer the transactions. You spread it out amongst so many different groups and organizations it’s hard to know who owns what. So you make shell corporations that muddy the waters. Now what you do is take these fake corporations, and establish them as exporting centers. The exporter reports sale prices far higher than what the goods are actually worth, but it’s actually the result of the sold goods plus the laundered money. Then they can use that money legitimately.”
“Ok,” Mark said, trying to get his head around it. “If I’ve got this right, someone is getting illegal money from somewhere doing some activity. What we do know is that they used the government to do the transactions, letting them funnel large amounts of credit that would otherwise be impossible. In return, the government got a kickback from this operation, which is where most of the actual budget came from.”
“I think that’s accurate,” Chon replied.
“Awesome work Chon,” Mark said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “What I need you to do is take this,” he pointed to the mountains of data that she was streaming, “and turn it into something a third grader could understand. I’ll assign some crew to help you run down the shell corporations and find out who is running this scam. Who ran it in the government?”
“That would be Margaret Copeland, the Secretary of Treasure.”
Mark sighed. Of course that’s who it would be.
“Wasn’t she one of the six civilians killed at the ceremony?” Luciana asked.
“Yep. With this twist in development, it could be that she was the actual target instead of Col. Rosa or me. Or again, all of us. The point is we need to figure out what corporation is doing all this off the books smuggling.”
“Can’t you simply sequester all the records for all the companies on this planet?” Luciana asked.
“I could,” Mark said, thinking it over. “But it would be too much garbage to sort through, and it’d give the perps a chance to cover their tracks once they know we’re coming. We’re already on a powder keg and something that heavy handed might tip it over. We need something surgical, carpet bombing isn’t going to work.
We’ll go over every record of anyone the departed Secretary of Treasure met with regularly, add in the Auditor as well since he didn’t seem to be doing his job, cross-match that against old bombing cases in the early years of this planet, and compare against which companies are earning enough to match the discrepancies we’re seeing in government monetary flow. If we’re lucky, that will net us a small list of suspects to work with.”