Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files) by C.S. Stinton
* *
Konstantin’s crew had been operating outside of the city for the last month, he explained as Miss Smith drove their van down the lane towards the surface roads leading north. As the buildings got lower, so did the vehicles, and within half an hour of leaving Navarro’s apartment block they were travelling at what Ramirez felt was the proper height: barely three feet above the old, paved road.
There wasn’t much work for a trio of mercenaries in rural Thor. But there was even less for mercenaries in Hardveur who didn’t work for Ragnarok. Their pay, Konstantin was saying, would be used to set themselves up somewhere else. Maybe Odin, or they’d completely give up on the Altair System and make for Sirius.
The sick feeling Ramirez felt whenever she remembered she was funding crime rose.
Navarro was bound, gagged, and blindfolded in the back of the van, with Harrigan to watch him. That left Miss Smith driving, Malik slouched in the seat up front next to her, scanning the police comm channels to make sure they’d picked up no unwanted attention, and her and Konstantin on the bench behind.
‘So do they usually send Marshals off to holes like Hardveur on their own?’ Konstantin asked.
‘I wasn’t sent on my own,’ said Ramirez, watching as the city faded into suburbia.
‘So do they usually send Marshals off to holes like this with only a rogue like John for backup?’
‘I was sent with a partner. She’s in hospital now.’ Ramirez glanced over her shoulder at the back. ‘Partly thanks to this piece of waste.’
Konstantin grimaced. ‘Bad day to be him.’ He looked out of the window at the residential district they had entered, the houses made from the reddish stone or brown timber of local woods and lands, buildings considered huge at three storeys. ‘This is real Thor,’ the mercenary said. ‘The first settlers built Hardveur in the valley around the river. Then the city raced towards the cliff-face, ran out of space, grew upwards. And outwards. In fifty years this will probably be more soulless skyscrapers.’
She tore her gaze away from the wide, sunlit roads, the rows of comfortable houses of people who lived in a community instead of being crammed into tight metal buildings, and looked at Konstantin. ‘You‘re a native.’
‘Born and bred. Why’d you think I stayed? Ragnarok are a blight on this city. This planet. These people.’ He sighed. ‘But there comes a time to fold. I won’t be the first person to leave their home in war.’ He must have caught her puzzlement, because he gave a crooked grin which almost broke his craggy face in half. ‘Sorry, was I meant to be all bitten and unsentimental?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I aim to defy expectations. Keeps people guessing. Miss Smith likes her nice clothes and pretty jewellery - she does the best roundhouse kick in a little black dress I‘ve ever seen - so it suits me fine if people think I‘m just the muscle and she’s the pretty face. Nobody would guess she could kick my arse.’
‘Stan,’ said Miss Smith from the front, ‘I‘m taller than Mal, nobody’s going to think I‘m the demure Southern Belle of our little crew.’
‘Yeah, well, Mal doesn’t defy any expectations. Stinks of techie. Should shower more.’
Malik grunted from the front. ‘You don’t pay me to mess with heads or look pretty, Stan, you pay me to deal with computer challenges - except any desk monkey who thought this guy’s security setup was a challenge needs to go back to tech school and then he and I can talk.’ He didn’t tear his gaze off the unseen vista of his eyepiece. It was the longest statement Ramirez had heard him make, soaked in arrogance.
Konstantin gave her another wry smile. ‘Aren’t you happy with what you paid for?’
‘I‘ve not seen it all yet.’
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there soon.’
As night fell, suburbia faded for the open plains of the valley - and then they were moving up, along the roads into the ring of mountains. Fine views were blocked by the thick greens and browns of the tall trees until they passed through only shadow. Occasionally Ramirez could see the flashes of the lights of Hardveur far to the south, but by the time they came to a halt they were almost equal with the highest point of illumination. Even mighty Hardveur was dwarfed by its mountains.
Miss Smith had driven them to an old-fashioned log cabin, but as they waited for Malik to consult his eyepiece and declare all was clear before they got out, Ramirez suspected not everything about the building was quite so ancient.
Navarro was conscious when they opened the van’s back doors for Harrigan to bundle him out. ‘Where am I? This isn’t an arrest, Ramirez, this is a kidnapping. I don’t care if you‘re a Marshal, the department won’t stand for this!’ His anger was tinged with fear.
She didn’t answer, just gestured for Konstantin to lead on. Without a word he headed into the house, and Harrigan steered Navarro up the wooden steps and into the gloomy building.
Lights came on the moment they were inside to show a humble living space bristling with security technology - and the cameras and motion sensors were just the ones she could see. Konstantin pointed Harrigan to a door at the far end of the kitchen which led to a set of plain stone stairs going down. ‘Everything you need will be there. Back room. It’s ready for him.’
Ramirez wanted as little talking as possible so Navarro had no clue where he was. But a foreboding comment like that could only help her cause, and she smirked as Harrigan led the squirming cop down the steps.
Konstantin grinned the moment the door shut behind them. Miss Smith was still with the van and Malik stomped off towards one of the back rooms, eliciting an eye-roll from his employer. ‘Can’t be away from his tech for too long. He gets twitchy. Welcome to home base. Coffee?’
Ramirez pulled up a stool by the kitchen counter and shook her head. ‘I‘ve had enough. I’ll let Harrigan get him in place, let him stew for maybe an hour, then go in. I don’t have the time for more.’
‘If this goes on overnight, we can keep him sleep-deprived,’ Konstantin said, like all he was offering was variety in his coffee selection.
She found herself hesitating and scowled at the window. ‘No. Thank you, Mister Konstantin. I have this in hand.’
‘Told you, I‘m no Mister,’ he said, and pulled his scattergun from his sports bag. ‘But I’ll leave you to it, and go do a perimeter check. Mal knows what he’s doing but it makes me feel better.’
She relaxed as he headed out the door, but soon enough there were footsteps from the basement and Harrigan came up. ‘He’s down there, cuffed to a chair in a tiny, dark room. Stan’s crew know what they‘re doing on security.’
‘Good. They‘re an efficient outfit.’
‘Too good for Polanski’s security.’ He poked at the coffee machine. ‘But Stan’s a local boy, he didn’t want to pull out even when Ragnarok were messing up the show.’
‘I know. Mister Konstantin told me.’
He gave her one of those piercing looks, the sort she knew ill-suited the simple soldier he proclaimed he was. ‘Not “Mister”. He don’t like it.’
‘I think we should be keeping this relationship professional, rather than based around what he likes.’ Ramirez’s voice was tart. ‘This has gone off the beaten track quite enough already.’
Harrigan didn’t say anything while he found a mug to pour himself some coffee. ‘Law and order don’t fall down the moment you bend a rule,’ he said at last, quiet. ‘We‘re smarter people than that.’
She noticed the “we” and wondered if he was talking about the situation or himself. But his state of mind and guilt were not her concern. ‘This is all perfectly legal. Even if it wouldn’t have been two months ago.’
‘Sure. But at this point, what’s not legal for you to do?’
Ramirez pursed her lips. ‘Very little.’
‘So you could walk down there and knock out some teeth before you even began asking questions.’ She thought he sounded hopeful.
‘I‘m doing this one by the book, Harri
‘Except you‘re not. As far as he’s concerned, he’s been bundled into a van at night and driven out into the middle of nowhere, then locked in a cellar. This is a million miles away from a cell with recordings and a lawyer. You can’t go in there and act like this is a nice little interrogation down the precinct, ‘cos it ain’t.’
‘I know it’s not. But I know full well a step onto a slippery slope doesn’t mean I’ll trip and fall into the bottom of the pit.’
‘No.’ Harrigan put the coffee down. ‘But you‘re afraid you will. You‘re afraid that down here the gloves are off. Out here, who watches the watchmen?’
‘The answer to that question has always been, “themselves”.’ Ramirez stood. ‘I‘m going to keep an eye on him for a bit and then start. Just make sure this little gang do their jobs, all right?’
She ignored his protests as she headed for the stairway, though in truth she had no real concerns about Konstantin’s crew. They would do their work in this thug’s task perfectly well.
Perhaps too well, Ramirez noted as she reached the foot of the steps and entered the stone, plain basement to see the far room, the makeshift interrogation room, wasn’t makeshift at all. The door was solid and locked. Inside was complete with a small, hard bunk pressed against the wall and the heavy chair in the middle in which sat the cuffed, scared Navarro. And she could see this despite the solid door thanks to one-way glass giving a perfect view of her prisoner.
Konstantin’s crew had done this before. Likely without the blessing of the law.
‘There’s pale moonlight out tonight, Sara,’ Ramirez murmured, pulled up a seat to watch Navarro, and waited for the time to break him.
13
It was another hour before she entered. Navarro had run through the processes she knew so well. Quiet panic. Shouting. Stubborn silence. It was when the panic was starting to cycle back around that she let herself in.
Normally she might have tried to open this with a ‘good cop‘ routine of a cup of coffee, a polite word. Since this was still more kidnapping than arrest she suspected that would come across as a hollow gesture.
The lights were dim, but enough to let her see Navarro clearly. His eyes widened at the sight of her, though with no surprise. They both knew what was going on. He jerked his hands and the cuffs bound to the armrests rattled. ‘Where am I?’
‘In a cell.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t have to tell you that.’ In the gloom, the shadows made his face look older, leaner, but there was something very young about the fear in his eyes. Sympathy trickled into the anger in her gut until she sawed it out.
‘Oh, so that’s how it is.’ He rocked on the chair to test if it would move, though she’d seen him do so several times in the last hour. It didn’t budge, too tall and heavy for his feet to push off the floor. ‘You call yourself more righteous than us, Ramirez, but you‘re just a thug with a badge, you know that? No better than Beyer.’
‘Maybe.’ This wasn’t the conversation she needed to have, and she let his accusations wash over her. ‘But better than you.’
His gaze met hers. ‘I‘ve not done anything.’
‘We both know that’s a lie.’ She wished she’d brought her uniform, instead of the two of them in this room with her in civilian clothing, him in the dark blues of the HCPD. ‘What I know for sure is that you failed to send backup into the warehouse when Tycho and I were caught. What I have been told is that you planned on murdering John Harrigan. What I can deduce is that Jovak didn’t escape, he was let go on your orders, and that you warned Vincente of our presence.’
Navarro raised an eyebrow. ‘And yet the precinct is happy to believe you botched your prep-work and you and Lieutenant Tycho wandered into a Ragnarok den unprepared, despite my explicit recommendations you leave it in the hands of the tactical team. Whose rapid response covering your escape saved your lives.’
This time it was anger, not sympathy, that she had to squash with a boot. ‘I don’t doubt you‘ve got the department dancing to your tune. You get results, don’t you? Everyone who’s sick of Beyer sees this young officer on the promotion fast-track who’s doing what he can’t, or won’t.’
‘What they see is the truth. Do you have evidence apart from your word against mine, Ramirez? Because otherwise this is a waste of time.’ It was deliberate nonchalance, but he didn’t need to be genuine in his confidence to force her hand further.
‘You‘re not going to be tried in Hardveur, where you have friends and allies in the justice system. You’ll be tried off-world on a military court. My word, as a Marshal, is evidence.’
‘That’s what the law says. If a Marshal does it or says it, it’s legal and binding.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘But that’s not been tested yet, has it? When the press get their hands on this, how a Marshal has decided a cop with a good record is in league with terrorists and their word’s the only evidence, do you think it’ll go down well? Law may give you the courts, but even your department’s not immune to the court of public opinion.’
‘More newsfeed stories critical of the Marshals? We’ll still sleep at night.’
‘Face it, Commander, you have nothing on me. If you did, you wouldn’t have me brutalised and dragged to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. This is ridiculous, and you know it. All you can do is try to bully and intimidate me until I make up some story to satisfy you. Because, as it stands, everyone will believe the other night happened because of your bad preparation and that you‘re trying to cover it up, that your partner’s crippled because of your incompetence -’
He couldn’t do more than rock the metal chair himself. But she could kick it over sideways and send him, still strapped to it, tumbling to the stone floor with a clatter that drowned out his shout of surprise and pain. ‘The hell are you doing?’
‘I didn’t touch you,’ Ramirez snapped, moving to stand over him. ‘But you are in the custody of the Orion Confederacy Marshals Service. You have only the rights I permit you. Nobody knows you‘re missing, nobody knows where you are, and when they know, all I have to do is wave my ID card at them and if they don’t go away, they‘re breaking the law.’
He drew a ragged breath, lying on his side, cheek pressed against cold concrete. ‘You‘re not going to do anything,’ he gasped. ‘You‘re the boy scout kind of cop, you won’t lay a finger on me -’
The gunshot made him yell in raw terror, but he subsided to a low whimper when he realised she’d discharged it inches from his knee.
‘Maybe you‘re right.’ Ramirez’s voice was low, flat. ‘But I don’t have to lay a finger on you.’ She pressed the barrel of her Hauer against his cheek, still hot. He was sweating, eyeballs rolling in their sockets to try to look at her as she kept his head pinned down. ‘And you‘re right that I‘m desperate, and alone, and low on options. So which of the handful do I take? Maybe the court of public opinion wouldn’t like me taking you to justice. But nobody knows you‘re here, Navarro. Maybe they find your body in a week and you get a proper funeral in the HCPD’s part of the local cemetery, with bagpipes playing Amazing Grace, weeping onlookers, a heroic picture of you front and centre. The works.’
‘How does that get you what you want?’
‘It doesn’t get me answers, but if you‘re as implacable as you‘re pretending to be, it gets me justice.’
His wide, white eyes locked on her. ‘You can go to hell.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ she said, and she moved the barrel of her gun to his right kneecap as her finger tightened around the trigger -
‘Commander Ramirez, you promised me I’d get to take a chunk or two out of him before you were done.’
Harrigan’s voice cut through the red haze like a knife of white clarity, enough to make her release the trigger in surprise. Her head snapped around to him, stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, eyes locked on her. His voice had been formal and courteous like she’d never heard from him before, and fres
Navarro broke into a sob, voice on the edge of hysteria. ‘All right! All right...’
Only then, when Ramirez lowered her gun, did she realise how close she’d come to shooting him.
Silence reigned for long seconds, Navarro’s breathing laboured, Harrigan unmoving, until broken by the snap as Ramirez clicked the safety of her gun back on. It was enough to make Navarro flinch, and he let out a low moan. ‘It wasn’t supposed to get this far.’
Ramirez swallowed and tasted bile. ‘How long have you worked for Ragnarok?’
‘I don’t...’ His voice caught, and he slumped. ‘I wasn’t working for them at first. That is, I didn’t know what they were. Crime in Hardveur was at an all-time high two months ago. And Beyer - Beyer did nothing.
‘Corrupt. Incompetent. I don’t know. I didn’t get where I did because of him, I got there in spite of him. And he’d made me responsible for cleaning up the industrial district because he knew a job like that couldn’t be done, he could keep me out of the way or get rid of me, and then... then I got messages. Tip-offs. Anonymous. Telling me where fugitives were hiding, where dealers made their trade, where stolen goods were fenced. For free. At first.’
The first taste is free, Ramirez reflected.
‘And things got better. Crime rates went down. I was getting results, I got transferred off the dead-end job because Beyer couldn’t ignore me, I was at his right hand.’ A muscle in the corner of Navarro’s jaw was twitching, his eyes screwed shut. ‘Then the anonymous tip-off identified himself and that was when I met him. Vincente. He said we both wanted the same thing, said he could help more if I got him into the Department’s communications network.’
Ramirez sighed. ‘And that’s how the comm blackout before the attack on the Second Precinct happened.’
‘I didn’t know! And when I confronted him, he pointed out I’d be held accountable for letting him in! And said I could do that, or... he said he and his people wouldn’t be on Thor forever, in Hardveur forever. And that the gangs wouldn’t be a problem. The smuggling, the drugs, they’d be gone. And that when Ragnarok left there was no way useless Beyer would still be the Commissioner. That I could have replaced him by then, and when they left, the old criminals would be already gone. It would be... better.’
‘Except for all those people who‘ve been murdered by Ragnarok. Innocents. Cops.’
Navarro opened his eyes to glare at her. ‘You - you don’t understand what this place was like before. Corrupt, dangerous. All the funding goes to the military and we get the least of the money, the minimum manpower, but people still live here. There’s a war on and the scum of society use it as their chance to pounce. You weren’t here. It was complicated.’
Ramirez sank onto her haunches in front of him, her fury faded to the same ebbing, background hum that had been there since Tycho was shot. Or, maybe, older than that - since the Battle of Thoth, since the Tragedy of Tyr...
‘No.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Good and bad. Right and wrong. It was difficult. But it wasn’t complicated.’
‘This from the cop who’s got me abducted in the middle of nowhere and was threatening to shoot me.’
Her expression didn’t change. ‘You ordered them to let Jovak go?’
‘Vincente said he was important. I - I told him about the bugs, he knew you were coming, he said you’d have to be got rid of.’
‘Right.’ Ramirez’s lips thinned. ‘Where do I find him?’
He winced. ‘I don’t know. I can get in touch with him, set up a meeting, but it’s on his terms. And I bet he knows you‘ve got me by now, there’s no way he’ll come out.’
‘Is he in charge of Ragnarok? He mentioned working for people.’
‘He’s not the one calling the shots. Vincente - he’s ex-military, it’s a job for him, he’s a cold bastard. But they‘re not all like that. Plenty of them? They believe, they believe in this violence for a better way, and someone’s pumping their head full of this. It’s not just bells and whistles for effect, the stuff they talk about in their vids. There’s belief at work.’
‘Locke?’
‘I don’t know. Could be.’ He squirmed. ‘I want protection.’
‘You know something about Locke and Ragnarok.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘The - he’s got his joint press event with the Mayor tomorrow. The Mayor’s people are providing the on-site protection but it’s the HCPD who’ll be handling security outside. No traffic in air-lanes within one mile of First Landing, people watching every window.’ Navarro drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Vincente had me put officers Ragnarok can trust on lane 26-Omicron. They’ll clear the route. And then they’ll go. I don’t know what he’s got planned, but it’ll be there.’
Harrigan drew a sharp breath. ‘The Mayor. That’s why he wanted sniping equipment. He’s going after the goddamn Mayor.’
Ramirez swore under her breath. ‘I need to know who in the HCPD is in Ragnarok’s pocket.’
‘I don’t - look, I can give you names, but I know this goes deeper than me.’ Navarro screwed his eyes shut again. ‘They‘ve been preparing this for months, getting themselves entrenched in the department, in the underworld, before making it happen. Any names I give you are only a partial list. And if you want that, I want protection,’ he repeated.
Ramirez looked at him for a moment. ‘Civilian trial. Off-world.’
‘I want that in writing.’
‘Anything in writing you know I can tear up.’ She hesitated. ‘But you’ll get it. As soon as I get the names, and anything else I want from you. I don’t think you‘re a bad guy, Navarro. I think you‘re weak, and an idiot.’ She reached down to haul his chair back upright. ‘I’ll let you think on what you want to tell me to make it a good agreement in writing.’
He was slumped now, defeated, and barely moved as she removed the cuffs. She could feel Harrigan’s eyes on her, piercing and evaluating, and didn’t look at him as they left the cell. He closed the door behind them and she stopped in the middle of the basement, her breathing ragged.
‘Why did you go in there?’ she said.
‘I wanted to get the boot in on him if that’s what we were doing -’
She whirled around, eyes blazing. ‘Why did you stop me?’
‘Was I supposed to stand there and let you shoot him?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’d hate me!’ His shout echoed in the cramped basement, the two of them glaring at one another until Harrigan’s shoulders sagged. ‘You’d blame me for making this happen, this cell with no lawyers and no rules. And more, you’d hate yourself for doing it.’
Ramirez tore her gaze away, looking to the window into Navarro’s cell. The sound-proofing meant he’d not heard their shouting and he was sat rubbing his wrists, looking not like a treacherous monster - just young, stupid, and afraid. ‘Why do you care?’
‘Because I swore an oath, once, and I thought it meant something,’ Harrigan said. ‘You can judge me and say I turned my back on the Confederacy, but it turned its back on me first. So I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Caring was stupid. But you -’ He jabbed a finger at her, no longer indignant but frustrated, even bewildered. ‘The government burns your homeworld and you keep on caring?’
Her breath caught in her throat. ‘It’s not about the government. It’s about the people. And the principles.’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’ She looked confused, and he shrugged. ‘You‘re a rare breed, Commander. You‘re not in this for the power kick, or just doing what you‘re told. If the Confederacy had more men and women like you in it, maybe I wouldn’t be some Marine chewed up and spat out... and maybe Tyr wouldn’t have burned.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I couldn’t let you destroy yourself in there. Besides, I didn’t save you. All I did was interrupt and give you a chance. You did the rest yourself.’
Ramirez exhaled slowly. ‘What happened to you, Harrigan?’
‘Me?’
‘You
He flinched. ‘Thought you said you’d read my file?’
‘I did. There’s more to any story than a file.’
Harrigan jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘It’s late,’ he said, tone now normal. ‘How about you get some sleep and I sling him a pad and stylus and he can sing whatever secrets he thinks will save his neck?’
She watched him for a moment but there was nothing but determination in his gaze. Ramirez sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But this conversation isn’t over. And tomorrow, we get to have an even harder job than convincing Navarro to talk.’
‘What’s that?’
She turned to the stairway. ‘Convincing the Mayor to listen.’