Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files) by C.S. Stinton
* *
‘How have people got through the door with rifles?’ Locke hissed as Ramirez pushed him towards the model of Aquila Twelve.
‘By your security detail and the HCPD being crooked, and Mayor Kelvin’s security detail either gone with him or dealing with the panicking masses out front. They must have been waiting as backup in case the shooting didn’t work. And with this level of chaos, who the hell’s going to stop them?’
Locke’s eyes widened as he ducked through the half-sized hatchway. ‘You?’
‘Yeah. Just me and my Hauer 55 against four ex-military hired guns and their modern military-grade rifles.’ Ramirez reached for her ankle, pulling out her backup pistol. ‘Do you have any idea how to use a gun?’
‘Where do you think I grew up, Morrigan?’
‘You point it. You pull the trigger.’ Ramirez pulled back the slide on the pistol to chamber a round, and flicked the switch on the side. ‘It’s ready to fire and the safety’s off. Brace it with both hands; this isn’t a high-calibre pistol but be ready for recoil. Don’t point it at me. Don’t point it at yourself.’
Locke took it without enthusiasm. ‘I’m a politician. You’re the Marshal.’
‘And today someone’s trying to kill you and we’re outnumbered. The power of the Orion Senate isn’t going to count for anything if Ragnarok find us in here. You point it. You pull the trigger.’ She grabbed his wrist and pushed the gun into his hands. ‘It’s not easy. But it’s not supposed to be easy. Stick by me.’
He met her gaze, and that fear which had humanised him remained. ‘I notice you’re not promising it’ll be all right.’
‘I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I do promise that I will not leave you, you hear me? If they get you, it’s because I’m already dead.’
Locke swallowed. ‘That’s so reassuring I might vomit. I thought you hated me?’
‘I’m the daughter of Maria Ramirez. How can I hate a man making a peaceful stand in the name of freedom?’ She gave a rueful smile and he returned it, the first hint of reassurance creeping into his gaze.
Then she heard metal scraping on metal, and pushed him further through the hatch. ‘I think they’re coming. Get out of sight.’
The model had not been designed for anyone to enter. There were mock-ups elsewhere of the interior of Aquila Twelve, a cylindrical, clunky ship which had little more to it than an FTL drive, some reconnaissance equipment, and living space for the crew who’d be away from nearby, recently-colonised Alpha Centauri for several months. But this model was supposed to be admired only from the outside, and so they ducked into nothing more than a hollow metal cylinder which was only half as big as a ship where a crew of twelve had once lived and worked.
So it was all the more surprising that it wasn’t empty, and Ramirez saw Locke jerk his gun upright before he stopped himself, finger tense on the trigger. ‘Anita!’ His voice rasped with surprise and fear. ‘What’re you doing here?’
Anita Singh, Locke’s normally composed assistant, was cowering in a corner, tear-stained and curled up in a ball of terror and tailored suit. She looked up at her name, eyes widening, and gave a whimper of what sounded like relief. ‘Mister Locke - you’re all right…’ She rose shakily, and Locke hurried over.
Ramirez turned away to hunker down in the open hatch, ears strained to listen for any sign of the Ragnarok gunmen. The museum wasn’t large. There were only so many places to hunt through. ‘Just keep quiet.’
Singh was crying, hands shoved in her pockets, shoulders hunched. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whimpered to Locke. ‘The shooting started and security were leaving but I was going to wait for you, and then you didn’t get here so I ran back to hide…’
Footsteps thumped outside, heavy boots on tiles, and Ramirez lifted a hand for silence. Locke saw this and put his gun down, placing reassuring hands on Singh’s shoulders. ‘Anita, it’s all right. Just stay quiet, and we’ll get through this. Okay?’
‘I’m so sorry, Graham,’ she whimpered, and the hairs on the back of Ramirez’s neck stood up. Right as Anita Singh pulled a holdout pistol from her pocket and fired it into Locke’s gut.
Even as the echo of the gunshot faded, she could hear footsteps thundering in their direction. Locke dropped with a thud, but the pistol had fallen from Singh’s hands and hit the ground first, the assistant backing away, tears falling anew. ‘I’m sorry! They told me - I had no choice!’
‘Son of a -’ Ramirez pulled away from the door and rushed over, Hauer levelled on Singh. ‘Get down! Down on the ground with your hands on your head!’
Singh did so still weeping. ‘I didn’t have a choice!’
Heart thudding in her chest, Ramirez yanked out her cuffs to bind up Singh. The footsteps were beating closer to the Aquila Twelve, and with a shaking breath, once the whimpering Singh was restrained, she turned to Locke.
Who was on his back, wide eyes staring at the ceiling - but he stirred and gasped, and when his hands tumbled away from his abdomen, there was no blood. ‘Ouch,’ Locke croaked.
She flew to his side, tugging his jacket open - and slumped with relief as she saw that the armour mesh layer, though it hadn’t saved Tycho against a Machenry round, had saved him against a bullet from a small-calibre holdout pistol like Singh’s. ‘You’re all right,’ she breathed. ‘It’ll hurt, but it didn’t go through. Christ.’
‘Ramirez!’
She tensed at the shout. She knew that voice. It was Vincente. ‘Be quiet,’ she hissed at Singh, and reached for Locke’s tie. It made a decent enough gag for the assistant - she could probably scream, but she’d be incoherent. ‘Unless you want us to all get killed, shut up.’
‘Come on out, Ramirez.’ Vincente’s voice echoed through the model, laconic. ‘Let’s talk. And if you don’t, I’ll just pepper these walls with bullets. You know they won’t do a thing for cover.’
And he was right; the model had been designed for looks, not to be sturdy. Her gaze met Locke’s. ‘Get her gun,’ she said, retrieving her own backup. ‘And don’t move.’
He sat up, eyes wide. ‘You’re going out there?’
‘I have to keep you alive. And if I stay in here, you die for sure.’ She slipped the holdout pistol into her ankle holster and got to her feet. ‘Keep your head down, stay silent, and if you get half a chance in hell of running… take it.’
‘Commander -’
‘I’m the only one who can go out there and buy you some time.’
‘And you’ll die. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.’
‘Actually, sir,’ she said, unable to keep a wry note from her voice, ‘that is my job.’ And, gun in hand, Commander Ramirez stepped through the doorway and into the line of fire.
16
The skies of Hardveur were lying to her again. Sunlight breaking through the glass dome ceiling of the museum softened everything with a gentle glow that had no place in a tense stand-off with this many guns.
Ramirez’s heart wasn’t thumping in her chest. Her mouth wasn’t too dry, and her breathing came evenly. She could look into the barrels of all four 2288 Machenry rifles and not blink. She had no plan. She had no idea how she was going to keep Vincente and his three men at bay, and she didn’t know if any cavalry would come to save her with a long enough delay anyway. There was no trick up her sleeve, and there were no words that could make Bartholomew Vincente not want to blow her head off. There was, in fact, nothing she could do to stay alive.
The helplessness was comforting. It meant she didn’t have to worry, didn’t have to race her thoughts through her options. There was no trying to think two steps ahead of her opponent. There was only the moment, and what she would do with it.
Her Hauer 55, a powerful handgun but insignificant in the face of Ragnarok’s weapons, hung heavy and comforting in her hand. They’d been together a long time, and now would be together until the end. She clung to the reassuring weight as she descended the ramp to the museum floor, and looked at Vincente’s three men
She smiled. It wasn’t a wry, sarcastic smile; this was no time for banter. It was just a calm, polite smile, and she gave them a nod. ‘Mister Vincente.’
‘Commander Ramirez.’ His smile was tinged with frustration. ‘You’re becoming a nuisance, interfering with my work.’
‘That’s my job.’
‘I have to remove nuisances,’ he said. ‘But if you step out of the way and let us have Graham Locke, you won’t be a nuisance.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘I didn’t know you were so interested in his corpse.’ The flash in Vincente’s eyes was telling. ‘Anita Singh did her work well. She shot him. He’s dead.’ The lie came easy, the appearance of sincerity born of necessity. ‘It’s just you and me.’
‘And my three friends. Singh?’
‘Cuffed and gagged inside.’
‘You didn’t shoot her?’
‘I had the power to take her alive, so I took her alive. It’s not my job to kill when I don’t have to.’ Her thoughts were forming together out of the serenity of helplessness. All she had to do was buy Locke a chance, with time and chaos to escape in.
‘Nor mine. And I don’t have to kill you here and now, Commander.’
It was impossible to hide her short, wry laugh. ‘This ends in bullets flying, Vincente, we both know that. The only question is how many of your men I shoot before I get perforated. You already know I can hit a shadow across a dark street in the blink of an eye.’ She did not need confirmation that her attempted shooting had been on Ragnarok’s orders, but Vincente’s flinch gave it anyway.
‘Ragnarok’s won. You’ve lost. I don’t gain anything by killing you - days ago your death would have been headline news. With Locke dead, you’ll be a footnote. So give me your gun, your pad and the targeting beacon so there are no surprises, let my men go in to confirm the job’s done, and we’ll walk away.’
Her backup pistol hung heavy by her ankle. She’d had it in the warehouse and it hadn’t done much good, but if she could split their attention then she still had a chance. And as with then, if she refused, they’d take no chances and just shoot her.
‘Fine,’ she said, snapping her Hauer’s safety on, and she tossed it to the floor between them. ‘I’m getting out my pad, and the beacon. Feel free to shoot me if my thumb twitches dangerously.’
The pad came first, the screen dimmed, sound silenced for the last five minutes, and she didn’t dare switch it on to see if there were messages or news. That she tossed to the ground, and tapped with her foot to slide it across to Vincente. He nodded. ‘And the beacon.’
She kept her movements slow as she reached to her pocket to pull out the small, hand-held cylinder. Which was when she saw its little light was back on.
It took all her professional skill to keep her face level as she tossed it to Vincente’s feet.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and knelt to pick it up. ‘This is expensive -’
She fancied he saw, in the moment he picked up the beacon, that it had been reactivated. Whether he knew what this meant was impossible to say - she didn’t know what it meant. Maybe his sniper was still out there. Maybe Harrigan hadn’t found him. Maybe Harrigan was dead.
The hope she hadn’t dared hope blossomed to life when a glass pane in the roof shattered and the side of Vincente’s thigh burst out with a spray of blood.
Everything seemed to slow. Vincente was collapsing to the ground, screaming. His trio of gunmen were spinning around in surprise. And she was lunging for the nearest cover, a solid marble pillar, already yanking her backup sidearm from its ankle-holster.
She hit the ground and let off two rounds that thudded into the nearest of the three gunmen. He dropped, and before his comrades could process that she was a threat, she’d scrambled sideways and was behind the column, blocked from their line of fire.
Her free hand came to her earpiece. ‘Harrigan?’
No reply, still, so she focused her attention on what was going on behind her instead of potentially miles away. The two Ragnarok gunmen were calling to one another, giving instructions to take cover, to be wary of snipers. Then as she heard their thumping footsteps their voices became only low mumbles, as she would expect from trained military. They had to have comms, and there was no way they’d let her hear their further planning after the first, surprised shouts. Vincente had fallen into desperate whimpering by now, and there was no sound from the man she’d shot.
And all was silent.
Headshots. They’ll be armoured, too, and you have a small-calibre sidearm. You got lucky just then. Headshots.
Ramirez slowed her breathing. They knew where she was. She didn’t dare risk poking her head out to see where they were. But tactics were obvious. They would keep hidden, move to flank her, deny her cover and shoot her like a fish in a barrel.
In this case, tactics being obvious didn’t mean they weren’t effective. All she could do was risk repositioning, which meant moving out into the open, or try to stay quiet and listen. For the moment, she went with listening.
Then there was more gunfire. Wild, frenzied gunfire, coming from the doorway of the Aquila Twelve, and when she poked her head around the side of the pillar she could see Locke crouched there, shooting a gun he was barely trained to use into the midst of the exhibits.
He hit nothing. But his shots were enough to send two black-clad Ragnarok gunmen scrambling out from their cover, outflanked from an unexpected direction, and she didn’t hesitate. Her shots thudded into one - first at the chest and getting no more than a jerk as body armour absorbed the round, but the second bullet hit him in the neck and he went down. But even as she turned her gun on the other, he’d brought his rifle up and let off a burst of automatic gunfire in her direction. The bullets whistled overhead by inches, some thudding into the pillar and spraying her with dust and masonry. The thunderous rounds didn’t stop as she scrambled back into cover, the gunman still running as he fired.
Then he ran past the squirming form of Vincente and fell with no more sound than that of a bullet thudding through his chest, fired from too far away for the gunshot to be heard, and the thump when he hit the floor.
And all was silent.
Ramirez ejected her clip and thudded in fresh ammunition. ‘Stay down!’ she barked at Locke. ‘Get in cover and stay there!’
‘They’re not moving!’ he called, voice on the edge of hysteria.
She didn’t answer, just rose to her feet and came around the pillar, gun held in both hands. In the blink of an eye she confirmed the two she’d shot and the last one to fall were, indeed, not moving. The only motion and sound came from Bart Vincente, who was lying in an expanding pool of his own blood and still clutching his leg. With a bullet of as high a calibre as a Machenry’s, he was missing a good chunk of flesh, and Ramirez forced herself to not flinch as she saw bone through the gore.
She’d seen worse happen to people who deserved it less. But she kept her gun trained on him as she approached, gaze only flickering in the direction of the model of the Aquila Twelve. ‘Mister Locke, are you all right?’
‘I - yes - did I hit them?’ His voice was faint.
‘No. I did,’ she said. It was true enough for now, so she focused her attention on Vincente and kicked the Machenry rifle away from his grasp, even if he looked in no state to use it. ‘Bartholomew Vincente, by the authority vested in me by the Orion Confederacy Marshals Service, you are under arrest for acts of terrorism.’
He sputtered. ‘Son of a - you think this ends it?’
‘Then what does?’ Her gun remained steady. ‘You’re not the boss of Ragnarok. Who is?’
Vincente only sneered through the pain, and then there were thudding footsteps from the front of the museum and a familiar shout. ‘Stand down! HCPD! We’ll take it from here, Commander!’
Ramirez turn
‘This is my prisoner,’ she said. ‘I have warned you that your men are compromised by Ragnarok; you are not taking charge of a high-profile terrorist or ensuring the safety of one of the organisation’s targets!’ Her gun twitched in her hand, though she knew its authority would do nothing but escalate here.
Beyer was bright red, and he gestured for his men to stop before he approached. His shoulders were tense, moustache bristling, and when he reached her, stood over the limp shape of Vincente, he dropped his voice to a low, furious growl. ‘I stood down the men on your list when the attack started. These are people I can trust. And if you don’t trust me, trust the fact that I got the press crawling over my ass out there and if I so much as fart they will fucking write about it.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re - Christ, you’re disgusting. You’re only here because when the shooting started you had no choice, aren’t you.’
‘And now I’m doing it the best I can, so unless you want to guard Locke on your own while you deal with these bodies and watch your prisoner, how about you shut up and let me do my job instead of shouting about corruption everywhere?’
There was something pleading in his eyes, but it wasn’t that which made her step back. ‘Mister Locke?’
Locke was moving away from the HCPD towards her, skittish. He clung on to his small handgun with an iron grip, and it was only when she gently laid her hands on his that he finally released it. His expression suggested he hadn’t realised he was clinging on. ‘Commander, I really don’t know what to say.’ His voice was hoarse.
‘Let’s start with the truth, shall we, Mister Locke?’ She summoned a sunny smile she didn’t feel. ‘But not to me. Or to the HCPD, though by all means, let them escort you outside - and tell the truth to the press waiting outside?’
She had to hand it to him. For a man unaccustomed to such violence, he recovered marvellously at the prospect of stepping back onto his own turf, the public stage. He smiled. ‘We’ll talk later, Commander Ramirez. Please, count on it.’
Then he was gone, swept away by two members of the HCPD, and all around her the police were, finally, doing their work. The bodies were checked, the guns secured, Beyer was talking on his earpiece to get medical assistance in for their key suspect, and now nobody was paying attention to her.
The body of the man she’d hit with her first shots was being pulled into a black bag, the paramedics hauling him about like a ruined ragdoll destined for the garbage pile to be later replaced with a newer, prettier toy. She couldn’t see his face from this angle, couldn’t even remember his face from the gunfight.
She didn’t need to. He was Li Jintao, the first person she’d ever killed, nothing more than small-time drug dealer who’d pulled his gun on station security back on Gateway, only her training meant she’d drawn faster. He was Petty Officer Hahana, the first Confederate Spacer she’d seen warped and changed to the shambling form of a Null, into whose body, head, limbs she’d pounded countless rounds before he collapsed. He was Stephen Wainwright, the Ragnarok sniper who would have been her executioner, but whom she’d gunned down instead.
This was not the first person she’d killed. It would not be the last.
Concentration steadied the shake in her hand as she holstered her Hauer at last, a simple gesture which nevertheless returned the comforting weight to her hip, and made her feel like balance was redressed.
And when she straightened, John Harrigan was stood in front of her. He looked a state, blood dried down the side of his face, bruising growing around his neck, but he stood tall and wore his usual, lopsided smirk. ‘Sorry I was late.’
She couldn’t help herself. She grinned. ‘That was good shooting.’
‘A military-grade targeting beacon helped. Sorry I couldn’t comm you - I, er, lost the pad. And the earpiece. So I did what I could from up there. And when the police caught up with me, told me where to find you.’
‘Please tell me you’re not under arrest.’
‘Not this time. I know, novelty, ain’t it?’ He looked at the fuss of the HCPD working all around them, Ms Singh now being escorted out of the Aquila Twelve, still in cuffs, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Can we trust ‘em?’
‘I don’t think Beyer can afford to let anything go wrong on something as high-profile as this. And with Navarro’s information, he’s finally benched the officers we know for sure were in Ragnarok’s pocket. If there are any more, hopefully they’ll keep their heads down with so many of their people dead, with Vincente arrested. And the press are going to be crawling all over this once Locke’s done talking to them.’ Ramirez’s lips thinned. ‘I don’t think he has a choice but to be trustworthy.’
‘He could have done it sooner. Like, when you sent him those names.’
‘I guess it’s easier to be brave when it’s act or be really screwed. He preferred to ignore my warning and hope nothing happened. But for someone to try to kill Graham Locke and for him to do nothing? That looks too bad.’
He nodded, gaze sweeping over the activity, which swelled as the medics arrived to bundle the unconscious Vincente onto a stretcher. When Harrigan spoke again his voice was low, thoughtful. ‘I guess it’s over.’
‘There’s interrogation. And processing. But the Marshals’ work here? We’ve cut up this branch of Ragnarok. Arrested the field leader, who’ll hopefully give us more names. And we know one of the fences they’re getting their guns from. So, yes. It’s over.’
Harrigan sighed. Then he turned to her and extended his hands, fists clenched, wrists close together. ‘Then that makes my part in all of this over. You don’t need a consultant no more. You need a deserter and smuggler to be sent back to Odin to face a court martial.’
Ramirez looked at him. He was still big and scruffy, still with the air of irreverence, but there was an glint of rueful sincerity in his eyes. She wasn’t sure if it had always been there, or if she now knew how to look for it. She glanced to the gathered masses, the huge crowd paying them absolutely no attention, then shrugged. ‘My cuffs are on Singh.’ Harrigan grinned, and she frowned. ‘What?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You hesitated. For a moment there, you actually thought about letting me run. ‘cos what’s one more petty smuggler in a galaxy of violence, especially when that smuggler might not be all bad?’
Ramirez kept her expression studied. ‘If I let you go, that would be criminal.’
‘If you let me go, you wouldn’t be you.’ Harrigan drew a deep breath. ‘It’s been an honour working with you, Commander.’
She met his blue-eyed gaze. ‘I’ll be sure I‘m at your court martial, Staff Sergeant.’
‘Is that meant to make me feel better?’
‘I’ll tell the truth. Good and bad.’
‘Well,’ said Harrigan. ‘Guess I’m screwed.’