Duplicate Effort Part 36

He appeared as a holoimage on her desk. She didn't know he had that capability. In fact, she didn't know that her desk could show holoimages.

Then she realized he wasn't using his usual system. He was coming through someone else's security filter, and instead of creating a two-dimensional visual image of his face in front of her vision, it created a holoimage.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"My lawyer's," he said, apparently not minding that she hadn't said h.e.l.lo. DeRicci nodded. "We had a power glitch here," he said. "I traced it to the source. It came from Gramming Corporation."

"We've had a number of those glitches," DeRicci said, "and we know that Gramming is causing them. Do you know why?"

Flint's mouth narrowed. DeRicci knew that expression. Her old partner wasn't going to tell her everything.

She hated it when he did that. "Let's just say that Gramming is trolling for information it shouldn't have." "In a lawyer's office?" DeRicci asked. "And other places," Flint said. "It's also deleting records." DeRicci frowned. "Do you know why?"

"It's a security breach," Flint said, not answering her at all. "A serious one. Gramming has gotten into the public database and now it's working on some private ones. The company is misusing minute power failures to interrupt and destroy information in various locations. It seems to me that such behavior should worry the Security Chief for the United Domes of the Moon. Imagine if this gets bigger. Imagine if they want to shut down the environmental systems domewide."

"Imagine if you just answered my question instead of giving me information I already know," DeRicci said. "Do you know why?"

"Shouldn't you stop them and ask them yourself?" Flint asked.

DeRicci grinned at him. "You want me to go into Gramming and seize their equipment."

"Seems to me the situation warrants it. And the police can't do it. Only the Moon's security chief has the authority for such a large seizure."

"And you want to come with me, right?" DeRicci asked.

Flint smiled back at her and nodded. "You know me well, Noelle."

"I know you well enough to know you have your own agenda here. You'll compromise my raid." "I will not," he said.

She tilted her head, unsure how he would see her. "You realize you're transmitting a holoimage."

"Yeah. It's one of the security protocols that I haven't shut off yet. When this system feels threatened, it goes to more complex matrices." He paused, then gave her his most charming look. "Take me along. I promise I won't compromise anything."

"A civilian on a government raid will compromise this," DeRicci said. "Especially when said civilian just completed an adoption of his own."

"I didn't work through Gramming," Flint said.

"Yes, but Ki Bowles mentioned them in that brand-new report of hers." DeRicci was finally glad she'd watched it more than once. "Is that what got her killed?"

"Probably," Flint said with reluctance. "Have you told Bartholomew yet?" DeRicci asked. "No," Flint said. "You probably should." "You're not going to take him on the raid, either, are you?" Flint asked.

"Nope," DeRicci said. "Although I will share information with him. Which is more than you're probably going to do."

Flint's entire body looked deflated. Or maybe that was just the smallness of his image, standing there on her desk.

"You're going to need me on this, Noelle."

"I already have enough to arrest everyone at Gramming and seize their a.s.sets," DeRicci said. "I don't need you at all. But I appreciate the heads-up."

"Noelle-"

"Tell me one thing, Miles. How come you're just letting me know about this now?"

"Because I just found it," he said.

"I wish I could believe that," DeRicci said, and signed off. Flint was planning something. He wanted access, and he wanted her to give it to him.

So she had to act quickly.

61.

Flint felt rather than saw DeRicci sever the connection. One moment they were talking, the next he felt like he was on his own.

He put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Talia asked.

He didn't have a lot of time. If he'd gone with DeRicci he could have taken some of the records on his own. But he couldn't do that now.

"Dad?" Talia asked.

Flint opened his eyes. Both Van Alen and Talia were watching him from the table.

"Maxine, contact Nyquist. Let him know that Gramming is connected to Ki Bowles's death. Tell him that DeRicci is going to run a raid on that organization and he needs a court order to get some of the records."

"All right," Van Alen said. "But what about this discussion of revealing to children that they're clones, maybe destroying families?"

"I'm going to have to wipe the records," Flint said. He didn't want to, but he would have to. It was the only way to protect the children.

"Then there'll be no case," Van Alen said. "At least not for the murder, and maybe not even for the United Domes. They'll be accused of hara.s.sment."

"Gramming did use power glitches to steal information."

"Or maybe its system malfunctioned and sent out some virus that did that. Without motive, a case could fall apart. You can't touch those records."

"He can't just leave them," Talia said, her voice rising. "The news stories alone will break up families. And maybe parents will get arrested for buying children."

"Probably not," Van Alen said. "I'm sorry to say that clones are viewed differently."

"And that's the problem," Talia said. "Dad, you can't let those records get out."

Flint stared at Talia for a moment, then at Van Alen. They both had valid points, and while he contemplated them, he was losing time.

Families were fragile, but families broke up naturally when the children grew up. The child left home and the family re-formed into something different.

Gramming had been doing this for twenty years. Which meant that the older children had reached eighteen, which was the age of majority in the Earth Alliance.

He could use the files from eighteen to twenty years ago. Those clones would legally be adults.

And he could use the pending files as well, the children that weren't yet sold. That would be more than enough to convict anyone of baby selling-or whatever DeRicci wanted to do. It would give her motive if nothing else.

If he deleted the information properly, it would look like Gramming itself was trying to cover its own tracks.

He didn't have a lot of time. And he couldn't follow the back trace all by himself, not and complete this before DeRicci arrived. All of the material had to be gone before she seized the computer systems. "Talia," Flint said. "Get a networked notebook in here, and sit down beside me. I'm going to need your help."

62.

Nyquist was having a very strange day. First he arrested one of the most powerful attorneys in the Earth Alliance on charges that just might stick, and then he got a message from another attorney, not quite as powerful, that told him the people who killed Ki Bowles had been hired by Gramming Corporation. Oh, and that he was not to contact the second attorney with questions. She wouldn't answer them. But she recommended that he pet.i.tion a court for a warrant to look at the material Noelle DeRicci was about to seize from Gramming in a raid she was conducting now.

He sat at his desk, feeling a bit stunned. Gramming had been in Bowles's report. He remembered the name. He also remembered that she had mentioned it in pa.s.sing.

Which meant that Gramming was tied to WSX, and Flint had implied-in that one strange communique before he got kidnapped-that WSX's files were tied to Bowles.

So there was a link; Nyquist just didn't know what it was. And he probably wouldn't know, not without files that DeRicci was somehow going to get.

He shook his head. After DeRicci's coldness to his request to shut off the Hunting Club's security system earlier, he wasn't going to contact her about this.

Instead, he was going to take Maxine Van Alen's advice and request a warrant for the information. It wouldn't be hard to get: He had an ongoing investigation and a tip from an informant. Plus a mention of the company by the victim.

If it all worked, he would finally get his answers.

63.

Gramming Corporation was at the outskirts of Armstrong, in an older section of the dome. The dome here wasn't as old as it was near Flint's building, but it was old enough to have a yellowish tinge to its plastic and chips in its exterior that looked dangerous enough to warrant replacement.

DeRicci had already studied the maps. Gramming's building was small. The corporation itself had eleven employees, and they filled the single-story rectangular building almost to capacity.

The building had six windows, four doors-two industrial strength-and no bas.e.m.e.nt level.

DeRicci brought a team of twenty, all in survival gear, all with laser pistols and laser rifles and an emergency knife. They wore masks, just in case someone used a gas in part of an attack, and they moved with quiet deliberation.

She'd made the security vehicles park nearly a block away. She monitored Gramming's communications before she approached, and jammed them after the vehicles were in position.

By now, the company's employees had to know something was up, but they wouldn't know what. She doubted that people who worked in an adoption agency-no matter what illegal activities some of them were partic.i.p.ating in-would expect a full-fledged security raid.

When she told the governor-general she was planning this, she had said she would just supervise. But they both knew better.

DeRicci did send the first team in, so that they could surround the exits, but she was going to break into the building herself.

She hadn't done something like this since she had been a detective, and she missed it. She slipped the environmental mask over her face, let it distort her vision for a moment, and then took her position at the front of the phalanx.

Her team spread beside and behind her in an open triangle. They moved slowly, taking each step as if they expected an attack.

Someone announced to the building that they were being raided and that they'd better open the doors, or the doors would be opened for them. The voice, distorted by the mask and the amplifier, was one DeRicci didn't recognize.

She held her laser rifle tightly, crouching just a little, as the double doors up front swung open. The woman who stood behind them was slight and gray haired. She wore a dress that didn't quite fit properly and she was in her stocking feet.

She raised her hands and yelled, "You have the wrong building. We're an adoption agency." "Gramming?" DeRicci shouted. Her voice didn't sound like her own, either.

"Yes."

"We have the right building." DeRicci turned to the man beside her. "Secure that woman. The rest of us are going in."

The woman screamed as the security officer grabbed her and moved her out of the way. The rest of the team poured through the door, laser rifles out, ready to shoot if necessary.

Other employees, standing near the door, fell to their knees, covering their heads. A few screamed. Others started to cry.

DeRicci's sense of enjoyment was fading. She didn't want to terrorize do-gooders.

She could feel the energy leave the bust. So she went through the central door first.

Now she saw some desks and a few more employees. They hid behind the chairs or the desks and peered around them, s.h.i.+vering in terror.

Only one door remained closed.

It had a sign in the center: pREsiDENT AND CHIEF: OHARI KINOY.

The sign itself seemed a bit pretentious for the business, and that sinking feeling that DeRicci had faded. This was right. She knew it.

She kicked the door open. It slammed backward with a bang.

A small redheaded man sat behind a very big desk. He had a laser pistol pointed at his own head. Behind him, a computer screen rose, ostentatiously deleting information.

"Stay back," he said.

DeRicci pulled up her mask. "You're going to kill yourself? Are you kidding?"

"I mean it," he said. "Stay back."

She let her own rifle down. "You realize this is a security raid. You've been messing with the power grid. That's illegal."

And then she recited the code. "But it's certainly not something to kill yourself over." He was shaking. His eyes were full of tears.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake," she said, and dropped her own rifle. She motioned at everyone else to come in the door. "Seize the computers and stop them from deleting information."

"I'm going to shoot myself," the man said.