Unexpected Witness (Forgotten Fodder Book 1) Read online

  It was only a moment before a tall, thin woman in uniform flanked by an obvious pair of subordinates arrived. She stepped up to Onima and offered her hand.

  “Lieutenant-Constable Gatha Thomas,” she introduced herself.

  “Marshal Onima Gwok.”

  “Please, follow me,” Thomas said, gesturing.

  Onima fell in beside Thomas, her three companions joining the lieutenant’s pair.

  “I’m glad you made good time getting here,” Thomas said as they began to pass through security doors. “The constable wants this dealt with as soon as possible. He really wants this out of our hands.”

  “What about this has the constable so keyed up?” questioned Onima.

  As they passed through the next door, they began to descend. “You’ll understand in a moment.”

  They were soon entering a morgue. Onima had considered if she should have brought her medical examiner along.

  They reached the cryo-beds, and Thomas punched in a code. Three of them opened with a hiss and slid out.

  Onima peered in. She saw that it was a male, probably in his late fifties, still in an impressive-looking business suit.

  “We expect you will take them with you,” remarked Thomas, gesturing to the three cryo-chambers.

  Onima tapped a key, and the chamber opened. Now she could clearly see the body.

  “You didn’t do an examination?” she asked Thomas.

  Thomas sighed. “Marshal Gwok, we haven’t had a crime in this district worse than a robbery or clone altercation since well before the war. We have no ME on staff, and the cause of death is quite obvious.”

  Onima didn’t need to be critical of how the locals did their policing. But she still considered it sloppy.

  Looking again at the body, it was obvious what the cause of death was. A single laser plasma bolt had hit the man in his left temple and exploded through the back of his head.

  Onima reached into a pocket in her blazer and withdrew a squared, flat monocle eyepiece that went over her right ear. Leaning in, she got a closer look at the wound.

  “This was not a close shot and went in very clean,” she said aloud. She looked to Thomas. “Sniper?”

  “That’s part of why the constable wants this out of our jurisdiction,” Thomas said. “This was an execution.”

  Onima nodded and turned back to look at the businessman. Then, she checked the information on the cryo-tube about who he was.

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. Palmer Cadoret was from New Terra in the Proxima Centauri system.

  That, however, was not the most interesting information. It was his employer that caught her eye.

  “Gray and Chuang Industries,” Onima said aloud.

  “Yes,” agreed Thomas. “And he isn’t just some nobody, either. According to his ID, he’s a deputy director of the company.”

  Everyone across the galaxy knew Gray and Chuang Industries, Interplanetary Limited. They were a behemoth, ranging across a huge number of different industries and planets.

  Gray and Chuang Industries had unlimited resources, ties to various governments, and a whole lot of influence and power. Some felt that they were too big and diverse and out-of-control as such.

  Onima knew that Gray and Chuang were known to have unproven associations and front companies tied to them. There was also a question of what they did and how they existed during and before the war.

  “Has someone reached out to the company about this man?” questioned Onima.

  “That’s above my pay grade,” admitted Thomas. “But I will reach out to the constable’s office.”

  Onima nodded. She joined two of her associates who were standing over the body of a clone.

  Like Mr. Cadoret, the clone had been shot through the forehead, just above the eyes. The plasma bolt had passed through the back of his skull.

  Onima looked at the clone. He didn’t appear to be anything other than a clone.

  She moved now to join Yael and the two local constables. The third body, also a clone, had been shot in the chest.

  Onima was familiar with clones. Overall, they were simply present, sometimes in the way. Clones had a pretty low standard of living, and they were often ignored or outright shunned, depending on the planetary system and local government.

  Onima knew that Planet Raven was largely neutral, even tolerant towards clones. Still, she knew they were not a part of most people’s lives.

  “Were these two simply bystanders?” asked Onima.

  “Not according to the witness,” Thomas said.

  “I want to see where this happened and speak with the constables that were on duty,” Onima requested. “Then I’ll want to speak to the witness.”

  “Follow me,” Thomas said.

  They left the morgue and returned to their van. Lieutenant Thomas pulled up beside them on a hovercycle and led Onima and her team to the site of the shooting.

  It wasn’t long before they were on a quiet street, not too far from the edge of Garden Mesa. It was early afternoon, and Onima noted that the sidewalk where the shooting had taken place was cordoned off.

  As she disembarked from the van, she saw that Lieutenant Thomas was joined by a trio of constables.

  Onima, with Yael beside her, approached.

  “Constables,” Thomas said, “this is Marshal Onima Gwok of the CBI.”

  “Tell me about what you found,” Onima requested.

  A sergeant stepped forward. “We were commed by the precinct that someone called in a shooting,” he said. “When we got here, we found three bodies and another clone with them. He claimed he was just checking on them. We restrained him, but he had no weapons on him. An examination of the bodies showed single plasma bolt shots. One each. Given the angles of impact and where the bodies lay, the shooter was up there.”

  The sergeant was pointing to a rooftop across the street.

  “Ito, Lopez, go figure out how to get up there,” Onima ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lopez replied.

  Onima took a datacard from a pocket and called up images of the trio in the morgue. She could tell that it was obvious that the shots that hit them had been fired from above.

  “What did the witness say?” Onima asked.

  “Nothing he said was reliable,” muttered one of the constables.

  “Mr. Park, that is quite enough from you,” Thomas admonished.

  The sergeant said, “The witness was the clone we retrained.”

  “The only witness?” questioned Onima.

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “I don’t suppose you still have him in custody?”

  “No, ma’am,” the sergeant said. “He posed no threat, Marshal. There is no way he was the shooter – in the time between the call, the comm to us, and our arrival, there’s no way the shooter could have gotten from a rooftop across the street to here.”

  Onima looked at the constable-sergeant. She knew an old, reliable law enforcement officer when she saw one. She nodded.

  “Do you have the clone’s information?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the sergeant said. He tapped a datacard on the sleeve of his uniform, pulling up and forwarding the information to Onima.

  She looked at her card and saw a wartime image of a clone. She noted his designation – Rojas AC J7-2247.

  “Do you know where I might find him?” she questioned.

  “Only place to find most clones,” said Lieutenant Thomas. “Copy Slum.”

  3

  Jace sat in silence, looking out at the blighted landscape through the cockpit windows.

  He often sat alone in the old transport’s command deck. The windows provided a view of the city.

  From this distance, Garden Mesa was just slightly elevated above the main plain. This had been a battlefield at the end of the war.

  The cease-fire had left the clones where they were. They received no recalls, no additional orders. Some of their war-machines were taken, some were used in various ways, but a great many of th
em – like this troop transport – were left behind.

  In the decade since the end of the war, the engines, defensive shields, and any other weapons had been scavenged. The only reason that the main power system remained was that someone had always squatted here.

  The entire former battlefield was littered with troop transports, tanks, once-armored personnel carriers, and various bits of mechanized ground-combat weapons. From where he sat, Jace could see the broken cockpit of an abandoned mech.

  The battlefield was not abandoned. It was occupied by several hundred clones. Because the Raven planetary government had a sympathetic attitude towards clones, they allowed them to remain where they were.

  Most of the larger abandoned vehicles like this troop transport were homes. A clone or two occupied the tanks, formers APCs, or had built shelters from old tents, broken vehicles, and whatever parts and pieces they could scavenge.

  This was Copy Slum.

  Though the majority of Copy Slum’s clones had been left behind and abandoned here after the war, others had found their way here because of the willingness of the Raven government to allow them to live.

  Jace had not been on Raven at the end of the war. Truth be told, he didn’t think he was ever told what planet he was on when the cease-fire came.

  The non-clone colonel that took Jace on as a guard had taken him off-planet. They visited several places before the colonel got sloppy, left his guards without a word, and got himself killed. Jace had been unceremoniously dumped on Raven just over nine years ago.

  The troop transport had been capable of carrying a fifty-clone platoon of light-infantry, plus 4 officers. It would have been packed tightly, an upper and lower deck of thirteen seats on either side and enough space down the middle to accommodate four soldiers’ egress at a time.

  The command deck, off the upper level, accommodated a pilot, a co-pilot, and two more.

  This transport was now home to Jace and two other clones.

  For about a year-and-a-half, Jace had no single place in Copy Slum that he had called home. But then he met John Doe Rojas when they both got a job inspecting and cleaning out piping in a Garden Mesa sewage treatment plant. John learned that Jace had no permanent home, while he had lost a roommate. John invited Jace to the transport.

  The hold was split into four rooms. Two on the upper deck, two on the lower deck. Each had a cot, an improvised closet, a chair, and were personalized by their occupants.

  The transport had had a bodily waste disposal unit and wash basin on the upper deck. A shower had been improvised at some point over the years as well as laundry.

  There was a very simple, crude kitchen towards the rear of the lower deck. Fortunately, clones had been engineered to survive on considerably less food and water than normal humans.

  Jace heard a commotion towards the back of the transport. He got up from the pilot’s seat and made his way back.

  “John? Zee?” he called out.

  “I think…I think John is back,” Zee Alpha Three, Jace’s other roommate, called. “Was he away? Yeah, he was. I think. He’s back, now.”

  Jace was the only one living on the upper deck. Zee lived beneath him. There was a ladder mounted on the fuselage at the point which had been the middle of the deck. Jace took ahold of the side rails and slid down.

  Zee Alpha Three had been a cavalry clone – a tank driver. His clone designation had been Zang AC B3-3149. Jace worried about Zee because over the last month or so he had become increasingly erratic. He’d been prone to forgetfulness and stated more than once that he was having trouble holding onto thoughts.

  Clones had been engineered to have eidetic memories. It had not, for some reason, always worked perfectly, but all had impressive memory skills. This was why slipping memories was troubling.

  Not that anyone cared about clone maladies.

  “John?” Jace called as he took the few remaining steps towards his friend’s room. John had left to do a job in Garden Mesa two days ago and not been back since.

  “It’s me,” John said. He did not sound right to Jace.

  Jace entered John’s room and sighed.

  John Doe Rojas, formerly Rojas AC J2-0123, was from the same template as Jace but an earlier batch. Though he and Jace were clones, John looked different from Jace because he was plumper and wore a beard.

  At the moment, he was also a bruised and battered mess.

  “What happened?” asked Jace. John was lying on his bunk, looking distraught.

  “You know how it is,” he said. “The job was a lie. A small gang of unemployed guys looking for some fun. They took turns beating on me but got bored when I refused to fight back.”

  Jace sighed. This sort of thing was not uncommon. Gangs of thugs beating on clones because - unless they were in the middle of a busy street or crowded market - the constables would do nothing to help a clone.

  When you fought back that got you killed. Nobody mourned dead clones save other clones.

  “Damn,” Jace heard behind him. Zee had come into the room. Jace couldn’t help but notice he was looking oddly unwell. Clones didn’t get sick.

  “Grab the med kit, Zee,” Jace requested.

  “Sure,” Zee said. He passed through the room and out the other side. They kept a medical kit in the kitchen.

  “Still alive,” John commented. He coughed and winced. “Not that it feels good to be alive.”

  “We should have some salve to help,” Jace said. Then he heard Zee cursing.

  “You okay?” Jace called.

  “Yeah…yeah,” Zee replied tentatively. Then, “But I can’t grip the strap.”

  Jace arose and crossed the room. He saw Zee trying to grab ahold of the handle of the medical kit duffel but failing. His hand was opening and closing spastically but not grabbing.

  “Zee?” Jace asked.

  “It’s getting worse,” Zee remarked. “Thoughts just…go. Can’t hold onto anything. And now I can’t hold… Can’t grip.”

  Jace noticed the mix of frustration and consternation on Zee’s face, and so he went and gently grabbed the bag.

  “Come with me,” he told Zee.

  Unfortunately, a clone couldn’t go and see a doctor. No physician would treat a clone.

  While clones tended not to get sick, Jace had heard about some malady going around only affecting clones. Zee was exhibiting the signs of it.

  As they returned to John, Jace heard a sound you seldom heard in Copy Slum. Someone was driving a vehicle outside.

  Clones were barely able to make enough ESCA to get food and clothing. No clone, not even those with specialties that landed them jobs, made enough to rent or buy a vehicle.

  That meant either the constables were making a round through Copy Slum, or perhaps a it was curious off-worlder. It wasn’t Jace’s concern presently.

  He reached John, set down the duffel, and opened it. He looked for the canister of salve that would instantly begin to heal the bruises.

  “Anything broken?” Jace asked.

  “My pride?” replied John.

  “You had some?” questioned Zee.

  “Of course. I’m handsome,” John replied.

  “No…not really,” said Zee.

  Jace found the salve. Getting this had cost a month’s worth of pay from a job he’d gotten working with drones underground, exploring old wiring and fuel lines.

  “Want me to do this or can you?” Jace asked.

  “Maybe you can get my arms for me, so I can lift them more easily,” John replied, holding up his bloodied, bruised arms.

  “They really beat you good, huh?” Jace remarked. “I told you never to take independent gigs.”

  “You have.”

  “Only after you meet them on an industrial or government job,” Jace replied. As he carefully rubbed salve into John’s arm, there was a knock at the transport’s hatch.

  “Yeah?” Jace shouted.

  “I am looking for Rojas AC J7-2247,” a female voice replied.

 
“One minute,” called Jace. He set the salve on the edge of John’s bed as he stood up.

  “Stay here, Zee.”

  Jace made his way to the hatch and opened it.

  The woman outside the hold clearly did not belong in Copy Slum. She was obviously not a clone, as well as being dressed far too finely for a casual visitor.