Noble Conflict (6 page)

The taller man charged at him. Kaspar took a half-step to his right in order to get the range correct and thrust his right leg straight into the man’s midriff. The guy left the ground, flew backwards before he dropped like a rock and hit his head on the pavement. Neither man moved. Kaspar quickly pressed his fingers against their throats to feel for a pulse. Both men were alive. Out for the count, but alive. Kaspar frisked them for weapons before he flipped them face down into the recovery position and plasti-cuffed
them to the wheel of the truck. He ran back to the car.

‘Call the Guardians and the medics,’ he shouted to Sara. ‘I’m going in.’

He stripped off Alun’s jacket, grabbed his rifle, thumbed off the safety and headed up the driveway of 864 Wissant Avenue.

From the outside it looked like thousands of other suburban homes, but the permanently closed net curtains concealed a hi-tech secret. This house was part of the Guardians’ distributed data network. Instead of concentrating all the data, and all the vulnerability, in one place, the data processing and archival facilities were spread out – a practice the High Councillors themselves followed when it came to their separate locations. Some hubs were in data centres, some in little bungalows like this one. It made it all but impossible to kill the entire network.

The door was open. Kaspar stopped and listened just outside the door. Sounds were coming from somewhere on the left. His grip on his weapon tightened. A deep breath later he entered the house, turning to his left, his stance immediately poised and ready.

For the second time in a week he came face to face with a man in a black costume. A
ninja
, as he had now begun to think of them, though this guy didn’t wear a mask. He was in his early twenties, with short-cut dark hair and dark-brown eyes. Kaspar instinctively shouldered his rifle and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing. No bang, no blue flash, no smell of ozone and, worst of all, no neural paralysis of the target.

‘Oh, well done!’ said a mocking voice inside Kaspar’s head. ‘You just took on a terrorist armed with nothing more than a child-friendly replica gun.’

Now he was going to die. And he deserved it for his complete stupidity. The ninja was equally surprised by what had happened, but recovered quickly to whisk a familiar-looking black-bladed dagger out of his boot. Kaspar dropped into a combat stance, ready to go hand-to-hand. The sweetish taste of adrenalin filled his mouth. This was it – kill or be killed. His first real experience of up-close-and-personal combat outside of the Academy. Kaspar forced himself to slow his breathing, never for a moment taking his eyes off his adversary. Their eyes locked.

But then the man smiled.

A simple, satisfied smile before he angled his knife and plunged the dagger into his own stomach. One shocked moment later, Kaspar ran over, but there was nothing to be done. The knife was hilt-deep in the man’s solar plexus. It must have transected his descending aorta. He was already dying and there was nothing Kaspar could do about it.

And as the man died, he was still smiling.

The good news about the afternoon’s excitement was that a terrorist attack had obviously been thwarted, but the bad news was starting to stack up fast. Kaspar was sitting in the conference room with Voss and a Justice Directorate liaison officer called Devon Salisbury. And Ms Salisbury was not happy, to say the least.

‘It really isn’t acceptable, having suspects die like that during deployments.’ She said the word ‘die’ as if it needed handling with tongs. ‘On top of which’ – she turned narrowed eyes to Kaspar – ‘it wasn’t even an authorized deployment. Tell me, Guardian Wilding, just how you managed to convert a visit to a primary school into an unprovoked assault on two farmers, an unauthorized entry into a secure communications facility and the avoidable death of a suspect?’

Kaspar’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t sure which part of that pile of crap he should tackle first. Maybe he should just throw the pen-pushing harpy out of the window.

‘Avoidable?’ he asked. ‘In what way was it avoidable? I walked into the room, he stabbed himself. He didn’t ask for my permission.’

‘He should have been rendered unconscious by means of your standard issue mark six neuro-paralyser rifle,’ she replied in a please-slap-my-face tone of voice.

‘Well, I didn’t have my mark six neuro-paralyser rifle with me, Ms Salisbury. It was confiscated by the Media Affairs department on the grounds of health and safety.’

Voss shook his head. ‘Stow the sarcasm, Wilding. Just tell us how you got involved.’

Kaspar pressed his thumb and index finger together just as hard as he could, a technique he used whenever he needed to take control of himself.

‘I recognized the truck, sir. It belongs to Ned Robson from Robson’s Farm, near to where I grew up. I’ve known him all my life. I learned to drive in that truck. Anyway, I know all Ned’s workers and I didn’t know those two. And Robson’s have had an exclusive contract with a super market chain for the last two years. No way should they have been making deliveries in a suburban street.’

‘The photographs from the scene show the truck was from Old Bob’s,’ frowned Voss.

‘Yeah,’ said Kaspar ruefully. ‘When I asked them if Old Bob still ran the company, they said yes. That was the clincher.’

‘Explain,’ prompted Voss.

‘The company is run by Ned, always has been. But it isn’t named after him. Old Bob was Ned’s dog, and that dog has been dead for six years.’

The computer on Voss’s desk chirped and he turned to look at the screen. After a few seconds he turned back.

‘Well, that’s confirmed then. We found the driver out cold and trussed up in the back of the truck. He’s going to be fine. Apparently he was hijacked on the way back from collecting a new pump from an engineering depot this morning.’

‘And as for unauthorized entry,’ Kaspar resumed, ‘I don’t think that it was my presence there that was the real problem. A better question would be how did the
terrorists
get in? In fact, how did the terrorists even find the place?’

Devon Salisbury’s lips pinched together with annoyance.

Yeah, got you there! Kaspar thought with satisfaction.

‘Commander Voss, I hope I don’t have to remind you of the absolute moral necessity for the Guardians to act non-lethally? The Council is very clear on this. We can’t have anyone’ – and she glanced sideways at Kaspar as if he were a pool of vomit – ‘thinking that one dead terrorist is a “good start”. Am I clear?’

Kaspar opened his mouth to say something cutting or sarcastic or obscene or all three, but Voss silenced him with a gesture.

‘We all know our duty, Ms Salisbury. Thanks for dropping by.’ Voss stood up and opened the conference room door, signalling that the meeting was now over.

Devon Salisbury got to her feet, her lips pursed into a fair approximation of an outraged duck’s face. She took the unsubtle hint and departed without saying another word. Voss quietly closed the door before heading back to the high-backed chair at the head of the conference table.
Kaspar stood before him, his hands behind his back, wondering if he was supposed to leave too.

‘Sir  . . .’

‘Guardian Wilding, in spite of my better judgement, I actually like you,’ said Voss. ‘You have the makings of an excellent Guardian.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Kaspar, surprised.

‘But you have a really annoying habit of drawing attention to yourself – and not always in a good way,’ Voss continued.

Kaspar knew it was too good to be true. An unqualified compliment from Voss? Yeah, right!

‘Now let’s have the whole full story and not just the edited highlights you gave to that twig-necked civilian,’ ordered Voss.

‘That was the whole story, sir. I entered the comms building, forgetting I wasn’t properly armed, and before I could get to the Insurgent he turned his knife on himself.’

‘What did you do when he dropped?’

‘I checked for a pulse, but there wasn’t one,’ Kaspar replied.

‘What was he after? Did you check the data screens?’

Kaspar hesitated; only for a moment, but it was more than long enough for Voss to pounce. ‘Spit it out, Guardian. And don’t make the mistake of treating me like a civilian.’

‘No, sir.’ As if! ‘I did look at the data screen the terrorist had been using, sir. He’d called up the blueprints of a number of underground tunnels far beyond Capital
City’s boundaries. Tunnels that haven’t been used in years, sir. And he’d also retrieved info on a number of out-of-the-way places, like Pelham Forest, which is even further away than the Badlands.’

Voss frowned. ‘Did he have some kind of recording or transmitting device on him?’

‘No, sir. I checked. One of his colleagues I pacified outside the building did, but the guy who killed himself didn’t get the chance to pass on the information.’

‘Listen, Guardian, this is important.’ Voss leaned forward, the look in his dark eyes intense. ‘Are you absolutely certain he had no way of passing on any information?’

‘Positive, sir.’

‘Hmmm. Good work, Guardian Wilding,’ Voss said, sitting back. ‘Let’s keep this between ourselves, OK? He must have failed in his mission if he was only looking at some locations of no importance, so there’s no need to mention the blueprints and scenery in your official report. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Kaspar didn’t understand, but he wasn’t about to question his boss’s motives.

‘Dismissed, Guardian.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Kaspar made sure he was out of the room with the door shut firmly behind him before he allowed a smile to take up residence.

Wonder of wonders! His boss liked him!

Unarmed combat practice was in full swing in the gym when Kaspar got back from seeing Voss. Everyone was paired up and going through knife-disarming drills. Just as he arrived, Trey, a new transfer, was holding a knife and circling the diminutive Mariska. He feigned leaping towards her but constantly drew back, a supercilious smile plastered across his face. Mariska stood watching him, her body very still. Uh-oh! Trey came loping in to close the distance, swinging the knife down in a lazy overhand before dancing away from Mariska, who still hadn’t moved, though her eyes never left Trey’s.

Kaspar winced.

He knew what was coming from painful experience. His first week at the Academy, Kaspar had been paired with Mariska for unarmed combat. Being brought up by his uncle to respect ‘those of the female persuasion’, he had held back. Despite Mariska’s repeated demands that he ‘get with the programme’ and ‘get serious’, he had soft-pedalled. Finally she had screamed. Not a girlie scream. Actually, not like any scream he’d ever heard. It was more of a psycho mental death howl. She’d launched herself at
him, kicked him in the groin, swept his feet out from under him with a calf-high spinning kick, split his lip by smashing his head into the mat and then knelt on his back and put him in a choke hold.

‘Don’t ever patronize me again, you lanky piece of shit,’ she had hissed in his ear. ‘You come at me with anything less than one hundred per cent and I will tear your balls off and use your scrotum as a change purse.’

Point made.

Later, as he was applying an ice pack to his lip and a bag of frozen peas to his genitals, Janna had been her characteristically sympathetic self.

‘Serves you right, Kas. We’re all training to be Guardians, you know. Even us delicate girlies. We all have to handle the same stuff,’ she said. ‘You don’t do anyone any favours by going easy on ’em in training. If someone can’t handle the rough stuff, it’s better they find out now in the gym, ’cause later on, out there, it’ll be too late.’

‘Yeah, I hear you,’ Kaspar muttered. ‘And I’m not lanky, I’m lean.’

‘Man, couldn’t you apply the ice pack to your tenders and the peas to your lip?’ moaned Dillon. ‘I’m on catering attachment this month and I was going to use those peas in a shepherd’s pie later.’

‘You still can,’ said Kaspar, peeved. ‘It’s not like I’ve taken them out of the packet.’

‘Are you off your nut?’ Dillon replied, scandalized. ‘No way is even one of those going anywhere near my lips.’

‘Your loss,’ Kaspar replied, unconcerned, readjusting the packet of peas before he got frostbite.

Next session, Kaspar had broken one of Mariska’s ribs with an elbow strike. It wasn’t intentional; it wasn’t payback in any way. It was just what happened sometimes when you committed fully.

‘That’s more like it,’ she had grunted, and actually smiled as he had tried to get her to breathe.

As he regarded Trey, who was still dancing around his opponent, Kaspar shook his head pityingly. Should he shout a warning? He’d just opened his mouth when, ‘Hey, Kas. I was looking for you,’ said Dillon, who had just emerged from the changing rooms.

‘I’ve never seen anyone, male or female, spend so long in the shower,’ said Kaspar.

‘Those of us not born on farms like to be clean,’ Dillon said loftily.

Kaspar shook his head, ‘But you take it to a whole new neurotic level.’

There was a blood-curdling scream, and out of the corner of his eye Kaspar saw the unconscious Trey hit the deck like a sackful of hammers.

‘Anyway, welcome back to the real world,’ said Dillon, ignoring the unconscious heap on the gym mat. ‘How come you aren’t being exhibited around Capital City today?’

‘Oh, that is so over,’ replied Kaspar with some delight. ‘I guess being involved with a death put a severe dent in
my ability to act as a walking advertisement for non-lethal law enforcement. So I am done for good with Media Liaison.’

‘I hear you decked a couple of farmhand impersonators.’

‘Yep.’

‘Nice one, mate. And is it true that terrorist boy stabbed himself?’ Dillon asked.

‘Yeah, that’s right. Why?’

‘Oh, you know  . . . some of the guys were thinking that maybe  . . .’

‘Maybe what?’

‘Well, maybe you  . . . kind of  . . . took him out?’

Kaspar looked around. A number of his mates were watching him, their gaze speculative. Kaspar turned back to Dillon.

‘No, Dillon, I did not take him out. I stood watching while he took
himself
out.’