Chapter 351
“What do we want to do next?” Dev asked. We both leaned against the side of his cruiser while we watched Embercore try to put out the purple flames. It was an oddly pretty sight.
”Track down this Lavender guy.” It seemed like the next best step. The arsonist was wrapped up into this somehow… ‘Sides, I’d checked out his bounty while waiting. 300,000 dead, 900,000 alive. Lavender had torched quite a few corporate assets, and they wanted retribution.
If I could just get him alive, I’d have enough rayn for a large fraction of the apartment building above the speakeasy. This Lavender guy had been on the run for years from the Crusade though, so he wouldn’t just fall into my lap. Reports indicated he was a strong Netrunner too, which was worrying.
Alternatively, we could dig through everyone that knew we requested a jaeger. It would probably be a relatively short list, but that was overlooking the fact Dev and the jaeger waited in a spot with high traffic. Anyone could’ve guessed what we were planning, especially if they knew Hope—and by extension Dev—was on the case.
And it really could’ve just been coincidence that the place was burned down right after I requested the jaeger. The mastermind behind this could’ve already planned on burning away the evidence.
Knight Bruce approached us, causing Dev to flinch down toward his gun. He stopped just before grabbing it, but the flash of silver movement caught my eye. “Bruce.”
”Dev.” Knight Bruce’s voice sounded particularly unfriendly when directed toward the other squire. “You’re still… you, I see.”
Dev didn’t reply. At least, not by speaking. Instead, he very slowly continued his movement and dropped his hand onto the grip of his gun. It lacked the usual twitchiness I’d come to know the squire for.
”Ahem.” I stepped in front of Dev before things could escalate much further. “Did you get the list?”
”All on here.” The Knight flicked a chip toward me. “Though, like I said, it probably won’t do you any good.”
I snatched it out of the air. “Probably. I’d be a fool to ignore a potential source of clues, though.”
“You inquisitor types,” the Knight shook his head, “don’t know how you do it. It’s so much easier just bashing skulls in.”
”You’ve got to know whose skulls to bash somehow, chek?” Classic Knight behavior. I’d expect nothing more of the intellectually inferior subset of Blue Crusade Inc.
“I guess.” The Knight glanced at Dev and me one more time, then walked back toward the raging fire without another word.
I watched him go while rolling the chip filled with names over my knuckles. Honestly, I also doubted I’d find anything on it. No way our traitor would be that sloppy. “You have anything else you want to do here?”
Dev pushed off from the cruiser and waved a hand toward the blazing building. “I did my sweep yesterday with the rest of the squad.”
“Then let’s get out of here.” It’d take them a long time to put the fire out at this rate. We were better of making good use of our time. Especially with the strict timeframe Commander Light gave us.
I slid into the car, checked my phone, and sent up a map ping onto the windshield HUD. It was to one of Lavender’s previous hits—a warehouse in Portside about a month ago. This guy was surprisingly prolific with his arson. How was he not caught yet?
Dev glanced toward the map and then tapped a button on the steering wheel. The entire HUD faded and we pulled out onto the street. Lights and sirens on, of course.
— - —
Finding Lavender wouldn’t be as simple as finding a run of the mill arsonist. Normal arsonists were easy enough to backtrack. They were usually sloppy, had clear motives, and not all that careful since they assumed the fire would clear out the evidence. Lavender had been around long enough to muddy the waters though.
The easiest way to look for him would probably be through finding the source of the chemical he used to light the fires. It was something the Crusade had pursued in the past when hunting for the arsonist, but it never turned up anything. Regardless, though, Lavender had to get chemicals from somewhere.
Outside of that, I wanted to look over some previous scenes. I could read all the documentation from previous investigations in the Crusade database, ‘course, but that couldn’t compare to getting a look at the scene myself. Not to mention the reports of Lavender’s crimes were a bit weird. They were kinda… empty?
I half expected for the warehouse to be a rundown warehouse in the middle of a ghetto like most of the time I’d been to Portside. Instead, the map led us toward a nicer side of the district. One that I'd heard about, but never had much of a reason to come to: Redhook Logistics Zone.
The entire several blocks that made up the zone were owned by Redhook Logistics, a private storage company for high-end corporations that couldn’t be bothered to operate a storage facility for themselves. It was the kind of place every thief would dream about coming to—only to have said dreams crushed by the security of the place.
The entire zone was walled in by Redhook, creating a section that was practically a bunker. It had the works—guards, cams, turrets, drones, and sensors built into every fraction of the zone. Redhook had nailed the security to the point hundreds of corpos were willing to pay the massive prices to have storage here.
This was supposed to be a secure, untraceable facility for all sorts of stuff. Going through here would be like opening up a loot box. Every storage room could just be weird collector shit, could be some kind of super expensive black-tech, or maybe a private art vault. The more I thought about this, the more I wanted to try and slip in some time just for the fun of it.
The cruiser hummed low as it moved along the streets of Portside covered in a thin layer of slush. The air was slightly hazy with light snowfall. That, and the smog drifting from other sections of the city. “You sure about this?”
”Chek?” I looked away from the snowy streets of Aythryn City and checked on Dev. He looked even worse than usual, and that was saying something. “What’s wrong?”
”Nothing, nothing… Redhook’s basically a kill box though. Once we get in, if they decide we’re a threat—“ He cut himself off and shook his head.
”It’ll be fine. They wouldn’t attack a bunch of Crusaders, right?” Not many groups would take the risk. They’d have to be completely idiots to—
“A knight and his five squires died here about a year back.” His hunch grew more pronounced and he leaned over the steering wheel in a position that looked downright painful. “Redhook’s backed by powerful people. Powerful enough people that the Crusade’s internal investigation concluded Redhook acted within their right as self-defense.”
Oh… that changed things. Some of his tension bled into me. Granted, they could’ve very well been in their right, but it smelled fishy. If they were willing to gun down even a Knight… I discretely checked my weapons and backup strategies. Worst case scenario, we could try to hold out and call in support from Commander Ligh and the rest of the Crusade.
Dev drove us toward one of several gates leading further into the facility. A heavily armed Redhook PMC, supported by a duo in polished power armor, approached. He leaned down and rested his hand on the open window of the cruiser. “What brings you here, officers?”
Dev’s hands tensed on the steering wheel like he was thinking about throwing a punch at the guy invading his personal space. His personal space, of course, included the entire block around the squire. “Investigating a fire.”
“Warehouse eight-thirteen,” I leaned forward and piped up from the passenger seat.
“Warehouse eight-thirteen…” The leader leaned back away from the window and tapped on a dataslate. “Your investigation closed a month ago.”
“It’s been reopened in connection to another case.” Dev glanced toward the gates. “Are you going to let us in or not?”
”Of course, of course.” The merc motioned to the duo in power armor and brushed off a thin layer of snow that’d gathered on his dataslate. “Your badge ID’s? For the logs.”
Dev shook his head and started muttering something deeply insulting under his breath. I chose to ignore his mutters and fished out my badge. I tossed it through the small gap in the window right into the man’s hand. “Try not to drop it.”
”I’d never, officer.” The guard keyed in both our badge ID’s and then got out of the way. We were let into the walled zone with little more fanfare.
The other side of the massive gates were a little more plain then I expected. An office building stood to one side, and what looked like a barracks to the other. Freight trucks idled just inside the area where they were carefully unloaded and moved onto Redhook’s own waiting vehicles.
Beyond that, there was the security itself. That drew my attention more than anything. Lightpoles with floodlights were scattered so densely around the space there were hardly any shadows. Each pole was covered in a dense hive of cameras and sensors.
Quadcopter styled drones, each easily as big as my hover bike with onboard guns and sensor arrays, hovered around the space and made the air hum lightly. They moved perfectly in sync with each other, creating very few gaps to slip through.
What the drones didn’t cover, which was basically only under stuff, heavily armed PMCs did. Patrol squads moved constantly around the space. Most of them were on foot, but there were several APCs lined up and ready to go near the barracks. If someone was discovered where they shouldn’t be, they’d likely only have a matter of minutes before the full company crashed down onto them.
That was just the physical and obvious side of security. I had no doubt there were dozens of different layers underneath all of that that weren’t so visible. Not to mention this place likely had a whole array of Netrunners hiding out somewhere.
Beyond the entry, rows and rows of similar boxes. All of them looked alike, and all of them were covered in dense arrays of security. It’d be easy to get lost in this kind of place where everything was so samey.
“Something feels off about this place.” Dev muttered under his breath. He kept glancing up toward the rear view mirror as we slid deeper into the facility.
“What gave that away?” I side-eyed him and then turned my attention back to sweeping the security. “Let’s just check out the warehouse, and get out of here. We’ve got a few other spots to check out.”
“We’re being followed.”
Several Redhook armored cars reflected back at us in the rear view mirror. They weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they were tailing us. It was almost like a warning—we better not stray from what we said we were here to do. It didn’t matter to them that we were Crusade.
”Just ignore them.” I nodded forward to a warehouse that didn’t look like the others. The entire thing was a burned out husk that looked like it might collapse at any moment if not for the scaffolding holding it up. “We’re here, anyway.”
That didn’t seem to help the squire at all. He threw the car into park, fidgeted uncontrollably, and glanced at the rear-view mirror several times. ”Right… still, in the back, I’ve got several boxes of ammo and a—“
“We’ll be fine.” I popped open the door, nearly slipped on a patch of ice, and moved around to let out CJ29. I leaned down into the doorframe and met Dev’s baggy eyes. “The sooner we get in and out, the better.”
He let out a breath and likewise slid out of the cruiser. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself.” I slammed the door shut and followed behind him toward the burned out warehouse.