Chapter 352
Dev stalled at the door into the place. He waved a hand when I looked back. “You go on… I’ll watch them. Just in case.”
”Uh—chek.” I shook my head and moved deeper into the burned out warehouse. Debris of burned crates and items lay everywhere.
”Call me if you need me.” Dev turned away and headed back for the door.
I whistled sharply, and CJ29 darted over to me. The hound’s metal legals clanked sharply against the floor and he disturbed the ash that’d settled across the place. “CJ29, search the area.”
The hound dropped its nose to the ground and broke out into a grid-like search pattern. I didn’t have a lab to send stuff to for chemical analysis, but the olfactory sensors in his nose should be good enough to pick up the accelerants.
While he did that, I turned my attention back to the Crusade report over the arson. According to Knight Akef, who originally came to investigate, the fire started in the very center of the place thanks to a firebomb Lavender somehow managed to sneak into the logistics zone.
I worked my way through the ash and toward the center of the storage facility. At a glance, something was wrong. I wasn’t a fire expert by any means, but I had been playing around with fire quite a bit as of late. Especially after messing around with my blaze rounds.
The obvious structural damage was the best place to start, and I could move on form there. The roof had been penetrated by the blaze, and the vents above were visibly charred and covered with soot. Fire wouldn’t have naturally gotten up that high, though. There was nothing to burn up there.
I moved around the area full of storage racks and charred pallets. By following the damage from the least melted racks to the most melted, it wasn’t all that difficult to find the fire’s point of origin. I followed the trail to almost entirely melted shelving back in a corner of the room. The walls, chipped like something had exploded, indicated a rapid exothermic reaction.
I whistled once more and called CJ29 to me. The metal hound bounded through the warehouse and pulled to a stop at my legs. “Search here.”
After I let the hound do its thing, I popped open the back casing and checked the jaeger’s internal terminal. There were the chemicals I expected, of course. Only, it wasn’t just here CJ29 found them. Glycerol was all over the warehouse, and pockets of potassium permanganate were scattered around.
Unless Lavender had time to soak absolutely everything in here with glycerol, which I found highly unlikely given Redhook’s security, then there was something else going on. Not to mention the fire’s point of origin was very clearly different from the report.
Hmm… I pulled up the Crusade’s database and looked through it for other fires related to Lavender. Almost every single one of them were written by the same Knight Akef, with only a few here and there by others. His reports all indicated the same thing—a firebomb went off.
Now, it wasn’t surprising reports wouldn’t be well written in the Crusade. I could look through the database and find hundreds of similarly underwhelming reports if I really wanted to. If it wasn’t an Inquisitor writing it, then it was a Knight. And Knights weren’t exactly the intelligent side of the Crusade. It was a little off-putting the reports were downright wrong, though.
I scrolled to a report written by someone else. It was much more detailed, and fully broke down the intense hypergolic reaction when potassium permanganate met glycerol. They violently ignited upon contact and produced such an extreme heat that they could easily punch through some low-grade heat resistant materials.
According to the other report, the fire suppression systems were found to be tampered with. The knight who was writing it suspected additional chemicals would be found around the scene, but they were quickly pulled off the case when the whole Circle fiasco struck. Most Crusaders were pulled off their cases during that time, to be fair.
That pattern repeated on most of the other reports too. There was a traitor in the Crusade helping Lavender. That much was clear. I noted down Knight Akef’s name to check out and turned my attention back to the warehouse.
Fire suppression systems were tampered with in other sites, so it was a safe bet to check them out next. I seriously doubted Lavender would’ve had the time or capability to tamper with the sprinkler heads themselves and the piping network that went through the ceilings and walls. That left the control valves and wherever they have all the rest of the system.
I moved back to the door just in time to find Dev and the Redhook mercs in a silent standoff. Dev sat against the hood of the cruiser, and the rest of the mercs stayed in the cars circling us.
”Ahem.” I coughed lightly and leaned against the broken doorframe. “You boys busy?”
The leader of the Redhook group snorted coldly. He was a new face, scars stretching out into a forced smile from his lips. “Busy ensuring you don’t fuck anything up.”
”Speakng of fuck ups, do you remember the previous Crusader who came to check this out?” I kicked the doorframe lightly. The squads of mercs were making me exceptionally tense. Focusing on the job was probably the right call.
”Yeah, he was in and out in thirty minutes. Really, some people should take after him.” He glared at me.
”We can get out of here quicker if you help me out.” I put on a kind, innocent smile and leaned forward slightly. “Otherwise, we may be here days. Can you imagine what clients would think seeing us dig around? Clients who are definitely keeping illicit—”
“Don’t push your luck, brat.” The man scowled, though it was hard to tell with his enforced smile. He kicked open the door to his car and stepped out. “What do you want to know?”
”Perfect!” I waved a hand back to the warehouse. “Do you happen to know what kind of fire systems this warehouse had in place? Oh, and do you have cameras inside the warehouses?”
“No. We take privacy very seriously. If there’s cameras inside a warehouse, they were set up by our clients. We don’t have access, and have no idea what they have in there.” He sighed and motioned around to the back. “The fire systems all run independently. The pump and tank should be around back somewhere.”
I figured. I didn’t want to waste time looking for it though. “Could you lead me? So we can leave quicker, ‘course.”
The leader looked extremely unwilling, but the promises of getting out of the logistics zone quicker goaded him on. He turned back to the squads. “You guys stay here. Let’s go, princess.”
“Oh, you’re too kind.” I followed after the man down an alley between two storage facilities. We were quiet all the way to the back, where he unlocked a hatch using his biometrics that led beneath the warehouse.
The room beneath was a massive utility area full of stuff. Everything from the electrical to the fire suppression systems were down here in neatly organized sections. Off to the back, another room was locked away from the rest. “What’s back there?”
The man stepped between me and the door. ”A private office. They come with every warehouse. You don’t need to see that too, do you?”
“No, no.” I shook my head and moved over to the piping networks. He probably wouldn’t let me in, and I doubted the client left anything in there after their stuff was wiped out by the fire. “Sit, CJ29.”
The pumps and stuff all looked good. None of the valves were turned off, and nothing looked tampered with. The pump itself was in a secluded room away from the rest of the stuff, and even that looked good. It would’ve had more than enough pressure to suppress the fire.
My biggest issue was that the suppression system didn’t work like I thought it did. Redhook installed some kind of vapor displacement system that jetted up from underneath the cement using nano-jets and killed fire that way. Simultaneously, a self-disintegrating foam owed through the sprinkler heads. It was all very advanced—advanced enough I didn’t have any problems checking it with Technical Expertise.
If I was reading the system right, then it relied on an external tank of chemicals, which then would be put under pressure and turned into a mist to douse fires and displace oxygen. The other side of the system was a more traditional sprinkler system, but they were modified for the foam.
I found the tank after digging around through the place a bit more. “CJ29, come check this out.”
The metal hound carefully maneuvered through the mechanical room and leaned closer to the tanks. I popped open his back panel and checked his scan readouts. “Who would’ve had access to the fire systems?”
“The company that put them in. Why?”
”They’ve been tampered with.” I leaned forward and checked the rest of the system just in case. It looked like just the suppression chemical had been swapped out. Instead, it’d accelerated the blaze. Someone didn’t want this fire stopped, and they had the know how and access to ensure the suppression systems wouldn’t be active. The foam was full of Potassium Permanganate and the mist jets were full of Glycerol. Only the intense pressure pouring through the pipes kept the entire warehouse from exploding.
“So?”
“Any chance you can tell me what corporation put them in, and the last person to come do a checkup? Last thing we need before leaving.” I clasped my hands together and once more put on my best innocent princess in desperate need of help act.
”I do hate you.” The merc sighed and pulled out a radio. “Percy, pull up the logs for the last operator from Phyxaflame. Have them ready for our… guests from the Crusade. They’re just on their way out.”
”No need to tell me twice.” I whistled sharply for CJ29 and worked my way back to Dev.
— - —
“What happened to finding the armor?” Hope sighed and pressed a hand to her temple. Or, at least, the metal mask covering her temple. “Redhook’s been flooding my inbox with complaints for the past hour and a half.”
”Heh—oppsie?” I shrugged and leaned back in the chair. “So, what do you think?”
We were in a private meeting room. Hope didn’t have an office, and simply giving one to her was apparently out of the question. Instead, Ligh hooked us up with a meeting room and stationed a wall of Knights out front to keep everyone else out.
“Definetely worth digging into.” She rubbed her chin. I’d already filled her in on my escapades so far. “What did you say his name was?”
”Knight Afek.” I shrugged. “I don’t have high enough permissions to check the database’s personnel files.”
”I’ll look into it.” Hope’s attention turned to the others in the room. “Joshua?
“Still working on it.” Joshua tossed a knife into the air and then caught it by the hilt before repeating the process. “Some guy was asking around about a high-risk heist a month ago. Might be a lead.”
”Keep looking into it.”
“I’ve got nothing…” Dev spoke up before she could ask. “Zuku took care of everything at the warehouse.”
”That’s fine.” Hope leaned over the table and looked between us like we were puzzle pieces. Silence settled across the room while she tried to figure out whatever she was working on in her head.
Joshua twirled in his chair and faced me, catching his knife just before it could slam into his leg. “What’ve you been up to, Zuku? Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
”Oh, you know… this and that.” I waved a hand. “Nothing too important.”
Joshua caught the dagger once more and held it pointed loosely in my direction. He then winked and tossed it back into the air. “Of course, of course. I think I heard something about you looking into Savants recently.”
“Chek.” What did the wink mean? I stared at him, but his expression offered no more hints. “Just, uh, just keeping busy.”
”Savants are a good target.” Dev entered the conversation. The squire twitched when Joshua turned to him with his knife, though didn’t back down. “Better than stealing fr—“
Bang!
Joshua slammed the knife deep into the table, cutting off whatever Dev was about to say. Everyone around the table froze. He got his expression back under control and forced casual ease as he leaned back. “Ahem…”
”That’s coming out of your wages.” Hope’s voice turned flat. She didn’t even glance at the blade—or comment on what Dev was about to say. Did she just not hear?
“Right.” The squire’s face flushed slightly as he yanked the knife free from the table. “So? You, uh, you figure it out?”
“Yeah.” Hope leaned back in her chair and imitated my posture. “I’ll dig into Knight Akef, and a few other Crusaders who’ve caught my eye. Dev, you’re with me.”
The twitchy man looked up a moment and then went back to tapping his leg far too quickly. “Got it.”
The Inquisitor nodded sharply and her attention drifted to Joshua. “Keep working the streets. I want you to get info on every heist that’s gone down in the past three months. Even if it's some creep stealing bras, I want to know about it.”
“Got it.” Joshua paused for a moment and side-eyed me. “What about the ones with Nightshade?”
”Even those.” Hope didn’t seem to notice and moved on to me. “Zuku, you push the Phyxaflame Corp angle and try to find whoever sabotaged the fire suppression systems. There's a good chance you’ll need a warrant, so go straight to Ligh.”
“A warrant?” Woah… was this the first time I was actually hearing a Crusader speak about a warrant without any prompting. How wild.
”Phyxaflame isn’t easily bullied.” She shrugged. “They’ve got some friends on the council, and are responsible for the fire systems in over half of Aythryn City. Bettter play it safe.”
”Got it.” They were linked to the city council too? This was getting more and more complicated. “Do you know where he is?”
”Try the commander’s office. If not there, his assistant should be able to tell you where.” Hope looked around the room. “Everyone good?”
Joshua’s hand shot up and flapped around with faux-excitement. “Can I get a Waymaker?”
Hope froze. ”Why the hell do you need one of those?”
“I need to go to Sunderland.” He shrugged. “Or another flyer, I guess. Those aren’t as armored, though.”
”It’s not that bad of a trip.” I’d made it without any issues when checking out the Leper-Khans. “Just pack lots of water.”
”Still, flyers are faster.” Joshua nodded to Hope. “So?”
”I’ll see what I can do. Most flyers are already assigned, I think.” Hope shrugged. “Anyone else?”
”Can I keep the jaeger?” CJ29 had been quite helpful so far. No point sending him back to collect dust somewhere in a Crusade warehouse.
“Send him to the basement to get retrofitted with a chemical analyzer while you’re at it. It’ll be a bit more precise then what you’re working with now.”
“Chek.” I flashed a thumbs up.
“Anything else?” Hope pushed herself away from the table and eyed each of us. “Then lets get to work.”