II
Three hours later, we were all standing in Horus's office. The chief was now dry and fully dressed in a fresh uniform, but it hadn't improved his temper. On the screen of his deskcom, we could see several eyecam views from around HQ as the repairs — and the investigation — got underway.
"That is not what I want to hear, Eleanor," said Horus, from behind his desk.
"Then this isn't your lucky day, Commander, because it's the truth," said Caelestis. "So far, we have no clues whatsoever."
"Of course this isn't our lucky day," said Horus. "It's a serious contender for worst day ever. But don't give me that, Deputy-Commander. Every crime leaves a footprint. You know that as well as I do. They will have left something."
He was the only one of us sitting down as the rest of the chairs were currently stuck to the ceiling by the plant. Free of the energy shield, the plant's shoots had spread out of the vault, through the holes Caelestis and her men had cut through the walls, and were now weaving their way through the entire complex. On some of the eyecam views, I could see the techs using handheld lasers to burn the shoots off and slowly chase the plant back down to the vault, but Hephaestus had insisted that they had to prioritise to protect the environmental and central computer systems and — to Horus's fury — his office wasn't at the top of the list.
"They did," said Caelestis. "They left seven hundred and eighteen actual footprints in the Ocean of Storms outside, a large amount of explosive and chemical residue, one off-the-shelf transport robot and three black market Unirifles that could have come from anywhere. They have not, however, left anything we can use to find or identify them."
"Just keep looking!" said Horus. He tore off one of the shoots that was creeping onto his desk and threw it into the recycle bin. There was a small flash of light as the lasers broke it down to its constituent molecules. "Check everything again. And tell the intelligence department to get off their backsides and start earning their pay. This took planning. Months of planning. They will have left evidence somewhere."
"I already have, sir, and forensics are double-checking," said Caelestis. She looked at the rest of us. "I don't suppose any of you got a good look at them?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "Identical spacesuits and helmets. We couldn't see any details at all."
"There were two tall ones, one short one, one very short and two middling," said Deborah. "Other than that, zilch."
"They were all combat trained," said Mirabi. She absently rubbed her ribs where one of the robo-raptors had landed on her. "Weapons and hand-to-hand. They were good."
"Yes, my first thought was soldiers," said Jake. "Or at least ex-ones. Jupiter Imperia commandos, Solar Union marines maybe?"
"I would sincerely like to believe that those two forces have better things to be doing than attacking us, Helios," said Caelestis.
"I said ex," said Jake.
"Look, if we don't know who they were, should we start with what they were after?" I said. "What was in the drawer, sir? I didn't get a good look."
That question had been on my mind since I'd seen which drawer they'd broken into. It wasn't just because I was curious — they'd gone to a lot of trouble and effort just to steal one item — but because the drawer number — 300929 — kept rolling about at the back of my mind and wouldn't go away. There was something about it that pulsed and echoed at the edge of my subconscious, trying to break through. It was like having a word on the tip of my tongue or a very faint childhood memory stirring up. It could only be because the number was familiar to me in some way, but I couldn't work out why or remember how.
"That's classified," said Horus. "Need to know only. Dismissed, Eleanor. You too, Helios. Shiva."
Jake and Deborah both blinked and raised their eyebrows. They were both detectives and had the same security clearance as Mirabi and me. Caelestis should have been cleared even higher. But they followed her out of the room, glancing at me and Mirabi. I heard Caelestis telling them to go and see the debriefing team before the door closed.
"Do you want to tell him or shall I?" said Horus. He tore another shoot off his desk.
"What?" I said. I looked around at him. "Tell me...?"
I broke off as I noticed Mirabi's expression. My partner looked relaxed, calm and deliberately disinterested. She only ever looked like this when she was about to tell me something she knew I didn't want to hear, and I realised she already knew what had been in the drawer.
"No. I'll do it," she said. She looked across at me. "It's you, Erik. It's your cloning tube. The one I brought back from the future."
I stared at her. My mind was blank, completely dead, for about ten seconds. Then it started moving again, and very quickly sped up to a sprint, as I tried to process this. It was the last thing I'd expected.
In one of time travel's self-contained, solution-providing, chrono-genesis-artefact-creating paradoxes, I was a clone of myself from the future. Five years ago, when she was a junior officer, an exploding time engine had thrown Mirabi forward in time; twenty-five years into the future. There, on a burning space station at the edge of the Solar System, she had met a 45 year old ChronOps officer, who had taken a blood sample from his own arm, given Mirabi the sampler he'd used, and sent her back to the present with it. She had just had time to see him get shot from behind as she dematerialised. When she'd arrived back in the present, the sampler had turned out to be a highly advanced cloning tube. I had grown out of the officer's DNA and a blank human embryo inside it; going from a foetus to a 20 year old in 18 hours. I'd woken up without any memories from my "parent" — cloning tech evidently hadn't advanced that far in twenty years — and I'd spent most of the last five years, all of my life so far, believing that I was going to live until I was 45, when I would meet the young Mirabi, give her my blood sample and send her back to the past to create me, and then get shot dead seconds afterwards.
My own trip to the future three months ago had revealed that I had — or rather, I would — survive getting shot and would live hopefully a long, full life afterwards. The people I'd met there, the family I never knew I had, had given me real hope for that too. But I'd been so overjoyed at learning that I wasn't going to die young after all that I'd never stopped to ask what had happened to the cloning tube Mirabi had brought back. I'd never thought about it or even wondered where it was or if ChronOps still had it. But then I remembered that Horus had declared it a Level-1 future artefact, which meant it would have been confined in the vault, in draw number 300929...
I jolted in my seat. The date in the future that Mirabi and I had both gone to, where we'd met my future self on the burning space station, was the 30th of September 3029.
"Do you need me to spell out for you, Midgard, or can you work it out yourself?" said Horus. "Izanami in archives loves those smart-alec codes."
"They stole my cloning tube?" I said.
"Yes, they did," said Mirabi. "I didn't realise which drawer it was until afterwards."
"But... Why?" I said.
"How the hax should I know? You should have stopped to ask them," said Horus. "But the fact is they did and, so far, they've gotten clean away with it."
"But...," I said. "No. Sir! We've got to get it back. We've got to find them!"
I started to stand up, but Mirabi grabbed my arm.
"Do you always have to dwell on the obvious, Midgard?" said Horus. "Of course we have to get it back. The last thing I need is a group of heavily armed criminals running about with 3020s technology. Don't worry. We'll find them."
"Oh, good. Great," I said, managing to get a hold of myself. "I'll go and help Deputy-Commander Cae..."
"No, you won't. Helios and Shiva will," said Horus, without looking up. "You two are going to Oxbridge Luna."
For a long moment, I wasn't sure if I'd heard him correctly. I stared at the chief, waiting for him to repeat himself. Mirabi was doing it too.
"What? Oxbridge Luna?" I said, when he didn't. "Why?"
"What for?" said Mirabi.
"Partly because somebody's been murdered there, but mostly because I'm ordering you to," said Horus, calling up an emergency call file on his deskcom. "The call came twenty minutes ago, so you'd better get moving. I would have despatched you sooner, but — for obvious reasons — I've been a bit distracted."
"Can't someone else respond?" I said. I couldn't believe he was giving this to us now. Not after all that had happened and not when I had something far more important to do.
"As I shouldn't have to remind you, Midgard, you two are on duty this afternoon," said Horus. "This is an emergency call. You are responding to it. Heroics over your lunch hour do not change the duty roster."
"You cannot be serious!" I said. "I need to be here! It's my cloning tube they've stolen! I need to lead the..."
"Don't even say it!" said Horus, pointing one finger at me and glaring at me along it. "You are not leading the investigation into what's just happened, Midgard. Your... involvement it is precisely why you're not. You proved to me three months ago I can't trust you with something like this."
"This is ridiculous!" I said. I vaguely realised I was skating on thin ice here, but I was too angry to care. "I had to go to the future! I was meant to be there. I explained that. This is unfair. You can't stop me..."
"Life is unfair, Midgard. Get used to it," said Horus. "And as for not stopping you; just watch me."
"But..."
"Do you want to spend the next forty-eight hours confined to quarters, Detective Midgard, or do you want to do your job?" said Horus. "There is a murder victim at Oxbridge Luna. They are just as deserving of your attention as this is. Get moving."
_ _ _ _ _
I didn't anything as we walked through the complex to the nearest set of teleporter pads. Mirabi let me brood and punched in all the co-ordinates that had come with the 10-10-10 call herself.
The implications were bad. The cloning tube — my cloning tube — had been stolen. Even though I'd never thought about it before today, it now felt like the nearest thing I had to a family in this time period. It was in the hands of strangers and they were doing Darwin knew what with it. The fact that it was the only thing they'd stolen, and that they'd risked life and limb and probably endless prison sentences to get it, meant that they had to know what it was. That meant they knew who I was, which possibly meant it was a good thing I'd been wearing a spacesuit without an identity tag when we fought in the vault. The full story of my origins was technically still secret information. Everyone in my ChronOps division knew I was Erik Midgard of course, but only Mirabi, Jake, Deborah, a few other friends and the senior officers knew the truth. There was also the Cult of the Hierophants, a strange, time stream worshipping brotherhood, but they only knew because they apparently had members inside ChronOps. They were not famous for paramilitary action and there was no reason why they would suddenly have turned hostile towards me.
That was all I could deduce about the intruders so far. Annoyingly, Horus was right. It wasn't technically necessary for me to lead the investigation because Caelestis knew as much as I did. She'd be able to deduce exactly the same things, if she hadn't done so already. But I still needed to be there. This wasn't a normal investigation. Nor was it about ChronOps being made to look like idiots by intruders who'd practically run rings around us. It was my life, my future, that other people were playing with.
A cold, dull ache was settling back into my spine. It had first come to me four years ago, when I'd finally learnt the truth about where I'd come from, and that not having any memories before waking up in the medical lab was not because I had amnesia. It had me left three months ago, after my trip to the future, when I learnt I wasn't going to die after all, and I'd thought then that it was gone forever. But now, that was changed. My future self — Erik aged 45, who I'd met in the future — had given Mirabi the cloning tube to take back to create me, to create both of us. But if I didn't have it, how could I give it to Mirabi in the future to take back? How could I be sure of finding another one? Or that it would work? I'd spent the last four years of my life thinking I was trapped by destiny. My future — my fate — was written and there was nothing I could do to change it, which was why I'd been so delighted three months ago to learn that I wasn't, that my life was my life and I did have the freedom to live it after all. But now that wasn't so certain.
I remembered an old theory about time travel, that had existed before the Mercury Disaster had proved what happened when you tried to change the past. If you tried to alter the time stream, the past or the future, to avoid some bad fate, time would twist. Proceedings would change, actions would rearrange and events would conspire to ensure that the same thing happened in a different way. Maybe that was happening to me now. Perhaps I was meant to have died in the future, and time was moving to ensure that I still would.
The cold ache finished resettling in my spine, as Mirabi hit the transport button and we teleported across the moon to Oxbridge Luna.