Pursuit (Silver Cane Book 1) Read online

  PURSUIT

  SILVER CANE, BOOK 1

  JAMES DAVID VICTOR

  FAIRFIELD PUBLISHING

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Free Story

  Preview: Discovery

  Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  Razor slammed into the atmosphere, flames raged over the ship’s leading surface. The cockpit filled with light and heat. Detective Silver Cane wiped the sweat from her face and shook the droplets of sweat away. They boiled away to steam as they hit the superheated wall of the ship. Reserve power was automatically diverted to the gravity distortion field by the ships AI, focusing it on the burning atmosphere just ahead.

  Silver’s suit sent a warning to her neural processor. The thermal regulators were exceeding performance limits. Failure was imminent.

  “You are overheating.” Silver’s AI reminded her of the danger. “Do you wish to continue the pursuit?”

  Silver cancelled the warning that blinked continually on her visor and focused on her prey. “Keep on him, Arty. Give it everything we’ve got.”

  The craft up ahead burned its own trail through the atmosphere of the planet Frost. Flames poured off its darkening hull and curled away. Silver had pursued the craft’s only occupant across the entire system. She was not going to let him slip away from her now.

  “His hull is burning up,” Arty reported.

  “Extend our grav distortion ahead and shield that craft.” Silver shifted in her seat uncomfortably in the searing heat.

  “Razor cannot survive entry if we extend the grav distortion field,” Arty reported.

  “Just do it. I’m not letting him escape me again.”

  Razor began shaking violently. Silver sent a rapid series of orders from her neural processor to adjust Razor’s flight. She gripped the arms of her chair as the shaking of the craft threatened to throw her across the cramped flight deck.

  Silver braced herself. The temperature on the flight deck had reached fatal levels. She activated her suit’s environmental controls and created a skintight layer of cooler air. It wouldn’t last long in the extreme heat caused by this violent dive into the atmosphere.

  “Coris’ craft is failing,” Arty reported.

  “Get ahead of him, Arty.” Silver gripped the chair. She looked ahead at the craft containing Coris. It burned as an incandescent white point of light for a moment before disintegrating and scattering shards of hull across Razor’s course.

  Silver pulled the gravity distortion field back to Razor and angled the distortion to deflect the flaming remains of Coris’ ship.

  “Failure on the starboard plasma jet,” Arty reported calmly. “Shutting it down.”

  Tightening her grip with lightening-quick reflexes, Silver held herself safe as Razor bucked when the jet was disabled, sending them into a wild spin. She adjusted the gravity distortion to stabilize the tumbling craft and feathered the port side plasma jet to further slow the tumbling.

  “I have detected an escape pod,” Arty said.

  Silver checked the image Arty sent to her neural processor. A small powered craft was racing away to the planet surface.

  “He used the wreckage of the ship to hide his escape,” Silver said with disgust. “Cunning.”

  “Razor will be destroyed if we don’t slow our descent,” Arty said.

  “We can’t let him get to the surface. He’ll do anything to get another ship. If I let him go now we’ll lose track of him again.”

  The hull temperature stabilized and began to fall. Razor fell through the freezing air of the upper atmosphere of Frost.

  Silver sent an order from her neural processor to the flight deck escape hatch. The hatch blew out, the boiling air of the flight deck replaced by the freezing air of the upper atmosphere. Silver jumped out of her seat. “Land Razor, Arty. Keep her in one piece if you can.” Silver ran to the open airlock and jumped out into the freezing air kilometers above the planet Frost.

  The murderous heat of the re-entry flight was replaced immediately by crippling cold. Silver plummeted through clouds laced with ice crystals. They bit at Silver’s suit. She expanded the suit’s gravity distortion, heating the outer boundary and vaporizing as many ice crystals as she could.

  Her visor showed her the trajectory of Coris’ escape pod. It was arcing away to her right, toward the only populated area on the frozen tundra below. Silver angled the gravity distortion and raced through the cold air toward the settlement, hot on the heels of her target.

  CHAPTER 2

  Silver adjusted the suit’s gravity distortion as she neared the surface, slowing her descent. Her feet crunched into the thin crust of icy snow as she arrived at the surface with a gentle touchdown. The temperature at the surface was cold enough to crack bone. Silver brought the suits protective field close to her and heated it to a comfortable temperature.

  Her visor showed her the outline of the settlement through the snow flecked air. The systems white sun was setting, further reducing the surface temperature. She set the gravity distortion to allow her to leap in steps that were each many meters long. Detective Silver Cane would be at the settlement before dark, hot on the heels of her target.

  The thermal tracking on her visor picked up Coris moving slowly toward the settlement. His core temperature was dangerously low. He would succumb to the cold and perish short of the settlement if he didn’t hurry. Silver guessed he was injured, or maybe his tech was damaged. Either way she needed to close in on him and save him from the cold. She needed to save him from death so she could interrogate him.

  Turning mid leap Silver looked to the point where Razor should have landed. If it had gone down hard and unpowered it would have created a fireball that would be climbing high into the atmosphere by now.

  “Arty. How’s my ship?”

  The AI responded with a damage report sent directly to Silver’s neural processor. The ship was on the surface. Heavily damaged. Drones were repairing the craft. Mechtissue and tech were being synthesized from local materials. Razor’s nanodrones were deployed and active. The craft would be patched and ready in a few hours. It would be slow and rough but Razor would be fit for a flight to a Gov facility where a proper repair could be conducted.

  “Keep working on the ship.” Silver slowed her approach to the settlement. “Bring it to the settlement as soon as you can.”

  “Detective Cane,” Arty’s voice registered through Silver’s neural processor. “I have connected to planetary AI. Coris just entered the settlement.”

  “I’m right behind him. Get my ship ready to fly.”

  SILVER DEACTIVATED her suits distortion field and heat shielding as she stepped into the settlement. She kept the visor in place and it floated just before her eyes. She opened the neck of the tight suit slightly and let her skin feel the air.

  Settlements across the system were all alike, and each was its own apart. This one was like so many others Silver had seen. It had the typical modular arrangement. The outer walls were built from modules of mechtissue similar to the material used to grow most spacecraft. The sett
lement modules could root into the ground and draw fresh nutrients and minerals for growth and maintenance. The essentials for a settlement were produced by the modules; filtered air, purified water, and electrical power.

  Silver connected to the settlement. A message received by her neural processor welcomed her and provided her with all necessary clearance. A detective was always treated with a degree of respect and suspicion. Advertising programs were not distracted from their task by a badge. They called out their services to her by name.

  Silver knew of settlements such as this. Most of the system’s population were happy to indulge in academic pursuits, consider philosophical and theological ideas, or study physics, biology, or technology. But some citizens flocked to settlements, clinging to the fringes of the habitable environs of the system’s worlds, where other pursuits were offered.

  Here visitors could indulge in more unsophisticated pursuits. Society frowned upon these settlements. Government tolerated these settlements. Police avoided these settlements. And the people who craved the thrill and threat of violence, of pain, of danger and discomfort came here. They came first out of curiosity. They came a second time looking to experience that thrill only real violence could provide. They stayed as brute or brutalized, addicted to pain and suffering.

  “Detective Silver.” A hologram projected from a hovering nanodrone walked alongside Silver. “If you have time for recreation during your visit we can provide some unique distractions for you.”

  The hologram went on. “Do you crave a fist fight? Would you like to beat a confession out of a crim? Private rooms are available. Surveillance free.”

  Silver messaged the town AI to cancel all advertisements. The hologram disappeared. Silver uploaded an image of Coris to the settlement AI and searched for him. The settlement AI reported to Silver the location of Coris. A map downloaded to Silver’s visor and marked out the path for her to follow.

  “Arty,” Silver relayed the message through her neural processor. “Keep track of me and watch my back.”

  The trail lit up on her visor led Silver deeper into the settlement. Narrow corridors twisted into the maze of fighting pits and drinking bars. Some doorways were fastened shut, others covered with curtains that billowed gently as the air stirred and people passed by. The shouts and moans and grunts and screams flowed out into the crowded corridors. A pair of bruised and bleeding patrons tumbled from one doorway. They probed their cut faces with cautious fingers, wincing and laughing at the pain.

  Silver turned a corner. The trail marked out by her visor showed her she was closing the gap on Coris, at least slightly. A group huddled in a doorway and peered in. Sounds of grunts and moans leaked out from behind the light curtain that did nothing to prevent any passer-by from observing the depravity within.

  Pushing her way through the crowd she saw she was suddenly falling behind and that Coris was getting away from her. He had evaded her for weeks. He had escaped justice for months since his crime. He was slipping from her grasp once again. Silver powered up her suit’s gravity field enabling her to shove the crowd aside with ease, individuals were knocked aside at her slightest touch.

  As the crowds were pushed out of her way and Silver advanced she saw she was closing in once again. Only a few meters lay between her and Coris. She would have him at last. She quickened her pace, eager to take down the terrorist.

  Silver stepped out of a narrow corridor into a wide interior plaza, the bright artificial lights glinting off the edge of her visor. She adjusted the brightness of the display a moment before the display pointing her toward Coris went blank.

  Arty’s message appeared through Silver’s neural processor. “Detecting a surveillance shadow.”

  “You don’t say.” Silver scanned the crowd for the criminal. “Could you not have spotted it sooner?”

  “Detecting several SV shadows across the settlement. Some localized to a few square meters. This one is large and covers a large part of the settlement. It has only just been activated.”

  “SV cloak?” Silver scanned the area, “That’s illegal. Remind me to deal with that once we have Coris under lock and key.” Silver released a number of nanodrone bloodhounds and activated her visor’s scanners. The bloodhounds located Coris in seconds. Silver focused on his location and spotted him hiding behind a small group of narcotic users.

  Eye contact with her quarry gave her a sudden flush of excitement. She had come to know Coris by his one act of destruction and his weeks of evasion. No one had committed such a destructive act in the entire history of the system. Not once since their arrival from Earth, not in all the generations of the system’s existence had anyone detonated an explosive device for anything other than scientific purposes. She looked deep into the eyes of the system’s first and only terrorist bomber.

  Silver watched carefully, her visor scanning every electrical impulse coursing through his muscles. She knew he would run. Any moment now he would run. Silver watched Coris. She ran a program to calculate which direction Coris was likely to take. She readied her gravity distortion field for a sudden alteration that would allow her to leap over the crowds that stood between them.

  Then Coris ran. He ran toward Silver. Silver’s grav distortion activated on a hair-trigger and she leapt over the heads of those around her, she recalculated her trajectory from the one she’d guessed Coris would take to the one he actually chose. She should have realized he would do something unexpected.

  Silver lowered herself back down to ground level as Coris ran underneath her and into a narrow corridor leading away from the plaza. It was dark and crowded like all the corridors in this forsaken settlement. Silver took the blazer off her hip and aimed through the crowd.

  “Coris,” She shouted.

  The terrorist ran, head down, bludgeoning a path through the crowd.

  Silver took aim and fired a debilitation pulse. The round slammed into Coris’ back and sent him sprawling forward, arms and legs limp and useless.

  Wiping sweat from her forehead Silver strode toward the fallen Coris. She fixed the blazer back against her hip. “Move aside,” she called out as the she elbowed her way through the crowd that had pressed back to fill the corridor.

  The faces in the crowd all avoided her stare as if her very look could identify their hidden crimes. The crowd pressed in tight around her. She called out again for all to step aside. She sent a request from her neural processor to the settlement AI to close the corridor and clear the civilians out.

  The crowd pressed in on her even tighter as she forced her way toward her prisoner. She realized she was getting nowhere. Looking past the shoulders that pressed in on all sides she saw the still limp body of Coris being dragged away.

  “Civilians,” she called out. “That man is my prisoner.” She pressed forward and realized the bodies that pressed in on her from all sides were acting in a coordinated effort to prevent her moving at all. And that moment of realization was Silver’s final moment of consciousness. The neural processor recorded the cause of loss of consciousness as a biological agent injected into her neck. Emergency procedures activated and the neural processor sent a distress message to her AI.

  When Silver recovered consciousness she was going to be pissed.

  CHAPTER 3

  The room slowly came into focus. Silver was staring at a ceiling bathed in a dim, orange light. She accessed the emergency files in her neural processor. She had been drugged and abducted. The chemicals in her system had been neutralized by her nanodrones. Her life signs were all normal. She was in good shape…other than the fact that she was strapped to a gurney.

  Several people were standing in the shadows, each of them were armed with 9mm pistols. The pistols were easily manufactured, and easy to use. They were impossible to control through AI. The kinetic rounds fired from these illicit weapons could be fatal and as such they were strictly forbidden system wide. Silver twisted her hands against their restraints.

  “Detective Cane.” Silver heard a voice
behind her. “You are awake?”

  “You must know the penalty for this,” Silver said. She tried sending a message to Arty.

  “We are very well isolated in this area,” the voice behind her said. “You won’t be able to contact your AI from here.”

  “Police HQ will know where I am. Release me.”

  “I have informed your AI and police HQ that you have been assaulted and have been taken into the care of the settlement’s medical facilities.”

  Silver heard the footsteps approaching from behind. “You are the governor of this settlement?”

  “I’m Gormah Darklin. But I don’t see myself as governor. I’m a facilitator. I do my best to keep this settlement safe and operational for all our clients.”

  “Gormah Darklin,” Silver turned the name over in her head. Her neural processor presented a file. Darklin was a rare individual in the system. He had spent time in the incarceration facility on Frost after assaulting a performing artist. Previous misdemeanors included antisocial and disruptive behavior at various seminars in universities and theology centers across the system.

  Silver studied Darklin’s holograph. He was a large man, tall and broad. His face was full of amiable charm but his eyes were devious and cold. Silver recognized him now. He was one of the system’s few recidivist violent criminals.

  “Are you planning on adding abduction and murder to your list of crimes, Darklin?”