John Ringo: Emerald Sea

“Might as well go full blast,” he muttered, opening up the footlocker and extracting a small leather box. From it he pulled a device like a shield, which he pinned on the left upper breast of the kimono. Below it he pinned four medals. The one on the uppermost row was a representation of a gold laurel. The three on the row below were a silver eagle, wings outspread, another shield, formed in bronze and pair of crossed swords.

As soon as the medals were arranged to his satisfaction he slipped into the kimono and belted it with his sword-belt. He picked up his sword, gave it an automatic check, and slipped it onto the belt. Normally the weapon sat high on his right side, attached to his armor but he’d spent so much time in both configurations either one was relatively comfortable.

He stepped out of the room and down the corridor to the main entrance.

“If anyone asks for me I’ve gone to report to Duke Edmund,” Herzer said as he headed for the double doors at the front of the building.

“Yes, sir,” the charge of quarters replied. He was reading something and didn’t look up.

Herzer paused and turned on one heel. “That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to write down, Private,” he growled.

“Yes, sir,” the private replied in a much more focused voice. He opened his ledger and reached for the quill standing in an ink bottle.

Herzer nodded at him, then turned and walked out the door.

“Come,” Sheida said at the door chime.

Her aide Harry Chambers came in, followed by a tall, thin, dark-haired man. He could have been anything from thirty to two hundred. He had an expression of slightly distracted amiability on his face as he nodded at the council member.

“Joel Travante,” Sheida breathed. “Welcome. Most welcome, sir. Sit, please. Harry, if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Harry said, stepping out and cycling the door shut.

As the door shut the man in the float chair changed subtly. Whereas he had been smiling, the smile dropped from his face to be replaced by a blank, hard mask, and his languid pose, while not shifting a millimeter, dropped away. He went from seeming to be a nice, simple, professional to something that looked more like a drawn sword.

“How are you?” Sheida asked, nodding at him, hard. “Where have you been?”

“In the Asur Islands, ma’am,” the inspector said, sitting forward and nodding back. He had a deep, baritone voice and his eyes were blue and cold.

Prior to the Fall, the world had had little crime. With nearly infinite wealth, personal protection fields and the availability of semilegal means to fulfill even the darkest fantasies, there was very little opportunity or need to cause it.

There were, however, individuals who for various reasons committed offenses of one sort or another.

Given that people could live any sort of life they desired, it required an odd person to commit crime, especially particularly vicious and predatory crimes. And with a life of luxury, it required an even odder person to devote their life to finding criminals.

But just as there were persons who could not resist breaking laws, there were others who had something in them that drove them to search, find and just as often destroy the worst of the criminals. These were the Council Inspectors. There were very few of them, no more than a hundred in the year prior to the Fall, and most of them worked part-time. But among them there was an elite, the Special Inspectors, who had powers nearly equaling those of the Council. And Inspectors only got to be Special Inspectors by both having a long career of tracking down the worst of the criminals and by showing exemplary conduct doing it.

Joel Travante had been a Special Inspector for nearly forty years prior to the Fall.

Direct access to Mother’s DNA database was closely restricted. To obtain a general DNA search required a plurality of council member approval, and a direct location search required a super majority. But prior to the Fall the inspectors had enormous resources to find their subjects. The slightest clue at the site of a crime could be used to track down the perpetrator. A shred of DNA, a fiber of clothing, any distinctive chemical or biological residue, and the inspectors had a lead that they would follow until they died or hell froze over.

Or the whole world came apart.

“What were you doing there at the Fall?” Sheida asked.

“There was a person who had committed a string of offenses,” Joel said, one cheek twitching for just a moment. “Primarily rape and murder, concentrating on very young females. He would… seduce them in order to get them to drop their shields and then… ensure that they were too overwhelmed to raise them… afterward.” His jaw worked for just a moment and he shook his head angrily.

“I had a hard gene coding on the person, he’d been going by the name Rob Morescue, mostly, but he had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. None of the secondary surveillance systems picked him, or his DNA, up, anywhere. I was able to secure the information that the person had turned himself into a kraken. I had reason to suspect that he was residing somewhere in the deep trenches near the Asur Islands. I had been asking around; there was a pretty large delphino population in the area as well as orcas and various fishermen and sailors. At the time of the Fall I had gotten three confirmed sightings of a kraken in the area and was about to perform a search of the depths. Then, with the Fall, I was forced to forego my investigation.”

“And since?” Sheida asked.

“I took a job with one of the local sailors who had converted to commercial fishing,” Travante replied. “In time I was able to secure my own vessel, a small sailing caique. When New Destiny forces took over the island I maintained my cover as a visiting tourist and post-Fall fisherman. When the time was right and the weather looked good I set sail for the mainland.”

“In a fishing caique?” Sheida said, aghast. “How large?”

“Four meters, ma’am,” Joel replied. “I had reason to suspect that some of the orcas that had willingly joined the New Destiny forces had suspicions that I was not all that I had said. Some of my questions, pre-Fall, had apparently been insufficiently circumspect. And, frankly, ma’am, I didn’t think much of New Destiny’s charter or actions. So as soon as I felt it was probable I’d survive, I set sail. It’s not that difficult a sail from the Asur Islands to Norau, provided nothing goes wrong.”

“Charts?” Sheida asked. “Navigation?”

“I was able by that time to secure a compass and had some training from my previous employer at stellar and oceanic current navigation,” Joel said, shrugging as if a three-thousand-kilometer voyage across empty ocean in a small boat was no great feat. “Dorado tended to congregate around the boat so that I had a ready supply of food. I had a large store of water when I left and picked up more from occasional rain showers. I made landfall on the coast of Flora ninety-three days after setting sail, made my way up the coast to the base at Newfell, contacted a person that I had known prior to the Fall and was put in touch with the Freedom Coalition rump of the Council. Upon being summoned by you I traveled by stagecoach and horse to Chian and was ported here.”

“Amazing, Inspector,” Sheida said. “Will it bother you if I say ‘a bit too amazing’?”

“No, ma’am,” the inspector replied. “If you wish to perform truth detection, feel free.” Like most intrusive protocols, truth detection required permission of the subject or agreement by a plurality of the Council.

Sheida frowned and then shrugged, drawing a smidgeon of power and running a lie detector test on the surface of the inspector’s thoughts. There was no indication that he had any reservations about his story. He had some personal problems that were beating at him, though.