His heart sunk slightly when he noticed the expression on his wife’s face. It wasn’t anger as he had feared but disappointment that was mirrored in Frances Thorgood’s eyes.
She tried and failed to suppressed a small sigh. “We’re going to have meatloaf with mashed potatoes and vegetables but I guess you can get what you like from the replicator once you get in.”
Gavin shook his head. “I’m probably going to be too tired to eat once I’ll get back. Don’t wait up for me.”
“Do you have any idea when you’ll be home?”
“No,” he said and glanced out of the window of the patrol hover he had used to contact his wife. It was one of a dozen of MSD vehicles which had since arrived at the old shipyard, surrounding the warehouse which he and the LT had raided earlier. A bunch of uniformed officers and investigators were inspecting the lifeless androids inside and then moving them into large transports.
Gavin turned back to look at his wife. The young woman still managed to look radiant with her long blonde hair and sparking hazel eyes even after taking care of their ever demanding daughter for the entire day. “That new boss of mine has something cooked up. She’s a mysterious one and you never quite know what she’s up to next,” he said and immediately regretted his words.
“You didn’t tell me your new boss was a woman,” Francis replied flatly.
Gavin was momentarily speechless, caught off guard. He had not anticipated this response. “Well, yeah she …“
Frannie’s lips broke for a smile.
“Oh you,” he said after he realized that he had been had.
“I like to see you flustered, honey. It makes you so adorable.”
“You’re awful.”
She snickered before she turned away from the screen for a moment to reach for something. “There is somebody here who would like a stern word with you, too,” she said and lifted a little girl of about four years and wearing blonde ponytails onto her lap.
“Daddy, daddy,” the girl shouted excitedly when she spotted him on her own screen.
“Hey there, honeybee.”
She laughed and produced a sound which was a fairly close approximation of the buzzing of a bee. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped herself and took on a very serious expression. “Mommy says you work too much and I think so also. You should come home.”
He grinned at her. “You and mommy are the smartest women I’ve ever known. I’ll be home tomorrow, ok? I’ll see you both then.”
She nodded dramatically. “Ok daddy. But I will be very angry with you if I don’t see you tomorrow,” she said and then stopped when her mother whispered into her ear. “Oh, and mommy will also be very angry with you.”
Gavin laughed. “No fury like two women scorned. I will see you both tomorrow. I love you, honeybee. And tell your mother I love her too.”
The little girl whispered into her mother’s ear and Francis whispered right back. “She says she loves you too,” she said.
Gavin’s smile widened.
“Be careful, honey,” said Francis just before the screen turned blank.
“Cute family.”
Gavin whipped around and spotted Mech leaning against the hover. She had her back turned towards him as if she had been paying attention to something entirely different. Gavin hadn’t seen or heard her approach.
Gavin nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, they’re great.”
“Well I do hate making you miss dinner,” she said and stepped away. “You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”
Gavin left the vehicle and followed her as she walked towards the SAFVe which had arrived only a few minutes ago at Mech’s request.
“I’m your partner on this and I’m going wherever you’re going,” he said with determination. “Besides I knew the sacrifices I would be needing to make to work for CCiD. I’m not about to quit now.”
“This could get dangerous.”
He let out a hollow laugh. “I’ve already gotten shot at today, how much worse could it get?”
At that Mech smiled sweetly. “You really shouldn’t be saying things like that,” she said and hopped onto the SAFVe. “You’re tempting fate.”
A few minutes later they were airborne and heading south along the coast. Gavin stood in the back of the SAFVe watching the San Francisco skyline, dominated by FedPlaza. The Federation logo glowing in a dark navy blue in the dusk of the late evening which would soon be claimed by night.
Once they had left Golden Gate behind and the skyline merged into indistinguishable shapes, Gavin turned away from the hatch and walked up to the cockpit were Hot Rod was piloting the shuttle. Mech sat in the co-pilot seat wearing her data port on her neck and seemingly interfacing with the on-board computer.
He exchanged a look with the Jamaican woman helming the shuttle but her expression left no doubt that she knew about as much as he did.
Mech removed the data port.
“You want to tell us where we’re going?” he asked her.
Mech didn’t reply. Instead she switched on one of the computer screens on the instrument panel in front of her. The screen showed an unmarked white hover speeding along a road.
“That vehicle left about 30 minutes ago from Starfleet Headquarters and is now heading south on the 101. I believe it’s carrying Captain Whren.”
“Whren? That’s the man who tried to have you killed,” said Gavin. “What makes you so sure he’s in that vehicle?”
“I used one of your interceptors to keep an eye on him. I’m reasonably sure he is in that hover.”
Hot Rod glanced at the screen and then at her own instruments. “We’re just a few miles behind him. We could catch up to him easily if you wanted to.”
But Mech shook her head. “No. I want to follow him.”
“Why?” asked Gavin.
She turned to look at him. “I had a look at Grayson’s schedule for the day and it appears he’s out of town for two days.”
Gavin didn’t ask how she had managed to get that information. He didn’t want to know. “Grayson is out of town and Whren, a man who practically never leaves Starfleet Headquarters, is also on the move.”
“I think they have arranged a meeting,” concluded Mech for him.
“And you want to know where.”
“I know where,” Mech said.
He gave her a puzzled look.
“Half Moon Bay.”
Gavin nodded slowly.
Mech got out of her seat, passed Gavin and walked into the loading bay in the back. Gavin took the co-pilot seat she had vacated.
“If we maintain this speed,” said Hailey Rodgers, “we’ll reach our destination in about 16 minutes.”
Gavin craned his neck around to see if Mech had heard the pilot but she didn’t seem to pay attention. She had sat down at the back of the SAFVe, inspecting her Glock.
“What do you think of her?” he asked Hot Rod quietly.
The pilot turned her head to look towards Mech for an instant. “She seems alright.”
“Yeah,” Gavin repeated. “She seems alright,” he repeated, sounding a whole lot less assured.
Hot Rod noticed. “You don’t trust her?”
He shook his head slightly. “It’s not that. She and the old man go way back. If he believes in her then there is no reason that we shouldn’t. But we know hardly anything about her and yet here she is, practically running the whole show without really giving us any inkling what it might be all about.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know either.”
He glanced back at his new team leader. “I think she knows more than she lets on. Or at the very least she has an idea. But she’s not the kind to share.”
“Maybe it’s a nikkeijin thing,” Hot Rod ventured.
Gavin wasn’t so sure about that. The old man was a nikkeijn too, wasn’t he? And he was nothing like Mech. And then there was the fact that their new team leader didn’t really look anything like a Nyuchiban. She was tall and lacked the typical Southeast Asian features. Of course not everyone living in the former Earth colony was descended from that region but a large majority had. And then there was something else that was different about her. He hadn’t been able to quite place it yet.
“Well that’s another thing. Sometimes I fear that she doesn’t quite appreciate how things work here. Perhaps Slade was too much by the book but with the LT I get the feeling she has never even read the thing.”
Hot Rod shrugged. “That might be just the kind of person we need right now.”
The two spent the next few minutes in silence. Then when they had confirmation of where they were going and began their own approach Gavin joined Mech in the loading bay. The first thing he noticed was the quiet singing voice. It was a beautiful, melodic sound and something he would have never associated with their tougher-than-nails team leader. But sure enough she was quietly singing to herself while apparently taking apart and re-assembling her firearm.
The old song sounded familiar. It was about a young boy named Johnny who was apparently extremely skilled at playing the guitar.
Mech didn’t take notice when he sat down on the bench opposite her. “Ray Charles?” he asked.
She stopped singing and looked up at him with a quizzical expression.
“The song you were singing? Was it Ray Charles?”
She smiled. “Chuck Berry, actually,” she said.
He nodded. Rock music was really not his field. “You like to sing, huh?”
She shrugged and finished re-assembling the Glock by sliding the magazine into place. “I guess I do it without noticing. Kind of ironic, I suppose.”
Gavin wondered what was ironic about it but didn’t press it further. “We’re coming up on our destination. Let’s assume that you’re right and the place is Grayson’s and Whren is in that hover, heading there to meet him. What are you planning to do? It’s not a crime to entertain guests. You know that, right?” he said, his question sounding silly to his own ears.
“I think Grayson is planning something big and Whren is in on it. If this is a meeting we might be able to find out what it is,” she said and took off her leather jacket and the silver ring she always wore. She stored both securely in a compartment behind her.
Gavin looked on skeptically. Moments later they arrived.
Mech did remain right however. The hover they were following ended its journey at a large estate overlooking Half Moon Bay. A quick check on FedNet revealed nothing conclusive about the owner. If the estate did belong to Grayson he had used a pseudonym for the deed.
Hot Rod landed the SAFVe about a mile east from the estate along the coast.
Gavin and Mech had climbed up a nearby rise which gave them a good view of a picturesque costal landscape, its beauty only hidden by the darkness of the early night. Gavin used a pair of computer-powered binoculars to reveal the compound in the near distance. It was impressively large, at least 10 acres, it sat perched on top of the cliffs, the white waves of the Pacific Ocean splashing away at the rock wall below. There were at least half a dozen buildings, some large enough to house small starships. The entire estate was surrounded by tall security fences which Gavin assumed were equipped with motion sensors.
“Tight security,” said Gavin still spying through his scopes.
“A good place to hide something.”
Gavin lowered the binoculars and looked at Mech. She was also studying the compound but she didn’t appear to need any additional aids to do so. He also noticed that she was wearing her data port, probably accessing FedNet even while she observed the estate.
“We can’t just go in there, we’d need a warrant.”
At this she just smiled. “Preemptive law enforcement doesn’t tend to work very well if we stand around and wait for warrants,” she said, her eyes still focused on the compound, her mind most likely busily diving through FedNet.
Gavin sighed. His background was with regular police work were reacting was much more common than preempting. He was still warming up to the idea of doing things the other way around. “So you want to break in? What about security?”
“It’s a lot less tight than it looks,” she said and then turned to him, still smiling. “Especially when you have the right access codes.”
The young operative was impressed.
“Get your gear, we move out, now.”
Gavin still had reservations but he found it pointless to raise them now. Also he didn’t want to appear skittish in front of his new team leader. He had wanted to join CCiD for a long time, to attack the roots of the crime which had gripped his city, his planet even. If that meant to break the habit of playing it safe then that was a price he was willing to pay.
He walked back to the SAFVe to get a wrist beacon, a field tricorder and an extra magazine for his Seburo just in case. He stopped by to see Hot Rod before he set out with Mech.
“If you don’t hear from us in half an hour ““
“I know, I call in reinforcements,” she said nodding.
“Reinforcements? Forget that. We might not have the time to wait around for reinforcements.”
The dark-skinned woman gave him an amused look. “Hey, I’m just the pilot here, not a field operative, I won’t be able to come in guns blazing.”
“Just … just think of something,” he said frustrated and left, following Mech who had already started out towards the compound.