Just doing my job

I was in the watch room playing pool with some of my teammates when Captain Hobbs voice came over the PA system, telling all on duty personnel to report to his office on the double. I pocketed the last ball and collected my winnings as the others filed through the door, wondering what was so important that the Duty Officer couldn’t handle it alone.

“Ren’s in town.” The Captain stood behind his desk, looking out of the window at Trafalgar Square, “We picked her up crossing the coast 2 hours ago, and we have to assume she’s headed this way, if she isn’t here already.”

“Ren?” Samantha West, the newest addition to the S.I.U. looked at us all blankly, “Never heard of her.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Hobbs sat down, “Care to fill Privet West in, Corporal Drake?”

“Ren is the only known alias of a French superhuman Anarchist.” I explained, “A few years back she painted the Eiffel Tower bright pink, leaving a note saying that as it was the worlds largest phallic symbol, it should look the part.”

“I remember that!” West’s eyes opened wide, “They said it was a militant feminist group!”

“A regular excuse for one of Ren’s pranks.” I nodded, “The French government hasn’t liked her since she leaked a ton of dirty secrets relating to several members of their cabinet that she’d somehow gotten hold off.”

“Do you know her?” West asked innocently.

“Not as well as she’d like to know him!” Henry Siva, the other member of the team, laughed, “She’s got a bit a bit of a crush on Nathan.”

“Piss off back to Birmingham you Brummie git!” I laugh back, “Yes, it appears Ren has a soft spot for me after I indivertibly saved her from being arrested by a pair of Foreign Legion operatives in Monty Carlo.” I blush, “Ever since then she’s sent me a Valentines day card every year.”

“The only reason why gods gift to superwomen here is still alive is that Charlotte finds the whole this as funny as I do.” Siva smiled.

“If the two of you have quite finished filling Privet West in on Drake’s privet life?” Hobbs’ looked a little upset at how lightly Siva and I where taking Ren’s arrival, “I think it’s no coincidence that the French Prime Minister is over here to talk with our PM. I want the three of you to stand watch at Downing Street and see that Ren doesn’t do anything to embarrass us.”

“What about Sydney sir?” I raise a hand, “Can’t she deal with it: she is the Duty Officer this afternoon.”

“I’m afraid that Sergeant Pierce has been called away by an unexpected personal matter, and can’t finish her shift.” The Captain glared at us, “What are the three of you still doing here?”

*********************************************************************

“Ok Sydney, give him our best. Bye.” I put my cell-phone away, glad that the Captains not there to see me, “Her youngest has appendicitis, and has been rushed to hospital up in Glasgow.” I explain to Siva and West.

They nod: Siva and I remember well Sidney’s rather messy divorce and subsequent custody battle with her ex-husband. The judge decided that her job was too dangerous to juggle with bringing up two young kids, and awarded custody to their father, who promptly moved to Scotland.

“You getting anything Sam?” Siva asks, stamping his feet to keep warm.

“Nothing yet.” West shakes her head: as a telepath with mild telekinesis and empathy, she’s our eyes and ears on a job like this. West isn’t really cut out for this kind of duty, but S.I.U. rules state that all members must serve at lest 6-monthes field-duty before they can transfer to H.Q. staff and a desk job.

“Whose turn is it to get the coffee?” I ask, my caffeine craving starting to rear its ugly head.

“Yours.” Siva smiles, “And none of the dog-urine flavoured Civil Servant stuff they offer you here: there has to be a Starbucks or Coffee Republic round here somewhere.”

“Ok, ok: I’m going.” I walk to the edge of the roof and calmly step off, dropping the five floors to the street without even blinking.

*********************************************************************

I walk along the street, guided by the aromatic smell of roasting coffee beans and cinnamon. I forget, for a moment, what an utter hellhole London can be at times, and concentrate on just the good things: the museums, the theatre, the parks, Arsenal football club, the south bank of the river Thames…

A hand grabs me as I pass an alleyway between two shops and I find myself pressed between a wall and a warm, defiantly female, body. Soft lips meet mine, and for a moment I wonder what’s going on.

“Hello Nathan: it has been too long, no?” A husky voice purrs in my ear.

“Ren.” I all but whisper, my mouth suddenly very, very dry, “You know I’m looking for you?”

“And so you should be!” The Anarchist pulled back slightly, “What man in his right mind wouldn’t be looking for me?”

“One who’s happily married?” I try to pull away, but I couldn’t gain any leverage in the confined space, “I know why you’re here, and it’s not to see me.”

“Can’t a girl mix a little business with pleasure?” Her tone of voice went right through me to a part of my mind that had no place making decisions at a time like that, “You need to learn how to unwind, relax, live a little.”

“I’d like to live a lot, and that’s dependant on not upsetting Charlotte.”

“She is a lucky woman your wife, but she is in Canada, and I am here…”

“Ren…”

“All work and no play? You British can be so repressed when you want.”

“It’s genetic. Why are you here Ren?”

“I was asked to give you a message: have you watched the data-chip Dr. Lang sent you yet?”

“No; I haven’t had the time.”

“Good: what ever you do, don’t open it on a government terminal. It contains information that can’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The world is a darker place than you know Nathan: darker than you’ve ever dreamed.”

“How come you’re involved in all this?”

“I discovered the truth.” Ren looked around, suddenly worried, “I have to go. Remember: don’t watch the message on a system someone else can access.” She kissed me again, more hurriedly than before, and ran off down the alleyway, disappearing into the shadows.

*********************************************************************

The stakeout finally ended once Ren was seen trying to re-arrange Stonehenge to spell something vulgar in French. It was a good cover story, but I for one knew that there wasn’t enough stones to spell anything even remotely offensive (an old drunken collage prank.)

I didn’t tell anyone that I’d seen and spoken to her: there would have been too many questions that I didn’t want to, or know how to, answer.

A not inconsiderable part of my monthly paycheck got me a laptop that could play a data-chip. Even more spent at places I technically shouldn’t know about, and as an employee of her Majesty’s Government, certainly not go, got me some anti-surveillance and encryption hardware that could defeat anything the government had.

By the time I’d finished the upgrades, the stock laptop was a bleeding edge piece of equipment that broke half a dozen of the rules I was supposed to live by. Simply owning it could lose me my job, but something told me that there was something else going on here. The fact that a hard-core anarchist like Ren was willing to act as messenger for Dr. Lang told me that I was about to fall head first down the rabbit hole.

I finally found myself sitting on top of Mt. Snowdon, my jacket pulled tight against the cold welsh air. Looking round to make sure there was no one within a mile of so, I entered the chip Simon had given me to the computer. The screen went black, and then the stern face of Doctor Philip Lang looked at me.

“Hello Nathan. If you are watching this, then I am dead. This chain of events does not surprise me: I’ve made enough enemies’ in my life that it was only a matter of time before one of them got to me.”

I looked at the screen, my eyes as wide as my mouth: Dr. Lang was one of the most powerful superhumans known to exist. If someone was able to kill him, this could be dangerous on a global scale.

“Don’t be so shocked: death comes to us all, sooner or later. I only fear that they will reach me before I can set into motion a plan to defeat my erstwhile assassins and their masters. There are dark forces moving against us all Nathan: in the last year 200 superhumans who had applied for emigration here to Luna simply disappeared, their families too. The U.N. says that they must have just changed their mind, but Ren found evidence that they have been taken by those who still cling to the idea that we can be used as weapons of war.”

I nodded at the screen: my own job, although technically that of a police officer, has connections to the military.

“I would have taken this evidence to the Council here, but they afraid of angering the U.N.: despite our political independence, Luna is still reliant on Earth for our very existence. I myself have spent the past 5 years doing my best to make us self-sufficient, to get us out from under the thumb of Earth-based politics.”

“I trust you Nathan: you chose your job because you truly want to make the world a safer place. I only hope you will be willing to go as far as it takes to see this through to the end. I trust you to get to the bottom of the disappearances, to blow the conspiracy wide open, to expose those who live in darkness to the light of day. The only other person who knows the truth is Ren: she is the only one you can trust. To tell anyone else, even Charlotte, could spell disaster for us all. Please, destroy this data-chip and the computer you used to view it on.”

“Good luck Nathan: I fear you will need it.”

I held the data-chip in my hand and concentrated: there was a whiff of smoke and the smell of burning plastic filled the air as my fist started to glow. I lifted up the laptop and did the same with both hands, melting it to slag to be drop in the sea before I went home.

I looked around, wondering if those who killed Dr. Lang know about the message he sent me. If they did, they would have stopped Simon before he reached me, or taken the chip from my room when I was on duty. I needed to think, to go somewhere where I wouldn’t have to explain myself.

Rising up into the evening sky, I turned to face the setting sun, and headed out across the mountains towards the sea beyond: Dr, Lang may have forbidden me from telling Charlotte, but I suddenly feel the need to see her.

To Be Continued…