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  Steve seemed perfectly content to stand there doing nothing until the drone returned. Blocker was less patient.

  “Maybe we ought to head over there ourselves,” he said. “We’re going to want to see it in person, anyway.”

  Steve just looked at him, then past him toward the bank building. “The crime scene investigator returns, even as you speak.”

  For reasons beyond Blocker’s understanding, the Mahk-Ra detective insisted on referring to the drone as if its job made it a sentient being.

  Blocker turned to see the drone speeding back to them through a sky so blue it almost hurt his eyes. “Good,” he muttered.

  Within a minute, the thing was hovering between them.

  “Well?” Blocker asked, addressing the drone.

  “There is evidence,” the machine said, still hanging there, the four motors on its corners whirring quietly.

  Blocker couldn’t understand why they couldn’t make the voice less tinny and robot-like. He had seen the Iron Man movies when he was a kid, and the robot that assisted Tony Stark sounded like a real person. This thing sounded like a broken drive-thru squawk box. “Which is?” he asked.

  The drone ran a video of its exploration of the room where the shot had come from. The machine flew in through a window left open by the killer.

  “Fingerprints on the frame or the opener?” Blocker asked.

  “No,” the drone said, then restarted the video that would pause anytime one of the detectives asked a question.

  From the drone’s POV they watched as it flew into an empty office -- empty of no desks, chairs, or even an old coffee pot. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

  Steve asked, “Any sign of Mahk-Ras in the office?”

  “None,” the drone reported.

  Blocker looked at his partner who seemed very pleased with himself that he had eliminated an entire species with just one question.

  The video rolled again, and finally, Blocker saw “the evidence.” Lying on the floor, near a wall, to the right of the window where the shot had come from, was a casing from a 50 caliber bullet, just the type that had killed the governor.

  “Any fingerprints on the casing?” Blocker asked.

  “No,” the metallic voice answered.

  A tiny alarm went off at the back of Blocker’s brain. Something weird there. “Any fingerprints anywhere in the office?” he asked.

  “None.”

  Blocker didn’t like that. Why would an assassin be so careful about not leaving fingerprints behind yet leave the shell casing? It was like asking to be caught.

  “What about DNA?” Steve asked.

  “Affirmative,” the drone said.

  While the drone was an Earther invention, the ability to have them capable of instantaneous communication throughout the Internet, all telecommunications systems, both human and Mahk-Ra, had been an upgrade the aliens had engineered.

  “Where was it?” Blocker asked.

  “Skin cells on the edge of the casing,” the drone reported.

  Blocker asked, “DNA on the casing but no fingerprint?”

  The drone fluttered in the air, the equivalent of a shrug.

  “Have you identified the source?” Steve asked.

  A still photo replaced the paused video on the drone’s screen. Blocker tried not to react as he looked into the brown eyes of the woman he loved, Hannah Perez. No one on the force knew of their past, and no one on this planet or Ra-Prime knew that he was still in love with her.

  “I know this Earther,” Steve said. “She is suspected Red Spear.”

  Shaking his head, Blocker said, “This feels wrong.”

  Steve just stared at him.

  “This doesn’t feel wrong to you?”

  “Wrong?” Steve asked. “How? We have the DNA, we have a suspect, we have only to arrest her.”

  The colonel came over. “You have evidence?”

  Steve brought him up to speed.

  “I think we should go look around the office,” Blocker said.

  “You have evidence,” the colonel said, his voice hard. “Go, arrest the woman. Bring her to me.”

  “But...” Blocker said.

  The colonel silenced him with a look.

  For a race that thought themselves intellectually superior, the Mahk-Ra had a limited outlook. They had the tenacity of cockroaches after a nuclear bomb, but their tactics were simplistic - attack. They moved ever forward, simply overwhelming their enemies with sheer numbers and perseverance. When it came to seeing a possible frame job for a murder, well, Steve was trapped by thousands of years of Mahk-Ra genetics.

  “What if she isn’t guilty?” Blocker asked. “What if it’s a set-up?”

  The Mahk-Ra detective shrugged, something he had learned from his Earther partner. “Then she is a suspected enemy of the state and we will bring her in anyway.”

  Blocker frowned.

  Steve eyeballed him. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” Blocker said, maybe a little too quickly. “We bring her in.”

  Hoping it wouldn’t come to that, Blocker turned to the drone. “Last known address for Perez, Hannah.”

  The drone said, “Sent to your mobile device.”

  Looking at the address, an uptown apartment, Blocker figured they wouldn’t find her at home. He had, since he had been back, kept tabs on her and knew she had left that apartment a while ago, but it was still in her name so she could be there, he supposed.

  While Blocker didn’t know for sure what he would do if she was guilty, until he knew for sure, his instinct was still to protect her. The set-up just seemed too neat. There was no way a Red Spear assassin would leave a shell casing behind, especially one that was laying in plain sight – especially Hannah.

  In the meantime, he wondered if there was a way to warn her, just in case.

  He scoured the park looking for a runner, one of the dozen nameless kids Kyla used to communicate with the Red Spear agents in her network.

  Early in the invasion it had become clear that the Mahk-Ra could use any electronic communication to track and target the Earthers. The armed forces were annihilated early on, but the Red Spear had gone old school almost from the beginning.

  Kids, like a latter day Fagin’s army, were used as messengers, lookouts, eavesdroppers, and even sneak thieves. They were just children, but with the very life of the planet at stake, the Red Spear felt it necessary to use every resource available.

  Especially in this cell, Kyla tried to protect the children, but there was danger every time they stepped outside, just as for the adults. Even though she mothered them, Kyla was also the one who had to send them out, and if Aquinas-ra was in town, she would have runners in the area to pick up whatever info they could.

  If he could somehow catch one of them, maybe he could get a message to Kyla to send an E-1 alert to Hannah. E-1 was Red Spear code for go to ground until further notice.

  Finally, he spotted one hanging near the tape that held back the rubberneckers. Thankfully, he wasn’t near any of the uniformed officers.

  “We should at least interview a couple of the onlookers,” Blocker said. “Just in case one of them saw something.”

  “If you want,” Steve said. “I know what I need to know, I’ll be in the car.”

  Blocker approached, and though the kid looked nervous, he didn’t bolt. He was maybe twelve or thirteen and had the same blond hair as his leader. The detective wondered if the resemblance was more than a coincidence.

  “Hey, kid.”

  The boy pointed to himself, raised his eyebrows. He looked like he was about to make a break for it.

  “Don’t run, kid, I don’t want to chase you.”

  The youngster’s clothes were clean, but his hair hadn’t seen a comb for a while, and his sneakers looked like he had run here from San Francisco.

  Nodding back toward the corpse as he closed the distance to the kid, Blocker asked, “See anything?”

  The boy shook his head.

 
; Leaning close to the kid, his voice barely a whisper, Blocker asked, “You one of Kyla’s?”

  The kid’s eyes widened for a second, then he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay,” Blocker said, voice still low. “But if you happen to run into anyone named Kyla, tell her she needs to get an E-1 message to Hannah ASAP.”

  The boy just stared at him.

  “It’s not a trap. Tell her Blocker sent you.”

  Looking skeptical, the boy said, “I have no idea...”

  Blocker cut him off. “Clock’s running, kid. In thirty minutes it might not matter what you say.” Taking a step back from the kid, Blocker let his voice rise a little. “So, you didn’t see anything? Get your ass to school.”

  The kid needed no further encouragement. He turned and sprinted away as fast as he could. Turning to the other onlookers, Blocker asked, “Any of you see anything?”

  Nobody had. Letting it go, but giving the kid as much head start as he dared, Blocker finally trailed after his partner to the car.

  Steve sped north, headed for the shitty neighborhood on the far side of town. Half the population was gone, the economy was depressed, and there wasn’t a lot of prosperity left here, but the Colony Park neighborhood had been a beehive of illegal activity that required regular visits by the police, SWAT, and once the National Guard, even before the Mahk-Ra invaded.

  On his belt, Blocker’s cell phone chirped. He pulled it up, looked at a number he had never seen before. Still, he took the call. “Blocker.”

  The voice on the other end was soft, just the hint of an accent. “Do you know who this is?”

  Kyla! The Red Spear commander had received his message. She had some balls, calling him while he rode in a police car with his Mahk-Ra partner. He couldn’t keep his eyes from cutting to Steve, who was focused on the road, and didn’t even seem to notice that Blocker was on the phone.

  Letting out a breath, forcing himself to calm down, he said, “What’s up?”

  “You drew the killing of Aquinas-ra.”

  It was not a question.

  “So?”

  “We’re being blamed for it, aren’t we?”

  There was no anger in her voice. She probably had assumed all along they would be blamed for the murder. “Yep.”

  “We didn’t do it,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact.

  “That’s my thinking, too.”

  There was a moment of silence while she considered that.

  He had met her once. A long-haired blonde who leaned to ponytails, she had light blue eyes that could lull you into thinking you weren’t dealing with a woman who had both a genius level IQ and a mean streak.

  “Really?” she asked. “That’s interesting.”

  He wanted to tell her about the faked evidence, but not while Steve was listening in.

  “Well, if you didn’t let the puppy out, who did?” he asked, hoping she would follow along with his lost puppy analogy. It was the only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment. The Mahk-Ra had decent hearing. It was possible Steve could hear Kyla’s voice on the other end, though Blocker was pretty sure he wouldn’t recognize it. At least that was his hope.

  “Not sure,” she said, “but I’m looking into it.”

  “So, you’ll let me know if you find Bogie?” he asked.

  There was a long silence. Blocker knew she had figured out what he meant, so the only reason he was waiting for an answer was because she was weighing her options. Finally, after what seemed like a minute, she said, “Yeah, I think I will.”

  “If I get a chance, I’ll try to look for him, too.”

  He couldn’t say more, but he hoped she would figure out what he meant.

  After a moment, she said, “You’re not looking for the ‘puppy’ now?” The word sounded funny when she said it.

  “Nope, different dog.”

  “The one in your message?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly.

  “You won’t find her, or any of them, for that matter.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re wasting time,” she said.

  “Can’t be helped, but as soon as I’m done with this, I’ll find time to help find Bogie, okay?”

  “It’s going to have to be, isn’t it?” she asked.

  He was getting ready to reply when she clicked off. He hoped she was right and that Hannah wasn’t just sitting at the address they were headed to.

  “Bogie?” Steve asked, eyes still on the road.

  “Lady friend of mine,” Blocker said. “Her puppy has gone missing. She was hoping I could help her find it.”

  Steve gave him a sideways look. Was he suspicious?

  “What?” Blocker asked. “I’m a detective.”

  Something like a grin tried to break out on Steve’s face, but he suppressed it. The Mahk-Ra did not smile much, and Blocker was pretty sure that laughing aloud was a capital offense.

  The mood turned serious for both of them as Steve parked the car in front of the address they had been given by the drone. They got out of the car, checked their weapons. While Steve had a Mahk-Ra handgun, a Piecemaker it was called on the streets, Blocker stayed old-school carrying the Glock he had gotten when he became a Seattle cop.

  They stood before a two-story building that held twelve apartments, four per floor, a third of them in the basement. The faux brick facade was cracked and chipping off, the windows were all filthy, and emergency calls, either police, fire, or both came in on the average of better than two a day on this block.

  At least they wouldn’t have to try to clear the tenement on their own. Steve already had the remote off his belt as Blocker opened the trunk. He was barely out of the way when the drone took off and buzzed a couple quick circles overhead as Steve reacquainted himself with the controls.

  Unlike the crime scene drone from this morning, this one was both armored and armed. The only thing it couldn’t do was open doors. They would advance slowly, the drone clearing every apartment. Blocker hoped Steve would follow procedure, clearing the apartments from the bottom up. Hannah’s place was at the top in the back. If they started at the bottom, the people coming out of their apartments would be bitching and moaning. That would warn whoever was in an apartment yet to be searched. In this neighborhood, there was always an uproar.

  Already, a few people had started peeking out from behind curtains Blocker saw, and a couple of brave souls had ventured out on their front stoops, but bystanders wouldn’t be a problem. Cops weren’t exactly out of the ordinary here, so nobody looked too eager to get in on the action. They were just watching because it was break from the usual boring bullshit of their lives, and having a real Mahk-Ra detective on the block never happened. They would watch, but this was one time they wouldn’t come out to cheer on either side.

  “Ready?” Steve asked as they approached the door, the drone buzzing like an angry insect just over their heads.

  Blocker was near the knob of the front door now. He nodded, twisted the knob and threw the door open, careful to remain to one side of the door. The drone went inside, hovered for a second as Steve looked at the monitor on the remote control to make sure no one was waiting to ambush them on the stairs. There were two sets, one on the right down to the basement, then five stairs on the left that led to the first floor.

  The drone swooped down into the basement while Blocker kept his pistol aimed upstairs. Steve took the drone past the basement apartments and Blocker could hear the faint whir of the machine’s blades.

  “Clear,” Steve said, standing behind Blocker. “Moving to the first floor.”

  This wasn’t simply a progress report, but also a warning to Blocker not to shoot the damned thing when it burst into view at the top of the stairs. Having covered the basement level from front to back, the drone had gone up the back stairs and was now flying back toward them on the first floor.

  The buzz grew louder, then Blocker saw the drone about the same moment th
at Steve said, “Clear.”

  Without hesitation, Steve took the drone up to the second floor. Blocker wasn’t waiting around either. He was right on the machine’s heels as it went up the final flight of stairs. The hallway was clear, and when one door on his right cracked open, Blocker leveled his pistol, then the door immediately slammed shut.

  He could hear Steve’s feet pounding behind him, and he wanted to get inside first, just in case Hannah was there, he didn’t want the Mahk-Ra killing her with the drone before they even had a chance to question her. They wanted her alive, but if by some miracle she was inside and took a shot at the drone, Steve might simply react. Mahk-Ras were not known for their patience when they perceived a threat, even if it was only to a drone.

  The last door on the left was Hannah’s. The drone hovered in front of it, as Blocker came up, panting. He tried the knob, locked. Without hesitation, he threw a shoulder against the door and the cheap lock shattered in the flimsy frame, the door swinging drunkenly open. The drone swept past and went toward the two bedrooms in the back.

  His momentum having carried him inside, Blocker swept his gun around the vacant living room. Even though he was certain she had abandoned the place weeks ago, her scent lingered in the air. The Mahk-Ra might not know what it was, but Blocker knew it was her. He prayed that she wasn’t here. He moved to his left, past the ratty dining room table, and into the minuscule kitchen – empty.

  Steve was at the door now, and the drone was working on the second bedroom. She wasn’t here or Blocker would have heard gunfire by now, he was sure of that much. As quietly as he could, he let out a sigh of relief.

  “She’s not here,” Steve announced.

  Blocker gave him a look. “No shit.”

  Then he heard something, footsteps behind them. He looked at Steve. The Mahk-Ra had heard it, too.